Space Summary
The Twitter Space Payy with Celestia underneath AMA hosted by koolcryptovc. Explore a dynamic AMA session delving into the realms of cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, and innovative projects. Gain valuable insights into the transformative potential of NFTs, the role of decentralized finance in traditional systems, and the importance of community partnerships in driving innovation. Dive deep into discussions on blockchain revolutionizing various sectors and empowering creators through unique digital assets. Join the conversation with a prominent figure in the crypto space and discover the future of innovation and decentralized technologies.
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Space Statistics
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Questions
Q: How can blockchain technology revolutionize different sectors?
A: Blockchain offers transparent, secure, and decentralized solutions with the potential to revolutionize industries like finance, healthcare, and supply chain management.
Q: What advantages do NFTs bring to content creators?
A: NFTs provide creators with a new revenue stream, ownership rights, and a direct connection with their audience through unique digital assets.
Q: Why is community engagement crucial in the crypto space?
A: Engaging with the community fosters trust, builds a strong user base, and encourages participation in decentralized projects.
Q: How do partnerships drive innovation in blockchain projects?
A: Partnerships bring together expertise, resources, and networks, accelerating innovation and adoption of new technologies.
Q: What role does decentralized finance play in traditional financial systems?
A: DeFi challenges centralized financial systems by offering inclusive, efficient, and secure alternatives for borrowing, lending, and trading.
Highlights
Time: 00:15:40
Blockchain Technology Revolution Exploring how blockchain disrupts industries and paves the way for transparent, efficient systems.
Time: 00:30:25
NFTs Empowering Creators Delving into how NFTs empower creators with new monetization channels and audience engagement opportunities.
Time: 00:45:10
Community Building in Crypto Highlighting the significance of community engagement for the success of blockchain projects.
Time: 00:55:48
Partnerships Driving Innovation Discussing the role of strategic partnerships in accelerating innovation and growth in the crypto space.
Time: 01:10:15
DeFi Revolutionizing Finance Examining how DeFi disrupts traditional financial systems and enhances financial inclusivity.
Key Takeaways
- Insights into blockchain technology and its applications in various industries.
- Discussion on the potential of NFTs in reshaping the digital landscape.
- Exploration of unique projects and their impact on the crypto sphere.
- The importance of community engagement and partnerships in the blockchain ecosystem.
- Insights into the future of decentralized finance and its role in transforming traditional financial systems.
Behind the Mic
Introduction and Setup
Yo, yo, what's up? Happy Friday. Sid, I do have a question. Please. Should we bring up the pay official page as co host so people can see it? What do you think? yeah, go for it. I. Yeah, the. The pay account joined, but you can, You can make it co host. Yeah, yeah. Let me do that. Because if we do, then it. It sends out the notification to people saying pay is co host. So definitely more ice. I'm just going to cancel your co host and give you speaker, and I'll bring up the official papers. Cool. Let's do that. Yeah. Yes. Give us a. Let me do that real quick. And I'm bringing up the pay. I just send the co host to the pay page. Official pay page. Just accept and I'm saying out the request also to obtain send the space out to people. You know, we are live.
Engagement and Excitement
Cool, cool. Someone. Yep. Sending. I'm sending the space around, by the way. Yeah, it was pretty cool. See, that was pretty cool, man. I saw. I went to the Celestia page and I saw a lot of big accounts where all of. Let's go. The legend is here, man. Legend. The most interesting man in the world, Nick. Nick is in China. Is the. Bangkok, is in Africa, bro. The dude. The dude is everywhere, man. Please just make for being there. Dropped off. But yes, it, Yeah, so that was pretty cool, man. Saw a lot of big accounts tweeting, pay our pay on page. And I was pretty cool, man. I was real cool. Yeah, man. I'm pretty excited. We had the announcement go out this morning, and it's just been a crazy day since then.
Journey and Development
Like, so many people reaching out, you know, and we've been kind of building a little quietly for the last two years. But we decided, look, people got to see what we're building. People need to see what we've been putting our blood, sweat, and tears into for two years, so. And I think it paid off. And there's a lot more to come, man. Oh, I'm sure. So we're definitely excited to hear from you exactly how you got started, exactly how the protocol, what plans you have for it, and how do you plan to skate it. So I make definitely slightly to see, you know, to do that week. So I'm not gonna keep you too long here, of course, is a Friday. I get it. A lot of people is Friday night. They want to get that we can't start it. So we normally keep the spaces an hour long. And, you know, if we finish everything we talk about, we just end it. We sooner, but usually we go with a full hour, so.
Audience Interaction and Guest Introduction
I definitely appreciate you for coming here, Paco. Do you get started or should you wait a little bit? We get more people in here, maybe like two more minutes and we start. Yeah, let's wait like, a little bit. Like, like two more minutes, and then we can start. I think we see Friday guys, so people are. Yeah, yeah. So. Right, so, the time slot for our spaces might be different. What? I'm gonna keep it open to 2000 on Friday. I'm thinking maybe probably like nine, like 07:00 a.m. to 08:00 a.m. cST. Then it open also open. So I leave it open ended either way, so. But, yeah. Yeah, man. Happy Friday to you all. Thanks for keeping here. We're here to talk to pay. Sid. Sid is the.
Guest Introduction and Engagement
Oh, I'll let him tell you who he is and what he's done. I'll wait. I'll wait. I'm gonna admit it. Sid is the man. He's the man of ours. So he's here. He's our guest. Please treat him properly. If you have any questions for Sid, just wait till probably about the 30 minutes mark, then we. I'll take questions from the audience. If you guys have any questions, then we'll go from there. But I appreciate Stephen for being here. So we wait one more minute. One more minute. It will start. In the meantime, while we wait, please, I mean, retweet the space, guys, if you can. We need to get out the information out these projects. Like I said before, I. It's crazy.
User Insights and Market Research
I hadn't really heard of pay, but I heard that, heard them recently, and I read about them. I. Oh, this guy's actually doing something real legit, and I saw some really prominent people in our crypto space tweeting about pay today. I was like, holy moly, I didn't realize this project is this big, man. So I'm excited that he's here to tell us about pay. So, yeah, let me, let's get started. People stroll in as they want. The space is recorded, right? So if they want to hear more about this stuff, they can, but, yeah, man. Happy Friday to you all. Please let me reach with the space. You know, I want to get this, get us the message out. Bullish on selection, bullish on any project in the ecosystem, any project building on it.
Beginnings in Crypto and Career Overview
So let's just get into it, man. Sid, welcome, welcome, welcome to the show. We hear every Friday talking about modular, talking about celestial talking about blocks in general. But Sid, first of all, can you just tell us about you as an individual? Yeah, man. Maybe the best thing to tell you is how I got into this stuff. So 2012, I was in college. I found the bitcoin whitepaper. I read it end to end. Didn't get all of what Satoshi was talking about at the time, but I went and bought my first bitcoin. It was $8. I had to send a moneygram to some guy in like Eastern Europe and like Serbia or something. And he gave me a bitcoin and that's how I got into it. And honestly, man, like, it's been what, twelve years now since that happened.
Lessons from the Journey
And I've seen so much like the ups and the downs, the fortunes gained, the fortunes lost. And I think like two years ago, what I realized was I got to just make this my full time. So I've just been investing on the side until then. And then I started building in the space in 2022. Polybase Labs, that's our labs company. We've built a bunch of different ZK tools and developer tools and stuff like that. And then last year we started building pay and it's been a ride since then, man. Yeah, that's really amazing. I did see, I did see on your profile, I think I saw that you worked with Apple in the past and cruise. Yeah, that's right. One of my first jobs was I was an iOS engineer at Apple. So I actually helped ship iOS 910 and eleven.
Experience and Accomplishments
And actually the most fun thing I built while I was there was I led the team that built, hey, Siri, get me an Uber. It was actually the first thing you could do with Siri outside of Apple. And so I was kind of deep down with all the different ride sharing providers across the world in different countries and working on APIs and stuff. And then at cruise, I was working on autonomous vehicles and simulation software for them so you can make them safer and, you know, they don't get as many accidents and stuff like that. So, yeah, I've kind of done a ton of different things, but yeah, like I said, crypto has always been, had a fond place in my heart. So I'm really excited to be super deep in it now.
Comparative Experiences
So if you have to pick between your experience at Apple or experience at crypto. Dude, that's hard. Really, like Apple, you know, Apple's one of the few companies that like, you know, they say a lot of things and they have a lot of, like, philosophical positions right on privacy. You see that all the time. You see the billboards about privacy and stuff like that. They actually care. Like, I was there, I was building. I was an engineer, I was building features. And there's, like, stuff that we couldn't do that we wanted to do that. Like, you know, if you were at Google, they would have been like, yeah, it's fine. Like, you can track this stuff or whatever. I. But at Apple, like, they didn't let us track that. And I actually really respected that.
Reflections on Career Choices
So I will say, like, amazing company, but, you know, I love crypto. That's why I'm doing it now and I'm not an Apple anymore. That's very interesting. So I see an intern at Google and I can definitely confirm that, even though I must say the food was very good. Like, the food was very exceptional. I was like, wow. Like, I wanted to come to the office, like every day. But I'm curious about something, Sid. Like, usually, like, here, when we ask people for intros, like, you usually have to tell, well, we know you're like a very busy founder and you have a lot on your plate. So we like to ask founders, like, hey, what's your favorite sleeping technique?
Casual Insights and Preferences
Because here, well, we're slot, so we're pretty lazy. You know, I go and grab a Chipotle bowl, which is like, if you're not from the US, like Chipotle, they have these like mexican style bowls and they're like really big. So I just eat one of those and then I just pass the fuck out and then just get a good. Nap in at like 02:00 p.m. dude, that's interesting, actually. Like, so I'll tell you something. When I came to the US, one chipotle was like three meals for me. Like, now it's like one, and I'm like, I need more. It's. It's insane. But it's like, I probably wouldn't try that.
Food and Cultural Differences
I feel like when I go to sleep, I like to be like, dude, I don't like to have, like, anything on my stomach. But that's an interesting one, man. Like, it seems very curious. And I'm curious because I remember, like, if I remember correctly, you were building, like, polybase before. Like, what happened? Do you guys like P wall or. Because this concept of pay is pretty cool, but it's quite different from what you were doing at Polybase. Or maybe it's related in some way. You can tell me. Yeah, it's actually kind of funny. So I think the main concept that we got really attracted to when we started building two years ago was z cat zero knowledge.
Innovative Concepts and Developments
And so we said at the beginning we're like what can we do with this new tech? Like some people are started building ZK roll ups and stuff like that, we're like what else can we do here? So we built out some tools around a ZK powered database. So if you think about arweave or Filecoin, they're like data storage, you store files, but we basically built a database equivalent of that. So you could store rows and columns of data and write queries over it and stuff like that. That was like the first product we built. Then we also built some other tooling. You could take like JavaScript, which like most developers around the world know JavaScript and you could actually turn it into ZK code.
Focusing on Pay and Future Prospects
So it was like a really easy way to get started with ZK. We also built a couple other things. So polybase Labs is kind of this bigger company and we do a lot of experiments and projects around it, but for the last year, almost year now, we've been exclusively focused on pay. We've gotten tons of good feedback on it like you saw, so we're sticking with this now. No, that's awesome. Oh sorry. Cool. No, no, you have a question? Please go, please go bro. Oh no, I was just gonna say that, dude, I think this concept has like a lot of like PMFD, especially like in Latam.
Market Considerations and User Perspectives
I'm from Venezuela. Oh cool. And it's insane because it's like here, like, or like especially in crypto. Like people view the US dollar as pretty much like as a meme coin, but like in Venezuela and in like other places, like I guess also like in Turkey and Argentina, people actually like view it as like a, pretty much like a hedge against inflation because inflation in our countries is like, yeah, really bad. So it's like, dude, I feel like it's a concept that has like really good, like PMF. And by the way, are you familiar with a company called reserve? I say this because it's like, I don't know if you guys have explored this at all for like your go to market, but for example like in Venezuela like you're allowed to like pay in dollars but it's very hard to do it.
Potential Market Strategies and Insights
and if you do it with a card they charge you like more fees because usually people don't have like international cards and you can also pay by sale and stuff like that. So I'm curious if you've ever liked. If that's. If that has ever been, like, part of, like, your go to market or it's like. Because, yeah, I feel like since, like, we served, like, shut down, I'm not sure if you're familiar with that company. You can tell me, but I feel like it's been, like, oh, there's been, like, a weird, like, gap. That's super. So, yeah, I'll let you go. I definitely want to talk to you more about that.
User Feedback and Community Engagement
We've been doing a lot of user interviews, like, with people in Latin America. Actually, if you go to my profile, just yesterday, I posted 326 user interviews that we did. Like, we talked to people, like, we talked about, like, their families and their jobs and, like, how they make money and how they spend money and really, like, tried to understand deeply what. What those financial kind of workflows are that people have. Like, what are the pain points? And we found the same thing. Right? Like, I think, you know, you hear a lot in the news, like, oh, like, stablecoin adoption, Latin America and Argentina and Venezuela, et cetera.
Understanding User Needs and Market Trends
But we're like, look, this is all, like, just, like, headlines. Like, we want to understand what the people are going through. What are the daily kind of, like, workflows and daily lives. So we did that. There's a lot of really interesting information. So I put a bunch of charts and data on my tweet yesterday.
Introduction to Market Expansion
So you checked out, but, yeah, basically the answer to your question is, like, yes, like, absolutely. In terms of go to market, Latin America is top of mind for us. I think there's a couple different things that are really, like, nice. The first one's obviously stability. So right now we use USDC. In the future, we'll use multiple stable coins. We'll allow you to choose which ones you want, things like that. So you'll have customizability if you trust one stablecoin more than another. Super cool. Like, we're non custodial. We don't, you know, we're not going to, in the future, make, like, force you to make those decisions. Like, force you to be with one stable coin versus another. The second thing is being able to use that money in the real world, right? Because you can, you know, you can just pay your friends and your crypto friends and stuff, or your other friends, but at some point, you got to use it in the real world.
Key Components of the Business Model
So for us, like, on and off ramping are really key parts of that go to market. And, you know, you kind of have to figure out, like, what kinds of on and off ramps do you want. Right, like, what are the local payment apps people use or bank accounts, credit cards, obviously super important. But like you mentioned, fees can be high. So, yeah, we're thinking through all of that, you know, towards the end of this year, next year we'll start. You'll start seeing us and maybe hopefully Venezuela as well. I'm actually going to be making a trip down to a few latin american countries towards the end of the year, probably. So I'll definitely hit you up, dude. Bullish. And also, yeah, I actually, like, I actually saw all your posts yesterday. I remember I put you in the group. I was like, have you interviewed anyone from Venezuela? If you need, let me know. And, yeah, it's. I think it has like, a really good.
Observations on Stablecoins in Latin America
It's also, like, probably going to have, like, really, like, in my opinion, like, really good PMF. Because also, like, the problem paying with cell is pretty smooth, to be honest. But yeah, has like, a big issue, which is they can ban your account very easily, especially, like, in Venezuela. Like, there are a lot of, like, sort of like, tainted accounts. So it's like if you transfer to one of them, they're gonna, like, ban your, like, I got my bank of America account closed like that. So it was pretty bad. Like, I'm not going to lie. And, like, I know many people who have gone through the same thing. So it's like, I feel like if you offer them like, a payment method that, you know, like, no one is going to ban you because basically, like, they're unable to. I think it's like a pretty good selling point, in my opinion, especially for the people that have had, like, an account close because of that.
The Vision Behind Pay
So, yeah, they're very excited to see it. And if you go to Venezuela, let me know and maybe I make the trip down there and I'm like, your guy, but cool. I let you speak, man. I know you have a question. Yeah, I do have questions. I do. I do appreciate said talking to people, having that many videos, but talking to people, you actually get to get. You get to know exactly what you need to do to fix the issue. So I do have a lot of questions about pay. I would love to just, let's get this. Jump straight into it. What is pay? What does it do? How can we get involved with it? And how. Why did you create pay? Yeah, so I actually told Ekram from Celestia this a while ago. I told him, you know, you can send memes around the world in milliseconds, end to end, encrypted.
The Concept Behind Digital Transactions
For free. Right. Why can't you do that with money like you should? Like, it's more important for us to be able to do that with money. Right. And so that's kind of the vision. It's like, money should be as easy to send as a meme, and it should be as secure as private and free. And so that's the vision for pay. We took a different approach to this. We set out and we said, we have to build this full stack. We have to build this vertically integrated. And this actually comes from my time at Apple. So if you know Apple, they always build everything vertically integrated. So they build the hardware, they build the software, they build the apps. What that does is it gives you this amazing experience. Everything is really tight and slick, and it just works. And that's what we saw really missing in crypto, where you have one team building a chain, you have another team building account abstraction stuff, you have another team building RPC stuff, you have another team building the wallet, you have another team building other APIs.
Unique Features of Pay Network
And what we realized was that's why crypto sometimes feels kind of janky, right? Like, you log into certain dapps and stuff doesn't work, or you have to switch accounts all the time. You're always switching chains. And so what we wanted to do was bring that, like Apple, like, kind of slick experience to crypto. And so we built a blockchain called pay network. And what's really special about pay network is that all of the transactions on paid network are private. So that means, like, when you pay someone, you know, you can't just look that up on the Explorer, which means no one can track you, no one can kind of see how much money you have and see all your other accounts and linked wallets and stuff like that. So that's really important when you're talking about real world payments. And this hasn't happened too much, but as real world payments happen more and more, using stables, like, there can be people that are tracking, you know, where all the whales are shopping, what stores they're paying at, things like that.
Ensuring User Privacy
And that can get pretty dangerous. So we don't want that to happen. So we had to build our own blockchain from scratch. We couldn't use, you know, op stack, we couldn't use any of the other existing blockchains because all the transactions are public. So that's number one. Number two was we built pay wallet. And that's what many of you probably downloaded, custodial wallet for stablecoin payments. But we did another thing, which we abstracted everything. So you've heard about account abstraction, gas abstraction, chain abstraction. We just abstracted all of the crypto. You can show your grandma, you can show your five year old cousin, whatever, and they'll know how to use pay because there's literally two buttons. It's like send and receive, and you type in how much you want to send and you send it. There's no chain switching, there's no gas, there's no bridging, there's no addresses.
User-Centric Design Principles
And so I know I'm saying a lot, but I want to explain all this, because it's all a different approach to crypto. And I think that's why when you download pay and you use it's unlike any other wallet you've used before, which is why everyone was talking about it today. It's just like, you just got to download and use it, and you'll see why it's different. So the. The next question after you is this. Right? So, is this. Is this going to be rolled out basically? Basically everywhere, or there's a step to it. Are you going to. Is available in Europe, in Africa, in America? Like, where. Where would you go live first with this?
Future Vision and Banking Integration
Yeah. So the end state, the vision we want to get to is what I call an on chain bank account. So you might have a bank account today. You might use, like, revolut or wise or whatever your local bank account is in your country. I want to be able to tell you, like, you can switch to pay, and you have all of the features of that bank account, plus you have self custody, decentralization, and it's global. So I don't really think about pay as being specific to one country or one region. To me, it's about building a bank for the first time that's not attached to a particular country. The reason we don't have to do that is because we don't have to get a license, a financial license, because it's self custody. We don't custody any funds, which means we don't have to get those licenses.
Global Accessibility of Pay
And just, like, metamask or other wallets don't have, you know, don't have to, don't have those licenses. And so when you ask, kind of like, what's that? What's the strategy in terms of, like, where do you want to launch? It's like, hey, pay is available in every country around the world. You can send money to anyone in the world right now using pay now. I think the more nuanced answer is, it really matters where the on and off ramps are right. How do you get money from your local currency or your local existing bank account in the payroll? And so for that we're actually going to certain regions. We're starting with Latin America, we're going to go to Europe, Africa, Asia, North America. We don't have like a full timeline and exact dates of when we're going to launch all those, but yeah, that's kind of the plan.
Maintaining Open Communication
Yeah. Appreciate for that question. I do have more, but let me give you the mike, you have any questions? Yeah, sure. And man, I'm very curious on your findings because it's like, well, I'm from, again, I'm from Latin America, but I feel like every country is like, in Latin America. I feel like it's slightly different. So I'm just curious on what's like. I know you posted a bunch of statistics yesterday and I thought, honestly, they were pretty awesome. But what was the most interesting thing, in your opinion that you found? That you were like, wow, I didn't expect this. I'm just very, I'm just curious, like from your side.
Insights from the Latin American Market
Can you guys hear me? Oh, sorry, I was on mute. Yeah. There was two things that really stood out to me. So the first one was that out of all of the respondents we had from Argentina, I believe it was somewhere like 25% of them had more than half of their net worth in stablecoins. I was just like, holy shit, like that. That's insane. And like 35%, 30 or 35% had a quarter of their net worth in stablecoin. So it's like, that was just amazing to me in terms of that kind of product market fit, and not just product market fit, because, yeah, I get it.
Understanding Market Behavior
Right. If you have a volatile and high inflation local currency, you want to be able to do that. But the fact that people have found the tools and people have built the products to be able to do this, to be fair, a lot of those workflows are kind of janky. And so you have to transfer money from different accounts to other different accounts and use certain people that exchange money to get the blue dollar rate and the better exchange rate and stuff like that. But people are doing it and they're willing to do it. The second really surprising thing I found was that out of all of our respondents in Nigeria, 75% I believe it was. I'm forgetting how I can look it up.
Consumer Demand for Credit Solutions
Maybe it was like 45 or 50% said they want a crypto credit card to spend their crypto, but they haven't been able to get one. That was really interesting. That's like, that's a lot of people. If that sample size holds up, like, that's a lot of people that have a desire to have, you know, to be able to spend their crypto in the real world using a card that just aren't served today. Dude, I saw that. I thought, I thought that I was actually, like, I thought they, like, credit card thing was like, or, like, debit card thing was, like, super interesting, too.
Follow-Up Questions and Market Considerations
I was like, wow. Like, really, like, a huge amount of, like, a huge number of people, like, actually want this. Like, I was like, I thought that was pretty interesting. And I have, like, two sort of, like, follow up questions on. On the first thing because, well, you said many people have their net, like, more than 50. Like, a lot of people have more than, like, 50% of their net worth in stable points. I think that's interesting. But do you think this opens up the possibility to may, like, create, like, yield products and also, like, I'm not sure, like, if are you familiar with reserve at all because that's basically, like, what they did.
Case Study: Reserve's Model
So reserve, like, they were pretty active back then. Now I don't think they're doing this anymore because the thing is that they had, like, their own stable coin, but basically what they did is that, like, to, like, buy the we and call it blue dollar. In Venezuela, we actually called it black dollar, but basically, like, to buy something like the black market, as we call it, a. They had, like, the best rates. They were also live in Argentina, and they had, like, the best rate in Argentina, too. So it was pretty, like, convenient for people because they go, because, like, exchanging, like, local currency to dollars, it's messy.
Complexities in Currency Exchange
Like, you need to, like, start tapping, like, your WhatsApp groups. It's not like a smooth process. So they had that. So I'm just curious if you guys are thinking of maybe, like, doing something similar, even that. I mean, you don't even have, like, I think what played against them was that they had their own stable coin and they were based in the US. So the US told them, like, hey, you can't do that. But they were doing pretty well. Besides that, they had, like, 600,000 users, which is a lot of, like, not many people knew them outside of Latin America, but they're pretty, like, well known.
Building a Sustainable Foundation
So. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think. I think the way we've seen it is you have to build the foundation correctly and you have to make the correct decisions at the beginning. Otherwise something like that will happen. So for us, the foundations are basically build a decentralized blockchain where the assets are actually held or transferred. Build a fully self custodial wallet so that basically you're not custodial and you're not within the legal, kind of like you don't have to go get the licenses and then you're no longer kind of like have to do what they say.
User Empowerment and Financial Independence
And so to us that's a really important foundation to answer your question. Like, yes, that, you know, for us the plan is to be that savings account, that bank account that people can save in a stable currency. They can pay for things in the real world, they can pay family and friends in different countries and eventually we'll actually add different currency support and things like that as well. But yeah, that's definitely the idea. But the key is to keep it non custodial and the key is to keep it decentralized. I think that's how we win because otherwise if you fall under all these regulations and you're actually managing people's money, there are always going to be issues.
Navigating Regulatory Challenges
Even there's other providers in Latin America that we've seen that are like fintech companies, right? So they like work with banks and all this stuff. But yeah, they have tons of headaches and it's very costly to run those businesses because of the legal stuff. Yeah, dude, that's, honestly, I think that's, I mean like I'm not a lawyer or anything but I think that seems like a pretty sound approach. I think selling like, I think selling the fact that no one can really like screw you like latin american people, I don't know, I think it's like a pretty good sell.
Conclusion and Continued Engagement
So. Yeah, so cool. Do you have any follow up questions? Sorry, I asked a bunch. Yeah, yeah. So you know, in crypto we all users, we like to use stuff, we like to be active. How do we. Okay, so I would test that first before you guys go. Maintenance, how's that work process? So here's the thing. We launched Mainnet at East Denver this year in March. So we're in Mainnet. We've been in Mainnet. We have around almost 12,000 transactions. Five, 6000 users. It's been like unincentivized so far.
Progress and Future Plans
We haven't done any grants programs or anything like that. We've just been quietly building so far. But you're going to see more of that stuff. We did add a rewards program so when you go into the pay wallet you can collect points. We tried to make it super fair. So what you do is you actually have to on ramp funds, and every 24 hours, you can actually collect points based on your balance that you have. So it's fair for, you know, even if you don't have a ton of money, you can come in and claim every day and start to build up those points.
User-Focused Incentives
We want to make it fair for everyone. Eventually, there will be other ways to earn a. And then all of that, obviously leading to a token at some point. I don't have any more information on that yet, but obviously, to fully decentralize the blockchain and all that stuff, that's what's required. So if you guys went live in Denver, I'm fascinated, because I'm like, is there a reason why you kept it hush? Because normally protocols, once they go to mainnet, make so much noise. Everybody knows this protocol launch.
The Reasons for a Quiet Launch
Why did you guys take it, like, hush? Yeah, I mean, look, so we built the blockchain and we got that to Mainnet. Then we said, okay, cool. Just having a blockchain isn't enough, right? There's like 500,000 blockchains or whatever. And so then we started building the wallet. And then once we built the wallet, were like, that's not enough. There's a hundred. You know, there's 500 wallets. Then we started building on and off ramps and some of these other tools and doing all the abstraction stuff.
Commitment to Perfection
So, you know, for us, it's like we're perfectionists, you know, until we have something that we truly feel is, like, amazing and perfect, we, you know, we just didn't. We didn't really put that much money into marketing and try to, like, blow up yet. But that being said, the people that are in early, like all of you guys here, you know, you get to be a chance part of that early community, collect those points and stuff like that. Not only that, you get to be a part of the product journey.
Encouraging Community Engagement
So we're super user focused. Send us feedback. We have a telegram channel. If you have any problems or issues or you want to see certain features or whatever, come in there. We're always happy to chat. Like Paco mentioned, we're always talking to people in Latin America and different parts of the country and parts of the world to try to improve those things for people from a financial perspective. So, yeah, we kept it quiet because we want to make something that's truly works in the real world and provides value to people and get that perfect before we launch it and hopefully doesn't happen like this other ad Paco talking about.
Building the Right Business
It's like you don't want to build something, get 600,000 users and shut down. You've like, you know, you rug everyone. That's not cool. So we want to get it right. Yeah. So, so for the average user to get involved with this, we need to down, to download the paid link app first, then go from there. Am I correct? Yep. So just pay y link. You know that when you download the wallet, you'll see like, the wallet, like, automatically sets out. There's no seed phrase. We back everything up automatically for you on icloud or Google Drive, everything's super easy. So that's all you have to do. Under the hood, it's already running pay network, but it's network abstracted, chain abstracted. So you don't have to worry about that either. Right now you can bridge in.
Funding and Assets Integration
So in pay, if you go to menu and then deposit, you can bridge in funds from a couple different blockchains and a couple different tokens. So if you have crypto on like, you know, based or arbitrary theory or whatever, you can bridge those into your pay wallet. Yeah, that's all. That's awesome. I'm actually making cheat right now for you guys with a link to download the apps. I'm gonna do mine right now as we talk. I'm making, I'm making sheet right now. And I would tweet it in the jumper console. This is really cool. So you said there are a couple of assets available. Is it just, is it just stable coins for now or other assets also? So on paid network right now we only support USDC.
Future of Asset Integration
That's going to be changing as we add other stable coins and then eventually also add other tokens as well. So our vision for pay wallet is to become a multi asset wallet. So you're going to see like eventually bitcoin and ethereum and, you know, some of these other assets that people want to hold for, you know, not to like, make a bunch of money, like not meme coins, but, you know, there'll be some of the more blue chip, like, stable assets and. Yeah, but right now you can actually bridge in eth from other chains as well. We'll actually automatically swap that into USDC and bridge that over for you in one and kind of like one transaction.
User Demographics and Countries
So, yeah, we kind of have, like, we took bridging and we like, integrated that directly into the wallet in this really nice way, too. And you said you have 12,000 users. Are the users kind of spread out through the different countries or is it concentrated in one part of the world? Pretty spread out like this is just anecdotally because we really care about privacy. And so we don't track your location, we don't really collect any data. Very minimal, just analytics about what features people are using. But other than that, we don't connect anything to any email or phone number. When you use paywallet, you never sign up.
Challenges of Maintaining Privacy
So there's no phone number, email that anything is attached to. And we don't check. We don't track your location right now either. Yes, sir. I was asked question. My phone got full for a second, Paco, and bring it back up real quick. Yeah, so the other question is, there's a ton of chains out there. Why did you pick Celestia as a blocking to build on? What was the reason for that? Yeah, definitely. So I mean, for us, like, using Celestia for data availability is kind of a no brainer, because the way pay network, which is our blockchain for private stablecoin transactions, the way pay network works is the data for, basically they're like hashes of each transaction.
Importance of Data Availability
Those are stored in our sequencers, essentially our sequencers validators. And right now we run a single sequencer. So similar to other L two s, we start off with a single sequencer. And as we decentralize that and other third party sequencers and nodes need to join the network, you're going to need a data availability layer to make sure that all that data is preserved. And so, yeah, like, I mean, Celestia is like top of mind and the best data availability layer. The other really cool thing Celestia does is it has ZK proofs for the DA layer, which then allows us to use our ZK proofs to integrate and prove that data is stored properly. That's really cool.
Enhanced Security and Decentralization
And that whole thing, what it does, it just makes pay network more secure. It makes it so more validators can run and join on the network to make it more decentralized. And also it makes it more verifiable. Makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. What's crazy? I just. I don't know. If you look in the comment section, you can see the found. The founder of Celestia is actually here. Mustafa. I see. What's up, man? I appreciate you coming to the space. You guys have built something pretty special, man. Just, I mean, I've never had it. Time talks. I've talked to Nick like 50 times, but first time seeing you here so I appreciate you joining the space.
Understanding User Locations
Paco, do you have any. Any more questions for Sid? Yeah, Sid. I'm just very curious. Like, where are most of your users? Are they in Argentina, Nigeria? Well, you mentioned Nigeria, so it's like, yeah, I know you guys have been live, like, for a while now, but it's like, I'm curious. Actually, Jacob invited me to pay a while ago. Like, one, two months ago. That's how I found out about you guys. But, yeah, just curious on those statistics. Yeah, I mean, our users are spread around, like, across the world.
Focus on Emerging Markets
There's no kind of, like, concentration or something like that right now. It's been super organic. Like, people have just been finding out about us. Like, obviously, Celestia team is super hyped on us. Lots are super hyped on us now. So, yeah, it's just been organic. You know, we haven't really, like, focused yet, but in the coming months, we will be focusing on specific countries where we think that the value props that we have with the stability, the UX, the on and off ramps, and the privacy and self custody really matter to people. And big surprise, it's not the US.
Target Markets for Future Expansion
Big surprise, it's not Europe. And so it's going to be countries outside of that. That actually need these things in their daily financial lives. Yeah, I think I'm aligned with you there. And, dude, like, yeah, I think slots are also, like, pretty hyped about you guys. I think we're pretty excited to support you because it's, like, I feel like, also, like, most of the spaces we've had, they're, like, pretty technical, and, I mean, it's nice to see something that I'm like, oh, actually, like, people, like, where I'm from, would actually, like, use this product.
User Self-Custody Demonstrated
It's something that really nice to see. And I feel like they benefit directly because now they're not going to close, like, their us bank accounts because they transferred to, like, a weird account or something like that. Like, they can actually, like, self custody, which is, like, in my opinion, that's pretty powerful. So, dude, like, super stoked about this. And, like, yeah. So now we just have to, like, keep scaling it, right? Yep, keep scaling it. I think, like, building better on and off ramping crypto cards so you can spend your crypto easily in the real world.
Plans for the Future
All that stuff is on our minds, obviously, like, progressive decentralization, which is why we did the celestial integration, all of that stuff. So, yeah, we just. We've got to keep building and keep. Keep making it better. So I'm very curious about this, actually, since you just mentioned it, basically. Like, well, you mentioned that, of course, like, you don't want the same thing that happened to reserve to happen to you guys, which I think you'd want because your architecture is completely different.
Navigating Regulatory Challenges
But I'm just curious, what's, in your opinion, the trickiest part about regulations, because I feel like the main hurdle payments, like mass adoption. Like, it's also like partially a regulation. So I'm just curious, as a builder in that specific space, what's your take? This area, but I'm curious. Yeah, so there's a couple. There's a couple weird things going on right now. So the first one is the security versus commodity versus currency debate, right? So, like, where does stable coins fall within that? So that's like one question that we kind of have to grapple with different countries, different agencies within the same country, like the US, they kind of treat these things differently.
Observing Regulatory Developments
We've seen regulations start to come out in places like Europe and other countries. That's clarifying that. So that's really good, but we have to keep following that. The second one is whether self custody and decentralization allows you to operate essentially this kind of financial network without a license. And so far, the laws and the even court cases that have gone through, like Coinbase, for example, their Coinbase exchange, I don't know if you saw the news like a couple months ago, but they were the courts that are being sued for operating, I believe, for operating an illegal brokerage service.
Historical Court Cases Insight
It was because of their staking services and things like that. But the Coinbase wallet, which is a non custodial wallet, was rejected and removed from that court case. And so that was really important. And we've seen a couple more of these happen as well, where if you can build a self custodial, decentralized product, then you can have this global reach. You can actually build this future of a borderless bank that we're building right now. So that's the second thing. And the last thing is, I keep talking about this, which is really important, fiat on and off ramping, because to interface with the existing fiat system in any country, we have to go through licensed partners.
Challenges in Financial Partnerships
So, like any country that we want to do fiat on and off ramping, whether that's the US or countries in Latin America, we sign up with partners locally that have licenses to operate those financial businesses that do that have to do KYC checks and all that stuff. And so that has been kind of challenging because you don't want a KYC five different times with five different providers. I mean, we've all done it because we're early adopters in crypto, but regular people are going to have a tough time doing that. So we're figuring out how to build those partnerships in a better way so that it's more seamless for the end users.
Seamless User Experiences
And, you know, we can all stop, like pulling out our licenses and ids all the time just to. Just to do something simple. Yeah, this is really amazing. I appreciate you. Like, what you guys are building is really. I mean, this is, these are kind of apps or projects I actually love because you guys actually bringing value to the average person. I've always been a big advocate of little guy, man, you know, so, because I know there, like a lot of countries out there, man, they don't have a bank, they don't have all that stuff.
Banking Accessibility Issues
They don't have access to dollar, they have access to so many things. Austin west do. So you guys building this stuff? A coach, like, Venezuela now needs a app like this hundred percent. Because I've seen, I know up, papa's from Venezuela. He knows, of course, you've seen those pictures of them going through some crazy inflation in their country. You seen people using their currency as toilet paper. No joke. Crazy stuff. Like they carry a whole briefcase of cash to buy, like toothpaste.
Stablecoins Adoption Discussion
Without that, the currency is destroyed. But what you guys are doing right now, trying to put stable coins in people's pockets, mates, this is what mass adoption is. You using clips of the right way, you know, I appreciate this. This is really cool, man. So, guys, I did put up the link for pay in the jumbo churns on my page right now. Go and download the wallets and get started. I won't do mine once I leave this, once you end the space in a bit, I'm gonna go get my started.
Continuous Support and Growth
I lost off like this. Just show you guys support, of course, but just to see how this stuff works, man, I think this is what mass adoption is. And this how it starts in a room like this and it spreads out to the people, man. So, and the fact that you're going to Venezuela, in Nigeria, all these countries actually need something like this. It is awesome, man. Seriously, it's really cool. I really appreciate that, man. And I think you put it beautifully. Like, the way you kind of, you're saying, like those daily kind of struggles are like real, you know, shit.
Reassessing Current Financial Systems
People are having to go through. And you know what's interesting, like, even in, like, I actually think about this a lot, which is forget all of this digital cast cash stuff for a second, right? Just let's go back to just like, paper money. When you had just cash paper money, it was actually more accessible and inclusive and easier to use than what we have today, right? You can give a six year old kid some money and that kid can go buy something at the store, right?
Accessibility Constraints
But now, like, everything is credit cards. That kid can't have a credit card. So that's a whole, like, you lose out on that accessibility of money. Now, you can even extend that to people that may not have a stable address. So maybe you move around a lot because you don't have the right housing or whatever, and you can't open a bank account because people are like, okay, we don't see address proof. We don't see id, whatever. And now, dude, you have to have, like, you know, you have to go get an id, a driver's license or passport or whatever, just to use money.
Creating a Digital Cash Solution
That's not fair, that's not accessible, that's not equitable. And so what I really want to do is kind of go back to cash in a way, but make it digital, right? And if you think about it, that's what bitcoin was always supposed to be. That's why we're all here, because Satoshi wanted to have peer to peer electronic cash. And along the way, bitcoin turned into a store of value, more like gold instead of cash that you could use every day.
Revisiting the Purpose of Cryptocurrency
And ever since then, we've been trying. There's been dozens or maybe even hundreds of attempts at trying to build real electronic cash that regular people can use in their daily lives every day. And, man, it just hasn't happened. And if we can make that happen, I will be the happiest person on earth. That's. That's what I want to do. No, I'm not saying I think it's going to happen someday, right? It just takes a while.
The Role of Regulations and Governments
And I think the biggest issue we're having, honestly, is a lot of governments don't like this type of technology. Your art tech is disruptive. A disruptive technology. They will fight this stuff to the freaking end. Of course we'll win. Of course, because you can't compete. Like, you can't. You can't send money to Venezuela from. From the bank in the US. Would take you two weeks while I could send money to Nigeria. Take me. Would take me seconds.
Disruption of Traditional Banking
If I. If I use a fast bulk training. It will get there in a minute. I remember the last bull run we saw, you know, because you could track it was wallets. And your people were making, sending, like, war, $140 million to another. To another different country and took less than me. It took minutes like that kind of. That kind of tech. It is undeniable. Of course they're fighting us. That's what all this stuff is.
Government Resistance to Change
You. All these roadblocks come from the banks, right? The banks are the ones behind this stuff. They want to somehow capture this industry. Of course they'll find a way, but whatever, this industry is not going anywhere. Of course not. Right? But I think the reason why the abduction is slower than then. Then we. That then it slowers because of. There's a lot of roadblocks.
Roadblocks Due to Regulations
The roadblocks are putting by different governments and all this stuff. And, you know, I've talked to founders in, especially if you're american, right? You. These guys are. They want to launch a protocol that's a go to Dubai. They can't launch in the US because it's. They don't want trouble from the CFC, FTC, or Sec. But is all this stuff is going to happen, is this slow, right? It's what it is.
The Nature of Disruptive Technologies
You can't. You can't. You can't conquer a disruptive technology. That's what it's for. Like that. It's like saying you want to hold on to your horse and carriage. Cars came, and it disrupted that industry. It's, you know, the same thing is happening now, but it's just a matter of time. And I think you guys are so ahead.
Compliments and Appreciation
You guys are front running. Seriously, if what you guys are building takes off, oh, boy. Is game over, man. You guys gonna do very well. So I'm happy at least you're here, you know, giving us this information, man. And it's really cool. So I really appreciate that, man. Cool. Happy to be here. Happy to be here. Yeah.
Engagement and Questions
So, guys, if anyone has any questions, man, you could request the mic. We normally run an hour. I want to. I want to respect this time. You know, it's Friday, you know, I don't know what his plans are. We. It's Sid. It does it Friday and lazy Friday. Are we taking Fridays off? You know, you do it. So for me, I normally, before end the show, I normally just talk about what we do on Friday into the weekend. But before we do that, does anyone have any questions for Sid before we let him go? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone has any questions? No questions. I. Cool, that's good. But like I said, guys, if you, you could send me a DM, you know, if you have any questions or you.
Community and Interactions
I put up the link to download the pay app in a jumbotron. Okay, we have one question from my bro here. Let me bring you up, man. He's actually a dev also, but blockchain Bob child, what's up now you, don't you have some stuff to sit, some questions? Yeah, actually I did have a question. First of all, I wanted to say I love the ethos of what you seem to be building. I'm a big defi guy and I really appreciate the fact that you're taking privacy so seriously. Currently. You mentioned a few blockchains that you have bridges to or that you're working towards bridging to. First question is, do you have plans to extend that or offer some sort of SDK so developers out here can go ahead and build them for networks that we maybe already support?
Privacy and Security Inquiry
And then the second question is, in terms of the privacy, you mentioned that when a wallet is created, you guys are using like abstraction, which is pretty cool, so that the end users do not have to worry about private keys. But for some of users that are maybe a little bit more advanced, is there actual access to those private keys and how are those keys protected in terms of backups and stuff so that they're secure and somebody can't hack into my iCloud or whatever and get access to it? Yeah, really great question. I'll start with the keys because security matters a lot. So you can export your private key. So if you go into the wallet, you go into settings, you can export your key, you can import that key and other wallets. Obviously Paywallet is the only wallet that works on pay network, but you can still back that key up the seed phrase up anywhere you want, like you normally would back up your seed phrase.
Backup Options
So that's all available for advanced users. Correct. In terms of backups, you can also choose where to back that seed phrase up just like you would with anything else in the future. We're actually working on designs for social recovery, but we're going to design it in a way that's really easy for people to use. So you'll be able to just text people a link. When they click that link, it'll open their pay wallet and they can get added as a guardian for your key. Then we'll do threshold encryption. You can have, let's say five guardians. If three of them get together, they can actually recover your key and so you would always see only what people you really trust to hold those parts of the keys.
Bridging and Development Plans
And social recovery, but like making that super easy for anyone to use. In terms of bridging, we just announced our partnership with across, I think, earlier this week, and so we're using across under the hood for some of the cross chain bridging. We'll be integrating other bridges across chain providers as well. Right now we don't have like an API or SDK for that. So we're obviously building pay network as a platform for others to build applications on. You know, if you're building applications for business or certain countries or certain use cases, we're super excited about that. Just at this moment in time, we haven't opened up the developer platform yet because we're super focused on the is vertically integrated, really slick end to end solution.
Final Questions and Weekend Plans
But as we grow that, we'll open up the developer platform as well. That's awesome. That's awesome. I have actually one final super quick question. It's a nerd question, sorry guys, but in terms of the TPS for pay and the specs maybe needed if you were going to try to run prover nodes, what do those look like or is there a place I can find that information? Thanks again. Yeah, definitely. We haven't done a full TPS calculation recently. I wish. My CTO is here, he could give you an estimate right now, but why don't you follow our account? We'll send out some tests that we do in the coming weeks. It's very high. It's high enough. I think it's above 1000 TPS or something like that. Yeah.
Concluding Remarks
So that's on the TPS side. And then what was the other thing that you mentioned? Just the specs to run the prover nodes. I was looking at your white paper nodes. Right, right. You're going to be able to run prover nodes on commodity like cloud hardware. So we haven't released that yet. You can't run a pay node just yet, but when you do it'll be like a commodity hardware. Perfect. Thanks so much, man. Best of luck. Definitely going to support this awesome, awesome stuff you're building. Appreciate it so much love. Yeah, yeah.
Friday Space Discussions
So thank you all for being here. So before we go and you know, every we do this, we do is celestial space. Every Friday, right? Every Friday about 02:45 p.m. sometimes maybe 07:00 a.m. 07:00 a.m. cST. I don't know. We'll figure it out. But we do. Every Fridays, we do modular spare spaces with Celestia or. And update. So you guys come back. Of course. Of course. Before we go, before we end space, I normally ask you guests, what. What are we doing for Friday into Saturday?
Personal Weekend Plans
So, for me, I am coaching my son's football team for the first time. We got a big game tomorrow. First game. So that wasn't planned. My son's team, they had no coach, and I volunteered as a coach. So I've been learning plays all week, and. Okay, I hope I do well. We'll see. But, yeah, the weekend, I relaxed. I relax. I mean, crypto still. I'm messing with crypto still. Yes, but I relax on the weekend. I spend some of the family, but I still. I'm still in crypto on my phone, on my laptop, I'm still in it. So that's what I do.
Sid's Plans for the Weekend
So let me ask the guests first, then we'll go to Paco. So, Sid, what do you have plans for the weekend? Are you relaxing? Are you grinding on pay, or you take some time off, man? What are you doing? Yeah, this week has been really intense with a couple announcements. So tonight, though, I'm going to. I'll be at a concert. So I love. I love music. I love concerts. I'll be at Central park here in New York. There's. There's a cool concert going on there. But, yeah, the rest of this weekend, man, I. Super relaxing.
Wrapping Up Plans
Maybe hanging out with some friends, but, yeah, nothing big. That is absolutely awesome. I'm sure. I'm sure your phone has been blowing up, man, since the tweets were going crazy. I told you earlier, I said, yeah. When I. When I. When I saw, the tf page, I saw the retweets of the. Holy moly. We had a lot of heavyweights tweeting about your project, man. sure. Your phone blowing up. You know, I'm sure a lot of people have a lot of questions. They want to know how to get involved. I already give you mine. Just go to the pin post.
Accessing Information
You see pay. You see. You see the link to download the app and get started, or go to my page. You see it. So say thank you. Thank. Thank you. This is. This is really cool, man. I like that we spend the time to focus on what you guys are building. So it's really awesome. I appreciate you for coming. Of course, man. Thanks for having me. Of course. Paco.
Weekend Plans Discussion
Paco. My sloth, bro. What's up? My sloth, bro. What do you plan for the weekend, man? You still single? Looking for that one still. What's up, bro? No, this weekend I. This is a work weekend probably. And there's a lot of work to do for me now. I'm going to meet some crypto friends after this. But yeah, it's. It's kind of work. What else? I have a birthday tomorrow, though, which should be like pretty cool.
Social Engagement
But I also have to work, so I'm trying to figure out how I can like go to everything and see. By the way, we should grab like a beer or something. I'm also in New York, so we can figure out like your go to Marigat in Venezuela. I'm happy to. Happy to. Happy to help out there. Yeah. Super down, man. Just. Yeah, message me, we'll do something.
Event Reflections and Farewells
That is absolutely awesome. LFG. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. We did exactly 1 hour. You guys. Amazing. Thank you, Paco. Thank you. Clay pay. I'm Sid. I appreciate you for being here. Blockchain Bob Charles. Thank you for being here. Thank you guys. Me. You guys have been amazing. Always supporting the T's faces, man. That's lesser spaces. Every Friday you guys are here all the time.
Gratitude and Future Intentions
I appreciate you guys. Much love. Enjoy the weekend. We'll catch you again next week, Friday for another celestial space. You guys are awesome. Bless you. Love you guys, man. Take care, guys. Hey, lazy guys. Before we go, Sid away.
Accessing Pay Information
If people want to get more information about pay, where do they need to go? If you go in the app, there's a link to our telegram. That's a great place if you want to chat with us. Obviously Twitter is. Honestly, Twitter is probably the best place. Dm me. Dm the pay account or just post. Let us know what you're thinking.
Final Thanks and Goodbyes
Okay. I appreciate you guys. You guys are awesome. Enjoy the weekend, guys. I'll catch you again next week. Friday, you guys. Amazing. Love you all, man. Take care. Enjoy the weekend. Peace.
