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as.when. He.

3:09

Hello Everyone welcome to episode Do.

3:13

Today. Timers are talking to

3:15

Aki Bloke. Who. Is

3:17

T Go founder and Ceo of the

3:19

and Sees Blink. This

3:21

is a. Bit. Of a

3:23

reader, the project that's. For.

3:26

Getting out a new architecture?

3:28

do. Bridge. Bitcoin from

3:30

Bitcoin to be other ecosystems

3:33

load you tedium. Know.

3:35

Of course lot of projects have.

3:38

Tried. And implemented commercial systems to

3:40

do similar things. But.

3:42

They have a really cool architecture

3:44

that minimizes the trust required. In.

3:47

The British technology so. Oh

3:49

please welcome. A key to the

3:51

to the show of Iraq is. A

3:53

big for having me. So.

3:57

Blessed. are those posts about how

3:59

you've and into the crypto ecosystem,

4:01

into this madhouse. Well,

4:05

I'm very happy to be here. I came in

4:07

full time three years ago. I

4:10

guess just a quick background on me. I've been

4:12

a developer since I was like nine or ten.

4:15

I went to a computer science

4:17

undergrad or actually instead of high

4:19

school, I did college degree

4:21

in CS and then BBA undergrad. And

4:24

yeah, I was in AI for over ten

4:26

years actually. I was in

4:28

AI VC or machine learning, big data

4:30

VC, when the NoSQL stuff started

4:32

in 2011. So I

4:35

got into data management then. I

4:38

actually heard about Bitcoin in 2011, 2012 actually,

4:43

but I didn't have the space to kind of the mind space to get

4:45

it then because I was building

4:47

an AI company, an AI marketing tech company

4:50

called Market News, which I founded

4:52

and led for eight years. And

4:54

so when I stepped away at Market News and

4:56

we put a CEO in there to run it,

4:59

I thought this would be the perfect time to

5:01

come to Web3. It's just

5:03

the amalgamation of a lot of

5:05

things that I was interested in, finance,

5:08

crowdfunding, data management,

5:11

database tech, self-sovereignty,

5:13

empowering people, giving

5:16

people good options in also in

5:18

developing countries. I

5:20

was born in Hungary in a smaller town

5:23

called Devrits and we grew up in Boston

5:25

and Michigan. So it just all of it

5:27

came together and finally had the mind space

5:29

to get into the space. And

5:31

my father had been a scientist all his career. And

5:33

so also with Market News, I

5:36

just I found my niches,

5:38

finding technologies that could

5:41

really be developed into products and figuring

5:43

out how to productize and commercialize it. I

5:45

did that with my last company.

5:47

I am a co-author on two patents or

5:49

I guess I don't know what the term is.

5:52

I have two patents in the area

5:55

of topic modeling and semantic

5:57

keyword analysis. And so when I

5:59

came to crypto, I wasn't

6:01

a cryptographer. I don't think I

6:04

have that background. But

6:07

I found this opportunity, this white

6:09

paper that Tage at MIT had

6:11

published. And I met

6:13

the DLC community. I met some brilliant people. And I

6:16

thought this would be an area where I could help

6:18

in. And then

6:21

I found my co-founder, Jesse. And then we've

6:23

been kind of trying to be active

6:25

members of the DLC community for over

6:27

two years now. That's

6:31

really cool. I'm

6:33

curious if you have any

6:36

regrets switching away from

6:38

AI to Web 3 and then

6:40

maybe one year India Journey chart GPT

6:42

launched and such a

6:44

huge AI boom kicked off. It

6:47

was funny that I was in

6:50

AI when too maybe

6:52

arguably too early before this and

6:55

missed out on the big run up of

6:58

Bitcoin and ETH. I heard about both.

7:00

I just couldn't really participate. And

7:02

then I came to crypto. It crashed and AI

7:05

went up. It's sort of the joke. But

7:09

I really honestly don't

7:11

have regrets because I'm really focused

7:13

on building things that add value

7:16

for society. I know that's always

7:18

a thing sounders say. But for

7:20

me, it's true that I

7:22

love my father's kind of love

7:24

for invention and kind of primary

7:26

research and basic research. And

7:29

I always wanted to build things that just

7:31

really make a difference. And

7:33

I think AI helps

7:36

in a lot of ways. Web 3 helps

7:38

in a lot of ways. On some level,

7:40

these are all infrastructure. And it's really about

7:42

what we build with these tools. But

7:45

I'm still somewhat involved with some AI

7:47

companies. Actually, our friend that

7:50

introduced us on show is heavy into AI.

7:52

We talk about it almost every week. But

7:55

I'm happy to be here. And I

7:57

just want to make a difference with AI. our

8:00

work. We're getting a lot of

8:02

that here. I think the timing now

8:05

is very strong because we've got

8:07

the halving coming up, we've got

8:09

Bitcoin ETFs launching, Bitcoin has

8:11

sort of crossed the chasm. It's in

8:13

use by people in El Salvador and

8:15

other places on a mass scale. That's

8:18

what attracted me to

8:21

building on Bitcoin, quote unquote. I think that

8:24

the time has come for this to be

8:26

more easily used up all that before. Right.

8:30

So you mentioned that

8:33

you started out meeting

8:36

Taj and

8:38

the DLC community, DLC standing for

8:40

discrete log contracts. And that's kind

8:42

of like the core

8:44

pillar on which your

8:47

commercial efforts are further

8:49

inventing on top of that.

8:51

So let's start there. What

8:54

is a discrete log contract and

8:56

why were they invented? Yeah,

8:59

yeah. So Taj also

9:02

is probably most known for his other

9:04

invention, the Lightning Network. So

9:07

right before he published the Lightning white

9:09

paper, he published this white paper on

9:12

DLCs entitled Smart Contracts on Bitcoin. The

9:14

original idea was how can we add

9:16

some sort of logic

9:18

to Bitcoin? And he proposed

9:21

a mass around it where basically

9:23

you can have two parties,

9:25

Alice and Bob, put

9:28

some Bitcoin and make sort of a bet,

9:30

like maybe like a sports bet. And

9:32

then you have this off chain

9:34

entity, quote unquote, Bitcoin Oracle, Olivia

9:37

the Oracle that decides who won

9:39

the bet. And then there's a

9:41

cryptographic, Taj proposes a cryptographic way

9:43

to execute

9:46

this. So that the so

9:48

that for example, the off chain entity

9:50

the tester does not know who the

9:53

parties are. It's just signing, you

9:56

know, outcomes or publishing

9:58

attestations. And then the parties. basically,

10:02

the big invention that we

10:05

also utilize is when the

10:07

users deposit Bitcoin, they

10:09

pre-sign the addresses where it can

10:12

go. So you have predefined everything

10:14

upfront and it's sort

10:16

of a secure system. And so there

10:18

was a company called Shortbits. Chris

10:20

Stewart and Nadav Cohen were primarily

10:23

driving that and they had built

10:25

a community round list. They had

10:27

implemented the first DLC

10:29

technology. And so

10:32

they were really the thought leaders driving

10:34

these discussions and they had these monthly

10:36

DLC kind of meetings and we would

10:38

talk about this back and kind of

10:41

implementation of it. And so

10:43

when we came into the scene, those

10:45

were the people we met. And

10:47

it felt like there's a big

10:49

opportunity here, but also that

10:51

community was sort of running

10:53

into some challenges because it

10:56

was hard to get liquidity on

10:58

it. There wasn't like a market

11:00

for sports betting with DLCs, mostly

11:03

because people didn't really know what DLCs

11:05

are and like how

11:07

do you find your peers and

11:10

what kind of bet and who is

11:12

this mysterious oracle that just happens to

11:14

know everything. That was always the quote

11:16

unquote oracle problem. So

11:19

anyway, we just thought we could kind of,

11:22

as the new people coming in, maybe give us

11:24

some fresh eyes. And

11:26

so we actually started looking at DLCs in

11:28

a different way. As a

11:31

user, locking Bitcoin with a protocol

11:33

and the oracle being like an

11:35

oracle that we're familiar with, like

11:37

a price feed oracle like Chainlink

11:39

or Fith and there being

11:41

kind of a blockchain involved and

11:43

I can kind of describe that

11:45

more. But we basically repositioned the

11:47

narrative and our understanding of DLCs

11:49

and that's what we're building around

11:51

now and I think that's what

11:54

people will find very actionable. Actually,

12:00

like if we wrap our heads around the

12:03

traditional DNC as envisioned by Taj,

12:05

like if we wrap our heads

12:07

around this sports betting

12:11

framework that maybe he had in his mind while

12:13

writing the paper, and then

12:15

it has this party which is the Oracle. And

12:18

then if we switch the

12:21

Oracle from being a single centralized

12:23

party to being a protocol, when

12:27

you make the jump from single-centralized party to protocol,

12:29

that is when you get from the

12:31

street lock contracts to DNC link. So

12:37

maybe we first start with kind

12:39

of unpacking the

12:41

original idea, which is like a sports bet.

12:43

So I'm kind of imagining

12:45

this as let's say

12:47

the two of us, Aki

12:49

and Meher's A and M, we

12:52

want to bet, I don't

12:54

know, let's say a Bitcoin on

12:57

the outcome of a game. So

13:02

maybe it's a soccer match, two

13:04

teams and the so

13:07

I'm kind of imagining it as the

13:09

two of us putting money into a

13:11

transaction output. So

13:14

maybe I'm putting in one Bitcoin there and you're

13:16

putting in one Bitcoin there. And

13:20

then the realization is that at

13:23

the end of the bet, what can happen? Either

13:26

two Bitcoin can come to me or two Bitcoin

13:28

can come to you. Nothing else

13:31

makes sense. So in

13:35

a sense, I signed

13:38

a sort of transaction,

13:42

but it's not a transaction I sent to the blockchain.

13:45

I signed something that

13:48

says in some scenario in the future,

13:50

two Bitcoin could

13:52

come to me. I signed that and I

13:54

also signed in some scenario in the future,

13:56

two Bitcoin could go to A.

14:00

Aki and you do

14:02

the same and then

14:05

these kind of

14:09

signed transactions require

14:11

a signature from some centralized

14:14

party which is called an Oracle

14:16

and this Oracle can kind of observe

14:18

the match, get the results of the

14:20

match and choose the

14:23

correct transaction to sign, sign

14:25

it and then resolve the bet on the

14:27

Bitcoin blockchain. Is that kind of right? Yeah,

14:30

that's pretty much it. I

14:33

would just add in the original design too and

14:35

in the way some protocols use it, you

14:38

can have kind of virtually any number of

14:40

outcomes. Right now we have seen as we

14:42

have done as high as 10,000 outcomes. So

14:45

you could have one and a half

14:47

and half and whatever different splits. But

14:51

yeah, we also found that the easiest way

14:53

to think about it conceptually is like it

14:55

all goes to Alice or it all goes

14:57

to Bob. That's

14:59

a very practical way

15:01

to do it because then other

15:03

data can be handled, logic can be

15:06

handled in more sophisticated places elsewhere. So

15:08

that's a good example. That's definitely you stick

15:11

with that. And so yeah,

15:13

you basically have a set of

15:15

outcomes. I also describe it like

15:17

an if then else statement or

15:19

if then statement. So if

15:22

this condition happens, then send it to

15:25

A, I'll send to B, you can do

15:27

something like that. And

15:29

so these create these kind

15:31

of pre signatures. They're called

15:34

CETs, contract execution transactions. And

15:36

basically, these are all predefined up front.

15:39

So both party, both

15:42

Alice and Bob signed them. And

15:45

then Olivia the Oracle has kind of a

15:47

special role because the Oracle is not a

15:50

party to the two of two voltage SIG

15:52

for security and privacy reasons, of

15:55

course. But the

15:57

Oracle does publish their.

16:00

There's an Oracle announcement in the beginning,

16:02

which is like, hey, you

16:04

know, Alice and Bob basically choose the Oracles.

16:06

So and you can have one or multiple

16:08

Oracles and we could talk about that too.

16:11

But let's say Alice and Bob choose this

16:13

particular Oracle, publishes an announcement. Hey, you know,

16:15

this is the Oracle and the the

16:18

Oracle uses this private key to publish

16:20

like a number for each

16:23

outcome, basically. So

16:25

you can think of it as just a number. So

16:27

you have, you know, outcome one, outcome two, they each

16:29

get a nonce, a one time use number. And

16:32

then the Oracle uses that nonce

16:34

in conjunction with this private key

16:36

to publish, you know, two public

16:38

keys, you know, for outcome one,

16:40

outcome two. And then

16:43

later, when the outcome is known,

16:45

the Oracle publishes its attistation, which

16:47

is basically just another number corresponding

16:49

to whichever outcome one. And

16:52

then the the again, the Oracles is

16:54

not a party to the multisig. So

16:56

what happens actually is the Oracle publishes

16:59

this number into a public space and

17:01

then Alice or Bob, either Alice or

17:04

Bob can grab that and,

17:06

you know, and execute the transaction. And

17:08

then either Alice or Bob have to

17:10

actually execute it. The

17:12

gas fees were also paid upfront

17:14

at deposit time. But, you know,

17:16

presumably whichever party is the quote

17:18

unquote winning has the incentive to

17:21

execute the transaction. That's that's the

17:23

base kind of DLC design. So

17:26

so that's really cool, right? Like so,

17:30

of course, we know that in

17:32

in Ethereum because you have a

17:35

Turing complete Ethereum virtual

17:37

machine, you could you

17:39

could write how funds should

17:42

be distributed in every

17:44

outcome and Bitcoin lacks

17:46

that. But what the street

17:48

lock contracts are saying is it

17:51

any financial interaction, if

17:54

you can define the set

17:57

of final outcomes and

17:59

it's if. finite set, not

18:01

an infinite set, then

18:04

you can use the finiteness of

18:07

possible outcomes as

18:09

a way to constrain

18:12

the system and through those

18:14

constraints reduce trust in

18:16

a centralized party right? Like that

18:18

that seems to be the essential

18:20

insight. Yeah. So so

18:23

maybe you know, maybe you can take

18:25

an example of a set which is

18:27

like not finite where if

18:30

I had to create a coin running

18:34

on top of Bitcoin, then

18:37

how that the set

18:39

of people owning that coin evolves is

18:41

maybe massive because new users

18:44

that nobody knows what the addresses are have

18:46

to appear and they have to get the

18:48

coin set of outcomes is infinite maybe

18:51

hard to put into a DLC like

18:53

format, but a bet is

18:55

something where because the set

18:57

of outcomes is finite, you

18:59

can use that as a constraining mechanism

19:01

to reduce trust. Yes,

19:04

exactly. That's exactly the idea. So

19:06

maybe the paper looking back of

19:08

course with the benefit of five

19:10

years of hindsight, maybe the white

19:12

paper was not actually you know, it

19:14

was called smart contracts on Bitcoin, but

19:17

it was actually just an if-then statement

19:19

on Bitcoin, but it's still quite

19:21

powerful. It's a you

19:23

know, kind of a low-level feature, but this

19:26

it does get into this idea of like

19:28

an on-chain escrow or an

19:30

on-chain kind of lockbox, which

19:32

is extremely powerful given the

19:34

utility of Bitcoin. Right.

19:37

So in our case where it's like your

19:40

K and M lock the funds

19:43

into a DLC and there's an

19:46

Oracle Olivia O and

19:49

the Oracle is the one that's going

19:51

to resolve the bet and A and

19:54

M have already pre-signed the future outcomes

19:56

that are possible with their funds. is

20:00

the trust assumption on in,

20:03

on all, on Olivia? Well,

20:06

that was the other issue in this

20:08

story is Olivia

20:11

has to kind of somehow magically know

20:14

all the outcomes of any kind of

20:16

bet you might, or you have to

20:18

pick an Olivia that happens to know

20:20

what that outcome is, but how do

20:22

you even measure an outcome? If I'm measuring what

20:24

the temperature is, do I measure it? This

20:26

part of the house, that part of the house, you

20:28

know, you can have different real

20:31

answers from different contexts or

20:33

different perspectives. So that's

20:35

where we, that's why when we

20:37

first started looking into this, we,

20:39

you know, we actually reached out the chain link

20:42

and just, you know, they, and,

20:45

you know, kind of as a disclaimer, we

20:48

have a close partnership with Chainlink. They were

20:50

our first investor via a

20:52

grant because they also

20:54

got excited about this theoretical idea of

20:56

Bitcoin oracles, but you don't need Chainlink

20:58

to use a DLC there. It's a

21:01

completely different layer, but they've been very,

21:03

you know, progressive and helpful. So we

21:05

reached out to, you know, to Chainlink and

21:08

we realized, well, Chainlink strength as

21:10

the strength of many oracle systems is you

21:12

have a diverse set of parties reporting, quote

21:15

unquote, truth, and they pick

21:17

like a, you know, midpoint or some,

21:19

you know, specific reference value. And

21:21

then that is used. And

21:23

then that kind of guided us to, well, this

21:26

is really less, maybe a less of a

21:28

sports bet and more of a DeFi or

21:31

financial tool because now you have these prices.

21:34

And so you can do things with Bitcoin

21:36

that trigger based on certain prices. And so

21:38

that kind of started moving us into DeFi.

21:40

And then as we were doing that, I

21:42

mean, a bunch of things happened last

21:45

year, but, you know, one was sort

21:47

of any kind of centralized or trusted

21:49

party was, you know, not all of

21:51

them, but many of them kind of

21:53

failed and, you know, kind

21:55

of spectacularly and losing a lot

21:57

of money. So we felt that we're, you know, on the

21:59

right track. by enabling the

22:03

more decentralization we can build around

22:05

this DLC concept, the more people

22:09

can benefit from it. And that's kind of what

22:12

set us down the path we have gone.

22:16

So in this traditional bet example,

22:18

is it the

22:20

case that the Oracle cannot stain

22:23

any of

22:25

the funds because it's

22:29

the outcome of all the funds going

22:31

to the Oracle isn't in the pre

22:33

signed outcome set in the first place.

22:35

The Oracle cannot steal funds. Exactly.

22:38

The worst the Oracle can do is say is tell

22:42

the users well, I'm never going to publish

22:44

this nonce or this resolving

22:46

information ever. Your

22:48

funds are stuck. So you'd

22:51

better give me half of your funds to

22:54

make them unstuck. Otherwise, they always stay

22:56

stuck and get zero. So it

22:59

gets extort or

23:03

by it's like not being live, but

23:05

it can't steal. That seems to be

23:07

just model here. That's

23:09

right. It's essentially like a form

23:12

of smart contract risks or risks.

23:15

But yeah, the Oracle can censor

23:17

the transaction, which then

23:19

pushed us of course, in the direction of

23:21

having multiple oracles where

23:24

you have a threshold of five or

23:26

seven or whatever. And

23:30

that will then reduce it.

23:32

And of course, the more

23:34

oracles presumably getting the data from

23:38

reliable sources, the

23:40

more that risk drops. So

23:44

now, in the beginning, it's

23:47

kind of like one

23:49

party that's starting the

23:51

Oracle and you're

23:53

now moving into the space

23:56

of not one party, but seven

23:58

or nine or eleven or however.

24:00

many parties that

24:02

together behave as the

24:04

oracle so that you can

24:07

protect against this like liveness

24:09

this this liveness problem. So

24:12

I thought that is that is something that's easy

24:14

to understand. But you're

24:17

also using it to somehow bridge Bitcoin

24:19

over to Ethereum, which does not feel

24:21

any obvious than obvious gems.

24:23

So how does that work? How

24:26

is that? Yes, it

24:28

took us a while also to sometimes

24:30

with technology and actually this

24:32

often happens in universities and

24:34

research labs, you have a

24:37

basic invention, but the application is quite unclear.

24:39

So it took us also two years basically

24:42

to kind of go in that direction.

24:44

And it was a set of kind

24:47

of aha moments collectively for our team.

24:49

So the first aha moment was well,

24:52

if the liquidity doesn't exist between you

24:54

know, you and me doing this, then

24:57

maybe it should be a human

24:59

interacting with a protocol, like

25:02

a DeFi protocol, a simple example

25:04

of that is gee, it would be great if

25:06

I could just put my Bitcoin in Aave. Well,

25:09

maybe I could use a DLC to

25:11

kind of enable that in

25:13

some form. So so that

25:15

was, you know, one one step. But

25:18

then, you know, another big

25:20

aha moment was, and this one actually

25:22

happened recently for us is, if

25:25

you're locking in, you know, with the

25:27

protocol, then you might want an

25:30

outcome where there's like a quote unquote

25:32

liquidation where you know, there's a second

25:34

outcome where all the funds go to

25:36

bond, you might want that, but

25:38

you might not want that. Because,

25:41

you know, in the case of for example,

25:43

and I'll get into kind of our rapid

25:45

coin product DLC, BTC, like we don't want

25:47

to be ever in a position where we

25:50

could rock the protocol, you know, we could

25:52

rock the Bitcoin, right, that would not really

25:54

scale, or that would

25:56

not be useful. So so then we realized,

25:58

well, wait a moment, we actually need

26:00

to, you know, can a

26:03

person lock Bitcoin with themselves?

26:05

Like, is that possible? And

26:07

it turns out it is because

26:10

there was another feature of the

26:12

DLC which people had not really

26:14

focused on where there's kind of

26:17

a liquidation payout address. So

26:19

you can have, you know, Alice

26:21

puts in, and obviously this would be that

26:23

a one-sided DLC

26:26

in terms of a depositor. Alice

26:28

puts in one Bitcoin, Bob doesn't

26:30

put anything because it's just a

26:32

protocol, and there's outcome one and outcome

26:35

two, but in the case of

26:37

outcome two, the Bitcoin goes back to Alice.

26:39

And so the Bitcoin goes back to Alice

26:41

in both cases. And in that

26:43

case, Bob is what we

26:45

call our protocol wallet, where

26:48

basically it's just an administrator for

26:50

the DLC. And the

26:52

reason you would want an administrator,

26:54

well, a couple reasons, but one reason

26:56

is, you know, if the user, like,

26:58

let's say the Bitcoin needs to go

27:00

back to Alice, but either Alice or

27:02

Bob need to execute on that attestation,

27:05

we can't assume the user is going to be at

27:07

their wallet, but the protocol

27:10

wallet can just constantly execute these

27:12

and just, you know, actually make the Bitcoin

27:15

move. So now, you know,

27:17

the user can basically lock into this

27:19

kind of lockbox, this kind of on-chain

27:22

escrow, where it's secured by Bitcoin,

27:24

not by another chain, not by

27:26

another validator set, whatever, but actual

27:29

just secured by the Bitcoin chain.

27:32

And then, you know, you can have any

27:34

kind of implementation, any kind of software determining,

27:37

you know, what basically what options

27:39

are presented to the user and how, you know,

27:41

what governs the unlock and what,

27:43

you know, what data source this Oracle

27:46

kind of comes from. And then we also had one

27:48

last kind of insight there is the, this

27:51

thing that this off-chain thing

27:53

that publishes the attestation, it's

27:56

actually not an Oracle of chaining or

27:58

pisses the Oracle and chain Bitcoin

28:00

in this sends a signal to Ethereum,

28:03

and Ethereum smart contract fires

28:05

a signal or an event,

28:07

and that goes to this thing, that what is this

28:09

thing? We very creatively,

28:11

because it publishes an attestation, we

28:13

called it an attester, which

28:17

is very, very simple but effective.

28:20

The attester actually gets

28:23

a signal from a smart contract

28:25

chain or smart contract and

28:27

actually can check it on chain. That's another

28:30

advantage of DeFi we realized is you

28:32

can actually check and validate on

28:34

chain before you

28:37

publish the attestation. It

28:40

reduces the issues

28:44

that could go wrong with that attester.

28:47

Basically, so then you have this VLC

28:49

attester or attesters, and then

28:51

we started building kind of around

28:54

that, and it went from there. All

28:57

of that led us to this idea of why

28:59

don't we have a bridge

29:01

or implement VLC as a

29:04

way to bridge Bitcoin to

29:06

ease using this system where

29:08

you're locking it with yourself,

29:10

your quote unquote self-wrapping, the

29:12

term I made up. You're

29:15

self-wrapping, you are the only

29:17

person that can ever get the deposits, and

29:19

so you end up with this decentralized kind

29:21

of escrow layer on Bitcoin, where

29:24

instead of sending the Bitcoin to

29:26

somebody's deposit address or to a

29:28

custodian or whatever to some pool,

29:30

you actually each individual deposit gets

29:32

its own DLC. You

29:35

have all these DLCs you can see on

29:37

chain. They're all just UTXOs on chain, and

29:40

then you can see the ETH

29:42

logic or the other smart contract logic

29:45

on the other chain, and then

29:47

you have this off-chain attester, which doesn't

29:49

make any decisions. It's just translating a

29:52

smart contract signal to Bitcoin settlement instructions, and

29:54

that kind of gave us the architecture

29:56

we have today. really

30:00

cool because like it's

30:02

an attester. It's

30:04

not a single attester. There are multiple attesters.

30:06

It's a multi-sig of attesters, but

30:09

the attesters could not steal my

30:12

Bitcoin and

30:14

I am locking the Bitcoin on my side

30:16

and I'm just locking it by myself. And

30:20

then I'm getting something on Ethereum

30:23

and I can use that Bitcoin

30:25

like a normal ERC20 token on

30:27

Ethereum. Yes, and then the

30:30

Ethereum protocol emits some kind of signal

30:32

when I want to bring that Bitcoin

30:34

back and the attesters are

30:37

just translating

30:39

that signal. So

30:41

that seems to be the advertised capabilities

30:43

and they seem really

30:45

awesome because the

30:47

trust equation is like, okay, you are

30:49

not, you are trusting X

30:51

out of Y of these attesters to be

30:53

live. That seems to be the trust equation

30:56

and the capability you get is you can

30:58

migrate Bitcoin off to Ethereum and I presume

31:00

if you can do for Ethereum, you can

31:02

do for other ecosystems. Exactly,

31:04

exactly. You can use it in

31:06

the same way from any ecosystem,

31:08

which is quite powerful Bitcoin L2s

31:10

as well and anywhere. Right.

31:13

So that feels very attractive. The

31:17

mechanism behind it, I

31:19

don't understand it. So

31:22

maybe let's unpack that. Let's

31:26

unpack that really slowly, right? So maybe

31:30

the first question is

31:32

kind of for

31:34

a bridge to be effective. If

31:38

I have Bitcoin and I send some

31:40

Bitcoin to whatever thing on this side,

31:42

so DLC, let's say one Bitcoin there

31:45

and it goes on to Ethereum. If

31:47

you assume I want to do useful things on

31:49

Ethereum, then it will always be

31:52

the case that that Bitcoin

31:54

could remain

31:56

half with me and half of it

31:58

might end up with something. else

32:00

some other party it could be

32:02

protocol like compound

32:04

or it could be it

32:07

could be maybe I made a payment on the CDM or

32:09

whatever so if

32:13

that's going to happen but on

32:15

Bitcoin only I can someday

32:18

recover the Bitcoin how

32:21

can you have a fungible token on the

32:23

CDM side then I am the only

32:25

party that could recover it on the on the Bitcoin

32:27

side yep

32:29

yep so so that's a

32:31

great that's a great

32:33

point that we when we

32:35

started there's also another related challenge

32:38

which is like which eath protocol

32:40

wants to manage a Bitcoin address

32:42

answer probably none of them are very

32:44

few not loud but very few you

32:47

know so we came to you know we

32:49

talked to partners like Maple and and someone

32:51

and play hey you could have this and

32:54

you could have even in a case of

32:56

a liquidation and you could have this outcome

32:58

to liquidation go directly to you but then

33:01

you need you know a place to manage

33:03

it and you have to do all this

33:05

other infrastructure and regulatory you know who knows

33:07

what other implications that would have and

33:10

it wasn't like a really good pitch people

33:12

not excited about it and that's

33:14

when we kind of that kind of led us to a

33:17

simpler mechanism where you're just

33:19

locking with yourself you literally

33:21

just you lock your Bitcoin

33:24

and the fact that it is locked

33:26

on in this DLC which also

33:28

kind of comes in with the built-in like

33:31

proof of reserves because you can see on

33:33

chain is it locked you know open

33:35

is it locked is it funded like you can

33:37

is it closed you can see all that on

33:39

chain on Bitcoin at

33:41

any time so so basically

33:44

it's just this like self-locking

33:46

mechanism which which is like

33:48

a little bit of a you know

33:50

you know kind of twisted idea

33:52

to to kind of wrap your head around

33:54

because like we're all familiar

33:56

with escrow providers and finance when you're buying

33:58

a house you put some money in escrow and

34:01

if the deal goes through, it goes through if not

34:03

you get it back. That's familiar.

34:05

But here, the escrow provider is actually

34:07

the chain itself, the

34:10

Bitcoin chain, which is kind of cool. And

34:13

I've neglected to mention that all of this

34:15

was like support for this stuff was really

34:17

added. A lot of it or some of it

34:19

was added in Taproot, like Schnoor and something

34:21

called PTLC. So Taproot was also kind

34:24

of needed to make this viable

34:27

or feasible. But basically,

34:29

yeah, that's it. So basically,

34:32

in DLC BTC, you lock

34:34

with yourself and the presence of this

34:37

lock, the fact that it's locked, lets

34:40

the bridge mint DLC BTC, which you

34:42

can use. And then when

34:44

you're done using it, you can burn it.

34:47

And the burning action unlocks the Bitcoin

34:49

and sends it back to you. And

34:53

in the case of a hack, if

34:56

the hackers hack the testers and they're

34:58

publishing outcomes, then they usually get your

35:00

Bitcoin back earlier. Like it tanks the

35:02

DLC BTC token, which is not great.

35:05

So we don't want hacks. You

35:07

know, if like the hacker could kind

35:09

of that the testers don't know who

35:11

these parties are. So they

35:14

can kind of randomly unlock parts of the

35:16

reserve behind DLC BTC, which is not good.

35:19

So security is still critical. But in the

35:21

case of an attack, you get your

35:23

Bitcoin back and

35:25

and that's it. So you're pretty

35:28

much, you know, you're not

35:30

left holding the bag, so to speak, or you're

35:32

not left. Neither us nor

35:35

the, you know, nor another party could

35:37

like drain the pool because there is

35:39

no pool. And that's kind of

35:41

the value out of it's a

35:43

very simple application of DLC. There's

35:45

no the second outcome basically doesn't

35:47

really matter. It's just a locking

35:50

mechanism secured by these testers. So

35:54

maybe one way of thinking about it is

35:56

that, so in the beginning, we

35:58

are imagining this is like Alice that that's kind

36:00

of locking Bitcoin on one side and then printing

36:03

an ERC token on the other side.

36:06

And Alice is kind of like a retail user. If

36:10

you imagine Alice as not being a

36:12

retail user, but rather as a market

36:14

maker of some kind, right, that this

36:16

is a this is an individual live in like,

36:19

I don't know, thousands of BTC is not

36:21

an individual. It's a corporation with thousands of

36:23

BTC in its treasury like

36:26

Michael sailors company, for

36:28

example. Yeah, Michael, we love

36:30

to talk to you if you're listening. And

36:34

so when they print

36:38

Ethereum on the other side, they basically,

36:44

they could sort of create kind

36:46

of like a fungible Bitcoin coin

36:48

on the Ethereum side and they

36:51

can basically have that coin transfer

36:55

and and

36:58

they are there to always maybe

37:00

other other side. So

37:03

if the coin ends up in the hands of

37:05

a different person and that

37:07

different person wants that coin back into

37:09

Bitcoin, they could always go to this

37:11

corporation and kind of

37:13

get the Bitcoin back,

37:15

but then it becomes a trusted setup. Exactly.

37:18

Exactly. So you're

37:21

exactly right. So the the

37:23

the depositors in this are

37:26

like if you're familiar with WBTC

37:29

merchants, they're like DLC BTC merchants.

37:31

They are KY seed. That's also

37:33

important for for regulatory reasons. They're

37:36

like companies institutions that

37:38

are exchanges market makers Bitcoin

37:40

depositors, give me like Bitcoin

37:42

miners companies that hold Bitcoin,

37:44

you know, asset managers who

37:46

hold clients Bitcoin like it

37:49

can be any of those, you know sources, but it's

37:52

important that you know, they they set

37:54

up these, you know, DLC's and

37:57

and because they're sort of an issue.

38:00

retail because it's kind of an unusual

38:04

conditionless like pegging peg out send the

38:07

Bitcoin you know you send in one

38:09

you get you know what we're half

38:11

out or whatever this is not that

38:13

you know this is clunkier so you

38:15

can have something we call like quote

38:17

unquote DLC abandonment where you know retail

38:20

like or somebody pegs in maybe they

38:22

use their private key they've abandoned that

38:24

that is not actually part of the

38:26

reserve at that point that is like

38:28

fake you know kind of liquidity and

38:30

if the token drops and that could

38:33

be an issue if there's a lot of

38:35

that so so the depositors end up being

38:37

merchants and and then retail

38:39

gets you know can use DLC

38:42

BTC as a safer you

38:44

know wrapped Bitcoin than other alternatives but

38:47

then they should go to you know

38:49

they need to go to a centralized

38:51

exchange to redeem it which is

38:53

exactly what I do with w BTC you know

38:55

when I use it so and

38:58

and other forms so basically yeah

39:00

that that's kind of that ends

39:02

up being the structure the logical

39:05

conclusion of this yeah

39:07

okay so I actually know how

39:09

to express the the limitation of

39:11

the DLC link protocol and I'll

39:13

express it so the

39:16

issue here is because if you

39:19

imagine party a depositing something

39:21

on Bitcoin and getting a

39:24

DLC link Bitcoin on the other side and

39:26

then the only

39:28

party that can go back is

39:30

party a itself and similarly if

39:32

you imagine that interaction for party b

39:35

there are two two

39:38

types of DLC link Bitcoin on the other

39:41

side one from party a and one from

39:43

party b and those

39:45

two bitcoins are not fully fungible

39:47

across each other because their origination

39:49

uh dlc

39:52

contracts have rights assigned

39:54

to different parties and

39:57

those different parties have different live this

39:59

risks The two

40:01

Bitcoin on the other side are not

40:03

fungible with each other and they

40:06

cannot be represented as the same ERC

40:08

token. And

40:11

that is a limitation

40:13

of the protocol, but that

40:15

limitation is coming in ultimately from

40:18

the fact that Bitcoin doesn't have a smart contracting system.

40:22

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. And

40:24

actually, not to further confuse the

40:26

situation, but you can actually, when

40:28

you log Bitcoin in a DLC,

40:30

you can also represent it as

40:32

an NFT. It's

40:35

really a unique locking

40:37

and the NFT can have the address

40:39

of the UTXO where it's locked. But

40:43

the issue we ran into there, of course,

40:45

is that DeFi protocols aren't really set up

40:47

for NFT side. And even

40:50

today, when people think of

40:53

NFTs, 90-some percent of the time, they were

40:55

thinking of pictures and stuff. And they're not

40:57

yet thinking of it as a financial asset.

41:00

But I say that because developers who want

41:02

to implement DLCs can implement them as

41:04

NFTs. And you can also do

41:07

different things with ordinals and that have an ordinal

41:09

back to NFT, but that's like, you

41:11

know, nobody really, it's a very, you know,

41:13

it's like another mind-walk. So

41:15

what we found was in order to

41:17

make this interoperable, it would need to

41:20

be an ERC-20, but it wouldn't have

41:22

that limitation that you described,

41:24

where if Alice refuses

41:27

to peg out, she

41:29

doesn't have to, but then the liquidity is less. Or

41:32

if Alice cannot peg out, maybe

41:34

because of just losing the private

41:36

keys, a simple example. Or

41:39

if Alice pegs in and

41:41

then changes, like swaps,

41:44

the LCPTC for USDT, and

41:46

then the price shoots up,

41:48

and now they have to spend a lot more

41:50

to peg out, that they might not want to

41:52

peg out because financially or economically. So

41:55

it kind of creates that complexity. So

41:57

the solution can only be just instituting.

42:00

institutions where they have treasury

42:02

management strategies and they have professional

42:06

risk managers involved. But

42:09

for that audience, it's very

42:11

powerful because now you have a

42:13

way where the counterparty risk

42:16

is not – I cannot

42:18

say it's zero, but it's reduced to

42:20

a significant extent. It's trust minimized to

42:24

a significant extent over other

42:26

options. And that's very powerful

42:28

in the practical world

42:30

we live in where there's all this Bitcoin that

42:33

already exists and all this liquidity and

42:36

then more about coming in. It

42:40

creates a powerful instrument or

42:42

a way for – then

42:44

that kind of takes us down

42:47

the path of we can provide

42:49

– the user could use different

42:51

financial instruments on EVM and

42:53

options, hedging and things like that, treasury management

42:55

things through this

42:58

mechanism and

43:01

there's physically no way the

43:03

Bitcoin can be stolen. If

43:06

that's just the one headline we gain with

43:08

this, then that's a big deal. So

43:13

maybe like we made a picture of

43:15

the DLC protocol is when you

43:17

imagine a party like I don't know,

43:19

Coinbase could be one, but

43:21

it could also be like Bitcoin Suisse in

43:23

Switzerland or Seba bank on Switzerland or in

43:26

the future, like

43:29

these companies that are building market

43:31

makers or things like that. So

43:34

these companies can

43:37

essentially take their Bitcoin

43:39

from the Bitcoin network, bridge them

43:41

over to Ethereum and

43:43

this bridging process is

43:47

quite trustless. They need to rely

43:49

on the liveness of these

43:52

attesters, but they

43:54

only need to rely that on the subset

43:56

will remain live. with

44:00

very low trust, they can bridge them

44:02

over to ethereal and then these

44:05

parties could be issuing

44:07

fully fungible Bitcoin ERC

44:10

20s on ethereal that

44:12

in the end finally, retain

44:15

users would likely use to basically

44:18

do anything they want to do in

44:20

DeFi. That is kind of like the

44:24

end goal that your protocol could

44:27

bring. Exactly, and the

44:30

requirements for using this DLCBTC

44:32

bridge can be kind of

44:35

more simpler or more easily

44:37

accessible. We just have

44:39

to qualify this institution, they have a

44:41

way of safeguarding their private keys, kind

44:44

of standard stuff and

44:46

then they can, and obviously with

44:48

centralized exchanges, the good thing about

44:50

Bitcoin with exchanges is there's a

44:52

lot of it already. So they

44:55

already have large amounts of Bitcoin, so

44:57

it's not like listing a new, it

44:59

is listing a new token, it's a synthetic

45:02

token, but it's an easier

45:04

one from a lot of standpoints.

45:06

And then yeah, retail can then

45:09

use it, hedge funds can

45:11

trade against it, whatever, it can

45:14

be used in finance in different ways, but

45:17

you just know that the underlying

45:19

security model is a decentralized security

45:21

model and not centralized. And

45:23

so there's less of that kind of counterparty

45:25

risk. And then yeah, you

45:28

still need like the exchanges and stuff to

45:30

participate. I would probably say that

45:32

that just is kind of an

45:34

endemic to the financial system overall. Like if

45:37

we are on one exchange

45:39

and they refuse to redeem, maybe

45:43

we should have more exchanges, we can

45:45

kind of work with that, but with

45:47

any kind of financial instrument, at

45:50

that point it's like an economic system.

45:53

And the good news is there are a

45:55

lot of economic systems like that that we

45:57

can leverage and risk

45:59

management. processes and even we can

46:01

look at insurers and things like that.

46:05

Right. So presumably it should

46:07

be possible to for kind

46:09

of this financial institution that's

46:12

doing this kind of bridging

46:16

to have a system where

46:18

the bridge from Bitcoin to Ethereum

46:20

and it lands directly in some

46:22

kind of Uniswap pool against

46:25

USDC. So as a retail user,

46:27

I could deposit USDC

46:30

into the pool and get kind of BTC

46:33

that institutional BTC directly

46:36

into a transaction and then I can do things with

46:38

that. So

46:40

kind of like that that flow that

46:43

handover to the user is kind of

46:45

like made really easy. But

46:48

the one thing that does that

46:52

seems pertinent here is do you sense

46:54

that there is like there

46:57

is like an argument here that you

46:59

have one blockchain Bitcoin and then you

47:01

have another blockchain Bitcoin and Ethereum and

47:03

if a professional company

47:05

is moving stuff

47:08

from this chain to that

47:10

chain, they are a money

47:12

transmitter and if they are

47:14

a money transmitter, then they are subject

47:16

to various forms of regulation in the

47:18

United States and one of which is

47:20

to actually get licensed in the 50

47:23

states and that

47:25

being a difficult part of

47:28

your protocol getting traction. It's

47:31

a great question and we worried about

47:33

this a lot earlier this year until

47:35

we realized that innovation

47:37

I mentioned around that the payout

47:40

address of this like

47:42

all the payout addresses basically can be

47:44

set to the depositor. So

47:47

if there's no scenario in which we

47:49

can ever receive funds and

47:51

the funds are all directed

47:53

by immutable smart contracts running

47:55

on various blockchains and

47:58

we also I

48:00

think with

48:02

any kind of crypto or financial

48:05

protocol, there's some risk. This

48:07

is a synthetic asset. It has risks. But

48:10

because the risk profile is really

48:12

the tester, there

48:15

isn't anything really on the Bitcoin side that

48:17

would constitute money transmission. And

48:20

then the tester is just running

48:23

software we made to execute instructions,

48:25

it gets from a protocol that

48:27

the user has chosen to trust.

48:30

And so the user has self-wrapped and

48:33

chosen the protocol. And that

48:35

protocol is directing our node

48:37

operator partners, the

48:39

nodes running there to kind of fire these

48:41

instructions. We are completely

48:44

just a software provider

48:46

in that definition. There's,

48:49

I'm not a lawyer, so I can't say

48:51

zero, but there's near zero or like maybe

48:53

on the list of like on the crypto

48:55

hit list, we're at dead bottom, most

48:58

likely. So

49:00

that seemed, so then I can sleep

49:03

while at night because I'm in New

49:05

York and we take regulation seriously, especially

49:07

because our target

49:09

market, our institutional Bitcoin depositors, of

49:11

course. So we are reaching out

49:13

to the CFTC to kind

49:16

of have conversations and get their initial feedback,

49:18

that kind of thing. But on the

49:21

other hand, we kind of even just

49:23

looking at Chainlink, I believe Chainlink as the

49:25

financial Oracle provider is not

49:27

a subject to CFTC or

49:29

SEC regulation for that service.

49:31

So our tester, which doesn't

49:34

even do that much, probably

49:36

is quite safe. But we

49:38

are proactively, there could be things we don't

49:41

know as engineers, so we are reaching out

49:43

to the CFTC. Cool.

49:46

So let's talk about kind of

49:49

the environment around this technology. What

49:51

does your company look like and

49:55

how is it financed and

49:58

yeah, and how are you developing this? this

50:00

protocol? Yeah, yeah. So

50:03

we, you know, I guess I would

50:05

characterize our company as we have two focus

50:08

areas, and we have

50:10

had this from day one. One

50:12

is the commercial business where we

50:14

are, you know, selling this, we're

50:17

pitching the idea of, you

50:20

know, Bitcoin holders, institutional Bitcoin

50:22

holders, gaining yield, or

50:24

buying, you know, financial, you know,

50:26

derivatives options, hedging products, or taking

50:28

loans on their Bitcoin in a

50:30

safer way. And we're, you know,

50:33

we're presenting that, you know, we're

50:35

presenting the options. Obviously, we're not

50:37

a broker dealer, so we're not like doing

50:39

loans and stuff, but we can just show

50:42

that BLC BTC gets them a step

50:44

closer to working with these protocols they

50:46

want to work with in a

50:48

safer way. So that's the

50:50

commercial side and that, you know, we also

50:52

take a mint, you know, fees on mint

50:54

and burn. So when people, you know, peg

50:56

in or peg out, we take a fee

50:59

in Bitcoin. So that's, you know,

51:01

that's our business model. And

51:03

then the, we then have the community

51:05

side, where we just support the DLC

51:08

community, kind of honoring short bits

51:10

and all this stuff that they did to

51:12

set it up and all the other participants

51:14

in the DLC community. Right now

51:16

it's Atomic Finance, 1010, OneLava. There's like

51:18

a few of these crew that have

51:20

been around for years, Tebo, Crypto Garage,

51:23

like the, and they've been just working

51:25

on this. And so we

51:27

want to get more people building on DLCs.

51:29

We want to get more chains, obviously, you

51:31

know, on the, on the community side. I

51:34

want to focus on every, every chain. Bitcoin

51:37

altunes, you know, can

51:39

use this to enhance their, their pegging

51:42

and peg out into their ecosystem. So

51:44

we partner with them. Pretty

51:46

much anyone, you know, Ordinals, you

51:48

know, Bruins, BRC 20s, you know,

51:50

whatever you want to, might want

51:52

to lock in a DLC, you

51:55

know, to wrap it, to get a representation

51:57

on another chain so it can do more

51:59

advanced stuff. like auctions, lending,

52:01

you know, we want to support all

52:03

of that. There's also

52:06

some work that's been done on DLCs on

52:08

lightning, so you can have taproot assets. So

52:10

we're just kind of a, you know, just

52:12

a general, you know, advocate

52:15

of DLCs there. And then we

52:18

can also leverage the infrastructure we've

52:20

developed to support the commercial side

52:22

and make that available for developers

52:24

at obviously a highly subsidized cost.

52:28

So, you know, you can access our tester

52:30

network. There's other things we've

52:32

built too, like these CETs

52:36

and the original design, they were just

52:38

stored in the Alice and Bob's wallets.

52:40

So we have, you know, other storage

52:43

to provide redundancy so the CETs don't

52:45

get lost. You know,

52:47

Bitcoin wallet integrations is actually probably

52:49

most of our, you know, work

52:51

is in order to actually

52:54

do this DLC, the Bitcoin wallet,

52:56

you can use any, you know,

52:58

ERC20 wallet, doesn't matter, just it's

53:00

an ERC20. It's fine. But

53:02

the Bitcoin wallet has to have a

53:04

feature, has to have a capability to

53:06

lock this DLC, to actually create the

53:08

DLC and do these signatures. That

53:11

requires something called adapter signatures. So

53:13

anyway, we build, you

53:15

know, DLC support using

53:19

basically all open source stuff and stuff that

53:21

we developed to to make it kind of

53:23

easier to build in. But we have sort

53:25

of like a wallet SDK, if you will,

53:27

for plugging in. So we have plugged that

53:29

into leather wallet, which used to be called

53:32

Hero and Xverse. And

53:34

now we are hoping to talk to, you know,

53:36

Ledger and OKX wallet and

53:39

so on to just have kind of

53:41

widespread adoption of this DLC

53:43

signing capability. So that's also a

53:46

big focus that then benefits everyone who

53:48

wants to use DLCs. So

53:52

I think we made some good progress with those

53:54

two wallets. Over 200,000 people

53:57

use either leather or Xverse. that's

54:00

a good start. And then obviously once for

54:02

our customer base, once we're at larger at

54:04

Trezor and any kind of hardware wallet, then,

54:07

you know, then, then, then

54:09

there's institutions can create DLCs

54:11

from there too. So that's a big goal of

54:14

ours and the next few months. So

54:17

what's the current status of the

54:19

protocol and the so

54:22

let's start with the protocol first, the

54:25

attester network and the

54:27

code that you need on both sides, the

54:29

TDM side and the Bitcoin side. What's the

54:31

status? Yep, the code is so

54:34

we're live on testnet. Last Saturday,

54:36

actually, we demoed the DLC BTC

54:38

bridge to ABCD capital on investors

54:41

and OKX ventures, they had a

54:43

Bitcoin hackathon. And so

54:45

we just I just yesterday posted

54:48

the testnet demo on our

54:50

YouTube channel. So it's

54:53

the first time it was

54:55

shown publicly. And the second time I

54:57

had seen it. So anyway, we've got that in testnet.

55:00

And then in so

55:02

for the attester network, we've got a couple

55:04

of verbal commits

55:07

from Republic and all

55:09

nodes. And this week, through through

55:11

you I met Chorus one, so we would

55:13

love to have just top tier attasters we

55:16

have in what we launched, we're just going

55:18

to have six attesters and

55:20

us as the seven. So

55:22

you know, six individual attestation

55:24

or third node operator companies.

55:27

And the main job of the attester is just to

55:29

safeguard the private key. That's that's the

55:31

most important thing. So so that's

55:34

why we're kind of, you know, reducing

55:36

risk by having six different ones. And

55:40

obviously, for some degree of censorship

55:42

resistance, in the future, we might

55:44

have a token that lets anyone run in a tester and

55:46

stake the token and that would be a broader

55:49

set of decentralization. We're

55:51

implementing also something called well,

55:55

we're implementing an NPC solution, potentially

55:57

one called frost, but it might

55:59

just be a different an NPC to where like

56:01

I said the tester has

56:03

opened a DLC or

56:05

participated in the opening of a DLC and

56:08

it has to leave the network. Maybe the

56:10

company stops doing this or go bankrupt

56:12

or something happens, then another tester

56:14

could take its place from another

56:16

provider and we could heal the

56:18

network. So that's the last feature

56:20

we need to implement. And we

56:22

have already done once a smart

56:24

contract audit through CoinFabric. Now we

56:26

are selecting the second smart contract

56:28

audit firm. So all of that

56:30

together we should be ready to

56:32

launch. We're also getting verbal

56:35

commits on the initial set

56:37

of Bitcoin depositors for our initial set

56:39

of merchants. We have some

56:42

investors who have

56:44

been early movers in Bitcoin

56:46

like Bitcoin miners like Waterdrip

56:48

Capital in Asia and

56:50

some other Bitcoin, we have another Bitcoin whale

56:52

who is invested. So basically getting some Bitcoin

56:54

lined up so we have some initial liquidity

56:57

picking it out to all of that we will

56:59

launch in March. So I think

57:01

we're on track to hit the March launch

57:03

date and then we'll start creating

57:06

a curve pool and maybe other DEXs

57:08

and having at least one centralized exchange

57:10

and then having at least a market

57:12

maker and kind of build up the

57:14

ecosystem from there. Really

57:18

cool. So I'm

57:20

actually curious that there's

57:22

a space of a

57:25

lot of protocols and a lot

57:27

of companies that have built Bitcoin

57:30

bridges in the past. Who

57:32

do you respect the most in these

57:34

alternatives? Yeah, you

57:36

know, great question. I mean,

57:38

just in the space of Bitcoin

57:40

bridges, I have to really say hats

57:43

off to Threshold, TBTC.

57:45

You know, that team there, I

57:49

was fortunate to work with someone from

57:51

there for a few months, just

57:54

even helping things through this project. And

57:57

I think they have a different

57:59

system. system, something based on the Keep Network

58:02

or Keeps, which was,

58:04

I think, invented like four or five years ago

58:06

or developed. But they are really

58:08

in terms of their goal of

58:10

having Bitcoin in ETH for

58:12

DeFi in a safe way. I

58:15

think that vision, we share that vision. So

58:18

we're really big fans of what they've

58:20

done. And they also have

58:22

done a lot of really smart engineering and

58:25

so on. So it's really cool.

58:29

But basically, we

58:32

try to be respectful to everyone, but

58:34

we love people who don't see

58:39

blockchains as sort of religions.

58:42

It can kind of go down that way.

58:45

And of course, everyone, if you are invested,

58:47

I mean, one of the goals is, of

58:49

course, to have ownership. And when

58:51

you have ownership in something, of course, you

58:53

have some human biases where you favor that

58:55

over other things that you don't know or

58:57

are less familiar with. But it should

58:59

not elevate to the level

59:01

of religions where they're warring or so

59:03

on. So anyone who

59:06

wants to have Bitcoin in

59:08

ETH DeFi or Bitcoin in Solana

59:10

or any other chain DeFi or

59:13

DeFi rebuilt on Bitcoin in

59:15

different ways, also great. Anyone

59:18

who's kind of is open-minded to

59:21

two or more things,

59:24

we love those kind

59:26

of interdisciplinary people. And

59:30

so we also like to talk to

59:32

developers a lot and people who are

59:34

close to the engineering behind this stuff

59:36

because I mean, I've sort

59:38

of simplified a lot of math and so on. Some

59:42

of it I understand, some of it I don't. But

59:44

there's a lot of the devil's

59:46

in the details with engineering. So

59:49

our hope is that by giving

59:51

DLC capability and infrastructure

59:54

to a lot of smart people, they'll

59:57

come up with more unique and more

59:59

interesting solutions. that we haven't thought

1:00:01

of. So we see DLCs as a

1:00:03

lot of thought of Layer 2 or anything,

1:00:06

but it's like a technology that people can

1:00:08

build on. And there's a lot

1:00:10

of like building on Bitcoin interest that's going on.

1:00:12

So I think we should really

1:00:14

look at building on DLCs. And

1:00:17

there are, even in this call, we

1:00:19

mentioned several different parameters that are very

1:00:21

impactful that you can choose on how

1:00:23

you design the applications. So you can

1:00:25

have different applications and that's great. We

1:00:28

can support also sports betting, not to

1:00:30

poop with that. That's a big industry

1:00:32

in the real world. So that's one

1:00:34

thing. Or there's so many others that

1:00:37

we've heard, especially when it

1:00:39

comes to like ordinals and the new types

1:00:42

of assets you can put in. So anyone

1:00:44

who's building and is open-minded, we

1:00:46

respectfully. Cool.

1:00:50

So if people are interested to

1:00:52

connect to you or to the

1:00:54

DLC link work, regression

1:00:56

to go. Yeah, I

1:00:59

would start with, you know, started our

1:01:01

website, dlc.link, and

1:01:03

kind of an all-inch to the first

1:01:06

company we partnered with Chainlink, but again,

1:01:09

not strictly affiliated from

1:01:11

a technological standpoint, although we respect

1:01:13

them tremendously. We are looking

1:01:15

at Chainlink proof of reserves. We're looking

1:01:17

at Chainlink CCIP. So there's a lot of partnership there.

1:01:22

But anyways, start with DLC link. Our

1:01:25

docs are there, docs.dlc.link.

1:01:27

Also, I usually recommend our videos. We

1:01:29

have a video on our own page.

1:01:31

It's one minute long. It explains it.

1:01:33

We have some blog posts around, you

1:01:36

know, how does this attestation work in

1:01:38

detail? You know, what are things you

1:01:40

need to know about the testers? What

1:01:42

are the things you can do? Like

1:01:44

advanced features, this enables for ordinals, people

1:01:46

building with ordinals or other Bitcoin-based

1:01:48

assets. You know, we try to just have,

1:01:50

you know, content that describes

1:01:53

it. We're also

1:01:55

now making Chinese language, Mandarin language

1:01:57

content so that, because now we're

1:01:59

working. with diverse audiences. In

1:02:02

the future, we should have Spanish and other

1:02:04

languages as well. And yeah, we're just, you

1:02:06

know, drop us a line. There's a chat

1:02:08

box. You can join our Discord. I'd be

1:02:10

totally remiss if I did mention that. Join

1:02:13

our Discord. The link is on the bottom

1:02:15

of the website. There's also a DLC

1:02:19

community telegram for engineers

1:02:21

specifically interested in DLCs.

1:02:24

We'll put that somewhere on the site. It's not

1:02:26

there today, but we'll get it added. And

1:02:29

yeah, just, you know, engage with

1:02:31

us. Ask us questions. Come to our

1:02:33

Discord. Ask questions. And

1:02:35

we're here to help. Cool.

1:02:38

It was great to chat with you, Oki. And

1:02:40

I wish you the best of luck for the

1:02:43

upcoming launch. Thank you so

1:02:45

much. I'm glad we got a chance to go

1:02:47

through on a technical level because as

1:02:50

you can see, this is like a set of meandering,

1:02:52

you know, startup discoveries over

1:02:54

two years. I appreciate

1:02:57

you taking the time to kind of walk through

1:02:59

the full picture. Cool.

1:03:02

And thank you to our listeners

1:03:04

for tuning into the episode. I'll

1:03:06

catch you in the next one. Thank

1:03:10

you for joining us on this week's episode. We

1:03:12

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