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Speaker A: Bankless nation welcome to the LRT episode. Today we have a different kind of podcast than what you would normally expect out of the Bankless podcast feed. Today we are talking with six different teams at different times, not all at once, all in the LRT space, five different LRT teams, and then Chunda McCain... |
Speaker B: Thank you for having me, David. It's a pleasure to be here. |
Speaker A: I want to peek into your brain about how you think about the LRT ecosystem. Before we do that, I think we need to explain to listeners what ion protocol is and what vantage point it provides for viewing all of the different lrts, because you're kind of at the meta level, you're at the bird's eye view, satell... |
Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. So I guess I'm gonna give a little bit of context about myself and kind of how the idea of ion came about because I think I'll provide a good foundational starting point to understand a little bit more on how we're approaching the problems of addressing LRT risk and specifically, how do we want t... |
Speaker A: That was a super useful explanation. I think one of the very interesting things about, um, Eigen layer and liquid restaking tokens is that at first glance, everyone sees Eigen layer and they see the concept of you take your eth, you stake it, and then you stake it again, and then again and then again. And th... |
Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think a good thing to remind everyone as well is this concept that LRT's at first, before they're ever LRT's, they're lsts, a lot of them. Anyone that supports native staking, you're building an LST protocol first, and then you're building an LRT on top of that. Our fir... |
Speaker A: One of the roles that ion protocol will do is it'll have a algorithm, I'm assuming, to actually, like, judge parameters, just to make it super clear. Ion protocol, like compound. But lrts go in one side and just normal eth goes out the other. Or LST. Yeah, or Ls. Ls. LST is on. Yes. Right. Yeah. Any sort of ... |
Speaker B: Yeah, that's a very good question. And it actually goes to the thing, like the two things that concern me the most with Eigen layer, like holistically. Right. The two things that concern me the most about Eigen layer has nothing to, has nothing actually to do with Eigen layer, the product, but instead on how... |
Speaker A: So, Chunda, during the middle of this interview that we're doing right now, I have decided to, instead of having this interview be at the very end, I'm going to put it at the very beginning because I think it provides a framework for listeners to have as they enter these five different LRT projects. You've a... |
Speaker B: Yeah, so there's a couple of things that I think is really important for every user to ask themselves. These are a few questions that we always want people to ask themselves, and I'll actually split them up into verbal. That's really easy for you to create this internal checklist to go and say, okay, I'm goi... |
Speaker A: True. I'm so glad that I brought you into this conversation. I think that was immensely helpful for the listeners as they are about to hear all five of these interviews. Just maybe one last message for the listeners is we're starting to color in a picture here. The interviews that you are about to hear are g... |
Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. If you want to check us out at ion protocol, we post a lot of content about this kind of stuff, as well as the things we're thinking about internally when it comes to building out the protocol. So just check us out on Twitter on protocol. One word. You can take a look at our recent work with shoa... |
Speaker A: Beautiful. Chuda. We'll get all those links and your twitter into the show notes. Thank you so much for all this knowledge. |
Speaker B: Yeah, appreciate the invite, man. |
Speaker A: All right, thanks so much, Chunda. Now let's go ahead and get into all of the different lrts. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Banklessation. I'm here with Mike Selig from Etherfi. Mike, welcome to the show. |
Speaker C: Hey, great to be here. I'm Mike Sziligadze. I'm the founder and CEO of Etherfi. Previously, I've built some pretty large businesses that were valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and I'm excited to help revolutionize the restaking universe. |
Speaker A: Okay, so, Mike, talk to us about how you came to the conclusion to work in the LRT space to build Etherfi. What was the inspiration? Where did it come from, and how did you end up building Etherfi? |
Speaker C: Etherfi actually started as a fund, an ETH staking fund. And we realized that there actually wasn't a product on the market that we were comfortable using ourselves. And so we really built Etherfi to solve our own problem, to solve the issue of ETH custody and risk management, and to build something that was... |
Speaker A: How did the team come together? Who are your co founders? What does the company look like? |
Speaker C: The core team consists of myself, Roc, Joseph, and Rupert. I founded the team and the CEO. Rupert is our head of engineering, Joseph is our COO, and Roc is our head of revenue. |
Speaker A: Okay. And then eventually, Etherfi went from fund to LRT. Can you talk about that? Like, aha moment or Eureka moment? Just talk to us about that decision. |
Speaker C: Yeah. So believe it or not, we plan to build Etherfi as an LRT from day one, when we were raising our seed round, we were talking about restaking at the core of the protocol because we saw that as a natural extension of proof of stake on Ethereum was. |
Speaker A: Always meant to be an LRT that would also allow users to deposit. Or is an LRT for just increasing the yields of the funds ether, or has the North Star always been the same? |
Speaker C: That's a great question. No, initially we started as a fund, and within a few months, we pivoted to building a product because my previous life, I built a product company. And I want to do that again in Ethereum rather than running a fund. |
Speaker A: Okay, let's talk about Etherfi as a product. There are so many LRT teams out there. That's why we're doing this episode. What about Etherfi is unique? What makes it stand out? |
Speaker C: So there's two things that make Etherfi interesting. The first is that it's the only staking protocol that allows stakers to hold on to their keys. With every other liquid staking protocol, the node operator controls your keys and effectively has sort of a stranglehold on your custody of your eternity. The s... |
Speaker A: Let's unpack those one by one. Let's start with that first one, the one where node operators retain their own keys. Can you just unpack that a little bit, explain, like, I'm five, what that means? |
Speaker C: Yeah. So there's a big challenge with most liquid staking protocols, in that when you deposit your ETH into really any liquid staking protocol, a node operator generates the keys and spins up a validator. You need that validator key that the node operator generates in order to be able to get your ETH back. S... |
Speaker A: This sounds like an innovation on the LST layer, which the LRT layer is built on top of. But first, it sounds like a little bit like this is improving even just the raw normal ethereum staking stack. Forward delegated staking. |
Speaker C: Yeah. So I don't think that there should be two categories. I think it's a dumb idea to have LRts and Lsts. All liquid staking protocols are going to be lrts within a year. It's going to be something that's foundational to staking on Ethereum. So yes, we call ourselves an LST because we think all lsts eventu... |
Speaker A: Beautiful. Okay, so I'm guessing this implies that individuals can become node operators with ether file, correct? |
Speaker C: Yeah, that's exactly right. So currently it is not a fully permissionless system. We've got a about 100 solo stakers who are operating nodes for Etherfi. Within about two months, it's gonna be a fully permissionless system. So anybody will be able to show up with a two ETH bond and DVT managed keys, be able ... |
Speaker A: Beautiful. Okay, leveraging DVT, what are the collateral requirements? Is there collateral in the system? |
Speaker C: Yeah. So there's a two ETh bond requirement for anybody that runs a validator in order to have one shard of the validator cluster. |
Speaker A: One unique thing about etherfi is you guys are incubating an AV's, is that correct? And can you tell me more? |
Speaker C: We are, yeah, we're really excited about this. So we are. The plan is to build on top of our liquid staking protocol and add components to it that make it differentiated, that hopefully generate higher returns for users. One of the ways that we're doing that is by actually building an in house AV's specifica... |
Speaker A: How does a decentralized RPC leverage Ethereum security to improve its products? |
Speaker C: So every Ethereum node in the world has an RPC endpoint. That's just how the protocol works. An RPC endpoint. It's basically just a way to talk to the Ethereum node and get data out of it, or submit transactions to the blockchain. So this is something that's already part of the network. Etherfi has now thous... |
Speaker A: Okay, so Etherfi was built to be an LRT from the ground up. From day one, you guys had your own capital that I think you guys have put into the Etherfi system because you guys were a fund prior to that. You have this unique node. Operators retain their own keys set up, which allows for more permission. Stake... |
Speaker C: So I would say it's always hard to make a subjective claim, but I would say we're super Ethereum aligned. The reason that we're doing this is because we really are passionate about Ethereum and crypto and what it stands for. The founding team myself, certainly we've made enough money that we don't need to be... |
Speaker A: So Etherfi is coming in at approaching $700 million ether deposited into your guys contracts that placing it as number one in the LRT ratio to. What do you credit the reason why Etherfi is currently the number one in attracted capital? |
Speaker C: Well, I think some of the things that we talked about. So, one, we were the first that naturally sort of confers an advantage aside from building a good product. That was just good timing, I think. I like to believe that our Ethereum alignment and messaging and the brand that we've put out there has made a d... |
Speaker A: Is there something in Etherfy's future, a roadmap item that is exciting that users might be interested? |
Speaker C: So the thing that I'm most excited about in the coming months of Etherfi, the first is that we are going to be announcing our series a fundraising, maybe by the time this episode airs. We have already announced it. So we're working with some pretty awesome investors that we're really excited about. And then ... |
Speaker A: Mike, if you have piqued the curiosity of any listeners at this episode, and they want to learn more about etherfi, where should they go? |
Speaker C: Just go to ether fi. Ether fi. And then you could, you know, hang out. You can stake your eth, you can check out our discord, whatever. Whatever you want. |
Speaker A: Awesome. Thanks, Mike. Thanks to the station. I'm super excited to introduce you to Amir from puffer. Amir, welcome to the show. |
Speaker D: Thank you, David. Thank you so much for having me. |
Speaker A: Amir, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be at puffer. And then we'll get into how Puffer came to be an LRT. But first, the first two questions. |
Speaker D: Absolutely. Well, I'm the CEO at Puffer Labs, where we're building the entire puffer ecosystem. |
Speaker A: And how did puffer come to be? Where did Puffer come from? |
Speaker D: Well, that's a very great question. We actually started to think about puffer way like before. On a foundational level, we started to look into bringing scalable compute to Ethereum through the use of Tes. Of course, we met Justin Drake in our journey and we realized that the blockchain is not decentralized ... |
Speaker A: Okay, cool tee. Trusted execution environment. Sadly, every single time we talk, Amir, we're going to have to define what that is, because most people don't know what that is. What is a te? And then what does it do for puffer? |
Speaker D: Basically, you can think of a te, a secure portion of the hardware that runs computation in it. It's encrypted through cryptography. What does it do it in puffer? The easiest way to explain this with Justin Drake is very good at explaining this, is you can think of it as a hardware validator, a hardware wall... |
Speaker A: Buffer okay, so I've defined the LRT game as a competition to maximize exposure to avss and therefore yield, while also minimizing risks. There are a variety of different reasons, categories of slashing events that could happen to an LRT, to a, to an operator. And then what you're saying is that there is thi... |
Speaker D: Well, we are actually releasing articles like one at a time. We're actually, our docs is very up to date. We recently uploaded the docs with a deep dive of how restaking and staking works on buffer. Just please go to docs dot puffer dot five the twitter is a good source. Our media are a good source as well w... |
Speaker A: L one, preventing all slashing is like, that's a really big statement. Is it? Is it really that big? Is it really that like rock solid? |
Speaker D: It is, because really it is so hard. The concept of slashing is so easy defined on Ethereum proof of stake it is so hard to produce a slashing event and therefore like preventing it from the hardware side is also not that hard. But it's been mostly if you've seen the past slashing events, either it was from ... |
Speaker A: Okay, so we talked about te as like the competitive advantage with the fundamentals of puffer, if you will. Like what sets it apart from others. But what about the actual like strategy of puffer? What is like the near term roadmap, the plan for action? Like, what does the near term look like for puffer? What... |
Speaker D: Absolutely. I think we have beyond just anti slashers. Our strategy is focused on research, focus on native restaking, and focus on ethos alignment. I can now unwrap each of these focusing on research. Puffer has been the decentralizing Runway for Ethereum. Why do we say this? A lot of the research and produ... |
Speaker A: Ethereum maintenance Amir, you alluded to it a little bit, but I want to go into it a little bit more. Again, going back to the whole idea, LRTs are trying to maximize exposure while minimize risks. One way you could another present that is being sufficiently defensive, as in making sure nothing gets slashed... |
Speaker D: Absolutely. The first and the foremost easiest way that te enables is just the anti slash key. Management is a very important concept. And like, we really like to see like Eigen layer as transferring all the existing infrastructure and ethereum to restate it. And it's very simple to use Te on top of middlewa... |
Speaker A: Interesting. Okay, so let's go into the specific state of puffer, the specific implementation. Y'all have collected a bunch of lido staked eth. There's a plan to swap that into puff eth. Can you talk about. And that's where we currently are in the puffer roadmap. Talk about that event. What's the roadmap for... |
Speaker D: Absolutely. To actually help reduce the dominance of one LSD player, we actually tried to just focus on STE at this part of this campaign. Users actually get puffy in return where they can use it on defi platforms. It's liquid. This campaign showed even if Eigen Lair is on unmadened people are ready for rest... |
Speaker A: Okay, so a layer two from puffer leveraging te and being infrastructure for AVSs is a massive rabbit hole that sadly we don't have enough time to go into. But if people want to learn more about that and just learn more about puffer, where can they go? |
Speaker D: Well, we are actually releasing articles like one at a time. We're actually, our docs is very up to date. We recently uploaded the docs with a deep dive of how restaking and staking works on buffer. Just please go to docs dot puffer dot fi. Our the Twitter is a good source, our mediums are a good source as w... |
Speaker A: Beautiful. Amir, thank you so much. |
Speaker D: Thank you. |
Speaker A: David Bankless nation. I am here with Amit Gajila from Kelp Dow. Amit, welcome to the show. |
Speaker E: Thanks. Thanks, David, for having me here. |
Speaker A: Talk to us a little bit about your background. Where did you come from and how did you start? |
Speaker E: Kelp Dow yeah, I'm originally from Bangalore, India. I used to work at a consulting strategy consulting firm here and then headed strategy and transformation at India's largest food tech player. Been in crypto since 2020. Started statal apps, one of the largest liquids taking platform with 450 million in TVL... |
Speaker A: Beautiful. Okay, so stator into Kelpdao, talk about just like the creation of Stator and like the lessons and experiences that you learned there, and then we'll carry that into how you are applying those lessons at kelp. |
Speaker E: Pretty amazing experiences at Stator. So we were one of the early protocols on Terra 1.0. We had about $1.5 billion in TVL that completely had gone to zero right after the USD collapse. Multiple learnings first and foremost, learning as a founder is diversify treasury and risks as much as possible, which kin... |
Speaker A: Okay, so Stator and EtH X is your staked eth token. Talk about just like the growth of stator because eventually this, like I said, will kind of like fold into kelp dao. Talk about just like the experiences of growing stator and just like learning to build an LST. |
Speaker E: Numerous experiences there. We have learned it the hard way and understood what are the major competitive modes for an LST and obviously drawing those lessons to kelp Dao as well. The biggest competitive modes for LST are creating these access or distribution points, that is taking staking or taking lsts to ... |
Speaker A: Right. Okay, so there is a relationship between Stator and kelp and stator. The LST, of course, has eth xdem. And one of the big experiences that all LRT teams are going to have to fight against is, like, integrations for their LRT tokens into defi. And this is something that you've sharpened your teeth with... |
Speaker E: That is one of the strengths that we borrow from our experience with Stator. But obviously, LRT's, given this is a new entire restaking and eigen layer being new technology, there are multiple risks associated with it. Obviously, we can't apply the same playbook as is, but the learnings are similar. |
Speaker A: Talk about the relationship between stator and kelp Dow. Like, how. How did that whole thing work out? How. What is the relationship there? |
Speaker E: The relationship is very simple. Just the founders are common, and stator is one of the seed investors in kelp tau. Apart from that, everything else is different. And one tactical relation is status. Ethics is accepted as one of the deposit assets on Calta. |
Speaker A: Okay, so founders are common, experiences are common. Is there like an ongoing relationship, or are these two things going to come together or diverge? |
Speaker E: They're going to be completely different. Kelp Dow, as you probably know, accepts three different lsts today, Lido's Steth, Fraxis, SFR Xe, as well as stators. Ethan. So Kelp will be a completely neutral entity that serves its own interests and has its own tokenomics and PNL. So as much as possible, they wil... |
Speaker A: Okay. All right, so let's get into more kelp Dow specific subjects. What, what would you say are the strengths of kelp Dow? How does it stand out from the many different LRT teams out there? What's your guys like strategy? |
Speaker E: Thats a very interesting question and useful question in the current context of the competitive environment. So some of the like, based on our experience so far, the biggest focus areas or strategies that we will employ with Kelp Dow is one, creating access for restaking. What I mean by that is like, we need... |
Speaker A: Okay, so the strategy here is that if you want to restake with Kelp Dao, one of the main benefits is that you will also be able to take your kelp dao ETH and then take that capital and put it back into defi and do the thing you were already doing with your eth and defi just now with the kelp dao eth. Is that... |
Speaker F: Yep. |
Speaker B: Yep. Of course. |
Speaker A: Cool. And what is the kelp dao eth token? |
Speaker E: It's called rs eth restaked eth. |
Speaker A: Okay. So in terms of, like, a brand perspective, like, just having restaked eth, I actually think is like pretty valuable. Like, lido has steak ethan, like easy. And so you guys have rseth. Maybe you guys just like, got there first, maybe the playing field was open. But just like I do think there's like some... |
Speaker E: Yeah, that's, that was, that was very easy to come up with in hindsight. |
Speaker A: Okay, beautiful. Talk about a little bit under the hood of kelp dao. Who is doing the validating nodes? Like who is actually doing like running the hardware or doing the actual eth layer one validation is there native reset can talk about the kelp daos system under the hood. |
Speaker E: Absolutely. So just zooming out about the kelp taos product today. So far we have been primarily accepting lsts as deposit assets on kelp Dow. So there is no validators yet that are live on Eigen layer that take lsts and validate. But soon, which is probably in two to three days, we are also launching native... |
Speaker A: Okay, so that means it's out by the time this episode is released. So this is now a live product? |
Speaker E: Yeah, absolutely. So we will have native restaking live and some, we're talking to some of the top validators and going to onboard them. |
Speaker A: Okay. Are you able to share who you're talking to? |
Speaker E: Still confidential. |
Speaker A: Okay, what about just like anyone entering into Kelp Dao with their validator? Is this, are you going to be able to open this up or what's the strategy around that? |
Speaker E: That's a very interesting question. For context. Stator allows any type of node operator to actually participate in validating nodes with just four eth worth of capital. That is the permissionless way of operating validators. So we do have permissionless, we do have the opportunity to allow permissionless va... |
Speaker A: Like we said, by the time this episode goes out, Kelp Dot will have announced native restaking what is on the near term roadmap that is worth highlighting. |
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