- Cain Warwick, founder of Synthetix, discusses the importance of user experience in the DeFi space.
- He highlights the shift towards layer two scaling solutions and the need to bring these solutions to users.
- Cain explains how Synthetix worked with Optimism on layer two scaling and the benefits of composability in the Ethereum community.
- He mentions the debate between composability and siloed AppChains and how Synthetix ultimately chose layer two scaling for their project.
- Cain introduces Infinex, a new project leveraging the Synthetix protocol, aimed at improving the user experience and competing with centralized exchanges.

- The trading engine of the platform has been upgraded over the years and can now compete with centralized exchanges.
- The user experience and onboarding process need improvement to attract more users.
- Fragmentation of liquidity across different chains is a big issue in DeFi.
- The solution is to build an interface that abstracts away the location of liquidity and allows users to access it easily.
- The founder is considering deploying the protocol on multiple chains to reach distinct user bases.
- The idea of creating an "AppChain" where governance exists and deploying on other chains is being explored.
- The goal is to be neutral and allow liquidity to flow wherever there is demand.
- The founder believes that Infinex is a different solution to the liquidity fragmentation problem.
- The platform aims to attract both crypto-native users and new users by providing a user-friendly experience.

- The speaker discusses the challenge of onboarding new users into the crypto space and the trade-off between recommending decentralized platforms or centralized exchanges.
- They argue that despite being 15 years into the crypto experiment, the majority of people still use centralized databases and closed-source software to interact with crypto due to usability and safety concerns.
- The speaker proposes a solution in the form of a DeFi application that uses DeFi for execution but abstracts away complexity, providing a safer and more user-friendly experience.
- They emphasize the need to capture new users and bring them onto decentralized platforms instead of centralized exchanges, promoting brand loyalty to decentralized infrastructure.
- The speaker mentions the importance of aggregating demand in one place with great user experience and discusses potential issues such as fee splits and token governance for front-end platforms built on top of protocols like Synthetix.
- They highlight the opportunity to prove that decentralized platforms can compete with centralized exchanges before new users arrive and to convert existing users to decentralized technology.
- The speaker concludes by stating that the mission of DeFi is to move away from centralized exchanges and towards decentralized exchanges.

- The core mission of DeFi is to move away from centralized exchanges to decentralized exchanges.
- It is currently not advisable to convince someone to use DeFi as it is still risky and prone to fraud.
- Centralized exchanges like Coinbase are safer but not without risks.
- The goal is to build a middle ground approach that combines the usability and safety of centralized exchanges with the decentralized technology of DeFi.
- The lack of market power in DeFi allows for more competition and innovation in front-end platforms.
- A DeFi front end that captures users and assets can negotiate with protocols and create a feedback loop.
- Infinex is already in the wallet game, allowing users to deposit assets into their contracts and use them in supported platforms.
- The focus is now shifting to demand and user acquisition in the DeFi space.

- The speaker discusses the potential for integrating new features on Solana and the importance of having those features readily available to users.
- They highlight the challenges of bridging to Solana and suggest that integrating new features into platforms like Infinex would make it easier for users to access and interact with those features.
- The speaker emphasizes the value of speculation and investment in driving innovation and growth in the crypto space.
- They caution against participating in projects like XRP and Hex, which they consider to be scams or net negatives for the ecosystem.
- The speaker criticizes XRP for its lack of viability as a replacement for Swift and suggests that the market should be able to shut down such projects rather than relying on regulators.

- The speaker believes that centralized systems are unable to pivot and fix inherent problems, unlike decentralized systems.
- They question the current state of Layer 2 solutions (L2s) and the decentralization of sequencers.
- The speaker argues for progressive decentralization and the importance of competition in the marketplace.
- They express the need for L2s to become more decentralized over time and aspire to the decentralization of Layer 1 (L1).
- The speaker acknowledges the challenges of messaging decentralization to attract users and investors.
- They discuss the possibility of multiple L2s coexisting and the need to let the market determine their success.
- The speaker mentions their project, Infinex, as a solution to abstract the complexity of L2s and focus on user adoption.
- They share their candid thoughts as an OG in the industry and their motivation for continuing to work in the space.

- The speaker has been involved in a startup where they had to do everything themselves, but found it satisfying.
- They took time off but felt mentally unoccupied and needed problems to solve.
- They realized that the usability and onboarding of their project, Synthetix, was a major issue.
- They decided to solve this problem by building Infinex and realized they have the freedom to do so in a decentralized organization.
- Some community members opposed their decision, but they proceeded anyway.
- They find solving problems in Infinex more energizing than their previous work on Synthetix.
- There can be conflicts between their artistic approach and the mindset of the core contributors and community.
- They believe that DAOs may struggle with considering secondary effects and biases of engineers.
- They have observed a desire within the synthetics community to create internal solutions rather than using existing ones.

- Cain Warwick, founder of Synthetix, discusses the importance of user experience in the DeFi space and the shift towards layer two scaling solutions.
- Synthetix worked with Optimism on layer two scaling and highlights the benefits of composability in the Ethereum community.
- Infinex, a new project leveraging the Synthetix protocol, aims to improve the user experience and compete with centralized exchanges.
- The platform aims to address the fragmentation of liquidity across different chains by abstracting away the location of liquidity.
- Infinex seeks to attract both crypto-native users and new users by providing a user-friendly experience.
- The speaker emphasizes the need to capture new users and bring them onto decentralized platforms instead of centralized exchanges.
- The mission of DeFi is to move away from centralized exchanges to decentralized exchanges, while also combining the usability and safety of centralized exchanges with the decentralized technology of DeFi.
- Infinex is already in the wallet game and is now focusing on demand and user acquisition in the DeFi space.
- The speaker discusses the potential for integrating new features on Solana and the value of speculation and investment in driving innovation and growth in the crypto space.
- They argue for progressive decentralization and the importance of competition in the marketplace.
- The speaker shares their candid thoughts as an OG in the industry and their motivation for continuing to work in the space, despite conflicts and challenges within the community.

- The speaker has observed a trend in the synthetics community to prefer building internal solutions rather than using off-the-shelf options.
- They believe that if the current synthetics team had been in charge in 2019, they would not have used Chainlink as an oracle solution.
- The speaker expresses concern that the current team's reluctance to leverage external protocols may hinder progress.
- In a rapid-fire Q&A, the speaker shares their opinions on various topics in crypto, including soulbound NFTs, startups, token supplies, stablecoins, music NFTs, and more.
- They emphasize the importance of questioning assumptions in startups and suggest gaming as a potential crypto application to attract everyday users.
- The speaker also discusses their belief in determinism and the potential of bonding curves in social experiments like friend tech.
- Their advice to aspiring DeFi founders is to tap into existing narratives and solve problems that the world wants, rather than focusing solely on their own expertise or interests.

- The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding what the world wants and solving those problems rather than deciding what the world needs.
- Users may not always know what they want, so it is not necessary to interview them directly.
- Instead, one should focus on understanding the world and its narratives to determine what is genuinely desired.
- By doing so, it becomes easier to gain attention, capital, and build something meaningful.
- The speaker mentions a quote attributed to Henry Ford about listening to users' problems rather than their wants.
- The conversation concludes with appreciation for the guest and their project in crypto.

The speaker discusses the trend of the synthetics community building internal solutions instead of using off-the-shelf options. They express concern about the current team's reluctance to leverage external protocols. In a rapid-fire Q&A, the speaker shares their opinions on various crypto topics. They emphasize the importance of questioning assumptions in startups and suggest gaming as a potential crypto application. The speaker also discusses determinism and bonding curves in social experiments. Their advice to DeFi founders is to tap into existing narratives and solve problems that the world wants. They stress the importance of understanding what the world wants and solving those problems. The speaker mentions a quote about listening to users' problems rather than their wants. The conversation ends with appreciation for the guest and their project in crypto.

Kain Warwick, the founder of Synthetix and Infinex, joins us to discuss how permissionless frontends are crypto's next battleground. Crypto has the infrastructure to support the next wave of users, but the user experience is lightyears behind Web2. What can solve this? Permissionless frontends. In this episode, we cover why Kain is building Infinex, the missing piece to get users onchain, crypto's new aggregators, Kain's multichain strategy, where DAOs fail to innovate and more. This might be my favorite episode yet!

- -
Timestamps
(00:00) Introduction
(02:04) A Shift from Infrastructure to the User Experience
(05:03) Why Synthetix Chose Optimism
(09:11) The Missing Ingredient to Compete with Binance
(11:53) L2 Liquidity Fragmentation
(14:51) Should Projects Launch on Multiple Chains?
(17:18) Why Synthetix Might Launch an Appchain
(19:10) How to Build Brand Trust & Bring Users Onchain
(32:57) Jito MidRoll Plug
(34:02) Crypto’s New Aggregators: Permissionless Frontends
(43:06) Taking Speculation Too Far
(51:16) L2 Centralization Vectors & Progressive Decentralization
(57:06) Will L2s Have a Power Law Outcome?
(59:54) Why Kain is Still in Crypto
(01:05:26) Where DAOs Succeed and Fail
(01:12:44) Rapid Fire

- -
Follow Kain: https://twitter.com/kaiynne
Follow Mert: https://twitter.com/0xMert_
Follow Garrett: https://twitter.com/GarrettHarper_
Follow Lightspeed: https://twitter.com/Lightspeedpodhq

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Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/ - -
Resources

Jito
https://www.jito.network/staking/?utm_source=lightspeed&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=lightspeed_Q323_1

Synthetix
https://twitter.com/synthetix_io
https://linktr.ee/synthetix

Infinex
https://twitter.com/infinex_app
https://infinex.io/

Kain's Writings
https://mirror.xyz/kain.eth

- - 
Disclaimers:

Lightspeed was kickstarted by a grant from the Solana Foundation.

Nothing said on Lightspeed is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Mert, Garrett and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.

My protocol hat says, yes, you need to be where the liquidity is.

You need to deploy it to all these different places.

You know, not try and pick winners on the L2 or see where the liquidity will flow.

Just like build a thing that abstracts it away and figure out where the users are and put the liquidity there kind of in real time.

And 1 of those feels very sensible and straightforward.

Welcome to another episode of Lightspeed.

Today we are joined by Cain Warwick, the founder of Synthetix.

Cain, you've probably explained this before, but I saw on your Twitter profile that you're the head of DeFi.

Can you tell me how you got that position?

There was an article that was written that I think quoted a few people and I was 1 of them and somehow they quoted me as the head of DeFi.

And so from there I thought it was a funny meme, so it stuck in my Twitter profile.

think I saw 1 with you being the head of agriculture as well.

So that goes back to the old yield farming days, pre-DeFi summer.

So this idea of basically changing the way we farm in the world.

It's much more fun than just like founder or CEO.

If you're from the Ethereum community, You definitely know who Kane is.

If you're from Solana or another, like maybe you don't, but it's about time you do.

So I'm glad you're tuning in to the show with Kane.

It was first founded Haven, I think that launched basically in 2018, which then transformed its synthetics, which is live and today it's a derivatives platform where there's a big focus on perps right now, but it's also becoming a liquidity layer for other synthetic protocols to be built on top.

Cain, you've been in the space for a really long time, been reading your writings.

Some people would say that you are an ETH maxi.

I'm not saying you claim yourself as that, but it looks like you're becoming a user experience maxi even more than that.

The focus is on user experience over everything else.

And why do you say now is the time that we need to focus on that?

Yeah, I'm definitely still in need of Maxie.

So you know, The thing that has changed, I think, over the last couple of years is we went through this inflection point leading up to DeFi summer, where all of a sudden people realized that DeFi was working.

There were a bunch of interesting projects that had deployed contracts onto Ethereum.

There was a whole bunch of interesting things that were happening and being built.

It wasn't like the ICO days where the only value proposition was just dumping money into a treasury somehow, buying tokens via an ICO.

And so, I think that there were a lot of people in the space who were caught by surprise by that.

And when DeFi Summer happened, people were like, oh, wow, there's all this activity going on.

The problem was that when we sort of hit like March 2020, we got to a point where the kind of flash crash showed that we had some issues in terms of scaling.

That there were a lot of different things that were now connected.

All of these different contracts were connected to each other.

You had flash loans in Aave and things in Compound and people arbitraging between those 2 and maker positions and all of these different things that were going on.

And so the first kind of indication that I think we were going to have issues scaling was March 2020.

And so by the time we got to the end of DeFi summer, It was like, what are we doing here?

We can only accommodate a really small group of users.

So that was where I think a big focus shifted towards layer twos, layer 2 scaling.

The L2 roadmap of Ethereum became a bit of a thing and this idea of like Ethereum as a settlement layer, you know, where you stored data and sort of executing transactions, you know, became a bit of a thing.

And so I think that We spent a lot of time between, you know, DeFi summer in 2020 and today, building out the scaling solutions and building out all of this infrastructure to be able to support, you know, the second wave of DeFi, if you will.

I think we now have demonstrated pretty, pretty credibly that layer twos are working.

There's a whole bunch of things you can do on them that you couldn't do on L1.

And now it's time to actually take those things that we've built over the last few years and bring them to the users, meet the users where they live.

Yeah, Kane, when you first started, I think Synthetix was 1 of the first protocols to work with Optimism on layer 2 scaling.

And at that time, L2 scaling was not really consensus yet.

At this point, it just seems like everybody in the Ethereum community has decided that's the best way to scale is this modular roadmap.

Can you talk about what was the disagreement at the time on that L2 scaling, and how were you able to see and get the synthetics community to start working with Optimism?

I think that in the Ethereum community, there had been a number of proposals for how to scale Ethereum, right?

State channel, all kinds of things, right?

That have been going on for years, right?

And there was also this transition to proof of stake that was planned.

And so, I remember watching Metallic talk in 2017 and being like, we're 6 months away from the merge basically.

And obviously it took a lot longer than that, right?

And so I think we had this problem where it was unclear what the solution was, but it was this growing issue.

And there were alternatives out there, like Solana at that time, Near, even some of the other Alto ones that weren't necessarily going for scaling like Polkadot or Cosmos, but we're going for like a sharded approach or, you know, these, these different, you know, chains that were kind of interconnected, etc.

And it wasn't really clear what Ethereum's solution was going to be.

And I think that there had been, again, a lot of confusion due to the roadmap changing over the years.

And we saw the Unipig demo, And it just clicked for me.

And so, the community got really excited about that.

They were looking for a project that had a complex smart contract suite that they could work with to basically bed down the network and figure out what was needed to actually get this into production.

And so it was a very powerful symbiotic relationship between us and Optimism because they were coming from, at the time, a very theoretical standpoint about how to do this, and we were coming from a very practical standpoint of running a Project on L1 and needing to you know solve some immediate problems So I think the combination of those 2 things, you know got us to a really good place But it did take a long time, you know, it took it's taken, you know, a couple of years to kind of get to this point so

So for example, dydx probably the most notable which chose to go on Cosmos and do their own app chain.

I'm sure you saw Rune's announcement of Maker forking the SVM as well and maybe doing their own AppChain for some of the parts.

So it does seem like maybe some of the earlier DeFi folks are also interested in the AppChain thesis, but it seems like you went with kind of L2s.

I guess, you know, for maybe other DeFi founders who are thinking about this, What made you choose L2s over AppChain?

Just how do you think about this in general?

Yeah, we had, there was an interesting debate between myself and Antonio a couple years ago about this idea of composability versus, you know, scaling or, you know, a siloed AppChain sort of thing.

And, you know, this is in relation to stockware at the time, right?

And I said, look, I think optimism is going to be a better place to be because you're going to have all of these other contracts and other protocols like Aave and Compound and things like that, that will be on these networks.

And composability is the kind of the secret sauce.

Now, the reality is that I think as a purpose platform, you can actually get away with not having composability, you can be a bit siloed.

And so I think in hindsight, DYDX won that 1 and they were able to scale up faster than synthetics.

But I do think now that we've caught up and the execution engine is sort of a feature parity between DYDX and us, and I would argue even between us and centralized exchanges, now it's a question of is that composability actually valuable, that other property that we have versus going to a pure App chain.

When you were talking about composability, I think this was a tweet you had the other day, you mentioned UIDX and you said, actually, right now, at least, it's their UX and token incentives that have probably won out.

And that's 1 thing that's led to Infinex, which is a new project that you're working on that's going to leverage Synthetix protocol.

Can you give a high level of what Synthetix is and why Infinex is something that's needed, you think, to actually get to that level where DEXs can compete with centralized exchanges?

So, synthetics, the current version, B2X, is a system that pools liquidity.

People deposit S and X, the staking token, and liquidity is pooled to support a bunch of different markets.

So spot markets, perp markets, different instruments, things like gold, silver, et cetera, and then obviously a bunch of cryptocurrencies.

And then we've got a number of different approaches to enabling that liquidity to support trading.

So we have a specific module that connects to that liquidity and enables leverage trading.

And all of these different components are being upgraded all the time, but V2X right now is currently the 1 that's live on mainnet.

And v3 is going to be coming out fairly soon, which basically upgrades a bunch of things.

And then we've got a new version of Perps.

The Perps module is actually being upgraded as well to allow cross margin and a bunch of other features and things like that.

This trading engine has been built over the last 5 years and it's been getting better and better and better.

And I think in the last 6 months, it's kind of crossed an inflection point where it went from not really being able to compete with even other DEXs and definitely not able to compete with centralized exchanges to now able to compete with centralized exchanges.

That shift, that inflection point has put pressure on us to say, okay, well, if this thing's as good as Binance, why is Binance doing 30, 40, $50 billion in Notional and we're doing 30, 40, 50 million?

The solution to that in my mind was that the UX and the onboarding and all of the kind of trading experience itself is missing.

That the execution engine's great, but that user experience is still lacking.

And so the solution to that in my mind was to build a new user interface that was focused purely on the user experience.

1 thing that I'm curious about as somebody that's not too familiar with L2s and how they interact with DeFi is a common criticism kind of is the fragmentation of liquidity across maybe the different modular stacks, as opposed to all being on like a general purpose, a lot, and maybe enabling better capital efficiency.

Or like, what is, what does it deal with fragmentation altitudes?

No, I think it's really problematic, actually.

If you have a monolithic L1, like we did back in DeFi summer, there's a whole bunch of things that happen, right?

Someone deploys a new contract, people think that's exciting, all the liquidity flows in, right?

That system is now broken in Ethereum, you know, to an extent, right?

Because, you know, bridging in and out is costly.

And, you know, there's a whole bunch of points of friction, different tokens, wrapped tokens, etc.

And we've seen the impact this has had even on token systems on Arbitrum and Optimism where there are very interesting projects that if they're running on L1 and they can't, so they actually can't run on L1, they can only work on an L2, but if they were running on L1, then these projects would be, I think, doing much better in a bunch of different dimensions, having more liquidity, there'd be more awareness, there'd be more token holders, there would be more participation.

And so being on an L2 right now is definitely a disadvantage for a project versus being on a monolithic L1.

But What I think we're looking at doing with Infonex is to abstract that away and to say, okay, you've got all these siloed pools of liquidity in terms of L1s, but what if you put an interface on top of them that abstracted away where those things were?

A lot of people have been talking about this, account abstraction and different solutions and different web wallets and different mobile wallets that kind of don't require you to do bridges or to sign transactions or whatever.

But I think that if it's done like the application layer, it can be done in a way which really does abstract it away.

And then it won't matter whether the liquidity is on arbitrum or optimism, or it won't matter whether the token you want to trade is on base, for example, right?

If you want to trade for Entext shares or something like that, you will just turn up to an application and that application will give you different options to trade.

Your assets will already be stored inside that application on chain and you'll have access to liquidity wherever it is.

And that will kind of unify and create this layer that abstracts away that liquidity fragmentation ideally.

1 is that how far away do you think that is?

Because technically speaking, that seems relatively challenging.

And 2, and sort of unrelated is, I argue there's almost the L2 wars happening right now.

You have Optimism and there's Arbitrum, there's Polygon, there's Squirrel, ZK-Sync, StarkNet, Fuel I guess.

And then now Eclipse with the SVM L2 as well.

As a founder, you made your company, your company went big on the L1, now you went to L2s.

How do you think about the landscape of L2s?

Like what decision factors do you look for when choosing to work with an L2?

So for us, you know, the decision was kind of made a long time ago, right?

We went, we went to optimism and we're on optimism now.

The decision that we're trying to work out, and it's kind of playing out in the community right now, is where do we go next?

Because there is this idea, this thesis, that there are unique and distinct users who are on different chains, who will not transact on another chain.

And we know this is true for things like Solana.

I think it's fair to say there are people that are on Solana that are not on Ethereum L1, and they're just distinct users.

But what's interesting is I think that we're starting to see this play out even on L2s, that there are arbitrary users and optimism users, and they're not the same people.

And so, you know, this is a question I think for all projects to figure out is like, if there is a pool of users who you can't access, right, then you need to be on that chain.

And you know, do you fork your project and deploy to every chain?

Do you try and create some unified set of contracts where all the governance happens on 1 chain, et cetera?

I actually had a very long blog post about this challenge a couple of weeks ago.

The conclusion that I think I came to from a protocol level is that the solution is maybe to build your own app chain where your governance can live and maybe some liquidity can live etc and then Deploy and create a beachhead across all of the other chains that you want to play in you know in our case these are mainly EVM chains, right?

So things like Avalanche and whatever, Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, et cetera.

But these are still, as you say, these are still unsolved technical challenges, right?

Like these are things that we need to figure out how we sort through it.

People have sort of asked why an AppChain?

Like you've already got all these other problems, like why create another problem, right?

And my theory behind that is that an AppChain allows you as a project, as a protocol, to be kind of credibly neutral and to say, this is the place where our governance exists.

We're not saying Arbitrum is better than Optimism or Base is better than Polygon or whatever.

And then we have a neutral deployment on every other chain and wherever there is demand, liquidity can flow.

And so on Polygon, people can deposit ETH or on Avalanche, they could theoretically deposit the native token there, right?

Or any other EVM chain that that could go for.

It's not clear that that is a sensible thing to me.

It might be the thing we're forced into, but to Mert's question earlier, is this the problem of fragmentation of liquidity?

Like, yeah, that problem doesn't exist if you just have a monolithic L1, right?

You just go to that place, you focus on that community.

Now, you could argue that, okay, even if you have a monolithic L1, and let's say it's Ethereum L1 and Solana and Cosmos, let's say there's 3, right?

You still kind of have this problem and you still need to think through, okay, well, where do we deploy?

But given how hard it is to connect those chains, it kind of forces you into a decision of just deploying a distinct instance, right?

You know, there really isn't the option to try and merge them and share liquidity and do all this stuff.

Whereas I think there is a bit of pressure to kind of try and do that on L2s and merge them.

But I think that there's another solution, which is Infinex, right?

Like Infinex is a different pathway of solving the same problem.

So 1 thing that I ask, I think I've asked every DeFi founder so far is, so you talked about kind of going to where the users and where the liquidity, where the users are and liquidity is.

And 1 thing that I find interesting is like, like for a perfect exchange, you don't actually need, like you can kind of be in an island like the YDX to some extent.

And 1 question I always ask is, to what extent do you wanna be chasing or expanding to where the users are, which are crypto native users?

And then how do you contrast that with onboarding new people onto crypto who probably won't care which chain you're on, but just want that user experience and experience what crypto has to offer?

Yeah, so I was actually talking to a good friend of mine who is another OG in space.

And I thought that this was like trivially obvious, right?

Like we're having this conversation, he was like, you know, I don't really get this whole idea of like trying to abstract it away.

And I was I was kind of looking at him like, what do you mean?

And so I walked him through my reasoning and all of a sudden it clicked for him.

And I think some of us, unfortunately, are like so DeFi pilled and we've just been living in this DeFi land for so long that like the other non-DeFi users we don't think about.

I think each cycle, you have new users coming into the space, right?

And those new users found out about crypto from someone, right?

You know, I'm sure in a year's time, you know, Mert will be getting a bunch of DMs from people being like, hey, is crypto back?

And, you know, they have some person in their network that they trust or whatever.

And, you know, they say, tell me what to do, right.

And every cycle, you know, there's been this kind of harsh trade-off, I think, for most of the people in the space, where you kind of want to tell them to go on chain and download MetaMask or download some wallet or whatever, right?

Even back in the day, like download Mist browser to like go and do ICOs or whatever.

You want to tell them that, but then you're kind of like, ah, this person's going to lose all their money.

Like, is this a really good, you know, is this a good idea for me to be recommending this?

And so, you know, you kind of like, you know, sort of grin and go, ah, just jump on Binance, right?

Like you wanna get exposure to these tokens, just go to Binance, right?

Like, they're probably not gonna lose their money on Binance today, right?

You know, over a given, over a long enough time horizon, they will absolutely lose their money on any centralized exchange.

It'll get hacked or blow up or steal all the money or whatever.

But in the short term, you're like, and this is true even for me.

My mother, I gave her some wrapped Bitcoin a while ago, and I was like, I set up Metamask, and I was like, you know what, honestly, just put on Binance, like just, it'll be easier, right?

You're not going to run yourself, like you're not going to lose your private keys or whatever.

And so the big question is, when these new users start showing up, Where do they flow through to?

Or do they flow into centralized databases like Binance, etc.

And the thing that I think we have not been able to achieve 15 years into this crypto experiment is when that influx of new users happens, that we are capturing even a meaningful percentage of them to bring them on chain to use crypto tech to engage with crypto.

It's kind of insane that we're still using web 2 tech, we're still using databases and, you know, closed source software and proprietary systems to interact with crypto.

And that's where the majority of people do.

And the obvious answer to why that is the case is because of usability, risk and safety and usability and all of these different things, user friction, onboarding friction.

And so this is where again, the solution that I see is for a DeFi application that uses DeFi for the execution engine, but abstracts away all the complexity and lets people on board.

And so my hope is that next cycle when people are turning up that you know you guys are like actually instead of going to Binance go to Infinex because they can't rug you right.

You can onboard easily you put a username password in and an email in if they lose their password if they lose their email they lose something they this you know social recovery system right they can recover their funds They don't need to worry about someone stealing the funds.

They can do all the things they want to do.

They can trade all the different assets they want to trade.

We've got a bunch of different markets that can trade leverage if they want, but it's a much safer solution to be using.

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Permissionless Frontends: The Rise of Crypto's Aggregators | Kain Warwick (Infinex)