DevHub Live 43 - Templar Protocol

Captions as YouTube publishes them, usually machine-generated, so product and people names can be misheard.

1. 0:00

   m m hey we are back again with another edition of devhub live uh I am your host Joe excited to have everyone back here this week uh with another great uh guest that I'm excited to jump into a couple quick quick housekeeping things uh

2. 1:04

   before we get started here uh just want to make sure if you not already subscribed to our newsletter comes out every single week about the near developer Community things that are going on here at near near AI uh definitely check that out that link is down below uh great place to get started there uh also too there's different hackathons always going on around the ecosystem we list those in the newsletter definitely check those out if

3. 1:27

   you're building here on near and you want to geted started again we'll stream the links here at the bottom all the way through uh but today's guest which is what I really want to get to so uh we've had a few different Bitcoin related dii products on here uh the past few months and they've all had something a little bit different to offer and this is definitely another one here too uh

4. 1:52

   template protocol is one that uh one they just announced a fundraising uh which is exciting for for them as well but they are taking a little bit different approach than the ones that we've talked about before so we're going to talk about what it means to build uh what this what their product actually is kind of going into the uh piece of you know for I guess defy and what that means to really leverage Bitcoin and how near is enabling that I think that's the part that we're going to really dive into a

5. 2:26

   little bit more today also want to talk about just kind of the concept of crypto in general and kind of where they're coming from uh this really interesting backstory uh you may have seen uh Our Guest today Royal Fool on the redacted uh speaker panel uh he did a panel there uh during the redacted conference as well so we're going to get into all the different things here uh again if you have questions of things that come up during the episode you're more than welcome to put it into the comment box

6. 2:56

   if anywhere you might be streaming this whether it's on Twitch YouTube here or on X uh and we will try to maybe get to some of your questions if they are reasonable and before uh I bring up my guest just last thing is this is no Financial advice here we are simply just talking about kind of building and focusing on that um this is absolutely not Financial advice and let's get going Royal fuel thank you so much for uh

7. 3:20

   joining today I'm really actually excited to talk about all different things here but maybe just let's start with introducing yourself and uh what Templar is all right uh thanks for having me Joe uh yeah I'm Royal full uh I've been a developer previously um and I co-founded a Templar protocol uh which allows you to uh borrow uh stable coins against Bitcoin uh without trusting centralized

8. 3:52

   institutions nice so what exactly for I guess there's a few different products out there not just your through the ecosystem what is Templar trying to do that separates themselves from some of these other like Bitcoin based protocols here um so uh I'd say that uh what we're trying to solve uh is a trust minimized uh lending Market uh with Bitcoin um so that and enables kind of permissionless lending of multiple stable coins on any chain uh natively

9. 4:36

   against Bitcoin so we're not doing any bridging um it's just the the Bitcoin lives on the L1 the entire time there's no wrapping that happens uh and the uh the stable coins can arrive in your wallet uh your wallet of choice uh and we're also implementing it such that there's no requirement of a uh metamask uh Phantom meteor uh style wallet to be connected um it follows the simple send receive functionality um there's some pretty cool near Tech that enables us to do that um but that really

10. 5:17

    opens up the potential user base for our product uh to on the order of 50 million uh different accounts and we could argue users that have those onchain wallets with smart contract functionality versus it's estimate it's estimated that there's around 500 million uh different people holding crypto uh in different wallets and exchanges um so we're uh enabling uh you know those users uh who don't have like an onchain wallet to use

11. 5:52

    our product uh without that extra friction of onboarding uh to their to like an onchain wallet right right uh few things I definitely want to get into here around building but I want to just take a little higher level view first and for maybe those in the audience who don't fully understand and want to learn a little bit more about like the kind of the Bitcoin side of this like why is

12. 6:17

    Bitcoin the right asset to build a protocol around like this yeah uh I mean uh it is by far the largest crypto asset um you know it's around 60% of the market cap dominance uh and uh people like holding it as a store of value um there are other use cases for it but it's that's that's uh kind of taking the place as the predominant use case of Bitcoin uh an uncensorable decentralized store value that can be permissionless uh sent and accessed anywhere in the world um and that's

13. 6:57

    that's a huge unlock um the unfortunately the problem has arisen that if you want to access liquidity with that Bitcoin your options become rather limited um ideally like in a peer-to-peer world where everyone can send and accept Bitcoin you're able to spend your Bitcoin but the adoption for Bitcoin as a payment network has been rather limited um so then the you're you're left with after that okay I want to spend uh some sort of fiat currency which is short-term stable

14. 7:39

    um and then you either need to sell your Bitcoin uh which may incur taxable events uh that may uh limit your ability to uh have any uh future upside appreciation for the Bitcoin um and that's not something everyone wants to do um um so then what you need to do is you you need to borrow against your Bitcoin that that way you don't need to incur a taxable event um and you don't lose that on the upside um now the existing solutions for borrowing your Bitcoin are rather

15. 8:18

    centralized uh you have coinbase which is offering borrowing against Bitcoin but that requires that you custody your Bitcoin with them um and technically they also wrap that Bitcoin as well which is also a taxable event so that kind of doubly defeats the purpose of um borrowing against your Bitcoin there um the previous Solutions out there were like blockfi and Celsius as well and we all saw how that went um there there's

16. 8:49

    like a there's some newer um approaches out there uh as well um but they all have their different trade-offs for example you can have wrapped Bitcoin um that you can borrow on a uh or on Moro or compound um but that also involves custody your Bitcoin with bitgo um so the the you know the uh ability to actually borrow against your Bitcoin without trusting a centralized third party that hasn't properly been

17. 9:24

    solved yet uh and we think that uh using uh the MPC network uh which shards the private key among uh a network of nodes uh is a is a good solution to that it's a good first step um and this solution isn't just something that we thought of uh it was actually proposed by uh Nick zavo in his 2001 piece uh trusted third parties or security holes uh where you know using that NPC network uh replaces the central ized third party in this case coin base or

18. 10:03

    bco yeah no I think if you've been around long enough you've certainly seen the dangers of host you know holding of somebody else for for you guys as you're starting to build this protocol uh and again before we get too technical I just thinking about like the users here and what your product is trying to get across you have a very clear vision of trying to stay true to the you know the cipher Punk model of you know you own everything self- Sovereign um you know

19. 10:35

    you are going to be in control of all this and also unlocking at the same time the ability to leverage some defi off of Bitcoin which again like you said is hard to spend and sometimes again people don't want to spend it if you believe that it's going to continue to rise in value and appreciate um go like that how though do you start to think about though like competing with some of these

20. 10:57

    centralized places where they try to tout that like the user experience is easier you know whether it is or isn't but they they try to come across like oh you already using coinbase it's already here here you can do this how do you start to get that message out and get other people to believe in that same vision as well yeah uh that's a good question I don't think it's necessarily that um we're trying to compete solely on user experience I think there have been

21. 11:28

    enough people that have been hurtt or have had a bad user experience with a centralized exchange uh whether it was a hack in the past or whether it's just with coinbase who frankly has just ignored their customers who are retail as of late uh they've been focusing on institutional adoption and their institutional clients which makes sense because coinbase uh custodies around 10% of the Bitcoin Supply uh in existence today uh there

22. 12:01

    was that's based off of a river report in November of 2024 I believe um so that's that goes really counter to the ethos of Bitcoin uh I mean that's that's where all the uh ET almost 90% of the ETFs are custody with coinbase that's our sailor and a lot of Corporations custody their Bitcoin the US government is buying Bitcoin that they're probably going to be using coinbase uh lot of the big funds in the US uh and in the

23. 12:33

    Western World they use coinbase as well um and in the event that there is a contentious hard Fork uh within the Bitcoin Community again like what happened in 2017 uh they can they can kind of like uh tip the scales on the outcome of that um by saying we only give this one version of Bitcoin to our clients or uh and we and we may choose to sell the other version of Bitcoin which we don't

24. 13:06

    agree with um and we think that the version that we're giving our clients is the real version of Bitcoin and that may include changes that uh hurt the decentralization of the Bitcoin Network in the long run um so uh I I think that um for the users that really care about the uh long-term success of Bitcoin coin uh and Bitcoin being uh truly decentralized incredibly neutral uh that they're not going to

25. 13:38

    want to custody their Bitcoin with another centralized institution they would instead prer a network um and on that point uh we also have plans uh to implement uh like a multisig where users can um hold there will be three different Keys it will be a two3 multisig where users hold one key uh the NPC network holds another key and then another neutral third party holds the third key and that allows users to recover their Bitcoin in the event that

26. 14:16

    the MPC network is no longer live uh and it also allows um there to be kind of programmatic Liquidation in the event that the users um collateral ratio Falls below the minimum um so in this in this future iteration we'd allow users to properly maintain custody of their Bitcoin the uh actual MPC Network would still be a pretty decentralized solution as well and that would hold another key uh and then a neutral third party would hold the third so um we have some good plans on the

27. 14:51

    road map for ensuring that in the long run uh there's proper decentralization um of the Bitcoin Network and users are still able to uh hold their keys uh custody of their funds really I that's a it's a really interesting concept I want to talk about so this custody piece here how in again this where our audience is a little more technical so feel free to go deeper but how are you maintaining that custody and allowing people to borrow against like

28. 15:23

    so you talk about you know leveraging them SE network but what goes into this aspect right now yeah so with the MPC network uh that essentially takes a single private key and it shards it uh into multiple different pieces and the idea is that none of the other holders of A Shard know what the other they're unable to reconstruct it without everyone uh going around and um adding their kind of unique Shard uh back to the key um and

29. 16:02

    with the uh MPC Network running in a trusted execution environment that ensures that none of the shards get leaked to any of the other participants in case there's any malware um that's running on it so yeah that custody is uh it's split uh among the network of nodes that are running the NPC Network um and it is callable from the near smart contract runtime uh via chain signatures so the smart contract that accepts the Bitcoin as collateral um is able to create uh a

30. 16:42

    deposit address um for which the corresponding private key is held in charted form on the NPC network uh and then when either the user repays their uh their loan uh and wants to withdraw their stable coins uh then the contract checks if those conditions are properly met and then calls the NPC Network saying hey release the funds back to the user uh or in the event of liquidation uh in the event that the uh

31. 17:13

    collateral ratio Falls below the minimum the smart contract calls the NPC Network saying hey release these funds to the Liquidator um so yeah interesting so in this setup and so you talked about users being able to come in not having to have a wall setup so like what does that onboarding experience have to look like do I just register an account and now I have to like where does I guess where does the Bitcoin come into this process of onboarding yeah um so on the

32. 17:49

    near side of things the way that we set it up is that the user who doesn't know this behind the scenes that's using the front end they actually have a trial account and that trial account that maps to their unique user ID uh and then there's a meta transaction relayer that pays for the transaction fees so that when the user clicks the button saying here are the terms of the loan that I

33. 18:18

    agree to that actually creates a transaction um that gets sent to the contract by the metat transaction relayer uh and that says uh specifies that everything that's necessary for the contract to get the process started here's the amount of Bitcoin to accept is collateral uh here the collateral ratio here it's the repayment terms Etc uh interest rate all that stuff um and then here's the stablecoin address to

34. 18:50

    send uh the funds to um what network it's on what stablecoin uh Etc once the contract receives that then it uh it sets up the Bitcoin deposit address using chain signatures the user uh scans a QR code or uh pastes in the address to send the Bitcoin to um and the user sends that Bitcoin uh natively uh on the L1 uh using their wallet or from their exchange uh to the deposit address

35. 19:29

    when the Bitcoin like client um confirms the balance uh of the collateral address uh and that that balance has been received uh then uh the the funds for the borrow and the stable coin are sent to the address that the user specified um that address could be on near that address could be on ethereum in the future it could be on salana L2 use Etc um that could be is that using near Intense or just chain signatures that's just the chain signatures um because on the other side

36. 20:07

    of things the uh the lenders provide um the stable coins uh to the to the lending market right okay really interesting so I can see so this definitely feels different than other Solutions in the sense that like I can have let's say my cold wallet that I want to maybe send some funds out of and still use this I don't have to actually connect anything else I don't have to swap anywhere I can just say okay I feel comfortable sending you know let's say

37. 20:38

    you have a cold card right and I can actually send from there something like that um I can just be off on running and borrow against that yeah that's correct um I mean this is also compatible with the institutional wallet flows as well that just have like send and receive functionality um so yeah there's there's no connect wallet that is necessary yeah um it is optionally supported um uh there there are uh there are Bitcoin wallets that allow you to

38. 21:12

    connect there are uh obviously near uh e salana wallets that you can connect in order to like receive the uh the stable coins in order to like sign the transaction as opposed to the metat transaction relayer um but that's that's optional uh in our setup um so yeah you can send it from a ledger treaser cold card whatever your Hardware wallet of choice it's compatible with that uh and then the stable coins just could be sent directly to an exchange address if you'd

39. 21:42

    like so that you could sell that uh usdc usdt whatever um and uh get funds uh within your bank account how are you guys managing liquidation and price and things like that is that something that you're um that's all fully automated as well so just like most uh dii protocols uh we track uh when loans are eligible for liquidation based off of collateral ratios or the inverse of that is LTV loan to values um and when a loan is

40. 22:24

    eligible for liquidation by being below the collado ratio uh then either like a liquidator can come in and uh liquidate that collateral uh and get get a reward for doing that um or we could also call the uh near intense framework uh now this is a rather attractive solution to us because that kind of cuts out the middleman of the Liquidator um so that the spread on the liquidation basically the difference

41. 22:59

    between the value recovered from the collateral uh being sold and the uh the principle PR plus fees that the borrow has incurred whatever is left over there that gets split among the uh lenders and the protocol uh there's no need to pay for the Liquidator uh because the intense framework uh handles that liquidation um and kind of you know takes care of any middleman uh that's there yeah interesting so for you guys and

42. 23:30

    maybe we didn't highlight it really too much at the beginning here but like you're truly trying to just build a protocol here you are not serving as the Liquidator or as any of that are you are you providing the stable is that like your business model that you're providing that and collecting interest on that no I mean the Proto the the protocol itself uh will earn uh Revenue uh from

43. 23:57

    fees that could be from origination fees which is a small amount that's charged in order to uh generate the loan um it could earn a share of the liquidation spread uh as well um and there are a couple other sources that the protocol itself could earn revenue from but we're just building the tools and releasing the protocol itself uh you create we're creating a market so that Liquidators uh lenders borrowers Etc can meet up and uh and make the magic happen

44. 24:32

    um we are also ensuring that with the protocol designed that um the actual markets themselves can be permissionless deployed so uh we just deploy the code saying hey if you want to set up a bit uh a Bitcoin and usdt on near uh with these minimum collateral ratio this type of uh interest rate utilization curve you can do that set set your own fees and they can deploy that market and that

45. 25:03

    Market's uh immutable um we are using a versioning system similar to Unis swap the actual protocol itself uh once it's deployed is uh permissionless and uh decentralized it is not something that we have multier admin Keys too uh to make changes to once it's deployed um we can make updates in the future uh in future versions um but that those original versions will still be running

46. 25:34

    um provided that the market participants are still interested um so getting back to the uh the different parties involved there yeah um the once a market is deployed and there's uh interest in in that market then uh like a lender can deposit stable coins uh and a borrower says okay there are these stable coins available to borrow I'm going to deposit my my Bitcoin and uh borrow those stable

47. 26:01

    coins against that um and then the in the event that the uh collateral Falls below the liquidation ratio uh a liquidator comes in says hey i' I'd like some of the some of that please um and uh sells the collateral recovers the uh stable coins so that the the lender gets repaid um the protocol erds a share of that um and uh the Liquidator gets a share as well um like I mentioned the near intense framework could also uh take care of that as well provided there's sufficient

48. 26:36

    liquidity right sure sure so for you guys there's a couple different things I'd love to dive into a little bit further as a team building uh is the Focus right now just purely on setting up the protocol and making sure that this gets to main net with all of these features in there or is there aspect where you have to start actually onboarding some of these and I'm just going to use the word partners for lack of better term right now that to come in to act as the lender and act

49. 27:10

    as the Liquidator things like that uh well it's both uh we are mainly focused on building the protocol um but obviously we want it to have users as well um so that will take the form both of uh different Partnerships to increase the distribution uh earlier this week we announced that uh we'd be working with rehea um which is recently rebranded as like the merger of uh ref and burrow um

50. 27:40

    to provide native Bitcoin uh loans uh on their platform uh so that users uh on their platform can have access to it uh we'd like to work with uh wallet providers as well uh different defi apps um that would be interested in utilizing it um there's even been some interest from like uh uh Bitcoin miners uh who need to properly like hedge their exposure to bitcoin so being able to just send that native Bitcoin and then get a stable get stable coins back um

51. 28:13

    then with those stable coins they're e able to like pay for options premiums or able to uh you know short as a hedge um so it really unlocks a lot of different use cases um and yeah obviously we want just uh regular users as well um sure this is yeah something that we're you know we built to solve problems that we ourselves were facing um so yeah yeah that's yeah you're leading right into my next question is is kind of like where

52. 28:45

    did this come from is this something that you personally or your team were facing you like this was the next and correct iteration for this yeah um so I mean for people that are holding Bitcoin like I mentioned uh and you know you don't you you you have real world bills to pay right uh I don't know maybe you want to like take a vacation maybe you want to like uh you know buy a house

53. 29:16

    uh cover some medical bills like uh um yeah like there they're just all these different things that people have to pay for and there are a lot of people that have been holding Bitcoin for a long time and they don't want to sell it and they don't trust coinbase they saw what happened with blockfi and uh Celsius on FTX so um you know this this kind of uh using the MPC Network as a solution to the trusted third party problem uh really kind of like opened our eyes to hey this this could be an actual

54. 29:52

    solution uh here and then we can improve security assumptions and uh um the using uh M uh using multisig as well as the NPC network uh we believe that we can Pro provide a really robust and secure solution to this problem um without relying on a coinbase or without relying on a bito right so yeah uh this is a problem that we faced ourselves our friends have faced uh who are just maybe more casual

55. 30:23

    crypto users um they're not in the trenches every day or don't have a metamask Walla to play around with defi yeah interesting so for this type of setup and as you guys are putting together this protocol is it something where you are feeling the need to build in some of the educational pieces around what the security is here what is the safety like so for example when a user is about to deposit their Bitcoin is it is something that we feel like is imperative of showing not only just

56. 31:05

    what's happened to be transparent but like why it's being done this way or is that something you kind of just put off to the side and and I I'll just phras this as I ask a lot of different builders in this in crypto is like where is the line of like educating people especially as you're bringing people who maybe are a little bit not as crypto native and then you know and how much it

57. 31:28

    becomes like you don't want to be too academic but like where does that line sit for you guys as you're building this product uh I mean what we're thinking about is that uh on the actual product when you're using it uh that's not where we want to do as much of the education it should be like as simple as possible when you go to use it now on other parts of the website like we'll be building like an FAQ page uh that's where we can both have things at a high level that's

58. 32:00

    pretty introductory and we can also dive into the technical weeds as well um we'll have like a user guides uh just showing how to use it in video format so that people who might be a bit cautious uh about trying out something that's new can see okay here's how I expect it to work um so yeah that that education piece is definitely important um but but you know we don't need to have a clippy

59. 32:31

    uh with users as they're uh as they're actually using the product right yeah yeah I think I think that's a nice balance a lot of developers kind of feel very similar it is a tough problem especially as you start to open up your Market towards more mainstream users that there is a piece where you want to hopefully get across some of the ideals maybe that you're trying like hey why

60. 32:55

    does this protocol exist like this is some things that we believe in but there's also balance of providing too much information and causing you know just you know concern simply because they just now don't understand what you're trying to show them right so yeah I I think that makes sense um from a a builder standpoint you guys are building in public uh your stuff is open source you actually um

61. 33:21

    I've seen your team members post uh logs like on Twitter uh like hey this is what we've been building you know um these are some things that have gotten done why that approach for this uh yeah uh you mentioned kind of the values and how we communicate that um it's it's uh you know we we've we've chosen The Branding Cipher lending for a reason uh it's not just something that we think that will resonate uh with kind

62. 33:53

    of the OG crypto crowd uh and bitcoiners it's something that we believe in um one of the main uh themes and narratives uh in the past two years has been institutionalization of crypto that means ETFs that means uh you know onboarding of like real world assets which essentially are you know IUS on chain to stuff that you know legally is custody by some sort of other third party um and we believe in uh those Cipher Punk

63. 34:32

    principles that uh you know gave birth to crypto uh and we think that in order for crypto to survive long term those principles need to be upheld uh doing everything open source and being transparent uh is one of those tenants uh of kind of like the cipher Punk principles um we believe that uh code should be transparent uh and that uh networks rather than uh centralized institutions uh peer-to-peer

64. 35:05

    networks uh solve a lot of uh problems uh with trust I mean that's that's how crypto came into existence with Bitcoin it solved the Byzantine generals problem uh through proof of work um like that was that was that was a huge breakthrough in a trust model uh and people might get lazy and think okay well yeah we can just we can just issue these IUS on chain essentially because one thing crypto does really well is distribution like you can get Global

65. 35:39

    access to finance right um so if you issue these complicated IUS that are that are custody somewhere else you can do that but that's really against the spirit of what crypto is about um and we don't believe that that is the best long-term use case um we believe that uh being transparent about what we're doing while preserving our personal privacy um is important that's why I'm

66. 36:05

    not showing my face um because I care about ultimately uh the quality of the product that the users ship and that that's get shipped to the users yeah um and yeah if you don't we're not asking you to trust us we're we're showing you here's what we're doing check out the GitHub uh we'll there'll be audits on the code you can run it yourself you don't need to use our trusted front end if you uh if you want to uh run the front end yourself to connect to the protocol feel free to do so if you want

67. 36:38

    to run the protocol yourself you know feel free to do that and deploy your own markets like we don't require that you trust us um so that's that's in in in in being transparent that way we believe that's a very good way to build trust um yeah really interesting and it sounds like taking this approach made sense for you guys too where if you were a singular product like if you're going to be the whole Suite of the product you

68. 37:11

    run the risk of having at times to make decisions where maybe you have to sacrifice some of those things in order for particular experiences but by being a protocol you eliminate any of that push and pull of do I have have to uh sacrifice for user experience or these different issues that might come up when you have the full Suite you can just say no like we are we are simply the

69. 37:37

    protocol that is allowing all of this to happen yeah that's correct um I mean there might be some products that are very well integrated together um and they look nice and maybe they're easy to use but ultimately we believe those are fragile um sure even within the uh uh you know it depends on there being a very very strong leadership that is around for a long time right that kind

70. 38:09

    of Steve Jobs approach yeah apple was not known for open source apple is known for closed Source developing projects in secret and making sure that everything fit together perfectly and Apple has basically coasted since Steve Jobs has died and you know you see they're becoming more and more blow and the product becoming less and less smooth over time since it's passing um so there's Inc you know there's a really big risk that you run in having a

71. 38:41

    tightly integrated uh Clos Source product because it might get you short-term gains um but in the long run ultimately we believe that open source wins um and that's the case in operating systems uh as you have seen with um you know iOS versus Android which is based off of uh Linux you see that in the case just of developers and servers and their uh environment of choice you know it was Microsoft that was dominating the server space for a while but now most people are running some flavor of Linux

72. 39:13

    absolutely um and we believe the same thing is true of monetary networks as well um the the uh dollar preserved its credible neutrality as a Global Reserve currency because they didn't shut people down or at least big people down and they you could you could say as like somebody holding dollars well the US government isn't going to stop me right um and that turned out not to be the case even

73. 39:45

    Switzerland as well the the the accounts holding um the accounts for Russian oligarchs uh when the war in Ukraine broke out were frozen um their assets ceased Switzerland as a country like you you can't really say that they're credibly neutral anymore they've lost that right um so yeah we we believe in these open monetary networks we believe in open source um we believe in uh building out in the open uh and that

74. 40:16

    ultimately like uh uh closed sourced and centralized networks are fragile and they will fail sure sure so for you guys going forward here um this sounds like a couple things that you're you are the dependent on and one is the chain signature piece of this from near are you creating your own NPC Network or are you leveraging the one that exists from near for chain signatures no we're not leveraging our own NPC Network we're using uh near we would like if the uh uh near MPC Network

75. 40:55

    consisted of maybe multiple different NPC networks going forward um so that there's kind of more decentralization it's not just like a single Network yeah um or that there was maybe some sharding to the NPC Network itself um that would definitely help uh with kind of like the uh the trust and uh scalability in the long run in our opinion um but we also uh plan on using like the multisig solution like I mentioned where the user

76. 41:26

    holds a key the n PC network holds a key uh and then like a credibly neutral third party holds a key as well and we think that that will lead to a very good um kind of uh best of best of all worlds uh where you have uh a level of decentralization you have a level of self- sovereignty uh and in the event of liquidations those can happen programmatically um so yeah and for you guys it sounds like that you are preparing as part of of your road map

77. 41:59

    and architecture here that as some of these Technologies improve right so maybe as the NPC Network improves and things like that you are able to adjust to that and leverage hopefully you know improvements um from it and things like that um but even if there are things that maybe you don't love you're not fully beholden to the southern network is that right yeah you know we would love if the near NPC Network

78. 42:27

    uh it properly scales and is credibly neutral uh and decentralized um you know we it being a core part of our infrastructure um but we don't want it to be kind of like the you know a single point of failure it's still a network right um so you know the funds can't be stolen as long as one of the participants holding one of the shards is honest that's a very nice uh security Assumption of the NPC Network yeah um but there are concerns about

79. 43:00

    like liveness uh guarantees uh of the NPC network uh so in the event that it goes down we want the user to be able to uh re regain their funds uh if they uh repay their loan nice nice okay um you know I I definitely appreciate where this approach is going for you guys now you're on testet uh you're going on to mainnet soon what does this road map look like for the next few months yeah um so we launched mainnet oh launched test net uh

80. 43:34

    pretty soon pretty a couple weeks ago uh we are aiming for a closed uh beta invite only uh mainnet launch uh by the end of May um that will that will enable us to kind of get some usage on mainnet uh ensure that there's efficient liquidity um and allow us a bit more time to uh get support for uh for eth before we do a public uh mainnet launch um for the closed beta we are targeting uh Bitcoin is collateral um we support um ne41 tokens near as

81. 44:20

    collateral um but we don't want to step on uh Raya shoes there uh as well as uh stable coins on near that can be borrowed um when we do a public main net launch which we're targeting like at the end of June that will also support uh uh ethereum stable coins as well um on the road map uh we'd also like to support uh Bitcoin lsts uh so you know there's billions in tbll that's been deposited into Babylon um which is like a

82. 44:55

    multi-chain uh St Network that allows you to earn yield on your Bitcoin um and there are other different uh uh tokens that represent the yield that could be earned on bitcoin um that could be used as collateral uh obviously we'd like to add more support for uh different stable coins um you know that seems to be a very hot area within crypto um you know we anticipate that there'll be you know an explosion of different stable coins and that those

83. 45:28

    will live naturally on a lot of different networks uh so chain signatures definitely helps us out there um and then we'll also want to uh post Manet uh work more on like different uh Partnerships and Integrations uh to increase the distribution uh and get the get the protocol into the hands of more users uh that's great that's great definitely I mean the stable coin push definitely seems to be growing a lot more momentum

84. 45:57

    uh you can just sensor just from from recent news uh releases as well it's just I think in general people are trying to integrate that more and more uh is there any concern with you know like another like Luna worthy uh stablecoin dpeg is that something that is built into this protocol yeah uh that's definitely a possibility for uh any individual stable coin um but the way that we've uh deployed the contract is that each of

85. 46:28

    the markets that gets deployed is isolated so let's say that uh luno 2.0 comes out and uh there's like a Bitcoin Luna 2.0 uh Market that is deployed in the event that Luna 2.0 uh D pegs uh that won't affect the uh Bitcoin uh usdt usdc fra any of the other stable coins uh that are out there um so each market is isolated um and uh not subject to like contagion uh we went with that instead of the pool based model yeah that okay that makes that makes sense that makes sense uh would in

86. 47:12

    that scenario would repayment be based on token number not dollar value in the event of a dpeg yeah yeah I mean it would just be in the number of tokens uh the yeah uh that were that in order to get the dollar value that would require like modification of the contract and Oracle which kind of breaks the trustless assumptions right that's that's that's kind of okay that's where I was kind of going with that of like do

87. 47:43

    you start to have to include now other parties to price that and everything else so no it's it's just it's just token number with the assum that everything yeah in in the future we plan on having an insurance fund um um in the event that you know you know so in in in addition to the protocol uh Revenue accruing to uh the actual uh uh Templar protocol itself uh as well as going to like the uh to the lenders um there'd also be a little bit

88. 48:15

    set aside uh for each market to an insurance fund uh and that Insurance Fund should help uh cover the event of uh losses uh in such an event makes sense makes sense uh awesome this has uh been a great discussion I'm really uh excited to see how you guys continue to build uh I really like the ethos I'm really glad that you're building in public so people can follow and if you are a developer I really encourage to follow along because just

89. 48:48

    see what it's like to actually build in public I think you guys are doing a really nice job of modeling that Behavior Uh which I think is something that you know other developers could certainly gain some insight from uh Royal fuel what's the best way to follow along and uh keep up to date with everything that's happening with uh Templar yeah um uh follow the Templar protocol uh account on X uh if you want to get a little bit more involved in the

90. 49:19

    discussion uh we also have a uh Telegram and a Discord group um those Social Links are available uh on our website uh Templar 5.org um you can check out kind of like the blog posts there that's you know what'll link to the to the test net um and yeah awesome awesome uh well again I really appreciate your time today and uh hopefully after main night you guys can come back on and a little more how

91. 49:54

    everything's going yeah really appreciate the conversation Joe all right thanks Ro take care all right bye bye uh folks uh that was that was a great conversation again I really always appreciate when Builders can come on and just talk about the process as well uh so hopefully everyone's learning something from that uh there too and again some of the them that we've hit on here in case you missed it uh again being able to abstract stuff away one of the strengths here on near uh and being

92. 50:27

    able to really ease that onboard process uh keep up with the self- custody all those different pieces so it's really uh a nice thing to again model yourself after and watch what they're building so definitely follow along with them on Twitter and their other socials and things like that and stay up to date with that uh for us coming up so there is a bonus episode tomorrow around the

93. 50:54

    zcash hackathon that is at 5 500m UTC uh definitely check that out uh next week we'll be back here normal time uh with another guest talking more about building uh so definitely exciting more on that and if you haven't already please follow along on our newsletter uh we have tons of stuff happening always around there so please make sure you check that out uh but uh until then uh

94. 51:17

    I'm your host Joe and keep building and we will see you next week thanks everyone byebye