The Future of AI & DeFi: Rhea Finance and NEAR's Vision Explained

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1. 0:00

   Welcome everyone. Thank you so much for being here today. Uh really excited because we've got Ilia, the the head of co-founder and everything of Near. And then we also have Escobar from RIA, which we've got a lot to sort of break down and everything. Great to have everyone here. Let's just jump right in.

2. 0:15

   First question, Escobar, frame for the audience. What is RIA and what it's going to be and do? Sure. Um RIA is um previously Rafam Barrow uh is the biggest tax and landing on top of near that has been merged into one entity called RIA which is the intention of building uh RIA right now is uh to lead the new narrative um with chain abstracted and AI um and also leading the whole uh the whole uh ecosystem defy scene which is uh rooting

3. 0:45

   into bitcoin and also all those non-s smart contract chain um token utility um that's the whole intention and to make sure there's a um there's a way where uh users can do uh every single little things about D5 on top of one single D app and um and on top of that we uh with us integrating chain abstracted solution which is um like user like bit from from Bitcoin native they can simply connect their Bitcoin wallet and interact with uh um uh on on RIA itself. Yeah.

4. 1:20

   All right. Well, I've got IA Here's what I want to ask. So, Ilia, in your so we've got userowned AI and we've got sort of the we've got the near stack, right? How do you see something like a RIA deck slash like lending platform defy ecosystem working within all those spaces?

5. 1:38

   Yeah, for sure. So on the high level right DeFi is really like an infrastructure like a financial infrastructure for the rest of the use cases that um are built on top and you know as we imagine in the future where you have your AI assistant your AI you know companion that is able to go and interact and transact on your behalf it needs a place where it can go and kind of leverage all of the DeFi superpowers.

6. 2:10

   Um, and so RIA is really building that hub. Now, RIA itself already integrating AI, right? There's an AI assistant kind of integrated into RIA, there's a kind of Delta Trade side, right? Creating different AI worlds. So, it's kind of coming from both directions, right?

7. 2:29

   where um as the kind of this [clears throat] AI assistant infrastructure matures, it will use more and more of the kind of financial infrastructure that RIA is building and then RI itself is starting to use more and more of the pieces to turn this kind of financial infrastructure into more intelligent system.

8. 2:51

   Interesting. Yes. Because I think sometimes if people think like blockchain and AI, it's like AI will be everything, but there's still going to be a lot of uh rails behind the scenes doing lots of stuff. With an AI agent is going to be moving value around crypto.

9. 3:03

   It's going to go to possibly something like ARA and use that. Is that how you're thinking of it, Escobar, from like your guys' team? Yeah. Um so uh I think Ilia covered like two main things that we have we have covered on AI right now that are already live but um I think in three to six months uh what we're trying to build right now is um how the AI agent can help us to uh to let users um just see simply deposit their assets with all the security that uh can be supported

10. 3:34

    through state agent and also how the AI uh AI knowledge can simply aggregate uh all this landing platform or uh the the yield uh infrastructure across chain uh simply this uh this AI can help them to uh manage their assets and what's the strategy looks like better for their for their risk management. So let's say users like uh it's a very conservative um investors then we just going to make some suggestions on what possible for him to do and uh he simply uh do single click on it and deposit all his assets.

11. 4:11

    Yeah. So you've got an AI assistant and you're going to be using it to do maybe possible yield multi-chain, right? So because RIA right now is it's a DEX but it's so much more, right? It's also lending margin products, Bitcoin, DeFi.

12. 4:25

    Like can you kind of go through some of the products this is and then follow up on that? Yeah, for sure. Um the the initial product is basically Rafan uh Raf and borrow is a tax and lending right. It's a very uh um uh very um I don't say old school but it's just like a very regular regular decks which is AMM and also uh landing um like a but then uh we also improve a lot in the DAX side. uh we do a lot of um LP option like we have a CLMM or concentrate liquidity market making and

13. 5:00

    also ALMM which is uh helping user to generate more yield with their LP position and on top of that we also have margin trading which is uh it's part of the lending uh lending product that let users to leverage more on their assets then we have bridge um utilizing the intang uh by near and also uh stargate uh supported on the back end. Um yeah, I think I think that's a three core product. Then on BTC side, we also spin

14. 5:32

    off um a D app that's uh BTC native let all the users to just connect BTC wallet and they can utilize their BTC native BTC asset being supplied and borrow some stable coin and leverage loop their assets uh to get more yield. All right. Well, now I'm going to bring in Ilia here through a bit of the chain signature and all this kind of stuff because I'm curious like your vision of this and it's now being executed through

15. 5:58

    someone like Aria. Is the idea of like near chain signatures and the crosschain with BTC, Zcash, XRP, BNB. Is that where you see this going with maybe all chains on a I I don't even want to call RIA DEX. It's so much more. It's like a DeFi ecosystem. Is that where you're seeing the future go?

16. 6:19

    Yeah, I mean I think we've been talking about this for like over a year and a half I think at this point. But yeah, the idea was like remove this kind of artificial boundary that like this app is on this chain and you can only do stuff here, right? And only users of the wallets of this chain can do stuff here and really create kind of this smooth experience where you can come in with your Bitcoin wallet with your EVM wallet with your Near Salana

17. 6:50

    whatever you don't even have a wallet just you know Face ID and start using you know the use cases right which is the DEX the lending the you know the launchpads the all of this kind of financial and even beyond uh use cases in a way that is also fully kind of engaging assets across all chains as well. And so chain signatures were kind of the first, you know, important piece to really interconnect this. Obviously, there's like message passing systems as well that are needed. But then on top,

18. 7:22

    we need this application to really kind of create this experience. That's why I mean the the half joke of last year was, you know, your dabs are not dabs, right? So like the RIA now is the first like really you know DAP that like any wallet any asset just make it work and kind of deliver on the use case deliver on you know not just one like on a whole host of financial use cases like I mean we were joking about this before

19. 7:53

    but like if you think of it unis swap is not really a product it's a feature like imagine you go to a bank and they're like the only thing we do is you know we're gonna swap things and only only if you're you know like customer of our bank and you know pre-deposited money and by the way the registration is actually in another building with another company and uh if you want to put money in we don't have ATMs ATMs are actually in another building somewhere

20. 8:23

    else like that's that's the experience of cryptos like uh like no no we cannot take like you go to airport to change some uh some money like in this travel X thing it's like no no no we don't take your cash like you need to first go to another kiosk give them cash they'll give you the IUS then go another place make sure you have a wallet set up then you come to us the exchange

21. 8:48

    totally and what's funny is you say you've been talking about this for a year and a half in my mind basically how fast is that in a year and a half you've gone from like what I'm seeing is like dexes and having to move money around like hours I've spent waiting just moving stuff from like chain chain to chain. Fingers crossed. You know, now a year and a half later, it's like there's a DeFi hub that's going to be very intertwined with all of crypto. To me, a

22. 9:14

    year and a half seems like that was crazy fast. Like that seems like I mean, think of like I know, I know, I know, but you know, so that's really cool. Um well, Ilia, while we still have you here, like let's jump into this AI powered vaults and yield optimization. So, uh, Escobar, can you frame this for us because I'm really interested in like AI we all realize is going to be massive

23. 9:37

    and like I want to start using AI for like I'm a bad trader like I want AI to do this for me. How what are you guys doing with this AI powered vault? What is this? And then yeah um so um on on the other side of the product um like Ilia mentioned before we have um we have some uh pilot project that we are we we call it delta trade um it's a grid bot trading well um simply how we want to utilize that grid bot trading and also as part you know um

24. 10:11

    in in the other um uh dexes probably they just let user to deposit the fault and and default will help them to adjust their their strategy uh liquidity position right on our end we going to develop a pool that's called Apollo pool it's basically utilizing the delta trade grid and uh it's also utilizing our lending so before the assets been sent over to uh a liquidity pool we just going to send it to this uh lending right a suppliers and assets and then we

25. 10:43

    borrow out some stable coin and then we make a position for them which is this all position um uh assets need AI uh to to manage all this uh situation and how we can provide the strategy to the users is uh like I mentioned before it's all based on the risk uh they they would prefer right and um on top of that uh not just limited to our landing protocol itself we just see that what's the opportunity that we can provide for the users for a better yield let's say there's a better yield offer in other

26. 11:15

    landing or crosschain and then we can borrow we can do supply and then we borrow out some um some some stable out of it as well and remmanage the position for them. So that's actually how we see it and uh it's already work in progress in terms of the Apollo pool and we'll see how it goes. But um yeah um the the whole the whole uh initial idea is basically take a look back on web two uh

27. 11:43

    we see a lot of um asset manager apps right um it's basically let user or let you to deposit your USD uh and then it it let you decide like uh what is your risk that you want to do how high is the re uh risk of investment and um I think the end goal is just we just want user to choose what's the risk of u uh risk of investment that they want to then we help them to manage everything on the back end. Yep.

28. 12:16

    Yeah. What I I get what you're saying and what I like about so I think the important thing when when I think of AI is that it needs to be userowned versus corporate owned, right? Like when I think of user AI, I think of like some of the perks of it like being verifiable, being like there's a couple very important things when it comes to finances that I want to know that my AI agent isn't going to just like take my wallet and dump it or move it to its other AI agent friend that I had nothing

29. 12:39

    about, right? And so I think the fact that you're so ingrained in the Near ecosystem and building on Near, but also going multi-chain because of Near's amazing account model, it uh really is helpful and it's good that you guys are incorporating that. Ilia, question for you. A year and a half has gone by, we're here. A year and a half from now, let's get a little visionary here. What What's it look like? What does something like a RIA DeFi ecosystem and a near

30. 13:04

    userowned AI ecosystem, they hit combined explosion, amazing. What does it look like in a year and a half? Yeah, I think like the the examples that I mean Rio already has a really cool I think we we we can definitely see a lot more proliferation of this um kind of concept of like I mean affect the autonomous agents right that are they starting financial right and I think like they naturally

31. 13:34

    you know they live in this like blockchain environment so it's the financial part is easy for But I think where things are getting interested is where they're able to start to actually participate in also real world economy right because like the you know if like a lot of yield will come on chains who RWAS and so you can imagine having autonomous agents that actually go and you know buy a gas station and then the revenue is flowing back on chain you know you buy a coffee

32. 14:08

    shop by a laundromat Right. And actually starting to bring those types of assets and like the the agent itself is tokenized, right? So you can own part of it and effectually but like agent is not just an asset. It's a business. It's an operation. It can run things. It can have contracts. It can you know have purchase orders etc. Right? So like you have all the pieces starting to really

33. 14:32

    kind of come together like things that like people were imagining as Dows right back in the day where you know you have like autonomous organizations. Now you can actually have that with AI being at the core actually operating it but then linking it back to real world linking it to the physical world. So I think like I mean [clears throat] RIA kind of being that host right where you can actually trade where you can you know find

34. 14:55

    discover understand participate in this autonomous agents I think is is really cool and again the like investment yield optimization etc are the first ones because they're kind of native to this blockchain infrastructure but that's I mean like what we've been working on intense is effectively creating that protocol for AIS to communicate and coordinate with not just other AIS but

35. 15:22

    also with other legal entities and physical you know how do you how do you have how does AI fire a person right like you need effectively some legal contract that you know settles on chain that is able to be executed and that itself can actually be tokenized and traded as well and so you can have all this this kind of instruments that's why G5 is really this like kind of financial

36. 15:46

    infrastructure for for this AI world we're building really interesting side quest that it's been doing is this Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem right as if you want to talk a little bit about that and then Ilia give your response that'd be really helpful I think to sort of frame what's going on there for sure yeah um so in terms of having BTC uh it's it's part of the things that we envision since day one uh when we

37. 16:10

    want to work on this uh how we can develop uh using the chain signature stack right um how we can utilize this uh product. Then we just thinking okay um the biggest the big the biggest market attention is always bitcoin the biggest uh move will always come from bitcoin then how we want to ensure that bitcoin have a good utility as well um which is it's come to defi because it's

38. 16:34

    all about decentralization and also uh transparency so we just think about okay um then we need to figure out what's the best user experience for defi user uh for bitcoin users um they don't need to feel like it's another home and they they they should feel like it's their home. Uh which is they need uh they need their own wallet, they need their own things to do and it's not um presenting

39. 16:57

    with other assets. It's uh it's it's not horrible. It's just not the best way to present the BTC community. So we just figure out how we can spin off um RIA finance to BTC. finance where uh we enable user to just connect their bitcoin native wallet like unisat or xers then they can simply supply their bitcin native assets then um it's it's up to them how they want to use it they can borrow out a stable coin and then they can make a loop strategy buy another bitcoin or they can also earn some extra

40. 17:30

    yield by also uh supplying their their stable coin assets it's it's part of the whole strategy that uh we provide for the users on BTC Yeah, probably Ilia have more thoughts and on how he want to see things on BTC side as well.

41. 17:47

    Yeah. And the non-programmable chains too like Zcash and stuff. So if we want to riff on that. Yeah, I think that kind of one of the clear use cases for this chain obstruction like I mean we thought it's going to be oh you know all those applications on different chains. The thing is like all the applications different chains are mostly just exchanges and lending. And so what's

42. 18:08

    more interesting was like hey let's actually get access to all these assets that are sitting there and are not able to participate in kind of DeFi and finance and in all the ecosystems and bitcoin indeed as mentioned like is the main asset right it's a king king of all assets from everything from volume from supply from number of users and so yeah I think it's like definitely the most important ecosystem to tap into and create us opportunity. I think there's a

43. 18:41

    lot there was a lot of like talk about like Bitcoin layer twos and really kind of opening this up, but there hasn't been that much actual products that are really to easy to use or kind of straightforward or you know you can do from the comfort of your Bitcoin wallet.

44. 18:59

    And so it was really exciting to see the RIA's kind of Bitcoin user flow, right? you log in with your Bitcoin wallet, you know, you can do all the DeFi. It looks like it's a DeFi and Bitcoin, right? From for all intents and purposes. And so, again, very very kind of aligned with the this chain abstraction vision delivers, you know, real product and yeah, kind of fits into the existing kind of mentality of the users. Um so yeah was really exciting to

45. 19:34

    see but indeed yeah there is now XRP there is you know Zcash there's kind of all these other assets as well which kind of have very similar notion where you know people are just there's no yield there's no staking there's no way to borrow against it like beyond you know what you can do on Binance potentially in small amounts um and there's no uh yeah opportunities to really freely trade back and forth as well. And so

46. 20:06

    kind of across the NE ecosystem right now we see like a proliferation of these products which is really exciting because they kind of opened up near to all of the different user bases as well and kind of solidify us as a place where all of this activity can be happening in a very natural way for this users.

47. 20:27

    Awesome. Yeah, that's yeah, it's so cool that I did not expect like the BTC and the Zcash and the XRP that that all like it's a very clear use case and people are using it so that's good. All right, Ilia, thanks so much. Hi, thanks guys. Good to see you.

48. 20:42

    How will Ria Finance incentivize community participants with the TGE? What role will XRIA and Oria utility tokens play in governance and broader ecosystem? This is the question I want to get to. Let's break this down. Sure. So um I mean to support community growth and shared uh success we have completed a initial air drop of 4% of the total via supply as as the initial air drop right uh for for the whole community uh it was split into uh

49. 21:11

    multiple multiple campaign with one of them was a ria points uh participants the this align with our long-term vision uh of expander based on strategic direction uh why we build xrea and ORA. So uh think about this way. XRIA is more like a utility token while the RIA itself the main token is more a tradable token and ORA is an incentive token. So uh the user journey will most likely be

50. 21:43

    a stake ria they're going to receive XRIA which is uh by staking RIA and receiving XRIA they will uh earn the first layer of the yield um which is in RIA token and um by holding XRIA they will have an options uh they will have three option. One is span RIA as a gas fee. The second uh the second options will be locking XRIA to boost their landing incentive and the third option will be XRIA uh supply as a collateral

51. 22:16

    where when they're supplying as a collateral they will accumulate Ora as a incentive token. Yeah. So on on Ora conversion uh ORA incentive token they will be converted to RIA token. It's based also based on the XRIA uh holding XRIA utility uh that they utilize and also yeah it's basically all the onchain reputation.

52. 22:43

    Anything else you want to talk about right now like one any last things you want to share before we hop off? Um yeah so um well um just a little bit deeper on the on the token utility as well. uh we have prepared like around 30% of the our token um to be part of the incentive for the future uh for the for the community for the future incentive which is that will be followed by u 3 um three months linear and um 30

53. 23:12

    30 months of uh sorry 36 months the 36 months of linear fasting uh three months cliff 36 months linear fasting yeah um then with that uh we just going to distribute that token gradually uh based on our our onchain campaign. Thanks so much for like the time here, a good conversation and uh you know I hope everybody checks out RIA and uh great for having you man. Till we talk again.

54. 23:37

    Thank you Jared.