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#38 - DeFi Trading, Decentralised Exchanges and MEV Resistant solutions
53 Plays1 month ago
Mounir is the founder of ParaSwap, a DeFi aggregator that consolidates liquidity from decentralized exchanges and lending protocols. ParaSwap focuses on advancing on-chain trading efficiency and user experience.
ParaSwap Delta’s Beta Launch and Roadmap
Mounir discussed the beta release of ParaSwap Delta, an intent-centric trading product designed to minimize MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) risks and simplify DeFi interactions. Currently, in a closed beta phase, Delta is accessible only through ParaSwap’s interface to allow for iterative improvements before a broader V2 launch. This version will introduce breaking changes to smart contracts and APIs, with plans to open access to external partners once stability is confirmed.
Mounir emphasized Delta’s use of private transaction routing to avoid public mempools, leveraging tools like Blink to send transactions directly to block builders. This approach reduces exposure to front-running and sandwich attacks, critical pain points in decentralized trading.
The Technical Engine Behind DEX Aggregation
ParaSwap’s core aggregation technology relies on DexLib, an open-source TypeScript library that standardizes integrations with decentralized exchanges (DEXs) like Uniswap and Balancer. Instead of querying blockchain nodes in real time—a resource-intensive process—ParaSwap monitors liquidity pools by tracking on-chain events (e.g., swaps, deposits) and maintains a live database of token balances. This allows the platform to compute optimal trade paths in milliseconds using algorithms that factor in slippage, gas costs, and multi-hop routes.
Mounir highlighted the challenges of scaling this system, particularly with concentrated liquidity models like Uniswap v3. DexLib’s modular design lets developers reuse code for common operations, fostering collaboration across DeFi projects. Despite TypeScript’s performance limitations, Mounir defended its use for rapid iteration, though he acknowledged interest in Rust for future optimizations.
By routing transactions through private channels, Delta bypasses traditional mempools, reducing MEV opportunities. Mounir noted parallels with traditional finance’s “best execution” standards, underscoring DeFi’s maturation toward prioritizing both price and execution quality.
Gas Abstraction and User Experience
ParaSwap aims to abstract gas fees entirely, allowing users to pay transaction costs directly from their swapped tokens. For example, swapping USDC for ETH would deduct gas fees from the USDC amount, eliminating the need to hold native tokens like ETH for gas. This approach mirrors centralized exchanges’ simplicity, lowering barriers for non-technical users.
Mounir acknowledged edge cases—such as trades smaller than gas costs—but argued most users benefit from streamlined interactions. Future iterations could integrate market makers who bake gas costs into quoted prices, further simplifying the process.
Broader Implications for Decentralized Finance
The conversation concluded with reflections on DeFi’s societal impact. Mounir and the host discussed how self-custody and censorship resistance align with broader ideals of financial sovereignty, contrasting sharply with centralized systems’ inefficiencies. While acknowledging that centralized exchanges will coexist with DeFi.
This Podcast is Fueled by crypto trading bot platform Aesir. Get 20% off using code AESIRPOT20.
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Transcript
Intro
00:00:09
cyberpunkmetalhead
First of all, I want to say thanks for um joining. I think it's going to be a really fantastic episode. And congratulations on your recent launch of Paraswap Delta. um i I recently read an article about it, and that's really fascinating stuff.
00:00:25
Mounir
Thank you. Thank you. I'm super excited to be here. Yeah, it was a a great lunch. I'm super happy about it. It's in Delta, in Beta, sorry. And a new version should be coming in very soon where we can open up access to all partners. So I'm super excited and looking forward for for the next steps, especially the video.
00:00:46
cyberpunkmetalhead
So it's closed beta, it's not open beta at the moment.
00:00:48
Mounir
It's open only to our user interface. ah We did that in purpose, first of all, because there will be V2. We always had V2 in mind, and which will come with likely breaking changes, like in the smart contract and for developers. So we thought that let's have it only open for our user interface and for our users, and then open up for other partners. That was the the plan that we came up with.
00:01:14
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh, that that makes perfect sense. So look, I think i think something like Parasop is such like an interesting technology. It's got so much complexity behind it. And I think it's really great to have you here to kind of talk ah all about that and to get into all those details.
00:01:31
cyberpunkmetalhead
um so Obviously, you're a DEX aggregator, and I think that's where that like that beauty of complexity comes into play. So do you want to maybe talk a little bit on ah on a high level how that aggregation is achieved? What are some of the technologies you used? And maybe what are some of the limitations that you've come across along the way?
00:01:51
Mounir
Yeah, sure. So there are two main products. First of all, there's the aggregator, as you know, actually three, the aggregator, there is part of Delta, which is an intent centric product that uses part of API and part of smart contract, but also individual be using other sources of liquidity. ah But it's a core part of products.
00:02:10
Mounir
and parts of limit orders are up cute that you can get into. But yeah, aggregation was really by far the biggest products. So far, we have we processed over $80 billion. dollars With that, it's ah um quite complex, for sure, there's the on chain parts of the system of the smart contracts, and you have the API side.
00:02:31
Mounir
ah And that comes with like a lot of fancy algorithms, fancy connections with the exchanges in real time. A lot of tech is being used, which might to also make it as simple as possible.
00:02:43
Mounir
I don't know how much technical you want me to go, but happy to to like make it as technical as possible, but also as high level as you wish.
00:02:50
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, let's get into it. Let's dive in.
00:02:52
Mounir
ah Okay, yeah, but first it was something that will like speak for everyone is the most of the code basis open source of all the smart contract are verified on chain that people can and can can check how the transactions are are at being executed.
00:02:52
cyberpunkmetalhead
That's cool.
00:03:07
Mounir
On the backhand side, we have a library called Dexlib, which contains most of like all the logic for how do we integrate with exchanges.
00:03:18
Mounir
And the reason why we built Dexlib is
00:03:18
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:03:21
Mounir
Before, we it used to be only our team who built the connections through DEXs. And the way aggregators in general nowadays, at least modern aggregators, is if you want to get the price from, let's say, Uniswap, you can either use their smart contract and ask yourself, give me the price of one E2 die, give me the price of one USDC to WBTC and all of that.
00:03:26
cyberpunkmetalhead
Mm hmm.
00:03:41
Mounir
But this is not scalable because this request of give me the price or what we call the general get price is a very heavy call. it because it goes through like their order book, their ticks, and it depends on each text has its specificities.
00:03:54
cyberpunkmetalhead
sure their their own pools as well and all of that abstraction, yeah.
00:03:57
Mounir
Yeah, there are many operations behind the scenes. So what we do instead of doing this operation, and by the way, when you are an aggregator, if you're looking for a price for, let's say, one ETH to die, you need to know if maybe you should go to USDC to die, maybe you should go to USDT, maybe you should go through like two connectors, and it can be as complex as you may think. And the goal is to always maximize the return for the user.
00:04:23
Mounir
And the between each leg, well, you you will try to find the price for multiple DEXs and get, like, examples. So you can build metrics of prices here that you need to optimize, another metrics here, and so on and so forth.
00:04:36
Mounir
And then run some fancy algorithms. There are many possibilities. The most known is the shortest path algorithm, which is not what we use. But anyways, that's something that some aggregators use.
00:04:45
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:04:48
Mounir
And um you try to get samples of prices for each time for every single DEX. So you can imagine how many calls you need to solicit those smart contract and full notes are not designed to take that much load. It's just like not made for that. There are some attempt attempts to improve the full notes performance, like by building more type of data access toolings that will make the response times faster. But I think no matter what they do, it's going to be always hard for aggregators to just like use this, what we call naive method.
00:05:22
Mounir
So what we do instead of calling the price, we let the price come to us or let the state of the liquidity ah come to us and put it on a regular database in general like an in-memory database like Redis.
00:05:27
cyberpunkmetalhead
Okay.
00:05:32
cyberpunkmetalhead
Mm
00:05:34
Mounir
And then when you call for the price instead of asking the full node, we don't solicit the full node at all in most of the time.
00:05:35
cyberpunkmetalhead
hmm.
00:05:41
Mounir
We just query against our local store and gather samples in real time. So in matter of a few milliseconds, we can get most of the prices gathered. And then it would be a matter of running the algorithms to optimize the the price and and then deliver the price to the end user.
00:05:58
Mounir
And all of this has to happen in a reasonable time, like in like it's say a few hundred milliseconds.
00:05:58
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:06:02
Mounir
Sometimes you have the network latency and all of that. But yeah, the challenge is for aggregators is to deliver. best possible price modular gas and also the shortest possible time yeah yeah
00:06:13
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right. So yeah, I mean, of course with something like Redis, like speed's not an issue. It's it's lightning fast, right? ah But then isn't there a bit of caching going on between Redis and the the data source itself? Because you have to you still have to fetch that data to put it in Redis to have it available for querying.
00:06:32
Mounir
Exactly, 100% and that there's caching for sure in multiple layers and also some full nodes like an alchemy I think and quick node. They also have some caching built in.
00:06:43
Mounir
So if you ask for the same thing within the same block, they will just use their cache.
00:06:43
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:06:47
Mounir
So they have also the smart built in features like this. And here the way, like let's say Uniswap, the most simple example you see in Uniswap v2, although it's almost now obsolete nowadays,
00:06:57
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:06:57
Mounir
is you have like liquidity for two tokens, token A, token B. You have this formula, multiply balance times balance in like any constants. What we do is we listen constantly every block for balanced variations. So USD, let's say, pool of ETH, USDT, you would listen every block on events like there's a swap event, there is deposit liquidity, remove liquidity events, and those events come with parameters.
00:07:21
Mounir
that will allow you to recompute just the delta. So you don't need to just do any RPC call, you just like get the initial state and then continuously calculate the delta and do that for every text, but every text has its own logic.
00:07:34
Mounir
So X times Y equals K is really, really simple.
00:07:36
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:07:38
Mounir
But for UNI v3, it's much more complex. You need to take into consideration like how the text works, ah balancer as well. Yeah, the lib is very interesting. It's open source. And for us, we used to do this work.
00:07:49
Mounir
And since DexMib, we asked now DexTeams to do that work ah for us. But it worked really well. We didn't expect it to work well that now we have so many PRs that we don't have time to review.
00:08:02
Mounir
So maybe you created another time of problem. which is, I think, a good one.
00:08:05
cyberpunkmetalhead
yeah
00:08:06
Mounir
But also we built a very good relationship with the other DEX builders ah who now like have ParaSwap and DEXlib as a reference. So they can use it also with other aggregators.
00:08:17
Mounir
If they want them to integrate and they don't have that system, they can tell them, hey, just look at DEXlib, and you can get the reference implementation that you can either copy or use like ah rewrite if you use another language.
00:08:29
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right. that That's really cool. and And congrats. It's really nice to have like, you know, hopefully useful PRs, not just like updating read me and and and stuff like that.
00:08:37
Mounir
It's quite useful. I think it's one of the biggest, I haven't did any stats, but like if you look at the the stars and the activity on the Dexlib, it's like one of the most used libs in the Web3 space.
00:08:50
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh, wow. That's really cool. And what's it written in?
00:08:53
Mounir
It's in TypeScript.
00:08:55
cyberpunkmetalhead
TypeScript. Oh, nice.
00:08:56
Mounir
yeah Yeah, not the most convenient technology, I would say, for a backend, ah but in terms of performance, but convenience in terms of productivity, it's by far the simplest one that can be used, can be more or less safer because you still have a typing system.
00:08:56
cyberpunkmetalhead
Nice.
00:09:12
Mounir
But yeah, productivity is unheard of. I know some team, so even some team members in ParaSwap would love to use like a Rust or something like that. so but you can yeah assume that you will be dividing your productivity at least by two.
00:09:21
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:09:25
Mounir
Even though the code will be more robust, the the performance on the backend will be much, much, much better. But yeah, iterations, which I think matter much more if you're a startup, will will now it not say hit a wall, but yeah, it will be not the same as we have right now.
00:09:42
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, no, I completely agree. I think like TypeScript is an amazing technology and it's kind of like it's it's it's popular enough that that mostly everyone's kind of comfortable with it.
00:09:50
Mounir
Yeah.
00:09:51
cyberpunkmetalhead
So they're happy to kind of, you know, as opposed to something like Rust, which Rust is, it's amazing. I haven't used Rust much. I have a friend that talks about Rust and goes like, Hey, I can't really write Rust at work, but whenever I get a chance to do like a fun project, I'm just going to go fully on Rust.
00:10:08
cyberpunkmetalhead
So I guess that it's good is like, following of of people looking to hyper-optimize every single line of code. um i I like that about it. I don't love the fact that it's yeah it's got a higher barrier to entry and it does take a lot more getting used to.
00:10:21
Mounir
Yeah,
00:10:23
cyberpunkmetalhead
But one of the cool things is that you don't have to worry about because TypeScript only gives you type safety in your ID. like ah On compile, it doesn't care about it.
00:10:31
Mounir
yeah exactly.
00:10:34
cyberpunkmetalhead
like You could still go around these these safeguards if you really wanted to, but it's good enough.
00:10:40
Mounir
Yeah, 100% yeah. I saw many users of TypeScript as if it was like just the JS with many any types, which is not really the most, yeah, I would say convenient thing. But yeah, as you said, it's ah it's an arbitrage at the end between productivity and and quality of deliveries.
00:11:02
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah. Oh, I just imagine that the back in the day where we didn't use to have TypeScript and we didn't like web dev was such a weird, such a weird space, right?
00:11:10
Mounir
Yeah, I was there.
00:11:12
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah Like the the pipeline of creating like a front end framework, like even, even, even let's say 10, 15 years ago versus today, it's, it's such a different set of skills.
00:11:24
cyberpunkmetalhead
It's just mind blowing how, how far it's come.
00:11:25
Mounir
Yeah. Indeed, and indeed. Not to mention the AI tools we have nowadays.
00:11:32
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I actually saw a funny video today about the the guy using Claude AI. And then there's like an AI to using in VS code. I forget his name is like co-pilot, but on steroids, it's supposed to be like really cool.
00:11:44
Mounir
Yeah. ah sir Cursor.
00:11:46
cyberpunkmetalhead
And, huh?
00:11:47
Mounir
Cursor. Cursor, yeah.
00:11:49
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yes, that's the one. I never used it. I've heard great things about it.
00:11:52
Mounir
Yeah.
00:11:53
cyberpunkmetalhead
But then I started seeing like meme videos coming up. Be like, can you center this red box? Can you please center this red box? Eventually centers the red box without the blue box is out of frame.
00:12:04
cyberpunkmetalhead
It's like, it's one of the experience that I've personally had with with AI tools or using AI to write code for me is that I, okay, I save time by not writing the code myself, but I feel like a lot of the times I actually waste time by literally arguing with the machine.
00:12:22
cyberpunkmetalhead
And I'm guy getting really angry. It's like, no, you're just stupid. No, just do this.
00:12:25
Mounir
Uhhh...
00:12:27
cyberpunkmetalhead
So it's, I think it's, I don't know. It's not at the level yet where I can confidently let it just do stuff, but I haven't used something like cursor. So maybe that's, that's a much better.
00:12:38
cyberpunkmetalhead
Have you had any experience with it?
00:12:38
Mounir
It's nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because now I could code much less than i what I used to. The devs who work with us are much smarter than me in in writing code. I'm more like ah on other topics and product and stuff like that.
00:12:51
Mounir
But when I need something urgently, so I don't bother anyone, I will just like open my cursor and write the code myself.
00:12:51
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:12:59
Mounir
But yes, you see me to do a lot of babysitting. It's not as magic as it seems from from the outside. Much better than copilot, I would say. You can still have some conversations, but my small experience would be like I would write half of the code and a cursor would write like a code behind cursor would write like the other half, kind of.
00:13:19
Mounir
Like if you want something that works.
00:13:19
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right. Yeah, you you could get, I guess you could get a working, well, sometimes that is horrible, but you could get a working prototype with your prompt and then you just kind of have to optimize and iterate on that and kind of actually make it like good and optimize code.
00:13:28
Mounir
Yeah, for sure.
00:13:35
cyberpunkmetalhead
um It's funny how a lot of companies feel like AI, well, they sell AI as like the the product that solves everything.
00:13:36
Mounir
Yeah.
00:13:46
cyberpunkmetalhead
And that's when I start taking a bit of an issue with it. Even even the software that I'm using to record this conversation, Zencaster, right? It's a great platform on on most parts.
00:13:54
Mounir
Yeah.
00:13:56
cyberpunkmetalhead
it's you know It records like VOIP quality. They have their own like protocols for that. um But one product that they have is um they have a ah solution going like, oh, you know what? You don't have to edit your shorts anymore.
00:14:07
cyberpunkmetalhead
Just use our AI and it will create like 10 shorts out out of of out of this conversation. and um So I've tried it a couple of times and they're just dog shit quality, right? like It doesn't work for that. um We also have, I've used one for ah the CRM that we but that we work with, with HubSpot. um ah Used it for, like it's just they've they've recently introduced AI as well to kind of like do stuff for you. And whenever you ask it, hey, can you summarize this record for me? And half of the time gets it right, half of the time goes like, I'm sorry, I can't do that.
00:14:41
cyberpunkmetalhead
Um, and I just feel like people have been going really hype on AI to the point where the products are really being pumped at a super rapid pace where quality control is lacking a little bit.
00:14:54
cyberpunkmetalhead
Um, and I feel like maybe we need to take a step back ah and just kind of understand these limitations.
00:14:54
Mounir
Yeah.
00:14:59
cyberpunkmetalhead
Um, like, yeah.
00:15:03
Mounir
That's a good point. I think if once you understand the limitations, that you take more advantage and you use much better the AI tools than if you take for granted what they do and get disappointed at the time, every time you get an outcome that doesn't match your quality expectations. But if you know exactly the limitations, you will use it to the maximum possible extent. So yeah, you would know how to use it much better if you if you understand it, how it works more or less.
00:15:31
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, for sure. like It's definitely improved my workflow, um and it's definitely saving me time, but that's because I know what to use it for. like If I have a manual a task or like a predictable or iterative task to do, like, hey, I want you to take like these 30 properties and convert them into an enum or an interface for me or something like that, like very good for that.
00:15:47
Mounir
Yeah.
00:15:52
cyberpunkmetalhead
I don't have to spend 20 minutes writing that. It can just do it for me.
00:15:57
Mounir
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:16:00
cyberpunkmetalhead
So I also wanted to talk to you a lot about ah MEV. I feel like also with with your um with your Delta or ParaSwap Delta, you mentioned that you have like reduced like minimized MEV risk. Do you want to expand a little bit on how that's possible before we get into MEV?
00:16:18
Mounir
Sure, yes. um But the way intent for centric products works is, ah first of all, well, there is an improved UX like abstract gas in all of this, but also, well,
00:16:33
Mounir
The actors who are behind the scenes, we call them agents. ah the Other people in the ecosystem call them also so solvers, killers, or killers. But I would say the most dominant term is solvers. I can get into why we call them agents, but anyways, it's the same thing at the end. Some of those actors, they compete for providing the best possible price.
00:16:54
Mounir
And also, ah they are supposed to, I'm saying supposed to because enforcement's mechanism are still something that being figured out, so but at least now they rely mostly on trust. But in any ways, we can assume that this is something kind of enforced that will be enforced to use any of your assistant tools.
00:17:11
Mounir
ah Because they are judged on the quality of the execution, post, post trade. So right now there is one agent or one solver is the Parasoft API that provides solutions which are like optimized prices for users. And the user will sign just, I want to trade token A for token B.
00:17:29
Mounir
Without caring if it's gonna be settled on chain if there is a market maker behind and all of that they just want the best possible price for them for themselves and the actor behind the scenes that the here of the parts of the pi or the solver will um not only provide an optimal price but also provide an optimal execution.
00:17:48
Mounir
and execution here in the context of on-chain execution is trying to avoid m MEV or minimize MEV as much as possible that's why we have no other choice but to use MEV resistant tools like ah we use blink but there's also flashbots and many other tools MEV blocker and other tools that don't put the transactions on the mempool they send it directly to the builders and so it's not visible it's only visible on the explorer or visible on chain once the transaction is finalized
00:18:18
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right. That's super interesting that you completely avoid the mempool. I didn't even realize that was the thing you could do. I thought by default, everything just waits stay sits in the mempool waiting for it to be picked up by ah by a validator.
00:18:34
Mounir
In theory, yes. But at the end, what is the mempool? It's a common memory that multiple here builders share. So when you send the transaction, you broadcast it to multiple listeners who are generally builders or maybe any of the attackers. But this memory is not the standard So my mempool in my full node may not be your mempool, it's someone else's mempool. There's a big ah overlap, but it's not 100%. But here instead of sending it to everyone mempool, we send it to a private mempool that nobody can see or only those builders would be able to see.
00:19:13
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right. That's a very good way of of of going around it for sure. Because I feel like it's always been a big limitation, like MEV attacks.
00:19:17
Mounir
know
00:19:21
cyberpunkmetalhead
It's been a big limitation of ah DeFi. um So that's that's it's nice to see that you you know you have a good way of going around that. um Again, on on the MEV, but I was was thinking like i know like a little bit about it, but I'm not i'm not like ah an MEV expert, so I'm hoping that you'll you'll help me um ah with the question I have now. it's and when you have When you're running a validator um or let's say let's take up maybe just for the sake of the example, let's take a proof of proof of work chain or something and you're part of a part of a mining pool rather than an individual miner. Do you still in theory have access to the mempool? Do you still have access to the transactions even though you're not running running your own dedicated node?
00:20:10
Mounir
but Actually, MEV used to be called minor extractable value. It was back in the days where Ethereum was still proof of work.
00:20:14
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:20:17
Mounir
And because the transaction, there was no ah DBS like ah builder validator separation. It was just the ah the miners who were like ah where they get what who would you get the transaction.
00:20:29
Mounir
And of course, yeah, they are the first party to see the transaction. And everyone had those thought. There was a known paper. It used to be called Flash Voice 2.0.
00:20:40
Mounir
written in 2019 and which gets through what is m MEV and how MEV works and different strategies that miners may be using to extract the MEV at that time ah but yeah short answer is definitely I mean as long as there is a decentralized type of block validation, there will be anything. There's no other way. This doesn't exist right now in some of the L2s like ah optimism, anything, RPstack, Arbitrum, because simply they have a centralized sequencer.
00:21:13
Mounir
that is the one party, one entity that takes the transaction of everyone and is responsible for the ordering. like Your transaction came first, and another transaction came second, the order is going to be respected. But with a system that is completely distributed and there is no central party like ah Ethereum and other Solana and other chains, where whoever beats more on the gas, like whoever pays more, validators, miners, you name it,
00:21:41
Mounir
will be included first. So in this case, I see your transaction, I can front-run you, pay out bid you in gas, and get jumped in front of you in in the order for validation, and that will happen. So it doesn't at the end matter. As long as there is decentralization between codes, that's a problem we'll be creating, which is avoided now by some type of centralization like in the Altus.
00:22:04
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, I've seen, I remember seeing some like wild application of MEV and front running with people going like getting a flash loan for like one and a half million dollars and then paying like 500 grand in gas fees and then just making like 30 million or something on a trade.
00:22:21
cyberpunkmetalhead
Like it's it's insane how, how like amazingly talented some some people are when it comes to this sort of stuff.
00:22:22
Mounir
Yeah.
00:22:27
cyberpunkmetalhead
ah
00:22:27
Mounir
Yeah, yeah, and yeah. I mean, as long as there is money, talent, I would say is not something good let's get ah that be missing, yeah, for sure.
00:22:35
cyberpunkmetalhead
Sure. I mean, definitely like greed plays an element into it, but you gotta have to like have a certain like analytical mind to kind of be able to realize the, like the, the exploitable parts of a system.
00:22:42
Mounir
Of course.
00:22:46
cyberpunkmetalhead
And in a way, I think like that makes that system more robust in the long run. It it creates, it you know, it gets, you know, people like you and teams like yours just to create an MEV resistance solutions because it's been tested.
00:23:00
cyberpunkmetalhead
We've been there. We know where the attack vector is.
00:23:05
Mounir
yeah her I think also this is something ah you can see in traditional finance, where um because here in crypto, we've been always focused on like how we can, at least in the aggregation index space, how we can provide the user with the best possible price, but nobody was paying or very least was paying that much attention to the execution.
00:23:08
cyberpunkmetalhead
nice
00:23:26
Mounir
but in traditional finance it's very important the quality of the execution there's even a term called just best execution and that goes into the quality of the execution itself and optimization of the execution so this is where we are right now which i think is a sign of maturity in the space it's very important for us to solve problems that weren't solved before.
00:23:47
Mounir
but we can clearly see like billions of dollars being extracted every every single year. So it became a big topic and some people are solving the problem by also making a business out of this profit, are out of sort of out of solving those problems, which I think is, as you said, it's a very good thing.
00:24:04
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah. A hundred percent. um So you've mentioned that you've seen, you've seen obviously growth and we've all seen growth in this industry. Do you have any numbers out the top of your head? Like maybe how much DeFi growth or volume have we seen in in the last few years? Maybe.
00:24:22
Mounir
Well, I remember, but I was a co-founder of the DeFi group in France, in Paris. I used to live in Paris before. It's called DeFi France.
00:24:30
cyberpunkmetalhead
No, nice.
00:24:31
Mounir
The very first meetup, which was in 2019, five years ago. And I had a talk to like sell DeFi to like the the audience that DeFi is great and you should get involved right now, which was really, really small at that time.
00:24:42
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:24:45
Mounir
And I remember I showed the graph of the TDL and it was at 600 million. ah Look at this, like, 600 million. Obviously, it wasn't 600 million. It was nothing at that time. But, like, we're heading to the billion.
00:24:55
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:24:56
Mounir
and And I'd say five years later, it was, I think, around the same time in 2019. And I think now we should be at, like, tens of billions of dollars. we can The number changes every day.
00:25:08
Mounir
You can see it in DeFi lemma. ah But yeah, I think only Aave should be at around 20 or $25 billion dollars in TVL and add Lido maker and other protocols.
00:25:16
cyberpunkmetalhead
Wow.
00:25:19
Mounir
Yes, it's ah it's an amazing growth and it's not not a surprise that even governments and big corporations like BlackRock are super interested in DeFi and like mentioning DeFi publicly and intentions on building on DeFi and some of them are already started.
00:25:37
Mounir
So I think, yeah, the growth may now defy as a category in crypto, as a major, let's say, finance finance category itself, but not just in niche as it used to be like five years ago.
00:25:51
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, 100%. And it's fantastic to see, it you know, developing to this extent. What do you think is the main appeal for for both individual institutions to explore DeFi? um When you keep in mind that you also have CFI, which is traditionally the more risk averse solution?
00:26:12
Mounir
Well, I think someday they have like straightforward solutions to their problems, ah like building on modern financial rails instead of a cobalt type of of infrastructure built in the 70s.
00:26:25
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:26:28
Mounir
ah I heard an interesting interview recently with the ah CEO of Adyen, the payments company and based in the Netherlands. And they were talking about adoption of stablecoins for international payments. ah So that's also a very straight use case of DeFi. Especially I would say stablecoins is maybe the parts that has the most straightforward value proposition for the financial industry and FinTech ah for those kind of use cases for Forex, for international payments, like large payments where they can be settled immediately. But also a funny thing, yesterday I was but trying to make payments like a like ah a few thousand dollars, like tens of thousands of euros, sorry.
00:27:17
Mounir
And I had to call my bank just to notify them that I'm going to make the payments. Can you please allow me to do these payments?
00:27:23
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:27:25
Mounir
And then they say, okay, you have a limit. You need to call it another service to ask them to upper the limits. So I called that service. They asked me three questions. I made a mistake in one question.
00:27:36
Mounir
I think just like they misheard me or something, they blocked my accounts.
00:27:40
cyberpunkmetalhead
Ah.
00:27:40
Mounir
I had to call another service. I spent like hours calling one person, another person, another person, just so that they can allow me to make a transfer of my own money to another party. And the same day yesterday morning, I was doing some transactions on Chain where some of them like in Baze or Arbitrum, they took like a few seconds or you just push a button, just to make sure you have a secure setup and that's all. So I think DeFi and like at least stablecoins here,
00:28:10
Mounir
would play a major role in transforming the banking industry ah for the best the user experience of their users. I think it's just a matter of time before this will be adopted by by the larger banks because they can clearly see that they can reduce cost. For instance, here I talk to like five or six persons.
00:28:28
Mounir
and They were great, they were very helpful, but they could have been doing something else just instead of just like trying to help me with my simple problem.
00:28:32
cyberpunkmetalhead
Sure.
00:28:36
Mounir
ah So I think yes, in terms of cost reduction, that's how like businesses are driven anyways, will be something I would expect it to happen just in the next maybe three, four, five years maximum.
00:28:47
Mounir
um But also we see some um some experiments ah that has been going for a few years, whether like a BlackRock or a big corporation, where try to build like an Aave pool.
00:28:59
Mounir
There was a product of Aave called this um something I forgot. so But anyways, like it was a pool where you need to KOIC in order to participate in all the parties at KOIC.
00:29:09
cyberpunkmetalhead
Mm hmm.
00:29:11
Mounir
But if you think about it, it's like a consortium. and which is like how finance works at the end. And like ah like the larger corporations, they have open consortiums between them. So they trade between them and they exchange value between them. And like Swift for instance, it's it's one ah it's an example.
00:29:29
Mounir
And it didn't took off, but I think now with the technology we have right now versus what we had in 2020, 2021, especially with L2s, I think this would be much more convenient for them to iterate faster and to reach a ah point where they can convince their hierarchy or their board that this is the way to go, where we want to trade on chain, we want to earn yield. We can instead of using our old school technology, we can use Aave, we can use protocol XYZ.
00:29:59
Mounir
We also had an experiment so with Parasa. We call it Parasa Hub for trading. but Instead of them using direct liquidity pools, they can trade against our market makers, which is the other protocol I mentioned in the beginning.
00:30:10
Mounir
It's called Augustus RFQ.
00:30:11
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:30:12
Mounir
It's a very bad name, but anyways, it's it's a way to
00:30:14
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh, Augustus.
00:30:16
Mounir
oh guess this at go yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah
00:30:16
cyberpunkmetalhead
Is it? Okay.
00:30:18
Mounir
yeah And and the the idea is that you can trade with market makers. and Market makers like KYC, AML and all of that, the traders as well, so they can trade with each other and they can have access to on chain, existing on chain liquidity, without having to do anything except because those market makers, they will hedge, they will arbitrage either on taxes or on centralized exchanges, but they can bring you exactly the liquidity you may have if you were to trade on a public public pool.
00:30:47
Mounir
But without the risk of of you going to trade in Uniswap, although we can debate if that's really a risk or not. But to them, their their compliance teams, they estimate that they don't want to trade directly on a DEX because maybe maybe at some point behind the scenes, there was a Lazarus Group or there was a group that is non-compliant, that doesn't match their their rules.
00:31:06
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:31:10
Mounir
ah So this this was a solution. But since also those these guys move super fast, like every iteration takes three to six months, we decided to make a pause. and But maybe I think this is something that could really become big in the next few years.
00:31:25
cyberpunkmetalhead
So would that be more like an order book type of scenario?
00:31:29
Mounir
It's an RFQ, but it also has an order book feature. At least the experiment was just RFQ based the type of trading. But yeah, the protocol can do order book as well.
00:31:41
cyberpunkmetalhead
That would be that yeah that'd be massive. I'm guessing like that you'd have very little slippage at that at that point, and it'd be a lot more predictable and a lot more. Yeah, that's that's really cool. It's really cool to hear that. But how did you get into like what defying crypto? like What attracted you the most about it in the first place to get to where you are today working with these protocols?
00:32:03
Mounir
Yeah, well, in 2017, I was ah also participating in those ICOs ah and stuff, and I used to use Intel Delta.
00:32:10
cyberpunkmetalhead
Nice.
00:32:13
Mounir
If you remember, it was a horrible UX. It's super slow and buggy all the time, but it was used. People were trading tens of millions of dollars every single day.
00:32:25
Mounir
And since to me centralized exchanges was just like a hack because the tech doesn't exist to build DEXs and the is like the worst of the two worlds. We have banks that are not banks and that don't have the two links of banks, but they are not decentralized or well whatever. um So to me, it was just a matter of time before we move on into DEXs and the technology wasn't there.
00:32:49
Mounir
um So I decided to at least start experimenting because we have a product that has clearly demand. This product is not serving its users very well.
00:33:00
Mounir
So there is an opportunity to just build something better and distribute it in a better way. So in theory, I should capture that market and not easily, but yeah i mean reasonably well.
00:33:09
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yep.
00:33:12
Mounir
and And at that time, even there was no Uniswap. This is late. This is in 2018, early 2018, mid 2018. There was no Uniswap. Bancor, Xerox, Kyber were just like at the beginning. But moving forward with my research, they launched, they they went to production at late 2018. So I was like, okay, maybe let's not reinvent the wheel because I can see these guys are super promising. They launched their product, but the volumes are kind of small and there's still some work to be done. So maybe why not build like an aggregator that will
00:33:48
Mounir
capture the liquidity of everyone. So if each have a million in theory, it's like you have a pool of five million, and build something for any user, like a Coinbase type of products, ah which is super simple, where it has like a nice onboarding, so anyone can use.
00:34:04
Mounir
And in theory, it should be simpler if done right than a Coinbase, for instance, which was a very, very naive approach, and it didn't work at all.
00:34:09
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right. Very optimistic too.
00:34:14
Mounir
ah Exactly. yeah Because, well, DeFi, nobody heard about DeFi at that time. I even had a hard time convincing my friends to join me. Like everyone look at me as like this guy is like taking high risk and getting into something that nobody heard of. Whatever. Some of them join me later, anyways. But ah yeah, the thing is we launched in 2019 twenty nineteen and Yeah, but yeah, to answer your question, what got me to DeFi is this passion about crypto and belief that DeFi is the future and the way we were trading crypto was just a temporary hack because we were lacking back in the truth.
00:34:54
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, that that's that's really good. That's a great story as well. um I think like the idea of having DeFi be as simple as something like Coinbase, I think that's definitely something to that that's achievable. I think it's also something that um is not only achievable, but I feel that it's bound to happen. like These technologies get better every day and chains get faster and transaction fees get smaller and smaller. um I'm just wondering at which point Are we going to see that DeFi or DEXs get more efficient and cheaper and easier to use than centralized exchanges? I think there's probably in my head, there's like a case obviously for both of those to exist.
00:35:39
cyberpunkmetalhead
I think it's generally cheaper and more convenient to transact well-known pairs on on stuff like Binance or whatever, but you have a lot more to gain in arbitrage and in trading smaller cap coins on DEXs. How do you feel about like that distinction?
00:36:00
Mounir
Yeah, I think it makes sense. um Also, to be realistic, yet not everyone will have a so a self custodial wallet and will know how to efficiently secure that wallet. Like I don't see many of my friends, and my family, my mother would not never do that. So I think there is an audience I hope, um yeah, I'm not exaggerating at least, but I think, yeah, the majority of people will be like that because people don't want to think too much about the tech and using a wallet and securing a wallet, it's still kind of technology.
00:36:33
Mounir
ah Although there is an interesting temptation to improve that, like with account obstruction, with ah some protocols that try to make it like a self-tested wallet, but you can access it only by login password, which is I think is amazing.
00:36:39
cyberpunkmetalhead
Mm.
00:36:48
Mounir
So I hope this will take off, but if not, Still, people like to call someone if things go wrong and they would like to have like a customer support something like a Coinbase. But if I tell you like this is in your wallet and you are under control 100% and there's nobody to call if something goes wrong, I think it's very hard to sell this narrative to the majority of the earth population because that's not how people expect people have to have other things to worry about, and like to have banks, and like to have people to talk to in case ah something goes wrong, in case they don't understand something, like some kind of support, which is very hard to deliver in a purely non-custodial fashion, even though we can still provide technical support, but you cannot match the level of support or control, I would say,
00:37:32
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh yeah.
00:37:38
Mounir
of banks, although I'm maybe biased, but I would still always encourage people to go more on sell Cassidy. But I understand each time my friends who are not in crypto at all, they would ask me the question, I would always give them options like, okay, you want to learn more, you want to understand more about money, about this is your funds, better to read this article or like ah use a agnostic sake and ledger, blah, blah, blah.
00:38:03
Mounir
But if you don't want to think about it, you just want to buy this weird meme coin and expect 200X, go to Binance, go to Coinbase. Okay, you'll be you'll be safe, but be careful because these stories happen in the past. No exchange is 100% safer.
00:38:18
Mounir
But also if you think about it, that person, if they don't know how to secure their wallet, they're not safer neither because that they can lose their phone just because they haven't secured their wallet or maybe they put everything in their computer and lost it or their phone and all of that.
00:38:26
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:38:31
Mounir
So I think yes, there is a often a trade off between how far the user wants to go to understanding how things work. And I believe they should because it's their money that's ah that's there and convenience. So yeah, I would still expect to be realistic that both will exist forever because they serve different type of customers.
00:38:52
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, for sure. and And appeal to very different needs as well. Like you've pointed it out, but it's just like some of them prefer ah freedom and the other ones prefer convenience, right? And like what is your what is your goal here, right? Because the ideal, in my head, the ideal if if let's say like DeFi is getting super mainstream is like freedom that people are not even used to. Like you were saying before, you had to make this transfer So you have to call up your bank, say that you're going to make the transfer, and then you have to go through all these hoops to access your own money, right? but rather that Like, dude, it's your money. You should be able to do with it whatever you want without the government or the bank or anyone having a say in what you're going to do with your funds.
00:39:35
cyberpunkmetalhead
the same way, like no one should have a say about what you're going to do with your body or whether you want to tattoo or whether you want to, you know, take certain substances.
00:39:41
Mounir
Yeah.
00:39:42
cyberpunkmetalhead
I feel like it just goes with the philosophy of self sovereignty that human beings should have.
00:39:47
Mounir
Yeah.
00:39:49
cyberpunkmetalhead
Like we don't need, we don't need a big brother to tell us, Hey, you can only spend, you know, Oh, you want to take some cash out? Yeah. That'll be 300 pounds that you can only take today. If you want to take out more from the ATM, you know, come back tomorrow and I'll give you more money and you should be grateful for that.
00:40:05
cyberpunkmetalhead
I love that philosophy and I want to see it happen.
00:40:05
Mounir
Yeah.
00:40:08
cyberpunkmetalhead
I want to see people you know being in charge of their own finances. um I don't fully know exactly when or how it's going to happen and I'm not sure if people are even ready for that level of freedom.
00:40:23
Mounir
Yeah, I would say people often like to have more freedom. And that system I think is just imposed on us. It's not that we choose to give this power to banks. Because yesterday I was talking to a person that I was making a transfer to, like a seller of an object. And he had also the same intuition. like they are putting roadblocks for your money. So that person is not in crypto, is not at all in our in our space. So I think ah human beings think tend to like freedom. It's just that when a system is imposed on us, we tend to just adapt and take it for granted. And you can see that also if you are in a country that doesn't have democracy, it's not that people don't like democracy in that country.
00:41:04
Mounir
It's just that they were bored in that system and they got used to it. And as a human nature, we tend to just adapt and accept whatever reality is imposed on us. And I think yes, the role of in like in politics, the militants, like the freedom militants, will try to like push this narrative and convince people that, hey, careful, they are taking your rights from you. I think also in in our space, role of the crypto community is to also educate everyone that This is their money, and this is their funds, and also it's very tied to freedom and democracy. If the country becomes like too powerful to control your money, they will also control you as a person. And that's just the fact and the reality, I think, that we have seen many times, and especially in big data sets.
00:41:50
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh yeah, 100%. My thought instantly went to North Korea, where every single aspect of a person's life is heavily controlled, including what they do with their money, what they spend it on their internet. like Did you know that they don't have access to like their regular internet? They have their own version of the internet, which includes like entertainment. which includes like you know they They specially crafted websites like video streaming services like YouTube, but obviously like, you know, communist YouTube um and stuff like that, just to kind of provide the illusion that people are free to to have access to this entertainment, which like really reminds me of 1984. Like it it's uncanny.
00:42:31
cyberpunkmetalhead
And obviously that also goes to how like what what they can do with their own money, with ah um with their own funds.
00:42:32
Mounir
Oh.
00:42:39
cyberpunkmetalhead
So maybe maybe something like DeFi will end up helping the individual assert their own control over that to the point where they'll realize that they're being you know held hostage in a system that's not created for their benefit.
00:42:56
cyberpunkmetalhead
um i I was born in Romania. I lived there up until I was 18 and then I moved to the UK and um I didn't catch the communist side of Romania. I was born in 94, so after that by five years. But my parents lived in communism and my grandparents also you know lived in during communist times. and um It's while the kind of stuff that people had to go through in order to just do the very basic things, like they would have to go through to queue to get their allowance of like oil, like cooking oil or gas for the car. If you had even plate numbers on your car, you couldn't drive on Sundays. If you had odd number plates, you couldn't drive on Saturdays.
00:43:38
cyberpunkmetalhead
um like you can You can easily see how you know a totalitarian government can completely change ah the human spirit. um And I am a little bit concerned, I have to say, about this technology being used for CBDCs, because CBDCs could easily be implemented in a way that it could strip away freedom.
00:44:02
Mounir
Oh, oh.
00:44:04
cyberpunkmetalhead
um if you're familiar at all with China's system for like social scoring. like That thing just scares me. I think it's just one of the worst ideas we've had.
00:44:15
Mounir
Yeah, I think in the US I saw a lot of pushback. I haven't saw what happened in the EU. The only thing in EU is too complex that for something for simple stuff to pass. So I think we're still far away from from having something like that. But yeah, it's definitely true that having a central party that has access to everything you do is super scary. And now we take democracy for granted.
00:44:41
Mounir
But history shows that whatever, um I would say, yeah populations get as like a big achievement may not last forever.
00:44:53
Mounir
So I think, ah yes, people got to be careful. when i I totally agree with you that CBDC gives so much power to governments in here, especially a central government of governments that can be a bit tricky to like ah expect a good outcome to come from it.
00:45:05
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:45:11
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, I'm hoping that it would still be, you know, up to the people to realize these things. I feel like, you know, society at at scale can only really be influenced when there's an imminent threat, right?
00:45:23
cyberpunkmetalhead
Like this is exactly how totalitarian governments get formed.
00:45:24
Mounir
No.
00:45:26
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh, look, there's this this there's this war, there's these bad guys coming here to kill us. Therefore, we have for a very short amount of time, we need to, you know, impose these rules and we all work together to kind of, you know, um ah face this threat together, right?
00:45:40
cyberpunkmetalhead
And it's all bullshit, like that's not even true for the most part.
00:45:42
Mounir
That's how it starts.
00:45:44
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, that's how it starts. So I think as long as we no longer have any kind of, you know, wars, large scale wars happening, I don't think there's a big risk of of that making a a comeback.
00:45:46
Mounir
No.
00:45:58
cyberpunkmetalhead
So I think also people ah I want to see that we've learned from the past and that we have the power to kind of, you know, foresee these issues with these technologies before they happen and to do the right thing.
00:46:09
cyberpunkmetalhead
but yeah Yeah, you never know, really.
00:46:13
Mounir
Yeah, I totally agree.
00:46:15
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, um we diverged there a little bit from, we digressed a bit from ParaSwap.
00:46:18
Mounir
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanted to say something, and like not to diverge more, but like I love Romania. I go there almost every year.
00:46:26
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh, really?
00:46:26
Mounir
And this year we go in twice because my fiance is also from Romania, from Bucharest.
00:46:31
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh, wow.
00:46:31
Mounir
And yeah, I heard also a lot of stories before in the communist period, but it's ah an amazing country. like we I really love it.
00:46:39
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh, that's fantastic. Thank you so much. have you Have you traveled much? Have you gone like to the mountains or to the Carpathian Mountains at all?
00:46:44
Mounir
Yes, yes, yes, not the Carpitians, but we went to Peles, to how is it, Brasov, Arashnov, and all this region.
00:46:54
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh, nice.
00:46:55
Mounir
it's ah It's something we do every year, like each time we go to Bucharest, we stay for a few days, then we go to ski to Sinaya, and that's that region.
00:47:02
cyberpunkmetalhead
Mm hmm.
00:47:03
Mounir
And yeah, it's really amazing, especially Romania is really like if you go outside of Bucharest, because I feel like there's two Romanias. the Bucharest, the Metropolitan City and the outside, and the outside I think is much more interesting.
00:47:15
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, it's it's like fully, it's it's kind of wild, right? Like it's right smack in the central of Europe, but they're still about, I think only about 50 to 55% urbanized. So the rest of it, you're going to have, you know, villages, you're going to have rural areas, you're going to have like the forest and stuff.
00:47:30
cyberpunkmetalhead
So yeah, it's um it's an interesting place for sure.
00:47:32
Mounir
Nice.
00:47:33
cyberpunkmetalhead
I actually have some like distant relatives in Brasov. um So that's interesting.
00:47:38
Mounir
ah nice
00:47:39
cyberpunkmetalhead
yeah Yeah.
00:47:40
Mounir
good place yeah
00:47:42
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, nice. So do you go there like in the winter or or more like in the summer?
00:47:44
Mounir
Yes, yes, we go for Christmas and this year will be interesting because our baby boy will have a ceremony for his name and for the first time we're gonna cut his hair. I'm looking forward for it.
00:47:59
Mounir
And I haven't understood yet exactly how the ceremony goes. its but It's like kind of religious, but here it's not going to be religious. It will be just like family gathering. And and yeah, I don't know.
00:48:10
Mounir
Maybe but I guess you're you should be familiar with it. And yeah.
00:48:14
cyberpunkmetalhead
but i'm um'm um I'm not. Is it like a baptism?
00:48:17
Mounir
It's not a baptism, yeah it's ah it's ah it's ah like the first ceremony to give a name to the to the boy, but it's not unlike a church, it's the family gathering. It has a name, but I forgot to be honest that I'm not super familiar with Christian christian christian religious reviews details.
00:48:38
Mounir
But it's it's quite interesting. For me, I'm more interested in being with the family and all the the food and the drinks that I have always in Romania. But I'm also interested like in cutting the hair of my boy because it's growing. And I'm like, to my to my girlfriend, please, let's do it now. She's like, no, we have to wait for the ceremony because it's super important. But frankly, the parties in Romania are always amazing, either with family or with friends. ah So something I always love in the food and the drinks.
00:49:08
Mounir
are really amazing, so I'm looking forward to it.
00:49:10
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh, that's fantastic, man. Have you have you ever tried palinka?
00:49:14
Mounir
Yes, yeah, Palika, the Sarmale, yeah, all all the Keftele, oh yeah, all the big foods, I'm super familiar.
00:49:27
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh, wow. That's really cool.
00:49:28
Mounir
Yeah.
00:49:28
cyberpunkmetalhead
Um, I think it's called cause you said is the, the giving like naming, naming the baby boy. That's usually called Botes, which is literally baptism, but I don't recall the the cutting of the hair.
00:49:38
cyberpunkmetalhead
So I'll need to actually like make a note to look into it and I'll let you know.
00:49:39
Mounir
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a second stage or something like this. Yeah.
00:49:44
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, maybe. yeah yeah cause i'm not really ah Obviously, it's a Christian country and it's an Orthodox Christian country, but I don't remember many of the customs and stuff.
00:49:47
Mounir
yeah
00:49:51
Mounir
Yes.
00:49:54
cyberpunkmetalhead
like we We do Christmas here, obviously, because um the UK also does Christmas. um But yeah, like some of these things you kind of tend to forget in time.
00:50:04
Mounir
yeah
00:50:05
cyberpunkmetalhead
Like I just get them from like when my my parents ah ah call me up and go like, Hey, it's, you know, this holiday. And I'm like, Oh wow. Right. Okay. And it's kind of, you know, really interesting cause it's, it's obviously still a big thing for them cause they live there.
00:50:18
cyberpunkmetalhead
But for for me, I'm like, Oh yeah, it's that thing that happens there.
00:50:19
Mounir
Yeah.
00:50:21
cyberpunkmetalhead
But like here, you know, being like, you know, in a, in a city where everyone has their own celebrations and their own, you know, little like reality tunnel. Um, it's interesting to see how like it doesn't reflect to what's what they feel and what they think.
00:50:34
cyberpunkmetalhead
But yeah. That's really cool. um Let me know how you find skiing in Romania.
00:50:40
Mounir
Yeah, I joined Sinaya. Sinaya, I think I like it. There was another ski resorts. But tonight I think it's small for me, not super expert. And I learned quite fast last time I went. It took me just a few back and forth. And I was feeling great. The guy also, the monitor, was really good. So yeah, I like it. It's small in size and place.
00:51:05
cyberpunkmetalhead
Nice. There's this, I just want to recommend it to you. Let me try quickly find it. ah There's this cool spa. Well, it's a spa slash swimming pool club in Bucharest. It's opened recently. My cousin's been there and he says like, it's absolutely amazing. I haven't had a chance to go. um I'm just going to pull up the name because I think if you go there, you have to try it out. it' It's like, apparently it's supposed to be like really, really cool. oh Let me see.
00:51:37
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh, it's called Therme, T-H-E, yeah, T-H-E-R-M-E.
00:51:39
Mounir
Theta man, okay.
00:51:45
cyberpunkmetalhead
I'm just going to drop it in in the message as well. It's supposed to be really nice.
00:51:53
Mounir
yeah yeah like so dead
00:51:55
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, maybe like Therme, yeah. um I'm planning to go there as well next time I go, so I'll be checking that out too.
00:52:03
Mounir
okay
00:52:04
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, fantastic. I didn't know you do Romanian holidays. That's very cool.
00:52:08
Mounir
yeah yeah yeah yeah it's ah like This year was the first time outside of the winter. And I saw, I discovered another type of, it was just Bucharest, another type of Bucharest in spring.
00:52:20
Mounir
It's another taste that's really cool. I like it, I like the vibe. And we met also a lot of Christina's friends. so And also some of them also had babies, so it was fun to see them and their new little family.
00:52:32
Mounir
So yeah, it's ah it's quite nice in like outside of winter.
00:52:35
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh, nice man.
00:52:37
Mounir
But also winter in Bucharest is weird because sometimes it's like a minus 10 minus 15 and sometimes like the quite opposite.
00:52:38
cyberpunkmetalhead
Congratulations.
00:52:46
Mounir
The last two two years ago I think Portugal was like 15, 16 degrees and Bucharest was like 19, 20, 21.
00:52:55
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh, wow.
00:52:56
Mounir
That's also... something I found fascinating about Bucharest where you can have like summer in winter that lasts only for two three days and then the next day it's like ah winter and snow something I saw I think only in Denver so far away but Denver is maybe more extreme because the same day you can have summer being short in t-shirts and the evening it's snowing but really really snowing so that's I think it's fascinating kind of this type of cities
00:53:25
cyberpunkmetalhead
do do you get much Do you get much snow in in Lisbon?
00:53:29
Mounir
I think maybe it's not once in history or something like this. and No, like it's like, ah I mean, literally in a t-shirt the whole year.
00:53:34
cyberpunkmetalhead
wow
00:53:38
Mounir
It's very rare that it puts a war and like a jacket for for cold. It's really, really rare. Maybe January, February, maximum you can have like ah let's say two thirds of the time where it's cold, but here, yes, it's in general warm weather where most of the time yeah yeah it's sunny and the and yes, i mean it's quite warm.
00:54:02
cyberpunkmetalhead
that That sounds like the dream, like living in the UK, that what you just said is like music to my ears. um
00:54:09
Mounir
Yeah, I lived in Paris before, so yeah, I can relate.
00:54:12
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah. um So you said something, I just wanted to go a little bit back to Parasop because you've said something um and it's also in your white paper about gas abstraction. um Do you want to expand a little bit of on how gas abstraction works um and and what are the benefits of it, obviously?
00:54:31
Mounir
Yes. and Well, it has to do a lot with with user experience because ah it's happened to me a few times. Sometimes I want to make a trade on a wallet that I received, let's say a payment, USB-C.
00:54:47
Mounir
And I want to trade that USB-C for ease or something. Often you need to have gas and that means that you need to like either bring it from another wallet or go to a centralized exchange or use a fiat on-ramp. It's a big hustle. and That's like a practical case for even for DeFi natives or crypto natives.
00:55:07
Mounir
But also for the broad audience, if you want to have ah users from Robinhood, from Revolut, come and use DeFi, now it's still very hard. If you still ask them to load the wallet, put some ETH on that wallet, understand what is gas, and understand also that gas can vary in price.
00:55:25
Mounir
So now you pay that amount, tomorrow you pay another amount. It's super complex. The onboarding is not convenient, but frankly, why people should care in the first place if they're not technical or super into the into like the technicalities of Web3 and DeFi.
00:55:30
cyberpunkmetalhead
Hmm.
00:55:41
Mounir
In my opinion, they should not care much. than What they need to to do is I want to trade token A for token b B or I want to buy that token X and I push a button and I buy that token and that's it.
00:55:53
Mounir
They should not think What's behind the scenes? Same way that when you use Revolut or Robinhood, you don't think, is this a native app? Is it built with iOS, with with ra with Swift?
00:56:04
Mounir
Is it built with native? Is it built, there's an AWS behind or Google Cloud?
00:56:10
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:56:10
Mounir
Nobody asks these questions because simply nobody cares. People just want to ah ah fulfill their needs. And abstracting the gas is one big step into improving the user experience.
00:56:22
Mounir
That's the main main purpose of of it.
00:56:26
cyberpunkmetalhead
And and and how how does it work without having the without them having to pay the gas, like who ends up paying the for the gas then?
00:56:35
Mounir
Yeah, of course. Yeah, somebody has to pay it at some point, of course. ah And there are multiple possibilities. So in the case of Parasymp Delta, the winning agents is the one who's going to get the rights to execute the trade. And when they do so, they will pay the gas on behalf of the user. And and also, obviously,
00:56:55
Mounir
Since this gas is paid anyways, it's included in the price. So if you buy, let's say, ETH with USDC, if ETH worth whatever, let's say 3K and gas is $10, it will be 3K minus 10 that the user will receive at the end and the agent is going to pay $10 equivalent or 10 USDC, sorry, like 10 whatever token you're receiving worth of it ah to the Ethereum blockchain or whatever blockchain is used.
00:57:23
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right. Oh, that that's a smart way. So they just get subtracted from the value that they're looking to swap.
00:57:27
Mounir
Yeah.
00:57:28
cyberpunkmetalhead
yeah that's and And if that value.
00:57:29
Mounir
But there are also other cases, yeah, excuse me, there are also other cases where ah with more professional, because now it's part of API, it's an aggregator at the end, it's like executing your trade on chain.
00:57:32
cyberpunkmetalhead
hu
00:57:41
Mounir
But also in v2, we'll have more ah type market maker type of agents who can literally just give you a price and not to have you pay any cash at all because ah the price already discounts the cash in a different way than aggregator because an aggregator would just estimate how much this transaction will cost because it's going to go on chain, it's going to use balancer, Uniswap, you name it. But for them, it goes directly from their wallets.
00:58:11
Mounir
And the price they give you already includes the gas, already includes their profits because they will be making some kind of arbitrage in Binance or Kraken or something like this. So the level of obstruction it is even higher. So we don't even need to tell the user, hey,
00:58:27
Mounir
you will get this minus 10 USDC because it's taking from you because somebody is paying gas. We don't even need to tell that to the user. The user is receiving in general more because again, as I said, like the trade is much more sophisticated and the they don't even need to get into this detail because it doesn't exist in the first place and they bear the responsibility of putting the transaction on chain.
00:58:53
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right. Okay. so So what I was going to ask is if the transaction amount is equal or so or smaller than the gas, then I'm guessing that I just wouldn't go through because it wouldn't make sense, would it?
00:59:06
Mounir
Yes, because nobody's going to take it. For instance, now our API will, I think there's something like a 30% minimum between like ah the gas and the trade.
00:59:09
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:59:16
Mounir
In any way, it's not good for the user. But of course, this it can be an attack vector where you can have a malicious actor just attacking, draining the basically the gas tank, like the water that pays the gas, they can attack it constantly.
00:59:32
Mounir
There's no incentive in reality. But since it's theoretical and in any way is not good for the user to like to pay half in gas, it's a use case that is discarded.
00:59:43
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, that's a fair point. yeah i mean ah yeah like Like you said, I don't think there's ah there's a big use case for someone wanting to exploit that, but people some people just want to exploit it because they want to exploit it.
00:59:54
cyberpunkmetalhead
you know um Are you familiar with ah with what's happened to um the Internet i Archive Wayback Machine recently?
00:59:54
Mounir
Yeah, yeah. No, I'm not.
01:00:03
cyberpunkmetalhead
um So, you know, Internet Archive is this place where they they take snapshots of the internet and you can go back far as far back as websites.
01:00:07
Mounir
Yes, yes.
01:00:12
cyberpunkmetalhead
You can see like what ah YouTube looked like in 2005 and so on. um And it's been under attack for the past few weeks. um Like you also had like JavaScript errors like popping up on on the website, like ah all sorts of exploits.
01:00:29
cyberpunkmetalhead
um with hackers threatening to take down Internet Archive permanently. And I'm like like, how shitty of a human being do you have to be to attack like things like Internet Archive, which is like kind of like on par with Wikipedia.
01:00:38
Mounir
Yeah.
01:00:43
cyberpunkmetalhead
It's an open source, not-for-profit organization that just works to keep an archive of the Internet.
01:00:44
Mounir
yeah
01:00:50
cyberpunkmetalhead
you know um The only motivation that I can think of potentially is that because it takes snapshots of most websites, um you could have forums or discussions or you know things that were said by people that maybe they no longer want them to be publicly accessible.
01:01:10
Mounir
Ah yeah. Couldn't be. Yeah. Yeah.
01:01:12
cyberpunkmetalhead
So it could could be that, but yeah, just a weird one.
01:01:16
Mounir
Stranger.
01:01:18
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah. um So tell me what's ah what's on the horizon for for you guys, a power swap in the next few months? What's what's the battle plan? Obviously, there's the the launch for Delta. What else is coming up?
01:01:31
Mounir
Yeah, the V2 is the really the most exciting thing we're looking forward to in the very short term. So obviously, end of this month, early next month, I mean, we are on the last week of October. ah And moving it forward, the goal is to try to scale because now it's very simple like really really it's simple as it could be there's one solver agent as you call it behind the scenes and now the goal is to build a very variety of of agents. ah One use case we're excited about is to have AI agents that's how like the agent name came in and for everything aggregation because right now
01:02:15
Mounir
What we do, we manually build integrations and manually build algorithms, which is fine. It's been working great. But I think that ah machines can beat humans in this kind of things because we can if the machine is like AI agents, you give them very, very specific instructive specifications like
01:02:29
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
01:02:36
Mounir
Here are, here is like a matrix of metrics and give me the best possible price. Or here is a historical data about the equity pools and there is the new equity pool. And you have the formulas and you have all of this, build me a smart integration on the fly that you can reuse. And I think the future of aggregating data, like as we do it right now, ParaSwap manually, it can be at some point delegated to AI, AI agents.
01:03:06
Mounir
that can generate those algorithms and generate smart integrations on the fly because there are many many times we don't go as deep in an integration simply because it may take like a month or two because you have like some math that let's say in curve where.
01:03:22
Mounir
only 2-3 people can can can write and only maybe 5-10 people can understand, at least right away.
01:03:28
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
01:03:29
Mounir
So it will take us some time to deconstruct the math and understand how things work. But I think AI can do this much, much better. So looking maybe to partner with do with with someone, we already talked to a few people.
01:03:42
Mounir
But also, I mean, it's ah it's ah it's ah it's a it's a big use case, but it's not just that, like the goal of Delta is to be like this hub for trading. ah And it can be for for for like normal trading, but it can be for other use cases because there is also this principle of hooks. ah It was publicized a lot by Uniswap, but it's not nothing new in reality, is you can do something before you trade, when you trade, like the trading and after you trade.
01:04:09
Mounir
where new use cases can can become possible, where you can like do arbitrage, like add liquidity, or like do more sophisticated equity provisioning, or build completely new use cases that you haven't thought about. So I think one of the focus will become a lot on building the best possible developer tools for Microsoft Delta users.
01:04:32
cyberpunkmetalhead
That's really cool. It sounds really exciting and um um I can't wait to see how that develops. I think it's going to be a ah fantastic time. um a If people want to apply for the beta currently or if they want to just be in the know for the release, um where might they go?
01:04:41
Mounir
Yeah.
01:04:50
cyberpunkmetalhead
What are the socials or the website that they could check out?
01:04:52
Mounir
Yes, the best place where we put all the information and the most up-to-date place is Twitter is X. So x.com slash ParaSwap that has all the all the information.
01:05:03
Mounir
And yeah, they can also follow me at money back and let's give you the the handle in case they want to reach out to me. But ParaSwap X handle is the place that is the most active, I would say, in the ParaSwap system.
01:05:20
cyberpunkmetalhead
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for the conversation, Munir. It's been a pleasure. And I hope you enjoy the winter holidays. And I hope the cutting of the hair goes well.
01:05:31
Mounir
Thanks a lot, Andre.
01:05:31
cyberpunkmetalhead
um
01:05:32
Mounir
It was really a pleasure.
01:05:34
cyberpunkmetalhead
Thank you. And post-release, I would love to have another conversation with you to see how ah how it's all gone. um So i would I would love to have you back.
01:05:41
Mounir
yeah
01:05:42
cyberpunkmetalhead
The door is always open. Just give me a shout.
01:05:46
Mounir
Obviously, yeah thank you. Will do.
01:05:48
cyberpunkmetalhead
Awesome, have a fantastic rest of your day. See you!
01:05:51
Mounir
Thank you. Thank you.