Haven1 Foundation builds safer DeFi ecosystems

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from Block West capital for investment pitch media and today on the Crypto Coin Show we have Akash Mahendra director at the Haven One Foundation Akash welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time hey Ashton thanks for having me you're very welcome excited to dive into Haven one's protocol and a little bit about what the team is working on in

0:24defy and your insights into the defy industry and where it's going I'd love to start off our conversation by just hearing a little bit about what is Haven one and what have you and your team built so far and then we'll dive into all the details sure so essentially Haven one is an ebm compatible layer one blockchain with the gold will provide secure accessible

0:48compliant user-friendly on-chain Finance to not only not only retail users but also for developers and institutional investors so you know despite its Evolution over the number of years D5 Still Remains very convoluted and you know turbulent landscape which is rather unfortunate given all the strides that we've made so far every single day Deep by users face

1:17Daily vulnerabilities such as you know hacks exploits liquidity risks rugs you know and furthermore there's even more regulatory uncertainty which has been added on from America parts of Europe and you know certain parts of Asia as well so overall this has caused like pretty you know lack of widespread fake faith in blockchain technology and this is a

1:45standard progress progress and hasn't really provided the consistent adoption that we all hope for so what we want to do is essentially expand The Current financial ecosystem drive more retail and its usual adoption on web3 throughout in our security Frameworks and network local guard rails and really just trying to enable on-chain Finance

2:09for every single person that's great you know blockchain can have a lot of use cases but I think defy at in today's day is one of the most important ones because you know it's already it's at the heart of Reinventing the financial system and it really is a clear-cut on how it provides more value inside of the current blockchain ecosystem that we have right

2:37now with Haven one being focused on you know improving on-chain Finance how so specifically do you think Haven one can improve defy so previously I mentioned that we're aiming for a more sacred skill you know on-chain Finance platform two things I really want to talk about is Network level guard rails as well as our approval identity framework

3:06so first and foremost we one of the you know the security is baked into the protocol itself the network that will guide drills that we are creating exist to protect not restrict the financial opportunity of using the network one one of these network controls for example is that we have on chain controlled deployment of contracts any contract that needs to be deployed

3:31requires whitelisting and approval by the validators and it'll have to pass through a governance process our plan is that every protocol and contract you know will have to pass the an extensive risk model that we developed and each deploy each deployment will need to fulfill certain criteria that meets industry standards as well as you know certain level certain levels of

3:52audits and that automatically prevents significant you know number of the hacks and exports that happened in D5 today I think for us that's really important that we kind of promote this security for retail and institutional users especially those who haven't really dive in D by our Unchained Finance before because we need to be welcoming

4:15we need to understand that the average user even even in today's standards doesn't understand the risks it isn't able to read solidity contracts so really we need to make things we need to kind of take on the responsibility of securing the network itself and you know creating some industry standards which protocols can adhere to rather than just

4:38You know continuing with this wild west that's been happening for the past few years amd5 and I should note Ashton that I think there's something around 8 billion over eight billion dollars which has been lost in the past couple of years in deep way and you know in web 3 in general just based on channel analysis data so and it's it's a pretty

5:00boring Trend because this number keeps increasing year on year I don't see how we can possibly have widespread abuser adoption institutions coming in until we somehow fix this fix this issue from our getting worse and worse yeah so that's essentially how our Network level guard res come in play there's a lot more to it but I don't really and that's I don't want to get

5:24into it all of it right now long as that might take hours yeah yeah we see with the institutional adoption that you're talking about obviously you mentioned you know there's still a lot of hacks but we've seen that it seems to have gotten better since sort of the defy explosion in 2020 in that there is more adoption what do you think is

5:51the current stance on institutions and they're looking at D5 but they're they're ready they're not ready to dip their toes in or you know is there sort of getting to that early adopter phase where there are a lot of them starting with it I'm just taking it very slowly where do you think that they're at with you know experimenting with this technology

6:12there's definitely a lot of interest and during my time at the you know the yield app D5 team we discussed had a lot of these discussions with institutions such as David Morgan BlackRock Goldman Sachs as they explored the blockchain ecosystems now all of them expressed interest in deploying on chain but first of all they had risk concerns but the risk

6:36they were out to take in the liquidity risk or like you know risk of exploits on chain as well as the counterparty risk I think from from memory I did see a styling figure a couple of weeks ago that TBL off D5 protocol is like nearly an all-time low within three years so that's pretty shocking to me given the all the advantages we've made in the

7:00past three years whilst assets on chain such as stable coins and you know other other instruments are increasing you know there's tokenized gold there's tokenized silver there's you know all these other tokenized stocks coming in as well different types of equities disabled coins you know US Dollars disabled coins you know Euro stable

7:22coins they're all coming into the market but the D5 protocols aren't really getting getting any use and ask about you know a year or two ago or even like you know three years ago so it has been shocking to me that I didn't see that figure from personally I've stop deploying as much Capital as I did with my own funds in D5 because there's just too much uncertainty now

7:46even care which is which was meant to be I suppose a blue it is still a Bluetooth protocol but everyone assumed that there was virtually no like it was risk-free now that there was we found that there was like a zero day exploit within the you know the wiper comply Viper compiler same with balancer it's like one of the you know biggest and most

8:10trustworthy protocols has had like two or three issues this year so there is definitely risk from Institute the risk that institutions will need to take on if they do Deploy on chain that's you know that's just the reality right now that's why a lot of them use their own Enterprise blockchains or they're building their own Enterprise blockchains which

8:32Protects themselves from those risk but ideally we need a mixture of public and private blockchains you know in terms of you know we have risk controls on a public blockchain now that's where I think we will need to go as an ecosystem three space will lead to kind of differentiate that this definitely space for a public blockchain ethereum or

8:57you know or supposed to learner or some of the other big ones but not everyone can deploy it on there now there's just too much counterparty risk and this is this is where our approval identity framework comes in which I mentioned a bit earlier so we require all users and you know our Builders and anyone who sort of wants to deploy capital on chain to complete a

9:20identity verification before executing on-chain transactions so only the result of the identity verification and the country IDs will be stored on chain whilst all the rest of the data won't be stored by us at all so you know essentially what we'll try to do is create some sort of framework which assures that all on-chain actions are

9:48compliant and performed by known actors I think were you were you aware of the whole tornado cash issues that happened I think sometime last year yeah a little bit the great to Enlighten the audience if they if they weren't sure so what happened there that is I think is ofac they raised concerns or they released some ruling I'm not really sure

10:13How that happened but they said anyone who used that application or even mixed money with people who use that application where non-compliant and may may face you know regulatory issues now imagine if your institutions such as JB Morgan and you've got all these you know standards that you need to hold on to you can't really deploy money on RV because you don't

10:41know who the who you're mixing money with and that pool is so there's too much counterparty risk you need to know that everyone on chain that you interact with is a known known party is compliant with you know the AML requirements terrorist financing rules yeah I just don't think they can ever deploy to a public blockchain such as ethereum and I'm beneath Maxine I

11:08love transact learning theorem I love having the financial freedom and I enjoy the you know the financial inclusivity it gives us to interact with people around the world without you know intermediaries but the reality is like a lot of the bigger players aren't able to do like you know what I'm able to do because you know that they need to

11:28their their actions need to be compliant and they need to you know adhere to strict rules wherever they are so that's that's something you know we are kind of trying to solve by having a approval and a framework to you know essentially access Haven one the other you know one of the other benefits of that is that because

11:54Every you know there's every personal transacts on chain will will have a in sort of a proof of ID nft developers can easily restrict or enable users from specific regions to use their apps so for example if you want to do fundraising Ashton or if I want to you know for example sell treasury bills on chain such as companies such as

12:22open edin do now they need to make sure that they are only interacting with certain people who passed certain levels of verification and they're able to do so on Haven one very easily just through a single line of code so but not only can institutions and other retail users be assured that there will be complying with all the regular requirements but solo developers you

12:49won't have the issue where randomly the SEC or ofak or whoever it is will be trying to find you or you know bring you to court for just creating a permissionless app great insights into into the industry there a gosh thank you and you mentioned there about you know the tvl levels and the total value locked compared to three years ago and also

13:16about you know there's more stable coins and there's more tokenized gold and silver and other stocks which I think is great as well I'm curious on your insights into sort of that looking back into you know when the tvl was very high when there was a lot of activity in D5 versus now and sort of when we look at when it was skyrocketing or when there was a lot of

13:38growth and interest in it how much was speculation versus fundamental value that's sustainable you know when that I think part of the reason why the total value locked is down is obviously the asset prices are reflected in that in that you know ethereum was almost five thousand dollars and now it's fifteen hundred dollars so that's going to reflect as well but there also was a lot

14:02of smaller coins and different projects that were going in there that had high yields and a lot of people were putting their capital in just because they saw that it looked really attractive but it wasn't really sustainable and when it's stopped being sustainable then they took it out or they lost it maybe you can talk about sort of that stage of D5 and there's a lot of

14:24interest in and what we're seeing now and what are actually the fundamental parts that are sticking around and we'll continue to be there for the next cycle of growth so you are right I mean the previous cycle I feel 99 of it was fueled by speculation yeah there's there's a few major trends that kind of played out which was certain parts of defy did really well in

14:51terms of price action there was an entirely a one Trends you know the alternate layer ones ethereum competitors did super super well because of the eve gas feed narrative as well as the lack of you know transactions per second that ethereum can do and that was the point when l2s hadn't scaled or deployed you know properly as as yet and of course there

15:13was the entire nft narratives as well you know there's a whole bunch of other small narratives such as let's say you know all the decentralized you know the networks of where you kind of the online networks you know like the central land and sandbox and things like that yeah the virtual worlds all that sort of stuff so all of that

15:38was driven by speculation because it doesn't really it doesn't really make sense for you know a you know virtual world protocol to be worth 10 billion dollars like such as you know I don't know what levels it got to but I'm pretty sure you know the bigger ones such as this Central land and sandbox would have gotten to 10 billion plus fully delivered values so and barely

16:03had any users oh and still don't really have any users right now so I it obviously didn't make any sense same with the alternate layer ones now some of the ones which did well was for Solana there was phantom I think Avalanche cello or all these ethereum labels which are competing with ethereum now they didn't generate many fees at all as

16:29compatible even ethereum does today in the bear market so there was no no reason for them to even compete considered competitors at that point even though they did take tvl ethereum for a while but in reality they the fee generation was very low they all kind of I suppose pumped because they had really good incentive programs that the flywheel was

16:53doing well and you know these things always do well in the program but now we are back to reality bits so the asset prices have dropped quite significantly there's I don't you know it's hard to find what the fair value of ethereum is because it's such a unique asset class right like if some people think it's a store or a value only you know there's obviously other

17:17aspects of it because after the merge it's actually a still is a the pleasuring asset it generates fees now it's essentially you know and you need to hold ethereum to use it so it's got many different properties that's kind of hard to Value what is what was fair rate would be as people do and try advice so you can't really use a price

17:44earnings ratio you know there's other other models I've seen people use it but I don't you know I don't believe that any of them are super accurate what is very clear that moving forward there's there's so many useful things that we can do on chain you know like we can trading on chain for example makes everything more transparent it you

18:10know it brings more people in that's I think the biggest and the most exciting part of the blockchain system so for example let's say I'm living in Australia here so let's say I want to trade token North American stocks now sorry American stocks in general I can't really do it super easily I have to apply the different Brokers there

18:34might be some restrictions that was placed on me it is a pretty frustrating experience like I've used to did it a few years ago around the covert time but ideally if a protocol can bring turbanized stops on chain to you know either ethereum or you know or a more of a permissioned or like more of a sort of secure platform such as Haven one I can

18:57do it with a couple of clicks you know even if I have to work on my identity I can I should be able to access that technology and the opportunities as easily as you know as as if I was living over there or even easier because I don't need to go to an intermediate intermediary so that's the kind of stuff which really excites me there's look there's a lot of these examples

19:20that you know that we can kind of talk about like for example another thing would be Sports books even as simple as that you know like accessing transparent sports book where it we not get you're not getting wrecked by the spread of the odds you know you can bring that on chain you can even if you need if for example if you want to build it on

19:46Heaven one you can you know no restrict or enable only certain parts of the world that's kind of useful for certain Sports banking companies yeah things like that you know we're all gonna make things a lot easier by bringing you on chain I do believe that the real value in these kind of products and these kind of platforms will will come out in

20:09the next run that's what I'm hoping for you know but as we all know and I know you've been through about that five or six Cycles you know the usually the dumbest things end up on top so it's I'm not holding my breath but you know I'm happy to see that a lot of things are being built right now actually are more useful than you know the next home fork or whatever you want

20:37to do which which doesn't have any value it's just a bit of a fad yeah no those are great insights Akash and especially with the tokenized stocks and moving that kind of Finance onto the blockchain there's obvious benefits once it's done in the proper framework and you know I think it sounds like the framework that haven one is building it's for onboarding into D5

21:01it sounds proper so I'm looking forward to seeing how it all plays out maybe we can just talk about you know the current stance of the network where you and your team are at with it yeah so it's been about just over a year since we started architecting and building Haven one we deployed the private test net early this year with that initial deployment we

21:26designed all the network permissions and parameters would work the world of validates will play and you know the best way to implement the approval of the new framework at a network level since then you know we've of course been scaling up our team you know onboarding a significant amount of Partners and developers and yeah we're on stage where we are we're at

21:48you know we have a public test that internal public test now that we are still stress testing and working out all the Kinks I'm we are hopeful that we can release the public incentivized testnet which is a significant milestone for us in the next month or so no promises there because with NASA technology you know you never know how things are going to go

22:10Yeah it's it's one of those things where you know this hasn't been done before so just just for some of your viewers Haven one is designed using go Quorum which is an urban Source black blockchain platform built on you know built by I think it was JB Morgan and it's currently being managed by consensus and we're working closely with

22:31the consensus Team every week to upgrade and improve the client and only through go Quorum are we able to create a blockchain that provides you know flexible and expressive Network permission management this can't be done on any other L2 this can't be done on ethereum so it is something's unique that we are building and with this you know with this

22:52kind of technology that is hasn't been deployed before we do anticipate some issues to come up and test that which is you know all part of the all part of the game yeah we are we'll work through those when they do come along so it's a very exciting time for us ideally you know once we once we get the public testing out we'll be working super

23:14hard to onboard developers you know there'll be the grants program we do plan to run our own hackathon before the end of the year yeah there's a lot of initiatives that will be in place to assist everyone with onboarding as well as use wow very exciting and it sounds like it's just around the corner but of course you know yeah

23:37you're right it's hard to put final dates on these things because with test Nets you know there's people that are trying to break them which is a good thing because you know you want to get the Kinks out before you know you take the plane and put it in the air you better work on it beforehand so I'm definitely going to be watching for the launch of that

23:55incentivized testnet and when that happens will there also be an opportunity for people that are non-developers or sort of defy enthusiasts to be able to check it out and sort of explore through it definitely so you know once we do launch the fully public test and that there'll be campaigns that people can you know xillion other Galaxy campaigns that

24:21people can use for love our own internal program that you know incentivizes use of the test end itself it's it's it is you know it's a pretty interesting time for us because we need to kind of create the entire flow which is exciting and unique for our users so a lot of work's been done on the user experience site one thing I think

24:47that I want to know is when you when a new blockchain test net or you know or even a new blockchain main that launches I'm always Keen to jump on it because you know there's always opportunities especially when mainnet launches now it is a super confusing process for the average user like even I find it very confusing like suppose you know how base base launched

25:11Maybe about three or four weeks ago right I was like which taxes are available you know is there a lending Market there's just really cool user experience and this is from coinbase who's probably the biggest company in apart from Finance in the in the web series space so we want to create a very smooth and like interactive and easy user experience which and which aimed at

25:33onboarding not only the current users but also people who have never used on-chain Finance before so yeah it's it's you know it's one of those things where we are working very very closely with a number of designers to have that Easy Flow if I struggle with since like you know it's beginning you know when I think when what

25:58was the first thing when all those use some clones and five farms and Sushi swap came in so if I struggle with finding out information about a new blockchain I don't I can't imagine how you know the newer users feel that we would feel and you know they'd probably fall for a lot of scams and new dexes which run so yeah that's that's

26:23the kind of experience we want to avoid definitely and to follow into the launch for the incentivized testnet what is the best way for the viewers to follow along in the communities or on the site yeah so you know if anyone wants to learn more you can find us on Twitter which is at Haven one official you know or directly through our

26:50website haven1.org there's all the links to our socials such as Discord and telegram there we're Super Active his team is Super Active on their you know answering any queries or questions yeah definitely come and join the community there's plenty of things to do even before the tests that launches so we're very glad to have you on there

27:11and happy to build with them build and work with anyone who's Keen to join us awesome thank you so much for your insights into defy Akash and for what you and your team are building at Haven one I appreciate it looking forward to the incentivized testnet launch in the near future here and let's definitely follow up for the next stages of the protocol

27:32thanks Ashton lovely to talk to you today