OAK Network bringing automation to Web3 and DeFi payments

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from blockwest capital for investment pitch media and today on the Crypto Coin Show we have David Wu Finkelstein the chief of growth at Oak Network David welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time yeah thanks for having me Ashley really excited to be here you're very welcome looking through Oaks Tech it looks amazing and there's a lot of

0:22advancements in web 3 that I feel like 2023 is going to be a big year for injecting you know sort of the next level of technology into the mainstream you know and having a user experience where there's more functionality for people to actually get things done get them onboarded as well into the world of blockchain I'm really excited about what Oak is working on and

0:41I would love to just kick it off at the beginning here for those who aren't familiar with Oak Network on you know what is it that open network does and what is your team building right now and then we'll dive into all the details yeah absolutely so Oak is kind of the catchphrase that I use the mouthful that I use is cross chain cross chain

1:03Excuse me cross-lane trustless automation what does that mean so basically that means we have a blockchain that has the ability to schedule transactions in the future and we bring that technology and functionality to other projects other smart contracts other other partners in our ecosystem so that you don't have to be there at

1:25the time of signing to then affect the transaction whether that be based on time or based on a price or whatever it may be in the future yeah no and you know this sort of alludes to what I was saying before is this functionality is almost necessary for you know everyday finance and not having to approve every kind of thing and even so how we're approving things

1:46on metamask now it's sort of sketchy where you don't really know what you're approving there's a lot to be improved upon but so far in the first you know 10 plus years of cryptocurrency transactions this hasn't really existed but I feel like now sort of the time that we need it because more people are getting involved and we just need this functionality to function so how how

2:06long has your team been working on this technology and where is it sort of at right now yeah so our founder Chris started working on the idea back in 2020. he did a building in crypto since 2016 or 2017 I believe and had this idea of kind of a more powerful transaction so he went to work doing research it's about eight months worth of academic research to

2:28figure out whether this was even like theoretically possible I think you know some of the informed users probably the show fans of crypto have probably read alarm clock op code piece and the difficulties that come around with scheduling from the future but it became one of those things that just because it's difficult doesn't mean it's impossible or not worthwhile right so

2:48So he went down that path he validated the idea with the academics and then came off and you know we can get this done so I was brought on as the as the head of growth at the end of 2021 it's been kind of moving along since then as far as where we're at right now we are live on what we call the canary network using the polka ecosystem called Turing and that

3:09has a Time trigger available right now so that you can you know non-custodially without signing over your keys without locking up your funds schedule any number or recurring amount of transactions or just one transaction in the future so yeah that's where we're at right now and then looking forward to a to a oak launch on polka dot very soon

3:28amazing looking forward to it and you know all of this functionality you know it's difficult to develop and program that's for sure how does your team sort of make it easy for the end users to not have to understand all that technology and build a user experience that allows Somebody To You Know take all the work that Oak network is doing and make it into one one or two

3:50clicks yeah it's it's not easy it's it's sometimes interesting how difficult it is to make something easy especially in blockchain and especially going across chain but it's something we're really dedicated to so for example that time trigger I think you know we always try to make things that are useful at Oak as well so things that are

4:10you know easy to use but also useful as well it's no point in having something that's easy if no one wants to use it right so the first product that we launched on that Turing Network on the canary Network and Sama is auto compounding for our stakers so it's proof stake network normally you have to go in right you have to claim your

4:28tokens you have to mix a bunch of transactions restate them but if you think about it if you can schedule a transaction in the future maybe once a day every day then you don't actually need to log in and do that anymore so it's it does a couple things one it makes it a much better user experience I'm very proud of our partners that we're working with

4:46on that product so while and Nova wallet are two of the leading wallets in the polka dot ecosystem who have kind of created just a simple toggle button where all you have to do is you know you stake and you click Auto Compound on or we call it yield booster for that product and then and then yeah you're good to go it becomes considerably more

5:05complicated we have some other partners that we're working with right now and I gotta X it's a big one a star she didn't is another huge one that we're really excited about we're bringing similar functionality there and it will look the same it'll look the exact same in terms of like kind of some sort of toggle where you say Okay Auto compound My

5:21Rewards but with the technology behind it definitely is difficult especially when you have different tokens getting paid different fees on different chains but we're happy with the work that we've done and without laboring the point too much I think it looks great that is great and so a lot of those Partners you mentioned there I'm

5:40familiar with some of them and they're sort of running similar substrate technology with polka dot and kusama as well I'm curious about you know the choice behind the underlying technology and what makes it optimal you know obviously there's a lot of from the beginning you know this functionality could be used for all kinds of blockchains like like Bitcoin

5:57and ethereum but it seems like polkadon in the in the layer zero substrate technology works best for this kind of functionality maybe you can talk about you know why it's optimal for the end users for this underlying technology to be the way it is yeah absolutely so we did a lot of research well my father did a ton of research I did a little bit of research on

6:21where to build this and what made the most sense and the polka dot social technology made us for a number of reasons the first one is the modular the modularity I guess I suppose I'm not sure if that's a word but the modular nature of the substrate system where you can kind of use Lego blocks for these pallets to create your own blockchain where we can use a lot of the

6:42core functionality that already existed and then you can use that to bootstrap the new new technologies which it created so we added a number of new palettes automation time automation price automation event and some new transaction palettes as well to allow effectively I'll get a little bit a little bit out of my out of my comfort zone here and talk talk deeply about

7:05the tech using two things called the proxy palette which allows you to create accounts like an hack any over half and descend to origin kind of proves out the security such that we can we can not only have these automation time kind of Oracle functions but also have these these accounts that can kind of act on a user's behalf in an extremely limited manner right and it is

7:30still your account it can act on your behalf in the sense that it is your account right and that's why we say it's non-custodial because the you're always in control of your coins you're always in control of your keys you never have to sign any of that over all those things combined make the automation possible and then on polka dots specifically because of shared security

7:49and because of the xcm cross chain messaging system we can then bring it to other people so it's two real key pillars there right one we have to be able to build the blockchain which is very very secure obviously but also very efficient with this block space for Automation and then we also need to be able to send those messages to other

8:08chains so that we can affect a transaction on your behalf in those ecosystems as well and because of that polka dots really made the most sense well thank you for that explanation and for diving out of your comfort zone I know the technology can be complex and even for me as well being a non-tech kind of founder so I appreciate that and when you mention there about the

8:30automation of the price and the time one of the use cases that comes to my mind is decentralized exchanges and how they've been growing but really at the beginning they had limited functionality you could just do like a spot buy at whatever price is there right and who knows what the spread is you're sort of just going on a whim I feel like having this kind of automation could greatly

8:51increase the functionality of decentralized exchanges as that movement continues to grow is that one of the main use cases that Oak could be used for yeah yeah absolutely it's one that we're we're pretty highly focused on for a couple of reasons one it's obviously a huge market and we want to go to where the users are not try to convince them

9:09to use something that again isn't useful but also I just really believe very deeply kind of these ideas of you know being controlled your own money and we've signed up a lot of that control over the past you know 50 to 100 years and this kind of rusting back so that people are in control of their own whether it be their own trading

9:28strategies or whether it be their own personal index funds or just being able to even trade the things that they want to trade right whether it be a specific coin or better be you know some Commodities Futures that someone puts on Shannon in your future right it could be anything but that's absolutely something we're focused on in the in the very near term or we'll

9:47probably bringing them in stock orders to Market first just because they're you know the most used and the easiest most straightforward kind of use our technology with but you know dark pool trading Iceberg orders there's a ton of things that I'm super excited about even copy trading right with the with not totally matters something I'm really excited about so

10:08there's a ton on the horizon for sure with the decks trading and I think bringing that experience just a little bit closer towards whatever our traditional web 2 experience is going to be a really powerful step in the right direction for adoption very exciting David and yeah I would love to do an automated copy trading from the best traders in the world you

10:27know just have it all automated for me that would really make life easy and you know I feel like this is a great use case for Dex trading but also I feel like if you expand out to just the greater payments ecosystem and just Commerce and paying people or even remittances back and forth could this be used for just sort of you know not people that are just doing high

10:51frequency trading but just like paying your friends or you know your your bills and things like that yeah absolutely I mean if you think about the number of subscriptions that we have today right you know whether it be Netflix and Amazon Prime or whatever it may be yeah exactly yeah I think I've seen I've seen ads for subscriptions that just get you out of your subscriptions right

11:12saying all right we've really come really come full circle now but at the end of the day a lot of that stuff is really about convenience right I don't think anyone's complaining about most of those things it's convenient maybe maybe maybe we could hit the buy button a little bit too often but that's you know ultimately on us and if we could cancel it easily

11:27if things would be a lot easier right so this puts kind of the user in control of their own subscriptions and I'm really really bullish on that kind of broadly speaking whether it be from you know my perspective as consumer I think also from you know Creator content creator perspective where you know you're always spreading the risk of BD platform or banking can be issue

11:46in certain in Industries industry right and you just don't have access to what you think should be fairly easy to access these days I want to put yourself back in control of your funds and you know you your keys your coins but also your plan for your keys your coins is something that we say frequently at Oak it allows just a huge number of kind

12:06of middlemen to be ousted and that is unfortunate for those businesses but really great for everyone else who has been having kind of their their alpha or their you know their Surplus soaked up by by people in the middle definitely and I feel like as well Dao is you know and like as the complexity of dows increases and organizations get bigger actually using Dow functionality

12:30It would be a lot easier to have Oaks Oak networks technology than just like having one guy trying to authorize everything yeah yeah absolutely I think there's there's a couple different ways but even just the idea that if you know a vote occurs and the funds are automatically set very simple things like that right or even you know automatic

12:49notifications when voting is going on for a new funding proposal and you know I'm fairly bullish on Thousand long term I think it's a very interesting new way to organize incentive structures you know I don't think any of this is what we're looking at is like the final form of anything at this point but no yeah absolutely being able to have that automation on chain where

13:08the Dows live I think it's a really key component to making them more effective than you know if they have been in the past yeah I'm excited for the growth of Dao's that are actually functioning like real organizations and hopefully see some of the larger corporations you know in the traditional World sort of incorporate some of the Dow functionality and I can imagine they

13:27would want some kind of automation like this or else it's not going to happen because it gets complex so I was looking through the oak networks technology and I saw that there's like the oak Network and then there's a turing Network as well and I'm curious if you can explain the difference in how they work together yep for sure so we kind of have a if

13:49if you check out the website oak.tech you'll see that there's a like a standard progression of releases and that'll always be from from kind of local testing environments then up to the kind of cross-chain test Nets like Rococo's is a big one in Moonbase Alpha is Moonbeam where we just launched so excited to start testing with them on their test

14:10then as well and then you'll see it go to Turing and Turing is that Canary Network that I talked about that's live on the summer ecosystem and we have a number of connections there with some large Partners including chidin which I which I mentioned before as well as vangata X where we're going to be launching those Auto compounding features and you always see things there

14:27first it's it's kind of a lower level of Economic Security meaning that there's less money tied up in the in the chain but it is a way for us to test in real life production whether things are working or not so there is there's the number of taglines expect chaos is one of their foreign but if you think about Focus kind of the Enterprise level where

14:49you'll get the highest level security it's been vetted throughout multiple stages along the lines that I just mentioned with kind of our highest grade Enterprise Partners I think that's often the way you'll you'll be able to think about the two different networks so if you want the latest the greatest the newest and you're willing to take a little bit of risk or maybe you're not

15:06using that much money yet and you just want to see what's going on I highly recommend the touring network if you are a Fortune 500 company or a Visa or a MasterCard and you're looking to partner with us then it's it's probably more likely that you're going to want to stick with Oak okay great thanks for that explanation and yeah some of these companies that

15:23are on the Forefront of innovation like some of the ones that have launched on the substrate Network as well that are really bringing more innovative solutions into into defy I feel like that's obviously great to have that double two networks so maybe you can dive a little bit more into those partners because I've heard their name a bunch I know that they had successful

15:45like pair chain offerings with sheeden and mangata and I understand that you know they're in finance but can you talk about exactly the relationship between oak Network and how that helps these Finance platforms and then if there's anything that you know expands outside of substrate and to the greater defy or web3 ecosystem yeah yeah absolutely good question so

16:08I'll try to keep it to the highlights but we'll I'll start with our with our first cross chain Fighter versus one God X and we're really excited about that they built a new substration similar to we did but really hyper focused on Capital efficiency and basically removing Mev I won't pretend to be able to speak about their Tech nearly as deeply as ours but we've

16:30been a big fans of them we really like their idea quite a bit we think they're going to attractive liquidity so that's where we first listed our token and that will most likely be where our first Auto compounding launches and just to speak a little bit to those technical difficulties one more time there's there's quite a bit that I think anyone who's had LP rewards no

16:48okay for token now then you need to swap a certain amount and then you need to make sure you buy the lp token and put that back in so we've done that all in the background for you just the same way you would if you think about investing in an ETF right when you know if the dividend gets kicked out it's automatically reinvested this is the exact same thing that you

17:05have now which is again just a convenience thing that we think is really important but allows people to have a better experience and I think one that really people deserve at web3 the sheet in integration is a little bit different that's the canary network of a star really really proud to be working with them as they'll as well really just have some leaders in space I think

17:25the most exciting thing about a star and she didn't is that they're a smart contract platform of which there's a couple but my favorite thing that they've launched recently is something called XVM and that Innovation is really special because it allows different virtual machines to be translated to each other so in the past it's been very difficult for you know an

17:44ethereum virtual machine to connect with ink or something based on substrate but they have a palette now that allows you to there's that word palette again that allows it to translate effectively so that once we're hooked up with uhida and we're doing the auto compounding for their Gap staking any smart contact developer in the world really who wants

18:03to deploy something on that Network because they want access to time automation we'll be able to do so in any language that they that they want to write a smart contract in and I think when I think about a future web3 and you know the power of it's like yeah I can go somewhere and do anything I want that's that's really kind of special yeah it's a beautiful thing and I'm

18:24gonna look into those platforms again I've keep hearing their names and I feel like it's a great add-on to have this automation inside of them and 2023 has been a great year so far for cryptocurrencies so definitely time to look into some of these Innovative projects so thank you for you know that Alpha now more on the future of the growth of the oak Network and some of

18:48the plans for 2023 I'm curious sir what are the next steps or major releases that you and your team are working on yeah for sure so a lot going on obviously first things first stay tuned for that launch of the open network there will be some sort of public something very good with some sort of oh or sale or something like that gets attached

19:11to that launch so that'll be happening very soon but in the meantime really focused on getting those those first few features launched on the touring network so my God is in the pipeline is in the pipeline like I said we just launched on Moonbase Alpha which is the test net for movie where we have a couple of really strong Partners in being well and

19:31Stella swap that we're just kind of opening conversations with but we're really really excited they've managed to attract quite a bit of TBL in the ecosystem we've talked to their teams where we think they're very strong have really great backgrounds and bringing that automation functionality to you know the evm leader in this space is really great because

19:50obviously like I was saying before there's kind of East Coast here local we want to go to where the people are and you know meet them where they are not and I try to force things down people's throats if they don't believe in it and evm is great I was I'm a converted ethanaxi from back in 2017 so being able to bring these features to evm projects

20:10which they wouldn't be able to get literally anywhere else in the world I think is going to be a really fun time as well to just kind of expand what evm means and what evm can do so there's quite a bit on the horizon obviously price triggers I've talked about that'll be launching this year as well and other than that I'm always a little bit low to give strict

20:31timelines but there's a lot going on we're really excited about it yeah no I can see why and there's always it's so complex with the business development that I know your team's gonna be working hard regardless of you know when when the time is because this is this is a long game to build the future of Finance it's not something that's done

20:50overnight no no it absolutely isn't but it is a lot of fun that's good I'm glad you're enjoying it and now obviously this technology is very beneficial to web through as a whole and it's needed it's just a matter of the implementation and having a user experience where people understand the value and are able to utilize it very easily what do you think are going to be

21:18some of the key factors to success as you continue to grow and launch out the network to ensure that Oak network is a success I know inside and outside of web3 yeah I mean there's a there's a ton of factors as an infrastructure project really more than anything the growth of web3 broadly kind of helps us which is great because whenever we you know do

21:41tokenomic discussions or you know people ask me about the price or something like that it's always hard to say it because the more that the more that happens on chain the more valuable we become and I think there's a lot of other interesting products out there like that so the growth of web3 is really key to the success but as far as challenges like it just always feels

22:00like we need more time and that's not to say that you know a huge thing about working or that it's it's it's that because things aren't happening quickly they are yeah but there's no kind of limit to the speed that I'd like us to move at there's no there's it's never too too early to bring the big Banks down right so not that not that I'm trying to be

22:19antagonistic but mostly just speaking to the point that there isn't really a limit to how how much I believe in this level of innovation and the more time the more people that we can get involved and interested the happier I'm going to be so that's you know a lot of my job as the chief of growth is to make sure that people are interested in what we're doing people

22:38believe in what we're doing and that you know we get those resources from everyone from developers in other countries to people like yourself to you know take the time to speak with me the more of that happens the happier I'll be and I think the better things will be thrown well I appreciate your time David because these insights are very valuable especially

22:58people that are getting into D5 platforms you know near the beginning and understanding how they're continuing to grow out and you talked about it a few times you know earlier in the interview just about owning your own assets you know having a decentralized finance where you're able to not just control your assets but do more things with them right and that's where

23:15automation really comes in and adds value besides having to do everything manually and the hard way I'm curious on your vision as to how D5 will continue to grow out and with Technologies like Oak Network bringing Automation and extra utility to defy how you see defy looking as an industry you know two to three years or more from now yeah I have very kind of aspirational

23:41views about defy and what it means I think a lot of this really just kind of remember freedom and freedom in the sense of choice and being informed because if you don't know about something you can't do it and if obviously if you legally bound or something that you shouldn't be able to do as well if the incentives are so strong in one way that it's

23:59unreasonable that you know you're not free to do that thing and broadly speaking I think people deserve more Choice more freedom more information I think that's where d5's headed so when I talk about copy trading it's not just the idea that oh I can make a bunch of money it's that you get to have the information of what the top Traders are doing you can follow

24:19along with them if you choose to and if you choose not to because of anything from Financial to moral obligations you don't have to right but right now it can be very difficult I think there's a interesting I was on one of these Twitter spaces and one of the people in the ecosystem gave this example that if you know you wanted to create an ETF bakeries on the East Coast so you can do

24:38yourself there's no real way to create that investment vehicle but I'll watch you it's not that difficult especially if there's a bunch of bakeries on the East Coast that have you know collateralized debt when something like potential Foods right there's a ton of different ways that this thing can go but ultimately I think and it's it's kind of shown out thus

24:55far that as long as you're headed in the direction to give people broadly speaking more options more availability to information and really the ability to transact in a way that makes sense for them their family their risk profile however you know we think about D5 or Phi in general I suppose you're probably on the right track and that's try to track that I try to poke

25:20on Amazing David and great example the potential is Limitless when when this branches out beyond the finance to other Industries I'm I'm really going to see I'm really excited to see you know like just the value that it brings to people that had no idea about this technology it's like it's the next internet you know it's like when people didn't realize the potential the

25:42internet had to unite the world and I feel like this technology will do that as well so thank you for being a part of it what is the best way for people to follow along with the updates for Oak Network to learn more about the turn Network the Partnerships you have and towards the launch yeah so the all The Usual Suspects I suppose the website is oak.tech

26:05t-e-c-h so fairly easy to remember and you know we've got all our links to everything I'll mention there but I say our Twitter is very active we have a really cool Discord community and a couple guys managing that with a bunch of ambassadors and Ambassador programs so if those types of things interest you definitely come check it out we have a telegram group we have open espanol I

26:25just launched late last year so really excited about that as well as a bunch of different language channels and different language groups and telegrams well and Discord so there's there's quite a few places to come check us out I always say you know I leave my DMs open that probably won't be true forever but today it still is so if you have

26:41any questions feel free to reach out to any of us we're here to help we're strong Believers in our community and really like trying to stay as transparent as possible with everything that's happening at Oak so yeah come hang out I promise we're fun yeah I try to keep this particularly fun because sometimes infrastructure can be kind of actually dull so it's a fun

27:00computer sounds great thank you so much David I will leave those links in the description box below as well to make it easy all the best with everything moving forward on Oak Network in the launch and I'll be following along and let's definitely follow up in the near future yeah would love to action thanks for having me on I had everyone out there

27:17and yeah thanks again