Mantis is combining DeFi, AI trading, and social features

0:01I'm ashon Addison from the cryptocoin show and today on blockchain interviews we have Omar Zaki co-founder of mantis here to talk about the intersection of defi artificial intelligence social and much more in web 3 Omar welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time yeah thanks for having me appreciate it very welcome I'm excited to dive into what

0:22you and your team have been building at mantis I see that there's great backers uh it's the time for more people to get involved in in Social trading and AI is taking it to the next level merging in with web 3 so let's just kick it off with a high level on first of all what you and your team have been building all this time and then we can dive into all

0:38those details yeah sure so essentially you know we've always believed in this like chat GPT moment for crypto chat gbt experience for crypto and but we believe that in order to actually have a moat for these things you need to have a vertically integrated stack and so we spent you know several years since starting this in 21 building out the you know base layer infrastructure which is

1:04IBC based bridging between ethereum salana Cosmos ecosystem then we spent some time building the solver Network which is this layer on top um that allows for best execution for you know swaps and other defi activities um across ethereum salana and single chain on each one of those chains and now we have the dice framework um which is the you know main components that is

1:32powering our network of personalized agents but is also something that Agents from other ecosystems like virtuals can tap into to be able to do defi activities very interesting and you know I I feel like everyone's relying on chat and these llms for a lot of their web two based work whether it's content writing idea generation answering questions and I'm using it a lot but I

1:57feel like there's a disconnect when it comes to crypto and actually being able to make trades or get involved in and other parts of crypto I'm really not using it a lot for that I feel like there's a huge upgrade that needs to be made so how do you envision that happening as AI agents and AI allows you to actually interact with crypto and defi yeah I mean so there's a lot of

2:20things that need to obviously happen I think the first is like you know you have to make sure that the agents are actually doing what they're supposed to be doing um and you also need to make sure that it's like scalable um so that there's no like sort of break like increase of cost for using a better user experience right and so like I feel like we've solved the second problem which is

2:43like because we're vertically integrated we're able to internalize a lot of this order flow and essentially make the process cheaper than if you were to use something like Gane or any of any of these other protocols that like charge you 1% to do a swap um uh but the main thing is is then saying okay how do we make sure agents actually are doing what

3:04they're supposed to be doing that's where there's protocols like hyperbolic and like other protocols like we're also working on something as well um with a Watchers Network to make sure that there is actually a you know agent some sort of verification layer for agent yeah I've personally been involved in the basics of D5 for a few years I've seen the the narratives of AI agents and

3:30the potential that they have over the past 6 months throughout 2024 but I really haven't experimented with the intersection of AI agents and and and trading yet and I'm not sure how many platforms are actually available to do that um and I know eventually this is going to grow from just the degens to the mainstream and probably everybody who's trading in a decentralized way so

3:52right now are there many trading platforms that have actually tested out integrating AI agents with Trading so there's codex which I has big Tony which is like one of the only agents that's that's like autonomously trading you also have um Almanac which is not out but is theoretically going to offer something similar we have an agent that's trading already called lady

4:18mantis like she runs a poll and the community votes on what she should buy and she just buys it um and then we you know there's also griffan which is doing personalized agents um and then heyan which is Danielle's project which is doing you know personalized agents as well beyond that I think there's really not that much out there currently most of these agents are just focused on can

4:43you launch something that does Twitter Telegram and like interactions right you also have fails which is um sort of like a research AI agent as well but again none of these things are trading and so that's kind of the thing that we're looking to enable you know longer term is like we start out with this personalized layer where people use these things to to manage their finances

5:07you know grow that out to also include web 2 Integrations like Shopify and like Amazon and being able to do these things um and then at the same time why can AI xbt not launch a vault strategy that people just put money into and then you know you see what happens I mean I I would at least want to give AI EXP BT a shot to run some of some of my money

5:34right so like that could be interest I think like that convergence of just having the flexibility for any Vault strategy to be live and tokenized by existing agents that have Alpha I think will become very very interesting and that's kind of the Crux of what we want to eventually focus on is not just offering this personalized set of tools for users but

5:55also becoming this kind of central platform for for agents essentially competing to create the best Alpha on chain MH that's very cool and you know it I feel like it's very early on I'm pretty sure most people understand that that it's a great time if you're a speculative investor you're looking at something the beginning stages and researching through mantis as well I saw

6:19that it says version 0 at the moment so I I know that there's many updates to come after this what's the current status of of the Mantis app and what are you able to do yeah yeah so the current status of manp is basically you can use the ex the live solver Network to do trades across ethereum salana on ethereum on salana and like cross chain uh you can copy

6:45trade your friends um and you can do swaps as big as like $75,000 we have a you know SE several solvers that are actively solving things and we've crossed 50 million of volume um so the next step of what's to come is basically this platform is out and working and now we're going to throw the agentic layer on top of it um and that essentially means like being able to now use the

7:12dice llm directly in mantis app with your own personalized agent to to to do swaps for you and find Alpha um so really like this the existing application is meant to kind of become like the manual way of how you do things on chain on salana and ethereum um but uh like the dice llm sort of One agent One account framework is going to for us going to become the major thing that

7:41sits on top of this existing application and so like the existing application looks a lot like something like a Jupiter and stuff like that but the difference is is that we have a solver Network so you're not getting front run there's no me so really actually like if you want to throw a tagline at this thing it's like we offer the ability for agents to do me resistant trades um and

8:05I think that's like particularly important especially like how would an agent know any different so yeah yeah no I think that's especially important and to explain that a little bit when you have ai you know obviously you can be trading very fast and uh in the earlier days there are Bots that can run your transaction and make it cost more than you think it was

8:27going to cost uh and and when there's different AI agents competing with each other trading I can I can probably see that taking it to the next level of being able to front run or uh trying to be a person trading against uh other AIS um I feel like it's it's that's only going to continue to grow and having a platform that is resistant to getting screwed over by artificial intelligence

8:52sounds like a good idea yeah yeah yeah definitely I yeah I mean that's that's kind of the the impetus behind this these developments and in the beginning you mentioned mantis is a a vertically integrated stack so with that technology can you explain a little bit in what vertically integrated means and and how that's beneficial to the use of the platform

9:16when people are using it for trading yeah so essentially like if you look at something like you know Standard Oil back in the day they owned everything in the process all the way from like you know uh where they're selling the oil down to like the tires and the trucks transporting the oil right and in crypto this really isn't a thing because you're supposed to have like this collaborative

9:40kind of money Lego thing where things can can sort of fit into each other and you end up with this beautifully architected stack right where like you have like the modular framework right but over time I think people are beginning to realize like well we're going to run into the same economies of scale as we do anything else which is like you know if I use a bridge there's

10:03a bridge fee if I use a salt if I use a DEX there's a DEX fee if I use griffan there's a 1% fee so if you're an agent doing a swap right you pay 1% to griffan you pay the Dex fee so 0 2% to Jupiter then you also pay the 3% to Orca which is routing you through and so you end up with like 2 three% trades like that's just not scalable you do like 50 of

10:29those trades and essentially your money is just gone like eventually um and so what we do differently is like we charge a flat .1% for trades there's no front running we get you better quotes than Jupiter and we also have our own Bridges which power the solver Network so if you want a bridge between ethereum to salana it's the you know flat 0.1% and you're

10:53filled instantly and then an IBC message is sent from one chain to the next and so like what this means is everything it fits 100% together and we're able to lower the cost of doing business for users dramatically lower than our competitors h no that's really great to know and thank you for explaining that Omar and yeah no one wants to go to five different apps and pay fees on each one

11:19it's already tough enough to get involved in in crypto and like things that are just right on the verge of innovation um and with a lot of the def trading and mem coin specifically what I've seen in the last month salana seems to be that chain like Trump coin was launched on salana and graffan and these other ones are using salana a lot you also mentioned ethereum there is

11:44there a definite need for interoperability between those two chains and and what about the rest of all of the blockchains that there may be volume or trading on how does that fit into the major picture in the long run yeah I mean ethereum and Salon are interesting to us because you know most of the usct in circulation and like you know usdc like people that have major

12:10treasuries hold their treasuries on ethereum right so like if I'm a person that has most of my net worth on ethereum because I trust ethereum and like so does every you know in general everybody does um uh you know you SAR your funds there and then you can quickly go do things on salana and then like have a way back to your sort of bank right so the way I

12:34think about ethereum is like it's a longterm bank for your long-term Holdings um and salana is essentially like your brokerage um and so like we think there is an important need between those two ecosystems now like base is also a casino and arbitrum is also a casino so these are l2s that we're becoming interested in and probably will add to the platform um also like abstract

13:01probably would be a nice place for for deing but like bread and butter we think it's important to have like your money on ethereum as like your bank so we support we support this class of users right and this is also like a very institutionally oriented class of users as well I like I love that analogy uh the the bank and The Brokerage I haven't heard that before but I feel like that's

13:25a great way to explain uh to people when they're trying when they're stuck on just holding Bitcoin and they're like I need to get into more financial products inside of crypto so I like that and with those other layer twos um you know that that reminds me of there's a lot of rollups on ethereum and I know that mantis also has this rollup technology as well I'm sure that provides some kind

13:48of advantages with onchain trading can you briefly talk about the mantis rollup and what benefits that provides yeah so the Mantis rollup essentially is used for so essentially when when you think about the mantis solver Network it's essentially a um dark pool so and the rollup is used to essentially like take these intents and gossip them to uh to solvers and then the solvers

14:15can fill your order directly so as a user you never actually have to interact with the rollup but just know that it's there doing something for you and processing your trads um what's like there is a long-term vision for this Ro up eventually probably looking a lot similar to something like jup net um which recently is like just got announced by Jupiter this sort of like

14:38Omni chain layer where uh Protocols are like where you know this sort of like overlay Network like maybe that's something we'll pursue in the future with the rollup but for now it's used as sort of like this anonymization kind of dark pool processing layer so you should sort of think about it as a piece of like this Machinery H okay I know that helps

15:01understand it a little bit and I'm looking forward to seeing how those rollups Advance as as a platform grows also in the beginning you mentioned about the dice engine and how that's a major competitive advantage over all the other platforms can you elaborate on on the dice and what exactly it is and does yeah so it's essentially like the bread and butter of like our agents right so

15:23like every agent starts with an llm some llms are good at being generic for like all defi activities we decided to be very focused initially on swaps so like we have all this data from operating mantis we have all this information from like users that have told us what they would want to prompt and so we fed all this plus a lot of data into creating

15:47our own sort of custom llm and that will then serve as a like you know the the the the heartbrain if you will of our own agents and other agents like axt being able to tap into it for more information about swaps and then executing directly through the Mantis SDK which is also wired up to the dice LM okay so I feel like llms and and chbt

16:18a lot of people that weren't even technically Savvy they they realize how easy it is to start interacting with it and if you can incorporate crypto trading or crypto knowledge into that that would really onboard a lot of new users into crypto uh with dice is there a play in in making new people not even in crypto or not even in defi or maybe they have a bit of Bitcoin but they

16:43don't understand the technicals of financial products in web 3 how easily can we onboard new entrance into defi yeah I I mean we want to be able to have I mean so we are rolling out a mobile application at some point um and I think like the easiest thing is you log in you pay with your credit card you get some soul and you just start trading um but I think we are thinking about a

17:09lot of different sort of gamification layers on top um for being able to have uh you know making it actually fun for people to use the application um I won't go so far into depth about that but that's probably going to be our our major sort of um Catalyst for getting new people not in crypto to actually use these things and in the beginning you know I

17:38saw in the uh on the site it also talks about the social aspect of it I know copy trading is one of those social aspects of trading um is this what you're talking about as well um the llm or how else does like social fi fit into the package yeah I mean the whole thing is social right so like um we want people to be able to copy trade each other's like trades we want

18:04people to be able to like share their Alpha with others we want people to be able to link a trade that they've made in the past share their p&l um these types of things right because then ultimately we want normal people to be able to say hey my agent has made a bunch of money on chain I'm going to now run a vault and instead of asking me for what I'm doing this month just go buy My

18:27Vault um and and I think that's like a critical component of of what we're trying to do here which is like encourage the average person to create their own network Effects by having an agent that like understands their preferences and and like executes on them that's super cool I'm looking forward to to seeing how it evolves and with the ecosystem is there also a

18:57mantis token or or governance structure and that's involved in creating a sustainable ecosystem yeah so we are focused on um trying to get you know as much usage of the platform as physically possible right and so for us the the token is a is a good way for us to be able to um incorporate to to build an ecosystem

19:25around you know these agents and getting people to be interested in like a long-term sort of stake and decentralization of the network um and so the token initially is like we have uh this obviously needs to be enabled via governance but we have proposals that we're working on as the core team about sort of Revenue sharing because what's nice is like as opposed to other

19:49protocols where you just trade and then you're giving off all this Revenue to folks like Jupiter and orca and everything along the way like in our case we can actually internalize this swap revenue and pass this to the Token um so that's like you know one major component the second is also like to use the platform we will make sure that um instead of you

20:12needing to have like 10 different types of tokens for gas and then also having to pay for API requests and these will be things that uh the Mantis token can be used for as well and beyond that obviously in the early days like staking the token for access to the private beta is also you know just like the Baseline you know having a minimum amount stake

20:32to get access to the private Beta And as these things become you know more public um we can you know then have sort of like a first come first serve strategy slash fee discounts for for the token um and then the token will have a significantly different life in the worlds where we're tokenizing vaults um so yeah but I won't go get into that yet yeah definitely I

21:02know there's a lot uh to be done and with the you know there there's the functionality of the app needs to come out there's different stages uh is there a incentivized test net or incentivized beta um where you can start to earn you mentioned the gamification system I don't know how much you can reveal about that but potential air drops or getting involved early might have its

21:25advantages yeah so right now if you par ipate in our ask and earn campaign um and also join our affiliate program so essentially like use the existing platform and um post a referral link and try to get some of your friends using the existing mantis platform we will notice that and give you access to the private beta which then you know for every swap you're doing on mantis you're

21:50already earning mantis credits um and then if you're in the private beta those credits are worth you know double triple and we have sort of little games as well so getting a slot into their private beta um is you know valuable from a credit's perspective and the eventual sort of credits to something else um conversion uh is you know generally what we're doing to try to gamify things at

22:17the moment yeah very cool and you mentioned a lot of future uh launches um but I usually ask at the end you know about the road map you mentioned uh there's potential for for staking obviously the release of the token uh the next version of the private beta um is there any timelines or any major things that you missed that maybe we are worth mentioning yeah so uh next major

22:42updates for us is essentially like you know private beta we're adding as many people as we can to it currently token release stake for Access you know continuing to have the private beta targeting a public launch in a couple of weeks as well um and then mobile application and then looking to start introducing the vaults uh the Vault framework that's probably going to be

23:07something that we that we roll out phased because we're obviously worried about agents like rug pulling vaults um so that's like something we want to like be very uh closely monitor as we're rolling them out and like test these things properly so it but we'll probably have a sort of private version of that to share sometime in the month of February for people who used the private

23:33beta before very cool Rogue AI got to be careful and stay on top of it so it's not uh out trading you um and Omar what's the best way to get started on uh what's available right now and to learn more as these updates roll out yeah so best plat best way is follow our Twitter is mantis um also we have a telegram Ann announcements Channel Discord and uh you can follow me zerox

24:02brainjar on Twitter um and yeah our website's mantis.com already out there that people can interact with um so so we're pretty

24:31excited to be sort of different in that way it's very cool I'm definitely going to dive into it more myself uh as I feel like Defi and AI is on The Cutting Edge of innovation I'm looking forward to seeing how the platform progresses I will leave in the show notes a link to to the X platform to your x uh the website you mentioned and the other Social Links I'm wishing you and the

24:54team all the best as this grows and uh let's definitely follow up in the near future Omar yep thank you thanks for having me