MANTRA DAO building regulated DeFi for institutional investors

0:00i'm ashton addison from block west capital for investment pitch media in the Crypto Coin Show and today on blockchain interviews we have john patrick mullin the co-founder of soma finance and montreadow john welcome to the show and thank you so much for taking the time to come on absolutely thanks thanks so much for having me looking looking forward to the

0:18discussion definitely i've been following mantra for quite a while it's a beautiful ecosystem and i know that you're continuing to expand some with soma finance which is also incredible but i don't know enough about it yet so i would love to kick off the discussion just a high level overview for myself and for the viewers on what is soma finance and montreal as well in

0:41the ecosystem and then we can sort of break down and dive into the details after that yeah absolutely so again thanks for thanks for having me on really we're looking forward to the chat today so it's probably important to start with monitordown and then kind of how that flows into soma so montreal is a project that i started with a couple partners

0:58about a year and a half ago a little over a year and a half ago which is essentially a d5 focused dow we've created a bunch of different d5 products including a staking platform a yield farming platform money market lending launch pad we have like this little lottery pool called the mantrapool we are active on a bunch of different chains so we're live on each bsc polygon

1:22soon to launch on solana terra another layer one that's tbd i can't say yet polka dot paratrain and we're actually building our own chain which is going to be a cosmos tendermint based layer one we run validator nodes for a bunch of different proof of stake chains probably support i think 25 to 30 different networks so we're really kind of plugged into the d5 web 3 and kind of

1:45dao space i guess so that's montregao but basically kind of the story of how soma came to be around the time that we created our launch pad which is called zenit we were talking about that a little bit earlier you participated in some of the launches when we launched this product back in early 2021 we very like even before we launched it we're like this is going

2:06to be a highly commoditized product within the space everyone's going to have one it's not a very complex product to build everyone's going to you know try to have it and the only kind of unique selling point for most of these things is maybe a unique model that's going to get replicated pretty quickly because you can just fork or change the change the onboarding

2:23structure or in our case we're like okay well we have this partner our joint venture partner in soma tri-touring capital which is a us broker dealer and they have a very special license that allows us to do compliant issuances of tokens so we're like okay instead of trying to go this way of like attracting all these amazing projects and you know kind of

2:42differentiating ourselves that way let's differentiate ourselves with the fact that we have a completely defensible moat around this license so that was pretty much where we where we came to initially start talking about the idea of soma and originally the idea was to actually just have it as an extension pure direct extension of monterdo but then but then we decided it actually was

3:02better to be under its own brand its own its own kind of moniker its own you know everything and we kept spitballing a little bit in and thinking of new ideas and were like okay well not only can we do a compliant and regulated launchpad but really we can create all these d5 primitives that you know everyone's used to but in a you know again a kyc and aml compliant

3:21structure as well as utilizing this brokerage license to add other different asset classes you know to these type of products obviously securities commodities etfs et cetera et cetera so in a nutshell soma is really just a particularly us but globally compliant d5 platform that has a d5 native user experience but we do require kyc and aml on the way

3:45in because basically it creates this kind of walled garden around the platform that you can you know trade on an amm or participate in a launch pad or you know lend and borrow your your assets all in a permissionless fashion but we know who you are because we know based on your white on your wallet and your kyc information who you are and what you know kind of what you're doing

4:05This allows us to maintain compliance and also keep out the bad actors definitely and thank you for all that explanation and that does shed some light on the differences there and yeah with soma and with regulation just continuing to grow as as more institutions and regulators get involved there's definitely a need for that and that makes sense why soma has been

4:27created and when i first think of you know a launchpad and then like regulated i think security token offerings but i feel like it also is just like any regular token that wants to go through the proper compliance to be available to the us but also consider like nfts potentially or other other d5 solutions so is it going to be sort of a and you mentioned their etfs and

4:52commodities and things that i don't really associate normally with crypto but can be crypto based as well are you focused on all of these different types of assets for soma yeah absolutely i mean obviously we're not gonna launch everything on day one you know we'll roll it out in time and focus on you know certain things you know in due course but really the idea is to

5:14be able to support a multi-asset platform both on the issuance side as well as the kind of the trading and the dex product we think they go hand in hand you know one thing that i continuously say is i hate the term sto and i'm really trying to move some away from it just because it has a little bit of a bad connotation from you know the 2018 2019

5:35days where it's like the next big thing and it never really came to be really what i'm trying to push forward with soma is we're not just doing security tokens we're just literally doing compliant tokens right and the difference between the tokens that we're creating now and kind of back then was twofold in my opinion one when people were doing stos back in the

5:56day they're really focused on like tokenizing real estate or you know some big financial product or you know some equity in a company right the value add wasn't really that clear or significant and realistically a lot of the participants were only institutional investors there was no ability to access retail and to be completely honest does you know joe

6:16schmo off the street really care about you know owning a piece of a building it's not as like sentimental to them yes it might be interesting right but is it like is it like you know supporting your favorite crypto coin probably not right so what we're trying to do is actually build a retail friendly asset class that can support you know anything

6:37from games nfts metaverse sports so we're talking to a lot of athletes sports leagues et cetera that again retail can get behind we'll be issuing them as securities in the united states but effectively they're just tokens right so we're just doing the security is just on the back end just compliance work it doesn't actually change much in terms of the

6:56smart contract you actually will be issuing tokens in two tranches like an onshore us tranche and a in an offshore tranche but the token smart contract is the same right and i think that's really the key so you know we're we think this is a kind of a game changer because you know u.s retail particularly has really been shut out from any type of you know primary issuance primary

7:16launch then they can't get into icos right and everyone tries to stay away from americans i'm american i believe you're american if i'm not mistaken we can't even participate in these types of things most of the time so we think that this would be a bit of a game changer because we'll be able to directly sell to us retail investors in token form

7:34definitely great points john and yeah you're right about 2018 i was going to security token conferences back then and it was supposed to be the next trend and look at us now years and years later you know you're right like the main cryptocurrencies that could be classified as securities if they go through the proper compliance that checks a lot of green boxes doesn't

7:55necessarily have to be equity in the company it can just be a token yes so i really do like the path that you're taking with soma finance in that regard and to talk a little bit more about the regulation and not so much on the security tokens but more on d5 which has been the trend over the last few years is continues to explode with the value locked as more institutions come in and

8:18regulators especially with this battle between you know centralized exchanges having that regulation in the kyc and then d5 being the wild west they're trying to like regulate defy and create regulated defy and i'm curious your insights into like regulated d5 or just having d5 that you know where soma is attached to it and there's the proper compliance sure i mean i know a

8:41lot of people think that they're completely kind of a polar opposites for you know d5 should not be regulated or they just don't go hand in hand and i completely understand that there needs to be you know that wild wild west element to a degree to push innovation and things obviously you don't want to see the rug pulls and the scams and these type

8:59of things and it is an unfortunate reality of the industry that we work in and many industries it's not just it's not just only crypto but kind of the way that we're trying to go about soma is again creating a experience that is similar to as if you're participating just on uniswap or compound or ave or even monitored out right but there is a

9:22level of you know kind of backing that you know is supported by licensing and aml and kyc processes and compliance and things of this nature that actually will help reduce you know those drug bulls no scams and those and those things yes there is a bit more of a centralized nature to some of that business but realistically if you want to get in the

9:43you know the listed companies the big institutions the regulated fund managers the asset managers et cetera you know they are just not they're literally not able to go and you know purchase tokens on unison because you know there's significant i mean forget the securities problems which is a significant one but they're more worried about the ammo and kyc concerns

10:03because they don't know who the counterparty is on that trade right like they don't know if it's myself or you who's going to be part of that liquidity pool or if it's a guy in north korea or you know some separatists in russia which is obviously the hot topic of day or you know some terrorist organization or narco trafficker they don't know right in our situation they do

10:24because you know again we have that walled garden i mentioned but the user experience is the same and you can have the kind of enhanced functionalities that inherently blockchain and dfi can bring you in terms of enhanced yield and a bunch of different kind of permissionless opportunities which are you know very very very cool but you're you know

10:41doing it in a way that is actually accessible by you know a company or the like so we've actually seen a really like a significant interest in a lot of these kind of you know big traditional kind of trading firms or investors because again they've just been kind of shut out of that on-chain d5 experience and you know soma finance is aiming to

11:04you know bring bring them that definitely amazing great points and you know you talked a lot a lot there about funding and all these big companies and how they have to follow those procedures and i was looking at these large companies and one of the largest companies that i'm seeing in the nft space and d5 is anamoca brands and i saw that they recently led part of the

11:25funding round for soma finance which is great to capitalize the company maybe you can talk about that a little bit and you know what that capital is going to be for as you continue to grow in the near future here absolutely you know we're we're really excited to be working very closely with animoka obviously i'm normally based in hong kong i'm

11:43currently in new york but soma is basically a hong kong and new york team and animokus from hong kong so we're really happy to kind of have a our neighbor you know heavily supporting us and when we when we started getting in touch with him about the summer finance fundraise you know initially you're kind of like you know traditional d5 regulation you

12:04know does that really kind of play with nft's metaverse gaming which is obviously the wheelhouse of animoka and realistically when we went out initially that wasn't like our aim right it wasn't necessarily our sector of focus but we realized very quickly through the pain points that anamorko was facing that many of their portfolio companies particularly which are gaming

12:26companies metaverse nfts etc we're having significant issues again accessing the us market you know play to earn games in-game assets are highly highly likely to be deemed as securities in the united states so effectively what they were doing is they're just like meh if you're from america cannot participate yeah that's a big problem with there's you know there's 300 plus

12:45million people in the united states just alone right that's one of the biggest crypto markets out there and one of the biggest gaming markets out there so they were very very very keen to participate and work with us because you know they have tons and tons of portfolio companies that need the support to be able to access access this market another one that was

13:02participating in the in the seed round is griffin gaming partners which is the largest gaming vc in the united states you know they're the backers of forte and some of these other you know massive you know massive gaming companies they are also active participants so we're really lucky that we got two gaming and nft giants participating and supporting us from day

13:22one and we have a big big big pipeline of companies that are going to come through the issuance platform just like i mentioned so you know we have some really really exciting stuff coming on just the launch pad alone in terms of kind of like where the fundraising is going towards obviously it's you know it's it's building out the team the platform is has has

13:42fortunately been able to re-utilize a lot of the existing technology and tech stack that mantra's already built obviously we had to make some adjustments in terms of you know just adding additional compliance layers and you know some small tweaks here and there to make sure it's you know finra and sec compliant but really a lot of it's going to build

13:58up the team and then you know it's a retail focus platform to begin with so we're going to heavily heavily market it so we have a couple cool initiatives that we're going to be launching the first when we launched the dex is a lock drop so we're going to be you know basically a pre-launch liquidity incentivization program where people can earn some up by by lock

14:15liquidity that's one one one one cool thing on the way awesome looking forward to that and yeah i feel like there's a lot that still needs to be worked on can you talk a little bit about the near future in terms of the platform and you know is there any tentative schedule on releasing and getting these people involved in this pre-uh launch as you

14:37mentioned yeah absolutely so we've already begun a white listing procedure just for the soma token public sale that i think has already reached i think we already have over 250 000 signups which is pretty crazy yeah a lot i mean we'll see how many of those can pass kyc but you know still a lot of people to begin with and i think we're mentioning a little bit

15:04beforehand like right now the actual tech for the launch pad the licensing is already ready to go so it's really just like actually getting some of the deals to come to the pipeline so i would expect that i mean we're sitting here at the end of february right now i would expect that as soon as you know mid to late march because we're gonna

15:22have a couple deals that are gonna come through that you'll see a couple games and maybe some you know some some sports related activities or tokens come through the platform so that's on the way we'll start doing like white listing procedures for those as well so be on the lookout after that we're going to be doing a full kind of launch of the

15:38amm dex trading platform which will comprise of both cryptos as well as public equities so basically how it works is that there's gonna be two ways that people can mint kind of equity tokens one is just you know purely from the platform itself so you can you know send in eth or bitcoin or cash even or a number of different assets and then

15:59you just mint the tokens and as part of the lock drop you'll actually be getting discounted equities because we're going to be subsidizing essentially your purchase and then the other way is actually this might not be from day one but eventually you'll be able to move your existing equity portfolio from you know robinhood or interactive brokers or charles schwab or etrade or

16:17whatever and we can do another cool campaign where we'll cover you know your your transfer costs right wow the cool thing with that product that is different from other synthetic equity products out there is like you actually retain ownership of the asset so we hold one to one custody for each you know tesla token so if we have a soma tesla token we hold one share of

16:39tesla in custody on the traditional you know custodial broker dealer on your behalf wow and that means you can maintain dividends you get the voting right to get all that good stuff but then you can have the 24 7 trading you can yield farm with it you can blend and borrow against it you can do all these cool defy things wow and that's coming in the next

16:58two three months two three months wow amazing john i'm looking forward to seeing that really does sound incredible and a really easy way for people involved in traditional finance just move over into d5 and experience all those benefits that you just mentioned there about you know all the time and having the custody not being able to do anything when the market

17:18closes on the regular market and you know krypto is 24 7 and the world is 24 7 now so that's the way that it should be so i'm really excited for that thank you for sharing all those details for the viewers that are looking to follow along with these updates as they happen live what is the best way for them to get involved in the communities and to

17:35follow the updates yeah absolutely i mean i think that the two best ways are you know hop in our telegram group and follow us on twitter those are definitely the easiest for the time being you know if anyone wants to reach out to me i'm pretty active on telegram as well so you know or twit there for that matter so by all means shoot me a message drop in my dms do my

17:55best to answer sounds great i'll leave all those links in the description box below as well for the viewers thank you so much john for coming on to talk about soma and montreadao and to explain it all i appreciate that all the best on these updates that you mentioned i will be following along and let's follow up in the near future absolutely thanks so much for having me

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