QuantumDEX brings AI-powered trading to bridgeless DeFi

0:01I'm Ashton Addison from the Crypto Coin Show and today on blockchain interviews we have Kevin Cino. Back with us the founder of Layer 1X and Quantum Dex. Kevin, welcome back to the show and thanks for taking the time.

Yeah, it's good to be back and it's good to be back when things are going right.

Definitely the market is very hot right now. And I know layer 1x has

0:24been expanding. The decentralized trading exchanges, decentralized finance ecosystems have also been expanding. I would love to start out our conversation with a little bit on for those who didn't see our first interview, just a little bit on yourself, how you got into building layer 1x and quantum decks and a little bit of a highle overview on the

0:44ecosystems. Yeah, for those of you who don't know me, and I hope very few of you don't know me, I'm Kevin. I'm the founder of the protocol called Layer 1X and Quantum Dex. So, Layer 1X is a decentralized smart contract execution layer 1 blockchain and it has interoperability built into it. That's number one. With Quantum Dex, it's AI first and it also

1:10allows you to build crosschain applications on top of it while you list your token into it as well. Of course, we'll get into the details of it later on, but it's a great synergy between what we've built on the protocol and first of its kind text that we've launched you know really recently.

That's exciting. I would love to dive into that more. I think a fairly small

1:33percentage of people that have owned Bitcoin or Ethereum have actually traded on Dexes. If anything, they're probably familiar with UniS swap with Ethereum. Maybe they've traded on some other layer twos on Ethereum or Pancake Swap on Binance Chain. Could you give a bit of differences between those traditional dexes that people may have used and what

1:57Quantum Dex is offering? Yeah, and you know, I mean, we've got more than 30 million wallets, you know, or accounts on Bitcoin today. And if you think about it, the number of wallet addresses have exceeded, you know, your domain names as well today, right?

So, definitely there is there is a push in there. But in terms of the differentiation, let me start, you know,

2:21with a couple of points, right? So whenever you're going to trade on a DEX or whenever you're going to list on a DEX, you're looking for two to three main things. The first one that you're looking for is liquidity. You know, you need to have enough liquidity to start trading. The second one is you need accessibility. So people can come into your decks, buy your token and swap out

2:41of it as well.

And quantum DEX addresses these two things very differently. So the first one is we have something called as a smart contract based non-custodial loan model where projects can borrow liquidity on non-reserve assets and when I say non-reserve I mean based on your project token. So Ashton, if you wanted to launch your own token called Aston

3:03token, you know, I'm pretty sure it'll do very well.

You could come in, borrow you know, a bit of loan, which could be around 10, 15, $20,000 and launch your token by u, you know, collateralizing your own token and it's all governed by smart contracts. So that's never been seen before. And the second one is the moment you list on the DEX, your token is

3:24cross-chain compatible. So people from EVM, nonem and bitcoin can buy your token straight away and even they can sell yeah from from from the layer 1x token into these networks as well. And the beauty about it is this is all done automatedly where there is a token builder which we've got. We've also have you know a loan module where you can go in and you know

3:50punch in your token address and through AI it will analyze what kind of loan you will get and the third one is once you list it automatically integrates into our XTO infrastructure making your token crosschain compatible. So we are you know what we do see is a lot of hype and innovation gets funded later down the line in the cycle right.

Mhm.

and fundamentals like these get

4:15funded you know after the innovations get funded right once the memecoin frenzy ends. But we tried to you know bring back these fundamentals and we've seen success on the decks already like in less than six weeks of launch.

We've got five tokens that are listed over there and you know next week we are opening up the decks to anyone who wants to come and list and you know borrow

4:38liquidity as well. Right now it's a little gated so you have to go through a whit listing but from next week onwards you'll be able to list your token straight away. Very interesting and I would love to dive into that loan and liquidity part a little later. I have a few more questions on the accessibility and getting new people who may have used a DEX once or haven't used it into a

5:00different ecosystem that they may not be familiar with. So you mentioned about the accessibility EVM chain compatibility non EVM. So, if I was a holder of Ether or Salana or stable coins, how would I get into the DEX and then start trading around?

Yeah, it's very straightforward. So you go to l1xapp.com, you connect your MetaMask or your Phantom wallet or your BTC wallet based

5:26on what asset you want to give and through L1X swap which actually has more than 40 networks integrated bridgelessly through our native technology. You can swap from your token that you want to into the project token on the DEX directly. All these things happen in less than 60 seconds once you decide you want to buy a specific token and if you want to exit let's say you know you

5:51made a couple of dollars and you want you know to liquidate a little bit of it you could even swap out of that token into your desired u you know currency u from the same swap module as well as well with just two clicks you know this whole process has been automated and of course there's a lot of infrastructure working behind the scenes but we wanted

6:13to make it as simple as that.

Mhm. Wow. It sounds incredible. And being bridgeless and connecting different chains, I think that's the future of crypto. And there won't be so many different bridges and chains that you have to learn, you know, a thousand different subjects just to figure out how to trade one coin to another. So, thank you for simplifying

6:33that. And I also was reading about the AI powered part of the decks. And you know, I think that gets thrown around a lot as as a buzzword. Maybe you could just clarify how important is AI in the decks and does it add value?

Yeah, for sure. So, you know, whatever we do in layer 1x and quantum decks, it's all backed up by two

7:00things. One is research and one is practicality. So, my PhD is in blockchain and AI, the second PhD that I'm currently doing. M

and the way we go about it is if you were to borrow a certain amount as loan based on a non-reserve asset which is your token.

Mhm.

The crack over there is what if you mint enough of your tokens and swap out of the ecosystem. So the AI over

7:28there goes and analyzes your pool and gives it a risk score saying that it is good for people to add liquidity. It is good for people to swap into that specific project token. The holders of that specific token in that pool are strong and based on that specific score, the loan model allocates the loan to you or it can even remove the liquidity out of it as well. If it detects that there

7:53is a selling that goes on, it can frontr run your transaction knowing that you're trying to ruck and remove the liquidity before the transaction goes through. So a lot of smart contracts were baked together into this and the other component to it is the first one is already built. It's already working. There are you know users that are already buying into these tokens as well

8:15based on AI analysis. The second one that we are actually working on right now is the AI agentic framework. And when I say AI agentic framework, I don't mean to throw buzzwords around, you know, the bot is going to do X, Y, and Z based on, you know, hercuous data. It's going to analyze everything under the sun.

Mhm.

What it's going to do is it's going to

8:36give you intent. Meaning there are people trying to buy this coin. Previously, based on this utility, based on this category, based on this volume, there were people trying to buy such coins and it's going to learn over a period of time. Now

of course you know this is a time consuming factor not any company none of the company in the world has

8:56actually nailed down the AI agent yet. So we wanted to introduce this in a as a as a DCA compliant kind of an agent acting on your behalf you know slowly into the ecosystem. So the first one is you know giving the users enough understanding as to if this is a new token you know analyzing their smart contracts analyzing their white paper analyzing the pool should you be buying

9:21this or not based on your risk appetite while the AI agentic model is running behind the scenes learning before we release it to the people

very interesting I have a feeling like AI agents the functionality is increasing a lot where it's no longer us just talking to them and them giving us a response and then we have them we have to go do what they said eventually now

9:44we the they're they're giving better recommendations but also getting to the point where they can trade for us. If we say do you know make a trade then they can actually do the trading because right now you know you can ask to book a hotel and it gives you the link but you have to do it yourself. Yeah.

and we're getting to that inflection point where the AI is

10:05getting so smart it will be able to trade for us. So I'm looking forward to that. Yeah.

And last time we spoke was a couple months ago. We discussed the more intricately into layer 1x and the chain and quantum decks wasn't released yet. You mentioned they're just 6 weeks in the success so far. Can you talk about the vision and when we were

10:32speaking last time quantum DEX was the next logical step and what's the motivation behind having this as the principal next part of the ecosystem?

Yeah. So, I think the last time we spoke, we listed layer 1x at around 15 cents. You know, it's currently trading at $20 and you know, there are a couple of Yeah, there are a couple that are building with us good ones. And

10:58you know, with the decks, we didn't want to rush it. We wanted to build a product that people can use on a day-to-day basis. Where you know it's not just another form of AMM model that is you know you know spun out of just a layer one want and with the vision of the quantum decks what we anticipate and what we are working towards is building

11:22you know a nonreserve-based lending and borrowing model that is going to tie up in your identity system you know because layer 1x is multi-chain as well that identity identity system will help you to navigate across web three financial products but at the same time these financial products can you know can can let you borrow money based

11:47on non-reserve assets as well because as well because

the whole tenet of web 3 and decentralization at least in my opinion was opening up the doors you know through transparency and what that has done today is you know there are assets that are on the way up are not being looked So if there are security modules around the transparency then there will

12:10be people who might want you know who might have a higher risk appetite to enter into it and that's why that whole phase of a gated deck then we are opening it up to the people where it will all be categorized the pools will be categorized so that if there is a you know pool opening up with $100 versus five $5,000 you know what risks are associated with these pools as well

12:31versus well if this you know pool could actually take off in the future and you know it's it's tying up our identity system into a multi-chain environment which we envisioned through XTO which we built you know a couple of years ago.

Very interesting. And I want to dive into the liquidity side a little bit more with the loan. I probably most

12:56people that trade on DEX's aren't familiar with the liquidity pools unless they're actually contributing and earning in the traditional AMM liquidity pools on unis swap. But this liquidity loan is a little bit different with you know with how it works. Can you explain that difference in being able to launch your token or your coin on the decks and if that if

13:23there's a difference from how it works on unis swap?

Sure. So you know from both the angles let's say you're a project right and you wanted to list your token onto a DEX. The biggest challenge is liquidity number one. And according to certain numbers, you know, more than 65% of the pools have less than $25,000 in liquidity.

And if you have less than $25,000 in

13:50liquidity, the chance of your survival after 6 months is less than 15%.

Right? There is a huge crack over there. The second one is the biggest problem is dynamic emissions. meaning you know to get liquidity into your pool right you have to reward people to put liquidity and the moment you stop rewarding them the liquidity goes away.

So with AMM models the DEX works exactly

14:18like that where you know two tokens are paired together L1X and the project token and based on the demand of any of these tokens the price of that specific token is you know you get that price.

Mhm. The loan model what it does is there are more than seven to eight types of smart contracts. I won't get into the technicalities of it but there are more

14:39than seven to eight types of smart contracts that allow you to analyze your project. It gives you a risk score based on AI. It allows you to know what kind of collateral in your own project token you have to deposit and the smart contract then owns the liquidity into the pool. So if you do not repay back on a monthly basis

then the smart contract understands the

15:03risk is very high. It's time to start removing the liquidity from the pool. So all these things have been beautifully coupled together along with AI you know for projects to launch with enough liquidity and it is kind of a launch pad because nowadays people are also raising money by issuing out their tokens straight away on the decks right let's skip the sale let's launch the token and

15:26raise money because only the teams in their investor pool will start pushing out these coins into the decks as the demand keeps growing. Mhm. Very interesting. So it almost acts as like a launchpad as you're saying. Is there is that something that Quantum Dex might make more official where it's you're trying to actually help, you know, the marketing is, hey, this is really

15:52going to help not just the DEX, but help new projects launch and get the liquidity they need to not be one of those 15% that dies off in 6 months.

Exactly. And you know there is a huge gap here because you know there are projects that are wellnown who launch off the bat with a with humongous you know liquidity. There are types of projects that have minimal liquidity but

16:15that money is better used somewhere else maybe in tech in marketing because you're just locking up your money straight up over there right it's not efficient

and that is where we are going after the projects where they don't have that kind of liquidity available to throw but at the same time have got good utility. they've got good you know community

16:35base and they want to offer a an accessible you know trading to their users where the user from Solana or Bitcoin or Ethereum can buy into their token and can also sell out of it you know with minimal price impact. So that is the sweet spot. Well, if they want to use that for raising capital, so be it. But there are a couple of projects that are building with us and one of

16:59them is officially building a launchpad around this model. This model

interesting and yeah it when you lock in the team's funds into the liquidity pool that's capital that could be used to actually grow the business and grow the project but you need liquidity in the deck as well. So with the loan model, how much can you actually you know what are the factors in how

17:27much they can borrow and how big they can make the liquidity pool you know to reaching the full potential of what the loan liquidity model can do. One good thing that happened to us was the price of L1X went up from 15 cents to $20 and that allowed us to provide up to $2 million in liquidity pool loan for any project that comes on. Again, if it's a new project, right? If it's a new

17:53project, they have to go through the AI analysis of their project. It could be the website which gets scraped. It could be the white paper. It could be the smart contract. But there is a human element to it saying that you know if a project is trying to borrow over a million dollars that's where the human element comes in. But

the system has been designed in such a

18:15way that if you are given 10,000 L1X as a loan and you put let's say 100,000 of your coins into the pool at any given point in time the loan amount in the pool cannot be removed out. So you are building on top of that right and that's where the beauty of this anti-reuck feature comes in because if you are given a thousand L1X into the pool

the ratio that you have to

18:42maintain is 95% of the initial pool liquidity. So even the users over here know for a fact that the projects cannot mint extra tokens and swap them out of the liquidity as well. There will always be a buffer zone that has to be m maintained and all this is done through smart contracts. We have actually re-engineered a lot of AMM contracts that we looked at to have this feature

19:05baked into it. So we can freely give you know give up to $2 million of loan knowing that even if you have that loan it is used for you know better price impact. It is used for better trading experience. It is used so that community members can can understand that there is a good amount of TVL in here rather than just you know using that as exit liquidity.

19:28

Mhm. With the projects getting such large loans you're you're you're saying they're getting layer 1x. So is the trading is the main trading pair actually the token with layer 1x and you're giving that out because that mitigates more risk or you actually giving them stable coin or salana you know here's 2 million

so we are giving them L1X coin on the

19:55L1X network because the quantum is launched on the L1X network and I'll give you two examples like there is a project called M1X you know where it's an enterprisebased blockchain nothing to do with us you know they decided to have that they were given a loan of a million dollars, right? And you know they were they needed that because they had such

20:14buyers. On the other hand, there is a meme coin called Biscuit that launched with $10,000 in TVL as a loan and that shot up by 30,000%.

Now u all these you know trades that go through the network is designed for you to freely get into the ecosystem and out of the ecosystem using the L1X swap. So today if you came in, you bought a token, it jumped up by 10,000%, you can

20:39sell that and exit back into Ethereum that very moment. So it has been designed with that interoperability in mind. But because we want to make sure that L1X ecosystem grows, the network grows,

all the smart contracts, all the AI modules, all the DEX components are built on L1X.

That's great. And so with all of these loans available for these different

21:03projects, I could anticipate many different coins, some with great fundamentals, some probably just meme coins or nothing coins trying to take advantage of, building a liquidity pool, with, you know, interest free loans. So you mentioned there's like protection mechanisms where if the price goes down or if there's any of these other factors

21:24then the smart contracts and AI handles maintaining layer 1x is value. Is that right?

That's right. And you know two things to that like you know this product is already working. It's already live on the decks. It's already open sourced. And I think I'm very proud of the fact that the team worked super hard to make this AI you know you know based module

21:47that works seamlessly to you know build security around transparency.

so you know in terms of u the projects what we are actually doing is next week onwards anyone will be able to go in and create a pool but we are having different sections and we'll have different badges. So, if you created a pool using the loan module, you'll have a POI badge, which is a proof of intent

22:09that you want to grow your business, right? If you don't have the loan module attached to you, you will not have the badge, of course, but

all those tokens with less than $10,000 in TVL will be in another tab called no TVL pools. So, the users exactly know what they need to buy or what they want to buy and it will also analyze the pools for you. Right. Currently

22:33we've got around five pools. In less than 6 weeks, we have $1.5 million in TVL that are that is already there on the decks and we are expecting to go upwards of 25 to $50 million in TVL in the DEX as well. But at the same time, the QSD holders. So, we currently have a quantum sale of the token, you know, that's currently going on, the pre-sale going on. We've kept it at a

22:58low valuation, only $2 million valuation for the QSD sale. The QSD holders have a benefit to this, which is if you stake your QSD, you will get a governance token in return where you will be able to go in and vote for a specific pool

where the rewards or emissions will be driven towards

but in return you could get the project tokens or USD as a form of reward. So

23:24there is an emission model also that we have you know installed into the decks which is being rolled out gradually for QSD holders to benefit out of it as well.

Mhm. That's interesting. And I like that there's categories and I think Binance and some major centralized exchanges also do that. You know there's an innovation zone. There's like a here's

23:45the low caps which you know could rock at 30,000% as you said or they might not make it. It's good to have that transparency especially since everything should be on the blockchain smart contracts to know which are the loan the projects with the loan models and which ones are you know fully funded themselves from the from the team funds. And you mentioned there's a AI

24:08analyzer in terms of users coming to trade. Is there AI technology that gives them more information besides just having the categories?

Yes. So there is something called as an AI loan analyzer u that is already live on the on the Rex. The moment you put in the token name or the token address, it will go and scan more than 250 plus metrics which also is what is

24:36is a part of my PhD project and it will give you a thorough understanding of the pool in simple to understand language. Right. M

and extending upon that is also an intent based system that we are trying to build where you know whenever a pool launches because you can't keep a track on all the pools that keep launching every day. Whenever a pool

24:55launches you will be able to navigate your agent based on a certain intent in the future.

And the launch you said is right around the corner for non-whit public access. what are the next major steps in the road map once you go open to the public?

Yeah, so initially we wanted to make sure that the DEX is working you know perfectly. So 6 weeks of intensive

25:22testing auditing it's working great you know u our finality time is as close as avalanche it's as that fast right

and in terms of opening it up to the people so there are two different options one is if you wanted to be in the primary list you will have to have at least $10,000 in TVL either you buy L1X and pair it there or you can borrow loan and do it if you go in with

25:47less than that you will be in the low TVL you know place that is on the listing side. In terms of you know us making sure that the users have some great experience

we are working super hard on having AI agentic intentionbased model in there where it will allow a user a user to set up their profile and automatically trade or DCA in on users behalf which we don't

26:13see on the DEX today like the loan model is brand new. the ability for you to actually list your token on the decks and swap in and swap out of multiple networks is new. And you know at the same time you know making it accessible in less than like 10 minutes of you having your token getting alone being multi-chain you know is something that we wanted to

26:37bring to the people like it shouldn't be too complex to launch your own token right

but in the future we are positioning this in two different fronts. One is this whole non-custodial non-reserve asset based lending and borrowing method where other people or other dexes can also borrow this technology for themselves. And the second one is

26:58this AI agentic framework because L1X and XTO infrastructure is huge right and this technology allows us to go and build multi-chain AI agents for you as well and we want to start with quantum decks as the first where this AI agents come in and trade on your behalf.

Mhm. Yeah, I've seen the volumes for DEX dexes and I think Hyperliquid really helped with that, but I've I'm seeing

27:26this major transition where especially because there's just been more hacks and issues with centralized exchanges that more people are realizing digital assets were meant to be held on our own custody and traded non-custodially and with smart contracts, AI, blockchain transparency instead of just having a balance in an exchange and trusting the company

27:51that's what your actual balance is. Yeah, I completely agree to this and you know I mean you've seen the whole wave of you know Texas where you know you've seen exodus of people from unis swap into pancake swap you've seen exodus from people from EVM to Solana networks right and all this has you know I kind of think that you know this there's like a monopoly going on

28:17in terms of not letting you go out of the ecosystem and that's why bridges also fail because they don't want you to go from one place to the other, right? It's like let's just yeah, instead of, you know, building roads, let's just build our cities and keep everyone in, right?

but our intention has always been, you know, user first where projects can

28:36list easily. You know, users can, you know, transparently see if they really wanted to go into that project or not and an easier way to get in and out of that ecosystem. And I think we are one of the only dexes out there that actually allow you know to list in less than 10 minutes but at the same time have this whole loan and AI thing come together and prove that it

29:02can be done in a in a decentralized way.

Mhm. Well, I'm looking forward to the main launch and seeing lots of different assets there for the people that actually have projects and teams that have coins. Are they able to do they have to wait for this main launch or can they go right now and look at the liquidity loan model and sort of set

29:24up their the trading pairs on the coins?

Yeah. So if you know if you currently want to go in and list you just go to l1xapp.com you know just go to the quantum section and just fill up a form and once it is whitelisted you will be able to go in and continue through the self onboarding portal where you'll get a loan and you'll set up your own pool but from the next week

29:47onwards you know if you don't have you know if you don't want the loan you can or if you even wanted the loan you will be able to go through that same process test without any manual intervention into it. So we were testing this AI loan analyzer because this is the first time it's been done right this is the first ever time you know someone has come up with a

30:08non-reserve asset based loan module that allows you to list as well. So we were testing it rigorously it's tested the product is working. So from the next week onwards projects can go in and start listing their token in less than 10 minutes.

Incredible. And what's the best way for people that are just regular traders and want to maybe even try their first DEX

30:30experience out? What's the best way for them to learn more about the uniqueness of Quantum Decks and then to go and try it?

Yeah, I think you know, if you just go to l1xapp.com you know, it's a pretty holistic website. It's it's it's I think I'm in love with that website. It's it's taken us a lot of effort and time to build that. I mean, if you want to swap,

30:51you want to trade, you want to buy an identity based NFT, it's all in there. It's all in one place. You just connect your wallet once and you can move across different sections of the website. And start doing that. And you know at the same time I think what is also very important is trying out the loan analyzer right for users or projects that want to go in and you know

31:12because the hardest thing was bringing all this data on chain and layer 1x infrastructure you know helped us a lot in that in that specific area and quantum decks even although it's new like you look at Neo protocol that has only got 20 projects on their decks in so many years you know whereas a new deck coming up on a multi-chain layer has already got five in less than 6

31:35weeks and once we open up the floodgates,

right? It's it's anyone's guess after that what happens.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing it and yeah, I think we need these new technologies like the loan model, AI analyzers, and brid bridgeless and crosschain, all of this stuff and then put that all in the background so people don't even

31:59need to learn the technicalities. they can just go and they can trade easily from whatever asset they have to whatever they want to trade and make it easy as possible. So, I appreciate your insights into sort of this DeFi 3.0 where we're at with all of this and the advancements. I'm wishing you and the team all the best in the public launch for quantum decks and QST

32:22and I'm looking forward to checking it out myself. I will leave a link in the show notes below for the Layer 1X app, Quantum Dex, and the socials as well, so people can follow along. And thank you so much for taking the time, Kevin.

Yeah, always great, great to be here. I'm looking forward to come back again. Thanks for having me.