Helios Horizons - Episode 5 - Unlocking the Value of Validators with Phase 4.0 with Sever Moldovean

Kevin Lydon: 0:05

Okay, hello and welcome to another episode of Helios Horizons, and this is episode five. And today we're going to be talking with the one and only Sever, and we'll be talking about unlocking the value of validators in phase four. I'm really excited about this one. There's a lot to talk about. We've been talking in the background, preparing for this, and I'm really looking forward to explaining Phase 4 and talking about what kind of value can be unlocked through validator providers and what we can do for the ecosystem as both delegators and validators. So, without any further ado, I'd like to introduce Sever, who will give a bit of his background in case you don't already know, and we'll move forward from there. Take it away.

Sever: 0:56

Thank you, Kevin. Hello everyone, I will not bore you too much with how I started in Web3, but I do have a story that I, I think I haven't told yet. I promised to Kevin that I would tell it. He doesn't know it either. So I got into crypto in around 2017 and this was the ICO mania, so to speak. So I invested a lot of my savings into ICOs and I made like from $50,000, like around $3 million in tokens in the peak of the 2018 bull market and, of course, instead of selling, I started this online influencer thing where I would review ICOs and share my brilliance with other people, because if I invested and made money, it was because I was a genius, not because there was a bull market. Not long after, of course, those $3 million quickly went to nearly zero, which sent me down a spiral of depression and anyway, it was pretty bad.

Sever: 2:02

But eventually I kept at the Web3 thing and I got noticed by Elrond. So I started working with Elrond in 2019. And one of the first things that I was assigned to do with Elrond in 2019 was to run the Battle of Nodes competition. So for people new here who don't know what Battle of Nodes is basically in 2019, this was pre-Mainnet, so the Elrond, what it was called at the time Mainnet was not launched. It launched actually in July 2020. And before that, we had a public competition. It was called Battle of Nodes, and basically people would run Validator Node software in a public test net and just test and find bugs.

Sever: 2:47

And this is how I met a lot of the cool people that I stayed friends with from the validator community and this is also how I met kevin and I was reviewing our conversation.

Sever: 3:05

I don't know if you remember it, Kevin, but I think it was early when the pandemic started and we had that crash. I think Bitcoin went to 4,500, and then ERD dropped to some crazy, crazy low amounts. And I remember and this is the story that I never told you, Kevin, I remember that you told me like the next day, like yeah, it's like interesting, some orders that I had set like really, really low got executed. So I kind of got you know, got more interested into Elrond and so on, and you mentioned, like the price that you bought. And what I never told you is that because I was so panicked and because I was completely out of money and because everything was crashing, I woke up at 4 am. I couldn't sleep. And I woke up at 4 am and I think it was like the worst of the worst of the crash and I logged on to Binance and I sold all the ERD that I had there.

Sever: 4:06

It was like 2 million or something. Yeah, this was more than a validator and I took the price like just immediately dump everything out of complete desperation. And I think I took the price to the point where your orders executed and I looked now I tried to find the transaction into the, into the Binance history, but it doesn't hold the transaction for so far back because I wanted to make it into an NFT for you. I don't know whether or not my desperation turned into your, you know, made your orders execute.

Sever: 4:40

That makes me feel kind of bad, really no, it's a really good story. Man, of course I've been an idiot. Obviously. It's just a word of advice to everyone out there If they think I'm wise and just because they see me trying to explain everything, I'm not. I'm a bigger idiot than everyone here and this was just a story for an example. But I think all the bad things, I think got turned into good, because whether or not this particular price movement got your orders to execute and then got you a bit more interested in your idea or not, but anyway, here I am, this is here we are, and this is the story that I wanted to share with everyone. Just in case, you guys want to, if you, if any of us are here for the price component and which I think is important for everyone else, and everyone is thinking that, oh, there are some wise people out there. Maybe, for whatever reason, you're thinking I'm one of them. I'm not. I just wanted to. I just wanted to share this story.

Kevin Lydon: 5:43

That's funny I was always interested in ERD, right, like in fairness, and then, yeah, I think the thing there is just, you know, expect the worst is kind of what I'd say. The moral of the story is, on my side. Expect the worst, plan for the worst and, who knows, you might have someone sell into you who you know. That's crazy.

Sever: 6:10

No, no, no, definitely not. I'm saying this as, as you know, a funny story to be told years later. Obviously I was too ashamed to tell it to you the next day. When you say like, oh, it's like you know some idiot people like why would anyone sell at these prices? And I'm like biting my fingernails oh, god damn it.

Kevin Lydon: 6:25

Okay, okay, anyway, moving on, yeah, moving on.

Sever: 6:31

So just maybe you know, Kevin, we put in a document just a brief history of, like, the staking phases. Is it worth going through them? I think it's just fine, yeah.

Kevin Lydon: 6:45

I think we can just touch on them really quickly and just kind of say, say where we've been, where we're going. It doesn't have to be a major conversation, right, and like I, I can start just quickly, like the original staking was on New Year's Eve 2019, I believe, and I was driving back as fast as I could to a computer because there was only it was released i n stages, and I remember I made the first stage and I was all proud that I made it. And now you know we're here at staking phase four, right, and so it's been. It's just been a pretty wild journey, and everything in between, right, like the, 2019, we did a 251 TPS test, right, and then there's the pre-launch of the network in july 2020, and then you know, we work our way into where we are now, with phase 3.5, and with phase 4.0 on the horizons, which maybe we want to get into now.

Sever: 7:45

Yeah, it was pretty crazy. Everyone right now running validators and especially all of us delegating. We take the ease of delegation with xPortal and from the web wallet Just everything is so nice and elegant and it's so easy to choose one of the many providers you're on. But it has been quite the journey and it's so easy to choose one of the many providers this on. But it was. It has been quite quite the journey and it was not always like that and it was immense, immense project progress, sorry, from when the the project got started and from the network got started. But here we are, with staking phase four, which is I don't think this is the last stage, by the way, because we still don't have slashing, which I think this will be the last, last phase, but I think staking phase four is perhaps one of the most important steps towards democratizing and further expanding, like who gets to have a say, basically, in running the network, because in the beginning it was a limited number of validators.

Sever: 8:46

I think it was 2169. It was this crazy amount of validators, just because there's also a story here there. There's also a story here, because it was supposed to be, I think, 1600, but then there was a decision to create another shard, so there were more validators and because of the EGLD economics it was just this 2,169 number was just completely unexpected, but it was resulted out of some calculations. And then it was extended to 3,200 validators, which was already larger. And then there was the validator queue, so people could just wait in queue to join whenever nodes left, but still this, you know, did not solve one of the.

Sever: 9:34

It was not a problem, it was more like a feature. Obviously a lot of people took the leap of faith and took the opportunity to basically take a risk on what was then an unknown network and to build a large validator base and obviously they contributed a lot to the network. But over time also, I think what we see now for those of us looking into the Explorer and the validator section there are these big, big providers with hundreds of servers and basically they're there to stay. They're very important and they brought a lot of contributions to the network on one hand, but on the other hand, the dynamics of the network are pretty low and perhaps new players trying to make a move on MultiversX technology are perhaps discouraged to to do so because of this lack of dynamics, and this is why this is finally bringing us to staking phase four.

Kevin Lydon: 10:26

Yeah, so it's going to be crazy dynamic where it is, but like, let's explain phase 4. 0 like I'm a five-year-old, yeah, Like so I'm your nephew and you're going to explain it to me.

Sever: 10:46

Oh okay, all right, I think we're going to need a few concepts beyond that. I have a five-year-old son and I know exactly the level of conversation that you need to have with a five-year-old kid, and this is too hard to explain.

Kevin Lydon: 11:00

But let's just assume, of course.

Sever: 11:08

Yeah, let's just assume some things here. So, just the status quo, so like how things are right now we have 3200 validator nodes that are, let's say, active or busy or earning rewards. Each validator node has to stake 2,500 EGLD and that's the minimum right. And if they're in and if they have 2,500 EGLD, basically they can stay in for as long as they want. Also, people can stake additional EGLD on top of the base stake of 2,500. This additional stake is called top-up stake and basically the APR that you're earning from the base stake is a bit higher than what you earn from the top-up stake. So there's this also incentive somehow for some validators to keep their validators in with no top-up whatsoever, so they earn as high an APR as possible. So they earn as high an APR as possible.

Sever: 12:08

And what changes now in staking phase four? Instead of this number of 3,200 validators being fixed on a first-come, first-served basis as it is right now, this will change, right. So the validator's nodes will be basically ranked by amount of EGLD staked per node. So there will be a sum of base and top-up and basically the first 3,200 nodes. I'm not sure if this figure is correct. I think it was 1,600. Now I have a second thought. Looking at the numbers, maybe you know better than me, Kevin.

Kevin Lydon: 12:44

It's 3,200 that enter right, but then 1,600 that are active, correct, okay yeah.

Sever: 12:51

So basically the first 3,200 by amount of EGLD staked from largest to lowest, are in and then the rest are out. And there's a dynamic auction process which basically means that if some of the validators which are out or new validators, you start a new validator node and let's say the amount of EGLD stake per node to be in is at around I don't know 4,000 EGLD, then you come with 4,000 EGLD, then you come with 4,500 EGLD, then basically your node gets in and the lowest from the rank are kicked out. And this is really very important because basically anyone can come with like a more, let's say, aggressive EGLD stake to move in. And I will also mention here the maximum of 50 nodes per provider. Basically, each infrastructure provider, as you see them branded there in the validator staking providers page, they can have maximum 50 nodes per provider, which is a decrease from right now where basically there are no limits and there are a few providers with more than 50 nodes here and now the challenge here will be for providers to you know they are limited to this 50 nodes per provider.

Sever: 14:21

So basically, for providers to be able to attract delegations they will have to, you know, compete a bit more with one another and I'm sure this will create some healthy competition. Again, nothing against the people who are here from the from the beginning, but obviously the change makes it so that the staking providers have to be more dynamic in their offering. They have to engage their communities more and they have to kind of compete for attention and for the EGLD getting delegated to them if they want to be a part of the active validator network and earn rewards and distribute them to the delegators and take their fees from this.

Kevin Lydon: 15:07

Yeah, what's interesting is that anyone can come in, and anyone's going to be able to come in now and with, say, like a hundred thousand EGLD and have a node within an epoch if they bid correctly. Right, the bidding system in the battle of? Uh, what do we call that? Battle of stakes I think phase four. Um.

Sever: 15:27

Battle of Stakes.

Kevin Lydon: 15:27

Battle of Stakes. Battle of Stakes, yeah, and so what was interesting was and that was every two hours, it was their two-hour epoch. So you know, that was a bit of a challenge. But what would happen is when your node would exit active service. You'd then go down into this, this queue, right, and the thing was is the team then, every now and then, would just add a ton of EGLD and all of a sudden your node won't make it in because it doesn't enter next 320. It was about 320 nodes every every epoch.

Kevin Lydon: 16:00

But what's interesting is, yeah, at any point in time, a big player or anyone can come in and bring that bid price up which is going to, which, as you said, is going to force providers to work together or to find ways to have their delegators to see benefit in what they're doing. And especially with you know what are you doing with the commissions, right, and we'll get into that a bit further in a minute. But what this does is it kind of improves decentralization as well, right? So, if you want to maybe touch on the decentralization side of phase four, and why having this open market in every epoch, a queue, well, an auction is going to help increase the decentralization nature of the ecosystem.

Sever: 16:51

Right, right, right. So first of all, I think, like you said, new players perhaps waiting on the sidelines looking at the MultiversX technology is interesting, but perhaps they don't see enough room to move in in a way that allows them to invest and build in a way that is synergistic. So basically, you know they don't just invest the money into building projects that drives equal value, but then you know there are others who extract value out of it. So now it would make sense for people to muscle in, as it were, and to become established and to start working for the ecosystem. I think this is a really, really good thing.

Sever: 17:39

I think also this will bring also a better distribution for rewards.

Sever: 17:45

So imagine right now, if you look into a list of validators and the ones you see, like the ones who are kept with the amount of EGLD that they received to keep the APR up obviously some of them when you look at, when you drill down inside, you don't see that the amount of top-up is as large per validator as it could be, which kind of like limits the amount of EGLD to be staked or at least kind of like makes the distribution of the APR from the rewards kind of like uneven.

Sever: 18:20

So I think this will be a great dynamic, also for delegators. Basically, the average APR for delegators will increase, especially for newer ones. I'm not sure how many of you are using some of the tools, for example from Dr Delphi, to snipe some delegation spot with one of the providers that offers higher APR, and so on. This is probably a challenge, but this is obviously going to go away in this new format, which I like. I think also this will a bit kind of like, let's say, change the balance of power, like again, nothing against the established validators with a large amount of nodes who have been, let's say, a classical presence in the ecosystem. But giving the opportunity for new people with new ideas and new tools and new mindsets to come in and kind of like challenge a bit the status quo can be a really really good, good thing.

Kevin Lydon: 19:25

So I'm really excited for sure, and and over time, one of the ideas I kind of had is I was talking to someone about it the other day, I can't really remember but, imagine the amount of, just solo, solo stakers out there who might have 10, 20,000 EGLD or even just the bare minimum right. If we set up, you know, like these one-click, these, like well, we do have the one-click deployment with Tencent right, so if we can just start educating solo staking providers or solo delegators and empower them to set up their own, you know, two, three node provider for themselves. Then, all of a sudden, while the EGLD might be leaving like I'm saying this as a, as a staking provider while it might leave my provider, it will also go into a very decentralized manner and they won't have to wait four months, even more to to get that node active and earn their own APR and take control of validating for themselves. So there's also a very good point there where, current delegators who might have the tech ability or or do have the tech ability but never really bothered to go down that road or didn't want to wait for the queue, now will be able to do so.

Kevin Lydon: 20:47

So it'll be interesting to see the distribution of EGLD after this goes over the couple of months, and whether people actually unstake to start their own, or whether people unstake to go to providers that provide better value. Or we see programs that actually increase the level of staking, which is obviously what I would like to see the most, is see programs, developed by by fellow validators and validator providers, or even delegators, that that incentivize staking, with maybe smaller providers or providers that have that, that are that are adding real value to the network. Right, and I think that's kind of where we're headed next with this conversation.

Sever: 21:30

I like it and I would like to dwell a bit on that idea because I know that a lot of the projects existing projects in Multivers X right now perhaps even like NFT collections or meme coins or whatever they gather EGLD from selling their tokens or their NFTs and the ones who are really careful and cautious about managing their funds, they stake it and they unstake periodically only the amounts that they need to manage themselves and then the rest they keep staked.

Sever: 22:03

And with your idea, I think it would make a lot of sense for them to basically remove the stake, start their own staking provider muscle in, as I was mentioning earlier, and then leverage their communities to attract delegations towards them and maybe use some sort of like incentives like NFT distribution or token distribution or whatever is there. So, yeah, I think this is going to have a lot of change in the dynamics in the ecosystem and I think a lot of the projects that are quote unquote just communities will have to will have the opportunity to dabble also on the technical side of things and, as you said, with one-click deployment and how easy things are and how usable the tools are. It's just incredible how easy it is to deploy a validator node and cheap, right.

Kevin Lydon: 22:55

So let's talk about multi-key, right. What a lot of people seem to forget. There's so much education out there that we could be talking about, that kind of gets missed. And, just before we get in, that people kind of forget that the background and and the whole infrastructure is built on the validators, right, and we were the beginning of the chain and we'll be there at the beginning and we'll be there till ever, or whatever, right, until AI comes in and takes over, right, I mean, like it's a Skynet type stuff, right, like apocalyptic, but yeah, no, like t he thing is is there's always leaps and bounds happening there and, most recently, we also had multi-key, which I don't know if that many people know what multi-key is, and maybe you want to explain to people what multi-key is and why Multi-key has not only slashed our prices it's made it or slashed our overhead costs. It's actually made things extremely easier to run.

Sever: 23:54

Yeah, so I will tell you what multi-key is and I have also a story about multi-key, if you believe it or not. Anyway, so like multi-key basically is this I will start with how validators used to run before. So basically, if you look at the requirements for running a validator node, you need I think it was four CPUs, 8 gigs of RAM and 200 gigabytes of storage space for one validator node. Gigabytes of storage space for one validator node and what the validator node does with all this compute and storage. Basically, it runs a validator node, it listens to network traffic, it runs the calculations so that you know everything it sees in the networks, it compares with what, the conclusions it reaches on by itself and signs like yes, this, I agree with this.

Sever: 24:41

This is basically what's happening at the validator node level and this multi-key setup basically allows people, like a staking provider with four or more nodes, to basically bundle those more nodes onto only four. And why four? Because you have the meta chains shard zero, shard one and shard two. So basically we have four shards. So with a node in each shard and with the now it's anyway too technical, but with the validator key assigned dynamically to one shard or the other after each epoch. Basically, you don't care, you deploy as many keys as you want on those four nodes.

Sever: 25:29

I have servers with 22 keys running on four validator nodes on one server Because it's a consolidation. Basically, if you have five keys allocated to shard one, you don't need five servers running those whole computation to sign five times for each of the keys. You could basically do it with just one server signing five times. You know, one server doing the calculations once and signing five times for each of the keys. So this is basically what the multi-key infrastructure provides.

Sever: 26:03

And this is a really, really cool thing because for me personally, I told you Waterworks has 22 validator nodes and I used to run I think it was like 12 servers with like four or five nodes distributed on each server and there were redundancies between them and so on. So basically I was able to collapse my infrastructure to just two huge servers, but it's only two of them and I run two because one is basically main and the one with redundancy. There's also built-in redundancy, so like one of the servers completely dies from a data center or whatever, the other one just immediately picks up. And because they're in two different continents if I have one in America and I have one in Europe. Basically it's pretty easy and it's pretty low maintenance and you can set three or you can set four up, whatever if you want for additional redundancy.

Kevin Lydon: 26:58

But the cost of running servers has dramatically decreased our cost in Helios went down by 67%, yeah, maybe even more than that. Like we had, it's crazy. It's crazy how much, like I had to actually call our provider and, I decommissioned a whole data center because the the way we work, we work on a distributed cloud system, with bare metal servers, attached to them. But, we had, eight different data centers around the world and I was able to actually bring that down quite significantly, and had to renegotiate because of how much money I was going to save. Like, the release fee still didn't amount to how much money I was saving because of multi-key. So now, now we went from, let's say, just hypothetically running that 10, 000 a month cost for servers to under a thousand. Yeah, like it's it, it's crazy. But like the overall, was, I think, something like 70-80 or something like that, because there's other costs involved, like with me and Mark, obviously, but, in terms of just the servers, yeah, it was probably almost a 90% improvement on j ust the pure cost of servers. If you add mine and Mark's costs, then that's where the rest comes into play. But yeah, it's crazy.

Kevin Lydon: 28:34

So, with that said, now it's a really lucrative business. It always was right. I mean, the bear market was a bit rough, but at the same time now, with this improvement with multi-key validators are now most validators should be switched over by now are now also doing quite well, and you know, it's kind of like what will we do to do something back to the ecosystem, right? How can we use that to our advantage and how can we, as validators and delegators, step away from the narrative that's out there and do something of our own? Right, it's great following the narrative of the team and they're doing great jobs, but why can't we create our own narrative now as well?

Kevin Lydon: 29:26

Right, and start building something around, around what we we have, cause we do have. We are, in sense, our own, our, our, our own little corporation or mafia, if you will. Right, that has the ability to do quite a bit within the ecosystem if we all work together and provide value. So that's where kind of the conversation I think is going to go next. I don't know if you want to tag on to that.

Sever: 29:57

Oh boy, do I. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really interesting how things have evolved over the years. I just opened the Explorer and I was looking at the MultiversX community delegation, which I think it was called Elrond Foundational Nodes, which were basically the bulk of the network and right now they're like a minority, what is like 500 nodes. So, like you know, just if MultiversX, the team, shut down all its servers, we wouldn't feel it basically right. But if every other, every staking provider shut down all their servers, the network would basically not run anymore. And this is a great power. And you know, it's like my favorite wise guy, wise man Spiderman's uncle, said you know, with great power comes great responsibility. And I think it's wise to reflect on that, especially in the context, like you mentioned, Kevin. You know, like this narrative, like the team, why isn't the team doing something or something else? Or the team said this, or the team said that. I think it's time to acknowledge that this network is no longer run by the team.

Sever: 31:07

It's run by, especially the validator network supporting the servers, but also the by you know, by trusting the staking providers, with their hard-earned money, which is converted to EGLD, then put to work for the for for the security of the network, and I think it's good really.

Sever: 31:27

I think it's an important moment to realize this, to realize how far decentralization on MultiversX has gone and how much power now sits with the staking providers and how much more power now will come to the staking providers via staking phase four, with a much more diverse and dynamic landscape of infrastructure providers. Right, I think it's great also that the multi-key change came right now, even though it could have come a lot earlier, and I will still tell the story later, but I think it's important that we have now staking phase 4 coming. We have multi-key, we have really everything in place for the staking providers to take a more critical and active role in running the network and building on the network. And I was looking here at some figures. So, for those of you who are maybe not aware of, like the MultiversX economics paper, you know that EGLD has a maximum supply of 31,400,000.

Sever: 32:41

There are pie E in pie times 10 to the 7 or whatever E ever in existence, and they are gradually released in a decreasing amount each year and starting with July this year we will be entering year five and in year five 1,255,000 E will be released to be captured by validators as rewards. And if you think about the average validator fee, which is around 10% right now sometimes higher, sometimes lower, but it's on average 10% that's 125,000 e-gold going to the staking provider, which at $40 per e-gold is $5 million, at $200 per e-gold is $25 million. So imagine if we took like maybe 10% of that or 20% or 50% of that, you know, and we put it towards. Uh, we, you know, we, as taking providers, we basically take 5 20% or whatever the amount of the fees we get and we pull them together to start some projects, or at least we or you could start some projects individually and like kind of, like you know, everyone says, you know, I'm working on this or on that and I'm funding this with this amount of money.

Sever: 34:03

So basically, not only would the staking providers, who are the most involved, and, I would argue, also some of the more technically savvy from the community, right, I think I would argue that, you know, a staking provider is more technically savvy than, let's say, an NFT or a meme token community owner, which is not to say that they're not important, but I would say that a staking provider also has the knowledge and the tools and the capabilities to go and build something else right.

Sever: 34:30

So what if we all set aside some of the fees that we collect moving forward and then fund various things that we could do and there's like a number of things, of course, we could do and everyone could list what they're doing. So, like there are some you know ideas here, like I don't know, we could do marketing. We could like sponsor influencers or ads or news sites or blogs or whatever. We could launch new products, like launchpads or explorers we already have a few, but maybe reviving some. I love, for example, d Delphi's EGLD scan Tools, whatever tools and protocols we're missing exchanges and new DEXs but also supporting existing projects to reach, maybe on centralized exchanges to you know, sponsor them with listings or whatever, to set up VCs for investing in projects, and all these things that could be done right.

Kevin Lydon: 35:27

And what's most important is that this could be DAO-led right, and where the community can vote on what project we think or what I mean. The marketing things actually are a really interesting one. And I just kind of just realised, the implications of that and yeah, paying for the influencer spaces or you know, combining with community initiatives, or funding, helping to fund community initiatives, the validator space, you know, and, yeah it, you know, it could be 10%, it could be 50%, it could be 5%, it could be whatever. But the thing is, you know, like in Helios, for example, there was a period of time where, where I was putting away 5% of all commissions into a, into a reserves wallet, right, and that reserves wallet was then distributed to anyone who staked for X amount of time. But who's to say I don't take that 5% and start putting it in now to a smart contract, multi-key, multi-sig, that is backed by a DAO, and we decide where we're going to fund the money, like no coins in return, no ICO stuff or or stuff like that. It's just, hey, we have some grants as validators, and here's all the validators that contributed.

Kevin Lydon: 36:44

Now you as a community, and this is where the vote comes in you as a community get to vote on which ones we think we should, we should give to you first, and obviously you can't really open the gates there and just let in any old projects, right? So there is going to have to be some form of system to prevent a project that isn't really a project, right? But I think it's a brilliant idea, and NFT projects and projects out there that are earning income can add to this as well. Right, it doesn't have to be a validator registry per se, right, but yeah, it's an incredible idea that I think, when phase four comes around, us as validators, and maybe us as a community even, should maybe come together and talk about this more actively and and set up a basically a registry.

Kevin Lydon: 37:41

Is is kind of what we're talking about, where where there's a smart contract with a certain amount of funds that get maybe put in monthly or quarterly, and then we look at what people are working on. Maybe there's gaps, maybe there's an influencer we really like, or maybe there's, you know, something, we might want to put a giant billboard somewhere. You know what I mean. There's so many, there's so many use cases to that. Or even just loyalty programs, the building of a loyalty program for the overall staking providers who participate. There's there's a ton of use cases there. So that's a really good idea, and I'm going to have to credit that one to Sever. Obviously you heard it here first people, so yeah, I'll let you continue on that. You just got me super excited.

Sever: 38:28

I'm not even going to say that this was my idea. I heard it from I think it was Jose who told me this in Madrid that he was speaking to some friends or people in the I don't want to assume that Jose has friends in the Solana ecosystem, obviously just people. So he was speaking to some people in the Solana ecosystem and this is basically what the validators did after the whole debacle, when the main promoter of Solana, which was Sam Bankman-Fried, got into trouble and eventually into jail and everything was going to shit and basically the validators on Solana just came together and was like hey guys, we have to do something. And they came up with a lot of cool ideas and they funded a lot of the things. So you know, I definitely will not take credit for this idea, but I think it's a really good idea and I think, like you mentioned, Kevin, there are so many cool things and it just popped open a can of like potential ideas here and I think we definitely need to get the discussion going, the ideas flowing, and to see which way we can push this.

Sever: 39:42

I like, obviously, that you mentioned also the NFTs and other projects that can contribute to this and I encourage everyone who can contribute to do it, because I think it's time that we move together as a unit and as a team to push things further than the combined efforts of what are a stellar team of people but are still only a handful of people. The team can't do right. I mean, we can't expect to grow, to be in the top 10 or the top five if we only rely on a handful of people sitting together huddled in the office and we as a community don't move to, to do anything. And I think this is a great call to action for all of us to get you know, to get our hands down and dirty and get to to work. And I think we can do like a really, really great amount of things. We have the tech. We just need to put it out there for people to see it and to use it. Yeah, we have our own narrative.

Kevin Lydon: 40:42

The whole point is that we have our own narrative and we love the team. The team is great, but we have our own narrative and we can go out there and hammer that home. The whole point of decentralization is not having to rely on one single point of failure, right, and so not that the team is a failure, but they're just another, another big branch in, or the root of our tree, but we're able to offshoot as many branches as we want and and go off and and do what we do and and do that. I mean, you take a look at Ethereum, even like you may mention Solana, but you know Ethereum, you know people just ran with it and did their own thing, created their own ecosystem, Uni swap, for example. You know there's, there's all these people who just built on top of it without permission or without looking to to the Ethereum team for guidance. They just roll with it and, yes, tons of issues with with Ethereum, you know, and and all that stuff. But the point is is that you know the tech is by far the best on MultiversX. We know this. It's scalable, the security is unmatched with Guardians. And we're sitting there as a community, fighting amongst each other and trying to all all get the same piece of the pie, when really we can all move forward, and create our own narratives, and I think that's what we're talking about with with here, starting with maybe the validators, or even with, you know, NFT projects or other projects out there who might start creating their own nodes and then funneling some of those commissions towards community projects or to other tools that are needed, you know, or other marketing, that that that might be needed.

Kevin Lydon: 42:31

It's such a powerful thing to kind of break away and do your own thing. And the thing is, just because you're doing your own thing doesn't mean you're not going to get the recognition from the team right. There's this whole thing where you know everyone's looking for validation, which is no pun intended, but everyone's looking for validation and, and you know, a nice pat on the back from Dad, you did well, son, guess what? That doesn't exist in business. You know, that, that your competitors aren't going to tap you on your back.

Kevin Lydon: 43:10

The technology you use, Microsoft's not going to come say, oh hey, good job, setting up Outlook for this. You know that this company right, like, like if that was your business, they're not going to pat you on the back. But you can go out and set up Outlook for an entire company if you really wanted to do that, which is a mistake, by the way. But yeah, so that's that's kind of the point Like, let's make our own voice. Go out there, make your own voice, and the team will be there to support it at times. But you got to remember they're out there doing their thing and building something that's absolutely incredible that we can now leverage. We don't have to be looking to them for everything. So, yeah, that's pretty well the end of my rant.

Sever: 43:55

I chuckled a few times. I was on mute, but the whole Outlook thing was hilarious. I also had a funny image in mind. Funny slash said you know, with like the team, with like Beniamin and everyone, you know doing everything and pushing everything. You know, like creating a protocol where there was none, starting a network where there was none, starting an exchange where there was none, a launchpad where there was none.

Sever: 44:18

It's like I have this vision of like a tired runner, you know, like maybe Beniamin, you know trying to run and pass the baton and everyone's like no, no, go ahead, you're doing fine. You know, just keep running, you're the best. You know like how far can we expect you know one team again, as stellar as they are, to go on their own? So definitely the time to move here. And also I would comment on this expectation that you mentioned, this validation from the teams. Like oh, I've seen it literally nowhere, in no ecosystem. I don't think anyone was waiting for Vitalik to give his blessing for whatever was being built there. Like you said, people just ran with it.

Sever: 45:01

And I see this as like a sort of like a thing. You know, like I have people coming to me like the validators. I was like ah, can Beniamin maybe tweet about our project and so on to kind of like make it official that what we're doing is endorsed by the team? It's like, no, we don't need that, we definitely don't need this, and it's maybe even the wrong thing to be looking for, and I couldn't agree more that we definitely have to carve our own paths and like independent and whatever. If Beniamin and the team will be there and cheering us from the sidelines, you know good for us, but it's definitely not needed, right.

Sever: 45:37

And yeah, but it's definitely not needed right and yeah, it's uh, yeah, but it's, it's exciting, I think. I think we, we maybe are able to open, not a can of worms, but there's some sort of expression here or something. No, not even a pandora's box. Yeah, because all the bad things came out there.

Sever: 45:55

I don't know, to open something similar to the Pandora box, but everything coming out of there is like great ideas and a lot of great initiatives, rainbows and unicorns, people all of a sudden who were sitting on the sidelines, maybe even passively ignoring, like I'm not even checking prices anymore. It's like maybe holding but not getting involved, which I suspect this is the bulk with like, even the more active ones on Twitter is, like you know, angry and posting all mean comments and so on. It's just such wasted energy for what could be a great, great thing. So I'm really excited about bringing this idea in. Again, not my idea, but just bringing this idea as it is into this space, and thank you for hosting me because I got really excited. I don't know if you can tell by my voice.

Kevin Lydon: 46:49

I think a lot of people have been excited to hear your voice and the comeback kid. But, yeah, no, I'm really happy to have you, and usually now you know we have about 10 minutes left and I do have there, you know, what can delegators do in in order to help with this initiative, but I also would like to open up any questions that anyone might have. You can leave questions in the comments, on the pinned tweet, or you can request the mic, come up and ask a question if you want but in the meantime, yeah, what can, in your opinion, can delegators do? And I think we touched on it a lot, but let's just talk about delegators for a minute.

Sever: 47:40

Yeah, so if this idea is to work, with staking providers taking a more active role and funneling a portion of the capture fees towards building projects and so on, I would assume maybe each staking provider creates a list of projects or project or thing that they are doing. You know it's like look, this is what we are funneling 20 percent of our fees to this, and this amounts to around this amount of budget per month and this is how we will spend it to either build something or to advertise or to create some value for the network, and basically what the delegators can do, especially the more active ones, is to see exactly what provider is building what or doing what with their fees and basically, kind of like vote on the development of the ecosystem with their delegation. Right? So basically, you select your staking provider, not necessarily based on apr, which I, which I think is important, but I think for those EGLD holders with a builder's mindset, is it important if it's 7.1 or 7.3? If, on the long term, you're giving up 0.2% APR for something that may result in a 2x for the EGLD price, and maybe that's an extreme example, but you know what I mean.

Sever: 48:59

Right, it's like can, can we think, can we come together also as delegators and to kind of like, vote with our money and to empower those staking providers who are willing to forego a part of their fees and to build something with it? And basically, depending on what everyone is building, I as a delegator can decide okay, I like those guys, they're building a new launchpad and those guys are paying influencers to shill and this guy is building another DEX. I think we have enough of those or whatever, right, and maybe this will also bring people more, let's say, in touch with what the network is doing and not having maybe converting people from passive EGLD holders to more informed and active contributors. Right, they don't really have to do anything. They don't really have to be developers or marketers or whatever, even though that's welcome, but at least they can, you know, put their money to work with a staking provider that is building something that resonates with what they think. That should be done for the network, for it to increase in adoption and, ultimately, in value.

Kevin Lydon: 50:09

Yeah, and that's just it, like let's act, activate some of these dormant delegators. There's, you know, obviously, bear markets. You know people flush out and you know, with the prophesized bull coming, which is, I mean, the bull market's always coming, right, it's and just like the bear market will always be coming as well, right, but when the bull comes, obviously there's going to be a new influx of people and dormant delegators are going to wake up, and right now is the time to have those tools in place to make sure that that, that, that their delegations are are used properly or they create their own small little providers, thus decentralizing the network even further, right? I do believe we have a question. I think Lukas, the chess master, has a question. So if we can unmute him and let him fire away, that'd be great.

Lukas Seel: 51:14

You spoke a little bit about this sort of ethos on ETH and Solana maybe, versus the one on MultiversX at the moment. What do you think are some ways of actually also reaching across chains and getting some people from those ecosystems in through collaborations, through different sort of initiatives? And also, how can staking providers sort of lead that charge to either of you or both?

Kevin Lydon: 51:45

Okay, you go first.

Sever: 51:50

Okay, maybe this is going to sound like completely not technical and not wise and not intelligent, but I think people are not on other chains because they are on a chain in particular. I think people are in crypto for a number of reasons, and I think the most important one is to make money. So I think when we can funnel some funds towards creating opportunity for people to make money, we can get their attention right. And there are a number of ways for doing that and I like what. For example, I don't know if you guys followed like Memevers X with launching meme coins as the meme coin season was in full swing, but anyway, there's always a new meta, there's always a new narrative, there's always some clever quote, unquote way for people to find the infinte money hack and whatever, and the only thing that's you know, we have all the technology to support all of that, but the only thing that's lacking is basically attention on those products. So I would just say advertising and influencers in various crypto communities speaking about products and opportunities to make money on MultiversX, because I think there are a lot about products and opportunities to make money on Multivers X, because I think there are a lot. I'm not into DeFi so much, but even if I'm not into DeFi, I know that Hatom is doing a lot of great things, JewelSwap is doing a lot of great things, AshSwap is doing a lot of great things. I think even xExchange, version 3 with MEX, is doing something interesting after a long time and I'm not going to be critical here, but I know that it's been it's a welcome comeback. So I think there are a lot of opportunities for people to make money. It's just nobody knows all of them and nobody knows how easy it is to get into into it, and I think it's just advertising to those communities. The degens will come and once the degens will come, you know, the numbers will grow, because what's important for a chain is there are basically two, one metric, I would say, but maybe maybe two, number of transactions and number of accounts, and if we increase those, those numbers will speak by themselves, and then builders will you know, pay more attention to MultiversX choosing for a place to build and so on. I think it will all grow organically from that.

Sever: 54:11

So again, it's like probably it's not the most honorable or the most visionary answer, but it is what it is and I think you know it's honest. It worked for Solana, which is literally not a good chain, to say the least, from a technical point of view. It's not a good change, to say the least, from a technical point of view, but it did work because there were a lot of people who supported various products there. That allowed for money to quickly change hands. Some people won, most people lost. That's the nature of the game, but at least a lot of people had a chance to do that, and that's basically how you get started. It's a very honest answer and you're right.

Kevin Lydon: 55:11

Everyone is in it for money, right? If not, most people. It's definitely a money driven system, right? And I mean, when xExchange first launched, we saw what happened. Right, we did get that influx and we went up to 585. And that was strictly money based and returns based and it was great and it brought a lot of people in.

Kevin Lydon: 55:18

Now I hate to admit that. It's funny that you're so honest about it, but for me, I still like to think there's some tricks missed with adoption, an actual adoption of just blockchain tech that can also drive um new users, and things like that. And I've talked about this on a on a few podcasts already. But one of my ideas and I call it the Snoop Dogg, Willie Nelson concert. And obviously I'm not going to throw a Snoop Dogg Willie Nelson concert. But imagine I did right and imagine I made it so that tickets can only be downloaded, can only be bought through an NFT ticketing system such as xPortal, right, and when you release that, let's say, we have 20,000 tickets, right, these tickets, people will have to download xPortal in order to get a ticket. Right, so you do a lot of education prior, everyone's like, oh, what's xPortal, what does it do, what's this, what's this, what's that, how does it work? Maybe we have our own little, an NFT ticketing dApp who knows right? And and you keep pushing that. And yeah, it's going to be a big cost to the person who runs it. But then now here's where the trick comes in, and I actually learned this from OCS.

Kevin Lydon: 56:47

Which is the On-Chain Smokers, which is one of Lukas's things, and an event I went to is, when you cross the line into that festival now or that concert now, all of a sudden you can do push notifications that give people rewards on xPortal. Oh, hey, guess what? Did you know you just won this? Or oh, you get to meet Snoop Dogg oh, no way, you know you just won this. And this gets pushed to the person's phone.

Kevin Lydon: 57:11

And then, not only that, you can work with vendors then to allow them to only accept xPortal, and then they can provide various discounts to people. Oh, are you going to use EGLD to pay? Are you going to use USDC to pay? Hopefully, then there's just, maybe you accept the Euro on on on the card as well, but what, like what you're doing is, you're creating some Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson lovers, for example, to actually download this app and then, while they're in there, they're actually seeing the power of this. They don't have to give their email address, they don't have to do any of that stuff. All they have to do is go in, load some money up, buy their ticket, scan in and then they have also in their hand their ticket for the raffles. They have the ability to get 15% off a burrito which I love burritos, by the way and that sort of thing.

Kevin Lydon: 58:09

So it, it's a crazy idea, but, and, obviously it's very grandiose, but these are the kind of things that that I actually think could really change things if this, if an event of that size right, I know they've done festivals and all that stuff, but you still had to pay in fiat but an event of that size that was strictly xPortal-based or crypto-based or some wallet-based, obviously xPortal would be my choice If that were ran and the benefits were shown. For example, here in the Netherlands, techno is massive.

Kevin Lydon: 58:45

Right, if you did a techno event and shown how much money the promoters have saved, how much money now the artists are making, how much less fees there were, how seamless it was. Next thing, you know, all these other techno providers are going to be like we want to use NFT ticketing now through xPortal. And then boom, you got all these users, NFT ticketing now through xPortal. And then boom, you got all these users and some of those will convert to users of the traditional financial stuff. So yeah, that's my answer, Lukas. I hope that was good enough. Yes, thank you Wen.

Kevin Lydon: 59:22

Yeah, wen Wen, snoop Dogg, Willie Nelson.

Sever: 59:27

I had to look up Willie Nelson online, Like why would people come to see this guy for a chance to see him die live on stage? Or maybe I'm looking at the wrong guy. He's a 91-year-old guy oh, he's super old.

Kevin Lydon: 59:37

He's super old, but he's like. The reason I use Willie Nelson is because a lot of old people would want to see him right, and part of it is old people aren't on crypto, so I like, I didn't really touch on that, but like getting people who wouldn't normally use crypto to use crypto right, is, is it a lost cause?

Sever: 59:56

Yeah, yeah, maybe we need to get young people maybe with like games and you know, kind of like my son is playing like Roblox a lot, you know, but there's like there's I see these buying Robux. They're cold, they're like cards everywhere you can buy them online and so on and all the app stores are taking like a 30% cut of every transaction there. So crypto is just a natural disintermediator for this, but obviously it's getting kicked off App stores. Products with crypto in them get kicked off app stores for particularly that reason.

Sever: 1:00:31

But whatever, I think you had a lot of great ideas and maybe you can start small with them. You know to try to experiment, maybe not with Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg, but maybe like some sort of local event and, you know, maybe part of the funds that get set up, as we spoke before, we can start collaborating with smaller venues and smaller events and just get a feel of how that works, because I think, like you mentioned, there's a lot of opportunity to run all of this in festival or, let's say, independent economies using blockchain and xPortal also just one great idea, and I think we can come up with a lot of them.

Kevin Lydon: 1:01:12

Yeah, and and like there's so many angles, on it, but anyways, yeah, I I think we'll wrap it up there, if there's any more questions, we didn't get any more on on the tweet, and there's no one else, so I think we'll just wrap it up. So if there's anything you want to say before I say goodbyes, go ahead Sever and work away.

Sever: 1:01:37

Nothing else except thank you so much. I think it was a great conversation to get things started on in this spirit. Maybe the two of us can flesh out the details and propose it to, maybe to let's start with the validator community first and then see how we take it from there. I think it's great.

Kevin Lydon: 1:01:55

Yeah.

Sever: 1:01:56

I'm excited.

Kevin Lydon: 1:01:56

Yep, I agree, you know it's baby steps type thing, but it's, it's. It's definitely something that that we need to explore a bit more, for sure, okay. So thank you for everyone for for sure, okay. So thank you for everyone for for for being here, and thank you most of all to Sever for for coming in and giving us some of his time here on Helios Horizons, episode five, where we talked about the unlocking of the value of validators, phase four, and how I I ended up being the beneficiary of Sever's panic sell, which is kind of funny. He only told me today it happened. This happened years ago, but yeah, okay. So, yeah, thanks again, and I look forward to seeing you all for episode six next week. And yeah, let's get it and remember. You know, just do your part, keep your head up, stay positive and we'll get there in the end. Thank you.

Sever: 1:02:55

Bye, bye, all the best guys, bye.