JB Carthy: 0:00

Welcome to Helios Horizons, episode 22. Today we're chatting with Luis Carballo talking about bridging the developer gap in Web3. Luis is the CEO of Zatoon. Thanks for joining us, my friend.

Luis Carbajo: 0:16

Thank you for having me here.

JB Carthy: 0:18

No problem. No problem, maybe just to kick it off for people who aren't familiar with yourself. Maybe just a little bit of an introduction.

Luis Carbajo: 0:28

All right. So myself, I have been in the digital space or working in technology for quite a while. I consider myself probably a dinosaur. I started my career at one point a very not famous company that was called amazoncom, when they were still selling books online and that was basically their main business. Since then, I never left the digital space. So I grew up with internet, especially or initially with amazoncom, as having a great experience or how one company that nobody was really believing in, that one, became like the king of the world with all the Google, facebook and these kind of guys.

Luis Carbajo: 1:15

And after a while of being in the States with Amazon, I decided to come back to Europe. I am from Spain, so it was time to come back for family reasons and I continue from Spain, working in, especially in internet initially and, since 2018, in blockchain. I discovered blockchain around 2017 with Bitcoin. I was like shocked for the things that you can do with this technology. And in 2018, I decided that I wanted to build my own project, be part of this revolution, in the same way that I was able to live that when I was at Amazon at the beginning of Internet and we started Botun. We have been working in the space for five years and we started Botun. We have been working in the space for five years. It's been quite a trip, which has been a great journey. And, yeah, we are really focusing on bringing more developers to Web3.

JB Carthy: 2:17

We think that we're still in the very early stages of this technology, there are a lot of things that need to be done, so we are really trying to to make that happen no 100% and super excited to maybe dive in a little bit deeper with you about some of the things Vatoon are doing and I know we had the opportunity. We were over in Barcelona during the collabathon and we visited your offices and there's a great energy about all the things you're doing. You gave us a great insight and but maybe, if we're to take it back a little bit, even before Vatun, you were chatting about working at Amazon, discovering blockchain in 2017 or discovering Bitcoin in 2017 and being excited by the technology. What particularly was it that excited you about the space as you began to discover it?

Luis Carbajo: 3:05

So for me, it was a couple of things. The first one is to get rid of the intermediaries in the digital space. That was something, or that is still something, that is amazing. So really create a peer-to-peer technology that can solve so many issues in the digital space for me was just kind of mind-blowing. So, from that point of view, I I thought so many opportunities for for this technology to really improve a lot of the business processes that we have, um, that are obviously now everything is is tied with technology, right, everything is. Every company is using technology in almost every business project that they have, and I thought that blockchain technology was going to be a great tool to improve this a lot of business processes that we have. And, quite honestly, I see this as so. Bitcoin was kind of the first use case in which you can see what is possible to build with this technology. At that time. It was also the beginning of Ethereum, where the smart contract was something that I was really interested in. So, quite honestly, I think that you know, similar to with the internet was born, right At the beginning, people were thinking that the technology was just great just to be able to communicate with someone in their office without sending them a fax right, and that was called email and people were kind of cool with that.

Luis Carbajo: 4:41

And the reality is that after email, there were so many, so many applications that came out of internet that now we cannot live without right. So I thought that for pain is different because it's more back-end technology, but it's going to allow a lot of things that now are not possible to become a the first use case or why use case? But it's going to allow a lot of things happening and I think that it's going to benefit us, especially in data privacy, being able to keep your data, to be owner of the data that you own in the digital space A lot of things that you know. I think that we are not still, um, we don't think sometimes too much about it, but when we will see the application, when we see the possibilities, we this is going to change a lot of things on how we do things currently no for sure and like, let's say, even when you reflect back on your time at amazon and and obviously it's they probably become even bigger from when you were there a few years ago and they're continually growing.

JB Carthy: 5:51

Do you see these technologies, these peer-to-peer technologies, smart contracts being able to help improve business processes of already big companies, or do you think it's going to be something that is going to be a competitive advantage for, like, new companies, new businesses, new developers? Will it be very hard to integrate these technologies in existing big, existing businesses, or is it going to be something that you think bigger businesses will begin to adopt?

Luis Carbajo: 6:21

That's a great question. So let me reflect on something that happened or that I experienced firsthand on for specifically for my time on Amazon. So now everybody know about the cloud industry, right? Everything is in the cloud. There are very big players in the cloud industry. One of them is failure from Amazon of not being able to implement online e-commerce business in some of the retailers that they were trying to collaborate or partner with Amazon back in that day.

Luis Carbajo: 7:15

Back in that day, amazon was trying to help big retailers, especially in the US one of them was Target to sell things online. So the logic, or the business logic that Jeff Bezos was applying was thinking that if Amazon was helping other big retailers to start selling online, more people will have the experience of receiving the goods in their houses and a lot of people will like it, and a lot of people, after buying something in Target, if they don't find that whatever they are looking for in Target, they will finish buying these things in Amazon. So that was his logic, right? So back in that day, when we tried to implement this online business in Target, it was a pain in the butt and it was a complete failure. So it was very difficult. The product was delayed several times. It was very difficult because, basically, the systems that Target has were not ready for just working with Internet business processes, let's put it that way. So here with blockchain, it's still happening exactly the same. So it's going to require that other companies, like new ones, like Amazon, start thinking okay, in order to be successful next time, what do we need to do? And when Amazon was reflecting on that, they started creating these modules. That, at that time, was just storage on the cloud, so S3 services, so the next retailer, they have a place to put all the images that they need for an e-commerce, because these guys didn't have that kind of thing, right. So Amazon trying to build the things that they will need their customers, they create a complete new industry. They create the crowd industry, right, and from that point, that was history.

Luis Carbajo: 8:59

So for here in blockchain, we think that it's going to happen exactly the same. For here in blockchain, we think that it's going to happen exactly the same. So the traditional companies they are not going to do the effort of finding what is the best way to implement blockchain. It's going to be the new companies, blockchain companies, that they want to partner or they want to increase the size of the pie that they are going to build these modules or these technologies. So these companies, the developers from these companies, they will be able to understand easier how to use it to in order to implement that part.

Luis Carbajo: 9:33

So I don't know. I think that probably the ones that is going to bring this kind of technology to big companies are the smaller amazon that we have today in the crypto world, like coinbase or this kind of folks that they are trying to do things with traditional companies and, as they normally find a lot of resistance, they are going to build some modules in order for these companies to make it easier. And, once again, to make it easier. It's going to become from the bottom to the top, from the developers, the people that are fighting with the systems and really building the solutions that they are going to implement these kind of things in the in the future. Traditional companies are still going to be slow, but as new, new folks are going to into into these companies and they are more curious and they find better tools for bringing this technology, I think that that is how the revolution is going to happen no, I think that makes a lot.

JB Carthy: 10:38

The revolution is going to happen, and then purpose-built companies with very specific skill sets, building modules and helping them integrate it to make their existing services more efficient. It definitely makes sense. Same way, amazon, like you were touching on, almost just enabled and empowered the advent of e-commerce around the world just by giving people people a ready-made platform and on which they could operate. I think it's a good opportunity to maybe move into what you guys are doing, because you, you guys, are definitely helping bridge that gap and between maybe what we call, like the web two world and the web three world and with the tune. And so maybe we were lucky enough to be at the collabathon and we were lucky enough to get a great introduction and insight into Vatoon, but for anyone that's listening, could you give them a little introduction into Vatoon and what it is you guys do?

Luis Carbajo: 11:36

Yeah. So we are trying to bring more Web2 developers initially to Web3. We have in our developer community people that have a lot of knowledge about Web3, that they like to what I say to help other people to get interested into this technology. So basically what we provide is a platform in which any kind of developer can join. They have activities what we call challenge to prove their skills to really become more performance in how to get into Web3. As they progress in this journey of bidding or completing these activities, of this challenge, they get certified. So it's a gamified platform to get certification of your development skills. So you start as apprentice. After you finish several channels you became ninja. After you became more active you can save. So you are basically gaining different skills as you progress into the program and now that you have interest and you are proving that you can build things in Web3, what we are trying to do now is to bring different projects to our community.

Luis Carbajo: 12:53

So we start one thing that we call Open Projects. That basically what it does is we propose different projects to the developers. Developers can join freely and we do the project management for kind of delivering these products to production. There are open source projects that sometimes are built just for the good of the community, or there are other projects that are coming now, soon, that are normally for new blockchains or well-estab new blockchains, or or start well-established blockchains, that they want to build these products, um, or they want to find developers that build these products and they trust us in order to to do that.

Luis Carbajo: 13:37

So it's a great tool if you are a developer and you are interested in web3 and you probably don't want to go through an online educational course or whatever or this kind of like courses, and to join the platform and try to to do these activities.

Luis Carbajo: 13:53

When you get a block or what you don't find the solution, you can interact through the discord channel with other peers that they are going to help you, um, to find that solution, so you can continue your journey and during the process, you can have fun also in our chats and our channels, because there are a lot of crypto friends what we call the community part of Boton that are supporting the efforts and the projects we are issuing through the platform. So, yeah, we believe that we can bring the first million of Web2 developers to Web3, because this is something that we really need as an industry to bring more talent to basically start building all kinds of use cases. We know that crypto is great, but you know it is still a niche and there are thousands and thousands of applications that can benefit from this technology, and we would like to bring as many developers to know the technology so they can build the apps of the future.

JB Carthy: 14:55

No, 100% and maybe what would be the benefits to, or what are the key benefits to, maybe a developer and of joining the vatoon developer and network?

Luis Carbajo: 15:10

well, I think that the main one is is our token. That is part of our ecosystem. So we have this, this concept of code, to earn. So if you are active and you are building things and you are participating into the ecosystem, you can make a living out of that. So it's really interesting and I think that is a great introduction for developers that maybe they have their full-time job in some traditional software company. They are bored, they would like to enter the Web3, but they don't know exactly how or when. So this way is a good way for them to start coding looking at what is cooking, learn a lot from peers participating in these projects and making some money out of that. So we believe that it's an interesting bridge to really bring people from Web2 to Web3.

JB Carthy: 16:04

No, definitely. And how does the VTN or the Fatoon token? How does it maybe incentivize developers in the ecosystem? Or how can they get paid through the token? How does it work?

Luis Carbajo: 16:17

Yeah, so the token is still not in the market, so it's going to come pretty soon, or we hope that it's going to be coming pretty soon, depending on market conditions. But now we are trying to give a taste of what that could be through our airdrop. So people are already participating in the platform, doing things in the platform for points that are going to be translated to the bottom token. But basically, what we proposed are so the token. It's a utility token that can be used in the platform for several things One for developers, specifically when we post these open projects. So, for example, you guys work with Injective or Multiverse, right? So we have been talking with these blockchains and if one of them they would like to build something specifically for the ecosystem on the open project part that we were talking about, basically we work with that specific blockchain to identify or to provide the functional requirements of that project, right? So let's say that we want to do a bridge between one of these chains and Another native token, because the ecosystem or the foundation of that blockchain things that it could be. So we propose that bridge to the community. The developers can join freely. We select the people that we believe they have the skills to deliver that product. And we specified the things that need to happen to deliver that product and the incentives for doing them, some with milestones, et cetera.

Luis Carbajo: 18:01

So in this case, let's imagine that to build that bridge, it costs or it has a reward of fifty thousand dollars. So we are going to provide the different tasks that the developer need to be doing in order to start making money out of that project. And if you are working I don't know, let's say there are 50 tasks one thousand dollars each. So if you are doing I don't know, let's say there are 50 tasks $1,000 each. So if you are doing 10, you are going to earn $10,000. If you are making two, you are going to earn $2,000.

Luis Carbajo: 18:33

So it's a mix of working in an open source community, but with specific incentives for the work that you deliver. And we try to manage that in, but without really mixing on that experience, because we believe that developers are going to join just for not only for the money, but also for the fun of building that product. So that is how we, a developer, can have that experience, make money out of the platform and, yeah, and meet a lot of other good developers that maybe from that is going to be a team, that they will be launching something by themselves in the future. That is something that we are looking for.

JB Carthy: 19:17

Yeah, it's a nice blend of, like, transparency in terms of people are aware of what needs to be done in terms of people are aware of what they're what needs to be done.

JB Carthy: 19:29

Accountability in terms of like if I do, if I do more, I contribute more, I'm going to be directly rewarded more.

JB Carthy: 19:33

And collaboration in terms of like getting different people around the world, different skill sets, to solve specific challenges that you guys have been enlisted to solve, um, or found um projects to work with that need certain solutions built. So that's, too, like, really exciting. And I think that idea of crowdsourcing and open sourcing, like collaborative development, it's definitely something we were experimenting with um, or at least, uh, something similar to it with the Collabicon, bringing lots of different people together to work on one specific collective goal, and so it's something that we can see a lot of value in and I'm excited to see how it works going forward with you guys and how the introduction of the Vatoon token will help elevate it even further will help elevate it even further. What would you say in your experience so far chatting to developers and bringing them into your network and your ecosystem? What would you say are the biggest obstacles or challenges, preconceptions, whatever word we want to use to bringing Web 2.0 developers and getting them to start building on Web3?.

Luis Carbajo: 20:47

Yeah, that's also a good question. I think that there are Well, unfortunately, I think that the crypto for some of the scams and some of the bad press that it has, it taints a lot of things that has been happening around the blockchain technology, the value about what you can do or what are the possibilities of blockchain, because they don't know exactly what's going on, what you can do with this technology, and they just listen to all the noise that you have around crypto or the bad things that happen in crypto. And that is sad, right, because you know, instead of talking about the good things that we can do, sometimes people of talking about the good things that we can do, sometimes people are talking about the bad things that you can do.

JB Carthy: 21:42

It's kind of like back in the day. You know, like today, e-commerce is so like taken for granted and buying online is like something that is so normal and has like made people's lives so much better and like given great opportunity globally for people to sell things to anyone anywhere in the world. But it's like it's when you, when it came around first, it's like people had this great skepticism about, like putting your car details anywhere online or giving your address, your name, anywhere online, but it just became more normalized over time. Do you think something similar will just happen with blockchain and with developers, as it just becomes apparent that the technology is better, it becomes apparent that it's going to be used, and so they're just going to have to adapt.

Luis Carbajo: 22:30

You are perfectly right on that point and for the reason I say that that we are still in a, in the very early days of of this um, or how blockchain is going to change the world, it's true that now nobody really think twice when they need to buy something online, and before it was like, uh, people were, um, they didn't trust, uh, what they were doing or they were also bad things that could happen with your, your credit card online. But still, there are a lot of things that could happen, right, but it's true that people, just now, they are very familiar with shopping online and and that's the complete perspective of what internet is bringing to their, to their day-to-day lives, right. So, yeah, no, absolutely, developers, the thing is that we still or I believe that we still are in the, in this kind of like educational mode in which we need to explain people what the technology can be used for and explain it with the specific use cases. When they see it and they say, oh, wow, now I get it, now I, now I understand, because when they do that click is when they will start thinking about okay, in my current job, with the application that we are working on, we have this and this and this process, but if we will implement this with blockchain is going to be twice. With blockchain, it's going to be twice as fast, or it's going to be better protected, or it's going to be more secure, or whatever.

Luis Carbajo: 24:02

That application could be right. But they need to do this kind of click in their minds to understand for what this technology can be used, and sometimes I think that that is going to happen when they will sit in an application that they can use every day. And I think it's very similar to what happened this over this last year, right with with artificial intelligence. We were listening about things that were happening, etc. But it was with when open ai or chat gpt was out in the in the market and that people start using, and we were like, wow, wow, this is amazing, how many things you can do with this. Right, and everybody was jumping around and implementing JapGPT in all kind of new applications. So I think that that is maybe something that still needs to happen in blockchain.

JB Carthy: 24:51

So there needs to be kind of just that point at which we break through and have some critical, critically important use case that interests a critical mass of people well.

Luis Carbajo: 25:04

Or or imagine that one of the very well-known banks they start, uh, allowing you to send money to anywhere in your phone, in the phone, with just a click for not even sensing the dollar, right? So the ben mo kind of application in the us, with just a click for not even sensing the dollar, right? So the Venmo kind of application in the US? Or the other ones that are around the world that are still running through the bank servers. Imagine that you can just start sending money to anywhere or to anyone without that kind of still kind of process, right? I think that that is going to to open the the eyes of a lot of people when, uh when, they will see that these kind of applications, that they can use it in a more regular basis no for sure, and actually this is maybe a nice little little piece to touch on, and but I see on your website that you guys are working with Banco de España.

JB Carthy: 25:57

is that right, yeah, to help develop a payment infrastructure that reduces kind of friction and inefficiency compared to SWIFT?

Luis Carbajo: 26:06

Yeah, exactly. So we did that with very big companies in Spain to show them that you know these companies. It was a solution for what in the financial departments called intercompany payments, so these are payments that are made inside the same company but between different entities, so the headquarters and a subsidiary in another country. So we show them that you know these companies send millions of dollars between cross-border payments, but for all kinds of goods, of course, but also for their own internal services. So we wanted to show the companies that they have an alternative to the SWIFT system, that they have an alternative to the SWIFT system.

Luis Carbajo: 27:00

In order to do that, we entered this program with the Bank of Spain, because the regulator was there to really kind of like verify that what we were doing was okay, was compliant completely, etc. So we showed them that what we were doing, it was safe. So we were able to send money from one country to the, from Spain to the US, from Spain to Brazil, from Spain to Romania they were different locations, right, without the shift system that we were able to send that money in seconds and that the traceability of that transactions were completely, uh spotted, so perfect.

JB Carthy: 27:42

So and how did. Was there other benefits in terms of cost and uh, so obviously there was the speed benefits being able to transfer cross-border in like in like seconds but were there cost benefits, which are probably going to the things that are most going to interest these big companies and these big financial institutions?

Luis Carbajo: 28:01

Yeah, so the benefits, so the cost was tight with the fees that the banks were charging them, because these big companies they have very, very good service fees or already agree with these big companies. They have very, very good, uh, service fees or already agreed with these big companies, right, there are big corridors of money so they have very low fees for these guys. So the, the fees for sending the money was not one of the incentives. What we identified as an incentive was the speed and the traceability of the of the money. The first one, it was so fast that they didn't have time to lose that kind of money and the second part it was the traceability. So sometimes these companies they lost millions of dollars during one week, two weeks, because the, the systems between the banks that are involved on that they don't know what this money is. They find it obviously at some point right. But the traceability what this money is, they find it obviously at some point right. But the traceability of this money sometimes is not working because these systems they have like 30 years. So speed and traceability was one of the main benefits.

Luis Carbajo: 29:09

The second part of the project that we thought that it was kind of like the killer for convincing these companies to start using our system is something that the Bank of Spain allowed us to use, or he wasn't able to regulate that because we wanted to use stable coins. And one thing that is important to know is that regulators anywhere in the world they don't recognize stable coins, or what we call in crypto, stable coins, as stable coins. For them. They are not stable. They don't know if they are going to be stable. So it was kind of interesting uh discussion to learn that from regulator because we couldn't, uh, during the whole project, we we couldn't tell that we were using stable coins because they were not tested, that we were using stablecoins because they were not stable. So we were using digital tokens or digital assets, who they call it, but not stablecoins.

Luis Carbajo: 30:03

So it seems silly, but the reality is that for regulators, stablecoins they are still kind of not stablecoins because there is no regulation for being sure that these stables are stable, right, no regulation for being sure that these stables are right. So, and we find that that if we, if we, they will let us use stable coins and convince the big companies to use these companies as stable coins, they have a huge benefits in terms of all the money that these companies, companies, um, spent on currency exchange rates, so just playing with the futures of this current exchange rate. If you were using stable coins, you can benefit and reduce that quite a while, quite, quite a lot. And yeah, that was one of the benefits that we were trying to to push through these companies. But once again the regulator, they didn't think that was compliant enough to call all that regular or what do you say, stable coins.

JB Carthy: 31:07

Yeah, no, 100%, and I think, like you're saying, it's telling that obviously the banks maybe because there is issues around stable coins or they're not regulated and there are kind of like concerns with the different stable coins, heather do they have the reserves circle.

JB Carthy: 31:28

The reserves are transparent, they're held in certain banks, but what if the banks, for whatever regulatory pressure and political pressure, are restricted access to the funds in their different accounts in different countries? Then what happens to the value of the stable coins on chain? But do you think, like, let's say and so I've a couple of questions leading on from that and like we're like with such a large institution and obviously like you touched on such a heavily, heavily regulated industry, and do you feel there is an appetite for innovation, or do you think it's very difficult to push through any sorts of innovation and it's all going to be very slow moving, like, let's say, for example, do could we at some point soon in the future, do you think expect to have blockchain integrated on the back end of like just normal financial transactions that you or me might and use in our banks?

Luis Carbajo: 32:22

it's going to take a while.

Luis Carbajo: 32:24

I think that they are slow, but I think that when, when, the, the, now we are on the on the curve of real adoption.

Luis Carbajo: 32:41

I think that the, the ETF or Bitcoin that happened this year with big, big companies in the financial markets really putting attention or or validating that the crypto are going to stay here, that is going to. That has changed a lot of things in terms of perception and from that there are a lot of things that are going to happen. So real world assets is something that is going to happen and the speed of that is going to be really based on how good or bad the initial ETFs are going, but it's going to happen. The initial ETFs are going, but it's going to happen. I think that the big guys they already have validated the technology for basically representation of financial assets and that is going to accelerate the adoption in general. For the rest of things, I think it's still going to take a while because they are really slow moving, but the changes that happened this year with BlackRock and all these folks saying that they were basically creating this fund for Bitcoin, that is going to accelerate the things that as we know them.

JB Carthy: 33:50

I think that this is a really good starting point a good starting point and then in europe as well, and micah and the kind of regulatory framework they're trying to bring in and to maybe like regulate stable coins a little bit more and will hopefully like give the room for institutions to maybe integrate a little bit more in their offerings, their products, their frameworks and to make it a little bit more efficient and to make like on-chain, getting on-chain and doing transactions on-chain a little bit easier. And then, obviously, to give credibility to the technology as a whole for developers to come in and and build upon it and and make make it more appealing for more like bigger institutions to adopt the technology because they have a greater trust, because some of the bigger regulatory bodies are showing trust in it and giving it the credibility through regulation.

Luis Carbajo: 34:47

Yeah, that is super important, right? Because, at the end, the financial industry is so regulated that the compliance part is really a heavy, heavy burden for them to really innovate. So it's clear that more clear regulation is going to help. I definitely believe that because if they are able to test or to compare some of the things that they are doing today with the systems or the legacy systems that they have today, compare that to implementing that from scratch with blockchain technology, there is no point right of doing that. So I think that this point as soon as they have clarity that they can do it, that legally they are not going to have issues, etc. We are going to see more and more implementations that they are going to basically close down the current systems that they have because they don't make sense. They are all, they are very expensive to maintain and they are just going to establish through through the rateways that we have with blockchain technology.

JB Carthy: 35:54

Yeah, it's just the case almost right now that they're using them because they are regulated and they can't not use them. Yeah, completely 100%. There was a couple of other really interesting projects that you guys were chatting to us about when we were over in Barcelona, like in terms of even the traceability of things like olive oil. So maybe if you could give us a little insight into maybe a couple of other interesting projects that Vatoon have had a contribution to building or bringing to market, it'd be interesting to just see the uses of blockchain and hear about the things you guys have been have developed or helped develop for people listening on that weren't didn't have the privilege of being there and listening and to talk about them in person.

Luis Carbajo: 36:46

Yeah, so in 2021, with the craziness of NFTs we did a lot of different projects for NFTs. Out of that, I think that some of them remain that they were for not just NFT speculation but was using, for example, nfts for right ownerships. So from that kind of protect the ownership from content creators, that was something that is still going on. The trustability is something. It's a great use of the blockchain technology because provide data that can be trusted and is transparent. So we have one specific product that is used by companies to track their supply chain, so basically to identify who is participating, what kind of information are collecting in every point of the supply chain. That, I think, is very useful for some specific products, like in the food industry, for what they call from farm to fork, or really track for where the food is collected and what is processed and what are the things that are doing with that. I think it's very important. And for other kind of products in which you know to know that the supply chain is done properly is also important.

Luis Carbajo: 38:11

We have, for example, in with flexibility, one customer that they track diamonds. So they are a wholesaler of diamonds for luxury brands that they use it for to build their watches and they want to be sure that the the source of the diamonds that they collect are coming from the right places and not from war zones or from countries in which child labor is permitted. So, basically, they provide this kind of very good proof to their customers that what they are doing are really good and they can trust them and they can check in the blockchain everything that has happened with their, with the batches of data that they are sharing with them. So there are multiple use cases that, um, you have been working on and we still have on the platform.

Luis Carbajo: 39:03

But I would like to mention one that is kind of a really funny one, because it's kind of these new applications that maybe is going to give us a lot of surprises in the close future and is related with button, and it was so, so good and so successful that now it's like a a new kind of spin-off product by itself. So, um, I don't know if you have heard about the mini apps in Telegram, these kind of very casual games that just start popping up in Telegram.

JB Carthy: 39:36

Just very vaguely. I am aware of them, but I've never actually tried them or anything like that.

Luis Carbajo: 39:41

All right, so we create.

JB Carthy: 39:45

I did used to play, though. I did used to play the games on. Do you remember MSN Messenger back in the day? Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I used to play, though, and I did used to play the games on. Do you remember msn messenger back in the day? Wow yeah yeah, yeah, so I used to play some of the games, so I can imagine something similar yeah, it is.

Luis Carbajo: 39:57

It is kind of similar, but, uh, what is kind of like magic, is that? Well, so, just to make it short, so we create like a mini game in ingram to just explain what the bottom product was about. So, basically, the storytelling of this game is that you are a ninja developer, a Web3 ninja developer, and you want to launch your Web3 dApps and in order to do that, you need to complete some activities in terms of coding, in terms of marketing, in terms of community, terms of marketing in terms of community, and basically you need to to um, to do all these activities as you play a tap, turn this kind of game right. So we launched it. It was really successful to the point that the number of players was growing so much that people were thinking that bottom was only doing games and not what doing, that we were not helping developers, that we basically became like a gaming studio. So we we decided to spin up that project and now it has its own team that is trying to build really very different mini apps in Telegram.

Luis Carbajo: 40:59

But the point about this game is that what we see is that if you put a very easy way to use the technology in front of the people they are going to use it and what we see is that you know people that are playing that game all of them. Now they have, like, a Tom wallet, so we decided to open up the wallet for Tom. They can interact with crypto without no knowledge of crypto at all, because, basically, the system and Telegram they find out a way that you buy like a stars that is the name out, a way that you buy like stars that is the name of the payments that you have with your credit card. With these stars, you can pay the things in the game. So you don't and this is basically with Apple Pay you don't even need to put your credit card on that one. So it's super, super easy, super, super easy.

Luis Carbajo: 41:52

All the process of providing or putting tools for the the people that are playing these games that are blockchain based and they don't even know about that and just our game. It was one example of the things that you can build with this kind of technology, and now I can see that they they are going to be a lot of things that are going to be built in Telegram for that reason, like exchange of crypto or payment services or these kind of things that are probably very useful, but you know normally you have that in a separate app that sometimes you don't even know where it is right, just when you try to use it once a year. So I think that Telegram it makes very, very easy to do these kind of applications better with blockchain and maybe it's going to be a source of user adoption or user acquisition for these years to come.

JB Carthy: 42:43

No, definitely, and would you say that maybe stumbling upon this and the kind of popularity of this gave you a different insight into the importance of the onboarding experience and the user experience when it comes to getting people to use the technology?

Luis Carbajo: 43:00

yeah, absolutely. So I am pretty sure that, out of the half of the people that are playing with this game, they don't even know what a wallet is For them. It's just some place in the game that they have their balance and they are basically able to make bites in the games to buy things that they want. And some of them they understand what airdrop means and that, basically, if they are playing a lot, they are going to collect something and this something is going to their wallet and they can spend that money. So it's, they don't even know that is a blockchain game.

Luis Carbajo: 43:40

So it's kind of, if you are making the experience so easy and that, basically, that is what. When the technology disappear, right, that you don't think, and the technology, you think, and the experience, obviously that is what. When the technology disappears, right, that you don't think of the technology, you think of the experience. Obviously, that is achieving the goal of really creating this new user experience. So, no, no, absolutely. I think that it's going to change in a good way. How many people are able to get into Web3 without knowing that they are going into web3?

JB Carthy: 44:10

yeah, no definitely because there's a huge move towards, or at least the trend at the moment. You know, like the technology's been created, it's proved that it works and it kind of takes a little bit of effort to know and understand it and interact with it. And understand like bridges, understand wallace, understand seed phrases, understand gas, all these things. But, like um, abstraction is probably the next evolution of how we're going to bring more people to easily interact with the technology and when they can use, like, for example, you just like everyone knows how to use an iphone and like everyone knows how to go onto the apple app store, because it's baked into the. It's baked into like the apple um ecosystem or the product when you get it. And then facebook is just designed completely for the user experience on the phone or twitter or instagram or whatever other um popular applications that are used are used to optimize for the end user and not just strings of code and disconnected pieces of technology. And I think that's probably where abstraction is going to maybe make a difference, where people will be able to make, like you're chatting about here with Tom or Telegram, be able to create a wallet, and without knowing that it's, without knowing what self-custodial is, without knowing what seed phrase is, but it will still be self-custodial. It will just be abstracted on the back end through, like, whether it's the kind of cloud authentication or something like that.

JB Carthy: 45:45

You know, gas fees will be abstracted and the the concept of gas fees is probably going to change going into the future in terms of it will probably. Gas fees could well be subsidized by products looking to attract users rather than putting the, the burden of gas fees on the end user, and they will probably begin to be denominated in, like usd rather than in different, more volatile tokens. And so I think a lot of the, a lot of like the infrastructure and a lot of the technology will change, just make it become easier on the end user to interact with. You know it'd be unthinkable and that instagram would make you pay for server space to use instagram, you know, like the, to pay for uploading a photo because it takes server space, whereas that's kind of like what's happening with web3 at the moment yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely it's true um, so I think this is kind of the time we're coming to the end and we're close enough.

JB Carthy: 46:48

So if anyone in the audience wants to pop up and request the mic, ask a question, and feel free. Um, but maybe just a couple of little things while we're waiting to see if anyone wants to come up or ask a question. In the comments. And I did see, and that you guys were recently hosting like a women in web 3 and hackathon and sponsored by arbitrum or in collaboration with arbitrum, yep, and obviously we visited you guys with the, with the collabathon, and just how important do you think events are like this to attract, like not only developers but, um, also kind of attract like women or other niches of developers from underrepresented demographics to probably a very like male dominated industry.

Luis Carbajo: 47:36

I think it's important and I think that we should try to make it happen more often because, at the end of the day, out of diversity, we became richer. So the experience is better, the products are better if we collaborate with each other. Um, you know, um my co-founder, she's obviously very involved on on this kind of um actions, but I I really believe that is really beneficial from any point of view. So, from a business point of view, from a product point of view, as as more diverse we are, better probably the product and the experience is going to be.

Luis Carbajo: 48:18

It's true that there are not so many women developer, there is true that there are not so many women in tech, just in general. But you know, I think that the ones that are in there and they are fighting their way up, they really make a difference and we should support that kind of experience because I think that we became we have different approach to the problems, but sometimes we find different solutions. We have different um outputs of how you tackle specific issues and I think that out of that kind of like differences became better solutions overall. So, yeah, we are now going into the third week of the hackathon. We know that the teams are doing great work and there are some really nice ideas, so I am looking forward to what I can do.

JB Carthy: 49:12

Is there anything particularly interesting coming out of it or any particularly interesting projects?

Luis Carbajo: 49:19

Well, I think that, for example, I know one that was one of our ambassadors that I see here also that she's proposing something related with all the web3 programs engage in a more, better and trusted way with their with them, but with the ambassadors, these people that they really like the product, the project that they normally act on, on how they can promote the project because they really like what you are doing and there are a lot of Web3 companies that are in this space but we don't have very good tools to engage and make these ambassadors to participate, et cetera.

Luis Carbajo: 49:59

And, out of her own experience, is proposing something that can be tracked on chain that Basilio can verify, that is really worthy for other projects to compare. So I think that is a very nice different approach out of the experience of that person is having on collaborating with different Web3 projects, that it could be very useful for a lot of projects that are basically engaging with different friends. You know that in Web3 is all about the community, so that engage with the people in the community that are more active and they can take out of that the best out of that interaction.

JB Carthy: 50:39

No, I definitely do think like community, like I, like the idea of the project that you're describing like just on a high level because it's something I was actually discussing with someone today is that it's like community is just a buzzword that's thrown away in web3, but it's, or like it's throwaway buzzwords.

JB Carthy: 50:55

Like it's like, oh, community is important, but it's like what does community even mean? And community just generally means like oh, let's try and get the people who follow us to act as some form of marketing interns and share the stuff that we share and give them, maybe throw them a couple of tokens as a reward or some other kind of arbitrary abstract like reward that doesn't doesn't really appeal to them, but it's just like they're being asked to do something but they're not being given like a good role, a clear role in aligned growth with the brand, with the company, with the product. As much as web3 would make possible, like you're talking about creating, like the web3 developer ecosystem, where the vatoon token is at the heart of it and you open source, like the collaboration, open source, the accountability, the transparency of the process and something similar for ambassadors and for community leaders would definitely be useful in terms of helping, more specifically target and reward people who are doing really valuable things absolutely yep, no 100.

JB Carthy: 52:06

There's no one in the audience um asking question, and so we'll leave it with one last question that we always ask everybody and when they come on, which is just one thing at the moment that excites you about Web3 and where it's heading, and maybe one thing that disappoints you, based on where you thought things would be by now.

Luis Carbajo: 52:52

What excites me.

Luis Carbajo: 52:53

I still think that this is going to change how off, in the sense that we are going to not allow big corporations to take over a lot of things that are ours.

Luis Carbajo: 52:58

So, from that point of view, I think blockchain is going to help us a lot in a lot of things that, um, we kind of like now are not giving that enough value, like data privacy or the controls that these people have over what we see online, what we buy online on this kind of thing. So, from that point of view, I am really positive on how this technology is going to affect us in a positive way. All the part also related with financial inclusion inclusion. I think that is going to be huge. I think that we are going to be a society which, you know, banks are not going to be as important as they are today, because people are going to be able to create different products and services that are coming out of the people and not out of the banks. So, from that point of view, I think that we will be better off, too, in terms of, and then the value going out of the people and not out of the banks. So, from that point of view, I think that we will be better off too.

JB Carthy: 53:53

And then the value going back to the people, yeah absolutely. For providing the services at scale, like crowdsourced finance, basically, which is what DeFi is ultimately.

Luis Carbajo: 54:04

Absolutely and in terms of disappointment, you know, I don't know, it's sometimes. Obviously, the scams and all the crap that's happening in the space is very, very bad, because I think that they bring us some years back when these kind of big, bad things happen. But you know every time that that happened. I think that is part of the journey. I don't know, I would like to that they don't happen, but if it's happened, I think that is not going to be enough reason for not letting the blockchain advance. So, from that point of view, I still positive.

JB Carthy: 54:43

Yeah, crap happened, but you know things, the people that are building things, we are kind of positive in the future, about the future and this kind of just bumping the bumps in the in the road that you, you know, you just need to pass them no, definitely, and I do think there probably needs to be like a a greater um onus placed on, like personal accountability in the space and like, let's say, these scams and these like crappy things like we all know, like I completely agree with you, but these crappy things and these scams wouldn't take hold so hard if there wasn't, if people maybe were better educated um about, or had maybe more personal responsibility about, understanding that there is no regulation, understanding that with the power of decentralization, with the power of permissionless infrastructure, comes the responsibility of understanding that, like, you need to do your own research, you need to seek to understand as deeply as possible how things work and understand that you trust the people who are building the thing, the tools that you're using, the assets that you're buying, and that, like it's, none of it is regulated and with the great things that come with that, there's also things that, like leave you vulnerable if you just don't seek to understand better.

JB Carthy: 56:07

You know, yeah, absolutely, absolutely for sure, um, is there anything maybe, before we close it off tonight, anything you want to leave the audience with? That they should be looking out for? That's coming soon from vatoon or any final words just that you'd like to have before we we close it off well, I think.

Luis Carbajo: 56:28

I think that we are really now on building very cool things. So, if you are a Web2 developer or a Web3 developer that are looking for new tools, definitely take a look and go to our website. Join the platform. It's completely free. You are going to find a different way to approach Web3 development and I would invite all of you to take a look, be part of our community, join our channels so you can see what is cooking. And, yeah, stay tuned. We will be launching our token soon. So, yeah, stay tuned, because we would really want to be the company that brings more than 1 million developers to Web3. Let's see how that goes.

JB Carthy: 57:15

No, super excited. I think that's a great call. Anyone that's interested in development or interested in Web3 development should definitely go over to you guys and check it out. Just a question that came to my mind Do you guys educate developers more broadly, or is it people? Or is there like something for people who are just interested in web3 development but are not already developers, or is it kind of more like strictly geared towards and people are already developing?

JB Carthy: 57:43

say that again, sorry and so say, like if someone was to come over with no development experience, would they be able to find a path to education and participation in building things?

Luis Carbajo: 57:55

Yeah, absolutely. So you have two tracks to join our platform. One is what we call community and basically on that track you find a lot of activities that they don't are related with technology. It's more about social activities that you can do in the platform, but if you are a little bit curious on the technical side, so from that point, from the community side, you can join and talk about projects, join even projects that they have obviously technical leads that are building on to that, but they need sometimes other kind of roles for building that product. So people are really invited to participate even if they don't have any kind of technical skills. But if you have some technical skills or you would like to have technical skills, you can start from the beginning with the developer journey, start doing different activities. Once again, I think that that part you need to have this kind of taste for technical stuff. But without no experience you can really join and try or just join and enjoy, because there are different things to do with our platform.

JB Carthy: 59:06

Perfect. No, thank you. Thank you so much and thanks for answering all the questions. Thanks so much for coming on, really appreciate it, really learned a lot tonight and this was helios horizons episode 22 and today we chatted with louis carbio and from vatoon about and bridging the developer gap in web 3 and they're just building a comprehensive and developer ecosystem and transparent like accountable, collaborative, and that's enabling people to come together and work on projects and from anywhere in the world and to be rewarded for it. So thanks so much for coming on and and talk soon guys.