Lukas Seel: 0:00

Let me welcome Arnaud from Hadam Labs a long-time contributor to the ecosystem the MultiverseX ecosystem, but exploring other ecosystems as well To the show. We're going to talk about all things Hadam. We're going to talk about stablecoins, liquidity, defi, experiments in the space and community. So thank you very much for joining and hello, arnaud, how are you space?

Arnaud Deffuant: 0:26

and community. So thank you very much for joining and hello Arna, how are you?

Lukas Seel: 0:33

Hello, my dear friend, it's a pleasure to have this little chat in your jazz club. Yes, I mean, I thought Stablemates. I was like, what should I play? And I think, obviously with the launch of the first native stablecoin on MultiverseX called USH, which will be one of the main topics today, I thought, you know, stablemates seemed like a good match and since we are stablemates in so many ways, you and I, I had no choice when I saw that and or thought of that and yeah, so, looking forward to the conversation, but I, you know, thank you for having me, Thank you for being here.

Lukas Seel: 1:11

We usually start with a little bit of intro and personal background for people, because it's always interesting how people got involved in the space, how they discovered blockchain, web, three cryptocurrencies, and you know, I did some research on you, I did my homework, um, and I had no idea how big a sports fan you were or a sports contributor even, um. And so let's take a step back, give us a little intro to um, who you are and perhaps you know just touch on the first kind of um points when you you discovered blockchain and that revolutionary technology and what drew you in.

Arnaud Deffuant: 1:50

so, as you, as you, as you talked about um, I am a massive sports fan, and specifically, uh, football, european football. You know the sport, you play with a ball with your foot. And so after my studies, business studies, I gave everything I had to go and work for football related industry. So I started in the video game industry, working for EA Sports on the game FIFA in the marketing team. Then I went to work for the big retailer, decathlon that is French where I did sales. I had a sales team there in the store and then I discovered where I did sales. I had a sales team there in the store and then I discovered tech company, tech startup industry through football again.

Arnaud Deffuant: 2:55

I worked for a company called Tonsor. It's a Danish company and they were building a football app for youth football players and their edge was to try to use technology to find talents that weren't found by regular means massively, because I love the idea that technology could could help kids that had the dream of you know, doing football professionally, that were talented enough to but didn't manage to get discovered. And so I joined this company for three years, entered as a market manager in France and basically did go-to-market in France, in Switzerland, in Germany, in England, and also worked a lot on monetization for this growing startup, and I lived the startup dream there and it made me fall in love with working in tech companies. And so, after I started my own tech company in a completely unrelated industry in the wedding industry, where I created a SaaS, and we worked on this for two years, then I got back into football for a little bit, but, uh, by then we were in 2020 and, uh, I already had the web free blockchain virus. That was on my radar because I started investing in uh if in 2017, and so, um, being part of the blockchain revolution was some sort of inner virus and it was eating me from the inside, and so I managed to get in through the NFT revolution and through drifters that I discovered on Ethereum, and I helped bring this amazing project on Multipersecs. Multipersecs was already Elrond back then, but it was a blockchain that I had invested in and, yeah, this is how we are here today, a few years after.

Arnaud Deffuant: 5:30

I was always a big DeFi user, because I hate the fact you can't control your money with traditional banks. It's something that is deeply rooted in me. I'm a pro freedom kind of person. So, uh, yeah, to me this is. This is one of the the biggest use case that the blockchain technology is bringing to people is the fact that they can handle their own money. To me, financial freedom is not having enough money to do whatever you want. Financial freedom is being free to do what you want with your money.

Lukas Seel: 6:12

Yeah, super interesting. Do you remember back in before 2017, before you made your first investments in ETH and all of that stuff? What was the first time you kind of heard about, you know, I assume, bitcoin or Ethereum? And who brought you on? Of heard about, you know, I assume, bitcoin or ethereum? Um, and who brought you on? How did you get on boarded?

Arnaud Deffuant: 6:32

um, so, if I recall correctly, it was through a blog article and it was for Litecoin. I read about Litecoin and, being you know so, litecoin was a Bitcoin fork was going way quicker, and so I read about, I discovered I knew about Bitcoin. I heard about Bitcoin, I heard about Bitcoin. I even you know my best friend, and that was 15 years ago. My best friend believes that when we were roommates during our studies, we bought some Bitcoin while we were playing uh world of warcraft to buy uh, uh, you know, uh gold coins on world of warcraft, and we paid through bitcoin. So he's he's obsessed with the fact that on one of our pcs from back then there is some bitcoin hidden somewhere. I find this story very, very fun. Uh, what year was it?

Lukas Seel: 7:44

more or less. What year would that have been the first gaming and Bitcoin wow days?

Arnaud Deffuant: 7:53

That would have been Because clearly you were early, 12, something like that, yeah.

Lukas Seel: 7:59

I mean, discovering 10, 20, 100 Bitcoin wouldn't be terrible right now, would it? Do you remember having any like? This is something I ask a lot of people also. It's like was there any hesitation of jumping into this thing? Did you hear a lot about scams and all of this stuff? Like, interestingly, litecoin, I think, is a very natural way of getting on board. It was one of the first currencies that I bought because it actually worked. You know you could actually transact, yes, and in a short period of time you could send somebody money or a currency, and you know it was kind of the first time and you didn't pay horrendous transaction fees like on ETH either, right, so I think that's actually not not surprising, although I've never heard of anyone else, I think, sharing that story. Yeah, did you have any hesitations jumping into the space, or was it just intriguing this kind of concept of what you were saying or touching on before, financial freedom, like the freedom to transact whenever you want with whomever you want?

Arnaud Deffuant: 9:04

So I got in through Litecoin, but very quickly I was a bit intrigued by Ethereum and so I bought some LTC, I bought some ETH, and this was in 2017. And actually it was on Coinbasebase, so I didn't use blockchain back then and then I left it for three years and I basically came back to it in 2020, early stage of 2020. So I think it must have been what March, april of 2020, when I basically reinstalled my Coinbase app because I remembered that I had, you know, crypto in there, and so I looked at it. It was worth way less than what I had in 2017. Many such stories. Yeah, it was sad. I mean the first time I bought ETH in 2017, I think I bought ETH at like 200, and then I bought two more at um 400 and the last one at 900 dollars. Um, and there, when I open up in March or April, it's. It's terrible. Um, I don't have the exact numbers, but it's terrible.

Arnaud Deffuant: 10:44

But there I did my this when I made my deep dive on Ethereum and I absolutely fell in love with everything I saw. This is when I installed my first. I created my first metamask wallet. I transferred my, my, my coinbase, e on on chain, and I mean the fact. This was my aha moment, when it was transferred on my metamask wallet and then I could do whatever the fuck I wanted with it. This was magical. This was really magical to me. And this is when, you know, just complete bananas poured all my economy, all my finance, everything I had left, I put there. It was a good bet, honestly, because I bought ETH in 2020 before it made a big run. The sad story don't think about two crazy numbers the sad story is that I was so passionate with Ethereum that I locked my ETH in the Ethereum 2.0 contract. Me, too, I believed in sharding, bro.

Lukas Seel: 12:09

What can I say? I mean you still, if you bought in 2020, you still made out okay, hopefully, it was like 200 at the time, right, so, and and even the. The funny thing is, like the whole beth um thing, you got like five percent or something for the staking, right, it wasn't even. It wasn't even much.

Arnaud Deffuant: 12:24

It was at the beginning 5% because at the end there were so many people in this staking contract that you know you were making peanuts.

Lukas Seel: 12:32

Exactly yeah, yeah, it's true it went down to fractions of a percent or something. But I wonder like, because that's really interesting, I think this idea like what then really drew you or made you fall in love, even, um, with eth, like this idea of programmable money, um, just the idea that you had it in your own metamask and you could do with it whatever you wanted and could purchase things. Did you find anything really to purchase at the time? What? What were kind of the? How did you put it to use other than just holding it and looking at number go up?

Arnaud Deffuant: 13:07

Very quickly Aave Compound. So I was a user, I was a liquidity provider also on Uniswap on several tokens paired to ETH. So I just loved the concept that there was no human being to. You know, just refrain me or, uh, tell me, no, you can't do that. I, I project that I really wanted to get into and I fell for a Telegram scam because, basically, 20 minutes or half an hour before the official opening of the, basically you were exchanging opening of the of the. Basically, you were exchanging, you could invest your ETH to get the token and there was this. You know, by magic, this channel was created just before and they said hey, so you know it starts and it's now and this is the address, and boom, this is how I lost two ETH.

Arnaud Deffuant: 14:34

And, yeah, you really feel, when you get those kind of things happening, you feel violated from the inside. You know your belly is like, but you know your. Your belly is like, but, um, you know what it's. I never blamed the system and I think that's what. What is great with um, with the period we are in right now and the period we lived by back then, that we had the freedom to experiment and to um, to be at the start of something new.

Arnaud Deffuant: 15:11

Of course it's not always good because people will take advantage of all those blurry lines, but I can say that I've seen all this come to life and I'm super proud of it and super excited about our industry. I really love the blockchain industry. I'm here for the tech 100%. I always say to my friends you know, if I wanted to make more money, I gave the tip at Sol at eight. I have screenshot to prove it. I told my friend I have a crypto group with 11 friends and I told them so if you want to make a lot of money on this bull cycle, just buy, sold now. And I said I won't because I'm not into the tech.

Lukas Seel: 15:54

Yeah, Not going to make it or going to make it, We'll see. The verdict is out. But I think it's so interesting that you actually jumped from like a crypto newbie into a DeFi liquidity provider and all of this stuff. I mean, I did similar stuff. I lost stupid money, like you were saying, like on pairing you know, valuable currencies with new currencies. I just never went anywhere. The impermanent loss was horrendous, but you know very, very interesting.

Lukas Seel: 16:24

Exactly, and I want to say also, like these experimentation days, very, very interesting to have been a part of it, of the early like early-ish, I guess DeFi stuff. Obviously, people have been doing stuff for way longer than the two of us have since, you know, 2012, 13. 12, 13. But you mentioned drifters and you mentioned NFTs and I think it's something we'll touch on a little bit to this idea of community and how the Web3 space is organized a little bit differently than the traditional finance sector. So let's talk about discovering that and what you learn from it, and also now touch on how we got into the multiverse X also now touch on how we got into the multiverse X.

Arnaud Deffuant: 17:08

I think there's something that was very, very powerful back then. It's still powerful, but today we are used to it as being part of an adventure that most people are not interested in and are judging because of. You know what they think. This, uh, this whole thing is about, and this has the capacity to bring people together in a so powerful way and drifters, and so NFTs, uh, nfts, if, if you put aside the speculative craze that, in my opinion, um, destroy the magic that that this technology, the NFT technology, has, um, you know the magic it has to bring people together. Um, and NFTs had this power, you know, to create those communities, bring people together for various purposes, and I was drawn to it because you had this ability to just, you purchased an NFT and you could go to a discord and instantly you had a family. I mean it was so cool. Um, and and back then, I mean I had, I had a few nfts on on eath and um, one of the, the nfts. It was batshit crazy.

Arnaud Deffuant: 18:50

Those guys, uh, the the project, if I call correctly, I, I have them on my metamask. I didn't never sold them, but I think they were called angry penguins and it was basically a penguin fight club and those, those guys bought, uh, um, some, some land on the central land and there was an actual fight club, uh, for penguins in there. It was batshit crazy, the art was batshit crazy and the community, but the guys were so friendly and you know, you had, you have, people from all around the world and I was drawn to that because so I just a bit of a personal story my, I have an english mother, so I've lived abroad, so I've always loved, you know, and been open to other cultures.

Arnaud Deffuant: 19:37

I love that. So to me this is supernatural and also it brought me back to the crazy years playing World of Warcraft with the guild I was in and you know, meeting people on internet and just making friends and it felt like all the best in the blockchain industry. So, yeah, I kind of got to. I don't remember what was your initial question.

Lukas Seel: 20:08

You answered a few of them and I think exactly this idea, you know, bonding over something that is in one way quite superficial, just like a purchased item, but then opens up so many opportunities to do stuff together, and you know whether that's penguin fight clubs in central land or it's building valuable things um somewhere. And let's, let's talk about this drifters phase specifically. And then also, you know, like hadam obviously is building um, you know, on multiverse x in particular, um as home base. How did you, how did you, discover elrond and that ecosystem and what, what made you, you know, bridge the drifters over?

Arnaud Deffuant: 20:48

so in 2020, when I I do my big dive back into blockchain. I have more money and so I do an investment thesis and basically, back then, the opportunity, the biggest opportunity that I identified was doubling down on layer ones, because I understood that layer ones, similar to Ethereum, will have economies built upon them because of the smart contracts and that their tokens are both money but also a resource that you will need. And having understood this, I identified a few blockchains that I invested in, and egld was one of them. So this is how I discovered elrond. Um, I think back then I invested in in six of them. There was Ethereum, cosmos, avalanche, elrond, polkadot and the last one I don't remember, but yeah, so that was it. So then I experimented DeFi, etc. Aave Compound, uniswap Liquidity Providing NFFi, etc. Aave, compound, Uniswap Liquidity Providing NFTs, discover NFTs and at some point I start trying to get a sense of how those blockchain ecosystems are growing. And naturally, I stick more with Ethereum, polkadot and Elrond. So I participate in the parachains auctions on Polkadot. It was fun. To be honest, it was a cool experiment, social experiment also cool experiment, social experiment also. But over time, I tend to again come back to less, and those are Ethereum and Elrond.

Arnaud Deffuant: 23:04

And I discovered drifters through my little brother actually, whom I brought into crypto and he, you know, he shows me the art and he says I bought Drifters. They, you know, they look super cool, they have a vision of a world that is cool. So I discovered there were the Drifters white paper. I buy a few innovators and a few weeks after I actually discovered that the sale is not going well and in the Discord they are starting to talk about moving to Elrond and from then it just clicks. I was already in the Elrond ecosystem. I was already in the Elrond ecosystem by that time. We had Nogen, we had Meyer Punks, I had bought all those NFTs and so, naturally, I started asking questions to Henry, who was the founder of Drifters.

Arnaud Deffuant: 24:12

And you know, like, how do you intend to go to Elrond? Because you know going there doesn't mean that it's going to be successful, et cetera, et cetera. And I, you know, we have valuable conversations over a few weeks and at some point I see that I want to contribute and to help. And so I just ask him you know how can I help? He says you know, know, you know everything about the project now, so just help on discord, etc, etc. And we go closer and closer and closer and at some point, uh, he offers me to, you know, help the transition to elrond, so I do that, and then it, it becomes a success. You know the story, the um, the, the story the arrival on Elrond was a massive success for drifters and so we made a very big race back then and so that was, yeah, how I entered, how I joined drifters, and that lasted for one and a half year.

Lukas Seel: 25:14

Yeah, that's interesting. I think it's very interesting also particularly because you have this business development perspective and background right, and then you know going into this very new financial market that are NFTs, or at least the way they are financialized, and then you need to kind of figure out what a sustainable business for that company might be. Obviously, Drifters experimented with the metaverse at the time, right, Exactly. Maybe touch on that a little bit and then we'll transition to the main, the star of the show, which is Haddam, and how it's going there, and perhaps how you're applying some of the lessons you've learned from drifters and professionally working in the Web3 space there.

Arnaud Deffuant: 26:01

So back then, and with drifters, when I started, my role with Henry was to tell the story. Uh, because I I believe that if we were able to create a powerful story, a powerful universe around drifters, we could make it last. Uh, where does this come from? Uh, so this is not something that I tell everywhere, but actually I've been, um, uh, doing role-playing games for now 22 years now uh, dungeons and dragons with, uh, some of my best friends, and I even created my own world because I like playing on the world that is provided by the rules is not enough. So I love, you know, stories. I'm a super imaginative person and creative person, so Drifters provided me with this opportunity to blend my skills of business development with my passion of storytelling and creating, you know, crazy worlds. And so that's what I did in the beginning.

Arnaud Deffuant: 27:26

But very quickly the virus of entrepreneurship kicked in and I wanted to do more. So I started, you know, working more with Henry on the metaverse part looking for the studio, finding the studio and then creating the deal with the studio, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I mean with Henry we had a great relation because I think we were super like, we completed each other and it was a great synergy. So he, you know, he let a big production with an external partner, and then how do you transition this into a business model, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Arnaud Deffuant: 28:46

And it was hard to at some point, um, at some point, see and understand, uh, how you know, how are we going to to, to, to last in the next coming years? Um, and this is when you know, uh, I started having discussions with Henry to be like, plainly honest, I also have a girlfriend. I've been with her for now over six years and she was worried back then because you know, like, okay, you're experimenting with your thing, that I don't understand one thing. But then you move into this industry and you still don't understand anything. And now you are working in an ft project, building a metaverse, what the fuck. And you know it's like, so, after a year and a half, um, you know I was receiving big pressure also on that end.

Arnaud Deffuant: 29:54

so I think you know, we had this conversation with henry and I and I remember it and I won't disclose everything because it was uh, it was a tough conversation to have, but he, henry, was such a super human being and he understood perfectly and you know, he told me okay, you know what, let's, let's make it work, let's, you know, let's find a way for you to uh exit drifters in a way that won't harm the and and, uh, yeah, and and and. After this, you know, I remember, I, I, I didn't know where I was going to go, but I knew I wanted to stay in crypto, I wanted to stay, um, in blockchain, uh, and I wanted to go back to a business that I could make sense instantly because of my experience, and I didn't have any. I wanted to do that on MotiverSex. That was my one objective, but I didn't have anything. So I started being a bit more vocal and I'm very happy that he's here.

Arnaud Deffuant: 31:22

But there is the guy who offered me a seat at the table to show myself, and that's GRM. So a big love brother, because I joined grm when he was revamping and an existing uh spaces uh, that was a nft space, I I don't remember the name, but anyways and so I I joined him. You know, um a bit, and then more, and then more, and then more, and then I was always there and this gave me the stand to actually show who I am, show my expertise, my take on things. And one day I made a chronic, a column, a long column, on one of the long Hatom posts, and actually in the audience, the strictly hidden, there was one of Hatom co-founders. And after the show, the space, they came to me and they said, hey, could we have a chat? And you know this is how it started. So that was in October last year. Yeah, congrats. So more than one year ago.

Lukas Seel: 32:44

Been a long journey and a very interesting and windy road. So now let's first of all quick question Does your girlfriend understand what you do now?

Arnaud Deffuant: 32:56

Yeah, a bit more. Okay A bit more.

Lukas Seel: 33:01

Yeah, I think it's easier to be accepting of the fact that your boyfriend works in finance, even if it's decentralized. Let's talk about the vision of Haddam. Let's talk about the vision of Hadam. When they contacted you, you already were aware of all the things they were building. They've been in the ecosystem for a long time. They were one of the Launchpad projects. They were live. Exactly, they were one of the Launchpad projects. So clearly they've been in the ecosystem for a long, long time, have managed to build great relationships with basically all the key stakeholders in the ecosystem. But let's talk a little bit about the vision, as you understand it, of Hadam. What sets it apart from other providers, defi, platforms and all of these things? How would you kind of describe the vision there if you would have to?

Arnaud Deffuant: 34:04

Hattem is a place where you can become the architect of your own financial strategy. It is a place where you can handle your money freely because it's decentralized, and it will provide you with opportunities you decide to seize to combine that you can transform into strategies, and that's really the vision. That's their mission. They want to create a protocol that is inclusive, that allows everybody to own their financial destiny, and that's why you know, first of all, I love that I joined them, but also because it's so deeply rooted in who I am, I am very happy that I'm contributing to build such a tool and when I have friends that I can convince to jump and start using Hatton, and I have friends that I can convince to jump and start using Hattem and they stick to it, it makes me super proud because to me, this is one of the most beautiful thing that technology has brought.

Arnaud Deffuant: 35:27

Finance is rooted in the world today, but we have been running on the same infrastructure, the same gear, the same tools for decades and defy, um, defy, changes. This, it, it, hundred x's, this, and that's why everything finance, everything, payments is going to move on to I'm not saying will, potentially, whatever. No, I'm signing it right now. It's going to move because it's so much more efficient and Hatom has. Hatom is, that's the vision of Hatom and Hatom is doing it on multiverse sex Because, first of all, not many people know this, but all the founders were very early stage. L-rondon, do you hear me?

Lukas Seel: 36:24

well, yeah, you dropped for just one second, but Adam founders were early LRUN investors.

Arnaud Deffuant: 36:30

Yeah they were early stage LRUN investors and they, you know, like us, they were drawn by the technology promises back then and at some point they just wanted to start contributing to this ecosystem and that's why they, they, they assessed, you know where was the was, you know the big piece needed, and they have very deep financial understanding and DeFi expertise, and so naturally, they went towards building what is needed in every blockchain ecosystem, that is, the financial engine, the lending protocol.

Lukas Seel: 37:21

And I think this is actually something to kind of bookmark the success rate of projects that really understand both the needs of the ecosystem they're in but also the larger ecosystem needs where they can address problems in the wider space. That is such an indicator of success. Right, and I think you know, maybe we'll touch on some of the things that that had them does or how it does them differently, um, but just in terms of offerings, um, we have lending, we have borrowing, we have, um now, a stable coin arriving. So can you um kind of like sum up these things and how they all tie in together? And then let's jump into stable coins and the discussion about USH and the arrival there as well.

Arnaud Deffuant: 38:11

So the interesting way Hattem built its, its protocol, is they. They knew that there was an opportunity with the lending protocol, but very quickly they understood that there were other needs in the ecosystem to build them and always making those other products, other protocols, bring strength to the lending protocol and that's. They're doing this in a way that is very different from other lending protocols. Across crypto, Everything is tied back every so. You have the lending protocol, you have the liquid staking, you have the Tau Bridge, you have the upcoming USH stablecoin. All this is tied in together through the booster and the HTM token. All this is contributing back to strengthen the lending protocol, which is the core engine, the core financial engine on the multiversex ecosystem today.

Lukas Seel: 39:36

Yeah, and I think the token thing is always an interesting part, right, like, obviously, hadam launched with a token raise. I think you know I tend to be a person that's rather skeptical of every new token, but HTM is an interesting example of how to actually provide utility across a suite of products and tie it back to creating value for investors of the token, bringing more value to the ecosystem, but also, like you were saying, tying it back to the other services. You're connecting your protocol with right and I think that's something that is coming, or is a shortcoming, of a lot of token designs and tokenomicomic flaws, right yeah, 100.

Arnaud Deffuant: 40:28

You have loads of projects um in the in in the blockchain industry, they launch, talking a lot of token to launch a token and they, you know, once the the plane is is flying, it's not the time to look at how the engine is working and wanting to tune it. You can do it and it can work, but it's very, very hard, especially when you want to tie back your product to a token economy. It's very hard and this is where HATOM did a great job, because HTM is a resource. It's not just a token that can go up or down, it is a resource in the protocol. The more you have it, the more it amplifies your yield and you will get a percentage of the revenue generated by the protocol. And this is just brilliant.

Arnaud Deffuant: 41:30

You know, because you connect all the revenue generated by all the different products and through the HTM token you build a formidable, you know machinery that the revenue will buy back HTM out of the open market.

Arnaud Deffuant: 41:49

So you, you, you put a buy pressure, constant buy pressure. The more the protocol grows, meaning the more users it gets, the more revenue it generates. The more revenue it generates, the more buyback pressure on the HTM token on the the market it got it does, and the more token you give back to the htm stakers in the, in the product. And the htm stakers, they do that because they want to amplify their yields. So they are the number one people, they are the liquidity providers. So you have this, this formidable alignment of all the incentives from the person who's holding HTM, the liquidity provider, the protocol and the token, and yeah, I mean this is a very, very interesting machinery. And the transition to USH, which is going to be the cherry on top of the cake, which is going to be, you know, the cherry on top of the cake, and USH again, is going to be tied to the success of the protocol through HTM.

Lukas Seel: 42:59

And let's talk about that a little bit in a different context, because one thing, especially at Helios, we're always looking at is adoption and like retail adoption, and you mentioned how you got into DeFi because you were fascinated with all the freedoms that it affords you, right? And I asked about your girlfriend, not without reason, right? It's like does she understand what Haddam is doing? Is her money on Haddam Like the? The financial products, of course, that Hadam has released so far are pretty sophisticated and they're probably targeting a demographic that is like okay, well, stablecoin I understand that my $1 is worth $1 in this cryptocurrency. I can earn more yield on it, or it's like naturally more yield than I get in my bank account. But now I can perhaps even explore some more sophisticated products. Is that something you guys are looking at in terms of business development?

Arnaud Deffuant: 44:08

So you know, when it comes to trading stocks, not everybody is using a Bloomberg terminal. So you have in the stock exchange and people investing in stocks. You have those different layers, and those layers we don't have them yet in DeFi. We have a few of them, but not all of them. It's normal. The industry is so young.

Arnaud Deffuant: 44:47

So I think there's also something that we need to recognize is that DeFi and a protocol like HATM let's not beat around the bush and lie to ourselves it is a machinery that is quite complex and we want to make it as elegant and easy to understand as possible. I mean, it is still, when you talk to someone that is not from blockchain, from from blockchain you talk about, about those you know. You talk about the machinery and how it works and they just they look here at you with the eyes and you're like what are you saying? So it's fine that it's not for everybody. That's the first thing. But what's important is to always make sure that we give our best to make sure that people who want to can, and so there's two things in the adoption you're talking about and the business development role that we are doing at Hattem. The first one is constant product refinement to make sure that UI UX is always improving. And in 2025, we're going to have a revamp of everything on Hatton, because we've learned so much with Sol by building the Sol protocol that once you will see it in the testnet soon, you will see what wow. It's just mind-blowing.

Arnaud Deffuant: 46:31

And we want to transpose this experience into Hatom to make sure that we again improve the user experience. But it doesn't mean that your grandma is going to come and use Hatom. That would be a lie. So what we need and this is what we are pushing for is those layers built on top. So we want other projects coming and integrating Hatom inside so that they can abstract the experience, they can abstract the difficulty.

Arnaud Deffuant: 47:07

Of course, the yield is not going to be the same, but that's fine. If, if you want to to to optimize your trades, buy a bloomberg terminal and you will make maybe more money than uh, you know, uh the person, than going through the person that you're going for for your stocks. But not everybody wants to optimize for everything, you know. They just want to be exposed to crypto because they believe this is the future. They want to have a skin in the game in the blockchain industry, but they don't want to handle. You know everything, so that's fine and that's where we are. Those are the two fronts we're always pushing and um, it's the natural development for hatem looking for ways to always improve the user experience and looking for ways to have partners who are going to be able to address different type of users for a different experience?

Lukas Seel: 48:01

yeah, I think it's. It's important to note that you're also basically an infrastructure provider for other financial applications that want to have different subsets of consumers and users that they can offer services to using what you're providing. Let's talk about another very important element of adoption, which is regulation. You spoke about it quite a bit at a recent conference at XDA in Munich, which was focused on RWA specifically, and part of the largest RWA in the space are stablecoins, so you guys have an international business. Mika is coming. How are these European regulations and international regulations and, in general, the maturing of the space toward a more regulated or semi-regulated space, impacting what you're doing at HATM, and how does your strategy evolve with the ways that regulations are evolving?

Arnaud Deffuant: 49:08

evolve with the ways that regulations are evolving. So HATOM, from the start, has been set up in Liechtenstein, and Liechtenstein is a country that is not part of the EU, but what's interesting with them is that, since they are highly financial player, you know they have had before Europe, and actually a big part of the European task force thinking about digital asset regulation has looked at what Liechtenstein has been doing, and so, by having a company in Liechtenstein, you basically, by default, engage yourself in complying with the European regulation. So, that being said, hatem is always. You know, there's Mika coming. We are looking at how we will need to adapt to it. But there's two things. First of all, hatom is a decentralized finance player, so we don't, for example, we don't handle people's funds, since everything is decentralized. For example, we don't handle people's funds, since everything is decentralized. You don't have to comply with the same regulation as a protocol that is going to handle your funds for users. Through decentralization, you create possibilities, the smart contracts for them, and users come in there, deposit, handle their money, handle the strategy, they move their funds, and so this makes a difference with the regulation.

Arnaud Deffuant: 50:55

For the second part, that is going to be interesting and we are going to follow this closely is for stablecoin regulation. Again, here, ush is a decentralized stablecoin regulation. Again, here, ush is a decentralized stablecoin. So again, it is through smart contracts. Users come in, deposit collateral, mint USH. They do what they want with USH. We have nothing to say about it.

Arnaud Deffuant: 51:25

Um, we are going to look closely at how, you know, mika will deploy itself towards stable coins. And if we have to um, you know um make, make changes, or we will, of course, always try to uh to make the best out of both worlds. But we are building decentrally because we want people to have the freedom to handle their money, and that's the important thing. And now, after we want our protocol to expand, we want USH to expand. And if it means that sometimes you have to look at the regulation and change a few things to comply, if it doesn't break with the or come in direct opposition with our ethos, of course we will do it.

Arnaud Deffuant: 52:24

If, if not, then we will have to have hard uh discussions. You know, it's like I don't know. Let's say that we are forced in two years to um to make ush a token that we can control and we can burn from wallet, etc. Etc. I I can't answer what will be our decision? On Hatem's side, I have a good idea, but I'm not one of the co-founders so I can't speak for the protocol in that sense.

Lukas Seel: 52:56

Yeah, very interesting stuff I want to give. If somebody is in the audience who wants to come up and ask a question or just comment in the comment section, um, we'll try to get to one or two of those. Um, maybe let's let's just make it concrete and sort of look at a timeline and a roadmap for for hadam releases. Um, I think, or I think you guys have a new studio sci-fi or something like that I don't know how you pronounce it that kind of combines Sol Hadam, maybe something else as well Research Arm. What's coming up for you guys next? Do you have a date for the release of the USH token? Of course there is. The one question that I do see in the comments is when. So let's talk a little bit about the upcoming plans for Hadam in.

Arnaud Deffuant: 53:49

So let's talk a little bit about the upcoming plans for Hadam. So, specifically with with USH there I'm going to quote Ahmed, our CEO. When it comes to our ethos of building, the number one thing is never compromise with security. So, um, ush is on testnet. Um, the testnet is going great. Uh, no, you know, major um problem has been found. Absolutely no smart contract problem has been found. No smart contract problem has been found. So, um, the the feedback from the community and the bugs that they found are essentially, uh, cosmetic front-end ux. So this is looking great and this is what can push back the launch for some time. So we are coming to, uh, kind of coming to the end of this test net without saying when it's going to end. But this is like close and once this is done, we are going to have um one month of liquidity bootstrapping and then we will launch. So you, as soon as you know that the DevNet stops, you know that one month after, ush will launch.

Lukas Seel: 55:13

That means there will be a countdown.

Arnaud Deffuant: 55:14

Yes, Always, I mean we're on multi-persecs, come on.

Lukas Seel: 55:21

Great. Are there products that you're looking forward to releasing?

Arnaud Deffuant: 55:38

I mean Sol. Is there a date for that? Sol is built? It's a completely different project. It's built outside of MultiverseX. Of course, those two companies are being run at the same time, but they have two different tech teams. So Sol is also moving forward very nicely and we are currently working on how to bring the test net to uh to to to the market. So uh, yes, we're, you know it's. It's also very close for the test net of soul yeah, we'll do.

Lukas Seel: 56:19

we'll do maybe a separate space on soul, because I think that's a very, very interesting um product as well, and how that is different and how that ties together liquidity across a fragmented liquidity ecosystem or liquidity I don't know what do you say pool and very interesting, very interesting product. Just you as a person. Going back to a more personal view, hadam obviously ties in with this, but where do you see the space progressing in the next three to five to ten years? What would you say? You already mentioned made a very bold statement that DeFi is moving on chain. Any other predictions and perhaps predictions of when that is happening? Is there anything that's blocking it right now, such as regulation and things like that? Um, what would you say personally is is going to happen in the next few years here you mean for defy or for the, the whole of blockchain?

Lukas Seel: 57:19

let's, let's keep it to defy.

Arnaud Deffuant: 57:20

I guess um contained a little bit now, so I'm not taking my prediction back. Blockchain is such a 100x improvement to make money move that it started with experiments around. How can we help people transact exchange? But soon enough, companies are going to discover that transborder payment can be done in a few seconds for a fraction like it's not a fraction you would be. Uh, some companies, when they want to transfer billions across the job, the, the, the globe it costs, it's cost them millions. I mean, through blockchain, you can do that for cents. So they're going to discover this. Then those companies are going to to discover what uh, us crazy, uh crazy dudes have been doing in in defy and they're going to discover that you know, the treasury um sitting in whatever they're doing and making 2% a year is completely nuts. When they will transform this and bring their treasury on blockchain rails and so, yeah, I don't know if it's going to be in the next two years, five years, but it's coming, because money is information down the line and it will always choose the most efficient way to flow. So that's just, it's a natural law, I would say. So it's coming, for DeFi finance is going to become blockchain finance.

Arnaud Deffuant: 59:24

In Munich, I pinpointed, you know, something that Marc Andreessen from A16Z said about the early days of the internet. He said internet had two original sins, basically because they had to go too quickly and they didn't do a good job. And those two sins are internet couldn't handle money at protocol level and couldn't handle property at protocol level. So blockchain is the upgrade. We are allowing money to flow at protocol level. You don't need PayPal, you don't need banks, you don't need those things anymore. Money flows just naturally at protocol level. And property. You know, just put a tagger T on your car.

Lukas Seel: 1:00:21

I love that little shout out to Michiel building no-transcript. So I think a very interesting aspect that we'll come back to in the next one. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you everybody for listening. This was Helios Horizons, episode 28 with Hadam and Arno. Thank you so much, arno.

Arnaud Deffuant: 1:01:11

Thanks for having me, Lukas. It was a pleasure. Bye-bye, guys.

Lukas Seel: 1:01:15

Thank you all, see you soon.