JB Carthy: 0:00

But this is Helios Horizons, episode 33. Today we're talking about capital efficient staking with Makoto Uramura, co-founder of Pell Network, who are part of the upcoming or they are the upcoming project launching on X Launchpad bringing restaking to Multiverse. X. Pleased to have you with us, my friend.

Makoto Uramura: 0:23

Thank you so much for having me. Hello everyone, this is Makoto. I'm the co you with us, my friend. Thank you so much for having me. Hello everyone, this is Makoto. I'm the co-founder of Pell Network, super excited to be here today with the Helios staking community and share more about Pell and talk about capital efficiency and staking.

JB Carthy: 0:38

No, 100%. My friend, Pleasure for us to have you here to join us for a good conversation, but maybe obviously, look, everyone started from somewhere. No matter what people are building, they all have their own backstory. They all have the origin where they came from. Tell us a little bit about Makoto and your journey to this point.

Makoto Uramura: 0:59

Yeah, sure, so well, I actually started my career as a certified guy, used to work in investment banking and management consulting and, frankly speaking, I was quite bored at some point in time with the sort of very suit up career, suit up career. And I think maybe it was fate or something that I was introduced to the Ethereum Foundation back in 2018 and they were actually organizing the Ethereum Global Hackathon series called ETH Global, and I'm actually based in Singapore. So back in 2018 they were trying to expand the EVE Global Hackathon series to this part of the world in Asia, and they eventually picked Singapore as the first stop in Southeast Asia and I actually had the opportunity to work with them to help them organize that hackathon. And then that was the first time I actually met really a concentrated group of really committed and passionate builders and I was very intrigued by what they were building and the overall vibe of the blockchain community and I decided to leave my boring day job in TratFi and dive into crypto. And then I did a bunch of things since I joined the industry, sort of used the CeFi platform as a transition in, but I soon realized that it's not something crypto native enough for me, because if you're familiar with how CeFi works. It's essentially the track five business, but dealing with crypto as an asset class.

Makoto Uramura: 2:47

I quickly find that was not my calling and I branched into DeFi, did a few stuff, including stablecoin, dex, lending protocol, staking protocol, and I think it was in last year. We saw sort of a very interesting opportunity arising in risk taking and the whole concept of shared security being like a web3 cloud infrastructure, and I was very attracted in a way to this narrative and to this particular business. So I gathered the other two co-founders of Pell and we started this journey from beginning of last year we're actually soon going to celebrate the first anniversary of Pell and we actually started building Pell from, I would say, february last year onwards and fast forward today. I think we are a mature enough project, ready to actually come down our IDO, do our TGE and then sort of enter the next phase of our lifecycle.

JB Carthy: 3:58

No for sure, and we're obviously going to dive deep into Pell and chat about the problems you guys are solving and chat about the values you guys are solving, and chat about the values like shared economic security brings to Bitcoin, to MultiverseX or eGold and, in general, but obviously super interested, the Ethereum Foundation has definitely been in the headlines, at least on Twitter or X, in the last few days and, yeah, what was it about? If we go back a little bit earlier, to those early moments when you just started exploring blockchain, the decentralized ethos, what was it about Ethereum's mission vision that drew you into the space to begin with?

Makoto Uramura: 4:36

Yeah, so if you sort of turn back the clock to 2018, there were not sort of. There were not sort of. The sort of ecosystem back then was not as diverse as what we see today, and DeFi wasn't even a thing back in 2018, right. So there were a lot of early stage projects like Uniswap, like DYDX and these kind of projects. Back then they were all sort of in a very experimental phase and I think I was firstly attracted to the idea of being able to build sort of a decentralized computer Back then.

Makoto Uramura: 5:17

I think that was one of Ethereum's value proposition. And it becomes, I would say, a decentralized operating system that actually operates collectively on everybody's computer and everybody contributes part of the compute power to this decentralized OS. And then this OS can actually support smart contract-driven applications to be run on top of that. And these applications, as we know today, dapps. They do not actually rely on centralized intermediaries, they don't have like black box data centers or servers. Everything is transparent.

Makoto Uramura: 5:55

Of course, there is still the privacy preserving parts where everybody is just represented by a contract address, or it can be actually an EOA address or it can be a CA, and I think you sort of have that full anonymity yet full transparency. And I think it was just such a novel new concept to me back then when I was actually more exposed to centralized databases in banks and in other big corporates. And I think I would say although I am not very much in touch with the EF guys nowadays, but back then I felt it was a very young, passionate, driven group of people having really, I would say, of people having really, I would say, pure ideas and ideals to their matter in terms of building a different world that's ahead of us. So it's unfortunate to see the kind of community outrage that's happening, especially in the past few days.

JB Carthy: 7:01

No, definitely, and I think sometimes you know the public can be quite unforgiving when your affairs are displayed in public and when you're building in public and you're such a public figure like Vitalik is all your decisions, all your actions come under scrutiny. And you know, especially when he essentially, less than 10 years ago, built one of the pioneering technologies of the world and no one really knows how it's, how, how it was going to turn out, and obviously along the way there's going to be growing pains, there's going to be problems that have to be solved, but um, I'm pretty sure, based on his competency, that he's shown to this point that, like um, it's all going to come out, come out the other end, okay, and look, I think anyone in this space, just, we're all on this, we're all on the same path, we're all working towards the same goal. We all want to build these, build these rails, these infrastructures that um allow us all to thrive, ultimately like to and participate in this decentralized, permissionless world and govern each other, have code, be law and not be restricted by centralized agendas or entities. So I think anyone who wishes well for the space as a whole and definitely hopes that, like ethereum and one of the leaders and leaders of the whole movement and come out the other side stronger. Like you know and and I think, like I'm I'm super interested to even learn a little bit more about back in 2018, it's probably a time when a few people in the audience including myself weren't around, weren't as familiar with things that were going on.

JB Carthy: 8:34

Everything was probably a little bit more immature. But how was it? You said Ethereum Foundation were trying to expand into new markets. You your base in Singapore. Tell us a little bit about, maybe, how things were back then in terms of the Web3 or the community growth and building to how it is now, if that makes sense. A little bit of context as to how far we've come.

Makoto Uramura: 9:03

Yeah. So I think it was really like a wild west uh back in 2018 and, uh, I think for those of you who have sort of gone through the market cycles, you probably know 2018 was a super, super bad bear market. Uh, because he just came right off the 2017 uh CO craze and the bull run and I think ETH in that cycle hit a local top of about $1,400, $1,500. And by December that was when we actually organized ETH Singapore as part of the hackathon series ETH actually fell below $100. So I think, in a way, looking back, it was a very interesting experience because, since the market was shit, the builders who participated in the hackathon there was actually very few discussion around commercial ideas. People were really exploring the technological possibility of using Ethereum and sort of introducing the ideas of how do we model a certain business or how do we actually solve some of the real-life problems using a decentralized system. So I think it was somehow a very I would say, a pure discussion and hackathon. But if you look at, for example, conferences that we have nowadays, of course, yes, much more diverse content and there are just a lot of colorful ideas floating around and even, for example, if you want to build a project. If you are building this today versus you were building that back in 2018, 2017, the setup was very different. So I think those of you who are in Europe you probably feel this the most with the introduction of Mika. You know there was no such thing back then.

Makoto Uramura: 11:01

Right, and even Ethereum and other I will say uh, projects like multiverse x and I think back then it was called aaron uh, you didn't probably start with all these complex, uh legal structures and you don't have to do a lot of things just to ensure you are regulatory compliant and you can actually focus a lot more on just experiments with an idea you have, write a code, launch that and see how the community or the market reacts to that. And I think basically, it was, I would say, a much more open playing field as compared to today, where things are taken a lot more seriously. Where things are taken a lot more seriously. But still, I think we see rising narratives in this cycle, such as AI agents and stuff that sort of. Give me back the old vibe where you can just be a one-man team or you can be sort of a handful of tech enthusiasts, that you just build that and you make a hit in the market and then you are rewarded for actually building something new.

Makoto Uramura: 12:13

I really hope to see more and more of these kind of projects and initiatives coming out, and that's why, when we built Pell, our idea here is that it's increasingly more difficult for anyone who is building a distributed network or system to actually find an efficient, secure way to bootstrap their economic security. So we actually want to lower this entry barrier for aspiring builders not only, for example, in the Bitcoin ecosystem or in the multiverse ecosystem, but literally anyone building on top of any kind of VM or tech stack to actually quickly have the ability to trial the idea, build fast, fail fast and iterate from there. So that's actually one of the original, original ideas I had when I started pill no for sure.

JB Carthy: 13:07

Um, and obviously the problem you're solving with pal and you've been part of the market, you've tried the products, you've been around, as you're saying, dove into defy and in the period between 2018 and now, five years later, 2025, and a lot of things have happened, a lot of water's gone under the bridge and but I'd be super interested to maybe even talk about the journey. Okay, so in 2018 got into crypto, started to dive a little bit deeper into it and get deeper involved with growing and building communities and projects, and and then in that seven years, you know how did the journey take you to understand that, like pal was, pal was the project that needed to be built. So, when you were exploring defy, as defy maybe like emerged and matured a little bit and what was?

Makoto Uramura: 13:59

what were the realizations you came to that like essentially made you guys founding pal realize it was it was a good solution, that needs to be built well, I think if I, if I sort of take my personal story or experience, uh, with crypto in the past few years, uh, one of the key lessons or learnings I've taken away is that, uh, we need to really stay true to the spirit and ethos of building everything on chain.

Makoto Uramura: 14:30

So I have actually worked in, for example, c5 business model and we have seen the hard lessons a lot of people have learned in last cycle with the collapse of FTX as sort of really marking the end of last cycle, that you see, no matter how good a business, how successful a business seem to be on the surface, if you do not have that unchanging transparency, the human nature, the dark side of us, actually can sort of take control of our behavior, our actions. At a certain point in time when the pie actually grows to such a huge size. And actually, when I thought about Stack Impel, I just want to make sure that no more of this black box operation anymore. If I were to work on anything sort of in the industry, I really want to make sure that we respect and we give people who participate in Web3 the kind of transparencies that we started out with.

JB Carthy: 15:43

No for sure, 100%. So let's maybe just dive a little bit deeper into into Pell itself. So we'll go through Pell, we'll talk about, like what you guys are building, the problem you guys are solving, and then obviously, and why you chose to build on multiverse X and like looking ahead to the launchpad. But yeah, and for those who are unfamiliar, you know, restaking is probably a somewhat new concept and eigen layer, I think really came forward with it and last year, the year before, and kind of brought it, brought it to the forefront or brought it to the the front of people's minds. And but for those who are unfamiliar in the audience, maybe let's um, do a little, do it like, yeah, like what is restaking Can?

Makoto Uramura: 16:30

you explain it to us in a way that we can understand. Yeah, so I think, just continuing from the brief sort of intro I made about Pell earlier on, the problem that we're trying to solve is, in a way, coming from two different directions. So on one hand, you have builders who want to actually bootstrap or build new projects, that is, leveraging the decentralized network that we have today. But if you're building anything that is, for example, aligned to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, you would need to actually acquire your own set of node operators or validators. And, especially if you want to actually do these projects for a longer time horizon, it is not a good practice to actually run all the nodes on your own, because very soon the community will question how decentralized your system actually is. So in order to attract validators to actually join a new network validators to actually join a new network, they have to actually launch their own token and basically give a very lucrative sometimes so high that it becomes unsustainable kind of yield to attract and retain the validators and users who participate validators and users to participate. But being early stage projects, the token can be subject to very high volatility and that actually poses a risk, and I think we actually give EigenLayer team a lot of credit for doing a lot of deep research on this front that actually will lead to a death spiral. So when your token tanks, the overall network security of your system also decreases and you will see, for example, people pulling out from that, which is going to trigger a further drop in the token, and then that actually will weaken your network even more, to the point that malicious actors may find it is easy to take over control and really start attacking the network and extract whatever residual value there is, and that actually can kill projects.

Makoto Uramura: 18:56

So introducing the idea of restaking is basically saying look. It's basically saying look. Instead of using your old token and earmark a huge portion of that to staking and emission rewards, why don't you use an established asset, in EigenLayer's case, using ETH? We use Bitcoin, as well as the latest introduction, egold, to actually provide that support of economic security. That also makes it separate and independent when it comes to anything that is happening directly to the project. For example, there's a fart going on A lot of times. It's baseless, it's unfounded, it's just because of hearsay, but it actually spreads in the community.

Makoto Uramura: 20:03

If you use a risk-taking model in this case, then whether your token goes up or down, it is less correlated to the underlying assets like Bitcoin or e-gold. So you have a relatively stable foundation of the entire network security so that, as a builder, you can number one quickly bootstrap your network, because what Pell has gathered so far is over 60 institutional-grade node operators that are ready to work with our decentralized validator service projects or our client from day one. And secondly, you can actually pay in terms of the fees at a lower APR as compared to if you're running your network on your own. So you have cost efficiency there, you have higher security there and you can actually bootstrap your network faster. So we believe this is going to be really a net positive for the builders who want to build new projects in the space, regardless what kind of use case you are looking at Now.

Makoto Uramura: 21:05

On the other hand, restaking also offers the asset holders for example, bitcoin holders, e-gold holders an additional low-risk source of yield, and that comes purely on-chain. That is not coming from, say, emission. That sometimes, again, is not sustainable and it actually does not contribute long-term value to the network and these asset holders. They will actually basically enjoy a relatively stable or low risk yields on their idle assets, and so they are actually benefiting from providing this shared security to the deserving projects. So imagine you are essentially participating in the decentralized structure of AWS where currently, if you look at how Amazon Web Services is run they actually provide this cloud computing platform to any companies who want data storage or server and you basically just pay a subscription fee to AWS and you can dynamically also adjust the kind of services you want.

Makoto Uramura: 22:21

But we take that to a further step. Now is equivalent to say, your personal hard driver spaces can also be used to participate in this space and in exchange for your contribution of these resources, you actually get a cut of the fees that is actually accrued in the process. So we believe it connects, on one hand, the asset holders and, on the other hand, the economic security consumers, and we, as a platform that provides the technical infrastructure and integration services to this, will really help all the participants to get a better economic and technical outcome because of risk-taking. So I personally really like this idea and, although I would say a lot, a lot of the community has not yet really internalized and realized the benefit of this, but we are actually committed to keep on educating and building a space to a day, when the point of inflection has reached, that people realize that, hey, this actually is indeed a better way to build a new crypto project no for sure, 100, and it's a comp.

JB Carthy: 23:37

It's a complicated concept, like you know. It's not, it's not easy to understand and but when you say, like the community maybe have not fully realized the benefits, and if you had the opportunity to maybe talk to them or put forward maybe three key points as to the three key points you would need to understand to fully understand the benefits, what would you say? They would be yeah.

Makoto Uramura: 24:00

So I think let me narrowly define a community as the asset holders for the moment, because I think that represents a vast majority of crypto community we basically hold one form of yields of your assets and that is done on-chain.

Makoto Uramura: 24:34

That is done in a transparent manner.

Makoto Uramura: 24:48

Further, by contributing the assets, not only you earn a yield, you're actually contributing positively towards the growth of the entire industry, because without the contribution of the asset holders to actually put forward the assets, we are not able to provide an aggregated pool of shared security that can be used, can be rented, can be consumed by our decentralized validator services projects.

Makoto Uramura: 25:12

And I think a lot of times the community wants to make their positive contribution towards the forward development of the industry, but some of them simply lack the technical know-how or lack the ability to actually find the right way to participate. Risk-taking gives them basically this one-click experience or this one-click solution or opportunity to actually contribute something and help the industry move forward. And I think, thirdly is it also and I think this is also not sufficiently recognized benefit is that a lot of these new projects also want to put themselves in front of users, so the asset holders who participate in restaking will also get the first-hand exposure and get the first-hand experience, getting to know what is new, what is being built, and even try out the services, the products being built by the DBS providers. And I think this is again the benefits of having sort of not relying on sort of word of mouth for your own research on crypto Twitter, but rather looking at a platform like Pell that has got a collection of interesting new projects that are actually coming up.

JB Carthy: 26:45

No for sure, A hundred percent, and you guys are already actually have been pretty successful so far, even coming up to this launch pad, and it's great to see maybe like a token launch and like a project launch, coming from such a position of strength. If I just look through, like your roadmap and in mid last year already launched and btc restaking and on multiple chains and you guys have over 30 ecosystem partners and tvl reaching and over 500 million if I'm if I'm right at this point. And so what is the? So maybe there's a couple of questions, like Bitcoin restaking. Obviously, bitcoin is like a native chain. How does Bitcoin restaking work, if that makes sense?

Makoto Uramura: 27:37

Sure. Well, I think that is a very important question, a very important question, and I think what we have not sort of explained I will say enough to the community is that it is very easy to say that we are building a restating platform. But if you look at the underlying asset, which is BDC, to implement and realize this kind of capability to the same level of, for example, what Aiguner has built on Ethereum or what Solair has built on Solana, it takes a lot more work, sort of under the hood, because Bitcoin has very limited programmability hood, because Bitcoin has very limited programmability, so there has to be additional pieces added in the process in order to make it work. But once we have cracked that, thankfully with the support and help from our ecosystem partners, we have now been able to really link this end to end and once we have achieved that, it becomes a very powerful tool and I think I wouldn't want to use the words competitor, but it offers a very strong alternative to any kind of project seeking shared security. To think about what is the strength of the security I'm looking for? If I want the strongest possible crypto native security, then look no further.

Makoto Uramura: 29:15

Bitcoin is actually the way to go right and fast forward a little bit after we have built that.

Makoto Uramura: 29:21

So fast forward a little bit after we have built that, we started to talk to other projects, ecosystems, blockchains, and I think, for example, when we started the conversation with MultiverseX, we realized that, on one hand, bitcoin-backed security is definitely going to benefit the MultiverseX ecosystem but, on the other hand, within the multiverse ecosystem itself, there are certain aspects that may not actually require a Bitcoin-backed security and it makes sense or sometimes it makes even more sense to use, for example, e-gold as the underlying asset for the shared security that's being provided, because it simply offers easier technical integration and for, for example, uh projects, especially uh working within the multiverse ecosystem, it actually gives people more comfort and confidence that they are already joined on the security properties and asset value being provided by e-gold.

Makoto Uramura: 30:26

So we start to sort of move towards the direction of working, I would say, so-called a parent DAO, sub-dao kind of structure, where each sub-DAO, starting with Multiverse X, will have a very designated scope of work, that we will provide the restating capability within the ecosystem to support the ecosystem-specific projects. And I think we are drawing on this, of course, from our experience building the Bitcoin, restating and, I think so far what we have seen is it really helped us sort of save a lot of time, sort of crafting or architecting what is restating our multiverse looks like?

JB Carthy: 31:13

Definitely? And do you think that obviously chatting about like maybe how Bitcoin is obviously the primary store of value in the space and the largest market cap by a significant distance has the most value captured inside it? Do you think this is um kind of a model that more chains that are launching are going to follow, where they're going to essentially um utilize the larger valuations, the larger market caps and of bigger tokens and and leverage that for their own economic security? As to creating their own tokens for their own economic security, if that makes sense, do you see this as a trend that is coming down the line?

Makoto Uramura: 31:58

Yeah. So from our observation, I do see this as a trend that has actually been gathering momentum in the past. So Ivy Lane, of course, helped us open this new world of restaking. And then we have in the Bitcoin ecosystem, we have Pell, and I think there is also Babylon that is one of our close partners in terms of restaking collaboration, and then, if we look across, we also have Solana that's embracing restaking with a few projects building restaking solutions on them, and we're even seeing, for example, torn is actually also encouraging or sort of giving the support for projects who want to build risk-taking solutions on them.

Makoto Uramura: 32:49

I wouldn't say this is going to be the holy grail or the only possible way forward, because, again, that's against our sort of very spirit of being in the blockchain space where no one is going to be right or holding sort of the only right solution.

Makoto Uramura: 33:08

There are definitely different ways to approach this problem of economic security and I would say different projects take a different approach or different ecosystem see this differently, see this differently.

Makoto Uramura: 33:21

But from what we see is that we do not actually want to convince, for example, every single ecosystem on the merits of launching risk-taking using your own native token or building your ecosystem around risk-taking. So one of our value propositions is that we're building this Omnichain risk-taking platform where, if we connect with a new ecosystem, you can choose from building, with our support and help, a risk-taking paradigm that is based on your existing infrastructure. Simply let projects building your ecosystem integrate with Pell to actually let us provide that omni-chain shared security solution to the projects, which is actually much easier to implement, so you can also experiment and see if this works for your specific needs and use cases before deciding should I actually take it to the next level or next step. So, from Pell's perspective, I think our scope is pretty far and wide. We literally can work with all kinds of ecosystem and, of course, depending on the level of adoption of this idea, we can actually tailor to the needs and offer different kind of solutions to different partners.

JB Carthy: 34:49

Thanks and yeah, 100%. So I understand you guys are building a solution and it is up to other people to see if it's the right fit for them to integrate or to bring in. But let's say, on Multiverse X, for example, you guys are coming into x launchpad building here and then talking about, like shared security, um between protocols and things like this. Is there, how could let's say, the projects that are already building on multiverse x or is there a way? You know you've got like um great d5 projects like ash swap, like hatem, and you got the mex token on x exchange and you've got DeFi protocols that are existing and have been built. Is this restaking something that they are going to be able to benefit or is it going to be more for something when sovereign chains are launched and that sovereign chains are going to benefit more from?

Makoto Uramura: 35:43

Yeah, spot on.

Makoto Uramura: 35:44

I think we are just getting started with our integration and partnership within the Multiverse X ecosystem itself.

Makoto Uramura: 35:53

We've announced partnership with partners such as Hatong, but I think actually we have also just published a blog this week about our vision of working with and supporting the development and growth of the sovereign chains that are being built on top of Multiverse X. We are going to actually sort of publish another more tactic dive next week to actually explain a little bit more about the intricacy in terms of how a pair risk-taking solution will really help the sovereign chain tech stack to actually be, I would say, complete, and then it will become a much easier. It will actually offer a much easier developer experience to build sovereign chains on top of Multiverse X, and already we are seeing the Multiverse X team has launched initiatives, for example, to allow developers to build, say, a Bitcoin Layer 2 on top of Multiverse X using the sovereign chain technology or stack of Multiverse X, using the sovereign chain technology or stack, and I think restaking them will really help complete the puzzle by helping the sovereign chains to obtain and quickly bootstrap the network security that's necessary for them to scale.

JB Carthy: 37:19

No 100% and say so. Obviously you guys have grown quite quickly, have grown quite well, as I touched on, like I think, 500 mil in TVL, which is a great achievement in a short period of time, choosing to do the token launch here on MultiverseX through the X Launchpad. So maybe even just a little bit more about the decision-making process that led you guys to find yourself on X Launchpad and now I think the token sale or the lottery is going live I think it's in a week or so. So, yeah, maybe just a little bit about why you guys chose MultiverseX as your home for your token.

Makoto Uramura: 38:02

Yeah, sure, so well, actually it uh sort of a very coincidental meeting that we had with the x launchpad team, uh during devcon, uh I think in november last year, uh, and it was actually sort of not a very specific uh discussion on, say, doing ideal and stuff. But as the more we talked about, the more we realized there would be strong synergy if we actually take the risk-taking capability Pell has built and plug that into the Multiverse X ecosystem, and I think it was. Then we thought our primary purpose, if I may put it this way, was not actually to do a launch X Launchpad, but rather we want to enter into the multiverse ecosystem. But it just so happened that X Launchpad has been this fantastic platform that has launched a series of successful projects in the past and also Pell was at the stage where it is actually ready for token launch for TGE and we say, why not? We do this as a part of a broader-based partnership to actually also do our token launch and IDO on X Launchpad sweet, sweet, unbelievable.

JB Carthy: 39:30

So, no, that's great. I think like that's um going out to conferences, meeting people, and sometimes some of the best ideas and some of the best innovations and moves forward come from those coincidental meetings where people with similar ideas and similar aims and motivations and visions and come together and and, yeah, I hope you guys have found a good audience and a good home and and I have been received well, I know from chatting to people from around the space that there are that people are excited about this launch and excited to see and what pal are going to and be able to offer. And on multiverse x, you know, with sovereign chains launching, I think restaking and all the things you're describing in terms of being able to share economic security is going to have a positive effect and just give builders another opportunity for growth and give them more options to find the tools they need to get access to the resources they need to push forward. You know, get access to the resources they need to push forward. You know, I think at this point there's about 15 minutes left, 10, 15 minutes left.

JB Carthy: 40:35

Anyone who's there in the audience who wants to ask a question, feel free to drop it in the comments or request the mic and we'll bring you up here just to ask a question. But maybe, as we close into the last few minutes of the conversation, we'll think about like looking into the future. So obviously you guys are early, are early in your journey and only only like live for half a year or fully live for half a year, and what's the vision for Pell Network for five years into the future? What's the big vision? Where, where do you guys want to be?

Makoto Uramura: 41:10

well, actually, this is a very tough question for us to describe a future. That's the big vision. Where, where do you guys want to be? Well, actually, this is a very tough question for us to describe a future that's five years away from us.

JB Carthy: 41:18

Let's go, but yeah, just say just, you know what's the, what's the dream, what's the dream. You know what's the like, what's the dream, yeah yeah, maybe, maybe, I.

Makoto Uramura: 41:27

I should probably start with uh, something that's more near-term, that we have already planned, that we have committed ourselves to the delivery of some of this exciting stuff that we have sort of cooked in-house and then we extrapolate into a few years down the road, say, if we are successful in doing all these things and really make a splash in the work that we've done, how would the future look like? So I think for us very importantly, we want to launch, within this quarter itself, the ego risk-taking. Our engineer is working really hard on making sure that we built this as native to the Multiverse X architecture as possible. In fact, we are basically building this entire risk-taking capability using the Multiverse X stack and after we have sort of set in the first step of supporting ego risk-taking, we are going to leverage on this capability to then support sovereign chains. So we offer the sovereign chains an in-house solution when it comes to restaking. So these things will be very specific and to the heart of the Multiverse X ecosystem and from here on, what we see is that if sovereign chains itself, this concept, takes off, then we can see on the MultiverseX platform or within the ecosystem, we will already have access to new ideas like Bitcoin, layer 2s or sort of chain agnostic, chain abstraction solutions, state chain abstraction solutions and that actually can help the Multiverse X ecosystem expand horizontally without actually leaving what is already very familiar with them in terms of, say, the token standards or how things work in Multiverse X. And then for us, sort of spreading the message and preaching about the value of risk-taking is our core mission statement. So we actually want to also then offer more and more risk-taking solution. To the day that's now fast forward five years in the future, pell becomes the omni-chain risk-taking go-to solution.

Makoto Uramura: 43:47

Whenever there's a new project that actually want to build something. They would not be scratching their ahead and try to decide, okay, I have to build a certain tech step because that actually would give me probably better access to developer support, or that I actually could gain more community users early on, despite the fact that I like, for example, another technical design better. So they can actually be freed from this sort of dilemma or sort of difficult choice. They can build in whichever way they like and then they connect with Pell and then they would have now Omnichain access and we want to actually be able to realize the vision where, as a developer, you can deploy your code once and make it work everywhere and anywhere. And also, we want restaking really to become the standard for new projects or new distributed systems that are being built, so that we would actually, I would say, move the entire landscape of crypto to the next level where, as builders, you basically can focus on your core product. You can actually leave behind a lot of these infrastructure related issues or challenges that would be taking or consuming a lot of your effort in the past, and you leave it to Pell as a one-click solution Now, on the other hand, for the asset holders, I think we start with Bitcoin now we support e-Gold and we hope to actually onboard, for example, in the future, additional assets so that the different kind of asset holders they now get used to the idea that, okay, if I restate with Pell, I can actually have a safe, low-risk additional yield on my crypto and I do not only need to rely on the market beta or the alpha of the token of my choosing, but rather, whichever the token is heading in terms of market direction, I will actually have a layer of yields that becomes even, for example, a risk-free rate for crypto in general, and I think that would be really a very ideal situation, uh, that we would be in in the future yes, so we're going to go to maybe, like probably right now, like you know, there's probably an abundance of technology and um, rather than getting people to build more and more technology layers and hopefully restaking will just allow people to leverage better the existing technological layers and technological stacks in a way that aligns everybody's incentives better and doesn't fragment liquidity and economic security quite so much.

JB Carthy: 46:49

So let's say there'll be like maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but would you, would your guys' vision be? There will probably be less technological layers overall, but the technological layers that exist will be far better and utilized closer to their capacity than they currently are, rather than everybody trying to build their own little area.

Makoto Uramura: 47:14

Yeah, great, I think that's really a fantastic point.

Makoto Uramura: 47:18

I think definitely we want to see better utilization of the existing infrastructure that's already available in the space and I think what we really want to see and support is for the new generation of builders to focus more on building applications, building products that can really elevate the user experience of Web3 products to the level of what we're used to now.

Makoto Uramura: 47:49

As also Web2 users right Like, for example, if we are building in the future a Web 3 equivalent version of an app like Uber, I do not need to actually worry about keep signing transactions, giving authorizations, but what I actually want to do is essentially, say, book a ride, and all I need to know is I click this button and wait, I'm going to have a car that's going to come pick me up in a few minutes. So we actually want Web3 to also evolve and improve towards that level of user experience where currently we expose too much detail or the intermediary steps to the users and that's actually not helping us to onboard more and more users into the space. So the higher utilization of a common infrastructure layer and more developer attention and effort paid towards polishing the user experience towards the user facing or consumer facing layer, or really uh sort of creating that kind of product, is something that we also want to help uh sort of uh contribute and push the industry towards.

JB Carthy: 49:10

No, beautiful. I think there's definitely like there definitely is a need to focus more on products and outcomes and things that are being built on top of the technology, and how we can use the technology to improve the actions that people already take in their everyday lives and that have great demand for, and look at existing areas of like day-to-day life and how have great demand for, and look at existing existing areas of like day-to-day life and how technology and current um apps and services integrate with what people do and find out how to make those things better and with the technology that we have. Like you know, I sometimes think to myself even that like we haven't even explored fully the most simple use cases of blockchain and like it's still not, amazingly, the global standard for payments. And though it's getting there, like you know, um governments, banks seem to be adopting it more steadily, users seem to be becoming more aware of it. Um, like paypal and stripe integrating like either stable coins or um blockchain payment rails and their companies and all these things are kind of happening, moving it further along the chain or along the tracks of progress.

JB Carthy: 50:17

But yeah, I agree, I do think, um, it's probably getting to the point where there's more than enough technology out there and exists for these decentralized computers for people to build upon, and now it's now it's time to actually build things that make a difference, to find ways and that the technology can make the things we already do more efficient and better. And yeah, and I think it's a, it's definitely where things probably have to go and to onboard and new users and and people who are interested in the facebook, the uber, instagram and whatever it is, whatever things people already use, but can we make them better? Can we make them and can we bring them to another level through blockchain, through web3? And yeah, I think it's. I think it's it's very interesting.

JB Carthy: 51:07

I think it's definitely a noble vision and I think it's probably where the, where the space is going, and you were saying like that, maybe saying about you want the next, the next generation, the new generation of builders to only have to focus on product. But like what? So you've been around the space a while. Like you know, um, 2018, explore, defy. Now you're here building a restaking protocol that already has 500 million TVL. What do you think are the? What would you like to see built that is not already built?

Makoto Uramura: 51:43

Well, I think we really want to help number one for the builders who are building now in Bitcoin ecosystem to actually have better access to infrastructure and tools really spark a lot of innovation in the DeFi space in general, not only within Bitcoin, but it's actually going to stimulate the development for Ethereum DeFi, for Solana DeFi, for Multiverse X DeFi. Because of the sheer size of the market cap of Bitcoin, when you have actually such a large market, it's going to attract a lot of bright minds to come in and build. So we want to actually help this particular group of builders to actually create some really innovative ideas. And, secondly, we actually want to support and build together with now distributed AI or AI agent teams to actually also introduce very interesting now AI concepts and AI use cases that we have already seen the likes of AI16Z we see now almost every day everyone on Twitter, the presence of AIXBT, and I personally have seen also other use cases that are going to really make now a more real life impact, more real-life impact to how our life is like coming from the crypto world but also leveraging on the power of AI. But I think it's still very early stage. We are now only seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of what this can do.

Makoto Uramura: 54:15

So we actually also want the new AI use cases to be built on a foundation of blockchain, on a foundation of crypto, and also join the benefits of decentralization, of being crypto native, of being privacy preserving and also using the assets effectively to provide that economic security to back not only, for example, the network, but also we want to even introduce, say, economic incentive and also disincentive for, for example, the content being generated by AI, the inferences being made by AI models being made by AI models, and I think that's going to really push forward sort of the credibility of the AI vertical in general.

Makoto Uramura: 54:37

So, for example, I think now we'll use ChatGPT and we ask ChatGPT a question. He gives us an answer. We have no sort of proof or way to be assured that they have given a responsible answer. Of course, we can't hold the AI or the LLM to be responsible for the answer, but imagine if we can introduce, say, a potential slashing condition to the output being generated by AI and if it's proven factually false, then there is actually economic penalty to that and that actually is going to give people so much more confidence. When I interact with an AI model, I know if this AI model gives me a wrong answer, then there is going to be penalty on that, so that I will have really a higher level of trust for whatever that's being generated or that's being produced by am models no, I definitely yeah, 100.

JB Carthy: 55:40

And I definitely think blockchain and ai it's they came along together at the right time and it makes so much sense like blockchain makes so much sense. It's kind of like the layer up in upon which ai can thrive and like can essentially make sure that no one person because how are we to collectively know and trust and in the information being fed into it, the out and therefore, by extension, the output that's giving us. But if we all can have a collective role in governing the ai um, like through distributed computation, through decentralized governance, daos, and be all able to collectively shape the future of it, rather than having one or two people behind the thousands of servers worldwide and gatekeeping A the ability to feed the information which it learns from and then the outputs it gives, it's probably likely to be a more, a better and more robust outcome and the ai and the power of ai is more likely to be leveraged for the gain of the collective rather than the gain of the few. And I think, like blockchain and ai have just come together at like a wonderful time, and I know there's a huge amount of hype at the moment with all the projects that are launching I don't know. Even multiverse x today announced um that they were integrating, or allowing people to integrate, eliza and into things that they're building um. But yeah, like it's, it's probably we're only at the, at the start of the road.

JB Carthy: 57:07

There's.

JB Carthy: 57:08

There's a lot more um substantial use case to come in the future and we're only really just tip like getting getting agents to like do little transactions on chain is probably only the tip of the iceberg as to like where we're going with the integration between ai and blockchain in the future and it probably has far deeper integrate, far deeper implications than just um making making automating transactions, and so, yeah, I I completely agree with that.

JB Carthy: 57:35

With that sentiment, I'm really excited to see where everything goes in the next like three, five years. But I think what you were saying earlier about not being able to look too far into the future, I think it's so right. It's actually impossible to look too far into the future at the moment because things are growing so fast that you just have to like take one day at a time, see what emerges, see what emerges tomorrow and see what implications it has, and then just keep trying to grow, keep trying to move forward. But things are changing like very, very rapidly and it's it's exciting to be a part alive in this age, you know, of exponential growth and acceleration.

Makoto Uramura: 58:12

Yeah, absolutely. I think I recall recently reading a line that says we were born too late to explore the earth, but we are born just in time to see where AI can take us.

JB Carthy: 58:27

Yeah, let's see, I'm here for the ride. Hopefully I live long enough for it to make me immortal.

Makoto Uramura: 58:36

Yeah, who knows, Maybe we'll actually sort of find a solution or build something in our lifetime to actually put part of, say, the human mind on the distributor's network. That sounds really crazy, but if that's possible then it's actually one way of achieving immortality.

Makoto Uramura: 58:59

It's super cyberpunk kind of talk. But if you really want to achieve that, you definitely need a distributor system because you just need really a theoretically infinite number of copies of, say, the particular model, if you sort of model human minds that you know you are basically present everywhere, so that if a particular version or node is compromised it does affect that continuation, continuation of that particular model no for sure.

JB Carthy: 59:35

I think that's a. That's a good note we have. We have no questions and from the, from the chat, I think this is a. This is a strong note to end the end the conversation on looking forward to what, um, the future can bring and looking forward to the positive future of blockchain, how AI will be integrated in, and then, obviously, you guys here helping build the infrastructure that's going to allow people to bring great ideas, great foundations and hopefully improve people's lives going forward. So, look, appreciate you guys coming on. I know ExLaunchPad co-hosted this with us.

JB Carthy: 1:00:13

Whoever's behind the account posting up above or leaving the threads for people to have a look at regarding the upcoming Launchpad sale, make sure to check everything out about Pell Network that you can. I think the lottery goes live in like nine days and, yeah, like everyone, do your own research and check out what they're building, because definitely, from this conversation, I think there's a lot of exciting things to come and a lot of exciting possibilities to explore. Thank you, makoto. Again, like, really appreciate you coming on and giving your time and having a chat and explaining to us and what you're building, and thank you very much. And this was helios horizons episode 33 and we explored restaking and we explored ai, we explored and the foundations of blockchain and how restaking can ultimately help builders bring projects to market faster, with less concerns about um look worrying about infrastructure and with makoto urimura of pell network. Thank you very much, my friend, for joining us and, yep, hopefully you tune into our next one. Guys talk soon.