Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Living on Blockchain. Today we are speaking to Harshal. Harshal is the CEO of XADE Finance.
XADE is building innovative products around DeFi. They’ve created basically a platform which is at the forefront of DeFi innovation. And this particular conversation was obviously a lot about their platform, their new launches, which was very, very interesting to see that kind of enthusiasm around building is almost contagious.
Harshal has very high hopes regarding, like most of us I think, listening in and tuning in and being in Web3 around where Bitcoin is going and how we are already in a bull market. So this is a great conversation if you’re a young builder and I can’t wait for you guys to hear this. Let’s deep dive right in.
Hi Harshal, thank you so much for making the time to speak to me today. How are you doing? Hi Tarusha, I’m doing really great. I’m just suffering from the bull market.
So yeah, everything is very great. All right. Okay.
So you mentioned that you are just sort of looking at the bull run that is perhaps about to begin. Before anything else, let’s get your take on that. Where do you think the market is heading? I mean, well, personally, I believe we are already in a bull market.
We entered bull market when the ETF was announced and I believe the market is going to the moon. So it’s 2020 again, when next year is going to be 2021. So we’re just getting started with the bull market, but it’s just the beginning.
So last time we hit $69,000. So I mean, going by the meme culture, we should have $420,000, but I believe a realistic target should be $120,000 for Bitcoin and the space is going to the moon. We are getting mass adoption now.
I mean, the previous cycles, we reached to a limited amount of audience, but this time, if last time we reached to about 300 million people with the bull market, this time the number is going to be more than 1 billion, I believe. So that’s my take on the bull market. We’re just getting started.
This is just entirely like 2020 and the ETF, and I believe that in the next five years, in the next actually in the next five years, we’ll hit 10 trillion. And in the next 10 years, we may see Bitcoin flip gold. It’s a very bullish prediction, but yeah, I’m very bullish on cultism.
So yeah. Awesome. So this is a very good way to start the episode.
And you’re one of the few people who’s trying to perhaps, everybody I think secretly is trying to time the market and predict how the market will go. But you’ve come out with these big numbers and obviously we are all very bullish on this ecosystem as a whole and where we are going. But now, just taking a step back and talking a little about your journey, how did you get into Web3 and what has been your journey so far? 100%.
So I got into crypto in 2019 when I was just 13 years old, get curious on the internet. I was just like, I wanted to, I just heard about Bitcoin from somewhere, to be honest. And then just invested in Bitcoin, then probably was, I was inactive for about a year.
2020, COVID came in, the lockdown came in and I became more curious, I had nothing better to do. So started learning more about crypto, lost some money in 2020. 2021, the Dogecoin saga started and the Dogecoin saga was basically sort of like a turning point.
The GameStop, the GameStop saga and the 2021 Dogecoin saga brought in a new era of retail investment, which for me as well was a big turning point because I was able to devote more time to crypto at that point. And I was particularly fascinated by DeFi, where for me, DeFi, I mean, to be honest, DeFi is the biggest use case of Web3, biggest use case of crypto. And DeFi personally, and DeFi for me was always meant to replace the $22 trillion financial system.
But when I was using DeFi, it was nowhere near its vision of replacing traditional banks. And banks were not up to the mark. At that point we had Uniswap, at that point we had Cove, at that point we had several products, but all of them at that point were not providing any real world banking service.
And for me, that sort of, that was the 2021 version of DeFi was not going to get mass adoption and nobody was solving the problem of mass adoption at that point. And even if they were, they were not going in the right direction. So in January of 2022, after spending some time in the DeFi market, I would say I think a year, I decided I needed to be the one to step up and solve these problems.
I identified three major problems in the DeFi space. The first one being that DeFi products have a terrible user experience, terrible user experience, terrible UI, complex, tedious. It has a very, very, very, very steep learning curve to it.
Secondly, fragmentation was a big problem. It was fragmented across different chains, different protocols. And anybody who came to DeFi would any day before centralize exchanges, considering the liquidity, considering the fees and everything, DeFi as a product could not compete with centralized exchanges.
How the hell could they compete with virtual banks? And number three, we were focusing on making quick money. We were trying to get quick adopters. And again, like, you know, with every great innovation out there, DeFi was also like, you know, DeFi is still filled with scams.
DeFi has a lot of unsustainable incentives, unsustainable economics. We were trying a lot of things, but at the end of the day, we were not competing with new banks or we were not competing with traditional banks from day one. So we found these three problems.
I like, you know, I thought of a very simple solution. Why not create a super mobile app, which has a user experience indistinguishable from a digital bank, such as Revolute, such as Monzo, such as any other popular, such as PayPal, such as any popular digital bank while powering it by the best of DeFi. Early you go on one chain, but then like, you know, one chain is not going to make it and the future is multi-chain.
But right now the liquidity and everything is fragmented across so many protocols and chains. So it’s very difficult to choose the best one out of them. So we decided why not aggregate the best of DeFi across all chains, EVM and non-EVM, across all protocols and provide them in a streamlined manner, specifically created to replicate traditional banking services through the super mobile app, which has the user experience of a digital bank.
So that’s what we are doing at XADE, where we are solving, where we are trying to solve all the major problems of DeFi and get it ready for master option so that even your grandma can use it without even realizing that they’ve entered the world of DeFi. So, you know, that’s what my journey in DeFi and crypto has been like. I started as a, started as a investor, then became a trader, then became an, then became an algorithm, I would say, like, you know, I was doing arbitrage.
I was doing, I was doing a hell lot of arbitrage, arbitrage. I was running trading bots. I was, yeah, so like, you know, I just spent, I was like, I was a total degen.
And then I became a builder in 2022. So yeah, that’s what my journey in VET3 has been like. I started in crypto and right now I’m in VET3.
So yeah. Nice. I think that is a journey for a lot of folks who, you know, started off as traders and they got in on the retail side and then they decided that, you know, they can really do something to perhaps change the user experience or the way this technology is being adopted.
But perhaps, you know, looking back, who was, or what was that one factor or one person who perhaps pushed you or introduced you to this technology? I mean, there was like a lot, there were a lot of technologies which were there, but there was one technology in particular, which actually, you know, influenced my thinking a lot and like, you know, shaped a lot of my thinking. It was Terra. Terra, even though they collapsed, but the, but overall, like, you know, I, like, I knew that they were a Ponzi, I knew that they were a Ponzi, they were going to fail and the economics were not sustainable, but Terra started something like Terra got mass adoption through Chai.
Like, I think that’s perhaps the only, at that point of time, it was the only DeFi app to have over 10 million users. Terra got, you know, a lot of the retail users through Anchor, through Mirror, and it was doing something in the right direction, just with the wrong way. So the Terra, so the Terra ecosystem, I mean, personally, I believe what Terra wanted to achieve, create multiple stable coins and use those stable coins across different DeFi protocols, which are basically used to replicate financial banking services.
It was a very fantastic idea, but again, the base and the technology was very weak and the intentions of the founders were not correct. The algorithmic stable coins are not the way to go. Unsustainable economics are not the way to go.
So once you remove all of that, once you solve that, so I believe Terra was perhaps the biggest reason or the biggest inspiration for me to start XADE, for me to get into the space. So yeah, that’s what I believe. Wow, okay.
So that is how you started and look where you are. So now with XADE, you are building primarily an interface that would make it easy for users to use Web3 in perhaps a very seamless manner. Can you tell us a little more about the product? A hundred percent, definitely.
So like right now we are live with XADE 2.0. With XADE 2.0, we call it the best trading experience ever. So with XADE 2.0, over the next three weeks, we are launching three products. The first product is what we call the, it’s basically the ultimate trading experience.
By what I mean by the ultimate trading experiences, we provide you with a very seamless experience. Like, of course, like, you know, we have advanced charts, we have latest news, we have multiple markets, and we aggregate liquidity across all chains, EVM or non-EVM. And we give you the best rates possible across all chains without any gas.
That’s our product number one, which we have already launched. Then we have another product coming out next week, which is on-chain stocks, on-chain forex, and on-chain commodities. We are bringing in on-chain stocks in partnership with Denarii, so you can trade Tesla on-chain, you can trade NVIDIA, Coinbase, Apple, and the most popular stocks out there.
And you can even receive dividend on it. It’s backed one-to-one by the real-world assets. Wow, nice.
Yeah, on-chain forex. It’s pretty simple. We are working with Zave for that.
And like, you know, they are literally the best market makers for on-chain forex in the space. And on-chain commodities, it’s very simple. A lot of people are already doing it.
But we are working with Denarii, we are working with Zave, and we are also working with, yes, so Denarii and Zave are two people who are helping us bring in these real-world assets on-chain so that people can trade. So these three assets are something, you know, which people have already traded for a long period of time, and they will continue to do so, whether it’s on-chain or off-chain. And lastly, we are launching the following week, a product which is loved by degens, by non-crypto folks, everyone.
It’s called Perpetual Futures. And like, perps are something which has been, which has found product market fit. And we are partnered up with the best perpdex out there, which is Hyperliquid and DYDX.
So we are partnered with two of the best, two of the best perpdexes out there. And we give the users the best rates by aggregating these two perpdexes. And as you know, with hyperliquid, we can give you access to multiple markets with low market cap tokens or high market cap tokens.
And hyperliquid has probably the best technology for perps out there, whereas DYDX has the best liquidity. So once you aggregate two of the market leaders, we can provide our users the best experience. And other than these three core features, we have two very interesting features coming out.
These are more, these are more directed towards retail traders, but I love using them. One of them is called DGN AI, which provides you with the most advanced data, with basically analyzed data in the most seamless manner possible. So you can ask questions like, why is Bitcoin pumping for the past five minutes? And it will give you a detailed analysis of what happened in the past five minutes.
It will give you the technical analysis. It will give you, it will give you the latest news. It will give you the inflows and outflows.
So we aggregate data across multiple data points. We are part of a token terminal. We are part of it.
We are part of it, look on chain and multiple other partners to bring you this data while also running multiple models on our, in partnership with Speron as well. So, you know, we have been working a lot on DGN AI. It’s the ultimate analysis tool, whether you’re a beginner, whether you’re a con, you’re going to love using that product.
So, and then the other product we have is portfolio analysis. So you can basically look into your portfolio, you can get, you know, a look into all your trades, you can analyze what went wrong, what went right, what can you do better and everything. So, you know, that’s what’s going on with Z2.0. We are looking to make the best trading experience, and then we’ll expand into other products, whether it’s spending, trading and spending are two of the products which are on our radar.
And then we’ll expand onto the products later. Wow, wonderful. That sounds like a quite a journey.
And, you know, kudos on the collaborations that you guys have made so far, all the partnerships sound very exciting, and especially this introduction of real world assets, which is the new product that you know, you’ve mentioned, that that is super exciting as well, because real world assets on chain, like have become all a rage nowadays. And executing them has been a bit of a challenge, I believe, because a few years back, I think, I guess, it was too early, we tried executing gold and silver on chain as well. And it was obviously, you know, doing it on your own, it was it was kind of a logistical nightmare with all the, you know, bureaucracy and the jurisdiction and licenses that we had to sort of procure.
If you’re going, and you’re not doing this directly, you are tackling this, obviously, with an intermediary, and you know, who are helping you facilitate this, what kind of challenges have you faced so far in actually executing this and getting it right? I mean, personally, I believe since 2017, the biggest problem of bringing into or of bringing in tokenized real world assets is not like, like, contrary to what people believe that it’s the legal side of the thing. It’s the it’s the operation side, I believe the lack of demand is a major reason. Since 2017, a lot of people try to bring in real world assets on chain, real world, like tokenized real estate has existed since 2017.
People have tried doing it, there is no demand, there was no demand, there is still very, very little demand, to be honest. And the reason that is that people in crypto are in the space to make money, they are in the space to get like, they get to get abnormal returns. Investing in something like real estate on chain, something like investing in stocks on chain that won’t fit their appetite.
But I believe that this time, it’s going to be a bit different because DeFi and crypto, they are gonna, they want to separate like, we want to see DeFi separate from crypto. Right now, it’s right now still crypto moves along with DeFi. But I believe in this cycle, we want to see it go differently where DeFi will get more mass adoption due to its actual use case, rather than just, you know, a playground for degens.
So this cycle, I believe, real world assets will get demand. And in terms of, and in terms of execution, and in terms of, you know, the legal operations, everything, we let our partners handle that. Because we cannot do everything by ourselves.
We are good at making bets, we are good at making, you know, we are good at getting consumers. So that’s what we do. We cannot be like, for every popular, for every web2 company out there, out there, having a good infrastructure is very required, having a good infrastructure and having a good consumer layer.
So we are that consumer layer. In crypto, in web3, we already have a lot of infra layers, but we don’t have any good consumer layers. So we are that consumer layers, where we are going to utilize the best infra available in web3.
So that’s what we are doing right now. But I believe like, we have already solved the supply side problem. It’s the demand side, which is the major issue.
And we can only solve that demand side issue. Once people start using DeFi to solve their real world problems, and they use DeFi to solve the problems that they face in their day to day lives. So yeah.
Right, I think that is a very valid point, you know, demand is always been on the scant side, especially for real world assets. And I think I attribute it mostly towards lack of understanding, perhaps, and the lack of clarity to a lot of investors and on the retail side, as to what perhaps is asset classes and how would it really work. And I think that has slowly changed over the years.
Would you agree? I mean, definitely, like compared to the 2017 batch and compared to the 20, like the current like, we have evolved a lot in the past six years, to be honest, right, compared to what we were six years ago. So we have definitely evolved a lot. And the retail has also evolved a lot.
So yeah, I mean, definitely, I agree with you on that. So can you tell us a little about the team, you know, that is building this brilliant product? 100% definitely. So our team, we go, okay, so with a team, it’s been quite a journey.
So I started with two of my friends, one of them, one of them is Anshuman Tikriwal, another guy is Arnav So Anshuman Tikriwal is basically we call the prodigy of a team. He won a hackathon. He won the world’s largest AI hackathon.
It’s called AIIJC, where the chief guest was Mr. Vladimir Putin. And he won the first prize over there. And Vladimir Putin gave him the award for that.
Then he got an offer from Seavision Labs at the age of 14 or 15. I don’t remember. He’s AI prodigy, and he’s just a great dev.
So, you know, that’s one of the founding members. Then we have Arnav Jhajiria again, a great dev. He’s been working, he’s been coding since he was, I think, six or seven years old.
So, you know, those were our first two team members. After that, we got all our team members from Discord. So the first person I believe, so I believe like Artyom Kulaga, he’s our head of design.
He has worked in, he was working in a neobank right up until three months ago. And like, you know, he worked in neobank, we cannot name them. So he has more than four, five years in experience in design.
Then we have Andrew Elisa. He has actually worked in Uniswap Labs before. So he worked in Uniswap.
He was a contributor at Uniswap sometime around 2016, 17. And he’s been in the crypto space since 2013. So, you know, he’s an OG of the space.
He’s been, he’s a very, very experienced dev. He has over 10 years of experience. He has worked in Armrock, he has worked in, he has worked in Cisco, he has worked in several companies.
So he’s our, what we call adult supervision to a tech team. Then we have a couple of the members, you have Jashan Shetty, he has worked in Rep3 before. And then we have Priyanshu, he has worked in, he has worked in PurplePay and he has worked in, so, you know, that’s our team.
It’s, it’s a very, very technical team because we believe like at this stage, at this stage, once you crack the product and once you crack distribution, you’ll be able to do everything. And then like, you know, we can later expand the team. I would also like to mention, like, you know, we also have some great advisors and great, you know, investors who have helped us out.
So I would like to especially mention Mr. Ajit Khurana. So like, you know, he has been advising us since, for some time now. And like, you know, he’s there to guide us because, you know, he has made some, he has made crypto, he has made, he was the CEO of ZepPay.
So like he knows the consumer, you know, that definitely helps us out. And like, other than our team, it is the ecosystem which has supported us a lot. The ecosystem, the people in the ecosystem who have supported us from day one.
So like whenever I mentioned about my team, I never forget to mention about the ecosystem because the ecosystem has helped me as much as my team. So yeah. Absolutely.
I think, you know, Ajit is a friend, is a very old friend and he’s probably seen me from the very start of my entrepreneurial journey. Since 2011, we were working in deep tech and he has wonderful insights just owing to his very vast experience. So I completely agree with you there.
And when it comes to the ecosystem, I totally believe that, you know, in Web3, it’s all about sort of pulling people up. And, you know, it’s a small ecosystem and everybody is sort of there to give you perhaps the help and support that you need to get your vision to life. Because I think all of us are rooting for the same thing, for larger and greater adoption of Web3.
I mean, definitely, totally agree on that. So now, you know, we’ve talked a lot about the team and your milestone that you’re looking forward to. If you had to perhaps sum up your, you know, the USP, because you are obviously positioning Zaid as an alternative to traditional banking.
And if you had to sum up, you know, the USP for Zaid vis-a-vis traditional banking, how would you perhaps put that across? So I’ll start first with like, you know, how we compete with neobanks. And like, this is more of an easy comparison, because we all know how DeFi is better than neobanks. So I’m not going to mention the advantages of DeFi and like, you know, the advantages of non-custodial nature and the transparent nature of DeFi.
For instance, what you could do with Zaid, what you can’t do with your neobanks. So number one is the unparalleled access. With your neobanks, you probably cannot access the global assets, whether it’s trading on-chain stocks, US stocks, if you’re sitting in India, or trading like, you know, European stocks while sitting in India or while sitting anywhere in the world.
Second thing would be the settlement periods, the fees, traditional finance just cannot compete with that. Number three would be just the sheer number of products we offer. Again, the products that we offer may not be available in different regions, such as futures, such as a high stable entry, a high stable interest account, access to USD, access to literally any fiat currency in the world via stablecoins, and several other features which the neobanks cannot provide.
And obviously, we have the, obviously, we have, you know, the advantages that DeFi has to offer. But let’s talk about something more interesting. How do we compete against the thousands of wallets out there, the thousands of super apps out there, DeFi super apps, and how do we compete with centralized exchanges? So we have three major points on how we compete with them.
Firstly, I would say, the amount of protocols and the amount of chains that we aggregate is perhaps the most in the entire space. We have done our research. We are the ultimate aggregator.
We aggregate everything, we aggregate chains, we aggregate protocols, we aggregate fiat rams, we aggregate, we provide you card services. We are the ultimate aggregator platform available out there. So once you come to Zaid, you have the assurity that the rates that you will get, that the products that you will get is the best that DeFi has to offer.
Secondly, I would say the experience. In Zaid, everything is gasless. So if you want to basically transact, you don’t need to hold Ethereumatic, Solana, or any of that stuff.
You don’t have to speculate on those assets just to do a simple transaction. In Zaid, everything is created in your, in your neobanking style. So you have a checkings account, a savings account, an investment account, a futures account.
And when you come, when you come, once you come to Zaid, you’re not even going to realize that you’re using DeFi. And lastly, I would say what makes Zaid very, what makes Zaid, like, you know, what makes it very different is how streamlined we are. So compared to, you know, other wallets or the super apps, which let you explore everything, all of our products have been streamlined and have been curated to replicate these traditional banking services.
And lastly, we have made our product to be curated to different geographical areas with support for native currency. So you can do everything in a native currency. You can see everything.
And let’s say IANA or maybe like, you know, your Nigerian AIDA or the Brazilian Real and like compared to other wallets or super apps, they can just view everything. In Zaid, you can even transact in your native currency. You can get your native language support.
So again, to sum up, our three, our three USPs would be the ultimate aggregator, the best experience and the streamlined experience. So yeah. Yeah, that is wonderful.
I was on mute. But I think what you kind of put is for the USPs, I think those can be very, very fundamental to just having an easier experience while interacting with Web3 applications or just getting into Web3 for somebody who is perhaps not that, you know, well-versed in the way Web3 sort of functions. And it might, you know, Gatsby as being one of them and having a clearer user experience, obviously giving them a good interface, which they find easy to navigate.
Again, to perhaps Web3 applications is, you know, another advantage. But then let’s take another step back and, you know, talk about acquiring these users. You guys have been able to acquire a considerable number of users, right? So how have you been able to do that? You know, time to perhaps spill the secret sauce a little bit here.
Very simple. Like, I mean, compared to like, we just take inspiration from Web2. I mean, to be honest, what we’re doing in Web3, people think it’s very different, but to be honest, we’re just copying Web2.
We have just given it new terms. Airdrops. Airdrops are nothing but incentivization.
PayPal had a very strong referral program. PayPal used to offer their users $5 for, you know, just using the platform. We have just named it airdrops.
It’s just a better way of incentivizing users, acquiring users through communities. We have had communities since the 70s. When Apple was launched, Apple was able to create the early user base while creating a strong community of tech and enthusiasts.
Same goes for literally every other tech product that has existed since the 1970s or even before. So we are just following the same roadmap as every company has. So we have a simple three-step process.
We acquire users through different communities, different tech and Web3 communities. We retain them to our, we retain them to our experience. We retain them due to the number of, due to the sheer number of features that we keep launching.
And we incentivize them with something known as Z8 points, which unlike what we’re seeing in DeFi points today, can actually be redeemed for different rewards, such as gift cards, such as, such as cash, or maybe an exclusive rule. We are partnered with several NFT projects so you can get an exclusive collectible drop to you and several other, several other rewards that you can get by redeeming these Z8 coins or Z8 points. So it’s a very simple three-step process.
It’s more about the execution than the guerrilla marketing techniques. Wonderful. Are you also trying to perhaps facilitate any offline events to increase engagement in the community? Personally, like, well, I mean, again, like, you know, we tend to spend more towards a product because that’s what we believe are major factors.
We haven’t started doing a lot of, we don’t do any offline events as of right now, because as I mentioned, we like to, you know, concentrate everything towards a product and the remaining just goes towards like, you know, acquiring users via, the remaining goes towards incentives and whatever is left just goes through basically, you know, getting different communities or getting into different, you know, just doing online marketing. Offline events is something which we haven’t tapped into yet. And for a B2C company, I believe like sponsoring different events, like, you know, sponsoring different mega events, such as if I were to say different concerts, like whatever, whatever the traditional companies have been doing, right.
The traditional consumer companies have been doing makes more sense. Whereas often events such as meetups, such as hackathons make more sense for B2B companies or developer oriented companies who are trying to acquire, you know, developers who are trying to acquire more, more web 3 native people. Whereas for a mass, mass-based consumer products such as ours, meetups, personally, I believe won’t be that effective for us.
It’s mostly going to be like, you know, sponsoring larger events, such as like, you know, maybe let’s say a concert or any big, big event that’s happening that, that, that will probably help us more compared to, you know, doing our own meetups. So I would say there are two reasons why we don’t do meetups. Number one, number one, like we probably are not focusing on them very much.
And number two, probably won’t be as effective for us. Then, you know, let’s say compared to a B2B company. So, yeah.
Okay. So yeah, perhaps, you know, every, every company has their own strategy for acquisition and you, because you are B2C and you would rather look at perhaps more consumer facing ways to reach out to your user or potential user base, which is wonderful. So you are currently live in multiple test beds, right.
And the polygon of the OS main net. So how does it help your product vision, you know, by being live on so many networks and what, what is like the plan for the future? How do you envision a date of the product working in the multiverse? A hundred percent. So, well, first of all, like, you know, like we rely on polygon, but you have some multiple test nets, multiple tests that you are like, again, like, you know, that was a mistake, which we did because we were trying to farm, we were trying to get engaged when we were trying to get community members by different test nets.
That was like looking back into it, like, you know, it was a good way to get some traction, but in the long term, I mean, it may help us, but to be honest, it destroys, you know, the trust that the users have on you. So personally, I don’t consider it a very good decision. We started on the polygon POS chain, considering the fact that the infrastructure available on polygon is just unmatched, but right now we have gone omni-chain.
So we aggregate everything that’s out there, whether it’s Solana, whether it’s Cosmos, whether it’s any EPM chain out there, we aggregate all of them because the future is not multi-chain, it’s omni-chain, where we are going to aggregate, where if the users want to experience DeFi, they shouldn’t change their chains. They shouldn’t just, you know, hop from one ecosystem to another. The users should experience the best of DeFi, which we are making possible by aggregating all these chains.
So we, as of right now, are not native to any chain and we are entirely omni-chain. So we abstract away all the chains and we are live on all chains. As of this moment, it’s around 45+.
So yeah. Okay. So this is a good vision to have.
I think, you know, like having the vision of an omni-chain, I think that makes wonderful sense, especially for a small DeFi facing in the Web3 ecosystem. Now, stepping back a little from, you know, Zaid, I would love to talk about and get your perspective on the Web3 ecosystem in general. You’ve mentioned and you started the conversation talking about how you feel that you’re already in a, you know, the bull run has already begun, according to you.
So can you tell us a little about your perspective on the kind of niches, apart from DeFi, that will do well in this current or upcoming bull run? Definitely. So, personally, I believe like, I mean, we cannot predict which, you know, which narratives are going to do well, which niches, which, you know, segments other than DeFi is going to do well. It has always been very hard to predict.
It will be impossible to predict, to be honest, because we see narratives formed in two days, like we saw with the ERC404 narrative. We have seen the narrative with real world assets. Sometimes it’s Deepin, sometimes it’s RWA.
So it just keeps on changing every day. We cannot predict which narrative is going to do well or which, you know, which niche or which category is going to do well, because that changes every day. I mean, perhaps it’s going to be a category which has not existed before this bull run.
DeFi is something which has been constant throughout. But if you were to ask me from the technology point of view, not from like, you know, a price action point of view, other than DeFi, there are two things which I’m very, very bullish on. Those are, number one, it’s Deepin.
Deepin is a very interesting category, where most of the projects, most of the products that we have today are probably, you know, probably going to go to zero. But a few projects, few Deepin projects are something, you know, who are actually making an impact and they’re actually going to do good. So Deepin and decentralized identities, those are the two things other than DeFi which I’m bullish on.
And real world assets, of course. So, yeah. Okay, that’s wonderful.
Okay, that is wonderful. Like your perspective around, you know, Deepin and these, basically on the infrastructure layer, I think there has been a special focus. And I also concur, I do think that, you know, in the next or the bull run that we are in, these are going to be the products that, you know, you have to kind of watch out for.
Is there an infrastructure layer that, you know, you guys are perhaps working on as well, apart from, you know, keeping this as a consumer-ended product, but is that something that you guys have under the wraps as well? I mean, we personally, like at one point of time, we were working on infrastructure because at that point of time, we believed that, you know, the infra that we wanted was not available. Right. But with the amount of teams, like working on an infra for like about three, four months, then we started messing with the teams and we explained to them what we wanted and what our vision was.
So those infra companies started working on those. So that’s the first time we started working on infra. And if we were to talk about the infra layer, personally, we have built a lot of infrastructure, such as the Remitex.
So Remitex was one of our products, which we launched, like, which was one of our first products, which allowed people to send payments to any mobile number or email address in the world. So that is right now an infrastructure product, which like, you know, people can basically leverage via different SDKs, but we never thought of making it, you know, an SDK or an API, which other developers leverage, because like, you know, we wanted it to be exclusive to our platform. So in terms of infra, that’s a direction, which I don’t believe we’ll be taking anytime soon.
But again, like anything can happen. Merchants, like infrastructure for merchants or something like, you know, Stripe for DeFi is something which we can, which we are definitely planning on becoming. But again, infrastructure for developers is not something which I believe that we want to do something in the near future.
So yeah. Okay. All right.
Good to know. I think it’s good to have a sharp focus as it is when you’re working and building something so tremendous. So keeping your focus at a level where, you know, you want more consumers to perhaps be joining in the Web3 bandwagon and utilizing it in an easier, efficient manner, keeping staying true to your basically vision.
I think that that is a good way to move forward. 100% definitely. I mean, if everybody starts doing everything, then the space is not going to progress.
And I believe we have a lot of infra projects, like in everything. And like, and there’s a reason that we have so many infra projects. It’s much easier to build a business out of like, you know, again, every business is very difficult to build.
But in the Web3 space, we have always seen infra projects or infra companies to do better. Then we can see that is because, well, D3 and D5 is built on top of, you know, building on top of different layer ones, which are nothing but infrastructure. So infrastructure is the winner of Web3.
But if you cannot build the consumer layer, then the space won’t survive and nobody will need that infrastructure. Absolutely. I think that is, you know, really hitting the nail on the head.
Now, you know, we are almost at the end of the time where you have to wrap this up. I would love to know from you, are there any resources or any thought leaders or just any founders that you know, you admire in the space that you would recommend that our listeners perhaps key into as well? Okay, so this list is very, very long. Yeah.
I would do like, if I were to see a few people who I really admire in the space. So one of them would be one of them would definitely be Ajit Tripathi. So like, the reason why I like Ajit sir is because like Ajit Khurana, Ajit Tripathi, both of them.
Ajit Tripathi provides like, he’s the, he’s the biggest degen I know. So he knows, he knows DeFi and he knows Polygon. So like, you know, that’s the reason.
He’s one of the people I love interacting with. He’s a, he’s one of the people I love, you know, listening to. He’s one of the people, you know, I just love, love seeing on a Twitter feed.
A few of the people would definitely be, one of them would be, one of them would definitely be Vitalik. So like, you know, Vitalik is the OG, he knows his stuff. And, but, but understanding Vitalik is going to take a lot of time because the stuff he says, it’s just difficult to understand.
It’s a little too technical, perhaps. It’s not productivity. Yeah.
It’s super technical. And a few of the people who I really, really admire in the space, again, like there’s so many, but I’m just trying to figure out from the top of my head, who are the people who I admire the most. I believe, I believe one of them, I believe one of them should be definitely be Mote, Mote from Solana, Mote from Helios Labs, who is currently on Solana.
So he has a lot of hot takes and he’s against, he’s not against EVM, but I really like his takes. So, you know, these three people are some, you know, these three people are some, some people who, you know, who I would definitely follow and follow Twitter to, you know, get the insights on. But, but if I were to say people who have taught me the most in the DeFi space, it would be, it would be very different people.
It would be Christian from, it would be Christian from MakerDAO. It would be, it would, Stani, I like Stani, but Stani, Stani has shifted more towards like, you know, Lens and more towards, more towards social media. So right now, don’t listen to him.
2021 Stani, 2021 Stani is someone who I loved, you know, to follow. And lastly, I would say the one person if I were to select, it would be, it’s a very, he’s also, he’s a, he’s a, he’s an influencer, but like a great friend. And he’s like, you know, he’s probably the, the most knowledgeable influencer I know.
It’s Hitesh Malviya. So, you know, he’s a great. Very, very great insights.
Yeah. The way he kind of puts it forward in a succinct manner, I think it’s wonderful because it makes it so much more accessible, right? The information. A hundred percent, definitely.
So, you know, those are the people who I would follow in terms of resources. And like, you know, I just mentioned the people who are like the most on a Twitter feed, but yeah, these are the resources. And other than that, again, like there’s so many resources out there on the internet and right now we have perplexity.
So just like, once you get into perplexity, once you just enter the term DeFi, that you enter into, it’s just, it’s just vast. So, you know, just, just enter the word DeFi and like, you know, perplexity or Google. So yeah.
Absolutely. I think it’s a rabbit hole that once you fall down and you know, you have a hard time getting out because there’s just so much to learn and so much to imbibe. A hundred percent.
So, Harjit, this has been such a lovely conversation. It came with its own glitches, but thank you so much for being accommodating. And I really don’t want this to end.
I think what you guys are doing is wonderful. It completely aligns with my ethos of making Web3 more accessible and easy. But, you know, I’d be amiss if I did not ask you this one question that I ask everybody who comes on the show.
You know, you are someone who discovered crypto and then you got into Web3. If there is somebody like you pretty much who has the next great idea, perhaps around improving the ecosystem, but they are still sitting on the ledge, what would be your suggestions to them for them to start living on blockchain? Okay. So, well, this is a very interesting question and I usually give a very simple to answer to this.
Don’t just do it. Yeah. Just start building.
A lot of people think, what if I do this, then the repercussions, the consequences may not be favorable, but I believe until and unless you do it, you won’t understand. So, you will either succeed or you will learn. But once you think, if you keep thinking, if you keep procrastinating, you cannot do anything.
So, just start building. You’ll either succeed or you learn. So, once you start building, you’ll enter into a new world and definitely assure you is that you’re not going to lose if you start building.
So, that’s what my suggestion is. Just start building. Just learn how to code, start coding.
If you don’t know how to code, still learn how to code because in this space, you need to know how to code. And building is something which you have to start by your own until and unless you have very great friends like me. So, call your friends and start building.
So, that’s my only suggestion. Those are wonderful suggestions. I think just start building.
Don’t wait. I would even add that even if you are perhaps not that technically sound, do not let that stop you from getting into the space because A, you can always get help and B, that there are a lot of no code tools as well that are available perhaps for you to just get started at least. You don’t need to have a fully working product to be able to validate the idea.
You just need to have an MVP and you can build an MVP with even no code tools and with a little help from the ecosystem just so that you can validate your idea and then perhaps go forward and build your vision in a more concurrent way perhaps. Absolutely. Totally agree on this because I mean, I myself started as a non-tech guy.
Yeah. When I started, I was a non-tech guy for more than a year. So, definitely like being technical, that’s not a barrier anymore.
Like with chat GPT, I mean earlier. Yeah, you can learn on the go, right? That is not an excuse anymore that you can have that okay, I’m not technical because see, I started my journey like I don’t know as an entrepreneur in deep tech that too nearly 14 years ago and I come from a background in humanities but you know that never really stopped me from building the products that I wanted to build and doing what I wanted to do because even when there was no chat GPT, there are always resources online and you can sort of become a self-taught techie. It’s not that hard and as long as you have the perseverance and the grit to do it, the world’s your oyster.
100% definitely. Totally agree on that. Thank you so much, Harsha for making the time to speak to me today.
This has been such a wonderful conversation. All the best for Zaid. I am already one of your users.
I think you’ve built a wonderful product and I’m looking forward to your new releases as well. Yep. Thanks a lot for the call and thanks a lot for having me, Tarusha and really great to be over here.
Thanks a lot. Likewise. Thank you.