Risk On Podcast
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Risk On Podcast
Incognito Mode for your Money | EP 66
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Joined by Kru and Abbas from Umbra Privacy
Covering:
• The new Umbra web app, private transfers and swaps for onchain traders
• The Streamflow partnership and why private vesting matters
• Plus the usual Risk On rundown.
Hello.
SPEAKER_03Hello, hello. Welcome. Risk on episode 66. Brought to you by uh FOMO. Go download FOMO today. Use promo code RISCON for 10% off all your trading fees. We have a great episode today. We got the guys from Umbra on the phone. She was on the phone. On the show today. It'll be a fun episode. Talk about privacy. We've been privacy guys for like nine, ten months now in varying forms. So having people that actually know what they're talking about when it comes to privacy will be a nice change of pace.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's usually me making stuff up, right, Wood?
SPEAKER_03Exactly. I never know if what you're saying is real or not. I just trust you, which I probably shouldn't do.
SPEAKER_04We've been good. Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for joining us, Kruan Abbas. Good to have you guys here. It's been a big week of uh announcements and stuff for you guys. Uh so thanks for making the time to chat with us.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for inviting us.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, definitely. Um so it's funny. Before we get started into your guys' stuff, um Sat, this was the last episode. We declared it to be alt-season, and then Bitcoin promptly dumped like off of off a cliff.
SPEAKER_05Dumped real bad, yeah. I would say that's not how we drew it up, but I feel like that is just textbook. It it could not have been better timed. It's the classic, classic story of uh, you know, we're gonna throw a little actually we didn't call it alt season, we we brought up our all-season watch list, and to be fair, we've been watching them and things have been happening.
SPEAKER_04So a lot of things have been happening.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, things have been happening.
SPEAKER_04We've been right. We were right on one big leap. Uh hype mainly. Uh up 7% today on that uh CFDC news. I haven't actually looked into what this means. I thought this was a prediction market thing, but it seems to be a per book overall thing. Um I literally just saw this like just now been traveling today. So is this something I um should be more even more coping about since I'm sideline hype?
SPEAKER_05Or I don't know about coping, but I I think it's relevant for sure. If you guys saw Brian Armstrong did a victory lap a little bit, uh I don't know if we have the tweet, but he said big day for US-based traders and for Coinbase. Uh until until now, US users have been locked out of roughly 80% of global crypto markets, perpetual futures and options, but not anymore. Um some of this is directly related to Coinbase, but obviously the big reaction was for hype and lighter, um which you saw bounce off of probably done like a 20% bounce. And I think I think we don't really know yet, but the the initial reaction was clearly that um this is like has a chance to provide some regulatory clarity for these perps exchanges.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, like one still keep them non-KYC. This feels like a bit of a sh I feel like I am uneducated to speak on it because I haven't researched it now, but it feels like a little bit of a stretch. Like this doesn't really confirm anything like from what people are really worried about.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Well, it's paving the road for for perps to be legal in the US, though. Yeah, um, you know, right now there's there's been a lot of shackles, and I don't know, to your point, um people are are split on what they want to be the future for hyperliquid. They're very split on that. Um but there's obviously like there's been so much talk about institutional bid, institutional acceptance of crypto. And you know, that's why the Clarity Act has been such a big deal. And like, um this is actually a great segue into talking to crew and a boss because like the flip side of this is like people want crypto to be adopted, they want it to be accepted. So there's this large push for institutionalization, like the allowance for like everything to happen on chain, move on chain. Um, and then there's the flip side of the argument and all of like the unintended consequences that go with it, which is everything up to this point, you know, built on top of what Bitcoin is, all these other L1s and L2s, they're all by definition and by design like meant to be very transparent. They live on a ledger. Anyone who's you know sophisticated enough to kind of understand what's going on with the concept of what a blockchain is can go and see what anyone is doing at any time. Um and I imagine uh crew and a boss would love to hear the backstory, but like I imagine like this is a driving force of what got you guys inspired to start working on this issue with Umbra. Um I don't know, maybe you want to explain uh better to us kind of how it came about, but it feels very relevant to be talking to you guys, especially given the news that came out this morning. It's just another catalyst to propel the polarization of this topic. And like I think what we really are interested in is like, you know, how do we equip ourselves to live in an environment where okay, stuff does move on to the blockchain. Uh now what do now what do we do with that? How do we how do we treat our our assets that we keep there? So maybe that maybe that's a decent uh intro, but am I right in that there's a little bit of inspiration that got you guys working on on this from now?
SPEAKER_00Uh Abbas, you want to go or should I? Alright. So I mean, I did it for like my personal reasons, right? I had my friends looking at my my my wallets as if like it's reality TV, right? Uh getting calls at like 4 a.m. in the morning about why am I buying fart coin. Um I just did not like it. Yeah, I mean, uh, but I mean uh that's all that's all okay, but I think uh you know uh privacy is almost uh a fundamental try, right? Like I'd say that there's a zero percent chance that crypto would scale without privacy. Uh and that the most ironic part of the last year has been just watching that play out in real time. Um yeah, uh I think it is almost a top requirement for institutions. They will not come on chain at scale without it. Uh so you can call it the next big wave, the one everyone has been waiting for, is gated by the exact thing that the industry has been ignoring for all these years. And that's the irony that the unlock for institutional capital that retail wants to ride into does not happen until we solve privacy. Uh so I did it for personal reasons, and then it turned out to be this amazing thing that people have been waiting for for all these years. Uh, and I'm glad that that you know uh I was thinking something right alongside the entire team at Umbra.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I could add some thoughts as well. I think um broadly, we've seen validation of this over the last six months, especially. I mean, thanks to the way we've launched and the things that we've been able to do. We had a lot of teams that we actively spoke to show plenty of interest in using Umbra for more than just the retail side of the business. There's a few types of even on the institution side, right? It's like there's companies that want to use our product to cater to retail markets, but there's companies that want to use our product to cater to institutions and that size. And um the one that's most interested is the one that wants to talk to institutions and entertains that kind of capital. Um, is just about getting the infra right, getting the compliance part right, which is all that we've also spent time focusing on. Fortunately, our architecture allows us to do that, and we've built it that way. So we are primed for that opportunity, and I'm glad it's happening now.
SPEAKER_04How does Umbra compare? I feel like a lot of people are big users of things like privacy cache and things like that. How does something like Umbra compare to privacy cache, for example?
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, um so the core thesis is sort of the same to bring privacy for the masses. It's just how we do it that changes the game. Uh one, we we tackle the compliance angle really uh really well. Um and alongside this, we make things uh much more composable for the user. Uh we we want them to interact with the entire ecosystem rather than you know just be like a part of a shielded pool and then you know go go nowhere. That's just idle capital laying forever. Um we do things completely differently there. Uh also the under underlying engine is completely different. It's it's just using zero knowledge proofs while while we use like a blend of multi-party computation and zk uh to achieve the goals, making it much cheaper, much faster than any other you know protocol available.
SPEAKER_05Could you expand on that actually? Um I think most people who are have been in you know the crypto Twitter sphere or following a lot of these privacy narratives, or you know, even on the AI side, there's been a lot of conversation about that. Like zero knowledge proofs is something that's become a little bit more mainstream knowledge. People understand that there's this, you know, effectively the complicated math equation that allows you to have this kind of binary protection of what you're seeing. Can you explain the other side of what you're talking about? Um, in terms of this other computational method, I I didn't hear exactly the label you said, but what is that that differs from zero knowledge proofs?
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, um so like I said, like MPC is multi-party computation. Uh it's you know the core primitive that makes um you know uh make confidential compute possible. Uh like what MPC does is basically it uh allows multiple party parties to jointly compute a result uh without you know seeing each other's inputs. Uh so I can, I mean, I'm not the the most technically uh you know uh sound here, but to give you an example, it would be like uh imagine you know three people who want to know their average salary without wanting to you know revealing what each of them actually earn. Uh MPC uh is a math that lets them get the average uh without learning anyone else's number. Uh and RCM runs this infrastructure at this scale, and we are using just a blend of MPC and ZK to make things you know faster uh much safer, and picking the best of out of these you know both technologies that's available.
SPEAKER_04So in terms of like the flow of how this works, too, like just just so I can get an idea. So say if you're wanting to send money with with Umbra, is it you're sending it to a pool similar to Privacy Cash, and then Privacy Cash is distributing that to like from that select pool? Because I know a lot of people who use privacy cash and that sort of platform and that sort of privacy, it can be tracked. So is that the sort of thing you guys are doing, or is it completely different?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh, I mean, uh the core principle is not straight up derived from Zcash. Uh okay. Like uh ZK is is great at proving uh I know this thing without revealing it. MPC is great at, you know, let's compute something new from you know multiple private inputs together. So what happens with Privacy Cash uh is that you deposit money inside a pool, but for anyone else to receive it, uh the money has to leave the pool. Right? That that that's what is making it not composable. Uh what we do is the money is received by someone else in the pool uh itself. Um and you know, it's just money stays inside the pool without it leaving it, and that was something that maintains like complete privacy here. Um so yeah, that's that's the simple answer to it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And you mentioned like uh sorry, just wanted to add like I think there's like one part of the encryption that probably helped you understand better. It's like the way we use MPCs to do the encryption to be able to allow for this transaction is within the pool, think of it as a ledger, and the ledger is it just as an addition and subtraction of balances, right? So if I'm sending a transfer from my account to your account, the encryption is what allows us to not see what the actual amount is and at the same time deliver that balance to you uh without revealing any of the sender, the recipient, as well as the balance of it. So it's completely anonymous in that sense.
SPEAKER_04You guys mentioned like you're a bit ahead in the compliance game of this. Like obviously, this is a massive part, massive part of this. I know people like companies like HoudiniSwap have have struggled with this. I've struggled with this with HoudiniSwap, like just the way they route through exchanges. Sometimes the exchanges will hold your transaction, and you then have to end up KYCing with that select exchange. Obviously, you guys don't have that problem, but could you go more into how you guys have solved for the for the compliance issue?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure. Uh uh there are two parts of it. Uh uh let me let me start by prefacing that like uh the privacy on Umbra is uh privacy for the good players in the ecosystem. Uh now, how do we maintain this? Right? The step one is uh on the protocol level, uh we use services like range uh to you know uh scan wallets before they even create an account on Umbra. If you know these wallets appear to be at risk, uh they are on any OFAC list or or a list by circle tether, they're not allowed to create an account uh on Umbra. And that that's what kind of secures the protocol. Um and on the second side is the user. Uh so institutions won't be you know um happy to see if there is zero compliance on you know the RN or any user's end. So uh for that we've allowed like um uh granular viewing keys. Uh now what are viewing keys, right? If your accountant uh needs to take a look at the amount of transactions that you've done over the past year, uh you know, you could you could hand them over a master key, which allows him to take a look at all the transactions that you've ever done until now, um uh which is available on Umbra and all the other platforms as well. But what Umbra does really well is you could you could send in a single transaction and just reveal details about it. Or you can send in a week's week's worth of transactions or month worth. Uh and that's like giving it granular access to you know to whoever wants to see the data. Uh depends on your permission, of course, like you are the one who are share who is sharing it. Uh but that that's what's something that makes it absolutely um a game changer in this compliance space.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so you could send like a snapshot instead of sending every single transaction the users ever made. Yes, yes. Okay, I see.
SPEAKER_05So basic so basically just for to simplify it for all of our uh fellow DGENs out there who really want to understand like the base core use case here is like you can go act on chain, do whatever you want, and submit transactions privately. So you're not gonna be traced. You're you're able to move freely around the internet and you know do the things you want to do with your money. But then you also want to be compliant, you need to pay your taxes, you have to do some form of audit at some point, whatever. You can then go track that down, say, I'm not gonna unshield this for everybody, I'm not gonna show the world, but I can I can repackage this and show who I need to show it to for whatever compliance compliance reasons. Is that is that a fair summary?
SPEAKER_00Yes, indeed. Uh I I thought Abbas was the one. That's very good. Yes, indeed, that's the whole answer to it. Yeah.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_04So for example, say if I right now I when I when I want to stay hidden, I use any swap, which routes for exchanges, etc. And then maybe I'll mix privacy cash in with in with that. Like and this is uh on Seoul specifically. What would be my reasoning for using Umbra over something like AnySwap or these other platforms?
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah. Umbra would be cheaper, Umbra would be faster, um, it would have a better user experience. Just a second, guys. I'm receiving a call. I need to go leave.
SPEAKER_01Just for a second. I can take it. I can take it. Okay, I can take that. I it's definitely more private as well. I think um uh the good part for us is like you said, the compliance does become a blocker for most other uh uh platforms that you may end up using. Um so that level of uh compliance um and similarity definitely helps. We also have a lot of Intel stuff within the platform that makes it probably much more um appealing. Like for example, in a couple of weeks we've used the web going live as well. So the web should have the ability for you to go from any chain to any chain as well. Um a lot more as a part of the platform that makes it easier, or like a one-stop solution.
SPEAKER_04So it has the bridge involved, and the bridge is private as well. And that's all built in. Okay, I see.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome.
SPEAKER_04So you guys are too.
SPEAKER_03Go on, sorry, sorry, would no, I was gonna um you guys recently launched your new web app, right? Um and this will all be built into the web app, so the bridge, everything.
unknownYep.
SPEAKER_03You guys have released some pretty cool content as well associated with it. Um I really wanted you guys to get an opportunity to kind of show us the web app. Um kind of so we can all visualize all these kind of technical things that Stats has been grilling you on.
SPEAKER_02Sorry, sorry.
SPEAKER_03No, no, no, no. It's really impressive. I've watched a bunch of your content you guys have put out. Um it's really, really cool. So I want you guys to get an opportunity to share what you guys built. Um I'm gonna pull that up uh Henry and let Crew walk us through the code. All right.
SPEAKER_00I'm just gonna double check if everything is visible right now. Yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you're good. Which is important.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, uh this is gonna be like uh the place where we you know experiment and you know deploy our new tools whenever we build them. Uh Web App will be the first place where we you know experiment. So it's it's private swap, private send, withdrawing from pools, and bridging. Uh so let me get started with you know uh Umbro first. All right, uh simple login and it gets you like uh to a to a dashboard where you can see the amount that's shielded, uh what's public, and if there is any activity done. Uh now let me show you how easy shielding is. So let me click on shield, click on USDC and enter, like let's say five. Uh shielding is free, of course, there's no fee to it, and uh a couple of transactions to be signed.
SPEAKER_04So is this on on Solana? Yeah, it's shielding USDC on Solana. So but what by shielding, what is this actually doing on the back end? Is this sending it to a pool?
SPEAKER_00Or it's sending it to a a pool that uh that is mixing all the USDC that is available in that single pool.
SPEAKER_04Okay, and then when you unshield, is it coming back out of that same pool?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's coming back out of the same pool. Uh but you gotta, you know, you know the the thing with privacy is you let you need to let these assets mix for a while, uh just to keep anonymous. And you know you can see now that you know the the shielded account has increased and you know there's like 125 USDC in the world now.
SPEAKER_03What do you mean when you say that they have to sit for a while? What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh right, with any um privacy mixer, uh you need a certain amount of time for these assets to you know sit inside the pool and become more private. Uh if you claim these assets right away, uh unshield them, uh, all of these assets would be public on uh on the chain. Uh the longer you let it sit, the more private it it gets. Uh and and that's you know, that's the the initial complaints that you've seen with maybe privacy cash or who whatever mixer that people have been using. Uh what people are doing usually is just instantly claiming it. that's what ruins the privacy on it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I was gonna I was gonna say what what is what would you say your best practices are here to to to remain the most private. Like what I do right now is I usually when I'm using a shielded tool I'll deposit SOL or USD or whatever and I will wait maybe a day and then I will start withdrawing random amounts um from the initial amount I put in. So say if I put $10 in I will pull after 24 hours I'll pull $4 I'll pull maybe two or three the next hour and so on and so forth. What is the best practice to remain private on chain?
SPEAKER_00Right. First of all we I mean to add to what you said I think we've introduced something called a pool health which tells you you know what kind of capital is in these pools and you know uh a higher score of course makes it more anonymous. And I think what you said is is absolutely perfect honestly because let's say you do like 10 point five US dollars uh to be shielded uh the second you claim all of it together uh it's easily traceable so the best thing is to let it sit for some time and when you unshield them uh or claim them uh you claim them in parts uh that that increases the chances of it being more anonymous so yeah this this is just like a quick demo about what's possible uh you can see you know uh can you do swap the U.
SPEAKER_03Yeah for sure uh let me do like a swap between USDC I cannot buy umbra so I'm just gonna do let's say so uh let me do like five dollars worth of so yeah definitely I mean I think the thing and you and you touched on it earlier was like you know back in the day I mean still people are just wallet tracking all the time um you know I I've I've I think Sats, Swizzle and I have all had wallets that have been tracked to points of annoyance. Swizzle's wallet he was recently told that whenever he that one uh every time he places the trade, uh it's like taking candy from a baby because you just sell whenever he's when whenever he buys something.
SPEAKER_05I actually gave up trying to mask it.
SPEAKER_00I used privacy guys for a while and then people figured that out they still knew where my wallets were so you might have to yeah so so right now with the you know the current tech that we have like we take about five signatures for each swap five to six signatures for each swap. But you know with the Alpen Glow update uh on Solana all of this will be reduced to just one signature uh and that just will be instant and make things really fast. So it takes about 35 to 40 seconds if you're like swapping for the first time because it's downloading all the you know the ZK files. But once it's you know you do it repeatedly like it reduces to like 20 25 seconds at max.
SPEAKER_05So I hate to put you guys on the spot here and ask but I I imagine like I would think it's something you guys have talked about a good amount amount. So I'm just curious you know obviously there's been this crazy um you know like development landscape with all the AI tooling and everything. And I think like that was one of the things privacy cash ran into where um stuff would be you would do these kind of like shielded transactions and to the naked human eye it was a good surface level protection. But as we all know like AI is is much better at pattern recognition than humans are right. And so um they're very it's very good at if of course if someone was deploying these tools and these are going to be advanced systems, but like if they want to be able to track something it's it's quite easy to see what goes in and then ultimately after whatever process happens if the same amounts go back out or even if it's you know in this sequencing where um you know it goes back out to different wallets or whatever like there's still a lot of like pattern recognition that these AI tools can track. So how have you guys been thinking about like the increased like abilities of AI tooling to you know be in an attack vector here. Like how how is that factored into your guys' discussion and and you know do you have protections for that? Do you have a thought process for for why this how why and how this process will still work? I'm just curious because obviously that's such so at the forefront of everyone's minds as they're thinking about all this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah absolutely right like um I mean all of these these thoughts uh that we have had are really in its initial stages. The only way I mean the simple answer to pattern recognition is just adding randomizations. And for that reason we have something like a privacy score right uh you get to change it anytime you want it. You can set it from a scale of zero to 800 I think and like higher the score the better it is. But when you set a higher score it adds like a randomization number to it. So let's say the privacy score is 800 so it allows like you know any number between let's say 750 and 800 transactions to pass before you auto claim that amount. So like it's not um you know how can I say it uh there is a certain randomization added to to the fact that you made a transaction but you never know how when uh you're gonna claim it to your wallet. So this is just like initial idea that we've had but no that's really interesting.
SPEAKER_05So is it fair to say that like the use case for Umbra is this is like where maybe Zcash is institutional grade privacy like is this more like the concept is this is actual usable functional privacy where you're not a like you're not necessarily achieving a 100% certainty of like this cannot be traced. But the the more like let's say you're just like a casual use case I want a 10 privacy score because I want it to the transaction to happen relatively quickly. I know there's some scrambling going I know there's elements that could still be traceable or you could say I want you know it's not going to get to a hundred but I want it to be a 90% privacy grade so I'll let it sit in that pool and there'll be a ton of scrambling and mixing happening.
SPEAKER_00At the end of the day if someone really advanced wants to track me they still can but you guys are obviously going to continue to improve at scale how private it can get is is that is that the idea that you guys would go from zero to ninety nine and and accept that 100 can't be achieved Abbas would have his own points to add to this but uh I you know I beg to differ with uh Zcash being institutional level privacy I think uh Zcash is works on a more human level yeah it works on a level of you know um privacy sovereignty for uh for all you know like the human civilization uh what we are working on is like the same models as Zcash but uh we think from a perspective that privacy gives you more agency and uh that's what you know of course institutions wanted so our you know uh push is towards institutions while Zcash is again like uh uh works on a much more human level uh of course a bus you know go ahead with this yeah I wanted to answer like the go ahead yeah I was gonna say the more use of the pool I guess the more private it is that's the idea here yeah like the more institutional you guys drive the more private it's gonna be for the average end user as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah absolutely I think it's like I think I want to answer the previous question as well um the way we care about privacy is or the way we think privacy is going to end up looking on Solana especially and hopefully ID at some point pretty pretty much every single chain especially for Umbras context is uh we would never want people to leave our pools. So the idea of being able to deposit into our pools and being able to leave and then being able to patent recognize what that transaction was and be able to match it to a user the end goal for us is that you jump into our pools, you make a transaction or a transfer, you want to pay someone, you do it within our pools and the person can claim whatever amount they need to claim from within that pool. So the idea is for them to be able to hold capital within that pool without sacrificing on yield, sacrificing on a bunch of other things or just being able to not access uh differential assets. For example, um most privacy protocols only probably allow you to hold um a very specific set of assets. So if you want to hold let's say Umbra or hold Avici or some other coin for that matter you'd probably have to leave the pool, go purchase it and then hold it on the public address. But as Umbra grows we're gonna enable more assets, more tokens. So technically you could hold anything from RAC BTC to gold to um whatever other commodity and metal and still be able to participate within the pool completely privately and permissionlessly. So that part um works fairly well and as for um the way we think of where we stand with Zcash, Zcash I think it's like you have a sovereign asset that allows you to be exposed to this potentially like Cruz said civilizational opportunity that changes the game for everything for a private asset and monetary asset. We will work with institutions, we'll work with smaller partners we'll work with all sorts of spectrum of privacy. So we are entirely private. It's just that you may choose to operate in a spectrum depending on your requirements for speed or requirements for X asset andor not. Zcash also probably um pigeonholes you into one asset which we won't be um you'll be able to hold any number of assets across yeah maybe maybe the wording I used when I said institutional grade was probably wrong.
SPEAKER_05I more meant like the the fundamental purpose of these assets like Zcash is is probably more intended to be a store of value that the longer it sits in that pool, like you know it's a safe it's a safe you know sovereign asset. Whereas you guys are saying let's have privacy but we want to be able to use it. We want to be able to to you know switch between tokens pay people do all these things and that's why you bring network activity into the Umber ecosystem.
SPEAKER_03So that it makes perfect sense sorry definitely my the next thing I wanted to go and and obviously you guys on board you got uh you guys uh got a partnership with Streamflow recently um which will help bring more assets into the ecosystem of course can you walk me through how that kind of came to be and who that benefits um you know it uh the users of Streamflow or the companies that are using Streamflow by users I mean like I've done a bunch of Streamflows um whenever I'm doing one I spin up a random wallet address so it's like kind of anonymous that like I'm not getting those tokens to me. Like I don't give like my my core wallet addresses. So walk me through how this technically is going to work and how the partnership came to be and what they're kind of looking for out of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah um I can go on this um so I think the way uh it was pretty obvious to us that there was a there were a few spaces that uh privacy is most important and token distribution is an obvious one. So I think Malisha and uh the founder of Steamflow and crew they've been in conversation for a bit um and it seemed like a natural fit because they had a lot of demand from their clientele to be able to do this for a while now and they never had a good enough solution until Umbra came about. Which of course Umra and Arcum were a perfect fit for them. And as conversation progressed we decided to help them build that setup. They could just use a SDK to enable private transfers and private distributions for their clients. The way we've set this up as an agreement and a deal is um it's a two set structure as far as fees are concerned that that is beneficial immediately to the team making the transactions. So not the average user but there's benefits to them as well. So first of all any team sub 50 million for example or a particular volume uh expected distribution volume for their vesting can immediately use this um offering and get like a reduced fee on their transfers um and be able to make private uh distributions for whatever vesting period two or three years and then there are custom deals as well depending on the size of the partner. Now the way it benefits the end user is if let's say take an example if Jito for example was doing a vesting when they first launched on Umbra, any user that holds GTO tokens could participate in our pool and be able to use it much more anonymously than any other token available because this constant stream of tokens being distributed. So the benefit for the end holder or the token holder of that said token is that you have a liquid anonymous venue to participate and do whatever you want whether that's private payments or swaps and so on. So broadly those are the benefits and the number of pools we have so for example over the let's say one or two years if we end up creating 50 pools or 100 pools with 100 different projects each one of those would have a massively liquid anonymous pool for a course of two or three years depending on how long the vesting is interesting.
SPEAKER_03So basically the the goal to make this most successful as possible is to onboard as many people and onboard as much capital as possible for you guys.
SPEAKER_01What are I guess from that avenue what strategy I mean the Streamflow partnership is big of course um but adoption onto the platform the the the privacy of the platform is heavily dependent on capital being onboarded what is like your guys' strategy right now to onboarding that capital it depends who it is uh sorry could okay um I mean it depends who it is yeah go on go on go on go on I think it's like we have active conversations with teams that will use our platform so like I said there's two types of um potential large integrations that is a company that wants to offer our service to a larger institutional client so someone that wants to move around $100 million or $50 million or a couple 10 20 million dollars or someone that wants to offer it to the end retail user base that probably does swaps for that matter. For us as far as anonymity is concerned the amount of traction moving or capital moving through the pools matters most so if we get a partnership that says we're gonna move uh a million dollars worth of transactions every day and it's gonna be $100 swaps or like a couple hundred dollar swaps that's pretty valuable to our USDC, USDT pool or whatever tokens they end up using. So the size of the volume moving is important but not as important as the number of transactions happening through the volume, through the pool. And in saying so we're talking to teams that want to do all sorts of stuff so there is like I said um wallets we have uh again a few more token distribution companies are potentially payout and payroll companies that want to explore what we offer um and there's teams that we are talking to to do potentially deposit TVL directly into our pool so that they can establish the fact that they want to shield assets with us active conversations.
SPEAKER_05So that's that's pretty interesting. I'm curious like in terms of TVL is there a critical mass point you guys are focused on hitting where you'd say hey and I know you were saying it's more the more volume of transactions might even be more important than the actual capital but in terms of direct capital needs is there a point you guys would hit where you'd say hey now if we can get this amount of capital on chain with this amount of movement like that's a critical mass that explodes like the like the value of of what umbra can do like are do you have a specific target um or is it like you know it's just a compounding effect that the more we get the better.
SPEAKER_00I mean I would agree on the part with uh the compounding effect right but uh alongside the TVL it's also the amount of users that would be on board it and contributing to the TVL. So far we've heard that Zcash has almost 50% or more than 50% of Zcash which is shielded uh you know uh our goals are somewhat similar uh with each and every token that you know uh exists right now. What happens here is basically we apply the same thesis uh that people have for Zcash to each token that's available on chain. Uh which means that you know more the capital that's yielded the better it is. But yeah.
SPEAKER_05So a question I saw I saw on the web app there's there's like a bridge functionality. So you guys are trying to incorporate you're incorporating bridging so uh right now is it a safe assumption to say Solana assets are the easiest to incorporate um or is is the goal like this could be a place you would like to house all of I know this is a big statement, but like your goal is to house all of crypto within the Umbra ecosystem.
SPEAKER_00Yeah so for sure I think the thesis is is is correct for now uh the safest place to do it is Solana right uh now I keep on going back towards Zcash but Zcash and Zcash is nice. People like it but can you imagine Zcash on Solana right? You get the same properties you get everything that works with Zcash just much way more faster using Umbra.
SPEAKER_05So it's it's transacting within so it's like you're keeping everything shielded but it all happens within there. So any Solana anything happening on Solana you're you're inside of that network and and you're you're transacting and you're not removing your privacy yeah exactly so uh that's the added benefit of you know being being on Solana but it doesn't you know uh uh it it kind of resonates with with Solana's thesis as well that it it wants to have each and every asset on chain running on Solana and that's we want to what we want to do.
SPEAKER_00We just want to add the privacy angle to it. And it's a huge benefit for you know anyone and everyone who trades using Solana.
SPEAKER_04What is that bridge on the back end as well?
SPEAKER_00Is that uh like relay but that's near intent okay oh okay it's near yeah yeah oh that's a second yeah yeah so like like I said right like uh it it changes the game with composability it's not just using one so like one sort of technology underlying technology it's almost like an aggregated layer where the best tech is being used for a certain purpose. Near Intense is absolutely amazing for you know cross-chain private bridges and that's what we're using right now to to enable this feature uh scopes are being done using you know ZK MPC and being routed through Jupyter uh which which is the best way to do it for now uh in the future it may change and that that's what makes like us completely f flexible to any upcoming innovation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah okay so as you guys are clearly tapped into all the stuff going on privacy across near Zcash uh and whatever else is going on what would you guys be most interested in from a token perspective like what is a buy on the privacy side are you guys holding Zcash personally guys holding NIR what are you guys interested in I'm gonna let Abbas go ahead first on it clearly has some strong thoughts broken bags and please got bags or doesn't have bags buyers and hot takes some hot takes I just want to preface this with uh Ansom yesterday tweeted out that holding Zcash is like having Swiss banking in your pocket I'm sorry I've I've heard this I've heard this and promoted promoted this for like about a year now since I think Mert I think when Zcash was about at $20 is when I first was like okay you know what I saw Mert talk about it let me try the Zashi app out which is called Zashi back then. I wrote like a long ass feedback for Zashi um which the electric coin CEO uh did look at and respond to um Zuka was part of that thread um and they were curious on like more insights and UX feedback. So I'm a big fan of uh the wallet and what Zcash has done. Of course I didn't hold a lot of it uh right after that feedback so that was a mess but um I think I think I think I think it for me personally I would rather bet on the one thing that I'm most involved with. So I made a tweet just today actually saying why would I bet on the second best idea isn't when I have my first best right here and it makes no sense. Like I feel I do not feel inclined to own anything else. But having said that um I think Zcash is still something that is Something I would hold in like a volt for a very long time and not be bothered by price given that I have a specific allocation to it.
SPEAKER_05And by the way, I I think you guys are I I like the framing that like you understand that you don't have to be competitive with them. Like you can have some variance and opinion and say, well, we think we we're actually better for for these things, or like we might be better as a whole, but like we under like understanding network effects, it's like they have trapped some of that, and that's a good thing, right? It's like the fact that people are embracing privacy is good, that's what you guys are in it for. Um but it's it's good because a lot of people might take the stance of like screw screw Zcash man, come to Umbra. But it's like you know, you want you you want something in the ecosystem to validate the thesis. So even if it's not yours right now, like the thesis being validated is very important. And then you can build out the best the best product you can, and and I think that's where things can explode, right? So uh I I I like I I like that you guys didn't take the approach of just trying to attack something. Even if you do, I think you've made it clear you think you have the best product, and that's great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I want to add to it, I think it's a we work in like it's a pretty solid, it's gonna be a pretty solid symbiotic relationship between near intense Zcash and us uh to a great extent because the bridge from Zcash to us, so technically you could use Zodlap, and once you be you're able to use our bridge, move Zcash from anywhere to anywhere and be able to deposit an umbra. Like Cruz said, it's faster, more private, more private as in you're probably able to use it in more places uh than just on like a specific wallet or specific chain. Um, and the other part is our network effects probably do compound much faster than any other uh protocol, just because any team that integrates one of our SDK technically could access any of those pools and any of those users as part of our pool. So our users do carry over to other applications. So technically, let's say let's say Streamflow has 10 token pools launching, and each token pool has 1000 participants because those are the ones receiving investor capital or employee capital as part of their token distributions. Any team could launch an app, um, integrate Umbra's SDK and now has a captive sort of audience available to them that could just privately participate in their economy too. And this compounds with each net um SDK integration. Um that front as well.
SPEAKER_04When when do you guys plan to have the the web live? I see a lot of people asking for access codes. So I think you must have piqued some interest there, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, um uh this is the first time that we've built a web app and and you know, uh it's it's going live to just so many, like there's a huge audience we built from, you know, when we released our mobile app to where we are right now. Uh and for sure there's like a huge demand of for privacy. Uh these these you know uh these access codes are are being given in a way that uh uh allows people to critique the app way more, uh find bugs to it, find errors, uh suggest us changes that we can make before the release, before the final release. Uh and it takes us at least a week, week and a half to you know, collect all the feedback that we've gotten, uh make changes to it and make you know the app completely perfect before we go live. Uh the announcement was made yesterday, so you know uh you can you know guess the time frame where we we would be releasing it, no specific date on it. I'm just gonna tease you guys as much as I can.
SPEAKER_05Uh you'll have to DM us. You don't have to give us the rockets, but you'll you'll let us know.
SPEAKER_00Uh I mean you you got uh uh a good look at the you know uh the UI for now. Yeah. Uh for sure. I'm gonna hand over you the uh the access codes. Do let us know how we can make it better. And yeah.
SPEAKER_03I do have another question before um I think Swizzle has a has a hard as a leave us a 10, but uh MetaDAO just got recently listed on Coinbase. That's obviously huge for the whole ecosystem. Um I wanna understand more about how you guys got involved with them and what that process was like, um and how the ongoing relationship is, and if you could do it again, would you do it that way?
SPEAKER_00Uh wow. Uh I'm gonna start and I'm and then I'm gonna let Abbas uh add to this, okay? Um so uh Umbra actually began almost a year ago. It it funnily enough, it started on April 4th. Um so uh I I I mean I was just you know left my last job and was on the verge. Like either I gotta I'm gonna quit the industry or I'm gonna build something that is you know unique. It's not gonna be a copy of an existing product, it's gonna be something unique. Uh and I kept hinting uh this to Abbas who was then you know helping uh metadavis cloud. Uh so uh I I was in conversations for with him for you know about like six months where I mean I considered him as a mentor to me, right? Uh each and every idea that I had was was discussed with him uh until the the Coliseum hackathon came in and we we you know participated in it. Uh luckily enough we got an honorary mention and that's you know where we still started getting the spotlight. Um recommended us to Metadel, and then had this like two-hour long call with with Prophet, uh where he ex he was pitching the idea of Metadell to and Futarki to me, and I was pitching him the idea of what Umbra is. Um and that's when I think the first raise happened as well, which is OmniPad. Uh that's the only conversation I've I've I've had with Prophet, by the way. Uh of course later down the line we did have conversations, but this was pre-ICL. Um and uh it made complete sense because we've we've been you know crypto native since 2021, 2022, and it did not make sense to you know raise a VC round at all. Um and like raising on MetaDAO is absolutely the most ideal way anyone should be raising in crypto. Uh and and it has you know proved its its its point uh so far. Uh so one conversation and six months, uh and we we got this amazing ICO that we did. Um I'm gonna let Abbas continue with uh what the relationship between Umbra and Meta Davis.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Uh I mean, like Krew mentioned, I was with uh Metadov for the longest time. I pinned profit actually some point f last year. I was hopping out of a job as well, and I was like, hey, I really want to I saw your article and I really want to help you because I spent five years helping founders, and I think I can really do something over here. So I hopped around all over the world, especially in Asia and parts of Europe, hosting events, trying to attract founders. I had three teams join from my side. One of the first few, I'd say one of the I'd say three out of the first five teams of my teams, essentially. Um, I had a WeChi, Ambra, uh, and Pace team. And uh Crew and I have been chatting for a long time, so it made obvious natural sense to me. I had to tell Prophet, like, hey, you should speak to Crew. I think once you get on a call with him, this is gonna be an easy yes for you. And when he did, it was an easy yes. And the text I got from Prophet was something with the lines of uh this is the best call I've had. Like one of the best founders I've spoken to, and it's an easy yes, so let's do it. Um and then things sped up, and once the ICO was done, Crew was like, Hey, do you want to join us? Because I was still an advisor at that point in time, not officially working with Samura. Um and it's been an easy, easy, easy ride from then. I think the way I see it as Merital structure is the closest to a public markets company structure that you could find in crypto. Um the way our comp is structured as well is similar to the way most public CEOs have their comp structured. They get only paid out when the share price hits a certain multiple, and so do we. We don't get paid out until we hit those multiples, and that means we have to deliver those results for the investors, holders, the team, and the larger stakeholders of the company.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Bringing it back to the token, I guess, how is the token integrated into all of this?
SPEAKER_01It's it's not.
SPEAKER_00It's not. Uh it is I mean, uh uh it's a simple explanation, right? Like people have asked me this, you know, countless amount of times, and I just reduce it to one sentence is that this is the first time that you get to own a part of the business. Uh earlier tokens meant basically nothing, you would just be buying some supply of it, and that's that's it. But here you have the right to you know speak up when you want, you have the right to put up a proposal when you want. Like I like Abbas said, this is you know uh exactly the way you know public companies in public markets work. Uh and supporting buying the token means you're buying into you know Umbra.
SPEAKER_03So that's interesting. Sass, you you uh you've been kind of waiting for this for these types of opportunities.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I just uh like does the token represent equity yet? And it's like it's still a wishy-washy question, you know? It doesn't. Um it doesn't, and that's the way go on.
SPEAKER_01I'll I'll tell you what it does represent. Um so the way the business works is the entire IP of the company is owned by the DAO, um, and the DAO is the token holders. Um that means we cannot spin up an alternate entity, no labs entity, no way to accrue revenue outside of this said entity. That's one bank account. The one bank account is the treasury, uh, and a squats multisect that's governed by the treasury. Even our spends, our monthly spends are governed by the treasury and the and the market proposals, right? So, for example, all the cash that we raised so far, which is about 3 million, is in the treasury. It's available for token holders to claim. So you have a nav uh to your buying that is about 0.22 or 0.33, something like that. Um add to that, any revenue we generate goes back straight to the Treasury. That means if we make about $10 million over the next few years or next year, uh you have complete claims on it. Um it is as close to a proxy as you get, and uh you can pass any amount of proposals you want. If you wanted to fire a crew tomorrow, just drop in a proposal. I'm just dropping this thing out there. Just drop in a proposal and uh we can all trade it. Uh okay.
SPEAKER_04So say say if say if someone comes in tomorrow and wanted to buy Umbra, what happens to the token holders?
SPEAKER_01Oh, the token holders get paid out. There's okay. First of all, if someone wants to buy out today, Umbra, we wouldn't get paid out because we have no tokens.
SPEAKER_04Oh shit, okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we have none.
SPEAKER_04But incentive incentives are kind of misaligned there, no? But yeah, it's a whole different conversation.
SPEAKER_01We'll we'll we'll be fixing those. For example, let me give you an example of it. Avici did this. Avici had a proposal recently where it says it says in the document if someone tries to buy Avici out before they get their tokens, uh, Avici gets paid 30% of the token value, of the sale value. So Avici has a failsafe for this. Um and I believe most teams will have it as well.
SPEAKER_04Okay, makes sense.
SPEAKER_01Gotcha, gotcha, cool.
SPEAKER_03Um, cool. I think Suez, you gotta jump off, right?
SPEAKER_05I gotta hop off, but uh it's been great talking to you guys. Um appreciate it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I appreciate it. Well uh we'll wrap up here. Um you guys, thanks so much for your time. Um learned a lot today. Uh is there anything like closing you wanna like share that we didn't cover? Um I think we went over a lot of really cool stuff you guys are building. I'm I'm really impressed with you guys and what you're building. Um it was nice to chat firsthand and like get to learn more and share with our audience um how they can kind of implement it into their life and hopefully they can get some access code soon.
SPEAKER_00Oh, for sure. Uh yeah, I mean the closing notes here would be that first of all, I mean, thank you so much for inviting us and uh help us push the agenda on privacy. Uh yeah, I mean the the whole idea that we are building with is privacy means more agency. And that's what you know crypto as an industry was was made to was was made in the belief of these ideas, right? Privacy, uh you you always need more agency to to what you own. Uh and that's what our goal is at Umbra, and that's what we're gonna do until we uh keep on building Umbra.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, it's it's not well yeah, good good stuff, guys. Thanks. Uh go check out Umbra, go check out the web app um if you get a chance. Um and it's Friday, Jesus Christ. We'll be back uh next week, Tuesday, um 12 p.m. Um Eastern. Have a good weekend, guys. Thanks for chatting. Um and uh if you guys could just hang out after we log off for like uh two minutes, that'd be great.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely.
unknownAll right.