Bridging Chains & Shaping Web3: Coinbase, BOB & MOCA at EthCC

‍Bitcoin DeFi takes center stage in this Edge of Show live episode from ECC 8 in Cannes as host Josh Kriger sits down with three builders shaping the next wave of on-chain adoption. First, Alexei Zamyatin (Co-founder & CEO, BOB—Build on Bitcoin) breaks down why Bitcoin DeFi is finally inevitable: native Bitcoin pathways via BitVM, improving UX, and Tier-1 DeFi integrations—so users can borrow, earn, and participate without leaving the Bitcoin mothership. Next, Kenneth Shek (Project Lead, Mocha Network by Animoca) details how a chain-agnostic, user-owned identity layer lets people carry verifiable data—finance, healthcare, education, gaming—across apps using zero-knowledge proofs, unlocking safer, more interoperable Bitcoin DeFi experiences. Finally, Tom Vieira (Head of Product, Base by Coinbase) shares how mini apps, agentic/AI-driven commerce, and sub-second, low-fee blockspace are onboarding the next hundred million users—fueling creators, social, and global commerce rails tightly coupled with Bitcoin DeFi flows via stablecoins. If you care about where liquidity, identity, and UX converge, this conversation maps the practical road from hype to real utility—Bitcoin DeFi that’s permissionless, verifiable, and ready for prime time.

Key Topics Covered

• Why Bitcoin DeFi now: Wrapped BTC’s growth, the industry’s mainstreaming, and BitVM’s blueprint for native Bitcoin on L2s create a credible path beyond hodling—so users can borrow, earn yield, and interact in Bitcoin DeFi without centralized chokepoints.
  
  
• BOB’s hybrid approach: Build on Bitcoin (BOB) fuses Bitcoin’s security with Ethereum’s liquidity to meet users where they are, enabling Tier-1 DeFi integrations and a migration path toward full self-custody as BitVM matures—driving Bitcoin DeFi adoption.
  
  
• Identity for interoperability: Mocha Network’s self-sovereign, ZK-powered data layer aims to let users control verification without exposing raw data, reducing “clean-room” inefficiencies and unlocking compliant, cross-chain onboarding that benefits Bitcoin DeFi and Web3 apps.
  
  
• Base and mini apps: Base’s sub-second block times, low fees, and distribution via mini apps address the cold-start problem. Builders can ship social, commerce, and gaming use cases that connect seamlessly to Bitcoin DeFi and stablecoin rails.
  
  
• AI + on-chain rails: Agentic commerce and vibe-coding meet Bitcoin DeFi and stablecoins for always-on payments, creator monetization, and verified identity—helping combat deepfakes with signed messages and enabling new consumer experiences at scale.
  
  

Episode Highlights

• “We finally have the blueprint to have native Bitcoin on Layer 2s with BitVM… that’s what unlocks Bitcoin DeFi at scale.” — Alexei Zamyatin
  
  
• “You have to go where the users are—BOB connects Bitcoin security to Ethereum liquidity so DeFi power users can adopt Bitcoin DeFi without new hurdles.” — Alexei Zamyatin
  
  
• “Users own their data. With zero-knowledge proofs, apps can verify without seeing raw data—interoperable identity that fits real compliance needs.” — Kenneth Shek
  
  
• “Mini apps solve distribution—builders can grow and earn with sub-second, low-fee rails. It’s a new on-chain commerce and creator stack.” — Tom Vieira
  
  
• “Stablecoins are the future of commerce—the rails that bring everyday users and apps on-chain alongside Bitcoin DeFi flows.” — Tom Vieira Benzinga
  
  

People and Resources Mentioned

• Build on Bitcoin (BOB) — gobob.xyz LinkedIn
  
  
• BOB on X (Twitter) — @build_on_bob X (formerly Twitter)
  
  
• Alexei Zamyatin (X) — @alexeiZamyatin X (formerly Twitter)+2X (formerly Twitter)+2
  
  
• Mocha/Moca Network (Animoca Brands ecosystem) — Animoca Brands site & updates LinkedIn+2LinkedIn+2
  
  
• Base (by Coinbase) — base.org Wikipedia
  
  

About our Guest(s)

Alexei Zamyatin — Co-founder & CEO, Build on Bitcoin (BOB)

Alexei is a computer scientist and Bitcoin researcher focused on bridges, rollups, and trust-minimized interoperability. After a PhD at Imperial College London in distributed systems, he co-founded BOB to bring Bitcoin DeFi to mainstream users by combining Bitcoin security with Ethereum programmability. His recent work centers on BitVM-based designs for native Bitcoin on L2s and partnerships with Tier-1 DeFi protocols. castleisland.libsyn.com+1

Kenneth Shek — Project Lead, Mocha Network (Animoca Brands)

Kenneth leads Mocha Network, an identity-first interoperability layer enabling users to port verifiable data across Web2 and Web3 with privacy via zero-knowledge proofs. He collaborates with enterprises, exchanges, and apps on compliant onboarding and data monetization models that avoid centralized data silos—crucial plumbing for scalable Bitcoin DeFi and consumer crypto experiences. LinkedIn+2LinkedIn+2

Tom Vieira — Head of Product, Base (Coinbase)

Tom leads product at Base, the EVM L2 incubated inside Coinbase, focused on global on-chain commerce, creator tools, and mini apps. Under his leadership, Base has pushed permissionless fault proofs, security council decentralization, and performance gains—building rails that help developers ship AI-native, social, and Bitcoin DeFi-adjacent experiences to millions. LinkedIn+2LinkedIn+2

Guest Contact Links

Alexei Zamyatin
LinkedIn Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexei-zamyatin (if available)
Website Link: https://gobob.xyz LinkedIn
Twitter Link: https://x.com/alexeiZamyatin X (formerly Twitter)

Kenneth Shek
LinkedIn Link: https://www.linkedin.com/company/moca-network/ (org page featuring Kenneth) LinkedIn
Website Link: https://www.animocabrands.com (parent ecosystem) LinkedIn
Twitter Link: (Not publicly verified at time of writing)

Tom Vieira
LinkedIn Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-vieira LinkedIn
Website Link: https://base.org

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Transcript:

Josh Kriger: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Edge of Show live and con at ECC 8. It is very warm outside and there's a lot of really exciting conversations happening inside at this event. And I'm here with Alexei, the co-founder and CEO of Bob, spelled out as Build on Bitcoin. Nice to have you on the show. Thanks for having me. So you're a computer scientist and Bitcoin researcher. Since when? It's been over 10 years now, actually.

Alexei Zamyatin: Yeah.

Josh Kriger: Cool, and you actually have a PhD from Imperial College London, which was in what exactly?

Alexei Zamyatin: Distributed systems, which is the more computer science-y term. Specifically, I worked on bridges and roll-up designs.

Josh Kriger: So you've been thinking about sort of what we can do with the mothership for a long time, basically.

Alexei Zamyatin: It has been a long, long time and it has definitely cost me a few gray hairs fighting the maxis throughout the years about whether or not Bitcoin should be used for more than just hodling.

Josh Kriger: And I guess, like, were you ever a maxi or did you when you saw the underlying technology immediately think about its potential to be more than just a store of value?

Alexei Zamyatin: I mean, define a maxi. I've worked on Bitcoin and trying to do more with it and designs for the last 10 years. So arguably that makes me a Bitcoin maxi to some extent. But I do believe that there's a lot of value to be found in the innovation that Ethereum, Solana and others have brought into the space. So in that sense, no, I don't think Bitcoin is the only thing that should exist. And I do firmly believe that we should be able to use Bitcoin for more than just payments. And I should not be forced to go to a centralized provider the moment I want to borrow against my BTC or yield on it or do something else that is just not standing around. If in 10 years I have to go to my bank and ask my bank, hey, could I send my Bitcoin to my friend? It's not Bitcoin to me anymore in that case. And we would have failed if that's the only way that I can interface with Bitcoin as a retail user who doesn't really, you know, self custody and doesn't really understand all the nitty gritty details.

Josh Kriger: So some of the early concepts of us tapping into Bitcoin to do more have been around a while. The idea is not new. However, you sort of feel like we're in a current moment in time that is the rise of Bitcoin DeFi. What makes you feel that way? What is different about the present moment that gives you this sort of, I guess, optimism on the use of the technology and is there data so far from what you're doing at Bob and what other Bitcoin L2s are doing that you know would give you that bullish sentiment where it really is clear this is a moment that's different than the past?

Alexei Zamyatin: Well, I think, you know, there's several different indicators that, you know, Bitcoin DeFi is here to stay. First of all, you know, we've had wrapped Bitcoin assets for a long, long time. We've had billions of dollars wrapped into Ethereum. And now you suddenly, if you look at, you know, there's a website, the equivalent of L2Bit for Bitcoin called Bitcoin Layers. They track all the wrappers. There's 50 of them now. Every chain wants their own Bitcoin wrapper, or if they can get access to the big ones, everybody wants Bitcoin. Every single chain has a Bitcoin strategy. If they're not, then they're developing one or they're falling behind. Every DeFi protocol has a Bitcoin strategy. And the reason for this is twofold. One is that overall crypto is just getting more adoption. You know, it's become an industry now. It's not just, you know, a small niche. It has, you know, global recognition. It's mainstream at this point. Bitcoin received the ATF, then Ethereum and there's going to be more in the future. And you also saw the kind of flip from banks saying Bitcoin is really, really bad for the environment to now selling it to your parents and grandparents. And because I think people in our industry often forget that for the majority of the world, crypto is equal to Bitcoin, right? When the news report about crypto, it's always Bitcoin that, Bitcoin this, Bitcoin prices up, Bitcoin prices down, this ETF. Very rarely do they talk about Ethereum. Maybe Solana, that's it. Like after Solana, you really don't know what's going on if you're not in the industry. And so Bitcoin is the rails that we have in this industry to onboard new users, because you have, you know, Robinhood announced that they're offering stablecoin payments. Stablecoins naturally are also a very interesting use case, very important, but they're not digital assets natively, right? They're just wrappers around the dollar, whereas Bitcoin is arguably the only neutral global currency or digital asset that could at least survive in that kind of state. And so as more and more people get into crypto, Bitcoin is the first thing they get to know. And then the other angle is that there's been a major shift within the Bitcoin community. Previously, you know, it's been tried in the form of sidechains and people have tried to do something more with Bitcoin, but it never really took off for various reasons. A, because it was always very segregated from the rest of the crypto ecosystem. And B is that, well, it never had this clear path to becoming a real system that can scale securely, right? Ethereum has Layer 2s. They are secure, right? They use fraud proofs or ZK proofs. You know, we know why they're secure. We know why they work. Bitcoin never had that until recently with BitVM. We finally have the blueprint to have native Bitcoin, not wrapped, but native Bitcoin on Layer 2s. Like, just like ETH on Arbitrum is ETH, you don't call it ARP ETH or Base ETH or Optimism ETH because we consider it native, right? You can always get it out. Bitcoin never had this. It was always RABBTC, TELABTC, CBBTC, XBTC, XZBTC, whatever. And now, finally, we have a path to having native Bitcoin with the concept of Bitfam, which is basically giving us the same roll-up infrastructure that we're having on Ethereum. And these things combined just, you know, pave the way for Bitcoin entering DeFi en masse. And at the same time, UX is improving too.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, thank you for breaking all the different factors into your sort of thesis down. I appreciate those perspectives. What about the choice of Bob to sort of fuse with Ethereum? Why is that necessary?

Alexei Zamyatin: I think it's really important to understand that building only for ethos, like it has been done in Bitcoin before with Lightning, doesn't really work. You have to go where the users are. You can't always expect users to change their behavior completely. And realistically, who are your first power users in DeFi world? It's the DeFi users. But they're on Ethereum, they're in Solana. They're used to a certain environment. Telling them to, oh, I've built this completely new stack. that's UTXO-based, or maybe it has its own language. It doesn't really work. There has to be a reason for them to adopt that. And if you impose a hurdle from day one, you're just going to fight an uphill battle for the rest of the existence of your protocol. So are you also building a bridge to Solana? Maybe in the future, the architecture of Bob as a hybrid allows us to inherit security from more than one network, primarily Bitcoin. Because ideally, you know, everybody trusts Bitcoin, right? If Bitcoin fails, and we hope it never does, but if it does fail, our industry is going to go belly up no matter what. So it's a quite pragmatic approach to A, people trust Bitcoin, and B, it's actually very easy to verify, so it can be easily used as a mechanism to secure bridges. So we use Bitcoin security on Bob, and that makes it very easy for us to connect natively again to Ethereum, because Ethereum can check Bitcoin security and easily verify that, yeah, Bob is fine. And the same mechanism works on any smart contract chain. So we could connect to Solana, to Barret chain, and other networks in the future based on demand.

Josh Kriger: And how are you guys thinking about sort of other converging technologies right now? AI, real world assets, robotics, some of the more sophisticated use cases of Deepin. Are you talking to projects like that? You're doing some events here. Are you engaging with the broader ecosystem? How does that fit into your perspective on things?

Alexei Zamyatin: I mean, that's a very good question. I think right now a lot of like, RWA is obviously a very interesting topic. There's a lot of demand to get access to RWAs, but using Bitcoin as collateral. So stay long BTC, don't sell it, borrow stables against it, invest into RWAs. So that is certainly something we've seen.

Josh Kriger: I mean, we've always, it's kind of a, sorry to interrupt. It's just like a, it's a fast track on this idea that happened last cycle where everyone, you know, wanted to diversify into real estate after uh during the the bear market right but theoretically if it can all be integrated um you can have a multi-asset portfolio without ever having to leave the mothership exactly yeah um with the in deep and it's it's a bit different right you can launch the iBots in any chain deep in you know

Alexei Zamyatin: The aspect of Bitcoin is not necessarily only, oh, it's like, you build O2s that specialize in Deepin and they can use Bitcoin. It's more the asset itself. And we do firmly believe that if you zoom out, and yes, stable coins are great today, but they're not neutral, whereas Bitcoin is. And in the long term, I do firmly believe that AI agents will use Bitcoin as one of the rails to settle because that is credibly neutral, decentralized, always accessible, always on, 24-7. If you use a stable coin access, because, well, for whatever reason, you can always use Bitcoin. And I think that's that aspect just is always going to be there and it's always going to prevail in the long run.

Josh Kriger: That makes a lot of sense. So what have folks built on Bob so far? Like, where are you in terms of your launch milestones and, you know, what are the types of projects that you want to see come to your protocol?

Alexei Zamyatin: So we position Bob as the gateway for Bitcoin DeFi. So we work with tier one DeFi players. So Uniswap, Euler, Aave is also in the process of launching on Bob. And we work with them to develop the Bitcoin strategy. So Bitcoin specialized markets with Bitcoin, Bitcoin LST, so liquid staking assets, which is one of the most exciting things that has happened on Bitcoin recently. And then we help them get new distribution. So you have a lot of wallets, aggregators, fintechs, right? New players that enter the market have a Bitcoin user base because they've allowed their users to buy Bitcoin and now they're looking for ways to keep them on the platform. And we offer them solutions where they can just plug in Bob and get access to reliable ways to borrow against Bitcoin on tier one ecosystem players like Aave or EarnYield and in strategic vaults and so on. So really like tailored products for retail and institutions that just stand out in DeFi because, you know, they use Bitcoin, they're reliable, they're trusted, easily accessible, and you only need to plug in Bob to get access to all of them. You don't have to think about, oh, how do I get my Bitcoin to Solana? No, you just use Bob. It's the same principle as, you know, with exchanges. An exchange would rather list your ERC-20 token on Ethereum than integrate a new chain. Same concept here.

Josh Kriger: But are folks giving up their keys if they're working with Bob?

Alexei Zamyatin: It really depends on the model. You can self-custody, right? Of course, you have to be aware of the different risks of the wrapped asset providers, right? There are centralized wrappers. There's things like TBTC that go more to the decentralization, like bigger multisigs. And ultimately, with the work we're doing on BitVM, you're going to have full self-custody along the way. And that's coming out. It's already on testnet. And we're releasing new things along the way throughout the year. So ultimately, the path leads to full self-custody if you want it. But institutions still prefer institutional custody, right? Sometimes they can't even self-custody. And Bob is positioned to work with both retail, but also with major institutional players. We work with major custodians, for example, like Fireblocks and other providers that I can't yet announce that just make it easier for institutions. And when I say institutions, it's also institutions that have a lot of retail users, but they have to decide on the user's behalf. So they have to, of course, take precautions. And I think it's quite important to understand that we're not going to go from, oh, people have Bitcoin in their Revolute, they're going to immediately self-custody in one day. It's a gradual process. And if we can get, you know, Revolute to allow users to stake their Bitcoin, that's really a major win.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, appreciate your perspective there. And like, when do you think, you know, you guys get to full self-custody approximately? What's your hope there?

Alexei Zamyatin: I mean, we're aiming to have it live by end of year. We are making some interesting announcements tomorrow, depending when this airs. I may or may not be able to say it.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, you can go ahead. This will not air tomorrow. It will probably air in a few weeks, maybe longer.

Alexei Zamyatin: Okay, so at ECC, at the BitVM AC event that we're hosting, we're announcing a new BitVM testnet with institutional partners. BitVM is a really cool technology, but our concern was if it's just developed by researchers, you know, sitting in ivory towers, maybe not. as exaggerated as that, but it won't get adopted. So we've worked with institutional players, node operators, LPs, market makers, to design and improve the BitVM design so that they could run it. And we founded the BitVM Act Working Group with 20-plus institutional partners and research partners to make sure that this actually gets adopted. And we're releasing the first joint test and release at HCC CAN, which marks a major milestone in actually getting this from research and prototypes to, okay, now you have institutional operators, the big staking providers, actually running this as a test and preparation for this going to mainnet. So this is going to go to mainnet, not with just Bob is running a node, but with some of the biggest institutional players in the space being online from day one.

Josh Kriger: Cool, and are you able to say who some of those players are?

Alexei Zamyatin: Well, what I can say is the members of the Bitvm Act working group that have committed to contribute and work with us and other research partners on getting Bitvm to adoption include Wintermute, they include Anchorage, Amber, ChorusOne, P2P, And they include also some of the big LST providers like Solve, Lombar, Bedrock. It's a good mix of infrastructure providers, staking providers, market makers, custodians, and also some of the really active DeFi players as well.

Josh Kriger: Cool. And there's a lot of different folks doing various types of Bitcoin L2s or BitVM types of projects. What's your overall perspective on the ecosystem? Is this friendly competition? Are you sort of foreseeing an opportunity to work across all these different platforms to increase liquidity? Or do you think as the dust settles, there'll be a small set of winners that are sort of in this sort of VM category?

Alexei Zamyatin: Well, I mean, the dust has started settling. When we first announced Bob, we were one of the first to go out and say, look, Bitcoin L2 is like Bob, you know, it's time for them to emerge again. We are at a stage where the technology is there and we know how to build them. And then six months later, we had 80 competitors that had claimed or announced that they're doing something with Bitcoin, right? A lot of chains kind of start pivoting to Bitcoin. A lot of them then kind of switched to AI. Quantum, you have a lot of ecosystems looking for There are a few players left that are building and trying to compete, but I still think that when the dust settles, it's just going to be a few players left. I generally think that we need fewer chains, more applications, and our mission is not just to build a chain and say, oh, come build on Bob. We work very close with the biggest DeFi players in the space, with the biggest institutions in the space. to allow them to use their Bitcoin and DeFi and build things in a way that, you know, that they want, that the users want. So not just, oh, we're going to build something and then let's see if it gets adoption. We work with these players from day one. And I do think that that pragmatic and very business and product oriented approach is the way to go. And there's other players in the Bitcoin space that also are doing similar things. So there's going to be interesting competition. But it's not just among Bitcoin L2s. Realistically speaking, the biggest competitors are still the Eth L2s, the Solanas of this world, right? We're still in the same arena. Everybody wins Bitcoin yield, except that players like Bob are just better positioned, not just because of the branding and the marketing and integrations. But we have native Bitcoin coming and in the long run if you see you've seen that on aetherium The the players at one were the ones that also pushed both product and technological advancement at the same time and managed to be the first Roll-up with real fraud proof stage one and essentially best execution environment

Josh Kriger: All right. Well, appreciate your perspective on everything. And great, great to finally have you on the show and learn more about what's going on with Bob. Where can people go to follow you on X and dive deeper down the Bob rabbit hole or the Bob hole?

Alexei Zamyatin: So you can follow me on Twitter. It's Alexei Zamyatin. You can also follow Bob. It's build underscore on underscore Bob. We're super active on Twitter and you can always check out our website on gobob.xyz.

Josh Kriger: Great to have you on the show.

Alexei Zamyatin: Thanks for having me.

Josh Kriger: Hi, everyone. Josh Krieger here, co-host of The Edge of Show, live in Cannes at ECC 8. I'm here with Kenneth, who's the lead for the Mocha Network, which keeps expanding every day. A lot of exciting news recently. It's great to have you back on the show. Thanks for having me. So, give us just the high-level 411 on what Mocha Network is for those that haven't listened to any of our past content, and what are some of the big milestones that you guys recently hit?

Kenneth Shek : Yeah, so Mocha Network is basically Animoca, and we are the ecosystem layer that actually tap into the entire ecosystem, portfolio companies, enterprises, and user base, and so on. We have basically, it has always been the vision to build an interoperability layer and what that actually means. So starting from when we actually started the project, we always had the vision of having a fully decentralized identity, self-sovereign identity, allow the user to actually bring their data everywhere and be verifiable. Because we believe interoperability doesn't start from another blockchain to create more fragmentation in the space, but it's more like creating a blockchain ecosystem where it can be chain-anonymous and working symbiotically with a lot of the other chains by being the identity layer.

Josh Kriger: Does that mean across all types of consumer use cases for identity? Like, I go to the doctor, I go to a local retailer. Is that the expansion of the vision?

Kenneth Shek : Yeah, the use cases of identity. Let's not differentiate between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. Right. Just identity. Just identity is basically being used on a day-to-day basis, both in traditional industries or tech and so on. If you go to Marriott Bonvoy website, you see the loyalty program is not being called loyalty.marriott.com, it's called identity.marriott.com. Meta, Google, Ads, and all these are identity businesses. They're basically monetizing identities. So it can be a lot of different use cases, financial use cases, healthcare, education, recruitment, gaming, and so on. And the fun thing is, and what is going to be very impactful, is what we're building here is a home for all these identities across these verticals. Users finally can have one unified identity, having all these data re-owned by the data encrypted with the user key and allow the user to bring those data everywhere without any centralized entity getting involved in between the process. So it's highly scalable, highly efficient, highly interoperable. That is really creating an autonomous and interoperable internet, a verifiable internet.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking back to the Netflix documentary about Cambridge Analytica and Brittany Kaiser, who was recently on the show. And this idea of owning your own data and the power of that and the potential of that for you to be part of the consumer economy is really unlimited, I guess, at the end of the day, right?

Kenneth Shek : Yeah, for sure. Cambridge Analytica case is exactly what we want to avoid, right? Because basically, there's a centralized entity aggregating all this data. They use privacy for a reason, to not share data with their partners, so that the centralized entity, which have access to all the data, becoming the only party that can help them reach the user. So they basically monopolize the data economy. And what we're doing here is allow the user to own their data. And by using their, basically everything is their ownership. So no one other than themselves can actually allow any verification by any party.

Josh Kriger: So where does Mocha Chain, which was recently announced, fit into all of this?

Kenneth Shek : Yeah, so we announced Mocha Chain about four days, five days ago. And it's an L1 EVM compatible chain. and having decentralized data storage to basically allow the user to encrypt and store their own data on the chain, and allow the user to generate a zero-knowledge proof and present that zero-knowledge proof to any parties to verify the data without getting access to the raw data in the storage. There is a cross-chain relayer that actually allow, we call that Identity Oracle, that allow basically any kinds of chains, any kinds of apps on any chains to verify the user data. And with CKTLS, that actually allowed the user to onboard any kinds of web data you see on the screen and verify the proof. So it can be the likes of bank account balance, your trading file on Coinbase.

Josh Kriger: So pretty vast scope. I think in our industry we have this tendency to create solutions without problems. I know you guys are trying to be focused on solving real problems. What are the pain points that MochaChain solves that just aren't accessible with the 80 other L1s that are out there that got you the conviction to do this?

Kenneth Shek : Yeah, so it's really, we have seen a lot of things and we want to be a lot of things, but like the products and the infrastructure that we see today doesn't really fit what we want to do. And we've talked to a lot of enterprises, brands, weather-related projects and apps. We have seen a common pain point, which is basically allowing data to be cross-verifiable without exposing raw data. I was in the data broker business. I founded an AI machine learning company. I worked with a lot of data brokers on building what we call the clean room to allow two parties to share data. One party wants to get more data by sharing the data with party B, but both sides are paranoid about sharing the full database with each other. We created something called a clean room. The clean room is basically somewhere that they can match data without exposing raw data. It's highly inefficient and complicated. Also, the users do not have the full awareness that this is happening, but it's their data, you know what I mean? So what we're doing is making this process highly scalable and self-sovereign. So a user has full control, they monetize based on their own data, on their own terms, and everything is interoperable once you have that in your ownership.

Josh Kriger: Cool. What are some of the most immediate use cases that are coming up? I know you just had a demo day here in Cannes, one reason that you're here. What are you looking for the community to galvanize support behind?

Kenneth Shek : Yeah, so we see a lot of value in financial data, such as bank account balance, or your taxable income, accredited investor, and so on. And there's a lot of other companies, such as exchanges, that want to verify that data from a user onboarding perspective. They want to have verified user onboarding. There are other use cases such as like genetics company putting DNA data on chain that's verifiable by insurance companies, health supplement companies. There are like zero-knowledge proof KYC for like in the current days having more securities being tokenized on chain. How do you balance decentralization, interoperability, reusability of data and KYC and also fitting compliance requirements. There are many, many more, such as recruitment. There's a lot of fake profiles, fake data, how to actually verify that by recruitment platforms, recruitment firms, saving a lot of money for background checks, for instance. So there are tons of use cases and truly revenue generating and fee generating.

Josh Kriger: That's really exciting. So how does this sort of shape the broader Mocha network? When you started, there was a lot of gaming partnerships. Is gaming, that industry, still critical to the long-term vision? And what are other industries that get you excited?

Kenneth Shek : Gaming is definitely going to be a very important pillar. The reason being a lot of the projects or a lot of the verifiers who are actually paying to verify these user data, they all want the gaming users. So if you talk to any kinds of exchanges, the reason why a lot of exchanges are listing gaming projects early on is because there are a lot of users there that they can onboard and they would become trader, they generate volume and then generate fees and revenue for the exchanges. So if there is someone who is willing to pay for the data, there is a source of user bases. Gaming still plays a massive role. Even amount games themselves, they can cross verify their data. Especially gamers who actually has a certain level of in-app purchase, because that actually indicates some level of paying tendency.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, I guess you still have the same thing of how much information about yourself do you have to reveal to be able to take advantage of the gaming economy, which is really, it's growing like leaps and bounds. I mean, people are making a living off of various forms of of being a gaming influencer or gaming marketing, right? There's unlimited new roles in the gaming where identity would take place. That makes a lot of sense. Anything else on the roadmap that we haven't covered yet that you want to mention you're excited about?

Kenneth Shek : The announcement of the chain, a lot of people actually see it. It's a big deal. It just happened. The announcement of sharing, a lot of people actually assume that that's a catalyst or that's the end of an era, but it's really just a start. To build a chain requires a lot of effort, to work together with the team on the ground, working with them. A lot of teams actually need help on finding product market that are understaffed to run a business. So we're here to help them. We truly want these businesses and projects to build on Mocha Chain to be successful. So that is like real work. And I wouldn't say it's like a burst level kind of catalyst. Of course, there would be some. But more importantly, it's like building true sustainable value with these ecosystem projects.

Josh Kriger: That's exciting. And one random question, because I've been to the office, I see your team, how dedicated, how hardworking everyone is. How do you make your life sustainable? What's your longevity regimen to deal with all this travel? all this progress so quickly. I'm just curious what you've learned about sort of staying healthy mentally, physically, you know, acutely focused on the ball during all this building.

Kenneth Shek : Yeah. To be honest, like what keeps me alive is probably, uh, because of our mission, like we're passionate about what we do. We understand and align with the why, um, in terms of physical health, I've started paying more attention to it. And, uh, I've tried to pick up, you look fit. Well, I I've, I've started basically going back to the gym and like taking more supplements and all that, but I definitely need more help on that. Um, yeah.

Josh Kriger: We'll talk. I've been doing some fun stuff, too, in that area. I think it's really important for entrepreneurs in our industry to take care of themselves. Because without health and wellness, you can't focus on anything else, right? Yeah. Great to see you again. Looking healthy. And congrats on all the big progress. And we'll have to check in soon. All right. Thank you. Hi, everyone. This is Josh Krueger, your co-host for The Edge of Show. And we're live at ECC 8 in Cannes, France. It is really exciting to be here. This is my first time in Cannes and my first time at ECC. It's just a great event. And I'm so pleased to be here with Tom Vieira, who's the head of product at BASE. And that is produced by Coinbase, of course. Tom, great to have you on the show.

Tom Vieira: Hey, Josh. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to have our conversation today.

Josh Kriger: So I guess you're based in Miami, so you weren't coming here for the beach and the sun.

Tom Vieira: But it's a smooth transition. Let's put it that way. Yes.

Josh Kriger: Yeah. Yeah. What brings you to this particular event? What's going on here that's sort of relevant to the bass community?

Tom Vieira: Totally. Well, I think Europe has always been a hub of crypto and on-chain innovation and especially Ethereum. And so I think it's great for myself and some of the rest of the base core team from, you know, from the product to the DevRel group to come and connect with builders on the ground and really to share more of what we're doing at base and also hear more of the needs here and that are unique to Europe and the European Union as we, you know, bring the world on chain.

Josh Kriger: That's cool. And I think it's interesting because when you guys first came out, everyone was like, why do we need another L2? What's going on in the EVM community? Is things getting a little bit too, I guess, crowded? And you guys have really sort of set out on your own niche and really tried to bring a lot of new activity on chain. So we'd love to sort of get just the 411 from you on what's new at base and what's kind of exciting you these days.

Tom Vieira: Yeah, so taking it all the way back to really what BASE is trying to accomplish, we feel that on-chain is solving problems that are very, very important for the world in the current environment. And we think that really, there's a huge opportunity if we can build this global economy. And really, it's a new global economy. It's a new way to build. And it's a new kind of social network, even with the work we're doing with Coinbase Wallet. And we think that this will bring more and more people into the ecosystem. And that's a big part of what we want to do. We want to create this global economy that increases innovation, creativity, and freedom. And a big part of that is growing the pie of people and assets that are available on chain and the builders that are building. And that's really what I think sets base unique and apart from some other chains approach. And definitely building on Ethereum was the best EVM, the best decentralized L1 that it was just an obvious choice for us to build on Ethereum.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, absolutely. And recently Vitalik actually released his criteria for what type of sort of, I guess, features product development components different EVM compatible chains need to have to sort of go up his criteria in terms of being worthy of getting more of his attention and collaborative potential. And you guys sort of just moved up a notch, right, from level zero to level one. Congrats on that.

Tom Vieira: Yeah, thanks. It's, you know, an important value at base, even though we're built by, you know, incubated inside Coinbase, a public company, decentralization and permissionlessness is one of the core values that we hold dear to our heart. And so in Q4 of 2024, we got live with permissionless fault proofs. And earlier this year, in 2025, we got live with our Security Council, which is achieving stage one decentralization. But, you know, a couple of thoughts. It doesn't stop there. So we're actively pursuing stage 2 decentralization and exploring other proving systems, and that's both not just Go-based, but Rust-based optimistic proving systems, zero-knowledge proving systems that can really make the blockchain more real-time and more performant for everyday people. And the important thing is is also keeping things really secure. You know, we have a great internal security team. We work with external auditing firms and security folks to make sure that base is both decentralized and secure. So it's the safest place for users to use and builders to build.

Josh Kriger: Have you or any members of your team had a chance to chat with Vitalik about what you're up to and your aspirations?

Tom Vieira: Yeah, certainly. We've got a good relationship with Vitalik. Myself, I know Jesse is in Vitalik's DMs and has a good conversation going with, you know, both Vitalik and with the rest of the Ethereum Foundation. And it's very important that we stay in close contact as we scale the L2, we help scale the L1 and we help improve usability. I think we all win together. And I mean, Base, Ethereum, other blockchains, we win together. And I think there's a really positive some way that we approach building at Base that I'm proud to be a part of.

Josh Kriger: Right on. And I guess as you're thinking about new products and services, mini apps have become a popular trend and have a lot of real world utility. What sort of got you guys thinking about mini apps? What are the types of mini apps that you're trying to build? Why are they important?

Tom Vieira: Yeah. You know, when we hear from builders, there's some of the same needs will recur over and over again. Like what do builders want? They want eyeballs, they want users, they want distribution, you know, and they want dollars, they want funding, they want monetization. And so really we're helping builders go from idea to app. And then just as importantly, go from app to business. And so a big thing that you'll hit is you're trying to build, grow and earn. And I can say this myself as a multiple time founder in the past, including founding a on-chain startup is like, you know, the cold start problem. Where do the users come from? You know, if you build it, they won't just come. You have to kind of go out there. And I think that type of gorilla boots on the ground growth is great. And what we're excited about many apps is this is a baked in distribution form factor that we've seen great adoption on Telegram, on Farcaster and very soon in just a couple of weeks time in Coinbase wallet. And so the idea is if you're a early app that's just getting going or even have an idea. Many apps are a great way to get that early distribution or get early validation for your idea. Learn and find those initial sparks of traction. And I would say if you're an established app, many apps can be a great way to kind of drive that top of funnel or drive retention in it. Basically, for those that don't know to to say what a mini app is, it's an app inside an app. So you can just go inside Coinbase Wallet, see many apps that are, you know, driving activity and just tap it and it knows who you are. So you don't have to sign in. It knows your social graph. So it knows how you're connected in the on-chain ecosystem. And, you know, you can use your stable coins or your coin balances. You can connect with people. You can buy things. There's great viral loops for builders building. And it's a really powerful new way, again, to get users and start growing your app.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, it's more seamless than, for example, going to the Android or Apple store. And I guess it's different than even using like a Chrome extension, right? Because it has everything fully built in. And also you're doing some organic promotion of, I guess, trending many apps and things that folks are doing that they might want to take a peek at. So it sort of helps you guys deal with sort of managing new products that are coming to the ecosystem and supporting them.

Tom Vieira: Yeah, majorly. And some of the categories that are seeing great traction is, you know, commerce type things, social type things, definitely gaming type things. You know, these hyper casual apps where you can come in, play, earn, engage, share what you're doing. And really, it's a win, win, win. The users enjoy it. The builders get this distribution and it keeps people coming back to the Coinbase wallet product service.

Josh Kriger: I know you guys can't choose your favorites, but are there any specific examples in those categories you can mention?

Tom Vieira: Yeah, totally. You know, this morning I gave a talk on the future of commerce and really how more and more is happening on chain and how these are happening through many apps. A few to highlight that are great, you know, Crowdfund, which is built by SeedClub. This is a great way. Think like Kickstarter or GoFundMe on chain. That's a good one. You can, you know, open up to donations or small funding rounds to anybody around the world. And I think there's over 50 million dollars worth of USDC in the forecaster social graph, which is what Coinbase wallets built on. Another great one is Slice. This is on chain commerce. So you can set up a storefront. And maybe one more to highlight would be Noice. This isn't a commerce app per se, but it's basically you can set micro transaction values in USDC to be able to, you know, if somebody likes your content or engages with your content, you can pay out small bounties. And so this type of mini app like experimentation and innovation, I think, is the next wave of how we're going to see consumer crypto adoption and really grow from, you know, a few million people on chain to get that first real breakout killer app on chain that has 100 million plus people every month using on chain. So those would be a few that I'd highlight in the commerce niche, especially. And there's some other great ones, too. Right on.

Josh Kriger: break. I'm my, I have a scratchy throat and I'm going to keep coughing. I don't know what happened. Swallowed some dust. Well, you've been doing a good cover, you know, that stuff. Yeah, but I don't want Lucy to be editing out a bunch of coughs. It's like weird. I appreciate you sharing all those interesting examples. I'm definitely going to check out the crowdfunding one you mentioned. I think that's the micro-economy that builds the macro-economy of our space. I'd love to hear that type of use case. Speaking of trends, on the developer side, what are some of the promising trends that you're seeing in terms of the types of developers coming to the base ecosystem, their backgrounds, the types of things that they're excited to build, how they're elevating the base ecosystem?

Tom Vieira: Yeah, so a huge part of it is builders that are excited about new ways to move money around that's 24-7, global, worldwide. And I think base being super fast, so less than a second for block times very soon, less than a cent for median transaction fees, and 24-7 global. That attracts builders that are interested in some of those economics. But one thing we haven't mentioned yet, Josh, is AI. Right. So, you know, A.I., agentic commerce, these new ways of generative A.I. that are impacting how we build, how we interact with the world, how we search for information. There's huge adoption that we're seeing with people using on chain payment rails for A.I. use cases. So it's not necessarily just, you know, kind of crypto native use cases. It's really anything that an agent wants to do or anything that an LLM chatbot wants to do can be more effectively facilitated by on-chain, these building blocks like smart contracts and like the EVM, which is so expressive. And so on base specifically, we're seeing a huge wave of developers coming in. You know, I was out at ETH SF, which was, it felt more like AI SF, where there was like 300 people packed in the build-a-thon kickoff, all AI developers, and wanting to learn about how crypto can help their AI focused product.

Josh Kriger: Well, that's really interesting. Yeah, we had Jonathan King, your head of ventures on the show, sharing his theory about sort of AI being the middle layer, so to speak, of blockchain. And I guess I'm curious, like, had a lot of conversations recently with folks sort of going after AGI, you know, from an AI perspective and sort of releasing really interesting agent economies where there's a lot of ranking and competition. Do you see BASE interacting with all these different decentralized AI players? And are you guys taking like a step towards that direction of sort of building your own marketplaces and whatnot for AI agents or letting the community do that for you?

Tom Vieira: Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both. And maybe to highlight three ways that we're seeing adoption and working with the AI focused builder ecosystem. One would just be around, you know, agentic commerce and agentic connections to the blockchain. And so earlier this year, we prototyped BaseMCP, which is, you know, anthropic spec. And that's also supported by ChatGPT now that There's tools and resources that you can talk to. So essentially, you know, part of what makes crypto and on chain so good is how plug and play everything is. So now you can write from your chat interface or you can have your agent, you know, making a swap or sending a stable coin payment or doing a borrow and lend trade. That's a very compelling one. A second one would just be around the rise of vibe coding and the new way that builders are building. And so You know, for the past 10 or 15 years, my Uber driver has been excited that, oh, you build apps or you do this, and then they have an idea and then they want to learn how to build it.

Josh Kriger: Now, I've heard that vibe coding isn't quite up to snuff, where if you don't have a coding background, you can't get a lot out of it. I've been meaning to try it one of these weekends. What's your experience so far?

Tom Vieira: Yeah, so I think there's a range of vibe coding, like generative AI tools. Some are, yes, I'd agree that, you know, Cursor, Cloud Code, Windsurf, you probably need a developer background still, but there's some partnerships that we've been striking and making sure our builder tools work really well with these more low code, no code ones. So just to shout out a few, you know, Bolt, Lovable, VZero, Repl.it. These are kind of, you know, good for deep developers, but also just to come in and prompt. If you have an idea, you can go from zero to workable prototype quite quickly. And a big part of what we're trying to do is make sure that our developer stack, like the Smart Wallet, like OnchainKit, like Minikit for building mini apps, works really seamlessly with these.

Josh Kriger: Have you done any vibe coding personally?

Tom Vieira: Oh yeah, a million percent. So last week at Bass, we had an internal build week where the 200 or so core team members working on Bass did different projects and there was a lot of vibe coding. I'll be honest, I didn't get mine finished, but it was an on-chain tangram, like the seven shapes. So you can, it's a mini app where you hit it and then it goes into all these directions and then you have to build, you know, a lion of this. And then there's like a prompt per day. So my mini app will be coming soon on Chain Tangram. So I was vibe coding that and kind of going through the loop of like prompt, try, fix, prompt, try, fix. And it's getting good. Sonnet 4, the new Claude one, it's getting quite, quite good.

Josh Kriger: Cool yeah I used one app recently this weekend to create a mini game. I was in Georgia and I had to create a game sort of celebrating the Georgia culture and heritage and like literally within three minutes I had like this really cool scene where like you're jumping around finding the cheese, finding the traditional homemade wine, eating the bread and yeah it was pretty fun you know.

Tom Vieira: I'd say it's getting there. I'd say it's getting there. And I think, again, making sure that if your mini app or mini game has to move money around, has to move value around, on-chain smart contracts, on-base is a great way to do it. And so just to round out the AI stuff, we're seeing the vibe coding for sure. We're seeing the agentic use cases. Another one I'd say is just to call out deepfakes. I think we're going to see more and more of agent of like AI generated things and it's not clear. Well, the thing that we love about more on-chain adoption and bringing more people on chain is that everybody has a key in their pocket now. And so if a message comes from Josh, I can be sure that it's you because it was signed by, you know, your ENS, Josh dot whatever, your base name, Josh dot base dot ETH. And I think this is another important thing that we're seeing as AI disrupts more and more of our life. That is a use case for crypto that, again, it's not crypto native, but it's a really important thing around public and private key pairs.

Josh Kriger: Right on. You've definitely given us a lot of insights on what's to come for BASE. We mentioned some of the things you're doing around getting to level two. Any other sort of things on the roadmap that we haven't covered yet that you want to mention?

Tom Vieira: Yeah, so I think we think of BASE as three things, right? So it's a global economy connecting people all around the world. It's a new way to build. And we've touched on this now, you know, stable coins, block space, vibe coding. It's a third thing. It's a new kind of social network. And so really, thinking about creators as the creator economy as a huge new market that I don't think crypto has really solved for yet. And I don't think many people now would be able to argue that creators have it all figured out in sustainable ways for them to build.

Josh Kriger: Well, I mean, in fact, unfortunately, a lot of creators that have come on my show have have said the future of the creator economy might look a little bit more like the art market where There's some big winners and a lot of folks sort of independent that maybe won't get the audience they were hoping to get from crypto. So I think there's a healthy skepticism now.

Tom Vieira: And I think that's fair, you know, especially after the 2021-2022 cycle. I think a lot of things happened well, and I think a lot of things didn't happen so well with the, you know, kind of the promise of on-chain to help creators ship creative work more sustainably. So the third thing that BASE really is becoming is a new kind of social network. And, you know, with the work that we've been doing on Coinbase Wallet, we can say that 7-16, so the 16th of July, we have our new day one event where we have some exciting things coming. We have already shared that Coinbase Wallet will be getting a new name, TBA, and really excited there. So to follow along with that, you can go to newdayone.xyz, all spelled out. And I really think that it's another big component of bringing the world on chain. It's not just builders. It's not just people. It's people that are creating. day in, day out. And we're really excited about how crypto and on-chain can solve some of those problems in a unique way. Hopefully learning from some of the opportunities and things in the past to really try and make it open for everyone to participate and experience the upsides.

Josh Kriger: Very interesting. Thanks for the alpha. We like to talk about things that are at the edge, on the edge of show. So that's a perfect thing to include here. Looking ahead, 2026, you guys hit these milestones. What's the big headline around sort of commerce and how blockchain is sort of playing a role globally?

Tom Vieira: Well, yeah, you know, we have these North Stars that we go after, right? Like we think about a million builders, a billion people and a trillion dollars of assets on chain, you know, all secured by a secure, decentralized blockchain doing sub-second transactions. I think, you know, just speaking of commerce, it's projected to be over four trillion dollars annually in the next couple of years. I think we're going to see more and more and more of that happening on chain. happening on base and sure other smart contract platforms too. And so I think the things that we really care about is not so much the product names or the features or the new types of assets, but it's all about the people and the impact that we're having. And so we want to get to that billion people on chain experiencing more freedom in their economic lives and in their everyday lives. And we think we're on the right trajectory to do so.

Josh Kriger: So on-chain commerce, a $4 billion industry, you said, or trillion. Yeah, if I said billion, I meant trillion. You said trillion. I said billion. We're probably still both jet-lagged a little bit. But what percentage of that do you think is accessible to the crypto world a year from now?

Tom Vieira: Well, I'm an optimist. I think I'm a realistic optimist. I think near to 100% is ultimately like from a TAM penetration, market size penetration, it's just better. You know, and whether users know they're using a stable coin to pay with something, it's all going to be behind the scenes. When you think about cross-border remittances and everything and just moving money around, settling more effectively. So I don't think 100% next year, but I think very reasonably between 10 to 25 to even 50 percent, I think we should aim our sights high and help, you know, our partnership with Shopify recently exemplifies this. The idea that it's not just smaller builders or emerging builders, it's the enterprise is adopting stable coins and smart contracts to drive the wheels of commerce. And so I wouldn't be surprised if near to half of all commerce is happening on chain over the next year.

Josh Kriger: Yeah. Speaking of enterprises and unique adoption use cases, I'm waiting for the Taylor Swift stable coin. I know it's coming at some point.

Tom Vieira: Well, as a, as a Swifty myself, you know, I think I could be very excited about that. And if you have any connections, I'm sure the base ecosystem core team would love to talk with Taylor about opportunities there.

Josh Kriger: I wish, I wish. Um, but, but we'll have to figure that one out.

Tom Vieira: Let's collab on it. We'll see if we can make it happen.

Josh Kriger: Tom, give us your axe handle so folks can follow you. And of course, the website where they can learn more about bass. I'm sure just Google bass. But yeah, let's let's get those details out.

Tom Vieira: Yeah, you got it. So I'm tom.base.eth on both X and on Coinbase Wallet pretty soon. You can find me there. And if you are just wanting to learn about what's happening at base, go to base.org. We've got all sorts of info. And if you're a builder, I'd say go to base.dev. You can learn about how to get involved, how to start using these commerce tools and really build your first mini app. So those will be the two places that you can find base. And I'd love to connect and see what you're building. Hit me up and we can chat. Awesome. Thanks for your insights today. This was great. Thanks for having me, Josh. All right.

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