DeFi, DAOs & the Next Wave of Web3 Innovation | Live at EthCC Cannes

Web3 Interoperability takes center stage in this Edge of Show episode recorded live in Cannes at Hack Season and ECC 8. Host Josh Kriger dives into Web3 Interoperability with three powerhouse builders: Jordan Jefferson (CEO, DogeOS & MyDoge) on unlocking Dogecoin’s app layer and community-first DeFi; Rebecca Liao (Co-Founder & CEO, Saga) on gasless, horizontally scalable chainlets, Web3 Interoperability for AI agents, and a stablecoin strategy built for volume; and Marc Boiron (CEO, Polygon Labs) on the AggLayer vision to unify chains, liquidity, and payments. If you care about Web3 Interoperability that actually ships—moving DOGE beyond vibes, scaling L1s via chainlets, and stitching ecosystems together with secure cross-chain rails—this conversation is your field guide. Expect candid takes on institutions, RWAs, developer distribution, liquidity hubs, and why “nothing is too weird” when you’re building for the Doge community. Web3 Interoperability isn’t a buzzword here—it’s the playbook.

Key Topics Covered

• Web3 Interoperability on Dogecoin (DogeOS + MyDoge): Jordan Jefferson breaks down how an “app layer for DOGE” targets Web3 Interoperability by moving DOGE from centralized exchanges to community-owned DEX activity, growing on-chain liquidity, and welcoming devs with distribution plus creative, “super-Doge” UX. X (formerly Twitter)+1
• Web3 Interoperability at Scale (Saga’s chainlets & gasless UX): Rebecca Liao explains Saga as an L1 to launch L1s—elastic “chainlets” with built-in interop, gasless flows, and a partner stack (DEX, stablecoin flows, and AI agent launchpad KEX) designed to drive volume and yield while simplifying user journeys across chains. saga.xyz+2Business Wire+2
• Web3 Interoperability via Polygon’s AggLayer: Marc Boiron details AggLayer—a security-first approach to unify state/liquidity across many chains, then make it fast and cheap; plus Katana, a deep-liquidity hub all AggLayer chains can tap for sub-second cross-chain UX. Web3 Interoperability shifts from bridges to ZK-verified movement. agglayer.dev+2Polygon+2
• RWAs, payments, and agents: From DOGE treasuries to consumer RWAs like tokenized trading cards and enterprise payments flows, the guests tie Web3 Interoperability to real revenue, better UX, and AI-native experiences that extend brands and games across ecosystems. courtyard.io

Episode Highlights

• “There’s nothing too wild for Doge—if it’s weird and useful, let’s build it.” — Jordan Jefferson
• “Web3 Interoperability means your app gets its own chain—then scales to more chains without users feeling the seams.” — Rebecca Liao saga.xyz
• “AggLayer is about secure, fast movement of assets so hundreds of chains feel like one experience.” — Marc Boiron CoinDesk
• “Move DOGE off CEXs, let users earn fees on DEXs, and you catalyze the economy.” — Jordan Jefferson
• “Gasless, volume-first design plus agent-native IP unlocks new Web3 consumer loops.” — Rebecca Liao Business Wire

People and Resources Mentioned

• DogeOS – App layer for Dogecoin (X) X (formerly Twitter)
• MyDoge Wallet – Official site mydoge.com
• Polychain Capital – Led DogeOS $6.9M round (news) CoinDesk
• Saga – L1 to launch L1s (chainlets) saga.xyz
• KEX (AI Agent Launchpad) – Saga x Chrono Labs launch Business Wire
• Polygon AggLayer – Interop/unification layer agglayer.dev
• Katana (AggLayer liquidity hub) – Polygon x GSR Polygon
• Courtyard.io – Tokenized trading cards marketplace courtyard.io
• Polymarket – Prediction markets on Polygon (site widely known; see Polygon PoS note) Polygon

About our Guests

Jordan Jefferson — CEO, DogeOS & Founder, MyDoge
Jordan Jefferson leads DogeOS, the application layer and developer platform for Dogecoin, and founded MyDoge, a self-custodial DOGE wallet with hundreds of thousands of users. Backed by Polychain and notable angels, his team is pushing DOGE beyond memes into an open, developer-led economy spanning DeFi, gaming, and more. mydoge.com+1

Rebecca Liao — Co-Founder & CEO, Saga
Rebecca Liao co-founded Saga, an L1 designed to launch chainlets (dedicated L1s) for every app—gasless, horizontally scalable, and interoperable—powering Web3 Interoperability for games, DeFi, and AI agents. A former policy advisor (Clinton & Biden campaigns) and Skuchain co-founder, she’s focused on volume-first UX, stablecoin rails, and IP-grade agent experiences. saga.xyz+1

Marc Boiron — CEO, Polygon Labs
Marc Boiron leads Polygon Labs, stewarding the AggLayer roadmap to unify chains and liquidity, and performance upgrades to Polygon PoS. His thesis: secure, fast, cheap cross-chain UX plus deep liquidity (via Katana) will mainstream payments and RWAs across Web3. Previously CLO at Polygon/dYdX and a fintech attorney. CoinDesk+1

Guest Contacts

Jordan Jefferson (DogeOS / MyDoge)

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jordan-jefferson-ca LinkedIn
• Website: mydoge.com | dogeos.com (site linked via X profile) mydoge.com+1
• Twitter/X: @MyDogeCEO X (formerly Twitter)

Rebecca Liao (Saga)

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rebecca-liao LinkedIn
• Website: saga.xyz saga.xyz
• Twitter/X: @beccaliao X (formerly Twitter)

Marc Boiron (Polygon Labs)

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/marcboiron LinkedIn
• Website: polygon.technology Polygon
• Twitter/X: @0xMarcB

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Transcript:

Josh Kriger: Hi, everyone. Josh Krueger, co-host of The Edge of Show, live in Cannes, France, actually at Hack Season. And I have the pleasure right now of hanging out with Jordan Jefferson, the CEO of DogeOS and MyDoge. Great to have you on the show.
Jordan Jefferson: Thanks for having me.
Josh Kriger: So yeah, when your team reached out to chat a little bit about what's going on with the Doge ecosystem, I have to admit it sparked my curiosity. And I feel like, you know, there's so much legacy history and brand value to Doge. I mean, I think the only one I would rival is Bitcoin itself, the mothership. So Maybe tell us a little bit about your journey and what got you excited enough about sort of adding utility layer to Doge to step up to the plate.
Jordan Jefferson: For sure. I think you kind of nailed it. There's just, there's so much history, so much community, so much like value on untapped really in the Doge brand and the Doge world. And, you know, we've been building in Doge for four years full time now. And there's, there's not a lot of us, you know, there's not a lot of, you know, weird people who thought, hey, you know, forget all this other stuff, let's just commit our lives to Dogecoin. And, you know, we started building my Doge, the number one Dogecoin wallet. And as we kind of got to know the community through that, we just thought, look, let's see what we can do to kind of evolve this thing. I think, you know, it's about not necessarily adding utility to Doge, it's really just about empowering the community to kind of like chase these crazy dreams everybody has. You know, Dogecoin taking over the world, a new financial system, finding, you know, the path to the most ironic outcome is the most likely. And I think the most ironic outcome is, you know, Dogecoin really becoming a serious currency, even though it's still a joke, you know, kind of like walk that line. So
Josh Kriger: Polychain led your round of funding recently of $6.9 million. That's a substantial amount of money. I'm curious, what traction was some of the earlier products you had that gave Polychain enough conviction to give this a go? And what do you see as the biggest risk going forward of this not working?
Jordan Jefferson: Great question. And I think it's, this is also kind of like ironic to have, you know, one of the most respected funds in the space going back at Dogecoin startup kind of out of nowhere to most people's eyes is pretty crazy. I think, you know, the number one thing is that we've already built a business around Doge and we have captured, you know, nearly half a million users in the wallet already. So like we built something real, there is a real community that's kind of proven there. You know, I think everyone sees that there's potential in Dogecoin because it's so big, because there's millions of users. No one's really like capitalized on it in like a big way, a way that's going to like deliver investor returns, because a lot of us are just kind of, you know, doing this for vibes. So I think we're really lucky, you know, not only Polychain, all the angel investors who've supported us for a few years, they just kind of believe long term and the general idea that like, hey, Dogecoin's not going anywhere. It's pretty fun. Let's just let's just roll with it and see what happens.
Josh Kriger: On the risk side, what could make this not work? And where polishing gets like, what to say, no return on their investment?
Jordan Jefferson: So, yeah, that's actually a really good question. Most people don't ask. And I think there's a couple things. Like, one is that the Doge community is really big. The floor for like building something in the Doge world, you're going to capture the hearts of many. But to really like realize the potential of the crazy dreams that we have, it has to be beyond just this core Doge community. I think like the big challenge is basically, you know, getting other people aware of and to kind of believe in the Doge story, because Doge has kind of been doing its own thing for a while. You've kind of got like Web3 over here, and Dogecoin over here. And, you know, a ton of people, I would say like, about half the industry in my experience, don't even know that Dogecoin is a blockchain. They just assume like, oh, yeah, it's like, I guess it's just like the first meme token, ERC20 probably. And so I think it's like, how do we take this like really awesome story, this crazy community of evangelists, and how do we actually kind of get, you know, either the rest of the crypto community or just like new users, consumers to kind of like fall in love with it again, which, you know, probably hasn't happened since like the crazy bull run 2021, I believe.
Josh Kriger: Right on. And I guess to go along with that, I mean, you have to get sort of consumers to believe, but you also have to get developers and institutions to back this project. What's been the uptake there?
Jordan Jefferson: So I think we're really lucky on the developer side because You know, there's many, many blockchains, new ones every day. Everyone's kind of competing over this pool of developers. What we've found when we tell devs about what we're doing is that the number one thing they're looking for is distribution. And they see this opportunity of like a huge community that's sort of not been offered a ton. They've not been marketed to a bunch. There hasn't been many like, you know, native Doge applications and experiences. So on the dev side, to be honest, most devs we talk to are pretty excited. I think the other part that helps is it's just like wacky and fun. Like, we're not taking it too seriously. We're like, look, embrace the creativity, like, do something weird, do something different. We don't need to copy and paste every other blockchain app and put it on a new chain, right? We're looking to just do something weird, different, that really appeals to Doge.
Josh Kriger: Just the institutional, I'd say. Because, I mean, at the end of the day, to get, you know, more trading volume and use of these products, you need to also get institutional capital deployed.
Jordan Jefferson: Yeah. So... I think we got lucky with the, you know, kind of the election and the changing regulatory landscape. I would say, you know, even a year ago, to imagine institutions like taking any serious look at Dogecoin was pretty hard. I think even, you know, many institutions wouldn't even touch Bitcoin a year ago. And what we found actually is that like Doge is becoming very institution friendly. I mean, you see right now like the rush in public markets to launch like treasury companies, etc. But it's not just Bitcoin, right? People are launching treasury companies for all sorts of assets. And Doge is particularly popular on that side. We're also finding that, you know, a lot of institutions actually see Doge as a potential home for, you know, a number of RWA projects, which is, you know, another hot topic in the space.
Josh Kriger: What's one of the RWA projects you're most excited about on Doge and what makes Doge best for that use case?
Jordan Jefferson: Great question. Yeah, I think going back to like what's creative, different and unique to Doge, right? It's like, well, okay, we could tokenize like a real estate portfolio and put it anywhere. Is that like super Dogey and exciting? Like not necessarily. I'll give you an example of something really cool that's cooking on DogeOS. The people's robo-taxi fleet, okay? What if the people built, you know, the next Uber by decentralizing, democratizing investment into like a growing robo-taxi fleet and autonomous taxis, you know, first in the US and then the world. Like that's an RWA project that's pretty serious, but like really aligned with, you know, the Doge community, obviously a lot of Tesla fans, that kind of thing.
Josh Kriger: Do you think that DOSA's historical volatility and how much of a shift that occurs from bull to bear market and back and forth sort of hampers development potential on an RWA type of environment where you want that consistent stable return?
Jordan Jefferson: I think that, you know, for the most part, volatility of Doge itself in RWA context is not a big concern, because most of these assets are going to be, you know, paired with USD for now, you know, I think the volatility of Doge certainly, I mean, certainly a factor, institutional adoption, like serious adoption, etc. I would say it's certainly like a risk on mindset in Doge, right? I mean, institutions that are trying to like launch a Doge treasury company, for instance, They know it's high-risk. This is not the same play as like a Bitcoin treasury. But there seems to be an appetite for sure.
Josh Kriger: Nice. That's good to know. Any other projects that wanted to sort of build on Doge where you're like, no, this is just too wild, too crazy. We're not ready for this.
Jordan Jefferson: I would say the opposite. There's nothing too wild or too crazy. And sometimes we talk to builders, they're like, hey, is, you know, is this too ridiculous? Like, you know, would you support this? And we're kind of like, 100% like nothing is too ridiculous. Let's be weird. But I would say the opposite is true. You know, sometimes builders come to us with something. And we're like, look, this is not different enough or not crazy enough. But let's brainstorm together, like how we could kind of take it to another level, make it super unique. So
Josh Kriger: Is there going to be a grant or ecosystem support program or how are you thinking of helping to accelerate people building?
Jordan Jefferson: Definitely. So, you know, we're not at the stage of like, you know, a giant income in blockchain with like a hundred million dollar brand portfolio, right? But we're super, super hands-on in trying to help the community build. The type of thing we're offering now, and it's not like, you know, investments, grants, et cetera, are not on the table or anything. But I think the best way we can support builders is a few things, you know. We get some teams that come to us that are like, they're just developers. They don't really have a designer on the team. We're kind of building like a huge toolkit assets providing like support in our guard to like you know help them make it like super doji and fun. On the other side I mean you know we've got a bunch of talented devs who like we ourselves have been like cooking up doji ideas for a long time and just like never had the ability to build them which is kind of why we're building dojo as and so like. You know, if you're just like, I don't know, inspired by like what we're doing, the Doge movement and stuff, but maybe you don't have that killer idea, like we've got a ton of ideas for you. And I would say it extends into like, you know, the marketing support, audit support, all this kind of thing.
Josh Kriger: Has anyone done like a really amazing Doge game yet on DogeOS?
Jordan Jefferson: So we definitely have a bunch of game developers cooking stuff up. You know, because we're pre-launched, these games aren't live, but I would say
Josh Kriger: So we don't know yet if any of them are the games.
Jordan Jefferson: I think we've got a few that could be the game. But I think in general, it's just like, there's not enough Doge games in the world, right? You said at the beginning, like the brand value of Doge, everyone loves this.
Josh Kriger: And there's no IP restrictions from people using Doge.
Jordan Jefferson: No, because I mean, basically, it's totally decentralized. And, you know, it's just a Shiba Inu. So I think, you know, the original photo of the Doge like that is actually owned by a Dow, right. And I've met the dog mother herself, she really supports like, you know, true licensing of that image. But beyond like, using that actual photo, I mean, Doge is just Doge.
Josh Kriger: Makes sense. Well, this has been eye-opening for me. And I am curious if there's anything else moving ahead that you're just particularly excited about? Any upcoming edgy insights you can give us about what's to come?
Jordan Jefferson: For sure. Ultimately, the most exciting thing that we're doing is, you know, it doesn't sound even most exciting at first, but it's kind of on the DeFi side. The reality is almost all Dogecoin is just chilling on centralized exchanges. Okay.
Josh Kriger: Yeah. It is not a Bitcoin, you know.
Jordan Jefferson: Exactly. And like very different from something like Solana, for instance. where people actually hold it in their wallet on chain because they might have to buy a meme coin, do something else. Half of the Solana volume is on DEXs, not centralized exchanges. And so there's just a huge opportunity for the community to take control of this economy. And if we're able to make that happen, I think it's the catalyst that maybe everybody has been waiting for in terms of price and evolution of Doge. Supply leaving exchanges you know, can cause a very meaningful impact in price. Trading moving to decentralized exchanges means, you know, users can start earning fees instead of, you know, a few giant corporations. And so like, there's actually, you know, a potential financial revolution on our hands. That's not just such as the dogecoin price going up, it's actually like the people kind of getting a piece of the economy.
Josh Kriger: So you mentioned the Dogecoin price going up. Obviously not financial advice, but if you had a dream in terms of where Dogecoin could be at its peak during this bull cycle, What do you hope is possible if I recall and I'm not like a doge trading expert, but I have dabbled You know, it's creeped up to like 80 cents. I don't know where got beyond 80 cents I'm not familiar with it. You might know more did not, yeah. But around there, right? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe 70. 70, yeah. Maybe 72 for a second. So what's the sentiment in the Doge community and the DogeOS community about where the price could get to? Again, I don't normally do this. Not financial advice. Just curious what the sentiment is.
Jordan Jefferson: Yeah, and I try not to talk about price either, but it's a very fair question. I would prep this by saying, I mean, come for the vibes, come for the fun. If the price goes up, that's secondary. But I, you know, I truly believe and I hold Dogecoin that we've definitely not seen an all time high. I kind of think we're just getting started. It's, you know, it's a Bitcoin of memes. It's not going anywhere. It's got the biggest community of any meme coin ever. Um, everyone talks about doge to a dollar. I mean, I think the next big run, I think it goes past a dollar. Let me just, I'll just leave it at that.
Josh Kriger: Past the dollar is doable. And it's, where's it, where's it hanging out right now?
Jordan Jefferson: I think today it's like $0.17 or so.
Josh Kriger: Cool. It's been as high as like $0.30 in the current market if I recall.
Jordan Jefferson: $0.45-ish a few months ago.
Josh Kriger: We'll have to see. People can call us out and say we're totally right or totally wrong later. That's the fun of predictions is you never know what you're going to get in our industry. Fascinating conversation. Jordan really enjoyed learning more about what you guys are up to. seeing your passion come through. So good luck with activating a new aspect of the Doge community.
Jordan Jefferson: Thank you, man. We're going to have some fun.
Josh Kriger: All right. Where can people follow you on X?
Jordan Jefferson: Yeah. X.com slash Dojo S. Yeah. Get all the updates. A lot of crazy stuff cooking that we don't even have time to touch on.
Josh Kriger: All right. Well, follow these guys and see what's next. Thanks, Jordan.
Jordan Jefferson: Thank you very much.
Josh Kriger: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The Edge of Show. I'm Josh Krueger, one of your co-hosts, and we're live at ECC 8 in Cannes, France. And I'm here with Rebecca Lau, the co-founder and CEO of Saga and L1. Great to have you on the show.
Rebecca Lau: Great to have. the show running here. I mean, I've been a big fan for a long time, and I'm glad to chat with you, Josh.
Josh Kriger: Well, thank you so much. Obviously, we were the edge of NFT, and things have changed. And really, we always love talking about sort of cutting-edge technology across the whole industry. And I think it'd be cool just to sort of start with your background because I came from traditional technology consulting and I did a lot of work with government and you were a policy advisor to several presidential campaigns, both Hillary and Biden. I'm curious sort of how you parlayed that type of experience into being a deeper member of the blockchain ecosystem and maybe some of the sort of insights you got about sort of getting policy adoption in the space from being part of those campaigns.
Rebecca Lau: Yeah, it's fascinating because I've been able to see it from several angles. So obviously with the Clinton campaign in 2016, crypto was not really a major issue on anyone's platform. But having said that, a large part of the reason why I got into crypto was the conversations I was having with my colleagues back then, because I was doing Asia trade and economic policy. And as we all know, in a crypto industry, one of the biggest adoption areas for crypto is in developing market economies. And so the first time that I heard about Bitcoin and stablecoins and Ethereum was actually from Asian bankers, Asian traders and people building fintech platforms in Asia, because for them, they weren't looking to copy what the U.S. and Western Europe already had. They wanted to leapfrog. And they kept talking about blockchain technology. I got fascinated by it. This is a huge passion area for me. And that's how I ultimately got into the industry. So fast forward to 2020 with the Biden campaign. Crypto still was not huge in the campaign platform.
Josh Kriger: Was Biden a fan?
Rebecca Lau: I don't think he knew about it, to be perfectly honest. I don't think he knew about it. No, 2020, the campaign focus was incredibly different. We just wanted to beat Trump at the time. But I will say that, you know, as much as people think that Biden just was not a fan of crypto specifically, I think he had difficulty with the tech industry in general. And that's why you see a lot of the tech CEOs becoming fans of Trump, even though policy-wise, honestly, a lot of them privately diverged from him and they did not support him in 2016. But the stronghold that the Democratic Party had over the tech community in the U.S. really cooled with Biden. I think he didn't use the products, honestly, and so he didn't feel any sort of loyalty towards any of the companies. And I think he felt that tech had an outsized power. And his main focus was, how do we make tech companies less powerful? So that can be through antitrust. It can be through stopping newer innovations like crypto, et cetera. So I think we got caught up in that sweeping change.
Josh Kriger: And do you feel like, you know, the rapid progress that China and other countries have made with AI has kind of lit a fire under both parties to support technology more or made it less of a sort of party specific issue?
Rebecca Lau: Absolutely, absolutely. I think that tech competitiveness with respect to China is a huge motivator for many things. So I do think that a lot of people remain very concerned about where AI is going to go. It's developing incredibly quickly, and more and more people feel like reality is being taken away from them. But anytime that there is new regulation proposed now, the first thing that people ask is, well, does China do this? Does China care about this? Because if they don't, then we are putting guardrails on our companies that the Chinese don't put on theirs. And that can be a disadvantage in competition. It also shows up in national security and defense as well. So it's really sweeping across the board. You can use that argument anytime that China is going to do it faster and better. And it really gets people to jump.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I whatever it takes to let it fire. I mean, I just I think that blockchain has so much Usefulness and enterprises and talked about that with with coin coin with base earlier today Maybe that will be on this show or another show from the set from the series for for this industry but I think We are at a momentous time where the true practical use cases of blockchain can now be unleashed. But speaking of competition, I think I talked to the Galaxy co-founder a few months ago and there was 80 or 90 L1s at this point and so it of course begs the question you've gotten a million times like why did you decide to start an L1 and what truly differentiates Saga from from its peers?
Rebecca Lau: Yeah yeah absolutely it's a great question so Saga is an L1 to launch L1s So there's no such thing as building on the Saga mainnet, actually. Every application that builds on us is by definition on their own chain or set of chains, all of which are also fully decentralized proof-of-stake chains. And the reason we architected it this way is really for scale. So one L1 should be sufficient for most applications, but in case it's not, then you can always scale out to additional L1s and everything is interoperable. So it'll feel like being in the same application, even though you're on multiple chains. And we really took our inspiration from cloud. So for any of us who use cloud servers, we still do in crypto, for AWS, Google Cloud, etc.
Josh Kriger: Oh yeah, AWS can't necessarily talk about it, but they are a big player in the blockchain cloud space.
Rebecca Lau: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And they're trying to make compute resources available to blockchain projects. They also run validators. So what Sogit does is a concept of multi-threading. So if you run out of compute space in one server, then you just move to multiple. Same thing for L1s here. So we just felt that with any L1 out there that claims to be highly performant, it still is going to run into the block space issue because it's just one chain. Here, there are infinite number of chains. That's why we call ourselves infinite horizontal scalability.
Josh Kriger: Cool. And why do you need to do that as an L1 versus an L2?
Rebecca Lau: So an L2 has a lot of inherent limitations. It's actually the topic of my talk today here. So an L2 does not have interoperability. You need to build a custom for any sort of L2 environment for any given L1. Whereas for us, interoperability was built in. It is built into every single chain when you launch it. So that's one major hurdle.
Josh Kriger: So you're fully interoperable across all chains?
Rebecca Lau: No, it is fully interoperable within Saga, so across all of our chains. So if you scale out within Saga, then yes, you shouldn't notice any sort of adjustment, change, difference. Now, if you want to bridge out to say Ethereum or Solana, then we do rely on a third party bridge. We do not have our own bridge. So, slight nuance there. But L2s also still need gas. We are gasless. And that is the beauty of an L1, is that you can set it to be absolutely gasless. And especially in the DeFi realm, that has made a huge difference with respect to trading volume and then future yield opportunities.
Josh Kriger: So thanks for clarifying all that. So you're working with new partnerships with folks like Stare, Liquidity, DeTrinity. What are the types of differentiators that drew them to Saga, and what are you looking for in terms of partnerships moving forward?
Rebecca Lau: So we have a very unique architecture, as you can tell. And first and foremost, we need partners that are technically proficient enough to be able to build alongside us. From an app developer perspective, all you need is solidity because we are EVM. But from the perspective of an infrastructure partner, they need to understand multi-chain. So that's the first thing that we look for. A lot of people do at this point. The other thing is when it comes to DeFi infrastructure, which all the projects that you just named, Seer, Liquidity, dTrinity, they all focus on DeFi. A lot of them are maximizing for other vectors. So they're usually dealing with chains that have a lot of gas. Now, for us, because we are gasless, we tell them just drive volume up. Our objective is volume. And from volume, we take a rake of that. And that's how we ultimately make revenue as a protocol. But it's just a different way of thinking. And I think every single time we talk to a new partner, whether they are able to understand what we're going for and whether they are in a spirit to collaborate with us becomes evident pretty quickly. And then the conversation flows from there.
Josh Kriger: Makes sense. And, you know, obviously, I guess, has the legislation for stablecoins passed both houses? I don't think so. I don't think so. So, you know, it was sort of announced as a big splash. And I've been on a Europe tour the last few weeks, so I wasn't sure if it, like, did pass the house yet. Not yet. But it seems imminent. And with this comes sort of this potential for all these really exciting use cases of stablecoins. So you guys are launching your own stablecoin. That's right. What were you sort of thinking in terms of what challenges you can crack with Saga plus the Stablecoin ecosystem that maybe hasn't been sort of tapped into yet?
Rebecca Lau: Yeah, absolutely. So the reason why we doubled up on stable infrastructure is, again, volume and additional yield opportunities. So for a lot of protocols out there that are looking to launch their own Stablecoin now, they will partner with liquidity and then call it a day. Because with liquidity, you can park your assets there, blue chips like BTC, Sol, ETH, and spit out stable coins on the other end. Now, for us, we are using them for the same mechanism, but then we take those stables and then we put them through dTrinity for extra yield. So this is a way in which you really compound the yield that is available for stables. And I don't know if that particular piece of it is unique to our architecture, but the fact that we are gasless and we allow for these transactions to happen between different chains and different protocols at the highest possible value, and especially among the ARBs, it works out very nicely for our stablecoin flow and yields.
Josh Kriger: Do you have a sense yet of what the yield range could look like?
Rebecca Lau: That, I don't want to name a number right now, but let's just say that for Saga, we do offer LP incentives at the moment for any LP activity that happens on our decks, which is a canonical deployment of Uniswap. And right now, I think it's hovering around 22% or so for USDC, USDT.
Josh Kriger: Wow.
Rebecca Lau: Yeah.
Josh Kriger: Okay. Fair enough. Well, do your own research.
Rebecca Lau: Do your own research. Do your own research. Not financial advice. We have changed by the time this airs, but yeah.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, but definitely check out what's going on in terms of that ecosystem. So also, you have a new launchpad partner called KEX, K-E-X, KEX. Yeah. And they're focused on AI agents. Tell me more about that.
Rebecca Lau: Yeah, so there are so many AI agents in the world now. And I think we saw that people were attracted to Saga for AI agents just because of the scale factor. So we have a bunch of projects building on here that are just AI agent protocols. So they're not agents necessarily, but they're frameworks for agents. And the reason they build on here is, again, it's limitless scale. But CACs we are particularly excited about because they specialize in character agents. So their DNA is in gaming and entertainment. And what they do is they take characters from some of our most beloved IPs and they turn them into agents that are available to interact with users and fans 24-7. Wow, what an example. So, for example, we have one coming out soon. His name is Carl. It's Talking Strawberry. This is a children's character that has a billion plus views across the world. It is distributed by Disney DX. And it is a kid's character that teaches kids and their parents about healthy lifestyles and healthy eating habits. This one I highlight in particular because all of their characters will be tokenized. So Carl can talk to you 24-7 if you want healthy eating habits, if you need therapy, if you just want to chit-chat with a talking strawberry. But at the same time, it gives you goodies, it gives you assets. So these come in the form of NFTs, whether that is extra time to chat with him, because it's not cheap to chat with a talking strawberry. Or it could be exclusive perks, experiences, bonuses, being part of this IP universe. And at the same time, it's able to take payments through crypto rails. And if you want to play with a token, you can play with a token. So that's one example of a holistic experience.
Josh Kriger: Wow, that's really interesting. Yeah, so is the sophistication of Carl's sort of capability rival like a Grok or like a Perplexity or Chad's CPC? Is it like its own proprietary LLM behind it where maybe Carl really knows a lot about agriculture because he's a strawberry?
Rebecca Lau: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so CAX does not have their own LLM. It is built on top of these other models that you mentioned. So right now, the majority of the model is based off of a combination of Gemini and OpenAI. But in terms of the information that is fed to this agent, so the studios that originate the IPs, they are really responsible for making sure that the lore and the backstory, you know, there's content that gets fed in. So you're getting a
Josh Kriger: basically unique IP fan experience. Sort of a skin on top of the LLM experience, which is really, you know, for folks that really love that brand, it's a cool experience.
Rebecca Lau: It's a really cool experience. What we find is when users first interact with these AI agents, usually, you know, they have some knowledge about that TV show, that film, that game. So they first start to ask about that. It's like, can you give me tips in this game? Or I'm stuck on this level. Can you tell me more about that? Or what are the upcoming episodes?
Josh Kriger: Are there any cheat codes?
Rebecca Lau: Yeah, exactly. Where are the cheat codes? But you know, this happens with AI is very quickly people start to go into just general interest questions, you know, like, how's your day? What'd you have for lunch today? Do you want to know what I had for lunch? And so it's, these AI agents start to be anthropomorphized, and people really start to treat them like part of their friend group.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I just had a chance to interview a humanoid robot, Ria, at a conference in Chile in front of over a thousand folks. They're very trepidatious about AI and she has over a thousand facial expressions and she's designed to help people with loneliness and you know, mental wellness support, basically humanoid. And I think it's really cool to see these examples. And I guess the next possibility is that, you know, there are Carl strawberries all around the world where you can meet Carl in person. And maybe you need to, you know, really be part of the community to have that experience. Because Carl's going to have a long line to hang out with in person. Exactly. Fun stuff. So, I mean, we're talking about brands and Web2, IP. This has been a conversation for a long time. Of course, like, you know, we hosted NFTLA and we had Warner Brothers there and some of those early sort of players that were sort of trying to figure out how to use digital collectibles in creative ways. What is your thoughts on sort of where we're at with Web2 brands? Because There was a cooling off period for a while with Terraluna and FTX and I think they've been reticent to see the true utility of Web3. Certainly sports brands, PSG is doing some cool stuff and all that, but there's been a pretty major cool off. Do you see these brands being warm again to the possibilities with the stablecoin legislation and what's happening? You know, what are you sort of trying to do with Web 2 brands?
Rebecca Lau: Yeah, it's been fascinating because we noticed that cooling off period for sure. And so when we started to talk to these Web 2 studios about the possibility of turning their characters into AI agents, we didn't know what kind of reception we would get. Because not only do you have the crypto aspect, you also have the AI aspect, which we should remember, they don't like that either. And truthfully, with any sort of company, if you solve a problem for them, then they're open to the conversation. And I think the problem with crypto and these IPs historically is that it was sort of a cool, trendy new thing, and they thought it was going to open up this new audience. of really young people.
Josh Kriger: Higher engagement.
Rebecca Lau: Exactly, exactly. But that didn't quite pan out. And so the business case for it really plummeted. So here, first and foremost, we said to them, if you're a Venturist, you can have your own tokens, but you don't have to. And you also don't have to use a Saga token because we're gasless. So really the Saga stablecoin plays into this in a huge way. I see. Yes. And so really the user experience for most people who interact with the IPs on Saga is they just swipe their credit card. And then it's Saga USD on the back end that settles. So, we have to remove that user friction, first and foremost. The other thing is, with respect to the agents, I think that we've hit on something that actually passes muster with the creative teams. So, in the end, to get anything approved by a studio, you have to get past the business team, yes, but then the creative team, this is their baby, right? Like, they're up at 3 o'clock in the morning, sketching out these actors.
Josh Kriger: I mean, I'm banging for the IP license show, and there's a lot of brand pride. nuance to working with these brands.
Rebecca Lau: Absolutely, absolutely. And so they have to trust that first and foremost you understand why they created this, where they ultimately want to take this, and what their brand essentially is. And once you establish that trust, then the conversations get a lot easier. The main thing that we spend time refining, honestly, is not the crypto piece of it. That is getting a lot easier to sort of plug in. But the training model, they do think about that a lot, which is an issue completely outside of crypto, but it's obviously a very important one. And so they ask things like, all right, how do I prevent this agent from hallucinating? How do I prevent this agent from doing something that destroys my brand? So Carl or other more kids type characters cannot start cursing up a storm, for instance, or talking about adult themes. So the training models are sophisticated enough now such that they can be still, you know, empathetic enough, independent thinking enough to have an interesting conversation with you at all times. But if you tell them, you know, don't say the F word, it doesn't say the F word. So it's, yeah, it's gotten to a nice place where this can be mass market.
Josh Kriger: Cool. And is this like similar to traditional licensing deals where, you know, there's a royalty somewhere usually between like 8 and 12% and a minimum guarantee?
Rebecca Lau: No, no, no. So we always say there's never a minimum guarantee in a deal. So early on, I mean, Saga, when we built up our ecosystem, we let projects know ahead of time we don't do grants here. Because ultimately, if you pay your customers to use you, then you never know whether you've achieved product market fit. And because we are gasless, you don't need a loan to build on Saga. You can get started for free. So that tradition has carried on to our conversations with these Web2 studios. There are no NGs. There are never any MGs. Generally, we go for a rev share model. So we're in this together and lion share, the revenue obviously goes to the studio, but then we take a cut of that and any of our partners would take a cut of that.
Josh Kriger: Very cool. And I guess you say we with Kex, you have a partnership with them. So you're advising them, you're supporting their growth, sort of, is that how that works?
Rebecca Lau: Yeah, it's become a very close partnership. So what's interesting about Kex is that they started off as a gaming platform, as many of these, you know, AI agent and entertainment platforms do. They started off in gaming and a couple of years into it, they decided, okay, let's pivot to an AI agent creation platform. And they had something really cool in terms of organic character creation, what we call UGC, user-generated content. But when we looked at it, we thought you could use this for Web 2.0 brands as well. And that's really how the partnership got so close. So they are exclusive to Saga. And I'm pretty sure that we're going to be working together very, very closely.
Josh Kriger: Makes sense. I've learned so much about Saga, and I think your background is fascinating. It's great to see folks like yourself in the industry. If people want to learn more about you, can they follow you on X?
Rebecca Lau: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I'm just Becca Liao on X, and then Saga is SagaXYZ with a double underscore at the end. There is a lot of news coming out this summer because all of our DeFi is getting stood up. Our DEX is, I want to say a couple, three months old, three months old now because we launched it at ETH Denver. And the month of June, I think we've seen about 800 million in volumes. Yeah, so that does, we are steadily becoming a part of the top 10 in DEX volumes across all chains. And then I think a few weeks ago, we were number two in terms of overall Dex volume growth just behind Binance. So our volume strategy is coming to fruition. I'm really happy to see that.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, congrats and definitely tuning in to see what happens next with you guys. Thanks for your time.
Rebecca Lau: Awesome. Thank you. Really great to see you.
Josh Kriger: You too. Hi, everyone. Josh Krueger here, co-host of The Edge of Show, live at ECC 8 in Cannes, France. And I'm here with Mark, the CEO of Polygon. We haven't had you guys on the show for a while, so it's great to meet here in this beautiful environment and catch up. Yeah, thanks for having me on. So you joined Polygon in this CEO position two years ago. What sort of got you fired up in terms of your vision then and how has that evolved since then?
Marc Boiron: Yeah, so I think the best way to think about Polygon is like the goal was always to scale Web3. So like for most people, what that showed up as was scale Ethereum, because in 2018, we started like Ethereum was Web3. The reality when you look at like what Web3 is now today, it's like hundreds of chains that have very different VMs, very different architectures.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, Galaxy, I had them on the show. I mean, they said they onboarded over 80 different L1s. So it's changed a lot.
Marc Boiron: Yeah, it changed a lot. And then you add all those L2s into it. And so like, ultimately, scaling Web3 now really means ultimately not just scaling through like new chains, but also scaling kind of horizontally. And so it's where a lot of time we've spent is on the Ag layer in terms of like being able to bring all those chains together and connect them as one. And that's like really where Polygon is.
Josh Kriger: And I guess, like, what gives you the conviction that you guys are the right team to do that? Because I imagine other folks also want to sort of be the kings of interoperability, right? Yeah.
Marc Boiron: Or the queens. The thing that got us, like, excited about this is, first, it's consistent with what we've always wanted to do, which is Scale Web 3. But more importantly, it's that there's no solution. Frankly, like, nobody's even working on something that can work. Like, I think the Agilear is the only solution that's being worked on that's, like, actually has potential to be that. And the simple reason for this is like you basically have like three kind of worlds. One is this world of interoperability that is actually pretty smooth, but within these like little fiefdoms, right? And so, great, like that experience might be good, but like not interesting to scale like a few chains. We want to scale all of Web3. And when you start going beyond that and you start looking at what exists, you start looking at intent-based solvers. And those are what most people use when they think of a really good experience today. But the thing is, you can only really onboard blue-chip assets from the biggest chains. And you're leaving aside all of the smaller chains, you're leaving aside any non-blue-chip assets. And even when you do do those blue-chip assets, it requires a huge amount of capital to actually provide that. And so like, when you think of that and you fast forward to having hundreds and thousands and then tens of thousands of chains, it's just like not viable. And then when you think about the bridge side of things.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, that was gonna be my next question, right? Is like, there are sort of these quantum bridging ideas coming out with instantaneous bridging cross chain. But that's not like a new layer per se, right? Like, why is that insufficient?
Marc Boiron: Yeah. It really comes down to like security, right? So like, okay, there's three things people care about. And one is obviously like being cheap. Second is being fast. Those are the things that like people really, really actually care about. People would love to pay nothing. They love to pay nothing and to go fast. But if you play this out over a long enough period of time, What's going to ultimately happen is if there's not security, something's going to go wrong. And when you look at how bridges work, they're all based on minting and burning. And if somebody takes control of what is usually a relatively small multisig, they can infinitely mint tokens. That is not how the Ag layer works. The Ag layer works through more like a Bitcoin UTXO model. It basically looks at all the deposits into a chain, all the deposits out of a chain, And when somebody wants to move an asset, it uses a zero-knowledge proof to actually prove that that asset exists on the chain. So I would argue that the Yagler is like the first cross-chain solution that provides actual security. And so then the second step, now that we've built that, is, okay, now let's make it fast and cheap.
Josh Kriger: So it's build it's it's out there in the ether. Yep. Cool. And um, what's been the response? Um, what would have been sort of the use cases that have been predominant so far?
Marc Boiron: Yeah. So when everyone hears the story, everyone's like, okay, this is a no brainer. It makes sense. Right? So like the response to it's very, very good, but we've been developing it. Right. And so it's been about a year. And finally we released the version that allows like any EVM chain to connect to the other. And when was that? That was about a month ago now. So very recent. Congrats. Thank you. And so we currently have about 10 chains connected to that. And I think that now that we can connect an AVM chain, now that you have that, that's when things start getting interesting.
Josh Kriger: And is it the chains self sort of volunteer to connect or is it you're selecting chains or a little of both?
Marc Boiron: Yeah, it's actually a little bit of both. Right. So the ones who select to be part of it, they're going to be able to offer a better user experience than the non like those who select will ultimately be able to get to sub one second secure interoperability. Those who don't They're ultimately going to, it will allow chains that are kind of like have opted in to move assets very quickly to those chains, creating a good user experience for them. The chains who have been kind of, let's call it forced into that connection, they're going to be able to bring assets in, but it's going to be slow. And so ultimately you're incentivized to become part of the Ag layer so that you can move assets around fast.
Josh Kriger: And who is the first chain to say, let's do this?
Marc Boiron: Yeah, I mean, so OKX's chain, Xlayer, was technically like one of our chains was like the first first, but that was like, I think it was the second chain, maybe the third.
Josh Kriger: All right. Shout out to OKX for Being innovative and trying new things. They do push the envelope in a lot of ways. I mean, Ace is very innovative. Yeah, they're thinking big all the time. So that's great. And this is part of a broader roadmap that you released recently as well. Can you tell us a little bit about that roadmap and sort of the process to come up with these ideas and what gets you excited there?
Marc Boiron: Yeah, so there's two roadmaps that we released recently. One was on the AgLayer side, and the other one's on the Polygon POS side. So for AgLayer, it's very much this idea of like, hey, let's let any chain connect. And then next step is, okay, now let's start increasing the user experience. So let's make it faster. And let's make it cheaper. That's kind of what's on the roadmap for that by the end of this year is like, let's make this fast and cheap. On the Polygon POS side, I would kind of think of it as going back to, let's make sure that Polygon POS is the most performant chain in all of crypto. And so recently increased like the TPS on Polygon POS to like 1000 TPS, decreased block times to 5 seconds. And basically what we'll be doing next is actually focusing on increasing TPS to more like 5,000, introducing single-slot finality, which will get rid, completely rid of reorgs. Let's break down what that is for our non-technical audience. Yeah, yeah. So when you think about, so two different parts of that. So one was when you think about that from a TPS perspective, what we're basically saying is like how many transactions per second. And basically it's saying like, how fast is this chain? How many transactions can it handle? With Polygon POS now very much focused on just payments and RWAs, this is a great test because you want payments to be able to flow very, very quickly. And then the second one is this idea of single slot finality. In the simplest form, it's finalizing the chain very, very vast rather than waiting multiple blocks to finalize the chain. This means that people have guarantees around the state of the chain like much sooner. And so, you know, if you're like a end user, what this means is that you using an app on Polygon POS could consider like your transaction final like much faster. So when you think of like Polymarket, right, and like all the users using Polymarket on Polygon, being able to know that your transaction is just done sooner is better. That's just better user experience than Polymarket can pass on to their users.
Josh Kriger: That makes sense. Let's talk about the RWA enablement component a little bit deeper. Some people have sort of talked about RWAs as the evolved version of NFTs, and I know you guys were pretty excited about NFTs, as we all were. I mean, that's how our show started, is talking about NFTs. What are some of the nuances that sort of require enablement for RWAs that makes them different than other use cases for blockchain that you sort of had to make some tweaks? And, you know, I'll ask the second question after. I just want to understand what you see as the near-term and long-term potential of RWAs. I'm pretty excited about them and curious like what you guys are focused on there. But let's start with just the fundamentals of what makes a chain and the underlying infrastructure more RWA friendly and why do we need that?
Marc Boiron: Yeah. So we think about it from like two different sides. So there's like consumer RWAs and then there's like institutional RWAs. So on like the consumer RWA side, you're talking about things like, I don't know if you're familiar with like Courtyard, for example, on Polygon. They tokenize like initially started with like Pokemon cards. Now it's like a broad set of cards. It's a fun gamified experience, allows you to resell them at a much better market value than you would anywhere else. And it's actually kind of amazing, like their numbers are like straight upwards.
Josh Kriger: I mean, that makes sense. I mean, you know, baseball cards, Pokemon cards, any kind of collectible cards. This was sort of a challenge with the sort of traditional definition of NFTs in terms of sort of mirroring real world economic conditions. Things went up and went down much faster, per se, where there's much more stability, for example, in the baseball card collecting industry. So why do RWAs do a better job of managing that more traditional increase in value? Is it just that the tokenomics are better than RWAs, or is it more to it?
Marc Boiron: Yeah, so I think there's like a couple parts of the NWAs that are useful. Like one, one is like the boring things, right? Like being able to like have better transparency, but like the more useful thing and the thing that we're focused on, right, is like composability. Ultimately, it's like actually being able to like use these assets. And so I think this is like most obvious with like institutional NWAs, right? Like it all started with like, let's tokenize some funds or some stocks or whatever it is, and let's just have them sit there. That's like what most tokenizations have looked like. And that's not interesting. Like, cool, you can see it doesn't do you much good. The interesting thing that's come up, and we did this recently with Acre, which is like Apollo's fund, is actually tokenizing it, but then using it in DeFi. So like, you can go and take their fund, which returns like eight and a half percent a year, you can go deposit it into like Morpho as collateral, and then you can borrow against it, and you can buy more of it, you can do that. Now you can loop that and instead your 8.5% is now 14% on a very well-performing fund. Now you've actually got use for an asset that before you had no reason. It's like, just go buy it off-chain. There was no reason to have it on-chain. Now there's a reason to have it on-chain. You don't have to talk to anyone to borrow against it. You can borrow against it and increase your returns on it.
Josh Kriger: Is there anything stopping, I don't know why I haven't thought of this idea before now, but is there anything stopping someone from continuing to collateralize loans on top of loans at lower risk type of yields and compounding into a very large yield just based on a series of low risk products as opposed to sort of the more aggressive ones that could fluctuate every day? I mean, there's a lot of five, let's say even three to 8% yield products out there in the crypto world that have stayed consistent. Could you keep clouderizing? Yeah.
Marc Boiron: And initially with that is when you get to like, so lower risk is going to be like lower yielding ones. And then you would like loop them. The problem with this is like, you need to look at on-chain borrowing rates. So like the nice thing about like Apollo's product, for example, at like 8.5% is like, usually the borrow rate for like a stable coin is below that amount. So that means that you can go and invest in it, collateralize it, borrow, and then go and invest again, and you've got like a margin on it that makes sense. When you start getting like Biddle, for example, is on Polygon as well from BlackRock, like when you tokenize that, there's other interesting use cases for it potentially, right? But from a looping perspective, it's not interesting. So it returns you like, you know, whatever, three and a half, something 4%, whatever it ends up being. And when you go borrow on chain to loop that you're literally going to pay higher in borrowing fees than what you'll actually get. And so it doesn't really make sense. And this is why like a lot of times when we focus on RWAs, it's really on these like, more, yeah, like novel products that allow for something to be done with it on chain, which you can't really do with like money market funds in general.
Josh Kriger: Consumer versions of RWAs are a lot of fun. Do you think from an actual volume and sort of demand perspective, it's the more traditional, boring RWAs that are going to be the focus for the next few years? Or do you think it's going to be a little bit of both? Or will the consumer version sort of eventually take the lead?
Marc Boiron: If you asked me before Courtyard, I would have told you it'll be the more boring institutional stuff. Courtyard's doing tens of millions of dollars in volume a month now. Wow. It's probably the first product that I showed it to my wife. She used it and she went and told all her friends about it and they all use it consistently now. Wow. And it is like a very sticky experience actually when you use it. When you say that, I want to check it out. Yeah, you'd better wait. Definitely check it out. It's actually really cool and easy to use. Yeah, that tells me that there's like something there. And the question is, like, what other assets are going to be interesting in that way? And I don't know what that looks like. But yeah, definitely, there's a use case there.
Josh Kriger: Well, I mean, when we, when we think about sort of the catalytic potential of communities like Wall Street bats, if if they get a hold of Courtyard, right? Like it could galvanize a movement. So I guess you have that potential with these consumer applications and it's not so viral on the institutional side. That is true. So maybe there will be a few consumer cases that really do educate the world about RWAs that come out in upcoming months or years. And what's your take on AI and how does that fit into sort of your roadmap?
Marc Boiron: Yeah, so we're like very focused on like doing things that are like consistent with what we're focused on, right? So like, we could go explore like a bunch of random AI stuff. We don't. There's other people doing that. There's other people doing that. And that's okay. It's like a huge use case. It's good. we do in a narrow way, which is like, how does AI enhance like payments or RWAs is where we're focused. And I think payments is the most obvious one, like an example that I give all the time. We're not fully there yet, but I think we'll be there soon. It's like, okay, this super boring example, but it's actually like, not a bad use case, which is like, you're a finance team. You get invoices that come in. It would be pretty nice if you could literally just have an AI agent review those invoices, push out to a human those they're unsure about. Otherwise, Approve, take stablecoin, send payment, all done. There's so many use cases, that's like a super boring one, but like where, you know, you can use AI to enhance payments where they don't need authorization the way that they would need with like a bank account and everything else. And so that's where we're spending like a lot of time on AI stuff. We're always like open to exploring other stuff, but that's like ultimately like core within our focus. That's where we spend most time.
Josh Kriger: Makes sense. I appreciate your perspective on RDAWs more broadly. I can tell you've thought about this a lot. You're excited about this utility within the Polygon ecosystem. Another key component is liquidity, and I understand you have a partnership now with Katama. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Marc Boiron: Yeah. So one of the things about the Ag layer is like, So if you live in this world of like thousands of chains, what you want to do is you want to build a chain that's good for your use, right? So I talk to gaming chains and gaming chains don't want to build the DeFi ecosystem. They want to focus on giving a good gaming experience.
Josh Kriger: As they should, because that was the challenge of the gaming web economy. Is there really a blockchain gaming economy, or is it just a gaming economy? That's the question now, right?
Marc Boiron: Yeah. But if your users do want to tap in, to being able to exchange their NFTs, or frankly, they need a different kind of currency than the one they hold in their wallet to actually use your chain. You should be able to tap into that without needing to tell your users to go somewhere else or spend millions of dollars bringing the infrastructure that you need. And so as part of that for the Ag layer, we want all these chains to be able to tap into something. So we need a source of very deep liquidity on the Ag layer that allows that to happen. And so we started looking around and realizing there's nobody built well for that. And so we incubated a project called Katana, along with GSR, who is a liquidity provider market maker in the space. and created Katana, which is very much built in a very special focus of like creating like deeper liquidity and higher yields than you find elsewhere. And the whole intention here is now, now that it's launched three days ago, those chains connected to the Ag layer, I mean, obviously users can come directly to the Katana. But for chains connected to the Ag layer, they can all tap into that liquidity in, you know, sub few seconds, and they don't need to offer that experience directly on their chain, and they can focus on what they're good at, but their users can still tap into that liquidity.
Josh Kriger: Very cool. Yeah. I think what, what made Polygon, um, originally sort of stand out from the pack was you guys had sort of a very fast chain with, with low gas fees and, and then that became more of a norm. Right. And so, um, it's clear from this conversation that you're doubling down on the innovation side and now it's all about, you know, liquidity and interoperability that these are the two differentiators that you believe in for, for the future vision of Polygon. Is that fair to say?
Marc Boiron: Yeah, that's a good way of summarizing it. Yeah. Ultimately, it's like you have a commoditized world now in blockchains. Everything looks pretty much the same. So you need to evolve.
Josh Kriger: But yet what we thought was going to bring the masses didn't. So there's more work to be done.
Marc Boiron: It is. And I think once you start focusing less on just like, let's build something that's like cheap and fast, which everyone's doing, and let's build something that's just good for a set of users who want to use that, that's how they're going to get interested and want to actually onboard and use blockchains.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, really appreciate your thoughts and your time today. If people want to follow you on X, where do they go?
Marc Boiron: 0xmarkb.
Josh Kriger: All right, and of course, you guys can learn more about Polygon. Just Google Polygon and dive deep down that rabbit hole. And looking forward to checking out some of these products. For the products like the one you mentioned, Courtyard?
SPEAKER_06: Yep. Where do they go for that? Courtyard.io. Go check it out. Same thing with Polymarket. Check it out if you don't know it. Shout out to Courtyard.io. Thanks, Mark, for hanging out today. All right. Thank you.
Josh Kriger: Cool, man.

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