 Thanks for joining us today. It's Jessica here from Cointelegraph and today I'm hosting a special AMA with DeFi Chain. I'm joined today by Prasanna, a core member of the DeFi Chain technical committee who has been involved in the development and growth of DeFi Chain since its inception. Hi Prasanna. Thanks for joining us today. How are you this morning? Hi Jessica. Thank you so much for having me. I'm doing great. How are you doing? Awesome. Well, I'm doing well. Thank you so much. Before we get started, I just want to remind our audience to please send us your questions in the chat and make sure to like the video and subscribe to the channel. I'm really excited to be here with Prasanna. This is a really interesting and informative AMA, but first we're going to set the stage of why DeFi Chain is so important. So to get us started Prasanna, can you tell us why is decentralized finance also known as DeFi important within Web 3? That's a very interesting question. So in terms of Web 3, Decentralization is something that everybody continues to talk about, but I often find it helpful to actually go back all the way to Web 1. If we think about it, decentralization was something that was in the ethos of the web or what we think about as Web 1 now. So Web 1 at the end of the day, if you look at it, it was actually about our ability. It's about the ability to decentralize how we consume content. It was about reading content. And back in the day, it's say, you go to a library or an institution or maybe an educational institution or a school. So that's the only means to actually consume content. Web actually completely changed that. So in a manner, the way I like to think of it is it decentralized our ability to do that. And then Web 2 was about not only can you read content, but you can actually create them, you can share them. So we are having this conversation through a medium of Web 2 right now. And then Web 3 is something that I see as a natural evolution of that. But it creates this important construct where not only can you read and write, but you can also own the content. And that concept of or just the construct of ownership is something that's incredibly powerful. So that is essentially, you know, that now having this construct of ownership, now you can start rethinking several different aspects that exist today, like be it, you know, something like identity, finance, supply chain, so many things you can start applying that to. But finance is something whether or not we like it is the underpinning of our society today. Right. So and I believe so that's one of the reasons where, you know, it's actually Web 3 could have started anywhere else. But it rightly so started on rethinking about how can actually finance be built on this construct that we now have that we didn't have access to today. And that's why I do believe that, you know, decentralized finance is one of the most important aspects. Just sort of zooming out of it, you know, finance is something that gets restructured or rearchitected once in 100 years or 200 years. Right. So I think it's a very exciting time to be at. Yeah, absolutely. Oh my gosh, that was an amazing explanation. Web 1, Web 2, Web 3, it kind of shows the evolution of the human experience. But you know, I'm curious, how does Bitcoin fit into the Web 3 landscape? That's, this is another question that, you know, I think a lot of people try and ask in many different ways. Because Web 3, as a term, came much later after Bitcoin and somewhere in, you know, 2014, 2013. But Bitcoin itself was 2009. So people don't usually associate it with that. But my personal philosophy is that, you know, Bitcoin was one of the very early technologies to actually promote this concept of ownership and show the world that this can actually be done. So I would go as far as say that, you know, Bitcoin was one of the key, the key promoters of Web 3 in a way, even though the term was actually invented much later. Right. So, yeah, so where I would go as far as say, you know, Bitcoin is probably the most used product that we use, even though it doesn't have, you know, the largest smart contact ability that people look at, or all of the other bells and whistles around it. It is probably the origin of Web 3 as we know it, because it really drains, like it builds into it, the construct of that ownership, where you own what you have, be it data, be it digital currency, or whichever asset be that form, it promoted that philosophy. Nice. And, you know, I guess we'll take a couple of questions for the audience. We have one from Jackson. Will Bitcoin be the main currency of Web 3? Well, I do not actually know the answer to that. That is something that Web 3 is an evolving landscape. So everybody's keen to figure out what that Web 3 currency is going to look like. To, you know, start it out with Bitcoin, and then you had, you know, things like Ethereum, and now you have, you know, so many other innovations that's coming up. But the way I like to look at it is if you start looking at Web 2, you know, it took us about 30 to 40 years to get to sort of, you know, to have some of the basic constructs in place. And Web 3, I believe, is going to take the same evolutionary process. It could be some of these foundational constructs that we take from what we have today, and which could eventually end up as those. But because of some of the early gratification that people have gotten so used to in the land of Web 3, and particularly in crypto land, I feel like there is a rush to figure out what that is. But I think things are going to sort of take its own cycles to actually get there. So I'm excited to see what that actually is going to look like. Yeah, it's an exciting time. And what exactly is DeFi on Bitcoin? What does that mean? And what are the advantages? So DeFi on Bitcoin is, I believe it's a term that people use in very different ways. So one, one, you have Bitcoin, which is a non-tiering, complete programming system. And on top of that, people build Layer 2 solutions, which have a lot more extensive DeFi protocols, like decentralized exchanges or other financial tools on top of it. But I would like to focus more on what we we refer to DeFi on Bitcoin from a DeFi chain perspective, because that is one of the things that we built. So when we refer to DeFi on Bitcoin, we've taken all the characteristics that make Bitcoin what it is, the UTXO system, and how the overall non-tiering completeness of the language which provides, which bolsters its security in different ways. So we've taken all of these, preserved that, and then built the native decentralized protocols right into it, into the protocol itself. So that is what we call as DeFi on top of Bitcoin. So at the end of the day, you have Bitcoin on one side, which primarily is a vehicle that is purpose built for base foundations of finance. And then on the other hand, you have something like Ethereum, which is a global state machine, which can provide state X. And then out of that, you can end up with state Y. And yes, using something like Ethereum, you can recreate the outcomes of Bitcoin, but it's a vehicle that's built for innovation and so much more. And each have its own different purposes. So what DeFi on Bitcoin to people that I work with, and people who work on DeFi chain, it's usually about how do you find that sweet spot right in the middle where you utilize the characters to Bitcoin, but then just still have some of these native DeFi elements. So just iterating a little bit on top of that, on DeFi chain, you have a native decentralized exchange. So you have the decks that's going to be built right in. And then you have things like CDP collateralized debt possessions and things like that, which are built right into the chain itself. So that's usually what we refer to, or I personally like to refer to as DeFi on top of Bitcoin. Amazing. And I think this question from L is very interesting. Do you think Bitcoin is more reliable than Ethereum when you're considering decentralized finance and DeFi on Bitcoin versus Ethereum? Reliability, I would like to think both Bitcoin and Ethereum has demonstrated their reliability in both in different ways over the last decade. So again, reliability is a very subjective construct. So it depends on what outcome that you're looking to achieve in terms of that. But basic, for pretty much all basic financial utilities, I think both have in its own way achieved their own reliability. So as a general language, I probably, if I'm looking at, hey, is it reliable? I would say both are reliable. And then I would focus more on what is the specific set of outcomes that I'm looking for. Absolutely. Thank you. So far, we've gotten into how DeFi, Bitcoin, and Web 3 are uniquely connected. With that in mind, let's move into discussion of DeFi chain, a decentralized proof of stake, blockchain created as a hard fork of the Bitcoin network to enable advanced DeFi application. Now, if that sounds like a mouthful, don't worry, we actually have a short video which explains in simple terms what DeFi chain is and how it works. Let's play the video. Investing money can be complicated. Where to invest? How much to invest? Which investments to choose from? With DeFi chain, investing is simple, but what is DeFi chain? DeFi chain is a proof of stake blockchain that brings decentralized finance capabilities to Bitcoin. Why Bitcoin? Because it's the most secure blockchain in the world. Isn't that great? But it gets even better. DeFi chain opens up a whole world of investment opportunities. Starting with liquidity mining. You've got Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, or Litecoin in your portfolio. Great. Put it in a liquidity pool together with DFI, DeFi chain's native token, and earn rewards. We even support the coin with the cute dog, Doge, but a great investment portfolio consists of more than just cryptocurrencies. You need stocks, precious metals, and other things to make it crisis-proof. DeFi chain can do all of that, and it does it better than your traditional finance broker. Buying assets and just waiting for them to increase in value is boring. Why not put them into liquidity mining and earn tons of rewards on top? Can't wait? Download the DeFi chain wallet and start earning now. Pristana, that was a great video. We just saw the video explaining what DeFi chain is. Can you explain the key takeaways from the video? What is the next level of understanding? So I think the video did a pretty wonderful job of actually explaining what it was. So just as a side note before you go more deeper into DeFi chain, I think this is one of the things that I'm excited about. The video is something that is purely being done by the community, people who have used it, and then who feel like, okay, this is something that we want to explain. The power of community there is quite incredible, and I think this is one of the aspects about decentralization. DeFi chain, that is one of our core goals, and we've been trying to decentralize as many parts of it and it's something that's built right into the ethos. So now coming to DeFi chain, I think the video did a pretty nice job of explaining the foundations of it. So as I should have, even before I started, I should have just let the video explain some of the aspects. And now utilizing some of these, just the core points of it, I would say, is DeFi chain, sitting right in the middle, having the native protocols of finance that's built with the Bitcoin security and some of the some of the flexibilities that Ethereum brings in. So we're providing a lot more that's coming in, but we'll dig in a little bit more into that. And so foundationally, it has a native dex that's built right in inside the chain, and then you also have a minting mechanism, and then based on that, how do you actually get tokens into asset forms in the blockchain? So mechanisms are all of that built right in. And at the end of the day, everything is a token and you're free to do what you want with it. Amazing. Let's go ahead and take a question from the audience. We have one here. What is DeFi chain doing different than other chains? Yeah, so there are multiple different things that we can get into. So one is having all of these protocols natively built right into the chain, which means that it's a part of the blockchain as long as the blockchain is sticking. Decentralized exchange is not going to go away. So on Ethereum land, for instance, just as a comparison metric, so let's say Uniswap is something that's getting changed or for whatever reason it stops, then you need to figure out how do I actually start? How do I actually swap the tokens that I have? In DeFi chain, since it's a part of the protocol itself, as long as the blockchain is sticking, it's going to continue to go on. And then two, how would all of these governed is that is a vibrant on-chain governance mechanism and a vibrant community that actually continues to govern all of that. So most of these are, there are about 12,000 masternodes at the moment. And so we're putting on them and then figuring out what the governance is. So on-chain governance is something that we are prioritizing and building more and more on that. So more of the aspects of the chain is something that's based purely on how the community actually wants to drive it. So I would say these are some of the things that are unique that exist now, but I am quite excited on where we're actually heading from here. So on one hand, since we are based on Bitcoin, what that means is we can potentially start, we are currently exploring, you will have direct connection into Ethereum on one side and a complete native compatibility with Bitcoin on the other side. And I don't think any chain currently that I know of, that's both of these at the exact same time. So you might have to do multiple hops to actually achieve that. But right now we're exploring connecting all aspects of the story. And that is one of our larger missions now to be able to, it started out with connecting the old world or you know, the web two world with the web three world. And it could be thought of in different forms, like how do you connect assets in the real world to this, to the ones on the digital world. And then now you could also, we also want to start figuring out how can we actually connect these worlds to the Bitcoin world and the Ethereum world together. So I'd say these are some of the places that we have deferred from many other chains. And that's, that's a journey that we are continually exploring the community on. Awesome. Now, Prasanna, DeFi chain is built on Bitcoin Core, allowing easy and quick integrations with Bitcoin backed exchanges and applications. But we all know that one of Bitcoin's biggest issues is speed. So how are you tackling the DeFi problems of governance, security and state scalability? Thank you for that question. So when we early on folk away from Bitcoin, the proof of consensus mechanism, the consensus mechanism is something that we switched over from proof of work to proof of stake. And with that, a lot of the variables where Bitcoin is constrained to not apply to DeFi chain anymore. So in DeFi chain land, in Bitcoin, you have a 10 minute settlement in DeFi chain. Currently, it's 30s, it's about roughly about 30 seconds. But that is something that, you know, we are exploring with EVM, some of these variables might change and become even faster. And so like in terms of security, we retain Bitcoin security, but now we also additionally anchor back to Bitcoin as well. So in a way, you also, the Bitcoin 10 minute settlement ensures that, you know, you kind of push in the state of DeFi chain in those 10 minutes, as well as you have a much faster chain that's going about regardless of that. So I think we sort of combine all of the best of both worlds. And that's always been our largest story. How can we utilize these existing mechanisms, but then still, you know, connect them all and provide a better use of use for our users. And in terms of the last point, I believe governance, governance is something that I just touched on and where, you know, on chain governance is a continuously evolving story right now. And a huge part of that is going to be released along with the next update end of the year as well. Nice. Now you mentioned proof of stake. I'm curious, can you explain why you've built a proof of stake blockchain on top of Bitcoin, which is proof of work? Right. So proof of work is it was the whole of the Web 3 aspect to that ownership was started out with a proof of work mechanism. Satoshi consensus is one of the most battle tested consensus of the moment. However, that was built with that, you know, it was the very early conception of it. And I think Ethereum is a very great example where it started out with the exact same thing. And then now, you know, we had that we just had the merge where everything is moved to proof of stake. So proof of stake was always put in that experimental box. But I would go to go and say that, you know, it's no longer is just that experimental. And now with Ethereum are completely onboarding on proof of stake. It is, it is an evolving story. And now we're beginning, we as a society, I think I understand what the limitations of proof of stake is. And it is not something that like, sure, there's always going to be again proof of work, you have different compromises that you make. But here, energy efficiency is an easy win. And some of most of the problems that you're you are actually setting out to solve, you can solve it in a pretty much the same manner. Amazing. Well, thank you for that. Let's check in with the audience. Just want to remind everyone, please send us your questions in the chat box. Again, this is an interactive interview. So please send us your questions and we'll ask persona to answer them directly. Let's see. We have one from Marcus, just curious, how would users be rewarded in Web three, if you might be able to go into that completely different than the subject we've been talking about? But how would users be rewarded in Web three? Was that a question? Okay. So that's a very broad question. So I there are several contexts in which we can take them. But there is since this, there is something specific that I probably can share that's going on in the defy chain land, which is we defy chain community plus cake defy ventures had combined announced $100 million fund for people who are actually building in the web three space on defy chain, but the introduction of EVM. So, you know, all of the existing applications that you have on EVM, if you are a smart contract developer, or a programmer, you know, who wants to take advantage of that and actually build some of the applications on defy chain. So there's a straightforward path with with not just rewards based on financial instruments, but on the projects and the applications that you can actually build on top. So this, again, there's going to be a launchpad for it. There's going to be accelerators. There's going to be hackathons. There's a large community around. So I think that'd be a starting point where you can start looking at and then figure out, you know, what kind of rewards that you're actually looking for. Amazing. And, you know, what are some of the decentralized assets on defy chain now that we're talking about rewards and how can they be used in the defy chain ecosystem? So the assets, as we like to call it on the defy chain land is tokenized representations of real world assets. This is for about the last one year, the community has been repeatedly every month they vote on what are the assets that they would actually like to see on defy chain. And as long as there are Oracle mechanisms to support it, and as long as there are live oracles and feeds that are there over the last year, things have been continuously added. And so there's all forms of assets, including, you know, some markets, including some representations of commodities. So the variety of different things that you can actually take a look at and see what it interests you. And there is also, again, if you find that, you know, there is an asset that you want to bring on board, you can always, you know, work with the community. And as long as enough people vote for it, that is something that that's one of the core missions of defy chain to be able to enable all of these. And at its more basic form, every asset is minted using a collateralized debt position system that was that was actually pioneered by maker Dow. And we have a very similar system that interoperates natively with defy chain. And it's a part of the protocol itself. So most of them are over collateralized asset. And for each for actually meeting each asset, what is what are the set of collaterals, all of that are determined by the on chain governance. Hopefully that helps. In somewhat setting the stage on that. Of course, no, certainly. That's definitely very helpful. We have a question here from the audience. How does web, how does web 3 deal with security as it applies to Bitcoin? How does web 3 relate to security? Was that a question? Could you repeat? The question from our audience member is how does web deal with security as it applies to Bitcoin? I am assuming that they mean web 3. Right. So security in web 3, I think security is the very underpinning of most of the things that we do in web 3. Bitcoin, the continuous evolutions in what kind of crypto technologies that are being used. So in terms of defy chain, we continue to follow Bitcoin and make sure that all of those updates are something that we stream back into defy chain as well. But in a general context, in terms of security, in pretty much all of the common blockchains that we are used to or hearing about, security is always at its core. But one of the interesting aspects of the question that I would like to touch on is, if you compare it to the traditional web 2 land, usually, again, you have companies with massive war chests and security teams to ensure that all of the security aspects are as they should be or they are at least trying to be, because security is not a static story. It's a constantly evolving story. And so you have all of these massive war chests to ensure that these teams are about them. But in the web 3 land, all of them actually happen in public, in the open. So this also, unfortunately, at times creates this perception that web 3 security may be not as much as web 2, but it's usually the opposite. Web 3, it just has a lot more visibility into everything that's going on because by the inherent nature of it, everything is public. And usually community deals with all of them as they happen. And when some things usually go wrong, that's when you have complete visibility into what's going on and people are solving it as they go. But usually in web 2 land, all of it is hidden behind the scenes in backdoors. People just don't see it. But here, so, but because of the way that it continues to happen, now you have some of the chains which are, chains with good communities which are responding to it again and again in a prompt manner and making sure transparency and security is something that's where these teams are approachable. Usually those are the chains that are moving ahead in a manner of speaking. So long story short, I think web 3 security is at the very core of it. Of course. Now, Prasanna, you're about to launch DeFi meta chain, a side chain of DeFi chain that brings full web 3 and EVM compatibility to DeFi chain. Can you please tell us a bit more about that and what does that mean in the context of DeFi on Bitcoin? Sure. So, so far DeFi chain has always been about Bitcoin keeping the characteristics of Bitcoin and then integrating all of these native financial tools, the basic constructs into that. Now, what the DeFi meta chain story is about connecting all of this that we have right into the EVM world because EVM is something that everybody in the web 3 space is familiar about and lots of applications are built on it. So bridging that gap allows people to actually utilize all of these tools that they already know and have used and bring over many of those applications right on to DeFi chain and also use all of these native constructs in their smart contracts in whichever manner they choose to. So that's the basic element of EVM. And now starting explorations on the other side, which I just mentioned a little bit back about Taro and getting into the Bitcoin native land of things about how you can utilize the Lightning network. So then having that EVM also lets you dig so much deeper into the Bitcoin land, which I think is going to be quite unique and connecting both of those worlds together. Amazing. And I know we've gotten a lot of questions from our audience regarding the future of DeFi chain. How do you see the future of DeFi chain and what gets you really excited? So DeFi chain, our roadmap has always had quite a lot of things. So one of the, this Q4, one of our major goals where to bring more of the on-chain governance aspects and put it for that on a much higher step along with DeFi meta chain, which is the EVM that is again scheduled to be launched a little bit later this year. So both of these have been the main Q4 goals at the moment. And then next year is going to be building on both of these, which is on-chain governance as well as meta chain. Beyond that, on-chain governance, we are just beginning, we just started on it. And I think that's going to evolve quite significantly as to what elements, because it's always about once you have all of these tools, now how do you evolve those tools along with the community becomes the next question. Being fluid enough to continue to evolve. And I think that's where the on-chain governance is the most powerful tool to be able to do that in the right way in a decentralized world. So all focus has been on that. And a little bit later towards that, again, experimenting with how can we go deeper into Bitcoin ecosystem. And there are other potential aspects in the roadmap as well. You're free to have a look at the repo. Everything happens in open source land. But so there are other aspects where we want to explore, but we may or may not have the resources too, which is going to be today. Most of these network upgrades happen through hot forks. So we want to move to a more forkless nature. So there's been work that's been going on there. There's been experiments that's going on there. So there are quite a lot of exciting things under the hood. But at the end of the day, it is going to be, these are my opinions on what are some of the things that we might have to take. But it's going to be interesting to see what the community thinks, especially after MetaChain, which is going to bring a whole world of applications in there. So that's going to create its own cycles of things. So I'm pretty excited about that. Amazing. And as we wrap up, can you just any final words, anything that you want to leave the audience with or any special sneak peeks into the 2023 roadmap and what we can see, what we can expect to see from DeFiChain besides DeFi MetaChain in the near future? I would actually love to throw that back out to the community because there is going to be a launchpad for a lot of innovative applications. So I'm very much excited to see which direction the community wants to take all of this forward and what DeFiChain actually has in store for the next year. Awesome. Well, Pristana, thank you so much for connecting with us today. Looks like 2023 will be a very exciting year for DeFiChain. Before we sign off, I'm sure that the audience would like to know how they can get in touch with you or how they can reach out to the team if they have any additional questions regarding DeFiChain or DeFi MetaChain. Can you share how they can get in touch with you or the DeFiChain team? Yeah. So all of the work happens in open source lands. So GitHub, DeFiChain, organizations. So please feel free to interact with the team there. A good number of our team are active on Twitter and some of the other social media as well. Feel free to reach out any of there. But usually GitHub is the place to start. Amazing. Well, Pristana, it's been a real pleasure. I just want to say thank you again for joining us today for the AMA and thank you to our audience for being interactive and sending along questions. I also want to remind everyone to please subscribe to Cointelegraph YouTube channel as we do AMAs like this quite frequently. Thanks again, Pristana, and thanks again to our audience. We'll see you next time.