 Hello, good morning. I'm here today with Marique from Nier Protocol. Marique, would you like to introduce yourself to our viewers? Sure. Hi, so I'm Marique Flamon. I'm the CEO of the Nier Foundation, which, as you've mentioned, looks after the Nier Protocol. Fantastic. Great. So, I mean, we're here today in La Bourse, which is formerly the French stock exchange, and you yourself come from a TradFi background. Could you perhaps talk to us a little bit today about the trend that you're seeing in more and more traditional finance TradFi people coming over into the cryptocurrency sector? I think, you know, I think it's not just TradFi, actually. It's an entire Web2 movement that's actually coming to Web3. And to be told, we need so much talent, right? Because in crypto and blockchain, what you've seen so far is actually a lot of people who are very, very core developers, building products and so on and so forth. But actually for products to be successful, you need a whole array of people. You need lawyers, you need operations, you need go-to-market, you need marketing and so on and so forth. And you need, actually, especially if you want to work in DeFi or sectors like that, it's very helpful to have TradFi experience, right? So, I'm seeing a lot of talent come from, let's say, a more traditional world into Web3. That's very welcome and we need more. Fantastic. Yeah, I know. And so, Nia has had an incredibly busy 2021-2022. Would you be able to perhaps talk us through your priorities for this year and perhaps some accomplishments over the past, what, four or five months of 2022? Yeah, so our long-term goal is to think through how can we have billions of users actually being on the Nia protocol, whether they know it or they don't, right? Because ultimately, the Nia protocol is an underlying technology and as a user, you shouldn't have to worry what technology you're on. To do that, especially from a foundation perspective, we have three large objectives. Number one is how can we help raise awareness, not just of Nia, but also just of the space in general, Web3, OpenWeb, what does it mean, back to talent, right? How can we actually help attract more talents? Within raising awareness, we're also extremely focused on how can we help have real use cases that actually are going to enable that large on-ramp of people who come from Web2. So for example, yesterday we announced a partnership with Sweatcoin, which is an app, you walk, you actually get Sweatpoints and now they are choosing Nia to be their protocol for moving that to crypto. So things like that are part of what the foundation does. The second mandate and our objective for this year is actually how can we support builders on Nia? And we have a very large grant program, so we can give small grants, larger grants, grants that are focused, for example, for DeFi or certain regions, so that's how we can help support builders. And the last part is actually governance and regulation, right? We are only in a space that moves very quickly. How, as a foundation, can we help spare head that for the ecosystem? Okay, you said something very interesting that allowing users to use Nia, whether they know it or they don't. What do you mean by that? Could you perhaps give us some examples of where that's happened to date? Yeah, well, I mean, today, you know, when you send an email, do you know that it's on an HTTP or SMTP? You don't know that, right? And so I think what we observe most of the time is that, especially in the crypto space, we're still very much in the technicalities of it, right? Like it's this building block and that and so on. But it's not that user-friendly or the UX is not fully seamless. And what we believe in is actually the technology needs to solve real end user problems. And so how can we build some of those cases where ultimately it's just great tech that is enabling you to do something that otherwise you couldn't do. Sure. I mean, as you mentioned, that example of an email, how far out are we from when we will suddenly realize, okay, I'm using crypto without using it. I'm using Nia without using it. I think we're actually getting closer and closer, right? For example, examples such as Sweatcoin are really interesting because the app today perfectly works in a Web2 world without any crypto in it at all, right? So the idea is like, okay, now if you power that with crypto, it shouldn't change fundamentally what's happening, but actually it's doing things that can be more seamless and can empower more use cases. Similarly, we're starting to see and look at DAOs. I think DAOs are fascinating, but the ultimate holy grail of DAOs is that you can participate and be in an ecosystem and take decisions without having to worry too much about the intricacies of the technology that you're leveraging. Okay, got it, got it. So Nia is split between California and Switzerland, as in, you know, at first it was born, correct me if I'm wrong, by the way. And we're seeing more and more cryptocurrency projects and Web3 developments take place in Switzerland, but obviously with this entry point into the EU. However, the EU has recently made it quite difficult with the new KYC regulations. How would you describe or how would you evaluate the current operating environment within Europe at the moment? Yeah, so a couple of things there. So we're extremely decentralized actually as a team. So yes, you're right. The protocol and the founding team started from San Francisco. Today we are actually from all over the US, from all over Europe. We have quite a large operation in Portugal because a lot of the teams were actually based in Ukraine, have now relocated. We have teams also in Asia. We basically were extremely decentralized as most people are in the space. I think the point you mentioned, it's really interesting to actually look at the regulatory landscape and the movements that are happening there. Because, you know, a couple of months ago, I'm not sure we would have been so positive about the take that was taken by the US towards the landscape of crypto. And actually it's starting to be more positive and you look at Europe. And I think every week we are seeing new things that are coming out almost of nowhere and that actually could be threatening for the entire ecosystem. And I think that's something to watch out for because the talent in this industry is extremely fluid. So the talent will go where things are enabled and where things are possible. And I think also from a European perspective and we're trying to help also spare head that but we need to be more coordinated in having a voice for the industry and ultimately coming together with regulators because the intention of regulation are absolutely the right one, protects consumers and product businesses and the intention of the space are the same one. So there is a middle ground, there is a two-sided education that can happen there. Very good. You mentioned regulation there. What would you say are the hurdles or things that you have to navigate on a daily basis within the industry? Well, I think within the industry if you look at where you employ people, employment law, it can be also sometimes, it varies a lot across for example, across Europe, across different places. I think that's definitely one. I think regulation, I think adoption from a market perspective it's really interesting to think that all of us are trying to bring models that are very global and yet it's very local. Like you come here to Paris, you can meet the Paris community. It's actually quite tight, needs very strong community but you go to another place in a different community. So I'm actually fascinated by that, I don't need to have very local footprints to actually be a very global player. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, looking forward to your vision for the sector, what are you most excited about? What is it that really inspires you in the space? I'm personally extremely inspired by DAO. I've been watching the trend over the last few years and even before when I was in Tratfy the ways of working are fundamentally changing. The creative economy, the passion economy, the way we live our lives is just completely shifting and the 9 to 5 being in one location, that's just something that's not here to stay. If you look even like how we're motivated to do things today, how the next generation want to work where they want to work from and so on and so forth. So DAO I think are so powerful to reinvent how we participate into projects that matter to us and I think we're just at the beginning of that but that's definitely the area I'm looking at and very excited about. Any interesting examples or use cases for DAOs that you'd like to share today? Yeah, definitely. Thanks for asking. So we've recently announced that we are working with Cell GP which is a sailing competition that's been spearheaded by Larry Ellison and we are basically the league is enabling a DAO to buy a team which is the first in sports history like having a professional team that's going to be enabled to be acted by a DAO. So I think that's really interesting. Another example because it's also quite close to our heart is we've launched Unshamed Fund which is a DAO for raising funds for Ukraine which has been extremely successful I mean it's been beautiful to see the amount of capital that flew in that super fast and that was therefore enabled to be unlocked very fast for local help. Yeah absolutely and speaking of capital we're here in a form of institutional investment style building would you say that institutional investment or interest at least is here and is it here to stay? Oh 100% it's here. We are seeing a very strong appetite from institutional investors to understand the space to understand where they can participate and here again regulation is going to play a very big role right because a lot of companies within the space can be actually token based and I think being able to actually understand something that's token based is not given in every market so for example if you take the example because we're here in France it's actually quite difficult for funds to be able to accept that. Other markets make that more easy. So I think institutional funds are trying to find what are the models where they can see something they recognize which might be more equity based and how they can actually start participating. Institutional so we're seeing a lot of web 2 companies wanting to get into a great example of that but like many many others are thinking through oh my god what does this mean I have a hotel business what does this mean for me right? So all those questions are starting to arise. Fantastic I feel like I could ask you any question related to the industry you definitely know your stuff is there anything else you'd like to share today or anything that's particularly top of mind while you're in Paris? No but I think thanks for having me I think it's great. I think it's maybe the last point would be that the local footprint that we can see here is actually and I may be closing with what you said we are in a very traditional building but you can sense that innovation is actually pushing the boundaries of what the traditional building will be going forward. For sure it does feel like we're at this sort of inflection point. Definitely. Thank you so much Marie. Thank you so much everyone and we look forward to speaking with you again soon.