 And I'm very excited to talk about DeFi with the industry leaders like you. So when we talk about DeFi, the evolution, we are talking about traditional finance going towards peer-to-peer. And then right now we are talking about ReFi or the regenerative finance. So let us hear from each of you on how the rise of DeFi and the context of your industry is changed. So myself Shashi, so I'm representing anterior here. So before we start discussing about DeFi, so let me just give a little introduction. DeFi comes with two words, one is decentralized and second is finance. Finance, anything, everything that we can think in the finance industry. So that is moved to the finance. And when we say D, D means decentralized. Decentralized means everything, it's a trustless application that moves to the smart contracts. So smart contract is nothing but a set of rules, set of conditions, set of algorithms that is automatically being executed without involving of anybody, right? So and smart contract is moving to the second layer, that is fractionalizing of the assets. So when we say fractionalizing of the assets, so any asset that be at infrastructure level, be at any commodity, anything that can be fractionalized. And third step that is coming to that, it reduces the gap between demand and supply. So when it's reducing that gap between demand and supply, so it's coming with a better price discovery. So everything when I was discussing around the table with everybody, so everybody's talking it's a boring lending, it's yield finance, these things only. But it's actually meant for getting the better price discovery. Wherein we will be moving from monolithic market to a perfect market, right? So wherein the economy will grow. So this is how the DeFi system is getting grown. Absolutely, yeah. So even the ownership and direct peer to peer, when you remove that intermediary, so there's more trust in the system. So let's go to Vikram. You have a very interesting background on entertainment and media. I think you have worked with Disney, Discovery, and now with Eros. So can you explain your industry's background and how DeFi sits on it? So it's pretty interesting in terms of how various industries evolve and how DeFi applications are going to play a key role. That I'm going to zoom into media and entertainment and content ecosystem. From my perspective, DeFi applications will only accelerate the process where it is required to really in this universe, to drive equitable distribution of value creation. It is really going to be important in terms of how we use DeFi applications to trigger and disrupt industries where power will actually move back to 99% of the population from 1% of the population. This will lead from a DeFi application perspective to new incentive structures for the users, new incentive structures for the creators, new monetization structures for the creators, getting fans and creators closer and actually build new models where all the middlemen will kind of eventually get eliminated. And blockchain will be the foundation where transparency, data privacy, and really create a situation where you have everyone who's putting in efforts get back their value creation. So content will really get disrupted at the back of blockchain. And AI is actually a major catalyst here. When you look at the content ecosystem, it will give wings to the creator to say that, hey, I've got video content. Can I create video to video to give more power, more wings? It could go on social. It could actually have a narrative from a user participation where you end the story differentially. And that, again, is provided by the creator because from video, you can convert video to image. And the user can actually create a differential storytelling by just adding text, using images, and create a different version of the video. But the epicenter of all this is gonna be IP. Today, the IP ownership is not sitting with the creator. For example, if you're a music artist, it is sitting with the music label. They are making money. That's the 1% population. Yes. It'll move back to the fans and the creators. So what about you? How does your DeFi sit on your industry, and how does it help? Well, talking about DeFi, we are building a futures trading platform. Not like decentralized platforms like FTX or other centralized platforms. So the key point of DeFi, as you said, DeFi must be decentralized, permissionless, trustless. So if we are building, I'm sure there are lots of other features. But for the trading platform, it must be trustless. So in the future, we are seeing the product shift where people don't want to actually deposit their tokens in a particular platform. Just in case that they go bust, and we can't actually get our tokens back. And in that case, we are trusting the founders of the platform. But for a trading platform like us, we are building it so that people don't need to trust me. People don't need to trust my team. We go to technical audits, like three of them, to make sure that it's trustless, it's permissionless. And that is the meaning of DeFi. And on top of that, it must be simple as well. The simplicity is what people in this industry, like our builders, like us, don't put much of the focus on. So we have time, right? The market is like this, we don't need to actually be in a hurry. So it's better to actually make the platform simpler, remove the entry barrier for people who want to actually get into DeFi. I believe that lots of you guys are crypto traders. But then a few people actually go to decentralized platforms. So that's the context. Absolutely. So the trust or the consensus happens to the smart contracts. And so that is the main context of DeFi. There is no intermediaries who is verifying it. So in my case, I work for DTCC and we are transforming the entire Wall Street using blockchain. So it is like, we are taking that intermediary out of that transaction. And peers, the brokers, or the accounts like Citibank or Wells Fargo, they go directly between those two parties. It's a peer-to-peer DeFi system there. So it's all about distributed ledger, right? All the nodes who are participating will have the consistent information there. So that's the main context of DeFi, how do you have a trustless peer-to-peer protocol? So what about you? Can you explain your context for the industry? Am I audible? Hi, I'm Swapnil. I'm the founder of Neural, a layer one blockchain focused on real world applications. One of the areas we're focusing particularly sharply on is financial inclusion, bringing credit, insurance, and other financial services to the people left out by conventional banks, insurers, and the likes. Now, our journey in DeFi started with a little bit of a maximalist position. I remember in 2020, I had a slide in a PPT which said, banks will become redundant in 10 years. And mind you, the technology for that exists. Especially in the blockchain-enabled trust infrastructure, you can actually make banks redundant in 10 years. But the problem isn't about technology. Problem is about the transition. And the regulatory comfort along the way. So we've been trying to get farmers to have better access to credit, lesser rates, and better LTVs, and so on. And we realized that we could actually get a bunch of people to lend to them instead of banks. And that can become a competitive market, reducing their rates, and so on. But if you, the technology for that, as I said, exists. But if you do that, you're breaking almost like a dozen laws, whether in India, Mexico, US, wherever. Now how do we go from here to the North Star where banks are redundant? And financial inclusion is not even a buzzword because everybody's included. So that path for us is essentially like saying that banks did not go to internet banking when internet first came about. We went through websites. The banks first had websites, talked about the products on the site, and they felt comfortable with it. Then they went to internet banking. Likewise, for DeFi 2, for me, actually it's not more technologically advanced. It's actually technologically a little bit less than DeFi 1. But it is regulatory more savvy. So that's what we're working on right now. Thank you so much, sir. And first of all, thank you so much for having me. And congratulations to everyone who's building path-breaking products in this space. And thank you so much for taking out the time to attend this. You guys are the people who are building Web 3, whether you're curious about it, passively engaging in it or actively engaging in it. Decentralization is about all of us working together. And just kind of segueing off the point that sir was talking about earlier. One of the reasons why adoption was becoming challenging is the current incentive economic structures which have been built around solving for inefficiencies in the financial market are so strong today, trying to unroot them by just showing technology as a beneficiary, as a beneficial transition towards financial utopia is just not enough. You need to be able to align everyone's economic incentives towards that. You need to be able to align regulation towards that. And we at Ruba Finance truly believe that it's not about just disintermediation, but it's also about optimization of processes. Ma'am over here works for DTCC. So DTCC is actually working on integrating into the blockchain. So disintermediation of clearing corporations isn't necessarily happening. But can you optimize their processes? Can you bring down settlement clearing times down to zero? We believe that the technology like sir pointed out is there for that. And we need to take along all of the participants. So that because DeFi is currently changing that very economic incentive structures that traditional finance operates on. So if you want to be a part of this new future, you need to find a place where you fit in and optimize those services. Otherwise the technology will make you redundant. And that's what we're seeing happening. And that's why a lot of institutions are actually talking to us about tokenization and how a full stack tokenization could actually help them in aiding that solution. Because we do the valuation, the custody, the tokenization and the trade. And we believe that's where the power will come integrating real world assets into DeFi and that is essentially what we see as DeFi 2.0. Not what happened with Olympus and the bonding, but this is the new DeFi 2.0 where real world assets will provide a stable collateral and stable fuel to the future of decentralized finance. That's why we at least stand today. Hi everyone, good morning. So DeFi is the real and the in crypto actually. If you want to generate pure yield, if you want to make profit, then you can directly come to DeFi applications you can use and you can make profit. Even DeFi is one of the best use case in the crypto currently. Because there are like multiple protocols who are earning money actually. There are BioFi, he's making $100 million per year. There are many other protocols. Even you can apply real world strategies in the DeFi. You can calculate price per sales ratio and many more things. You can give a valuation to a protocol. You can calculate the valuation on the basis of transaction fee and revenue. So DeFi protocol are making actually real revenue, right? So what is basically DeFi in the simple term? We are connecting the whole world. Like you assume money market in India, right? Money market for the whole world, just think about it. So using DeFi, we are trying to connecting the whole world. Like if you want to borrow some funds in the midnight, right? You can just go to the Aave then you can borrow. You don't need to go to the bank. Yeah, you don't need to bid for the queue. Yeah, you don't need a verification. You will have the credibility on that platform and you can get funds easily anytime anywhere across the globe, right? You can borrow if someone is in US. You can borrow just within minutes, right? So that's the best use case. Like we are like shifting from the currently financial system to DeFi. It will take time. There are few challenges. Regulatory concerns are there and security concerns as well. And for security concerns, we are trying to do something. Like we are building tools to provide the security at CoalOdds. And many more things here to come. There are many applications where you can just start using the DeFi applications. Where you can actually find the gap in the DeFi market. Then you can also build the protocol. There are DeFi banks, curve. Like there is a curve war happening in the DeFi world. Like where people are multiple protocols. Like are trying to get the best yield from that protocol. There is a mechanism like CVX. Like there is FXS, they are fighting to each other to get the real world yield. To maximize the real world yield, YFI is also trying. There are many protocols like who are trying to give you the best yield. But I'm pointing out here, you can just build a protocol. What is CVS? These are just fund managers who are trying to maximize the yield, right? Using other protocols, like curve. So there are, I think, we are at a point where I think DeFi is getting momentum. And other problems also will be, I hope, will be solved with the time. Like majorly regulatory concern and security concern. Yeah, thank you. So what do you feel about moving towards ReFi, like more sustainable financial solutions? Like there is, like sustainable, in terms of sustainable solution, like there is multiple platform, like who are operating normally since five years. There is YFI, they are making real revenue. Last year revenue was $100 million, right? There is CVX, who is operating normally since two, three years. There is like curve, like this is a DeFi bank, right? First ReFi bank in the crypto. So there are many things like people are trying to solve. I think DeFi future is bright. We will connect the whole world one day, force you. Yes, what about you? Yeah, so before I get into talking about DeFi, I just want to maybe like ask a question from the audience. So how many of you actually ever traded on a decentralized exchange? So we can see like there's few hands over here. How many of you actually exchanged on a centralized exchange before? Here we can see more hands. How many of you have ever exchanged or traded crypto? You can still see there's a large majority of the room. Might be quite blur with what we're trying to say over here, what we're really talking about, right? So let me get to the concept of DeFi itself, right? So if you look into DeFi, it's not emergence of DeFi or new creation is actually re-emergence of DeFi. So before central banking got famous right after the world war, we always used to do decentralized financing. If you go down and see how financing used to work across history from the Chettiar systems, from how farmers used to get money, how families used to make money, how loan system used to work, it always used to be decentralized. We used to call it more kind of social financing, right? Community-based financing. So it is kind of a re-emergence of that same concept of financing by using new technologies because we can do that now. Because when you talk about centralized financing, put a computer, put a server, put everybody's accounts there, you can make financing work, right? And you can control the money, you can control and regulate it. But when you talk about decentralized financing, thousands of people are giving loans to each other, how do you regulate it? How do you govern it, right? When you talk about decentralized financing, is decentralized governance or financing, right? It's not just the technology that is decentralized, the governance is decentralized, community-based, incentive-based and protected with the technology that secures it, blockchain at the back, right? So you can trust that the technology will do its part and you can just do the use case a little bit. So you mean like the trust is through smart contracts and the governance is through DAOs or things like that? So I mean, in this case today, the concepts are all reliant on smart contracts, but it's actually way more than just having a smart contract. You can build DeFi directly into a chain, you can have a DeFi chain itself, right? The most important thing in having a technology that secures it, it might be a hash graph, it might be a blockchain, it might be any kind of DLT solution. As long as there's enough amount of consensus, there's enough amount of trust, there's enough amount of technology to back it and secure it, DeFi will work in it, right? So coming to this concept here, today when we look into DeFi, I actually, to give you a bit of context, I've spent 10 years in the space, right? I've seen it going in from the days where we were stealing crypto as a scam and you're like, scams used to be prevalent, right? To the days where we say that crypto is everything and you're like, you don't get on board with it and you're losing out, right? And I've seen bursts and booms across the years and then basically every time I'm getting more and more excited because I see more and more use cases forming out, right? So when you talk about DeFi today, you cannot see from the lens of how bankers are doing it, how enterprise are doing it today because that's where the inefficiencies are, right? That's where the problems are. We still have billions of people unbank in the world because over the years, we can actually get rockets to the moon but we can't get bank accounts in Africa, right? We can get your internet messages across the world in seconds but I want to send money, it takes me days, right? So it shows you there's inefficiencies, there's challenges, there's problems and there is a new technology, there's a new way to pick it up and say, hey, can we actually look into this new technology, this new way or this new concept and maybe re-imagine finance, right? So when you look into, hey, Kai, I want to, I have problems, I want to send money from Malaysia to my developers here in India. It takes me three days and tons of documents. A lot of it is of course security reasons but then I also pay a hefty fees because I'd have to go through three banks or four banks just to get my money across. Can I actually use something like crypto and just transfer it, right? Get it in seconds, get it withdrawn in seconds, right? So those are use cases that will disrupt, those are use cases that will go far, those are use cases that will actually bring decentralized finance to mainstream, focus on solving challenges, right? Outside there, what are the problems of the farmers out there, what are the problems on the street, what are the problems of people, of what are the daily challenges and struggles and how can you use blockchain as a technology, DeFi as a technology to then solve those challenges, right? I think that's a mindset we gotta sit into and slowly kind of evolve in the Indian market as well. I think it's already happening quite a lot in the West and even if you look today in DeFi, it looks all just kind of a crypto money-making machine, but I think the fundamentals of the technology is quite rooted here in India. If you look into India in history, if you're looking from an outside route, although I have an Indian origin, I'm actually a Malaysian, I'm born from Malaysia, but I've seen the Indian history. You, India used to export its financing concept all the way in Southeast Asia. The financiers back in the day in Singapore used to be all the way from India, right? All those concepts used to be there, but I think it's just time for us to go back in history, look into those concepts and see how can we bring back for the benefits of the people with a new technology. That's it. That's great insight, you know, and I loved how you touched like unbanked people in Africa and we were talking about satellite and all that advanced technologies while we don't have the basic global needs which is not taken care of. Yeah, in addition to the same, you know, what he said like, you know, it's more over advanced version of the banking system. We are still, you know, kind of struggling with KYC, you know, AML, all these things. So it will be moving to KYT, know your transaction. Basically, it's not stick with like, you know, still we are struggling that, you know, we need to move, we need to get the KYC of individuals only then we can, if we want to move to DeFi, it's no more about KYC, you know, or any other AML stuff. It will be more on to the KYT. So more than the customers, it is more on the transaction. Yeah, there will be a tools already getting built, already R&D is getting done on to that tools, wherein you can get a fraud or information done from the transaction itself, like from where that transaction is started, where it will be going to end. There is, I think there is no need to move to, you know, on to KYC, AML stuff. It's more over in terms of DeFi, things will move to the KYT. Yeah. Know your transactions. Just let me add on to that. So I mean, like, we can see that these are the consents of today, right? That we need to know who are doing the transaction so we can actually verify and protect the ecosystem. So I mean, like, many people would not know, actually, that crypto has been used for, you know, like, of course, money laundering and terrorism financing across the world. But it's a small factor of it. If you look into where the real money is coming from is still the traditional base, because if you are a money launderer, you'll be stupid to use crypto because all your transactions will always be traced back, right? Just open up the blockchain, put your address, I can trace back all those transactions you did, which exchanges you hit, and where actually the money flew in. Just open up chain analysis, I get the whole mind map of your transactions and your habits, right? So, but it has been used for that, so there's a consents of today. I think what we need to make DeFi mainstream, right, to solve the challenges on the street, we need digital identities, right? If you look into, like, Adarkart, you know, like, there's like a good step forward. I mean, like, how can we actually make that better, right? How can we actually take up identities? You know, like, digitize them, have digital fingerprints, right, and you know, like, fingerprints of people's transactions, their history, and make it much simpler for people to get onboarded. So I do not want to go up and teach people how to install MetaMask, how to go up and do swaps, right? I wanna teach you, like, here you have an ID, click on this browser, two clicks, you are basically transacting. You wanna transfer money, two clicks away, you're transferring money. I don't wanna transfer more documents, right? You already know me, you're connected, basically I go to 10 different banks, they keep asking me the same document, right, for 10 different bank account. Why can't I just have one account, right, and I can just click two buttons and have a new bank account, right? So in this case, experience is something that I think DeFi can elevate, right? So today we have challenges, of course, I mean, we spoke about futures on DeFi, that's gonna be a challenge, right? Transaction speeds are not there, right? Smart contracts have challenges, enterprise adoption not really happening, right? So when you look into that and be honest, yes, we have a lot of challenges, but in challenges is where the opportunity lies, and I think that's where everybody should be looking at. Absolutely. Yeah, I just wanted to add, and you know, this may sound philosophical, but it's a fact, you know, DeFi applications actually need a marathon approach. If we keep sprinting, it's gonna end soon, and you're not gonna innovate further. So rightly mentioned, you know, it's new, we need to reinvent itself. So just imagine a simple scenario over here, just answer it to yourselves here, right? In the last one week, how many of you all opened and checked your equity portfolio if you have one? Then think about it, did you trade about it in the last one week? Now let's shift the focus and say, did you trade anything by yourself, anything from your mutual fund portfolio? Now, not just one week, let's talk about this for last 48 hours. Did you consume content, which was either short form, which was either mid form or long form? You guys have the answer to yourselves, but the fact of the matter is the consumer took time. Mutual fund took time globally and in this country to arrive at various campaigns which is run by a bunch of corporates. It's called Mutual Fund Sahihai in this country, right? And that's a separate association, body running it, mind you, today no mutual fund company can actually say, I'm right. And it comes with great data of our documents before it leaves with subject to terms and conditions. You don't understand, but you still invest, right? So the fact of the matter is now, let's come back to DeFi, the stage is ready. Stage is ready, let's not get impatient. If you watched your content in the last 48 hours, you actually consumed it, you know it much better than how to invest in an equity or a mutual fund. And if that's the case, if that's the case, the user can take a more measured decision in investing in a content ecosystem of the format that you watched for the next project that that content creator is creating. Whether it's short form, somebody's just kind of taking a selfie and talking to the camera, that person needs funding. Can build a small studio. And whom are they going to raise funding from? From their social media fans. What are the fans getting? The fans are getting good ROI and royalty every single year. That content makes money through the distributor. What is the creator getting? Something which they never get. They get money without any middleman. Most importantly, you are the creator. You get to keep your own IP. Otherwise you're just giving it up. So just coming back to the point, we all need to believe in marathons. Sprints are not going to be good enough. That's a great point. So I think we will go to the last question. What is the future of DeFi? And how can we make an impactful solution to the world using DeFi? So if we can all take 30 seconds to answer it? So real world assets coming on and plugging into DeFi is definitely one of the biggest catalysts that we're going to see. And an educated institutional user or an educated retail user is the next generation of adoption that we see coming. Where people understand how the yield actually functions because if you don't know where the yield in DeFi is coming from, you are the yield. So that's just for posterity's sake over here because I'm sure all of the users here are power users in their own respect in DeFi. But yeah, do understand where the yield is coming from and we see real world assets being brought into DeFi in a safe, regulatory compliant manner through companies like Ruba, through companies like Neural, being supported by companies like Quill Audits, Anteer, and everyone on this panel for that matter. I would just add one thing that the path of adoption needs quick wins. And so for me, the quick wins are the two or three that stand out in a big way. One is registry of novel assets like carbon credits, music videos, content, IP, so brands. And that's a, it's like think of it as a DMAT for all of this. And we don't need to do an NSDL for it. We already can go to the decentralized version of it. Second is fraud reduction in lending. And that's a problem that banks face as well. So we can even serve them using blockchains saying you can avoid identity fraud, collateral mismanagement, and even checking land records, for example. And third is immediate settlement of rates, which can help even the current securities market, but also future securities market or future novel assets market. We don't need to keep any collateral or margin. And everything is settled immediately without counterparty risk. And that is feasible in a Web3 world. Absolutely. So no collateral and it increases the liquidity as well? Absolutely. Yeah. What about you? Well, making defy mainstream, making to get to broader users. First, they would need to be, they need simplicity. It needs to be a lot easier for users to actually enter the space. Second, they need the security as well. These days, we are not asking banks, even if we have the problem of the Silicon Valley banks, right? We are not asking banks like where our money go to. So we need to make sure that users trust what we are building. So we need to ensure the security, the audits, and that kind of thing. And the last thing would be the sustainability. We should build defy so that it's sustainable enough. We don't do inflating tokens. We don't give away tokens for more yield. We don't do that kind of thing. We need to make sure that the defy that we are building in the future, it would be more sustainable. The business model should be sensible. We are not giving away things for free anymore. And this is just to be real yield. So this is going to be to make sure that people are going to come to defy and trust defy and make defy more mainstream. Absolutely. Yeah, sustainable solutions and defy, moving towards defy is the way, yeah. So my concluding thoughts on that will be, I think today why defy works in crypto is because the groundwork in crypto is done. You can just open up a wallet and you can start trading. And you can just directly go on an exchange, swap it. If you have money, put it on to and earn some yield, and it works. But to make it mainstream, we need to do the groundwork. You need to go up and actually digitize identities, digitize platforms, digitize the financial markets, and then slowly start to onboard them into the defy ecosystem. And start working on use cases that are not there yet. So as I was talking about in the talk earlier, there's a lot of ways of doing financing that we do not use anymore from history, which actually was more effective in terms of making sure, correct financial inclusion. So if you just go back and start looking into these concepts everywhere from local Indian financing, Islamic financing, Huala systems, Chatira systems, there's actually quite a lot of good systems over there that actually can reemerge in defy. That's one. Number two, when looking into today, what are the challenges that has to be solved? One is, of course, transactions, gas pieces. Futures and options markets are not really there. Dep markets, we don't have depth market trading platforms among the crypto space. We need all of those. We need better liquidity management across platforms. We need better security to ensure that the smart contracts are properly audited. So the auditing companies in the state actually can do that. So I think that's the bell telling me to stop talking. And with that, I'll pass it back to you. Thank you. Do you want to add anything? Well, I think you rightly said, to move into the mainstream, I was just envisioning if we can have a stable coin backed by IANA. So we are the biggest country, biggest industry that is not in comparison to the US or any other country. I would say, if we can get a stable coin backed by IANA, and then on top of that, there is the regulations or Tao system that implemented this industry going to thrive. Great session, guys. Thank you so much for the insight.