Oranges on Geode Finance’s liquid staking for Avalanche and Ethereum

0:01i'm ashton addison from block west capital for investmentpitch media and the cryptocoin show and today we have on with us oranges co-founder of geode finance oranges welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time hey i ashan uh pleasure thank you for having me you're very welcome uh lots going on in the world of defy staking liquid staking um advancements being made to bring more

0:25people into financial inclusion in the world through this beautiful technology we have called cryptocurrency um your team is working on some great d5 initiatives as well with geode so let's just start by kicking off the conversation hearing a little bit about the solutions that your team is bringing into the finance world and then we'll dive into those

0:45details yeah sure so um yeah as you say you know this is a really interesting space and it's it's opening up finance to a lot of different people and that's kind of what we're looking to do as well so geode is is basically a um a white label liquid staking solution so we offer dows the ability to have their own staking service um branded themselves that they can then

1:08use for their users benefits to create new new products new yield generation services and then obviously they can take uh we give them a token like a the yield generating token that reflects the um base asset that's staked and then they can obviously go and use that within d5 and do other partnerships to to promote that token and get more utility for their service which will

1:29ultimately drive more tvl and get a nice little flywheel so so yeah we hope it's going to be quite popular um it's kind of like a b2b solution serving dowels okay very interesting let's break this down a little bit more um so with d5 obviously there's different blockchains that different apis as well and different ways that you can lock and stake your tokens

1:52what networks or what are the most popular assets that are working with geode right now so we're we're at the very beginning of our journey so we're looking to launch on the avalanche ecosystem first um obviously our plan is to be we will be a multi-chain protocol um but avalanches and our sites at the moment uh that's what we're working on um intently um and then ethereum obviously

2:20um is going to be on there and then any i mean in theory any proof of stake chain can benefit from geode so we can only do one at a time obviously um and we're going to be starting with avalanche because we see a good need there for users and for daos and they have a fully functioning proof of stake ecosystem there um and then i'm sure we'll be going on to ethereum and

2:45then and then the future will see which ones we go on to from there sounds great and when you mention dows at the beginning you know when i originally think of liquid staking i think of oh i'm just taking my personal funds and i'm going to stake them and i'm going to get some kind of asset in return but i'm guessing that daos have a lot of capital that the community has

3:06gathered up that's just sitting there and they would like to stake it but they also need to utilize it as well can you talk about how taos fit in and why you're targeting them yeah of course so i guess under proof of stake right the whole point is it you know by staking you're secure in the network and therefore if you have one or two providers um holding all of that staked asset

3:29providing a stake in service it's not really securing the network as well as we could be doing there's a lot of third-party risk there if something happens to one particular protocol one monopoly for example then then that chain could potentially be at risk or be compromised in some way so by providing dowels and the thing is dowels don't necessarily want to do liquid

3:51staking or it might just not be in their roadmap you know a a a loan protocol for example might not want to create its own staking solution it won't it's just not what they they're focusing on right but what we're doing by offering daos a solution which we've built you know there's no work there and to do we open up liquid staking for any dow to benefit from and the benefits are quite

4:18apparent not only from a security standpoint by diversifying the parties that validate the particular blockchain but also from a user standpoint and what i mean by that is if every dow i mean picture a world where every single dow has its own liquid staking solution so if we take avalanche as an example all avacs on avalanche can be yield generating

4:46by depositing it into a dow liquid staking solution and earning a yield which can then be used in their products so if i want to deposit or if i'm currently depositing avax in a loan protocol and borrowing usdc to farm i'm depositing vanilla avax and my utility is is basically buying this stable coin uh to then go do something else with it if i could

5:14deposit avo vax into a liquor staking solution which could then be used to borrow against then i'm in effect compounding my yield so i'm actually getting paid to borrow funds to then borrow stables to then make additional yields from that stable farm that'll then go into definitely that makes sense and i feel like it is a little bit of extra complexity to

5:37understand for regular users when they're getting a synthetic asset in return and they're able to use that in different places you know there's depending on what liquid staking platform you're depositing your assets into you may be getting a different asset in return that's synthetic now is geo working on their own synthetics or how would that work specifically on the

5:58first assets that will be deposited on geode so we we basically provide the solution to a particular partner so you'll be able to stake with that partner directly on there on their site or you could stake with geode ultimately goes through the same back end and mints the same token so from a user standpoint from a simplicity standpoint it should be quite

6:20good for the user because they want their favorite protocol that offers a liquid staking solution through us hopefully um and then they literally just go to the liquid staking section on their site deposit avax receive their their branded token derivative which they can then use within that protocols products as an additional to compound their yield

6:41as an additional yield um so it should be quite nice and simple but ultimately but i i guess there will ultimately be you know a lot of different staking derivatives in the market you know if every dow has their own liquid second solution of their own token there will be multiple tokens out there and i guess that could cause some confusion for the the newer users of d5

7:08but one thing we do look we are looking into doing is providing some kind of decks to allow people to trade between the different staking derivatives in our ecosystem which will avoid users having to unstake and then restake again you can just literally swap between the different tokens which which should be a nice bit of ux definitely yeah i'm excited for that and

7:31that sort of leads me more to think about the avax ecosystem i'm curious if there's any other reasoning behind uh using avalanche as the primary technology like i know that they have an evm compatible chain and i'm guessing that the fees are lower on ethereum is there any other rationale behind why avax first and then ethereum yeah so i guess so if we go to ethereum first so the

7:55merge is happening later this year um it hasn't got a fully fledged uh proof of stake ecosystem yet so if you stake on ethereum i mean withdrawals won't be enabled till 2023 so it's not a proper fully fledged liquid staking environment right now um and also if you know it's our first launch if any if anything goes wrong with any protocol any partner your funds

8:19are locked until 2023. um whereas with avalanche not only a fees cheaper which is good for the user um but it's the liquid staking is in its infancy over there like there's only only one provider really two providers there offering liquid staking withdrawals are enabled um and it is a relatively new d5 ecosystem as well so it's it's a great opportunity for us to

8:47go in and actually add value to a chain that could benefit from liquid staking when a while liquid staking is so young um and it's also a great um area for us to prove ourselves and to integrate with all these different protocols prove what you know what we're trying to do works and benefits everyone and then we can then move that over to other change like ethereum

9:12like phantom lightning whatever the case may be in the future yeah well said and speaking of integrations i did look through geode and i saw that you've already partnered with a few different platforms like yield yak and eden network can you talk about those partnerships and you know if you have a bunch in the works yeah so um i mean i can't say too much about

9:34certain partnerships right now that there will be announcements coming up but um basically yield are going to be our first launch partner they're going to be the first protocol to integrate our staking solution um our white labels taking solution and they will be received they will have their own staking derivative called the yy avax the yieldiac avax uh token um

9:55their plan is to obviously get that into into defy uh on avalanche and then eden network is our first node operator so they're going to basically map they're going to manage the validators they're going to manage the yield generation side of the of of liquid staking so which is quite important because you can offer liquid staking to dowse great but if they've got to maintain and

10:21manage a network of validators you know manage exit liquidity all this kind of stuff then that's a lot of work for them whereas by partnering with someone like eden we're actually providing the full package we're providing the infrastructure and the infrastructure so that they they've just got their solution there it is they can use it but we're also providing them with

10:42partnerships that allow for the main the maintenance of that solution to be dealt with and managed themselves so they don't have there's no no heavy lifting for the doubt very cool great to hear and and also i was reading that you know there's been some fundraising with you know as you guys are just launching right now there's also fundraising involved can

11:04you talk about uh the capital that you guys have raised and if there's any significant partners or you know what that capital is mainly gonna be uh contributed towards as you grow sure so um again like you know we will be making announcements soon so there's not too much i can i can disclose but what i would say is yeah we may we're raising uh you know multi-million dollar raise

11:27um we have deliberately chosen strategic partners to help us grow and to help us make our dream a reality i guess like any you can raise funds from anyone but you can't necessarily get the strategy and the contacts and the introductions and the advice um from everyone so we've been really careful in picking

11:54uh really high quality partners to to really give us the best possible um start um in our journey um and i guess in terms of what the funds are used for well it gives us it gives us a good runway gives us a great runway to to get started to build to grow um it also gives us you know if we if we need to provide liquidity to certain things we can do that as well so

12:21yeah it's an exciting time and there should be an announcement over the next couple of weeks hopefully with with a lot more information amazing yeah i'm looking forward to those announcements um alluding to some great things uh and you know with with that capital when you raise it as you mentioned you're near the beginning stages here just getting the first partners

12:41how quickly are you looking at ramping up to full production launch and having tons of partners pretty quick um you know d5 is all about momentum right so um we're hoping we're hoping to launch in april on avalanche uh that's the plan um obviously things can change dev you know dev timelines can change but that's the that's the goal at the moment um and

13:06then it's full steam ahead from there really to get as many dowels involved and to get the huawei vax token and other tokens into d5 and then then we've got our sites on ethereum i'd say amazing and looking a little bit more down the road say a year from now or two years that's a long time in d5 um how do you see geod continuing to be you know the leader in liquid staking and what is

13:34that going to take to get there so i mean to become the leader i guess you know that that's that's obviously the goal but um that's going to be quite a feat i think we've got to be multi-chain that's as simple as that it's a multi-chain world it's a proof-of-stake world and we need to be on multiple i mean in two years time we should be on you know multiple proof of state chains

14:01partnered with you know 50 plus dows across those across all different chains and i think we'll we'll know when we're successful when no one is using base assets other than to pay for transactions you know like if there's an el if you if you're lp on uni swap why are you using eth you should be using steak teeth for example very interesting you know

14:26and then when that in a proof-of-stake world base assets unless used for gas should be generating i think for the user so when that's happened you know that's one of our goals and uh when that's happened i'd say we've we've been successful like that perspective so for daos and for users that want to learn more about liquid staking and the white label solution that geode has what is

14:54the best way for them to learn more um so you can get twitter's really good so geode underscore finance our twitter handle um join our discord um our website geo.fi and then you can always get in touch with me as well i i tend to to post or my tms always open um i'm excited on twitter awesome thank you so much oranges for coming on the show i will leave those

15:20links as well in the description box below for the viewers all the best with everything liquid staking on geode and let's follow up in the near future brilliant thank you very much thanks for having me