Episode link:
https://www.citizencosmos.space/bojan

Episode name:
Bojan Peček, Mass Adoption, Stablecoins & Web3.

In this episode, Citizen Cosmos speaks to Bojan Peček, Operations Manager at Liquity. In this interview, they discuss how the current banking crisis and the state of traditional finance is driving adoption of Web3 and how it will hopefully lead to mass adoption. They also follow the journey of a freelancer and ponder as to why more people don't take this route. Bojan goes into detail about Liquity and why it is the best borrowing protocol in his eyes and what the future holds for the project. The age old debate around stablecoins continues in this episode as well. As always Citizen Cosmos poses some tough questions as the devil's advocate around education and the nature of money and it ends with everyone's favourite, The Blitz.

Citizen Cosmos
Good space time yall In this episode of The Citizen Cosmos podcast, I spoke with Bojan from Liquity an Ethereum based borrowing protocol managed by Smart Contract. We discussed the value of traditional education of Web 3 freelance and the catalysis for mass adoption and the points of failure on project. We also spoke about people as currency, future of Stablecoin, the security of Multisig and the structure of liquity versus other similar platforms.

Bojan
I think that Defi itself is not sufficiently interesting for the common person for us that financial systems actually help via their incompetence to push non trustless financial systems. Why are you building this? What problem is it solving? Who needs this? And if you can't answer that, then you shouldn't build a web 3 product they are providing defi and wider with reliable price sources, then they have I think a multisig 4 of 9 which can crash and burn all of defi.

Citizen Cosmos
Hi everyone welcome to a new episode of a Citizen Cosmos podcast. Today I have with me a guest from Liquity and Ethereum Project Bojan the Biz Dev. Hi, head of Operations, I should say as well.

Bojan
Hey, Serj Yeah, no worries. We're a small team and that we do a lot of different stuff.

Citizen Cosmos
How are you man, First of all,

Bojan
Thank you. Business as usual. Quite busy with the recent news and announcements and turmoil in the team, especially, but Good. Thank you. Yourself?

Citizen Cosmos
I'm good. It's nice. It's perfect time. And I was going to ask you about it. Time as well. For me, it's perfect. It's just the start of the second half of the day, so it's good. Before we get into all the turmoils of Ethereum and all the pains, you know, of of whatever it is there, because there is a lot, of course, in crypto.

Citizen Cosmos
So it's not an easy day any day I'm going to ask you to do a small intro for yourself, like tell us everything you think we should know about you. What are you currently working on specifically and anything else you would like to add for introduction about yourself?

Bojan
Cool. Yeah. As you already said, my name is Bojan I'm based in the south of European in Macedonian more precisely. And I am a freelancer as since over ten years by now. So I did all all kinds of jobs for the last almost two years signed with Liquity which is the borrowing protocol on Ethereum. And before that I did all kinds of VC and startup related gigs.

Bojan
I really love this type of work freelancing, being independent and really suits my needs. So would you like to hear anything else from my side.

Citizen Cosmos
You know, since since you already said an interesting topic, you said you're a freelancer for ten years and I've quit I'm trying to think I think it was seven or eight years ago, like corporates work. I was around 30 at the time and I'm I'm curious like a person like yourself, you know, Your Biz Dev, which is, in my opinion, one of the most busiest positions.

Citizen Cosmos
I would say, you know, maybe not demanding in terms of physical work rights, in terms of like you don't have to put in carry heavy things. But yeah, it's a demanding position and I'm curious, like you said, that it's been ten years for you now, you know, and yeah, I have of course he has some questions about your past work as well, about the VC experience, but in a bit.

Citizen Cosmos
But before that, like I'm interested, a lot of people today, especially with all the financial situation around the world, right. And trying to look for alternative ways of earning money, a lot of them turn to web3, but again, freelancing doesn't necessarily correlate with Web three. How is it been for you, the journey of ten years or being a freelancer?

Citizen Cosmos
Is it better in Web three being a freelancer than in Web two? Or is it the same? Is there no differences?

Bojan
In terms of Web three versus Web two? There is no difference. People value with work, and that's the same for Web tree and web two. How I started this was funny because I was in not such a good financial position and I somehow stumbled over Upwork, which is a big, probably the biggest freelancing website, and I just applied to some gig.

Bojan
It was 2 hours testing of a mobile app for my country. So I'm from Slovenia originally, so they needed some local. I applied, I got hired at that's that an app for 2 hours and I got paid. I remember that's still $22 for that, which was at that time probably four times my hourly rate. So that's also inflation for you there.

Bojan
So I thought, hmm, that thing actually works. And I started applying. I started out with customer support, jobs, various research jobs, and then just expanded on that. So because I was in my school years interested in all kinds of things, just not in finishing school, I don't have a university degree. So I had to improvise and I had to find my way around to how to make money.

Bojan
But everything worked out well in the end.

Citizen Cosmos
Interest and you mentioned uni degree and I can really relate to that. I'm the same and the only thing I was interested in school was not being there. I wasn't actually interested in finishing it. So that's a good one. And I'm curious, there's another topic that is kind of, you know, a lot of people point the finger at Web3.

Citizen Cosmos
As for a lot of the time you hear this stigma and I'm curious as to what your opinion on that. The people who say that Web3 isn't ready, you know, that's.

Bojan
It's not it's just.

Citizen Cosmos
A big speculation. And the you know, it's all a scam. You know, they say one of the reasons so that is because, well, the people who build web3 are are not educated, not not the good enough educated. And here is a question. But isn't it's kind of like a double stick thing because, I mean, a person who goes and again, this is like a devil's advocate kind of thing to say, but what's your opinion who goes and does an education degree in finances, right?

Citizen Cosmos
Or an economics? Isn't that kind of already a problem for them? Because if they have that information to go into Web 3 they already go with some prepositions and things that they wouldn't have if they didn't do the degree. So in a sense, I'm trying to say maybe not having that and not being exposed to that system, especially.

Citizen Cosmos
Right. Because that's what university gives you the most, is that systematic thinking, Is that a good or a bad thing in Web3? And should everybody who works in Web 3 go and do you know, economic degrees or that's that's not necessarily in your opinion?

Bojan
I think the most important thing to start working in any industry is being interested in that industry. So you have to have a passion for that. I don't think that we attract uneducated people or anything of that sorts or traditionally not educated but not having degrees, etc. I think it attracts a certain type of person in the either they are kind of libertarian, either they had some kind of lacking of experience with the financial system or live in an oppressive country either or They worked in Web 2, and and saw some innovative approaches which couldn't be done in Web 2 or in or in traditional finance.

Bojan
And there are dozens of other reasons and examples. Why would someone choose Web 3 over other industries in my experience when meeting people at events, at conferences, they are all very approachable, very nice, very good people. I get along with the vast majority of them, so I haven't had any bad personal experiences and I think more and more people would join.

Bojan
I mean, you see the people from Google or from the FANG companies are moving over into crypto. Some of them maybe have quick money, wishes or plans. Other are genuine, there will be more and more people coming into the space. And if I revert back a bit to the freelancing question because I haven't fully answered your question there, what I do think about often is, especially in Global South Country or first world countries, it's really very easy to get a freelance job on your computer.

Bojan
You can do very basic jobs like data entry or customer support, and there are probably three or four times what you earn, what you are in that country or even more. But I still see such a huge migration of young people from, for example, south of Europe into Germany and to Switzerland, into whatever, while they could live, in my opinion, better life at home, working on a computer.

Citizen Cosmos
I personally based in, well, you could say South Europe. I mean, it's an island, but it's a Portuguese island and not even that. I see a lot of young people moving to France and Germany for physical jobs and it's sometimes not a disappointment. I don't want to say that word because it's not the right word, but like it's bright people, you know, bright minds, bright young guys, girls that are doing what they're used to do for many years, other people.

Citizen Cosmos
And the thing is that they are a bit wary in Discovering. And this is I think again and talking about adoption or usage. Right. And I notice though that people it's very hard for me. For example, I've been based here for two to something years and especially this is kind of correlates with the growth of the project, our own project.

Citizen Cosmos
I mean, and at the time, you know, we'd been looking for we've been struggling to get local guys and girls to work for us because they prefer something physical and that they can touch with their hands.

Bojan
Yeah, I think it's also a question of a certain blueprint as to how you should work or where one can get money. I guess from South America, everyone wants to go to the States from Africa, everyone wants to go to Europe. Here in the Balkans, it's more to Germany. And they don't even allow the board to penetrate that.

Bojan
They can make money at home. Everyone is a scammer. And I don't know politically affiliated if you drive a good car or something. So it's a bit of a mind thing as well and we should try to change that. The thing also for the Romania for the benefit of the countries.

Citizen Cosmos
Absolutely. And this is there is a very good couple of points. I think you mentioned there, you know, that it reminds me of that experiment, you know, where they put five monkeys in a cage and put the lot with the bananas. Have you heard about that?

Bojan
I don't think so. Can you tell me?

Citizen Cosmos
So the scientist put I don't remember who it's done by. I don't remember what year it's done. But the idea is that you have a ladder with bananas and five monkeys. And every time a monkey goes up the ladder to get the bananas, the other monkeys get sprayed with really cold water. So essentially, every time a monkey goes up, the the monkeys beat up the monkey and then let him go up the ladder.

Citizen Cosmos
And then the scientist changed one of the monkeys, which of course, sort of the way it goes up for the bananas. But of course he gets beaten up and then he gets used to doing that. And then they change one by one, the other monkeys to the point of five. The original monkeys are changed and the five new monkeys have never been punished with cold water.

Citizen Cosmos
Yet because everybody was doing that, they are also doing that and they are still beating up the other monkeys that trying to climb up the ladder. And we are talking about, you know, people getting used to do what other people get been doing for years, not really understanding why. And this is like kind of bringing me, I guess, to more and your favorite topic and I guess one of my favorite topics, decentralized finance, right?

Citizen Cosmos
And why are we still stuck in a rut? But you know what? Let me go completely different. Wait, something for you. That is, I'm going to I'm going to go straight to the harsh question. Okay. Why Peg to the US dollar? Why are we still in cryptocurrency, in the Web3 world where our goal is to build One of our goals, I guess, is to build a different alternative financial system and not just an alternative financial system a lot more.

Citizen Cosmos
I'm not going to be loud right now, but I think we all understand that's what I'm talking about, at least. Why are we still pegging to fiat currencies? What is the idea behind that? What's the reason?

Bojan
Well, we are mostly pegging to the U.S. dollar because that is the global reserve currency and that is what people are use to value things in the fiat currency and they they most aspire or desire. We saw experiments with pegging to nothing with reflex or finance and they're array coin and we saw experiments with pegging to other currencies and they just lack direction.

Bojan
People are used to the dollar. People want the dollar. People understand things in the dollar. And for the time being it's going to be the dollar. It's pretty much it in my opinion.

Citizen Cosmos
Let me play devil's advocate since we just spoke about was herd mentality in and people want the US dollar but does that mean that that's the solution? I mean, let me ask you your opinion. What in your opinion gives value to a currency at all, not just today's dollar, but what would your personal interpretation be, not a book interpretation, but you know, what would this Bojan how does how do you see what gives any currency value?

Bojan
I mean, that's a bit of a monetary theory question, something that I'm not too strong in. I think a certain degree is just the belief in it. But the other thing is adoption. So if it can be easily used as a unit of exchange, where and how easily and but also some kind of backing, I mean, we don't have a gold standard or anything really backing to the dollar at least anymore, but there is the backing of the US government, the US military, the US financial complex and all of that together still make USD the strongest offering.

Citizen Cosmos
Do you think that things that you said like the US government, the military can be replaced in the in the digital form like infrastructure? I don't know. Smart contracts, whatever.

Bojan
If there is a critical mass reached, then yes.

Citizen Cosmos
But that is what is the point of this critical mass. Sorry to interrupt you. I don't know.

Bojan
But we are still far from it. In my opinion. I dont know where is the critical mass. I guess we need to see a lot of financial turmoil, a lot more than than we saw now. I mean, there are different currents pulling the monetary system, not only crypto, there is the the BRICS countries which supposedly want to do a commodity backed currency and I don't know if that's true, but there are some papers floating around.

Bojan
There are probably others which want to do something, I don't know. Gold backed or cryptos which want to do something with gold, but so far that is still far from challenging the dollar status and it won't be easily easy to execute I mean the U.S wont just stand by and get steamrolled.

Citizen Cosmos
I'm not sure that's something that I mean, as much as that's one of my dreams going to be honest, but I don't think it's possible within the next. Yeah, I agree with you. I'm not. But let me You mentioned adoption several times and I recently, you know, I was using like everybody I guess mid journey and chatgpt and I'm like, I don't know, not, not everybody, but I guess a lot of people have want to use it and I'm one of them also.

Citizen Cosmos
And I noticed one thing I have we have a designer on the team and shout out to her. She's listening and she was using me journey and I notice because she's a person not from the computer world she's an artist, like a real artist, you know, in one day or not, not one day, one hour. I think she started using prompts like, but the command prompts.

Citizen Cosmos
And my first thought was like, oh, so, you know, NFT’s did half of the adoption for crypto, which wasn't expected, and now AI's doing the adoption for codeing also not expected, but you know, people using these prompts that technically sending you know, a query to a database which basically that they doing some coding which before they didn't even think about it.

Citizen Cosmos
What do you think is what's going to give Defi and I'm not talking adoption in the Web3 world I'm talking adoption outside of the Web three world. What's going to are do we need adoption in the first place for Defi, like as it is today? At least?

Bojan
That is a very good question and I think that Defi itself is not sufficiently interesting for the common person or whatever you want to call it. In the same way that stocks and ETFs, etc., etc. are not too interesting for the common person. I don't know how the percentage of people investing is in the US, but I saw just recently some data for Europe and for example, Slovenia was 22% for traditional finance.

Bojan
So 22% just one in five. Invest in any stocks or bonds or anything. Bulgaria even less. Cyprus 10%. There were some of Switzerland's and some of Sweden's with 40 50%. This is kind of the outlier for Europe. So Defi, I don't know if it will bring adoption, maybe, maybe working as a bank, as a savings account and you can get 3%.

Bojan
You're very easily on board with your wallet. So onboarding and account abstraction will be very important for adoption, security will be very important for adoption. But then, as you rightfully said, Nfts did a huge favor to crypto or also to Defi, even though I personally have no affinity for it, I just don't feel any need to do anything with NFT I dont know why.

Bojan
Even though I like pretty things I guess, but not just let NFT is when this will happen. You give great examples of it midjourney and chatgpt. I think it will happen when the things that people can achieve with them are so mind blowing. They just can't resist. Similar like with the mobile phone. All of a sudden you could phone your mom from anywhere.

Bojan
You could go on the web browser and look things up and receive emails sent, send messages on telegram. So when things become so mind blowingly good and such an improvement and so easy to do, then a bigger mass adoption will happen for sure.

Citizen Cosmos
But you mentioned an interesting thing. You said you started comparing numbers from the Balkans and primarily from the Balkans and investing in traditional instruments. And, you know, one of the first things that springs to mind, one of the reasons for that is because in the U.S. or the numbers are higher because, well, the system helps you to trust itself more, whether in the Eastern Europe.

Citizen Cosmos
I mean, I spent some time in the Balkans as well, and in Eastern Europe as well. Of course, people don't trust the system. That's why they don't invest in traditional instruments. And the question is, can a trustless instrument and this is a this is going to be hilarious. But here is the question. This is the paradox. Can a trustless, you know, project like Liquity help people to establish trust in something that they should have had originally entrusted financial systems?

Bojan
Yes, I actually do think that is the case and that is happening and trusted financial systems actually help via their incompetence to push non trustless financial systems. And the same research I mentioned earlier with TradFi it's actually checked for TradFi and crypto adoption. And I think for Croatia it was very similar crypto and TradFi around 16 17%.

Bojan
I remember Cyprus was even higher crypto adoption than TradFi So it's already happening and it will just accelerate from here. I think especially now with all the banks and centralized exchanges blowing up, etc. etc., that people will wake up to the importance of resilient and decentralized applications and use cases.

Citizen Cosmos
It's been a while since we've been talking about with several various guests on the podcast that um, you know, the Next Circle or Binance or whoever is going to go down is going to be the probably the biggest push for the next adoption leg of bridges between the interchange, which will help, of course, to hopefully to transfer liquidity in a trustless manner between blockchains without, you know, multi sigs and uh, you know, because a lot of the bridges are like that.

Citizen Cosmos
Um, regardless of that, those security maybe a bit later I have a question for you, something that you mentioned that I didn't ask you. You mentioned about 10 minutes ago, maybe 15 minutes ago, the word passion and this is another big topic that we always discuss and with the way that Liquity is is shaped right where the smart contracts are kind of in charge.

Citizen Cosmos
Right. Of of what's going on. Why what made you guys as a team at least, what is your personal passion for doing for working for such a project? Because again, I'm being devil's advocate, but I want to ask you in that way specifically, why aren't you afraid? Like a lot of the people out there that are saying, Oh my God, we do that and we're going to get, I don't know, like we we we cannot build tools like that.

Citizen Cosmos
This is going to create a universe with murderers and killers because they don't exist now. Right. But so like, well, what is the passion of the team behind liquidity and your personal passion for trying to decentralized something yet at the same time kind of understanding that you know, that responsibility. You said yourself the world isn't, you know, the way that Defi is today might not need adoption.

Citizen Cosmos
So, I mean, why okay, I'm just going to shut up and ask why.

Bojan
So yeah, I think I will answer that by explaining why Liquity did what it did, because it's pretty much aligns with my moral or passion or whatever you want to call it. So short interim Liquity If some of the guys, some of the viewers don't know it a Liquity it is a borrowing protocol, not the lending protocol, but the borrowing protocol which launched two years ago on Main net.

Bojan
It is very similar to Makerdao you deposit collateral, you mint a stablecoin. Makerdao was actually the inspiration for our founders, but also the motivation to build something better because they saw that they can and did improve on the Makerdao concept. And I did watch Stablecoin pod you a couple of months ago and there were a lot of Makerdao fans, so I'm interested that I would be interested to hear what they think about Liquity if if they know it at all.

Bojan
Anyway, Liquity is a boring protocol at this for a decentralized, fully immutable. When we launched the contracts two years ago, we relinquished any control about it over it. No one can change it, no one can influence it. There is no governance. There is no DAO. Everything is governed algorithmically, not algorithmically, as in the case of Terra, but as in governed by code and nothing else Liquity

Bojan
The issues a stablecoin, which is called LUSD and is over collateralized. And now I can come to the topic of improving on Maker Liquity is the most, as I mentioned, or decentralized protocols. Also because we do not run any from ends ourselves, not only because of the MIT abilities, etc. So the most decentralized protocol, the most capital efficient protocol, and the cheapest protocol to borrow again, though, some people will be challenging that.

Bojan
So why is it most capital efficient? Because while maker offer a loan to value of 75% liquidity, offers 91% with deposit, 10K of Eth you can borrow nine K of LUSD tho doing that probably is not smart because it can easily get liquidated and it is also the cheapest way to borrow. So you there is no interest rate, but there is a fee which is almost always half a percent, so pay half a percent when taking out a loan and never anything again.

Bojan
Why with decided to build something like that because I think we wanted to build something in the spirit of cryptography and Ethereum how it is supposed to be done or how is this ideally done, meaning in line with the crypto ethos, so to say, so decentralized, immutable, governed by by code, very resilient and just, I don't know, in line with that ethos that all of us in Defi are striving towards, but not many can achieve.

Bojan
And that is also in line with what I like and what I am passionate about. And that's why I'm happy that I'm a team member here in Liquity

Citizen Cosmos
I actually stumbled upon Liquity about one and a half maybe. Yeah, roughly about two and one half years ago because I was searching with some colleagues of mine for projects that don't like that are that that have the smart contracts. Independence or independence is a loud word but you know, as much as we can say that and it's interesting because in Ethereum you know the conversation of of of I.

Citizen Cosmos
In your opinion, should a smart contract have the fees and not the creator? I mean, should the money technically go back to the smart contract the gas that that it's a waste and to set with smart contracts and self and then led the smart contracts in the future decide what it wants to do with the money.

Bojan
I mean, if you built something good, you should be paid for it. I know that this via fees or via some kind of token you build on top or at least on top? So I see nothing wrong with being getting something out of your work. I mean, that's that's a case for everything how that should be done.

Bojan
This really up to the builder to the founder. Of course.

Citizen Cosmos
You mentioned a token on top and correct me if I'm wrong in the Liquity protocol, their rewards are paid out in Ethereum right?

Bojan
Yeah. So there is a secondary token apart from the Stablecoin, which we call, which is called LQTY and we call it a revenue share token because there's no governance usually call. You call that the governance token. And that token, if at this stake, will receive 100% of the revenue of the protocol revenue. There are two sources of revenue in Liquity

Bojan
One is the aforementioned borrowing C but people can also redeem or swap their LUSD against Eth that is actually a peg maintenance mechanism. Yeah, that's the other source of revenue and the revenue is a stablecoin So LUSD and Eth when people redeem. So that is what has been recently called real yeild

Citizen Cosmos
I'm going to go again devil's advocate because we had this is a topic that, well, in my opinion, very important and I think not enough people are paying attention to it, but not about me. Right. So we had this stream with the liquid Staking a debate when we had I don't know, this was I think a little bit before liquid staking started to be popular.

Citizen Cosmos
I think it was it's what was cosmos focused, not not Ethereum focused. This was when liquid staking about 3, 4 No, maybe a bit more. It was still like building up and the Lido course, was there actually, of course. But Far From that was a Cosmos projects. And one of the questions that I had for the four speakers and that I want to ask you is what do you think about Defi in general?

Citizen Cosmos
paying rewards out of inflation. Isn't that kind of like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer or something like that or no? Or is that a me being extreme.

Bojan
Is just the most convenient way of doing it. I guess it I mean, every project needs liquidity and needs adoption. It would just print some money and that's the easiest way to do it. That's what started Defi summer with compound. There was an improvement, a good improvement on that via buying POL which was introduced by Olympus Dao and Liquity to the team behind Liquity they actually made another improvement on that with chicken bonds.

Bojan
Well that's a totally different topic. Uh, and I don't know if you want to go into that. It's, it's rather complicated. [...] I think that it's it's okay and cool to distribute your tokens in kind are inflated to a certain degree if it's within certain terms and if with time you are actually building towards generating real yield, sustainable yield.

Bojan
And you just kind of use those tokens to kickstart things. That's the thing. Cool.

Citizen Cosmos
From my perspective, what are the other ways that a protocol can generate real yield today apart from fees or apart from, you know, having I dont know defi tactic, some other projects. But then again they would have to avoid projects. If they are after real yield, right, then they would have to use projects that generate fees which aren't that many.

Citizen Cosmos
Right. So are there really any other ways to generate real yield from, I don't know, selling goods, physical goods and fees in Web three.

Bojan
Thing that.

Citizen Cosmos
Maybe land? I don't know. Decentraland. Sorry to interrupt.

Bojan
Yeah, I think there's nothing wrong with fees. You pay a fee to a bank to manage your account or to your funds to to manage your, your finances, whatever. So fees are fine, in my opinion, but first and foremost, there should be a product market fit. There should be a reason for someone to to use your product and for you to build that product.

Bojan
That's kind of the usual VC question. Why are you building this? What problem is it solving? Who needs this? And if you can't answer that, then you shouldn't build the product. You should think about how the product can sustain them itself via some type of revenue. And if that math doesn't work out, then maybe you need to explore things a bit further and deeper.

Citizen Cosmos
Consider in your a VC experience. Here's a question for you What's the product market fit for Liquity, Is it a decentralized? Well, let me divide that. Is it a stablecoin or is it a project that, uh, where the where the code is law or whatever smart contract kind of a rule. And there is no that. I mean, who is it's aiming at, who's the prime audience, People who want to use Stablecoins are people who wants to use something which is decentralized to the extent that it can be.

Citizen Cosmos
Of course.

Bojan
Even though that we received a lot of attention recently, especially recently because of certain events like Paxos not being allowed to mint BUSD anymore and more recently, and then USDC and core depeg even though we we received that because of our stablecoin LUSD first and foremost. We did not want to build a stablecoin we wanted to build the best borrowing protocol on Ethereum or in Defi, and that was the motivation and that was the goal.

Bojan
And that is what we succeeded in, I think. But the Stablecoin is just a side product. So to say, if I maybe don't play it a little bit, but that's, that's not fair to the token itself. But we wanted to build first and foremost a borrowing protocol where people are bullish on Eth because only Vanilla Eth can be collateral in Liquity

Bojan
Didn’t mention that yet I think so people bullish on Eth can hold and continue holding their Eth So continue being exposed to the upside while getting some liquidity on the side either to buy something to pay for expenses. What I like the most would like to see most is people not yield farming even though we all do it, but kind of using using the stable coin for real world purchases either to pay your expenses, to buy a car or to buy a house.

Bojan
All of that we had with our users. So that's what I hope to see more in the future and that's what I like to see the most.

Citizen Cosmos
Do you think that, you know, in terms of all the regulatory crap that the European Central, the financial regulators like to get involved in? And, you know, of course they're primary targets to some extent after Bitcoin and Ethereum is stablecoins, right? Oh my God, they're printing Stablecoins Oh my God, what are we going to do? So and I understand why.

Citizen Cosmos
I understand why because like you mentioned yourself, right? If you have somebody that everybody trust, like the U.S. dollar, but without all the crap in it, of course people are going to use that and not the real U.S. dollar. But with that in mind, do you think and what you said before, you know, with people actually using LUSD for a purpose, do you think those two things will not contradict each other with the recent, like all the bureaucracy that's going on in financial regulator world.

Bojan
I think we are getting close to some kind of inflection point. It's easy to see if you follow the industry. And yeah, there was a lot of crap shoveling going on both sides of the Atlantic. Um, I hope because finance and crypto is, is a very lucrative business, I hope that the decision makers kind of think more of their own pockets, what kind of money they can make with crypto, then kind of what damage it can done to their current revenue streams.

Bojan
I don't know if that makes sense. I think that the decision makers in the Western world are playing this very old people and they have a certain mindset which can’t be changed. And I hope that with the time as new people come into position, I think I know that that will this should be beneficial for crypto, that also the regulatory aspects won't be so damaging and won't so be so inhibiting, but is getting really tight, really, really hot.

Bojan
So I don't know what will happen. I just hope that no really stupid decisions will be made.

Citizen Cosmos
But I think we should expect stupid decisions to be made, right? I mean, it's it's normal. Let's get just.

Bojan
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos
But it's good. The more crap they're putting from one place to another, using the shovels or crap shoveling. Right. I think the more you said yourself, the more adoption that gives our world.

Bojan
Yeah. And I guess this gives adoption gives also leverage to this use case. And if the masses kind of rise up and demand some kind of different paying system, though, of course they're trying to counter that. CBDC’s that much power to to crypto if we have more Adoption

Citizen Cosmos
I noticed over the last when was I pilled, about ten years ago or something like that. Of course I didn't understand straightaway what I was doing. Took me three years, I think to read the Bitcoin whitepaper, but I'm like, I noticed over the course of those ten or 11 years or so that if I want to talk to somebody especially, doesn't matter what age really am and try to explain what is this world needed for, then the best way to do it is not to talk about blockchain, but to explain to a person how the financial system works and then are people are in shock.

Citizen Cosmos
Usually they are like their eyes go, go really like what that, no that can be true. And they start to Google things and they're like, Whoa, it is true. And they're like, and what they believe a Google. Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting. You also mentioned, by the way, about the time and I don't know if you know, there is those, of course, you know, Deutsche Bank, you've heard of them and they do those.

Citizen Cosmos
I think it's them if im not mistaken. They do those reports every now and again and on big macro topics. And one of them was actually what you mentioned before that about the who are the decision makers and they were saying that this decade, especially in the years between some like 25 to 28, are very interesting because it's the first time in the history well, not the first time, but this time in history.

Citizen Cosmos
It's where the shift in decision making, if you take all of the voting power of the world, is going to shift from one generation to the next generation, and it's going to be roughly between the 25 and 1928, 2028 where this will happen. Of course, this a count in all of the world population is one big voting power.

Citizen Cosmos
And it's interesting to see. Do you think that we will see more places like I mean, I don't know what to think of it and I don't know. Some people are going to hate me for saying that. But like, you know, El Salvador and other crazy decisions like this, I mean, yeah, it was whatever people make out of it.

Bojan
Depends on how that goes for El Salvador. I heard the adoption was pretty bad in terms of El Salvadorians and Bitcoin adoption, which I can understand because it has been kind of forced upon them and I like Bill Keller from what I can see, his approach and his stance and his mindset. I think especially now with what the IMF or enough was responsible to to Russia with seizing their funds, a lot of global self-confidence.

Bojan
Start thinking about should I be keeping my money with the West or rather not? And I think they come to the conclusion that rather not is the better way to go. And that's why you see more and more countries applying to BRICS be it Egypt's be it, Saudi Arabia, be it Iran. All of those are very populous countries with very good natural resources and young population, which will be the hard currencies in the future.

Bojan
I think population, demographics, natural resources. I actually forgot what was the question, but now more adoption of Bitcoin and contries So yes, more of that in the future, but slowly and then Suddenly I think

Citizen Cosmos
the thing there was no real question. I think it was just more like a reflection of some thoughts but it was just us talking about what will drive that, if anything, will drive that. And you know, I have like quite a few more questions about USD. But one thing I would like to ask you, which is again, a bit of interesting topic, unusual topic for sure.

Citizen Cosmos
Um, when this is the last question, the direction for sure in terms of Liquity and the team behind Liquity, the team is still there and the team still communicates. I mean, anybody can go on a website, go to the About us page, have a look at that. And even if it's not there, it's not that difficult to follow the team

Citizen Cosmos
And my question is this again, considering all of the you know, I mean, tornado cash and everything else, that sometimes happens very suddenly and then very unexpectedly and very stupidly, I should say. Right as well, that that should be very important word to add aren’t the Liquity team. Or are is the Liquity worried that they could be the back door or the kill switch in any way to the success of Liquity?

Citizen Cosmos
And of course, this brings that the bigger way of can this be the same for every decentralized projects? Will the team always be a failure point for decentralized projects?

Bojan
Definitely. It's a it's an easy and it's a big attack factor for everyone who wants to do that. Specific Liquity we tried to remove ourselves from the protocol since day one or even before we launched, and not only by relinquishing control of the protocol, but also via our communication on. The other side. We also work with legal teams and trying to comply with Swiss regulation.

Bojan
Those two companies established in Switzerland, but also of course with uh, mainly U.S. and European regulations. So we don't want to do anything stupid. We don't want to go against regulation. But yeah, I mean it's an impact factor, even though our Liquity cannot be stopped. Well, it can be stopped if Chainlink decides not to serve the Eth price anymore or if Ethereum main net gets taken down.

Bojan
But those two options are the only options to stop the protocol or to stop LUSD Of course we can get blacklisted or have a medium media campaign against us, etc. etc. Things that happen closer to tornadocash. And so that's a possibility. We try to minimize the chances of something like that happening. As mentioned earlier, I hope that regulators will act.

Bojan
I know reasonably, but time will tell.

Citizen Cosmos
You mentioned and I guess I'm going to start to slowly resume. But you mentioned kind of price oracles and price oracles, you know, and ever since Sergei created which respect, of course, but it's not exactly decentralized. What is, in your opinion, the next vision or the next step for decentralizing price oracles? Should it be a completely different design, or what's a how do we proceed here with this part of the infrastructure?

Citizen Cosmos
And in web3?

Bojan
Oh, technically, I'm really not the person to be asked about that, to be honest. It's a very hard problem, not only from the technical standpoint, but also from the point of chainlink being so dominant. They are doing a good job, they are providing defi and why they are with which reliable price sources. Then they have a think multisig four of nine which can crash and burn all of Defi.

Bojan
It's very hard to tell how likely something like that would be. I know that there are several teams working on new Oracle Solutions, but how likely or how good their solutions are and if they can even gain adoption because we know that they are that that very hard. There's not impossible to say that.

Citizen Cosmos
And so going to go move to the blitz kind of thing. It's three questions. You don't have to answer them in a blitz way. It's not, uh, I call it the blitz, but it's not like a blitz blitz.

Bojan
That.

Citizen Cosmos
Three projects outside of the obvious answers like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polkadot, chainlink Liquity And it doesn't have to be crypto by the way that technologically or in Europe case it could be like a defi projects or anything in that way that arouses curiosity and you've lately been inspired by and again, it doesn't have to be crypto can be crypto doesn't have to be three.

Bojan
Okay, so I personally use a like another Swiss project which is actually on offramp on ramp at is called [...] you can find it it's an offramp which is non-custodial and you can send your funds from your web3 wallet to your bank account without any third parties involved. They are actually non KYC up to 3k think.

Bojan
So that's my off ramp of choice lately. They also integrated LUSD so that let's good one project in the similar vein which is about to launch this week or launch at this week. We are what are we..? end of March is called Holy Hell this is non-custodial debit card and can again fund the debit card from your web 3 wallet.

Bojan
No third parties, no intermediaries involved, and then you can actually use the web wallet and the monolith or other anon KYC or KYC, a non-custodial wallet, because you have all the Binance cards and coinbase cards. You can use it. But on top of that you have defi integrations, native defi integrations, also Liquity also you're also alchemix. So put some ether on your credit card and take out the loan against it and drink with it or whatever.

Bojan
So that's really cool. Holy hell, what else do I like? I can think.

Citizen Cosmos
It doesn't have to be like three specific great answers, but of course, feel free to add if you wanted.

Bojan
Yeah, I think very cool product. Or is it just aggregators or apps which simplify things for people like most recently llama swap by the defi llama team or or which try to improve the user experience and user access of wallet. I like this Robbie by de bank or frame or the new avocado by instep though I haven't tried that yet.

Bojan
And also last answer projects which build and expand on the protocol itself. Like Defi saber the defi the position management that really call app as well

Citizen Cosmos
Frame by the way. Yeah. Big shout out for creating that. Yeah so far the only probably wallets for me but not the only one I use of course. But anyway it's a good job the guys did. What are. Give me two motivational things that inspire you in your daily life to keep on working on Liquity and the web three and everything else.

Bojan
A main motivation is my family, my kids, my wife. That's number one. And following above everything else. The other thing is might sound cliche, but I really think that Defi can improve the lives of people around the globe, especially in countries which are more repressive, which have bigger inflation issues than we do here. Just of trying to build in line with the ethos of cryptopunks as close as we try or can get and just improve the lives of people pretty much.

Bojan
Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos
Nice last one. One person or personas or characters. A dead or alive coder writer, poets, blockchain engineer doesn't matter made up of a cartoon character that inspires you.

Bojan
So over the years from high school and even before and above, I liked all kinds of people, but I was never a really idolizing person. I remember. But I would like to give a shout out to and bring attention to Alex Patrushev, the guy behind tornado cash and kind of bring attention to his case. I'm not fully up to date on the situation right now, but I hope everything works out well for him because writing code, it's not the offense, it's not the crime.

Bojan
Yeah, that's what I wanted to say.

Citizen Cosmos
And hopefully this attention will go further. I'm not saying I personally actually know Alex, so but hopefully this goes further to Ross and, and everybody else that does what's happening. I don't know the personal case. I know personally the person from some years ago back in Kaliningrad and the days of like 20 1617. But I don't know what's happening personally to the case now.

Citizen Cosmos
Unfortunately. Okay. Hopefully, though, Alex and you know, Ross and everybody else who is currently Virgil, right. There is a lot of other people out there who.

Bojan
Ross as well. Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos
Snowden It's not a lot of people there who should not be where the what are the are I guess that positive note. But in all honesty, this is what we face, right?

Bojan
So this is the reality. Yeah. And shout out to a few people who are trying to push regulation in the right direction, like [...] from Kraken or Eric Voorhees and others just wanted to mention that.

Citizen Cosmos
Well, definitely, definitely. Bojan thank you very, very, very, very much for your time. Thank you for answering all the questions. Hopefully going to see Liquity expand its reach into the interchain and beyond, not just, in my opinion, Ethereum, but there are many, many other protocols out there that I would love to see Liquity to expand to.

Citizen Cosmos
And hopefully the infrastructure in the future would allow for that to happen. So thank you again for your time.

Bojan
Definitely. I was a big user of Cosmos a while back, so I am doing all the ecosystem to some degree at least, and I like it a lot. I like what it stands for. Yeah, thank you for having me. And it was lots of fun to talk to you and yeah, I wish you all the best.

Citizen Cosmos
Thank you. And thank everybody who tuned in. Thanks.

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