SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Hey, hey, hey, welcome to this week's episode of Blockheads Blockcast. I'm your host, Takatoshi Shibayama. I'm also the head of APAC for Ledger. I aim to uncover the creative, intelligent, and radical minds who are shaping the crypto industry today. I'm as crypto curious as anybody that's tuning into this show. We're doing this together, guys. Let's go. Today we have a special guest, Jess Zhang from Mantle. She's the ecosystem lead. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00: 0:38

Thank you so much, Taka, for the introduction. Nice to meet everyone and I'm very excited to be on this podcast. It's actually my first time doing a podcast as well.

SPEAKER_01: 0:47

Trying to make sure that you're not nervous. Thank you for coming on to the show. You've been with many different crypto businesses and I would really love to know how you got into crypto business.

SPEAKER_00: 0:57

Yeah, so maybe I'll just start off with a bit of introduction about myself. So it's actually very interesting for my crypto journey. When I was still in uni, I wanted to find an intern job and then I was I was browsing through YouTube and I saw this very interesting video that talked about crypto and that made me wonder, oh, maybe it's good to find a crypto related job. So I took a gap semester when I was in year four and I interned at this firm called Gemini, which is a crypto exchange that they also do have an office in APEC. And back in the days for me at Gemini for crypto, it was more of selling crypto to asset managers or sell crypto to family offices so less of the interesting side but more as an asset class so that was my first exposure to crypto and shortly after that I got a few internship experiences at Huobi and a few extras and made me land it to my first job at Chainlink which was a very interesting experience for me because I've never really know that I could work in something that's very unique which is an oracle I didn't even know what was an oracle before so yeah that's how I've that you got into crypto.

SPEAKER_01: 2:09

And what part of crypto really excited you that you wanted to get into this crypto industry? Because, you know, I think you did your internship in 2021, right? Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, you know, people nowadays, their first job is in crypto. So, you know, it's unthinkable from my time. But tell me why you got really interested in crypto.

SPEAKER_00: 2:28

Yeah, so for me, because I studied finance. So I was in this university in Singapore called SMU and everyone in my class, they were like crazy about going to investment bank or like doing some private banking stuff. And for myself, I got to know about Gemini because it was still more of a traditional finance-ish kind of exchange structure. So at that point of time, my exposure was still more finance related, but it was because of the colleagues there that gave me a lot of exposure. For example, back then, Jeremy was the MD for Gemini. Now he's leading for Open Eden. He did give me a lot of very good insights about crypto and also made me really really excited about the industry.

SPEAKER_01: 3:10

And you worked for two exchanges before moving on to Chainlink, but why didn't you want to continue being in the crypto exchange side?

SPEAKER_00: 3:17

So for me, to be very, very honest, a Chinese exchange was not something that I really want to continue pursuing because for me, maybe I was not too experienced at a point in time, but I feel like it was a bit too chaotic and I wanted to build up my foundations first. So after the experience at a Chinese exchange, I decided to maybe jump into a more westernized company to understand the true tech behind like blockchain. And maybe that's how I could slowly build up my bricks so that I can understand and improve more.

SPEAKER_01: 3:52

And tell us what you did at Chainlink.

SPEAKER_00: 3:54

So I was doing more on the BD side of work. So Chainlink, I'd say, even though it's a very crypto native company, but still it's a very sales product driven tech firm. So at the point of time as a BD at Chainlink, I I did two different roles. So the first role was more focusing on the pure product selling Chainlink price feeds for Chainlink CCIP and some other products. But the next role was something that made me truly understand how important it is to build up the ecosystem because I was working under Chainlink build program, which is similar to an accelerator where you talk to different projects, understand what's their need, and also trying to see what kind of Chainlink product could be the best fit for them. And in exchange, maybe there will be some kind of token swap or some kind of token allocation to Chainlink. So at that point of time, I understood a lot on ecosystem part and also like different type of projects. I was reviewing a lot of different kind of projects under the Chainlink metrics. So it was something that was very interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 4:58

So I guess you kind of really enjoyed that ecosystem build part as opposed to the BD part. So that's kind of why you kind of went into Mantle. But why Mantle in specific? Was there something about them that really excited you? Because you mentioned about Chinese exchange before, but it's also a Chinese foundation, I guess.

SPEAKER_00: 5:17

So actually, after Chainlink, I went to Fireblocks for one year as well. So I guess it's a very similar playing field with Ledger related to wallets and custody. So after Chainlink, I wanted to experience a bit more on institutional, even more structured side because I didn't feel like I learned enough being as a salesperson. So I wanted to pick up more proper sales kind of training. So I went to Fireblocks and then I got to know a bit more on the institutional side, but I decided maybe ecosystem is still something that I wanted to pursue further, hence MENTO. Even though I know like the founders or like a lot of the founding members are Chinese, but I think the culture there are very Westernized and also people there are very capable. There are a lot of things that I could learn from and more so for MENTO, I think as L2, I think it played in a very unique track comparing to other Layer 2s because I'd say it's the only Layer 2 that is also issuing their own assets, which is something that's very interesting to me. So that's why I made the decision to come to Mantle.

SPEAKER_01: 6:22

When you say they're creating their own assets, are you talking about the MEth and the FBTC, right?

SPEAKER_00: 6:29

Yeah. So for Mantle, now it's called Mantle Group, but under Mantle Group, we have different business lines. Other than the Mantle Network side, What do you mean by a hedge fund in

SPEAKER_01: 6:54

this case? manage assets on behalf of other investors or is it more like a treasury?

SPEAKER_00: 7:01

Yeah so for example on the mental index fund side we are putting our own treasury into this index fund that we've created. At the same time in the future once the index fund has launched we will be actively looking for investors that are also keen to invest into crypto but don't know what kind of portfolio that suits the best to their risk appetite into this index fund too. So I think That's how slowly Mento has been transitioning into not just like a ecosystem player, but also someone that is acting similar to a hedge fund as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:37

Makes sense. And for the METH and FBTC, what do you think its real functionality is? Obviously, you know, I've heard of both of those assets being used for, you know, kind of moving into one chain to another,

SPEAKER_00: 7:51

you

SPEAKER_01: 7:51

know, like FBTC or METH like for liquid staking. But what do you think the market actually is? Well,

SPEAKER_00: 7:58

for FPTC side, I won't comment too much because it's not something that I have too much exposure on. But for ME side, I'd say it's definitely something other than being as a liquid state gain token. There's a lot more values added into this because of its intrinsic nature of being able to trade on Bybit or a few other platforms as a collateral product. I think this also adds a lot of value for the ME side. or same ETH holders. So other than being as a yield generating token, you can also use it as collateral to trade. And also at the same time, it opens up your opportunities on chain as well, because we are actively integrating METH not just on Mantle, but also on other ecosystem that are very trending in the recent month. For example, we are talking to Hyper EVM, we're talking to Monad and a few others. So that's when this is another aspect that interests a lot of the holders.

SPEAKER_01: 9:00

And you're the ecosystem lead for METH. So what kind of ecosystem are you trying to build for this?

SPEAKER_00: 9:06

Yeah. So currently for METH protocol, we are on Ethereum mainnet and also on Mantle for sure. But also one thing that's very unique about METH protocol is that it's the only first ever vertically integrated LSP product, which means that we own our very own LST, which is METH. But also at the same time, we have our own LRT, which is CME. So having this kind of vertically integrated structure made us very unique and also made us having a lot of autonomy and also ways to play around with the ecosystem. So that's why for this year, we are planning to heavily expand into other rising ecosystems, maybe being as a ETH vanilla equivalent kind of product on their ecosystems for people to trade. Or maybe we can also expand more on the institutional side, because on CME, actually this week, we've announced our very own unique institutional friendly product called CME Fixed Out Bolt, where we are opening up opportunities for institutions that don't really want to hold on to AVS points, but rather just wanted to have plain yield to have this opportunity to be exposed to LRT field as well.

SPEAKER_01: 10:22

Yeah. And outside of the trading, have you seen any adoptions around METH? I have spoken spoken to you know lido which probably is your competitor and they also have an institutional business as well where they want to go into financial institutions to promote like e-staking and using their liquid staking product but i'm sure you want to kind of you know compete against that i'm sure you have different strategies for market adoptions compared to lido i mean what kind of things that you've been doing

SPEAKER_00: 10:50

yeah i think one of the biggest thing that differentiate us from lido is that like what i mentioned earlier we are the only platform that is vertically integrated so for LIDL they only offer their own SCE which is the LST product and a lot of the LRTs are wrapped on top of the LST that they are offering so they don't really control like the entire business line but for us we do have our own LST and LRT and also at the same time we do have a lot more I'd say flexibility on how we want to play around with it so on the institutional side for our very own rt we're doing this fixed vault product but this is maybe just a step one we might be able to release even more interesting products that are catering just for the institutions and whereas for lido maybe because of its nature of being a very decentralized dial structure it would be hard for them to play around with and also on the ecosystem side for lido i understand their strategy is basically mass adoption so max expansion to all of those existing strong Layer 2 ecosystems. But for us, I think we are playing out with very different strategies. We are limiting ourselves to a few, in our eyes, very strong ecosystem players to create stronger synergies with them rather than max expand to different up-and-going ecosystem in the Layer 2 side. For example, like base, arbitrage, or optimism. We'd rather focus on those ones that are very DeFi driven like Unichain or like Hyper-EVM to further expand the utility and functionalities for our ME holders.

SPEAKER_01: 12:36

Right. So I guess the aim is to try to have mass adoption more on the retail side than institutional in this case, right? Because I kind of like the whole narrative of like, you know, institutions coming in, they want to trade on centralized exchanges. I feel like for the retail side, it's going to divert them more and more into retail. And then obviously, I personally think crypto is still for retail people. Obviously, hedge funds can trade this and that, but I think the more accessibility to finance that kind of narrative is more driven towards retail and having them adopt more decentralized finance applications is kind of the way to go. Are we kind of aligned in that kind of way of thinking?

SPEAKER_00: 13:15

Well, for the ecosystem side, like for my job scope, I think it's more focusing on the retail adoptions or I'd say on-chain adoption. But we also do have another colleague that's working on the institutional expansion side. So I would not say that for ME's protocol, we are focusing more on the retail users. But on the institutional side, we are also actively gathering data and also talking to very valuable partners to create stronger synergy there. For example, we are in very, very late stage conversations with a few custody providers with the aim to create strong collaborations with them to open up our channels and to the institutional world as well. But since we're still quite new, we just decided to do institutional expansion in the I believe that's something that's coming very soon in the future. I

SPEAKER_01: 14:13

mean, I've seen Athena use METH as an asset class that they want to use on exchanges, especially Bybit. Is that kind of the way that you want to see adoptions? Like, do you want to see more trading firms, a second use case for the underlying ETH?

SPEAKER_00: 14:29

Yes. For Athena, they are indeed one of the strongest strategic partners for METH, given that a portion of their ETH derivatives are actually holding on to METH. And these type of trading firms or like these type of delta neutral stable coin issuers are definitely core available partners that we are in conversations with but also at the same time like what you mentioned on the ethereum etf site is something that we are still i'd say in exploration stage given that if that's something that we are trying to target there might be a lot of regulation or like licensing concerns that we need to do a bit more research on but i'd say i'll the ecosystem expansion side where we are running actively with our metamorphosis campaigns for but also on the institutional new unique product side we're pulling a lot of strings there.

SPEAKER_01: 15:25

And what is this metamorphosis campaign?

SPEAKER_00: 15:27

So the metamorphosis campaign is actually a campaign that is very unique for ME's ecosystem so that's something that we already ran for two seasons so this week season two just officially finished and then we are preparing And recently,

SPEAKER_01: 15:58

Mantle has moved on from optimistic roll-ups to ZK roll-ups. Is there a reason why they made that change?

SPEAKER_00: 16:05

I'd say it's more of a decision that is aligning to what Mantle is rebranding itself towards. I'm not sure if you've seen the news earlier this year. We've officially announced that for mental, we have split it into six different unique business lines. So mental as an L2 or mental network is one of the six unique business lines. That's why they made this kind of decision where they would like to change from like P-STACK roll-up to a ZK roll-up to better fit for the future collaborations with other business lines as well.

SPEAKER_01: 16:37

Right. So I guess it's more of a business decision as opposed to like a technological decision. It's not like they found certain things that weren't working out for them. Rather, it's more like a, you know, how do you build an ecosystem around the ZK? And what kind of dApps that do you see are building on Mantle that you find is quite unique to Mantle?

SPEAKER_00: 16:58

I'd say some of the very interesting dApps that are already building on Mantle that are very unique would be our very strong DeFi ecosystems, because I think for a lot of those Mantle chain users, Mantle has always been known as a yield generating chain because of the nature of us owning our very own ETH and also BTC assets. And also at the same time, we have launched a few very interesting DeFi protocols, for example, like MerchantMall in a capital. These are some of our star projects that are building on mental. So yeah, I think I'd say it's the DeFi ecosystem.

SPEAKER_01: 17:36

And what are those apps actually do?

SPEAKER_00: 17:38

So for MerchantMall is one of our very unique Dex on mental and the entire team is actually the trader joe's team because they are very close to the mental foundation with the mental ecosystem people so they've decided to build another unique decks on mental so that's something that we've always been very proud of and also at the same time for mental one of the other area that i forgot to mention earlier will be the ai side that is very interesting we have our very own kaito leaderboard and a lot of our mental ecosystem system. Community members have been yapping a lot on Twitter. And I think recently they just launched their airdrop. So I bet a lot of the community members are very happy about it.

SPEAKER_01: 18:24

Yeah, just on the AI agents, because it's really a hot topic these days. What is your view on AI agents? You know, there's obviously a lot of use cases that you can think of, but still, it's kind of like the first gen of these products. You know, how do you see the AI agents working, you know, in the future more with crypto assets?

SPEAKER_00: 18:42

I think I'd say for AI agents and crypto, I think the correlation was more on the token price. Like people were very excited about virtuals or excited about a lot of the AI agent related tokens, the up and downs of the price. And this kind of trend has died down a bit because of other verticals and other event has been happening and kind of sucked out all of the liquidity. But regardless, I think AI is a very important part that meant to stay with crypto because of the nature of how these two technology are closely inter For Kaito itself, actually, because Kaito is one of the very important partner for mental on the AI side, I think they will be launching their own AI agent in the very future, where I feel like that's something that mental will be also putting in a lot of support for, because we are actually launching our own AI business line as well. So that's something we will be keep on exploring further on.

SPEAKER_01: 19:44

And what personally excites you in this industry? I mean, aside from math, aside from all the business that you've done what keeps you going?

SPEAKER_00: 19:51

I thought about this question for a long time for me I think it's about the people in this industry because it's very rare to see people that's super passionate about like what they're working on and also they have those like dedication for their job because in other more traditional industries or sectors people would see jobs being something that generates money for them that supports them to do stuff that they really like but I think for crypto that's the only industry that I can see so many people that are like passionate about like either the technology or the trading side or like on different kind of like community building so these kind of strong passion towards the industry is something that keeps me going every day because I always having those kind of formal feeling that if I don't keep up then I'll be missing out yeah

SPEAKER_01: 20:44

yeah I agree I mean you know I get really energized by meeting people like yourselves and a lot of people in the industry because you know I come from a traditional finance background and I took a massive pay cut to get into this industry and there's no reason why I would stay here without the excitement right without the energy that I feel from people and we're building the new industry from scratch and we're all kind of part of it right one day we'll tell our kids or grandkids that we were you know first generation of building this industry well thank you very much for your time how can people follow you or follow Mantle's project

SPEAKER_00: 21:18

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01: 21:47

See you on the next podcast.