Takatoshi Shibayama: 0:01

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. Welcome back to another episode of Blockcast. Today I love it when I have people inside the office. Um today I have Mark Liu, the head of APAC for Jito Foundation. Welcome to the show.

Marc Liew: 0:40

Thanks for having me.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 0:41

Really pleased to be here. Yeah, lovely for you to be here as well. And you know, I've known you from your previous times at working at Ripple, but uh you have a history. Probably, you know, maybe we can go down a little bit more into your background prior to coming into crypto. But you know, you spent time in R3, went to Ripple, and now you're at Gito. I mean, obviously we were joking before before this, but you went from super institutional to super retail now. Um, but uh love to kind of dive into like your background um and how you got into crypto, why you got into crypto, and then we could just take it from there.

Marc Liew: 1:15

No, yeah, um, sounds good. Um so maybe before we go into you know my uh my my my career in crypto, maybe just let me just spend a few minutes to talk about my life before crypto. So um I've always been um intrigued and you know, in terms of how money moves, and especially for us that's actually you know um lived in Asia, um, you know, money moving across borders is really a big thing, right? Because of FX charges, um, etc. So I mainly started my career in the payment space originally with the likes of Pfizer, um, really working on omni-channel payment strategy when you know credit cards and online payments were just coming mainstream. Um, really working with merchants and you know, big logos in terms of advising them of their omni-channel payment strategy. How do you work with online payments while making sure that you're in your offline point of sales sort of like uh can play a strategic role?

Marc Liew: 2:11

And then fast forward for a few years, I had an opportunity to join PayPal to really work with a um mobile payments uh business unit that PayPal had required uh had acquired back then called BrainTree. So if you remember, you know, the very first time you took your Uber rides like more than a decade ago, how seamless that experience was. So it was BrainTree, the payments processing um full stack platform behind the scenes processing your payments. So I was part of the team that actually scaled a Braintree business in APEC, uh, working with like a lot of e-commerce players, um helping them with their cross-border payment, settling payments, um, taking transactions, etc. That was, I say back in 2014, 2016 period, that was really the time when I first got into crypto because Braintree was the first, um, I think, among all the peers in the payment space to started accepting Bitcoin as a payments um you know currency. So I went down a rabbit hole and then really looking at wow, this is amazing. Because if you think about how do you further improve on or optimize the whole payment experience, a lot of time the evolution for payments landscape happens on the consumer UI UX layer, right? Because you don't really see the plumbings behind the scene, because those plumbings are very messy. You're talking about different rails and all these fintechs, what they've been trying to do part the past decade is really merely building a slicker UI UX, but behind the scene, you're still dealing with all the existing railings and plumbings that's been around for a very long time. So when Bitcoin and blockchain technology came around, I say more than a decade ago, that was really like transformative, right? It was really at a point where you can really transform payments businesses. So um deep down, I'm a big believer of really utilizing blockchain to transform payments business, right? We are talking about big bank migration kind of transformation from the ground up. Um then back then, you know, there wasn't anything about stable coin, or people were still trying to figure out what's the best uh killer use case. So um, and then I joined R3. Um, R3 was very um famous for its founding of the banking consortium originally with 42 banks uh out of the US to really study blockchain technology, and there was a you know, R3 has its own proprietary blockchain platform called CODA. Um we were mainly experimenting with institutions in terms of how to best leverage this blockchain technology, what kind of use cases can we can we look at creating? So there was trade financing, digital assets, and most notably CBDC, central bank digital currencies. We had the opportunity to be in front of a lot of regulators, really understanding their learning curve and see how we can help them. Um so I was at R3 working with uh different regulators, different central banks and institutions in terms of looking at digital assets and CBDC. Um I was at R3 for about six years, and then I had an opportunity to join Ripple. Um, so that was really interesting because we were actually at a crossroad where thinking about okay, CBDC, is this going mainstream or is stablecoin gonna be you know the thing to go as the next phase of crypto evolution? I still remember um when I joined Ripple, um we had the opportunity to really assess CBDC or stablecoin. So in the end, we decided that you know, because of how the landscape is actually evolving and more fiat currency is actually coming online, we had the opportunity to pivot uh from focusing on CBDC into launching our own stablecoin RLUSD. Um, huge market cap right now. But back then, if you look back like 20 months ago, it was just USDC and USDT, right? But right now, you see so many other uh payments companies launching their stablecoin, so many stablecoin companies launching their own blockchain. So you sort of have the trifecta. You gotta have a payments network, have your own stable coins and uh and the blockchain technology underpinning it, right? I call that a trifecta of killer use case for blockchain technology. But when you look at it, it is still talking about bringing traditional fiat currency on-chain, right? And Daka, you've been in this space for a while, you know how hard it is to bring traditional money on-chain, right? You need to think about wallet addresses, blockchain addresses, etc., etc., etc. So, what actually drew me to Solana and Jito Foundation uh subsequently, I wanted to look at how we can evolve, you know, um, the whole industry beyond just like bringing traditional assets on chain, right? Has anyone ever asked about how do we actually make crypto more accessible for the wider audience, for the track fire guys, for the NCD guys, without having to go through all the technicalities of crypto, right? Um so Gito actually has a really strong narrative, right? Um Gito obviously is the Solana revenue engine, right? We call it the revenue engine because we help to govern um and allocate most of the transactions on Solana. Um 93% of validators on Solana uses uh Gito's uh product. We have a few products, happy to go through them. Um and Gito really helps to actually secure the decentralization part of the Solana network. So if you think about the comparison between the Web 2 technology and the Web3 technology, I think us as active Web3 participants, we have an opportunity to really build a self-sustainable Web3 economy, right? That is totally different from your traditional SaaS model where you charge like an annual fee and then you expect your customers to pay you year in, year out, and then cross your fingers that they they like it, right? Web3 is a very different ballgame altogether, right? Web3 is about community, about developers adopting the blockchain. At the end of the day, you know, some of the um economic values get passed back to the participants. And I think that's really wonderful. And in the long run, you know, it can be a self-sustainable new economic model. Yeah.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 8:18

Well, the whole promise of crypto was generally peer-to-peer. So even if you are securing a network, it's still kind of a peer-to-peer where everybody participates and they get they get the economic rewards from it. So I totally understand the dynamics of like the crypto how it's very different from the traditional finance businesses. But since I got you here, and I'd love to ask you uh from your previous kind of work on working on payments, crypto was designed, as I mentioned, it was like a peer-to-peer. So we take out the middlemen. In the payment space, how many middlemen are there? Because, you know, as you mentioned, it's a very, you know, opaque industry that you don't really see what's going on in the background. So if I tap with my card um at a POS machine, I get a receipt that says World Pay. I didn't even use World Pay, but like World Pay comes out, right? So there's a lot of companies that are participating in the network so that your payments can actually get done from your bank account, through a credit card, through uh whatever you know, middlemen who are who are in between to that merchant, right? So could you explain a little bit how that plumbing works and how how how many participants are there in that space?

Marc Liew: 9:25

Yeah, no, that great question, right? So if you look at the current state of the economy that we are we are actually in, obviously um there are so many different types of cross-border payments, right? You're talking about remittances, you're talking about e-commerce payments channel, you're talking about aggregator, you're talking about card networks, visa, mastercard, so on and so forth. And there are so many fintechs out there um trying to create solutions um utilizing some of these existing rails, right? And you're absolutely right. There are so many middlemen right there. Um is there an opportunity where we can streamline everything overnight? The question, I'm sorry, the answer is no, unfortunately, because the payments business has been around for a very long time, right? No matter what, you will still need this so-called middleman to function in order for our economy to still keep you know uh running, right? The the lights being turned on, etc. But over time, is there an opportunity for us to reach that state where some of this middleman can actually go away? The answer is yes, right? Stablecoin is definitely a very good utility to actually do that, right? Look at Tether. I think they go grow to where they are today, having less than 100 employees because they really attack the problem right from you know the root cause, right? Giving people the the tool um to transact, you know, in the real world, right? How do they actually disseminate um stable coins into the real economy? Um but you know, coming back to our economy right now, most of these so-called middlemen are obviously getting into the stablecoin game as well, right? I say at least for the next two to three years, you still see this um development happening because uh whether you like it or not, stablecoin is probably one or two use cases in crypto that has still got legs to run. Um and it makes sense from an economic point of view, because it's about bringing traditional fiat on chain. But over time, right, the competition will actually um filter itself out, like whoever can actually stay. Because at the end of the day, you if you want your stable coin to thrive, you need to have adoption, right? And how do you drive adoption? You need to have network effect and economy of scale, right? So probably the larger, the larger incumbents already with their own payment networks, it's actually much easier for them to integrate stablecoin within their payments network. And in that process, maybe they can streamline the process and then get rid of some of these middle components that's you know slowing down the payments. So that's the way I see how the in the industry is actually evolving into.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 12:08

Yeah. Even in the crypto space, obviously you have to on-ramp. And then even if you go to a merchant, it doesn't mean that they're gonna accept your US dollar stables. So there has to be some middlemen in between, right? So, you know, in in the current setup today, I mean, do do we have we eliminated a lot of the middlemen that is in the traditional space that you know we don't and and and um has it become a lot more efficient, do you think, in your view?

Marc Liew: 12:35

I think we are definitely becoming more efficient. You mentioned a very important point, which is on-ramp, right? So when it comes to on-ramp, there's also an opportunity to talk about off-ramp, right? So, for example, you know, if someone who is actually working in, I don't know, Spain, trying to um, you know, send money home into the Philippines, obviously there's on-ram and off-ram, you know, um, you know, you can't just spend euro in the Philippines, right? You will still need local uh payments company that helps with that FX conversion, and then ultimately people can off-ram into you know pesos and spend locally. So that is still gonna be a necessity, right? But we see it happening maybe over time, it will get more streamlined. Say, for example, you know, hypothetically, let's just say USDT becomes so um, you know, broadly adopted, everyone started transacting in USDT in terms of or instead of their local currency, then maybe there's an opportunity that you know something will emerge over time as like a widely adopted standard.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 13:34

Right. Yeah. Okay. I think we're derailed a little bit, so let's go back into the main topic. Um so yes, so now you you're working you're working for a JITO Foundation, uh, and um what I understand from you know kind of what what JITO is is that it's a liquid restaking um um service. However, I'm sure there's a lot more to that. When I open up your webpage, obviously there's words like MEV, you know, there's liquid staking. I mean, obviously the you know our audiences are well um well educated around crypto, but generally if we go to like a lay person and this and and talk about you know staking in general, I mean you have your kind of big staking providers of the world, like you have Figmint and you know, Killen and all these people who are also securing the Solana network. Um how does Jito uh play into that? Are they one of the participants or are they are you guys like a layer on top of that?

Marc Liew: 14:28

Yeah, that's a good question. So happy to take it from the top, right? So um what really attracted me to the Jito um um, you know, to Jito project is because Jito solves um the one thing that institutions hate most about public chains, right? Um which is execution uncertainty. Um so banks, institutions, they need certainty um and compliance, right? So Jito essentially transforms Solana from a wow ecosystem into an institutional great um global deterministic execution layer. Um so we mitigate spam, fail transactions, and uh predatory MEV, right? Solana is the you can think about Solana as the global execution layer for real economic value. And Jito is the revenue engine that makes building on Solana profitable. Right? So let me actually go deeper into like some of the um products that we have that is actually helping to do that. So um I think layman term, you can think about Jito as the revenue engine of Solana, right? So let's just say Solana is the highway, right? Yes, you can drive super super fast, um, etc. But when it when when it gets too many cars on the highway, if you that if there's no traffic control, who gets to go first, right? That's the biggest question, yes. So this is where Gito comes in. So we help to actually power more than 93% of Solana validators, and we run the largest liquid sticking protocol with a 2 billion TVR. So um coming back from the point of MEV, maximum uh extractable value, right? So on most public chains, um value actually leaks because transactions get pulled into public main pool, people can see transaction details, etc. People always get front run and then the sandwich attack, you know. Um that actually adds on to a lot of uh challenges in terms of really adopting uh public chain. Gito actually like we plug the leak, you know. We we are an integrated stack of three things. First and foremost, we have the Jito Solana client, which is a software that 93% of validators actually run to optimize performance, right? If you want your transactions to actually land faster uh on Solana, you can actually provide uh Jito chips so that it can land faster on Solana, um transactions get sequenced better. And then two months ago, we launched something called the Block Assembly Marketplace, or in short, BAM. So BAM is an engine that actually captures MEV um transparently. So um you know, without BAM, trading boards actually spam the network with millions of failed transactions trying to land a trade. So this actually clocks up the chain, right, and degrades the user um experience. So what BAM does is, right, without too going into too much technicalities, so BAM uses what we call a trusted execution environment, TEE, to create a secure auction. So as traders, you bid to have your bundles included and your transactions go through. Um so transactions remain private until they are executed. So front running cannot take place, right? And then the benefit actually leads to that is BAM creates an app auction. So this reduces spam, increases reliability, and via the application control execution ace, um it allows apps builder to control their own transaction by um, you know, ordering to prevent exploitation. Um and last but not least, the third product that we we are really proud of is uh JiroSol. Um pretty much is a token that packages the value within the Solana network and distributes it to the stickers, right? Um you can think of Jirosol as like your deposit, right? You go to the bank, you put in $100, and then the banks will tell you, okay, over the next six months we'll pay you X percent in terms of your deposit. Now the biggest challenge is you can't take out the $100 because you will lose your interest, sorry, right? Jirosol, in a way, is very similar to a bank deposit. You help to secure the Solana network by sticking Solana, but in return, you will get a token called JiroSol. Now, this JiroSol, then you can deploy into DeFi applications as a collateral to borrow, to land out, and to do so many different things, right? Um, not only DeFi players are actually looking at JiroSoul as a collateral, we are also working with institutions who is actually actively looking at can they actually include J2SOL as part of their collaterals, whether it's market makers, whether it's prime uh brokers, etc. Uh, and we're also working with ETF issuers to include JOSOL as part of their ETF filing to meet uh redemption uh requests as well.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 19:16

Yeah. So let's put in the pin on that la last part, but let's talk about the first two parts because um obviously if I had to compare Solana with Ethereum, obviously it's a much faster chain. I mean that's that's kind of kind of the the the catchphrase for Solana, right? It's a better Ethereum, the faster Ethereum. With Ethereum, in in order to kind of validate transactions, it takes like 12 seconds or so, if I'm c if I'm not mistaken. Um so obviously it happens in a pretty fast speed to sort out okay which which transactions go into the block and you know, and then they're broadcasted, right? In in terms of so, I I could probably imagine like it's much faster than that, right? So you're saying that from bat with BAM, you're running auctions in a Split second kind of interim to actually do these auctions and put them in, put all the transactions in line. Am I correct?

Marc Liew: 20:07

Yes, that's the right way of actually understanding it. And we help with the governance of how blocks are actually being sequenced. So ever since BAM's been launched, you know, we are having a lot of conversations with existing Solana validators in terms of upgrading their current infrastructure to BAM, which is a more streamlined approach. And also from Gito, there's also something called a StakeNet, right? So every time a stake actually comes true, via StackNet, the smart contract actually automatically and autonomously assign a stake to top validators to actually maintain and govern the allocation in a fair and transparent way. So that way also we help to actually make sure that, hey, you know, not only developers are actually profiting or enjoying the speed and all the nice features of Solana, but people that's actually doing a hard work, the validators, the people that's actually helping to secure the infrastructure, they are you know they they get the the right reward so that you know it's a sustainable business model that can run on a long-term basis.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 21:14

And MEVs are generally known to kind of like make the um the I guess the staking, you know, or I'll say the blockchain transactions a lot more efficient because they'll try to find like, okay, um, you know, what which which who who can pay the highest fees to get certain transactions done? And obviously that would cause uh front running, back running, sandwiches, et cetera. Um and that's kind of how it uh has always been run um prior to uh Solana, I think. And and then now with this, does it kind of lower the value of having MAV or does it enhance it? Because I'm trying to understand here. So if you're trafficking everything, obviously it makes it a lot more fair, is my kind of understanding. But it also takes out the kind of efficiencies of you know certain, you know, uh people kind of front running, et cetera. Right. So how do how do I kind of understand this?

Marc Liew: 22:14

No, that's a really good question, right? Um, I think the way we look at it is no matter how you put it, there's always going to be two scenarios. There will always be people trying to take advantage of certain features, right? There's always two sides of the story. But when it comes to BAM, what we are trying to uh provide the community is a fair and square and transparent environment. Transactions details remain private until they are executed. I mean, if you are a genuine developer who is actually trying to build uh and send through transactions, you love this because you know that you know uh your benefits is actually secure, and then your transactions can actually go through, and then you can, you know, deliver, right? And obviously, you know, if you are trying to speculate and profit from those old systems in terms of how MEV is actually run, that would be unfortunate news for you. So we believe you know in making a transparent system, putting it in place, and then over time serving the right type of profile in terms of developers and growing the ecosystem with Solana. Yeah.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 23:14

Currently, what is the uh staking rewards that one can get on JTO?

Marc Liew: 23:19

You know, JitoSoul typically gives out um six to eight percent of APY. Um obviously, you know, it depends on how the market performs. Uh, but typically you get that kind of uh range, right? And obviously, JitoSoul, you know, is uh relatively new as a liquid staking um um utility token. And um, but the good thing is, you know, we have made so much inroads in the institutional space. Just a couple of months ago, the SEC has actually released a statement uh concerning liquid staking tokens as that you know it doesn't fall within the securities law. Um that has actually opened a lot of doors for us to have conversations with ETF issuers um in terms of including JitoSoul as part of their filing. So maybe let me just double-click a little bit in terms of the work that we're doing with some of the issuers um in the space. So um, you know, I still remember when the first Bitcoin ETF was launched, I think January 2024. That was a really good timing and window because if you think about it, is that ETF is such a good uh vehicle for a lot of these ThreatFi investors to get exposure to crypto, right? Without having to acquire a hot wallet or cold wallet or having to worry about blockchain addresses and all that, right? So these guys are familiar with the threat fire world, right? So um the best thing is how do we actually make it seamless and make it straightforward for them to actually tap into crypto assets, right? ETF is definitely a vehicle because by launching ETF, that means to threat fine investors, they can easily invest into crypto assets via the threatfine brokerage accounts that they already have and they've been using for years, right? This is where they are most comfortable with. So um we've seen Bitcoin ETF last year, we've seen a lot of uh Ethereum ETF last year, and this year the story is always about um Solana ETF, right? So we work with a lot of different issuers, mainly from the states, in terms of helping them to actually um file for Solana ETF, and part of their filing actually includes JitoSol, certain percentage to be JitoSol, so that they can actually meet redemption requests. Because think about it, if you are an issuer, whether you are BlackRock, you know, um 21 shares or Venek, you have customers always asking you, hey, all right, you know, I'm I'm done with this ETF, I want my money back, right? Redemption requests. Now the problem with that is what we are seeing is say Ethereum, um, I think the unstaking period is really long, but 44 days, 45 days. Um Solana is actually slightly better, two epochs, it's still about three or four days. But from an institutional client's perspective, it's still not good enough. They felt that redemption means instant, you know, T plus zero. If my client comes and you know, give me the ETF, I need to actually um give my clients back their money, right? Uh within the same day, settle back into the bank account. So one way to look at it is that they park certain of their allocation in JitoSol, right? Because technically JitoSoul um you know is staked Solana, right? So anytime they have a redemption request, they can sell the Jitoso, they burn the JitoSol, they can actually get Solana right away without having to go through and wait the unstaking period. So that's a really good utility uh for Solana ETF. So that's actually a very strong angle. A lot of these uh issuers are actually looking at including JitoSol. Um VanEck has also filed 100% JitoSol ETF, and uh we're working with them, you know, um, and then all the other issuers in terms of helping to see how we can actually um bring this to market um as soon as possible, right? Um and of course, you know, JitoSol, there's also another very strong angle. Uh we call it the Yield machine. Um obviously, you know, uh if you look at the last decade, people buy digital assets purely on speculation. No matter how much of stories that you want to, you know, uh cover it or just you know build the narrative around, it's all speculation. Yeah. I mean, Bitcoin, uh proof of um soil values, yeah, you will always appreciate. But at the end of the day, if you are an institutional client, if you want to deploy your treasury into digital assets, you need a stronger narrative than just speculation. This is where JitoSoul comes in, right? So if you can think about, you can think of JitoSol as a token that actually gives you the inflationary uh appreciation of Solana token plus all the MEV fees, right? So suddenly your narrative becomes an infrastructure investment, right? You're deploying your treasury into JitoSol because the more transactions that happen on Solana, the more fees will actually get collected and passed back to JotoSol holders. So it's a very strong narrative that institutional clients are very comfortable with, and then we're seeing a lot of uh positive uh attraction from that front.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 28:15

Yeah. So when you talk about, we talk to institutions. Obviously, uh by this time, I think every institution generally knows what the value prop is for Bitcoin. And I think for Ethereum as well, I think they're slowly catching up onto it. And I think a lot of that kind of uh narrative is around we're super decentralized, and you know, this is the first blockchain that has smart contracts as the biggest DeFi community ecosystem that blockchain companies have ever built. So, what is the current narrative? Not the retail side, but for the institutions. What is the narrative of Solana?

Marc Liew: 28:50

Yeah, this is something very close to my heart as well, because having come from two uh major institutional focused L1s, I realized that decentralization is becoming less and less important for a lot of institutional clients. Because at the end of the day, if you think about it, people just want things to happen faster and bring asset on chain, right? There's a whole stablecoin rush, there's a whole RWA rush. So when I when I scan the landscape, I see Solana be still flying the flag for decentralization and JITO really building the infrastructure for decentralization, right? And I think that's like super important because we don't want crypto to turn into another SaaS model, right? You don't want to be in a future where I don't know, your service provider is actually selling you something on a SaaS model, and they're using some sort of blockchain behind the scene to optimize that operation, right? It's not exactly like a Web3 economic model. So when I look at Solana, I think Solana has the advantage of the winning second mover kind of tagline because maybe a decade ago, people still talk about TPS, people talk about performance and all that stuff. Right now, people don't talk about TPS anymore. People just see whether things can happen and things will stake, right? And if you look at the Solana ecosystem, all of the Defi projects that are building on Solana, they grow very organically. They have their own very dedicated user base and most of these projects collaborate with each other. It's a very healthy kind of environment and Solana's vision has always been hey, you know, uh we are a monolithic uh blockchain layer, you know. It means all the liquidity from institutional side and retail side happened on Solana itself. Period. Right? You're not you're not talking about silo liquidity, you're not talking about layer one, layer two, it's a very different vision altogether. It's very close to what we are as an economy, right? Can you imagine if you are in a world where your currency, you know, whatever that you're actually using is silo, and then you don't interact with other countries in the world, right? In a way, so Solana it has that positioning in terms of a monolithic liquidity layer, and then JITO providing the infrastructure layer to govern some of these transactions, right? And coming back to the decentralization part, um, we have our product called StakeNet.

Marc Liew: 31:28

So StakeNet actually ensures every stake that comes through the protocol gets uh distributed autonomously through all the top validators depending on their performance via smart contracts. No human is involved, no Jito um team members are involved in that process. Even if one day Jito shuts or goes away, StakeNet will still operate on its own autonomously. And um yeah, I think that's the best way to really build decentralization. Um yeah, the way I look at it is that decentralization can only happen when you put the right tools in place and you have the right projects helping to push that vision forward in a in a in in a collaborative manner. And and the way I see it, Solana has a really thriving ecosystem and I think this is a good time to also talk about Breakpoint, which is happening next week in Abu Dhabi. I think it's gonna be late. Um you know, everyone from within the Solana ecosystem is gonna be there. And yeah, it's gonna be exciting.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 32:29

Yeah. I was gonna I point you to it to that direction later, but let me derail a little bit. Because you work for R3, Ripple, I mean, you know, I've seen Solana, you know, really from its beginning and then you know have its kind of really questionable moment during the FTX collapse and then really kind of matured into this um blockchain ecosystem where you don't need that much like support from the outside. It's like it just organically, as you mentioned, it started growing, right? And you know, on the on the opposite end of the spectrum, and I don't mean to like bash any foundations or even Ripple at this point, but like I'm just saying, like the the XRP ecosystem hasn't really really grown that much of a DeFi ecosystem, right? But it's a monstrosity on of its own, and they could buy companies and do whatever they want. So, like, so what what do you think? And this is a personal question, right? A bit more philosophical as well. What do you think it takes for a blockchain to actually get to where like Solana is? What is the kind of organical growth? How do how does the blockchain foundation actually get that kind of organical growth as opposed to like really trying to pay for its growth? You know what I mean?

Marc Liew: 33:45

No, I think that's a really good question, right? So there are a thousand roads that can lead to Rome, right? Depending on how you want to actually get there. And you are right, right? So there are definitely a lot of traditional uh financial players, especially from the web tool world, um, they're thinking about using certain elements of blockchain to optimize their businesses, right? Makes sense because you know they they are they have they are incumbents, you know, they have a lot of customers to serve, right? It doesn't make sense to do like a whole big bang migration, etc. but if you are a developer today that's just starting out in Web3 and you're looking for a place to land, um, Solana makes a lot of sense, right? Because you know, great team building great stuff and and and and the ecosystem helps themselves, and most importantly, there's a lot of organic growth. There's no right or wrong in terms of you know how to be successful in Web3, right? I think it all depends on the different business model, one that's actually in, right? And I pointed out earlier during during um you know our session, obviously the flavor of the money right now is definitely payments network utilizing stable coins and uh blockchain technology because there's low hanging fruit, right? That trend will definitely continue. h maybe down the road, you know, there will be some industry shakeout, and then you will see one or two um companies you know emerging as winners. It's definitely a place to be. Um but for Solana it's a very different positioning altogether. You know, Solana called itself the internet capital markets. Um, you know, essentially you look at Solana as like the NASDAQ of battery, like everything trades on Solana, even tokens from another foundation launched on Solana last week. So that is definitely something unique that's never never happened before. And um, yeah, we see a lot of opportunity on Solana, especially with Jito, and then we're hoping to um grow together with Solana and helping to serve the community. So, yeah, coming back to your question, I don't there's no right or wrong way in terms of how you can be successful in Web3. It it very much depends on the business model that one uh chooses to be in. And for Jito, you know, we are we are bullish Solana from day one, and then we are here uh for the long term working with the community.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 36:17

Right. Okay. Well, thank you very much for your time. I hope the uh Solana breakpoint is a big success. Unfortunately, I can't go but I've been to some others, obviously while I was in Singapore or other parts of Asia. It was quite exciting to be at those conferences. Um but again, thank you very much for your time.

Speaker: 36:40

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