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When Shift Happens Podcast - Episode 82 Summary
Episode Overview In this episode of *When Shift Happens*, host Kevin interviews TN Lee, the co-founder of Pendle Finance, a DeFi platform that allows users to tokenize and trade future yield on Ethereum assets. The discussion covers the evolution of Pendle, market dynamics, personal anecdotes from TN Lee's journey, and predictions for the future of crypto.
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Key Themes and Topics Discussed
- Introduction to TN Lee and Pendle Finance
- TN Lee is one of the co-founders of Pendle Finance, which facilitates the trading of future yield.
- Pendle's Total Value Locked (TVL) has surged from $250 million to over $7 billion within months.
- Understanding Market Dynamics
- Analyzing Market Prices: Emphasis on the volatility and the factors that impact token prices.
- Trading Interest Rates: The significance of interest rates in the crypto market and Pendle's unique offering.
- Personal Journey and Background
- TN Lee's transition from a hobbyist in crypto to co-founding Pendle.
- Experiences from his time at Kyber Network and the lessons learned from starting multiple businesses, including a failed cold brew venture.
- Pendle's Business Model
- Yield Tokenization: How Pendle allows users to tokenize yields and the implications for liquidity and capital efficiency.
- Discussion on the PT (Principal Token) and YT (Yield Token) structure, illustrating their inverse relationship.
- Growth Strategies and Market Positioning
- The strategy of identifying and collaborating with larger protocols like Lido, Aura, and Rocket Pool to gain traction.
- Importance of community and distribution in the success of crypto projects.
- Predictions for the Future
- Expectations for Pendle’s growth, with projections for potential TVL reaching tens of billions.
- The impact of emerging trends such as Ethereum’s restaking protocols and the potential to tap into the Bitcoin ecosystem.
- Challenges and Lessons Learned
- TN's reflections on the importance of resilience in entrepreneurship and the difficult decisions regarding when to pivot or persist.
- Learning from past failures and the critical need for market adaptability.
- Culinary Interests
- TN Lee's passion for food, particularly Peruvian and Japanese cuisines, and how his wife's culinary expertise informs his outlook on quality and execution.
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Key Takeaways
- Market Analysis: Understanding market trends and consumer behavior is crucial for driving value in crypto projects.
- Innovation in DeFi: Pendle exemplifies innovation in yield tokenization, catering to both retail and institutional investors.
- Importance of Community: Building and nurturing a community can significantly enhance a project's visibility and success.
- Learning from Failure: Resilience and adaptability are vital in the fast-evolving crypto landscape; past failures can inform better decision-making moving forward.
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Episode Highlights
- 3:00 - 5:00: Introduction to TN Lee and Pendle's staggering growth.
- 20:00 - 29:00: TN discusses early entrepreneurial ventures and lessons from failures.
- 49:00 - 57:00: Detailed explanation of Pendle's yield tokenization mechanism.
- 1:00:00 - 1:05:00: Predictions for Pendle's future and the DeFi landscape.
- 1:20:00 - 1:25:00: Culinary discussions with insights into the significance of quality and cultural influences in food.
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Conclusion The episode provides a comprehensive look at TN Lee's journey, the innovative mechanisms behind Pendle Finance, and the broader implications for the DeFi landscape. The insights shared highlight the ongoing evolution in the crypto space, emphasizing the importance of adaptability, community engagement, and strategic partnerships.
For more information on Pendle Finance, visit their [official website](https://www.pendle.finance/). Follow TN Lee on [Twitter](https://x.com/tn_pendle) for updates on Pendle and DeFi trends.
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Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00When we launched V1 in June 2021, we didn't have a lot of fraction. We made a lot of assumptions and we thought everything should be on-chain. An end-to-end transaction would cost a user maybe$1 ,000 in gas fees. There was a moment of realization for me because... Tian Li, the co-founder at Pendle Finance, a decentralized project pioneering yield tokenization on Ethereum. Enabling users to trade yield and earn fixed yield on their assets. Why did you leave Kaiba at the end of 2018? We started out in 2017 and we wanted to lead the charge of decentralized exchange. Comparatively in 2018, a good day for Kyber was maybe$50 ,000 when Binance or some other spot exchanges were doing hundreds of millions or even billions.
0:42We worked on many different product ideas. All of them didn't work out. How many did you try? We wanted to explore cold-roof business. We thought there could potentially be an interest in a different type of bean origins in Singapore. It was a completely radical idea and I was fascinated by it. I started out crypto as a hobbyist. I came across a product that utilized Bitcoin as an avenue for remittance. At one point in time, we were$10 million in FDV. We also experimented with NFT marketplaces. We are currently approaching close to$7 billion in TVL. A bulk of that was because of... So you started Pendle a couple of years ago, but you've done other things in your life that some people might not necessarily be aware of, right?
1:21Yeah. Who are you? How far do you want to go back? You decide. 75 % of you that watch this channel frequently do not subscribe. If you like this show and think it provides value to you in your crypto investing journey, can you please, please, please do me a favor and subscribe to this channel? Hit the like button and leave a comment below. It helps this channel more than you can imagine. The bigger the channel, the bigger the guests and the better the conversation. Thank you. Today's conversation is supported by Jupiter, the most used decentralized exchange in crypto and the largest DEX by volume on Solana, Manto, a leading Ethereum layer 2 with more than$2 billion in total value locked and$3 billion in liquid treasury.
2:07And Astar Network, a scalable network connecting people to Web3 through entertainment, blockchain development and community events. Raoul was asking him when we all met, he was asking him, how do you keep the value of a token high through time and then we talk for two hours right how do you because there's so much volatility yeah what's the kind of secret or kind of thing to that that a founder of like pretty substantial protocol should think about because you might say as the other day we talked about you said hey I don't want to comment on price which makes sense but at the end of the day the price of the token is kind of like the ultimate marketing tool and so if the thing goes down 97 % you can do the best job in the world in terms of protocol people are not going to like it Yeah, we don't comment on it publicly.
3:18We definitely observe it as a tracker of sorts, right? So we will do activities to grow the fundamental metrics. And hopefully it can translate to the price. Because ultimately, like you said, the price is the best marketing tool. So when we were, I remember, sorry, is this? We're starting, yeah, we started. We'll cut the beginning where we started, yeah. Okay, okay. Yeah, so, but basically I think when we were in the earlier part of last year, so this was, okay, just a little bit of history, right? Pendle at the lowest was around three cents. Today we are probably around five to$7. It can be very volatile.
4:10but at three cents growing the protocol um up to i'd say that the first uh to the 20 cents mark was incredibly difficult i'd say like maybe more so than the run that we had this year and the reason was because like when you're small nobody really paid attention to it so we had to figure out ways to get people to talk about pendle um and i think we had the first major boost when our good friend alex vanavik through his public wallet bought some pendle tokens so that actually i think that gave a lot of confidence to to the to the community and I think from there on it really started to compound yeah so thanks Alex
5:06he so so does it mean because this conversation we had like between closed door with Raul and Mia was Raul was basically saying hey how do you keep a token valuable through time right through multiple cycles and mia was just basically saying anything that is fundamentally driven is is utility of the protocol it just gives a non-zero value to your protocol right but it's that whether you make good revenue or whatever the actual premium on the top is attention. Yes. And that's it, right? And it's what you're saying that with Alex is that you could have basically built the best protocol, but no one cares until there is someone in the space who is kind of like public enough who is giving this first kind of kick and then you have the, you get the ball rolling.
6:06I think this is also in retrospect, this has been, I think a core part of our strategy. So we have a couple of things that we focus on when we launch Panel V2. So V2 was launched December of 2022. And during this period, we made like four different emphasis, right? So first, we needed to make sure that the product is iterative because whatever we pushed out to the public, it's not going to be the end state. We will interact with end users. And then through these interactions, we gather data points and then we have to continue to improve on the product. Now, the second part, which is an investment in like the BD and growth efforts, really, really made a difference between V2 and V1.
6:51Because V1 product was complex and the learning curve for most people was very, very steep for Pendle at least, right? V2, we invested a lot in educational materials and then we made sure that we work on the distribution outlets as well. Because like, again, I think in crypto, we're not short of products that have very meaningful technology, but because of the lack of distribution outlet or people don't talk about them enough, they don't get the attention and then they kind of just become irrelevant over time. There is this saying, actually it comes from Silicon Valley, right? Which is the first time founders, they focus on the product.
7:36The second time founders, they focus on the distribution. And that makes the whole difference, right? And they realize, oh man, I can build the best product in the world. but if no one gives a fuck, it's probably not going to be a success. Whereas you can build an average product or a good product, but if the distribution is on point, then it's going to make a massive difference. So the product has to still be good. It has to be the baseline foundation for people to even want to utilize it, right? But then the rest of it is really just how you get it to the right target audience. And then like for us, we've also been very very active in in a way like expressing a view on the kind of trends and narratives that we want to work on so i remember so stan drucken miller i think uh one of the speeches that he delivered a while back he there was a segment that he says because he's a macro trader he doesn't really care about what businesses, sectors to focus on.
8:42He cares about what the feds think, the central banks across the different regions, the different big powers, and then try to identify the liquidity flow. And then he slots himself in there to try to capture some of these opportunities. And I think in the same way, right, as crypto founders, sorry, protocol founders, we also have to think about positioning of the protocol in a similar nature as well. For us, we identified like in the early part of last year, we identified LST to be one of the more dominant trends of the year because Lido, RocketEath and a couple of others started showing up And it's true that a lot of people who are involved in DeFi have ETH.
9:39So they wanted to utilize the ETH to generate some yield. So that was a view that we took. And the first instance of us getting some sort of visibility was by affiliating the brand with some of the more dominant players in that particular segment. So I remember in January last year, we figure out a way to partner up with rocket pool balancer and aura and then four of us collectively marketed a new product line so if if i were to look at it right in the last one and a half years of running pendle the product hasn't changed it's really how we leverage on different narratives to try to position ourselves by figuring out the big money movements from one trend to the other and really inserting ourselves to help our users capitalize on these opportunities, we grow as well.
10:38And then of course, after LST, we also capitalize on Arbitrum. we also capitalized on I mean more recently this year was really restaking narrative so figuring out the place where we are expecting majority of the liquidity or capital to flow in this sector and how we can best position ourselves to help our users make wealth or express a view that's been I think a core anchor of how we think about positioning
11:15so you started pendle a couple of years ago but you've done other things in your life before that that some people might not necessarily be aware of right yeah who are you how far do we want to go back you decide yeah well so i think like um
11:41I think so I started out in crypto as a hobbyist this was when I was still a student and I was a research assistant for a professor and he tasked me to look into the different fintech business models as part of the research for his coursework so I looked into it and I came across a product that utilized Bitcoin as an avenue for remittance between Singapore and the Philippines. So TransferWise or WISE was already in existence then and they were really big. But I thought what this company was doing, it's called Toast. I think it's no longer around. they were using Bitcoin to do the money transfer.
12:40And the price that they were offering to customers was a fraction of what Wise offered. Now, I can't remember exactly what it was, but I thought it was a fascinating technology altogether because the way I looked at it, right? Wise was innovating. It was more like an incremental innovation in the business model, right? So they have credits on one side And then like the money doesn't really cross border. It's just credit and debiting of money in a certain jurisdictions, depending on the target. So they have multiple different endpoints and then they rebalance every day. Whereas like in the case of Bitcoin, it was a completely radical idea and I was fascinated by it.
13:27So that was, I think, my first interaction with crypto and then I went deeper into it. But fast forward, I was also like, because I'm not technical. So to get involved in a space that was highly technical at that point in time. What do you mean by I'm not technical? So I was a business major. I was a business major with some understandings in finance and marketing, right? Very typical, I think, profile. Not typical in crypto. Definitely not typical. Especially not as a founder. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, I took up courses to learn about coding, but I don't aspire to be a great coder. And I think back in 2014, 15, crypto was extremely technical.
14:24And of course, my first interaction with Ethereum was through the white paper around then. Learning about it. So one of my current co-founders, we have been friends for a long time. So we actually knew each other about 20 years ago today. We lived together then and we decided to venture into this technology not knowing too much about technicalities of it. So the first implementation for us was actually to mine Ethereum. So we got some GPUs and then mined some Ethereum using mining pools. I think it was F2P at that point in time. But of course, we mined some assets. And then shortly after, like 2016, 2017 period, it was an extremely good time because it was an ICO period.
15:24so we took out all the assets that we mined and we started flipping ICOs because of better return but turns out I think it was it was actually a bad decision because we were relatively decent with entries but we were really terrible with exits meaning you keep too long yes yeah you just we became the exit liquidity right so so and I'd say like that was formative years and then I went through another cycle in the like 21, 22 period. And then I learned it like more recently, just stick with Bitcoin and ETH, maybe Solana as well. And you don't have to do too many things because most of us are not like good token or coin pickers.
16:13We shouldn't have to do that. We should to just stick with the blue chips and then be comfortable with it. Yeah, but I started professionally in crypto actually through Kyber. So I joined as one of the founding team members and it was one of the best things to happen to me because everything I learned about, sorry, everything I know about finance was a result of that opportunity. So I worked very closely with Loy, definitely with meow as well uh we were just a bunch of guys with some ideas um trying to figure out ways to be relevant in a fast-growing environment yeah this was 2017 yes 2017 2018 right yes correct um yeah i i thought the the entire experience was extremely inspiring because of of i think because of that opportunity i had the chance to travel more broadly and then met with very interesting and capable people so that that motivates me even more to want to um do well um focusing on my strengths and then try to maybe leverage on someone else's come together and and do something meaningful yeah you told me you left kyber at the end of 2018 which was also pretty much the bottom of the bear market right yes i think november bitcoin went from 6k to 3k yes then everybody was kind of like depressed why did you leave kyber at the end of 2018 and obviously like i'm not gonna say hey the question is not like hey why did you leave at the bottom yeah but it's more put that in perspective with what you learned afterwards right yeah that played a big part in pendle current success yeah of course so i think so i left kyber at the end of 2018 um for one okay it was it was because there were so many things that were happening around then right uh we had multiple different types of l1s this was eos tezos a lot of them might not be very relevant now, but they were pretty big protocols at that point in time.
18:40And of course, the other aspect was like, we started out in 2017 and we wanted to lead the charge of decentralized exchange. But comparatively, I think in 2018, a good day for Kyber was maybe$50 ,000, $100 ,000 in daily trading volume when Binance or some other spot exchanges were doing maybe hundreds of millions or even billions. So there's a big disparity. There was a big disparity between the two different types of exchanges. And I just couldn't figure out ways or rather, I think in retrospect, I would think of myself as being unimaginative because I was, again, looking at it, from the present perspective and not really thinking far to see what it could potentially become.
19:37So I think this was a very important lesson for me. And yeah. So basically you're kind of like FOMOing into other things, right? Like I'm doing something here. It's interesting, but it's not picking up. And these other things are kind of like more successful right now. Yes. I'm probably, therefore, I'm probably doing the wrong thing, right? Yeah. so there are definitely push and pull forces right the pull because someone else is doing it much better and then the push was yeah like um we are we on the right track yeah i wasn't sure so there was a lot of doubt and this was me not too long after school and and not having a lot of experience and not having that resolution to see through the things that we wanted to build so i left kyber and set up a small team with my current set of co-founders to explore different ideas so we worked on many different product ideas sometimes crypto related sometimes not crypto related and i'd say all of them didn't work out um how many how many did you try Right.
20:55Dude, I don't even remember. It was a lot. I'll give you some examples, right? We wanted to explore cold brew business. Interesting. This was nothing related to crypto. This was just an interest in coffee. And we thought, okay, so we actually took a trip to Laos because coffee producing countries in Southeast Asia, not that many, right? Laos happens to be one of the Arabica beans producers in the region. And then, of course, on the other side, there's Vietnam. So we thought there could potentially be an interest in a different type of bean origins in Singapore, considering that there were so many different coffee shops here.
21:43So we actually have a friend who runs a farm in Laos, and we visited him to see if it's a viable business opportunity. That didn't work out. That import business didn't work out. But we were considering different profiles of cold brew that could potentially be sold to coffee shops or retail. And it would basically become just a supplier. That didn't work out. We also tried a kit for cheesecakes. i know i know no well the reason i'm i'm the reason i'm laughing is because i love coffee and i love cheesecakes basically so and i think the even i had multiple ideas around building business around coffee and when i was 2006 2006 i went to the u.s and i discovered cheesecake factory and i was like i need to bring this concept back to europe i was like it's so amazing right yeah obviously there was already some guys on it and everything but like okay so cake for cheesecake.
22:47Look, so, yeah, of course, like these were the things we like as well, right? So I think we weren't set to want to make these into big businesses, but we wanted a way to generate some income stream so that we can continue to explore different business ideas. So again, like during that period, in order, because it was, it was bear market, I had some savings, but it wasn't like a massive amount of money. So I needed to, as much as possible increase my runway. So these were the ideas that we explored. Didn't work out. But of course, along the way, I picked up some part-time job as well. So I was a swimmer.
23:28I taught swimming because it's actually a pretty lucrative side gig. So I taught swimming, kids, adults as well. Not so many of them, but it paid the bill. And then I also became a lifeguard because it was like the easiest job ever. in a pool. Okay, so not to discriminate against any kind of lifeguards, but the pool that I was assigned to had no guests at all for the entire day. So there was nothing to look at, right? It was just me sitting in a room to try to get my work done. That's it. Every minute that I sat in there, it was just like some money for my expenditure. i also did slides for someone else on fiverr to try to so you were fiverr contract like a contractor yeah yeah so all these little gigs to try to sustain that um that that dream and hope of building something meaningful yeah and then 2020 happened right yes defy summer yes and what's really important to understand here is i think based on what we talked about before the other days it's the moment you you had a big realization right regarding decentralized exchange and kind of like your mindset on how a founder should think about being early in a trend.
25:00Yes. Yeah, so I think it was an important realization because 2020 DeFi Summer was the tipping point for a lot of products that came out in 2017. So Uniswap 2017, 2018 period, and then EatLand, which eventually became Aave and then Compound, all of them came out around 2017, 2018 period. And it took them about two to three years to get to a state where they became really, really important. And basically, they hit the product market fit. So for me, that was a moment of realization for me. It was, I think it was extremely memorable because I didn't think money market was needed when I was at the spot of, say, at Kyber.
25:54We didn't see a lot of transaction. And if no one else is trading, who's going to need a money market? Who's going to lend and borrow? I didn't, I couldn't make sense of it. And then, you know, a couple of years later in 2020, I realized I was the one that was not thinking big. So I was actually quite adamant not to repeat that again because that has caused me quite substantial, not so much in, I mean, not just monetarily, right? But time for me to work on something meaningful. Yeah. So. I mean, the problem, an important point here, which is kind of a double-edged sword because on one side you're realizing, hey, the big ideas, I could be working on the right thing but not know it, right?
26:50And then if I give up too early, I shoot myself in the foot, I lost time and I missed out on a massive opportunity that I had found already, right? Yes. The other one is I could be working on something that's completely useless. Les, when do you throw the towel? It's always a very difficult question. Truth is, I don't know. But I would say like my experience with Pendle, right? Because we started out in 2020. We stuck through, and this is going to be the fourth year we run Pendle. So actually for me, I thought the first two years of low adoption period was relatively easy to get through because I think for me, it was mostly anchoring the state of crypto to a mature state of a financial sector, right?
27:47And for me, I think in any financial sector, people who are managing money would value certainty, but it was largely absent in crypto. So if we are able to create an instrument that allows people some form of certainty, I think it should see decent adoption. So that's one. I think another layer is more internal. When we thought about the idea of building a product like Pendle, it was because of our innate need to get some form of certainty as well. Because we like the 10 ,000, 20 ,000 % APY. But there's also another side of us that want to know that if we put$1 today, we can get$2 out, like say in a year's time.
28:37That certainty is actually quite invaluable. And again, it was largely absent in crypto. So because of our own conviction in that particular perspective, we sustained and we continued on to build what we thought would make sense to the space. And I think for me, I've always been motivated to work on products that could deliver impact at scale. And I thought that was a pretty meaningful problem statement to work on. Because if we can, I think if we can deliver that product successfully, we could enable more types of use cases. I think we can also enable, we can potentially reduce the cost of capital.
29:23and that could have a widespread application across the board.
29:53So one of the big realizations is things take time. I should not give up too early if I really believe in my thing, right? Yes. That you learned through the Kyber experience. Yes. Because Kyber and decentralized finance happened two years after, two years later than basically when you kind of left it. Yeah. There's two other big realizations that you had the last 10 years. the first one is uh you were thinking and it's really interesting because i was the same maybe it's an ego problem i don't know like you were actually thinking that everyone should start a business right when you were younger you're thinking and i remember when i was 23 i started my first company and i was like every day i was thinking the same i was like i don't understand why not everyone is starting a company it doesn't make sense to me that not everyone is starting is starting a company right yes you were thinking the same yes why did you change your mind actually doesn't make any sense to think like that but no i i i think it actually takes a lot of grit um and it takes a certain kind of personality to to get things done like we're talking about running a business uh and charting into and like trying to get into an uncharted territory.
31:24So you need to have, I mean, first of all, self-belief, very strong self-belief. And then you need to also convey that to other people so that they can join you in that particular mission. And at some point in time, you need to be able to convince a broader audience to utilize the product because it can be meaningful to them. So and along the way, we're going to encounter a lot of challenges and obstacles. Like, for example, this guy suddenly throws in a towel and doesn't want to work anymore. What do you do? Do you break down and cry and then give up? Or do you go look out for solutions, patch it and then keep moving forward?
32:05So I think it really does take a certain kind of character to be able to execute with so many known and unknown. challenges. Another thing is, I've also come to realize, do you know Ratatouille? The animated picture? The movie? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they have a very famous line, right? But eventually at the end of it, the critic, he commented that he thinks that anyone can cook, sorry not not everyone can cook but a good cook can come from everywhere so so i i i believe that as well right um interesting because it's it's linked to the second point second realization right yes you don't have to come from silicon valley to start something big yes so okay so this was this was also i think um a realization for me but this was in 2016 so i grew up like this was before i came to singapore this was a long time ago i was actually a pretty competent swimmer and i was i represented my state at some point in time i represented the In Malaysia.
33:29In Malaysia. Yeah. At like age groups, like regional age groups. So competed in Thailand. So I was one of the top candidates for some events in the country. Trained really hard for it. And I remember very vividly when I was growing up, like during the 7 to 12 years old, I only had a dream. I wanted to be an Olympian and I wanted to win a medal at the Olympics. this didn't matter like whether it's first second or third right but to be at the podium representing the country was i thought was one of the most meaningful things that that i could do but of course uh so over time i think as i as i grew and had a bit more exposure and realized that like becoming a swimmer is actually very, very difficult.
34:21I started to lose faith and dismiss that idea of having the ability to win. So eventually I changed. In short, I ditched that ambition and I went another trail. Why did you ditch it concretely? I didn't believe in that dream. Why do you think you're not believing in your dream? Because there was no precedence. Because no one else from our region, like just say like in Southeast Asia, even made it to the finals at the Olympics. It was always say the US, Aussies, some Europeans, some Japanese, some Chinese. But the dominant swimmers were always from that few countries. Japan, maybe one or two good swimmers, but the rest of it is really kind of not so good.
35:17And then China, sometimes, no one from Southeast Asia. And I was born and raised in Southeast Asia. And then 2016 was when Joseph Schooling from Singapore, born and raised here, won the gold medal. And I thought the - In the Olympics. At the Olympics, beating Michael Phelps, Chad LeClo, and Lars Loche. It was an incredible, I think these days, when I wanted additional motivation, I would look at the race to get myself motivated because he was probably the youngest of the lot, right? And he beat, typically in a swimming race, there's a gold medalist, silver medalist and a bronze medalist. Now it was very interesting, not just because Joseph Schooling won the race at record time.
36:11It was one gold medalist and three silver medalists. So I thought it was, the odds of that happening was extremely low. It was a pretty interesting race. But more than that, I think it really proved me wrong in the biggest way possible, but also in the best way possible. Because I came from a background of, I had a similar kind of background. And the difference between Joseph and me, aside from Flair, I think he must have been a much better swimmer than I was. But more importantly, I think it's just having that belief that he could one day become a gold medalist at the Olympics. I didn't have that.
36:59I looked, I was basing it on historical data and didn't find any patterns. So I kind of dismissed it. He went the other way, right? No one else, no one else before him did it. but he went ahead with it anyways and he achieved it. So in all honesty, I think he is one of my biggest heroes because he showed me that indirectly, he showed me that if you think big enough and with enough convictions, sometimes things can happen.
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37:35Do you think it's a resource or a mindset problem? So I think resource has to be there. that that is like that that that is the the foundation the baseline you need to be good in something but then after a certain stage it's really just about mindset you got to believe that you can do it and you will figure out ways to to to to get get it done absolutely and then the mindset will get you to know other people with the same mindset we're talking about lori before yes we're talking about meow right we just hang out with these dudes like meow is a fucking machine like it's just always like like right and he pulls you up right yeah and so the more you the hard thing is and it's the same for me i'm from a village in switzerland right switzerland is great but there's not much happening so in the beginning for a very long time the only thing you have to get into those circle is your mindset and kind of self-belief and just trying.
38:41And then once you get with these people, you get into another dimension just because you're surrounded by these people. Yes, surrounded by people who've been there. So I think another very formative experience for me was actually Cumberland Summit in 2018. So this was when I was already in crypto. So Cumberland is one of the largest OTC desk for crypto globally. and they organized a summit here in Singapore for a couple of days leading up to F1. Now, so they had, because of their influence, they invited, I think, a total of 100 guests to the event. And then for some reason, I was one of them. Now, in that room, there were so many, I'm pretty sure everyone else in the room was more accomplished than I was.
39:37We're talking about CZ. We're talking about like Arthur Hayes, Joe Lubin. These are guys who have done, they have, I think at this point in time, they were all very established already. And I think being in, and there was Wu Jihan as well. And being in the same room where people of certain successes are just like next to me. I thought that was incredibly inspiring because it's one thing, right? To see Mark Zuckerberg, he's in Silicon Valley and then he's done Facebook meta and his net worth is whatever. He's got a product that serves like billions of users every day. That all feels very different, distant.
40:28when at that point in time, I think in 2018, just sitting in the same room with say CZ Wu Jihan, just maybe two seats next to me, it was extremely enlightening because they were all very successful founders and they're all self-made too. And they're able to just assert influence in the space in a way that no one's done it before. And I actually look up to them. And that gave me a lot of confidence that, yeah, I could do something as well. So you said you launched Pendle in 2020, right? And then you just tried different things.
41:17What is Pendle today? If you had to explain it to your mother.
41:25Tough question. Very tough. My mother doesn't know that I'm doing Pendle. Why does she know about you? Well, she knows that I'm okay. I don't know. I find it very... She knows I'm okay. It's probably an Asian mindset. I feel like, again, I'm pretty sure she's not going to be an audience of this recording, right? So I can say it quite freely. i have a feeling that if she knows what i do she's gonna have she will probably allocate some of her assets to help like uh for me to manage and i don't want that responsibility why because it's family and that's a really really important point actually i've done so I mean, I think all of us have done the mistake before.
42:18Yeah. Why don't you want to help your mother do well in crypto? No, but like it's a fair, right? So I will support in different ways, right? Like if she needs financial aid, in any case, right? I will, as a filial son, I will do my best. But managing money is very different because I think this is like me speaking of it from my perspective. I think my mother is at an age or my parents, right? They're at the age where they have some amount left and they have maybe, I don't know, another 20, 30 years. So that is sufficient. It's nice. Like if it's just fixed rate stuff, if it's a 5 % just to keep the pile growing gradually, that's fine.
43:12But if it involves taking risk and putting the savings at risk, I think that's quite irresponsible. Look, they only have, because everyone at some point will have to move on. They have maybe, yeah, conservatively 30 years left. They should just enjoy it and not having to have to grow that pile. because no matter how much they grow, they only have that amount of time left to spend. So what does your mother think you do? She actually doesn't know that I'm involved in crypto. That's so interesting. Finance, IT. I'm an IT guy. Yeah, that's all she needs to know. I think I had a similar story with Arthur Cheung from Defiance.
44:04Like he was saying, they don't really know. I don't really tell them. otherwise they would be scared they would be worried for me right so i didn't i don't yeah i mean maybe i mean maybe now it's different but like in the beginning at least he was like i just lied i just lied for a long time i was not saying what i was doing because otherwise it would have been too worried for me right yeah no that's true actually because i had a period of time before um before before founding pendle before we had any kind of fundraise right there was a period of time i was doing odd jobs it was they were all honest jobs but i mean but you're not a banker you're not an accountant i'm not making bucks yeah you're not a lawyer yeah which is what most families want their kids to do especially in i guess in asia yeah in switzerland is the same actually yeah banks so what the fuck are you doing son yeah you you went to a school and then you graduated with a degree why are you doing like all these things that does not require your your um your knowledge from school yeah we have different aspirations but i i just wasn't i think at that point in time i probably wasn't the best best son in the family um now now we're okay um yeah so so i think because of that experience i kind of just went ahead with it anyways do you siblings i do i have a sister younger older sister and and a younger brother are they involved in crypto my younger brother is so what is pendle if you had to explain to your sister to older sister who doesn't do crypto
45:43in short it's an interest rate swap protocol what does that mean so we tokenize the apys of of APRs, APYs of protocols and allow that to be traded. So as an example, Lido's STETH is offering, is maybe paying 4 % APY. That can be tokenized and be traded. So now let's say if you're the counterpart, you can purchase just the incoming yield and not having to care about the underlying principle. So that's what Pendol does. Now the same mechanics, this has been the vision that we started out, right? Like this was what we started out with in 2020. It hasn't changed, but the underlying implementation has changed when we launched V2.
46:43So you had this initial idea, but it's not the thing that really worked out the best, right? you said like what you implemented with this new version is kind of similar, but like different. Different implementation. Yeah, so this is the challenge that I think working on a product that has no precedence because we make a lot of assumptions. We actually copied quite a lot of the UI UX from referencing other protocols. So these, for example, Uniswap was already very established then. there was a certain kind of layout that people were familiar with and then there was avian compound so we were basically taking components here and there and then slap it onto our our layout with a lot of assumptions like because we didn't have any kind of data points to work with we thought maybe users would care about this number because this is what we think and we have to go ahead with that.
47:47But in reality, maybe users don't care about it as much. So we have to make adjustments. So that's why I think one of the, like this is also why it's important to have time. It's, sorry, it's important for some products, especially the nascent ones where they haven't really gotten product market fit to take some time to figure out. And we, yeah, it took us a good like two, two and a half years or so to get to the state that we are currently at. But it was a lot of work behind the scene. We implemented, oh, okay. Actually, I think when we launched V1 in June 2021, we didn't have a lot of friction for a couple of reasons.
48:34The UI UX, as I explained, right, was terrible.
48:40it was extremely difficult to get into a position on pendle and at that point in time just to give you an illustration right an end-to-end transaction would cost a user maybe a thousand dollars in gas fees so it doesn't make a lot of sense it doesn't make any sense at all so um we have scenes modify the contracts and optimize it so we we delegated a lot of the works to the back end to to reduce the cost but you know first implementation we made a lot of a lot of assumptions and we thought everything should be on chain um so it was very expensive and then it was also a time when in 2021 it was bull market yeah so we were competing for attention against so many other protocols that were doing much better than we were.
49:31Nobody cared about fixed rate when the floating rates paying like 20%, 30 % APY, right? Fixed rate, yeah, you could get like 10%, but people wanted something else because they have the appetite and the stomach to, yeah. And you even had the Anchor protocol, right? Yeah. It was fixed 20%. 20%. Yeah. It was incredible. Yeah, yeah. It was actually a very, okay. The first guest on this podcast, which started online, was Matthew Cantary, the MD of Anchor Protocol. Very first guest ever. I must confess, I actually enjoyed Anchor Protocol. I mean, who didn't? Yeah. Who didn't? Absolutely. It was beautiful, right?
50:16Yeah. It was so easy to use. Actually, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The UX was, I think, incredible. It was so easy to use. you didn't even have to I mean I could navigate it without having to go go through a tutorial and that I think is is yeah a gold standard when it comes to UI UX right yeah I I enjoyed it until until I didn't yeah lots of money there I mean who am I to say that like I got completely wrecked on Luna yeah and even Angle Protocol had a few hundred thousand dollars from my data analytics company on there got 30 cents on the dollar. You managed to claw some back, right? 30 cents? 30 cents on the dollar.
51:02But like, but Luna, I lost way more than that and it all went to zero. Damn. I'm sorry to hear. So when Luna happened, when Luna happened, I was in California on the road and I couldn't access my device. So I took some hits as well. Yeah. Lesson learned. Always bring the device when you're going on a long road trip. For me. Or just buy Bitcoin ETH. Yeah, exactly. And just do nothing with it. Exactly. That's it. Buy Bitcoin ETH when it's bear market. And then just, I think the challenge really became staying sane and not do stupid things. Absolutely. This week, we are releasing Raoul Pal. Don't fuck this up, right?
51:49It's like the meme. Banana Zone and don't fuck this up. main thing we talk about is that the entire crypto the entire system in crypto is to make it fuck this up and what's really interesting is Pendle right I mean we talk about V2 and points and all that stuff but like if you think very rationally about the points it's these protocols they basically want your liquidity and all that stuff right so they're basically gamifying the whole thing but if you think and it's needed for innovation for sure, right? Because if they don't have liquidity, they cannot do anything, right? But at the same time, if you think purely as a investor who doesn't want to fuck this up, what you're doing is the same, right?
52:34Buy Bitcoin, ETH and just do nothing, right? With it. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So many distractions. Everyone feels the need to take chances in crypto because they've seen someone made like 100X, 1 ,000x on some meme coins. I get that. I think the appeal is very strong. But realistically, I think most people don't have the luck to hit that jackpot. So most of us are actually better off just holding Bitcoin and ETH. And if you hit the jackpot, you're not going to sell. You're going to end up bag holder because you wouldn't hit the jackpot. You're not going to go for the 100 or the 1 ,000x if you sell before, right?
53:15Exactly. But it also means if you didn't sell before, you're probably not going to sell after, right? Yeah. like it's just yeah it's it's hard and and if you have such a sizable position um you become it's it's it's also like the challenge is like it becomes very difficult to exit because when you exit like let's say if you are if you're a significant holder even one or two percent of a meme coin try exit it's extremely difficult without without influencing the market yeah so so i think that's that's the challenge and i think yeah because people who made it through meme coin they have a lot to say right like and everybody likes a good story like that so these things get vocalized a lot more than the boring strategies on uh bitcoin eat the boring strategies that actually work yes yeah i i learned it after several rounds of getting wrecked by investing.
54:14First one was like the ICO days, right? Like I said, I think I would have done a lot better if not - If you just kept your ease at your mind, right? Yeah. Of course, we would have. Yeah, so much better. Yeah, terrible that exits. But yeah, those were the days. I mean, we have to go through some of these experiences in order to appreciate. Like if you tell me today, without any context that I have, without any kind of wisdom that I have learned through the years. If you tell me just stick with Bitcoin and ETH, I probably wouldn't trust you as much. It's the same with, I mean, not same, but similar when you said before, I learned that not everyone should be an entrepreneur, right?
55:00You have to go through the entrepreneurship journey to realize, fuck, this is actually not for everyone. It's actually for almost no one, right? There's not many people who can do that. And in crypto, it's the shitcoin. game is the same, right? Yes. Everybody thinks, ah, and then they get wrecked and then they learn, actually, the shitcoin is, I think that's why Bitcoin maxis, I mean, now is less the case, but for so many years, they're just, Bitcoin maxis is so strong because they went through the shitcoin casino, got wrecked, realized, oh, I had that many bitcoins, I mean, denominated in Bitcoin.
55:35All these shitcoins were worth that many Bitcoin at the top and I got so wrecked right and then they learned and that's why they basically became more and more maxi I guess yeah and yeah it's possible and I guess we'll I guess we'll go there and that's why also you don't want to involve your mother yes like that's why one of the key points that I talked about with Arthur Cheung was someone who is really experience in crypto doing really well will never ever recommend even his friends to buy any crypto because there's no upside to telling someone to buy crypto because if it goes up a lot they are the genius if it goes down you are the asshole right and even if you tell them at the right moment to buy the thing just buy Bitcoin if in the bear market you're going to do 10x whatever they will fuck this up because they will not be they won't be able to go against their kind of nature, which is I need to buy this shitcoin.
56:41I need to play with it. I need to do that. So whatever, because you involve them first intense, right? It's kind of your fault. Therefore, there is no upside to tell anyone, hey, you should do that. You can educate, whatever, but don't. I recommend you not to buy this thing. Like literally. Yeah, sure. Because you're going to get wrecked with your own stupidity. Yeah. it's happened a lot more common like a lot more than I'd like to think yeah it really takes a lot of discipline to resist the temptation of getting into a shitcoin it takes a lot so you launched V2 yes around the points right yes so actually V2 wasn't around the points V2 was 2022 December we were trying to figure out how to because I think at this point in time in December 2022 we had maybe five million dollars in TVL so for the entirety of last year it was really trying to very painfully grind through the last year and trying to gain traction so the strategy going into 2023 for us was actually just just one type one mental model right that is to stay relevant We didn't have to care too much about the trading volume.
58:01We wanted to optimize for TVL. So in order to attract TVL, we had to figure out the big money movements and then slotting ourselves there. So the first implementation for us when it comes to like a more meaningful narrative play was to set up a campaign with Aura Balancer and Rocket Pool. we were small, they were much bigger. So we leveraged and I mean, thanks to a lot of them, we were able to kind of rise from a pile of protocols that were written off already. Because I think we were dead at that point in time. We were three cents and we had like single digit TVL. And because of their endorsements, we somewhat became a little more relevant.
58:56So subsequently, we continued on the same kind of strategy and we were looking for narratives and good partners to work with. So that's been a strategy for the last year and even for this year. Identifying good partners to work with is a key part of our strategy. We benefited drastically from EtherFi, Eigenlayer's cluster. And then we also benefited greatly from Athena's rise to stardom as well. Yeah. So yeah, the points, frankly, I did not expect the traction to be this significant. So I remember this year, in my conversations with my teammates, I usually use Aave Compound as the blue chip standard because in the money market, everybody forks Compound, everybody forks Aave.
59:58So to me, they're like the blue chips that we look up to. So crossing the, like at one point in time, we became bigger than Compound. That was actually quite a special moment for me. And then more recently, we also surpassed a number of other protocols that I still have a lot of respect for. I think that definitely felt, I mean it feels extremely surreal that in such a short time frame of like five, six months so much has changed Do you want to give us some concrete numbers on like what happened in the last five months where you were and where you are now? Yeah, sure so last year we were growing from I'd say like five million dollars in TVL at the start of the year to gradually we picked at around 250 million so that was i think already quite significant the target was i think we were looking at it from say um revenue perspective right our target was actually yeah potentially 300 million we didn't hit it um but it was a good result nevertheless because to grow from say a single digit TVL to several hundreds.
1:01:16It was, I think, quite encouraging. And I think the team has done a lot to experiment with different ideas. Look, we tried so many things, right? Like even though it's easy for me to say, like we try to identify the big money flows, the narratives, but we tried so many things that didn't, probably doesn't make a lot of sense. We were at one point in time, the narrative positioning for us was low cap gem because we were like$10 million in FDV. We also experimented with NFTs and the NFT marketplaces. So Luxray, ApeCoin. So these were the different types of narratives that we wanted to affiliate Pendle with.
1:02:00Didn't work out as well. But yeah, so I think for this year, we are currently approaching close to$7 billion in TVL. A bulk of that was because of the several protocols, right? The restaking protocols like Ether5, Renzo, Kelp. And then ETHINA is definitely a big contributor of the growth as well and Zirkit more recently. So it was points. Points was the main catalyst for the product market fit.
1:02:39you said we went from 5 million in tvl to 7 billion what does that represent in terms of fdv you said we were at 10 million i don't know what it is today i would think it's probably around one and a half billion to one point something like that yeah 1.7 billion in in terms of number of user count is also grown significantly as well. We used to have maybe one transaction every two days. Now we have thousands of transactions every day. So our daily trading volume has grown quite substantially as well. Last year, I think like around May last year, we would be very happy if we have 200, 300K in trading volume.
1:03:26So yesterday we have$182 million. So we averaged maybe around 100 to$200 million in daily trading volume this year, largely because of the YTPT interaction. So people who are bullish on points, they can express a view by buying YT. And then people who want fixed rates, they can buy the other side and um i think i think more recently we saw big whales like for example like justinson he's got his um i mean these are all public uh public public information so he he's actually one of the biggest users of of pendle and if if i read it correctly i think he's got a liking for fixed rates which understandably so for his size typically in the three digit million size fixed rate of 20-30 % is actually quite a lot of money can you explain how the point thing came along especially you said it was not expected for us that's probably one of the most interesting points so
1:04:45Actually, when we... So points wasn't exactly something new for us this year. when we work with swell swell is one of the lst protocols we have a view on lst protocols that's why we work with a number of different issuers and swell happens to be one of them so in order to attract liquidity swell had their own system and they were issuing pearls which is equivalent to points so you deposit some asset on swell you get some pearls and these pearls could eventually on some days in the future be exchanged for airdrop tokens. So this is, I think, our first interaction with points. So we've had last year to work on something like that.
1:05:34So points isn't exactly a new novel concept for us, but Eigenlayer popularized it even more so this year, right? Because Eigenlayer, when they started out, They were basically just giving up points to early depositors as a way to bootstrap liquidity and to incentivize participation. And then end of last year, we were really thinking that Eigenlayer was really becoming quite meaningful in size. We need to work with them. So we don't work directly with Eigenlayer. we work with LRT protocols like EtherFi and Renzo and Kelp because they're building on top of Eigenlayer. So they are offering points as well.
1:06:23So for us, using the experience that we had last year and incorporating like newer elements of points, and then we basically just assign all the points to YieldToken. so sorry as a context right pendle tokenizes a yield bearing asset like eith into pt and yt so the pt represents the principal token yt represents the yield token now so principal token is generally the fixed fixed income like the fixed rate uh sorry fixed apy uh component So PT does not earn yield. It is the YT that earns the yield and the points. Now, so there is also a very important relationship between PT and YT because one PT plus one YT has to equal to the value of underlying.
1:07:19Now that means PT and YT are inversely related. So if PT demand increases, the price of PT would increase. and because it is inversely related to, sorry, the demand for YT, if it increases, the YT price would increase. And because YT is inversely related to PT, when YT price increases, PT price has to come down. So the more it comes down, the bigger the discount is to the underlying. so this is where I think like it's structured something like a zero coupon and then users who value the fixed rate they will just buy the PT hold it until maturity to earn to redeem the underlying one-to-one now we basically like through the points right because user has an anticipation for maybe how the points would work out because eigenlayer being one of the biggest protocols today they are number two after LIDO there's a lot of expectation that they would do very well like from a fdv standpoint and then on top of that all the lrt's the leading lrt's like etherfi and renzo there is a lot of expectation on the performance of these tokens as well so users who are bullish on these protocol performance they would just buy the yt because they want the points exposure and and points exposure is not limited to just the LRTs it's also eigenlayer points so one time per chase gets exposure to two times the the points and to top it up to sweeten it we've also negotiated for multipliers for a lot of these points as well so that means if you deposit one ETH into say EtherPhi you earn one time point but if you deposit it through Pendle you could get three times the points So that is how we kind of funnel more liquidity to Pendle, which eventually ends up in the liquidity pools of all these LRT protocols.
1:09:34And the benefit for us, sorry, the proposition for users is that like these assets can be more utilized and then the liquidity is generally more sticky as well. So because of that relationship with PTYT, we see a lot more interest in the YT side. And as a result, the PT becomes more attractive. So we're talking about 40 % to 60 % in fixed APY on ETH. So the strategy is to serve the big players in the risk-taking field, right? Yes. One of the key focus. Yeah, we figure out a way to work with them. and I think now the strategy is identify the best potential protocols to work with and then from there on, construct a successful case study and then go to the other protocols to offer a similar kind of service.
1:10:34We are very neutral. We are primarily operating as a platform to help these protocols go to market and then bootstrap initial traction. so the plan on the restaking side is eigenlayer right and then you mentioned carac and symbiotic yes so um i think i think the restaking narrative is is very sound because it allows for users to generate more yield with the same asset um eigenlayer has already proven to be a very effective means to aggregate liquidity and potentially offering pretty attractive APYs to the users. So the upcoming alternatives like Karak and Symbiotic are good candidates that users can consider as well if they want to deposit their assets for additional APY.
1:11:36And we work with these alternatives and then provide an avenue for users to participate in their point systems. What's the potential for Pando if you successfully manage to kind of pull this off, right? This risk-taking narrative? Yeah. I think we could look at tens of billions of dollars because, yeah, just looking at Lido alone, Lido has$35 billion in TVL. And I think a lot of that could be channeled to a restaking protocol. Because Lido gives you the basic ETH staking yield, but the same asset could potentially be earning more yield. So I believe that in the future, maybe not too far from now, most people would actually prefer to stake their assets in a restaking protocol versus just something like Lido.
1:12:36again depending on their risk appetite right you want something vanilla and safe it's taking yield through Lido would would be the play but if you want to optimize for return with some risk exposure then restaking protocols could be a consideration and and for us we are mostly just a facilitator of liquidity to these protocols and I think the market potential for us easily in tens of billions of dollars worth of assets. And I think to also touch on something else as well, right? Because we are also looking quite deeply into the Bitcoin ecosystem. I personally think that Bitcoin being the single largest asset in the whole of crypto, even if we can capture maybe a percent of that, it represents a big amount of value.
1:13:31My general thesis is that people who can utilize Bitcoin, sorry, my general thesis is that there will be a group of people who want to utilize their Bitcoin that is currently sitting dormant in their wallet to generate wealth, to make it more productive. And we see that there are already quite a number of L1s and L2s showing up these days to really capitalize on this upcoming demand. so this is a sector that we are also looking quite deeply into and we want to be much more involved in this particular segment in the second half of the year perhaps what's the potential there for pendle i would also think it's probably tens of billions of dollars in value again because even if we just look at Bitcoin is 1 point something trillion in value 1 % of that is 10 billion assuming that we can capture 1 % of the market that in itself is very sizable already
1:14:40You mentioned Athena before that was one of the key parts in your growth lately right there's a part in this podcast where i ask the founders what their favorite teams are i know athena is one of them why why do you like the athena team so much i like that i i think their execution is superb they i mean um we've worked with many teams just to single out several right Athena comes to mind because they actually don't have a very big team but they are managing quite a large sum of money and I think take that aside right take the logistics parts aside the fact that they are able to I think they know their game plan really well because for stablecoin, I think the play is to increase adoption.
1:15:50And they put themselves out there and work with a lot of these upcoming projects to accept USDE as a deposit asset, collateral for the points. So for example, Symbiotic is something that is up and coming because of the backing from Paradigm and also the affiliation with Lido. So Athena figured out a way to make USD a deposit asset for the upcoming campaigns. And I think that's really smart. And this is not the first time they've done it. They've done it with Karak. They've done it with Zerkit, which is also pretty sizable in TVL, like$3.6,$3.7 billion. So I think they're really executing very well for an idea that is seemingly simple with maybe two or three other products that are similar in nature in the past, but didn't work out.
1:16:51I think Athena is, yeah, they recognize that and they are focusing that as a big part of their strategies. So a lot of respect to the team when it comes to their ability to execute. there's another one or two projects that you really like yes um i i would i would i would give it to monad i think monad is a very interesting one so like internally we think like my team my team of developers think the tech is sound and interesting but for me i I am actually very impressed by their ability to construct the community when the product is not out. Because again, the team definitely embraces memes and they put community first.
1:17:47So I think in my position, I've actually spoken with quite a lot of L1s and L2s. And I think not every founder thinks about go-to-market strategy the same way, rightfully so, right? And most of the time, I realized that they actually take go-to-market for granted. So there is always this assumption that you build an L1 or L2, and if you have your peripheral infrastructure set up properly, like for example, your RPCs, your wallets, and all these things set up, people will come to you naturally. But the fact is, is never the case. From a protocol standpoint, as a protocol operator, the way we decide on the ecosystem to expand to is really by looking at liquidity.
1:18:36If an ecosystem has a million dollars compared to the other one with$10 billion, the natural choice is going to be the one with$10 billion, not the$1 million. So when it comes to L1-L2 development, I think far too many times a lot of L1, L2 founders they don't think about the go-to market and I think a key ingredient to go-to market is actually community. You need to have that community so that you can attract initial batch of liquidity which can further compound because when you have liquidity in the system it becomes interesting for other infrastructure like wallets or protocols like Uniswap, whichever it is, right?
1:19:24To also build on top of that L1. And I think Monad has it right in aggregating community interests first. When they're alive, I'm actually reasonably sure that there will be a decent amount of liquidity that will deposit into their campaigns. So again, we talk about attention, right? Crypto is a game of attention. Monad so far has done really well with community. They've got some key hires, right? No doubt about that, who really understand crypto culture very well, like CMS intern, the guy who pioneered the intern concept in crypto. And I think that's definitely very respectable for him to want to work on something.
1:20:14I think Keone must have done something right to attract talents like that, to join his team. He told me on this podcast that their approach has always been that the actual product is the community. It's not the actual, he says, yeah, the technology needs to work. Of course, but the actual key product, right, the key focus, the most important thing, see, from day one is the community. Yes, yes. and they really are nailing it. And you can just like, so I was in GM Vietnam maybe a week ago. I went to their event. They hosted like the Monad, there was a Monad community in Vietnam that self-hosted the event and like Keone and his team went over.
1:21:11Not just that, right? I think they were able to attract a decent crowd to show up there. the monad community members from other countries in the region also showed up in the event like the ones in korea the ones in thailand so i thought that was actually pretty pretty incredible yeah especially for something that doesn't have technology out there yet yet yeah yeah yeah it will come i i think to also if i can i i like to also highlight etherfi i think etherfi is also and execution beast. And I think they deserve all the traction that they have today. So they are also one of the largest protocols out there now, six something billion dollars.
1:21:55When we knew them, I think they were only double digit millions. The synergy between us and EtherFi has been very, very strong. But looking at the way they churn out products and the way they manage community is also, I think, a good case study for me personally and also the other protocol founders.
1:22:21Across the different protocols, I think they have one of the best communications with the community. Very clear, direct, usually no rooms for confusions. Yeah.
1:22:38So before we started this podcast, we talked about Singapore Japan India
1:22:48and Japan is definitely an interesting one for you and for me it's one of our favorite cuisine right? you're a foodie you love eating well yes and appreciating fine food yes which I think is the case probably for a lot of people especially those who did well in life right? but you also go much deeper and now I understood why because you told me your wife is a chef right yes so we actually share both our favorite cuisine which is Peruvian and Japanese so let's take each of them and try to understand why they're so good because it's actually something I never thought about right yeah yeah yeah I knew you thought about it right yeah so again I credit all these things to my wife because she is she was a chef and now she's an educator in the culinary field so she she knows a lot more than i do and i'm learning from her all the time and she's actually one of the reasons why i think not everyone should do entrepreneurship and i'll tell you why so she likes we she likes to host big groups of people right so we usually have like in the past we usually have, I'd say in the past because we used to have a bigger space.
1:24:10Now we move to a smaller space. We are going to move to a new place again and we'll start hosting it. And she likes to host big groups of maybe eight to 10 people. And usually she would do all the dishes on her own. And she always says cooking is very easy. But the fact is it's not. And like I can follow the instructions as clearly as I can, but I will never make the same kind of food that tastes like what she did. So I think a lot of it is actually flair and experience. Like you have to be really good in cooking, the organization, the thinking of the menu and pairing of ingredients, right? Between say lime and like something else, you pair them, you think about the profile of the different foods and how you make something better than the individual components, that requires flair.
1:25:10And because of her and watching her commenting about cooking, I decided that I am not a good chef. I will never be a good chef and I respect her for that. And in the same way, that concept applies to entrepreneurship as well because of her. But let's come back to Peruvian. Peruvian. So we were in Peru. I think one of the biggest draws for us, right, to Peru was, firstly, it was all like more gimmicky. We are devoted followers of the 50 best list. And last year in 2023, I think Lima has the highest number of entries across the world in the 50 best. So for me, who's never been, someone who's never been to South America, I have a certain impression of South America.
1:26:03It's maybe not as advanced. Most of the countries are still developing. But for these countries, like Peru to be specific, right, to have four entries in the 50 best list against so many other culinary destinations like France or Japan or several others, there's got to be a reason. So we went there to check out. and I think of course like with the benefit of having an educator next to me I learned that Peru has is is probably the only place with deep sea tropical rainforests and high altitudes and because of that you have a big range of ingredients that you can combine right like Like just talking about Peru, sorry, just talking about corn and potatoes, Peru has probably thousands of different varieties there.
1:26:58So that diversity is quite critical to the Peruvian cuisine. Over here, we only know like corn, white corn, like sweet corn, white corn, maybe a couple of others, but they have two, I think close to 3 ,000 different varieties of corn. that to me was extremely refreshing because you see purple corn, black corn and different shades of corn. I thought it was incredible. And then potatoes as well. So, and then if you combine that with the history of Peru, where of course, like it all started with like the Inca empire and then Spanish, they were a Spanish colony and had a lot of Spanish influence. And then they also had a huge influx of Japanese and Chinese migrants.
1:27:52And that mix of different cultures resulted in very interesting profiles of food. So combine that with the ingredients, the ingredient choices, I think it makes like there are tastes in Peru that you can never find anywhere else. That's why it's so interesting. and I could relate to that when I was there.
1:28:18We had amazing foods there. Really incredible. Yeah. There you go. That's why Peruvian restaurants are our favorite ones, right? Yeah. I mean, it's an amazing, it's a great explanation and understanding of something that I just was not aware of. I was just like, how come Peruvian food is so amazing? Yeah. Because it is, right? Yeah. it is another one that is really amazing is for me and for you japanese yes japanese is is interesting because japan has an interesting culture of trying to perfect things right so this this may i was in tokyo for for about a week um we went to karuzawa and if you're a whiskey drinker you would probably be familiar with Karazawa Distillery.
1:29:11So it started in 2000, 2001. So the existing bottles of Karazawa is very expensive. So now there is a revitalization of the brand under different ownership. So we visited that distillery. The amount of depth that they went into trying to replicate the past successes is incredible. the culture sorry the the climate is important for sure the the source of water it's it's coming from like a a mountain in in in the region um and then the the barley types they're all important so i think like they they have a i'm always amazed by japanese when they take someone else's culture they can sometimes do things that exceed even the origin.
1:30:08Another example, so I had a really good time checking out the distilleries. Another good example was actually pizza. I've always had the impression that the Italians make the best pizza, no doubt about that, right? But the Japanese make incredible pizza too. Sometimes they don't do too much fancy things to it. Sometimes they add their own interpretation. and most of the time they end up really well because you can taste the Italians in the pizza and you can also taste the Japanese in the pizza. And this recent trip, I also visited a French-Japanese restaurant and I had the single, this restaurant must be the one that serves the most memorable steak that I've ever had because they use sanda beef, which is the crown jewel of Wagyu and grilled it using French techniques.
1:31:07And the result was incredible. I have a lot of respect for food, but maybe not as much as the Japanese when it comes to food. So there you go. What's your next destination? I think this year it's still going to be Japan. But next year we will probably check out China.
1:31:32what's your biggest prediction for next 12 months
1:31:39next 12 months i'm actually going to put it on pendle i think we will come out with we're working on a new product i think it can be game-changing in what in what way new use cases that is not possible right now do you want to elaborate a bit on that i guess i don't know maybe maybe it's not the best um yeah i have a lot to say but i'm not sure if i should say it that's why the prediction amazing thank you so much for doing this man that was a great conversation thanks for having me
1:32:23We'll be right back.
From the publisher
TN Lee is the founder of Pendle Finance - a DeFi platform that enables users to tokenize and trade future yield on Ethereum assets. Pendle has shown remarkable expansion since the beginning of the year, elevating its TVL from $250 million to over $7 billion in just a few months. In this conversation, we dive into: - Analyzing Market Prices - Getting into Crypto via Kyber - Starting and failing a Cold Brew Business - What is Pendle? - Failures & Ventures Within Crypto - Culinary Business in Peru & Japan - Trading Interest Rates - Building Without Precedence - $7 Billion in TVL - Predictions for the Next 12 Months And much more! __________________________________ PARTNERS 🚀 Jupiter is the most used Decentralized Exchange in Crypto and the largest DEX by volume on Solana. https://jup.ag/ 🐧 Pudgy Penguins is a web3-born brand that fosters creativity, freedom, and community. Join the huddle: https://pudgypenguins.com/ ♾️ Astar Network is a Web3 hub for innovation, offering tools and a blockchain platform for decentralized apps and smart contracts. It invites users to innovate and connect in a community-driven ecosystem, transforming ideas into reality with its robust infrastructure. https://astar.network/ 🤖 SwissBorg is Europe’s top trusted crypto app offering user-centric investment platforms and DeFi asset management with reliability and innovation. Sign up with this link and earn up to €100 : https://join.swissborg.com/r/kevinH6E7 ♾ Coinsilium provides vital funding and expert advice to Web3 and AI-powered early-stage technology companies. https://www.coinsilium.com 🍷 Dvin is building the operating system for the $100 billion wine industry. https://www.dvinlabs.com/ __________________________________ FOLLOW TN LEE👇 • Twitter: https://x.com/tn_pendle FOLLOW PENDLE 👇 • Twitter: https://x.com/pendle_fi • Website: https://www.pendle.finance/ • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pendlefinance/ FOLLOW KEVIN & WHEN SHIFT HAPPENS👇 Twitter (X): https://x.com/KevinWSHPod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevinwshpod/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kevinfollonier_ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinfollonier/ Website: https://www.podpage.com/when-shift-happens/ __________________________________ DISCLAIMER The info contained herein is for informational purposes only. Nothing herein shall be construed to be financial, legal, or tax advice. The content of this video is solely the opinions of the speakers who are not a licensed financial advisor or registered investment advisor. Trading cryptocurrencies poses considerable risk of loss. The speakers do not guarantee any particular outcome. #Entrepreneurship #Crypto #howtogetrich __________________________________ Video Chapters 0:00 Who is TN Lee? 1:29 Our Valued Sponsors 2:16 Analyzing Market Prices 5:08 Theory of Attention 8:12 Protocol Positioning 11:16 Getting into Crypto via Kyber 17:41 Leaving Kyber Lessons 20:29 Business Start-ups 24:34 Decentralized Exchange Realization 26:34 Knowing When to Give Up 29:29 Dvin Labs Partnership 30:19 Business Mindset Realization 37:36 Mindset VS Resources 38:48 Surrounded By Success 41:08 Managing Family Finance & Relationships 45:23 What is Pendle? 46:43 Trading Interest Rates 49:06 Building Without Precedence 49:46 Anchor Protocol 50:46 Failures & Ventures Within Crypto 53:55 Failure is Necessary 57:20 Launching Pendle V2 1:00:24 5 Months Ago VS Now 1:02:30 $7 Billion in TVL 1:04:27 Understanding Pendle Token System 1:10:07 Servicing the ‘Big Players’ 1:11:47 Potential of Pendle 1:14:42 Ethena 1:17:08 Monad 1:20:22 The Real Product Is the Community 1:21:37 EtherFi 1:22:37 Business Based on Strengths 1:25:26 Culinary Business in Peru & Japan 1:31:32 Predictions for the Next 12 Months
