Hey guys, what's up? It's your girl Rachel here. Thank you for joining us today for another awesome AMA Today, I am with Scott Stewart. He is the co-founder and head of products at Kava. Hey Scott. How's it going? Hi, it's going great. Good. Thank you for joining us. It's good to see you Yeah, and thank you for having me on of course Okay, so we're just gonna get started with some basic questions But I just want to remind the audience please send your questions our way in the chat. We're here to answer them But before we answer your question Scott I have a question for you if you could just give us an overview of what Kava is and the different services that Kava provides That would be great Yeah, so the Kava platform is a it's a layer one blockchain network that services Specifically DeFi protocols, so it's built from the ground up exclusively for DeFi and DeFi products and we're And in the the the differentiator around Kava and what we're offering is the Is really the security so for us we put an emphasis on having a safe and reliable Experience for the protocol developers on Kava as well as the end users and a streamlined UX for those users and we can kind of get into that philosophy a little more later on Sure. Yeah for definitely But just going back. What are the services that Kava provides? Yeah, well so to date you have The ability to borrow through a facility called Kava Lend Covament and then you have the ability to lend and borrow through a facility called Kava Lend and then the ability to swap tokens through a service called Kava swap and then we can also talk about how Other protocols are now being built to allow users to do more DeFi actions Got it. Okay, great. We've already got some questions from the audience coming in. So I'm going to take one real quick Classic Panda BTC is asking when can we expect to see swap token on Binance and trust wallet? I know we're jumping right into the into that Yes, so I believe swap token is available On trust wallet have to check my trust wallet, but they interface with us pretty easy. That's an easy thing to do Binance is Right, so we like we can't really talk about like the the interaction like they lay hot like the Listing path for tokens for different exchanges But it is a process like unlike I mean one of the nice things about Kava swap the AMA the AMM Itself is that it's much easier for different projects to be able to list, you know Similar to Uniswap then centralized exchanges me centralized exchanges. There is an entire process You're dealing with the business they have business needs and they have you know all the the various things that go into that So yeah, I mean over the years, you know, we've built up an expertise and partner and basically relations dealing with them It's it's a slower rollout, but yeah the goal for any of the tokens. I mean at least that have been initially released Is to continue to build up liquidity to provide Basically more utility for users as they're using the coins being able to trade them receiving the rewards being able to trade them and We've had it. We've had a pretty good history of that with the the first two tokens. So we anticipate You know swap will look pretty well Right, right and let's talk about the tokens real quick because now that you've mentioned them So there are three native tokens on the Kava chain. Is that correct? Well, so there's one native. So there's kind of there's Kava, right? So you can think of Kava as basically Ethereum but Kava the Blockchain is built on the Cosmos SDK. It's probably one of the most extensive Cosmos SDK blockchains Out there in terms of the amount of sort of software and things that have been built on it And so Kava is the thing that drives That blockchain similar to Ethereum Ethan Ethereum except that the Kava blockchain is a proof of stake System so Kava is a proof of stake coin And actually Kava has pretty high rates right now for staking where it's been pushed up to about 20% So users can go obtain Kava and they can stake the Kava to secure the network and they receive something like 20% APY right now, which is variable sort of based on the amount of stakers That's awesome. And then can you also discuss hard token and then the stablecoin USDX? Yeah, yeah, so the kind of like backing it out to give you users a sense of what Kava is doing differently, so we're we're coming out basically to the market and saying that there's this this opportunity in DeFi, right? Where you know You have about a hundred billion or so assets that are currently being used In the DeFi space resulting in these protocols being worth tens of billions of dollars But despite that success we're still in this early phase of the crypto maturity cycle We're in what we call the early adopter phase and there's this like popular thing I don't know if you guys have seen it called crossing the chasm where with any emerging technology There's this chasm There's this difficulty of being able to move from early adopters to the majority or what people in crypto often call like You know that the mass that sort of public and so Kava is uniquely positioned to be able to capture That early majority user segment other competing products tend to have have been built to serve these early adopters We've spent the last few years building from the ground up the ability to serve the early majority And this is because that early majority user is a completely different user and this is what I was mentioning before We're going out to the market and we're saying that to get to that destination We need to have a streamlined user experience needs to be safe and then needs to be and it needs to be a reliable service And then there needs to be a community of individuals who are committed to taking us there and have the ability to deliver that So when we look at what's available today on on Kava There's we've been able to deliver the platform, which is the Kava platform Kava Mint which allows you to draw stable coins from the world's largest crypto assets like Bitcoin XRP B&B and we'll have a theory of coming in Q4 You can take those stable coins or other assets and put it into Cobble Lend which is powered and governed by the hard protocol by the hard token and You can supply those assets and borrow other assets in that money market facility And then you can also take these stable points and put them into Kava swap which is powered by the swap token and so what the kind of the major innovation there and the thing that we've seen that's really sticky for users is the ability to earn higher yields by by Composing these these different protocols together so you can put these protocols together You can earn a higher yield with the same amount of stake safety And we think that's the thing that that has shown to be really quite sticky But it yeah, that's that's super interesting I'm gonna take a quick question from an audience member Minof is asking when will Kava enable USDC and ETH? Yeah, great great question. So we're we're releasing that in Q4 so In yeah, so about mid Q4 We'll have the ability for users to be able to deposit USDC and ETH tokens directly to Kava and actually this is this is an example of what we mean by streamlined UX and the ability for users to easily interact with this platform Instead of kind of talking about it in this like sort of cross-chain like difficult technical way We want users to be able to deposit coins Ethereum and USDC on to Kava as easily as they'd be able to deposit coins onto any exchange So basically from your coinbase account, you can take USDC Send it simply send it over to the Kava platform It shows up there in your Kava wallet and then you can get to work doing whatever sort of yield activities you want Got it. Yeah, I think that's great. There's a lot of times with DeFi platforms People are confused. I mean if you don't know much about DeFi You aren't going to know how to use these platforms And I think what Kava is doing is really bringing DeFi to the mainstream from what you were just saying Which is so important because I think there's just too much confusion still in the DeFi space because it's so early It's it's so new, you know, yeah, and it's a good point that you bring up and I think that you know We've had a lot of we had experience with this so for us. It isn't just it isn't just like Like abstract so we we created a bridge the ability deposit B&B Directly on the Kava and that went live a little over a year ago Yeah, since then that bridge has processed over 1.8 billion dollars in transactions without a single fault So and that like that's like I mean I can tell you guys that is a lot of sweat Like it is a lot of effort that goes into actually doing this in a secure way There's a lot of process that we've built up as an organization to be able to deliver software that can sort of do that And even with that success we've we learned that there was there was a significant I we got significant drop-off because what it required is a user had to move their front funds From Binance to Binance chain and then do this like special cross-chain transaction So it's difficult for for us to know how much Drop-off there was because you know we're not Binance and we don't get to see the users directly But there was definitely significant drop-off and so that learning kind of you know We're sort of continuously learning and building better and that that learning like allowed us to then have this this this Sort of bar that it needs to be for users as easy as Depositing on any of the other sort of central offerings out there, right? Yeah You also bring up a really important point when it comes to DeFi security Because we've seen so many DeFi hacks happen Just so much money lost So what is Kava doing differently to ensure that its platform is safe and secure like what's the what's the secret? secret sauce here Well, there's not a secret sauce It's not There's that it's Yeah, I mean and I think that again that point that you're bringing up is really good like the today sort of the competing DeFi platforms They are really geared towards that that early adopter and from the perspective of the of the of the this late Majority this majority user that user experience is actually is actually broken So it's not just the security part. It's that the offering is fragmented So it's basically it has all of the things that are that what you would expect to see in the early adopter phase of any emerging technology They're the offering is fragmented, right? You have all of these different protocols and you don't exactly know how to put them together They're technically difficult time-consuming. They're often expensive To use and unsafe in the sense that I don't know if the product that I'm interacting with is the next like big hack And this creates a massive friction for users So there are people who are able to generate higher yields by composing applications but it's really kind of today only the wealthy and technically savvy and so What what we're doing what we're about doing is broadening the ability for users to be able to access higher yields by composing applications by knocking down those different those different barriers and Yeah, I mean, I guess like to directly answer that question like It's it's hard like there's probably only I would suppose there's probably only like 10 projects in the world that have a shot right now at least of being able to deliver this stuff you know with security at a scale and Particularly when when we dive into security, I mean what that really means is that like for instance Being able to have your platform built on something like a robust Goaling base goaling based architecture that is slightly more technical, but these are some of the things there Something that has up to you know, 10,000 TPUs transactions per second throughput also ensure safety being able to Have a process built out so that when software is built and distributed it goes through these series of checks So we actually have this so for the software developers out there. There's this idea of Sort of Test-driven development, right? So you kind of like I build my software with the sort of tests that I want to have ahead of it We actually pioneered this thing for a Kava swap and it worked really well This notion of audit-driven development So as though as from the perspective of an auditor, we're going to create the bounds for what we think Is possible or what is possible to be safe and then we're going to develop within those bounds and so Yeah, I mean if you can turn like just like as a thing that's Millions of dollars go into the creation of that process But we think that that's well worth it when these things are secure securing hundreds of millions and billions of dollars I won't name any names, but when you contrast that to Other some of the other projects out there is actually not that hard to kind of take a look at what they've built and say That's relatively riddled with Like gotchas and then it's kind of for the more technical teams unsurprising that you know problems problems come up But the point is that you know when we're trying to open out this technology to a broader base of users They don't have the time or sort of like, you know Technical acumen to go in and assess these things themselves This is why we think there's such a premium on being able to deliver a safe and curated process Over time to allow that trust to build up so that a large amount of users can actually come on and access the services safely Right definitely, and I think the only way DeFi will go mainstream is if you know When we have better security measures because what we read about in the media with the hacks and all of these You know problems coming up. I think it scares a lot of the the mainstream users away from it So I think it's great to hear what cova is doing to ensure safety and security Yeah, and so and and so and actually kind of we bake that into this notion of scale or this idea of true Scale so everybody's going to have a scale like oh scale that that has to get there But I think that you're you're still not going to get that Basically, we have this we just released this thing. It's sort of beyond speed Right like being safe enough or being fast enough isn't going to isn't it isn't that's not enough To get this new type of user onto the system Really what what you need to have is it need it does need to be secure basically by what I was describing there It also needs to be simple So you have to have this streamlined ux the ability for users To put their money into the the system with a minimum amount of be able clicks be able to get done what they need to get done Um, and then we also think this this idea of multiple on ramps the ability for cova now To go and access the ethereum network and then eventually bitcoin network Cardano xrp and have users of those networks be able to easily deposit their funds onto cova and use that is Is huge to enable that type of cross-chain Composability and then we think that it's also this this final part of selection So this curation process And um, you can kind of liken that sort of to the the the apple or uh, I like the apple store So previously before this I had founded um Like an ad tech company and this is for mobile applications And this was kind of right as as phones were becoming very popular And you had you had apple coming out and saying how are we going to get a bunch of high quality users Onto this platform and have this sort of trust to be able to use this And they they they had this curation approach So, you know, you can ask like a like a developer of ios software like oh, it's kind of lame I have to go through this process But what they did is they enforced a bar For usability and they enforced a bar for security and that backed out to An increase in the amount of trust from those users Using this, you know, mobile Operating system and platform built on top of it. The exact same thing is true for kava We're building financial operating system and we have a community that curates The types of products that can be offered to users on that platform I think that's that's basically unique. I haven't seen anybody else Really doing that and we think that for all of these reasons mentioned I think that's going to be a really important differentiator as we get to onboarding, you know, these newer these these newer users Right, definitely. It's a game changer And I know that kava has uh some more news very recent news that an audience member is also asking about so i'm just wondering if you can discuss the Ignition fund and the whole new ecosystem news that kava just released Everyone's dying to know more details. So tell us as much about it as you can Yeah, so I mean we're we're actually pretty excited to um That we recently um released or announced um that we're basically taking So the idea is we basically took this model and we like kick started it So so the idea is we were able to say hey, let's let's from the ground up build a platform That allows this this early majority user to come on and let's show that we can make a composability easy With this kava mid kava lens and kava hard and be able to have these products I guess we didn't mention that have these products be directly integrated Into some of the largest players in the space like finance, wabi Crack and send x so that users on finance can interact with these products and never have to leave there Never have to leave the finance dot com And so now we're taking this model and we're opening it up to other developers and so And then we're accelerating that with this this ignition fund so, um, yeah, and and I think that That this is quite this is really exciting for us because um each new developer that comes on is going to benefit Not only from the scale of that that layer one and the the simplicity that's built in there But other measures like this kava safe food fund. So we have It's about I mean it ranges based on price It ranges about 70 80 million dollar fund which basically That the community created which serves to underwrite any force Unforeseen things that could happen With these protocols and this is why that that that interplay of safety and curation is so important, right? If we just let any project, you know, just like you release their software on there We couldn't underwrite it with a large safety fund But if the kava community can look at that project approve it and have that software be published Now it's automatically eligible for all of its users to have have that be underwritten So each new um protocol or developer that comes onto the kava platform gets all of this stuff baked into You know the the protocol that they release and then yeah the ignition fund is really just to kind of is to throw Is to throw gas on that is and so the major things that will be deployed Into that are going to be protocols themselves Building out so we can't we have a we'll have another announcement coming up pretty soon But building basically services that are allowing it to make a easier and safer front ends To access the the services built on kava Strengthening the validator network And then There'll be also liquidity incentives So we'll provide liquidity to kickstart some of these protocols to allow more users to come in and feel To feel safe about using it and yeah, we just had announced earlier today that a cosmo station is sort of the The first like marky project to come on Enjoying and they'll be releasing so so cosmo station is basically the most used front end in the in the cosmos ecosystem They decided, you know, they like what we're doing and they're going to come on and Build a stable swap protocol similar to curve finance on top of On top of kava Got it. Yeah. Well, uh, Sergio marin. He's an audience member He's also asking about the cosmo station stable swap protocol I guess he wants more details about how it will help kava's ecosystem and in the other details you can share about that would be great Yeah, so, I mean what we're particularly excited about with cosmo station is that they share that same philosophy of being able to present Defy to users in a way that is easily accessible, right? So I think that with the raw numbers they're they're up there if they're not the most used they're they're talked to Most used front ends to kava and I think they're I think they're the they're the they're the they're the most used front end for the cosmos ecosystem at large and so for from from our perspective, they're a natural fit to um in body that um that uh to embody that belief that it is streamlined ux that's going to get that that majority user onto the platform And so we're really happy to be working with them and build around that the stable swap I mean you'll have to go like have what they have to say and like the amas that they're doing but the stable swap will um Will be servicing stable coins on kava. So that's you know, you I think I saw somebody put terra Terra's usd. So that'll be serving usdx b usd. We'll have usdc on through ethereum q4 I don't know in chat if you guys have seen but um circle we we struck a deal of circle Where they'll have a direct integration of usdc on top of kava So users of the stable swap will be able to interact with that as well as usd t And then when when kava does integrate ibc will likely have your terra USt on there as well And so users can basically swap between those tokens at very low costs And then the liquidity providers can also provide liquidity and earn The cosmo station stable swap token for doing that And so the stable coins will be a major use case and then the different forms of btc So we have finance btc We'll have wbtc and then a direct bridge to btc uses will be able to swap between those easily as well Got it. That's awesome. I'm going to take another question from the audience members and and keep sending questions our way guys These are really really good questions Alejandro is asking kava plans to become compatible with other virtual machines such as neos It is already compatible with evm But is it possible that in the future it will be integrated with others like polka dot or sol Yeah, totally. So and this is and that's a great question So for us like we you know our destination is crossing that chasm and unlocking the ability for The majority users to come on and use d5 products On like if you think about it as kind of this then diagram right now We have the we have the user experience of centralized offerings like block fi coin base Whatever gemini etc And then we have the d5 offerings kava's goal is to bridge that and allow users to be able to consume Um financial services with the same level of ux that you can have with these centralized services using the benefit of decentralized rails And so for us that bar is you know, if you're a user of solana or you're a user of polka dot You will be able to deposit your Your dot and your soul On to kava and use kava service as easy as it is for you to deposit those coins on the coin base And use coin basis services. So absolutely we'll be supporting those It's just a matter of kind of rolling them out in terms of uh, sort of like a priority and efficiency Right now ethereum is kind of the biggest most obvious network to do it and you get a number of urc 20s for it So we're we're kind of working and focusing on that and then we'll move out from there Right, so I mean just simply put kava's about d5 meeting c5 bringing those two worlds together and making it You know the easy to use right as one Yeah, and I mean, you know also sort of we think that um, that's a better end game anyways, right? If all crypto ended up being was these sort of centralized uh parties Kind of collecting rents on top of crypto. We didn't actually open up or expand Um, uh, we we didn't achieve kind of what crypto set out to really what kava's doing is we're building the financial infrastructure For a generation of like basically each generation kind of redefines the way that it interacts with money Sort of had banks then you had these services like paypal Now you have neobanks and what we're building is the rails for another generation of uh users To be able to come on and do their financial services Anywhere in the world at any time with no limits and no kyc And so this is really what we're trying to deliver with a better user experience than the financial offerings that they have today Got it. So my question is What users Does kava cater to because it seems like a lot of this is You know defy related where you earn rewards where there's a lot of these functionalities That may may or may not appeal to enterprise for instance Does kava focus at all on enterprise defy where enterprises could also use kava Yeah, so we'll so kind of like as you sort of seen like we we will be we will be rolling We will be rolling that out The first we're kind of the first thing that we're doing is taking the offering that we have And exporting that to users of different networks like ethereum As well as the the large institutions that are closer to crypto So like finances is a good case study there, right? So, you know, um, it's it's they're already like their their business is is basically based in crypto Their users are, you know, basically entirely crypto based So those are the first folks that we target to show them the offering Show them how they give them support for how they can integrate with the offering And how best they can show that to their users and so These crypto exchanges we've had success with with we're going to continue to sort of double down and get more Usage around them, but then we will we will be expanding that out Yeah, we will be expanding that out accordingly. Yeah Got it got it. Okay Manoff is I mean finance has 15 million users. So they're not they're not small Right, exactly. Yeah, obviously Um, manoff is asking why after all this time there are only five assets on kava Yeah, good question. Yeah, so there's well, I think there's seven right now And there's more to come But basically, you know, this is this is that difference between um This is that difference in approach so This this curated process means that intentionally kava is going to offer you products at a more controlled cadence with the the ecosystem fund we expect to increase We expect to increase that cadence The kava is not trying to compete With something like ethereum In the sense of or by finance smart chain in the sense of spraying out a bunch of products and having you the user decide If it's safe or a good idea kava is about having its community curate a level of A level of user experience and safety for you the users so that when you come on You already know that there's a guaranteed. There's a there's a floor. There's a bar for the the level of Safety and reliability that you can have for the products So what that means is that it does move slower in the sense that there's There's less variation on the offering But the quality is higher and so yeah today there's there's three core protocols on there We'll be releasing in q4 As well an earned product which a rubble advisor which allows you to Access these these strategies more safely And and so we'll we'll have more coins. We'll have more work. We'll have more protocols But the the idea is that each protocol that gets released has the stamp of a guaranteed bar for you the user So you may have less coins, but every coin that you interact with is going to be of a higher quality Right quality over quantity in this case. There you go. Exactly. Well said. Yeah, right, right exactly. You simply put Classic panda btc is asking a really great question He's asking or she's asking due to recent regulations on some exchanges Do you think we're going to need kyc on kava and then your future? It's a really great question Yeah, so there's I mean Well, so first off nobody knows if you ask any lawyer, you know that we don't know But just to be clear there's and this is why I think the decentralized rails is so important Is there's a distinction between the the underlying blockchain or protocol in the front end that interacts with it so You know, you can be interacting with kava through trust wallet through cosmo stations through kava.io And that that front end can go down, right? So it could be censored That that team could just leave and you could still take that wallet from the perspective of the blockchain and the protocol Go put it on another, you know Connect the wallet to another front end and being doing the exact same service You obviously can't do that with coinbase your coinbase wallet is your coinbase wallet cannot go to finance And then all of a sudden the coins appear So I think in the worst in the worst case where In particular regions like the u.s. They really crack down and impose k yc That k yc is going to be on the front end So the front end the the the team or project a group of people who are presenting that front end may be required To provide k yc in that jurisdiction The benefit of a decentralized rails is you the user can then go to a different offering in a different jurisdiction That may not require k yc and you can interact with the kava blockchain and the protocol Using that service And so I mean again, that's like this is I think that's a it's a good point It's a good example of one of a key benefit of this these dentures decentralized protocols Is that you can really only a regulator can really only impose k yc on a particular layer of it. They can't do it all the way down Right. Yeah, I mean it's just it's so it's a great question because they have been cracking down on k yc and aml Especially in the u.s. So yeah, I'm just curious to see how that plays out Um, I have a question for you scott. So back in april kava launched a protocol upgrade called kava five Which which I guess was used to convince institutional investors to stake their bitcoin holdings on kava So was that how exactly is that, you know going to be achieved and are the results that you can talk about from that? Yeah, so kava five I mean I have to remember which one kava there's there's eight there's been eight already So which one was kava five? So I think kava five was the the lend profile. Yeah And so what we really like about kava lend As a as a as a product is it allows users to To lend their assets. So let's say in this case bitcoin And they can earn a yield in native btc. So because some people are going and borrowing The btc They'll earn an actual yield in btc from the users who who borrowed and on the other side This is you know, basically the exact same mechanism as what something like block five does But it's just done on chain In protocol for kava then to you you additionally earn hard tokens That are just used as incentive to to drive more usage And so yeah, I mean I think that's gone pretty well And then this is this idea of composability where now we have kava swap Where on chain You can you can earn both native btc and hard tokens And then if you if you if you want btc instead of hard tokens You can swap those you can swap those hard tokens on chain for btc And then when we'll be launching this earned product This robo advisor in qq one of next year You can then automate that strategy. So you can through through the robo advisor You can just say okay. I want to earn btc on my btc just like block by I'll put my btl. I'll just that's it. I just click that it executes that transaction It will put that btc into kava lend And it will take the hard tokens that you earn and convert them automatically on kava swap to btc And and deliver that to you So then so this is like this is really, you know, this is a good example Of the just like sheer sheer efficiency and improved user experience of being able to Use these composed products on a on a d5 platform, which is basically, you know There's there's no equivalent to that in in in like the the c5 space Right really like i'm saying the the exciting part is We're like people are doing this today and people are having a great time doing it They're just sort of like an ethereum wealthy people and because the transactions views are so high and technically savvy Knocking down those barriers to allow any user to be able to have access to that we think is really that's I mean That's what's going to get us to our destination Right. Yeah, I mean it's it's reaching the mainstream, which is what we need um, I'm going to take a question from Erkan solve sobsi. Um, they're asking is there any internal dynamic that has an effect On the price relation between kava hard and swap I don't know. I'm sure it means by internal dynamic. Um Yeah, so one thing that I think would be fun in the future So the market does the market trades and does What it wants One thing that I think could be fun though, um in the future Is we could have on kava swap an index Raised basically something that tracks the value of basically kava like ecosystem coins And then a user can buy into that actually an interesting point there And it's kind of been designed this way is kava the token Serves as as as effectively an index So what we did what what we've done so far with the protocols that we've released and then we'll heavily sort of encourage other protocols to do this is Because kava staking this pos coin is providing security both for the platform and these protocols We ask that new protocols on kava apportion some percentage of their inflation to kava stakers So today when you buy kava and stake it you get staking rewards from kava Which is you know true of basically any pos network, but you also get a cash flow in rewards every block for hard tokens and you also get a reward every block for swap tokens And then we'll we'll when when the um the Robo advisor comes on You'll be earning from that and other projects And so the idea and this is also a unique mechanism to kava Which you can kind of get from this curation process Is that owning kava and staking it over time gives you an index For all of the projects that are built on top of kava Um, so you kind of get index exposure just simply by buying kava and staking and securing the network Got it. Yeah, that's very interesting Um, we are running a bit low on time. I want to remind the audience keep sending us your question Be sure to subscribe to the channel. We do these amas all the time Um, but scott, I was wondering are you able to kind of talk a little bit about Roadmap and plans for the future with kava? Yeah, so um, yep, so I think that uh In terms of roadmap We've basically I mean We've we've built a solid foundation to date. Um, but There's so much more to do. Um, I think we have a huge opportunity ahead of us And in order to get there there's kind of three core things That we that we need to get done We want to improve The offering by making it easier and safer for users To have access to high quality yielding opportunities via these this comp composed product usage, you know with Added layers of simplicity around products like the the realm advisor We want to grow the breadth of offering by opening this up to onboarding best in class Teams like cosmo station to be able to build Better protocols on top of the kava platform And then a key for us is that ability to tap into the largest markets in these untapped markets With our differentiated product offering and Be able to grow usage there So kind of as I was excited saying we're excited about the like 1.8 billion dollars that we've been able to move on From binance. That's great. We're really like interested to see what happens with ethereum In q4 The goal is basically for us as quickly as possible Open up to these new yet new networks and allow those users to be able to use The kava offerings In a safer more reliable cheaper and better user experience Right. Yeah Wonderful. Well, if the audience i'm not seeing any more questions come in I will wait another minute or so in case anyone does have further questions Scott if anybody wants to reach out to you or to kava if they have questions or concerns What what are the channels that they can reach you guys on? Yep, so we're on twitter And we have a large presence on twitter We also have a large presence on telegram and then For for users of the application at least in kava.io of the front end that we provide You can just there's a there's a There's a bot in there a chat bot that you can open up ask questions directly getting contact with somebody if you have any questions around Using using the the the product I think somebody is saying wait. No cosmos ibc and red map. Yeah, I was gonna ask you that also Yeah, I'm looking at the chat. So yeah, I mean I could I could talk about that too. Yeah. No, so definitely I mean, you know when we think about kind of as I mentioned It's true. What's key for us is being able to tap into tap into other markets So the ability for users of other markets to be able to deposit their coins on kava We think is central to how we grow Grow usage and grow the offering and so yeah, we're absolutely intending to include ibc Which is for it's called inner blockchain communication This is kind of like the default way for The chains on the cosmos that are built with the cosmos sdk kava being one of them To be able to to interact with each other. Um, so notably like terra and In kava and a few others haven't integrated it yet. So we plan on doing it It's just it's a matter of sort of priority. It's sort of like cost And so for us We have kava kind of ended up building pretty far ahead in terms of Things on top of this cosmos sdk. And so in order to do the upgrade for us It's actually a lot of things to upgrade as opposed to a more vanilla chain And as I mentioned, we have a pretty extensive process for Any changes that we make auditing around changes that we make so it's just it's a really long process For us to be able to do this upgrade. We will do it We might make it into q4 if it doesn't get made into q4 It'll likely be with the the q1 release 2022 but you will as a as a holder of adam and other coins You will be able to move that onto kava Borrow usdx from it use it in kava land And be able to trade against usdx and other stable coins in kava swap Great awesome lots of exciting things to come from kava. Um, scott. Do you have any final thoughts before we uh in the interview here? Did we cover all of our bases? Yeah, I think that that that's pretty much it. I guess the you know, it is like, uh I think for us, it's just a it's a particularly exciting time that You know, we have had this amount of usage in the space And looking at that amount of usage in the space You know, we're still really only in the early adopter phase. And so I think that I mean our our goal is we think that the the team that's able to like crack that That adoption not and be able to take this technology which clearly has legs For users in the in the tune of you know, 100 billion dollars now When we open that up, I mean you're going to see You're going to see a significant multiple Like an order of magnitude multiple in the amount of usage on these things And we're just we're excited that you know, we sort of From the beginning have built for this this state and we feel like we're uniquely positioned to capture this And I hope that anybody who is watching if you guys are interested feel free to join Any of our communities and give us feedback on the products We're continuously building and improving and trying to make a better safer offering for you guys Great wonderful. Thanks so much for joining us today scott and thanks to the audience for tuning in Remember to subscribe to our youtube channel and yeah, thanks again scott Thanks again to everyone and we will see you guys next time Yep, thank you. Take care. Bye


Arden Shaw from the School of Biological Sciences, whose three-minute thesis title is Neural Networks to classify stars can also be used to measure proteomes. Can you hear me? Testing, testing. Great. Inside you there's a world of tiny machines called proteins. Usually we think of proteins as something that you eat, but in biology proteins are information. It's how your body communicates. And because proteins do so many things, when something goes wrong in your body, you're almost guaranteed to at some point find a protein struggling to do its job. But a lot of treatment ends up being focused on how do you compensate for a protein that's struggling. But a big problem in the field is we often don't know which protein is struggling. So we're trying to find ways to look at just the proteins that are different between a healthy state and a disease state. Well, there's a great technique to do that that was invented right here at Carnegie Mellon. It's called DGAY. It's a way to separate and compare all proteins at the same time. It's kind of like that game I played as a child, guess who?  Well, we can separate proteins based on chemical traits. And you end up with a map that looks kind of like this. And each spot in that map represents a different kind of protein. And the brighter that spot, the more of that protein is there. So what we are able to do with this technique is run two samples at the same time. What that means is we can put a healthy state and label it all in green. And we can take a diseased state and label it all in red. And what that tells us is when we see a bright red spot, there's a lot more of that protein, but it's only in the diseased state. So most of the proteins end up combining to make yellow, and that's great news for us, because the differences pop out. These differences are like a needle in the haystack where we can focus treatment. Well, this created a new problem. We now have to compare really precisely the brightness of thousands of different spots. And a key insight is, well, we know who's good at comparing the brightness of many spots. It's astronomers. So we can steal some of their techniques, lovingly with proper attribution, and use the same techniques that were designed originally to measure stars and galaxies and teach that program how to measure differences in the constellation of proteins instead. And I love a few things about this. One is that it makes science more open, because the original software to analyze these maps, it's like a proprietary black box. But this is open source, and we know exactly where information came from. Another thing I love is that science can seem so technical and difficult, and it is, but it's also creative, and it's playful, and I want people to know that. And lastly, this is why science communication matters. When we can learn from different fields, when we can teach different fields what we do, we can ask beautiful questions, questions like, what happens if we look at proteins the same way that we look at stars? Thank you.


Hi, I'm Freddie DiMarco and welcome to Blackstar Potential. This lesson will be on shred guitar. So this is definitely for advanced players. So we would expect you to have a workable knowledge of some sweeping arpeggios, some alternate picking, some legato techniques and a little bit of string skipping techniques. So also the theory, if you know some theory, that would help as well. So each one of these licks can be used in the seven different modes and they would go a lot further. So brushing up on any of that and then you'd be ready for this lesson. So I am playing through the Blackstar ID 100. So this is the high powered and it's got the super stereo wide. Just one microphone on it though, even though it's got the two speakers just to capture the sound. I do for shred like to have some delay. So my delays are going, they're dying out about the fourth or fifth repeat. A touch of reverb because I'm in a pretty dry room, but a lot of times I won't use reverb because it'll wash out the sound. This first lick though will be focusing on sweeping arpeggios. They're one octave arpeggios and we're going to use two arpeggios for each lick. So it's actually going to be two different forms. So it's an E minor with a harmonic minor five chord, meaning the B7 to an A minor arpeggio to an E minor arpeggio. So it's going to go like this. So that's following the chord changes of the first arpeggio is a formation of this one of a B major. We're just going to play the top octave of that in a sweeping fashion up and down. And right after that we're going to this B minor or B major actually arpeggio. We're only going to use the top octave of that one as well. And that sequence is going to go down the other two chord changes. So I'll go to A minor and use those same two forms but in a minor fashion. So the A minor full would be this. Top part. Then I jump to this form. But also only the top octave of that. And then the E minor is the exact same thing just in the E minor fret. So the fourth position here, the fundamental arpeggio would be this. Into this one. Okay, this is going to be a string skipping lick. I'm thinking of this in D mixolydian. So for the theory people any of the G major modes this will work for. It goes like this. Notice the changing of directions. That sounds interesting. The string skipping means a wider intervallic jump. That's always interesting sounding. So I have three notes per string on this. I'm plucking the G string and hammering on the rust. I string skip. So the hand has to blossom open there to 10th, 12th and 14th. And I tap up on the 17th and then pull that off. So it's like this. Then on the way back down I do pick that initial first lick again, the G string one. But notice it goes in reverse this time. So I have ascending. Then when I string skip again to the A string, that would be an ascending pattern. Then we just cadence it on a neighboring string, the D string up and down, and then on the D which would be the root of the mixolydian. Okay, this lick is going to be based off of lower octaver peggios. So the lower octaver peggios are going to be based off, well it could be any arpeggio. I'm going to take this one here, the same minor. And just focus on the lower octave. And then we're going to play it like a sequence. We're going to keep going back to that but going up a note in the A minor scale. So notice that when I go through the G string, that picks a down stroke and it does an up stroke, so it's actually hitting that same note. It happens to be an E, the 5th. It hits that on the down. And then on the retrieving, the back stroke, it's the same note. Check it out. And you can experiment with that, playing that up and down the harmonized scale. That would be all the arpeggios in the key. No different than you probably do with the higher ones, like, you know. You do that with the lower one. Here's an alternate picking lick. This is an E minor and it's going to ascend up the scale. But it's going to play a sequence. It's going to play a pattern in three positions going up the E minor scale. Starting on the 9th or the 2nd, the F sharp, it's going to go back and up. So it's going to have this motion of going down, then back up. And when I change strings for the first time, it's going to end up being an up stroke. So give that a little accent. It'll sound really nice to accent and make that note spit out. So it's going to sound like this. Slowly. Then the next pattern ascends, starting up the next position of where E minor would be. So right here. Then the third pattern to create even more suspense moving up. We'll start up and I'm going to begin this one on the A note. But we're actually in 9th position. Here's all three to a slow to medium tempo. Hey, thanks for joining me for this lesson on shred guitar.


Math majors do the best. Biology majors fare slightly worse than the average kind of acceptance rate. You've heard of the numbers on kind of what pre-med majors and their acceptance rates and what who gets and where. Now let's talk about what to do with these numbers. Stick around. Hi, I'm Dr. Josie. This is right here acceptance. Thank you for stopping by. I work with pre-medical and pre-dental students on the admissions process from A to Z personal statement to interview prep. I become your partner in applications. So if you're interested in learning how I work with students, definitely get a slot in my calendar. The link is in the description or comments below and we can start chatting. But let's dive into what to do when kind of choosing your major or why you would choose a specific major to kind of, you know, think about to maximize your kind of end goal. According to the AMC, more than half of students applying to medicine are some sort of biological sciences major, right? It doesn't only have to be biology. It could be neuro, physiology, medical science, microbiology, zoology, biotechnology. So it really kind of one depends on the course offerings and major offerings in your home institution, but also just kind of, you know, that umbrella is, is rough. These majors will most likely be the ones that mostly overlap with your pre-medical requirements. So now pre-med is not a major, right? You will declare pre-med in the sense of that you will take the required courses to a then applied medical school. But in many ways, it's not a major major, right? You kind of focus on, you pursue a different major. But biology, if you kind of major in that would have the most kind of overlap with the pre-med reps. So these tend to be biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, sociology, biochemistry, psychology, you know, statistics and research methods, especially the ones covered kind of as introductory courses or with labs and kind of, you know, with an introsociology course let's say. Because you want to make sure that you do your best in the MCAT of course, you want to kind of try and take your pre-medical reps, your heart sciences as close to not the date that you're going to take the MCAT necessarily, but as close to when you're going to start diligently studying for the MCAT, right? So that that content, you're not kind of only preparing, but you're not kind of dealing with content gaps as well. So that you are kind of the materials as fresh as possible and then you continue to prepare. So remember, the MCAT is testing on the following core knowledge areas, biological and biochemical foundations of living systems, psychological, social, biological foundations of behavior, chemical and physical foundations of biological systems. The MCAT also has cars and has that critical thinking aspect to the exam. And so there's a lot of critical reasoning. There's a lot of reading passages and kind of, you know, deducing and synthesizing information. And so in this case, there could be other majors as well that will help you kind of tangentially in this section of the exam. Despite the fact that most kind of biology major courses will be kind of overlapping with a pre-med that doesn't mean that you have to be a biology major to succeed. I've had stellar results with students that are sociology, philosophy majors, math and statistics, big data, public health, computer science, nutritional science. I've had just those majors to name a few very, very successful students who have gone on to medicine. I've had English majors, art history. So I've had students that have very kind of unique or kind of different humanities type inclinations and interests, and they will pursue that major and kind of then, you know, continue their pre-med recs and they're fine and they do very well. So definitely kind of biology is not the kind of, you know, catch-all major that you must kind of pigeonhole yourself to, especially if you have other interests that you kind of could potentially round out your why medicine in a way. So when I start talking to students that are kind of very early in the process, right, they are starting to pursue their major. They're starting to think about extracurricular activities. A lot of students' success will come from, you know, you could be a philosophy, a sociology, public health, nutritional science major, and you're taking your pre-med rec courses, but the research and extracurricular activities that they choose kind of brings them back to the kind of medical sphere, right? And a lot of very interesting kind of experiences I've had with students have been when students will bridge their major or their kind of research kind of from their major and bridge that into medicine. So kind of borrow their, you know, public health knowledge or their sociology knowledge to go into a research about hospice care in Michigan or a nutritional science major who then started a kind of grassroots research in their local community about the relationship between fast food and socioeconomic kind of disparities. And then they'll kind of bring that into kind of public health and medicine and how we kind of, you know, how primary care physicians should be kind of doing X, Y, Z, or like what they would want them to kind of like be looking at in their own future as a physician. So pursue academically and intellectually something that you find interesting, but then round that out with research and extracurriculars that really kind of bring you back to medicine so that you have very, yes, unique, but very kind of foundational and strong medical content for your application. Here are a couple other examples from students so that you can kind of get a sense. I had a student who pursued nutritional science and their research was on type two diabetes and immigrant adolescence. And so they kind of started looking at what they can do from like a pediatricians perspective on how to kind of help with, you know, diet knowledge and kind of, you know, what to shop for just kind of diet and lifestyle information for these kind of newly immigrated families to curb type two diabetes at such a young age. I had another student who pursued philosophy and after taking a medical ethics course did a research on right to diet measures and medical suicides. Are you thinking of pursuing a non-biology major and want to kind of think through how you would round out your extracurriculars? Comment below. I'd love to start chatting. Non-traditional students can also feel like they're stitching together their kind of life in academics kind of from the back or kind of in reverse, right? So you want to kind of think about how no matter what major you pursued or your first career, you want to think about how you can build your bridge back to medicine. I've worked with students who were teachers, lawyers, firefighters, EMTs. So, you know, my teachers and lawyers specifically, they started building their bridge back to medicine through volunteering and service. So, and this advice goes for everyone. You want to really think about how your activities, what you do within beyond the classroom really kind of feed each other and inform each other. But sometimes the kind of the trickier applications, the trickier students to work with are the ones that have like compartmentalized their experiences. I do this in this box, I do this volunteering here. And so then it doesn't really feel like it's connected and it feels very kind of like they're checking off what they need to do and not really making connections, not making those bridges to kind of synthesize and gain insight into broader aspects of medicine through zoomed in experiences. Hope this was helpful. And remember, my expertise is the writing, your messaging. When you sit down to start applying to medical school, make sure that you are kind of really showcasing all the strengths, all your assets on the page that you are presenting the most compelling application. If you are interested in knowing how I work with students, definitely get your free slot in my calendar. The link is in the description and we'll get started chatting and see you for a good bit. I will see you soon. Thanks so much for watching. Bye.