Building the Future on Bitcoin - Asteria - Founder of The Syvita Guild

Asteria Interview
Jake: [00:00:00] What is up you beautiful people. Welcome back to another episode of the built on Bitcoin podcast, where we're covering everything going on in the Stacks ecosystem. Today, I have a special guest. This person is the founder of the Syvita Guild, which is a collective of shadowy, super coders, building applications and infrastructure on the Stacks ecosystem and Web3 more broadly. If you've used anything related to MiamiCoin at this point, you've touched something they've created and this is definitely someone you want to be following. Asteria thank you for coming on the podcast. My man. How are ya?

Asteria: Hi, I'm great. I'm great actually. Yeah. Good day.

Jake: Love it. I just want to get started with some of your background. What is. How did you get into crypto and what is your background as a coder? Let's start there.

Asteria: I got into Crypto [00:01:00] probably sometime late last year. Like I think I was just messing around with. Uh, buying on exchanges and trading and stuff.

And then, um, I got into Stacks in the week after 2.0 launched, and, um, I accidentally discovered Stacks looking up tech stacks but for, um, companies, I was just seeing what tools companies use and I found Stacks. stairway backed up. And that's where I am now. Um, as a coder I mean, I'm 15, so not the big university to read your CV, but like, I've been coding since I've been like 11 or something like that. I'd say I'm experienced enough to do what I'm doing, I suppose.

Jake: And did you, when you got started in coding, Would you like doing code academy or will you just kind of like trial and error building things and breaking things? How, how did that happen? [00:02:00]

Asteria: Um, I mean, I sort of first started to code in by just like using my PC. I was on windows. Um, and we did a lot in me and my dad did a lot of PC building together and we did gaming and stuff. We also did our modern games and stuff. I then I got into like making scripts at school um, funnily enough got into to do into trouble for hacking the school, but nevermind. Um, I, I swear. That's just. Well, everyone does ,no?

Jake: I mean, I was a coder in school. I'd be for sure. Be doing the same thing.

Asteria: Yeah. Um, I didn't do any courses like by definition, I've tried to stay away from those actually. I'm more of a docs guy. So I just read through white papers for hours on end at like 11 o'clock.

Jake: Okay, so you, so you read the formal, like building blocks of a language or like [00:03:00] how to program and then you just hop in visual studio code and just start hacking away.

Asteria: Usually I like, I like, um, infrastructure infrastructure is a Betty for me. Um, just having, well, just the idea of having lots of compute power and using it for the greator good has always appealed to me for some reason, but like just, yeah, usually just jumping into anything, rarely like even clarity, like one when we will building.

Um,MiamiPool, we were all still learning clarity, like, um, w we were using the docs at the same time. We were writing in the MiamiCoin smart, the MiamiCoin and MiamiPool smart contracts. So we're still learning on the way. Um, I suppose it's very open. So we'd ever been feedback is because Stacks is so new, like the ecosystem.

We're giving a lot of feedback, even though we're basically as early as everyone. Else's I suppose

Jake: [00:04:00] that makes sense. Yeah. I, I started, I decided I wanted to become a developer in May and I joined up with CodeCademy and I was kind of, my focus has been front end currently. So I'm learning, you know, I've learned HTML CSS, and I'm in JavaScript right now.

Um, and I definitely, I can see your point where when I'm on code academy and I'm in their structure, I feel like I know what I'm doing, but when I go, when I open up visual studio code more proper, I feel like my training wheels are gone and I have no idea what I'm doing. And like, there's like a sense of lostness when I'm like, I'm like, okay, what do I even want to build?

And then how the heck do I do it with just typing keyboard?

Asteria: Yeah. But that's, that's one of the big things I'd say about just coding in general is like, even though you shouldn't have all the tech behind you to read all the blog posts and like, oh, this is so cool and use this I understand it fully, like at the protocol level.

And then you're doing your open, your editor and you'll be like, [00:05:00] ah, What am I doing? Does,

Jake: yeah. Did, uh, did Clarity launch with Stacks 2.0?

Asteria: Oh, I have no idea. It might have done.

Jake: Got it. Because when I'm looking at, like, if I have an issue with JavaScript, there's like a million articles on StackOverflow. I can get feedback from or copy and paste, like all the developers do, but with Clarity it seems like it's much more, you guys are like on the bleeding, bleeding edge of trying to like fully express this language on the blockchain.

Asteria: Yeah. I mean, were I suppose we are, because this it's such a new language and I suppose one of the good things about Clarity and the ecosystem of Devs right now is you can just hop onto one of our Discord servers and you can do ask for example, one of the developers at, uh, NFT marketplace or DeFI protocol we were learning at the same time.[00:06:00]

Um, because it's so new, no one has fully mastered it yet. I suppose like the majority of developers haven't mastered it. So we're all learn from each other.

Jake: Yeah, it's interesting cause like I'm just, this whole journey has been so challenging because I've realized in myself I'm a, I'm like I'm goal oriented.

I like, I want the path to be clear. And it's very murky right now. So it's very much like you can only see like two steps ahead of you. You kind of know what you want to build, but you don't really know how you're going to build that until you really start running things and seeing what breaks and why. And like, you have to have the actual feedback once it's on Mainnet..

Asteria: Yeah. I mean, when we were doing the tests for MiamiPool, we launched what w we must have had the Smart Contracts done in like a month and a half or something. Like, we just went, we were to continue on SyPool but as I think [00:07:00] we're delaying that for higher priority Guild stuff.

Um, but yeah. Decided one evening, you know what? Let's just build a mining pool now and just get it done and over and done with, so we did a month and a half of really hard, late nights. Um, and while we got to the Testnet, well, we have like a stupid amount clarinet tests, which is the, um, testing tool by Hiro.

Yeah. There are awesome shoutout hiro or hero, whatever. Um, and we, we had like 36,000 lines of tests or something from MiamiPool. And then not only do we have to run those, those are useful when you're actually coding in like VS code. But then we have the test net where we basically we call it the initiation ceremony, where we basically just draw everyone to bully the contract as much as possible.

Like just throw an absolute chaos at it. because smart contracts are immutable. You need [00:08:00] them to work fully and perfectly basically. Smart contract bugs do not forgive, um, because of the nature of like blockchains and stuff. And unlike Ethereum, when someone gets hacked, we don't roll back the chain um, I mean, for, for the Miami pool, when we were doing the sale @ buy.syvita.org a while back when we were doing manual selling. We lost, like, I don't know what the current value is.

It must be like half a million dollars worth of MiamiCoin stuff in our smart contract, but we cannot access it but it's such a, you can do look at the contract and it will be there forever.

Jake: Yeah. I remember that. Cause I was part of that at the beginning and it, Ooh, that hurts a lot

Asteria: but, funnily enough we were so lucky because was like, we were making enough profit that even with a 550 K loss, like we were still making like stupid [00:09:00] amount of profit.

So that was so lucky to have that. Um, and yeah, ride-on Miami pool, but I thought we launched like four different versions and upgraded at four different times during the test net or something like that and kept switching it over, um, doing the final perfections and yeah, it does teach a long time and you have to focus.

Um, but it's doable. Um, I, what something I really like about clarity is because of the developers. Everyone's so new to it. Um, Unlike JavaScript. I mean, you can just go onto the Discord and ask people and you can get response back in usually minutes, because they've probably had the same issue. Like, I don't know, 10 minutes or something like that.

And they know your solution or you to watch the other for a solution. It's I find it much more cohesive than like a I've had on mutual us or something like that, I suppose. But I'm diverging

Jake: It sounds [00:10:00] like, cause we kind of hear this ethos of like move fast and break things when it comes to especially startups, but on the blockchain, it sounds like it's kind of the opposite where you want be very deliberate because once you go live, it's absolutely law and you can't tweak it. So if it gets abused incorrectly that's on you because you didn't do the proper work on the front end.

Asteria: Yeah. Yeah. Especially Bitcoin, maybe not so much on Ethereum, but just, you know, they just rollback chains when they like, um, and I won't, I won't even speak for Solana but, um, Definitely.

Um, it's the complete opposite. So build slow, test everything, everything needs to be tested. And then once all the unit tests need to go out, then you need to get the community you will together and have like these initiation ceremonies where you just try and absolutely break. I don't know if I'm going have to try to somehow wherever you want, you're allowed to break the shit out of it.

You [00:11:00] need, you need everyone to try and break it because then when I think MiamiPool right now on Mainnet is like processing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Stacks a week in code. Like no one, no one, like there's no team member or like servers running that that's the blockchain doing it and that's the code we wrote, which is kind of special.

Um, and w when it's handling that much, like you needed to perfectly work so that's why you have to do all these tests

Jake: I remember the transition from having, you know, bow tied and, uh, PJ run the pool to going automated. And in my mind, I think there's almost this mentality of like the lean startup method.

We like you, you launched your MVP, then just kind of build from there. And when I saw, when I saw the switch from, you know, sending stacks to one of these two wallets and theyll handle everything for you to I can just [00:12:00] choose the round and want to participate in and go from there. I was shocked at how polished it was, but I guess that speaks to what you're speaking of is like, why you don't just send this half baked thing out when you're playing with someone's tokens with their money. It has to be 90% there from the jump.

Asteria: It's you have to be very careful about what you do. And we learned, we definitely learned our mistakes probably locked up half a million dollars in that time. Um, and yeah, as I said, we're so lucky that to have turned out well for us, like we've got MiamiPool working and the fee from that has changed all three of our lives and we were doing, and now we're like fully funded. We can do what ever we need now, which is like such a big deal for us. Um, yeah, I mean, I think with the manual pool, Syvita spent about 600,000 STX and. I don't know, 50 million [00:13:00] plus MiamiCoin back for the manual Miami pool.

Um, but PJ's, and Mooneeb I mean, they're actually on our coms team right now. So, um, we get, they have part of the fee each and they help with customer support and all that stuff because we're more devs, I suppose. Um, so they are on the front end on comes. Uh, And like the, when we opened it up to everyone with the contract, we did that massive launch. I mean, it was just crazy. I don't know how much we spent already, but like, there's huge amounts of capital moving through that contract. But as we speak.

Jake: Yeah, I think, I think when it started, I was seeing like between 50 and 100 thousand stacks we've been deployed like almost day.

Asteria: There was 111 K on the second day.

That was insane for us. You have no idea how, [00:14:00] but because of the way rounds overlap, um, You don't know, we don't know that it fully works. Like even though we've done all the tests, we've done all the ceremony, everything, like we know it in theory works, but you know, in some ways when you put it on main chain, it's always still nervous.

Um, and we did not know it was doing to work for maybe three days. Like until we know all the, all the starting works or the add in funds and withdrawing and the mines and the payouts that end, that all has to seamlessly work. And we did and proposal the way they overlapped people through like 50k into the first round.

And then 111 until the second one, or we didn't no one even knew if the contract fully worked on Mainnet and that was so scary for us. Like Invidia was not sleeping. I bet you, I don't think he slept for three days, but,

Jake: so, so is, is [00:15:00] there three main Syvireans that kind of like at the top of the, the Guild currently?

Asteria: Uh, no, we are decentralized at this is just, um, each member goes after the F main projects. So it's a bit like, um, people can bring their startups to Syvita, and then they can bring their team onto Syvita, and work on it, like the completely independent entity. But then when they need help, when they need funding without selling out part of that company, when they need developer help, when they just need community support, we are there.

Like we have bounties. We have infrastructure. We have the branding we were like massive. Now I think we're like the number one entity and the ecosystem by size right now.

Jake: Yeah. I think that, that sounds right. I mean, I see you guys everywhere. Um, do you, the people I see the most, I see you, I see Invidia and I see [00:16:00] Dio. You guys have separate specialties that kind of overlap to become like a, uh, like a Decepticon or like what, how do you guys, how does that work?

Asteria: Um, I'd say me and Invidia are more on smart contracts though. Nvidia is sort of like a multi-role beast. He did the UI too, Dio is more of a UI guy and like Javascript.

Um, but he's literally Anton into contracts but I think we've like partnered up. Like we, we don't, well, we do know each other's real names, but like we don't use them. We actually, when we're talking to each other, we use Dio um, and you know, Invidia, um, and we're really good friends now. Um, It's I think it was just, just us three is like a sort of sub guild suppose, where the next thing for us three, as a team, we're working on Halo [00:17:00] which is coming soon.

So that's our next project as the three of us. But then the Syvita has moving on to do all sorts of things. Um, I'm really, we were just pushing to bootstrap the Guild um, We're just pushing to try to get as many people well as much activity into the guild as possible, because once, once we set it off, like when we give it like a smart contract, so people can vote in a decentralized proper way.

Unlike the reactions we do on Discord right now, and we have like our own GitHub and stuff like this, um, It will take itself from the because it's just a decentralized entity, even though, even though I founded it, like, I don't want to be Dean because that is a weakness.

Jake: Yeah. I am curious about your guys's choice to be pseudonymous because I started following Balaji and like he talks about the [00:18:00] pseudonymous economy and he breaks down the difference between anonymous, which is like, they have no persistent profile their just anons. And then there's this pseudonymous in the middle where like they have a persistent profile in some sense. So there's some kind of like personality that's, it carries over across platforms, but you don't really know who they are.

And when I first started seeing you guys pop up and the BowTied guys pop up, my first reaction is like caution like pause. Like, I'm not sure I can trust you, but then the more you interact it's, it's just a nice thing about it is it just focuses you on the content and the ideas and there's no other thing there.

Uh, yeah. How do you, how do you think about that going forward or, or your decision to be pseuodonymous?

Asteria: I mean, I encourage everyone in blockchain to be like Pseuodonymous by default, because just for privacy sense like. If you, [00:19:00] what you have already messed up, you'll be, you'll be fine. I mean, I suppose it's not that big of deal, but like for me as a 15 year old and when we were planning out SyPool right, SyPool by nature as it was designed to be Custodial even though we might change the design when we actually get round to doing it now.

Um, but it was designed to be custodial and. Our story would have basically the private key to the Bitcoin and since, I mean, look at, um, the Miami pool, um, like the amount of money in there and then scale up to Stacks Mining. And, um, and then what would happen to me? I mean sure. Our systems to be like, we try not to have any type of systems, like the most secure things on the planet.

But like it, the, all the AEs encryption and all the digital signatures will not stop a spanner. But [00:20:00] if I put my real name out there and people knew I hold like well, in the case of SyPool we should be holding like millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. And my real name was on the, I am personally at Risk and I, that would just be like too much of a risk

Jake: that makes sense. So like a pseudonym kind of serves the same place as an LLC does in the real world for a business, but it's for anything you touch on your online identity.

Asteria: Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm very, I'm very careful about why interact with, um, I've looked into protections before.

I'm very big on like opensource. Um, open source as much as possible. Um, hardened Firefox you know, TOR you know, the drill like making I mean, I've never shown my face before. Actually I did once in a Hiro meeting, but then, um, I got them to delete the recording so there are [00:21:00] some people at Hiro who knew what I looked like.

Okay. Um, but yeah, I don't Dio and Nvidia don't really know what I look like. Well that we were such, we're such good friends at this point. Um, I think Invidia gonna be coming over to mine for dinner or something between Ireland and UK. So we're, gonna meet up for the first time or something, um, and Dio in the U S so we can't really do that.

Although Invidia's going to meet Dio afterwards, or you just don't have the plane soonish. Um, so that'd be fun for them. And then when I'm 18, um, hopefully we go get a house. somewhere just disappear off the grid at night, or at least for our pseudonyms well keep the pseudonyms, I'm going to stay online, you know, chip scientist stuff.

But like in the real world where we use our legal names and stuff, we're just a drop off the grid.

Jake: That's dope. man, that's that's tight. Um, so, okay, so you guys are [00:22:00] built, you guys built some of the Miami coin, main dashboard. You built Miami pool and you guys have SyPool on pause it sounds like. Yep. Your guys is right now is this new halo project? Is that what you guys working on.

Asteria: Yeah. So, um, this is more, going be like a commercial project rather than a big non-profit thing, because at the moment, we're just trying to provide, like, we saw an opportunity in the NFT market right. And we'd a try it, well, take advantage of that.

And then, um, any fees we can put towards Syvita and bootstrap and Syvita's treasury and fund it and projects within Syvita. Um, I mean, that's ultimately what it's all about. It's just getting, I mean, Mike, from, from when I started the Discord server to like where it is now, where, where at. I'm guessing at least 800 members on the [00:23:00] Discord it's been a crazy journey for like 10 months or something.

Jake: Yeah. Yeah. It's been, it's been crazy for me cause like I do a weekly Roundup to kind of like. Uh, help people and like a quick 10 minute burst, understand what happened in the past seven days in Stacks and like, I was just thinking about it, like so far up to this point, I've been able to, to keep track of every single NFT project that drops, but I can see that quickly becoming not the case like

Asteria: there are so many.

Jake: Yeah. And like on, on OpenSea we see the big ones that come out, but there has to be hundreds that drop every day that no one cares about because they're just not that cool or original or whatever it is. And, uh, so yeah, I feel like we're just at this, like this tipping point for Stacks where like things have been building, we've been dealing with network problems. We started don't have a proper Dex like all these things, but in the next six months, you know,

Asteria: they're just grown [00:24:00] pains, I suppose. Like, we've come this far in 10 months of our main net launch, which is kind of crazy that whereabouts have a full DeFI project. Arkadiko is like launching this month, the 21st I saw on Twitter, which is like, amazing.

Um, cant wait to use that? Yep. Um, Syvita to my end up being a big investor in Diko and big holder. You know, or all that stuff. Um, Yeah, sorry. I've lost where I was still.

Jake: Uh, no worries. I I'm. Yeah. So I think we're in this weird place, because when you think about NFTs on Ethereum it's OpenSea like there's, there's for sure other platforms, but nobody knows about them.

There's always kind of this like mentality that there's everything gravitates towards the one or two top platforms. And then the rest are just kind of like their niche out. And I think we're in this weird place right now with stacks where we have, I think we have three that are live right now and there's probably three to four more [00:25:00] dropping in the next three to five months. And just by that logic, It's safe to say that 80% of those are not going to be viable besides unless they pivot.

Asteria: Yup. Uh, a lot of the platforms now, while will either . become very successful rare like exponentially in like months or they will die out and fade out within weeks, depending on the project.

Jake: And is that your goal is to be THE NFT marketplace and minting platform?

Asteria: Halo is more an API system. So we've got multiple products that will be coming out. For example, a stats API, like Hiro's one but quite a lot faster and like we'd completely redesigned it, from an infrastructure level and then we've got this NFT thing, which has been basically our main push right now and the first project were branding under Halo which is [00:26:00] an API for Minting and API for marketplaces. And I'd say probably the biggest thing about the marketplaces is that both the actual bidding it. So it has bidding, um, it has 0% fees for the seller and the developers and bids happen off chain. So they happen in milliseconds rather then blocks and, it's Bitcoin by default we're not selling the NFT marketplaces right now are abit um, off because everyone's been selling them for Stacks but then that's taking away the point that Stacks is a gas token. Stacks is not meant to be capital. Bitcoin is capital.

Marketplaces that will be built on Halo's NFT platform will be Bitcoin by default.

Jake: But you will accept Stacks as well, in tandem.

Asteria: We don't have plans to, we might add SIP10 tokens for [00:27:00] example, like, I don't know, MiamiCoin USDA from Arkadiko. These are like assets are designed to be capital rather than Stacks which is more of a, as I said, a gas token.

It's a utility token rather than, uh, money. So I focused on the, this will be like a massive thing for the Bitcoin community, not just to the Stacks community, but like Bitcoin Maxis too. Like they can, these are assets that can be bought natively in Bitcoin trustlessly. Yep. Um, so. I'm just really hyped for it.

Um, I'd say it's not, it's not a marketplace itself. So when we do have like the full launch, as an example, you wont be able to do onto some like marketplace like OpenSea or something. That is not what Halo NFT is. What it is, is a API. Like a code API, [00:28:00] um, a bit like what Strike's done with lightning, um, with Twitter, so that that's like a massive deal.

And that's my Twitter picked it up really easily because instead of dealing with blockchain nodes and all of that. Strike handle that. And then they deal with all the instant payments, the instant settlements via lightning, which is like awesome. And all they do is release an API for, uh, platforms like Twitter to build on and halo will have the same approach.

So, Halo NFT will be basically the strike API for NFTs. Right. And this sort of has like unlimited possibilities. Like we're not unlike key mark, like a UI based marketplace. we're not for example, locking it down to, I don't know, art, for example, um, this is literally everything because we deal with handling image delivery [00:29:00] globally, video delivery, 3d asset delivery, and audio delivery. And we just have that built into the package for free may I mentioned , so it wouldn't be locked to just art, but you can also use it for I dont know software license. Like a company instead of running blockchain nodes and Bitcoin nodes and learning how UTXO's work on Bitcoin and all that rubbish, they can literally implement a system with like, I don't know, 50 lines of code, and that allows people to buy software licenses as NFTs on Bitcoin, with bitcoin within milliseconds or you could build an OnlyFans where like you can buy you where users pay creators for content. And also what I'm doing, I say, um, and then the content is in the form of NFTs. Like that's also doable. [00:30:00] Um, you can literally go crazy with it. Like I posted on Twitter, I said, what if we brought Halo to Halo? The next Halo game Halo is Halo Infinite, which is that's awesome. And they've made a big push on like it not being paid to win, which I think is like awesome by its own. Um, but I think you'll be able to buy cosmetics and stuff, which is like, fair enough.

That's how they monetize the game and it's not pay-2-win awesome. now They could literally implement Halo's NFT API and basically Mint each cosmetic item, say like your helmet on your Spartan. And then within like 50 lines of code, it's instantly tradable and it's connected to the trillion dollar Bitcoin market.

But within like milliseconds and we're not, I suppose we're not only targeting in Stacks developers, With this because, Stacks developers will be building their own entities and stuff like that. [00:31:00] Um, which is great. That's great for decentralization and all, but when we want to bring in like big companies like Bungie and stuff, you'll see.

Shopify and Twitter, they're not implementing their own system. They use an open node they using strike, um, and halo will be the NFT platform and a bunch of other things for people to.

Jake: Very interesting. So you guys are almost going like how strike or like Stripe where you guys are like the backend. It's the unsexy stuff that no one really knows is there but it's powering, like everything that goes on on e-commerce.

Asteria: Yeah. I mean, Stripe itself handles. I think something like 30, I don't know what the, it might even be higher. I think they handle it 30% of all internet payments. But if you think about that for a second amount of capital moving through them, even most customers don't even know what Stripe is.[00:32:00]

And that doesn't matter. It's for the companies that don't have to use that don't have to use all the bank systems and all the settlement behind it. That's what Stripe handles. Um, and in Halo's case Halo is basically the Stripe of Bitcoin, but that's what we're aiming to be so NFTs, actual API for fetching transactions that are like within a hundred milliseconds of basically the entire world.

Um, and just all these API is that. You can think of all the banking systems in Stripe as an analogy for like Bitcoin nodes and lightening nodes in Halo. So we abstract that we looked after that, uh, we can, well, because Halo is a Syvirean project. It has Syvita behind it. Um, it has the support and it has the technical expertise of Syvita which makes it like very, very strong and like trustworthy to [00:33:00] build on.

And that's what we're aiming for. Yeah,

Jake: man, if you didn't have such a good track record of delivering products already, I would say you're crazy. Cause that just sounds too good to be true. Almost like we all need that yesterday. Like getting past JPEGs, like let me send a video clip already, you know, like let me Mint let me Mint could I work with music artists when I shoot videos.

And so it was like, if I could mint. Their music video, and then use that in some fashion. Like there's so much it unlocks a whole new ecosystem that currently for one reason or another is doesn't seem viable.

Asteria: Yeah it's so it's hard. It's a big jump right into the ecosystem, but to build right now, We're basically to fully take that out and not just for like regular, small, small time developers.

Like, if you don't mind me saying like you and me [00:34:00] by, like, if we re we talked about like Bungie and 343 industries and they, they, they don't want to have to employ like whole teams of people to do it. Companies like Amazon, apple. Sure. They can do it because they're literally trillion dollar companies and they have the capital and expertise to be able to do that type of thing, but like what about Walmart? They're not going to build out their own payment system. They're most likely when they, if, well, I'm going to say when because I'm bullish on Bitcoin. When they do integrate Bitcoin into their payment system, Then I'm guessing they won't use it.

Use themselves. I'm guessing they use a company like BitPay pay or open node. I mean, look to the Verifone thing that just happened with BitPay, um, in the U S the Verifone, you know, those payment terminals that you use for your credit card. Um, when you go to pay at the till. Verifone is quite a big company that produces those and that integrate him bit pay into it.

So [00:35:00] small shops will just be able to turn it on in that. And the payment terminal and that instead of using their own blockchain nodes and all of that for themselves, they just using BitPay. And the, I was, I was listening to one of Jack Maller's was on CNN, talked about the advantages and it's the companies to do this because there are no fees on, Bitcoin

there are no intermediaries like banks, for example, banks that Stripe has to deal with at Stripe, say trusts at 3% or like two and a half percent. We can literally make Halo free. Like that's because, because of the nature of the system, like it is impossible for legacy startups to compete because they simply do not work on the same backend infrastructure as.

So like we can, we can [00:36:00] make it extremely cheap, like the way we're making money on, um, halo or planner two is not on the Minting um, we're taking 0% of the seller fee so you get a hundred percent of what the buyer paid. Uh, 0% for developers so they're incentivized to come and use the platform it's completely free for them to use.

And like, it takes out a load of work for them and you know, who does it like that as a developer? Um, and the only way we're taking a fee is we're taking a tiny percentage of the losing bid on a marketplace bid so I thought we're taking like something like not 0.1% on a losing. Or something like that we can all even less, like we can make your, whatever we want we to make it really small.

Um, so basically the fee that the seller would normally be charged is spread out between the buyers who didn't buy it in the first [00:37:00] place when theywithdraw. So it's like a tiny amount for them. It might be like 2000 sats that it's like, For like, I don't know, one Bitcoin transaction. So that's like a $2 fee for, I don't know, $43,000 or something, um, which doesn't affect them, but that might as well just be gas fees.

Um, but then most play that up for us for, I don't know, say 10 and we've made $20 on that listing and that's fine, but that helps pay for all the minting and helps pay for the future listings. And most of all makes it free for developers and that makes it free for the sellers. And that's just something no other NFT platform is doing right now. And I'm guessing somebody will probably copy us after this, but once this is done on a podcast,

Jake: I can imagine that's not actually a smart, that's a smart, like game theory design, because like with gas fees, if you want to try and Mint this. Go ahead, but there's risk involved and it's that same kind of mechanic. Like if you [00:38:00] really, really want this thing, go ahead and head, but there's, there's no, like it's not zero loss here there's some skin in the game, which is perfect.

Asteria: Halo will have no gas fees. What we'll be doing for the marketplaces. when you use halos marketplace API, you won't be using, uh, like halos marketplace.

What you're say you're beyond like the in game store on you Xbox trading like your Transmetrics and you won't even know Halo exists users wont will not even know. Um, and we will pay the Stacks gas fee using sponsored transactions. So Bitcoin Maxis don't even have to touch Stacks and with every NFT purchase when it sells and the NFT transfers to the winner. We're also transferred them a tiny, tiny, bit of stacks to just to keep them going when they want to transfer that NFT and that will just happen on every listing.

Very cool. Very cool. now I feel like I could talk all day about crypto with you [00:39:00] maybe off to save this for a year from now, when you've built out so much more, we can, we can reconvene then. Yeah. Where if people want to learn more about what you guys are building follow you, uh, where can they follow you? And any, any closing words you got for the people listening?

follow Syvita @SyvitaGuild on Twitter. Um, and then you can join our discord by going to Discord.syvita.org. You'd follow me, Invidia and Dio on Twitter. Um, I'm @OxAsteria ,Invidia's @SyAsteria, and Dio's @SyDiopitis , um, you'll be able to find them.

Halo is at sub a hundred milliseconds, so @sub100ms. I'm on Twitter. Also that on GitHub too. We're also just @Syvita on GitHub where we're literally everywhere. You'll find us if we are everywhere we've been on we're [00:40:00] even on the CityCoins website, as one of the contributors, like you. If you looked in the cracks were always there.

Yeah. If you're, if you're in, if you're in the Stacks ecosystem at all, you,

you know,

you, can't not be following them currently. Uh, nah. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming on the podcast, man.

Sure. It's been a pleasure.