0xResearch
February 14, 2026

LIVE: Aave, Polymarket, LayerZero | 0xResearch

Crypto's Core Conflicts: How Aave, Polymarket, and LayerZero Redefine Value Capture

by 0xResearch

Date: October 2023

Quick Insight: This summary dissects the strategic plays of Aave, Polymarket, and LayerZero, revealing the underlying tensions and opportunities in crypto's quest for sustainable value capture. It's for those tracking the cutting edge of DeFi governance, market efficiency, and cross-chain infrastructure.

  • 💡 How is Aave Labs aligning incentives with its DAO, and what does this mean for its fintech ambitions?
  • 💡 Why are prediction markets like Polymarket so valuable to market makers, despite low volume compared to perpetuals?
  • 💡 What's the strategic rationale behind LayerZero launching its own blockchain, and can it succeed where others have struggled?

The crypto world is a constant negotiation between ideals and execution. This episode, featuring Sylvia from Advisory and Shondaanda, unpacks three critical battlegrounds: Aave's governance overhaul, Polymarket's surprising market maker appeal, and LayerZero's bold pivot to its own chain. It’s a masterclass in how protocols are fighting to define and capture value.

Aave's Governance Evolution

"I think the ideal end state is to have something that combines all these products protocols under the same hat and the tokens benefit from it because all the other scenarios there will be like other tokens or or like more bigger role of the equity and I don't want to see that."
  • DAO Alignment: Aave's new proposal aims to fully align Labs and DAO incentives, directing all product revenues to the DAO treasury. This shift addresses historical criticisms where Labs sometimes benefited more than token holders, creating a unified economic model.
  • Fintech Future: Aave is positioning itself as a crypto protocol and a nascent fintech platform, focusing on retail products (app, card) and institutional offerings (RWAs). This strategy seeks to capture higher distribution margins, moving beyond the typically low margins of lending protocols.
  • Lean Execution: The discussion highlights a preference for lean, execution-focused governance, especially when targeting traditional finance. This suggests that while decentralization is a core principle, practical efficiency might necessitate more centralized decision-making for rapid growth.

Polymarket's Retail Edge

"The flow that prediction markets are selling is retail. It's for stuff like sports. It's for stuff like political events that's not fairly priced and if you sell that to market makers, you can charge a much higher premium."
  • Uninformed Flow: Prediction markets like Polymarket attract fee-insensitive retail demand, which is highly valuable to market makers. This "uninformed" flow provides significant arbitrage opportunities, unlike the efficient, institutional flow on platforms like Hyperliquid.
  • Option Repackaging: Polymarket effectively repackages complex financial derivatives (like options) into simple "up/down" bets for retail users. This allows market makers to profit from users overpaying for contracts, sometimes by 5-10x their fair value, because they do not understand the underlying pricing.
  • High Premiums: Market makers are willing to pay a substantial premium for access to this retail flow. This explains why prediction markets, despite lower volumes, can command high valuations and generate significant revenue compared to more efficient, institutional-focused exchanges.

LayerZero's Chain Ambition

"I will tell you why I think they're launching a chain. They want to issue assets through their chain. Like I think their entire premise over the past few I don't think messaging is very sexy business like crosschain communication. I do think settlement and asset issuance is very good."
  • Asset Issuance: LayerZero's new "Zero Network" blockchain is likely a strategic move to dominate asset issuance and settlement across chains. This positions them beyond mere cross-chain messaging, aiming for a more central role in the multi-chain ecosystem.
  • Strategic Pivot: While LayerZero has achieved dominance in interoperability, messaging alone is not a high-margin business. Launching a chain for asset issuance represents a pivot towards higher-value activities, similar to how stablecoin issuers control their own infrastructure.
  • Competitive Landscape: The success of LayerZero's chain will depend on its ability to attract major asset issuers and overcome the challenges faced by other protocols attempting similar chain launches. The question remains whether their existing partnerships translate into sufficient leverage for this new venture.

Key Takeaways:

  • 🌐 The Macro Shift: The crypto industry is actively re-evaluating the balance between decentralized governance and centralized execution, recognizing that efficient value capture often requires streamlined decision-making and clear economic alignment between core contributors and token holders.
  • The Tactical Edge: Investors should scrutinize protocols for clear revenue-sharing models that benefit token holders and identify platforms that effectively monetize "uninformed" retail flow, as these often hide significant, sustainable profit margins for market makers and the platforms themselves.
  • 🎯 The Bottom Line: The next 6-12 months will test which protocols can successfully transition from pure technical innovation to sustainable economic models. Watch for Aave's fintech execution, Polymarket's continued retail monetization, and LayerZero's ability to establish its chain as a primary asset issuance layer.

Podcast Link: Click here to listen

What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of Zurax Research. Today's a very, very exciting day because I think this is the first time we've had the second time we've had anybody from Advisory on with the rest of the analyst folks. Everybody say a warm welcome to Sylvia. Sylvia, how you doing?

I'm doing well, man. Thanks. Thanks for having me. First time. I'm very excited. Thank you for Very good. Thank you for coming on such short notice. The debacle happened earlier today. So I wanted to get some I guess prepared opinions as opposed to what I would say I typically do which is very much like oh X party is wrong. Let's just go ahead with it. So I'm happy I'm happy you could make the time to come on.

Yeah. For sure. For sure. And go ahead. Yeah, know regarding the other stuff, it's not super prepared, but as I talking older, I'm really happy about this. There are some details that need to be better understood. Like this is a big investments. And it's more than 30% of the treasury. So it has a big impact on the runway.

And what I think it makes sense to do is to stop doing buybacks and cover with the savings these investments in growth. Yeah. So you get like stable solid runway and you grow as a fintech company. I don't think that Revolute Rump and others they do they do buybacks right and a did 35 millions of buybacks something like this in 25.

Now that the proposal like aligns better all the parties I think buybacks are less necessary and if revenues from fintech started to come it will be like an example of like an entity that has protocol revenues front end revenues everything flows into the treasury treasury is controlled by the token so I think we are very close to something that even traditional people can invest into.

And so yeah I'm happy about that and the only thing will be to to take decisions to to manage the treasury so that this is like actually sustainable but overall I think that's great and I don't really understand most of the controversies that every time we get this proposal follow I think that makes sense.

So I have maybe like before we really really get into it I'll give a short rundown of what I think the general like process has been ACI is very very involved like Mark Stellar is very involved with a DAO. ACI or A Chan initiative was the one that decided or I guess voted for buybacks. They were behind this buyback movement and so far $20 million of a token has been bought back.

One historical criticism not just for a but I guess for like all let's say D5 1.0 protocols has been that there's been and all D5 protocols really is that there's been a significant difference between the lab side and the DAO side in which sometimes the labs benefits more than the DAO side I think most of the time that's the case and this is maybe like the third proposal from the big boys I would say like unis swap is a big boy morpho is a big one a is also a big one that's been like we very much want to combine DAO and labs to align them and then right everything until here is completely accurate. I'm not misrepresenting anything.

Yeah. 100%. The opposite side of what you said which is like combining the two is I guess ACI's criticism of the labs is that not everything that the labs does is constantly public. So they're a bit and the spend is it's it's $50 million. Is that for one year or is that for like five years?

Yeah. So this is a point from already the proposal is this is an annual budget which we're going to try to renew every year. And this bring up this brings up like another point which is I think a general like lack of it's not a lack it's something I wish to see more a general longer term view.

Yeah. So like two three years give us the revenue targets the cost target the break even point. So even like without disclosing every costline item just like having an idea of what token holders could expect by starting this process because the the worst case scenario is that we we do this and next year there is whatever downturn and the proposal doesn't pass and so you just like throw through money you're just born money without any good good outcome. So that would be my my critique to this the only thing I would say.

I think that makes sense. And this idea of like because you said we don't want to see costs line by line but a general idea would make sense. I imagine eventually these guys will have to do line by like I think the most common feedback that I've seen and what the the A labs response has always been like oh like this is just a temperature check. We're not posting the full proposal yet. has been that well there needs to be line like it's a lot of money to ask for and I guess people don't really know what it's going to go towards right like they should be doing some form of I guess more line by line analysis I'm not sure like it's it's generally this is something that I think it's only in crypto because if you do like whatever fund raise and I don't think 25 millions or like the 50 millions is a big amount for what they want to achieve.

You don't need to do like line by line cost in a time sheet. There may be you know the way it works there may be some like expenses that you you need specific approval for but it's in the best interest of everyone that the execution stays like lean and coming up with like cost item for everything will be like an extra super overhead. So, I don't I don't know if like I'm just a centralization maxi, but I believe that in a very like lean execution.

And I believe to to be able to vote me with my wallet. So, in my case, I usually, you know, I like the proposal, I buy, I don't like it, I sell. And if the team is doesn't align, it's not align with the token, this is no reason for me to to buy generally.

So and here the economics alignment the the old things the treasury looks like there is an incentive and so I don't as a token holder this is my personal opinion I don't need and want to see line by line I wouldn't look at it uh in the detail maybe Sylvia just to dig into the detail here on your viewpoint it seems like prior conversations around obvious specifically have been this push poll between obviously token holders the DAO and then the labs team and there's been a difference in terms of okay fund the labs team but then maybe the labs team also captures the revenue streams from some of the products they create and that's kind of caused a tension in the sense that it doesn't make sense to fund them if then also they get to keep all the money for all the things that they build anyway.

It's like they're sort of kind of running away with it versus it seems like this proposal there's an intention to say okay fund us but all the money that a products make then go to the DAO and then the DAO continues to sort of decide how to fund its operations going forward whether that's paying labs or someone else but probably labs for foreseeable future from your POV like that's that's the correct direction forward like you like seeing this general change from labs was kind of doing its thing and where it could was maybe keeping some of the revenue some of the revenue would go to the DAO. I think this kind of aligns things more just more generally like streamlines things under one kind of roof.

Yeah. No, that's true. The this is very good and actually I think uh the previous problems were sorry I got some noises some dogs in the background. Sorry angry dogs. Give me give me one sec. Should be better. And yeah, I was saying yeah, this is very very positive and it's actually maybe more important than the the founding piece.

And I actually agree with the previous controversy about like this one piece that that would that was like fishy and I didn't like that. But it's great to see that in a in a few short in a short amount of time, the the lab kind of like rebounded and they turned around and they they came up with this new new framework.

And I guess it's really hard to do it to to do like every part has these different incentives. So you cannot there is only you can get only to a point like to a point where it's not perfect. Uh but you are aligned to the best of your possibilities in 2026 with the regulation we have. So I think yeah it's I'm super super supportive of that and I have not seen like any any other voice on this point. So this is like general consensus that this is the first part of the proposal is very good and people are discussing on the numbers basically of like how much you're do we want where do we want to invest like disclosure and the the length of the proposal and so like procedural stuff but the substance is is very good.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. Um, and in the proposal they kind of outlined this new direction for A. Um, so it's a kit, the card. Um, and then there's a few other things. To me, it seems like A's really started to focus on their end a bit more. I think like the past two years have been kind of dominated by Morpho in terms of mind share. Um, I know like V4 is supposed to come up and it's very exciting.

Yeah. Do you have any like thoughts on that? Do you think A's direction is correct? I know Horizon we laed as probably the correct way to approach it internally. I'm not sure if you guys have a different opinion on the advisory side. And just like generally curious if you think these steps that they've outlined that they would take with the 50 million make sense or if there something else that you would want to then want to see them focus on.

Yeah, interesting question. And I think the the way I think about it is AI is a growing cryptoc protocol and a nent fintech platform and the fintech platform side you have a retail product the lab the app and card and institutional products including RWAS. So they have a lending protocol business which benefits from all of these and they they have they are like starting to get into the the distribution side.

I think this makes a lot of sense because the margins of of lending protocols and lending platforms are generally like low and distribution still tend to be king and capture a lot of fees. Even though lending protocols are like good businesses still with the the tiny markets we have on chain now it's$und00 million business so it's it's very very relevant.

I think the the strategy totally totally makes sense and there is like a wide space. Uh I'm not sure that this is like more for other players. There is like a strong super strong competitive dynamics. I think it's it's more around the the market is so wide. The time is so large and crypto can offer so much more than fintech and we are realizing this.

So it's not going to be like an easy go to market or like immediate with immediate success but I generally think this is the right direction. So I think neo banks will be distribution channel for lending protocols and will like increase the financial freedom of people like around the world. So if they can open the door of the stock it's it's great and I'm supportive of that.

Yeah, I agree. I'm curious like what you think about I was so there's this like very popular Gwart tweet, right, which is like it seems like you guys just built a lot of open source software so that like Robin Hood and stuff can just take it and use it. And then I'm curious what you think about like we mentioned Revolute a few times. a Morpho's model right now fits a lot better with a Revolute as opposed to a I think the way that they would want to approach it potentially just because to me morpho feels more customizable.

And B if they want to do some consumerf facing thing. I don't know how well they can compete against I don't know Revolute for example or whatever like a Robin Hood cash or something like that. And I know I don't know if this you guys spend a lot of time on this on advisory so I'm also happy to like Yakob Shondaanda or Danny if you guys have any thoughts on this as well but like curious how you think as we've realized that we're not displacing fintex but fintex are just going to use this as their back end how much consumer growth we can see in these products like a and morpho and stuff.

Yeah, I think the the thing is a as the crypto platform can never think the this up from first principles and so and they can be like months and even years like anticipating like the moves over re and others. So now like if you think about the the consumer experience of a lending platform as a like supply capital type of experience I think yes this is like very in line with what others can do but I think we are seeing another trend this week uh like borrowing against stocks and borrowing against stocks is impossible for it users around the world even if you are like us and it's accessible only to ways like institutional Bank A cannot see stocks you have in bank B. If you want a loan, you can use that on your brokerage account.

And so this kind of net new consumer experience can can be like the playground from for the crypto apps and can be the the the wedge to it market share. I don't think the the like the having like a saving product to to make 3 4% with euro or USDC is very appealing uh tremendously appealing but it's really only a starting point. So uh that that's my that's my view but uh on the other end I see that the revolution of this war will there will be like fierce competition like in this segment.

Yeah I I think that makes sense. I will say that like that's the first time because I think historically composability has been like oh you can take like whatever your Olympus bonds and deposit them into like invectus and then make it work but I think this is the first instance of like I would say composability that I think makes a lot of sense and it's the first time I've seen that feels like we used to talk a lot more about democratization of finance and we don't really talk a lot about it now but what you mentioned I think yeah like you can do I think institutions can do that and also I think in private private banking you can borrow on your because you have a very close relationship with your banker but I mean in regular life you just can't borrow in your stocks it's not a very easy experience so I'm very excited about that as well I think Danny I don't have any other questions on a unless you have a magical diet tribe that you want to jump into.

I don't have a magical diet tribe but maybe Sylvia if we could talk to so like there is some push back and I heard you mention earlier on that maybe a bunch of it you don't align with maybe some of it you do. Obviously the I think we talked a little bit about the amount of funding like for the year and the difficulties of raising a proposal every single year. There's uncertainty in that but Mark Zeller raised he raised four main points that he called out. one was that this is like a bunch of big issues kind of all tied into one proposal and he thought that that doesn't necessarily make sense like maybe you should break them up. I don't know whether that makes sense or doesn't since it's sort of like one broad big strategy. I can kind of see the reasoning there.

And then another one he had was full wallet disclosure as well as independent revenue verification. So some about kind of breaking things down and like maybe like I'm curious your takes on a couple of these. So like does would it make more sense to break out each of the pieces here like what the strategy is kind of like how much the funding amount is you know then how the revenue and and the app kind of rollouts roll into that procedure afterwards as well as like do you think there's more transparency required kind of across the board in terms of who owns what? you know who's voting with which tokens and how how the labs and the DAO are sort of integrated in that way.

Yeah. Know these are these are very delicate questions and there are each of these like has its own like merit and point. I don't know if like I'm not like expert enough on the governance process to know if it makes sense. So like the I think that the path that makes more sense is like to prove this and then like enforce a bit later like some more transparency and some more measures. These days with platforms like accountable like **ZK** ztls solutions shouldn't be hard to verify revenues of change. So it's all everything is feasible but yeah my worry is that it risks to you know slow down the process.

So what I would like to see more is like there like more trust between these parties so that they can like speed up the process. And yes like apply these transparent measures but it's hard to you know digest everything all at once and it's even maybe it's harder to you know split these big in decisions in many subd decisions. So, I I see again like I see I see the points. I'm I'm not sure about the the disclosure of the wallets to be honest. Something that I haven't thought about enough.

But I think this point makes sense, but I don't think these are points that would make me like vote no to to the proposal as is. Right. It's not perfect. But I really would like for this to proceed and to to know that revenues will go to the to the to the to the talk to the to the treasury to the DAO.

And then okay you know I I cannot trust hubs that in the first months in the first year they will will not I don't they will not like hide or consider revenues or do shady things. That's what I want to to think that's my my approach on this. Then over time the accounting procedures the the IR everything will improve and maybe we'll also play a role on that and things will start to be more transparent so it's like more continuous process.

Yeah I think that go ahead. Yeah one last maybe to round it out on the A discussion is like what what do you think is the ideal end state for a as like an organization? I feel like in this conversation, the way that you're saying like Labs and DAO, they don't trust each other. It's almost like you're it'd be like if you're running a company and you had an employee working for you and you're like, I can't trust this employee. He might be committing fraud right now and stealing money from me.

So I need to like safeguard him from doing that, but also let him ship everything for our product. And I'm curious like does I mean is the structure just at odds with the success of the protocol? Do you think that they need to like do something more drastic to fully align things or or is there a way out?

Yeah, this is um this is a great point and I was thinking this morning this is like almost almost like watching something like co-founder like a reality show for co-founder conflict or some like hard situations in companies and so it's just not pleasant as a token holder or like participant in the industry to to to see that. But it's healthy, right? in some ways it's healthy and I I do not have the answer to to the question. I I don't yeah to be honest I I don't know.

But I think the what what I really would like to to see as a token holder is you know token being front and center regardless of of of the structure and having like full alignment for for whoever is the decision maker and like I also have as I said like a personal preference for lean governance and like execution focused governance particularly when you want to go like into the more traditional segments.

So yeah but I also understand like how important it is to to have a protocol decentralized protocol immutability these kind of principles that make us makes made us grow in the first place. I think the ideally the end state is to have something that combines all these this protocol these products protocols under the same hat and the tokens benefit from it because all the other scenarios there will be like other tokens or or like more bigger role of the equity and I don't want to see that. I think it would like apply a huge huge discount to the token and the equity as well.

Great. So, we'll last question on governance. If you were designing a governance system right now for crypto, a crypto protocol, would you design a general governance principle with a DAO and decentralization or would you not do that like no decentralization or just full decentralization?

Yeah, depending on the product I would go but I would go for no decentralization. and try to you know do something similar to you know the the metad format or something where yeah there are very important powers to token holders there is alignment but the the the execution is like totally centralized and I say this as like someone who previously like founded run startups it's already very hard already So like I I hate to I would hate to have this over it to think about. So I would definitely lean into a more centralized kind of system but with tokens to that represent equity. So in some ways but yeah this is my pre preference.

I think that makes sense and I think that is where go ahead Sean that used to have a take. Yeah. So do you guys mind if I share my maybe hot take controversial opinion because I feel like this whole thing is like pretty simil like it's pretty simple in what's actually happening. I think if you go back and you understand the relationships that labs and DAO had labs work pretty similar to a service provider in that they basically handle all the development and they needed to come to the DAO for funding.

And we saw even earlier back with the proposals like a v4 a 2030 that the budget that the labs outlined was higher than what the DAO was willing to give and in that sense a as a DA was like really strict. So if you compare it to unis swap foundation that got 150 million for incentives to pay themselves like inflated salaries and there was basically no due diligence done there. compared that to AI labs proposal to like create a before that the DAO basically said the costs are way too high.

And AI labs I think they ended up revising their proposal to a lower amount and working with that. But in my mind they always thought that they have more of an incentive to earn than just this revenue stream from the DAO. And the first kind of way this played out was with a horizon where they were even considering I think launching their own token and airdropping some of that to the DAO.

And then the second way this planned out was with them taking some of the front-end fees, right? I think essentially it's a conflict where the labs think that the work they do is very valuable. They think that they can get paid more than the than the Dow is willing to give them. And the DAO kind of saw this that labs is trying to pay themselves in addition to the revenue stream that they're getting and they were not okay with this and now it's kind of consolidating and the solution is okay all the revenue is going to go to the token holders but you need to pay us more you need to pay us what they're worth.

So I think in that sense it's like a pretty simple solution to a pretty straightforward problem that labs wanted more than the DA was willing to give them. Well, there isn't a very straightforward solution unless the DAO decides to give them the money though. So, it is still I I think you're right though and I think there is some rightful questioning of like where the money is going. And I think that's just partially because the lab side probably doesn't want to make everything super public, which is fair from them, but also I think the Dow side should have some more. I mean, the ideal scenario here is like a third party auditor probably who just like confirms with each other, but they don't make it public. I don't know, Sylvia, you probably have a more thought up thought on this, but yeah.

Yeah. So what I see in the market is there are a lot of platforms or WA platform for pro that for proofs of resource or rather like disclosure that there are several solutions. So I don't see a problem there. And by the way, I really like the the framing of Shondaanda on the like this view. It's it's really accurate. Very good. Very good.

We're gonna take one more framing from Shondaanda as well and that is specifically on **Poly Market**. You wrote you Shondaanda, you've been writing about the more interesting stuff within crypto. Not to say that a governance isn't interesting. But Shauna, do you want to kind of talk about your your thesis that you wrote on the newsletter today and then I can grill you on why it's wrong or why it's right?

Yeah, I'd be more than happy to share my **Poly Market** newsletter and also why it relates to **Hyperliquid**. And that actually prompted my like research into prediction markets is **Hyperliquid's** HIPP4 outcome markets that allows essentially these prediction markets to be listed on **Hyperliquid** as well. And it started as me just doing napkin maths looking at okay if **Hyperliquid** were to capture 100% of **Poly Market's** volumes how much revenue would that actually be? Would it be a significant amount? And the answer was it would be very insignificant. It would be only around a 5% increase. So like 7.5 mil a quarter.

And that's pretty surprising, right? When you think about **Poly Market** and you think that **Poly Market** is valued at around $9 billion. So my initial kind of the way that I saw it was either **Poly Market** is overvalued or **hyperlid** is undervalued. But as I begin to like dig into it, I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. And I think the discussion starts when we consider what is an exchange like what is an exchange monetize? in exchange monetizers buyers and selling buyers and sellers meeting it like the takers the retail are paying for instant liquidity and the makers that provide liquidity what they're paying for because they pay fees even though they provide liquidity they're actually paying for access to flow right and the reason you as a market maker want to pay for flow is because that flow can often have inefficiencies in that in it that you can exploit right like let's take the example that somebody is executing ing on Coinbase and they're buying at a value that's way above the fair market value, you can then sell to that user and hedge your position somewhere else.

So because of that, you want to pay for it. But the problem is that **hyperlquid** in general, the flow on **hyperlquid** is very institutional. It's very fees sensitive and there's not a lot of inefficiencies. PTC as an instrument is one of the most liquid instruments and there's not a lot of edge in being the opposite side to that flow, right? It could be informed flow from arbitrage bots from sophisticated funds. You're not necessarily trading against retail.

So what makes prediction markets so interesting is that they're capturing this fee insensitive retail demand and that is so valuable for market makers that they're willing to pay a huge premium for it. And the example that I wrote about was let's compare **Hyperlquid's** BTC market and you compare how much edge can you actually get from that versus **Poly Market's** new instrument which is basically just repackaging options as a gambling instrument like up down is is Bitcoin going to go up or down in the next five minutes and anyone sitting on their phone can tap that not understanding that they're buying an option with a fair value and that fair value might be 5 cents and they're paying 15 cents for it, right? So, the edge there for market makers is huge. That's why it's way more monetizable and that's why these prediction markets have such high premiums compared to pers that have less that are just more efficient.

And in general, the framing is the flow that prediction markets are selling is retail. It's for stuff like sports. It's for stuff like political events that's not fairly priced and if you sell that to market makers, you can charge a much higher premium. I think I I have two questions. One is at what point does this go away? Because I see that they're onboarding more and more market makers now. So I imagine eventually this is just not as attractive as it probably used to be already. I'm not sure how attractive it is now. The second one is how much does sizing matter in this case? Because from what I've heard some of these pools just impossible to get in and out of. So if you've looked into that, I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on that.

Yeah. So I guess in in terms of how how long is this effice going to last, it depends a lot on who your user is that's trading. If it's an institutional user, it's not going to last long because they're going to wait. They're going to switch to a more sophisticated, more liquid alternative as soon as they can. But for a retail who's trading and thinks that he's paying zero fees, right, because his execution is being harvested, he doesn't understand that he's getting sub-optimal execution.

So, as long as you can take that, charge a premium that market makers are going to pay, the market makers will become more competitive, but they're going to earn as much as they can and still pay the fee, right? So, as long as they can pay the fee and still profit, they're going to they're going to make markets and the exchange is going to profit and the market makers are going to profit and the retail user who's trading is going to lose and and they're not going to understand why.

I have one last thing for you. You said **hyperlquid** is institutional flow. I think that's not true. Maybe even for BTC or Eve I like compared to what is the institutional flow in that case or I guess like what what does institutional flow mean in this? So I'm I'm trying to understand how you define institutional flow because to me like yeah just general let's start with that and then we'll go on.

Yeah. So I guess the way I would define flow is there's as a marketing maker there two types of flows. There's good flow which is like normally retail driven. It's uninformed and you can profit off of that by exploiting it. And then on the other hand, there's informed flow that's toxic and that those traders probably know something you don't and you do not want to be on the other side of it.

I think just in general, any platform that has low fees is going to attract institutions. Like compare that to Coinbase where you pay like 50 basis points. Retail is trading on Coinbase. retail is not trading on **hyperlquid** to the same extent and also the way you frame your marketing right I think **hyperlquid** attracted a lot of volume but did they attract a lot of retail users that are going to trade and provide value for market makers to take the other side I think there's a lot less of those on **hyperlquid** than they are on other chains that are like paying for marketing and they're really focusing on the user acquisition I really need to look into this more. My initial gut reaction is that you're wrong, but I also don't want to bring you on the podcast, tell you to explain something, and then say, "Oh, dude, you're [ __ ] wrong." So, I need to look into this and come back to you. But, um, if anybody has any comments about anything else, I'm more than happy to discuss after the time being, Danny.

So, I mean, may maybe I can like defend myself, which is I I could definitely be wrong, and that's one thing. like I'm in the process of writing this report, right? So this this is a bit early. This is just based on my logical understanding of the platforms of **Hyperlid** of of Coinbase of Robin Hood and who their users are. And my assumption is that the average person executing on Robin Hood and Coinbase with those high fees is much less of a institutional trader than someone trading on **Hyperlid**.

I I maybe have a push back here. I'll just jump in because I think it's quick. The point that it's less I I guess I don't think the argument follows from the points you make around the fees are X, therefore the traders are Y. I don't think it works. Like if you look at Coinbase's revenue breakdown by retail versus institutional, you'll see they make quite a bit more from the retail consumer, but of course they they can also charge them a higher, you know, spread on a Bitcoin trade. and they know that their institutional, you know, if it's ETFs or other purchasers who are, you know, have to buy at BTC in size, like they know they can't charge them 2% spread on a BTC purchase at 10 billion size. Like I think that's more just downstream of the fact of the way that sizing and like and like those trades kind of work. So I guess I wouldn't use that as evidence that like Hype or Coinbase are different in this way.

Um, I think like the retail activity on Coinbase is probably more reflective of the fact that like they're a big company who's like done Super Bowl ads for five years in a row. Uh, and they have a mobile app that caters to retail users. Which it doesn't mean that Hype, you know, could or could not have retail or institutional traders in in the same breakdown. Um, I don't know. I I think the probably the bigger problem is that you can go to the revenue statement from Coinbase and say, "Wow, they made this much from institutional traders and they made this much from retail." And you can't do that for really any DeFi product that exists. And that's maybe the harder part is that I think you like you could be right, but um it's going to take a lot more work to find out if you are or not. But maybe you could do that.

Yeah. So, so hopefully you guys will allow me to come on the pod again in a couple of weeks when the report is out and back up my stance and I'll be able to take victory laps. We can time stamp this, play it in the background. Um it'll be a good time. Yeah, I'd be super curious to know like what how much money would they make with this with this business model, right, of selling selling flow and how this compared to the liquid model. and traditional like other models. So yeah, I'm going to wait for that report from I think maybe the other question I'd have is like you take businesses that are KYCed versus those that are nonkyced and I I like I would I'd probably lean in your direction that like I would actually believe that there is more retail flow on like a nonkyced venue just because of you know regulatory questions but that it might also be incorrect like I don't know it just you could I think you could define institution utional in different ways. Like if a fund is happen to trade size non KYC on a DeFi platform then like I don't know we we could mislabel them as retail hypothetically.

I mean the way I see it is again an exchange is like monetizing inefficiencies in its flow and selling that to market makers like that's a huge thing in Chadfire right like payment for flow. So in that sense, intuitively for me, it would be very easy to argue that these exchanges like Coinbase, like retail that are spending millions of dollars to pay for Super Bowl ads and get retail to trade on their platform are going to have higher retail audience, are going to have higher retail volume than **Hyper

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