Who Actually Owns the Aave Brand -- the DAO or Labs? Uneasy Money

There's this people that are doing that are getting some wrong in the society and then they complain to the society itself and say hey that should not be a low because I'm very sad. That's usually what a low comes from. The the the point of insider trading laws is not to stop the fairness in the market. It is to stop someone appropriating information that they got from a privileged position, stealing from the company that you got the information from. Not about the people that are trading against you on the NASDAQ, right? When people called the the Maduro Bets insider trading one, show me anything that shows that that information was insider, right? There's a lot of threads on Twitter right now and let me tell you, especially the like look on chain dudes who are like, I'm a sleuth. Look at me. They're wrong.

Welcome to Uneasy Money because what happens on chain never stays on chain. I'm here with my co-host Taylor Monahan, security at MetaMask. And today we have a very special guest, Mark Zeller, founder of the Achan Initiative, ACI, a provider for the A DAO. Uh, one quick thing before we start. Nothing you hear on Uneasy Money is financial advice. We're just three builders talking about what's happening on chain and we want you to always do your own research before aping in. You can find all of our disclosures at unchained crypto.com/ unneasymoney. Multi-chain advisers is an emerging technology growth firm that has helped create 50 plus billion in enterprise value for 80 plus clients over the past four years. They're the partner to help navigate markets. Build real traction today at multi-chainadv.com. Mantel is launching the global hackathon 2025 to accelerate the future of realworld assets with a 150,000 prize pool backing from a $4 billion treasury and direct access to Bibbit's 7 million plus users. This is the ultimate ecosystem for builders.

Hey guys. Um, so before we get started, Mark, uh, you had one of the most banger tweets of the year so far. We're only a week in. Um, your your tweet about, uh, Macron after after the Maduro uh, um, expiltration, I guess. Um, we don't have the technology to pull up tweets. Uh but uh but if I remember correctly, it was it was something along the lines of, you know, this is such a terrible situation. I hope uh that nothing happens to my beloved president who lives at Peru wherever uh wherever the presidential palace is uh in in Paris. So um yeah, that was that I laughed out loud at that one. That was very very impressive.

In France, we have two part of our culture that are extremely important. uh being uh very pissed at her politician and we love the good sarcasm and I think it was a good mix of those that resonate with some people.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely definitely uh it it uh landed. Um so um really awesome to have you here because our our main topic uh today is going to be a governance war. Um and the question of who really controls **Aave** but also probably more broadly who really controls any protocol um are they controlled you know what are the mechanisms so um uh basically here's here's the recap I think um and you know Tay you've you've brushed up on this a little bit so you know jump in if if anything's off here um but a few weeks ago now maybe we'll zoom out even more right um **Aave** I would say for most DeFi enthusiasts is um the top if not you know the the top three absolute worst case uh um examples of good governance in DeFi Dow governance um not having misaligned incentives despite the fact that there is a labs and a DAO and you know there there are some uh you know potential points of friction.

Um and I think it's you know it's worth uh mentioning Stanny is a good friend of mine and I think part of that is that you know Stanny has uh kind of consistently showed up and and you know tried to do the right thing for **Aave** but then you also have people like Mark who are you know extreme like maybe the most aligned with a protocol and **Aave** the DAO right um and it creates a really uh good tension and and you know checks and balances for uh how um a Dow should operate and there's a lot of people who have kind of given up hope on Dows. Tay, you may may not be one. Don't look at me. Don't look at me. Um and and so, you know, I think like for a lot of us, we look at **Aave**. We've got **Aaves**. First of all, we see **Aave** governance as like one of the shining lights of, you know, maybe this DAO thing can actually work. Um and and that's kind of been the historical backdrop of all of this stuff, right?

And then a few week and this is not the first time there's been tension of course you know it's a doubt there's going to be tension um but then a few weeks ago **Aave** labs uh switched its front-end swap integration from power swap to cow swap um which you know fairly uncontroversial uh but then they routed uh what is effectively eight figures low eight figures of uh fee revenue that used to go into the DAO treasury to the **Aave** labs mult multi6 I guess right um and there was no discussion or vote on this or whatever um and the community was like whoa whoa whoa you're taking our money um and uh you know kind of privatizing these fees right um and uh and then I think the the next point was this kind of view of like who is owed those fees this question of like well this is a front end and you know it's not the protocol etc. And so you know maybe it's fine if we just do this right um but there is like a I think a principled view in the world that uh you know if you are a DA that things should go through the DA that there should be governance around it um and so this kind of escalated right um a snapshot proposal was drafted um by uh um **Aave's** former CTO um and uh this was submitted to transfer **Aave's** brand assets um domains an IP to D control.

Um but uh well and hold on. So that thread that that governance forum thread that is in part in my opinion, my view, right? That is in part was sort of kicking off the governance around literally the domains and the brand and stuff, right? But it was actually a reality serving as a uh as a a central place for everyone to discuss this broader issue. And then there were these little spin-off things. Uh which is why what happened next was I think caught everyone off guard because this wasn't necessarily your typical we're going to do a proposal, we're going to do a snapshot, we're going to then ask, you know, through the normal governance things. this was like the place for everyone to sort of like get caught up on on the the conversation, the drama, etc.

Um, yeah, I think what is important if we have to do the recap of the situation is that it all started by a token holder. So a token holder and also a very large uh independent delegate of the the ADA uh basically found out that **Aave** redirected the fee and it's back basically like if you have a Apple store and you sell the iPhone you the Apple gets the money on the iPhone that are sold but overnight there's an executive at Apple that say well every app that is that every user that pays some money to to use an app on the uh Apple store we uh the fee goes to us and the token was not very happy. So the communities take well maybe we should have a discussion to have a revenue share this kind of stuff and make sure uh unit control and redirection of fee cannot happen and the reaction of **Aave** lab at that point was like well we do the front end that's our project and uh we don't have anything to discuss with you guys and that's when the discussion uh basically escalated to okay let's put the fear on the side for one moment and discuss who can do what in the **Aave** ecosystem using the **Aave** brand and who actually own the **Aave** brand and that's where the proposal from former CTO of **Aave** labs that's been out to create BGD labs and is know the core maintainer of the **Aave** codebase uh for the DAO as a service provider uh escalated to say okay maybe the DAO should have legal entity and own those brand assets and then delegate that back to other labs.

So we are sure that those strategic asset cannot be uh monetized unitarily to one party or redirected completely uh to other purpose that would not serve the **Aave** protocol or the **Aave** token office and that's where I think the conversation got interesting because the swap feed itself is not so important it's less than 10% of the **Aave** global revenue obviously it's important that most revenue uh goes back to the token holders but I The real meat of this conversation is about ownership of those assets.

Yeah, 100%. And and you know, we we joke about like uh IP ownership and and you know, who owns a brand and uh and DAO structures, right, all the time. Um I remember uh back in the day when we were deprecating Haven um and and moving to synthetics. Um we got on a call with the lawyers and I was like, "Guys, this is taking so long. Like, why can't we shut it down?" And they're like, "We don't have anywhere to put if you don't have an entity, you got to put the Haven brand somewhere." And I was like, "What?" Like, "No, like just like I like just put it in, you know, put like put it on the chain or something. I don't know." I was like, "I don't know what to tell you guys."

Um and so uh so there is I think you know an interesting uh nuance in this as well of like okay how do you even wrap IP and brand assets etc into a legal rapper and then put that on chain you make it an NFT that says **Aave** like what you know there's the **Aave** brand not so good that is new in the ecosystem there's been a bunch of implementation of all the Dows and all the ecosystem. So Leido was legit. Moro as a French nonprofit association owning the the brand, the assets, the all this kind of stuff. So it's not really a problem like it's a technical problem. It's a little problem, but it's it's something that can be solved literally overnight.

Yeah, it's it's fairly easy to solve it. It's just it is I think somewhat interesting, right? That like we have these uh intangible assets, right? IP brand, etc. Um, and in order for a DAW to own them, they kind of have to be inside this legal rapper. It's like one of the weird meat space things that like bridges across uh you know, both both um uh a DAO and yeah, no one's uh no one's turned them into an NF yet. I don't know maybe that would be a good option but at the end of the day I think ownership and safeguard is important when you do a business and uh especially when that business the the DAO and the protocol is a billion dollar business and hundreds of millions of dollar per year business and what you want to prevent when you have this kind of pro uh business is uh to have unity or control that can redirect the revenue or redirect the brand already in the project and I I'm actually old enough uh to remember uh maybe they had to submit to that but to remember when uh my wallet account became my crypto.

Oh, I remember it's very it's the situation was very different because uh obviously I'm a I was a big mic crypto.com fan and how we used the project and most of the team fully tailored. So the situation is quite different but at the end of the day uh one uh very important I asset got uh changed overnight in terms of control and maybe that's a situation the **Aave**idel wants to prevent in the future uh if Stani wants to create myav.com and change the brandet change the because he has the front end the domains and deposit on another codebase and another protocol he owns 100% where the token there's uh no control that's something we want to prevent. I know Stani and uh I work with him for nearly a decade now. I know he's very a line and uh he has his own alignitement as well and it's also a bit of game theory uh of where you put the right Nash equilibrium to make sure that everyone have their own incentive but you need to have a framework that is safe for every actors. uh best interest and I think the the best Nash equilibrium is to say okay there's going to be a neutral uh legal rapper that is the D that will own the asset that will protect D and then there's going to be mandates back to **Aave** lab back to Stani to say okay you can continue to do exactly what you do right now but ultimate ownership belongs to the DO so if there's something that breaks the trust between the token holder and the lots for any kind of reason in the future. There's less of a asymmetric relationship.

Yeah. Yeah. There's recourse, right? You have you have some level of recourse, right? But well, and it also it sets expectations and and in reality like the MU, my crypto split and this situation, they're not they're they're very different in basically every way except for like the core root of everything, which is that um we were all working on something that was valuable to other people that other people's livelihoods like our team but also like everyone that was using our product was relying on. Thank goodness we did enough. So it was by the way everyone everyone the entire ecosystem like it was systemically risky for all of like Ethereum for this. Yes. Yeah. And we were we were wildly aware of this but we were also when we had first started it we were it was just like this opensource GitHub repo. We had no company. There was no company guys. There was none whatsoever. Like it wasn't a Dow wasn't No, it was just a repo that we threw together. Right. Um and so then fast forward that the combination of the value and the risk on the table combined with the lack of clarity that we even had with ourselves and that evolves over time and as the stakes get higher and you know people's lives intersect with work intersect with like wait how did we end up here right and then all of a sudden you're sitting there and you're like wow we have because we never got we never established clarity on even the bas 6. Now it's like every little thing just sort of amplifies and compounds that initial uncertainty.

Yeah, it was fine in the early days, right? When it was all sitting in a room, we're friends. And by the way, there was two of us and we were committing directly to master on GitHub. Like it was fine. Everything was fine. But you know once you got to once we got past ICO era I mean really even past the Dow like that was not fine anymore. And so you know in that situation like our uh our processes and our security evolved but the company structure like Ethereum has never been good on no we don't do companies here. We have to learn it on our own. But I think it's great to learn from the past as well and it's all a sign of maturity. It's like there's there's a very good knife take when you are a builder and you start building things from scratch and but as things evolve and it gets more and more serious and then you have some value and you have actual revenue then you cannot just sit sit down and say okay everything's going to be all right and we all going to be friends forever. uh it's part of the becoming an adult, you know, to say we need like a a Claude slashcomand need robust dow get just get the clarity right and that's part of part of some of the stuff well so one of the things that I think is most sort of disappointing about the timeline for **Aave** and stuff is like in a certain sense everyone had just got this clarity right the SEC finally It was like actually JK lol sorry for ruining your lives for years and then like immediately it's like just like little certainty and then but there's something to that right I don't think it it's I don't think it's a coincidence like there was no way while the SEC was circling with their you know uh goon squad right that uh **Aave** labs was going to be like hey why don't we just take some revenue from the Dow and divert it to our private company. That was never going to happen. Soon as the SEC capitulates, then it's like, oh well actually, and this is the problem, right? Like without that clarity, without the right structure in place, you can't trust that in 3 years, 5 years, 10 years. And I think, you know, your point Mark is is really important. Um, this is a billion multi-billion dollar project, right? This is not like, you know, two people sitting in a room, you know, hacking some stuff together anymore. like this is systemically uh important to Ethereum to crypto um and if you don't have certainty around governance and around how the thing will operate then that's just like a a drag on the value of the entity because you no one can look at it and go well I know what's going to happen in this scenario it's like uh anything could happen and so you know even if you ignore governance and and all of that stuff just from a purely financial standpoint. Uh uncertainty is bad. Like remove the uncertainty, have clarity. Like it's good for everyone if everyone knows how things will work.

Yep. Mhm. Completely agree on that. And I think it's also important for the valuation model of the asset because as an investor if uh you get a claim of the proxy of revenue of a protocol itself that's a very thin margin business because the way **Aave** works and the way **Aave** makes money as a protocol is by the collection of reser factor mainly that's the the main revenue source paid by the the borrowers. So part of the borrower interest paid goes back to the DAO and the protocol and that's a very very t margin. **Aave** makes a lot of money because **Aave** is extremely big but at the end of the day uh everybody that builds software and I think one of the reason you launch infinex is also that when you have a protocol or when you build a **Fat App Theory** like you are building right now and you are closer to the user that's where the real margin can be made.

Agree. And and the closer you are to the user, the more you can monetize. And if uh there's no ownership on the distribution channels and uh the project side of things to the DAO then there's a a very hard limiter on the valuation model of the **Aave** asset because you have the high margin part of the business that is controlled by a third party entity that has no uh obligation legally or even uh uh to redirect that revenue. And that's why ownership is important because uh at the end of the day nobody is against standing making money obviously because uh we are very aligned because usually when he makes money because part a big part of this portfolio is **Aave** I also make money because a big part of my portfolio is also **Aave** and that's the same thing for the the people that hold the asset and this kind of stuff and that is linked to the **Aave** success as a protocol and uh so nobody is against **Aave** labs doing their work. They are doing a fantastic pro for nearly a decade. Now what we want is clarity about the structure and to say okay if you do things and you use the **Aave** brands well the aid should get their fair share and we still that from a position that is uh more on an eagle standpoint and less aimemetric where you decide overnight okay you you guys will get 10%. Oh, in one year, oh, I changed my mind. No, it's zero. Oh, no. Uh, I'm more friendly to you. It's gonna be 40%. This kind of stuff. We don't want this kind of relationship. We want something secure, something stable that create trust and bring clarity to everyone in so, you know, clarity, right? Like the the **Aave** holders rejected this brand transfer. Uh, it got voted down um in spite of the fact that it was on like Christmas day or whatever. Um and uh **Aave** labs is now saying okay we will share the off protocol revenue um with **Aave** holders but again I think it's less about all right fine guys we'll give you this because this didn't go well and more about now saying well we'd prefer if it's not discretionary right we'd prefer if you were obligated to do this thing because what happens in 10 years time if you know the **Aave** front end's making a billion dollars a in frontend revenue for some reason, right? Then you know or or what happens if like the question for me, right? Uh and it's very hypothetical, right? But what if the front end starts doing something that actually works against the DO like actually against the D? No, that would never happen. Taylor and there is there are a lot of incentives that make it unlikely to happen but like that is like a scary future state of things and again I don't think this is going to happen but right I think everyone is looking at this and saying like oh they redirected the revenue but they could when you control the front end you can do a lot fork just to be clear they could fork this is like we we can't live in fantasy land right they could fork the protocol if they have the main entry point to the protocol And and I don't think anyone is saying that this will happen, but what happens if you know something happens to Stanny and some person inside of Always turns up and goes, "Stanny was a nice guy, but like honestly like [ __ ] the D stuff, right?" Um, and we're going to fork it and we're going to take 100% of the revenue. And sure, you might say, "Well, people aren't going to follow that." But some people will. Um and so you know that is that is the level ownership of this brand asset is that if tomorrow he wants to do a.com and do his own front end his own protocol he should get 100% of the revenue on that. Sure. The issue is doing this kind of thing on a.com because uh the DAO and the protocol and Stani as well and labs everyone worked very hard and spent hundreds of millions of dollars in incentive in development in research in uh uh risk parameters all this kind of stuff to build the muscle memory that if you want to do onchain lending you type a.com on your browser and then you end up on **Aave** and that's what has value And what is important is to make sure that a more likely scenario let's say have **Aave** labs raise from and do a IPO in five years in 10 years and I wish them the best I wish them for that to to happen and to be a billion dollars company on itself what happen if there's a administration conceal that decide that well Stani you're a great CEO thank you for your vision and thank you for being a founder But no, the big boys are in place. I'm black rock and I will see pap share. Goodbye. Is your sh goodbye and then decide to implement many things that are not so decentralized anymore or not so aligned with the token anymore. Are you aligned with Dow governance? Maybe not naturally or maybe they are. That's the the thing is that these kind of things happen in text and in startup every single day for the past decades and if we have no recourse and if we have no ownership of this kind of asset from the DAO we cannot prevent that and that's not serious for a billion dollar protocol.

Yeah it's yeah you have no recourse and that drives the uncertainty. It also just drives I think there's this thing where you know on the one hand the Dow governance can be very inefficient and dramafilled but it also just like naturally lends itself to everyone assuming that they're talking their bags and like assuming this malicious intent even when there is none. It's been really prevalent with this specific drama where everyone's like, "You're just talking your bags, blah blah." And I'm like, "These are like I don't know. I find that super insulting because, you know, all of the players involved are actually looking out for **Aave** like above all. It's just like in the details of what **Aave** is. Um, but you know, you can imagine that the conversation and the governance and everything would just be um it would be easier. There'd be more clarity and people could focus on building and delivering new value if they weren't uh they weren't expending all this energy arguing about whose bags like who's aligned where and who's trying to get the best for their bags and whatever. you know, like ultimately the goal is to build and to deliver value and to to iterate and to do all of these things. Um, and and these sorts of things just like they just get in the way like we have to get past these barriers.

So, I have one I have one question for Mark before we wrap up the **Aave** uh conversation. So, um, **Aave** started his Eat Land and it was okay. Wasn't going amazingly well, right? And then Stanny turned up and said, "What if we change the name to **Aave**," which is Finnish for ghost? So Stanny, as I can only assume the president of Finland uh has some claim over the Finnish language, right? Um and uh and he was like, "Hey, we'll change it to **Aave**." And then from there it kind of went parabolic, right? So you could pretty much point at the approximate cause of all of the success of **Aave** as the rebrand to **Aave**. Um, what if you just pay Stanny some money like uh like you know give him 5 million bucks for the name and uh and maybe we can settle it all like that. I think there's zero uh opposition to that in the DOT. The the issue and I think the situation escalated because uh **Aave** labs didn't want to negotiate. Basically what they did is that they they went to the forum and they flipped the negotiation table saying we own everything. we own the asset and thank you. That that was basically the first message then it was more a constructive approach. Uh that was very welcome and if we are at the last update like basically what happened like five days ago is that standing we went back to the forum and say okay guys the communication was not so great we going to work with you guys to uh to do the revenue and discuss the IP this kind of stuff. So at the end of the day uh I don't want to antagonize anybody and uh pale anybody uh in the situation as the villain like people love binary uh uh stuff but I think uh it's clear from our conversation that everyone involved in this debate uh is looking for the best of the **Aave** protocol uh itself. So we most likely going to end up with what we call a phase two. So the proposition was phase one uh we should have a mandate as the DAO to seek ownership of this blood asset and phase two was okay how do we do things and the idea was like phase one is shortterm give a mandate give a senial from the DAO to a large to say okay we want this to happen and phase two is this is oh it's going to happen and oh it's going to be implemented and we are working constructively uh to build phase two and I think **Aave** labs is knowing in a position to discuss uh the these kind of things and I'm very optimistic for the future of that.

Yeah. Yeah. I think you'll get there and I think you know even two three weeks ago when when Kane and I were discussing this we had faith that it would everyone would get through but we were going to enjoy the dumbass is that we have the historical market data on that. So uh earlier this year in February if I remember correctly uh Stenny went to the forum and say hey we're going to do horizon it's going to be a real world asset and there's going to be a second token and I was not very happy with that and the token holder as well say well there's not going to be a second token and obviously you can have a red share uh we love the idea of having real world asset and we think horizon is a great idea but the second token yeah it's not going to be an option and there's No second thought I don't have and I think everybody uh at the end of the day it's simple game theory every actor will look for their best personal interest but what we need to do is to make sure the national equilibrium is uh somewhere that benefits everybody. So no single party not the DO not me the ICI not BGD the core developers not **Aave** labs the the maintainer of the front end the brand uh have too much power and we end up in the situation that is more less asymmetric and uh better for the the protocol itself and I think avi has an historical way uh as historical proof to to say okay we we find good solution and that's for the best of it yeah I have a question about so in the ideal I guess ideal world right you have the protocol you have the DAO and then you have these other entities sort of around that are doing really good tangible work that is like for the benefit of the protocol not necessarily the benefit of like the DAO but for the the protocol the DAO is also sort of one of those right the DAO is also supposed to be uh serving the protocol and the token holder in the future, right?

Um, the front end is, I think, more important than DeFi has ever really made it out to be. That is literally the the thing that has the relationship with the users. Every time someone stands up and claims that a user can go interact with the contracts raw. Like, I just laugh. I'm sorry. That's not how the world works, guys. Um, but I'm curious if you guys are thinking about um, like ideally there's there's actually some sort of baked in incentives or rewards or something for uh, the front ends, right? The the the people that have that relationship with the user so that they can build their thing, they can do so uh, in a way that's like a sustainable business, right? They can serve the users uh, and give them say access to **Aave** uh and let them like unlock that value. Um and doing that they're incentivized to do that, right? Like again, they can uh have a really sustainable business doing that. I think that's sort of what I guess the crux of the issue is here though, right? Is like Sony is saying like we have the front end like we should get the rewards for that because we are the one that has the relationship with the user and that's not wrong. Like you do, in my opinion, if you want to have great frontends and great experiences for users, you have to reward those those things, right? Because they need to be able to uh to be aligned to serve the users and the protocol on the other end. Um and they need to have the resources. It's hard, right? Like it's it's a hard thing to especially because the founder of the protocol is also the guy building the front end because it turns out that people don't just turn up and build front ends for you like we thought they might.

All right, Mark, I'll let you uh wrap up our and then we'll we'll move on to the next topic. Yeah. So to wrap up, uh there's two different things. So that you have the front ends and you want to incentivize builders to build on top of it. And uh what we did in 2020 was a referral program and I think we should bring that back. Uh so we incentivize people building on top of **Aave** and we redirect part of the protocol revenue uh to those builders and I think uh now we are mature and especially after these events to bring back this sort of things to invite every builders uh to build on upon **Aave** front end but also the kind of application because of the uh the protocol and IO it. The second conversation and that's the most important one is the domain because no matter where you are uh the reason Stan had this reaction initially is that he knows that if he builds a.com it's not going to have the same traffic like uh everybody loves Danny and I'm part of the east supporter despite what people want to believe but uh I don't think uh there will be as much uh traffic on a.com compared to a.com and what's another random Finnish word.com. So that's the situation and I think the domain should remain to the DAO and operated by the DAO and if the DAO should build a domain itself there's a large treasury on the DAO and there's a lot of competitive builders up there but I think the best one up there to do that is a lot they just need to have a proper and clear relationship with the DA to break that or where the you share is defined from a position of the ship of the D that will be this topic multi-chain advisor is an emerging technology growth firm that has helped create over $50 billion in enterprise value for more than 80 clients like Pith, Moon Commerce, and Wormhole. They've worked with some of the largest and most impactful companies in the space. They're the partner you want when you're navigating markets and trying to break out from the noise. They help navigate TGES, go to market, BD and partnerships, capital markets, advisory, PR, media placements, KOA activations, and more. Driving execution from launch to scale. Their results are measurable. To learn more and start building real traction today, visit multi-chainadv.com. Mantel has entered a new phase as the distribution layer connecting tradi and onchain liquidity. To accelerate this vision, the Mantle Global Hackathon 2025 is inviting developers to build scalable RWA and DI products. Why build on Mantle? It's an ecosystem built for builders. You get direct access to BBET's 7 million plus users for potential listing exposure, support from the $4 billion Mantel Treasury, and mentorship from top VCs like Spartan and Anamoka brands. With six tracks prioritizing RWAS and RealFi and a $150,000 prize pool plus grants, this is your chance to deploy on a high-performance modular L2. Register now. The link is in the show notes.

So, Infinex Infinex. Oh my god. So, hey, what happened? What came? Sure. So, the other day, uh, you were you were like, "Oh, you know, you kind of became the main character for like I don't even know what that I've forgotten what that even was about. Why people uh were um were using it. I don't know what I did two weeks ago or three weeks ago when you said that, but um someone pointed out on the timeline a couple days ago that like Infinex somehow has become the main character of the last like week." It's it's qu it's an interesting dynamic. we can get into like why is everyone so obsessed with uh Impex and and the ICO, but um so uh I you know I've said this many times. I'm a I'm I'm a long-standing fan of uh ICOs. I think ICOs are a much better uh way of um raising capital. I think they're a much better way of distributing tokens. Uh we stopped doing ICOs because of reasons. um we stopped stopped doing ICOs and started doing airdrops which just created like the most perverse bad incentives. Um and so you know when when we launched Infinex we're like okay let's do a token sale. This is in 2024 um but it was still you know a little on the edge right and so we did this NFT sale um and in fairness at the time it took about a month for us to kind of get everyone to understand what we're trying to do. Um because many people were like NFTTS like what like why are you doing this doesn't make sense and eventually they got it. Um and so then you know we're about to do TG and we're about to release an actual token an ERC20 token. And so I was like okay before we do that there's a new sonar meta. Um you know someone Kobe has turned up and said I'm going to like help fix capital formation this cycle right built echo built sonar. And I'm like this is good. We should use