From a Sovereign Internet to Fartcoin, and Back Again

Hi everyone, I'm Julien Nesque, I'm Gnosis DeFi VD and I'm going to speak about how everything started about creating a centralized financial system and somehow in the rails, we went on to do and trade 14 coins and what are we doing at Gnosis to bring it back to where it was. So let's start in the beginning. Gnosis started in 2017, we launched the first decentralized prediction market platform and it proved to be one decade too early. It turns out that neither the UX nor the infra was ready back then to mass adoption and poly market success proved that we were too early. So we had to pivot and we pivoted, we built, we became a cornerstone of Ethereum infrastructure, we built GAO, we built the SafeMoon SIG, we acquired and kept building Gnosis chain and now I think things are finally becoming ready for achieving mass adoption.

But what started as a cyberpunk dream of banking the unbanked, of exiting the system, of creating a decentralized censorship-resistant financial system, became into either an unregulated decentralized casino where people are just talking and smiling with insiders to launch an exchange coin to dump on retail or a bunch of centralized services that do provide value but do not really care about our values. So let's get back to basics, let's bank the unbanked. Stablecoins are actually providing massive value right now and they do serve two different use cases. In the global north, stablecoins are a UX improvement, they really improve, they are acting as programmable money, they really improve the UX, they are much easier to integrate, they facilitate access to a global liquidity layer and in the end they do provide access to a credibly neutral financial settlement layer. In the global south, stablecoins are actually providing another use case and they are giving access to users or people from censored countries or with very unstable economies to stable value and this is really valuable too.

But the problem is that all of these users are using services that are really centralized. There are a lot of teams that are building without really thinking about our values and they are gaining a lot of traction. And there are also a lot of teams that are building thinking about our values but they are not really gaining much traction. So we should really think about how do we balance principles and usability. And one of the things that we cannot really compromise on is self-custody.

So let's take one step back and let's talk about what the UX was like in 2021. Let's say you were having a few drinks with a friend on a Friday night in 2021 and you told them about the shitcoin that you bought and that did like 5x overnight. And you got him excited and now he wants to play in the casino too. So you schedule a call in order to help them with the onboarding. So you call him and then you tell them, right, first you need to go into this website and then you have to download this Chrome extension with a fax on it.

Yes, you are going to store your money in a Chrome extension. Now you have to write down these 12 words in a piece of paper. Yes, do not store it digitally. Don't store it on your phone, don't store it on Google Drive, don't store it on a password manager. You're going to get hacked.

It has to be in a piece of paper and you have to hide it like a treasure. And also do not watch porn on your computer because you're going to get hacked. And don't load that game through this sketchy torrent because you're also going to get hacked. Every time that you want to enter into a shitcoin, you will see a pop-up in your browser. That's when you're signing a transaction.

And if you sign the wrong thing, your wallet is going to get drained. So be very careful what you sign. And how you do that? You really need to learn a lot because there are some numbers. How about gas fees?

What are gas fees? How about cross-chain? It didn't scale. This was not the way to onboard a billion users. This was not the way to solve and create a really inclusive financial system.

Fast forward to 2025 and now we have baskets. We have wallets that you just download on your phone, you put your face, and then you have a wallet, which is really self-custodial. These wallets are actually built thinking about the UX. They abstract away the problems of paying gas, especially with account abstraction. They're safer by default.

They are abstracting away all of the complexities surrounding crypto and they are mainly built for humans. They're not built for devs. So it's pretty much Web2 UX with crypto values and benefits. So the answer now is why? Why would a user want to use this?

And I could say that there are many reasons, but first of all, let's talk about the fact that new users, they don't want to listen. They don't want to be full of shit with their crypto friends shilling the shit coins on a Friday night with a few beers. They maybe have money on FTX or in any of the exchanges that went broke in 2022 and they don't want to know anything with it. They are sick of precedent launching coins that are going to go to zero within a week. They are sick of all the scammers.

They don't want to do anything with that. But they do want access to digital dollars. They do want access to a global liquidity layer. They do want supercharged DeFi yields. And they especially will want censorship resistance when they need it.

So what are we doing at Gnosis to make this happen? Well, we are creating circles. Users can now create their own money. Users will be able to have a universal basic income. And who doesn't want free money?

Users will be able to receive cross-border payments powered by GnosisPay. Say you are an Argentinian freelancer. You need to receive your payment on USDT. Well, we provide a U.S.

bank account. Within minutes, you get USDT in your wallet. And users will just see a dollar there, a dollar sign. They don't really need to know that it's crypto in the back. It's a dollar in the end.

And what can users do with these dollars? They can ramp it in Argentina. They can ramp it in Europe. They can pay with PIX in Brazil. But they can also access DeFi yields.

They can also borrow against it. They can order their GnosisPay card and pay directly from their wallet without paying these abusive fees that they are currently paying on centralized services. You are a Brazilian living in Portugal, like 20% of Portuguese population. You want to send money to your family. You don't pick your own board on Monerium.

You just do an Ivan transfer to Monerium. You swap to VRLA and then you do a PIX transaction. And that's it. You send money to your family. Just five, six clicks, a few minutes away, moving money from Portugal to Brazil.

You are a Brazilian that wants to pay abroad, like I was just explaining. You download PIX, you order the card, and you will get an FX rate on boarding on US dollars with just a PIX transfer. And this FX rate is almost 5% cheaper than what you could get currently with VICE, for example. The best FX on the market. And we can do this because of stablecoins.

Do you want to earn higher than TruthFight yields while still being able to pay with your assets? You can access these yields through SEAL. You download the wallet, you put your face on it, and that's it. You can run through Monerium, which is a traditional normal Ivan transfer. Then you have EROE.

You can earn 3.6% on AVE or 5.4% in ESDAI. And you can have your funds earning a yield until the moment that you spend. They have this feature.

It's called recharge. You set how much funds you want to have in your card. And then you have everything else in your earning a yield on AVE. Every time you tap with your card, you pay your 20 bucks in the grocery shop. It redeems 20 euros from AVE and goes back to the card.

So you're always earning yields up until the moment that you spend. And if you have not, I really recommend that you guys should try because the experience is really great. You can also order the No Suspect card from there and also start getting cashback. And finally, if you want to have the first decentralized lending protocol-powered crypto credit card, just use AVE. You can deposit from ETH on AVE, borrow EUR and even get paid for borrowing on AVE and No Suspect.

So if you're a dev, if you're a founder, if you're building products that will facilitate real-world finance, reach out to me. And if you still want to ape into the ultimate meme coin, join Circle. Thank you. Thank you, Julian. Let's move on to questions.

Do we have questions? All right. Well, all right. Thanks, everyone. Good.

Thank you so much, Julian.