# Unlocking DeFi for the Worldโ€™s Most Underserved Crypto Asset | Jordan Jefferson - DogeOS - Channel: [Ethereum Denver](https://streameth.org/ethereum-denver) - Date: 2026-03-09 - Duration: 15:16 - Topics: ETHDenver, Crypto, Web3, Blockchain, Event, Conference, ETHDenver 2025, ETHDenver 2024, Bitcoin, Ethereum - Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-FJHfbq6N4xc - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJHfbq6N4xc ## Description ๐Ÿš€ Get Ready for ETHDenver 2026! ๐Ÿš€ We're already hard at work preparing for next year's biggest Web3 event! Keep your eyes peeled for more info on ETHDenver 2026โ€”itโ€™s going to be epic! ๐ŸŒŸ ## Transcript Okay, everybody, are you ready for the next topic? So, we're going to be talking about unlocking DeFi for the mo world's most un under underserved crypto asset. I wonder what the assay is. So right now we have Jordan Jefferson, Joe Jos, and it's going to be moderated by Jared Win. Welcome, guys. Take the stage. >> All right. I I just first want to start out. Uh Jordan, thank you for joining me and thank you for this conversation. >> Let's just first kind of address the most bold statement and what is it that we're discussing here? we're calling the most underserved asset Doge in this case at an Ethereum conference. Where does this bold statement come from? And let's let's dive into that first. >> Yeah, I mean I think we call Doge the most underserved asset because it has tens of millions of holders. It has, you know, $20 billion of value of liquidity and there is not really an ecosystem. There is literally zero DeFi. There is very little onchain activity for Dogecoin. 99% of it or 95% of it sits on centralized exchanges, but it's a huge opportunity. It is the original memecoin, the original meme chain, tens of millions of holders, the most well-known IP in crypto other than maybe like something like Bitcoin or, you know, Ethereum. So, uh, yeah, I think it's underserved because the holders are hungry. Uh, there's liquidity sitting there, there's opportunity, there's culture, there's community. Um but until now there hasn't been like a huge influx of builders or you know onchain development. >> Well what's interesting about what you just shared so I try to think of things in community in terms of parallels right the the Salana community is going to be operating or acting in a different way than say Ethereum. I what parallels would you see between the Ethereum community and the Doge community because Doge was always for dens right? So like Doge, the congregation around such a topic where everybody was just so we there was so much relativity to one another. How do you see that overlapping with what Ethereum does? Because essentially you're what is the Ethereum virtual machine EVM? You're kind of doing the DVM, right? Like and you can you can take that one, but like where do you see the parallels between Doge and Ethereum in that way? >> Yeah, I mean Doge launched in 2013, you know, a little before Ethereum. Lots of my, you know, Ethereum OG friends are also Doge fans. Like, if you were around in that era of crypto, um, you were probably a Doge fan cuz at the time it was just this hilarious thing that took off and, you know, kind of everybody loved it and, you know, some people made a lot of money, some people watched it. Either way, it was fun. So, I would say culturally like I think there's a ton of overlap. Um, yes, we're building EVM on Doge. I think you know there's if you look and say, "Okay, Dogecoin's underserved." Like is is the EVM world is the Ethereum world underserved? No. I mean, there's thousands of incredible projects like tens of or hundreds of thousands of incredible builders like that's the community you know we feel most embraces Doge that's you know the technology that we love um so yeah we're bringing that to Doge I really feel like it is you know it's you know we roll up to Doge itself we're trying to build Doge native infrastructure but um I feel like it's kind of part of the you know culturally part of the broader Ethereum world obviously technically it is you know pure EVM so um I mean I think there's a lot of overlap that's where all of our builders have come from is the Ethereum world. I don't think anyone's like maxis about one chain when you can just come build something fun on Doge. Why not, right? >> Well, there's almost a level of arrogance to what could be considered a maxi if you think that yours is the best way and that there isn't anything else that could be better. Like you you're not open to feedback that like it's almost like there needs to be an ego death that kind of takes place, right? what we're building, what Doge is building, you're you're basically looking right now at is like you have a community that's passionate, that's always been for the dgens. Now, when we think about I I I remember specifically Doge is the most satirical brand of everything. It was always built to just make it ridiculous, right? I remember you we were talking and you had a conversation with Billy where the main thing of Doge was was like, "Oh, we're it's not about the tech. It's not about the it's about the community and everything else. But even Billy said he was like this is to the point of ridiculousness is so satirical that he loved it. Right. So I guess what my question is to that is is like when you're thinking about Doge and as you develop it, this is a arguably one of the largest communities around any cryptocurrency and the most loyal communities. You've had Elon Musk that otherwise endorsed it and made it huge in that respect. What is the next frontier? right? Like how is right now with where you're at in building this, what do you think is it going to take and what is the opportunity of this? Right? We're talking about all the centralized exchanges. There's not exactly a DeFi on Doge. Anything else? I would love to learn a little bit more about what is the opportunity uh that's at scale here. What's the math of it? >> Yeah. And I mean, we're I think it was supposed to be a Yeah, it's a DeFi talk. So, I'll talk about the DeFi opportunity, which I think is uh is really big. Um yeah, as I said, all the Doge is on centralized exchanges. Guess what? Since forever, Doge has been one of the top traded assets on every major exchange in every country in the world. What does that mean? It means tens of billions of dollars of fees have been captured, you know, by trading uh or sorry, by exchanges from trading. Um, look at any other ecosystem. Guess what? A lot of those fees are captured on chain. Normal people can provide liquidity and earn. Builders can build a DEX, a primitive, something on top of that, whatever. Uh, and actually capture some of that value. And so in the Dogecoin world, we call it the people's currency. The people are not capturing any of the value of this massive economy that's happening. And a handful of exchanges are making billions and billions and billions of dollars. And so I mean, you say, what's the math? I mean, right now, I think uh exchanges are doing maybe 300 400 million a year in fees just on Dogecoin trading. Um that's sometimes like a billion or two billion dollars a year depending on how the market goes and you know, how hype Dogecoin is. If we even take, you know, five t% of that onchain and even if onchain you're only capturing, you know, taking 10 bits or something like an exchange, you know, would take at the cheapest scenario, that's still tens of millions of dollars that have flown to or flown. Yeah. That have flowed uh to builders on chain. Um that's like a pretty good start. Uh I think the the more exciting thing here is now what we're doing. I mean we're we're building EDM on dojo, we're building dojo at CK rollup. The thing that we offer is we are bringing a ton of Doge liquidity onchain day one like a significant amount. Okay, we're starting with a bit of CD5 products. You could say something like Athena that offer, you know, huge Doge basis yield for the first time that provides like exogenous yield that's actually being extracted from exchanges and brings it on chain. Now you have a ton of Doge sitting on chain and you have, you know, yield coming from outside and you can now build real flywheels on top of that. You know, this is not printing some token to to give yield. This is like real Doge yield coming off exchange onchain. Um it's just a huge liquidity unlock. I think it's like a huge liquidity unlock with very little competition given that we're starting from zero. So there's you know room for builders to build all sorts of things and you know actually generate revenue. Um and it's uh it's also a huge unlock of the tens of millions of Dogecoin holders that are not introduced to DeFi. They do not use other blockchains. A lot of them they've never tried DeFi. We have a wallet app with half a million of them. um now we can put you know real consumer DeFi in front of them and show them the you know the benefits of crypto that they might not be unlocking. >> That was so extremely well said. You know the way that you put it that it when we think of this as a mathematical problem it's like okay blockchain was always intended to be an elimination of middleman entities. It was a substitution of trust. Right? This seems like a no-brainer in that respect. So I want to roll back a little bit. I want to think a little bit more about you. There's ideas, but then there's the people that deliver on it. You've done a lot in the Doge ecosystem and so forth. When when did you first hear about Doge? And what was it that otherwise you were just so what what magnetized you to Doge in that respect? What was it about the Doge ecosystem that you were like, "This is my place. These are my people." >> Yeah, I mean, I I was around when Doge launched. I mean, I was an early Bitcoin believer. Um, and I didn't I thought Doge was funny, but I didn't take it seriously. And I saw no reason to like buy one or participate. And I had lots of friends who did and they mined it early and they're like, "Dude, it's just fun. Just do it for fun." And I honestly didn't get it. Like I was just like I used Litecoin. I was like, "I don't know. It's kind of the same. Like I I don't really need this." I did not get it for many years. And I watched like everyone else kind of get it and just like, "Hey, it was just about the fun." Finally, I guess I, you know, got the stick out of my ass and started to like appreciate the meme and the humor and realized, okay, it doesn't have to be like so serious. Um, but it wasn't until like 4ish years ago when we first built my Doge wallet and I actually, you know, as a developer started to interact with the users. >> What's my Doge wallet? >> I mean, so number one mobile app for Dogecoin, self-custody Dogecoin wallet. Um, now kind of becoming a super app, Neo Bank on Doge, everything app for Doge. Um, but yeah, basically I don't know as a software engineer, small startups, you're always like doing the customer support. You're talking to the users. It's kind of like you're doing everything and talking to the Dogecoin users and seeing the excitement and the support and like, "Hey, it's okay if my money's stuck or gets lost. Like, I just want to help you. Like, we never lost anyone's money, but like we had, you know, bugs where people were like, it's okay if the money's all gone. Like, we just want to help build things for Doge." That was crazy. Like, I never experienced that. normally like users would just get really pissed off and everyone hates doing customer support and um so it it was kind of like that that made me realize okay there's like a special spirit here that I really loved then we build we realize okay there is an underserved community here they were so hungry for something um I think you know the holy grail in crypto right now is how to get that wave of retail adoption coming back in right and it's obviously through I think we can all agree like through like real apps that a real use case I think that like kind of the gambling to bring people on chain was the last big wave Um, I think that's kind of the most exciting thing because we have all these Dogecoin holders. They have their foot in the door. They already hold a cryptocurrency. They're just not necessarily doing a bunch of onchain stuff. They don't know exactly what DeFi is. To me, it's like the hard part has been done. Like, they have the crypto. They know about it. They're in. The easy part now is just like, okay, now let's unleash this stuff on them. And, um, I think it's a cool opportunity. I mean, I'm very bullish on just, you know, people should be able to download an app and use it and it's just an app whether it's crypto or not. Um, I feel like we're halfway there with the Doge community. They have the app, they have the currency. Uh, all we have to do is kind of like make it really easy and safe that oh wow, how am I earning all this interest? My bank gives me zero. This is amazing. Like it, you know, it's it's not groundbreaking. This is what a lot of people are trying to do right now. I just think the opportunity with the Doge community being so big um and there just being so much liquidity and you know Doge obviously not going anywhere at this point uh I think it's really cool. It's exciting. It's fun. Um it's the people's currency. Let's just bring value back to the people, provide financial opportunity. I think it's more important now than ever the way the world's going. So that was a mic drop statement. Like everything you said right there like the one thing I've always felt is that cryptocurrency is such a volatile industry when it comes to emotion, right? Um it's arguable that every decision we make in life is as a result of wanting to pursue emotion. Um in cryptocurrency, people are attracted to cryptocurrency largely to make wealth. Right? We have a division between greed and passion. Passion is one thing that ultimately can't be substituted for any level of currency in that respect. Right? So when we think of the Doge community, there's really no better foundational like there's no that you never feel more at home than when you find people that have similar you share those experiences. the humor, the the love, everything that comes with it, right? So, when you're doing what you're doing right now with Doge, why do you think Doge, like this is a two-part question. Number one, uh why do you think Doge ultimately like in an environment where Doge was always supposed to be nonsensical, satirical, never supposed to be anything technologically, why do you think it requires an advancement of technology at this point? And why do you feel that Doge is the best environment to bring us to the next echelon of cryptocurrency adoption? I just think there's a real purity in the Doge community and I think it comes from the beginning when it was made as a joke. No one knew you could make a meme coin and it would go to billions of dollars or even hundreds of millions or maybe even tens of millions back then. So, there's a real purity and like the kind of OG crypto spirit which is why when I started to get into Dogecoin, I kind of fell in love because it felt like the early Bitcoin days post, you know, um, you know, or before the shift to like digital gold and all that. Um, so I think um, yeah, I think there's just like a a purity of opportunity here. It's not like a community and culture of like max extraction. Hopefully it doesn't get to that, but there's just a great chance to, you know, build stuff the right way. Capture the, you know, the community is already there. Capture their hearts, provide a little bit of value to them. They'll be the biggest evangelists. Um, and yeah, I don't know. It'll be a lot of fun. I mean, Doge is fun. It is a joke. Like, we're we're building serious stuff, but we don't take it too seriously. That's the whole point. I just think the funniest thing of all, the biggest joke is, you know, Dogecoin taking over the world, Dogecoin being worth tens of billions of dollars, building real financial systems on top of Dogecoin. I think that's funny. I think it's ridiculous. Um, so yeah, >> I say it's not that serious, but meanwhile, you had what a six million round led by Polychain, right? So there's obviously some degree of confidence in the capacity of what Dogeos can achieve in that respect, right? >> Yeah. I mean, look, we're building serious tech. We're building it the right way. Nobody wants to assume like protocol risk or infrastructure risk or anything in DeFi these days. We're not reinventing the wheel there. We're building on existing tech, OpenVM, etc. Um, Polychain helped us kind of architect it, make sure we're doing it the right way. There has to be a serious aspect. We're talking about tens of billions of dollars on the line, but like we're just trying to have fun. I think it's fun if the whole community makes money. I think it's fun if, you know, Doge takes over the world. I think it's fun if builders can come in, find a new opportunity, you know, reach a new community. we can give them distribution. We have half a million wallet users. We have, you know, my teammates have millions of followers on X. Elon, you know, retweets them on a regular basis. Like, come build something awesome on Doge. People will see it. If it's awesome, you'll be successful. It's kind of that simple. So, um, it's serious, it's not serious, whatever. It's Dogecoin. It's fun. Let's have fun. >> So, thank you for sharing all of that, Jordan. In that respect, I the last thing I just wanted to kind of state is is do you have anything to share with the audience now at this stage? How can somebody become more involved in the dojo movement? >> x.com/djos follow us. We really got to wrap up. He's not stopping, but I'm seeing the motions here. Thank you guys. Appreciate your time. >> Thank you so much, Jordan. That was amazing.