Startup Battle Round 2 | EBC12

Second day of the startup pitch competition . Okay. Okay. Okay. Startups .

Okay. Okay. Okay. Startups , if you're planning a pitch, I just received some urgent news. Please sit in the front rows.

So, if you don't know anyone who was here yesterday for the first round, right? We had a few people here for the first round. It was amazing. We had six startups. They were being judged in real time by the jury.

So, what we'll do first is welcome the judges to the stage, and then I'll explain the rules of what we 're doing. And then we'll start with the first startup. It seems good? Yes with the first startup. It seems good?

Yes ? Let's go. Judges, please come up on stage and let's give you a warm round of applause. Beautiful. Beautiful.

So, yes, sit down. What we'll do is a quick 20-30 second introduction from the judges, telling us who they are, what they're building, and perhaps what they expect from startups. Next, I'll present the first one and we'll get started. Just to remind you we'll get started. Just to remind you , we have six startups, 12 in total.

We had six yesterday. We have six more today, competing for a prize of US$100,000. The prize will be awarded this afternoon, after the judges have made their scores, and the winner will be announced on the main stage at the end of the day. I hope you're excited. Judges, the floor is yours for the presentation.

Hello everybody. Tarek Khan of Outrun Ventures. We have two arms in what we do. On one hand, pre- we do. On one hand, pre- seed and seed investment in broad fintech, regtech, and web3.

And the second arm consists of liquid token strategies, investing in both long-term and short- term projects. Thanks. Anna? Hello everybody. I am Yana.

I am the growth director at Generis. We are a growth and marketing agency that supports early-stage projects and scale-ups with marketing activities and helps them convert their marketing efforts into measurable business results. So today we're going to take a look at startups that truly understand their target audience, Ideal Customer Profile ( ICP), unit economics, etc. So, those who understand the market and the demand. Incredible.

Incredible. Thanks. Hello everybody. I'm Matthew, founder and GP of Very Early Ventures. We've been active for 4 years, issuing checks from fund two, ranging from 500,000 to one million in pre-launch alone.

Incredible. Incredible. Hello everybody. Michael from Softstack, a German development and security company, works with both web2 and web3, providing end-to-end security, not just smart contracts. And yes, I'm always happy to support startups.

I will also share with you all the products that we offer. And yes. Good luck. Incredible. Thanks.

Thanks. Let's give the judges a big round of applause. Fantastic. So, guys, for those who weren't here yesterday, just a reminder of the format we're using and how it works we're using and how it works , and also about the judges. We have some new jurors.

So, that's how it works. Startups will have 3 to 4 minutes to present their startup, right? So, it's not a very long time. They will have 3 to 4 minutes. Next, we have questions from the audience.

If you have an urgent question, something you'd like to ask, you can ask one or two questions. Jurors, the same goes for you, right? We would love to have some questions from you for the startups. And then we close and we begin. We have six startups in total.

Are you ready for the first one? Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. I know it's after lunch, guys.

Are we ready for the first startup? Yes. Let's begin. So, the first startup that takes the stage, let's give it a warm round of applause. When she goes on stage, we...

I just want to make sure the name is 100% correct. We are representing Limpid. Let's give her a warm round of applause as we welcome Yoann to the stage. Please come up on stage, brother. It's Take over there .

Make sure you're in the light. You have 3 minutes. Have a great session. And if you want the... great session.

And if you want the... if you want the... Yes, beautiful. Here it is. The floor is yours.

So, we processed $16 million in investment volume before realizing we were solving the wrong problem. At the time, Lend Bid was a B2C marketplace for private assets was a B2C marketplace for private assets . So basically, you could invest in real estate, wine, horses, private credit, etc. At the time, we acquired over 10,000 registered users and processed over 16 million in investment volume. But then, something extraordinary began to happen.

Asset managers, real estate developers, financial institutions—they were all asking us a simple question. Can we use your infrastructure to launch our own products? So we quickly realized that the bottleneck wasn't in demand. In fact, it was in the infrastructure to launch the titles infrastructure to launch the titles . Right now, if you want to launch a bond or investment product in Europe, this is what you need to do.

You need to do three things. Hire a securities lawyer, obtain your financial licenses to distribute the securities, and then develop your own investment platform to be able to distribute the securities throughout the European Union. And that will cost you 300,000 euros and more than a year. All this without you getting a single investor or a single euro in investment. That's why we decided to transform our B2C marketplace into a repeatable B2B infrastructure that can be used by anyone who wants to launch these types of products.

For example, if you're a real estate developer and you want to create a financial instrument to raise capital, you come to us, we structure the securities for you, and then we launch a white-label platform that contains everything. It holds the license to operate throughout the European Union. It holds the custody of the securities. It encompasses all investor integration and bond lifecycle management. So basically, you can go to the market in 4 weeks and for a small fraction of the cost.

And the market is pulling us in that direction. We have already acquired five paid institutional B2B clients. We have over 150 potential issuers in the pipeline representing approximately 700 million in investment volume. And all this with half of a FTE dedicated to advertising and $1,500 in marketing expenses. In terms of business model, it's very simple.

We charge a one-time implementation fee, and then we have two variable fees: an exercise fee paid after the increase, and an assets under management fee, which is a recurring revenue model. And the team is specifically formed for this type of product. I myself worked at BNP Paribas as an auditor. So basically, I got to touch every department in a bank, from marketing, sales, risk, compliance, etc., etc.

My cousin, André, was a lawyer at a law firm specializing in financial institutions. So, he is very well-versed in creating this type of product. And of course, our developer, Tiago, does the work of five people, an entire team, and he previously worked on the largest Web3 launch platform. So, the main idea is that if you want to launch a title, you don't need to build all the infrastructure. You can use our repeatable systems for this.

Thanks. Thanks. Let's applaud him. Let's applaud you, João. Fantastic.

Great presentation. Right on time, my friend. That was brilliant. So, audience, we might have one or two questions. Ah, we already have a hand.

We are ready, ready. Brother, go ahead. What is your question? We are not currently raising any funds yet. So, it will be a future effort yet.

So, it will be a future effort , but it will be between 500,000 and 700,000 as a pre-seed. Oh, let's go. Yes, we need your question. Please. Yes.

Let's go. That guy was on fire yesterday. I don't know if you were here. Thank you for your question. Yes, go ahead.

Yes, so what we've seen is that this revenue model is being well received by our leads. So, we want to go to a meeting and add value, and for the leads to understand that value, and that they don't understand what they're paying for, they're being deceived, right? So, these values ​​were adjusted taking into account several lead meetings we've had. So basically, what you see now is an iteration of an iteration of an iteration of an iteration of pricing, right iteration of pricing, right ? Just three side dishes.

So, in 2 years, 5 years, when you think these institutions will be more established, how do you know they'll still be able to pay you the same fee or charge you the same AUM fee you're charging? Yes, I mean, for institutions, the AUM rate is quite common across the industry. We also pay an AUM fee to our custodian. So, I think it's generally well-received because it's already part of the industry and the standard business model . Incredible.

Incredible. Incredible. Guys, thank you so much for the question. Judges, unfortunately, unless you want to ask a controversial question, which I think you might, you can please do so. Given the amount of funding raised by the companies you're working with, how does that compare to an approach like a crowdfunding website?

You have a highly regulated structured product here, whereas they're accessing a crowdfunding site, which is much easier. Yes, yes, yes, that's a good question. The operating model is very similar because you are basically raising funds from many people. The only difference is that in this model we can create our own brand using your own brand. So basically, you do n't need to put your business in a mix of businesses on a crowdfunding platform.

So, you'll have your own branded platform with your own logos, colors, etc. Incredible. And the revenue limits are much lower in terms of regulation. In our case, we could make 100 million in deals. We could make any amount that comes to your mind, we could do it.

Even with the prospectus exemption, which is the fastest way to reach the retail market, we could still raise $12 million, which is far more than crowdfunding regulations allow you to do under their umbrella. Incredible. Incredible. Hey, that was a great presentation, João. Thank you so much for guiding us through the Limpid.

Let's give João a big round of applause . Thank you very much, my friend. Great questions. Great questions. Okay , everyone.

We are cooking. We are cooking. You are alive We are cooking. You are alive . The audience is asking great questions.

We had some great questions from the judges. Remember, the judges are scoring the startups in real time. So, right now, they are going through the scoring process. Are we ready for the second startup? Maybe 50/50.

Folks, are we ready for the second startup of the day? Remember those guys, right? These guys are competing for a $100,000 prize. They are here live. They are the founders.

They are builders. We will truly support them . Next, representing Orion Finance, let's give him a big round of applause. We have Matteo. Let's give him a big round of applause, everyone.

And Matteo, when you go on stage, try to stay in the light, brother. You have the remote control right next to you. You have your 3 or 4 minutes you. You have your 3 or 4 minutes . When you're ready, make sure you're in the light so we can see your beautiful body.

No, you're there. You are beautiful. You look great. Yes. No, my microphone.

Incredible. You look great. Hello everybody. I'm Matteo, CEO and co-founder of Orion Finance. So, we're all here because we love the value of public blockchains.

They are...They enable global distribution. They enable both modular finance and programmable finance. However, for asset management, we have a major problem, which is the standard transparency of public blockchains. You can imagine that, as an asset manager wishing to operate on a public blockchain, you are required to disclose your behavior in real time to competitors and the public.

Thus, destroying their competitive advantage. As an asset manager today, you have two choices. You can either stay off the blockchain, experience operational overhead as described, and consequently have limited distribution capabilities, or you can stay on the blockchain and forgo your competitive advantage by broadcasting your signals to competitors and the public. With Orion, there is a third way. We built and deployed an infrastructure on a public blockchain that allows the manager to benefit from the verifiability and composability of public blockchains, while preserving the protection and alpha of the asset manager operating within it.

Technically, we're using a local ZKVM rollup to do this. Furthermore, simply bringing the fundamentals of capital markets to the blockchain was not enough to achieve wider institutional adoption. So, in parallel, we are operating an operational digital twin sandbox. You can think of it as a paper-based trading infrastructure; paper-based trading infrastructure; managers can deploy products and build historical records. It is more powerful than a paper trading account in that it is an out-of-sample, time-stamped record that includes the complete operational lifecycle of a vault administration.

We hired several managers. They range from decentralized, crypto-native companies like Alora Network to microregulated CASPs like Hodlie. And we are growing rapidly. We have been focusing on security for the last 6 months. We had a bug bounty program that revealed zero critical errors in a multi-strategy vault infrastructure, followed by a security audit also sponsored by the Ethereum Foundation, and we launched live on the Ethereum mainnet a few weeks ago.

Sure, the market opportunity is focused on crypto-native asset managers, but with the right steps, we can unlock it through institutional adoption and distribution. And for that, we are raising a $2 million pre-seed round, with over $1 million committed in the last two weeks. So, yes, come talk to us later today. Thanks. Wow, that's fine.

Beautiful, Matteo. Matteo, I don't think I've ever seen that before. You were running late , so perhaps we can give you an extra question. That was amazing, brother. Thanks.

Let's applaud him again. That was beautiful. Thank you very much. Okay. So, judges, maybe I'll go to you first in this round.

Do you have any questions you'd like to ask? Audience, if you also have any questions, let's think about it. Judges, yes? You can start. Thank you for your argument.

Could you explain a little more about the sandbox environment? Yes of course. And I think also, sorry, second question, I saw something about privacy as well, so maybe you could elaborate on that. Yes. Yes, so in the sandbox, we built and deployed a digital twin parity on the public blockchain, Sepolia .

We think of it as a method of asset management, so it's like a local fork. In other words, it's not exactly a bifurcation, but we managed to synchronize the state of the investment universe. This means we can have time-stamped, out-of- sample records of investment strategies directly on the blockchain, and that's valuable in itself for asset managers, regardless of the asset class they're investing in. Because then, in reality, they can obtain a strategy disclosure spreadsheet that isn't just an oversized PDF with data they've been playing around with for months, but one that is actually validated and auditable on the blockchain. Along with that, we basically have managers that can be integrated into the infrastructure.

It's a vault infrastructure. They can implement their own fee structure. We support watermarking, which is difficult to weight, and performance management fees. We have full permission control over the token lifecycle. Think of it as a Uniswap before the Morpho V2's hook gates in basket management space in basket management space .

Hmm, and yes, managers can play around with this with zero capital at risk, with zero compliance risk, before deploying capital and building the business case for a blockchain product business case for a blockchain product . Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you for that, Matteo Beautiful. Beautiful.

Thank you for that, Matteo . Beautiful. Great question. Great question. Audience, is there a question we'd like to ask Matteo?

Okay, yeah, wow, this side of the room is active. Yes, go ahead. Would you say that your competitors are especially active both online and offline? Yes, so I would say there are two categories. I would say that there are on-chain natives and off-chain natives, of course.

As you are seeing efforts like Midas Accountable that are trying to tokenize existing off-chain vehicles and wrap them in on-chain vaults, on-chain contracts. The issue here is verifiability because how do you propagate NAV in a way that is self-executing? ZK-TLS, yes, you can use them, but you can also easily bypass them. So, it's like building a very heavy door with an open window in a house. Hmm, and at the same time, of course, Veda and Makina Finance, which are transparent vault infrastructures by default, do not support Alpha.

Fantastic. Fantastic. Beautiful. Beautiful. Okay, everyone, listen up.

Matteo, thank you very much for this presentation. It was fantastic. Jurors, thank you for the question. Audience, thank you for your questions. Let's give Matteo a big round of applause.

Thank you very much. Remember, everyone. Remember, the judges are evaluating Matteo in real life, in real time, giving him scores. At the end of the day, we will have the finalists, and we will award a prize of US$100,000 to whoever is the grand winner. So, speaking of which, are we ready for the third startup are we ready for the third startup ?

Let's go, everyone. We know how this works. We know how this works, right? We're bringing our third startup to the stage. Representing Sats Bridge is Ilya.

Now, let's give him a warm round of applause. Ilya? Okay. Perhaps we'll move on to the next one. Perhaps Ilya is not here.

All good. No problem. Sometimes these things happen. So, let me call aboard, representing Toto Finance, Toto Finance. Let's give Steven a big round of applause .

Let's give him a big round of applause, everyone. Let's continue big round of applause, everyone. Let's continue . Let's give him a big round of applause, everyone. Let's go.

Steven, come up on stage. The stage is all yours, my friend. Excuse me, can we go to the presentation, not the Sats Bridge one presentation, not the Sats Bridge one , but can we go to the Toto Finance presentation? But Steven, you'll have to stand in the spotlight so we can see your beautiful face. You're going to have one...

I don't know why everyone laughs at that. You know, you look great. You look great. We'll have 3 or 4 minutes. We'll ask a few legal questions and then we'll begin.

While we're getting ready, if you'd like to introduce yourself, take a minute, you know, and then we'll check if your presentation is active. You have the remote control and we're ready. So maybe just a 1-minute introduction about who you are, while they change the presentation. I hope. All good.

Are you waiting? I'll be waiting for the presentation. Problem. No problem. No problem.

No problem. Do you know how to sing or something like that? Sing? Wow, you're really putting him in a difficult situation. Guys, let's go.

We have to be nice here. You know, it's a competition. We are not trying to make people suffer. Sing. Then you'll ask us to dance Then you'll ask us to dance , you know.

These things always happen sometimes, right? Okay. Beautiful. You have 3 or 4 minutes. When you're ready, enjoy.

We have a problem. Everything we're building needs copper. AI data centers, defense technology, power grids, the microphone I'm holding here, and the screen you 're watching the presentation on. There is a huge demand for copper today. The world needs to mine more copper in the next 30 years than humanity has mined in the last 30 years.

Take the commodities market, for example; it's a very fragmented and completely opaque market. Sales take 5 to 30 days. But, in addition to that, if you're a producer or a miner on one side and the market or the end user on the other , there are a lot of intermediaries sitting there, all getting a cut sitting there, all getting a cut . My name is Steven Gartner. I am the CEO of Toto Finance, and we are creating and providing a solution to these problems.

Toto Finance is a mining platform for the tokenized commodities market, starting with copper. We transform copper reserves, future production, and physical supply into digital assets physical supply into digital assets . They can be financed, negotiated, settled, and finally redeemed for delivery. We have already tokenized over 45,000 assets with 5,000 token holders and built on five different blockchains, both EVMs and non-EVM chains. We were the winners of the Cardano accelerator program earlier this year and have just been admitted to the CDL Montreal HEC program which is linked to HEC Paris for those in the know.

In our asset pipeline, we are in talks with two of the largest mining companies in North America, two mining companies. One is McEwen Mining from Canada, the other is Ivanhoe from the USA, with deposits all over the world, in South America, the USA and Africa. We also applied for two federal grants in the US at the African Bureau for blockchain-based solutions to obtain copper in a more efficient, transparent, and traceable way. Everyone knows and hears about tokenization. But tokenization didn't start today.

The first wave of tokenization was the tokenization of money. A few years ago, everyone knew. These are stable currencies. USDT, USDC. The second wave we are experiencing now is the tokenization of markets, bonds, funds, and stocks, of course.

But that 's nothing compared to what's to come. The third wave. The third wave is material goods, commodities. Therefore, the total addressable market is $25 trillion. But if you look at how much has been tokenized to date look at how much has been tokenized to date , it's only $7 billion.

Market penetration is still less than one-tenth of one percent. The opportunity is huge. We've done this before. Our founder, Monty Metzger, is a serial entrepreneur. I myself have worked in the commodities and gemstone trade for 20 years, and we are surrounded by excellent consultants.

You must know some of them. And we have a very strong team in technology, database management, and marketing. In 5 years, Total Finance aims to be a leading global platform for tokenized commodities. We are starting with copper and plan to finance, trade, settle, and deliver billions of dollars in physical commodities through a digital marketplace that connects producers, investors, and buyers. This is Total Finance.

Let 's give him a warm round of applause. That was brilliant. That was brilliant. And congratulations. I just want to say, before we start the questions, congratulations on beating the Cardano accelerator.

I know a lot about this, so you guys did very well. We will applaud him warmly for that. That's fantastic. That is great. Okay, everyone, do we have any questions from the audience?

And then we'll move on to the jury. Perhaps a question for Total Finance. A quick one. Ah, okay. OK everything is fine.

Hey, if we're going to give prizes for questions, you guys are tied. Guys, let's go. Let's participate. Let's ask some questions. But go ahead.

What is your question, my friend? Total Finance, did you already have a token for this before? Sorry? Did you already have a token for this before? Yes, we have a token.

Yes yes . So why didn't you mention that you already had a token and what happened to the token's price? So, we have a utility token. It's called Total Tokenization. It's used internally on the platform to get reduced fees and things like that .

Okay. Which marketplace is the best, or is that all there is to it? So, we have a retail marketplace where you can buy precious stones, gold bars, silver bars, and ultimately redeem it if you want to receive the physical asset at home. This is available on our website, totalfinance.co, and in the app.

But now we are building this investor portal where copper will be available, but only for accredited investors and institutions. Incredible. Incredible. It's very exciting to see what you guys are doing, Steven. I think we have a question from the jury.

They can go. Thank you for the presentation. I wanted to ask, basically, so you could see that your main target audience is retail users and also B2B. How do you handle this from a legal standpoint, because, for example, if you're planning to operate in Europe you're planning to operate in Europe , there are some regulations regarding MiCA, etc.? So, you might not be able to reach both of those audiences.

So, do you have any plans for that? Of course we do, and we started in Europe first to, how to say, be in a more complex regulatory environment, and we were successful. So basically, our assets are one of the assets. So, a gold bar is an ERC 721 item that retailers can buy and it doesn't fall under MiCA regulations, as you know. Number two, we have now established the company in the US, where we basically believe the regulatory environment for the investor portal is much more appropriate, and we are looking forward to it.

But I think the challenge of regulation at the end of the day is a great opportunity because we've done it before and we're very excited to do it in other jurisdictions. Incredible. Thank you very much, Steven. It was a great presentation. It's great to see you go through all of this.

Oh, you would love that. Please. Last question. Last question. Let's go.

Very. It's a very competitive space. You have many competitors, something similar. What makes you stand out? How are you going to capture their market share?

And also the second question, are you already online, do you have users, or when do you plan to go live? So, I'm actually returning the question to you. Who are my competitors? Hmm, we've done some audits for similar companies. One of them is reliable in Germany, doing very similar things.

It also works with some institutional clients. But overall, I think it's a very, yes, overrated RWA space. Many competitors, a lot of competition. So, yes. I'm just going to, I'm sorry to say, but I'm not going to agree with you.

I think what we're doing is that we're the only ones specializing in two commodities. Most of the tokenization and RWA space is focusing on financial assets. The second wave that I was showing. Competitors that aren't really competitors, I guess, but Tether and Paxos Gold, for example, are focusing solely on the retail market. They only have one asset, and to redeem the physical assets, you need to have something around 13 kilograms of gold, which is worth around US$2 million.

For us, it's much easier. You can redeem from $100, for example, for the retail market, but we are basically focusing on institutions and tokenizing the underground assets of the mines. Beautiful. Beautiful. Guys, thank you very much.

Thank you for the question. I appreciate the question from the audience. Yes, let's applaud them. Thank you very much, Steven. Okay , everyone.

Listen, we're cooking. We have two more startups remaining and then we're done. We went through all 12 of our startups. These guys are competing for a... What was the prize money?

Do you remember? 100,000, right? And that will be granted at the end of the day. So, let's move on to our fourth startup of the day, and then we have one more. Are we ready?

We know that side is ready. This side is 50/50. Okay, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding, guys. Let's welcome our fourth startup to the stage.

We are representing the Treasury. Let's give them a warm round of applause when he takes the stage. We have our friend Jovan takes the stage. We have our friend Jovan . Jovan, stay in the light, brother.

You have the remote control. Stay in the light so we can see you. Okay. Okay. And you have your 3 or 4 minutes.

Rock and roll, brother. Thank you for your enthusiasm. So, my name is Oscar and it's wonderful to be here. I am representing the Treasury of Belgrade, Serbia, and we are transforming natural capital into assets for investment. So, what's happening in the world right now?

Well, first, food production needs to increase by 70% by the year 2050. Climate change is only making things more difficult, and supply chains are broken due to the geopolitical situation. Therefore, we need a lot of capital to ensure efficiency lot of capital to ensure efficiency , resilience, and sustainability. While regulatory frameworks for digital securities exist, structural barriers also exist. Thus, global agricultural land is a huge asset worth $48 trillion, but only 3% of investments come from the private sector.

Why? Because there are high investment limits, liquidity is limited, operational complexity is present with the core knowledge that is required, and everything needs to be integrated into the supply chains. Therefore, the Treasury was created to overcome these problems and provide the exact structure that private investors need. Therefore, we transformed agricultural projects into investable digital securities. We have our own tokenization platform that follows the ESC standard, which guarantees the formation of digital capital.

We have our proprietary grain methodology, which combines agricultural knowledge and agricultural technology expertise, and we integrate everything into the supply chains. Therefore, we guarantee product pickup and fast sales. So, last year, we built a hazelnut farm and issued €1.5 million in tokenized bonds with ICN and DTF numbers, to over 220 investors in Serbia. So basically, a token is linked to a tree and the profit is split 50/50 between us and the investors.

So, what I'm most proud of is that we have a measurable climate impact. So now, 6% of the total tree cover in the municipality is on our farm, and we are offsetting the village's carbon footprint. So, why hazelnuts? Well, first of all, they are a great investment opportunity, and demand far exceeds supply. Therefore, we have ideal growing conditions in southeastern Europe and we have secure export conditions for Ferrero.

So, what is our business model? Well, there are three pillars here. The first is that we want to expand the hazelnut business. The second is that we can use our tokenization infrastructure for literally anything, and we can also create new agricultural assets with new crops and new geographies. So, we have our interdisciplinary team here.

There's Yovan, who is a former executive with a successful track record. Vlad knows everything about blockchain. Goran too. She is interested in market expansion and agribusiness strategies. I have a PhD in AI.

So, we have a combination of geeks, people from the market, and also experts in agronomy. We are raising growth capital, totaling 2 million euros, to accelerate investor acquisitions and cover operations and hiring. So, we want to increase our footprint to 1,000 hectares and six tokenized projects, and reach €6.2 million in annual revenue. So, that's it.

Well, join us as an equity investor, or you can invest in hazelnuts and other tokenized assets by scanning the QR codes here. And thank you very much for your attention. Let's applaud Jovan. Let's applaud Jovan. Jovan, that was great.

Hey, you did it! Very good, brother. Very good. That was fantastic. That was good.

That was good. I loved that you're tokenizing hazelnuts. Beautiful. Okay, do we have a question from the judges first? Do you have any questions?

And then we'll pass it on to you, the audience. Maybe on this side, you know, maybe you have something. Maybe the guy in the shirt. Okay, Anna, it's up to you. You can start.

For the presentation. I wanted to ask if you calculated the customer acquisition cost and, in fact, the lifetime value of each customer. So, how long will this investor stay with you? Well, thank you very much. That's a good question, especially since we're currently focused on expanding into other markets.

Well, we see a lot of interest from customers, from investors, primarily because hazelnuts, for example, have a really long shelf life of 40 years. And the maintenance costs for everything are kept below 5%. So I don't think they'll see any security there. And I don't think they're very interested in assets that combine profitability and sustainability. So, I can't give you the exact numbers off the top of my head, but there's a lot of interest from that side.

But what I find even more important is that there is interest from the buyers' perspective. For example, Ferrero sources 2/3 of its hazelnuts from Türkiye. Turkey has low productivity, inconsistent quality, and is very complicated. They are looking for large , high-tech farms with high productivity and consistency. So, I think there are demands from both sides I think there are demands from both sides .

And that's really keeping customer acquisition costs low. Incredible. Incredible. Jovan, thank you for your reply. Do we have a quick question from the audience?

Someone in the audience has a quick question about the toke. Let's go. I knew. So, when the price drops, you cut down the trees? No, no, no.

No, then I'm curious. If I buy as an individual investor, am I buying a share of the farm? It's like I bought a tree and got half the rewards from that tree. And that? That's more or less it.

For example, you buy a tree for 100 euros. In reality, you're not buying the tree, you're not buying 1 square meter of land. You buy your share of the recipes. So, from one tree, you'll receive the recipes, and as the tree ages, it will yield more hazelnuts, and you'll receive more and more nuts, and more money, and more carbon credit money as well. Beautiful.

Based on what I said, what happens? How do you deal with liquidity issues if the trees aren't very marketable? Yes, that's why we also have the secondary market, where our tokens are listed. So, you can also build a portfolio. So, you have three hazelnuts, two walnuts, a sugar beet plant, and maybe something else, and you can produce Ferrero Rocher chocolate balls.

That's really cool. Thank you for that. We're going to pause this because we need to wrap things up, but I really appreciate you both. That's fantastic. Jurors, thank you for your questions.

Jovan, you were fantastic. It was amazing. It was very good to go through that. Let's give him a big round of applause, everyone. Thank you very much.

Okay , everyone. We are on our last startup project . Remember that we have 12 startups competing for the $100,000 prize that will be awarded at the end of the day. Are we ready for our final EBC 12 startup? Are we ready?

So, well, he's already on stage, but let's welcome him on stage representing Vant Network. We have Will. Let's give him a big round of applause. The floor is yours, my friend. So, good afternoon.

I'm Will, and I'm here to talk about a gap that was hidden in plain sight. This is the wrong slide deck. But we can ignore the slides. Then, Ferran Torres scored in the 106th minute, in Spain's second World Cup . Nearly 2 billion was traded during the World Cup final alone , but there were no auctions.

Each trade was priced according to an order book. But at the same time an order book. But at the same time , for a pair of cryptocurrencies, there were several market makers competing in real time in an auction to bid for each basis point. Technology truly exists for both. That's...

truly exists for both. That's... Yes, I'll come back to this. So, how do we do that? Therefore, a prop AMM is much more efficient than a traditional centralized limit order book .

Prop AMM is a private pricing engine that quotes its own model. And the base points of a prop AMM model are only 1.5 basis points. When you look at a traditional forecast market, it's a minimum of 100 basis points, possibly even 200, plus a catch fee. So, Jump uh Crypto analyzed 20 million submissions in March of this year.

And the basis points fell to 1.5, but they also outperformed Binance and Coinbase in 92% outperformed Binance and Coinbase in 92% of those fills. So, when you look at forecast markets, it's a different asset class , but the same question arises. How much does a round trip cost in an average transaction of $6.50 in an average transaction of $6.

50 , because that's the average on Kalshi and Polymarket. Because it's retail flow, and that's exactly what the makers want. So, in tight markets, you have a situation where nobody can actually come forward to quote a price initially. That's where our proprietary, automated, informed market maker , our AIM , our AIM , comes into play. So, we're the first price to appear, so there will always be a liquid market for someone to trade.

So, that's where the auction comes in. So, we have a price that's there for people to analyze and compete against. But then the market makers step in to beat that price. Because when you have multiple people quoting a price at a single moment, you will be much more efficient than with a limited order book and only one price hovering over the account. This is not a statement about us.

It's simply a structural reality. Five people competing in real time will outperform and surpass this order book model . So, when you look at customer acquisition, it's one of the most important things in forecasting markets and in all existing products. And few infrastructure companies can say this, but we managed to create an influencer campaign where we activated 600,000 creators worldwide. So, they generated 750 million views generated 750 million views .

So, we identified another gap where our infrastructure can help with customer acquisition. Therefore, the goal of market makers is not to compete, nor are they quoting in an empty room. When analyzing compensation, we realize that it is a major problem in forecasting markets. There are many negotiations taking place, and the capital ends up getting stuck. So, Spain wins, Spain draws, Spain loses, you're not locking up capital for each individual potential outcome.

You 're looking at the worst-case scenario. So you look at the net value, not the gross value. And this is a major breakthrough for the capital that is active in the market right now. Hmm, so we're raising $6 million. The first installment is open now, closing at the end of October.

We build or operate the tracks, and the market makers operate the models. Hmm, so we are Augur. We are building the future of forecasting markets. So, come and meet us later. Let's give him a big round of applause, everyone.

Will, thank you, brother applause, everyone. Will, thank you, brother . Great job. I know there was a slight hiccup in the presentation, but the presentation itself was phenomenal, very good. Let's give him another big award without an introduction, folks award without an introduction, folks , that's it.

Very good, Will. Thank you very much. I think we have one question from the judges, and we'll only accept one question from the audience, folks. You can speak, brother. Yes, so what's the strategy to gain volume that's currently concentrated in very few volumes, right?

It's a very competitive space. Yes definitely. And market makers are always looking for the best place to put their capital. So, that's why you need flow, right? I mean , it's a great deal because of the retail traffic.

So how do these retail people find out about this location? Yes, and that's exactly where our content creation strategy came from . So, our strategy for engaging retailers is to influence the influencers. If you get them talking about the product, you open the market to many more people. So market to many more people.

So , we spent $500 putting together a small piece of technology, which was a TikTok filter. We released it to a core group of about 20 or 30 creators with whom we have a good relationship. 600,000 people were activated by seeing those first 20 or 30 use the tool and deciding to create their own videos, which generated all this benefit from the traffic. So, when you look at different events, there's constantly a narrative being disseminated on social media and in the media landscape in general. So, if you can be part of the content creation itself, you get all the benefits of dragging along.

So, a competitor is focusing on a similar model, XO Markets. Do you know them? What is your comparison? What do you think about this? Basically, almost all current prediction markets operate with a centralized order book.

And I would say it's like a steam engine, while cryptodynamics adds a whole new layer where each order is a real-time auction and that probably lasts about 120 milliseconds. So, you're not running an auction that lasts minutes; in fact, you're being very shrewd. So, when you have multiple market makers, you're delivering a much better price to end users and giving market makers a way to avoid tying up their capital by placing orders across the entire order book. They are only using it at that specific moment, in that specific auction. Mmm.

Will, you did an amazing job. Thank you for... Thank you. Thank you for guiding us through the VAN network. Let's give him a big round of applause, everyone.

That was phenomenal. Actually, we have a little last-minute trick up our sleeve, folks. We had a startup, if you remember, that we had to abandon, but we managed to find that person. We managed to dig it up. Let's rock!

So, listen, I know some... Listen, these guys are looking for an opportunity to really expand their businesses, to transform themselves. This is our latest startup, Sats Bridge, representing... We have Ilya. Let's give him a warm round of applause.

Ilya, make sure you stay in the light, my friend, and that you're in control. You only have 3 minutes. Rock and roll, folks. Yes, I'll try to be brief. So, let me introduce you to a lightning-fast Bitcoin project called Sats Bridge and our product walls.

It was designed to be an exclusive Bitcoin product for Bitcoiners, so they have zero installation cost and zero fees on native tokens when trying to interact with DeFi. So, first of all, let's start with the paradox. Bitcoiners collectively represent the largest pool of capital primarily invested in cryptocurrencies, but they are largely unable to engage with DeFi on a large scale in most ways. So, they need to use bridges, they need to assume custody risk, or send tokens to centralized exchanges, or they need to install new wallets like MetaMask or RabbitMQ, or something else. Most of them have no idea about this Most of them have no idea about this .

So what we're basically doing is combining the LNURL protocol with a secure, battle-tested protocol that works for DeFi, and we're also using account abstraction. So, for a user, all they need to do is scan a QR code. So, fit it together, visualize it, execute it. So, this is basically what the average user does when they are on board and using our service. And the user is also not required to pay in Ethereum tokens or stablecoins or anything else.

They pay in satoshis on the Lightning Network. So, they obviously have access to Lightning when they try to use the service Lightning when they try to use the service . So, when compared to competitors . So, when compared to competitors , we obviously provide the best solution because it combines non-custodial properties. It abstracts away gas fees and also relies on existing wallet infrastructure on existing wallet infrastructure .

Many of the different Lightning wallets, whether they're Bleed, Phoenix, or whatever you want, don't really care about them. So, they all use this protocol internally, and the user can interact with our service. Therefore, our target is basically any speculative amount of Bitcoins, as each one can be spent on regular day-to-day needs or perhaps deposited into lightning channels. And in 2023, River reported approximately 1.1 million monthly active users on Lightning.

And since then, it's probably grown a bit, and there are also some Bitcoins being used in DeFi. DeFi. Therefore, users can currently use Bitcoins locked in DeFi when they receive stablecoins and convert them back to Bitcoin. And our business model is very simple. So, first, we start with execution rates.

Users pay us with Bitcoins, and we conduct transactions on Ethereum and Ethereum L2s. Next, we have route routing rates. Therefore, if you run the Lightning public node , we will have some opportunities in the DeFi space. We are currently deployed on the test network. We plan the rollout on the main network, security audit, etc.

We are in the initial stage. Get in touch as launch partners or investors. So, I have my three minutes. Phenomenal. Phenomenal.

Let's applaud him. Let's applaud him. Let's applaud him. Last one of the day. Ilya, you were fantastic, brother.

Thanks for stopping by. Unfortunately, we won't have time for questions, but thank you for analyzing the statistics. Thank you for joining us. But if you want to talk to Ilya, judges, public, if you have any questions, please call him. He'll be around.

Let's give him a quick round of applause as he walks onto the stage. And remember, folks, all these guys gave their presentations. We had our 12. They are competing for a prize of US$100,000. The prize will be awarded.

The winner will be announced on the main stage in the late afternoon. So, stay tuned. You were an amazing audience. I hope you enjoyed the startups. Very good.

It was a good time, wasn't it? Yes? Yes? Okay , everyone. Enjoy the rest of EBC , everyone.

Enjoy the rest of EBC . Thank you very much for your time, and judges, thank you very much. Okay.