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- [00:00]
Host
I read that you were personally recruited by Ken Griffin to work at Citadel. What was that experience like?
- [00:04]
Vlad
Like, my first week, Ken brought me these, like, track records of other funds.
- [00:08]
Host
And Ken said, oh, today we're interviewing boy genius Vlad. He is the founder and CEO of Lighter, one of the top protocols in crypto. He is a former Citadel employee, personally recruited by Ken Griffin at the age of 18 years old to help build out the desks at Citadel. Stan here, he's about to deliver some crazy insights for you on how to trade the markets. Vlad, thank you so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure to have you here at the Thousand X Studio at the Saloony Conference. This is. This is going to be a fun one.
- [00:59]
Vlad
Thanks for having me.
- [01:00]
Host
Yeah, I have, but we were talking a little bit before the pod, and one thing that struck me is you've had a very interesting life, man. Like, you've crossed paths with some very interesting people and I think have lived a life that a lot of other people have no conception of. And it's kind of interesting because it starts in Northern Virginia. You're at high school at a magnet called Thomas Jefferson. And I heard that you were. You were actually there with the other Vlad, with the Robin Hood Vlad, and.
- [01:29]
Vlad
That's right. That's right. And, yeah, it's like, I'm like, you know, Forrest Gump, if he had been a math person in terms of encountering different people who ended up shaping the world.
- [01:41]
Host
Yeah. And while you were. While you were there, you were very active in the Physics Olympiad and the Informatics Olympiad as well.
- [01:48]
Vlad
Yes.
- [01:49]
Host
What drove you to. To do this? Did you always have an innate interest in. In math and science?
- [01:55]
Vlad
Yeah, I mean, for sure. I. I think that I always liked numbers and, you know, structures and things like that and programming. Got into that when I was 8. But. But I think the, you know, I'm, as it turned out, I'm a very competitive person. I didn't really know that I was until I discovered these competitions when I was around 12 and then done the stuff really quick for me, because before I was like, okay, this math and science stuff is kind of interesting. I'm kind of good at it. But, like, I don't know exactly. You know, I don't, you know, maybe I'll become a scientist or something, but, like, I don't know exactly how all that works. But with competitions, you have a very clear feedback loop and you can kind of practice and get better. And it all kind of clicked for me and accelerated the, you know, the Progress.
- [02:39]
Host
You said you were programming at eight. What could you possibly have been programming at eight?
- [02:43]
Vlad
Um, well, I, back then I played, like, card games with, with my family, and just like, I, like, I wrote some, some programs to basically, like, be able to program the computer to play the card game so I could practice, you know, when in, in the spare time so I could get better and beat, beat, beat my family at the card games.
- [03:01]
Host
What, what was this Dirac that you're programming?
- [03:03]
Vlad
It was initially Cubasic and then. Okay. And then Pascal.
- [03:07]
Host
I was talking about the card game.
- [03:08]
Vlad
Oh, no.
- [03:09]
Host
I don't know if you've ever played Dirac.
- [03:10]
Vlad
I, I haven't.
- [03:11]
Host
Okay. So it's a very Russian game, but.
- [03:14]
Vlad
Oh, actually, that was one of the games.
- [03:16]
Host
You're right.
- [03:17]
Vlad
Yeah. There were like, three different card games. Yeah.
- [03:19]
Host
Yeah, that's, that's, that's cool. So you, you, you end up going to the, the, the Math Olympiads. And while you're there, you start. You said you started at 12. When. In these Olympiads, competing at 12. What was that, what was that experience like? In. What were the other people like? As, as well. I mean, did you. What was a community? Was there a community?
- [03:40]
Vlad
There was absolutely. I mean, it was, I mean, like, I don't know how it was for the other kids, probably similar, but, like, for me, it was the first time I felt like I'm part of something, because before that it was like, you know, I was mostly interacting with adults. Right. Like, the other kids were not. It was hard to find. Coming around with was like, when I started doing these competitions, now I was part of the community probably. I don't know, maybe someone who joins sports team feels the same way. But it was, it was much more. I mean, it was competitive, but it was much more collaborative and, like, learning together. And especially, like, for the team competitions where representing our school or our state or the country, that, that brought us together closely too.
- [04:16]
Host
Right. And then you go, you graduate at 16 from high school and you end up at Harvard, and you choose at Harvard to study economics, which is kind of orthogonal to everything that you were doing in high school. I mean, Thomas Jefferson is a science school. You were in physics and informatics. Why. Why Economics.
- [04:37]
Vlad
Right. So when I got to Harvard, you know, I was thinking about what, you know, to concentrate in. I mean, actually, most people don't know this about Harvard, but, like, a lot of the curriculum is kind of more general. So, like, it's like, if you pick a concentration, that doesn't mean that 95% of your classes are in that concentration. So you're still learning a lot of other areas, but you do need to pick a concentration. And for me, the way I look at it is like, okay, like, I'm pretty good at building stuff in terms of programming. That's probably not an area. Like, I've probably already kind of hit diminishing returns when it comes to that. So the. What I really want to take out from the college experience is like, what to build and like learning more about the world as far as what to build. And kind of the three areas I considered were physics, biology and economics. Physics. At that time, like early 2000s, this was kind of after a lot of funding went into physics, didn't work out. Like, it was kind of not necessarily growing very fast. Economics, on the other hand, there was a lot of exciting stuff going on with things like, you know, option pricing and, you know, portfolio theory, like, or, you know, monetary. There's a lot of exciting stuff going on and a lot of like the math and the programming background could actually, actually be applied there to work on some interesting stuff. Biology, not for soon, just because, like was, you know, not, not somebody who loves being in, in. In a physical lab environment. Right. But yeah, so anyways, I picked economics based on, On. On that frame of thinking.
- [06:12]
Host
And, and while, While you were at Harvard, I mean, what were you doing? Normal, just the normal economics course load. Were you doing specific types of research while you.
- [06:21]
Vlad
Yeah, well, so funny story. I took this like, microeconomics course the first semester and you know, like, it's like midterm and I get the grade back and it's a 94 and know Thomas Jefferson and probably most high schools, like 94 is the minimum for an A. So like, you know, like 9023 is a B plus and so on. So I was like, oh, okay, this is, you know, cutting it close. Like, I almost didn't get an A on this. Like, you know, anyway, then I get an email from the professor to come see me or to come for me to come see him. So I would go to see him and then he said, you know, like, I was looking at your like, scores. I was like, oh, like, maybe, like, who knows? Like, maybe I didn't know. And he's like, actually, like, did you know, like, how well you did? I said 94. I said, well, the class average was 37. So it's actually like this score historically, since we've run this class, is one of the highest standard deviations we've seen. So I'd like for you to Come do research with me. So that was actually my first job.
- [07:19]
Host
Oh, that's cool. And what kind of research was that?
- [07:21]
Vlad
It was microeconomics research. Okay. And then I started working with other faculty the following year on more like financial economics. But that's how I got into research. Just from that one thing.
- [07:32]
Host
Them. Right. And that, that's actually correct. And that was the first exam.
- [07:35]
Vlad
That was the first exam.
- [07:36]
Host
And so what was it, what was it like being a 16 year old boy genius at. In college?
- [07:41]
Vlad
I mean, but like I thought I just barely got an A. Right. Yeah. So. Because I, you know, like I didn't know about like that they grade on a curve or anything. Because in, in high school you just. It's just based on the absolute value.
- [07:52]
Host
No, for sure. I mean, I'm sure the professor was like kind of blown away by that, which is, which is kind of fun. And so you ended up. Did you do research with him all three years?
- [07:59]
Vlad
No, I did research with that professor the first year. I mean, I, I finished in two and a half. Okay.
- [08:04]
Host
It was two and a half years.
- [08:05]
Vlad
Yeah.
- [08:05]
Host
So you took. Were, were you did. Do you find that you got the classic college experience in any way? Or were you. Because you were, you know, you, you were, you were quite young. You were quite young at the time. Yeah, that's what, what was being at Harvard as a 16 year old. Like, I mean, were you the youngest on campus?
- [08:22]
Vlad
No, there, there was one girl who was 15 and there were two other 16 year olds.
- [08:25]
Host
Okay.
- [08:26]
Vlad
So there were four who were in our, in our like age range.
- [08:29]
Host
Okay.
- [08:30]
Vlad
Was the experience, you know, I, I think, like. Cause like, I think people say, oh, you know, skipping grades, that means like, you didn't get a proper college experience. The reality is that if you're somebody who's really into math and all these things, doing competitions, like if you go to college at 18, you're hanging out with the same kinds of people anyway. It's not like if you're 16, you're hanging out with the math nerds and when you're 18, you're hanging out with, with the football players, you know, like, so it's not that different, you know, still hang out with the same kinds of people. Right.
- [08:58]
Host
And was there anyone basically up, up until this point that you ran into that remains relevant in your life today? I think you mentioned a few.
- [09:09]
Vlad
Yeah, yeah. So like I was saying, it's kind of like forest gump experience looking back. Right. So you know, in those early 2000s, you know, one of my good Friends from the computer, you know, AKA Informatics Olympiad was Adam d', Angelo, who was actually Mark Zuckerberg's high school roommate and helped him build Facebook, was the first CTO there. He's now on the board of OpenAI. Right. Two of the people from the physics camp are now co founders of Anthropic. You know, somebody from my high school is Vlad 10 of Star Robin Hood. And that, and that's just, that's just talking about founders. Right. Like, I think in Harvard in the early 2000s, two of the people there came pretty close already to becoming president on either party. You know, another one served in the White House at a very senior level and so on.
- [09:54]
Host
That's very cool. And, and so when you, when you graduate at 19, you're personally. I read that you were personally recruited by Ken Griffin to work at Citadel. What was that experience like?
- [10:07]
Vlad
Yes, it was, it was 18. And I think, you know, Ken, I wouldn't say he personally recruited me, but he personally closed me. Right. So the firm was already talking to me, you know, at kind of the levels of quantity of research team and portfolio management. And then I was deciding between them and a few other firms. And that's kind of when Candy got involved and spent a lot of time with me, walking me through how he thinks about markets. I mean, that was, again, a very interesting time because markets had just become electronic like, a couple years prior, and he was building out some of these trading desks for the first time. And, like, one of the funny things was, like, I was based on, like, some of the research I did. I was trying to trade options on my own, like in college. And Ken was like, yes. Like, actually, some of those strategies did work for many years, but, like, I just arbitraged them away. So, like, that stuff doesn't work anymore. You shouldn't said, like, come work with us. So he was very, you know, very good at convincing me.
- [11:12]
Host
What, what were some of the. Do you remember any takeaways, any specific frameworks that he mentioned that have sort of stuck with you or what?
- [11:22]
Vlad
What?
- [11:22]
Host
Maybe. Tell me a little.
- [11:23]
Vlad
Well, I, yeah, I mean, I probably, you know, I probably shouldn't talk about any specific trading strategies even now, 20 years later. But you did.
- [11:30]
Host
They'd come after you?
- [11:32]
Vlad
Well, I, I, you know, I don't want to imply that, but just, I, I think just for, like, I don't want to give other people listening the idea that it's, like, appropriate to talk about that kind of stuff in general. Right. But I, I will say one Funny thing also. So, like my first week, Ken brought me these like track records of other funds and so could like kind of check, check out, like, see if there's interesting stuff from what these other guys are doing, like our competitors, right? And I said, okay, I'll look at that. And this was 2004, right? So I said, well, like, because I had done some of my own research on what on other funds and track records. And I said, well, like, shouldn't we be looking at Madoff? Like his, his sharp ratio is very high, like, and he's trading options. Like, shouldn't we figuring out what that strategy is all about. And Ken said, oh no, no, that's a Ponzi. Don't worry about that one. And so he knew somehow, like, when was this? 2004.
- [12:20]
Host
2004. So this was a full five years before.
- [12:22]
Vlad
Right. And then later on when it was uncovered, the. The SEC published the full report and they said that like three anonymous hedge fund managers reported made off to the sec. Maybe it was, you know, I, I don't know exactly what that went down, but like the SEC did look at it and thought it. They check it out that they thought it was okay, right? Because he gave them a DTCC number. Made off. Gave them a DTCC number to call or to. To. To look at when they called dtcc. And that was a fake number and they never made the call. So had they just picked up the phone, I mean, the call would have been uncovered based on those suspicions. I mean, stuff like that. I guess turning it back to what I do not stuff like that is what got me really excited about using blockchain for finance.
- [13:04]
Host
Right?
- [13:04]
Vlad
Because something like made up would have never happened if the stuff was on chain where literally like him getting called literally dependent on some somebody picking up the phone and asking DTCC a question.
- [13:14]
Host
How do you. And maybe dive into that. How do you see how would have blockchain stopped a MAIDA from happening specifically, like what. What about it to you?
- [13:22]
Vlad
Because well made off of the thing with him, right? He actually never did any trading. He just said he did. He raised whatever it was X number of dollars and just said, okay, we made 10% last year, we made 12% this year and just kept going and just raising more money like classic funds. There were no actual trades happening. He sent reports of trades to his LPs, but. But it was all fake. And then when the SEC tried to check it and they said, okay, like what's the DTCC number for this account? He gave him a fake Number on chain. All this stuff you could just verify, right. Like if you're, if you're up 10% and the reason is because you bought, you know, Microsoft at 30 and sold at 40, whatever, like all those trades would be on chain. Anybody could verify it.
- [14:05]
Host
Yeah, no, that, that makes sense. But one, I guess one pushback that is often made is that people don't actually want all of their trades to be public in any meaningful way. And so you have to, you know, figure out a way to obfuscate that. And so how do, how do you approach that problem?
- [14:19]
Vlad
Well, in terms of that there are ways to do it with, with zero knowledge proofs actually. Right. So you could prove that certain trades were done without the exact trades being made public. I mean, there, there are different ways of, of doing that. Right. Like you could, I mean, for, for one thing, it's not real time. Right. So there is, it's not like you're publishing the trade at a time when somebody else could front run it. And there's like issues like me. I mean, we're talking about longer term investments here. But, but there are, there are ways to use, like to implement dark pools or the additional levels of privacy. I mean, I've actually been surprised that there's not as much market demand for that as I would have thought because the way lighter works, we use ZK more for scaling, we could use it for privacy. Right. At these kinds of features, it hasn't been much of a customer request. You know, once it becomes a priority, we can build more along those lines. But I, I think like at this point, a lot of firms, you know, including the one hosting the summit and others like trade on chain and. Right. They're perfectly fine. You know, they still have a lot of alpha in that environment and they're perfectly fine executing.
- [15:30]
Host
I want to, I want to get into lighter. But before we pivot to that is you spent a decent amount of time in finance. You were working, you were working at Citadel and then another quant shop.
- [15:39]
Vlad
Yes.
- [15:40]
Host
And. But after that you actually took a break from finance and you pivoted out to you, you worked at Quora as well as the head of ML and then you also started an AI company and then you came back to finance. And so I want to hear why did you leave finance and then why did you come back to finance?
- [15:56]
Vlad
Yeah, well, I certainly thought that the, you know, going from, you know, Wall Street, Silicon Valley was going to be permanent. And you know, I guess I certainly didn't come back to Wall street. And it's traditional form. But for me at the time I thought, okay, this is really interesting of trading, you know, building out quant strategies, building out early forms of electronic trading. Very interesting work. But at the end of the day, we're not really building new products and new markets. And I saw that that was happening in Silicon Valley by people like my friend who was cto, Facebook and then started Quora and others as well. Right. Like early people at Google. Early people.
- [16:36]
Host
So that's how you end. How did you end up at Quora? It was through your friend?
- [16:39]
Vlad
Well, yeah, I mean, I knew the company through him and other, other, you know, I knew a lot of the early team there, but I considered a few different places. And after Quora, I joined Joel Ansdale to head up engineering at Addepar. And then there we recruited Scott Wu, also from the Olympiad World. And then Scott and I started a company a couple years after that. Right.
- [17:01]
Host
It's like one big club. What did you. Are there people that.
- [17:05]
Vlad
It's a one big club, but it's an open club. Right. It's not like an old boys network. It's more like merit based. If you're really good at, you know, and it's not just math. If you're really good at customer success, if you're really good, you know, at operations, like you're welcome to the club
- [17:20]
Host
maybe because you've met up until you start lighter, you, you've met a wide cast of characters, a lot of really interesting people. What are some of the biggest lessons that you've taken away from specific people that you think are valuable to you today?
- [17:34]
Vlad
Yeah, well, I wrote about this recently and one of the big lessons from Joe Ansel, who also famously co founded Palantir, was really to like, like the idea of having engineers be like tip of the sphere, part of the customer success team, like forward deployed engineers. Like that idea was new.
- [17:52]
Announcer
Right.
- [17:52]
Vlad
It's funny because a lot of these learnings, if I say them now, I was like, yeah, like that's somebody listening might think that's obvious. Like, of course it works that way, but it wasn't at the time, right. So like that idea was an important learning, like something I learned from, you know, 10 of. Right. And Robinhood team was like the idea that you can have product with zero fees. Like at the time that was considered crazy. Like now that's like, yeah, of course you want to have zero fees for retail, right? So I don't know, I'm trying to think, is there something that I learned from one of the industry greats. That's still considered controversial. That's a good one. I'll have to. I'll have to.
- [18:27]
Host
If you think about it at some
- [18:28]
Vlad
point, I feel like a lot of these ideas, it's like being contrarian and. Right.
- [18:31]
Host
And then it's no longer contrary.
- [18:33]
Vlad
It's no longer contrarian, right?
- [18:34]
Host
No, it's, it's, it's a, it's, it's a problem with old advice, but I think it's also something that sometimes people just don't necessarily think about. So it might be commonplace knowledge among successful people. But if you're just starting out, you have to learn, you have to learn that framework at some point, right?
- [18:49]
Vlad
Yes. It's like ever.
- [18:50]
Host
You know, there, there are probably 10,000 people learning that framework of forward deployed engineer every single day because they've never come across it before because they're maybe 18 years old in it. Right?
- [18:57]
Vlad
That's right.
- [18:58]
Host
So I think that's. That, that's important and I want to get. Actually, you, you mentioned Scott Wu. That's kind of. So you've co founded Lunch Club with him?
- [19:06]
Vlad
Yes, that's right.
- [19:07]
Host
And you worked with him for a few years before you ended up pivoting Lunch Club to lighter.
- [19:15]
Vlad
Yes.
- [19:16]
Host
One thing that I noticed is that when you pivoted, even though it's a completely different concept, you managed to retain 80% of the workforce.
- [19:25]
Vlad
Is that right? That's 80% of engineering.
- [19:28]
Host
80, 80 of engineering. How did you convince them to stay through? I think this is very important. Founders, how do you convince 80% of your engineering workforce to make a complete pivot into a different product line?
- [19:40]
Vlad
Well, hopefully, because we've earned some trust from them. I mean, that's the starting point. But I think more specific things we did. Right. Like one, they were part of the process. So we actually, once we got approval from our board to do a pivot, we didn't just say, okay, we're going to pivot to this. We actually kind of ran like an internal YC within, within the company. Right. So we had like three projects going at the same time. And then we did, we did kind of like an internal demo day and like, kind of like pitch competitions and all of that. Right. So everyone felt like, like if someone, even the, you know, least experienced person on the team, if they came forward with an idea, hey, we should. The whole company should do this, they would have been. That would have been considered too.
- [20:24]
Announcer
Right.
- [20:24]
Vlad
And so they felt like they're part of the process, for one thing. Two, they. They still knew that we have healthy Runway, like strong investors. And like, it's not like we were down to the last three months of funding or something like that. I think a third thing was, you know, for a lot of our team, like they actually, the technical problems they would have wanted to work on were actually closer to what we're building at Lighter. Like they joined the original team more because they wanted to work with other smart people. The problem space itself they, you know, they were somewhat interested in, but they're actually more interested in the problem space of lighter, which is like cryptography, scaling systems, you know, quant finance, that kind
- [21:07]
Host
of stuff that, that makes a lot of sense.
- [21:10]
Vlad
And so, and I, I guess that also is part of why that idea won out the internal pitch competition. Right, but, but yeah, can you maybe
- [21:16]
Host
talk about some of those technical challenges that you were solving? Like what, what were they and what, what made them interesting? Because I think a lot of people, they, they, they hear the technical challenge and they go, well, I don't understand anything. I don't understand why that would be interesting. Right, but maybe you can translate that. Like what was interesting about these problems?
- [21:34]
Vlad
Right, Yeah, I guess before going into specifically what was interesting there, I want to make a general point which is like, like I think oftentimes there's this narrative. Oh, like no one cares about tech. It's all about, you know, distribution. It's all about user experience and this and that. And I'll push back on first. First of all, things like distribution and user experience can and do depend on the tech, right? Like when we done partnerships with Telegram, Wallet or Robinhood, they absolutely did diligence on the tech and cared a lot about that. Right. Over the user experience, you know, shaving off a hundred milliseconds off of trade execution. Even if the user doesn't know how we're doing that, they absolutely care about that happening. So, and again, if you look at something like Bitcoin, out of how many people who use Bitcoin actually fully understand how it works? Not many, but they know that it does work and they know that if it broke, somebody would find an error. So I would make that meta level point. Why is the problem space of Lighter interesting? Because we're solving a problem like we're optimizing across a few different dimensions, right. We're going to build an exchange that's low cost, low latency, verifiable and secure. So like that kind of three or four dimensional optimization problem is very interesting intellectually.
- [22:49]
Host
Right?
- [22:49]
Vlad
Because sometimes, you know, a lot of times when you make decisions, it's like you, you trade off being strong in one of those areas and being doing less well in another. But sometimes, and these are the moments that really get engineers excited, you find ways to, you know, novel ideas for systems that actually improve all of them. Right? Like you write a piece of code where after you deploy that code, that's actually cheaper and faster and more secure. That's the stuff, I think, that really gets engineers going.
- [23:18]
Host
That's kind of, that's so you, you found mostly these things are at odds with each other and you have to
- [23:25]
Vlad
like make decisions, Right?
- [23:26]
Host
Right.
- [23:26]
Vlad
And I mean, that's true of any, I mean, not specifically to us, but I mean in general when you're building systems, right? Like these usually like optimizing one goal, you have to compromise another goal, right? But sometimes it's really, you find these really cool ideas where all of the metrics improve.
- [23:41]
Host
And so can you talk me through some of these breakthrough moments in the process of building lighter? I mean, when did they happen? And what product do you think you have today that really differentiates itself from the market?
- [23:54]
Vlad
Well, I guess one breakthrough moment was just realizing that we could actually build custom ZK circuits. We don't have to adapt general purpose circuits to our use case. We can actually build custom circuits specifically for finance. Right. And it's like we realize that the amount of compute you need to prove those circuits is actually only 1% of what you need for a general purpose computer. And that's to run finance. Whereas like finance is what, 30, 40% of the economy? So in a world where everything is on chain, it's like imagine you find a way to run 40% of the economy with 1% of the cost. Like that's pretty cool, right?
- [24:28]
Host
And is hyper liquid doing these things as well? Or do you feel like you've really created a new space in finance?
- [24:37]
Vlad
So I think again, going back to the point about there are a few axes here, like low cost, low latency, verifiable, secure. You know, I would argue that we're stronger in all of those dimensions than pretty much any of our competitors. Some of them were there earlier and built a strong, you know, strong track record. I mean, you don't have to be us as you know, I think some of these guys had a step function change relative to what came before them, right? So like, I think we have to give them credit too. And they had good products at the time when there were very few other options like any of these products in the decentralized Space right now, at least in the top five, top ten, I think are stronger than centralized exchanges for most customers. And that's where I think like most of the shift will happen also right from, from CEFI to Defi. But you know, we certainly believe that our technical choices have led us to being kind of stronger across several different dimensions. And we're seeing that being adopted either by direct users, but also through integrations, you know, institutional use cases and so on and so forth.
- [25:55]
Host
Do you think your adoption, your partnership with Robinhood was directly a result of the technical choices or was there other, what were the conversations like there?
- [26:04]
Vlad
Well, the technical choices were a big part of it for sure. You know, being on top of Ethereum like is. And again it's like implementing what we've been able to implement while retaining Ethereum security is. Is hard problem. Right. Robinhood chain is also on top of Ethereum. That interoperability is really important. Just a little low latency. I think in the demo we did last week, everybody there was, you know, pretty impressed with how fast it was. Right. Like good speed on that was kind of the quote. But, but it's not just that, right. Like we forward deployed engineers actually having people on the team that are there working with teams at Robinhood, at Telegram Wallet, at other, you know, ongoing partner conversations, like that's important too. Or like being a good dance partner, somebody put it right. It's not like, I think the idea of like okay, here's our tech, just throw it over the wall, kind of use it as is. That can work in some contexts but, but it doesn't. You know, if you're working with a kind of a large financial institution, whether they're on chain or not. Right. Like there, there are people there, there's, there's like fine details to get right. They have a lot of their own customers that have priorities that need to be considered. So it's not. I think it's much better to do that in a collaborative way.
- [27:24]
Host
Makes sense. Is, is. Is there a world in which you ever move off of Ethereum or how important is Ethereum to your model?
- [27:32]
Vlad
Right. Well, Ethereum is the most secure kind of ledger for Defi. Right. If you think of that ledger as like the on chain equivalent of a clearinghouse in Tradfi and it works. Right. I mean there's no reason why like Ethereum serves that function very, very well. It's been secure and stable since the beginning. You know, last 10 years there's been no hiccups at all. I mean like in a Very hypothetical sense. If that stopped being the case, would we move, you know, if there was,
- [28:04]
Host
you know, like, I guess, would it be easy for you to move off
- [28:06]
Vlad
new theorem that was even better in every possible way. Would we move to that? Like, maybe we could. Right. But, but that's not, I guess in kind of our technical roadmap. That's not in the top 10 or the top hundred things that we're looking at. Right.
- [28:21]
Host
What, what, what is, is, is the next problem for you to solve technical, or are you now focused on mar. You know, marketing liquidity? Where, where is your focus right now?
- [28:33]
Vlad
Well, you know, we have the capability of, of doing, you know, of doing multiple things at once, but if you
- [28:41]
Host
had to pick one, really, you know, like one.
- [28:43]
Vlad
Well, right now, one thing we're really excited about in this quarter Q3 of 26 is options, like building real options on chain and having that be on the same balance sheet and same, you know, risk collateral model as perps and spot and doing that kind of within lighter. I mean, that's a really exciting problem and it's technical, but also. Yeah, like we need to get the right market makers involved. We need to tell customers about it. So it's technical problem. It's also a marketing problem. It's also a partnerships problem.
- [29:11]
Host
Are people going to be able to trade options on LiDAR through Robinhood?
- [29:15]
Vlad
That's, that's the goal.
- [29:17]
Host
That's it. Yeah. But do, do you consider yourself competitive with them? Because you're. Are, is Robinhood to you just a, a layer for users?
- [29:25]
Vlad
They're, they've been very good partners. I think for a lot of these things. We like our approach is to work with a partner rather than, you know, our, we're. Our strength is in the technology part. Right. So if there's a partner that already has a very good distribution, that has kind of like relationships with institutions and maybe some regulatory aspects, which we're also working on too. But like we'd rather work with a partner in that case than go it alone.
- [29:56]
Host
Yeah. And, and they, I mean the partnership, by all accounts has been reasonably. It. It looks like it's going to go very well so far. So congratulations on that. I think. I mean, just generally, as somebody that's been in crypto for a long time, the financial, the actual seeing of the implementation of crypto in the world of finances is very welcome. We're finally getting things that are useful and used and people seem to enjoy. And one question I think that a lot of people have though is the perennial issue with crypto is that the where does the value accrue?
- [30:26]
Vlad
Right.
- [30:26]
Host
And I know you've talked about this before, but I think it's, it's important for anyone new listening to get that from you is like, what is the value of the equity versus the token? And like why, why do you have the token?
- [30:40]
Vlad
I guess, sure. So lighter has a pretty unique structure in that we're a USC corp or always been a USC corp. There is no dual, you know, foundation or anything else like that we built in the US from day one. We are, I guess our thesis at the time was that yeah, regulations are slow to come around, but they will come around. And that's been happening. Right. But to answer your question, we raised funds, kind of venture funding. Right. I think it's, it's, it's healthy to do that when you're building something as massive as an ambition as lighter. But we committed that the round we raised before token launch is the last equity round we'll ever raise. And everyone knows that, like all the stakeholders at the time, you know, we were 5x over subscribed. So anyone who didn't like that and didn't think it was fair to them had an opportunity to get out at a very healthy return for them. Only 1% of the cap table took that opportunity. So everyone else is all on the token model and the team is all in on the token model where all values accruing to the token, all, all
- [31:42]
Host
values according to the token. Okay.
- [31:44]
Vlad
Yes. So, so is, so the equity doesn't
- [31:47]
Host
get any revenues or profit discount.
- [31:49]
Vlad
Okay. Now I will say that the long term state of how, and, and by the way, I'm, you know that, that, that works well for us, right? Like I'm not, I don't think it's my place to opine on how other projects structure things. It works well for us. But I will say in the like longer term time frame, let's say that we are in a healthy place with clarity, act passing and SEC continuing to innovate on how they think about tokens. Right. Like I think where we want to get to is where equities are tokenized. So then let's say, let's say there was a project that wanted to have native utility token and equity for whatever reason that makes sense for them. Well then that equity would also be tokenized. It would be like they have two different tokens. Right? So like I, like, I think for us it would be one token which we have now and that token would also be equity. That makes sense. I think that's the world we'd like to get to with. And we're. From our perspective, we're already there. We're. But from a regulatory perspective, if once clarity passes and SEC continues to innovate, like, to me, that's the exciting end state here. And then there will be no ambiguity about these things.
- [33:00]
Host
I think that's a good place we have room for One last question. And I mean, obviously I've seen you reply on Twitter to a lot of people. I think you have a very unique communication style. And my question for you is, is this like, just you, like, shooting from the hip, or is this a strategy? Like, is this a marketing strategy or are you just having fun out there?
- [33:21]
Vlad
Yeah, I mean, it's like sometimes, like, if I'm taking a break between meetings and just like, to me, I treat this. You know, I've. When I was at Quora, right? Like, I did a lot of writing there. So to me, the feed is just like Q and A. If I can answer a question, I'll answer it. And I mean, I think some of the stuff is, like, pointing out the absurdity of this industry. It's. It's funny to see some of the responses, right, Because I think the responses are even more absurd than the thing I was. I was trying to make fun of in the first place.
- [33:53]
Host
I mean, that's. Well, welcome. Welcome to Crypto Vlad. Thank you so much for coming out today. This was awesome. Really enjoyed, really enjoyed this.
- [34:00]
Vlad
Thank you so much.
- [34:00]
Announcer
Yeah. Foreign. Nothing said on the Thousand X podcast is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is for informational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of one KX Media. Our hosts, guests, and the one KX team may hold positions in the company's funds or projects discuss discussed.