The Data Economy’s Non-Pegged Stable Asset: H20 – Sebastian & Marek

Sebastian and Marek built H20, a non-pegged stable asset designed to become the Decentralised Data Economy’s stable medium of exchange. We look at what’s next on the roadmap for H2O and talk about what it was like launching into a volatile bear market.

Website: https://www.h2odata.xyz/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/H2O_data

Medium: https://medium.com/@H2Odata

Thanks to the Ocean Protocol Ambassador’s Programme for Sponsoring this podcast. Learn more about the programme here: https://oceanambassadors.community/

The following is a rough transcript which has not been revised by Ocean Missions. Please check with us before using any quotations from this transcript. Thank you.

[00:00:00] Scott: Hey, well, thank you so much for joining us today. we are gonna be discussing H2O, which is a data backed stable asset. You’ll be learning all about what that actually means. and for today’s interview, we’re gonna be speaking with Sebastian and Marek from H two O so welcome to the show guys.

[00:00:19] Sebastian: Hey, thanks for having

[00:00:20] Marek: us. Thanks. Pleasure to be.

[00:00:22] Scott: So I just wanted to kick off and, maybe Sebastian and we start with you, if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself, and how you found yourself in the wonderful world of web three.

[00:00:34] Sebastian: For sure. So, yeah, Scott, first of all, I wanted to, to thank you for, for having us and invite against the interview has been long in the, in the makings, I would say so.

Yeah, as you just mentioned, I go by Sebastian and I basically come from a long background in financial institution. So in the financial industry, mainly banking and insurances, where my main occupation was, leading the implementation. Data driven initiatives, such as process automation, digitalization of financial processes.

And I was also pioneering, their blockchain initiatives. But at the same time, I found myself, completely. I mean fascinated by, by the blockchain industry since 2016, I believe 2017 when I started, to get involved and to really dig into the rabbit hole and quickly I find myself, pretty much taking too much time into crypto.

So I decided to find, a way to get. Closer involved. And that’s how I got in touch with, with Merick and Sammy and the New Order, and one thing led to the other. And, and basically my passion for data, brought me all the way to H2O.

[00:01:40] Scott: Very cool. And Merick, if we could just, hear how you found yourself into the, the web three space.

[00:01:46] Marek: Yeah, for sure. I mean, that’s a bit of a long winding story, but you know, I’ll, I’ll try to be brief I actually started following, you know, Bitcoin and crypto, like back in like 2008, 2009. and you know, when I read about it on, on slash dot, I was like, yeah, magic internet money.

I, I don’t know if this is really gonna take off. Right. So like, you know, years passed before. You know, I, I, I really started seriously looking at it. , but I noticed that, you know, it kind of wasn’t going away. Right. and then, one thing led to another, I, you know, I’m sort of a recovering academic now.

but, you know, back in 2015, I was, essentially teaching data science, in, in Toronto, Canada, and, and there, I co-found. Canada’s first academic, blockchain research lab at, at the Schook school of business. long story short, eventually I left academia to pursue, startups and, and things in the industry.

after my first startup was sold, for the technology. I, went to go work with, block science, along with some brilliant people, including, Michael Zargham over there. And block science is, you know, sort of like a consultancy, that does, token engineering work mechanism design for, you know, many of the top, 100 projects, you know, top crypto projects.

[00:02:49] Marek: Eventually, I moved on from, from block science to help co-found new order, which is, a, an incubation DAO, and you know, new it’s, it’s sort of like an, I would call it an experiment in the venture space for like an evolution of the venture studio.

And what new order does is it helps. To,incubate and spin out. I would say very, you know, very innovative, defi protocols. So, I’d always been a believer since, you know, maybe around like 20 10, 20 11, in, data as an emerging asset class. Right. And then, you know, through sort of our connections at new order, we actually got to talking with ocean.

and this idea of, H2O this stable asset, that, would, would be eventually backed by data, sort of, you know, kind of came. And, we, we actually met Sebastian, through new order, really liked sort of like, you know, the, the cut of his jib, good vibes coming from Sebastian clearly a, you know, I would say an innovator and a leader in the space.

[00:03:43] Marek: And so, yeah, that’s sort of how, how, I got involved and, and in a roundabout way, how H2O was born.

[00:03:50] Scott: Very cool. and, and obviously there’s a common thread there, between the two of you around data. which is, is obviously important as, as we’ll we’ll soon learn. for those who, have never heard of H2O before, or, or never heard of the concept of a, a data back stable asset, if you could just give us a bit of a, a quick kind of overview of what H2O actually is.

[00:04:13] Sebastian: So, yeah, as, as you say, like data back that’s, that’s basically not yet where we are as of today, but that’s, let’s say like the main mission of H2O. So, H2O of today is an non pick, stable asset for the web three data economies. So we pretty much, start of our journey with, our friends at ocean.

Which, I mean was, an obvious choice. Ocean is the closest that we have in the Web3 space as, proxy to the value of data. So that’s why, it, it was more than an obvious choice. So H2O, as I said,is an over colateralized, stable asset. We, pretty much exercise the mechanics of.

Reflex. RAI. so we are very close to RAI and MarkerDAO in terms of, mechanism and, and how the protocol functions. but in comparison to RAI that is backed by ETH, H2O is backed by ocean. So in that regard, we. Perhaps say that we are kind of in the, on the road to data back. Right. And we also recently became available as a base token for the ocean marketplace.

So as of now, people can also value their data on the marketplace,utilizing H2O. And benefiting from a stable pricing and productive revenue, right? So we are positioning ourself, in a way that we can serve the data economy, with a stable, let’s say medium of exchange and unit of account for data marketplaces, and with, with, with the aim of eventually becoming also backed by actual data.

[00:05:42] Scott: Okay. Very cool. I know the idea of a, of a stable asset inside of the ocean market ecosystem is definitely, very important. you know, having the, the fluctuating price of ocean when you’re trying to price a data asset and then the, that, that sort of USD value amount is moving around a bit.

you know, being able to stabilize that is, is, is pretty important. so in terms of, of stable assets, Right. I think year the, the year 2022, probably hasn’t been the best year in terms of, the discontinuation of the, the more recent bull run. And then also, there’s a lot of, coverage and, and activity around, the Terra USD depegging and so on.

[00:06:20] Scott: And so I was wondering. The sort of under the kind of overall umbrella of, crypto based stable assets, whether or not you can sort of, start to explain to us how this concept of, of a data back stable asset. can start to work inside of this web three ecosystem. Now, I know you mentioned that it’s not necessarily data backed as yet, and you know, more, you’re more than welcome to either talk about how, how things are currently set up or, or maybe more about what you’re working towards in terms of the, the fundamental concepts that is essentially.

keep this, non-pegged, token at some form of stable value over

[00:07:03] Marek: time.

[00:07:04] Sebastian: So a few things, indeed a few unfortunate events have led to kind of, shady lights onto, onto stable coins. And in that regard, H2o is very different from, from other stable, stable assets in the sense that we are not packed to.

Fiat currency, that first started and it’s also an over collateralized, protocol. So as you might have followed after the collapse of, of Luna terror, there was also a very bullish narrative towards protocols, such as RAI. And, and, and maker, although they’re not very capital efficient, it, it just has historically proven to be a superior model.

on the other hand to touch on what you said about data backed we, we really see that as one of the major strengths of our. Over protocol and, and what we are trying to achieve with it. Cuz as a team, we, we really strongly believe and I think yourself included that data is a very strong asset that has, intrinsic value.

[00:08:01] Sebastian: So it has underlying value that can be measured, right? So it has to be possible to create an asset, that uses that intrinsic value of data as an, as an. Underlying collateral. Right? So, so we really see, strength into that. And we we’re looking very much forward on, on how the, the ecosystems evolves on the other hand.

what I can maybe add to that, or, or Meric, maybe if you want to, to dive bit in the specifics of the mechanics on, on how the, the H2O protocol differs from, from other stable assets, let’s say, In

[00:08:37] Marek: a, I mean, right. Yeah. For, for, for sure. I, I can dive, you know, a little bit deeper into that.

when you have something like,, like a peg stable coin, right? That’s, it’s maybe, backed, in theory, a hundred percent backed with, You know, with, like, let’s say, let’s say us dollars, for example. Right. you know, there’s, there’s a lot of different sort of challenges there, right?

[00:08:53] Marek: Like, you know, people are always questioning, let’s say like the reserves of U S D T for example. I think, you know, even more recently, we, we saw. some, like, kind of fear spreading across the market with,coins like, U S C having to, impose sanctions on, on users, whether that was justifiable or not.

I mean, I think that’s, the courts will resolve that two course. Right. But, yeah, we, we actually have some really cool mechanics that make,H2O I would say like kind of, much more decentralized. Than those other models. what’s actually super cool about it is, H2O being a fork of, reflex RAI protocol, uses a, I would say like an innovative mechanism, in that it has, what’s called a P I D controller, which stands for, proportional, integral derivative controller.

Which is a,very popular, type of control system that has been used widely in, in the engineering space, in for many different applications, for decades, right. It keeps airplanes in the sky. Well, you know, lands rockets on the moon, these sort of things.

And, , we, we were watching like RAI and other stablecoin, you know, stable asset, whatever, whatever we wanna call that mechanisms. for some time, including like we considered liquid. we ended up landing on RAI because we, sort of looked at its its performance history, over its lifetime.

we saw that, you know, even though the price of, ETH fluctuated, wildly, over, RAI’s lifetime, the RAI, stable asset, was, was able to maintain. You know, a fairly kind of constant,price level, right? So the way that the P I D controller works just, just intuitively is, you know, what, whatever the price, is currently at, the P I D controller adjusts, the, redemption rate in such a way that it incentivizes.

[00:10:34] Marek: Independent actors, much like the way the maker do works, right. To either, you know, mint more, H2O or to, redeem, H20 and yeah, Sebastian alluded to, in our roadmap, much, like in the same way that maker DAO went from, single asset, DAI to, multi, multi collateral DAI, which, you know, we just call DAI now. you know, a H2O will also go through a, a sort of, you know, upgrade to use. Multiple, types of collateral, probably like later this year or Q1 next year.

And,, then, you know, we’re watching the, data economy, right now. And, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re sort of watching closely to,find out which kind of, you know, data assets sort of have the most. Let’s say like longevity and, and develop like, you know, like the deepest liquidity and volume and, and things like that when, when we’re gonna be choosing, the data assets that will go into, backing H2O.

Oh. you know, later in the roadmap.

[00:11:28] Scott: Yeah. Look, it’s, it’s, it’s actually an incredib. Powerful concept really isn’t it because you know, these, these stable assets, that are backed by, for example, the us dollar, you know, there’s a, there’s a sort of one to one interaction going on there.

and you know, the kind of, visions and promises of, of crypto and web three is, is all around this, like entirely new. decentralized distributed financial system, and without a quality stable asset, you know, it’s, it’s essentially fundamental to, to the ecosystem, you know, prior to the, even just being these sort of USD backed, stable assets in the crypto ecosystem, it was a completely different place.

[00:12:09] Scott: And as soon as they came along, they, they kind of enabled a whole. additional kind of innovation, additional adoption from, from a number of, of people. So, cracking that, decentralized, distributed, stable asset mechanism, inside of this ecosystem is, is obviously a super, super.

use case, sort of waiting to be picked up and then this idea of, of essentially using data, as, as a form of collateral. So in the, in the physical world, , you might have piles and piles of, of gold bricks and you say, okay, cool. We’re gonna now, you know, print money on the top of, of, of these gold bricks.

but inside of this, this digital. ecosystem, you know, you’re taking something which, which actually, you know, is, is the digital, collateral kind of equivalent in terms of it’s digital by nature. It has intrinsic value. you know, that value can last over time. And obviously if you have the ability to, you know, add to your store, Data assets over time to increase that collateral, you know, kind of increase the, the money in the bank, so to speak.

then, you know, you’re, you’re able to kind of, begin to, to produce more stability inside of that system. And, and you know, that in of itself is just a pretty fascinating kind of concept, to, to all come together. So, I was just wondering, In terms of, of the H2O stable asset and how it’s, designed at the moment, are there any sort of known, weak points that, that you guys are, are aware of or sort of working on to, to mitigate at the moment?

[00:13:47] Sebastian: Yeah. If I can, if I can quickly name one, I think, America also already alluded to, to the point that we are moving towards, multi collateral backing of H20.

So I think. what could be considered, let’s say a wheat point is, it’s over exposure currently to the volatility and the long term trends of, of, of ocean. so yeah, for us, it’s, it’s very important to, To also diversify right. Or diversify or, or, or, or backing, and therefore create also more use cases.

And not only that, but which I would not consider weak point, but it’s just a fact of the matter is that the data economy in the web three is still very nascent. So, it’s, it’s a matter of time. we, we definitely believe in the strength of the ecosystem itself, but as of today, right now, I would say that that kind of hinder adoption.

but that’s, that’s not, I mean, that’s a trend overall in the space.

[00:14:42] Scott: Yeah. And in terms of diversifying, the collateral, is, is there anything that you are able to, to sort of talk about at this stage or are those still sort of in the planning phase?

[00:14:54] Marek: Well, you know, if I could jump in there, Sebastian, you know, I, I, you know, what, what, what we’re doing actually right now is actually super ambitious and, you know, we, we love ocean, you know, great, great protocol, you know, great, great ecosystem.

so you might, you’ve probably heard by now, right. That O ocean’s gonna be, deploying like a, like a, a VE ocean, right. Which is like, you know, voting, voting, escrow, mechanics that’s, you know, been popularized by protocols, like probably most famously like curve. Balancer sort of like others. Right. you know, it, it, it’s actually really great token, token mechanics, token, token economics.

[00:15:26] Marek: And, so like our, our sort of first foray into, multiple assets, is, is very likely to be, creating a liquid staking for, the ocean that we’re, we’re gonna be calling PSDN ocean and, very likely that’s the PSDN. the liquid state wrapper is gonna be, is gonna be the second, collateral type.

So that, that, that still has the benefit of, you know, keeping us very close to kind of what we’re kind of already doing. but you know, sort of just crossing that, what do they call it? Crossing the Rubicon, right. That’s I guess the expression right. To, to having, multiple, multiple asset types, even though, even though, you know, PSDN ocean will be a derivative of ocean, right.

That that’s that’s like plan, so correct. yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:07] Sebastian: And also even. Adding adding data to, to, to the basket as well. Right?

[00:16:13] Scott: So in terms of, when, how long ago did, did H two O officially

[00:16:17] Marek: launch?

[00:16:19] Sebastian: Hmm, I think we launched in April. Didn’t we

[00:16:21] Marek: Merick, yeah, that, that feels about right. Like, I mean, it feels like my heart, like, it’s been like a really like long journey.

Right. But it’s yeah. It’s only been April. So we had April, may, June, July. August. It’s about six months, right? So about half a year ago. Yeah. It’s been a long, it’s been a long and interesting ride. Yeah,

[00:16:38] Scott: definitely. Hey look, I mean, unfortunately the timing wasn’t maybe as good as it could have been, but, how, how has the, the market responded so far in terms of, you know, how, how have people responded to, , the Goli of, of H two.

[00:16:52] Sebastian: I, I would consider overall, pretty positive. although, as you mentioned, when asking the question, the, the market conditions are, are really terrible and has been since, since our launch. So we entered, we launched pretty much at the very start of the bear market and, and, and the whole terror, the collapse.

So extreme volatility, in the market’s also influenced I think, our lunch, but at the same time, let’s let’s see the positive side of things. We got, the pleasure and the courage to battle tester. Or mechanics very early and see how the protocol, pretty much handles, huge markets, drops.

And, we are happy to say that everything works as intended and, that that’s, we, we got to battle this, the, the protocol very early and for the people who are using it, I think it has been a, a pleasant journey as well. And, and we we’ve seen. Also growth now with the introduction of H two as a base token, and, and as more data is, is added to the marketplace, we’re confident that we can only see more grow in adoption.

So I think so far we are. Relatively happy with the results and, and, and very anxious to, to keep on building.

[00:18:07] Marek: Is there anything you would like to ? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, most protocols like encounter some adversity right. In our history, pretty much us. Like, you know, we, we, like, it was just, you know, pretty much like clockwork case Sebastian.

Like we launched like literally, like days later the market just dumped and it was just, I remember we were on the phone, like, like quite often, right. It’s like, wow, this is just re. Market , you know, like the entire crypto market and, you know, like stocks weren’t doing well either, you know, it was just, just really, really a terrible time.

So like Sebastian, I’m also hopeful that like the worst is, let’s say behind us. Right. And maybe there’ll be a bit of sideways action, but then, I’m hopeful. We get to sort of like up limb mode in crypto before long again.

[00:18:47] Scott: Did you guys learn any significant kind of insights as a result of, just confronting that onslaught so early?

I would say stay calm and move fast.

[00:18:57] Marek: Yeah. I mean, running one of these protocols, everybody wants to launch a project, right? Cryptos, like, oh, I’d love to launch a project, but like running a project is like an entirely sort of like different beast. Right. It’s like, , storage from that day.

From those days, it’s more, it’s like a little bit like, You know, doing a sprint. Right. And then like, as soon as the sprint is done, now you start running a marathon. Right. Like, I don’t think that that exists in the sports world. Cause it sounds pretty like Savage. Right. But like that’s, that’s literal literally kind of what, what it’s like and yeah, I mean, it’s quite a bit of work to sort of, manage and, and, and operate one of these protocols, right.

Like much like, reflex does, there, there has to be like a lot of, kinda like off chain processes that, that, that you have to be maintained. And it’s, it’s a, it’s a lot of curation, right? I mean, especially like early. When a project launches, usually around project launch, that that’s sort of, I would say like when a project maybe like at its, at kinda like peak centralization, right.

And then like things, you know, projects kind of tend to decentralize over time and, or take steps to decentralize over time. So, you know, I think it was especially maybe challenging, right. Kind of early on when there, maybe weren’t like a lot of adopters very early on, you know, to sort of just be.

Just sort of be, be those, those sort of few people that, that were, working with the protocol. So, yeah, I think, I think we just, as, as a team, right. I think we, we learned to,kind of like overcome, let’s say adversity kinda like hang in there. Right. Just through, through like just sheer grit.

Right. And, and, just really hang in there. Right. I mean, you know, crypto’s great comes and goes in cycles, but you know, the, the folks that. You know, are, like kind of hang in and they, you know, they don’t end up being tourists. Right. And both me and Sebastian have been sort of at least through at least through one market cycle before this.

Right. So like, it’s, it’s easier to stay calm. once you realize that this is just sort of, just sort of part of the cycle, right. , many other, I would say stable assets. Maybe haven’t haven’t fared so well. So like, I, I mean, I think that we’re, we’re, we’re grateful,it’s sort of like blessed that we managed to kind of like hang in there.

And I think it’s a, it’s really a Testament to, to, the strength of the ocean community, the ocean ecosystem. And also like, I would say like the, the, the very, strong,RAI mechanics that we, we implement.

[00:21:04] Scott: Yeah. Well, I, I have to honestly commend your efforts guys, because, you know, in terms of timing, it’s, it’s one of you basically launched in one of the hardest times.

Right. And, and to, to be able to pull through that, to, to still be working on this to, to still be, planning, future releases and updates and all of those sorts of things. And,sticking true to, to your, to your gut in terms of, how important this is and, and how much it needs to, to, to be built and come to life.

Definitely it’s very admirable. and I think, the, the fact that you guys are still here and still doing it is, it speaks a lot in terms of both the character of yourselves. And then also, your sort of commitment and dedication to the project. you know, I, I think I, I don’t wanna put words in Sebastian’s mouth, but I mean, we, we talk quite often, right. I think I, I would speak for, you know, say like, we are like just turbo bullish, right? Like, data economy, DataFi, and like, you know, just the bright future of this space.

[00:21:57] Scott: I was just wondering if you guys could maybe touch on a couple of, common misconceptions around H2O I, I know, I was, pretty well versed on sort of the data economy and, and the ocean ecosystem when I started learning about H2O. And I think that that definitely helped me in terms of my understanding, but I was wondering if you guys could touch on.

Some of the, the frequently or commonly asked questions that you get from people when they’re first trying to wrap their head around, what H2O is and, and how it sort of works.

[00:22:27] Sebastian: Right. So, so yeah, as, as Merick explained earlier about the PI PID controller, right. And how it all functions, I think that’s, that has been a point of confusion for people who are not as yourself familiar with, with RAI, right. So, the concept of a non-pegged stable assets and the, the comparison always going to, other stable assets.

And, and especially at the early days, there were a lot of concerns in how, how similar we are, to the mechanics of Luna. So often we had to explain. how different, how different we actually are and that we were not exposed to the, to the same type of risks. so I think that was, has been up till now.

I think the, the main point of confusion, the non-pegged aspect of the protocol.

[00:23:13] Scott: Yeah. And if someone doesn’t have an understanding of what non-pegged is, I mean, even just kind of in itself, non-pegged stable asset is a bit of a head turn in itself, right.

[00:23:22] Marek: Mm-hmm

[00:23:24] Sebastian: yeah.

The idea of, of a target price is often is often a point of confusion, right? Yeah,

[00:23:30] Scott: yeah, yeah. You know, moving, moving the project forward, you mentioned obviously, adding additional forms of collateral, adoption of, of, the, the data market and, and, and the development of, , larger, more valuable data assets, to also be used as collateral.

is there some other. Key obstacles that you guys are currently working through, to get this thing up and running, or is that mostly the, the, the main ones.

[00:23:56] Sebastian: So I think, yeah, those are mostly the main ones. So as you said, launching in extra, extremely weird market conditions, right?

In at the beginning of a bear market, also, as you mentioned earlier, we are at, at a very early days of, of the data economy in the web threes. So. Adoption and all these things will, will come organically. We believe so. We don’t see them much as an obstacle as for now. but yeah, I think we we’ve touched on, on, on the main challenges for our protocol.

And from now on forwards, we just keep on building and I think we have a, a beautiful over the head.

[00:24:33] Scott: Awesome. So in terms of that road ahead, is there, is there a couple of things, you know, in three to five, if you were to cast your mind forward and, and, and think , in the ideal scenario where things would be with H2O could you paint a bit of a picture for us of, of how that might

[00:24:48] Sebastian: look?

Yeah, of course. So I think the, the big question is also like in three to five years, where will the data economy in the web three B? Right. So we, we kind of build edge through with the idea and with the belief that the data economy. Really a multi-billion, potential also in the web three, as, as it also historically did for the web two, we see this translate, through our time to the web three.

So from, let’s say three to five years from now, I think, the whole space will be much more mature and, and, and yeah, H two thereby will be positioned as dominant medium of exchange, unit of account for this data marketplaces. so we, we consider this, integration of the ocean in the ocean marketplace is pretty much a, a starting point of this.

And, and, and, and it’s, it’s very nice to see how the whole DataFI ecosystem is, is kind of coming together with. With other protocols who are also big believers in, in the space and are, are pretty much paving the way for, for us to achieve that, in, in, in the future, as you say, three to five years from now.

So that’s, that’s pretty much how I see it. I don’t know. Merick if you would like to, to give some

[00:26:01] Marek: words yeah. Here, here’s where I have to disagree with you, Sebastian. I, I don’t think it’s a billion dollar. I. You know, it’s a trade. Yeah. It’s a trillion dollar opportunity trillion with a T with a capital T, but

[00:26:14] Sebastian: in Europe we don’t use trillions.

Right.

[00:26:17] Marek: Really? You say how use 1000 billion?

[00:26:21] Sebastian: Do we use trillions? Yeah, it could be my mistake. Trillions.

[00:26:25] Marek: Yeah. I take it back to is, I mean, you know, back when I was a data scientist, I, you know, you know, was when I first got sort of like, let’s say. You know, I dunno what the right kind of pill is. Right. But when the first time I got like pilled on this, you know, concept, it was actually a report, that came out of, some, some thinkers in data, from MIT, Sandy Pentland, you know, wrote a report, helped co cocreate report for, for the, the world economic forum about this concept.

That’s sort of where I learned about, you know, data as an asset class. I think this report. you know, it’s pretty old. So, you know, from, from around like 20 10, 20 11, you know, and, and it definitely started talking about this, this, this concept, of, of data as an asset class is like a trillion dollar opportunity.

So like in three to five years, I’m convinced that, we’re gonna be well, well, well done the path to sort of realizing this stuff, right. I think, you know, governments, I think, especially in Europe, right. Are, are, are taking steps to, you know, like move regulations forward.

Right. You know, starting with GDPR,there’s been other regulations since then, like I’m, I’m not a lawyer or like a, you know, regulatory buff. Right. But I just sort of see things, you know, moving in the direction of giving people. more rights over their data, right. And, and more rights to like monetize their data.

Right. Where I think the status quo, I think still to this day, right. Is that, people implicitly pay for a lot of the quote unquote free services that we enjoy, right? Like Instagram and maybe Twitter, you know, at LinkedIn other services. Right. Which people don’t pay for those, but they kind of implicitly pay for those things by, with, with their data.

Right. And I think that what, what, it’s probably gonna. you know, and I, you know, I see, I sort of see a path to this right. In the coming years would be to make those, sort of, you know, economic relationships, just, just simply more explicit, right. Instead of being buried into like 150 page terms of service, right?

Like, like the, you know, what, what data tokenization, you know, what, what, the kind of things that ocean’s been building over the last few years are gonna actually enable. You know, those, those transactions to be, much more explicit. Right. And, and, and let or ordinary people sort of, take advantage and, and, and monetize those.

[00:28:23] Scott: So if you have this concept of this kind of shared back end with, with all of this data moving around, and if ocean is helping to facilitate the, That, that sort of exchange of data then H2O can, can essentially be the, the substrate, which is, the, the stable medium of exchange to, help facilitate the, the economic exchange of, of those transactions.

[00:28:44] Marek: Yeah.

yeah, that that’s certainly one, one side of it. And, and, and the other side of it is that, you know, you know, once people are able to sort of like tokenize their own data and, and, and, and, you know, sort of like take, take ownership of it, so to speak, you know, they’re gonna probably wanna use it in, in different, You know, like essentially use it in, in, in, in DataFi.

Right. Which is sort of like a, the next evolution I would say of, uh, decentralized finance, right. It’s gonna be finance that is,essentially data backed and that’s, that’s really the future that we’re building towards. Very

[00:29:14] Scott: interesting. So, in terms of, that, that future what’s coming up next on H two O’s roadmap.

[00:29:20] Sebastian: As you might be aware, like, I, I believe last week of the week before that we, we launched a roadmap V2. So, as a consequence of, as Merick, also mentioned earlier, the ocean coming up.

So, the VE model, as, as Merick mentioned, popularized by by curve, allows for several place. Right? So, The opportunity that we saw is to build PSDN ocean, which is basically like a liquid staking wrapper for the ocean. Right. this is good for ocean protocol as it’s pretty much, locks of the liquidity, the ocean.

So we, we users, can, can pretty much, so ocean holders can log their token. Interacting with the PSDN ocean contract, right. Which will then in turn lock ocean in the ocean for the maximum period of time. Right. As a token of confidence, to the protocol. So it’s pretty much, comparable to the curve play that we’re doing.

So then the N holders, PSDN ocean holders, will be able then to stake and get a share. The revenue generated by, data farming and locking the ocean. So this generates basically an opportunity for real yield, and, and a more sustainable model for, uh, HTO itself. it also creates, the possibility for, PSD and hold, right to, to have the ability to, pretty much choose.

where, where this, this liquidity, so the, the, the VA ocean will be allocated, right? so this adds, this pretty much adds this, defi primitive layer to the DeFi economy, creating opportunities for this whole new layer of defi place. Right. then further down the line. as we previously mentioned, we are looking into adding so modifying our code base to add, multiple assets, capabilities, right.

which then of course will allow for users to meet, H two using PSD and ocean to start with, and also, other forms of collateral in, in the future toward earth, 2023. So, yeah, a lot going on there, on, on for, for the coming months and also for the coming year and keeping our eyes on our main mission, that we, we hope to achieve by the end of, of 2023, which is, to become, to, to also add data as an assets, as a form of collateral bridge tool.

[00:31:42] Sebastian: So only big plans I had. So yeah, this, this pretty much adds a lot of utility for H two and PSD and uses in, in the very near future. So a lot to look forward to.

[00:31:52] Scott: Yeah, very cool. And for people listening , how would they be able to get more involved and, and, and sort of get more active inside of the H two O ecosystem?

[00:32:01] Sebastian: Right? So, first of all, get in touch to get in touch with us. You can join our socials. so Twitter discord telegram can find us under H two data. And if you want to know more about, what I previously discussed. Our new roadmap, check us out on medium also H two data. And learn more about the protocols.

So you can find, all the info there and we re regularly post, new updates and stuff.

[00:32:28] Scott: Great. I’ll make sure to add links to all those in the show notes as well, so you can check them out. is there anything else that you guys would, like to

add?

[00:32:36] Marek: I’m looking forward to, to, to doing this again, once we’re able to add multi collateral and, and, you know, we see the, you know, data economy unfold and, be great to do like a retrospective, sometime in the future.

[00:32:48] Scott: Yeah, definitely. I’d love that. There’s There’s a lot happening, you know, there’s a lot of, pretty significant, developments as well on the roadmap for you guys. So, yeah, it’s gonna be cool to, to see this all come together and, look that that need for a, you know, non-PE stable asset inside this ecosystem is just so important.

and you guys are basically one of the very few people in the world working. Something that is this, this sort of novel and, and, and interesting in this space. So, yeah. you know, huge, huge, appreciation to, to you guys and everything that you’re doing and looking forward to, to seeing it all come to life.

[00:33:22] Sebastian: Thanks for having us