The Exchanges

Q So before we go deeper into the technical side and these kinds of things, I'm curious when you and your partner got the idea to do this, because this is something that I was thinking about in 2016, 20 17, and I was baffled by how horrible the solutions were or the lack of solutions. Um, so yeah, why don't you tell us a little bit about that story?

A Yeah. So the company was, uh, uh, co-founded by two, uh, co-founders, uh, one, the COO, Asaf Naim, and the CTO, uh, the genius, the brain behind the technology, uh, Tal Asa. So Asaf is an accountant, you know, no, no, nobody's perfect. Uh, and, uh, he will, he actually has a speciality in taxation. So, uh, he was called to, uh, to add a, uh, department of taxation that dealt with crypto in a boutique firm. And he had a lot of crypto, a lot of clients who held crypto. And, you know, in the balance sheets, he started seeing a lot of losses that originated from funds that were lost, which is something that you don't see much in the traditional finance world. And he started, you know, tracking the reasons for losing your funds. And then he stumbled upon, you know, sending it to the wrong address, which is one of the biggest problems. Um, you know, people unfortunately dying because life happens and then no one, and I can explain why, but no one can help you with that because if you have your private keys and you haven't communicated them with your, you know, partner, with your, uh, kids, Uh, no one can inherit your, your funds. And another problem, which is also something that is in the news, uh, people losing access to their wallets, either losing their physical wallets or losing access to their, um, uh, cloud wallets. And, uh, basically that's another way of, uh, that money is be…

AI assessment note: “in the balance sheets, he started seeing a lot of losses that originated from funds”

Q of another interesting edge case. Let's say someone names their spouse and let's say they see the will has somebody in there that they don't like. So maybe they decide to undo A transaction to them because they would rather nobody get that money than that person gets some of the money. Is there a way to prevent them from, like, ignoring your last will and testament in that regard?

A The way that the system is designed right now is we want to give the deceased person, again, while he's alive, obviously, a hundred percent of control over what happens with his funds after he's gone. So with that respect, no, we will not give the, let's say the trustee, the beneficiary, or however you want to call it, Uh, the ability to intervene, uh, because then basically we're, we're, um, nullifying the, the will of the deceased person. Uh, again, if someone wants that, if someone wants to have someone that will manage their estate, then it's something that the technology allows. And, you know, if we see that, uh, there are enough usage for that, maybe we'll create like a separate sub product that will facilitate that. Uh, again, it's doable. Uh, the whole idea behind, you know, all the services that we're, um, working on is the possibility to fully customize the way that you handle your money while you're alive, after you're dead, you know, um, to have full, full control over your money. So it's your call. You know, if someone wants to, someone wants to trust a specific person and wants that person to distribute their funds, Then definitely we can allow that. It's just a matter of, you know, of, of the company deciding to pursue that path. If it's, uh, uh, you know, if there's a market fit for us.

AI assessment note: “no, we will not give the, let's say the trustee... the ability to intervene”

Q Why not just have a SaaS model? Why not just have people pay you every month to be allowed to use the service and not have a blockchain with a coin? What, what's the, why do you need to have the coin?

A If we want to have a system that is fully decentralized and someone needs to work here, right? Someone needs to activate those transactions and, you know, God willing, once the system scales, We will have thousands of transactions per day with many, many different use cases. So this someone, first of all, is paying a price. He's bearing the price of the gas fee and he needs to be reimbursed. Second, he needs to be incentivized. And also we want to incentivize the other players in the ecosystem, right? The builders and the developers and so on. So everyone needs to get a cut. And as you said, we need to have a business model that Kirobo will also benefit from. So, In order to create this internal economy, we need to have a token that will basically be the, the fuel that will, that will power the engine. Okay. Because there needs to be, if you, if you pay a certain fee, I have no way to know of knowing which transactions you will have, how many transactions, how complex they will be, uh, when they will be activated. So I cannot even calculate the gas fee. These things need, need to be, On a per transaction basis, and they need to be calculated right so that everyone is, first of all, happy, and second, that everyone is not losing money, but earning money from, from the process. Hence the idea of, of a token. Uh, as I told you earlier, it's kind of a blockchain inside a blockchain…

AI assessment note: “In order to create this internal economy, we need to have a token”

Q if you use a company like Binance or Coinbase and you do trading there actively, the coins or tokens are not in a wallet that you actually Have full control over. So technically they're in control of them and therefore it's in their custody. And we call this a custodial wallet or a custodial system. So with that, uh, clarification in mind, the system that you've created, is it custodial?

A So the quick answer is no. And if you allow me, I w I would like to, to elaborate on why, why does it matter? Right? I mean, you, you did a very good job in explaining what's a custodial. So you, you did a good job in explaining what's a custodian, and, uh, I want to explain why, why is it a problem? So, first of all, uh, You know, luckily, quote unquote, we have plenty of, of use cases right now during the less downfall of the crypto market that can help us explain that. Uh, we also, several companies that basically, uh, were kind of like hedge funds. They manage, uh, their clients' funds without the clients even knowing that they are essentially hedge funds, because they had the client's, uh, assets in their possession, and they were trading with the client's funds, and unfortunately, Once the market took a downturn, we saw that they didn't really do this in a very successful way. And the, the problem with that is people were depositing money in custodial venues, you know, whether it's an exchange or a lender or however you want to call it. And they were receiving, um, basically interest in many different forms. The interest was usually much higher than Most of your listeners know in the traditional finance, and obviously that was very lucrative, but the price for that, and most of them weren't really aware of that, is the risk factor, and the fact that some of them didn't ev…

AI assessment note: “So the quick answer is no.”

Q How do I know that at my death, it will be executed? How does Kurobo know that I'm dead? Is there some sort of, you have to check in once a month? Uh, and if you don't check in, we assume you're dead and then we send it off. Like how does, how does this work so that Kurobo, there's no human from Kurobo touching it, but it still works.

A So basically it's, uh, two questions. One is, you know, what's the difference between the original way that people were doing, uh, You know, their will and testament. And how does Kirobo operate? So let's start from the end. Kirobo has a very straightforward system where the funds that are stored on that on-chain wallet, on that smart contract based wallet, you can decide that they will be distributed At a certain time to, uh, predefined destinations with predefined, uh, distribution. So for instance, if you're holding, let's say five Ethereum tokens and you're holding, uh, let's say, uh, mana and you're holding, I don't know, USDC, you can decide that 50% of your ether goes to your wife, 50% of mana goes to your son, you know, whichever cocktail that you want to brew here, you can do that. And eventually, you, once you have your errors, and you have the distribution, uh, what you do is you sign the transaction. It's a smart transaction, and it is smart in a sense that it will be executed in the future upon certain conditions met. Now, the condition now, now, you would ask, how did, how does the system, the robot, knows that, that, uh, the person is deceased, right? That's the big question here. So, currently, the system is time-based. So, basically, you define that if in the course of the next two years, or sorry, after the next two years, If you don't use the wallet at all, y…

AI assessment note: “currently, the system is time-based. So, basically, you define that if... you don't use the wallet”

Q like people have come along and, and thought about how to make it easier, especially the, the layer one user experience for blockchain has continued to be horrific for the last decade. Um, so how does, how does your system tackle that and make it easy for someone like my mom, who doesn't know how to attach an image to an email? To be able to handle something like this.

A So first of all, I think that, that, you know, you raised some very good questions. So we should start from differentiating us from different services that are maybe very good at what they do, but, but that's not what we address. So there are a bunch of solutions that allow you to create smart contracts, uh, in a more streamlined way. And, uh, uh, first of all, for very specific and very simple use cases, you can pursue that path, and you can use those services to create smart contracts, um, and that will save you some time and some money. But eventually, a smart contract, because of the complexity of it, because a smart contract is not like, you cannot update it like web two versions, ok? For instance, the website that we're now talking on, Podcastle, ok? I'm sure that, you know, if, if, if the, Uh, product manager wants to do a small, you know, tweak, uh, to that system. He can do it in five minutes. Whereas with smart contracts, if you want to upgrade a smart contract, you need to do it all over again. You need to write the code and you need to audit it. Audit is basically to see that there are no vulnerabilities in the code and that, you know, you have the logic, uh, sustains. And you have to deploy it, meaning to upload this to the blockchain. So even if you save like 10%, you still need to pay the remaining 90% in time and money and so on. So that's not what we do. We und…

AI assessment note: “differentiating us from different services that are maybe very good at what they do”