Unlocking Private Markets and Tokenization with Brian Aznar of Republic

Speaker A: And welcome to another episode of the Stack, where we talk with folks, uh, in the Solana ecosystem and beyond about their journey and what sort of problems they're solving in the ecosystem. Um, today with me, I have Brian Asner, who's the CTO of Republic. Republic has been a key, um, company within the tokenization space for a number of years and his work there has been quite impressive, uh, working on bringing stocks to the market, um, even when they're still, you know, like in the private part, um, of their journey. And so, yeah, really happy to have Brian on today. If you don't mind introducing yourself, tell us a little bit about what brought you to this crazy world of, uh, you know, on chain financial markets.

Speaker B: Hey guys, my name is Brian Asnar, uh, CTO here at Republic. Um, well, I mean, starting with like, uh, crypto in general or just the tokenization specifically.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, crypto in general.

Speaker B: Okay. Well, you know, when we first started, I think, um, I kind of told you my journey, which was kind of this, um, this, this uh, kind of this path that had twists and turns. You know, I've been in engineering and technology for almost 30 years. I started as a job engineer, uh, landed in New York after I got a CS degree from Virginia Tech. I landed in New York around 98. And I was a, I was a just a program my way around. Um, started in, in Wall street, but really I worked in many, many industries everywhere from, um, research to, um, entertainment. I worked at Conde Nast, um, I worked, uh, in social media. I worked, funny enough at the precursor to Twitter and it was called upoc. That's a very unknown fact. The thing before Twitter was called upoc. I worked there. And so really hodgepodge of industries. I've been doing this for almost three decades. So it was really, um, in 2010 when I started my leadership, um, career. Still in the normie world. Right? Um, I was in. Actually at that time I was a con overseeing their fashion digital products. Right. So I was in the fashion industry. And then in 2015, and this is where it kind of gets, um, interesting. I was head of engineering at Major League Soccer, so. Major League Soccer, you know, amazing. Uh, um, league, you know, one of the five leagues in North America or the United States. And you know, our job at that, at the league at that time, which is, which is really interesting because we're in the World cup right now. But the job of Major League Soccer is they provide services, technology to every team. So if you're going to start a soccer team, you're Going to, you're going to buy into the league and then the league gives you mobile app, website, uh, APIs, data, uh, and data, uh, um, products, ah, video, uh, capabilities. So my team provided, uh, that. Right. And so we did that probably about like 60, 70 or plus kind of apps, uh, that we provided. And we did that for many, many years. Did interesting stuff with like, you know, late, uh, hot technologies, whatever was hot in 2016. Right. Kubernetes, react native. So we were always doing and exploring what was, um, what was, what was a new technology to solve business problems uh, that uh, were required for a small team. Like a small team. Uh, what can we use with technology to leverage a small team. Right. And one thing I was doing at the. Almost at the tail end of my Major League soccer career, and I don't know if a lot of the team knows this or the league, but I had a friend who had an agency and they were exploring digital ticketing. M. And I had this thought it was a pie in the sky, thought about, well, how would digital ticketing work? Because that's always a problem in ticketing. Right. We had partners with SeatGeek and Ticketmaster. And the problem with ticketing at the time was, you know, you buy a ticket to go see a match, who knows who owns the ticket? Right. Does the team know? Does the league know? Does the stadium know? You know, you'd be surprised at how little, uh, um, you know, people knew in that chain.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Worse if I gave that ticket to a friend, now who knows who owns it. Right?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So problem that, uh, you can understand where I'm going with this. So my friend who had his agency said, you know what? I want to do a POC for you and show you. So he kind of showed me this poc and it was a solution, um, on the Ethereum blockchain. And I was like, this is amazing. I got to see this thing, you know, um, uh, I got to see this thing through. Obviously, too radioactive. Right? We couldn't, we couldn't upset the vendors at the time. Right, Right. So, but. But it really started to spark in my head, like, wow, what can else can you do with. With. With EVMs and blockchains? That was 2019. That's a, that's a magical year because the next year was Covid. And, and it's funny because, um, I just put, you know, one little, I believe POC on my LinkedIn. Just a POC, you know, digital ticketing blockchain. And that was enough to get the attention of, um, a recruiter and lo and behold, I got hired by uh, block one, which was at the time top three blockchain in 2020. Yeah, so that's where I went Covid, kind of facilitated uh, my move into blockchain. And I've been in blockchain industry ever since, moving different companies. Uh, at that time at Block One, I worked with that CEO. We spun off, um, a company called Voice, which was one of the first decentralized social media companies launched that. But worked at several companies, uh, got into finance, uh, along the way, uh, worked for a company called 21 shares. And then that got me here at Republic. So that's the long story. But it's interesting because I was in many m. Many companies, um, and industries. But, but it was really the, the solution that blockchain gave the, the business problem that it solved. And it's really that that idea of solving business problems that kind of was like in the heart of, of. Of how I look at, at, at. At crypto and blockchain. Like, well, what problem are we solving? You know?

Speaker A: Right. Yeah. So tell, tell me about Republic. What problem?

Speaker B: Sol? Well, that's great too. Good lead. Well, you know, Republic, we've been around for almost 10 years, right? So before I came here, our mission was really to give access to private markets, right? And some people don't even know what is a private market. Right. And why do people care? Well, private market is just anything that's not New York Stock Exchange, nasdaq. It's easy, right? So what would you care about getting to access to things that are not the New York Stock Exchange or nasdaq? That's the next question you would ask. Well, the answer to that is that that's where. That's really where, uh. That's where all the good stuff is. That's where the yield is. That's where all the assets which, um, have uh, higher, um, let's say return on investment on the, you know, like uh, pound for pound, uh, are. And why is that? Well, that's because one, that's where majority of companies are, right. I think the last stat that I was told, um, something around 90% of all companies are private, right around that. Right? Like, uh, there's not a lot of incentive, well you know, at the time, over the last five, 10 years for companies to go public, right? Because of how onerous it is, how owner owners it is to file an S1, all that stuff. So one, most companies are private, right? Two, when you're in the private sector, you answer fewer gods, right? Which Is you don't have to answer to the God of your shareholders. Therefore, most times private companies tend to be, and I'm just now making conjecture, um, tend to be a little bit more m. Um, uh, shrewd and able, uh, to drive profits and revenues in ways that public, public companies can't because the scrutiny that they have. Right. And so, and this is just, you know, on the company and on the equity end, you know, this is not even mentioning funds and other types of assets. So we give access to that. And that was before I even got there. So access to private markets, in a sentence. That's what Republic was doing before I got there for the last 10 years. It started out with startup equity. Right? Uh, and uh, um, my founders, they helped bring about the JOBS act which brought us reg cf, which is the exemption which allows a company to finance from the public without filing for an S Lon. Uh, it caps out at 5 million but allows you to go out, go to a, Go to a site like Republic and get folks like you to put money in. And then companies like Republic can give you equity. So think like Kickstarter, but instead of getting a shirt you get equity. And that's what Republic does.

Speaker A: Okay, Got started not on chain, right?

Speaker B: Um, yes, it started not on chain and that was just giving equity. And then you know, on one side of that then Republic grew so that the kinds of investors grew. So from retail to accredited. Right. Reg D and then to international reg s and then on the other side the kinds of things that you could invest in grew from early startups to later stage to funds to uh, debt. Right. To other types of debt. So that's how Republic grew as a marketplace, uh, uh, in the private sector. Now what I helped bring along was helped uh, with the, the, the mission for um, crypto and blockchain to further realize that democratization, if you will, that for that further realization of access to the private market. So, so that the problem we're solving, uh, you know, long, Long story longer is to, to get. Give access to. To um, to assets in the private market and having blockchain and crypto, uh really um, um, facilitate that because as we know and blockchain can do amazing things that are things like all the words we've heard. Accessibility, availability, fractionalization, all those stuff. And these are the things that we do we use uh, blockchain for.

Speaker A: And um, so tell me about the tokenization side. What mechanisms do you use? Um, how do you think about permissionless versus non permissionless. Right, like permissioned and KYC and everything. Um, where do you think things are going there as well? And how do you guys see it internally?

Speaker B: Well, you know, I mean if you look at the trend and I think, I think it's safe to say this, right? Really the institutional, um, participation that's going to drive this thing forward, right? I mean look at all the, you know, the inflows and outflows of ETFs and what those effects they've had on the market for, right? And you know, you might be tempted to say for better or for worse, but I think it's safe to say it's for better, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, it matures the market, right. It forces uh, improvement generally.

Speaker B: It's a forcing function and you need that institutional participation to make this thing real. And I think that's what we learn, right. As you know, I'm a self, um, identifying D.J. back. You know, I was there for Defi Winter DeFi Summer 2020. Right. DeFi winner. What? 20, 21, 22. Uh, and I saw the wonders of Defi, right? All of the exotic derivatives that you could get from the Olympuses to the Alakazams. But I think a lot of us learned that as awesome as that is, we need a little bit of grounding. How are we going to get that grounding? Um, and I don't think necessarily jamming KYC down everyone's throat is the answer 100%. But I do think if you look at really interesting products out there, like a lot of these interesting vault products where you have both sides, right? You might have institutional participation where there's KYC at the institutional end, right? So, you know, there's like a solid provider of treasury and that treasury is like solid. But maybe then you've got an interesting instrument set up where you can purchase this anonymously like on a Dex, right? Without, you know, kyc. And I think, you know, I think that's. Isn't that like what Nest is doing or, or you know, um, what, what AAVE's, um, fun product is doing? And a lot of these vaults are trying to do, they're trying to do mix and matching, right? And so back to your question. Like, I think we need to find a way for institutional involvement. And essentially that kind of implies finding real solid market structure for blockchain, for um, crypto, uh, so that institutions can participate. And that really means like, okay, how is custody going to work? How are custodians going to be part of this? So that does mean there is going to be uh, you know, custodial as well, as well as non custodial, uh, in the mix. And I think both can live together. Um, and just like KYC and non KYC can live together.

Speaker A: Are you guys non custodial for folks when they come to purchase?

Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah. And so you know back to our offering, you know we developed a non custodial wallet, the Republic Wallet. If you go to republic.com right now when you sign up you get a non uh, custodial wallet. And we're very, very proud of the work we put into this wallet because um, it's an embedded wallet. Right. But it is highly usable. It uses passkey and uh, you will get it abstracts a seed phrase yet there's a seed phrase there if you need access to it. Um, we use um, social backup, uh, you know, um, for alternate device, uh, backup. Um and um, it is highly usable. You will have a wallet in seconds. Right. And so we believe that defi can be usable, can be very usable. Uh, and it doesn't have to be something for you know, the elite DJed, uh, so self custody all the way and that's what you need. Right. Like we think that um, RWAs and which I know is a problem term for most security tokens, in order for those to be unlocked it has to be composable, it has to be modular. And for those words to mean something, uh, uh, you have to have a self custody wallet for that. Right. You're not going to be connecting your custodial wallet to something.

Speaker A: Yeah, it should work for both for sure. Some people will prefer, will prefer one over the other and that shouldn't be the thing that blocks you out.

Speaker B: Yeah, you know like I, you, you, I, I think you know you're never going to have one. While I think it's a waterfall kind of situation like you know your funds go over a certain amount. Send the majority of it over to there, keep some of it here. You know, whether you have a hot, warm, whatever, cold whatever situation.

Speaker A: Yeah. So let's talk about the tokenization side. Right? Like you guys are on multiple chains. Tell me about the integration on Solana. What makes it special? What makes you a little bit. Um, I know you are definitely multi chain but uh, what makes you bullish on the Solana side as well?

Speaker B: Well you know, I mean I mentioned this to you earlier. We, we worked together uh, on, on um, on the token 22 spec, on the security token spec with Solana and, and, and Republic and Solana worked together on this and we were very proud of that. And you know we Definitely got inspired from, from the um, ERC fortune Force Spec, which we also helped uh, bring to the world. Um, which for those that aren't aware, like you know, the security tokens, uh, the thing that makes a security token novel is really just the ability to have transfer restrictions. Right. So that you can apply some kind of OFAC control, some kind of AML on top of it, and then also some way to plug into identity management, KYC management, whitelisting so that uh, you can control permissioning. So that's what really when we say security tokens, that's all it is. It's just an extension of an existing token, utility token that you're familiar with, but these added extra capabilities. So, you know, we took what we learned from, from, from um, from, you know, the more, you know, the more mature um, EVM world and we brought it to Solana with you guys and we wanted to do that because, um. Well, many reasons. One is because of the predictability in the efficiency of the gas. Like, let's, let's, you know, let's be real. Like that's something that we can always depend on to say, hey, like this is something that our issuers that are coming to us. Um, uh, it's a requirement because if you're working with security tokens, you're trying to um, coax issuers to tokenize their assets and to explain gas fees to them and to their prospective investors is something that, you know, it's not easily explainable. Therefore, if basically you have to have fees that are so low that either you as an organization or someone has to cover the gas fees for them.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So you need fees that are that low or you have to have. And make, make some kind of capability so that, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're actually uh, fronting the gas like in some mechanism, you know, in some way, one or another. So, um, you know, I would say the biggest is just predictability 11 of low gas fees too. Um, secondly, obviously the speed of settlement is key. Uh, we're gonna, we might get to it, but we at Ah Republic, uh, just got through the purchase of uh, an ats, RWA ats, uh, this past year.

Speaker A: Can you share what an ATS is for, folks?

Speaker B: Oh, sorry. Yes, yes, I should, I should. Please, please hit me on the uh, acronyms that I live with every day that, that the listeners might not know an alternative trading, UM system. Now it's just, you know, an exchange that is, um, has different, um application, uh, from the SEC to Trade. Right. It's just like not uh, a standard exchange like NASDAQ or the American Stock Exchange or the New York Stock Exchange. Right. Like if you were going to create that an exchange, um, like at that level, the kind of um, licensure you would need to acquire is quite high. It's a high level that you have to be at. So with ats, it's different sort of filing. The filing is called reg ATS and it's more unique and specific and uh, and let's say targeted different types of assets and um, when you file, you file more um, specifically for a certain kind of profile. And for us our profile was security tokens for a centralized exchange with a self custody wallet. And so that's interesting. Right? It's a self custody wallet with a centralized exchange. Um, and that's what an ATS is. That's what uh, uh the exchange uh, is was formerly inx and uh, now we acquired it and it's going to be part of Republic.

Speaker A: Cool. Um, so bringing these assets to this exchange. Right. Like are there certain things that have to change on the on chain side or how do you actually do the interoperability? Also how do you do a centralized exchange with self custody custodial wallets? It feels contradictory but I know like backpack also has something um, in that realm.

Speaker B: Wait, you know who, uh.

Speaker A: Oh, did you say back to backpack?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean well, it's not easy. Um, and two, essentially you know what you're doing is you're working with an allowance functionality so that the exchange, you know, is getting delegate the ability for delegated transactions to be executed on behalf of the counterparty.

Speaker A: That's got it.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, you've got an exchange where you have to connect your wallet. Right. Um, and then um, you have an order book that's just kind of it. Right. Like you. It's, it's the, it's a club, it's a central uh, limit order book. Um, very performant, um, and has m. Multiple um, markets both um, security tokens and crypto. So uh, we're um, uh unique in that we're a sex that is self custodial. That's what's unique about us. And um, that's part of the license uh, that we submitted for um. And um, you know this helps us with our m. You know, our liability obviously. Like we're not going to be holding funds. It's the counterparties and settlement is instantaneous. Uh, and um. Wait, what was your other question?

Speaker A: Sorry, you're covering most of it. Yeah. Just sort of like how does this actually work under the head?

Speaker B: Um, yeah.

Speaker A: Um, are you hoping to bring it more on chain or you. Yeah, there are benefits of centralized and there are benefits of onchain. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You know, we will say this like there's our, our backlog is, is. There's a lot there. Our backlog's long. Right. Um, I would say that what we're. What we're prioritizing right now and most of the discussions are really about making it as usable as possible. And a lot of that means putting it as deep into the Republic.com experience as possible. Because right now, right, there were two separate products, two separate um, brands and for now all of our focus is like putting it into Republic. Uh, that plus um, um, trying to really just find other um, uh, let's say, you know, uh, needle, um, moving assets that can make the rwa, um, space see, uh, this as a valid solution. Uh, right. So really, uh, what that looks like is we just um, onboarded Animoca, um, which is a really interesting asset. Ah, still to be marketed, still to have a couple more bells and whistles before that's official and out there. But we're going to be looking for more assets like that to bring on to the exchange. And uh, whenever you do that, um, there's work involved around that like, so hopefully they're all going to be in Solana and that's going to be less work for us because we just added Solana, uh, to uh, the exchange. Um, which by the way is another answer to your question. Um, when we got inx, it was just EVM M and so part of the work in the last year was adding Solana support. That's actually the last bit of work we did on the exchange. But as we tried to court other issuers and or um, just get other meaningful rwas onto the secondary that depending on the chain that that issuer wants to be on, there may or may not be other work we have to do. For example, if they choose, I don't know, Canton, well, then that's going to be one other chain that we need to make that settlement logic for. And that's just going to trump any other kind of work. But yeah, I mean we see defi composability as the necessary, um, component for unlocking value. So this is how it is on the asset side.

Speaker A: What do you think drives most demand? I mean private markets makes a ton of sense, right? Because it's hard to get, it's hard to access, especially for regular investors. Um, which parts of that stock is most interesting to you? Um, is it like, because I know you guys had offered SpaceX for a long time prior to um, the IPO as well as some others that are really interesting. So I'm curious, on the asset side, what do you think is most interesting from the demand to actually bring more volume on chain?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean so from an asset side you've got equity, like actual equity. You've got debt based assets and everything in between. So funds, um, um, and then dividend, you know, dividend payout from equity, dividend, you know, uh, payout from fund stamp. I think what, what um, what is going to be interesting is to put out a product that showcases the capabilities of an RWA that is showing that real business problems being solved. Right. And I, this is something that I think we talked about briefly too before, which is, you know, in the old world, a year ago, year and a half ago, tokenization just meant wrapping up something like a piece of stock, like Apple stock with a token and throwing it out there and not really solving a very compelling business problem. Maybe it was like emerging market access, like someone couldn't get access to Apple, now they have access to Apple. But that's not strong enough of a problem in our viewpoint. Right. Uh, what's a stronger problem to solve is something like paying daily dividends. That's something that's actually not very possible in tradfi because this is capitally inefficient. But uh, if you have a security token that's equity or debt and you purchase something like we, we just launched a company called Profiter. So shout out to Profiter, profiter dot com. Uh, I encourage folks to check it out. That's a security token that represents um, uh, buying a token. You get a share of loan interest, um, uh, interest receivable. So you're actually purchasing uh, the rights for the interest payments of a loan.

Speaker A: And this is the rights all the way back to like legal rights, right?

Speaker B: Yes, yes. You're going to get the percentage of uh, whatever, you know, the originate the loan originator would have gotten. And this is again private market. These are private loans in the private market which have higher, higher interest rates. Right. And so these are, we're talking, you know, double, you know, close to double digits. So. So um, this is an example of what RWA and security tokens can do. You can get this token, you put it in your wallet and tomorrow you actually have dividends.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: You have dividends. The next day you have dividends. Now this is something that Fix and Tradfi World are dreaming of, let alone for the fact that if you wanted access to this, to this loan before, you had to have a minimum of uh, I don't know, 50,000, $100,000. And now you can have a minimum 550 of $50 or $500. I forget what the minimum is. Now you also get daily dividend payment, payment on that. Now, um, I don't know how many people know about that, but I think when, when more um, you know, uh, uh, folks find out about that on both sides of the market, people are going to say, well that's a problem that I need a solution for the

Speaker A: amount of paperwork and everything. Like I think I read a study that it's only going up too. It's not like they're making it more efficient somehow in TradFi, it's actually getting harder and harder, um, to be able to coordinate the payments.

Speaker B: And something we did with you with Solana that I'll also shout out. There's so many great projects we did together. Like we could just do a whole podcast, another podcast on that. Um, it's a Hamilton Lane, the Hamilton Lane, um, product, which is. That's a situation where you know, you've got um, a private, uh, private infrastructure. A private infrastructure fund. Right. Um, uh, and it's a fund that has its constituents are um, private infrastructure, um, uh, investments which all have pretty decent yield on them. Now typically, uh, this would have a very high minimum, uh, to get access to this. Well, we were able to fractionalize that. And um, you get, now you can get $500 to get access to this. And now you can get your, you can get your um, um, you know, your dividends, uh, paid back to you in a way that was a possible, you know, prior. So these are the kind of problems that we want to solve with tokenization. We want people to know about this and then, and I think when this is sort of um, understood and more uh, critical mass is gained, then I think that we're going to see more uh, um, you know, more issuers or uh, um, more of these kinds of projects out there. But we're in the infancy of it, right? But we're also really solving real problems, I think.

Speaker A: Yeah, you're solving it on both sides, right? On the supply side for Hamilton Lane, hopefully it frees up their back office quite a bit and you're able to automate a lot more by embedding these processes on chain. And then on the demand side, uh, I think it's, I don't know if it's a knowledge gap in addition to access. Probably it's probably both because, like, I think it's both. I don't even know that, you know, half of these things exist, right. Like, it's just not known in the retail space.

Speaker B: You touched it, uh, you touched, you touched a very important point. It's actually those very two things. It's, wow, I didn't know that existed. And to education, like, how does it work? Explain to me how this works. Right? Is this, you know, is this legal now? We work very closely with our legal team and we work with the SEC to make sure that every product we launch is. Passes SEC muster. Right. So that's the other thing that, that we do. Right. Um, and, you know, your, you know, your original question was like, what RW assets do we see, like, are going to be, um, you know, uh, coming down the pipe, I think that the assets that we see is less about a specific asset, but more a type of asset that is just solving real problems. That's what. That's really my answer. It's kind of like a formula, if you will. But, um, I do think that, um, the ultimate formula is going to be things that are exposing access to the, the private market. That's, that's, that's, that's where that's what I think is, is really going to be, um, uh, where you're going to see the most real form of RWA and security tokens coming out there. Because that's, that's solving a very, a strong business problem. But I mean, but not, not, not to sort of like what Back's doing is really amazing too. And, and, and I actually know, um, you know, uh, you know, you and I both know you, Tom, and that's, that's, you know, they're, they're crushing it, you know?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. There's space for multiple different companies to do.

Speaker B: They're solving a different problem. Right. They're solving the access problem.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, so what, what does Solana bring to the table and what do you wish Solana could do better?

Speaker B: Well, you know, I mean, Solana, Solana brings to the table, um, scale, you know, so that's it. There you go. Just scale, speed and settlement. And the thing is, we have to have the most solid settlement layer in order to prove that this thing works. Right? Like, you know how it goes. Like, we have a new technology. We're trying to prove this to issuers that we've got something that's like better than what they have. And you got to bring, you got to bring them the plumbing that's like top notch because it needs to be, you know, um, uh, uh, exponentially better than what they've got. Which, which is what? What do they have right now? The dtcc. Right. So. So I think, um, if you look at what, T plus what T plus 2 to T plus 1, and now I think like, they're going to T plus 0, but still within that, like, I don't know, like, we're talking hours. Yeah. Minutes. We're talking seconds. So instantaneous settlement is what, what is like, no problemo. And Solana is powering that. And, and that, that's really, that's. That's really, um, um, something that we, we're proud of and, and, and, and m Happy with as a partner. Now, now what, um, what, you know, what do we want from Solana? You know, I, I think it's kind of. What do I. It's. It's not just unique to Solana, I would say, um, to everybody in the RWA space, I think, ah, you know, rising die floats, all boats. And I think we need to all work together to move this thing forward. So, you know, working together to bring, to bring, you know, issuers kind of partnering up to get projects in front of each other to move them forward. Uh, and this isn't Solana. It's everybody, like, in the space, like, working together in ways. Uh. I don't know whether it's collaboration, whether it's, you know, um, um, more, um. Uh, um, like, you know, there's the rwa, uh, conference. Like, just, um, just more, more awareness, you know, more. More talking about this, you know, like, you didn't know about this, right? So there's something right there, you know?

Speaker A: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. I do think it's super important. Uh, and we're seeing it. Right. It's natural and enough people are interested in this where the snowball is no longer a snowball. Right. It's definitely more of an avalanche coming. Um, so I think it is there.

Speaker B: Um, well, and we're doing what we want from Solana, so. Thank you.

Speaker A: Thank you. Um, yeah, I guess to close it out. I'm curious to hear if you have any advice for folks who are on the technical side who, you know, hear about RWA and understand all of these things, but actually want to get their feet wet and, um, try things out a little bit more. Um, what kind of advice would you have to them to actually start becoming more of an expert in the space.

Speaker B: Well, you know, now it's kind of. This is interesting, actually. Um, you know, RWAs are one of the fewer things that you can actually Google and use AI for. There's not a lot out there. We're all building everyone in this space right now. We're all building the Mars Rover. That's my favorite, um, analogy. We're all building the Mars Rover and we're all trying to make it land on Mars. Um, and so, um, what I would say, um, my actual advice is to find others in this space and don't be shy about reaching out and asking questions like, uh, anybody that's really in the space. And I'm not talking about sales, please, no sales here. No one's selling anything here. But people who are actually really trying to build, like real builders. Um, I think that. And you know this as engineers, like, we love to help others build. And if you bring a real challenge to another person, um, I think that there's an inherent, like, desire to want to meet that challenge and give an idea of how to. How to solve that challenge. So therefore, they really just reach out to someone in the space, like me, you know, like, reach out to me. If you're. If you have a question of, uh, like, hey, like, where do I start? Right? And so the answer to you is one thing, is familiarize yourself with all the RWAs out there. There's. There's RWA XYZ. We'll show you all of the RWAs right now, and that'll give you an idea of, like, the AUM and what. What's going on. Right? Secondly, um, I think if you're like, like an engineer. Engineer. Like, I think it's. I would go, uh, and just kind of, uh, this one, this one you can Google. Um, just familiarize yourself with, like, the differences between the different specs out there. Like, there's two different major specs, maybe three, um, on the evm. And then with Solana, there's one, um, and I would try to help contribute, really, probably. Um, and this is really not me being biased probably to the Solana spec, right? Because that one's the newer one to come about. And I think there's a lot more to grow and push. And so it's open source. Like, we're all open source here. And so I think one of the best way to learn is to contribute in open source. So, um, look up the smart contract. Look at what it's doing. Why is it, like, what makes a security token a security token? Get curious about it and look at the actual, um, look at the functions and what transfer restrictions even are. So just learn about it, uh, at the smart contract level. That's what I think. Right.

Speaker A: Amazing. Yeah, I would appreciate that. Please contribute to our open source request. Um, that'd be great. And I know you guys have a few as well. Um, well, Brian, thank you so much for coming on the pod today. And, um, I'll hope to see you soon in person.

Speaker B: Yes, you too. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Thank you.