{ "episodeId": "SLP772", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "walter_maffione": { "name": "Walter Maffione", "role": "guest", "tag": "WALTER" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:00", "start": 0.0, "text": "Hi everyone, welcome back to Stephan Livera Podcast. Joining me on the show today is Walter Maffione, CEO and founder or co-founder of Kaleidoswap, which is a swapping platform. Welcome to the show, Walter. Hey, hey, thanks for having me. So Walter, tell us a bit about yourself. I know you have a little bit of a background, but obviously you're a young guy, people might not have heard of you." }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "00:19", "start": 19.0, "text": "Sure, so I'm a software engineer, had a few years of experience on the IT field, and then I found Kaleidoswap, found Bitcoin a few years ago, and then three years ago I decided to, to work on Kaleidoswap, that basically is a, is a DEX on the Lightning Network, so we gonna offer swaps, swaps on, on the Lightning Network." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:39", "start": 39.0, "text": "Yeah, and as I understand, you started more on the RGB side, as in Kaleidoswap started on the RGB side, but now you're gonna expand it out. Talk to us a bit about that. Which layers are you going to offer?" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "00:50", "start": 50.0, "text": "Sure. So basically, yeah, we started with, with RGB layer, so we, we started the idea to offer swaps around RGB, but then we decided that, probably would make sense to, to expand to other layers on Lightning and on the, on the Bitcoin layers. And so, basically right now we are building this So connecting Lightning to Liquid, to Arkade, Taproot Assets, and maybe other Arks that, came out, can come out later. And so the idea here is to, is to have Lightning as the common rails between any of these, layers on Bitcoin. and so we're gonna offer swaps of Bitcoin, but also other assets like, stablecoins or in the future, for example, real-world assets." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:31", "start": 91.0, "text": "Interesting. And so, yeah, just for listeners who are maybe a bit newer or trying to learn a bit more, what's, what's going on here? Is We call that last mile technologies that people are using, and some of them might be on Liquid and Ark and Spark and Lightning, and, and so, and so some of these, some of these things maybe they might be used in the background by the wallet or the app provider, but the end user doesn't have to know. He just kind of clicks a button, hits send, hits receive, he doesn't really think about it too much. Can you talk to us a bit about that, from your perspective on Kaleidoswap, do you see, do you see it being like that where maybe" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:08", "start": 128.0, "text": "a The guys will kind of use you guys, and then the end users will kind of use you, but they won't-- they don't actually know they're using you." }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "02:14", "start": 134.0, "text": "Yeah, sure. So basically we are building a full infrastructure here. So we, we're gonna have our own Lightning service provider, so our own LSP that we're gonna offer, Lightning channels and liquidity on Lightning in general as normal LSP. and on top of that, we're gonna, we're gonna run our own, swap provider. And here, basically, we're gonna have our own liquidity for" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "02:38", "start": 158.0, "text": "layers and you, you can interact with, our swap provider in different ways. so the first way will be a web application similar for what Boltz was doing, so there will be a web app where people can go there, create the swap they want to do, pay and receive immediately with an atomic swap the asset they, they want to receive. But the other way to interact with us is using, by using our SDK. So we have our own SDK where wallet providers or, exchange or any other people interested in implementing swaps. Can just use the SDK and offer the user connection with other layers. So for example, if you don't wanna, if you don't want to support stablecoins, for example, but, the merchant will accept stablecoins, a user can, or a wallet pro- developer can implement our SDK and people that just want to pay on Bitcoin can immediately pay the, the invoice, for example, for USDT on, on Lightning, but, but just, but just paying on, on, on Bitcoin by, by using our SDK. So" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "03:37", "start": 217.0, "text": "this is To, to implement and to connect to our swap provider." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:42", "start": 222.0, "text": "Yeah, gotcha. So as I read it then, like you said, there may be different uses where, let's say, a merchant wants to take payment, and maybe that merchant, he has fiat bills to pay, so he wants to take stablecoin, but the Bitcoin payer wants to pay with Lightning or Bitcoin. So it's like Bitcoin and Lightning in, and then like maybe Tether or USDT or some stablecoin out in RGB liquid, taproot assets, et cetera. So that's kind of one of the models. And" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:08", "start": 248.0, "text": "Wallets or apps that want to have a unified balance. They just want to show you one balance, they don't wanna confuse the user with like, \"Oh, here's your liquid balance, here's your this and that.\" They just wanna have one balance, and you can just pay or receive into that. And then in the background, there's swaps. So what you're saying then is Kaleidoswap can be the swap provider for that app. Right." }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "04:28", "start": 268.0, "text": "But, yeah, any layers have different needs, different trade-offs. So for example, the unified balance is something also we are looking for, to experiment a bit, for example, in our web extension. So we, we built this, web extension to test our, our technology and, here basically user can pay on Lightning and then, for example, decide if they're advanced users, okay, I want to receive on Spark or I want to receive, on Arkade, because for example, on Arkade, in the future there will be more advanced" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "04:57", "start": 297.0, "text": "You can, for example, have governance, so you, you want to do more advanced tech, or you just want to, to receive a spark because you, you want to pay and with, with low fees and, let's say, immediately. So yeah, there are different ways, where people can, can use this swap provider, and in general, is a, is a needed feature on Lightning. So we saw, for example, after Boltz shutdown, that a lot of different wallets and applications, they didn't have the, the Lightning swap provider and, let's say counterparty on the Lightning Network. So we, we saw nowadays that, swaps are needed for a better Lightning in general to connect different layers." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:38", "start": 338.0, "text": "I see. And so part of that is the app developers and infrastructure developers want to provide a simple user experience for the end user, and that end user doesn't want to deal with channels and, you know, opening and closing channels and doing all these kind of more technical things. And so this swap method became very popular, I would say. So it's kind of like, I'd say Muun Wallet was really popular with this in like twenty twenty two-ish, and then what happened is we saw a whole slew of other wallets like Aqua Wallet, Breez SDK, and, you know, and others. There's kind of using that idea but doing it with liquid, or now, now we're seeing a bunch of wallets doing it with Spark as well, like Wallet of Satoshi, Blink, and, you know, probably others too. So I guess that's kind of an example of where things are going. Now, on the, I guess, on the side of doing some of these swaps, you, the provider, obviously you have to have liquidity on both sides, right? You have to have, like, let's say, you have to hold some Tether on each of those chains, or you have to" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:36", "start": 396.0, "text": "Layers, let's say, and then you're, you're providing the swap in and out, right? Yeah." }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "06:42", "start": 402.0, "text": "Yeah, exactly. So we basically have to, to manage all this liquidity, also for example, rebalance ourselves the liquidity when, for example, one of the routes is out of liquidity. So there are a lot of technicalities to, to do. So that's why also, for example, after Boltz shut down, no one was, replacing them because it's definitely not easy to, to run as a provider twenty-four seven on the Lightning Network. We, we are building it for, for a while, so hopefully in, in one or two months, we, we gonna start launching it in, on the wild. So we are now live on, on Signet network, so we are finishing our tests, and this week basically we s-we're gonna start testing on Mainnet, so, we, we are almost there to, to launch." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:24", "start": 444.0, "text": "Yeah. And so just for listeners who aren't familiar, there's, you know, on Bitcoin, there's Mainnet, which is where most of us are using, there's Test" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:36", "start": 456.0, "text": "Where it is right now, just for listeners. And then let's talk a bit about the security part, right? So obviously Boltz dot exchange were undergoing some AI assisted attacks, they had to take their service down. I think they have now kind of sold the business to somebody, some other people who are gonna take it on. But obviously the question remains, are you vulnerable to the exact same kinds of AI assisted attacks that they were?" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "07:58", "start": 478.0, "text": "Yeah, so definitely in general, we, I mean, if you, if you run a swap provider on Lightning, you are one of the center point on the Lightning Network, so you receive a lot of attention from, any party out there that wants to steal your money. Also, we, we found these days that a lot of vulnerabilities came out, for example, out of Liquid, so we, we saw a lot of funds, that were stolen from the Liquid Federation, also for Lightning and vulnerabilities. So in general, this- Days were definitely hard for Bitcoin, so it was a tough summer this year. so hopefully, we, we're gonna see that, basically the tools that the defenders can use will be the same of the attackers that wasn't in, in, let's say, these days because we saw that the new Chinese models that doesn't have-- they, they don't, they don't have basically guidelines to, for example, like the same" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:51", "start": 531.0, "text": "safeguards or whatever that would stop them from solving problems for the defenders. Exactly. So" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "08:56", "start": 536.0, "text": "it's definitely easier to attack than- To defend, but, we saw now, for example, for the Bitcoin teams, that the defenders now are keeping it hard and trying to, let's say, have better tools for defend themselves. So for example, some pipeline we're integrating in our infrastructure is daily routines where basically we track any, any dependencies we have and trying to see if there are new vulnerabilities, for example, in the tools we are using or, for example, in, the tech or the layers that, that are there. So hopefully after Let's say these events, Bitcoin stacks will become stronger and those will be, become easier to defend tools like, as well providing or Lightning or in general an LSP. So, I'm, I'm bullish that we're gonna have the same tools that attackers are have right now. And so I, I think in the future, yeah, we'll, we'll be easier to defend also, not, not only to get attacks, but yeah, it's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:52", "start": 592.0, "text": "a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it A bit because some of these, because Boltz.exchange the way they did it was, it was atomic. Maybe some of those losses were being borne by the Boltz.exchange team. And then I guess obviously you guys are gonna be in a similar camp, right? That you are gonna be offering some of these atomic swaps. How do you defend yourself from the attackers, you know, in those cases where they might try to, try to grief you or actually steal your money?" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "10:23", "start": 623.0, "text": "Yeah, so there are different ways to, to defend, so for example, one of the- M can be, for example, get, have higher fees for having a swap like this, because, basically you are, you are receiving funds in a no-KYC way and non-custody way. So I think that, let's say atomic swap is something we still need, because otherwise we, we're gonna end up with, some custodial exchange, so people can go on Binance, for example, to, to make swaps. So I think we still need some non-custodial swaps in general on Lightning, because that's is the, the main core because people doesn't want to, to, to lose their funds, so I think atomic swaps are needed. But for example, here there are things like get higher fees, or for example, there are other solution like not fully open source everything of the, of the tech. Probably this is something, I mean, we still have to decide, if we're gonna do it or not. But in general, i-i-is, is harder to, to attack some code or tech you, you don't see, but still maintaining the same Same feature like non custodial and, and that atomicity on, on the swaps. so yeah, I mean, it will be hard to, to defend ourselves, but we'll try our best to, to let's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:39", "start": 699.0, "text": "say, yeah. And then in terms of the atomic swaps as you're offering them, so if a listener's atomic, a bit of a, it's an industry term or it, it gets thrown around, I mean, it, it predates this industry obviously, but the point is that both legs of a trade are locked to the same secret, so it might be a pre" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:58", "start": 718.0, "text": "You reveal the secret and then both sides claim it, or if it stalls, so the idea is you might-- they might have entered the kind of, they might have said, \"I'm gonna enter this trade,\" but then it stalls out, and then the idea is that it refunds back out after a timeout. That's kind of like the loose generalized understanding. Can you talk to us a bit about how you are implementing atomic swaps?" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "12:18", "start": 738.0, "text": "Yeah, so basically, that's the thing. So there is this shared secret, that can be, for example, the Lightning preimage of a payment," }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "12:28", "start": 748.0, "text": "lifecycle of a swap. So for example, some swaps, have a Bitcoin script where you have this, hash of, of a secret, and the secret is the, is the pre-image of a Lightning swap. So basically when you, when you pay an invoice, for example, Lightning, you reveal the, the pre-image, but you, you basically can't not The, the payer, the, the people you, the, you, you are sending the funds, can't settle the funds until you reveal the preimage, and when you reveal this preimage, basically you can, you can settle the other leg. So for example, you can get the funds on chain by using that preimage. So basically there is this shared secret that locks the funds until a payment arrives, or you can get the funds back if the payment, don't arrive basically." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:12", "start": 792.0, "text": "Yeah, and then there are different layers involved here, right? Because it's Liquid, Spark, Ark, RGB, and I guess e-each of those has a slightly different flavor of how it works, right? So I guess obviously Bitcoin to Lightning, that's one thing,'cause it's all, you know, that all either is on-chain in Bitcoin or it can go on-chain, but in the case of some of these others, it's a little different, isn't it?" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "13:36", "start": 816.0, "text": "So, yeah, for, for RGB is almost the same because RGB works like, can work on chain or on Lightning, so use the same, primitives of Bitcoin on chain and Bitcoin Lightning. So for RGB is basically the same scripts. for Liquid is a little bit different, but even Liquid have the same primitives of, of Bitcoin, so you can use Bitcoin scripts even on Liquid. so also there, there is more complexity for, for example, confidential transaction, but in general, yeah, that's the same, primitives, while on- Arkade, is, is different script, so because Arkade have its own VTXOs and, VTXOs script, so you can, you can build better tech there, because you have more feature, you, you can experiment, but let's say the, the primitives are almost the same, so, there is always the same, let's say, Summer is Boltz's technology that Boltz were using. So basically what we are doing is expand a little bit the, the tech from, from Boltz by" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "14:36", "start": 876.0, "text": "The different assets. so what we, what we are trying to do, also we're gonna open source our protocol because we think, the idea here is to, to have a common tech, a common spec that other people can implement themselves, because we think that a standard is something needed on Lightning for, for a swap provider. so for example, what we are also researching a bit is, for example, using Boltz twelve for having Boltz twelve as a standard and having assets inside a Boltz twelve offer. So for example, you- Just see an offer, but if you support, for example, RGB, you can also see the metadata that encodes the RGB assets inside the, the BOLT 12 offer. So also that is something we, we're gonna look for. And yeah, the, the protocol is something multiple providers can implement themselves. And for example, if we speak the same language, a wallet can see multiple providers seeing, for example, offers and decide, for example, I want to use this provider because it has better fees, or I want to use that provider because... I know them and I know that they are doing the, the tech really great. And this is also similar on what Arkade is doing with, the new intents they, they release. So they basically release this new way to implement swaps on Arkade after the Boltz shut down, and basically similar to, to what we are following. So there are multiple providers, they are, for example, discovering themselves on Nostr, so they're using Nostr as this, for, for wallet, swap providers to publish themselves, publish their fees. And," }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "16:07", "start": 967.0, "text": "the wallets can see multiple offers from different providers, and they dec-decide basically which one they want to swap with." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:13", "start": 973.0, "text": "Yeah, interesting. There's a lot in there, so let's try to unpack a little bit of that. So what you're talking about there isn't Nostr as the kind of the decentralized Twitter, it's Nostr more like for, let's say, discovery or connecting and understanding, oh, that's Walter, you know, let's, let's say that's Walter's npub, that's his Nostr ID, or that's Stephan's N" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:37", "start": 997.0, "text": "As a way to then understand, okay, let's say I'm doing a trade with you, I try to, you know, open your BOLT 12 ID, and then inside of that, it might say, \"Oh, hey, my first preference is RGB, so if you can pay me with RGB, pay me on that. But if you can't pay me on RGB, RGB, okay, how about Liquid? This kind of-- Is that loosely what you're talking about?" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "16:57", "start": 1017.0, "text": "Yeah. People can use Nostr for, for example, you want to say, \"Okay, I want to swap" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "17:06", "start": 1026.0, "text": "This what providers can offer your fee, so they all receive this message and say, okay, these are the fees that you, you can receive by offering these swaps, and here is my BOLT 12 offer, you can pay me, so I can receive on different layers, so you decide where you want to receive, and basically you can use this BOLT 12 as standard for encoding their multiple, multiple assets. So, also for example, people that want to receive, funds, they can say, okay, I prefer to receive, to receive Bitcoin on, Lightning If you, if you don't have Bitcoin on Lightning, you can receive Bitcoin on Liquid, or you can receive USDT on RGB. And all of, all of this information can be encoded in a single BOLT 12 offer. And so with this BOLT 12 offer, you basically can, can receive anything on," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:49", "start": 1069.0, "text": "on Lightning, yeah. And so again, because this podcast is for the more intermediate and advanced listeners, but for-- this could sound confusing for like an end user or a beginner, but the idea is, it's kind of for them, it's gonna be more like scan and just pay it, right Pay it. And in the background, all this stuff is happening, you know, swapping this and swapping to this layer and that, or to tether or back or into stablecoin and this and that. But it's kind of the end user, a lot of it can be abstracted away. So I think that's, that's kind of an interesting quality of this method." }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "18:23", "start": 1103.0, "text": "Exactly. It's basically, you can pay whatever you want and receive whatever you want, and all this tech is basically used for, let's say, having a universal way to receive funds and also, to So you don't need to, let's say, support all these layers or know about how Arkade works or how Liquid works, you just need basically to implement, or the wallet providers just have to implement this SDK and basically they're gonna have all these features integrated in their wallet. So you're gonna be able to pay whatever you want as I, as I just speaks Bitcoin in text, so it can be on Bitcoin, on Lightning or whatever. The main thing is that it's gonna be on, on Bitcoin. Interesting." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:03", "start": 1143.0, "text": "And then the other thing, thing, obviously Obviously, the kind of elephant in the room is tons of people use Tether, and I don't know the exact number, but just colloquially, I think most of the Tether usage nowadays is still on Ethereum and Tron. So what happens there? Like, is there a way that those users can swap? And so let's say people, you know, are, are, is that something you would offer, like a swap in from USDT Ethereum or USDT on Tron, so that they can then take Bitcoin or Tether, Liquid Tether, or something else? So" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "19:34", "start": 1174.0, "text": "Connection to EVM, Tron or Solana isn't something we're gonna offer right now. So here is, we'll, we'll say we are different from, aside what Boltz was doing. So we're gonna focus only on, on Bitcoin layers. But for example, for, on our, web extension, we are using, Flashnet for having, connection with, EVM and, and this kind of tools. So basically we might support it through Flashnet then. Exactly. So for example, people can deposit for, for example From Tron and receive immediately Bitcoin on, on Spark by using, Flashnet here. But the idea basically is that there are other providers that gonna offer tools for connection, for example, for Ethereum to RGB. So for example, Utexo is the company that is gonna provide the stable coins, tether on RGB, and they are building this bridge where people can go there, deposit, USDT on Ethereum and immediately get USDT on RGB. So we're gonna basically use them for, as a tool for letting people swaps from these layers to Bitcoin. So, I think we're gonna have usability on RGB is basically you can, you can use, Tether on Bitcoin, on chain, or decide to also use it on Lightning. And that's, let's say, what will change everything, because on Lightning, you benefit of the privacy of the Lightning Network and also the faster, cheaper, yeah, etcetera," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:01", "start": 1261.0, "text": "etcetera, yeah. Yeah, gotcha. So I guess simple answer is you will have- There will be other players in the ecosystem who are supporting that, whether that is Flashnet on the Spark side or Utexo on the RGB side, and then they will kind of have the other chains support, and then that's how users can kind of interoperate a little bit and swap in and out and swap around to whatever wallet they want, if they wanna do an RGB wallet, if they wanna have a Lightning wallet, or if they wanna have a whatever else. Got it? Yeah, we're not" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "21:29", "start": 1289.0, "text": "focusing only on Bitcoin layers, so we don't want to touch, Solidity or Solana I don't know about the, that tech. I, I want to focus on Bitcoin only, and so that's why we decided to, to focus on that and expand to, let's say, other companies that, that need for that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:44", "start": 1304.0, "text": "Yeah. And then from a Kaleidoswap perspective, from your company, talk to us a bit about, so are you gonna have a wallet? And then, so you got, so you mentioned the SDK, are you gonna also have your own wallet? And then, are you also gonna do, I think you mentioned a web extension as well." }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "22:05", "start": 1325.0, "text": "we started originally with a desktop application that was basically built as an interface to an RGB Lightning node, because basically we started as, as we said, for on RGB. And on RGB, basically you can run, a Lightning node that support RGB assets. is basically a fork of LDK that is one of the implementation of, the Lightning node is basically a node written in the Rust language, and we built this desktop app for, let's say, connecting to, to this node, and the desktop application is connected Connected to our swap provider, so that people basically can receive new channels, make swaps on Lightning, for example, Bitcoin to stable coins is still on testnet because RGB Lightning is still on testnet, but, that is one of the, the product we built and is, is gonna be live on mainnet on, let's say, Tether and RGB Lightning is gonna go live on mainnet. So that's one product. And then we have other two products, that is, one the web extension that is currently already live on mainnet because basically it supports, multi Wallet. So right now on the extension that is in, in a closed beta, but it's gonna be public as, let's say, a web store on, on Chrome, so it will be a extension similar to MetaMask, but focusing only on Bitcoin layers, i-is supporting a Spark network, a Liquid network, Bitcoin on-chain, RGB on-chain, and Arkade. So these are right now the layers, already live. People can just compile a form and get a link to download the extension. So i-is in closed beta, but it's gonna" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "23:35", "start": 1415.0, "text": "be both open source and public in the source, and the extension is basically similar to Alby, wallet, so people can use the extension to receive funds on Lightning or connect the extension, for example, to web application for trading or, for example, I don't know, decentralized application like DApps or a prediction market, whatever. So it's like the interface of a Layer 2 for web application, and with the same tech. So basically Basically with the web application, we built this SDK of for wallets. So we have, two SDKs. One is the swap SDK and one other is the wallet SDK. So you can use both two SDKs and combine them together to build whatever app you want. So for the future, probably we're gonna use these SDKs to also build the mobile app, because the interface is the same, the code will be almost the same between the web extension and the mobile application. So for the future, we're gonna try also to have this mobile application that share Almost the code with extension, but you can also, you have the same experience on, on a mobile phone. So this is the full, in, let's say, architecture of Kaleidoswap." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:44", "start": 1484.0, "text": "Yeah. And then on the wallet SDK, is that designed as like Bitcoin Lightning plus all of the other layers that you have, like so Liquid and Ark and Spark and RGB, all in one like wallet? Is that the goal, or is it more like, I guess you can use it to do that, but the developer can choose which ones he wants to enable if he only wants to do one or two or" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "25:05", "start": 1505.0, "text": "Yes, exactly. Is, is the second one. So you can decide whatever you want. So, for our application, we basically decide, okay, we're gonna, let's say, use all of them. But what I think the, the best user experience will be to basically decide based on the user. So the user, at the beginning, we're gonna respond on a few questions. So, are you an advanced user or are you, light user or, let's say, junior user? based on this, basically you can design the interface. So if you Here with all these layer choose, so you, don't know how to, how it works Arkade or, or Liquid, you're gonna have one single wallet with one single balance, and you're gonna receive only on Lightning, but for example, there is a swap in between. So it's a really easy interface. While if you're an advanced user and you want to manage your own channels, or for example, you want to decide where you want to receive funds, or you want to receive on Lightning, but on the Arkade balance, for example, you're gonna be able to do This is what I think is the best thing, because any user have different needs, and so by just responding on a few questions, you're gonna have an, an user experience based on the user needs." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:17", "start": 1577.0, "text": "Yeah. Now, agentic payments, right? This is the other kind of big, obviously AI is like the super hot topic nowadays, everyone's talking about it, everyone's investing in it. What is your view on agentic payments? Is that something you will enable on the Kaleidoswap side?" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "26:32", "start": 1592.0, "text": "Yeah, so I have experience on AI, so I studied computer science on AI, so I think the, the connection between Bitcoin and AI is something that is really interesting and is always a passion of mine. In general, yes, this is something we already were looking for and we already expect Experiment a bit. so for example, on the SDK, there is already some MCPs libraries where basically you can ask Claude or your own AI to basically, for example, connecting or buying new liquidity from an LSP, so you just chat with your bot and asking to buy a new channel for you or make a swap for you. So this is something we already support and is already live. So for example, in the, in the desktop application, there is a section already defined for, for this, section, and also in the SDK in our- Docs, there is all the, documentation for this. So this is something, so basically let your wallet being able to, be used from a chat experience or from your voice. But the other things that re- is, in my opinion, is really interesting is the self-sovereign AI. So basically we participated to the QVAC Hackathon. So QVAC is this, tools and SDK built from, from Tether that basically let people and developers to run their own models in their own device. So for example- You can run, smaller models like, eight billion parameters LLMs or sixteen billions LLMs, and basically you can, use these LLMs in, your own hardware for doing the financial application" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "28:03", "start": 1683.0, "text": "you want. So for example, instead of asking Claude or OpenAI to make a swap or to pay a friend, you can just ask your own AI locally, since these are simple tasks, a smaller model can manage it. And so in the future, we see like also So some area where we can expand is, for example, fine-tuning these models, because we, by experimenting with these models, we find out that, for example, real, real small model aren't capable to understand the difference, for example, from Satoshi's to Bitcoin or understand, what's a Lightning invoice. So by fine-tuning a model with some Bitcoin data, you can, let's say, have a smaller LLMs that is really capable and, can understand really well what's Bitcoin, what's Lightning, what are these Bitcoin layers. And then you can use this model whatever you want, so for example, you can run on your own smartphone or there is also, for example, for QVAC, a QVAC feature where the model can run in, let's say, an hardware like, your own laptop, and so the inference is in, in the laptop that is, that have better capabilities, more RAM, more CPUs, more GPUs, and you connect from your own mobile phone through the laptop. So basically, the, the, you can ask question from the phone. For example, saying, \"Can you pay Bob ten sats?\" And the inference is run locally in your laptop and then give back the answer to the phone. So these are all areas we, we are looking for. And for example, we, we made a few videos of, of this. So on" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "29:33", "start": 1773.0, "text": "our mobile application that we built for a hackathon, there is already this integrated. so there is a voice, im- feature implemented where the user can talk to his own wallet and all the inference runs locally on the phone, or it can then- Navigate to the desktop application and, for example, you can pay friends on, on Nostr, you can, generate invoice and whatever. So I think AI and Bitcoin are definitely something they're gonna join together and for sure, agentic payments for the future will be something. So giving wallets possibility to, to receive funds, so AI can pay it and whatever, I think is something really cool for the future." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:12", "start": 1812.0, "text": "Yeah, it's one of those things that there's tons of talk about it, maybe it's, it's not quite reality yet for a lot of people, but I, I think it's, it's definitely coming. It's the question of what does it look like, right? I think as an example, even with personal agents today, right, whether it's OpenClaw, Hermes, MetaMuse, or Grokbot, right? That seems to be like kind of more the retail focus, like a lot of normal people, like if normal people use Facebook, then maybe they'll That they use to, I don't know, make a booking for a restaurant for their family or pay for the gym membership or, you know, whatever. And then maybe that's how they're gonna coordinate some of those payments on the, let's say, the retail side of the house, and then maybe on the business side of, it's more like, you know, small to medium enterprises who are setting up agentic payments. And, you know, I guess the question is What, what is the shape of this gonna be, right? What is it, what is the practical way that it's gonna happen for a lot of peo- for the, you know, for the masses?" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "31:12", "start": 1872.0, "text": "Yeah, so I think in general there are different ways here you can, you can have. So I think one great user experience is to, for example, being able to- Handle a wallet with your voice or, let's say, experiment a bit, for example, for, for Lightning in general. So, Lightning is complex, for example, based on the user, if you are a Lightning node, a Lightning node runner that is not the masses, but of course, it's something really difficult to do, you can use AI for, for this and it'll definitely help you. If you are a normal Bitcoin user that just want to use a Bitcoin wallet, AI can help you to, for example, understand what you are doing or pay your friends with your voice. So Payments for, for the users in general, but as a main things for, let's say, book your flights with, with bitcoins, I think that is more an enterprise and, institutional level inte-integration, where basically we, we are seeing now that there are new standards coming out for payments, for example, the new x402 protocol, so in general it wasn't used before Bitcoin, and then now with AI came out also in the standard fiat world Out there. so I think L2 for example is something where Bitcoin companies working with enterprise can integrate a lot, and so Bitcoin will be another payment rails on top of that. So there, there will be needs for example for payment providers to integrate Bitcoin to these rails, because agentic" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "32:42", "start": 1962.0, "text": "payments or AI will use these tools for making payments, so by adding Bitcoin on top of that is definitely something needed for having Bitcoin payments on, on AI. Yeah. Then there is, there will be the wallet interface where basically you need to interact and connect with this protocol. So there are different ways here where we should interact for, with the fiat world." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:04", "start": 1984.0, "text": "Yeah. So I guess is, what, from a Kaleidoswap perspective, what is the agentic payments thing gonna look like? Is it an MCP thing? Is it something else? Like what? thing are the agentic payments, you know, the models, are they gonna call from the Kaleidoswap side to do the swaps or payments?" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "33:22", "start": 2002.0, "text": "Yeah, so, it will just basically be, a plugin to the SDK where basically wallet providers, instead of manually understanding the APIs or managing the API, can use the AI plugin where basically they just have these MCPs or, for example, some skills / MD, so you can teach your own AI how to use the SDK. And basically they're gonna be able to, for example, have an interface for the user where they wanna make swaps or they wanna receive USDT payments inst-instead of having Bitcoin payments or connecting with each other and basically being able to connect via, via chat interface or via voice interface. So basically our plugins to, connect to our infrastructure and through our swap provider, but not only via APIs, but also via voice or via chat. So these are one of the, the main- thing, and in the future there will be the, the focus on, self-sovereign AI, because also that is something, in my opinion, will be really interesting, because also financial data is really important, and you don't want to give all your information about your payment to OpenAI or Claude or Anthropic. So by maintaining your own, AI infrastructure that understand Bitcoin is something we, we're gonna focus on the future, because that also is another step for being a full self-sovereign individual. So you maintain your own swaps, your own liquidity Your own assets, but also your" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:48", "start": 2088.0, "text": "own AI. Yeah, fascinating to see where that stuff's going and, you know, how quickly the open weights models are kind of keeping up with the closed frontier lab models and things like this. Obviously, that's a very hot competition and it's kind of very, very quickly changing. So that's, so that's all there. I guess in terms of final few questions for you, give people an idea on the fees people pay to use Kaleidoswap swaps." }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "35:11", "start": 2111.0, "text": "So they're gonna be the same of what they are used to. when there was Boltz. So depending on the route, we still need to decide each layers, each-- because on each layers you, for example, also us, we have to rebalance our own channels or making splicing, so also depending on the on-chain fees, but it will be around, zero point five percent or on one percent if it includes also, for example, stablecoins on it, but it depends, we, we still have to decide looking at the market and, let's say, but we'll be up to zero" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:43", "start": 2143.0, "text": "point five to one percent ish Which is the range? And then, and then, yeah, so when? So you mentioned earlier like mainnet, so give people a timeline of when, they can see Kaleidoswap on mainnet." }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "35:57", "start": 2157.0, "text": "So There are different architecture here that are gonna live on different timelines. so for example, the extension, we're gonna live sooner, probably next month, it's gonna be live and open source, so people can already download the, web application and using it. While for the swap provider, we are, let's say starting now to testing on mainnet, so the infra is fully ready on, on Signet networks, so hopefully in, November, we're gonna start launching on, on mainnet and, we- We're gonna launch with a few wallets that we are already in talk with that they're gonna support our swap provider, and then the, for example, web application we're gonna launch probably in December or in the coming days. So we're gonna start first with a few wallets that start implementing swaps with us and then launching the web application for the full users out there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:47", "start": 2207.0, "text": "Okay, so it's basically over the next one to three months, you've got a bunch of things coming out. So, yeah, I think we'll leave it there. So listeners, check it out, it's a swap provider for swapping in Bitcoin and Lightning, but to-- various Bitcoin layers. And lastly, where can people find you? What's the website?" }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "37:05", "start": 2225.0, "text": "Yeah, so the website is kaleidoswap dot com. There you can find all the products we, we talk about now. we also have a Telegram community at t dot me slash kaleidoswap. So yeah, if you Try our tools, our software, just let us know. Also, we are on X at Kaleidoswap, so, yeah, reach out and we are happy to, to talk about what you are doing." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:26", "start": 2246.0, "text": "Excellent. Alright, listeners, check it out, that's Walter from Kaleidoswap. Thanks for joining me." }, { "speaker": "walter_maffione", "time": "37:30", "start": 2250.0, "text": "Thank you very much." } ] }