The Next Wave of DeFi: Portfolio Automation with Glider.fi feat. Co-Founder & CEO Brian Huang

GMGM. Welcome to what's going to be another fantastic episode of DevNTell. So if you didn't know, DevNTell is a 30-minute podcast held every week allowing founders, hackers, and anyone in between an opportunity to come on the show and showcase what they built. And today, I'm excited to welcome Brian Huang, who is the co-founder and CEO of Glider. So if you didn't know, Glider is a unified platform that gives you control, clarity, and and speed to design and manage automated portfolios without compromise. So if you stick around for today's episode, you'll get to meet Brian, learn about Glider, get a peek at some of the latest Alpha on the platform, and learn how you can get started with it today.

All right, let's get into it.

GMGM. Welcome to the show, Brian. I'm really happy to have you on here today, man.

Happy to be here. Thanks for, uh, thanks for having me.

Of course, of course.

Uh, yeah, Glider, uh, I I know I know Glider, uh, pretty well. Um, and, uh,

I hope so.

Yes. And, uh, I'm excited to, uh, have our audience here who might not be familiar, uh, get familiar with it as well. But before we get into that, um, would you just like to give a brief introduction about yourself?

Yeah, for sure.

Um, so my name is Brian Huang. I am the co-founder of Glider, and, um, my career has really spanned from what I would call as like the most boring traditional finance you could imagine into now DeFi and literally everything in between. Um, I started trading bonds, um, at Morgan Stanley back in the day, almost a decade ago at this point, which is pretty crazy. Um, pretty quickly realized like that was not the future, um, and moved over to a trading firm called XTX Markets. XTX trades every liquid market around the world, um, including a little bit of crypto. Um, and, um, you know, it came to COVID really, and I had always been using crypto, and we can sort of talk about maybe back story of how I got into crypto, but, um, I'd always been using crypto behind the scenes, and like COVID sort of pushed me to the point where it's like, okay, maybe I don't want to trade and do high-frequency trading for the rest of my life, and maybe I actually want to build something for the world. And so, I joined Anchorage.

Anchorage is a big institutional custodian. They hold funds for all the biggest VCs in the world, hedge funds, corporations, sovereign wealth funds, like, you name it. And, um, they hired me to build out their trading platform. So, built out the product there. Um, had a really great time, you know, sort of moving from trading finance into, uh, what was then a pretty late-stage startup. Um, and spent about two and a half years there, um, and was introduced to my co-founder, John. Um, and the rest is history. So, we've been working on Glider for almost a year and a half now. Um, and we're really excited to, uh, continue building into the next couple months and years.

That's amazing. I I didn't realize Glider was so young. Um, but I guess in crypto years, a year is like four years, or, or what have you, right? So,

Yeah. It feels like a million things have happened since we started Glider. Um, I met John last July, and then we said we would do this thing in, I think, September of last year. So, not even a year and a half. And, I mean, I can't even like name the million different trends we've had in that. Like, obviously, like, Perpetuals was a huge thing and, um, still is a huge thing, of course. And then we had any number of like social apps that came and went, and trends related to that. We had trading cards. We had, you know, October 10th like meltdown of liquidations. Like, I'm sure I'm missing like 50 different things. I'm very active on X, if you guys are not following me on X, and so, I've, I've probably commented on a lot of the different metas in the time. So, yeah, it's been a bit.

It's never, it's never a dull day. There's always something going on in a given week, a given day. Um, just on the timeline today, I saw some spicy takes from the Solana folks. So,

Uh, yeah. So, I guess, um, so, with all of this, um, experience that you kind of built up, um, earlier in your career, and into your experience with Anchorage, and then meeting John, I guess, along the way, um, you mentioned that, um, you're, you're into crypto, trading, trading coins, and whatnot. Um, and during that experience, I'm sure you've found a lot of, um, a lot of, the, the, quote-unquote, um, fun parts of DeFi. Um, and, I mean, let's, let's not, let's not kid ourselves. I mean, it's, like, beyond just buying your first set of sats for ETH or, or Solana, like, it's quite hard taking that next step, um, after that, in the DeFi space. Like, in your opinion, like, what are some of the biggest problems, um, just preventing people from, from exploring DeFi any further than, than just buying their first Bitcoin, say?

Yeah.

We think about this all the time. Um, like, how can we lower the barrier of entry for people to participate in being on-chain and doing things that we think are really cool, things you can't do off-chain?

Um, and so like, of course, there are the centralized exchanges of the world where you can go and buy things. They're great. But we're, we're mainly interested in decentralized systems and and DeFi in particular. So, um, there's so many things. Uh, where should we start? So, um, you know, one of the things that we think a lot about is like, what is your first taste of crypto, and like, how do, how do you get into it? You know, we saw a really big pump in retail coming into trade crypto and get into crypto, um, with the Trump meme coin. Now, you know, we can say whatever we want, and there's many opinions on whether that was good or bad for the industry. But, um, there's never been that surge of retail interest in doing something on-chain before. That, that really was the, the first major sign that there were going to be changes in not only crypto regulation from the administration, but also, um, how people think about and are willing to get involved with crypto. Um, but you'll notice with that that a lot of people did not go through a wallet, right? They downloaded Moonshot, and they did it that way. And so, um, that's what we think a lot about, like, okay, how, how do people actually get involved with, mostly we think about investing? There's plenty of places to go trade memes. Glider is very focused on investing, but, um, and how can we make that feel very Web2-like? Um, and so, what does that mean? That means anything that we can hide and abstract away from the user, we should, right? In so far that it's not relevant to you. So,

Um, gas is a big one, right? Gas is something that I think all of us have had headaches with when we are dealing with multiple chains, or you run out of gas, or any number of problems. You're bridging, who knows? Um, and so, we pay for everybody's gas, and we abstract that away. We think everybody should be doing this. If you're not using an app that's paying for your gas, they should be. They're, they're in 2021, and, you know, it's 2026 now. So, um, it's time. Um, the idea that people should have to think about networks also, not important, right? If you want to invest in an asset on Base or Solana or mainnet, you shouldn't really care about the network it's on. Um, people might disagree with that who are quite tribal today in terms of like where they think the tokens should be, but, um, as an investor, it, it shouldn't matter. Um, and so, as much as we can abstract from that is important. And then, of course, the movements between those. So, um, bridging itself is, is not something that anybody should ever have to know what it is. And, um, you know, there's many parallels to this. Like, I, I've said in the past like, when you use an oven, you don't need to know how the oven actually works, right? You just turn the knob. Um, Brian Armstrong put out something recently that was along the similar lines of like, like, when you turn on your microwave, you know, I don't think it was microwave, but he, he had his own, and it was literally the same exact thing. Like, people just want to do certain things, and if we can make those things easier for people, then, uh, we'll build it. Like, that's, that's the whole purpose.

Absolutely, absolutely. And, yeah, I mean, like, even as you were kind of given that example, like, example of like just stock trading came to my head, just like, when I, when I want to go buy a stock, right? I don't care if that stock is on the New York stock exchange or the NASDAQ, I just want to buy the stock, right? Like,

Exactly.

Yeah. And, um, yes, and, and I guess, um, through all these pains that you just described, um, I'm sure a lot of these built up and resulted in what Glider is today and probably, um, still things yet to be built, um, in your North Star vision. Um, what's, what's your elevator pitch of, uh, of Glider?

Yeah. So, Glider is the best platform to manage and control and access your long-term vision of, of on-chain wealth. And so, we believe that, you know, there is going to be a bit of a segregation between how and what you do with your assets on-chain, right? We don't believe that people will have individual wallets. They will have multiple wallets. And you will have, you know, your day in, day out wallet, and then you will have your investment account. Um, we also firmly believe that all assets are coming on-chain. So, stocks, you're already seeing it with it. RWAs are, are slowly picking up, and I shouldn't even say slowly, quickly picking up at this point. And, you know, we'll have credits, and we'll have bonds, and we'll have all these other things that are, um, hopefully permissionless on-chain. And that to us is way more exciting than the investable crypto markets. Um, there's plenty of places to go and trade memes or creator coins or, you name it, like, go have fun. Um, there's real stuff coming on-chain, and there's no good way to manage that stuff today. And so, Glider is that place where you can manage your on-chain stocks, RWAs, you know, you name it. Um, in what feels like a very calm, but also sophisticated application. So, you know, if you wanted a one-liner, it's like Fidelity on-chain, but we do things that Fidelity can't do, or things that Robinhood or Coinbase can't do, right? Because we have on-chain capabilities, which lend themselves to novel user experiences that, you know, the normal user is not used to. And with those novel experiences, they should be able to have better control of their wealth and also earn more in the long run, right? Whether it's through lending, staking, or anything that you can do on-chain. So, it's a little bit about Glider, um, but we can definitely unpack that some more.

Of course. And, and, yeah, uh, well, well said. Uh, yeah, I, I know you got, um, a nice little walk through you wanna give us on Glider. But, just, uh,

um, kind of circling back to earlier, when you mentioned how you met John, um, just not, not so long ago, uh, I'm just curious to double-click into the story there. Um, like, was it kind of like at a hackathon or, or some sort of, um, um, crypto event that you guys met and had this idea together, or, yeah, like, how, how did Glider come to be? What's the origin story?

Yeah, I, I wish it was that spontaneous. It was, it was definitely spontaneous, but it wasn't like a, oh, man, we met, and now is it? We, we decided we were gonna do this thing. Um, no. So, um, John, prior to Glider, was part of a, a VC firm, um, called Anagram, which he still, um, you know, heavily advises at times. Um, and, uh, prior to that, John had built and led, uh, Matcha.xyz. So, at 0x, the, one of the really first consumer Dex aggregators ever, which is pretty cool. He was the founding engineer of that.

Um, and so, well, John was doing that, I was in high-frequency trading worlds, and, um, the, uh, recruiter from Anagram reached out to me. And he also does a lot of recruiting for high-frequency trading, and said, hey, like, let's like get to know each other, you know, maybe you'll wanna roll down the, uh, down the line. And so, we chatted. I wasn't looking for a role. And that was like 2020. That was a long time ago. Um, and, like, fast forward two years later, I was at Anchorage. He like reached out again. He was like, hey, like, saw you're at Anchorage now. Like, you know, maybe now is a good time to think about roles. And I was like, yeah, like, not that interested right now. I've been in Anchorage for a year. I was like, no, like, I already made the big shift from trading to to product. And so, um, and then he finally reached out, again, third time. This is now like five years in the making, okay? And he said, look, you should meet this guy, John. He has a really good idea. We think you two are really complementary in terms of skill sets. Like, if not, like, you know, at this point, I was, I was like, okay, maybe I'll start to look for roles. I'd been in Anchorage for over two years, like, we can explore. And he said, um, if not, we'll connect you with the, like, a portco, and you can go, you know, do product or run product there. And so, I met John, and, and, uh, yeah, I was sold. I mean, I, I'd been in DeFi for a very long time, and, you know, like, all of the visions that he said, and the problems that he brought up, I was like, yeah, like, we can solve this. Um, I felt very comfortable taking the lead on the, the product, we can call it non-technical side. Although, you know, I consider myself fairly technical, so I don't like that term. Um, and John can lead the technical side of the house. And so, that's the way we've set it up. Um, you know, I do like product design, marketing, and BD, just oversee that. We have, you know, a team now. And John leads, you know, our excellent team of engineers who are, who are building everything, um, that you guys see in the app today.

That's, that's pretty sweet. So, it was like third time's the charm. Ah, I, I didn't realize it was the, the gang at, uh, Anagram that, that brought you together. That's pretty sweet.

Uh, yeah, and, and you guys have built, um, quite, uh, amazing product, um, that I think is, this, is a good segue to kind of get into all, all the things Glider. Um, so, uh, I'll bring your screen on, on the stage, and you can give us the, uh, tour of all things Glider.

For it.

So, this is Glider. Um, you can go to glider.fi and, uh, join the app right now. You can log in with email or a wallet if you have a wallet. Um, and it should look and feel very much like your traditional investment platform. And so, you know, in the middle here, we've got, uh, you know, my total value in these portfolios and it over time. And, uh,

if I scroll down, you have a list of my, what we call portfolios at Glider. And so, can show you a very simple one. So, this is the remake of the Bitwise Crypto 10. And so, I am holding 10 assets. These are all the biggest assets. So, ETH, Solana, Sui, Coinbase, um, Litecoin, a whole bunch of them. And, uh, I'm holding them in like what looks like an ETF. And so, um, what Glider will do is it will rebalance this portfolio at any period of your choice. So, this could be every hour, it could be every week, it could be every month, you name it. And it does this all autonomously. So, you know, you don't have to think about signing or gas or bridging or anything that typically plagues, uh, DeFi. Um, and, yeah, as I mentioned before, we pay for all of your gas. So, you can see here, like, I've actually saved $5.57, uh, on gas myself, um, for not having to do this myself, and letting Glider run it for me.

Um, so, with Glider, you can build out ETFs. We have this builder. I don't want to go too much into this because I know it's a little bit complicated, but we have this builder where you can add assets to your ETF and customize it. You've probably seen this in like some of these more modern financial management systems on the, uh, like Web2 side, or like traditional brokerage accounts. So, like, you can create your own custom ETF. What's incredibly unique about Glider, and why it's so important to be on-chain, this is like really, really important, is that you own these assets. And so, you have direct custody of all of the assets that you see here. Glider does not create vaults. Glider does not wrap these into an ETF token. There are a lot of problems with doing those two things that we think are really important to, uh, not go down that path. And so, when you ever trade into these, you're actually trading on the underlying liquidity of the tokens. And so, there's no ETF token that has like no liquidity. It's no, you, you own the actual underlying.

But, more importantly, when you own the underlying token, you can do things with your tokens, right? When you own an ETF, you don't get the voting rights of that ETF. You don't get to like buy and sell to tax optimize. You don't get like all of the dividends of depending on the ETF, of those underlying shares or any of the benefits of ownership. Like, you know, this is a wild example, but like if you have a gold ETF, you don't actually get to like hold the gold, right? Like you just have a wrapper around it. And so, we don't believe in wrappers because now you're in a world where you can actually non-custodially own all of your assets yourself, and then do things with your assets. And so, on Glider, you can lend, and you can stake, and you can participate in governance, you can claim airdrops. Anything you would normally get with your assets, you get them still, which is really, really important. Um, and so, that's, that's more or less Glider in a nutshell. Um, I'll let you guys explore the rest. We've got, you know, some shareability of these portfolios as well. So, you can share with friends, they can copy, they can remix, they can change them up. Um, and we have a lot of stuff that's coming very soon too. So, the app might look a little bit different, um, depending on when you're watching this, but just know that, uh, this app is, uh, really in flux, and I think we are seeing what will be the future of investing on-chain. And then, again, as I said this before, like, giving you those powers that you have on-chain, that you don't have off-chain. That's what's critical to us.

Absolutely, absolutely. And, uh, if I understand correctly, um, what you were showcasing was EVM side, but you guys recently, uh, also launched Solana support. Um, did you wanna briefly just, uh, touch on that as well?

For sure. Yeah. Um, so we're on a couple chains right now. Um, Base, and Solana, as well as Plume. Um, we'll be adding more chains over time. And eventually, we should be making everything very seamlessly cross-chain. So, that's coming. Um, something that we get asked a lot about. And, uh, yeah. We're, uh, we're pretty excited. We're pretty excited. We, we have the team. It's more about like prioritizing how much we can do, when we can do it. Um, and then we're also, um, we're also hiring. So, if you're listening to this, and you want to join the team, um, you know, we're very small team right now. There's four engineers, one of which is my co-founder. You would be the fifth. And, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's an exciting time to be building on-chain and building real things on-chain, like real consumer applications that have, um, in our case, we've been very lucky to have, um, now over 80,000 users, um, who have logged in and and validated through their privy. And so, uh, that's growing. 100,000 is the next milestone, very excited for that. And, uh,

yeah, it's, uh, it's just early days, and there's so much to do, and it's, uh, I can't even like go through the full list. We have so much we want to do. So.

Yeah. 100%. 100%. And, yeah, you, you beat me to it. I was gonna, I was gonna ask you to plug in the, um, the open role you were looking for. But, that's good. You, you beat me to it.

Um, and I guess, um, sticking to the developer side of things, um, so obviously, this is the, uh, consumer side. Um, but as I understand, you guys also have a neat set of APIs and SDKs available for developers to start messing around, um, with, uh, Glider as well. Um, could you touch on that and what's available for, for devs to use?

For sure. Yeah. Um, so one, y'all, I'll talk about the APIs and SDKs that you guys can get access to and the use cases that we think are, are cool for that. Um, but also, um, we can also dive deeper into the tech here too, if you're curious. We can touch on that later, because I, I hand-wavey, you know, didn't explain how all this stuff is actually working. We can definitely dive into that if you guys want. Um, but, um, so there's, there's sort of two cases for the Glider API. Like, if you want to come in and create portfolios programmatically, and update those portfolios based off of maybe you have external data or something like that, you can do that through our API, and, uh, use Glider in that way, right? So, you don't have to use the front end to create and build and deposit and do all those things. Like, it, it's all accessible, um, via code. On top of that, we've started to work with a handful of integrators who want to build portfolios into their applications. And this is interesting because we see a lot of people doing automated investing in the traditional Fintech space, and we think that's an interesting angle for Web3. And so, what this looks like is, you can curate a portfolio like one of the ones I showed you, and you can offer it to all of your users in a B2B2C fashion. And it's relatively straightforward. It works with pretty much any asset, uh, any rather any wallet, uh, like configuration, uh, or architecture that you have. And, um, yeah, that's, that's the beginning. We'll have a couple, um, early integrations that we'll announce at some point in the coming months. Um, and we think B2B2C is really interesting. It's also a great way to monetize as well, if you want to look for new ways to monetize your app. Um, and so, whether you're building like a savings app, or you're building a launchpad, or you're building a wallet, or really, you name it, or even if you're just a token issuer, like, maybe you're building liquid staking tokens and you're like, hm, I should just make a portfolio of my liquid staking token, and maybe throw in Solana there too, and, you know, people want more ways to get diversified exposure, and your token just happens to be in there, you know. Um, there's cool ways that, uh, we think this can be used, and, uh, we've, we've even heard sort of exotic cases too where, you know, somebody came to us and said, like, hey, I'm tokenizing songs. I want to put a bunch of songs together in what looks like an ETF, and, uh, call it a playlist. And, you know, like, as long as it's on-chain, that should be doable, right? Like, we have to figure out the logistics of like, where is the liquidity, and how can I route, or how can Glider route to that liquidity? But, uh, that's the cool part about it being on-chain, right? Like, you don't have to come and be like, oh, we've got to do like a full-on integration with, like, Coinbase or Robinhood or, like, Fidelity, and like, pull in all this information about our, the user, and, like, and, like, move money between these like old, like, rails. Like, no, like, it's, it's all seamlessly moving through a centralized, or rather decentralized, ledger, um, for everyone to participate in publicly. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. The, the, um, the portfolio of, um, music is, is interesting. I'd be, I'd be keen to, to see, see that kind of come to fruition, and, um,

So, what this looks like is, you can curate a portfolio like one of the ones I showed you, and you can offer it to all of your users in a B2B2C fashion. And it's relatively straightforward. It works with pretty much any asset, uh, any, rather, any wallet, uh, like configuration, uh, or architecture that you have. And, um, yeah, that's, that's the beginning. We'll have a couple, um, early integrations that we'll announce at some point in the coming months. Um, and we think B2B2C is really interesting. It's also a great way to monetize as well, if you want to look for new ways to monetize your app. Um, and so, whether you're building like a savings app, or you're building a launchpad, or you're building a wallet, or really, you name it, or even if you're just a token issuer, like, maybe you're building liquid staking tokens and you're like, hmm, I should just make a portfolio of my liquid staking token, and maybe throw in Solana there too, and, you know, people want more ways to get diversified exposure, and your token just happens to be in there, you know. Um, there's cool ways that, uh, we think this can be used, and, uh, we've, we've even heard sort of exotic cases too where, you know, somebody came to us and said, like, hey, I'm tokenizing songs. I want to put a bunch of songs together in what looks like an ETF, and, uh, call it a playlist. And, you know, like, as long as it's on-chain, that should be doable, right? Like, we have to figure out the logistics of like, where is the liquidity, and how can I route, or how can Glider route to that liquidity? But, uh, that's the cool part about it being on-chain, right? Like, you don't have to come and be like, oh, we've got to do like a full-on integration with, like, Coinbase or Robinhood or, like, Fidelity, and like, pull in all this information about our, the user, and, like, and, like, move money between these like old, like, rails. Like, no, like, it's, it's all seamlessly moving through a centralized, or rather decentralized, ledger, um, for everyone to participate in publicly. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. The, the, um, the portfolio of, um, music is, is interesting. I'd be, I'd be keen to, to see, see that kind of come to fruition, and, um, and, uh, what I will say is, next week, we have something really interesting coming out for Glider. I won't divulge more here, but, um, the product will get incredibly, I would say, even easier to use than it already is, and we're really excited about what next week entails. So, keep your eyes peeled for next week, um, and, yeah, give it a try. Give it a try. We, we would love feedback. It's still early days. Um, we have a little feedback button on the bottom left of the app. So, um, if you do have comments, uh, bugs, praise, like, anything like that, we are constantly reading it. I get every email that gets submitted through the app, so, I respond to a lot of them too. Um, yeah, just, uh, just give us some more ideas. Like, what, what do you guys want to see? And that's really important to us.

And, um, and I guess, um, sticking to the developer side of things, yeah. So, for every portfolio that you ever create on Glider, that portfolio has its own set of wallets. So, like, let me let load this for a second. We hide them away because we don't think it's that important. But, if you wanted to see them, they're here. Um, so, this is a set of wallets. They're non-custodial, account-abstracted wallets. Uh, it's the same thing on the Solana side as well. And, uh, these wallets are fully non-mingled. Meaning, every portfolio gets their own set. If somebody copies your portfolio, they also get their own set of, uh, of wallets, which is also very different from a vault. There's no honey pot risk. Like, there's no one smart contract holding, you know, $50 million. It's all segregated across all of your wallets that are only protected by your seed phrase. Very important, like, security consideration that, um, we think is valuable, and a lot of people are curious to know. After that, what happens is, when you create a portfolio, you sign for Glider's agents, we can call it, to be able to operate on your behalf with a slim set of permissions. And those permissions being, uh, essentially, trade whatever is in your portfolio, where can it route those, and, uh, in the case if we take fees, take fees. Um, that might be relevant to you if you're doing B2B2C. Um, and so, that agent has a limited set of permissions on things that he can do on this wallet. It cannot move funds anywhere else besides the wallets you have connected to Glider. That's the important part, um, and the fee wallet. So, those are the two things, um, so, like, it's not like it can just suddenly move your funds to like some random person. It, it can't do that, which is very important. Um, and then, behind the scenes, like, uh, we run what look like cron jobs. These cron jobs run, in this case, every hour on this portfolio. We've got, um, millions at this point of cron jobs running. And, um, there's been a lot of work to, uh, build that system and scale it, given the size that it's already at, and how big it will get. Um, and then, you know, when the cron job kicks off, we evaluate whether or not your portfolio has to be rebalanced. If it does, you know, we come in, we find the best liquidity. We put those trades on-chain, and then you're good to go. And then, it goes back to sleep. Wakes up an hour later, or every week, or every month, or whatever, and says, oh, do I need to rebalance? Do I need to do anything? And it does that. Um, so, that's the setup today. Um, we will be offering what we call triggers at some point in the future, where it's not cron job-based, but it's more action-based. So, like, Bitcoin hit 120k. I want to do X, Y, and Z. We should allow for that without you having to wait, you know, top of the hour for the rebalance to occur. Um, and so, we've built this really cool, you know, you might want to call it like a state system, right? Where it says I have start at point A, I need to get to point B, you know, whatever triggers or time has elapsed, and I need to figure out how to go from A to B. That's the magic of Glider. Magic, like, we figure out how to go from A to B without you having to figure out how, um, and know that we have your best interest, um, aligned. Um, so, it is quite centralized today. I will say that. There is a path to decentralization, um, that we can get to, and, um, that'll take time. I think all the best startups start centralized, and then, you know, A16z calls this progressive decentralization. Um, so, we'll get there. But, uh, you know, for the vast majority of the real world, I say real world, meaning non-crypto natives, uh, they couldn't tell you what decentralization even means. And so, yeah, there, there's a lot we have explored on that front, and it'll take time to get there. But, given the size of the team and priorities, like, we think we can add a lot more value other places first.

And, um, and I guess, um, sticking to the developer side of things, yeah. So, for every portfolio that you ever create on Glider, that portfolio has its own set of wallets. So, like, let me let load this for a second. We hide them away because we don't think it's that important. But, if you wanted to see them, they're here. Um, so, this is a set of wallets. They're non-custodial, account-abstracted wallets. Uh, it's the same thing on the Solana side as well. And, uh, these wallets are fully non-mingled. Meaning, every portfolio gets their own set. If somebody copies your portfolio, they also get their own set of, uh, of wallets, which is also very different from a vault. There's no honey pot risk. Like, there's no one smart contract holding, you know, $50 million. It's all segregated across all of your wallets that are only protected by your seed phrase. Very important, like, security consideration that, um, we think is valuable, and a lot of people are curious to know. After that, what happens is, when you create a portfolio, you sign for Glider's agents, we can call it, to be able to operate on your behalf with a slim set of permissions. And those permissions being, uh, essentially, trade whatever is in your portfolio, where can it route those, and, uh, in the case if we take fees, take fees. Um, that might be relevant to you if you're doing B2B2C. Um, and so, that agent has a limited set of permissions on things that he can do on this wallet. It cannot move funds anywhere else besides the wallets you have connected to Glider. That's the important part, um, and the fee wallet. So, those are the two things, um, so, like, it's not like it can just suddenly move your funds to like some random person. It, it can't do that, which is very important. Um, and then, behind the scenes, like, uh, we run what look like cron jobs. These cron jobs run, in this case, every hour on this portfolio. We've got, um, millions at this point of cron jobs running. And, um, there's been a lot of work to, uh, build that system and scale it, given the size that it's already at, and how big it will get. Um, and then, you know, when the cron job kicks off, we evaluate whether or not your portfolio has to be rebalanced. If it does, you know, we come in, we find the best liquidity. We put those trades on-chain, and then you're good to go. And then, it goes back to sleep. Wakes up an hour later, or every week, or every month, or whatever, and says, oh, do I need to rebalance? Do I need to do anything? And it does that. Um, so, that's the setup today. Um, we will be offering what we call triggers at some point in the future, where it's not cron job-based, but it's more action-based. So, like, Bitcoin hit 120k. I want to do X, Y, and Z. We should allow for that without you having to wait, you know, top of the hour for the rebalance to occur. Um, and so, we've built this really cool, you know, you might want to call it like a state system, right? Where it says I have start at point A, I need to get to point B, you know, whatever triggers or time has elapsed, and I need to figure out how to go from A to B. That's the magic of Glider. Magic, like, we figure out how to go from A to B without you having to figure out how, um, and know that we have your best interest, um, aligned. Um, so, it is quite centralized today. I will say that. There is a path to decentralization, um, that we can get to, and, um, that'll take time. I think all the best startups start centralized, and then, you know, A16z calls this progressive decentralization. Um, so, we'll get there. But, uh, you know, for the vast majority of the real world, I say real world, meaning non-crypto natives, uh, they couldn't tell you what decentralization even means. And so, yeah, there, there's a lot we have explored on that front, and it'll take time to get there. But, given the size of the team and priorities, like, we think we can add a lot more value other places first.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And, uh, yeah, thank, thank you for that great, thorough explanation, um, of, of how things work here.

Uh, as we're kind of coming to time, uh, I wanna get a couple more thoughts, um, answered, uh, from you. Uh, so, um, you, you, you, you touched on it, um, throughout our conversation, actually, but, um, I guess, concretely, like, what, what's your, like, North Star vision for, for Glider and, and what you think it has the potential to become, um, like, five years, ten years, X amount of years, uh, down the line?

Yeah. So, there's sort of three core tenets that we run on right now.

One, assets are coming on-chain. And so, if you're not building for an on-chain future, which a lot of these traditional fintechs aren't, in our view, um, you're gonna be replaced. So, that's really important. Assets are coming on-chain.

Uh, two, the tools that we have today are not good enough, don't feel Web2 enough, aren't accessible enough, um, to manage those assets. And so, how can you do that? How can you manage them? How can you do things that you traditionally couldn't do off-chain, on-chain? And then the last part about this, which we will get to, is how does AI play a role in this? And I don't want this to be hand-wavey, but, you know, I'm not gonna go into our whole thing about where we think AI plays a role in DeFi. Um, John and I are actually writing a piece right now that's quite lengthy, and we'll be shared with VCs, and, and publicly, around defining AI's role in DeFi. But, um,

we think we have a really strong opinion on how this looks. We're seeing it in Web2, um, I, I've got my dog back here. Uh, we're seeing it in Web2, and, um, what Web2 is lacking is everything that comes with being on-chain, right? Atomic settlement, uh, asset utility, lending, things like that, that we think are incredibly unique to being on-chain. And so, we're solving for those three things. And that's the world we envision, and I don't think anybody else that we've seen is really building towards that in the way that we think we are. Um,

yeah, I mean, again, it goes back to like one liner, Fidelity on-chain, but with the powers of on-chain crypto. Um, and truly managing your wealth and growing your wealth, uh, on-chain. We aren't building a casino. We're building an investment platform. It's very clear in the things that we, you know, try to promote or feature, like, on-chain stocks and RWAs and, like, real things that people want, not your, like, peanut fart coin, you know, cat with the hats, like, meme coins. Um, there's places for that. Again, you can go have fun there, but, there, there is real stuff that we think can really democratize access to wealth management, and, uh,

have cool features that you couldn't have off-chain. So, that's all we think about. That's what we're driving towards. And, uh, I think we'll get there actually fairly soon. I think there's, there's a lot that we are really excited to push out.

Amazing. Yes, and, uh, I'm excited for our audience to also have a chance to start to play around with Glider if they haven't already.

Um, again, uh, you mentioned it earlier in the, in our combo, but what's the best way for folks to start, um, messing around with Glider?

Yeah. So, we're fully live on Solana, Base, and Plume. Go to glider.fi. You can connect either a Solana wallet or a EVM wallet. You can log in with email, if you want, or X, or any type of login. Um, if you have money on-chain already, that's great. You can just deposit it in, create a portfolio, and you're good to go. If you don't have money on-chain, we offer a number of on-ramps around the world. So, hopefully, one of them works. If it doesn't, just ping us. We'll try to find an on-ramp that works for you, so you can use a debit card or bank transfer or PayPal or Revolut or all those ones that I named. We already have, so hopefully, one of those works. Um, and what I will say is, next week, we have something really interesting coming out for Glider. I won't divulge more here, but, um, the product will get incredibly, I would say, even easier to use than it already is. And we're really excited about what next week entails. So, keep your eyes peeled for next week, um, and, yeah, give it a try. Give it a try. We, we would love feedback. It's still early days. Um, we have a little feedback button on the bottom left of the app. So, um, if you do have comments, uh, bugs, praise, like, anything like that, we are constantly reading it. I get every email that gets submitted through the app. So, I respond to a lot of them too. Um, yeah, just, uh, just give us some more ideas. Like, what, what do you guys want to see? And that's really important to us.

I, I, I love that. I love that. And, uh, yeah, you heard it here. Some alpha, alpha on the way next week. So, uh, definitely wanna stay tuned for that. And, uh, just before we, uh, let you go, Brian, I know you're super busy. Um,

for the aspiring founders, uh, or founders to be that might be watching today. Like, um, from your experience with, um, starting up Glider, like, what would be a key piece of advice, um, you, you'd give to them?

Yeah. I think the one thing that I've really leaned in on now is focus. Um, early Glider was a lot of exploration, which I think is important. You definitely wanna explore. Um, but when it comes time to doing things, and trying things, do them quickly, and do them very quickly. And if they work, they work, push forward more with that. If they don't work, you gotta try something new fast, right? Um, cut out all distractions. So, like, yes, there's a million things to explore, a million different B2B2C integrations we could do, but you only have so much time in the day. And so, being incredibly focused on what you wanna do is really important. Um, you know, I think at times, um, you might have to ignore messages, and those messages just are noise in the thing that you're trying to deliver, the mission that you're trying to drive. And, you know, it's, I don't like to come off as rude, and I don't think I do, but, you know, you have to recognize that you only have so much time in the day, and if you wanna get what you wanna get done, you need to be incredibly mission-driven. And so, that's not something I sort of thought too much about in my early days, uh, you know, shaping Glider, but we've gotten to the point now where there's so much going on, so, so much going on. You're gonna be pulled in a million different directions. Focus on what you really need to get done, and the other distractions, you'll have to nicely put aside. Yeah.

Uh, yeah, I, I love that. That's, that's so, that's so true. Like, if you start to diverge and, um, lose sight of, um, the finish line with distractions, like, yeah, somebody else is gonna eat your lunch, um, so, uh, yeah, very well said. Um, and with that, uh, unfortunately, we've come to time. Uh, Brian, thank you again so much for taking the time out of your day to come chat with us. Um, Glider looks really amazing, and, uh, audience, if you're watching today, uh, give it a go. Um, you, you're, you're in for some alpha next week, uh, so, uh, no, no better time to get started with that today.

Thanks, guys.

And, with that, uh, just wanna wish everybody a happy Wednesday, uh, happy rest of the week, wherever you may be, and we'll catch you back here next week for another great episode of DevNTell. Till then, have a good one, folks.

Peace, guys.