[00:00:00] Luke: From privacy concerns to limitless potential, AI is rapidly impacting our evolving society. In this new season of the Brave Technologist podcast, we’re demystifying artificial intelligence, challenging the status quo, and empowering everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. I’m your host, Luke Malks, VP of Business Operations at Brave Software, makers of the privacy respecting Brave browser and search engine, now powering AI with the Brave Search API.

[00:00:28] You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist, and this one features Bartosz Lepiński, CEO of CubeExchange. He’s a prolific developer within the Solana ecosystem and is well known in crypto circles after being quoted in CoinDesk, CNBC, Bloomberg, BlockWorks, and more. In this episode, we discussed how cube is approaching the exchange model more transparently in the wake of FTX and other opaque exchange issues, how their hybrid exchange model is different from the traditional models, ways cube is rewarding their community as a growth marketing strategy, how they’re building a global business with varying global [00:01:00] regulations and the potential that meme coins and new defy developments have for the broader financial marketplace.

[00:01:05] Now for this week’s episode of the brave technologist. Bartosz, welcome to the Brave Technologist. How are you doing, man? Yeah, pretty good. What about you? I’m doing well, doing well. I’m excited for this interview. I’ve been kind of looking forward to it. And you know, having you tell us a bit about Kube, like what is KubeExchange?

[00:01:25] Why is it important and how do you think it’s going to affect the space?

[00:01:28] Bartosz: Yeah, a hundred percent. So we started building it a bit more than a year ago. And the primary reason was to really give back to the space after, you know, KubeExchange. What has been happening for quite some time with other crypto exchanges, especially decentralized ones where people lose money, and I was not happy with the state of that.

[00:01:47] So the first thing that we built for the exchange is this. Non custodial wallet setup that’s guarded by the user himself, the exchange, and the guardian network. And we built that, over the first [00:02:00] three months before we touched anything trading related. That network supports multiple blockchains, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana.

[00:02:10] Cosmos Chains and others, Doge connects directly to those layer ones and allows you to ensure that if you send, for example, one Bitcoin to Kube Exchange, you can actually go to the Bitcoin Explorer and at all times see one Bitcoin. And after that, we decided to build all the trading on top of it. So maybe a bit backwards, like most people start with the trading infrastructure and then they say, Okay, how do we start crypto on this exchange?

[00:02:34] We did it in reverse. And when you trade on the exchange, it’s pretty interesting because from the on chain perspective, it really looks like you are peer to peer settling with each other. The net balances after the trades happen. So if I was to buy one Bitcoin from you right now on Kube and pay, you know, 66, 000, after 10 minutes, the settlement network would [00:03:00] send you USDC on Solana.

[00:03:02] And you would send me Bitcoin on the Bitcoin network. So in that simple transaction, we actually have two blockchains that settle independently.

[00:03:12] Luke: That’s awesome. Yeah, I and just for folks that that aren’t familiar, right? I mean, you mentioned that kind of the reverse thing, but I think it’s super important to drill down into because I mean, you know, you think about, like, November of 2022, you know, the whole downfall of FTX.

[00:03:25] And then, you know, there was a big focus on things like kind of proof of reserves, right? Or these other ways where it’s kind of like, Working backwards to have, like, how do we make this opaque system transparent? But if I’m understanding correctly, right? Like cubes kind of starting from the reverse of that from the ground up, you’re building something where you don’t need to worry about proof of reserve because everything is transparent, right?

[00:03:47] Is that, is that a fair statement?

[00:03:49] Bartosz: Yeah, I think it is. It really, it really goes back to the like original vision for, for blockchain. Right. When I go to original Bitcoin paper for the like, Peer to peer electronic cash system. [00:04:00] It was really built as a ledger and ledger that’s public that you can trust. So I don’t understand why most of the crypto exchanges move back from this original Bitcoin vision of like, this is the public ledger that we all agree what it is.

[00:04:14] To, let’s move our balances and ledgers to Postgres database and we’ll publish this miracle root of proof of the reserve that you can check on our website if you really own something or not. Hey guys, that was sold actually in 2008. Right. Or like 2009 to be specific when the like Bitcoin paper was published.

[00:04:35] But it’s like, let’s just use what was built and every single blockchain has been built for that purpose. Okay.

[00:04:41] Luke: Yeah. And it just seems like it’s totally addressing like a need in the market, right? you know, if we’re in a space where more and more focus, you know, exchanges are gonna be, continue to be an important part of the space, right?

[00:04:53] Like, and especially with the way the regulatory stuff’s looking globally, et cetera. You know, having a system that’s built. [00:05:00] Where we can address some of those issues that have been bad. Like, I mean, you know, there’s a classic example around like, Oh, I guess we have these big swings in the market and then Coinbase is down for a servicing, right.

[00:05:11] Or whatever, you know, and, and people, lots of little things like that. Like your network or your exchange basically is kind of like proofing against that, right. or, working in a way that’ll, you know, make it more reliable. Is that a fair. It can.

[00:05:23] Bartosz: Like this is not really just me, I think there’s a lot of people like smart people out there, right?

[00:05:28] Like Anatoly, Vitalik, right? And like all the people that are building blockchains and they actually solve for these things already. Hey, we don’t want Amazon to disrupt our services. Like the blockchain should be up all the time and maybe we shouldn’t have all the nodes in AWS.

[00:05:47] Luke: Remove those central points of failure, right? The hybrid exchange approach. Can we drill into that a little bit? Like, how is that different from more of a traditional exchange model? Like is a order book different or it, how does that work?

[00:05:59] Bartosz: The order [00:06:00] book and everything on the exchange site is the same, you know, maybe a bit faster and built with like a bit more focus on, mechanical empathy.

[00:06:10] But like, end of the day, it’s an exchange, right? And, like, the centralized part of the exchange is exactly what you would expect from NYSE and NASDAQ and CME. It’s like top of the line exchange that if you wanted to, you could use it outside of crypto. What makes it hybrid is that custody layer that we talked about.

[00:06:28] So rather than us having a hot or cold wallets that we control, we don’t control it. And like, as soon as you have that part is it becomes a hybrid. I don’t like that term, but because I think it confuses people.

[00:06:42] Luke: Terminology in crypto, right? Terminology in this space is just a tricky thing. I think anyway.

[00:06:48] I

[00:06:48] Bartosz: kind of agree. At least in the like public messaging trying to move away from it and saying we are just building an exchange. It’s not a DAX. It’s not a SAX. It’s just like I’m trying to build the best exchange out there. [00:07:00] That’s awesome. And then there’s some technology associated with it and we can call it many words, but you can look at it.

[00:07:05] Decide what you want to call it yourself

[00:07:08] Luke: Yeah, no, and then I think like, you know having used it I think it’s just one of those ways to like If you’re looking at what’s happening in the space right now And you want an easy way to get involved with it like just go to cube You know It’s pretty easy to like I think you guys we were we were buying runes and a few other things in like one Transaction pretty simple.

[00:07:24] How are you guys working on growing cube? I saw somewhere you guys have like a referral program, like, like, how does that work? Like, what’s kind of the thinking behind, you know, how you guys want to grow in the market that has some pretty dominant players in it.

[00:07:38] Bartosz: Yeah, so I think that the first thing that like our team is extremely technical and burdenable, kind of similar to a brave team, right?

[00:07:46] Like you are competing against this giants like, you know, Mozilla and like Chrome and Microsoft and they all are building this like massive browsers that send all the data out there. So from cube perspective, we kind of compete with this [00:08:00] big companies out there. How, how can I be better than them? The first thing is I believe we can build a better product.

[00:08:06] And build that product in many cases faster by just responding and listening to the users, what they want. That’s how we came up with the runes. We actually allowed our users to trade runes on day one when they launched with the Bitcoin halving. And I believe for many weeks, that was probably the easiest way, if it’s still not the easiest way to buy runes on Bitcoin, you literally can take USDC or US dollars with a credit card and buy rune in less than a few minutes.

[00:08:37] Or second, if you already have USDC. It’s pretty interesting and you tried it yourself and I think that’s that’s a testament to how nimble is the team like getting everything out there on the first day required a lot of work and like understanding sometimes like how opcodes on Bitcoin work and like having all of that.

[00:08:54] Tie together when you look up now bigger exchanges like finance and coinbase. They still don’t [00:09:00] support roots and it has been months,

[00:09:01] Luke: right? Yeah, you guys can move fast for sure. And and I think one other thing I’ve seen a lot with cube That’s been really interesting has been you know a lot of communities seem to kind of be joining around the effort and you guys have things like bundled buying and stuff where you can Really kind of make a you can get a community to rally behind it or several communities.

[00:09:20] It’s like a pretty community Awesome thing to just how simple it is to buy into these things.

[00:09:24] Bartosz: Yes. So like moving the product aside and like having the nimble team, you still need to have a bunch of tactics and strategies around like traditional crypto exchange marketing. And this is where the referral program and all the like earning points kind of comes in where we want to reward the community that helps us build the best product out there.

[00:09:44] And. We would love everyone that’s using kube to refer as many people as possible and effectively make the exchange better and make money at the same time.

[00:09:53] Luke: No, it’s great. It seems like it’ll move people too. And, you know, I’ve I’ve had the opportunity to come out to the headquarters a couple of times now [00:10:00] in Chicago.

[00:10:00] And it was one of the things that really stood out to me too. And maybe we can go into a little bit more on this too. I mean, aside from even the product, right, you just walking around the headquarters, You’d run into other projects people that are just either just like hacking there or like, you know, just hanging out or whatever.

[00:10:15] are you guys like trying to kind of build a culture around kube too? It seems like there is like almost like an incubator, but kind of informal, like how are you guys approaching this? Like, cause it does seem like there’s like a lack of hubs around crypto, especially in the U S where so much of the user bases are kind of getting shut out in different ways.

[00:10:34] What are you guys trying to do around the cultural scene with Qube?

[00:10:37] Bartosz: Sure. So, you know, I started like, so a lot of hacker houses and I think Trying to kind of continue with that tradition and it really came from the fact that I wanted to make sure that if you have something that’s like Successful you are giving back to the community and in that case People that are building on any blockchain literally when they come to Chicago.

[00:10:58] I just say hey you can you’re [00:11:00] welcome to have your company here We are not going to charge you any money And you can just start building and I’m just excited about what’s happening, you know, in the, in the headquarters, it can be a, tech company in Chicago, or it could be a crypto company. And I think having that community in person after COVID, it’s like extremely powerful for the engineers.

[00:11:18] Most of the engineers that work for cube are in person. And I think you can feel that energy when, when you are in the office as well, and everyone is extremely friendly. And it’s willing to help you with, with your project. So it’s not like we’re pushing you like, Hey, you need to use cube exchange right now.

[00:11:34] No, it’s just like, let’s build better finance together.

[00:11:37] Luke: Yeah, no, that’s awesome. I mean, I was just like, I just bumping elbows with people who I had known on Twitter, but had never met in real life. And it was kind of a cool way to just kind of, I don’t know. There is just like a good energy, I think, where.

[00:11:49] There is something about being a nimble startup. And then also when you’ve done this before, right? Like, I mean, especially with your experience with the hacker houses, right? Like it’s like, you know, getting a few of these like [00:12:00] motivated groups together. There’s a whole different energy there and just the ability to kind of tap somebody on the shoulder and get to know people in person, it’s kind of a lost thing.

[00:12:08] I think like with a lot of the space, just to kind of change gears a bit, regulations, always a topic in this space. And especially now it’s political season, right? Like given how regulatory landscapes evolving, like how is cube trying to kind of remain compliant when, with all this, you know, different areas to navigate, how do you see like regulation kind of impacting both exchanges and then kind of the broader space in the next couple of years?

[00:12:33] Bartosz: A lot of ideas that we utilize that cube came directly from us seeing like either regulatory opportunity or a gap, or even like, let’s call it like straight arbitrage, where I think, again, because you are a startup, you’re a more nimble team, you can respond to the regulation in a very different way that a company that has At 3000 people and, you know, maybe [00:13:00] trades on nicey already, you can actually build it from ground up.

[00:13:04] So the whole idea of like, you need to own your crypto and we are not a custodian. It’s one response to where I think the regulation will be going globally. And there’s like smaller decisions, like, Hey, all the time stamping and recording in the exchange is happening in nanoseconds because we know that what was expected from traditional financial firms, like every, everyone.

[00:13:26] In technology on cube came from traditional finance like Citadel, DRW and others where we actually did that before.

[00:13:34] Luke: Yeah, I mean, there were some nice little touches that we even ran into kind of going through that funnel of like, Oh, because we do similar things at brave to where it’s like, look, if we if we don’t have to collect a piece of data, we don’t want to collect a piece of data.

[00:13:47] And one thing that was really nice that we ran into is it’s just kind of this round trip login where like so many people get exploited, like through data breaches and things like that. And, you know, software, software, right? things that are going to happen, but it was really [00:14:00] cool to see kind of this grownup approach to even things like authenticating into your exchange account where it’s like, look, you could tell that people were thinking about trying to minimize risk, you know, like, remove a vector, right?

[00:14:11] Like where. It’s a pretty big one too, like with exchanges, with the amount of information that flies around. I, yeah, a hundred

[00:14:16] Bartosz: percent. Like, look, it’s extremely easy as an engineer to build a database with hashed passwords and just compare them and be happy with yourself. Like some piece of code from the internet and you are good to go.

[00:14:30] I think it was much more like, I don’t know, risky or courageous or whatever. It said, no, we are actually not going to do that. And in many cases, again, Brave is a great example in my mind. Would it be easier to sell some of the things like user data from Brave and make the business grow faster? Maybe, but you follow your core principles to actually change the world a bit.

[00:14:54] Like maybe it’s like small, but

[00:14:58] Luke: Yeah, and I think a lot of it’s just kind [00:15:00] of proving it in the market, right? Like if you can get adoption, doing it a better way, then, you know, people move with their feet, right? Like, and, you know, that’s why it’s cool to see this stuff getting adopted by you guys and kind of taking that step.

[00:15:11] Cause you’re absolutely right. Like, I mean, I think if I look at some of the stuff from Brave, like, Google has to deal with making an old model work when the technology changes. Right. And all the baggage that comes with that, we don’t have to deal with that. We can just do something different from the beginning.

[00:15:23] And it’s cool to see like cube kind of having this really awesome approach. Do you feel like you guys are really constrained by like a lot of the regulatory landscape right now, or are you guys kind of have some kind of guidelines you’re working with and are just running with those in mind?

[00:15:39] Bartosz: We have a great team of lawyers and advisors from day one that help us navigate the landscape.

[00:15:45] I think that the hardest thing about building crypto exchanges, you are building a global business. And because of that, you need to comply with all the markets where you’re operating. And it could be, you know, 180 countries with 180 [00:16:00] different regulators. And it’s one, like usually you try to build one software platform.

[00:16:04] And that can make it very complicated. Just like the browser, right? Like all the GDPR and privacy regulation, each country and region is slightly different, even though they look similar. And complying with all of that adds software complexity that makes it harder sometimes to move forward.

[00:16:23] Luke: One of those things too, is to kind of change gears a little bit.

[00:16:26] I mean, like when I was looking at kind of, the different types of bundles of, of crypto that you can buy, because you guys have this great bundle feature where, you know, you can buy different, different kinds of groupings of, crypto in one, purchase. and you guys have like an infra bundle and, you know, I know like AI, like infra, like these different areas within the crypto space, like where do you see from a technology perspective, like just as somebody who’s just an enthusiast and also working in the space, like.

[00:16:50] Where do you see the plays around crypto and AI kind of meeting up over, you know, the next year or so? Like, cause it seems to be kind of a meme where people are trying to kind of get a sense of where these things are [00:17:00] there. They seem like they’re bound to collide somewhere, but in your mind, where is that going to take place?

[00:17:04] Bartosz: I think that the easiest one to start with is like infrastructure, right? Like physical one. I think people are doing this like Ionet, Render and few others. Like those people already interacted with a lot of like GPUs for whatever reason and selling that through the Open market that allows you to pay for money is something that you know, it’s fairly obvious Just like with selling compute on a cash But I don’t think that’s the end of it, I think pushing the automation and taking it much closer to finance enables a lot of things.

[00:17:35] And this is again coming from like my engineering background, a lot of times, the reason why I was fascinated at some point with blockchain is the fact that it has the ability to unify APIs between the software. And make it give you ability to almost like generate the code that’s like interact with the finance world in traditional world.

[00:17:56] And even though you have like rest APIs and soap APIs, maybe in [00:18:00] some cases like flat FTP files for ACH generating all of that and having glued it together, I think it’s very clunky and sometimes doesn’t move at the speed that you would want to move once you make your finance move every 400 milliseconds.

[00:18:16] Having ability to include execution of the transactions in that A. I. makes the world different, right? And like building that will be much easier on top of blockchain that it is on the like legacy system.

[00:18:29] Luke: That’s awesome. In a different light to like, how do you see more traditional finance principles being applied to the stability and the growth of crypto markets?

[00:18:37] Cause I know we’re now we’re starting to see ETFs or, or becoming, you know, formal products that people can buy and like, more and more of the traditional finance world’s kind of meeting up with crypto these days. It’s not the, not the crypto of 2018 or 17 or. Yeah,

[00:18:52] Bartosz: I think that, you know, the biggest thing that we are still missing in crypto outside of all the likes of like crypto is very good at [00:19:00] creating innovative products that in many cases are very sophisticated.

[00:19:04] But I would take it back to like the basics and I would say I would love to see the transition from M1 to M2 in terms of money supply. So as soon as we will have the ability to make the money appear, and I think MemeCoins are doing that, I would love to see more of that, that type directly to the government.

[00:19:22] Luke: Yeah, no, that’s great, man. What do you think, innovation wise are going to drive next wave of exchanges? What are you guys looking at like that can continue this kind of path of differentiation that Cube’s on right now? Yeah, I

[00:19:35] Bartosz: think having something that when you stop calling crypto exchanges crypto exchanges and just think of them as like This is my mobile app that I use for X different things and they are not just crypto Then we’ll know that, like, I think that’s the next step.

[00:19:52] Luke: Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, like it’s kind of where we’re at too. Like where you’ve got like save payment methods and then you’ve got like crypto wallet, she’ll just be [00:20:00] one thing, like demystify it. Right. Just a more of a light note. What’s interesting to you kind of in the crypto scene right now?

[00:20:07] I know there’s like meme coins you mentioned, right? Like, and I’m seeing a lot of different meme coins on cube. What, what areas of, you know, what’s trending now are most interesting to you in this space?

[00:20:17] Bartosz: Super excited about all the DeFi development on Bitcoin specifically. I follow pretty closely the, the Opcat, you know, conversations.

[00:20:26] So that’s one development of the more layer ones and layer twos again on Bitcoin specifically as well. So really excited about Monad, all the Bitcoin L2s that either use SVM or EVMs. I think there’s, there’s a lot of innovation happening and there’s a lot a lot of engineers building hard problems. So like, that’s like, it’s great to see everyone kind of working together.

[00:20:50] Luke: That’s

[00:20:50] Bartosz: awesome.

[00:20:51] Luke: I know we’ve been talking a lot about like kind of retail is cube working with businesses as well, like on the, like institutional side of things or their plans for that, [00:21:00] or I mean, we are working with

[00:21:01] Bartosz: market makers to like, obviously those are institutions. So yes, we are open to, to onboard any type of business for our KYB process.

[00:21:09] Luke: Awesome. Looking farther out in the future. What are you most optimistic about? Like, I’m really

[00:21:14] Bartosz: thinking about product development. think in the next five years, truly believe that you might end up using crypto, not knowing it’s crypto.

[00:21:22] Luke: Awesome. That’s great, man. You’ve been really gracious with your time here.

[00:21:25] Is there anything we didn’t cover that you want people to know about with Kube or otherwise? I think we covered a lot.

[00:21:32] Bartosz: You should, if you’re not a user of an exchange and you’re listening to the podcast, we’d love you to try. The registration process is super straightforward. And then refer some friends.

[00:21:42] Luke: Where can people find you on X or Twitter or whatever we’re calling it these days?

[00:21:46] Bartosz: Yeah. So on Twitter, just search for, my name Bartosz, cube and you will find it. And I reply to most of the DMs fairly frequently. And, I’m also on telegram

[00:21:56] Luke: as B underscore Solana. Awesome Bartosz. Well, I really [00:22:00] appreciate you making the time today.

[00:22:01] Love to have you back to, to kind of check back in on things like, let people know what’s new and what’s going on and thanks so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. All right, man. Take care. Cheers. Thanks for listening to the brave technologist podcast to never miss an episode. Make sure you hit follow in your podcast app.

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