Travis John (00:01.262)
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Real World Assets Show. Today we have a special guest. We have Dan Friedman here from zenGate. He's the founder and CEO of zenGate and he also is part of building the platform and they are the leader in building the platform for Palmyra and also the Palm Economy, which we'll talk about. These are two new projects that are in the commodity space and welcome, Dan.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (00:27.917)
Thanks for having me, Travis. Great to be here.

Travis John (00:31.118)
Nice. So I know that I've followed your background for many years in being involved in the Cardano community. And I wanted to, I've heard quite a bit of your background, which is quite interesting. I'd love to chat more about, as you know, you've been at IOHK and building several blockchain projects that led you to where you are now. So I'd love to hear a little bit about just kind of this, the origin story of Dan Friedman.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (00:59.405)
Sure, sure. Right, so I started my career back in the 90s as a developer. I was a Java and Oracle developer all throughout the 90s. Well, not all throughout the 90s, later part of the 90s and into 2000 into the dot -com boom and subsequently the dot -com crash.

And from there on, I'd worked as a developer for quite a long time, almost 20 years. Now, within that time, I also started working in business development and other entrepreneurial ventures. And so my life and work and whatnot brought me to Japan, where I live right now.

Um, and so around 20, early 2016, I was at CTO of, uh, of an augmented reality company, uh, out of Osaka. And, um, just, I was just kind of looking for, for some new opportunities and, uh, a friend of a friend, uh, was, uh, turned out to be Charles's former business partner. And so they were at that.

point starting a new company. There were a couple of, they only started a couple of months before. A company called IOHK and the project called Cardano, which at that point nobody knew. And so what they needed was a, an experienced project manager to handle the pre -sale app, which ran the entire pre -sale of Cardano in Japan, everything from individual.

KYC to, um, you know, to, to the back office to everything, you know, it just, it was a huge, huge application and ran the whole pre -sale. And so at that point, before I started doing the project, it was actually Jeremy Charles's former business partner that was managing that. And of course he had other stuff to do, um, as you might, might imagine. And so I took over, uh, the project, um,

Dan Friedman - zenGate (03:13.101)
ran that team. Um, then of course, uh, about a year and a half, a little bit more than that later, we launched main net. Um, you know, the road to that was also not an easy one. You know, it was, um, it was one of those things, you know, where every, you know, every milestone that we in the Cardano community wait for kind of sometimes seems like it's, you know, this like magical and reachable thing, you know, first it was Shelley, then it was.

Gogan then you know that now it's governance, you know, and of course everybody's really into it, but People some people are just thinking wow, this is a really difficult thing to launch and it's you know I don't know if it's ever gonna launch and whatnot Well, that was kind of the same thing when we're you know Getting up to to main net because that seemed like a huge thing that was way way out in the distance But of course we did launch

And so after we launched, I negotiated a few deals. I was, um, so myself and, uh, John O 'Connor, who's actually the director of the African operations now at IOG, uh, negotiated the Bittrex listing, which was the first listing of Cardano and a centralized exchange. Um, and so at that point that the sales, uh, the, the pre -sale app was kind of wrapping up because the pre -sale was over.

I changed into more of a commercial capacity in the company and I essentially started the commercial arm of IOG. And the entire commercial operation, I was kind of the first official business developer of IOG. And throughout that time, I've done quite a few things, you know, like say, for example, the sneakers right behind me.

these sneakers behind me there. Yeah, there we go. Those are actually, I believe the first RWA tokenization project that happened on Cardano, which was the New Balance deal, which was a deal that I put together where these sneakers, those are the Kawhi Leonard limited edition sneakers that were tokenized and

Dan Friedman - zenGate (05:36.781)
put on Cardano with the help of Tangent Cards. So basically all the information that's the authentic, the authenticity information from that sneaker was also imprinted into a Tangent Card. And then so this Tangent Card then was put on chain. And so you registered. So these sneakers are actually on chain. I don't wear them because they're size 15, but still they're there to remind me of like one of the first really cool deals that I was able to be a part of.

Travis John (05:58.638)
Yeah.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (06:06.701)
Um, also worked in Georgia. Um, so, um, I originally, you know, went to Georgia in 2018 when it wasn't the thing. Um, and that kind of opened up and then brought Cardano out there with the help of some partners on the ground, um, working.

various different capacities at IOG and of course about two years ago decided that it was time for me to just kind of, you know, do my own thing. So I started ZenGate and I was always really passionate about working in emerging economies. And it was also very, very into kind of real world use cases, you know, not hypothetical, not theoretical, not, okay, well maybe you build it, they will come, but you know,

finding a solution for a problem, not finding a problem for a solution to solve, which is something that is prevalent in our industry. So this is where the idea for Palmyra came up because I was just kind of also, I mean, I don't want to kind of go into the negative here, but it was also born out of somewhat of frustration with the industry because,

Travis John (07:04.142)
All right.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (07:23.213)
You know, we often hear in this industry that's like, oh, we're early, we're early, we're early. And that's an excuse to just screw around and not really, you know, not, not really go for it with these technologies and really trying to make businesses out of them, you know, which is what you really need for this technology to be, you know, mass adopted. And so that's what I said. Well, you know what? We got the technology enough. Okay. Enough is enough.

We have enough technology to make a difference. We can do it. Okay. We just need to use a good business case. We need to create a business. We need to find a problem that can be solved that needs this solution. Well, basically know that this, the problem that we're looking at needs this solution. And the problem is of course, where's the underserved markets. And what I saw from my work in developing economies markets, like the wine market.

like the coffee market, tea market, all these are huge commodity fields, multi -billion, multi -billion dollars. And still they're underserved because they don't have the same access as say, gold and silver would to finances, to volume, to technologies, to just, you know, what actually our friends from World Mobile call Swiss cheese.

That's what it boils down to. There's gaping holes in access that a lot of these commodities lack. And that's where the idea for Palmyra came in, which is what we're building. And that basically brings us to today. And what we're building is a tokenized commodities trading platform utilizing the Ergo and Cardano blockchains.

Travis John (08:56.526)
Nice.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (09:12.173)
And of course, ergo is another ecosystem that I work with and I have been a part of for several years. And of course it's, uh, you know, it's an amazing ecosystem on its own. And plus it's also very synergistic with, uh, with, uh, what we, uh, or, you know, I've been a part of in Cardano, um, as, you know, and obviously our communities are very much in a row. And so, um, both ecosystems are real, real close to my heart and I'm building in both ecosystems and you know, our, my company is building in both ecosystems.

So it's just a really exciting time for us to be able to really kind of be the forerunners of a lot of this technological adoption, you know, where we believe, we strongly believe that we have the technology, we strongly believe that EUTXO is the way to go for things like tokenization and traceability, digital credentials, on -chain certifications, on -chain warehouse receipts, and all these different things. Decentralized trade financing, all these different things are great on EUTXO.

Travis John (09:41.966)
Yep.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (10:11.757)
So yeah, we're just going for it where we made a business out of it.

Travis John (10:15.278)
Yeah, I love that. Kudos for that for sure. And I think the thing I'll point out, I just kind of bring some of the listeners up to speed too from a lot of people that maybe aren't native to Cardano. And as we know, the future is multi -chain. So coming into this and realizing like from IOHK is input output, Hong Kong, one of the originating foundations essentially of Cardano and started in Japan, if I'm not mistaken. So, you know, that...

It was an interesting background of how Cardano got started for those who didn't know that. But I think also to point out to your work in Georgia, Georgia, the country, that involved a lot of the traceability of wine and commodities that led you to where you are today. Like you mentioned, just going here and I think clearly the real world applications, and that's my passion too, is solving problems that exist, not creating...

casinos or speculation machines. The technology is there, the business problems are there, and projects like yours are connecting the dots, which is great. And I agree. The Swiss cheese analogy is a great way to think about how disconnected and how RWA projects can connect or make that cheese whole. So I'd love to talk a little bit.

transition here into the Palm Economy and what you're doing with commodities and really what this project looks like because obviously that's really why people are tuning in here is to kind of learn about how they can get involved in not only supporting the local businesses on the ground, which you guys are doing, but also how this is connecting into DeFi and the real world applications of this.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (12:07.437)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let's get into that. And so to really understand where the Palm Economy comes in, you have to understand the the Palmyra ecosystem. So the Palmyra ecosystem consists of three pillars. The first one is, of course, the Palmyra platform, the the the tokenized commodity trading platform, which is actually live now at Palmyra .app. And so the second pillar is the Palm Economy, which is

essentially the financial bedrock of the Palm, the Palmyra ecosystem. The third one, of course, is the Palm DAO, which is the decentralized business development treasury that we've designed to really, to really kind of nourish and utilize community involvement in the project, which we've enjoyed so much thus far.

Um, and this is not just community kind of saying, yay, you guys are awesome. You know, you guys, we love what you guys do, but actually getting involved in saying, Hey, I know an opportunity in this country, you know, and I think this is a great ownership commodity to put to put on, uh, Palmyra. And so, uh, up until now, and of course, you know, in, in, in. Go going forward, we would engage with everybody and say, okay, yeah, that's a great opportunity or actually, you know what, maybe that's not very.

synergistic with what we're doing, it would of course would explain why and you know, and, um, but still the community wants to do business with us and we love that. And so, um, the reason for the Palm DAO is to encourage that. So the, essentially the Palm DAO would work in a way like Catalyst does where people would submit a proposal, uh, that proposal would get voted on. And if they, if the community feels that this proposal would synergistic with what the Palmyra does, um,

in the Palmyra ecosystem, it would get funded and they can do their own business, right? They can do business that would bring volume and traffic into the Palmyra ecosystem. However, the Palm Economy in itself is a really unique vehicle. And so, of course, at the heart of it is the Palm Token. And so the Palm Token has various different utilities, right? So the first and...

Dan Friedman - zenGate (14:32.941)
very kind of cool you know I'm really kind of proud of this one is the the staking and burning mechanism and so the way it works is so this is a deflationary model but the way it works is

The Palm Economy constantly gets capital infusion from the Palmyra platform. And so what happens is the Palmyra platform actually just utilizes fiat. It doesn't utilize crypto for payments, which is, you know, I mean, there's various different reasons, regulations, barriers of entry and so on. And so we want to make sure that the platform is usable now, not in 10 years when there's actually clear regulation for

Travis John (15:17.262)
Right. Yeah, and we'll get into that. Yeah, keep going. But yeah, we'll...

Dan Friedman - zenGate (15:18.637)
for cryptocurrency. Yeah, and so the transaction fees that happen on the Palmyra platform are on fiat. Now, a portion of the transaction fee gets converted into Palm. So basically what we do is we take a portion of that transaction fee, go and purchase Palm on the market, on just the regular market, and then distribute this Palm as rebates to the stakers.

And so essentially, number one, you're helping to scale the platform. Number two, constantly getting fresh capital infusion into the economy, meaning that there's always new capital coming in. So there's no stagnant mass in there that might or might not be sustainable. And of course, if you're a producer, you can then offset your transaction fees by staking the token. So great.

a great set of utilities. Another one that's really cool is the Oracle incentives system. And so the way it works is we created this robust Oracle incentive structure to be able to accommodate a robust Oracle network. And so what that means is,

This particular platform requires all different types of oracles, the pricing oracles, IoT oracles and off -chain data oracles, oracles that can do proof of reserve, oracles that can do proof of origin, all these different things. And it's not just the same thing. It's all these different things that need to happen to be able to really optimize the traceability and tokenization process. And so for that,

We need to utilize several different Oracle solutions. And so the first one is, of course, the Oracle solution that was designed by our token our tokenomics partners, 0 .1x, which is a very unique bespoke Oracle solution that utilizes slashing to make sure that the data that's going on chain is quality. We're also in talks with Chainlink that utilize CCIP.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (17:39.181)
and their proof of reserve protocol. And we're also looking at Ergo Oracle's as well for utilizing them in various different use cases. So that's also a very big part of the platform because of course, you know, your traceability is only as good as your data. And so, yeah, I mean, that's the palm Economy in a nutshell and it's very exciting to be able to deploy something like this.

Travis John (18:05.998)
I love that. So I think it'd be great to even back up then from the origin, pun intended from traceability of talking about the platform itself and really how this works, what commodities are you focusing on first or what do you already have set up and really kind of more of the visual aspect of how people are going to see this go through the pipeline here.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (18:34.669)
Right, so right now, the first commodity, our pilot commodity was Ceylon tea. So that's what we specialized on. And from there on, we expanded to other tea growing regions and other types of tea. After which we onboarded other commodities like Ceylon cinnamon or spices. We also onboarded some Zambian and honey.

We're onboarding Greek olives and Greek olive oil as well. Later on in the year, we're also going to be onboarding Turkish hazelnuts. We're also speaking to semi -precious stone producers and miners that are also looking to utilize the platform. So yeah, there's a variety of commodities that are available there right now, and we're constantly expanding on these commodities.

Travis John (19:25.646)
Nice. And as you mentioned, I mean, this is where the DAO comes in because obviously, they can help point out or even help verify interest in new commodities as well as vote on them. And I do like how you kind of explain the structure point of the DAO where it's a lot more like the culture catalyst format that Cardano uses where it's not a definitive DAO, which in most cases isn't.

always, you know, doesn't always work with corporate investments or institutional investments because, you know, the DAO isn't necessarily the end all, beat all answers to everything, but they are driving a lot of the momentum and decisions and they're an influencer of decisions, which is great. I think that's helpful because as you mentioned, it's a community aspect here, but I do think that's where I'm sure I'm curious to hear what you've heard from your community about.

new commodities and how that's even related to anything you've adopted so far.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (20:31.693)
Um, yeah, I mean there there's there's quite a bit. Um, I mean, of course, we're talking to coffee producers and then people wanting to onboard coffee. Um, Cocoa is another one from Ghana and, um, there's another, I forgot which other there's a there's another region that's also famous for cocoa. I think Argentina says something like that.

Travis John (20:45.454)
Yeah.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (20:58.221)
And yeah, so another one is actually coffee from Honduras. That's another one that we're working on right now.

Travis John (21:09.006)
Yeah, one coffee as you know coffee and cocoa are are going to be competing with gold prices the way it's going they're increasing so I can imagine

Dan Friedman - zenGate (21:15.405)
Oh yeah, and they're highly underserved. These commodity fields are highly underserved. They require this type of solution, so that's why I'm really excited about going into them. So another one is of course, semi -precious stones, various types of stones that are...

Not your typical gold, silver and diamonds, right? Could be jade, could be amethyst, could be a variety of different stones that could also go on the platform. And of course, in this case, you have sustainability and the ESG requirements that are also going to be met with utilizing traceability and tokenization. Another one that we're actually really interested in looking into is carbon credits.

and carbon offset. And so this is also a field that really requires a lot more scrutiny as far as auditing goes of data, just to making sure that these carbon credits are not misused or they're actually real.

Travis John (22:07.246)
Yeah.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (22:31.597)
So that's also something that we're looking at. So again, like I said, all these are coming from the community. So like I said, there's quite a bit of business coming our way from the community, which is, like I said, which is the reason for the Palm DAO.

Travis John (22:45.358)
Yeah. I mean, and your holders are all over the world. So it's great. They have nothing better than boots on the ground that are saying, hey, this is what I'm seeing in my area. This is where demand might be and may even know suppliers as well. So I think just a quick pivot on this, I think what would be interesting and obviously part of the goal of my show is to reach other people outside of, as you know, real world assets and tokenization is in many ways kind of

non -crypto because there's still a crypto component as a token, but it's less speculative and less related to on -chain activity only. It's tied to real world business models like you mentioned. I always like to just talk through the difference from a simple standpoint of if somebody was investing in commodities today through the standard methods,

How is this different and better to use the Palmyra platform and the ecosystem that you've created? Obviously, I know a lot of those answers, but I'd love to point that out to listeners that really kind of understand the breadth and the impact that this makes.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (24:07.501)
Yeah, so, and that's a great question because I think there's also kind of this lack of understanding exactly what commodities are and how they're traded and why they're traded, right? So of course there's the, you know, people are looking for the upside. That's why they trade. Why do they trade anything? You know, they want the bigger the better, right? It's always the bigger the better.

And it's the same for commodities. And, you know, in the traditional sense, you trade commodities, you trade futures contracts for commodities, which are basically, you know, contracts for a certain lot, commodities lot that that project, you know, prices for, you know, going into going into the next quarter, the next two quarters or whatnot, forward contracts, which are also specific to lots.

You know, there's, you can trade derivatives. You can, there's all these different things, right? Now, mostly you do that with gold and with silver, potentially with, you know, wheat, maybe, you know, but coal or something like that, right? But commodities like tea are actually difficult to categorize and trade using traditional means because,

You can't just say, I mean, you can say gold, right? Gold is LBMA gold. So LBMA standard 99 .9 % pure gold. That's what's on all the commodity trading platforms, unless it says otherwise, unless it says something like Thai gold, which is 96 .5 % purity. But for the most part, if you see gold on commodities index, it's LBMA gold.

And that's because gold is gold, it's just about the purity, it's not about the type, right, necessarily. Where with tea, well, you can't just say this is tea, right? You have to say, okay, so, you know, I mean, you got your Tokucha is different from your Ceylon price -wise as well. It's different from your Oolong, different from your other, you know, your other green teas. I mean,

Dan Friedman - zenGate (26:24.941)
They're just varieties. And so while the traditional markets cannot accommodate them, we can through the use of fractional baskets, through the use of just basically commodities baskets that we can now aggregate through the use of smart contracts and tokenization. And also just create easier subsets for these commodities to be traded against.

So it essentially gives the opportunity for people to get into commodity fields that were not available for them before to get into, to speculate on, or to even take physical delivery on because most of our actual, our spot buying and selling right now is physically settled. So people are not only buying the tokenized asset, they're consuming the tokenized asset. Like tea, for example.

So, and that's, that's, that's very cool because, um, and even in traditional commodity fields, what you have is the ghost lot scenario where you could have a contract representing a lot of say, you know, iron ore or something like that. Right. But then when you actually, if you want to go and collect on the contract and you want to take delivery, it does that, that it might turn out of that.

or doesn't actually exist. So you're trading a phantom. With what we're doing, that's not going to happen. You have traceability attached to this. So you know that this really does exist. So essentially, you're de -risking yourself if you're a trader. If you're actually buying to consume this product, again, you're de -risking yourself because you have all this different documentation, all these different proofs showing where the product is from so that...

When you're buying Ceylon tea, you know it's Ceylon tea. It's not some, you know, it comes from Sri Lanka. It comes from a plantation in Sri Lanka. Does it come from someplace in India that says, oh yeah, by the way, this is also Ceylon, which it can be. So all of these things are important, you know, and all these things kind of give provide new opportunities for people, for traders, for buyers and sellers to engage in and to take advantage of.

Travis John (28:47.054)
Right. And this is really where the future is going, not just from the RWA aspect, but I think people that obviously want traceability, they realize that the supply chain around a lot of goods and services they purchase, I mean, United States is horrible. It claims to be the best, but the quality, so many things are illegal in other countries that producers are allowed to put chemicals and things in the United States as you know. But the...

Traceability of things is important, but I do believe that just a brand, people really want to believe in certain, they believe in certain products and they want to know that it's authentic. And I think that's where the traceability comes in. But I also think that's where people vote with their dollars. And I think this is a way, like you mentioned, is it opens up a whole different opportunity to put your money to work for you, for things you believe in and things you know have.

traceability factor to them. And I do like how you called it the Palm Economy because ultimately, you're creating an entire Economy which also involves new investors, clearly. I mean, it's not just the typical investors, as you mentioned, and I think that was a great point, is the typical commodities investors are investing in the things that are gold, diamonds, a few things that are very specific, categorized.

and have certifications related to them. But almost all of the other commodities are not traced at any level, any accurate level at this point.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (30:26.797)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There is a big gap even in the mainstream commodities trading field with actual accountability and traceability for the existence of these commodities. And again, this is why what we're offering is so important because this kind of solution is not just synergistic with emerging markets and underserved commodities, but it's also relevant for commodities that are mainstream.

Yeah, it's very important and it is a big problem for the commodities field right now.

Travis John (31:00.142)
So I agree. And the producers that you have, for example, how are you sourcing them? What kind of impact so far? I know this is early for your team and the project, but from the producer's standpoint, say from Ceylon Tea or Cinnamon, what kind of impact is this having so far? And how are they, what's their feedback?

Dan Friedman - zenGate (31:22.925)
You know what, so far the feedback has been magnificent. They're very into what we're doing. Simply because it brings them access, it brings them exposure, which they cannot get by themselves because they just don't have that access. They don't have the opportunity to get worldwide exposure. The way we source our producers is through...

course through our connections, we, when we actually say, for example, when we went into Sri Lanka, we started what's called the middle out approach. So we started working with the SROs and the MBOs. And of course the government agencies to really understand and to kind of sink our teeth into the industry. And from these connections, we got connected to producers and people that are willing to participate in.

in the ecosystem and we started onboarding these producers. Now I believe we have something like 20 different producers that have been onboarded. And this is not just tea. This is like I said, this is everything. This is spices. This is honey. Soon is going to be rubber as well because one of the producers also does rubber coffee. Yeah. And so again, it's right now it's a very personal and manual process for us. We do it one at a time.

We KYC the producers one at a time. And all our producers are KYC'd on our platform. So once they start utilizing the platform, you know that these are not just somebody who just came off the street. These are trusted parties that are utilizing the platform.

Travis John (33:07.694)
Yeah, and then that's incredible. What about the on -site boots on the ground process? What does that look like from what the producer has to follow to comply with this traceability?

Dan Friedman - zenGate (33:15.789)
Ahem.

 Yes, so So what they would have to do is utilize what we call Palmyra Pro which is a mobile app that helps them with logging and cataloging their traceability cycle and this is not something that we kind of forced on them a lot of them already do this in fact pretty much all of them already do this they catalog You know picking times picking days amounts

than the processing, drying, curing, all this stuff. It's actually pretty meticulously cataloged. Now, it is done currently on paper a lot of times. It's done on paper. There's like a sheet. Somebody fills out and then passes on to the next person. They fill it out and pass it on to the next person. What we did was we digitized that. And so now they're utilizing the Palmyra Pro app for doing what they were doing manually on paper.

And then only are they getting us the information, they're also using it for their own record keeping. So it's kind of like a win -win situation. And of course, like I said, we're going to be utilizing oracles for on -off chain data validation right now. Of course, we have a centralized oracle, which is us. But going forward and...

getting into more volume, we're going to decentralize it with all these various different solutions.

Travis John (34:52.59)
Yeah. And obviously you're, you're curating a data warehouse that's, uh, that it's also, uh, valuable, you know, over time, the amount of data that you're collecting is, uh, is incredible for, uh, for this. Like you mentioned, each of these suppliers now have maybe a better process, more digital process, but for what you're bringing on chain, uh, it's also just something that I think other companies will, will look at you as, uh, as a source of, of truth on certain commodities in the future.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (35:23.309)
Yeah. And that's, that's what we were kind of hoping to be. Um, not only are we looking to, to be a B2B provider, but we're also looking to be a solutions provider, um, which is essentially what a hub and spoke commodities exchange does, or really commodities exchanges do, you know, because you think that commodities exchanges, somebody who just kind of, you know, runs price tickers and the, you know, has people on the floor yelling, buy, buy, or sell, sell, sell. And it's not, um, for, for the most part, a,

Commodities exchange, which we are not, but we are striving to be and we're looking to get licensed to be. What commodities exchanges do is they provide solutions to the producer, they provide solutions to the buyer and everybody in between. They're solutions providers. And that's essentially what we are. We're solutions providers. We're providing solutions for the various different issues that...

already exist in the industry. And a lot of time by solving these issues, we actually solve two or three issues at the same time by bringing, bringing one solution that really is so, so, so needed in the industry.

Travis John (36:35.342)
Yeah, and you're democratizing investment, which is great too. You're opening up a new investment class to assets and commodities that haven't been available in the past, but also to anybody that wants to spin up a wallet and invest. I mean, it's much easier than getting a brokerage account and all the things that might be involved in trading traditional commodities today. Yeah.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (37:00.173)
Absolutely. Yeah, it's about all about lower barrier of entry. That's what we're about.

Travis John (37:03.918)
 for sure. So I think it'd be a good transition to maybe just chat a bit more about the Palm token, the Palm Economy, kind of project timelines. What I know you had a, I believe it was your first Launchpad event on T -minus -one, which is a Launchpad partner. And I know that sold out very quickly. So maybe chat a bit about that and just kind of talk more about the...

as we transition to kind of the investor conversation of how this is democratizing it. And we did talk a bit about what the Palm token does and the utility of it. But I think just kind of talking about your project timelines and other opportunities to get involved in the project.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (37:50.829)
Yeah, yeah. So the Palm Economy has been having a tremendous month. We had a really small idea on a platform called VLaunch, which is actually a Binance platform that, of course, we use our tokens on, but that's going to bridge the tokens to Binance, which is actually very interesting because now we're going to have tokens on various different chains, right? So we're going to have on BNB, we're going to have them on Cardano. Of course, they're native to Cardano, but...

or they will be native to Cardano when they're available. Also, they are going to be available on Ergo through Rosen Bridge. And of course, later on when Rosen comes out with the EVM bridge, they'll be available on the EVM side. So again, it's all about just kind of giving variety for incentives because that's pretty much what it's about. It's about incentives and scaling the ecosystem. Yeah. And the...

The T-minus -one IDOs were fantastic. We couldn't believe how fast these things sold out because we allocated five days for the last one and it sold out within half a day. And in fact, when you put them all together, because there were three stages, there was the RS -ERG stage, the early eight around that was attainable through that.

special NFT that we had and the general round and all those rounds put together sold out in under 24 hours, something like 17 hours. And we allotted five days for the whole thing. So it went fantastic. Um, so going forward right now, we actually have a private sale happening. And so the, the, the whole point of the IDO, which was the initial distribution offering, it was the community round was to give the community early access, right? So early access, even before the private rounds is sort of like the.

special community seed round that we did. And so now we have the private round happening after which we're going to have the public round happening. And that's after that we actually launched the token. We are looking probably at the end of May, early June for launching the token. We're also...

Dan Friedman - zenGate (40:14.541)
finalizing with two very nice centralized exchanges for listing. That's going to happen pretty much immediately after the launch. We also have two really big Cardano DEXs that are really ready to work with us, which are Min Swap and Wi -Fi. And so we're, of course, looking forward to working with them as well.

Yeah, yeah, just going forward. I mean, we're just keep on pushing, you know, and getting that volume up on Palmyra so that these rebates keep happening and happening and the Palm Economy just keeps growing and growing.

Travis John (40:56.078)
Perfect plan, it's being executed so far. So I definitely commend you and the team for that. Anything we missed as we're wrapping up? Sounds like we're within a month or so, 45 days of the Token Generation Event and public launch. And we'll obviously keep up with your progress and the success and share this with the audience as we do this as well. We certainly can have you back or someone on the team.

at some point as you continue to evolve the platform and after the token is live.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (41:30.253)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think we covered it pretty well. It's just very exciting for us, for the team right now. It's very keeping everybody's morale really high because the community is so engaged and they showed us, you know, they came out and forced a, you know, we were thinking, I mean, of course, you know, when you're doing an IDO, when you're doing any kind of raise, there's always this thing in the back of your mind. I mean, as sure as you are in yourself, it's always like, you know, like,

something could go always can go wrong. It could be like a black swan event, you know, I don't know, Godzilla could strike, you know, King Kong, whatever, you know, just, there's always stuff in the back of your mind. And then when something like this happens, when the community says, Whoa, we got you, you know, and they come out and then they just scoop this stuff up. It really validates what we've been doing. You know, it really kind of makes us feel that yes,

We have been doing it right. We are in the right track. We're going to keep doing it. We're going to keep bringing it. And it just really puts a lot of energy into the team for us to keep pushing and keep making this happen and really just makes it real for us as well. Because, you know, some people just might not have this understanding and some do. The understanding of the process between ideation and realization.

So something where you take it from idea to reality and on a large scale, right? On a project, for example, you know, first you start thinking about the project, right? And this project in your mind seems to be this like vast thing, right? And then months or years later, if you stick to it, if you develop it, if you push it, when it actually becomes a reality,

Sort of like what Card, how Cardano was, you know, I mean, in our minds and, you know, early 2016, it was still like this thing that if we make it is going to be awesome. But it was still just a little bit of that if right. If, or not just if, but when, and that when we just, well, is it going to be when like soon or when like we're going to keep waiting for it. And finally somebody's going to say, okay, let's just flip the switch and just get it, get it done. It's going to be one of those.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (43:49.069)
And so when you get to that point, when you flip the switch and it is done, or you flip the switch and it starts working, it's an indescribable feeling. And this is why I always thank the community for the support that they've given us, the push, the morale. And yeah, it just...

Like I said, I always say that we will not fail you. We'll keep doing what we're doing. And what you've done so far to support us that only validates that, you know, we are on the right track and that we are doing something that matters. And so that's, that's very important. And yeah, definitely. I would love to be back on the show, Travis, and get some of the other, the other, my, the other people on my team on here and, um,

Yeah, we can converse further. We can do an update once everything launches and see where we're at that point. So I think that would be a good time to maybe have a revisit.

Travis John (44:57.582)
Yeah, I love that Dan. I think just to recap to what you said I think what we talked about from the very beginning is a perfect thing to draw back to is your reputation in the industry as a whole but also within the Cardano community, you know, obviously says a lot about the turnout for the community support I think in some ways but as you mentioned and why my passion is on RWA projects is going from idea from the idea to reality is

A little more, you know, the dots are a little clearer as, as you know, uh, you did one of the most, uh, difficult tasks in, in being an origin team of Cardano because, you know, the technology wasn't all there yet. The reality of that wasn't all there. I do think there's a significantly, uh, better opportunity to succeed just because the community understands at least half of what you're doing. You know, not everyone understands.

all the oracles that you're building and the technology marvel that's happening under the hood, but realizing that they can now invest and participate in a community that is handling traceable, rare commodities that you can't get anywhere else in this kind of managed ecosystem. I think that's always step one, and I think that's great. And I think the Cardano community, for example, I think...

everybody's been looking for these real world application projects. So you really built the right thing at the right time. And I'm seeing other projects. And as you know, I've talked to other projects that are doing the same thing on Cardano and other chains. And this is a great time. I think as we fast forward the next five years, we'll see just an amazing impact from projects like yourself. So yeah, definitely the invite's there for you to come back or the team and really excited about the next.

60 days as you move into full launch.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (46:55.693)
I appreciate that Travis and really looking forward to coming back and kind of giving you more success stories.

Travis John (47:01.806)
Perfect. Enjoy your day. Thanks, Dan.

Dan Friedman - zenGate (47:05.069)
Thanks a lot.

Travis John (47:06.926)
Cheers.