Sebastian Rivera: I came from the world of traditional finance before I went to graduate school at Stanford. Before that, I worked in private equity, family offices, and buy-side investment banking for wealthy individuals across the Americas. In those roles, I also focused on initiatives in Central and South America related to financial inclusion, which really gave me a strong sense of responsibility and ownership regarding how we can help the underserved from our fortunate positions. Then I went to Stanford for grad school and started a company with my fellow classmates—and I’d even call one of them a mentor, Michael Heinrich. We worked together for several years before exiting the company. Through that close relationship, I connected with one of his advisory companies, Vishwa. At Vishwa, we're really focused on making the world of Web3 easier for everyone. Vishwa, which in Sanskrit means universal or all-encompassing, reflects our goal of bringing trust-minimized real yield and payments to the entire ecosystem. That's why we call ourselves the first PayFi channel to real-world assets. This mission also incorporates elements of financial inclusion, which I’m sure we’ll discuss further at some point in this interview.
Sebastian: Good question. So, HyperState Channel is just a Web3 name for a simple concept. It's really a vessel through which we originally allowed only Bitcoin holders, but it's essentially a tool for any crypto holder to leverage the value of their asset without having to surrender it to any centralized third party. In that way, they'll gain exposure to financial returns and, more importantly, real yield—that's our big North Star. Ultimately, it lets you use your Web3 assets and their returns in the real world. We call it a vessel because you bring your asset to our protocol and enter a marketplace where you can find multiple yield opportunities that match your risk appetite.
More importantly, you're doing all this on a decentralized platform, which isn’t widely available in the ecosystem right now. So, it's simply a Web3 term for giving you exposure to multiple yield opportunities, real-world assets, and payments.
Sebastian: So, as you might imagine, a crucial component of our protocol is safety. Our users want their assets to remain untouched in their own UTX, allowing them to leverage Bitcoin Layer 1 security without any custodians involved. That's a big hurdle that we identified in our customer discovery conversations. What we do is guarantee that our users' information and assets are safe through the business decentralization I'm talking about. We're basically distributing authority across network nodes and removing trust dependencies, using cryptographic techniques to ensure that data integrity and authenticity are maintained without any external verification.
But, as you might understand, this data needs to be safely protected and backed up. That's where Vishwa uses 0G for our key-value storage. Essentially, 0G serves as our data backup and, therefore, our redundancy layer, which is critical when handling people's assets in any financial scenario. We really depend on 0G for supporting our security and backup.
Sebastian: So, as I mentioned before, in Vishwa's technical framework, we need to safeguard our users' assets with the utmost security. Before that, we must clearly establish asset ownership, and one critical component for doing so is the asset's preimage. Within our trusted, decentralized protocol, this preimage is sharded to ensure decentralization and eliminate trust dependencies. This information demands high security and timeliness, meaning it must be stored with multiple trusted backups. On that specific point, I believe 0G's technology provides the most substantial support to Vishwa and its users.
Sebastian: Yeah, so we've really grappled with that conundrum—whether we’re just building a protocol or an interface. The answer is that we're more focused on the technology side, building on the protocol without neglecting the business side, which is one of the big lessons we learned from Michael.
To drive adoption, we attract owners of nearly 80% of Bitcoin’s total supply—currently locked in cold wallets and providing no liquidity or market returns. In today's dollars, that's over one trillion dollars in value simply parked in what I call a "safety deposit box." It's an old reference, but it's very fitting.
We can now offer these asset holders secure investment avenues, risk-free returns, and exposure to real-world assets—something they currently lack and, as our customer discovery has shown, really need. While our customer base is diverse, we understand that many Bitcoin holders see their assets appreciating in value without any real way to consume them. We provide this in a truly non-custodial, trust-minimized way, so they don't have to surrender their assets to a centralized party or a black-box solution where they lose agency.
This approach will significantly boost the TVL across both PayFi and DeFi. Through our aggregator marketplace, we deliver wins to all participants—whether they're investors, asset holders, or financial yield protocols. We're bringing in Bitcoin and TVL that remains safely in the owner's UTXO, allowing users to leverage that value, benefit participants across the ecosystem, and ultimately enable payments or consumption of that value. This was my focus in traditional finance—financial inclusion—because I witnessed firsthand how limited access hindered economic growth and livelihoods.
Now, as this translates into the Web3 economy, we believe the new economy must allow everyone to participate. Currently, only about 7% of the global population owns cryptocurrency. We need to help that grow to serve the entire global population. That's why we're focused on integrating Web3 and tokenized value into everyone's daily lives.
Sebastian: So, I'm going to allude to one of my previous answers. As I mentioned, we reached a crossroads in our development during the incubation process—deciding whether to focus solely on building our protocol or to compete as one of the many interface layers in the market. We realized that while we could prioritize one over the other, they are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary parts of our North Star.
As such, we decided to devote our tech efforts to becoming the first trust-minimized real yield and payment gateway to real-world assets. We are razor-focused on building our protocol using state-of-the-art technology and have dedicated our resources accordingly. At the same time, we haven't forgotten about the interface layer; we've also put significant effort into creating and deepening strategic partnerships with yield providers that will grow our brand.
We're forming strategic partnerships with established providers who will participate in our marketplace and offer multiple opportunities for our users to invest their value and grow their assets. Our MVP is our immediate priority on our roadmap, while we simultaneously build our aggregator marketplace partnerships. Although we faced the decision between building just a protocol or an interface, our solution includes both strategic tech development and business partnerships. That's why there's a truly symbiotic relationship between our tech team and our business teams.
Sebastian: Okay, so, for Professor Muriel Medard she basically confirmed that what we're doing through Vishwa is building the rails on which the global financial system should run. We've tried to stick closely to the principles of blockchain, and she mentioned that by creating a fully decentralized community with Vishwa, we're providing that global vision of financial inclusion to everyone. That feedback has been really valuable. She also gave us key insights into our user flow—she's an expert in Web3 optimization and helped us reduce the time to block our users' assets on-chain from three blocks to just one. It's been a great partnership with her, and she's contributed a lot to our team as an advisor.
As for Michael, he's been incredibly important in guiding both our solution and our business strategy. We leveraged his mentorship to build our protocol's business model and in Volkai. He also helped us connect with other founders and solutions in ways we wouldn't have been able to otherwise. His best advice has been not to forget to make our solution and message as simple and digestible as possible—demonstrating how we can transform our space not by one order of magnitude but by a hundredfold. It's a fine balance between building a highly technical solution and communicating it clearly, and Michael has really helped us achieve that.
Sebastian: I think the most valuable resource we leveraged from the incubation program was the high stepping stone that the program's leaders provide to the projects. I'm going to mention specific names here—KJ is particularly noteworthy in how he provides ample exposure to the teams and the incubatees by sharing his network connections. Also, Dafu is extremely generous in supporting and including our project in his promotional activities, campus tours, and road shows without asking much in return. It’s really valuable to see that type of closeness with the incubator leaders.
This generosity is something we don't take for granted and will never forget. Hopefully, once we become the major player in the Web3 ecosystem that we expect to be, we'll be able to support their efforts in growing the value of the companies that go through the incubation process.
Sebastian: We entered the incubation process as a team with a lot of expertise, but we faced hurdles in clearly transmitting our message. The incubator helped us build confidence in our solution to the massive problem of centralization, custody, and lack of transparency in the Web3 world—challenges that are directly opposed to the core principles of the ecosystem. Through various conversations with our mentors and guidance from the incubator’s leaders, we not only learned to trust our instincts but also sharpened our message so we could confidently handle our first, second, third, and all subsequent investor meetings.
This trust is critical, not just in discussions with potential investors but also in our partnership talks. As I mentioned, we’re navigating a double-edged sword where we need to align both supply and demand. The incubator’s support has helped us showcase the trust-minimized nature of our solution, enabling us to move value from our customers into the ecosystem. We’ve been able to engage with ecosystem players who provide yields, and they’ve been eager to share their carry with us. Overall, the incubator has been invaluable in building that trust and helping us tackle the market uncertainties we face.
Sebastian: There's plenty—we’re working really hard, often staying late into the evenings and early mornings. One very important milestone coming in the next few days is our swift move from prototype to MVP. We expect the MVP to be out before the end of the year, which will be a moment of huge pride for the whole team.
This also means that within a quarter, we'll have the main version of our solution ready for public launch. That product launch is our first priority, and it's happening right now. With the release of our solution, we’re expecting an exponential increase in traction—from thousands of Bitcoin locked to tens of thousands locked—thereby providing more value to our ecosystem.
Assuming favorable market conditions continue, we're preparing for a TGE in the early part of the second half of 2025. These product launches and the TGE are the main milestones we're focused on for the coming year, even though we know there will be plenty of challenges along the way.
OnePiece Labs is a premier Web3 accelerator dedicated to supporting mid-stage startups. Through mentorship, networking opportunities, and tailored programs, OnePiece Labs accelerates the growth of promising Web3 projects, shaping the future of decentralized technology.
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