Ishan Pandey: Hi Siraaj, welcome to our "Behind the Startup" series. You've built your career in fintech startups before entering the Web3 space. What specific experiences from traditional fintech shaped your vision for Byrrgis, and what was the moment you realized the DeFi space needed a platform like Byrrgis? Ishan Pandey: Siraaj Ahmed: Thank you for having me on the series, I'm excited to share more about Byrrgis with you. As you mentioned, my career has been defined through a variety of fintech startup experiences, and through those I was able to see the benefits and weaknesses of fintech and TradFi as a whole. There was such a large barrier to entry for the average investor, and so much of the necessary insight was hidden away, or chaotically scattered. That investor doesn't need to understand algorithms and complex ratios. They have an idea of their risk appetite, and they want to invest in a way that supports this. They want transparency, trust, and they want a simple interface. Siraaj Ahmed: I saw that as Web3 evolved, it offered this possibility for the average investor to get rid of the intermediaries, brokers, and other fee-driven barriers. It has such tremendous promise, but Web3 came with its own problems. We decided then that there was more work to be done in DeFi before experts and newcomers alike could really experience the simplicity, transparency, and trust they should expect when investing. Ishan Pandey: Byrrgis was founded to address what you call "one of crypto's greatest challenges" - the flood of scams and rug pulls. Many platforms claim to solve trust issues, but you recently made headlines by freezing 57% of the $WOLF token supply for two years. Walk us through the decision-making process behind this move, and why you believe this "zero trust security overhaul" was necessary even before your platform launched. Ishan Pandey: Siraaj Ahmed: The decision to freeze the 570 million tokens might have been shocking to many, it was straightforward to us. It's simple: talk is cheap, but actions define who you are. Freezing over half the token supply for two years was an easy way for us to show just how serious Byrrgis is about creating trust, being transparent, and eliminating any doubt that the community might have with a typical platform. Siraaj Ahmed: It was a blessing, really, because a simple action like that conveyed a stronger message than we ever could through conferences, expos, and advertising. Byrrgis is here for the long term, and Byrrgis is here for the community. Freezing the tokens simply aligned our mission with the investors: when they benefit, we benefit. Ishan Pandey: The concept of "curated packs" sits at the heart of Byrrgis. These aren't static bundles but dynamic portfolios that users can reconfigure after purchase. What were the key technical and philosophical challenges in designing a system that balances pre-vetted security with post-purchase flexibility, and how does this differ from traditional index funds or existing crypto portfolio products? Ishan Pandey: Siraaj Ahmed: The idea of a wolf pack really is at the core of what Byrrgis is. There is strength in numbers, and each part of the pack brings its own value and risk. Together, the pack has a much more predictable risk/reward profile. The pack also evolves over time, and must be dynamic. Siraaj Ahmed: For us, creating the packs presented several key challenges. Pre-vetting each token is harder than it sounds, as the team must think first and foremost about the community members relying on our judgement. There are tokens that are obviously not suitable to be included, and others that are high quality. It's finding truth in that gray area where a token shows great promise but we don't have a full picture of its risks. We make the choice to protect our users, but we challenge ourselves daily to get better and better at maximizing the promising tokens without letting in undue risk. The key difference between our packs and traditional indexes or other crypto products is that the job never ends for us. Selecting and offering packs is the first step, and we continue to evaluate and tweak every pack as it evolves in order to make sure it maintains its intended risk/reward profile. Ishan Pandey: You've described Byrrgis as having "group-based portfolio logic" where multiple strategies can run simultaneously within the same pack. For readers unfamiliar with this concept, can you explain how a user might practically use this feature, and what problems does this solve that simple diversification cannot? Ishan Pandey: Siraaj Ahmed: The group-based portfolio logic is key to the Byrrgis mission. We've set up our packs to take away as much complexity as possible for users who want to invest in vetted tokens, understand the portfolio risk of a given pack, and know that the pack will continue to be curated by experts. However, for those investors who want more control over their portfolios, we provide several powerful tools that are straightforward but create maximum customization. By having the freedom to regroup assets in a pack, users can select different strategies for each group and even set up automated rules for a group to follow. In other words, they can "set it and forget it," or they can tweak their investment as much as they'd like. Siraaj Ahmed: Ishan Pandey: Byrrgis integrates trading across both centralized and decentralized exchanges on multiple chains starting with Solana, Ethereum, and Base. Many projects struggle with true multi-chain functionality. What technical infrastructure did you build to make this seamless, and how do you maintain security standards across different blockchain architectures? Ishan Pandey: Siraaj Ahmed: Because Byrrgis offers not just trading tools but a one-stop-interface between investors and the Web3 market, taking away the complexity of this was critical for the platform to truly be functional for the user. We wanted the user to be unaware of just how complex it is to reach different chains, to have access to both centralized and decentralized markets, and for all of this to be presented within a simple window. Siraaj Ahmed: Becoming truly multi-chain was no small task, and our team of brilliant architects have spent many, many hours building up the different tools and integrations needed to connect across chains. From MPC, routing and bridging to 550+ partners, market aggregation, automation, monitoring, auditing, and all of it transparent enough to ensure a path to regulation. The Byrrgis whitepaper outlines it in more detail than we can here, but the key takeaway is this: It's no surprise that many projects fail to become multi-chain. It's incredibly hard, complicated, and you need the right people to put in countless hours to make it work. We've done it and are incredibly proud of the accomplishment. Ishan Pandey: You're proactively pursuing EU licensing rather than waiting for regulatory pressure. This is unusual in the Web3 space where many platforms try to remain in regulatory gray areas. What strategic advantages do you see in early compliance, and how does this affect your ability to compete with less regulated competitors who might offer features you cannot? Ishan Pandey: Siraaj Ahmed: As with everything we've done, our actions give away who we really are. We've locked supply to show that we aren't here for a quick profit. We've invested massively into creating a truly multi-chain platform. And when it comes to regulation, we will be here long after the regulatory pressure increases. Instead of waiting for it or being resistant, as other platforms are, we want to be part of the solution and help to write our own future with regulators. After all, regulation is meant to protect the community. We want that as well. Siraaj Ahmed: Regulation can also be heavy handed, cumbersome, and inadvertently harm the community. By getting out in front of it and opening our doors to those who will make the decisions, we can help ensure the regulations are fair, protect investors, and aren't overly burdensome. If our competitors want to focus on the short term, they might be able to squeeze out a little more profit for now. But we are here for our users, for the long term. Ishan Pandey: The $WOLF token serves as the utility backbone of your ecosystem, with revenue flowing back through buybacks, liquidity growth, and marketing. Many utility tokens struggle to maintain value or find themselves classified as securities. How did you design $WOLF's tokenomics to avoid these pitfalls, and what lessons from your fintech background influenced this design? Ishan Pandey: Siraaj Ahmed: Setting up $WOLF as the backbone for Byrrgis was accomplished by a few key decisions. We wanted the token to help drive our packs, and as such it is included as a component for them all. This helps build up the utility and circulation, but as the platform expands the token will serve as a form of "risk ballast" for each pack, helping to stabilize any volatility by anchoring it to $WOLF which will hold more and more predictable growth. Siraaj Ahmed: The other element to increasing the $WOLF token's utility was using it as a key mechanism for giving back to the community. Some portions of the token earn different rewards, and the top holders of the token are also incentivized. The fees from the platform help to ensure the treasury can continue providing excellent service, but it also uses these fees to directly reward and encourage the Byrrgis community. The key lesson here is the same reason we have frozen so much of the token supply. If you align your incentives with the good of the users, everyone will work toward the same goals and share the rewards. Ishan Pandey: Finally, looking at the broader DeFi landscape, what do you see as the next major breakthrough that will drive mass adoption - whether it's technical innovation, regulatory clarity, or something else entirely? And conversely, what narrative or trend in DeFi today do you think is holding the industry back from reaching mainstream users? Ishan Pandey: Siraaj Ahmed: There are a number of baseline requirements preventing mass adoption, and we as an industry have to fix them before we can even develop the next major breakthrough. Regulation is critical for all sides to reduce the uncertainty of Web3 as a whole. Platforms, through regulation or their own policies, must step up to their communities and practice unwavering transparency and trust. Without these pillars in place, mass adoption simply can't happen. Siraaj Ahmed: That said, once you commit to these ideals, the biggest breakthrough needed is simplicity for the Web3 economy. We've already adopted those users who are willing to read a whitepaper, jump onto a Discord chat, or study notes in a Github repository. We need that ultra simple interface that connects a user with a clean and easy-to-use view of what they can do with Web3. They need to be shielded from the behind-the-scenes mess of bridges, interfaces, centralized or decentralized architectures, and more. That will always be part of Web3, but it's our job to understand it, secure it, access it, and then make it as clean and intuitive as possible. For mass adoption to happen, the average user should be drawn to the value this interface offers, even if they do not understand Web3 at all. Once we accomplish that, we need to be ready for the waves of new users ready to overwhelm the industry—in the best way possible. Don’t forget to like and share the story!

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Byrrgis Founder: "Mass Adoption Won't Happen Until We Fix These DeFi Problems

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