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Welcome to the Chain Stories podcast, the podcast that celebrates disruptors who defy convention. Here, we dive into the bold stories of trailblazers who turned audacious ideas into billion dollar ventures.

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All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another ChainStories podcast. And today I'm very excited to have Jacob Camilleri. Jacob started his journey in crypto a few years back and he's building something very interesting called Sonar. And he's not a sonar for a submarine. It's something much more interesting. Jacob, if you'd like to start and give us a brief intro about yourself. Certainly. So hey guys, I am Jacob. I am the CEO and co-founder of Sonar and I am from the little island of Malta. I come from different areas, honestly. I've worked in the education sector. I've spent more than eight years in the urban planning and architecture sector, I was project manager. I was doing a lot of stuff in different areas. I started both urban planning and then later traditional finance. I got into Bitcoin around 2016 and it was at the time that. I realized, even working a bit from the government side where things are more, bureaucratic and inefficient and so on, you know how it is, right? I realized that DeFi and decentralization in general is probably a solution for all this stuff. So that is where this piqued my interest and I started to look deeper into it and got me into the DeFi and crypto space. Well, that's fascinating. And you mentioned traditional finance and a more traditional background. Was there a catalyst that, that you told yourself, okay, I need to go into crypto. This is super interesting because there's so much uncertainty and volatility, especially from outside of our industry that people portray like this is not safe or not secure. Yeah, look. I'm not going to beat around the bush. The first time I bought a Bitcoin wasn't because I understood it was because, you know, people were making money and I bought some Bitcoin. So it was as simple as that. What's piqued my interest was later, and that is why I explained, you know, I was always frustrating by the bureaucracies and time it took and the inefficiencies of working in, especially in the public sector, more than the private sector. And as I delve more into Bitcoin and what is the decentralized finance and it's kind of struck a chord with me because there are so many solutions you can solve, you know, corruptions and efficiency of all of that can be solved through DeFi in one way or another. So when I realized that, I'm sure I'm not the only one through my nights of research. I'm sure I'm not the only crypto person that spent nights reading about crypto. This is where it piqued my interest and I started to really then delve deep into it and yeah, after a couple of years, I met the others. And that's how we started Sonar actually. It started just as a Telegram group where we wanted to help people integrate in the space, you know, not get scammed, get in safely, understand the basic concepts. And that group quickly grew from 200 people to like 20,000. That is practically our birth story. And initially, what was the intention of this group? Were people there just sharing tips about trading? Was it a alpha group? What were people there for? Look, I'll actually tell you the exact truth of it. This initial, initial group were actually a group of people that had just been scammed. And you know, in order, me and the others were there, we opened this group, these people joined in, and we were just helping them, so this doesn't happen again, it started really innocently, with no intention to, at that moment, to create something big. But as time passed and people started getting in and they loved the way we explained things and the way we're helping people out, we realized, all the things that DeFi was missing, how it's a mess of scattered tools, how accessibility is so difficult, you know, how when someone new comes in and asks a simple question of how can I buy this, how cumbersome it is to get there. And me and my team, that is where we realized we have to do something about it, you know. We have to do something about it. And yeah, that is how it started practically from people getting scammed, funnily enough. And for the people getting scammed, were they coming into the group very frustrated, I don't know what's going on can I get my funds back? And then I leave this space forever. And do you think now that we're in another cycle, there's still a lot of scams, it's something that can change? We're more mature as an industry? Look, it's a hard question to answer. I do believe that, if anything scams have increased in the space. More than reduced. The thing is this, right? Yes, people learn, but there's always new people coming in that are getting the worst brunt of it all, right? And I do believe that that is hampering a lot. The growth, the retail growth of the space because we can all say, yeah, you know, all this bull hype and all of that. Fair enough, it brings a lot of new people into the space, but we are forgetting one very important thing that DeFi has, I believe, 75 to 80% bounce rate, which is insane. And most of that is because of the stuff, you know, because of scams, and similar stuff. The bounce rate is too big. So yes, 10 people get in, but eight people are getting out. How will we reduce that to five, to four to three, you know? I think that's something that people don't realize that, yeah, a lot of people come in, but then they leave. I mean, that's why we have these very tough cycles where we see 90 percent of assets losing value. And regarding Sonar, when you started this community or this group, what inspired you to start this platform and to what the platform does today with something that you imagined at the time that could grow into? Look, yeah, yes and no. At the time, when looking at the team and the people that we had available, I mean, if you look at Mike with his philanthropic background and entrepreneurial background, if you look at Cristiano with his technical background, especially in UI UX, I mean, his one epilepsy of the year and all of that, with my background and advanced experience, when you look at all that and you combine it together, we realize that actually together we can make a difference. And it was spurd on by our community because after some time, after months of this group, we started to love our community. There were people who are, who are there just sharing their experiences, trying to help each other out, and probably the love for our community spurred us on. And their questions made us realize what was missing and spurred us on. I mean, it gave us a mission. Mission to create borderless finance, practically. That is our mission statement, create a world without financial barriers. And in order to do that, you need to have the tools to do that. And currently the tools are not good enough for that. And initially, what was the vision for Sonar? Was it an academy where people could just learn and then they go trade on other protocols or? No, the vision was very similar as it is today. The only difference at the time, three years ago, was that AI wasn't, let's say the technology hadn't caught up yet. So our focus, so obviously the AI was kept under wraps, our AI targets I would say. But in terms of the mission itself, it's always been the same. In terms of the vision of having this unified space and improve accessibility, all of that has always been the same. Just today with the technology of the past 2-3 years has allowed us to execute on that work faster and better. Awesome. And regarding the community, what has the community sort of gave you in terms of feedback that, well, Sonar has this feature that no one else out there has. This is why I love using it and I trust it. I think first of all, this is the user interface and user experience. And that is why I mentioned Cristiano. He is brilliant at the stuff. So that is, I think the first thing that stood out in 2021, even more than today, because in 2021, it was even more, let's say, the user interface was even more horrible than today. But even today, I mean, that is the first thing that people see, you know, it's the first thing that people notice. The other thing is, and I think it's very important, is actually the way we treat our community. We are not just, you know, this company of people that are there separated. We are part of them. I mean we are investors, we are traders. We are people that got scammed people that made the wrong decisions. So in us, I believe most of the community and as they see themselves, and we're just there to represent them through our work, that's the way I see it. That's a very good point. I was actually diving in tokenomics. And when a token goes to the market, and there is a correlation with the UI UX that's built on and users not coming back because in this industry, there's such a poor UX and so much friction. I mean, look, when we're talking about TGE, right, and launch it's true, I mean, when you're talking about TGE, people jump in, people love ICOs, people love all that, you can have sometimes the worst product out there, they'll jump in. But user retention, and this goes back to that bounce rate that we talked about, right? When we're talking about retention, that is where DeFi especially is struggling a lot. And CeFi struggles much less. Because CeFi, even though it's still not great, it still has a much better user experience than DeFi. And in fact, you can see it in their user retention, right? Yeah, for sure. And why do you think this has not happened in our industry yet? Is it because it's just too complex to make a simple UI on certain instances? That is a hard question to answer. I have to admit. I would say that, and that is where we differ from most of the market. It was so easy for a long period of time. It was so easy to just launch a token and launch something, make money, you know, that I would say this descent, the incentivized real builders from building something proper. And of course we weren't like that because we always had this mission to heart, but for most of the developers out there, team leaders out there, you see your friend and your friend, you know, launching a meme coin, launching something small, made a lot of money, he's out. You need to have an internal mission in order to win against that feeling of he got it so easy, why should I go through all that work to give something good to the community when he just made the money and he's out? You know, he took a day of work. So I think the ease by which projects can launch projects can make money has led to the incentivize real builders in this space. I think that really matters. And I keep seeing better and better interfaces, but I think ultimately for the founders listening, a great example is looking at Coinbase. Like they did really well and they have one of the best UX and UI interface in the focus on that, right? True. I mean, look on centralized exchanges in general, it is a better interface overall compared to DeFi. I think access to data has been a problem as well, and that is why we, one of the first thing we did was start to work on our indexing solution. So we'll have our own propriety data. That's actually one thing going back to a question before. That's actually one of the things we didn't have part of the plan at the beginning, because at first, we actually tried to search on the market for reliable fast data across chains and affordable data, not just reliable and fast. We tried and for months we couldn't find real proper reliable data at the time. So that's actually changed our targets and changed a bit our plans. And we build that for ourselves because of the lack of that in the market. Then obviously that data allows you to have, let's say unlimited potential on what you can build up on it. Moving on to the next question. Yeah. You mentioned AI early on and the technology was not ready. And I have entered the Sonar platform and I see this thing in the right bottom of my screen, there's an arbitrage opportunity between Binance and a couple other exchanges. Is this AI powered? Is AI now looking into the entire market into that data fee that you mentioned and seeing where I can profit and potentially yield higher returns. Exactly. So before getting into answering that question, I think it's best to explain a bit how the AI works, right? Or how our AI agents work. So we've got the main language agent, okay? Which is the one, the only one that you converse with. Okay? That is the communication agent. And then that communication agent is connected to, we have right now 25 different agents that give you different types of information. So one agent is connected, for example, to our on chain data. The other agent is connected to, I don't know, data sources, global sources like news and so on. So all of these ages are connected to everything, and then they connect to the language agent, communication agent, which connects to you. Okay. So this makes it easy for the user to only converse with one agent, right? But behind him, you've got a team of 25 wealth managers, you can call them. Now, yes. So one special thing that we have apart from the agent network, is the fact that we're looking at unifying CeFi and DeFi. Right now it's like the market is like two different markets, right? There's the CeFi world and then there's the DeFi world and they don't mix much together. And one of the reason is user experience. So what we're doing is we're unifying that. So you'll be able as a user to look at your combined portfolio, for example, your combined profit and loss. If you're running risk management through our AI or devising trading strategies, the AI is helping you do that. And actually you can execute through the AI itself. The other thing is that the AI is proactive. So it's not just you prompting it like, Hey, can you help me find this or can you help me do that? But the AI is proactive in the sense that let's say, I don't know, a token unlock has come, notifies you, Hey, token unlock is coming. Do you want to reduce your position? Do you want to sell whatever? You say yes. How much, this much? Boom. Execute. Yes. Done. So it has proactively informed you of something that in one way or another may affect the value of the assets in your wallet. And that is something special because most actually AI's that even we have tried out ourselves can't even look at your own wallet, let alone, you know, proactively notify you of stuff. Well, fascinating. And I do think it makes a lot of sense. There's so much information out there. And if an AI model can process that and be sort of like my wealth manager and help make the best informed decisions in the markets can potentially be really interesting. And Jacob diving into the story of yourself as a founder. How was this process of going from working at a government? And then in Web2, and now you are about to potentially launch a token and you launch these sort of SaaS platform, how is it, what would be sort of your advice for the founders listening and thinking about maybe leaving their job in government and starting their own startup? That is a very interesting question. I will answer it honestly. It is not for everyone. It is the truth. So I don't like when people say, you know, like it's all the roses and.. So some people like stability, something that never changes. If you're that kind of person, it is not for you because there are challenges that you will face. You will need persistence, resilience, willpower. You need all that. But then the satisfaction of launching something of succeeding in something, it is something that is obviously massive and massively fulfilling. I believe if you think you really want something like this, you should do it because the regret of never trying is always going to be bigger, but I do understand that it is not for everyone. It is important to add. And something I hear a lot of times is, Oh, having co-founders it's like a marriage. Not sure if you're married, but what are you? Well, yeah, look, even though most of the time they're on the other side of the world, I spend more time with them than I spend with my family, girlfriends. They are the ones you spend the most time with. And yeah, it's a very important to have co-founders that you trust, co-founders that share your values more than anything. And you will get into clashes. I mean, I probably fight with Mike like twice a day. But there's a difference between fighting, you know, arguing about something and then coming to a viable conclusion of what's best way forward and between not being in line in terms of values. So if you share values, if you respect each other, then yes you become family. And you know, probably the most person I fought with in my life is my brother, but I still love him more than anyone. So it's normal, right? That makes sense. What would you suggest the founders listening to pick on a co-founder or to see before engaging, is there sort of a protocol here or should just flow naturally. And now we're in business together. Basically, how do you, how can someone pick a co-founder or the right co-founder? In our case, we already had built a relationship beforehand, right? So before Sonar actually started, we were already for some time, knew each other from the space. We helped each other, we built this group together, you know, that we started. So that does become easier when choosing a co-founder, I have to say. I don't know how I would feel about co founding something with someone I totally don't know. I wouldn't say it's a bad thing because I've never done it. Personally, I believe this helped me a lot, having that bit of prior relationship, but I cannot judge and say, you know, it doesn't work any other way because it's not something I've tried myself. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's fair and honest advice. And for a lot of people listening, I think it's, you have to feel that's the right thing to do. And it's sort of like a marriage, I guess, at the end of the day. Yeah. And how was the process of, okay, you have your founding team, you guys are working, deploying, building, and now going to market, finding partners, investors. How was sort of this journey? Obviously, the building site is exciting. It's interesting. All that is well and good. However, we cannot deny that it was a very hard market for fundraising in the past two years. And now it's better. It's much more, you know, everything is waking up, but there's no denying. I mean when I mentioned you need resilience, you need persistence, you need to continue improving yourself, improving your product, improving everything. Sometimes the world goes through harder times and you don't know exactly when that will happen. You can assume more or less when, but it's not always the case. For sure, personally, it did surprise me, even though I knew because of my knowledge about the space that you know, like bear markets are coming more or less during this time. But I personally, for example, the FTX thing, that was something I did not foresee, of course, and the effect of it was much larger than I ever imagined. But these are things that happen, you know, happen every year or every few years. So you have to be ready for the bad times and that is where in these bull market times, you have to prepare yourself for the worst of it, you know, it's not just right now we're doing all so good. So we're perfect. And then, you know, after a year later, you're dead. And that is something which I'm very proud of that we got through three years of building in a very harsh market. And it came through to smart management, strategy, resilience, willpower, friendship, teamwork, all of that. You guys had moments that let's throw down, put down the towel. It's bear market. There's no traction. There were times, there were times where I wouldn't say there were times where we discussed it, but there were times when you get tired and you start doubting a bit, it happens to everyone, even the strongest most persistent people, right? But the thing is when you have the strength and teamwork, when you have a community that's supporting you, it becomes a only an afterthought I would say. Like something when you're tired that you feel a bit like, Oh my God, why am I doing this? But then you wake up in the morning all fully energized and you're like, yeah, let's get on with it. You know? And now the bull market has officially initiated with Bitcoin surpassing$100,000. What are you the most excited about for Sonar on the roadmap? The launch of the main launch that we have. So we've got obviously the token launch but after that, we've got the main product launch and that for us, after all these years of building for us, it's something. Okay, it's not one event because we'll continue launching stuff and releasing stuff all throughout the year and the next year as we have a five to ten year business plan and everything, but to have that official that you're officially out. That is going to mean a lot for me personally, and I think for the team as well to have enough that you're officially out of better. And let's say if we had a time machine and you could go back in time to that first version of yourself before you started all this, is there something you'd have told yourself as advice? Don't do this or do that. Oh, there are probably a million and one things to be honest. Yes, I don't know where to start. I think the life is a constant learning experience, right? And You can do a million good things, but you're always going to do something which later you say, you know what, I could have done it better. So, yeah, I mean, sometimes I can't think of one in particular, which is the most one, but probably, I think sometimes succumbing a bit to community pressure, sometimes patience. You need to have that patience. And that patience, when you have a community you tend to sometimes rush something just to make community happier. And there has been a couple of mistakes in the past that I've did personally. I rushed maybe a couple of things because, you know, community really wanted it fast. And it comes from a good intention because you want to make everyone happy. But sometimes you have to, one thing I've learned is everything follows its own time according to plan. Don't try to release things for example a week too early just to make someone happy. No, like that was something I learned a lot during the past years. Yeah, I think that's great advice. There's some founders that we invested and they're very packed to what's happening on the Telegram group chat. And they're like, but there's no official announcements. There's no partnerships. There is no XYZ. And it starts building up that stress and can be hard to manage and feeling of delivering more and more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jacob, if people want to find more about Sonar and more about where would you suggest them to go? First of all, obviously to our website, sonarplatform.io, I suggest you also visit our app sonar.studio. Join us on our Telegram, on our Twitter. because a lot of things are coming up in Q1, again the token launch, AI launch, the main product launch, it's going to be jam packed full of stuff. Even as the TG marketing starts, we're going to have a lot of fun quests and stuff to do. We're already on a lot of AMAs around the Twitter spaces especially. So please join our socials, be part of our community. We are a relatively old community by the space standards. There are some people there that really feel part of a family. They really do. The community themselves as well. Awesome. Makes sense. And you guys got it. It's a wrap. Bye, Jacob. Yeah. Bye. Bye.

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