Welcome to Landline. A podcast exploring the intersection of cutting-edge onchain finance and real-world property ownership. Landline dives into conversations with industry leaders and real-world property enthusiasts who are redefining how we own, trade, and borrow against tangible assets—unlocking new opportunities through technology.

Episode Highlights

1. Bridging Digital and Real-World Assets

   • Traditionally illiquid assets like land, art, and luxury goods are becoming more accessible through tokenization onchain.

   • Both MetaStreet and Fabrica are focused on simplifying the process for users, building better infrastructure and seamless user experiences.

2. DeFi Meets Real Estate

   • MetaStreet started with NFT-backed loans for digital collectibles but always aimed to support real-world assets, including real estate.

   • Fabrica is pioneering the tokenization of land, reducing transaction costs, and simplifying property management through onchain solutions.

3. The Value of Tokenization

   • Tokenization unlocks the borrowing potential of specialized assets: land, collectibles, or luxury goods, that traditional banks often overlook.

   • Instant settlements, flexible terms, and streamlined refinancing options offer a significant leap forward compared to traditional lending systems.

4. Marketplaces and Two-Sided Challenges

   • Building these systems requires educating and engaging both sides of the equation: lenders and asset owners.

   • While real-world assets might feel novel to Web3 lenders, they bring established value and lower risk, particularly in markets like real estate.

5. Regulatory and Cultural Shifts

   • Clear regulatory frameworks and robust user education are key to wider adoption.

   • As projects like MetaStreet and Fabrica demonstrate reliable structures, they pave the way for broader institutional and individual trust.

6. Looking Ahead

   • MetaStreet is broadening its scope, integrating more real-world assets like GPUs, domain names, and solar farms to build secondary markets for onchain debt.

   • Fabrica is refining instant land tokenization, enabling property owners to unlock value through onchain lending with unprecedented ease.

Transcript

Federico Pomi

Hello everyone and welcome to Landline. That's our first episode of a podcast that we are starting. I'm Federico, your host, and we have Connor from MetaStreet with us. Hi, Connor, how are you?

Conor Moore

Hey, thanks for having me.

Federico Pomi

Of course. It's a pleasure to have you. Before we get into this chat, which will be a very casual interview, I wanted to give you a few words on what we're doing with Landline. The idea is to have a podcast that bridges two different worlds. On one side, we have the onchain world of builders and tech companies who are building beautiful products and usually head down on their keyboards. On the other side, we have people on the ground, like real people buying real land, investing in properties, collecting beautiful properties, finding the latest gems on the ground, and improving them. That's what we do at Fabrica. We bring real land onchain so that people can buy and sell it and borrow against their properties. With that, Connor, tell us a bit about yourself, your company, who you are, what's the story?

Conor Moore

Thanks for having us. MetaStreet is a three-year-old project that we started in 2021. Before MetaStreet, I worked my whole career in traditional real estate finance. So I'm familiar with both the builder side and the user side from Fabrica's perspective.

I was working at a real estate private equity fund in 2021, and I was seeing innovations happening in crypto, specifically in DeFi. I was fascinated by it—Uniswap, Aave, permissionless transactions, permissionless markets. I thought there was a natural progression for some of the work I was doing in traditional finance and private equity to also go onchain. Dealing with title, closing deadlines, wiring money—these processes are archaic, probably the most archaic in real estate compared to any other industry.

At that time, NFTs were booming, and we were getting a lot of excitement around them. Token-based innovations like Uniswap and Aave involved markets and borrowing and lending in a margin style. My background was in capital markets, focusing more on asset financing and asset acquisition rather than liquid token-to-token transactions. NFTs, specifically ERC-721s, were just starting to be developed onchain to house those types of assets.

In 2021, the space was mainly about art and collectibles. We thought maybe we were early, but ultimately we believed that all unique assets would be represented on chains for permissionless, instant settlement, and leveraging DeFi. Art and collectibles are also financialized markets in traditional finance, so we started there with a long-term goal of disrupting the mortgage-backed securities industry, banking, and asset financing in general.

We've been building MetaStreet for the last three years, creating a cool lending structure with tranches that resemble a permissionless mortgage-backed security product. We've raised two rounds, have 20 employees now, and lots of integrations, supporting asset tokenization like what you're doing at Fabrica Land. We're also seeing people tokenize GPUs, precious metals, watches, and more. Coming from 2021, when it was mainly crypto punks and PFPs, we're coming full circle from traditional finance and real estate investing to building a DeFi protocol that was financing JPEGs and now competing with traditional capital markets. The next four years are exciting, especially with changes in administration and more friendly policies.

Federico Pomi

Beautiful. Thank you. That's a perfect overview of what you guys do and your history and background. Let me start with some basics. Let's say I'm a user. Who are your users? What do they do? What do they look for? And what do you provide them? What's the problem you're solving?

Conor Moore

We're a two-sided marketplace. We built permissionless infrastructure that allows anyone to create a lending pool. That pool pairs a token being lent with a collateral type allowed as collateral. For example, we have the Fabrica land pool with Fabrica land NFTs as collateral and USDC as the token pair. Once the pool is created, anyone can deposit money into it and define parameters, forming an order book that meets their criteria for their money.

If you're familiar with tranching, you take a bunch of assets with different risk profiles and cut the overall pool into different pieces with unique risk profiles. Users can lend money against land at various loan-to-value (LTV) ratios, stacking participants to give borrowers the best execution possible. Lenders seek yield by depositing into pools that match their risk-return profiles. Borrowers own valuable, illiquid assets and can borrow against them easily onchain without traditional processes.

Compared to Aave, where collateral is liquid token pairs like BTC or ETH, our collateral consists of hard assets like land. Borrowers can borrow against their land with one click, and the pool manages the rest. Lenders earn higher yields, typically mid-teens, because they take on more risk with illiquid assets. We use tranches to manage risk, offering higher yields for higher risk.

Federico Pomi

Thank you. Let me try to recap. You have a platform that allows people with digital and real assets to borrow against them. If they own a JPEG or other digital assets, they can use them as collateral to get real money represented as tokens, like US dollars. On the other side, investors put their capital into a pool, fine-tuning their risk profile by choosing which tranches to invest in. The platform manages the pool and provides capital to borrowers at the best possible rates, handling the complexity of organizing investors. From a borrower standpoint, it's easy to bring in an asset and get cash under certain conditions. From the lender perspective, it's easy to deposit capital into a pool with a chosen risk profile and earn profits.

Conor Moore

Exactly. When we started, there was only one NFT-based lending protocol with $10 million in cumulative volume. It was very early, and concepts like account abstraction, gas sponsoring, on/off ramping were not common. People weren't doing much with real-world assets (RWAs). It was mainly ETH-based lending against JPEGs and PFP NFTs with a small participant universe. Now, with on-ramps like Coinbase smart wallet, collateral types include familiar assets like land and watches, expanding the lender profile. For example, someone can lend money against watches with just a few clicks using Apple Pay, without setting up wallets or dealing with gas fees. This makes it easier to attract mainstream users.

Federico Pomi

I totally hear you there. For context, most people don't know, but Fabrica has been around for six years, targeting landowners who buy and sell plots of land. There's no way to approach them with crypto solutions like MetaMask; it would scare them off. So we built a more user-friendly system with custodial solutions, allowing users to log in with email and buy properties using dollars from their bank accounts. It was extremely challenging, but now the infrastructure has improved massively over the past two years. Companies like ours have user-friendly products that handle wallet complexity, gas fees, and more, making it easier for people to interact with onchain solutions.

Conor Moore

Yes, and new people can come in, but you've created brand value and a reputation that's hard to recreate as a new player. We're dealing with extremely valuable assets and large amounts of money, so trust and regulatory compliance are crucial. We're proud of our work in this area and hope for better rails, understanding, and players in the crypto space.

Federico Pomi

Absolutely. Now, earlier you mentioned different asset classes, starting with NFTs and moving toward real-world assets. What are the real-world assets you're referring to? And do you think it makes sense to combine these two parts of the story as a roadmap, showing how we started with digital assets and are now expanding to widely recognized assets with less friction?

Conor Moore

Yes. When we raised our first round, the pitch was that art and collectibles are financeable assets in traditional capital markets. People get art loans against artwork regularly, so we could build a product for this user base and iterate. Our big-picture vision is to recreate Wall Street onchain, handling bond issuances, securitizations, and removing middlemen for efficient asset pricing and debt creation.

We want to focus on cash-flowing assets that generate revenue to pay down debt, unlike luxury goods or assets valued only for their next trade. For example, land today, real estate tomorrow. We aim to finance assets that generate cash flows and are closer to being digital. Deep in networks and hardware are closer to digital and easier to tokenize and borrow onchain. Eventually, all assets will be tokenized and traded onchain, but initially, we'll focus on assets that are hard to finance off-chain, like land and watches.

Federico Pomi

That's interesting. You mentioned adverse selection, which is risky in our space. Additionally, there's no reason why someone can't take their assets to a bank for a loan. Why doesn't that happen?

Conor Moore

We call the watch pool a digital pawn shop because traditional pawn shops are localized and often have a bad reputation. They have to value assets like watches but might not have buyers, making the process time-consuming and physical. Onchain, you send your watch to a vault, receive an NFT, and can borrow against it in seconds. The market sets yields, LTVs, and durations based on multiple data sources, eliminating the risk of being ripped off. Capital is global, so anyone can lend without knowing the borrower. There's no need for trust, and everything is managed by smart contracts.

If we were to compete with traditional mortgage companies, we might not yet be better, but for undeveloped plots of land, watches, and domain names, our alternatives are much better. There's often no alternative or the alternative is inefficient, making our solution highly valuable.

Federico Pomi

I'll double down on that. In some cases, you don't have an alternative, which is a positive signal. For example, getting a loan against valuable land takes time and is expensive with traditional banks. It's impossible to borrow against 90% of properties due to high transaction costs and overhead. With what we do, we make it possible and much better than traditional mortgages. Even the best Web2 mortgage websites offer a terrible experience compared to our onchain solutions.

Conor Moore

Yes, even integrating directly into your front end allows one-click borrowing, which is very convenient. Refinancing onchain is also incredibly fast compared to traditional mortgages, which require paperwork and time. We're delivering the user experiences that people will use tomorrow for their houses today.

Federico Pomi

Absolutely. Now, what do you think it will take to reach a point where we can borrow and take a mortgage onchain, affecting how our houses are managed?

Conor Moore

Technically, we're not far away. We need to add some features, but it's more about the Overton window shifting. People need to see onchain settlement as an extension of the financial system they're familiar with. Building good products and pitching them is essential, but overall sentiment in the U.S. is becoming more crypto-friendly. Initiatives like Coinbase's advocacy and support from influential figures are shifting mainstream perspectives. This will make it easier for people to adopt onchain financial solutions without associating crypto with negative aspects.

Federico Pomi

That's a good start. How do we acquire real users and shift from being a small private party to something beneficial for more people?

Conor Moore

Fintech succeeded by reskinning the front end for banks, making processes simpler. Crypto can do the same but also improve the backend. Our offerings are superior to traditional and fintech solutions, but the missing pieces have been on/off ramps and connections to traditional financial rails. With infrastructure now in place, we can target mainstream users through various marketing efforts like SEO, postcards, and other accessible methods. For example, sending out postcards with QR codes to attract users unfamiliar with crypto.

Federico Pomi

I agree. To build products for end consumers, we need to start implementing and experimenting, even if it seems early. We're sending out postcards targeting people far from the crypto world, providing simple instructions to access our services. This helps rewire our thinking and attract mainstream users.

Conor Moore

Yes, traditional crypto marketing is insular, targeting people already interested in crypto. To reach mainstream America, we need broader marketing strategies like SEO. Postcards with QR codes can attract people who aren't familiar with crypto but are interested in passive income or new financial products. This approach is more relatable and accessible.

Federico Pomi

Absolutely. On ramping and off ramping remains a significant challenge. Despite building credible solutions, bringing in and sending out capital is a pain point. We've considered accepting the reality of outdated banking infrastructure and focusing on bringing value onchain in different ways. At Fabrica, we offer a way to bring real estate onchain quickly, competing with traditional methods by reducing complexity and time.

Conor Moore

The on-ramp process will continue to improve. Despite challenges like account closures from banks, the overall trend is toward better infrastructure. Reducing friction and increasing incentives to on-ramp are crucial. MetaStreet provides incentives like higher yields for lenders and benefits for borrowers to tokenize their assets, making the process worthwhile despite the initial complexity.

Federico Pomi

Well said. What’s next for MetaStreet, and how can we help you get there?

Conor Moore

Our progression started with a lending DAO, then an automated vault lending strategy, and now the current product with order book-style tranches. Moving forward, we want to focus on the collateral side—finding or tokenizing worthy collateral like GPUs, nodes, and deep in networks that generate onchain value. We also aim to develop a liquid secondary market for debt positions, allowing users to trade their ERC-20 representations of pool shares easily.

Federico Pomi

Understood. How do you decide which asset classes to target, especially when some are already well-served?

Conor Moore

We aim to support all asset classes initially and double down on what works based on market response. The industry is still immature, so we support a wide range of assets and let the market decide. We focus on educating lenders and borrowers about the safety and benefits of our products, emphasizing regulatory compliance and legal soundness. Building trust through education is key to attracting a diverse lender base.

Federico Pomi

You've been a great partner for this first episode of Landline. Is there anything else you'd like to share with our audience?

Conor Moore

We're very excited about what you've built and the integration we've achieved. Our focus is on onboarding lenders and borrowers. If your audience is curious, we’re open to phone calls, DMs on Telegram, emails—whatever it takes to help people learn about this space and our product. Our main message is to reach out and ask questions so we can help people get comfortable and excited about our offerings.

Federico Pomi

Beautiful. Connor, thank you so much. We're looking forward to the future. Thank you to all the listeners for joining us today. Bye, have a good one. Take care.

Conor Moore

All right, see you.