Founder's Spotlight: Zey From MOCA app

We like to get to know the different Founders around the THORChain ecosystem, taking a look at what motivates them, how they got inspired, what they're building and why it stands out in the crypto space.

This week, it's Zey from Mexico, the founder of MOCA app and in this interview we dive into the real-world problems that inspired MOCA and shows how the team is rebuilding the entire experience around human behavior, not just the chains. Also, how THORChain’s native, trustless infrastructure is powering a future where crypto payments finally “just work” for everyone.

Let's dive in...

1. Tell us about your background in crypto and how MOCA was born

I didn’t come into crypto thinking I would build a company. Like a lot of people, I was just fascinated by the idea that money could move without permission. But the deeper I got into the space, the more the same frustration kept coming back. Everything was powerful, everything was innovative, but almost none of it was usable for regular people. I watched friends try to send a simple transaction and get lost between chains, gas assets, bridges, approvals, addresses. Meanwhile the people who actually need this technology the most like families who live on remittances, small businesses trying to stay afloat, were nowhere in the picture.

At some point I realized the gap wasn’t technical. It was emotional. Crypto never built a product that felt familiar.

That was the spark for MOCA.

Not “let’s build another wallet,” but “let’s rebuild the entire experience around how people really live.” What do they already do? Chat. Pay. Send money. That’s where the idea came from: hide the complexity, keep the power. Since launching, that vision has only gotten clearer. If you want adoption, design for moms and kids first. If they can use it, everyone else will.

2. Why MOCA tries to be “one app to rule them all”

The phrase sounds ambitious, but it’s actually simple. People don’t want one app for payments, one for trading, one for chatting, one for stablecoins, one for every chain. They want one place where money just works. So we rebuilt the entire flow around intention instead of chains. You want to pay? Pay. You want to send? Send. You want to swap? It happens in the background. Everything else like routing, cross-chain swaps, security, happens under the hood.

A big part of our innovation is invisible. We made multichain feel single-chain. We made crypto feel like chatting. We designed security around real user behavior instead of assuming everyone is a power user. It looks simple because we spent years removing every reason it shouldn’t be.

3. Why THORChain became a pillar of MOCA

The first time I understood THORChain’s potential, I remember thinking: “If this works, it changes everything.” No wrapped assets, no bridge risks, no custodians, no need to ask a central entity for permission to move your money. Just native assets swapping at the protocol level. And once you see that, it’s hard to look at the rest of the industry the same way.

The partnership happened naturally. If you want someone to walk into a café and pay in BTC while the merchant receives stablecoins instantly, THORChain is the infra that can settle that trustlessly at scale, and even though we are still missing a couple pieces of the puzzle to match centralized experiences in some aspects, I’m confident we will get there soon, and we’ll contribute as much as we can to do so. That single idea transformed the MOCA experience. Suddenly the thesis became clear: pay with whatever you hold (XRP, BTC, SOL) and the merchant never has to think about volatility, liquidity, or the chain itself by settling in stablecoins. It’s the closest thing to “crypto just works” that we’ve ever had.

4. What’s genuinely groundbreaking about THORChain

For me, it’s two things. One is conceptual: it treats chains like languages. It doesn’t care what chain you speak; it translates for you. That’s how money should move. The other is economic: the network is secured by people who have skin in the game. The incentives are clean. No artificial rewards, no ponzinomics, no magic APYs. Real yield from real swaps.

That structure is rare in crypto. It’s why I think THORChain has a long future. You can build global infrastructure on top of something that honest and agnostic.

5. What excites you in THORChain’s roadmap

New chains are not just new tokens to us. They’re new worlds. Solana support opens up an entire ecosystem of users who already transact daily. TRX matters for remittances in places where crypto is basically the default currency. Every chain THORChain adds is another group of users MOCA can serve without changing the experience at all.

The fun part is that each new integration unlocks more liquidity and more cultural use cases. Payments become borderless not just geographically, but chain-wise. The world gets smaller in a good way.

6. What THORChain should prioritize next

If I had to pick one theme, it would be comfort. Not comfort for developers... comfort for humans.

Better primitives for UX. More asset coverage for real economies. And eventually, some form of privacy that doesn’t compromise decentralization.

If you solve those, you remove the last major reasons normal people hesitate to use crypto.

7. Why MOCA integrates both THORChain and Maya

People rarely think about protocol redundancy, but for a payments app it’s everything. If someone is buying groceries and one liquidity route goes down, the payment still has to settle. Maya gives us that resilience. It mirrors the same trustless model but gives us more paths, more stability, more uptime.

The lesson from building with multiple protocols is simple: assume nothing is permanent. Build systems that fail gracefully. Build like an airline, not a demo.

8. How THORChain shaped innovation at MOCA

What influenced us most was THORChain’s commitment to real economics. No shortcuts. No artificial sugar-rush incentives. Just real yield from real activity. That mindset pushed us to design MOCA the same way. Our revenue comes from real payments. Real commerce. Real usage. That alignment makes the entire ecosystem healthier.

If I had to give founders advice: work with protocols that force discipline. If you build on top of something honest, you naturally build better products.

9. THORChain’s role in remittances and everyday payments

Most crypto projects talk about remittances. THORChain actually makes them possible. You can send BTC and someone else receives stablecoins in seconds with no exchange account in the middle. That’s the dream.

MOCA is simply the interface that makes that feel normal. A message. A QR scan. A tap. Nothing more.

Once AI agents come into the picture, optimizing routes, managing bills, handling conversions, users will interact even less with the crypto side of things. The chain becomes a silent engine. That’s how adoption happens.

10. The magic-wand wish for THORChain

If I could choose one evolution, it would be universal privacy. Not opaque for everyone. Not “mixers.” But a clean, native way to protect ordinary people’s financial lives while keeping the system open and secure.

If THORChain cracks that, it becomes the settlement backbone for the next hundred years. And it lets MOCA deliver what we’ve always wanted. Money that moves freely, privately, and instantly, without ever feeling like crypto.