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Navigating Landscapes Of Web3 And Shaping The Future Of Gaming At Edge Of Asia With Consensys, Over Protocol, KryptoGo, Ordzaar And XVerse
The future of Web3 gaming continues to take shape before our eyes as critical gaps are gradually being plugged by innovative solutions created by some of the best minds in the industry. We spoke to some of them at the TOKEN2049 and the Ordinal Summit 2023 to get important updates on the things they’re working on. Get ready to take a sneak peek on the nitty-gritty with industry leaders from Consensys, Over Protocol, KryptoGo, Ordzaar, and XVerse. Tune in and learn the latest developments at the edge of Web3 innovation!
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Navigating Landscapes Of Web3 And Shaping The Future Of Gaming At Edge Of Asia With Consensys, Over Protocol, KryptoGo, Ordzaar And XVerse
This special Asia roadshow tour edition is sponsored by our friends at the Casper Association. They oversee the evolution of the Casper Network, a blockchain supporting innovative tech giants as well as decentralized applications and platforms. It features both upgradable smart contracts and predictable gas feeds. They also have a great new show called Casper Blockchain Podcast. You can check it out on Spotify or by visiting Casper.Network and click on News.
While we were in Singapore, we had a chance to have some great conversations with industry leaders at TOKEN2049 and the Ordinal Summit 2023 nearby. We speak to a Senior Leader at Consensys, Jeremy Millar, as well as several founders of Web3 infrastructure projects that are plugging critical gaps on blockchain’s path to mainstream adoption, including the fast-growing Ordinals movement.
On the special edge of Asia edition, you’ll learn potential solutions to Ethereum’s cost and speed challenges through scaling methods like Layer 2s and ZK knowledge roll-ups, the story behind Superblock that was able to raise $7 million for Over Protocol in order to redefine blockchain accessibility, making it lighter, faster, and more decentralized, and how KryptoGO is making critical Web3 compliance infrastructure a breeze for diverse applications from banking to gaming. Get the scoop behind Ordzaar, the first-ever NFT platform to fully build in royalties for creators. Lastly, learn about the first Bitcoin wallet dedicated fully to the Ordinals movement. Step away from your PCs and dive headfirst into the edge of innovation where you’re a player, too. Press start.
It is day one of the actual TOKEN2049 event, and it is bustling. There are thousands of people having exciting conversations about the future of blockchain. I am really pleased to be here with Jeremy Millar, Chief Development Officer at Consensys, to chat a little bit about his thoughts on the market. It is good to have you here.
Thanks, Josh. It’s good to be here. It is crazy out there.
It is busy. It’s nice to be in a quiet air-conditioned room for a few minutes and reflecting on things. The first conversation I wanted to have with you was about Vitalik’s keynote at Korea Blockchain Week. He talked about the fact that crypto payments are going to make a lot more sense again when we bring those costs down. I know using Ethereum has still been challenging. Some of these gas fees get up into the $30 or $40 range. I was like, “I thought we were lower.” He is talking about how we can get down to that $0.2 or $0.5 range. What’s your perspective on the realisticness of that and what’s being done to build the ecosystem on Ethereum to make that possible?
A bit of context is helpful perhaps. Ethereum has had a scaling roadmap for years. If you go back a few years ago, we were all talking about Ethereum 2.0, the beacon chain launch and what have you, scalability, and layering the stack. We’re at a point now where some of the scaling solutions are starting to come to fruition.
The first part of this was when we decoupled the Consensys layer from the execution layer. We’re now decoupling the execution layer from the data availability layer, which allows us to provide scaling at multiple layers of the stack. We’re starting to see Ethereum as the Layer 1 being the anchor chain. It is the layer of the final settlement. Whereas there are scaling solutions in the form of Layers 2s that are starting to become broadly available. In fact, there are volumes on what we call Layer 2s, which are Ethereum-compatible chains that write back the results of their transactions but not the transactions themselves to Layer 1. You get the security of layer one and the scalability of parallelism coming to fruition.
The big change that we’ve seen over the past couple of months is the evolution from what we call optimistic roll-ups, which are lower thresholds of security to ZK or Zero Knowledge EVM or ZK proof-based systems. It allows for faster finality, a greater layer of security at the Layer 2, and a plethora of ZK solutions coming to the market.
We’re at a point in time where we’re starting to see the first ZK EVM-based or ZK roll-up-based Layer 2s starting to move through beta and into production, which is why the comment from Vitalik was so timely. It was recognition that we’re at this point in time in the ecosystem where these technologies are starting to be ready and are starting to become usable in a way that will unlock a much higher degree of scalability. In turn, it means lower transaction costs, but it’s not just lower transaction costs. One of the other scarier things that can happen is not that you might not be able to pay your fee, but it is your transaction might not get into a block at all.
Web3 Gaming: We’re at this point in time the ecosystem where these technologies are starting to become usable in a way that will unlock much higher degree of scalability.
Not long ago, there was a flash crash across crypto. If you’re in the dev ecosystem, a lot of people were probably concerned about their collateral locked and whether they were going to get wrecked or liquidated. If you want to make a change to your vault, that’s a transaction in and of itself simply to change your thresholds and your collateralization in your vault so you don’t then get liquidated. Some of those transactions didn’t get through.
When we talk about continuity of service and enterprise adoption, these things can’t happen. We have to live in a more continuous world. It sounds pretty relevant what this advancement is doing. Break down ZK roll-ups for us a little bit more. Educate our audience on them. This is a term that if you’re in the dev ecosystem, makes sense, but it’s a foreign language for everyone else. I’m curious along those lines about what Consensys is doing strategically in these areas.
ZK means Zero Knowledge. What it says is I can prove something to you without giving you all the details. You can rely on the fact that I can give you this piece of evidence that what I’m telling you is true. You can verify that it’s true without having all the underlying data. There are two principal applications for that. One is around privacy, but the application we’re talking about here is around scalability.
Why does that matter for scalability? It says, “I can go off and run a batch of transactions, give you the results and the proof that I calculated the result correctly, and you can rely on it.” That allows you to have a whole series of networks running in parallel where you share the answers and then do arithmetic on the answers instead of having to do all the underlying transactions yourself. That is a breakthrough when it comes to parallelism speed, multiple implementations, etc.
It’s exciting stuff. At Consensys, you guys have been a key partner with Ethereum. There’s a deep history there. What are some of the strategic initiatives that are going on at Consensys that you’re particularly excited about?
To stay with the ZK theme, Linea, which is built on top of our own Zero Knowledge EVM, is exciting for us.
It launched, right?
It launched in beta and moving more towards something that can be more in general availability.
It’s got a fun name. Is there a significance of the name Linea?
There is. We have some novelty in how we do the math that allows us to execute certain functions in a ZK EVM environment much more quickly and in a much more performant way. It has something particularly to do with the way we implement it using lattice and what that means for hash functions, which is probably a detail that we don’t need to get into here. It sounds cool.
Branding matters.
We did consider calling it Lattice but we landed on Linea and we’re really happy with that. What people probably don’t know is this piece of technology we’ve been working on for about four years began with us building a ZK start implementation and arc implementation and over time generalizing it into a full ZK EVM. There are two main differentiators in what we’re trying to accomplish. One is we think because we’ve done the math the clever way, we can get some performance breakthroughs. The other is it’s fully EVM compatible. It’s not recompile. It’s not cross-compile. It is take-your-code-as-is-and-implement-it.
One of the things that we’re doing is we’re working with partners to move partner solutions that are built for the EVM onto Linea. What we say to our partners is, “You should be able to move your code over with zero changes. If that doesn’t work, you need to call us because the problem’s on our side, not yours.”
I know you’re doing a lot of support on the dev side, and that’s one reason you’re here that we’ll get into. Are there any particular use cases for Linea that crush it because they’re stronger and that you’re excited about?
What we’re starting to see, if you look at the use cases, is people are starting to get into much more consumer-centric use cases. Gaming is one that many people in the sector are very excited about, and it’s not just in the sector. If you look back over the last few years, one of the areas of highest investment from a venture capital perspective in crypto has been games. There’s a pipeline of AAA games that have been built over the last couple of months that are starting to come out that need higher, more scalable infrastructure underneath. Games are one area that we’re excited about.
I hear the word gaming about once a minute here at TOKEN and Career Blockchain Week. It’s a hot area.
Some of the titles look really cool. We’re going to start to see much more high-quality games. The value proposition, as I’m sure most people reading this are aware, is in-game economies traditionally have been very closed. The promise of Web3 is openness and portability. In order to achieve that and reach that type of consumer audience, you need low transaction fees and high scalability.
We’re going to start seeing much more high-quality games. Click To Tweet
Are there other things going on strategically at Consensys that get you excited?
The other big area is the wallet, MetaMask. Account abstraction and programmable wallets are big topics and areas we’re working on really fast.
I saw an announcement about the ability to cash out directly on MetaMask. Is that correct?
Yes. We’ve been working on ramps and off-ramps for quite a while. We’ve announced some big integrations including PayPal. The other thing that we’ve been doing with MetaMask is making it more open and extensible. The big announcement at this event was Snaps, which is a framework that allows developers to publish parts of their applications into the wallet directly.
The reason why that’s really important is one of the principal uses of the wallet when you’re using dApps is signing and approving transactions. This allows apps to be part of that flow natively within the wallet. There are lots of applications for that. For example, you can do Bitcoin transactions in your MetaMask wallet.
I’ve been waiting for that a long time. Thank you. This is exciting stuff. We’re here in Asia. I saw some of your team over in Korea as well. Why is Asia significant to the overall landscape from your perspective? Why is it that everyone is here at TOKEN2049? This is not to create some FOMO for our audience, but it’s true. Everyone’s here.
There are two reasons for this. One is some of it’s around regulation and some of the more progressive stances that some of the Asian countries have taken that are really encouraging crypto to flourish. The other is pretty much every crypto and Web3 company out there talks about getting to 1 billion users. To get to 1 billion users, you need to be everywhere. In particular, you need to be in the most populous and most densely populated areas in the world. A big portion of that population is here.
The third is adoption. Especially if you look at things around payments and games, a lot of that adoption has really been Asia-driven. For us, it’s incredibly important to understand the market, what partnerships we need to do, the level of localization we need in the products, and culturally how people are using the products and create the features and capabilities that will help drive even more adoption.
That makes a lot of sense. Are there any partnerships in Asia in particular that have occurred or are in the works that you could speak to?
There are tons. If you start to look at some of the stuff about Snaps, something like half of the Snaps we published were built by Chinese-speaking teams, for example, in our launch announcement. We have an entire Asia-focused business development team focused on international expansion that is working across the geographies.
That makes sense. I really appreciate you spending some time with us, your perspective on what’s going on at Consensys, and the broader Ethereum ecosystem as well as L2s. Where can folks go to dive deeper into what you guys are up to?
One of the things we did earlier this 2023 was we relaunched our website. If you go to Consensys.io or Consensys.net, there are tons more to learn as well as MetaMask.io.
We appreciate what all you guys are doing to continue to build this ecosystem. Thanks for your time.
Thanks for having me, Josh. I really appreciate it.
We are at the Korea Blockchain Week. This is an exciting one for me as we are out here with some major announcements. We have been with Over Protocol who has some really fun, cool things to share with us. It’s been a fun week. A lot of cool things are happening here in Korea. Ben, you had a pretty cool major announcement that has happened. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
About the fundraising?
Yes.
We raised about $7 million this February 2023 from SK, NetMarble, DSC, E&, and Schmidt, which are the prestigious companies and venture capitals in South Korea. We also raised funds from Naver Z and SpringCamp, which are the companies related to the Naver, which are also prestigious companies in South Korea.
That’s amazing. What’s incredible is being able to raise that during this bear market that we’ve been enduring. Let’s learn a little bit more about you. Let’s learn a little bit more about Over Protocols. Tell us a little bit about yourself and then tell us about what makes Over Protocol so special and different than other Layer 1s.
First of all, my name is Ben. I graduated from Seoul National University, which is the most prestigious university in South Korea. I’m also a graduate student. I am studying to optimize Ethereum in my school. I published a paper on tunnels. Tunnels are about optimizing Ethereum, especially reducing the size of Ethereum. I reduced the size of Ethereum to about under three gigabytes and synchronized time to about several seconds.
I found a company and made a protocol based on this idea. Over Protocol is the protocol that is based on this idea, especially tunnels. We are making that protocol. Our dream is to make nodes very small so that anyone can run a node on their PCs or personal devices. They don’t have to rely on institutions like validators or freeload services. Anyone can access data and anyone can transfer money by themselves. That is our goal or dream.
That’s really good. One of the challenges that I found with a lot of these Layer 1s that need validators to go is you typically have big institutions that come in and take a lot of liquidity and you need to have a good amount of money to be able to come to set these up. By being able to set nodes, it allows more access. I know that’s important to you. Tell us a little bit about tunnels and why that’s an important aspect of Over Protocol.
It is regarding blockchain’s ethos. Blockchain protects data manipulation or data copy by spreading the nodes, making people maintain the same data, and updating that with the consensus algorithm. These nodes are too heavy and blockchains get too fast. The size of blockchains is getting very big. It takes about more than several terabytes, or sometimes, it requires several petabytes. This is heavy. People cannot dare to maintain them. It costs expensive so people cannot dare to access them. Only the institutions or the infrastructure companies can do that. We think this is the opposite of the blockchain ethos. Blockchain opens the data. Blockchain is open and not closed. This ethos is opposite.
It’s a really good point that you’re bringing up. One of the parts that you’re able to go and raise this money is addressing challenges like this and finding ways to not have it be so heavy. You are having the blockchain be a little bit easier to scale and have good things happen. for people who are learning about this and potentially want to come and participate with your protocol, what would you say are the biggest differentiators of, “Here’s why you want to come and build on your platform.”
Our code is based on Ethereum. People can use EVM Solidity on our platform. They can run those very easily. They don’t have to pay to run those or get some data from the node. Ordinary people can run a node on their PC. They can develop something on their PCs and deploy it. Also, these nodes or these projects are run by ordinary people so they don’t have to pay. It is free on your computer. Your dApp will be run on other people’s computers. That is our strong point. People are very easy to get into our platform.
It’s easy onboarding, being able to do stuff on your computer. People can come in and access this pretty quickly. All of that’s really exciting. Something else that’s exciting is being here in Korea during Korea Blockchain Week. Being able to come and participate in this, how’s that been for you? How’s your experience been so far? How are you enjoying the conference?
Korean Blockchain Week is a very big conference. Since I’m based in Seoul, I’m very happy to join here because I don’t have to fly. I’m moving here with the subway. It is very cool. It is also good because Korea is an important market for many projects. They come here and meet some people and some companies in South Korea. #HASHED and FACTBLOCK are all very good companies. They are very eager to spread blockchains in South Korea. They are willing to do that. That means we can do something easily because of them. Thanks to them.
It’s good to have local support. It’s also good to be one of the locals that were able to raise, which you were able to do. Congratulations on that. For people who want to come and learn more about everything you have going on with the protocol or Over Protocol, how can they do that? What’s the website or social handles? How can they start to participate?
First, you can download our application named OverWallet. OverWallet is not a crypto wallet yet. OverWallet is an application to gather people so that they can experience our environment and ecosystem. They can get the address from our application. You can download OverWallet first. Our next application named OverNode will be launching on October 2024. People can download OverNode on their PCS. They can run OverNode on their PCs and experience those node environments.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Yes.
What does the AI do?
Also, OTC and crypto trends.
Thank you.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
That is so cool.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I appreciate your time.
Thank you.
I’m good. Thank you.
Thank you.