The Interoperable Multi-Chain Future of Web3 - TOKEN2049 London 2022

hello everyone welcome to my presentation at talking 2049 I still see some free spaces free seats available so if you come closer and just sit down would be great but uh um it's going to be an easy presentation today it's pretty loud here in the hall so uh don't sweat too much the title of the presentation is the interoperable multi-chain future of web3 probably you've never heard of a presentation with more buzzwords in it before but it's pretty simple my name is Max Kodak I'm CEO and co-founder of Lisk and you will hear a bit more about Lisk later at the end of the presentation but coming back to the topic of today and the goal I have with my presentation is that I want that you understand the concept of something what is called interoperable Web 3 applications and like I said it's pretty simple simple but I will guide you through it so that you fully understand what I mean with that um and if you're not sure why I'm like having this talk to you because I think the whole topic of interoperable web 3 applications is the future and if you're developers if you're having a business to wish to enter the web three space I think this presentation will give you some very valuable input on how to do that so let's first focus on web three and with that I would like to First explain how web3 is going to be built there are two paradigms one is with a smart contract which we can call Smart contract layer one and examples of that are ethereum the binance smart chain or Solana and that's where you're developing a smart contract similar like a little script or program you're uploading onto one of these blockchains and then with that everyone in the ecosystem can just execute them against the fee the gas fee and these smart contracts have a few advantages they're very simple because you just have to write a small script which everyone can execute that's it there's not a lot of stuff around that and with that it allows you to really quickly iterate on your use case to bring it to a state where it has a real benefit to your end user and well I showed before on the slide that they are already like multiple smart contract layer ones and if they are using the same smart contract system let's call it like that in reality it's called a virtual machine then it's very portable as well because you could just develop now it's getting a bit technical one solidity smart contract and deployed on many different smart contract layer ones and for me that's the best way to build web 3 applications at an early stage because with that you can like I said very fast and very simple iterate really quickly so it's kind of like an MVP known out of the startup world however there's also a different Paradigm and we can call that an app specific layer one like what's polka dots Cosmos or my own company list is working on and these projects or platforms they have an SDK a software development kit which you can imagine Kinder as a toolbox which gives you everything you need to build your own blockchain and if you then want to build a web 3 application you basically build or develop this logic of your application natively into the protocol of this new blockchain You're Building obviously that's a lot more work because you're not developing just your smart contract you're developing your own blockchain and everything what comes with it but it has some advantages it's much more secure because if something goes past on your blockchain there are ways to like um to turn back essentially so you have your own governance model you can make your own decision on your blockchain it can be decentralized it can be trustless but then in in case of a hack for example you could vote in a decentralized way that the users get their funds back in a smart contract layer one that's not working because the smart contract is just one of hundred thousands of smart contracts why would they ever change anything on their immutable blockchain just for that then let's take ethereum for an example I think there are nearly 1 million smart contracts deployed on ethereum all can be executed by everyone that just tells you already that's not a very scalable approach if you're building your own blockchain for your application then it's only your application living on that one chain so your users don't have to compete with the users of other web 3 applications making it much more scalable typically I think the different sdks enable you to build a blockchain with around 1 million transactions a day and that's then solely for your web free application not for anything else and it's more accessible because you as the business behind the web 3 application can really focus on providing the best user experience to your user base you have much more tools available to change whatever parameters you need to change in the blockchain you can really fit your user interfaces to how your blockchain is performing and so on and so forth and that's why I think app specific layer ones are the best way for web 3 applications at a later stage so it all starts kind of with a smart contract maybe you want to see if it works if your product has a user base or a use case actually but then at the later stage if you want to have more scalability a better user experience then I think it makes so much sense to switch to a app specific layer one like polka dot Cosmos or list and we see that already happening so for example dydx they started as a smart contract on ethereum they're one of the most popular decentralized exchanges in the world right now and they announced the plan to move to an app specific layer one and they are citing user experience and scalability as one of the biggest reasons for that move now you've seen that well there are multiple smart contracts layer ones and there are multiple app specific layer ones which also all come then with individual blockchains so the multi-chain part of my presentation is already reality we are already living in a world with multiple blockchains in existence and everyone's fighting for adoption and I think that's very good because it brings many advantages individual use cases more scalability because there are more platforms to work with however it also creates kind of Separation on isolation because all these different blockchains they are not connected with each others they're all individual and that's where we have to work on something called interoperable or interoperability that allows you to connect these blockchains with each others and move tokens or nfts seamlessly between them that's just necessary just an example you have index and you want to trade different tokens but now if it's an app specific layer one of course these tokens are on different blockchains but you need to pull them over into your decks which is also on its own blockchain and to make that work like I said you need interoperability a way to connect these different blockchains and that's basically the interoperable part of my presentation and well that's Kinder about the interoperable future of web 3 applications and now we're coming to my project I'm working on it's going to be a quick part don't worry Lisk list is an app specific layer one and it was established in 2016 so we're a very OG project that's why I got announced like that uh since seven years we're working on it but we're pretty successful with what we're doing our team is around 80 people big we have above 65 million dollar in funding still so a long way forward for us before we might run into any problems there but until that point we already have multiple Solutions in mind and we have two products one which I already mentioned before this SDK this toolbox for developers which enables any developer to build their own blockchain or blockchain application or web3 application and this one is open source it's free forever we will never monetize it you can use it it however you want to use it it's rooted in JavaScript so we made this decision because it's the most popular programming language in the world there are over 20 million JavaScript developers out there and we don't want to only speak to the elite of crypto we want to speak to all the businesses in the world and get them ready for web 3. it's modular so everyone can really benefit from different components businesses startups or individual developers are building you can just reuse them this is like a core principle of JavaScript itself and we're really working on developer experience and here of course a good documentation is key the second product is that we want to also make it possible for our users to then actively use these web3 applications and that's called the list platform it's coming next year they're already multiple projects building on it and we are super excited to see that live I'm working now since seven years on Lisk and this is going to be a Monumental step for not only us as a team and a company but for web 3 overall so that's the future that's the Future Part of my presentation Lisk that's where we feel like we're really contributing something to the industry by offering not only an open source SDK for every JavaScript developer out there but also a platform for users where they are really in the focus because we really think it's still all too complicated to be used in terms of web free applications and our goal for the next few years is to onboard 100 million users to crypto and web 3 and that we make possible with list if you have more information if you want to know more about lists just head to our website list.com and there you can learn all about it thank you awesome big round of applause for Matt man how are you Max I'm really connected in the whole crypto space love to get your take on what's happened um in the last kind of 24 48 hours with regards to uh finance and the guys in FTX first of all did you have any exposure there no exposure no luckily not um we have some exposure to block fi yeah which is not affected as things stand yeah but there was a deal between FTX and block five back in the day but there seems to be everything good yeah so we're I would say lucky yeah because this I think no one was able to foresee absolutely not and and also I think the speed on how things happen in the market right now welcome to crypto welcome to crypto baby where things move fast yes exactly um so I mean what what like how do you think this is gonna affect the next few weeks and months obviously I think it's quite negative for this space there was a gentleman Philip who was up here talking before who looks at all data in the market and you know he was actually saying that you know things like this need to happen because they test the systems and they get rid of some Bad actors or bad practices and we move on yeah and what do you think it's going to be negative for the space I mean it definitely is going to be negative for the space because a lot of people are losing money um and it's not the only thing which came up this year there was a real serious of bad events so it's been a pretty bad year for investors in the crypto space overall especially for retail investors yeah and why are we doing all of this we're doing this to bring web 3 to the world and we're going to use web 3 sure businesses and institutions but also just normal people like all of us yes and this event like the many other this year sets the whole industry back for maybe not months but years who knows yeah I think it's really hurting um it might have to happen to weed out Bad actors but crypto generally reaches the size where the the numbers involved are just so big that it's really more hurting than beneficial in any point you know yeah I mean the numbers thing is interesting I mean when you look back historically you know Adventure Investments done five years ago and how much was raised uh when you look back at some of the hacks which were done five years ago and you look at how much was hacked you know you look back in comparison five years ago to now and the numbers are just different way bigger it's a different ball game right yeah yeah it's a different world but I mean I've been now in crypto since nearly 10 years and this year it's going to be 10 years 10 years and crypto doesn't die no it only makes it harder it only makes it more robust so I don't think it's gonna post a very big problem for the long term but for the short and medium term definitely we will feel it I just hope that at this point not other companies are somehow getting sucked in this ripple effect you know I really hope that and I hope that everyone can just survive the storm you know it's the contagion effect right yeah that's a problem and I suppose with what's going on now is especially with the investment side and counterparty risk and staking and adding liquidity it does become quite a contagious area right crypto is becoming all interlinked right yeah and because this is a seven years old project we've been through two or three bear markets already so we know how to manage our Treasury and know that we should not hold everything in Bitcoin ethereum our own currency but actually have also Fiat Fiat equivalence so we're good even if everything drops to zero for a few more years no it doesn't matter but all these projects here at the conference for example they're pretty new yes that's a big topic they don't have the experience on how to manage their treasury so I really hope that they're somehow getting advice on that topic so that they can survive crypto Winters stay in the game and onboard the next 100 million people Max list good big round of applause thanks so much dude great now thank you so much man really appreciate it thanks Max