This is epicenter episode 483 with guests Louis.
She's good and him apart. Welcome to epicenter the show
which talks about Technologies, projects, and people driving
decentralisation and the blockchain revolution.
I am going to take a chance. And today, I'm speaking with
bluish G skin to my art who are the founders of gelato a project
which makes blockchain deaths. Lives easier, through Automation
and other things. We are talking about this in
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It's super nice to have. You buy a both on Lewis and
Hammer. We go Way Way Back.
So pretty early on in your web three Journey, you guys got the
Grant from the noses ecosystem fund but we'll get to that.
So maybe maybe tell us about yourselves and who you were
before you know, before blockchain and how you guys met.
Oh yeah, hi, hi Fredrik. Is, of course, first of all,
thanks for hosting us. You excited to finally be on the
Fe set up Podcast. I remember still listening to it
when the bear Market times, 2017, 2018, and of course beyond
that. So, so awesome to be here.
Yeah. Maybe I can start giving it like
a quick background. What we actually, how we came
into the space and I think, as a sort of context, what is always
interesting for me to looking back is like, we are Like
post-financial Crisis sort of generation after 2028.
And I think this sort of had a quite the impact in how we
thought about financial systems. And why we we were very eager
25. And with retain mode came around
to sort of participate in that. And the reason I we met I think
we have like quite the same same Journey, the two of us so so I
can maybe speak for the both of us.
We met in high school actually. Ready in the UK, and then both
studied in London. I studied Finance, Lewis
politics. He focused more like the game
theory side of things and now we then went to Berlin because we
both had sort of like the the dream to become entrepreneurs,
Founders doing our project. And so we started to to learn
the craft in that sense in Berlin in Berlin and at some
point is Master's degree there as well.
And they're actually we met a colleague of ours who was
working at MasterCard and he kept talking about blockchain
back then, I like 20 2016 and so on and got us quite excited
about it. And at the same time, the Dow
started and I read this article about it and was super
fascinated by it. And you have we've participated
in the Dow and we, I remember we had to buy.
He's on crack for the first time when I was like eight.
Dollars. And I was like, what is this
either? Just want to participate in the
Dow and yeah, that's sort of got us hooked.
So so we were like, Ethier and natives.
We didn't we kind of skip the Bitcoin part all together and
yeah that from then almost just the red, little wrote Our Master
thesis on my Crypt, I think Louis you on, put it on a u.s.
consensus algorithms and yeah, then we actually sooner fell
Master. We started working at a start-up
in Berlin, that help. Jake's like pick European based
projects such as by on of artists or others experiment
with like blockchains and eat evm, private networks and they
have we helped build those up but they are five blockchain
things were I think a bit early back then and I got the boring.
And so we decide to just like, get out there, go back to
research, learn more, the in-depth, engineering of
everything, I've participated hackathons that we went to like
three, four, five different hackathons all around the world.
Old just started building and it had this idea about this Steve
application that we wanted to build which was like a landing
protocol on top of the Dutch eggs that we wanted to build.
And I think the sort of like ties as in very nicely into how
we met you and the noses team. And yeah, then we remember we we
sort of started applying for for Brands like the gecko one and
yet this is sort of in how the whole journey officially
started, I guess. I think you may have been our
most successful gecko Grant receiver.
You actually submitted a proposal for something called
instant DX and I actually checked it out last night.
Again, it's actually. It's pretty cool.
Do you still remember what it was about?
Yeah, yeah, totally. Also, I thank you very much
Frederick you for hosting us. I think he'll mind, I completely
share the history of our private and business lives of the last
12 years. So I don't have any everything I
do, he doesn't. Yeah, and vice versa.
So so yeah. So actually I do remember the
instant, the X quite well, which is it was Houmas and my sort of
first solidity project other than hackathon project before.
And we, we basically looked at the Dutch X, which was a really
cool idea back. Then, as always noses, was very
early maybe even too early with, with these great Innovations.
The Dutch expose a decentralized exchange diagnosis.
That was based on a reverse Dutch auction mechanism.
And one of the things there was that users or participants in
the auction would have to wait 20 up to 24 hours.
I'll be for clearance and then they would have to come back and
remember to withdraw their proceeds.
And there's, of course, wasn't very great ux.
It was very slow. You had to wait, you were
impatient? So we were then thinking, okay,
how can we sort of make this better, right?
And the first idea? We had was actually very deep
fry. Yes, it was basically having a
pool of liquidity to front the proceeds of the auction.
Cause you I think you were able to at least by a margin sort of
deterministically, have a guarantee of roughly, how much I
use. I would get And yeah, we would
then instantly X was, I was basically fronting this money.
So you would be immediately able to withdraw a portion of your
proceeds. And then yeah, that actually
turned as well into thinking about automating the withdraws
from the auction. And that's really when we
stumbled upon the great problem. That is smart contract
Automation in the constraints of an evm.
And that's how we then realized. OK, actually automating
withdrawals. And so on is actually, quite
it's not built into The evm, it's not supported natively by a
theorem. So how how do we do that?
And then we realized wait a second.
There's a, there's like a whole need here for generalistic
automation protocol to allow a smart contract, applications to
be automated to have automated processes, and that's how we
very quickly. Then stumbled upon gelato.
I believe, we already rebranded from instant.
The X2 gelato in May of 2019 and started the grant as gelato
back, then with our first mission to automate withdraws
from the Dutch X. Yeah, I think it's super
important to kind of remember that this was four years ago and
basically all the things that kind of seem like common place.
Now back then they were they were cutting edge.
So, as a space, we've we've come quite quite a way but kind of
the fundamental problem or one of the fundamental problems with
smart contract, automation, kind of boils down to the fact that
smart contracts don't do anything unless they're poked,
right? Right.
So when you can't really say, if this happens to that, then
basically, if that has happened, someone needs to tell the smart
contract paycheck, again sort of thing.
So can you talk about that problem that you're trying to
alleviate? Yeah, maybe, maybe I can.
I can start losing a few feature jumped and of course.
Yes. I think the Foundation of
problem that like gelato or like the initial mission that we want
to solve his mark on track automation, was that that the
the protected blockchains the processes?
Run on evm. Blockchains like a theorem are a
finite. So if you want to execute
certain business logic, which you encode in a smart contract,
let's say you want to transfer funds to, to a friend, it's a
everyday for Then these then you define the sort of logic within
a smart contract. And then the actual business
logic of that smart contract is actually only run if someone
sends the transaction to it, right?
And so, if you think about what automation is automation, is,
sort of, okay? At very granular intervals.
I would like, like, preferably at every block.
I would like to run the sort of logic that is in the smart
contract to then determine whether to send the money to my
friend or not. And then they also like to
Options. How you can achieve this on an
evm blockchain one is you just send a transaction that every
block to that's for contract, right?
Which of course, is not really feasible because we all know
there's the spam protection mechanism was having to pay gas
for it. And especially when we start on
the theory on which was completely infeasible because of
a transaction can cost like $20 if you're unlucky.
And so the other way of doing this is actually to have this
sort of off chain Computation Network that does that
simulation for you? Not on Shane but of chain and
then, once your conditions are met and can be fulfilled on,
Shane it actually will execute and send the transaction on your
behalf. And this is basically what the,
the base problem was that we wanted to solve, but we wanted
to solve it in a generalistic way.
We started with the sort of withdrawal issue, but then we
realized, hey, it's not only the Dutch exit has a problem.
If, You want to do a limit orders on you.
Nice word for examples. The same problem if you want to
do liquidations for Lending protocols, it's the same
problem. So we realized that defy,
especially in defy at the beginning is like a the the use
case array is just infinite. And so that's why we started
them building this General 26 solution for it.
Gelato kind of boils down to kind of you know being this
Marketplace but in principle you could have also just offered the
service you know as as an infrastructure company writes I
mean there's plenty of those out there whom you can just contract
and they kind of run you know, the devops side of you know you
know the blockchain business for you.
What kind of drove you to kind of building this very
generalistic solution? So basically, our mission here
was, to bring smart contract automation, without trading off
the core properties of where three like self custody in our
private keys. So one way to achieve
automation, is by giving up access to your private Keys,
giving up access to your crypto assets, whatever they be and
give them into the hands of a service server company or
something and day, then execute transactions for you from your
account. But that would essentially be
like what banks do nowadays, right?
Like, they control all of your assets or Facebook controls, all
of your data. And that's how they can actually
bring Automation and web to which is which brings these very
cool web to use experiences. So we have three the problem was
okay, how can we have automation while it's not you know, forcing
users to give up custody over their funds and so on and that's
why we With a smart contract protocol.
Before we even build any servers, we first started with a
smart contract protocol gelato V1 which had some very like, I
think, now functions that have been copied as well a lot and so
on, like, it was sort of set, its own standard of smart
contract automation with these angers and functions can exec.
So, can I execute here on behalf of a user and then exact and
during the onion execution, user and application would be able to
Define their own business rules into the smart contract?
Which make it so that, you know, the gelato Bots can.
First of all, they don't need access to your private keys.
They can execute for you via Smart contract mechanisms and
also at the same time, the smart contract mechanisms can enforce
certain business rules, right? So that the bot cannot just, I
know, for example, in a limit order on uni, swap or on
pancakes, what which uses two large limit orders, actually use
a like report about can only execute a limit order to at the
right price, right? Like these are very important.
Was that are enforced by the smart contract.
So that is user as a user. You don't have to trust the
gelato about to execute at the right price.
Like, you know, that the smart contract logic protects you.
And as a bot, you are incentivized to execute at the
right price, because then the transaction will be successful
and you will get a small reward for it.
So these sort of encoding these rules into smart, contracts was
essentially what we started with and that there was like, the
first big version of gelato and interestingly, now, we are also
looking into how we can Remove the Reliance on just my
contracts because smart contracts and blockchain
computation is somewhat limited, right?
Like, it doesn't work with a heavy computations on and now we
also chipping away at the problem of, okay, how can we
have off chain computation, be secured and somewhat like
trustless and, and yeah, so we're working on that as well.
I want to hear about, I want to hear more about this in a little
bit. That's the the private beta that
you just released, right? The web three functions, let's
maybe get to the to the core of it first.
So you just said that basically Bots do stuff for me if I want
to automate stuff. So who controls the Bots and how
do I buy this service from them? So, who controls the?
But so we have because like gelato gelato notes, right?
And from him, and these are basically entities that are
running notes for you there. Like, you can think of them as
similar as I can in theory. Mm.
Not for example, just with the difference is that they are not
validating blocks or proposing blocks and validating them.
There are Verifying and checking certain tasks on your behalf all
the time and then executing them and making sure transactions get
included into the blockchain at the right time for you and then
getting getting paid for to do that job, right?
So I'm not sure how you pay any theory of note, the transaction
fee of of what you were what you have to pay and and who is who
are running this these notes. So, so today and this is
actually what we At the very beginning, we will have caused
running running the null cells and this was so like the
bootstrapping face of gelato gelato was always designed to be
the sort of Unstoppable etherium like protocol which tries to get
as close as possible to the trust minimization guarantees
that is theorem provides at the very beginning.
We started very good like bootstrap you inside.
Okay, let's build all the tools first and everything and then
get to that point later because the great thing about how we
started it with is that the trust minimized, the trust
Assumption of a very little because we could enforce it all
on chain and smart contracts, right?
So the only things you'll have to could really do for you.
At the very beginning was not executed transaction at the
right time, but we like we couldn't Rocky or something, you
like the little thought, I would still always execute and you
would always get the money or it just wouldn't execute right.
So. So that was the great thing, how
we could start. And also not worry too much
about likely centralization methods, as long as we have
reliability up time Right? And so we like sort of perfected
that process and now I think it will go there.
Probably in a second we're moving much more into.
How can we offload that computation that is done by
smart contracts to enforce certain data Integrity of like
okay what price to use to execute a transaction or let's
say what route should I use to get the most optimal Price,
Right? These things that are very hard
to enforce on Shane. How can we do that in the trust
minimized way? Way of chain.
And this is where decentralization comes into play
and this is where you have to basically build up a network of
mobile operators. That has steak similar to like
any theorem proof of stake and follows a certain protocol.
That is encoded into the clients that if they break it they will
get penalized. And if they follow it, they get
rewarded. And this is actually what we are
started launching last December. So, so so now, this like a major
upgrade. We actually announced pretty
soon. Is already conducted and we
already have external node operators running on this
network today. For example, station facilities,
they're running light or nodes and other dolls father company
other projects and by the end of the year.
Yeah. It's it should be that.
There's no like the Reliance on us.
This is very little to none. And at this is, this is sort of
where we are evolving towards as someone who kind of wants to
automate a process. Do I pick one board provider to
kind of do this for me? Or is it just a generalized pool
to which all of the blood providers?
Cannot all of the note Runners and can kind of tap into So, you
can think of gelato as a marketplace where the demand
side is you or like, smart contract applications that need
Automation Services and the supply side is the, gelato
network of nodes and nodes can offer their services on the
gelato Network. They have to run our client
implementation for that. They have to enter their task
execution via our smart contract protocol.
Where in certain rules are enforced like payouts and so on,
but yeah, basically, you can think of gelato as a module that
you can plug in and get access to a decentralized market of
notes. So it's not just like some
people know that we have real apis and they sometimes mistake
gelato for a relayer, it's not just a relay, it is a network of
relayer. So it is a module that you can
plug into your flow and get Access to a decentralized
network of three layers similar for smart contract automation.
So you don't have to pick one. You just picked gelato the
network and all of the basically what you get out of the box is a
coordination mechanism that coordinates amongst a set of
notes. Okay, so I don't have a personal
relationship with anyone, gelato note provider, it's kind of like
the network as a whole does it give me any basically what
Legacy business would call SAS or is this something that it how
do I know that if I use gelato for my decentralized back end
that it will perform? Yeah, that's a good question.
So currently there's no such thing as a laser.
So because I mean, we are sort of an open web 3style protocol
that you can use currently. I suppose the SLA is the the Mev
that note operators, get, right? So the way the protocol is
designed is that for successful execution of your transaction,
you have to pay a fee to cover the transaction fee and then
some profits. So as long as You believe in
like you know, people like it or not operators, wanting to make a
profit in this network. You should be, you know, you can
basically sleep well and know that someone will go and execute
your transactions at all time. Given that the core premise of
using gelato Network the services, there is that you have
to pay for it, right? That you have to pay the network
for performing the services. So the incentives are designed
in such a way, that always, you know, similar to how public Mev
works or to Howie theorem Works right?
Like why do people keep mining blocks because they get a block
reward and similar in gelato why will always will always be a
node executing your tasks while because they get a reward for
it. That's completely Fab.
So, let's talk about the people who actually run the nodes.
Do you have any idea how many different entities?
They're ours? Are there any are there?
Any requirements? I need to meet in order to run a
note so you said like taking providers and so on?
That sounds like very involved. I mean there's also things you
can kind of do from a dep. No do so at home, can I run
gelato on my deck note And if not what are what, what's the
barrier to entry? Well I think in theory yes in
theory you need an RPC so you need a connection to to the
blockchain you dislike access to phone up maybe and then you need
some server resources, right to run it and this is a like the
theoretical part of it. Now in practice of course gelato
the so like the client fermentation is fairly diverse
and actually complex spy now and especially Since we started off
as a, okay, we have this note up known to permutation for smart
contract automation. But since then, it expanded
quite a bit and I think we have this very modular microservices
like architecture for for gelato clients.
So you run like running a running.
A gelato note, here comes like different flavors and you can
sort of like opt in to certain services that you would like to
support. Because we have this automation
service which is completely detached from um, the relay
service which is completely detached from our new often
computation service. That is actually now coming out.
And so it's sort of like depends on sort of what service you want
to run. If you want to run like the most
simple one which is basically our execution service, which is
just there to get a transaction and not even do the computation
itself. Just get the transaction and
then get it mind for you. Then I would say a theory.
Yes, you can do it in practice because gelato is Or like live
on the say, I think over 10 different evm trains today,
right? You need like stable are feces
with most of them of course you could choose to only serve a
theorem for example in and do that and then like later this
year once we go live with our V 0 .1 or staking you could be
able to just like by some gel stake it and then participate in
actually exit into some track transactions.
But then you also have to guarantee some up time because
if you're not up, when you're supposed to To a new if you're
not executing transactions, get that get allocated to.
You adds a certain time, then you will, basically no longer
receive transactions for us for like, an interval as a
punishment. So, there's like this sort of
mechanism in place which is we, we incentivize you to stake
shell. The more you stake, the motors
actions, you will be able to execute but also if you get
these executions allocated and you don't execute them then you
will also not get the next one. So it's all.
Like a game of more steak and high up time.
So as long as you can guarantee that, then yes, you will
definitely be able to participate.
You just kind of touched on the fact that I mean, most of these
so far. We've talked about automation,
right? You're also kind of refer to
relays just a bit ago. Can you kind of explain the
distinction? Yeah, I can explain the
difference here. So I used to call automation
deferred relaying, and because automation is also a form of
relaying, if you will, it's this idea that a message in
operation, a transaction that a user wants to see, executed is
relayed on that user's behalf. So the user Themselves don't
have to send this transaction, it's a relay or that puts it on
chain for them. And automation is quite
interesting because there we couple this transaction,
relaying to a condition, being fulfilled in the future.
And that could be a deterministic condition like the
passage of time, right? Like every day do something for
me or it could be a complex condition that is not
deterministic. Like, if the price, you know,
reaches this, then execute for me, that might never happen
actually, or it might So so automation, is this a sort of
relaying on steroids if you will, where you couple the
relaying of a transaction to a arbitrarily user-definable
condition on chain and now also off chain.
Yeah. And then, relaying is really,
the simple primitive of just sending a transaction and
usually, that is in the context of real time relaying and
actually, to be honest, it's it sounds quite simple and so on.
So that it's literally just saying, hey, put this
transaction for me on chain but it on Looks like this much
better. You ask for about three users
were now. Technically, you can interact
with an application on a blockchain in real time without
needing to have crypto funds in your wallet.
For example, this is known as gas.
This transactions or major transactions, where, where it's
great for user onboarding. For example, you can you can use
a relay our and a user can then come visit your app for the
first time and interact with your smart contract already
without needing to go to a centralized Exchange.
First do kyc, and by crypto or something, to be able to send a
transaction. So, so, yeah, that's the, but
it's a bit more this real-time thing of like, hey, please do
this for me. Now, relaying is also really
cool for not, just for, for users, but also for back-end
Developers. For example, that are multi
chain. So for example, connects has
been using gelato relay for over a year and basically, they're a
cross Chain Bridge and every connects transaction is a gelato
real, a transaction. And for connects, As they call
them, it's very beneficial to use our relay apis and relay
Network because it makes it very easy to get transactions sent
reliably on multiple chains at the same time at scale.
So the relaying is also for us at least specializing in the art
of you know scalable transaction.
Throughput on multiple chains and also decoupling payment like
for of native tokens for transactions.
Removing this need for developers.
So developers can for example, nowadays with our one Balance
system put used to see on polygon, a balance, a ten
thousand dollar used to see and then go and have transactions in
their applications. Be executed on multiple
different chains while only paying from the single balanced
on one chain. So it makes the management the
transaction Management in the tens of thousands of
transactions per day extremely easy.
When you use a relay I liked a lot.
Oh yeah. And here again like gelato is a
network of relay are so you can think of gelato like as a Entry
point for you, real a transaction.
But in the background, there's multiple relay us that are
competing to execute these transactions.
Before we dive into use cases, a bit deeper one final question on
the automation. So as a user of the automation,
I don't I only have to pay once it's executed, right?
So can I can I spam the system by kind of?
I mean, basically, because the the nose they have to check the
conditions at certain Cadence is so if I had, just give them a
lot of work in checking conditions that may Never be met
or that pop that I Engineers such that they're never met.
Can I kind of can I bring down the network?
Yeah. So, so what you rightfully said
is, what is automation, automation consists of two
parts. It's the of chain computation
that has to be done and then it's the transaction relaying
that has to be done at the right time, when the condition is
fulfilled, right? And you're very right, if you
created say like 100,000 tasks or a million tiles, they would
never execute. You could bring down these sort
of networks because Yeah, there's no there's a lot of cost
but there will never be a reward.
That's why many of like these systems.
And I think this is sort of how we started our V1 designer that
they are better or Alpha and we want us out of gelato back then,
which is hey, we sort of put this blue, put a bounty up and
this bounty will then pay for the transaction.
And then it's I think everyone started to like take it and copy
it. And now it like it turned into
like the standard for spoke only automation but it's actually not
a scalable and It is actually quite flawed and that's why we
realize also. And this is this is also what is
being rolled out right now. And with our newest release of
our basically automate 2.0 or also like what three functions
that we probably talked about in a moment, we already redesigned
the system to such an extent that they are basically true
payments you have to do and and all like that too.
Fees that are being paid. And this is the one fee is for
the actual computation and there, it's very like the
analogy is very much basically looking at you Outdoors like a
decentralised AWS or Google Cloud which is a set of nodes.
Not one particular data center somewhere but a network of like
self also motivators somewhere in the world, the way your rent
that computation for your decent recertification and they run it
at the same the runner. All the time as long as you pay
them, of course. And then the execute the
transaction at the right time, right.
In the execution of the transaction for us is actually
done by the executor and the network empty empty in the
actual computation by another part of the of the network and
there has to be like it's in order to make these systems
really sustainable and scalable and work for everything.
You need this sort of distinction between paying for
computation and and so this is actually being rolled out Right
now as we as we speak but the cool thing is you don't like you
don't need to have let users deal with that, right?
Similar to how users don't pay for the users on Netflix.
Don't pay for the computation of AWS in the background, right?
If you watch a movie there even though they use ATO idea of yes,
similarly, like users of, let's say pancakes for, for like a
decks, they they are not using, they're not paying for the
computation. That is done by gelato.
They are paying Cakes for black as 0.1 percent fee, on each
limit order gets executed and they pay the computational fee.
For example, right? Let's kind of change course
here. Let's talk about the web three
functions. First, before we talk about use
cases, you are a kind of led into it so how what I mean.
So now you kind of you have to pay twice.
The payment is split between kind of submitting the
automation request and having it fulfilled.
Any other updates. Yeah, so what free functions is
is I think something we have been talking about for for quite
some times. I should also know white paper,
which is okay. Like smart contracts are like
it's cool to automate smart contracts and there's a lot of
stuff you can do on chain. And we have seen an explosion of
use cases, which we can talk about in a moment, but the real
cool use cases. And the real efficiency you can
gain is when you move the actual computation from on.
Strain and 22 off chain where you can do much more plus if you
move the data that can be used to automate, your smart
contracts from only being based on on sharing data to then of
chain data. And this is I think where it
gets really interesting because now, basically what you can
think of about like what free functions is, it's like a
decentralized cloud function. So it's like a decentralized.
A Darius Lambda where you as a developer you go.
And say, hey, I need to query a sub graph for example, or like
some API that returns me a list of all the entities that that
follow. It have a certain criteria and
all the entities that have a certain Rarity for example,
right? And what I want to do is I want
to check all these entities, if they can be cuddled with.
But let's say there's a cuddle function on that, right?
And I have to check whether they can be coddled and And I want to
check it and I once one of them can be cuddled, I want to, of
course, make sure that they get cuddled at the right time,
right? This is like a fun use case and
obviously, doing this on Shane is impossible.
You can't just query all the all the entities that have, that
sort of property and that sort of Rarity.
It's like, first of all computational far too expensive
and sector for you. You mostly impossible because
there's no good way of doing it. Sometimes certain like data's
only, visit my events for example or let's say they You
can start on chain like some information, you need to get
them from API, like ipss, maybe the metadata is an ipss, and you
need to get it from there, right?
So and what you can do with three functions, basically, you
can write a type script file, like, rather than writing, the
smart contract that encodes the logic, that determines what data
to use. And when to execute
transactions, do now, right? The typescript file that you
compile and deploy to ipss. Now, this lives on ipfs or other
data, availability layers that you can choose.
Or we can, we'll probably also expand it to other locations
later and you get an ID from ipfs out of it.
And then you go to 22 gelato and you send a transaction on Shane.
It says gelato, hey, pointing to this ipfs fire.
Hey, gelato notes, please run for me this ipfs file that I
just deployed there, which determines the logic that I just
described, and then execute transactions on my behalf to
whatever chain. I want to while providing me
with certain levels of Data Integrity that the data that is
being generated is being used is actually the same and the in the
right one, right? And yeah, this is this is what
you can do. And you can think about it is in
allowing smart contracts to access Cloud functions with like
a transaction. And this is super powerful for
decentralized applications that don't want to like have one
company that runs Google cloud or whatever and if they don't
pay their bills. So if they get censored or
whatever, then the whole application goes down then
Relies on this which many applications do these days and
this is basically a way to make them like to centralized process
from make them more Unstoppable. That's super powerful.
But what does that do to your trust is?
I'm shanaz like you know developer who uses this.
That's a good question. And and this is also like the
evolution and why decentralization for gelato is
now becoming very important. And I eluded the beginning that
the beginning, it it was okay because trust was sort of on
Shane right now. We're moving to a world where
trust assumptions are higher because gelato nodes are a
running computation for you that you cannot verify don't chain
and you need to, you need to have some sort of trust in it.
And so this is, we're staking and the decentralization of our
Network. In hand and basically how we are
envisioning is that you can Define.
You have some sort of comparing this to other Oracle networks
because it's some sort of like you can you can refer to as as
like partially like a hybrid Oracle Network and how we are
sort of trying to provide users with like like the flexibility
of writing these things as much as much greater than what you're
used to in other networks. But what you can also do is, you
will be able to Define what sort of Integrity, you need for the
data. So for example, you can say, hey
I want to have 50 or 60 percent of the gelato nodes that have
staked their gel to sign off on that data.
And only if they all signed off of that data, Then I then note
can take that transaction and execute it, right?
And so that way you have 60% of the gelato stake.
That does saying, hey, I verified that data and this is
actually data should be used. And then of course, if they are
maliciously they will be session.
Can be can be penalized for this, but you can also say,
let's say my data is not that important, right?
And I don't need that sort of Integrity.
I don't need six percent of the network to run this computation.
I only need two nodes to run the computation.
And you could also Define some, some, some lower thresholds here
for you. It depends on the use case, but
basically, now staking and having a valid data, set becomes
very important. Okay, I think that solves a lot
of the problem, but is there some sort of escalation
mechanism? So if I'm not happy with the
execution, there's some sort of arbitration protocol that I can
run because otherwise, what you incentivizing is, basically,
someone performs the computation, maybe maliciously,
and other other nodes are not incentivized to rerun the
computation but can just piggyback, right?
So, basically if everyone agrees and and it's it's It's wrong but
no one's penalized then that's kind of.
Yeah so can I ask you late as a Dev who uses this Oracle?
Yeah. So for that we have right now
the gelato doll, right? So we have our dowel right now
where users can basically come and and say, hey, this is what
was executed and this is actually I rerun the computation
myself and this is actually what it supposed to return, which is
not always 100%. It's not easy to make this
hundred percent objective because if you talk about
generalistic object computation then, Then it's not only a
mistake. It's not a monistic, right?
I think for many use cases, it actually is, especially if you
talk about, like sub graph data, or data from other chains, there
it is deterministic. But if you think about saap at
Price data and it depends on which milliseconds or note,
queried your price right there. You have to like have some sort
of defined aggregation and sort of concert.
Jason of the data process defined and this is what we
meant with this. Hey you can Define your own
thresholds. Let's say you can say a I want
these sort of nodes to run this. And they have to agree that this
is in a certain range or this is roughly the same in these
boundaries. And if it's the case, then I'm
cool with that, right? And then they have to sign it
off and send the transaction, right?
And if you look back here and you can say head was completely
different, then you can basically start this escalation
process. Which is, hey, I want to
challenge this. And then there is basically the
Dow doing his job and, and validating it, and making sure.
But right now, like there is stay.
There's no perfect way of sort of doing it for now, which is
always deterministic objective and all subjectivity involved at
all. So we are taking this sort of
pragmatic approach to this. No, it's super exciting.
So when it is, when it's is going to be rolled out, Well,
actually the beta starts today. So we were rolling out the word
three functions beta. Today we're actually also roller
so yesterday but today it's going love life but it is first
of all in like a closed beta. So we have roundabouts like 30
projects, 30 projects signed up for it now that will be
immediately using it and a lot of really, really cool and
amazing use case that I'm super excited for Mike nft, Perpetual
stew too. To end of T, lending to
decentralize market-making to like a lot of different things.
On the use case, array is really huge and the beta is there
because yeah, there's a lot of stake here, right?
And data Integrity is important and so we are slowly only
onboarding new and your users to the system to make sure we can
scale this up secure this efficiently and make it work
smoothly for everyone. So yeah that's why it will
probably only still be in a closed beta for at least a
couple of months. Who is this is a super nice
segue to use cases. So, we've talked about kind of
like the, the nuts and bolts for the past, 40 minutes.
So kind of hit me with what what has been built with it because
it's been massively used. I mean, there's millions of
transactions that have been that have been sent using gelato.
So what are the use cases? And what networks are they on?
And what are what are you particularly proud of?
Yeah, maybe I can give a little history, I guess of use cases.
And really, what we discovered, four years ago, was that
etherium and other EVMS. Need this generalistic
automation, or real a protocol that lives outside of the client
implementation of the blockchain.
And and really this means that anything can be built on top of
this. And we've seen this really
happening, like they have been use cases that we didn't force.
See. And there were, I mean, it all
started with defy because we started to large 1, 2019 and
2019 to 2021, I guess there was pretty much everything was defy,
right? And then eventually nfc's
happens, but but it started with defy and and there, I mean, the,
the first use case actually we're built by in step by the
incident team. So, there are also legendary
members of the gelato Club if you will, and they built
together with us some extremely complex use cases.
Automated depth refinancing. So these were things like I
think automatically, for example, automatically moving
your alpha position to compound if compound has better apis or
something like this. I think this was the number one
use case for incident for a whole wide and I know this is
one of the things that I used in to stood up for it was just a
single click and basically it just switched everything over it
was super neat. Exactly.
Yeah and they use gelato to automate this This.
And yeah, it was, it was a very heavy on the device side was
using flash Lawns and this and that.
And all of these things were checked, basically, like all of
these things by gelato conditions, like what flash
learn to use whether from dydx or from other or whatnot, and
they are. So some very heavy, D5 things
were built first. And then actually, one of the
first big use cases that we always saw where limit orders of
course for am. So, anybody trading on Senators
exchanges? We place a limit order when they
bite want to buy or sell something right but on a mems
like you nice pop or Kaiba back, then even you didn't have this
enabled. So with gelato, we build a limit
order, SDK, that was using a smart contract, limit order
protocol. And yeah, basically this is how
big a M&M's, like spooky swap on Phantom and Quick Stop on
polygon. And pancake swap on be chained
or basically, we're able to offer limit orders on their
exchange to Ooh, users, which is in the background using gelato
Automation. And, and then from there, I
mean, eventually once we build our automation, UI and interface
slot to automate previously cultural tops and we basically
then gave developers a sort of nice way of you know, self
servicing them and themselves before I was sort of us, you
know, the tech was ready, like it could be used, but there was
a lot of work you as a developer needed to do into.
And we also didn't have that much documentation.
Technically, you could have used a lot with about anything but,
you know, you know how it is. You have to make developers
lives easier for them to actually use it.
So, we built this. Super nice UI product, where you
can come up, touch, allow to the network.
And you can basically start automating your smart contracts
with the click of a mouse button, basically, and that
really, I mean, that sort of opened the floodgates to use
cases. There were so many things
launching without us, even knowing that, suddenly we're
using the network. I remember algorithmic stable
coins using it for for replacing many other things.
I'm sure whom I will give some more colors soon.
And then for relaying, for relaying initially, our approach
ruling was a bit more back and focused.
So, really focusing on how can we provide back and projects?
Such as, for example, connects the cross-trained messaging
protocol, they're using it with a way to get transactions.
Find on multiple chains with high throughput.
Like really at scale because that's actually quite hard
building, your own relay or sort of to send a couple of
transactions. Hundreds of transactions, every
day is not that hard, but going from there to forty thousand
transactions. A hundred thousand transactions
per day on many different networks.
Reliably, that's then really hard and that's production
software. So, we sort of started with that
and then has been successfully used by connects for over a year
without any problems. And and and recently in the last
half year or so we also focus a bit more on the UI side of
things for relaying. So gases, transactions, account
abstraction. All these things making it easy
to unboard web to use us and not so much the focus on having.
I don't know a throughput of hundred thousand transaction per
day for your back-end application.
But rather having these cool user experiences where as a
user, you can interact with smart contracts without the need
of having crypto in your wallet and so on.
So, So there there will be a think I have some exciting news
cases launching soon. Yeah, for example, and we're
talking to a betting site or noses chain who want to make it
so that users first time, users prefer them to users can come
and place their bet without needing to to have crypto in the
world for example. Super cool him?
I do you want to add to the landscape of projects building
on gelato because if, if not, I'd like to talk about account
abstraction but Louis kind of insinuated that you would that
you would want to add some color.
And as we heard earlier, your kind of, basically the same
person, so I assume, Louis knows what you want.
I think Louise already covered a lot.
I think maybe to a God, there's like we are things that I
personally didn't anticipate all these nft use case because we
are both from like to defy world.
But about suddenly we seem like tens of thousands or hundred
thousand transactions from like nft rentals.
For example, I don't know, like I didn't know people rent.
So many and of teas, but they're like these entire NFC rental
market places. Now, where you can get an NF T,
you can literally get the energy into your wallet, but say like a
board a for example, and then you can do something and then
gelato will out of like there's a fine.
In the transfer from function. There's like a condition which
is gelato can get this nft out of your wallet in seven days.
Again will draw it back to the original owner and this is like
happening. So literally smart contracts are
all of the entities are given to you in the next drawn, back it,
but gelato and this is happening every day, like tens of
thousands of times on polygon and B&B chain vnd and and stuff
like that. So these are things that Beyond
like makeout are using it for like their collateral management
and Like stuff like optimism for topping up sequence or nose and
stuff like that which are use cases.
We have seen very early on. These are like ones that did
read. That really surprised.
Me personally seeing rent a monkey.
Yeah, I think, I think what both film and I were quite happy and
proud of is that we really saw the, you know, one, one guy team
developer using this up to, you know, the blue-chip defy
projects, like other Make our optimism and in San source of
really, it's for everyone who is so it kind of traction.
So, I think a lot of our listeners will kind of know this
in the context of VIP 4337, this is actually something that we're
working on together. So, not we as epicenter, but me
has no surface. And this is kind of finding an
implementation for account of traction without protocol level.
Changes just using real Ayers. It's incredibly cool use cases
and actually can see. So we are committed to kind of
rolling this out or no sustained.
And I would kind of assume that this this goes well and kind of
is taken over by other chains as well.
So can you explain to me how it works?
Yeah, so I can instruction really is the concept of trying
to move away from having users interact with smart contracts
with their externally, on the count and rather promoting that
they are interacting with the smart contract wallet.
Based as my contract based account and that these are the
two accounts that are available on aetherium.
One is created by your private key, and then the other one you
will have to Deploy yourself. Let's say the Naza saves is
probably the most prominent example of a smart contract
wallet. And the cool thing about it's my
contract while it is, I like to compare them as one is like an
old-school Dalek where you have like this wooden a key that you
get in and then you can scan to kind of like access we're free
and then the other ones like this digital door lock, if we
have an office here where you can program people to just like
come in for like a day or so or you need multiple people.
All to sign off to enter the building for example, right?
And so it's a programmable wallet.
It's my contract was a programmable what'd where you
can encode Advanced functionalities, for example,
that you can make transactions be fully gasless on behalf of
users without having to change any smart country code anymore.
And this just greatly improves. The ux of users that are,
especially better getting on board two or three.
And yeah, that is this whole array of like And feature sets
that you want, for example, gases transactions, account
recovery but also in Walnut automation, which I think I'm
sort of most bullish on construction.
And Yeah, we actually sort of experiment and been building a
construction stuff. Since the very beginning gelato
was actually started off as the module for the nose has saved.
This was our first implementation of gelato and it
was it was virtually. Hey you have your smart contract
wallet and now you have like I can add on to the smart contract
while to make it really, really smart and it could, it can
automate, it can execute things on your behalf when you're not
there. This is for me like a smart
wallet, right? And we actually deployed knows
the Cézanne our at first, your eyes back then and had like had
users interact with our application, using their noses.
Safe as a proxy, which is exactly what account abstraction
wants to achieve and sort of enshrine into the protocol a bit
further. I am with this ESU 437, for
example, which basically allows provides people like a public
entry point who dented and say, Hey I want to interact with a
certain application and they can Define how they wanted to act
how they want to pay for it, for example.
And then there's this public entry point where you can't do
so. So at this is account
abstraction and I should, but there it's a very broad topic.
So there's a lot of different parts you can go into if you
want. Yeah, absolutely.
It's a, it's a super big topic and I think I think in terms of
kind of making web three usable for Nummies, this is really
something that kind of we need to hit.
Because I mean, the current onboarding experience you need
to be able to onboard users with an email or similar, even if
that means lower, trust assumption.
You just have to be able to switch it out later.
The users will be able to switch it out later.
But, you know, this experience where kind of you, you download
meta mask for someone and then, then you say I'm not.
By the look. But you have to write down these
12 words and you can never lose them.
So replicate them, you know, in many places but you can also
never show them to anyone. So replicate them never.
It's just it's a lot of mixed messages and people don't get
it. It's just, this is not how we're
going on board. Like the next hundred million
people are. So right and until EIP 4337
actually comes, if it comes, I think it'll be an uphill battle
in terms of Pretty complex. And you know, backwards
compatibility and such what other things are you excited
for? So I mean, with the web three
functions, you kind of you radically enlarge the
possibility space of what can be built using gelato.
So what are the cool things? You kind of you foresee, and
what are you excited for? Yeah, maybe I could start at Lee
Lewis, feel free to add stuff and so I think maybe tying it
back to the account abstraction for me, this all sort of for me
I was gelato especially I see all these things converging at
some point. So right now to provide users
with in sort of these Advanced automated services or use cases,
let's say a limit order on pancakes for or let's say Learn
with like, hey, we always give you the best rate, we're
whatever or other you, other use cases, what you always have to
do, is, you had to build entire smart contract, protocols, which
logic is solely based to provide, this sort of
automation, for users in a way where they can say, they just
have to deposit their assets into like this pool.
And then from this pool, a limit order gets executed, or from
this pool, The the it will be invested in the best yield
generating protocol or whatnot. And mostly the reason why we
have this is because you can't automate transactions from the
users. What you're a wanted, right?
So other than getting their private key then yeah.
You basically on their money, right?
So if we can as a community push this Concept of a construction
and smart contract wallet. Then, what we gain is, basically
what I call in wallet automation, which is you don't
need to build all these protocols anymore.
You can just tie your money or your funds in your wallet to
arbitrary off, chain data computation or on Shane
verifiable data and computation, which allow the for example, and
can start getting the best yield everywhere.
Straight out of your wallet, you don't have to pull them
anywhere. You don't have to send them
anywhere first just straight over your water.
De Deus things think about like games for example, right?
You can build like you can play strategy games where you run a
script that interacts with your account on your behalf or with
other people's accounts on their behalf and like direct their
actions and like a Pokemon world.
Like, for me, I see NPC's non-player characters.
All of them will be like a smart contract which will attack you
like. So your Pokemon game, you walk
through the grass and suddenly Pokémon attacks.
You, it is like a text function there and then gelada cents a
transaction. The Pokemon comes the text, you
and then is like a battle and you fight the Pokemon.
Even if you might not be at the machine at the time, you define
the strategy beforehand and then you can alter it over time.
So I think they're with the construction plus automation,
especially leveraging data from off chain.
I think you just Full like you 10x or 100x, the possibilities
that can be built for with free and it all ties a very nicely
together. So I'm super excited about like
how this and I already see a couple of use cases and projects
building. First things like brahmas
building basically like a urine but based on those who say it's
using gelato in the background. So I think I'm super excited
about these type of use cases. And they tie everything very
nicely together. Yeah, one of the big things that
I am excited about is basically a whole new web, three user
experience. We all were three natives here.
I know I've known you for four years of video dica.
So you were definitely very early and probably you are used
to using M masking sound, but but you also mentioned here that
it's still very cranky. When onboarding new users, it's
still always like, every time I on board, a friend, or family
member it I realize how bad it is and that it will never be
mainstream because it's way too complex.
And one thing that we have to hand to web to is that the user
experience is, there are really great, A lot of times.
And and yeah, I think we have to achieve parity with that and web
3. And if not even surpass it and
web three, we have created these amazing back-end technologies
that make developer experiences. Great, right.
That you can build your own bank, you can build whatever
like with a bunch of lines of code.
But on the front end on the UI level on the mobile app level,
it still is very immature. It scares people off its clunky,
it's kind of horrible, to be honest.
So what I'm what I'm really hoping for now that as we move
up, the stack a bit, and we sort of provide Technologies like,
the relay apis that we have account abstraction smart
contract, wallets to front end developer.
Is that we finally have a better front end to a 3 as well.
Not just a good back-end and and hear what I'm looking out for.
Hopefully next Bull, Run is that we don't have these things where
you definitely know that this is a web three side where you log
in, with me time, ask you connect, to some RPC, everything
is slow. You can't do anything because
you don't have Kryptonian wallet, you have to go visit
three other places now to get crypto to do to configure your
wallet, to write something on paper.
And And stored in a save or something, right?
Like all of this should be gone and hopefully we can build web
three applications, where users don't even know that they're
interacting with with three only the developers of that site and
all because they're using the power of what P Technologies to
build, amazing back ends to build amazing applications
without the need of, I don't know.
Web to Legacy licensing. So, so, so yeah.
Really like, that's what I'm really looking forward to an end
here. Our our basically stake in this
game. Is our set of real apis.
You can certainly use automation as well to provide very nice
user experiences but especially with relaying and account
abstraction. You can build amazing new user
experiences where I hope it will simply be like, okay, we forget
completely about connecting meet, I'm asking what?
So, what so ever, like, all of this will be gone, it will just
be a nice website and you go to clicking buttons again, you
needed to see data and so on and you don't have to have this
extension be connected. And so on at all times, like it
should be Very smooth sort of instant feedback as you use a
website to interact with crypto. That's really what I'm looking
forward to you too. Having left three with strictly
better user experience than web to this is.
Those are goals. Fantastic, I have one last
question and maybe it's the most important question that I
considered leading with. What's your favorite flavor of
ice cream? You don't, you don't get to be
called July. Otto without, you know, having a
good answer to that. And I do look forward to the to
the next Defcon and the the gelato booth there again.
Oh yeah. The most the favorite Booth of
our def con attendees where you get gelato.
We literally saw people going there eight times in a single
day guy, who's get you skipped lunch and everything was crazy.
Costed was also I think it vegan or maybe maybe just vegetarian
but was very healthy. So basically this was also one
of the main complaints about def con this year that the food was
too healthy, but you were there, too.
You were there to, you know, to to rescue the staff.
Attend saviors. Yeah.
Yeah, but having having a free ice cream truck is definitely a
dose Vector, that's for sure. So was we've got a grease there.
So for fun, for me, if for me impressive, favorite flavors
still is the command and this is actually how I what I ordered
when I was a child when I spend all my pocket money on gelato
and I went to destroy the place close by and I ordered eight
Scoops and it looks It what I wanted a scoops and I did it on
my career. I'd like a biweekly basis, most
likely. And there were lemon chocolate
chili and lemon chocolate cherry.
So so the, so I like lemon and chocolate and it specifically
just a hinge of chili and some sweetness with the cherry.
And then you get a, you have opinions opinions and isn't
Louis. What about you?
Yeah, I think, for me, it's pistachio.
And by the way, I have to plug the amazing ice cream shop that
is next to fall, not in Berlin. Do I?
Yes, it's amazing. This is Hylian ice cream there.
So. Yeah.
It was the perfect place to start gelato in 2019 and have
some of the bear Market. Bitterness be washed away with
some nice Sweet. Gelato from the shop, close by
Fantastic. If people want to find out more
about gelato or use, gelato, or become active in the gelato
Community, where do we send them understand?
So first of all, gelato dot network is the website that you
find all the various resources and links, the most active
channel-facets Discord there. If you were free developer,
you're starting out or you are an advanced person who wants to
go deep into gelato. Just come there and chat with us
and And of course, follow us on Twitter.
We are also producing a lot of video content on YouTube, so
make sure to try to follow us on YouTube, as well.
We'll probably do some cool Vlogs for each Denver, so if
you're not there and can participate, but still when I
experience it and make sure to check out our other Vlog there.
And yeah, so this card is the best form and to it, of course,
Fantastic, thank you both for coming on.
This was super fun. Thanks, thank you.
Thank you for joining us on this week's episode.
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