Welcome to obscenity show, which talks about the technology
projects and people driving decentralization and blockchain
Revolution. I'm Brian Crane.
And today I'm speaking with Sergei gorbunov.
He's the co-founder axle. Our axler is one of the leading.
Interoperability protocols, like aiming to kind of make, all of
the blockchains interoperable or lots of things.
Lots of different diverse product, protocols, very cool
project. So I'm really excited to dive
into that with Sergei. Now, before we do that, let's
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before we get started one more thing, so my wife has started
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I think. There's some other crypt
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So you can find it on non-conventional dot show.
And so with that, let's get started, say gay.
It's so great to have you finally on epicenter.
Hey Brian, good to be here. Pretty excited.
This is like I have to question every voters like directly in
but maybe you can like take a step back a little bit.
Like, how did you, how did he become interested in, you know,
crypto and blockchain? Yeah, so, you know, I think my
background I played with various Technologies.
I think over the years originally, I worked in the kind
of software-defined networking and just distributed systems.
And then I wanted to go to grad school to study for my
cryptography. Right.
So I ended up going to MIT to work on theoretical cryptography
for a number of years, including, you know, lattice
based cryptography like function encryption, like multi-party
computation, protocols and things like that.
And then by the end of the grad school could have solved a few
interesting problems. I knew that you know, I had
enough to defend my thesis but got a little bit bored, right?
And was looking for a new space and then you set of problems to
work on. And so that's how we started to
look at the at the Block chains and crypto that was around 2014
2015, kind of pretty early days, you know, etherium was still in
the early makings and they were figuring out some of the in
scalability issues and I started to collaborate with silver
McAuliffe who was a faculty at MIT at the time and some of the
early designs behind the elgrand protocol.
And you know, 2015. I finished grad school.
I went to the University of Waterloo for few years, continue
doing research there in systems, you know, crypto security and
then after that been kind of joined the crypto space
full-time, right? And help to build our grant.
We took that to the market, you know, two and a half years ago
and Since then, yeah, it's been kind of full time.
It's, it's an amazing space to be in.
I'm pretty excited to build here.
Yeah, absolutely. It is pretty pretty unique
industry. I don't think there's anything
like it. At least I've known heard of
anything like that. So one thing I'm curious about
it, with our grand Rite. You were part of, you know, like
a big block chain project, I big layer, one project now, then you
went to start axle or like your own project.
So curious, like what are the main lessons of learnings that
you had from like your timing diagram that you are like?
Okay, that's something. You know, definitely want to do
differently or that's like something that's like really
important in terms of how you approach launching crypto
protocol. Yeah, great question.
I mean, I think a, you know, it is important to say that the
time it was probably, you know, a little bit different at right
now than when it was when we're launching our grant.
So, you know, some of the things that I say, you know, should be
Revisited, right? But I think that being said, at
least build in right now, with the last few years.
I kind of realized that building alongside the community is
probably, you know, one of the most important things, right?
So that as you make in decisions, as you're building a
network, It's right where you have lots of actors, participate
in it like validators, right? You have users, you have
applications. That will be interacting with
it. I think getting feedback early
get in, you know, reacting to the feedback iterating quickly,
allowing people to you know, contribute and participate and
build alongside with you hear their ideas is kind of quite
fundamental, right? And I think this is right now
that to me, to me that's been one of the most rewarding things
I think building in crypto space and Building an open network is
that, you know, we have a core team that that does a lot of
development. But I think without the external
support of folks, like, like, you guys course, one right and
other validators, and other community members building, like
dashboards and tools and monitor, and Services.
I think it would be a lot harder to get what we are.
So and we're trying to leverage that, I guess to the fullest
extent. What's your secret like
building? The axle our community.
What has worked best? I'm not sure if there's you
know, it's specific one secret but I think being transparent
right being open and where we are, you know, listening to
feedback inviting people and I think, you know, it's important
to help each other out, right? As we're building.
This is there is a lot of folks that are kind of get into the
space trying to learn how to, you know, set up nodes or how to
perform simple transactions, across networks and things like
that. And just listen to that,
providing feedback along the side.
I think that's, you know, that that worked quite well with us.
I think the other things that we have done well is we're running
a lot of different Community programs work where we try to
structure how people engage with axilor.
Right? So the we've been running this
Quantum Community program over the last few months and kind of
Kate who is working on our community.
Development's been doing a lot of driving behind it.
And there are we allowed How kind of non-technical people to
participate, right? Which is something people have
asked for a lot, which like how do I create content?
Like what type of content you guys need?
How do I create documentation, like technical right apps about
axilor, like how to explain it better, and things like that.
And so, you know, we try to put some structure and give them
some ideas how to how to get engaged.
And then I think that that worked quite well.
Let's think maybe step back around.
Axle are so, what was what was the original impetus?
Like? Why did you want to start this
project? And what's your vision for Axl
are? Yeah, I mean, you know, I think
as we were building our brand and taking it to the market, I
think a will quickly realize that a lot of other, you know,
platforms are been built in parallel that are going to have
traction that are going to have use cases.
And, you know, may be optimized for different.
Current constraints that like Iran was optimized for, for
instance, you know, some of them build their own different
software stack. Some of them just Target
different markets. And so definitely, we quickly
saw that many ecosystems would continue to evolve in the space
right now. When you take that as a, you
know, as a given, then the first question that asks, well, how do
you interact across those ecosystems right?
For us, the first ecosystems, we wanted to interact with from our
grand War Bitcoin aetherium, right?
Then I think Every proof of stake blockchain that was built
around the same time frame had a similar questions.
Like how do you connect to those two networks?
But, you know, that on its own, you know, you can think about
like Bridges or some some, some type of one-off solution and
serve that's fine. But if you take as an assumption
that many other ecosystems are going to continue being billed,
continue being developed. Then you ask yourself a
question. Well, how do you make it easier
to connect all of them together? What are the universal metrics
that you have to satisfy at the protocol?
ER, at the infrastructure layer to connect them together.
And so that's what we started to do.
And the end goal for actually has always been to allow users
and developers to interact with all of these ecosystems.
In an easy way. I see an application.
I have an asset, I should be able to go and use that
application with my asset which is not really possible.
If you have to hop across from one network to another, you
know, in some fashion. So if you see in the end, like
if he's sort of Acts lard or interoperability in the long
run, you think we're going to have like lots of different
interoperability protocol. So do you think there is going
to be like a convergence on, you know, one or two great
questions. So I think there's going to be
different protocols. But different Protocols are
going to be across different layers of the stack.
Okay. So if you take as an analogy,
you know how, the internet works right interoperability.
Protocols are all about About how the internet is structured,
right? And it's not a single protocol,
its kind of sets of protocols that were built.
Everything from, you know, routing, protocols transmission,
protocols, application layer, protocols on some of the layers.
You have few protocols, you know, on the core routing
infrastructure layer, you have protocols like IP bgp, right,
then you have TCP and UDP protocols on top of it.
But then you have many application layer, protocols,
that are making it easy for the applications to Interact on
going to talk to one another and at least right now, I would
think that something similar will happen in the blockchain.
Ecosystem, were at the core, you know, routing or infrastructure
layer will probably get end up with.
I think a handful of solutions, right?
Or maybe protocols. And then on top of it, I expect
to see a lot more application layer, protocols, that, you
know, leverage all of the core infrastructure to communicate
and go back and forth and that's what, you know, Applications
would be exposed with but on the network and Route and layer, you
know, I don't think we cannot scale if there is just too many
protocols, right? This the system can just going
to continue to be fragmented. So I do think there is going to
be a, you know, a convergence towards a few approaches or a
few message formats, and some sense when you are pursuing
that, all right, you know, kind of started work on this.
On this idea of like, having this interoperability solution.
What did you feel like was? I mean, what would it mean?
Kind of requirements that you have for, like the solutions
that were produced. Like, what were you trying to
optimize for? Yeah.
So I think, first requirement that we had, was to be able to
connect with the, with any ecosystem, in an easy way,
right? So meaning that in the
blockchain space, we've seen lots of different consensus,
protocols, everything from proof of work to proof of stake.
They all have different finality rules.
They all have their way of doing.
Only with, you know, safety and live in those thresholds and so
on and so forth. And so we wanted to be able to
plug in in an easy way with any of the ecosystems without having
to make complicated engineering projects and kind of spent years
integrate in one platform to another.
So that was a, you know, first core requirement.
I think the second core requirement was to be able to
translate right and Route across any of these ecosystems in an
easy way. So I think the basic problem
that comes up as you connect more and more of these
ecosystems. Is that a, they all speak very
different formats and different languages, right?
So you need a mechanism to be able to, you know, take a
message from one chain, be able to translate it and put it as a
message on a different chain and you need to be able to Route it
in an effective way. Like how do you make sure that
as new ecosystems that been added, there is no additional
like, Layton sees or hops that are introduces to to connect to
those ecosystems. So, Were some of the core
requirements that we that we wanted to make sure we can
satisfy and the final one was to really think about it.
How do we make it easier for the users to interact with all of
this solutions? Right?
I think we are still so early at the interoperability space where
we talking about, you know, core pipes and infrastructure, but we
do have to get to a level where you know applications integrate
with this infrastructure so that the users can go and just use
the application that they They that they want across the
ecosystem and so building a stack that would allow for that
user experience is actually quite fundamental and quite
important. And, you know, we spend a lot of
time thinking how to make those, you know, those design decisions
that would down the line optimized for this user
experience and make it easier for the users to to talk to all
of these chains. Cool, and so, can you describe
the, you know, what's the architecture that you ended up
arriving and like, what this Arc slow look like on a high level.
Yeah. So on the high level, you know,
excellor is a proof of stake Network.
That's built around Cosmos has Decay, right?
And what it runs is that it runs a kind of cross chain consensus
protocol that we have built. And what happens under the hood.
Is that a set of valid? Odors or collectively monitor a
different block chains, and they're monitoring the special
exit points on those blockchains.
Right? We'll call them X or gateways.
So, think of a Gateway as a special account or a set of
accounts or a smart contract. If you talking about, you know,
a smart contract, compatible chain, information can come into
this, Gateway account, the validators collectively, reach a
decision of what needs to happen with that information, right?
Where it needs to go, where it needs to be routed or translate
along. Way, they perform those
functions collectively, they vote on it and then they produce
a message that can be posted on the destination chain and that
message then gets executed. And so, the basic idea is that
you have this axilor consensus protocol and the validators that
are executing, all these cross chain functions.
You can on board more chains, you know, more validators can
join. It's an open network.
You can keep on adding more protocols and you get all the
benefits of having this. Universal overlay Network across
all of the, all of the blockchains that does all the
core functions. Right.
And in just to maybe, kind of contrast is a little like, like
11 interoperability solution that people may be aware of is,
you know, something called IDC, right, which exists in Cosmos
and IBC basically have like, okay.
Let's say Cosmos Harbor nose, Moses and you have a light kind
of the cosmos shop running in a small system the like kind of a
smooth running the cosmos Hub or you know, they dislike kind
proves the basically accepted and Then you can connect this
way. Now.
Of course, the problem is, that doesn't really like work easily
across like, lots of different chains, right?
For example. Like, how is it Bitcoin chain
going to like verify it, like climb proof some some other
chain. So then here you basically you
have a set of operators know that I like running full knows
that you didn't trust. Yeah, exactly, right.
So, I guess, yeah, like, you know what you mentioned is quite
correct, right? Like, I think I'd be see is, you
know, great protocol, and I think it works really well, but
it wasn't a very heavy engineering undertaking, right?
Even for ten german-based, change to integrate and
Implement integrated it for some other chains, even proof of
stake chains. Like I'll Grant or Avalanche.
I'm in a lot of the stack will have to be rebuilt to do that.
Right? Which is you know, kind of Would
be years of work and engineering.
And so, I think that's one thing.
And to you are always going to be in the need of maintaining
this, like, lines and these connections, right?
If you create IBC connection, so, if I'm upgrading my proof of
stake blockchain and I modify and consensus, because I have a
better algorithm or I want to change the way I'm, you know,
creating blocks or headers. That means all of the
connections that I need to manage as an operator of this
network. I would have to go and write the
low-light clients for them. They may have to be produced in
different languages like solidity, you know, rust
consensus, layer, whatever, that is.
I have to go and upgrade them, maintain them, and so on and so
forth. So I think we try to optimize a
little bit more for engineering ease of use, and onboarding.
In some sense. Then I would say, kind of a IBC
is almost like, you know, the the ideal model, but it's, you
know, but it's but it's very hard to scale and practice.
And if you talking about diverse ecosystems, Oh systems.
Maybe you can talk a little bit about the security aspect of
interoperability. Right?
I mean, I think we have seen some of the biggest hacks and,
and sort of misfortunes have happened around
interoperability. I think there was something only
theorem as I remember was called now, but that was like, a few
months ago. That was like a really huge one.
And then, of course, we had Wormhole more recently, like why
is the Of interoperability in your view.
Why is this so hard? Yeah, great question.
Because at the very core kind of any interoperability protocol
works as follows, right? You you need to you have let's
say you have two to block chains, right?
On the very high level. Any blockchain is a database
plus a network, right? So let's think of it as a
database. So your goal is to get to
synchronize to databases in some sense, right?
So what is the way of synchronizing estate across two
databases? As well, the most standard
approaches that, you know, you lock a state on a source chain
you, replicate it on a destination chain, right?
So when are we talking about moving assets across different?
Blockchains, most of them effectively lock the state on
the source chain of an asset and then you replicate the state on
the destination chain. And then destination chain can
work with that state. And then you go back and forth.
Right? So it's a similar, how, you
know, on the internet we're doing messages across different
systems were, you know, I messages sent.
You can put Databases, you know, you can lock information, one,
database or another. You can manipulate it and so on
and so forth. So, that effectively creates a
big challenge. Is that how when you lock the
state on the source chain, how to make sure the nobody can
unlock it, right without being authorized, without getting
authorization to unlock? And, you know, in in IBC, for
instance model, what allows you to serve lock or unlock or these
proofs? Right.
That you passed around from kind of source chain to destination
chain and that proves allows you to verify that information on a
different chain, has entered a certain format and therefore, it
can now be manipulated and on this destination chain right?
With most interoperability protocol, that's similar way.
The question is, what is this proof?
The question is, how compact is the proof, how easy it is to
generate it and so on and so forth?
And because a lot of these interoperability Protocols are
built. Across many complicated software
Stacks is just non-trivial to do this to do this the right way,
but I would say that it's a kind of a no different than well.
It is different but it is very similar to how we were, just
learning how to build. Let's say like different defy
applications in a secure way. Three years ago, right?
I mean, I think you remember, you know, 2017, 2018 2019.
Lots of applications worshipped people just experiment and lock
in, you know, millions or hundreds of millions of dollars.
Dollars of liquidity. There was some attacks.
Were well, some chains, even decided to Fork, right, to
prevent to kind of resolve the incident, but it was the same
problem that people just didn't know how to do is securely.
People didn't pay attention to the audits, right?
People still learning the kind of the edge cases of some of
these software programming models.
With, I'm interoperability. You talking about a much more
complicated problem, or you talking about different, many
different ecosystems, you have to, you know, create those
proofs. An efficient way you have to
relay them. But you know, I do think it's a
solvable problem. You just have to be much more
thoughtful, how you think about security how you think about
audits, you know emergency mechanisms and so on and so
forth. It's a full stack that you
really have to serve Embrace if you actually try to solve this
and do you think there is, you know, kind of like a fundamental
difference in sort of the level of security between, you know,
like this kind of light client based approach versus approach
where you know you have Basically a set of operators who
run full nodes on on each chain and to the observe the state.
I mean, there are definitely you know differences if you look at
you know, kind of a one connection at a time, right, but
I think if you look at the ecosystem from a broader
perspective, then you kind of realize the following a suppose
we're going to be in a world with hundreds of thousands of
chains. Okay, which not even an
assumption anymore. Right?
I think we'll definitely get a bit of world with Hundreds of
useful chains, maybe thousands down the line in that model.
You cannot have pairwise connections across every single
chain period, right? Because then every chain will
have to manage, you know, a hundred other connections, you
know, you're going to need to have, you know, almost n Square
connections across all of these chains who's going to manage
them, who's going to figure, you know, update all the whatever
protocols like lines deal with emergencies and so on and so
forth. So, no matter what, I think, if
you in a world with many different chains, Then you can
have to trust some intermediary, you know, pubs along the way,
that will route you information, right?
And whatever you trust in some intermediate Hub to Route some
information through whatever protocol you're going to be
trusting, you know, the validator set of that Hub and on
the internet as an example. We are, you know, an average
taken like six or seven paths across any different network
when we send the packet, right? And so the, you know, if you
were to replicate it through the, you know, To the blockchain
ecosystem. Imagine taken Six Paths, which I
don't think we should. By the way, I think we should
try to minimize the number of hops in.
It will go from any to blockchains foot.
This reasons. Is that every time you would
take a hop, you're going to have to trust that, you know, another
set of protocol or another sets of assumptions along the way.
So it's inevitable that you're going to have to trust some
intermediary, unless you're big enough to manage, you know,
hundreds of thousands of connections yourself, right,
which nobody wants to do. So, I think that's not really,
you know, An issue, you would rather trust actual somebody who
can do a diligent job of being this sort of security to provide
a for you, right? And being this Hub that can you
know, secure the connected with hundreds of different chains.
And so that, you know, that if something goes wrong, this
network provider knows how to deal with it, right?
And have the operations in place has the protocols in place to
deal with emergencies, you know, and react to it.
I think that's one thing. I think the second thing this is
I think quite important to note Is that most blockchains today,
run across the same validator set, right?
You know, it's a kind of Cora's right figment the, you know, I
can name, you know, a couple dozen validator sets and you
know, a lot of them have the majority of the steak on most of
these protocols. And so, whenever you talking
about, you know, trust in this network of that Network, at the
end of the day, you trust in the validators, and most of the time
you trust him, you know, the same valid data.
So, you know, I hope will continue to centralize them for
right now. It's not even a problem of how
many nodes are protocol. Can support this more about how
much you can decentralize the stake in some sense, right,
while still while still making it economically.
Attractive for the validators to continue operating the
Network's. So I think that's actually a
bigger challenge than, you know, how many nodes your protocol can
support at this point. Yeah, and then of course, one of
the interesting aspects of like, you know, I remember in the
past. I don't hear this argument so
much anymore, but you know people often saying like Owen
calls on us. Like how is it going to be safe
and secure? Because like you have so many
different chains and you know, isn't a market cap enough and
things like that, but then like, of course we haven't seen right?
Like in the theorem classic. We had this thing where like you
had a majority of the mining power.
Basically, You do this 51% attack and like, go back the
chain. Well, this is not happened in a
proof of stake chain. And I okay.
Why not? I mean, I guess various reasons,
right? First of all, I think it's
economically. It's just like so much more
expensive. It just doesn't make any sense
to basically ever do that. But then I think you also have
the factor right now. Okay, you have all these
different validators and if they did something malicious on one
chain, well, they would like totally ruined their whole
business on, like all the That's right.
So I think it means that even smaller chains, right?
Can be pretty, you have this kind of like this channel, trust
through in the reputation and in a way that the Aggregates take,
that's with them. Yeah.
I mean, I'm totally with you that right?
Then I think the only thing that we have worked to protect the
ecosystem has been to try to maximize the centralization,
right, you know, it's still, I would say not sufficiently, you
know. Centralized yet.
I think we'll get they'll continue working on getting, you
know, more validators, kind of included in these sets and
having them, you know, given them enough voting power and
things like that. But but like you said, that's
the only thing that has kind of proven to work right where you
have dozens, or maybe hundreds of different actors and
coordinating between them like an attack.
I'j, we all know who they are. Right?
Like they own food labels and you know, why websites?
So, and I think just a few judge credit.
I think, you know, to all the validators communities on that
because I think they have powered a lot of what we see in
the blockchain ecosystem today. Let's dive into a bit more sun
for so far. Right interoperability in crypto
has mostly been around talking transfer, right?
Like you have, you know, Bitcoin and you want to put it into D
Phi. So now we're going to use like
I'm W btc-e or you know you have in Cosmos, you have like
different tokens and you want to put them.
Nice, Moses, you know, you want to put atoms in like liquidity
pool and osmosis or like, what do you think?
Or do you use case is like Beyond token transfer that you
think are most exciting. Yeah.
So, you know, I think there's a lot, right?
That like, I think token transfers in some senses, just
kind of need and that's why we're seeing a lot of
interoperability bin centers around it, but more generally,
you can just ask, can I use? Zur, you know, directly interact
with an application with the tokens that they have on a
different chain, right? And interaction with an
application may or may not involve the token transfer, but
it often involves like other information that makes to be
passed along, right? So, let me give you an example,
suppose you have, you know, a stable coin, like UST on a
cosmos chain right on terror, right?
And then as a user, you want to get directly.
Let's say Heath on the theorem chain, so The ideal user
experience, from a user perspective, is them just going
to their wallet, right, you know, making a one-click
transaction where their tokens if needs to be routed across
from, you know, Tara blockchain to etherium swap on the
destination chain for eith and then the user receives eith
right away in their wallet. So this is her one, click
experience where a token transfer is augmented with some
other information the user, the user may include like what is
the The nation address where they need to receive the token.
What else? I don't know the slippage that
they're willing to tolerate and tolerate during this exchange
and so on and so forth, right? So I guess go and Beyond tokens.
What we're asking is that candy users and applications composed
with one another across this ecosystems, right?
And that often requires passing messages, like, you know,
slippage information, whatever exchange rate that you like to
take amount, you know you Source destination addresses, you want
to communicate across and so on and so forth.
I think that's, you know, just at layer above, I would say, you
know, the token transfers, which is still mostly Tok still
centered around talking transfer, use case.
I think, from there, serve the sky's the limit in some sense,
right? Any acid has been created, like
kind of T will effectively need interoperability because users
want to interact with those assets across different
ecosystems. And finally the applications
want to interact with one another and compose write today.
If you're building on top of the etherium, you were taken.
Interoperability for granted right?
But the reason that we're seeing defy and you know, etherium or
other proof of stake, blockchains emerge is because
they allow developers to talk to one another right on the same
Block Chain. They can execute the function
calls. They can perform swaps one
another and so on and so forth. And so that's what we win.
A want to enable across different blockchains right
where applications can talk to one another send information
pull, you know, Rewards. CV, liquidity, mining rewards
and so on and so forth. And you know, I do think it's
important to understand that that model we're going to have
to change the way. The development is done a little
bit, you know what can talk more about that.
But it is a new program in model in some sense and and developers
will have to embrace it but I think it surf inevitable.
That I think it is going to happen.
Yeah, let's go get into that because that was one of the
topic I wanted to discuss with you.
So has often been brought up as You know, one of the core, you
know, strength of the theory Emanuel, the advantage of e.t.
Room over. Let's say something like the
cosmos ecosystem, where okay, you have all the smart contracts
on like a single chain and then it's pretty easy for me to, you
know, create some other application that like uses two
different chains. And another in other aspects of
this, that has been often brought up as like, okay.
This is like, you know, really core Advantage is that I can
make, you know, a transaction that interacts with different
block chains and different, smart contracts and, you know,
either their whole transaction succeed or it fails.
So this like Atomic transactions and Flash loans, only term,
write this like this. This Paradigm example, where
flash groans, basically allow you to kind of borrow money like
use the money in a bunch of transactions and like, repay the
money like in the same transaction.
And in same block. So then I basically, you know,
there's like no Capital risk where the money is basically
almost like instantaneously taking and giving back and of
course that's like pretty unique and kind of strange use case.
So yeah, how is that going to change?
Like do you think these Atomic transactions?
Is that is that something that's like that important or how is
that going to play out in the in a sort of?
Our cross chain context, I think you know before maybe we just
answer that. I think just taking a slight
step back. I think it's kind of important
to understand that it's serve inevitable that applications,
you know, and serve cross chain, will have to be a reality to
just continue scaling the ecosystem, right?
Because why aren't we built continue building all on on top
of a theorem? Right?
Well, because it's one network, it's one database and is
congested period, right? And I think if you look at a lot
of other block change, no matter how much research, you know
throughput, they process however fast they are.
If it's a single database if it's a single Network at some
point, it's going to be congested.
Once you talk it about, you know, even a handful of major
applications that need, you know, thousands of transactions
of throughput running on top of it, right?
So in some sense to continue scaling, the ecosystem and to
continue in a surviving like we're going to have to have more
networks. So I think that's inevitable,
but then that model, you know, Ask well, how do I talk to to
one another right then? And I think like I mentioned the
model changes were instead of having a transaction that may be
you know, Atomic whenever you executed in a single program and
environment, you will be interacting in a more of a
message passing way. This is similar to how a lot of
the networks on the internet again, right?
And the traditional web to Applications, have scaled, they
all run behind. Find different networks or
different database instances in the back end.
Right? And they send messages to
exchange to one another and we have protocols for reliably
sending messages, unreliably sending messages, right?
And then you build your application logic around those
messages, that tells you what to do when, you know, the message
hasn't arrived. Right?
Or it needs to be transmitted or, you know, in this case, it
would be what to do. When a transaction doesn't go
through right? Or, you know, the asset is not
delivered on the destination chain or whatever the swap that
you want to do on the Can chain, doesn't go through?
What do you want to do with it? You're gonna have to put some
code in around it, and you're gonna have to put some rules,
right? And that's where I think this
layer of pending application. Layer, protocols will have to be
billed to, you know, to almost think about like, what are some
of the good examples and use cases that we want to have with
stronger properties that, you know, just a message passing,
right? Like you want to revert,
transactions across different networks, as you want to allow
people to, you know, re transmit and replay and what types of
fall. Back mechanisms that you have
you want to have? Those are all can application
specific cases that you have to think through but you know, I
don't think it's that hard. Well, it's not trivial would
have to think that through it but it is a solvable problem and
we have solved it in the past and you know, in this case, I
think yeah, it's inevitable that we're going to need this.
And you know, and I think in some sense it's never ruled that
developers will have to adjust to this programming environment
along the way. Do you think it is there?
Have you thought about the idea of where, like, whether acts
like could provide some kind of like, Atomic transaction
guarantees across chain, so that like, you know, I can make a
transaction on chain a and I wanted transactional chain be
and like, you know, I only want to change action chain a to
execute. If I, if also the transaction
chain be executes, what defaults on them.
I think it's a great question. So we have we have to either
About it. And, you know, it is possible.
And I think this is where I think one of the architecture
decisions that we made for building actually becomes, you
know, pretty fundamental and necessary in some sense is
because axilor itself runs on top of, you know, consensus and
a blockchain system. Right.
Around Cosmos has UK. So that means that whatever
cross chain transactions, you want to execute, you can
sequence them right on the axle Network itself, right?
And then you can build your protocols around it.
And you can say, You know, because there is a sequence of
events and because you can rely on the axle Network to give you
the surf, ordering of the transactions that need to be
executed across different chains.
You can then execute them in a, you know, in a specific order
and only trigger if some other conditions have been satisfied.
If you were, you know, in contrast if you were to work and
try to satisfy this without survey, it consensus layer in
the middle right there, without an ordering service.
This becomes a lot harder, right?
You would have to you, you would have to replicate a lot of this
functionality at the application layer, which, you know, is
pretty painful to do. Yeah, it's very interesting
topic and I was actually two podcasts.
I did just in the last like weeks where we kind of talked
about this and you know one was 15 Tribble of a gorik and he
made the interesting claim that I don't think I'd heard before
but he kind of made the claim that like, okay, if you have
actually these different chains and if you don't have these like
Atomic actions across chain that that actually She leads to a
much more kind of, you know, robust ecosystem because they do
the risks and the failure modes are more contained, you know,
you'll have like, okay something goes wrong and but to this sort
of, you know a little bit of an isolation of that.
Do you see that as well or like? Yeah, I mean, it's an
interesting point. I would have to think a little
bit about it. It is definitely, I guess easier
to build systems in that way. Where, you know, you have like
this asynchronous model and then you know, if one system goes
down, you know, you can continue operating the other models, you
know, is this sufficient for applications that?
I'm not sure that I think will have to think but but again I
think from a systems perspective.
I do think that that's the way, you know, we're going to have to
build things in some sense. But I do think you can build,
you know, application layer protocols.
On top of it that solve, you know, some specific needs
whenever you need to satisfy some of these, you know, Atomic
operations. But on the network layer or
interoperability layer in some sense, it needs to be a little
bit more decoupled and loose footing for these reasons for
right, where if one network, or want systems goes down, like you
can't take down everybody else, right?
That you have to isolate it and you have to contain the damage
in some sense. Yeah.
And the other, let me just also mention it because I just did
the episode yesterday with the near guys.
And this was also something that like we discussed a little bit
and I was not aware of that before, but right near you have
like different charts. And then even if you have like
two smart contracts that are on the same chart, they actually
still, don't they still function is asynchronous way, right?
Where you don't have this Atomic transactions and they were like,
okay, that's sort of their design choice.
So that the developed does not actually have to care about
which charts, the thing is in, and then, the contract can be
moved around and it doesn't really change anything.
But then of course, it also has that implication that, you know,
functions in this different way. So, I Oh, I thought this was
very interesting because maybe in the past maybe this is also
something that the Syrian Community has like emphasized so
much about like oh this is so crucial.
This is so crucial because it was maybe that's not really the
case. Like I think you know back to
what I was saying earlier, I think, you know near right?
And Dean and Agora guys. They thought about how to scale
the ecosystem, you know, for years to come, right?
And I think they quickly realize that the only way to scale at
this to continue. Chardon, right?
Or scaling horizontally, and some sense.
And whenever you scale in horizontally through many shards
of many blockchains or whatever that, you know, architecture
that you choose, you're going to have to switch to this
asynchronous communication model, right?
So I think, you know, that's probably I would say one of the
reasons those guys are embracing this model because it's you
know, it's sort of inevitable. Maybe talk us through a bait.
Like what's the, what's the status of Axl are today like
what has been developed and yeah, like what?
Yeah, so, you know, we spent a little over a year.
I think today, it's kind of a building the core networking
technology. We've run been running, you
know, test nets for over eight months with our community.
And last month. We just announced that we're
starting a phased rollout of the main Network.
So that means You know, in the first phase we already started
to on board early validators, getting them connected with
different ecosystems. I think we're already connected.
I think six or seven different ecosystems through axilor.
And we slowly going to be opening up different
functionalities on top of the network.
We already opened up functionality to transfer some
assets. So you can move the things like
Luna or USD across many evm. Different ecosystems through a
kind of front-end. In that would build on top of
it. And you know, the coming year is
going to be pretty exciting as we're going to continue to open
up. This functionality is working
with developers and working with the community to start scaling
this right? And you know along the way we'll
have to build better documentation better, apis.
And sdks think about those application layer protocols that
will want to that will want to work with with our partners.
And you know, what ecosystems will continue integrating down
the line. So super excited.
I think for the for the coming year.
So one, one interesting question.
I have. So, you know, like let's say now
we have like chain day and it's like you made the example,
right? So you have UST, right?
Which is the stable coin that originates on terror.
And then you have some evm chain.
Let's say, Avalanche and you know, like use it on there and
then, you know, Axl are is like a solution that so that somebody
can move it over. But of course, tax law is also
its own Block Chain. So do you do you think what kind
of things do you see like running on the axle?
Our chain itself? Did you ever see for example,
people developing? Like, I don't know.
Let's say, putting something like a permissionless, cosm was
a main there or general smart Contracting environment or like
are like what? What kind of functionality can
the axler chain? You can be put in there in the
future. Yeah, great question.
So, you know, I think the core problem that we're trying to
solve is interoperability, right?
So, and the way we want to see the future is that developers,
get to decide where they want to build, how they want to build
but underneath it. They have a set of protocols,
you know, and infrastructure. They can rely on to go cross
chain, right? So this is our ultimate goal.
So in that model, right? We want to build the
infrastructure and stack. We're Uppers are empowered to go
and build, you know, on evm chains, right?
Own Cosmos. Based chains on whatever they
really want. And then, you know, and axilla,
just helps them to communicate and go cross chain and be, you
know, a service provider Network in some sense that they can,
they can do those things. On top of the axle Network
itself with developers, be able to build, you can certainly
build some things and, you know, I think we may open up kind of
Cosmopolitan for the purposes that will want to customize some
of the Finley interoperability protocols and things like that
down the line and allow people to unboard new chains easier
right now. If you want to unboard the new
chain, if it's an evm chain, like we build it so like you can
on board in 10 minutes, so it's pretty straightforward for
Bitcoin. We have a module that we're
working on or Cosmos, you know, it's IBC compatible, so it's
going to integrate it at the protocol layer for other chains.
You may need to push another module, but, you know, we want
to make it easier so that maybe as a developer, you can just
write another smart contract that allows you to translate
this message. Message from a particular
ecosystem to be routed by the axle network with all the other
networks that are connected with right without having to write,
like a fool Cosmos module in past the governor's, proposal
down the line, and things like that, but on its own kind of
solvent interoperability across chain.
Messages is just such a demanding requirement.
And, you know, you need a lot of throughput, you need to optimize
for this use case and you know, we're designing Axel Network to
kind of optimize for this use case as opposed to as a As
another developer environment. I think there's a lot of
projects where optimized for, you know, JavaScript development
or solidity development or rust development.
And I think they're a lot of the doing a fantastic job.
So we want to, you know, connect those ecosystems on the actual
Network itself already process and tens of thousands of
transactions per day just for cross chain message passing.
I wouldn't necessarily, you know, start building the
application on that and I think will want to remain as a service
provider. In some sense.
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, one application is that,
you know, we've had a bunch of conversations on, it's kind of
like an interesting. I think sort of product on
etherium. You have something like gnosis
safe, which is the Smart contract wallet and, you know,
that's pretty nice because you can have, you know, multisig you
can have, you know, maybe some sort of programmability, you can
have different types of things. But, you know, it's in the
etherium thing. It doesn't function cross.
Chain, and in general, like, you know, cross chain wallets, don't
I mean, there's no great solution.
There's not like one wallet. You can use across like
different ecosystems. You have, you know, on Cosmos,
you have something I kept below. Okay, functions, great on Cosmos
change, but like doesn't function anywhere else, Solana
your Phantom, great over there, but like doesn't we do much
else, you know, etherium you have a metal mask.
And so this this idea of like, okay.
Can you have like some kind of universal programming?
Will wallet. And of course, I guess one way
of doing that might be that you have actually like a chain or
some place that custody is assets and all these different
chains and then, you know, I could just have one private key
on that chain, and I send a message to that chain and then
that emits, like, transactions on another chain to like, you
know, for example, stay key theorem or like, Swap.
You came on Eunice while but like there's like an
interesting. I think an interesting kind of
product a year. Have you thought about this?
And how do you see that sort of playing without the axle or
stack? You know, I think kind of a
building Universal crushing walls, you know, is one of the
top, I think use cases of interoperability, right?
And it kind of goes back to the things.
We talked about earlier is that, you know, allowing users to
interact with all of these ecosystems and apps.
It's in an easy way from a single wallet.
And I think the way that this, you know, will play out is that
you do need a combination of, I guess asset transfer and message
passing to make those Universal wallets, right?
And I think, you know, it seems like you already have some great
design ideas Brian, right? But you know, I think you know,
if I were to invest adjusted serve similar right, where you
have potentially some smart contracts that are living on
different chains or as a user, you know, you authorized to
interact with those smart contracts, right.
And those Tracks. Allow you to have your balances
on different ecosystems. Maybe even the way people send
money to is through Universal like handle that, you know, can
be used to uniquely identify you, write or universe or
identifier QR codes, whatever you want.
And then underneath it the wallet providers or the daps and
the user, they get to interact with those contracts Shuffle.
The quiddity back and forth. If they needs to be shuffled
messages, if they need to be. And you know, all of that
experience is a lot smoother. So I I think it's a great
example and I do think we're going to see something like
this. Start appearing over the coming
years. Yeah, I mean, I guess 11.
I don't know if that was one way.
One could build. It may be right.
Might be as a cosmos chain and then you could you could maybe
use IVC to connect with other Cosmic chains and you something
I get asked a lot to connect with like the rest of the
blockchain universe, but who knows?
I mean, yeah, definitely I mean and in that case, I think you
know, you can build it like on the cosmos, right?
And then kind of use the IBC axle.
Stack to talk to other networks. Similarly.
You can build your logic wherever you want.
Right? Like, you can, you can build it
like an avalanche or Solana if you want.
And then again, you know, use like the axilla protocol to send
messages to other ecosystems, right?
So so in that sense, as a developer of that wall, this is
really allows you to pick wherever wherever you want to
host your logic, right? Which application layer logic
were your core functionality is going to live and then you The
interoperability protocols to communicate and interact with
other ecosystems. See, when you look to the future
of axle are, what are the hardest problems that are head?
Yeah. I mean, you know, I think it's a
combination of will continue to build technology, right?
In a, in an efficient way, continue to integrate more
chains, more assets improving security along the way, you
know, reducing the gas costs reducing latency.
And you know, working with a lot of the developers to teach them
and to educate them. How do you write applications in
a cross chain environment? Right.
How do you, how do you think in this new different Paradigm
programming model? Yeah, so I think all of those
things are, you know, challenges but also that's where, you know,
the rewards and opportunities are right and you know to us
that's what served exciting. The exciting aspect of it is
that we would get to change the way.
The ecosystem can scale, and I think it is quite quite needed
to continue growing. Can you talk also a little bit
about, you know, kind of like the road map or, you know,
exactly to roll outside are coming.
You mentioned. Evm chains, right?
So I think there's like, any one of the initial focus on the TVM
chains. Like, yeah, so talk a little bit
about like, you know, where's that that and like what comes
afterwards and what would be, you know, it kind of did the
ways people can actually interact with Axl are in the
coming year. Yeah, so, you know the initial
rollout that we started doing focus it on connection between
cause machines and AVM change it so, you know columns change we
can easily on board through. IBC got a pretty straightforward
for evm change. We also program that on the
network layer so you can on board any DM chain, you know in
10 or 15 minutes assume in the validator supported, right?
So it's incredibly easy and very straightforward to do and you
know, we're continuing to work on.
Going module, that would allow to unboard, you know, Bitcoin
and similar types of proof-of-work Cannon, Legacy
ecosystems and we're, you know, opening up the SDK and a set of
apis that would allow developers to interact and talk across all
these different chains, right? So this is something I'm pretty
excited about right now. If you want to integrate and
move assets back and forth. There is a simple JavaScript SDK
that we're going to be releasing that allows.
As you to do those, those calls in a niche in an easy way, you
know, you can integrate bridge and functionalities in your
decks or your defy application. But then from there, we're going
to enable this SDK that will allow you to talk directly to
the Gateway contract, right? Or directly from your dap front
end and talk with other ecosystems.
So, that's something. We'll be certain to roll out
soon. And that's how we envisage.
Most of the developers will interact with axilor and other
ecosystems. Well, thanks so much Sega.
It's been really a pleasure to like happy on to like learn
about actual art and kind of share this with our audience and
I think it's been it's been exciting to, like, follow along.
And I'm super, yeah, excited to see see how it evolved.
So, I mean, I think for me with wood has actually been
interesting about interoperability was that when,
like, IBC launched, I was really surprised how good the user
experience was. And, and of That's still pretty
limited, right? Because it's just it's just
called most, right? Doesn't really work well.
And then he gets much worse when you have like, let's say
interoperability between different.
I don't know, because often you have different Wallets on each
side and stuff like that. So I'm I'm excited about, you
know, what things like axler will enable by having this like
Smooth seamless interoperability across chains because I think
it's just going to be enormous like what that enables.
Yeah, for sure. Well, it was great chatting,
Brian, and thanks for all the questions.
Always a pleasure chatting with you.
Thank you for joining us on this week's episode.
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