Our intuition was OK, so some sort of arallelization should
happen with the like those kind of sharding and Rovo state was
intuitively the desire that we should approach and everybody
said no, it's not doable. If you take the blockchain
dilemma from italic that you cannot achieve scalability,
security and their centralization without
compromising any of those without charting.
I always envisioned that Etherium would eventually define
a standard where all those headers or data that is being
pushed into the Bobs into the Etherium beacon chain will kind
of get synchronized across the L twos.
You kind of build some sort of a trustless finality model across
synchronize across all the L twos.
If you would apply the same L run or Multiverse 6 model to the
Ato case. The only problem is.
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Welcome to Epicentre, the show which talks about the
technologies, projects and people driving decentralisation
and the blockchain revolution. I'm Felix Lutch and today I'm
speaking with Lucian Minku who is the Co founder and CIO at
Multiverse X. Multiverse X, previously known
as Lrond, is a fully chartered blockchain network and
ecosystem. Hi Lucian, welcome to Epicentre.
Hey, hey, Felix. Pleasure to be here.
Awesome. Yeah, so glad to have you.
I think. Yeah, you've been in the space
for a long time with Alderon previously now, no multiple sex.
I think there's like a lot of stories you can tell about proof
of stake, about what you've been building.
And, and so, yeah, we wanted to basically just start there.
Like how did you get into crypto and and started building like
Alderon and now I guess multiple sex?
Definitely. So first thing first, thanks a
lot for the invite. Thanks for hosting me, Felix, by
the way, big, big Congrats and respect for the entire Epicenter
team. I think Epicenter is perhaps the
the podcast where I learned most of the crypto stuff in my entire
life, like in the entire career. So I've been following ever
since I met Sunny in 2017. Just to give a brief context how
how I discovered first Epicenter, then then we'll we'll
move to to my background. But actually I met Sunny in TSUG
into one of the very early crypto conferences.
He was presenting Cosmos ecosystem and it was prior to
mainet. I think it took one 1 1/2 years
after, if I remember, after Sunny mentioned just it's it
will follow very shortly. Cosmos large will be very
shortly and immediately. Actually I fall in love with
with a lot of the stuff that you guys were presenting and more
than happy as I said, big Congrats.
And maybe the second point is I have not just to upfront
disclosure, I have not did any podcast in the last seven years
since I built or started Alrund. And then the, the main reason
actually why I'm here is after listening to your one of the
latest podcasts from, from Epicentre with Paulo Arduino,
where he mentioned we, we all as technical founders thought, OK,
we're going to build such good products that we, the products
will speak for themselves. And then that was my, my life
thesis that if everything went for seven years, six years, and
only with that one would not, not going out.
Then basically once I'd heard his story and how important it
is to go, go out, yeah, I decided I'll reach out.
And here I am. So just aswarting the big, big
respect for the entire Epicentre team.
Awesome. Yeah.
Thanks so much. That's that's such a, yeah,
great anecdote, I think. Yeah.
And we're super glad to have you and honoured to be chosen as the
first. I think your project obviously
is technically like one of the very advanced sort of blockchain
infrastructure. So it is only fitting that you,
you come on Epicenter to dive into it.
But yeah, I guess, yeah, let's, let's start there.
How how did it start or when did you sort of come up with the
idea of like L Ron back then and now multiverse and and how has
it changed if, if at all or I was like.
Yeah, definitely. So it's some context.
I've, I think Benjamin, my brother was, was the, the hook
for me into the Web 3 ecosystem. I've been building and have
technical background, have built several startups in Germany, has
believed the, I think the last 1012 years in Germany.
They're building all kind of infrastructure projects for the
German states, for startups, for large, large scale enterprises
and so forth. And was very passionate about
very simple logic of every protocol standard like from
TCPUDP and all that kind of stuff going to BitTorrent and
that kind of direction. So I think for me, it was very,
very important to try to connect to something that I could relate
and understood very simple, but I could draw it like the
protocol design on the whiteboard, right?
So once you take like that and you just remove, for example,
from BitTorrent, the cedar part, you immediately see that's the
Bitcoin pretty much topology of the network.
So basically it clicked, it clicked, it clicked.
And then my brother tried to, he was already involved in, I think
one of the core core team members at Nam and I think on
the Bitcoin talk forum and so forth, very, very, very all, all
days. And then every time he had all,
all this kind of task or, or challenges to, to, to solve.
He flew to, to Germany over the weekend, hooked me again.
We stood like 111 weekend 1st and then more weekends and so
forth until actually I, we, we got the, the task needed for
other protocols. And then after a while, he he
convinced me to to move full, full time into a three.
We also had a fund back then where we actually ended up
investing in Cosmos as well, I think in a private in polka dot
silica, pretty much everything. What was infrastructure back
then? We were one of the first
Packers. And yeah, while researching
pretty much all those new protocols and working with them,
bringing, trying to contribute to, to their ecosystem, actually
we learned a lot of the stuff. And that was maybe the, the also
one of the triggers where back back in the days, we, we, we,
we, we look at the, the performance or capabilities of
the, the throughput of all those protocols that were coming out
from 2016, 2017 and so forth. And we, we, we just had the
thought experiment. OK, Well, if we're going to put
like one 8 billion people into any this kind of architectures,
would would it stand? Would it still stay alive?
Would it still, we still reach consensus or, or have any kind
of meaningful performance such that it will it could gain world
adoption. And basically we, we kind of
reached the conclusion that the state problem or the, the, the,
the state size of any of those block chains wall will become
pretty much the, the, the main killer of and the killer as we
use in web tree. The good part of killer actually
literally will will kill any kind of performance that could
those architecture reach. And maybe The funny thing is
that we, we, our intuition was OK, some sort of parallelization
should happen with the like those kind of sharding and
provostate was intuitively the next the, the, the, the desire
that we should approach. And we went actually to several
of those ecosystem projects that we're already working on on very
complex problems and pitch them that they should do sharply.
And everybody said, no, it's not doable.
So it's funny enough that everybody said, no, you cannot
do that. It's too hard, too complicated.
Why would you do that? And here we are, I think after
six years, seven years with everything live and Ethereum
still, I think arguing that some of the stuff are literally be
hardcore. I, I, I, I cannot not, not agree
with that. There were many, many sleepless
lights and many attempts to to build this kind of stuff.
But yeah, I think this is very briefly how how also the
background and also how we got to to at least have the the
thoughts in the direction of L1 architecture, initial
architecture. Yeah, that, that's super
interesting, I think. Yeah, I guess there was a phase
where the Ethereum scaling road map was also sharding based and
then it sort of shifted back to like this roll up architecture
now and we we're basically still there, right.
And I think in the wider space like some people are depends on
which pocket you are in. You maybe even forgot about
charting that it like existed. But then on the other hand, we
have like projects like like you and maybe I guess the other
mention of one is near that has implemented charting actually.
So yeah, super curious to hear from you more about like how,
how that actually works and how you how you set it up to and
yeah, basically the problems that it solves.
So maybe we can we can dive a little bit deeper in there like
how you actually do the charting.
So maybe we start just from like sort of the the validator set
that you have and how how they are sort of set up.
More than happy, more than happy.
So maybe just some some context. We funny enough that you, you
you mentioned you, you mentioned the sharding part or the, the
sharding from from Etherium world map.
We actually worked with Prismatic Labs in 2017 on the
Etherium sharding model. So it we I, I just had a, a
discussion on the, I think last conferences with, with
explaining again how the architecture of multiverse
sector L Ron look like in the production.
It was very, very, very, very similar to what Ethereum two 2.0
look like, especially at least the the the the staking part
apart with Q with all those modules actually L Ron and
multiverse six had had both of them actually brought to the
production. But also another final part.
I would say that Sunny was I guess one of the first guys that
did the peer review of the paper in 2017.
And then also Vasily from Lido has been grilling me about the
randomness source of the chain in 2016.
Seventeen, I think, or 18, something like that around that
a lot and eventually contributed to the architecture as well.
So very, very, very nice actually to see that all all
those builders have contributed and always contributed.
If there's something that builders have in common, they
all contribute to the best things.
Now going back to the architecture model of Multiverse
X and going a bit into the technical stuff that I would say
the, the, the first step would be to walk, walk the thought
process that I, I look at as at any blockchain architecture
pretty much. So if we take for example,
Ethereum as a supercomputer, a supercomputer is still a
computer in the end and it has three major components.
So you have kind of CPU, RAM disk where CPU is consensus.
You throw a lot of requested works with a very fast with a
very fast memory, which is the RAM where you basically iterate
or permutate those values once you reach consensus and you
write to the disk you got there, right.
So this is like, I would say boxing one O 1, explaining 30
seconds. And also as a super computer,
put the same distribute just distributed over the Internet.
And then that's kind of it. But the next point would be if
we look at general computer architecture, how we scaled up
the system, we did not end up with the CPU with a single
thread that has 100 gigahertz, but rather we have a bunch of
threads that paralyze the execution.
They all also all of those threads work a very fast memory
which is the RAM where you have even though you have physically
the RAM as one, one piece. Actually each of the threads are
having the pre allocated subset of memory right?
Which is like each of the threads in order to work, in
order to be able to process it, it actually reserves a set of
memory of the RAM. And then of course once they
reached the OR solve the data they requested right to the
disk. How we got here now this is like
the general compute. This is also if we look at error
on Multiverse X how it looks like or how it works actually.
You have the beacon chain similar to Etherium 2.0 and then
you have a bunch of execution charts.
If you remember the the initial Etherium sharding architecture,
it it has it, it basically push out the state, the state to the
execution charts where the state transition will be maintained on
the execution charts. So basically you have this kind
of beacon chain, which is not surprising, all those blocks
being produced on the the sub shards or the execution shards
level, while basically that that allows and goes as basically to
to the entire sharding model. Maybe before going even more
into specific and losing pretty much maybe a bunch of the guys
what is being motorized, what headers and so forth.
I would just do a step back maybe defining a bit the the
problem of the sharding, right. I would say one of the points
here that said like there are three kinds of sharding.
So there there's I would say transaction sharding where we
have had had architecture similar to silica.
Silica, for example, was one of the first one that that proposed
that kind of model which allowed any kind of state transitional
or kind of move balance parallelization in within the
same chain in within the same binary, right.
So that's cool. However, as soon there the the
chain has heat 11 transaction or one smart contract transaction,
for example, which would have iterate multiple accounts, there
would have been a memory lock on the entire state and that would
would not allow any kind of parallelization at this point.
So the next point would be there's like the network
charting like if we look and for example, this the way the
architecture is being built on our case, you we have the we
have a total of 300 to 3200 validator seats and all those
seats are being being allocated into four chunks or 4 sub
shards, each of them maintaining 800.
In this case, like beacon chain has 800 validators Shard 0 has
what 800 Shard 11 do each each 800.
Basically at the network topology level, there's on top
of of leap peer-to-peer and authentication layer where it
tells like once you go and again, this might be a bit
technical for for people. Basically once you go into and
and you connect to the lip peer-to-peer network, you, you
need to have some, some sort of an ID like a public private key
infrastructure. Now on top of that, what you can
do actually you can sign the messages with the private key of
the validator which will tell the other counter party which is
receiving the message if your what kind of peer are you?
So are you coming from the same Shard?
Are you coming from a different Shard?
And basically there's a specific optimizer set which will tell
each of the validators, hey, I have a maximum, for example,
like, but again, just defining the problem like network traffic
is perhaps the most expensive resource we have in the Internet
right now. And that's one, one of the the
problems also that we need to optimize.
So assuming that you can have in into a parallelization system
where where each of the validators maintains only a
subset of the network, you also need to pass a lot of those
messages and and kind of kind of find the optimum route to
connect those peers to each other.
Now, because of this kind of of first you, you, you have, as I
said, the 1st, the the, the authentication method or the
signing method with the, the validator key on top of each of
the messages. Then on the other side, assuming
that I'm synchronised and I'm synchronised with the with the
the network, I can tell the public key that has signed this
message where it comes from on based on Michael no knowledge of
the network configuration. I can tell OK, this public key
should be actually validating or should be a validating sharp two
or in the meta chain. And I can assign this public key
or this network connection to a routing protocol where I keep a
certain amount of connections optimal or for an optimal
broadcasting method or propagation protocol in order to
to to reach and always have highly, highly available, high,
high connectivity and low, low latency between validators
intrashard and still maintain some sort of a cross chain
connectivity for with with all other shards such that they will
never become a lonely, lonely island.
So there's, I hope, Let me like, let's break here and maybe I'll
let you ask some questions. I know there's a lot of stuff
like there, there's very specific layers, but more than
that, did they explain everything?
No, sounds great, dad. That's super, super interesting.
So basically, first of all, maybe one question, the meta
chain, which is like kind of the beacon chain, I guess in your
system, it's not that every validator actually validates
that as well, so but rather it's also like just a normal Shard in
some sense, no. No.
So, so basically there's first there, there's shared security
model. So basically there the entire
pool of 3200 validator seats are randomly allocated around among
all the shards. So there's no no special
configuration, no special preferences for the beacon
chain. You just basically get every
epoch shuffled and being allocated to do that chart.
The only difference is like in the current configuration, is
that the consensus size or the consensus?
Yeah, the consensus participation for every round is
400 or 400. Like there I could just maybe
just define a couple more thoughts.
That's right. So basically there's, if we go
on the, the chronology part first, right?
So let's define what's, what's the metric of accounting or, or,
or measuring it said blockchain. So we have epochs which are
equal to 24 hours. And then there's rounds.
Current round time is equal to 6 seconds, which will get improved
with the next protocol updates to I think 3, two seconds, one
second and hopefully sub second from finality before, before the
end of the year, maybe now that's chronology.
Then there's validators which have two different states or had
two different states. So there's active and waiting.
The reason for that is basically each epoch 400 validators are
being elected or elected to to validate each of the the shards
including beacon chain where eight, the other.
So 400 are being elected and the other 400 are in the waiting
state. Why?
Because there is every epoch, every epoch there the the the
validators are, a third of the validators are being random
sampled to reshuffle across validate across the Shard such
that they will never be able to collude to take over a Shard.
So by doing that, basically we also have a built in protocol
time for those validators to synchronize the new state.
So assuming, for example, that I'm, I'm being relocated to a
new Shard, then I have a built in, in the protocol, a
guaranteed time frame for my node.
Even if I will just like in practice, the node will destroy
and delete the the the entire database.
We'll just go and and synchronise the, the, the
snapshot, the, the three snapshot from the, the current
epoch and then build on top of that the current state of the
chain, assuming that at the net net next epoch change, I, I'm
eligible to become validated, right.
So maybe that's very raw a bit what, how, how the the consensus
consensus or chronology works and then also a bit tied to, to
the to the to the shopping part. Right, Yeah, that's super
interesting. And this sinking like how long
does it actually take right now? Or because I guess you need to
be able to do it in 24 hours, but it.
So. So there are two parts.
There's basically for first, there's three snapshots.
So we're we're like 3 pruning. We implemented the three pruning
which allows us actually at each of the epoch change to clean up
the the old, old or on the old state you would like.
The three will always maintain only the the the latest and
greatest, so to say version of the leaves or or the three three
model, which will be actually transferred in the new snapshot
where basically that gets to also to to the next problem to
the the state charting. Because maybe if I like right,
right now it it takes just to answer question, it takes I
think around maybe hour, two hours and that could be
optimized and we have optimized a lot and so forth.
However, this this is like the general, the general problem
what what we're doing. And now, so we, we kind of touch
on the network charting, we kind of touch about the design and
rationale why you need like putting network charting on top
of this kind of architecture. You kind of see all this kind of
engineering breakthroughs on top of all those primitives to, to
highly optimize the throughput of the network and the latency.
However, the main problem, I think what we were, we were
solving is the state problem. And like if you take the, the,
the state or if you take like put put the world population of
8 billion people into adjust the database and try to iterate and
do hundreds of thousands of transactions or thousands of
transactions per second while finding those accounts.
Like you need to iterate on 8 billion entries inside that
database, find those entries and change the values and then redo
the search for the next one and so forth.
So that could not scale. And also in the in the same
time, try to replicate this database as many times across
the call. Like if like if you take the
blockchain dilemma from italic, I think that's the most famous
one that everybody knows you, you, you cannot like the problem
says that you cannot achieve scalability, security and their
centralization without compromising any of those
without charting. Like charting is the what was
the design for that? And actually what it does.
If, for example, if we take deuterium address range as an
example, and you would take zero X 000001 as a beginning and then
you have zero 10 at the end as an end, and you would split into
a sharded model, each of the shards would persist on a subset
of those accounts, right? So in practice the storage like
the everything related to those accounts will be pre allocated
or allocated to a specific Shard and that specific Shard will
maintain the storage of it. While now if we take and do the
step back at the consensus or the entire architecture model,
basically you can if for example a transaction would be
intrashard like assuming that the first zero to five are in
the same Shard and the the next 5 to 10 are in the next Shard.
Basically each of the shards could process in parallel.
They will run consensus every block, every block, every block.
And then basically when the transaction is intrashard in,
in, in inside the same storage, it will happen atomically.
And then when not, then it will just reach out over the beacon
chain through the notarization method.
And that's, I think the next point where we're going to dive
into. But I'm I'm plugging here again,
letting you maybe to ask some questions if it's clear enough
if it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you still always go through the main to the beacon chain,
ask for like interrupt Shard interoperability.
And I guess does it work? I remember from like me or
actually that, you know, if like some transaction is actually on
the same chart, they still kind of weighed this one epoch and
delay it. So there's no benefit of being
on the same chart somehow. Is that like something you guys
do? So so there there are two 22
problems here. What so first is the
composability problem. I guess that's the most the most
interesting, the the most, I think the only reason why
Ethereum have not implemented charting yet, right?
So what what like assuming that you run consensus on each of the
shards and for example, there are two shards and the beacon
chain every time you're a transaction needs to like it is
assuming that I'm I, I have the the account with the ID like
with the ending one. And then I'm calling a a smart
contract which has the IT is in the same chart and basically
everything that happens atomically in the same
transaction, I can just compose and so forth.
However, if for example the account that I'm trying to go to
is outside my postal code, just to code the near podcast as
well. Basically, I need to go through
the router, right? And the router will kind of
ensure me the guarantee of the message delivery.
However, it will not happen at the same block.
But here there are two problems I would say.
First, there's the throughput problem.
Like you could still try to concentrate everything into a
single blotching. However, there are some sort of
improvements that could be done in order or like engineering
engineering steps that could reach to atomic composability
across multiple shards. But the the the main, the main,
the the most interesting part. I would say that's the easy part
almost. I would say once you have a
sharded blockchain, it's easy. It's easy to go easier to go
back and compromise again. I would almost compromise again
and then kind of reach consensus across all the shards, whereby
the the most crazy part is that nobody solved until now or
before L run the full state charted problem.
Like the the the cool part is for example.
Now let me let me break it down to to something that I think
it's also very, very, very known for everybody like the the
tribal agency problem. I think it was described in an
etherium forums back then where you want, for example, I'm I'm,
I'm a an end user and I go to a travel agency and I want to
regardless where the accounts are being distributed inside
this architecture. I want with the same ticket.
I like I want in my my offer. If I want, I buy this this
holiday ticket to get a train ticket, hotel, car rental and a
plane. And if, if, if I buy into the
smart contract, the results should contain all of them or
nothing. Now this is the cool part like
nobody says that everything in even in computer science
problems not not, not everything happens synchronously and not
like even even the, the the way we communicate right now is not
synchronously. It has a synchronous model which
guarantees the, the, the, the, the, the transport of the
messages. And then we built on top of this
transfer messages a bunch of algorithm or a bunch of software
which can handle this kind of the modular approach.
And now if we look like the the way we approach like what
multiverse or Elro that we're sharding promises is it
guarantees a way of forwarding messages from A to B.
But with some, some specific properties, like for example, if
we know that the message will will take about a while, you can
basically go and lock that memory.
You can define the interfaces, so to say on top of that to work
and and, and specifically say, Hey, I want for this ticket for
the smart contract that is going to purchase everything.
I want them to await and store this kind of information and
asynchronously. Like when I'm calling this
contract, the contract will send a receipt or will send ten other
transactions that might take even 2 seconds, five or two
blocks, three blocks, whatever. And whenever they will reach
their destination, I, I'm awaiting a message back and I
know the protocol guarantees a message back to me and it will
tell me what to do if it is successful or not, right?
So this is like the, the beauty of asynchronous execution that
you can build primitives or on top of those primitives and can
build on top of this messaging layer where you can asynchronous
call and have composability for and also not compromising on
the, the throughput of the network, right?
So this is kind of kind of kind of it.
And maybe the, the, the even crazier part is knowing, for
example, the, the, the part with the network, network charting
that I will be mentioning before, and also that the
network itself is kind of synchronized synchronize of over
all this kind of primitives, cryptographic primitives and,
and consensus state. Basically, you could, if I know
that, for example, in advance, like one of the looking maybe
few, few seconds into the future, how, how, how could the
such a protocol still achieve what every everybody else has,
but what the other ones could never achieve Sharding just like
that. Basically, if I know which
transaction or what transaction I need to talk or execute
synchronously and I know that the destination of it, basically
I could easily target those validator sets or the protocol
could talk to the validator sets and make them achieve consensus
for all for all for atomicity for one specific upcoming round
where they will execute 11 specific transaction from A-Z
across all the, the, the the accounts inside the, the chain,
right? But in the same time, you can
still have, you can still persist this kind of
asynchronous model for everything else where you don't
need to guarantee everything in the same, in the same block.
Like the the same way the Internet doesn't guarantee us
that everything just comes and drops everything and just
process one, one single thread at the time.
I, I hope it makes sense. I I I I think it's.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I think it makes sense.
So you're saying that you can like, so there is a way to
guarantee this somehow. And then basically in that
specific scenario, more or less the shards act like a single
Shard for this string of transactions.
Or whatever exactly. But also, while not uniting the
state so you can, I can still work in like the same way if the
model works in the nasynchronous model already.
Basically, we will just speed up the message passing from 1-1 to
another and we will still do consensus on that kind of
messaging. But instead of doing it
asynchronously, if there's enough economic incentives, for
example, for, for that kind of processing, it can be
prioritized, scheduled and then reached and executed in into one
single transaction. That could be as well.
I, I mean, it's just an engineering, pure engineering
problem. It's not the something that
cannot be solved, like if we have solved all and build all
this kind of stuff, and I do believe I did.
That's just a couple of sleepless nights, I would say.
Just a few it took a few years. Yeah, OK, that's interesting.
So, but right now, do you, can you do this prioritisation or is
it like, I guess it leads a bit into, you know, what are like
the prioritised transactions in general in blockchain is like
sort of MEV related, like arbitrage or whatnot across like
is this something you can already do on, on which versus
X? It, I think it's clear a bit how
the, the logic of the, the sharding.
Then on top of that, what we're building, maybe it would be
there. Each of the sharks, by the way,
has its own VM, so it has its own execution environment and so
forth. And on top of that, basically we
we built at the some primitives, which is called time lock and
promises like you can define at the interface of each of the
Spark contracts. What kind of what kind of
properties do you want? Like defining you want this TCP
or UDP? Do you want, for example, do you
do you want that if like when I'm shooting to this smart
contract and this smart contracts cause other test part
contracts, do I need? Does the user wants whatever it
it gets or do what do you want to await all all the file, all
the results of all, all the smart contracts?
And if that bypass is basically I'm, I'm just confirming ceiling
that the, the, the, the result or I'm, I'm, I can go back to
those contracts and say, Hey, I don't want them, right.
So you can define all those kind of specific properties on, on
each of the interfaces how you want to do that.
What we don't have is the synchronous consensus among all
the charts. The way where I can do that we
don't have right now because it was not the problem the, the,
the, the IT would be. It is kind of a challenge for us
because we only have block chains that are single threaded.
Let me put it this way, we don't even have the mindset to think
about applications that are multi threaded like you do.
What? What if?
What if I can design such such, such such applications that can,
instead of having just one single thread, one single smart
contracts, for example, for wrapping oil and wrapping tokens
or whatever else you're thinking where you can actually have this
kind of primitives available in all sub charts.
And then I think that's kind of the challenge of also interior
withdraw apps that you only have some, some primitives available
at one specific layer and then you need to broadcast them,
reproduce them to all other layers.
I also have some, some interesting notes on that.
And actually, but yeah, I I hope it answers your question to to
that end. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That, that makes sense. And I guess, yeah, you mentioned
also like every Shard has their own VM.
Is it all like the same? VM basically so so we we have
three kinds of so first on top of the blockchain, we on top of
the blockchain accounts, we kind of built a routing system where
you can have multiple VMS. The cool part is you ended the
data field. For example, when you're calling
a smart contract, a smart contract, you can define there's
a kind of a switch where you can say, hey, I want this
transaction to be originated or the account that I'm talking to,
I want them to to call the bytecode with a specific VM.
So I can tell through this kind of switch what what kind of VMI
want to. I don't it's a storage at the
end of the day. If if we decouple the, the
execution from the storage, then basically I can just tell hey,
go to that specific storage take take that bytecode and map it
into a specific VM. In our case, we have a WASM VM
we built on top of a Wasmar. It's called a space VM.
And then there's all the framework on top of that, which
abstracts the entire complexity of sharding, which is called
spacecraft SDK, right? So the, the, the core part is
basically what, what, what that's one, one of the
frameworks like this is the most used for, for anything Spark
contract related. And then also on top of that, we
also have a, a go, go or like a system VM where we used, for
example, for staking primitives like system specific
applications or logic where you need very, very efficient
computation and very fast. Yeah, you, you that's kind of
what, what, what, why we, the reason why we do that.
The, the funny part is actually because of the, the new SDK,
like the sovereign change, I think we're again attached on
that as well is we're incentivizing people.
And because of the entire modularity that we we build on
top, you can we're actually putting grants for people that
would take and build port. Different VMS for to to the
ecosystem. So for example, there's one of
the projects that I'm very excited about that does Etherium
EVM compatibility. So imagine that you basically in
the future, the main chain could with in, in one transaction with
you're calling 11 specific smart contract.
And then that specific contract, you could take the output and
inject it into the next VM. That is, for example, you take a
WASM bytecode, you're calling a WASMI code and then you call a
Solidity code and then you take with that result you have
composed, you reach composability across multiple
VM, move VM, Solana VM and so forth, right.
So that's kind of the ankle, the direction for the VM execution
side. And then on the the sharding
part, there's a a lot of consensus optimization.
There's a lot of like even block time is I think from my point of
view a bit too slow. But it but what, six years ago
it was reasonable, right slow. Yeah, always something to do.
OK, super interesting, I guess. Yeah, especially like heading
into the Sovereign Chains realm, I guess we have seen more and
more it's like application specific paradigm, I guess play
hour dry, like I think that's like where it started in Cosmos
and sort of like everyone build their own chain.
Everything is a chain, your fridge is a chain.
And I guess Cosmos has this approach.
We have the sovereign chains or like the app chains and then IBC
in your case, that's like sort of the the sharding, but now
you're also bringing in, as I understand, like sort of a model
to have your own chain within the system.
Like how how does it work? Is it also like is it an
additional Shard? Is it just something that lives
on a Shard or yeah how explain a bit more what certain chains are
more? More of them have.
So maybe first I, I would just defy the the problem.
Like we've been very good on running multiple binaries.
So like multiple chains in parallel architecture,
orchestrating them into an, an invisible layer would say with
through the bit, orchestrate them through the beacon chain
such that you don't care where good counts would would leave
actually in your in, in your entire architecture.
And then by doing that, actually we kind of learn and said, hi,
we kind of, we're kind of good on running this kind of
specialized chains or almost paralyzed chains.
Why don't we just repack, rebuild the, the, the code base
such that it will turn into an SDK, which actually could if
like if you have, if you look at an Internet architecture, you
don't have just public cloud where you are sharing the
resources with everybody else. You could, what if you could
just deploy your own private cloud, but still maintain all
your own sovereignty. Like the cool part is, is like
first you get all the primitives, everything that we
build with Elrond on Multiverse 64 the last couple of years
out-of-the-box, but also pretty modular when it comes to you can
define your own consensus size. You can run your own consensus.
You can, for example, decide at which point in time you want to
post the transaction to another chain.
Like you're not tied to Multiverse X You, you can
basically decide, hey, I want to run the consensus of 400 or 400,
for example, validators. I want to have POS, I want to
have a block time of or block time of one second.
And I want every time there's an interaction I can write in into
the Go binary. I can say every time there's an
interaction to with a specific address, you need to go and post
this transaction to Ethereum or whatever.
You can just compose this kind of new features on top of that.
So that's kind of the narrative. I do believe like, yeah, people,
I think Sunny again was saying you're kind of copying the
cosmos stuff. But I mean, that's the beauty of
it. I think from where it came from,
people say if you, if you're being copied, you're it, it
means that you were doing right, right.
So definitely, I think Cosmos and IBC and so forth was, was
the, the part where I, I learned most of the stuff prepared to,
to starting what I'm doing now. Now I think we define a bit
what, what are the capabilities of the SDK, the narrative.
It is with it that it should go and serve other ecosystem better
than what what the main chain was designed to.
And also with that, we're actually providing grants and
supporting all this kind of new teams that are building this
like Polka that has had this concept of pallets, for example,
where you can just build new, new modules that you can attach
and compose. Like I think even Cosin WASM is
a very, very good example that one team built something and
then it got implemented to pretty much and provided a smart
contract execution environment to all other platforms, right?
I think first it like besides the privacy or the the
sovereignty of your own application needs, you're kind
of you're also fueling a lot more innovation at the entire
ecosystem level to connect and also bridge kind of have a
bridge bridging method to Solada, to Cosmos, to Etherium
and so forth. But not only on the virtual like
on the messaging part, but also you where you can get and deploy
the applications from there that have been built there into this
kind of new, newer, newer setting, right.
So this is kind of approach. There are three three like I do
believe like one. One is the application specific
logic. Of course, that's the best 1DY
DX again is I think I love the podcast with DLDYDX by the way
here. And that's I think the best
explanation what an specific logic would look like.
Then there's the consumer grade from my point of view, where you
have this kind of Gelato out layer and all this kind of other
application where you have consumer grade tons of boxes
that will be deployed. And then there's enterprises and
that that would be, I think another podcast to touch on what
enterprises this case is with a lot.
But now going again to something more technical.
Imagine, imagine that right now there's Ethereum as a beacon
chain as a meta chain compared to Multiverse X.
And then you have a bunch of shards, which are L2's roll ups
with sequencers that are posting this kind of transactions to the
main chain. The cool part is like the most
easier way to understand would be like I always think, like I
always envision that Etherium would eventually define a
standard where all those headers or blocks that are or data that
is being pushed into the box into the Etherium beacon chain
will kind of get synchronized across the L twos.
So I think like in in in in our case, assuming that for example
you you have 4444 shards, one is pick a chain and three execution
Shard and they all produce block block block one after another.
Now if the the the shards, for example, the Shard header blocks
would be pushed to meta chain and the meta chain will not
authorize those headers and the next block actually will be
again fetched by the execution shards from what it will, it
will tell them each of them what's the height or or the
finality on each of the sources of the messages.
Now the cool part is you kind of build some sort of a trustless
invisible finality model across synchronize across all the L
twos. If you would apply the same L
run or multiverse 6 model to Etherium case to the ETA case.
The only problem is I I like, I hope that that will will be the
end game, or at least if they drop charting that could work.
It's it with minimal, minimal changes.
However, the the problem is the longer the wait and the many,
the more the chains go impose the data to another beacon chain
right then you you cannot synchronize them anymore.
Like you, I cannot know. Assuming that, for example,
you're you're a roll up, you're you're a roll up, I'm a roll up
and we're both posting the data to the beacon chain and we're
fetching the next block from Etherium.
We can both know I can know from the BLOB from Etherium if your
data was included without talking to you, right?
So in this case, this is exactly how meta chain works for the for
LRO for multiverse 6 model. But assuming that we're all
going to talk to that specific beacon chain.
Now the the next problem would be and now this is comes again
to the to the sovereign chain. Assuming that we're going to
have 10,010 thousand shards or 10,000 roll ups in the space.
Now where would this data be processed, pushed to even even
if it comes only to a block header, but to a minimum kind of
information, you still have this kind of overhead of
communication that you need to do and integrate and write this
kind of minimum information into an authorization chain that will
give us the synchronicity or the sync synchronity across the
execution in order to execute stuff directly from one to
another and not routing them, routing the the data per SE to
through the beacon chain. Well, that's, and that's the
reason like we, we, I thought, OK, what if I, I, I, we are
Etherium, right. So you assuming that we will be,
we will get to the same problem. It's just a matter of time
where, where each of the blockchains will just get to the
same problems that the then what, what would, what, what
would happen? And in this case, for example,
if you would apply the same principle as Etherium, that
means in order to, to my transaction to get forwarded to
your chain, I need to compete economically speaking, to with
all other L twos that my transaction will fit into that
block space, very limited block space of 1 beacon chain.
Now, if the, for example, if the shards are being connected to
the execution shards and there's a proper messaging system
through the execution Shard, the execution shards will have tons
of capacity to broadcast to, to to process 10s of thousands of
shards. So it's just the scale of things
is just just put it at the at the the power of 10, right?
And then you'll you'll get kind of the problems where, where
everything will will just kind of hit, hit the limitation.
I hope, I hope it it's not too abstract and it just goes a bit
to the desire rationales. Yeah, Yeah.
No, I think, I think it makes sense.
I is it then I guess it's also a problem, especially since we
have like sort of this L three thing now as well where someone
post and 1st to like the L2 and then I guess yeah, you have like
another tree that basically that is not synchronised with the
beacon chain and that might be. 1% exactly.
That's that's the the main problem.
Like it would require the play L2 to pause the transaction or
the state of that L2 to that, that receipt or the, the, the
state of that L3 to L2 and then from L2 to north 1L1 in order to
that message to get through like that, that, that won't work.
And, and assuming that, as I said, that the the L1 will still
be the same. Like we, I think we do have a
lot of data availability models and other stuff that that kind
of again, fragments the state. If if we assume that the, the
model will be default as a sequencer where only, only
someone will keep the state. And in order to execute or trust
anything, you, you'll need to kind of fetch, fetch that state
that I think that kind of add some, some, some sort of
challenges, like again, some some sort of challenges.
How would they talk to each other?
Like then we'll, we'll fall back again to bridges where I think
IDC is the the good, the good. I think I, I hope like big
things got IDC exist. They might say same.
The entire messaging with fragmentation across the all
those layers. Right, right, right, right,
right. Makes sense.
Yeah. OK, OK.
Then we went like pretty deeper. I think we hopefully we didn't
like lose everyone along the way, but I think, yeah, super
interesting to hear this from yeah, like your experience, how
you went through and how far everything has come.
So maybe we can for the last few minutes switch a bit to, you
know, like the broader Multiverse X story.
I guess you you're not just building this tech.
I mean, I guess you predominantly are like deep in
that, but there's obviously like stuff being built on top of it.
And I think what's interesting in your case is, yeah, that is
like a very integrated ecosystem with like many, many parts sort
of handled in some way by by by your team or like sort of the
the, the broader multiprose ecosystem itself.
It versus like, you know, some more fragmented thing that is
like sort of Ethereum, I guess. So yeah, I guess maybe the
question is, you know, how do you think about this like
ecosystem building and integrating things or, or what's
like the broader vision there? I think it seems like also
sovereign chains are trying to bring a little bit more other
people more in. So, yeah, happy to hear how
you're how you think about that and the future for, for like the
sort of Multiverse X ecosystem. Yeah.
Definitely, definitely so. So while I percent agree with
the part that we're trying to get even more ambitious people
involved, but also the Spark contract framework, it kind of
proven at least to some sort of the threshold that it it can
work. So the, the mention has pretty
much all kind of primitives from concentrated liquidity, stable
swaps, all kind of AMM spools, liquid staking, multiple liquid
taking protocols and all that. So that, that's that.
But now going even to the deeper level, if you want to like, if
you want to persist and build a, a, a protocol that will be
developed for decade to come, you cannot train people only at
the smart country level and then assume that they will contribute
to the protocol, right? So this is kind of A22 sided.
I really hope that it will will will work.
But maybe going back to to your question, yeah, we we we kind of
built many teams like now they're getting more like a spin
off their own space. But one of the the products is
export, though one of the spin offs from from multiware sex
where what we're very interesting is our approach was
again, I I think everybody remembers build the platform and
developers will follow. Build pretty developers user
will follow like that. That's kind of a lie.
But we we heard too many cycles and then we we kind of got we
believed that naively not build the protocol and then waited for
the users, right. And you deserve yourself that
ever came. And then while, while that week
we could waited, awaited and waited to, to for some results
or said, OK, we're kind of hardcore engineers, let's try to
do something about it. And that's how we actually start
the, the next day. And, and when with one hand, we
were kind of having this bottom up approach with the protocol
and sharding scaling for masses. But then if you want to, to, to
scale and reach mass adoption, then we're looking at the
Internet. There were like 222 moments like
there was a Fibre Channel where you have distribution like what
the sharding does. And then you need.
We had the Internet browser moment where you kind of have
extracted the, the entire complexity when not only the
geeks could work and, and start using Internet, you kind of have
the, the browser moment. And that's actually what we
tried to do with the X portal where the portal would be the
portal, your portal to everything.
So it kind of abstracts the entire complexity with both that
kind of that that product as well, which I think I think 1.5
million users in less the 1st 12, I think 12 or 24 months
after launch. And then yeah, that allowed us
to to build or at least experiment some, some very
interesting stuff like to launching to a fight, right.
So I can give you a very short, like where we come from, like we
are the second Unicorn of the country.
And then what there, there were a lot of people that put bets on
us and believed in US and so forth.
And we, we did lots to, or we think that we, we, we did not go
went against other communities and so forth and built our own
community base. But what whenever people trust
you and they put bets on you, they're taking a lot of risk.
And what happened actually when you inboard 1,000,000 users with
0 experience in crypto, the hackers were in heaven.
Like you can imagine how much social engineering against those
users happened and how many people kind of also lost money
into all this kind of phishing, the tents and all that kind of
stuff. So we thought what what can what
can be done such that the next bull run will will I can sleep
good and all that even my parents are safe, right?
So well, indeed, actually I said, OK, if we do like the the
external old accounts like EOA accounts approach, that would
mean that every transaction would need to go to the VM
execution, right? So it will need a smart contract
to open and verify that signatures.
And you basically, especially in the WASM environment, there's
still a lot of work to do. Like it could get even better.
And we do you don't want to add in a chain of let's say you were
called 10 smart contracts for liquidating AM or whatever.
Just add another multi sig on top or 10 multi sigs on top with
cryptographic, it will just get worse.
So we said today's today, let's see what what can be done.
So we, we actually added a secondary field at the protocol
level, which is checks a guardian so-called guardian
signature, which is basically the the exporter comes with a
black box signature, a black black box memonic, which you
cannot read well, only through a cryptic backup such that it is,
is foolproof. And then you basically in that
way you register the application or the device at the protocol
level to cost sign your transaction.
So you basically cannot, even if I give you right now the
mnemonic of 1 multiverse 6 account, there was a page like
called equaled heist where there were like 6 million people
trying to watch where I saw that the post with a seat phrase
published where they could could not steal the money.
You'd be quiet because it's required the same way you even
if you have the my my bank account login, you require the
two FA, the second signature, right, the second device that
will authenticate you. And we, we kind of took the same
principles as a bank account, like no, as a staking account.
You like assuming that I, I have a phone here.
I, I, I, I have registered and I have the second one where I am
importing just the, the C phrase and try to, to initiate this
kind of transaction. And then this first thing, OK, I
will notice I cannot move the, the, the funds because they're
locked. I let let me try to re register
a new, a new the same way you would call the bank and say,
Hey, I want to, I just want a new token.
Fuck it. I, I lost that that one drop it.
I I need a new one. They say, OK, sure, I'll mail
you what right. So they, they will first give
you some sort of a time, a buffer that no, not this is not
the gun held to your head to while while you're doing that
call. It's it's kind of kind of common
sense. And then the the process would
be. I, I I tried to register, I
would send the transaction on chain that goes through.
I'm allowed to do that, but the transaction has a bonding time
of 20 days, right? So in that case, the second
device, which is already assuming that I still have my,
assuming that I still have access to my current device, it
will have a notification similar to, for example, Facebook or
Instagram or whatever. Is it you that you're trying to
login, yes or no? If I say yes, basically it asks
me, do you want to give the rights to those, this new device
to sign to move the balance or whatever, give the rights to
sign the transaction, yes or no. If I say no, then basically it's
just the that account can just retry to reregister, but it, it
cannot move any fun. The cool part, if I could say
yes, then instantly it just goes and transfer the security.
Now those are like on the one hand, just going back the on the
one hand, you have this kind of super fast infrastructure, crazy
complex. And then on the other hand, you,
you just go to full proof versions of applications where
I, I know that my, my, my parents are safe on the Internet
and they can do all this kind of transaction.
Maybe. Yeah.
The the 11 of the very interesting part is we also
acquired, I think we're kind of the the only L ones coming out
from Europe where we acquired and have AE money license and a
kind of neo bank license to operate IBAN accounts and have
issued in partnership with MasterCard debit card attached
to IBAN accounts that now packing it into with the
protocol one with the LL1 packing it with a very cool user
interface. You could basically just easily
spend and use all this kind of super hardcore tech and cool
stuff that goes decentralized and open border and so forth.
But also on the same time, just go go outside and buy you a
beer, right. So what, what if our, our
question was what if we can do that?
And actually it, it, it ended up that we, we actually, we're live
with all this kind of crazy stuff.
Yeah, that's a really cool mechanism.
Thanks for diving into that. I think so basically like these
20 days, like if someone has the mnemonic, they can just try to
register a new device, but you could still block it.
But OK, if you lost any, you you wait the 20 days, it'll
automatically pass over just in case.
Yeah. OK.
So you do need to like interact a little bit with the account,
at least the frequently if you lost the mnemonic, let's say.
Yeah, yeah. So it's not perfect, but the
idea is, for example, assuming that my phone just got crashed,
I don't have access to it and so forth, then basically I still
need to be able to recover this kind of the fonts.
And assuming that I do have access, I'm still getting
notifications all the time or I can just hear hear or listen to
what the account does and so forth.
Like I, I don't think that that the ideal case would be to lose
lose access to the funds forever like.
Yeah, I know exactly. There's like a sort of OK, yeah.
I think it's like you have to die one death somewhere a little
bit. And I think this is like a nice
trade off that you're exploring or doing there.
So yeah, that's quite impressive.
I, yeah, I really like it. Cool.
I mean, yeah, thanks so much. I think we went like super deep
into everything. I hope people take away a lot
about multiverse acts and like understand how much cool tag you
build and like what's still to come.
Is there any, any final thing you want to say or you want to
like lead people towards or want to make them aware of what's
happening or how they can get involved?
Then please, let's sit. Yeah, definitely, definitely.
So I'm, I'm, I do believe that there's a lot of stuff that is
still to be built, as I said, like on the sovereign chains,
what what there there are the first, I think couple of of
chains coming up line up with EVM, bringing EVM composability
and compatibility. Then there's should be we're
looking and actively talking to several teams from Solana
ecosystem to build a Solana VM, then move VM.
That would be also very cool part.
And then hopefully to get one of the versions that will, will
just wrap and have a unified execution environment across all
those kind of crazy VMS. So what, what, what if and just
open it, seeing it better like that then while I think to
believe that risk taking is definitely, I think very, very
crazy idea that eventually kind of every ecosystem will have.
And yeah, I, I, I mean here big, big Congrats to you, Felix.
I know you, you had some very, very cool close stuff recently
announced and the whole yeah, hopefully we'll, we'll work
together on that that one as well down the road.
Yeah. And there there's a couple of
stuff. I, I, I maybe also very, very
interesting that I have not seen yet because of those licenses
that we're also having with either accounts.
What if we're going to build a chain or a chain framework that
where the banks could just spin off their spin off spin on their
their own infrastructure, right. So we're going to explore with
our own, put a framework together and then work with the
central bank to kind of let's see if that could be tokenized
directly on chain or what if, what if I just throwing a bunch
of stuff. Assuming that legislation is is
being solved, the licenses are on the table and we do have this
kind of toolkit on the table. It's an open question to what,
what can we build? Like how, how far can we go?
And that's, I think just a matter of time until the way I'm
thinking, just a matter of time until whatever you're thinking,
I'm going to think about it too. It's just a matter of time that
I do the ecosystem, it is progressing good enough it will
get get there. Yeah, yeah.
Like you mentioned like the consumer grade, like the core
primitives consumer and then the institutional enterprise, I like
that framework as well. So I guess you you are
definitely involved in all the those areas so.
We just noted, funny enough, I just had a consistent call with
the founders yesterday and there's the Institute of
Research and Engineering making from the national government
from Romania that is being part and they have the NFT
marketplace running and they're exploring with the sovereign
chains. And the cool, Craven, crazier
part, they like there's a partnership between the
government, the, the China government and European, several
European governments where the China one is exploring to, to
launch their own NFT marketplace as well for foundational
Olympics guys. And and explain that like how
how crazy it it got like from from talking all this kind of
crazy cryptographic protocols, then governments finally coming
closer and exploring this the the technology.
With the naxis. Yeah.
Yeah, maybe soon. Soon.
Chinese meme coin. Coming.
We'll see. All right, yeah, thanks so much.
I really enjoyed this and and thanks for being the first
podcast in in seven years. So yeah, I hope the listeners
enjoyed this episode. And yeah, I'm get in get in
touch with the multiverse ecosystem.
So. Thanks for that, Alex.
Highly appreciate the time and thanks a lot for the patient
guys. I know might might have been a
bit tough with all that stuff, but sharding will come
eventually to everybody. Nice.
A good final words. Thank you for joining us on this
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