2852: Wanchain: Unlocking Blockchain's Potential Through Interoperability

[00:00:00] You have a pond of how the seemingly isolated worlds of traditional finance, central bank,

[00:00:07] digital currencies and decentralized finance could be interconnected.

[00:00:13] While today's episode invites you into the forefront of blockchain technology's future,

[00:00:19] a future where cross-chain interoperability isn't just a possibility.

[00:00:24] To reality, and today we're going to be joined by Tim Louis, vice president of One Chain,

[00:00:30] a visionary platform at the helm of decentralized cross-chain solutions.

[00:00:35] Tim is uniquely positioned to demystify the complexities of blockchain interoperability

[00:00:41] and that is one of the many reasons I'm excited to get him on the podcast today.

[00:00:47] Because as this digital landscape evolves, the necessity for seamless communication and

[00:00:53] transfer between diverse blockchain networks is becoming undeniably critical.

[00:01:00] So I've invited Tim on to share with us why bridging these isolated ecosystems is vital

[00:01:06] for the scalability and the integration of blockchain technology into our financial systems.

[00:01:13] From that influence of cross-chain interoperability on the symbiotic relationship between traditional

[00:01:18] finance, CBDCs and DEFI to the pressing need for industry-wide standards, we're going

[00:01:26] to explore the challenges and the breakthroughs that lie ahead.

[00:01:31] If we've got time I also want to explore why Ethereum's ERC20 token is actually a beacon

[00:01:37] of hope in this quest for unity and how One Chain's pioneering work in developing decentralized

[00:01:43] cross-chain bridges is not only enhancing DEFI infrastructure but also paving the way

[00:01:49] for a more interconnected and efficient future.

[00:01:53] How does that sound?

[00:01:55] Now before I get today's guest on, quick shout out to the sponsors of TechTalks daily because

[00:02:00] in today's remote first world, I think settling for outdated managed file transfer solutions

[00:02:05] means ultimately you're risking your sensitive data.

[00:02:09] If you upgrade to Kiteworks, the gold standard in Secure MFT, boasting FedRamp Modular Authorization,

[00:02:16] Kiteworks isn't just Secure.

[00:02:18] It's a complete transformation of how your business handles file transfers and the communications.

[00:02:24] So say goodbye to Compromise and hello to unmatched security and efficiency and you can

[00:02:29] do that by making the switch to kiteworks.com.

[00:02:32] Visit kiteworks.com to begin.

[00:02:35] That's kiteworks.com to secure your data and empower your business.

[00:02:40] But now let's get today's guest on.

[00:02:43] Well book a lot and hold on tight because wherever you're listening in the world I'm going

[00:02:47] to beam your ears all the way to London in the UK where you too can pull up a chair, sit

[00:02:52] down with myself and tell me as we attempt to light the path to a truly decentralized financial

[00:02:58] ecosystem.

[00:03:00] So a massive welcome to the show.

[00:03:03] Let me tell you what I'm listening a little about who you are and what you do.

[00:03:07] Sure, well thanks for having me.

[00:03:08] My name is Tamagen Louis.

[00:03:10] Everyone listening can just call me Tam.

[00:03:12] It's a lot easier and IMDCO of WANCHAN.

[00:03:16] WANCHAN is one of the earliest decentralized blockchain interoperability protocols.

[00:03:20] Now I know that is a mouthful.

[00:03:22] I'm sure we'll get into it but yes we work on making different blockchain networks speak

[00:03:27] to another basically.

[00:03:29] Wow, well it's such a pleasure to have you join me on the podcast today and you are

[00:03:33] someone with a decade of experience in pushing the envelope of emerging tech particularly

[00:03:38] blockchain is incredibly cool topic.

[00:03:40] So question I've got to ask that set the scene for our conversation today.

[00:03:44] How do you articulate the role of decentralising for structures in democritising access to technology?

[00:03:51] And also was the origin story of one chain focus on decentralized cross-chain interoperability

[00:03:58] and I know it's a huge mass world and I've given you the biggest question in the world

[00:04:02] just to start but would you like to begin by just telling me a little bit about them?

[00:04:06] And nice and easy question to kick this down.

[00:04:09] Yeah, no softballs here.

[00:04:11] Well with this I think it's good to maybe break it down.

[00:04:15] Democritising access, this is an important idea but it's also good to define it I would

[00:04:20] say.

[00:04:21] So what it really just simply means is that you have equitable access and open participation.

[00:04:26] So this thing that exists is available to all people and will remain available to all

[00:04:32] people.

[00:04:33] So I think that's kind of how I like to define democratised access and decentralised networks

[00:04:38] like blockchain.

[00:04:39] This is really where they thrive.

[00:04:41] They have extremely low barriers to entry.

[00:04:44] Basically anyone can go and interact with a decentralized blockchain.

[00:04:49] They're also empowering in the sense of data ownership and controlling the flow of information.

[00:04:55] This really kind of puts that power into the hand of the individual.

[00:04:58] There's also advantages in terms of security with a centralized system.

[00:05:03] What you might often encounter is like a singular component can fail and the whole thing comes

[00:05:07] down.

[00:05:08] At least theoretically with decentralized networks, one piece can go offline without taking

[00:05:12] down the system.

[00:05:13] It's very redundant in that way.

[00:05:16] And I guess more biased to what we are working on.

[00:05:21] The network also lend themselves very well to the creation of open interoperability standards

[00:05:26] or open standards overall.

[00:05:29] So this is kind of very different from the systems that exist today and most certainly

[00:05:33] are centralized, which means that they're controlled and owned by a few large incumbent

[00:05:39] monolithic companies, your Google's of the world and the like.

[00:05:42] So it is quite a shift, but it is still mostly theoretical.

[00:05:50] This beautiful vision of low-barious entry, everyone controlling their own information

[00:05:55] and their own data and everyone thriving together.

[00:05:58] This is the theory in the implementation.

[00:06:00] There's still cracks.

[00:06:02] The individual crack that Wanchain is focused on is that interoperability element.

[00:06:07] Right now there's many, many blockchain networks that exist.

[00:06:11] But blockchain though decentralized are awful at speaking to one another and sharing information.

[00:06:18] And so this is the specific crack that we at Wanchain are focused on kind of building

[00:06:23] infrastructure that can help this data move from one chain to another without sacrificing

[00:06:29] the decentralization aspect that spurred this whole movement.

[00:06:34] And what was it that inspired it all?

[00:06:36] Is there a story that is used?

[00:06:37] It usually is.

[00:06:38] Yeah, I think most myself included everyone at Wanchain, we have very similar stories.

[00:06:45] We encountered that original Bitcoin white paper and it awoke something in us.

[00:06:51] But then once you start looking at the specifics, you kind of see where work still needs to be

[00:06:58] done.

[00:06:59] It's a great idea, but at some point you have to get it down on the weeds.

[00:07:02] And very, very early on we just realized that one blockchain network is not going to be

[00:07:06] enough to run the whole world on it.

[00:07:07] We want to do more than have blockchain be a payment system.

[00:07:12] We wanted to really kind of operate a lot of the world systems beyond finance.

[00:07:19] And with that we just need multiple networks working together.

[00:07:22] We had a lot of learnings from the web to space, you know, the transition from a local

[00:07:26] area network to a wide area network.

[00:07:28] This is conceptually the same thing that we're trying to do now with blockchains from one

[00:07:31] blockchain network to multiple blockchain networks.

[00:07:36] Now just to expand on the definition of everything you're doing, you did a great job

[00:07:40] of putting it in a language that everyone can understand.

[00:07:42] And I know another, there's also a huge significance of scaling up the connections between

[00:07:48] isolated blockchain ecosystem.

[00:07:51] So can you expand on why this is so pivotal for the future of blockchain technology?

[00:07:56] And also how this could potentially reshape the landscape of digital finance.

[00:08:00] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:08:01] Now as I just mentioned, finance is definitely one of the early use cases for the step

[00:08:07] of technology, but our long-term vision we want to expand beyond finance.

[00:08:10] You know, there can be things like supply chains, there can be all sorts of different real

[00:08:15] world centralized systems that exist today, you know, that we want to bring on to block

[00:08:20] chain so that it can also take advantage of these systemic advantages.

[00:08:24] But it really has to scale up.

[00:08:27] One chain is simply not enough.

[00:08:28] There's one example I like to share that I think really helps people kind of understand

[00:08:33] why interoperability and why multiple chains working together is important.

[00:08:38] So you know, don't quote me on the exact numbers.

[00:08:40] I'm going to be doing some rounding here.

[00:08:43] But there's about 8 billion people in the world today and 86,000 or so seconds in a day.

[00:08:50] Now if we want the whole world to run on blockchain, that's going to be a huge number of transactions

[00:08:57] that need to take place on chain.

[00:08:58] Now if we just wanted to give each person a single transaction per day, just one per day

[00:09:04] that you need an excess of 90,000 transactions per second to kind of sustain that level

[00:09:10] of volume.

[00:09:11] Now that's just what I myself as an individual, I might do 100 in a day, just me.

[00:09:17] If you want to really onboard kind of real world industries, the stock market, you know,

[00:09:22] a single marketplace like Nasdaq, they'll do 30 plus million transactions per day.

[00:09:27] So the scale of this, of the world is immense and decentralized systems and blockchains

[00:09:32] and the as it exists today as isolated networks.

[00:09:35] This simply cannot handle that type of volume.

[00:09:38] And so that's why it's important to scale.

[00:09:40] That's why it's important to have all these distinct networks kind of operate as a single

[00:09:45] meta network.

[00:09:46] And that's why we need interoperability.

[00:09:50] Cross chain interoperability seems to be the cornerstone for bridging traditional finance,

[00:09:56] cultural bank digital currencies and decentralized finance.

[00:09:59] And with that is a whole lot of short and buzzwords that we all hear, trap by CBDCs and

[00:10:05] DeFi etc.

[00:10:06] But can you elaborate on how you envision this relationship evolving with the correct scalability

[00:10:13] measures in place?

[00:10:14] Because it's incredibly complex area, isn't it?

[00:10:18] Yes, it certainly is.

[00:10:20] And you know what these buzzwords as you mentioned.

[00:10:23] I think these oftentimes are placeholders to mean mass adoption.

[00:10:29] When can the real world start using these types of systems so it can grow beyond the

[00:10:33] kind of DeFi niche?

[00:10:35] And I think one thing that's extremely clear right now is that at least traditional

[00:10:40] finance and decentralized finance, they're already eyeing each other.

[00:10:43] They both see the synergies there, but it's just about figuring out how and when traditional

[00:10:50] finance can transition on to these decentralized networks.

[00:10:54] Now there's a few reasons why it takes a lot of time.

[00:10:58] The scale we talked about already, but it's more than just network throughput.

[00:11:03] It's also just the value in traditional finance.

[00:11:06] They're securing trillions of dollars, quite trillions of dollars on certain timescales.

[00:11:12] And when you're dealing with this type of value, you're not going to take risks with

[00:11:16] it.

[00:11:17] These are startups that are just going to throw everything against the wall and see what

[00:11:21] sticks.

[00:11:22] They have to really understand the systems, truly appreciate what all the various risks

[00:11:28] are and then they can act.

[00:11:31] And one of the problems is that DeFi right now is somewhat of a fractured mess.

[00:11:36] It's a lot of different builders and different projects doing things their own way.

[00:11:43] That's a mismatch.

[00:11:45] One signal for traditional finance to move on to decentralized networks or interact with

[00:11:52] DeFi is going to be clear regulation.

[00:11:58] Once you have, if you want to have clear regulations, you need some standards in place

[00:12:04] in the industry as well.

[00:12:06] Right now because everything is built ad hoc, everything is a little bit different.

[00:12:09] It's not really reasonable to expect regulators to understand in great detail all the variants

[00:12:17] and technology across the entire industry, even people like myself who are in industry 24

[00:12:23] seven.

[00:12:24] I might understand interoperability extremely well, but it doesn't mean I understand every

[00:12:27] corner of the blockchain industry to the same depth.

[00:12:30] So expecting a regulator to understand all of that is unreasonable.

[00:12:34] And I think that's where something like these standards that have to be put into place

[00:12:40] can really help.

[00:12:41] I'm going to focus here just on interoperability again because this is where I know best,

[00:12:46] but you can define you some clear standards and clear interfaces on how communication between

[00:12:54] the two networks has to work.

[00:12:55] How you vet and verify the authenticity of the data and put these best practices into

[00:13:00] place.

[00:13:01] And once these are in place and adopted by enough people in the industry, that's a blueprint

[00:13:07] that regulators can follow.

[00:13:08] Then there's lots of ways that they can think about regulating that they can do a via

[00:13:12] in different tiers or what have you, but at least there's something that is there that's

[00:13:16] tangible that can be used to properly educate the regulators so that they when defining

[00:13:22] their regulations can strike a good balance between security and protecting the end user

[00:13:27] and promoting innovation.

[00:13:29] And then once that's in place, then it's kind of open doors you can now safely Mr.

[00:13:35] Treadfy go on and interact with these systems.

[00:13:41] So that's kind of how I see this interaction taking place.

[00:13:43] There's no doubt in my mind that these various market players are going to converge the advantages

[00:13:48] of decentralized networks are too clear.

[00:13:51] And there's not a lot of controversy amongst traditional finance and defy that there's

[00:13:56] additional value that can be created there.

[00:13:59] It's just the nitty-gritty right now that still needs to put in place.

[00:14:02] A lot of it is being slowed down by regulations, but I think one step deeper is regulations

[00:14:07] are slowed down because there's still too much variance.

[00:14:11] There's not enough standards in place.

[00:14:13] And he just, excuse me, it just feel like we've been talking about increasing adoption in

[00:14:19] this space and the excitement around it since what 2017 when the world won a little bit

[00:14:24] crazy around blockchain, but the absence of industry wide standards does appear from the

[00:14:30] outside looking into being a roadblock in the path of widespread blockchain adoption.

[00:14:35] So what do you say are the main challenges this presents and how is it hindering the growth

[00:14:40] of a financial inclusive future because that's always been the ideal destination.

[00:14:46] That's where we need to get to, but what's holding it back and how's this going to improve?

[00:14:52] Do you think?

[00:14:53] Yeah, I mean you're totally right.

[00:14:54] It feels like we've been talking about an enterprise adoption for 10 years.

[00:15:00] Yeah.

[00:15:01] And there's been experiments of course, but it's clear that it's not really happened yet.

[00:15:08] As you rightly pointed out, I think a lot of that is due to the lack of standards.

[00:15:14] Even internally, having a lack of standards creates certain obstacles.

[00:15:20] And it's nothing groundbreaking.

[00:15:21] If you think about it for just a few moments, it makes a lot of sense.

[00:15:24] If everyone is building the things, the way they want to build it,

[00:15:30] it comes a little bit difficult to trust every single one.

[00:15:33] It's a huge task that to go in and understand in great detail where all the risks are present

[00:15:39] based on a certain design, especially if you have to then vet 10,000 different designs that are not

[00:15:45] following any kind of shared language. And so there's security concerns in that sense, even as

[00:15:51] Wanchan ourselves, we build this type of infrastructure.

[00:15:54] If we connect our infrastructure to another maker's infrastructure and we're not following the

[00:15:59] same standards, we're exposing our system where we always of course prioritize security, but

[00:16:04] we expose it to the risk assumptions that another builder might have decided.

[00:16:09] Maybe they decided to do different trade-offs than we would have done.

[00:16:13] So it makes it difficult to kind of connect two other systems that way.

[00:16:18] And you know, that is kind of counter to the ethos of interoperability, but it's just

[00:16:22] the reality of a situation because security always has to be number one.

[00:16:25] And similarly, the user experience is not seamless at all.

[00:16:30] And that in itself is going to always be a roadblock for mainstream adoption so long as it can't

[00:16:36] be, you know, quick and easy. In the web too world, they've gotten really good at

[00:16:40] making nice experiences convenient and allowing the user to simply focus on the thing that they

[00:16:46] want to accomplish and not have to worry about what's going on behind the scenes.

[00:16:50] It's not like that in blockchain right now. You still have to know which blockchain you're

[00:16:54] interacting with is a lot of manual intervention for end users. So this is simply just too complex.

[00:16:59] Here again, I think when you once you have standards, particularly for interoperability,

[00:17:04] it'll make it easier for application developers to abstract a lot of that away so that it can be a

[00:17:09] more seamless user experience for the end user. And I think this, you know, I think I

[00:17:15] think I talked about this a little bit just now in the security part, but just the fact that

[00:17:19] everything is ad hoc makes it very difficult to onboard the mainstream.

[00:17:26] So I think we really need more of a shift in thinking. We need to think about these type of systems

[00:17:32] blockchain interoperability really as being core infrastructure. In the sense, core infrastructure

[00:17:38] should be zero profit, condition endeavors. And then once you have the shared secure,

[00:17:44] vetted or infrastructure in place, then you can kind of go and build products on top of that

[00:17:49] that have different offer different value does different trade offs for different types of use.

[00:17:54] And you can kind of compete there. But we're still at the point now where we're trying to get everyone

[00:17:59] to really focus on building this core interoperability infrastructure.

[00:18:04] Yeah, I think it's something you see with any emerging technologies. We can't

[00:18:07] just see in a few parallels with AI arguably at the moment where AI has been around for a long,

[00:18:13] long time. But it wasn't till Gen AI almost just lowered that barrier of entry and oh, I can

[00:18:18] just type stuff and it gives stuff back. People kind of got it. The world goes crazy for it.

[00:18:23] Now people are starting to think hey, we need to regulate this. We could be causing more harm

[00:18:26] than good. We're putting out company data into large language learning models. And it's very similar,

[00:18:32] isn't it really? Yeah, there's definitely a lot of similarities. Luckily,

[00:18:38] I think blockchain is slightly less of an ominous black box in terms of what's going on behind the

[00:18:44] scenes. And a lot of it is transparent and probable so that is an advantage to to blockchain. But

[00:18:50] yeah, all these type of revolutionized or potentially revolutionizing technologies, they all

[00:18:54] kind of go through the same kind of growth pains on the way up as the industry's mature and realize

[00:19:01] okay, yes, you might have had this amazing ethos of the star for decentralization open access to

[00:19:06] all. But if you want to unbord the whole world, you know, you need regulation, you need the

[00:19:13] systems that are in place to protect consumers, to be compatible with the thing that you're building.

[00:19:18] And this is often where there's growing pains 100% with you. And Ethereum's ERC20 token,

[00:19:26] the standard there is often how does one of the biggest success stories for creating a

[00:19:31] a universal template really? So how do you view that ERC20 as an ideal model for maybe

[00:19:37] establishing industry-wide standards? And do you think there are any lessons that could be learned

[00:19:41] from this implementation? Absolutely, I love the RC20 example. It's really good for

[00:19:49] illustrating the importance of the step of standards throughout the entire industry in,

[00:19:55] you know, to people who are not focused on interoperability 24-7, which is everyone. And

[00:20:02] you know, ERC20 for those for those listeners who might not know, it's a standard token interface

[00:20:06] that originated on the Ethereum blockchain. So basically just, you know, introduce a token standard

[00:20:12] that everyone could follow when they're deploying their tokens on Ethereum and the advantages

[00:20:17] then were that that standard kind of became interoperable, interoperable within Ethereum.

[00:20:23] At all sorts of different applications can just automatically interact with it

[00:20:28] and it really allowed the ecosystem to boom. Now, if you didn't have this type of standard that

[00:20:33] this that everyone followed, you probably still could have built out an ecosystem. You could have

[00:20:38] built a decentralized exchange. The difference would have been every single token that the

[00:20:44] decentralized exchange wanted to support would require an engineering lift. You would have to

[00:20:50] build that integration in ad hoc. Then you could also have other applications support that same

[00:20:56] token, but it would be the same thing. You know, each application, each wallet, each lending

[00:21:00] platform, they would have to go in and do the engineering work for every single token that's

[00:21:04] following its own standard just to be able to use it. But because you had ERC20, now it can just

[00:21:10] spread. Okay. Everyone knows what type of data structure they'll look for and I can go, you know,

[00:21:16] issue a new ERC20 right now and right out of the box, it'll work on all the Dex's on Ethereum,

[00:21:20] all the lending platforms slightly different. But all the Dex's, all the wallets, they can

[00:21:25] immediately use my ERC20 token. Now this sounds way better than everyone doing it ad hoc one by one

[00:21:33] because you really can't see that scale if everyone every single time you wanted to support any

[00:21:37] token, you have to hire new engineers and then integrate it. And that's kind of the state of

[00:21:42] interoperability that today we can build bridges between any two blockchain networks essentially.

[00:21:48] But every time we want to deploy a new bridge, it's an ad hoc construction. It's a new engineering

[00:21:54] task and every single piece has to be built one by one. And then when you zoom out what you look at

[00:21:59] is okay, well now it sort of works. It's not very seamless and there's a million mission critical

[00:22:05] failure points. You know, any one of these ad hoc constructions goes down, then it causes problems

[00:22:11] throughout the entire system with a standard that standard has to be obviously extremely well

[00:22:17] vetted and secured. But once that standard is created and in place, then it can spread,

[00:22:24] then you can have widespread adoption, then it scales up very quickly.

[00:22:29] You and your team are right at the forefront of developing decentralized cross-chain bridging

[00:22:33] solutions so that someone that's right in the eye of this storm, anything you can share around

[00:22:38] how these solutions work, especially for people listening to hearing about it for the first time.

[00:22:43] And also their impact on enhancing efficiency of defy infrastructure because we're solving real

[00:22:49] world problems here and that's something that often gets missed with all the hypernex alignment.

[00:22:55] Yeah, absolutely so if we zoom out a little bit, you know, Wenxen, I think I mentioned the top were

[00:22:59] blockchain interoperability project focused mostly on R&D. You know, we are actively working with

[00:23:04] our industry partners trying to set up these or get these industry standards in place. But we do

[00:23:11] have forward-facing products as well. We have cross-chain bridges, we actually launched the

[00:23:16] industry's first ever cross-chain bridge back in 2018 and we support a variety of different types

[00:23:24] of bridges. We do fundable tokens so these would be things like your ETA, H or your BTC or your USDT.

[00:23:33] We also do NFT bridges. A lot of the listeners, I'm sure I've heard NFTs during that last

[00:23:38] last craze when everyone went crazy over the monkey images and we do cross-chain message passing which

[00:23:45] is basically moving data from one chain to another but that's basically what interoperability

[00:23:50] in the blockchain sphere is. It's the capabilities to move data in one way, shape, or form that exist on

[00:23:57] one network and transport it to another network, lossless, identical and then transactions can

[00:24:05] continue. So it's really about moving data from any chain to any chain and that's what we do.

[00:24:13] If you want to think about how, what you need to think about when evaluating these different

[00:24:17] types of systems is that process of moving data from one chain to a second chain, this is really where

[00:24:25] you need to vet the system and this is really where the systems differentiate from one another.

[00:24:31] So in one chain's case, what we prioritize is that transfer mechanism has to be as decentralized

[00:24:38] as the underlying blockchain networks themselves. This is usually not the case with interoperability

[00:24:45] protocols out there right now. It's quicker if you're focused on growth first and foremost to have

[00:24:51] that piece centralized. You can have just a single actor copy and pasting data from one chain

[00:24:56] to another, and that's easier to build and you can spread faster. But for us, as I mentioned,

[00:25:02] I think probably at Nazim at this point is that we view interoperability as core infrastructure

[00:25:06] so we really can't sacrifice on security and decentralization. Then that's where

[00:25:11] one chain sets itself apart. As we touched on very early in our conversation today, accessibility

[00:25:19] and user experience, these are the things that are crucial for the adoption of blockchain by

[00:25:24] the general public. And maybe people listening around the world again hearing about you for the first

[00:25:29] time. So how are you addressing these aspects in your technology and equally the narrative as well

[00:25:35] to reach that wider audience beyond the technically savvy and ultimately increase adoption?

[00:25:42] Great question. On the user experience side of things,

[00:25:47] one chain ourselves a prior near to few innovations, let's call them, that made the experience

[00:25:55] more seamless than it was before. I'm not saying it's perfect yet but it's an improvement.

[00:26:00] I can think back at our first bridge which as I mentioned was the first bridge or the first

[00:26:06] decentralized bridge. Back then it required multiple clicks, or either the user had to do things

[00:26:14] multiple times to complete a single transaction. They had to go on the one network, do a sign of

[00:26:20] transaction there, grab some data, copy paste it, go somewhere else, paste it there, sign another

[00:26:27] transaction on a suggestion and now you're done. So that's how it looked like in the first iteration.

[00:26:32] Today it's a single click. The user presses one button and then everything else happens

[00:26:37] in the background so everything has been abstracted out at least to this extent.

[00:26:42] I think that will be the key to continuing to improve the user experience is we really just have

[00:26:48] to abstract it away. If you think about your relatives who are using Facebook and things like

[00:26:54] that, it's a big ask to have them go download multiple blockchain wallets and figure out what

[00:27:02] different tokens they need just to be able to use it. That all has to be abstracted out so they

[00:27:06] can focus on the applications that they want to interact with. It's really just about

[00:27:12] making it as easy as possible and removing a lot of that complexity from the surface.

[00:27:18] I think the second part of the question you asked was about reaching beyond the tech sassy.

[00:27:24] I think is more difficult and where there's still even more work to do as an industry as a whole

[00:27:32] not only when chain but I guess our thesis is that once you have universal standards,

[00:27:39] it'll make the whole ecosystem, the whole industry more seamless and then application developers

[00:27:45] will be empowered to build applications that actually run on multiple blockchain seamlessly.

[00:27:49] And again, to abstract away all of that complexity so that when you are talking to

[00:27:54] regular people who are not extremely tech savvy and into the blockchain world,

[00:27:58] you don't have to mention the word blockchain at all. As long as the end user needs to know

[00:28:05] what blockchain they're interacting with, that means we're not there yet and we're not ready for

[00:28:11] for true mainstream adoption as long as that's still part of the conversation and part of the narrative.

[00:28:16] For us, we're focused on building the infrastructure that makes it possible

[00:28:22] and application developers I think once that is in place are the ones that are really going to have

[00:28:28] to reach out beyond the tech sassy because blockchain itself is still very complicated to use

[00:28:34] and you can say is more appropriate or more feasible is probably a better word for tech savvy people to use.

[00:28:42] Does that frustrate you at all the fact that we've been talking about this for more than 10 years

[00:28:46] and I come on guys, we've been talking about this for 10 years. What are you getting yet?

[00:28:51] Do you ever have those little random moments or runs?

[00:28:54] Definitely, definitely random moments, the frustration will come but then I zoom out

[00:29:00] and then I feel better because we've made a lot of progress in the past decade

[00:29:07] and we often look to other industries to comfort ourselves.

[00:29:13] Our conversation is this Web 3 idea that is powered by blockchain so we often look at what Web 2

[00:29:19] went through in Web 1 and the journey for the internet or Web 2 even decades long as well

[00:29:27] from the origins of the technology to revolutionizing e-commerce online.

[00:29:34] That was also extremely long time horizon so when you look at it that way, we're still early in

[00:29:39] the blockchain timeline and so it becomes less frustrating but definitely there'll be moments here

[00:29:46] and there where it's like kind of lots.

[00:29:50] And you're also somewhat deeply engaged with the blockchain community and I speak

[00:29:55] to so many prominent events like the Cardano Summit for example. So how do you approach conversations

[00:30:01] about interoperability and enterprise adoption among so many different diverse stakeholders in this

[00:30:07] space because one thing we've not touched on yet is your cross-chain infrastructure,

[00:30:12] empowers developers to build the future of Web 3. So how do you start those conversations

[00:30:18] and I get those diverse stakeholders in place?

[00:30:24] Yeah, I mean it sounds very basic I guess but it also just acknowledging and understanding

[00:30:29] that not everyone is focused on interoperability every single day of every single year.

[00:30:35] And so there has to be both teaching and kind of learning going on. It's really at this stage

[00:30:40] still just having conversations still trying to communicate the importance of decentralized

[00:30:45] interoperability and we're talking to someone that's in the industry also the importance of

[00:30:53] supporting not only Ethereum-like systems, EVM systems but also more heterogeneous networks

[00:31:01] and the importance of that. But it also especially when speaking to regulators and people

[00:31:08] in the traditional finance world or in traditional enterprises also listening to what their

[00:31:12] concerns are and how they're thinking about blockchain in terms of their needs. And that's an

[00:31:18] important thing to learn from my side as well. With enterprises it's a little bit different because

[00:31:24] those who are engaging with blockchain right now actually have been in blockchain

[00:31:30] experimentally for a very long time. Some of the earliest innovators in blockchain were some of

[00:31:36] these huge enterprises like Microsoft, Chapin Morgan and things like that and they're running their

[00:31:41] own experiments and a lot of the things that we learned in the public sector originated

[00:31:48] from their experiments also. So when we talk to the enterprises you can be a little more granular,

[00:31:53] you can caution against things like single solution approaches and really kind of hammer away at

[00:31:58] the need for core infrastructure and infrastructure first product second that type of approach.

[00:32:05] And yeah really it's just still at the stage you just have to have these conversations and

[00:32:10] it's still at the stage of explaining why it's so important and why it's indeed a prerequisite

[00:32:17] or mainstream adoption. Like we mentioned earlier you go for these hype cycles and you get

[00:32:22] these periods where everyone wants to run onto blockchain and everyone's really excited

[00:32:28] and we're entering one of those phases now but it's likely going to be very similar maybe slightly

[00:32:35] larger than the previous cycles but I doubt we're going to get to the end point of true mainstream

[00:32:40] adoption this cycle either because some of the prerequisite infrastructure is not yet in place.

[00:32:48] Well I cannot thank you enough for coming on the podcast today. Do you mean

[00:32:51] it's defying this space talking about it and a language that everyone can understand? It's a

[00:32:57] gift to be able to do that and I'm going to finish now by asking you possibly the most difficult

[00:33:02] question for you and that is a song that you can add to our Spotify playlist or a book to our

[00:33:09] Amazon wish list to leave everyone listening with all I'm going to ask is what would you like to

[00:33:13] leave everyone listening with and why? Yeah great question one book that was very impactful

[00:33:22] to me is called Power or Radical View by Stephen Luke's. Yeah and this really kind of helps

[00:33:32] shape the way that I think about incumbent power structures and the impact of new ideology on

[00:33:41] the existing institutions. It's a book that originated in the 70s and was quite influential in this

[00:33:48] field and has been revised a few times since then I think they're in their third edition now

[00:33:53] but really just helps think about what power is, what hour is power and

[00:34:00] how power is legitimized. It's a little difficult to go into more detail right now but I think it's

[00:34:06] very very much worth a read especially for those who are interested in disruptive technologies

[00:34:15] and why it is so often the case that when there is something new like this that emerges it

[00:34:21] receives such prevent blowback from the incumbent systems. Oh wow you left me with a huge

[00:34:29] teaser though I'm going to be checking that out I'll get it added to our Amazon wish list and

[00:34:34] for anyone listening why don't I be a developer someone following the space closely wanting to

[00:34:40] get involved wanting to join your community where's the best starting point for all things

[00:34:44] out on channel. I would imagine you've got things like medium telegram get urban your website but

[00:34:49] where would you guide everyone yeah the number one place to go to stay up the day will be our

[00:34:54] Twitter or X our handle is Wenching underscore org that's number one we're very active there

[00:35:00] and then number two would just be our website Wenching.org and with those two

[00:35:05] those two channels you can get up the date pretty quickly. I cannot thank you enough for

[00:35:09] sharing your insights that scalability and implementation of industry-wide standards

[00:35:15] they could be the next hurdles to face but not only that you've also demystified this space to

[00:35:19] talk about it and a language everyone can understand so just thank you for taking the time to do

[00:35:24] that with me today. Thank you very much for the opportunity and I really enjoyed our talk

[00:35:29] so as we wrap up today's enlightening conversation I think as we wrap up today's conversation

[00:35:35] I think it's clear that the journey towards that fully interoperable blockchain ecosystem

[00:35:42] is challenging but equally exhilarating and that vision of connecting isolated blockchain networks

[00:35:48] fostering a seamless exchange of assets and establishing industry-wide standards. Yes it's

[00:35:54] no small feat and I'm conscious that in attempting to demystify this space we may have oversimplified

[00:36:00] some of the challenges in making that happen but I confidently believe that with innovators like

[00:36:06] Tim and platforms like Wenching the blueprint for that unified financial future eat really is

[00:36:13] slowly but surely coming into focus and I love how Tim was reflecting on the rise of web too

[00:36:20] and e-commerce and how long that world took maybe we just need to be a little bit more patient

[00:36:26] but of course there are implications of such technological advancement and they extend far beyond

[00:36:32] the realms of track fi cbdc's defying all those other buzzwords that hint at a world where financial

[00:36:41] inclusivity and efficiency they're really not just ideals budge words they're really not just

[00:36:48] a set of ideals nice to have and buzzwords but a reality so as we all collectively ponder the potential

[00:36:56] of that cross-chain interoperability and how it might revolutionise our digital and financial

[00:37:02] landscape I think one question remains how can we all contribute to that transformative journey?

[00:37:09] I'd love to hear your thoughts on this discussion today so please share your insights on anything you

[00:37:14] think we missed from the conversation today anything you think about the future of blockchain

[00:37:19] interoperability please share your views with me techplogriteroutrook.com if you want to come on

[00:37:25] the podcast and join me we can do that too I'm also on twitter, instagram, linkedin just at Neil C Hughes

[00:37:32] let's continue this conversation beyond the airwaves and together maybe we can navigate the

[00:37:38] complexities of emerging technologies and ultimately unlock the full potential of decentralized

[00:37:44] finance for all but that's it for today so just a big thank you for this thing as always and until

[00:37:50] next time don't be a stranger