MultiversX: Blockchain Sharding 101 - Lucian Mincu. Ep. #559

Transcript

our intuition was okay so some sort of parallelization should happen with like those kind of sharding and pro of stake was intuitively the design that we should approach and everybody said no it's not doable if you take the blockchain prma from metallic that you cannot achieve scalability security and decentralization without compromising any of those without Charing I I always envisioned that ethereum would eventually Define a standard where all those headers or data that is being pushed into to The Bobs into the ethereum beacon chain will kind of get synchronized across the l2s you kind of build us at some sort of a trustless finality model AC synch synchronized

across all the l2s if you would apply the same alrun or multivers uh model to thek the only problem is welcome to epicenter the show which talks about the Technologies project and people driving decentralization and the blockchain revolution I'm Felix luch and today I'm speaking with Lucian minku who is the co-founder and CIO at Multiverse X Multiverse X previously known as Alon is a fully sharded blockchain Network and ecosystem before we talk with Lucian we'd like to tell you about our sponsors this week this episode is proudly brought to you by nosis a Visionary Collective committed to fostering and expanding applications for a decentralized future nosis is at the Forefront of innovation

with nosis pay circles and metry revolution izing open Banking and creating a superior form of money with Hashi and novpn they are building a more resilient and privacy focused open internet are you seeking a robust L1 to launch your project well look no further than nosis chain enjoy the same development environment as ethereum but with significantly lower transaction fees and with a robust network of over 200,000 validators nosis chain stands as a credibly neutral and resilient foundation for your application governance sypnosis is driven by no Dow where everyone has a voice in shaping the Project's future join the nosis community today by participating in the nosis Dow governance form you can deploy

your project on the evm compatible and highly decentralized nosis chain or help secure the network by running a validator with just a single gno and lowcost Hardware embark on your journey towards decentralization today at nosis doio cars one is one of the biggest node operators globally and help you stake your tokens on full 45 plus networks like ethereum Cosmos C last year and dydx more than 100,000 delegators stake with chus one including institutions like bitgo and Ledger sing with chus one not only gets you the highest years but also the most robust security practices and infrastructure that are usually

exclusive for institutions you can stake directly to carus one's public note from your wallet set up a white label note or use the recently launched product Opus to stake up to 8,000 e in a single transaction you can even offer high yield staking to your own customers using their API your assets always remain in your custody so you can have complete Peace of Mind start sing today at chorus. one hi Lucian welcome to epicenter hey hey Felix uh pleasure to be here awesome yeah uh so glad to have you I think yeah you've been in the space for a long time with aleron previously now now multivers sex I think there's like a lot of

stories you can tell about proof of stake about uh 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 start building like uh El and now I guess multix definitely so first thing first uh thanks a lot for the invite thanks for hosting me felx uh by the way big big congrats and respect for the entire epicenter team I I think uh 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 uh ever since I met sunny in 2017 just to give a brief context uh how how I discovered first epicenter then uh then we'll move

to to my background but actually I met s in Tu into one of the very early crypto conferences he was uh uh presenting Cosmos ecosystem and it was prer to main it uh I think it took one one and a half years after if I remember uh after sun mentioned uh just it it will follow very shortly Cosmos sludge will be very shortly and uh immediately actually I fall in love with with a lot of the stuff that uh that you guys were were presenting and uh more than happy as I said big congrats and uh maybe the second point is I have not uh just to up front disclosure I have not did any podcast in the last seven years since I

built uh or started aland and then uh the the main reason actually why I'm here is after listening to you one of the latest uh podcast from from epicenter with Pao ardino where he mentioned um we we all as tech technical Founders thought okay we're going to build such good products that to the products will speak for themselves uh and then that was my my life thesis that if uh everything went for seven years six years uh and only with Alon not not going out then basically once I he heard his story and how important it is to go go out uh yeah I decided I'll reach out and uh here I am so just a short into

big big uh respect for the entire epicenter 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 honored uh to be uh chosen as the first I think your project obviously is technically uh 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 Elon back then and now multivers and how has it changed if if at all or what was like yeah definitely so uh it's some some text I've uh I

think Benjamin my brother was uh was the the hook for me into the web3 ecosystem I've been building uh and have technical background have built uh uh SE several startups in Germany has lived the I think the last 10 12 years in Germany they're uh building all kinds of infrastructure projects for the German states for startups for large SC large scale Enterprises and so forth and was very passionate about uh very simple logic of every uh protocol standard like from TCP UDP and all that kind of stuff going to bit torent and that kind of uh Direction so I think for me it was very very uh important to to try to uh uh connect to something that I could relate

and understood very simple but I could draw it like the protocol designed on the Whiteboard right so once you take like that and you just remove for example from bipor and the cedar part you immediately see oh bitco that that's the Bitcoin pretty much topology of the network ah ahuh so basically it clicked it clicked it clicked and then uh my brother uh uh uh tried to he he was already involved in uh I think n uh one of the core core team members at n in I think on the Bitcoin talk forum and so forth very very very all old days and then every time he had all this kind of uh task or or challenges to to to solve he flew to to Germany over the weekend

uh hooked me again we still stood like one one one weekend first and then uh more weekends and so forth until actually we we got the the task needed for other protocols and then after a while uh he he convinced me to to move full fulltime into web3 we also had a a fund uh back then uh where we actually ended up investing in Cosmos uh as well I think in the private in PKA zelica pretty much everything what was infrastructure uh uh back then we were one of the first back and um yeah while researching pretty much all those new protocols uh and working with them bringing trying to contribute to to their ecosystem

actually we learned a lot of the stuff and uh that was maybe the the also one of the triggers where um 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 up from 20166 2017 and so forth and we we we just had the thought experiment okay if we're going to put like one8 billion people into any of this kind of architectures what would it stand would it still stay alive would it still have still reach consensus or or have any kind of uh meaningful performance such that it will it could G gain uh World Adoption and uh basically we we kind of

reached the conclusion that uh the state problem or the the the the state size of any of those blockchains will will become pretty much the the the main killer of and killer not as we use in web3 the good part of uh killer actually literally uh will will kill any kind of performance that could those architecture reach and maybe uh the funny thing is that we we our intuition was okay so some sort of parallelization should happen with like those kind of sharding and pro of stake was intuitively the next uh the the the the desire that we should approach and we went actually to several of those ecosystem project that were already

working on on very complex uh problems and Peach them that they should do charling and everybody said no it's not doable so it's uh a funny enough that everybody said no you cannot do that it's too hard too complicated why would you do that uh and here we are I think uh after six years seven years with everything live and ethereum still uh I think uh arguing that some of the stuff are literally hardcore I I I I cannot uh uh not not agree with that there were many many Sleepless lights and uh many attempts to to build this kind of stuff but yeah I think this is very briefly how how uh also the background and also how we got to to uh at least have the

the thoughts uh in the direction of Alon 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 charting based and then it sort of shifted back to like this rollup architecture now and we we're basically still there right and I think in The Wider space like some people are people 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 mentionable one is near that has implemented charting actually so uh yeah super curious to hear from you more

about like how how it actually works and how you how you set it up to uh and yeah basically the problems that it Sol so maybe we can we can dive a little bit deeper in there like how you actually do the sharting 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 s some some context um we funny enough that you you you mentioned uh you you mentioned the the sharding part or the the sharding from from interium road map we actually worked with Prismatic labs in 2017 on the ethereum charl model so uh we I I just had a discussion uh on the think last

conferences with with explaining again how the architecture of multivers 6 or Alon look like in the production it was very very very similar to what ethereum 2.0 look like especially at least the the the the staking part part uh with Q with all those modules actually uh Elon and multivers 6 had had uh both of them actually brought to the production but also another funny part I would say Sunny was I guess one of the first guys that did a peer rev of the paper in 2017 and then also vasil from Lio has been grilling me uh about the randomness source of the chain in 2016 17 I think or 18 something like that around that uh

lot and eventually contributed to the architecture as well so very very very nice actually to see that all all those uh Builders have contributed and always contribute as if there's something that Builders have in common they all contribute to the best things now going back to the architecture model uh of Multiverse X and going a bit into the technical stuff the I would say the the the first step would be to um uh walk walk the thought process that I I look at as uh at any blockchain architecture pretty much so if we take for example ethereum as a super computer a super computer is still a computer in the end and it has three major components so you have kind of CPU Ram dis where CPU is consensus you throw a lot of request at him uh uh works with a very fast me with

a very fast memory which is the ram where you basically iterate where or permutate those values once you reach consensus and you write to the disc how you got there right so this is like a I would say blockchain 101 explain in 30 seconds uh and also as a super computer put this distribute just dist it over the internet and then that's kind of it but the next point would be if we look at General compute architecture how we scaled up the system we did not end up with a CPU with a single thread that has 100 GHz but rather we have a bunch of threads that paralyze the execution they all also all of those threads work with a a very fast memory which is the ram where you have even though you have

physically the Ram uh as one one piece actually each of the threads are having a 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 a set of memory of the RAM and then of course once they reach uh the or um solve the data the request it wres to the disc how we got there now that this is like the general compute this is also if we look at uh Al or Multiverse X how it looks like or or how it it works actually you have the beacon chain similar to ethereum 2.0 and then you have a bunch of execution charts if you remember the the initial ethereum chart in architecture it it has it it basically uh push out the State per the state to

the execution charts where the state transition will be maintained on the execution charts so basically you have this kind of peon chain which is notarizing all those uh blocks being produced on the the the Sub sub shards or the execution shards level uh while basically that that allows uh uh and goes us basically to to the entire sharding model maybe before going even more into uh specifically and losing pretty much maybe a bunch of the guys uh what is being notorized what headers and so forth I would just do a step back maybe defining a bit the the problem of the charting right um I would say uh one of the points here that's like there are

three kinds of sharting so there there's uh I would say uh transaction sh in where we have had architecture similar to zil zil for example was one of the first one uh that that proposed that kind of uh model which allowed any kind of state transition or kind of move balance uh paralyzation in within the same chain in within the same binary right so that's cool however as soon there the the chain has heat one uh one transaction or one smart contract uh transaction for example which would have iterated 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 um there's like the network charting like if we look and

for example uh this the way the architecture is being built on our case you we have the we have a total of 3002 3,200 validator seats and all those seats are being being allocated into four chunks or four sub charts one each of them maintaining 800 in this case like big chain has 800 validators Shard zero has 800 Shard one do each each 800 basically at the network topology level there's uh on top of of Le peer-to-peer an authentication layer where it tells like once you go and again this might be a bit uh technical for for people basically once you go into and and uh

you connect to the Le toer 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 counterparty which is receiving the message if uh you're uh you're uh what kind of peer are you so are you coming from the same chard are you coming from a different chard and basically there's a a specific Optimizer set which will tell each of the validators hey I I have a maximum for example like again just defining the problem like Network traffic is perhaps the most uh 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 uh um 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 first you you you have as I said the first 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 synchronized and uh I synchronized with the with the the the network I can tell the public key that has signed this

message uh where it come from on based on my knowledge of the network configuration uh I can tell okay this public key should be actually validating or should be validator in Chart 2 or in the meta chain and I can assign this public key or or this this network connection to to a routing protocol where I keep a a certain amounts of connections uh optimal for an optimal uh broadcasting meth or propagation protocol in order to to to reach and always have highly highly available or high connectivity low low latency between validators inard and still maintain some sort of a cross-chain

connectivity for uh with with all other shards such that they will never become a lonely lonely island so there there's I I hope let me let's break here and maybe I let you ask some questions I know there's a lot of stuff like there there's very specific layers but more than have to explain everything no sounds great 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 this as well so but rather it's also like just a normal shard in some sense no no so so basically there's first uh there there's shared security model so

basically their the entire pool uh of 3,200 valid seats are randomly allocated around among all the sharts so there's no no special pref uh configuration no special preferences for the beacon chain you just basically get uh every epok shuffled and being allocated to to that chart the only difference is um in the current configuration is that the the consensus size or the consensus yeah the consensus participation for every round is 400 or 400 like they I I could just maybe just Define a couple of more stuff let's let's let's do right so uh basically there's uh if we go on the the

chronology part first right so let's define what's what's the metric of accounting or or measuring it at blockchain so we have EPO which are equal to 24 hours and then there's rounds current round time is equal to 6 seconds uh which will get improved with the next protocol updates to I think three two seconds 1 second and hopefully subsec fin finality be before the end of the year maybe U now that's uh chronology then there's validators uh which have two different states uh or had two different states so there's active and waiting the reason for that is basically um each Epoch 400 validators are being elected or elected

to to validate each of the the shards including bacon chain where eight the other uh uh so 400 are being elected and the other 400 are in the waiting State be why because there is every Epoch every Epoch the the the the validators are uh a third of the validators are being random sampled to reshuffle uh across valid uh across the shards such that they will never be able to collude to take over a shart 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 shart that then I have a built

in in the protocol a time a guaranteed time frame for my node even if I will just like impr practice the node will destroy and delete the the entire database will just go and and synchronize the the the snapshot the the three step shot for from the the current Epoch and then build on top of that the current state of the chain assuming that at the that next Epoch change I I am eligible to become validator right so maybe that's very draw 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 something part right yeah that's super interesting

and this sying 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 uh there's basically uh for first there's uh uh three snapshots so we we like three pruning we implemented the three Runing which allows us actually at each of the epoch change to clean up the the old old uh or on the Old State you like the tree will always maintain only the the the latest and greatest so to say version of the leaves or or or the tree tree model which will be uh actually transferred in the new snapshot where basically uh that gets to also to to the next problem to the the state

charting uh because uh maybe defi like right right now it it takes just to to answer question it takes I think around maybe Hour 2 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 or do we 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 is to to highly optimize the throughput of the network and the latency however the main problem I think what we where we were solving is the

state problem and like if you take the the the the state or if you take like put put uh the world population of a billion people into a justed 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 in that database find those entries uh 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 uh uh as many times across the go like if like if we take the blockchain trma from vitalic uh I think that's the most famous one

that everybody knows you you you cannot like the problem says that you cannot achieve um uh scalability security and decentralization without compromise izing any of those uh without charting like charting is the the what's the design for for that and actually what it does um if for example if we take the ethereum uh address range as an example and you would take um 0x0 000000 1 as a beginning and then you have 0 10 at the end uh as an end and you would split into a sharded model those each of the shards will persist on a subset of those accounts right so in practice um the

storage like the the every Everything related to those accounts will be pre-allocated uh or allocated to a specific chart and that specific chart will will will maintain the storage of it while now if we take and do the a step back at the concess or or the entire architecture model basically you can if for example a transaction would be inard like assuming that the first zero to five are in the same Shard and the F the next five to 10 are in the next Shard uh basically each of the shards could process in parall they will run consensus every block every block every every block and then basically when the transaction is inard in in in inside the same storage it will happen automically 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 uh uh point where we're kind of dive into but I'm I'm pausing here again letting you maybe to ask some questions if it's clear enough if it is uh yeah yeah yeah so you still always go through the main to the beacon chain ask for like interop Shard interoperability and I guess does it work I remember from like a near actually that you know if like some transaction is actually on the same shart they still kind of wait this one Epoch and delay it so there's no benefit of being on the same shart somehow is

that like something you guys do as well yeah so so there there are two two two problems here what so first is um the composability problem I guess that's the most the most uh interesting uh the the the most re I think the only reason why ethereum have not implemented charting yet right so what well like assuming that you run consensus on each of the sharts and for example there are two shards and the bacon chain every time you a transaction needs to like it is assuming that I'm I I have the the account with ID like with ending one and then I'm calling a sh a smart contract which has the it is in the same chart and basically everything happens automatically uh in the same in the same transaction I can just compose and so

forth however if for example the the the account that I'm trying to to to go to is uh outside my poster code just to call the the the near uh the near podcast as well basically uh I I need to go through the rout right and the router will will will will kind of Ensure meet the guarantee of the message delivery however it will not happen uh at the same same uh in the same block uh but here there are two two two pro two problems I would say first there's the tripet problem like you could still try to concentrate everything into a single blockchain however there are some sort of um uh improvements that could be done in order or like engineering engineering

steps that could reach to comp automic automic composability across multiple charts but the the the main the main the most interesting part I I would say that's the easy part almost I would say once you have a sharded blockchain it 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 sharts where whereby the the most crazy part is that nobody solved until now or before L1 the full State sharted problem like the the the cool part is for example now let me let me break it down to to something that uh I I think is also very very very known for everybody like the the uh tral agency problem I think it was described

in in ethereum forums back then you where you want for example I'm I'm I'm a um uh 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 in my my offer if I want I buy this this holiday ticket to get a train ticket Hotel uh a car rental and a plane yeah and if if uh if I buy into the smart contract the results should contain all of them or nothing now this is the cool part like uh nobody says that everything in even in computer science problems not not not everything happens synchronously not

like even even the the the way we communicate right now is not synchronously it has a asynchronous model which guarantees the the the the the transport of the messages and then we built on top of those transfer messages a bunch of algorithm or a bunch of software which can handle this kind of uh the modular approach and now if we look like um the the way we approach like what Multiverse or Al or sharding promises is it guarantees a way of forwarding messages from A to B but with some some specific properties like for example uh if we know that the message will will take uh a 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 this 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 10 other transactions that might take even two 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 uh for and also not compromising on the the true put of the network right so this is kind of kind of uh 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 been mentioning before and also that the network itself is kind of synchronize uh synchronize over over all this kind of Primitives cryptographic Primitives and and uh con consensus State basically you could if I know that for example in

advance like one of the the looking maybe few few seconds into the future H how could such a protocol still achieve what 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 uh uh 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 those validator sets and make them achieve consensus for all for uh for automic for one specific upcoming round where they will execute one one specific

transaction from A to Z across all the the the the accounts inside this 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 uh in the same in the same block like the the same way the internet doesn't guarantee us uh op that everything uh just comes drops everything and just process one one single thread at a time I I hope it makes sense I I I I think it's uh yeah yeah yeah I 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 chart for this string of transactions what exactly but also while not uniting the state what so the cons you can I can still work in like the same way if the model works in the asynchronous model already basically we will just speed up the message passing from one one to another and 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 a swap I I mean it's just an engineering pure engineering problem it's not uh

something that cannot be solved like if we have solved all and build all this kind of stuff then I I do believe that did that's just a couple of sleep lights I would say just did a few took a few years um yeah okay that's interesting so but right now do you can you do this priorization or is it like I guess it leads a bit into you know what are like the prioritized transactions in general in blockchain is like sort of me related like Arbitrage or whatnot across like is this something you can already do on on M SE I think it's clear a bit how the the logic of the the Shar then on top of that what we're uh building maybe uh it

would be um there each of the shards by the way has its own VM so it has its own uh execution environment and so forth and on top of that basically we we build at uh uh uh uh some Primitives which is called uh um time lock and Promises like you can Define at the interface of each of the spa contracts what kind of what kind of properties do you want like defining you want TCP or UDP do you want for example uh do do you want that uh if like when I'm shooting to this smart contract and this smart contract call other test contracts do I need does the

user wants whatever it it gets or do what do you want to await all all the F all the results of uh all all the smart contracts and if that passes basically I'm I'm just confirming sealing that the the the result or 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 sharts uh where I I can do that we don't have right now because it was not a problem the the the the it would be it is kind of a challenge for us uh because

we we only had blockchains 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 it do what what if what if I can design such such such applications that can instead of having just one single thread one single smart contracts for example for repping or I'm wrapping tokens or whatever else you're thinking where you can actually have this kind of of Primitives available in all sub charts and then I think that's kind of the challenge of also iterior with rollups 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 um I also have some some

interesting uh uh notes on that end actually but um yeah uh I I hope it answers uh 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 um is it all like the same VM basically so so we we have three kinds of uh uh so first on top of the blockchain we on top of the blockchain accounts we kind of built a a routing system where you can have multiple VMS the cool part is you end the data field for example when you're calling a smart contract uh 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 uh call The Bite code with a specific Viet so I can tell through this kind of switch uh what what kind of VM I 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 uh storage take take that bu code and map it into a specific V VM in our case we have a wasm VM we built on top of a wasmer it's called a space VM and then there's all a framework on top

of that which obstructs the entire complexity of sharding which is called spacecraft uh SDK right so uh the the the co- part is basically what what um that's one one of the Frameworks like this is the most used for for anything Spar contract related and then also on top that we also have uh uh go go or like a system VM where we used uh for example for staking Primitives like system specific applications or logic where you need High very very efficient computation and very fast uh yeah you you that's kind of what what uh why we the reason why we do that the the funny part is actually because of the the new

SDK like The Sovereign chains I think we going to touch on that as well is we're in identifing 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 uh one of the projects that I'm very excited about that does ethereum evm compatibility so imagine that you basically in the future the main chain could uh with in in one transaction with the you you're calling one one specific smart contract and then that specific contract you can take the output and inject it into the next BM that is for example you take a wasm bite code you're

calling a wasm b code and then you call a solidity code and then you take it with that result you you have compos you reach composability across multiple VM more VM Sol VM and so forth right so uh that's kind of the end go the the direction for the VM execution side and then on the the sharding part uh there's uh a lot of consensus optimization there's a lot of uh like even block time is a for my point of view a bit too slow it but six years ago it was reasonable right so yeah always something to do okay super interesting I guess yeah especially like um heading into the Sovereign chains realm I guess we have seen more and more this like application

specific Paradigm I guess play out right like I think that's like where it started in Cosmos and sort of like everyone built their own chain everything is a chain your fridge is a chain and um I guess Cosmos has this approach okay you have the Sovereign chains or like the app chains and then IBC uh in your case that's like sort of the the sharting but now you're also bringing in as I understand like sort of a model to have your own chain within this 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 than heavy so maybe first uh I I I would just justify the the problem like we've been very good on

running multiple binaries so like multiple chains in parallel architect orchestrating them into an invisible layer would say with through the orchestr G through the bacon chain such that you don't care where the accounts would would leave actually in your in in your entire architecture and then by doing that actually we kind of learned and said hi uh we kind of we're kind of good on running this kind of specialized chains or or almost paralyzed chains why don't we just pack rebuild the the uh the the code base such that it will turn into an SDK which actually could if like if you have if you look at the internet architecture you don't have just public Cloud where you're sharing the resources

with everybody else you could what if you can just deploy your own private Cloud but still maintain all your own sovereignity like the cool part is is like first you get all the Primitives everything that we build with on multivers 6S for the last couple of years uh out of the box but also pretty modular when it comes to uh 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 multier se you you can basically decide hey I want to um uh run a consensus of 400 or 400 for example validators I want to have PS I want to have a block time of or block block block time of 1 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 on on top of that so that's kind of the The Narrative I do believe like yeah people I think sunny again was saying you're kind of C copying the cpos stuff but I mean that's the beauty of it I think from where kind from people say uh if you if you're being copyed you're it means that you you were doing right right so definitely I think uh Cosmos and IBC and so forth was was the the part where I I learned Mo most of the

stuff uh uh pre preor to to starting what I'm doing now uh now def I think we defined a bit what what the capabilities of the SDK The Narrative it is with it that um 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 uh all this kind of new teams that are building this like Po 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 kmm is a very very good example that one team built something and then it it got implemented to pretty much and uh provided a smart contract

execution environment to all other platforms right I think first it pro like besides the privacy or the the sovereignity of your own uh application needs you you're kind of you're also fueling a lot more Innovation at the inter ecosystem level to connect and also Bridge uh kind of have a a bridge bridging method to solada to cosos to uh ethereum and so forth but not only on the virtual like on the messaging part but also you where you can uh get and deploy the applications from there that have been built there into this kind of new newer uh newer uh setting right so this is kind of approach there are three

three like I I do believe like one one is the application specific logic of course that's the best one dydx again is I think I I love the the podcast with the dydx by the way uh here and uh that's I think the best explanation what an a specific logic would look like then there's the consumer grade from my point of view where you have this kind of uh gelato out layer and all this kind of other application where you have consumer grade uh tons of blockchains that will be deployed and then uh there's Enterprises and that that would be I think another podcast to touch on what Enterprises is Cas is would allow but now going again to some something more technical imagine imagine that right now there's ethereum as a bon

chain as a meta chain uh compared to Multiverse X and then you have a bunch of shards which are l2s rollups with sequencers that are posting this kind of uh transactions to the main chain the cool part is like the the most easi way to understand would be like I always like I I always Envision that ethereum would eventually Define a standard where all those headers or blocks that are or data that is being pushed into the blobs into the ethereum beacon chain will kind of get synchronized across the l2s so I think like in in in our case assuming that for example you have four four CH

four four shards one is beon 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 notarize those headers and the next block actually will be again fetched by the execution shards uh 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 AC synch synchronized across all the l2s if you would apply the same L Rand or

multivers x uh model to ethereum uh case to the ethereum case the only problem is I I like I hoped that that will will be the end game or at least if they drop charting that could work it's it with minimal minimal uh changes however the the the problem is the longer the waight and the many the more the chains go and POS the data to another uh Beacon chain right then you you cannot synchronize them anymore like you I cannot know assuming that for example you're you're a rollup you're you're a rollup I'm a rollup and we're both posting the data to the beacon chain and we're fetching the next block from ethereum we can both know I can know from the block from e

if your data was included without talking to you right so in this case this is exactly how meta chain works for the E for for elra for multivers 6 model but uh assuming that we're all going to talk to that specific Bon CH now the the the next problem would be and now this is comes again to the to the Sange chain assuming that we're going to have 10,000 10,000 uh shards or 10,000 rollups in the space now where would this data be processed pushed to S even even if it comes only to a block header 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 the synchron across execution in order to execute stuff directly from one to another and not routing them routing the the data per se to through the bonj now that's uh and that's the the reasoning like we we I've thought okay what if I I I we are etheral right so 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

ethereum that means in order uh to to my transaction to get forwarded to your chain I need to compete economically speaking to with all other l2s that my transaction will fit into that block space very limited block space of one Beacon chain now if the for example if the shards are being connected to the execution shards and there's the proper messaging system through the execution Shard the execution shards will have tons of capacity to Broad to to to process a tens 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 you'll get kind of the problems where where everything will

will just uh kind of H hit the limitation I I hope it it's not too abstract and it just goes a bit to the desire rationals 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 L3 thing now as well where someon post then first to like uh the L2 and then I guess yeah you have like another tree that basically that is not synchronized with the beacon chain and that might be one% exactly that's that's the the main problem like it would require that 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 L1 in order to that message to get

through like 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 uh 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 uh in order to execute or trust anything you you need to kind of F petch that State uh uh that I think that kind of uh uh add some some some sort of challenges like again some some sort of challenges how would to talk to each other we like then we we'll fall back again to Bridges or I think IBC is the The Good the good

I think I I don't like thanks God IBC exists they might save save the entire uh messaging with fragmentation uh across the all those layers right right right right right makes sense yeah okay okay so we went like pretty deep here I think we hopefully we didn't like lose everyone along the way but uh 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 uh for the last few minutes uh 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 uh there's obviously like stuff being built on top of it and I think what's interesting in your case is yeah that there's like a very integrated ecosystem with like many many parts sort of handled in some way by by uh by your team or like sort of the the the broader Multiverse X ecosystem itself it versus like you know some more fragmented thing uh that is like sort of ethereum I guess um so yeah I guess maybe the question is you know how do you think about this like ecosystem building and uh integrating things or or

what's like the broader Vision there I think uh 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're thinking about that and the future for for like the sort of Multiverse X equos system yeah definitely definitely so so uh 100% agree with the part that we're trying to get even more ambitious people involved but also the SP contract framework uh it kind of proven at least to some sort of the uh uh threshold that it it can work so the dimension has pretty much all kind of Primitives from concentrated liquidity stable swaps uh all kind of uh amm pools uh liquid staking multiple liquid

staking 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 protocol that will be developed for a decade to come you cannot train people only at the Smart contri Level and then assume that they will contribute to the protocol right so this is kind of a two two sided sword uh I I really hope that it will will will work but maybe going back to uh to your question uh yeah we we we kind of built uh many teams like uh now they're getting more like a spinoff their own space but one of the the pro products is exportal one of the spinoffs

from from multivers X where um what very interesting is uh our approach was again I I think everybody remembers build the platform and developers will follow build pre developers user real follow like that that's kind of a lie but we we heard to too many cyos and then we we kind of got we believed that navely enough build a protocol and then uh waited for the users right and the users almost never came and then while while do that we we could waited away waited and uh waited to to for some results or said okay we're kind of Hardcore Engineers let's try to do something about it and that's how we actually um uh start 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 uh to to scale and reach Mass adoption then looking at the internet there were like two two two moments like there was the fiber channel where you have distribution like what the Shing does and then you need we had the internet browser moment where you kind of haveed the enre complexity when not only the geks could work and and start using internet you kind of had the the the browser moment and that's actually what we try to do with the X portal where the portal would be the port your portal to everything so it kind of abstracts the entire complexity we bought that kind of that that product

as well which I think I think 1.5 million users in L the first 12 I think 12 or 24 months after launch uh and then uh uh yeah that allowed us to to build uh or at least experiment some some very interesting stuff like two on chain to a f right so I can give you a very short like where we come from like we're the second unicorn of the country and then what there there were a lot of people that put bats on us and believed in us and so forth and we we did not 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

in board 1 million users with zero 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 uh into all this kind of uh uh fishing attempts and all that kind of stuff so we thought what what what can what can be done such that that the next bow run well will I can sleep good and know that even my parents are safe right so but we did actually I said uh okay if we do like the the uh external old accounts like EA accounts approach that would mean that every transaction would need to go to the VM execution right so it will need a smart cont to

open 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 you don't want to add in a chain of let's say you were call 10 smart contracts for liquidating amm or whatever just add another multi on top or 10 multi on top and with cryptogr it will just get worse so we said today's today let's see what what can be done so we we actually uh added a secondary field at the protocol level which is checks a guardian so-called Guardian signature which is basically the the exportal comes with a blackbook signature blackbox uh memaric which you cannot read only through a crypted backup such that it is is foolproof and

then you basically in that way you register the application uh or the device at the protocol level to cosign your transaction so you basically uh cannot even if I give you right now the memonic of one multier six account there was a page like called uh equal heist where there were like six million people trying to watch where saw that that post with a a seat phrase published where they could could not steal the money it' be Qui because it requir the same way you even if you have the my my bank account login you require the tofa 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 uh like assuming that I I have a phone uh here I I I I have registered and I have the second one where I I'm importing just the C phrase and try to to initiate this kind of transaction and then the first thing okay I will notice I cannot move the the the funds because they're locked I let's let me try to re-register a new new the same way you would call the bank and say Hey I want to I just want a new token [ __ ] it I I lost that one drop it I I I need a new one they say okay sure I I'll mail you one right so they they will first give you some sort of a time a buffer that no not you is not a gun H 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 uh I I I try to register I would set the transaction onchain 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 uh assuming that I still have access to my career device it will have a notification similar to for example Facebook or Instagram or whatever is it you that you're trying to log in yes or no if I say yes B basically it asked 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 the data account can just retry to re-register but it it cannot move any fun the cool part if I can say yes then instantly it just goes and transer the security now those are like on the one hand just going back 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 foolproof versions of applications where I I know that my my my parents are safe on the internet and they can uh do this kind of transaction maybe and yeah the the one one of the very interesting part is we also acquired I think we're kind of the the only l1s coming out from Europe where we Acquired and have a e-money license and kind of Neo Bank license to operate iban accounts and

have issued in partnership with MasterCard uh debit card attached to to iban accounts that in now packing it into with the protocol with the L L1 packing it with a very cool uh user interface you could basically um just easily uh spend and use all this kind of super hardcore Tech and cool stuff that goes decentralized and open border and so forth but also in the same time just go go outside and buy your beer right so uh what what if our our question was what if we can do that and actually it it it ended up that we we actually were alive 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 memonic they can just try to register a new device but you could still block it but okay if you lost then you you wait the 20 days it'll automatically pass over just in case yeah okay so you do need to like interact a little bit with the account at least the frequently if you lost the MIM monic let's say yeah yeah yeah so it's not perfect but idea the idea is for example assuming that my phone just got crashed I don't have access to it and so forth uh then basically I still need to be able to recover this kind of of the funds and assuming that I do have access I'm still getting notifications

all the time where I can just hear hear or listen to what a account does and so forth like uh I I don't think that that the ideal case would be to Lo lose lose uh access to the funds forever like yeah I know exactly there's like a sort of okay 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 uh 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 multi X and like uh 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 uh want to make them aware of what's happening or how they can get involved then please let it yeah definitely definitely so I'm I'm uh I do believe that uh there's a lot of stuff that uh is still to be built as I said like on the soarine chains uh there there the first I think couple of chains coming up line up with evm bringing evm composability and compatibility then there's uh 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 queries VMS so what what what if and just open putting it like that then while uh I think to believe that uh risk taking is definitely I think very very crazy idea that uh eventually kind of every ecosystem will have and uh uh yeah I I I mean here big uh big congrats to you Felix uh I know you you had some very very cool cool stuff uh recently announced uh and oh yeah hopefully we we'll work together on that that one as well uh down the road um yeah and um there there's a couple of stuff I I

maybe also very very interesting that I have not seen yet because of those licenses that we're also having with Ian accounts what if we're going to build a chain or a chain framework that where the banks could just spin off their spin up uh 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 J 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 uh tool kit on the table it's an open question to what what can we build like how how how far can we go

uh and that's I think just a matter of time I what the way I'm thinking just a matter of time I until whatever you're thinking I'm going to think about it too it's just a matter of time that until the ecosystem if it's progressing good enough it will get get there yeah yeah like you mentioned like the consumer grade like the core primitive consumer and then the institutional Enterprise I like that framework as well so I guess you you are definitely think involved in all the those areas so um just let's not it's funny enough I just had an ecosystem call with the founders uh yesterday and there's the Institute of research and Engineering I think from the national

government from Romania that is being part and they have the an nft Marketplace uh running and they're exploring with the Sovereign chains and the cool even 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 the national uh Olympics guys and and uh exploring that like how how crazy it it got like from from uh talking all this kind of crazy cryptographic protocols then governments uh finally coming closer and exploring this the technology with

NFS 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 enjoy this episode and yeah get get in get in touch with the Multiverse ecosystem so thanks a lot fix highly appreciate the time uh and thanks a lot for the patient guides I know uh might might have been a bit tough with all that stuff but sharding will come eventually to everybody nice good final words