OK, welcome everyone and thank you for joining us.
Today, you'll be hearing from Anthony Solshniak from Aleph Zero and myself, Robert McCracken,
I'm very excited over the last couple of weeks, maybe some of you guys have noticed, we teamed up, worked together as an on-ramp provider, FIP Crypto Payment Gateway, we're supporting the A0 token for Aleph Zero.
I'm very pleased to be working with them on that.
So, hoping for, you know, more and more of a deeper partnership. I know that, Anthony, you're based in Europe, is that right, Anthony? Where are you today?
Correct. Hi. Hi, everyone. Hello, Robert. Thank you for thank you for hosting. Thank you for having me as an Aleph Zero representative.
I am in Europe. Yes, I'm currently in Krakow in Poland. So, some call it Eastern Europe, some call it Central Europe. We prefer, I guess, the Central Europe terminology.
And yeah, this is also where most of the R&D team has been located. The foundation itself is in Zug in Switzerland.
Okay, excellent. Yeah, okay. So, I'm in Germany right now, down in the south of Germany, actually near the border of Switzerland, in fact.
Yeah, so I know the Europeans sort of seen quite well. And I think you and I actually know quite a few of the same projects as well. I know you've been with Fractal ID recently and near as well recently.
And so, yeah, exciting to have big projects coming out of Europe, actually. And yeah, Zug in Switzerland is, of course, a bit of a center for crypto and web3 development in Europe.
So, look, Anthony, it's a real pleasure to have you today. First of all, I should just add that do check out both our websites. So, if you want to learn more about what Aleph Zero does, and today we're going to be talking definitely, I think, about common.
Is that right, Anthony? And then we're going to also talk about Aleph Zero in general as well, and try and explain a little bit to both communities what Aleph Zero is doing and how AlchemyPay facilitates that and helps them.
Okay, cool. So, perhaps, if you want to start by just sort of explaining a little bit about how you got together with, I know you're one of the co-founders, but how it began and kind of the missions behind Aleph Zero.
And I also kind of, I always find it interesting learning about the guests entrance into the web3 space. So, you know, something about that is always quite, I think, quite interesting for our community to hear about.
Yeah, so, I'm sure, happy to maybe just a bit on my background. It was primarily I was involved with various startups and scale ups since I was a, well, a teenager, really.
And then my job was always to kind of find the good intersection between technology and marketing. So how do we turn deep tech into products? How do we then communicate the USBs? How do we make it as presentable and as attractive to the users?
So I don't do tech, I can code, for instance, but I would say fairly good at translating what the value prop is.
In Aleph Zero, I'm handling essentially or helping to handle at this point, really everything that is not related to development or our research.
And so it includes, you know, operations, business development, marketing, branding, product design as well.
And how it all started was late 2017, early 2018, we got together with Adam, Matt and Mike. And essentially, Adam had this idea for a new type of consensus protocol that we call Aleph BFT these days.
And the idea for it was to be able to combine sort of the design, the optimal design for scalability, speed and decentralization, while maintaining, you know, the sort of the optimal theoretical security guarantees.
Oh Anthony, Matt, just to jump in there, just out of interest. So now, to me, it seems like your privacy focused your ZK, you're certainly exploring ZK solutions a lot. Is that something that was always there at the start, or as things have developed, you've kind of moved into that?
It kind of was. Like, the first challenge that we wanted to do is, let's just optimize how things work on the consensus level, right? Because it's the heart of everything.
Then, okay, then how do we take this and build it into a full blown blockchain? And then how do we add a USB that we believe is important not only to us, but also to the broader market.
As far as the on-chain transparency is amazing, there are things that you need privacy for, may it be, I don't know, trading strategies, may it be, you know, at that point, we were betting that also institutions and enterprises are going to at some point go from the permissioned environments into public chains.
But then again, there are problems associated with too much data being exposed.
Yeah, transparency is, it can be good and bad, depending on the scenario.
Correct, correct. And then the sort of the obvious challenge was, you know, being able to prove that the private data is correct, being able to prove that the statements are also true. And this is where ZK fits perfectly.
Yeah, okay. So it is a layer one blockchain. Is it, is it its own foundation or does it take a fork from anywhere or just just explain the basics there?
Yeah, so we set up to do two things that weren't haven't been done before. And the first one was, is there a consensus protocol? The second is the privacy layer. As far as smart contracts, we inherit the substrate tech, which is, which is the tech stack that's powering the Polkadot ecosystem.
So effectively, we thought of substrate as you would naturally think of Cosmos as decay. And, you know, we didn't feel really there is a need to reinvent the wheel on some of the cases, as there was way more than enough really good open source tech on the market already.
But no, like all things, all things concerned of zero is definitely not a fork. It's a it's a it's an architecture that was that was pretty unique, unique steel, like an obvious benefit of plugging the consensus into the substrate tech stack is it's time to find out which is currently and has been historically always under under one second.
So this can be this can be pretty much considered instant.
Okay, yeah, okay. So I don't know how much you want to go into specifics here. But in terms of the developers and users, you know, what, what would you say some of the benefits of using out of zero would be for them?
Now, if a user, well, let's let's maybe start with developers. So the developer environment on Alex zero is sits on ink, which is a rusty DSL.
So effectively, if somebody knows rust, they're gonna feel feel right at home. The tooling is not too mature yet, but we are very, very lucky to have been able to onboard it.
Really a significant amount of developers, we've just finalized a three week long hackathon.
You can find out the results at hack dot Alex zero dot org. And this was a first self hosted initiative, hackathon initiative that we've that we've ever done.
And we were really, really happy about the results. We've had almost 30 high quality submissions, we've just revealed winners.
Okay, so it was a pleasure to see that, you know, new teams that haven't been in the ecosystem before, experiment with both ink and and and the very basics of the of the privacy technology that we put out there.
Okay, so people can find out about that on your Twitter if they want to learn more about the projects that came out well from that hackathon. By the way, was the hackathon.
Was it only online or was it based specifically, you know, in Poland or Krakow or anything like that.
So this edition was 100% online. We wanted to effectively have as much participants, I would say as possible, which is proving, you know, for obvious reasons, it's proving difficult on in the real world of sorts.
We are also very happy to have support from three major telco companies, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonika, and Saudi Telecom, and Bahrain, as well as funds like Arca hardcore.
So it was it was a really cool, really cool virtual event with 75k in bounties and the possibility to get a follow on follow on funding as well.
how do you think the last 12 months has been for for you guys in terms of development in terms of those changes?
Yeah, it was a brilliant, intense building time, I would say so we've, we've started going to more and more conferences, we've started putting out hackathons are joining different builders events.
While at the same time bootstrapping and kicking off the, the ecosystem so smart contracts when live on the LF zero mainnet in April, and around the same time we've kicked off an initiative that's called the ecosystem funding program, which is our approach to
essentially assisting different developer teams to build on top of LF zero, not only through grants, but also through assistance with compliance, branding, marketing product design, and all the aspects that you really need to to take an idea and turn it into a sustainable
sustainable business in the end. So for the better part of last year, we were not only develop developing the core tech.
But also, but also just helping to helping to build ecosystem products. I'm very happy to have
really a number of number of different teams working on over 40 40 ups at the moment.
Yeah, okay. Yeah. And that's interesting that you talk about the idea of having different teams work on different things. I mean, people are developing in a lot of different directions in in blockchain technology and still, you know, working out what is possible.
What are the drawbacks for how, how can, you know, reiteration, how can things be reiterated in a better way. And I think it's very exciting. I think when you mentioned about, you know, the idea of giving these projects and these developers, everything they need to create a sustainable kind of online presence, community, business, network, I mean, however, whatever kind of project they're doing, you know, the necessary infrastructure.
Obviously, probably come under the somewhat under the compliance aspects as well. You know, as a as a fear crypto payment gateway payment provider. So yeah, so we've also kind of felt certain projects over the last 12 or 18 months, maybe is a better timescale to use have have really grown and expanded.
And I think the infrastructure, including regulations and compliance around digital assets and around blockchains and around something we're going to talk about more, which is, you know, privacy protocols and online identity and all these kind of factors and issues.
So this has all seen a lot of development in the last sort of 18 months and certainly without me pay, I've sort of seen that and been part of that. And I think with Aleph zero, you guys have as well, you know.
So let's talk about common showy. Let's talk about this decks with the private order book mechanism.
How would you like to talk about that? Or what would you like to approach in terms of common? Because I know this is a big project for you guys and an exciting new addition.
Yeah, common with common, we're really trying to solve two things. And the first one would be the overall UX of how we approach the fight because, you know, we all know that in most cases, defy is better for an average user.
And we've seen the consequences of, you know, different bad actors in the in the CFI space and their actions in 2022.
But the problem that we've seen with with defy and I think that everyone's painfully aware of it is that it's just kind of tricky to use for for an average person.
So this is the first thing that we want to eventually solve with with with common. So how do we make onboarding of new users as simple as possible while maintaining this sort of lack of lack of custody lack of custody mindset, then where the privacy comes in.
Beyond also private order books and just the obvious benefits of it is just a really huge boost for the user experience because you can use, for instance, one or two wallets for majority of your of your activities.
And of course, we can argue that, you know, having more wallets is secure as you don't have a sort of central point of failure, but but still, even if you want to send, I don't know, pizza money from from your, your non custodial wallet.
Then it's very easy to kind of just click on the on the on the transaction ID and take a peek into your your main wallet revealing how the state of your finances looks like. And this is not something that majority of people would be would be comfortable in.
So this is one very simple obvious challenge that that we want to solve.
When it comes to the private aspects of the order books in common. This is primarily to have professional traders be able to kind of keep their strategies private, basically.
So whenever you kind of execute an order, it's revealed only or whenever you set an order, it's revealed only upon upon execution, placing the order doesn't influence the the asset price also, because, well, it's basically impossible to spoof anything.
And network validators don't have any. Yeah, so who has sorry, who has who can see the private the order book?
Well, not not the public, you only see the orders that you've placed and you see the rest after they have been executed. Okay, okay. Yeah. Oh, sir. Well, continue, please explain.
Yeah, well, and for for also due to this embedded confidentiality.
Users also protected from from the negative effects of of me.
And this is the I would say the the initial value prop that common is going to have in addition to the fact of simply being fast, just because it's built on on other.
And that's, that's, that's the gist of it. As we go along, we're going to also introduce a mobile app that has a lot of other added benefits. We're now finalizing a spec for essentially adding even and and and payment cards to this app.
This is we still need a bit of time in order to to get this up and running. Yeah, the very sort of first iteration of common, which is which is just a transparent auto automatic market maker is going to go live in the coming weeks.
So it's it's all really exciting. And it's going to be an interesting use case for the underlying alec alec zero technology that we want to just translate into what we think is going to be an optimal user experience as a as a full as a full build out.
Okay, very good. So yeah, I mean, people can can learn more about the common project or side projects or I mean, it's more than just I mean, is it you'd refer to it as an app.
Well, um, so there are several components to it, right? So for on the on the let's call it the back end, you have the protocol, right? Yeah, I'm on the front end. Yes, it's it's an app. So similarly to how say Uniswap operates its own front end.
But also there is the the Uniswap protocol that you can just build whatever custom front ends you want to work with. It's it's a similar it's a similar approach. But then again, the also the challenge is how do you put all of that into a very cool mobile interface?
Yeah, that's everything user user experiences is everything, not everything, but it's a huge part of adoption and interest and usability. You know, it's, yeah, okay.
It is. It is. And we're seeing that we're far caster even.
So are you able to do everything you want to do in your Apple? There's there's obviously more to come or are you limited by the technology in that regard?
Ideally, what you would be able to do is simply use DeFi on the go, while being able to if you choose to while being able to use Apple Pay to spend your stablecoins and whatever shop.
Well, this is what we do, Anthony, this is what we do. So we've got a card, people can check out crypto card. It's on our list of products on our website alchemypay.org.
So I think our teams are probably discussing this at the moment, as well, because I think this is a new area for crypto usability. Absolutely. The idea of being able to actually spend your crypto.
Yeah, and everyone wants everything on an app, you know, that is the be all and end all, you know, so whatever your idea it is, you know, I think it's important to have that usability. Absolutely.
Yeah, 100%. Like I strongly believe that a sufficient level of abstraction and simplicity is going to get all of us where we want to go as an industry. Obviously, common is also on the AMM front and the desktop side of things.
This is very much suitable for degeneracy, if any of them are. So, you know, we don't want to we don't want to compromise on the on the on the lack of lack of custody aspect if we don't have to.
So you're you're you're a strictly non custodial platform.
Initially, initially, yes. However, like the privacy components of common are going to be are going to be gated for compliance reasons, right? So I understand. Yeah.
We can, of course, dive more into this. This is a really tricky, long discussion that, you know, well, the idea of compliance is quite a fascinating subject, all of its own, I think.
But also, I think you're making ethical choice, not ethical choices, you're making ideological choices also in terms of the idea of, you know, the Web three decentralization ideology is the idea that we hold our own assets or tokens, right?
So that that's another aspect that, you know, separates us from exchanges are, you know, work in that category, you know, so everything has its place, you know, these different sectors within crypto.
But you can kind of pick and choose which parts you want to do and which you don't want to be part of, you know.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's so much beautiful stuff going on in this industry that we see that it is our job as builders to kind of limit, try and limit the bad stuff, right? So if you don't have to introduce custody, why would we?
To the elements that, you know, will require that, for instance, the institutions or larger players that, for instance, it's just easier for them to make a crypto purchase through a custodian, right?
Oftentimes problems would occur, you know, so you're just leaving things more open for errors, I would say.
Okay, so look, we did talk a little bit actually about the idea of user experience and really everything we're doing in terms of our payment solutions is very much about being mainstream friendly and usable, you know, is really kind of, you know, at the cutting edge of digital payments right now.
So to make that usable and understandable is a challenge. Right, so how are you bringing new users into your ecosystem? Are you big with Twitter?
With Alep Zero or how are you going in terms of spreading the word or building your community developers?
Yeah, let's maybe start with the last part. So when it comes to developers, we have different university relationships around the world.
So here in Krakow, we're working with a Yigilongian University, we're just going to also start to teach a Web3 product design course at another university here where later this year we're going to join a Singapore National University hackathon.
And this is really the probably the easiest way to involve developers through universities, through hackathons, through events, because essentially you're going out to them and trying to in an effort to explain what the value prop is.
When it comes to the broader marketing efforts, we're preparing the overall Alep Zero ecosystem go to market.
So various ecosystem teams are finalizing their pre-seed and seed raises, they're getting ready to have their products audited, they're getting ready to launch them on the Alep Zero mainnet.
And this is also when a more visibility will somewhat naturally come to the ecosystem.
Historically, yeah, I would say Twitter is our favorite social platform. We're now also looking into Farcaster. It's a nice case of how developing a friendly mobile interface with sufficient abstraction can generate a lot of users in the crypto space.
So this is really cool. And beyond that, we're we're preparing something that we internally call Alephoria. But more details on that will be will be revealed in the coming in the coming coming days and weeks.
Well, it's a it's a cool name. Hey, Anthony, how about we go to some of our users questions that they had for you?
We've got a we've got a we did a little short list here of possible questions. Maybe if you pick, I think four was the idea. So if you if you have a look at the questions we picked out, I think you've got some questions there, have you?
Yeah, like we have one from Uriman driver about whether common is going to have a ban and and payment cards. And well, the answer is yes, that's gonna that's gonna come. And it's already something that we have in the in the works.
I see we have like six more questions.
Yeah, just take three more. So so the idea of the eye band. So actually, recently, we, we could issue eye bands from in Hong Kong now as well. So that's the big news from Alfie Pei. So so do go check out Alfie Pei.org.
And you can check out and also alif zero has a you guys have a medium blog as well. As do we so yeah, do go check out some of those things. Which was the next question you'd like to choose, Anthony.
Yeah, the interoperability question is interesting. I think this is something that our community is waiting for very much. So, um, we have a few few developments on that from first one is something we call most spelled most it's a it's a well broader broader Slavic word for a bridge.
And this is going to be essentially a method of establishing a connection between Alex zero and Ethereum that we expect to go live quite, quite soon, actually.
Okay, so that's a big deal for your ecosystem and a big deal for developers. Okay, that's big news.
It is it's going to be the first really the first well the first tool that is going to make well take out of zero from being an island to being a part of the broader interconnected web three space.
We're also closely collaborating with router protocol and router is working on two short solutions.
The first one is nitro, which is a messaging bridge and the second is Voyager which is more akin to an acid bridge and beyond that we're also pursuing a bunch of different, different opportunities.
We also have a part change lot secured strictly for bridging purposes to the polka, the ecosystem as of zero is not a part chain itself.
Yeah, then we have a question of the broader education and the blockchain space and how do we approach.
How do we approach that topic.
I think we've already answered that with the universities and hackathons.
Examples of native apps and solutions that are being developed on the network. This one is, I think this can, this can be interesting. So we're just as much I would say crypto native as a platform as we're trying to work on the value propositions for enterprises.
So on the say the broader crypto space. The first apps that the first apps that have launched are is hard zero the NFT marketplace, or for instance a zero ID which is, which is a naming service for for the other zero ecosystem.
And at the moment we're going to also see, we're also going to see the first defy apps going live.
This is most likely starting with with, you know, with common kintsu which is a liquid staking platform built by built by Steven noven's turn.
Then we have a box we want to just explain who Steven is.
Yeah, sorry, Steven was a Steven was a was a one of the courting members in Pangolin, which was a pretty cool deck is still is very much a pretty cool decks in the in the avalanche ecosystem.
Then we have a box, which is a, which is a lending protocol. And it's all just, you know, all just coming together and it's just really exciting to see all the projects that have been building for for months, going, going live.
We also have some pretty cool developments on the gaming or game five side of things starting with dark first, which is an RPG game this is a larger project, led by folks who are involved in cyberpunk 2077 and the Witcher.
We have update, which is like a really fun platform for minigames.
I know they're working on it. Okay, yeah. So casual gaming, is it something for the casual gaming sector? Correct.
Yeah, that's quite a sort of big new focus at the moment, I think for a lot of web three gaming developers. So yeah, I'll be interested to see that. What was the name of that?
And they are at up Kate dot XYZ. Like, I think this direction is very, very interesting, because if the industry will be able to crack the, you know, how to kind of build and deploy minigames that have this added engagement benefit of just being having this on chain component.
And then this is going to be this is going to be really, really cool. And it might be one of the factors that gets us closer to broader adoption.
Yeah. Okay, yeah, well, that's where I mean, a lot of very exciting projects for you guys all to, to check out and you can go to aleph zero.org and find out more about the various projects.
And obviously, our Twitter accounts, I think are generally a good place to go or discord link tree alchemy pay or aleph zero, you can find out more about our projects.
All right, should we take the last question from the last user and then and then a couple more questions? How about that?
Highlighting any upcoming developments or features that users can anticipate and 20 any for for instance, yes, so
we'll be bringing zk ID to light. So effectively, you know, the challenge that we needed to solve in last year was how do we combine prior on chain privacy with various compliance requirements?
Because it's first out of zero is not really a privacy coin. It's a it's a transparent network and the coin is just there, you can use the explorer, you can see everything.
But then again, what happens if you want to keep some of the some of the transactions private what happens if you want to keep the computations shielded, right?
And the big part of of that is that you turns out you can be both private and compliant and it all requires a proper proper system to kind of limit the impact of bad actors in the ecosystem.
And this is where, you know, we've arrived at the conclusion that having a sort of a zero knowledge ID system would be a great, great addition to all of this.
And this is what we're building with the IDOS team.
And into that comes zk KYC, know your customer compliance regulations as well.
I think so. That's Yeah, that's an interesting area of development. And yeah, it turns out it's an area that, again, has seen a lot of development over the last 18 months, I would say.
I think whoever cracks the, you know, the interoperability of verified credentials, this is going to be this is going to be a killer from a user experience standpoint.
Yeah, absolutely. Yes, I do agree. It's it's a few pieces to put together.
Yeah, it is a fascinating area of development, actually, I think, I think even outside of whip three anything in the sort of online identity, cyber security, privacy, I think they're more and more necessary for everyday people or everyday people would benefit from understanding more about it, perhaps.
So, okay, so how about if we said, you know, the kind of progress has happened for our projects in our various sectors and where we we cross over.
What about sort of big catalyst for for for adoption and for crypto and blockchain in the next in the next 18 months, let's say.
Well, I mean, from from where we're standing, it's it's really always has been the same thing. So how do we keep the security on a maximum possible level while making the entire experience as easy as humanly possible, right?
So how do you not compromise on the core crypto values while at the same time providing enough enough of the abstraction? And this is this is what the entire team is all about for this year.
I think this is also what the broader industry has has been trying to solve. And this is what you guys do to this as well.
Yeah, this is also about sort of, yeah, again, about sort of ideology and ethics as well and making decisions about what you think is the best way to to construct this, this blockchain in this case, you know, so I think it's a fascinating area.
And yes, it is, you know, these are kind of questions that in the digital age and the age of cyberspace, you know, are suddenly very relevant, you know, to think about and discuss, you know.
Yes, so to continue the next sort of catalyst.
Yeah, I think the next step, we're going to see more and more, more and more institutions involved in public networks. So, you know, we've been seeing this, this move away from permissioned environments to public chains of various shapes and sizes in the recent months.
And this seems to be seems to be increasing, we are, you know, lucky enough to to work on some of that in the in the telco space.
And this, I think is going to is going to become more and more obvious as we as we go along.
I'm very much hoping that DeFi, or maybe the understanding between what DeFi versus CFI is is going to increase for newcomers to the space as well.
And this is, I think, where, you know, solutions like alchemy paper play a crucial role as well.
And yeah, I would bet on those three things. So first, continuous improvement of the user experience. Second, more large scale use cases.
Third, more sort of actionable education, maybe on the on the DeFi side. And the fourth one that we are also have been exploring for for a while is, let's just maybe generically call it web 2.5.
So plugging in what's best in web 3 into into into sort of existing existing web 2 web 2 use cases. And we've seen some of that in the retail sector trend.
Yeah, that has definitely been a trend. I've noticed myself, yeah, taking some of the good ideas and the good concepts of web 3. Yeah.
Because that effectively opens the networks up for a large user inflow while providing sort of somewhat of an obvious benefit to the other side.
So this, I think, is going to is going to continue and we're going to see a lot of interesting developments on that front.
Okay, very good. So maybe just on the flip side, what do you think is sort of holding crypto back or blockchain back at the moment, if anything, are there obstacles at the moment?
Well, yeah, obviously, I don't want to sound like a broken record with this UX experience thing, but it's still still a challenge.
I'm very happy that we have some regulations rolling out. I think this is going to help standardize a few things and also make the industry a bit more, you know, we're going to go out of the curiosity phase into an actual
even broader adoption phase. And the Mika regulations in Europe are also coming in in the summer. So that's going to be very exciting as well. Well, not exciting.
But I mean, there's a lot to prepare for and it'll have ramifications and I think ultimately it will stabilize the space somewhat.
Hopefully, hopefully, like it's a it's a major effort to have that rolled out, you know, in such a large jurisdiction, if we let's say that we just assume for the sake of the conversation that you is among it.
So, you know, it's a I would say that we're prepared for that. But I'm really huge kudos to your regulators for coming up with this and just rolling it out because ultimately, this is definitely going to happen.
Hopefully, this is definitely going to help the space and its users first and foremost.
Yeah, so we'll see. We'll see what that effect that has on sort of narratives in the direction of the space and regulation around the world as well, I think.
And also, of course, Hong Kong has been an interesting, you know, change around in Asia.
And I think Singapore has always been a base, a hub of crypto development as well. All right. Well, Anthony, it's been great to have you.
Is there anything else that you wanted to sort of explain to our listeners, your listeners, to our communities? Anything else you wanted to mention?
I think we've covered most of the most of the important topics. So, yeah, very, very happy to have been a part of this space.
Thank you, everyone, for showing up and thank you for hosting and having us.
Okay, cool. Well, it's been great to have you. And yeah, everyone who joined us today, it's been a pleasure to have you.
I hope you enjoyed hearing from Anthony Dulciak from AlephZero. Do go and check out AlephZero.org. Check them out on Twitter.
Do you want to plug your own Twitter, Anthony?
Obviously, like we're at Aleph double underscore zero. You can also go to AlephZero.org to check out more of the ecosystem apps and the value prop of the network itself.
Okay, thanks very much. All right. It's been a pleasure to have you. And thank you listeners today.
If you want to check out AlchemyPay, go to AlchemyPay on Twitter, alchemypay. And then if you want to check out my profile as well, TheRMcRackin, Robert McCracken, TheRMcRackin, you'll find me there.
It's been a pleasure having you, Anthony. I wish Aleph zero to all the best. And I'm sure we're going to continue our working together and collaborating with you developing in the coming months and years.
So thank you very much. Likewise. Looking forward to it. Okay. Goodbye. Bye-bye.