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Securing Hathor Network: A Scalable, Easy-to-Use L1 for Digital Assets
Recorded: July 22, 2025 Duration: 0:32:27Space Recording
Short Summary
Hathor Network is making waves in the crypto space with its innovative architecture and user-friendly tokenization process. Recently, they launched the first regulated security token offering in Brazil, raised over $50 million, and announced strategic partnerships, including one with Bitcoin OS, to enhance their ecosystem. With a focus on grants and community support, Hathor is poised for significant growth in the Web3 landscape.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Test 1212, can you guys hear me?
Yeah, we can hear you.
Can you hear me well?
Loud and clear.
Alright, let's give it a minute or two and we can kick off. Thank you. All right, I think you can get going.
What do you guys think?
Ian, are you with us?
Yeah, I'm here.
All right, let's get going.
Thanks, everyone, for joining today.
I'm Sofian, account executive at Halborn,
and this is the Halborn office hour.
And today we have Jan from Hathor Network.
Jan, thanks for joining.
Could you please introduce yourself?
This is a big one.
Yeah, sure. Thank you, Sofian.
Hi, everyone.
Thank you for the invitation first
halborn it's a pleasure to be here i'm ian martins i'm ceo of hetero labs which is the
main development company behind hetero network um i first got involved in crypto around the
think end of 2016 you know but initially i just you know purchased some tokens uh even though i'm a computer engineer
by formation i have to admit that at the time i didn't give much attention to the technology
which i think was a mistake so you know i just purchased some tokens i had some friends who
were making some money with the crypto market so i just purchased some tokens and then, you know, fortunately it was a good time to buy tokens at the time.
But I only got to really, you know, look at the technology and this market later on in 2018.
That's, you know, when we started Hathor.
So, yeah, I guess that's a bit of the background in this space.
Excellent. Thanks for joining us, Ian. So what's the story
behind Hathor Network and what are you guys trying to bring to the Web3 space?
Yeah, well, I mean, Hathor started with the PhD thesis of our co-founder, Marcelo, who is a friend of mine. So we had worked together before.
We graduated from the same university.
And so he spent some years in academia researching scalability in blockchain networks.
So he proposed this different architecture using a mix of a DAG, a direct-to-seq graph,
and the traditional chain of blocks of blockchain.
So you have this very innovative architecture.
So back in 2018, when he presented his thesis, he decided to make it into a company.
And that's when he called myself and a few other friends for us to get started.
So that's how HATR got created.
And our mission, our vision for blockchain in in general but also for the d5 space is making it easy for for anyone should you get to use it i mean not not just the
end users because we know for for them it should be super super easy you know we're not just talking
about enthusiasts but if you want to have mass adoption really need to be easy for regular users
but also for developers because we understand that the blockchain experience when you're creating a
product on any network is still not ideal so yeah that was our goal to make a chain that was easier
for anyone to create a product and And when you're talking about easier,
not just in the sense,
well,
it's not just about,
you know,
making it easier for people to integrate,
but it just also brings security with it,
which is,
I think one of the topics we're going to be discussing with Halborn.
Nice.
And we definitely will,
Jan.
But let's focus a little bit on the chain Hathor itself.
I'm also very much of an enthusiast, so not very familiar with Hathor,
so I'm learning with you guys.
But you mentioned scalability, ease of use.
How do you guys set yourselves apart from other layer ones on that aspect?
What's your key differentiator, I would say?
Yeah, as I said, we have a pretty different and innovative architecture.
Back then when we started, IOTA was a big thing with their Tango.
It was a pure DAG system system but they had some problems with
the coordinator which was a centralized coordinator back then you know Marcelo
studied it and he came up with different architecture which is a mix of
a deck something like a Yoda had with the tango but also a traditional chain of
blocks blocks be mined and that allows us to have scalability without compromising on
decentralization because we hear a lot of change now they say about scalability, but they need,
a lot of centralized resources, let's say, data centers or high-end machines to achieve that.
And we know if we want to have trueD centralization, that's not viable.
So on one hand, we have the scalability, but also since we started, we wanted to make it easy for anyone to integrate.
So, you know, from the start, we made tokenization native to the chain.
And you don't need a smart contract for that.
You don't have to deal with high gas fees.
And that already allows a lot of different use cases.
And this is the same approach that we're
taking with our smart contract platform, which
is called NetoContract.
It allows developers to build apps
without needing to learn specialized languages
like Solidity, contracts are written in Python, which
is very, very user friendly. So we think that's really a game changer in terms of accessibility. And just the last point
I'm going to mention in terms of, you know, what sets it apart is we are MergeMind with Bitcoin.
We are a proof of work chain. So MergeMind with Bitcoin allow us to have, you know, Bitcoin security
levels, let's say, on our chain. So, you know, scalability, ease of use, and Bitcoin security, if I had to sum up.
Superb, Jan, thank you very much.
And you've mentioned a few points.
You've mentioned DAG, you've mentioned proof of work, nano contracts in Python.
work, nano contracts in Python.
And I'll be having a few questions for you
on those key aspects of Hathor network.
But could you first, for those who don't know,
explain a little bit what DAG is and what is merge mining?
How do you guys bring proof of work consensus
into your chain security? Yeah, well, first DAG stands for direct acyclic graph.
To be honest, it's not that easy to explain just with words.
We have a great video on our YouTube that shows this architecture, but I'll try my best.
So basically, it means that each transaction, it's not laid out inside a block as in traditional blockchains,
but the transactions as they arrive, they confirm, they point to other transactions.
So each transaction has to point or confirm to previous transactions.
And by doing that sequentially, you're going to end up with a graph of transactions,
which means one you know,
one transaction arrives, points to two previous transactions. The next transaction arrives also
points to two previous transactions. So it's not going to be like this, you know, straight line
sequential as a traditional chain of blocks. But apart from that, we also have the chain of blocks,
which is, you know, one block next to the other.
So when one block arrives, it also confirms the previous block, which forms the chain of blocks of blockchain.
But it also confirms two previous transactions.
And, you know, these transactions, which are confirmed by the block, they, you know, propagate this confirmation to all of the other transactions that they point out to.
So, you know, you have all the transactions coming and confirming other ones.
And then when a block arrives, which has a higher proof of work, I'll talk about it just in a second,
it propagates this confirmation to all the transactions in the DAG.
So it's not like the transactions are inside of the blocks as in traditional blockchains,
but they are laid out in this DAG outside of the blocks.
As I said, maybe it's not that easy to visualize
just explaining like this,
but we have a great explanation video on YouTube.
I recommend that everyone watches it.
And talking about Proof of Work,
yeah, when we first started, you know, Proof of Work was,
and I think it still was, the most battle-tested technology in terms of consensus.
So we decided to go with it.
It's not that we are, I'd say, religious about it or anything like that. It's just in terms of, you know, let's make it simple.
Let's use what already works.
And Proof of Work, it's just that.
So we decided to go proof of work, and then we knew that we needed to have a way to reach a high hash rate.
Otherwise, it would be very easy to attack the network.
So we went with what's called merge mining with Bitcoin, which means that miners can, at the same time,
mine Bitcoin and HTR without changing their setup
with the same gear.
So yeah, for the miners, it's basically extra revenue
and they help by securing a Hatcher network.
Sweet. Thank you, Jan.
So that's what's happening on the infrastructure
level and then
you mentioned nano contracts
custom tokens
Python smart contract which is
kind of specific
and unique I think
could you
tell us a little bit more how does that work and why
Python which is very surprising
for also smart contracts?
Yeah, well, I mean, it's not like custom tokens initially, they've been present in the network
since day one.
And when we looked back in 2018-19, when we were creating the network network when we were running the test nets ahead of the 2020 mainnet launch.
We scanned the market and, you know, creating tokens was the main use case.
To a point, it still is.
I think nowadays it's a bit more sophisticated in terms of after you create a token,
you have all this different stuff that you can do with DeFi.
But, you know, creating a token is still the basis of it.
And so we wanted to make it very easy for anyone to create a token
without needing a smart contract.
So yeah, that's what we did.
So you can create a token directly from the wallet in under one minute
and start trading with friends.
So as I said, no smart contracts.
Tokens are native in HATRO,
which means that it's not like it's a smart contract.
It's native.
It's a different architecture, let's say.
And yeah, in terms of the nano contracts, which is our newest feature,
it's on testnet right now, ahead of the mainnet release.
So basically, they are kind of lightweight smart contracts.
It's Python because we wanted to use a language
that was easy.
I decided one of our goals is being easy to integrate.
And we feel that Python is the best language for that.
I myself, as I said, I'm a computer engineer.
First language I learned was C, which I think for introduction
to programming, maybe it's not the most friendly one.
And we know that a lot of colleges and universities around the world nowadays use Python as their
introductory course for programming.
Not only that, again, it's a great language for regular people, not just developers.
So that's why we decided to go with Python for smart contracts.
I know it's different.
Everyone is using Solidity VMs,
but we feel that's a better language for onboarding more developers,
making sure that there are not as many mistakes
as in traditional smart contracts.
Because, I mean, in the end,
a lot of developers come into Web3
with the Web2 mindset and you know in the end they make mistakes so for for
Web3 that can mean millions millions of dollars so yeah we wanted to make
something that was radically different simpler than traditional smart contracts. And does this low-code approach improve the security in a way
for the developers building on Hathor, the users?
Yeah, yeah.
I think when you make things simpler, easier,
that already, you know, removes a lot of the attack services
and risks that you have.
You know, developers cannot make as many mistakes.
And with nano contracts, it's not just about, you know,
let's use a Python, which is an easier language,
so it's going to be easier, more secure.
You know, the platform itself, we are making it, you know,
easier to use in terms of abstracting some of the complexities
that you have in regular smart contracts
that lead to a lot of the mistakes.
If you go to some of the lists, I was looking the other day, some of the lists of the most
common forms of attacks, like you have re-entrancy, you have all this very complex stuff that
most developers are not used to dealing with, and we're trying to you know hide most of those complexities so
regular developers can use the platform without having to know in depth what's going on and and
to be honest even those who know in depth what's going on sometimes also makes make mistakes
and earlier you mentioned that on your chain on your chain, the fees were very low, almost in existence.
Anything on the MEV side of things on your chain?
Are you guys protecting what's happening on chain?
What's your approach with that?
Yeah, it's a good point there.
forgot to mention it. With tokens being native on the platform, we were able to make transactions,
I forgot to mention it.
token transfers, fee-less, which means there are no gas fees. The model is a bit different on Hatcher,
so basically you pay a fee whenever you're, well, it's not a fee, it's a deposit, whenever you're
creating a token. So let's say I want to create a thousand tokens, I'll pay 1% of that as a deposit.
And if later I want to mint more tokens, I'll pay a bit more of deposits,
a proportion of 1% of those tokens.
And later, if I melt those tokens, I receive the deposit back.
The deposit is paid in HTR, which is the native token of HATR.
But after those tokens are created,
all the transactions are fee-less.
And that's only possible because we have this native tokenization.
Otherwise, with smart contract tokens,
you have a bit more complexities.
You have to cap contract execution.
So I don't think that would be impossible
if we hadn't the native tokenization.
In terms of MEV, yes, we know that's a serious issue for DeFi.
It types away millions or even billions of dollars every year.
And we know that in the end, it's the users who are going to pay up that cost.
It's not the platforms, It's the end user.
You know, the trades are going to be more expensive.
So, yeah, we did come up with a very, I think, ingenious solution for that with nano contracts at the protocol level.
So it's not something that, you know, that developers have to enable or to be mindful about.
But at the protocol level, the transactions, they cannot be manipulated in terms of the block producers.
You know, MEV usually happens when you have the block producers like miners or validators who order the transactions the way they want to be executed.
So if they see a transaction to purchase some tokens on the DAX, you know, they can purchase before and then sell for them.
So, you know, sandwich attacks from running attacks.
With Hatter, you have this pseudo ordering.
You know, I don't say pseudo, completely pseudo,
because the Foonoves, they have to agree on an ordering.
Otherwise, there wouldn't be consensus.
But it's not the block reducers who determine the order of execution.
The order of execution is only determined once the blocks are mined.
So they cannot manipulate it.
And I'd say it's ingenious because it's quite a simple idea.
And as I said, being simpler usually means that it's less exposure to bugs and problems.
But in the end, as I said,
the transaction ordering cannot be manipulated.
And that's not just for DAXs, right?
For any other product built on top of Hathor,
this MEV protection is going to be built-in native
because it's at the protocol level.
And that's due to the DAG architecture, right?
It's a mix of that. Yeah? It's a mix of that.
Yeah, it's a mix of that because the blocks,
they don't have the transactions inside of them,
so there's no ordering in there.
But yeah, it would be, I think, a mix of the DAG,
but also the way the execution happens at the nano contracts
because we use a a randomizer and
with the seed of the uh the block hash of the latest block hash at the execution time so yeah
it's i think it's a mix of you know our architecture and also some creative solutions that our
engineering team had no that's brilliant um and to be, first time I'm hearing about search setup. So kudos to your team, guys.
Yeah, yeah. And I think there are some other solutions, some other platforms that offer MEV protection, but they are all centralized. And how can you really trust the sequencer that's the order that you receive the transaction?
And to be honest, it's very hard to know which transaction arrived first.
Is it through the network, right?
A transaction that originated in, I don't know, in Asia may arrive first in the sequencer,
then the transaction that originated in the US.
But, yeah, it's hard to know.
So, yeah, I think what's noted here
is this distributed way of doing MEV.
And with all these innovations
and new approaches building a blockchain,
I imagine that security has been
at the top of your head, guys,
while you guys were building all this.
What was your approach?
Was it building first and then think about security?
Or was it, like you say at Albom, secure by design as early at the ideation phase?
You guys were putting in place a security plan.
I'm curious.
Yeah, I mean, we were creating a new network, right?
It's not like a fork of any other chain.
So yeah, it's built from the ground up.
And obviously security was a priority from day zero.
We have this mindset that we innovate where we feel that we need to innovate.
If not, we just use the old boring stuff, especially when
talking about cryptocurrencies, cryptography, you know, there are some areas that you don't
want to try to innovate because there's going to come back to haunt you. So yeah, as I said,
we use our consensus work, which is battle tested. We have merged mining with Bitcoin.
which is battle tested, we have merged mining with Bitcoin.
So our hash rate is already high enough that we don't have to be concerned about attacks.
As I mentioned before as well, simplicity plays a big role for that.
So a simple, straightforward code base definitely reduces attack surface.
attack surface.
Our internal processes in terms of automated tests,
code coverage, and quality assurance,
keyway process is very solid.
It's something that we constantly improve.
But we understand that some things might look through the cracks.
So that's when having an external set of eyes
looking through the code is also very valuable absolutely and imagine this is this is
how you guys came in touch with us at Halbo as we recently been collaborating
together on the security side of things could you tell us a little bit more how
you got in touch with us and how this security partnership has been going on until now?
Yeah, I think for us the challenge was that, you know, there are a lot of audit companies that specialize in smart contracts, you know, a lot.
But in our case, we're talking about the protocol, right?
It's not just smart contracts so our process
was i'd say very well not very but a bit long and we had to make sure that the contract that was
the company that we selected was already used to that you know there are so many fronts
that the audit company has to know about you you know, consensus, peer-to-peer, cryptography, data storage,
you know, so many places where things can be manipulated and surface of attack.
So, yeah, we wanted to have a company that already had experience with that.
And also, frankly, in the sale process, the meetings, we needed to feel comfortable to have this kind of feeling,
The sale process, the meetings, we needed to feel comfortable to have this kind of feeling, this assurance that we're talking to people who had this knowledge.
And, you know, that's what we got through TownBorn.
And, I mean, so far, I think what's interesting about the experience is that we have a constant touchpoint between the teams, right?
It's not just like we hide in TownBorn.
It's going to take, I don't know, like two months to have this this audit and at the end of two months you're gonna get like a pdf
right because that that that's not a good process so i think what's what's been interesting so far
is having this almost daily let's say exchange of information and some questions from the halborn
team through hetero how things work and and some things they are pointing out.
So I think that's the most important and interesting thing at the moment.
I appreciate the kind words, Jan.
And indeed, we're very proud of our processes that we've put in place.
But also the fact that obviously we started doing smart contract audits, but we've grown our team
and now we probably can tackle any aspect of the tech stack in the Web3 space.
And working with you guys has been great.
So thank you for choosing Albon.
Hope we can collaborate more in the future.
Let's get back chatting about what you guys are building, Ian.
You guys obviously have built a network for developers, individuals, miners, but also enterprises.
What kind of use cases each of these type of users can expect?
Yeah, I mean, initially we definitely focused more on RWA.
It's easy tokenization that definitely fosters a lot of use cases in that area.
You know, NFTs back then, back in 2021, when it was huge.
You know, also creating tokens, including NFTs, was super, super easy.
So, yeah, I'd say any use case in that area was our stronghold, I'd say, but now expanding into smart contracting platforms,
I think we're opening up for all the more Web3 crowd and have very, very interesting use cases here,
you know, DeFi with liquidity pools, with lending, and I don't know, I'm hoping we're going to also have some innovative,
very different ideas.
Sweet.
And is there any projects in your ecosystem at the moment that you like
or you think our audience should be aware of and should go check out?
Yeah.
I mean, you know, talking about RWAs and tokenization,
as I said, is our stronghold. And we already have a lot of successes in this area. We had the first
regulated security token offering here in Brazil. That's where I'm from. I forgot to mention this
in my intro. And then a big part of the team is in Brazil, so we naturally have a lot of
connections here. And so the first security token offering regulated by the Brazilian SEC
approved was launched using HATRO network. You know, it's a tri-fi use case, I think with over
$50 million in security and assets with some of the largest banks in the country.
And yeah, we're expanding now this, let's say, RWA footprint into more the DeFi space.
I'll mention, as I always mentioned, the Dozer Protocol, which is the first DAX that we're
going to have in the network.
They are doing some amazing work.
Also, we're going to develop a lot of different tools
that are going to help builders and people who want to create
and launch their own token with a lot of different tools,
let's say like vesting, like staking,
and making it super easy and intuitive for them to launch it.
We also have some other projects in the pipeline,
especially through the grants program,
you know, the name system, a hater name system.
So it's very easy for you to send tokens, MIMP coin launch pads as well.
Yeah, so all the usual tooling that you have on DeFi space.
A growing ecosystem, right?
And I saw also an announcement about the Bitcoin OS partnership.
Can you tell us a bit more about the different achievements since the beginning of this year?
Yeah, Bitcoin OS was announced last week or the week before.
I'm not sure to be honest.
But yeah, for us now that we're expanding more into Web3,
it's important to foster these partnerships,
to grow our ecosystem and to talk to all the different also players in crypto, right?
Because we understand that, yeah, it's not going to be just one chain that wins. We're
going to be, I think, a lot of different chains and being able to talk and collaborate with
all the other chains is going to be an important part of it.
Trying to reduce the fragmentation, which, you know, it's a problem.
So yeah, Bitcoin OS partnership, not just that, UTXO Alliance, which is,
you know, partnerships, partnership among projects that have the UTXO
architecture, which Hector has, Cardano has, and a couple
different other chains, like Bitcoin. RWA.io that showcases our real world assets,
organizations, and yeah, I think a few more to come. Also, in terms of some other major
milestones, we finally got, you know, non-contracts code freeze, which is very huge because it allows us to move forward with the launch.
And, you know, the code audit was the next step.
And, yeah, the grants program, as I mentioned, we also made a hackathon earlier this year, which it's already bringing some new dApps
and builders to the ecosystem.
Excellent, Ian.
Any small alpha for our listeners before we're closing this Twitter space?
Yeah, it's hard to say that, but yeah, we're definitely looking into expanding our partnerships and also working on cross-chain capabilities
and expanding the reach and accessibility
for Hathor-related token.
Excellent.
Jan, it was great having you today.
I really invite our listeners to go check out
Hathor Network, their ecosystem,
its specificities.
Jan, anything you would like to add before we're closing this one?
Yeah, again, thank you very much for the invite.
Looking forward to collaborating again on these X spaces.
And Hathor's here to make it easier to simplify the WebTree experience.
So anyone looking for fast, scalable, easy to use layer
one, connect.
Go to Hathor.network, also on LNX, on Telegram.
We are more than happy to help.
And yeah, thank you again, Halvon, for inviting us.
Thank you, Jan.
Thank you, everyone, for joining.
And we'll catch you next time at the next Office Hour.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
