Catch up on our presentation from the 2024 Blockchain Futurist Conference as Kartik Bajaj discusses WonderFi Labs' plans.
Transcript
[0:02] [Intro Music]
[0:08] Presenter: So for our next presenter we have Kartik Bajaj from WonderFi, he will be speaking about the expansion of WonderFi labs and hiring opportunities. Please welcome to the stage, Kartik.
[0:18] Kartik Bajaj: So uh myself Kartik I'm the VP of engineering at WonderFi and today I'll be talking about the expansion of WonderFi into WonderFi labs and how we're going to be able to contribute back to the web3 ecosystem.
[0:37] Quickly taking a look at the WonderFi...
[0:40] Uh, how does this work yeah.
[0:42] So at present if we look at the WonderFi ecosystem we are heavily focused on centralized trading platforms. We do have crypto payment solutions as well, uh, as of now we are just shy of reaching 2 million active users with a $1.5 billion assets over custody.
[1:00] But if you think about as of now, like as a centralized ecosystem, you can do like... it’s impossible to build everything with the web3 space. Our users want to be able to interact with all the innovations that are happening in the DeFi space, in the web3 space. As a centralized ecosystem it's not possible to start building everything you want to be able to.
[1:30] Leverage what's there in in the world, what all of you guys are building and be able to spend limited time doing the integrations and have that available. So, we are missing quite a lot of features of now, uh, like DeFi innovations, on-chain integrations. We want to be able to allow non-custodial transactions as well with centralized exchanges that's not really possible at the moment.
[1:53] So, what we have done is we have made some space within the company to have some innovations and for that we're starting WonderFi Labs which is primarily focused on expanding ecosystem for our users to allow them to interact with the web3 space in a pretty quick and easy manner
[2:14] So, going forward I'm going to talk about what that journey is going to look like.
[2:19] Before I do that I just want to paint the picture of, like, why we, like uh, the decisions that we're going to take and how we are reaching those decisions, so I'll leave this slide up for the next 5 minutes.
[2:32] If you look at the slide you see TestNet, MainNet, quite a lot of marketing material, but hey, what's so special about launching another Layer 2 as part of Labs, right?
[2:44] So bear with me for 5 minutes I'm going to paint the picture, the point of view, that we're coming from that will actually be the most valuable 5 minutes from this presentation.
[2:55] Imagine to a scenario, uh, like if you took, uh sorry, if we talk about crypto adoption in the last decade I think we have come leaps ahead, but if I look at the audience in this group all of you guys have interacted with crypto at one time, but imagine looking outside the room. If you look at all the buildings in downtown Toronto how many people use crypto?
[3:20] The answer would be pretty fairly limited so we're really not at a place where you actually have mass adoption at the moment. In order to get mass adoption you really need to be at a place where people are utilizing crypto, but without knowing that they are interacting with crypto.
[3:38] So, like if you go back, talk to your family members, how many understand crypto? Not a lot, right?
[3:46] So, over the last decade a lot of improvements have come along simplifying interactions with DeFi space, and you want to be able to utilize all of these. Not because “hey we want to take over traditional finance” just because crypto, but because crypto solves problems in an innovative manner that allows you to scale much better.
[4:09] So, if I want to focus on mass adoption there are three main criteria that want to focus on – security, transaction speed, and the network fee.
[4:20] Quickly talking about security in the last decade if you have been following the space, uh, a lot of wallets have come along that educate users on how to manage your seed phrases, to centralized custodial platforms, to MPC Solutions where, as a user, you are made part of all the best practices without actually understanding that, so the security problem has been solved significantly.
[4:44] If we talk about transaction speed that's where Layer 2s have come in. Over the last decade we have evolved from using native Layer 1 solutions, Ethereum, Bitcoin, to lightning networks through radiant networks ,to Layer 2s that have become quite prominent but Layer 2s do bring in a unique problem of its own.
[5:09] Imagine if you're traveling to Europe, uh, you go for a breakfast, your bill comes out to 15 Euros but the waiter says that hey you got to pay me 15 Euros and you also got to pay me one Indian Rupee to settle the transaction. Suddenly you realize hey you don't have that additional Indian Rupee and you can't really pay for it.
[5:31] Similarly in the crypto space if I send you USDC on say any of the Layer 2 solutions you really can't use it unless you really have network gas to pay for that transaction. You realize that even though Layer 2s do solve the problem of transaction speed and the network fee as well they do introduce new problems, with one of them being how do you interact with that Layer 2?
[6:00] You need to understand where to get the gas. You need to understand how to work with bridges. Imagine in a real world it's not really going to scale when you are at a solution where hey if I send you like USDT on any of the Layer 2 solutions, that's fast that's cheap but you really can't use it because you don't know how to pay for that right?
[6:22] So, as part of that we are introducing WonderFi Layer 2 where, uh, a lot of that is in R&D right now so you'll see that coming in the, uh, you'll see the articles coming out in the coming months regarding the innovation that we are doing. We really want to be at a place where you have a Layer 2, where as a user you don't really need to worry about say paying for the gas. That's just one example that I'm going to be talking about .
[6:48] So, if I send you say, uh, let's take USDT as an example on WonderFi Layer 2, or any Layer 2, as a user you should be able to spend that you shouldn't have to worry about, hey there's yet another token that I need to figure out to be able to even utilize my transactions, uh, the funds that I have received.
[7:08] So, does that mean can we have a gasless network? Uh, in theory yeah, nobody's stopping you from having a gasless network, but now how do you incentivize the infrastructure partners to run those nodes to be able to pay for all the infrastructure cost that it's going to cost them to facilitate the transactions.
[7:28] So that's where a lot of Game Theory practices come in as well. How do you incentivize infrastructure participants to support the infrastructure? And how do you incentivize users to not spam the network, utilize the network in a reasonable manner?
[7:46] So, as part of that we'll soon be launching the TestNet where you are able to interact with the TestNet in a quite efficient manner. Build, uh, protocols and tools that you can focus on the innovation that you're doing already and not have to worry about educating the end user, hey in order to use this chain you got to go to this bridge, convert your existing ETH into this gas token that now you can only use here.
[8:15] So, rather focus on building ecosystems that allows your users to interact with the value that you are providing and your user shouldn't have to worry about, um, yet another cryptocurrency or any gas that they have to first figure out where to get, which bridge to go for. They need yet another cryptocurrency to do the conversion or they need to go to the exchange to get that.
[8:40] So, taking all of that out is where we do want to introduce the WonderFi Layer 2 and, along with the WonderFi Layer 2, we'll also be introducing the WonderFi wallet, uh, with WonderFi wallet I think my take is as, as an, as a web3 organization you do want to in know it, uh, in terms of giving your users an experience of how they interact with the web3 space. It's less about innovation, more about, uh, in the web3 space there are quite a lot of unique protocols that all of you guys have been building.
[9:17] How do you simplify and present them to an average user? So, as part of wallet we'll be working on coming up with user interfaces that will make life easier for an average joe to be able to interact with the web3 innovation that you guys are doing and with that moving on to the next slide.
[9:36] Overall our journey as of now we are in pretty early stages of the Labs where we are focused on the foundational pieces where we're working on a wallet, we're working on a TestNet. As we have our wallet and TestNet live we're going to be engaging with the community feedback quite a lot. So, really looking forward to be interacting with all of you guys in this room. To be able to give us feedback on how our Layer 2 evolves, how our wallet evolves, what kind of innovative products we build.
[10:05] We'll also work on engaging with some community grants, as well giving more and more options to, like getting, gathering more and more feedback from the users and giving them more and more options to evolve the space. And then eventually all of the that community feedback will lead to further Innovation and then the cycle will continue in this case.
[10:26] So, as part of foundational wallet, as I talked about, in the wallet we'll be offering an insured MPC wallet as well. The idea being if you can open a bank account, bank account comes with some kind of insurance that allows you to have a peace of mind, uh, currently that's really not, uh, possible in the crypto space. With MPC wallets you're in a semi non-custodial territory where you can actually guide your user with the right practices instead of being a fully noncustodial where user is fully charge of their security practices as well and you can't really, like you can guide the user, but you don't really control the user that much.
[11:06] With MPC wallets you are in a place where you can enforce some strict guidelines around and you can allow your user to still interact freely with different protocols so, and you're able to offer insurance on top of that. Um, everything else that you see here is pretty standard wallet features that we'll be building.
[11:25] Moving on to Layer 2, uh, as so one of the key things that we're solving is that we want to be able to offer a gasless protocol but with the right kind of game theory mechanics and incentivization, uh, built in that allows users to not worry about the nitty gritties of how blockchain works but also incentivize people enough to participate in the network as infrastructure providers as well as motivate an average user to be able to utilize the, uh, utilize the Layer 2 but de-incentivize someone who's trying to spam the network in this case.
[12:03] Moving on to the next slide. As part of the community organization we're going to be working with onboarding different key players in the web3 ecosystem. We'll try to do our best to integrate with other chains as well so that the transitions are smoother. We're going to be working on setting up some community grants as well so that we can have each one of you who's maybe not directly part of the WonderFi ecosystem but they're still able to contribute towards the WonderFi ecosystem by building unique applications and I think that's where the true innovation comes in is when you're not really limiting everything, all decisions, to a single organization, so we want to be able to work with you all as much as possible in different ways.
[12:46] Let it be hackathons, let it be grants ,let it be you working at WonderFi as well which is where I'll be talking about the job opportunities that we have right now as well.
[12:55] So, moving on to innovation piece. As part of innovation we are also working with different universities where we are hiring recent graduates, people who are actively doing R&D in the phase already. Along with white papers we're also going to be looking at publishing a few peer-reviewed papers as well
[13:12] White papers do play an important role in the ecosystem because as a user you can come up with your thoughts, print the marketing material, share it out, get feedback from the community. Whereas if you have been in the space for last 10 decades you have seen thousands of white papers but a very few percentage of those have actually materialized into useful products.
[13:39] That's where I really want to push forward for peer-reviewed research publications instead, where before something is shared out with the larger community we have gathered feedback from experts in the space on what what's feasible what's not. Instead of sharing just an idea with the community we want to be able to share a vetted thought with a proper plan to how we are going to be able to implement that.
[14:06] Lastly, uh, I think innovations EIP like we be, uh do, we'll do our best to integrate with the Ethereum community as well. I think EIPs is a great way to improve the ecosystem so we're going to be participating in those as well and
[14:23] As far as the current opportunities go, uh, at WonderFi we are actively hiring for blockchain developers, community managers, technical writers and designers. All of these will contribute towards how we evolve the web3 ecosystem at WonderFi.
[14:40] So, if you are interested definitely share your resumes, uh, and then we'll definitely be in touch to figure out the right opportunity for you, so send your resumes to [email protected] and, yeah, that's all, thank you!
[15:00] [Applause]
[15:02] [Outro Music]