Evan Shapiro on making cryptocurrency accessible with Coda

0:00i'm ashlyn addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and FinTech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have evan shapiro CEO and co-founder of the oh one labs and the coda blockchain Evan thank you so much for being on the show it's a pleasure to have you here today these are having me you're very welcome let's start by understanding a little

0:19bit more about the code of blockchain project can you first of all explain the solutions that coda provides and what makes it different in the industry yeah sure um so the the challenge is that I mean the core property these protocols have is decentralization and this property is sort of like under threat and not exactly where we wanted to be for a lot of crypto projects in

0:42particular like you the only way to really have full permission less access to a chain is if you download the whole history as the only way you can fully verify it but this is out of the reach of most people and has been increasingly becoming out of the reach like basically anyone unless you'd like a big company to like run and download a whole blockchain there hundreds gigabytes

1:00ordering on terabytes for a lot of them and that's just kind of like unreasonable for like especially like you want to use these things permissionless lee on your phone or on your browser and like nevermind access like participation is just not going to happen we've built a cryptocurrency with a very very small blockchain that's only the size of like a few kilobytes using zero

1:21knowledge groups and this lets you download that zero knowledge proof instead of downloading the hundreds gigabytes of the entire chain and it gives you full verifiability okoda are watching as well as like permissionless access because you can just check a little proof and you're good to go mm-hmm that's really interesting Evan I know the Bitcoin blockchain is like a

1:42terabyte or more and if you want to actually be a network participant and to be able to validate transactions then you have to have the whole blockchain you're right and it's totally unfeasible to have it on a computer however in that blockchain is you know a record of all the transactions from from the beginning of time so it's interesting what you've done

2:01with coda with zero knowledge proof essentially you've taken a snapshot of transactions and you know and you're basing the new transactions off of that snapshot rather than the trends actions themselves so you don't really need to download them on your computer or on your device is that right yeah I mean if you think about it like the system today like you don't need like

2:22your transaction history like three years ago to use your credit card you need to know your current balances you need to trust like your balance you like the merchants balance you trust all the ones balances you need to be able to check the transaction actually goes through but you don't need to know like three years ago what was happening that can be like an otter day or someone yeah

2:38definitely so that's been a huge downfall for people that are looking to run full nodes and there is this level of decentralization where there's enough for in aetherium for example there's 30,000 different nodes that are verifying transactions but there's hundreds of thousands of different participants now does everybody that is a participant in the network need to run

3:01a node or should they is that what coda believes I mean we think so I mean it really depends right like there's two ways I think of using crypto currency repose may be with us currency right now but like the two that we care about is like everyone should be able to participate fully there shouldn't just be like you know consortium or cartel of people who run the chain so anyways you

3:19want to do it you should actually have to do it everyone and then also it should be the case that you feel access and permission lessly so right now if you use aetherium you have to like basically asking for permission if you're a developer and you have to go through and PRI if you're like a consumer or through coinbase or whatever and it's not really using this

3:35technology the way it's like can probably be possible though the real potential is everyone accesses a permission Leslie no matter where they are no matter who they are but it's not really the case right now with the way these systems are set up yeah that's really interesting and a lot of people are familiar with aetherium because it's so large and has a large

3:53community and right now the consensus algorithm for aetherium is proof-of-work and they're moving to proof of stake is there a similar consensus algorithm for people to verify transactions on coda or is it different because you don't have that size there yeah so it's actually um you do need to like when you're designing the consensus algorithm take into account that you have to apply it

4:16to a gene that's going to be back by zero knowledge group but with your knowledge proofs you can express any computation so you can kind of convert any consensus algorithm to beings your knowledge group compatible enough work we use precooked stake in in Kota in particular a variant called Ouroboros which lets like any number of people basically participate in the

4:37consensus though we're actually doing a thing called the Genesis program right now where we're looking to bring on at least a thousand people onto the before may net so they can like get a grant tokens and be part of like the initial like stinking cohort that's great and that leads into my next question on you know developer activity to have mainstream adoption of a blockchain you

5:00really need to have developers that are developing applications that people are going to use are there incentives for developers to move from developing on etherium or yose to developing on coda no I mean like not at the moment there's like nothing we've announced and like really honestly like the way I kind of think about it right now is developing

5:21on a cryptocurrency right now is very hard there's a lot of things and technologies you have to learn about and chain together if you want to really build something I think that's why the incentives need to be there right now is just really hard I think they're like with what we're doing on it should be way easier to build something at least we're hoping and with that we're hoping

5:43like it's just like a still lower barrier to a period of effort that you can start building something maybe something that you can even have revenue off of or like you know something that can be successful I would less effort than if you had to UM you know figure out the whole in fear of meta masks what 3sec definitely and with aetherium it was made in a way that developers needed

6:04to learn solidity which was a whole new programming language just to you know build on aetherium whereas neo has all these system development kits that you know you can build a library of programming languages that many developers that aren't familiar with blockchain already know is it easy for developers that aren't in blockchain to come to coda or do they need to have

6:25technical knowledge about block chains to be able to develop notes the intent yeah our current API he's something called graph QL which is like accessible basically anywhere and like as we like start on implementing and adding support for like full like you know for programmability that'll hopefully or will be in like JavaScript another Python and things

6:46like that as the library you can like call into versus like another programming language your color and right now coda is in its test net stage if I'm correct what's the timeline bin since you have when did you first start working on the project and when did you guys launch the test net oh man so it's it's it was a while so I think like you like June 2017 we started working on it

7:11and I start working I mean like we like sat down the code I like it and in our living room started building it wasn't until I guess like july 2019 that we like launched the public version of like the testament so i was like two years of development and like yeah to get to where we are now and then is it's been like you know six or seven months since

7:33then where we've gotten to like a pretty stable place and we're setting features announcer that's great and what does the development roadmap look like moving forward is there an estimated time for the main net and are there a bunch of things that you need to develop before you get to that point yeah so like the test it's like basically in in phases um

7:51so we're in like phase three of which should be five total phases right now so this phase currently is about like making the experience extremely good for like node operators like those Genesis people we mentioned lumbering people and for that we want to just like make an incredibly good experience for your you know and add features to support that what's coming up next is like our phase

8:13four and phase four is going to um basically be a test of the economics of the system as well as like adding in some more development SDK kind of features and then we have phase five and then phase five is going to be like a full like adversarial like test map where we're really gonna like test to make sure it's super secure before we launch it that's great

8:33and you already have a community of developers are they are they already starting to work on applications on coda or it's all just you know on the foundational layer right now or we really like it we right now we're basically everyone's working on like kind of node operator level stuff we think like building a strong community around there and participation is like

8:54the place to go and we'll build from there so like not like end-user apps but like little tools for like known operators mm-hmm that's great and and what kind of partnerships have you guys closed or are you looking to close to bring the Kota blockchain into the mainstream world for enterprises or for customers or how do you foresee that playing out nothing we've announced yet

9:16I think like um there probably will be things on but at the moment is just kind of like we want to bring in like hobbyists and like grassroot community people because we think that's like where this technology can get started yeah that's great and do you have any idea when the mean that's launched whether there will be specific use cases or industries that this would be best

9:38applied to or are you letting developers just free roam and develop whatever they wish using the protocol I mean like I I think there's a lot of possibilities so we want people to build whatever the heck they want like that's exciting um but like I think the two directions that I'm most excited about which are kind of um complimentary one is like using zero

9:59knowledge groups for verifiability and the other one is like value transfer related things where you just have like a ton of tokens permissionless ly accessible just like you can just like deploy with a snippet of JavaScript on to like the web i I think that like both zero knowledge proof is gonna be important or like finance in the future as well as like permissionless tokens

10:21are gonna be really important for mine into the future and i think like yeah that's like the direction my my mind is going for what I'm probably building with the stuff I think it's worth the technology is most exciting at least today mm-hmm very cool Evan and as the main net launches what will the coin or token infrastructure look like is there gonna

10:41be a coda coin which will also have tokens that will be able to be built on the coda blockchain similar to how aetherium runs yeah basically I mean you can think of it sort of as like anything tokens like a parallel architecture to like aetherium and they're tokens there's a coda token that is used for staking used for making snarks on the network zero knowledge proof sneaking

11:03the blockchain small need someone to make snarks um and you can imagine there being other goons on top as well yeah and with the blockchain ecosystem right now there's been a bit of interest from other blockchains to introduce interoperability with theory Amarillo s do you foresee being able to connect to a theorem at all or more so looking for a standalone project and that would

11:30require creating your own wallets I believe as well could you touch on that yeah I mean I think that things are so early it's okay just like I think in general things should be interoperable but I think like we launched like it's gonna just be like a whole new cool thing and it's okay to be standalone for a bit yeah but I think I'm a lot like the medium term even like I want to have

11:51interoperability and we have some cool ways of doing that I think through zero knowledge proof because you can really prove things about what's happening on the other chain through the zero knowledge groups like in a very succinct efficient way but I think that won't it'll probably happen farther out maybe something from the community will probably end up helping them it's uh

12:09yeah bigger brother great and what challenges do you foresee as you continue to grow to the main net and Beyond which lay in the lay ahead for Kota I mean I think like I guess like our vision for the project is fairly big so it's there's a lot we want to get done and there's just like you know we really want to like see this network launched with like a lot of participants

12:34not just like he doesn't people of a like hundred really thousands of people spinning the network I think that like that'll be an interesting exercise and like what will the community look like but like you know that was the people in it that are all running like notes of stuff like I'm really exciting and then also like um III think they were still

12:52in the very early days of like developing the cryptocurrency I think like there's been a lot of like great things happening so far but like we want to like kind of push that head and get it out to like a lot more people that are building a lot more things all over the Internet I think that's also kind of um you know new territory so it's exciting but it's also uh you know new

13:10challenges definitely and that is exciting so what is your current development team and your whole team how large is your team and are you expanding developers as you move towards the maintenance yeah we are so we're like um in house like a toe of one labs like 25 and then in the community like you know more people than that like maybe you know order like 100 or a

13:33couple hundred people um in house I guess like I said Jonah people like most of them like 19 or so our developers um we mostly do oh camel for the actual protocol um and yeah we're hiring if people know a camel a bunch of programming they like like a yes that's great and that was my next question are you looking for mainly developers right now or more strategic partners or

13:58investors or anything else developers people that wander in the community like we're extremely open about like you know if you want to like you know apply dough to work that's like I don't want labs it's awesome if you want just like join the community all of our developments like completely out and you open like you know everyone just like it was like

14:16it's a discord you can just check it out on my website a link to it and like just like everything happens just like on our public discord server so like however you want to get involved it's it's it's they're great and that was leading me to my next question is how what is the best way for them to reach out I'm guessing your discord or is there any other

14:33locations as well um the discord on I think the genesis program is like a really good opportunity for people that like like urged in running nodes um it's like I think it's like equivalent to like 180 720 atti GPUs stake for a theorems hash power or the Genesis program um I think that makes sense so so I think it's like a good opportunity and I think we would really like to see

15:00more people we got a ton of interest but like even more people that want to run knows and stuff that's like I like wanted everyone participate so it's also on our website great well I'll leave the link to your discord as well as the website in the description box below and that's all the time that we have today Evan but I really appreciate you coming

15:17on and sharing the information about coda and looks like your team is well on its way towards the maintenance so best of luck in pursuing that and let's follow up in the near future great okay thank you very much you