Toposware developing zero-knowledge ecosystem for privacy

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from blockwest capital for investment pitch media and today on the crypto coin show we have Theo Gautier founder and CEO of topos Ware Theo welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time thank you Ashton nice to meet you and excited to be here likewise excited to dive into the world of zero knowledge and the ZK ecosystem that you and the team at topas where are

0:23building out I feel like this is something that I've been following for quite a while and it hasn't really kicked off yet and maybe it hasn't been necessary but I feel like it's an integral part of the blockchain ecosystem it's providing privacy and security to an infrastructure that desperately needs it on its way to mainstream adoption so I decided to dive

0:41into what you and your team have been working on let's just start from the high level if we can on you know how would you explain what Topo square is and then we'll dive into all the details yeah absolutely um so the post is um the first ZK ecosystem like we call it it's a it's a platform uh built for interoperability and privacy where Builders developers

1:06can deploy their own blockchains that we call subnets and by doing so they enjoy reduce risks associated with security High fees compute limitations they are empowered by having better control over the environments the execution environment while being able to natively and securely interoperate and compose value across the whole topos ecosystem to improve productivity for themselves

1:33for for the users as well as to improve value and revenue capture and the protocol as you mentioned really revolves around one main ingredients which is geological yes okay great intro and can you talk about you know is this a necessity moving forward you know I think a lot of people have understood that there's some uh privacy

2:00invasion in in Bitcoin and ethereum where if you send a transaction people can just look at your address and they can look at your entire bank balance in there and of course there's other little privacy things as well um what are sort of the main problems that are being solved by adding topa square into these blockchains so right now in the current ecosystem

2:22when it comes to interoperability what you have to do if you want to send assets for example or even call a discount smart contract what you have to do is to rely on Bridges and the problem with Bridges is that they have inherential abilities because in the best case if you take for example a trustless Bridges um those bridges in the end all they always rely on the security of the

2:49underlying blockchains so if you're for example a very strong chain like ethereum that wants to interoperate with a much much quicker chain like a much newer chain for example then the security of your Bridge reduces to the security of the weakest chain which is not great so the idea is how can we leverage zero knowledge proofs ensure that validity of transactions about sense across the

3:15network is assured cryptographically instead of saying oh I want to put my trust assumptions on the validators of the two chains or by extension on the crypto economics or the crypto economic incentivizations of those validators so can we replace that by cryptography course and that's what we do at the course where to provide greater guarantees when it comes to

3:38interoperability because we believe in three main hypothesis and the first one being that the future will completely be multi-cham so there won't be a single single winning blockchain but rather we will have a proliferation of application specific blockchains and more and more we see that actually today and we think that it will increase in the future with

4:05even Enterprise once Enterprise will make a big jump into Productions then most likely will want to have their own execution environment and not really just be plugged onto ethereum for example and so given that the future will be made by Channel we don't want value to be a siled within each of those blockchains but rather we want uh you know value to be able to to be composed

4:33because the nice thing with value is that when you compose value the the new value that is created is greater than the sum of the two inch initial values so you get something that is super linear that is very great for Value creation we want to enable that and so we think that the the future is multitasking and natively interoperability we don't want those

4:56value to be siled within each blockchain so that's the first point we believe in the second point is that when you reach that point of having an ecosystem with multiple chains in it you don't want that if there is a failure on the chain in this ecosystem you don't want that failure to be contagious you want it to be localized and you really don't want that this create systemic

5:21contagion in the ecosystem because if for example you have to deal with the financial instruments like asset transfer for example that's a big problem if you have a problem on the source chain and um that yes that's great very big problems so we want that when you have this ecosystem that the system is secure even in the case where you have failure of a

5:47single chain in the ecosystem and the third hypothesis we believe in is proofs are really the engine technology for a privacy scalability and interoperability yeah I've I've heard a lot about zero knowledge proofs and I've only myself has started testing it out moving you know once you have all these different layer twos and especially moving to

6:14different blockchains being able to Shield those transactions to ensure privacy especially if you're a large business or Corporation that's you know competing in a sense with with other corporations in the same industry you know you don't want to have your books open to to all of the competitors I feel like there's many use cases but that feels like just one of them

6:33um how long has your team been working on this now and where are you guys sort of at with it so we've been founded in 2019 initially so we've been doing heavy research and development since we actually published I think six or seven academic papers so far in collaboration with multiple research institutes so we've been pretty deep into doing research in the in the

7:03field both zkapis and distributed systems because we also bring Force some kind of new primitive of distributed systems that is Maybe not so used in the blockchain we hear consensus a lot and we actually use an alternative solution and um so yeah so we've been pretty deep since the beginning doing research in that KP and Institute systems as well

7:31very interesting and when this technology is released are you anticipating it being used by you know institutional investors or or corporations or you know retail Traders or just all of the above or is there a specific focus on you know who will best benefit from this yeah absolutely so I was always mentioning topos has really been built for interoperability while preserving

7:57privacy and for example for enterprise we know that the main buyers that really prevent Enterprise from actually making the jump uh the technology are really the lack of privacy and interoperability which we both tackle so we can have Enterprise that now deploys their own subnets their own execution environment their own execution layer and still being able to natively interoperate with

8:25the broader ecosystem public channels and commissioned networks uh while preserving that privacy so they do not have to reveal any data with respect to the network with stopwatch and with things that can be a game changer for Enterprise because a lot of value is being created to them with web3 but um if we look at things pragmatically most of the value today

8:49resides still with Enterprise because Enterprise has tremendous value that it creates and if you really want Global adoption of factory we need to onboard Enterprise and we need to solve some of you know Enterprise biggest problems with the technology and I think we are well positioned to uh to initiate that that switch for Enterprise incredible and is the team you know has

9:17the team spoken to a lot of different Enterprise uh companies to you know pinpoint where those problems are or are you already looking at you know getting them onboarded or getting them as a part of the ecosystem yeah absolutely we actually already executed the POC uh last year with a publicly traded accounting firm uh we will execute three more uh this year and

9:42we've been actively talking with the game industry the music industry even even Financial Services the pharmaceutical industry as well because they're all interested in the technology but they always there is always those those big walls which are very busy and and in job habits and we stop us we also act as a direct replacement of Consortium so now Enterprise don't need

10:09to all gather together onto a shared Ledger but rather they can all deploy their own layers their own networks and still interoperate with each other as they would with Consortium but with greater guarantees and without sharing anything so not everyone has to share the same computation and and data as they should as they would with the Wisconsin amazing that's great to hear I'm looking

10:32forward to uh to the next stages and you know I was looking through uh the platform and I saw that you're also expanding the team and The Advisory Board and you know sort of aligning those interests of the Enterprises as well can you talk about just expanding into getting more Executives professionals uh on board with topos yeah absolutely so we've been working

10:53hard on getting an Advisory Board uh composed of uh industry leaders and academic leaders to make sure that we could when time comes have access to the right verticals so we currently have executive and leaders from large companies such as IBM or Electronic Arts or even meta Facebook that have joined the Advisory board so it's it's great here we have great access to to all

11:23those verticals and um yeah wow that sounds like a great list and now I know your team's been working on this for quite a while now what are the main focuses in this first half of 2023 and what needs to be done to get to the next stage yeah absolutely so right now we are currently onboarding um third party Partners uh web3 podcast foundational Partners uh because we

11:51can't do it alone we need Partners to be able to help us in building the community um so onboarding Partners we also right now are creating a the community because so far we've been very very focused on building the product and we actually somehow quite happy with what happened in 2022 in in in in in in some sense because we were not uh riding the hike in a sense

12:15we really a team of scientists so none of us really was typing anything or he's here for the hype but surely for the technology and the product that that we can deliver and that's good because we were always focused on building and so yes who is now the we have to start marketing to be able to build the community and that's what we focus on right now in the next six months because

12:42in at the end of Q2 or beginning of Q3 uh this year we will be launching our investments incentivex testnet so we are building up the premise of of the space of the journey very cool and I I know that there's um you know with the renewed interest since the beginning of 2023 here there's been a lot more marketing efforts from a lot of projects which I think is great

13:06and there's a lot of conferences that are happening as well um How Deeply are you guys getting involved in the crypto communities you know in person and are you attending the conferences and do you think that's worth it yeah absolutely so here we're based in Boston uh and so right in the middle of MIT and Harvard so it's great to be part of the tech

13:27world and also part of the BBA the Boston blockchain Association where we hold regular events and meetings meetups and later I think next week or next next week we will be also at East Denver uh in the big events and also later this year at the consensus so if anyone wants to to come and talk to us anyone is free to yeah to uh and with this you know what from just

13:59looking over uh the crypto communities in the last uh months here since the beginning of 2023 I've noticed that you know although zero knowledge has been around for quite a while it seems like people are starting to pay attention and that it's more needed and I'm curious if in part part of that is you know the right uh regulation and you know oversight or if there's other reasons

14:24why now is a great time for the zero knowledge technology to be introduced into web 3 for people to actually use it what do you think about the timing of you know this narrative and why is it necessary right now yes so as I was mentioning we really believe that Jonas will be a game changer in terms of Technology as much as blockchain was a game changer so we

14:51really put them as equivalent of equivalent impact uh in a sense and the problem currently with zkapi a little bit uh similar to the initial problems of blockchain is somehow efficiency and cost it's quite costly to compute those proofs so it's not there yet but a lot of tremendous effort is being put into things like Hardware acceleration or even research to create more efficient

15:18protocols so as those protocols become more efficient they will gain adoption and we also see for example the ability because last week the EU the European Union announcing uh that they have launched some kind of commission to study zero knowledge groups for compliance privacy as they head towards their own cbdc so clear really I think there was a great great future for Azure

15:43knowledge proofs that's coming wow great insights and moving forward towards Q2 towards this incentivized testnet is there any way for people to get involved or to follow along with these updates and what's the best way to learn more about topos yes so we have of course a website that is available with the documentation we also have Twitter so feel free to follow

16:12us we also have of course a LinkedIn we are setting up the Discord right now and um and yes so anyone will be able to participate in the test net and this is an institution so we will be testing specific features of the the protocol so yeah anyone is uh we to join on very exciting well thank you so much

16:39Theo for all the insights into to zero knowledge and what Topo swear is working on I will leave the the platform and the Social Links you mentioned in the description box below for the viewers as well appreciate all the insights into this and I'm looking forward to that incentivized testnet and hopefully we can catch up before then as well so let's definitely follow up in the near

16:58future closer to then absolutely thank you for having me Ashton thank you