Discovery Episode 54: Particle Network

Space Summary

The Twitter Space Discovery Episode 54: Particle Network hosted by HouseofChimera. In 'Discovery Episode 54: Particle Network,' the Alpha Group delves into blockchain research and advisory services, focusing on supporting start-ups in navigating the rapidly evolving blockchain landscape. The episode provides valuable insights into the crucial role of advisory groups, non-financial advice, and the impact of research on blockchain innovation. Through in-depth discussions and real-world applications, the Alpha Group promotes transparency, support, and the advancement of blockchain start-ups.

For more spaces, visit the Alpha Group page.

Questions

Q: What services does Particle Network offer to blockchain start-ups?
A: Particle Network provides blockchain research and advisory services to support start-up initiatives.

Q: How does non-financial advice play a role in blockchain discussions?
A: Non-financial advice ensures transparency and unbiased insights in blockchain conversations.

Q: What is the focus of 'Discovery Episode 54: Particle Network'?
A: The episode highlights the Particle Network's role in fostering blockchain innovation for start-ups.

Q: Why is research essential in the blockchain industry?
A: Research drives advancements, innovation, and informed decision-making within the blockchain space.

Q: How do advisory groups contribute to blockchain start-up success?
A: Advisory groups offer guidance, support, and industry knowledge to help start-ups thrive in the blockchain sector.

Q: What are the real-world impacts of blockchain innovation discussed in the space?
A: Exploring practical applications and support for blockchain start-ups in the evolving industry landscape.

Highlights

Time: 05:15:29
Particle Network's Services for Start-ups Exploring the unique offerings from Particle Network in supporting blockchain start-up ventures.

Time: 07:30:17
Role of Advisory Groups in Blockchain Innovation Understanding how advisory services drive innovation and success in the blockchain start-up ecosystem.

Time: 09:45:40
Real-World Applications of Blockchain Research Discussing practical implementations and support provided by Particle Network for blockchain start-ups.

Key Takeaways

• Particle Network offers blockchain research and advisory services for start-ups.
• Understanding the importance of non-financial advice in blockchain discussions.
• Exploring the role of advisory groups in fostering blockchain innovation.
• The focus on blockchain start-ups in 'Discovery Episode 54: Particle Network'.
• Insights into the evolving landscape of blockchain technology and solutions.
• The significance of research in driving advancements within the blockchain industry.
• Blockchain advisory groups play a vital role in guiding start-ups through the industry.
• The Particle Network discussion sheds light on blockchain adoption and support for start-ups.
• The impact of advisory services on the success of blockchain initiatives and projects.
• Real-world applications of blockchain innovation and start-up support.

Behind the Mic

Introduction and Discussion Start

Sadeena. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining in for our discussion. Goffery, episode 54 already. Geez, the time goes fast when you're having fun. And today with another special guest. This one is actually very interesting. It's one of these projects. And now, then you come across a certain project like, right, this could actually change something. And you might think, well, what do you mean with change? I mean, with crypto we are solving problems mainly which are not there. Right? What? Is this true? We like to make problems which do not exist, and then all of a sudden we find a solution for it. But with protocol network, they actually try to change something where we actually have a problem with and they are not creating the problem themselves. Without further ado, we are with Tabasco today.

Welcoming Tabasco

Tabasco, how are you doing? Hello. Hello. I'm doing pretty good. Yeah. Can you find. Is my audio go to? Yep, sounds perfect. Awesome. So how are you doing? You doing good? I'm very much surprised that you still have a voice. I have listened to you to so many podcasts on YouTube X conferences. I mean, how do you keep up with all that? Yeah, it's been a lot. I think just last week we did, we released maybe two podcasts and it was three or four Twitter spaces and roundtables and have maybe three or four more this week. It is definitely quite involved, but I really enjoy it. I like talking about chain abstraction and don't get tired of it. And we have Singapore coming up here pretty soon, which is going to be quite good. We have some events that are running out there about chain obstruction.

Events and Experiences

So have more talks planned. I think in Brussels, I was out there. That was crazy. I think Brussels was particularly interesting because there was like 300 events or so, or maybe even more, and they're all kind of in a relatively short time period. And I ended up with eleven talks out there in total between panels and keynotes and stuff like that, which that was definitely exhausting. I was losing my voice by the end of that. But no, I really enjoy it. It's a lot of fun. I think this is a very important topic that, as you mentioned, like that you're spot on with the intro. It is a real problem that the industry is facing that is being solved at full force here, not only by us, but many others in the industry. And so it's definitely worth talking about.

Background and Experience

So before we go there, I would love to have a bit of an intro about yourself, just to give a bit more familiarity with who you are, how did you get into web three and all of that? And maybe also how did you actually get into a particle network? Yeah, for sure. I've been working full time web three for a little bit over three years now. I originally started working web three at 16. I got into web three when I was 15, mostly just out of hobbyists. I think I originally came to the space when Dogecoin was pumping and was in the news. And so I thought that was a quite interesting and a good opportunity to make some extra money. And so I started buying dogecoin and trading it and participating in that community.

Early Involvement in Crypto

I realized pretty quickly that I'm not a very good trader and mining doesn't really make very much money. And so I started just participating in the community and holding some crypto and kind of exploring different parts of the industry, and I'd go into different communities and spend a long time and research different coins and stuff like that. I really enjoyed it. Eventually I decided to start building some applications, web three. I figured out that I'm not good at trading and guessing the markets and stuff like that. I'll just stick with the actual tech part of things, which I found more interesting. Ultimately, at 15, I started building an application called Amity Defi. Amity Defi was the first real production app I've ever built and was essentially, if you guys are familiar with how Ton or custom Telegram wallets work today, it was kind of like that, but for discord, and this was back over three years ago.

Creating Amity Defi

At this point it basically allowed you to have a wallet on discord that you could use to send funds to people natively in different chats or airdrop to different chats and stuff like that. Basically bringing on chain directly to discord. Because I was participating in all these communities and I really wanted the ability to actually use on chain infrastructure natively. In those conversations I was having, I built that and it did pretty well. I think it ended up with a few thousand users. It was especially popular within the harmony one community, which if anybody here was around back then was quite a big blockchain, but isn't so much today. I was really happy with that. And then eventually when I was 16, I was working at a tire shop, and so I was changing tires and fixing flats and stuff like that, and I didn't really enjoy it very much.

Transition to Web Three Industry

And so I decided to kind of take the experience I had gained building that application and just apply to a bunch of jobs in web three, which I got lucky enough to, shortly after I turned 16, start doing developer relations work at an RPC provider called Chainstack. I worked there for around a year and a half. Ended up leading developer relations over there for a little while in the joint particle back in September or August of last year. So I joined particle mostly just out of wanting to switch to a more web three native organization. RPCs are a very web two esque space and so I had a lot of fun switching to particle and having more of that native web three experience and building something that I felt was quite important for the industry. I've been here for over a year now and doing a lot of interesting work.

Tabasco's Journey in Crypto Development

Wow. Well it seems you went from a true degen holding and buying dogecoin to like wow, tech evangelist. Well it's very interesting. And damn, your first application when you were 15 or 16. Wow. And I can remember the times that discord was the place to be. Everyone was on discord. Nowadays it seems more people are on Telegram, but it used to be discord for the main part. That's where the real alpha was being shared. Very interesting to see that you actually had a working application. Did you actually happen to monetize it or also just for the fun? Everybody, when I was building it, everybody was like, you have to monetize it, you have to charge fees or something. And I never really wanted to because, I don't know, I felt like it would maybe reduce its amount of adoption or whatever and so I never really made money off of it.

Monetization Decisions

I did have some developers that wanted the source code and I sold them copies of it, but other than that it was mostly just a public good. And it's actually still online today. It's not used very much anymore, but yeah, it was a lot of fun. It was a good project to work on and kind of got my foot in the door with web three. Wow. Well that's very interesting. To be really fair, I didn't expect this story to begin with. Most of the times what you hear is people say, well, I came from finance and I saw how everything was kind of, well, bad decision, didn't work like it should be, blah, blah. I never had someone come on here. It's like, wow, I was like 15 and I just tried something and happened to be something which people actually used and it opened my eyes and I might be able to actually, well, make a living out of this.

Setting the Stage for Protocol Network

Very interesting. Before we go to protocol network, I want to actually, I would like you to set a bit of a stage here. The main reason is just to give some context. This is a bit different than we do usually. But chain abstraction, for a lot of people, it's a new idea. It's completely new. And it's like you can compare it with the. Whenever Rops game came about, everyone did hear about Rops, but no one really knew what Rops were. And I feel like chain abstraction have a similar, I wouldn't say issue, but it's like the similar stage. It's getting more and more. The term is getting more and more familiar, but whenever people, whenever you ask people what is chain abstraction? People will give you different answers.

Understanding Chain Abstraction

That being said, I know because, well, we did a research on you guys, particle network has a great, you guys put a lot of great stuff out of there. And you also have a great definition for chain abstraction, which I would say encapsulate the user experience quite a bit. So could you explain for the audience what chain abstraction is so we can build up on that foundation for the rest of the spaces? Yeah, absolutely. And you're right, if you ask 100 people in the chain abstraction space, what is chain abstraction? You're going to get many different answers. But in general, we found that this definition that we proposed has been pretty widely accepted, and it's the foundation for how most people understand chain abstraction.

Explaining Chain Abstraction

That definition is simply that chain abstraction is a user experience exempt from the manual processes required to interact with multiple chains. What that means is that basically it's an experience where you don't need to bridge or manage multiple balances or multiple wallets and things like this. It's essentially the ability to use applications agnostic to the specific chain that they're built on. This is really important because it means as a user, you can basically go to an application that's built on base and then one that's built on arbitrum and then one that's built on Solana and actually use the same balance for all these different chains. Use whatever gas token that you want, use the same wallet for all these different chains.

User Experience with Chain Abstraction

So to an end user, every application feels equally accessible. The chain that they're built on becomes a largely irrelevant detail. It's just an infrastructural note. It's something that developers choose. Very similar to the way that. I don't care that Twitter right now is using AWS or GCP or Microsoft Azure. It doesn't matter to me. It's up to them. It's whatever works best for them. And so chains are going to be moving in this direction as well, where it's just a backend thing. It's the infrastructure as a user, I don't care about this. And so my experience is removed from the processes that make the chain that I'm using visible.

Conclusion on Chain Abstraction

And so that's the easiest way to understand it. All right. And how. All right, that makes sense. It seems to be like very, I know you guys don't really like this metaphor, but it's like very simple, I would say it's very, there's some very parallels with how we use the Internet right now. You just use it, you're not really thinking about, well, what is there in the background? You just hop from one to another website and you just, whatever is there in your front end, you're not thinking about, oh, wait, what is going on in the backend? Sure, you could check it, but you don't have to. You just use it. So that being said, we have set a bit of the stage here.

Introducing Particle Network

What is chain abstraction? Now obviously, the question comes in, what is particle network? What has it to do with chain abstraction? Yeah, and first of all, the analogy that you just used in terms of comparing it to the Internet is correct in that whenever I'm using applications on the Internet, whenever I'm going to a website, I'm not thinking consciously about what is this site built on or what is the underlying protocol or what is the infrastructure that's building this. As a user, I don't care about these things. The fact that in the industry we're expecting and that we're hoping that consumers will be willing to understand and pay mind to the infrastructure underlying the applications that they're using is ridiculous, and that's not sustainable.

Particle Network's Perspective

It's been a huge blocker for the fact that people always ask, well, where's the consumer adoption? It's like, well, we have this enormously complicated industry that requires so much of end users if they just want to use applications, that no wonder people don't want to use it. Right now, the barrier to entry is pretty much only a barrier that tech enthusiasts will cross. And so this is a problem that we're trying to solve in that particle, essentially. We're trying to solve this from a specific perspective on the problem, which is what you can call the account level.

The Layers of Chain Abstraction

So chain abstraction is a multifaceted issue. There's multiple different layers and ways to approach it. It's not just going to be one organization does chain abstraction and that fixes the issue. And then great, it's actually multiple organizations working collaboratively at different points in a stack that will then solve the issue and achieve chain abstraction. This stack can very simply just be understood through the account level. This is user facing chain abstraction. Things like your wallet and your unification of balances. You have the application level things for developers, SDKs and APIs that let developers deploy and compose their application across multiple different chains.

Universal Accounts Concept

Then you have the blockchain level, which is intrinsic interoperability, things like Polygon AG layer and optimism super chain. And so these three layers are different infrastructure providers that each provide a different part of the user experience that ultimately yield this full chain abstraction idea that we're talking about. And so at particle, we are solving at the middle of the stack at the account level. And so we're kind of right in between the other two types of solutions. We are specifically building something that allows users to have simply a single balance that works across all chains. And so we call this universal accounts.

Functionality of Universal Accounts

Universal accounts are essentially an evolution of ERC 4337 account abstraction that lets you as a user maintain one balance that is usable across all chains and all applications. And so if I have ten UCC on arbitrum and ten on base and ten on avalanche, then I actually have 30 USCC that I can use anywhere that I want. There's no distinction between where my funds are. How do I get them to the chain that I want to use. I just simply have funds that are spread across multiple different chains and they're consolidated as a single balance.

Understanding Universal Accounts

They can use anywhere. This is the easiest way to understand universal accounts. It is just at its most basic form, one balance and one account that you can use across all chains. And that is actually our tagline. Essentially. This is integrated through either developers that use their SDKs and put this within their applications, or users, which we're going to have an interface that you can use to create a universal account with your metamask or with Google and stuff like that. This will materialize is basically one of the foundations or the center of the chain abstraction stack, which will allow users to maintain a single balance anywhere. What this will do is it means that users will now be, as I mentioned earlier, agnostic to the underlying chains that they're using. Because as a user, if I have funds spread across ten different chains and I can use them as one, then all of a sudden the chain that I'm using becomes largely irrelevant. I can deposit on whatever chain that I want. I can use my funds on whatever chain that I want. I'm removed from the notion of specific blockchains. And so this is really important. And this will achieve a huge chunk of the experience I'm talking about. Although of course particle is not the sole provider that will enable chain abstraction.

Collaborative Solutions for Chain Abstraction

And this is important to understand as well. Particle works really closely and will work very closely with organizations like Cluster and Socket and agoric and similar other infrastructure providers that solve the problem at a different part of the stack. That, for example, give developers the ability to basically do workflows of cross chain transactions and create chain agnostic applications and really cool things like this. Particle is solving a narrow problem at a certain part of the stack, which is specifically the account, giving users a single unified account that they can use anywhere. All right, let's digest this a bit of, so at one point you said, well, you have different layers. Completely understood. You said, well, you have application. Well, let's start with the account layer. You got the account layer, you get the application layer, and you got the blockchain layer. Protocol is very focused on the application, sorry, not an application account layer, meaning that you guys, for example, try to unify wallets, which means basically comes down to red.

The Importance of Universal Gas and Asset Integration

Now all of a sudden, instead of having a like metamask phantom bitcoin wallet, you can just have one wallet. And on the side of that, you guys also do like universal gas, which basically means whatever token you have, you can settle the gas transaction with that token. You don't have to need officer for bitcoin Ethereum, you need Ethereum. For Solana, you need Solana. For binance chain, you need BNB. All of a sudden you just can have one asset, whatever that is. Makes sense. my first question, let's settle. Let's try to do it in like bits. So let's try to start with a universal accounts. Then we go to universal gas, and then we end on universal liquidity. So the first thing which came up in my mind, all right, whenever I have a universal account and I can go to any chain, well, one thing which seems scary, but maybe it's not scary, but it seems scary for me right now is, all right, I can go to any chain without me really having to know what chain I am.

Concerns About Chain Awareness and Security

So similar to the Internet. I can go to any website, but I'm not entirely sure what sort of that website is being built on. If you take the, if you take for example, the website parallel here, if I go to a website right now, but I don't have antivirus, I could get a virus, right? Because I have no clue what's being built on it. I'm not looking at the source code. I don't know. I'm just going to his website, maybe it's a sketchy website, I don't know. And I got malware. Let's say. Obviously it's not that easy, but let's say it is because I'm dumb. I don't have any enter fires. I don't know how the Internet works. Now. I go to the blockchain. I just go to a random Dex. I'm not entirely sure where this Dex is being built. How can I be ensured that I'm still being on a relatively safe chain? Like a chain which, for example, is battle tested? We could say ethereum is relatively battle tested.

Assessing New Chains with Limited Information

But a new chain, let's call. Let's not call out any change. Let's say chain X is completely new and it's not relatively better tested considering it's not EVM compliant. It is his own smart contract language and therefore we don't really know what's happening. How do you ensure that it is still relatively safe for the user without them knowing which chain they are on? Yeah, this is a really good question. And we've had a lot of debate about this within the chain abstraction vertical of like there's two parts to it. It's like, well, number one, how do you keep users safe? Number two, how much abstraction should you apply? Because of course, like you mentioned, if we apply the maximum amount of abstraction by the default, then this means that users truly are unaware of the chain that they're interacting with. They just use applications. And so they could be using four or 510 different chains, and a few of those could be unsecure. One of them could be unsecure, whatever, maybe. How do you solve this?

Building Trust in Applications

I think that there's basically two components to this. The first is that of course the user will intrinsically have some degree of trust in the application that they're using. This is already somewhat true. Whenever I sign a message within these apps, I'm already trusting that app to be responsible with my signature or whatever it may be, or most people don't look too far into it. Trust with an apps already exists. I think trust with an apps will increase with chain abstraction because now you really do have to trust an application to be responsible with the applications or with the chains that they use. I think personally applications that use secure chains will by default be more popular and will proliferate more. And as a result, users will on average use those applications that make responsible decisions more. But of course, you can't rely only social consensus around that.

Filtering Unsafe Transactions

So I think that what we're probably going to see is as chain abstraction really starts to popularized and it becomes kind of the standard or default experience. The wallets that users are using, whether that's metamask or a chain abstraction wallet or like whatever, I think all of these will be usable within the chain abstraction paradigm. I think those wallets will apply some degree of filtering. So the same way that if I'm using Google Chrome or antivirus and I go to a website that is maybe not very secure or not very safe, actually chrome or many of these antiviruses will tell you, it'll say, look, this site that you're about to go into is not safe and might be malicious. Do you really want to go to the site and use it? Then you click, yes, I want to, or no, I don't. Okay, thank you. This is already a reality within web two, and some wallets actually already do this to some degree.

Creating User Awareness of Potential Risks

And so I think this will continue to be popular within these flagship wallets. And specifically that warning message will be based upon the underlying chain that you're interacting within a given application. I think applications will by default maybe have some automatic trust scores that will then results on the warnings that are given to users. I think it'll ultimately be up to users to make secure decisions, but I think we're going to have many safeguards in place to prevent users from unknowingly going into an application that maybe is not very reliable or not very secure and losing funds as a result. But I think the same time, most users will just interact with applications that make these responsible decisions because those will ultimately be the most popular ones. Makes sense.

Keeping Users Safe in Digital Economies

And this is a bit, obviously, a bit of hypothetically speaking, because, well, this is just one way to do it, or one idea you guys currently have. But I'm wondering, like currently, based on your examples about Google Chrome already has this. Completely true. Google Chrome will tell you, I think, whenever the certificate is outdated, it will say, all right, hey guys, certificate is outdated. Probably another good idea to go here. And obviously you have a lot of add ons, like you got malware by its guardian, whatever it's called. You got Norton or whatever, right? But these are specific applications which are being built for this specific problem, basically making sure that the user doesn't go somewhere where he most likely doesn't want to go.

Responsibility for User Notifications

So these applications will send you that message. I'm just wondering who is going to send you this message? Whenever we've chain abstraction, would it be from you guys or from the solver side, or from the underlying chain is not going to tell you, most likely, because maybe it doesn't even know whether it's insecure. Yeah, my guess is that this will probably be applied within specific wallets. And so just to kind of add a note here, users in this kind of like chain abstracted ecosystem will still be able to use whatever wallets they want to. They can use Phantom, they can use metamask, they can use rabi, it's up to them. The important thing is that wallets will be universally usable across any application.

Enhancing User Experience and Choice

This means that I won't need to have five different wallets to use the ecosystem. I can just choose the one that I like the most. I think that wallets that are particularly high quality and that recognizes shift and adapt to it will apply this at that level. You already have some wallets today that actually do this, and that will give you a pop up that says, I think Metamask might do it a little bit, I don't know, but they'll give you a very similar Google Chrome pop up that will tell you if DAPP is malicious or not. They have a trust list they add scam websites to or whatever. I think that wallets will specifically implement this. I think that what we're going to see, especially within the wallet landscape, is that because you no longer need to have specific walls for specific chains, users are going to naturally shift to wallets that just provide the best experience and that of course, natively support chain abstraction, for example, metamask or phantom.

Expanding Choices for User Interaction

I think these wallets will ultimately end up using some sort of chain abstraction solution like protocol network or whatever, that will then allow them to of course be abstracted, or they can use atpartical. We're also going to have our own air quotes to wallet interface that you can use. So that of course will also have safeguards like this. Basically, the interface and the wallet that the user uses to actually interact with the ecosystem will, I think, ultimately be responsible for making sure that they're safe ultimately, and interact responsibly with applications. And so I think this will be the most common place that you see it.

User-Friendly Wallet Options

All right, that makes sense. Yeah. Metamask has something, it's like it's one of these features, which is interesting, but it doesn't work perfectly because they would allow you to see the simulation. Right? Are they allow you. Right. If you do this with your transaction, most likely it's going to happen. But that is just on a smart contract level. And this is not my words, I have been told this, so please take it with a grain of salt is. It's not perfect, apparently, because you could code decode the smart contract in such a way that nine of the ten times it will do x, but only one of the ten diamonds will do I and I stuff is the bad stuff.

Smart Contract Risks and User Experience

Your metamask will obviously pick up, most likely on the. Well, 90% it has the 90% of the time it's good stuff. It will do the simulation like it's good. And the wise stuff, the bad stuff is only one out of ten. Right. And your metamask will not pick up on that, considering we just run up. We'll just run the smart contract. And that's what he's being told. I am not, I'm not a deaf. I've been told that this is the case. I have no experience whether this is true or not. I've only been told whether this might be an issue. But that being said, I completely agree with you. Obviously, metamask is not the only smart contract wallet out there.

Exploring Wallet Capabilities

Sorry, not smart. Smart contract wallet. No, it's not like that. It's not only the wallet out there. There's a lot of wallets nowadays on different chains. And you said, well, something very interesting that you said as well, you can have any wallet which you want, but you can also create a wallet with socials and use, I think you said, like Google. Would that mean that I can just create a wallet with my Google account? Like, I'm also able to make accounts on. Yeah, on web, two Internet, on like just normal traditional Internet. Is it like similar? Like, I just.

Google Account Integration in Blockchain

It's quite literally plug and play. Yeah, this is another good point. And actually, this is infrastructure that for some context, we've been building this for a while. Our original product over the past few years was actually social logins. So the ability to use applications with your Google account, your email and Twitter and stuff like that's actually already live unusable in a lot of applications today, I think a little bit over 1000 apps. Essentially, it allows exactly what you mentioned. You go to an application, you sign up with your Google account, you have your wallet, and you use that as you need. The way this actually works under the hood, without getting too technical, is that we basically, it's not custodial, but you use a key sharding mechanism.

Tech behind Google-based Wallets

You can have a private key that's split between both the user and a trusted execution environment. Then they're used both simultaneously to sign transactions. It gets a little bit in the weeds there. Essentially, it's a secure way of letting users create wallets and accounts using their Google account or their Twitter and email and phone number and stuff like that, with chain abstracted wallets and that whole ecosystem, it will be absolutely possible to just go to applications, choose Google, sign in, use the app, go to another app, choose Google, sign in, use that app, and of course it'll all be under the same balance. And so I think this, of course, is a great experience. I think this is how most users probably will end up in the space, because even just the fact that you need to download a wallet and use it and save a seed phrase, of course, this is also a point of friction that account abstraction has been trying to tackle for a long time, as have we.

Reducing Barriers for User Entry

And it's just that initial buried entry of just needing to initialize a wallet is itself a pretty big hurdle. And so Google based wallets and stuff like this and social logins and not needing to save a seed phrase and stuff like that is also a pretty huge evolution that will make it far easier for users to actually get into the space and use applications. And so I think that will probably be the standard for most consumers. Wallets will still absolutely have a huge market of users, but I think for standard consumers that don't really want to get into that, typical social logins will do the job. And of course, we'll tie very closely in with things like chain abstraction.

Broadening Accessibility in Web3

I think you make a bit of an understatement here. I think it's a huge problem to come into the web three, space. I mean, it's like open up, opening a bank account.

The Risks of Managing Private Keys

But then worse, because the thing is, there is so many steps which you can do wrong. You can make a mistake. One, the first mistake you could make is, for example, not storage. Hang your seat key privately, but then you're already done. Like, like you don't know it yet, but whenever, for example, your PC crashes or all of a sudden you lose access to your metamask, for example, let's say humans metamask accounts, your money is gone. Like there's nothing someone else can do anymore. If you not, do not have your private key, your SDK. Yeah, you could pray and hope that quantum computing will able to brute force it. Maybe in 50 years, maybe. But I mean, you are. Yeah. Like we say, Gigi, well played. It's done. It's done. You are not able to get your money back. So talking about the recovery phase, how would it work with Google? Like, if I'm making an account with my Google account, like, can I just forgot. Can I just forgot seed phrase or how would it work?

Understanding Google Account Security

Yeah, I mean, you know, right now at least, it's pretty hard. Like there actually is no private key that can ever leak with those accounts. And so there's no way that an exploiter could ever actually get your private key and then steal funds that way because the private key is permanently distributed. And so that's not even a point of vulnerability. But let's say you sign something bad, there still would be the fact that those funds would be gone if you did sign a transaction that was ultimately malicious. There are ways and mechanisms in place to with account abstraction, like have spending limits and these different things. And that's always an interesting thing where you can reduce the damage done, but recovery itself is sometimes difficult. Of course you can always export the private key, but I think ideally we don't really want users to manage and handle private keys in the first place because then that exposes this point of vulnerability. I think that in general, it's just going to be up to the user to make sure that they sign things securely.

Social Login and Seed Phrase Management

And of course, I think in a lot of cases that the provider, for example, particle or whatever else, should and will also provide safeguards there to say, hey, what you're signing is going to do X and You should, like, it's going to give this application permissions to do this, make sure that you know what you're doing here. And that's also very important. And so I think that mixture between that as well as of course, the whole point here, that there is no private key to be breached in these Google based accounts. They just don't exist in a single place. It's not possible. I think it's also a pretty huge security benefit. And so I think you're probably going to see a lot less of these massive account losses under this different model. I even keep a lot of my crypto in accounts based like this because I just don't, I don't like the fact that metamask and these other wallets have a single point of vulnerability as a private key. And so these don't. And so really, the only way that a user could ever truly have a breached or vulnerable wallet would be if they sign something malicious.

Concerns About Private Key Loss

But there's ways that you can prevent 99% of that from happening just by giving them proper information about what they're signing. And what if I lose my private key? Because that's now a really big issue, right? Because honestly, I'm trying to think about like an industry or a product where there is so much responsibility on the consumer, and I cannot come up with one right now, whereby the consumer could quite literally lose everything, assuming they have everything one wallet, which is obviously not a smart idea, but let's assume, I'm quite sure people have, that they can lose everything in a split second, because if they did not back up their private key right now I'm talking with metamask right now, it's impossible to get it back. So how would it work with social logins? Like, can I just, like I said, can I just do, like, forgot seed phrase? I want my seed phrase, or. Yeah, how would it work?

The Strength of Distributed Key Management

Yeah, you know, like, like, I got into a little bit, like, basically because these accounts have no central seed phrase or private key, there's no way that you could ever lose it. You will. Users can do basically like, forgot seed phrase and recover it if they really want to. But that's in cases where they want to, for example, migrate to a different wallet or whatever it may be. But, yeah, I mean, there is no seed phrase, essentially, to be lost in the first place because these social accounts are generated using a distributed key mechanism. This means that basically there is two different key shares, and they are always separated. And so there's no reality unless the user requests it, in which they can actually have a central private key to be lost in the first place.

Security Benefits of Smart Accounts

This is really important because it means that, you know, there's no way for a user to, themselves, like, be socially manipulated into, you know, providing a private key, of course. Like, they can always recover it, I guess, technically. But it is far more secure than metamask, because with metamask, the almost number one way that people usually get breach is through loss of private key through one way or another. And so with social accounts, that isn't a reality anymore. And there's no way for that private key to be lost in the first place because there is no private key. Ultimately, it's actually done in a way that the private key is distributed. This is even more so the case if you're using a smart account.

Social Recovery Mechanisms

If you're using a smart account, then this is like, there is even less of a private key there because that's a whole other layer on top of your existing social account. So there's a lot of different areas to that as well. And of course, with account abstraction, you have various different interesting things like social recovery. If you really do lose access to your account or something, you sign something bad or whatever, maybe you can recover it through. Through those means or whatever it may be. But, yeah. So I think that there's a lot of interesting caveats here. The most important point is that these social accounts, they have no central private key, and so there's nothing to be lost, which is a massive boost for end users and means that there's basically never need to worry about security in this case, at least from the private key perspective.

Challenges in Web3 Security and User Education

Awesome. Well, one thing which you said, which is very interesting, and I cannot stress this even I want to put an emphasis on this, is because I would say the majority of private keys, or generally not even private keys, well, actually, these are private keys, but generally the most exploits, they happen to social engineering. Right. People sharing something which you shouldn't share, or they downloading something which it shouldn't download just because they trust someone. Really. Well, it's a big problem in web three. Having more secure wallets is, I think, going to help a lot because it's. The sad thing about web three is there are so many moving parts that it's so hard for your retail investor to actually keep an eye on these moving parts because industry is moving very quickly.

The Rapidly Changing Landscape of Web3

It's actually like, one thing which could be hot today, could be very cold tomorrow, meaning one thing which is very popular today could not be popular at all tomorrow because it moves so fast. People take also some risks because they want to be part of the next hot thing. Could be a meme coin, could be defi, could be rwas, could be deep in, could be chain abstraction, whatever. If you fill it in, whereby people tend to make a lot of risks with a lot of money, but they don't recognize it because they are so, like, there's capitulated into. All right, I have to get to this new thing. I had to get to this new popular meme coin, asset, whatever. So having things which actually provide some more information, what actually happens into the background will help a lot. I agree.

Creating Security through Information Access

There are some. There are already a few wallets out there. Definitely true. We will come back to the smart wallets and all that. But before we go there, I would like to do a bit more zooming into the universal gas, which were talking about earlier is. Well, let's assume I have $10 on ethereum and I have $10 on arbitram. I think that's what you said, or $20 arbitram. And I want to move my not move. I want to use a dapp on polygon. I can use these funds to well, pay for the gas. I'm very much wondering how would that work? Because nowadays, obviously, you need all these separate gas tokens. So how is it possible that I can have, like, focus on a different chain, but I can still settle the gas? How would it work?

Overcoming Challenges with Universal Gas

Yeah, definitely. It's a good question. Because like you mentioned, one of the biggest points of friction with multichain today is not only the fact that of course, I need to manage multiple balances to pay for transactions, but also the gas part. If I want to use an application on polygon, then I need to hold matic to pay for that transaction. Or if I want to do a transaction on base, I need ether or whatever it may be. Every time I use a new chain, I need to specifically have my balance set up for that chain. I need to have funds to pay for transactions to pay for gas on transactions on that chain. And so with a chain of traction, specifically with part of the account level, which is what you can call gas subtraction, what you can do is basically if I have any token on any other chain, I can use that to pay for gas.

Flexibility in Payment with Cross-Chain Transactions

And so if I want to do a transaction on polygon and it costs a dollar in gas, let's say I have one UFCC on base or on Solana, I can use that UFCC, that one UCC to pay for the gas. I can use any token from any blockchain to pay for it. Of course, as a user, they don't really know that this token is on any specific blockchain. They just see, okay, I want to pay for gas. Do I want to pay for gas using USCC or ETh or whatever token you can imagine? Basically, then of course we'll source that from the chains that we need to. The user could theoretically have 0.1 USDC across ten different chains and use that to pay for the transaction on polygon worth one UCC.

Backend Mechanisms of Gas Payment

And so you kind of get where I'm getting at here. It's basically the ability to have universal access to funds to pay for gas. And so the way that we actually this in the backend is that it's quite simple, actually. We will take payment in any token and then our paymaster, because we're using account abstraction, our paymaster will actually settle the transaction on chain and the native token of the network. So we take whatever token that you want to pay with. We say, okay, we'll take that and we'll swap it back to whatever token that we want and then we'll just pay for the gas. For you. So it's that simple.

Temporary Subsidizing of Gas Fees

It's basically us temporarily subsidizing the gas fee of your transaction and then paying ourselves back using the funds that you want to use to pay for the transaction or to pay for the gas in this case. And so in that example where I want to use one UCC on some other chain to pay for my transaction on polygon, that one UCC is going to particles. Paymaster, Paymaster is saying, okay, I've received the USCC, I'm going to now sponsor or pay for the gas on your transaction within matic. And then that's basically the exchange that's happening here.

Infrastructure for User Convenience

It's just infrastructure that's saying, I'll pay for your transaction, you pay me back, and that's the agreement. And so it's really simple under the hood, and basically allows users to no longer have to hold specific tokens for gas fees. They can pay for it using any token from any chain. All right, I agree. That's easy to understand. So basically in the backend you will take any, well, let's say any liquid coin. So any coin which actually has some liquidity. Sponsor or sponsors, I think subsidize, and need is a better word, subsidize the temporarily subsidized data section and obviously have gotten the funds.

Maintaining Liquidity for Efficient Transactions

And then I think you guys do either conferred to actually maybe rebalance the inventory of coins you guys have, considering, I think you will probably have some coins in there to actually subsidize instantly. Otherwise you have to, let's assume you don't have any matic, then first you guys have to get it. And then, because that wouldn't work a lot. So most likely you have some inventory of coins which are being used a lot, like Ethereum, Binance, Solana, polygon, most of these big layer twos and layer ones. And then obviously the transaction goes through and you guys have the funds, and obviously you can restock thematic.

Exploring Universal Liquidity Benefits

One more feature I've seen, which was actually very interesting too, is like universal liquidity. And whenever we talked about it, we got some interesting questions from our community. And one of the questions was, which was a question which actually came back quite a few times, he said, well, what is the upside of universal liquidity? If I'm already able to use a Dex, and that specific Dex, I already can tap into different chains. I think Rocket X is one change, finance is another one. There's a couple of ones which allow you to trade multi chain. Can you give us an idea what the difference is and specifically what the benefits are for the users?

The Concept of Universal Liquidity

Sure. So universal liquidity is basically just a fancy way to say unified balances. Universal liquidity is the ability to use funds or essentially value liquidity that you hold collectively on different chains and use it for a transaction on a single chain. And so, for example, I could go to a Dex or whatever that's available on multiple chains, or I go to a game that's available in the wall, multiple chains or whatever, and I could use my funds across those chains. But the difference is that I need to have and manage my balances across these different chains individually, and switch between these chains if I want to use those funds, and then bridge if I want to get those into a single place and so on.

Streamlining User Experience in Cross-Chain Transactions

And so universal liquidity basically looks at that process and says, well, users shouldn't have to necessarily bridge to get their funds to different places. They shouldn't really have to switch chains in the first place to access different funds. They should just have a single pool of balances of value. Essentially, they can use to pay for transactions. Going back to the example I gave earlier, if I want to, let's say I want to use a Dex, I want to swap ten UCC to, I don't know, ten bunk or something like that, or however much bonk is equivalent to ten UCC. And then, okay, so I want to do that. But my ten ucc I want to do. Let's say I want to do this on Solana.

The Efficiency of Universal Liquidity

My ten UCC is actually on. It's spread between right now, Ethereum base and arbitrum. Okay, so right now, without chain abstraction, what I need to do is say, well, let me go find a wormhole or something and bridge over my UCC to Solana, and then I can pay for the transaction. I first need to go to each chain that I have those funds on bridge between each chains, and I'm doing like six transactions manually. It's taking me like 30 minutes now to actually move my UCC from Polygon arbitrum into Ethereum over to Solana, and then swapping that for bonk. Universal liquidity looks at that and says, actually, we'll do that all for you.

Automation in Cross-Chain Transactions

Just take your UCC, swap it to whatever you want, or do any operation with that UCC, and we'll automatically bridge those funds over for you. And so these are said, okay, I see that I have ten UCC. I don't really care where it is. I just know that I have those funds somewhere. I'm going to pay for the transaction and now I have my bunk and I can go do whatever I want with it. Same thing applies to a game, for example, okay, I want to play a game, and this game is going to cost me 50 USDC or $50. And where do I get those funds? Well, I see that I have some eth spread across a few different chains.

Seamless User Experience Across Different Chains

I'm going to pay for this entry fee on this game in ETH and then, okay, not going to play the game. And maybe that came from four or five different chains. That is fundamentally how universal liquidity works. It's just giving users the ability to have one single pool of value of balances that they can universally use across any application, regardless of the underlying chain that app is using. And also regardless of, for example, if I'm using assets somewhere else or if I'm swapping assets, it doesn't matter where those assets are, I just use a balance that I have collectively.

Understanding Universal Liquidity

And all I know is that, okay, I have some bonk, I hits worth this much, and I want to buy this NFT, which is worth this much. And so universal liquidity is just simply that mechanism. It's the ability to have a single balance usable across all chains. The way this works in the backend is actually not too different from the universal gas mechanism. Essentially we have something called a solver, or specifically we officially call it a liquidity provider. This basically allows users to like, they'll do a transaction, and this liquidity provider, this solver filler, whatever you want to call it, will pay for the transaction temporarily. Okay, so I want to buy an NFT on Opensea that's worth $50. Our filler will say, all right, that's fine, we'll pay for that transaction in whatever token it needs. So let's say that's ETH on Ethereum, okay, we'll pay for the transaction in ETH, and then it'll pay itself back using the tokens that I want to use to actually fund the transaction. So very similar to the universal gas mechanism, it's paying for the transaction in the 50 ETH or the $50 worth of ETH, and then paying itself back using whatever I want to use.

Temporary Payment for Transactions

Bunk on Solana or USCC across a few different chains or whatever. So that's the easiest way to understand it. It's just paying for transactions temporarily and paying itself back using the tokens that you want to use to actually pay for the transaction on your side. So very simple mechanism. Again, this is a pretty standard solver mechanism. It's called liquidity fronting. Essentially, you're fronting the funds to pay for a transaction and then automatically paying yourself back using different funds that the user has. This is a very efficient and effective way to move funds across chains and to use funds universally, where basically you can do this in a way that doesn't require any canonical, mint and burn bridging or whatever. So you just simply, it takes maybe 5-10 seconds and costs very little. And so this is the most efficient way to do it. And it's how most chain abstraction products do it today. It's through solvers essentially.

Determining the Solver

Okay, makes sense. I agree. It's very similar to the universal gas. You said that right then a solver or failure or liquidity provider will basically, well, make happen whatever you want to swap. Right? They will make it happen for you. But how do you determine who is the solver? How is it determined? So at least in our system, by default, we will have one major solver that's actually ran by particle, but that's pretty temporary. Eventually it'll be more decentralized and open for anybody to run a solver and earn fees from doing so, upon which it'll have some routing that's based on ultimately what solver can provide, the best rate, and it'll be very competitive. And so this is how most solver markets work today. It's that you have sort of competition between solvers of who can execute things as fast as possible and at the best rate, lowest fees, stuff like that.

Working of Solver Networks

And so there's a lot of solver networks out there that work on this principle. There's a lot of applications like Cal swap that have somewhat sophisticated implementations of solvers. And so we will implement something quite similar. To start, it will just be particle solver. And so there's only one that you can choose from. But eventually, especially as we get into the end of this year and into early next year, we will implement a solver network that works on a more kind of typically decentralized fashion in which there's competition between solvers to solve or fill these transactions based upon what ultimately is the best for the end user. All right, all right. And one thing which comes up into my mind is around we have all these different features. Well, we could actually categorize into, well, three features really. It's like, well, universal accounts, universal gas or gas abstraction, and a universal liquidity.

The Role of Token

Obviously, there are some subcategories within the main features. You could for example, say, well, universal accounts, social logins, and so forth, right? So one thing I'm wondering about, you guys will have your own token, if I'm not mistaken. How will the token come into place in all of this? What is the utility of the token? Let's put it this way, what is the expected utility? Yeah, so all of the mechanisms I just described, with the liquidity, fronting and moving funds across chains, this is all coordinated in a decentralized way through our own app chain. It's a Cosmos SDK baseball blockchain. This blockchain is not for users to interact with or for developers to deploy on. It's purely for coordination. So if you're familiar with how Axelr works with their coordination chain, it's kind of a similar principle with us. We have a underlying chain that is used for coordinating these solvers and these cross chain transactions.

Transaction Verification and Settlement

And as a result, every transaction that I do through a universal account ends up going through verification and settlement on our blockchain. So this does a few things. This makes things far more decentralized and actually adds a good amount of security assurances, because it means that we are actually validating and verifying transaction or workflows and sequences before we actually push them to end solvers and ultimately the chains that you're interacting with. This means that whenever I'm for example, buying NFT and Opensea, going back to that example, that sequence of transactions, that four or five transactions need to happen to ultimately pay for that transaction, to pay for that NFT, that sequence is actually being settled on particles blockchain. That settlement is being paid for in our own token. Users don't need to hold our token. Users don't need to be aware that our token even exists necessarily.

Utility of the Token

But every transaction that gets executed by universal account ultimately ends up being settled on our own blockchain in our token. So as universal accounts gain more usage, our token is consumed more, and it's used for settlement. It's a very small fee that user pays, but it's basically a security assurance and mechanism of decentralization that we use to coordinate universal accounts that is all paid for in our native token and settled for in that token. That's the main utility here. It's a settlement token for the underlying coordination chain. Of course it's also going to be used to pay validators and actually secure the chain and stuff like that. It's pretty typical layer one token and the utility that plays there. But it's going to have a pretty high degree of usage and utility through the means of being settled upon every transaction.

Future Plans for Particle Network

All right, understood. Yeah, it seems like it's indeed a very similar common utility foundation for infrastructure products like yourselves. Considering time, we are slowly but surely creeping to the end of this Twitter spaces. But I have two questions left, and the first question is a bit more about the future, about particle network considering obviously you guys have your token planned. I'm quite sure you guys have more planned for the end of the year. And also Q one, you already gave a few things we guys are currently working on. Could you give the audience and also me a bit of an idea what we can expect of protocol network in the upper coming, let's say two quarters. Yeah, I think these next two quarters are probably going to be some of the biggest for us in recent years. It's going to be a lot happening. The first major thing to watch out for, and we haven't done a big announcement for this yet, but if anybody here or if you are going to be in Singapore, we have an event that we're going to post a link for probably later this week called Abstract Coffee app Shark.

Real Life Implementation of Universal Accounts

Coffee is actually going to be a coffee shop that you can go to in Singapore and use a universal account, a very early mainnet implementation of a universal account and actually use it to pay for a coffee that will provide you using funds across multiple chains. It's going to be pretty interesting. Basically, you're going to be able to use USCC that we'll give you. We'll basically give you a pre funded wallet with USCC spread across five different chains. And you can actually use that pre funded wallet to pay for a coffee in Singapore and then do whatever you want with it. And so it's going to be a very early in real life demo of universal accounts you can actually use in person and give it a try. So if anybody's going to be in Singapore, we're going to be posting about that later this week and giving the link for that event. It's going to go on for about a day, I believe.

Release Timeline and SDKs

So that's going to be kind of like our first main net demo in person, and then we're going to actually release a very early mainnet implementation over the next month or so. That will be followed by some SDKs and a bunch of other developments. And so by November or December we're going to have a lot released, pretty much everything that we've been looking to release this year into next year. We're going to continue posting improvements and updates and various infrastructural expansions and new chains and all that stuff. But basically by December you're going to have everything that we've been talking about. It'll be live and usable. so we're very excited for it.

Event in Singapore

Wow, so you are saying you can get a free crypto and a free coffee in Singapore? Yeah, just a little bit of free crypto. It's going to be like $5 and you'll use a good chunk of that for the coffee. And yeah, you can get a free coffee and try universal accounts. So it'll be a pretty good event, we're hoping. I wish I was in Singapore. I would definitely come. I mean, I would also like a free coffee and free crypto. I mean, seems like madness to me. So there's a couple of people here in the call or spaces, whatever we want to call it, and I'm quite sure a few of them would obviously like to get a free coffee. So if you would like to get a free coffee, go to Singapore.

Details of the Event

I think it's on the 6th. I'm not going. I think it's on the 16th or is on the 18th of this month. Yeah, it's the token 2049 out there is happening, I believe, from the 15th or 16th to the 19th. And so I think the event that we're going to be running should be happening on the 17th. I don't know for sure, though, maybe the 19th. So it'll be at some point during that whole token 24 nine week. And so we're really excited for it. Most of particle network in our organization is based out in Singapore, and so I live out in Denver, so it's a little bit of a trip to get out there, but I'm looking forward to it. We're going to have a lot of fun. And if anybody's heading out, definitely stop by.

Participation Beyond the Event

Awesome. And is there other ways they can, if they're not able to, for example, we are not going to talk 24 nine this year, but is there other ways that the audience can actually participate in? Well, in particle network, is there any way they can help or how they can contribute to anything if they would like to contribute to the ecosystem? Yeah, I mean, right now, probably the best way is just to kind of keep up to date with what we're posting. We do a lot of content, a lot of thoughts and different pieces about chain abstraction and the ecosystem and stuff like that. And so a lot of really good content from our side of course we share a lot of research from organizations like House of Chimera, and so you guys go to our Twitter articlentwrk.

Testing Universal Accounts

You can follow us there and see all of our stuff. We also are running a testnet at the moment, so you can actually try universal accounts on Testnet. If you go to pioneer dot particle.net work, this is going to be ending pretty soon, so you guys have maybe one to two weeks to give it a try, but you can already use it. You can do transactions and pay for the transaction using funds across multiple chains and use universal gas and all these different things that we just talked about. It's actually already usable on Destnet at Pioneer dot particle.net work. Feel free to give it a try. Although between now and Singapore that will start to wrap up. And of course we're going to be preparing for some initial releases over the next few months and so that's probably the biggest thing to look forward to and the best way to know when that is happening and kind of how you can start using universal accounts as soon as possible is to give us a follow up.

Staying Updated

Particle ntwrk on Twitter. Yeah, I think honestly, we obviously see a lot of different coins and different assets, different verticals, and we are very much excited about chain abstraction. Brings us a bit back on. When Ro ops came up, everyone was like, oh, Rops, that's awesome. So we kind of feel very much excited about genetics. It could really change how we interact with web three. Rops obviously changed quite a bit through, I mean, which layer two is not a ro op nowadays. I'm not saying ro op is perfect, not really. There are a lot of issues, but they're definitely, in my opinion, definitely better than most side chains which we had before.

Concluding the Discussion

Rops in general are in generally a bit more interesting than, I would say, than the alternative, which we had before. It seems like the market agrees, considering, and like everyone is using optimism, ro ops. And there's a good point, we could really go into this, but it's also because it's easy to fork. If you're like forking nowadays, it makes sense. That being said, we are wrapping up these Twitter spaces. Before I start rambling, before we go, I always give the last note to you, to the speaker, to our guests, if there's anything which have missed, or maybe you would like to put an emphasis on something while this is your chance, considering this stage is yours.

Final Thoughts from the Speaker

Yeah, I mean, thanks again for having me. I think it was a great conversation with some really good questions. The one thing I would kind of leave everybody with is that if you're at all interested in chain abstraction or particle or anything related, go read the report by House of Chimera. It is, I think, linked under the original announcement for this space. It's really good. It goes really in depth on chain abstraction and particle and everything involved. And so it's absolutely worth reading if you're interested in getting a pretty deep dive into the topic. And so that would be the main thing that I'd leave everybody with is, if you haven't already, give it a read, it's an amazing report.

Summary and Upcoming Content

And even if you do not read it, because I understand if you're not going to read because it's 40 pages, don't worry, we will still make a lot of content. So there is no way you're not going to hear after a while about protocol network. We have a lot into the pipeline, so whether you read it or not, you will still get absolutely filled with information about protocol network. But that being said, if you do have the time or you're not able to read 40 pages, don't worry. There are, every chapter has a summary which is only one page. In that case, you are done in like four pages because there's only four summaries. And then still you have a relatively global idea what chain abstraction is, what it brings, what are the risks and what the risks are all the technologies, they have issues, unfortunately, we didn't have time to go into these, like the standardization and all that, whether you have to need some standard to make sure like chain abstraction is being implemented everywhere in a similar sense.

Challenges of Chain Abstraction

So every chain is connected to each other and every Dapp is connected to each other. But that being that everything is relatively well explained in the paper, specifically that part. There's also examples which give you some idea how it all would come together. That being said, I would love to thank all of you for coming on, and obviously Tabasco, to coming to another Twitter spaces with us, because I think you said earlier you have like two or three more this week, and I bet that token 2049 is going to be hectic for you with a lot of conferences, saudi fans and talks.

Appreciation and Future Interactions

So thank you so much for your time and to the audience. Hopefully I see all of you. I think it's going to be next week. I think we only have one Twitter space this week, so hopefully I see all of you next week. And if not, what? I will be sad, but hopefully I will see you somewhere else on x. Have a great day, everyone. And thank you so much for your time. Bye bye. Cheers. Thanks, guys.