Radixly transformed - Ociswap
Radix-ly tranforming the way web2 natives switch to web3, we speak with Lukas Steffen, Co-founder at Ociswap. This conversation puts a spotlight on Radix, its developer community, scalability and how team Ociswap is rocking crypto adoption. Surprising twist at the end with Lukas' travel recommendations if you ever want to backpack across the globe.
Transcript
Radixly transformed - Ociswap
Participants:
• JP (CMO of AdLunam)
• Lukas Steffen (Co-founder at Ociswap)
00:22
JP
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. Welcome to this episode of Diving into Crypto. This is JP from AdLunam Inc. bringing you everything about web3 on the show today called Radically Transformed. We have a guest that has been bred and has been a champion when it comes to Radix. He's going to talk to us about a number of things, not just about the chain, but also about the decks that he represents. However, before we begin, I'd like to remind you, ladies and gentlemen, you have emojis at the bottom of this app. If you're on the phone or if you're listening to this on the computer, feel free to use them. Also, just so that we remember, music sped on.
01:12
JP
This program belong to those of the speaker and are meant for education purposes only. It is not to be construed as financial advice. Towards the end of the show, we will have a question and answer round, so keep your questions ready. If you come across something that you would like to ask the speaker, we will open up the room so that you can ask in your question. But in the meantime, you can also send these questions across to AdLunam Inc. or to our speaker directly and we'll have those answered for you. Now, for those of you that don't know, AdLunam is the world's first NFT integrated Engage to Earn, crowdfunding and IDO platform with a Proof of Attention allocation model. If you don't know what that means, check out our website adlunam.cc for more information. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, help us welcome to the stage today our guest who I'm going to allow him to introduce himself, but he has been an experienced online marketer, he's been in it, he's traveled the world for three years just to feed his wanderlust and he's done that through a very interesting journey.
02:23
JP
A digital nomad if you've ever known one, but let me not spoil that for you. Let's welcome him to the show today and let's get him to tell us his story. Lukas, thank you so much for being on the show. Welcome to Diving into Crypto.
02:40
Lukas
Thank you so much JP for this awesome introduction. Looking forward to this space and all the questions that we follow.
02:48
JP
Likewise, likewise. Lukas, tell us a little about yourself and what got you into the web3 space.
02:54
Lukas
first looking into crypto at:03:46
JP
Okay, interestingly. I know that you've had a little foray with the regular IT industry, right, and you've been in sales and of course you've traveled a lot that it has to have been a point at which you thought that, hey, Web3 is this space to be for me. What was that moment like for you, Lukas?
04:09
Lukas
Good question. So it was more like in a drive for myself that I'm maybe not the best employee. So it was not like not really thought, okay, I have to go into Web3 or into crypto in the first place. More like I really like to do my own stuff, to be an entrepreneur, to do whatever drives me the most. So I also decided to go to what you already mentioned to do world travel in the beginning, just with a small hand luggage together with my girlfriend, and at the time wasn't really sure how long and which direction or whatever. So it was completely to really challenge ourselves at the time. And with that, I got the opportunity to find a lot of really like minded people, also digital nomads, who do some online marketing stuff and also somewhere into crypto as well, doing some online conferences related to crypto and web free topics at the time.
05:20
Lukas
So that was the reason I got into that even further after than just investing and stuff like that, so was like this way around.
05:32
JP
Okay, so Lukas, I feel the resonance of you having been a bit of a rebel of sorts, having to explore. And I know that this resonates with a lot of us, not just in the room, but also in the Web3 space because that's what crypto is. We want to go against the grain, right? Was there a moment for you at which you thought, hey, you know what, this is the space that at the moment that you knew that hook was in you because of Web3, was it just the tech? Could it have been the trading?
06:06
Lukas
o be honest, first years from:07:14
JP
Super. Lukas, there's a story that went into how Ociswap started. Tell us that story. Tell us how you found the people that helped you begin with Ociswap.
07:29
Lukas
Like I said, two years ago, I first discovered some social media posts and afterwards I decided to do a deep dive into the technology and then two, three months later to run my own node called Stuttglos Node. And with that opportunity, other people got aware of me because I was out there a lot on social media. And yeah, then Marco and Florian, my two other co-founder mates, asked me if I want to join as well with Ociswap. So it was like they already had all the ideas and icon, logo design, everything already set in stone and asked if I want to join as well. And it was a really honor for me at the time and still is to now be part of this journey.
08:23
JP
It's brilliant. Okay, so you found a group of people that you have a connection with and you were able to get this off the ground. Okay, that's fantastic. Lukas, I have to ask you, when it comes to destroying anything new, and you're in a unique perspective to be able to share some light on this. Because when you transition from web2 to web3, that's a huge challenge because it turns a lot of what we know about the industry in web2. And what we know about the industry in web3. There's a huge transformation that does occur, even though from the surface, it looks like, hey, it's just tech, right? So what I want to ask you is what have been some of the learnings that you've had when it came to developing your community around Ociswap? Was it easy to find the community the same way that you did in web2 or what you're doing in web3?
09:30
JP
Is it radically different? How is that working out for you?
09:33
Lukas
Very good question. I guess it's not that different after all. For people outside web3 crypto, it's really like a completely black box. They don't really understand also from an entrepreneurial perspective how this works at all. Right? But in the end, I just say to people what I do actually I'm working for a software developing company so they have some idea what we are doing. In the end, we are just developing software. It's a smart contract software. So there's a connection to the web2 world people have an understanding what we're actually doing. So it's not that different, actually, to build up a community, to build up a company in that sense, even if it's a completely decentralized I know it's kind of weird to give this waiting for it, but in the end it is like that. In the beginning you need a dedicated team who builds smart contracts to build a community.
10:29
Lukas
And over time with the success, it grows in terms of many different metrics and after all it will be as decentralized as possible because the initial team have reduced power time over time with token distribution and also with DAOs and stuff like that. But in the beginning it's really important that you have some, even not so big dedicated team who do everything possible to make it a success. And then afterwards you have to have a roadmap to get as decentralized as possible over time.
11:09
JP
Understood? Yeah, okay, I can see that completely. Of course that there is something and then there's also a point at which when you're getting people to come on board to really love what it is that you're doing, are there some things that you're doing that are different to what you normally see? You don't have to spell out your secret sauce on a podcast like this, but is there something that you do or something that you have as your core principle, your core value that says this is how we'll provide, how we'll share value with our community? Is there something like that?
11:52
Lukas
Core values are really so it's really the fundamental driven to push this whole industry forward, to have a leap forward even not just with our tech, with Ociswap, with our decks especially why we decided to launch on Radix is the idea that this layer one enables a lot of opportunities or possibilities that wasn't really possible before. So for instance, what are the biggest issues today for crypto, for web3 in general? I guess from my understanding, it's scalability. So all the different layer 1s and people are figuring out how to solve this issue like with Sharding or with layer 2s or roll ups or stuff like that. But it's still an issue that's not really solved then the user experience, so that people are coming from web2 are actually feeling like they are still in web2. So at the moment it's like with MetaMask, with seed phrases, with blind signing, with all that different things.
13:00
Lukas
to hex and exploits alone in:14:03
JP
Got it. Okay. Wow. That's a tall order. And those are certainly a large number of areas to build focus on. I mean, I'm certain it must be crazy at the office at some point.
14:16
Lukas
It is, yeah. It's a lot of work to do, especially in so many different ways. So still, Radix itself is not really well known. It's kind of a hidden gem still. And so they get out there. People are getting us known in general. It's a challenge. Of course, people are used to the big ones, like Ethereum and EVM and stuff like that. And if you're coming around with a completely new tech, so it's not EVM compatible, it's not a blockchain even. So people are kind of confused when they're first digging deeper in Radix and have all the assumptions what they are knowing from other places, and then they really dig deeper and see, okay, yes, absolutely. Everything is built from scratch. It's completely new tech, so nothing is copied from other places. So it's really a mind shift, but it's like a mind blowing shift for myself and for many people who dig deeper at the time.
15:24
JP
That's awesome. We know that there's so many DEXs out there, but more so I want to take a step back with where Web3 is concerned, and you hit on a very important point, Lukas, and that is when it comes to the user experience, right? The UX. I personally believe it's one of the reasons why a lot of people don't transition from Web2 to Web3, because the experience is a lot more like you said before, right? When it comes to having to sign up for a wallet, when it comes to having to even try and on ramp some currencies, because in certain places across the world, mass adoption hasn't happened yet. Right. But even when it comes to usability like this, between the tech as a community, between the users as a community, let's look at the first one. Let's look at the mass stage, right?
16:22
JP
When it comes to the users as a community, what are some of the ways you think that all stakeholders in the industry should focus on a bit more to be able to transition a non-Web3 user into a Web3 user? What do you think?
16:41
Lukas
Yes, that's one of the most important aspects for me personally, also for what we try to achieve with Ociswap tandem with the Radix tech stack itself as well. So what you're seeing today, people are getting on boarded with mostly browser wallets, like MetaMask, for instance, and that's also kind of confusing. So you're starting downloading it for your browser, and then you have to write down your C traces, like 12,24 words, and store it safely somewhere. In some places. Most people even just copy paste it to their cloud providers, stuff like that. So doing all the bad things, but it's not convenient, it's not really for people outside crypto. It's really weird to do something like that. Right? And so the core principle also from Radix and Ociswap is that we just download your mobile wallet, the Radix wallet that will come end of July and simply for Android and iPhone and you are set and done after three steps.
17:45
Lukas
Nothing else to do at the time you do your first transaction, the wallet asks you if you want to set up your two factor authentication. Very important two factor, not seed phrases. So you will never ever see any seed phrases. So this will allow a way, safer way to actually deal with crypto in general. So you can use your friends and family for instance, as a two factor, your UB key, ledger, wallet, whatever. So you can set up a different set of two factors. And this is really a completely shift in design, for instance, what we see today in crypto that will hopefully enable massive adoption in the end because people are never really getting used to seed phrases and stuff like that.
18:29
JP
Yeah, that's a very interesting point. As a matter of fact, using two FA, because two FA is something that's common, you use it with email, with a lot of your web apps, having to use that as an alternative to simply your seed phrase is one option. Any other thoughts? Any other ideas?
18:51
Lukas
Yeah, also what's important at the moment you're seeing on the EVM chains and with ERC standards. So that means something like a token or NFT is not really native to the ledger itself. So this enables a lot of problems we see today with a lot of hacks and exploits because it's very challenging task for developers and solidity to actually make these smart contracts as secure as possible because there's so many pitfalls you have to be aware of. And with Radix and the Radix engine, so it's not an EVM, it actually knows natively what tokens and NFTs are. So it's native to the ledger. So this is like a core principle and you're really natively sending your tokens or your NFT from wallet A to B. So it's not like today we're seeing it in different ERC balance sheets. You'd have to update those balance sheets but you're not actually holding any token or NFT inside your own wallet.
19:53
Lukas
So that most people are not really aware of. So you're just holding the ETH token itself, the native ETH token inside your wallet. But every other has to be asked, you have to ask each smart contract if you're actually holding those tokens. But with Radix you really have every single token NFT inside your own vault and so this enables so many new possibilities and also is so much safer than what we're seeing today. So this is also a very important core principle for the UX to make it as secure as possible for people to feeling actually comfortable to use crypto. So when you're seeing each day by day on Rex or wherever, you see just another hack, just another bridge or smart contract has some exploits or your wallet gets trained because you're a blind signed for something. So give a completely full allowance that some smart contract can actually train your wallet.
20:53
Lukas
So this is a really bad practice. What we're seeing at the moment with Radix, it cannot really happen because it's not really possible to give some random smart contract your fully permission to actually train your wallet. So that's one of the most important stuff we would try to solve and do better.
21:15
JP
That's interesting. I have a friend who swears by Radix, right, and I know that there's again a large community of Radix believers out there was one of the first that came out very strong with the developer community across certain geographies. Let's take this in two parts, right? So the first part is when it comes to Radix, what makes more developers find Radix as one of the prime tech that they should be using or learn more about. What do you think what we've seen.
22:00
Lukas
So far in the early stage. So we're still pre smart contracts end of July. So, yeah, we're still kind of small community and also developer community. But what happens to this day is that one developer talked to another developer and really recommends to actually deep dive into it because it's so much better or it feels so much more convenient to use. So Radix has an own smart contract language called Scripto. It's a rust based framework. And this allows this asset oriented handling of things, makes it way easier for developer to actually start with their own idea. That's the reason why Radix says to its own Radix engine, game engine. So it's like a Unity or unreal engine for game developers, for DeFi developers. So that actually enables the developer to build their idea right away. And don't think about all the low level stuff, everything, what's more low level is actually handled from the Rails engine right away.
23:05
Lukas
So you don't have to deal with all that clunky stuff on the lower end. So actually 80% of your time is building the idea, the core idea, and also and 20% looking for security and stuff like that, where with EVM and Solidity is like the other way around most of the time. 80% of your developer time you have to spend to secure your smart contract for audits, for very expensive audits and stuff like that. So the time to market is so much quicker with the technology of Radix. I guess it will draw a lot of attention over time and especially for the developer community because they see, okay, I have idea XYZ, I can develop this same idea on Radix in like a 10th of a time on EVM chains and Solidity. So time to market is very important for developers because of course you don't need some big fundings to get going and also to spend so much funds for audits.
24:11
Lukas
And so therefore, I guess, and I hope so, this will allow way more innovation in the future, because at the moment we just see a handful of blue of smart contracts that are really battle tested on Ethereum, like Aave, like Compound, like Uniswap, for instance. But why don't we see way more innovation happening? Because it's so hard to actually build and save smart contract, a battle tested smart contract on EVM chains. And I really hope to see on Radix that we have so much more innovation in way shorter amount of time and this will hopefully draw a lot of attention to our chain.
24:55
JP
Yeah, I think that you may have hit the nail on the head when you say that we need to have a lot more focus when it comes to innovation as opposed to just the mainstream part, right? Do you see some focus or some initiative being given when it comes to innovating on chains like these? I'm talking about this broadly, not just with Radix, but overall when it comes to innovation. Do you see a lot more innovation happening or should there be a lot more innovation happening? What do you think?
25:28
Lukas
Yeah, in general, absolutely. There should be way more than just DEXs and liquid staking and derivatives. So we have some sort of battle tested categories on all the layer 1s. But yeah, it's really still lacking a lot of more real world applications and lacking so much more innovation at the moment. So people are kind of focused now on relying on the few battle tested smart contracts for a good reason, because they fear that their tokens get lost and hacked and stuff like that. Because of all the new upcoming smart contracts, it takes some time to get actually confident enough that those smart contracts are safe enough. So that's one of the biggest issues, I guess, why it takes so long until real innovation is happening. Because we have to deal with user funds. It's not like, let's say other industries, if there's some hacks, it's not so important because it cannot really happen that much, right?
26:44
Lukas
But in this case, it's really bad because user funds are on the line, right? So this industry has to be as secure as possible so that people really feel confident enough to use those applications. And that's the reason for this lacking innovation on all those chains because they are relying just on those very few smart contracts that are over the years, over five, six, seven years, battle tested and like Uniswap or like Aave, they are really considered the best of the best, right? And people are feeling confident you use them, but not all the new upcoming shiny smart contracts because they are thinking, okay, that could happen something if you use them too early, maybe there's some bug and then your assets are gone. And yeah, that's horrible at the moment, unfortunately.
27:41
JP
Understood. Yeah, understood. I can see a complete relation with what you're referring to. Right. As it is, you just have about 5% of the world that's doing anything with Web3, including where crypto is concerned. Right. And at the same time, there has to be a stimulus for an appetite for innovation. Now, while most of us are still getting used to this and you can see that there's an appetite for innovation in few spaces, you know for a fact that it's there across the US in some parts of Europe, like Germany for know, even Japan, right. There's a huge appetite when it comes to something innovative. Do you think that putting some focus on this particular aspect would help, that is to stimulate more of an innovation appetite? Do you think that would help or should we be going in a different direction?
28:42
Lukas
Absolutely. That's the second step for me after the first step and this is actually having a reliable infrastructure in place so people feeling confident to build and also use those applications, decentralized applications in my opinion. We are not there yet, so we don't have this stage that we have reliable enough foundation like virtual machines and languages and stuff like that are reliable enough for innovation. So if this is in place, like the first step, the second step definitely should be that we should enforce way more innovation and make noise that more developers joining web3. Because this is still so tiny. Markets like don't know. We have millions of developers and we have still just 50, 60k not even that developers focusing on web3 DeFi. So it's still tiny margin. So therefore yeah, that's really true. And in that sense, we are really early in that regard that not a lot of developers are here yet to actually feel confident enough to build here.
30:11
JP
Yeah, you're right there. I think once again you've put a spotlight on what are some of the systemic issues that we're facing. You need a lot more developers who are interested and focused and running a similar engine to what you have in Web2. You have these large powerful corporations that are able to do a huge scale of, you know, take on huge scale of technology solutions. Right. And that's missing at some point in of course, Web3. I can't think of a Web3 company that has the same volume of quantum that a Web2 does at this point. I know that's going to change. Do you see that happening in maybe the next three years or five years?
31:06
Lukas
Definitely. Especially moving forward to more decentralized applications that actually enrich everybody's life, right. Obviously every single time we having a new technology, people playing around with it and try to figure out the use case actually to find some market fit in the end. So we're starting with profile picture NFTs. It absolutely makes sense because we have no really idea at the moment for what to use it in the long run. Right? So we're still in this playground and early stage that people figuring out, okay, we have now these shiny new tools. How can we use it actually for something that everyday people really have some benefit from it, right? And I really see those stages in the next three, four years so that we have some decentralized applications that are really pushing this industry to the next level. So that everyday people are just downloading their apps, right, and using it for their everyday life because it enriched their life in a certain way or other.
32:17
Lukas
So we cannot really figure out which use cases yet, but there will definitely be a lot of things. And I cannot wait for that to happen because digital identity and digital ownership is really so important if you think about that. So we couldn't resolve the issues before with digital identity. So everyone could just create an alt account or could say, hey, I'm this guy online. But it's not really how to prove that right now. We have the technology to actually prove it in a digital space with blockchain technology or with DLT to prove that you are really the owner of this assets. You're really the owner of this and that right. So this enables so many things, especially if you're thinking about web free. So like in persona, you can have your own digital identity, your own persona, and everyone is sure that's actually you and you're not faking someone else or you're just copying something.
33:21
Lukas
And this is, if you're thinking about it, so many spaces, like online gaming and stuff like that. So you have your own persona and moving your assets fluently around like a one big liquidity pool for everything online. And that's so great. And we're just facing the very beginning of all the opportunities we'll have in the future. So looking forward to that.
33:49
JP
Yeah, fair enough. I guess any method that would be able to bring about that mass adoption to bring about more users is something that all of us in the industry have got to put our heads together and be able to think about it. And as you were talking about the digital identity and digital ownership, oddly enough. A visual comes to mind where we know that we've got 7 billion people across the world, right? But we will never at some point see most of them. And in some way, the only way in which we can connect to more people across geographies is the fact that we have a world wide web right? Now, this may be a basic point, but then the importance of that comes in exactly as you were saying. When it comes to having to understanding a person or understanding an identity, maybe even in an ethereal sort of form, you get to understand them because of interactions with them.
34:53
JP
And it makes it so much more important when you can't have all the senses giving you feedback about it. So how I mean is that if you meet someone in person as opposed to if you meet them online, how do you validate that you can trust them, that you can know how to interact with them, and this in some way does that, right?
35:17
Lukas
Yeah, that's like what I said. So that is just to start to think about all the use cases, right? If you really have a digital persona that's you and it's verifiably you because of the underlying blockchain technology. So all the node runners doing the consensus verification stuff, so you're sure, okay, that's really you. And that's kind of amazing if you think about that. So it enables trades. So you can put any object in your daily life to an NFT and you can trade NFTs from one to the others. So it's like kind of an ownership transfer as well for anything, actually. So really looking forward to some new use cases. Like someone is storing, for instance, gold in their company and each bar is like one NFT. And those gold bars never actually have to move around. Just the market is trading those NFT certificates or derivatives or whatever around.
36:26
Lukas
And you're sure, because it's really verifiable this one NFT can just be this specific gold bar, right, or coin or whatever. And so this is just one aspect of the digital ownership and the digital identity verifies that's actually you. You are the true persona. You are the true owner of this gold bar because you are holding this NFT. So you have this aspect of identity and ownership all the time verifiably because of underlying DLT technology. And this wasn't possible before the time of bitcoin blockchain and stuff like that. And this is really mind blowing for me if I'm thinking about that, because this is really enabled so many opportunities. Cannot imagine at the moment.
37:19
JP
Being able to explore that digital identity, being able to explore even where the transfer is concerned. Right. The thought I was trying to pick up on was the fact that you can't see people, but you are still able to develop an aspect of trust when it comes to interacting with an online entity. You can meet a lot of people and they can say a lot of things that whether it comes to speaking about things that they own or things that they do. But being in the web three space, you are able to create a certain amount of trust because you're able to validate what it is that you're saying with what it is that you can actually confirm because of the technology we have. What do you think?
38:11
Lukas
Absolutely. And like I said, in order to figure out how to use all the shiny new tech, for instance, soul bound tokens, right? So it's like non transferable tokens in your wallet can actually prove, for instance, within a KYC batch. That's really you. Right. So I guess a lot of people don't really like it from the cyberpunk perspective that you are kind of transparent and verifiable. Sorry. Because a lot of people really highlighting the anonymous aspect of it as well. Right. But another way, it's also if you want to use the tech for something to actually build trust in the digital sphere, it's kind of important that other people dealing with you actually knowing that's really you right. To avoid a lot of harm that could happen otherwise. Right. So I guess with the technology, we can enable both. We can enable more anonymous depths. For instance, if you really don't want to see your transactions on a public chain.
39:27
Lukas
Absolutely makes sense. But on the other hand, it also makes sense to use this technology, for instance, with a Soul bound token that's KYC showing that's really you. So you can actually use it for stuff that really needs this trust aspect as well. And therefore I'm absolutely for both ways at the same time to use this technology.
39:54
JP
Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. I do see eventually the entire planet is going to come into this club where you have your bounces at the door, which is your KYC and what's the word I'm looking for? I can't seem to find it right this minute. But the fact that you actually find genuine people in this particular space right. And that's because you don't have to focus on the question whether you have to trust them or not, but you're just able to be able to understand them because they've already been verified as they've come through the door, right? Yeah. Interesting. Okay, shifting a bit towards DEXs, I want to talk a little about Ociswap, what it is that you guys are doing. And you've spoken about how you're making the UX a lot easier than most of the spaces. Right. And of course, it's one of the challenges that everyone in Web Three faces, but more importantly, in the entire arena of those that are with DEXs now, how do you guys firstly solve the problem when it comes to understanding what a new person getting onto the decks or transitioning them smoothly?
41:24
JP
Right? Just getting them to transition smoothly. What are some of the interesting things you guys do?
41:29
Lukas
So to start, this really needs a little bit more of background story to actually understand our unique journey. So we started with Ociswap in November 21. We are still dealing with a layer one without active smart contracts. So this is a very challenging environment for a depth project or DEX project right at the time we started. So it was like smart contracts are coming end of last year. So there was some postponements for some more refinements and new ideas that came up in the meantime. But it wasn't really a challenge in that sense because we could already start the up and running network, Radix network called Olympia already enables staking and also sending XRD tokens from A2B and also create new tokens. So this is kind of unique in that sense. We have no Smart Contracts but we have the opportunity to create tokens already.
42:38
Lukas
Therefore we built our own MVP last year in June with a sort of centralized decentralized Exchange. So we built our own trading engine and also custodial wallets to already get started. We haven't really thought about it at the beginning to do it, but we saw the opportunity to start early even before Smart Contracts alive to already provide our community a working product. Obviously with all the disclaimers that is sort of centralized at the moment. But we also already wanted to provide swapping tokens, also providing liquidity and it look and feels like a DEX, it's not. But now at the moment we obviously are heavily heads down building with our six awesome developers in our team, the Real Smart Contracts. This will be a completely new product. So this is like the MVP. What we have live now on Aussie swap.com is like obsolete. End of July, it will be completely done from scratch.
43:51
Lukas
Everything front end, back end, crypto, real Smart Contracts of course, a really decentralized foundation. And there we are really heavily focused now on great UX because with the new tech stack we have the opportunity to onboard people with the Radix wallet. It's mobile. So what I mentioned earlier, like three clicks you can already start and don't have to deal with some weird stuff like seed phrases, also blind signing. So we say we are Ociswap decentralized Exchange like Uniswap be free with concentrated liquidity, but people are actually able to trade with confidence because something like blind signing isn't really a thing on Radix. So you have the guarantees before you actually do a trade, a swap on our exchange, you're certain that it either works or not. So you can set your slippage for instance, 2%, if it works perfect, it will go through, but not beyond that or it fails, but then nothing happens at all.
44:57
Lukas
For instance, on Ethereum you sometimes have to handle or have to deal with fees, although nothing happens. Right, that's kind of weird. So that won't happen with Radix at all with Ociswap. So either it goes true, so you have to pay the fees, that makes sense, but otherwise you're not. So there's like a completely new way to trade with confidence and yeah, from a UX perspective, completely new and really looking forward to showcase all of that stuff starting in August this year.
45:28
JP
Well, more power to you guys at Team Ociswap. I'm certain a lot of the community is excited about having to do that. And I love the fact that you saw UX focused, right? Because that's the one part that brings about more adoption and brings about more people to come in. Is there anything else you want to let us know. I know that you would like to share in the show that would get us more excited about visiting you all when you'll launch in August.
45:59
Lukas
Yes, restarting the crew excitement is really the onboarding experience. I guess at the moment we just able to talk and to say that's the future. But the great thing is it's just 39 days, it's really around the corner now and so we're soon able to show you this really unique onboarding experience you never seen before in any other crypto project. So it's like a free click, you're able to be set right, don't have to deal with some clunky browser wallets it's like one click, you connect your mobile wallet with our DApp on browser or later also with deep linking on your mobile phone itself. So it's completely mobile UX possible later on as well. So really looking forward to that as well because most users worldwide are already just using mobile phones and things like to be focused or to be desktop first. This is really not the future because you're kind of not looking for people like in Asian countries or African countries they don't have any desktop, laptops, whatever at home.
47:12
Lukas
It's really important that everyone is able to use it in the world, starting with that core principle and also it's important that everyone understands it in five minutes and is able to use our exchange and also our exchange itself from a UX perspective we'd like to change certain aspects we see we're facing today. Other DEXs. So it's more like what people more used to on Web2 like exchanges with terminologies they are already familiar with look and feel what they're already familiar with in Web2 and also DEXs in the front end mostly looks like something crypto first. So it's for crypto people and it's not for the everyday people and we also want to change that in that regard for our look and feel and yeah, that's one aspect of it. And the other exciting stuff is our tokenomics. We will soon announce our new V tokenomics to actually enable a long term sustainable way to provide liquidity on our exchange.
48:25
Lukas
It's not the same like curve have certain issues with curve, you know, but with a curve like way to deal with that but to hopefully avoid something like the curve force but maybe if I'm familiar with that so people try to sheet and game the system. It's always a big you have to think about game theory all the time when you're doing such things right and to think about how could people to hack the system and we hopefully find a way for a long term sustainable liquidity providing system.
49:04
JP
Certainly you got to watch out for that because you got to find a lot of people who want to hack the system or find a cheat or a way to get through. I mean, it's happened from the time that you start playing games. You're always looking for those codes, you're always looking for those cheats and it just keeps continuing, right?
49:22
Lukas
Absolutely. Therefore it's like 3D chess. You have to think already two, three moves before what could happen. Maybe if you do this and that it's really a lot of game theory, what you're doing in your daily life as a developer.
49:43
JP
Yeah. Super. Super. All right, I want to take this a step further because you said that you're planning to launch in the month of August and that's brilliant. But you're also trying to time the launch close to the Babylon update, right? Absolutely. Could you share a little light could you share a little light about how that works and what it would mean for you at Ociswap?
50:07
Lukas
It's great to be an early adopter for the early advantage. Right. But it's also in the other way, it's hard to be an early responder. Therefore there's a lot of moving parts still. And yeah, the core developer team, Artics Works is launching the completely new Babylon network end of July. And obviously we have to go with the flow at the time. So it's like a completely, at the moment, completely fluent system. So also the scripture language, the Radix Engine is changing. So we have the very last step is now the RCnet v2 end of June. At that moment we have a complete 100% reliable system also on the beta net on the testnet, right. So we can be ready for everything with certainty and to be able to deploy as soon as possible. Actually, the main net is live, right? And obviously there is a little bit of uncertainty in the beginning.
51:22
Lukas
Of course, we have all to deal with a completely new design and network in the beginning, but we are also confident with the tools we already have provided from the core developer team to have a really great smart contract v1. I guess we have to do some v2 later on because there are some changes down the road. But still we will have a great v1 Ociswap decks. Really look forward to that.
51:55
JP
Well, yeah, of course. Now with the Babylon update, what are some of the key strengths that is going to bring what are some of the key changes it's going to bring to how the interaction is going to occur? Are we looking at more scalability, more security? What are some of the things that are really going to make it strong?
52:17
Lukas
Yeah, so the Babylon update basically enables smart contracts. So this is with the scripture language, the rust based language, and the completely redesigned Radix Engine v2. So the v1 is now live, but the v2 is so much more capable of stuff, handling stuff, and also the already mentioned Radix wallet for Apple android devices. So this all will come now with Babylon. And obviously not everything is 100% ready on day one, but there will be updates for your Apple or Android app over times that will enable even more features over time with the Radix wallet. And afterwards we have the CN update that's coming next year or latest 25, never really sure with developing cycles. Right. And this will actually enable the scalability stuff, what I mentioned earlier. So at the moment we have to deal with a single chart network. So that means we have 100 validator nodes running the network at the moment.
53:22
Lukas
And this is also capable of around 50ish smart contracts, transactions per second. But this will actually completely be open after the CN update year later. So there won't be any more limitations in terms of validator nodes. So you could have as many validator nodes as possible. And also two to the Power 256 shards. This is a number I don't know, more stars in the universe and stuff. So there's an extremely high number of shards and therefore there's no upper limit in terms of scaling in terms of transactions per second. So if you have to deal with more demand on the Radix network, you can add more nodes to the network. So we will have more shard spaces, sorry, validator sets. This will enable more scale. So we can simply scale with the demand and add more nodes to the network. So this kind of nice design.
54:29
JP
Okay, Lukas, through this entire episode, you've focused a lot on how you enjoy the process that you're building, Ociswap and the team that you've had and the journey that it took you to get there as the show is about diving into some insights, right. Trying to develop some insights about these processes from people like you who are in the industry and doing things differently. I have to ask, are there some days at the office where you just want to rip your hair out and say, hey, this is something that really bugs me, this is something that we need to fix really quick, but it's just taking too much energy. Right. Are there some of those moments that you face? And what are some of those moments?
55:22
Lukas
Absolutely, there's ups and downs all the time as an entrepreneur, as a builder have to face, especially in the crypto space, it's still unfortunately heavily short term minded. So people are here for quick investments. It's very volatile still. It's also one of the reasons why it's that volatile because people are really looking for the next big thing to just quickly buy this token and then be away as soon as possible after pump. Right. So this is obviously from the perspective, from a developer or builder perspective, it's obviously hard to deal with that because you're really into this stuff for the long term. You have the long term mindset. For me personally, I'm kind of bored about when people talk, just talking about charts and prices and market sentiments and stuff like that. It's kind of the most boring topic from all of those. There's so many interesting deep dive things you can talk about all day long, what this technology enables, and then people just starting to look at shards and shading their next Dogecoin.
56:44
Lukas
It is how it is, right? It's still so early stage. Hopefully we will be at a later stage that Crypto Rapids in the later stage that we face a certain threshold, right? And we don't have to deal with such great volatile movements anymore because this industry is really one of the most important industries and therefore we've set a certain milestone in terms of market cap and stuff like that. And afterwards we don't have to deal with those extremely high volatile movements anymore. It's really challenging for me personally or for a lot of people to deal with that because your community is very close to those volatile aspects as well. So it's not just like building a smart contract to be like a software developing company. You have also to deal with those sentiments. And this is really challenging, especially in such a quickly moving industry at the moment.
57:55
JP
Yeah, I completely feel your pain. And when it comes to having to work with these forces, you're looking at the tech and at the same time there's the market that's asking you to do something different. And that's always going to be the challenge, right? It's always going to be the challenge of balancing what demands are, what the tech can actually deliver.
58:17
Lukas
Yeah, absolutely. So, you have also sometimes avoid daily movements, daily sentiments, or facing or looking for the next big narrative and stuff like that. Really try to get your focus, your core principles, try to get your attention all the time, these shiny new narratives and stuff. But now, especially as a builder, as someone who really sees in long term opportunities and what we could actually enable with this technology, we really have to stay focused as good as possible. That's so important. And we saw a lot of mishandling, unfortunately, especially what we saw last year with FTX, with Celsius, with Luna. So it is really challenging also to be in this position, to stay sane, right, to stay focused for your core principles, if there's so much noise and so much volatile movements all the time, to really stay on your path. That's what we really try to achieve with Relics, with Ociswap, that we stay on this path, that we stay sane, that we don't move every day to the next narrative.
59:39
Lukas
dy cares about narrative from: ::JP
the space for a while, since: ::Lukas
Correct.
::JP
What do you see five years from now? The shift that's going to happen with the industry? What are your thoughts on that?
::Lukas
So for the next years or what do you mean?
::JP
Yeah, the foreseeable future, let's put a timeline to it. Let's say the next five years or the next three years. Let's start there.
::Lukas
I really hope we learned some lessons from the last hype cycle. So crypto is at the moment in a really weird spot. Cannot really trust custodials anymore with FTX. So with centralized exchanges, we have certain trust issues. At the same time, we have certain issues with non custodial solutions at the moment because of all these hacks and exploit what I mentioned earlier as well. So people are not really sure where to put their or where to store whatever. Even wallets, like atomic wallet, are now hacked. And people thought, okay, that's kind of weird because that's a wallet. I stopped my own seed phrase, right. How is it even possible? So there's a lot like I said, we are in a really weak spot and people don't really feel confident at the moment to use either custodial or noncustodial solutions. And what's really important now for the next five years to find a way that people can use noncustodial solutions in a way that they're feeling confident and not just feeling confident.
::Lukas
Also, the numbers, underlying numbers are showing that there are way less hacks and exploits and weird stuff happening or people misusing funds and stuff like that. And we really see in the statistics that we don't have to deal with $4 billion of hacks anymore, just in the millions, just it's still too much. But hopefully it will be way less than what we're seeing today. And afterwards, we have a great foundation for this industry to move forward that people are using noncustodial things so seamlessly with great UX and feeling safe and confident to use it. Actually, that's my vision for the next five years.
::JP
Well, you're right about especially the fact that we've got to learn because what you've shared with us in terms of increased security, more adoption, these are certainly things that we have to put a lot more we as the industry players, right, have to put a lot more focus on over the next horizon. So, Lukas, my last question to you, and I'm going to check with my team if there's any more questions that have come in from the audience because I know that we've had a bit of a technical glitch in between, but then we got back. So here's the thing, right, Lukas, and you're in a unique position to share this because you've taken some time off with a backpack. You've traveled as a digital nomad with your girlfriend, as you've said before, and I'm certain that has been a lot of learning for you as a person.
::JP
So keep that in mind when I ask you this question, right? What's your personal philosophy? What is that one message you would like to share with the audience?
::Lukas
glad I did that at the time,: ::Lukas
That's what we actually did,: ::JP
Super, super fantastic. Okay, Lukas, I got one question that's coming from Rebecca. Of the places that you visited in the world, of course I'm paraphrasing you, right? So the question that she asked is, of the places that you visited, which place did you like best and why?
::Lukas
Yeah, this is a quite common question for some reason. So interesting. It's still to this day hard to answer for myself. So I've been to so many great places, equally great places. So could just say I really enjoyed to be in Colombia, especially in Medellin. For some reason, people think it's a quite dangerous place. It's not at all. It's so many lovely people there. And like Georgia, so also some smaller countries, not many people visited or not really aware of it. But also Georgia. I love those foods. It's like the best dish in the world and I've been to a lot of already. Also, of course, Southeast Asia is like this spot. The hot spots of Digital Nomads, Bali and Thailand and Malaysia. Been to all these places as well and really love to be, especially on the Co Islands of Thailand. Ko Pha Ngan, for instance.
::Lukas
It's such a lovely island. So really enjoyed this data. Also kind of longer time. It was like really very enjoyable experience as well.
::JP
Fantastic. I think you've given us all something to look forward to this summer. Lukas, thank you so much for accepting our invitation and being part of the show today. It was insightful. We got to learn so much about what we need to do as an industry with Radix and of course now we have a travel plan, so thank you so much. I hope you've had as much fun.
::Lukas
Being on the show. Absolutely enjoyed a lot. Thank you so much for having me to ask her to be around here and to introduce a bit of our story. Thank you so much.
::JP
Super. Thank you, Lukas.
::JP
That's it, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in. We'll be back next week at the same time at the same place. And for those of you that are in Dubai, feel free to step down over to the World Token Summit. Our co-founders, Nadja Bester and Jason Fernandes are speaking there today. You'd be able to catch up with them or if you want to have a meeting with them, then drop us a line and we'll try and set that up for you. Well, that's it from us over at AdLunam. This is JP from AdLunam Inc. Thank you so much for being part of the show today, ladies and gentlemen. Cheers.
