Manta Network and Axelar recentAnnounced cross-chain cooperation, Manta Network will introduce more ecological assets to its Layer1 privacy network through the Axelar cross-chain bridge.
The following is a selection of Q&A reviews from Manta Network co-founder Shumo Chu's AMA with Axelar co-founder Georgios Vlachos in early February. The pair discussed cross-chain interoperability, privacy use cases in Web3, and the challenges of building Polkadot-EVM cross-chains. You can also listen to the entire conversation on the YouTube channel.
Georgios ：
Hello everyone, I am one of the founders of Axelar, a decentralized universal interoperability platform that connects all major blockchains, including Polkadot, Bitcoin, Cosmos, Ethereum and, in the future, Solana.
The team at Axelar has known Shumo for some time. We worked closely together at Algorand. Shumo is one of the few people who will stay in the office late into the night, obsessed with work such as cryptocurrency. I would love to hear your reasons and stories behind starting Manta Network.
Shumo：
Thank you Georgios. Starting Manta has been a super fun journey. In my first job, I was a research scientist at Algorand, where I met Georgios. Georgios is exploring some very hardcore protocol design. At the time, I was building Algorand's smart contract functionality. I have a formal computer science education with a background in database systems and programming languages. Before working at Algorand, I hadn't started studying cryptography. It was also from then on that I began to be shocked by cryptography. I think, in a sense, I fell down a rabbit hole.
At the beginning of building Manta Network, I hope to solve some problems in cryptocurrency. Many people think that blockchain must be very private, but the opposite is true. Blockchain transfers are just like you transfer money via Twitter. You broadcast your transaction to everyone on the planet. To make matters worse, the transaction history will exist forever, which is a huge challenge to protect privacy.
The original intention of Manta is to solve problems. We believe that the biggest problem in the blockchain industry is the lack of privacy, and the lack of practicality of existing privacy blockchain products.
Take ZCash as an example, I think it is very good. We learned a lot from its protocol design, but it is a single asset protocol. I think in the open blockchain world, everyone has their favorite token. This goes without saying, we just want to make any token we want private.
The second biggest problem is that privacy coins lack programmability. This is at the heart of Manta's ongoing development: bringing privacy-preserving smart contracts to the platform.
In short, we are privacy providers. We can provide privacy protection for all underlying Polkadot tokens. Ultimately, we hope to use bridges like Axelar to provide privacy-preserving services for tokens in other ecosystems.
Georgios：
great. For Axelar, our vision from the beginning is that different blockchains can focus on different use cases. We have actually considered the direction of making privacy products.
In the end, we decided to do only one thing and do it well, that is to build a cross-chain infrastructure and let projects like Manta help us protect our privacy. But one of our original motivations was that blockchains need privacy.
We cannot build privacy features on any chain because some blockchains are not compatible. Therefore, a Substrate-based privacy-focused blockchain is exactly what we need. I think the possibilities here are endless.
So, what kind of synergies do you think there will be in the early days? Asset cross-chain? Writing an application on Manta? Where do you think there will be a lot of demand for assets across chains, and what applications will people be excited about in the early days?
Shumo：
There are absolutely endless possibilities related to privacy when it comes to working with the Axelar ecosystem. Again, we are a permissionless blockchain, so basically anyone can make any kind of asset private. I think a lot of people are looking forward to the Terra and Cosmos ecosystem, and it will be very exciting if assets like UST can be made private. The exciting thing is that when people talk about cross-chain bridges, they talk about composability and programmability. But there are actually other reasons why I think cross-chain bridges are actually much more important than people think.
I think an example of the first type of collaboration is easy. Let's say people have some tokens in Terra, Cosmos ecosystem or whatever ecosystem Avalanche or Axelar supports, they transfer tokens to Manta and we make it private. Manta is the first layer and Axelar is the second layer.
I think in the future the bridge should support something, something like primitive, something like RPC in distributed systems. You can do remote execution, you actually bring more APIs, like fungible token transfers. I think this will be more interesting because it can bring a kind of interchangeable connectivity through stackable function calls (such as smart contract function calls). In terms of apps, we do have some really good ones already.
I think many of you have heard of the recent ConstitutionDAO incident. Due to the lack of privacy, the DAO actually failed the auction. Hypothetically, if Manta could connect through Axelar to gather broader information, it might solve the problems that ConstitutionDAO had. Auctions can be conducted under Manta's zero-knowledge proof-based privacy protection. So if you're a DAO, you don't have to have a completely open governance model where you're only going to lose to someone who bids $1 more than you. The failure of the auction is due to the lack of privacy protection.
Another concrete application is, say a DAO wants to send salaries to its members and doesn't want to fully disclose that information, then you can use Manta's private payment feature to get an open source governance structure. Right now, we don't see a lot of privacy adoption due to lack of utility. Manta aims to create this utility so that we can see more and more privacy applications. Last but not least, Manta will build an open-source, EVM-compatible programming layer. With this, we have endless possibilities.
Georgios：
Let's focus on the first use case you mentioned, since Axelar is focused on user experience. We are also very concerned about security issues and will conduct proper audits for new stacks. With that in mind, do you have a concrete timeline for Polkadot-EVM cross-chain integration?
Shumo：
We've got a pretty good idea of the design of this programmable asset layer, and I think we've solved all the hard design problems. One of the design issues here is privacy, and Manta's token layer uses the UTXO model. If you want to make a programmable layer through EVM, such as building Polkadot-EVM cross-chain dApps with smart contracts, you need to integrate UTXO and account models. I think we have a very elegant technical solution.
We will launch a privacy testnet supporting programmable privacy assets in Q3 or Q4, but we actually have more exciting things before that, such as updates to existing privacy payment products. The first is reusable private addresses, and the second is improved zero-knowledge proof performance. In the next version of MantaPay, the performance is optimized ten times compared to Zcash, and we can support many assets that Zcash does not support, which greatly improves the user experience in terms of verification time.
I think 2022 will be a very busy year for us, with a series of product updates coming out one after another.
Georgios ：
In terms of composability, tracking transactions can be relatively easy. How does Manta provide privacy around composability?
Shumo：
When you talk about privacy, you have to define what privacy is. So there's privacy of the transaction or execution logic, and privacy of the end user. At Manta, we care about the privacy of our end users. This is why we can reintegrate privacy assets through programmability. Our business logic layer can still be exposed for 90% of use cases. We basically have this UTXO to account model integration layer so that we can use the UTXO demo account model. Your private identity remains.
Georgios：
At Axelar, we've been in discussions with various parachains because our goal is to connect everything directly, but we have to be mindful of the existing interoperability protocols within the Polkadot ecosystem, and the current state of the ecosystem as a whole.
If we cross-chained directly to Moonbeam and then to Manta, we would have four different versions of UST in the Polkadot ecosystem. Using XCMP to bridge all parachains will produce correspondingly different versions, which will lead to more fragmentation.
A potential solution is for everyone to use Axelar, or any other protocol that can connect these parachains. That would create an undesirable situation where XCMP is not widely used. After all it is the most seamless way to transfer assets within Polkadot.
Another option is to choose a specific parachain, if we choose Moonbeam to be the specific initial parachain of UST. Of course, we can also choose Manta, and then allow people to use XCMP to cross-chain all parachains. All of these we consider from the perspective of the best user experience.
Axelar will allow you to transfer UST to Moonbeam, and then we have a proxy contract that basically just sends it directly to users on Manta for the best user experience while achieving compatibility with XCMP, and then it's up to the community to split assets.
Curious what your thoughts are on this?
Shumo :
I've dug deeper into XCMP these days and think there's a more elegant solution. First, there is a difference between XCM and XCMP. XCM is more of a programming language, while XCMP is a protocol. XCM is actually quite flexible.
For example, we can incorporate Manta. Once you get into the substrate or parachain ecosystem, we can incorporate one of the reserve positions, and then cross-chain transfers will be very easy.
We could also have a unified token identifier, with cross-consensus instead of cross-chain. In fact, I think if all our teams work together, we can create a better solution for the end user, because this fragmentation is unnecessary.
Georgios :
Yes, Thanks. I don't think this is really a technical issue, but more about getting everyone to reach a consensus on a unified standard.
In Polkadot, everyone wants to work together to make the ecosystem the best it can be, because it's a super collaborative ecosystem.
Do you have any questions about Axelar at this point?
Shumo ：
I have read the Axelar white paper and have a good understanding of Axelar.
However, for those who don’t know about Axelar like I do, what sets Axelar apart from other cross-chain bridges?
Georgios ：
Well, Axelar itself is not just a cross-chain bridge.
We recently launched Satellite, a demo application built on top of Axelar, which is just a cross-chain messaging layer that allows users to build various applications on top of it. This is unique because most cross-chain bridges seen in the market today are in pairs.
For example, if you transfer UST to Avalanche, you cannot continue to transfer to Polkadot, you must return to Terra first.
Satellite is a one-way solution that can be used to route assets. If you give it a try, you can bring UST to Fantom and other blockchains. Therefore, it is more like an end-to-end connector than a cross-chain bridge.
At its core, Axelar is all about passing information and messages between different blockchains. The Polkadot-EVM cross-chain is just one of many connections. Axelar is the first permissionless, decentralized solution for many things like this.
This is similar to other chains such as Cosmos Hub, Osmosis and Terra. This is the security mode that any pos will adopt. Our thesis has been about validators from the beginning. Strong validators run on all major chains, so we want to replicate this model.
Basically, when you transfer assets or information through Axelar, you rely on distributed validators, similar to other proof-of-stake chains.
We are also building a strong application layer protocol. This will allow users to enjoy a native experience. For example, imagine you want to interact with Anchor on Terra, but your wallet is on Manta. If you hold a collateralized derivative on Manta, you may want to take out a loan on Terra through Anchor. You can do this through Manta's native wallet. On the backend, this would involve Axelar sending a message to Terra, taking a UST loan on Anchor, and returning UST to the user.
So basically, we can support applications across chains without requiring developers to rebuild on 15 different chains.
I think in the next year, we will see a change in the way people think about cross-chain technology. We are no longer doing multiple deployments on 15 different chains like we are now.
Shumo:
Also, if you think about the internet, other bridges are peer-to-peer. You have a bridge that connects to other bridges. By analogy, we see that Axelar acts more like a router in that you can send messages over the network, allowing you to route through different chains with a decentralized set of validators.
Georgios ：
Yes, I think that's a good analogy. For those familiar with Cosmos and Polkadot, this is an original motivation. With Polkadot, you have relay chains that can route information across different chains while maintaining a common protocol across the ecosystem. Likewise, in the Cosmos ecosystem, you can connect directly, but you can also decide to do things more efficiently through a hub.
We basically generalized this model to account for differences that are not compatible with IBC or XCM. For those in the Polkadot ecosystem, it can be considered very similar to the XCMP protocol, but common to all changes, not just Polkadot's local changes.
Victor Ji (Co-founder of Manta Network)
Recently, we have seen some big news about Wormhole and FTX. What do you think about this? Can Axelar help avoid this by bringing a bridge and true decentralization to the industry?
Georgios :
Unfortunately, these things will continue to happen next year. No matter what you build, and how secure it is, things can go wrong.
In the case of wormholes, it has more to do with smart contracts than any issue of trust assumptions. Nonetheless, we’ve seen some on Twitter pointing fingers at cross-chain design and incentive structures.
This has happened countless times in smart contracts and elsewhere. I think the best we can do here is create an insurance protocol so that when these things happen, people can get their money back. Also, tried and tested protocols are the best path to develop. It's all about safety.
From the Axelar side, we don't rush to launch something new. We start by making sure everything is safe.
Telegram Chinese: https://t.me/mantanetwork_zh
Manta Network is committed to building a better Web3 world through privacy protection. Manta's product design starts from first principles, and provides end-to-end privacy protection for blockchain users through leading cryptographic architectures such as zkSNARK. While protecting privacy, Manta is interoperable, convenient, high-performance and auditable, allowing users to conduct private transfers and transactions between any parachain assets. Manta's vision is to provide more convenient privacy protection services for the entire blockchain world.
Manta's founding team consists of several cryptocurrency veterans, professors, and academics whose experience includes Harvard, MIT, and Algorand. Manta's investment institutions include Polychain, ParaFi, Binance Labs, Multicoin, CoinFund, Alameda, DeFiance, and Hypersphere, etc. Manta is also a grant recipient of Polkadot's official Web3 Foundation, a member of the Substrate Builder Program, and a member of the Berkeley University Blockchain Accelerator.
Follow the official channel for more information about Manta/Calamari:
Website：https://manta.network/
Github：https://github.com/Manta-Network
Twitter：https://twitter.com/MantaNetwork
Medium：https://mantanetwork.medium.com/
Telegram：https://t.me/mantanetwork
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Telegram Chinese: https://t.me/mantanetwork_zh
