The RockTree OG Talk series of roundtable talks is co-hosted by Stonewood Capital and. In each issue of OG Talk, Stonewood Capital will gather pioneers in the field of Web 3.0 to bring the worlds most in-depth OG views and the latest information from top companies in each track to the audience.
At 20:00 on August 22, this roundtable discussion hosted by YouTube Influencer CH Egan started with the theme of Big Bulls Talk about Zk. The four guests were: Omer Ozden, Chairman of Stonewood Capital and International Partner of Zhen Fund Ph.D., Golden Gate (GGX) co-founder and CSO Matt Doty, ZKEX co-founder and head of growth Balal Khan, zkLink co-founder Vince.
Omer Ozden believes that Layer 2 has been innovative, but this does not mean that all Layer 2 platforms can truly produce applications. Moreover, Layer 2 also faces many challenges similar to Layer 1. Even if a large number of applications appear, it can still be seen that verification issues, cost issues, speed issues, and even some centralized delay issues have not yet been resolved.
Matt Doty believes that in the future, there may be a need for standardization on the Zk track, but it is still far from maturity. The cost issue is a major technical challenge encountered by Zk on the road of innovation, which will determine Zk’s long-term competitiveness in the future.
Balal Khan believes that Zk applications are expected to be launched in 2024. Government business and traditional financial business will be Zks two major potential areas.
Vince believes that DeFi should serve a large number of ordinary people as a public product. zkLink provides users with user-friendly self-hosted products. There are already many different levels of chains in the crypto world, but popular application layer products are still lacking.
The following is a transcript of the roundtable conversation, condensed and compiled by Odaily.
CH Egan：First, let me introduce today’s organizer, Stonewood Capital. Stonewood Capital is an international fund and merchant bank based on the forefront of investment development in North America and Greater China, focusing on early-stage investment and ecological support for leading blockchain and other high-tech companies. Stonewood Capital has formed strategic alliances with the worlds leading funds, exchanges, media and other partners to provide top entrepreneurs and Web3.0 projects with high-value strategic investment support and global accelerated growth services.
Dr. Ouyang Mo, founder of Stonewood Capital, is also an international partner of Zhen Fund. Before becoming an investor, he was a lawyer. His team invented the VIE structure, opened the door to foreign investment in Chinas Internet industry, and participated in the early development of NetEase, Baidu, Alibaba, and Facebook. As a well-known decacorn hunter in the field of crypto investment, Dr. Ouyang Mo has a keen sense of the market and has successively invested in a series of star projects with valuations of more than 1 billion or even 10 billion US dollars in the early stages, including the well-known ChainLink, The Graph, dYdX, REN, Fantom, Aave, Maple, Pocket Network and a host of hit star projects. Under the leadership of Dr. Ouyang Mo, Stonewood Capital has become the leading fund in the Web3 field and the link that unites the core values of the Eastern and Western cryptocurrency markets.
Stonewood Capital has a systematic team of experts in crypto finance, capital markets, digital marketing and legal compliance. Team members are located in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Singapore, New York and Toronto to provide truly global solutions for blockchain projects. solution. Help Stonewood Capital’s investment projects connect to top investors, funds, media, cryptocurrency exchanges and other resources, and provide them with a full range of international ecosystem support.
Matt Doty：I am the co-founder of Golden Gate (GGX) and the chief scientist and chief architect of GGX. In 2014, I was involved in the cryptocurrency industry. I worked as an engineer in Ethereum and participated in the design of mining algorithms. My newly designed algorithm has reduced the gas fee of Ethereum mining many times.
Balal Khan：I am the co-founder and head of growth at ZKEX. ZKEX is a decentralized trading platform. The goal is to provide all users on the platform with a series of packaged services covering good functionality, good user experience, and perfect security. At the same time, based on the current development of ZKEX, we can provide users with simple, easy-to-use, efficient, fast and cost-effective solutions in complex ecological environments.
Vince：I am the co-founder of zkLink. As an infrastructure service, zkLink can provide users with Zk-SNARKs-related applications and solutions. zkLink serves as a middleware to connect different L1 and L2 layer related applications and solutions. We also provide related various complex APIs. Can provide customers with customized services to meet their needs.
Omer Ozden：I’m Omer Ozden, Chairman of Stonewood Capital and Partner at Zhen Fund International. RockTree Capital, as a professional fund focusing on early-stage projects and early-stage investments in Web3.0, has long-term cooperation with Zhen Fund and jointly invests in some high-growth companies. I found that the smartest people and entrepreneurs in the world are gradually gathering in the Web3.0 field, so Stonewood Capital is now fully invested in and focused on the cryptocurrency industry. Zhen Fund has also been deeply involved in this field for six or seven years. At the same time, we have seen many good projects with high growth and large-scale profits in the future.
CH Egan: Matt is the OG of OGs. Going back to 2015, Matt co-developed and released the Ethereum mining algorithm with Buterin. You are also the price setter of the Ethereum network gas fee. Please share some of your past experiences, including how zero-knowledge innovation affected you?
Matt Doty：I was indeed one of the engineers of the Ethereum algorithm invited by V God. Our pricing is essentially a cost issue, and the cost of gas fees can determine the future long-term competitiveness of Zk zero-knowledge innovation to a certain extent.
I would like to share with you the technical challenges encountered in Zk’s zero-knowledge innovation. We all know that the cost of doing zero-knowledge traditional verification is quite high. For example, the cost of Zk-related verification is now about 10 to 20 times higher than traditional USDC and NFT. What we want to think about now is how to reduce the cost by 300-1000 times.
In specific practice, GGX helps developers and computing personnel verify offline computing power online. By integrating multiple verification methods, gas fees can be reduced by more than a thousand times. Zk is currently experiencing various types of innovations. In the future, there may be a need for standardization in the industry, but there may still be a certain distance from the introduction of mature standards.
Golden Gate（GGX)
As an innovative cross-chain infrastructure protocol, Golden Gate (GGX) has achieved technological innovation in multiple cutting-edge fields in the Web3 technology ecosystem. These areas include interoperability, programmability, and zero-knowledge proofs. The strategic positioning of Golden Gate (GGX) is to promote cross-chain availability and solve cross-chain communication and liquidity challenges at the smart contract level in the Web3 industry.
Golden Gate (GGX)s hybrid virtual machine is designed for cross-chain applications and is compatible with EVM, WASM and supported tools. The hybrid virtual machine can not only realize the development of native cross-chain applications, but also support innovative applications based on zero-knowledge proof and cross-chain DeFi.
| Website: https://ggxchain.io
|Twitter:https://twitter.com/GoldenGate_GGX_
| Discord: https://discord.gg/goldengate
| Telegram: https://t.me/GoldenGatecn
| YouTube：https://youtube.com/@GoldenGateGGX
CH Egan: Stonewood Capital is famous for its early discovery and investment in some of the infrastructure giants in today’s DeFi and cross-chain fields (such as dYdX, The Graph). What do you think is the industry direction of Zk technology?
Omer Ozden：Stonewood Capital focuses on the most innovative and innovative deep technology developments in the world. All the guests who will speak today are researchers with scientific backgrounds. I can feel that to realize the development of Zk zero-knowledge innovation in the future, we may need to first think from the perspective of Ethereum, because Ethereum is now the most common and commonly used platform tool for everyone to listen to their voices.
RockTree Capitals investment philosophy focuses on the development trends and directions of the industry in the next two or three years. “Just like in ice hockey, what we focus on is not the specific location of the ball at this moment, but more about which direction the ball will slide in the future.
Around 2018 to 2019, I wrote articles focusing on Zk’s zero-knowledge innovation. At that time, I was conducting early exploration with Zhenge. We had discovered some huge application potential of zero-knowledge in the early days, but it was not until 2023 that we Only then did I see some real applications.
CH Egan: The next question is for Balal Khan. ZKEX.com provides bridgeless multi-chain trading with zero-knowledge guarantees. ZKEX is a trustless, self-hosted order book DEX with CeFi performance. What is Zk from your perspective? What does it allow your DEX to do that others miss? What is at the core of Zk innovation to make your DEX safe, secure and transparent? How can Zk technology be applied in more trading scenarios?
Balal Khan：Zk-SNARKs are a concise, non-interactive zero-knowledge proof technology that allows you to prove yourself without revealing too much about your cryptographic identity.
The computational cost behind doing Zk proof is quite high. In order to reduce costs, we are promoting Zk Rollup packaging technology. Packaging all calculations into cores can reduce the cost of the entire calculation to a certain extent. Other CEXs and DEXs have largely made some user experience and product compromises. ZKEX will not make such relevant compromises.
We want to improve this kind of transaction and achieve mutual trust, openness and transparent exchange, which are the trading goals that ZKEX wants to achieve. All users manage their own assets by themselves, rather than being completely hosted in a black box.
ZKEX focuses most on ease of use first, transparency second, and absolute security. There are already many mature DEXs on the market, and most DEXs will generate a lot of wear and tear during the transaction process. Because assets and liquidity will be stuck on a certain chain.
We at ZKEX will never require these users to entrust their assets to a certain party or a certain chain. All our processes are transparent and auditable. Asset management is conducted in a transparent manner so that assets always exist in the hands of users.
ZKEX
Layer 2 zero-knowledge proof multi-chain order book DEX
| Website: https://zkex.com/
| Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZKEX_Official
| Discord: https://discord.com/invite/ctDAYrrNTH
| Telegram: https://t.me/ZKEX_Official
CH Egan: zkLink is considered a transaction-centric, interoperable, multi-chain L2 network guaranteed by zero-knowledge technology. What features of zkLink can make these innovations happen for you? What kind of development does this mean for DeFi? What do you think of the future of Zk?
Vince：zkLink focuses on several basic points: first, scalability, second, user security, and third, interoperability.
There is a huge amount of potential in DeFi that deserves to be explored, and DeFi shouldn’t just be a market focused on by cryptocurrency industry professionals. In the future, DeFi should be used as a public product to serve a large number of ordinary people. As an infrastructure architecture, zkLink can provide users with solutions, products, and services, and the seamless links between them can enable DeFi to be widely used in a wide range of applications. There are already many different levels of chains in the crypto world, but popular application layer products are still lacking.
The market currently needs products that are easy to use and have low learning costs. zkLink has already conducted Alpha testing and linked 9 networks, and is currently working on liquidity integration. In terms of user experience, users can enjoy the same products and services as traditional platforms that can be self-hosted, self-application and more convenient.
CH Egan: I want to ask all three of you a question that can be answered simply. I would like to ask Matt, Balal and Vince whether Zk is positioned as a solution for blockchain scalability. Do you agree with this view? And what properties of Zk can solve such problems?
Matt Doty：First of all, Zk is actually the abbreviation of Zk-SNARKs. The full name of Zk-SNARKs is zero-knowledge concise non-interactive proof technology. Its fastest application is to verify our offline calculations online, and its verification process is Very fast, very efficient, so it essentially encompasses two things. First, our calculation verification can be made online. Second, it can better protect the privacy of some users, and the user does not have to provide some complicated information that he is not willing to provide.
Therefore, the specific practice and operation of GGX is to help all developers and computing personnel verify their offline computing power online. This means that on the one hand, it is verifiable, and on the other hand, to a great extent Reducing gas costs can help these developers achieve better cost control.
Balal Khan：When we find an industry or an innovation that changes from a large volume to a small volume, it means that this industry brings a lot of opportunities. This rule can also be applied to the blockchain industry.
When the blockchain moves from a large chain to a smaller and smaller state, it can release many possibilities and opportunities. High gas fees basically stifle the innovation and development of the encryption industry, and are not conducive to the improvement of the entire user experience, let alone the development of multi-chain interoperability.
Over the past five years, many practitioners have tried, but ultimately failed, to reduce gas charges. Zk technology packages a large amount of information on a small scale, so it realizes innovation from large to small and greatly reduces gas costs.
2023 can be said to be the first year of innovation for the entire Zk infrastructure and the entire blockchain industry. Matt also talked about this just now, and I very much agree with this. Whether we are doing such cross-chain or multi-chain, whether it is for traders or users, their assets, I repeat that sentence , it is always in your own hands, it is a transparent state, and it can also start long-term innovation in Zk in the future. It is only the beginning now.
Vince：Our main concern is the scalability of Zk. In addition to Zk, sidechains and Rollup are also one of the commonly used technical means for Ethereums scalability. Our ultimate goal is to hope that Ethereum can process more data, generate more UI products, and handle more complex scenarios.
Ethereum is the most used and reliable platform now. I also believe that in the next one to two years, we will see more experiments and applications in the field of Zk. I can say that I am relatively optimistic about future solutions. And I am quite optimistic about it, and I think this area can indeed bring more applications, whether in rollup or other aspects. Even now I see that some applications in the L3 layer have gradually surfaced, and maybe there will be more applications. There are other applications.
CH Egan: Thank you everyone, you have just shared a lot of possibilities that Zk will bring in the future. But we are now seeing that it is similar to many other applications in the encryption field, and we may need to face the process of standardization. On this topic, I would like to ask you, what is the current development status of Zk? What are its flaws? How to improve? Where is the next big opportunity?
Matt Doty：Thank you very much. I do feel that our industry will have such a need for standardization in the future. But standardization itself is also a huge challenge, because Zk is currently undergoing various types of innovations, and we are constantly taking more methods to optimize the application of Zk. We hope that it can be better and more implemented in the future. The process of de-trusting, but whether there are mature standards now, there may still be a certain distance. We are now also using some of the most common and mature methods, including Groth 16, which is the most convenient and classic method for testing. Thank you.
Balal Khan：We have repeatedly mentioned before that if it needs to be proved on EVM, the gas fee is too high. Now we are thinking about how to make relevant improvements on EVM. In the field of improvement, Polka 2 is our most common method and means. This is also the direction I think we need to improve EVM in the future to reduce gas fees.
Vince：No matter which layer of Zk EVM you are working on, there is a lot of original code work. We see code overlap in different EVM projects. We may have some preparations for open source code in the future, and we call on the entire industry to prepare for open source. Whether it is verifiers, hardware, or accelerators in the entire ecosystem, because these jointly shared knowledge can greatly reduce the cost of the entire industry.
Different companies in the industry have different market segments to compete for and grab. In todays market, there may be far more competition than cooperation. So this may be the future that we need to call for and the industry needs to better pave the way for standardization.
zkLink
Cross-chain transaction infrastructure based on zero-knowledge proof technology
| Website: https://zk.link/
| Twitter: https://twitter.com/zkLink_Official
| Discord: https://discord.com/invite/zklink
| Telegram: https://t.me/zkLinkorg
Balal Khan：When talking to other developers in 2022, we all believe that Zk EVM is basically unachievable. But this year, several RD teams have announced information about new technologies.
Practitioners should pay attention to some specific preparations in the future. For example, how to lower the cost of hardware and how to give developers better tools.
When exploring a longer-term path, Zk has two paths worth exploring in the future: One is to gain more trust from the government. The final application in the Zk field needs to operate in a compliant manner in order to operate in the long term. The second is to attract traditional financial industries. Traditional finance can truly apply Zk technology, which can change the slow and inefficient working model of traditional finance.
CH Egan: My next question is for Vince, what do you think of the future of zkLink? What do you think of the idea that projects and the industry can grow together?
Vince：zkLink now has 9 networks linked. Users can jump and convert between different tokens, and seamlessly and smoothly jump between different chains. In addition, WAS is also implemented.
Nowadays, a large amount of capital is invested in our chain, and a large number of traditional financial products have flowed into it, such as U.S. Treasury bonds, corporate bonds, and even some traditional gold and other foreign currency investments.
We also want to lay out more of the original ecological development of NFT and gaming industries on the chain. We are currently positioned at the development of the L2.5 layer. It will also be converted to L3 layer in the future.
Now we have reduced the cost to the 0.005 level. Lower costs mean larger scale applications. Our off-chain computing can increase TPS to the level of 1,000. When doing high-throughput engine testing, we almost implemented an application very similar to Binance, which can achieve self-custody and self-trading, allowing users to automatically do such trading products on different products, services, and chains. s Choice.
CH Egan: May I ask Matt, what do you think of the prospects of GGX, what do you think of the prospects of the entire enterprise and the prospects of the industry?
Matt Doty：In the future, GGX will continue to support the application and development of recursive Zk, because recursive Zk can eliminate the deployment of a trust layer. At the same time, some hybrid virtual machines are also being used. In addition, we are also doing some IDC, that is, the interoperability of some transaction trusts between blockchains. Now we have actually become a supporter of the Nexus ecosystem and have also deployed Cosmos on Ethereum. What we have to think about in the future is How to continuously reduce gas costs.
CH Egan: May I ask Balal, what do you think of the prospects of ZKEX and how it can grow together with the industry?
Balal Khan：Thank you so much. There is a lot of volatility and pessimism in the industry right now. In the long run, we are now in the tunnel, having passed most of the darkness, and are seeing the final moments of light.
We have a long-term goal of creating a perfect safe haven for investors, both new and experienced. In the future multi-chain trading scenario environment, no matter how everyone chooses, they will hold it for themselves. Invest your way. We will protect all conservative investors and risky investors. Protect and manage assets the same way.
In the future we will launch our own unified account. We hope to provide better investment strategy protection for all users and investors, so this is also our long-term development direction.
CH Egan: In addition to Zk that everyone is discussing today, what other problems need to be solved in the field of cryptocurrency? Which technology categories will play a key role in Web 3.0 for the next market cycle? As an ordinary token holder, what directions should we pay attention to in the future?
Matt Doty：GGX is currently in the Zk zero-knowledge field. In fact, it is still further deepening and improving the process of converting offline calculations into online applications, proving in a more efficient way that this is also the direction of our research.
Vince：What this industry needs most is products that are user-friendly and convenient. The infrastructure is too prosperous, but there seems to be no application products that users generally like. Improving user experience is even more important.
Balal Khan：2023 is the year of infrastructure, as we tinker with previously imperfect building blocks. In 2024, maybe we can embrace more excellent products.
Both investors and developers have many pain points, such as difficult-to-use tools and high costs. Solving pain points can truly lead to a long-term winner.
Omer Ozden：Whenever we talk about the future, what I see is not an abstract future.
CH Egan: Thank you very much for your wonderful speeches. If you are interested in OG Talk, I really want to advertise here. You can follow RockTree Capital’s WeChat public account and RockTree Capital’s Twitter account to continue to see follow-up reports related to OG Talk. Thank you all. .
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