Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Mona El Isa & Reto Trinkler: The Polkadot Protocol – One Blockchain to Connect Them All

Episode Date: November 22, 2016

System scalability and extensibility of system features are two central problems around which research in the cryptocurrency / blockchain industry has centered. For example, the Blockstream sidechains project foresaw hundreds of blockchains coordinating together to form an ‘Internet of Chains’ delivering extensibility to the Bitcoin system. Recently, Dr. Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum and Parity, put forth Polkadot, a technical vision to achieve the similar end-goals using different system architecture. Polkadot could enable individual blockchain networks to share security and communications infrastructure with other blockchain networks, forming in effect an ‘Internet of Blockchain networks’. Melonport, a team based out of Zurich, has taken up the challenge of deploying the Polkadot network and also building decentralized asset management software on the same network. In this episode we converse with Mona El Isa and Reto Trinkler, co-founders of Melonport, in order to discover more about the overall vision. Topics covered in this episode: Melonport, a team based out of Zurich, has taken up the challenge of deploying the Polkadot network and also building decentralized asset management software on the same network. In this episode we converse with Mona El Isa and Reto Trinkler, co-founders of Melonport, in order to discover more about the overall vision. Description of problem(s) Polkadot seeks to resolve Analogous design problems from technological history Overview of Polkadot network Overview of Melonport asset management software How Melonport and Polkadot connect with each other Next steps for the team Episode links: Melonport website Melonport white paper melonproject on GitHub Melonport explainer video Polkadot Network Polkadot white paper Parity and Melonport joint press release This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/158

This is Epicenter, Episode 158 with guests, Mona Elisa and Reto Trinkler. This episode of Epicenter is brought you by the Ledger NanoS, the hardware wallet which sets the new standard in security and usability. Get it today at ledger wallet.com and use the offer code Epicenter to get 10% off your order. And by Jax. Jacks is the user-friendly wallet that works across all your devices and handles both Bitcoin and Ether. Go to J-A-DoubleX.io and embrace the future of Crypto. currency wallets. Hi, welcome to Epicenter at the show which talks about the technologies, projects, and

startups driving decentralization and the global blockchain revolution. My name is Sebassan Kutu. And I'm Meher Roy. Today we have a very special episode for our listeners. We're going to talk to Mona Elisa and Rayto Trinkler. They are co-founders of a project called Melon, Melon Port. And they're building what is what might just become in the future the network of blockchains. and a decentless asset management software to run on this network of blockchains.

But before we get into their vision and what they're doing, let us have a quick intro from the two of them. Starting first with Mona. Mona, can you tell us a bit about your background and how you came to be involved in the blockchain industry? Sure. I started my career in market making and trading equities at Goldman Sachs back in 2003.

And then in 2011, I moved to the hedge fund world. became a hedge fund manager running a part of a long short multi-strategy portfolio. And about just over a year ago, I decided to take some time off to explore the world of blockchain and in particular some of the use cases for the technology to enhance what felt like a lot of inefficiencies in our industry. Met Reto pretty soon after that and we've been working together pretty much ever since. Cool. And Rita, tell us a bit about your background. Since when have you been working in this space and what have you been doing? Hi, I'm Rito. I have a background in mathematics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. I've been following Ethereum more or less ever since I first heard of it.

I've been working at brainbot technologies. And now I'm working at Melonport with building the Melon project. So as Mayor kind of put it at the beginning of the show, this is sort of a fundamental new concept that we're going to try to dissect today. And we've been reading the white paper. In fact, our listeners should know we tried to record this episode a couple of days ago and weren't able to really construct a sort of clear and sensible

framework for how we're going to explain this. So we said, okay, let's come back on it and try to explain it again. So I hope that we get it right this time. Because it is fundamentally something that is quite different from anything that we've seen before. And to me, it sort of feels a lot like when we first started talking about Ethereum more than two years ago

and that it's completely novel and it requires you to have a new type of outlook on how you consider what a network looks like, and especially in the context of blockchains. So Pocod is, I'll let you sort of explain it, Reto, is a network of networks. It's a network of blockchains. And specifically what it would allow is for different blockchains, depending on, regardless of there, size, their functionality of the types of industries or people that they kid or two to interact

together and to be interoperable. And essentially allowing for one blockchain to trigger events in another blockchain, which would in fact allow this interoperability that so much of us has been sort of talking about in that that has been defined as one major problem in the blockchain. How do we get blockchains to interact together? And so Pocodot, the white paper came out a few days ago. It was written by Gavin Wood, who's famously one of the co-founders of Ethereum. And I think this is probably one of the first times that, you know, the blockchain

or cryptocurrency media will try to dissect this. So I hope we get it right because it is very fundamental. So I'd like for you, Richard now, to explain. of your vision of what Pocodot is and what it's trying to solve fundamentally? So we kind of see it as the Internet of blockchains. If we look at the Bitcoin blockchain and kind of see it as a database, as a decentralized database, and we look at Ethereum and kind of see it as a world computer, as a decentralized computer, And we have all these different variations of it, like C-Nero and all of these kind of other computer-like structures.

Then we can see polka dot as the layer, which finally connects all of these computers and databases. So in a sense, what you're trying to say is that we fundamentally have a sort of of a coordination problem among among these different blockchains, right? So historically, when we when we look at our industry, we have, we have kind of thought in terms of there's going to be one individual blockchain. Initially with Bitcoin, we said, okay, there's going to be one individual blockchain and one individual currency to rule them all, you know, everything else is going to perish. There's going to be one blockchain, it is one currency, and it will be the blockchain,

quote and quote right that's where we started that's where our industry started then came ethereum and in ethereum it said okay we don't want to be really thought of as a blockchain we want to be thought of as a world computer so it's it's a it's a blockchain that is generally enough to really be thought of as a computer and although ethereum never said it explicitly when you say world computer you assume that there's this there's going to be one single one of them because only if there's one single network like Ethereum does it become the world computer but if there's like hundreds of them then there are hundreds of these right so somewhere intrinsically we were thinking okay there's going to be one big one giant world computer and now

with with polka dot the way I interpret your statement rito is is saying like we have to kind of cast aside these ways of thinking that there's going to be one winning network one winning blockchain one winning world computer, but rather think as that there are going to be a lot of different consensus computers or there are going to be a lot of different blockchains and they are all going to sort of coordinate together with each other, work together with each other, and they're going to form a network of blockchains and this network of blockchains will be singular. Like this will be the fundamental unit by which kind of our industry is organized. right? Would you agree with that?

I definitely would agree like there will be different computers, different databases, as there are already or now. I think that's a good point. I think it's unlikely that there will be one winning chain to rule them all, but there will be different chains with different abilities and different use cases. So I think, and like all the credit goes together. I think that the genius of his proposition is how loosely he defines basically what can be included into this network. So it doesn't even have to be, I mean, essentially it just needs to be a data structure that is validatable and globally coherent. And then it can be included. So it can even be a private chain, it can be a consortium chain.

It can be, you know, chain with proof of work, proof of stake, proof of authority. it's interesting, yeah. So before our show, we were kind of discussing different ways in which kind of we could explain this general concept itself. And we thought of a different analogies. Like, Rito came up with one analogy and, like, I came up with another. So one way to think of it is the way that kind of, kind of, kind of, Rito is going to use during the show,

which is that notion that in the beginning we had like computers, right? So the computer industry for since the 1950s until the 1980s probably, they were individual computers, right? And then for the first time with the notion, with the development of TCP and IP, you kind of built a network of computers where processes running on one computer could communicate to processes running on another computer. And we built a network in which all of the computers in the world could just be plugged into. and the idea is you start to think of an individual blockchain as an analog of a

1950s or 1980s computer which is like kind of standalone not able to interact with other blockchain networks and now the idea behind polka dot is hey can we build this new network that allows all of these blockchains to kind of coordinate amongst each other to run processes that are shared between blockchain. So something happens here, something happens on another blockchain, something is triggered on another blockchain, things like this. That's one analogy. And then the other analogy we kind of came up with is this kind of problem has been solved by other kinds of technologies as well. So because I'm from a biology background, the way I think of it is that if some

of you know that like in biology we have cells, right? So the human body is made up of cells. And if you go back to the history of biology in the form of evolution theory, then the cells were invented like three and a half billion years ago. And then for the next around three billion years, the world only had like single cells. These were like bacteria and these were like archaea. They were the different kinds of cells that existed in the world.

And like 600 million years ago, roughly, give or take a few hundred million years, a few tens of millions of years. These cells learned how to coordinate with each other, like work together to form organisms that consisted not of one cell, but like of multiple cells. One of the fundamental inventions that biology did

was the invention of the nervous system. So if you think of your nervous system, your brain and spinal cord, what it's allowing you to do is there are cells in your feet and there are cells in your hand. And these two need to coordinate in order to do something right and your nervous system solves this coordination problem for these cells

right the leg can do something send a message to the cell of the hand hand can do something send a message to the cell of the leg so this coordination problem was solved for cells this coordination problem was solved for computers and here we are kind of asking the question can you solve this coordination problem of sending information between blockchains for blockchains right so that's what we're going to be talking about right rito do you have anything to add to add to that or perhaps you could develop your analogy of networks of blockchains further yeah i think that there can be a lot of analogies drawn and in a way like we i mean like yeah you kind of mentioned it already um the way kind of i see this like if if we go back um 60 years

years in history, or 60 or so years in history, then we kind of see this big old clunky databases kind of developed by IBM and biggest houses. And then as history progresses, we see kind of they get, they improve a lot these databases and finally we kind of get to computers. So essentially we add logic on top of these databases and get computers. And then we go further a bit in history and we have all these different computers and essentially the invention of the internet comes up and we connect these computers together. And in a way it looks somewhat similar in the blockchain space. So we kind of start with databases. So I mean, if we look at Bitcoin as a database, which is very secure, but also has kind of, it's room for improvement.

And we kind of go a bit further in history there, and we kind of have the next big peak, which is kind of, in my opinion, in Ethereum, where we have this concept of database and we add logic on top of it. the genius of Vitalik Buterin. And now it really feels to me like we move a bit further. And now we're at this other peak where we kind of, we see all these different databases and all these different computers with all these different functionalities. And now we can connect them. So, and in a way it's, it's, in a way it feels like, I mean, if you look at traditional computers and it feels to me like the last big invention in traditional computers was kind of the

internet. I mean, we had a lot of, you know, we have AI and we have, you know, super high-performance small computers called mobile phones and they have all these things. But it feels to me like the last big invention was the internet. And in a way this might signal, you know, it might signal in a bit philosophical way, but in a way, this might signal the last big peak of innovation in the blockchain space as well. So now we start to connect them. There still will be so much room for improvement and all of these great features will come, but it might be the last big logical step for a while. It's fascinating how you talk about it as a big peak in the space. Like the space is only, what, eight years old? And already we're talking about perhaps

Like coming to the end of innovation in this space, you know, if you compare that to the internet, what did it take 50, 60 years before that happened? And sort of, you know, the sort of computers coming together and participating in the network, which is the internet. What I like about that analogy is that what the internet did essentially is it standardized communication between all of these systems that were very unstandard. So, I mean, today, we take it for granted that 20, 30 years ago, computer systems were very different and very incompatible. And the Internet sort of enabled standards to emerge, and now you have different types of processors, right?

So you have Intel or like arm chips or any type of Internet of things connected device, which is running on some other types. of chipset to communicate with each other through these standards that are well-establishing in the industry. But 20, 30 years ago, that was not a given. And that's what the internet and TCPIP enabled. And I see this as that leap, right, with blockchains, is this network protocol that would enable for standardization at the communication level to occur, not standardization of features, you because like CPUs, like processors, computers, whatever,

each of them has their own functionality and that's important. But we need to have a common language or common protocol that enables secure, efficient, and fluid communication between them. And as I start to construct my mental model around this, this is how I'm seeing it. Let's take a break to talk about the Ledger NanoS, the new flagship hardware wallet by Ledger. I'll pass it over to the Ledger's CTO, Nicola Baca,

who can tell you all about Ledger's security features and SDK. The Ledger NanoS is a personal security device based on a secure element, a screen and button, so that you can verify everything that is done on device and make sure that you are really doing what you wanted to do. Compared to our previous solutions, this device is based on the latest generation secure element, the ST-31 from ST-Micro.

The SC-31 is using a secure-examination. armcore, which means that you can have the same ease of development that you would have on a generic microcontroller, but benefit from the security features of a secure element. Security features include an application firewall at the lowest level that let you protect applications from each other, which means that you can load multiple applications on the hardware wallet, even post-issuance, and you as a developer will be able to leverage these features to load your own application without our authorization and without any kind of authorization from the vendor. We will be providing this device with an open SDK

that let you do anything you want with this device. We provide sample applications for cryptocurrencies, different cryptocurrencies, so Bitcoin, Ethereum. We will also provide a Fido Authenticator and you will be free to add everything you like. For example, you could add some secure messaging, some encrypted chat, and you'll see that the solution is quite popular,

full and very easy to develop with. The NanoS sets the new standard in hardware wallet security and usability. You can get yours today at ledgerWallet.com. And when you do, be sure to use the offer code Epicenter to get 10% off your first order. We'd like to thank Ledger for their support of Epicenter. So let's perhaps dive in a little deeper. I think we've sort of covered the analogies of what this looks like and what this enables. Let's talk about some of the core components of Pocod.

And I think it's important to define two of the core components. One is the Pocodot chain itself, which in the white paper is called a relay chain. And essentially, that's what it does. It relays communications between different blockchain networks, which in the Pocodot context are called parachains. So could you expand on that, please? Sure. So maybe we start with paracchains. So barra chains are essentially defined as validatable, globally coherent dynamic data structures,

which kind of has, you know, Bitcoin-like blockchains, which has Ethereum-like blockchains, which has consortium-like or even private chains. like it kind of encompasses all of them because all of them are validatable and all of them are globally coherent. So essentially, yeah, if we see these para chains as data structures and data structures can also be computers or in the in the analogy could be like a smart phone or like a high performance computer, a very secure computer. And we kind of kind of plug them into the network and then it's kind of, we need to have this TCP or essentially we need to have some sort of layer that they can kind of talk to each other.

And this kind of layer of talking to each other, as you said correctly, is the relay chain. So the relay chain essentially relays information from one chain or from one data structure to another. that's a great start right so there are their para chains and then they're relay chains so you think of it like parachines you can think of cells or organs the relay chain is like your like a spinal cord that relays messages between communications between them right now let's kind of start imagining on on a deeper level what happens inside a parachain so perhaps we could start with imagining like just one parachian network individually. And could you explain to us who are the important participants in one parachine network and what their responsibilities are?

So essentially if we start at a para chain and we said they need to be validatable and globally coherent, essentially validatable is kind of a need to be some sort of state transition function. Or in other words, there needs to be some mechanism to check whether or not the next block makes actually sense. And sense can just be like whether or not kind of it's within, like within some standards of bookkeeping. Like if somebody just wants to add a million to his or her account, that essentially would break these standards of bookkeeping.

And then the block wouldn't be valid. So that's essentially what is meant by state transition function. So, okay, if we start at the parachain, then we have the participant called a collator. And what a collator does is essentially he or she runs a full node of this parachain and just kind of delivers block to validators. And validators are participants in polka dot which kind of just apply. this date transition function on this incoming block. So they just kind of, so this is in order that validators don't have to have a full node of each

blockchain or of each parochane. They just kind of need to have this, this day transition function. So they only need to kind of validate if the next step or the next block actually makes sense. So, and kind of these validators are are split into subgroups. each subgroup and randomly selected and each subgroup is kind of responsible for one parochain. So it kind of starts with subgroups, they validate all the transition of all the parachines. And then it's kind of, once this happened, it's kind of, it tries to seal it into one relay block, which is kind of from all the subgroups into one relay block.

Let's try to kind of break down what you said. I think what you said is like a great summary of the system, right? And we'll try to kind of break, break this thing down by taking a couple of examples. So you started off with this notion of there being a parachain and these participants in the parachain, which you call it the collators, right? So let's imagine that there is like one parachain. for for purpose of simplicity we'll call it parachane one or p1 right now now p1 it looks pretty much like ethereum right you know it has the same functionality in ethereum and let's say ratto you and i are the collators for for p1 and there's already been a million blocks in p1 right and now a new block needs

to be added so the million and million and first block so how How does this block get added and what do we do in the process of adding the million and first block in P1? The Pocodot network would kind of vote on whether or not we include this new para chain. And once this is approved, essentially, you and I, the collators of this paracain would supply the information to why, validators. Yeah, and essentially validators apply state transition function, check if everything makes sense. And yeah, kind of once this happens for all the parochains, gets into a relay chain block and kind of included into the relay chain.

So one thing I think is perhaps important to define is the validators. Essentially, if we think of traditional blockchains today, the miners or stakeholders or whatever validating node we have has this role of a collator and a validator in one. They collect transactions and build the blocks and submit the blocks to be validated by the network. In this configuration, those roles are separated. So we have the role of the collator who assembles transactions to be sent to a validator, and that validator does the work that, let's say, like, a minor or a proof-of-stake validator or any, like if we take, like, tendermint, like a validator in tendermint, they add the block to the network.

Is that an accurate representation? Maybe we need to introduce, there's also the concept. concept of nominator. Okay, so essentially I would see validators as an analogy of a mining pool. And nominators are people who have a stake in PolkaDOT, but just kind of want to nominate a validator to kind of do the validating on behalf of them. So these people would probably be considered as the miners. the validators as the mining pools and the collators just as the people who kind of run a full note who do the heavy work essentially, deliver the data.

So these validators are not individual to one parachene, right? So we imagine this one parachain P1 and the two of us were collators to this and then we might further imagine another parachain like P15 and Sebastian and Mona will be the collidating. of collators for this. So if you have like two different parachines, P1 and P15, how will the validators, like who selects the validators for these parachines? And how are the validators initially selected at all? The validators are selected randomly into these subgroups.

So there's kind of two steps of validation. There is the validation of the individual para chain. parachane and there's kind of the validation of the overall relay or of the overall polka network so it's kind of two times validating so rato you have you've kind of we've walked through this concept of the para chain and they're being collators inside the parachine and then we introduced like a new party which is the validator right so can you tell us who is a validator How is the global pool of validators created? And then further, what kinds of interactions exist between validators?

Essentially, a validator can be seen as participants who keep the network secure. So essentially people who put stake, like stake in dot tokens, the underlying tokens of Pocodot. and bind them to the network, essentially with kind of vouching with these tokens for their accuracy of what they validate. So if they don't validate accurately, their stake is in danger. These people will be selected according to a staking pricing algorithm. So the network needs to incentivize these people that they put stake into the network. Like the same way as in a proof of work network, there needs to be an incentive for people to buy hardware and to actually mine. And it's the same here.

So the selection process will be essentially an algorithm which kind of has as inputs, like how much does a person want in return for their stake and how much stake is this person actually willing to commit? And then once we have a set of validators, which as of now probably is 144, this set of validators need to be grouped into subgroups so that they can kind of validate the individual para chains. And this grouping is done randomly. So what you're in a sense trying to say is that there's this central relay chain that is essentially like a coordination chain that helps with the task of coordination. And the relay chain has this native asset,

which is dot, right? So just as the Bitcoin blockchain has a native asset, which is Bitcoin the currency, Ethereum, Ether, the currency, PolkaDot relay chain has a native asset, which is dot, right? The unit is called a dot. And now this dot is like freely tradable on the exchanges like any currency,

but once, let's say, a holder, let's say Brian, let's say he owns a lot of dot units. So let's say there's a million dot units and Brian owns, so there's 100 million dot units and Brian owns, let's say, two million of them. Then Brian can essentially stake his dot units in order to become a validator. So he hands over control of these dot units to the network

and in exchange he kind of becomes a validator and then he can validate not only the relay chain but some of the data of the para chains themselves and we'll walk into how how that happens so different participants different owners of dots can kind of deposit their dots and become validators and this defines the global pool of validators right is that right yeah exactly okay Dot D-O-T. Head over to let's talkbidcoin.com to sign in, enter the magic word, and claim your part of the listener reward. One thing that I'd like to make clear, as a new parochain, let's imagine that there's a parochain, there's a polka dot network, and it is made up of n chains, and there's, there are many validators,

and it's secure. I want to create a new parochain. I want to create a new chain specific to a use case that let's say I want to build a blockchain for the French insurance industry and I want to participate in the Pocodot network.

What type of considerations would I have to make, whether technical, ideological and the construction of my blockchain what I have to make in order to participate in this network. So I guess the analogy is if I take the internet, if I want an internet-connected device, I have to adhere to a certain set of standards,

which is TCPIP. I have to have a network card that is compatible with TCPIP and software. And there's the whole stack that allows my computer to communicate with the network. If I'm constructing a parochane and I want to participate in the polka dot network, what are the considerations I have to make to do that? that's another really feel really in my opinion really a beautiful thing about this proposal okay so I usually see okay if we take a theorem and we look at it as a computer and then we take smart contracts on this computer I mean smart contracts on this

computer can then kind of be seen as software running on this computer so essentially we with PolkaDot, it's just a matter of downloading some software, like the analogy would be like a browser, and then you're connected. So PolkaDot has this concept of break-in and breakout contracts. And essentially, this break-in and break-out contracts are enable this communication. So even with existing Parachians, Parachains, you just download essentially the browser software, and then you're connected.

So this software would need to, let's take a concrete example. Like, let's say I'm building a permission tenderment style network, or maybe hyperledger, right? Like a permission network using one of these permission protocols. I would have to include libraries that would that would speak the Pocodot protocol and include those libraries in My Smart contracts? Is that? I would see it differently. I would see it as special contracts themselves that have some special logging functionality.

So if you send a transaction to them, they emit locks, and these locks are then picked up by the relay chain. So this is like the breakout. So if you want to send a transaction that goes beyond tender mint, you just send it to this one contract, and then it gets picked up by the relay chain. And the relay chain sees that, okay, this transaction wants to get out. And within these locks, they're essentially, or within this transaction that essentially is the destination, para chain and the information it should contain. The other way is with so-called break-in contracts, but essentially in the break-in contract, it validates if the transaction actually,

you know, it checks whether or not the transaction actually has been validated by the polka dot validators. So maybe we could take an example around this. So let's imagine two para chains. One is parachin 1, the two of us, Rayto and I, we are the collators for this. And then there's parachene 15 and Mona and Sebastian are the collators for that. And somewhere on the background, there's like 144 validators of the relay chain network. And let's say, Brian and Gavin, like Dr. Gavin Wood, Gavin, are two of these validators, right?

So you know, you have kind of personalized these. Now, fundamentally, what needs to be done is some, there has to be some way to exchange some message that might be starting from Para Chain 15, so Mona and Sebastian's chain, and then it has, and that message needs to be processed by us, which is Parachain 1, right? So explain to us like how would that happen. What is the difficulty in making this work and how would that happen on the relay chain? We need to make two differentiations here. should the transaction go directly to the other parent chain,

or should it go to the relay chain, and then maybe from the relay chain to the pirate chain. I think what you're asking is the direct route. No, let's take the indirect route from the relay chain to the parish. Okay. From the pirate chain to the relay chain, it essentially would be a special breakout, either contract or account, depending on the blockchain capability, capabilities. And this breakout account or contract would essentially omit locks that are picked up by the relay chain. So the relay chain kind of recognizes that something wants to get out. And essentially it's, yeah, it will be picked up what is called aggress transaction queue. Yeah, and this way essentially it's, it goes from the parochain to the relay chain.

And then from the relay chain to the destination chain, it would just be that the validator sign off, that this transaction wants to get in. And in the break-in contract on the other parochain, there essentially would need to be this inbuilt function that can validate the validators, you know, like an easy recover function. essentially, yeah, checks that this actually has been signed by the validators. And if so, it gets included. So we've talked about how new networks would be able to onboard Pocodot. So in my previous example, one industry-specific permission blockchain. Can you talk about how easy or complicated it would be for existing networks such as Bitcoin or Ethereum to onboard and participate in the Pocodon network? Sure.

So for any kinds of blockchains that have some sort of smart contract capability, it should be quite straightforward. For Bitcoin, essentially that the problem that needs to be solved is kind of that on Bitcoin, there needs to be a way to validate, you know, that the transaction has been signed by maybe 30, 40 validators. And that as of now is quite difficult for Bitcoin. Okay, so it's a problem with multi-signatures then being limited to a certain number of signing parties. Yes, that's how I understand it. So then in that case, it would require Bitcoin for the protocol to evolve in a way that it could handle a large amount of multi-signature,

like a multi-stakes scheme where you have potentially like 30 or 40 signing parties, would represent the validators. Yes. Okay. Let's take a short break to talk about Jacks. Jacks is a multi-coin wallet created by the people at the Central. Now, in the past, if he had a whole bunch of cryptocurrencies, it was a pain to handle them. You either had to leave the money in exchange, which was insecure, or you had to have

all these different wallets, which was a hassle. Fortunately, now with Jacks, those medieval days of darkness, misery, and suffering are over. Jack supports multiple cryptocurrencies and new ones are being added. But it's not just storing cryptocurrencies you can do with Jacks, but you can also exchange them directly from within side the wallet thanks to their shape-shift integration. And since there's only one seed, Jacks makes it super easy to back up and sync to the other devices.

Jacks works with Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and has browser extensions for Firefox and Chrome. So go to Jacks. that's j-a-a-double-x.io to download the wallet and get started today. We'd like to thank Jax for the supportive epicenter. So at this point, I would like to maybe come out of the technical discussion and bring it to a higher level in terms of use cases and what this enables. So I'd like to get your thoughts. Perhaps Mona, you can address this on

what use cases or what new types of business models, the Pocod network would enable in the broader scheme and the sort of the broader vision of a world with thousands, perhaps millions of blockchains. If we go back to the analogy of thinking about this as an internet or something that connects these different databases or networks together, one of the big advantages you have all of these transactions being decentralized or the relay chain being a decentralized process. is that it's very secure. So it might not be as fast as an exchange of information on the internet, but it's extremely secure. And so the biggest use case I see for this

would be exchanging things of value across chain. And so when you think about that, then it kind of starts to make sense why we as Melinport, who are building a protocol and software for asset management, were so fascinated and excited when we heard, or when Gavin opened up to us about the Pocodot paper, because it solves a really big problem for us. We've been building melon on Ethereum for a while now,

but one of the big limitations we had, and one of the things people kept asking us is how are you going to deal with assets on other chains if you want to truly be decentralized? And for us, Pocodot really opens up this opportunity, and it's kind of why we wanted to make it happen faster so that we could sort of, deploy Mellon on Pocodot essentially from day one.

Let's then perhaps dive into Mellon. And so what you're trying to solve with Mellon, and I'd like to explain essentially what Mellon is and what you're trying to do is is being able to transfer assets or transfer value from one blockchain, let's say, like Bitcoin, to another blockchain, like for instance, decentralized capital,

Europegged token or from an Ethereum contract token, you know, which represents some sort of asset to like a private chain that represents some sort of other asset. And you needed to have a protocol or what you were missing was a protocol that would enable this transfer of value

from one blockchain to another. Can you talk about that in the context of Mellon and the business that you're building there, how PeraChane solves that problem? So actually, the Mellon Protocol itself is a protocol that basically enables people to set up funds in a kind of non-negotiable way. So it standardizes performances, so you can start to compare different fund managers or portfolio managers. And it also stops the embezzlement of funds. So just like the Ethereum and Bitcoin Protocol, stop people being able to transfer a million dollars from one account to another, the Mellon Protocol stops a fund manager just being able

to transfer that money to his or her private another another account, friends account or whatever. So that's the setup process and then there's this kind of management process. So I think this is the first proposition, at least, that I know, of to set up and manage decentralized funds. But our limitation was that in order to stay completely decentralized, you have to, the only thing you can keep in those portfolios, which, by the way, there's a lot of on-chain tokens on Ethereum. But the real idea becomes a lot bigger

when you can start to gain exposure in those portfolios to assets on other chains. And maybe if digital assets become more mainstream, potentially one day on private chains or consortium chains. And possibly not just limited to tokens and currencies, but maybe one day you'll be able to hold intellectual property or anything you've done. can really imagine in these portfolios. So this this poca dot element kind of really

unlocks this for us because melon starts to become a much bigger idea in terms of an asset management proposal. That's a very interesting concept. So the way I'm kind of thinking of it is so so melon the project itself is enabling like fund managers who are who basically specialize in figuring out which places to invest money in set up their portfolio so what a portfolio means is okay there's like imagine like the smart contract system where you can you can get investors to invest in your portfolio and then you will buy other assets on their behalf and then when the other assets appreciate some of these returns are fed

back into this investor and all of these interactions are managed by a smart contract system right now in a sense like A really good asset management smart contract system would enable the fund manager to invest in a wide variety of assets. Like for example, if I open a brokerage account in the United States, then maybe I can, as a fund manager, invest in like 5,000 different shares of different companies. So you want a lot of assets to be enabled for fund managers. and a global network like PolkaDOT gives you exactly that kind of reach because there are lots of different blockchains, lots of different assets, and then these fund managers would be able to hold all of these in their portfolios.

Exactly, Meher. You've got it spot on. Yeah, so it's the reach, but it's also, we also profit from extensibility. So the same way, you know, this internet can connect different computers. with different abilities, kind of, we as the Mellon project can also kind of utilize this. So if we have, if we want to have, like if we want to have our protocol and a chain that has zero knowledge proofs, we might, or we can essentially just take the idea that is the protocol and just implement it and deploy it on this computer, on this chain, essentially giving our users, option to now have these portfolios with zero knowledge proofs and not kind of dilute the tokens

because it's all kind of the tokens are kind of on the network so that so that there is no conflict of interest there so that yeah that we can use i guess to summarize it's all about giving the user a choice and not limiting the user in any in any way so enabling them to invest in as many assets as possible and also to deploy set up and deploy their funds on any network they may choose in future because if we go back to analogies that we discuss in future some people if you're setting up a high-frequency fund you may you may choose a network or a blockchain that can can handle high-frequency trading if you're mostly concerned about privacy you might choose a different kind of

blockchain and so by having this flexibility we kind of overcome this and become more neutral and just allow the user to decide how they want to deploy their portfolio. And you can think of Mellon at this stage as an idea that can be deployed on any network which has the flexibility to do so because of Pocodon. That sounds really interesting. So can you walk us through like, so we have walked to these two concepts. One is like the Polkarot network and then there's one application of the Poldcarot network, which would be the sender's asset management in the form of Mellon. So can you walk us through like how you are planning to develop these concepts further?

Because as I see like PolkaDot is kind of a theoretical concept that was, that has a paper written by Dr. Gavin Wood, and then you yourself have a paper on how decentless assets management would work on Ethereum. How does this get translated into reality in the future? Sure. I think the idea is that we recognize there are certain elements such as deciding on, for example, the exact consensus mechanism or the exact inflation to build into some of these tokens, et cetera, that need to be further researched.

And rather than rush them, I think the first thing we'll do is enter into a research and feasibility study together with parity technologies. The idea is that we have a contribution period coming up soon where we'll issue tokens in both Dot and Mellon. And the initial goal with these funds is to start with a feasibility study and kind of sought RETO and our team to work very closely with parity technologies in terms of finalizing some of these details

and making sure we approach everything from the right place. And once we complete this feasibility study and conclude that it will be possible, we'll continue with the, we as in Mellonport will continue with a development of Mellon Protocol to a phase two, where we hope to be able to go live and then we will enter into a development agreement with parity technologies to launch the Pocodot, to build the Bocodot network, which we will then deploy. with melon onto it at Genesis blog. Okay, so this as I understand it, is like in order to execute the development of both of these technologies,

you're going to have this contribution period where you solicit contributions from various people around the world. Do you have any timelines on when this would happen and what shape that would take? Sooner than later, I would probably say. The exact date hasn't been finalized, although I think we'll be announcing more information on that very shortly. The contribution period will probably last about eight weeks. We will probably, Melimport will facilitate the smart contract that enables the contribution period,

and we'll probably be packaging the two tokens together, because we think it's a very obvious fit that you sort of build a network and have the application side by side. So we'll package the tokens together and once we raise a certain amount of crypto funds, we will enter into the plan that I just discussed with you. Great. Well, we're definitely looking forward to that, hearing more news about the development of Melimport as a project and also of Pocod as a network. It was hard to construct this in a way that there's understanding.

but I hope that our listeners find that we've dissected this concept in a way that it's digestible and that you'll be able to understand. And I'm sure in the coming days and weeks there'll be articles and other podcasts coming out, you know, that you can also watch or listen to or read that will help you, you know, also gain more knowledge about Pocod. Because I think it's a really fascinating idea that we were only starting to begin to see what the implications are, what the ramifications might be in the future. So good luck to you both on these very ambitious projects.

Thank you very much, guys, and congratulations on making it so easy to understand round two. Well, I hope so. And thanks again for agreeing to come on a second time. We kind of botched it the first time, and now I think we've got something solid that people will be able to fully comprehend. So thanks for coming on. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. We are part of Let's Talk Bitcoin Network. You can find lots of great shows on Bitcoin, blockchain technologies, decentralized technologies and all that good stuff at let's talk Bitcoin.com.

You can find us at epicenter.tv or YouTube.com slash Epicenter BTC. And you can also find us wherever you get your podcast, whether that be iTunes, SoundCloud or any podcasting app. So thanks so much for tuning in. And we look forward to being back next week. I'm going to be.