Customer Interview with Hoon Kim, CTO of Astar and Shiden Network
OnFinality, a blockchain infrastructure provider speaks with Hoon from Astar, on Swanky Suite, an all-in-one tool for WebAssembly (Wasm) Smart Contracts, dApp staking, the future of Cross Chain and more
Find out from Hoon Kim, Chief Technology Officer at Astar and Shiden Network, on how OnFinality has supported the team through its early days as one of the first parachains on Polkadot.
Hoon shares how big companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft are already supporting WebAssembly (Wasm), a staple for web developers in blockchain development, and how they’re supporting developers in the space with ‘Swanky Suite’ — an all-in-one tool for writing, deploying and testing Wasm smart contracts.
Learn about how a group of “Gavin Fanboys” came together to build a revolutionary system rewarding true value-creators through dApp Staking. Hoon talks about how Rust (Programming Language) helps to filter the real projects from the “hype” projects by preventing “cloning” of projects, and thus breaking the cycle of pump-and-dump schemes with no real utility.
🎙️ Watch the full video here ⬇️ or scroll down to read the full transcript!
(Disclaimer: The below transcript has been automatically transcribed hence there may be minor discrepancies with what was mentioned in the actual interview.)
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📜 Full transcript ⬇️
[00:00] welcome to OnFinality’s Customer Interview Series where we learn more from leaders in the blockchain space and how OnFinality’s infrastructure helps them build the decentralised future faster my name is Rob I’m Head of Growth at OnFinality and today it’s our distinct pleasure to have Hoon a bit of a legend actually on Polkadot he’s the CTO of the Astar Network joining us for a bit of us a chat uh learn more about how what they’re doing and how OnFinality helped them nice to meet you how’s it going
hey thank you for having me here I’m doing well
[00:33] yeah no worries can you tell us more about uh for the people who aren’t familiar with Astar and what it does
Introduction: Astar — The Innovation Layer Of Polkadot
yep so ask our network is a layer one smart contract uh platform and we provide the infrastructure for dApp developers to create a decentralised future just like everyone else here and we aim to become the Innovation layer of Polkadot so what this Innovation layer mean well we create we provide the best smart contract infrastructure for not just evm but webassembly smart contracts also interoperability between contracts with other chains but also other environments within the same network so in our Network evm and wasm are completely compatible with each other and finally we have dApp staking where users can stake on a smart contract that they like to support developers and encourage developers to create something that users care and want to support rather than just creating a a product so that’s all about hype or token sales
[01:35] yeah amazing I think there’s there’s a huge amount of uh material there and
what you’ve just said and um yeah I think you guys are one of the most innovative uh projects out there um in terms of like stepping all the way back there in terms of like you know you want to be the sort of Innovation Hub maybe just to break it down um simply would it be fair to say that you know because of this um kind of playground if you will that you know where you enable people to build you know with uh within the evm you know if they’re in virtual machine and there wasn’t the web assembly smart contracts you would almost hope to be the real like the first Port of Call for anyone building like an Innovative uh Dia and web3 is that how you would think of yourself
[02:22] yes definitely and we would call ourselves uh well we’re aiming to become the Gateway in the portal to web3 for any industry because uh with solidity and evm is it’s something that’s already well established and everyone’s so used to there’s a lot of materials out there easy to learn uh language and build something simple but when it comes to Industry level uh complex use cases and cases that requires more type safety you kind of have to use rust or other languages and this is where webassembly comes in and through interoperability yes like no uh dapps are really isolated from each other in our Network so starting so our Network as a would be a perfect starting point for people who want to branch out into other industry use cases using a traditional DeFi project that’s written solidity or vice versa where traditional or it’s not traditional but more like industry level use cases that leverages the blockchain could deploy on Astar Network and interact with any other applications that’s out there and we’re trying to expand our reach into other blockchains using various methods we’re looking into Cosmos but also of course xcmp that provides and yes and most importantly it’s also great for a small Indie developers as well small creators who don’t have the backing the financial backing that they have like most companies but through community support and by using our dapp staking they can still create uh generate passive income through the project that they created which other the community members want to support
[03:58] yeah awesome and for people who aren’t as familiar with you know a lot of the terminology there it’s really I think one of the most exciting things uh really about what you guys are doing uh you kind of have this sort of like easy on-ramp I guess for traditional developers to come in because of the nature of what you’re doing with wasn’t right
How Big Tech Like Apple, Google & Microsoft Are Already Supporting WebAssembly (Wasm)
yes yes so webassembly itself is um for people who don’t know webassembly itself is just a simple message instruction or I guess it’s it’s more of a virtual machine instruction for by code for uh the browser it was meant to be something that’s more performant and portable than the Java JavaScript virtual machine that a lot of browsers use by default uh where webassembly virtual machines can interact directly the hardware level um at the native Hardware level uh through code that targets webassembly as its compiling Target and this is these language includes C plus plus rust go
any other system level languages and what’s really um interesting here is
these languages are very mainstream everyone uses this for any cases that we already have uh and they’re well they have a very well established Library uh webassembly itself has a lot of support from Big Industry players like apple Google Microsoft um and and for blockchain evm is also just a uh a stack based virtual machine and just like web webassembly the only difference is the instruction sets like is it more standardized or is it really custom made and for evm it’s it’s very custom made uh it’s it’s kind of a proof of concept really for a smart contract as well a smart contract execution environments uh hence why it’s there are a lot of problems that could be fixed like for example handling asynchronicity or uh or language composability and that’s where it wasn’t is so powerful because it’s not although it was meant for a browser for the browser environment it’s not limited to the browser and you can definitely translate this into a blockchain allowing blockchains to run smart contracts that is written in any language that targets webassembly binary
How Astar Is Driving Mainstream Adoption Of Web3 With Outreach Activities & Swanky Suite
awesome and how do you [06:17] um you know with that in mind with with this sort of opportunity that you have created I guess to um like open the floodgates for for all these people to kind of build within Astar and then get exposed to you know all the other sort of innovative things you have uh like what what are you doing to to bring on these web 2 developers or are people just uh naturally coming to you or you guys kind of like doing like an outreach to to you know bring these people into your ecosystem versus you know starting somewhere else how does that work
so of [06:51] course we would love to have uh those traditional companies come to us without us doing anything but that’s yeah that’s not going to happen in this in this day and age where we have a bunch of blockchain sites uh so we have to do a lot of outreach and yes so there’s so we handle uh outreaching in uh both internal EXO preparing the internal side uh for the external developers who just jump right in and we also um do a lot of outreaching activities uh and talking to other companies to encourage them to build on us our
Astar’s Swanky Suite: All-in-One Tool For WebAssembly (Wasm) Smart Contracts
[07:21] Network and so for the internal sites we prepare all the toolings and infrastructure so um for example we have Swanky tools or Swanky sweets uh which is a set of uh all-in-one tool for building webassembly smart contracts so you don’t need to know how cargo contracts work and if you want to build in assembly scripts uh there’s the ask edsl which is uh which is from which is made with the assembly script which is a sub language of typescript which compiles which allows typescript like syntax to compile down into webassembly so it’s much easier for developers who are used to typescript which is like a huge uh you know portion of developers and for them they can just jump right into building their own simple smart contracts to the Swanky Suites and with Comprehensive documentation which is we’re working on right now as well you can learn more and create something that’s a little bit more advanced uh all through Swanky and another internal site is of course the the infrastructure so providing the infrastructure for developers to build their own stuff uh and this infrastructure also includes uh providing nodes uh responding notes like you know Services that’s uh that OnFinality provides as well so you know OnFinality is I believe uh one of the go-to choice for a lot of our ecosystem projects and we definitely push this and we encourage them to build use OnFinality as like their their end point uh for for their projects and for an external reach uh we we are planning a lot of hackathons we initially initial phase was attending a lot of conferences and that’s how we did spread our name out there but if we want developers practical developers coming in um we have to talk with corporations we have to talk with uh with students hackathon uh to organize hackathons or to uh onboard corporate institutions for their Solutions and recently we’ve had a deal with the docomo which is one of the biggest uh telecoms providers in Japan uh and because we have a huge presence there they yeah they were putting billions in their uh to start this web 3 initiative uh for researching uh how to use web3 use cases for uh sorry uh for traditional existing use um use cases and infrastructure uh on the on web3 Solutions uh to expand their reach and provide a better quality service and of course we’re also talking with various big players like uh well Japan is also known for their art of their media right so we we are talking with a lot of company companies and and individuals uh who are well known for their artwork uh who are interested in building an nft uh making nft out of their work uh or the IP we’re also talking with uh big corporations like Toyota as well and um Sony all those all these companies so that’s how yeah that’s our activity for now
wow yeah amazing uh there’s again [10:23] like so so much so many Rich uh you know things you guys are doing it’s uh it’s hard to keep up and you know one of the things you mentioned earlier and one of the things that’s like super interesting for people is this this concept where you know everybody or a lot of projects including us actually have this kind of um you know the saying of like four Builders bodybuilders that type of ethos but I think you know you guys perhaps more than anybody really uh like embody
[10:50] that completely right with this like the build to earn and staking to earn Concepts can you explain more about that
Astar’s Ethos
[10:57] because it’s just incredible what you’re doing there uh yeah so I guess first yeah our ethos uh the way how our company started was if you really break it down we you can say we’re just we were just a bunch of Gavin Fanboys coming together seeing the web free future like oh my God in tropical web I want to build so many things but where should we start uh and substrate was the answer for us and we wanted to yes like you could say we want
to create uh something like what substrate did for blockchain developers
but uh for people who are trading dapps uh and what’s one thing we really
realized is right now the web 3 Industry relies a lot on hype uh tvl monetary incentives uh and you know if once the market goes down which I guess you can say we’re kind of in that situation uh everything falls down right when your fundamentals are always about money and I feel like that’s just uh such a shame because this technology can do way more than just you know create be a monetary um system uh it’s it could be something web3 is all about creating this ecosystem uh where where there is a service but without a service provider explicit service providers um and you’re able to create your own digital Nation uh that’s that’s why that’s where I see the power in it and Builders are the ones who really bring this uh happen they they’re the one who makes this happen and um and that’s why we feel like why is uh we felt the need to incentivize those
How Astar’s dApp Staking Revolutionises Value-Creation
[12:31] builders well and right now traditionally Builders had to rely on investments uh from bigger firms or they had to Hype up their token so the token price goes up and then hopefully uh they’re able to make some profit of it but in the end it ends up being a pump and dump-esque like scheme um even if it’s not really a scam like it sort of turns out to become evolves into a scam because that’s that’s the only way you can really make money uh in in a lot of ways so how can we solve this and that’s where that’s taking come in we want to become a platform where that staking isn’t really meant to make developers rich or anything uh we just want to make sure that the incentivization goes to the places that actually creates the ecosystem that enriches the user experience and that that fastens the the adoption of web3 and we believe that’s where that those are the depths for users they are just taking their tokens and this model is similar to something like patreon uh where you’re able where users can have pay a uh regularly pay uh their favorite Creator so the creators can continue their work um but uh in our case it’s the barrier of Entry is way lower than patreon since patreon you actually have to pay money but uh in our case we you stake those tokens and through networking inflation and uh how you know generally where where the um staking rewards are generated from instead of Distributing that to those uh to validators where we’re paraging so we don’t we don’t have validators therefore we can redistribute those rewards to the depths and that’s the that’s the gist of adapt staking
yeah really really neat and I guess just [14:17] to um to make it simple for for some people you know if you have Sr tokens you can you can basically not uh you know nominate those towards projects that you think are doing cool stuff and those the builders will get uh income from that uh you know which is really neat so you can support like directly the people who are building stuff and you know the Astar network is really facilitating that kind of community and things around it which is cool and I don’t know if you’ve seen there’s a um sort of reminds me a little bit of um there’s a show at the moment on Netflix about how Spotify came about and there’s that change in the music industry you know where and I’m not I’m not comparing you guys to Spotify because of course there’s many many differences but you know that relationship between uh you know trying to get the you know value to the artist and and kind of promoting the artist and kind of getting rid of some of the middlemen you know eventually from from the music labels and so on so it’s really cool and I think with that if you kind of look at that model then you guys are quite an interesting um piece of the puzzle where you can see inside like like what are the exciting niches perhaps or things that are being built or what what’s the what are things that are resonating within your community you know what are people uh you know putting their their tokens to [15:41] work on can you can you share more about that
uh yeah so right now uh as everyone
How Cosmize Became The First Polkadot-Based Metaverse On Astar
[15:47] would know like web3 is still very Niche so like you know Niche within Webster is like finding a niche within a niche uh which which is like what five people or something just like you know vastly supporting that project um but when it comes to projects that a lot of people are supporting I think we have a great uh a lot of gaming uh projects are coming in we have cosmized one of the um the first or actually yeah the the first metaverse uh project on our star and um I think the community was way bigger than I expected I’m I’m I was never really a huge fan of metaverse that much because of the value proposition they’re always about like you know land sales and money and uh that sort of rubbed me the wrong way but with cosmis they were really Community focused and Community Driven it was made by the community and they just wanted to have this place where all the Astra ecosystem can come together uh and it’s yes that was pretty amazing we also have a lot of nft projects in Dallas that works around the nft project those projects the nft projects uh and the artwork but also Community nfts uh that’s that represents uh you as a membership within a Dao and metaverse projects I think those those get are getting the most supports and Community [17:06] engagement
okay okay cool I’ve heard you in another um presentation talk about how there’s like people uh like not incentivized to innovate and you can’t attached on it before around you know that people you know some teams can just Fork an existing project uh you know raise a bunch of money change a logo I think and then then they’re kind of like done right um with with the macro environment now and especially like what’s been happening in the last few weeks and crypto do you think that there’s going to be do you think this will change anything like you know because it’s been so easy to kind of do that do you think that’s gonna continue more because things are tough or do you think that there really is going to be a change now from like everybody in the ecosystem that you can’t just get away with some of this stuff now there’s going to be a higher level of scrutiny I guess from whether it’s yeah the communities or investors and so on and there really is going to be that Innovation that our star is driving for
How Rust Helps Filters The Real Projects From Hype
[18:12] yeah that’s a very great question my uh concern was always that the people because there’s so much money involved in this uh in this industry and everyone’s getting an investment for the most stupidest thing uh it’s so easy to just copy others uh other other projects and now with the market downturn um I I think it’s definitely going to be harder uh to get noticed with your projects uh like if you make for example you make a new nft project like unless you really have some sort of utility or on name value or some sort of unique value proposition that that would get people uh people’s interest it’s going to be near impossible to get any funds that that you were able to receive you know um like a year ago for example but will this trend um continue we’ll try and change like completely or um I would say it’s more at this stage it’s still a temporary thing uh for for two major reasons one is that the barrier of uh copying something and uh just flipping flipping a project um is very low so anyone can do it uh now we have more solidity uh examples uh solidity use cases that are so big so if the market goes up and people are looking into new products coming in um definitely there’s gonna be people who are just going to flip existing projects with rust this kind of it’s kind of solved because you can’t really clone existing solidity projects and expect it to work the same you really have to put your mind into it and when you put your mind into it you see that you see some flaws in it you see uh ways to improve on it so naturally it becomes into a its own thing which is why we’re really pushing rust and other languages to create smart contracts instead of reusing the same one um but the second Point why why I feel like it’s not it’s still a temporary thing we might see it uh we might see other like you know projects copy each other in the future is because it’s uh we don’t have enough um I guess attention from or a positive attention from the mainstream media uh it in terms of business opportunities and also in terms of education so educating people to understand the real value of blockchains and web 3 the real purpose uh is very hard compared to you know seeing being is seen as a money making machine um we know that it’s uh crashed now but there’s also a lot of sentiment where people know that you know there was a couple of times where the the numbers went really high and the lower it gets a lot of people are now thinking like okay so it’s like my my time to go like a thousand x a million x or whatever uh and these these people sort of I would say that makes it difficult for people to focus on building something that really matters uh not because of its monetary incentives but because of its utility uh so we still need more people to come in but I am still hopeful that uh as more big corporations or small creators uh comes into this industry uh this this ecosystem and sees its true value and creates something that the average users might see a value in then you can see some real change meaningful changes
yeah great great [21:37] um if you bit of a random question but if you weren’t doing what you’re doing now and kind of thinking about like you mentioned that there’s something’s missing and and now you’ve you’ve got this platform to build like really Innovative stuff what do you think is missing or what opportunity do you think is really exciting for that next phase or what you know what are people not doing that maybe is something that’s like an opportunity out there to be to be great
Cross Chain’s True Potential — Beyond Asset Transfers
yep uh so for me in a technical term [22:08] um I guess one one of the biggest missing features uh Missing Piece the author network is researching really hard to work on is uh is async native asynchronous of Team smart contracts so everything every execution is in a smart contract is synchronous um right at the moment and there are asynchronous languages like gear or uh asynchronous environments like gear or Cosmos they also have asynchronicity um and they but they only work within the same network so if you but what if we can translate uh asynchronicity for or represent asynchronicity for uh cross chain functions where you’re requesting another blockchain uh to execute this feature and then the smart contract is waiting until they get response from that other blockchain if we can have that that the at a syntax level for um for smart contracts I know rust in all the languages already do support that in terms of their language specifications but it’s still not supported in a smart contract context and once we can allow that I feel like the use cases would be exponentially bigger because most of the Cross chain functions that we see right now on blockchains are just asset transfers and because it’s only asset-based asset focused they’re thinking in people are making apps or adapts in terms of assets and this is limiting their creativity in my opinion so that’s one of the biggest amazing features another missing feature would be I guess it’s also a matter of like having blockchains that are really focused uh if from my understanding
The Current State Of Blockchain And How We Can Derive True Value From Blockchain
[23:40] based on my observations the current blockchain because the landscape they’re all they’re all boasting about how fast uh how stable and how cheap their network is and to me I I see blockchain as like a digital Nation where you have Merchants that are smart contracts and Merchants can definitely communicate with each other within the same jurisdiction cross string would be like uh you know conducting international trading and in the future I believe that the competitive advantage of blockchains are going to be slightly meaningless and instead we’re going to focus on comparative advantage where you know conducting a um having a certain Merchant within a or certain business case in a certain blockchain makes more sense than the other way around your game uh focused blockchain or uh industry like car manufacturing the focus blockchain whatever that’s the that’s the future that we I feel like uh would make blockchain exponentially better and more appealing for so many people um that’s missing right now uh and most importantly I guess you can say like to me a blockchain that’s boasting about how gas uh how cheap their gas cost is is like saying a country saying like oh our country is the best because we have the lowest tax like it’s it’s I guess yeah I see why some people might want to go in there for sure but uh that’s not that’s not what defines a country a country is defined by their cultures that what they produce and what kind of community people they have and this is what I would like blockchains to see in order for us to really move forward into the next step
yeah I agree um I think uh in this current well the cycle it’s just kind of [25:18] happened or happening I think the the sort of the tribalism between or you know that’s happened around certain blockchains has really been uh a real blow in lots of ways I think to some of retail investors I think that sort of tribalism has hurt a lot of people in different ways and also um projects and general advancement right because there’s a lot of people being stuck like in these sort of Kingdoms and and things they’re not really thinking about ultimately you know does it really matter right and that kind of thing like what you’re talking about a lot of these things are almost hygiene factors and uh you know it’s not really the way this goes forward of course they’re all important you have to have those things in order to advance but it’s not um it’s not really um ultimately you know how this is going to proceed um yeah interesting um and can you talk a little bit about um you know how you came across OnFinality and and how the services you know benefited as star and the Shiden [26:19] network
How OnFinality Supported Astar Since Its Early Days
uh yeah so the I think yeah have you asked OnFinality was one of our first uh earliest um infrastructure provider and at the time I believe on finality was providing services for most of the major pair change well I mean now they do it for all but um back in they do like they were approaching all the major pair of chains uh like that got a slot in the first option and yeah we were one of the um the first batch uh alongside movie Mikala that’s where I believe our relationship really like officially uh started from from my understanding uh although I do know that we were talking um before as well um and it’s in terms of like how it benefits like as I mentioned before it’s uh the and for providing infrastructure and an endpoint for the um the ecosystem developers it’s very important especially for us where uh we are just a we’re just a network and the adapts are the one who’s really using the network and we can’t provide all the inputs of ourselves so having onfinality was amazing especially when during the early phases of polka dots there were a lot of runtime upgrades and a lot of changes to the RPC and every time that happens the the nodes the endpoint has to perform like a cleanup uh upgrade from a clean State basically so they’re from from scratch in order to have those uh new rpcs and finality was very responsive for that we yeah so that’s why it’s saved us a lot when whenever something happens like OnFinality it was the way to go it was like the the default uh URL uh endpoint for a while um yeah that’s that’s like I think the biggest
um yeah I hope that on finality gave us you know appreciate appreciate the support um just a couple of final questions you know in your did a bit of uh research and like clearly you’re a very talented guy you’re you know CTO of Astar you’re CEO of Indie gaming company and you’ve won uh all sorts of awards and different fields uh I even watched something where you said even though you’re you’ve kind of you know in the sort of technical role that you see yourself having more expertise and like marketing and business which is amazing so clearly you know you’re the type of guy that I think you know anything you sort of set your mind to you know you you make a success so what what led you to to crypto and what keeps you here
How Crypto Found Hoon
[28:56] yeah uh well how I started crypto it’s uh it’s a pretty funny story because it sort of found me uh and sort of like pushed me it pulled me here to the industry instead of me um really like going in there uh I mean compared to like most people story so how I first like how was I first exposed to crypto uh it was like when I was very young uh I used to do like I used to do a lot of um just like security audits uh for people like for a commission and a lot of just you know odd jobs gigs on the on the internet and I had a client who was willing to pay in Bitcoin and had no idea what Bitcoin was uh I took the I took the task as more of a challenge than for actual money uh and Bitcoin at the time was like nothing so uh I was so I looked into Bitcoin and the technology was quite interesting uh but I still couldn’t really see like something Bitcoin uh Bitcoin itself has something you know that I’ll be working on uh though I did I did the look into my mining pools and sometimes participated and then it when when you can still mine it with your CPU uh good old days and and now leg fast for a couple of years uh did the I was in my undergrad um senior yeah senior years of my undergrad I had to write a thesis uh and at the time I was actually mastering uh I was majoring in in management business administration so it’s like nothing with tech uh just because I love management uh I love the concepts Steve Jobs was like my heart my hero so I wanted to be like him uh so yeah and I for my thesis I had to write something I want to write something about tech because I was interested in Tech uh but it has to be related to management and I at the time I was really interested in the stock market and asset management so it was like how can I how can I write a thesis about stock uh Asset Management without me doing the field work where I don’t have to like just ask surveys or actually go to the stock market and stock exchanges and like give tell you know survey them um so the answer was make my own system where I can conduct these trades so I I thought okay so you know the blockchain was like the only solution I could think of I looked into every other ways like make my own simulation or whatever but I didn’t want to take too much time so um blockchain was the actual answer at first I wanted to I was planning on making a solidity contract but the gas cost uh unpredictable gas cost was like a huge problem uh with my research because I can justify why a corporation would go into uh into blockchain if the gas cost is too high and unpredictable because it’s a huge risk for them especially like Service uh risk of service downtime although etm doesn’t have a downtime per se but uh the gas because of the changing gas cost like it could there could be uh interruptions uh with the with the client so so I had to find a different way which is to make my own blockchain and I didn’t want to make my own blockchain from scratch uh because that would be crazy uh if I looked and uh like out of just pure coincidence I had this um so someone from uh so a former student of my seminar uh was actually uh like working with parity at the time and he was talking about polka dot and substrate it’s like 2019 I think like yeah mid early to mid 2019 it was like that polka does the next big thing you know you gotta you gotta get in it’s like Shilling crypto to me I had no idea about like investing crypto just the technology sound interesting okay so blockchain but the interoperable that’s that’s awesome so now I was like maybe maybe what if I uh changed my research so that every company has their own blockchain and let the blockchain interoperate with each other and represent uh uh I guess like stocks as as uh as the crypto native cryptocurrency of the blockchain although like using stocks was was it really like uh accurate but still a way to you know represent assets of a company uh so I created my own blockchain um and made my own palette and tested out and all I will disabled that somehow that thesis got uh known to Sota was living in Tokyo uh and he called me was like uh or messaged me more like it was like hey I saw your I saw your research and that’s all your project it looks like you’re working subject you want we’re also working in substrate you want to like get a job like why does this guy and I was I didn’t know what’s going on but I thought I thought he wanted to talk about blockchain with me so I accept it and we talked and all of a sudden I was part of the team
well what a what a journey awesome and how would you like for people who maybe don’t have that sort of uh background or how would you advise them to get into
Hoon’s Tips For Getting Into Web3
[33:34] um web 3 right now uh I think right now is it’s a really good way to get in uh no noise just you know just pure focus on building uh how to start so first first thing and the most important thing for any project is understand what you want to achieve uh as in like what do you want to get out of either this technology or just uh just your dream project just think about the project that you want to create or you want to work with and see what’s the best solution because right now it’s so easy to create your own blockchain with thanks to substrate and the parenting option uh purchase slots are also quite affordable so the the difficulty of onboarding is not that high the only thing that’s difficult is thinking about token economics and securing and securing um a diverse set of collators so that your network is alive um but it’s relatively easy compared to the old days so technology is there uh smart contract is also much more accessible with solidity but also rust uh you can build smart contract with rust or C plus plus uh any language that can compile down into webassembly as long as the compiler does as long as the compiler does targets the proper interface and this means that your knowledge if you already have knowledge in those languages it’s perfect uh what I want to say is now technology is not the issue at this uh this Age Technology is not the issue the only issue is your imagination and your want to create something so understand what do you want to get out of the future if you were able to put this one block in the future and and put yourself in there uh what would it be understand that and see if that could be achievable if they’re web free because web3 is an evolving space and once you have a dream your vision write that down show it to the community the community loves it then there you go you guys you got yourself a project anyone from the community can join in uh to your project and you got yourself a [35:31] team
um yeah things have definitely changed um well thanks home real pleasure to talk to you today learn about a little bit about Astar and you guys have like really uh inspirational uh think of you know if people want to learn more you can check out your website um you if you want to learn more and build uh with Astar you’re welcome to check out our website and uh at dot on finality.io you can sign up there for free and get up to 500 000 daily API requests um and take your day out to the next level with all sorts of interesting monitoring and and tools you have to understand the behavior of your users super easy check out our website and um yeah thanks again home uh great to Great to chat and uh yeah all the best likewise Ralph thank you so much for having me it was a pleasure
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About OnFinality
OnFinality is a blockchain infrastructure platform that saves web3 builders time and makes their lives easier. OnFinality delivers scalable API endpoints for the biggest blockchain networks and empowers developers to automatically test, deploy, scale and monitor their own blockchain nodes in minutes. To date, OnFinality has served over 287 billion RPC requests across 60 networks including Polkadot, Ethereum, Moonbeam, Astar, Avalanche and Cosmos, and is continuously expanding these mission-critical services so developers can build the decentralised future, faster!