Ladies and gentlemen, we are back. Crypto news pod is buzzing. As always, we have another incredible guests on top today. Our guest is Jonathan Shemuel, the founder and lead developer of a leaf dot I am. Our guest has a passion for web three and is on a mission to decentralize and revolutionize storage, computing, indexing and security. If you're a salon fan, you're absolutely going to love
this episode. He is a chiseled vet in the salon space and is going to drop a multitude of knowledge bombs, so get your popcorn ready. Without further ado, I'm very pleased to welcome to the crypto news podcast. Jonathan Shamrock. Jonathan Welcome to the show.
Thank you Hello ready thank you for like inviting me today
fired up to have your ima big I guess we got we got to start with geography I often do but big fan of France I do speak French so when I go there it no it makes life a little bit easier. But man, what a country you are so grateful to be there. I absolutely love France, Paris in particular. But what is your favorite part about Paris? Tough question. I know.
That's a good question about Paris. What I love the city in general is really cool. Not always what all the tourists see. But even all the tourist parts are quite nice. Like I really love to my take my bike and go all around Paris Go To Meeting on the other side of Paris. Take my take my bike on the riverbanks. It's really nice. I love it.
I generally don't understand how French citizens aren't fat because I know you guys bike lot. You walk a lot. You know, you're all very active and fit people but when I was there a couple of years ago and I normally fast right? I normally do you know if we're out my window will be there eight hours or six hours but I'd wake up and go out of the you know, apartment or hospital or wherever I was and you just smell baked goods. First thing in the morning you smell
espresso and baked goods. So I'd start my morning with a double espresso and like, you know, one almond croissant one and two other pastries. I just I don't get how you guys aren't all Tabi. But what's the secret that
we don't eat pastries are days. Likewise on on Thursdays? We like only 80 on the weekend? If not, you just get fat.
Gotcha. I love it. I guess we should probably get into some fun crypto stuff. You were at the salon conference a couple weeks ago in Lisbon, another great city. Now what was that like? And I believe you weren't at NFT NYC I was there that was an absolute banger. Probably the most fun crypto conference I've been to, especially in a sense that everyone was so united. You know, there was really no bad
blood. And just it was really cool seeing a lot of people who, you know, became millionaires off of internet based JPEGs. Now, what was the salon conference? Like? Do you have any really good or funny or interesting stories from the conference? Well,
it was really nice. I discovered Lisbon with that conference. It was really a great discovery for me because I really love the city. I will go
back there that's for sure. And what was nice that there were people who were there for like a month some of them even like moved for like multiple months just for like all the conferences because there was a theorem conference Cosmos conference near conference, Solana conference, etc etc. And it was like people just became nomads gone to like to like to like have have their life in Lisbon for for like a few months. So it was quite interesting to see. And there was events all night or day side
events, whatever. People could could just not keep up with that. So that semi locals we just got there to like leave for a few months. Didn't do all the silence. People were like, like me just for like a week there. We were doing all the silence but these peoples were because they were a bit exhausted. So it was nice to see. understood that the conference itself was was really awesome. Like they took the best places of Lisbon at St Lisburn attach to for free. And you could take cabs between the
places. So that was a bit the black point is that we we always had to take cabs between one place on another on the There were like three or four of them. So you needed to like 25 minutes of gap, or whatever between the places where the conference is where all across the all across the city. So if you wanted to like talk with someone in some place, then go back to suit, then go back to like this place. You lost a lot of time. But those venues were huge and
great. One of the best venues I've ever seen for a conference, actually, so it was worth it. And then there were a lot of developers in suit, Lisboa, and in the other places, especially as to fear it was a lot of VCs. A lot of people talking business all the time. Well, if you're raising money for a project, that's kind of cool. If you are just here for like developers, or just, you were just staying at Sood, which was where all the developer talks were, and it was
cool as well. So it was a good mix on the fact that places were far away, kept, kept all the all the business and VC stuff separated from the developer tracks, which was also not that bad of a choice, because developers were not to separate it from developer tracks. So it was quite interesting of choice for a conference. And I really like that. And I think that the closing party was astounding. I really don't like electronic, but I'm not that fond of electronic music, but I was
really into that. So like that DJ from Matrix AI, I think was really great. Like,
I love that what was it like in regards to a bunch of people who again if you got into Solana last year at this time it was $1.52 bucks a coin three bucks a coin and now you know it's in the hundreds What was it like seeing everyone you know, at minimum 50x their their salona bags and then coming to this conference where people flaunting money like could you tell that there was you know, wallets were little fatter than usual? What was the sentiment like?
Well, I feel there is a lot of people who like entered later on, on didn't do the work 50 weeks. I personally didn't, because I only had a few sort here and there just to pay for the gas and fees. For investment position, just like most people, I think, when you use a chain, you can just pay for the gas with whatever you want. And it's
not really expensive. And I don't think that there was a lot of people who did a lot of money there were and you could see them I was joking with a few people that you could recognize people who did a lot of eggs with their investment because they are saying that they are looking for investment that they are looking for the next big thing etc. While in reality they're just enjoying going around and a few of them were just open about it
nice nice and and again. I Jonathan I don't mean to ask what the elephant in the room but on Twitter I literally saw I'm gonna say 75% of my the people that I follow who went to salon or conference ended up getting sick Now mind you, it wasn't COVID I want to say like one or two of the 20 or 30 people in my feed who went there got COVID the other 28 got, you know, just regular common cold but like what was that? Like?
Can you give me any? Any exclusives on the salon conference called the winter out?
We all called it the conference called My co founder Claudia didn't get it. I haven't got it. I I had it was kinda harsh. It started when I got back in France or and it started with some sore throat and then you start coughing and then you you have already knows the conference where that started off November. I still call from they still have a runny nose. And that started was sleeping a lot of hours per day. So on it's still not completely passed for me. So I guess it was
some hard thing. I don't know if it was COVID Half of the people were testing positive half of the people were testing negative. So we either breed our own conference mon finlays Burn special COVID Rain are hard. There was a few viewers there and it's not necessarily COVID There is a few viewers that can do that as well. So I don't know. But it was kind of hard and I must admit that that like myself, I got sick on a lot of people I know got sick as well and a lot of people tested positive
there's a lot of common colds going around in Europe right now and I think they're already to North America but again this always happens this time of year I just hope we don't we don't get our panties and briefs in a bunch and make a business out of it. But you know, we're a politics free pot here so we will we will move on but we were just talking about salon I'm a big fan of a lot I wish I you know got in hell a lot earlier than I did just like
everyone else. But so long as a blockchain really making moves I for one didn't think that it would really reach its you know, its height that it's out right now. And it's prominent, I probably should have taken note when SPF Sam Bateman fried tweeted, you know, his his classic and infamous tweet, which was, I want to say in a month from now, December 2020. When he told that guy to fuck off and he'd buy all his his soul at what, three bucks a pop, that probably would have been a
good indicator. But with that being said, I'd love if you could tell me a little bit about Selena, you know why it's such a prominent alpha one and why we've seen it's absolutely insane growth spurt up till today's date.
I think there is a few factors. There has been a few tentative of having non EVM chains that are successful on that very good ecosystem that it's not really like, like on EVM or link to Aetherium, etc. We have seen a few tentative that were quite successful in terms of hype that then we can think about Neo, for example, Neo was was tentative on that as as well. But they didn't really take on because because I was it was on the hype for Neo mostly
it was on the hype. There was a multi language support, but it was lacking a lot of very basic things. From one from one client implementation to like the over, you could have different result on the blockchain, which is really problematic. It was breaking when they on the over pleasant. It didn't work out right workout. It was too much centralized on a lot of parts. And it didn't work out for different reasons. I won't really enter on that. You are talking about Solana, but
solida. It works. And it works really well on its decentralized. I know that a lot of people won't agree on that and say, well, solid I centralized bla bla, actually it's not your, your 1000s of nodes. It works. We've We've a consensus that works quite well. The the thing with Solana is that there, there is a lot of data, like really, really a lot
of data. If you want to index everything that happens on serata, you need nearly one terabyte of data per day added to like your indexes, which makes it really hard to get historical data on which makes it really hard to index data of whatever happens on Solana. And I think that with time it will grow even more of a pain point. Because they are trying to max out all the hardware capacities. They want to like get to the point where the network maxes out all the network interfaces.
So as well as you can't know what is happening on the internet or what exact packet transmitted 10 years back on the internet, you won't be able to do so on Solana. So it's quite a different approach from Aetherium or from universe I think that the the part where the chain Bix becomes pseudo I don't even use the word come get or the word story is not for cryptography is for flood. Like your data is flooded in a lot of
data from other people. And no one can get whatever happens at that point in time on the chain. So it's quite an interesting point as well. And it also makes that the traditional finance starts being interested in it because you can run The internet of money on it, it will work. So it's another parodying. So I'm quite fond of what they're building
one question that I always get, and I don't do a good job of explaining it. Mind you, I'm not a pro like you are when it comes to to salon, but I always get asked what's the difference between salon and a cerium? And the follow up question, because everyone, you know, has a huge price Boehner is, well, cilona ever Eclipse a theorems price. Now Aetherium sort of has, you know, first market mover advantage, they, their their TVL? is absolutely,
you know, insane. I want to say it's what, a couple of 100 times larger than salona. But on that note, can you do? Can you try to explain to me like I'm a five year old, the the main sort of core differences between the cerium and cilona?
It's a good question. I think that and I totally explained it quite well, because it changes a bit the trilemma that we see, the idea is the cost of instant replication, the cost of blocking all the replications. On on the hardware cost of the nodes. If you see, if you see this as a trilemma, then solar that makes different choices, donate area, the idea is that the average node for Aetherium is cheaper to maintain. It has a
different block time. Don't Solana actually, whatever people might say, the G eth client, or like all the other clients of Aetherium, actually are really, really well optimized. And that's something that we're seeing on the BSC, for example, in they just took the main Aetherium client and changed all the variables. Well, the issue is that server is extremely optimized. And if Aetherium could do twice the block time, they will do it, they don't
care. If they don't do it, it's because there is a good reason. And the reason is concurrency of the execution time for the execution to be replicated between two blocks. If the nodes can't replicate, or the results in the time there is between two blocks, then they can't keep up with the network. And if they can't keep up with the network, they're just out of consensus. If if they are mining nodes, or proof of stake nodes or
whatever. And that's where the stolen digital machine gets a good job down is that when you do an execution, Adi, we'll get a bit technical, I will try not to get too technical. But when you do us a program called which is the equivalent of a smart contract call, you get a you pass information to the virtual machine just like on Aetherium. But you also pass all two accounts that can get mutated by dissection. On Aetherium, each smart contract has its own
storage. And Solana, it's a bit different, each user can create accounts, which have storage in them, and then give give write to the contract to change these accounts on this part of the data sources so that the data for one program can can be kept in a lot of different accounts. And the good part with it is that if if there is execution that touch different accounts, they can all get done in parallel.
Gotcha.
If you come to execution in parallel on since or the newer CPU have a lot of cores, then you can scale much more. And then in the time between two blocks, your nodes can do way more job. Don't if they had to do it everything sequentially on a single CPU.
So this is one of the big reasons why we're seeing so many defi protocols moving to salon are being built on salon,
there is this plus plus to eight fact plus the money that that is on Solana plus a lot of other factors. But yeah, it's definite
Gotcha. And on that, and I'm very curious to learn more about the defi protocols. And in salona it just seems like every day there's, you know, millions and millions of dollars being locked on the blockchain. Are we going to continue to see that rise? Or will there be some sort of, you know, domino effect where one domino will fall and we won't see any, any more massive, massive defi applications being built on so on.
It's a good question. On the side of domino effect. It all depends if we ever get some kind of black swan event that happens on that breaks a lot of the protocols. I think that there is a few key part that I really wouldn't like to see break today on Solana if Daybreak break a lot of the defiant salon on break a lot of projects because there are some kinds of yield aggregators, leverage farming and stuff like that. There isn't that much leverage farming on Aetherium.
There is on solid on there is a lot of people leverage farming. So one bad thing could do some kind of domino effect on over tokens over protocols, etc. So that's the part that could be a
bit problematic. On the on then on the amount of protocols that are getting there, there is more and more there is a lot of protocols that started I think that there is there is comparatively more more concentration of, of money on Solana like there is perhaps a bit less players, but each player has a bigger account to play with, in terms of defy, we which which makes players which gets players that are able to move faster and get higher TVL of protocols so that protocols
can collect get to like a billion of TVL quite fast, which wasn't the case before. There is some as well on Polygon, avalanche, etc. So, but it's a bit more concentrated, I would say on Solana there, there will be another big factor in the coming month for so perhaps two more, I don't know, I don't want to give information that I
shouldn't give. So I will say that which is, which is known labs, new labs is is an EVM implementation on Serrana, which allows a smart contract developers that have ordered smart contracts in solidity party to Salena really fast. Big because it's an EVM implementation on Solana, I think that this will be a big growth accelerator for it because it's like having it's like having EVM chain that runs on top of Solana, we've direct link on gateways with the solid ecosystem on the SPL tokens,
which is pretty cool. And we are doing by the way at the time although indexing for DM labs so so that so that you can get all that out easily. With nice UI.
Does neon labs have a coin?
I don't think so. Perhaps they will have in the future. But right now, no.
Good to know I I just googled them and you know the first hits UCR neon labs raises 40 mil to bring EVM functionality to salada work from some big names to three arrows, capital jump capital as well. So not too shabby. We'll definitely take a look at that. Folks want to take a quick break and give a massive shout out to our incredible sponsor prime x BT you guys know I love prime x BT. I've been using them for the last couple months and I will not be going anywhere without
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to the show with Jonathan. We have not even got into your baby being a leaf dots. I am now so many ways we can take this combo. I when I was doing research for this I was sort of flabbergasted in regards to how you guys would revolutionize the storage computing indexing and security aspect. Now that is a little over my head. I feel like you need to be a you know a bit a bit more of a techie and a dev
to really get all this. So I'm going to ask you to explain it to me like I'm a five year old but before we get into that tell me about the name what's the inspiration behind the name a leaf which is a L E P h.im.
A little TM is the first letter in Hebrew Arabic, on on 3d close to like, alpha, which is the first letter in Greek as well.
Like that.
So, so it's a
bit of the start. And also in mathematics, all the cardinalities of the infinite are LF letters, you're at zero and f one and F two, etc. So it's also shows the infinite, or actually, the cardinalities of the infinite on the Dota is the instant messaging, the idea of dual entertain networks that kind of parallel channels specific for applications on kind of like an infinite amount of them on on that infinite scaling for your applications, because at core derivative network is a decentralized
database that can have net sharding in it, using you using instant messaging with signed messages,
okay, that that was I think I got that. Is that as best as I could. So just to clarify, the least I am is not blockchain, right?
Nope, nope, it's a peer to peer network where all the messages are signed, using Blockchain addresses. For example, you can use your meta mask and sign the message, it can be a valid message, on the left no time network, you can also sign a message using your fountain wallet, on salada, it will be a valid message. Same for polka dot Cosmos, all the scripts trade based chains, or the cosmos SDK base chains on many more to come as well.
So it's an interoperable instant messaging service that works with many block chains.
Yes. But the thing is that this instant messaging or the node, or the culture, the nodes of the network, which are the controllers of the network, they're storing the messages on music, like using it as a database. You can have documents like Database A bit like MongoDB, for the people who are more technically oriented, or a key value database. And you can also use messages to request the network to like store data for you, or more technically, say, to pin IPFS ashes for you on the
network. So so you can ask the network to store data for you on what we will launch in the next month, which is quite interesting are the resource nodes and more specifically, the computing resource nodes. The idea is that, I don't know. If you know a bit about Amazon lambda. It's, it's what we call
serverless. Computing. The on the, our network provides serverless computing akin to what Amazon lambda does in the centralized world, where you can just call a specific URL, which maps out on on a virtual machine to networks find work to like run your realtor mission, runs it, it gets you a result back. And then if the automation is not used anymore, it will just get trashed. Or, like restarted
later on. And that's where all our decentralized indexing leaves, our indexer leaves inside those micro VMs.
Gotcha. Okay. Now, while I was doing research for the show, again, big NFT guy, I absolutely love NF T's. And one of the problems with NF T's is that, you know, you have people who just get in and they get hacked super easily, right? Because it's sort of their first touch point with within Web three. And the metaverse and, you know, in the crypto world, one of the problems is security.
And when I was doing research for the show, I saw the Eleaf DOS, Iam actually helps sort of decentralize the whole NFT security aspect and adds an additional layer of security. I'd love if you could explain that for me,
well, we don't really help on the part where they can get act. But what we're helping them is if they buy on NFT, that gets removed later on, they can back up their NFT. on on on our D apps. And what we do is that if it's already on IPFS, we'll go and pin all the IPFS content that is linked to that NFT. And if not, we'll download it and upload it on IPFS and ask the network to pin it for the user. To be a bit
more specific on that. What what you have on your NFT on chain is just a certificate that says, Okay, this NFT is owned by this address on here is where the metadata is. The issue is that this link to the metadata, metadata means name, description, tags, title, picture, video, whatever, or these are the metadata. What we're doing is that we are making sure that that this link
lives forever. And that you can always get the data from this NFT, even if the mentor of the NFT decided that this NFT shouldn't be leaving anymore, or that they want to change the picture or whatever. So so you can always see what was at that point in time on that, and FTK.
Very, very interesting. You had an incredible tweet a couple weeks ago regarding the domain fiasco that's currently going on in web two, you know, early 2000s, you had everyone in their cousins locking up every.com domain possible. Fast forward 20 years to web three, and the exact same thing is happening now. Yes, the Ethereum domain sort of kicked
off the parade. Every domain, you can imagine whether it's a fortune 500 company or a crypto company or any person of interest, regardless of the case, you could bet the house that that domain is already taken. And for those at home who are unfamiliar, that would just be like my name, for example, Matt Zahab dot eath, or crypto news? Dot eath. Right, it's you have the TLD, the top level domains, which is, you know, the the suffix after the the name.
Now, fast forward into web three, again, like I said, all the eath ones are taken, you have other blockchains other ones like salona, like BNB, who are releasing their own as well. And the exact same thing is happening with cilona. Jonathan, to my knowledge, someone took your name, dot Sol and Eleaf, Iam dot Sol as well, what's going on with this? And, and what can we look forward to going down the futures? Any solutions gonna kind of, you know, be available for us?
Well, yeah, it's a bit shitty, to be honest. At least on Aetherium, right, now, when you want to register something, you just register us on Sarana. For the dots or names, you need to open some kind of auction to be able to get it so that people just snipe your auction, just like snipe domains, if they like it, they see arriving, and then they just set the boats on, they can snipe your domain, and then they put it for sale so that you can buy it from them at a higher price.
So it's shitty, I think that the auction system isn't the good one for domain names. Honestly, on the on the even for EES, what they did is that they support links with normal TLD. So that if you have a regular domain name, you can register it as an ens. domain name, which, okay, it's not fully decentralized, because you still use TLD, etc. But at least you can have a lot of domain name, and it's not on, it's not really a big issue there. So I'm more fond of using
solutions like that. And I think that it should come to serve at one point in time, if we really want to delay like all these domain names to take over. Because there was a lot of, of domain squatting. during the.com era, like everyone was buying.com. Domain names on since now, you have you have hundreds of TLD, you should buy it for like hundreds of TLD. So squatters care, but they care way less, and then domain names become less expensive as well. So it will happen a just
different domain name. And not just on the dot sorry, but that I don't know what on if we have a lot on even if, if it can be cross checked. It could be good. Or like even regular TLD would work.
Now. I have a theory. I don't know. I consider this a hot take. But I'm a firm believer that addresses receiving and sending addresses like you know, Matt, they have dot eath or crypto news dot eath is paramount for mass adoption within the space. Now I sort of my analogy would just be traditional email. Like imagine if you were you know, when you and I were emailing to get this pod set up. Imagine if I was emailing you and my my email was 26 random letters and numbers.
Yeah, that's bananas. You know, it makes no sense. Do you agree with that statement in the sense that like I I'm a firm by Really this is paramount in mass adoption for crypto.
Yep. But I'm not sure that fully on chain solutions are the good solution for that, because we need it to be cross chain if you wanted to be successful.
What do you mean by that. got to be that? So you mean for example, like my eath address needs to be able to work on the Ceylon blockchain on the Bitcoin, you know, network, all that?
Yeah, I guess. Because if you say, Okay, send me funds, here is my address. Say you have funds that are in Solana and my receiving addresses on Aetherium it won't work as is. So we either have cross chain bridges that automatically take on that or we allow addresses to work on multiple blockchains with receiving bridges or things like that, I think that we will need something like like this to get mass adoption because if not, it will be a lot of different addresses on different networks.
I think that we should get something that is more more integrated on cross chain
is any Are you aware of any companies that are really spearheading this movement? Because if they are I'd love to bet the house on them.
There is turning worked a lot on that I don't know where they are on that end but they have been working on it. We have worked a bit with them in the past because they have user profiles linked to to like all the star names on the user profiles are stored on the team network. But I don't know where they are currently
Good to know. Let's let's jump into the hot take factory it's got a big you know, big boy big girl boots on what is I'd love to hear a Jonathan hot take care something that really only you believe in that no one else does. It can be in life. It can be in crypto, web three anywhere. But what is something you believe in that no one else does.
In crypto, I think that for the gaming industry or the backends. We need to be decentralized. For example, right now, all the game servers are fully centralized on when people are talking about Metaverse, NFT, etc. Just on chain artifacts linked to centralized servers. Well, it works for a time then it doesn't because it's not really a metaverse. If everything is centralized. I think that the metaverse, we need to be decentralized, on the guests, servers of the metaverse will be
decentralized. And that's where we are heading with our microbiota machines, decentralized, serverless computing etc. Because I think that we need a virtual machine on a network that can be decentralized, that can instantly scale to like an internet scale. That's what we're building. So this is something that I believe, a lot of game don't trust and say no, it's better to like stay with
like our centralized ways. This is something I also think that all the backends for all the decentralized finance should be decentralized. Again, same ways, decentralized servers, decentralized backends. If you still have centralized parts, then so defy, then then whatever agency can come and bring you down. On it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when. So same for most of these things. So this is on crypto on the defy part. I'm not I don't think I'm the only one to like think that but
no, I've heard I've heard this many times too. But the question is, how do you move away from not using AWS, which appears to be like the, you know, the best server out there, right? In regards to the price, functionality, power, everything, it appears that they're just the front runner, and there's no one, you know, in second, who's going to build the decentralized server?
That's what we're working on at the time.
So you guys, your tagline would be you're building the decentralized version of AWS? Yep, exactly. Wow. That's a pretty sexy tagline that will get you paid right there.
So yeah, it's exactly what we are building. On we are taking roots where we are seeing adoption. For example, indexing on Solana is the first step to get project to use a decentralized backend. It's when you get all their data out. Really easy to use, they can use it inside inside the order UI. And then if it's a decentralized server, that's the first step in the door, and then they can move the rest of their server on a
decentralized stack. For the record, we are working with a lot of solid projects including radium, orcas, Saber, neon, Port finance, and many others serum as well.
Amazing Jonathan, really appreciate your time here before we let you go, can you please let our guests know where they can find you? And at least I am on socials and online.
So So on Twitter Our Twitter is a is is at LF underscore I am myself on Twitter. My My nickname is marshmallow well above on Twitter on telegram on Twitter so it's at Moshi malware demo SHEWH on Twitter, so yeah mostly on Twitter, our our telegram our telegram is is LF Iam all together yeah
amazing Jonathan really appreciate you jumping on I learned a lot in stuff so that this was an area that I was that's that I still am very curious to learn more about and you've definitely got the wheels turning in my head so I appreciate you coming on thank you for that and big fans of you and leave bye for now and we'll have you on shortly
Thank you very much
folks this was Jonathan shum more from Lyft dot a great episode really hope you enjoyed it. salona is still growing and there are a multitude of applications on that blockchain and a lift IAM is tackling the security indexing storage and computing aspect really exciting things I really hope you enjoyed this
episode. Folks if you did, it would mean the world to my team and I if you would subscribe to the pod and we you know, as always, we really appreciate you listening, keep growing those bags stay safe, stay healthy, and bye for now. All the best