SUI Crypto's Explosive Growth & Web3 Plans with Evan Cheng

not commingle, they do not lend out your funds. They are one hundred reserved and you can review their transparency report, and they have a lot of great features that make it easy to execute your trades. They also have a great new product call us the Interest Accounts, which allows you to park your dry powder or your crypto profits and earn up to four point nine percent APY. Now the four point nine percent APY is only on balances over one thousand dollars below one thousand, it's two percent.

But what's great about this product, guys, is there's no lock ups, there's no monthly fees, there's no subscriptions, and best of all, it is FDIC insured, just like a bank. So if you'd like to learn more about Uphold, visit the link in the description. Welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host, Tony Edward and with me today is Evan Chang, who's the co founder and CEO of myst and Labs. Evan, great to have you on.

I didn't finish high school. I tricked my way into college and finished it very quickly, and then later on drop out a PhD program after I wrote four chapter of thesis and just wasn't inspired by my own work and just kind of literally just walk away one day. But anyway, so I spent a number of years doing startup kind of early in my career that that didn't work out. So I think I made fifty k uh that startup experience after seven years, and then I joined Apple.

So this is where I started doing uh kind of some serious compiler work. You know. L v M is sort of my you know, kind of big, big accomplishment along with my friend and partner, Chris Laantner. So we sort of build something that really really had a massive impact on the on the industry, not just in terms of kind of you know, sort of like the geeky developer tooling kind of work. But but also this this

impact consumer products in a lot of different ways. It's literally running pretty much every smartphone, every smart device these days. Then I went down to Facebook, so where I was leading the program language and rent and organization before I got repilled into going to Crypto. So I was sort of looking at you know, Ether twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, kind of figuring out. I got excited about the space, got excited about the opportunity, you know, given up my background.

I felt like the industry really really need a lot more sort of kind of formal thinking about what programming language for developer tooling, developer environment would look like for a smart contract platform. And that was where I really want to get, you know, sort of like get involved. So when the liber project came around, I was just sort of raised my hands. I me, me, me right.

So I already sort of I doing a sort of clubs, right blockchain club crypto, you know, people talk crypto inside Facebook. I want to be part of that project, and I end up sort of leading the R and D side of the of the project.

and rodblocks that came up from the government. On that note, Being at two major companies like Apple and Facebook, giants in the tech space, what do you think or when do you think they may fully adopt blockchain, Whether it's Facebook putting profiles on the blockchain and we have more verifiable profiles and so forth, or Apple maybe using blockchain for logistics and where they get their different supplies, or

integrating stable coins for payments and so forth. What do you think that may happen.

I'm a green tech, right. So there's a lot of these kind of you know, app store they take you know, they take cuts right, and the same thing right to to away on the Google side. Uh, perhaps a little less so because uh it's more of advertising kind of business rather, you know, that's where the revenue come from. Let's a little bit less unlocking. Uh. I think I think you all may eventually happen in some way. As you say, it's not like adopting blockchain across the board

like every aspect of their business. But they could offer you know, as you say, crypto based payment service because more efficiency, you know, logistic could happen. You know, we talk about how blockchain is a coordination kind of solving

a lot of coordination problems. So a lot of it is you know efficiency, you know, kind of a reduced cost, you know, more automation with especially with AI, Right, you have to imagine everything will be more and more automated rather than sort of still very much human involved in a lot of ways. So timeline, nobody really knows these They are not necessarily going to be the first adoption adoptor right, They're not going to be the first mover.

Looks like Google is a partner, they actually are moving much much more aggressively. In turn, it off out looking at the web tree in the business, especially from the infrastructure side. Apple so far has not shown a lot of interest. But you know, it's every company is different. It comes down to the business model, how they make money, how do they deserve their customer right. So too oftent time people talk about, you know, sort of building crypto

or web consumer products. I think what people missing is, well, you've got to empower the builders, right, they have to make money, they have to have a lasting business for them to adopt the technology. So always look at both sides. Yeah, so I think it's it will happen, but when nobody really.

and just start building on them and so forth. But to your point, no one knows on the lines of Google, tell us about how you're working with them, and you know, what's their vision that they've shared with you guys.

We talk about a lot of future opportunity as well, uh, you know sort of you know, sort of like sound of security aspects, cybersecurity kind of products that we we have done and shown some early poc as well. So so all that right, So there's a it's a long term kind of a you know, partnership that we intend to explore a lot of options. Also AI Gemini. We we're done uh sort of AI powered kind of smart

contry auditing or but funding tool. You know, you may not have heard much of it, right, we're actually building it and it's actually funding bugs these days, not just on Sweet smart contract, but other smart contract platform as well. So there's a lot of a wide variety of kind of projects that we're working on together.

coming waves. It's always the case, right, So so you probably heard me talk about this a number of times. It's not just a numbers game. Uh, it's it's always uh, if you're thinking about building uh, you know, sort of a platform of any sort, especially when there's a developer platform,

it's a hit business. How many you know, kind of products are kind of arrive on our platform that really transform people thinking transform consumer experience or turns out enabling kind of business model shift to allow the builder to make more money, be more competitive, or given an edge. That's when things really happen. That's when people get excited about, you know, either the builder or consumer. It's like, oh, this is exciting, this is something I want to see

more of, uh, And that's when the magic happens. Oh.

and networking. Now let's talk about three. We set out to build Sweet, not as a worker anything now following the sort of architecture of previous blockchains or not, because we're like, okay, we have to do something different too to attract attention. In fact, we were, oh, like, why don't you have IBI and compatibility? Solidity has won, right, all that sort of thing, which is kind of ignored because we're first principal think here, thinker here, where we say, okay,

what is the blockchain really about? Right? What what do you see this kind of you know, kind of delivering impact while we think about this is uh a platform where you want to allow developer to model different kinds of assets. You want them to have these user and developers and builder think about all these assets or they intact with each other. Right. Ultimately we understand this is

just really a coordination problem. Anything that looks like to you know, to side the marketplace, there's a by side their cell side. Right. If you think, you know, should be empowered by a block chain, right, you know, so so examples deep in right, example such as dots right, our partner that's just launching, uh. You know you have access capacity. I have IDOL three D printer I want to make available and there's one hundreds and thousands of them.

At the same time, there's one hundreds and thousands or millions of users Like, Okay, I find a cool model I want to you know, kind of realize it into actual you know, physical product. Well, okay, let me get on this and find the nearest three D printer that's available. Right, it's two side of the marketplace, and people really really extend beyond sort of what people think in terms of the usual crypto use cases speculations or financial kind of product.

But even financial product, you understand there's a lot of kind of inefficiency. Right, So you have human getting involved, you have people realize bank transfers brought to be slow, why not use crypto rail? Right? And when I have it solving some the compliance on the complex kind of business problem where we're add as well. So all that is happening, right, gaming, everything's happening, So we realize you've got to model this correctly. Thinking in terms of assets.

That's the starting point. So it's just you know, sort of you can look at it. It's a three years a you know, it's not a camp based model like most other kind of smart contract platform. It's you know, assets and asset interacting with each other. And assets are type objects, right, because you want to define clearly what that looks like. And to do that, you will also realize, well, you've got to have make sure all that important information about the assets look on chain. If it's not on chain,

then you go back to centralization. Right, you got to rely on some centralized party to manipulate that states as the asset undergoing changes. Right, So that's important to build as well. Uh. And people talk about composibility, Uh, people about talk about intropability. Well, we want it to be more than protocols talking to each other, because if you think about everything in the real world, it's asset composing with each other. Right. I'm literally like showing you example here,

I have a coup with coffee. Right, that's two different assets, two different items that being composed into one. Now it's a glass with coffee. So and that applies to pretty much everything, you know, especially in gaining. Everything is hierarchical, composable. Things are constantly changing, and assets are being used to interact with other assets, you know, and that history of the asset, My my magic stew in this game was the one that took down the final boss, right, that

street better be there on chain. That make this particular instance of that that sort of be much more valuable than others that may not have that history. Right, All these things require us to think really really differently from first principle. So the data model is all objects, right, then the pipeline for processing transaction it's going to be very different because each one is distinct rather than one

giant global state. We're even reading the states right, trying to because I just want to look at the information about my in game asset. You can't do that easily on the blockchain because you have to look into the mercle tree and you know, extract on the information. So this allows us to change the way how you read a blockchain as well, how we think about everything like notes and everything, and over time we also change how

we think about you know, concerns. Right, you don't really need consensus in a lot of cases if you are a single owned object, right, I own the object. I want to you know, reduce the amounto coffee in it. This doesn't need to be sequenced with other transactions because there's no way other transactions can interfere with it. There's

no contention. So we really really rethink everything from how we process transactions, how the data is as stored, how we model the interaction between objects, how we do composibility, how we think about kind of a cocomposibility. We want to enable the client side composibility, so we're going to transaction blocks. So Sui really is not like any of the blockchains out there, like really really fundamentally, we don't

even produce blocks, right, We produce checkpoints asynchronously. So transaction our process immediately it's real time. Thinks has to be super fast. We also think about not interests capability, We think about elasticity or you know, kind of a supply and demands. So that's a little bit worthy answer to your question, but it's a lot really is a very very different kind of way we think about kind of this infrastructure.

sweet blockchain? Is it tokenization? What are some of the target use cases that maybe are industries that you're going after.

And but you also think about in terms of this mediation, right, anytime you're middleman, that's sort of like sort of extract value out of it that could be replaced with a blockchain smart contract platform. You know everything, right now, your human trust intermediary, right, somebody provide trust, I hold on to your assets. I gave you some benefit, but I

may extract benefit as well. Right, So you're familiar with any kind of content platform that that's look like that, right, So they hold on, they help you do discovery, find essential buyer for your asset that you produce, but they extract sort of very out of it. That is a

blockchain's job as well. So obviously asset organization, as you say, because now we model, as I say, right, So it's all about modeling assets, right, So that's that's the example, and transfers much of that sort of rules enforcement of the asset onto the block chain is very very important. So again we think about everything differently. Right. You're familiar with the empty marketplace example where they later on decided

not to enforce royalty payments. Right, that's because our human is in the middle intermediary decided what's beneficial to them, so they discard the rules. Right, that should be done by software smart contract that won't lie to you because or change their mind. That's most important. So really is every industry, right, people thinking primarily about kind of finance right DeFi payment definitely, tons working on are being worked out right there right now, tons of activities, tons of

energy commerce. Right. Once you have payment solve, you have marketplace solved, a lot of commerce use cases. YEA mean any kind of sort sharing or resource I'd be deep in on and on. Pretty much every industry out there can benefit from this technology.

the best. There many many examples people saying don't want to go back and work on any other kind of blotting platform. It's not just a language, right. People talk a lot about Move and Move is exceptionally great and you know, same exceptional job, you know, conceptualizing, building it and then growing it and the team alongside as well. But a platform is much more than just the program language.

It's a tool surround it. It's a documentation, it is a support we give to the to the developer community. It's really the Wholet system working together, right. Because we are in the business allowing developer to model assets and model the interaction with an asset. We focus so much on that sort of thing, that area, so you can send asset to assets right, object to objects, right, you can compose objects very simply. We take away the untime, takes away a lot of the sort of things that

can go wrong, right. You know, you're familiar with all the reinentency problems that could be you know, missing a check for ownership somewhere, right, that that sort of thing. So we yeah, absolutely right. So from the beginning, we focus so much on making sure developers don't have focus right they should themselves in the foods, making sure they don't have to do all that things that's easy to get wrong and very boiler play stuff. And then we

build you know tools on top of that. The building blocks you know, solve the logging problems, so so the onboarding problem, solve you know a lot of their liquidity problems. So finally we have USDC on street today. Yeah, all that problem right, it's what takes to make a great development platform.

You may not be able to give away your secret sauce, but love to hear you know how you're approaching that and instead that you can be as efficient respons without compromising decentralization.

that out of the way, right, Uh, you know. And the other extreme sort of thinking is that every validator needs to run on a BlackBerry, right. So, but that's that's going too far because you're ultimately limiting team what your network can do. Right. So imagine people building Internet thinking that's the way it should go. Right. Remember the Internet, the network itself was decentralized, the protocol decentralized. But it's a business same time, Right, You've got to be able

to run things efficiently. So finding the balance is very important. So for us, right, we want to empower user, anybody to be able to validate, you know, whether they're trying the transactions will being you know, processed correctly, whether there is a fraudulent behavior is going on, whether there may be collusion happening. Right, So coming back, right, it's people talk about live notes, right, how easy it is for

anybody to be able to kind of validate that. And then while you're gradually growing the number validata's notes and ensuring they're actively participating in the network, right, whether that magic number is hundreds or thousands, will get there gradually, but it's first, right, you want to make sure the network can grow, can be operated smoothly, and things have happening, and then bring more people in that you drop, we are dropping, should be dropping the requirement to run the notes, right,

so they really want more notes, but done so in a way doesn't impact performance, doesn't impact scalability as well as latency. That's very important. At the same time, adding the tools for you know, for for users to be able to validate their their transactions are being carried out correctly, that's really really important. Again, we have no magic soft here since already talk about talk about it, uh, you know,

sort of because the data model is very different. Right, if I'm running, if I developer building a game, there's ten thousand users on it. Each one of them has a characters. I just want to follow that ten thousand objects. They tell me that, you know what the states are. I don't care about the rest of the blockchain. You know how they're changing. So so we call that sparks replay. And then we're building a lot of tools around that.

So you know, very very different ways of achieving the centralization for sure.

very few has done that. At the same time, engineered them to you know, sort of the kind of level of siphistication, the kind of trust that you can trust our engineering output as well. We have some of the best engineers as a result, and we're really really, you know, sort of that the core competency is build the best kind of distributed system, the best run time for programming language, the best platform, building the tools to enforce to be

able to make sure these are correct. We talk about a lot about we're using AI to build kind of an auditing tool, internal bug funding tools, UH to find them as well. So it's the research is engineering, it's a design. It's very very much the design. Like we don't hand waves, trust us this is correct, Like we prove things are correct. At the same time, operationally we're ready right to jump out anything. And beyond that, we help you know, the ecosystem only as safe as well

all the builders are doing right. We're helping the builders a lot right, ensuring best practice right, making sure they understand security requirements, making sure how to safe guard their

assets and their users' assets. Yeah, so and and again coming back right, and we we're making sure that we've been stepped fast about making sure you use the right tools and move take away a lot of the security concerns in terms of smart contract, but you still need, you know, to follow these practices to ensure there's no logic errors, no mistakes in your code. Yeah, it's it's it's Uh, it's a big undertaking. So far, so so good, right,

not on words. We haven't had any kind of downtime at all, and uh, there has been small skills attacks and but you know, generally the three consistence being pretty pretty down good.

want to challenge in the movie industry. We love to partner with kind of partners like that and times one hundred. There's a lot of kind of partners I can't talk about today. Uh, some building consumer products are building sort of infrastructure too for other builders. It's uh, it's it's literally it's like mind blowing, how how much of interest

there is? Yeah, I mean, I mean I we talk about like three Dots as an example of this kind of upstart right kind of company that want challenge status quo. The list goes on, and I can give a gaming example of society super excited. Ef C Final Salvation is launching. We have a chain, a big, big public company out of Korea building a suite you know, Dark Times, you know, you name it. We have a huge lineup coming.

on people's door say are you interesting blockchain? You know, in fact, a lot of people don't understand this industry, right, I think the elephant in the room is people skeptical or outright sort of anti blockchain crypto. That's very unfortunate. So I do have friends and for mccauleeagues, why are you doing this right? This seems like crazy world you're eing. It's like, trust me, right, you know what I've done in my career. I'm not here for a quick buck

or doing something that's sketchy. So it's a mix. People now knows what I've been doing a lot of them a kind of very very impressive and supporting us. Some are skeptical, but it's our job to prove to the world this is real and this deliberate value to the world, and I think that that will all change.

Like if they realize what this is on top of the Internet, their their mindset will be different.

almost not their own fault. Right to the point, right, the expectation changes and the sort of the the zo the fervor, you know, changes how people think, right, Like it's you know, we have heard the saying, right, money corrupts, right. I think I think in the space where you know, let's be honest with ourselves, we're seeing those kind of behavior as well. And a lot of times you don't

really need to build something. You can just like vaporware, right, announce vapor day in, day out, and then try to pump your token and that's that's just bad. Right, you know, you know you're probably see every time we say something is coming, they're either like writing now in or pretty soon. Right, we just don't do that. But not everybody does that, right, And there's some schemes you know, so so unfortunately right, and there are sometimes just the security issue, right, smart

country hacks. Right. We attract a lot of bad actors rock polls. Right, that's really really human kind of doing bad things. It's all there, right, we just got to naturally, as we grow up, mature and clean up, more adoptions happen. They were drawn all those bad actors. H And as the industry gets better, gets smarter about, you know, what to do but not to do naturally, they will go away. Right. So even Internet today is full filled with skames and bad actors. A lot of things are spamy. I get

hundreds of spams on everything every platform, every day. But it's like the good is way, our weights the bead, right, we just need to get there, and then all the attitude towards this industry would change. I think we're getting closer and closer, and that's exciting. That's super exciting and I can't pick it.

vision into practice, so to speak. Hardening three the platform, continue to improve upon the developer experience, building more building blocks. People get follow follow for example Custers, right, you get all of us and stuff. He's working on these incredible building blocks that allow new use cases that it's just

you know, people cannot even imagine them today. Some then you know, right on chain randomness, right, you know, then then taking a step further, like you know, sort of time capsule type of use cases, private afts, all these new cases, all these building blocks are being built beyond that right on the product side Stash. We really haven't done a lot onto on the payment side with Stash yet, lots more coming. The wallet will continue to get better. A lot of other serve party of wallets which are

super exciting coming as well. Uh, you know we have but then let's talk about the big thing worse. Right, the team is very very very busy building words. We're about to hit test net, I think very very soon. So that's a little bit apha there, and it's uh, I think we already had petabytes of like data being stored on many many to petabytes on the deafine, right, So we're moving on to the next space because now

we're seeing the demand fund developers. Okay, now you imagine building a web tool product where you can only use the ring, right, and that's that's like building a web street product only using the blockchain, with some on chained storage at least on other you can't even do any kind of chain storage. Now we have a system for you to store a large amount of data, uh, you know, to be able to host your friend, end your website

on decentralized storage or decientire hosting. Then you don't longer have to worry about somebody tinkering with my my app right my friend, and to trick users. That's happened right again, if you have a building a decentralized product, you have a centralized a tap vector, it's going to be exploited. Right. So we're solving more and more problems, uh, you know, starting with Sue, and now we're focusing a lot on

building waters, getting ready, presume, and lots of other things. Sion, you probably saw the news about adoption or site young again. By hardening the system, Mike, it really mission critical that cannot be taken down by any actor, and lots of things we can all talk about. You know, yes, it's it's uh, we're just running as fast as we can keep on building.

may happen? I know we're not an exact date, but is it within the next five years or the next ten years?

And then now we're saying, oh, oh my god, like lookas how bad it is. Centralization caused all this problem, but most people don't know how to solve it. So those of us are you know, are working, we are working hard to solve that, but require adoption. So it's going to be constant battle back and forth. I don't think there's going to be a moment where everybody's just going to say, well, well now we're in Web three era. It's a gradual thing. It's adoption and then we go vertical.

We are we we are very much adopting Web street right now. It's happening. It's early h if we're seeing the example of consumer product product that's that's built with crypto use blockchains already and it's just gonna salary and when does it go vertical? Yeah, I agree, it's going to be the next few years. That's no doubt in my mind that that's that's happening. I like to say, like the series of Arrival is play a big part

in that, because that's what we're seeing. We're seeing the partners that come to us, is finally something that could work at our skill, Finally something that fits how we think about building products. Finally something that saw a platform that's solved all these kind of complex problems we have.

So we believe it's very very soon and it's well I like to think again, it's it's gonna first come on sweet and just based on sort of what I'm seeing, what I'm seeing my partners are our partners are building. Uh yeah, it's it's going to happen before you know it. And they're just gonna go pure vertical for sure.

they want to be their own sort of boss. Right, they want to be in control of everything, and that very much in the web street thinking, uh, and all the cool stuff, right, they come to you know, sort of expect out there, right, very much in this world, they're very very comfortable and building community around me incoins, right, So that's something that's new. We never thought about it, right, so until well maybe the first indication was that was

the game stock scenario. That's very much like a community belonging type of scenario. And yes, there's all kinds of being coins that people talk about all the time. But yeah, that's one example. So AFT was another example. There was a bit of a speculative bubble, but it's still there. Right. People collect things and they want to feel like part of a community, and that that's very much the case.

Automation everything has got to be faster. Yeah, they don't want to deal with like people don't want to get on the phone to call I mean, I'm like that, I hate talking to human Right, Can I just type a few things? Get things done? Right? Automation everything's got to be fastest, smoother, right. Trust, there's less and less trust in centralized entities, right, given higher education, you know,

government's big business. It's just kind of people are like this generation is like are they really trying to help me? Or I just don't have a choice. I have to trust them. Right, I really don't like that. So yes, absolutely, the mental model, the thinking has really really changed, so dramatic, if so fundamentally, it's gonna, like, you know, speed up the adoption for sure.

So we're getting attention for all the same players. Some in order left feel like we didn't know they're they're coming, right, great skill. We didn't know they're they're interested in building a sweet product and they build it, announced it before we even knew. As I at first I thought it was somebody is pulling my leg. Uh, you know, surely you talk to us before announcing their product. No. Yeah,

but that's that's we are now. You know, talk about just the market force is going to lead us, you know where we want to lead us, and and it's it's welcome, It's all part of it, for sure. I expect the process.

twenty twenty five. It can help put the United States back in the race, so to speak, because a lot of jurisdictions are moving ahead, the EU, DUBAI, and so forth. What are your thoughts and are you optimistic we may see some sort of legislation in twenty twenty five.

It's much more nuanced rather than like Google, gole bed Bay back right, it's it's it's really like the thinking things too, and not try to model after you know, sort of you know, other things, other products, other industry that may at this very very high level looks similar but actually very different. So it's all welcome, you know, sol the development definitely we're paying close attention to it,

but generally we're very very optimistic. Twenty twenty five is going to be the year where we're going to get a lot more clarity on the regulatory front.

starting over when I join a new world. I want to see everything that I build, I earned, h come with me, and they may just look different or function differently. Right. That's sort of like the Holy Grail, right, I think ready to play one. Everybody knows about it. Right, that's the world I want, but not just purely kind of science fiction. Awesome, Yeah, I love it.