Anis, what is your unique perspective that you bring to the team, especially regarding blockchain technology?
Anis: So with blockchain technology, actually I’ve launched a couple of my own projects in the past. I’ve been working with Ethereum for a while, with Solidity, writing contracts, building. With that experience, what I’ve gathered and what I’ve learned is that there’s a dire need to simplify user experiences and lower costs. And working on that problem is super fun, and that’s one reason I love working at Vanar, because that’s what they’re trying to tackle.
Ash, as the CSO and part of the Vanar team, what do you see as the core mission and vision of Vanar? How does your role really contribute to achieving this vision?
Ash: I think the first thing is understanding what the mission and vision of Vanar is. When we do that, then we can feed into my role there. The question we often get asked is, look, why are you doing this? Isn’t there just enough chains out there? Aren’t there enough technology products? We see L2s and L1s popping up all the time, and specifically, in the last six months. Why are you doing this?
Our Vision, and something that’s very core to us is taking this mainstream, understanding the potential the technology has and identifying that this can really truly be adopted. If you look in the space generally in Web3, and I’ve been here quite some time, you look at why people talk about why this technology is better than that technology, or why this chain is better than that, and they double down on the technology elements. This chain is going to use this cutting edge technology, etc. But my philosophy and I believe the correct philosophy that you see through all the tech cycles that we’ve seen in the past, is what works best is what fits best, what people are actually going to use and how if something is convenient, people will gravitate towards that thing. I’m sure there’s plenty of conferencing tools that have more functionality than a Twitter space, right? But why are we all here on a Twitter space? Because it’s easy and this is where we are, so we use it. People always defer, not necessarily to the best tech, but what is the best fit. That’s core to our philosophy at Vanar. Working with brands over the last five years, I’ve understood and the team has understood what are the pain points and barriers to adoption.
Barriers have included having to go to multiple vendors, accommodating chains, shortcomings, lack of transparency, variable costs, many, many factors. We factored all of these in when we decided to build out what we were doing with Vanar. Not only that, we understood that it can be very confusing for non-natives entering the space because there’s a ton of confusion around what Web3 really is. You go to some companies that are massive and they’ll have three people in Web3 and when any program comes for approval or an activation comes for approval, they’re like, well, is this crypto? Is this Bitcoin? They don’t even understand those differences. So our job is to demystify it and make it very straightforward, simple, clear and easy. That’s our core mission. We see some chains that are doing a good job with this, other chains that are really great technically but are doing a poor job because it always ends up being technology first. I often say, we tend to talk about the plumbing more than we talk about the use cases in our space, and we really need to talk about the use cases.
Now, in terms of my role in achieving that vision, I guess I can break it down into maybe two or three key areas. I think the first is education. So at Virtua, I led a lot of our partnerships. So we were the first to partner with film and tv studios and brought great IPs to the Web3 space. We did a lot of that. But a phenomenal amount of that work was educating the potential of what this space could be and how it can explain to people the value that it potentially has. My primary role is educating. Now it’s about educating why people should use Vanar as opposed to going elsewhere. The second is obviously onboarding. My function is I’m the one that tends to be the first contact, to use a Star Trek phrase, with a lot of these non-native brands and also people that are already building in Web3 and explaining why we think it would be advantageous to them to come and enter the space. I guess the third piece is talking about the USPs that we have, whether that’s being completely green, whether that is some of the additional features that we have that we can break and talk about a little bit later.
My job is really that. It’s bridging those worlds. And then it’s very much about working with the leadership team to say, Okay, look, we decided to go in this direction or why we’re not doing this, and figuring out, Okay, where do we see Vanar in five years? Where do we see it in 10 years? Where do we see it in 20 years? And trying to keep abreast of what’s happening in the space, what’s hot in the space, what are really interesting innovations, and then reaching out to them, reaching out to those people. If I see something really interesting happening with one company, I try to find a way to reach out to them, talk about it, and then bring them in as part of our ecosystem. That’s a lot of my work as well.
Anis. I noticed that you chose to develop on layer 1 blockchain. Could you please elaborate on the advantages of this approach over the layer two solution or app chains, especially in the context of gaming and instruments, applications?
Anis: Our approach is all about right fit. Ensuring no matter what the underlying technology, the product is something that mainstream brands and Web2-world users are able to get the best mileage out of. Right now, current blockchain technology is by developers for developers and struggles to go outside of this domain. I think you’re going to see in the coming years a big shift where a lot of the blockchain tech is great already, but we’ve got to make it the right fit. How do you do that? This highlights some of my advantages. It’s ensuring that we have low cost transactional fees or fixed fees, enabling it to be affordable for these mainstream brands and consumers, pushing for environmentally friendly node validators, again, something that we’re doing with our Green Infrastructure Partnership with Google Cloud. Then on top of that, it’s making sure the right tooling and technology is available with our chain where development tooling enriches end-user experiences, including stuff around abstraction for wallets. Right now with seed phases, private keys, it gets too complicated for users and there’s a huge drop-off rate after people are asked to connect the wallet essentially. Making it easier to really own a Web3 wallet and interact with the applications almost as seamless as a regular login or a regular checkout process, whether it’s your website, mobile app, or AAA game, that’s what we’re pushing for.
To recap, briefings, low cost fees, which allows us to differ from other chains, making sure that we’re environmentally friendly and having the right tool to enable the best experiences with blockchain support.
Ash: Also, I could probably add a couple of points to this as well because part of this was strategy. If you look at what is happening in this space and this is kind of what always happens — five years ago, if you wanted a website, you’d go to a web developer, you’d spec it all out and it would take a long period of time, and then you’d come up with a website. Then you had tools like Wix and all in Squarespace and all these others came along and it became a service. It became something really easy to do. People were able to spin up websites in minutes. In the same way, we saw that with e-commerce, with web stores and stuff. People spent loads of money to build out their own web stores. Then Shopify, et cetera, came along and people were able to have these stores and you could have stores as a service. What we’re actually seeing right now, particularly with the proliferation of L2s, you see so many L2s coming out on being built on Optimism and the like.
You can pay a few thousand dollars now and have your own L2. I think that what we are going to see in the space — L1 becomes these deeper infrastructure layers, and then you’ll have L2s that are popping up on top of those very much as a service. Ultimately, let’s say I’m a brand and I want to create my own metaverse. I might say, Well, listen, I don’t want to necessarily have this with a dependency on Polygon or anything like that. I want my own chain. I want my own token that creates its own value and gives me more flexibility. So we’re going to see as the tech evolves, we’re going to see a proliferation of that. And we want to be part of that. Absolutely. Being in L1, there’s going to be lots of new functionality, obviously, and people will be able to spin up their own L2s on top of their own. So for us, it was very much about having the building blocks in place and having this foundational layer that not only services what we do in terms of our own products and drives value back to our own ecosystem and thereby our holders and supporters of our community, but seeing where this tech is going to be in five years.
Blockchain as a service is just around the corner. We’re seeing more and more of that happening right now. I’m seeing more companies that are doing that. From a strategic perspective, it was very much like with this approach we can address some of the big L2 problems that are out there. Congestion complexities are always going to be there. Part of our fundamental thinking about this was, look, we want to remove dependency on third parties. We got the most amazing tooling, but the dependency was always the chain. For us it’s a case of, well, let’s get rid of that piece and drive all the value back into this really amazing ecosystem. We can talk about that a little bit later as well.
Ash, you talked about onboarding, partnership, and education. I’d like to ask, in terms of ecosystem development, how is Vanar facilitating adoption among developers and businesses? And what tools and supports does Vanar provide to encourage engagement and innovation within its platform?.
Ash: Well, I guess there’s two questions there. One is how are we facilitating adoption amongst developers and businesses? In terms of developers, there’s two key areas that we’re doing. One is, and this is something obviously that Anis is leading with the tech team, is we are currently in the process of formalizing what our ecosystem for developers is going to look like in terms of their support, having developer-only channels, opening up the testnet, getting people building and doing exciting things. So in terms of developers, that’s what we’re doing. And in terms of facilitating the adoption of businesses, it comes into this other area, which is we’ve got two types of products outside of the chain. And I break it into two things. We’ve got what we call Dapps as a service and what we call Vanar products. So what are Dapps as a service? daas is tools that attack multiple business verticals that work out of the box with Vanar. And if you’re holding Vanry, you get access to those tools for free. That might be something like a marketplace as a service. It might be a metaverse, a space as a service. It may be avatars as a service. It might be tools that are integrations with third-party products. I touched upon e-commerce and stuff like that. There’ll be integrations for that. Something like an SSO, which allows you to do more with your game.
We give our partners the ability to come into the space in a way that suits them. And that’s really, really important. Because let’s say right now, all right? Imagine Gucci or Hermes released an amazing new handbag and they want to create digital twins for it or something. In the real world, if Gucci or Hermes create a really amazing handbag, do you see them selling it on eBay? They wouldn’t, right? They would create the most curated, cool experience. You go into the store, you feel like a VIP. That’s your journey. That’s your customer journey. However, when it comes to Web3, we expect every brand to come in the same way, which is crate, NFT, maybe throw it up on OpenSea, maybe put it on Magic Eden or something like that. Whereas they don’t want to engage in that way. They might want to engage in a different way. The tools and dApps that we are rolling out, allow them to come into the space in a way that suits them.
If it’s just a small activation, if they just want to create an avatar, if they want a branded marketplace, that’s white label, they should be able to do that. The dapps as a service do that. On the other side, we’ve got what we call Vanar products. Vanar products are the products that we already have out there in the market, which allow them to meet new users, Web3 native audiences, and other games users or metaverse users that are already out there in our products. We have Virtua, which is a metaverse product has land, has resource, all that stuff. And we also have our own games network called VGN.
Example might be, let’s say you’ve got a game and you want to bring it to the Web3 space. If you look in Web2, if you compare the amount of games that come out to the amount of games that are actually hits, it’s probably less than 1%. That’s why you see Indie Studios going bust. That’s why you see so many games companies making cuts. Even Epic made huge cuts, and they’ve got the most successful game in the world. So in Web3, everyone talks about, Oh, this is going to be the next big game and this is going to be amazing and stuff like that. Absolutely. And we hope that. We want everyone to be a success. But what you can do with the Vanar products, something like VGN, is you can create quests, you can meet other gamers, you can give people a gamer’s lounge and allows you to enter an ecosystem even before your game might have come out.
So you can give your product the best chance to succeed. That’s what we’re doing there. We have these Vanar products and you have the Vanar dApps. Those things will facilitate adoption. Those are the two areas that we’re really doubling down on giving people the best chance of success. Because obviously we know adoption is a success for us. But at the same time, rather than it just being, and unfortunately often in this space is just that, is that people come to a chain because they say, well, how much money are you going to give us? okay, I’ll build on this chain. And what we’re trying to do, and certainly what I’m trying to do is say, Well, listen, it’s not just about that. Okay, a chain can give you $10,000 or $20,000. You’ll burn through that really, really quickly. But how are you going to get success? And that’s part, like I said, it’s part of my role, but at the same time, it speaks more to how we’re thinking about it. Give people the chain as a tool, but then give them all these other tools as well that we’ve already built that could help them be a success.
I have a follow-up question to that Ash. Because regarding the ecosystem expansion and how Vanar is leveraging its partnership to enhance its platform, like you explained, the Dapps, Vanar, and the Vanar products itself. Could you give us examples of how these collaborations are fostering groups and adoption in different sectors?
Ash: Okay. So ecosystem expansion, how are we leveraging our partnerships? Okay, well, for example, one that we’ve been talking about a lot over the last few weeks is we partnered with Google. And how did that come about? Well, something that’s very important to us and something that’s been a big sticking point for a lot of the mainstream brands that are coming into the space is ESG, environmental and social and governance. For us, we really thought deeply about, well, what does that look like? In our discussions with Google, we talked a lot about being completely green, having a complete green infrastructure, being on green data centers, node hosting on completely renewable energy. That’s an area where we’re leveraging our partnership. Also, there’s a lot of stuff that we’re going to be talking about later on down the line in terms of AI tools in partnership with Google and our CEO. The reason why Jawad isn’t here is he’s with them out in Singapore at the moment and doing a lot more there in terms of AI It’s something much more deeper that we want to get into, which is like how can we provide tooling to people that are building dApps on Vanar for them to be able to use those tools for metaverse world-building, or to allow them to create dApps faster?
That’s one area. That’s an example of how we’re not just doing a partnership for partnership’s sake. You will notice that a lot of people when they come out, there’s partnership after partnership after partnership, and you think, Oh, this is amazing. That’s often a strategy that’s used by brands to build FOMO and people just FOMO into them and drive value in that way. We’re trying to take a much more mature approach to the space. If there’s something that we are bringing, if there’s a partnership that we are bringing, we’ve really thought about what that’s going to look like in advance, and then we will roll that out over a period of time, very much like it happens in the traditional space. The second area that we’re doing, and this is in our DNA as well, is that we believe talent is global. We came into Web3 because we believe that it can break down barriers. One of the reasons that we were very passionate about metaverse and all that technology is I think it’s a big unifying factor. The ability for people to come together no matter where — we want people to be able to connect irrespective of where they are in the world. So talent is global. We’re working with two governments in Africa. We’re also working with one in Asia and working with their national incubation centers to be able to create programs for developers there who are building tooling and building interesting dApps that are able to service their local economies and that are solving problems in those areas as well. And if we think that those can have an interesting human impact, those are products that we will support as well. And then finally, we’re talking to Indie Games developers, publishers, developers, and publishers in territories that have games with huge engagement and want them to come to Vanar. That might be if you look at areas of huge growth when it comes to gaming, that’s like Korea, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and a lot of those places where you have games with these huge, huge audiences and we want to bring them to the fore as well.
Anis. I’d like to know and ask, why did Vanar opt for the EVM compatibility architecture? How does this decision impact the interoperability and flexibility of Vanar in the broader blockchain ecosystem?
Anis: I think, again, it’s about being the right fit. We looked at what the other chains are doing and we’ve seen some are adopting EVM or virtual machines that are based on Rust or Go or Move. What we found with EVM is, and especially with Ethereum and a lot of L2s, is that with Solidity and the frameworks that can work on top of it, development in this area is a lot more mature. It’s becoming rapid for developers to develop contracts or smart logic on the chain and build our applications. The other frameworks aren’t as mature in terms of security as well because we’ve all been there now. For the past five, six years, we’ve been seeing the number of hacks that have happened in the DeFi space with smart contracts being hacked.
Other frameworks that aren’t EVM-based are going to have to go through those same journeys. In terms of security, in terms of developer availability, in terms of tooling available, it’s a no-brainer to actually pick this technology. That’s the core reason why we chose it. And then again, when you talk about EVM chains, there’s so many that use this technology now, it makes interoperability in terms of data storage and digital asset and bridging capability is really easy because they process information in the same way. It’s a bit like the early days of Windows and Mac. And if you developed on Windows for Windows, your application wouldn’t work on a Mac. And if you developed a Mac, then it wouldn’t work on Windows. But over time, people built tooling on top that enabled you to one-click deploy to Windows and Mac. I think that’s the way within the EVM space, it’s pushing. You build once and it’s supported by many chains. That’s important.
Okay, great. I also have a backup question for you, Anis, because I went through the Vanar Chain website recently and I saw something about nodes. I’d like to know the rules of nodes within the Vanar blockchain.
Anis: Yeah, so within our node architecture, we’re looking at starting off with 21 nodes. The purpose of the nodes is actually security, data availability, making sure those RPCs are available globally. We’re running all our nodes on, again, green infrastructure, which is super important. The core role for nodes is obviously making data available so it’s accessible and also processing information. Now, our network with these 21 nodes is also taking advantage of Google’s undersea cables, which is something we’re doing in partnership with them for super low latency, so we can have high transactions per second and improve performance between our network. We’re starting with 21 nodes. We are going to, in 2024, look to bring on more nodes into our ecosystem-system. But we’ve got some strict requirements. We’ve got this term proof of reputation. You’ve got to be trusted, you’ve got to be a reputable brand, and you’re going to be running nodes that are on environmentally friendly architecture before you can get in. Super cool concepts, super cool things with training with our nodes in partnership with Google. That’s pretty much nodes for our blockchain. I think the concept is pretty well known in general.
Ash as the Chief Strategy Officer and looking at the current trajectory and how Vanar is going, what are the strategies that are in place for Vanar to drive further adoption and growth? And how does this user experience play a role in these strategies, especially for the growth of Vanar?
Ash: If we look at what our strategies are for adoption and growth, we are taking a very much a Web2 approach to this. Let me give you a Web2 example. For example, let’s say if I’m a designer, and that’s what I do. When I go to Adobe, let’s say I sign up with Adobe as a creator, what happens? I’m immersed in an ecosystem which gives me every area that I would need to address as a designer, whether I’m a publisher, web, apps, all that stuff. It gives me all the tooling that I need to be able to get where I need to go. That’s the approach that we’re taking with Vanar, which is look, we’ve got this awesome chain, which is fast, it is scalable, and it’s transparent. It doesn’t give you variable costs. You don’t have these wildly varying gas fees. You can’t prioritize transactions, so you know what something is going to cost. But I’m not only entering and adopting one chain. What I’m doing is I’m coming into an ecosystem of all these different dApps and tools that allow me to get to my final destination.
Let's say an entertainment brand wants to drop a million collectibles, linked to multiple locations. Well, how do we tackle that in a transparent, simple way that works for them? It’s a particular journey that one brand would need. How do they do that? We’ve got the ability to give you your own custom NFT marketplace that works at scale and it’s completely free if you’re holding the Vanry token. That’s one area. Now let’s say, I don’t know, take an artist like Drake. Drake is scared of everything that happens in this space. He’s scared about all the people that got sued with FTX, all that stuff. He says, Guys, all I want to do is create a Drake avatar, and I just want a store that people are able to buy really cool merch that I can activate as and when.
Well, Vanar has got you covered because we’re going to have our own avatar builder that works out of the box across virtual products in the metaverse, allows you to export it to different places, and he can just do that. Again, it works.
More importantly, do you see the conversation that we’re beginning to have is no longer about why use the L1 chain over another chain? It’s about coming into this ecosystem. I’m not super technical, however, what I do understand is that I don’t know what Photoshop or Adobe illustrator is written in, but I know it does the job. I don’t know how when I buy something on Amazon, when I just use the swipe to buy, it doesn’t ask me for any of my credit card details like every other website does. I know it works, so I use it. People don’t talk about what something is built in. They talk about how it solves their problems. And when you start talking that language, we will solve this problem and allow you to tackle these new exciting markets.
That’s what is going to drive adoption. If you look at the stats, 70% of Gen Z value a digital relationship as much as a real-life relationship. 80% of this generation expects their brands to be responsible in terms of the environment. 60% of this generation value digital assets as much as physical assets. These are new markets that need to be unlocked, that need to be targeted and mainstream brands want ways to do that. And we can probably count on our hands how many brands have actually done it well and how many brands are now suffering because they didn’t do it well. They ended up hurting their brand, or hurting the reputation of one of the brands that they own, and they got loads of people super pissed off with them.
Well, that’s what we’re here to try and solve, which is not only do we bring you into the web3 space, we try to solve the problems for you. And when you start talking that language, that’s huge. And to your other point about how does UX play a role in these strategies? User experience is super important and allowing people to interact with technology in a way that they don’t feel they’re interacting with the technology is really important. One of the Vanar products that we have is something that we call VGN. It’s our games network. Now, what that does is it allows games to enter the space in a way that gives them very familiar behaviors. Quests, being able to buy off-chain assets, being able to do mechanics that are very common to Web2. But what it also allows, is allows Web2 games to come into our network and create adjacent economies to their game.
They don’t need to repurpose their game, but they can begin to unlock Web3 economies, whether that’s through questing, reward mechanics, going into customized spaces based around the game itself. We created our own SSO — a single sign-on. Let’s say that you’re an Android game or you’re an iOS game. And when you play a premium game or whatever, you get a pop-up at the end, which is keep playing for this by paying $1.99 etc. What we’ve built is an SSO, which is a pop-up in that same Web2 game that says, Hey, keep the adventure going. Jump into VGN. People jump in. It pops up on their phone, pops up in a browser, or if they’re on a desktop, it pops up on the desktop browser. They go into this cool space and they start doing cool things. They haven’t learned about wallets, they haven’t done anything. But what they’ve done is they’ve entered Web3 without them knowing it. Then you can begin to build on that, which is why we’ve got a large Web2 games publisher that’s got 10 game studios coming on board into Vanar because they like that approach, which is listen, getting our audience and being able to unlock value for us is really important without confusing them.
And anyone who’s in mobile gaming knows that monetization is a real problem right now for a lot of these studios. We believe Web3 technology is going to allow them to do that in new and exciting ways.
Anis. I’d like to know, as the Chief Technology Officer, what are the most significant technical challenges you faced while doing Vanar? Or what challenges are you anticipating to face and how is your team addressing these challenges?
Anis: I think we’re not looking to reinvent the wheel. Ash made some great problems of problems we are trying to solve. And providing those digital experiences or those user experiences for the brands and users is where the technical challenge really lies. I mean, the Web3 communities come together to build some amazing technology. Surprisingly that bit is the least challenging, although the audits are making sure that we’re super secure, running a tight ship, always making you sweat. But we’re doing a great job there. I think the challenges of how we create these familiar experiences with our VGN, our avatar experiences, and how we process information on-chain while abstracting that away from the users is the challenge. Addressing these challenges is always about the right R&D, having the right team to build out what you need building, and working with the best partners. What I love about, again, being here at Vanar is we do that. We’re R&Ding, we’ve got the right team, we’re training the team in the right ways, continuously building, continuously improving, and we’ve got amazing partnerships who are working with us to ensure that we build the things that will help them adopt this great technology.
That’s where the significant challenges lie, is those digital experiences, and we’re addressing them, but taking our time with it. We’re not rushing this, but we’re doing it right.
Ash: The other thing just to add to that is that I think another challenge is that space is noisy and it’s crowded. Certainly from my perspective, we have a lot of trends that are really noisy for a while and then they go away and whatever that might be, and then it matures. So what It was two months ago, everyone was talking about socialfi. Next month it might be something else or something else. I think we have to work hard to rise above the noise and really keep true to our message as well, which is the space is growing up, the space is maturing. Hopefully in 2024, we’re seeing really interesting use cases of the technology. Certainly from my perspective, outside of the technical challenges, I think it’s very much the messaging challenges, which is like get past the noise.
Ash can you discuss the significance of the Vanry token within the Vanar ecosystem? How does this underpin user engagement and value creation across the platform? This is my last question for today.
Ash: First of all, thanks for these really great questions and really interesting. The Gate community is asking really insightful questions. I think that the significance of Vanry is vast within Vanar. Obviously, it’s a blockchain. So gas is fundamental. It’s a gas token. That’s one big use case absolutely for Vanry. But the other thing, and I did touch upon this earlier, is it’s going to become a core component for all of the Vanar dApps. The approach that we’re taking is like some of these dApps, for example, that brands want to utilize would be typically using Web2 models to make it simple for them. It might be like this is a subscription, this is how much it costs you per month, in the same way that if you use Shopify or if you use any other software as a service, you would offer a subscription. However, if you are holding Vanry, you get that for free. We really begin to create these new exciting staking mechanics and we might abstract that away for Web2 brands who don’t really understand staking, but we can say that we can hold those tokens for you, and that brings some new staking dynamics in terms of unlocking different dApps.
It becomes a core component for that. Also it becomes a component for the dApps in and of themselves as well. If there’s NFT marketplaces that we see people are building, there’ll be incentives for using Vanry on those. If you’ve got an avatar creator tool, if you’re holding Vanry, you get access to additional features. On a blockchain typically, what are the use cases? Well, it’s three. It’s node, it’s staking, and it’s gas. But we want to bring more of that value and unlock more of that value, which is okay, you can use them in and across all of the dApps as well. Also, you’ll be able to use it as a basis for trading. So just similar to what you have on Magic Eden and a lot of these third-party marketplaces that have their own native token, there will be, I’m sure, marketplaces that are popping up and someone’s going to support Vanar and we will work with them to make Vanry a supported asset to facilitate the trading of those digital assets.
Those will exist as well. And then obviously we’ve already had one pre-staking program. We have another one coming for a pre-staking program on its way for Vanry itself. And that’s something that we’d probably be doing with one of the exchanges that we work with. There’s community staking and voting in terms of running, validate and own. That’s something that’s coming as well. And obviously staking rewards. So it does underpin a lot of stuff. And this was one of the reasons that we migrated from old TVK to the new Vanry, is that we wanted to be able to not only add value to our existing holders, but then be able to accommodate all the things that are associated for having your own L1 and being able to do a lot more there as well.
Thank you so much for your insightful responses, Ash, and thank you to Anis for a very wonderful response to all the questions we asked. This brings us to the end of today’s AMA.