Vanina Ivanova - Breaking Barriers: EVM Compatibility as a Bridge to Multi-Chain UX

Hello. Hello everyone. I'm so glad to see a room so full of people. Uh JK, it's still early. It's still early.

Uh yeah, today today we're going to talk about UX uh multi-chain UX and uh multi-chain accessibility in particular. Um a few words about myself. I've been doing marketing for about longer than I care to admit actually. Um and the last decade I have been focusing on on crypto marketing. Um, I've made it a point to become as technical as I could be, but I'm not a technical person.

Please keep that in mind when you're asking your questions. Um, this is my QR code if you want to connect with me personally. There's going to be another QR at the end to connect with my company, which is Neon EVM. I'm going to talk a little bit about that as we go in my presentation. I'm going to start with um a quote that I particularly like by uh our CC CEO, our chief commercial officer David.

Um imagine a world where you have separate internets for all of the countries. So you have one internet for Japan, another one for France, another one for USA, another one for Romania and they don't talk to each other. So your emails are not being sent across country. Um, social media is confined to your nation and global commer commerce is just a billion-dollar innovative dream stuck in walled gardens and that's exactly where blockchain is today. And also if you are from North Korea, you don't even have to imagine that you're living that dayto-day, I guess.

So, um, this is this is where we are today when it comes to uh to interoperability between between blockchains. Um we've got more than 2,000 chains. Out of them, um about 300 are active. So that these are chains that have some activity on them or some money locked in. Um the main players are competing for the same rather smallish smallish pie.

Um, so we're all competing for the same liquidity and for the same attention whether we're talking Ethereum, Sui, Solana, Ton, whichever network you want to name. And there's also a bunch of EVM compatible networks which kind of makes things a little bit better but not not quite. Um and there is that's a $3.5 trillion market with approximately 114 or um 115 I think today um TVL logged in in DeFi and that translates to a huge market fragmentation that that botches the UX and spoils it for everybody and it means that we're operating with siloed ecosystems that again do not talk to each other do not interact with each each other and that slows down the innovation. Um, which again ironic given how blockchain is one of the fastest developing industries but still this is where we are today and that's this is why we're talking about multi-chain though because there are the signals that people are using multiple chains and they want to use multiple chains and again you know blockchain is for the same 17 people that uh jump from a protocol to protocol but we want to get more people in.

We're going to we're going to we want to attract normies and and convert them uh to the dark side. But we're not there yet. We're not there yet. And at the same time, even though people are trying to use different networks, the majority of the the majority of the activity is um across a couple of them. Basically, we've got Ethereum, which is the still the big blockchain daddy.

Um, we've got Solana and then we have everyone else. So, this is this this prompts the question, why does it matter? Why does it matter? Like if if we have such big fragmentation, why does it matter? Well, because as I said, Ethereum is still responsible for half more than half of the blockchain activity.

So, whether we like it or not, we need to make stuff EVM compatible. We just need it's not a matter of do we or do we not it's a matter of like how quickly can we make it happen um because the EVM comp compatibility it enables uh smooth interactions between the blockchains not just for the users but also for the developers who can easily and quickly build across different chains. It um brings the users that sense of familiarity and that sense of security of like hey I feel confident enough to do stuff on Ethereum on chain. So I can go and do that on Solana as well. Uh so that leads to increased you increased user adoption and overall it's good for the whole ecosystem and for boosting the entire ecosystem and like making everybody play together in the playground basically.

There are a lot of challenges. there are a lot of challenges. It's not like we're just going to snap the fingers and things are going to happen. Um the there's a bit of a architectural mismatch across especially the major players. Developers need to learn new toolings and new programming languages as they go from chain to chain to chain and that's incredibly annoying.

Um we do have a lot of security and trust assumptions that come with that. Um and there's also the matter of feature interoperability because of that architectural mismatch. A lot of features that are available and and possible on Ethereum for example will not be possible on uh on Solana and that again is an issue when you have already an already working DAB for example on Ethereum and you want to port it to another network. Are there workarounds? Can we solve these inefficiencies?

Yes, kind of kind of some of them. Are these the most elegant solutions that we can have? No, I would not say that. Um, so and how do we solve this? And this is the part uh where I talk about neonvm a little bit and how you know I'm allowed to show a little bit I guess.

Um, neonvm is a Solana network extension which is basically a Solana program on um uh that is it's not a bridge it's not a layer 2 it's just yeah we are calling in a network extension uh we ex execute EVM bite code within the Solana runtime we use uh neon and uh soler gas uh compute units are consumed and uh the state of Solana accounts is stored and we leverage native Salana system calls. So this way we basically um we tackle the architectural mismatch by basically um sorry I'm having a brain fart simulating is the word that I was looking for simulating transactions offchain so that um we can apply uh EVM logic onto Solana um and um I've put here a little like technical diagram if you're if you're interested in the technical part of things reach out to me after the presentation, but I didn't want to go like too deep into the technical part of Neon. I just want to uh basically address the way we we fit in within the the UX part of things. And um what what you can do with Neon EVM if you are an EVM uh developer is basically port your project to Solana without having to learn Rust, without having to dive super deep into Solana's architecture. You plug it in and it basically works sometimes.

Most of the times, no, I'm kidding. It works. And why we're doing that? Because at the end of the day, interoperability is what makes things talk to each other, what makes different chains talk to each other. But it's the compatibility that aligns the experience.

And again, I'm talking about the experience of the developers. I'm talking about the experience of the end users. And compatibility is that what what shapes that feeling and that gives people that familiarity and that confidence to jump from a chain to a chain because the real cost of bad UX is higher than we can expect actually. Uh for for users um that means that pro providing users with inconsistent experience means that they say screw that I'm not doing that. this is too hard for me to to even care.

So they drop out drop off. Um for companies and project that means that they need to invest in more customer support, tech support, people who are explaining everything to to the users. Um for developers that means fatigue and again oh I'm not doing that. This is too hard. What's the point of that?

Um and these things are all avoidable. They are avoidable because at the end of the day if we allow users to use different DAPs across different chains with the same wallet part of the problem is solved. If we are um if we enable seamless bridging solves part of the problem. Seamless means success and that's how we get there through compatibility. Sorry.

Of course, there are more challenges. It wouldn't be me if I don't point out any potential pitfall. Um, but we do have multiple heterogenous um proof of um consensus mechanisms like proof of work, proof of history, proof of stake. There is no standard um there are no standards when it comes to tokens and that's also an issue. Sometimes there are so many diverse network protocols that we need to consider where we're porting apps uh from one chain to the other.

there's data inconsistency um that we need to you know that we need to address again and then wallets universal wallets most of all the solution is a UX first approach instead of thinking hey how can I work this how can I make this work on Solana we need to ask ourselves how can I make this work period um keeping the wallet experience consistent is one of the ways that we can do that. And fortunately, we're seeing more and more wallets adopting this approach and enabling access to multiple networks. Prioritizing liquidity access um is another way we can do that. Avoiding code code rewrites or requiring minimal code uh adjustments is is another way we can do that. We can also solve these challenges um by matching transaction speed and um and transaction costs.

We can deploy on new chains like Neon EVM hash sorry not sorry and um and we can use the same familiar onboarding journeys for users if your boss asked you hey what did you learn from this presentation at Ethereum Cluj I've made it easy for you these are these are the key takeaways that uh that you should uh take from from my presentation today. Um, EVM compatibility is incredibly important because it lowers the deployment and onboarding friction. It is UX and bridges that we should be uh focusing on when talking about multi-chain deployment. Um, you can launch nonem chains on um on non EVM chains with tools like Neon. And um yeah, this is already real without the need of sacrificing experience.

Um and this one is for your Twitters if you just want to do that. But you know it is we we when we talk about compatibility, we think about the code. We think about you know the nitty-gritty, the everyday stuff. But if we take a step back and look at the bigger picture, the compatibility boils down to the trust of the end users and the people who are going to be using our DABs to the efficiency of our development teams and to the growth velocity. So yeah, the real win is not just um multi-chain support but multi-chain accessibility.

And that's it. Thank you very much. I'm not going to take more of your time, but if you want to connect with Neon EVM and learn more about what we're doing, please do that. There's a QR code uh leading to our link tree. Not very decentralized, but you know, it is what it is.

It's easy. So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Vanina. And breaking the silos of every VVM is just amazing.

So and again thank you for coming in and please do connect with her even though link tree is not on chain it is still link tree. So we have one question that just came in just a thought. This comes from blockchain miner8. Can crosschain UX ever seamless feel seamless without giving up decentralized or relying on middlemen?

That's that's the million-dollar question, isn't it? Um, I would say not right now. Not right now. Um, if you again, if you take a step back and look at the the wider picture, I don't think that we're talking about like a a single project that is truly truly decentralized. At the end of the day, we are all relying on the, you know, on the servers and and uh Google services and all of that.

That kind of like makes us centralized. uh as we are we're still all relying on Twitter for marketing and coms and discords and all of that where we we have very little control um and then when you come to like the more granular uh points of access again you know some decentralization is possible but trade-offs have to be made trade-offs have to be made I don't think that it's uh it's truly possible to have a a completely 100% decentralized um infrastructure for for DAPs today, especially for DAPs that are talking to other chains. Um, is it ideal? No. Is it the reality of the situation?

Yes. Are we working to change that? Yes. Hopefully more projects are involved into that um like are getting into that paradigm and part that discourse to make sure that we do achieve that true decentralization. So yeah, I hope that answers the question.

Well, yeah. As you saw, when everything is built on a house of cards, you saw what happened a few weeks ago with Google. The internet completely broke down because everybody was using one system instead of actually having multiple backup systems, right? And how are you working on that over time to get that into UX?

Well, again, you know, we're working on we're working on in infra. There are a lot of projects that are kind of like uh providing uh infrastructure that is um if not truly decentralized and a lot more decentralized. Um and projects that uh come to mind here are uh um deepin projects that are tackling decentralized compute for example or projects like double zero who are trying to optimize the actual physical infrastructure um for for the blockchain. Um and yeah they are getting a lot of support and a lot of attention from the industry not just by you know not not just from the projects that intend to use them but also of other projects and companies that are just like hey this is good for the industry let's just let's just do the the great thing about the the blockchain industry is that it's still young enough for us to care. Um unlike web two where we're like oh it's the bottom line and nothing else.

It's it's us against our competitors in in blockchain and in crypto. We're still kind of working together. So that's the beauty of it. And I would say that this is yeah this is one way in which we can get there.

Yeah. We always have the ones working together and then the few are just outsiders, right?

I don't think you can avoid that though. So

So I want to ask do we have any questions down from the audience today? I know you might have something burning on your heart. There we go. Dan is right down here. Hey, so I loved your uh little anecdotes with uh EVM compatibility and uh patching things up.

So obviously EVM uh compatibility it's a cool stuff to have but also livveness and availability is UX very UX related. So would that be strictly strictly related to Solana run uh chain?

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand your your question completely. Could you could you please rephrase that?

So uh in order to have good UX, you need to have the chain that you have your app built on top needs to always be, you know, available live.

Oh yeah. Okay. Okay.

Not have stop stop service.

Yeah. Okay. So this is this is a dig to into Salana. I get that. Uh yeah Salana actually used to have a lot of a lot of availability issues and you are completely correct that yes for that UX to exist and for for that UX to be to be great it needs to it needs to be there.

It needs to be accessible like if if you have

Sana has made a lot of improvements when it comes to that. So yes, I understand your criticism and I kind of would have agreed with it uh a few years ago, but with the uh changes to like the the the the approach to Salana um adding more execution clients and gaining more attractions, it it has been a while since I don't want to jinx it, but it has been a while since Salana was down. Um so I would say that this is uh you're right that it is a concern and it has to be mentioned and it has to be taken into consideration but at the end of the day um if we want to be realistic that's not really much of an issue today

is basically everybody takes baby steps once in a while to grow up. I mean at the end of the day again that's a while ago there were there were a couple of uh major major centralized exchanges that that uh went down because there was an outage with their Amazon web services uh accounts and you know they were unavailable for more than 24 hours. Is that something that happens in web 2? Yes. Is it something that happens in web 3 even more often?

Yes. Are we working to change that? Yes.

That's the answer. So it's taking into account.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. Taking everything into account. Well, do we have more questions from the audience today? I also want to say thank you so much for joining us and explaining us the depth of EVMS.

Thank you for having me.