1. Introduction
Welcome to the Ryze Up program, presented by Ryze Labs. Ryze Labs acts as a bridge between the East and the West, striving to accelerate Web3 development in emerging markets and influence the global Web3 landscape. With the motto "Local Insights, Global Impact," let's embark on this journey together. It's time to Ryze Up.
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Host of this episode:
Fred, a researcher at Ryze Labs, focuses on enhancing the fund's presence in the Chinese-speaking community and provides insights and advice to the fund’s portfolio companies.
Special Guest:
Chris started his career at ByteDance, where he gained extensive experience in consumer entertainment and SaaS market research before moving into Web3. He later joined the RCT AI team, focusing on AI and Web3 intersections, exploring AI with NFT and Crypto. These innovations sparked his interest in Web3. After founding Mirror World, which focused on game asset issuance, he identified changing market demands and collaborated with the Solana Foundation to develop Sonic, a proprietary chain for gaming to address Solana’s scaling issues. Chris's rich experience and deep technological understanding have made him a key driver in the Web3 gaming ecosystem.
2. Entry into Web3
After leaving ByteDance in late 2021, Chris ventured into Web3. His previous work at ByteDance in consumer entertainment and SaaS market research, followed by his role in the RCT AI team focusing on AI and Web3 intersections, deeply attracted him to decentralized business models and prompted his decision to enter Web3.
3. Motivation and Process of Creating Sonic
While developing Sonic, Chris and his team transitioned from Mirror World and addressed three core issues:
Diversity of Game Assets and Users: Initially, Mirror World focused on issuing assets through NFT collections for multiple game projects. They observed that asset issuance demand peaked during market upturns, but during downturns, projects focused on solving core issues. Diversity in game assets directly leads to user diversity, but on Solana, the number of assets in consumer, game, and social applications was limited.
Solana Chain Congestion: Single projects consuming significant computing resources caused congestion on Solana’s mainnet. Despite Solana's high TPS and low costs, congestion persisted with more applications putting logic on-chain. Hence, they considered using side or proprietary chains to share computing resources and prevent mainnet overload.
Insufficient Game Publishing Capability: Solana lacked the capacity to publish games, which involves technical, organizational, and team background issues. Chris believed the game industry needed dedicated resources and professional publishing agencies to support development and publishing. Therefore, they discussed developing a game-specific proprietary chain using the SVM framework with the Solana Foundation.
Chris’s team collaborated with the Solana Foundation to develop Sonic, a game-specific chain on Solana, leveraging their R&D capabilities and resources from Mirror World.
4. Impact of Experiences on Entrepreneurship
Chris's career spans ByteDance, RCT AI, Mirror World, and Sonic, each providing valuable experience. At ByteDance, he learned corporate management and efficiency methods in a fast-growing environment, crucial for his later entrepreneurship. At RCT AI, he gained further training in managing enterprises and recruiting talents, laying a solid foundation for subsequent ventures.
These experiences became vital after Chris entered the Crypto field. Recognizing Crypto’s high volatility and clear capital inflow windows, unlike SaaS products' sustainable growth, he adopted flexible and adaptive strategies in managing Sonic. He emphasized a streamlined core team and rapid expansion during high market demand to handle industry changes, helping Sonic stay competitive.
5. Evolution of Mirror World
Initially, Mirror World issued NFT assets for game projects. Over time, Chris and his team found that simple asset issuance couldn't meet long-term market demands. Especially during downturns, projects preferred solving infrastructure issues like fiat onramps and cross-chain exchanges. Therefore, in early 2022, they collaborated with the Solana Foundation to develop in-game wallets, marketplaces, onramps, and Swap tools, expanding Mirror World’s infrastructure support beyond asset issuance.
In 2023, with the FTX event, ecosystem project numbers drastically dropped. Realizing existing solutions couldn’t meet new market challenges, they decided to develop Sonic, an SVM extension chain for gaming, after in-depth discussions with the Solana Foundation. This new direction leveraged their R&D experience in Mirror World and addressed Solana’s scaling issues, helping game projects run better on-chain.
6. Solana vs. Ethereum Scaling
Chris highlighted differences in Solana and Ethereum scaling. Ethereum’s scaling aims to improve mainnet speed and reduce costs using Layer 2 solutions. Solana’s high TPS and low transaction costs focus on meeting specific needs in various fields through proprietary chains, ensuring independent economic effects and computing resources, sharing mainnet load, and providing professional services for each field. For example, a proprietary gaming chain can better support on-chain operations of game logic and assets, improving overall efficiency.
7. Sonic’s Hypergrid Expansion on Solana
Hypergrid’s core is flexibility and adaptability. Horizontal scaling allows independent field development while maintaining Solana mainnet connection, improving field professionalism and efficiency and enhancing Solana ecosystem performance and scalability.
8. Challenges of Layer2 Expansion on Solana
Solana faces multiple challenges in Layer2 expansion. Evaluating fields needing independent SVM chains is crucial, as not all fields require such solutions. Chris noted Ethereum’s similar early challenges, determining suitable fields for Layer2 expansion.
Technical challenges in continuously splitting and maintaining Solana’s codebase, like recent client and runtime environment code splitting, require ecosystem adaptation. Ensuring code stability and compatibility during rapid development is essential.
Solana’s rapid growth requires constant problem-solving. Chris likened Solana to a fast-moving startup, needing flexibility to tackle new challenges and changes while developing Sonic.
9. Future of Web3 Gaming
Chris is confident in Web3 gaming’s future, noting significant improvements in game content quality and payment tools compared to the previous cycle. Despite current coin price issues, he believes the quality and user willingness to pay are high. For example, Big Time’s increasing monthly active users and revenue indicate Web3 games’ potential.
Future game design will involve more on-chain logic. When technology costs and speed improve, full-chain games will become possible. Sonic’s development also aims towards this. Although 80% focus is currently on asset-chaining games, future attention will be on full-chain games. He believes technological advancements and market maturity will lead to breakthroughs in Web3 gaming, potentially seeing the first hit full-chain game.