Nil Foundation CEO on New Ethereum Rollup With Zero-Knowledge Proofs, Sharding

Ethereum Research and Development Firm Mill Foundation says its new Ethereum roll up will be the first DK roll up that enables sharding. Joining us now is CEO and co-founder of Mill Foundation, Misha Komarov. Welcome to the show, Misha. Hey, it's like, thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. Now, let's talk about this. It combines zero knowledge proofs and sharding, explain what this problem solves. And just I want to put something into context here. Of course, developers watch our show, but we have a very broad audience. So talk to us about what this problem solves and how that relates to developers, but also uh other folks who are operating in this space. OK. Let's go into it. So basically, it's like what's the basic idea of the stink? The basic idea of this thing is to try to solve is to try to break the wall gardens of all the variety of different roll ups which have, which you know, which, which you know were brought up to life, which in the recent years. So basically right now we have a lot of the roll ups. They are all you know, like completely isolated from each other. And it's good if people, you know, it's good if people consider some particular one, like, you know, a good one, like a worthwhile one. And it's like, it's absolutely tremendous that there are whole ecosystems growing on top of them. But in the end of the day, there is a lot of them, they are isolated and we try to, we try to solve this issue, this modularity issue, this uh you know, World Gardens issue by basically bringing what Ethereum, you know what, what was an Ethereum? What was an Ethereum roadmap initially like, you know, long premise charting, we tried to bring it as a ZK roll of think which you know basically solves like which basically solves the modularity concept. Yeah, modulator concept. Drawbacks. That's it. All right, le le let's take it as another step further because that ee explain why that isn't why that's an issue uh for for the lay, for the lay person out there watching this. OK. Why this is an issue? So basically it's like the more the more liquidity fragmentation, the more security fragmentation you have basically what was like, OK. What what the hell is a modular concept, right? It's basically that you have one application, one roll up, that's what it is. And it's a good idea. But the problem is that how much of liquidity can the one can a single one application attract? And what if other applications can also make use of it by increasing the total, the total good of this liquidity, the total outcome of this liquidity from this liquidity. So this means that one application one roll up is might be, you know, not the best idea. OK. So we tried to, we tried to solve this issue so the liquidity and security could stay unified because for example, for lending protocols or like for swaps like different kind of swaps, it's like it's very important to keep the liquidity pools as deep as possible to keep the lending pools as large as possible because that's what defines their economic viability for the user. So that's what it is. We try to solve this issue is keeping liquidity unified. What's the difference? I guess from a developer's perspective, if we build on nil or another roll up like polygon, Zkevm or ZK sync or are they all kind of similar? Uh It's like, let's say it this way, it's like, it's like we target, it's like we target those kinds of applications, those kinds of applications which first of all, you know, very to liquidity fragmentation. So there wouldn't be a requirement for them to keep uh you know, to keep, to keep their liquidity, you know, split. That's the first thing, second thing we target those kind of applications which are, you know, high load applications, something like, you know, it's pretty obvious for everybody right now that, you know, high load applications, I don't know, autonomous worlds OK, autonomous actors. Vita likes to talk about that much or like, I don't know this kind of things, sequencers, builders, decentralized PB, all of these things are not possible to be built, you know, on Ethereum because of the way it is built. And that's the same thing. It's not possible to be. These kind of things are not possible to be built on top of traditional roll ups. So there are, there are intersections with traditional roll ups, of course, but there are parts of, you know, there are parts and segments of applications which are only possible on now. So we try to cover, we try to cover these two parts of markets. You mentioned high load and data intensive applications here. What kind of apps do you think will thrive most in this ecosystem, you mentioned autonomous worlds? But what do you envision what kind of apps living here? Well, first of all, it's like, it's like it's like the first kind of apps which first kind of apps which which I'm personally going to push forward is going to be first of all sequencers. And well, let's say it this way, I mean, obviously, obviously financial applications and things like this. But besides that, it's sequencers, it's anything related to building and minimizing the for the for the user in a decentralized and like, you know, open way. That's what I see, like, you know, right now, that's what I'm going to talk like, right now I'm going to push for it. OK? And obviously, if we're talking about like a lot more long term vision, uh I do support the vision that, you know, I will try to put shared state applications on top of this because that's what, you know, all of those autonomous worlds and autonomous actors are about. I mean, it's like that would be really fun to put up some, you know, autonomous actor to make it smarter than just, you know, trivial and then just trivial like Perron or something. So yeah, so I, you, you, you mentioned uh uh financial application. So for, for people in the financial service industry who might be watching this and, and don't quite understand exactly what this conversation is about. Can you lay it out for them? Explain to them how this, how this would affect them? OK. So basically uh how this particular architecture, how this particular approach affects uh financial applications. OK. Let's just take a look at, I don't know lending protocols or like different swaps. So let's say you have uh let's say you have some, I don't know Unis swap or something and let's say a liquidity in a particular pool on Ethereum is quite deep enough. OK? But it's expensive to use it for like in case you need to swap something often, I mean, really expensive to use it. OK. So what's the, what's the, what's the traditional solution? The traditional solution is you deploy the UNIS swap to like, you know, some roll up, you pay less for the gas fees. You can do it more often, but a little bit of a nuance. It's like the liquidity pool on the roll up is much smaller than on the Ethereum originally. And no matter how you try, it would be really hard for you to, for you to put that liquidity from Ethereum to some roll up and to make a roll up slit pool deeper than the the one. So that what the liquidity fragmentation does to you, you know, this kind of exchanges, this kind of exchange applications. So that's what it is. And obviously the deeper the liquidity pool is the it's like the smaller uh basically this, it's like the smaller um the smaller kind of OK. Well, basically the deeper the deeper liquidity pool is the more you can exchange it OK? That's like, you know, talking in basic terms. So that's what it is. It's like the less slippage is OK? So that's why this is important. This is, that's why the absence of liquidity fragmentation is important to financial applications like on the example of a unit world, for example. So basically, it's all about making a ba basically, it's all about increasing the efficiency of those. All right, Michelle, we got to leave it there, but very quickly before we go, I wanted to see if you have any comment about the news that came out on crack in this week. It said that they're seeking a partner to help build their lay two. And according to people familiar with the situation, the Mill Foundation is one of the partners. They're considering any comments on that. I knew this question would, would arise. Uh That's the first thing. Second thing I would say it's too early to say something or not to say at all. It's like, so let's, you know, let's just leave it there, let's just leave it there. I can't state anything about this currently. All right, Misha, thank you for that. It was a pleasure and congratulations on the upcoming launch. Thanks. Thanks a lot. That was the CEO and co founder of No Foundation Misha Komarov and make sure you sign up for Coindesk protocol newsletter which explores the tech behind crypto one block at a time. You can find that at coindesk dot com slash newsletters.