Injective FRENZY: Interview with CEO Eric Chen

Hey guys and welcome back to the BoxMining channel. Today we have a very cool interview with Injective Eric Chen. So Eric, welcome to the channel. Yeah, really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me. Now, Injective has been getting a lot of attention recently, so I really want to get the questions just out of the way. So I guess just as a starter question, in your own words, what makes Injective special? Yeah, I think what makes Injective the most unique is that it's not like a generic generalized L1. It doesn't try to do everything and try to excel or compete in like TPS in general. For Injective's case, it's very much, and we like to call it a sector-specific layer one blockchain that's built purposely for financial applications. It's basically this highly open, interoperable, optimized layer one blockchain that tries to power the next generation of DeFi applications, where a lot of these are like leading-edge DeFi apps. They're trying to take advantage of chain-native modules like Exchange Module, which has an on-chain water boat that's synergized with all the other dApps, and create this very, very unique competitive advantage against other apps and any other L1s or L2s. Got it. And you talked about two key aspects here. So financial, all right, powering financial and DeFi. So what makes it different? Because I mean, Ethereum's huge right now. Avalanche is huge. Solana's huge. What kind of sets you guys apart in this respect? Yeah. So basically, Injective has these out-of-box plug-and-play modules for developers to get integrated with and to synergize with other applications with. And one of those is the Exchange Module, which allows you to plug into the on-chain order book, enjoy the cheapest possible order placement or cancellation order updates. And there's also Oracle Module, which lets you take advantage of an aggregated price feed from all the major Oracle solutions. And there's also a native, highly optimized, Rust-based Cosmobosm environment, which allows for agent-based Spark contract that can do anything that an externally owned account can do. And on top of that, consistently adding more and more of these modules, especially with the next chain upgrade, which adds a permission module, which basically allows what people might be familiar with, which is your C20 token, to be compatible with all the other applications, but at the same time having this institutional-friendly interface and compliance framework. And so this basically allows for whatever new technology that comes on or whatever new scalability solution comes on, Injective can always incorporate it to expand the scalability. And at the same time, it's always going to be cheaper as a result. So creating a limit order, creating a trade, et cetera, it's going to be always 10x cheaper than the next generalized environment that you're going to find. There's a lot to digest here, because you're talking about access to these tools, these oracles. So that's kind of the primary thing for developers. So if you're building a financial application, the tools are already integrated on-chain. So that's a key advantage. The other thing that I kind of wanted to digest is that you're supporting multiple languages here, right? So on Ethereum, we have Solidity, the EVM. Then we have, I heard you guys have Rust. So you're kind of like a hybrid between you combining all the programming goodness with everything. How is this achieved? And how does this happen? Yeah. Yeah. So this is actually part of our new electrical chain effort, which allows for a lot of the roll-ups environment to be deployed on top of Injective and using Injective as a D-layer and also a disverified layer sometimes. The first two that they're being launched are the INSVM layer and also the INEVM layer. And this basically allows for the Solana runtime environment and also the Ethereum virtual machine environment to be built on top, to roll on top of the Injective chain. And oftentimes people generally treat these roll-up environments as a scalability solution. But for our case, it's actually more of an interoperability and for more of an environment diversity solution. And what this allows for is, even if you're building completely in a roll-up environment where there's always going to be inherent delays, for a lot of Ethereum L2's case, it's going to be a seven day withdrawal period, et cetera. It also allows you to be tightly coupled with the Injective native chain to take advantage of all the liquidity and all the execution and all the flow within the Injective chain, but at the same time being able to develop and perhaps even in a more optimized way on top of this roll-up environment. So the strategy here is to just entice developers that are developing on other chains or they can easily port over, right? You can basically take existing code without any too many optimizations, bring it, port it over to this appropriate layer on Injective. So that's going to be exciting for a lot of developers because it's probably the first time the Solana developers kind of see the Ethereum developers that see like the other Rust guys, you know, like that's, that's exciting, right? Yeah. Nice. Nice. All right. Let's play a few games first. So we're going to ask, we're going to ask a few questions. We're going to ask you to either Injective or to Ejective. Okay. And then you can give a little bit of explanation of why or not, but let's start with an easy one first. Pineapple on pizza, Inject or Eject? I'm sorry. One of my best friends is Italian. I'm going to have to say Eject. All right. Okay. Second question. Inject or Eject selfie sticks? Oh, that's a hard one. Um, I would say like before, like the latest generation of iPhone or like the latest two generation, definitely Inject. But like these days, there's like wide angle and stuff like that. Eject 100%. Eject. Get that shit out of here. Okay. We got Inject or Eject reality TV. Reality TV. What's that? Oh, oh, oh, you mean like the reality shows? Yeah. Um, I would say I got Inject like 60% of them. Um, there are like quite a few ones that are like certainly very, very interesting. I can't think off the top of my head, but I feel like, you know, like the traditional, whatever you think of the reality TV, like it's probably like a, uh, uh, Eject. Got it. Okay. Then Eject or Inject meme coins? Um, I would say Inject because, um, um, basically it's one of those things where it's like, it really showcases like how powerful like a community can be. Um, and especially, you know, like meme coins literally like a representation of like, you know, like the dollar value of like a certain communities are like hyper aligned. We've seen, you know, Dogecoin. We've seen like Shiba Inu. We've seen like all these like projects before, you know, it's very easy to dismiss. It was like, you know, what is like the economic value behind it. But now like it became very, very clear. It's like, it's certainly like a belief system and, uh, it's very, very much hard to like, you know, like quantify. And like now I've seen Kira, seeing Ginger or like, you know, like, like all those like crazy, like, uh, you know, communities out there. It basically became like an economic indicator of like a community alignment. Mm-hmm. It's, uh, people will not have fun, right? Inject or eject Mirrorsless Cat. No, no, no. I like my chat better. Sorry. Got it. Let's eject that. All right. So, so on that note as well, I mean, the meme coin seems to be like the ones that's popping up, uh, everywhere. Uh, what do you take on this whole thing? Are you personally like playing with meme coins right now? Yeah. So, so I certainly, you know, showed a little bit of support and, um, I think like a few projects, uh, transfer like their LP token to me. I'm still figuring out like the proper way to burn it without like, uh, causing like a panic. Um, but yeah, like it's definitely like probably one of the most exciting thing. It's, you know, like, uh, one of like, you know, if you, if you asked me like five years ago or like four years ago, like, like, like, like, like what is like a, you know, uh, ecosystem's like success indicator. And I would say like, definitely, you know, like the blossoming of meme coins and stuff like that. I think that's the surprising part. I mean, like we're seeing huge volumes. So now it blew past that. Um, uh, before it was like, you know, like having like a few meme coins, you know, like getting some co-following, you know, like we're, we're certainly far past that. I mean, you're getting these LPs from, uh, meme coins. Uh, would you, would you burn them or donate them? No, I'm definitely burning them. Maybe there's like, you know, like other, like, uh, uh, uh, like places to LP them per say, where it's like, you know, Hey, like maybe like one place that you LP, like it turns out like some other place is better. So like, you know, what is the time for burning? Like if you burn it, like, you know, it kind of became like awkward, uh, ground where like there's like a new, like, and like, you know, much more capital efficient, uh, uh, LP venue that popped up. So that, that, that was like, you know, like my hesitation for like burning, like right now, like literally like four days after I received it. Um, but yeah, like, you know, within a matter of like, you know, weeks, if not like a month or two, it's definitely going to be burning them. So, so, um, uh, on that, like, let's go back to some of the more serious stuff. Um, right now there's probably a lot of stuff that's been developed on, um, injective that a lot of people probably don't even know about like me to finance or, uh, what would be like your most underrated project in your opinion that's being developed on injective? Yeah, I would say so. So, so, so like personally, I've spent a lot of time on like coming out, uh, coming out with a lot of theoretical models around like, uh, onto market making around like my own finance. So I certainly have like a personal mental bias on like my own finance. Um, recently, you know, a lot of attention has been, you know, on my dose, a launch path product and some of the, you know, generalized, like a marketing product, but like part of my, uh, academic purity mind would be like, uh, you know, like, Hey, like it's not perfect yet. Like, but really on, I think, you know, it's more of a, you know, uh, uh, effective really show over time where it's like, Hey, like this, this part has like better capital efficiency, better, like APY doesn't suffer too much from like IL and et cetera. Um, if any at all, it's definitely within like the Mito umbrella, but it's more about like the specific, uh, vertical part that Mito is offering. I will, I will love her be able to draw more of their attention on. Um, and I think, you know, maybe they do like upon launch, but, uh, if they don't, like, I would love to like, you know, like, uh, uh, draw their attention towards it. Hmm. Um, I think, I think that's, that that's always the case, right? Like, uh, when people describe, um, uh, concepts, it's quite hard. Uh, I guess like for me, I'm a very much of a learner that's based on just clicking buttons and doing something. So I guess it's 100% of those cases where, uh, when you demonstrate something, uh, and allow people to use them, play around with it. Um, the results can be amazing. Okay. So, uh, what, what's coming up, um, next for injective that you find very exciting. Yeah. Um, I think one of the most exciting ones is certainly like the upcoming, uh, main upgrade. Basically it's going to encompass like a lot of like institutional tools that we've, you know, been done a lot of times, uh, you know, survey like all the major institutions on, you know, what their, uh, uh, you know, wants and needs are and to come up with like the perfect solution for them to like properly onboard, uh, and, and to, you know, bring on like a major flow of asset class. It certainly has been, you know, like a slightly pushed back because of the recent, like Russian, like a adoption, et cetera. Even like a chain upgrade, which might require 30 minutes of downtime might cause a lot of stir, but you know, like, like, like it's pretty much like the next big thing that we've been, you know, like, uh, uh, pushing out for. Hmm. Got it. So, so, uh, what would be the main features instead? So it's targeting institutional users. What, what do they want that we don't have right now? Or what do they really, what are they dying for right now? Yeah. So, so, um, so, so for the most fundamental level, it's certainly, you know, like the permission aspect of things, but obviously as we know, like as you permission something, um, it pretty, I practically become useless within like the on-chain world. So you have to slowly start to think about like solutions, uh, that can be presented for institutions to take advantage of all the on-chain liquidity and all the on-chain activity. And at the same time, you know, making sure they satisfy their compliance framework. So then it becomes kind of like this shareable list of, uh, uh, permissioned, uh, uh, access where it basically became like, kind of like all a card for different institutions or different asset issuers, uh, to pick from, uh, which is like, it could be like, Hey, like we want major, uh, data integration, but at the same time, you know, we have like a non, not like a white list, but rather a black list. And that became like a list of them to itself. And then, uh, uh, at the same time, like, um, it could be like a white list where it's like, we want the app, uh, uh, uh, you know, dApps to be like seamlessly incorporated with, uh, you know, injective, but, um, uh, for, for those to actually like hold it like in like a self custody way or like to withdraw it, then it, you know, it becomes permission that is like a completely, uh, uh, you know, viable venue as well. And that basically becomes kind of interesting case because they oftentimes like centralized exchanges, you know, when you trade amongst each other, uh, and then, you know, like one of the accounts get like blacklisted or something like that due to compliance, um, uh, you know, that accounts still technically as a balance, but they simply can't withdraw. So then, uh, they end up, you know, having to like, yeah, yeah, uh, uh, concise, like another counterparty, uh, uh, they're not being blacklisted. Right. That kind of became like a known path that works for like, uh, uh, centralized venues and that were, you know, like adopting for like, uh, uh, kind of like this decentralized venue for the first time. Um, and then on top of that, there's like, you know, a lot of, a lot of tools are like semi-onchain, semi-offchain that makes it so much easier for like institutions, like, uh, deployed a real world asset, deployed their issuance, et cetera. And, uh, yeah, we're, we're looking forward to a lot of those. That's really like the future, right? Like, um, you know, in Hong Kong, uh, the SLC licenses really cover securities and real world assets. And, um, so, so you're really looking at that future where, you know, not, not just like, you know, like few months down the road, but like years down the road and how can this chain benefit, uh, users, uh, or, or institutions rather? Yeah. It's a very, very long-term investment. It won't pay out probably like, you know, uh, uh, like a meaningful, like scale relative like institutions, uh, until like, you know, years and years afterwards, but you have to plan to see it as early as possible. And, you know, this is, you know, like one of our first few initiatives, uh, uh, planted. Nice. All right. So, so, uh, when can we expect this? Cause, uh, that, uh, so, uh, on Twitter, so, uh, fucker off the world says, when can we expect the Vulkan upgrade, um, in 2024? So I guess right now you're busy, but, uh, do you get a rough timeline for this? Yeah. So Slater for the end of this year, um, it depends on, you know, like how disruptive it is. So like all the new integrations and new like infrastructures are like connected and setting up their nose for like objective. So we might like, uh, uh, push it back like a week or two until they're all like settled in and stuff like that, because we have like, you know, historical amount of traffic that's. You know, just, just like a slight, like a hundred X increase, uh, which costs like, you know, Hey, but you don't, don't work very well. Right. I mean, it's one of those, uh, uh, situations where when there is a hundred X, usually websites break. Right. But how did you guys deal with that? Like how, how did you manage that sudden flow of users and everything? Yeah. So, so it's all about like, you know, preemptively like increasing the load. Uh, and certainly, you know, like, like, like we've, uh, underestimated a lot of like the upcoming traffic load because oftentimes for these like public facing websites, uh, not the chain itself, um, you'd have to anticipate like, Hey, like it'll go up to like a hundred K concurrent sessions, a million concurrent sessions, et cetera. Um, and then like, um, you know, like, like once it surpasses that, it'll have like, you know, slow down issue for all of them. And, uh, for a, for our cases, like, you know, like being up for like an, uh, ungodly amount of hour, like just keep seeing like, you know, like, Hey, how much are we increased by how much are we increased by? Um, and then making sure like, you know, there, there's as, uh, as little user that are having like a long low time or like, you know, like a stream, like drop issue, uh, uh, as much as possible. So the entire time, and I'm quite jealous, I was changing myself was just like having like, it's, it's chill time. Um, uh, it's just having a time of this life. Um, uh, yeah. Uh, because, you know, like, like, like it's like kind of like designed to like handle that type of load, but, uh, for like websites that people are trying to load or like, you know, streaming a lot of, uh, lots and lots of data on like account and like index data and stuff like that. Uh, uh, that becomes quite, quite a bit of stress because, you know, we, we didn't anticipate like that much, like resource strain or imply like AWS still. Um, so, you know, we, we constantly, you know, like monitor, uh, increase monitor, like add more notes, uh, add more stability monitor. So yeah, that, that's been like kind of like a fun, like marathon for the past two weeks. It's a busy Christmas. And I mean, it's glad to hear that the, the chain side is very well prepared for it. It's just really the, the services that are surrounding it. Um, you know, especially when it comes to server costs, those are very expensive. So those were the ones that you were guys finding fire on, but the chain itself, it's like pretty much solid. You know, to make a transaction, to change something that's already within the chain itself, that's not expensive at all. But for the users to see, Hey, like what was my past hundred transaction past thousand transaction? You know, how is it on like a price graph and stuff like that? That kind of becomes expensive. And that, that, that's really, you know, like, like a lot of the workforce though, you know, like that probably explains why like Infuril and Ethereum was down a lot. Makes sense. Makes sense, man. So I think that's pretty much concludes the first, uh, round of questions for the community. And for us, I hope you guys liked, uh, inject or eject. I would love to ask Eric more questions about that in future interviews. Uh, but yeah, Eric, thank you so much for coming on, uh, today. I, uh, and I wish you had to have a good Christmas as well. I see you're, you're having fun and I hope Ginger's doing well. Uh, Ginger, uh, uh, the community loves Ginger. So, so we gotta, we gotta mention that. So any, any last words you want to add before we, uh, conclude this interview? Yeah. I would say, you know, like, like definitely like join the injective ecosystem. It's a very, very fun place. Um, um, yeah, but before people were wondering like, yeah, like I have to bridge over, I have to acquire native token. And in reality, like, um, you know, you don't have to do any of that. Um, if you try a Helix and stuff like that, it really feels like, you know, like L2 solution or, you know, sometimes, you know, to some, it's even like a centralized exchange, like, uh, uh, user experience where it's like deposit, do whatever you want. You don't even have to use gas. Um, so yeah, definitely try to deposit. You can just withdraw from finance, right. Um, they, they had, they slowed it. Uh, yeah, you can just directly from the change and you're good to go. So it's the same experience. Yep. That's also one of the reasons why, you know, like a Volant was, uh, uh, pushed back a little bit to avoid that like 30 or 40 minute, like, uh, you know, downtime. It's that, you know, a lot of these like notes are, you know, not part of injective labs, like, you know, wall solutions and stuff like that. Uh, it's all trying to catch up with the traffic and stuff like that. Uh, because they didn't expect it. Uh, so yeah, like, uh, it's been very, very exciting time and, you know, a lot of them have definitely resolved most of the issue. So it should be like, you know, pretty smooth, uh, uh, sailing from here. Awesome. Awesome. I hope it goes really well. I want to see, I hope to see you more in the future as well, especially when the upgrade hits. So guys, thank you guys so much for watching. Thank you, Eric, for coming on and check out what's happening on injective. Yeah. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.