Unique Divine on building Nibiru, a high-performance Web3 chain

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from the cryptocoin show and today on blockchain interviews we have unique divine co-founder and CEO of Nibiru chain here to talk about new layer 1 blockchains multivvm and blockchain interoperability uh and much much more about creating new apps and just growing blockchain overall into the mainstream. Unique, thank you so much for taking the time. Yeah, thanks for

0:24having me. You're welcome. I I know uh the team has been hard at work on Nibiru and there's uh I've seen the loading bar in that the the mainet is getting closer to being launched. Um I'd love to start off with a highle overview on what you and your team have built at Nibiru and what makes it different and then we can dive into all the latest in blockchain.

0:47Yeah. So um the simplest overview, Nibberu is a younger layer 1 blockchain. Uh starting initially, it's built with the Cosmos SDK and then supported smart contracts in WASOM. Uh with our V2 upgrade that went live in February, we added on uh multivvm support. So it actually runs both the EVM and WASOM in tandem. And we built up a standard as well for cleanly moving assets between

1:15those two uh frameworks essentially so that builders can use whatever they're comfortable with and you still get intrachain uh operability. So essentially they can ship fast but you still get a lot of the benefits we added in terms of performance for fast finality like low latency UX a parallel execution. Um and yeah so those are a couple of the ways like Nepiru stands

1:37out. Um but more practically speaking from a strategy side, our focus is on use cases like structured products and passive yield products that don't carry as much risk for holding volatile assets. And we want people to have easy access to those um so that they can get real yield sources beyond simple staking or inflation. And so that's a lot of the strategy in terms of business

1:59development and which apps we're seeking out as well. Mhm. Yeah. I'd love to dive into the applications uh in a little bit here. I want to go back to that first point on there's the there's an EVM compatibility, there's WASUM and maybe we can sort of break it down in terms of what are the major barriers to mainstream adoption and getting more growth in blockchain uh that you're

2:24trying to solve because it sounds like interoperability and fragmented chains for blockchain development is one of the issues and there's a few other things you mentioned there. Yeah. So I guess one would be uh one kind of like point that stems from what I touched on a moment ago is access to liquidity. So on the one hand if you let's take EVM and and was with IBC uh

2:49as the example like in our case a lot of chains that were in the cosmos ecosystem did not have any pathway to being involved with like ETH and the layer 2 like essentially the larger basket of all the rest of the liquidity. Um with the stack we have set up now a lot of the protocols from whether they were from like OG's from Terra or was protocols from different chains or they

3:12were building on Neperu now can easily get the assets they create over to the EVM and essentially be bridged out to other places and also things like ETH and USDC USDT bitcoin can come in very easily and be integrated with those protocols that didn't have access to it. Um, so it's it's simplifying that and and providing a lot more access for those applications. Um, but it also

3:35works in in both directions. So something that was innovative in WASM can now be used as if it were a native Solidity protocol. Um, so that's a pretty big advantage. Definitely. The other set of Oh, go ahead. I was just going to ask about the Cosmos ecosystem tying in that liquidity. You know, people hear, "Okay, blockchains are fragmented. What does

3:59that mean?" The fact that the liquidity needs to be aggregated between these different chains is sort of the end goal in being able to put the pieces of the pie together so that everything works better and more fluid. But how and I I know there's a lot of value locked in DeFi on EVM ecosystems. How big of a piece of that pie is the Cosmos ecosystem as well? And what about the

4:23other chains like Salana and these other places? Yeah, I haven't I haven't looked at the exact figure in a while, but I I do know that uh in terms of like TVL. Okay. Well, of course, if you have Bitcoin, that takes up a huge amount of it, but let's say you're focusing only on like non- Bitcoin stuff. So, ETH is still like heavily pretty dominant um in terms

4:44of like total value locked. Sometimes you'll see spikes on like Salana and other chains in terms of volume, but it's still very much like uh I would say like Ethereum is kind of like the deacto standard in terms of what people use from a tech standpoint. Uh right. So that um that doesn't necessar now I caution that with that doesn't necessarily mean ETH the token is going

5:07to do the best but um at least in terms of a tech stack that seems to have already like won out or be very dominant. Um, so it's pretty crucial. Like I I know for us on boarding projects the like uh deal flow sped up probably like 10x or more by adding in the EVM because there was just so much more access to like different D5 protocols and other things we could work

5:29with. Definitely. And with the development ecosystem of Nibiru, that's really part of one of the main goals is making sure that it's tying into the EVM ecosystem so that it can be compatible with all of the other DeFi apps. What about the the development of apps for NIV compared to just doing it on EVM in the first place? Is it faster, easier? You know, what are

5:55the main advantages? Yeah, I think the um one thing we're touched well it's meant to be as backwards compatible as possible. So the in even so far as like NB is the the gas asset you kind of use as your ether and you can continue to use all of the same tools meaning like MetaMask Coinbase wallet anything that was compatible on Ethereum and then also you know even

6:19goes to things like Foundry libraries you can use. So from a developer side, it's really making it like uh it should be almost one:1 exact as if you were trying to build on like OP stack or if you're trying to build on ETH1. Um but then the extra piece there is then Nepuru also does like parallel processing of transactions. It has like very fast finality and like higher like

6:42basically has higher performance. So you get to leverage those benefits and still get access to things like IBC um without you know essentially without leaving your tech stack. Yeah. No, that's that's a huge advantage um because Cosmos ecosystem it has a great uh system developer kit and there's a lot of people developing on there and that's also growing and as that grows you want

7:06to make sure that it can tie into both ecosystems. So I I see where you're going with that. And you mentioned about the finality being faster, being more scalable. I I was reading that NBU can do 10,000 transactions per second with under 2 seconds finality. You know, Ethereum can't scale like that. Is that uh something that's going to be needed for adoption? And also, how do you guys

7:30achieve some scalability like that with the technology? Yeah, I think performance is it's obviously not like the the main consideration for a blockchain, but of course uh if you want to be able to support the same quality of apps that are in web 2 or just like using a centralized exchange, it's it's definitely really key, right? That I think that's been one of the huge um

7:52rationals behind the success of hyperlquid for example. Um but yeah for for how we achieve it like the base performance you get uh baseline performance you get on common BFT uh the algorithm we use for consensus is quite high to start. Um so usually um if people are just running it by default without any without any changes the theoretical TPS is already in the

8:12thousands but then with realistic ones you're only looking at like into the hundreds. Um, so what we did is made uh some changes to basically the timeouts of the nodes so that they don't wait as long waiting for confirmations and consensus. So normally you you don't mess with that stuff cuz you can cause additional slashing and other things. Um but with how we have it configured for

8:34Nepuru um essentially you can run at a really high baseline TPS without it causing instability or slashing. Um so that that's how it keeps like the the faster settlements because tenderint or comment BFT already does you know fast finality then it's just a matter of getting that um getting that block time down. Um on top of this we also added further implementations on top. Um so

8:58one of the ones we implemented first was parallel optimistic execution. Um so that's set to go live in a in an upgrade in the near future after some of the EVM upgrades we have planned. And what will happen there is uh parallel optimist exe parallelized optimistic execution is essentially a process where you have the validators preemptively execute u

9:18mutually exclusive transactions in parallel on a clone state. Um so what that means is normally you get a block and you wait for consensus to tell you that that's the official one you're going to process and then you execute all the state transitions to produce the new state uh for a node. Um, with this one, as soon as you receive one before it's confirmed, you're optimistic about

9:38it and you assume it's going to be correct. And more than 99% of the time, that's right. Um, so you just start processing it right away as soon as you have anything for what'll be the next height. Um, and then of course if you find out that it was the wrong one, you just do it in the normal order. So in the worst case, it's the same performance you had anyway. Um, but you

9:58know, best case, it's something like 2x. Essentially, you get to overlap consensus and execution. Um, so that'll help us get to like a very stable with the same validator set, but have it be under, you know, under a second instead of under 1.8 seconds. Very interesting. And yeah, I've I've I've always thought that there should be ways to be making the confirmation of

10:22transactions more efficient. You know, like get started and then if there's that.1% chance that there's an issue, then go back to the regular way. So that's something that's not actually implemented yet. The team is rolling that out in the near future. Um, we implemented it, but we did not upgrade the chain yet. So that one will be live pretty soon. Yeah. Yeah. Can you paint a

10:43picture of where exactly uh how much time has been put into development of this and where exactly it's at with right now? Yeah. So it started as um literally from my idea conception would be uh late 2021 or early 2022. Um so I met one of the um other co-founders at I think the 2021 Cosmoverse funny enough. um be even

11:10though we weren't necessarily building in the Cosmos ecosystem that was how we got connected and then naturally uh put together at first we were going to make just uh perpetual a new type of perpetual uh decks in in combination with like a CDP and something else. So it's like a combination of DeFi apps and then basically got interested in this idea of um okay there's enough changes

11:34we need at the base layer that it actually makes sense to make a chain here was at least the initial genesis. Um so throughout the course of um basically 2022 up to uh March of last year that was the whole thing of um you know building out a lot of the the product um you know raising venture capital anything like that and then we launched our mainet last year that was

11:58just with uh cosmos you know for wom contracts and then um immediately started working on the next set of features like you know parallel uh transactions and then also the EVM uh adding that to be not just like done as a rollup or a side chain or something, but to be like really natively integrated with the core stack. Um so that was what we worked on up

12:20until basically the beginning of this year. Um and then now we have this big uh campaign coming with a lot of apps co-launching on top of the EVM. Um so that's kind of like our one our next major step. That's very cool. And I want to dive into the applications. We've talked a little bit about DeFi and making sure that the liquidity is aggregated, but there's also real world

12:42assets, um, other tokenization plays, uh, NFTTS, gaming, all the stuff that comes down the line when more developers that are interested in that start building on the chain. Uh, what are some of the main categories of apps you could say that you're excited about that you're talking to developers that are building on Nibiru right now? Yeah. So, there's um there's some of

13:08just like the necessary elements of things you you want to see, right? Like you're going to see u NFT marketplace. Um obviously you need like Dexes, things like that. So, a lot of it centers on like DeFi. Um not just on ours, but probably on like most chains. Um but the big leena I guess for us is really in the realm of if a protocol issues interest or yield bearing tokens uh in a

13:32permissionless manner so that you can turn those into structured products that people can have as like passive investment vehicles. Um, so some of the at least in the community it seems like the the stuff people are most excited about is um it's called SAI SAI PERPS is like the native perex that we have um where it's going to the LP tokens are kind of similar to GLP in that they are

13:56an interesting token but also that you don't have to actively market make them on an order book. Um and then prediction markets I think people are excited to see as well. And then of course it's got a lot of the like basic dexes, launchpads, things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Very exciting. And what do you think of the potential for real world assets and tokenization of uh financial

14:19instruments in traditional finance and moving out to other instruments uh with Niru? Yeah. So I think like decentralized finance has delivered pretty like eyepopping yields in past cycles but a lot of that was unsustainable, right? it was on like token emissions or you know just creating a protocol that just mints away a bunch or mints a ton of supply

14:41and it's not you know that that's not something that's going to stick around or like last through different cycles. Um I think today the focus is shifting a lot more and more to returns you know derived from actual cash flows interest fees like option premiums corporate credit right uh rather than inflation. Um, so a big motivation is at least with Nibiru is to make it easy to access a

15:03lot of that those attractive yields. Um, obviously they're not going to be in like you know 100% APY of things like in the past, but they're going to be legit, right? So that that's a a key selling point. Um, so at least in the RWA side, the most popular stuff as of late has been like short-term US treasuries. I've seen like a couple protocols doing that.

15:23you've got like, you know, Onondo, Noble, like there's a big list, right? Um, real estate income, trade invoices, uh, providing like loans to businesses gives like a higher yield. Of course, there's more, uh, there's some risk there, but of like real companies that they're vetting, right? So, um, it's no additional risk uh, like on top of what you would get in normal Trafi. Um, but

15:47it's easier to access because it's through crypto. Um, so I I think RWAS are gaining momentum as a like and a lot of legitimacy as a source of stable uncorrelated yield. Um, because essentially it's like we're bringing the risk-free rate um into web 3 to to be more easily accessed. Um so structured products are another like side of that and and just to um in case

16:13for listeners that don't know that so structured products are um a financial instrument where you combine multiple components to create a predefined uh payoff profile in terms of like risk and reward. So basically you're packaging an exact strategy um as a product so that you can automate specific outcomes for the the end user. Um so in our case um structured products are basically going

16:38to be built on top of vaults. Um it's just a name for a pool of funds or shared investment account that you're having operated with a smart contract. And so um yeah basically we in our ecosystem you'll you'll see like either bridged or native versions of you know private credit. Um we'd like to see like yield tokenization and fixed income. Like I know one of the projects that uh

17:02is getting a lot more attention nowadays and or that we like a lot on our team is like Pendle. So like Pendle Finance does um approaching sustainable yield from uh you create a fixed income layer for DeFi. So they let users separate a yield bearing token into a principal a principal asset and a yield stream. And then essentially you can trade the the

17:23PT, the principal token separate from the yield token, the YT. And um what that means is someone can go out and like buy just the yield portion of it without needing to own the rights to the principal. Um so it just creates like a sort of like interesting financialization on top of uh like stra and stable coin farms in their case. Um so bringing a lot of the same

17:48like conventions around things that are showing product market fit in this area to all launch on Ebu. Um just ours will be structured through different protocols. Yeah. Wow. It's really interesting. I appreciate the insights into this and I have have heard a lot from other experts as well that you know fixed income uh tokenized treasuries are you know they're they're not as u fancy

18:11to the regular user as you know tokenizing a a skyscraper a house or something for RWA but that's the first thing that's happening right now that's going to lay the foundation for the entire stock market hopefully to be tokenized um so I I'm seeing a lot of growth in that area and you mentioned mentioned the vaults. I did I was reading through NBroot

18:32vaults. Is that something that people can test out right now? Not yet. So, it's part of the uh that campaign I touched on. A lot of the protocols that are essential to you using that as an end user are kind of co-launching together. So, right, you need u essentially the decks um any of the protocols that have that actually create the yield bearing tokens or you

18:54can deposit. And then of course more and more we'll try to integrate things into our like our web app as the L1. So instead of it just being to like view your assets and maybe go to do a swamp maybe add in the vaults to the same screens for increased discoverability. But um yeah some of the the the earliest ones that you will be able to use um like in the matter of weeks is uh

19:18probably Abracadabra with cauldrons. So um so Abracadabra does input uh you input interestbearing tokens to borrow mint. Um so the simplest explanation is it's a lending protocol where you can lever up the yield and um so how that works in is essentially you put in a yield bearing token whether that's like um some form of USDC that is you know investing in treasuries or it can be

19:44like a yield form yield bearing version of bitcoin um stake dbi anything like that and then up to some loan to value ratio um you can now borrow mim against it um so why that's pretty useful is because it's stable coin, you can essentially buy more of the yield bearing asset if you want to grow the position. Um, you know, obviously with some risk tolerance there, but as as

20:07long as the asset you're you're buying is not like doesn't have that much of a a price volatility to it. Um, um, that's that's it's pretty low risk right there. Um, the other thing is I mentioned on Cyper and several of the other apps, making sure that they work well with other things that are launching in the DeFi ecosystem on eB. So, for example, the the SI liquidity provision tokens or

20:29SLP tokens similar to GOP um acrew acrue yield from trading fees on the perks exchange and it's essentially act as another yield generating token. Um so, funny enough, you could you could make that another cauldron on Abra. Um but also you can provide a vault that just combines the SLP base with like delta hedging. So you can create a market neutral yield for somebody that is

20:52collecting payments from you know funding payments or just from trading right um you can also uh for example in Sai it'll also accept MIM as collateral so maybe somebody wants to deposit borrow against it and then like for example they see there's going to be a runup on bitcoin because of some bullish news now they can actually without exiting their position on stables still

21:14go trade and like uh essentially get per yield from that. Um, so that that's just like one example, but you're essentially making it that not only just provide a bunch of like disparate or disparate apps, but rather that they work well and compose well together for the end user. Yeah, really interesting. And you mentioned stable coins there. I'd love

21:37to know more on how exactly that works with obviously stable coins are integral for for DeFi and probably for real world assets. If you have for example USDC or T on uh Ethereum or EVM chain, does that have to be bridged over to Nibiru or is there like a native stable? Um how do you actually get your stables to input into the vaults for example?

22:05Yeah. So the if they're coming from the uh the EVM side is probably the majority then we set up we're set up with layer zero and Stargate. Um so similar to like a lot of the you know like arbitrum base like several other EVM chains um basically you can get from the native versions on Ethereum to us in in one transaction uh without much hassle. So we we wanted to do that instead of like

22:32making people do something unfamiliar. So um cuz the goal is not really to just like fractionalize things further. So yeah. So, we're using layer zero and then the OFT standard and then we'll also be opening up like probably several different tokens created natively on Nibiru to be moved over to those other ecosystems as well with the same infra. Yeah, that's good to know. And with

22:56these uh advanced financial products, you know, there's so many traditional finance players that have moved in over the past year and a half through the ETFs and they're looking for more um and and institutions are learning more and getting eager to jump into DeFi and RWA. What do you think about the potential or the timeline for like how many of them

23:20will actually jump on something like this in Nibiru and are they ready for that? Yeah, I think it's a lot of that really just comes down to like one are their credible counterparties, right? So, um institutions don't really want to work with like pseudonmous Dows and stuff, right? Um so, basically they need to be able to deploy capital with like uh custody they can trust. Um so, obviously

23:45it's really uh like institutions really don't want to manage keys themselves. So if you have like MPC wallet infra or you're working with like Anchorage, Fireblocks, Bitcoiners, um that's becoming like super relevant, super common. Um I definitely think in in our case, uh it's more I I would say it's more open to institutions if you have a lot of these like passive yield structured

24:10products because it makes it so easy to deposit into, right? they they don't need to like it it doesn't require like a whole white paper of explanation or or different things to you know get yield using something like goldfinch or or credits um or open eden orondo. So if you're providing things that are very like like that and are very simple and easy to use um basically you've you've

24:31abstracted away all the complexity that it's just a very like simple and uh legitimate yield source. um that should be very like attractive to institutions but especially also even to retail as well if it's permissionless. Definitely. Yeah, it's a great point about security and custody. I think if you can get those players that you mentioned involved uh to help support

24:55then that's the main thing is obviously uh it's great to have a yield but you need to secure the principal assets. So um I love I like that point. I had another question on a different topic that I've seen circulating around in the cryptosphere more recently and I know Nibiru is working on something to do with quantum resistant cryptography. You know, I've talked to some other founders

25:17about the potential for quantum computing to come in and break blockchains or you know also protect blockchains as well. And is Nibiru looking at that technology? And where do you see quantum resistant cryptography advancing right now? Yeah, I see. It's the one of the first things. It's like uh I mean I guess people have been talking about it for a while, but um basically we're we're

25:43referring to u cryptographic algorithms that are designed to be secure against um quantum computers, which quantum computers are advancing like uh very rapidly outside of the web3 space, right? Um but really it's like how realistic is the is the risk of that or like should anyone care about quantum safety? And it's definitely one of those things that's like it matters a ton when

26:05the threat arrives, but then people aren't sure how long it takes to prepare for it. Um, so the stakes are are asymmetric. Um, so we we did start on that. Um, we did a uh a hire for like research engineer as a position and then basically started working on you know a few initiative like most people's time goes into stuff that's in the immediate like next one year, right? because you

26:27operate as a startup but a few things we do in engineering are very like um have a a very long time horizon. So uh one is working on quantum resistance to build that like natively into the the basel one. I don't know like that definitely wouldn't be in like the next 6 months or anything but it is something we're like actively working on. And then the other

26:48is uh Nibiru adaptive execution which is on top of the optimistic I touched on before. This one would be runtime evaluation to run transactions in parallel. But those are two of our like more probably the most ambitious technical innovations we're working on. Um but yeah, it's if uh if it's essentially like if we're like wrong about the threat and quantum never

27:11arrives, then it's that really working on it is a waste of time. But if we're right and we didn't prepare, everything breaks, not just for us, but for a lot of people. So I think it is pretty important. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I don't think it's something that's going to happen in in 2025, but uh it it's in the back of people's minds and we'll see how that plays out as quantum

27:31computers are getting really good. Um so, you know, which which blockchains will break from that and which will be secured. Um and you mentioned, you know, it's not in the road map for the next 6 months. You've talked about a lot of updates that are the the new update coming out in the near future. Can you just sort of recap the timeline for the next few months and potentially the rest

27:56of 2025 in what are the main things to look forward to for Nibiru's rollout? Yeah, so the the biggest thing is there's um I touched on in the near future is a co-launch of several apps using the Nibiru EVM. So on our uh ecosystem page, we changed it to be less of a directory and more structured like maybe a Steam store or something where you can see all the apps. And so a lot

28:20of those that you see uh if you're on our site as like newer uh that were labeled as new or coming soon um essentially are all ready for launch now or um they're already on the chain and haven't been announced. So basically we started seating liquidity for some of the dexes um and then we're working with both Galaxy and Merkel to basically do tracking of different places that

28:42liquidity is deployed like volume um different tasks that people can do for actually using the applications and the goal now is then to be a good shepherd to all of the apps that are launching in the ecosystem bring as much like usage and liquidity as possible and um so there's a big campaign for that. So one of the things on like probably pinned on

29:02our Twitter is like um in access code for example to have like boosted benefits for that. Um so that's definitely how I would recommend. Um so in the in the short term is you'll see like a few of the apps over the next few weeks and then as there's basically like a gradual roll out of more and more um all throughout the the rest of the year. So that's basically the plan is like um

29:26helping those DAPs launch and then also for the per decks that I touched on earlier, we built that inhouse. So then we'll also be rolling that out and adding more features. Um yeah, so they really if um the best thing would be for people to like uh if that sound if that's of interest to them like seek out the access code on our Twitter and then you know they can like take part in

29:47that. That sounds great. Unique. Uh, I'm I can put a link to to the X profile, Twitter in in the social notes below and the the main platform. I'm going to check out that, you know, Steam style store of all the apps and follow along as they get released. Is the best place to follow along for the new development and the rollout of of apps on the ecosystem on X as well. Yeah, we mostly

30:11use X and Discord. Yeah, sounds great. I appreciate your insights into, you know, multiVM, um, where the institutions are at with this, all the different financial products that are being tokenized. Um, there's so much happening in the space and you're very well spoken on it. So, I'm looking forward to the release of uh, these next apps on Nibiru, and I

30:34would love to follow up again in in the near future when the development continues and and more people get involved. And um, yeah, thank you so much for taking the time. Yeah, thanks for having me.