Johnny is founder and lead developer at Empyreal SDK. He is a seasoned Systems Engineer with a wealth of experience in enterprise-level technology. Prior to starting Empyreal, Johnny worked as a Software Engineer at a FAANG company. He brings a strong passion for programming, particularly in Rust, Python, and Functional Programming.
[00:00:00] Hello everybody and welcome to the Crypto Hipster Podcast. This is your host, Jamil Hasan, the Crypto Hipster, where I interview founders, entrepreneurs, executives, thought leaders, you name it across the world of Crypto blockchain all around the world.
[00:00:16] And today I have another amazing guest. I'm looking forward to this interview. I know this man's first name but that is last name, it doesn't matter.
[00:00:24] Hi, his name is Johnny. He is one of the co-founders and lead developer and imperial. Johnny, welcome to the show today.
[00:00:33] Hey, great to be here. Thank you for being here. So let me ask you first. I kick things off with the same question for everybody but I'll get lovely and all kinds of different diverse answers.
[00:00:44] What is your background and is a logical background for what you're doing now?
[00:00:49] Yeah, I think so. So I come from an engineering background and I've worked in kind of web3 development and back end in data for about 15 years now.
[00:01:03] So this is sort of just a logical profession for me to kind of move into tooling for web3.
[00:01:12] And so I can talk a bit more about kind of how I got to where I am. Yeah, so yeah, so I was first kind of exposed to blockchain pretty early like around like 2011 actually just kind of when somebody kind of showed me Bitcoin and I didn't really understand what it was.
[00:01:33] I think that like that early. I don't think anyone really did. It was this kind of weird hacker money where like people would talk about things like the Silk Road and the first time I remember so much owed it to me Bitcoin was maybe like $10 and then when I saw go from $10 to like it was like 120 was like sort of first big push.
[00:01:52] That got me interested just in the sense that like okay this feels like this is gaining traction and it seems like something worth studying. And so kind of coming from an engineering background I started to kind of dig into the underlying tech and there wasn't so much you could do back then it was really you could participate by you know buying a GPU and mining or you could just kind of try to like study and understand the potential of it.
[00:02:19] And so there's a lot of like sort of experimentation but it wasn't something where you would really think I think the people that really like went full crypto that early were really brave and kind of just very like they were willing to kind of explore this technology. And for me was just something that I use sort of the way to kind of improve my systems programming and my understanding of cryptography.
[00:02:42] And then over time you know you started to see kind of some interesting applications come out like I remember counter party and there was like a lot of these kind of different proof of work chains but it wasn't really till a solidity came out that I got interested as a developer in a bigger way because consensus started the consensus academy which is sort of like this first cohort of solidity developers.
[00:03:09] And so what they wanted to do is like on board people do this class where they would teach you kind of how to write smart contracts and it was it was a lot different back then there was sort of a different mentality and how you approached it but it gave me the sort of exposure.
[00:03:24] And that kind of kick started my interest kind of moving into a different sort of smart contract platform.
[00:03:30] So like I was pretty interested in the work those being done by teams like Tazos and just sort of different virtual machine implementations but over time I kind of ended up gravitating back towards sort of the EVM is what I felt was like the most important technology for developing smart contracts and building in this space.
[00:03:52] And so I kind of had a pretty cool journey where I spent some time working on chains like Solana and Tazos but ended up kind of finding my way back to solidity development.
[00:04:05] And then so through all that I also worked a lot in systems programming and data and so.
[00:04:12] I think that there's like this really interesting intersection where I found that building for web three.
[00:04:21] It initially was this idea of trying to put everything is like a dow and decentralized on chain but I think we're starting to see people move towards more this hybridized approach where you have these off chain and on chain components that work together.
[00:04:33] And so when we were starting.
[00:04:36] Um, Imperial for me I was looking at an interesting way to kind of build in the space that really focused on.
[00:04:45] Um, approaching things from sort of a defy first perspective but.
[00:04:49] I was always trying to work on the infrastructure side and that sort of how this project came together was it was a way for us to be.
[00:04:57] Firmly placed in the defy community but focus more on infrastructure development.
[00:05:05] Very cool, very cool. So that brings us to today.
[00:05:10] Uh, Imperial, Imperial. I want to keep saying, empty real because it's spelled out.
[00:05:15] But what does Imperial SDK you know all about what makes you unique from a technological development standpoint?
[00:05:22] Yeah, so I think um.
[00:05:26] I like one of the biggest challenges I think in web three right now is that we have a lot of sort of peer.
[00:05:34] PVP style trading and part of the reason for that is I think that we struggle to onboard more users.
[00:05:42] So we're competing for market share of a smaller user base and I think that a lot of the onboarding friction comes from things like the complexity.
[00:05:52] So we're going to be learning protocols. Like one of my consistent thoughts is if it's hard for me to understand as a solidity dev, it's going to be very hard for a standard user to understand and a lot of protocols.
[00:06:07] They're really powerful once you learn how to use them but there's this very sharp learning curve.
[00:06:12] And so I think we started to see this narrative of like intense.
[00:06:15] This idea of not focusing so much on directly using a protocol but being able to say how you want your funds to be allocated or the outcome you're looking for.
[00:06:27] And then allowing.
[00:06:31] Tooling to kind of solve the problem for you.
[00:06:34] And at the same time I think also with the count of distraction we have ways of making wallets simpler to use.
[00:06:42] I think a lot of people that interact with web three applications every day have gotten very comfortable with this concept of having a browser intersect browser.
[00:06:53] Integration you know, so having like a met a mask or some sort of web wallet and managing a private key bridging funds between networks and kind of just like juggling a lot of complexity that feels like.
[00:07:07] Pretty natural I think after you've been doing it for a while but for a new user I think a lot of people just they immediately get discouraged by this complexity and they are uncomfortable with things like maintaining the security of their assets and.
[00:07:22] And so they're looking for a kind of a simpler way to participate in web three.
[00:07:29] But at the same time I think we can give them a pretty complete experience and so what we want to accomplish is easier on boarding and simplify interactions with web three.
[00:07:42] So that we can onboard more users and create more exciting use cases.
[00:07:49] Everybody's ghost on board.
[00:07:51] Yeah, you know I think we all have to be evangelists right?
[00:07:54] I think that you know everybody's number one job in web three is evangelist first and then you know secondly is whatever else you're doing.
[00:08:03] That's a good way to put it.
[00:08:05] I like that approach so I'm going to ask you how we build an intelligent infrastructure for web three and part of it is a kind of distraction right part of it is intense.
[00:08:17] How how do we build it out though?
[00:08:20] Well, yeah I think like one of the things that I'm pretty lucky to be working on a project like this is that in web three.
[00:08:29] You have a lot more freedom for experimentation and exploration then you might if you're to pursuing a startup with kind of traditional funding via VC where you kind of have a lot more pressure on you.
[00:08:41] To produce in a short period of time I think with web three developments it's there's a better grasp from the community on the needs for being experimental and explorative but so I think what that has led to for us is it's afforded us the ability to really figure out the best way for us to solve the problem for ourselves.
[00:09:04] And so when we're working on development for this a lot of times what we're looking for is trying to discover the best path to develop applications for ourselves so that we can share that learning with other developers.
[00:09:19] And so I think that there's a lot of complexity right now and there's like you know a lot of these things are kind of newer concepts so what we're trying to do is figure out.
[00:09:31] A really effective way to build this type of tooling so that we can share it with more developers.
[00:09:38] So you're building it.
[00:09:40] And here you know like the flexibility I like to freedom I like that concept we still I I's from my perspective I still see that people in the web too world are not giving the proper credit.
[00:09:53] To web three builders right and I want to see how we can flip that switch and empower this next generation who is going to be web three builders.
[00:10:02] To you know be and patty you be respected have that great.
[00:10:07] Yeah, I think it's kind of interesting because I think that there's a lot of people that were.
[00:10:12] You know very aggressive in aceaers but I don't think it's because they didn't believe in the technology I think it's they were rooting against it.
[00:10:19] You know I think when you start to see web three catching on and it's disruptive to the work you're doing.
[00:10:26] You start to feel like I can imagine that some people in kind of web two looked at and said oh it's a fad.
[00:10:32] We don't need to start to adapt to integrate this into our workflows and kind of rethink our entire business model.
[00:10:39] And I think it's harder to hold that stance every day, you know as we start to see these massive benefits that are provided by the centralized technology.
[00:10:49] I think like one example is when you look at programmable money just as like a very basic concept.
[00:10:56] If you're building applications that have financial rails, if you're not working with web three you have to.
[00:11:05] Build a relationship with a payment processor you have to have this sort of.
[00:11:13] There's a lot of regulation around how money can be transferred.
[00:11:18] There's a higher latency and I think that you can just provide a generally better user experience when you are working with web three for a lot of these concepts.
[00:11:26] And so I think as we start to kind of figure out regulation because I think that's probably one of the biggest inhibitors was.
[00:11:36] Large companies were scared to kind of dip their toe in the water of web three because they just were you know scared of like.
[00:11:43] What if regulators come after us for working with this technology and I think that we're starting to get to a point now where big companies feel much more comfortable.
[00:11:51] You know exploring this space and so I just think over time it seems pretty clear to me that this is a better way to manage.
[00:12:01] Just like a large percentage of your development stack so I want to talk about the development stack so actually you know.
[00:12:13] You worked on you worked on three different platforms you said you worked on EVM you worked on Solana you were those.
[00:12:21] Testos was great for NFTs I'm not going to dispute that in an.
[00:12:24] I like some of my NFTs on Tesos.
[00:12:28] But you know you have this war I would say the war but if it's a very outside or looking at social media.
[00:12:35] And a theory on me you know what's going to win why and why is it why why do you pick the theory and what's what are the considerations of why should other people pick Solana what's the pros and cons.
[00:12:49] Yeah I think you know I don't think there has to be just one blockchain or just one sort of paradigm for development I think that.
[00:12:59] When you look at things even like you have like aptos and sweet with the movie and you have Solana and Ethereum and like all these different VMs they all have tradeoffs and so.
[00:13:13] Obviously when you have like the lower latency with chains like I mean ton is another example I look at with ton Solana and I think we're starting to see.
[00:13:25] Some EVM based chains that are going to have that very low latency and kind of asynchronous processing like moan add.
[00:13:33] I think that there are use cases for that as well.
[00:13:38] I think it also it really just kind of depends on your your goals for your application one thing that I would found really interesting about Tesos I know people don't talk about it lot but what it was really good for me in terms of learning was they have a really high focus on like formal verification and so when they built their virtual machine their focus was on.
[00:13:58] Making it easy to mathematically verify the logic of your smart contracts and they felt that that would be a really good value proposal.
[00:14:06] To developers which didn't catch on in the way they had hoped but I think that a lot of really good research was done by them as a team and as a chain and they might actually you know there might be a time when that actually becomes the bigger priority.
[00:14:21] I think what we're at right now is that we want to have really flexible development that's effective and so for me I see the EVM community especially in DVA DFI as having a really strong open source community.
[00:14:38] really good auditing community there's a lot of like very good auditors in this space and so I think that if you are trying to build a more complicated application.
[00:14:47] There's a lot of benefits to building on an EVM just because there's a lot more code to kind of use as a foundation for your development but I think in the same way.
[00:14:57] You know, chains like Solana which are there building you know as like a virtual machine that supports you know rust development and so you can kind of have the tool chain of a rest developer at your expo at your disposal.
[00:15:10] That also has its benefits but I think that right now there's less of an open source community around Solana development than there is in the EVM.
[00:15:21] So it's just I think something where you're doing a lot more trailblazing if you're building for Solana than you are for EVMs but you know like I said it I think it's the trade offs around sort of like latency and decentralization are really sort of big things to weigh into.
[00:15:41] Got it. So I'm curious. I've interviewed people before really really really tech savvy like you who who are creating SDK toolkits right and there's always been a different mix of writing what the toolkit is for the developer.
[00:16:00] You know, Sam and developer I want to have this I want to have access to the tool kit so I can mix and match and I can you know have interoperability between chains what should be in my ideal SDK toolkit.
[00:16:15] Yeah so for us what we wanted to focus on was.
[00:16:21] What I would say is sort of like the core kind of tooling that a user would want at their disposal. So we've been working on a platform called simulachron and so what it's doing is it's distracting interactions with common functionalities on chain.
[00:16:38] So right now what we're focusing on are swaps, perpetuals, ENS tooling so being able to have the abstraction on your wallet address account abstraction and a few other things that were kind of packaging together to make it this very simplified experience that we can build on top of.
[00:17:02] And so that's enabling us to integrate with different sort of rails. So one of the things that we've been focusing on now is trying to demonstrate to people the ability to connect off chain sources with this on chain framework and so Twitter is sort of or X is where we kind of decided to target for our first demonstration of that capability.
[00:17:26] So being able to connect your X account to a wallet and have your X account manage your crypto holdings. But it's more about demonstrating this as a specific source that can tap into this framework.
[00:17:43] So building in like a modular sense where you don't really have the source connecting to the logic allows you to have a variety of sources that connect to the underlying intense platform.
[00:17:57] And so building this way what we're really trying to focus on is building a framework that works for us that's complete enough that you can build a wide variety of applications and also extend it because I think that it's hard to predict what the.
[00:18:12] The next use case is going to be so we really wanted to build in a way that's flexible and scalable and also think that.
[00:18:21] We want to make sure that we can tackle user onboarding an extremely low friction way. So I think that some people there's different sort of users that you can target.
[00:18:31] And I think there's like a lot of great applications that with their targeting or high frequency traders people looking for like this like really rapid edge to make the.
[00:18:42] The best trade possible with the lowest latency and there's definitely a big market for that. But I think there's also an even bigger market for users that aren't looking for this like extremely competitive trading experience, but they're looking for maybe stable yield some crypto exposure and some kind of swimland experience where they're not.
[00:19:08] Really able to.
[00:19:10] Make the kind of mistakes that they're afraid of making so by simplifying the web three experience by giving them you know this kind of overlay of the blockchain that really exposes safe applications.
[00:19:23] We think that that's like. Really important way to onboard users and so.
[00:19:29] And this is something that works sort of building as a toolkit for ourselves so we're dog fooding our toolkit ourselves and then we hope to open it up to other users, but we think it's very important as we're building to make sure that we're the first customer so that we're building something that we are using.
[00:19:45] I like the X platform usage from a efficiency standpoint and I like it that way.
[00:19:54] Question for you though, this is my concern.
[00:19:57] Yeah, they have post something on Twitter or on an access say like those coins sucks.
[00:20:04] And Elon sees that and he puts me in an ex prison for a week.
[00:20:09] How do I I crypto if I want to get rid of it like we're on a cell it or sell it by.
[00:20:14] How do I do that without being censored.
[00:20:18] Yeah, yeah so the goal of this really like what we wanted to demonstrate with this.
[00:20:25] Initial use case was more so that you can have a wallet tied to an ex account and you can actually make actions with it.
[00:20:33] But yeah, like obviously that's not going to be the most secure in the sense that you don't have full autonomy over that x wallet.
[00:20:41] But it does open some really interesting things such as tipping and air dropping.
[00:20:46] So being able to send a token to an ex user and they can move that off of their like socially visible wallet into a wallet that's not linked to the platform.
[00:20:57] It's it's just a rail that kind of connects this web to experience to a web three experience.
[00:21:02] But I think that it doesn't have to be firmly tied to that and so I think that once you have a user that onboarded their ex wallet via similar.
[00:21:14] Which the onboarding is it's I don't love using that phrase because it's the wallet is already developed like you already have a wallet assigned to every user based on their user ideas a deterministically generated wallet for user.
[00:21:28] But what you are able to do is if someone does send you a tip or a transaction to that wallet, well we're working on next is the ability to integrate past keys with that wallet.
[00:21:39] So now you have an alternative authentication mechanism for your socially linked wallet that doesn't tie you directly to access a platform.
[00:21:49] But I think that when I like envision this as a platform one thing that was really important to me was that you had to have a trust minimized control over that wallet that would not rely on these other channels.
[00:22:03] And so what I mean by that is by creating an Oracle for a user to broadcast and intent on Twitter they're able to have this non permissioned way to have some base interactions with that wallet.
[00:22:19] But we want to be able to facilitate users migrating away from like this height connection to Twitter as like the, you know, as your controller.
[00:22:31] And so I would just describe this as like a low friction onboarding that can kind of function as a stepping stone to get people to a more traditional web through experience.
[00:22:44] Because I think anyone that's worked in tech knows onboarding is when you lose users and onboarding it like the what I mean by that is that you often if if something takes an extra, you know.
[00:22:59] 500 milliseconds to load that will have a significant impact on the amount of users that you onboard.
[00:23:06] So it's like very touchy just getting someone to come to your website is.
[00:23:12] Is like not even half the battle because you have to get them through this onboarding process so if we can have an onboarding process where you're actually already onboarded just by owning a Twitter account and then if you do want to take that more seriously and start to transition to.
[00:23:29] You know greater custody of that wallet we want to make that an easy process for the user.
[00:23:37] I like it, I like it.
[00:23:39] My next question I can spend that let's have some my next question right.
[00:23:44] As overall the best way to democratize access to web three I guess besides easier onboarding like what's the dimension regulation you mentioned different things right.
[00:23:55] How do you get to me here in a democratic way how do you democratize democratize.
[00:24:01] I think you have to give people good experiences like that's one of the things that I worry about with for example this cycle has been very meme focused right and I think when you read the data.
[00:24:16] There's people that do terrifically well on memes but I think this cycle has been very aggressive meme trading and so.
[00:24:25] I think there are users that come into this thinking oh this is a thriving ecosystem I'm going to be successful and they underestimate how competitive.
[00:24:34] These meme marketplaces trading is and so they might not have the best experience and it might actually discourage them.
[00:24:41] So we kind of have this fall start for onboarding a new web three user and so in that regard I don't think that.
[00:24:49] We want to focus and this is a sin to say in web three but we don't want to focus on get rich quick style experiences I think we want to focus on showing people that there are other opportunities in web three I think that stable yields is one of the things that.
[00:25:10] is not tapped into enough by people that are exploring web three where you can actually get.
[00:25:18] You know there's people that buy Ethereum and hold it right and to me that's crazy when we have.
[00:25:27] I think that if we can start to make it easier for people to see I can get yield not only on eath but I can get yield on stables I can actually have a better interest rate than.
[00:25:46] Any bank or for the most part, you know a standard sort of index fund would provide I think that's a really powerful opportunity for onboarding a new way of a users.
[00:26:00] I like it.
[00:26:03] I always like the fact you can get more return than a bank.
[00:26:07] Yeah yeah I mean the points whatever 2% annually.
[00:26:11] I think it's a very easy value proposition to tell somebody what is you know you have your funds and a CD or a bank right now if we can make it secure enough that they feel comfortable.
[00:26:23] We can provide a better experience to people outside of just high risk investments and I think that there's a lot of projects that are doing like a great job in sort of building this style of investment for users I think we just have to.
[00:26:39] find a way to meet users where they are and we have to earn their trust and I think that's the biggest thing is that.
[00:26:46] We have to provide a safe secure experience and.
[00:26:51] I think that we're going to start to see protocols that focus on things like insurance and risk management and I think that there'll be a bigger narrative as we onboard.
[00:27:01] A wider amount of maybe less risk tolerance users.
[00:27:07] Yeah I agree.
[00:27:09] So, we talked about the cycles and I tell you what I like about each of them.
[00:27:14] I like the ICO days I was an advisor and they're in the eyes and I like the fact that you don't need to be see anymore.
[00:27:21] You know during the entities I started my podcast and a T start you know it like to see artists that ever made money before in your life make money that was cool.
[00:27:31] Then you have to actually see come along and go after everybody except didn't go after the meme point people.
[00:27:37] You know, and the message out there is always okay to use crypto from meme point gambling but I don't really think else you know how.
[00:27:45] How do you break down that challenge you know I don't like the name coins I'm not a great meme point guy.
[00:27:52] You know but how do you add you clear a path there say okay you know it's so much more than just meme point gambling.
[00:27:59] Yeah I think that's a hard problem because there is there's a stigma for sure and I think it is.
[00:28:09] It's something that creates a lot more volume and I mean I think that when you look at what's happening in web three right now.
[00:28:18] I don't have the date in front of me but you know from looking at doing dashboards a significant percentage of our volume is.
[00:28:24] What you might consider wash trading on meme coins right.
[00:28:27] So how do we get away from that or maybe we don't need to get away from it maybe we just need to expand kind of the purview of web three a bit beyond that.
[00:28:39] But yeah I think that like I said I think that it's it's going to come down to having a clean onboarding experience in a very secure.
[00:28:50] Like the secure platforms that are designed for less than expert crypto users and I think that.
[00:29:00] There's a lot of people that are looking for this I think that you know when you talk to I mean I'm sure you whenever you go out and you socialize with people outside of web three they're always asking you for advice on how to get involved in it right like I think that people are really curious but they're just.
[00:29:18] Scared of losing money and you know, which is a totally reasonable thing to be worried about.
[00:29:24] And so that sort of what I think is sort of going to be the kind of the next wave is this more kind of handheld experience where we can kind of bring people on to you know these platforms and give them you know a better kind of.
[00:29:39] Web three investment.
[00:29:42] Great yeah I obviously people are talking to who are not in web three who an advice I say you know learn.
[00:29:50] By on Coinbase cracker or Gemini and learn about Bitcoin and theory before you do anything else.
[00:29:55] Yeah, you know and then when you have any questions after you do that then come back to me they never come back.
[00:30:02] Yeah well and that's I think that's like I mean it's fair you know not everybody wants to go and read.
[00:30:09] Satoshi's white paper and then learn what a virtual machine is and you know I think it's it's a lot of knowledge to take in I think that.
[00:30:17] It all comes down to credibility I think if you can go and you can present a platform that works well as an awesome user experience and earns people's trust just through.
[00:30:31] I think I don't know there's something really weird in terms of perception where it's hard to quantify why a person feels comfortable with one platform or another you just kind of have to iterate and figure out.
[00:30:43] What can you do to kind of give the best experience to one user you know you pick a user profile and you satisfy that one user and then a lot of times that will scale to more users like them.
[00:30:56] And so I think that that's kind of the approach that I want to take with this is identifying users that might have non traditional profiles for web three and building something that they love and then seeing if we can continue to onboard more people like them.
[00:31:14] See I like that and I get fully behind that I like it a lot.
[00:31:17] So yeah.
[00:31:20] Awesome.
[00:31:21] So I do want to thank you very much for coming on the show today with speaking with me I enjoyed speaking with you.
[00:31:28] I look forward to see what in perils up to and what you know great things you're about to accomplish and I have one last question.
[00:31:35] And so how can people find it more information about imperial about you?
[00:31:38] How can we do that? How can we use become users or clients or platform? How can we do that?
[00:31:44] So yeah, so first and foremost I'd say come through our Twitter and check out our telegram telegrams were most active and we're currently actively beta testing.
[00:31:57] Simulachrom and if you're interested in becoming a beta tester or just want to learn more come through our chat were all very active as a team in there.
[00:32:07] And I think that right now the most valuable thing to us is getting feedback from real users so I think the more beta testers we can work with and the more opinionated people they come through and I would say.
[00:32:22] All kinds of opinions I think that sometimes people are scared to come in and say like oh I don't like this for this this is not.
[00:32:31] But that's actually the best feedback we can get is you know just people patting us on the back doesn't do a lot for us to improve our product.
[00:32:37] But when someone comes in and says I don't like this for these reasons it's something we take very seriously because it's like okay this person has this perception for a reason and so let's try to understand what we can do.
[00:32:50] To you know alleviate that or maybe we just have to understand that there are certain user profiles that are never going to like the work we're doing and so.
[00:32:58] It helps us to kind of understand okay so these are the types of users we shouldn't be targeting for these reasons so yeah anyways I would say if if you're interested in having.
[00:33:09] You know passionate conversations about intense and account abstraction I want to talk to you.
[00:33:18] Awesome awesome thank you very much for your time today.
[00:33:21] Yeah thank you this was great.