Mass Adoption: A Composable Vision

What is the Route to Mass Adoption?

A constant theme traversing the zeitgeist of crypto land is the concept of mass adoption. Many enjoy the debate of the route to mass adoption, and a few frontrunners come to mind.

Will it be gaming?

Ownership of in-game assets is alluring to many gamers, but the lack of interoperability creates a small incentive for current gamers to fully dive into the NFT scene. Not to mention, many gamers see NFT integration as a push for greed and more capital lining the pockets of gaming studios rather than benefitting the user. Here is a quote from a NY Times article on GSC Game World, the makers of S.T.A.L.K.E.R, who attempted to integrate NFTs into their upcoming sequel to their uber successful FPS:

In the new game, GSC said, players could buy and sell NFTs of items like clothing for their in-game characters. The company heralded the move as a “transformative step” toward the virtual world known as the metaverse.

Mr. Lantz was incensed. He joined thousands of fans on Twitter and Reddit who raged against NFTs in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’s sequel. The game maker, they said, was simply looking to squeeze more money out of its players. The backlash was so intense that GSC quickly reversed itself and abandoned its NFT plan

It appears it’s too early for gamers to be sold on NFTs and the metaverse. Many are already on edge with in-game purchases causing some games to become nerfed from new players being able to buy their way to the top. In reality, the NFT tech in its current form is too far off from bringing the vision of fully interoperable, future-proof and fully owned assets. RMRK’s tech is not too far off, and there are many solutions aiming to bring high fidelity games with tokens or NFTs baked right in, such as Ajuna.

However, with this market downturn, even the most successful crypto games, like Axie Infinity, have lost their luster

Messari Anayltics on Axie Infinity Revenue

Will it be the metaverse?

In a similar vein, the metaverse - in its mainstream form - is a far cry from the decentralized metaverse many in this space aim to build. Virtual headsets cause some heads to spin with the possibilities, or is that just the vertigo? Meta’s vision for the metaverse may lead to mass adoption as they are innovating the hardware through which people may choose to experience it - Oculus. The Oculus has mixed reviews, but so did the iPhone initially. Even with fine tuning of the user experience, do we really want another big-tech, monopoly-focused, and data hoarding entity to guide our future? How much will blockchain actually be used since centralization is the key to power in this race?

The decentralized version of the metaverse has to be that much greater in order for users to adopt it, and despite the pitfalls of centralization, it is a high hill to climb for decentralized solutions to achieve mass adoption and market share from these giants. Just take a quick look at techradar’s report on Meta’s sales of Oculus in 2021:

According to new market research, Meta’s Quest 2 sold 8.7 million units in 2021, that amounts to almost double the total number of VR headsets sold in the previous year

What about Finance?

At the core of the reason for creating Bitcoin, decentralization of finance (DeFi) has been gaining steam since Bitcoin’s inception in 2009. Many who have done their due diligence in the space understand the thesis behind Bitcoin decentralizing finance which sparked a revolution within finance. To those who don’t, as big banks were bailed out from default and bankruptcy in the US housing crisis in 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto and his cyberpunk colleagues created an alternative system to create value and began a revolution of thinking about what ownership truly means.

Fast-forward to the advent of Ethereum and the common use of smart contracts, DeFi has taken another leap forward. However, the ingenuity of smart contracts and the use of solidity has begun to reach its limits. The market is saturated with similar DeFi offerings and degens bounce from chain to chain looking for arbitrage opportunities and the highest APY, then promptly move their bags right on to the next chain. But this hasn’t stopped many institutions from dipping their toes in, making finance arguably the best bet for mass adoption.

While the cryptocurrency market has caught the attention of smart money, the asset class is still very young. Look at these comparisons to the traditional market provided by ngrave.io

Painting a grim picture? Well it isthe bear market.

Despite the massive hurdles ahead, every nascent industry faces these types of challenges. But it’s the innovators, those who dare to think differently, that may take web3 to new heights. This is the general feeling that arises when thinking of Composable Finance. A daring vision with the gumption to attack DeFi’s problems of fragmented liquidity and poor user experience head on. If the future is multichain, then multichain finance will likely be the key to mass adoption as a financial focus has brought many users into the blockchain ecosystem despite these hurdles. Composable Finance has put this at the center of their vision and is a top bet to achieve the interoperability of DeFi. Let’s take a stroll down the path of DeFi’s journey to mass adoption through the eyes of Composable Finance.

The Vision

Said best by the CEO and Founder, 0xbrainjar:

By improving one limitation (fragmentation), we can impact and improve the others. More specifically, if we create a more unified DeFi industry, we can together enhance interoperability and ease of use and resultantly increase the appeal to retail users.

This is why Composable Finance has made it our goal to seamlessly connect the DeFi space and, by doing so, abstract away complexity, unleashing enhanced interoperability and utility. By unifying the DeFi space, we can push interoperability as far as it can go and make the space the most conducive to widespread retail usership.

But what exactly is Composable Finance?

It aims to be the glue to fuse together the best parts of Web3 and DeFi to create a cohesive user experience that intuitively connects multiple ecosystems. They aim to achieve this vision with three main pillars

1. Cross-Chain Virtual Machine (XCVM)

2. Multiple DeFi Focused Pallets (Plug-ins for substrate based chains)

3. User Interface/Experience (UI/UX)

XCVM

The cross-chain virtual machine can be seen as the “orchestrator” that can execute multiple smart contracts and functions across consensus systems including Cosmos, Polkadot, NEAR and EVM based chains such as Polygon. It does this by providing the execution layer to the user’s desired function and abstracting away the details.

When their vision is complete, no longer do you need to learn a Cosmos based wallet, find the best APY in that ecosystem and execute your strategy. You can reside within Composable’s UI, request the best interest rates for loans, highest APY, most stable strategy, options and more and let the tech work for you. They even envision this extending from finance as the XCVM is the cross-chain execution of contracts and function rather than only assets.

Imagine cross chain gaming, metaverses and movement of NFTs. Cross chain governance becomes a reality especially for those such as Sushi that have deployed on multiple chains, but in doing so, divided voting power. While these appear to be further in the future, the vision for XCVM is near as Composable revealed XCVM at their Unchained conference in Berlin that occurred right after Polkadot Decoded. This conference included the likes of Polkadot co-founder Robert Habermeier, Comos Hub lead Billy Renekamp and others from Nomad, Polychain, Subquery and more.

Watch the demo of PICA being transferred and swapped for USDC on Ethereum and returned to Picasso (Composable’s canary network) here

While this iteration of code may not be impressive to a user, the vision of leveraging DeFi dApps on multiple chains into one UI using XCVM is coming into focus. It essentially utilizes protocols such as Cosmos’s IBC and Polkadot’s XCM for secure communication, relayers to assure the messages are understood by appropriate parties, and a cascade of functions that originates and returns assets to Composable’s chain in the Polkadot ecosystem.

Multiple DeFi Focused Pallets

This is a doozy, and for many not worth exploring, but pay attention because it contributes to the grand vision.

Composable’s mantra, “Ship or Die'', has become somewhat of a meme in the Dotsama ecosystem as Composable and Picasso have taken longer than many crowdloaners and general fans expected for their product to ship. While the UI isn’t in our hands as of yet, I would argue that Composable has done a ton of shipping.

Take a look at their github profile here which shows multiple pallets, pull requests and active contributions to developing sound solutions. If your argument is that they aren’t shipping, you may want to jump in a different boat. Token release is an entirely different story that may need an article of its own.

Regardless, the pallets Composable has developed are able to be deployed on any substrate based chain and will inherently result in interoperability with those chains that choose to integrate these pallets. For example:

1. Cubic- the first DotSama vault infrastructure similar to Yearn Finance

2. Apollo- an MEV resistant oracle solution

3. Mosaic - the transfer availability layer (MEV driven)

4. Centauri - Substrate-IBC bridge infrastructure (such as Polkadot </> Cosmos+)

There are more pallets, but the point is that these are meant to provide a comprehensive DeFi solution within Dotsama. Furthermore, this comprehensive solution will not only provide a full suite of products, but suck in liquidity from outside DotSama right into the ecosystem. Granted this liquidity can flow right back out, but with Composable’s vision it won’t matter where the liquidity is, but where the best tools lay, and they are pushing out some interesting ones.

UI/UX

What we’ve all been begging for. Polkadot has been promising some interesting updates to the UI, and in fact recently announced an update to the staking interface. As UI works its way front and center for the development of successful ecosystems, Composable intends to lead that charge with their intuitive interface. With a plethora of solutions under the hood, Composable wants to abstract all of this away from the user and provide a simple interface to complete complex tasks.

Don’t let the simplicity of the UI fool you. Here we have Dotsama, Ethereum and Cosmos wallets all connected and a swap has now turned into a composition as the XCVM underlying this UI will orchestrate the transfer, swap and return of whatever assets lie within these three ecosystems.

A strong element of mass adoption arises from the simplicity and intuitive nature of the UI. As this continues to improve with multiple iterations, the complexity many are now used to in the DeFi space will all go under the hood.

Modular Functionality

Composable has used this term to denote the future of DeFi. Utilizing multiple dApps, chains, smart contracts and other DeFi functionality through XCVM allows them to leverage these entities and create a consolidation layer that can compose these siloed parts into one UI. This is the true beauty of what Composable aims to build.

A complex system presented by an intuitive experience

It’s bold and far reaching, but it will be interesting to watch them strive to complete it. There are many moving parts, but Composable’s vision has stayed the same, and this is what gives me hope that they can achieve what they have set out to do.

Solving fragmentation, chipping away at chain maximalism, and embracing an interoperable future.

Ship or Die

From the Founder

While it is valuable to have alternate perspective on a project and it’s place in the Web3 ecosystem, it’s also invaluable to hear from the founders themselves. 0xBrainjar was able to take some time out of his schedule to answer some questions about the vision of Composable Finance, XCVM and maybe even a bit of alpha at the end

Composable Finance’s vision for interoperability is ambitious, but you and your team seem to be putting the pieces together very well. In your vision, do you see the user as the center of Compoasble’s vision or the developer? How can you address both?

Creating an environment for users in DeFi that abstracts complexity but also sufficiently mitigates risk, lies in a seamless user experience. Users must feel that their assets are not being mishandled, understand the risks they are undertaking, and must still feel in control of how assets are deployed. But they should also feel the use of DeFi is both fluid, accessible, and efficient.

We are open-sourcing the user experience and creating something referred to as a stepper that will allow people to understand what is happening on the backend, show them error handling and callbacks, indicate when messages fail and allow users to make their own decisions as to whether assets should revert, etc, among other features. Overtime we will make this stepper more robust and inclusive of additional functions. Minimizing the number of signature transactions is also a priority for the XCVM. See 0xslenderman’s presentation at unchained for more on this.

Trustless bridging is a key component of our vision and technical stack where developers and users do not have to depend on a third party to ensure finality and objectively prove asset transfers between chains. In general, the bridging infrastructure we are working on is to ensure users avoid bridging assets manually, thereby integrating the cross-chain functionality directly into any protocol. We are building the infrastructure for developers to build cross-chain applications that ultimately benefit the end-users.

Did you draw any inspiration for XCVM from the theory behind the future of XCM? If so, how is your version different?

The XCVM is a virtual machine whereas XCM is a cross-chain messaging protocol. The XCVM is not an alternative to XCM as they work together. The XCVM is bridge agnostic therefore, the XCM can be used a transport layer for cross-chain smart contracts to interact with other parachains. Furthermore, the XCVM uses XCM inspired messages to transfer messages across different chains.

From a high level, what about Cosmos’s technical stack was necessary to help make your vision come to pass?

The IBC protocol is what the standard of trustless and sustainable cross-chain communication looks like outside of the Polkadot ecosystem. It supports cross-chain contract calls, asset transfers, artibirtary cross-chain data transfers and more.

CosmWasm is the only framework that currently facilitates building across multiple chains and migrating to other chains with built in, permissioned, pre-contract migration.

Many in DotSama are curious about TGE and crowdloan distribution, is there anything you can tell us about when that may be?

I would have to redirect you to our devlogs.

Who is Brainjar outside Composable? What do you enjoy apart from theorizing about DeFi’s future?

A simple family man. I rarely get the chance to leave the metaverse and when I do, I spend my free-time reading and researching evolving concepts in DeFi such as MEV,

Any parting thoughts? Maybe some alpha?

XCVM.dev - looking into the future of DeFi

Password: unchained

Feel free to poke around and get a feel for Composable’s UI and let me know your thoughts in the comments below. This is just to play around with and get a feel for the UI. There is limited functionality…but whew, it’s slick.

Enjoy

To learn more about Composable Finance, follow them on Twitter, visit their Website, or dive into their Medium