Flow to Raise Funds on CoinList! Interview with CTO Dete: Why Rebuild a Gaming Public Blockchain

Flow, a public blockchain developed by the team behind Cryptokitties, Dapper Labs, just held a meetup in Taipei on the 16th. On the 22nd, it opened registration for fundraising on the Coinlist platform here. The Community Sale is set to start at midnight on the 23rd in Taiwan time and will end on October 3rd at 8 a.m., with a limit of one thousand US dollars.

In addition to interviewing Lee Hsuan, co-founder of Blocto, the first to adopt the Flow blockchain, we also had the opportunity to ask some interesting questions to Dieter Shirley Dete, the CTO of Dapper Labs. You can find the interview here.

Not Choosing Second-Layer Solutions, but Developing a Public Chain?

In an interview with Li Xuan, it was mentioned that Flow's resource-oriented design addressed many challenges in Ethereum application support. However, Ethereum still has many second-layer solutions, Layer 2, to cater to a more diverse range of application needs. Why did Flow not go in this direction and instead develop a new public chain?

Dete, the CTO of Dapper Labs, told us: "In the first year of Dapper Labs, we did explore various second-layer solutions, for example: we developed the first consumer-oriented smart contract wallet based on Ethereum and used 'meta transactions' to pay users' gas fees. However, Flow is a product tailored for consumer applications, making it easier for developers and users to use, which is difficult to achieve on Ethereum." He believes that Flow makes open composability possible, and its scale and cost are very suitable for creating consumer applications, games, and other applications that can be used by hundreds of millions or even billions of people.

Can Applications Help Users Pay Fees and Not Worry About Malicious Attacks?

The mechanism of applications paying fees built into Flow allows users who have never interacted with blockchain to enter into application interaction without needing to possess tokens to pay gas fees in advance. However, if a user keeps engaging in meaningless interactions, will it burden the application with a lot of fees?

Dete stated that Flow's mechanism is still based on the principle of user payment rather than having developers bear all the costs. It must be emphasized that the fee payment mechanism is optional. He mentioned that the application scenarios for the fee payment mechanism are more like: a wallet that can bear the cost of lower-fee transactions for users or if you develop a dapp, only pay the fees for the user's first few transactions.

In addition, Dapper Labs has been developing fraud prevention and malicious user screening features for the NBA and is very willing to share this content with third-party developers on Flow.

Are NFTs Just for Investment Speculation?

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) will be a significant application scenario on Flow, but currently, the main motivation for purchasing NFTs mostly comes from speculative investment. We are also curious if Flow will bring a different environment.

Dete mentioned that although speculation is usually the most eye-catching, there are already many great collectors in the NFT field. While early cryptocurrency communities were more speculative, they found that CryptoKitties, a game based on NFTs, has attracted many mainstream users outside the cryptocurrency field who genuinely care about the cats rather than just their value.

He stated that due to Dapper Labs' consumer-friendly orientation, it will break through the small circle of the crypto community, change the past focus on speculation, and lead more pure collectors into Flow's open world. We have also seen the potential in NBA Top Shot: fans tend to create collectibles they can hold onto forever.

Is There Potential in Combining NFTs with DeFi?

As we continue to track the development of memes, an experiment combining NFTs with liquidity mining, we also asked Dete about his views on combining NFTs with DeFi.

Dete expressed that they like this concept, and the Aave team and community have been demonstrating their creativity by creating Aavegotchi. Another example is NFTfi, which allows NFT owners to collateralize their assets for loans. There is also DontBuyMeme, which offers a mechanism for liquidity mining of NFTs.

So, Is the Next Trend NFTs?

Our question is, NFTs have not just emerged, so why are people shouting that NFTs will be the next trend as the DeFi craze gradually cools down?

Dete mentioned that although NFTs have been around for several years, the maturity of an emerging technology takes time, and now it's NFTs' turn. With the launch of Flow, NBA Top Shot, and the continuous accumulation of experience in our community, we may witness a revival of gamers and independent developers.