Interview: Sota Watanabe, CEO of Plasm Network
For today's interview, we invited Mr. Sota Watanabe who is the CEO of Plasm Network.
Hello Sota, can you introduce yourself, where are you from and how did you start your career?
I am Sota Watanabe, a founder of Plasm Network. I joined the blockchain space 4 years ago and started my career at Chronicled, a blockchain startup based in San Francisco. After coming back to Japan, I became a blockchain researcher at the University of Tokyo and founded Stake Technologies.
Can you briefly tell us what is the goal of the Plasm Network and what does it bring to the Polkadot ecosystem?
Plasm Network is a scalable smart contract platform on Polkadot that supports layer 2 solutions. Polkadot Relaychain doesn’t support smart contracts by design so all developers in this ecosystem need a smart contract parachain. And when it comes to smart contracts, scalability is obviously important. That’s why we are implementing layer 2 solutions on Plasm Network.
What does it mean to run on layer 2? Is it going to work for any ETH/EVM compatible smart contract platform?
We are building both layer 1 and layer 2. You can deploy smart contracts both layer1 and layer2. We do have 2 virtual machines, EVM and WASM. When you deploy Solidity contracts, you can deploy on that EVM or you can compile Solidity to WASM contract by using Solang.
Would you tell us how do you solve issues with scaling? What are the Rollups and other techniques used by a Plasm?
Plasm Network supports the Optimistic Virtual Machine, a unification of all layer2 protocols such as Plasma and Rollup. We have implemented Plasma but Plasma has one problem, the data availability. Rollup is a solution that provides off-chain scalability without sacrificing on-chain data availability.
Can you tell us more about the OVM? Why is it so unique?
The OVM is a powerful concept in layer 2 applications. We can express complex dispute logics by a simple OVM language and that language contains Optimistic Game Semantics (OGS). For example, we can express Plasma checkpoint and exit claims with 2 simple definitions (we call these “property”) by OGS. Plasm Network separates the OVM from the smart contract and prepares it as a module so that OVM can be used more simply and conveniently.
Polkadotters note: OVM will also support other scaling solutions such as Lightning Network, so it won’t be restricted to only ETH/WASM-based chains.
Did you enjoy working with Substrate? Have you tried other platforms as well?
We have tried Substrate and Ethereum. Substrate is a great tool mainly because of two reasons. First, we can customize Substrate itself by adding pallets based on our needs. Second, we can upgrade functionalities and governance without any hard forks.
Why did you decide to make 3 lockdrop rounds?
Lockdrop is the fairest way to distribute tokens. Some of the projects own a big portion though they are building a public blockchain. That’s why we chose lockdrop. And the reason why we choose to do 3 lockdrops is that only a single lockdrop is problematic. The token distribution can be centralized. In addition, we need to win the Polkadot Parachain auction. During the auction, we will have a DOT lockdrop which will help us in this matter.
How successful was the second lockdrop in comparison to the first one?
It was really successful. 137,252 ETH has been locked in 4 weeks and around 9300 people joined the lockdrop. Our community doubled through the lockdrop and it is expanding since they own our token. We will do our best to support our community members.
Do you expect the third lockdrop to be the most successful out of these three?
Yes, I think so.
Do you plan to use the DOT tokens locked in the 3rd lockdrop as the amount locked for the parachain auction?
Yes, that is our plan.
How many DOT tokens do you expect to be needed to ensure the slot in the parachain auction for Polkadot?
I don’t know it. Actually, no one knows.
Will you also apply for the parachain slot on Kusama before?
We haven’t decided on the Parachain auction since we need more information.
Lastly, there were a lot of Plasm tokens minted during the locks, are you planning to make redenomination similarly to what Polkadot did? What redenomination rate would you expect?
As we have already announced, we will have a redenomination. The number of tokens at this moment is not a problem at all. Through redenomination, we will decrease the total supply but the value per token will be increased. In this sense, your token won’t be hurt.
Is it possible to become a validator in Plasm?
At this moment, Plasm Network is PoA and you need to run a node on Dusty testnet first. We are going to switch PoS. Then, it will be permissionless.
Thank you for your time!
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