Interview with Kenny Li: Manta Network will privatize assets on Polkadot
For today's interview, we invited Kenny Li, who is a co-founder and COO of Manta Network. Kenny is also a co-founder of a Boston-based consulting company focused on the cloud computing industry — Cloud Spectator International.
Kenny, you have recently finished the Manta Squad Games public sale. Why do you think it’s necessary to have a public sale for the community alongside the crowdloan itself?
Squad Game happened right before the beginning of the parachain auctions, which started on November 11th. Actually, we didn’t plan to have the token sale alongside the Polkadot crowdloan. It was a coincidence, a week before Polkadot announced the crowdloan, we announced the Squad Game event. Here we did our best to adapt to the current happenings on the Polkadot ecosystem. The parachain auctions or the crowdloan began a week before, November 4th.
Do you see crowdloans themselves as a success? Were there any surprises or did it work as you expected?
Parachain auctions for us at Manta and Calamari Network are very community-driven! When you have this community-driven approach you aren’t able to just launch arbitrary projects on the Network, and that’s sort of the quality control layer, you have to be able to prove to the community throughout the entire process that you’ve been building, you’re legit, and so the community will support you on return.
The first parachain auctions that we’re doing in Kusama and Polkadot, it’s highly experimental, it truly is just about your trust in the project, and in the people. And with the renewals, a year or two years later depending on which chain you’re on it’s going to be a lot more about the execution. Because if we’re not able to provide the technology we’re promising after two years, what are the chances that we’re going to get another parachain slot?
It has a lot of weight that our approach is community-based, and it will continue to be like that in the future, but I think that the merit, our ability to execute has to go to have a lot of weight in the future.
You are definitely one of the most popular projects in the Dotsama ecosystem. How did it feel to secure your parachain on Kusama so early and to see such overwhelming support from the community?
Winning the Kusama parachain auctions made us feel like we’re on a roller coaster! It’s not that we only that we secured parachain slot #7, we also broke records for the most contributors to a Kusama parachain auction — over 16,000 contributors to a single project!
Could you give us a brief introduction to the Manta Network and to what is trying to achieve?
With Manta Network, here are three things we’re bringing to the Polkadot and Kusama Ecosystem.
- We aim to be able to privatize other assets and transact privately in that manner. Because we’re able to privatize various assets.
- We’re able to create private swaps as well, which means that I can exchange my private DOT with Manta, in an AMM-styled DEX with that added layer of privacy.
- A lot of other solutions are building on top of other blockchains, but, we’re on Layer 1, so we’re controlling the network as well. Being able to expand and distribute that network isn’t confined to proof-of-work consensus, which means we’re a lot more scalable, a lot faster, and a lot more inexpensive. That’s a big value proposition for privacy because if you wanted as a utility, there can’t be financial barriers to using it, otherwise privacy becomes a luxury! That’s the stand we took when we decided to go for Layer 1.
Manta Network includes two different protocols — MantaPay and MantaSwap. MantaPay offers an on-chain private transaction for any Polkadot ecosystem asset. Can you tell us how it works?
We’re focusing on launching the MantaPay protocol, which is a private transaction service! We already launched the Dolphin Testnet, the private payment system that will be deployed on Manta Network’s main network as MantaPay, and Calamari Network’s main network as MariPay.
The Decentralized Anonymous Exchange (DAX) protocol called MantaSwap is an AMM-based DEX. What is your secret sauce for combining privacy with the market maker model?
The Decentralized Anonymous Exchange (DAX) protocol is based on AMM and zk-SNARK. Users can anonymously trade private versions of tokens on the platform between each other. The price formation method of the decentralized private token exchange protocol is consistent with the mainstream AMM. The revenue model of Manta tokens is based on the rebate and redeem of swap usage fees and transaction fees. In the future, the team will also develop products like synthetic asset stablecoins based on Manta.
What level of anonymity will MantaSwap provide? Is it going to hide both user addresses and their token balances?
From a technical perspective, every single piece of data for a transaction will be private! This includes the sender address, the receiver address, the amount, the currency, etc. One of the things that we do, is that all of the zero-knowledge-proof (ZKP) generation that obfuscates all the data, all that happens locally on your device, so non of that data ever leaves and gets processed over the internet, on a cloud computing platform. That means that data is never at risk in transit because it’s stored in your local computer. As soon as any data hits the chain, it’s already completely private.
Why did you decide to base the protocol on zk-SNARKs and what does it mean for the user? Have you researched other cryptographic solutions?
zk-SNARK is the only cryptographic guarantee that one can trust for on-chain privacy for all Web 3 applications. Alternative solutions like TEE require trust in hardware vendors, which is not suitable for crypto assets. Another solution like ring signature that Monero uses only works for token transfer, but cannot support AMM or general smart contract.
How can anyone list their token to the MantaSwap? Is it going to be completely permissionless or the process will be subject to the on-chain governance?
MantaSwap is a decentralized anonymous exchange where users can trade various major crypto assets in the Polkadot ecosystem. MariSwap offers users the capability of swaps between parachain assets while preserving the privacy of the user addresses. It also provides never-before-seen features in the industry.
Your solution is quite revolutionary and if you succeed, users from the whole Polkadot ecosystem might benefit from it by preserving their privacy. But we know that launching a parachain requires time so when can we see the first features to be enabled on Calamari? Is there any roadmap?
You can find our Manta & Calamari roadmap details here.
What’s the difference between Calamari and Manta? Are those projects going to be complementary or your canary version will just serve as a testing ground?
- Manta — Manta is the leading on-chain privacy platform for Polkadot and beyond. We are building a better Web 3.0 with privacy guarantees from first principles: applying cutting-edge cryptographic constructions such as zkSNARKs to build blockchain applications, including DeFi, with end-to-end privacy guarantees and at the same time interoperable, easy to use, high performance and auditable tools.
- Calamari — Calamari is Manta Network’s canary-net, an early, highly experimental version of Manta Network, where all new features will be released and tested first. Calamari is the plug-and-play privacy-preserving parachain built to service the Kusama DeFi world. It combines Kusama and zkSNARKs to bring on-chain privacy to transactions and swaps.
The most popular project dealing with confidentiality in the Polkadot ecosystem is probably the Phala Network. Is there any collaboration between you and Phala?
Manta Network and Phala are partnering to bring full-stack privacy to Polkadot! An overview of the partnership can be found here.
Besides Phala, Manta established partnerships with Equilibrium, Crust Network, ChainX, Reef Finance and Tidal Finance. What is the purpose of those partnerships and are you looking forward to some more partners to cooperate with? Can you reveal some further connections to our readers?
Manta Network offers a privacy layer for the whole Polkadot ecosystem. Manta Network has already partnerships with some of the projects that would like to increase the level of usability by adding a private layer for the users. Here’s a list of our partnerships and details about each of them on our forum.
Thanks for your time with the interview and good luck with both Manta and Calamari!
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