Enabling Blockchain Interoperability with Hashport

Oh welcome to gossip about gossip. Powered by Hedera Hashgraph. And each episode will cut through the hype of blockchain promises and explore real world examples of organizations creating the next generation of decentralized applications, which will bring trust back to the internet for us all. Hello, everyone and welcome to gossip about gossip, the podcast where we talk about real world applications for distributed ledger technology. My name is Zenobia Gottschalk and I'm the SVP of communications here at swirl labs, helping drive adoption of the Hedera ecosystem. I am joined by Jessie Whiteside from hash port. Hi, Jesse, how are you? I'm great, Zenobia. How are you? Good, Thank you. For those who are not familiar with hash port, can you give us a brief overview of what you all do and what was the impetus for starting the project? Yeah, absolutely. Hash port is enterprise grade public utility that facilitates the free flow of digital assets between different distributed networks. Right now, that's connecting to hedera, polygon and Ethereum. So the platform in and of itself allows for token transfers from both Hedera polygon in the theory up to one another. And the impetus for creating hash port was really to be able to allow for the movement of these assets, in particular from more legacy networks such as Ethereum to more performant networks such as Hedera and other networks like Polygon as well. And I think for those of us who have sort of grown up in technology, we recognize that as markets evolve, it's very rare that there's just one solution, right? Interoperability is pretty key to the development, evolution and broad scale adoption of new technologies. So you guys have you also have a very interesting validator model. Can you talk a little bit about that and why you decided to go with that approach? Yeah, absolutely. And to your point about interoperability, it does mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And depending on what the use case is, it can mean very different things. So one of the main reasons, I guess, for this solution, again, is really what we've seen is the potential for dapps themselves to start to mobilize and potentially move from the networks that they originally found themselves on for one reason or another, be it performance issues and moving somewhere where you can get performance benefits from migrating between networks and to your point about the validator model. We've tried to take a page shot of this book on this one and effectively create what we feel is like a mini Hedera governing council in the sense of having decentralized decision making for the platform, leveraging the reputation and size and industry trust that the validators that we have on the platform already have in market. So, you know, top to bottom, we have the foundation, obviously a multibillion dollar foundation that is focused on the network and growing it, which which is amazing to have. The polygon network is also a validator. Galaxy, which is a decentralized social media platform that is created by Spencer Dinwoody of the Dallas Mavericks bw group, which is a multi-level strategy and consulting firm that takes part in a whole host of DLT based solutions across the industry. Hex trust, who is leading digital asset custodian within Asia. Worldpay from fis, who is also happens to be a Hedera governing council member and handles a bulk of the payments infrastructure for around the world for a whole host of different organizations. Stable node, which is the sister company of the MakerDAO and the Dai stablecoin Animoca brands, which is one of the industry's largest decentralized gaming companies and lime chain, who is one of the technical architects for hash port and has helped us build the platform. So between these nine members, effectively in leveraging the Hedera consensus service, we're able to have these validating members sign transactions that arrive at hash port to be migrated across to these other networks and in doing so, leverage the performance benefits of Hedera and the security properties of Hedera. All right. So now you've established sort of a framework for a trusted migration, if you are. Walk me through. I'm an application that is thinking of moving from Ethereum to Hedera. How do I engage with hash port and what kinds of services can I expect to utilize from you all? Yeah, absolutely. There's a variety of ways to reach out, primarily through the site or by emailing us at hash port network. And effectively, what that would look like is getting in touch with us about the idea of migrating your token across to hedera, locking up the existing ERC 20 token on the platform and then creating an HTTPS version if you're moving from Ethereum to Hedera. This instance, and with the advent of smart contracts 2.0 on hedera, along with a whole host of other exciting new features that the network has been adding over the past several months, it's really a easy process for dapps to then migrate. Also their smart contracts over to Hedera as well, and Meanwhile still leveraging the benefits that you get with residing on the Hedera network in terms of the speed and security and finality. And can you give us an example of how long that migration takes? If you if you've done that for an application, does it depend on what does it depend on the size of the application, the number of smart contracts? Yeah, that's going to be that's going to vary case to case, obviously, in terms of getting the token added to the platform. We're starting to see a lot more traction in terms of other dapps and platforms interested in making the jump, what will happen going forward. What we're trying to do is have sort of a monthly cadence with adding new assets and tokens. So the first two weeks of every month are typically going to be when we're gathering all of the new tokens that are requesting to be included on hash port. And then going forward, the idea is to by the end of every month, have those tokens integrated onto the platform. And then from there, obviously, depending on how many smart contracts there are or the size and complexity of the build, that's really going to dictate how long it takes a given platform to make the jump and create those on Hedera. And then how much of a heavy lift is it for the dapp versus how much do you take on. Yeah I would say, you know, again, given that Haidara has been really good at providing as many of the tools as possible to seamlessly allow for smart contracts just to be migrated across to, to, to Hedera from whatever network they may find themselves on in terms of solidity, smart contracts, there's going to be quite a bit of lift on the side of the creator, but that's only in the sense of actually having to mobilize their assets and moving them in terms of integrating the token. That that's a fairly straightforward process for us. And again, that monthly cadence that we're going to have so we can sort of coordinate with a dapp and a given dapp on timing to make sure that everything's set up for them for when they're ready to deploy. Got it. And then you mentioned the validators, but it seems like they are also engaging and having conversations in terms of further development of your offering. Can you share a little bit more about that? Absolutely Yeah. It's something that's really exciting to us that we're really looking forward to is a lot of what has gone on behind the scenes for us over the past 10 months or so has really been building out the core functionality for dashboard. And not only that, but going forward in the next several quarters, we have a host of new features that we're going to be adding as well as assets that are going to be adding to the platform, which is going to enable a lot more use cases to be leveraged on the platform. Just recently we integrated one of our validators tokens, galaxy. Their HDFS token is now integrated onto hash port and it can be migrated between hedera, polygon and Ethereum. And moving forward, we're going to be looking to work with all of our validators on very interesting use cases that we think that the community will be really excited about. Awesome and as we look forward to what an integrated utopia looks like, what is next for you guys on your roadmap? Yeah, a great question. Very next thing on our roadmap, which we'll be having shortly, is an upgraded version of hash port, new UI, enhanced features and compatibility with mobile devices, I believe, as well as adding many of the typical assets that you would see on an interoperability portal for users to migrate to and from different networks. So we really took an approach of looking at what the traditional assets were on other interop solutions, and we're migrating across to other networks and we're making sure that all of those good things will be available to users in short order here for them to be able to coincide with a lot of the exciting things that are happening, particularly within the Hedera ecosystem in terms of DeFi on Hedera and decentralized exchanges. There's quite a few in development right now. So we're looking forward. And we're working with and collaborating with many of those platforms to make sure that all of those assets are ready for them on day one when they open their doors. Very exciting. Rising tide lifts all boats. Yes, absolutely. Well, Jessie, before we wrap up here, anything else that you would like to share with the audience, either in terms of things you think, gosh, I wish everybody knew this about sport or things to stay tuned and look for. Yeah you know, one of the things I think that is important to recognize is hash port is the interoperability solution that allows for connection between other EVM based networks and Hedera and any dapp or developer that has an interest in connecting to any of those networks, no matter where they may find themselves right now. We'd love to hear from you and collaborate with you and help you to further your build out of your platform and what you're looking to do. What are the coolest, coolest things I think about the platform is the ability to migrate dapps between networks, but also the ability to expand a footprint into other networks and have access to other user bases. I think up until this point, the decision has really fallen to I'm going to be locked into x, y, z network. And from there that's sort of the sword. I'm going to live or die by. And I think that that's changing now with a lot of these interoperability solutions. And I just think that especially legacy applications or dapps that may have a really great use case such as was the case with Dover and the dove token. You know, they've been around since 2016 and you know, the use case, well, incredibly powerful, just wasn't going to be feasible on the Ethereum network. However, it will be on Hedera and I think they've got a great staking program going on right now and it's had quite a bit of success so far. So just in terms of the door is always open for anyone and everyone that would like to reach out and collaborate with us. Yeah and I think that's a great point. Sometimes organizations as they grow and scale and succeed, hopefully beyond their wildest dreams, realize that they need something that is more scalable, more cost effective, just in terms of more the ability to manage what your costs are going to be and know what those costs are going to be over time. So hopefully as the entire ecosystem grows, as people do become more successful with their applications and they need to run them at huge volumes, huge scale and low cost, they will come contact you. Absolutely and I think yeah, I don't think that can be understated ever or overstated, I should say, with respect to Hedera basing their fees pegged to USD values, that's so incredibly powerful in my mind, just simply because if you're an organization that's looking to build something out, as you say, at volume and at scale, not being able to have a clear picture as to what your budget is going to be to run that use case makes it next to impossible, I would argue, completely infeasible to actually operate long term. So the fact that Dara does that, I think one of the few, if not the only that that's doing that incredibly powerful stuff among a whole host of things that the network really does well. So yeah, my, my dad was a CFO before he retired and thinking of going to him and asking for a budget that may be this or maybe 10 weeks this just would never fly. No, absolutely not. Well, Jesse, Thank you so much. It's so great to see the progress that you have made to date. And we hope that you will continue to keep us posted on the developments for everything that you're doing. And as you continue to grow and encourage interoperability. Absolutely one of the just I'll leave on this note. One of the biggest things that we're working on through the coming quarters is sort of enterprise grade functionality for larger use cases to leverage hash port, not only on the back end through various APIs as well as SDK documentation, but also having the functionality to potentially create individual channels to keep assets separated and enable use cases that may require certain regulatory compliances to be followed in order for something of that nature to be leveraged in a decentralized way. So we're really excited about that stuff. There'll be more details to come, but I just wanted to leave that a little bit with everyone to part. Yeah, I think, I mean, especially I think enterprises need some of that already pre-built right there. They're less likely to go in and fiddle with things and much more likely to buy something if you can deliver it to them out of the box. And in ways that they can plug it in to their existing processes and streams. Absolutely all right. Well, Thank you, Jesse, so much. And we look forward to hearing from you again soon. My pleasure. Thanks for having us and happy to be here anytime. Thank you.