Dialogue with Kevin Liu: How the Metis Mining Trilogy Empowers the Community

In the fierce competition of Layer 2, Metis is a rising star that has gained a lot of users' favor with its combination of Layer 2 + DAO features, and recently the token METIS has increased more than tenfold.

The 43rd session of the Catcher Academy, hosted by Chain Catcher, invited Metis co-founder Kevin Liu to give a thematic sharing on "Above the Limits: Why Metis Has Become a Hot Favorite in the Layer 2 Track." During the session, Kevin Liu shared with the community users the advantages and value propositions of Metis, the development roadmap, and various insights including three levels of mining. The full text is organized as follows, hoping to help you gain a deeper understanding of Metis and Layer 2.

Chain Catcher: Can you first talk to us about your team and co-founders?

Kevin Liu: I am Kevin, the co-founder of Metis, and I have over 5 years of product development experience. In 2018, I met Elena and Yuan and began learning about DAOs, governance, and decentralized collaboration. Initially, we wanted to solve the problems of decentralization and distributed collaboration, and later we realized that this could only be achieved on Layer 2, which is how Metis was born.

My other co-founder is Elena Sinelnikova, who is also a co-founder of CryptoChicks.ca. Elena has a rich technical background and has served as a Microsoft Solutions Architect for over 20 years in the Canadian government and law enforcement. In 2015, she developed a strong interest in blockchain. In 2017, she and her friend Natalia Ameline founded CryptoChicks—a women-focused organization dedicated to blockchain education. At that time, the organization was just a small meetup, but now they have established chapters in 56 countries.

Yuan is our Technical Director, who started programming at the age of 6 and participated in the infrastructure design of the IBM Hyperledger project. He has in-depth research on Optimistic Rollup, and he is currently driving our own Layer 2 implementation: Metis Rollup.

Now the Metis team has 26 members from around the world—Canada, China, Ghana, Venezuela, Colombia, India, Bangladesh, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and Singapore.

Chain Catcher: What is Metis? What are its main features and value propositions?

Kevin Liu: Metis is an Ethereum Layer 2 (Optimistic Rollup) + DAO infrastructure aimed at the Web 3.0 economy.

Our vision is to scale Ethereum to connect the Web2 world with Web3, enabling the entire Web3 world to build on Ethereum through Metis Layer 2. Metis also defines a new DAO structure—DAC (Decentralized Autonomous Company), which supports the operation and management of decentralized applications, communities, and businesses as a basic unit.

The main features of the Metis Layer 2 scaling solution include:

• Extremely low gas fees (compared to the dozens of dollars on Ethereum, Metis only costs a few cents)
• Fast transactions (while transactions on Ethereum can take several minutes, Metis only takes a few seconds)
• Native file storage (which cannot be achieved on Ethereum or Polygon)
• No need for smart contract programming—Metis provides one-click deployment based on our pre-developed templates
• Fully compatible with Ethereum (EVM)—if you have already built on Ethereum, you can directly migrate to Metis and enjoy the above conveniences
• Completely decentralized
• Fully integrable with Web2 websites/platforms

Metis's scaling protocol supports a wide range of use cases, including NFT platforms, decentralized social platforms similar to Reddit, open-source developer communities, influencer communities, gamer communities, freelancer communities, crowdfunding, yield farming, DEX trading, and more.

Chain Catcher: What advantages does Metis have compared to its competitors?

Kevin Liu: Compared to other Layer 2 scaling solutions (Optimism and Arbitrum), Metis:

• Is more scalable (supports multiple virtual machines and sequencers processing transactions)
• Is more functional (microservices framework facilitates the expansion of the suite)
• Is highly efficient (the Ranger system reduces withdrawal times from days or weeks to just a few hours)
• Is self-sustainable (supports DApps/communities launching their own tokens)

Compared to Polygon, Metis's advantages are:

Polygon is a centralized private sidechain controlled by a few people—this is why they were able to build this solution so quickly. In fact, if four members of the Polygon team and a partner decided to withdraw funds from a company on Polygon, they could do so completely. But this is impossible on Metis. Metis is fully decentralized and is not controlled by any individuals, including the founders or the Metis team. Decentralization is one of our core values.

Additionally:

• We have IPFS storage—users can store and share files and data.
• We have a multi-chain (multiple VMs) structure—our dynamic construction of chains makes its design decentralized and eliminates single-chain (VM) bottlenecks.
• User-friendly. Even newcomers to the blockchain field can use our middleware (including modules, APIs, and templates) to build their own DApps or decentralized businesses on the blockchain.

Chain Catcher: Which projects have already agreed to use Metis's technology?

Kevin Liu: The ecosystem is our top priority for development. We are accelerating, especially with the important milestones of launching the mainnet testnet in September and the mainnet in October. Currently, we have announced our ecosystem development plan, with over 50 projects applying, and we are connecting with them one by one. More than 20 have been confirmed.

Partial list

We expect to announce the ecosystem map in two weeks, and new projects are being connected every day. https://www.metis.io/grants/ is our ecosystem development plan, which includes not only technical support but also grants, market and community support, launchpad, investor networks, etc. Paid Network is our investor and close partner, and projects in our ecosystem will have a fast track to launch on the Paid Ignition launchpad after passing the review.

Chain Catcher: What is the main timeline for Metis (such as token sales, fundraising, or product launches)?

Kevin Liu:

Looking back at our development history:

• Alpha testnet launch: April 2021
• Community NFT minting event—"Rebuilding Babel" (website: tribe.metis.io): April 2021
• IDO, launched on Gate.io and Uniswap: May 13, 2021
• Beta testnet launch (website: testswap.metis.io): June 15, 2021
• Polis (middleware) launch (website: polis.metis.io): July 2021
• Public testnet launch and DAC staking mining event: September 2021
• Mainnet launch: October 2021

Chain Catcher: What actions will Metis take in the remaining months of 2021?

Kevin Liu:

In September, the public testnet will launch, and community mining will begin.

With the launch of the public testnet, community members (including applicants for the ecosystem development plan) can create their own Layer 2 DAC; migrate assets (Metis tokens) from Layer 1 to Layer 2; stake on Layer 2 and earn yield farming rewards. The more users invited to join your DAC, the higher your DAC's mining power, and the more rewards you will receive from the yield farming reward pool.

At the end of September, more features for Layer 2 DAC.

These new features will help drive the development of the Metis ecosystem development plan. In other words, Metis will assist in the cold start of projects within the ecosystem—from preparing initial funding to community building, from marketing to technical assistance. Currently, we are preparing a third-party Swap platform and a Launchpad DApp.

All DAC members will be able to stake Metis tokens to mine the tokens of these new projects, and they will also be able to vote on whether they want to invest in these projects in exchange for their tokens. The mining power of the DAC will also determine the discount during token distribution. To support projects in the ecosystem, Metis will continue to work hard, and in the future, more projects will be added to our ecosystem.

In October, the global hackathon.

Metis's first global hackathon will kick off in October! We will collaborate with the Ethereum community (we will announce our partnership soon) to promote the powerful features and ease of use of Metis to the tech community, attracting more projects to migrate to Metis. As always, projects joining the Metis ecosystem development plan will enjoy numerous benefits, including token rewards, developer mining opportunities, community building, social media and marketing support, and access to a range of high-quality investment firms and other investors.

In October, the mainnet pioneer version (v0.1) will be released.

Metis mainnet v0.1 will support more types of assets to migrate between Layer 1 and Layer 2, allowing all projects to deploy and conduct business on Metis Layer 2.

Projects and communities will be able to mint their own Layer 2 tokens and utilize the DAC framework for rapid launch and community building. Thanks to our collaboration with third-party cross-chain bridges to verify transactions, Layer 2 assets can be quickly migrated to Layer 1, reducing the withdrawal period from a week to just a few hours. Meanwhile, our middleware Polis will also provide more features and templates, making it easier to manage and launch DApps.

From October to December, further improvements and upgrades to the Metis mainnet.

We will continue to build the infrastructure, middleware, and DAC framework of Metis, release updated versions of the mainnet, and a series of exciting new products. At the same time, we will establish more partnerships with projects across various fields, including Web2 developers and projects, leading DeFi protocols, NFTs, DAOs, games, etc. All projects will be able to use Polis to manage their wallets and smart contracts and launch DApps.

They will also be able to use the DAC framework and tools to manage their communities and businesses, with tools and templates including (but not limited to): voting, mining, task management, knowledge management, token transfers, token claims, investments, payroll, etc.

Chain Catcher: I heard that the three levels of Metis mining are already in the planning. What are these three levels of mining?

Kevin Liu: The first level is DAC mining, which is aimed at community members and ecosystem projects. Users can register to establish their own decentralized company, stake, and mine. This is a plan provided by Metis to support ecosystem development and project cold starts.

In a DAC, the more participants in the decentralized company created by users, the higher the mining rewards will be. This ensures a certain user base, ensuring the stability of the mining and breaking the instability of DeFi mining.

The second level is DApp mining. As Metis gains more recognition in the industry, more ecosystem projects will collaborate with Metis, and the Metis team will select high-quality projects to partner with. For the development of the ecosystem, Metis has detailed plans and incentive mechanisms. Under this strategy, users can mine DApp tokens every month, and eventually every week, or even daily.

The third level is validator node mining, which is an economic incentive plan designed to improve validation efficiency at the technical mechanism level.

In the Optimistic Rollup mechanism, it is assumed that everyone is honest and trustworthy, and the data packaged by the sequencer is assumed to be error-free. The sequencer needs to stake and use standard software to provide packaging services, so the probability of making mistakes is very low. This means that validators actually have no economic incentive to validate, as the probability of discovering errors is low. Optimistic sets a seven-day period during which anyone can raise a challenge to re-validate if they find an issue, further ensuring the security of transactions.

The design of Metis Rollup's Ranger system believes that by increasing incentives for validators, they will be motivated to validate actively. Whoever is the first to validate can mine Metis as an incentive, and the competition to validate will improve validation efficiency and shorten validation time.

In summary, the Metis mining plan will truly benefit users and co-build the Web 3.0 world of Metis with them.

Metis Telegram Chinese: https://t.me/MetisDAO_zhongwen

Metis Telegram English: https://t.me/MetisDAO

Metis Official Website: https://metis.io

Metis Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetisDAO

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