Dialogue with Reddio Founder Neil: Traditional Enterprises Urgently Need To B Infrastructure for Transitioning to Web3

Interview: Nianqing, ChainCatcher

Guest: Neil, Founder and CEO of Reddio

In recent years, more and more traditional internet companies have begun to embrace NFTs and venture into Web3, such as Meta, Twitter, Reddit, Mercedes-Benz, Starbucks, Nike, Nanguo Dream, and Wemade. With the diverse applications of various enterprises, NFTs are moving away from the mainstream context of "PFP small images" and are being assigned more application scenarios.

Recently, Starbucks launched Starbucks Odyssey, which provides us with an imaginative space for the diverse use cases of NFTs. Starbucks Odyssey combines Starbucks' loyalty program with NFTs, enriching the new membership mechanism through an integrated NFT trading market.

However, the reality is that traditional enterprises' attempts and transformations in Web3 often face high development costs, time costs, and cognitive costs. They urgently need infrastructure from the Web2 era, like Stripe and Twilio, to allow their developers to easily access Web3 and embed these technological infrastructures into their own business models. Currently, infrastructure in the NFT field is also relatively scarce.

The blockchain infrastructure company Reddio is a solution to these problems, allowing developers to build in-app NFT markets, expand applications, and trade assets on Ethereum-based zkRollup, using Javascript SDK and Unity SDK to mint NFTs with 0 gas fees, among other features. Its clients are mainly game developers and Web3 applications, while also providing services to traditional enterprises.

ChainCatcher interviewed Neil, the founder of Reddio. Neil's previous work experience at Twilio, PingCAP, and other tech service companies is closely related to technology services. Four years ago, he had a brief encounter with the often overlooked Vitalik during a conference, and the subsequent success of Vitalik and Ethereum made him more convinced that "serving applications and being close to technology" is the path that can bring about a decentralized revolution.

Here is the full interview:

1. ChainCatcher: Please briefly introduce the development history and team background of Reddio.

Neil: Reddio was actually founded at the end of 2021.

Because my background has always been in traditional B2B companies like Twilio and PingCAP, I initially focused on the traditional developer market to see if there were any entrepreneurial opportunities. I didn't initially set my sights on the Web3 field; in fact, the Web2 project I previously founded was even ending its financing. However, I felt that the traditional track was very crowded and had limited room for development. So later, I wanted to explore some earlier and broader market tracks.

In November last year, I happened to attend the annual Fintech Week in Singapore. At that time, a co-founder of a16z introduced the concept of Web3, and I felt a spark of inspiration upon hearing it.

So, with years of observation of crypto and exploration of Web3, I entered this industry. At that time, many domestic game developers and my previous clients from Twilio reached out to me, seeking some technical solutions. I then discovered that the entire Web3/blockchain industry was unable to provide good infrastructure for games. Many so-called "chain games" were using a compromise solution, where the core assets of the game were centralized, with only a small portion of assets placed on-chain. They didn't want to do this, but there were no better options available.

I started looking for solutions to this problem and was fortunate to meet Paradigm. After extensive research and discussions with Paradigm's CTO, we decided on the technology stack. Soon, Paradigm and its largest LP, Arena, participated in our seed round financing, and then the team began to form and advance R&D, etc. Since we are an infrastructure company serving developers and have no plans to issue tokens, we did not attempt to promote during the seed round, but rather focused on R&D at this stage.

2. ChainCatcher: When did you first get involved in the crypto industry?

Neil: I had some awareness of this industry as early as my time at Twilio. Twilio is the leader in the global cloud communications industry, and at that time, exchanges like Binance, Okex, and Crypto.com were my clients. However, I was more of an observer back then and even thought that such an infrastructure, which could only handle 30 transactions per second, seemed to have no practical use beyond speculation and would not become mainstream in the short term.

In 2018, when crypto was very popular, I also worked as a consultant for a company. They were backed by South Korea's largest entertainment company and were developing a consortium chain for artists to trade their audio-visual products, such as music copyrights, on the chain. However, a very practical issue at that time was that no matter how fast such a chain was, it couldn't compete with centralized servers. In this case, how could you create something for the general public? So this collaboration eventually ended, but during this process, I did learn about the changes happening in the industry.

There was also a rather amusing incident. In 2018, while everyone was raising funds based on white papers, those of us focused on technology were left behind. I clearly remember having coffee with an investor discussing Twilio's business, and there was a person standing nearby, looking dazed, and no one was paying attention to him. But that person was so distinctive that I later found out it was Vitalik. So, the visible bubble burst quickly, and the truly technology-focused Vitalik built Ethereum, bringing about revolutionary changes.

So once you choose not to go with the flow and participate in speculation, you can often see which technologies will actually bring about changes in the industry. This is the lesson I learned in 2018. Now, there are again speculative projects like certain layer 1 public chains, which may not fundamentally influence decentralized change, but people will still speculate on another public chain after Solana. It's essential to take a step back and look at some technological aspects.

3. ChainCatcher: Reddio's positioning is "providing infrastructure for Web3 applications, games, and enterprises." How do you achieve this goal?

Neil: The reason chain game companies choose our solution is that they recognize the user base on Ethereum, which is directly reflected in the number of Metamask users and transaction volumes. In contrast, the number of wallet holders and funds on chains like Flow and Solana is very limited. The primary goal of games is to acquire more customers, so choosing chains like Flow or Solana is not very meaningful.

However, Ethereum's gas fees are relatively high, so when making technology choices, I looked for companies that had technological breakthroughs in Ethereum scaling solutions, ultimately deciding to implement Starkware's zk-rollup. Although I missed out on meeting Vitalik back then, I am very glad I didn't miss this company.

For project parties, there are mainly a few demands: first, to issue NFTs or tokens through mainstream NFT markets on Ethereum, such as Opensea and X2Y2, before the game is fully developed; second, to ensure that NFTs and tokens can be extracted to faster infrastructure to guarantee a smooth user experience. Both of these can be solved through Ethereum and layer 2 scaling solutions.

Reddio provides these projects with a solution for deploying on Ethereum at minimal cost and maximum speed. Project parties can implement NFT and token issuance, trading, and other functions with just a few lines of code by integrating our API. We also provide open-source code for users to trade their own NFTs and tokens, making it easy to seamlessly integrate into their own app's NFT marketplace and decentralized trading platform for tokens.

I often explain to clients that you can think of Ethereum as an interbank settlement system. Because it needs to ensure that all servers can reach a consensus, it is destined to be slow. One cannot expect such a settlement system to provide a good user experience and technical capabilities. Thus, services like Alipay and WeChat Pay emerged, which are built on top of this underlying banking infrastructure. They directly serve customers, significantly improving efficiency. Therefore, Reddio can be understood as a similar infrastructure to Alipay in the Web3 era.

Why is our product in the form of APIs?

As mentioned earlier, the current trend is that many Web2 companies are following the trend to start Web3 companies. However, whether learning Solidity or Starkware's Cairo language, the technical barriers are very high, and the learning cycle is long. However, they are very familiar with APIs, so APIs and SDKs are our way of interacting with these companies, allowing integration with just a few lines of code. Moreover, in addition to providing underlying infrastructure capabilities, Reddio also helps project parties lower the cognitive barriers in the industry. For example, all NFT logic, including minting, trading, transferring, and tokens, can be implemented through our API.

Additionally, many of our clients are traditional game companies that focus more on game experience, where the most important factors are response speed and ease of play. It is not feasible to make users wait a few minutes to generate NFTs and confirm assets after defeating monsters in the game. Given the confirmation speed of Ethereum and most layer 1 public chains, it is indeed too slow. Many high-quality games are implemented using Unity, so we developed a Unity SDK to help developers easily integrate our solutions, and we also removed the Metamask wallet login to help game companies attract more Web2 users more quickly and easily.

Starkware can achieve speeds of 10K TPS and can confirm ownership within a few hundred milliseconds, which has minimal impact on user experience. Project parties deploying on Layer 2 not only ensure speed but also guarantee user experience, such as in-game NFT markets and wallets. Additionally, we provide a ready-to-use NFT marketplace suite, allowing game companies to modify configurations based on their style and needs, such as supporting cool 3D effect NFTs. After all, game companies need to create a better user experience.

Furthermore, while ensuring user experience, we can also guarantee the decentralization of games. Currently, most chain game apps use centralized solutions. For example, StepN on the Solana chain has faced instability and frequent outages, preventing developers from placing all infrastructure on-chain. They can only place the final transfer logic on decentralized trading markets.

As a result, neither users nor investors have a clear understanding of actual users and transactions, which contradicts the principles of decentralization. However, through Reddio, all transactions in the game can be viewed through browsers like Etherscan, making transactions relatively transparent.

4. ChainCatcher: There are many L2 networks already online. Why did you choose to use StarkWare's scaling engine, StarkEx? What do you see as the future of ZK technology?

Neil: There are two types of scaling solutions: Optimistic rollup and zk rollup. Optimistic rollup is somewhat like batch processing in banking systems, and the biggest issue with batch processing is that it is "slow." It is difficult to expect it to serve end customers. Optimistic withdrawals are slow, usually requiring a 7-day wait to allow for disputes and fraud proofs. If there is a problem, the entire transaction needs to be rolled back, which has a significant impact on users. In contrast, zk is essentially a real-time mathematical proof, with any transaction confirmed on Ethereum, and it is a second-level, secure confirmation.

In simple terms, the fraud-proof logic of Optimistic will eventually be eliminated for application scenarios, but it poses no issues in DeFi and other contexts. Therefore, zk can be consumer-facing.

When we were making technology choices, we consulted with our investor Paradigm's CTO, who has strong capabilities in industry research and trend analysis. Paradigm's investment style is to invest in only one company per track, and they decided to invest in StarkWare after extensive research. Coupled with market feedback and various data, we ultimately decided to collaborate with StarkWare. Later, it proved that StarkEx indeed provides a solid foundation in the NFT and token infrastructure field.

Although we initially chose to partner with StarkWare, we still maintain a relatively neutral stance and did not accept investment from StarkWare. This is also why we are collaborating with zkSync and Scroll, waiting for their ecosystems to develop.

5. ChainCatcher: Currently, our platform is more focused on game projects. Do you have plans to serve traditional internet applications looking to transition to Web3 in the future?

Neil: Yes, this is actually one of the biggest differences between us and Immutable X. Our team's background is in Web2 infrastructure, which naturally leads us to understand more about what is happening in various industries. We are currently in contact with some traditional industries, but these cycles will be relatively long, and we will gradually disclose some partnerships in the future.

In fact, many traditional enterprises need infrastructure like Reddio to create their own NFT trading markets. We have seen many interesting scenarios for traditional businesses going on-chain, including genuine product traceability, luxury bag traceability, and logistics information on-chain. These could previously only be done using enterprise chains. Of course, one reason is data privacy, but the most important factor is that the main chains at that time could not support such large-scale data storage and concurrency.

Reddio aims to build a universal Web3 infrastructure, but currently, gaming is our focus. This is because traditional internet growth was also driven by gaming. Gradually, as acceptance increases, more consumer-facing applications will develop, which is an inevitable path for the industry.

6. ChainCatcher: The NFT infrastructure is a very specialized but urgently needed field. In your observation, what is the current development status of this area?

Neil: This field is still in its early stages. The wave of popularity for NFT PFPs at the end of 2021 was both good and bad for the public. Many people learned what NFTs are because of it, but the association of NFTs with small images also led to misunderstandings about NFTs. This has caused many NFT infrastructure platforms to develop their functions at a very superficial level. However, NFTs are undoubtedly a core aspect of Web3, not just avatars and game items, but also membership mechanisms. For example, different levels and identities can be combined with the existing logic of NFT rarity, allowing holders of the same series of NFTs to enjoy different rights.

NFTs can evolve differently in various industries. For instance, the creator economy has improved the living conditions of musicians. By minting music copyrights as NFTs, musicians can obtain timely income from NFT sales, while holders become investors with rights that include participation in concerts and sharing in copyright revenue. NFTs fundamentally change the entire industry, eliminating the need for intermediary companies like Warner Music, and instead creating a music copyright NFT market.

7. ChainCatcher: What insights has the popularity of Reddit NFTs brought to the NFT industry?

Neil: The biggest difference with Reddit NFTs is the concealment of the NFT concept itself, which is why Reddio focuses on optimizing user experience. Reddit uses the term "digital collectibles," reducing the psychological resistance and cognitive barriers for traditional users. Additionally, users do not need mnemonic phrases to create wallets; the entire user experience is designed for Web2 users. This reflects the future ecosystem of Web3.

Moreover, Reddit's issuance of NFTs provides a way for artists within the community to profit from their works, with most of the money going to the designers while Reddit retains only 5% of the sales revenue. Any industry can do this; previously, creators were exploited to the bottom of the ecological chain, contributing the most but earning the least. Companies like Reddit are leading the way in making changes, but I believe that entrepreneurial and small to medium-sized companies will adapt even faster.

In fact, Starbucks' attempt to combine its loyalty program with an NFT platform is similar. However, the biggest issue with both is that all minted NFTs are somewhat centralized. Although it simplifies the process for users by eliminating the need to register for a wallet like MetaMask, it does not solve the problem of NFTs being limited to circulation within the platform. We are also collaborating with similar traditional enterprises to help them develop next-generation products using completely decentralized solutions.

8. ChainCatcher: Where is the team currently focusing its efforts and discussions the most?

Neil: First, we are making efforts aimed at game developers. We have already released the Unity (game engine) SDK and are considering gradually supporting the Unreal game engine, allowing developers who primarily use Unreal to directly use Reddio technology in their games without needing to switch wallets. Additionally, we are exploring SDKs for mobile clients. Although current chain games are browser-based, truly large-scale consumer-facing applications will definitely be mobile-based. We are also making improvements based on actual customer needs, whether for decentralized trading of tokens or the demand for NFT marketplace sales.

From an ecosystem perspective, although we currently do not have a grant program, we have built an investor network, and our team includes a dedicated ecosystem partnership manager who connects project parties and investors with needs and resources for free. At the same time, we have integrated global market expansion resources to help our game clients promote their games in global markets.

9. ChainCatcher: What are the team's development plans for the next year?

Neil: At this point in time, we have essentially validated an initial Product-Market Fit, proving that Reddio's products indeed meet industry needs. In the coming year, we will further raise funds, expand our team, and enrich our ecosystem. Of course, the most important thing is to continuously develop and iterate our products based on customer needs. We will focus more on clients in the Asia-Pacific region and gradually expand to the United States and other regions and countries.

10. ChainCatcher: Previously, the discussion about "Chinese entrepreneurs" was sparked at Token 2049 in Singapore. What are your thoughts on this? What are the strengths and weaknesses of Web3 Chinese entrepreneurial projects?

Neil: I have actually been in Singapore for the past 16 years and have been involved in the overseas business of domestic companies. I believe that the situation of Web3 Chinese entrepreneurs is not something to lament. After all, the domestic environment is already very competitive, and Web3 provides a great opportunity for companies to suddenly require them to become global enterprises, which is also determined by the nature of Web3. From this perspective, it is a great opportunity.

Chinese entrepreneurs have strong practical abilities in C-end user experience, which has been demonstrated in many domestic internet companies, without a doubt. However, once they go overseas, how to quickly translate their capabilities into an understanding of the local market, while not focusing solely on a specific market but rather creating a more universal product for a global audience, is still quite challenging. In this regard, we will also leverage our experience to provide assistance to such companies.