 Web 3.0, a fully decentralized internet built on the blockchain. Some say it is a far-fetched fantasy or even a scam. For others, it is the foundation of a new digital age that will unlock trillions of dollars in value. I would say today, no one can support a billing use, but no chain, no ecosystem. This industry still has 10x potential. Li Jian, CEO at Harmony, believes that connecting all existing blockchains is the only path towards the internet of the future. You should be able to move assets very easily from one chain to another chain with good prices, with good rates and very fast. How far are we from the creation of a decentralized internet? And what would it take to onboard the first billion users on Web 3? Welcome to our latest Cointelegraph interview. So I would like to start the conversation with a provocative question. One of the slogans of Harmony is one chain to rule them all. That seems to be quite in contradiction with the principles of interoperability and decentralization that should be at the foundation of the ideal of Web 3. So can you explain to us this discrepancy? Yeah, actually, I would like to first say that that's a community meme. It's not an official project slogan, but because we have the token Harmony 1, we actually have a lot of great taglines around the word one. And we don't say this as a project slogan, but we do think that we're one chain to bridge all other chains to bridge, whether it's Ethereum, Bitcoin. Our Ethereum bridge has been launched for the last year, more than a year, and we have bridges to Binance Smart Chain, to Terra, to a few other projects as well. And actually, our goal is to bridge all the layer one blockchains with us. So we're a layer one, but we think that the future is multi-chain, right? And it's cross-chain that you should be able to move assets very easily from one chain to another chain with good prices, with good rates, and very fast. So now let's get into the plans of Harmony for Building Web 3. So in a blog post that I recently read, you said that in 2026, Harmony is planning to become a unifying Web 3 platform. So can you expand a bit on this thought and tell us what you mean by unifying Web 3 platform? I think looking forward for the next four years, we still think that adoption, blockchain adoption is really at 1%. If you think about how many truly people are custodering their own funds using their own wallets, using blockchain every day, less than 1% of the world's population as a whole, right? And so the next four years is really about continuing the journey of keep building the infrastructure, keep building the ecosystem. Web 3 is just the catch-all word for blockchain, for decentralization, for the idea that you own your own beta and you own your own money. And so we want to be the platform that allows people to, allows the next billion users to come into the space, right? I would say today, no one can support a billion users, no chain, no ecosystem. But it requires innovation on the technology level. It requires bridging to other chains that we can keep making this infrastructure layer easy for whether it's NFT, games, DAOS, join in, DeFi, all of the above that you've been hearing about, which we just call the metaverse, all of that together. So that's the vision. The unifying Web 3 platform is a platform that allows the next billion users to come into Web 3. So I guess that one of the main challenges facing blockchain technology nowadays is the so-called blockchain trilemma. So the trilemma of scalability, decentralization and security. So each protocol comes up with its own solution for this problem. What is the harmony solution for the blockchain trilemma? Yes, so great question. And that's that's actually a key point because everyone has to choose certain design and tradeoffs. So what we've chosen is sharding and proof of stake. So these are these are not new ideas, by the way. These are ideas that have been around the Ethereum 2.0 design and community ever since, I would say, 2015, 2016, right? So what we've done is put those the best research into production and actually launched the first sharded and proof of stake. One of the first sharded proof of stake mainnet back in 2019. And it actually works really well because of those reasons and we'll continue to make it better. So on our roadmap is things like cross-star transactions, even cross-star smart contract. So I would say that we're probably just even there's still a long story about sharding and proof of stake that we can continue to make it better and continue to allow the protocol to scale. So that's interesting because it's widely known that the trilemma basically forces protocols to sort of sacrifice one of these three components. So either security or decentralization or scalability for the sake of the other two. But in your opinion, you can preserve all the three at the same high level and just expand the triangle. Is that correct? Exactly, exactly. We expand the relationship still exists between the three components, right? Like they're all moving in relation but you can open, you can expand the overall as well. Like for example, we have two second finality while that's almost the fastest in the industry but we did that without trading off on decentralization or security. And so there are ways you can get even faster by sacrificing some of the other factors. So you could be sub one second if you choose to be more centralized. I mean, that's what let's say AWS is, right? So our goal is actually been pushing on all three at the same time through engineering and expanding all of it at the same time. So now I would like to touch upon one of the core aspects of harmony strategy for Web 3 which is based on DAOS or decentralized autonomous organization. So you dedicated $50 million out of a total $300 million fund for funding a number of DAOS. So can you tell us why DAOS plays such a crucial role in harmony strategy for Web 3 and what kind of DAOS are you funding at the moment? So essentially we think DAOS will replace companies and in the future countries. It's a way of organizing all human coordination and activity. So I think, you know, like think about countries and companies. These are all entities that we humans invented, designed in the first place, right? Like why do we have LLCs or, you know, corporations? And there was the East Dutch and India, India company. Like there are all these things that we basically made up, to be honest. And even countries, right? We made it up. Like someone won a war and it became a country. And so I think with Web 3, with the technology, with coordination that everyone can participate and there's a natural token incentive, you can design any way of coordinating humanity. And that's the future, right? And so people won't be starting companies anymore, people will start DAOS. And so that's why we think that almost everything can be done and created via a DAO at some level and it will be, as the world becomes even more global, it's a much better tool than an LLC or a corporation because those can't go across borders. It's very difficult. But DAOS is global, DAOS are everywhere. DAOS can provide incentives as soon as you join a DAO. It's just a much more flexible way of getting anything done. OK, so that's interesting. So can you give us some concrete examples of what DAOS are you involved in and basically what role they play in the harmonious ecosystem? Sure. We have some core DAOS that are our community DAO or a validated DAO. Community DAO is just about growing the community. So what's nice about that is instead of us trying to hire 10 more people on our team to try to coordinate and grow community and do social media, we have DAOS that do all this work and it's much easier. There's no management overhead. There's no coordination with the sub team. I mean, they're an independent organization that delivers on their milestones and they can be anywhere in the world. It doesn't matter where they live, right? So we don't have to get, right now if you have a company and you want to hire someone in another country, you have to set up an entity in that country. You have to set up a bank account in that country. Then you have to send money to your entity in that country and then pay that person. So blockchain changes, all of that, right? Anybody can raise their hand and start. The DAO can be set up in one day, essentially. It's a multi-stake with nine people that consent to being there and then they can start doing the work. So that's how flexible it can be, right? So another DAO that we started with a good collaborator is the Harmony Africa DAO. And their goal is to cultivate and educate developers in Africa across different countries. There's five countries that they're targeting. If we tried to do that as our own team, that would have taken six months to a year to start, right? Again, all the entities, all the countries, all the local people. But as a DAO, it took a few weeks to get everybody organized and then we started. So that's the power. So now I would like to go deeper into your vision of Web3 and in particular your vision of the interaction between Layer 1 and Layer 2 protocols. So of course Harmony is a Layer 1 solution alternative to Ethereum. And you think that basically the capability of Harmony to create this bridge to Ethereum and the blockchain makes Harmony a more attractive solution than Layer 2 protocols. That seems to be in contradiction with what analysts at Coinbase say. So they believe that Ethereum will remain the dominant Layer 1. And that the combination of Layer 2 scaling solutions combined with upgrades like the Bitcoin chain, the Bitcoin chain merge and sharding could limit progress for alternative Layer 1s in their current form. So what do you think about this argument? The reason why we think we're Layer 1, like us, Harmony with a bridge to Ethereum is actually better because our bridge is much faster. You can transfer assets in two or three minutes versus Layer 2, there's a seven day settlement time for optimistic Layer 2 rollups. So there's a lot of different features that essentially you can use us as a scaling solution and transfer assets in the same way that you use Layer 2, but the experience is better. So I'm nothing against Layer 2. I just think the design is having a parallel Layer 1 that's connected because we can also connect to Bitcoin and Cosmos and other Layer 1s. It's just more flexible versus just being a Layer 2. You're actually only in that Layer 2. You can't even connect to other Layer 2s. I mean, it's hard. You have to go back to Ethereum and then go to a different Layer 2. So that's the reason why I think that Layer 1 is a better design as a bridge. And actually, we want Ethereum to grow. So if Ethereum grows 10 times bigger, hopefully we can get 10 times bigger along with the entire industry. So there's really no conflict. As long as we are in the right industry and as long as this industry still has 10x potential, which I think it does, hopefully in the next... Think about the market cap of all of crypto is about two trillion. It could easily be 20 trillion in a few years. Yeah, it seems that the trend is going in that direction. So now I would like just to clarify, it's clear your position towards Ethereum, but what about your view on the competition among different Layer 1 solutions that are competing with each other? Like for example, I was talking to the founder of Nier, another Layer 1 protocol alternative to Ethereum, who seemed to have a very similar vision to yours in terms of how he sees the development of Web 3 and specifically how he sees his own protocol. The role his protocol will play in this Web 3, so this bridge connecting all different blockchains. So I was wondering, what do you think? Why would we in the future need multiple Layer 1s? Why would we need a multitude of these bridges? Couldn't we just have one bridge that works very well? I would say that these ecosystems can all grow, and in fact, bridging to Nier is something that we will do. It's just a matter of time, right? Whether they do it or we do it or someone a new project does it, it will be bridged. And I think that we will live in that multi-chain world where there will be a few chains that will keep growing and keep growing, and there'll be some others that are slightly smaller that are still relevant. It's a very fluid landscape. It's not like, oh, there can be only, and it's not zero sum. It's not like, oh, this one chain has all this and then this other chain doesn't. There will be, if you see applications, right? They live on multiple chains now. Like sushi curve is on many, a number of different chains and that's how it will be instead of, and then there'll be native projects on every chain. So I think what's gonna happen is the blockchains that will grow are the ones that are great at cultivating their native projects. So for us, it's like, let's say DeFi Kingdoms or Tranquil. These are some great projects on Harmony that have hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in value and traction. So now let's talk about your visions for 2022. So we saw that Harmony experienced a massive growth in 2021 together with other layer one protocols because of on the wave of this bull market that we witnessed last year. So this year, the picture is a little bit less optimistic. We saw a huge drop in crypto prices not long ago. So what do you think? Can Harmony continue to grow at the same pace even in a bear market? I think that's a good question. I hope so. So I think obviously like bull market, everyone gets excited and inevitably, this happened last time too. In 2017, like the ICO cycle on Ethereum, it brought in a lot of people and then some percentage, let's say at that time, probably only 20% of people stayed, right? Cause the bear market was really long and crypto winter was really long. I think now like the cycles are shorter, like you go up and you go down and you go up, you go down, like it's more compressed. So my only prediction, like, of course I have lots of theories about 2022 and let's say more DAOs, more tools, more builders, but my only thing that I think is actually more talent will come into Web3 this year. Like the best talent, like we see it everywhere. Honestly, I get pinged every day by people who say, I want a career in this space, I want to build something, I'm doing a new project. Like we have so many friends who are just coming in, like flooding in. That's final question. I would like to know what should we expect from this talent that is coming into the space in 2022? What are the milestones that we should look forward to happen in terms of the development of Web3 this year? Yeah, I think in general, my personally biggest hope is that Web3 make the user interface a lot easier for the average user so that we can onboard like the next 100 million people, right? So that means that wallets should be better, like all the tools. I mean, today if you wanna swap tokens, it's not necessarily that easy, right? You need to know how Uniswap or Sushi works and where the tokens go and how long it takes this transaction, you have to wait. Like all these should just be so abstracted that you can just buy some tokens on your wallet, on your phone, and then you can swap and trade like all of that is in the background. So I hope like as an industry, we make the experience easier for like your mom or my parents, you know, whoever, right? Like your like the non-crypto people. Awesome, thanks a lot, Lee. That was a great conversation. Thanks for coming on our show. Yeah, thank you very much. Had a great time.