Today we have the Head of Marketing of Klaytn Foundation, Mr. John Cho, to tell us more about Klaytn Foundation and what inspires him to work on such a type of project. However, before diving into the question and answer session, let’s first understand what Klaytn Foundation is?…
- Can you provide an overview of the Klaytn blockchain and what makes it different from all the other L1s out there?
In a nutshell, Klaytn is an Ethereum-equivalent open-source public blockchain that is designed to be the foundational layer for tomorrow’s on-chain world. Developed by leading Korean IT company Kakao, Klaytn is uniquely designed to fulfil the practical real-world requirements that builders and end users need from a blockchain infrastructure.
For example, Klaytn boasts a stable average transaction latency of just 2.1 seconds, easily outperforming many other chains such as Polygon, NEAR Protocol, Solana, and more. This allows Klaytn DApps to deliver a speedy and seamless end user experience akin to regular Web2 apps, which we view as one of the key requirements for enabling mass adoption – no one wants to use an app where every transaction takes minutes to complete! Beyond this, Klaytn’s ultra-low transaction latency also enables more use cases where near real-time transaction confirmation is necessary.
Additionally, Klaytn also has built-in gas fee delegation functionality, which gives builders more flexibility to design their business models, allows DApps to massively simplify user onboarding and everyday usage by taking the hassle of purchasing and maintaining a token balance for gas out of the equation, and opens up possibilities for social good use cases such as those aiming to help refugees or empower the less fortunate. And of course, Klaytn’s gas price is also very low – over 90% lower than Ethereum’s.
Klaytn builders also have the ability to easily spin up a service chain that can be customized according to their performance and security needs, while providing dedicated throughput to ensure stable performance.
And did I also mention that Klaytn has had account abstraction since 2019?
2. How does the Klaytn blockchain ensure a high level of enterprise-grade reliability through its BFT-based consensus mechanism?
While blockchains are renowned for being immutable, the reality is that the consensus mechanisms of many popular chains, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, operate on the basis of probabilistic finality, where there is an ever-decreasing – but never zero – probability that a transaction will not be reverted as the block goes deeper into the chain. This can be problematic once the number of transactions scale up, as a non-zero chance of a transaction reverting, however miniscule, is still too great of a risk.
By adopting a BFT-based consensus mechanism, Klaytn is able to achieve not just immediate, but also absolute finality, giving companies the speed and reliability they need to process their on-chain transactions with peace of mind.
3. What is the role of the Klaytn Governance Council in the Klaytn ecosystem, and how does its recent transition to transparent and verifiable on-chain governance impact its operations?
The Klaytn Governance Council (GC), as the name suggests, is a permissioned council of trusted organisations tasked with making governance decisions for Klaytn. Since last year, the GC has been progressively shifting towards crypto-first organisations that have the experience and capability to not only contribute actively to the Klaytn ecosystem, but also provide expert and informed blockchain governance decision-making.
Currently, the GC members also double up as consensus node operators, but once Klaytn’s transition to a permissionless structure is complete, anyone who meets the requirements will be able to participate as a validator, and governance and consensus participants will become separable – although we still expect that most GC members will continue to operate consensus nodes.
With the launch of on-chain governance on Klaytn Square, the governance activity of every GC member is now publicly accessible and verifiable – with their discussions, decisions, and the voting results of every decision made by the GC as a whole recorded on the Klaytn mainnet.
4. How does Klaytn’s on-chain governance via Klaytn Square work, and what does it mean for the Klaytn community?
Essentially, Klaytn governance proposals will be tabled for both discussion and on-chain voting on Klaytn Square. The discussion forum is publicly viewable, and all votes cast are done so on-chain, creating a fully transparent and verifiable governance process for the Klaytn community.
5. How does the Klaytn token economy contribute to the sustainability of the ecosystem?
Over the past two years, Klaytn has been gradually implementing tokenomics changes towards a sustainable token economy, including reducing block rewards to reduce inflation with KGP-3, the implementation of an automated burn mechanism that has incinerated 77 million KLAY to date, and most recently with KGP-6, the burning of 5.28 billion KLAY and the transition to a new community fund powered by block rewards as opposed to a foundation reserve.
These tokenomics changes, along with our focus on driving more utility and demand for KLAY, will work together to ultimately result in deflationary tokenomics.
6. On this topic, we’ve read that Orakl Network will be one key contributor towards this goal of deflationary tokenomics. Could you tell us more about Orakl Network?
Orakl Network is a decentralized oracle network designed specifically for Klaytn. What sets this oracle network apart from others is that it only accepts KLAY for its fees and will burn a portion of the fees collected, thus contributing towards our goal of achieving deflationary tokenomics. Beyond this, Orakl Network will also focus on providing high performance, unique data feeds based on the needs of the Klaytn ecosystem, giving builders more freedom and flexibility that other oracle services do not provide.
7. Can you describe the Klaytn developer environment and the resources available for developers to kickstart their Web3 ambitions?
Klaytn has, without a doubt, one of the friendliest developer environments in the Web3 space. As an Ethereum-equivalent blockchain, developers are able to use any toolings built for Ethereum, and any code that runs on Ethereum will also run on Klaytn with no or minimal code changes. Klaytn also has a comprehensive collection of SDKs, no-code/low-code solutions, contract libraries, open-source code bases, as well as an ever-growing repository of guides and tutorials to help developers build their DApps with ease. Aspiring developers can find everything they need on our developer portal.
8. Can you give an overview of the wallet options available in the Klaytn ecosystem, such as Kaikas, Klip, and MetaMask, and their unique features?
The Klaytn network is supported by many popular crypto wallets beyond these three, including Crypto.com DeFi wallet, Huobi Wallet, D’Cent, AlphaWallet, BitKeep, Coin98, SafePal, and more. You can see the list of wallets that support Klaytn here.
But to your question, Kaikas is the official Klaytn wallet, and is continually being developed and improved upon. Klip is the wallet built into KakaoTalk – which is a superapp used by 93% of smartphone owners in South Korea – giving them a hyper-convenient way to access the Klaytn ecosystem. MetaMask is self-explanatory, as it is one of the most popular self-custodial wallets out there.
9. What are some of the key partnerships and collaborations that Klaytn has formed in its journey toward mass adoption?
We’ve formed countless partnerships over the past couple of years, from renowned Web3 platforms such as OpenSea, to gaming powerhouses Netmarble and Neowiz, infrastructure partners like Soramitsu and BlockPI, and more.
On the developer front, we’re working with Questbook for our grants and bounties programs, and our partnership with DoraHacks led to our Klaymakers22 hackathon breaking a new submissions record on their platform, with many of the winners now working to build their submissions into live services on Klaytn.
Achieving mass adoption requires a lot more than just getting that one killer DApp – it’s about creating sustainable tokenomics, enabling transparent and open governance, and empowering our community and the builders amongst them to create a vibrant ecosystem – and all our partners play a part in making this happen.
10. What upcoming developments can we expect from Klaytn in the near future?
The biggest protocol update coming up would be Klaytn’s transition to a permissionless structure, which means that anyone that meets the requirements will be able to participate as a validator.
You can also look forward to all the projects and initiatives that our GC members will be launching, including the Another World metaverse platform, a gold-pegged token that will introduce real-world asset trading to the Klaytn DeFi ecosystem, and more. Follow us to be the first to know!