Infrastructure for the Hedera Ecosystem! Patches / King Solomon (Part 2)

This interview was originally published by Genfinity.

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As part of the Hedera Corner in the LightHouse by Genfinity, King Solomon interviews Patches, CEO and Co-Founder of Hgraph.io, Turtle Moon and HGraph Punks. Brought to you by LightHouse Report sponsor Hedera Hashgraph and in collaboration with our partner and Hedera wallet provider HashPack.

Transcription

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍That's fantastic, so the people at ETH Denver, again, are going to be able to see the gorgeous long flowing locks of Patches. If you've never seen it in real life, it is something to behold, almost a, you know, almost a magical level. So I want to ask you, because you did mention kind of Open Source tools that brought you into the web 3 space. Kind of being a, you know, tech nerd and an innovation nerd, in the future, you know, as Hgraph IO and Turtle Moon develop out, is there plans on the road map to open source some of the tooling? Is it kind of a mixed bag between the business development aspect of where Turtle Moon's at right now and making sure that that's bootstrapped out enough? Or, do you have plans to open source anything, or what does that look like for you guys moving forward?

Turtlemoon Tools, Hgraph IO & Hgraph Punks – Patches - Founder
‍Yeah, no, we definitely, you know, when we're building, we always look at what can we open source, and when. It's definitely, I'm a firm believer in open source technology. You know, we're building on a network that's open source, so I might as well, you know, try to try to lead into that ethos. I think the most tangible open source thing that's going to be coming soon is going to be from Hgraph IO, and it's open source, but it's really an npm package. It's going to streamline the usage of Hedera. I have over, let's say, a thousand scripts that I just have on my computer that I use to do different things, like air dropping or token gating, and you know, sensing Association, and we're gonna, we're working on building out our first npm package, or the SDK is another way to think of it, and that'll allow you to, simply talk to things like the consensus service, or the file service, or the token service, through an npm package. So, one layer of ease on top of the Hedera npm package that it all currently exists. And so, I'm really excited for that to come out. And, you know, we're also going to be looking to add things as we go forward, such as the point system that we're building out with each graph punks and Turtle Moon, to add into the npm package. So, they'll, it'll be, you know, base functionality first, but we do have a lot of ideas to continually expand it to build, really specific use cases for metaverse, for gaming, for NFT marketplaces, so that it's like stupid easy. It's like, 'git user wallet ID, all NFTs with that.' I'll just show me the name and the metadata IPFS link. Boom, that's what you get, you know. So, it's just enhancing our service to be a lot, a lot easier to get up and running on Hedera.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yep, and I think, you know, you mentioned it previously, you know, to hit, you know, Solana volumes and value and liquidity, you know, kind of traded across, you know, the network, even from the NFT standpoint that's like a, you know, representing from where Hedera's at right now, like an 8X in growth. Um, but understanding, you know, that I think that we've already kind of passed the Tipping Point for the web3 ecosystem, internet of value type aspects. We all kind of know, um, where blockchain distributed Ledger technology ends up. When you start getting into that 50-70-100x standpoint from volumes and transactions, that's a lot of, you know, we go through these boom and bust cycles, but it's a lot of real value and real tools and real usability being built out. So, I guess the question that I would like to ask you is based on where we're at now, what are some of the greatest milestones and achievements that you believe, whether that has been facilitated through Turtlemoon or Hgraph IO, that the network has achieved over the past year? And what do you think are the necessary tools, that need to be implemented to really get us to kind of that next step of, kind of, what that 50 or 70x or whatever it may be, uh, in volume and, you know, value being transmitted across the network? What does that look like to you over the next year, two years, three years, whatever it may be?

Turtlemoon Tools, Hgraph IO & Hgraph Punks – Patches - Founder
‍Oh, it's like five questions in that question.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍I am notorious for doing that. I'm sorry.

Turtlemoon Tools, Hgraph IO & Hgraph Punks – Patches - Founder
‍Like everything that's gonna happen in the future, I think, is what it was, but yes, yeah, please go ahead. The floor, the floor is yours. I'll try to, I'll try to let me know if I go off top. I'll try to hit what you just asked. So, um, over the last year, I think we've definitely had a lot of big moments. I think some of them weren't as celebrated, because, like, we're in it, we're here every day, so it's like it's just not noticeable because we're, you know, really, really close to the brick wall. We're not stepping back and seeing how tall it is. I would say one of the biggest things that that is going to help our adoption is HashPack having email login. I can't overstate enough how that simplifies user experience onboarding to Web3. That's, it's insanity. And then the way they did it by using magic auth allowed that it's still using DID tokens, it's still using methods that are web3, but it allows you to tell your grandma to go log in, just put in an email and HashPack, boom, okay, you now have a wallet on a blockchain that's not a blockchain, it's Hashgraph, whatever, but you have them, you have them onboard. So, you know, the biggest thing for us to grow our audience is onboarding. If the friction is hard, if our main wallet sucks, we're not getting anyone to adopt it. It's just not. I mean, I go into different chains - I go to Tezos, I go to Ada, I go to VeChain - and I experience all these different wallets, and I think our Crown Jewel right now for onboarding is how smooth HashPack is in the UX of how is just really easy for non-technical people to understand. And it's not an easy feat, so having people sign in through email is huge. We're, you know, thinking of ways that you can get people to onboard through solutions that are targeted towards much bigger people than just one company. I'm not gonna get too far into that, but it's only enabled through that. So, that's not the hard point, but that, I think, is going to show itself its weight in gold as we onboard more people. I do think another really good time, a really good moment throughout the last year was uh, Hangry's mint going, you know, 100% smooth. The fact that there was so much hype around that mint and most people I've met in Vechain that know about Hedera found out about Hedera through Hangry. Solana people came over, it was, you know, it was a, you know, all of the NFT projects on Hedera are how we got there, but Hangry was the straw on the camel's back that got people's attention, right? And then having a smooth minting process when everyone was looking at us, to see if our network could take that much, you know, 500 requests per second, we could. We did it. It was smooth. It was nice, and that showed a lot of people that Hedera has a good underlying technology that is worth, you know, checking out a little bit. I guess what else.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍I guess this is where to get into the weeds of that. You, I was just asked 15 questions in 20 seconds.

Turtlemoon Tools, Hgraph IO & Hgraph Punks – Patches - Founder
‍Open source, I think happened in the last year. It probably did, and that, I think, was another huge hit to people's criticism of Hedera. I love the fact that they didn't get bullied by the market and open-source too early. They really did it when they were ready, and I, you know, as a creator of Open Source software, you can open source it at the beginning, but when you do, you lose control and Direction, and then it's more nuanced to get where you want to go. It makes much more sense to take it to a place that you know it's firmly got guardrails in the direction you want it to go, and then you say, "Okay, now we're ready." So I think I'm just gonna leave it at those three things for the biggest, you know, moments in the last year. Yeah, I think that's it.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍You touched on it, too. Um, oh no, if you were gonna go into, what's going to drive Mass adoption, please go ahead, right?

Turtlemoon Tools, Hgraph IO & Hgraph Punks – Patches - Founder
‍Yeah, that's where I was going so my perspective, Turtle noon, hat on, h-graph io hat on, we're looking at Giant Enterprise Solutions Soup To Nuts that allow ease of onboarding of major corporations to use Hedera. Like the only reason Starbucks chose Polygon Isn't because Polygon is the best network for Starbucks to go to. It's because they have an infrastructure and a company and they built everything that Starbucks can say, "here's money, do thing" and that team and that technology was built to do that thing. And so, I think that's the next step of Hedera. Like we have great projects, we have great ecosystems, we have great developers. Now, putting them all together to create one Enterprise use case with easy wallet sign-on, good platform, good back-end API, green amazing DLT see if the nuts top to bottom full use case execution. Okay, that's what we're gonna need to see in the next year. That's what we're working on at hgraph.io and Turtlemoon, talking to other partners throughout the ecosystem. And that's what is the uh-to in my perspective. That you get one win, then you get an exponential win from people looking at it, seeing the news. You know, it's a really big marketing moment for Hedera and adoption, plus the massive amount of people that are gonna have to onboard just for the use case that Corporation is using. So, that to me is the focus and makes sense that we should be able to beat Polygon at getting major corporations to say, "hey, we're going to support Hedera and build on Hedera because I gave them money and now I have my product and I don't know how to think about it."

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, I mean it's an interesting point too because, you know, I know that you delve out into multiple ecosystems. I mean, you have delved out into the Twitter spaces on, you know, with XRPL community members, you've went out into Twitter space with Vechain community members, and all these communities are building really amazing, you know, tools and solutions for not only Community but, you know, mass adoption and web three. I think the one interesting thing to touch base on with when you look at something like Hedera is really like where we were at a couple of years ago and looking at everything that's really been built from the community standpoint that has synergy and what these Enterprises are really looking for. Like they when you see so many different projects building out so many different ecosystems building out so many different tools within the Hedera network, you know, I think that probably sparks a good amount of interest from the Enterprises as well because they know that like, hey, if these community members can bootstrap it out based on, you know, artwork or based on simple tools that can be built, I mean It's just a little bit of a welcoming environment, so is that kind of what your, you know, the thought process as far as where we were at before? And knowing all the tools that you guys are continuing to build, is that kind of the incentivization that some of these Enterprises are gonna, you know, do you think that they're looking at the stuff that's been built out from Community? You know, I can't think of another network that's done things like that.

Turtlemoon Tools, Hgraph IO & Hgraph Punks – Patches - Founder
‍I don't, I don't, I mean, no, it Hedera is currently 31 ranked coin, it's different than a blockchain, so even if someone thought they knew what they were talking about in a corporate research position, I highly doubt they would get it. I don't think they look for commuted small community stuff. I think if anything, like the LG TV Marketplace would be what they look at because it's another Enterprise adoption of the network in a live use case. They wouldn't, you know, I think it's, it's an assumption, and I think it's a fair assumption that when in an Enterprise from that perspective, just because someone can do it at a small scale doesn't mean you can do it, and so just because it's been validated that this could happen on this network, it's like, okay, but what happens when there's 100 million people doing that, you know, like what happens when a million people try to try to go through this? And so the answer of scale isn't answered to them from developer applications from my point of view, and when I was, you know, sea level at a at an Enterprise, I didn't, yeah, I didn't do that. But if, if you looked at the again like LG, okay, well, there's another person who's gonna have a huge throughput, that's a huge amount of onboarding, and they've decided to go with Hedera, we see they're on the Council, so maybe you know, they just did it to prove out the tech that they believe in, but if they believe in it and they're using it, that's a reason. So what we need, you know, that's great, and what we can do from a community aspect again is I think work together to create a super nut solution, either through Partnerships or some other mechanism, that is a purchasable simplified this is how it works, this is, you know, again, like let's just take Starbucks, this is the Starbucks rewards program, come to Hedera, we have a Rewards program, we white label it for you, it works, it works on scale, we can show you all of this, and then it's targeted and marketed towards Enterprise onboarding. So I think it is its own Beast, it's it deserves its own focus, and um, it will, uh, be the next step function of adoption from an Enterprise level, I do want to add that Avery Dennison is one of the other things in the last year that helped. Like every conversation I've had as hgraph.io is so much easier now and say, "Well, Hedera is like the number one DLT in transactions per second right now." That's a very meaningful sentence, and I understand there's nuance there. People say Sol has more if you disregard node-to-node communications that just make the network alive. Hedera has the most TPS for end-user outside of the network getting value by paying money for a transaction to be processed. So, yeah, it's that, that's very helpful for the growth.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Again, I think it should be noted that when we talk transactions per second and speed of these networks, a lot of things or networks in theory can hit transactions per second, but what I think you're talking about right now is like what's actually occurring. Whether that be consensus or whatever it may be on the network that it what is actually occurring per second, and yeah, there is, I think it's, shoot, I'm gonna forget the website, is it realtps.net? Okay, yeah, and I know you mentioned kind of from the hgraph.io standpoint, I would love, I know Sonia Orbis86, you're down there, so if you want to request to speak, please come up. You mentioned kind of some of the forward-thinking thought leadership aspects that hgraph.io is looking for Enterprise Solutions moving forward, so I think kind of the last question that I want to ask you is, what are you most looking forward to this year from your standpoint? I know you also mentioned some potential Partnerships being announced. I know you got ETH Denver coming up. What are you most excited about this year?

Turtlemoon Tools, Hgraph IO & Hgraph Punks – Patches - Founder
‍Yeah, this, I'm really excited about the innovation that we can make now. We've slogged through the last two years of building fundamental architecture that needed to be made. Hey, no one can mint, okay, well that's not great. Hey, there's no wallet, that's not great, you know. Hey, there's no way to launch these things, that's not great, so all of those have been solved, and we're not even at a place where it's by one, you know, we have multiple wallets, we have multiple launch pads. We have multiple marketplaces, and it's amazing to see. We even have metaverses being built out. So what we're at now, and I think, you know, I think there's even a live example of something that's not really doable on other networks. It's innovate, we're going to innovate using our very, very fast DLT that to do things that are not possible on other networks, and we're going to build value by being at the forefront of what is NFT use cases, whether that be enterprise or, you know, consumer. You know, a good example is this just came online, but if you've been following Pangu Pals and Degen land, they have a land NFT that gives you access to a land plot. That land plot, then you stake their NFTs and earn Power Coin. You use those Power Coins to buy things in the game. The more you build, the more your point, your experience points go up, and then they pay out all of the Hbar to the people that play the game based on the level you are, and this mechanism would not make sense on Ethereum because all of the gas fees. It would take to do all of these things together for a user to make it to play their own games, impossible, and that's why they chose it there to build it here, and it just, you know, they're still minting on zoos that just went live, but it's a really good snapshot of a use case that is theoretically possible but not really built out anywhere else because the costs don't make sense, and that's what we're going to continue to see is these theoretical things that are too costly elsewhere being created here, and then things that no one has thought about because of the restrictions of the trilemma or whatever it's got to happen this year, and so we're going to become a top five coin through innovation and changing what people look at DLTs for use cases and being on the front lines of how you can use this technology to better people's lives at the end of the day.

Genfinity – Valor – Founder & CCO
‍Along those same lines, I just wanted to jump in here real quick. I was actually curious what you thought about this Shopify. I think it was Shopify that was going to be integrating Hedera connectivity. I'm not sure if you know anything about it, but I just saw it the other day. I wasn't sure. It just kind of hits on this point of enterprise kind of adoption. Any thoughts on that?

Turtlemoon Tools, Hgraph IO & Hgraph Punks – Patches - Founder
‍Yeah, yeah, no, I saw that. I think I saw it on, it's Brandon with the Hashgraph enthusiasts, Shameless chill that it's Brandon is amazing. The Brandon Devonport, amazing person in Hedera. It's brandon.com enthusiasts is a great sign-up. He goes over every week all of the news in Hedera, it's crazy. All the things I learned, so much from that. And that's where I saw that, that's huge. I mean, Shopify is the POS system for most web companies at this point, even like really big brands still use Shopify because it's just so much easier than building out your own. So them having adoption, and easy adoption, the Hedera is magnificently huge, and I could only think of, you know, I've built 3PL Logistics Software before, and if I had Hedera, oh my God, it would have been so much cheaper and cooler and safer, and more secure. So, I can only imagine the use cases that Shopify would have for Hedera, so I'm very excited to see what hits the market, and I guarantee that it'll definitely have a meaningful impact on TPS, whenever whatever they build goes live.

Turtlemoon Tools, Hgraph IO & Hgraph Punks – Patches - Founder
‍I want to also give a shoutout, we have Orbis 86 here, but I have to give a shoutout to one of the old school HBAR community members down there who does have a mint going on today as well. Obviously, not financial advice to anybody, but Batty Hattie has Generation H going live today through Hedera Sentient. If you guys want to, or Valor, if we could pin up something from Batty down there that would be fantastic. And Patches, I know your voice is dead, and I'm sorry for asking you like the most ridiculously, like, obtuse questions in the world, which was like, "Hey, how do you feel about tomorrow and the rest of the next five years?" But we always really appreciate you coming up, and please feel free to hang out.