MultiversX CEO Talks Sharding, Security, and Scalability

In the rapidly evolving world of blockchain technology, MultiversX is a pioneering force driving innovation and scalability. At the helm of this groundbreaking project is Beniamin Mincu, CEO and Co-founder of MultiversX. A prominent figure in the Web3 space, Beniamin’s vision and leadership have positioned MultiversX as a top-tier Layer 1 blockchain solution, renowned for its state sharding technology, robust security features, and energy-efficient operations.

With a mission to empower entrepreneurs, developers, enterprises, and government officials, MultiversX is focused on creating a transparent and collaborative framework that fosters radical innovation. The platform’s impressive capacity of handling 263,000 transactions per second and its thriving ecosystem of over 8,200 dApps and 3,200 nodes underscores its commitment to scalability and efficiency.

Before founding MultiversX, Beniamin was instrumental in shaping the blockchain investment landscape through Metachain Capital, where he supported pioneering projects like Polkadot, Binance, and Tezos. His extensive experience and strategic insights have been crucial in steering MultiversX toward its ambitious goals.

In this exclusive interview, Beniamin Mincu shares insights into MultiversX’s mission, the development and impact of Sovereign Chains, and the future of blockchain technology. From leveraging state sharding to achieving unprecedented transaction speeds, and from addressing technical challenges to enhancing security, Beniamin provides a comprehensive overview of how MultiversX is setting new benchmarks in the blockchain industry.

Q1. Can you give us a brief overview of MultiversX and its mission in the blockchain space?

Leveraging highly scalable, secure, and efficient blockchain technology, MultiversX is creating a collaborative framework and composable toolkit for all stakeholders—entrepreneurs, developers, enterprises, and government officials. Our goal is to enable transparent and radical innovation, allowing anyone to seamlessly create, augment and interconnect applications, networks and systems at scale in a distributed and interoperable way.

After pioneering state sharding technology in the Web3 space, we have introduced future-proof features, including meta-transactions—fees paid by third parties, allowing users to interact with smart contracts without holding the native token; native standards for tokenization, on-chain 2FA protection and many more. Our carbon-negative and energy-efficient platform can support an extremely high transaction volume of 2.5B daily capacity, with low latency and at negligible costs.

Q2. What inspired the development of Sovereign Chains, and how does it fit into MultiversX’s long-term vision?

If we are to properly compete with Web2, be it in the financial system, media, gaming or in the public sector, we need to match and surpass the experience of legacy technologies, and provide great usability as well as an intuitive development framework.

That’s the rationale behind Sovereign Chains. They aim to extend the capabilities of general-purpose blockchains by providing a customizable and scalable architecture to build on, while allowing, for the first time ever, to create a truly unified Web3 ecosystem that’s not only on par with but better than current centralized options.

It mirrors, in a way, what we have already done with MultiversX by providing a stable, reliable, efficient and powerful foundation for Web3 builders to create, innovate and scale. This time, we are doing it for the entire crypto space, but the vision remains the same.

Q3. Could you explain how Sovereign Chains leverages sharding technology to achieve up to 70,000 transactions per second?

By being built on top of the MultiversX, Sovereign Chains already benefit from all the robust technology previously developed. This means that we took our existing cross shard module, modified and improved it for native cross chain operations. Not only do resources no longer have to be shared with other apps on the same shard, vastly increasing throughput numbers, eliminating any bottlenecks, but we have provided Sovereign Chains with extensive configuration options.

Hardcore engineering, the new consensus mechanism, the new state trie model, the new execution way and the spaceVM together make Sovereign Chains achieve a faster block time of just 1s, and 2s finality, outperforming the current setup as well as most benchmarks from other L2 solutions. On the first-ever instance of a Sovereign Chain, which was set up in just minutes during a live demo, we have managed to prove the efficiency of our architecture, by surpassing 70K TPS together with the community.

Q4. What are the main technical challenges you faced while developing Sovereign Chains, and how did you overcome them?

Developing Sovereign Chains presented the same kind of challenges that other similar projects (Ethereum L2s, Avalanche Subnets) have faced in terms of interoperability, composability, security assumptions and offering a novel integrated experience. Just one wallet, integrated seamlessly across the Web3 ecosystem, removing security concerns associated with cross-chain operation and the hassle of bridging assets.

Given our existing infrastructure, which allowed for native cross-chain transactions, these challenges were addressed, eliminating the need for traditional bridging and wrapping, and facilitating smooth asset transfers between chains.

On top of that, customizable virtual machines allow us to transfer all the capabilities of the MultiversX network to other chains, while enabling them to tailor features to specific use cases. Additionally, through the Gravity Layer’s restaking module, users can support the economy of new Sovereign Chains.

Q5. MultiversX is known for features like on-chain 2FA and native standards. How do these features integrate with Sovereign Chains?

All the advanced features that have made MultiversX a premiere destination for builders and users have been made available by default on Sovereign Chains. That means that on-chain 2FA protection, as well as native standards, are leveraged from the underlying architecture and security protocols of MultiversX. Users who activate their 2FA will be required an additional signature for each transaction, provided from their authenticator app, providing them multi-factor protection directly on-chain.

Similarly, native token standards eliminate the need for dedicated smart contracts for token transactions. This design reduces attack vectors and ensures an efficient, cost-effective execution layer for token transfers. Additionally, these tokens benefit from strict protocol-level guarantees, preventing the introduction of malicious functions and ensuring secure, transparent transactions across the chain and network.

Q6. Can you elaborate on how Sovereign Chains will elegantly tie ecosystems without involving traditional bridging or wrapping mechanisms?

The ability to customize and run multiple virtual machines (VMs) in parallel is central to Sovereign Chains. Developers can deploy various VMs, such as EVM and MultiversX VM, on a single chain, ensuring seamless asset and smart contract interactions without external bridges.

Customizable VMs enhance compatibility and performance by tailoring execution environments to specific needs. This multi-VM approach facilitates secure, direct interactions across blockchain networks, eliminating bridge-related complexities and vulnerabilities.

Another major innovation is the Native Cross Chain operations with Asynchronous Composability between assets, contracts and complex operations, an architecture that enables fluid, secure asset and data movement across ecosystems, supporting a truly interconnected blockchain environment without additional wrapping processes.

Q7. How does the concept of ‘borrowing’ security from MultiversX, known as shared security, benefit new blockchain networks?

The Gravity Layer allows Sovereign Chains to utilize the security and trust features of MultiversX without having to build them from scratch. This is achieved through a dual-staking model, where both EGLD and the Sovereign Chain’s native token can be staked.

This setup mitigates the risk of security issues linked to the native token’s volatility and creates a stable base of economic trust. Validators can support any Sovereign Chain option for Gravity, further enhancing security through shared economic incentives and decentralized trust.

This shared security framework allows new projects to start with high security and economic stability, facilitating innovation and growth without the heavy initial investment and bootstrapping process required for establishing a new credibly neutral proof-of-stake network.

Q8. How does the Gravity Layer restaking module work, and what impact do you anticipate it will have on the staking yield for EGLD?

As mentioned before, the Gravity Layer restaking module enhances the staking ecosystem by allowing EGLD holders to further re-stake their tokens on both the main MultiversX network and Sovereign Chains. This approach involves staking EGLD on the mainnet and then locking it for use on Sovereign Chains, thus securing both networks simultaneously. By participating in this system, users are potentially doubling or tripling their staking yield.

Q9. Can you share more details about the potential airdrops and other incentives designed to attract community attention to Sovereign Chains?

The incentives that multiple teams currently working on their Sovereign Chains instances are exploring are meant to work as engagement strategies to generate attention. Yes, they include potential airdrops and other rewarding systems, but currently, everything is in its early stages and the details are being decided on as we speak

But what I can tell you is that we and the Sovereign Chains dev community are thinking hard about how to foster a vibrant and engaged community to ensure robust participation and support for the development and growth of these projects. Community-building efforts are one of the pillars of our strategy to solidify and expand the Web3 ecosystem.

Q10. What are the next steps for MultiversX following the launch of Sovereign Chains?

We have an ambitious roadmap ahead. We plan to implement performance and scalability improvements through parallel processing and introduce confidential transactions to enhance privacy. On the product side, xExchange V3 will soon launch, offering an enhanced DeFi experience, while xPortal will receive significant updates to its app and card. Additionally, we are advancing xFabric to become a leading no-code platform for Web3 engagement. We are also preparing for the next xLaunchpad debut and finalizing details for a major xDay announcement, marking an exciting period for the MultiversX ecosystem​​​​​​.

Q11. How do you see the blockchain landscape evolving in the next 5-10 years, and what role do you envision MultiversX playing in that future?

There are several trends currently driving the blockchain space, including the DeFi growth, the regulatory framework, the prospect of enterprise adoption and the focus on security. MultiversX is in an exceptional position to execute on all of these fronts. And one way we will do that is with the help of Sovereign Chains.

Unlike many centralized Layer 2 solutions, MultiversX’s trustless approach ensures that Sovereign Chains built on its network will not qualify as custodians and, thus, will not be regulated as securities. This aligns with regulatory frameworks by emphasizing the intrinsic utility and governance functions of crypto tokens rather than their speculative aspects.

Similarly, the high flexibility of Sovereign Chains makes them ideal for corporate and public sector use cases. We think that as regulation progresses and companies look to leverage more of the blockchain’s capabilities, having options such as Sovereign Chains around becomes a necessity for scalability, interoperability, security and compliance. And this is how we see our role. Not just as a project creating tech, but also setting the benchmark for how the technology should conduct itself. That is our long-term goal.

Q12. What advice would you give to developers and enterprises looking to scale their operations on MultiversX’s blockchain?

The smartest thing any project could do is start engaging with our community, test out our architecture, try the tools, experience the performance and discuss with us in our community channels. Many exciting projects have emerged from this kind of exploration within the ecosystem.

We are constantly organizing developer sessions, one-on-one business conversations for builders, as well as challenges and hackathons for the broader community, so there’s a lot to do and learn with MultiversX. Developers can also take advantage of our current $1M Sovereign Chains grant program.

Aside from this, make sure to familiarize yourself with the architecture and documentation and look into our libraries/SDKs. Our team is always available to answer any technical question and guide you through the process of creating your dApp or Sovereign Chain.

Interview Summary

In a landscape where blockchain technology is continuously evolving, MultiversX, under the leadership of CEO Beniamin Mincu, stands as a beacon of innovation and scalability. Through this interview, Beniamin has provided an in-depth look into how MultiversX is pioneering the future of blockchain with its cutting-edge solutions like Sovereign Chains. By leveraging state sharding technology, MultiversX is not only pushing the boundaries of transaction speeds but also enhancing security and efficiency in unprecedented ways.

Beniamin’s vision extends beyond just technological advancements. He aims to create a transparent, collaborative framework that fosters radical innovation, benefiting a wide array of stakeholders from entrepreneurs to government officials. The introduction of features such as on-chain 2FA protection and native standards for tokenization exemplifies MultiversX’s commitment to security and user-friendly experiences.

As MultiversX continues to advance with ambitious plans for further scalability, confidentiality, and DeFi enhancements, it is poised to play a significant role in shaping the future of the blockchain ecosystem. Beniamin’s insights reflect a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities within the Web3 space, providing a clear roadmap for how MultiversX plans to lead in an increasingly competitive field.