Thanks for the well formed note lauren. I deeply appreciate the thoughtfulness and engagement with our liquidity mining program.
Since we launched RLY Network a year ago, there’s been a lot of progress on L2s and alternative L1s that make your suggestions well warranted. But first, some background.
We didn’t talk much about the Rally sidechain tech, which is built on Forte’s blockchain infrastructure, mostly because Forte wasn’t public yet. Forte has since announced some more about what they’re working on, a Cosmos partnership in addition to their Ethereum work, and will be announcing a number of blockchain partnerships. Because we built Rally.io on Forte’s sidechain, we’re largely dependent on them to undertake the work you’re talking about. It’s been our top priority request for Forte to release a proper block explorer and a number of other points you’ve suggested.
Unfortunately, we don’t control what Forte does. But we do control our own future, which is why we created the RLY Network Association to create a multi-chain architecture for the RLY network protocol. The RLY Association has taken the protocol we’ve built on Forte, rebuilt several pieces to put the smart contracts on an L1 directly, and SuperLayer’s first product will be released on top of this technology. This L1 is one of the top L1s, and we hope to announce the deal we’ve been working on soon. SuperLayer’s first product should go into alpha late this year or early next year, so we’re excited to show off all the building we’ve been doing quietly very soon.
With this L1 and our protocol level contracts on it, we’ll usher in a whole new era for the RLY Network. The whitepaper we’re working on dives into this work, and the Association plans to launch their own website soon with more information forthcoming there.
All of that is to say that incentivizing developers to build with us is a top priority, but requires some foundational work first. Currently, we have several web2 companies building with Rally, which is a big benefit of the custodial and sidechain architecture that Rally is using. For Creators and their fan communities, the additional benefits of this approach are:
- Feeless transactions
- Custodial onboarding, versus having to go figure out how to use a 3rd party web3 wallet first to begin supporting and interacting with creators (a drawback even with other L2s)
- Fast finality and high transaction throughput relative to Ethereum main net
The drawbacks are exactly what you’ve laid out. When we started out a year ago, there were no L2s nor production-level L1s that could be alternatives so I think we made a reasonable set of tradeoffs to get to market. But today, at the tail end of 2021, we are quickly moving to get the RLY Network on another L1 directly and working with Forte on a roll-up centric technology for the sidechain and the Ethereum main net to connect. But it’ll take time, and not something that necessarily solves the problem Mason laid out where creators and their fan communities can have the ownership level necessary to offset the supply overhang.
I’ve connected with several investors and founders. We’re discussing various options, but everyone has been supportive of the long term of Rally and the Network so far. I hope to update this thread as I get more conversations completed. Thanks all.
Kevin