Kinetex Co-founders on Becoming the ETHGlobal Finalists

Dubai, UAE, 6th November 2023, Following their participation at the ETHGlobal hackathons in Lisbon and Paris and bringing home a couple of prizes, the founders of Kinetex, Tigran Bolshoi and Mike Shishko, talked about their experience at the hackathons, what the crypto industry and users need right now, and how the clear understanding of the community needs helped them to build prize-worthy solutions.

Shishko explains: “The starting point for Kinetex Flash was an exploration of the industry drawbacks, which crypto users and developers face daily. Firstly, there are scalability struggles. We firmly believe that Ethereum has been and will remain the leading network in the cryptocurrency space. However, due to the rapid growth of new projects and the consequent influx of new users, the network’s load is increasing significantly, and scalability is becoming a major concern. While layer-2 solutions may help, they can worsen the situation with liquidity. As most protocols become multi-chain, the need for quick, cost-effective, and secure liquidity movement becomes paramount”.

Bolshoi continues: “In addition, the recent collapse of large bridges, particularly MultiChain, prompted us to reevaluate the security and effectiveness of existing bridge solutions, which we aggregated in the Kinetex dApp. You may say that it was a starting point for Kinetex Flash”.

Another thing that inspired the team was the rise of zero-knowledge technology (Zk). For the last year, crypto enthusiasts have been hearing about this technology more and more as the tech industry has been exploring ways to employ it. Shishko elaborates: “Zk has the potential to resolve many cross-chain problems, including its security, scalability, privacy, and more. Arguably, the most widespread application of Zk is Zk proofs, which allow one party to prove the validity of their statement to another party without revealing any extra information except the statement’s validity. Zk proofs can be used to transfer data securely while ensuring that we transfer only the absolutely essential information. It allows us to achieve two things: minimize the time required to validate transactions and decrease related gas costs”.

By combining Zk and light clients, which the founders presented at the ETHGlobal hackathon in Paris, Kinetex can process transactions in batches and facilitate direct peer-to-peer transactions between users and market makers. While batch processing speeds up the process, the ability to trade with market makers means there is no need to rely on third-party validators, which can be hacked or compromised in other ways. “As a result, Zk light clients can help Kinetex to provide users and projects with a fast, cost-effective, and secure way to move liquidity between networks by simplifying cross-chain data transfers. Additionally, it will optimize gas costs even more and promote a fair and competitive market.” – Bolshoi continues.

Both Bolshoi and Shishko noted the critical role this past hackathon season played in the development of Kinetex. Bolshoi says with gratitude: “We are very grateful for the opportunity to participate in such global events as ETHGlobal hackathons, where we can meet so many like-minded people working to change the DeFi industry for the better. By having this amazing experience, we have the motivation to work harder, think outside the box, and take risks when needed”. Shishko agrees: “On hackathons, we had a chance to try several ideas and receive useful feedback. Winning several prizes was a good sign that we are on the right track and must keep pushing towards making an efficient cross-chain solution a reality”.

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