Interview with Kraken's New Chain Ink: How to Co-build the DeFi Ecosystem with Superchain

Original text from Bankless.

Compiled | Odaily Planet Daily Golem (@web3_golem)

Editor’s note: Currently, mainstream exchanges have launched their own blockchains, such as Binance launching BNB Chain and Coinbase launching Base. On October 24, the well-known cryptocurrency exchange Kraken also announced the launch of an L2 based on OP Stack—Ink, and plans to launch a testnet two weeks later. At the same time, the two co-founders of Bankless, Ryan and David, invited Ink founder Andrew Koehler and Optimism co-founder Ben Jones to join their podcast to discuss not only the reasons for the birth of Ink, its ecological focus, and future plans but also the key current work and future development of Superchain.

To give readers an intuitive understanding of Ink and Superchain, Odaily Planet Daily has specially compiled the key content from this podcast episode. Enjoy~

Ink Founder: Ink will focus on DeFi and currently has no plans to issue tokens.

Ryan: First, can Ink's founder Andrew Koehler briefly introduce what Ink is?

Andrew: Ink is a new on-chain unit of Kraken. The idea of Ink was born a year ago when I was walking in Amsterdam with an old friend who was re-hired. During our 5-hour walk, we were thinking about how to 'bring Kraken on-chain.' Various innovative experiments based on this idea started, and at that time, we hadn’t named it yet. Later, we decided to call it Ink, meaning 'writing your future.'

We are bringing the good user experience that centralized platforms have to the chain. So Ink is the evolution of all our ideas and experiments, and we are collaborating with Optimism to launch our own Superchain focused on DeFi.

David: Is Ink just a business unit within Kraken, like the relationship between Base and Coinbase, or is it an independent entity?

Andrew: Ink is indeed a business unit within Kraken, but it can also be seen as an independent entity, as we have established various new structures for it. It will integrate with our Kraken wallet and will be dedicated to building on-chain DeFi, without centralized order books or KYC verification.

I think many companies are trying to go on-chain right now. This integration is similar to the integration of the TCP/IP protocol in the 90s. Clearly, centralized exchanges were the first to start doing this, but this trend will not stop at centralized exchanges. In the future, thousands of companies will have their own L2, and perhaps one day Nasdaq will also join Superchain.

David: Ink plans to launch its mainnet in the first quarter of next year. A public chain is a permissionless ecosystem where DeFi and other applications can be built on the platform. So from your perspective, what kind of applications do you hope to see emerge in this ecosystem?

Andrew: Initially, Ink will invite developers to build DeFi applications on-chain, as they can make users' experiences easier, without having to endure the various bridges and multiple approvals that DeFi users previously faced. Once this foundation is laid, we will also incubate some other projects so that developers of different types can get involved. We also have a 'Hacker House' where developers can use our tools and collaborate with our partners. We will fund some projects that may want to build on Ink.

Ryan: So how will Kraken Exchange synergize with Ink, and what makes Ink different from other chains?

Andrew: This is indeed a difficult question to answer. Because we don't see this as competition; we don't want to compete with Zora, Base, or anyone else, as we are all in the Superchain ecosystem. We are joining this ecosystem, which is completely interoperable. Liquidity will ultimately be shared everywhere, so there's no one who can monopolize everything. Of course, we will create a fantastic user experience on our chain. As for Kraken, we want to build great tools in terms of user experience and ensure that everything in Kraken eventually goes on-chain.

Ryan: What are the metrics for measuring how well Ink is performing? Is it active address count, TVL, or other indicators?

Andrew: Simply put, I think the standard is for trading users. We want to leverage our easy-to-use experience to promote it on DeFi as much as possible. This was decided a year ago when Ink was still in the experimental phase. We did dozens of test nets and tried every stack, and we were also constantly experimenting with zero-knowledge proofs, creating our own proof checker and other things. In the end, our experiments succeeded, and we decided to join Superchain.

David: So why did Ink choose to join Superchain instead of other stacks?

Andrew: Firstly, other stacks like ZKsync and Arbitrum aren't bad; running their test networks and everything is interesting. But we see a lot of people joining Superchain, and we love its roadmap for interoperability that goes beyond just internal interactions within Superchain, which makes a lot of sense to me. OP Stack allows non-developers to execute operations on the stack in a second, similar to using a cursor, and we felt that experience, so we wanted to be part of it.

Ryan: Kraken recently launched Kraken BTC, so will Kraken BTC be brought to Ink?

Andrew: Currently, Kraken BTC is still on the OP Mainnet, but we will definitely deploy it on Ink. This is also one of our experimental explorations. We have our own compliant custody solution, so we can at least safely hold the underlying assets. We designed a system that we can integrate into Ink, and we are also exploring what other assets can be brought to Superchain, but I can't specify what those are at the moment.

Ryan: So, does Ink plan to issue a governance token? What would the name of this token be?

Andrew: First, I need to make a disclaimer that Ink has no plans to issue any type of tokens or similar assets. However, there are people internally who enjoy making similar guesses about tokens, like kink or something. But I mean, there could be many related meme coins, but we have no such plans.

David: What are the subsequent plans for Ink after the testnet launch?

Andrew: Our ultimate goal is complete decentralization. We don't want to be the only Ink sorter, but currently, we only have a rough outline of this plan. After we launch our mainnet, we will publish a specific roadmap detailing how we intend to decentralize, which is a daunting task.

Optimism Co-founder: Standardization is key to Superchain.

Ryan: First, how do you view Ink and its relationship with Superchain?

Ben: Ink is attempting to build a massive centralized exchange on-chain. As an industry, what we need to do is move away from these low-level innovations and focus on building outstanding products, just as Andrew said, bringing the world onto the chain and bringing many users onboard, not just advanced users, but not only those who are willing to like, understand all the crypto mnemonic phrases, network swaps, RPCs, and how all these things work.

So one of the very important things for us at Superchain is to balance the standards so that the entire Superchain has a consensus, and Ink doesn't have to consider these issues; users of Ink don't have to worry about them either, they just need to work. Superchain will introduce a large number of chains by 2025. This is not a large-scale one-time artificial process but a concerted effort across the industry for all chains that benefit from the shared standards of Superchain.

Another very important balance is to leave room for chain managers to make decisions on things like ordering, as there is no one-size-fits-all standard here. But when hearing that we hope our chain has high throughput and a high degree of decentralization, I think anything that Andrew and everyone running chains in Superchain wants can be achieved.

Ryan: Superchain has a universal upgrade mechanism, allowing all OP chains to upgrade seamlessly at the same time, reducing security fragmentation. But from a user's perspective, when will user experience fragmentation disappear? Since the announcement of Superchain, this has been one of its core commitments. Now that you are here, can you give us some insight into any secret plans you have to reduce fragmentation in Superchain and make it truly a seamless experience?

Ben: There are no secrets here, as everything OP Stack and Optimism are doing is public. If you go through the protocol reference specifications, codebase, or the Discord development channels, you'll see that all development is open. We believe standardization is key. Therefore, our goal is to make it easier for developers like Andrew to build infrastructure, so they can focus on bringing users onto the chain and solving other more important issues, such as enabling my mom to use cryptocurrency seamlessly.

Standardization can achieve stronger interoperability. When you try to establish a seamless chain network, the primary concern must be security issues. So if you have a common standard that everyone follows, it will be jointly managed and follow a shared security model, preventing security fragmentation. There are many great initiatives on Ethereum that allow Ethereum chains to interoperate. Of course, we are working hard to ensure that all these things go into Ethereum and Superchain in a way that is compatible with other parts of the ecosystem. But fundamentally, I believe a seamless user experience ultimately boils down to the same thing: letting developers focus on bringing outstanding products to market, rather than dealing with a bunch of infrastructure.

For example, ERC 20 is a standard within Superchain, allowing trades to achieve zero slippage, with tokens moving between different chains within Superchain. Only in a cohesive and secure model can you truly achieve economic efficiency and have a truly seamless experience without slippage or bridging.

So the key is to provide people with a unified security model. Once we have that, we can build stronger interoperability on top of it, which is the core of the Superchain interoperability roadmap. This is how we shorten the time for developers to transfer assets and send messages across chains from seven days to just a few seconds, while also ensuring that we don't make significant security mistakes in the process.

David: If I stand from a user's perspective, I don't care about standardization issues. With more and more chains joining Superchain, such as Unichain, Base, Zora, and Worldchain, as a user, I hope that by the end of 2025, experiencing dozens of chains on Superchain will feel like using one chain, everything should be seamless and abstract. How far do you think we are from this vision by the end of 2025?

Ben: It's hard to estimate a specific timeline, so I don't want to commit to anything here. Currently, our core work is focused on ongoing interoperability efforts. If all these chains—Worldchain, Base, Ink, Unichain—adopt shared standards, I can even say it feels like one chain, or users might not even perceive it as multiple chains.

But the goal is to have these assets flow here with a delay of about two blocks, so it all depends on block time. If you take a close look at the specifications, you'll find that on GitHub, there is what you can see, and you can enter the local Superchain test environment, where you can simulate multiple chains on a computer. You can use the ERC 20 standard on Superchain and quickly move these assets between chains.

But clearly, there is still a long way to go in setting these standards and ensuring they benefit application developers, and we are confident we can launch them on the mainnet.

David: Many chains in Superchain have their own specializations, such as Zora focusing on creator economies, Uniswap around liquidity, swaps, and DeFi. Previously, we proposed a prediction for the Superchain economic zone, where one chain specializes in one domain. What do you think about this? Where will the Superchain economic zone eventually lead?

Ben: The term Superchain economic zone is interesting; I've never heard of it. Composability is a key attribute of Ethereum that makes it unique. Perhaps I've been repeating this story because this situation will be forgotten before we truly scale the blockchain. But in reality, I think if you compare how Web 2 architecture works with how Web 3 architecture works, the superiority of composability is undeniable. Anyone can write any application and interact with any other application, and they can all follow their own rules and connect together. Comparing the difficulty of integrating two different service-providing websites in Web 2 is a world apart; everyone can innovate permissionlessly on top of others.

So to answer your question, will there be some applications that encompass all functions or focus only on one area? I think it will be a hybrid. Undoubtedly, some applications will be integrated on top of other ecosystems and applications, which may be spread across different chains, and the best way to serve users and customers is to traverse these chains. At the same time, I believe cultural and specific use cases will also target different areas of Superchain.

A metaphor we previously proposed internally is the highway. I remember years ago, when discussing the birth of the optimism collective, there was only one chain, which was the OP Mainnet. One way we thought about interoperability was to compare it to the emergence of the interstate highway system, through which people could travel longer distances in shorter times. Perhaps a large city would worry about people leaving and the increasing competition with other cities, etc. But in fact, every city in America has developed after connecting to the interstate highway system, and the development of Superchain has a similar impact on the chains in the ecosystem.