What is your role in the company?
Hi! My name is Nicolas Arqueros. I’m one of the co-founders of dcSpark and also a core contributor to the Milkomeda Protocol.
Hey, Nicolas Arqueros, happy to connect today and learn more about the Milkomeda project! Can you tell us more about the project and the problem you were addressing?
Following Metcalfe's law, tech products primarily accrue value based on the size of their network. This means that superior technology can give a slight edge but does not in itself guarantee a definitive win against established competitors. Promising cryptocurrency projects are part of this set of tech products, thus it is necessary to achieve a critical adoption growth trajectory to come out ahead over the long term.
Milkomeda is a protocol that gives EVM capabilities to non-EVM Blockchains. In practical terms, it allows the deployment of smart contracts from Ethereum, Avalanche, Binance Smart-Chain, and multiple other chains, to chains that wouldn’t support it. Developers are at the core of making the visions of these businesses possible, and as such, having access to a large pool of developers is one of the vital points for ecosystem success.
What are the most important things about Milkomeda?
In about 4 billion years the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy will merge into a new galaxy called Milkomeda. The team is not only focused on bringing EVM compatibility and other technical advantages to developers but also to make the onboarding process of users simple and easy. Some of the most important things about Milkomeda:
EVM compatibility
Usage of ADA (or other tokens depending on the deployment) as their base currency adds more value to the tokens
Creation and maintenance of critical infrastructure tooling
Wrapped smart contracts bring a novel UX to the table for end users, wherein they will have the power to execute smart contracts on various systems without having to switch wallets or even know what is going on behind the scenes.
Research about data availability and rollups – the goal is to deploy as a rollup or move to a rollup. Rollups are the most likely scalability technology available
Compatibility layer for other technologies like zk-rollups to be integrated through Milkomeda
Connection with other ecosystems using bridges that anchor to Milkomeda
Metaverse for faster transaction confirmation
Indirectly, Cardano-multiplatform-library (CML) for the creation and serialization of transactions
Indirectly, CARP (Cardano Postgres Indexer) a replacement for cardano-db-sync that works at least 10x faster – required for high-performance dapps and tooling
Why did you choose to launch your project on Cardano?
Me, Seba, and Rob have been part of the Cardano community for quite a while so we know the ecosystem, the tooling, the different technologies, what’s coming up, etc. Previously, I was CTO of Emurgo and also a board member of the Cardano Foundation. We really like the community behind Cardano so we naturally want to support it.
Going forward, how will Milkomeda make an impact in the crypto space or on the world?
Milkomeda is like providing internet to stand-alone LAN networks. We are allowed to connect multiple ecosystems and help Cardano move towards one of its goals of interoperability. We are making technologies compatible between different ecosystems, and even going further, we can act as a compatibility layer for other technologies like zk-rollups.
Now, what are your accomplishments so far, and what are you most proud of?
Oof, difficult to tell. I’m mostly focused on what’s next in our roadmap. Some of the top ones that come to my mind are:
Bridge integration with Cardano connecting it with Ethereum, Avalanche, Binance Smart-Chain, Polkadot, and Solana among other ecosystems
Bringing stablecoins to Cardano like USDC and USDT
Bringing other assets to Cardano that not only help DEXes on Milkomeda but also DEXes on Cardano mainnet. Some of these assets are WBTC, ETH, etc.
First sidechain for Cardano! And also (briefly) surpassing 100M in TVL in less than a month from launch
The hackathons and the acceleration program that are launching soon also look very promising. Thank you everyone for spreading the word
Why should people choose to use Milkomeda? What are the advantages over other Layer 2 Protocols?
Currently, Milkomeda is the only Layer 2 Protocol available in Cardano. We will see what other solutions propose in the future, but they will have to hurry up! We will continue moving forward and creating a bigger gap that they will have to close up.
Milkomeda is bringing more complex DeFi to Cardano, and also to DAOs and gaming! Even further, Milkomeda is also being used to test some concepts like djed ala Kusama for Polkadot. Another cool concept is that users that think that they have not used Milkomeda may actually have used it by getting exposure to assets that were bridged through Milkomeda.
What is the future of Milkomeda? For example, what new things are to come, and what will it mean for the overall project?
We are very excited to see what Vasil will come. In particular, we are looking forward to seeing progress in data availability in the mainchain so we can move Milkomeda to a rollup. We are also working on improving performance and continue growing the value added by Milkomeda with games and dao tooling among other projects.
We are also launching in Algorand which we are excited about. We expect that this will improve interoperability between two chains that share a culture of a future based on deep academic research.
Tell us about your team. Who are the people behind Milkomeda?
From the dcSpark side we have a few names that some people may recognize:
Me (Nicolas Arqueros, Cofounder - CEO @ dcSpark)
Former CTO @ Emurgo & Former Board member at the Cardano Foundation. Senior Software Engineer for multiple startups in Silicon Valley.
Sebastien Guillemot (Cofounder - CTO @ dcSpark)
Former VP of Engineering @ Emurgo. Former Engineer @ Microsoft. He developed the most used Cardano library in the ecosystem. Even Coinbase is using it to provide ADA support.
Robert Kornacki (Cofounder - CSO @ dcSpark)
Former Head of Research @ Emurgo. Former Board Member at the Ergo Foundation. In charge of developing the Ergo ecosystem (Oracles, dApp frameworks, and a Stablecoin).
Melissa Simmons (COO @ dcSpark)
Former COO @ p23: Created and maintained an efficient filing system for documents related to over 50 entities. Managed daily activities and maintenance for six multimillion-dollar estates.
Nicolas Di Prima (Lead Engineer @ dcSpark)
Former lead developer of Jormungandr (Cardano's first PoS implementation in Rust) @ IOHK. Developed several cryptographic components of the Cardano wallets and nodes.
Caro Rossi (CMO @ dcSpark)
Board Member @WSA. Global Mentor for Redbull. Founder Team of Startup Chile. SOSV Fellow. Coach +1,000 startups on Marketing & Biz. Dev. Lead community building n for organizations such as The World Bank to InnovaRock Media.
And over 20 more amazing team members. There are multiple organizations working on Milkomeda like Vacuum Labs and Atix Labs (part of Globant).
Which partnerships have you engaged in so far, and which ones are the most impactful?
So far, I believe that the most important ones are the bridge partnerships that have brought multiple assets to Cardano and also allowed “export” of Cardano CNT to other chains.
The partnership with SOSV for the acceleration program also has been critical.
Integrating with Milkomeda:
To integrate with Milkomeda please visit: Milkomeda Getting Started
Some of the projects that have already been integrated are Blueshift, OccamX, Nomad, Muesliswap, and BridgeC (Celer).
Milkomeda Accelerator:
Milkomeda Accelerator, SOSV (dlab)
Link: Milkomeda Accelerator
Investors:
Arrington Capital, Coinbase, Circle (USDC), Hypersphere, Archetype among some other great investors.
Thank you for your time! Do you have anything else to add?
The three founders of dcSpark, core contributors of Milkomeda, have supported the Cardano Ecosystem for years. If you would like to learn more about our story and reasons for dcSpark’s existence, we invite you to read this post: Building a significant imprint: A story about decentralization (dc) Spark.