Exclusive: Behind Somnia's Vision to Build the Dream Computer - A Breakthrough Layer 1 Blockchain

In an exclusive sit-down interview during India Blockchain Week 2024, Michelle shares unprecedented insights into Somnia's journey from being backed by gaming giant Improbable to building what could be the fastest EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain. With a fresh $15M raise and ambitious plans for mass adoption, Somnia is positioning itself as the infrastructure for the next generation of Web3 applications.

Ishan: Welcome to Behind the Startup series. It's a pleasure to have you here. Could you explain the vision behind Somnia and what motivated your team to develop a high-performance EVM-L1 blockchain, focusing on real-time applications?

Michelle: Sure, so there's actually a great story behind it. While you see many L1/L2s coming up with high-performance blockchains, we have a unique reason for creating another one. Our company is backed by Improbable, one of the biggest gaming and metaverse technology companies in the UK. They've been around for almost 10 years now, raised significant funding backed by SoftBank and various other businesses.

Improbable comes from Web2 experiences and they're behind Msquared game engine, which can bring 100,000 people into a virtual space simultaneously. Imagine playing Fortnite with 100,000 people at the same time – that's the kind of experience possible through this engine. They raised another $150 million two years ago through investors including Mirana Ventures.

They were looking for an L1 or L2 that could bring this experience fully on-chain. After meeting with major existing blockchains, they realized none could handle the performance requirements needed for hundreds of thousands of people in their on-chain experiences. That's why we ended up building our own blockchain.

Ishan: I saw on the website that Somnia has developed its own database, IceDB. Can we discuss how that works and its use cases?

Michelle: Yes. As you've seen on our website, we achieve 400K+ TPS, which is incredible. To handle this level of throughput, you need a custom database. IceDB comes from our own engineering team at Improbable. To store and manage that data in-house, we needed our custom database solution.

Another important aspect is that we're building a reactive blockchain. Many current blockchains are places to store data, not recall it. To recall data, you typically need to integrate with services like Chainlink, which requires additional fees for developers. But with Somnia, you can do it natively. For example, in gaming, when you need time-triggered events like rewarding users for killing monsters, you can do this natively in the blockchain rather than relying on third-party services.

Ishan: You mentioned that Somnia's consensus has around 400,000 transactions per second with sub-second functionality. How did the engineering team achieve this breakthrough?

Michelle: The engineering team has been working on blockchain technology since 2016. When they first told me about the 400K TPS, I was skeptical and questioned it extensively. It's not just one single feature that makes this possible – it's a combination of factors. We have IceDB, our multi-stream consensus, and our sequential execution model.

We believe that a blockchain should be fast on its own, rather than running multiple blockchains in parallel. Our approach focuses on excellent sequential execution where every node runs simultaneously. We compress the data and deliver it fast through a single blockchain, which makes it super fast. We're about to release our performance report since we just launched two weeks ago, which clearly shows we can achieve 400K TPS.

Ishan: Can you discuss the consensus mechanism in detail?

Michelle: We have a research-based approach called multi-stream BFT consensus. Instead of using parallel blockchains, we use different streams of handling data multiple times on a single blockchain for optimal execution. This was built by the Improbable team, who has over 10 years of experience in building high-performance systems.

Ishan: Around 2020-2021, when there was a resurgence in Web3 gaming on Ethereum, games were gaining traction, but transaction fees and blockchain performance were major bottlenecks. How does Somnia and IceDB solve these issues?

Michelle: Many games currently use what they call service chains, which are somewhat centralized to achieve better speed and lower fees. Often, game logic and metrics aren't fully on-chain – they're not truly decentralized. This is exactly what Somnia blockchain aims to solve. We want to bring everything fully on-chain while keeping it very fast.

Through our reactive blockchain technology, game developers can embed the fees so users don't need to worry about paying transaction fees, or developers can pay fees in advance. We've seen cases of so-called decentralized Web3 games where you need to make a transaction for every action, like shooting. That's not practical. With Somnia, you can have very low fees while handling data optimally.

Beyond play-to-earn games, we're targeting fully on-chain games from big game studios, which we have connections to through Improbable.

Ishan: Let's talk about partnerships now. Your partnership with Msquared in the NFT space is significant. Could you discuss the vision and how it would play out?

Michelle: As I mentioned, Improbable is behind the Msquared metaverse engine, and that's how we became partners. We're utilizing Msquared’s game engine for our protocol. The Somnia protocol is designed for NFT gaming where you can have connected virtual experiences. Currently, NFTs mostly just exist as static assets, maybe with some utility. But what we envision is different.

For example, we partner with MLB and K-pop concerts where you can enter virtual ballparks and watch live games as an avatar. Imagine using a Bored Ape as your avatar to enter these stadiums or different virtual experiences. All of this will be fully on-chain. We want to create a connected virtual society.

Ishan: Can you talk about Dream Builder and what it means for users?

Michelle: Dream Builder is part of our protocol. Through it, users can mint avatars and virtual assets. For example, if you build a virtual car, someone else can pay for the rights to modify that car's design or add virtual assets to it. The original asset builder benefits when others utilize their asset, and there's interoperability – the car can be used across different games. Everything built on Somnia will be interoperable between different virtual worlds and games, enabled by Msquared and our protocol.

Ishan: The recent $15 million raised is substantial. What are your goals for utilizing these funds for ecosystem development?

Michelle: We just launched our first grant program of $10 million. This is separate from Msquared's funding. It's purely for Somnia to attract developers to build on our platform. We're primarily looking for developers building fully on-chain games, but we're also interested in social applications since they require handling lots of data and transactions simultaneously. We're also looking at orderbook implementations – bringing centralized exchange capabilities to fully decentralized environments.

Ishan: Can we talk more about the grant program?

Michelle: From my experience in the industry, growing an ecosystem is quite easy if you have funding – you throw money, and developers will come. But we're focusing on quality over quantity. We have basic tools that we can integrate with existing partners, but our approach to ecosystem building is different. We have a team that nurtures developers.

Many Web3 developers are great at building but don't know how to approach exchanges or handle marketing. We provide engineering support, marketing support, and business support. Improbable plays a big role here as they're currently operating as a venture company investing in different projects. Beyond our grant program, there's potential for additional investment from Improbable for promising projects like game studios.

Ishan: How would you assess projects for the grant program?

Michelle: We're clearly focused on mass consumer applications. We want to showcase our blockchain's capabilities – handling a million transactions per second. We're launching a prototype testnet today where people can transact, mint tokens, and make swaps to demonstrate our speed. We're also planning an NFT minting campaign to showcase our ability to handle mass transactions simultaneously without breaking down, unlike some other blockchains.

The grant amount varies from a few thousand dollars up to $100-200K, depending on the project's size and scope. Projects that are Somnia blockchain exclusive and bring significant value to our ecosystem could receive larger grants.

Ishan: Looking ahead, what's your vision for the future of blockchain gaming and metaverse applications? How do you see Somnia shaping the future?

Michelle: Having worked in this industry for 8-9 years, including the early ICO days of what we now call OG L1 blockchains, I believe we need good players in this industry. While the industry has improved significantly, we need players focused on long-term goals rather than just token generation events.

I've seen many developers join ecosystems based on pre-mainnet promises, only to find the actual launch falling short of expectations. We want to make a blockchain that delivers on its promises. While we may not be a game-changer that everyone becomes obsessed with, we're here to serve mass consumer applications as a significant player in this industry. We're focused on long-term goals, not just token launches and short-term traction. That's why I joined a team with this vision.

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