Enabling Chain Abstraction. An Interview with Shun K., Founder @ Light

Web3 Leader Spotlight: Shun Kakinoki

This week, we had the pleasure of chatting with Shun Kakinoki, the Founder of Light. Light aims to make using Ethereum and EVM chains as seamless as possible. Designed from the ground up for the rollup and multi-chain world we live in, Light enables you to use Ethereum like it is one unified network.

Shun spent most of his childhood in Silicon Valley and has over five years of experience as a developer. He is passionate about open source and is excited about the potential of startups to shape the future of the world.

Follow Shun on X @shunkakinoki

What inspired you to create Light, and what specific challenges in the Ethereum and EVM ecosystem are you addressing with this project?

Light is an EVM Chain Abstraction Protocol - we enable users to use Ethereum and EVM chains as if it were one! I was inspired to create Light due to the fragmentation issues of the EVM - I didn’t want to bridge assets, refuel gas, or change the wallet configuration that all takes me out of the flow of interacting w/ crypto itself! Some issues we are addressing:

• Asset Fragmentation Users will no longer have to worry about the fragmentation of the assets between multiple chains, rather will be able to asynchronously aggregate and use the assets like if it were on a single chain powered by our Light Layer.
• Gas Abstraction Users will no longer have to worry about having to refuel or bridge gas to interact with a new chain - they will be able to use all chains like it is one, removing the complexity and time of onboarding to a new chain.
• Wallet Synchronisation Users will be able to synchronise the wallet configuration not resulting in having to deploy separate wallet implementations for each new chain, preventing lost funds and preserving identity and single unified address across chains.

Bridging and gas management are two concepts that newbies to the space struggle with. How does Light handle these complexities to give users a seamless experience and drive adoption?

Light handles this complexity in the two approaches below:

• Chain Abstraction Interface: We believe that a dedicated interface is necessary to handle the complexities of the underlying chains - not only is chain abstraction a protocol specific problem, I believe it is also an interface problem that requires a full end-to-end approach.
• Bridge / Pay Gas in Any Token on Any Chain: Being constrained to pay in the underlying chain’s native coin is one of the onboarding obstacles that every chain has to go through - if optionality can be extended to any type of asset can have significant implications regarding usability for actual users.

Given your passion for open source, what role does the community play in the advancement of Light?

Open source is the heart of Ethereum - what is the meaning of self custody if the code used to hold and secure user’s funds can’t be replicated and not transparent? The community plays a role in the sense that it holds us accountable to the very ethos of crypto and makes sure that we’re making life easier for them to interact on the EVM or more-so in crypto.

Tell us one fact about the industry that every founder knows but no one says out loud!

Narrative is everything especially in crypto, but not necessarily what users are demanding. I surely haven’t figured this out but hope to pave the way in actually making crypto usable to a broader audience as opposed to having a narrow perspective.

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