Innovating the future of on-chain finance with Mantle

GM, GM. Welcome to what's going to be another great episode of DevNTell. So, if you didn't know, DevNTell is a 30-minute podcast held every Friday for founders, hackers, and anyone in between to come on the show and showcase their product. So, today we're ecstatic to welcome John Nguyen, who's a DevRel at Mantle. So, if you didn't know, Mantle is building the largest sustainable hub for on-chain finance with core innovative pillars such as Mantle Network, mETH Protocol, and FBTC. So, if you stick around for today's episode, you'll see John give us an overview of Mantle and tell us about their ongoing flagship hackathon called the Cookathon. All right, let's get into it. But first, a word from our sponsors.

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GM, GM. Welcome to the show, John. A pleasure to have you on, man. Likewise, pleasure to have you on. I know you all at Mantle have some awesome stuff going on. You have a big hackathon going on called the Cookathon, that we're all excited to learn about. But before we get into all those fine details, perhaps you would like to give an introduction about yourself for folks who aren't familiar.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, my name is John. I'm a DevRel at Mantle. I also do things, tinker with products and just do random stuff. I started in the space just being a hackathon developer, right? Usually just, you know, contributing on the front end, smart contract or whatever. Kind of basic, but you know, I slowly made my way up to kind of participating and actually winning one of my first hackathons. And that's where I met the Mantle team. Actually, previously they were called the BitDAO team, previously before all the rebrand and things like that. So I initially joined BitDAO. And yeah, kind of from a hacker to becoming a DevRel, I think the path is pretty smooth. And super happy now, it's like we can create, you know, developer activations like Cookathon that I'm going to be talking about and continue to contribute back to the developer ecosystem. Yeah, that's my two kind of sentences about myself.

Right on, man. And yeah, that's a very common path. I've seen lots of DevRels and other folks join teams. Basically build something pretty cool at a hackathon, a company takes notice and then bang, you got a job. So, right on, right on, falling right on screw. And yeah, I agree. And that's the way, that's the way you gotta do it. You always have to stay curious and wanting to learn and that's exactly how you grow. So, right on, you're on the right path. And yeah, your path has led you to Mantle like you described. For folks who aren't familiar, what is Mantle in your own words and why should developers watching the show care about Mantle?

Yeah, well specifically like crypto and Web3. I got introduced to it like through a user perspective, like the retail trading perspective. It was a bit painful in the beginning, you know, just you know, I think trading is never easy and like 99% of the people actually lose money. I was part of the 99%. So I quickly understood where like the real things are going on, like it's like back of house in the like product, like in the products, right? So that's where, that's where the real real work is being done. So yeah, I quickly that's that's like my exposure to it was trading, but I quickly realized that you know, that's not what I'm good at. Yeah, but in the crypto technology itself that was my onboarding, but like in general into coding was like through high school. Like my dad actually forced me to do it initially. I hated it completely, but like eventually it was like especially when I learned about like the early days of AI, just tinkering with TensorFlow, Scikit-learn and just like libraries that abstract the hell out of it. So that was like my main initial point of touch into coding. And then at some point I was like, damn, I love crypto and I also like find coding fun. So it's like let's just merge it together and then become become a smart contract engineer, for example. So yeah, that's like how how I got into the tech, I guess, and I'm like continuing to learn. In no way I think this is like my last point in my in my just curiosity. There's like a lot of cool stuff going on in like the AI space, coding and like executing things now is like much easier than ever, like you know, so many vibe coding tools and things like that. So it's like yeah, I'm always curious, I'm always learning. So yeah, I don't know, probably a lot of people might relate to me in the audience.

Certainly. Yeah. And that's the way, that's the way you got to do it. You always have to stay curious and wanting to learn and that's exactly how you grow. So right on. You're on the right path. And yeah, and your path has led you to Mantle, like you described. For folks who aren't familiar, like what what is Mantle, um, in your own words and and why should developers watching the show care about Mantle?

Yeah, just just a little bit about Mantle. Mantle is a general-purpose Layer 2 on Ethereum. So we are a rollup or Valdium. From the tech side, from the like boring stack side, we are an OP Stack chain. The difference between us and like other OP Stack chains or Superchain L2s is that we use EigenLayer's EigenDA for our DA layer, as well as have a really kind of interesting roadmap to transition into being ZK rollup. So we we are going to be like the largest ZK rollup by TVL once we do. And yeah, that's like the the boring tech side, that's what Mantle is. You can build anything on Mantle, anything that you know, you can deploy on Ethereum could also be on Mantle fully EVM compatible. So yeah, that's where like the good developer experience comes from. But also like in we we are trying to incubate our own products, right? So as you mentioned, the kind of a few pillars we call them that we kind of use to to describe Mantle. So one of them obviously is the Mantle Network that I just talked about. Also there's mEthereum, so or you might call it mETH. It's it's basically just a liquid staking token, liquid staking derivative. So allowing you to stake your ETH and earn yield. The same way a function or FBTC works, right? Yield for your Bitcoin. And kind of the more exciting ones that we are actually planning to launch and announce pretty soon is the Mantle Banking and the Mantle Index4. So Index4 is mostly for like VCs and institutional players to invest into like a bucket of crypto assets. And like Mantle Banking is actually just think of it Revolut on the Web3. So it's like we're trying to yeah, just close this gap between like the the regular retail banking and like Web3 digital assets and things like that, yeah. More on that to come. So yeah, we we run things on the layers, right? We have a layer of the chain itself and then products so we are also app builders. We are builders just like you guys. And we also want to like empower everyone else to build on Mantle as well.

With that there's like I think I think the main thing about Mantle is not really the tech, not really that like the products. It's it's like about the community. We have a really great developer community thanks to Sozu Haus and like other our initiatives. So Sozu Haus for those who don't know it's like a hacker house. So if you're like a if you're like a builder and or developer you're wondering you're like in your room, you know, like everything is online, it's of course the fact that it's online is great right, it's great accessibility. But like you know, there's a big challenge there too. You you're not as connected as other develop like people of your own kind basically. So like that's what Sozu Haus actually solves. It's a hacker house, we invite everyone to come and live together for like a week or two. And they're the same builders, founders and like people just trying to make it right, they're the same people as you. You you connect, you build together. Like it's it's been able to like foster a great like innovative environment. So like for me actually, why Mantle and why should people care about Mantle is actually because of Sozu Haus, the community around Mantle and yeah, like the support we give it is like you know, it's a family basically, yeah.

That's amazing to hear. Yeah, and it sounds like Mantle is the full stack kit basically for people who want to build on Ethereum, on a L2. Is Mantle in testnet mode or is Mantle in mainnet now?

Oh yes, Mantle is in mainnet. So especially with like the the Ethereum upgrade, we are going to be with like we are usually live with all the upgrades on mainnet like very quickly. So yes, to answer your question, yes, we we are on mainnet, yeah.

Awesome. Yeah, I was going to ask you, um, the Pectra update, um, is it is it live now on Mantle or are devs still cooking that thing and getting it on board?

Yeah, yeah, we we we can definitely do something about it. Yes, so we are we are still cooking on it. Um, it's going to be live on testnet first and then mainnet. Um, uh, yeah, I think we're trying to take an approach where we are like we are, um, taking a step back. We have it implemented, but for us to push it we want to kind of have a a little bit delay to see get the grounds going and just see see what's going to happen on mainnet Ethereum first. Um, but yeah, it's like there's a lot to discuss about the the Pectra upgrade. Um, I love my favorite part of it of course is the EAP-7702. Um, I think it's really going to bring a a better UX to Ethereum. Actually Binji from Optimism wrote a great thread on the official Ethereum Foundation account. For those who like want to learn more about the Pectra upgrade definitely go go there and check it out. Um, yeah, it's like usually Ethereum upgrades were for the infra, now Ethereum upgrades are becoming for the UX, which is like you can't you can't not like it, right? It's it's a really good improvement and I think a step in the right direction, yeah.

Indeed. And I mean it's something that the entire industry can can benefit from, right? It's like that's one of the one of the inhibitors of, um, basically Web3 kind of crossing the chasm there of getting people to actually use the the tech beyond just like the the quote-unquote degens that just like trade crypto, right? Um, even though crypto is is like one of the main use cases of blockchain, but anyhow. Uh, yeah, uh, is a promising developments indeed. And I and you yourself will be very keenly watching as as things progress on that front. And back to Sozu Haus, Billy, my man Billy wants to do a workshop out of Sozu Haus, so.

We can never say no to that. There you go. For sure.

There we go. Um, and yeah, I guess bringing us back, you guys have this big hackathon going on called the Cookathon. It's your flagship hackathon. Yeah, just just tell us about that, like what what is that, how people can get involved.

For sure. Yeah. Maybe before that, just a little bit of context. Like the team and I, we've been like contributing and sponsoring and just doing hackathons all around like throughout the previous year and the year before. And like we've noticed a couple of like just fundamental flaws in the hackathon, the regular hackathon structure, I guess. So yeah, there's like there's two things that we considered when we first like designed the Cookathon, we called it, right? You don't hack, you cook. So yeah, basically the two ideas is that we are trying to make it more gamified, right? So it's like broken up into steps, pretty fun. And like the second thing is that there's a continuation to it. So we're trying to make it in like stages where you are actually engaged in like different parts. So yeah, the idea is that it's a monthly recurring hackathon, right? So it it goes every month till October. So that's like the first cool thing about it. The second cool thing about it is that it's virtual. So you can be anywhere and like participate and like be at any step of your career or whatever like any part of yeah, basically if you're just want to cook, just just come and cook right, that's that's the idea, accessibility. And then the third thing is that yeah, like it's broken up like every month is broken up into like three steps. The first step is the ideation part. So you only submit your idea, so you get some time to actually think about what you want to build. The second step is um the actual MVP. So it could be like a really really sketchy vibe-coded prototype or just like you we want to see the idea half-baked but like at least something working. And then the the last step is where like the the real the real cooking comes in, right? That's where like we want you to ship it like you mean it, you know, like uh figure out all the all the necessary parts for your app and actually uh have it come together. Um so that's all within a month. Um and yeah, like every month we have $15,000 worth of rewards. So 10 10,000 will go to um like the first three top three winners, and then 5,000 will be like a pooled bounty um divided across everyone who got into like the third stage um where it's actually the real cooking. Um so yeah, that's basically like it should give you um kind of a clear path to build a project on Mantle. Um um yeah, it's like you're not like specifically um forced to like deploy your contract on Mantle or something like that. So um what you have to do is just build something that aligns with the overall ecosystem. Um yeah, and of course DM me if you want your idea to be validated. Um if yeah, maybe we could post some links later about Cookathon. Um they're probably going to be in the description or whatever. Um but yeah, that's basically the idea, if you want to cook, come and cook. Uh we will support you all through the steps, yeah.

Amazing. And um every month is there like a different theme of like different types of apps you guys want to see built on Mantle or is it just like wide open?

Yeah, yeah, so um yes there there are a couple of themes. So like the first theme for the first for the first Cook, um is uh Thirdweb Nebula. For the for those who don't know, Thirdweb Nebula has a pretty cool product that is basically v0 or like is basically an LLM pretrained and like fine-tuned towards blockchain. Um it's like it's cross-chain, you can like basically select yeah, select any chain and like say, oh analyze the last block and all the transactions within it or something like that. Um and the cool thing about it you could actually use it to build stuff. There's an API, there's a there's a like you know, you guys know Thirdweb. Thirdweb is a great um developer tool. So um yeah, you could also plug in plug it into your app. Um so that's basically the idea for this kind of Cookathon Cook theme um that's going to be like utilize Nebula um in one in like any shape or form. So we're actually like we're still learning. So like throughout all these months we're going to be like fine-tuning our our own idea behind themes. Maybe we shouldn't force it as much, maybe we should force it even more. Like you know, um so probably expect changes or you know, if you have any feedback regarding the structure let us know, yeah. But hopefully themes will bring some I guess some flavor into every every Cook, yeah, every month.

Yeah, for sure. And it always keeps people on their toes and keeps the ideas fresh. And um on on Nebula, ironically, Thirdweb was the guest of DevNTell last week and we learned about Nebula there. So boom, there you go. If if if people want a bit of a more deep dive on Thirdweb definitely check out that episode with Joseph Ortega from last week as well after this. Yeah, and Lyle has a question, has the Cookathon started already and where can he learn more about the Cookathon? Yeah, you want to take that? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it's already started. Um you can you can register on the Luma. Um so we'll have links posted somewhere um maybe in the comments, yeah. Um and yeah, just just register in the Luma, submit your idea, and you can hop right in, yeah.

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, and um we're all looking forward to all the amazing apps that people that you all are going to build for us, yeah.

Yeah, great. Yeah, also very thankful for Developer DAO to kind of support us, um with like some you know extra extra kind of distribution extra ears. Um I've actually been part of Developer DAO and like just in general and just watching from a side I think this is one of the things that made me happy and like one of the things that made me excited about like this space even though everyone's sitting in their tiny rooms around the world, it's like we still come together and share and like build a community together. So that's that's really awesome.

It is, yeah. The power of community is is amazing. Like if you get enough like-minded people together like, yeah. For sure. It's it's amazing. Yeah. And yeah, as Billy says, we do indeed support our members. So we wouldn't be who we are without our community. So definitely right on. And yeah, I guess kind of sticking with the hackathon still, are there any particular projects like in the past that have kind of like stuck out to you or perhaps there's something in particular you'd like to see built? Maybe give some inspo for for people who want to join the Cookathon.

Yeah, I mean to be honest, I'd like to like even if you're not a developer, even if you're listening to this you're like just a creative product or design-minded person and you've never touched code before you have no idea, like just do it, you know. There's there's so many tools out there nowadays. v0, Lovable, even even Thirdweb Nebula right as an AI that could help you vibe code it all. Like you know, the implementation the execution can be offloaded to an AI nowadays and like more and more it's like your product taste and like your idea actually matters. Um so yeah, for those who are just creative people, you know, hop hop right in. We have no problem with with that. We we kind of see you as the same um like it's all about building cool ideas like it doesn't matter if you're a developer or not. Um yeah, for us like we have a bunch of like I would say evergreen tracks. Um it's like AI we look for like AI projects, DeFi projects, consumer projects. So like my personally I personally like consumer projects because they're very tricky. Um for you to like drastically increase the user's UX um in a meaningful way and also like in a very smooth and slick way, um I think it's even like even harder and like even more interesting to see than infra improvements that a lot of like say smart people focus on. Um but yeah, I think I think like there's always room for improvement in like the user experience of for for regular users interacting with on Ethereum and with dApps. So so things like that is also like very nice. Um yeah, gaming is also one of the tracks if you're into games, things that like get people addicted. Um that stuff that stuff we like right. Um I think gaming in the past was way too much um kind of incentive play. So like people were actually coming into games into to make money rather than actually play a game because it was addicting. Um so yeah, like games that just make you addicted should be perfect, right? Um social apps like you know basically all in all come in from any side or angle just make sure it's good, right? The quality of the build is what we're looking for. And the thankfully enough nowadays quality is not dependent on like your coding abilities, it's actually dependent on your product taste and like a lot of other design kind of features I guess. Um but yeah, if you have any problems or issues or questions or idea validation, um yeah in the Luma in the registration you'll see um a Telegram chat, that's where all the the chefs the cooks come together and we like we talk about ideas, we talk about good things, bad things, you know, um yeah, just join us.

You heard the man, just join them. Uh, and yeah, that that was an amazing answer. Thank you for sharing that. Um, and I guess we've you touched on it kind of throughout, um, like how AI, um, is kind of just like part of our our workflow now. Um, is Mantle concentrating on adding AI as as another pillar or anything there you can speak on?

Yeah, I mean there's nice you put me on the spot here, but yeah. There there are things that I really can't announce and like can't tell yet. But there's something called Mantle X or like another pillar, um, that that will heavily be focused on um yeah, developing some product, something with regards to AI. Um if you're a really cracked AI researcher or AI developer, a real AI developer you know let me know. Um we have we might have something for you. But yeah, it's like there's a lot of great products being built around this AI became a buzzword basically it's like it almost feels cringey saying it. But um yeah, that that's the truth right, and we're trying to be we're trying to find an angle where like this Mantle X or the AI pillar comes comes like in handy, um maybe it's something like internally for our products, maybe it's something external for like a tool or something um for that will make developers life easier or like a users life easier. Let's see. But yes, we we are kind of trying to move in every direction as you can see, let's see which one actually like stands out. But that's that's what we're cooking, yeah.

Awesome. Yeah. And uh yeah I guess stay tuned folks, um it will be coming your way soon enough. Um we have a couple questions um from the crowd. Um Lyle is asking about Mantle Bank. Uh I believe you touched on this earlier um in the segment, but um if for for Lyle if you want to just give a TLDR.

Nice, nice. Um yeah, good question, right? Um since we are developers here like Mantle Bank, um it sounds like a user user specific app right, maybe from a developer standpoint what what is the angle here right? Um I guess that's that's the question. So um um yeah from a developer angle, um if you're a dApp on Mantle right and uh you're trying to onboard regular users right, like people who maybe are not crypto natives and um they don't particularly want to figure out all the bridging yeah all the bridging hell um that we have on crypto and they just just want to have an account on Mantle to use your app, right? So that's actually where Mantle Bank comes from. Um you can you you would likely have a way to um kind of integrate that and like have it in your app as well, and allow your user to actually seamlessly um have funds like on-ramping of funds, off-ramping of funds, and like all in all just have a have a better like consumer experience rather than having to again go through all the hell of bridging to Mantle or like in general like you know. Um we we assume that like Mantle Banking would be mostly for non-crypto natives. Um so that's that's what you should be expecting. And as a developer um yeah just stay tuned for like touch points between Mantle Bank and um your app. Um honestly we don't have everything figured out so like if you have more ideas on how this how this could like work together with like every every other um kind of dApp out there, yeah let us know, yeah.

Awesome, great question, great answer. And Billy is asking where he can see the themes for the upcoming months for the Cookathon.

Yes, Billy. Billy wants to see everything right away. Uh yeah, I can I can DM it to you, but yeah I mean we we're trying to like we're still iterating on um on the different themes moving forward. Actually we we should discuss this all together. You know, we I'm a big fan of like um building in public in a way. So like yeah Billy if you have any ideas on what the themes should be, um literally don't limit yourself. Um just just ping me man or yeah text it down here in the chat. Because um yeah it's we got a lot of ideas but we're trying to iterate what's going to be next or whatever. Also we don't want to reveal everything so that people don't don't prepare in advance you know, make it cool. Um but yeah that's the idea.

Sweet. Yeah, good stuff, good stuff. And yeah, I guess as we're coming to time here, just always curious to hear people's thoughts around like what what excites you the most in Web3 right now? Is it kind of like the the cross between Web3 and AI or Pectra or yeah just just curious to hear.

Yeah, I mean for me what always like excited me was that we like just speaking of the Ethereum community, we we kind of made things that just work, I think. Like we were good at like designing incentive games, like all in all Ethereum is a big incentive game, um like Uniswap, like AMMs in general, fast capital bridges or whatever. So basically we've been like throughout history in the Ethereum we've been fixing holes with like or gaps in user experience with um with like basically some incentive structure. Um and now with with um a lot of the upgrades especially Pectra right, and then like um a lot of the ZK things that are going on in the space, um I think there's a bright future where like the UX actually becomes usable right, like the the biggest problem that we have in crypto is that it's just impossible to make the user experience as easy as we have it um outside of crypto. Like there's no way I'm onboarding my mom onto this, like it's insane right. Um and also there's not like nearly enough use cases for anyone and everyone in the world um to find a place in crypto. Or Web2, Web3. Um so yeah for me what excites me is like increase in like the developments in the user experience, making it better for the regular people to use it, um and more apps more apps is definitely something that I'm looking forward to more apps that solve real problems, the more apps that are actually addicting entertaining that will actually bring the next wave of people, and with a better UX we're going to onboard them really easily. So that's that's what excites me, yeah.

Love it. Yeah, and same. Yeah, it's like it's very yeah it's an awesome time to be alive um to see the the all the monumental um like breakthroughs in tech. So definitely agree with you on that. And yeah, unfortunately that brings us to time, but thank you so much John for coming on the show. I really appreciate it and I'm sure all the devs here are going to start cooking on on the Cookathon.

So um the link to the details around the Cookathon will be in the YouTube description below, um as well as the the Spotify description. So definitely check that out. Um and weekends coming up, no better time to hack. Uh and if you are into collectibles and you watched us live today, you can claim your bit badges viewership collectible for watching us live. So if you're into that kind of thing, definitely check that out. And yeah, thank you so much everybody. Yeah, thank you Narb, thanks Developer DAO community for having me. Um yeah, if you if you want to support, if you want to build your next app, try at Cookathon, give it a shot basically, um give yourself a shot and yeah, see see you there. Yeah, exactly. See you there. And yeah, with that just want to wish everybody a very happy Friday, happy weekend wherever you may be and we'll catch you back here for another great episode of DevNTell next week. All right all, have a good one. Cheers.