A few weeks ago, Mantle’s Chief Alchemist Jordi Alexander and Ecosystem Research Lead Derek Lim, as well as Co-Founder and CEO of Astaria, Justin Bram, jumped into a discussion about what Mantle has been up to, and what they thought about recent developments in the decentralized finance (DeFi) world.

The trio started with a Q3 rundown, where they went through most of Mantle’s achievements in the last three months, and you can read all about the details over here in this review if you missed it. On top of that, here’re some other interesting points covered during the session.

On the Pivot to dApp Innovation on L2s

Justin: I think it's really positive that we’re looking at the expansion of these ecosystems. We’re at a point where L2s actually have to compete on onboarding projects and offering the best products to users, which I think is really a net positive for the user. Imagine if Ethereum were competing on investing in and helping different projects, innovating in the space and building new applications, if that had been done over the last five years, just think about where we'd be at today with new use cases. So I'm very excited that there's now a legitimate force in the market that's pushing for new decentralized application (dApp) development and new projects. Because ultimately, for Mantle Network to succeed, it can't just be another L2 where people can go and transact and use the same applications. And I think what Mantle is doing now with new applications is super exciting — just having everyone compete to offer the best experience for users.

I'm really curious how that evolves in the future. For example, maybe L2s would even own the wallet layer and start owning the entire customer experience from getting their money off of an exchange on-chain and then using apps from there. So I think it's a really exciting time. I think it's going to push us to see a lot more innovation and transition from the days of yield farming and tokenomics to actual applications that truly benefit people in the real world. It's just so invigorating to see this happening especially in the bear market.

Derek: It's important for researchers to continually push the frontiers of the technology stack, but without the app layer, I think the technology stack will not serve the users directly as much. The focus here really will be to build a very strong application layer, especially on Mantle. We’re putting the users first and really putting a hands-on approach, which is also why we built Mantle Journey.

On Mantle Journey

Derek: Mantle Journey really is our ecosystem engine, where all users’ and protocols’ on-chain activities are indexed for future rewards. The main reason why we built this is firstly, I think we realized that there was a lack of kind of huge engagement between ecosystems, and projects and users. And what we have now with Mantle Journey is a bridge between these three stakeholders that really make up any on-chain ecosystem. We felt that this would enable protocols to identify power users and also users who are genuinely interested in using those platforms. And for users, they would then be incentivized to use the protocols they enjoy using on a daily basis. I think it's something that has probably been lacking quite a bit in the space so far.

Showcase Apps & On-Chain Security

Jordi: It's time to try a different approach. And this is truly what we'll be doing with the idea of having Showcase Apps where we’re really focused on the security-first approach. People want their privacy, but for an ecosystem to really back an app and tell its users and huge community to feel safe with using a particular dApp or product by having that deep dive into the tech and audit capabilities, that’s something we’re focused on. On the part of audits, we’re making sure that there's enough money for good audits and going for a more slow and steady approach rather than simply building up hype.

So we're trying to choose founders that are very experienced, while at the same time, looking out for someone who has that track record, that they can build something and do it carefully. With smart contracts bugs happen. At some point, they're inevitable, but we do want to minimize them as much as possible.

Ultimately, it all comes down to the user experience. We want people to be able to protect their funds and to have ways to get sustainable yield. Moreover, we want them to be able to do it in a way that is pleasant and fun. We want the UI to be good, and the community to be positive. A lot of these things come together and hopefully create a flywheel. It’s a challenging task, but that's what we're gonna try to achieve.

There’s more where this came from, so if you’re interested, listen to the session’s recording for some extra insights from our three speakers.