Dialogue with CocoCat Co-founder: Reduce costs by over 90%, enhance privacy protection, and build the infrastructure network for large-scale Web3 applications

Interview: flowie, ChainCatcher

Guest: Eric, Co-founder of CocoCat

*Organizer: flowie, *ChainCatcher*

Developing a Web3 application generally faces two major challenges: one is how to truly decentralize and have privacy and security capabilities, and the other is how to simplify development and reduce costs.

Eric, co-founder of CocoCat, stated that while smart contracts can be easily implemented on the blockchain, the front-end and back-end of applications are mostly deployed on cloud servers like Amazon and Alibaba Cloud in traditional ways, which brings some centralized security risks and high cost issues to the projects.

Based on this market pain point, CocoCat has created a more privacy-focused and secure decentralized P2P network called Cat Network, and has lowered the development threshold through two productivity tools: CocoAPP Framework and Self-Service Protocol, providing project parties with a cheaper and more decentralized application deployment method.

According to Eric, Cat Network can help developers reduce costs by over 90%, and it has currently attracted around 400 project parties from public chains, DeFi, and Web2 fields.

To further validate and visualize the capabilities of decentralization and privacy protection of Cat Network, Eric's core team has also developed a Web3 social product called CocoCat, which is completely decentralized and has stronger privacy protection compared to Telegram, in addition to incorporating more features tailored to Web3 user needs. The iterations on the CocoCat social application will also feed back into the underlying network, providing developers or project parties with capabilities that are closer to market demands.

Creating a More Privacy-Protecting Decentralized "Telegram+TON"

1. ChainCatcher: How did you get into Web3? What important work experiences do you have?

Eric: I started paying attention to Bitcoin and blockchain around 2011. Before that, I worked in traditional manufacturing for over a decade in areas like information technology.

Since 2014, I have conducted systematic research in the blockchain industry, and in 2017, I spent more than half a year writing a book called "Blockchain in Plain Language," of which I am the first author.

After that, I deeply engaged in multiple engineering projects covering public chains, DeFi, middleware, and more. CocoCat was born out of these technological accumulations, insights into industry pain points, and through systematic thinking and innovation, we incubated products that provide more user value.

2. ChainCatcher: What prompted you to establish the CocoCat project?

Eric: In 2021, NFTs became very popular, with many top-tier projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club emerging. However, my view on NFTs is different; I see them as units of productivity tools. I wondered if we could slice application elements into NFTs, allowing each NFT to become a productivity tool with scripting and composability capabilities, thus solving issues related to application deployment, cost savings, and privacy protection.

Based on this idea, we developed a protocol called "Particle." We spent over a year on it but found the protocol too abstract and difficult to promote.

By the fourth quarter of 2022, I saw a social product called Damus, which had a high degree of overlap with the privacy social product model I developed with friends in 2016. This gave me an insight that overly abstract protocols are hard to promote; we need a visual product to present these technologies and capabilities.

Thus, we decided to enter the Web3 social field and design such a product. In the design and construction process, our starting point was to create a productivity tool that could cater to Web3 applications and even Web2 applications, providing greater privacy protection, cheaper serverless deployment, no domain name, no link access, and inherent DDoS attack resistance.

So, while CocoCat appears to be a social product, its initial purpose was not to create a social platform. Its primary goal is to use social as a visual product to showcase the infrastructure we want to promote—an infrastructure aimed at Web3 applications.

3. ChainCatcher: Specifically, what market pain points does the underlying network and technology behind CocoCat address?

Eric: Currently, all Layer2, ZK, and other technologies are striving to solve the same problem: how to allow more applications to be deployed in a decentralized manner on a peer-to-peer network. However, the current situation is that while smart contracts can be easily implemented on the blockchain, the front-end and back-end of applications still need to be deployed in traditional ways on cloud servers, such as Alibaba Cloud or Amazon Cloud.

This brings some centralized security risks and cost issues. First, whether purchasing servers or registering domain names incurs significant expenses, and a team is also needed to maintain them. Additionally, there are many security issues, such as DDoS attacks, CC attacks, and phishing attacks. These problems hinder the development of a richer application ecosystem.

For developers or project parties, they want to find a cheaper and more decentralized way to deploy applications, including both front-end and back-end, not just smart contracts. At the same time, they also seek strong privacy protection, including identity privacy, data privacy, and social relationship privacy. Moreover, they hope to have effective protection against traditional attack methods.

However, the solutions currently available in the market are not satisfactory. Therefore, CocoCat's underlying network, Cat Network, aims to address these issues, providing a cheaper and more decentralized application deployment method while offering strong privacy protection and defense capabilities.

4. ChainCatcher: Is CocoCat + Cat Network equivalent to a more decentralized and privacy-protecting Telegram + TON?

Eric: You could understand it that way. "CocoCat + Cat Network" and "Telegram + TON" have significant differences in architecture and philosophy. Regardless of Telegram's privacy protection capabilities, its centralized nature cannot be changed. In contrast, Cat Network pursues greater decentralization and privacy protection, and the social product CocoCat is also completely decentralized.

Cat Network is not a blockchain network but a P2P network. It has strong compatibility and capacity to support and carry other blockchains or protocols. For example, with public chains like Ethereum and Solana, Cat Network can provide compatibility support at the P2P messaging protocol layer. Once compatibility is achieved, users' wallets do not need to connect directly to public chain nodes but can interact with public chain nodes by accessing any node within Cat Network. This provides users with a more convenient and secure access method while enhancing the network's flexibility and scalability.

Two Productivity Tools Reduce Development Costs by Over 90%

5. ChainCatcher: What are the specific features of Cat Network? What efficiency or cost changes will it bring to developers?

Eric: Cat Network has three main features. First, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, Cat Network is also based on a P2P network structure. The P2P network of Cat Network has three privacy metrics: identity privacy, data privacy, and social relationship privacy.

Identity privacy means that all user identities of applications on Cat Network are completely private, requiring no registration or login, and no need to provide phone numbers, email addresses, or other identity information.

Data privacy ensures that every message transmitted in the network is resistant to cracking and tracking, and it is even impossible to know who sent it. These messages have no fixed format, features, or rules, making them impossible to block through firewalls and possessing resistance to quantum cracking.

Social relationship privacy is another major feature of Cat Network. It protects the privacy of relationships between people, between people and devices, between devices, and between applications. For example, in CocoCat's friend-adding feature, when someone scans your QR code to add you as a friend, Cat Network ensures that the data structure cannot analyze how many people have added you as a friend, isolating each person's friend relationship.

In addition to the aforementioned characteristics of the underlying network, Cat Network also has two core productivity products aimed at applications: the CocoAPP Framework and the Self-Service Protocol.

Both are designed based on Cat Network's high privacy-protecting P2P messaging network, targeting the front-end and back-end of applications. To support developers, these two tools provide corresponding development components, APIs, SDKs, and compilation and packaging tools.

Through the CocoAPP Framework, developers can convert Web3 applications into an indexing method for Bitcoin addresses and deploy them to Cat Network at nearly zero cost, achieving completely decentralized deployment and distribution. Additionally, CocoCat's Self-Service Protocol can provide privacy protection for applications while significantly reducing server-related costs.

For example, if a project party deploys an application on Amazon Cloud, the monthly server cost may reach 50,000 yuan. However, when they use Cat Network's technology, costs can be reduced by over 90%.

6. ChainCatcher: What types of projects or developers are currently attracted to deploy on Cat Network?

Eric: First, there are small public chain projects. Many small public chains need to set up multiple nodes during deployment, but project parties often cannot afford the high costs of deploying numerous nodes initially. These nodes are vulnerable to DDoS attacks from hackers on cloud servers. With Cat Network's Self-Service Protocol, project parties no longer need to set up many nodes; they can deploy a few nodes and use other nodes within Cat Network for message broadcasting and forwarding, ensuring security while reducing costs.

Secondly, DeFi applications, including mining pools, DEXs, NFTs, and cross-chain bridges, are also deployed on Cat Network. These applications can achieve better performance and security through Cat Network.

Additionally, some individual developers or entrepreneurial projects are also deployed on Cat Network, covering a wide range of types, including mini-games, financial management, and more. Cat Network provides these projects with a low-cost, high-security deployment platform.

At the same time, we are also working hard to attract Web2 application projects, as they have a strong demand for assetization.

Currently, nearly three to four hundred applications are deployed on Cat Network. From an operational perspective, we are still actively bringing in more project parties, public chains, and developers, converting existing applications into Cat Network, and nurturing developers.

7. ChainCatcher: What ecological incentive plans do you have to attract project parties and developers to your network?

Eric: First, we will actively organize events like hackathons and provide incentives to encourage developers to master our network's development technologies and tools.

Secondly, we will provide more tool-oriented features for project parties and operations on platforms like Cat Network. Most community tools currently available in the market are not designed for Web3, lacking sufficient decentralization and operational functionality. We will launch features like fully decentralized privacy group chats and release them to Cat Network as value-added features to attract more project parties.

Additionally, we will actively collaborate with leading project parties. For example, applications like UniSwap and MetaMask currently face security issues and regulatory challenges. Through Cat Network, we can help these applications deploy in a serverless manner, avoiding some regulatory and security risks.

8. ChainCatcher: CocoCat has stated that it is also a DePIN project. In what aspects does its DePIN attribute mainly manifest?

Eric: Many DePIN projects offer different capabilities. Some provide storage capabilities, such as hardware storage boxes or storage products; some provide computing power like GPU and CPU; and others provide network capabilities. For Cat Network, these DePIN projects can all become part of its capabilities.

If a DePIN project provides decentralized storage, as long as Cat Network is compatible with its protocol, the capabilities of that storage product can be integrated into CocoCat. Similarly, DePIN projects that provide computing power can also be integrated in this way.

Moreover, Cat Network itself also has hardware planning. When project parties want to deploy larger-scale, high-performance decentralized applications, they can choose to deploy relay nodes themselves. To facilitate these project parties, Cat Network may provide some node hardware in the future, including total systems and portable hardware. These hardware will come pre-installed with CocoAPP Framework, Self-Service Protocol, and network access functions, allowing project parties to connect and deploy their applications more conveniently. This is equivalent to providing project parties with a total system for nodes.

Launching Group Chat Features Customized for Web3

9. ChainCatcher: Web3 social communication has always been a key area for large-scale Web3 applications, but the network effects established by Web2 communication seem difficult to break. Past Web3 social communication products often have been short-lived. What are your thoughts on this situation?

Eric: Why is it difficult for Web3 products to succeed? I think there are several reasons:

First, social products emphasize experience, which is inherently challenging. Unlike games and other products, social products require users to use them frequently every day, not just occasionally open them. Therefore, the product's performance and smoothness are crucial. However, traditional centralized architectures (like WeChat and TG) require purchasing a large number of servers, which incurs high costs, creating a significant barrier for small and medium-sized development teams.

Second, the technical threshold is high. Achieving decentralization in social products faces enormous technical challenges. First, it is difficult to obtain a sufficient scale of decentralized nodes, and at the same time, ensuring the performance and stability of message sending and receiving is also challenging. These issues deter many entrepreneurs and teams from overcoming the technical barriers.

Third, constructing an economic model is difficult. Social products struggle to achieve assetization and profitability on their own. Unlike profit models such as hardware sales, mining, or transaction fees, the revenue sources for social products are unclear. The traditional paid group entry model also lacks appeal, as users can choose to use existing centralized social tools. Therefore, how to build a reasonable economic model is another challenge faced by social products.

However, despite the difficulties, the ceiling for Web3 social products is very high. We are also trying to solve these problems. First, we aim to address the technical threshold issue by ensuring that no servers are involved in the entire product, achieving true decentralization.

Secondly, we can attract users by providing dedicated Web3 features, such as directly sending and trading project tokens within groups. These features can increase user stickiness and activity. Currently, although the concepts of Web3 and decentralization are prevalent, many communities still rely on Web2 tools like WeChat.

Additionally, Web3 social products can also generate revenue from supporting project parties and applications. Since social products primarily provide stickiness, they can collaborate with project parties to offer promotion and display platforms to generate revenue. At the same time, open protocols and interfaces can attract more developers and applications to join, further enriching the product's features and ecosystem.

10. ChainCatcher: What is the biggest challenge CocoCat is currently facing?

Eric: Currently, our main goal is to bring in and attract more project parties and application ecosystems. This is our primary task at this stage and is key to driving the further development of the product.

On the technical side, we have already overcome the most challenging parts, and the existing CocoAPP Framework has reached 80% to 90% completion. Next, we will continue to optimize the product based on this foundation and gradually roll out the envisioned features.

11. ChainCatcher: What important plans does CocoCat have in the near future, and what is the roadmap for the next year?

Eric: In the coming period, our main goal is to launch a new version of the group chat feature. This group chat will have completely decentralized privacy protection characteristics and will provide specific functions for Web3 projects, which is an important plan.

In addition to the group chat feature, our future plans will mainly focus on supporting development tools and development kits. Specifically, we will provide complete development tools and ecosystem support for the two core components: CocoAPP Framework and Self-Service Protocol. To this end, we will also organize more hackathons and other activities to promote technological innovation and application.

In terms of operations and marketing, next year we will prioritize expanding into the Southeast Asian market and gradually advancing. Our goal is to strive to enter the North American market by the end of next year.