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Originally published
April 28, 2021

Each week, we host top DeFi project leaders on the CertiK Security Leaderboard Live AMA. This week we were pleased to welcome Dylan Dewdney, CEO at Kylin Network.

Kylin Network is building a cross-chain platform powering the DeFi and Web 3.0 data economy on Polkadot. Kylin Network provides valid, reliable, secure, cost-effective, and easily-coordinated data sources and data analytics.

The discussion kicked off with a look at Dylan’s background in crypto. He first got into the space in late 2011 — relatively early by most standards. One of Dylan’s most formative forays into the online world was on Eve Online, where he learned firsthand that there could be value in digital or virtual environments. This idea stuck with him and primed him to see the potential of Bitcoin in its early days.

After linking up with the Ethereum Foundation and participating in the Ethereum ICO, Dylan was involved in an ICO of his own. Harbour aims to rebuild governance using the Ethereum network and IPFS, though it was a project that “rose and fell with the ICO boom,” in Dylan’s words.

After stints with BEAM and AdEx, as well as consulting and analysis roles with VCs, Dylan began to work on the idea of a Polkadot-native oracle.

Aaron notes that oracles have been a topic of discussion since at least 2015, when Gavin Andresen, Vlad Zamfir, and Vitalik Buterin would debate the potentials of decentralized blockchain oracles.

To Dylan, the oracle problem seems a lot more surmountable now than it did back then. He recognizes the work of Chainlink, a decentralized oracle network which has done a lot to educate the crypto community about the benefits of these networks and the use cases they enable.

Dylan came to the same conclusions soon after beginning to learn about smart contracts, realizing that blockchains desperately need real-world data if their full potential is to be unlocked. Kylin takes advantage of Polkadot’s high throughput to power its consensus mechanism, which aims to provide a probabilistic determination of truth both on and off the blockchain.

Kylin’s ambition is to power the nascent data economy, doing for data what DeFi did for crypto. The network allows users to operationalize and monetize previously inactive data sets, opening up an almost infinite amount of data. This market is so big it’s hard to quantify, though Dylan compares it to the total addressable value of all the money in the world. If data is as important a resource to the 21st century as oil was to the 20th, Kylin is positioning itself to be at the forefront of that revolution.

In response to a question from the audience, Dylan considers which industries will benefit most from this wholesale unlocking, operationalizing, and monetizing of data. The first that comes to mind is Artificial Intelligence, with its need for training data. Just like oil needs to be refined to be useful, so does data. This is likely to be one of the most important undertakings over the next couple of decades that will realize the power of AI.

Real-world data on the blockchain also enables use cases like insurance policies that settle without any need for a claims process, or individuals licensing and monetizing their personal data with the click of a button. These are just two examples of industries that could benefit from a deData (decentralized data) market.

While the full potential of real world decentralized data on the blockchain is yet to be realized, the technical foundations are strong. Dylan is a firm believer in Polkadot and Substrate’s approach to scalable blockchains, which is part of the motivation behind having Kylin function as a native oracle on the chain.

The next audience question relates to user privacy. Dylan doesn’t see this as being a major sticking point with Kylin, as the protocol will integrate industry standard encryption techniques and other safeguards of user privacy. When it comes to the storage of user data either on or off-chain, Kylin is not designed to take custody of it. Instead the network will use peer-to-peer disintermediated methods of storing data similar to the mechanism that underpins the oracle.

Since the addressable market of data is so large, it can be easy to get lost in fantasies of the future. But Kylin has worked hard to deliver on the fundamental blocks that will build this future. Price feeds are the network’s first offering and are currently integrated by more than 50 projects.

If you’re excited by the thought of this revolution and want to get involved with Kylin, there are a number of ways community members can dive in. There is a 🔥 post competition running both on Kylin’s Twitter and in their Telegram channel, which can earn great content an official shoutout and some Kylin tokens (KYL) rewards.

The team has also adopted features based on the feedback of the community. In fact, some particularly active community members have been upgraded to positions on the core team.

If you’re technically minded, you might find it very lucrative to look into writing oracle scripts for Kylin, where a popular script could earn you 15% of the value that script processes.

Kylin’s close relationship with the community is of further importance due to the fact that governance of the project will be turned over to a DAO four years after the stable release of a mainnet product.

Kylin Network was audited by CertiK before their release, and their network is protected in real-time by CertiK’s Skynet and Shield. Dylan describes this collaboration as an “overwhelmingly positive” experience and praises the quick turnaround times and technical competency of the CertiK team. Ultimately, when it comes to auditing a project you’ve labored on for years you want it to be done by the best in the business.

Security is an important consideration for project owners as well as the investors who support their work. Professional auditing and ongoing real-time security mean investors don’t need to trust the word of the founders, they can verify the integrity of the product.

If you’re interested in learning more about Kylin Network and following their project, check out their page on the Security Leaderboard, follow their Twitter, and join their Telegram channel. Dylan finishes with an announcement of the plan to host a weekly Clubhouse-style chat on their Telegram, where anyone can drop in on Fridays to talk with Kylin team members and ask any questions they like.

That wrapped up this week’s AMA with Dylan from Kylin Network. For more AMA sessions with top DeFi and crypto projects, keep an eye on our social channels and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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