Interview, Compilation: Alex Liu, Foresight News
Saga is a Layer 1 protocol that allows developers to automatically create parallel, interoperable private chains called “Chainlets” that are independent of virtual machines, providing unlimited horizontal scalability for applications. Its mainnet was officially launched yesterday, and its token saw a strong performance on top exchanges, reaching a high of 7.89 USDT, with a fully diluted value (FDV) of nearly $8 billion.
Before it landed on Binance Launchpool and broke the historical record for total locked value and number of participants in the event, and before it showed impressive performance after opening, not many people paid attention to Saga. For a while, the Chinese community was filled with questions like “What is this project and why is it so impressive?”
Prior to this, Foresight News conducted an exclusive interview with Saga CEO and Co-founder Rebecca Liao, discussing Saga’s origin, technology, vision, and over 100 potential airdrop opportunities in the future. Hopefully, this article will help clarify doubts and understand Saga through an in-depth conversation.
Below is the interview content:
Foresight News: Thank you for accepting the interview with Foresight News. Before founding Saga, you worked as a lawyer and worked in AI-related tech companies and political teams. Please briefly introduce yourself and talk about why you entered the blockchain industry and founded Saga.
Rebecca: My career has always revolved around development economics. During my time at Globality, the first AI startup I joined, I learned about Bitcoin and blockchain and realized their obvious impact on democratizing financial services. This made me strongly want to start a company for the first time, so I co-founded Skuchain with Zaki Manian, focusing on the RWA field in DeFi.
By 2020, its annual transaction volume reached $5 billion. In 2021, I left the company to pursue a potential position in a government department but eventually decided to stay in the crypto industry. The founding of Saga stemmed from the desire to give developers a complete end-to-end (E2E) blockchain experience, which did not exist before. L1 creating L1 systems can achieve infinite scalability and remain free at the front end, allowing Web3 developers to eventually build widely adopted applications. Since then, we have focused on applications that need this infrastructure the most: games and entertainment. Saga’s vision is to provide a space for those who boldly pursue the wildest dreams—a place that celebrates freedom and exploratory creative expression.
Foresight News: You mentioned that you have known Zaki (a core contributor to Cosmos) for 10 years. You have also contributed to the Cosmos project before. Why did you choose Cosmos SDK to build your own project?
Rebecca: Zaki and I are co-founders of Skuchain. When he started building Cosmos, I knew the power of this technology and understood its challenges. Not everyone wants a sovereign independent application chain, but using proprietary blockchain space to scale applications is the answer to the future of blockchain applications. That’s why we decided to use Cosmos SDK to build Saga.
Cosmos is still the only stack that supports native multi-chain, understands the challenges of building decentralized blockchains, and provides fast bridging and interoperability with other chains. All other scaling solutions, including Rollups and variants of other application chains, are still catching up to the technical understanding of Cosmos SDK.
Foresight News: Many people classify Saga under the modular landscape. Do you think this division is accurate, or is BaaS more suitable?
Rebecca: From a technical perspective, Saga can indeed be classified in the modular field because it focuses on providing dedicated blockchain solutions and has the ability to provide validation services for chains created with Saga and ordering services for modular Rollups. In addition, Saga’s collaboration with Celestia and subsequent collaboration with Polygon demonstrate our adaptability and capability to provide critical infrastructure in the Web3 field, consolidating our position in the modular blockchain ecosystem.
It is accurate to classify Saga in the modular field, but it is worth emphasizing that describing Saga as BaaS (Blockchain as a Service) is not more appropriate. Unlike traditional BaaS solutions, Saga emphasizes providing dedicated blockchain space and the ability to automatically instantiate private chains, which is more in line with the modular blockchain framework, allowing scalability and flexibility when deploying dedicated blockchain solutions.
Foresight News: What is the difference between Chainlets built with Saga and RollApps built with Dymension? What is infinite horizontal scalability?
Rebecca: There are significant differences between Chainlets built with Saga and RollApps built with Dymension.
Benefiting from our platform’s protocol, Chainlets built with Saga can automatically launch fully decentralized private chains with the ability to freely interoperate between Chainlets, Saga’s main chain, and other blockchains through cross-chain communication (IBC) and fast bridging. This provides unlimited performance and scalability, making it an ideal solution for developers seeking modular and scalable blockchain infrastructure.
On the other hand, RollApps built with Dymension focus on transaction settlement, consensus, and execution, while leveraging external providers for data availability, execution environment, and liquidity. Unlike Chainlets on Saga, Dymension RollApps run within a fully modular framework, allowing flexible selection of oracle providers and execution environments to meet specific application requirements, but it also adds complexity. Due to the lack of a native settlement environment, Dymension lacks fast finality, and therefore lacks fast bridging capabilities or interoperability.
Chainlets on Saga also provide developers with a blockchain space pricing based on commodity grades. Our economic model does not seek to merge the prices of multiple protocols that make up the stack, like a fully modular system. Instead, we aim to achieve zero cost at the front end so that developers can monetize as they wish without end-users paying any gas fees to Saga. Considering that Chainlet fees are the only fees in the system, it should be the most economical way of development.
Infinite horizontal scalability is the core idea of Saga—all Chainlets are parallelized application chain instances that allow applications to scale elastically to their maximum performance and speed, meeting the demand for unlimited scalability in the blockchain ecosystem. You can understand why Saga is attractive to games and entertainment.
Foresight News: How do you view the current progress and prospects of web3 games?
Rebecca: We envision that web3 games will evolve towards the early forms of a diverse metaverse, emphasizing the role of modules and creators in shaping game IP. The industry will shift its focus towards harnessing the power of communities and creative expression, rather than solely relying on the production value of games. This marks an exciting and transformative phase for web3 games in the coming years. One specific example of progress we see is the user adoption rate. The web3 game market is continuously growing, with an increasing number of active wallets and a higher market share. A good example is that out of the 300+ projects built on Saga, 80% belong to the gaming category. Applications using the X-to-Earn model also provide players with opportunities to utilize their skills and game time, creating a more engaging and profitable gaming environment for everyone.
Foresight News: Why do games need to be built on the blockchain? And why build on your own L1 instead of building together with other games on Ethereum L2s like Immutable? How to solve the liquidity problem of cross-chain transactions of virtual assets? Will there be a unified market?
Rebecca: Building games on the blockchain allows for true ownership of game assets, decentralized economies, and enhanced security. With blockchain, game developers can provide players with assets of verifiable scarcity and provable ownership, and securely trade game assets across different platforms. Unlike games deployed on Ethereum L2s together with other games, building games on your own L1 blockchain with Saga gives developers more control over the game ecosystem. This approach provides dedicated blockchain space, scalability, and community-driven governance, allowing for customized experiences and efficient interactions in the gaming environment.
Saga solves the liquidity problem of cross-chain transactions of virtual assets by providing dedicated infrastructure, enabling seamless interoperability between Chainlets, Saga’s main chain, and other blockchains. This facilitates the transfer of asset liquidity and interoperability, addressing liquidity limitations associated with cross-chain transactions.
Saga’s focus on collaboration and expanding the multi-verse demonstrates the potential for a unified market. The platform focuses on community-produced content and decentralized control of games, making people believe in the possibility of this.
Foresight News: Saga is currently focusing on the game ecosystem. What unique advantages of Saga have attracted these GameFi projects? Will Saga expand into other areas besides games in the future?
Rebecca: It is evident that our breakthrough innovation in infrastructure has attracted GameFi projects. The first phase of the mainnet allows developers to automatically launch fully decentralized private chains (Chainlets) on Saga. This enables developers to leverage IBC for free interoperability between Chainlets, Saga, and other chains, providing unlimited performance and scalability. In addition, the Saga Multiverse Summit showcased a growing community of innovators who are creating games on Saga, including projects like Shrapnel, Cosmic Exodus, and AILAND, providing innovative and immersive gaming experiences. Although Saga currently focuses on the game ecosystem, our mission is to break down barriers in Web3 and allow creators to focus on creation without having to build backend systems themselves. It is obvious that by automatically launching parallel and interoperable private chains, we will expand into other areas, such as entertainment or decentralized finance.
Foresight News: Saga is an L1 project that issues L1s and is a B2B project, but it pays special attention to the community. What does the community mean to Saga?
Rebecca: The community is crucial to Saga as it represents a diverse network of creators, developers, and advocates. It is the center for nurturing creativity, driving innovation, and supporting individuals in realizing their visions within the Saga ecosystem. Without our community, there is no project. It is the hub of our user base, the cornerstone of our market expansion, and an important factor in attracting games and other applications. It is because we have such a wonderful community that applications are attracted to use our platform.
Our mission is to be a place for crazy dreamers to realize their wildest dreams, and I believe we have made great progress on the path to this goal.
Foresight News: The community reflects that due to the relatively complex rules of the airdrop, only a few people are actually eligible to receive it. Saga has announced that the second phase will airdrop to SAGA stakers. Will users, including long-term stakers who were not qualified in the first phase, have the opportunity in the future?
Rebecca: We will soon release the full conditions for the second phase of the airdrop, and all unclaimed airdrops from the first phase will be distributed to SAGA stakers in the second phase. In addition, we have teased our stakers with over 100 confirmed airdrops from partners. The first phase had a total of 200,000 eligible wallets, which is a healthy number. These wallets must be distributed among our key technical partners, including Cosmos, Celestia, Avalanche, and Polygon, as well as our community, ecosystem builders, and game players participating in our Play-to-Airdrop campaign. With so many stakeholders, the airdrop criteria had to be designed more broadly.
Foresight News: After the mainnet launch, what will be the focus of the project’s development? What can players and token stakers look forward to in the future?
Rebecca: We will complete all six stages of the mainnet launch, roll out games through Saga Origins, continue to onboard new projects into our Innovators Program, which currently has a total of 350 participating projects, and execute over 100 airdrops to our stakers. The final statistics will be disclosed in a press release that will be released along with the mainnet launch news.
