Building a significant imprint: A story about decentralization (dc) Spark.
Understanding dcSpark
While blockchain is becoming mainstream, the vast majority of people that navigate Web2, still experience difficulties following the solutions provided by crypto companies and find it complex to understand the intricacies.
At dcSpark, we search for the best way to apply our knowledge of the industry to create a series of products to help users interact with the next big generation of tech: Web3. To do so, we have united as a team to change the status quo and enforce the relevance of having a new kind of internet to our users and partners. We began with tools, we moved on to products, and soon we will provide support to startups in the crypto ecosystem.
This is part of our imprint. We invite you all to be part of it, while we do what we do best: build.
To understand dcSpark’s mission, first, you need to understand its name. It gives us a hint about the reason for its existence; “dc” stands for decentralized and “spark” relates to the mission of the company to continuously look for ways to bootstrap and create novel decentralized solutions that interact within various blockchain ecosystems.
Once you understand the meaning, you gain another perspective. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that the word “interoperability” plays a central role in all of dcSpark’s projects.
It is not enough to just build and move on and that’s why dcSpark positions itself as a full crypto ecosystem builder focusing on the most promising blockchain ecosystems (Cardano, Solana, and Algorand). It aims to do so to tackle one of the biggest problems in the industry today: interoperability.
But, let’s go back. How did dcSpark get started?
Company Origin
The story begins some years ago when the co-founders Nicolas Arqueros, Robert Kornacki, and Sebastien Guillemot met at Emurgo — a multinational blockchain technology company providing solutions for developers, startups, enterprises, and governments — while they were working in the Research And Development department.
The big moment came at the beginning of 2021 when they realized that they could be building solutions more focused on providing value to users through a B2C company. They asked themselves: Why don’t we build a solution that focuses on the end-users instead?
Months later, in April 2021, dcSpark was born.
Remote First Company
dcSpark is a remote-first company, composed of 43 people from over 10 different countries including the United States, Canada, Chile, Italy, Thailand, Poland, Turkey, Ukraine, Japan, and Portugal. Between them, the team speaks over 12 languages and includes developers who build in over seven programming languages including Rust, Hoon, Typescript, Swift, Solidity, C, C++, Haskell, etc.
However, dcSpark believes that what’s more important than mastery of a particular programming language, is the programming model itself. The company believes that a deep comprehension of how technology connects is more valuable than simply knowing one programing language over another. Currently, every blockchain has a problem with scalability and that is exactly what dcSpark is solving.
In order to form a global team, dcSpark selects people who share a sense of curiosity and a drive to uncover new potential. In addition, dcSpark prides itself on choosing individuals who can self-manage by taking initiative and claiming ownership of their work. Each team member is also flexible in working with teammates across multiple time zones. Another pertinent attribute of each team member is that they have — what the team calls a “spark” — that unique factor they associate with being a game-changer to the company’s fundamental mission.
Want to know more about dcSpark’s team culture? Check out the website.
What dcSpark is working on:
Milkomeda
dcSpark is a core contributor to Milkomeda, a novel protocol that empowers several leading blockchains (Algorand, Solana and Cardano) with EVM support, and a path for long-term scaling via a rollup composability layer. Want to know more? Check Milkomeda Foundation Medium page.
Flint
A multichain light wallet that focuses on providing users with a streamlined experience across multiple networks. It has full smart contract and dApp support baked in, with a long-term goal of becoming the most interoperable wallet in the space. Today, Flint supports performing transactions on Cardano. Soon, it will be ready for other blockchain networks like Solana and Ethereum, and even non-blockchain networks like Urbit.
Urbit Visor/UV Ecosystem
Urbit is a peer-to-peer network that allows users to own their data, manage their identity, perform off-chain decentralized computing, and private messaging all from their own personal computer. As part of their mission in Web3, as ecosystem builders, dcSpark has contributed a solution called Urbit Visor that transforms web browsers into first-class Urbit clients and leverages all the features of Urbit.
Fracada
An NFT Fractionalization protocol built as a Plutus dApp enabling users to fractionalize native assets on Cardano for various purposes, such as split ownership of valuable NFTs. Fracada is the first plutus open-sourced dApp in production on Cardano, for general use at no cost.
But let’s get back on track…
dcSpark’s contribution to the Cardano ecosystem
As many of you know, dcSpark has been building for Cardano since the beginning. dcSpark’s founders’ journey in the Cardano ecosystem began around 3–4 years ago. Each founder holds a piece of the puzzle that propels the company’s products to the forefront of the industry.
Seba Guillemot is well known for the development of the Cardano Serialization Library, a core component that has become vital for products such as light wallets and dApps in the Cardano ecosystem, and is still used on a daily basis. He is also a major contributor to the Cardano Rust SDK, which has become a key package used by crypto exchanges and wallets. Both of these advancements first took form through the Yoroi Wallet, a project that was built by Seba and Nico.
Nico Arqueros came into dcSpark after having had an executive role as Chief Technical Officer of EMURGO, where he oversaw multiple internal and external initiatives,and became a board member of the Cardano Foundation by helping to grow an ecosystem of developers.
Rob Kornacki has a history of success in both the realms of blockchain research and shipping projects with millions of dollars of value on the line. Rob produced several novel research publications in the EUTXO space, while more recently tackling data availability and rollups as well. He also took a key position in leading multiple crypto projects, including implementing both oracles and a stablecoin protocol which had over $10mm in locked TVL (Oracle Pools and AgeUSD respectively).
As a result, dcSpark has worked on certain infrastructures of the Cardano ecosystem focusing on making the blockchain more interoperable and improving the overall UX of Cardano for end-users and developers.
Previous Catalyst Proposals
(Fund 5, Fund 6 and Fund 7)
dcSpark has embarked on a mission to solve numerous challenges via Catalyst proposals to help improve Cardano’s infrastructure by listening to the community’s needs.
Fund 5
During the fall of 2021, a blog post discussed the organization’s success in building the Cardano community in Japan as well as dcSpark’s efforts to encourage adoption in the area. This was all made possible by the funding received for their Developer Evangelist Japan proposal made in Fund 5 of Project Catalyst.
During that same time period, dcSpark had a proposal called Cardano Connector (Metamask-like), As note, this funds also helped them co-standardize CIP30: the dApp connector standard now used by all wallets in Cardano!
With 5,000+ daily users and growing, Flint Wallet is providing many people in the Cardano community with the option to manage their ADA and be part of the emerging dApp ecosystem in Cardano.
Cardano Rust SDK update for Alonzo Proposal:
Thanks to the funding received for their Cardano Rust SDK update for Alonzo proposal in Fund 5, dcSpark was able to maintain the critical libraries that needed updating in order to stay operational in the Alonzo era.
If you’re not aware, the Cardano Rust SDK library is one of the key components that exchanges like Coinbase rely on to interface and properly operate with the Cardano ecosystem.
Fund 6
Fund 6 of Project Catalyst brought the funding of three major proposals that were crucial to the development of the first EVM-compatible Layer 2 solution in Cardano. The success of these proposals in Fund 6 contributed to the deployment and launch of Milkomeda in the Cardano ecosystem.
Today, Milkomeda is getting ready to go public with its mainnet with at least 10 different projects and platforms from DEXs to cross-chain bridges.
These proposals were, namely the Multiverse-dApp Rollback Handler, Multisig For Building EVM Bridges, and Cross-chain Asset Transfer Standard.
Multiverse-dApp Rollback Handler Proposal
A solution focused on improving the general UX of end-users and developers by providing the information needed to determine the state of the chain and transactions in regard to the various branches(mini-forks) that occur every time. This information is what users and platforms like dApps, wallets, exchanges, block explorers, etc can use to determine how best to proceed with decisions and fallback measures without having to wait extended periods for high transaction assurance requirements.
Multisig For Building EVM Bridges Proposal
dcSpark proposed the construction of a solution to help coordinate the creation, sharing, and signing of multi-signature transactions by using a Solidity contract on any EVM-based chain as middleware. With the help and funding from the Project Catalyst Fund 6 round, the team successfully implemented the Multisig for Building EVM Bridges and went on to integrate this into the bridge protocol of Milkomeda (an EVM-based Cardano sidechain).
Cross-chain Asset Transfer Standard Proposal
Through the aid of funding from Project Catalyst Fund 6, dcSpark has been able to design a metadata standard for Cross-chain Asset Transfer. This metadata standard makes it possible for Cardano Native Assets such as DeFi tokens to be interoperable with other blockchains/ecosystems in a generalized framework such that developers can define these assets in regard to specific chains they may be interoperating with. One great feature of this metadata standard is the standardization of a refund process in the event of unforeseen problems on a cross-chain bridge.
Fund 7 and beyond
In the beginning of 2022, dcSpark submitted a set of new proposals into Fund 7 focus on solving challenges in the Cardano ecosystem. We have written a blog post with all our funded proposals for Fund 7.
You can read more about them on this link.
Impact
dcSpark is building. With a growing community, three main projects developed and more than 40 people working every day to generate top impact, the company has established its differentiator as an organization that wants to provide access to the top experts in the field, as well as to all newcomers to the crypto ecosystem.
Approaching the one year anniversary of dcSpark, the company is happy to announce the following updates:
- It is a core contributor to the Milkomeda protocol, the first EVM-compatible Layer 2 solution that brings EVM support to non-EVM blockchains. They decided to start with Cardano, as their first stop on the roadmap. Next up: Algorand and Solana.
- They are the co-authors of the dApp Connector standard, popularly known as CIP-30, that aims to kick-off the growth and integration of Cardano dApps by allowing them to safely and conveniently connect with wallets on Cardano. By virtue of this, today every user is able to interact with NFT marketplaces and DeFi platforms directly from their wallets with the dApp Connector standard.
- Some of the early novel developments, such as those done by the popularly known, ‘berry Alessandro’ were made possible thanks to the Cardano Serialization Library, which was authored by dcSpark’s co-founder and CTO, Sebastian Guillemot. This led to the release of great products in the very early days pre-Alonzo era and even after, some of which were light wallets and NFT marketplaces.
- Flint Wallet, the company’s friendly to-go wallet, is a step toward the future of interoperability. Currently running in Cardano, but soon, it will be launched on other platforms such as Milkomeda, Solana, Ethereum, and Urbit.
