The Interchain Lab Ep. 14 — CronCat
The Interchain Lab (TIL) occurs biweekly on Fridays at 3PM ET (20:00 UTC) in the Osmosis discord lounge. On this episode of The Interchain Lab: Waterspinner and Togg from Osmosis Support Lab host a discussion with Mike Purvis from CronCat.
Mike Purvis is one of the co-founders of CronCat. He got his start in Web 3 four years ago working with Near Protocol. Mike was originally attracted to the innovative developers and interchain vision of the Cosmos ecosystem.
Mike: Cosmos is just buzzing with really smart people trying different stuff all day, every day.
CronCat: A Deep Dive
CronCat is focused on automating smart contracts for event and schedule related workflows for Cosmos blockchains, DAOs, DeFi, and apps. For example, users could schedule a dollar cost averaging plan or a purchase/sale of a token when a specified price or block height is reached.
What began as a developer focused protocol, CronCat is now developing a website where nontechnical users can click through and it creates a json for them. This enables nontechnical users, as well as developers, to engage in automation in Web3. More information on json possibilities can be found in the Anatomy of a Task section of CronCat’s documentation. Authz bank send and execution of smart contracts are allowed by CronCat at this time.
Mike: I hope this is the one thing that I give to the Web3 world in my lifetime. We can actually automate stuff and I can just step away and anyone can run agents. Our hearts have always been in the public goods space.
Agents, similar to oracles, call the scheduled contracts to be executed when the specified conditions in the json are met. Agents are incentivized with a portion of the gas fee required to execute each contract. In the beginning, agents will be whitelisted and the team plans to progressively decentralize the automation process until it is fully running on its own. A core goal of CronCat is decentralization and it will be interesting to see how this is achieved as development continues.
Mike: CronCat can be thought of as a traffic sign which sends messages exactly when the time is right.
CronCat automation development began over a year ago and the culmination of their efforts is now going live for developers and users. Oak Security has completed its audit of CronCat’s code. Additionally, Proposal 513 has passed on Osmosis to allow their contracts to be uploaded.
Future of Automation
Currently a vast majority of the Web3 space requires users to be active for every transaction. This active participation to maximize their assets, such as staking, compounding rewards, buying or selling a token, payroll, purchasing NFTs, etc., can be very time-consuming. Users can miss out if they were not actively online and ready to sign a transaction. In a world where time is a valuable and limited resource, automation may allow more passive participants an improved way to engage with blockchain technology.
Automation enables a new style of casual investing, and may open the door to more institutional engagement. Automated smart contract calling can provide security to institutions that desire to do more than simply trade. Professionals working in the Web3 space have quickly realized payroll is a large undertaking. The luxury of automating payments for employees is another capability enable by CronCat’s work.
Mike: I hope automation is going to massively improve the way that people can use the blockchain in ways that I can’t even imagine. We may see an “automation summer”. Its that big of an idea.
Don’t Miss Out on Future Updates from CronCat
The entire TIL interview delves deeper into the information discussed in this article. Users can participate in the CronCat testnet. For future updates on CronCat, you can follow their Twitter and Discord. You can learn more about CronCat by reviewing their documentation.
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