Conversation with Supra: From Oracle to Middleware Layer - IntraLayer

Supra is a middleware layer product. Committed to building a cross-chain interoperable middleware layer with native oracles, VRF, automation and other functions - Intralayer. This creates a more secure interoperability infrastructure for the future of blockchain. Supra links L1 and L2, Web2 and Web3 through bridgeless cross-chain technology, and achieves 2-3 s finality through its customized consensus algorithm Moonshot Consensus, providing comprehensive middleware services to the developer community. Currently, 1.5 million price feed data updates have been achieved every day.

At the end of September, Supra announced that it had completed over US$24 million in financing in a private equity round, with participation from Animoca Brands, Coinbase Ventures, HashKey, Prosus Ventures, Razer, UOB Risk Management, Valor Equity Partners, etc.

Supras doctoral research team is deeply engaged in academic fields such as secure multi-party computation, distributed consensus and oracles, and has published multiple white papers that have been reviewed by peer academics. The research team is led by Dr. Aniket Kate, one of the creators of KZG Polynomial Commitments and well-known in the industry for his important impact on Ethereum L2 scaling.

On the evening of March 6, Jon Jones, who serves as Co-founder and CBO of Supra, was a guest on the Odaily super chat community and shared the theme of Supra: From Oracle to Middleware Layer - IntraLayer, focusing on Supras products and services. An in-depth discussion was conducted.

Jon Jones said that Supra is the first oracle project to participate in Mastercard’s blockchain Start Path. Supra has currently launched a SNAP incentive program for developers to attract Web3 projects to use Supra. For the community, Supra has also launched a learn to earn airdrop event called Countdown Sprint, which will issue 400 million SUPRA tokens as rewards.

The following is a transcript of the community dialogue:

Odaily: Please first introduce yourself to our community members as briefly as possible, as well as introduce Supra and the Supra team.

Jon Jones：I founded a blockchain consulting firm in early 2017 with the goal of creating a blockchain venture studio. In 2018, I met my co-founder Josh and created a crypto RD lab called Unity Chain Labs. There, we dive into a variety of blockchain-related topics, including Layer 1 consensus algorithms, verifiable random functions (VRF), and even potential applications for IoT and blockchain.

We also provide solutions for projects that raised significant amounts of money through ICOs in 2017 but failed to build the technology themselves. This is how we survived the crypto market trough. Later, we founded the Entropy Foundation to expand the capabilities of smart contracts and oracles, and launched Supra Journey.

Supra is a middleware network that can connect L1 and L2, Web2 and Web3, which we call"IntraLayer". Supra as"IntraLayer"Have a powerful framework that integrates our solutions—oracles, VRFs, and native cross-chain protocols—into a shared secure infrastructure. Each solution delivers superior performance, increased security and lower costs.

However, what makes the Supra become"IntraLayer", and more importantly, the vertical integration of our services - an all-in-one network. Because our services share the same decentralized secure network, we are able to deliver higher speeds and performance at a lower cost. And since they are on the same platform, development work becomes easier.

Supras research team is at the heart of our innovation. Our Chief Research Officer is Dr. Kate, the lead author of KZG Commitments (also known as Kate Commitments), a technology that is the cornerstone of most ZK Proof systems today and laid the foundation for breakthrough Ethereum L2 scaling strategies . Our research team brings many important innovations and next-generation solutions to Web3.

Odaily: We want to start with the core product - Supra Oracle. There are already many competitors in the oracle industry. What advantages does Supra have over todays oracles?

Jon Jones：Supra Oracles is unique in that we apply Layer 1 consensus principles to any data in the blockchain we serve. Our architecture is more secure than some competitors, over 100 times more secure. Data accuracy is our top priority.

Secondly, our second priority is speed. We believe we can provide 2-5 second refresh rates on-chain for other types of data such as cryptocurrencies and soon including stocks, forex, etc.

Of course, every blockchain has its limitations. For example, even if we could publish data to Ethereum at 3-5 second intervals, due to the way Ethereum works, it would still take over 10 seconds and multiple blocks to finalize the data on the chain, and publishing data frequently could It will be very expensive.

Nonetheless, when our mainnet is fully up and running, Supra Oracles are capable of delivering an accurate refresh rate of 2-5 seconds while also being the most secure and reliable solution in the industry. We want to compete by having the best products. Data correctness and speed are both important, and our goal is to excel in both.

Many oracles today are not decentralized enough. We worked hard to decentralize the blockchain, but found that the oracle level was highly centralized. For example, in one of the largest competitor’s oracle models, their nodes don’t even rotate. This is a huge security risk. If nodes are not rotated or replaced, eventually they will conflict.

In our model, nodes are rotated frequently and randomly assigned together. This randomness is a key property of our security model. We also utilized more nodes overall. In short, what makes us special is that we figured out how to maintain high speed while staying safe.

Odaily: Now we have some understanding of the core of Supra - the oracle. So I have an interesting question. Ive been hearing about Supra Oracle for a long time. Why should we get rid of the “oracle”? Why do we need to upgrade our brand? What’s the story behind Supra’s name change?

Jon Jones：As I mentioned before, we were actually heavily involved in the Layer 1 expansion initially. During the Unity Chain Lab period, we studied from Layer 1 consensus algorithm to VRF. But in November 2020, we discovered that there is a huge problem with oracle manipulation in DeFi. Many price manipulations and hacks occur due to insecure implementations of oracles. This poses a significant problem for DeFi to become a mainstream market. And there are no perfect solutions on the market. Therefore, we decided that this was the area where we could contribute the most initially, and we could solve the oracle problem by leveraging insights from our Layer 1 research. Thats exactly what we do.

Ensuring the security of oracles is our first mission, and our impact now extends beyond oracles as we move toward our goal of building a better Web3. With the launch of Supra VRF on mainnet and progress on our cross-chain solution, we have updated our brand name. The new brand better reflects our focus. We simplify SupraOracles to Supra.

Odaily: Can you introduce the use cases of Supras different current products? Including Oracle, VRF, etc.

Jon Jones：A common use case for oracles is to securely bring cryptocurrency price data on-chain. In addition, we are able to bring various price data on-chain such as stocks, precious metals, foreign exchange, sports data (such as who won the football match), weather and temperature data, etc.

Additionally, as a cross-chain oracle, we intend to help other blockchain ecosystems better interoperate and communicate. We achieve this through our cross-chain communication protocol - Supra HyperNova. You can learn more about this exciting innovation on our website.

Supra VRFs (Verifiable Random Functions) work behind the scenes to make gaming dApps more attractive, fair, and secure. Common use cases include blockchain and online game operations (making random matches, generating loot boxes, character upgrades), odds-based games - card games, casinos, NFT minting, lotteries, random sampling (e.g. community rewarded distribution) etc.

Odaily: What challenges does Supra face in the future? How will we address these challenges?

Jon Jones：The most difficult part of cross-chain oracles is communicating natively with multiple chains. Native cross-chain communication means “speaking their language” – in other words, communicating via the cryptographic signature algorithms of both chains to allow the smart contract to verify the data provided to it. Many chains use different encryption technologies - so its not easy.

Now, we have a solution – Supra’s HyperNova “cross-chain communication protocol” ensures L1 security from the original chain all the way to the target chain.

In fact, it’s an agreement that requires no bridges! This makes Supra a secure middleware network that acts as an “IntraLayer” to facilitate true cross-chain coordination.

Supra, as an IntraLayer, is a vertical integration framework consisting of a hub and branch or star topology. This structure helps dApps communicate seamlessly with all connected blockchains, acting as a universal translator and helping various blockchains seamlessly understand each other at runtime, connecting these individual chains into a connected community.

Now, users from any network can easily access your dApp without having to jump through too many barriers.

Odaily: Supra proposed the middle layer. What is its concept? What market gaps are currently being filled? What problem does it solve?

Jon Jones：IntraLayer is a middleware network that connects L1 and L2, Web2 and Web3.

There are a huge number of users using multiple services in multiple ecosystems - sometimes the same, sometimes different - so there is a lack of interoperability between L1 and L2.

IntraLayer is the core infrastructure for interoperability, which is committed to treating the entire space as a unified layer that provides various services to multiple blockchains and seamlessly connects multiple blockchains. This provides customers with a truly integrated experience. IntraLayer is a specialized layer that cryptographically merges all chains into one. With native oracles, automation and cross-chain interoperability, Supra as an IntraLayer will be the best place to automate cross-chain coordination.

Odaily: What are Supra’s plans for ecological development? How to attract more developers and users?

Jon Jones：We launched the Supra Network Activate Program (SNAP) to attract Web3 projects.

This is an incentive program that provides early adopters with 6 months of free access to core products such as cryptocurrency price data, VRF, etc., followed by significant discounts up to 18 months, along with technical support and guidance. Our goal is to support Web3 projects early on and help mitigate the costs associated with project launch. Our SNAP program was inspired by the Cloud Credit program, where organizations like Google and Amazon provide promising projects like Supra free credit for use of their infrastructure.

Odaily: I believe community members are interested in the future of Supra. What is our roadmap? Now the time is about to enter Q4. Does Supra have any big plans for this year?

Jon Jones：We are just starting to come out of stealth mode and our data oracles and VRF are already running on mainnet Alpha.

Q4 is definitely one to look forward to as we have more exciting announcements and deployments to over 30 additional L1 and L2 networks. We will publish more white papers, support more ecosystems, and announce more major partnerships. Of course, there will be more marketing activities and events.

We are launching a public sale soon, so be sure to visit our official website as soon as possible and join our whitelist to get first access to all the details.

Finally, early next year we will have a TGE. Every week we get closer to our goals. Our path is clear and things are starting to accelerate.

Odaily: Does Supra already have potential high-profile project partners?

Jon Jones：Yes, we are the first oracle project to participate in Mastercard’s blockchain Start Path project. Some of our consultations with them are confidential.

But I can share some information: There is a lot of interest in stablecoins and CBDCs. There is also how these digital legal currencies interact with the public chain. SupraOracles is a neutral data provider, but if digitized fiat currencies are to interact with public chains and their cryptocurrencies, foreign exchange data as well as cryptocurrency price data will be needed. We will be ideally suited to provide FX and cryptocurrency price data to the public and private sectors in a trustworthy, neutral way to suit anyone who needs it.

Our VRF service also supports DeFi Kingdom, a major Gamefi project that we recently deployed to Coinbase’s L2 – Base. By the way, Coinbase Ventures is also one of our seed investors. We will reveal more information about high-profile partners later, and some other important projects are still under negotiation.

Odaily: Can you share with us the latest progress and data on Supra?

Jon Jones：The project is currently in the mainnet Alpha stage. Oracle DORA has supported more than 40 testnets and has been successfully launched on 13 mainnets. The Oracle now supports 120 price data sources and provides over 1.6 million data updates per day with latency as low as 5-6 seconds, with our optimization target of 2-4 seconds.

Note that each data update involves approximately 50 data units. As a result, Supra ingests over 65 million data units per day, the most of any Oracle to our knowledge.

Verifiable Random Function (DVRF) has been deployed on more than 25 testnets, and has been successfully launched on mainnets such as Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, DFK Chain, Doge Chain, and Klaytn. It has also established integration partnerships with several GameFi applications. Including the well-known betting game JustBet on Arbitrum.

Upcoming releases include “HyperNova,” a cross-chain communication protocol and our decentralized IFTTT (if-this-then-that) automation service.

Odaily: Is there an alpha?

Jon Jones：Currently, we have published 3 white papers, with more in the process of being peer-reviewed.

We have a token sale coming soon, so be sure to join our whitelist to get special early access (EA). You can find the whitelist on our official website.

Odaily: Is there any airdrop plan?

Jon Jones：Yes! We are conducting an airdrop event - Countdown to Blast Off.

This is a gamification-driven learn to earn event designed to provide the community with an interactive experience where new members can learn about Supra’s latest features while also earning $SUPRA tokens in the process. We will reward approximately 400 million SUPRA tokens to the community. Nearly 240,000 verified players have participated.

If you are interested, you can click the link below to join. Also feel free to join our Discord community to learn more.

Related Links:

Official website: https://supraoracles.com/

Whitelist: https://supraoracles.com/whitelist-invite/

Community airdrop:https://supraoracles.com/blastoff

Discord：https://discord.com/invite/supraoracles

Public account: Supra Chinese