From Microsoft to Marlin: Roshan Raghupathy on Blockchain’s Future

In this interesting interview Roshan Raghupathy talks about his ground-breaking work Marlin aiming to improve the scaling & developer experience of blockchain by connecting Web2 to Web3.

Project Vision & Purpose:

• Roshan Raghupathy goes into detail about his project Marlin building a’co-processor’ that can be plugged to any of the blockchains (L1, L2, L3) to scale and provide features.
• The aim is to bridge Web2 and Web3 enabling developers with a streamlined development pipeline & tooling for deploying verifiable, on-chain computations.

Key Features & Differentiators:

• Hybrid On-Chain/Off-Chain Execution: The solution enables computation on the one side to be done on-chain (in a verifiable fashion) and off-chain a simplified form of roll-up with no full chain.
• Tooling for Web2 Developers: By retaining the traditional Web2 development experience, developers can lift-and-shift existing applications to Web3 without rewriting code in Solidity.
• Enhancing User Experience: The goal is to create a user-friendly and approachable interface that makes it easier for people to engage with blockchain applications, ultimately minimizing any hurdles they might face.
• AI Integration: Project is actively building out the Amazon machine and infrastructure pipeline to support GPUs for AI project. This will include deploying trusted execution environments (TEEs) on GPUs for AI model verifiable execution.
• Verifiable Front Ends: Roshan points out a growing trend where people are working on creating decentralized and verifiable front ends. This approach aims to tackle the risks that come with centralized interfaces.
• Blockchain Compatibility: Currently, Arbitrum is the most used chain among users because of this early adoption and scalability, but Polygon and non-EVM platforms (like Solana) are also seeing increasing demand.
• Developer Adoption & Ecosystem: The approach is to challenge both the established Web2 developer with well known tools and a frictionless Web3 entry by focusing on, still high level and swift verification processes, as well traditional early-adopter Web3 folks. Continuous feedback from developers is essential to anticipate market needs and iterate on tooling and infrastructure.