Original｜Odaily Planet Daily
Author: jk
In recent years, Web3 has been regarded as the next stage of the Internet with its decentralized concept, but it faces multiple difficulties on the road to becoming a reality:
Traditional developers face a steep learning curve and need to understand the underlying blockchain architecture and new development languages and environments from scratch;
Although AI technology has great potential in data analysis, automated decision-making and other fields, it is separated from the Web3 ecosystem, which should be its teammate, and has not formed deep synergy;
Redundant underlying protocol ecosystems are fragmented, while cross-chain operations are complex and inefficient, and users face high costs when transferring assets between different chains ;
More importantly, the clumsy interactive experience of DApp forms a sharp contrast with the smoothness of Web2 applications , causing Web3 to be trapped in a highly speculative niche market for a long time and difficult to penetrate mass scenarios such as social and content.
When looking for innovative solutions to break the above deadlock, the recently launched Endless Web3 Genesis Cloud (hereinafter referred to as Endless) caught our attention. As a distributed intelligent component protocol, Endless has made comprehensive innovations from the underlying architecture to the development paradigm.
Its high-performance public chain based on the Move language can achieve 0.5-second transaction confirmation and process tens of thousands of transactions per second. The nearly zero-cost gas fee breaks through the efficiency bottleneck of traditional blockchains. The decentralized storage and computing architecture improves network robustness through a self-developed relay node network, while the componentized development model provides modular tools such as wallets, cross-chain bridges, and multi-language SDKs, allowing developers to build DApps like building blocks. This serverless architecture + fully distributed framework design allows Web2 developers to migrate seamlessly without relearning the blockchain technology stack. Users can log in to their wallets directly through their Google accounts without even having to sense the existence of gas fees. At the same time, the self-developed Keyless technology is used to protect user privacy - all complex logic is encapsulated at the bottom layer, and the experience is close to mainstream Internet applications.
Endlesss ambition is not only to upgrade technology, but also to become a bridge connecting two eras.
Facing the Web2 world, it lowers the development threshold through standardized components. For example, it supports mainstream languages such as Python and Java, allowing developers to use the original technology stack. For users, its wallet design completely hides the concepts of mnemonics and private keys, and introduces a developer pays gas fees on behalf of users mechanism, making on-chain interactions as natural as using social software.
In the battlefield of the integration of AI and Web3, Endless has shown a sharper edge: it cooperates with the University of Surrey, the top artificial intelligence research institution in the UK, to develop efficient applications based on large language models , integrates AIGC tools such as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion, is compatible with AI Agent frameworks such as Eliza and Swarms , and provides rich AI components on the platform. Developers can directly call atomic capabilities such as AI data analysis and multilingual translation through standardized interfaces, or combine AI models with on-chain components to develop innovative applications such as automated DeFi strategy robots and NFT intelligent generation tools, truly unleashing the superposition effect of Crypto x AI.
Endless has delivered its first report card on the direction of ecological implementation. The decentralized social application Luffa is developed based on its protocol and uses end-to-end encryption technology. User data is only stored on local devices, completely eliminating the risk of centralized server leakage. Its built-in native wallet supports token rewards and NFT sharing, and allows users to customize AI chatbots and provide personalized services in combination with on-chain data.
It is worth noting that in order to accelerate the prosperity of the ecosystem, Endless announced the launch of a $1 million airdrop plan. Users can participate in the reward distribution through cross-chain transfers, DApp interactions, and other behaviors (readers interested in zero-cost rewards can pay more attention to the interactive guides released by its official X and other channels). In the future, it will also launch developer grants and component market sharing mechanisms to build a sustainable incentive network.
Behind these visions and steps is a team that values both academic resources and practical experience. Co-President Xiong Yu is the dean of the Blockchain and Metaverse Application Research Institute at the University of Surrey . He has served as the chairman of the Advisory Committee of the UK Parliaments Web3.0 Group. His research on Bitcoin mining carbon emissions published in the top journal Nature Communications has promoted a shift in global industry policies; CTO Amit Kumar Jaiswal works at the Indian Institute of Technology, deeply engaged in machine learning and DeFi protocol development, and has built open source decentralized applications for many international customers; Chief Economist Ned has a Ph.D. in distributed systems from the University of Oxford, and the token economic model he designed has served millions of users, and has made great achievements in the fields of zero-knowledge proof and protocol optimization.
This team driven by technological ideals has a clear goal: to break the internal circulation of Web3 in the financial scene, extend its value to richer real-world scenarios such as social, content, and AI, and through data sovereignty and on-chain value distribution, allow users to transform from traffic commodities to co-builders of the ecosystem.
When developers are no longer bound by the underlying protocol, when users can control digital assets without understanding the principle of private keys, and when AI and blockchain are deeply coupled under standardized interfaces, Web3 may be experiencing its Android moment . What Endless wants to do is to become the operating system-level foundation of this new era, so that the decentralized value flow can truly return to the user-centered.
In order to get a more panoramic view of Endlesss vision, technology advantages, ecological progress and the latest developments that deserve the attention of users and developers, Odaily Planet Daily had the honor of interviewing Professor Xiong Yu, co-president of Endless. The following is a condensed interview question and answer session. Enjoy~
Odaily: First of all, we would like to ask you, as an expert who has been deeply engaged in the academic field for a long time, Web3 has grown rapidly in recent years, but it also faces considerable bottlenecks. What do you think is the most urgent problem to be solved in the current Web3 field?
Xiong Yu: There are still too few applications that can really bring value. When people mention Web3, they often think of cryptocurrency speculation, but these have not created much value for society. So we have always hoped that there will be something that is truly useful to users.
In addition, the threshold of Web3 is still too high. Most traditional developers have not entered the Web3 field, mainly because the development environment of Web3 is not very friendly to them and the learning cost is relatively high. On the other hand, the value of Web3 is not so intuitive for ordinary users. Even the number of Bitcoin holders is still too small compared to the user group of Web2. In the entire blockchain industry, the number of users on each platform is very limited, and it is difficult to influence the public like Web2.
So I think there are two key points. One is to reduce the difficulty of Web3 development so that more developers can get started more easily; the other is to make Web3 applications truly bring value to users so that everyone is willing to use them.
The biggest features of Web3 are actually data sovereignty, transparency and security. Just like Bitcoin, you can control your assets without worrying about others touching your money. You can also clearly know how the entire system works, and transactions are open and transparent. This certainty is very important for users - you know what you pay for and what you get. Only in this way can the value of Web3 be truly reflected.
Odaily: How did the idea of Endless come about? How did the core members of the team come together?
Xiong Yu: This idea actually comes from my school, the University of Surrey . Our school is strong in information technology (IT) and artificial intelligence (AI) research, especially our AI research center, which is one of the largest AI research institutions in the UK. Moreover, we may also be the only British university in the UK to establish a blockchain application research institute. Our research institute is called Surrey Academy for Blockchain and Metaverse Applications, which has done a lot of work in promoting the combination of blockchain, AI and Web3.
We attach great importance to the combination of technology and industry . Companies in many industries, such as the gaming industry, are willing to cooperate with us. We have also been directly applying academic results to the industry and have established extensive cooperative relationships with many companies.
At the same time, we are also involved in a large number of national and transnational blockchain research projects. I once published a research paper on blockchain in Nature Communications. Currently, on the Nature official website, if you enter the keyword blockchain, its Altmetric academic impact ranking is still the first in the world.
But we are not satisfied with just doing cutting-edge scientific research. We hope to bring blockchain technology out of the laboratory and combine it with the actual needs of enterprises and society to make it truly practical.
In addition to the aforementioned insufficient user base and high technical barriers, another core problem is ecological fragmentation - everyone uses different technical standards, and different chains operate independently and are incompatible with each other.
So we were thinking, can we start with applications, improve user experience, attract more users, and reduce the difficulty of development, making it easier for developers to get started? If we can launch a new protocol and solve these problems, can we really break through the boundaries between Web2 and Web3? This was our initial idea.
With the rapid development of AI, people are aware of the importance of data sovereignty, and blockchain will become more and more important. It is not just a financial tool, but also an important technology to support the entire digital economy of society, helping users to truly control their own data and protect their privacy and rights.
Odaily: What is the biggest obstacle in the migration of Web2 applications to Web3? You mentioned lowering the threshold just now. What obstacles do you specifically mean?
Xiong Yu: The main reason is that there are not enough users. The user scale of Web2 is several orders of magnitude larger than that of Web3. Even if it is Trump Meme Coin, no matter how popular it is, it has only a few hundred thousand to a few million users, which is far from the real mainstream level.
The user value of Web2 is completely different. For example, the number of users of platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon is measured in hundreds of millions. This brings up a core question - how to fill the huge gap in user scale between Web3 and Web2? What kind of functions can we provide to truly bring value to users, rather than just staying at the level of concepts and hype?
The second core obstacle is that the technical threshold is too high. A large number of Web2 developers will not learn Web3 programming specifically for a small number of user groups, and only a small number of them will choose to switch. If we can make Web3s programming methods, concepts, and technology stack consistent with Web2, developers only need to call a few modules to directly integrate blockchain security, privacy protection and other features into the application, then the entire Web3 development threshold will be greatly reduced. In this way, all Web2 developers can seamlessly transform into Web3 developers.
This is exactly the problem Endless hopes to solve - what we want to do is modular development + ultimate user experience.
In addition, the problem of multi-chain fragmentation is also a major obstacle. Our idea is not to create a system that takes all chains, but to design a set of universal protocols so that all chains can be compatible and developers can call different functions across chains. We have encapsulated the protocol, and no matter which chain the developer chooses, they can easily connect to other ecosystems through our cross-chain mechanism.
Odaily: What were the biggest challenges that the Endless team encountered during development? How did you overcome these challenges?
Xiong Yu: Modular development requires overcoming many technical barriers. If Web3 programming is to be further encapsulated into a modular form so that developers can use blockchain technology like calling an API, then a lot of innovative technical work will be involved.
In terms of programming language , we finally decided to use Move. Move itself is a programming language designed for modularity, and it has strong considerations in terms of security and privacy protection.
Security is also a challenge we are very concerned about. The core reason why people trust Web3 is decentralization and asset security, but Web3 also often has security vulnerabilities. Therefore, we made a lot of trade-offs between security-experience in terms of security, and finally adopted bank-level encryption, combined with privacy technologies such as zero-knowledge proof, to optimize the security and convenience of user authentication.
At present, we have established a developer ecosystem with multiple co-developers, who have built smart contract packages and various functional modules together. In the development of so many modules, there will definitely be many problems, different opinions within the team, and new ideas from partners. In the face of optimization suggestions, we are happy to accept, improve, and iterate continuously.
In terms of optimizing user experience , we focus on two core issues:
(1) Using ZK (zero-knowledge proof) technology, a signature verification method without mnemonics or private keys is implemented, allowing users to log in directly using third-party accounts such as Google as before, while seamlessly interacting on the chain.
(2) In terms of contract development, we provide a mechanism for project owners to pay gas on behalf of users, allowing users to interact directly with on-chain applications even without paying gas fees. This greatly reduces the cost of acquiring users for project owners.
We believe that the true popularization of Web3 is not to let users adapt to Web3, but to let Web3 adapt to users.
Finally, collaboration among teams distributed around the world is also a big challenge. Our core team is mainly in the UK, responsible for program development and external cooperation. We also have team members in Hong Kong, Japan, and Thailand. Collaboration faces the problem of time difference.
Now we have entered the stage of promotion and ecological cooperation, and connecting with partners in different regions is also an important task.
Odaily: Why did you choose the Move language? What advantages does it have for developers and ecosystem expansion?
Xiong Yu: The Move language was originally developed internally by Facebook (now Meta) and was designed for the security and efficient management of digital assets. It is particularly suitable for processing digital assets and complex financial logic. Its core goal is to reduce the risk of smart contract vulnerabilities and improve the security of Web3 applications. Therefore, when we introduce AI into Web3 applications to generate and manage smart contracts, Move can well ensure security and modularity, avoiding security vulnerabilities caused by excessive code integration.
Another important feature of Move is high performance and low latency , which allows us to process and execute AI agents faster. This is a unique advantage for us because we want to achieve modular development, allowing more developers to build their own modules while ensuring that these modules remain highly secure after integration.
Of course, Solidity also has its advantages, such as its more mature ecosystem and larger developer community. But our goal is not to compete with the existing ecosystem, but to attract new Web3 users, especially developers and users who have not yet entered Web3. Therefore, we value long-term development more than simply catering to the existing ecosystem.
Odaily: You have just mentioned some information about Endlesss AI componentized architecture. How can it help developers build AI and Crypto related applications?
Xiong Yu: Endlesss AI componentized architecture is essentially an open platform . We have integrated multiple large models, and developers can directly call them according to their needs. For example, we support DeepSeek, LLaMA, and other large models. Our goal is not to develop large models ourselves, but to become an entry point to help developers use large models efficiently. At the same time, because we run on Web3, users can rest assured that they can control their own AI-generated content and assets without worrying about the data being abused by the platform.
From a developers perspective, Endless makes building Crypto AI applications easier and more efficient. We provide modular Web3 and AI components. Developers do not need to write complex Web3 smart contracts or AI algorithms from scratch. They can easily implement these functions by calling our modules. For example, there is already an AI-driven Web3 application Luffa in our ecosystem. It currently has more than 100,000 users and tens of thousands of active users every day. Luffa did not develop its own AI language processing capabilities, but directly called the AI voice-to-text, multi-language translation and other functional modules we provided.
In addition, Endlesss data layer and technology stack are isolated, which means that AI can access Web3 data without any perception, without the need for complex adaptation. Endless is like a connector - seamlessly grafting AI capabilities into the Web3 application framework.
We also provide SDKs to help developers quickly encapsulate AI models into their application interfaces and call them directly like plug-ins. For example, we have in-depth cooperation with many large model companies. As you may know, more than 80% of the worlds large text-to-image models are based on Stable Diffusion. We are currently promoting in-depth cooperation with Stability AI (Stable Diffusions parent company).
Finally, the Blockchain and Metaverse Applications Research Institute of the University of Surrey recently launched a framework and vision for the integrated development of Web3 and AI, hoping to use Web3 technology to empower the rapidly developing AI ecosystem. Our team has also accumulated a lot of experience and resources in AI technology research.
Odaily: What are Endless’ unique technical advantages in the field of AI Agent?
Xiong Yu: First of all, Endless’s AI technology strength comes from our team background. The core team members are all from top AI research universities.
Secondly, we also have obvious technical advantages in the optimization and application of large AI models . Our optimization solution is based on Stable Diffusion 3, but it is superior to the original Stable Diffusion in terms of generation speed, computing efficiency and cost. Even the development team of Stable Diffusion has begun to pay attention to some of the optimization algorithms we have launched. It is worth mentioning that a vice president of Stable Diffusion has also joined the Endless Foundation as the chief AI consultant.
In addition, we embrace open source . Endless will invest a lot of open source work in the fields of Web3 and AI to promote co-creation and collaboration in the AI community. The development of AI requires transparency and cooperation, and the concept of Web3 is highly consistent with this. We believe that open source can further promote the integration of Web3 and AI.
Odaily: There is great uncertainty in the current global regulatory environment. How will Endless respond? What are your considerations in terms of global compliance?
Xiong Yu: The UK is very supportive of blockchain applications, and there are many well-known projects actively developing the ecosystem. Even within the UK Parliament, there is a dedicated blockchain group that invites blockchain industry talents to enter Parliament and communicate directly with policymakers.
In addition, since Endless does not involve capital-intensive businesses like exchanges, there are relatively fewer regulatory requirements to comply with. One of our foundation members was once the head of the digital asset department of the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which allows us to obtain more professional advice on global compliance and ensure that our business is carried out in strict accordance with regulatory requirements from the beginning.
Odaily: Looking to the future, what are your prospects for the development of Endless and the entire ecosystem?
Xiong Yu: In the next three to five years, we hope that Endless can become an important pillar in the Web3 ecosystem. If we use traditional Internet thinking as an analogy, we hope that it can occupy a position in Web3 similar to Solana in the public chain field.
Our core goal is to promote the comprehensive transformation of Web2 to Web3, not only to turn Web2 applications into Web3 applications, but more importantly to allow Web2 developers to naturally transform into Web3 developers. We will promote this change from three aspects: developers, application ecology, and user growth. To achieve this, the deep integration of AI is essential.
Our vision is not to simply build a question-and-answer AI like ChatGPT, but to build an intelligent system that can truly solve problems autonomously. At the same time, the transparency and traceability of Web3 can provide security for the development of AI. Ultimately, we hope that Endless can become the smartest and most user-valuable platform in the Web3 ecosystem, and promote the intelligent development of the entire industry at the protocol level.
Odaily: Regarding the airdrop that individual investors and users are very concerned about, is there any information that can be disclosed in advance?
Xiong Yu: The scale of this airdrop will be relatively large. We have reached cooperation with many well-known partners, and well-known funds such as Foresight Ventures have also invested in Endless. The total amount of financing in this round is about 110 million US dollars. Several institutions will announce investment information in the future.
Regarding the specific details of the airdrop, we are currently planning to raise a total of $1 million , with the main purpose of attracting more users and promoting ecosystem growth. We will announce the entire airdrop plan through official channels later.
In addition, the distribution of airdrops will be based on our incubated social application, Luffa . Luffa has accumulated more than 100,000 users, with more than 10,000 daily active users, and is an application with considerable scale. Through Luffa, we can distribute airdrops to real users more accurately, ensuring that the incentive mechanism can promote ecological activity, rather than just attracting short-term speculators.
Back to the protocol itself, on March 6, Endless, which has completed its architecture and has undergone large-scale testing, was officially launched on the mainnet. The TPS exceeds 10,000, and the robustness of the overall system has met the requirements, so we are very confident that Endless can become a truly attractive and innovative Web3 protocol.
