Deploying Zk-rollups: Exclusive Interview With Gateway.fm CEO and Co-founder Cuautemoc Weber

Cuautemoc Weber, Co-Founder and CEO of Gateway.fm discusses the company's mission to abstract the complexity of blockchain technology, highlighting it as a significant step towards mainstream adoption. 

For the convenience of the reader, the interviewee,Mr. Cuautemoc Weber, is reffered to as CW.

LB: How has 2024 started for Gateway.fm?

CW: The year 2024 has gotten off to a fantastic start. We ended 2023 in a very strong position, and that momentum has certainly carried over into 2024. We recently introduced modular Data Availability (DA) on Celestia and NEAR – major integrations for our platform.

We are also actively building private zkEVM roll-ups for API3, IDEX, Wirex and zkSOM, to name a few of our clients, and we’ve laid down very solid foundations for these new partnerships to expand.

With the API3 partnership, we look forward to providing API3 oracles to our rapidly growing customer base moving forward.

We are firmly aligned with API3 when it comes to promoting the use of real-world data in decentralized applications, and we’re excited to build on this initial partnership scope in the months ahead.

LB: Why is Gateway.fm focused on the ZkEVM field?

CW: Leveraging zkEVM expands the range of Web3 applications, delivering inherent benefits of improved security, customization, and scalability. In parallel, we are reducing the cost by 80% and time to market by an amazing 90%.

At Gateway, we have an excellent track record when it comes to successfully managing complex technical integrations and enabling projects to deploy a state-of-the-art full E2E zk-validium or zk-rollup – all within a couple of clicks and minutes.

So as we can see, Zk-implementations offer enhanced scalability, reduced transaction costs, and improved privacy, making them valuable for Web3 and decentralized projects.

It is been well documented that privacy, scalability, costs and time to market have been several of the most pronounced challenges facing the blockchain space, and ZkEVM innovations are providing a timely solution.

By combining the versatility of the Ethereum Virtual Machine with Zero-Knowledge Proofs, ZkEVM improves privacy, scalability, costing, time to market and overall user-centricity.

LB: Tell me about Gateway.fm’s work in the ZkEVM field.

CW: Sure. Presto, our Zero-knowledge based Web3 platform as-a-service, is geared towards simplifying the implementation of Zero-knowledge roll-ups.

Presto allows any non-native crypto user to deploy an advanced full E2E zk-validium roll-up almost instantly.We want to extend the benefits of ZkEVM far and wide, driving mainstream adoption of blockchain technology globally.

We have pre-integrated a lot of necessary tooling from the offset, including explorers, faucet, data availability and many more ancillary services.

They will make life easier for developers and projects, giving them the bandwidth to focus on the actual use cases as opposed to the underlying technology.

This is part of our mission to abstract the complexity of blockchain infrastructure and allow our partners to focus on the key aspects of the use cases they are about to launch on their dedicated chain.

Presto plays a significant role in enhancing the security of the bridges and transactions in its platform by incorporating ZkEVM.

The integration of ZkEVM by Presto accelerates transaction processing, reduces costs, consumption, as well as the environmental impact of blockchain technology.

We are already using carbon-neutral data centres, so we are keenly aware of the importance of championing more environmentally friendly practices across the Web3 ecosystem.

LB: What is the scale of blockchain’s complexity problem?

CW: I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that blockchain has a severe complexity problem. For the layman, getting to grips with cryptographic algorithms, consensus mechanisms and smart contracts is a steep learning curve.

From a project standpoint, it’s commonplace to see roadmaps being adjusted and extended due to unforeseen technological setbacks, so there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that blockchain’s inherent complexity takes a toll on project implementation.

Dealing with the technology requires highly advanced expertise, and if the Web3 space is going to go mainstream, this can’t remain the case.

Everyone likes nostalgia right? Think back to the glory days of the 90s, simpler times! But back then, building a website was very complicated, a type of activity that was exclusively reserved for high-functioning web developers.

Now, anyone can do it without even considering or fully understanding the underlying infrastructure, protocols and multifacet API integrations needed to make them useful for any kind of website.

This is the kind of sea-change we want to enable with Presto, to make blockchain technology easy to use and build on top of, without requiring extensive knowledge in cryptography or blockchain protocols, allowing new innovative use cases to arise to leverage this new technology to bolster the true capabilities of blockchain.

LB: What’s next for Gateway.fm and Presto?

CW:With Presto, we want to simplify the establishment and upkeep of blockchain networks, enabling more businesses to tap into the potential of blockchain, enabling quicker adoption and implementation in a much more cost-effective and timely manner.

This instant private zk-rollup lets users choose between the Gnosis chain and Ethereum as their Layer-1 for zkEVM, we foresee adding more networks in the near future, as well as enabling gasless transactions and instant transaction confirmations.

Over the course of 2024, we’ll be expanding our team, our solution suite and the technical reach of Presto. As part of this effort, we’ll be pursuing partnerships with industry leaders who share our vision for decentralization.

This is what gets us up every morning. Stay tuned as we’re getting ready to make major new partnership announcements which will demonstrate the scale of our ambition to extend the benefits of blockchain to a host of new verticals.