I recently spoke with the Founder and CEO of Swing, Viveik Vivekananthan. We discussed the challenges the blockchain industry faces, possible solutions, and how he thinks the industry will fare in 2023.
Hello Viveik, it’s wonderful to have you with us. Can you please introduce yourself and share your journey with our readers?
Hi, I’m Viveik Vivekananthan, the founder & CEO of Swing.xyz, a decentralized cross-chain liquidity protocol. I was pursuing my MBA from Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business but withdrew in my second year to build Swing.
My association with the blockchain cryptocurrency sector dates back to May 2017 when I founded the Silicon Valley Blockchain Consortium (SVBC). I resigned from SVBC in May 2021 to become Swing’s full-time CEO.
In April 2022, I was a Hackathon Judge at the ETHGlobal. Since May 2022, I’ve been an NFT Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Elevate in Toronto, Canada.
I have a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from McMaster University and worked in Wireless Platform and Product Software at Blackberry from 2012-2013. I was also a Wireless Software Engineer at Apple from 2014 to 2021.
Currently, I’m focusing on making Swing a leading platform for accessing crypto liquidity.
What do you think is the biggest challenge that the blockchain/ cryptocurrency industry is currently facing?
I think the biggest challenge right now is the lack of liquidity across the crypto industry. The shrinkage from an all-time high market cap of $3 trillion in November 2021 to $856 billion today is definitely unprecedented.
But historically, down markets provided ideal conditions for developers to stay under the radar and build the best protocols. After all, companies like Amazon, Dell, and Google survived the Dot Com Bubble burst in the 2000s because they kept on innovating. However, crypto developers face a very unique problem.
The limited liquidity in the industry remains siloed and fragmented in individual blockchain ecosystems without adequate cross-chain communication technologies. This hinders blockchain interoperability and prevents developers from building applications where users can seamlessly transfer assets across different blockchain networks.
I believe this is further compounding the problems in the current development cycle to build effective technologies for the future.
Can you elaborate on the specific problems that are crippling the crypto sector? How do you think the industry can tackle these challenges?
There are multiple problems that are affecting the industry and consequently the crypto developers. To begin with, the go-to-market time for building cross-chain applications is very high because of integrating resource-intensive bridges. Some of these bridges have high slippage or gas charges with difficult routes for transferring assets.
Additionally, developers have to worry about security threats like bridge hacks that can compromise users’ assets. If you look at the statistics, half of DeFi attacks in 2021-2022 were cross-bridge hacks, amounting to over $2.5 billion. This poses an additional challenge to cross-chain application development and worsens the liquidity crunch.
One way to tackle the challenge is through cross-chain liquidity aggregators which facilitate frictionless trading and cost-efficient asset swaps. Although the solution sounds simple, it is often difficult to build secure aggregators with fast routing features. Protocols like Swing are playing an important part in providing the technological infrastructure to developers to build cross-chain applications.
What role does Swing play in addressing the aforementioned problems?
Before answering your question, let me explain what Swing does. It is a blockchain-agnostic, unified API for cross-chain bridge aggregation, facilitating crypto liquidity for the Web3 economy. Swing’s single liquidity integration layer enables developers to reduce time-to-market, helping them to launch cross-chain dApps faster with smart routing capabilities.
We have launched the Swing widget and SDK to simplify and improve crypto developers’ experience of building better cross-chain applications. The Swing SDK will empower developers to build cross-chain DEXs, Omni-chain NFT marketplaces, wallets, multi-chain payment protocols, cross-chain lending applications, and yield aggregators.
Apart from improving cross-chain liquidity access, Swing’s widget and SDK will offer a simplified and user-friendly onboarding experience. Therefore, developers can build cross-chain solutions with simple coding, reducing time and resources. It further eliminates the need for maintaining and integrating ten or more bridges, cutting down on security monitoring expenditures.
How would you assess the importance of crypto protocols like Swing in the current market scenario?
At a time when there’s a severe liquidity crunch in the crypto market, protocols like Swing are critical for accessing cross-chain liquidity. I think Swing plays a vital role in ensuring that liquidity doesn’t remain siloed or locked in individual blockchain ecosystems. The protocol enables traders, investors, and yield farmers to seamlessly move crypto assets across blockchains with low slippage.
The Swing SDK supports 21 Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) networks and 4 non-EVM networks. The EVMs include Ethereum, Polygon, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Optimism, Fantom, Moonbeam, Cronos, Aurora, and many more. The non-EVMs are Solana, Cosmos, Polkadot, and Elrond. We currently support Metamask, Keplr, Brave Browser, WalletConnect, Coinbase Wallet and intend to expand wallet infrastructure support to Phantom and other leading wallets.
I believe Swing will continue to play an important role in the crypto industry to bolster liquidity in the Web3 sector and enhance the overall developer experience.
Given the market slump and impending recession fears, how do you think the crypto industry will shape up in 2023?
Despite the liquidity crisis that I’ve already talked about, I do think that developers will continue to build innovative technology solutions this crypto winter. But to do so, they need access to all the liquidity that is currently available in the market. To this end, cross-chain liquidity protocols will help plug the gaps for developers to build robust future-proof applications.
I think the coming months won’t be very easy for the overall global economy. But again, for the crypto sector, this is a necessary cleansing ritual to filter out the dubious, unsustainable stakeholders. In the long run, 2023 will be an important year for the crypto industry in terms of building and developing top-class technology.