Victoria d’Este
Printed: August 27, 2025 at 10:18 am Up to date: August 27, 2025 at 10:19 am
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August 27, 2025 at 10:18 am
In Transient
Pharos CEO Want Wu shares how his journey from constructing AntChain to launching Pharos—a high-performance Layer-1 that hit over 1,000,000 TestNet transactions in its first week—is bridging Web2 establishments, belongings, and customers into Web3.
When Pharos launched its TestNet earlier this yr, it hit over a million transactions within the very first week, rapidly trending on Twitter and rating on the prime of mission dashboards. On this interview, co-founder and CEO Want Wu shares how his journey from constructing AntChain, Asia’s largest consortium blockchain, led to creating Pharos, a high-performance Layer-1 designed to bridge Web2 establishments, belongings, and customers into Web3.
May you share your journey into Web3?
I’m Want, at present the co-founder and CEO of Pharos. We began Pharos in the course of final yr. However earlier than that, I used to be a part of Ant’s blockchain infrastructure staff. Along with my co-founder Alex, we bought into blockchain know-how again in 2017. At the moment, it was a analysis lab below Alibaba’s Damo Academy.
We began constructing blockchain infrastructure for a consortium blockchain in China referred to as AntChain. By the point we left Ant, it had grow to be the most important consortium blockchain in Asia. The analysis lab grew into an R&D heart and finally grew to become one of many 4 essential enterprise teams of Ant Group, now referred to as Ant Digital Applied sciences.
We constructed consortium blockchain options for a lot of companies in China, together with provide chain, finance, authorities tracing methods, and different industries. We additionally supported JingTan, which has grow to be the most important NFT market in China. Due to this, the necessities for the underlying blockchain infrastructure have been just like these for Web2: very excessive throughput and an enormous consumer base. At the moment, we reached round 100k TPS with over a billion consumer accounts supported.
Final yr, we left Ant and began Pharos, which continues to be constructing on the AntChain tech stack. Like Aptos and Sui popping out of Meta, we obtained technical assist from Ant and spun out the know-how to launch this mission. We rapidly raised a seed spherical led by Hack VC and Elastic Manufacturing unit in September final yr. Earlier this yr, we launched the Devnet internally, and in Might, we launched the Testnet publicly. It gained important traction—over 1,000,000 transactions within the first week, and even trended globally on Twitter.
What we’re constructing is high-performance, scalable, and particularly designed for institutional-grade purposes. Options like SPNs permit customization, privateness, and assist for specialised {hardware} reminiscent of GPUs and ZK options. In the end, our aim is to onboard institutional belongings, capital, and Web2 customers into Web3 by means of Pharos.
How does your modular three-layer construction: L1 base, L1 core, and extensions, work collectively to enhance efficiency and scalability?
We designed Pharos with three layers. On the base is {hardware} integration: CPUs, GPUs, and specialised {hardware} to assist totally different transaction and software necessities.
The center layer is the consensus layer. We use an asynchronous BFT consensus algorithm that permits all validators to suggest blocks concurrently. This improves bandwidth utilization, will increase throughput, avoids single factors of failure, and ensures equity since even validators with larger latency can nonetheless suggest blocks.
On prime of that, the extension layer helps all kinds of purposes. For instance, we’ve a twin VM: one absolutely suitable with Solidity, and one other WebAssembly VM that helps languages like JavaScript, Java, or C++. This enables builders to construct sensible contracts utilizing languages they’re already aware of and combine simply with current methods.
We’re additionally constructing a toolchain so builders can write their complete software, frontend, backend, and sensible contracts, in JavaScript, then deploy every thing with one click on. This makes growth on Pharos extremely accessible and environment friendly.
You talked about SPNs as a singular characteristic. How do they differ from sidechains or conventional Layer-2 options?
SPNs are like sub-net throughout the similar Layer-1 community. Not like Layer-2s, which segregate liquidity and tokens, SPNs stay a part of the identical Layer-1, retaining liquidity unified.
For instance, a financial institution can construct its personal SPN on Pharos to maintain consumer knowledge personal with TEE or ZK safety whereas nonetheless benefiting from the shared liquidity and validator safety of the Layer-1. SPNs additionally let establishments use specialised {hardware}, like GPUs or ZK accelerators—immediately by way of SDKs. This mix of privateness, customization, and liquidity unites SPNs aside from sidechains or L2s.
What challenges did you face with state bloat, and the way does Pharos deal with these in a different way from different blockchains?
State bloat is a big difficulty. At Ant, we confronted it throughout campaigns like Alipay’s Chinese language New Yr NFT drops, the place almost a billion customers participated in a short while. Conventional KV databases like RocksDB weren’t designed for blockchain’s Merkle tree construction, which requires two-layer traversals and causes inefficiency.
We solved this by rewriting the database from scratch as a blockchain-native resolution. We pushed the Merkle tree construction immediately into the database layer, optimized disk alignment, and launched compression in order that solely modified components ofthe knowledge are saved. This dramatically improved efficiency and lowered state development, guaranteeing scalability even with huge consumer exercise.
Are you able to share a real-world instance of how a decentralized knowledge change protocol may allow progressive AI purposes on-chain?
Whereas the precise time period might range, what we concentrate on is enabling AI purposes by means of SPNs. Many AI+crypto initiatives require TEE and GPU sources to make sure agent possession and environment friendly operation.
As an alternative of constructing totally new blockchains or counting on centralized cloud suppliers, SPNs on Pharos present TEE for privateness and GPU for computation. Builders can deploy open-source AI fashions immediately on-chain whereas sustaining possession and compliance. This successfully allows actual on-chain AI purposes.
Past DeFi, which industries do you consider will profit most from SPN-driven computing and modular blockchain infrastructure?
Funds and stablecoins, certainly. DeFi already wants excessive throughput, however funds require each pace and real-time finality. For instance, Visa’s community handles as much as 90,000 TPS with sub-second latency. Conventional blockchains can’t match that, however Pharos can finalize transactions in below a second.
This makes us well-suited for real-world fee methods, stablecoin transactions, and different industries that demand excessive efficiency, reliability, and regulatory compliance.
What’s your imaginative and prescient for the way forward for Web3 infrastructure, and the place does Pharos match within the subsequent 5 to 10 years?
Our imaginative and prescient is to attach Web2 and Web3 in three essential methods:
Property: Onboard institutional belongings as RWAs and create a full ecosystem the place they are often traded, used as collateral, or built-in into stablecoins.
Capital: Attracting conventional buyers who might not absolutely perceive crypto however are snug with tokenized real-world belongings.
Customers: Collaborating with regulated establishments and corporations to onboard Web2 customers into Web3 by means of acquainted platforms, stablecoins, and RWAs. Pharos would be the infrastructure to make this transition seamless.
For those who may spotlight one breakthrough or achievement that units Pharos aside, what would it not be?
From a know-how perspective, we’ve constructed one of many highest-performance Layer-1 blockchains by innovating throughout consensus, storage, execution, and SPN structure, all in-house. From a enterprise perspective, our capability to bridge belongings, capital, and customers from Web2 into Web3 positions us uniquely to drive mass adoption.
Lastly, are there any new options on the roadmap?
Our mainnet is scheduled to launch later this yr. Early subsequent yr, we’ll roll out the primary SPN use circumstances in collaboration with establishments, displaying how blockchain might be adopted in real-world, internet-scale eventualities.
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About The Creator
Victoria is a author on a wide range of know-how subjects together with Web3.0, AI and cryptocurrencies. Her in depth expertise permits her to jot down insightful articles for the broader viewers.
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Victoria d’Este
Victoria is a author on a wide range of know-how subjects together with Web3.0, AI and cryptocurrencies. Her in depth expertise permits her to jot down insightful articles for the broader viewers.
