Space and Time at SmartCon 2023

Last week, the Space and Time team headed out to Barcelona for Chainlink SmartCon. Space and Time Co-Founders Nate Holiday and Scott Dykstra gave presentations, members of SxT leadership participated in panels, and the team demoed the Space and Time Studio to Chainlink ecosystem members and developers at the SxT booth. We highlighted our partnership with Chainlink by announcing a new integration of Proof of SQL in the Chainlink Network, and were honored to have Microsoft’s Rashmi Misra join us at the conference to showcase what Space and Time is building alongside Mircosoft. Check out our recap of the week.

Day 0: Announcing Pay Per Compute

We kicked off an exciting week by announcing Pay per Compute: a new pricing model in Space and Time that enables developers, analysts, and Web3 enthusiasts to build dapps and dashboards with more flexibility. We want to make it as easy as possible for our community to get started building. SxT is up to 50% more cost-efficient than popular cloud data warehouses, and unlike virtually every other database solution, when you use Space and Time, all you pay for is compute. We’ve introduced Pay per Compute so that you can build your dapps and dashboards with as much flexibility as you need. Get started right away with no overhead. You can read more about Pay per Compute here.

Day 0: Hacker House and PreGame

Prior to the main conference, the team gave presentations at the SmartCon Hacker House and PreGame event. Head of Ecosystem Ebru Engwall spoke about the SxT ZK query engine to the hackers, and the team hosted a mini-booth to showcase some community gaming dashboards built on the Space and Time Studio at PreGame.

CTO Scott Dykstra also gave a keynote on what Proof of SQL enables for onchain gaming rewards:

• Smart contracts need to know what’s happening in-game to reward players onchain.
• Query results from centralized, black-box databases can’t be verifiably connected to a smart contract.
• Space and Time joins onchain transactions with in-game events to enable Web3 games to facilitate more sophisticated onchain rewards.
• Your smart contract can run a query like “show me top wallets that have recently won this game, minted an NFT, and have at least two hours of playtime" to mint an onchain reward… verified by Proof of SQL.

Day 1: Partnerships highlighted on TradeTalks

CEO Nate Holiday was invited to interview with Jill Malandrino for Nasdaq TradeTalks. Nate highlighted SxT’s last year of progress and provided an exclusive look into the roadmap for our partnerships with Chainlink and Microsoft. You can watch the full interview here.

"What's unique about Space and Time is that it provides verifiable compute within a database. As the world moves toward automation by LLMs and smart contracts, the need for verifiable data and computation is becoming more and more important."

Day 1: Announcing Proof of SQL is verified by Chainlink

Nate’s interview launched the news that the Proof of SQL Verifier will run natively on Chainlink. In a story covered by CoinDesk, Yahoo Finance, and dozens of other major publications, we announced that Proof of SQL can now be attached to any centralized or decentralized SQL database to connect verifiable, ZK-proven query results to smart contracts, AI models, and enterprises. The Chainlink Network will come to consensus to verify the ZK-proofs produced by Proof of SQL, allowing the protocol to become more trustless, transparent, and decentralized. You can read the news here.

Day 1: ZK compute keynote

There was a full house for Nate’s keynote on ZK Compute for the New Internet, where he gave an overview of what we’re building with Chainlink. Verifiable data and compute are paramount to building a world that doesn’t rely on trust. Together, Space and Time and Chainlink are closing the gap for the verify-everything future.

Day 1: Web3 infrastructure panel

Ebru joined Rashmi Misra (Microsoft), Kseniia Baziian (Premia), and moderator Zayi Reyes (Chainlink) at the Chainlink x BoysClub event for an insightful women-led panel on how Web3 infrastructure drives user adoption.

Day 2: Turning oracles into ZK-verifiers presentation

On day 2, Scott dove deep into the Proof of SQL / Chainlink integration in his presentation, Turning Oracles Into ZK-Verifiers:

• Smart contracts are extremely limited in the amount/types of data they can access, and how they can process that data. In order to realize the vision of Web3, we have to figure out how to make smart contracts smarter.
• Every app in the world is powered by a database, but most databases today are centralized and can’t be connected to smart contracts. 
• Space and Time makes smart contracts smarter by connecting them to offchain compute and proving that the data processing and underlying tables haven’t been manipulated. The verifiable compute layer for Web3.
• This is made possible by Proof of SQL: SxT’s novel ZK proof. Proof of SQL turns smart contracts into ZK-databases.
• Together, SxT and Chainlink are powering a new wave of data-driven smart contracts for the next generation of Web3.

Day 2: 0xAI Symposium panel

Scott joined moderator Kemal El Moujahid (Chainlink) and panelists Ron Bodkin (ChainML), Alexander Campbell (Rose AI), and Humayaun Sheik (fetch.ai) for a panel on the intersection of AI and Web3. Each of the founders provided insight around building verifiable AI with blockchain technology and accelerating the adoption of Web3 with generative AI.

Day 2: Fireside chat with Rashmi Misra

We were honored to have one of the most visionary leaders in AI, Microsoft’s Rashmi Misra, join Space and Time CEO Nate Holiday for a fireside chat to discuss the role of verifiability in creating neutral, transparent, and responsible AI models. Space and Time is driving verifiable data and compute for AI and Web3, and we’re grateful for Rashmi’s leadership and our incredible partnership with Microsoft.

In the arena

The team spent the week meeting with devs at the Space and Time booth (“The Arena”) and exploring new use cases for SxT’s data warehouse and ZK compute layer. You can head to the Space and Time Studio to get started with SxT today.

Thanks to the team at Chainlink for putting on an incredible event! We’re already looking forward to next year!