CoinVoice：Please introduce yourself and your experience in the crypto field.

Henry：Hello everyone, I am Henry, Co-founder of Khartes Studio. First of all, I would like to thank Coinvoice for inviting me for this interview. I am glad to be one of the builders in the emerging FOCG field and share the journey of Khartes Studio and the zkHoldem team over the past year.

I first got involved in the crypto space around 2017 and spent most of my time as an individual investor active on Twitter. Due to my background in operations and my understanding of degen culture, I have helped with marketing and growth strategies for some well-known Crypto projects.

CoinVoice：Can you briefly introduce zkHoldem?

Henry：zkHoldem is the world's first fully on-chain Texas Hold'em game and the first application developed by Khartes Studio. It has already been launched on the Manta Pacific L2 mainnet. Through the application of technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption, we have achieved absolute fairness and decentralization in the shuffling and dealing of asymmetric information card games at the code level.

Since its official launch at the end of October, zkHoldem has achieved an average of 200+ DAUs and over 6,000 games played, despite the high gas fees. We are very grateful for the support of the community members.

We will soon release Khartes L3 in collaboration with Lumoz, which will significantly reduce the average gas fees per game and optimize the overall transaction speed. Stay tuned!

CoinVoice：The popularity of fully on-chain games continues to rise. Why did you choose to combine Texas Hold'em with on-chain gaming?

Henry：We decided to develop the first version of zkHoldem as a demo to participate in the Eth San Francisco hackathon last year. The idea was simple. First, because our team members are all loyal Texas Hold'em enthusiasts and have had experience with online poker, we wanted to bring Texas Hold'em to the blockchain to fundamentally solve the issues of fairness and transparency in online poker. Second, we noticed that most applications of zero-knowledge proofs in the market are still at the infrastructure level. We wanted to use Texas Hold'em as a very obvious use case to truly bring these cutting-edge technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption to ordinary consumers to experience.

From a future perspective, bringing Texas Hold'em to the blockchain also has the potential to bring many new possibilities to this traditional game.

By integrating zkHoldem with DeFi, we will have the opportunity to significantly increase the utilization of users' funds. For example, users can use their stETH or assets on AAVE as collateral to borrow CHIP for playing, which is not possible in traditional poker games.

Another example is the Player Staking model that we are currently researching. Imagine if you could stake tokens to a player on zkHoldem and receive a portion of their profits from the game. This is a very SocialFi concept. We can attract users who don't play poker themselves to participate in economic system, allowing them to profit from an investment token or NFT perspective. Conversely, for players on zkHoldem, they can use this method to operate their own fan community, no longer tying their profit model solely to playing poker.

CoinVoice：After the launch of the test product, the overall feedback has been positive. Can you share some of your latest developments?

Henry：The launch of Khartes L3 and the design of the second card game are currently the core focus of our development. In terms of zkHoldem, our primary goal is to improve the user experience to a level similar to Web2 poker platforms. This includes significantly reducing gas fees, improving transaction speed, and lowering the entry barrier for Web2 users.

The design of zkHoldem's economic system and token model is also one of our main tasks this year. We can't reveal too much at the moment, but DeFi and Player Staking mentioned earlier will play a crucial role in zkHoldem's future economic model.

CoinVoice：As one of the first dapps to use FHE, can you explain why zkHoldem needs to use FHE? What other "black technologies" does zkHoldem have to enhance the user experience?

Henry：FHE stands for Fully Homomorphic Encryption. You can think of it as a special form of encryption that allows users to perform calculations on data without decrypting it.

For zkHoldem, FHE is an essential component because to achieve truly decentralized shuffling, we need every user to participate in the shuffling process. The application of FHE ensures that the order of shuffling does not affect the shuffling result and does not give any unfair advantage to players who shuffle later.

In addition to zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption, which play a core role in the game logic, we are also exploring many new technologies that can improve the user experience in zkHoldem. For example, our collaboration with the Lumoz team to build Khartes L3, which will be the first zk L3 based on the Polygon cdk on Manta Pacific. Account abstraction and Social Login, which are already mature technologies, will also be applied in zkHoldem and future games developed by Khartes Studio.

CoinVoice：There are many Layer2 solutions to choose from. Why did you finally choose Manta to build your product?

Henry：Manta, as one of the early investors in Khartes Studio, has provided crucial support to our team's development in terms of resources and technology. Throughout the collaboration, we have gradually realized the capabilities and ambitions of the Manta team in ecosystem building.

In the current landscape of various L2 solutions, we believe that choosing an early-stage ecosystem with a vision, willingness to go all-in, and provide support would be more beneficial to us than choosing a more mature ecosystem with stable liquidity but stronger competition.

As Khartes Studio, we have confidence in continuously delivering competitive application products to the market, and we hope to prove our ability to attract traffic through collaborations with the new ecosystem, both from a product and operational perspective.

CoinVoice：Building a ZK-based on-chain card game while ensuring smooth user experience, have you encountered any major difficulties in this process?

Henry：Regarding this question, I can only say "there are always difficulties, but we overcome them" haha. The development of zkHoldem can be described as an ongoing process of innovation and trade-offs. What we can do is find the best solutions to problems within the existing technical framework, balancing security and user experience. I believe this is a common challenge faced by many Web3 builders.

There are still many features in zkHoldem's user flow that need to be optimized and updated, including random matchmaking and automatic check-out, which may seem basic but are challenging to implement due to the fully on-chain nature of the game. Solving these issues requires not only allocating more development resources but also innovative thinking in design. In addition to smart contract engineers, our team also includes dedicated cryptographers to solve the challenges encountered during the development process. This may be a unique advantage for us as an application layer team.

CoinVoice：Which regions of the world are you mainly targeting for marketing?

Henry：At this stage, our promotion is not specifically focused on any particular region but more on the crypto-native attribute as a measure. The KOLs and communities we cooperate with cover different regions in Asia, Europe, and America, but the commonality among them is their interest in innovation and sensitivity to new opportunities. We specifically select KOLs with these traits for cooperation because we believe they are the influential voices in the industry, rather than judging solely based on the number of followers.

CoinVoice：As the market gradually recovers, what are your plans in terms of product and market strategy?

Henry：In terms of product, we will focus on improving the user experience of zkHoldem and introducing DeFi and Player Staking features in the next version to involve more ordinary users in the game's economic system. Additionally, our second game, Psychiatric Center for the Degens, based on Degen Culture, is also in development. The game's Twitter account has already been set up, so interested friends can try to find it haha.

In terms of marketing, this year we will focus on the Ignition Program and the upcoming airdrop mechanism. Our Ignition Program is already live, and users can earn weekly points through playing and inviting others, as well as receive weekly profit-sharing and future token airdrops. After the official deployment of Khartes L3, we plan to collaborate extensively with KOLs for promotion activities. We hope everyone can participate!