Smart contracts can finally react: Rong Kai’s journey from police officer to Web3 builder

What if your smart contract could sense the world around it—and respond on its own?

Today, most smart contracts are blind. They don’t know what’s happening on other chains—or even on their own. Developers have to duct-tape automation with off-chain bots, indexers, and scripts. This approach is not only clunky—it’s fragile, centralized, and expensive to maintain.

In this week’s episode, Sam Kamani sits down with Rong Kai, co-founder of Reactive Network, a protocol aiming to fix this broken model.

From policing to protocols

Before diving into blockchain, Rong Kai served in the Singapore Police Force. It was a volunteer role at Binance that nudged him into Web3, where he discovered the complexity of automation across decentralized systems. That frustration sparked the idea behind Reactive Network—a Layer 0.5 infrastructure that allows smart contracts to react.

Instead of relying on external services to observe events, Reactive contracts are written in Solidity and can see and act on-chain using reactive triggers.

Why automation in Web3 is broken

Here’s the problem: most smart contracts today require off-chain logic to function meaningfully. Developers must use:

• Centralized indexers
• Third-party bots and schedulers
• Off-chain data sources to trigger actions

Each one introduces risk—latency, failure points, security issues, and ultimately, cost.

Reactive Network replaces all of that with an on-chain, event-driven framework.

“Reactive contracts are like adding eyes and ears to your smart contract,” Rong explains. “Now they can observe events across chains and respond without needing off-chain help.”

Building the Reactive stack

Reactive is built with a Solidity-first approach and supports multi-chain environments via integrations like Hyperlane, enabling general message passing (GMP).

Its architecture includes:

• A custom sequencer to orchestrate reactive logic
• On-chain sensors to monitor conditions
• A gas payment mechanism for automated execution—where smart contracts can pay gas themselves

This enables smart contracts to function like decentralized bots that can run logic based on any observable event across supported networks.

Fueling adoption with a $3M dev fund

To bootstrap the ecosystem, Reactive Network is offering a $3 million developer fund consisting of grants and bounties. Whether you're building DeFi tools, cross-chain infra, or just experimenting with automation, there’s strong support for you to explore reactive contract design.

Their onboarding strategy includes ecosystem partnerships, deep community support, and a focus on familiar tooling—Solidity and EVM chains come first, with non-EVM support planned.

A modular, composable future

As Rong notes, the future isn’t about infinite new chains—it’s about fewer, more specialized ones with better coordination and automation. Reactive Network fits into that vision by offering a layer that empowers developers to build smarter, more composable systems.

For developers still cobbling together indexers and cron jobs, Reactive offers a cleaner, safer, and far more elegant approach.

Links & Resources

• Listen on Spotify
• Listen on Apple Podcasts
• Reactive Network Website
• Tweet thread summary
• Be a guest or contact us: https://www.web3pod.xyz/

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