The biggest thesis back then and even now is that Web 3 isn't
secure enough. Facebook wanted to build a
stable coin to power Facebook itself.
That was the DM leader project. They looked at the EVM, looked
at the SVM and decided that it wasn't good enough.
So the language itself it's a lot easier to write code.
There's actually some diagram that shows like to write account
checks for a full module. It takes SVM like 2 pages.
It takes EVM like 5 pages. It takes like the movie on like
10 lines. If we ever have more than like
1000 users on chain, the EDM chain simply can't handle load
because you're waiting for one thread, what parallelization
enables use at multiple threads. So if you have 10 transactions,
instead of waiting for E to B to C to D, you can do a transaction
transaction B. Transaction C transact D all the
same time because you have multiple threads within the VM.
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Welcome to Epicenter of the show, which talks about the
technologies, projects, and people driving decentralization
in the blockchain revolution. I'm Sebastian Quitio and I'm
here with my Co host Felipe Ernst.
Today we're talking to Rushi Mancha.
He's the Co founder. At Movement Labs.
There are a network of move based modular block chains.
Before we talk to Rushi, just want to disclose that Movement
Labs is a portfolio company of Interop Ventures.
But with that out of the way, hey Rushi, thanks for joining
us. How's it going guys?
Pleasure to be on here. Yeah.
So we were just talking before the show about like East Denver
and I think this is the first episode to come out after the
conference, maybe the 2nd. But yeah, you you, we were both
there wearing the movement sweatshirt, which is very comfy.
Yeah. What were your impressions about
E Denver and, you know, compared to last year?
Like how do you think the space has evolved?
I mean the short answer is we're back.
Last year it was like kind of dreary cause like post FTX, it
was like 3 months after FTX and all the debacles and everyone
was like pretty damn bad. If you were there, you were like
in it for the like actual long, long term.
There weren't that many side events, weren't that many
parties, weren't that many like fun things, which is a blessing
and a curse. I think last year we saw a lot
more like builders coming to the market and actually presenting
some of the cool novel ideas, and there's more signal than
noise. And then at Denver there's a lot
of signal, but even more so noise, especially with care if
the lot rises with crypto and AI narrative.
But seeing a lot of those decks flowing around, honestly have
had a difficult try to filter out what's real and what's not
real. But more importantly, I think
it's like great to see the public, like obviously the
market's back. Bitcoin's all time high, price
action is doing well, private markets are going crazy.
So the excitement's back. I think that was really great to
see. But I think it's important to
know like you have to be kind of wary because I think we're
heading way too fast an upwards direction, like even before
having bitcoin's all time high, which creates a lot of like
macroeconomic questions for how long this bull can last as a
supercycle, whatnot. So as like a builder, it's very
important to like a focus on distribution, keep like
capitalizing the market, but also remaining like conscious
that it's probably not going to be a long term thing and maybe
so economics is like suggesting it's a short term thing.
So that kind of adjusts timelines.
I think a lot of different infrastructure companies are
paying attention to the markets in terms of timelines for
product launches and whatnot. So that's one side of the story.
I think some key to finding narratives, you had AI, crypto,
AI obviously like intersection as a core narrative.
Obviously NVIDIA is getting crazy right now which trickles
out as their private markets and the like.
Modularity was still retaining from last year, I think 2023 we
still have ADA focused modularity.
So you had like Celestia, Eigen avail And then this year we put
out like modular day as kind of the flagship event and really
focus on the VM level experimentation.
So I moved VMSVM was in VM and a few different groups.
I really come to market and explain why alternative CVM
important. Let it be sticking out.
This is a big narrative that I used to push on, looking forward
to launch. Yeah, I I felt like East Denver
this year could have been just like modular week.
It felt like every event had a modular twist to it or was
either like about modular or had like people giving panels about
about the modular thesis and the modular stack and like avail had
an event. So I see an event you guys had
an event and and tons of other sort of like more theorem
aligned teams were were doing events on on modular like how?
How? Important do you think modular
is to to the current cycle and in terms of narratives you know
like what amount of developer mind share do you think it's
actually capturing versus what the markets are saying like
what, how, how markets are perceiving it?
I think modular is now used to look good in market term.
It's like modular alignment where you want to structure a
company to be in trouble with other networking systems, which
I think is a good thing. Like if you look at traditional
tech or even traditional like hardware, the the the companies
that won where the companies are able to build parts and hardware
that's in trouble with other E systems that wasn't tied into
one vendor lock in. I think that's what we're seeing
in the Web 3 where if you're building AI Oracles, rebuilding
infrastructure, you wanted to be able to tie to different
different chain, go across chain or multi chain and interoperate
because you have a bigger client base, have bigger marketing
exposure. So I think modular now is a
marketing term where if your infrastructure, if your app, you
want to be modular so you can align with different systems.
Whereas if it's actually a modular that's yet to be
determined, probably not. Honestly modular in this case
probably refers to using all DA using experiential different
like BM levels. But I've seen like modular be
used for like RPCS be used for like even like APIs.
So I think Modular is like a bigger landscape which gives
credit Celestia. They've turned their narrative
into like a meta and it allows if like a bunch of different
companies to align under like 1 unified umbrella.
And we'll get into the entire modular stack in just a bit
Rushi. But it is your first time on
Epicenter, so maybe tell us a little bit about yourself and
your background and how you got into this and what what made you
start Movement Labs? Yes.
So my background's engineering started cutting.
I was 14. I was always interested in
distributed systems technology and whatnot, Started software
engineering. I worked at the United Health
group LED on Prem databases and cloud immigration for a team
over there. Got into that pretty early on.
Then somewhere across crypto was really interested in all program
languages, especially Ross based program languages.
So Kazuwaza and Ross was really exciting to me from there Me and
my Co founder group we're both at Vanderbilt University which
is a university in the South of the United States.
He was a few years older than me but I was playing one of the
first dex in app does he both satay the first yield dragger in
app does. So we were early move builders,
this was August of 2022, so pre FTX back when like things were
better in that cycle. And then we wanted to bring
things like we love moving, which I think I stumbled across
it because I like, I read like a New York Times article or some
like block article where I was like Facebook's doing this
blockchain programming language and their new blockchain
initiative. And it got me excited because I
was always interested in blockchains, but I was always
concerned of security and it would ever scale to mainstream
consumers. And Facebook is the biggest
consumer app for the planet, and they took a bet on programming
and started Move language. So I built the first deck,
Synaptos, that ultimately led to movement because we wanted to
bring the moving beyond to Aetherium.
I get more to the move side, but that's kind of how I got here.
Yeah, super cool. Yeah, let's get into the Move
side. So basically Move is a language
as you said, created by Facebook to to be more dev friendly, more
more secure than Solidity and the likes of Solidity like Viper
it's been used for for Libra and DM obviously, but kind of SUI
and up to us are the main chains that kind of build on it today
to tell us what kind of sets Move apart from their solidity.
Yes, I think going back to the root, Facebook wanted to build a
stable coin to power Facebook itself.
That was the DM leader project. They looked at the EVM, looked
at the SVM and decided that it wasn't good enough.
They needed their own infrastructure and needed VM and
language that could scale for billions of users as well as
provide security front chain. The biggest thesis back then and
even now is that Web 3 isn't secure enough.
If I ever want my mom or anyone in my family to use crypto, the
biggest thing they're saying is isn't going to get hacked, isn't
going to be rugs, and they're like a lot of scams going on and
Moo was kind of built to combat that from the smart contract
level. So it stops like 9095% of tax
factors we're seeing today in the EVM as well as provides
obviously for some of the tax we're seeing SVM as well, it's
like some so that's kind of the root and origin cost.
And then we kind of bring into like why move.
The thesis is a was built by the biggest consumer app bringing a
new web to developers over the next two or three years.
You'll see suite and app does use their big treasuries to
attract consumer apps and consumer builders to bring net
new developers to each system. As our language itself is
designed to be a blockchain first language the knowledge I
could say is like Move is to rust as reactors JavaScript.
If you follow Javascript's history web two it came to
market no one really liked writing JavaScript and then
React came to market made website generation much easier
like you can design custom components.
You're like object oriented. Same thing with move it's people
don't really like Wagon Rust they like the framework's the
top of it. So move the move and the move VM
is a framework. You can think of it on top of
Rust where you can design modules that are very custom.
You can have on chain events radio track protection, so the
language itself, it's a lot easier to write code.
There's actually some diagram that shows like to write account
checks for a full module. It takes like SVM like 2 pages,
it takes EVM like 5 pages, it takes like the movie on like 10
lines as well as you have embedded on chain protection.
So you have the move prover at the VM level, which stops risky,
stops injure, overflows, it stops all the attackers we're
seeing today in crypto. So it's the most important
innovation, security while also being paralyzed.
So it touches in the paralyzed narrative block.
STM was actually built by app Das Labs, as pioneered by Monad
and a few other groups. So think of like the best, the
fastest VM and your favorite auditor combined into one VM at
one time. The EVM and Solidity in
particular. I mean they are pretty low level
and they let you do a lot of things that other programming
languages like move don't let you do.
So for instance, things like inline assembly or something
like move would never let you do this, right?
But the reason why it was devised this way was to give
developers more freedom and kind of optimizing for things like
gas cost, right. So with kind of this more
prescriptive language that move is you are also somewhat tied
down in, in you know in in terms of what you can actually do
especially in kind of a distributed system such as kind
of a blockchain ecosystem. Does this concern you that you
can kind of optimize for things as well as you could in the more
permissive languages? I think going back to web to
example, like you don't have the flexibility with Reactor via or
Angular. It's simply the best framework
to build and design websites. If you really want
customizations, you can go at like C++ level.
You can like Cherry your own kind of Ruby on Rails frameworks
that's more designed for specific like mega use cases.
I think there's two sets of argument here.
A move increases the velocity of production.
So let's say for example I'm a 24 year old kid, I will want I
want to launch my own DFA app in two weeks.
Move is the best way to do that because you can get to mark
quickly, you can write code quickly, you don't have to worry
about account checks, you don't have to worry about keep
debugging. So it's the easiest way to
Sprint on product development if you do want low level
customizations. The movie system's actually
working on a lot in line assembly and integrating
assembly directly into the Move language.
Obviously it's a nascent language.
It was launched like a year ago. So there's a lot of fixes and
optimizations are happening. But over the next three or four
years, I'd imagine that Move also adopts a similar low level
support. I think the address team is
working this as well as we're looking into as well.
We actually look at it at the Bico level.
So you can actually directly write you'll which is like a
assembly language directly to our VM.
That's part of our text That kind of differentiates it from a
person sui. We've made it fully even
compatible. So you can take the silly code,
do the 145 AP codes and map it to the 54 move AP codes and
launch the VM. Between that process, it's we
have a abstract syntax tree which enables runtime and SDK to
understand Yule byte code. But also if you are a very
talented developer and you want to customizations as a smart
contract level and you want to use assembly, you can write Yule
directly to the interpreter. No, that's super interesting.
I had no idea that was happening.
How do you feel about the mindshare advantage for the EVM?
Obviously the EVM has been around a lot longer and there's
tooling and people know it and there's tutorials and so on.
Do you think this can be overcome by kind of like the the
sort of treasuries that Facebook and up to us and Sui and so on
put into it? I think it's our it's our PvP.
They both exist. If you want to use Lido today,
EVM is the best place to use it and will be the best place to
use it for the next five years. But the thing with the stance is
the EVM however approaches legacy code.
It is code that works really well for past use cases when we
have 1000 years on chain. MOV is designed for billions of
users on chain. It was designed for Facebook to
be on chain, which is why you have parallelization but also
you have Security benefits. So it's actually complementary
such that that you have the EDF legacy code and legacy software
for early kind of web applications.
You can think about Bitcoin script still supports, people
still use it for various use cases.
But if you ever want to do on chain consumer, on chain social,
any actual use case that requires high throughput
applications as well security, you need to use a framework like
Move. How Move approaches is we
recognize the shortcomings of of Move itself in terms of a new
language as well as the network effects of EVM and we combine it
so we have a MEVM where you have Moves support as well as EVM
support. So if you're looking to deploy,
I don't want to chain or like Avi on chain or you just swap on
chain. Today you can use the EVM
runtime interpreter. If you want to build the next
biggest consumer app, you can use the Move STK as well.
I think that's the best way to approach next Gen.
VMS which is I think a lot of different groups messed up on a
lot of layer ones in next Gen. VMS were like this is our
program where it's just our framework, it's the best thing.
If you don't use it, you can screw off and then they lost a
lot of developers. It was difficult to track
liquidity for us. We are acknowledging that EVM
still has a liquidity we want to fully support and actually be as
ethereal as possible while supporting moving the long term
and supporting proliferating its growth.
You talked about parallelization a couple of times there.
Can you kind of go into what that means?
So in traditional EVM or any other stack, you have sequential
processing, which means you have if you have tentative
transaction, it's a transaction A to B to C to D So within a
given VM, you're waiting for a transaction to finish for one
single thread. Typically in today's crypto
environment, sometimes it's not a big deal.
If you're using Lido like you'll have $5 gas fees or whatnot,
which for some of you just for like big whales, it's fine.
If you have $1,000,000 on chain you pay $5 gas fees, they don't
really care. But what parallelization enables
use at multiple threads. So if you have 10 transactions,
instead of waiting for E to B to C to D, you can do a transaction
transaction B transaction C transact D all the same time
because you have multiple threads within the VM there was
first started with like the block STM process which app has
pioneer which is a new form of parallel processing that enables
high throughput parallelized threads.
Y is really important is for two reasons, a you on low gas fees.
So if you look at near, if you look at Swiss say they had an
extra nothing gas fees which is from parallelization.
While it took the EVM, you still have a theory in which it's like
$50 gas fees. Even layer twos today are pretty
expensive and they require layer threes to scale.
My thesis is a layer threes don't make sense if you have a
paralyzed layer 2 because you can have multiple threads that
can handle and manage date. The second thing is on if you
look at descriptions of the best use case of parallelization,
every EVM chain went down like to get like seeking saying
arbitrary went down 120 GPS. If the if the chain didn't go
down like avalanche, it was at like $50 gas fees.
Which means that if if we ever have more than like 1000 users
on chain, the EDM chain simply can't handle load because you're
waiting for one thread. Think about logically right?
If you have a high impact event like inscriptions or game going
crazy on one thread and you just swap on the same thread, it's
going to cause the gas piece for you to swap to go up.
Or if there's a world where you can multiple threads and you
have gas fees, go crazy on one thread rather than effect you
just swap. Doesn't affect DYDX, doesn't
affect GMX other threads, so you can actually have modularity
within the threads itself instead of requiring constant
infrastructure upgrades that make no sense at scale.
So Long story short, parallelization enables
concurrent transaction processing which allows flow gas
fees as well as allows for a management of state during times
of high network activity. There's a lot to unpack here.
So I think some of these things in the Ethereum ecosystem are
being tackled by intense space transactions, right?
What's your take on those? I think Intense based tries
actions pretty early on. I know Shogun's trying to do
something for like the moding system and the one inches also
trying to push towards that. The general thesis was that it's
like very early stages yet to be proven because there's a lot of
interoperability problems. If you try to get intense
between like AEVM chain on one like layer two and another layer
two like across is probably the biggest one here.
It's very difficult to do like bridging standards and there's a
lot of secure assumptions they're making.
But I would say I guess in the EBM world intense is another way
to tackle that. But still the fees are generally
a high and there's still like just cause like just cause
across has intense built to the bridging doesn't mean it can
handle high load. If that was the case, like
inscriptions would not take another chance.
And so basically when you talk about parallelization, I mean
basically we used to have this this idea any here with that I
very much hope is going to return at some point with with
kind of like smart shards where basically you have where you
have individual execution environments with local states
that kind of can interact async with one another.
When you have stacks that natively do parallelization, how
do you handle the state? How do you make sure that you
kind of have one Ledger? How do you deal with security?
Well, the thing was that's one of the benefits of using
Ethereum's layer too. As you inherit the network
security and the valor set and the kind of decentralization,
that theorem is already built and you put the move VM on top
of that. I bring parallelization to
Ethereum, which is why I think it's very like the vision for
Ethereum is actually to bring parallelization to the VM level
because you can inherit the security, manage state bloat
through the settlement dealers. While you have VMS that can
provide performance parallelization, you have like
parallelize Evms. Coming now to Ethereum, you have
SVMS Move VMS. This is definitely the rise of
these virtual machines, but they're all saying that the AIM
is still the best place to manage state and store data.
I'll hand off to to Seb here. Sorry for the for the intense
inter interrogation here from the EVM camp.
No, these are, these are all great questions.
I I love it. I was just watching and and
really enjoying that whole exchange.
I mean, you know, to kind of bounce back on what you were
saying Rishi, you know, in terms of you know, the EVM being
legacy code. I sometimes equate DVM and I
know this, this analogy doesn't overlap exactly but look at the
EVM and salinity a little bit as I do.
You know, PHPPHP has been around for over 20 years.
It it is still powering something like 60 to 70% of
websites on the Internet, you know, most of which are
WordPress websites and Facebook. However, you know ask a college
kid today or like a young engineer what language he's
building with, like he's probably using, you know like
Node JS and React and all these sort of new Web 2 frameworks and
and not PHP. So I, I sort of look at the EVM
and Solidity in the same from the same perspective where I
think the EVM will continue to power very important
applications and D5 will continue to power these, you
know, sort of legacy applications that are going to
be you know, very, very important to Ethereum and sort
of crypto infrastructure moving forward.
But you know as the space moves towards a more modular ecosystem
stack new VMS that are better suited for, for that, for that
infrastructure will probably prevail in those ecosystems.
Is that a good way to look at it?
Or is that analogies missing? Missing some parts, no.
I think that makes perfect sense.
Like a guy could touched on like the EVM has done a great job of
boot shopping the initial crypto user base and use cases for D5
but there still is a lot of challenges.
So that's why these all BMS are coming out of our performance,
security and a bunch of the different trade-offs to kind of
scale existing Ethereum use cases.
But like Liquid with with web two is kind of different where
you have, if you have a novel new tech stack, if you have a
cool new website and you can essentially vampire attack to
use this thing like user base and bring it over pretty quickly
probably within a two to three month test span.
That's not really possible in crypto because you have
financial incentives. So if you have like building
locked up on one of each system, it's very difficult to migrate
and essentially take all the liquidity over to a new nasty
system which is why it's it's more of like a long term horizon
where you'll see liquidity slowly move to Exelana which is
why Exelana has been kind of crushing in, it's been steadily
growing TBLS was app since we. So we're slowly seeing that
liquidity and users can move over to the next 10 VMS but it's
still going to be like a 10 year process probably before the EDM
is at least completely challenged.
So in the current state of execution environments is you
acknowledge the EVM, acknowledge the liquidity benefits it has
while try to try to create different use cases for these
alt VMS, make sure those use cases actually reach fruition
and then slowly work on acquiring the even liquidity.
Once you prove that. I think the two main contenders
are this SVM and then move VMA which have a huge eastern
backing of from pre-existing level ones and B how specific
teams are carrying out on the alt VM2 VM each system.
So maybe just like playing devil's advocate here, like what
do you make of the fact that you know Barrett Chain is launching
an EVM chain, you know, say also is I, I think now dropping Kazum
wazum to to favor a paralyzed EVM in in order to, you know
attract more developers. I think they've found it
difficult to attract Cosm Wazum developers.
You know, if this is all true and if like move and and and so
lot of VM are better suited to this kind of new era of
blotching applications, why are you know these very large like
especially Barry Chain right? There's like large ecosystem
play putting the EVM first. I'll take you to the same.
Point of view where the paralyzed EVM, I would contend
is not the same as the EVM. It's completely redesigned
virtual machine, It just even compatible.
You can argue that our MEVM is a paralyzed EVM even though it's a
completely different virtual machine.
So I think the paralyzed EVM is I would consider also the next
Gen. VM because it's a complete
redesigned virtual machine. This has EVM compatibility from
the start. There are security issues with
Solidity but say isn't really prioritizing that because their
go to market is being a trading first chain being a high
throughput chain so they don't really care for optimizing for
smart country security. So the the simple answer to say
example, the modern example is those are completely different
EVMS or VMSI would not say their current EVM, they're actually
like the Monet EBM. I want to say EBM which is
completely different. So still ties in the next Gen.
thesis. And then As for Bearish, I would
say that's like the main value prop.
There is a community they've done a great job assembling,
maybe the most valuable community crypted today.
And a lot of their activity is based on this proof of liquidity
consensus where it's actually doesn't make sense to use a next
Gen. VM because they don't really
care about speed, they don't really care about security as
much. They're more focused on using
governance and using the liquid staking every staking narrative.
But I know for example like talking to the teams and
different teams are throughput is a concern for them because
even like mempool went down recently, it probably won't be
able to do more than like 50 TPS at scale.
So it's we're actually going to be working with Birgi and
bringing the Movie VM to their system.
Probably more experimental on down the road map, but for any
game that wants to launch, a bear chain simply probably won't
work. You'll probably need to like get
an exclusion for that. Yeah, so therefore.
Like Bear chain will sort of act as a a security layer for L twos
and and and other app chains that want to leverage bear chain
security. Yep cool.
Let's let's talk about the stack.
So you know immediately there are there are different parts of
the stack here that yeah, I mean even for me sometimes like it
can still be a little bit confusing.
So you know there's M1, there's M2 and the idea here is for like
M1 to act as you know this sort of like layer one that that
enables M2 chains and roll ups to to launch on top of it.
Can you explain like broadly what the stack looks like and
where? And also there may be zooming
out like where these different components sit within the
modular stack. If we bring in like now Celestia
and Eigen layer maybe like union for interoperability, you know
if we're looking at a sort of infographic of this, like what
would that look like? Yeah, so we can.
Start with top down South execution layer.
You have the movement VM which is the DM salvage machine,
supports move smart contracts as well as supports EVM smart
contracts. So it's the EVM interpreter
that's eventually transition to transpire that exists on top
SDK. So any smart contracts whether
you're in MOVE or slowly Kansas other execution layer settlement
is Ethereum. We believe that's the best
security centralization also enables liquidity to easily flow
to layer two through a trust minimize bridge.
The kind of stack of framework we're using is a zero knowledge.
Rob, we're using versus right now for ZK fraud proofs, but
also looking at scope out our own ZK Move VM proving kit.
So you have MOVE VM execution, ZM settlement, ZK fraud proofs
as kind of the roll up framework and then right now using slash C
for DA, I'm giving us the one that's Live Today as well as
allows for cold data to be pushed directly DA and saves a
lot of gas fees. So it's kind of like this
Frankenstein of like different layers which is kind of the
direction I I think a lot of different roll up in tubers.
And last bit on sequencer portion, I think today's
centralized sequencers cannot scale and do not scale.
I think most people agree. If you look inscriptions like it
like broke every sequence that exists and the simple reason
that arbitrary MZK sink and these teams aren't innovating is
because they're making a lot of money on sequencer fees.
Because we're a next Gen. roll up, our fees are basically
pennies. So we don't actually prioritize
sequencing fees. We have a fully decentralized
sequencer day one that enables Valors to take the move token to
participate in sequencing for layer 2.
So it's a fully decentralized layer to a network where the
transaction fees are distributed to stakeholders, stakeholders
take the token to participate in sequencing.
So actually is like a bridge between like a layer one and
layer 2IN that sense. How?
Do you deal with the
decentralized sequencing? Because if you kind of look at
the L2 stack on Ethereum right now, no one's really figured
this out yet, right? So basically, S Tech are the
people who are who are saying that we're not going to do this
without, but they're also saying they're probably launched
earliest in a year or so. Yeah, so.
I think a large in groups like Origin based setter, they've all
announced like Optimism Super chain is a sequencer.
I think they've all announced that they want to do desensitize
sequencer. But like I touched on, there is
no economic incentive for them to prioritize it because they're
making a lot of money on sequencer fees.
So it's always like OK, we'll eventually do that or we'll work
with a third party, but the third party never really works
out. So it's always been pushed back.
For us it's a directly a priority a because we're a high
throughput chain. So we each have a decentralized
sequencer to manage the load down to the network.
And B, that's our token business model.
We need a decentralized sequencer for the Ballers to
have taking privileges, which actually accrues value and buy
pressure for the token. So that means we're actually
prioritizing as a core part of our tech stack.
I think Metis is another one. Our mode, one of those has
started and launched with the decentralized sequencer and I
think we'll see a lot more of this come.
I think Astra is also launching the new layer, two of the
decentralized sequencers. So teams that prioritize these
centralized sequencers, we'll be able to Sprint to market, while
teams that don't prioritize it have no sense to do so.
Can you? Walk us through how it works.
So the only the only technical implementation that I'm aware of
is the one that Sello is pushing kind of who who are moving from
like an L1 to an L2 network. So how how do you go about it?
Yeah. So I think we.
Have a very similar approach Sello.
Sello had a layer one. They now they're approaching
this like layer two. Honestly cable idiom.
All the valors from Sello were layer one to layer one, take the
cello token to participate in sequencing for the cello layer
two. So that kind of works how we
have it, right. So we have M1, which is booklet
stomach consensus. For those that are familiar,
it's from the Avalanche system. That's essentially A
fastenality, extremely low hardware requirements and very
decentralized consensus mechanism.
That's our sequencer valor stick to move token to participate in
sequencing for the layer 2. The benefits of using them and
there is leaderless it when you water Q transactions, you can
have multiple different nodes. So if one node goes down, the
network doesn't go down, you'd have a centralized point of
failure and then B, anyone can run a node for the network.
So the issues like slana apps and squeeze the hardware
requirements are very high. The minimum stakes are very
high. So it's very centralized in that
sense. With our stomach consensus,
anyone can run a node. It's very low sticky
requirements, so we can have much more decentralization at a
network level. Cool.
I want to come back to. The to the stack a little bit.
So could you describe like what is the role of of M1?
So is M1 like the the sort of shared sequencer that all M2
chains? Are are going to?
Use. Yeah.
And and then how does M1 then connect into IBC and then all of
the other like move chains that are part of the broader, you
know, move ecosystem, so you'll have M2?
As the main like fraction, well think of like the optimism
chain, the main chain you have M1 as sequencer which is kind of
analogous to optimisms super chain sequencer.
And then we have other move rollups launching the network
and all sequenced by the same sequencer set which is M1 which
is like the OP stack rollups. So similar business model there
was focused on A launching our sequencer off the bat and B on
the next Gen. VM.
So our stack will actually complimentary to LP stack where
you can use LP stack, use the move stack to the VM and connect
to the sequencer. I think everyone's customizing
ADA layer, customizing role frameworks, customizing proven
marketplaces but then not touching the EVM at all.
Our stance is we don't believe that should be the case.
We should we want experimentation at the VM level.
If you're building a gaming role up which we see a lot of demand
for, you probably want to use the Move VM or SVM something
like that. And yeah, the M1 sequencer
connects all the different systems, allows for liquidity to
be routed seamlessly and then envision as you have these
hundreds of roll ups all connected to Ethereum with this
decentralized sequencer set. Fascinating.
And yeah, let's maybe just zoom in a little bit to where
Celestia fits into all of this and how it supports the the roll
ups being built on on top of album 1.
Yeah. So the thesis last year was each
settlement and EDA is really expensive.
If it were like optimize an arbitrum, the fees are pretty
high there. So how can we free all DA to
really scale a theum roll ups so that you can still be on theum
settlement but post call data to a cheaper source.
That's when Celestia Eigen avail even near an hour kind of
position ourselves as leaders in the space from there kind of
like what roll ups like ourselves Eclipse Manta etcetera
have already been focusing on is OK we're bringing alt VMS and
next Gen. VMS and different VM stacks to
Ethereum. We need to use Celestia because
if you have a paralyzed VM on top of theorem and you're not
using alt TA it's still being really expensive.
You'll inherit security of theorem and obviously be a true
L2 but the user experience could be pre subpar at least until the
pool being shortings out which is appears out at this point.
So that's kind of thes of these alt DA that also ties into the
kind of IBC narrative which you touched on before.
We're working with the union on being fully IBC compatible.
They're building out so like kind of machines for us.
So essentially if you want to do cross chain swaps on top of M2,
you can do that with IBC itself. Kecked Osmosis.
Kecked to Juno. Kecked to your favorite Cosmos
sones or World chains or whatever you want to call it,
Yeah. So we're.
Recording this on March the 12th and the dengue wouldn't upgrade
is going to be tomorrow, so kind of this will give us Proto Deng
sharding. I think it's pretty obvious that
it's not going to be enough, but how much do you think it'll help
the entire call data situation? Yeah, so it's an.
Exciting day tomorrow, so looking forward to that.
But to be frank, Frank, I don't think it's going to be that
noticeable. I've seen like some recent
measurements and like I think I'm going to be a few cents
difference the full day and starting as we know it is like
three or four years out which at that case that we can reassess
the needs for all DA. But I think like slust taking
cut fees down at 99% today while per day and charting is like .1%
something like that. So I don't think it really it
really is a factor I think user experience I mean F theorem will
be a little bit better it's it's why I stepped in the right
direction. But the fact of the fact, the
truth of the matter is like Ethereum Foundation and like
Ethereum itself can't move as rapidly as like Celestia Eigen
third party infrastructure groups.
So in the short term and midterm, honestly, all DS sells
the market. And what's the?
Role of like restaking within the sort of movement story.
And how does eigen layer fit into all of this?
Yeah, so rethinking. Has always been an interesting
area that I think it's definitely, probably the hottest
thing right now, one of the hottest things people want to
use Ethereum security. There's groups bringing you to
Cosmos, there's groups bringing you to like Bitcoin and it's
just like kind of using more capital efficient markets.
We're seeing a lot of layer twos work with resignal providers at
the bridge contract level. So imagine you have like
arbitrary deposit each to Barber trump, it can be able to
restrict you with a Rio Renzo one of these players and have
extra yield. So I think these are much like
yield bearing strategies that layer two is adopting.
I think the way we're approaching is like all similar
to that like having LRT at the bridge contract.
If you're a family office liquid follow you a lot of ETH.
You want to deposit on a chain. You can you can stake it on on
an LST and then restick it with LRT on the British cadre level
have fully automated so you don't need to worry about it.
Have like extra yield that you wouldn't be able to get usually.
And the benefit of loss is that because it's fully formally
verified, it's actually the most secure way to restick ETH.
So we topped a lot of liquid funds.
The concern they have is OK, I want to earn yield, but security
is very important to me. I'm not.
I'm family office. I don't like to take a lot of
risk. I just like hold ETH and sell at
certain times. So for them the pitch is OK.
This is the best place to deploy ETH restate kit, earn the yield
that you want, and have it fully, fully verified.
So it's not the security concerns that you're actually
worrying about. It actually creates a bigger
narrative around insurance, which gets me excited because in
the past insurance has been really pretty much useless
because it's more contract risk. There's actually a world where
you can, because you have ETH, you can use that as collateral
for investment. So if you're like using Ave. or
USWAP on chain, you want to use Restake as collateral.
You can use IGA insurance, which in the park protocol they're
working on as collateral for the investment.
So that's another ABS that's actually really exciting
especially for the move because the security gaps enable it to
be much more risk adverse or much more risk better, which
enables interest rates to be lower, which enables retail
capital come in more easily. Any thoughts on the rise of
Bitcoin L twos because kind of we've in the in the past months
or so those have been all the rate right?
Yeah, I. Think like personally, I don't
really understand that well. I'm not that deep in Bitcoin
space. So like the Bitcoin programming
space, I'm sure there's other people that can see better to
it. For my standing, it's like a way
for people to you take existing Bitcoin reserves, put it on
chain or put it into we're now like custody multi sigs or side
chains and are on yield for that.
So in the short term makes sense.
It's a way to generate yield and it's a way for layer twos or
whatever you want to call it to boost up TBL ability, rolling
chain like 2 billion three billion TBL in a week or
something crazy. And I think a lot of geek
systems are now looking at that. How can we acquire Bitcoin
liquidity. In the past rapid TC was always
available but family offices, liquid funds don't really want
to wrap BTC because the whole process gas fees are really
high. It's a risk.
So BTCL, twos enabled needed Bitcoin to exist and be
repurposed for yield. So I think what a lot of
different groups are looking at is how can we integrate
something in Babylon, integrate like the BTC accrued from there
and earn the yield for our system.
So something that we're looking into is, is there a world where
we can be native BDC, be it Babylon or other infrastructure
providers and have that used in D5.
But obviously we're experimental and probably more down the road
map. But I think like Bitcoin itself
is here to stay. I think that each EF proved that
it's going to be like currency of gold.
It's not going to be very programmable.
I don't imagine the next social or gaming app being built on
these BTCL twos. I don't think that's possible at
my current knowledge. I think it's just a way to
repurpose BTC, which is cool. So I think short term play makes
sense. Long term, I'm Kevin Schurr.
But teams like us are looking to kind of leverage that for
existing TDL Security benefits. Yeah, I I personally think that
Bitcoin is going to play a a bigger and bigger role in the
Layer 2 narrative in the coming year.
And you know a lot of that I think is fueled by you know the
ETF bringing like lots more liquidity into the space but
also a lot of the kind of technical developments that are
happening there. So I've you know there was this
Bitcoin renaissance event at Denver and I think like half of
the teams that were that were that had boost there were were
building some kind of restate Bitcoin product or liquid steak
Bitcoin product And and I think that you know given bitcoins
position as like the largest and more secure blockchain it makes
a ton of sense for that capital to be utilized well one in D5
through liquid state assets with now whether like that's
technically possible that you know you can do sort of trust
minimize versions of Bitcoin on other chains.
It's going to be very important like yeah, we don't want this
just to be a multi sig, but then yeah, the security aspect I
think is also huge. So like whoever figures that out
and brings it to market, I think we'll we'll do very well.
Want to move on now to, yeah, you you guys announced a couple
of months ago a partnership with Yeah Union and Noble and I was
really excited about this 'cause we're we're all also very
bullish on, on those two teams. Yeah.
How does this help bring USCC to movement?
And can you describe maybe like the role of Union in bringing
IBC to, you know, the movement ecosystem, but also Cosmos and
Ethereum and sort of tying it all together so that we can have
fungible USC across all these platforms?
Yeah, things like IBC has always been like regarded as like the
most secure, one of the best bridging centers on the market
and there's a bunch of transport layers on top of that which like
layer 0 wormhole, hyperlane. Recently Wormhole was a nice
warm chain which is like gateway now which is their cosmos
adaption layer. Zero and Hyperlane both have
also obviously adaptions. You have Xlore as well.
So all the biggest bridging protocols all use IBC under the
hood, but they use it probably non-native way is really
difficult. I mean point of view to use them
like for warmly you have to bridge to the gateway and the
bridge gateway to respective chains.
There's lack of native IBC connections.
So there's a few groups that have emerged to kind of solve
this problem. You have like Palmer Labs, you
have like proposal finance, you have Union Labs.
Now they're now looking at different ways to bring IBC
natively T systems. So part of our partnership with
the union is they're working on building direct Lifeli machines
for a layer or two. So if you're a DAP on top of
movement, you can do transactions directly.
Does Moses do it to other chains?
It starts off through the Union chain I believe, but eventually
they'll be native IBC compatibility, which really
exciting because now you can have any of USCC, you have Adam,
Tia, you can get the benefits of all the Cosmos and assets that
people want on chain without relying on the third party and
secure bridge provider. But I think my general thesis is
that IBC is the COSMOS standard. I know we touched on this as
convergence where Cosmos accomplishes the vision, the
Internet of blockchains where every roll up, every L1L2L3 or
whatever you want to call it, we'll use IBC as a main bridging
provider bridging standard of the hood.
It's just depending on like where the wrappers on top of it
and transfer layers on top of it that facilitate that.
So you have like Wormhole doing it from like their point of view
which is more third party and more trust reliant and you have
like Union and Palmer which are looking to kind of address the
security assumptions and increase speeding times.
Union specifically is looking at ZKIBC.
They built Comet BLS, which is a new standard for messaging, some
pretty exciting and bullish on them, which is how we're working
with them. Yeah, I'm I'm glad you mentioned
conversions because there's a couple of topics that we we
touched on at the event that I'd like to bring up here.
So you know one of the topics that we talked about was USD
denominated asset dominance in crypto.
It's obviously like USDC and and Tether are you know by a large
margin leading in stable coin issuance you know over things
like like die and and other decentralized stable coins you
do do you think this like you know Corel from Union was on the
panel also And so I I encourage those who haven't seen that to
go check it out. It's on the Nebula Summit
YouTube channel. We'll link to it in this show
notes. But you know he was saying that
you know he felt that there was a risk to crypto to having these
well one like centralized centrally issued stable coins.
But also I think another topic that another sort of point that
I haven't heard brought up very often is yeah, you know this
USDC denominated stablecoins. So it's kind of like US
alignment, U.S. dollar alignment risk.
Do you do you see that as a risk and you know how?
How can one mitigate that considering the fact that like
these stablecoins already have like such dominance over the
space? So yeah, we discussed like USCC
dominance and my thing is like I have actually pro Circle
dominance in the short term because if we already have very
few users on chain and like if you ever want like consumer
safety, right now we need like a third party like big provider
Circle Coin Base to really issue these assets and provide
confidence to retail users. Like going back to my example of
like family using crypto, if I told them to use like die or a
maker or like some of these other stable phone providers,
they're probably free down big. What is this?
If I said it was like, OK, it's a stable coin issued by Circle,
like now probably going to be a public IPO company.
The very US regulated, has a lot of rules, regulations, they feel
all more comfortable. So there's like two kind of
markets here, right? You have like retail, which is
like people who don't really know crypto at all.
They want to explore with it. You need Circle, you need a
Coinbase, You need centralized authority for them to feel
comfortable. And then you have the experience
on chain degens. People have been trading for
years. They recognize that in the world
that Circle kind of goes rogue or Coinbase goes rogue.
They want the ability to safeguard their holdings.
That's why Dye is really interesting, that's why UCT is
like is interesting is that was like Athena, which is not a
stable coin, but they're providing different in
investment kind of issuances. So I think there's different
groups for those categories where you can provide solutions
and stable coins and assets for more roughly native people.
But to bring in people's base, you do need centralized
authorities. So actually Pro Circle Pro
Coinbase issued assets. Yeah, I think that makes sense
to me. I think in the short term it
makes sense. You know, looming in the back of
my mind is always this censorship risk with USDCI think
that's really the main risk that I see.
But as the space becomes more regulated, that is going to be
the case. Also most likely like, I mean
all applications and and dash will be subject to potentially
like having to central transactions that don't fall in
line with like compliance. Yeah.
In terms of, yeah, like this Cosmos and Ethereum convergence
idea, which was the main main topic of the the panel in
Denver, Yeah, what's the end game here for you like in terms?
Of cosmos. And Ethereum coming closer
together and benefiting from each other as sort of strong
points, Where do you see that heading towards?
I think Ethereum. Is used for liquidity, is used
for settlement security. What Cosmos is used for
communication. The Cosmos has a lot of
different features. They had tournament, they had
SDK at IBC, they're called BFT, gone BFT.
There's a whole zone thesis with like custom app chains.
I think a lot of the times the zones had a lot of struggle with
Isotoponomics and blue shopping values.
That's a pretty difficult. But the one thing that was
always prominent and like beautiful was if you had
multiple zones, you could use a Cosmos CK and you connected to
Osmosis, you connected to your favorite chains and it's
permissionless interoperability which is kind of like
Hyperland's motto. But I really see that kind of
mantra spreading towards the theme of the modular stack.
Where in this world where you have all these roll ups and all
aspects of chains, you don't want to wait for a third party
bridge provider to always deploy.
If I'm building a new gaming chain I want to watch 3 weeks, I
sure have to wait for layer zero or any other kind of third party
bridge provider to deploy on top of me.
I should be able to use IBC or some third party pretty standard
to get connected to my favorite chains so I can Sprint on my
product. So I think that's where IBC has
a unique market where enables for permissionless interop, a
few different groups building wrappers on top of it.
But IBC is the standard that's going to be adopted for this
mass welcoming of change that's coming.
Whereas the theorem is still like the programmable computer
where people building on top of it, using it for liquidity,
using it as like a supercomputer and then IBC is connecting on
it. So I think the Cosmo theorem
narrative and the Cosmo theorem vision is coming to fruition
today where maybe Cosmos zones don't win but IBC wins which
means that Cosmos wins and maybe that Ethereum layer like
Ethereum Layer 2 and Ethereum DA as don't really make sense.
There's also a question about what is a roll up is a if you're
really does that mean that you're a roll up or is that mean
L2? I think that's a frivolous
debate. I think as long as you can get
Ethereum some give some some capacity doesn't really matter.
I think that if. IBC wins everybody.
Wins. I think it's not so much.
About like I think the End Game is just you know and and Ethan
Buckman and and Sam Hart were talking about this on a on an
episode of I think it was like one of the Block Works podcast
recently and they were talking about the end game.
And like the end game is all chains using IBC and benefiting
from this amazing intro ability technology.
And then you know if I take it even a step further and this is
sort of Corel's point of view, is that we we have this swarm of
validators that is validating the state of all these chains.
And as an application, you know, like there's just, you don't
know who's validating your your your transaction, but it's it's
being added to this massive sort of swarm of state, this massive
state that is secured by the swarm of of validators.
I kind of see that as the as the end game where Aetherium sort of
sits at the bottom layer provides liquidity provides a
major part of the security. But Cosmos, you know through its
construction, through the construction of the the Cosmos
stack and been at the forefront of of modular with the app chain
thesis brings the technology and the technical philosophy to
build that applications in a way that makes sense.
I'm 100. Percent with you both that kind
of IBC is kind of like the absolutely golden part of
Cosmos. So I think this is something
that kind of the theorem ecosystem is lacking and and bad
kids we see it. And bad, I think.
Bad kids always win. There was a.
Podcast, probably already here a year and a half ago.
Also with Ethan on Bankless. Interestingly, where kind of he
argued his thesis that Ethereum is kind of like this empire
where kind of everything ultimately settles back to
Ethereum, where whereas kind of cosmos is like this network of
cities, states with kind of like pockets of value.
So now in this Cosmos and Ethereum convergence picture,
how would that kind of translate into this metaphor in terms?
Of cities and states like where? Yeah, in terms.
Of like having like a giant empire where basically
everything's kind of like inverted pyramid shaped and
everything ultimately said it's back on main net where so like
that's. I would say like the United, I
would say clearly the US for example the United States would
be Ethereum. You have a bunch of different
states which is like you have like movement is 1 state you
have like another roll up is another state you have all these
different states are all over for roll ups and the highways
that connect all the different states are is obviously where
you need like connectivity between the different states.
Otherwise if you're from California you can't get to New
Jersey. If you're from like Oregon you
can't get to Florida. So that's like the main problem
actually between crypto is like if you look like earlier settle
stage when America was first developed, this is probably just
might inherit American coming out.
But like there was like really it's really hard to like travel
between different States and different regions.
Back in old America when they built roads out and
transportation properly, it was really easy to get between four
states which enable people to network easily and meet their
family and friends. Same thing in today's crypto
where you have a theorem which is like kind of the barren land.
It's like it's like the 1700s out if you would say where you
all of different states kind of forming but still kind of
figuring out what their markets are like like California was a
gold state at one point in New York was a financial hub.
People were still trying to figure out their hubs in that
case. And then the main thing that's
missing is kind of the roads between different chains or in
this case states which the Ibcs position to be a best candidate.
I was like IBC would be the asphalt in this case or the
concrete and then like different groups this is getting really in
depth to it, but like you have like Looney and Polymer in
different groups that are actually building the specific
roads if it makes sense. We talked about.
Adoption kind of depths that with of, you know hundreds of
millions if not billions of people in the very beginning
kind of when we talked about Facebook's motivation to create
MOVE. So what does the future look
like for for Move and Ethereum and kind of when do you think
we'll see the first steps that actually have that sort of
mainstream appear? To plug myself, I was like our
main net, but the the real answer would be like like it
depends on what your real apps are like.
I don't. I don't.
I think there's no apps in crypto yet.
We don't have any real apps yet. I'm talking about like we don't
have like an on street social app.
We don't have anyone that my parents are talking, my friends
are talking about. So we're still very early on
that too. Like I can we can say like oh
we'll have X amount of D fabs, X amount of TBL, but who really
cares. There's just another like copy
pasta of another layer or two. We're trying to build
infrastructure and apps that means people can use send
payments at the speed of light across the world.
So I would say like the movie system is poised to carry that
through the best, A, because you have backing from two of the
biggest consumer chains on the planet and then B, like the
language itself is designed for consumer development.
So I I would say that within like three years we could see
like a really prominent consumer social app that gets a lot of
traction. But in the short term you will
see like much much more Pro France Security 5 strategies
compared to like traditional era twos than traditional methadium
solutions. Great.
Do you want to? Share a little bit about, yeah,
sort of short term, I mean road map for movement, when can we
expect mainnet and how can people start building on
movement or perhaps getting involved?
To get involved like. Go to Disco, check out like a
Builders community Moving Labs XYZ website, follow me on
Twitter at Ushimonchi and then we're rolling out a lot of stuff
endless month and setting some announcements coming on
fundraising as well as like test set aspect coming out next
month. So Dev Nets fully live as well
as it's a device test set shortly.
Awesome. Rishi, thanks so much for coming
on Epicenter and expanding our minds on the on the Alt VM
thesis and why movement is going to the mood pressure.
On it. Thanks so much for having me.
Really appreciate the time. Thank you for joining us.
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