1 00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:02,120 Welcome to Epicenter, the show which talks about the 2 00:00:02,120 --> 00:00:04,920 technologies, projects and people driving decentralization 3 00:00:04,920 --> 00:00:07,720 and the blockchain revolution. I'm patrika ants and today I'm 4 00:00:07,720 --> 00:00:11,280 speaking with Joe Lubin who is the Co founder of Ethereum and 5 00:00:11,280 --> 00:00:14,280 CEO of Consensus. There's been a tremendous surge 6 00:00:14,280 --> 00:00:19,000 in our ecosystem and a lot more respect for permissionless 7 00:00:19,040 --> 00:00:21,640 innovation. Banks are panicking. 8 00:00:22,320 --> 00:00:27,120 Organizations related to banks are trying to figure out what a 9 00:00:27,120 --> 00:00:32,840 world looks like where you can essentially have a full service 10 00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:36,640 bank owned by you in your pocket on your phone. 11 00:00:36,760 --> 00:00:39,800 If I were a bank, I would adopt blockchain just for efficiency 12 00:00:39,800 --> 00:00:42,320 gains, right? So any bank would and should. 13 00:00:42,520 --> 00:00:46,880 So what we're going to be doing is furthering decentralization, 14 00:00:46,880 --> 00:00:49,280 decentralized proving decentralized sequencing and 15 00:00:49,280 --> 00:00:53,440 figuring out where it ways to to share some value creation some 16 00:00:53,440 --> 00:00:55,520 of the revenue with token holders. 17 00:00:55,560 --> 00:00:59,840 And I think we can build a token economy or sub economy with a 18 00:00:59,840 --> 00:01:05,200 lot of linear networks that are independent, quasi independent 19 00:01:05,200 --> 00:01:08,440 or or closely related with one another that are collaborating 20 00:01:08,440 --> 00:01:10,840 with one another, that are sharing infrastructure. 21 00:01:10,880 --> 00:01:14,480 That's the the vision currently for LINEA. 22 00:01:19,080 --> 00:01:22,200 Hey, Joe, thank you so much for coming back on again. 23 00:01:22,800 --> 00:01:24,880 Doctor Ernst, thank you for having me. 24 00:01:26,160 --> 00:01:31,520 One of my favorite podcasts and you are my my favorite podcast 25 00:01:31,520 --> 00:01:34,280 interviewer. You're making me blush. 26 00:01:34,560 --> 00:01:38,560 You're the best. Good. 27 00:01:38,800 --> 00:01:45,880 Maybe let's start with kind of some bird's eye questions. 28 00:01:46,400 --> 00:01:51,000 So if you, I mean, you've been in crypto in extraordinary long 29 00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:56,680 time, Web three values have shifted, right? 30 00:01:56,920 --> 00:02:01,520 Kind of you came into Web 3 after the 2008 financial crisis. 31 00:02:01,600 --> 00:02:04,720 I, I remember you were telling me how you drove across, across 32 00:02:04,720 --> 00:02:08,840 Argentina to see whether you could buy up land in 33 00:02:08,840 --> 00:02:12,400 anticipation of kind of. Peru and Ecuador, but yeah. 34 00:02:13,040 --> 00:02:16,560 Sorry, kind of in anticipate anticipation of kind of this 35 00:02:16,680 --> 00:02:22,800 imminent collapse of the global financial system and now all the 36 00:02:22,800 --> 00:02:25,640 banks are on chain, right? So kind of Web 3 was supposed to 37 00:02:25,640 --> 00:02:29,760 be this ownership revolution and kind of what we're getting to 38 00:02:29,800 --> 00:02:33,040 some extent is this back end upgrade for Wall Street. 39 00:02:33,160 --> 00:02:37,160 And I mean, kind of like I can see it from this, from this from 40 00:02:37,160 --> 00:02:39,080 the perspective of the legacy players, right? 41 00:02:39,080 --> 00:02:42,080 Kind of if I were a bank, I would adopt blockchain just for 42 00:02:42,080 --> 00:02:45,360 efficiency gains, right? So any bank would and should. 43 00:02:46,120 --> 00:02:47,880 This episode has brought you my noses. 44 00:02:48,240 --> 00:02:50,360 Building the open Internet one block at a time. 45 00:02:50,880 --> 00:02:54,440 Nosis was founded in 2015 and it's grown from 1 of Ethereum's 46 00:02:54,440 --> 00:02:57,880 earliest projects into a powerful ecosystem for open user 47 00:02:57,880 --> 00:03:00,720 owned finance. Nosis is also the team behind 48 00:03:00,720 --> 00:03:03,360 products that had become core to my business and that are so many 49 00:03:03,360 --> 00:03:07,520 others like Safe and Cow Swap. At the center is Nosis Chain. 50 00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:12,400 It's a low fee layer one with 0 downtime in seven years and 51 00:03:12,400 --> 00:03:14,400 secured by over 300,000 validators. 52 00:03:14,800 --> 00:03:17,480 It's the foundation for real world financial applications 53 00:03:17,480 --> 00:03:21,640 like Nosis Pay and Circles. All of this is governed by Nosis 54 00:03:21,640 --> 00:03:24,560 Dow, a community run organization where anyone with a 55 00:03:24,560 --> 00:03:29,080 GNO token can vote on updates, fund new projects, and even run 56 00:03:29,080 --> 00:03:32,000 a validator from home. So if you're building in Web 3 57 00:03:32,200 --> 00:03:34,600 or you're just curious about what financial freedom can look 58 00:03:34,600 --> 00:03:37,520 like, start exploring at nosis dot IO. 59 00:03:38,200 --> 00:03:41,880 The deeper question that kind of plagues me is are we at risk of 60 00:03:41,880 --> 00:03:47,840 losing the paradigm shift kind of that was meant to be inherent 61 00:03:47,840 --> 00:03:51,920 to kind of web three if the user experience, Rails and 62 00:03:51,920 --> 00:03:55,920 distribution end up owned by the same old incumbents? 63 00:03:55,920 --> 00:03:59,720 Yeah, I, I think if, if there's any risk and there's a huge 64 00:03:59,720 --> 00:04:03,680 amount of risk in the world right now, it's the risk of the 65 00:04:03,680 --> 00:04:08,240 paradigm shift accelerating. I started in the blockchain 66 00:04:08,240 --> 00:04:14,720 space when it was called Bitcoin in early 2011 and is crypto 67 00:04:15,360 --> 00:04:18,720 anarchic? It was a bunch of people who 68 00:04:19,480 --> 00:04:23,800 were technologists and they drew in people who were very paranoid 69 00:04:23,800 --> 00:04:25,960 and very protective of their own assets. 70 00:04:25,960 --> 00:04:30,400 And I think that ethos has significantly prevailed in the 71 00:04:30,400 --> 00:04:34,320 Bitcoin space. There are other projects and 72 00:04:34,320 --> 00:04:38,760 starting in 2011, 2012, etcetera, colored coins, faster 73 00:04:38,760 --> 00:04:43,600 coin, counterparty, a whole lot of them. 74 00:04:45,240 --> 00:04:50,080 Next was an interesting one that essentially added functions to 75 00:04:50,080 --> 00:04:54,360 the protocol rather than pursuing Vitalik's idea, which 76 00:04:54,360 --> 00:04:59,120 was to add a computationally complete computer to every node 77 00:04:59,120 --> 00:05:02,160 of a, of a decentralized network. 78 00:05:03,480 --> 00:05:09,400 And and so that was all about builders recognizing that this 79 00:05:09,440 --> 00:05:14,760 profound invention of Satoshi decentralized trust was 80 00:05:14,760 --> 00:05:18,120 something that should be everywhere and used in as many 81 00:05:18,120 --> 00:05:22,640 cases as possible, not just in the the narrow use case of money 82 00:05:22,640 --> 00:05:26,560 or store value, some some aspects of money. 83 00:05:26,920 --> 00:05:31,720 And so there were certainly a bunch of crypto anarchist types 84 00:05:31,960 --> 00:05:36,480 early in the Etherium ecosystem, but I think a lot of the, the 85 00:05:36,480 --> 00:05:41,080 early builders were really pragmatic and many of us felt 86 00:05:41,080 --> 00:05:47,120 that this is great. We can transform the world to 87 00:05:47,120 --> 00:05:50,520 greater and greater, call it progressive decentralization 88 00:05:51,920 --> 00:05:54,760 permissionlessly. Nobody can stop us. 89 00:05:55,200 --> 00:05:57,600 You know, we're we're anti fragile. the US government to 90 00:05:57,600 --> 00:06:00,680 even can try to kill us for for years in a row. 91 00:06:00,680 --> 00:06:04,360 And, and ultimately we would just get stronger from those 92 00:06:04,360 --> 00:06:07,600 attacks though move a little more slowly. 93 00:06:08,680 --> 00:06:16,520 And so it was all about building enough functionality, usability, 94 00:06:16,520 --> 00:06:21,400 scalability, etcetera, so that we could just change everything 95 00:06:21,400 --> 00:06:26,080 ourselves if we needed to. And then maybe the older 96 00:06:26,080 --> 00:06:29,240 generations, the older cohorts would die off and the younger 97 00:06:29,240 --> 00:06:32,680 people would be crypto token native etcetera. 98 00:06:33,840 --> 00:06:41,280 But we we really did many of us really did feel that unless the 99 00:06:41,280 --> 00:06:45,360 whole world on boards to progressive decentralization, 100 00:06:46,480 --> 00:06:50,920 the paradigm shift will will not be nearly as effective. 101 00:06:51,440 --> 00:06:57,200 And so early on consensus and a bunch of organizations in our 102 00:06:57,200 --> 00:07:03,240 ecosystem did enterprise blockchain formed the Enterprise 103 00:07:03,240 --> 00:07:09,680 Ethereum alliance and the the technology was used for 104 00:07:09,680 --> 00:07:11,880 consortium chains and things like that. 105 00:07:11,880 --> 00:07:17,600 And a bunch of years ago we declared that that Enterprise 106 00:07:17,920 --> 00:07:23,560 Ethereum is dead, but Long live Enterprise Ethereum because the 107 00:07:23,560 --> 00:07:30,040 layer 2 roll out, roll up road map was invented and has grown 108 00:07:30,360 --> 00:07:32,640 remarkably successful in my opinion. 109 00:07:32,960 --> 00:07:38,920 And so, you know, is is a whole bunch of banks and their 110 00:07:38,920 --> 00:07:44,160 customers worse than some of the exploitative things that we've 111 00:07:44,160 --> 00:07:46,840 seen going on in the meme coin space? 112 00:07:47,400 --> 00:07:52,840 I would argue the ICO space was remarkably period era was 113 00:07:52,840 --> 00:07:57,400 remarkably successful, but a lot of shenanigans in that era as 114 00:07:57,400 --> 00:08:00,240 well. And so I really do look forward 115 00:08:00,240 --> 00:08:05,840 to onboarding major financial institutions, major enterprises 116 00:08:05,840 --> 00:08:09,400 around the world. And with things like prediction 117 00:08:09,400 --> 00:08:13,320 markets, which you know a little bit about and and other things 118 00:08:13,320 --> 00:08:18,680 going mainstream, I think I think Tradfi is onboarding 119 00:08:18,680 --> 00:08:23,120 itself to defy. It'll soon all be called finance 120 00:08:23,240 --> 00:08:25,800 and and it's going to be running on our rails. 121 00:08:25,840 --> 00:08:30,360 Yeah, I, I think that's, that's innovatively happening. 122 00:08:30,640 --> 00:08:35,480 But if you look at the promise of Web 3 and kind of if you, if 123 00:08:35,480 --> 00:08:39,120 you look back over the last 15 years and you would have to 124 00:08:39,120 --> 00:08:45,440 point that kind of a tangible metric that's gotten better for 125 00:08:45,680 --> 00:08:50,040 real life people because kind of their banks now use blockchain 126 00:08:50,040 --> 00:08:52,800 in the background. What would you say that it's 127 00:08:52,800 --> 00:08:57,880 because kind of to me the the value proposition was to a large 128 00:08:57,880 --> 00:09:06,960 extent that these intermediaries are no longer necessary and kind 129 00:09:06,960 --> 00:09:11,320 of they, they are no longer in a position where they can very 130 00:09:11,320 --> 00:09:14,400 effectively extract from their users, right? 131 00:09:15,240 --> 00:09:16,960 Yeah. So the intermediaries 132 00:09:17,480 --> 00:09:21,480 essentially are disintermediated and turned into protocols or 133 00:09:21,480 --> 00:09:24,720 their functionality is replaced by protocols. 134 00:09:24,720 --> 00:09:32,680 And so I think we've always been about growing agency, personal, 135 00:09:32,680 --> 00:09:38,600 political, social, economic agency for people and for 136 00:09:38,600 --> 00:09:41,040 communities. Companies are kind of 137 00:09:41,040 --> 00:09:44,120 communities too. So they should have agency. 138 00:09:45,280 --> 00:09:52,040 And, and if you look at what's been going on since the end of 139 00:09:52,040 --> 00:09:57,400 the Biden auto pen Gensler administration, whatever that 140 00:09:57,400 --> 00:10:03,960 was, there's been a tremendous surge in our ecosystem and a lot 141 00:10:03,960 --> 00:10:07,160 more respect for permissionless innovation. 142 00:10:08,200 --> 00:10:16,440 The Stable Coin Genius Act lit a fire under our ecosystem, stable 143 00:10:16,440 --> 00:10:23,080 coins growing and proliferating. Our total game changer for 144 00:10:23,080 --> 00:10:26,440 banking. Banks are panicking. 145 00:10:27,600 --> 00:10:31,680 Organizations related to banks are are trying to figure out 146 00:10:32,080 --> 00:10:37,880 what a world looks like where you can essentially have a full 147 00:10:37,880 --> 00:10:43,680 service bank owned by you in your pocket on your phone. 148 00:10:45,120 --> 00:10:48,200 Gnosis is doing that, Man A Mask is doing that. 149 00:10:48,800 --> 00:10:53,920 And how do regional banks survive and thrive in that sort 150 00:10:53,920 --> 00:10:58,440 of context? How does SWIFT, for instance, 151 00:10:58,440 --> 00:11:07,840 provide services to 11,500 financial institutions using 152 00:11:07,880 --> 00:11:11,920 enhanced technology? And so we're talking to lots of 153 00:11:11,920 --> 00:11:15,680 banks and we're working with SWIFT and, and there's some 154 00:11:15,680 --> 00:11:19,160 really good answers to that. So it is not the case that 155 00:11:19,160 --> 00:11:24,720 you're going to need to be custodying the assets of your of 156 00:11:24,720 --> 00:11:30,040 your customers in order to provide services to them and and 157 00:11:30,040 --> 00:11:32,520 make a living. If your financial institution, 158 00:11:32,640 --> 00:11:39,440 other financial institutions could potentially achieve 159 00:11:39,440 --> 00:11:42,920 charters and we're going to need some government cooperation on 160 00:11:42,920 --> 00:11:48,440 this around being data custodians, identity reputation 161 00:11:48,440 --> 00:11:50,680 custodians, attestation custodians. 162 00:11:52,080 --> 00:11:56,840 A project portfolio company called Spruce ID is working 163 00:11:56,840 --> 00:11:59,080 doing some great work on this stuff. 164 00:11:59,480 --> 00:12:05,880 And so it's going to take time for the general population to 165 00:12:05,880 --> 00:12:11,560 get more comfortable with Defy. So Defy is probably one of the 166 00:12:11,560 --> 00:12:18,040 first killer OPS of of the world Ledger as Ethereum has a sort of 167 00:12:18,040 --> 00:12:24,840 re articulated as Vitalik's we are articulated Ethereum pulling 168 00:12:24,840 --> 00:12:27,680 it back a little bit temporarily from calling it the world 169 00:12:27,680 --> 00:12:31,280 computer. Vitalik is also articulated that 170 00:12:31,280 --> 00:12:36,760 he believes that that low risk defy is now something that they 171 00:12:36,760 --> 00:12:44,400 could be considered by even naive people because the the 172 00:12:44,400 --> 00:12:49,080 financial system, the global economy is in danger right now. 173 00:12:49,080 --> 00:12:52,760 We're at the end of a super cycle and there is great risk in 174 00:12:52,760 --> 00:12:56,840 holding nation state currencies in certain bank accounts. 175 00:12:56,840 --> 00:13:00,360 And the risk might be more severe in terms of financial 176 00:13:00,360 --> 00:13:04,680 repression, where where inflation just erodes the 177 00:13:04,680 --> 00:13:08,360 purchasing power of the savings of people and companies. 178 00:13:08,360 --> 00:13:14,520 And, and so holding your own assets under your own control in 179 00:13:14,520 --> 00:13:20,480 your own personal bank and, and exposing them to yield and 180 00:13:20,480 --> 00:13:24,400 investment opportunities in an ecosystem that has been growing 181 00:13:24,400 --> 00:13:29,840 exponentially for the last 10 or 15 years may be a good idea 182 00:13:29,840 --> 00:13:35,160 compared to being exposed financially to a global economy 183 00:13:35,160 --> 00:13:39,240 that is, is careening towards a brick wall in the form of the 184 00:13:39,240 --> 00:13:42,800 end of a super cycle. So I'm, I'm very optimistic that 185 00:13:42,800 --> 00:13:47,440 we're going to move into the next super cycle that will be 186 00:13:47,440 --> 00:13:51,200 heavily supercharged by AI and will be operating on 187 00:13:51,200 --> 00:13:57,400 decentralized rails. But there's a there are ways to 188 00:13:57,480 --> 00:14:00,920 to bring the legacy infrastructure along for the 189 00:14:00,920 --> 00:14:04,440 ride. A lot of the stables that we see 190 00:14:04,440 --> 00:14:10,440 today in web three are just wrappers for legacy currencies, 191 00:14:10,440 --> 00:14:12,480 right? So kind of USDC and USCT are 192 00:14:13,000 --> 00:14:18,960 backed and supposedly supposedly probably backed one to one by 193 00:14:19,160 --> 00:14:23,080 U.S. dollars in some sort of escrow custodian account. 194 00:14:23,080 --> 00:14:28,960 So kind of like if, if the if the US dollar kind of careens to 195 00:14:28,960 --> 00:14:33,920 watch towards the edge, what does that mean for a defy 196 00:14:33,920 --> 00:14:37,640 landscape that is very heavily built on these these 197 00:14:37,640 --> 00:14:40,200 transpositions? Yeah, if it careens towards the 198 00:14:40,200 --> 00:14:42,240 left edge, it it could be concerning. 199 00:14:42,920 --> 00:14:49,000 So I I think of backed stable coins to be a tremendous 200 00:14:49,000 --> 00:14:53,240 validation of our technology, also an existential threat 201 00:14:53,360 --> 00:14:57,240 potentially to our technology as you've suggested. 202 00:14:58,120 --> 00:15:01,640 I think of it of it as a transitionary step. 203 00:15:03,160 --> 00:15:07,320 I would love to see I would love to see and die continue on its 204 00:15:07,800 --> 00:15:13,040 pure path liquidy. It is a very cool protocol that 205 00:15:13,640 --> 00:15:17,640 makes use of decentralized economic bandwidth basically in 206 00:15:17,640 --> 00:15:22,640 the form of of ether or other decentralized instruments 207 00:15:23,880 --> 00:15:29,680 serving as, as collateral so that you can, it's a complicated 208 00:15:29,720 --> 00:15:34,640 ecosystem, but you can basically lend yourself some stable coin 209 00:15:34,640 --> 00:15:39,560 against your own collateral. And that's an incredibly 210 00:15:39,560 --> 00:15:44,240 important construct. But we need ether to go through 211 00:15:44,240 --> 00:15:46,680 the roof and price. We need Bitcoin to go through 212 00:15:46,680 --> 00:15:51,080 the roof and price in order to be able to mint enough stable 213 00:15:51,080 --> 00:15:55,960 coins based on that mechanism. In the meantime, there's a 214 00:15:55,960 --> 00:16:00,520 really interesting political economic transformations 215 00:16:00,520 --> 00:16:05,760 underway where China, some other countries are are going to have 216 00:16:05,760 --> 00:16:09,120 to pull back on lending money to the United States. 217 00:16:09,880 --> 00:16:14,520 Japan's raising rates and is probably going to pull back a 218 00:16:14,520 --> 00:16:19,840 bunch of its money and and throw the world into a much less carry 219 00:16:19,840 --> 00:16:23,040 trade driven world. That should be very interesting. 220 00:16:23,960 --> 00:16:30,400 And Scott Besson, Treasury Secretary, has crafted a 221 00:16:30,400 --> 00:16:36,440 strategy where the US can borrow money from many organizations 222 00:16:36,440 --> 00:16:41,080 around the world that are effectively involved in, in 223 00:16:41,080 --> 00:16:45,360 doing genius compliance stable coins and, and they're either 224 00:16:45,360 --> 00:16:49,440 putting dollars in the in the bank or, or holding U.S. 225 00:16:49,440 --> 00:16:54,440 Treasuries in custody. 1 backing stable coins, one for one. 226 00:16:54,440 --> 00:16:58,640 And I think the United States government is going to be very 227 00:16:58,640 --> 00:17:02,200 aggressive about that strategy. Scott Bestent indicated he 228 00:17:02,480 --> 00:17:05,880 thought probably hit 3 trillion in stables. 229 00:17:06,079 --> 00:17:13,040 And so that is a transitionary political economic phenomenon or 230 00:17:13,040 --> 00:17:15,880 moment that embraces our technology, drives our 231 00:17:15,880 --> 00:17:19,839 technology forward, drives the price of Ether and Bitcoin 232 00:17:19,839 --> 00:17:23,400 higher, much higher, hopefully enabling. 233 00:17:24,640 --> 00:17:29,120 We don't need a full replacement of of backed stable coins in our 234 00:17:29,120 --> 00:17:31,240 ecosystem. We just need to bootstrap 235 00:17:32,040 --> 00:17:35,600 properly decentralized stable coins in our ecosystem. 236 00:17:36,400 --> 00:17:39,800 Really nice side effect for people around the world in 237 00:17:39,800 --> 00:17:44,880 countries that are say more problematic than Germany or or 238 00:17:44,880 --> 00:17:52,200 the United States is that if you have a despot who is financially 239 00:17:52,200 --> 00:17:56,600 exploiting the population via monetary mechanisms or getting 240 00:17:56,600 --> 00:17:59,560 into deep debt and financially repressing the population, 241 00:17:59,840 --> 00:18:04,520 printing much too much money. It's great to have either tokens 242 00:18:04,520 --> 00:18:09,640 like ether or Bitcoin or stable coins that are tracking the US 243 00:18:09,640 --> 00:18:13,800 dollar or or other denominations to put your money in. 244 00:18:14,360 --> 00:18:17,920 In some cases, you need to hide your money from family members 245 00:18:17,920 --> 00:18:19,520 that that might take it from you. 246 00:18:19,840 --> 00:18:22,800 In other cases, you just need to protect yourself from the 247 00:18:22,800 --> 00:18:26,360 governments. And if governments lose their 248 00:18:26,360 --> 00:18:31,800 ability to financially exploit their populations, we could see 249 00:18:31,800 --> 00:18:34,200 some positive political ramifications. 250 00:18:35,280 --> 00:18:40,840 I know I'm saying this at a moment of extreme chaos in the 251 00:18:40,840 --> 00:18:43,200 world. We are at the end of the an 80 252 00:18:43,200 --> 00:18:49,320 something year super cycle and a lot of stuff is breaking and 253 00:18:49,320 --> 00:18:51,880 kind of has to break. That's what happens at the end 254 00:18:51,880 --> 00:18:56,560 of super cycles, so that the new system of the next super cycle 255 00:18:56,880 --> 00:18:59,400 can establish itself. So what do, what do you 256 00:18:59,400 --> 00:19:05,120 recommend for the ecosystem to kind of build in anticipation of 257 00:19:05,120 --> 00:19:07,440 this collapse? Because kind of like currently 258 00:19:07,760 --> 00:19:11,680 we're kind of transposing a lot of the old mechanisms on chain 259 00:19:11,680 --> 00:19:15,080 and they will just collapse with the old mechanisms, right. 260 00:19:15,280 --> 00:19:17,720 So what what do you, what do you think is the infrastructure and 261 00:19:17,720 --> 00:19:20,920 the projects we need to kind of see us through this? 262 00:19:21,040 --> 00:19:27,200 So I I think keeping a bunch of the old mechanisms as healthy as 263 00:19:27,200 --> 00:19:31,960 possible to facilitate as smooth a transition for humans as 264 00:19:31,960 --> 00:19:36,560 possible is a good thing. Like smashing into a brick wall 265 00:19:36,840 --> 00:19:42,320 would be bad and doing that sort of thing might make it easier 266 00:19:42,320 --> 00:19:49,720 for nefarious actors who have guns and things to take control 267 00:19:49,720 --> 00:19:53,520 of a very of a very broken situation. 268 00:19:53,520 --> 00:19:57,560 So I I think we need to remain as functional as possible while 269 00:19:58,280 --> 00:20:02,920 organizations like ours continue to build infrastructure 270 00:20:02,920 --> 00:20:08,760 scalability applications that they can enable people to to 271 00:20:08,760 --> 00:20:14,840 transition to the next economy. And So what are we building? 272 00:20:14,840 --> 00:20:18,840 We're building wallets that that people fully own and control. 273 00:20:19,200 --> 00:20:24,240 We're building decentralized finance so that people can 274 00:20:24,240 --> 00:20:30,840 participate in, in funding the development of the next economy 275 00:20:31,520 --> 00:20:37,400 and and can earn yield as the next economy accelerates. 276 00:20:37,400 --> 00:20:41,880 Because money in the next economy, even though it it's 277 00:20:41,880 --> 00:20:44,320 nearly free to print magic Internet money. 278 00:20:45,320 --> 00:20:49,760 It's, you know, they're really good ones are valuable, are 279 00:20:49,760 --> 00:20:54,320 scarce and, and they earn pretty good yield. 280 00:20:54,320 --> 00:20:57,560 If you're trying to acquire them, borrow them for, for 281 00:20:57,560 --> 00:21:01,440 different things. So our our ecosystem is likely 282 00:21:01,440 --> 00:21:08,120 to see pretty good yields compared to the legacy economy. 283 00:21:08,400 --> 00:21:11,600 We'll see how that goes. But looks like we're going to 284 00:21:11,600 --> 00:21:18,720 move into another accelerated money printing phase and 285 00:21:20,200 --> 00:21:24,200 building things that enable people to express themselves 286 00:21:24,200 --> 00:21:27,760 better. Prediction markets are a great 287 00:21:27,760 --> 00:21:33,040 one that we've talked about for many years that enable the world 288 00:21:33,840 --> 00:21:36,640 of people who think they know the truth about different issues 289 00:21:36,640 --> 00:21:39,880 to incentivize the people who actually know the truth to share 290 00:21:39,880 --> 00:21:43,360 the truth, sort of like a, a consulting fee. 291 00:21:43,360 --> 00:21:45,880 I think that's going to be great. 292 00:21:45,960 --> 00:21:48,920 I think we're going to have a lot of revolution revelations 293 00:21:48,920 --> 00:21:54,360 over the next few years about all the, the shenanigans and, 294 00:21:54,360 --> 00:22:00,080 and just utter rot that sits at the, at the core of of our 295 00:22:00,080 --> 00:22:03,200 political cultures. So looking forward to that. 296 00:22:04,200 --> 00:22:06,800 And I think it's going to be about empowerment to, to do 297 00:22:06,800 --> 00:22:10,680 things. I think the social media social 298 00:22:10,680 --> 00:22:15,360 networking industrial complex is unbelievably toxic. 299 00:22:16,520 --> 00:22:20,040 And you know, it's, it drives polarization. 300 00:22:20,360 --> 00:22:24,360 I think if you look at the people in small town Germany and 301 00:22:24,360 --> 00:22:29,640 the small town America, they're probably isolated from a bunch 302 00:22:29,680 --> 00:22:34,800 of the madness that that we think is the state of the world. 303 00:22:34,800 --> 00:22:39,560 If we're paying attention to to Twitter and certain elements of 304 00:22:40,760 --> 00:22:47,800 of mainstream or social media. I actually think that a lot of 305 00:22:48,360 --> 00:22:57,000 the, the polarization and the narrative around collapse of, of 306 00:22:57,000 --> 00:22:59,880 the system of the world, I think a lot of that is a manufactured 307 00:22:59,880 --> 00:23:01,840 narrative. Yes, there are big changes going 308 00:23:01,840 --> 00:23:08,600 on, but but I think I think there are owners of all the all 309 00:23:08,600 --> 00:23:12,000 the different industrial complexes, whether it's a social 310 00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:16,440 media or educational or scientific publishing or pharma 311 00:23:16,440 --> 00:23:20,520 or food or military. And so we do live in a a 312 00:23:20,520 --> 00:23:26,640 manufactured reality and the opportunity is for reality to 313 00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:29,200 become a little more decentralized. 314 00:23:29,200 --> 00:23:34,120 If we if we start building applications on decentralized 315 00:23:34,120 --> 00:23:37,480 rails like block chains, if we start building applications on 316 00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:40,960 the centralized networks of decentralized social graphs, 317 00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:45,480 where are decentralized identities are wired together 318 00:23:45,880 --> 00:23:49,120 via attestations and reputation systems. 319 00:23:49,120 --> 00:23:54,600 And and when their platforms where we can add contents to our 320 00:23:54,600 --> 00:24:00,360 social graphs, tokenize our social graphs, earn money, can 321 00:24:00,400 --> 00:24:03,680 add functionality to our social graphs, We can the owner of a 322 00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:08,840 social graph can earn tokens. Potentially the owner can share 323 00:24:08,840 --> 00:24:12,920 those tokens with people contributing value to the social 324 00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:16,800 graph. And so it shouldn't be the the 325 00:24:16,800 --> 00:24:23,360 big corporate owners and making use of AI to exploit us who are, 326 00:24:23,440 --> 00:24:27,160 who are making money from user generated content. 327 00:24:27,160 --> 00:24:31,600 It should be the people who are in control of all that and and 328 00:24:31,600 --> 00:24:34,600 benefiting from that. And we need a lot of 329 00:24:34,600 --> 00:24:37,200 infrastructure building in order to make that happen. 330 00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:41,040 But as soon as they're good platforms and people can start 331 00:24:41,560 --> 00:24:46,080 making a living and feeling like they're not being manipulated 332 00:24:46,080 --> 00:24:51,520 and and driven a bit crazy from plugging into social networks, I 333 00:24:51,520 --> 00:24:55,720 think they'll, they'll probably be a, a flipping of the of how 334 00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:58,280 people engage in in social networking going forward. 335 00:24:58,280 --> 00:25:02,160 So I look forward to the the big social network companies 336 00:25:02,840 --> 00:25:07,480 shrinking quite dramatically. That sounds like wonderful 337 00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:09,960 vision for the future and it sounds a lot like kind of like 338 00:25:09,960 --> 00:25:12,200 this ownership narrative, right? Kind of like this. 339 00:25:12,200 --> 00:25:14,760 It's it's a platform. It belongs to no one. 340 00:25:14,760 --> 00:25:18,280 That's it's, that's it belongs to everyone narrative, right? 341 00:25:19,120 --> 00:25:22,520 Where there's not one central counterparty or one bottleneck 342 00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:25,240 that kind of sits in a position where kind of they can. 343 00:25:25,240 --> 00:25:27,080 You need blockchain characteristics, you need 344 00:25:27,080 --> 00:25:29,520 guaranteed execution, permissionless innovation, 345 00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:34,040 censorship resistance. So and and we need scalability 346 00:25:34,040 --> 00:25:36,680 where we've gotten to the point where we're we're really close 347 00:25:36,680 --> 00:25:40,000 to having good scalability. I yeah, I want to talk about 348 00:25:40,000 --> 00:25:43,120 scalability in just a bit, but maybe kind of like if you look 349 00:25:43,120 --> 00:25:49,720 at applications we see so far, mostly we see yield applications 350 00:25:49,720 --> 00:25:55,400 where somehow Web 2 yield or web two financial stack yield is 351 00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:58,920 redistributed to kind of Web 3 protocols, right? 352 00:25:58,920 --> 00:26:01,800 So kind of the, the, the yield on stables comes from the fact 353 00:26:02,040 --> 00:26:05,560 that kind of they are they they buy T-bills and kind of then 354 00:26:05,800 --> 00:26:09,520 rather than I'm kind of eating this up themselves, they kind of 355 00:26:09,600 --> 00:26:14,880 somehow redistributed to, to, to the defy users or the low risk 356 00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:17,400 defy users. Where do you see the Where do 357 00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:22,960 you see the applications that actually give back ownership to 358 00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:27,920 users of their data, their identity, their audience, their 359 00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:31,880 content? Because I, I, I mean, I know all 360 00:26:31,880 --> 00:26:34,440 the experiments, but none of them have really caught on, 361 00:26:34,440 --> 00:26:35,920 right? It is transitional. 362 00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:42,520 We're in a transitional phase. When cars were invented, there 363 00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:45,240 were laws where people had to walk in front of the cars like 364 00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:48,520 they walked in front of horses and and carriages. 365 00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:54,120 And that's because the roads maybe couldn't handle fast cars 366 00:26:54,560 --> 00:26:59,120 moving down them. When TV was invented, nobody 367 00:26:59,120 --> 00:27:01,920 knew what to do with it. So people stood up with their 368 00:27:01,920 --> 00:27:05,160 scripts and they they read radio plays in front of the cameras. 369 00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:07,240 Do you think we'll get there? Yeah, of course. 370 00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:09,880 I think we'll get there. Maybe I'm maybe I'm just 371 00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:11,880 impatient. So I mean, the patience has 372 00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:16,480 never been my prime virtue. Most people don't see the world 373 00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:20,440 in terms of flows. If you look at crypto Twitter, 374 00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:25,240 everybody's looking at a slice of time and whether their tokens 375 00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:30,320 are up today or down today and, and either the sky is falling 376 00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:34,960 or, or everything is great. And so if you start paying 377 00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:39,160 attention to the flows and, and we've made unbelievable progress 378 00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:48,200 since 2009 or, or 2014 for Ethereum, a civilization has now 379 00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:53,960 effectively started embracing in earnest decentralized protocols. 380 00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:57,960 So we're seeing it at consensus because we're talking to 381 00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:01,920 governments and and big companies, especially in the 382 00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:08,160 financial industry and they are all asking for help in 383 00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:10,760 understanding the stuff or in building on this stuff. 384 00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:12,520 Maybe let's talk about consensus for a bit. 385 00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:17,440 So kind of consensus is an unusual company to say the 386 00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:20,840 least, right. So if if, if you were starting, 387 00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:23,880 if you were to start consensus again today with kind of 388 00:28:23,880 --> 00:28:28,240 everything you've learned over the past decade, more than a 389 00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:33,800 decade, would you replicate kind of this haben spoke structure 390 00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:39,440 that you pioneered back then? I spent a year roughly on the 391 00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:43,360 Etherium project helping with a whole lot of people to to stand 392 00:28:43,360 --> 00:28:46,120 up well, the theorem project, the theorem foundation, 393 00:28:46,120 --> 00:28:49,200 etcetera. And I think it's important to 394 00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:56,280 note that as we did, we did talk to some VCs back then and we, we 395 00:28:56,280 --> 00:29:00,760 did make the explicit decision not to take VC money directly, 396 00:29:00,800 --> 00:29:03,600 VCs for free, invest in the token launch. 397 00:29:03,600 --> 00:29:12,080 But we felt like we had to be a very different kind of project, 398 00:29:12,080 --> 00:29:13,600 a different kind of organization. 399 00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:18,720 It had to be as decentralized as we could make it and 400 00:29:18,720 --> 00:29:23,000 progressively decentralize it. And the token sale had to be 401 00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:29,040 open, free and fair. And we did a lot of legal work 402 00:29:29,040 --> 00:29:32,440 to make sure that that we wouldn't get into trouble in the 403 00:29:32,440 --> 00:29:37,040 United States if we allowed to Americans to, to participate and 404 00:29:37,800 --> 00:29:42,400 got a, a piece of paper from the law firm that they gave us 405 00:29:42,400 --> 00:29:44,920 confidence that we could go ahead and do that. 406 00:29:45,360 --> 00:29:50,400 And that has stood up despite the attempts to to tear it down. 407 00:29:51,600 --> 00:30:00,000 And, and we didn't hire in the sense that we didn't put up job 408 00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:03,240 wrecks, job descriptions and things like that. 409 00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:09,440 Basically anybody who wanted to self select to become part of 410 00:30:09,440 --> 00:30:13,240 the Etherium project, they were virtually instantly on the 411 00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:18,120 Etherium project. And and so it was a, a band of 412 00:30:18,680 --> 00:30:23,880 pirates, band of characters. Sometimes there were issues, 413 00:30:24,480 --> 00:30:29,280 interpersonal issues, but I don't think that Ethereum would 414 00:30:29,280 --> 00:30:34,920 have been seen to be open, permissionless and something 415 00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:40,440 that moves towards civilization, scale, technology if we were a 416 00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:43,680 company, like a traditional company to start. 417 00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:51,680 And so a year into it, I wanted to do something essentially 418 00:30:51,680 --> 00:30:55,120 based in the United States because Ethereum people were 419 00:30:55,120 --> 00:30:58,360 afraid of the United States back then, but I was a little less 420 00:30:58,360 --> 00:31:03,560 afraid. And and it was, it was about 421 00:31:03,560 --> 00:31:07,240 continuing the vision in the mission of the Etherium project. 422 00:31:07,280 --> 00:31:13,280 And we knew that we couldn't design an ecosystem, whether 423 00:31:13,280 --> 00:31:15,800 from the Etherium Foundation or from consensus. 424 00:31:15,800 --> 00:31:19,240 We couldn't design the decentralized protocol world top 425 00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:22,400 down. We had to just do a, a ton of 426 00:31:22,400 --> 00:31:26,080 experimenting. So it was, it was pretty 427 00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:30,160 decentralized and people made fun of it because we were trying 428 00:31:30,160 --> 00:31:33,960 to figure out how to govern ourselves and, and what to build 429 00:31:33,960 --> 00:31:37,840 with the type, the technology. You know, we tried to build an 430 00:31:37,840 --> 00:31:42,240 accounting system, we tried to build a DAP store and we 431 00:31:42,240 --> 00:31:46,760 realized, hey, we have no developer tools, we have no 432 00:31:46,800 --> 00:31:50,760 ecosystem really. And so why don't we build a 433 00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:55,200 little infrastructure to enable us to interact with this raw 434 00:31:55,200 --> 00:31:57,720 technology. So at a mask emerge from that 435 00:31:57,720 --> 00:32:03,080 and Inferra emerge from that and Truffle emerged. 436 00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:07,040 Custom culture was trying to build a DAP store and, and just 437 00:32:07,040 --> 00:32:10,640 the scripts that he built in order to, to build an 438 00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:16,200 application ended up evolving into a pretty useful developer 439 00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:18,560 tool that was used by many for many years. 440 00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:26,120 So Consensus has been different organizations over the years. 441 00:32:26,840 --> 00:32:29,160 So there's a, an initial mothership company called 442 00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:32,120 Consensus Mash and it went through a bunch of pretty 443 00:32:32,120 --> 00:32:36,520 powerful or radical evolutions in in its nature. 444 00:32:36,520 --> 00:32:40,040 It does pay a lot of attention to enterprise Ethereum for a 445 00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:45,480 while, some projects spun out because of the, the COVID 446 00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:50,480 challenges of consensus mesh to form consensus software and, and 447 00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:54,960 it's been very tight integrated software product company 448 00:32:55,400 --> 00:33:00,720 extremely different from the, the organic BLOB that consensus 449 00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:05,880 mesh was and and had to be. Because early on Mesh was all 450 00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:10,160 about fostering adoption, educating, talking to anybody 451 00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:14,320 who would listen to us and incubating a huge number of 452 00:33:14,320 --> 00:33:18,120 projects, many of which including Gnosis spun out a 453 00:33:18,120 --> 00:33:24,240 consensus, some with great success, some with not so great 454 00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:29,040 success. But we did, we did seed a lot of 455 00:33:29,040 --> 00:33:34,280 activity in the Etherium ecosystem and and so we have a a 456 00:33:34,280 --> 00:33:37,000 lot of friends out there in the extended consensus network. 457 00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:43,000 I, I think it's completely uncontentious that so much value 458 00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:46,680 has come out of consensus over the years for Ethereum. 459 00:33:46,680 --> 00:33:51,880 And I, I think you're 100% spot on that Ethereum needed a 460 00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:57,520 business to kind of, to kind of Dr. adoption. 461 00:33:57,840 --> 00:34:02,680 If you look at the individual parts that kind of make up 462 00:34:02,840 --> 00:34:06,560 consensus and I think I, I, I kind of maybe I look at this 463 00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:11,280 because I feel sometimes we're kind of like in, in a similar, 464 00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:16,840 I'll be a much smaller boat. So kind of what do you think 465 00:34:16,840 --> 00:34:21,159 some of the projects would have been better off kind of on their 466 00:34:21,159 --> 00:34:28,040 own rather than as part of this of this often unwieldy 467 00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:32,120 mothership structure? The social contract back then 468 00:34:32,120 --> 00:34:36,199 was that you could spin out, you know, it, it had to make sense 469 00:34:36,199 --> 00:34:40,520 and, and it had to be pretty broad agreement. 470 00:34:40,520 --> 00:34:44,840 But a lot of projects got financial and other support to 471 00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:48,800 spin out of consensus. And I think we we spun out over 472 00:34:48,800 --> 00:34:53,360 40 projects that that were incubated inside a consensus and 473 00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:58,000 and invested in, in many others that weren't incubated inside a 474 00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:02,000 consensus. Projects like Metamask spent a 475 00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:05,560 lot of time figuring out not just what their business model 476 00:35:05,560 --> 00:35:07,920 should be, but if they should have a business model. 477 00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:11,520 So there was, there's a lot of interest early on in just 478 00:35:12,120 --> 00:35:15,120 setting up a foundation and treating Metamask as a public 479 00:35:15,120 --> 00:35:18,440 good. And don't worry about making 480 00:35:18,680 --> 00:35:20,800 turning it into a for profit endeavor. 481 00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:26,440 And the reason that the Metamask had pretty good distribution 482 00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:35,400 starting in 20 like 2021 as D51 point O happened and then the 483 00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:39,920 NFT phenomenon happened. And and the only reason Metamask 484 00:35:40,280 --> 00:35:44,280 ended up being in a position to make money was because we 485 00:35:44,280 --> 00:35:48,800 absorbed A-Team called Air Swap. And they were, they were the 486 00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:52,400 people that that build of the infrastructure that enabled us 487 00:35:52,400 --> 00:35:57,080 to charge for swapping and, and have added a lot of features 488 00:35:57,400 --> 00:36:01,000 since then. So would Metamask have been 489 00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:02,240 better? Maybe the world would have been 490 00:36:02,240 --> 00:36:07,560 better off if Metamask remained a public good infrastructure. 491 00:36:08,640 --> 00:36:12,480 And maybe it's moving in that direction already actually, 492 00:36:13,240 --> 00:36:17,400 because we're we're trying to progressively decentralize a 493 00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:20,080 bunch of the elements of consensus. 494 00:36:22,080 --> 00:36:30,120 I think you were better off spinning out because. 495 00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:35,440 Yeah, 100%. Back then, I, I thought that you 496 00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:40,920 all could become a hub in the same way that consensus was a 497 00:36:41,040 --> 00:36:42,800 sort of hub and spoke like model. 498 00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:46,680 And you've done an amazing job of that building a bunch of 499 00:36:46,880 --> 00:36:52,280 integrated, very valuable components and so already 500 00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:56,160 massively successful. And I think your future is going 501 00:36:56,160 --> 00:37:02,000 to be very, very bright as as we all move into the mainstream. 502 00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:07,360 So we can go through a lot of examples, but I think, you know, 503 00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:11,160 roughly we made pretty good decisions along the way. 504 00:37:11,160 --> 00:37:13,080 Yeah. So I mean we we were the first 505 00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:16,800 spin out, I think and many. Too. 506 00:37:17,680 --> 00:37:21,960 Yeah. And yeah and yeah, no regrets. 507 00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:24,880 So I think it worked out well for us and you guys. 508 00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:29,600 So it's yeah. So the the two big pillars 509 00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:32,200 inside content is right now linear and Metamask, right. 510 00:37:32,200 --> 00:37:36,080 I mean, so there are, there are still big pillars that are less, 511 00:37:36,080 --> 00:37:41,480 less visible like in Furor for instance, and and diligence and 512 00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:43,960 so on. But but talk me through linear 513 00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:46,320 and Metamask first. So kind of how do you see them 514 00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:50,160 fit together, really enforce each other or kind of do you do 515 00:37:50,160 --> 00:37:51,960 you see them as somewhat orthogonal? 516 00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:57,080 Men mask as I already articulated, we're seeing as 517 00:37:57,720 --> 00:38:01,840 your cell phoned personal wallet in your pocket or or on your 518 00:38:01,840 --> 00:38:05,680 laptop. And we think that Metamask can 519 00:38:05,680 --> 00:38:10,600 become a a full service bank. We think we can start speaking 520 00:38:10,600 --> 00:38:16,640 ISO 20 O 22 like other banks and become infrastructure not just 521 00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:19,800 for people and communities and companies. 522 00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:23,560 I think some of it could become decentralized and become sort of 523 00:38:23,560 --> 00:38:30,720 back end infrastructure as well. Linea is a technology, It is 524 00:38:30,920 --> 00:38:36,960 leading ZKEVM technology. We're hoping to see it natively 525 00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:40,280 enshrined in the Ethereum protocol at some point in the 526 00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:43,800 not too distant future. And with the the pace of 527 00:38:43,800 --> 00:38:47,960 innovation of real time ZK proving, things are looking like 528 00:38:47,960 --> 00:38:50,120 Ethereum's going to get remarkably scalable. 529 00:38:50,120 --> 00:38:54,560 So it was going you out and we're hoping Linea is a big part 530 00:38:54,560 --> 00:38:57,040 of that. The scaling issue so kind of 531 00:38:57,160 --> 00:39:02,160 Ethereum has kind of in the past couple of years kind of had this 532 00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:06,000 paradigm around L2 scaling, right. 533 00:39:06,000 --> 00:39:11,200 But now kind of it looks like L1 scaling may actually come much 534 00:39:11,200 --> 00:39:16,960 faster than we had we had originally anticipated with real 535 00:39:16,960 --> 00:39:20,800 time proofing. And it, it looks like possibly 536 00:39:21,560 --> 00:39:25,160 the the true bottleneck is, is networking, which would be 537 00:39:25,160 --> 00:39:28,720 wonderful. How, how do you see that? 538 00:39:28,760 --> 00:39:33,560 And how do you see, see that in context of the L2 landscape? 539 00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:36,360 How do you foresee the the future evolving here? 540 00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:42,200 So we'll have to get back to to that initial thread, but let me 541 00:39:42,200 --> 00:39:44,520 run with this one. I think scaling has all been 542 00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:46,840 enabled by the roll up centric road map. 543 00:39:47,800 --> 00:39:51,360 We were trying to scale the theorem in different ways, 544 00:39:51,680 --> 00:39:57,040 plasma sharding, etcetera. And we simply didn't have the 545 00:39:57,040 --> 00:40:01,880 technology to get that done in the pure layer 1 context. 546 00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:06,280 And so the roll up centric road map gave a lot of really smart 547 00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:10,720 people and entrepreneurs permission and incentives to 548 00:40:11,640 --> 00:40:15,320 take approaches, whether they're optimistic approaches or or zero 549 00:40:15,320 --> 00:40:18,920 knowledge approaches. To building out scalability, 550 00:40:18,920 --> 00:40:24,080 Ethereum layer one seeded its pricing power for a while and 551 00:40:24,080 --> 00:40:30,360 made explicit choices in in the protocol to enable roll ups to 552 00:40:30,360 --> 00:40:33,440 establish themselves and flourish and really build out 553 00:40:33,440 --> 00:40:39,080 the technology back when we. So we have a protocols group 554 00:40:39,240 --> 00:40:44,200 that produces an execution client called Basu and Techu 555 00:40:44,440 --> 00:40:47,080 consensus client. And we've been building clients 556 00:40:47,080 --> 00:40:50,440 for a long time as have you for the Etherium protocol. 557 00:40:51,480 --> 00:40:55,520 And we've always had an R&D group in our protocols group. 558 00:40:56,000 --> 00:41:00,440 And the R&D group was doing a bunch of work 6:00 or so years 559 00:41:00,440 --> 00:41:05,720 ago, maybe longer in zero knowledge proof technology. 560 00:41:05,920 --> 00:41:13,520 A couple three years into that, it started to become clear that 561 00:41:13,520 --> 00:41:17,200 hey, we think we could build A roll up because the technology 562 00:41:17,200 --> 00:41:19,680 is moving much faster than we thought it would. 563 00:41:20,080 --> 00:41:24,480 And so that's been accelerating exponentially since then we 564 00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:28,040 built Linea. Linea has been accelerating 565 00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:32,360 exponentially. Linea today is Wednesday, 566 00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:37,800 December 3rd, 2025, otherwise known as Fisaka Day. 567 00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:44,360 And traditionally Linea has been out of sync with the with the 568 00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:48,480 hard forks and but Linea has been improving its process all 569 00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:51,480 along. And over the last few months 570 00:41:51,840 --> 00:41:58,040 we've implemented four or five different hard forks and for the 571 00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:04,320 first time we're actually launching Fusaka for Linea on 572 00:42:04,320 --> 00:42:08,720 the same day as as the rest of the world, which is a really 573 00:42:08,720 --> 00:42:13,680 remarkable feat in my opinion. And so we're seeing Justin Drake 574 00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:20,440 demonstrated that the two GPU's are able to real time prove some 575 00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:23,000 blocks, I'm not sure which blocks they they were proving. 576 00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:25,920 And, and so we're getting to the point and this is something that 577 00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:31,840 we anticipated in our R&D group years ago that not only is ZK 578 00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:35,720 going to be the direction of travel for layer twos, but ZK is 579 00:42:35,720 --> 00:42:41,040 going to be used horizontally in messaging and ZK is is going to 580 00:42:41,040 --> 00:42:43,640 make its way into the core protocol. 581 00:42:43,720 --> 00:42:47,800 And if consensus wanted to be a core protocol company and we 582 00:42:47,800 --> 00:42:50,840 would have to be expert, but with ZK. 583 00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:56,080 And so it's all working out in that direction it looks like. 584 00:42:56,080 --> 00:43:02,960 And I think we're going to see a very fast, very performative 585 00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:08,880 layer one for a theorem that has very useful things for layer 586 00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:11,480 twos to do. And it's all saturated by super 587 00:43:11,480 --> 00:43:16,000 fast CK real time proving accelerated by hardware. 588 00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:21,400 At some point soon, I think layer twos, layer threes, layer 589 00:43:21,400 --> 00:43:24,560 fours and higher are going to have a real utility. 590 00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:29,520 They're going to represent gaming domains or topical 591 00:43:29,520 --> 00:43:34,120 domains or regional domains. It's possible that the the 592 00:43:34,120 --> 00:43:39,840 country of France may may not want to share a layer 2 with the 593 00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:43,360 country of the United States because it would want to divide 594 00:43:43,360 --> 00:43:47,720 some have some political divisions for for its provinces 595 00:43:47,720 --> 00:43:52,520 and and the United States might have political divisions and 596 00:43:52,840 --> 00:43:57,600 Switzerland isn't going to want to have a bunch of data leaked 597 00:43:57,920 --> 00:44:00,520 outside of its national layer 2 borders. 598 00:44:01,120 --> 00:44:07,320 So that a lot of good reasons for the prolap centric road map 599 00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:12,760 architecture to be incredibly useful and valuable for the next 600 00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:15,680 economy and the next geopolitical map. 601 00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:21,560 The Anti Network states. Exactly, love it. 602 00:44:24,160 --> 00:44:28,440 So do you want me to go back to talking about what linea is I I 603 00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:31,280 sort of described? Yes, yeah. 604 00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:34,080 Go, go back to Linea. I think that's a good idea. 605 00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:37,920 Yeah. So Lenny is a technology, Lenny 606 00:44:37,920 --> 00:44:43,200 is a network linear mainnet and we're putting lots of effort 607 00:44:43,200 --> 00:44:45,120 into that. We've tokenized, we've 608 00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:47,840 decentralized it into a linear consortium. 609 00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:54,760 We've got stewards from across the ecosystem, we're adding one 610 00:44:54,760 --> 00:44:58,480 steward that we're about to announce in a in a few days. 611 00:44:58,480 --> 00:45:01,640 So don't want to front run that. And these stewards are very 612 00:45:01,640 --> 00:45:05,280 aligned with the health of the Etherium ecosystem and obviously 613 00:45:05,280 --> 00:45:10,680 the the linear ecosystem as well of a giant ecosystem Development 614 00:45:10,680 --> 00:45:15,640 Fund in the form of the the linear tokens and the linear 615 00:45:16,160 --> 00:45:20,840 consortium and technology is available for others to build 616 00:45:20,840 --> 00:45:25,640 on. So SWIFT consensus is building 617 00:45:25,680 --> 00:45:27,520 on the linear technology for SWIFT. 618 00:45:28,720 --> 00:45:34,160 We're working out our privacy technology and we think we're 619 00:45:34,160 --> 00:45:38,680 going to be able to do something pretty profound between Metamask 620 00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:41,040 and Linea connecting to one another. 621 00:45:41,640 --> 00:45:46,480 BAZK, maybe not best in class, but one of the best in class 622 00:45:46,720 --> 00:45:52,000 privacy solutions. So we think that Linea itself 623 00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:55,400 has a business model. It is credibly neutral 624 00:45:56,120 --> 00:45:59,520 permissionless innovation. We don't control it, but we're 625 00:45:59,520 --> 00:46:02,280 leaning heavily into into making it successful. 626 00:46:03,320 --> 00:46:08,200 So between Infura, which is decentralizing itself into dim 627 00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:12,920 decentralized infrastructure network, So what it calls 628 00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:18,240 enabling the range of Metamask to to grow as fast as the 629 00:46:18,240 --> 00:46:21,480 ecosystem grows, as fast as protocols can onboard themselves 630 00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:25,480 to decentralized infrastructure network, inferior is helping DIN 631 00:46:25,480 --> 00:46:31,040 out quite significantly. And DIN is, is run design 632 00:46:31,040 --> 00:46:36,200 founded by EG Galano, who was a founder of Infura. 633 00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:42,400 And so between those different elements, what we're looking to 634 00:46:42,400 --> 00:46:47,680 do is what traditional companies have done verticalized. 635 00:46:48,080 --> 00:46:51,960 And so how do we verticalize in a way that is different and much 636 00:46:51,960 --> 00:46:56,280 better for everybody than the way the, the Web 2 walled garden 637 00:46:56,280 --> 00:47:00,560 companies verticalized. We, we do it while maintaining 638 00:47:00,560 --> 00:47:04,760 as much credible neutrality at each layer as we can. 639 00:47:04,960 --> 00:47:09,760 So, so there are things that we can do that unlock synergies 640 00:47:09,760 --> 00:47:14,280 between men, mask and lineal and some will be forthcoming don't 641 00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:18,240 want to front run those things. But you know, things like our 642 00:47:18,240 --> 00:47:22,960 new rewards platform makes use of both and they'll be more on 643 00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:26,560 that front. But we have to figure out how to 644 00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:31,160 maintain the balance between some useful verticalization to 645 00:47:31,160 --> 00:47:36,400 make products better for people and companies and making sure 646 00:47:36,400 --> 00:47:41,080 there's credible neutrality so that nobody feels like they can 647 00:47:41,080 --> 00:47:46,360 be de platformed by us. And everybody feels like there's 648 00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:50,320 a long tail of innovation where they can build in the Metamask 649 00:47:50,320 --> 00:47:52,760 context, building the linear context, building the dim 650 00:47:52,760 --> 00:47:58,000 context and, and just add value to the ecosystem and, and 651 00:47:58,200 --> 00:48:01,360 nothing we can do to stop that. And that's we can do to foster. 652 00:48:01,360 --> 00:48:05,080 That I think this is something that the ecosystem often doesn't 653 00:48:05,080 --> 00:48:08,880 give you enough credit for. And you probably get APR 654 00:48:08,880 --> 00:48:11,840 briefing document before every interview you do that says 655 00:48:11,840 --> 00:48:15,000 don't, don't compare yourselves to competitors because I know 656 00:48:15,000 --> 00:48:18,720 this is what what I get, but maybe I can do this. 657 00:48:18,720 --> 00:48:23,520 So kind of on on linear, you can deploy your own roll up without 658 00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:26,520 permission from you guys where, where it's kind of like if you 659 00:48:26,520 --> 00:48:30,520 look at the other major stacks, it's actually very much not 660 00:48:30,520 --> 00:48:33,400 permission. You actually need sign off from 661 00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:38,680 optimism to kind of to launch an OP stack roll up. 662 00:48:38,680 --> 00:48:41,360 And I think most people aren't actually aware of this. 663 00:48:41,360 --> 00:48:43,360 And it's crazy, right? Kind of like this? 664 00:48:43,360 --> 00:48:48,040 Shouldn't be this this? Business model, you know, and if 665 00:48:48,080 --> 00:48:50,720 it works for them, it's fine and not crazy. 666 00:48:51,840 --> 00:48:56,320 So what we're going to be doing is furthering decentralization, 667 00:48:56,320 --> 00:48:58,600 decentralized, proving, decentralized sequencing, 668 00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:03,320 etcetera, figuring out where ways to, to share some value 669 00:49:03,320 --> 00:49:09,080 creation, some of the revenue generation with the with token 670 00:49:09,080 --> 00:49:11,760 holders, linear token holders. And, and maybe it's just through 671 00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:18,280 burning more linear tokens. And, and I think we can build a 672 00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:25,160 token economy or sub economy with a lot of linear networks 673 00:49:25,200 --> 00:49:29,440 that are independent, quasi independent or, or closely 674 00:49:29,440 --> 00:49:32,360 related to one another, that are collaborating with one another, 675 00:49:32,360 --> 00:49:37,600 that are sharing infrastructure. And I, I think that's, that's 676 00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:42,720 how the the next geopolitical landscape gets built out 677 00:49:43,080 --> 00:49:47,760 somewhat bottom up with a lot of, a lot of projects showing up 678 00:49:47,760 --> 00:49:51,440 and, and finding synergies and Co locating on different 679 00:49:51,440 --> 00:49:53,920 networks. And lots of those projects will 680 00:49:53,920 --> 00:49:58,640 be on multiple networks and will be citizens of many different 681 00:49:58,800 --> 00:50:03,120 network states the the vision currently for Linea. 682 00:50:03,600 --> 00:50:05,800 Yeah. I mean permission is innovation, 683 00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:10,000 true composability. I think that that'll be a huge 684 00:50:10,120 --> 00:50:12,880 unlock. We kind of. 685 00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:17,720 One last thing, we would like our relationship to Linea to be 686 00:50:17,720 --> 00:50:19,840 very similar as our relationship to a theorem. 687 00:50:20,960 --> 00:50:24,720 That Linea should be as a theorem aligned as possible, 688 00:50:24,720 --> 00:50:30,240 100% a theorem compatible. And maybe there's a time when 689 00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:37,080 when the architectures can evolve so that maybe overflow 690 00:50:37,080 --> 00:50:40,400 activity at layer one gets handled by different layer 2 691 00:50:40,400 --> 00:50:44,480 networks. So I, I think, and we'll see, 692 00:50:44,520 --> 00:50:47,840 we'll see quite a bit of architectural evolution over the 693 00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:49,880 next decade or two. Absolutely. 694 00:50:50,760 --> 00:50:54,760 So we probably have time for one more question and I want to make 695 00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:56,920 it a good one. So if, if you kind of, I mean 696 00:50:57,120 --> 00:51:01,920 you are a remarkable optimist and a pessimist at the same 697 00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:04,280 time. So maybe maybe do do the doom 698 00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:07,800 thing. So kind of what what do we, what 699 00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:09,960 keeps you up at night about the ecosystem? 700 00:51:10,000 --> 00:51:13,520 So kind of what, what do you think is the one thing kind of 701 00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:16,360 we need to get right in the next one or two years. 702 00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:20,200 So kind of are you worried about validator centralization or 703 00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:23,600 custodians or L2 interop? What are you worried? 704 00:51:23,600 --> 00:51:29,560 About I'm not worried about anything specifically related to 705 00:51:29,560 --> 00:51:35,960 the evolution of our ecosystem because the ecosystem is so big 706 00:51:36,200 --> 00:51:39,440 and anti fragile and self-sustaining. 707 00:51:39,680 --> 00:51:46,280 We've gotten over a lot of very difficult humps and it's hard 708 00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:49,800 building civilizational infrastructure in the middle of 709 00:51:49,800 --> 00:51:53,520 a civilization that doesn't care or wants to kill you. 710 00:51:54,120 --> 00:51:56,560 But we've made remarkable progress. 711 00:51:57,480 --> 00:52:02,600 There are so many technical issues in our ecosystem, the 712 00:52:02,600 --> 00:52:06,680 Etherium ecosystem, but we're aware of most of it or all of 713 00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:08,720 it. And there are so many parallel 714 00:52:08,720 --> 00:52:14,520 efforts to to solve all these different issues, whether it's 715 00:52:14,520 --> 00:52:17,400 throughput or latency or composability. 716 00:52:17,400 --> 00:52:21,240 I mean, these are just obvious things that that really just 717 00:52:21,240 --> 00:52:26,080 require engineering solutions. There's nothing existentially 718 00:52:26,080 --> 00:52:28,880 difficult about these things. We just have to keep working on 719 00:52:28,880 --> 00:52:34,080 them and we're, we've got the wind at our backs now, U.S. 720 00:52:34,080 --> 00:52:38,120 government wind at our backs. The much of the globe is 721 00:52:38,280 --> 00:52:41,920 following the US in terms of getting more comfortable legally 722 00:52:42,240 --> 00:52:45,640 with the technology and, and the mainstream. 723 00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:48,880 So we don't have any users yet. We don't have any applications 724 00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:53,120 yet. And, and that's, I think largely 725 00:52:53,120 --> 00:52:56,800 because of scalability and usability issues and, and 726 00:52:56,800 --> 00:53:01,080 because it was effectively illegal to do things in our 727 00:53:01,080 --> 00:53:03,960 ecosystem in the United States, illegal for companies to hold 728 00:53:03,960 --> 00:53:08,720 tokens or issue tokens, illegal for builders to, to build 729 00:53:08,720 --> 00:53:12,720 something innovative. Because the SEC would would slap 730 00:53:12,720 --> 00:53:16,080 a lawsuit on you if you, if you started to, to look successful. 731 00:53:17,040 --> 00:53:20,960 But now it's legal and everybody's all the 732 00:53:20,960 --> 00:53:24,200 organizations are trying to figure out how to rush in and 733 00:53:24,200 --> 00:53:27,520 the builders are coming. So we're going to see so much 734 00:53:27,520 --> 00:53:34,640 innovation in in terms of building novel things largely in 735 00:53:34,640 --> 00:53:39,000 define hopefully in social and gaming and other things in our 736 00:53:39,000 --> 00:53:43,440 ecosystem. So hopefully the global economy 737 00:53:44,200 --> 00:53:46,840 will hold itself together in 2026. 738 00:53:47,200 --> 00:53:51,520 If it does, it'll be an epic here for the Etherium ecosystem. 739 00:53:51,520 --> 00:53:53,560 Cool. Joe, thank you so much for 740 00:53:53,560 --> 00:53:55,680 coming on. Where do we send people to find 741 00:53:55,680 --> 00:53:58,840 out more about you, Our consensus, Metamask, Linear, all 742 00:53:58,840 --> 00:54:00,040 the wonderful things you're doing? 743 00:54:01,840 --> 00:54:05,800 Ethereum Joseph on Twitter consensus dot IO on the 744 00:54:05,800 --> 00:54:07,840 interweb. Perfect. 745 00:54:08,000 --> 00:54:10,000 Thank you so much. Thanks, Frederick.