Finding Common Ground | Solana, Avalanche, Terra

✨Finding Common Ground✨ Crypto has grown a lot in 2021! New ecosystems have put new private keys in the hands of so many new users. Our interests overlap by 99%! We bring on the leaders from three killer DeFi ecosystems to discuss all the things that we align on, in order to start 2022 off in positive vibes! ------ 📣 ZERION | Move Your Assets To Layer 2 https://bankless.cc/Zerion ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🍵 MATCHA | SMART ORDER ROUTING https://bankless.cc/Matcha 🚀 SLINGSHOT | LAYER 2 SOCIAL TRADING https://bankless.cc/Slingshot 🏦 GEMINI | TURN FIAT INTO CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/Gemini 🦁 BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave 🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 6:00 Ground Rules 8:16 Why Are You in Crypto? 12:58 Personal Values & Backgrounds 18:26 Who are your Heroes? 21:56 Crypto Tribalism & Politics 27:06 Competing vs Collaborating 31:58 Decentralizing 37:04 What is True Decentralization? 45:00 Are Your Tokens Money? 51:31 Do Kwon Arrives 55:01 Layer 2 vs Multi-Chain 1:03:15 Predictions for 2022 1:07:11 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Resources: Anatoly on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko?s=20 Do Kwon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stablekwon?s=20 Emin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/el33th4xor?s=20 ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey Bankless Nation, we are back. We are live streaming this special edition panel episode. The theme here is finding common ground. So we have some alternative Layer Ones, some of the founders of Solana, Avalanche, and possibly Terra. We'll see if Do Kwan shows up in just a minute. But David, give us some context for this panel. Why are we doing it? What's the context going into this?

• 0:34David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think the industry is still unpacking 2021 because it was such a crazy year, definitely the craziest year in crypto's history, like period. And the mental model that I have for this is that the start of 2021 was really Ethereum rising out of the bear market and having a lot of success. And then a lot of that, and then in the wake of that, a lot of newer L1s to crop up on the scene with different design structures, different blockchains, also capture a bunch of users. And there's been a ton of demand for users to do crypto stuff. And a lot of these newer Layer Ones have innovated in new ways that have enabled a lot of new people to come into the crypto ecosystem. And so we want to unpack just a little bit about where we all have common ground with

• 1:19David Hoffman?

  all of these different blockchains. All blockchains are blockchains, which means we have common ground somewhere. And we want to find where that is and then grow that ground, grow that area of real estate of which we all share. So that is the panel that we are having today. We invited Anatoly, Emin, and Do from Terra, Solana, and Avalanche. Do, I don't know where Do is. We don't know where Do is.

• 1:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  MIA right now.

• 1:45David Hoffman?

  Yeah, he's an MIA at the moment. If he comes in in the next few minutes, that would be fantastic. Otherwise, we have Anatoly and Emin, who is imminently about to show up right after we get through some of these other messages. Ryan, what else do you have to say about this fantastic panel?

• 1:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, I think I just want to say that the theme for this panel is good vibes only, you know, in 2022. So we're gonna have a productive conversation. I think crypto is a little bit tired of a lot of the tribalism goes on. So this is a great opportunity to not be tribal and just have a great conversation. So that's what we're gonna do. Guys, some other announcements, housekeeping things as we get in. The first is, we've got a conference coming up. This is the permissionless conference. I believe Avalanche and Solana are going to be there. Terra, maybe two? Not sure, but this is a fantastic conference coming in May 17th to 19th. Just wanted to let you know to get your tickets soon for this event. Tickets go up every two weeks and batches are

• 2:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  released every two weeks as well. So grab your ticket to this event. Both David and I will be there. Also, wanted to give a quick PSA from our friends at Zirion because they've incorporated some new Layer 2 and multi-chain features. In particular, this is a Zirion portfolio. You see this, David? Look at this. What am I doing here?

• 3:01David Hoffman?

  So it looks like you're swapping networks, Ryan.

• 3:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  You can swap networks now in Zirion. All of your assets in one place, one user interface, really cool. Also, tell them about bridging, David, because Zirion enables some bridging as well.

• 3:14David Hoffman?

  Yeah, bridging is a very complicated world because there's going to be so many bridges of so many different types. And that's why I'm kind of bullish on the world of bridge aggregators or bridge obusators where it lets you do exactly what Ryan is doing right now, which is not care about what bridge you're using and just simply being able to send your assets to the place that you want to go without having to worry about the details about how you got there. And so that's what Zirion is doing is making bridging easier so we can all become bridge oars in 2022.

• 3:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  We are all migrating to Layer 2, all migrating to different sidechains, getting off the Ethereum L1. That's the message here. Get on Layer 2, connect your wallet, use Zirion to hop across those bridges, get started. There's a link in your show notes to do that. All right, guys, we're gonna be back with our guests in just a minute, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 4:04David Hoffman?

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• 4:49David Hoffman?

  to ape into. The Brave browser is the user-first browser for the Web3 internet, with built-in privacy and ad-blocking to keep you in charge of your digital footprint. Inside the Brave browser, you'll find the Brave Wallet, the first secure crypto wallet built natively inside of a Web3 crypto browser. Web3 is freedom from big tech and Wall Street. More control and better privacy. But there's a weak point in Web3: your crypto wallet. The Brave Wallet is different. Brave Wallet is built natively inside the Brave browser. No extension required, which gives the Brave Wallet an extra level of security versus other wallets. With the Brave Wallet, you can buy, store, send, and swap your crypto assets, and you can even manage your NFTs and connect to other wallets and DeFi apps, all from the security of the best privacy browser on the market.

• 5:31David Hoffman?

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• 6:16David Hoffman?

  Many of your favorite apps are already live, with many more coming over soon. You can find these apps at portal.arbitrum.1, and you can bridge your assets over to Arbitrum using bridge.arbitrum.io in order to experience DeFi and NFTs the way it was always meant to be: fast, cheap, and friction-free.

• 6:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey guys, welcome back to the special panel edition. This is the Finding Common Ground panel with some alternative layer ones. We've got two here that we're going to talk to. First, I want to introduce you to Anatoly. He was the co-founder of Solana and also introduce you to Emin who is the founder of Eva Labs. We are missing our third panelist, Doquan. He might show up in the episode at some point in time. And like if he does, we'll just let him right in and roll along with the conversation. Gentlemen, it's great to have you on Bankless. Welcome.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

• 7:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, this is gonna be a fun episode, I think. And I think it's something the crypto world is craving. And I just want to throw out some ground rules as we enter this conversation. So I don't think this is really a debate. I think this is about finding common ground that we all have. Some ground rules, I think, for our guests. Good vibes only. This is the podcast. We want good vibes only. I think the crypto community wants to see good vibes from the leaders in this space, including David and myself. Also, plainspeak. We're going to try, whenever possible, not to talk technical. The community has asked that we sort of speak at a plainspeak language as much as possible, not get too in-depth in the weeds. And the third ground rule is letting people finish their sentences. I know we're

• 7:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  very excited, have a lot to say. Let's let everyone have an opportunity to talk. David, you and I have some ground rules as well. We are not representatives of Ethereum on this episode. We are merely moderators, not today. So we're not arguing aside. We're just here to be good hosts and move the conversation forward and be as hospitable as possible. Great to have you guys on Bankless. You ready to start?

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 8:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, let's start with this first question. I think this is an important values alignment question. And I expect we'll have a lot of common ground on it. And the question is, why are you in crypto? Why are you in crypto? Anatoly, you want to, you want to kick us off with that?

• 8:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, I had this idea that it's possible to use these Byzantine full tolerant systems to build an environment where there's no intermediaries for trading. And this was because this was something that I did in my spare time. I did it for fun. I used to, you know, like connect to interactive brokers or a bunch of Forex trading like platforms and trade via their APIs. And I was always feeling like my trades were getting in a little later than everyone else's. The data I was getting was a little slower than everyone else's. And there was this barrier to entry there that was kind of impossible to cross as a hobbyist.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  And when I kind of had the technical idea for what for building a system like Solana, that was the first use case that I thought of. And that's really what drove the first, I would say, three years of development, how we were thinking about the use case we're building and like everything we're trying to deliver is that, okay, a hobbyist can connect to this network with just a piece of metal and they're in the same level playing field as, you know, Alameda or Jump. And that that was the the goal and still is the goal.

• 9:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  Just curious, anecdotally, a quick follow up on that. A lot of people came to crypto for like a, you know, sound money thesis, right? As a result of, you know, what they would say is misuse of monetary policy and kind of the fiat world. Is that you or is that not?

• 10:00Speaker 03

  No, so like despite like, but I totally get it. And I thought that was a really very like important thing that crypto could enable. My family, growing up in the Soviet Union, saw the failure of government, like to experience it firsthand, myself included, like my parents, you know, we, they left in 1992 with $350 to seven people. That was, that was it. That was the only thing that the Soviet Union will let you leave with. So that was kind of, I get it, like, I strongly get it in a very core sense. And I totally appreciate the folks working on that side. But what I was passionate personally was like bits and sending these bits as fast as

• 10:44Speaker 03

  possible around the world and as fairly as possible, which was where my skills set lies and what I was inspired to do. And I'm not trying to compete in the sound money thesis at all, but definitely appreciate it.

• 10:57David Hoffman?

  Eman, curious, same question to you. Why are you in crypto?

• 11:00Speaker 02

  So I like building big, big things that work and it comes from, it comes from a different, different kind of background. I grew up in a, at a time and in a country where things did not quite work. You would go to the airport and you know, the systems were down. You would go to the bank, they'd say, come back the next day. When you closed the door, it wouldn't close perfectly and completely. Now I remember going into my middle school at the time, an American school and, and seeing that everything actually perfectly matched. The doors were no longer drafty and, and that instilled in me a sense for things that, that have a life of their own, that, that live on the internal, in some virtual universe, subject to their own rules and continue functioning in a predictable, perfect manner.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  And that got me going into distributed systems and starting in 2002 with the Karma system that we built, I started getting into digital money and the goal of course is to digitize all things of value, to create a universe where anyone can digitize something, send it around the world and trade it. And in so doing, eliminate all the middlemen. You should not have to get permission from anybody. You should not have to be beholden to anyone else's rules in transacting with your valuable goods.

• 12:16David Hoffman?

  Guys, I, I think, I find your quick backgrounds actually really fascinating because I think both of your guys' backgrounds actually show up in the, in the blockchains that you, you guys work on. Anatoly, you talked about how you were working with, you know, trading, you just felt like you were getting, you know, front run by people with more access and better privileges than you. And so that inspired you to make Solana, which I think has similar properties that make sure that everyone can do that. And so, and Eman, same with you where, you know, you like big things that work where perhaps how you, the, the experience that you had influenced why you're here in crypto and, and also the, the nature of the blockchain that you guys are, are building.

• 12:59David Hoffman?

  Can you guys just speak a little bit to that about like the values that, that you learned when you were, when you were deciding before perhaps getting into crypto? And, and how it came to actually shape what you consider to be important inside of the crypto industry? We'll start back with, with Anatoly.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  So I spent most of my career at Qualcomm working on communications operating systems, like moving bits around through silicon. And that skill set is what I brought to Solana. And the use case that I thought of was like this, this system that I'm building, it has to be good at something useful to humans. That was like, that was a prerequisite. And there were plenty of people already working on the sound money thing. And I, and I was like, I don't, I don't think I bring anything new to that space. Like, I don't think I can build a better Bitcoin or a better Ethereum. Like, so I never really thought of it like as something for us to go after. And trading was something that I personally enjoyed as

• 13:56Speaker 03

  a hobbyist and had a, saw a clear reason why centralized systems always kind of tend to get to a kind of a corrupted state, where it's not in the sense that it's corruption, where you're getting screwed. It's that you gotta like, you know, pay 10 million bucks to Chicago Mercantile Exchange for that preferred access. And to even be able to do that, you have to know the people to even like, talk to them and be part of the, part of the club. And that to me always felt like, just not, not great. It felt like I couldn't do what I was really interested in doing, you know. And I didn't think that initially, I kind

• 14:38Speaker 03

  of thought, you know, maybe, maybe these systems will actually flip CME and NIZI, and we'll see equities being traded on these open decentralized systems. What I, what I've realized lately, over the last year, is that the revolution that we're seeing is that everything is becoming DeFi, artists becoming DeFi, social networks are becoming DeFi. And that long tail of new use cases are going to, is going to surpass all these old financial applications by, you know, 100 miles. It's just going to outgrow everything. So where if we've switched kind of, you know, ideas that like, what we're building is this thing for trading, for price discovery, but We need to start building tools for humans to actually use it in day-to-day

• 15:24Speaker 03

  activity that they do on the web. And that could be NFTs, that could be using that NFT to participate in a social network. That's the monkey Dow that's now sticking with a validator, whatever is that they want to do, right? Like, it's kind of become much more consumer-driven. Like, how do we apply this stuff to now consumers as opposed to Jump Trading or Alameda, or like, you know, even Trading Hobbies? Even though I believe both of those joining together is really what makes this space really interesting.

• 15:53David Hoffman?

  And Emin, same question to you. What about your experiences in your young professional life led into how you decided to construct Avalanche or what you care about now that you're in the industry of crypto?

• 16:05Speaker 02

  So, there are a couple of things that struck me very early on. So, one of the main things that I saw, I saw in the 90s, the very first attempts at digital cash and how they failed. They failed because the banks intervened. You can't go through the regular channels and do a revolution. That's just not how it works. You gotta bring something to the table that is multiple orders of magnitude better than what's there. You can't come in with like a 15%, 20% better thing and say, hey, this is, this is going to change things. So, that made me stay in academia for actually a very long time. I've been an OG in the space for a long, long time. Started out, you know, I remember, single-digit Bitcoins.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  So, you know, I didn't actually initiate Avalanche until I decided that there was something in our hands that was orders of magnitude better than what was there. So, that's one of them. A second thing that characterizes my approach is to always build systems that are flexible, that to not have, I think this comes from my background, as a graduate student, I worked on operating systems. You want to build a substrate, something that lies at the bottom, that enables other people to get whatever they want done. You don't want to be prescriptive. You want them to be able to customize whatever they're building. So, Avalanche has this notion of subnets that allows anybody to create their own chains with their own rules, with their own virtual machines.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  So, that is something that's actually fairly unique to Avalanche, and it's quite different. And it plays at the, you know, plays to the heart of our values. The third and final thing is that, that all along, I was always human oriented, not algo oriented. So there were a lot of people, especially in the early days, who were like, "Oh, you know Bitcoin cannot be changed because, you know, the algorithm says 21 million coins, etc., etc." And so they're right, you know, in what they're saying. But they're missing out the fact that these systems have to be serving their constituents. They have to be serving their users. So that led us in a direction where we're building a system that is, within given parameters, admits

• 18:17Speaker 02

  governance and modification on the fly by its users. So all of these had a fairly big impact on the ultimate design of the system we built.

• 18:27David Hoffman?

  I'd love to know, who are your guys' like heroes in this industry? Who do you, who are like, you know, ancient forefathers or forewomen who you guys think that have really like, you know, the cypherpunks of old? For example, like personally, I really look up to somebody like Amin Soleimani. Ryan here might like say Vitalik. Who do you guys look up to that are like the early OGs of cryptography or cryptocurrency? Or who comes to mind? Amin, let's start with you.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Let's see. So one of the first people I would mention would be Ron Revest. He's the R in RSA. He's a Turing Award winner, came up with some of the crypto that we use to sign our transactions. He's also brilliant across the, you know, across the spectrum. And, you know, every time I chat with him, I come out, come away enlightened. Another person that I look up to is Barbara Elsko. And she was a professor, she retired from MIT. Brilliant, brilliant researcher, set the path for consensus protocols, which are at the heart of all of these systems. And so there are also some others, more modern. So these are, I think, maybe two generations or three generations older than

• 19:36Speaker 02

  me. A couple more people that I look up to is Mike Burrows. He's the person from AltaVista. I'm not sure if you guys remember this, but it was one of the big search engines back in the day, probably the best engineered search engine of its day. Just a fantastic builder all around. And Jeff Dean, someone that I went to graduate school with, who's an amazing builder at Google. A lot of the Google infrastructure that, you know, we all use came from his vision or his actual fingertips typing away at the code. So that's sort of my, you know, go-to idols, if I were to name them.

• 20:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Anatoly, who are your idols or people that you look up to?

• 20:15Speaker 03

  In the space, I would say Zaki from Cosmos. He was one of the first folks that I talked to that was like a true crypto developer. And he's one of those people that you can call in the middle of the night and he will calm you down.

• 20:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is this something that you've done before?

• 20:38Speaker 02

  Anatoly, you can call me too, you know?

• 20:44Speaker 03

  He's just an amazing person. Vitalik, I haven't interacted with him that closely, just a few times. But his writing, I think, is very crisp and succinct. And he's able to describe really complex topics to like an engineer. I feel like he bridges that gap between academia and engineering really well. At a personal level, there's a few folks that I worked with that qualified that really shaped my career in terms of operating system design. Brian Kelly, I don't know if you would be listening to this podcast, but he was just one of the senior directors there that was designing a bunch of the operating

• 21:23Speaker 03

  systems on ARM while ARM was moving from architecture to architecture, basically, every year. It was such a breakneck speed of development in the hardware that I really kind of learned what it's like to code under the gun. When you have hardware that's shipping at a particular date and it's shipping with bugs and every delay is costing a company 10 million bucks or something like that, you're under a lot of pressure to deliver and solve hard problems really quickly.

• 21:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  So guys, now we get to get into the meat of this a little bit more and ask a question I think is on everyone's mind in the crypto community. So, you know, some of us in this panel represent maybe different tribes within crypto, although we have just so much in common. But I want to ask the meta question of why do you think crypto is so tribal? And does it actually have to be? Does it have to be tribal? Why is it tribal and does it have to be? What do you think, Anatoly?

• 22:26Speaker 03

  So I kind of came into tech in the 90s as a teenager and I remember people arguing with passion and vitriol about Linux file systems, like the file system that you pick in your config, in your kernel config when you're booting up Linux. People were tribal about that.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  And turns out there was one evil file system, but that's a different story. The thing that like I think what people get about these technologies like movements is that when you participate in these, you're thinking about all the future things that this thing will enable. You're kind of putting a lot of faith in these ideas and how it's going to change the world. And that's almost a religious experience, right? Like this idea of an open source movement taking down Microsoft. That was a big deal, right? Like you were battling a company that was like a giant monopolist run by Bill Gates that was just squashing everyone, right? And this fledging community of people are just coding for fun. Like you kind of get bought into this and I feel that's true about crypto.

• 23:30Speaker 03

  We have, we're trying to change the world, right? And we buy into these ideas and they, and you think about what is this going to be 20 years from now? How is this going to improve the world and change everything? And that is a faith, that's faith, right? So we argue about it like we argue about religions. It's part of the human experience.

• 23:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you think that crypto is a bit more political than something like a Linux file system by nature, right? It's kind of about decentralization as a political concept. Does that make it a little different?

• 24:04Speaker 03

  I think at that time in the 90s, the open source was almost a political movement. And a lot of folks actually became like tried to interact with politics and governance and get US governments to adopt policies that taxpayer money should only be spent on open source software development. And these were really like core, important things to folks. Like they were, they were fighting, they took time with their own, you know, life to go do this, right? And I think we're seeing Similar things now with decentralization and open finance because there is kind of not a single enemy like Microsoft,

• 24:42Speaker 03

  but kind of this, you know, you know, this vampire squid that's like slowly sucking the blood out of everything, both on the web through advertisement and those kind of negative loops and in finance through fees and everything else that people deal with. And, uh, you know, so that's, these are powerful movements. I mean, like I, I feel like, I guess blessed to live through multiples of these, like the web, open source and now crypto. Um, but you know, it's also a curse, right? To, to have that much, so much change happening in your life.

• 25:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Eman, what do you think? Why is crypto tribal and does it really have to be?

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Uh, well, it shouldn't be. Uh, my dream is that we would stop fighting over the same pool of users and focus on growing the space. You know, sum total, we're about one trillion and, and sum total, there's about 700 trillion worth of assets out there. And the chains that, that win will not be the ones that, you know, say the meanest things about each other. They're going to be the ones that can absorb that growth, that can make those use cases happen on top of their platforms. So that's very clear to all of us. And you're right, uh, despite that, this area does attract a level of tribalism that, um, I actually have not seen in many other areas. I've seen the, the, uh, the open source movement, of course.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  I have seen the, the, uh, the editor wars, Emacs versus VI, you know, we've, I fought on the side of one of them, uh, that I'm not going to name because then I'll lose half my audience. So, um, but, uh, but you know, um, but money is inherently political and it's so deeply ingrained in our consciousness. Everybody thinks they're an expert at it. Uh, that's also another thing that, that factors into this. If you can balance a checkbook, then suddenly you think you're an economist. And, um, and it's, uh, and suddenly, you know, you've got all these people opining on all sorts of technical issues that really ought to belong to, uh, to a couple of people who've done some measurements and ought to be resolved by science. And so instead of scientific discourse, we find ourselves in vitriol.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  And, uh, you know, it's not a good look for, for our, you know, for the industry, for the space, but I think we'll grow out of it. Um, or maybe we won't. I mean, I, I actually don't think we're going to grow out of it entirely. It's just always going to happen. But the folks who absorb the message that, hey, moving on and, uh, and expanding is the right strategy are going to be the ones that win.

• 27:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's cool. Thanks for these answers, guys. We're gonna switch it up and throw some community questions your way from Twitter. The first is from Yankee dot U S T on Twitter. Asked this question prior to the show. Do you see your chains as complements or substitutes to each other? I think, Emin, you're maybe advocating for a more expanded pie. But at the end of the day, is there some competition between these chains? Are they substitutionary? Or are they, I guess, synergistic and complementary?

• 27:41Speaker 02

  They are essentially complementary. So first of all, just let's dispense away with the killer words. There is no killing done in this space. There are chains that are technologically dead. Anatoly knows this. Every techie knows this. They ought to be dead. And, you know, the horse is lying down on the ground with the four legs facing into the sky. But yet, they're traded. They're around and they're not disappearing. So even dead chains are actually quite alive and walking. So that's, I think, something that everybody needs to absorb. There will be times when I will criticize Anatoly for some technical choice. And he will understand what I'm saying. He might do the same to me. But those are technical discussions among technical people. So in general, it's not one against the other.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  So all of these chains have a different vision. And they have far more in common, far more in common than they have against in opposition to each other. For example, Avalanche and Ethereum are working in the same EVM space. The more we have in the EVM space, the better it is for both of those ecosystems. So Solana is pushing the envelope in a variety of different areas. In terms of engineering, in terms of building a community, in terms of appealing to a different set of programmers. You know, their programming language is quite different. So, you know, I'll name the other ones. For example, Tezos is appealing to a functional programming environment. So there are all sorts of different approaches to this whole thing that are essentially going to complement each other.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  And it's not a, you know, I win a dollar by taking it from you kind of... Environment. There is so much out there that isn't digitized, that hasn't come into blockchains, that that's where the real battles ought to be and are actually. That's where we are fighting. Because Avalanche, at least, you know, my or Avalanche certainly is spending its time coming up with new assets to build on top. We're coming up with new use cases, new virtual machines to build on top of our platform. So that's, I think, the thing that's going to get us out of this morass of people who are who seem to be inward oriented and and at each other's throats at times.

• 29:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  So Anna Tully, same question to you. Emin says there's no such thing as a killer. There's no such thing as an ETH killer or Bitcoin killer or a Solana killer. At some level, we're all in this together, but there has to be some element of competition, right? I mean, somebody's got to win. What would you say to Yankee USD's question, complements or substitutes?

• 30:01Speaker 03

  Um, I think the killer part comes from if like the developers just stop building, eventually that thing will die. You know,

• 30:12Speaker 03

  the theory, right? Like, as long as there's somebody working on this open source project over the weekend, you can't really kill it. And we saw that with Microsoft trying to kill all sorts of things that were much, much smaller than any of these chains. So that part, I think, is is kind of like just a silly thing to think about. But I think the there's definitely competition because there's overlapping use cases. Every chain can run NFTs. So now, like, how, you know, we're competing in that use case. You know, those projects that are built on top are now competing for the NFT space, NFT users, NFT enjoyers. And that competition, I think, is very healthy.

• 30:54Speaker 03

  Because that forces innovation at that like border between complicated technology and consumers. How do you figure out key management? How do you figure out what is a good UX for a wallet and all these other things? You get to see a bunch of different experiments run and the best of those are the ones that succeed. But they're not exclusive to that chain. You start seeing people copy all the best practices like almost instantly.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  And that's really the driver innovation, driver of growing the space, getting more users to, you know, have their keys, self custody. Ultimately, a good thing, but it's competition. That's fine. I like competing.

• 31:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Let's set some context before we ask this next community question. So I think the context is crypto is very much on a path towards becoming more decentralized over time, at least at its best, right? Bitcoin is trying to do this through distribution. Ethereum is trying to do this via a variety of mechanisms. I assume your projects are trying to do this as well. So the question from Faithful Stewart is, what's your change plan to become more decentralized? So you had some point on the centralization versus decentralization spectrum, assuming you want to become more decentralized. How do you do that? Eman, what would you say to Faithful Stewart?

• 32:14Speaker 02

  So the very first thing that's essential for any system to become more decentralized is to have at its very core, a protocol that allows people to participate. If that is exclusionary, if it is, for example, as we saw in the case of Libra, it's just Zuckerberg and 27 of his best buddies at most, you know, going up to, they had visions to go up to about 100, and you know, they had to scuttle the whole project. It didn't go anywhere because they failed to decentralize. So if that's your path, then you're going to be limited. And we see, you know, for example, with Avalanche, we spent a lot of effort in coming up with a protocol that accommodates millions of participants in every single decision. So that's number one.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Number two, of course, is the ecosystem on top. You want to accommodate as many use cases as possible, as many programmers as possible, and provide to them both a familiar environment, if that's what they so choose, or an environment that they can custom tailor to their needs. And that's what we do. We have both the contract chain, which is EVM compatible, and we have the ability to create subnets for custom use cases. So these all bring in new use cases, and the ultimate in decentralization is the set of people that we attract, the set of people who are part of our ecosystem. And we're working, I think, overall, all of us, and not just Avalanche, but I think for all of us, we're trying to expand that pie. And I'm really excited about what has happened.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  I think we saw in the last year or so that, you know, systems like Avalanche did not exist 15 months ago, and it went from zero to where it is today. And that's been a tremendous, tremendous driver for us, and we plan to continue on that path.

• 33:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  And Eman, you look concretely, how do you think Avalanche can become more decentralized? Like, what's the next thing that you feel like you could implement the chinks in the armor right now that need to be filled?

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Sure. So currently, we have only three subnets that are in production. And we have a couple of testnet subnets that are really seeing a lot of use. So as we have more subnets, where you're going to see a very exciting development. I've been saying this for a while now, nobody takes it seriously. But staking services and validation services are going to become a real revenue driver, not just for the platforms themselves and the people who hold those platform tokens, but also for people who are participating as validators and stakers. Validators and stakers don't do much today, but soon there will be actual use cases for differentiated validation services, validators that do more than just vote on transactions. So that's coming.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  And as that comes in, you're going to see all sorts of people participate in making blockchains more decentralized, and there will be essentially a business model developing around them. That's one of the main ways in which we're pushing the envelope. And of course, another step forward for the Avalanche community is to bring the cost of joining the system as a validator, the default networks as a validator, so that more people can participate in Avalanche itself.

• 35:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  And Atoli, how would you answer that question? What's Solana's plan to become more decentralized?

• 35:28Speaker 03

  So I think there's some things that we can do, and that's more engineering focused. And that's similar to what Eman's talking about. Reduce the cost to join the network, make sure it's permissionless to entry. I mean, those are the obvious things. And reduce the number of failure points. And that could be things that you see Ethereum do, like multiple versions of the same client. Because the more teams you have that understand the protocol at that intimate level that they could be able to write it. The more kind of you're reducing kind of key man risk, right? The bus factor is much lower and all these things are parts of decentralization.

• 36:07Speaker 03

  And I think the bigger picture there is, do you have enough humans that actually care that this thing is decentralized? To use it, take advantage of these features that decentralization buys them. That there's a reason for this thing to exist and for that to move forward. Without the latter, right? Without actual demand for self-signing, self-custody, actual humans signing transactions and doing something on these chains. The work that you're doing in decentralization becomes pretty pointless, right? Like it's, you may do the work, but then, you know, no one's actually going to run these systems and care about them and make sure that they're operating correctly.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  So that latter part is, you know, a mixture of like time and use cases that have product market fit. And that's, that latter part is the harder part. That's the hardest. That's not engineering, but it's actually trying to understand what humans need out of these systems and building for them.

• 37:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  And Anatoly, the bankless thesis has very much emphasized decentralization, particularly at the base layer, the layer ones. But there are others with kind of like a different thesis on the space. Basically pushing back and saying, hey, like the descent, the most decentralized chain doesn't always win. Do you believe that? Do you think decentralization is the thing that makes a layer one fail or succeed? Or do you think there are other things that are even more important?

• 37:34Speaker 03

  For our particular use case, if it came to a point that it's possible for some sort of the network to prevent a hobbyist to plug in and get at the same information level playing field as everyone else. I would consider that a failure and I would probably start a different chain.

• 37:54Speaker 03

  So that part of it, right, that physical guarantee that anybody in the world can throw a piece of metal, even if it's a very expensive hunk of metal, right, but if we at least they can do that and permissionally start getting in the same level and playing field in terms of information as everyone else, that that to me is a critical piece. And I feel like if we succeed there, plus there's humans that want this system for something, right, there's some real product market fit on the human side. Everything else would just be taken care of over time. That's just a function of time. So that core part, I think both of those need to exist. And that's a different thing than sound money, or, or something like that, or,

• 38:39Speaker 03

  you know, you know, whatever, nuclear war resistant finance bunker coin, whatever you want to call that. Two different use case, you know, three different use cases potentially.

• 38:53David Hoffman?

  So guys, that was all of our serious philosophy type questions.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  I didn't get a chance to react to that. Let me say a few words. Yeah, let me say a few words. Actually, Ryan, I'm actually really worried about the issue you raised. So the issue is, does the market know enough to evaluate the claims of these chains? And something that you always worry about, if you have a high quality product, is a cheap knockoff. And many of us, in fact, everybody on this podcast, obviously, is working on chains that are working really, really hard to get truly decentralized, or have worked really hard to be truly decentralized. Now, and then along comes Joe's centralized check, okay, Joe's centralized blockchain. And, and you got to worry, because they can suddenly

• 39:40Speaker 02

  excel in metrics that are really hard to excel in, because they've given up on one of the most important things in the space, which is decentralization. So they can boast all sorts of numbers, they can, they can cut corners essentially. And, and the thing is, will that be seen and evaluated properly by the market?

• 40:02Speaker 02

  Or will the market just go along because most of the time, everything is good and it's a sunny day and you don't really have to worry about the leaks on the boat until the storm comes in and starts shaking it and that's when it sinks. So this is something I actually worry about quite a, quite a bit. At the end of the day, and we have seen this happen too. We have seen chains rise and we've seen chains get adopted as if they are fundamentally sound when many of us knew that they were at their core, they had centralized points of failure, or they weren't decentralized enough. So this is something that actually does worry me and that we've worked really, really hard to be able to compete even with those folks who are at the extreme ends of that trade-off. That is, our algorithmic innovations

• 40:47Speaker 02

  are so good that we are competitive with them, but it's still something that worries me. And at that level, I think we do have to just rely on user awareness. We have to get the word out that there is a big difference between chains that are deep down centralized versus the chains that are actually bringing something new to the table versus the ones that have true technology and true decentralized foundations. So I think at that point, it's up to all of us to educate the public about the differences here and the values in this space.

• 41:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  It always seems on that, like, Emin, the thing that trips people up is like, people don't know where to draw the line, right? So Bitcoiners will say Ethereum is too centralized, right? And some people in Ethereum will say, you know, Solana, Avalanche, and Terra are too centralized. And then maybe this panel collectively says, well, we've got Binance Chain and Tron and Zuckerberg Coin and like, that's where we draw the line. So that is the hard part, I think, for new entrants to the market. What gives me peace, I'm wondering if the panelists agree with this, is in the long run, the market will just figure this out, won't they? Like, well, things will happen, hacks will happen, you know, centralization

• 42:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  vectors will be attacked, single points of failure will fall, and the market will figure this all out. But in the interim, there's a lot of, you know, I guess, miseducation and noise and questioning about these things. Would you both agree with that?

• 42:16Speaker 02

  Absolutely, 100%. I think the storm inevitably comes someday. That's the nature of these tail events. And when it does, it exposes problems with decentralization very, very easily.

• 42:30David Hoffman?

  And I definitely agree that this is definitely the hard part about onboarding people into crypto because these are the hardest lessons to learn, right? Like decentralization is such a new word for so many people outside of the crypto industry that when they come into this industry, the newer, I knew that, I remember coming into 2017, not really appreciating decentralization and just kind of thinking that peer-to-peer money was like the cool new thing and not really realizing actually how to measure or reason about decentralization. It's a very hard thing to reason about, especially for the newcomers. And so guys, that was all of our like philosophy, serious type questions, but in the second half of the show, we have some more candy type questions. And I want to tease the second half of the show with this candy type question here.

• 43:14David Hoffman?

  If you didn't, what is your favorite blockchain that's not the one that you are working on? So if your blockchain went down, God forbid, and you had to use a different blockchain, what blockchain would it be? Anatoly, let's start with you.

• 43:28Speaker 03

  Shoot, I don't know. I haven't thought about anyone else's blockchain in a while. I would try, I would like to try Avalanche, I guess. I haven't tried it yet. So I'll just, I'll just be nice to him and.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Sounds good Anatoly. We'll give you some coins if you bridge over. So that's a very easy question for me, without a doubt Ethereum. So, you know, I'll just flip over my network and pay the extra fees and go back to what I used to use.

• 44:05David Hoffman?

  Well, that question was going to be a little bit more fun if we had Doe here for a three-person panel, but we don't, we just have, we just have you guys. If he's like, oh yeah, okay. Guys, so we have questions like that, such as, do you think your own asset is money? And what do you think about L2s versus L1s and bridges? And some very fun questions coming up right after we get to some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. When you shop for plane tickets, you probably use Kayak, Expedia, or Google to compare ticket prices. So why would you limit yourself to just one exchange when you trade crypto? When you make your trades, you want to make sure you're getting the best possible price. On your trade, and that's why you should be using Matcha. Matcha has smart order routing that splits your trade across all the various liquidity sources in Ethereum,

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• 46:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey guys, we are back with the Finding Common Ground panel. This is with the alternative layer ones. Anatoly from Solana and we have Emin from Avalanche. Guys, when we finished the last conversation, we left a few questions hanging. And one, I think is really important, at least has been important as David and I have sort of explored crypto. And that is the question about the monetary value of the tokens underlying your platform. So are your assets money? Is the AVAX token money? Is the Sol token money? The reason we think this is important is because that can be what gives the token additional value.

• 47:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  And of course, in these crypto economic systems, additional value means increased security. So let me throw it over to you Anatoly. Is Sol money? Are your layer one assets money, would you say?

• 47:35Speaker 03

  So if you lived on some planet where you could magically communicate with everyone simultaneously, and that was guaranteed, you wouldn't need Nakamoto Co consensus, you wouldn't need BFT, all you would need is cryptography to build money. That would be the only thing that you'd need. So in a world where Solana is at its peak, right? It's the system where information, state transitions pass through it at speed of light through fiber. It is that thing. It's that planet and you can build money on top of it. But I don't think of the token or something like that as a money in sense that users don't need to use it from day to day services to transact in it, to buy coffee in it, or

• 48:19Speaker 03

  to use it as a, as like a, I don't know. Yeah, I think of it as like an access to that magical communication bus where I send a message, it's guaranteed to arrive to everybody in the world.

• 48:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  So not a store of value then Anatoly?

• 48:35Speaker 03

  You could build a store value on top of that, in that planet, right? On top of this Tesla planet where you stick a rod into the ground and you can talk to everybody. All you need is cryptography to build a store of value on it.

• 48:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  We're going to ask these same questions to Emin, but just a quick follow up while we're talking about. So what makes the soul token valuable then?

• 48:54David Hoffman?

  Why number go up Anatoly?

• 48:57Speaker 03

  This is, I think, a tough question because it's not clear that there is a clear, like, I think the only clear business case that I think I see in the systems is that owning soul gives you a percentage of the stake. That percentage of the stake means that you get to produce X amount of blocks and producing those blocks is lucrative for some use cases such as, you know, meth. But that's four degrees of separation and this is the only thing that I've seen really as a, as a real use case on Ethereum that has clear, kind of clear connection to the underlying token.

• 49:37Speaker 03

  But I personally don't think that may be the, the final use case or how the stuff plays out. Like, I don't know, right? This is, we're still, we're so early that we don't know yet. And you can say that safely because 1994, when you're looking at those bulletin boards and the first six degrees, like email chain went out, there's no way you could have predicted that's going to be Facebook worth a trillion dollars, right? Like 20 years later. So we can safely say that we don't really know yet.

• 50:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  So Emin, same question over to you. Are avalanche tokens, are they money?

• 50:13Speaker 02

  Of course they're money. They can serve as, as money in transactions. The system is so fast, you know, finalizing transactions in under a second that you can use it for payments faster than you can use most credit cards these days. So at least in the US. So, so that's a very good situation to be in. The token has other uses as well. It's used as a, as a primary means of access to this underlying network of networks of the avalanche system in which there's these multiple subnets live. And on those subnets, you can do things like creating smart contracts, interact with smart contracts, stake, lend, swap, etc. So it has utility, it has use cases, and it

• 50:57Speaker 02

  serves as the sort of the fluid that greases all of these financial wheels. And the main thing, of course, is that this thing, while it's money, our vision is not to compete with the world's monies. We are not trying to compete with Bitcoin's store of value narrative. So even though we're actually a hard capped asset like Bitcoin, that's not where our energy is going. We're going after the use cases that are not on the blockchain. We're trying to digitize all things. So we have a very different vision and take than most systems out there.

• 51:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  Guys, I think a new player has entered the chat. I wanted to welcome Do Kwan to the chat for the Terra.

• 51:37David Hoffman?

  The YouTube chat is about to blow up right now.

• 51:41Speaker 04

  Hey, guys. Sorry I'm late. It was supposed to be 5:30 AM my time, but I accidentally set the alarm for 6:30. So really sorry about that.

• 51:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  No worries. Well, we appreciate you jumping on and joining. This has been a really fun conversation so far. David, should we just throw Do right into the last question there?

• 51:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah, absolutely. That's the best question to start. Let's do it.

• 52:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. First thing in the morning for you, Do. So the question is, are the underlying tokens of the Terra blockchain, are they money? Should they have a monetary premium associated with them? And if they're not money, why should number go up?

• 52:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, if you look at our Twitter handle, it's Terra money. So definitely, the intention is for it to be money. But I think when I say money, I mean that in a slightly different sense from, let's say, when people say Bitcoin is money or Ethereum is money. So we generally think about what we're trying to do as

• 52:45Speaker 04

  Creating a price neutral asset, so a stablecoin that is pegged to things like the dollar, or the Krill one, or you know, the British pound, and so on and so forth. And then the idea is that people can enjoy, you know, programmable assets, so things that they can build in DeFi, and so on and so forth, in a censorship resistant context similar to Bitcoin or Ethereum, while at the same time, they maintain all the price stability characteristics of their local fiat currency.

• 53:19David Hoffman?

  So, Doe, we're gonna have to catch you up and speed run through some early questions to get you up to speed with the panel. So the first two questions that we want to run through is, why do you care about crypto? And also, who do you look up to in the space? Who are your heroes or your idols that have influenced you in your time here in this industry?

• 53:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  And it's okay if you name someone on this panel, Doe.

• 53:44Speaker 04

  Well, to answer the second question first, all of you guys, obviously.

• 53:50David Hoffman?

  Okay, but what about not on this panel?

• 53:53Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, so in general, I think the people that are inspiring is, if you look at the type of people that started building, you know, like many, many years ago, most of them have semi-retired or fully retired at this point. And it takes a lot, right? Because crypto runs 24/7. It definitely does take a reasonable amount of toll on your health. I actually used to be like 20 kilograms lighter when I started Terra, if that's useful context. But yeah, so I mean, like, the types of people that I find inspiring are, you know, the people that have been in the daily grind for, you know, three, four, or five years, yet at the same time still going strong.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  So I think these are the types of people that add tons of value to the industry and, you know, hope to be working together for a long time.

• 54:45David Hoffman?

  All right, now that we got a little bit of your background, we're going through some of the candy questions. And so we want to kind of unpack, I think we want to, the listeners definitely want to hear about the versions of crypto that you guys think will manifest in, there's always a, while there's spectrums in crypto such as the decentralization and centralization spectrum, I think another spectrum that we can all talk about is the L2 versus multi-L1 world. And so what do you guys think about L2s? Will your chain have layer 2s? Or will it be mostly emphasis on a multi-layer 1 world instead? How do you guys reason about these things?

• 55:26David Hoffman?

  And what do you think, how does your blockchain fit into the future crypto world that you think is unfolding? Anatoly, let's start with you.

• 55:37Speaker 03

  I think defining L2 to strictly this idea of something like optimism or zero knowledge proofs that verify that some computation was done correctly. Those are implementation details, anybody could build this on Solana. So the question is, why would they want to, right? Like, what is it that they're trying to do with this, with this thing? And then the only reason they'd want to do this is because the execution layer on Solana is not sufficient for them, that it takes too long for some really big computation. But right now, that's not a bottleneck. And it doesn't seem like that's going to be a bottleneck for the next couple of years, at least. I don't know what things would change, but cryptographic operations that are typically the expensive parts

• 56:22Speaker 03

  that you run on Ethereum, unless they're, you know, built in, those are running at nearly native speed. And like, by native speed, I mean like SIMD accelerated, like, speed on current processors. It's, to me, like, unlikely that we'll hit those limits, simply because current hardware doesn't million these, these things per second, right? So computation is just not the bottleneck.

• 56:49Speaker 03

  And neither state, you know, like, I think both, both of those are, are like fairly solved problems. It's a... It's, I think, might be more necessary in the, this like, we only want to do settlement at the layer one and nothing else. And we'll build a thing for settlement and only that, and run the single core ETH2 style validators.

• 57:11Speaker 03

  That may be the necessary design choice, but I don't know. We'll see. I don't see it as like a necessity.

• 57:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey David, you're muted.

• 57:22David Hoffman?

  Emin, what's your take about the future multi-layer two, multi-layer one? How do you reason about these things and how does Avalanche fit into that?

• 57:34David Hoffman?

  Emin, you're also muted.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  Okay, so every layer two solution also works on Avalanche. So we can accommodate anything, any layer two that works on Ethereum just as well. But that's not where our scalability roadmap is taking us. So I understand where Ethereum wants to go with its own layer two based solution. And I'm not headed that way. I'm not headed that way because I have some concerns about where one might end up if one were to go that way. And that is centralization land. All of these layer twos that exist today, minus like some of the very esoteric ones that people worked really hard to build. Most of them that you've heard of have single points of failure.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  They're centralized. So, and then assuming at their best, some future date when they get finally, you know, whatever they are to, you know, the second version of them that has, you know, the sequencers all made redundant, et cetera. Even in that universe, the designs, the architectures lead to constructs where some central party is collecting all the rent. Somebody's collecting all of the extractable value from the user stream. So you can end up wanting to build a new system that's really, really scalable. And you end up reinventing the system as we have now. Congratulations, you have Robin Hood and Citadel. And so I don't want to end up there. So that's why we have so much emphasis on layer one scalability.

• 59:01Speaker 02

  Everything that can be done on layer one should be done on layer one.

• 59:06Speaker 02

  L twos, they essentially take an opaque blob, do something to it and bring it back into the system. And and that that process that that happens away from users of in in many cases. Uh users of understanding at least. So there are many different uh uh paths for malfeasance. There are many different paths by which people can reorder what happens on at the layer two level. So that's not where we're headed, but you know, we can accommodate any layer two uh to come. So we have a very different path on that front. Oh, and our subnets are the natural way to shard. Uh shard things and shard by use case. So that allows us to paralyze as well.

• 59:47David Hoffman?

  And though I have one more candy question after this serious question. So uh teaser on that one. But where do you how do you reason about the layer twos versus multi-layer ones? And how does Tara fit into that?

• 1:00:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, so.

• 1:00:06Speaker 04

  From a from a non-technical perspective, it just seems that the the main distinction that people are driving between L twos and L ones is two things. Like number one, this idea that you would have better security in L twos because you're borrowing that security from another blockchain. Um and but I feel like that that differential is going to get squeezed out over time as bridges improve and uh things get more secure. So uh I the mental model that I have is that the world is really just chains and bridges. And the reason why I think there should be multiple chains is because at some point uh every chain is going to run into.

• 1:00:45Speaker 04

  You know, it it has finite state, right? So in that finite state, there's a limit to how much transactions that you can squeeze in. So you need to be able to offload it to different chains. Now, the question is whether you offload that to an L two or to other L ones. And the the way that I'm thinking about it is that once uh bridges become more secure and as as I said, that security differential gets squeezed out. It's all just going to be a world of chains and bridges. So in that case, I think the only difference would be like where do these different blockchains declare their allegiance to? So for example, as we're fragmenting state, in that world, I think the only difference would be that these L2s are economically benefiting the token holders of an L1 to which they're swearing allegiance.

• 1:01:27Speaker 04

  It's kind of like a feudal system where, you know, there would be like a lord that declares allegiance to like a duke and this duke declares allegiance to a king. So it's it's a kind of like a hierarchical file system where you don't necessarily borrow security, you're borrowed community from other blockchains. So I I think multiple of these things would emerge. I think some, you know, blockchains would brand themselves as L2s. I think some of them would largely association, associate themselves as being entirely sovereign. And yeah, I think it's going to be like the feudal systems, it's going to be competing kings, competing knights and, you know, things like that.

• 1:02:08David Hoffman?

  And the the question that I I want to ask you is, what is your second favorite blockchain after Terra? If you're if Terra, God forbid, went down or was lost for whatever reason, what would be the chain that you would migrate to?

• 1:02:27Speaker 04

  We we actually spent a decent amount of time thinking about that. So I I would say the straight up honest answer that I would have to give is that there's multiple different candidates. We're big fans of Avalanche. We're also big fans of Solana. But, you know, like, for example, around the time that we started, we, the reason why we selected the Cosmos SDK was because we were super focused on payments. And there wasn't really a way for us to be able to get those payment margins down using a different chain, which is why we had to, you know, pick a chain where we could control the rules in a sovereign type of way.

• 1:03:09Speaker 04

  But now that that's kind of different. So, you know, things are up in the air.

• 1:03:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Guys, this has been a really fun panel and I think, I hope listeners saw that there's a lot of common ground between these three projects, these three platforms, maybe other projects in crypto as well. And, you know, thank you guys for being willing to do this. It's been a lot of fun. Closing question for all three of you is the same. Crypto loves predictions, really fun to predict various things. Wondering what your highest conviction predictions for 2022 are? Do you have any high prediction, high conviction predictions? Maybe we'll start with you, Anatoly.

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  And I think, um, I think we're going to see the first application with like 10 million users in 22. Like 10 million active users that are signing stuff, doing stuff. First decentralized application is going to break that barrier.

• 1:04:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow. Big prediction. Eman, do you want to go next? What's your prediction for 2022? Highest conviction?

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  That's a good question. So, you know, I'm a techie. I'm not much of a market person, but I suspect that this year is going to be far better than most people in the space think it will be. I suspect that a lot of the people that we are seeing are very much the early adopters and the ones that have, the ones that actually have the loudest voices on Twitter are the ones that have been through many, many crypto winters. And those all happen in a very different environment. So I suspect that this year is going to be a huge boom year because the technology has finally come of age. So those things that we dreamed of for many years are now here. So that's my highest conviction prediction. In other, in other news, I think, you know, easy predictions that I could always throw

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  out. The bridge wars are going to intensify. That's going to be great for the users because you'll end up having an opportunity to sample a lot of these systems and see how they are, how they operate firsthand. There will be very, very big hacks as there always have been. And so that's always going to be fun. And, and overall, I'm super bullish in this space. That's my simple, basic prediction.

• 1:05:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Anatoly predicting millions of users, Eman saying that bear, bear market, bear participants be gone. This is going to be a bullish year. Do Kwan, do you think you can out bullish these two panelists? What are your predictions for 2022?

• 1:05:38Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, I don't know if I have a super bullish prediction, but there's a couple of opportunities I think are going to be interesting. And you know, these market cycles are difficult to predict, but at the same time, some elements are predictable. So as I think, you know, in 2021, you know, like

• 1:05:58Speaker 04

  layer ones were super popular and right now there's a lot of competition that's happening at the L2. And then, you know, the layer below that, like L0, so like bridges and things like that. So what I think is going to be interesting is if you look at like the interface of some of the stable swap protocols like Saber on Solana, for instance, or Trader Joe's on Avalanche. There's actually multiple bridged assets for the same thing. And this leads to pretty comparable user fragmentation. Now, the, the problem here is that the bridges themselves can't create products that solve this fragmentation problem. So I think the next project that can, you know, very low hanging fruit. You know, be very highly valued is sort of like a wrapper

• 1:06:42Speaker 04

  around all the bridged assets that issues canonical assets regardless of which bridge was used to bring assets onboard. And this is fairly easy to do because every single app that uses bridged assets wants to solve this problem. And it sort of helps to collocate liquidity around canonical assets instead of having seven different versions of the same thing. So, um, yeah, I think that's, that's going to be powerful. Maybe I'll build it.

• 1:07:09Speaker 03

  Do it.

• 1:07:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  As this has been awesome. Emin and Anatoly Dukhwan, thank you for joining us today on Bankless. It's been a lot of fun.

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  Thank you for having us. It really was a lot of fun.

• 1:07:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Awesome. We will do this again sometime, of course, uh, you know, hand clap, applause, these panelists. They have been instrumental. What? That's the wrong button. He killed the vibe at the end. Look at him. Rug pull.

• 1:07:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  No, all of you guys, all of your projects have been responsible for onboarding a lot of users in the space and distributing a lot of private keys. And that increases the decentralization of our world, and that's a good thing. So we applaud you. Congratulations. Risks and disclaimers for Bankless listeners, of course. ETH is risky. Avalanche, Terra, and Solana, they're also risky. All of crypto is risky. So is DeFi. You could lose what you put in. But this is the frontier. We're headed west. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 1:08:10David Hoffman?

  Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcast, and community as a Bankless premium subscriber to get the most out of your Bankless experience. You'll get access to our market analysis, our alpha leaks, and exclusive content, and even the Bankless token for airdrops, raffles, and unlocks. If you're interested in crypto, the Bankless community is where you want to be. Click the link in the description to become a Bankless premium subscriber today. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel for in-depth interviews with industry leaders, Ask Me Anythings, and weekly rollups where

• 1:08:53David Hoffman?

  we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content. Thanks, everyone, for watching and being on the journey as we build.