Everything you need to know about Solana | Santiago Santos & Konstantin Lomashuk

Solana is emerging as a competitive Layer 1 platform, promising scalability and a growing ecosystem. Join community thought leaders Santiago Santos and Konstantin Lomashuck as we assess the Solana Value Proposition. How important is decentralization? Why build on Solana? Can different L1's coexist? Does it seek to compete with mainnet Ethereum or Layer 2 scaling solutions? We've been hearing a lot about Solana lately. It's time to dive in. ------ SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ ️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ CLAIM YOUR BADGE: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/-guide-2-using-the-bankless-badge ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: GEMINI | FIAT & CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/go-gemini BALANCER | EXCHANGE & POOL ASSETS https://bankless.cc/balancer AAVE | LEND & BORROW ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING http://bankless.cc/uniswap ------ ⚽️ SoRare | Collect and Play! https://bankless.cc/SoRare ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 8:00 Santiago and Konstantin 10:05 Why Bullish on Solana? 16:31 Solana is Optimizing 24:05 Decentralization 34:56 Running a Node 55:57 Skeptical ETH Maxi Hat 1:04:40 Initial Sale 1:12:32 Valuing SOL 1:19:08 Developer Activity 1:24:11 Can We Be Friends? ------ Resources Santiago on Twitter: https://twitter.com/santiagoroel?s=20 Konstantin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lomashuk?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.

• 0:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey Bankless Nation, we are excited to bring you another Bankless panel. This one is all about Solana. Solana, a Layer 1 blockchain. Some people have called it an ETH killer, maybe an ETH competitor, maybe it's an ETH companion. David and I realized we wanted to learn a bit more about Solana and the ecosystem and to have a panel where we could have a fairly neutral conversation about Solana to dig in deeper. So that's what we're doing today. We've brought two fantastic guests, which I think can represent a bull case for a Solana perspective in a kind of incredibly neutral way. So, you know, these two guests are very passionate about DeFi, you know, they care about values

• 0:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  that the Bankless Nation cares about. That's why we wanted to bring them both on. David, do you want to tease who the guests are and then maybe we can give a quick tease of what this panel is going to cover and our positions going into this panel?

• 1:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah, sure. So we brought on Santiago Santos, who is a big Ethereum bull and is also bullish on Solana. And so for somebody that I resonate with their bullishness on Ethereum, I would like to know why, like, what are the rationales behind the bullishness on Solana? And so we're bringing on Santiago just for that angle. And then we also have Konstantin Loomisuk, who has worked many different projects around the world, around the crypto ecosystem, part of the Lido team, has experience with validating systems, proof of stake systems, blockchain systems. So he will be useful to talk about the nature of the technical details of Solana and is also bullish on Solana.

• 1:51David Hoffman?

  And so I have detailed questions about that. And then I also, I think we also have to ask, you know, kind of more or less the same questions that all blockchains have to ask themselves. The nature of the token distribution, the nature of who gets to validate, and just the why it is a, what did it unlock, right? And so from what I've been able to gather, Solana is a pretty cool piece of software. From the people who are more technically competent than me, they have good things to say about the software that is Solana, and so I want to dive into that as well.

• 2:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. I think we probably, both of us, have a particular thesis coming into this conversation, right? One that we've held for a while. So, you know, first of all, the vision when we started Bankless was, we want a self-sovereign, bankless money system for the world, the most decentralized system possible. We saw that in Bitcoin, we saw that in Ethereum, we see that in DeFi, and we've always had an open mind to like, what is coming next. I will say, I probably have a preconception going into this conversation, and that is this. Solana, as David mentioned, is a cool piece of technology. They're a real project. There's a real team behind this. There's some fantastic engineering and a real community.

• 3:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Talent. They have a real community. I see backing from some interesting funds, FTX, and, you know, other crypto banks as well. So I see some traction. So it felt time to have a conversation about it. Other layer ones, like, haven't reached even this stage where it's worth spending a lot of time on, at least for me, but David and I thought it was time to have a conversation about Solana. I will say, my current perspective on Solana is that I believe it might be a bit too decentralized, or too centralized, to be a global world settlement layer for DeFi. Things I'm going to ask and I'm concerned

• 3:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  about, the ability to run a node from home is very important, the ability to kind of verify transactions and op into the system. There's some issues with state growth that seem unresolved. Some questions around the supply of the token. This got a start in sort of VC land, in a pre-sale that wasn't publicly available. A relatively small group of folks who have been distributed the token, at least in the early stages, some of that may be decentralized. I think ultimately, I have concerns about the number of validators that it, you know, takes, and the number of colluding parties that it takes to kind of co-opt the network, censor it, roll back the chain, these sorts of things. I feel like my

• 4:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Coming into this conversation and the way the reason I'm sort of spending some time to illustrate this is because it's important you get a sense for the questions David and I are asking is it feels to me like Solana is a fine platform for lower value settlement, maybe things like NFTs are, you know, great for it. Maybe other low value use cases, but I don't think it's decentralized enough to be the bankless, you know, DeFi settlement layer that we want from this space. At least that's my thesis going in and I'm open to the conversation around this, open to change my mind, but all of this might mean it doesn't actually compete

• 5:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  against Ethereum. It's actually a companion to Ethereum in the same way other side chains are. Other layer twos are even centralized exchanges help propagate and they do settlement on Ethereum too. So ultimately, I do want to echo the sentiment that this is not a zero sum game. Like we're all in this together. I do think that Solana is actually good for Ethereum. So the ETH killer versus Ethereum thing is somewhat of a myth, but we do need to get to the bottom and have a conversation about the trade offs of various systems and particularly the layer one that we select for this industry as kind of the

• 5:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  shelling point for all DeFi, we need to make sure it is as decentralized as possible. So I'm probably going to be asking these panelists some questions along those lines. I don't know, David, if you have anything to add. That's a longer preamble than you usually give for these panels, but yeah, I felt it was important.

• 6:14David Hoffman?

  All right. So let's go ahead and get into the takes from our guests. And so, but before we get there, we must talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the 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 that you're getting the best possible price on your trade and that you aren't paying high gas costs that you could have otherwise avoided. That's why you should be using Matcha. Matcha routes your orders across all the various DeFi exchanges on Ethereum, Polygon, Finance Smart Chain, and gives you the best possible prices without taking any commission. Matcha has smart order routing that splits your order across multiple liquidity sources if Matcha sees that it gets you better pricing.

• 6:58David Hoffman?

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• 7:42David Hoffman?

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• 8:24David Hoffman?

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• 8:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey guys, we are back with the panel that is all about Solana. We have two guests for you, really excited to introduce them to you. The first is Santiago Santos. He is a crypto investor, spends most of his time at the intersection of DeFi and the Metaverse. He has a CryptoPunk, of course, number 9159. He's a former partner at Parify, longtime investor in the space, also a repeat Bankless guest, Santiago. Thanks for joining us today.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Hey, thanks Ryan. Thanks David. It's great to be here again.

• 9:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  We also have Konstantin Lamishek, who is an investor in the Ethereum crowdsale and also a Solana seed investor. So both of those networks at the same time has watched them grow from little seedlings to what they are now. So I think offers a fantastic perspective. Also a validator in the space, co-founder of the p2p.org project. And also Lido, he is a Unisox holder. Need to mention that, we've got to pump our NFTs whenever possible, right guys? Konstantin, welcome to the show. It's great to have you. Hi guys. All right, fantastic. Well, we are going to get into the panel with, I think, the first question, which sort of sets the basis for all others, which is, what makes you bullish about Solana? Santiago, maybe start with you.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, look, I mean, I think it was interesting. I think generally when you're investing in this space, you have to keep an open mind of how things are evolving. I think protocols are organisms that expand and grow. And Bitcoin, I saw Bitcoin early on and Ethereum early on as well. And like they've taken a shape of their own and they've grown in a very meaningful way. I think what drew me to Solana was a couple of things, but I think this idea that the number of developers that were entering the space, not just like solidity devs going to Solana, but it was more like new talent entering the space. And I think that was a large part, the gravitas that Sam, FTX and that consortium has.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  They're, they have a lot of muscle and resources to attract new developers, which I think is net positive to the space. When I say the space, I think like, you know, Ethereum, Bitcoin, just broadly kind of crypto. And to me, it was really encouraging. I was a judge in a few of the hackathons and the number of developers entering the space was improving. And talking to these developers, the thing that I focus on the most is how easy is it to build in Solana? And I think the dev tooling and resources have come a long, long way since they launched, what is it, a year and change ago, a year and a half ago, a year, nine months ago? So I think to me that has been most encouraging. It's sort of like follow the devs and why they're building in Solana and understanding that led me to, to become more interested in the space.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  And also, I think you alluded to this in the preamble, which is, well, there are certain things that I think like certain blockchains is my view that are application-specific blockchains, you know, like a blockchain doesn't need to do everything. I think we're, we're in this mindset that we think of the internet as this one, you know, like just the internet, right? But I think blockchains might be different where they might lend themselves to this trade-off that you're making with security and centralization and faster throughput and and settlement and execution and lower costs. And so I think ultimately, I think that to me is this is a growing desire to see more different use cases be explored, whether it be social or NFTs or stuff that, you know, if you're, if you're settling, you know, a million plus dollars, well, you're going to value security a lot.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  But you know, there are certain applications that might not require, and especially the user might not even appreciate decentralization and security. So ultimately, I think it's net positive, as you said, and to me, that was most interesting and have been for a while now, supporting and just observing what's happening and on the DeFi side of things and also the NFT and Metaverse side of things. So, but I'll pause there.

• 12:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  We definitely want to get back to the conversation around the use cases for Solana and how that might be distinct from Ethereum or similar to Ethereum when we talk about the apps, but let me throw the same question to Konstantin now. So Konstantin, you were there from the very beginning, both of Ethereum and also of Solana. So tell us, what made you bullish on Solana in the early days and then what makes you bullish now?

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, my answer is pretty simple. It has a different vision on scaling. And it's not bad. It's good, you know, like if we do only, I mean, the same things, it is a better ecosystem. We should try a different one and compete with each other. It will bring, you know, like a better product for final users. And before we start this discussion, I also want to say that I'm a big believer in Ethereum success, you know, like and have, you know, like much more Ethereum that I bought on, for example, in Craig's crowd sale. And so I'm not going in this conversation, try to sell Solana. My goal is, you know, like to show that Solana and Ethereum are good friends.

• 13:52Speaker 03

  And they can coexist together and together we can achieve like the goal of decentralization and censorship resistance faster. And like to bring more value, I mean, to everybody than if we compete attack and try, you know, like to compete with each other. And also, I mean, in 2014, you know, like I did a report about all blockchains. And this valuation was more than $100,000. It was about 100 of them. And we split them already in 2014 on proof of stake and proof of work. And what did we try to understand what is difference between all of them? And what we saw, we saw even in two thousand fourteen, already a lot of Bitcoin maximalist.

• 14:37Speaker 03

  You know, they still exist, you can see them. Now we have a lot of also Ethereum maximalist. I I don't try to say that it's bad. It's also good that we love the products that we build. But what I tried to say is that, I mean, we need to to look are deep more. We need to make more critique, not only to competitor, but also to products that we love. And push to make them better. So back to the question, you know, uh, in two thousand eighteen, when it was the beginning of crypto, the beginning of crypto winter. So nobody want to allocate capital to new product, products, especially to layer one. And I had a conversation with Anatoly, where he told me like a lot of different things, you know, I didn't catch everything. Because he is more technical than I am.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  But one thing that I catch, it was like that he want to build the blockchain that scale with the speed of technology. You know, like, and it is a little bit different thesis that we have in this theorem. For example, when you want to like make more like transaction, for example, when you want to build more scalable solution. And if it is new hardware exists, you can make more transaction per second. And in this different vision, you know, I'll allocate my capital because I think, I don't know what the vision is. I mean, or like, what what is better finally? What will win, what ecosystem will win?

• 16:02Speaker 03

  I I I will happy that like all this ecosystem coins coexist and will find own uh like place in the market. And there, this is my goal, that's what we tried, I what what I tried to do from two thousand eighteen, I run a really data, I run this notes. I help, you know, to make it censorship resistance and central, the decentralized. Yeah, this is my answer.

• 16:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, you're muted.

• 16:28David Hoffman?

  Fantastic, Konstantin, I appreciate that perspective. And both of you guys' answers had some sort of allusion to Solana being a meaningfully different innovation than just what would be just a fork of Geth, right? And I think the reason why we are doing a Solana panel rather than a Binance Smart Chain panel or an Avalanche panel is that both of those things are just forks of Geth, and that's not really true innovation in my mind. And ultimately, talking about the EVM is ultimately just talking about Ethereum with extra steps. Solana is not that. Solana is its own thing. It's bringing its own innovations to the table.

• 17:08David Hoffman?

  And so my question to you guys is, what is Solana optimized for as a result of its new package of software? And if Solana is optimized for something, is it optimized for something that is similar to Ethereum and what Ethereum is optimized for? Or is it something different? Santiago, let's start with you.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, Konstantin, if you wanted to go first, but sure, I'll jump. I think, ultimately, my view is that Solana perhaps takes, like every network, I think, through utility, decentralizes. So Bitcoin and Ethereum were pretty centralized, I think, initially as well. To Konstantin's point, I mean, I spoke to Anatoly, and he worked at Qualcomm, I believe, and so has this sort of view of how networks scaled in the early days of the internet. And I think there's sort of these sequential waves where you have this technology, no one really cares about it, then it gets a lot of traction, and it pushes the limit

• 18:15Speaker 02

  of a server, of a network, and then you have sequential waves of innovation. But there's this sort of gap where there's more demand with the network and support. And I think that experience from Anatoly, coming from the network side of things, is interesting. Ultimately, I think both Ethereum and Solana are designed to be just generalized, and I don't think they have a particular vertical in mind. Now, I think, as I think of it, I mean, I'm skewed, right? Because I like DeFi, but I've also become more interested in NFTs and the Metaverse. And back to my original statement, you know, I think Solana is more, this is my view. I don't know why it was if there's, if this is true of its design, but I think that at least for now,

• 19:00Speaker 02

  you are more likely to see applications that require less security, both from, especially on the user side of things and can scale more easily.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  And, and I think those are naturally things that have been trying to do, but haven't gotten that much traction or have gotten reasonable traction. But I think you're seeing a lot of like, I think, I think you're seeing over a million active users in, in Solana. A number of transactions per user is like two, three times higher than Ethereum. Why? Because I think it's just cheaper, right? And so all that's telling me is that social, NFTs, gaming, applications at the moment of where the network is in terms of its security and concentration validators. Sort of you look at the like Nakamoto consensus, I think is more well suited for those types of applications. Now, over time, let's not say that like DeFi applications, for instance, cannot, I mean, there's certainly like Mango and a very thriving DeFi ecosystem that is being built.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  A lot of which has been, hey, what's working Ethereum, let's port it over to Solana and build that, right? I think DeFi is like a core backbone in any, any of us. I, I think most layer one blockchains are now realizing, hey, look, wow, DeFi is really the killer use case, at least Ethereum, let's port that over. And have all these yield incentives to attract users.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  My view that perhaps we should discuss at some point is this idea that DeFi protocols, when you're securing that type of value, you know, like I think TVL in Solana is actually quite small at the moment, it's like three billion or so, and Ethereum is like, it's like thirty or something, or much, much more.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  And the question is, can you actually get there and will institutions and funds get comfortable, like meaningfully staking value in the Solana ecosystem? And I, I don't know, it's sort of like, I think it's still TBD. My view is that it might take a little bit more time to like battle test this network. And, but, but it's not to say that it can't get there. So long with an answer saying, I think at the moment, you're in this curve of security decentralization where applications that require less security are probably in, in our more like computation intensive, we're going to get more traction. But, but yeah, that, I'll pause there, but.

• 21:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, you're muted again.

• 21:19David Hoffman?

  Thank you. Konstantin, same question to you. Since Solana is a new suite of software, it's a new collection of softwares. How is that, how is that software collection optimized differently or similar to what we see on Ethereum?

• 21:34Speaker 03

  You know, I think blockchain tried to like, like optimize to, I mean, from one side, security, from other side scalability, from the other side, decentralization. And there, I said that like, it's a lot of critique to everyone, still to Ethereum, for example, I mean, launch of Bitcoin Chain, from one side to security, but like, give a lot of chance for exchanges to be like the leaders of proof of state, for example. These are also like, I mean, for example, so, and I think Ethereum tried to be secure first, you know, and they're decentralized and sound like scalable, you know, like by different other,

• 22:16Speaker 03

  and to move not so fast. And Solana doesn't have, you know, like this option to move so, so, so, I mean, like, so, in a so secure way, they take a lot of more risk. Because, you know, like, I mean, Ethereum like is a almost number one blockchain for, I don't know how much, four years. So, I mean, if you don't like look on Bitcoin, for example, and Solana only launched in 2018, you know, and they try and to build a system to bring developers to do all the things, to build the product is really difficult. And it's not easy. That's why, you know, like when somebody like, like make a lot of critique to any products,

• 22:59Speaker 03

  I send them to build something, you know. And I think, of course, Solana, from one side, they want to be censorship resistant. And do they, as they're doing a lot of work, I can say, yes, they bring so many validators, they spend so many funds on top of it. They spend more time on like validators than maybe any other blockchains, maybe like Zach did a good work in Cosmos.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  Of course, it is like some issues with that, but like Solana did a great work in, I mean, Solana to build like this community. And it's not a lot of other blockchains that gives this example, but I think the main goal of, I mean, like Solana is give you scalability. It's still think about security and about decentralization, but the main goal to run like an application that can be compatible with other application and has one billion users. Is it a complex task? Yes, it is. Is it like a lot of different way how to build such blockchain? Yes, it is. And this is like just different approach.

• 24:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I'm curious about your your model for things, guys. Like, so when I think in my head about like decentralization, right? And trustlessness, first of all, it's very hard to pin down and define, right? But it's very clear there's also like a spectrum of of trustlessness, right? And and decentralization. And so let's say you have on the on the far left of, you know, most decentralized smart contract chain out there. We put Ethereum, right? And then on the far right, you might have, you could call something like Coinbase, for example, or Binance, or something that settles to other public chains, chains in and of themselves, right?

• 24:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're kind of like you single validator, I guess, ledgers, if you will, that settle on top of this open ecosystem of chains. And then if you move a little bit further, right? You might get like side chains, for instance, with some sort of, you know, delegated proof of stake. You might have like Cosmos, you might have, you know, Polygon in its in its in its current form. And then maybe somewhere in between, I, you know, I can't quite make up my mind. You have like a Solana, which is possibly a bit more decentralized than a delegated proof of stake sort of, you know, tenderment based chain, like something in the Cosmos ecosystem, something like Terra? Or not?

• 25:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  And what I, first of all, I'm curious if this is kind of your mental model. And in also like what one, I guess, thing I forgot to mention is we also have a layer two, which is essentially, I would say, further, further left, closer to Ethereum. Because while it has some, you know, cryptographic and economic sort of additional trust requirements, it's still using the Ethereum network ultimately for its economic security and its full security. So it's kind of like, A, is this the model? Is this how you model the world in your mind? And then like, B, how much decentralization is enough for something like DeFi? And Santiago, I'm curious your take on this first.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I I think your mapping is relatively how I think of it as well.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  And and jumping directly to the question around DeFi is, look, I mean, I think Anatoly, sorry, Konstantin alluded to this earlier. I think if you Anatoly, I've heard him say a number of times. There is an implicit belief and assumption in sort of this Moore's Law concept that the cost of running validators, Lana, will go down pretty dramatically over time, which will allow for more, I guess, diversity of of the validator set. And because right now, there's what 900 coming up to 1,000.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  And but it's still relatively expensive, I think, to run a node. And Konstantin, you you can collaborate, corroborate, correct me here if I'm wrong. But and so, okay, it begs the question, right?

• 27:03Speaker 02

  When you think about security, I think of security is what is the economic cost to attack this chain? Okay, and and and I think the simplistically, you would say, okay, I think you need like a third or whatever to a third or two thirds, I guess, like to to to for validators to collude and then like, you know, roll back the chain or like attack the network. Fine. But I think when it comes to DeFi. So I think DeFi protocols, it's an interesting dynamic where my theory is, okay, so if you're a DeFi protocol, you have a lot of these assets, you have your own token, right? And then you have all these users, right, that are using your protocol, you're maybe an AMM or a money market.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  But I think when you have the choice of which validators to use or like, I think it's sort of like increases, I think, the cost of the attack, because like, you know, there are these stewards, I guess, of capital in the system that are that are going to choose, I think, the validator. So like, it's not as like, we think in theoretical terms, I think, okay, what would happen if someone were to buy all this equipment and then like, try to attack the network? But the reality is there is some choice in that, I think, process where DeFi becomes an interesting, I think, mitigator to simplistically just saying, oh, it's going to cost X to like, get X percent hat rate or X percent of validator set and just like collude and try to attack

• 28:31Speaker 02

  the network, I think, is is my theory. But I'll let Konstantin jump in.

• 28:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. What do you think, Konstantin? So, you know, same question. Is this the model that you see, the spectrum of decentralization? And how much decentralization is enough for DeFi?

• 28:48Speaker 03

  You know, it's a complex question. I mean, I can't measure like the decentralization of Solana on this spectrum. And we even don't have a lot of data to do it. I mean, if you look on, for example, Ethereum data set, how we can calculate how many real validators are running in the network? We can't, you know, like, I'm running in the network, I don't know how.

• 29:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  And by that, you mean like individual people?

• 29:15Speaker 03

  Individual, like companies, like individuals, like some other parties, you know, how many professional validators are running in Ethereum, you know? And the amount is really low. Why? Because Ethereum didn't have delegation. And as a light, we tried to find these professional validators and bring them to the data set. Is it any one? Please outreach us. We will be happy to give you like some stake. But I mean, and in case of Solana, it is also like they have now like, for example, nine hundred, nine hundred eighty like validators in the data set. But is it all real people? I mean, it is a difficult to understand. It's different to like measure.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  What is, you know, like, I mean, what is their really censorship resistance? Is it like 1,000 validators? Is it 10,000 validators? And when I speak with these guys, for example, with Anatoly or like with Dankret from Ethereum, you know, they all pushing, as they say, we need 10,000 validators, you know? But is it economic enough to pay everyone like for the running of validation? Is it possible to run individual, I mean, validator by the individual? Is it, you know, like flashing condition? So it is, you know, like really complex thing. And to, you know, like, and it is, so it is a lot of things how we should measure it.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  And there could have more metrics. And now we don't have, so, you know, like, I even can't like say, like, is it like Ethereum proof of stake? Network is like, for example, time, like how much decentralized? I can't measure it, you know?

• 30:58Speaker 02

  If I could ask a question to Konstantin, I've been involved in Lido and I think Lido has seen impressive growth. But there is this idea of how much should Lido be like, like what percentage of the network should Lido have? Right? Because Ethereum is transitioning to proof state and it's a, I'd be curious because you, when you talk about this mapping, Ryan, or we think about decentralization, proof of state concept is how much is too much? Because Lido has gone incredible traction, but maybe if you can talk about that, Konstantin, I think like it forces to think about like Ethereum and so on in the context of, okay, Lido is getting all this traction, you're approving some validator sets, right? And new validators into the Lido trusted ecosystem, if you will.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  So, so I think that acts as a mitigator, right? Because you know, these people, you know, these operators in some capacity, you know that they're, you know, there is always some sort of social trust in any of these networks. Now, it's not realistic to assume that you're gonna, in a world where there's like 10,000 validators, you're not gonna know all of them, right? And it's sort of this permissionless system that anyone could just spin up, right? Their own infrastructure. And so the question is to you, Konstantin, as Lido expands into Solana, like, would you say that like, okay, it's a fairly like limited validator set today, but if you're a DeFi protocol or if you're a big Sol holder, you're gonna choose which, which validator, then you're gonna have to like do some due diligence, you're gonna have to vet that, right?

• 32:25Speaker 02

  If you're a DeFi protocol and you're holding all these Sol and tokens, well, like, I think that's ultimately like, we forget, but I think blockchains are social constructs of coordination. Like, there is always an element of, hey, I trust Konstantin because he's been running validator nodes forever. And I know his like, I know his slashing rate, I know that he's a super competent operator. And, and there is an element that I know him and I know he's probably has an incentive not to attack the network or be corrupted. But, but this is my sort of perspective.

• 32:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, like we are, as PTP dot org, we are running notes like for many years and you know, like it's how people choose validators. They can't understand. It's more marketing, you know, like or sales. It's like, I mean, users, even the funds, they don't think really a lot on security. And this is an issue. And that's why like products like Lido can solve this problem. Because what is the goal of Lider is to make happy Ethereum holders. Is to extract, for example, MEV to his holders, is to keep network decentralized, is to choose like best validators. And the more competition between such actors like Lider, then more they will be invalidated.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  For example, when I'm speaking with Anatoly and say, oh, we're going to like, why do want to launch us on Solana? And he said, oh, we need 10,000 validators, you know? And I, and I say, how, you know, like, what should I do? It's impossible. And he said, let's do it, you know, let's find the way we will find some like brands, some other things. And it's complex, it's complex things. And I, I, what I tried to say is that, you know, like to make this network decentralized. You are like Bankless, what Bankless is doing, you should push people to like, to go to Lider, to go to Ethereum Foundation, to go to other parties.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  And push them like to make this network decentralized. It should be more politic discussion of stakeholders to push, or I mean, to decentralization. Back to the question of Solana, you know, like, I mean, it's, it is, it has like 980 like validators. But I mean, like, it's more maybe decentralized than like 10 validators or 120 validators. And I mean, we still don't know how the biggest like decentralized network has, how many validators it has. But I mean, amount of validators, it's only part of decentralization. Also, it depends how like its contract architecture of this blockchain and all other questions.

• 34:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  There are so many factors that make up decentralization, including like even token distribution, which we could talk about. Yeah, let me maybe throw out throughout kind of some of my experience. So Konstantin, I used to actually have a validating entity, validating company, did some work with Cosmos, was on the early Cosmos testnet. And one of the things that was interesting from a, you know, observer's perspective of being a validator was, you know, Cosmos had an ICO, so it had some distribution. But what would seem to happen post the launch of the Cosmos hub is that a lot of the stake kind of collected in the hands of whales and a relatively small number of validators. So

• 35:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  nominally, there'd be like 100 validators, right? But like, a good portion of the network, they were all in the same disc, we're all in the same channels, we knew one another, you know, like, a lot of the actual validators were former employees of like Tendermint and Cosmos. And it just, it just felt very, and of course, it had, you know, governance, on-chain vote governance, and it felt very centralized. And I don't actually fault the Cosmos ecosystem for that, right? It's using, it's kind of, you know, delegated proof of stake type model. And to be fair, its vision is actually not to have a, a single chain that rules them all, it's to have this massive ecosystem of self-sovereign

• 36:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  chains and city-states, right? But this is kind of where I'm coming from when I look at Solana, right? So we have a, generally a closed sale, VC sale, you had to be an accredited investor to get the tokens, dominated by a bunch of VCs, but also validators, who got in early on the Solana launch, right? And many of these validators know one another. I've heard that, you know, 18 validators or so have 33% of the network. Like, it's a relatively small group of people. But, but what it doesn't have, and what I think Ethereum does have, is the ability to actually run a node at home, right? Like, on my Comcast internet connection, I want

• 37:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  The ability not to run a validator necessarily that I want that ability, but also to run a non-validating node on Ethereum and just that like make sure that I'm not getting a bunch of like garbage injected in by including group of validators. So to me, that's what's what's kind of different is it's, you know, coming from that perspective. It feels like you had a more centralized launch than something like Ethereum. You have a small group of validators who become kind of the, you know, almost like the early banks. Right. This is like they control sort of the ledger. It's a smaller consortium, smaller group of people.

• 37:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  And then the average user doesn't necessarily have the ability to run their own node to to clinch it off. And so with Santiago, you were saying earlier about, hey, some of this stuff decentralizes over time. Actually, I partially agree because I think token distribution decentralizes over time. But when you construct a network that requires such massive like bandwidth and like, you know, state growth is a problem. It's a problem for Ethereum, for instance, right? I worry that Ethereum is going to become more centralized over time. And because state is like state growth issues remain unresolved. So I'm curious your perspective on some of this. Maybe we'll just start with like the ability to run a node at home.

• 38:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  How important is this for the decentralization of the network, Konstantin?

• 38:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, or, you know, like you tell so many questions and I even try.

• 38:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sorry.

• 38:43Speaker 03

  You know, I remember your product, you know, like back in Cosmos ecosystem. You had like a beautiful website. These are good for for big fishes, you know, like I remember this. Or.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  This is like Metos, right?

• 38:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was running notes to you.

• 38:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I, I, I, and I, I, you were one of the first who, you know, start to work in Cosmos ecosystem, made a website, I mean, before everyone else. And start to outreach people, you know, and I saw on your website, try to copy some like pieces. And try to do the same. And I am agree with you that like Cosmos ecosystem, for example, I don't remember how token holder they have, for example, three thousand, yes. But, uh, I mean, the distribution was, I mean, pretty centralized. But, you know, I, I, I am agree with the opinion that then more utilities and better distribution. If you look back in Ethereum, it was only ten thousand people who participated in crowd sale. For example, I participated two times. So maybe like it was, I don't know.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  I, I mean, I was like, a couple, couple transactions, yes. But I tried to say that it's difficult to uh, understand the real, I mean, like, decentralization of state. But we know that Ethereum has like traction, it has a lot of users. And redistribution happened during this time. People sold tokens, or like something happened, the same, I think is here. Then more like utility for the network, then more network will be decentralized in the long term. And also about the running, like the equipment at home. I asked my team, you know, like the DevOps team, how much this equipment, I mean, is the price of this equipment.

• 40:26Speaker 03

  I, it can be like the prices until be like from five to twenty thousand, like for their one setup. And you can run it at home. For now, I mean, it's not so many transactions alone. When the state will go, when there are like, uh, I mean, uh, amount of transaction will grow, you need more, for example, like, uh, like video card, but still the same with mining, you have like, I don't know, small, uh, like container or something, it's like a lot of different mining equipment. So can you like run it at home? I think yes. Uh, the question is like, would be like the best, like performance node, I don't think, because you need to have a team around it.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  I mean, but if you are DevOps, you can like buy it. And I also, you know, like this equipment is cheap and cheaper like every like two years, the price is going down. So that's why, you know, like if you speak about YouTube in two thousand, everybody tell you that, I mean, it's impossible to that somebody will, for example, have a YouTube or and nobody will would invest in YouTube in two thousand. The same with Zoom or Skype, for example, Anderson and Horowitz, you know, when they start to work on browser, one of the first idea was to make like calls between each other, but it was impossible.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  And what I tried to say that, you know, like, I mean, are the the price of hardware will drop down. And for example, you already like on, I think like on PlayStation has one bit of byte of like,

• 42:03Speaker 03

  yes, SSD and you have some other like metrics. So I, I, in my point of view, if you want to run a node, you need to have some delegation in stake and you can do it in Solana too. And also.

• 42:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, from a practical perspective, it's like I'm just curious because I do think this is a fundamental trademark trade trade off that Solana makes, right? So like we can run an ETH two validator and we do on a Raspberry Pi at home, home internet connection, basically, right? You know, solutions like Rocket Pool do things like, you know, decentralized. I know Lido is moving to a more decentralized model two, but the average user can run it at home. I couldn't do that necessarily with my Cosmos validator node. I mean, that did require a bit more DevOps, but it was possible. Maybe, right? Solana, I worry that like from a practical perspective, maybe like a hypothetical, yeah, somebody, one guy

• 43:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  could figure out the DevOps and like run this thing from home. He's got, you know, high, super high speed internet. But it's not part of the culture and maybe that's a trade off that is made. It's basically like, hey, we're going to have lots of validating nodes and other nodes throughout the world. They're all going to be on AWS and they're all going to be in data centers in various locations. And that's okay. That's the point at which Solana is on the spectrum of decentralization. But it has not prioritized the ability to like for a regular person to run a node and read write to the Ethereum chain. Is this kind of a fundamental trade off? Because this is part of the challenge. I, when, when I have Solana, you know, discussions with people.

• 43:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  I always feel like we can't get to like the, the bottom line of, okay, I, there are some trade offs that are being made between Ethereum and Solana. It's like, what are they? If this is one, cool. I understand. Now we understand the trade off. Now we can have an argument of whether that's good or not. But is that the trade off? Do you think, Konstantin, the inability to run a node as an individual user?

• 44:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. How many of your friends, you like know a lot of people in Ethereum community? And maybe like it's a critic, you know, but we need to like speak more openly about it. How many of them are running Ethereum node? Really like, I mean, validation node? And for example, I would be really, because of the slashing, because of the other risk, I would really, I mean, worry to run it by myself. Because I'm not so technical, I can't run it and I, I would use a special software than can, you know, like, or dimension my node. And I would be not really sure that it will work in a way, in a secure way. So how many people do you know, like, who is running Ethereum node at home?

• 44:49David Hoffman?

  I, I think the answer to that question misses the point and, and it's not, it's not, it's not the wrong point. But the, the, the option to run a node is extremely important.

• 45:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:01David Hoffman?

  And, and so.

• 45:02Speaker 03

  But you can, you can, you can run like Solana node at home, I think. I, I don't see like, I, I mean, I, I know people, there's those people, they have like VPN inside at home, you know, like. They have like servers at home and they're running VPNs and some other things. Is it possible right now? I think it is, but, but you need to be like, to do some research, to spend some time and you also top it, I think, at home.

• 45:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Santiago, what's your take on all this so far?

• 45:33Speaker 02

  I think, yeah, like, look, I, I, I think the Solana Foundation would tell you it is hard to run a node today. It is, it's just, it's more expensive, it requires more technical expertise. The hope is that, and, and, and it totally says it's a technological problem, not a computer science problem. It's an engineering problem, not, not a computer, I, I've heard him say this a number of times. I think he's right. I mean, ultimately, you are banking on this idea, like are we, for instance, of the cost of running a node will, will collapse over time. This sort of Moore's Law construct of, hey, it's going to become cheaper, easier, you're going to abstract away some of the complexity for anyone to run a node.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  And maybe that's what opens up a lot of these use cases that we talk about where it really, you know, as I said earlier, it might just open up. And Solana can become, Visa might choose to settle USDC on Solana, but it chose Ethereum. So is it too late at that point? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But I do agree, like, from a design perspective, at this moment in time, I think we can all agree that it's harder to run a node on Solana. And I think the Solana team will tell you, yes, and they're focused on that. And that's, that's the, the challenge, right?

• 46:50Speaker 02

  So, so then I think it moves on to the second part of the question, which I think Konstantin was alluding to is. Then, then social trust and diligence becomes very important. The social layer of these networks and the culture becomes more and more important, I think, earlier on. Earlier in the stage, I think there was a transition of trust and, and, and, and sort of security and decentralization. Right now, I would say there, there, there is a lot of trust in Solana, that you need to be trusting these validators, that as you say, Ryan, I don't know for a fact, but if, if they all potentially could collude. Well, I think like, just to pose another question is like, how much do you trust in Fiera?

• 47:29Speaker 02

  And, and Joe Lubin and the consensus team and, you know, there is concentration, there will always be concentration, the same way that like, if you look at political systems, like. It is unrealistic to assume that everyone is going to run node in their home. It's just, let's just like, agree on that because it's not going to happen, I think. We can probably make it easier for people and try to layer in some incentives. But I think people ultimately just delegate and want to to use trusted delegators. And as Konstantin was saying, there needs to be more talk and more discussion across networks, not just Solana, but also Ethereum. And also, we talked about Bitcoin, like where's Hash Rate, it's all in China, right? Okay, well, let's let's talk about that.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  And let's figure out ways to mitigate that, not like brush over these things. And I think it becomes important to do, for instance, tooling and educational resources to say, hey, this is the track record of this validator. And this is where it's based, these are the people, maybe there are blue check mark that says, these are whatever someone's like validating or like attesting to the legitimacy of this validator or something like that, right? Ryan, if you're running a ethos, well, hey, like someone can vouch for you. And then there's an implicit social layer, I think, on top of this consensus that that creates, I mean, this is sort of the idea of slashing, right? But you can potentially maybe include a reputation layer built on top of that,

• 48:55Speaker 02

  that that becomes interesting because I don't think you solve it as easily for any network. I think you're always, there will always be a gravitational pull towards some concentration. The question is how hard? I think in Solana, it's easier to go towards that extreme that you're talking about, Ryan, where it's just by design at the moment, it's easier to go to a state where it can become uncomfortable for financial institutions and large people to settle value, like meaningful values in this network.

• 49:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is kind of what I like, what I worry about. And like back to back to David's point, just just because people lots, many people don't run nodes at home, you know, it's kind of like, I mean, many people don't vote in their democratic elections, right? Particularly their local ones, right? And so should we say at the protocol level, well, hey, we only get like 25% shown up to these elections, let's just stop elections, be way more efficient if we just had some, you know, central leaders who could make the decision in this jurisdiction, this area. Well, no, because it's important to have the option to to vote in these elections. And I think that's important for the most decentralized base layer, settlement layer,

• 50:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  a DeFi protocol to preserve. I think Ethereum preserves that. And that's kind of my question about Solana. Maybe this is why I would say like, I think we're all on the same page that Solana plus Ethereum is like pie expanding and is great for the space. And it's like, it's great for Ethereum. It's also great for Solana. So like, I don't ever want to to couch it as a like this versus that. But I do want to fight and make sure we preserve these values of decentralization that the entire crypto movement is based on, the ability to opt out of the existing system. I don't want to have us at the protocol layer, the deepest layer of this whole financial stack, some kind of a centralized lock in.

• 50:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  And maybe to Constantine's point, hey, it's like, look, man, this is all going to centralize anyway. And people aren't going to run Raspberry Pis through their home. And like, if that's the case, then man, you know, that would be sad. We will have lost something in crypto. And then I kind of go existentially and like, what the hell was the point of the whole thing? You know?

• 51:12Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, I mean, do users care about decentralization? No, but okay, like, let me offer you other data point from the networks that I was running validator. So like, Tazo, for instance, if you were one of the early bakers, which is the validators, you were gone. Like, to your point, if you were in top three, like, you would, it would, it was more at that point a marketing effort and BD. And it was practically impossible because I would be offering like 10%, 5% like take rate on the, on the reward.

• 51:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  And you gotta go find whales, don't you? I mean, I played this.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Exactly. It was, it was incredibly hard to convince people to undelegate and redelegate. And they were paying 40% to a validator. And it's wild. And I would say economically, rationally speaking, you would say, these people would switch. And they didn't, right? It's hard, right? People are lazy or what, or what have you. When it comes to money, you rarely switch your bank account. And I think that dynamic for me, Tazo's. Was interesting to observe. Uh, now, of course, you could undelegate and you, I think that kept like the validators honest and what they were voting for. And you could, you know, there was a process to undelegate and a cycle and what have you. And so, okay, that's fine. The optionality is super important, right? I, I definitely agree.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  But look at, look at Cosmos too. I mean, you had to have a certain amount of delegated atoms to even be a validator. Now, like to your point, a lot of that was an early advantage from a lot of employees from Tendermint. Who, who, who cleaned up. I mean, it was just easy for them to do that, right? It was an unfair advantage. I didn't like that. I didn't agree with that. So I, I agree. I said, you know what? I'm, I don't believe in that. Even though Tendermint as a protocol, I think is pretty interesting, but I didn't like that dynamic of the validator set. And I thought it's, it's, it's a, it's a big kind of, it's a challenge, I think, for a newcomer. At least in some of these systems, just to get reasonable validation. This is difficult. Uh, so it's also a sales effort and a BD effort. Um, I think Terra is doing something interesting, actually.

• 53:06Speaker 02

  Where obviously like there's more apps being built in the Terra ecosystem, which has been pretty impressive to see. And what they're doing is the airdrops, uh, that some of these protocols are issuing and the Terra, the Terra Foundation, I think is layering in rewards, um, to incentivize users to delegate to smaller validators in the set. And this is what I was going at. I think like this could be an incentives design where if you're the foundation. Heck, if you're the Solana Foundation. Let's just agree that that's sort of like the more neutral party that has a really strong incentive not to like, for the network to be secure. The same with the Ethereum Foundation and Consensys did it early on, um, and the Terra guys are doing it.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Well, let's just like create incentives to stimulate a very more vibrant, um, validator set and incentivize users to delegate to the small guy.

• 54:00Speaker 02

  Um, or to even subsidize part of the hardware. I don't know if this would be practically possible with Solana, but this is just an idea that I've had, which is Terra is doing it and I found it interesting because even as a, sort of as a fund or what have you, I was like, okay, this is interesting. I'm just going to re- undelegate from the large guy. And try to really delegate to maybe the guy that's on top 10 or top 20 and has, never has been slashed or what have you, never skipped the block.

• 54:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just want to add something, you know, like I don't try to say that. I mean, I, I, I am happy that like Ethereum can run like on Raspberry Pi. I just tried to say to look like, and I, I, I think it's one of the most important things, you know, that you can launch a node in any place and to run it, you know? But I just tried to say, I mean, to look on reality, you know, like to discuss it, to push it, you know, we need more discussion. For example, now to run an Ethereum node, you know, like you need like 32 ETH. How much is it? Do you know how much 32 ETH is right now? It's like $120,000. Is it a lot? Is it like expensive? Is it, I mean, I mean, how much?

• 55:12Speaker 03

  Raspberry Pi is cheap, but like the steak is expensive. So I mean, it is a lot of things that we need to push. And I'm 100% agree that it should be available to run anyone a node at home. This is definitely, I mean, the right of, that blockchain should give you.

• 55:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  I do want to make one quick distinction, like 32 ETH to run a validating node, right? But like you could run a non-validating node at home, which is, which is important, which is also essential. So that an individual can read and write to the blockchain without going through any third parties. But I've talked so much, David, I want to get, let you get a question in here.

• 55:49David Hoffman?

  Well, I, I do want to move on to other subjects, but I first want to maybe hopefully wrap up this conversation with this, with this question. And I'll put on my skeptical ETH maxi hat and say that Ethereum as a consensus system is built to be neutral, to allow any sort of expression of alternative systems to be built on top of Ethereum. That's kind of its goal, maximally simple, layer one blockchain to allow layer twos to be however they want to be. And so my skeptic hat is, is saying, why didn't Solana if get what it wanted to get out of like a more scalable platform as a layer two to Ethereum?

• 56:29David Hoffman?

  And my, my malicious skeptical hat will say, well, if you deploy as a layer two to Ethereum, Solana wouldn't be able to do like a EC pre-sale raise and enrich a lot of many early founders. Like they wouldn't be able to hype themselves up as a as a layer two in the same way that they would be able to hype themselves up as a scalable layer one. And so they perhaps chose the layer one path rather than a layer two on Ethereum with a money motivation, right? And to me, that like taints the incentives of the bootstrapping, the genesis of this this ecosystem. So that's my skeptical Ethereum maxi hat. Why is that wrong? Konstantin, I saw you shake your head. Why is that wrong?

• 57:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, you know, like, do you know how much like this L two solution now raising of VC money? Do you know the valuation?

• 57:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think Arbitrum just did a 1.2 billion dollar one, right?

• 57:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, much bigger than like one solution. So any like that want to build.

• 57:23David Hoffman?

  Well, so the question still stands like, why, why build a layer one instead of a layer two?

• 57:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. So the question is the same. Yeah. So I mean, like layer two solution still have some, I mean, like price cost, you know, like to run on Ethereum, it has some restrictions. It's not so, I mean, it's depend what you can do in Ethereum too. So you need like, if it's like roll up, for example, then you need to have an ability to like, I mean, to execute it on Ethereum, it's something happen. And this is like price, this is like user experience, it is like some issues that going with like L two solution.

• 58:05Speaker 03

  And you know, like, it is a lot of people who are has own vision of of a solution and it's good, you know, like it's a big thing. And they have it, why they can build own way, how they think like this layer one should work. And about like this, we see money. I mean, what we see is doing is they usually allocate capital. And not all of them are bad, you know, I am allocated capital in many blockchains and we allocated capital. It was a small capital. It was my pocket money allocated in Ethereum. And it was a big thing for me, you know, I am a boy from Kaliningrad, you know, like I don't think that you know where it's.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  But I mean, I try to say that like Ethereum, give me this chance, you know, like to do it. Solana didn't give a chance. They didn't like give a chance, I mean, to everyone to invest. But not because they don't want to do it, because the market changed. It was impossible to make ICO in 2018, not because you didn't raise capital, but because it was a security risk. They're based in US, guys. And it is a reality, you know, and as they did their race, I think by 40 cents or something like that by Coinlist and a lot of people can participate in it. So, but it's not a lot of people participate. So they have, they give an option to everyone come in. So I mean, like answer this question that

• 59:31Speaker 03

  I, I am, you know, like for broader ecosystem, then more solution we have, then more competition we have. Do you remember like how slow Ethereum development was three, four years? Now we are, Ethereum community is much stronger, is better. Why? Because it is like some competition on the market is good for us, you know? It's for, good for Ethereum believers that it is some strong people like building something else. And it's push Ethereum also forward and I think it's good.

• 59:59David Hoffman?

  Tim, Sergio, do you want to add anything upon that?

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, look, back to your question, David. I think that there, there is, there, there may have been some motivation to, and, and look, we've seen that in ICOs, right? People realize that you, you build your own and there's, there's much more uh, sort of the idea why employees leave Google to, to go start their own. There's more upside. So, so there may have been some of that. I, I think it goes back to the very, very first question, which is, I think they, Anatoly had a vision for a different architecture design uh, to a blockchain and Vitalik's been talking about scaling Ethereum since day one. It's been an issue in everyone's mind. And Anatoly, I think from his perspective, had a different way of constructing a blockchain. Credibly like it's not like BSC, to your point, David, you were the one that brought it up.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  It's not avalanche. It's, it feels more unique in its architecture and in its design. That is refreshing because we don't really know, like, I don't think we have perfect answers. How these systems will work. I think it's very early. We can try to think about this stuff and look how much has roadmap of Ethereum change over time? And I think, you know, to me, that's instructive of, we don't know. This is why this space is so exciting. It has a lot of technological challenges and social challenges that haven't been resolved, but it's fascinating. That's why the smartest people keep coming to the space because people love working on difficult problems. And so the other point that I wanted to make is I think adding to that

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  whether you build an L two like Arbitrum or Optimism, you're still sort of beholden to L one and what happens at the L one, right? And so, so like, to be fair, if you really want to break from this architectural system that is Ethereum, and then you have to, you have to break and you have to make a different you know, a different system. Now, my thesis is it will be a multi-chain world and there will be a lot of connectivity between these platforms. Now, yeah, we talk about composability and all this sort of stuff, but by and large, I think we can all agree here that it is win-win in many ways where there might be huge gaming applications in Solana and social applications in Solana.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  And then there'd be a much thriving, evolved, developed, secure system of DeFi and Ethereum. And let's talk about that. Let, let, let's understand the connectivity of these chains because I think it will happen. I think it's unrealistic to assume that one chain will rule them all. I think, you know, it is net positive to see flow, even though people have terrible experiences there and realize very quickly that sometimes, sometimes decentralization does matter. It's sort of like flood insurance. When shit hits the fan, you're like, oh, okay, I should have bought insurance. But people realize until they want to withdraw and stuff. But by and large, I mean, it's bringing on, how many users have NFTs brought to Web three? And look, the idea is even, even Libra coins, not to get too off topic, but even Libra, I was

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  slightly positive on because I said, okay, well, you have two billion people that are all of a sudden going to wake up with a wall and say, what the hell is this? And then it's like, okay, I want to earn money and what else can I do with this? And I think that's what I'm more excited about. It's perhaps a more practical approach. But you know, I think, um, I think is Solana an L two to Ethereum? Maybe is so, or maybe possibly, right? You just build a nice bridge. And it's a hard problem, these bridges, but I think someone will crack that nut.

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, can I add one point here? So for example, I also invested like in Arbitrum, like in some other projects, I should disclose it and I'm.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, full disclosure to you.

• 1:03:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, so also like I'm a good friend of like Alex who is building the K-Cing and it's amazing software and I hope that it will be successful. But it's a little bit different, you know, like it's still, I mean, to launch it to, I mean, to bring ecosystem, it's still really complex. And I also like had a team that is working on EVM for Solana. And you know, like it's even just a program inside Solana. And my vision was I like allocate capital to, you know, to build the roll up. Uh, it's called Neon Labs, you know, like it's like to build the roll up from Ethereum to Solana, you know, like to execute Ethereum. EVM but use Ethereum like our security and scal a Solana scalability.

• 1:04:11Speaker 03

  So my goal, you know, like that it should be all interoperable. It should be all like more like tied together and use the best features of everyone.

• 1:04:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I think we're in full agreement about kind of like a, you know, a multi-chain world, right? Whether that's like, you know, we already are at a multi-chain world, which is what I say when people ask us, it's like, it's like, look, Binance and Coinbase, these are all additional chains, these are side chains, right? Like, and they they settle on these public networks. Let me ask you another question, this kind of weaves in maybe Sol as a, as an asset, as a, as a token and kind of the valuation of it. So another thing that's kind of tripped me up in evaluating Solana in the past is this, this pie chart on the far right, which is distribution of Solana. And I think Konstantin made the point earlier, like, okay, for folks that can't see this, by the way,

• 1:05:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  forty-eight percent of Solana distribution, according to a Missouri analyst report, was allocated to insiders, credited investors in the US. This is the, the initial sale of Solana. So this doesn't account for how it's distributed since that sale versus Ethereum, you know, fifty. 19%, right? So we had more concentration at the very early stages of Solana, which which kind of lends in the in sort of the crypto native crowd to people calling Solana kind of a VC chain, if you will, right? Not as not birthed by the community like something like an immaculate conception of Bitcoin, or because Ethereum was the first ICO and it was kind of

• 1:05:46Ryan Sean Adams?

  publicly available and it, you know, it got through that gateway and issued publicly, like it has kind of a special story about its its issuance. Solana was birthed just like any other kind of Silicon Valley VC project. And by the way, not their fault, right? We understand the the financial prison that we live in in the US, for those of us who are listening from the US that prohibit some of these, you know, ICOs and and crowd offerings and this sort of thing. My my question is, how does this affect the trajectory of the network, though? We've had this ongoing conversation about monetary assets in crypto, right? This conversation of is Bitcoin money? Is it a store of value? This conversation ETH as money,

• 1:06:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  as a store of value, as a pristine collateral, but as something that is used as a unit of exchange and a medium of the account. Now, we have Solana, which is less distributed from Genesis. Does that mean it takes a different path, do you think? Does this affect the affect the decentralization of it? There's no proof of work period of time where it's distributing. It's it's kind of going back to the validators and the owners. So what are your thoughts on that? And our our souls essentially competing as money? Santiago, let's go to you first.

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I want to make one point, which is if you look at the blue shade in this chart that you pulled up, I think the it's a little tricky, right? Because there was no VC allocation in Ethereum, although there were some very, very large Ethereum holders that participated in the ICO that had that knew each other, that collectively owned a big, big stack. Um, I, I think insiders like is a little bit misleading because there, there were large whales in the Ethereum ecosystem, just to be fair, that, that collectively owned a big, big chunk of the network. And over time, I think what was perhaps one of the best things that came out of the 2017 ICO boom was that people were spending their ETH,

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  and that led to reorganization and further distribution of ETH across mul- many, many hands. Um, but i- it's a little tricky, but like, I'll take the point, right? I mean, is, is Solana VC coin? And what is that? What are the implications of that? Because every other network, you know, to your point, Ethereum was the macro conception of what an ICO was, and then it was, oh shit, we can't do this. And so we're forced to work within a construct, and it's very difficult. It, it kind of is a dialogue that we should have with regulators, is like, what are we designing here? Because what are the side effects of the, of this uncertainty? But anyways, I think a couple of things, right? If it's centralized, I mean, I think Solana, one of the things that I've been thinking about is

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  how quickly can a network evolve and adapt? For a long time, it felt like Ethereum was sort of gridlocked, and it was very difficult to get shit moving. It was difficult also to fund development. If you were a whale, if you were a protocol, it was somewhat difficult. It's like, who should I give money to? Okay, Joe Lubin spun up consensus, which looked a lot of really good projects came out of that. And I, and I think, look, kudos to that. And I think the Ethereum community and, and protocols come a long way as a result of that. But it was difficult, right? I, I, I wonder for many, many years, like, okay, if you're a DeFi protocol, how do you give back to Ethereum? Because I, I was like, how many actual developers are, are thinking about ETH to scaling solutions? And what if I wanted to give grants to that?

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  And, and have some say in that decision-making process? And it was difficult. And I guess we're competing designs and, and, and look, I, I agree with Konstantin. I think the pace of development in Ethereum, maybe it was DeFi that put pressure on the network. It's like, all right, we gotta figure our stuff out quickly, or a combination of that, DeFi taking off, a killer use case, and then other protocols launching. I think it's healthy competition goes a long way. Um, I think Solana again is at that stage, and other networks are more centralized. And that allows for certain changes in the protocol to be, they're more agile. Now, you may agree if that's good or not. I think some design trade offs and changes in Solana and decisions have been made in a fairly swift manner by a few insiders.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  Um, that, you know, you have a community call and what have you, but at the end of the day, you know, you can credibly vote certain stuff amongst a few people. That's, I think, I think that's still the state of the world for some of these networks, including Solana and, and Definity and maybe Filecoin, where like, you know, a few funds and large holders and including the team, unless the team is abstaining, can, can pass this stuff. But ultimately, like, I'll give you my more practical answer to all of this is, the beauty of a blockchain is it's this hyper competitive world of open source. So if you want to do dumb stuff and you want to do stuff that destroys value and it's short sighted or near sighted, people are just gonna go to another blockchain. And that's the beauty of competition, right?

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  It just keeps people more accountable. If you're, we, we tend to think about like, oh, concentration is bad, right? If you're Apple, if you're some random web two company, yeah, like people can just vote this stuff or proxy vote and whatever. And, and no one, there's no accountability, there's no transparency. But you juxtapose out a web three world, which is open source, ruthlessly competitive, and the cost to copy is barely nothing. So like, I think protocols, whether they're apps like DeFi protocols or Layer Ones, are always beholden to, hey, we start doing stuff that pisses off the community as small as it may be, then we're not gonna go far. And so even if you had, even more so, right?

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  If you have a big, big stake in a network and you're a VC and you're a, a, a team, why would you destroy value? And, and you're being held accountable in real time because it's open and transparent. And that I think is the biggest, it's sort of like the Heisenberg principle. People are observing you in real time, being super critical of what you're doing, because everything is publicly visible and immutable. And it, there's a digital footprint of everything that is being done in these networks. And I think that while concentration is, I'm not agreeing or not saying that is, is good or bad. I didn't, I'm just saying, concentration, you should decentralize over time, yes. Sometimes being more centralized can help in agile development and making decisions.

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  But at the end of the day, Block inter coordination tools and the community is the layer zero of all of these networks. And if you don't listen to the community, even though they might have a smaller stake, you're done. You're not gonna, it's sort of the fastest way to be irrelevant and and die in this ecosystem.

• 1:12:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  What about that second question that was woven in there, which is about souls having a monetary premium? Do you think, does that factor into your analysis of of the valuation of souls, right? Like, right now, it's interesting because, like, you know, the framework where we see things like Bitcoin is primarily store of value. Ethereum is like, we've got capital asset, we've got cash flows. We also have a commodity being used as gas and we also have it being a store of value. So this monetary premium, do you think Solana is valued in the same way that Ethereum and Ether is valued? Or do you think there's a different valuation lens through which? Or do you think like, sometimes people like me tend to overanalyze all of this?

• 1:13:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  And it's like, who, the market doesn't care. It's it's just kind of a narrative. And so however this plays out in the long run, in the short run, it's just going to be valued based on the way Ethereum is valued.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  It's a great question, Ryan, because I've come from a fundamental background, much like you, and I like Ethereum, especially now with the EIP 5059. I don't think, by the way, I don't think most people appreciate the full extent of EIP 5059. I think most people are just like, like, concentrated or focused on NFTs and thinking those, but like,

• 1:13:43Speaker 02

  I don't think it's, okay, I don't think the entire market has woken up to the idea of how transformational EIP 5059 is to Ethereum. Like, let's just start with there. I think the market, because it's so early, we can't even agree on valuation methodologies for crypto. I mean, it took forty, fifty years of traditional, in traditional markets for Benjamin Graham and like in valuation methodologies of P ratio and valuing it off of EBITDA and recurring revenue. These things take time. I think it requires like banks to like put out like equity research reports or like.

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  You know, folks like us that like are tweeting, oh, look, you know, some of these like protocols are trading at distressed multiples and they have all this cash flow and people are like, oh, no, I'd rather ape into like some random protocol that has no traction. Like, this is how rational this market is. Like, this is why I don't short this market. So I don't really know how people are valuing these networks at times. I can, I think with Ethereum, it's easier for me to understand the value proposition of what ETH is as a substrate in the system. And seeing all the activity, and I think in a similar manner, my framework for Solana is not due to similar Ethereum, which is you have soul, you're going to consume soul, maybe less, but it's a sort of like, um.

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  How, the things that I rest on, like where I get conviction on is what I said earlier, which is number of developers, which is now up to a thousand in Solana. How easy is it to build? What are the applications being built as a proxy for? How big can this network get? The number of transactions and settlement.

• 1:15:18Speaker 02

  And, and putting aside, hey, let's just assume that like this network is not going to be attacked and all this stuff like that. This stuff can be figured out, but you discount, by the way, you discount. The valuation of Solana at this stage, based on these risks that we've discussed in this call.

• 1:15:32Speaker 02

  Whereas Ethereum is far a little long in that. You know, when, when, when London was announced. And E I P fifty nine was also agreed upon by, by the, by the miners. I'm like, all right, well. To me, that was a very clear. Motivator of an change of dynamic of how you look at Ethereum in a very, in a very meaningful way. And I can tell you other large players in the market that were, hadn't any exposure. To ETH also were very, very observant of this dynamic. Uh, because. For a long time, it's only been Bitcoin. This monetary premium you talk about, Ryan, has only been Bitcoin. And so, oh, you know, it's like, how many, how many Bitcoin maxes are like, oh, what's the, what's the, what's the, uh, supply of Ethereum?

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  It's just like, they, they would always go to that and it'd be like the most dumb, like, argument that you could ever make. But lo and behold, you know, people listen to that. And then you have a network that is burning. And then you're saying, oh, wow, it's a settlement layer of the internet. Oh, wow, all these transactions. Oh, there's a very clear way to value this network. Uh, so anyways, uh, very long in a response. My framework for Solana is somewhat similar, very similar to Ethereum. Does it have a monetary premium today? TBD.

• 1:16:46David Hoffman?

  Konstantin, do you want to touch on these subjects?

• 1:16:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, like, I mean, you also should understand that it is a discussion, you know, like, if we, like, say that Ethereum and Solana are children, so Ethereum is seven-year-old children, you know, like, and Solana is three-year-old children. Are they different? Yes, of course, like, they have different problems on a different level. In case of, I mean, back in 2014, when we thought about, like, how, what is the, like, value of the blockchains? What is the, I mean, token value? What, how we can compare it, you know, like, and we, like, tried to, we compared, like, Ethereum, for example, with a country, you know, like, and where you have microeconomy and macroeconomy.

• 1:17:34Speaker 03

  And there, the more transactions inside, the more companies inside, you know, like, decentralized applications, the more activities there, the more value there is, and more you can extract, you know, in case of burning. The same, I think, is with Solana, you know, like, if you have developers inside, if you have applications, and they make transactions, then they can do transactions. This is, for example, cross-chain and macroeconomy, it happened, you know, like, the more value for, and the more narrative to use, I don't know, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, or like Solana as a currency, but you still will look on numbers, you know, like, you still will look how activity inside, how many, like, assets locked, for example.

• 1:18:18Speaker 03

  So, and this system is much more transparent than current system. And that's why we are here, you know, that's why I love, like, all these projects, you know, that's why I love to spend time on it. And, yeah, so, I think, like, any product that will have real activity, not just transaction, you know, for, I don't know, like, validation, or for something that has real people inside, real products, they will find their own value, and they will find their own value proposition, and they will have extra, you know, like, value, and maybe, like, can be used by, as money. And, you know, like, I believe, like, ETH is money, and big funds have already invested in ETH as money, and, like, for example, all, why they, like, accept only ETH as money,

• 1:19:00Speaker 03

  because, you know, like, it's a really good case and a good example.

• 1:19:05David Hoffman?

  I appreciate that perspective and I want to, as we come to a close on this panel and I appreciate you all of you guys' times and going a little bit over. So I'll ask this one quickly. Ryan and I are often criticized as being ETH maxies. Ryan will definitely say that he's not an ETH maxi.

• 1:19:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Definitely not, David.

• 1:19:23David Hoffman?

  Definitely not. And I would also like to reframe, like what I am maximalist in is developer activity. And if we are talking about smart contract platforms, which I do believe is where this industry goes, I will be a maximalist about whatever the developers are a maximalist about. And so if one specific system has like 99% mind share in developer activity, then I am 99% a maximalist in that thing. And so what it would take for me to become really, really bullish about Solana is seeing a developer ecosystem grow around Solana, but also things that the developers are building on Solana being built there first, rather than being built on Ethereum, right?

• 1:20:03David Hoffman?

  Because like we are seeing a bunch of like copycat NFT projects, like now we have Solana punks and we now we got Solana squiggles. Like what are you really doing here? And so like my question to you guys is what are you excited about? That's coming to Solana that you might think will come to Solana first before it comes to Ethereum. Santiago, you want to start?

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  It's a great question, David. I think you'll see perhaps more complex computationally intensive DeFi primitives like option protocols and perks that have been struggling in Ethereum. You know, things like Mango or Synthetify. You'll get just a number of users of some of these protocols, more complicated, especially option protocols, haven't truly taken off in DeFi and Ethereum. And I think it's logical because it's expensive to update, to refresh. And so I think that's one that comes to mind. The other one is gaming. Um, something like Star Atlas or or uh uh like I I think some of those applications, maybe social as well.

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  Those would be my top three kind of use cases that I think may may garner like more attention. I'm seeing like from a use case perspective in the developer composition. Um, to me, it was interesting to to learn that a lot of these developers are like new folks. Um, that don't know solidity and just enter enter entering the space. There's few have been like, oh, rage quit Ethereum because it's like, I'm done. Uh, there's a couple of examples, but it's mostly been like folks in, um, so like, uh, I think Solana has a big office in Chicago. Chicago is a very, uh, very like, um, trader, uh, focused like market.

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  And there's a lot of folks like like Sam was at Jump and, you know, it's pretty tech, uh, sorry, was it the Jane Street? And so or Jump and some of these shops that, you know, they're like financial guys, but they're also quants. They're developers. So like, I think you'll see more and more developers in that arena. And so naturally, because they're coming from that field, they're gonna probably want to build more complex DeFi primitives. Um, on Solana. Um, so so I that's what I'm keeping an eye out for.

• 1:22:23David Hoffman?

  Konstantin, same question to you. What what do you think? What what's the developer environment on Solana going to be like? And and what do you think? Or what are you excited about coming first to the Solana ecosystem?

• 1:22:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, first of all, I want to say that it's a lot of problems inside Solana, you know? We just tell a lot of good things, but I mean, it's still, uh, I mean, early days, it wasn't a lot of hacks. Uh, so we don't have any like attacks and don't know what we can, what can happen. It is not a lot of auditing companies. I mean, it's a big market. So like, maybe somebody like will build a a a audit company to for Solana. And it is really difficult to like develop application right now because it's not so many examples, good examples. Uh, and you know, like it's a beginning, I I I. To launch like not even product is really complex.

• 1:23:14Speaker 03

  And what I mean, I think, I think like with like more experiments is more tooling. It will be easy, easy and more easy, you know. And I'm agree with that. I mean, Santiago about the use cases, about financial use cases, about define about game. So where you want to, for example, to, I mean, to use, to make like like application with cheap transactions. And I mean, try to, you know, like to do it right now. So some of them will try to build on Solana. But for now, we should understand that it's more complex than build it on some activity.

• 1:23:57Speaker 03

  But so I mean, even also have a lot of own issues, you know, like Solana is multi-threaded. So it's paralyzed. It's all it is, you know, like has a lot of unique features.

• 1:24:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Guys, this has been a fantastic discussion. I know, you know, David said he's kind of a developer maximalist. I would say like for myself, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a bankless maximalist. So I carry, I care very much that you don't create a new financial system that is owned by a new class of bankers that just take it over like our existing financial system. And I actually think some diversity in experimentation is good. And I do think Solana provides us that for sure. And look, guys, it was just great having a rational conversation, like a neutral conversation about this topic. Because crypto is so tribal sometimes and it's, it's hard to separate the signal from that, that noise of, you know, tribalness that that goes on.

• 1:24:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  So we definitely appreciate you guys joining and, and thanks. I guess maybe my last question for each of you as, as we close is this. How do you think that Solana and Ethereum can live together in, in harmony in the future? Like, how do you think this is going to, to really work out for both of them moving forward?

• 1:25:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Santiago, let's go with you. Dave's laughing at my question, but let's do that.

• 1:25:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:24Speaker 02

  Uh, I I think it it there will be coexistence, so let me just agree with that. I think the way it may look, thinking probabilistically is um. Kind of like WeChat has developed in China, because they totally leapfrog financial infrastructure. So it started with a social app messaging. And then they built a suite of products around that. And and then you combine that with like the sort of aggregation theory that I think this space will will really kind of. Go towards, because right now we're all beta testers. It's like it's like a speck of dust, like a number of users really get paid to like. Experiment with this stuff that has still a lot of risk in Ethereum and big everywhere. Um, but like, you know, just give an example, uh, maybe.

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  A lot Solana is just an onboarding funnel, a big one for that. You have like things like Star Atlas and games and social applications. And then you might just click a button and say, oh, I want to earn yield on this or or swap my my in-game items. And then that might get settled in Ethereum, depending on whoever you're using. Uh, the end user may not even know or care which blockchain it gets settled on. It just by default will get settled on Ethereum. Let me tell you why. Because. When, let's just assume that ninety-five percent of users don't interact directly with Layer One. They don't even know, maybe they're interacting with blockchain.

• 1:26:50Speaker 02

  But large financial institutions may, so you PayPal or Bezo or JP Morgan or whatever. And I think at the moment, uh, security is. The thing that most people say, hey, do users care about decentralization? I think they may not even care about decentralization. I think Binance Smart Chain kind of told us that in a very clear way, at least. So if we assume that most users may not value decentralization as much, they might value utility. So again, they might be starting Solana, they might swap or use some sort of financial function, which you're going to be using Ethereum, maybe potentially. Why? Because your aggregator, maybe the JP Morgan or the game that you're using. Will route to Ethereum because it's safer.

• 1:27:31Speaker 02

  Or because they perceived it to be safer and then security begets more liquidity, which which improves the set like the the the slippage on the trade. And so I think that's like the state of the world that I'm excited about and which I think Ethereum has a moat in DeFi, which is it's the most secure chain today. So if you're an institution like Visa or PayPal, you're going to use Ethereum. And so more liquidity because security becomes more liquidity. And so it's that virtuous flywheel that is just going to be more efficient to trade on Ethereum inside. Uh, and your your aggregator, your financial institution, your app, whatever you're using may just decide to route it to Ethereum because it's it's just uh just easier to do.

• 1:28:16Speaker 02

  So that that's probably now technically I I'm not in a position to like comment on on on the feasibility of that. But I am actively kind of thinking about bridges and how that might work. Um, so so yeah, I think that's how it probably, you know, or to have millions of users in Solana, which are going to require doing other things other than playing. And some of those, some of the in that journey, they're going to use Ethereum.

• 1:28:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Austin, what's your take on this? How do these chains coexist, live in harmony? How does this uh play out over the next few years?

• 1:28:50Speaker 03

  First of all, thank you for the discussion. I mean, uh, yeah, uh, it's great that we discuss all the things and they're openly. And I think we should think more about the problems and there, uh, you know, like who are like this Solana in Ethereum? It's like we are like we as a community, we are people who is doing it, discussing it right now, who is pushing it like in some direction. And what we need like we should keep this blockchain decentralized together. Solana like Ethereum like to let's all validators of Ethereum ones around Solana and Solana validators around Ethereum nodes. You know, like, and it will be already big things. And we have what we are building, you know, we are building like Internet of Value.

• 1:29:34Speaker 03

  And it will be better if it will be built on only one blockchain, you know, because it is also a risk. It will be good if it will be a lot of different layers. And it will be more secure, I think, that collaborating together to, you know, like, or I mean, to give.

• 1:29:52Speaker 03

  Everyone on the planet like to make a transaction without like permissionless and not censored. And our goal as a community like of this like blockchains is, you know, like to like speak more about it, to push this blockchain, keep them to be decentralized, you know? And this is important, you know, like, so what we can do, what like Solana and Ethereum, we should like work together on and bring our values, I mean, to our community. And they're trying to keep it watching decentralized and work together to attract more like billion people here and use them as values.

• 1:30:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Absolutely. Those values are the layer zero of this entire crypto space. Santiago Constantine, it's been fantastic to have you. Thanks for walking us through Solana today. Learned a lot. Great discussion was had. Thanks so much.

• 1:30:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks, guys. Really appreciate the time.

• 1:30:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless listeners, risks and disclaimers. Of course, crypto is risky. So is DeFi. You could definitely lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 1:31:04David Hoffman?

  Living a bankless life requires taking control of your own private keys. Not your keys, not your crypto. That's why so many in the bankless nation already have their Ledger hardware wallets, which makes proper private key management a breeze. But the Ledger ecosystem is more than just a secure hardware wallet. Ledger is the combination of the Ledger hardware wallet and the Ledger Live app. And if you're used to seeing all of your crypto services and favorite D apps all in one place, Ledger is where you want to be. Not only does Ledger let you buy crypto assets straight from the app, but it also hooks into decentralized exchange aggregators like Paraswap, which makes sure that you are getting the best prices on your trades without your assets ever leaving your control. DeFi never stops growing and the Ledger Live app grows alongside with it.

• 1:31:47David Hoffman?

  So click the link in the show notes to see all the DeFi apps that Ledger Live has. And stay tuned as more and more apps come online. And if you don't have a Ledger hardware wallet, what are you even waiting for? Go to ledger.com, grab your Ledger, download Ledger Live and get all of your D apps all in one place.

• 1:32:06David Hoffman?

  Bankless is proud to be supported by Uniswap. Uniswap is a new paradigm in asset exchange infrastructure. Instead of a cumbersome order book system where trades are matched with other humans, Uniswap is an autonomous piece of software on Ethereum, which is what Ryan and I call a money robot. No human counterparties or centralized intermediaries, just autonomous code on Ethereum. Input the token you want to sell and receive the token you want to buy. Something brand new in the Uniswap ecosystem is the Uniswap Grants Program is now accepting applications for grants. We have been saying this for a while and we'll say it again. DAOs have money and they are in need of labor. If you think that you have something to contribute to the Uniswap DAO, apply for a grant to Uniswap.

• 1:32:50David Hoffman?

  Just look at the size of the Uniswap treasury. It's almost $3 billion. This mountain of capital is looking for labor. Do you have something of value to contribute to the Uniswap DAO? No matter how big or small your idea is, you can apply for a uni-grant at unigrants.org and help steer Uniswap in the direction that you think it should go. That's exactly what we did to get Uniswap to be a sponsor for Bankless and you can do the same.