SotN #34: Polygon: Ethereum's Internet of Blockchains – Mihailo Bjelic & Sandeep Nailwal

Guests: Mihailo Benjic & Sandeep Nailwal We bring Mihailo & Sandeep of Polygon (formerly Matic) to the Bankless State of The Nation, to discuss Ethereum's Internet of Blockchains and Polygon's approach to connecting networks. ----- 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: http://bankless.substack.com/​​ http://bankless.substack.com/%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B ✊ STARTING GUIDE BANKLESS: https://bit.ly/37Q17uI​​ https://bit.ly/37Q17uI%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/​​ http://podcast.banklesshq.com/%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B 👕 BUY BANKLESS TEE: https://merch.banklesshq.com/​​ https://merch.banklesshq.com/%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B ----- 💪BECOME A BANKLESS PREMIUM MEMBER: http://bankless.cc/membership​​ http://bankless.cc/membership%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B ----- GO BANKLESS WITH THESE SPONSOR TOOLS: ⭐️ AAVE - BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave​​ https://bankless.cc/aave%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B 🚀 GEMINI - MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMP https://bankless.cc/go-gemini​​ https://bankless.cc/go-gemini%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B 💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDS https://bankless.cc/monolith​​ https://bankless.cc/monolith%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B 📱 DHARMA - MOBILE ONRAMP DIRECTLY INTO DEFI https://bankless.cc/dharma​ https://bankless.cc/dharma%E2%80%8B ------ 📣LATTICE | NEXT GENERATION OF HARDWARE WALLETS https://bankless.cc/gridplus​ https://bankless.cc/gridplus%E2%80%8B ------ Relevant Links: Polygon https://polygon.technology/​ https://polygon.technology/%E2%80%8B Our Tactic on Using Polymarket https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/how-to-bet-on-defi-with-polymarket https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/h...%E2%80%8B Sandeep on Twitter https://twitter.com/sandeepnailwal?s=20​ https://twitter.com/sandeepnailwal?s=20%E2%80%8B Mihailo on Twitter https://twitter.com/MihailoBjelic?s=20​ https://twitter.com/MihailoBjelic?s=20%E2%80%8B ------ Don't stop at the video! Subscribe to the Bankless newsletter program http://bankless.substack.com/​​ http://bankless.substack.com/%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B Visit the official Bankless website http://banklesshq.com/​​ http://banklesshq.com/%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B Follow Bankless on Twitter https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ​​ https://twitter.com/BanklessHQ%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B Follow Ryan on Twitter https://twitter.com/ryansadams​​ https://twitter.com/ryansadams%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B Follow David on Twitter https://twitter.com/TrustlessState​​ https://twitter.com/TrustlessState%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8B ----- 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 we may add links in this channel to products we use. We may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. We'll always disclose when this is the case.

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

• 0:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, everyone. Welcome to another Bankless episode of State of the Nation. We are super excited to bring, I think, a very timely set of guests on today, talking about Polygon, which is Ethereum's Internet of Change. This is a Layer 2 solution. We've got the co-founders of the Polygon project on to discuss that. I think that is really the big news this week with gas fees as high as they are, David. But how are you doing? And tease this episode a little bit for us here.

• 0:30David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I'm doing just fantastic. Just another week in the crypto, just blazing news of an industry. And so, you know, the Matic team and Polygon has been, I would say, a little bit under the radar, or at least under my radar, you know, heads-down building. And now they are exploding onto the scene. And so, we're bringing the co-founders on to talk about the specific implementation details of this specific flavor of L2. I think going into 2021, and definitely in the second half of 2020, it was all about people picking out their favorite flavors of L2. And Matic, now known as Polygon, is another flavor of L2 that we, that I think deserves people's attention. And so, we are going to investigate what that flavor is in this State of the Nation.

• 1:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, and I think what's cool about this project, Polygon, is more than just a flavor. It's like a whole ice cream shop with all the flavors, because they're executing on all of them. But anyway, we will get to that. Of course, this is State of the Nation. Comes out every Tuesday. We try to bring up a really relevant topic and discuss it in depth. We release it on YouTube. If you're watching live, how's it going? And we also release it on the podcast as well. David, before we get to Polygon, let's talk about some things that are new in the Bankless Nation. You had a fantastic conversation with Hugh Karp, who is the founder of the Nexus Mutual Project, Insurance Protocol for DeFi. We've had Hugh on the podcast previously. But what was that conversation? When's it coming out? And why is it important for folks to tune in?

• 2:00David Hoffman?

  Yeah, an unfortunate part of DeFi history now. Hugh Karp is the founder of Nexus Mutual, and he was the owner of a bunch of NXM tokens. As the founder would be, this is normal. And and so he was playing with the DeFi. I think he was redeeming some farming rewards or something of this nature. And he pressed approve on his ledger to send a transaction. And turns out the transaction that he approved on his ledger was not actually the transaction that he meant to approve. And what happened was that a hacker was able to inject a rogue file into his computer that hot swapped MetaMask with a forked version of MetaMask that injected a bad transaction into his ledger, which I

• 2:43David Hoffman?

  I make out of every single day, at least a couple of transactions on my ledger, and I never like view the little like little like display that's going to tell me what to do. And so, you know, I don't think anyone really does. And so, you know, Hugh pressed send to claim his farming rewards or whatever, but what actually happened was that this hacker had geared up this transaction to send all of his NXM tokens to the hacker's address, which then the hacker then just, you know, cleaned up through like ren BTC, tornado cash, and then exited. And so it's an ongoing investigation, but we brought Hugh on to talk about the vulnerabilities that he was exposed to and how he got how he got attacked by this hacker. And so if you are worried about

• 3:24David Hoffman?

  how this may have happened and you want to protect yourself, we have an article coming out on the Bankless newsletter and this video is coming out tomorrow on the Bankless YouTube. The attack on Hugh Carr postmortem. Thanks, Hugh, for coming out and sharing this all this information. And I think DeFi, it's an unfortunate reality, it's an unfortunate part of this crypto industry that these are the things, the things just work this way. And, you know, tip of the hat to Hugh for sharing how he got attacked to make sure that none of us fall to that same fate.

• 3:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, if you are a DeFi power user, super user, you've got to tune into this. When I heard about Hugh's hack, I think it happened in December. He lost $8 million this way. So it's a massive, you know, attack and it's scary that this came through MetaMask. So if you're a DeFi power user, super user, make sure you tune into this and glean some, some of those lessons from Hugh's experience. That's why he's making it public to help the DeFi community. So take a look at the article and check out the YouTube video that Comes out tomorrow. By the way, David, we should mention that we are teaming up with Lattice Wallet as well over the next two weeks because we're really excited. They've got some new Lattice wallets in stock. So think, oh, David's showing his right here. Okay, so see that's this is like a ledger, like a hardware wallet.

• 4:37David Hoffman?

  Big screen.

• 4:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  But it has a big screen. And what's nice about the big screen is that you can see all of the transaction details on that screen. And it's it's much more human readable. So we're teaming up with Lattice. They wanted to give Bankless readers, Bankless watchers first dibs on some new stock that they have on Lattices. So we'll include a link to the Lattice and we're going to be publishing some more about the Lattice. Kind of a hands-on experience from David and I here shortly. But that is a tool for DeFi power users to prevent the Hu hack. Actually, reading your transaction details before you click send. So stay tuned for that. We've got Liquidity on Meet the Nation, David.

• 5:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  I don't know if we have time to tease that. And then we also had the Dollar Milkshake Theory with Brett Johnson, a podcast that came out on Monday. So so take a look at that. But maybe just give us a give us a quick high level of your conversation with Liquidity. What is that project? And when is that going to be posted on Bankless YouTube?

• 5:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's going to come out this week on the Bankless YouTube. Liquidity is a governance minimized stablecoin. It's a similar protocol to MakerDAO, but with less governance features. And it's also much more much similar to RAI, which is also a governance minimized stablecoin project. But RAI importantly is not making a dollar peg stablecoin. They're making their own peg. Yet MakerDAO is making a dollar stablecoin in DAI, but it's not governance minimized. It's pretty heavy on the governance. So Liquidity is kind of trying to be this middle ground between MakerDAO and RAI, where they're pegging it to the dollar, but they're having governance minimization. And so that video is coming out on the Bankless YouTube this week.

• 6:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, what's so cool, we say this all the time, is we're going to see all the things attempted in DeFi. All of the experiments will be attempted here, and this is just another one that's kind of a hybrid of the two models here. So, super cool. All right, David, before we get into talking with Polygon, I've got to ask you the question I always ask on these State of the Nations. What is the State of the Nation today, sir?

• 6:41David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the State of the Nation is expanding. We are expanding our territory, expanding our real estate. The whole conversation about L2s is to create like new virtual real estate that isn't so crowded, right? Ever since Haseeb Qureshi came on the podcast, and he gave out that metaphor of how like DeFi is Manhattan, or the Ethereum L1 is Manhattan, I've really been a fan of this like a real estate or just like physical landscape metaphor. I made my first Loopring wallet this week, and so I now have a plot of land on the Loopring L2. And so that's my new plot of land. There's not as many inhabitants there, and so gas fees are really, really inexpensive and really, really instant.

• 7:22David Hoffman?

  And so people are flowing out of like, you know, Manhattan, trying to find new areas of land to settle on. And one of those areas of land is Polygon, which we're bringing on to the Bankless State of the Nation this week. And so the State of the Nation is expanding. We are expanding the fold.

• 7:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  We are moving outside of Manhattan and settling in the suburbs a little bit. Yeah, I think that's a great articulation of what's going on right now. So, David, before we get into this conversation with the Polygon folks, let's take a minute to tell the Bankless visitors about our fantastic sponsors who made this episode possible.

• 7:58David Hoffman?

  If you are looking for a product that connects your fiat bank account with DeFi tokens and products, you need to download the Dharma mobile app. Dharma is a non-custodial smart contract wallet and comes with a bridge that connects you right into your bank account. Dharma is the fastest and most efficient wallet between your fiat and your bank account and any token on Uniswap, or even any vault in Urn. With Dharma, you can get over $25,000 per week into the DeFi universe and You can do it non custodially. If you or anyone you know is hot on DeFi and you're trying to get your money into a DeFi investment, Dharma is the place to go. Signing up and going through KYC is an absolute breeze.

• 8:42David Hoffman?

  It took me just under three minutes and after signing into my bank account via Plaid, I am now just one transaction away from any token that Uniswap has to offer. Go to www.dharma.io, that's D H A R M A dot I O. Download the Darba app and get yourself unbanked today. If you want to live a bankless life, you need to get a Monolith DeFi Visa Card. Monolith is both a one-two punch of an Ethereum smart contract wallet, as well as an accompanying Visa Card that lets you spend the money that you have in your Ethereum wallet wherever Visa is accepted. It's really a fantastic tool that lets you use Ethereum for what it does best,

• 9:22David Hoffman?

  which is holding and managing your financial assets, but also keeps you connected to the rest of the world's payment rails. Monolith also offers on-ramp services for getting your fiat money into the world of DeFi. So it's trivial to top up your Monolith Card if ever you need to, and your deposited money goes straight into your non custodial wallet. So your money is never held by a centralized intermediary because your Monolith Wallet is native to Ethereum. Monolith helps you transcend both the legacy and the crypto worlds because the money that you hold in your Monolith Wallet has the power of DeFi behind it. Swapping assets on Uniswap or earning yield in DeFi is at your fingertips. But with Monolith, so are the groceries at your grocery store or the coffee at your coffee shop.

• 10:05David Hoffman?

  Go to monolith.xyz to sign up and get your Monolith Visa Card today.

• 10:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, everyone. Welcome back. We want to introduce our next state of the nation guest. We have Sandeep, who is the co-founder of the Ethereum Layer 2 project Matic, and Mihailo, who is the co-founder of a project aiming to create the polka dot of Ethereum. Well, these two have fused their brains together and their teams together to create Polygon, formerly called Matic, which is Ethereum's Internet of A quick disclaimer before we get in, I'm actually an advisor on this project because I think so much of it. So keep that in mind as well. It's not the reason we have them on. We have them on because this is a fantastic project that you need to know about.

• 10:53David Hoffman?

  I'm not an advisor, so I get to be the bad cop.

• 10:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not.

• 10:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  So let's start here, if we could, guys. This narrative, if you go to the Polygon website and you sort of see the description of what Polygon is, it says Ethereum's Internet of Blockchains. I want to get to the Ethereum part in a little bit. But first, can we talk about this idea of an Internet of Blockchains? What is an Internet of Blockchains? And why is that something that people should be paying attention to? And is that the future?

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, first of all, thanks, Ryan and David for inviting us. Even though, David, you're not an advisor and it's amazing that you actually still invited us.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for the question, Ryan. I guess Ethereum blockchain is a concept that appeared a couple of years ago. And it's, I would say, a belief or a bet that when this whole crypto ecosystem matures, there cannot be one chain to rule them all, as some like to say. And the reality will necessarily be a multi-chain reality, as I said, once the ecosystem matures. And I would say there are two primary reasons for that.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  One is that blockchains are hard to scale, as we, I guess, all know. By this point, they are very sophisticated machines built with security and resilience and decentralization in mind. But they are hard to scale, as we said. So as we are, as more and more people are joining the bankless nation, and there's more users basically competing for the limited throughput, it becomes, I would say, relatively obvious that the future will have to be multi-chain. The second major reason, I would say, is that so far, both, I would say, Sandeep and I,

• 12:54Speaker 02

  through various roles, have worked with probably, definitely 100-plus blockchain projects. And if there's something that we realized is that different projects have different requirements, basically, when it comes to technology and the features their projects and their community require. Sometimes, some of them are more focused on security, some of them are more focused on privacy, et cetera. So, that being said, any single blockchain, if we assume the existence of that single blockchain that rules them all, you cannot tune those parameters, basically, to cater to those specific requirements.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  So that's, I guess, I would say that's probably the second major agreement that explains why the future, as we believe, it has to be a multi-chain future.

• 13:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  If we agree on that, that there is, sorry, sorry, Ryan, if there is a multitude of blockchains, it becomes relatively obvious that we definitely should connect them. We don't want them to exist as isolated islands, and that's where the whole, now we, I guess, have the whole picture. I mean, the Internet of Blockchain is a concept of multi-chain reality, where chains are connected among each other and can communicate and exchange messages and collaborate, if you want.

• 14:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  So, so definitely, the Polygon thesis is, believes that there is going to be some Internet of Blockchains, but Polygon wasn't, isn't the first project to say that. There have been some other projects that have been saying this for a while, maybe we could touch on them. So, I remember in 2017, a project called Cosmos was talking about the Internet of Blockchains. So that's one approach. And another has been the Polkadot network, which is talking very much about an Internet of Blockchains. Maybe, Sandeep, could you build on what Mahalo was saying about the Internet of Blockchains and talk about these, these two attempts, Cosmos and also Polkadot, and how they're kind of similar or distinct from what Polygon is building?

• 15:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure. So, uh, I think one of the biggest thing that we know we also keep discussing amongst amongst ourselves is that both of these attempts, uh, like first thing is very clear that ninety nine percent of I would say like I don't have exact number but ninety five to ninety ninety nine percent of all the blockchain developers Ethereum developers, right? First, like, you know, principally, like, slightly wrong step, uh, we believe, or, uh, you know, at least from our opinion is that these, uh, you know, ecosystems don't like try to create a separate, uh, you know, environment than Ethereum, right? So they don't kind of utilize those network effects Ethereum already has.

• 15:40Speaker 03

  Secondly, uh, you know, the one more important part is both of the platforms are uh, you know, sort of opinionated in their in their in their sense, right? So like they have particular kind of solutions that they are looking to build, right? Like, uh, you know, like an opinionated approach, like for example in Cosmos, you have like each of the separate or the the chains, actually, uh, they have their own, you know, security and then they connect to the Cosmos hub. And then, you know, uh, the problem is that, you know, if let's say one chain is communicating to some other chain, how do they, how do they trust the, you know, the things that are coming from the other chain? Similarly with Polkadot, uh, you know, Polkadot is trying to build a shared security thing, right?

• 16:24Speaker 03

  So, you know, you will have a like a central chain which will have some validators and they will kind of, uh, you know, validate on Para chains, which would be like shared security chains. Again, like that is also one flavor of, uh, you know, kind of application. So, you know, what, when we teamed up, like, you know, one of the biggest parts of our synergies was that we, uh, you know, after talking to so many developers, uh, is like, you know, like the the eventual solution that will end up winning the overall, like the scalability or or winning the infrastructure side of thing would be something that is unopinionated. That means like that caters to the requirements of the developers, uh, you know, as per their their projects, right? So those those two are, I I would say are the are the

• 17:09Speaker 03

  Are the most important things in my mind that how we differentiate from that. And like first I already mentioned that you know being being closer to Ethereum and then you know building on top of Ethereum. And providing the scalability to like, you know, the the the projects which are already there. Uh on Ethereum by providing EVM compatible chains. And then, you know, connecting them via via Ethereum. And one important thesis we also have is that. Uh you know, eventually, whatever happens, Ethereum is going to be the ultimate settlement layer and the business activities will move to these. Various flavors of of, you know, uh, you know, like the execution environments, be it like, you know, standalone chains, be it. Shared security chains or L two chains which derive their security from Ethereum. So that would be.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  Like, you know, so that's that's the main idea on it.

• 17:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sandeep, why do you think that? Why do you think Ethereum will be the settlement layer for this entire internet of change?

• 18:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I think like the uh the Ethereum's primary, uh, you know, this thing like a decentralized and secure programmable money. Uh, you know, part is is the like, uh, it has been proven over the years. And then the like overall, the developer ecosystem, there are multiple things like we can go on and on about it. But then, you know, like, uh, like we were just talking about the the kind of hacks that, you know, DeFi environment is. It is already having now, right? So and then, you know. Previously, apart from DeFi, also Ethereum has seen so many like maybe like a billion dollar worth of attacks, right? And then Ethereum has reached this stage, which is a level of maturity where we can see like, you know. Billions of dollars of DeFi and you know, we are seeing.

• 18:49Speaker 03

  All the like, you know, the traditional finance sector talking about it and all that. So. That level of maturity and the network effect, it takes like time and and there is no shortcut to that, like that's organic. Uh, you know, movement that Ethereum has has has has, you know, evolved in the last, uh, you know, like six, seven years. Right? So for any other blockchain platform to reach that, uh, you know, organically, it is going to take time. There's no shortcut, no matter how. Big money you have raised, no matter how many billions you have raised and. Like how much, uh, you know, how, how you, you are, you're trying to build your developer community. Uh, those tooling, uh, those, you know, your, your wallets, uh, your, your security paradigms for your smart contracts and all that.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  Everything, you know, takes time. So like Ethereum is at a stage where it's very hard to, you know, take back or take those network effects out of Ethereum. Uh, you know, that's what, that's what I feel that that's why we believe that, you know, this programmable money paradigm, which has proven itself over the time. With, with a huge amount of decentralization and security. Uh, I think that will, that will control the, you know, central sort of, uh, network effects in order to become the, uh, or in order to remain the settlement layer and the business activity that can happen, uh, you know, on the side chains. Uh, inside chain means like, you know, other kind of execution environments.

• 20:13David Hoffman?

  Ryan, you're muted.

• 20:15Speaker 03

  Ryan, you do.

• 20:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, thank you. So let me kind of summarize, Sandeep, for, for folks that are kind of new to this because I think, and I've seen this on Discord, I've seen this on Twitter. Um, there's a lot of fear and certainty and doubt going on about Ethereum given high gas fees. So Ethereum kind of quote unquote killers are coming in and saying, hey, we've, we've got more advanced technology. We've got a chain that doesn't have these high gas fees. DeFi is going to migrate over to our chain. A chain like, uh, the Binance, uh, smart contract chain comes to mind, or, or a chain like, uh, like the Polkadot network comes to mind, all of these kind of Ethereum killers. And I, I think what you're saying is the difference between sort of, uh, an Ethereum killer or a competitor.

• 21:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  And what you're doing with, with Polygon is that, that basically, um, your Polygon is Ethereum's internet of change because you're using Ethereum tooling that works out of the box. So like the Ethereum virtual machine, all of the wallets, all of the infrastructure, all of the smart contracts can just be ported over. So you've got that, which is kind of Ethereum native, if you will. But, but secondly, um, the, the plan for, for Polygon or any layer two is also to use Ethereum as a settlement layer. And also to use Ethereum's security. So all of Ethereum's economic security, if you guys were building out sort of an optimistic rollup or a ZK rollup or something, the Polygon chains would essentially be backed by Ethereum's economic

• 21:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  security. If you're an ETH killer competing as another Layer 1, a Cosmos, for instance, you have to bring your own security to the table. You're not bootstrapping that on the value of ETH or the token and its economic security. If you're Polkadot, it's the same thing. You're sort of... So a Layer 2 is something that uses Ethereum as a settlement and uses Ethereum for security and uses some of the Ethereum tooling like the EVM. Is that an accurate representation of the difference between a Layer 2 and an ETH killer?

• 22:20Speaker 03

  Yep, largely, largely. And I think Mihailo can expand on that, like, you know, multiple, like, one part, like, Mihailo has, you know, very nicely articulated is the various degrees of, you know, connectivity to Ethereum. So there is, there's like, you know, there's various kind of T3. So one is a, like, a very strongly coupled T3 into, you know, tethering into the Ethereum layer, which would be like a Layer 2, you know, trading like, for example, ZK rollups, optimistic rollups. Then you have another level, layer of a kind of connectivity, which is like, let's say, in the form of bridges, right? So, and then there are multiple flavors to it. So, for example, the Polygon POS chains, if you see, the whole of, like, although many

• 23:00Speaker 03

  people think of it as a separate, like a proof of stake, you know, sidechain, but then it actually, the whole of POS logic actually stays inside of Ethereum. So all the validators actually have to register on Ethereum, they, you know, they make periodic checkpoints onto Ethereum, whatever is happening on the sidechain, they put a proof of, even on, and I'm talking about the, you know, Polygon POS chain, the magic number POS chain, you know, they put the checkpoints onto the Ethereum, this thing, and their rewards, staking rewards are actually given out basis the checkpoints that they've given. So, like, there is a, there's a lot of, like, you know, the connectivity to Ethereum is also a spectrum, right? So you Have the extreme end of like, you know, let's say optimistic rollups,

• 23:43Speaker 03

  which actually are putting the transaction call data as well as the state root also on the Ethereum. And then, you know, they have, you have the, you know, the standalone chains on other side like which might be an enterprise chain. But still again, like, you know, just something like what we, what everybody is trying to do with Quorum and, you know, you know, Ethereum enterprise alliance. The idea is that if the larger number of developers are building on EVM, Solidity and all that, the Ethereum ecosystem overall, you know, is.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  So, yeah, like you said, Isaac nicely, yeah.

• 24:19David Hoffman?

  Mihailo, before I cut in, do you want to add anything to that?

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe just a few, few lines, but I think Sandy articulated pretty, pretty well. First of all, I guess the most prominent internet of chains projects out there are Cosmos and Volca dot and maybe Avalanche. And I first of all, would like to say that these are amazing projects with very, very good teams and huge kudos for all the work they're doing. And that being said, I think that I would say the fundamental, from our point of view, fundamental mistake when, when they, these projects were initiated or started is the decision to build a separate ecosystem, or some people would like to say Ethereum killers.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  We, we believe our bet is that, and we are, I would say, pretty sure of that, that that was a strategic mistake. Like, and internet, we strongly believe internet of chain is the future. But internet of chain done right, if you will, is Ethereum's internet of, of, of chains. So that's the only thing that in our opinion makes sense because of everything that you mentioned, networking effects, the maturity of the tech stack and, and all the other things.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  And that's what we basically decided to do. That's, I would, that is, I would say, the major difference between us and these other projects that we mentioned. And that major difference, actually, when you, when you go a little bit deeper and you start really thinking about it, it might not sound like a big deal, but then like once you start going deeper into the weeds, it really, really can. I would say even blow your mind, like in a sense that uh how uh um you get so many more options in terms of the architecture. You get by default higher security because you have all of a sudden, like all these projects, uh uh Cosmos, BitCosmos or Polkadot or whatever, for example, Polkadot has the relay chain as the,

• 26:23Speaker 02

  let's say, settlement layer or their source of security. It is still, of course, I'm really not saying, trying to say anything bad and I won't, uh um I will never say anything bad about those, those projects, but you have a chain that is still not better, better tested, it is just basically starting to run and you are using it as source of security for the whole ecosystem of chains and that can, can, can be tricky and can introduce some challenges. Here you have the most battle-tested and the most secure programmable blockchain in the world as your settlement, settlement layer, layer and source of security. I mean, it's like a, a, a very huge difference, you, we have to admit.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  The, the second thing is all the tech stack, like when you're building an ecosystem from scratch. Ethereum was, I would say, some sort of perfect storm happened and as Sandeep said, no matter how much money you have, it is going to be, in my opinion, extremely hard to, to replicate the success of Ethereum and all that organic interest and like the whole digital nation that gathered and formed around Ethereum. It's like really, really impressive. Um, so yes, I mean, that's, I think that's like a really a, a, a major difference and um, once you start building such a, such a multi-chain system with Ethereum in mind, like there are,

• 27:48Speaker 02

  I guess, two again, major impacts. One is, uh, or aspects, one is strictly technological and I would say pretty obvious. You get to inherit all the tooling, all the, I mean, the, for example, EVM is a, a global standard for programmable, programmable blockchains and all the ancillary tools and whatnot. Uh, and the, it, it, for any competitor, it will take years to, to reach to that point where Ethereum is now. And the, the second thing is, uh, I would say a little less obvious and it's kind of abstract or maybe sociological, if you will, is uh, that

• 28:29Speaker 02

  I think the community understands if something is built. I think the community understands and will understand that Polygon is built as an integral part of the Ethereum ecosystem, both technologically and from the point of view, I mean, from the cultural point of view, if you will. I think the community is very much able to recognize these things. So these two aspects, I believe, are putting Polygon in a very good, I say, position.

• 28:58David Hoffman?

  So here's my takeaway so far. Sorry, one moment while I adjust the screen. So my takeaway is that there is this construct, this construction that we can label as like an Internet of Blockchains. And that can be a relatively neutral thing to build. We can build it as a neutral piece of infrastructure that we can deploy it wherever. You know, Cosmos has it deployed as its own kind of like Internet interchain. Polkadot has it deployed as this, you know, L1 ecosystem. And then you guys have it deployed as strictly an extension of the Ethereum-based protocol as an L2. But it's the same con, it's more or less the same construct, depending on, with maybe some tweaks and parameters adjusted.

• 29:42David Hoffman?

  But what you guys are saying is that when you, when you take this neutral construct that is possible to be built in any sort of context, and then you put it inside of the Ethereum context, you get to draft on some of what makes Ethereum so awesome. One of these things being the value of Ether and the native security of Ethereum, the blockchain. And then also, you could also draft on all the multitude of assets that are being issued on Ethereum, right? And so any sort of ERC 20 token, and I, and correct me if I'm wrong, but any ERC 721 token can also be, work with Matic, natively with, with Matic, right? And I guess the whole point of Cosmos and Polkadot is to also be able to make an

• 30:25David Hoffman?

  interchain world, so in theory I should be able to take my assets to Cosmos as well. But the difference there is that Cosmos isn't as natively integrated with the security of Ethereum and having that native integration, in the same way that Loopring offers you the same assurances that the Ethereum L1 offers you, so does Matic/Polygon, Polygon now known as Polygon. And I think, Mihailo, what you were just finishing up there is that committing to Ethereum is not only committing to the technology, but also to the values and ethos of the community, right? And so the energy that is in Avigachis, like all of that community, can actually be carried

• 31:08David Hoffman?

  over without loss into Polygon, right? Because we are committing to the ethos and to the ethics that we think that Ethereum brings to the world, the politics that we think Ethereum brings to the world is matched by Polygon. So far, that's my takeaway. Do you guys want to add on anything to that?

• 31:26Speaker 02

  I think you phrased it very well. I think that's a very good recap of everything that we've said so far. Like, as you said, and again, these are these two aspects. As you said, assets can be indeed transferred to Cosmos or to Polkadot in a similar manner, relatively similar manner, at least on a high level. But it just comes from that if your design decision from the get-go is that I'm building a system that is integral part of the Ethereum ecosystem. And on the other side, there is another design decision that says I'm building a separate ecosystem, and then I'm going to build bridges to. It has to reflect along the way, it will reflect many times.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  It's like you and I decide to do this show from your apartment, or we decide to do it from the get-go from different apartments and then think of a way to connect. It has to reflect in all sorts of phases along the way. And the second part is, as you said, we are completely adopting Ethereum ethos and ethos and culture, and we are, I think, already very much active members of the Ethereum community and supporters all these years and all that. So, yes, I would say that's a great recap.

• 32:48David Hoffman?

  Ryan, you're muted.

• 32:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, I want to go back to something you said, right? Because, and feel free, anyone to kind of chime in here. But so here's kind of the thesis, and the thesis that we've been talking about is that if you are a base Layer 1 chain, like you're a Bitcoin, or an Ethereum, or even a Polkadot, you have to be in the game to compete as a money. Your asset has to compete in the game for a monetary premium, right? So Bitcoin, obviously, competes for a monetary premium. More recently, I think people are realizing that Ether, when it's used as collateral, as a store of value, when it's used inside of the economic parameters of Ethereum, is competing as a money.

• 33:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  And this has been always my problem with like a dot or an atom in Cosmos is that they don't seem to be competing as money, right? Like, the folks on the Cosmos project will tell you explicitly, no, atoms are not money. There's some sort of a token, a capital asset, but they're not money. The folks on Polkadot with dots, they're not quite as clear. But the challenge with treating dots as a money is that there's on-chain governance. So essentially, you have issuance that's ruled by coin vote and by plutocracy. And the reason I think it's important that Layer 1s compete for money is because that's where their security comes from. Their economic security, at the end of the day, comes down to what's the value of the token.

• 34:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  So Bitcoin's economic security and its double spend prevention is based on the value of Bitcoin as an asset. Ether's economic security, Ethereum's, is based on the value of Ether, right? So you have to be competing and playing in this money game. And if the other Layer 1 chains aren't competing as a monetary asset, they don't have a credibly neutral plan to compete as a money, they can't possibly be the chain that offers the highest security. And at the end of the day, it seems to me that DeFi will all move to the settlement layer of the chain that offers the highest security. So I wanted to just throw that idea out there, you know, to you guys, because we've been talking about kind of network effects and sort of the EVM and the tooling,

• 35:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  and that's all true, too. I also think that there is a network effect in being a money that can't easily be replicated by a and we've been calling them ETH killers, but like, you know, that's just a term that the industry uses. You know, to your point, guys, these are, uh, these are good projects. These are good teams. Everybody has, you know, the best intense, I suppose, but it seems to me that unless they compete as a money, they can't possibly be as economically secure as Ethereum. So I guess what I, what I see in sort of the Polygon approach is you don't have to bootstrap, you know, the Polygon token as a money.

• 35:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  You could just, you know, use the economic security of Ethereum and that's an advantage too, because it's really hard to create a monetary asset that the world accepts as a money. Any comments on that from Sandeep or Mahalo?

• 35:58Speaker 02

  I think that's absolutely a great point and definitely positioning Ethereum as money has been very valuable in terms of increasing the security of the whole ecosystem, primarily Ethereum mainnet and then indirectly the whole Ethereum ecosystem. And that's something that I think everyone, it should be an obvious thing to understand and admit. And that being said, of course, for us, that's that synergy basically between Polygon and Ethereum. Like, once you build this integral part of the ecosystem, our best interests very much align with Ethereum's best interest.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  And Ethereum Ether being strong or hard money and having, I mean, providing or enabling high security

• 36:54Speaker 02

  to us. So it's like a very nice incentive alignment between, in this case, this particular case, Polygon and Ethereum or any other basically Ethereum ecosystem project and Ethereum.

• 37:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Just to confirm, Ether is money, I just want to say it.

• 37:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, well, you know. You won't get any disagreement here on that. So can we talk a little bit about the types of change that Polygon has? So it's not just one solution, right? And actually, I'm going to share my screen here.

• 37:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is a great way to look at it. There are multiple types of.

• 37:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  To.

• 37:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  To roll up, it's not just ZK roll up, it's not just a plasma proof of state chain. You got to try.

• 37:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Kind of.

• 38:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like this list of different chains kind of encapsulates all of the different approaches. Maybe besides state channels or that sort of thing, but all of the different Internet of Chain types of approaches that are being attempted on Ethereum today. And you guys are doing them all at once. Maybe could you go over each of these solutions and kind of talk about their advantages and disadvantages? And how far you are in the process of actually bringing them to market?

• 38:31Speaker 02

  Sure, Sandy, do you want me to take this one or?

• 38:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, so maybe I can start with the first two.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Please.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  If you see the current, like the Matic POS, hybrid POS and plasma chain, that please is very interesting, which is not very talked about is that on a single chain, you have an option of two different kind of, right? So you can either choose a pure POS, you know, a solution for you. And then you can actually choose, you know, like a pure or a plasma based solution also. I mean, the benefits and you know, the pros and cons are like, you know, I mean, a lot over there. For example, like with, you know, like with simple POS, you know, the solutions which only want to rely.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  On the uh you know, security of the of the of the proof of state layer. They uh you know, end up using that more like for example, some sort of NFTs and you know. Like uh you know, like some some DAO votings and all that where they don't need like that hard level of security. Like you know, as I think I think that uh that analogy of having a Manhattan versus a you know suburb. So you know, the per per uh square, you know, mile number of policemen. Uh in a in a in a Manhattan area would be much bigger than the you know, like a suburb. So I think that's that's a very nice analogy to do that. So you know, like so the kind of use cases which want that, they can have that. If if the projects like for example, uh you know, as far as we know, like for example, Augur wants.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  Like more Ethereum based on chain security, like which is which comes with plasma, uh using fraud proofs and things like that. So then you know, you can use you you can use that, but that comes with its own kind of caveats. Where you know, the development and you know, like you need to put more developer protocol. Uh you know, specific developer as into it and things like that. So similarly, you have other different different other solutions and you know, may maybe Mihailo can take uh from there. Uh and I think he has a very nice uh you know, this thing of categorization of uh you know, the. The larger piece of solutions into two different two main ones. One one are the standalone chains and other ones are secure chains. So yeah, Mihailo like if you want to take take over from there.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. Thanks. Um yes, as Sandeep said, basically, uh we like to categorize. Because the the Ethereum scaling and infrastructure uh um uh ecosystem is is very vibrant. And there's a lot of flavor uh flavors and a lot of projects offering different solutions. And and the the whole ecosystem is really amazing, I would say. What we what Polygon introduces here is basically some sort of.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  We are trying to introduce structure for the first time, maybe for the first time in this fantastic, vibrant and organic ecosystem. Ethereum is developing organically by default, and that's a wonderful thing and very powerful.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  But organic things often lack structure. So speaking of different projects, we kind of realize that there is awareness about different scaling solutions, but it's kind of hard to navigate that ecosystem and understand the trade-offs and deal with some implementation complexities, I would say. And Polygon is, I would say, a community-driven effort to introduce some structure in that beautiful, organic, a bit chaotic, scaling ecosystem.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  To introduce structure, we can start first by defining, let's say, two major categories of Ethereum or Polygon chains. First one are these standalone chains. I would say that's how we call them. Standalone chains are chains that do not necessarily inherit security from Ethereum. They, by default, have their own validator set, and they are, in simplest terms, you can think of them as some sort of side chains or enterprise chains. And it is, I would like to say, first of all, I guess, to understand if some people are generally into Internet of Blockchains projects. Those chains would be something similar to Cosmos zones.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  I think it's fair to compare them with Cosmos zones, because Cosmos zones also have their own validator sets, and they are, by default, responsible for their own security. In Ethereum, we already have, I would like to say, a very high success with chains like that. For example, if you Google, there's something on GitHub called Ethereum Atlas. It's like a list of... Ethereum compatible chains that are currently live and have assigned chain IDs. And there's already, I think, sixty-plus chains over there. Plus, there are, I would say, hundreds of enterprise implementations. And all these chains are in that group, standalone chains.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  And they are alive, they are running, they are fulfilling their purpose. And I think, to be honest, I think they're not getting enough attention, or at least as much attention as they deserve.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  The community tends to focus on Layer 2 solutions, strictly Layer 2 solutions, in a narrow sense. And I will get to them in a minute. But I just wanted to say that I think these standalone chains are also providing a lot of value to the Ethereum ecosystem and community. And I think we are often forgetting that. All these chains are still using Ethereum in one way or another, to generate their assets, they're bridging to Ethereum to transfer assets back and forth. They are using Ethereum for checkpoints, for all sorts of activities. And they are, in my at least humble opinion, significantly contributing to the Ethereum network effect and the ecosystem overall.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  And I think we're kind of doing them a bit of an injustice, because, let's say, we have hundreds of such chains in production today, and Layer 2 solutions, we unfortunately still have maybe dozens of them alive. But like, strictly Layer 2 solutions get probably like ninety percent of the attention. So that's just something I wanted to briefly say. So Polygon and the Polygon SDK that we'll be releasing soon supports by default building these standalone chains. Once you have a standalone chain, as I said, you can interact with Ethereum in various ways, use it for checkpointing, transferring assets, even staking, like we do for our

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Matic POS chain, which is one example of such standalone chains, etc. So I would say it's like it's a really, really important component of the Ethereum multi-chain. So that's the first group of chains. The second group of chains are what we called secure chains. These are the chains that derive security from Ethereum. And these would be a layer two solutions in the narrow sense. Like, and there, I really like your analogy, Ryan, that when you said that we are actually at like an ice cream shop. Or instead of providing any specific flavor, we are actually like an ice cream shop where you developers or project founders can come and pick their, basically pick the flavor that fits their requirements and needs the best.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  That being said, we are kind of, we spend a lot of time also working, and me personally, and Sandeep and the whole team spend a lot of time analyzing different layer two solutions, working with specific projects to, to help them find the optimal scaling solution. And, and one thing we realize is that there is no silver bullet for Ethereum scaling. There is no one size fits all flavor that will, at least we believe that, and that's our bet, that will fit, that will be an optimal solution for all the projects out there. We believe that multiple scaling approaches will definitely coexist in the long term.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  And that's how we decided basically to offer a multitude of solutions instead of any specific solution. We, we have, like, of course, also enormous respect for all the teams out there, like, huge shout out for teams like, to teams like, I don't know, Meta Labs, Optimism and all these things, doing fantastic work. And we will be working with those teams hopefully closely in the future and already working with many of them. But they are by default also focused on one specific solution, one specific implementation. So, once you're in that position also, you cannot

• 47:22Speaker 02

  You have no other option but to, you're actually betting on that solution. You're all in on that specific flavor. We think it is not really a safe bet because, as we know, Ethereum scaling ecosystem is still developing. The whole industry is basically developing. This industry is, we must not forget, 10 years old in total. And Ethereum and programmable blockchains are like five years old in total. So this industry will still see a lot of changes, innovation, turbulence, and all these things. So that's why we decided to, and because of there is no one-size-fits-all solution. These were the reasons that made us basically introduce something

• 48:04Speaker 02

  that the community already likes to call Layer 2 aggregator. Like you have DEX aggregators that came along and aggregated multiple DEXs. That's how Polygon is basically aiming to aggregate or offer a multitude of Layer 2 solutions to projects and teams out there.

• 48:23David Hoffman?

  So I want to ask about how that works. And so on Polygon, we just went through a couple of examples of the chains that we found. Like you said, shared security blockchains, standalone blockchains. And I think if people are familiar with Cosmos terminology, this would be application-specific blockchains, I think would be how they would have called it. But then we also have other Polygon chains, which are things like, you know, just a plasma chain, ZK rollups, optimistic rollups, things that we've seen in the rest of the ecosystem. But my question is, why, how is this different than just a normal optimistic rollup chain? And like, how does consensus of the many Polygon chains happen? And where does that consensus happen when it, in relation to Ethereum, right?

• 49:07David Hoffman?

  So like, are these blockchains, Polygon chains, all talking to each other? Or like, where is the canonical like convergence onto one kind of state of truth as to what is true about the Polygon L2? And then how does that get communicated to Ethereum? Because we have all of these different flavors of blockchains. How do they interoperate? Or like, how does Polygon come to know what is true about all these various different blockchains? Like, where is that actually happening?

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Yes, that's a fantastic question. Basically, there is, in Polygon, in the multi-chain reality that we envision, there is no such thing as global consistency, like strong global consistency. We kind of believe that it is pretty much not possible to achieve. On a global scale, like in, let's say, traditional systems, be it financial systems, traditional financial systems or Web2 systems, you always have some, either autonomous systems or some systems that are functioning independently and can fail independently. And by allowing that, you are actually making the system more resilient. That's what we believe. So there is no such thing as global consistency,

• 50:22Speaker 02

  because, let's say, I think Polkadot is an example of a project that strives to achieve global consistency. And on the other side, Cosmos is a project that aims to isolate security and avoid global consistency as a goal. And we believe this Cosmos approach, the approach Cosmos took is a better one. Because this global consistency approach is, number one, never can scale unlimitedly. That's simply, I would say, not possible by design, because you always have some sort of set of validators that at the end of the day has to validate this proof.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  So there is always an upper limit to how much you can scale. And the second thing is that it's actually really hard to achieve, right? Once you have a multitude of chains, all of them at the end of the day can produce some, there can be malicious activities or even mistakes, unintentional, non-malicious mistakes, that can cause invalid transactions, let's say, to appear in that specific chain. And if you are strongly insisting on a global consistency, global security of the system, the question is, what happens then? And I say it has to happen sooner or later in any such multi-chain system.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  So yes, that's the approach when it comes to security. And we strongly believe that Polygon really tries to be as unopinionated and as flexible as possible. Like, every project, every community on Polygon should...

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Decide for themselves what level of security suits them. If this security is absolutely critical for them, I would probably at this point at least advise using something like ZK rollups or solidium implementations if possible, because they provide like high level of assurance and all the transactions of that implementation get validated on the Ethereum directly. Some other chains, for example, like enterprises, they really do not require that strong security of Ethereum, but they require many other things from the Ethereum ecosystems. They might decide to pick something like a standalone chain and form their own enterprise

• 52:46Speaker 02

  network and interact with Ethereum mainnet as they all generally want to. So the approach to security is, I would say, absolutely unopinionated and flexible, I would say. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, please.

• 53:06Speaker 03

  I mean, just one, like, if David, your question is regarding like where is, where everything converges, right? Like, and if your question was not regarding the security, then like everything converges on Ethereum, that's the whole point, right? So all the assets and everything, like the inter, you know, communication, let's say, between two enterprise chains. So we are already working with the, with one particular enterprise implementation where, let's say, both chains are run by enterprises themselves, but then they communicate with each other using a checkpoint like we have, like, you know, a cryptographic proof on the, on the Ethereum main chain. So basically, everything converges back to Ethereum. That's the whole point, but yeah.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. No, no, no, no, thanks for, that's a great point. Everything converges on Ethereum, like Ethereum is the nexus, we envision Ethereum as the one and only nexus of all this activity, especially economic activity in this multi-chain reality.

• 54:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, guys, we're gonna, we're gonna pause for, for some sponsors and when we get back, would love to talk to you some more about some of the DeFi projects using Polygon today, the, the, the full landscape of Ethereum layer two and the projects out there. And then hopefully we can get to the Matic token and the token economics. So guys, stay tuned and let's, we want to tell you about these sponsors first.

• 54:29David Hoffman?

  Gemini is the world's most trusted cryptocurrency exchange. I've been a customer of Gemini since I first got into crypto in 2017, and it's been my main exchange of choice to make my crypto buys and sells. Gemini is available in all 50 states and over 50 countries worldwide, and on Gemini there are markets for over 30 various different crypto assets, including many of the hot DeFi tokens. And it's one of the few exchanges that has liquid DAI markets. Gemini just launched their Earn program, where you can earn up to 7.4% interest on 26 various crypto assets. If you're tired of paying fees in DeFi, or you don't want to worry about DeFi exploits, but you still want to earn interest on your crypto assets, Gemini Earn is the product for you. Another product I'm stoked to get my hands on

• 55:12David Hoffman?

  is the Gemini Crypto Back Credit Card, which gives you 3% cash back on all of your purchases, but paid to you in your preferred crypto asset. When I get my Gemini credit card, I'm going to make sure that I get my cash back in ETH. So whenever I buy something, I get a little bit of ETH bonus back to me at the same time. You can open up a free account in under 3 minutes at gemini.com/go-banklist. And if you trade more than $100 within the first 30 days after signup, you'll be gifted a free $15 Bitcoin bonus. Check them out at gemini.com/go-banklist. Aave is a borrowing and lending protocol on Ethereum, and just recently released Aave version 2, which has a ton of cool new features that makes using Aave even more powerful.

• 55:57David Hoffman?

  With Aave, you can leverage the full power of DeFi money Legos, yield, and composability all in one application. On Aave, there are a ton of assets that you can deposit in order to gain yield, and all of those same assets can also be borrowed from the protocol if you have deposited collateral. Here you can see me getting a 200 USDC loan against my portfolio of a number of different DeFi tokens and ETH. I'll choose a variable interest rate, because it's a lower rate than the stable interest rate option, but I could choose the stable interest rate option if I wanted to lock that interest rate in permanently. One of Aave's V2 features is the ability to swap collateral without having to withdraw your assets, trade them on Uniswap, and then deposit them back into Aave.

• 56:40David Hoffman?

  Aave does all of this for you, all in one seamless transaction. So you don't have to repay loans in order to change the collateral you have backing them. Check out the power of Aave at ave.com. That's A-A-V-E dot com.

• 56:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Alright guys, we are back with the Polygon team, Mahalo and Sandeep. Guys, I want to talk about DeFi projects that are using Polygon today and what you guys are seeing with the growth. So it seemed over DeFi summer, gas fees got really expensive and there was a frenzy, "Oh, we got to get to Layer 2", and then they cooled down, right? But now we're back into this frenzy, gas fees are high again. It seems like there's, you know, an uptick, a massive uptick in conversation about migrating, maybe even starting DeFi projects on Layer 2s. Can you talk about some of the projects that are using Polygon today? I want to maybe bring attention to two things that I found were sort of interesting, maybe reflect on that.

• 57:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  The first is this tweet, "There's now $200 million in total locked value on the Polygon Plasma Chain and the POS Bridge." So on Polygon, $200 million in total locked value. So where's all of that coming from and what projects are using Polygon today?

• 57:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, you know, a large part of it is actually, and which is a good news, is that, you know, is the stable coins. So like one of the, like in the DeFi side of things, like prediction markets, like, you know, you know, like I think the Polygon POS Chain is like really doing well over there with Polymarket, you know, like some of the bigger prediction markets, for example, in the space. Polymarket is on, you know, is on Polygon. Then you have this SporeX, which is doing, a Canada-based team, very, very, doing very, very well. Their SporeX token is doing very well. Similarly, like, you know, Augur team has multiple times said that, you know, they are integrating their, this part, you know, UI and all that.

• 58:41Speaker 03

  Then you have other ones like PlotX and, you know, the upcoming ones, some of the upcoming ones they are doing. So, you know, the prediction markets, things are going very, things are going very well. And due to these prediction markets, a lot of stable coin come to Matic, so like the Polygon, you know, POS Chain. So the previously, like out of, like when the TVL used to hub Around I think fifty to sixty million dollars, like forty to forty to fifty million dollars was was in stable coin. But now I think some of the because of quick swap. So basically, quick swap is a uni swap clone on. Uh, you know, on on the on the on on Polygon. So that is also attracting a lot of liquidity.

• 59:23Speaker 03

  And now I think you have a free, you have a few tokens like Abi Gotchi tokens there. Then you have, uh, you know, Sport X token, which are which are like available in pretty. Uh, large numbers, uh, you know, in terms of their USD amounts. Uh, so, so yeah, those are there. Then you have a lot of other protocols like, you know, EZ5, for example, which is. Which is sort of a fork of compound, but they want to do a lot of like micro lending kind of use cases. Because we still believe that for for the larger kind of like multi-billion dollar. Uh, you know, TVLs and all that. Like, I think Ethereum is is still like Ethereum is the. Best layer for that for those those veil like, you know, let's call it like veil B five for a lack of a term, right?

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  So for that, like Ethereum remains to be the the biggest this win. But and you know, like some of these, maybe some of these protocols can have a like a micro versions of them. On on the like on on this chain, which is now like guarded by more than hundred. Hundred million dollars of like steak that on the proof of steak side of thing. So. Uh, so like so EZ5 is basically into micro D five case, you know, this this thing. So they are now. Uh, innovating on top of it and trying to bring bring, let's say, under collateralized loans. Or payday loans, for example, like some of the cool features, some of these projects are trying out. Then you have, uh, you know, like synthetics kind of applications like like Oro Pocket is there, which is issuing.

• 1:00:50Speaker 03

  Uh, let's say gold and silver, silver, actual like, you know, backed by custody. So it's not. Purely D five, it's like C five, D five, but then they are issuing. Let's say silver and gold backed, you know, actual, you know, assets on on on the on the P S N. So similarly, like, you know, there are multiple, multiple these, like D five plus N F T is also becoming pretty hot. So Abi Gotchi is is is one of them.

• 1:01:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sandeep, all these projects, right, that you mentioned, you know, one you mentioned was was Polymarket, which we're familiar with, we've done a tactic on before, it's a prediction market. And I remember when we when we first started using Polymarket, the first tactic, bankless tactic, we did on Polymarket was on main chain, right? But now this is all on Polygon today, is that correct? So if I am using Polymarket, I can use my same MetaMask instance. So same user experience I've had previously, but it's going to be faster and no gas fees because, or low gas fees because it's now on Polygon, is that correct?

• 1:01:50Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, and you know, you can actually say that no, like you can say no gas fees because why? Because the applications actually pay those gas fees for you. So it's like, it's like kind of a web two model. So you know, if you want to attract the mass users, you need to have that kind of model where you are like the gas fees is so low that you know, you can maybe a decent application or a mid-tier application can actually have a hundred dollar worth of, you know, magic tokens, and then, you know, they can pay the gas.

• 1:02:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so Polymarket itself, that's just an example of a project where instead of like, they started in Manhattan, but the rent was too high, it got too expensive. So they're just moving to the suburbs, that's all they're doing, just moving to the suburbs. You get the same user experience. And because their numbers are smaller than something like a Uniswap, so they're not doing billions in total locked value, they might be doing millions today. Well, the economic security, I don't know if they're using your proof of state chain or what, but let's say they are, they are, okay. So the economic security offered by the Polygon proof of state chain, well, that's good enough. That's all you need in the suburbs when you're doing lower amounts of total locked value. And then I suppose the idea with Polygon is if they needed more economic security later,

• 1:03:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  they could migrate essentially to a Polygon, you know, layer two, that's that's based on optimistic rollups or ZK rollups, you know, in the future. So that's kind of what's going on here. Can we talk about this other post too? So I saw this, this was super interesting. The question in my mind for Polygon and all of these Ethereum layer two solutions, because Polygon isn't the only one, of course, and I know. Our listeners know that there's all sorts of layer two projects in Ethereum's Internet of Chains. But Avagachi went through, this is a NFT project. They went through why they picked Polygon. And it was for these reasons. One, sufficient decentralization, like you guys had enough decentralization for their needs. And enough economic security.

• 1:03:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  EVM compatibility right of the box, they could just migrate things. Production readiness. So the nice thing about Polygon is it's ready like right now. Some growing network effect, which we just talked about. So this does seem to be a case where, you know, some suburbs might do better than others. Right? Like Brooklyn might do better than the Bronx for whatever reason. Developer ecosystem and interoperability with other NFT projects. Those are some of the reasons they mentioned going with Polygon. Is this kind of common? How do you attract DeFi projects to your specific layer two? Like, what are they looking for? And how does Polygon differentiate itself?

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, so.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  Before I hand it over to Sandeep, sorry, sorry, Sandeep. I just want to, one small thing to add or a small correction that the user experience is actually far better. Once you move from the Ethereum mainnet to Polygon. It's far better and you're able to allow your end users, I would say, web two user experience, which is like probably critically important, like highly likely. If you talk to UX engineers and then the experts, everyone will tell you if you want to disrupt an app or a system or an industry, the disruptor has to offer at least the same level of user experience, if not better, at least the same.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  And we now have still this reality of people having to learn about guess and acquire it. And all these things that are like huge, huge barriers to entry. And these things are pretty much gone. Once you, in the case, for example, of Avagachi or Polymarket, once they moved to Polygon. Yeah, so sorry, Sandeep, handing it over to you.

• 1:05:36Speaker 03

  Hold on.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  You're muted.

• 1:05:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, so with DeFi kind of projects like you know now that the the the stake on the network is like growing, growing like you know like now I think it's like around hundred billion plus proof of stake is guarding the the network and we have like ninety plus validators to give you a context like I think Mihaluk, correct me if I'm wrong, but like you know Cosmos has primarily hundred validators or something like that, right? So like I don't have an exact number, but roughly like like that number, right? So you know, imagine you have a you know Ethereum side chain or layer two chain which is guarded by almost like equal number of validators that are you know like a very high profile you know layer one project like that is there.

• 1:06:21Speaker 03

  So that you know, that's why like Avi Gauri mentioned that sufficient decentralization is there. And then you know, the the stake is also pretty high. So for you know, some of these DeFi use cases, as you mentioned, like for polymarkets, polymarket now which are which are handling, let's say forty to fifty million dollars for now, right? So they are pretty happy having a having you know the the the assets over there. And and also like you know, they are all the all the user assets are not not being managed by one particular smart contract, like only those amounts which are on bets, they are actually in the smart contract. So that also like kind of diversifies the the risk profile over there.

• 1:07:01Speaker 03

  So so that's why like you know, DeFi projects are now getting more and more attractive attracted towards the towards Polygon. But you know, like DeFi plus NFT because NFTs like you know, as you can already you know, realize that you know, thirty dollar NFT, you need hundred dollars to mint on the main chain. So like NFT projects are you know, they are in droves and droves. And I think that Avi Gauri, you know, even mentioned article even mentions that you know, there is like a you know, like even open sea. Uh, is is looking to have an NFT store of, you know, on the, this one because so many like high-profile games like almost, you know, like out of, if you pick like, let's say 10,

• 1:07:44Speaker 03

  you know, gaming and NFT projects, you will find that, you know, six, seven, eight of them would be on, on, on Polygon. So because of the, you know, obvious benefits that low-cost, uh, you know, uh, transactions and, and all that. And even like, I think for NFTs, even whenever like, you know, the other solutions like optimistic rollups and more secure solutions will come in, but they will definitely have more, uh, you know, their, their gas footprint will still be pretty high because optimistic rollups actually are putting all the transaction data on the Ethereum main chain, right? So for the NFT kind of use cases, this level of security as well as the, you know, the to and fro bridging with Ethereum works very well, very well. So that is attracting now NFT plus DeFi use cases, which is kind of, you know, you, you must already be seeing that a lot of projects are exploring in that.

• 1:08:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And that's going to be huge. I think Dave and I have talked about so much in the rollups and otherwise, like, like NFTs are going to be a gateway for people to discover crypto. Uh, you know, they're going to come because they saw a tweet from their favorite celebrity and they're a big fan of the community and they might just enter on a layer two rather than the way we all entered, which was like, we bought some ether, we bought some Bitcoin, which is, it's just going to be a fan, uh, fascinating inroad. Uh, another question about in general Ethereum's layer twos, because, um, Polygon is not the only layer two, of course, there's optimistic rollup, there's ZK rollup, Starkware is doing some stuff. Uh, Dave and I are going to be doing a lot more on layer two on bankless in, in the coming months. In fact, we're, we're talking to a, a panel, um, you know, recording tomorrow

• 1:09:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  with a panel of, uh, DeFi applications who are talking about selecting their layer two in the criteria and they use to select it. And that'll be on the podcast coming next Monday, guys. But I, I guess a question for you, is it, is it like a, a battle to the death kind of competitive landscape? Is it, are all of these Ethereum projects really, uh, fighting each other? Like kind of, is there a layer two wars going on? Or are the projects all friendly and working together to solve this as a community? What's, what's the feeling right now?

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  I would say definitely not. I would say that definitely there's a lot of room for all these fantastic projects to work and grow and gain traction. And we will definitely act in the same manner. And so far, like, I personally know founders of, I guess, many of those or most of these projects. And we are already directly collaborating, exchanging knowledge, helping each other, or even planning on some things that maybe we'll be able to share more in the future. Maybe even things like mergers and stuff like that. So, no, I would definitely say Ethereum, there's no such thing as Ethereum scaling wars.

• 1:10:24Speaker 02

  What you might see actually on Twitter, which is, or elsewhere, it's probably like healthy debate between researchers. Because each of these scaling solutions, every scaling solution has trade-offs, like any other technology in the world. Every technology has trade-offs. So when you see sometimes some conversations around that, it's just basically mainly researchers discussing those trade-offs. And that's about it, I would say. So as far as it goes for us, and I would say all the other projects, there's no such thing as Ethereum scaling wars. There's like a lot of room for everyone.

• 1:11:06Speaker 03

  And especially for us, like, you know, where we are looking to aggregate and provide a better developer experience for the users and, you know, kind of making it easier to navigate through this whole, you know, layer two space. I think she knows, especially for us, like, it's not like that.

• 1:11:22David Hoffman?

  So, speaking about trade-offs, since Polygon has, you know, optimistic rollups or ZK rollups as a potential Polygon chain, what, if somebody was thinking about doing a native optimistic rollups or doing optimistic rollups via Polygon, what are they giving up when they go to the Polygon version of optimistic rollups? What is, what's the cost of doing this?

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  It's not always, it differs from case to case. But for example, with optimistic rollups, our optimistic rollups technology is not ready yet. It will be ready in months to come. I cannot share any more details at this point, but we will hopefully be able to share very soon with the whole community. But the thing is, sometimes, for some solutions, we will have partnerships with specific projects that is working on that specific type of scaling. For example, like a partnership with Starkr, just giving an example here. With other solutions, we will have our own implementations. I guess the major difference would be that

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  we are really trying to make it easy to use for other projects to implement their own rollups or value domes or ZK implementation. And the other difference is that it should be easy to switch. As Ryan nicely said, you can start with one scaling solution, one implementation, and as the time goes, and your project maybe matures and your community becomes stronger, you might decide that you actually want to change the specific implementation and move from, let's say, from, let's say, ZK. You may be started with a ZK chain, and then your community became strong, and you are realizing that you can have your own standalone chains

• 1:13:13Speaker 02

  that can actually even introduce some nice incentives for your community members and for your, let's say, project's native token and whatnot. So all kinds of possibilities are possible. So I think Polygon can allow any project to evolve or to follow the evolution of every project in terms of infrastructure and technology that we support. We are there to support you with your infrastructure. We will provide you good infrastructure, so you can focus on what you do best is your project, your application, and its adoption.

• 1:13:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  The last thing I'd love to cover.

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  I hope it makes sense.

• 1:13:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it does. And so the last thing I'd like to cover, and you guys may not be willing or want to kind of weigh on on this too much, but I think it's an interesting, it's a super important point for Bankless listeners to to sort of wrap their heads around because we're not only going west on the journey and actually using these protocols, but we're also investing in them. And I think it's it's kind of curious because what we what we see here on like the, you know, the token market cap top 10 list is a number of alternative non ETH layer ones that are in the top 10 list, right? So we've talked about this before. So Polkadot right now is valued at a fully diluted valuation of

• 1:14:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  $28 billion. That's billion with a B. We've got Binance Chain, which is 19 billion. We've got Cosmos somewhere here with their their Atom token. That's at 6 billion right now. What's interesting, I think, is if you're evaluating things using sort of the the Bankless lens, which is there are, you know, asset super classes and you're either competing as a as a commodity, or you're competing as a store of value, or a capital asset, or in Ether's case, all three of those things, we would argue. The question in my mind is what are these alternative layer ones competing as? And if they're not competing as a money, as a store of value, and maybe they're competing partially as a commodity, they're mostly

• 1:15:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  competing as a a capital asset. So what's interesting to me is to observe the relative market cap difference between like the Polkadots and the Binance Chains of the world and the the Adams Cosmos of the world versus like the like Loopring, for instance, right? Loopring is an Ethereum layer two. It's 859 million in terms of market cap, or even like Polygon is, you know, 517, yeah, half a billion. So I

• 1:15:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  I guess what I'm saying here is it seems to be the case that either these ETH killers are like way overpriced in terms of of market cap, or the the ETH layer twos are way underpriced, or it could be the case that these ETH killers are basically these alternative layer ones are just sort of being assumed that they will accrue some monetary premium in the way that that Ether does and being priced based on the value of Ether. So I think if you if you if you guys are thinking about like alpha leaks and opportunities, there's gotta be some like mismatched pricing here. And I'm not saying this will play out like now or this cycle even because, you know, who knows

• 1:16:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  what retail will will buy as they're entering the market. But I'm talking about like, like long term. And long term, it seems to be the case that if you're a layer one, you have to compete as a money. Otherwise, you're just competing with the other layer twos. And if that's the case, why is Polkadot 28 billion in market cap versus some of the Ethereum two's layer twos, which are in the, you know, still the hundreds of millions? It doesn't make sense to me. And it seems like there, you know, one of us is going to be right, I guess, on on these bets. I don't know. Maybe that maybe the Polygon folks don't want to to weigh in on this because it's, you know, talking about like, you know, tokens and that sort of thing. But David, I'd at least like like to hear what's your take on this? I mean, how do you see things?

• 1:17:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I would say that I think if you are a token on an L2, you are not bothering to compete as like a native trustless money, right? You are you are giving up that that value accrual mechanism to the native L1, right? You are you are not you're just not even bothering to fight that fight. And instead, you are trying to focus on what what is the core competency of the L2, which is to be an extension of the L1 while also providing uncompromising levels of of security. And I think I think maybe the conversation could turn into the actual role of the of the Matic, and I'm probably I'm assuming there's going to be a rebranding in

• 1:18:10David Hoffman?

  the future, of the Matic token in the Polygon network and the role of Polygon validators. Can you guys explain the relationship between validators and the token and Ethereum?

• 1:18:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, so basically like the the thematic token is essentially a proof of stake token. Uh, which is used for uh, used by the validators to kind of, you know, to stake. Uh, and and you know, and basically earn the rights to become or kind of validate the transactions. And then transactions uh, have the same, you know, gas model as Ethereum. So if you are a validator, uh, and you, uh, you know, you have staked your token, you've earned the right to validate those transactions. You get to have the transaction fees, plus you also get to, you know, participate in putting the checkpoint on Ethereum, right? This is specifically for like, I'm talking about this POS and plasma chains. I mean, there can be future kind of chains which might not like, you know, have a checkpoint or have stronger checkpoints.

• 1:19:07Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, that that will depend on the kind of solution. But then essentially it's like the proof of stake, uh, you know, mechanism, uh, you know, basically the validators actually uh, earn the right on the transaction fees, right? So the value approval mechanism is is actually directly dependent upon the adoption. So if the large amount of adoption comes in and then the like the network starts generating hundreds of millions in transaction fees. Uh, then you know, if you are a validator in this network, you get a piece of that pie, right? And then, you know, let's say a 10% return for you yearly is a good enough return. And then the network is, let's say, generating 100 million per year in the, uh, you know, transaction cost. Then let's say a billion dollar worth of tokens can be staked, right? And that that amount of tokens are out of the supply.

• 1:19:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Sandeep, this is this is essentially the same role that the atom token plays in the Cosmos network, correct?

• 1:19:57Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah, exactly.

• 1:19:59David Hoffman?

  Is it what are the fees actually denominated in? So I've got my Matic token, I've got my validator, I'm staking my Matic to my to my Matic. Uh, I'm taking staking my tokens to my validator, processing uh, transactions on the Matic L2. What and I'm getting fees. Uh, how are those fees measured and what are what is the denomination of those fees? How how do the fees happen?

• 1:20:21Speaker 03

  So the current POS chain, uh, the, the plasma chain, they have the fees denominated in Matic tokens uh, uh, itself. But then that's not the primary value approval system of this. So in future, like, uh, you know, I and Mihailo have been discussing. That, you know, we can very easily make, let's say ETH as the, uh, as the gas fees in that. And that actually increases the user experience. We kind of realized that, you know, that like later on in the cycle that, you know, we should have like with this change also ETH could have been the, the gas fees. So that people also have a mental model, easier, easier mental model that, okay, on Ethereum I am paying three hundred fifty or like whatever gray as the gas fees and here I'm paying like, you know, maybe one to five gray as a gas fees.

• 1:21:02Speaker 03

  So, you know, that could be a default option. So, but in terms of like, uh, you know, currently it's Matic. And then in future, it can be again, like as Mihailo said, that, you know, we want to make it like completely unopinionated. So like the default option might be ETH in future, but then there can be some change which say that, hey, I want die to be my transaction fees mechanism. And then as a, as a, as a validator, you earn the fees in whatever token the, the relative or like the, the chain you are validating on, uh, you know, denominates its fees on. So.

• 1:21:33David Hoffman?

  And so with, with Ethereum gas fees, the gas, the amount of fees that is paid by the user to the miners or in the, in future, the validator is determined by how much demand there is for block space. How, how is the fee size determined on Polygon?

• 1:21:48Speaker 03

  So it's exactly the same model, the, the, the, the free market model for the, for the gas, uh, gas fees. And, you know, we are also exploring like the newer, like, you know, like ERC one, one five, uh, one, one five point nine, uh, kind of, uh, scenarios. Uh, so, so yeah, like currently, but the, the model is exactly like Ethereum. When the, when the, when the demand goes up and there are larger number of transactions, then validators choose the higher gas fees, uh, paying transactions. Yeah. But the, but the scalability of the current chain is pretty high. Like, you know, it's around like, uh, you know, seventy two hundred TPS uh, in some of our menge, uh, you know, measurements. So like network is right now far from, uh, you know, that stage. So, and then plus there are staking rewards. So the validators also subsidize some sort of fees right now.

• 1:22:34Speaker 02

  And on top of that, just to add to that, now we are introducing a multitude of chains. So it's not like Matic PSs, even though it's nowhere near the peak capacity. But we will have a multitude of chains, hopefully in the future, that will all have significant capacity. And yes, that's the general intention.

• 1:22:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, all of those chains, if they're proof of stake in Polygon, will they all be backed by Matic's economic security in some way?

• 1:23:08Speaker 02

  Not necessarily. Not necessarily. We also think it's like a kind of a slippery slope or a double-edged sword. It's always like, I guess it's always tempting to... Tokens are a very powerful mechanism, I would say. Like, token-powered systems are really amazing to analyze. And the way, if you think like something like Bitcoin or Ethereum, works as a, let's say, fully independent, but again, consistent and functional system, only driven, primarily at least driven by the token, that's like a very, very interesting paradigm.

• 1:23:46Speaker 02

  And it's tempting to try to use that powerful tool as much as possible. But it also can introduce friction. So we want to, like for developers that are building end-user apps on Polygon, for them, the primary concern should be the user experience of their end-users. For us, our primary concern is the developer experience, the experience for people who are building on Polygon. So we kind of have to be very flexible. If someone, there will be options, and there will be many cases, I believe, where people like to stake either their native token or our native token to secure their system.

• 1:24:29Speaker 02

  So we just want to, there's that famous misfortune, let the thousand flowers bloom. We just want to allow all sorts of architectures, setups, whatever basically works the best for any specific project or the community. We think some projects made that mistake previously, and if you're forcing someone to stake... Let's say one hundred thousand dollars of your native token, which is by default volatile, because this is a very volatile market and in its nature, I mean, you are kind of instantly rejecting ninety percent of developers, I would say, out there.

• 1:25:12Speaker 02

  And that's definitely something to consider. So, yes, I hope that answers the question. We just want to be, we just want to allow people to pick their favorite or optimal setup for their specific project. And we believe that will provide, in the long term, the best value to all the participants, including token holders, metric token holders, steering token holders, developers, basically all the stakeholders in the system. If you set up the system properly, in the long term, like, everyone will be happy, I guess.

• 1:25:48David Hoffman?

  So there are a number of questions in the Bankless YouTube, and thanks, everyone who's in the YouTube for being there in the chat box. The chat box, I know, is a very fun place to be. While you're there, please like and subscribe. We won't be able to get to every single question, but there is a question I want to get to is the roadmap for Polygon. What's on the roadmap? What do you guys have as deadlines or deliverables? Like, what can we see coming down the pipeline?

• 1:26:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we are yet to publish a fully detailed and timeline roadmap. But then the next upon release is our Polygon SDK, which is like equivalent of Polkadot substrate, which you can use to launch your own chains, like, you know, Para chains and Polkadot. So that is very close. But then, you know, beyond that, like, all the things, you know, a timed roadmap is yet to be published. So, yeah.

• 1:26:44Speaker 02

  We'll share it with the community very, very soon, basically, but probably in the next couple of weeks to a month.

• 1:26:55David Hoffman?

  Well, actually, before we close out, I would like to squeeze one last question in here because I've seen this asked a couple of times in the chat box. Sandeep, this one's for you. We recently saw some hostile regulation out of India when it comes to crypto and blockchain development. I was wondering if maybe you could get your comments on that about your opinions on the government stance towards our industry.

• 1:27:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, you know, like, India has a, like, when people see India's crypto regulations, they actually don't see the background India is coming from. Like, as near as, like, you know, 10 years back, there used to be a saying, even though India is like, you know, fourth or fifth, you know, largest, you know, country by GDP, but there used to be a saying that, you know, like, you know, like, if you have $2 billion, $2 trillion of economy in the white markets, you have $2 billion worth of, you know, $2 trillion worth of economy in the black markets. So government is actually, this, the current government has been trying to put a lot of, like, you know, curbs around, like, how people can, you know, move their money around and

• 1:27:59Speaker 03

  all that, like, bringing everything to system, everything to the books. And then suddenly you introduce crypto and boom, everything is gone, right? So their discomfort is, you know, their discomfort, you know, is pretty understandable. And they are like, you know, generally the tendency is to scare away the retail, because, you know, they're, they are like, it's a pretty large country and then, you know, you have a lot of scams coming up and all that. So I think that's their intention mostly, but right now seeing the global scenario where, like, Elon Musk is buying, you know, Bitcoins and, you know, like, these micro strategies of the world and all that, I think they would be, I don't see, like, you know, the kind of, like, media sensationalism that has been done, that there will be a outright blanket

• 1:28:44Speaker 03

  ban and all that. Like, it's very hard to do in India, in a democratic country like India. It has, like, almost similar, like, values of liberty and all that as, you know, as you have in the US. So it's very hard to ban things outright. Previously, government tried to do that and it was like, you know, it was squashed by the judiciary and Supreme Court actually issued an order against it. So I think, like, Or any of the, any of the people who are like, especially in India, they are who are panicking on this, like just relax. Even if there is a, you know, difficult regulation comes in, government will give you time to, you know, liquidate your assets, no need to panic sell or anything. Secondly, for, for Polygon, the, you know, like Matic Network, when we evolved into Polygon, this idea of

• 1:29:25Speaker 03

  larger, like, you know, like, kind of a, you know, like a sub foundation for Ethereum in, in the sense itself, like, you know, we are working for the Ethereum ecosystem. And in that sense, we at least we internally culturally believe. So we actually have already expanded our entities into multiple geographies. So we are, we are like immune to any particular geographies, you know, concern. And previously also, when we had built our entity structures, we had built for these eventualities, right? So we have like our, our token entities in British Virgin Islands and then, you know, our, you know, the other token interfacing entities are in Singapore, Indian entities absolutely free from any sort of relation to crypto.

• 1:30:05Speaker 03

  So, you know, like no need to worry, especially related to, uh, you know, uh, to the, to the team and the, the protocol. And then now it's a very diversified team with, with our entities in, you know, uh, in Europe and, uh, you know, and in multiple other areas of the world. So no need to worry about that. And the team is also pretty distributed also. Yeah.

• 1:30:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, guys. Oh, go ahead, Mihailo.

• 1:30:30Speaker 02

  No, just one sentence, basically Polygon is a, I, I want to stress again, we consider it a community driven project and uh, it is not owned by anyone, it's not located in any specific country or anything like that. It belongs to the whole community, it belongs to the world and, uh, um, everyone is very much free and welcome to contribute. And it has, as I think we all can see, it is a, uh, quite powerful but quite ambitious vision. So we will definitely need all the help we can get, uh, um, to, to build this, to make this all happen. So yes, we are inviting everyone to, to join us, whether you're technical or not.

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  If you, I don't know if you're concerned about Polygon, if you understand what you're building it, if you like it, if you see it might be a good fit for you, please good chat to us. We are welcoming you with open hands.

• 1:31:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, fantastic, guys. Mihailo Sandeep, thanks for spending some time with us and describing Polygon. It's been a pleasure. This really feels like 2021 will be the year of Layer 2 on Ethereum, and thanks for your work in making that happen.

• 1:31:35Speaker 03

  Thank you so much, Brian and David, for having us here.

• 1:31:38Speaker 02

  Thank you, guys. It was a pleasure to be here.

• 1:31:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, Bankless Community, there are a number of ways to get involved if you're a developer, of course. Mihailo mentioned that you reach out to the project, reach out to Polygon and see what they're doing. Also, if you're a user, I would encourage you to start using Layer 2. So that poly.market application is one way to do that. You can experience

• 1:32:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Layer 2. That's a good way to get your arms wrapped around this technology and the investments you're making in this space, as well as be a user. That's the number one thing you can do to inform yourselves. Of course, risks and disclaimers, guys, none of this has been financial advice. ETH is risky, so is DeFi, so is Layer 2. You could lose what you put in, but we're headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but thanks for joining us in Bankless today.

• 1:32:28David Hoffman?

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

• 1:33:09David Hoffman?

  Ask Me Anythings, and weekly rollups where we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content. Thanks, everyone, for watching and being on the journey as we build out the Bankless nation.