Optimism Base Superchain 🔵_🔴 with Ben Jones, Karl Floersch, & Jing Wang

In today's show, we bring on Ben Jones, Chief Scientist of the Optimism Foundation, Karl Floersch, CTO at OP Labs, and Jing Wang, Executive Director of Optimism Foundation The five discuss Coinbase's Base launch, the OP Stack integration, and what it means for the Superchains vision! ------ MetaMask Learn https://bankless.cc/metamaskshow ------ JOIN BANKLESS PREMIUM: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/subscribe ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/kraken UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE https://bankless.cc/uniswap ️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum EARNIFI | CLAIM YOUR UNCLAIMED AIRDROPS https://bankless.cc/earnifi ------ Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 6:20 Sentiment at Optimism 7:00 Biggest Deal with the News? 11:28 Reflection on Coinbase's Base 15:45 OP Stack 17:15 Is Base a Competitor? 20:53 Puberty State of Chains 33:30 Superchains 40:35 Security of the Superchains 44:35 Superchain Standards 51:51 Base Decentralization Timeline? 57:10 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Resources: Coinbase Base Announcement https://www.coinbase.com/blog/introducing-base Optimism + OP STack Details https://optimism.mirror.xyz/2jk3D1Y8-hid8YOCUUa6yXmsyzNCYYyFJP0Nhaey9x0 Ben Jones https://twitter.com/ben_chain Karl Floersch https://twitter.com/karl_dot_tech Jing Wang https://twitter.com/jinglejamop ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

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

• 0:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a big week. We've got plenty of bonus content for you. Today, David, we're going to talk about optimism, Base, the super chain, all of these concepts. This is based on news from yesterday that Coinbase is releasing a layer two chain called Base. That chain is now in testnet. It's going to go to production, what, in the next couple of months, I say, weeks to months. And now, yesterday, we spent some time with Jesse. We got the Coinbase reaction to this and the news. This time, who do we have on and what are we going to talk about, David?

• 0:51David Hoffman?

  We are bringing on the three co-founders of optimism, Carl, Jing, and Ben. And we got a lot of questions for them. We got the news yesterday, like you said, about the Coinbase side of things, why they want to build Base, what does it mean for Coinbase to have their own layer two. But I think people still have a lot of questions for what this means on the optimism side of things. What does it mean to be building on the OP stack? Coinbase isn't building base on optimism. They're building on the OP stack. What are the differences between these two things? What is this super chain vision? Where are we in this super chain vision? What does that mean for the world? And really, what are all the other implications between this optimism Coinbase collaboration? Because Jesse and Coinbase are now the second

• 1:34David Hoffman?

  core development team of the OP stack. What are the implications of that? I think people are still learning how to wrap their heads around this, myself included. And so I've got a bunch of questions and we've got the optimism team on the show today to go directly to the source.

• 1:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, I'm super excited for this episode. And the triad of optimism co-founders is always so enthusiastic. And so I love catching them the day after the news.

• 1:58David Hoffman?

  So optimistic, if you will.

• 1:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, so optimistic. I should have used that word. And disclosure, before we get in, David and I do disclosures at the beginning of every Bankless episode, whenever they're necessary. David and I are advisors in the Optimism Project. We believe wholeheartedly in the Layer 2 vision. We also own some ETH. I think that covers it. Other relevant disclosures, yeah. Bankless.com/disclosures for all of that info. Guys, we're going to get right to the episode with the optimism founders. But before we do, we want to take a moment to tell you about these tools to help you go bankless, including Kraken, which is our number one recommended exchange for 2023 and the gateway to crypto.

• 2:40David Hoffman?

  Kraken has been a leader in the crypto industry for the last 12 years. Dedicated to accelerating the global adoption of crypto, Kraken puts an emphasis on security, transparency, and client support, which is why over 9 million clients have come to love Kraken's products. Whether you're a beginner or a pro, the Kraken UX is simple, intuitive, and frictionless, making the Kraken app a great place for all to get involved and learn about crypto. For those with experience, the redesigned Kraken Pro app and web experience is completely customizable to your trading needs, integrating key trading features into one seamless interface. Kraken has a 24/7/365 client support team that is globally recognized. Kraken support is available wherever, whenever you need them, by phone, chat, or email. And for all

• 3:23David Hoffman?

  of you NFTers out there, the brand-new Kraken NFT beta platform gives you the best NFT trading experience possible. Rarity rankings, no gas fees, and the ability to buy an NFT straight with cash. Does your crypto exchange prioritize its customers the way that Kraken does? And if not, sign up with Kraken at kraken.com/bankless. Arbitrum One is pioneering the world of secure Ethereum scalability and is continuing to accelerate the Web 3 landscape. Hundreds of projects have already deployed on Arbitrum One, producing flourishing DeFi and NFT ecosystems. With a recent addition of Arbitrum Nova, gaming and social dApps like Reddit are also now calling Arbitrum home. Both Arbitrum One and Nova leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum and provide a builder experience that's intuitive, familiar.

• 4:09David Hoffman?

  And fully EVM compatible. On Arbitrum, both builders and users will experience faster transaction speeds with significantly lower gas fees. With Arbitrum's recent migration to Arbitrum Nitro, it's also now 10 times faster than before. Visit arbitrum.io, where you can join the community, dive into the developer docs, bridge your assets, and start building your first app. With Arbitrum, experience Web3 development the way it was meant to be: secure, fast, cheap, and friction-free. How many total airdrops have you gotten? This last bull market had a ton of them. Did you get them all? Maybe you missed one. So here's what you should do. Go to Earnify and plug in your Ethereum wallet, and Earnify will tell you if you have any unclaimed airdrops that you can get. And it also does PoApps and mintable NFTs, any kind of money that your wallet can claim, Earnify will tell you about it.

• 4:54David Hoffman?

  And you should probably do it now, because some airdrops expire. And if you sign up for Earnify, they'll email you anytime one of your wallets has a new airdrop for it, to make sure that you never lose an airdrop ever again. You can also upgrade to Earnify Premium to unlock access to airdrops that are beyond the basics and are able to set reminders for more wallets. And for just under $21 a month, it probably pays for itself with just one airdrop. So plug in your wallets at Earnify and see what you get. That's E-A-R-N-I dot F-I. And make sure you never lose another airdrop.

• 5:26David Hoffman?

  Station, we are back with the three co-founders of Optimism. We got Carl, the CTO at OP Labs, the internal optimist, Jing, the executive director of the Optimism Foundation, and Ben, the chief scientist, also of the Optimism Foundation. Guys, welcome.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Yo.

• 5:46David Hoffman?

  I always love interviewing you guys, because you guys are always in the same spot. And so we also have the anti-glare technology in the background as well, so thank you for setting that up for the optimized livestream. Anti-glare technology, oh my god.

• 5:59David Hoffman?

  So first off, guys, just absolutely huge congrats on the news. This is some of the biggest news that I think has dropped in a very long time, and also some of the first very big positive news that's dropped in a long time. So thank you for shifting the meta into something more optimistic than what we've seen in 2022. So I just want, just to reflect on this news. How does, how does this feel? Like, what's sentiment like over at Optimism?

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Pretty fucking cool. It's um, very unifying. Um, it's, the thing about announcements though, is that uh, it's about all the work yet to be done. So there's a sentiment of like focus um, and motivation on the enormous pile of work we have ahead of us.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  Well, it's pretty hype, feeling pretty optimistic.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  You stole the optimistic joke in the, in the, in the intro.

• 6:58David Hoffman?

  No, sorry. It was too easy. It's too easy. Yeah. So, so guys, where should we really start on this conversation? Cause there's so many different ways that we could take this, like Coinbase building a layer two, Coinbase building on the OP stack, the, the super chain. There's a bunch of really big things to talk about, and we're definitely going to talk about all of them. But I just want to throw this one to you guys. Where should we start? Like in your guys' opinions, what's the biggest deal about this whole bit of news to you guys, to optimism?

• 7:24Speaker 03

  Public goods. Um, Coinbase is contributing back to public goods funding um, and public goods experimentation. We think this is really important because, I mean, the three of us have been working together for six years on scaling Ethereum from various different angles. Um, we started off as grant funded, then as a nonprofit. Well, I guess that's also grant funded. And so public goods has been a super core theme to everything that we're doing. And I think until now, um, it hasn't been super clear externally how public goods plays into the winning strategy. It's seemed like a

• 8:02Speaker 03

  charity, feel-good, fuzzy-wuzzy type thing, but it's genuinely not. It's all about the neutrality of the core tech. In order for something to be truly decentralized, um, you can't just have the technical architecture be decentralized. DNS is architecturally decentralized, but the US owns 11 out of 13 root zones. And like, anyway, sorry, not to go on that tangent, but sources of funding, the execution of work, the governance of it, also all have to be decentralized in order for the architecture to, you know, uphold its decentralizedness. So.

• 8:40David Hoffman?

  So going to the details between the mechanism that uh, is, is taking Coinbase to contributing to public goods? Like what, what is that bridge? How is that happening?

• 8:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, so in general, there's two big ways. One is a commitment to a percentage of the base revenues back to the collective, to the collective treasury.

• 8:59David Hoffman?

  So the base transaction fees, like the gas fees of base?

• 9:03Speaker 04

  That's right. The other, the other piece of this is that Coinbase is joining OP Labs as the second core contributor to the OP stack, which is huge. I mean, that's what it's all about, is having multiple teams working towards the same standards and the same end states. Yeah, so there's a, there's a lot more that goes into it than that. Obviously, just like exposure, you know, to the masses and people understanding what an L2 is will definitely go up as a result of this. But those are the two big direct ones.

• 9:29David Hoffman?

  So for the non-technical minded, what does it mean to have a second core contributor to like a repository? Like, is that perhaps the right word? What does it mean to have somebody else who's not optimism being a core contributor to this stack of technologies? Why, why is that such a big deal for people who don't understand these, the significance of this?

• 9:49Speaker 05

  All right, well, really Ethereum pioneered this whole concept of having many different core contributors and many different client implementations. The thing, there are two things that are really important about this. The first one is that we're building an open protocol. That means that it can't have a bus factor where if one team were to stop working on the protocol, the whole thing just stagnates. You need to make sure that this is something that is open, decentralized and being contributed to by a community. That is the first thing. And that's what like, you know, a lot, if you don't rely on a fundamentally decentralized contributor base, then you can't really call yourself truly decentralized.

• 10:31Speaker 04

  Long haul, baby.

• 10:32Speaker 05

  Long haul, exactly. And so we have to start building up that process in layer two, if layer two is going to be decentralized. Anyway, the next thing is security. It is absolutely critical to have multiple parallel implementations of the protocol in order to ensure that when there is a failure, a bug in one implementation, it does not take down the entire network. This is kind of security through redundancy of the client software. And so we're getting both of those things. And, you know, it's just the beginning. It's not just going to be, you know, Coinbase. It's going to be a bunch of other contributors as time goes on.

• 11:14Speaker 05

  But it is really exciting that we're getting like started on this soon because this is one of the least talked about, yet most important components to actually decentralizing a layer two protocol.

• 11:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  And let's talk about layer two in relationship to Ethereum, because with the the roll up centric roadmap of Ethereum that that we're now on, basically, layer twos become kind of the future. Yeah, I mean, they're the future execution layer of of Ethereum, right? So it's very important that this future execution layer is funded, is completely open source, is as credibly neutral as possible, and has multiple client teams and is continuously building. I was pretty blown away that Jesse said there were like over 120 Coinbase employees that have been working on this project in in one way or another. Like, that's absolutely massive. And I think I had forgotten, like.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  That's one of the.

• 12:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  I know. And and and so I, one thing I think I think I'd forgotten as well, which Jesse reminded me of, Coinbase has actually been active in EIP.

• 12:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  4844. Thanks, David. Why do I always forget 4844? Which is like. Say EIP 515. I know, I know. Oh, now I can't remember.

• 12:32Speaker 05

  You've only got two numbers in there.

• 12:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Come on now. There's only two we need to remember. Yeah, so they've already been developing for public goods. And this was what was so exciting to me about this. One thing I'd add, and I'd get kind of your response on this, is to me, it's not just public good goods. It's the way Coinbase went through the selection process, it feels like, and they ended up selecting a credibly neutral technology that would not give Coinbase more power in in the network, right? It's very, very different than sort of a side chain where you kind of own the validator set. They like.

• 13:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Purposely, I think, made it such that they are not in the driver's seat, that they're developing incredibly neutral technology. And to me, that was so, because it's always been, you know, part of, part of Bankless is this idea, of course, of like the corruption of the banks. Centralized banks can, can bring corruption. And we'd always wondered, where will some of the crypto banks, the crypto exchanges fall in the spectrum? Will they turn evil? Will they go a little bit JP Morgan? Or will they embrace crypto values with us? And so that's why this made me particularly optimistic that Coinbase decided to not only embrace public goods, but embrace credible neutrality and develop along with us.

• 13:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Anyway, that's why people have asked like, why is this such a big deal? I'm like, that's why it's a freaking big deal. Like, we, we, we have a Coinbase level of resources on our side, and they chose to go with public goods and credible neutrality. That was a statement more than a question, but do you guys have any reflections on this?

• 14:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it definitely doesn't pattern match to the other flavors of Fortune 500 blockchains. This is a pretty Web3 native move. I think that says a lot about what Coinbase's intentions are.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  I don't think this is some like, you know, side science project. They are contributing real resources in a bear market when resources are tight to pushing for decentralization. And core contributions means they're committing engineering firepower to writing code for fault provers, multi clients.

• 14:57Speaker 03

  It's crazy.

• 14:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'll, I'll build on that 100%, agree. I'll build on that a little bit, David, to say which it's also, I think, just as awesome to be continuing to use this as a shared standard. So you can, you can totally see a world in like a, you know, a Fortune 500 environment especially, where they see the OP stack as a public good. And they're saying, okay, this can form the basis for a technology because it's, you know, just the best way to build a rollup. But it doesn't mean that they're, that they have to. Also not just take that code and run with it in their own direction and custom fit it to their needs. So they get that it's not just about base. It's about the other chains that are going to end up interoperating with them. You know, I'm sure we'll get into that more later on, but, but it's also just as important to be building on the same standard as other rollups.

• 15:43Speaker 04

  So that's what we're very excited about.

• 15:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, precisely.

• 15:46David Hoffman?

  Okay, so I think I'm starting to wrap my, my head around this. And so maybe the, to answer, to ask a question like, why did Coinbase choose the optimism technology instead of like the Arbitrum or Polygon technology? And I think the answer is what, what you guys are saying is that like the optimism OP stack is this MIT open source technology stack of software that allows Coinbase to not create its own, like Jesse used this term Coinbase wants to build bridges, not islands. So like they could have made their own client for their own layer two and run off in their own direction and built base with their own technology stack. But that's not really what they're interested in. They're interested in joining ranks with other groups to be co-contributors to the same technology stack.

• 16:31David Hoffman?

  And then the idea is that, that, that becomes a third group of people or a fourth group of people. So it's not just OP labs and Coinbase, it's OP labs Coinbase, uh, third, fourth, fifth. And so they, they wanted to pick a technology where they could work together.

• 16:45Speaker 04

  And it's even stronger than that because the OP stack is a public good. Like part of the reasons for choosing the OP stack is certainly it's licensing and being a public good. It's also just a darn good code base, but because it's a public good, you can take that darn good code base and run with it in whatever direction you want. But the problem with doing that is if everybody does that, we're going to have a lot of L2s, a lot of fracturing. There's going to be a lot of issues. So building towards the same shared standard, like not a fork of even the public good, super, super important.

• 17:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Help people understand this too. So, um, is base a competitor to the existing optimism EVM chain that's out there in the market? Like, are you guys like shooting yourselves in the foot? Is base going to come cannibalize the existing op, uh, optimistic rollup? Like the, the, the one that you, you, you have out there right now? I've heard that, that question on Twitter and what would you guys say to that?

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, that's definitely from our perspective, the naive but clear take that, you know, that immediately comes to mind when you talk about this. We think it misses a few key things. Obviously, one of them is that positive sum outcomes are critical in this game. And the reality is that, yes, while there are going to be some chains that maybe have numbers and you can probably construct a narrative that this is a race and compare the two numbers between these chains, right? The reality is that that ignores the fact that the entire pie is getting bigger when more people do this. And quite frankly, the truth of the matter is, while we have saved our users something like 2.7, I think it was 2.69 when we wrote our article, billion dollars in fees, there is the reality is that, including

• 18:24Speaker 04

  ourselves, nobody has scaled Ethereum yet, because one chain is not going to cut it if we're going to take this to global scale. So the reality is, it's inevitable, and it's a short sighted view, in our opinion, to be looking at, you know, some like exciting crypto Twitter fueling, you know, poll making, you know, angle on this, because it's so much more.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  I also think that the way people think right now is a little too chain oriented. The reality is that, right now, when we access the internet, we don't give a fuck what ISP, we're accessing it through, or what hardware, or whatever. And chains have been like the sexy thing for people to invest in and talk about. Somehow, protocol research is like a really hot thing, you know? So we talk about chains a lot. But the reality is that it shouldn't matter where you're deployed. And so far, the applications that have been built in crypto have also been very chain oriented, because that's where the funding has been, that's where the go to market strategies have been centered around. What we're trying to get to collaboratively

• 19:25Speaker 03

  with Coinbase is the super chain interconnectedness, which users interact with, similar to the way that they interact with the internet. It doesn't matter what ISP provider you're on, it doesn't, you don't, it doesn't matter what state space your application is deployed to. Applications that require atomic composability have it, and you're just accessing the application. You don't have to think about what's happening. There is an awkward transition phase between where we are now, the chaininess, and then where we're headed, the chain agnosticness. And so, in that period of time,

• 20:05Speaker 03

  There are things that could be perceived as competition. There are choices that applications may have to make before they're re-architected and before a lot of this composability tooling exists. Should I deploy on Optimism mainnet or base? Or some other EDM chain? Should I deploy everywhere? And ultimately, it's um gonna be different for every single application. A lot of applications should probably start deploying their own chains. Let us know. We've got a superchain intake form on our website.

• 20:33Speaker 04

  Optimism.io slash superchain.

• 20:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, wait. Give that URL again.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  optimism.io slash superchain.

• 20:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Boom.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  optimism.io slash jobs.

• 20:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Two links in one. You only get a third link to Shill in every Bankless episode. So use that third one wisely. Okay, so slash superchain, do people have to like apply to be a superchain? Or can they just be a superchain?

• 21:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, there's no permission required, right? I could just fork the code.

• 21:03Speaker 04

  There will be no permission required. There will be no permission required. To Jake's point, obviously, this is a rollout, a staged process. And so right now, it makes sense for people to get in touch with us and start coordinating together. Right?

• 21:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 21:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  I want to go back to this Jing's idea because I think we're going to talk about the the superchain, obviously. That was a D in the title here. But Jing's idea that we are in this weird awkward like puberty phase of crypto where there's too much chaininess going on. And I want to maybe.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  People have been talking about it for years.

• 21:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, we're still, yeah, we're in this weird awkward phase. So, okay, so I think maybe there's two reasons for this. Here's an idea for you, and I was thinking about this while you're talking. One is kind of a technical reason why we have these chain borders, right? And that is because when you're on one chain, it's hard to get to another chain and your security assumptions change. It's very much like, you know, like I go from the US to Canada and I have to, you know, do my path. It feels like a different country, right? Even though maybe it's culturally similar, whatever. So there's that. There's kind of the technical and security type border. The other reason is because we have tokens for all of these chains. And I think that that kind of breeds some tribalness sometimes. It's just like, well,

• 22:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  my token's better than your token. And like, look at this, we can compare, you know, how fast the tokens are growing and price and Oh, you like the red token? I like the blue token. Yeah. No, I like the purple token. Yeah, it's very like, you know, star-bellied sneetches of us. Like, we're just kind of like, we like to separate into tribes based on a team color or, you know, something like this. What was really neat about the base token, or the base chain as well, there's no token. There's no token. Like, they're using ETH. Imagine that. So that's very cool. Anyway, I want to test those assumptions, Jing. It's like, so is that why we're chaininess? It's because all the chains have tokens and so we organize in token-based tribes?

• 23:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  And also because there's technical limitations right now in that it really does feel like there is a border. It's hard to go from one chain to another. Is that why we're in this current state?

• 23:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think all of those are like components of the fracture of mindshare, liquidity, energy in the ecosystem at large. And the existence of a token kind of ossifies that fracture and makes the time to like converge on a single standard take longer because there's financial incentives not to.

• 23:37Speaker 04

  Especially if that token is required to run the chain, like most of the L1s out there.

• 23:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the core thing with the like composability and the atomicity is message passing between different state spaces. So like, you know, chain B receives data from chain A and there's a process by which that the validity of that data is verified. Like, that whole thing, that whole standard, we need to coalesce on a single one of those things. And that's what the superchain is, is all coalescing on a single message passing standard and a bridge standard in order to enable the type of UX between chains that imitates the UX of being in a single state space.

• 24:20David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 24:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  I want to hear Carl read.

• 24:22Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, I, okay, I mean, I was just gonna say, I was just gonna say that like, yeah, there is, there are technological limitations that have resulted in this fracturing. And the solutions to the fracturing oftentimes actually introduce new technology, which then further fractures the developer base, the thing, it's like, oh, build on this new language, build on this new, you know, like all this.

• 24:49David Hoffman?

  Fracturing on fracturing on fracturing, yeah.

• 24:51Speaker 05

  Exactly. It's going crazy. And so I'm just gonna, I mean, I started out with my multi-client, my standards rant, but I just want to like double click and just say like, this is so important from a community building perspective, not only the technology becoming standardized, but the process by which we come to what the technology is, as in the standards bodies, the people, contributors, building together, working together on this. That is another key, critical element to ensure that we do not result in crazy developer fragmentation. Like, it is so nice that all the browsers can load up the same websites and display the same things.

• 25:33Speaker 05

  That was not a given for many, many years, right? Until people realized, hey, why are we building out incompatible features for our browser software? Let's work together. So that is like what we're going to start to see in the Ethereum space for the OP stack. And this is, it's really exciting to see the snowball like just beginning to grow.

• 25:56David Hoffman?

  And this is really the long-term arc, at least for what I see, of the optimism project and the optimism like philosophy is that like every time that we have you guys on, you guys have made one more innovation further down the stack that keeps every, all the developers cohered into the same tech stack. And so like this whole idea of like EVM equivalence and making sure that optimism is equivalent to Ethereum means that we can imbue Ethereum's technology into the optimism technology. And now with this OP stack, it's just every time we talk to you guys, it's just the technologies one step further along and making sure that all the developers are on the same page and we're reusing and recycling all of the developer technologies and tooling

• 26:39David Hoffman?

  that need to be leveraged in order to build a coherent ecosystem.

• 26:44Speaker 05

  Yes, and I will even build on that a tiny bit because not only are we trying to push forward the actual technology and the actual, you know, things, EVM equivalence, whatever the, you know, OP stack, what we're also trying to do is build an incentive system, right? That enables people to continuously contribute in perpetuity without having a centralized dictator governing body that's like giving out money or some corporate, you know, control, right? So this is actually, I wanna like, I wish if I could, I would love to like give a click moment for like literally everyone, which is just like, let's retroactive public goods funding, which we've talked about on other things, you can go look it up.

• 27:27Speaker 05

  Retroactive public goods funding, a funding source for public goods. That is absolutely the like, you know, complement, the puzzle piece that enables the OP stack to grow and be great. In other words, what we're doing is we're not only building out the open source protocols and technologies that will become the standards for how we use blockchains, how we use the internet generally, well, we're also building out the funding source that funds that development. And guess what else? I'm sorry, I just can't stop. But Base and Optimism mainnet, all of and and all the further chains within the superchain,

• 28:07Speaker 05

  the the cycle is those, the usage of those platforms go back into retroactive public is funding, which then goes back and funds the development of the OP stack, making it better and better, right? Like, this is going to be a crazy decentralized standards development, like no one's gonna own it and it's still gonna happen. Anyway, it's, it's, it'll be a very wild ride.

• 28:32David Hoffman?

  Yeah, see, this is, the bankless listeners can tell why I call Carl the internal optimist. And so just to really to drive this point home, we've got the OP stack technology, which is designed to be an equivalent extension of the Ethereum technology stack to allow for all of these same shared standards and just like tech stack to be expanded and scaled across many organizations, which is the story of Base and Coinbase building on the OP stack. And also, the retroactive public goods funding and the OP collective is also a

• 29:05David Hoffman?

  Economy, a system of recirculating funds to support and further development in a way that doesn't need a central coordinator of those funds. So that's always been the optimism vision. And the fact that we are now having a second huge core contributor to the OP stack is a huge vote of confidence in that vision.

• 29:24Speaker 04

  And having that and having that mechanism that Carl was just talking about, just to tie exactly what Carl said back to what we were talking about before, that is what prevents the fragmentation and the fracturing, because you're totally right, Ryan. So often fracturing occurs from people trying to get a business model behind something that fundamentally that they're doing is just building a public good that's some software, right? So having that funding mechanism is how you keep this thing cohesive.

• 29:49David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah. And that's also why it's so important that some percentage of the base transaction fees goes to the OP collective. That's like to add energy into that flywheel. Guys, okay, so we've been talking about the superchain. We also want to talk about fraud proofs as well. Like, we want to hear about the optimism fraud proofs trajectory. But also, we've been teasing the superchain, and I want to dive into that. What is that vision? Because it's very, very sci fi. And I kind of want to understand it a little bit more. So we're going to talk about those two main subjects as soon as we get back from some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Uniswap is the largest on-chain marketplace for self custody digital assets. Uniswap is, of course, a decentralized exchange, but you know this because you've been listening

• 30:30David Hoffman?

  to Bankless. But did you know that the Uniswap web app has a shiny new fiat on RAM? Now you could go directly from fiat in your bank to tokens in DeFi inside of Uniswap. Not only that, but Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism Layer 2s are supported right out of the gate. But that's just DeFi. Uniswap is also an NFT aggregator, letting you find more listings for the best prices across the NFT world. With Uniswap, you can sweep floors on multiple NFTs, and Uniswap's universal router will optimize your gas fees for you. Uniswap is making it as easy as possible to go from bank account to bankless assets across Ethereum. And we couldn't be more thankful for having them as a sponsor. So go to app.uniswap.org

• 31:13David Hoffman?

  today to buy, sell, or swap tokens and NFTs.

• 31:18David Hoffman?

  The Phantom Wallet is coming to Ethereum. The number one wallet on Solana is bringing its millions of users and beloved UX to Ethereum and Polygon. If you haven't used Phantom before, you've been missing out. Phantom was one of the first wallets to pioneer Solana staking inside the wallet, and will be offering similar staking features for Ethereum and Polygon. But that's just staking. Phantom is also the best home for your NFTs. Phantom has a complete set of features to optimize your NFT experience. Pin your favorites, hide the uglies, remove the spam, and also manage your NFT sale listings from inside the wallet. Phantom is of course a multi-chain wallet, but it makes chain management easy, displaying your transactions in a human-readable format with automatic warnings for malicious transactions or phishing websites. Phantom has already saved over 20,000 users from getting scammed or hacked.

• 32:03David Hoffman?

  So get on the Phantom waitlist and be one of the first to access the multi-chain beta. There's a link in the show notes, or you can go to phantom.app/waitlist to get access in late February. Hey, Bankless Nation. If you're listening to this, it's because you're on the free Bankless RSS feed. Did you know that there's an ad-free version of Bankless that comes with the Bankless Premium subscription? No ads, just straight to the content. But that's just one of many things that a premium subscription gets you. There's also the Token Report, a monthly bullish, bearish, neutral report on the hottest tokens of the month. And the regular updates from the Token Report go into the Token Bible, your first-stop shop for every token worth investigating in crypto. Bankless Premium also gets you a 30% discount to the Permissionless Conference, which means it basically just pays for itself.

• 32:48David Hoffman?

  There's also the Airdrop Guide to make sure you don't miss a drop in 2023. But really, the best part about Bankless Premium is hanging out with me, Ryan, and the rest of the Bankless team in the Inner Circle Discord, only for premium members. Want the alpha? Check out Ben the Analyst's DGEN pit, where you can ask him questions about the Token Report. Got a question? I've got my own Q&A room for any questions that you might have. At Bankless, we have huge things planned for 2023, including a new website with login with your Ethereum address capabilities, and we're super excited to ship what we are calling Bankless 2.0 Soon TM. So if you want extra help exploring the frontier, subscribe to Bankless Premium. It's under 50 cents a day and provides a wealth of knowledge and support on your journey west. I'll see you in the Discord.

• 33:32David Hoffman?

  All right, Bankless Nation, we are back with the optimism team. And now we're going to dive into the super chain. Because what the hell is a super chain? So there is a Ryan is showing the link that you guys talked about earlier. optimism.io slash super chain. Is that, is that where we go?

• 33:47Speaker 04

  You gotta click super chain up at the top.

• 33:49David Hoffman?

  Super chain.

• 33:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Boom, look at this. I'm here, I'm in the super chain.

• 33:53David Hoffman?

  So now I know what a blockchain is. I know what a layer two chain is. What is a super chain?

• 34:02Speaker 04

  It's a chain that's super. What's a super chain, Carl?

• 34:06Speaker 05

  All right, a super chain is a network of chains which share security, decentralization, all built on a standard technology stack, the OP stack. And the key insight of this is that by creating a shared set of chains that all conform to the same properties. What you do is you make it so that each one of these chains can work together, interoperate, and you can use them as interchangeable resources. So today we think, oh, what chain am I going to deploy to? I need to look at all the custom features. I need to understand the custom trade offs that I'm making. And then I deploy my app. Well, what if there was a network of chains where you could have

• 34:50Speaker 05

  the exact same security features across all of them? Well, now I don't need to learn about every one of these chains that I'm deploying to. I literally write my application and boom, deploy all to all the chains. What this enables is not only developers to kind of abstract away the underlying chains. It allows users and wallets to also do the same. So you get the crypto experience that we really need, which is super scalable, low fees, and you don't have to worry about what network you're on. You're just secure, happy, and getting your application on.

• 35:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 35:27Speaker 03

  But it doesn't exist.

• 35:28Speaker 05

  It doesn't exist.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  It doesn't exist, yeah.

• 35:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  It doesn't exist. Okay, okay. Let's fast forward to a future state that is something more incremental that we can imagine, right? So now we have this base thing. And then we also have the optimism chain over here. So we have two chains. And let's assume that they are in the super chain right now. Okay. And so I'm a user, I got MetaMask open. What chain do I set it to? Is it just like a box that says?

• 35:55Speaker 04

  The super one.

• 35:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I set my settings in MetaMask for Superchain. And then, um, let's say I want to do something with the version of Uniswap on Base. And then also, like, can I, does, would that Uniswap tie into liquidity over on the Optimism chain? Like, how does this work? See, the Superchain is such a new, new model. And this is to Jing, your point earlier, we're so used to even as users of like the chaininess of the feeling, oh, if I want to go from this place to this place, I have to like change my settings, change my, you know, RPC connection, and then I move to another chain. How does this work in the Superchain as a user?

• 36:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is like the puberty phase that we were talking about. And also like speaks to the enormity of the work. It's not just about a single application or wallets, like Block Explorers. Like, what the fuck are we gonna do with Block Explorers? There's just so many different mindset and paradigm shifts that need to happen.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  It's a collaboration. And so we're talking to a number of other applications that are also deploying their own OP chains, similar to Base. And so it's something we're actively figuring out right now. How are messages passed? What does the user experience look like? Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 05

  Yeah. I was just gonna say, one really easy mental model that is not here yet, but that we are working towards is you can kind of think of chains as like powerful smart contracts. And so imagine your question about Uniswap. You know, imagine you had two liquidity pools, two smart contracts with the same token pair, right? But they're both different liquidity pools for some reason. Now, you can have the Uniswap front end find you the best price across both of these. And, you know, maybe it trades on one, then it migrates to the other and buys on the other. That kind of thing becomes possible. So we're trying to make it so that there is an API, a easy to deploy interface, where you can spin up a new chain very, very seamlessly.

• 37:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. But Carl, so there's a Uniswap on Optimism, there's a Uniswap on Polygon, there's the Uniswap on Arbitrum. And there's also cross-chain like aggregators of these things, which are doing a similar job to what you just said. But I'm guessing if it's two chains on the OP stack and with that shared standard, that job of a cross-chain DEX aggregator just becomes a lot easier and fluid and fast?

• 38:22Speaker 05

  Yes, it becomes so much easier. And also, I think that the key unlock that's really going to take it to the next level is the problem with all of these bespoke chains that have all these different standards is that as a application developer or like an aggregation developer, I need to write a custom converter for each one of these chains, which does not scale. If all of these chains are using the exact same standard, then I literally, it could be a thousand of these chains.

• 38:51Speaker 04

  It could be a million.

• 38:52Speaker 05

  It could be a million, a billion. Anyway, sorry. Um, there could be tons of these chains and I can immediately aggregate across all of them. So it's really, it's really night and day. Like it, that kind of shift in developer productivity fundamentally changes what is possible because before you're investing months in implementing something that becomes minutes.

• 39:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:15David Hoffman?

  Okay. So like the idea with that is like, uh, if you have this like cross-chain Uniswap aggregator and a new version of a new layer two cross up, you have to manually make that chain supported by your deck, your aggregation software. If it's on the OP stack, it's like automatic, like there are so many things that are natively supported out of the box by in nature of the fact that it was built using the OP stack in the first place. That's the idea?

• 39:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, totally. And look to Jing's point, Jing is very right to bring the caveat, this will take a collective. This is the mission of the optimism collective is summoning the super chain, but it's not going to happen overnight, right? But what we're talking about here is a very logical, I think, comparison to exactly what we saw in the internet, you know? I think probably, and if you were in the early days of the internet, right? In like the late eighties, you know, you're like, what do you mean? I don't have to like enter the IP address of the university that I'm going to connect to next. It's just going to disappear, right? It's gonna, the IP is going to be the same for all of them, right? And, and obviously that UX like improves slowly over time, right? And it, and it took many years. And now everybody has, you know, probably 10 IP addresses and, you know, all this stuff. So, you know, it's going to take

• 40:26Speaker 04

  a while for us to get here. It's the point of building together, but it won't happen without a shared standard. And it certainly won't happen if we just keep fragmenting these things as opposed to coming together.

• 40:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  I wonder if you could reinforce this piece about kind of the the superchain idea, right? And what you're trying to summon, what you're what you're manifesting into reality here. And this is concept of security. So I will say, the whole Internet of Chains model, sounds really cool, but it scares the shit out of me. The atom model, right? The atom model. Because if we have all sorts of chains with independent validator sets, and independent security assumptions, and then we have bridges trying to tie them all together with their own set of security assumptions, right? How many bridge hacks did we see last year? I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars. North Korea ended up

• 41:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  with this money, probably. Yes. And, and, and so like, that scares the crap out of me about sort of the, the whole idea of all sorts of Internet of Chains that have different security assumptions. Now, with the superchain, my understanding is, you have the same underlying Ethereum level fraud proof security assumptions as every other chain inside of the superchain network. That's why you're calling it a superchain. It's because it's one big, like fluffy blanket of shared security wrapping its arms around all of these chains and ecosystems inside of the superchain, right? Can you reflect on that?

• 42:02Speaker 04

  The power of L2.

• 42:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, because I think sometimes in crypto, like, we're just, we forget about the long tail of the security risks here until it just like hits us in the face. And there's, you know, a, you know, massive hack that happens. Can you guys talk about this security aspect of the superchain?

• 42:21Speaker 04

  I think honestly, that's probably, I mean, that's a very good call out, Brian, because I think it's something that we take for granted, because for six years now, we've been working on layer two scaling.

• 42:32Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah.

• 42:32Speaker 04

  And what is the entire point of layer two scaling? It's to inherit the security of the layer one and make a layer two that gives you more scalability, but keeps the same security model, right? At least as close as you can get. And Yeah, so I guess we kind of take that for granted, but that's a very important thing to say. Yes, it's absolutely the case that the superchain ultimately is all secured into Ethereum. And this is how you can get a shared security standard. So that's super, super important for sure. And it comes from the nature of layer two technologies, which can inherit that credible neutrality of Ethereum in a way that scales.

• 43:05Speaker 05

  And by the way, I want to also say that the this point is not just about like, oh, I'm like super security conscious. Like, ah, I don't want to use an asset that's bridged over. No, the thing is that the compounding risk of having multiple chains and I bridge to this chain, then this chain, then this chain, and any one of these chains can fail, that weakest link's security. That actually limits the total number of chains that you can possibly have. Because the more change you introduce to the system, the more existential risk you introduce to the system. So in order to ensure that we're able to actually horizontally scale the superchain

• 43:46Speaker 05

  and scale the number of chains in the network, you need to have homogenous security across all of them. So that the core assets are always secured. And that actually, in a weird way, that security enables scalability.

• 44:03David Hoffman?

  A quote from Elon Musk comes to mind, which is that all user inputs are an error. And I feel like applying this, that like philosophy here is like all bridges are a patchwork of incomplete technology. Like if you have to bridge, like it's the technology isn't done yet then. Cause like the idea is to get rid of all bridges, right?

• 44:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bridges are hacks.

• 44:23David Hoffman?

  Bridgeless, bridgeless.

• 44:26Speaker 04

  Bridgeless, oh my God, absolutely good. If you have a layer two podcast that's been off, it should be absolutely called Bridgeless.

• 44:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bridgeless dot E, quick, go buy it now, dude.

• 44:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  I want to ask a question that maybe Carl kind of alluded to earlier about this idea of standards. And so my understanding of the superchain is of course optimism has its version of a superchain with all of the chains that use the OP stack, that kind of thing. And that's great. So we got the security blanket. Over this, we also have other layer two ecosystems, you know, the Matter Labs, ZK Sync, the Polygon, the Scroll, the Arbitrum, all of these other layer two ecosystems. Are they going to have their separate like super chain? And how do we run, how do we make sure we don't fall into the XKCD scenario of like, look, we, you know, situation, it says there are 14 competing standards. And then somebody says 14 ridiculous.

• 45:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  We need to develop one universal standard that covers everyone's use cases. Yeah, soon situation. Now there are 15 competing standards. How do we avoid that problem of having just a whole bunch of super chains that aren't interoperable with with one another? Is there some way to do that? You know, if if all of these layer twos are settling on Ethereum, is there some hope here?

• 45:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that, I mean, we are creating a new standard and there are other standards out there. I guess we believe our standard is a better standard because

• 45:54Speaker 02

  It's Ethereum, baby.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  We're not trying to create coercive lock in. We're not trying to create like a fundamentally new way to develop smart contracts. And that new thing you have to learn. We're not trying to create a closed ecosystem where once you're on boarded, it's very hard to leave. What we're trying to do is create an ecosystem that's as easy to onboard to as possible and to create non coercive lock in by providing value at the application layer. So if the platform is super easy to develop on and the tools are easy to use and open source and easy to build, then we believe that that will make it easier for applications to build.

• 46:40Speaker 03

  And so we're trying to create lock in non coercively at the application layer by providing real value to users.

• 46:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, 100%. Let me give you guys a few examples of where this shows up in practice. Early example was our EVM equivalence upgrade, right? In the early days of what we were building, we absolutely had introduced a new standard. We called it the OVM. There was the OVM compiler, the OVM bytecode, right? All these things. At the end of the day, what it meant was that application developers had to go and do something different to deploy onto Optimism mainnet, right? EVM equivalence was a huge milestone for us that completely removed that. We we just said, okay, look, we are doing the XKCD thing right now. We can't do that. We must comply with the Ethereum standards. So we went EVM equivalent one and a half, two years ago now.

• 47:32Speaker 04

  The another great example of this is the big release of the OP stack that is upon us called Bedrock. Shout out David for having the dot Bedrock, put dot Bedrock in your Twitter, yo.

• 47:45Speaker 04

  One of the incredible things that we use in Bedrock is something called the engine API. Have you guys heard of that?

• 47:52David Hoffman?

  No, I have, yeah. I just still don't know.

• 47:56Speaker 04

  It's it's a fancy name for the merge API. So think about this, here's something that's really incredible to think about. A layer one, when you're building a layer two, the layer one is kind of like the source of truth, because it's where the security comes from. And you sort of look at the layer one and the batches submitted by the sequencer and these sorts of things to figure out the state of your layer two, right? That is the exact same relationship between the beacon chain and the old like Geth, like execution client, the consensus layer and the execution layer in the merge. So what's fascinating is that every L two pretty much out there has to choose some way to implement

• 48:39Speaker 04

  basically what the merge, what the engine API does and what they did with the consensus layer and the whole pandas, you know, doing their thing. The OP stack uses that exact same API with like a few lines modified precisely for the reason that we can't be going about and creating a new standard. So every standard that we see, we're using. There are, you know, to James' point, there are going to be some new standards that are going to be have to be created because Ethereum wasn't built with a multi-chain standard in mind. And certainly, we're going to have to do that very carefully and in a, you know, community-driven collaborative way.

• 49:16Speaker 04

  So it's absolutely a concern. We think that the way to solve it is to always go with Ethereum when you can and be very careful when you are absolutely sure you can. What's up, Carl?

• 49:26Speaker 05

  And I just wanted to say that you noticed that we said the word "we" a bunch of times. Now, I want to remind people because this is a very hard habit to break out, but it is, remember that when we say "we," we are talking about us, as in everyone, like all of these people. This is a decentralized project. These are public goods that we are creating. This is open source software. The software that is produced by, you know, my hands and other people's hands who don't work nearly close with me, those things are public goods that are now available to the public, AKA everyone. And so the way to, you know, make sure that the fracturing doesn't occur

• 50:10Speaker 05

  and we don't have a bajillion different standards is not by having some people sitting in their ivory tower giving, you know, down the, laying down the law of how the tech should be built, but instead it's about building consensus in the community that we are all a part of and building out those standards in a joint, together fashion. And this is going to be more and more important as time goes on, as the project grows, as more core contributors come back, and I'm back to the multi-clients. I'm sorry.

• 50:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, this is, go ahead, Jane.

• 50:47Speaker 03

  I think that this also speaks to the 4844 work that we've been meeting. We wanted to create something that benefited all rollups, including our competitors, not just us, because it's generally important that the ecosystem moves forward.

• 51:11Speaker 03

  I think that in creating the standard and creating the superchain, it would be really sick to have other ecosystems, zero knowledge, or fault provers running in the superchain. We're not, we're not trying to only run the code that's outputted by the existing core team. We're genuinely trying to coalesce around a single standard. And hopefully, the work on 4x4 speaks to the cooperativeness that we operate with. And it's not just in 4x4, but more generally, we're very interested in collaborating with other ecosystems.

• 51:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's, that's really great to hear. Guys, you've kind of taken us all through this. And I think people, we started talking about base and the value of that and it, public goods, incredible neutrality and preserving these crypto values. And that's fantastic. We talked about the superchain and how that allows us basically to scale Ethereum. One last kind of question on my mind, I think maybe in the minds of some of the listeners. I certainly saw some of this conversation on Twitter, which was about the ability of base to decentralize. So when we talked to Jesse yesterday, you know, base is not going to launch fully decentralized. Like Coinbase will be the sole sequencer.

• 52:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  My understanding is it won't launch with fraud proofs either. Can you talk about this? How long will it take a base? So a new chain in the superchain ecosystem to become fully decentralized? And what is, what is optimism's path on that as well? With respect to things like, like fraud proofs and anything else you think it will require to get to the state of full decentralization?

• 53:00Speaker 04

  Oh, man, if only OP Labs had recently posted under the official of Charles Flasch, a decentralization update.

• 53:08Speaker 05

  Okay. I guess that was my cue. Okay. Um, decentralization is literally the point. That is like all that we have been talking about now. The reality is that software takes an enormous amount of time to get right. And especially software like fault proofs, by the way. Fault proofs, which there's no, there's no fallback entity. Cause if there's a fallback entity for your fault proof. That's a bank. Yeah, that's a big, yeah, like there's no, there's, you're not actually using fault proofs, right? You're not actually getting the benefits from fault proofs. So in order for fault proofs to work, we need to have multiple clients. It's not this kind of, uh, it's the thing that I was talking about in the beginning,

• 53:50Speaker 05

  which I for some reason have been going back to over and over in this podcast. Um, is that in order to make sure that the clients will never fail, the way that Ethereum does it and the way that we are following in Ethereum's footsteps, is that we have multiple implementations of the fault proof all running in parallel and ensure that if any one of those go wrong, we are able to continue the system. Now, building one fault proof is really hard and we've like, you know, gone quite far in Canon and you can take a look and contribute, but building multiple fault proofs is even harder. But in order to ensure that we have safe, secure execution that is decentralized, we need it. So that's the fault proof kind of side.

• 54:34Speaker 05

  There's another side to decentralization that we haven't talked about very much. That was in the blog post and that is the decentralization of the upgrade keys and the decentralization of the bridge. We are working to make a, you know, Security Council style upgrade system, which is still, you know, in progress, but that is another key component where we need to make sure that not only are there fault proofs, but the people who are upgrading and do, you know, managing the software. Those people are community members from everywhere. So anyway, we're firing on all cylinders. It's it's coming.

• 55:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. And like, you know, brass tax wise, we just haven't announced yesterday that there are some of the best, you know, engineers at one of the largest companies in the world contributing to the same shared standard for all of this that are very, very interested in that. The other thing that I'll say, and honestly, this is shout out. I don't know how the heck we have not made this, but the bedrock release of the OP stack is coming. The mainnet upgrade vote is have is like, there was a big, huge unlock moment that we got to earlier this year, which was basically competing the bed completing the bedrock release. Because I'll be honest with you, Ryan, previous versions of that code base were not up to the par of utilizing existing standards that we were willing to go out. Like,

• 55:55Speaker 04

  Public Goods Funding, we're finally doing our second round of RetroPGF. Shout outs to David for being a bachelor in that. To for us to get to that point, honestly required that we go sit down for First Principles and say, okay, what is the most neutral? What is the most code minimized? What is the most existing standards leveraging way to write a roll up? And that and a chain more generally. And that is what the bedrock release has been. So that is a huge unlocker that we've been really pushing on as a priority to unlock the rest of the multi-client and all this stuff. Now it is time to really focus our attention on these.

• 56:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Was it you guys? Did you guys write the the blog post with the analogy of it's just like a centralization is like the ring of power? And at some point, every roller has to, you know, throw it in the fire. Yeah, that's fantastic. All right. So so where are we on the quest? To throw the ring into to Mount Doom? We're outside of the Shire now, right? Are we like Gondor? Movie two. Are we approaching the Black Gates? Are we near Mordor? Where are we in this?

• 56:53Speaker 05

  Gondor. I think Gondor.

• 56:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, Gondor. All right. So movie three, David.

• 56:57Speaker 05

  We got like all of the dominos are right there. You know what I'm saying? Anyway, it's pretty sick.

• 57:03Speaker 04

  We just called, I mean, the announcement yesterday, it's kind of like we just called in the room here. I'm I was back.

• 57:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Thank you. Thank you. I just needed this. Yeah. Final question, and that's how we can close, David. Guys, it's been a lot of fun having you. Congrats on the success with this massive release. This is super huge for all of crypto, for the ecosystem. Super chain. Yeah, super chain. That's right. Now, you have one last link to shill. Please choose wisely. We talked about super chain link, the jobs link. Give us another link before we close out here.

• 57:37Speaker 03

  What's the OP stack link?

• 57:39Speaker 04

  Stack dot optimism.io. Got it. Got to do it. Got to do it. While we have a major second core developer, you know, joining the ranks of OP Labs, this is going to be done as a very large effort by a very large number of people. And we finally have some of the initial docs in place to really show you how to do the crazy stuff with the OP stack that is going to blow people's minds that we always can't focus our priorities on for the reasons that we just talked about. So come contribute and build the OP stack with us.

• 58:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's awesome. All right. We'll end it there. And guys, thank you for joining us. Thanks for setting up the tent background, getting the lighting working. It's very good. The makings of an early studio, I can tell. Bankless Nation will include some links, of course, in the show notes, as always. Got to end with this. Risks and disclaimers. Your aim is risky. So are Layer 2s. All of crypto is, when you think about it. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. I think Layer 2s are the new frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 58:43Speaker 04

  Thank you. Bye y'all.