StarkWare Sessions #1 | The StarkNet Fathers Uri Kolodny & Eli Ben-Sasson

Sometimes, the frontier is at a crypto conference. We’re returning from our adventures in Tel Aviv with nine exclusive interviews with some of the key players in the StarkNet space. Wish you could make it to all the crypto conferences, but don't have the time? Don't worry, Bankless brings the frontier to you. In this episode, we’re talking to Uri Kolodny and Eli Ben-Sasson, the co-founders of StarkWare and the fathers of the StarkNet ecosystem. We take a high-level overview of the emerging network state, and what we can expect from this community looking forward. ------ 📣 MetaMask Learn https://bankless.cc/metamaskshow ------ 🚀 JOIN THE NATION: 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 👻 PHANTOM | CROSS-CHAIN WALLET https://bankless.cc/phantom ------ Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 5:00 A Network State 8:00 Starknet Governance 12:30 Technical Minds 15:30 Integrations 18:20 Use Cases 20:30 Looking Forward 23:20 Day in the Life 27:40 Friendship ----- Resources: Uri Kolodny https://twitter.com/ukolodny Eli Ben-Sasson https://twitter.com/EliBenSasson StarkNet https://starkware.co/starknet/ ----- 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.

• 0:02David Hoffman?

  Bienvenidos a Bankless, donde exploramos el frontón de dinero de Internet y la finanza de Internet. Y a veces ese frontón de dinero de Internet se encuentra en una conferencia, lo que es por lo que el fin de semana pasado fui a decir a Aviv Israel para asistir a las sesiones de Starkware, un evento de dos días organizado por Starkware para unir el ecosistema de Starkware y Starknet de forma conjunta, para reunirse, aprender, discutir y construir el futuro de Starknet. Y como podrán ver, he perdido totalmente mi voz haciendo todas estas entrevistas que he traído a compartir con ustedes aquí en la nación Bankless. Personalmente, quería ir a las sesiones de Starkware porque mi comprensión y comprensión del ecosistema de Starkware no es tan fuerte como mi comprensión de otras partes del ecosistema de Ethereum. Y esto tiene sentido cuando aprendes sobre las opciones de diseño que Starkware ha hecho.

• 0:45David Hoffman?

  Han construido su propio lenguaje de desarrolladores y su propia máquina virtual en lugar de usar Solidity y el EVM como la mayoría de otras capas 2 y otras altas capas 1. ¿Por qué hicieron esto? ¿Qué beneficios tiene eso? ¿Cuánta fricción hace eso para los desarrolladores? ¿Cómo se sienten los desarrolladores de Starknet acerca del protocolo sobre el que están construyendo? ¿Cuánta propiedad tiene la comunidad de Starknet acerca de la plataforma que todos están creando juntos? Estas preguntas y muchos más son las preguntas por las que vi respuestas durante mi corto tiempo en Tel Aviv y por qué quería ir a las sesiones de Starkware en primer lugar. Y ciertamente siento que tengo estas preguntas respondidas. Pero en lugar de simplemente decirles qué son mis conclusiones, en lugar de eso, traigo nueve entrevistas que hice con diversos intereses y constructores del ecosistema de Starknet, para que puedan concluir por sí mismos

• 1:30David Hoffman?

  qué piensan acerca de lo que se está construyendo sobre el frontón del mundo de Stark. entrevisté a Uri Kolodny y Eli Bensassen, los fundadores de Starkware, y a quienes llamo warmly "los padres de Starknet", y les pregunto sobre sus perspectivas del red que han criado aquí. Y por red no quiero decir solo protocolo, también quiero decir comunidad. Ambos, Uri y Eli, entienden que lo que han construido ha convertido en mucho más que solo una tecnología, también se ha convertido en un movimiento. Which has been exemplified by the community that has come to surround them. I also interviewed a governance steward who's a member of the Starkware Foundation, but who's more a part of the Starknet community than the Starkware team. And I asked him about how he thinks the future of Starknet community ownership will play out. I did two interviews about smart contract wallets and account abstraction,

• 2:14David Hoffman?

  Madi from Bravos and Yoav from the EF. So you'll learn about the frontier of smart contract wallets in these interviews as well. I also interviewed the Sismo team, who's building an identity and privacy system using zero-knowledge proofs. I talked to Cartridge, a platform that's building the building blocks that all Starknet game developers will need. There's also Herodotus, who's building out what's called storage proofs, which opened up my brain to a world of possibilities I didn't think possible. I interviewed Only Dust, which if you're a developer looking to get started making money developing on Starknet, definitely listen to that interview. I talked to the Starknet ID team, Starknet's native identity system. And also interviewed Ignoyama, who's building out ZK-proof chips to ensure that individuals can run ZK proofs themselves at home, much like the same ethos of Ethereum staking.

• 2:59David Hoffman?

  I hope you enjoy all of these interviews. At Bankless, we try and bring the frontier of crypto to you in a fun and digestible content format, and I hope that's what I've done here. None of these interviews are longer than 20 minutes, so for those of you that can't keep up with the firehose of Bankless content, maybe these shorter interviews are just a little more digestible. And of course, if you have specific questions about my experiences at the Starkware sessions or about any of the interviews that you're about to listen to, hop into my Q&A channel inside of the Bankless Nation Discord. This channel is dedicated to asking me directly any questions that you may have about any of the content that you hear on Bankless. So if you're a premium subscriber, make sure you're in the Discord so you can have access to that channel. If you've got a question that you want to ask, feel free to drop it in my channel, because I basically live in there these days.

• 3:42David Hoffman?

  So without further ado, let's get into my interviews from the Starkware sessions, starting with Uri Kolodny and Ellie Ben-Sasson, the founders of Starkware, or what I'm calling the Stark Dads. But first, a moment to talk about these fantastic sponsors that make all of these interviews possible. Kraken has been around for almost as long as crypto itself. As crazy as crypto is, Kraken has remained a rock for its clients, building out a platform designed to stand the test of time. Kraken is all about proof, not promises, which is why they've pioneered a proof of reserves, a system that lets Kraken's customers verify for themselves the solvency and responsibility of the Kraken exchange. And for this reason, and many more, we've chosen Kraken as Bankers' strategic sponsor for 2023. And once you're done using Kraken

• 4:25David Hoffman?

  to get your dirty fiat money into pristine crypto assets, perhaps you should check out Arbitrum, where so much of the frontier of crypto innovation is taking place. Arbitrum just announced their Stylist Initiative, which is their brand-new programming environment that lets developers deploy apps using their favorite programming languages like Rust, C, C++ alongside regular old solidity EVM apps. That's can use any coding language they like, and it simultaneously drops Layer 2 fees by an order of magnitude. It's a big deal. So many of your favorite DeFi apps have already deployed to Arbitrum, like Uniswap. But did you know that Uniswap isn't just for ERC20 tokens anymore? Uniswap is also an NFT aggregator, too, to make sure that you are getting the best price on your NFT purchases. Uniswap gives NFT collectors and traders powerful tools, all from the cozy, comfy Uniswap interface.

• 5:09David Hoffman?

  By the way, it's also got a native fiat on-ramp. It's also deployed on, like, every Layer 2, and it's got this nifty, cool thing called a universal router that ensures that you always get the best price on your trades. Crypto protocols like Arbitrum and Uniswap are becoming super powerful, so make sure that you're also using a wallet that's equally as powerful, or else you'll be missing out. If you're looking to upgrade your wallet experience, check out Phantom, the number-one wallet of Solana, which has recently come to both Ethereum and Polygon. Phantom has native NFT support, giving you your own NFT gallery from inside the wallet. Phantom is both a browser extension and a mobile wallet, and is also the only wallet to span both the Solana and Ethereum ecosystems. Check it out at phantom.app. And now, let's get into the interview. All right, Uri and Ellie of Starkware, the founders of Starkware. The first question I want to ask you guys is,

• 5:54David Hoffman?

  I mean, you guys are big into math, big into all of this stuff that really makes blockchains up and run. But the first thing that I noticed while we were here at Starkware Sessions is that this is, um, this kind of starts to feel like its own network state, to use Balaji's words. Like, there is a community of people here that feel empowered and have agency over building the system of Starknet. So my first question to you guys is, is this what you guys expected when you first started along this journey a long, long time ago?

• 6:26Speaker 01

  I for one had no understanding or expectations in this regard. My sort of initial impetus, you know, coming into this was actually around verifiable computation. And as someone who actually required, Eli alluded to this on, it took me years to sort of appreciate the value of that. I still see tremendous value of that. But this whole social dimension of Starknet, I would not have known to dream up something so as beautiful as we have here. It's just, we're very fortunate to have it.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  My answer would be yes and no. Yes, in the sense that it was always clear to us that this is a transformational technology that will, you know, conquer the world. We didn't know, and we still don't know, whether Starkware will be, you know, able to best monetize it, maybe someone that comes later on, or whether we're going exactly down the right route. And so it was very clear to us from the start that this is, you know, going to conquer the world. Now, no, in the sense that the particulars of how it like is evolving is like, it's so hard to predict, I don't know, for us, like any of this, but

• 7:48Speaker 02

  it's so much fun and it's so uplifting to see this independence, like this, which also comes with like this losing control over this thing. This is like, it's like a child. It's way bigger than what we could conceive of.

• 8:08David Hoffman?

  When I first got into Tel Aviv, I immediately went over to the hacker house to see what all the hackers were building. And the first thing that happened was a governance workshop where two members of the Starknet Foundation sat everyone down, sat down on the ground, you know, like crisscrossed their legs and answered questions about governance. But it really seems to be in the early days of Starknet governance as there isn't really, like, people are learning how to govern, not really, there's no governance roadmap, and it's something that really the community has to come together to determine. How are you guys seeing these conversations progress, both from the Starkware side of things, and how are the developers of Starknet, like, auto-organizing themselves?

• 8:50Speaker 02

  I would like to say that I know enough and am in some sort aware or on top of some of these things. But the frank answer is no, I don't have enough like time and presence of mind to even learn and follow all that's going. But I have a very deep trust and conviction in,

• 9:16Speaker 02

  you know, I believe this community will transcend

• 9:22Speaker 02

  the way like governance is done today on blockchain, because there's much to hope for. And I have good feelings about it, but I'm not on top of it.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  I'm not fully up to speed on this stuff, but at last count, I knew of, I think, 93 delegates.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  For Starknet, people presenting themselves as delegates. And that's an amazing number, in my opinion, for something so nascent.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  And I probably don't know, you know, the vast majority of them, which is wonderful. So, you know, I think it's off to a promising start. There's a ton of work ahead and a ton of experimentation and invention in this regard, in this dimension. I'm sure there are a bunch of ideas in the ecosystem that we can build on and learn from and probably maybe, you know, variations on various themes.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  And we look forward to that. I think that's exciting work.

• 10:17David Hoffman?

  And I was watching your guys' opening statements this morning and your opening talk about how we got here in the world of Starks and all of this crazy math, which breaks my brain. And it's very clear that both of you have a very strong understanding of math and cryptography and some of the deep underlying technologies. But no one has an understanding of governance. Like, it's almost an impossible thing to understand. And I actually kind of think that's perhaps to the best for Starknet. As in, if you guys had a grasp on governance as you did on math, it would be a little bit more top-down when it needs to be a little bit more chaotic and bottom-up. Do you guys have any thoughts about that?

• 10:53Speaker 02

  I want to say that, um, okay, blockchain is relatively new, and because of that blockchain governance is still fumbling around a little bit. But the nice thing is that humans have been dabbling with governance for, you know, since ever. And there are things like, you know, corporations, there are democracies, there are open source projects that are very inspiring and amazing. So I hope that the Starknet governance takes a little bit from these, um, well-established and successful models. You know, things that resemble corporate governance, open source projects, uh, democracy of various source, representative democracies and things like that.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  And then, of course, um, imbue in it, uh, the, whatever is new in blockchain, which do, does operate differently. But there is, there are precedents to take from and be inspired by. And I hope, I hope whoever's doing the governance will, will take that.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  The, the thing that I find most interesting and most challenging, um, also most menacing in real life in the context of democracies is finding this balance between, in a democratic sense, giving everyone a voice, yet allowing experts to have their proper say and the ability to, to control all sorts of, of very fine sort of human interactions from sort of falling off the cliff.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  He's speaking about current Israeli, the politics.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  And, and, and I, and I think that, um, finding that balance is, is, is a huge challenge and maintaining that balance, as we see, is maybe perhaps an even bigger challenge. So, yeah, a lot of work ahead of us.

• 12:36David Hoffman?

  Uh, how many people have come out to the Starkware session? Do you guys have those numbers?

• 12:40Speaker 01

  I don't know exactly, uh, because there are multiple events at such, but I think somewhere between eight, eight hundred and a thousand people, uh, for a bunch of different events. Uh, some of us, uh, well organized by a whole bunch of, what coalesced around this is this Eve Tel Aviv thingo, uh, with, uh, Fireblocks and a bunch of other companies. Uh, and we're happy, very happy to sort of see this whole thing, this whole week sort of come to life. And by the way, I don't know if, when this is going to come out, but, but if anyone has a chance to go to the hacker house, that's complete insanity. Just, just the, the, the energy is, the air is, is, uh... There's electricity in the air. I really urge you to go there.

• 13:23David Hoffman?

  So if 800 to 1,000-ish people came out, I'm gonna guess 80 to 90% of them are very technically minded. And that is probably what every single developer ecosystem looks for to generate inside of their own. Like, that's a success metric. So first off, congratulations on all the success. What did Starkware and what has Starknet done well that produced that outcome? What are your guys' strengths that allowed so many people to come out all the way out to Tel Aviv to attend this conference?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Well, I think two things. In terms of tooling, I think the emphasis on saying, yes, there is something very appealing and very exciting about the math. But at the end of the day, we're here to serve developers. And we need to offer them the tools that make them happy. And Kyra 1.0 is right around the corner, and that's a huge draw for a lot of this crowd. I think that's one thing. And the other thing I think is actually not technical, is social. There's something authentic that people feel, and they're drawn to. And there's a virtual cycle around that authenticity. And I'm very happy it's sort of unfolding this way.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  I'll add to that that

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Starkware and its technology are... We keep saying this all the time. We're not about hype, but we really, you know, it's the real thing. And developers recognize that. What do I mean it's the real thing? We actually ship the things we say we're gonna ship. And they actually work very well from the point of view of developers. And they are, you know, they exist there. They're not just tweets. They're not just, you know, test nets that take forever to get to the next stage. These are working things, and developers sense that. And at the same time, it's very new, but I think developers, they also sense that this is a technology that really can really, really scale through fractal scaling and layer threes and recursion.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  And there's a lot of room for expansion, so they want to be part of that.

• 15:35David Hoffman?

  One of the things I'm noticing is that there's starting to be some stratification in the Starkware ecosystem. And I'm not technically minded, so I'm doing my best to understand how this goes. But there seems to be people who are really interested in the protocol design of Starknet and all of the associated things about that, sequencing, like all blockchain, all that kind of stuff. And then there's app developers in Cairo on top of those. And those seem to be the two main camps of people that have auto-organized. Are there any other camps that I'm missing in the Starkware ecosystem? And how do you see this playing forward into the future?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  I think that around Layer 3, there is sort of a community forming. I think that around the whole programming languages dimension of Cairo 1.0, there is like a sub-community forming. Yeah. The nice thing to see is how these things sort of, they coalesce of their own accord.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  To the DAP developers, which are usually small projects, and the infrastructure developers, I would add the businesses. So, you know, Visa's use of Starknet for account abstraction is an example of like an enterprise as big as it gets that is looking into this. They're not the only ones. There are a lot of, there are multiple, you know, banks who have sent here their, you know, innovation teams to look at what's going on. So that's like a third category that is, you know, inquisitive about this technology.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was a conversation yesterday between the blockchain lead for a big credit card company that I will leave unnamed and Terrence of Cartbridge about, you know, the work they've been doing around account abstraction. You know, and I told them that Cartbridge is closing the gap with the, you know, building on Starknet, etc. But the gap between blockchain technology and stuff that our parents can use, and that's a big deal.

• 17:31David Hoffman?

  I was talking to the BD guy over at Starkware, Starknet, about the Visa use of Starknet for account abstraction. He was joking about how he didn't, of all the BD that Starkware has done, Visa chose Starknet of their own accord. What was the conversations like when you guys heard that news from the Starkware team?

• 17:50Speaker 01

  So maybe this goes to this point around authenticity, right? That you can sort of force your way into sort of press releases and literally buy. Sort of the interaction and pulling people onto your ecosystem. Or something can happen in a more sort of authentic and organic fashion. And when it does, it may take slower, you know, it's slower, it's harder. But when it happens, there is something more sort of stable about it. It's a solid foundation to build on.

• 18:22David Hoffman?

  So the application layer on top of Starknet is starting to really come alive. And there are some categories that I'm starting to see play out. There's just, of course, the world of account abstraction. But that's just a means to an end for, you know, more usage, right? So the gaming ecosystem on Starknet is starting to become pretty alive. What are some use cases that you guys are seeing that perhaps intrinsically interests you? Like, what's your favorite use case on the Starknet ecosystem right now?

• 18:46Speaker 02

  I would, I don't know if it's going to be the one that is like, you know, the killer app, the CryptoKitties, if you will, of Starknet. But it's one I would really like to see pushed more. It's the whole social network and proof of identity and bringing the humans, you know, through reputation, credit scores, you know. I own my data because I think really if the end, so, you know, we started with proof of work, then there's proof of stake. But if you think about it, the really the endpoint you want is you want like one person, one vote as an infrastructure layer of blockchains. And even, we need to head in that direction. So it's going to take a while and we want to do so in a decentralized way, right?

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Without governments and, you know, KYC things. But anything that has to do with like, you are the master and owner of your information and your history and you attest to your credit and worthiness. I would love to see those things. That's my favorite.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  I share the sentiment around things supporting sort of broad reach, social interaction and coordination. Meaningful problems that have yet to be solved in the real world. I think I'm eager to see that play out.

• 20:06David Hoffman?

  So if we were to go back to 2013, 2015, when the early Starkware foundations were set, I would always ask my guests a similar question. If the roadmap for Starkware, Starknet was maximally successful, what would it look like? I kind of imagine this might actually be, what would that answer look like back in 2013, 2015, where you have 1,000 devs coming all the way to Tel Aviv to take part in these conversations? But let's extend that forward. So we're in 2023 now. What does the maximally successful roadmap for Starknet look like if we go into 2028?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  The problem with me is I lack imagination in a very extreme way. So the only thing I can do is take some recent activity and multiply that. So the Starknet CC events, which are community organized, there have been two, about 500 participants in each one. In 2028, I suspect there are going to be many of these all over the world. They're going to be open sourced in the sense that the only Dust 2 and NoGuardian teams that organize this, I think, are going to open it up to other community members to organize these events. And I expect we're going to see these as coordination and networking events all over the world. And as Eli said onstage this morning,

• 21:28Speaker 01

  the face-to-face interaction, there's something very, very powerful about it in terms of enhancing interaction. So I expect we're going to see that in a massive way.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  My hope for 2028 is, okay, like, number-wise, I have no doubt that this number of 1,000 now in 2028 is 10,000 or more. You can quote me on that. And we'll talk in 2028, hopefully. So let's see where we are. So number-wise, I have no doubt that this is going to really, really explode, which is good. But...

• 22:09Speaker 02

  At the end of the day, blockchain is a technology that enables social functions, social goods. So I would really love to see Starknet blossoming into this layer that is dominated not by the developers, but by people who are socially active and socially aware and want to take it a step further for the betterment of society, right? So like, again, things like voting systems, reaching consensus on stuff that really matters, human rights, or... That's what I'd like to see in 2028. Now, maybe 2028 is a bit too soon for that,

• 22:52Speaker 02

  but I think that's where it really should be heading.

• 22:56David Hoffman?

  Well, of course, everything about crypto is always early. So maybe the conversations start in 2028, and then in 2038, that's when it actually happens.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 23:06David Hoffman?

  So as all ecosystems that start to grow into themselves, the original parents of them probably get confused by some of this weird stuff that's going on, because that's just what they do. The bird has started to leave the nest, and that's definitely what we're seeing here. So what do you two focus on on a day-to-day basis? What's a day in the life of Uri and Eli?

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Well, my... Okay. There's before Uri dropped off the map, and there's after. So after is very clear to me. I'm just like, you know, how do you say? Like, trying to keep my head above the water and like, dealing with stuff. I used to have a bit more time to properly try to think about certain things and get involved in like, the material, like thinking about governance, or, you know, tokenomics, or... So when he comes back, which is going to be soon, I'll do a bit more of that. But now it's just...

• 24:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so I'm on a medical leave of absence. I hope to be back soon.

• 24:15David Hoffman?

  Before that, I was sort of...

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Well, a bunch of things. Sort of making sure trains run on time in a broad sense. And doing my best to attract talented people to join Starkware in the ecosystem. And a fair bit of just making sure information flows. Meaning, someone talks to you and you say, "Ah, you should talk to X about that. Do you know that they're also working on something like this?" And so, a fair bit of that, just sort of as a router of information in the company and in the ecosystem.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Uri loves this quote, "90% of life is just showing up." So I think that's just, you know, connecting things, pushing something, like this sort of very prosaic, non... how to say it, non like...

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Not terribly glamorous, yeah.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, but like, that's 90% of what goes on in life.

• 25:14David Hoffman?

  And just for the added context, Uri, you opened up the Starkware session with you both, of course, the two founders onstage to talk about, like, "Oh, there was an unexpected medical emergency that I've had to attend to." Which is not to say that the founder has dropped off as like, no, this is something else. But what was your reaction to the... moments like this trigger reflection and trigger like learnings and all of a sudden you're able to look at the Starkware/Starknet ecosystem from a different perspective. What was your learnings in those moments as you had to step away, as you were viewing Starknet from more of a distance?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  The decision to go on a leave of absence was reached within minutes because frankly, it wasn't only an emotional need, it was a very, very practical need for my family. I'm insanely fortunate in the sense that Starkware is made up of just a crazy number of talented and capable people. And we've succeeded in building a culture where the system, the human system, can absorb this kind of shock in a very trivial fashion. And, you know, often in startup land, you say, you know, Eli was referring, you know, "What happens if you get hit by a bus?" This was, for me, as close as it ever got to a bus.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  And the organization just operated in the smoothest of fashions and...

• 26:44Speaker 01

  You know, looking back to 20 some years of entrepreneurship, this is probably the one thing I I'm most proud of.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  That it was put to this stress test. And it passed in flying colors and

• 27:02Speaker 01

  and it may sound ironic, why are you so proud of the fact that, you know, this ship can continue without you without even blinking? And I don't know, the answer to that is, I don't know why, but it's just, I'm I'm bursting with pride.

• 27:16David Hoffman?

  Well, it's very cool. You guys have certainly built a very alive ecosystem, which is the the one key success indicator that we look for in this space. As I watched you two open up this the the conference, I was just struck by how you guys just seem like age old college roommates. You guys have been, I don't know, working with each other for decades now. And you guys even look like each other at this point. What's what's that been like having a second half throughout all this journey?

• 27:43Speaker 01

  So, yeah, we we're

• 27:46Speaker 01

  it's a little disturbing, the number of people who say that we look alike.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, we we've known one another for many, many, many years. It has made a remarkable number of situations. It's turned them from challenging to trivial. On the business front, on personal stuff, on every every dimension of of this story.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  We've worked very closely over the past five years. We've been friends for many years, but we haven't worked this closely, I guess, since the late 80s. So.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  I'll add to that, that so, first of all, well, you know, now that he's on leave of absence, so like, you know, when we're together, first of all, we fight and bicker a lot. And

• 28:37Speaker 02

  On like a whole bunch of things professionally, you know, ego things on like, you know, matters of style. But I know what I'm saying is also true for Uri. Like, I have the utmost respect for him as, you know, as a professional and as a smart person. And no less importantly than that, just like, and I said this for him from day one, and I'll say it, I'm sure, for the rest of my life. As I am sure that the sun will rise tomorrow, I know that I can trust him at a very deep level. Like, you know, we fight, we argue. There's a lot of things we disagree about, but like, at a very fundamental level, you know, our technology is about integrity,

• 29:21Speaker 02

  but in humans, you cannot replace integrity with any kind of math. So you need to have this like relationship of trust and just, at a very deep level, he's worthy of trust.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can, I can only...

• 29:42Speaker 01

  It's really funny how in this trustless universe, at the end of the day, in order to do what we're doing, it's based on very deep human trust, but there's an abundance of that here.

• 29:53David Hoffman?

  Well, Eli, Uri, you guys, I think, exude some of the principles, the deep first principles thinking that really is important in this space. And I'm glad that there's two of you to carry this ecosystem forward. And so, thank you for everything you're doing to contribute.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Thank you, David. Thank you for coming out.

• 30:08David Hoffman?

  Cheers.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Thanks.