Anthony Sassano | Layer Zero

Anthony Sassano is undoubtedly one of the most committed individuals to the Ethereum ecosystem and the values that come along with it. Dropping newsletters and podcasts every weekday with his consistent fervor is inspiring as it is valuable. In this episode Layer Zero, we dive into what drives Anthony. This opens up to a broader conversation of philosophy, longevity research, his thesis on life, and his beard oil company (?!) ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ 🎖 CLAIM YOUR BADGE: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/-guide-2-using-the-bankless-badge ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 💰 GEMINI | FIAT & CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/go-gemini 🔀 BALANCER | EXCHANGE & POOL ASSETS https://bankless.cc/balancer 👻 AAVE | LEND & BORROW ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave 🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING http://bankless.cc/uniswap ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 4:20 Justin Drake & Layer Zero 6:30 You Need A Social Layer 9:24 Profit & Value 14:20 Anthony’s Story & Drive 22:10 Why Ethereum? 28:48 Ethereum Content In Perpetuity 32:04 Gathering Momentum and Energy 38:58 Manic about Ethereum 43:40 Grand Thesis on Life 52:00 Denial of Death 1:02:40 Security and Monetary Policy 1:06:17 Longevity Research 1:13:52 The Bleeding Edge ------ Resources: Anthony on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sassal0x?s=20 The Daily Gwei: https://thedailygwei.substack.com/ ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

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

• 0:07David Hoffman?

  Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Ethereum is built by code, but it's composed by people, and each individual member of the Ethereum community has their own story to tell. Cyberpunk's understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it. And Layer Zero is a podcast that focuses on the people behind the code, because Ethereum is people all the way down, and it always has been. Today, I'm talking with Anthony Cezano, and I always joke that Anthony, he would submit his own soul as a PR request to Ethereum if he had the chance. Anthony does five 30-minute YouTube videos a week and five articles a week, all about updates and thoughts about the Ethereum ecosystem on his daily Gway newsletter and YouTube channel.

• 0:52David Hoffman?

  In today's conversation with Anthony, we talk about what he finds meaningful about working for a decentralized protocol. How does he find purpose in working for Ethereum? This leads to a conversation about values and working towards something greater than oneself, and ultimately finishes with a broader conversation about why humans form tribes, join organized teams, and rally around symbols. When something like Ethereum promises to be around for countless generations, being a part of the early bootstrapping phase provides Anthony with immense purpose in his life, and why he has an unceasing amount of energy to help promote the best of what the space has to offer. While I've only met Anthony in real life once, he is a close friend of mine, and it couldn't be more obvious that he's here in crypto for the right reasons.

• 1:37David Hoffman?

  So, without further ado, let's go ahead and get right into the conversation with Anthony Cezano. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Bankless is proud to be supported by Uniswap. Uniswap is a new paradigm in asset exchange infrastructure. Instead of a cumbersome order book system where trades are matched with other humans, Uniswap is an autonomous piece of software on Ethereum, which is what Ryan and I call a money robot. No human counterparties or centralized intermediaries, just autonomous code on Ethereum. Input the token you want to sell and Receive the token you want to buy. Something brand new in the Uniswap ecosystem is the Uniswap Grants Program is now accepting applications for grants. We have been saying this for a while and we'll say it again.

• 2:21David Hoffman?

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• 3:02David Hoffman?

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• 3:45David Hoffman?

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• 4:25David Hoffman?

  Anthony, what's up?

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Hey, David. How you going?

• 4:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, pretty good, man. Pretty good. Excited to do this.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, this should be fun. I just actually was listening to the one you did with Justin Drake yesterday, the Layer Zero one you did with Justin Drake. That was quite interesting.

• 4:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it was, wasn't it? It took me a while to get to the actual like Layer Zero part of that conversation because like, whenever I've talked to Justin Drake, like, we both just want to talk about Ethereum, right? So like, it took me a while to get to like the actual part of his lifestyle. But like, once we did actually get there, it was like the perfect model for exactly what I wanted Layer Zero to be. It's like, oh yeah, Justin Drake is a rebel. Like, he doesn't have any like nation-state identity. His kid is like some sort of like fractal off of Ethereum itself. Yeah, I thought it was a ton of fun.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it definitely was. I mean, I particularly liked the part where he kind of spoke about his changing roles within the Ethereum Foundation and kind of like how he focuses more on the Layer Zero these days. Because, I mean, that's been obvious from his work through kind of like the last 12 months with the Ultrasound Money meme and things like that. But I think the more people at Layer Zero, the better for Ethereum. We have like a lot of protocol researchers, a lot of people at Layer One and Layer Two. But Layer Zero seems to be sometimes neglected by people and they kind of neglect the importance of it and the importance of a really strong social layer for these things. So yeah, it's cool to see kind of like his roles change and kind of he kind of fit into a slot into where he's needed most, I guess.

• 5:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think that's actually, there's some sort of invisible line in the crypto world. It's groups and cohorts and communities and individuals that have made it through a bear market and those that haven't. And I think if you have a crypto system and you really want to be bullish on it on the long term, like you need to make it through a bear market, right? Like, if you're a crypto system and you haven't made it through a bear market, like you are actually like not fully tested in your resiliency and your rigidity, right? And like the concept goes, like, at the end of the day, it's the Layer Zero that supports all of these things.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, this is something that I kind of write about and talk about a lot through my work is that, I mean, Vitalik put out an excellent blog post around this where he basically, I can't remember the, the title of it, but he basically described this and said, you know, you can have all the fancy tech in the world and, and kind of all the scalability or whatever you want in the world, but if you don't have a strong social layer to resist attack or resist kind of, I guess, onslaught from competitors or from like nation states and regulators when we get to that point, then you just either kind of like fade into obscurity or you kind of lose the battle there. Whereas with, I guess, chains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, we have these extremely strong social layers and we fight back. You know, people fight for these things. They fight against the regulators. They fight against FUD online.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  And yeah, I mean, that falls into having to go through a bear market together because in 2018, 2019 and even parts of 2020, it was a very brutal time for the Ethereum ecosystem, both from a kind of price perspective of ETH, which obviously drove a lot of negative sentiment towards Ethereum, but also from kind of like a use case perspective because in 2017, Ethereum's main use case was ICO mania. And people were kind of like doing all that, kind of participating in ICOs. And there was kind of like rumors that ETH2 was going to be delivered end of 2017, which never materialized. And I think, you know, we, we suffered the fallout of that. We, we had like a massive hangover during the, the bear market, but we all came together and we, and we kept, you know, beating on against a really rough current. And we got through it in the end, which was, you know, obviously very positive.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Ethereum is now where it is today and, and you know, the ETH price has gone up a lot and think to reflect that and, and things like that. But it's not just those kind of things. It's the fact that we now have a very, very strong community who's basically been through the toughest times together and will stick by Ethereum through, you know, thick and thin. It's, it's kind of like Ethereum faces competition from so many different angles these days. But there's a very big reason why, you know, you and I and a lot of other people in the ecosystem stay on the Ethereum track and stay on course. And it's not maximalism. It's literally, this is what we want to see kind of like built. This is what the future we want to see. This is what we want to be a part of. And we've been through all this together. So we understand that, hey, you know, we can get through this. Like this is not a death knell for Ethereum or for anything else. We can get through this. We can, we can keep building.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  We can keep innovating and if you don't have that and like so many other chains don't and I'm not talking about the current crop. I'm talking about the old crop of of kind of like other other blockchains that didn't have this and never built a social layer like this. They've faded into obscurity. No one talks about them anymore. And there will be blockchain, new chains from kind of like this era that fades in into obscurity. Once we go into a longer term kind of bear market. So I think from that perspective, if you take like the long, long term view, like, like, you know, we both do. Ethereum is fine. I, I, and Ethereum is, is, is thriving. It's just that short to medium term, there's a lot of noise and you have to kind of like, uh, get through that. And then on the other end, I know Ethereum is going to be there. I even know Bitcoin is going to be there. But I don't know what else is going to be there. I, I can't, I couldn't say that about pretty much anything else at this point.

• 9:22David Hoffman?

  Right, yeah, there, there's the idea that like, you know, profit, money and profit is made in bull markets. But like it's values that are made in, in bear markets. And like almost by definition, like, I mean, I, I didn't sell a, a single ether. At in the twenty seventeen peak or the twenty eighteen peak, and I just watched it like go down to zero. And like to, at the same time, like I was very much in crypto for profit in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen. And then like in, of, of course, like I would keep on buying ether twenty eighteen, watch it go down, buy more ether twenty nineteen, watch it go down, buy more ether, watch it go down. Uh, and like, but, but it was profit motivated, right?

• 10:05David Hoffman?

  Like I knew the thing was going to resurge, but like there's still like a difference in people who like tap out of the ecosystem and be like, well, this isn't making me any money. Versus because like fundamentally, this ecosystem is about money, like it's, it's about a reinvention of money. And so no one can really say that they're not profit motivated, but like it takes more than just being profit motivated, motivated to make it through a bear market, right? Like you also have to have like long term convictions in the values as to why you're here in the first place, right? Like, say what you will about Bitcoiners, but like, they have like non-profit motivated beliefs that they truly definitely believe, right? And then always like the profit is, the profit motivation is like maybe the energy behind the propagation of those beliefs.

• 10:49David Hoffman?

  But like it's got to start with values and beliefs.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, obviously, most people come into this ecosystem, if not all, probably not all, but like almost all people come into this ecosystem with kind of like the goggles on, hey, I'm gonna make a bit of money, especially during a bull market, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with speculation.

• 11:07David Hoffman?

  It's how crypto is advertised.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And we wouldn't get like the kind of like people into this ecosystem that we're seeing right now, the onboarding that we're seeing right now without the profit motivation, which is completely fine. I mean, I did the same thing. I came into crypto for money reasons as well. I mean, when I first bought ETH in 2017, I kind of like bought it after reading like one blog post about it. I didn't like, I had kind of known about Bitcoin 2013, spent some time there. But I remember reading one blog post, I can't remember whose blog post it was, but I read that in early 2017. And then I was like, holy shit, this is awesome. I'm gonna buy ETH. And that's it. Like, I didn't know about like the community. I had no involvement in it. I didn't know about the values. I didn't know about why Ethereum was decentralized, whatever. I had no context. I just bought.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  And then I bought and I kind of learnt all about it. And then really through 2017, I was making multiple bets. It wasn't, I wasn't like that involved with Ethereum to the point where I am today, nowhere near where I am today. I was making bets on other chains. I even thought, I even fell into the meme of, oh, Neo is gonna be the Ethereum of China. Like, I fell into that meme. I bought Neo. You know what I mean? And then my conviction on Ethereum and kind of like my evangelism around Ethereum only really came to light during the bear market when I wasn't profit motivated anymore. And it was more about how can I kind of like build up my social capital here? How can I become more involved and see like a brighter future be created? And how do I be at the center of this?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  So that's gonna happen for every, every chain, I believe. But during a bull market, it's kind of hard to separate that signal from the noise. I had someone ask me the other day, hey, like, which chains do you actually think are gonna be around? Which has substance? You know, which, which of these ecosystems are actually gonna be long-term, kind of sustainable? And I can't answer that right now because it's just, there's too much noise. I can, obviously, as I said, Ethereum and Bitcoin are obviously guaranteed to be around, but the other ones, I just don't know just yet. Even, even some of the really popular ones that are getting a lot of attention right now. I mean, this was the same in 2017. Most of them, it's the same thing. They got attention because the price went up. They, you know, and over the bear market, they failed to build out an actual ecosystem. And they were basically relegated to, to the, to the history books. So from that perspective,

• 13:14Speaker 01

  I'm just going to wait and see how it all plays out. I don't know when a long-term bear market is going to hit, if it ever does, considering how much adoption we're seeing and how kind of ingrained crypto is becoming within kind of like normal society, I guess. Or non crypto society. But, but I guess when I look at these other things and evaluate them, I always look at the social layer. And if the social layer doesn't kind of like appeal to me or, or kind of like the community doesn't appeal to me, I just won't get involved with it. And the tech's just secondary to that. And usually the tech is what dictates the social layer as well at the end of the day. Because you'll see within Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is such a limited technology, it actually lends itself to a limited viewpoint. And that attracts a, a, a limited kind of set of people, those being kind of libertarian, digital gold bug type, like anti-government type.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Whereas Ethereum, you have a much more expressive kind of technology and that lends itself to a much more expressive community. And then other chains have their own kind of things that they're trying to do and, and attracts different kinds of people. So at the end of the day, just like you wouldn't hang out with people that don't share your similar interests in real life, you're not going to hang out with the people who don't share your similar values and interest on, on, you know, in crypto. It's the same kind of concept to me.

• 14:20David Hoffman?

  I want to ask a question on a similar like line of thought, line of reasoning, but from a completely different angle. So you, you do the Daily Guay, which is one newsletter every single, every single day. Do you, you don't do it on the weekends, right?

• 14:34Speaker 01

  A newsletter every weekday and a YouTube video, you know, recapping Ethereum every weekday. Yeah, yeah. Not, not weekends.

• 14:40David Hoffman?

  Right. Not we, so you, you take weekends off. Good for you.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Well, every second weekend, because on Saturdays I do an AMA, a two-hour AMA in the Discord channel. And I wouldn't say I take the weekend off. I would say I take the weekend to catch up on emails.

• 14:54David Hoffman?

  Okay, okay, so perfect. That is great context. You do a YouTube video, thirty to forty minute YouTube video every single day. You write a blog post every single day. Every other weekend you do an AMA. And then you also fill up your time with like all this other Ethereum stuff. And like, the impressive thing about like the daily Guey is like, not only the level of consistency, I don't think you've missed a single one, but also like your consistent level of energy while doing the damn things, right? Like, so like, where, dude, like, where the hell does this come from, man? Like, why, why?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  I, the funny thing is, I often surprise myself. I sometimes, you know, catch myself, and I'm like, how am I still so involved with this ecosystem? How have I not got bored of it? How have I not burnt out? How, how do I do this? Like, I ask myself these questions, and really, I only ever really come back to one answer. It's just that I have such a passion for everything that I do, for Ethereum, for this ecosystem, and, and, and the passion for changing the world, I guess, and, and being a big part of that. That's what keeps me motivated. But it, it, it's also a purpose thing. Like, it gives my life purpose. And, I mean, to get a bit personal here, since this is layer zero, I struggled a long,

• 16:03David Hoffman?

  That's where we're going.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  I, I struggled a very, for a very long time, personally, especially through my teenage years and early twenties, with depression, and with a lot of different mental issues and stuff like that. And I had paranoia, I had, I was very stressed, very anxious about a lot of things. I, I kind of was just like down in the, in the dirt about a lot of things. And I think, now looking back at it, it was because I just didn't feel like I had a purpose. I felt like I was just aimless. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I felt like I was, I, I, you know, I had a group of friends that were kind of the same. We would just hang out and do nothing, like, just talk shit, like, at McDonald's and, you know, eat junk food. And that was another part of it as well. My diet was shocking. So, that added to it. I was, I was overweight, and it just, like, really overweight. And it was just,

• 16:46Speaker 01

  like, really, really bad. I kind of put myself into like a super bad headspace. It kept compounding over time, and it just kept getting worse and worse. And then, as I said, like, I discovered Bitcoin in 2013. I got pretty, pretty involved, in terms of like, passionate about it, learning about it and everything, but not, but it was mainly profit-driven, like, I was Super excited because I was young. I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna make so much money.

• 17:06David Hoffman?

  And then you wanted to understand what you were invested in?

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And you know, I rode the wave up from like a hundred dollars. I bought my first Bitcoin to like a thousand dollars or whatever the all time high was back then. Uh, then MT Gox collapsed and so did the price of BTC and I sold it like four hundred dollars or something. So I still made a little bit of a profit, but I had traded away a lot of things because I fell for the scams and the pump and dumps, of course, as you do. Um, but then through through there, I guess, like I didn't come back into the ecosystem until Ethereum in early twenty seventeen. But between like twenty fourteen and twenty seventeen, I was still in that aimless kind of thing where I was doing a bunch of different stuff. I started some companies like it's funny. I started like a, a, a clothing company where we did like T shirts. It was like very, very kind of like weird stuff. I had like a company where we did beard oils and things like that, which guess makes more sense for me, but.

• 17:52David Hoffman?

  I did not. That's a fun fact right there.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So I, I, and I think for, for, for what I was trying to do back then, I was, I was still trying to look for my purpose, right? And something that I could actually put my energy towards and feel happy about and feel accomplished about that, uh, and would actually make me feel happy. And, and they did. There was briefs of, uh, brief happiness there, but there was no profits made. I had co-founders that were really kind of like, it kind of eh to work with. They weren't really pulling their weight and stuff like that. Um, and then I joined like a, a, a, I, so in between this time, uh, the way I was making money is I was a freelance web designer as well, just doing like, it wasn't anything complex. I was doing like WordPress websites for kind of local businesses. And then in twenty sixteen, kind of like towards the end of twenty sixteen, I, I joined a telecommunications company as a cybersecurity analyst, and this was shift work.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Uh, but I didn't mind because I was already pretty, uh, pretty shitty with my sleeping pattern anyway, and I'd kind of like stay up to all hours, whatever. Uh, I was a big gamer through this as well. Played a lot of World of Warcraft, especially in the, in my earlier years, but. Um, and then from, from there, uh, that gave me purpose as well. Like I felt really happy. Like I was, I, I felt like my life had actually turned for the positive. I was making good money. You know, considering kind of like it was an entry level role, uh, and everyone was like super nice, but over time, given it was a, it's a huge corporate kind of company. Uh, that kind of weighed down on things. You kind of discover, wow, okay, this is what corporate work is like. It's really, really. Shit, you're a cog in the machine. Yeah, it's a grind. You're a cog in the machine. There's really, the only end game is to become a manager.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  And kind of like, that's the end. And I, looking at all the managers there, I didn't want to become a manager ever. Like, it looked like the worst possible job ever. It doesn't matter how much money there was. It wasn't even that much money compared to what crypto gives you, right? Um, but it wasn't even about the money. It was about the kind of like the purpose and passion. But I think when I discovered Ethereum and I guess like to fast forward through all the years, that's what finally kind of made me feel like I actually belonged somewhere and I could actually create like a a kind of a purpose for myself within Ethereum. And that's why I kind of like, I've tried so hard and worked so hard through the years to get to where I am today. And what keeps me going is because the thing I'm most scared of, scared of is becoming irrelevant. Kind of like falling into the history books and just becoming a footnote in this revolution.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  I want to be at the forefront of it. I want to continue to be at the forefront of it for as long as it takes. And until we reach like global adoption where I don't matter anymore because there's so many people that are involved with it. I, I still want to be that. And I think that is what kind of like drives me the most. So all that previous context, all that buildup and me remembering all of that personally is what keeps me going and keeps me doing this. Cause I really don't want to become irrelevant. I really don't want to become kind of just someone who sits in the corner and hey, that guy used to be a cool Ethereum dude. Now he doesn't really do anything. He made money and now he's just kind of gone away. It's funny because I actually, I, I, I made enough money to quit, uh, Set being, working full time at Set and kind of sustain myself now. And the thing is, I actually just ended up working more because it's never been about the money.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Um, besides that, that at the start when it was profit driven, once you have the money, I think this is what a lot of people don't understand. It's like, once you have the money, like there's only a marginal increase from getting more money. And if you're not materialistic, I know I have a lot of crap around me, but like, I don't.

• 21:04David Hoffman?

  It's only right behind the camera, he promises. It's only what the camera can see.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I, you know, I buy these things, whatever. But like, I don't buy, like, I don't have a sports car, like a supercar. I don't have like fancy clothes or anything. Like this is like a cheap top from like some, some kind of like, uh, I don't even know where I bought it from. It's and, and stuff like that. So I'm, I'm not like super materialistic like that. So I don't think people realize that it's just like a marginal difference. Once you have the money and from there on you want purpose, you want a kind of like reason to continue doing what you're doing. And that's always been the case for me. The money was a means to an end to sustain myself to be able to do this work. Um. So I think that all taking all that into context and taking all that as kind of like a holistic thing is what keeps me going and what keeps my passion burning. But again, I still surprise myself because I've been doing this nonstop since 2017.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Um. And I've just increased my workload and I still wake up every day just super charged, super kind of like motivated to to to get, you know, to get it, to just get at it and do what I can to keep growing myself and growing Ethereum. Um. So yeah, maybe that's like the the much needed kind of backstory and context to that question.

• 22:09David Hoffman?

  So, uh, I'm a fan of the parallel universes theory where there's like multiple universes and each one's a little bit different. And so there's some universe out there where like Anthony is actually like a Bitcoiner. Or Anthony is, you know, equally passionate about something unrelated, veganism or something, something else. So why Ethereum? Like, why did this Anthony pick Ethereum to be passionate about?

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting question because there's also a parallel universe, um, where I was like a fan of another chain, right? Or something like like EOS or like Neo or something where I still was like in in the in the dirt there. But I think the number one thing for me with Ethereum that keeps me so involved and and why I've stuck with it for so long. Is, I mean, there's, there's, there's a few different things, but I think the the number one thing is that it's it's freedom in its most purest form, I believe. And I've said this before and I've written about it being Ethereum is is freedom. And this is because Ethereum to me is the only platform right now in terms of smart contract platform. And I think will continue to be the only one where it is truly, truly decentralized, where there are kind of like, I guess, um, I wouldn't call them central points of failure.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  But there are parties within the ecosystem that have more kind of like influence than others. But if we look at the ecosystem holistically and what it is today, it is truly decentralized, which means it it it lets anyone build whatever they want on it. Right? Anyone can transact on it. There's there's kind of like no. It's essentially persistent and and and it's like expressive. So because of the smart contract language and everything like that and capabilities. And and that attracts a certain type of person, a certain type of builder, and they're ideological about it because there's not really any shortcuts being taken. People are trying to do things the right way where they're trying to kind of. I mean, it's funny because the perfect example of this is what happened with the ETH two beacon chain, for example. This took many, many years of research and development to get to where we are today.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  But I truly do think that the beacon chain is the best proof of stake implementation that has ever been kind of like conceived. It is absolutely amazing how elegant the design is and how open it is as well. I I know that there's a thirty two ETH minimum requirement to to validating. That is there per the design spec and that can be lowered in the future, but it requires a kind of a few changes there. But in saying that, you can still validate it, um, uh, you know, with these decentralized services that can be built on top. There's also others like Rocketpool and there's also other services like um, SSV, which is um, uh, basically being able to kind of like. I guess you could call it delegate your steak, but keep your keys, which I think is really elegant as well, a really elegant way of doing delegated staking.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  As opposed to delegated proof of stake, which is which is kind of like um, a bit different there. But but essentially, uh, that is kind of like the the, I guess, like the culmination of everything I love about Ethereum is that we didn't take shortcuts. We didn't rush it. We we didn't kind of like say, hey, we have to get this out because the market is like heating up and we need to pump ETH. Like that that's never been a goal of Ethereum's core development. It's always been we're going to ship it when it's ready and when we're happy with it and we're not going to rush it to market. And that's the same with the layer two ecosystem. That's the same with sharding. It's the same with all of the major upgrades. Like look at one five five nine. That thing actually is, you know, half designed to be an ETH value accrual mechanism, right? Like it's an ETH pump thing. Like if you want to be accrued with the language. It still took over two years to get it into the network. So from that perspective,

• 25:26Speaker 01

  it um, you know, the the core development is actually doing it right and doing it doing it slowly and not taking any shortcuts. Whereas a lot of the other kind of like ecosystems, they take shortcuts, especially to scale. They're like, you know, we're going to scale by doing this and then we'll decentralize later. It's like, I don't like that. I like decentralization first. Focus on the virtues of decentralization, of kind of like freedom, of letting anyone kind of do whatever they want on this platform, of being kind of like focused on the long-term aspect of this technology rather than the short-term. And that all lends itself back to Ethereum being freedom, because anyone can do what they want, but no one's taking shortcuts from what I see. Some of the apps built on top are taking shortcuts, whatever. Like, there's a lot of scams and stuff like that. But if you look at the actual core development

• 26:11Speaker 01

  of the technology, it's taken so long because we haven't taken those shortcuts, and it will continue to take long. And I'm in this for the long term, so why would I go focus on the short-term kind of things rather than the long-term stuff? Right. Kind of like, that's a bit of a synopsis around. I mean, this conversation could go on forever, and the answer to that question could go on forever. But really, at the end of the day, I just feel like Ethereum aligns most with my values of kind of like freedom, making sure that anyone can kind of like participate in ecosystem with the strongest guarantees of security and decentralization and censorship resistance, rather than... And actually, I think this is an important point, and then I'll stop rambling here. I think the important point is that because the Ethereum ecosystem is focused on the long-term and focused on resisting kind of like the last boss, which is nation-states,

• 26:56Speaker 01

  that's what everything's being built for. Whereas the other ecosystems, I don't see them doing this. They're building for scale now at the kind of like by sacrificing decentralization, and that works in most cases. But when your enemy, your final boss, is a nation-state who is going to try and take you down because they don't want you doing this, then you need that kind of like level of assurance and level of decentralization and security. And it's really only then that you kind of like test these things in their full capacity. And to me, that's what I want to kind of work towards. I don't want to... Because you can imagine, like, if I was involved in another ecosystem for five years, and they weren't really decentralized, they weren't really secure, but they were scalable and whatever, and then in five years, they kind of like get extreme regulatory pressure, they get

• 27:39Speaker 01

  basically shut down essentially, like for all intensive purposes, then what was the point? Like, the previous five years meant nothing. Like, the accumulation of all that work meant nothing. Whereas with Ethereum, I can have near certainty, it's not always certain, but near certainty and a lot of confidence that Ethereum can survive basically anything as a network because of that decentralization, because anyone can run a full node, anyone can validate the network, anyone has a copy of the chain, and anyone can validate on the network as well. That to me is essentially the crux of it is that I'm not building for something that can kind of like go a lot, go about its life for five years and then die. I'm building for something that can, I'm involved with and trying to build something that can resist everything and kind of like.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  I mean, that one of the design goals of ETH two was to be World War Three resistant. So even if the whole world goes to shit, we can still have this network. Kind of running or at least have copies of this network around that we can bootstrap it again. It wants, you know, once, you know, the, the kind of like war is over for lack of a better kind of term there. So. That's what I guess like attracts some of the stuff that attracts me to Ethereum so much.

• 28:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah, you, you took the, the transition right out of my mouth. So I'm going to, going to go with that. So Ethereum is World War Three resistant. If everything goes according to plan, it will be here until we die and then beyond, be even beyond that. So like, what are you going to do? Are you just going to do daily Guey like newsletters and YouTube videos until like you can't talk anymore? Like, is that the plan? What's the plan?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  I mean, it's funny because actually these fall into something else I, I, I forgot to mention. So. I had a like plan for myself in early 2018, not so much 2017. Once the bear market hit, I was like, cause. The reason why I exited Bitcoin in 2014, I guess, is because the bear market hit. I was profit motivated, worst mistake of my life, missed the ETH ICO, missed everything else. You know, missed out on, on kind of like all of that and all that growth of the early days and missed Ethereum until early 2017. Which now seems like, you know, an eternity ago, but back then it was kind of like, okay. I need to stick around this time in, in when the bear market hit. It was like, I, I need to stick around. I need to make sure that I can basically.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Um, making kind of like a, a, a, make a name for myself, you know, I know what happens, like these things work in cycles. I'll just keep investing and, and I'll be good in a few years. I had no certainty of this. It was just kind of like a bet that I was making. Um, and that was kind of like a plan that I had for early 2018. I'm like, I'm gonna. Uh, do this for as long as I need to, to get to where I want to be. And then we'll kind of like figure out once I get there, what my next kind of thing is. And I still haven't figured out what my next long-term thing is. Like I'm doing the daily Guey and stuff and I'm going to keep doing that for the foreseeable future. Same with like the ETHUB stuff and, and all that, all that kind of stuff, but. Um, generally I don't.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Have like another grand vision like I don't know kind of like what I want to do into the future. I know what I'm doing now, but um it's kind of like been a weird thing for me lately where I've been like, okay, I achieved the goals that I set out for myself back in twenty eighteen. So where do I go from here? Um. And that was kind of like that that that spurred the daily way, but I kind of view the daily way as kind of like more of a like, I don't know if I call it a hobby, but it's more of a kind of thing where I I'm giving back to the ecosystem through it because it's all free and I don't really monetize it or anything like that. And it's kind of like a diary for me as well to kind of like keep track of what's going on in the ecosystem. But but generally, um, I don't have like that long term goal now. So I would say like for the foreseeable future, I'll be doing the daily way and I don't

• 30:58Speaker 01

  I don't plan to stop that. I don't really want to stop doing that at all. Like, uh, as I said, like I I can't, I I'm still very passionate about it and I and I I don't want to kind of like stop being and I don't think I'm going to stop being passionate about it for for the foreseeable future. But there may may come a day where I'm just kind of like, okay, well, you know, this is this may not be the best use of my time. Maybe I should focus on something else. And I've been thinking about that as well. I had ideas around, you know, maybe trying to help uh people kind of like find jobs within crypto, starting like a not for profit profit kind of like job agency or something like that. But even that, like, I mean, it's just kind of like, where's the best use of my time right now? And I think that I'm doing pretty much everything that I that that I consider to be the best use of my time, because not only do I do the daily way,

• 31:38Speaker 01

  but I do a lot of stuff behind the scenes as well. Like I talk to a lot of different uh teams, like I do a lot of angel investing, I talk, I I advise a lot of projects, I talk to a lot of people all the time. So I think it's funny because like I'm both content with what I'm doing now and feel like I'm doing the best that I can be doing. But also I have this nagging voice at the back of my head being like, hey, you could be doing more, like there could be something grander that you could be doing. Um, but I haven't exactly kind of figured out what that is just yet.

• 32:03David Hoffman?

  Yeah, uh, one of Eric Connor's metaphors that he's given, uh, I think you put this out on Twitter is like Ethereum is like this uh this blob thing, which was a reference to this nineteen fifty's horror movie about, it was terrible, apparently, never watched it. But this blob that ever ever expanding, ever like invasive, ever growing, uh, and like I sometimes I talk to Ryan about uh just being absolutely drained with like what we do at Bankless and like It's like, if you let it, Ethereum will like invade every single point of your life and like you'll lose, you'll lose touch with your former self and you'll only be your Ethereum self. But like with you, you actually seem to like gain energy with Ethereum, like, you know, injecting itself into your, into your, into your, into your brain.

• 32:46David Hoffman?

  Uh, and so like, it's, it's kind of weird. It's, it's kind of funny just to notice like everyone else, like, we all get excited about Ethereum. Everyone gets excited about Ethereum, but like, it just, you just don't stop. It's just like, you're like, oh, I, please, please absorb me blob. Like, take, take all of me and take it all.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think for me, the reason why I get more energy as time goes on and as Ethereum gets bigger is because I worked so hard during eighteen, nineteen and twenty twenty and even to this day to get to where Ethereum is today, to see this mass adoption happening, to see all these things coming to life, to see the beacon chain go live, to see layer two rollout happening. And the fact that I've been kind of talking about this stuff for so long and kind of promote it and kind of trying to kind of like usher it along. And the fact that it's finally happening just motivates me even more and gives me more energy. It just, it just kind of like, it charges me up every single day when I see these things. And, and, and the amazing thing is that I used to think me being kind of like in the time zone that I'm in in Australia was a curse because

• 33:48Speaker 01

  I slept during kind of like the peak of crypto because the US, it wakes up when I sleep and Europe's still awake and everything like that. But then I realized it was a blessing because I get to wake up and I get to catch up on everything that happened overnight, which is an amazing kind of like boost to my day or start to my day, where it's like two to three hours of catching up on all the chats, catching up on Twitter, on all the emails and things like that and everything that's happened. And I get to kind of like just experience a whole world all at once, like every single morning.

• 34:15David Hoffman?

  Well, you get like eight hours of chatting, but you get to consume it in like two hours or even less. Ah, that's interesting.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  E- e- exactly. And, and that like literally charges me up. I, like, I, I, it's amazing. Like I come to my computer and I, I look at everything. I'm like, okay, where do I start? Like, oh my God, there's so much stuff to do right now. And, you know, there are certain days where it's crazier than others, like when some massive launches happened, DeFi summer. Was was particularly pretty crazy where I'd wake up and it's like, okay, Yam's launched. Okay, Wi Fi is launched. Okay, this is launched. And you know, where's the latest kind of food farm? And then I'd message my friends and I'd be like, hey, you know, is this safe? Do I A P N and stuff like that? Um, but outside of that, there's also the tech stuff like Arbitrum went live when I went up while I was sleeping and I woke up. I'm like, yes, Arbitrum's live. Let's go try it out. Let's see what's happening. Let's see what people are saying about it. Uh, and it's because I've been a, and, and, and what makes it even more exciting when things kind of like go live or where, where kind of like updates happen.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Is that I talk about it for so long, like we, I mean, we've spoken about one, five, five, nine since day one. Like Eric is a co author of the A I P. We spoke about it for, for a very long time, not just Eric and I, but like you and, and the rest of kind of like the, the, um, the ETH core people that, that everyone probably knows by now, but we spoke about this for so, so long through different market cycles, through different sentiment cycles. And to finally see it go, go live, I, I don't think people that don't have that context would realize just how amazing of a feeling that was. And how kind of like, not just that, the beacon chain going live. I spoke about ETH two. I mean, I'd known about ETH two and staking for such a long time. And that went live and you know, coming up is the merge as well. That's going to be huge. We have all the layer twos. I mean, I've been talking about layer two or thinking about it since day one of this ecosystem, because people have been talking about it since then.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Um, and roll ups were kind of relatively new, but still talking about that, seeing them go live and actually work and do what they're, you know, we've been talking about for so long. Especially as someone who writes about it every bloody day and does videos about it every day, to actually see it materialize. Do it's like, it's, it's a feeling that's just like unmatched really. And I think that is, is kind of, um, you know, what gives me that energy and what kind of keeps me going. And why my energy actually goes up with the crazier this ecosystem gets. And also because I know if I take a day off, I miss everything. Like I, there's no days off in this industry like, and that might may, may not sound appealing to a lot of people because they want to take a day off. They want to recharge. But I, I, I have a pretty good system now where I can take time, time off during kind of like my afternoon and my evening, because everyone's asleep.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  This is the beauty of my time zone as well, is that once I'm done, like by two, three P M, uh, you know, I have some lunch. I'll go for a bike ride. I'll spend some time with my fiance. I'll watch some kind of shows, maybe play some games. It's like a cooldown period for a little bit. Uh, and then, uh, towards the evening, I'll do my, my newsletter. I actually like pick the topic and write my newsletter within an hour at like 10 P M. And then I'll record the refuel. I do all that and then at that same time, the US is waking up. So it's kind of like multitask. I'll do that and I'll start talking to, to, to friends and things like that and I'll see Twitter get more active. And then I go to bed at like two AM or something like that, uh, right in the, I guess, the peak of the US. But then I'm like, okay, well, I go to bed now, wake up and everything's going to be, you know, awesome again.

• 37:19David Hoffman?

  Wait, so, yeah.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And it's funny because like I, I had never experienced what it was like to basically live, uh, live in the US time zone until, uh, August twenty nineteen, when I went to see the set team after I joined set in July of twenty nineteen. And it was completely different. I didn't like it. I hated it. I woke up and there was nothing. Like I was sat there and I'm like, nothing happened. Like what the hell? Like where's all the updates? Um, and, and it'd just be boring. So I'm actually, and this is another reason, people ask me, oh, like, why don't you move to a more favorable time zone? Or why don't you move somewhere else? It's like, I don't think that's more favorable than what I have now. Like, I don't think I'd be able to do what I do without the, the, the kind of routine that I have now. It's just, it's awesome. Like really, and I don't know, there's a lot, probably some Australians that will listen to, and even Asia as well, similar time zone,

• 38:04Speaker 01

  that will probably, um, know, know what I'm talking about. But for anyone who has never experienced kind of like the, yeah, the, the time zone thing, yeah, you, you just don't know how awesome it is to wake up to just like a flood of information and, and get to absorb it. Cause I mean, for, for personally, this is how I learn as well. I overload my brain with things, um, like to the point where, uh, I need to basically keep just like reading stuff over and over again and overloading my brain with the same information to get to a point. I, I'm not a structured learner. I can't just sit there and read something and be like, okay, I'm going to study this and that, that I'm going to absorb it. It's kind of like, yes, give me all the information and my brain will make sense of it as time goes on. I don't care. Uh, it's just crazy. And I mean, I have six monitors in front of me and I have information everywhere.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Because I, I just want all of it fed to me at all times. And maybe that doesn't work for a lot of people, but it works for me. And that's, I think, a big reason why, yeah, the energy can kind of like, uh, uh, keep going up as this ecosystem gets crazier.

• 38:59David Hoffman?

  So one thing I've noticed about you, and like you talked about like before you got into Ethereum and in your formative years, like you had like, you know, mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and like, you know, issues like that tend to bring along further issues, right? There's like, they come in, they come in groups, right? And like, I also know that you listen to extremely, in my, these are my words, but like violent, like death metal, maybe? Is that the right, maybe that's the right genre, right? And so like, you sent me a song, and it's just like, this guy is like screaming at you, and he's like screaming his guitar at you. And then you, like you said, you, you have like six monitors in front of you. And like, you do the daily way every single day.

• 39:42David Hoffman?

  And then like, when you talk about Ethereum, like you can feel the excitement and feel like, and you, you want, I can watch your brain try and go in like four different directions at once, and you somehow manage to like hit every single one of them. So like, I think, I think you have like a pretty decent harness on like a pretty good, like manic side of you. And you've been able to like corral that and like inject that energy into like, well, okay, I've got, I've got the like this, like, you know, moderately, not too crazy manic side of me, and I'm just gonna be manic about Ethereum. Like, to me, that's kind of like your branding, it's like Anthony Sassano, manic about Ethereum.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's, that's actually a perfect way to put it. And you know, it's funny, you've, you've actually hit nail on the head. That's exactly kind of just what I'm like. I just, I, maybe a lot of people aren't like this, where they need to be calm, or need to kind of like have a cool down period. I'm just like, go, go, go all the time. I need to overload my brain with as much kind of stimuli as possible to, to be at my best. And, and that's because my brain's always begging for it.

• 40:45David Hoffman?

  Just look behind you. Look how many colors there are. There are so many things.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think that, that definitely stems from that. It's just like a constant need to have stuff around me, have things going on. I can't sit still for very long, even when I'm watching kind of like TV shows on my PC or something like that. Cause I really do love a good story, and I love TV shows and love watching stuff. But generally, I just have other stuff going on as well. Like, I can't really focus. And maybe that's a, that's a little bit of a curse, is that I can't like focus, focus. But, you know, I still.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Thing for me, like, and this is exactly actually why it's another issue is that I have struggled kind of like relating to people, talking to people when it's not talking about something that I want to talk about. Like at conferences is amazing because I get to talk about crypto the whole time. But if I go out with like some old friends and we just talk about stuff, within like an hour, I am done, man. Like I am exhausted. Like I'm actually tired from that conversation because it hasn't stimulated me.

• 41:41David Hoffman?

  You got drained?

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:43David Hoffman?

  You got tired for the first time in your, in your week?

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I just, I, I feel tired. I feel like just bored. I'm just like, wow, okay, this is just like such a waste of time and my brain just shutting off. And it's just, it's really amazing how quickly it happens. So, uh, yeah, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. I have like this kind of manic stuff where my brain goes in all these different directions all the time. And I try to piece it together in my brain. Like it's, uh, commonly on the refuel because it's, it's not scripted. It's just like a stream of consciousness. I will commonly have to correct, uh, stop myself and be like, okay, wait, wait, I need to give this context first before I jump to this. Cause my brain has already gone to the point where I want to be, but I need to kind of slow it down. And that's kind of become-

• 42:21David Hoffman?

  Brain's moving faster than the mouth?

• 42:22Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that's kind of become like an acquired skill that I had to, to kind of like teach myself because I realized that when I talked to, to a lot of people, I skipped a lot of much needed context. Uh, and that was definitely something like a hard part for me to kind of like come to terms with. But I think it's, yeah, it's definitely needed. Um, but yeah, it's, it's just funny how it happened because I don't think I've always been like this. I think it kind of just happened naturally as I looked for more of a kind of like purpose in life and, and, and like more of a passion. It's just that I, I become obsessive with things and I kind of engross myself in them. And if they don't catch my attention, then I just like, I'm not interested at all. And I think this is why right now, like a lot of people kind of tell me stuff and then they're kind of like, hey, you couldn't kind of like do this. You could yield farm here. You can, you can

• 43:05Speaker 01

  make money here. And at this point in time, I'm just not interested in making more money. Like I, you know, I got to the point where I don't need to, to kind of like make more money. I can sustain myself. Um, yeah, okay. More money's, you know, always fun and whatever. But I, I don't, that is not the stuff that kind of motivates me anymore. It's not the stuff that makes me passionate anymore. I need the, the stimuli that actually kind of like wakes my brain up and makes me want to focus on things. Um, so I kind of like tune that stuff out. And, and for a lot of new people, I don't blame them for wanting to do that. You, you know, yield farm, make money. Like that's all well and good. But at the end of the day, there's a lot more to life than money.

• 43:39David Hoffman?

  Right. Yeah, everyone gets into this industry or even just like gets into their life with like their focus on money. Right? Like go through college, graduate college, maybe they don't go to college, whatever. But like you start off life like focusing on money and like you said at the beginning, like once you have a some threshold of money, like having that translate into actual happiness gets harder and harder and harder. Right? Like I got myself an apartment that makes me happy and like I got I got a fun car that and after that it's like, well, I guess I could get a like the next thing to like add to my life could be like a boat, I guess. But that was so much more money and it's not that great. Like I worked on docks when I was when I was young. My my is my summer summer job in college.

• 44:25David Hoffman?

  Maintaining a boat is like a huge pain. You so you don't want a boat. You don't want to boat at all. Like, no, that's that like maybe it's cool, but like the value that how hard you had to work for it because like, you know, boats are orders of magnitude more and like insert any noun here, right? There's more orders of magnitude, like more expensive than like the typical things like an apartment and a car. And then like what you get out of it is actually is actually not that much. And so like you actually have to like reorient your attention if you because like the whole point of life is to like feel good, right? Like feel good and however, however, that is done, whether you like are hedonistic and you like drugs or you're altruistic and you like helping people.

• 45:04David Hoffman?

  The whole point of life is is to feel good and like money only goes so far with that, right? Like diminishing returns hit real, real soon.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah. And I mean, this this kind of probably perfect segue into into I'm not segue, but like a perfect kind of thing to to kind of bring up like

• 45:20David Hoffman?

  Who's the interviewer here?

• 45:22Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  I mean, what you were talking about got me thinking back to like, I guess my grand thesis on just life in general. And it's that I believe that we're all born with like a massive hole in ourselves and we try to fill that hole with things, right? Different people try to fill it with different things that make them happy, as you as you said. Some people will fill it with religion. Some people will fill it with money. Some people will fill it with material. Realistic possessions. Some people will fill it with, fill it with family and friends, whatever. But there's filling the hole for the short term and then there's filling the hole for the long term. So you can put short term stuff in there and that may give you some kind of like very short term happiness and, and whatever. Like, I'll, I'll be honest, some of the stuff that I buy, I buy and I'm just like, okay, well, that gave me some happiness, but like, that's not going to sustain me. Like, I can't

• 46:07Speaker 01

  stare at the stuff that I buy and be like, yes, I'm content with life now. You know what I mean? Like, it's just, and then for me, I fill that hole with, with Ethereum, with, with crypto, with my work that I do. Um, but other people fill it with, with other sorts of things. And I think that too many people fill it with short term stuff and expect that to keep them going because, you know, the funny thing is with the short term stuff is you can keep compounding that, but the thing is, is you have diminishing returns. You can buy something, short term happiness. Okay. Well, now I gotta buy another thing to get that happiness again. But each time you do it, you have diminishing returns. And that's why I think a lot of people fall into a place where they're depressed, they're sad, they're not even content with life. They're just like aimlessly going through it with no purpose or goal. You know, some people turn to alcohol and drugs as well and, and get like really bad vices and addictions and

• 46:52Speaker 01

  it's, and once you, once you fall into that, it's very hard to get yourself out of it. Like, it took me a long time to get myself out of it. To get to lose the weight that I had put on, which is a big factor in as well. Diet plays a massive factor in this. Um, but to get my headspace right, it took a very long time and I kept trying to fill it with short term things. I kept trying to buy new stuff and, and do, do things and become obsessive with the wrong things and it never led to any long-term happiness. It always led to short-term kind of, uh, stuff that, you know, while good, while I was experiencing it, I paid the price later for that. Like, I paid the price of, of, um, you know, just destroying my diet in the fact that I just had really bad mental issues. I looked bad. Trying on clothes is always like really depressing. Whenever I went shopping, having to go to like the double XL section and just like super, super depressing.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Um, so you, there, there's nothing for free, really. I mean, you, you, you kind of like pay the price for your decisions and you pay the consequences for them. So make better decisions, uh, and feel your, feel that hole with, and with better long-term stuff that you actually enjoy doing and you can sustain yourself sustaining over the long term and you'll be fine. Um, but. On the flip side of that, unfortunately, I think a lot of people just don't have that. Like, they just don't have the ability to basically fill that hole with something that's long term. Because they either just don't want to put in the work to do it, or they're probably not fundamentally wired that way. And it's quite sad, because I know a lot of people who are fundamentally not wired in a way where they can actually be passionate about something. Or at least as passionate about as I am with Ethereum.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  And I just think that if you're not like that, then you have to look for other ways to kind of like give yourself long term happiness. And there's no wrong or right way, it's just the consequences of that. Like, are the consequences good for you, or are they bad for you? Does it lead to more happiness, or does it lead to, you know, less happiness? And I think a lot of people fill this hole with having a family, which is totally fine. But like, is that what you actually wanted? Like, is that actually going to lead to long term, and I'm talking like decades long happiness? Or are you just gonna breeze through life and eventually get to your deathbed? And look back on your life and be like, wow, like, I didn't really do much. And, you know, that's, and like, I'm not happy with where my life went. That is actually something that's very scary to me. I don't want to get to the point where I'm lying there and it's like my final kind of like days.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  And I kind of look back on my whole life and be like, wow, I did nothing.

• 49:08David Hoffman?

  What did I do?

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, what did I do? Like, I'm, and just, you know, I'm just so depressed, so sad. And not just for me, but for like everyone around me, they just, you know, everyone that I care about, everyone that cares about me. They kind of look at it and it's like, what did he do? Did he just waste his life away and whatever? And I think, you know, there's, there's some people, there's a lot of people that aren't like that. They're just trying to kind of like, and I think it's like a privileged position to, you know. The funny thing is, for a lot of humans, humanities history, it was not about like this, kind of like filling your hole with like these grand goals. It was more like, fill that hole with food and water and surviving. Because you are a farmer and your village is gonna get attacked if you don't defend it and stuff like that. And that's true for a lot of the world still today. Like, I'm talking from a privileged first world position.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  But I also think that the fact that we've kind of like had all that stuff taken care of for us now. A lot of people struggle with that transition, because we don't have to worry about surviving in the first world. A lot of us, we don't have to worry about where our food is coming from. We, you know, we're content with a lot of this stuff. We're fed all this stimuli, we're fed all this kind of, all this stuff and all this, we're kind of like babied through, through life a lot of the time. If you're a first world, if you're middle class, you're babied through life a lot of the time, honestly, compared to someone in a third world country. So from that.

• 50:21David Hoffman?

  Shout out stimulus checks.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Stuff like that. You know what I mean? Like, and from that point of view and for that perspective, people just kind of like go into, I think this is why depression and mental kind of like issues are on the rise is because people just don't know what to do once everything is already done for them. Like, they're like, where do I go from here? Like, what is my life? And you really have

• 50:40David Hoffman?

  It's like that little robot from Rick and Morty who asks what his purpose is.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, exactly. You have to find, you know, your own purpose in life. And I think for a lot of people, that is a scary prospect. They don't want to do that. They want to be told what their purpose is, or they want to be able to kind of like know from, I guess, like the get go what their purpose is. And back in, you know, before modern society, we knew survive. That was the purpose for most of humanity's kind of existence, survive. Now that's being taken out and our primitive brains haven't actually evolved past that. We now still have that inertly within us. Like, the the goal of humans is to survive and procreate, right? To keep our species going. And that's all taken care of us. And even even kind of like procreating is taking care of us. Like, there's no need to worry about the baby. You go to a doctor.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  They tell you what's what. They tell you when you're due. They tell you what's complicated about things. They tell you, you know, if it's dangerous, if you're gonna give birth, you might die in childbirth. All that's taken care of. There's no, there's no risk anymore. Like, there's no kind of like, there's nothing for our brains to latch on to in terms of like fight or flight anymore. It's kind of like, you know, we're just cruising, cruising along through life. Everything's taken care of, whatever. And yes, we have our little battles here and there, but it's nothing compared to what it was back in the day. So that's why it leads to, I think, increased depression, increased mental issues, is because a lot of people just don't know how to deal with that.

• 51:59David Hoffman?

  All right, guys, in the second half of the show, this is actually where things get, in my opinion, really, really interesting. I bring up the the concept of Ernest Becker's denial of death theory, which I'll explain in the show. But it's basically a a theory as to why people work, enjoy, join teams, work in governments, work for things that are larger than themselves. And it's an attempt to become immortal, right? We all know that we're going to die. But when we find things that we can create permanence in, object permanence, that are things that are going to live on beyond us, we can actually find meaning in working for those things. And the subconscious fear of death is what motivates people in getting to that point.

• 52:42David Hoffman?

  So I think it's a fascinating conversation that Anthony and I had. But first, before we get there, we have to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible.

• 52:52David Hoffman?

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• 53:35David Hoffman?

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

• 54:19David Hoffman?

  that makes using the Aave Protocol even more powerful. With Aave, you can leverage the full power of DeFi Money Legos, yield, and composability all in one application. On Aave, there are a ton of assets that you can supply to the protocol in order to gain yield. And all of those same assets can also be borrowed from the protocol if you have supplied collateral. Here, you can see me borrowing 200 USDC against my portfolio of a number of different DeFi tokens in ETH. I'll choose a variable interest rate, because it's a lower rate than the stable interest rate option. But I could choose the stable interest rate option if I wanted to lock in that interest rate in permanently. V2 also features the ability for users to swap collateral without having to withdraw their assets,

• 55:03David Hoffman?

  trade them on Uniswap, and then deposit them back into Aave. With Aave, users can do this in one seamless transaction, saving you time and gas costs. Check out the power of Aave at ave.com. That's A-A-V-E dot com. Have you heard of Ernest Becker? He's a philosopher, cultural anthropologist. He wrote this book called The Denial of Death. And he talked about like, you talked about like, people are born with a void in their life and their mission in life is to fill it. And like, it really depends on how you fill it. And that'll dictate how your life is. The denial of death is like this theory of like, it's a very, it's a very wide ranging theory.

• 55:45David Hoffman?

  But like, it talks a lot about tribalism and all, and meaning and ascribing symbols to things. And he talked about like, organized religions or like, public service towards like governments or sports teams. Or any sort of like entity, right? Like the, like the average sports team, pick your favorite sport, baseball, soccer, football, whatever. Like, the team itself is beyond the person, right? Like, it's an organization that like, it existed before you were born. It'll exist after you die. Same with your religion, same with your country, same with your, like, insert your tribe here, right? And so like, the theory is that like, humans have this insatiable desire to build symbols

• 56:30David Hoffman?

  that will outlast their own death in order to seek mortality, right? Because we all have this fear of death. We all have this fear of death. It's embedded in our, like, our subconsciousness. And when you wake up in the morning, you can't think of like, oh, I really don't want to die, therefore I will go do this, right? Like, that's just too paralyzing. But like, still, still you are motivated, is the theory. Still you are motivated by that conscious, subconscious desire of denying death. But you also know that you're going to die. So what then do you do with your life? And so the people, according to this theory, find long-term sustainable symbols to be a part of, right? And like, to me, this answers so many questions as to why like crypto is so tribal.

• 57:15David Hoffman?

  Like, the whole cryptocurrency revolution is about building systems that can last way longer than we can even imagine, right? Like, not centuries, but like multiple, multiple centuries. Fuck, maybe even a thousand years, right? And so like, when you consider that we are on like the bootstrapping phases of systems that might be literally a thousand years old, like... No shit, like you wake up every single day and you look at Ethereum and you're like, I need to consume everything, right? Like, we're all trying to deny death by building and being a part of this symbol that can last for forever, right? The whole point about Ethereum is it will outlast nation states.

• 57:54David Hoffman?

  The whole point about these things is that they are going to be the longest lasting systems that humans have ever generated, right? Like, including religion, or at least, you know, religion morphs and change shapes, so that the symbols change. But, you know, the point still stands, right? And so, like, there is immense amount of opportunity to latch on to this symbol that can last, like, far, like, more generations than we can count. And so, like, I think that's why there's always, like, this such, why crypto's so tribal? Why there's so much, like, bottom-up community engagement? Why some of the deepest core Ethereum, like, developers, like, the people on the Geth team are so, like,

• 58:33David Hoffman?

  they kind of feel like the, some of the deepest, like, you know, Ethereum, like, religious, like, deep, like, religious people, right? In the sense that, like, they don't care about profit, they don't care about social media clout, they just want to build the damn system, right? They just want to build because they know that the thing that they are building can help them deny death because they built it in the first place.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  I never heard that, kind of like, theory before, or that, kind of like, the way you've put it. That's actually super interesting because I think it comes back to permanence as well, right? Like, these systems are permanent systems, like, especially the ones with decentralization guarantees, where you can be, or at least have relative confidence that in a hundred years, this is going to be around, and this is going to have a permanent record of everything that's ever happened on the chain. And, you know, if it comes to, like, crypto, your account balance is going to be correct in a hundred years or whatever. Or, like, whoever you pass down your crypto to, they're going to be able to have that in a hundred years, and no one has been able to take that away from you, no one has been able to alter it, no one has been able to change history. Could you imagine if we had, like, a permanent record throughout the last thousand years of history?

• 59:38Speaker 01

  Instead of etching it into, like, stones and things like that, we put it on this system? And, yes, okay, like, history can be rewritten, or, like, the history is written by the victors, and...

• 59:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  Different interpretations, but at least we have that on there and it's a permanent system through time. Where we can look back on it, dig the data out and kind of like do this, I guess, chain archaeology as some people have called it before. Which I think is really cool and have a relative certainty that this is the truth, right? This is actually what happened here. It didn't get altered by any central party to to to say something else or to reflect something else. And and that is really the the crux of it, I think, is that that permanence and to your point about like us subconsciously fearing death and wanting to create like permanent systems. So that even when we are gone, everything that we did while we were alive, or at least a lot of the stuff that we did while we were alive is still there. Like all the stuff that I've done on Ethereum in a thousand years potentially could still be there, right?

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  All my transactions, everything. I'm long gone. I, you know, I'm not there anymore. But my my history is like the history of who I was, doesn't matter how small of a person I am in terms of like how well known I am or not. I'm there. I'm edged into kind of this this thing as a permanence thing. And this, I mean, you go through history, look at the people that that like the pharaohs that built like the pyramids or they built like massive statues to themselves. That they did that because they're like, well, what's the what's the way that I can make myself kind of like immortal through a symbol to your point? And we make ourselves immortal by tying ourselves to a network that we believe can run forever. And whether it does or doesn't is another thing, but I think that's what really attracts me personally.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  To the the these systems that are actually truly decentralized is that I know that I, well, at least I can have relative certainty. That these things are going to be around in a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years. Whereas a lot of these other things, I don't know that. And I don't know if someone's messing with it or changing it or or doing some exerting sensual control over it. And I think that's actually the extreme point for Bitcoiners. And that's why they are really, really adverse to any sort of change on the base layer is because they don't want that. The they don't want kind of anyone being able to to change, change anything. They're happy with the way it is. They're happy with that permanence. And and that's fine, but I think I have a bit of a looser kind of, I guess, like approach to it where I think that you don't. That Bitcoin ossified way too early on in its life, like these networks are 10 years old.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  They're not like, I mean, Ethereum is not 10 years old, but Bitcoin is like, what, 12, 11 years old? They're not a hundred years old yet. So ossifying now is probably detrimental to kind of like what you want to build. That's why I'm so interested in Ethereum still. And kind of excited about Ethereum's kind of like changing, but at the same time, they're changing for like the tech upgrades and they're not changing history. They're not trying to rewrite anything and technically it could happen, but it hasn't happened. And obviously there's the DAO hack and stuff like that, but that was even earlier on in the life. Like it was like a year into Ethereum's life. I think we're building systems to last hundreds of years. Let's not ossify them too soon, but let's make sure that we understand that they will eventually ossify at the base layer. And that will be like a permanent record of of people. And yeah, I mean, that's a really good way of putting it. I never thought about it like that. Now it all makes sense.

• 1:02:40David Hoffman?

  Yeah. I mean, it's also a convenient model to frame like why security on Ethereum is so important. And not only security in the in terms of like, you know, the specifications, as I said, like node requirements, but also with monetary policy, right? Like Bitcoin isn't secure because it actually has kind of a broken monetary policy. As as good as the Bitcoiners will tell you their monetary policy is, it's also broken in terms of long term sustainability on the blockchain, right? And like, the reason why like Ethereum's have been always criticizing things like Binance Smart Chain is that like, cool. You just increase centralization, you increase state bloat, like you reduce sustainability. And so like, there's actually a very

• 1:03:25David Hoffman?

  like there's that one equation about like the sweet spot where a planet can be away from a sun, but basically like there's a there's a sweet spot about crypto systems that make these these things long term permanent, right? And if the point in the also, you talked about the pyramids, Ernest Becker, like one of the greatest example, the first examples he uses is like the pyramid. So good job for tapping into that. But like, if we want the like these crypto systems to be permanent, like there's there's a pretty narrow band of design choices that like Ethereum needs to be inside of that or like insert your crypto system here. It's got to be inside the band or else it succumbs to lack of sustainability in monetary policy or lack of sustainability

• 1:04:09David Hoffman?

  in in just like the the network's size, right? And so like, this is why Vitalik always talks about like this Goldilocks zone of like design choices. And what he's really talking about is like, how do we make this thing exist forever? Right? How do we? How do we? How do we deny death of the of the Ethereum system?

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's funny because like when you point out these issues with Bitcoin sustainability, people say, oh, we don't have to worry about that for 10 or 20 years. It's like, okay, but you're trying to build a system that's going to last centuries and you're saying that we don't have to worry about it for 10 or 20 years.

• 1:04:43David Hoffman?

  We'll be 40. Like, that's not that old.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And you're also building a culture of not changing anything through that time. Like, you're building like 20, 30 years worth of culture around no changes happening at the base layer. I don't know, I don't see that being sustainable. I think it's going to be very hard for them to change anything at that point in time because they've only got a few things they can do. They change the proof of stake, or they do a hybrid proof of stake, or they remove the monetary policy, which probably goes hand in hand with that as well. And they have to kind of like issue more coins, or they can take coins from old wallets that haven't moved, but that's like goes against the very ethos of Bitcoin in general. So yeah, I mean, that falls exactly into kind of why I like Ethereum as well. It's like, it's more sustainable in my eyes than even Bitcoin. I actually have more confidence

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  that Ethereum, in its kind of like current kind of like form, is going to be around in like 20 years, or at least kind of like secure in 20 years than I do with Bitcoin, unless Bitcoin was to change. And I know that Ethereum is not there just yet. We have to go through the merge. And then once the merge is done, really, that is the most sustainable thing because we have like the proof of stake security and we have the burn to kind of like offset that issuance, that perpetual issuance. And, you know, we've been through this a million times. But that's kind of like why, I guess, like I'm most interested in Ethereum's kind of like sustainability rather than Bitcoins, even though people will say, well, you know, I'm more confident in Bitcoin. It's like, eh, like, I think there's an argument to be had there. But it goes back to like the permanent stuff and

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  kind of like creating systems that outlive us by far. But, you know, on that note as well, though, I've noticed a very, very funny overlap between people in crypto, in Ethereum specifically, and longevity research and reverse aging, right? Like, there is a very, very like clear overlap. And Vitalik has actually funded this research. I think he's donated $10 million to the Sands Institute, probably done other donations. And he's written about, oh, not written about this, but he's got a blog post. I don't know if it's still there, but in his Twitter bio, he had a blog post for a while about like a dragon tyrant. And essentially it was a metaphor for, hey, why do we just accept death as a reality? Why not fix death or cure death? Why not treat death like any other disease that we cure?

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  Um, and he, I mean, that, that post had a point. It's like, okay, well, let's do it. And that, and that's why a lot of research is going into this now. Where it's like, can we live forever? Not immortal, as in nothing can kill us, but can we actually be biologically immortal? Where we can reverse aging, we can stay at like, you know, a certain age and we can basically uh extend our lifespans out indefinitely. Um, and I think we can. I actually think it's possible. I don't think uh it's, it's um something that we can't do because we've cured so many other diseases. And really aging is a disease. When you look at the cellular level, it's just our cells breaking down over time.

• 1:07:26David Hoffman?

  You don't die of old age, you die of a disease that you got when you were old.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, exactly, exactly. And it's because like our, um, our bodies are just like not, they can't fight that anymore, right? They can't, they can't function as they're used to. So whether that's making our organic bodies, um, to getting it to the point where we can reverse aging for long enough until we just basically transfer our consciousness into like a machine that can obviously live forever. You can just keep changing the parts of the machine. You can keep changing the parts of a human body, but eventually it gives out. There's diminishing returns to that. You can't just keep replacing every part, whereas with the machine you can. Um, and, and you know, as long as you have the human consciousness in it, you can keep changing parts, but it's also the same thing of reverse aging. Can we basically keep, um, you know, pushing back the date of our, of our death to effectively like being immortal?

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  Um, and there's philosophical questions about that. It's like, is that actually desirable? Can so- so- society survive with a population that, um, sorry, with a, with a, um, kind of like turnover, with no turnover? Because at the moment, the way society progresses is that usually the older people are more kind of like conservative, they hate change. They're the ones that are kind of like at the ruling class, but they die off. And then you have like a new ruling class come in and that's how society progresses. Um, through time and that's how.

• 1:08:37David Hoffman?

  The wheel.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Kind of like, yeah, exactly. It's, it's basically the wheel, but can that continue with uh, uh, effectively kind of like biologically immortal? Kind of population and. You know what a society look like in that world. So, but yeah, that that that overlap between ethereans and longevity research is not, I mean, that that is definitely be just because we we we're obsessed with permanent systems. We're obsessed with the long term. We're obsessed with the very long term, like long term being 10 years is normally what you're talking about. I'm talking centuries, like we're obsessed with this sort of stuff and and that's what a lot of people that I talk to are thinking about. They're not thinking about any of the day to day stuff. Even though it's it's tempting to.

• 1:09:15David Hoffman?

  I do I do know that Vitalik does actually take like some of these

• 1:09:21David Hoffman?

  supplements, I guess you would call them, that longevity researchers have like kind of given the unofficial like green check mark on. And so like he he not only does he a believer and funder in this thing, but like he's actually taking like meaningful steps of his own like, you know, well being to to attempt to get to living forever, right? And it's it's I was I can't remember when I was talking to him about this, but he talked about like, well, you know, if these things that I'm doing now kick out my life by like 20 to 30 years, well, then that just gives me 20 to 30 years more room for like more meaningful innovations to come out. And so like, maybe I'll go from like 80 die at 80 to die at like 110. But like, between now and then, we'll think of even more things. And then that will buy me more time to

• 1:10:06David Hoffman?

  for people to think of even more things, which will buy me even more time. And then it's eventually it's just some process of like kicking the can down the road. And you just ultimately you just kick kick the can down the road forever and find ways to like never actually have to like leave the can behind, right? You just keep on kicking the can. And so there's some there's some sort of joke or juxtaposition here about like Vitalik, the guy that designed the everlasting economic system, and then also like to figure out a way to live forever. So he can just ride this economic system into like the sunset, which is which would be a phenomenal story.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and and the beautiful thing of that is that Vitalik doesn't have control over this system that he made, right? Like, he can live for like for for centuries, and so can this system, but he doesn't have any control over it. He can't exert central control, um, which is which is actually amazing. I love that. The fact that imagine both these systems, Ethereum, not system, but imagine Ethereum and Vitalik lived to be a thousand years old. Everyone knows that Vitalik will created it, right? He's he's etched into that forever. Um, but like, he has no control over it. So it's just kind of like this thing that he set out into the world that he can't even, I mean, he at that point, he probably doesn't even have any influence over it. He's probably working on something else. Who I mean,

• 1:11:17David Hoffman?

  I mean, his social cloud would be absolutely insane. But yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  But yeah, but other than that, um, you know, the the system itself would be if if it works as as kind of like we want it to work, will be still fully decentralized and secure and stuff like that. So, yeah, it's kind of funny when you think about that. I mean, these are definitely like very deep philosophical things and stuff that may not be answered for for like 50 years to come. We don't know what the world's going to look like. But I mean, yeah, people are doing different things to kind of like extend their life already. I know that you fast and that's been kind of like, there's a lot of research done into that, that shows that it could extend your your life potentially. Um, and

• 1:11:53David Hoffman?

  It's cool. It's a wash with the beer that I drink. So call it even.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But that's the thing. Like, I'm I like personally, I try to take a little bit more care of my my health, trying to kind of like lose extra weight as I if I put it on or try to exercise more. It's kind of been hard with COVID and the lockdowns and things like that. But generally, um, you know, living a healthy life is not a bad thing. Like, that's even if it doesn't extend your lifespan, even if you get hit by a bus tomorrow, who cares? Like, living a healthy life means that you just feel better overall anyway, um, which I think should be the goal for for everyone. But, um, uh, generally, if you're trying to extend your life out, yeah, there's a lot of experimental stuff you can do. As you said, like, there's some supplements and stuff. There is there's fasting. There's a lot of experimental stuff you can do. But if you do it now, you need to kind of be content with the risks of doing it, being that, you know, you may kill yourself in the process.

• 1:12:41David Hoffman?

  Might have jumped the gun too soon on some of the things like, oh, it turns out that wasn't the right one, not the right experiment.

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it turns out that gave me cancer, turns out that made my heart give out, right?

• 1:12:50David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Steve Jobs ate a fruit only diet and turns out he gave himself cancer for that on the quest of like living for curing immortality.

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  Hmm, hmm, exactly. So there's going to be like a lot of that happening. So and then eventually, you know, maybe in a hundred years, we solve this and everyone born then gets to experience the joys of everyone else's sacrifices through through time, which is exactly what we get to enjoy right now. The millions of people that came before us that sacrificed their lives, whether that be in wars or in clinical experiments or dying from diseases that we eventually cured and viruses and stuff like that. Um, we all just kind of like, uh, survive based on previous generations. And I think it's a scary thought at because you, you know, you, we could be the generation that has to be the one that suffers the most pain for people to get to this enlightened live forever stage. But at the same time, it's kind of like cool because we get to be part of it. We get to be like

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  etched into history. And it goes back to, I guess, your, your kind of discussion, what you were saying about like, having these monuments, having these things exist that live longer than us to kind of remember us, I guess.

• 1:13:51David Hoffman?

  Totally. Well, Anthony, for a conversation that started with like, how, how the hell do you have so much energy to put into the daily Guey? Like, well, I think we actually might have found our answer.

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, I mean, the fun thing about these, I think these layer zeros that you're doing is that it doesn't have to be just about crypto, it can be about anything and the conversation can go anywhere, which I, which I always really like. Cause I mean, people who follow me and probably listen to all the stuff that I probably only know, know me for Ethereum and crypto stuff, but I definitely do a lot of other stuff outside of that and read a lot of other things and try to keep up with a lot of other stuff. But the overlap between, yeah, I mean, like, I think it's not just like longevity research, but anything on the bleeding edge. Like I'm definitely interested in like space stuff that's happening there and kind of like trying to loosely keep up with it and space travel. I'm definitely interested in, in just like all kinds of new advances in medic, medicine. And I actually thought it was really cool how fast we got like a vaccine for COVID, like the fastest ever. I'm, I'm just super interested in that,

• 1:14:47Speaker 01

  but like, it's kind of hard to keep up with everything.

• 1:14:49David Hoffman?

  Don't say we, brother. You're in Australia.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  No, God.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  Hey, no, I think, I think an Australian came up with the AstraZeneca vaccine, or at least one of the people that, that came up with it. So, um, yeah, I think, I think so. Yeah, yeah. So that's cool. But, um, yeah, I just generally like, I try to keep like a cursory kind of view of everything happening, but there's just too much happening, man. Like trying to keep up with Ethereum alone is, is like a more than a full-time job now. So, yeah.

• 1:15:15David Hoffman?

  Um, all right, man. Well, I definitely appreciate your time and coming and chatting on, with me on Layer Zero.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thanks for having me, man. Uh, I'm sure people will hear my voice on the live streams that we do, or any further like bankless stuff that we do, uh, probably in a few months when we do another kind of like bull case for ETH, like we always do, right? Maybe ETH is at 10K, who knows?

• 1:15:33David Hoffman?

  We'll have this, we already got two of them scheduled, one for a couple of months and then one for six months. They're already on the menu.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. Maybe Eric will join us again, um, for the next one. Like he missed the last one, but yeah, he's more.

• 1:15:46David Hoffman?

  I'm sure he was eating the popcorn while he was watching it.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think he's more bullish these days, so maybe. But anyway, yeah, thanks for having me.

• 1:15:53David Hoffman?

  Only on JPEGs.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Oh, man. Cool.

• 1:15:58David Hoffman?

  All right. Well, I'm getting a little bit loopy because it's coming into my, my bedtime. So, Anthony, great, great having you on Layer Zero, sir. You're our testament to Ethereum and thank you for everything that you do.

• 1:16:08Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:16:09David Hoffman?

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• 1:16:50David Hoffman?

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