Bankless - Anthony Sassano | Layer Zero

Starting point is 00:00:01 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 is composed by people, and each individual member of the Ethereum community has their own story to tell. Cyberpunks 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.

Starting point is 00:00:39 Today, I'm talking with Anthony Sizzano, and I, I'm talking with Anthony Sizzano, and I, 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. 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

Starting point is 00:01:14 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,

Starting point is 00:01:38 he is a close friend of mine, and it couldn't be more obvious that he's here, crypto for the right reasons. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get right into the conversation with Anthony Sizzano. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the 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.

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Starting point is 00:04:07 You can open up a free account, account in under three minutes at gemini.com slash go bankless. And if you trade more than $100 within the first 30 days after sign up, you'll be gifted a free $15 Bitcoin bonus. Check them out at Gemini.com slash go bankless. Anthony, what's up? Hey, David. How you going? Yeah, pretty good, man. Pretty good. excited to do this. 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. Yeah, it was, wasn't it um 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

Starting point is 00:04:48 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 uh his kid is like some some sort of like fractal off of ethereum and it's uh himself um um so um so himself um and Yeah, I thought it was a ton of fun. Yeah, yeah, it definitely was. I mean, I particularly like 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.

Starting point is 00:05:19 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 research, a lot of people at layer one and layer two. But layer zero seems to be sometimes neglected by people. 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. I think that's actually, there's some sort

Starting point is 00:05:51 of invisible line in the crypto world. It's, yeah, groups and cohorts and communities and individuals that have made it through a bear market and those that haven't. And I think, I think if you, 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 can't, if you have it, if you're a crypto system and you haven't made it through a bare 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. Yeah, I mean, I, this is something that I kind of write about and

Starting point is 00:06:31 talk about a lot through my work is that, I mean, Vatelik put out an excellent blog post around this where he basically, I can't remember the title of it, but he basically described this and said, you know, you can have all the fancy tech in the world and kind of like 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.

Starting point is 00:07:07 You know, people fight for these things. They fight against the regulators. They fight against Fudd online. 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 toward Ethereum, but also from kind of like a use case perspective because in 2017, Ethereum's main use case was ICO mania.

Starting point is 00:07:31 and people were kind of like doing all that, kind of participating in ICOs. And there was kind of like rumors that East 2 was going to be delivered end of 2017, which never materialized. And I think, you know, we suffered the fallout of that. We had like a massive hangover during the bear market. But we all came together 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. Ethereum is now where it is today.

Starting point is 00:07:55 And, you know, the ETH price has gone up a lot and think to reflect that 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 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

Starting point is 00:08:27 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 now for Ethereum or for anything else. We can get through this. We can, we can keep building. 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 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 into obscurity once we go into a longer term, kind of bare market. So I think from that perspective, if you take like the long,

Starting point is 00:09:01 long-term view like, like, you know, we both do, Ethereum is fine. I, and Ethereum is, is thriving. It's just that short to medium term, there's a lot of noise. And you have to kind of like, get through that. And then on the other end, I know Ethereum is going to be there. I even know Bitcoin's going to be there, but I don't know what else is going to be there. I can't, I couldn't say that about pretty much anything else at this point. Right. Yeah. 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 bare markets. And like, almost by definition, like I mean I I didn't sell a single ether at in the 2017 peak or the 2018 peak and I just watched it like go down to zero and like just at the same time like I was very much in crypto for profit in 2017 2018 and then like in of course like I would keep on buying ether 2018 watch it go down buy more ether 2019 watch it go down buy more ether watch it go down and like but but it was profit

Starting point is 00:10:01 motivated, right? Like, I knew the thing was going to resurge, but 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 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

Starting point is 00:10:41 profit is, the profit motivation is like maybe the energy behind the propagation of those beliefs. But like it's got to start with values and beliefs. Yeah, I mean, obviously most people come into this ecosystem, if not all, but probably not all, but like almost all people come into this ecosystem with kind of like the goggles on, hey, I'm going to 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. It's how crypto is advertised. 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,

Starting point is 00:11:17 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 in 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 going to buy Eith.

Starting point is 00:11:38 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.

Starting point is 00:11:50 And then I bought and I kind of learned all about it. And then really, through 2017, I was making multiple bets. I wasn't like that involved with Ethereum to the point where I am today. Like 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 going to be the Ethereum of China. Like I fell into that meme. I bought Neo.

Starting point is 00:12:09 You know what I mean? And then my conviction on Ethereum and kind of like my evangelism around Ethereum only really came to lie 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? So that's going to 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 asked me the other day, hey, like, which chains do you actually think are going to be around, which has substance, you know, which, which of these ecosystems are actually going to be a long term kind of sustainable.

Starting point is 00:12:44 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 obviously are guaranteed to be around. But the other ones, I just don't just yet. 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. And over the bear market, they failed to build out an actual ecosystem, and they were basically relegated to the history book. So from that perspective, I'm just going to wait and see how it all plays out. I don't know when a long-term bear market's going to hit, if it ever does, considering how much adoption we're seeing and how kind of ingrained crypto is

Starting point is 00:13:20 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 that the community doesn't appeal to me out, 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 limited kind of set of people, those being kind of libertarian digital gold bug type, like anti-government type, whereas with Ethereum,

Starting point is 00:13:55 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 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 in crypto. It's the same kind of concept to me. I want to ask a question on a similar, like, line of thought, line of reasoning, but from a completely different angle. So you do the daily way, which is one newsletter every single, every single day.

Starting point is 00:14:30 You don't do it on the weekends, right? A newsletter every weekday and a YouTube video, you know, recapping Ethereum every weekday. Yeah, yeah. Not weekends. Right. So you take weekends off. Good for you. Well, every second weekend, because on Saturdays I do an AMA, two-hour AMA in the Discord channel.

Starting point is 00:14:46 And I wouldn't say I take the weekend off. I would say I take the weekend to catch up on emails. Okay, okay, so perfect. That's great context. You do a YouTube video, 30 to 40 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.

Starting point is 00:15:04 And like the impressive thing about like the daily way 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? So like, dude, like where the hell does this come from, man? Like, why? Why? I, 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?

Starting point is 00:15:34 How have I not burnt out? 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 the passion for changing the world, I guess. and being a big part of that, that's what keeps me motivated. But it's also a purpose thing.

Starting point is 00:15:55 It gives my life purpose. And I mean, to get a bit personal here, since this is layer zero, I struggled for a very long time personally, especially through my teenage years and early 20s, with depression and with a lot of different mental issues and stuff like that. And I had paranoia. I was very stressed, very anxious about a lot of things. I kind of, um, uh, 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, you know, I had a group of friends that were kind of the same.

Starting point is 00:16:31 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 is when my diet was shocking. So that added to it. I was, I was overweight and it just like really overweight. And it was just like really, really bad. I kind of put myself into like a super bad headspace. They 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 involved in terms of like passionate about it, learning about it and everything.

Starting point is 00:16:58 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 going to make so much money. And then you wanted to understand what you were invested in. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I rode the wave up from like $100. I bought my first Bitcoin to like $1,000 or whatever the all-time high was back then. Then MT Gox collapsed.

Starting point is 00:17:15 and so did the price of BTC, and I sold at like $400 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. But then through there, I guess, like, I didn't come back into the ecosystem until Ethereum in early 2017. But between, like, 2014 and 2017, I was still in that aimless kind of thing where I was doing a bunch of different stuff. I started some companies.

Starting point is 00:17:38 Like, it's funny, I started, like, 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. Wow. I did not. That's a fun fact right there. Yeah, yeah. So I, and I think 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 would actually make me feel happy. And they did. There was briefs of brief happiness there, but there was no profits made. I had co-founders that were really kind of like kind of eh to work with. They weren't really pulling their weight and stuff like that. And then I joined like a, so in between this time, 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 2016, kind of like towards the end of 2016, I joined a telecommunications company as a cybersecurity analyst. And this was shift work.

Starting point is 00:18:35 But I didn't mind because I was already pretty pretty shitty with my sleeping pattern anyway and kind of like stay up to all the hours, whatever. I was a big gamer through this as well, played a lot of World of Warcraft, especially in my earlier years. But, and then from there, that gave me purpose as well. Like, I felt really happy. Like, 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. And everyone was like super nice.

Starting point is 00:19:01 But over time, given it was a, it's a huge corporate kind of company, 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. The only end game is to become a manager and kind of like, that's the end.

Starting point is 00:19:19 And 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? 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.

Starting point is 00:19:43 belonged somewhere and could actually create like a kind of purpose for myself within Ethereum. And that's why I kind of like have tried so hard and worked so hard through the years to get where I am today. And what keeps me going is because the thing I'm most scared of is scared of is becoming irrelevant, kind of like falling into the history books and just becoming a footnote in this revolution. 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. Until we reach like global adoption where I don't matter anymore because there's so many

Starting point is 00:20:10 people that are involved with it, 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 build up and me remembering all of that personally is what keeps me going and keeps me doing this because 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 made enough money to quit 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

Starting point is 00:20:47 besides 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. It's only right behind the camera, he promises. It's only what the camera can see. Yeah, yeah. And I buy these things, whatever.

Starting point is 00:21:08 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 out i don't even know where i bought it from it's and and stuff like that so 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

Starting point is 00:21:42 my passion burning. But again, I still surprised myself because I've been doing this nonstop since 2017. And I've just increased my workload. And I still wake up every day, just super charged, super kind of like motivated to get, you know, to get at it and do what I can to keep growing myself and growing Ethereum. So yeah, maybe that's like the much needed kind of backstory and context to that question. So 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 else.

Starting point is 00:22:26 So why Ethereum? Like why did this Anthony pick Ethereum to be passionate about? 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 EOS or like Neo or something where I still was like 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 a few different things. But I think the number one thing is that it's freedom in its most purest form, I believe.

Starting point is 00:22:57 And I've said this before and I've written about it being Ethereum is freedom. And this is because Ethereum to me is the only platform right now in terms of smart contract platform. form and I think will continue to be the only one where it is truly, truly decentralized, where there are kind of like, I guess, I wouldn't call them central points of failure, but there are parties within the ecosystem that have more kind of like influenced than others. But if we look at the ecosystem holistically and what it is today, it is truly decentralized, which means it lets anyone build whatever they want on it, right? Anyone can transact on it.

Starting point is 00:23:30 There's kind of like no, it's censorship resistant and it's like expressive. so because of the smart contract language and everything like that and capabilities. 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 ETH2 beacon chain. For example, this took many, many years of research and development to get to where we are today. But I truly do think that the beacon chain is the best proof of stake implementation that has ever

Starting point is 00:24:02 been kind of like conceived. It is absolutely amazing how elegant the design is and how open it is as well. I know that there's a 32-ath minimum requirement 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, you know, with these essentialized services that can be built on top. There's also other, like Rockapool, and there's also other services like SSV, which is

Starting point is 00:24:30 basically being able to kind of like, I guess, 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 as opposed to delegated proof of steak, which is, which is kind of like a bit different there. But essentially that is kind of like 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 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 Eath. Like 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

Starting point is 00:25:03 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. Look at 1559. That thing actually is, you know, half designed to be an eighth 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, you know, the core development is actually doing it right and doing it slowly and not taking any shortcuts. Whereas a lot of the other kind of like ecosystems, they take shortcuts. especially to scale.

Starting point is 00:25:34 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 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 will lend itself back to, you know, Ethereum being freedom because anyone can do what they want, but no one's taking shortcuts from what I see.

Starting point is 00:26:02 Some of the apps built on top are, you know, taking shortcuts, whatever. Like, there's a lot of scams and stuff like that. But if you look at the actual core development 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? Kind of like, that's a bit of a synopsis around.

Starting point is 00:26:23 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 an 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

Starting point is 00:26:51 the last boss, which is nation states, that's what everything's being built for. Whereas other ecosystems, I don't see them doing this. They're building for scale now at the, at the kind of like by sacrificing the 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.

Starting point is 00:27:23 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 basically shut down, essentially, like for all intents of purposes. Then what was the point? Like that 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

Starting point is 00:27:52 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 about its life for five years and then die. I'm building for something that can I'm involved with trying to build something that can resist everything. And kind of like, I mean, one of the design goals of EF2 was to be World War III resistance. 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

Starting point is 00:28:28 network around that we can bootstrap it again once you know once you know 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 yeah you you took the the transition right out of my mouth so i'm going to get and go with that so ethereum is world war three resistant uh if everything goes according to plan uh 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 gway like newsletters and YouTube videos until like you can't talk anymore. Like, is that the plan? What's the plan? I mean, it's funny because actually this falls into something else I forgot to mention. So I had a

Starting point is 00:29:09 like plan for myself in early 2018, not so much 2017. Once the bear market hit, I was like, because 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 ether ICO, missed everything else. You know, missed out on kind of like all of that and all that growth of the early days. and missed Ethereum until early in 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 when the bear market hit. Like, I need to stick around. I need to make sure that I can basically make a kind of like make a name for myself.

Starting point is 00:29:45 You know, I know what happens. Like these things work in cycles. I'll just keep investing 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. And that was kind of like a plan that I had from early 2018. I'm like, I'm going to 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.

Starting point is 00:30:04 And I still haven't figured out what my next long-term thing is. Like, I'm doing the Daily Way and stuff, and I'm going to keep doing that for the foreseeable future. Same with like the ETH stuff and all that kind of stuff. But generally, I don't 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 it's kind of like being a weird thing for me lately where I've been like, okay, I achieved the goals that I set out for myself back in 2018, so where do I go from here? And that was kind of like, that spurred the daily way, but I kind of view the daily way as kind of

Starting point is 00:30:34 like, more of a, like, I don't know if I call it a hobby, but it's more of a kind of a kind of thing where 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 generally, 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, I don't plan to stop that. I don't really want to stop doing that at all. Like, as I said, like, I can't, I'm still very passionate about it.

Starting point is 00:31:02 And I, and 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 the foreseeable future. But there 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 have ideas around, you know, maybe trying to help people kind of like find jobs within crypto, starting like a not-for-profit.

Starting point is 00:31:22 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 that that i consider to be the best use of my time because not only do i do the daily way 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 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.

Starting point is 00:31:55 Like, there could be something grander that you could be doing. But I haven't exactly kind of figured out what that is just yet. Yeah. One of Eric Conner's metaphor is that he's given, I think you put this out on Twitter, is like Ethereum is like this blob thing, which was a reference to this 1950s horror movie about, it was terrible apparently. Never watched it. But this blob that ever, ever expanding, ever, like invasive, ever growing.

Starting point is 00:32:18 and like sometimes I talk to Ryan about just being absolutely drained with like what we do at bank lists and like it's like if you let it Ethereum will like invade every single point of your life and like 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

Starting point is 00:32:36 gain energy with Ethereum like you know injecting itself into your into your into your brain and so like it's kind of weird it's kind of funny just to notice like everyone else like we're we all getting excited about a theory of everyone gets excited about ethereum but like it just you just don't stop it's just like you're like i please please absorb me blob like take take all of me and take it all yeah yeah i mean i think for me the reason why i get more energy as time

Starting point is 00:33:07 goes on and as ethereum gets bigger is because i worked so hard during 18 19 and 2020 and even to this day to get to where ethereum is today to see this mass adoption happening and to see all these things coming to life, to see the Beacon Chango live, to see Layer 2 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 kind of like it charges me up every single day when I see these things. 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 I slept during kind of like the peak. of crypto because the US wakes up when I sleep and Europe still awake and everything like that.

Starting point is 00:33:54 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. Oh, you get like eight hours of chatting, but you get to consume it and like, Two hours or even less. Oh, that's interesting.

Starting point is 00:34:22 Exactly. And that literally charges me up. It's amazing. Like, I come to my computer and 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.

Starting point is 00:34:36 Defi summer was particularly pretty crazy where I'd wake up and it's like, okay, yams launched. Okay, Wi-Fi's 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 apian and stuff like that? But outside of that, there's also the tech stuff.

Starting point is 00:34:50 Like, Arbitrum went live while I was sleeping and I woke up. I'm like, yes, Arbitrim's live. Let's go try it out. Let's see what's happening. Let's see what people are saying about it. And it's because I'd be, and what makes it even more exciting when things kind of like go live or where kind of like updates happen is that I talk about it for so long. Like we've spoken about 1-559 since day one.

Starting point is 00:35:11 Like Eric is a co-author of the AIP. We spoke about it for a very long time. Not just Eric and I, but like you and the rest of kind of like the, the, um, the, the, um, the, 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 say, 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

Starting point is 00:35:40 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 and roll-ups were kind of relatively new but still talking about that seeing them go live and actually work and do what 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 crazy

Starting point is 00:36:17 this ecosystem gets. And also, because I know if I take a day off, I miss everything. Like, there's no days off in this industry. Like, and that may, may not sound appealing to a lot of people because they want to take a day off. They want to recharge. But 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.

Starting point is 00:36:36 This is the beauty of my time zone as well is that once I'm done, like by 2.3 p.m., 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 cool down 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 the same time,

Starting point is 00:37:01 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, like, uh, right in the, I guess the peak of the US. But then I'm like, okay, well, I go to bed now. I'll wake up and everything's going to be, you know, awesome again. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it's funny because, like, I had never experienced what it was like to basically live in the US time zone until, uh, what, August 2019 when I went to see the set team after I joined set

Starting point is 00:37:30 in July of 2019. 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?

Starting point is 00:37:41 Um, and it'd just be boring. So I'm actually, and this is another. people ask me, all 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 kind of routine that I have now. It's just, it's awesome. Like, really. And I don't know, there's probably some Australians that will listen to you and even Asia as well, similar time zone that will probably know what I'm talking about. But for anyone who has never experienced kind of like the time zone thing, you just

Starting point is 00:38:11 don't know how awesome it is to wake up to just like a flood of information and get to absorb. it because I mean for personally this is how I learn as well I overload my brain with things like to the point where 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'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 I'm going to absorb it it's kind of like yes give me all the information right and my brain will make sense of it as time goes on I don't care it's just crazy I mean I have six monitors in front of me and I have information everywhere because I just want to

Starting point is 00:38:45 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 keep going up as this ecosystem gets crazy. 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, 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

Starting point is 00:39:19 extremely in my my 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 in front of you and like you do the daily way every single day and then like when you talk about Ethereum like you can feel the excitement and feel like, and 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 they, I think you have like a pretty decent harness on like a pretty good like manic side of you.

Starting point is 00:39:59 And you've been able to like her like corral that and like inject that energy into like, well, okay, I've got I've got like this like, you know, moderately not too crazy manic side of me. And I'm just going to be manic about Ethereum. to me that's kind of like your branding. It's like Anthony Sizzano, manic about Ethereum. Yeah. I mean, that's actually a perfect way to put it. And, you know, it's funny.

Starting point is 00:40:25 You've actually hit the 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. We 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 be at my best. And that's because my brain's always being. behind you. Look how many colors there are. There are so many things. 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, because 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, um,

Starting point is 00:41:13 you know, I still think for me, and this is exactly actually why it's another issue is that I have struggle 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. You got trained for the first time in your week. Yeah, exactly. I just, 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, 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 commonly on the refuel because it's, it's not scripted. It's just like a stream of consciousness. I will commonly have to stop myself and be like, okay, wait, wait, I need to give this context first before I jump. to this because my brain has already gone to the point where I want to be, but I need to kind of slow it down.

Starting point is 00:42:18 And that's kind of becoming faster than the mouth. Exactly. And that's kind of become like an acquired skill that I had to kind of like teach myself because I realized that when I talk to a lot of people, I skipped a lot of much needed context. And that was definitely like a hard part for me to kind of like come to terms with. But I think it's yeah, it's definitely needed. But yeah, 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 kind of like more of a passion. It's just that I become obsessive with things and I kind of engrossed myself in them.

Starting point is 00:42:54 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 can kind of like do this. You could yield farm here. You can 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

Starting point is 00:43:14 and whatever but i i don't that's 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 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 right yeah everyone gets into this 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 some threshold of money like having that translate into

Starting point is 00:43:55 actual happiness gets harder and harder and harder right like I got myself an apartment that makes me happy and like 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 docs when i was when i was young uh my my it was my summer uh summer job in college maintaining a boat is like a huge pain so you don't want a boat you don't want a boat at all like no that's that like maybe it's cool but like the value the how hard you had to work for it because like you know boats are orders of magnitude more uh and like insert any noun here right there's just more orders of magnitude, like more expensive than like the typical things,

Starting point is 00:44:42 like an apartment in a car. And then like what you get out of it is actually, it is actually not that much. And so like you actually have to like reorient your attention. Because like the whole point of life is to like feel good, right? Like feel good. And however that is done, whether you like are hedonistic and you like drugs or you're altruistic and you like helping people, the whole point of life is to feel good. And like money only goes so far with that.

Starting point is 00:45:07 right? Like, diminishing returns hit real, real soon. Yeah. And, I mean, this, this kind of probably a perfect segue into, I'm not segue, but like a perfect kind of thing to kind of bring up like, who's the interviewer here? No, no. 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 they were 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 said.

Starting point is 00:45:39 Some people will fill it with religion. Some people will fill it with money. Some people will fill it with materialistic possessions. Some people will feel it with family and friends, whatever. But there's filling the hole for the short term, and then there's filling the whole 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 whatever.

Starting point is 00:45:59 Like, 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 stare at the stuff that I've, 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 feel that whole with with Ethereum, with with crypto, with my work that I do. But other people fill it 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

Starting point is 00:46:26 can keep compounding that. But the thing is, is you have diminishing returns. You can buy something, short term happiness. Okay, well, now got to 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. 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 get like really bad vices and addictions. And it's, and 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 put on, which is a big factor in as well. Diet

Starting point is 00:46:59 plays a massive factor in this. 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 it. buy new stuff and 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 stuff that, you know, while good while I was experiencing it, I paid the price later for that. Like I paid the price of, you know, just destroying my diet in the fact that I just had really bad mental issues.

Starting point is 00:47:26 I looked bad. Trying on clothes is always like really depressing whenever I went shopping, having to go to like the double Excel section and just like super, super depressing. So there's nothing for free, really. I mean, you kind of like pay the price for your decisions and you pay the consequences for them. So make better decisions and feel that hole with better long-term stuff that you actually enjoy doing and you can see yourself sustaining over the long-term and you'll be fine.

Starting point is 00:47:53 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 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. 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?

Starting point is 00:48:31 does does it lead to more happiness or does it lead to to you know less happiness and i think a lot of people fill this whole with with having a family which is totally fine but like is that going 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 going to 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 that's and like i'm not happy with the way 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 and I kind of look back on my whole life and be like

Starting point is 00:49:05 what did what did I do? Yeah, what did I do? Like I'm so, 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 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 privilege position to, you know,

Starting point is 00:49:29 the funny thing is for a lot of humanity's 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 going to get attacked if you don't defend it and stuff like that.

Starting point is 00:49:46 And that's true for a lot of the world still today. Like I'm talking from a privileged first world position but I also think that the fact that we've kind of like had all that stuff taking 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.

Starting point is 00:50:03 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 life a lot of the time. If you're 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.

Starting point is 00:50:19 Shout out. Stimulus checks. Yeah, exactly. Stuff like that. You know what I mean? And from that point of view and for that perspective, people just kind of like get going to, and 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, it's like the little robot from

Starting point is 00:50:40 Rick and Morty who asked what his purpose is. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So yeah, exactly. You have to find your, 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.

Starting point is 00:51:11 Like 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 kind of like procreating is taking care of us. like there's no need to worry about the baby. You go to a doctor. They tell you what's what. They tell you when you're due.

Starting point is 00:51:27 They tell you what's complicated about things. They tell you, you know, if it's dangerous. If you're going to give birth, you might die in childbirth. All that's taking care of, there's no risk anymore. Like, there's no kind of like, there's nothing for our brains to latch onto 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 taking care of, whatever.

Starting point is 00:51:46 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, increase depression, increase mental issues is because a lot of people just don't know how to deal with that. 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 concept of Ernest Becker's Denial of Death Theory, which I'll explain in the show. But it's basically a theory as to why people work and join teams, working 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

Starting point is 00:52:31 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. 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. The AVE protocol is a decentralized liquidity protocol on Ethereum, which allows users to supply and borrow certain crypto assets. AVE version 2 has a ton of cool features that makes using the AVE protocol even more powerful. With AVE, you can leverage the full power of DeFi Money Legos, yield, and composability all in one application. On AVE, there are a ton of assets that you can supply to the protocol in order to gain yield,

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Starting point is 00:54:35 bootstrapping pools, which can help you launch and distribute your token with day one liquidity. At Bankless, we use a liquidity bootstrapping pool to sell our BAPT to much success. V2 brings powerful new features that makes your money work even harder for you. idle tokens are capable of generating yield in Defi without sacrificing liquidity in the pool using asset managers. Balancer's vault architecture lets you trade between Balancer pools at a fraction of the cost versus other platforms. And you can even take advantage of dynamic fees which automatically adapt to changing market conditions. Balancer's mission is to become the primary source of liquidity in Defi by providing the most flexible and powerful platform for asset management and decentralized

Starting point is 00:55:17 exchange. Dive into the balancer pools at app. balancer. F.I. Have you heard of Ernest Becker? He's a philosopher, cultural anthropologist. He wrote this book called The Denial of Death.

Starting point is 00:55:33 And he talked about, like, you talked about, like, people fill it, 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, but like it talks a lot about tribalism and all, and meaning and ascribing symbols to things. And he talks about like organized religions

Starting point is 00:56:01 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 in baseball, soccer, of 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.

Starting point is 00:56:27 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 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 subconsciousness. And when you wake up in the morning, you can't think of like,

Starting point is 00:56:51 oh, I really don't want to die. Therefore, I will go do this. Right. Like, that's just too paralyzing. But, like, 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.

Starting point is 00:57:07 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. Like, the whole cryptocurrency revolution is about building systems that can last

Starting point is 00:57:27 way longer than we can even imagine, right? Like, not, not centuries, but like multiple, multiple centuries, fuck, maybe even a thousand years, right?

Starting point is 00:57:36 And so, like, when you consider that we are on, like, the bootstrapping phases of, 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,

Starting point is 00:57:49 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. 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 religion morphs and change shape

Starting point is 00:58:12 so the symbols change but the point still stands right and so like there is immense amount of opportunity to latch on to like this symbol that can last like far more generations than we can count and so like that I think that's why there's always like this such

Starting point is 00:58:27 why crypto 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 guest team are so like like they kind of feel like 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

Starting point is 00:58:49 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 they built it in the first place yeah i mean 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 100 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

Starting point is 00:59:29 balance is going to be correct in 100 years or whatever. Or like, wherever you pass down your crypto two, they're going to be able to have that in 100 years, and no one has been able to take that away from new, 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, 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. Yeah, exactly, different interpretations. But at least we have that on there and it's a permanent system through time where we can look back on

Starting point is 01:00:02 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 relative certainty that this is the truth, right? This is actually what happened here. It didn't get altered by any central party to say something else or to reflect something else. And that is really the crux of it, I think, is that that permanence, 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 where we were alive is still there. Like, all the stuff that I've done on Ethereum, in a thousand years,

Starting point is 01:00:36 potentially could still be there, right? All my transactions, everything. I'm long gone. I'm not there anymore. But my history is, like the history of who I was, it 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 etched into kind of this thing as a permanence thing.

Starting point is 01:00:53 And this, I mean, you go through history. Look at the people 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

Starting point is 01:01:12 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 to the systems that are actually truly decentralized is that I know that, at least I can have relative certainty, that these things are going to be around in 100, 200, 300, 300 years, whereas a lot of these other things, I don't know that.

Starting point is 01:01:32 And I don't know if someone's messing with it or changing it or doing something, exerting central control over it. And I think that's actually the extreme point for Bitcoin is. 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, they don't want kind of anyone being able to change to change anything. They're happy with the way it is.

Starting point is 01:01:51 They're happy with that permanence. 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. They're not like, I mean, Ethereum's not 10 years old, but Bitcoin's like, what, 12, 11 years old. They're not 100 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

Starting point is 01:02:15 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 Dow hack and stuff like that. But that was even earlier on in life. Like it was like a year into Ethereum's life. I think we're building systems to last hundreds of years. That'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 people and yeah i mean that's a really good way of putting i never thought about it like that and now it'll make sense yeah i mean it's also a

Starting point is 01:02:50 convenient model to frame like why security on a theorem is so important and not only security in the in terms of like you know uh the specific specifications as to 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 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, like, there's that one of,

Starting point is 01:03:34 about like the sweet spot where a planet can be away from a sun based 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 and the also you talked about the pyramids uh ernest becker like one of the the greatest example of the 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 not 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 in just like the network size.

Starting point is 01:04:18 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? system. Yeah. And it's funny because like when you point out these issues with with Bitcoin sustainability, people say, oh, we don't have to worry about that for 10 or 20 years. 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. But we'll be 40. Like, that's not that

Starting point is 01:04:52 old. Yeah. Yeah. And and 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

Starting point is 01:05:32 Ethereum as well. It's like it's it's it's more sustainable in my eyes than than even Bitcoin. I actually have more confidence that Ethereum in its in its kind of like current 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 was to change. And I know that like 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 that issuant, 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

Starting point is 01:06:09 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 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 clear overlap. And Vatalaik has actually funded this research.

Starting point is 01:06:40 I think he's donated $10 million to the Sands Institute, probably done other donations. And he's written about, I'm 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 real? reality. Why not fix death or cure death? Why not treat death like any other disease that we cure? And I mean, that post had a point. It's like, okay, well, let's do it. 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

Starting point is 01:07:11 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 extend our lifespans out indefinitely. And I think we can. I actually think it's possible. I don't think, uh, it's 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 you don't die of old age you die of a disease that you got when you were old yeah exactly exactly and it's because like 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 getting it to the point where

Starting point is 01:07:50 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 of the machine, you can. And 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 pushing back the date of our death to effectively like being immortal? And there's philosophical questions about that. is like, is that actually desirable? Can society survive with a population that, sorry, with a,

Starting point is 01:08:28 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 through time and that's how, the wheel, kind of like. Yeah, exactly. It's basically the will. But can that continue with 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, that, that, that, that, that's definitely just because we, we, we're obsessed with permanent systems.

Starting point is 01:09:06 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. I do know that Vitalik does actually take some of these supplements, I guess you would call them,

Starting point is 01:09:30 that long jump the researchers have, like, kind of given the unofficial, like, green check mark on. And so, like, he, not only does he a believer in funder in this thing, but, like, he's actually taking, like, meaningful steps of his own, like, you know, well-being to attempt to get to living forever, right? And it's, it's, 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, diet 80 to diet like 110. But like between now and then we'll think of even more things. And then that will buy me more time for people to think of even more things, which will buy me even more time. And then eventually it's just some process of, like, kicking the can down the road. And you just, ultimately, you just kick the can down the road forever and find ways to, like, never actually have to, like, leave the can behind, right?

Starting point is 01:10:26 You just keep on kicking the can. And so there's some sort of joke or juxtaposition here about, like, Vitalik, the guy that designed the everlasting economic system. And then also, like, figured out a way to live forever so he can just ride this economic system into, like, the sunset. Which would be a phenomenal story. Yeah, 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 centuries and so can this system, but he doesn't have any control over it. He can't exert central control, which is actually amazing. I love that.

Starting point is 01:11:03 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 have created it, right? He's etched into that forever. 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, at that point he probably doesn't even have any influence over it. He's probably working on something else. I mean, his social cloud would be absolutely insane, but other than that. Yeah. But yeah, but other than that, you know, the system itself would be, if it works as kind of like we want it to

Starting point is 01:11:35 work, would 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 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 life potentially. It's cool. It's a wash with the beer that I drink, so call it even. Yeah, yeah. That's the thing. Like I'm, I like personally, I try to take a little bit more care of my health, trying to kind of like lose extra weight as I, if I put it on or try to

Starting point is 01:12:13 exercise more. It's kind of been hard with COVID and the lockdowns and things like that. But generally, 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, which I think should be the goal for everyone. But 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 are some supplements and stuff. 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 a tend with the risks of doing it being that, you know, you may kill yourself in the process.

Starting point is 01:12:48 Might have jumped the gun too soon on some of the things. Like, it turns out that wasn't the right one, not the right experiment. Yeah, it turns out that gave me cancer. It turns out that made my heart give out, right? Steve Jobs ate a fruit-only diet and turns out he gave himself cancer for that on the quest of like living, curing immortality. Exactly. So there's going to be like a lot of that happening.

Starting point is 01:13:10 So, and then eventually, you know, maybe in 100 years, we, we, we, we, 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 we all just kind of like survive based on previous generations and I think it's a scary thought because you know 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.

Starting point is 01:13:45 But at the same time, it's kind of like cool because we get to be part of it. We get to be like etched into history. And it goes back to, I guess, 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. 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 way?

Starting point is 01:14:06 Like, well, I think we actually might have found our answer. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, yeah, I mean, there's the fine 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 always really like. Because, I mean, people who follow me and probably listen to all the stuff that I probably only

Starting point is 01:14:23 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 just like all kinds of new advances in medicine. And I actually thought it was really cool how fast we got like a vaccine for COVID, like the fastest ever.

Starting point is 01:14:52 I'm just super interested in that. But like it's kind of hard to keep up with everything. Don't say we, brother. You're in Australia. Oh, God. Hey, no, I think I think an Australian came up with the AstraZeneca vaccine or is least one of the people that came up with it. So, yeah, I think so.

Starting point is 01:15:10 Yeah, yeah. So that's cool. But 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 the theorem alone is like a more than a full-time job now. So yeah. All right, man. Well, I definitely appreciate your time and coming and chatting on me with me on layer zero. Yeah, thanks for having me, man. I'm sure people will hear my voice on the live streams that we do

Starting point is 01:15:32 or any further like bankless stuff that we do. 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? We already got two of them scheduled. One for couple months and then one for six months. They're already on the menu. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Maybe Eric will join us again for the next one. Like, he missed the last one, but yeah, I'm sure he was eating the popcorn while he was watching it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I think he's more bullish these days. So maybe, but anyway, yeah, thanks on JPEGs. Yeah, exactly. Oh, man, cool. All right, well, I'm getting a little bit loopy because it's coming into my, my bedtime. So Anthony, great, great having

Starting point is 01:16:10 you on layer zero, sir. You're at, you're a testament to. Ethereum and thank you for everything that you do. Thank you.

Bankless - Anthony Sassano | Layer Zero

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