Bankless - Arbitrum’s Stylus with Steven Goldfeder | ETHDenver 2023 Interview #7

Starting point is 00:00:12 We are at the Axilar Interoperability Summit, where now I'm going to talk to Stephen Goldfetter of Arbitrum, specifically about stylists, this new thing that is creating what they are calling EVM Plus. So if you want to code on solidity on Arbitrum, you still can. But if you also want to code on Arbitrum, you can code with any other language that exists, which I didn't know was possible, but apparently it is now with Arbitrum Stilis. But I also talked to him about the Layer 2 wars, which are getting spicier and spicier these days, especially as optimism's got their super chain, ZK Sync has their hyper chain. What does Arbitrum have in their back pocket?

Starting point is 00:00:47 Do they got something? And Steven is going to come right back with his answer about that question right after we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Cracken is our strategic sponsor for 2023. Why? Because Cracken has been around for over 12 years and has proven itself to be deeply aligned with the crypto industry. Trusted centralized crypto platforms are hard to come by these days, which makes the few remaining ones even more valuable.

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Starting point is 00:02:09 other than Uniswap. Uniswap is of course a decentralized exchange for crypto asset trades and swaps, but it's now also an NFT aggregator as well, making Uniswap some of the best decentralizing trading tech that's out there. Uniswap's big announcement at Eith Denver is their Uniswap wallet, which is waiting to get released to the public as soon as Apple stops being a big old bully about crypto apps in the app store. Uniswap is basically on every chain that's relevant in the crypto ecosystem, so if you want to use Uniswap, but with the cheapest possible fees, then use Uniswap on Arbitrum. Arbitrum layer two is the host of Ethereum's most vibrant defy and NFT communities. Arbitrum is already surpassing the ETH layer one in transaction volume,

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Starting point is 00:03:21 and I'm talking with Stephen Goldfinner of Arbache from Steven. How's the got, my man? Great, great to be here. You just came off of a panel. What was that about? The panel was about interoperability among roll-ups, but that was the topic of the panel, but also it of course had, you know,

Starting point is 00:03:34 the roll-up team was talking about what they want to talk about. So it was a fun panel in which we discussed everything you roll up, some spice of interoperability. Yeah, I'm sure the Layer 2 wars have, we've been talking about the Layer 2 wars heating up for like 18 months now, and now other people are also starting to say that. So now, you know, it's really getting spicy these days. You guys always have it first.

Starting point is 00:03:50 Yeah. Okay, so the first thing I want to talk about is Stylus, because I kind of get it, and I think it's a very big deal. I'm pretty sure it's a very big deal, but I'd like to hear it from you. What is stylists, and why is it such a big deal? Yeah, so Stylis is our, what we call EVM Plus, and the idea is that Arbitrum is that Arbitrum is,

Starting point is 00:04:06 and will always remain fully EVM compatible or EVM equivalent you might want to say. But then the question we ask ourselves is, can we do more? Can we be more inclusive? Like the EVM is a starting point and a wonderful starting point, but can we make affordances that are, you know,

Starting point is 00:04:21 more inclusive and are bringing in more developers? You know, people always talk about they want the next billion users. And my thesis is to get the next billion users, we need the next million developers. And how do we target to those? And like always, our goal is, let's move to them rather than asking them to move to us.

Starting point is 00:04:35 So what Stylist does is it says, hey, let's add additional language support alongside the EVM, which is why we call it EVM plus, to arbitram. So now you're not in the initial release of Stylist, the sky is the limit, but the initial release you'll be able to not only write contracts in solidity or any other EVM language, but you'll be able to write contracts in Rust C and C++. And the coolest thing is that you can talk to each other in these contracts, or you can even break your contract up and say, I'm going to write that part in solidity. part in C++ or that part in Ross or use that Rust library.

Starting point is 00:05:09 And by doing so, you'll actually get a 10x, besides for the developer experience and all that, you'll get a 10x cost benefit as well. So really exciting update for us. Okay, so the main, the TLDR, is that developers know languages. Most developers don't know solidity, but with stylists, they can still write smart contracting code using Silas. Exactly. You know, today it's very much a binary choice.

Starting point is 00:05:31 You might say, I want to write contracts in Ross, and you'll have to go to the chain that supports Ross. or I might want to write contracts and move. Okay, there are one or two chains that support move. Our goal is to say, no, no, you want to choose the ecosystem you want to be on. The language shouldn't be the determining factor. So you can build an arbitrarum if you want to be an arbitrum, and you can use, you know, in the long term, whatever language that you want to use.

Starting point is 00:05:52 And by the way, it's also for solidity developers as well, because they might say, like, hey, I want to use this super, you know, cool cryptographic tool, but it's just too expensive in the EVM. Can I create my own pre-compile in Rust and do this? and the answer with Stylus will be yes you can. So it's bringing in these new developers and giving tools and scalability option to the existing developers.

Starting point is 00:06:12 Okay, the answer to this question might get over my head, but I'm going to ask it anyways. Technically, how does that work? How does that, like, compile down to smart contract by code? How does that work? Great question. So the key innovation here was with our launch of Arbitrum Nitro, the way we do our fraud proofs change.

Starting point is 00:06:31 So it used to be we had something called the Arbitrum virtual machine, which was a custom virtual machine. It's very similar to the EVM, optimized for proving, and the on-chain proofs we're actually running that virtual machines code. With Nitro, we got rid of all

Starting point is 00:06:47 that. And on-chain, we're actually running not our own VM, but WebAssembly or WASIM, which is like the VM of the internet, all the web browsers use it. So how do we get EVM support? We compile GEF, which is the Go-Eetherium node, the popular Ethereum node, down to

Starting point is 00:07:03 Wazim, and what's actually happening on chain is we're not arguing about the EVM directly, we're arguing about the state of GIF on this WebAssembly virtual machine. So the cool thing is, and I'm going to gloss over the details, but hopefully I'll give you the idea, is you can now say, we're not limited to GF, anything that can compile down to this underlying machine. So if you have a WOSIM compiler for your language, and hey, Ross C, C++, almost every language does, because WOSM is a very mature technology, you can now, you know, with some

Starting point is 00:07:35 details run in on Arbitrum as well. Okay, I actually did follow most of that. Awesome. I'm kind of proud of myself on that one. Not too long ago, Arbitum recently acquired Prismatic Labs. Was that talent acquisition part of this story of Silas? The Prismatic Labs is, you know, we're integrated very, very well, but fundamentally as a company, we're very committed to continuing L1 development. You know, we're doing a ton of work for EIP 444 and getting that ready. And so their team is, is while it's very well integrated and we have a meeting of the minds and we talk about all ideas, both ways, their team is very focused on L1 priorities. And we work together again.

Starting point is 00:08:13 It's not exclusive. So no, this was not really... So this was already an effort by Arbitrum prior to all that. And so like that would be back or higher, if that's the right word. That wasn't really about the stylist project. It wasn't about the stylist project, but I don't want to actually limit, like, definitely like Raoul and others on their team have contributed to stylists. Like, there is that meaning of the minds, but it was. wasn't like we're acquiring this talent.

Starting point is 00:08:37 It was really an acquisition. We wanted to develop Prism, and that's one of our ways that we say, how do we contribute more to the Ethereum community? Having a dedicated funding source for Prism was important to us, but also just the meaning of the minds, right? The conversations that happen between these teams is just incredible. Cool, yeah. I remember talking to both Raoul and Preston about Silas,

Starting point is 00:08:57 and the excitement just exuded from them in my chats with them. So that was really cool. And they had, you know, they did contribute a lot to the ideas behind it, well. Certainly. And so like the, I'm going to put my ETH Maxi hat on. You talked about like there's the move language, there's the Rust language, but now you're saying with stylus, you can bring any language in. Does this kind of just like invalidate the idea of programming specific blockchain environments as in like now any developer from any ecosystem can come and build on arbitram? Yes. So this basically says any developer from any ecosystem again, starting with

Starting point is 00:09:29 these three additional languages, but it will be more over time, can develop an arbitram. And but the cool thing is the EVM hell is a crystal has a critical role from our security. This is happening on layer two. What's securing us is the EVM on layer one. So, you know, it's, we're making the user experience better, but the thing that's making this all possible is Ethereum layer

Starting point is 00:09:48 one, the EVM contracts we have and those are still written in EVM. Okay, very, very cool. So like, I remember back in the day, the Wasam, was on the roadmap for the Ethereum Layer 1. I think it's since been jettisoned. Is this the

Starting point is 00:10:03 layer two of Ethereum starting to adopt some of the innovation that was previously going to be on the layer one? Or is that a different story? Yes, there was, uh, yeah, it's a really good memory. There was its Ewas and project, um, which was basically going after a very similar vision that we have, that we have today. Um, for different reasons that project was abandoned. But to, to the point, I don't believe it was because like people, like, you know, didn't want it or we're interested to just, you know, these things are hard, particularly on layer one. And that's one of the things, we have the ability to innovate on layer two in ways that, you know, in a system like Ethereum, are more difficult.

Starting point is 00:10:35 So this is very much that same vision. It's a bit harder, to be honest, on layer two, because you have to make everything work with the fraud proofs. So just if you had, you know, layer one note, it's a bit easier. I'm not saying it's easier to get the consensus around it, but it's easier to implement. And, you know, one thing which I think is possible, with this feature and more generally,

Starting point is 00:10:53 I think layer twos can become sort of innovation grounds for layer one. So if this turns out to be an off-desired feature and a heavily used feature, there's nothing stopping Ethereum from saying, hey, Arbitrum has proven that there's a good need for this and a good community. Can we do this on layer one as well? That's totally something that's possible to happen. And it wouldn't be a technical challenge to giving a community consensus challenge. Sure.

Starting point is 00:11:18 I want to pivot the conversation a little bit to what I've discovered is like this new meta. I've been using the meta word quite a lot in all these interviews. This interoperability conference is all about abstraction layers between many, many chains. people are getting chain fatigue, but abstraction layer solves that chain fatigue. And this is something that optimism is really pushing forward with their super chain. I know ZK.Sink has their fractal scaling. So optimism has super chain.

Starting point is 00:11:43 ZK.C.C. has fractal scaling. Does Arbitrum have something like this in the same pipeline? Are you guys going after that same effort? So let me answer that question in two parts. Sure. Yes, we have, and I'll leak some alpha here, we'll probably be announced in the first one in a week or two. We have layer three chains that are coming to Arbitrum

Starting point is 00:12:01 that will have better interoperability than others. But we don't have, we're not branding that as a super chain or as an interoperability solution generally, and let me explain why. It's basically what you said in your question. You know, the optimism team says, hey, here's our super chain. You know, it's a way that all OP stack chains can work together and you can add ZK proofs.

Starting point is 00:12:21 It's a nice theory, but there are so many strong builders in this case in the space. There's us, there's, you know, you mentioned ZK Sync, Cynch, you mentioned StarCware, Polygon. This is not something that one team can dictate. You know, even arbitram, you know, we're in a very strong position. We don't feel like we can dictate that. We have to really get them work together because your point is, like, you know, optimism has their super chain.

Starting point is 00:12:41 ZK. Sync has their hyperchain. I think they're calling it now. You know, Polygon has, you know, their thing, which is supernet. Internet and blockchains, yeah. And StarCware will definitely let you know that they invented the term layer three, too. Yes. And the point is, you know, we just end up with the same debate one step further. Right now it's arbitram optimism, ZK. Sync.

Starting point is 00:13:00 And now it's, no, it's, Rortem optimism, ZK. anthropovibati decision, pure and through our, so we're not going to enter that space unilaterally. What I want to do, and I've been doing reach out and I think it's important, is to say, hey, all roll-up teams, let's think about, not how we make a super chain of chains that build my technology, how do we make a super chain of chains or whatever the term is or a hyperchain or I don't care, I'm agnostic. Chain, chain, chain, chain. There you go.

Starting point is 00:13:23 How do we make one that integrates all of our technology, and there's some serious technical challenges here, but I think that can't be dictated by one team. and that's not the approach we're going to go. And I'd encourage others to really sit around the big table because otherwise we just have the same debate, one step up the stack. We're all arguing for our interoperability solutions and we haven't really gotten anywhere.

Starting point is 00:13:41 Sure. So again, I feel like I'm about to ask a question that's going to be over my head. How do all of these layer two chains that have all of their chaney chained aness on top of them? How do those technically all start to talk to each other to talk about that vision you said? So it's a really good question.

Starting point is 00:13:55 And there are some, you know, a lot of these like super chain things they brush up over some of the technical details. Like one question is a shared security question. How do we really get shared security if there are different security models? Does it just evolve to the lowest security if you're sort of sharing a bridge? There are very hard questions. And to be honest, I don't have all the answers. But I think one thing which we can do is to start, you know, it's too early to standardize. You know, half these technologies are not even launched yet. But I think we can start saying,

Starting point is 00:14:20 how do we build in a way that will make standardization easy in the future? So I think it's really that. It's a conversation and say, we all want to work together because fundamentally the people that benefit we work together are the users. And that's the ones we really want to serve. So how do we put our own brand second and users first and say, hey, I might think your technology is terrible or I don't like you. It's Ethereum, so we're all a little more friendly than that. But fundamentally, how do we work together?

Starting point is 00:14:44 And I think it's a very technical conversation. And unlike some others, I'm not coming here with an answer. I'm coming here and saying we need to have that conversation. Sure. Stephen, I think this is great. Is there anything else that I have not asked you about yet that is worth talking about? Nothing else.

Starting point is 00:15:00 You know, we're super excited to keep on building the Arbitrum ecosystem. I say nothing else then I start talking. So sorry about that. That's great. This is perfect. The Arbitrum ecosystem is growing.

Starting point is 00:15:08 You know, we're excited about, you know, particularly in D5, but also NFTs and gaming. We are doing a ton of, you know, volume and a ton of value coming to the chain and a ton of teams building on the chain. So for anyone out there watching, come building the Arbitrum ecosystem.

Starting point is 00:15:21 We're excited to have you. And come build an Ethereum. That's the real goal here. And we'll find a way, whether you're on Arbitrum or not, via cross-chain consensus to work together and make sure we can all build this future together. Stephen, thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Starting point is 00:15:35 Cheers.

Bankless - Arbitrum’s Stylus with Steven Goldfeder | ETHDenver 2023 Interview #7

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