Bankless - Bankless Takes | Solana vs Ethereum

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

In a brand new format, we discuss everything about Solana. From David's experience at the Solana Breakpoint conference, Solana vs Ethereum, and a mildly heated exchange with Chris Burniske, we try to wrap our heads around the big question: What does SOL look like in the upcoming Bull Market? How should we feel about it? 🏹 Airdrop Hunter is HERE, join your first HUNT today https://bankless.cc/JoinYourFirstHUNT ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE ⁠https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2  ⁠ 🦊METAMASK PORTFOLIO | MANAGE YOUR WEB3 EVERYTHING ⁠https://bankless.cc/MetaMask  ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  ⁠ 🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/Toku  🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE ⁠https://bankless.cc/uniswap  🔗 CELO | CEL2 COMING SOON https://bankless.cc/Celo  ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro  4:15 David at Solana Breakpoint https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1719731518514323487  10:00 Ethereum vs Bitcoin 13:30 Social Media Distortion 15:30 Solana vs Ethereum https://x.com/cburniske/status/1720891618709176633  20:10 Layer 2s vs Solana https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1720437160409502084  24:30 Ryan Gets Ratio’d https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams/status/1721702916552065458  https://twitter.com/mattytay/status/1721886832743604225  27:45 Solana Value Capture https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1720492407567823345  29:00 Chris Burniske https://imgur.com/366zoAA  https://imgur.com/MozScOa  32:00 Things Get Heated https://imgur.com/U38Fgkh  34:12 Blockchain Agnostic 36:00 The Answer with SOL https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1721948544662422013  38:00 Chain Usage with Polynya https://polynya.mirror.xyz/BR8SGLdB97fYbyzQU2FP_RrHjLlClgibMJyosL0orl4  39:45 Bankless’ Final Take 42:55 Closing Remarks ----- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures 

Welcome to Bankless Bites, a new weekly show out of Bankless, a little like the weekly roll-up, but more opinions, less news, closer to touching on the conversations that are going around crypto of the week, or really whatever me and Ryan want to talk about. If you don't like our opinions, this show is probably not for you, unfiltered, sometimes wrong, always fun, three to five topics every single week trying to get it under 30 minutes. Always an ambitious endeavor. This is our first rodeo on this show. so this show will change and adapt,

but the idea of the show is to be pretty raw and uncut. No filter. Ryan, what are we talking about this week? We got four topics of the week, David. Number one, I want to talk to you about bankless breakpoints. Okay, actually, bankless showed up at breakpoints

and you went. And a lot of people were upset about that. How dare you? Other people liked it. Yeah. Also, Solana versus Ethereum, that has been the subject this week all over crypto Twitter.

And I think that's where we're getting inspiration from the show, honestly. It's like things that people are talking about on crypto Twitter. That we've got to do a feelings check-in because you are disappointed with somebody this week. I believe you have some disappointment with Chris Berninski. Yeah, with that.

I want to unpack that. I'm going to see where that comes from, get into the kind of emotional layer of that. David's disappointed with dad. Also, what should bankless do about Solana? That has been a conversation that I think we need to have. David, before we get in, you're going to speed run through the ad, so let's play it.

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I want to tap into why you decided to go to a Salana conference in the first place. A lot of people said bankless showed up. I think because you are a representative of bankless, I would say that that's true. We showed up. Yet also it was you. It wasn't the rest of the team. I didn't show up, for instance. It almost sounds like I'm making excuses for this or something or like I'm patting in some way. But oh my God, you just went to a conference. Who cares? But somehow this shows some significance. Anyway, give me the context of like, why did you decide to go to this thing anyway? Yeah, there's like so much context. First, it was like, I signed up for this talk at Heath Lisbon. I wanted to go to East Lisbon.

I was going to go to Turkey afterwards for DevConnect. And then, like, Salana Breakpoint was just like, oh, it's just like in Amsterdam. And it's like two days before. So I'll just go two days earlier. And just like, why not? Then I canceled my DevLisbonic plans. But that's a different story. The other answer is just like, you say that, like, people were disappointed and that I went to Salana.

And I don't really want to, like, over-emphasize that. I think, like, some people are like, some Ethereum people are like, yo, why, you guys legitimizing what we consider to be an illegitimate project. But I think it feels like, imagine if a Democrat went to, showed up at a Republican conference. Yeah. It's like the tribal games are saying that. I don't think that really scales it out to like all of Ethereum,

but yes, some people are like, what are you doing? And granted, this is the first non-Etherium conference that I've ever gone to, right? Like either I go to something like totally neutral, like Missouri Main Net or I go to Ethereum events. So this is like a step out.

Like why? What was my motivation? It's like, well, Solana is having a narrative moment in this present time. Soul Price is pumping. I decided to go before Soul Price moved. I bought my ticket like months ago. I just like I don't know how to get a vibe for Solana that isn't through Twitter, which is a terrible place to get a Salana vibe.

because the Salana community, like, owns the Salana narrative on crypto Twitter at this present moment. And then also, like, my Ethereum circles aren't going to do it either. And so, like, how do I go figure out for myself what Salon is and what's real and what's real and who goes to Salon to conferences and how many people go? I just had to go see for it for myself. And also, Amsterdam is a nice city. Before I ask you to vibe check, because I want to hear a bit more about, like, your impressions, your takeaways from this, though, is just like, I'll note that you you've been to Ethereum conferences. You've been to kind of generic, you know,

blockchain crypto conferences before. But you haven't gone to like a Cardano conference, for example. I don't think Cardano conferences exist. And I would also not go to one. Okay. Or a Tezos conference, for instance. Okay. So what about Solana?

So what is different? I mean, if you talk to some people, they'll say there's really only a few communities that are really building. One is, of course, Ethereum and its layer two ecosystem. and others is Cosmo still building in Salana. Is it as simple as that, that there's just signs of life? And then, by the way, Cardano people would say, you're missing this whole world out there,

you know, bankless idiots and shills and morons. And you should come see what we're building. But you went to Salana, you didn't go to these other events. Why? The only answer I have is like that Solana seems to have captured a narrative. And there are people that I respect and trust in this base that say that like what Salonah's building is real. And these are people like our friend, Mike Epolito from Blockworks, for example, and John Charbonneau, who will also like kind of

pad is like, well, you know, Salonathek is good. The why are people investing in the ecosystem, I think is like not, it's not, it's not a full Salana bullcase, but like, Solana has some sort of narrative. They have a narrative that separates them from Tesos or Cardano or they're also like building. I mean, there's stuff being built, right? Yeah, there's stuff being built. Yes. Um, yeah. And I, they have, Solana has occupied a certain part of the design space that no one else has. Uh, and, and, I mean, that's also true for every other ecosystem, but I don't know. I think, like, the Solana movement, Solana effort is unique and has captured certain set of builders and mindshare of, at least in the narrative space. And this is something we'll talk about later, but just like, they've, they've captured some sort of territory.

and I want to go see why. Okay, so give me your takeaways. What's the, how does it contrast from, say, an Ethereum conference? Yeah, like the average Solana person, and I would call like this low-level systems engineer, system developers, like the X, Tesla, X, Apple, X, SpaceX, type of people that are just, like, software builders that are very tapped into what hardware is. And like this should come as no surprise. like Solana is all about hardware, hardware, hardware.

And I just want to, and this is like the people that I'm meeting and the takeaways that I have. And I get in there, Anatoly's giving his main stage talk to on the opening day, followed by like they do like the whole parade of people, like all the community leaders, all the builder leaders. And like the one thing I noticed, it was hard not to notice is like they're kind of doing like main stage jabs at a theory. Like in the opening keynote programming of like the first five talks that lasted like the first hour hour and 20 minutes like there was a handful of like jokes jabs at ethereum just like and like we're doing more transactions per second than any layer three on Ethereum right like why do we don't need layers blah blah blah blah blah so like it's interesting that you say that because like I would say in the earlier days of Ethereum conferences there were definitely jabs towards Bitcoin right it's like were there? Yeah. I don't think that the entire community was like in contrast to Bitcoin. But like, you know, Bitcoiners didn't believe that Ethereum could run, you know, a full node. A full node. For instance, they were getting confused with the difference between an archive node and have, you know, full node, stuff like this. Like, there were definitely some kind of light, light jabs for sure. My difference for why this is different versus that versus this is that Bitcoiners, Bitcoin Maximilus, were just. creating absolutely just off-based falsehoods along the lines of you can't run Ethereum full note. It was just not even, it was actually straight up delusion. And so when like,

and I don't know if, but that, like, Ethereum jabs at Bitcoin wasn't on the main stage. Like that was in the crowds. Right. That's what, that's what I would say. Anyways. So what else? What else? Um, if, uh, 1,500 people is a rough gut check, 1,000 to 1,500 people, I think, hosted in this town that's pretty far away from actual Amsterdam, like a 20 to 30 minute drive, because they had, like, this entire campus. It was actually kind of a good move.

So if you're going to, Solano was like a four-day conference. And so if you're going to be at this four-day conference, it was like a campus with different buildings, and you could go from building to building to building. And so they kind of, like, had this territory that was all to themselves and, like, different themes and different buildings, right? Did you feel like at any point you were, like, behind enemy lines?

you were like inviting another tribe? Was there ever the sense that? No, no. Here's the bankless guy. Here's an Ethereum guy and what's he doing in a conference? Or was it very welcoming and... I've been behind enemy lens before. Back in my old POV days, I went to a Bitcoin meetup in San Francisco where it was me,

CK, my old Bitcoins or co-host of the POV crypto podcast and 50 bitcoins, including like people like Pierre Richard. That were totally on CK's side, not your side. Oh, there were Bitcoiners, bro. It was the, it was the Bitcoiners. Bitcoin Maximus probably. Yes. It would do this. Because I'm a bitcoiner. It was like Pierre Richard and.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Yes. That's a Bitcoin right there. And Bitstein. Like everyone was a bit coiner. And like, yeah, there were some like teases, but it was very welcoming. And if the Bitcoin Maxis can accept, and this was in 2019, if the Bitcoin Maxis can accept Ethereum into their circle, I just

knew that like this the tribal warfare on Twitter is does not show up in real life and I had very strong convictions about that and I just always know that that's true and so going to the salon conference it wasn't really going to it was a little bit like oh david from bankless is that this alonac conference it's a little bit of that but it's mostly just like I got the same level of like uh it's great to see you recognition and your podcast like and you you don't get this a lot because you don't go to in real life conferences but just like in real life there's just no toxicity People are nice. People are nice. People like, and I got an equal amount of just like, hey, thanks for doing what you guys do.

You guys got me into crypto. I got that like at an equal amount at the Solana conference as I do it as any Ethereum conference. Yeah, I think that's going to be a theme for the rest of this episode, which is just like peering in on social media. Do you know Sam Harris, he quit Twitter. He's somebody's podcast. I listen to you a lot. And he describes like social media and Twitter specifically as like a fun house mere distortion of reality. And so you look into it.

And the shape, the person reflecting back at you is just like this distorted, misfigured, like, perception of a person. And that's true when you look at other people through the fun house mirror of social media, Twitter specifically. And people are just not like this in real life. There's a tendency to think, like, if you go on crypto Twitter, right now especially, I think it's gotten worse in the last since I've joined crypto. It is a cesspool of toxicity. That's the way it feels. Or it's just like shilling. It's like short term. It's like, it is not real life. Right. And I wonder if there's an element, David, that we're like, we're all in crypto. We're like two online. And we just like don't have real conversations, long form conversations in real life. Here's a guy who's always in the office. But even think a podcast, Zoom, people are not assholes on Zoom. The way they are on Twitter. Great. But then also they were throwing mainstay jabs at an opposing ecosystem. So like it's a little bit of both, right? But what's wrong with that? What's wrong with the little. Also, we need to move on to the next subject

because we need to have a... The next subject is the same subject, David. But I will say just like, Ethereum people, I think, have some sort of like responsibility in creating that in Solana. Because, I mean, Ethereum versus Salon tribes have been fighting for years now.

And Ethereum people like learn to cut their teeth against Bitcoiners and then they turn that against Solana. And like, we're kind of good at it, but Solana learned to be really good at it. And now they're biting that. Oh, so they're really good at being the underdog is what you're saying. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

And so, like, we, I think Ethereum people have some sort of, like, we kind of taught them what, how to behave. And so now they're better at us. And they're kind of better at it than us. All right. Well, let's move on. It's a different topic. It's still the same topic.

So Salana versus Ethereum. That has been the big conversation this week. And I think one of the standout tweets from this week was Solana Bull. Also, Ethereum Bolt, I should say. Also Bitcoin bull. Okay, so you could be bullish on multiple assets. Do you know that, David? No.

You can. And Chris Berninski is, in particular, he's bullish not only on Sol the asset and Ethereum and Ether the asset, but on the Soul over Ethereum, kind of the ratio here. So this tweet I'll lead with. From its 2022 bottom, Soul has now outperformed ETH 3X. This cycle, Soul has been, likely will continue to be the faster horse. This is the context. So people are observing this sole price run up and they're looking at Ethereum. And they're saying Ethereum is like the horse and buggy. And Solana is the Ferrari.

And like Sol is going to be like the new, the new savior of the bull market. It's going to like, not necessarily overtake Ethereum, but it's going to be the primary driver here. I guess that's the context of this whole crypto Twitter soul versus Ethereum thing. So. what do you think about this? Yes. Okay. Part of my current interpretation of Solana is like it's all it's a lot of people taking positions in Solana on the narrative. Solana will likely to be the faster horse. I think you could reword that and be like Solana. And one of the reasons why Solana to its credit has attracted a certain type of developer that Ethereum would have never attract like the low level hardware systems engineers. We're not going to Ethereum because Ethereum. is not a nerd snipe for them. Solana is. That's the truth of like the signal through the noise.

A lot of the noise, I think, is embodied in like this last line of Chris's tweet, which is Salana is the faster horse, which I would like to reword to being Solana is not Ethereum and it's tiny. So the Salana market cap is 18 billion versus Ethereum, 230 billion. Like a lot of people on crypto Twitter, which are helping set the narrative, to really, this is my hot take. The real reason why they're there is because it's not Ethereum

and the market cap is $1.20th the size. So they are filling a position based on that dichotomy. So you're making the case that this is traders doing a narrative of trade.

Of course. And then the soul is down. Of course it's going to pump more fully. That's not what Chris is saying. Maybe that's what he's doing. But what he's saying is, no, David, stop being an eth-maxi.

that is being dismissive of what's actually being built. The fundamentals are like incredible for Solana. It's this new high transaction throughput, like execution layer. You know, there's the modular strategy where that Ethereum is pursuing, it's all well and good, but you get all of these kind of fragmented L2s and people don't know which L2 to kind of bet on. It's maybe it feels to some like it's more messy. And here's Salana just executing this like, I don't,

know, infinity. A lot of transactions. I don't know what the reality is, where this stands up to, but fire dancers, new Salana clients, promising all of these things. Anyway, he's saying, no, it's not just a narrative trade. Wake up. This is fundamentals we're talking about. Right. The fundamentals behind Solana are up for debate. I think we can say, like, yes, Solana is super fast. People, anyone who tells you that they are doing 50,000 transactions per second, is including vote transactions, which are not transactions. They're like how consensus has happened. It's like really, in reality, like three to 500.

The last time Solana hit 400 transactions per second, it fell over. It hasn't gotten back there since. And also, like actual on-chain metrics around Solana are empty. Like, TVL is on the floor. Like, the sole token has gone up in price, but TVL and usage is flat or down. And so this is why I'm saying, like, that can all change. immediately because of the fundamentals of like salana being very fast, you know, finality at the speed of light, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like right now, like what I see Chris doing is taking a

victory lap because he filled his salana bag during the FTX collapse. And then Salana's like, Solana has just mean reverted to being back above its FTX collapse. So you're just saying it's too early for a victory lap. We're 3x and that's not a big deal when it was down, you know, if we're trying to go for like actual real adoption, This is not that. This is just Salana mean reverting. Well, here's another point of context is I tweeted this out. And I don't know, a lot of people hated it.

That's all I'll say. Theorem or every layer two is under $10 billion right now, while Solana floats above $22 billion. So if you look at O.P. or ARB or Matic, it's all $10 billion or under. And yet, here's an interesting thing. And yet, Solana would be a third in active users and fourth in total. locked value. Out of four. Out of, out of, out of these four. And I said, do with this what you will. I know what I'm doing. So this is me expressing, if Chris is expressing his bullish take on Solana,

this is me expressing my bullish take on layer twos, in general. Based on chain verifiable metrics. Yes. Now, Tushar, our friend at Multi-coin says like these TVL, terrible metrics, so is active addresses and actively harmful. And I get that. They're not like everything. They're not the only metric you can look at. But it is something. It's better than narrative. It's better than no data points. Yeah, they're not actively harmful to, Shard. They're just actively harmful to your thesis. I mean, but we could also look at block sales versus expenses, which is my favorite because this is civil resistant. And if you look at Solana revenue versus its expenses on a monthly basis, of course, expenses is sole issuance. And revenue is the amount of money it brings in through

selling its block space, either transaction order flow or actually just selling it with fees. and it's losing a lot of money every month, David. That's always been our critique about the sole value capture thesis is that it is penetrative pricing, as in it operates out of loss to achieve scale. Yeah, but I'll tell you, that wasn't my Twitter L for the week, all right? I'll tell you what my Twitter L was, which I got absolutely. That was a dub, because that caught hella, hella likes.

Maybe. You also ratio to Shahr. If we are accounting for Twitter likes at a signal, which they are, not. Mert is really close here though, right? Ryan, you have absolutely no idea what you're doing. This is a Slana Bowl. TvL and active addresses are easily gained. Slan does more TPS. That is such a horseshit, dude. TVL is not. He thinks TVL is games because remember the guy who did like triple quadruple 9x counting of TVL on Salana. They're not, it's game done depending on how you account for it. And then he goes TPS is actually the true metric, which is the most

gameable metric there is. Yeah. But let me show you where I got absolutely destroyed. Sure. Tell me. So then a couple days later, so one thing that I think is important, that I grew up believing in crypto in part of this notion of decentralization, which is very difficult to define. How do you define decentralization? There are many different next layers.

There are many different axes of decentralization. But one of them, I think, and this has been true, ever since Bitcoin, is the ability of a non-validating user to run a full node. Yep. Okay? What does that mean? I'm not talking about a staker. I'm not talking about a validator necessarily, right?

Although running a full node is necessary for those entities in order to keep it out of data center. I'm talking about somebody who's just wanting to validate and check that what the blockchain is producing isn't BS. Right. Okay. So you have the Ethereum staking validator, which is validating transactions and adding them to the chain. And producing blocks. That's different.

And then you have the full node validation of the validators, which is like, yes, they follow the rules. And that is a permissionless system. You don't need to eat the stake for that. Yeah. And I did a long ass suite because you can do that now on Twitter. And I just said full nodes, non-validating full nodes, I think they're kind of important. And I think that other chains that maximize for TPS throughput have made it such that full nodes become much more difficult to run on consumer hardware and are therefore very unlikely to be

able to be run at home or, you know, on a mobile device or something like that. And hey, guys, isn't running a full note and validating the chain, like verifying, not trusting? Isn't that important? A core tenant of the bankless thesis. You cannot be bankless if you cannot validate the chain independently. This was not a popular take, David. I tell you. I got absolutely like double ratio destroyed. I could go into like, I had to like meet the thread. Udi came in. Udi came and said, yeah, this is what Bitcoiners said, Bitcoin Maximus says. He said in 2017 cycle, Ethereum stakeholders, including Vitalik, prompted it, promoted it as the high TPS layer one compared to Bitcoin. No, he didn't. The Bitcoin Maxis were furious for the same reasons you mentioned,

but luckily Twitter was limited to 280 characters back then, so their complaints were versus synced. That's just fake. That's just fake. Yeah. Anyway, I got absolutely rationed by many of these things. Anatoly, almost. Mert, certainly. It says I'm not an engineer. Apparently, I study political science. I'm good at communicating. I didn't study political science. I mean, it's just casually. But anyway, absolutely slammed. Like, just nonstop. I had to mute this thread, David, because it was just... Can you throw down to where he says anyone with a one gigabyte, gigabit internet? can run a full node? I don't see that. That's quite the response here. He says that,

I just read that line somewhere. So like I was talking to somebody in the Solana community about like, hey, I would like to like create a validator. Can I, I, I have a beefy machine, right? I don't know if you know this. I built the computer myself. You don't brag about your beefy machines.

It's super beefy machine. Yeah. And I actually have, I think I have the hardware to run an Solana validator. It's consumer. I think that's right. I haven't tried. You got the hardware.

But I cannot do it. And do you know why? Bandwidth. Bandwidth. And I am in New York. Okay. What is the bandwidth that's required versus what do you have? Fiber optics is what you need.

I'm sure there's more nuances than I. Like not all fiber optics is the same. I have one gigabit download speed on my Ethernet, like cable internet, which is, I mean, fast. So as fast as I can get. I can't get it any faster. I do not have access to fiber optics. Okay. So if you had access to fiber, though, right, and you had a beefy machine, it would be possible for you to run at home. I think so. Let's say that. Okay. That's good.

Yeah, that's good. I'm glad. I wasn't calling in my, in my parent tweet, I wasn't calling out any particular ecosystem. Right. I was saying, hey, let's be conscious of the tradeoff that we're making and make sure that we still preserve this quality. And those chains that preserve this quality, of consumer grade, average users being able to run a full node, that is a more decentralized chain, and that is probably important. Yeah. All right.

But yeah, the Salon of community knew what you were doing. I think, but that's what I was saying. My point was it's an unacknowledged tradeoff, right? So maybe you could run it if you have fiber in your home. Right. Okay, that's great. Will you be able to run it on a mobile phone? And now, to be fair, you can't run an Ethereum validator here

on a mobile phone yet. But that is the end state goal. And Ethereum would be more decentralized if you could run some sort of a full node on a phone. Anyway, that was not landing. I got absolutely ratio destroyed by that. So David, what do you think?

Did I take the L? Am I wrong about this? What's going on? I think there's like the big unpacking of just like what it means to be a layer one validator, validation of the layer one in this day and age. and I think we probably have to update what that means in this year. But I don't want anyone to think that we can have a system that is maximally bankless,

maximally user sovereign without that being possible for the end user. On consumer level hardware, you need to be able to download a full mode. And we also need to make an episode as to why this is important. The way I would summarize why this is important is that if you cannot do that, then your financial system, you are trusting others to run it for you and maintain it for you. and if we go from like average consumer hardware to just like the guy I was talking to about in in salana like I was like hey I want to run of salana validator he pointed me to a cloud service like no no no no no I want to do it here in my home like I don't want to defer to the cloud David you sound you sound like such a bickliner right now yeah yeah big big like old school conservative but honestly they're right I mean they're not like bitcoiners got a lot of things right uh maybe maybe that's uh Correct an ideology wrong in execution.

All right. I was talking about my feelings. Let's get in your feelings here. You're disappointed. Why are you disappointed with Chris Berninski? Yeah. Who is the context for Chris Berninski. I think Chris Berninski is absolutely fantastic.

He actually helped bring me to the space. Help me understand this space. You wrote a book in, I think, 2017 called Crypto Assets. That was foundational for pulling me down the rabbit hole. And I've always viewed him as a mentor and still do. Yes. But you got disappointed with the Funhouse Mirror reflection you were appearing at on Crypto Twitter. Tell me about this.

Yes. So he made this tweet thread. This is the same tweet thread that he started off with the Soul Eath price, which I said is like Chris is like doing a victory lap about Sol like going back to pre-FTX levels in East terms. He makes this tweet thread in the bottom. He just randomly like invokes us. And I can't totally understand why. He goes, this being crypto Twitter, people will want to fight and will likely tag bankless, as they have been the largest crypto media platform that is consistently bearish soul.

Most media platforms aren't so opinionated and increasingly loud in their bearishness as soul trades against ether against their theses. And I'm like, I feel like he's putting words in my mouth and telling me the actions that I'm going to have, which is ironic because he put this thread out the day before I put out my video with Austin and Anatoly at Salon a Breakpoint talking to them. And I'm not being increasingly bearish in or loud in my bearishness. Like people who are increasingly loud in their bearishness comes from a place of insecurity. That's what he's saying.

It's like they're going to be insecure and so they're going to be loud about that. And I'm like, that's just not what I do. And then he follows up and says, David and Ryan have been good for Ethereum. I liked their content most when they were exclusively a curious up-and-coming media platform. The bankless brand has every opportunity to be blockchain agnostic, which I have a problem with. And I put that response there. don't have enough time in this episode. And most likely we would reach the most number of people if we were. It's actually not what I'm disappointed about, but this is like the context, right?

So you want to go to my next, my next picture here. So I put out like the next day in the words of Chris Berninski, here's me being increasingly loud in my bearishness, which is an episode that I did with Austin and Anatoli. And then Chris follows up and not. Not the first salon episode, by the way. Definitely not. No, we've done three or four, five. We do so, we do more non-ethereum content, more than the average podcast does. We do so much, we do so much non-Etherian content. Like a lot of Ethereum people get angry at us.

Yeah. Okay. So like I kind of like quote tweet, Chris saying like, here's me being loud and I'm like platforming Anatolian Austin. And then we continue. And here's like where I actually get like a little bit. Here's where my disappointment comes from,

which is like the next tweet. Which is like, so Chris, I publish the episode with Anatolia and Austin. in and I'm like, here's me being loud in my bearishness. And Chris Berniske says, so you believe in Seoul then? And I respond with my reasoning as to like what I am looking for in Seoul and why I'm not there yet, which is that there seems to be a big triple point asset size size whole in the Salon

thesis. And I'm just saying like, what do you mean? You're just talking about value accrual, basically. A value, like what is the thesis behind Soul? So you can have a lot of transactions per second, but it doesn't necessarily mean soul is valuable as a result. The underlying token is valuable as a result. Right. And so I'm telling Chris, like, there is a hole in my understanding about Solana that I have not been able to get over. And then he follows up saying, sounds like you're bearish soul. Good luck. I'm like,

Mr. Mentor, sir, that's not what I was saying. I was saying I am missing information. Not that I'm bearish. I said, and that's what I told them. I said, that's not what I said. There's a big fog of war about my ability to understand soul. And then he goes, sounds like bankless should put out more content about Solana to help people understand then. Glad to hear your bullish soul. And I'm like, that's also not what I said. And you're doing the thing that... Glad to hear your bullish soul versus Ethereum.

Yes. Specifically versus Ethereum. But like the line sounds like Bankless should put out more content on Solana to help people understand then is like the most tiring response that we get from everyone in crypto who is like, hey David and Ryan,

platform my backs. And it's just the top. timing of Chris doing the victory lap tweet thread, followed up by David, it's time for you to platform Solana and help people understand them. I was just disappointed in that because I think that that is just like, it's a low request. It's like my bags are filled.

Now you platform my bags, please. I know that's how it heard. Again, looking at social media, you're looking at a fun house mirror representation. I bet if you met Chris, in person, you had this conversation with them. 100%. You'd be able to articulate it.

And you'd be able to both have a discussion about it. Right. And it would be totally normal. I don't think that social media, in particular Twitter, allows the opportunity to have that kind of long-form conversation. So I mean, I think that's part of it. But what about this idea of blockchain agnosticism, David? Like, you know, I actually, so I just want to, our philosophy is not to be blockchain

agnostic. Because if you're blockchain agnostic, it means you have to be agnostic to the set of values that actually underpin this space. And that's not very popular, right? You talk about full nodes. You talk about, you know, values right now. There's a lot of nihilism about crypto values, which is like, who cares? Price go up. That's all I care about. I'm not here for the values. I'm not here for the values. I'm not here for the tech. I'm here for the money. How quaint, like full nodes are. And so it's not, it's not necessarily popular. But it's honestly, it's, I think it's important. And it's the thing that gives me meaning.

Like, I just, there's a lot of ways to make money in the world. For me, it's XRP is obviously one of those. Yeah, I just don't want to do it. I just like, yes, you could be a traitor. God bless, man, soul has been a fantastic investment. It might continue to be investment in the future.

And by the way, I'm not saying it's like morally, ethically bad at all. And I'm not saying it's like XRP, right? Right. But there are chains that are incredibly centralized that you make, a lot of money on, but they don't exhibit crypto values. And this is not why I am here. If the users cannot be sovereign, then they're not bankless. And I think, I think, like, the difference

between, like, Ethereum and Solana versus Ethereum and XRP is, like, the difference between Salon and XRP is, like, massive, right? So, like, I actually kind of think the difference between Ethereum and Solana is, like, incremental versus Ethereum and XRP. But, like, that's the gap that are operating and discussing is that gap and what there is a difference of and what people that you're saying in your tweet are not acknowledging that there is a gap there. So a lot of people see this, David, which is basically like bankless being bearish soul, bullish soul. What meme are we looking at here?

I had to like read, edit the meme. This is the Homer Simpson from Simpson's like looking at his schedule and his family is like looking at him. like, hey, what's at Homer? What are you going to do? And week one, it's bearish soul. Week two, it's bullish soul. Week three, it's bearish soul. And I just thought that was a funny meme because, like, I went to Breakpoint the same way, the same time you put out your big tweet about and needing to, uh, users to validate the chain. And yeah. And so like, yeah, so like, we're just confused or confusing people about like what is bankless's position on Seoul.

Like, what is it? Like, are we bullish? Like, why are we paying attention to it? But we're also, we're giving it attention, but we're also saying it's an insufficient. Like, what, what's our deal? Like, are we going to cover Solana in this bull market or are we not? I mean, I think there's a lot of different, like, answers to this. Like, there's, there's kind of the, the set of cynical answers, which is basically that bankless doesn't talk about soul or insert your blockchain here because we don't have bags in these ecosystems or bags aren't as big, right? So it's basically like bankless only talks about their bags, which is. categorically false.

Well, that, but how can you disprove that? And by the way, I don't have big sole bags. And most of my, like, values in kind of the ecosystem of Ethereum. So it's actually, like, true. And that's because, like, I'm investing in a thesis. I just think the, you're not talking about this thing because they're, like, you don't have bags or you have bags that you make you want to talk about some other asset. When someone is arguing like that against bankless or anybody else, it kind of cancels itself out because usually they have bags in the ecosystem that they are.

And they're just critiquing you for not having their bags. Yeah. So let's just put the whole bag bias thing aside in that entire critique. And I think one way to think about it is usage of chains. Plenia, I don't know if you saw this week, David, but yeah, Plenia put together a Chainsby economic activity post. and actually went through active economic activity and then passive economic activity.

So active is basically like the total value of settlement. How many assets have transacted, have moved, have settled on chain. And then passive is like how much value is being secured, economically secured by the chain. So if you actually went by usage

in terms of total value, Tier 1, that is the, like, in the double-digit billions, Ethereum would be number one. So we'd talk about Ethereum. Tron would be number two. So we'd be talking a lot more about Tron, which is interesting because the last time we tried to do content on Tron, we actually got a cease and desist from Justin's son. It was kind of hard to talk about Tron. And then after that would be Bitcoin, followed by Arbitrum, followed by Binance Smart Chain.

Yeah. Salana would not be in this list. And there would be a few more chains before Solana. Yes. And if we're talking about passive, which is the total value that the chain kind of secures, Bitcoin would be number one with triple digit billions, Ethereum number two, and then in the double digit billions, it would once again be Tron. Tron secures a whole lot of tether.

People don't realize this, but it's like $40 billion of tether or something. And then Binance Smart Chain after that. that could be another way to get like we could give waiting for what we talk about on bankless on our bags which I you know I don't think we do I think we're more honest than that we could give waiting based on actual usage of the chains in this way we could give waiting to whatever the popular crypto narrative is which again we're talking about salon in this entire episode so maybe we're doing a little bit of that yeah or like we could give waiting to where we are curious. And I feel like when we are at our best and when bankless is at its best, it's actually

doing the most of that fourth category. The curious one. That's why people listen to us, because we are curious and we explore our curiosities. I hope we can preserve that. And to the extent we do, I think that people will continue to listen to bankless and what we're doing here. But yeah, it's like curious and values backed are the things that at least I'm trying to optimize for and we optimize for in our best moments. Yeah. So, That's what I think we should do. Right. I 100% agree.

And like, this is like kind of the existential crisis that I think it means to be a media company, a for-profit media company with employees and all of this stuff, is that, well, actually, the narrative is good for the views. And like, and so, like, part of my, like, exploration into Salana Breakpoint was, like, is there really a there there? And in the future, if Bakerless elects to do Salana content, is it because there's they're there? Or is it because the VCs of crypto

and the DGens of crypto have all identified Solana as a good trade because it's not Ethereum and it's tiny? Well, there's a Nileas take there too, which is like the only reason you're covering it, David, is to get clicks. That's why you're covering

it. Right. Right. Right. So. But also at the same time, like... You'd say it's because people are interested. People are having a conversation and they're asking the questions that need to be answered and, and And you're curious about it because everyone's talking about it. Right. Like, I'm not going to do, like, Tron content because Tron is so stupid, simple.

It's like it's Ethereum with EIP-1559, juiced up with stablecoin payments. That's the story. Salana's story is much. We'd also get a season to assist from Justin Son again. But also just like, that's not what Solana is. Solana has this whole narrative, this whole thesis that is not show. not proven by its facts and circumstances, the facts of its chain,

but is a future statement of what Salana could be, which is a fair thing to believe by its community. So long as we understand that the facts about the chain usage do not support that, and it is all in the future imaginations and aspirations of the community, which I don't want to discount. But the whole idea of like bankless ignoring Solana, I think there's more than enough evidence to say like,

hey, I hate this word narrative, dude. I want fundamentals. I want reality. And the whole like Mert Reply Guy army does, should not dictate what we cover on the podcast. There you go. I don't know if this episode was helpful for anybody else, but I enjoyed it, David.

We don't have these conversations. I like this. Very often. So let's wrap it here, shall we? I think we should, yeah. All right. None of this has been financial advice, guys. Of course, you know that.

you could lose what you put in. This is bankless. We're headed west. This is the frontier. Hope you enjoyed this episode. And we're glad to be joined with you on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.