Bankless - Ethlabs: The New Org to Make Ethereum Win | Ansgar & Caspar

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

Ethereum has a new R&D lab, and its mission is blunt: make Ethereum and ETH win. In this episode, David sits down with Ansgar and Caspar, two co-founders of Ethlabs, to unpack why the organization exists, how it complements the Ethereum Foundation, and what it means to put Ethereum back on offense. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast 🧭OKX | TRADE, EARN, PAY to OKX | 120M+ USERS WORLDWIDE https://app.okx.com/join/USBANKLESS 🦊 METAMASK | DOWNLOAD NOW https://go.metamask.io/BL-Pod-Download 🌐BRIX | EMERGING MARKET YIELD https://bankless.cc/brix 📊BITGET | TOKENIZED STOCKS 2.0 https://bankless.cc/bitget-stocks 🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS https://thedefireport.io/bankless --- TIMESTAMPS 0:00 What is Ethlabs? 2:35 The EF Narrows Its Mission 9:30 Putting Points on the Board 13:06 Principles Need Users 14:53 ETH the Asset and Ethereum the Network 17:33 Scaling, Interop, and Growth Workstreams 22:52 The Talent Behind Ethlabs 25:27 What a New Organization Unlocks 27:53 Pro Markets, Pro Growth, Pro ETH 30:51 The Trillion Dollar ETH Question 37:07 Who Steers Ethereum? 39:55 Shared Vision, Different Path 45:13 Funding Ethlabs 51:54 Hiring for Ethlabs 54:24 Ethereum’s Long Arc 58:14 What Comes First --- RESOURCES Ansgar Dietrichs https://x.com/adietrichs Caspar Schwarz-Schilling https://x.com/casparschwa Ethlabs https://ethlabs.org/ --- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Bankless Nation, I'm here with Onscar and Casper. These are two of the many co-founders of ETH Labs. Onscar, Casper, welcome back to Bankless. Good to be here. Hi, David. Yeah, hi. So in the same week that the EF has explicitly positioned themselves as just one node in the network, we have the launch of ETH Labs, a new research and development arm under the leadership of U2,

as well as a few other names that people would recognize out of the Ethereum ecosystem. Talk to me. What is ETH Labs? Yeah, so ETHLabs is a non-profit R&D Lab and very simply put, our mission really is just to make Ethereum and ETH win as simple as that, right? And to say a little bit more, like I think we have this very strong feeling that right now, Ethereum in particular, crypto as a whole, but really Ethereum in particular is in a very unique moment in time. The first 10 years of Ethereum, there was a lot of infrastructure, built out infrastructure in the broadest sense, the chain itself, things like defy, all the rails. Now it's ready for adoption.

It's ready for prime time. The global economy is coming on chain. And we see two different paths how that can play out. One of them with Ethereum at the center. We think that's better for the world, but that's better for Ethereum. And we think there's a clear shot on goal here. And we intend to take that shot. Ethelabs is a new R&D Lab.

The only other R&D Lab is the Ethereum Foundation. So now we have two research and development labs for Ethereum. Talk about that. Is that correct? Maybe there's others that I don't know about. But this is really kind of like the main second research and development arm for the Ethereum project. Is that right? Yeah.

So we are a new org. And so far, a lot of that work, especially up in the pipeline. So more like towards the road mapping, the earlier stages of research. A lot of that has been relatively concentrated in Ethereum. inside of the Ethereum Foundation. It's not as binary. They have always been other external oaks that have contributed. I myself started my journey actually at an arc called Quilt.

It was a minor role, but we really believe that in this moment in time, that all set up no longer quite works. And actually, I think the Ethereum Foundation also believes that. And so now is the opportunity to really start decentralizing that layer of Ethereum as well. The timing of this is obviously going to be very, very interesting. The EF is talking about downsizing both in the team, the headcount,

and also the budget of the Ethereum Foundation. And this is being discussed at the same time as the rise and the launch of ETH Labs. Talk about that opportunity for ETH Labs. And also the talent that ETH Labs has, who is in ETH Labs, who are like the actual team members, and just the shift in the power center of, Ethereum and what Ethelabs represents for that. The Ethereum Foundation has put out a new mandate at the beginning of this year and has kind

of come forward with a lot of clarity in what it tends to work on. And that includes basically reducing its focus to some extent and really double down on crops. So censorship resistance, open source, privacy and security. And that's at the end of the day where we're all here. These are the core properties that give us credible neutrality. And so naturally, by double downing on like one core mission and the choice of sort of focusing your attention to that comes also kind of this reduced focus.

And I think I would put those reduced size efforts into connection to that, basically. And what this also means is that for the ecosystem, them. That means there's other things that if we care about them, we need to make them happen. And as these labs, we're basically here to see that gap and actually fill that. And yeah, we think it's a unique moment and we're here to fill it. Yeah. And I mean, just because we keep saying it's a unique moment, I think it's actually good to briefly unpack this, right? Like, I think really, if you look back, like I think you can maybe pinpoint it to maybe two years.

ago or so I think when we really, it's of course a transition, but I really think it's probably the single biggest pace change of crypto as a whole, really going from these early years of really figuring out how is this infrastructure even supposed to work, right? Like how do chains work? Like how do you bring assets on the chains? How does trading work? Amm's, all these things, like everything, all of these things were being built out. And now it's ready for prime time. And it has been for a while, stable coins as the first major real world asset kind of has been ramping up for several years already. And this. transition into the spirit of adoption is just asking new questions,

making new demands of what I would call ecosystem stewards, right? So that's the Ethereum Foundation. There's many other orgs, of course, that all collaboratively. There's entities like etherealize consensus, right? Like the Ethereum ecosystem has always had this like plurality of different orgs, but the Ethereum Foundation, of course, always played this special role there. And in this new time period, like there's a lot of new expectations. and a lot of new needs for Ethereum.

And I think we've also seen of the last year with Tomash being at the EF, Tomash and Choway as co-edies for a year, D. F really trying to figure out, like, what is our role in this new time period? So I don't think it's an accident that it's now. It's not just random. It is really the F, I think,

finding its identity in this new, in these very changed circumstances. And now I think what we're seeing is really like, the F has made their choice, has communicated this early in the year, is now executing towards really like reshaping itself around that new mission. And as Kaspar was saying, in many ways, that's exciting because that is really about like, well, the way I would say it is the F maybe stands for the things in Ethereum that need to stay the same.

Right. Like that is like this kind of this core identity of Ethereum that we had like, on no circumstances like a must ever lose, right? And that need reinterpretation all the time. Like security, Ethereum is secure today. But with quantum on the horizon, you need to actually do a lot of work to keep it secure. So like it's not just a steady state, but it's the same constant values. And then I think where I would say like what may be where there is, well, opportunities,

but also like the need for other people to step up. And where we saw the need for us to step up is really to like the areas of Ethereum where Ethereum needs to evolve, where Ethereum needs to fill a new role and like really needs to change how it is set up. And yeah, so that's why like it's not just a random moment of time. It's not just like struggles of the Ethereum Foundation. It's really like, I think, a very clear, like, shift in the environment and a shift in the org and as a consequence. In 2024, emerging markets generated over $115 billion in annual yield for investors,

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return in each tier wins the biggest cut. Pick from 260 Ondo token. stocks, funds, and commodities to swap inside Metamask and let your portfolio do the talking. If you think you can outtrade everyone else, this is your chance to prove it from now until June 18th. Click the link in the description below and opt in on Metamask Mobile. Trade RWAs on mobile or desktop to compete. Not investment advice. The EF has made it very clear. This is what I believe you guys are saying in what I agree with, exactly what they want to do. They want to focus on crops. They've kind of always seemingly wanted to focus on crops protecting Ethereum's soul. Ethereum is very special. It would be terrible if Ethereum lost the properties that make it special.

And what are those properties? Those are crops. And it seems to be what Vitalik and culture at the EF really resonates well with. On the other side of things, there has seemingly been a missing piece of Ethereum stewardship that is really about putting points on the board. Is that what Heath Labs is here to do, put points on the board? Yes, I would say so.

Well, mine would be yes and. I really think it's important that there is an arc that just really embraces that Ethereum wants to win. Ethereum wants to win and ETH wants to win. And those two also are connected.

I think maybe we can talk about it a bit more, but I think that those are just clearly true statements, right? And there's a few more in this category, like embracing that finance is at the very core of what makes Ethereum Ethereum, right? Like these are like, I think, very basic things, but I think having an org that just really wants to embrace them,

I think that's a starting point. At the same time, I don't think it's just purely about saying that's already a very worthy mission all in itself, but I do really believe that, you know, when we say the global economy coming on chain, I really believe that there's like two very different ways in which they can play out. And basically like what I would almost see as the default is that you have this, this world of like all these different independent chains that where basically you have,

you have some use cases on chain one and some use cases of chain two and maybe it's some geographic split or it's a split by use cases or by institutional coalitions, these kind of things. And then you tie them all together with like brittle links and you try to over time de-risk these links. but we've seen this multiple times in the past, right? Bridges keep failing because ultimately, bridges between independent chains can only ever be so secure, can only ever be so robust, right?

Because ultimately these chains just do not have a shared state. And the alternative outcome is one where really the global economy has one kind of central note, right? Like one central note, it doesn't mean that all the activity is on that central node itself. It doesn't mean that all activities on Ethereuml 1, but it means there's one central note that everything links, back into and it means that basically like these these defaults are sticky once they set up it means that we're in a fundamentally better state for the world when when all these

different parts of the economy can talk to each other trustlessly and and without friction and we really believe that it's only Ethereum that can play that role there is no second best neutral chain there's no second best chain that actually has a shot at this but that doesn't mean it's inevitable like we could just end up in this worse world and so so basically like it's about like incrementally by putting wins on the board the way you said it I think that that drank true a lot like really just like going talking to the builders in Ethereum the death in Ethereum's core strengths figuring out like what are the friction points especially what are the friction points as we built towards you know like bringing finance and and and and and and and just iteratively removing them strengthening Ethereum and and and but like in a way it's now or never right like it's not just it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's really now is this moment in time. There was a line in the announcement post of Ethelabs. Principles do not change the world until people benefit from them.

I thought that sent shivers down my spine. I was like, yes, somebody is taking Ethereum by the horns and scaling it out into the world. And so I want you just to like lean into this a little bit more. And specifically in the contrast or the collaboration with the EF. in the relationship with the EF, because we have this one organization that's always been there that's protecting Ethereum's soul.

And what ETH Labs is works well with that, but is doing something different. So like talk about that dynamic where the EF has one half covered and ETH Labs has a different half covered. And especially around this line of principles do not change the world

until people benefit from them. Like you said, basically, right? Like DEFs is about what makes E theorem is theorem. And then I think ETHLAP is East Labs is basically about bringing that Ethereum to the world. And so we basically want to scale this credible neutrality to the world. And I think the nice thing is we can scale those to the world each in our own way, but ultimately it's together, right?

So scaling these properties, what does it mean? It means actually building them in the first place. It's maintaining them. It's then also building the block space to make them actually available. and then it's also about having them adopted as well. And so I think the EF has squarely covered basically maintaining those core properties and strengthening them, and then ETH Labs is there to kind of scale them to the world as well.

Does ETH Labs have a opinion or philosophy or stance broadly about ether the assets? Because I think this is also something that has been left to be a void by the EF, and then taken up by the community by like bankless in the early years. And now the community is kind of taken leadership over ETH. And it's always kind of been not really supported by the EF, or at least not to the degree that we've really wanted. So what is ETH Labs? What do you guys think about ether the asset?

Really, our position is actually quite simple and quite natural, I would say. Like, I think it's obvious that Ethereum and ETH can only win together. Like, that is clear, right? like Ethereum is the chain that gives ETH the existence and powers ETH, and then ETH is the asset that sits at the very core of Ethereum that gives it the security, right? Like these two are deeply synergistic.

And I think sometimes that hasn't really been recognized enough. I think sometimes the protocol is being developed really just as a purely technical project. And the outcome, like the effects on ETH is a little bit of an afterthought. And I think that's just a mistake, right? Like you really need to co-develop Ethereum and ETH. You need to understand, like,

as you find the place for Ethereum, in the world, like, what are the consequences for ETH, like, what role does ETH play in that world? And you need, you need to basically find a stable synergistic outcome for the two, right? And so there's a few very simple things. So one is just, and we've seen this with Bitcoin. Like, why has Bitcoin been so successful? Well, because Bitcoin, Bitcoin is Bitcoin. I always use the word inevitable, right? Like, there's something, like, some sort of destiny element to it. Bitcoin kind of like has this aura of it will definitely kind of be there. be around. I think one first step is just

Ethereum needs to be inevitable. Right? Like I, that's what we talked about earlier, the special role that Ethereum, I think, can play, can play in the economy, but someone needs to actually go and make that happen. And once it is clear for everyone that, like, that is the role that Ethereum is certain to play, that is, so that, that is step one, right? Like, just de-risk, Ethereum is here to stay. Ethereum has the special role. Ethereum is inevitable. And so then, and then step two is, once

you've de-res that part, once it's clear that Ethereum is, is basically coming at this in a position of strength. Then you define the specific role of eats within that. How about value accrual? Like how does it all fit together? And we're not here to like today have all the answers. Obviously not right. But like the core insight, it's the very simple one is really just basically it's important

that the people that work on actually like evolving the system have eat in mind when they do that. Right. Like that's as simple as I think as that insight really gets. The EF has talked about exactly what its focuses are. and as we've talked about, it's the crops stuff. It's censorship resistance, being immune to capture, all this kind of stuff. There's a lack of scaling, I think, out of discussion out of the EF. So when it comes to, you know, the ETH Labs, a new research and development arm for

Ethereum, you guys are going to be working with and evolving the Ethereum protocol. What are like the swim lanes or the tracks of work that ETH Labs is taking responsibility for? What are you guys going to do to make Ethereum inevitable, push Ethereum into that slot that Ansgar is talking about, where it is the one central hub of all internet finance? So how do you guys actually do work to push Ethereum into that spot? What are you guys focused on? The way we start is we start with where does Ethereum go and then we reason backwards, right? And so clearly, like we're not here today with all the work streams perfectly light up. we have the machinery, right?

We are, in many cases, for me, it's seven years of experience in the core research space. For many of us, it's similar. Basically, we're deeply familiar with, like, how to evolve the Ethereum Protocol. So it's like the machinery of that, like being, like, and then combining that with, with the direction. And then, and then the question of, like, what are the specific steps necessary? So I, sorry, maybe general answer. And I can give some details.

So, for example, you mentioned skating, right? So I was leading that topic at the TIR Foundation for the last year and basically coming in saying like, hey, it really is important that not just the L2s are scaling with blobs and that remains, by the way, a crucial priority, but also that the L1 one is in a strong place. And so then we start that process with upcoming Lamsadam hard fog. There will be a huge scaling benefit coming out of that as much as like 4X kind of scaling throughput. And the more important thing is to put Ethereum basically on a permanent. scaling trajectory. So I've been floating this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this capable. And that's now, now, now, how does it map to basically the collaboration with, with the Ethium Foundation with Bitithelaps? Some of this, of course, it's day one. We, we have, we have to, we have to

figure this out concretely, but, but it, my impression at least is, I don't want to speak too much for the Ethereum Foundation. My impression is that scaling is less of a priority now for the Ethereum Foundation that, as you already said, it's actually comes out of the, out of the mandate. And so that's a natural topic for us to basically come in. And, and and have an impact. And then there's many other of these topics. So there is things like time to finality, time to inclusion. There's things like data scaling for the L2s.

There is maybe beyond just the core protocol, because that's where we're more coming from. But the way which we internally are restructuring it is chain, which is anything core protocol related, and then platform and growth. And so platform are topics that are more about the direct, like topics at the intersection between the chain and the actual applications, the builders. So that's things like interoperability, right?

Like you can only, you can only actually succeed at being the central node in the, in the on-chain economy if there's actually a direct and tangible benefit to being part of that, you know, united chains of Ethereum. So having, like, it's been talked about for a long time, but like practically, how can you actually drive towards seamless interoperability? giving L2s and Ethereum as this unified bundle superpowers and network effects, right? So that all the other chains want to come join that. And how do you design it in a way that actually like brings value back to Ethereum and to ETH?

Right. Like again, that's the same theme that we touch upon there. Other kind of more like platforms intersection topics are things like block construction, right? Like how basically like what kinds of you've there's these. You've seen the top AMM designs. There's a lot of innovation happening there. And like how can Ethereum help unlock a lot of innovation there? And then on growth, it's fully transparent.

That's the most like new for us domain. And so they're really like for now, it's more about putting a stake in the ground and saying like, hey, it's actually really important that the people that contribute to evolving the Ethereum protocol do that with some awareness of what are the actual applications. Right. like we've talked about finance before. Defi obviously like defy is the frontier of financial technologies and like what are the needs,

the constraints for defy builders and how can you propagate that back into changes to the protocol itself and the other way around. How can you actually like make the properties that Ethereum uniquely has directly tangibly available to these protocols in a way that makes a difference? So I don't know. This was a bit of a broad answer, but hopefully it gave like an initial impression and then obviously over the coming weeks,

we'll go into much more detail and give much more concrete examples there. Is it fair to say that with the talent that East Labs has, the founding members, Ansgar, Casper, that's you too, but also Barnaby, Drush Ruzov, Julian Ma. Some heavy hitters when it comes to just Ethereum Protocol talent, immense amount of just years of experience and just like talent density there.

And this org was all focused on something about Ethereum, Ansgar, you've been working on scaling, I know Josh Rudolph has been working on Interop. And so now that the EF has reduced their scope, and also now that we have ETHLAPs, it's fair to say that all of these people are simply now taking the responsibility that they once had at the EF, putting it under ETH Labs.

And now that they have this new organization, they have a little bit more freedom, tolerance, ability to be maybe more aggressive in pursuing these goals and objectives. And it's all, these people are still working on the same things, but now they're just doing it under Eath Labs. Is that a fair articulation? I actually don't think that's quite right.

I think A, I don't want to speak too much for the Team Foundation. It's also like, of course, can't be reshaping. And that means that some of the work streams that we started and or owned there will continue also inside of the foundation. It's not as black and white. And we will, in some cases, also just collaborate on these then. But also, it's not going to be the case that we will continue all the work that that would have been done in the past.

It really is important. We're starting as a team of five. We have plans to hire beyond that, but really stay ultimately very lean, very, very talent-dense. And so there is really a limit of, we basically have to be very selective at the work streams that we take on. There's a lot of new work streams that we've not done in the past that we want to take on. So it's not just a direct continuation. The one way in which I do think it is going to be at least to some extent true, of course, is that all of us, we didn't wake up yesterday or like in the last week and all of a sudden had all these new ideas. Right. A lot of this had been already self-selected.

I mean, I was really pushing very hard for scaling last year because I believed it was important back then and I still believe it is important today. So, of course, there's a lot of continuation of beliefs around priorities. Maybe just to double click on that collaborative nature here, I think it is kind of deeply collaborative between East Labs and DF. Just last week, actually, we were kind of participating together in a research offsite. And so I don't expect this to be as. clear of a split on all fronts and just, yeah, deeply collaborative and synergistic as well. What opportunity does being under a new organization in a new organization afford ETH Labs? What can you guys do now or are excited to do that you weren't able to do prior under the older

organization? I think the ETH Foundation really is very much shaping up its own role and that just like means that some of the things, already some of the things that we have, have been doing are now less directly in scope for the organization. But then also like many of the things we would be excited about starting to do. Like specifically say having a very clear vision around like the role of Ethereum in the future of these financial systems. And really like going and talking to the finance builders and figuring out like how can we just unblock them. Right. Like just like very simple.

I mean we've had conversations with with already Hayden from UNiswap. Just like very simple. It's like, hey, what what concrete? right now would make your life easier. And these kind of things, I think, are just not things that they're not, like, in the F, they always needs to be like the ultimate neutral guardian. I think I would maybe describe it a bit like a monastery, like a like like the Vatican of Ethereum. And that's very powerful.

The Vatican has been, has played a very important role for the last 2,000 years. It's, it's an important role. But it's also, of course, like the Vatican doesn't do everything, you know. And so being able to just really lean in to two topics when we see. them being able to just have opinions, you know, have opinions on ETH. It's not like we didn't have them when we were at the F, but while we were at the F, it's maybe we're less able to act on them, right? So basically, like, it just seems like on many, many, many different dimensions, also just culturally, being able to just really lean into the synergies between maybe different ways

of approaching, helping Ethereum. I think there's a lot of opportunity of just having different arcs that approach the topic from, or the challenge from very different angles. Obviously, having the benefit of starting fresh also means we're small, we're lean, we can bring that startup culture a bit. We're a non-profit, but we can operate a bit differently just by virtual size. And I think one thing we're also incredibly excited about is is kind of, yes, operating with that accountability, with that mentality and being a talent magnet and operate in this, yeah, lean and exciting environment. What I'm hearing from your guys' answers is that it's, what I'm hoping, what I'm hoping,

hoping to hear is that Ethelabs is going to be responsive to market forces. Now, like you guys have said, the word startup mentality, even though you're a nonprofit, you are lean, you can ship fit fast. These are all like startup words. And what I think the broad Ethereum community wants and what I would like to see in Ethereum is something like the EF that responds to market forces and is aligned with the market and is like pro-markets and pro-growth. and again, pro points.

Is that kind of the philosophy of ETH Labs, is thinking like a startup, thinking about how do we make Ethereum relevant to the marketplace, respond to market interests and desires and wants? Is that what ETH Labs is for? Yeah, I mean, I like this a lot, but how you were at this right now.

I think we have very clearly pro-markets, we're very pro-growth. Of course, we need to prove out what does that mean in practice, right? like I think what does it mean to be responsive to market forces to ETH? I think I don't know. I actually had coin market cap open earlier today at a look. And I think right now it actually surprised me to see there's only eight, if you take

out the stable coins, there's only eight crypto assets above $10 billion market cap. That's not a lot. And there's only two above $100 billion, Bitcoin and ETH. So in many ways, of course, Ethereum is already in a unique position, right? like Ethereum has in many ways had a lot of success. Now, the problem is it had that success five years ago, right? Like we already were at that exact level five years ago. And so the market is right now expressing like, hey, guys, yes, you kind of one round one,

but what's round two? Like, what's your next goal? Like what actually, like, you know, like there's nothing. It doesn't seem like there's, you're not necessarily growing towards anything more ambitious now. And so really to me, internally at least our prompt has been what does it take for East, you know, to become a trillion dollar asset, right? Like, that's, there's not actually that, there's not that many trillion dollar asset. There's a bunch of trillion dollar assets categories.

There's not that many individual trillion dollar assets on Earth. So what does it take for East to be a trillion dollar asset? And for us, that will be one of our North Stars. And again, it would, I think, be a bit full of ourselves if we came up today here and we had, like, the answer for how to make ether trillion dollar asset. That's going to be a huge project. that's going to be a project for the entire community. But I think it is important that we are in a position

where we can be that bridge. We can be the entity that goes and talks to the people that actually really want to take on that mission. And then we can go and we can actually talk and with the other people that actually helps do at Ethereum and we can work together to make that outcome happen. Trillion dollar assets are rare. At its peak, Ether was at $600 billion,

which is somewhat within striking, of a trillion dollar asset. So I think the proof of concept is proven out, at least sufficiently enough for you, somebody who just has been there disbelieved. And you're like, yeah, I can imagine a world where ETH gets to one trillion. I wanted to take this framing back to the idea of

Ethereum is a special blockchain. There is a place. There's a placeholder. There's a slot, an empty slot in the world for a single global hub of internet finance. that is interoperable, strong, super secure, highly scalable. And you guys want to take Ethereum and put it there. And once it's there, you know, once the key goes into the lock,

maybe we unlock the trillion dollar asset. You know, a few steps needs to happen, I'm sure for that to happen. But nonetheless, making Ethereum be the shape to fit into the lock and unlock that opportunity is, I think, your guys' goal. What does that look like? in terms of, let's say we go into like 10 years from now, and Ethelabs has done the protocol upgrades that it wants to do to Ethereum.

It's talked to the defy developers. It's talked to Wall Street. It's asked what their problems are. It's learned what their problems are. It's incorporated them into EIPs, and it's shipped it into Ethereum. And this is over the next 10 years. I know you guys have a lot of market research to do

in order to answer some of these questions, but I think we have our intuitions now, like of what Ethereum needs to look like to unlock that opportunity. So paint me a picture of what you guys want Ethereum to look like as a protocol in about 10 years from now. What can it do? What has it achieved?

And then we can talk about what properties that imbues ether the asset. I mean, the ingredients are clear, right? So basically, as more of actual financial flows, the global economy, however you want to say it, comes on chain, it's clearly not all just going to be just all within a single kind of layer, like all on Ethereum L1. That's obviously never going to happen.

So there's always going to be a structure of there's going to be more permission zone. There's going to be more app-specific zones. There's going to be more for all different kinds of use cases, geographic specifications. So we will see this continued explosion of like activity in all kinds of different ways and formats. And for Ethereum to in that world be in a special and stress. strong role. I think a few things need to be true about it. And then we can talk about like, okay, like what specific properties are. So like one, I think it's clear that that needs a very strong chain at the core. So like what does it mean for Ethereum to be a strong chain? Well,

scale scaling is one, right? Like you can't, I think at even at today's throughput levels, that's just not good enough. Right. You need to be able to really have a lot of L1 available box space. You need to have a lot of the actual interconnecting activity happen on the L1. So That is like the liquidity, a lot of the actual like trading, trade balances, balancing between the individual zones has to happen directly. It has to be able to happen directly on the L1. And of course, you need to have an asset. And for now again, the question is how do we get there?

But you have to have an asset that is valuable enough to actually be able to secure the entire load of, you know, like I think Justin once gave a talk. I'm not sure if it's online. But like I think it was called like one quadillion, you know, like something, something like Ethereum to one quadrillion. Because I think if you roughly sum up all the assets in the entire world, you maybe get to like one quadrillion dollars. And so like how do you basically secure one quadrillion dollars?

Well, you know, you need an asset at the core. There is this kind of this multiplier. Like you don't need literally a quadrillion dollar. Like so sorry to disappoint people. We won't. We won't. Yes. Eats won't swallow the entirety of all global value.

But but you do need like, you can't do it with today's market. That's just like that that wouldn't be good enough. Right. So like in that success case, if we just describe it, before we talk about how do we get there, each will have to also have found a role that makes it very, very valuable. And it means that interconnections between the individual like parts. And I keep saying zones because L2's is like the way that works today.

But in a way, that's an implementation detail, right? Like there could even be like just special gated parts of the L1 directly. It could be all kinds of different construction. It doesn't really matter. But the interconnections, the interlinks between them have to be like very strong, very robust and very efficient. So what that means is like basically like if I have an asset on any part of the Ethereum over you know, you know, I had a chance of Ethereum.

It needs to be like instant to transfer that from there to anywhere else without having any kind of worry that there might be a link that's breaking, that gets corrupted, that that that makes my asset kind of gets lost in transit. It means that I'm able to like reuse my asset that I have in place A as collateral in place B, right? like all of these types of like just natural network effects. Sometimes we, you know, we've started talking more and more with different builders in Ethereum. You talk to the L2 builders and they are all very open to talk about value accrual and how can Ethereum more benefit from these relationships. But they also say, hey, how do we also like this needs to be mutually beneficial. And being in L2 today is good.

But somehow it hasn't fully realized its full potential, right? Like there's so much more of superpowers, so much more network effects that that you need, that you could get, you need to get from being part of this construction, it needs to be a no-brainer that if I come on chain, if I launch a new chain and you, whatever, it needs to be a no-brainer that, of course, I do this in Ethereum, otherwise I'm losing out on all of these benefits, right? And today it's not a no-brainer.

Today the friction is also too high, but more importantly, the upside is not clear enough. And so that all needs to be fixed. We need a super strong L1. And then there is just no way that Ethereum will be the special chain if we do not solve interop once and fall. So I think that will be quite exciting to work through. Now, I know that there is now like a delegation of responsibilities

that we think is harmonious. Ethelabs wants to put points on the board. The EF wants to preserve Ethereum's soul. Each organization can optimize for what they think is important, and that's the beauty of having separate organizations. At the same time, there's only one metaphorical, steering wheel on the ship and only so many hands can go on the ship. There was a pretty interesting article from Trent, another former EF member, who really talked about the strength of the

legitimacy around the Ethereum Foundation. The Ethereum Foundation has the ICO funds. It has Lindy, it has Vitalik, it has literally www.ethor. It has the at Ethereum handle. It has the process of knowledge of submitting EIPs and coordinating hard forks. And so ETH Labs, I want, and I think you guys want too, Heath Labs, I want ETH Labs hands to go on the steering wheel as well. And that means that, like, there's a little bit of tension. It's like, are we going left or are we going right? What I'm, what I would like is I want ETH Labs to pick a direction and step on the gas.

and I don't always know if the EF is, maybe they want to slam the brakes. And so when it comes to actually creating EIPs, shipping them into Ethereum, merging them into the blockchain, how does ETH Labs think about this question of who calls the shots? In my mind, it's less mutually exclusive. And I think the important thing is that we're all here for the same reasons. We all know what makes this theorem special. And I think it's actually extremely bullish to have one org that is laser-focused on keeping Ethereum special. And another org laser-focused on kind of exporting that to the world.

And so I don't necessarily see it as mutually exclusive at all. In fact, I think the only reason why we can be laser-focused on kind of scaling that to the world is because the EF is, is kind of so focused on maintaining and strengthening the core properties. And obviously, I mean, there will potentially be kind of questions on like, how do you prioritize a hard fork? Like what goes into that fork and what goes into the next fog? Sure. But I think, I think like as long as we all have the same end vision,

I'm very confident that it's not going to be too confusing. Does Ethelabs and the EF have the same end vision for Ethereum? Ultimately, I'm convinced that that's the case. I think from conversations that I've had, that we've had, I think there are some differences around path dependency. Like we really feel that this moment and time is important, that we can't just first get all the tech out of the way, make sure that Ethereum is perfectly robust,

this post-Quantum secure is everything, and then start bringing the broader financial system onto Ethereum. It needs to happen in parallel. But that's really just a difference in opinion maybe on order of work streams. So these work streams can complement each other, can happen in parallel. Ultimately, again, like, we are not trying to change what Ethereum's co-identity is, what makes Ethereum Ethereum. I think sometimes I've seen this a lot.

Like, there's a lot of frustration sometimes in the community, and I'm part of the community. I share some of these, the same frustration sometimes. But sometimes that ends up in throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Like, the answer is also not to like just run Ethereum like a company. I've sometimes seen this. Like that is, again, that's so misunderstanding. like, well, you know, then now we're fighting about like, you know, like a pie that's much smaller than what he's here already has achieved.

Like, that's also not the answer. Like, the answer is to just like double down on the unique strengths. Just do it with an actual like excitement about adoption about like, about the achieving the outcomes. And so I really think that the ultimate vision is the same. It's just the way to get there and the things to prioritize in the short term. And so that's why we don't want to be naive and it's not going to. be without attentions ever and like, yes, there will be hard folks where maybe we have different ideas about priorities.

But ultimately, I think it's deeply synergistic. And also in terms of hard folks, like, we've now gone 30, 40 minutes without even mentioning quad-defs once, right? And like, actually, Ethereum has always been actually decentralized in ways where it really matters. And the EF is very, very important for charting a path, charting a course. But ultimately, in terms of, like, what to prioritize in the show? short term and and the actual work of making all of all of these things happen that has been always

like distributed among a lot of shoulders a lot of like exceptional very very talented shoulders and those people will continue to be around and so I think I don't think it's like going from one to two here it's really just it's more going from you know from end to end plus one the F talks about the multi-node kind of e-therum and in a lot of ways I think you can even think of it as client diversity So on the tech layer, we actually have this client diversity and it makes it so extremely resilient. And this resilience also comes at some cost, right? Like there is, it makes shipping hard forks harder. It means you have a bunch of teams that need to kind of work together to, and so basically

the development process becomes a bit more expensive and there's coordination cost. But you get this insane resilience. And this resilience is also precisely what. makes it them special and what gives it a shot at reaching global scale. And so I think in a way, this sort of multi-node future is precisely kind of bringing this client diversity mentality to the ecosystem. And so, yes, there will be some tensions. But I think we're all kind of working towards the same end goal.

And so I think it's actually just incredibly, I'm incredibly bullish. Markets don't move one asset at a time. One day it's Bitcoin. the next Nvidia, then gold, and then the S&P. But most traders are still managing their portfolio across different platforms, different accounts, and different pools of capital. BitGet just changed that. Their new Stocks 2.0 products lets you trade tokenized equities directly with USDT,

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Some exciting news. We are launching a new podcast to help people figure out the crypto cycle, how to navigate it. The best crypto cycle investor I know, his name is Michael Nato. He runs the DeFi report. This is the guy that sent me a sell alert before the 10-10 price drop happened. His cycle analysis has been absolutely on point. I've been following him for years. And this year, we started recording weekly podcast episodes. Each one we get into his portfolio, what he's holding, the market structure, entry targets, fair market value of Bitcoin and Ether, and where we are in the cycle, there's new episodes

that are released every Wednesday. They're 30 minutes. They're short. They're punchy. I think this crypto cycle is harder to navigate than most. So let's do it together. go subscribe to this podcast. Search the Defi Report, wherever you get your podcast, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or find a link in the show notes. There's a new episode waiting for you now. I want to ask such just some logistical questions about ETH Labs and the formation. It's a nonprofit. It's funded by BitMine and Sharplink and a bunch of just individual contributors. Talk about just the funding element of ETH Labs. How much runway do you guys have as well? Just like talk about all of that. To us, we, we,

we thought a lot about it and we spoke about startup culture before, et cetera. And I think again, it's like we want to have a startup culture, but like we're also very, very explicit about wanting to be a nonprofit. In our mind, it's like the only way to do the type of work and kind of stewardship that we want to do. And that just like requires the neutrality and sort of aligned incentives or in fact, sort of no no incentives, yeah, no incentives in some sense. sense. And so that was extremely important to us. That's just something I wanted to frontload. On the funding side, yeah, as he said, like there's Bitmine, Chaplin, Joe Lubin are sort of our core

donors. And I mean, from our perspective, it's like very natural, right? Like, basically, their job is buying and holding ETH and we care about Ethereum and ETH. And so I think it's just a very natural kind of match here. And in general, they just also really get it, right? They they want us to be neutral, they want us to be independent and just get the work done. And so it's been, yeah, very grateful to have this kind of long-term thinking also on the funding side. And then beyond that, we have like, it was kind of kind of incredible support from across the entire ecosystem, from like over 50 people and entities, sort of, yeah, honestly very humbling to see, really. It's been quite a zero moment in a way.

We had the core devs, builders, D5 founders, community members. So yeah, quite special. I think you touched on runway as well. Without going into sort of the specific specifics here, we have like solid two, three year runway with kind of ambitious hiring goals. When I say ambitious, like we intend to be sort of lean, but just world-class talent. and so yeah it's it's uh we're here to stay as well beyond that yeah is there a plan for just

like indefinite long-term financial longevity like maybe your funding is an eth you stake the eth and then you actually just consume the yield out of something like that i don't know but what's the plan for just existing for forever one thing that is quite nice actually about sort of the need of i mean basically we're a non-profit right we don't want to get distracted with generating revenue, we want to be laser focused. And so what that means is we're going to need more money eventually, right? And so the nice thing is it means we're kind of accountable. Like we need to be impactful to be successful at kind of continued funding streams, generating funding streams. And so I think this accountability is actually, yeah, I think it's going to be quite powerful

to avoid maybe also some of the nonprofit failures otherwise. And so in terms of continued funding, yeah, I mean, basically deliver impactful work on the one hand, like most importantly. And then secondly, I think, yes, there are kind of possible setups still early days exploring things like you said, kind of funding streams, et cetera. But yeah, we'll share more on that when we get there. We're all just too aware of the failure cases of non-profits, right? Like it's very easy to just be completely disconnected from any kind of real world feedback. Because in a company, in a startup, you get that immediately. You either find product market fit or you don't.

In a startup, you can for a long time just like delude yourselves about doing something useful. So we actually really like this structure where for now, our plan is in a year we come back to the community. And we're like, hey, this is our track record. This is what we've concretely done for you. Is that, does that look as a bundle like that was, that actually created enough value that you would want us to keep existing and to keep funding us? And I think that's actually, that's a really good forcing function that aligns us directly with, we have a broad coalition. So it really aligns us with both the eth holders and the builders.

Those are the two categories of, you know, of different entities that will, if we, if we are successful, that will directly benefit from our operation. So basically being in this accountability loop with them is very important. And then we are, I will just tease this a little bit, we are looking into ways in which we can maybe separately be in a place where if we are successful in the ambition to also really, help Eath, you know, that if, if basically there's like a big success case there, how can we then maybe leverage that into more like long-term sustainable funding, where then we no longer have to, you know, basically once we are at the end of our like of our path there and like it's

basically, okay, we actually like we're successful there, how can that actually like then turn into more like long-term sustainable funding? Yeah, but more on this later. Just on the implementation details of the relationship with Bitmine and Sharplink, is there an ongoing relationship with BitMine and Sharplink? Or was it just like a free and clear donation, just like everyone else's donation? We'll talk about some of the specifics of the funding and accountability and all these things at a later point.

It's just very, very clear. There's no strings attached. There's no specific, like, you know, you will keep getting money if you do X. Actually, as Casper was saying, it was like a very mutually, like the conversation from the very beginning, both sides were like, of course,

this needs neutral. This needs independence. Otherwise, it makes no sense. Like if you end up being the, you know, like the bitmind entity or something like that, that, that wouldn't work. And we were actually very grateful for that that understanding was there. At the same time, we actively want to have direct and strong partnerships relationships with the builders and the eth holders. And those two two entities in particular, Bitmine Sharpling, they are the two largest individual eth holders out there. And so we will have strong partnerships with them. but they're not, that that is separate from the funding, basically.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You guys are hiring, who and what are you hiring for? What's the role? What's the kind of talent that you guys are looking for? So today, basically, who we are hiring for is, or the way I would say it is we really wanted to put up our bad signal, and we would want it to be like,

hey, this is a description of who we are, what we think Ethereum needs in this moment of time, what we want to do, and see is there like other people, exceptional people in the ecosystem, just in general that hear this and that hear the calling and want to join us, join the founding team from the very start. And we've actually, we've been overwhelmed.

Like, we didn't expect it to be that successful. We've had like hundreds of inbound already, like people reaching out. And so if anyone is listening to this and hasn't heard back from us yet, like, please, you know, like we, it's a bit of overwhelming. We're working through it. And there's amazing talent among this. So really, like, the first step here is just to see is that like anyone that we can bring on immediately that like just like is just absolutely exceptional right and then we talked about a bit

earlier i felt like i gave this a very long winding answer about about work streams basically over the coming weeks and months we will over the coming weeks we will and basically more more more announced and and they've defined the specific individual work streams and then at that point we will have more specific open positions more like targeted tires for individual work streams How can the community support people like me or just the average daily Gway listener or anyone in the Ethereum community? How can we best support you to help you guys get your job done? Holding is accountable, giving feedback and kind of pointing out pain points. I think just we're really going to sort of try and be close to both the community but also just the builders and kind of really leverage those insights.

And then, yeah, I think this is the most critical. And then obviously separately, we spoke about funding. We do accept donations at Eathlabs. But yeah, I think more critical is like we really want to have this like tight feedback loop, be transparent, work in the open. Yeah. And like as Anska said, like we are hiring. And I think honestly, it's pretty exciting.

And I think if you're kind of an exceptional talent and, And this mission is inspiring. I think, yeah, there's a lot to be done. One thing I've been thinking of when I talk with Ryan on the weekly roll-up or broadly is maybe I'm a little bit impatient about the arc of crypto as a project and the crypto industry as a whole. And so I'm looking at the Bitcoin chart and I'm like, man, why aren't we at like a quarter million dollars? And like I'm looking at like Ethereum and being like, why isn't all of finance on-chain? yet. I realized like, you know what?

Ethereum is 11 years old. It's still pretty young. And so perhaps the whole crypto story just takes something closer to like a lifetime than simply a decade. And Ansgar, Kaspur, you guys have been in my leaders in Ethereum for my entire lifetime in Ethereum.

And so you guys have already contributed a lifetime of work to Ethereum. And I'm very excited that you guys are going to continue adding another lifetime of work to Ethereum. Hopefully that sounds exciting and not daunting. But just thank you for taking on the challenge that I think Ethereum needs to take on as a project, as a community.

Putting points on the board, I think is the most important thing for Ethereum right now. And what I'm seeing here out of Ethelabs is what I would hope to see for Ethereum to complete what feels like it's destiny and it's quest to arc that it perhaps has gotten a little bit distracted or off track with in the last few years or so.

But like I'm excited. I hope the best for you guys. I'm here to support you guys along the way whichever whichever however I can. And so those are my words for you guys. Before we wrap up, I actually had a question. I mentioned a little off air already

and I'm not sure if you thought it was a joke or anything. But I, you know, like you're known a little in the community for your paper hands. Let me put it this way. your lack of faith. Oh, paper hands. I don't know if eight years of holding counts as paper hands. I'm just teasing you, but I actually do believe.

Like, look, I actually think many of your, much of your criticism ranked true to me as well. But I really think, again, it's not indefinite optimism. I don't think we can just sit back and just wait for Ethereum to win for ETH to win. I do think, though, there is a very exciting price here. And I think there is a real shot that Ethereum has. And so I just want to, you know, just come here and just, ask you, like point plank, like do you, would you consider, this is a good entry, entry point, like would you consider starting to rebuild your eth position?

Look, I'm looking at the eth chart and I'm like, this is what a deal looks like right now. This is cheap. This is where one would buy. And I absolutely do take the argument that trillion dollar assets are rare. And in addition to that, Ethereum has the potential to fill that one singular slot of the center host, the center hub of all global finance, seeing organizations like ETH Labs being like, yes, and we know that, and we're going to push the ball up the hill

to make it fit into that slot. These are all the pieces of the puzzle. And so there is an alignment of things that all feel directionally correct. I don't want to, as Mr. Paperhands, I don't want to commit to anything here live on the podcast, but I do see the vision and the fact that that vision is being held

by effective, competent people who want to push the ball up the hill is exciting to me. That's good enough. I'll let you stew on it. That's good. As far, Casper, you guys have had a very busy week with the launch of youth labs.

I'm sure next week is going to be just as busy. But what are you guys doing next? Like, what's the next thing you're going to do after we log off in this podcast and maybe you're done with some of the beer of getting the organization spun up, like never mind all that. When it comes to actually pushing the ball up the hill,

what comes first? Yeah. So of course, as you said, there's a lot of still just like the tedious things of just starting an organization, getting all of this one time everything out of the door. We're just wrapping up some continued fundraising. So all of this will take up two, three more weeks.

And in parallel, we are now very actively working towards, we want to really have all our work streams clearly defined. We'll also communicate this probably on a rolling basis, like, hey, this is a work somewhere starting, this is the work some we're starting, with explanations of like why, why is that impactful, how can you hold us accountable for them, these kind of things, and then hiring.

So really like, I think kind of like wrapping up the getting off the ground, work streams and hiring. Those are the immediate priorities. And then, of course, not to forget to mention, really like feedback, feedback, feedback. A lot of people we have already talked to over the, beyond the scenes, over the past weeks, and a lot more people to still talk to.

Jump on the next call, get hiring, get started. It's still day one. Infinite work and a lot of excitement. I don't know if the Ethereum community considers bankless an Ethereum podcast anymore. I still do, but you guys are free to come back on the podcast at any time to talk about what you guys are up to, what you're building, what your needs are,

whatever you want to communicate. So I intend to continue to make BakeBak lists the best Ethereum podcasts out there. And you guys are, if you guys are interested, you guys are welcome to help me out in doing that. Yeah, thank you, David. You know what it'll take. Awesome.

Yes. Thanks for coming on the show. Congratulations on the new jobs, technically, I think. You guys all got new jobs. So that's pretty exciting. And you guys have a pretty big job to do. And I think everyone is out here just supporting you guys. Yeah.

Thank you very much. this was a great conversation. And now we actually have to follow through. So, put part to that. Thank you. By my host nation. Y'all know the deal. Crypto's risky.

You can lose what you put in. But nonetheless, this is the frontier. It's not for everyone. And we are glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.