Bankless - Is ETH Back? Memecoins Here to Stay? HYPE's HyperLiquid EVM | Jon, Bread, & Andy8052

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Jon Charbonneau, Bread, and Andy8052 join David to break down Ethereum’s bold pivot back to Layer 1 and what it means for the future of crypto. They also dive into the implications of scaling the L1 over rollups, the looming death of longtail L2s, and the shifting meta around value accrual, memecoins, and onchain activity. The crew also debates ETH’s monetary identity, HyperLiquid’s EVM ambitions, and whether Ethereum can reassert itself as crypto’s dominant tech and cultural platform. Jon Charbonneau: https://x.com/jon_charb Bread: https://x.com/0xBreadguy Andy8052: https://x.com/andy8052 ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFi https://bankless.cc/Frax 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🌐SELF | PROVE YOUR SELF https://bankless.cc/Self 🏦INFINEX | THE CRYPTO-EVERYTHING APP https://bankless.cc/Infinex ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 1:58 Ethereum Pivot Has a Tagline https://x.com/hosseeb/status/1917052715911549399 https://x.com/0xngmi/status/1916910787936797005 18:49 Ethereum Value Accrual 30:29 Fun Chain Premium 34:00 Memecoin Meta These Days 50:17 HyperLiquid EVM 58:01 1 Gorilla vs 100 Men https://x.com/search?q=1%20Gorilla%20v%20100%20Men&src=typed_query 1:04:07 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Welcome Bankless Nation to a differently styled podcast on the bankless feed. I want to welcome three guests onto this podcast as we discuss, deliberate debate and dissect the topics that we all find interesting. First up, some people are wary of society's trend towards gambling and financialization, but where some see moral hazard, this man sees opportunity. By day, he's on the couch scrolling crypto Twitter and by night, well, he's still there. The only person on crypto Twitter actually having any fun, Andy 805-2, it's good to see you. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Also, sometimes on the day, I am playing golf. He sometimes weighs golf. He sometimes weighs golf. Bringing up the middle, if you haven't seen his ass, you're not in the right circles.

The person that did the impossible, somehow not having a single hater on Twitter, the pink-coded educator with glutinous glutes, the mega ass of mega-eith. Zero-X bread guy. Welcome back. Thanks for having me. That intro, I actually thought you were going to go to John and I just had to miss his ass picture. So, you know, maybe some kind of the future. Yeah, no, you're the only one with an ass on Twitter right now. And then bringing up the rear, the crypto's chief, lowercase, R researcher, the man who will write a 90-page research paper over the weekend because it was fun. We've all read his long AF research papers only to conclude that nothing's real and we shall buy Bitcoin. John Charbonneau, how you doing?

Great to be back on. How's it going? Pretty excited for this episode, guys. So the topics that we've got lined up for this week, the Ethereum pivot has a tagline. But what about ETH? Is ETH coming along for that? We want to talk about the death of longtail layer twos. We're going to talk about a little bit of what Andy's doing in the trenches.

And then we're going to finish off with one gorilla versus 100 men. A crucial question to this era of crypto-Twitter. And I think actually this is just gone down to the internet broadly. First off, honored to have you guys here. I think everyone has been a podcaster in of their own right separately. So bring in these three podcasts at the table just to kind of go through the weekly meta. So let's start here. I'm going to start sharing my screen to a tweet that Haseeb tweeted out, which coincidentally was something that my partner, Ryan and Sean Adams, also identified when we talked to the two recent executive directors, co-EDs of the EF, this idea of the Ethereum Pivot, the tagline for the Ethereum Pivot. Scale the layer one, scale blobs, improve UX.

Three easy to remember ideas. Seems like it lands a punch. And then Haseeb finishes off with his tweet here. If they can pull this off and buy back some credibility, this may be the beginning of the ETH revival. Let's see. Now, I think this topic was the subject between John and Brett and I last week when Andy, you were a bit sick, missed you having you back then. So maybe we can just pick off where that episode left. John, I'll throw this one to you. How do you feel about this tagline for Eath? On the scale of possible taglines, how do you feel about this one?

I love it. I mean, I'll give it a 10 out of 10. And I do agree with Steve's tweet there. Like if they can pull this off and actually get back credibility on this, like this would be a meaningful turn for me, but for Ethereum and for eth is the asset, like, most likely to me. The one thing that I saw like as interesting on it too is, I don't know if I'm reading too much into this, but the ordering of it was it was scale the L1 before scale blobs, which was just an interesting note. And like that is a nuance that I'm sure a lot of people would fight over if that like actually is the listed priorities.

That would actually be my preference is actually to focus more on scale in the layer. one. But that was one of the things that I picked off as like really liking in there. And then throwing in the improve UXs is, yeah, like obviously Ethereum should be doing more of that. It's great. Some people miss the blobs entirely. Like I saw OX NGMI famously the creator of DeFi Lama. He's like, so this is rugging the roll up roadmap, right? Like they missed that nuance of saying that, yeah, that goes towards like no one on the L1 uses blobs, right? The blobs are stored in the consensus layer. You literally can't even submit a transaction that utilizes blobs on mainnet with a wallach because the wallets and supports. So like,

It's not an L1 user thing. It cannot be an L1 user thing today. So that is explicitly for roll-ups. I personally think it should be deprioritized, but I think it's good to have some directional stuff there for L-2s. I just don't see it as like a great value-agreative thing. But it's good to have that signal there for everyone. Yeah, and some people were responding to that tweet from Zero X NGMI saying,

look, Ethereum detractors, Ethereum will find a way to always just be negative about Ethereum. It's like, oh, like, we're going to scale blobs, but even the Ethereum haters will find a way to say, like, oh, now Ethereum is doing the thing that everyone will ask you to, but now it's also rugging layer twos. And so there's some frustration out of the Ethereum community saying, like, there's no way to win. There's no way to win here. There's never any way to win in cryptocurrency. Isn't he a neat guy? Like, he's got a zero X at the start of his name. Yeah, so does Mert, though.

Yeah. I feel like the Defy Lama guys kind of, they fairly will talk shit about anything. which I respect. Yeah, they're pretty neutral. Yeah. Yeah, but I think it's worth talking about because, you know, you mentioned the long tail of L2s and how that might actually look, right? Like, that was the, when we say this move to scale the L1, like, that is kind of rugging the L2s because, like, yeah, you're going to take, you're going to take users away from some L2s, right? You're going to be the place to go to for high value defy.

you know it's going to be habitable for some applications. And we talked about that. And it's like, yeah, like some of those L2s probably shouldn't exist, right? Like that's actually going to happen. If you weren't meaningfully different from Mainnet, it's like tough cookie, right? You're like, you're probably going to die off. And Ethereum will accrue more value because of that, right? Because it actually has direct users interacting other thing.

Accruing fees. You know, we don't like to value things based on fees. But like you're going to need that if you're going to try to be a smart contract platform. I believe that. Like even for the sciop component of it. So yeah, like this probably is going to lead to some L2s withering from the vine, but it's necessary. I actually did some numbers today and saw that there's several L2s.

I think four right now that are all actually at a net loss purely on chain profit. So like the cost it takes to post down to L1 versus how much they're generating in fees from user activity. They're negative. Tyco is all the way down to $5 million in the negative. So it's like that's a crazy figure. Right? And it's like some of these teams are going to have to shut down at some point if they lose even more activity to to a stronger main net. Yeah, I mean, my feeling on it is like if mainnet doing this means you have to shut down, you were going to have to shut down anyways. And this is just like accelerating that process.

Like probably your L2 is dead regardless. And so like, yeah, I guess it sucks, but it's not their fault. Yeah. I think as soon as there became like some media about launching layer two's, There became this thing where like, oh, what do we do next? Let's launch a layer two. As soon as that like meta happened, this outcome was also destined to happen. Because if you were just launching a layer two because that's what is in the meta, that means

you're not launching it for a real purpose. You're doing it just to like pump the token. And so as soon as that meta said it, and then there was ultimately going to be like a reckoning for layer twos because we just had too many layer twos hit the market. The thing that I haven't seen, have you guys seen this at all? of has anyone from a major L2 that is undoubtedly successful and like you feel pretty good

that they're gonna have a spot even with ETHL1 scaling? I haven't seen like anyone important from those types of places coming out and saying, hey, like we really don't like this that you're competing with us.

Like I haven't seen any of that. And like that's kind of the test to me is like the people who should feel secure they all seem fine with it. Like yeah, if you're the last L2 and you just can't get users, you like should shut down probably.

Alex from ZK Sync has been pounding the drum. I saw, my tweet that said like yeah if like you were going to die you're going to die anyways like i got a like i got a like from jesse on that so he kind of he kind of was signaling some of that um yeah i i would say anyone that's that's firmly in the like we're trying something new novel different camp has been in favor of it the question is like i know like we had talked to last week that you know the vision for ethereum was like okay you can have a thousand million jillion l2s um what do you still

see that future if ethereum is trying to take a more dominant position within the ecosystem and actually own some use cases? Do you still think, hey, we're going to get enough of these L2s that come out that actually will accrue value in the same way, or we expect more direct value because a portion of that, the long tail, is actually just going to live on L1? I know, I asked this question to Andrew from Conduit and also Georgios about like, hey, how many L2s do you think that they are? There will be in the future. And their answer was, there will be an amount of layer twos that correlates to the demand for compute. And I think there is, and like the idea is, so you could spin up an ephemeral layer two, a layer two that, you know,

spins up and then goes away in a week if there's a momentary demand for compute from some, for some reason, some game existed, some game popped up, something. But what's been happening, like, over the last two years during like the layer two mania where everyone was launching layer two is like they tried to front run future demand that actually ended up not being there. And so if there's going to be a million layer two is it's going to be responsive to demand, or it's going to be a reaction to demand, not trying to like supply. net new block space into the market. And John, what were you going to say?

I was going to say, yeah, I don't think that, like, ETHL1 doing any scaling is ever going to shift whatever the long run outcome is of, like, how many chains are we going to need? Because, I mean, today, I don't think that we actually need a lot of chains. It is just people with experimenting with different flavors of serving mostly the same kind of handful of use cases. The world where you end up with a lot of chains in the long run is where you, like, you actually need them for different applications.

And you're spinning them up, you know, taking them down quickly. they're like very, very high scale. That's just a completely different thing than what Ethereum L1 is like actually trying to do here and is ever going to do. And so like it's never going to encroach on that market if it ever exists. It's just that the practical reality today is the long tail of chains today isn't serving these like unique high scale use cases. They're just like another EVM blockchain with like one second block times that does the same

stuff. Like that's all the stuff that gets cannibalized. It's just that the long tail today isn't actually really justified. Yeah. If you have a justifiable long tail of chains in the future, then like Ethel 1 can't be with that like it never well. Yeah and it's like we already have fast L1 chains that exist and that hasn't totally made every other L1 chain that could ever exist obsolete. I think I'd love to be a fly on the wall inside of optimism because I've always thought the optimism business model as a chain,

you know, building the super chain, building introp inside of the super chain, taking a 10% rake of all of the fees of every super chain chain, is actually the business model that a theory, that people wanted Ethereum to be itself. And optimism in the super chain model was kind of just like running interception on like what Ethereum was trying to be. But it was using, you know, like more central coordination, more centralized coordination around the optimism super chain in order to achieve the Ethereum vision for itself inside of its more siloed. And so like while optimism, you know, the optimism mainnet has never been really elevated

and prioritized by the optimism product. They've always tried to be like the super chain and like, you know, base is part of the super chain, world, world chain is part of the super chain. And these are literally the biggest layer twos out there. But I would like, it would be interesting to see like discussions from the optimism side of things. Because to me, they've built a microcosm of the larger Ethereum system. And out of the weakness of the layer one is why, like, there was so much demand for that. And like, even Arbitrum and ZK. Sink are all, we're all trying to like race for that same vision of a unified network of chains that Ethereum couldn't

produce because it didn't figure out interop and it didn't have the layer one scale. John, what's your take on that? I still don't think this is going to change any of that. Like, the services and level of tech that they need to build there are still a different gap from what Ethereum is going to be doing here. I mean, part of it, particularly for optimism, is literally like it's shared governance and management of a bridge contract. Like, I mean, you can argue that the native role of stuff will, like, eventually encroach

on, like, some of that. But I think that's just like a better product than it's years away. and it is sort of different. And then a lot of the more like opinionated, tactical linderop, I mean, if any of these chains do end up going into like some form of whether, like shared sequence, share building, whatever. I mean, like, Ethereum isn't going to be competing on that. It really is just trying to take back that, you know,

hey, we should be able to sort of as like general use cases here of like a typical good chain. And I don't view that as mostly encouraging on what they're kind of doing there. This is actually kind of my idea. I had to debate with Alex again, ZK. Sink back in there. because it's always, always the bickering on timeline is about value accrual, right? So it's like having that discussion with him. It's like, oh, cool, we can handle the compute of the entire world.

Like, yeah, cool, but does value go back to Ethereum? Right? Like, that's what anyone cares about. And then he, like, he would talk about, oh, how this actually drives value to the single tokens, EK Sync and does stuff. I was like, yeah, but like, how does that get back to Ethereum? How does Ethereum gain in that world? Which is kind of frustrating for me as someone that, like, and maybe just everyone

broadly, it's like you see so much goodwill energy going into all of this stuff and people are like, oh yeah, man, we're building, we're doing the mission, we're executing, we're creating this interoperable world that can, that can, like, onboard the world to this, quote, unquote, Ethereum stuff. But it's like, if it doesn't drive value back to ETH token, like, you're just not going to have people that are excited, happy, or okay with the outcome. Like, I'm sorry. Like, and I know, like, the last few weeks has been a lot of, like, trying to make sure there's a clear delineation between ETH the asset and ETH the technology and the culture and the ethos and stuff. I think you really got to marry those two things. And those,

interop stacks, which have a central token at the hub of all those things, right? That's the countervailing forces. That's like these people have incentive to drive value to their token, which kind of guides their decisions away from driving value directly to Ethereum the asset. And that has always been the critique of going down this roadmap. Is you just insert a bunch of incentives between these teams, the man hours are putting in, and then Eath the asset going up. Yeah, it's like death by a thousand cuts kind of small.

little tokens carving out a billion dollars of market cap over and over and over again that could theoretically be a cruel to ether, you know, speculation in ETH. Which is why I'm continuing to push that like if I'm joining John's camp here, it's like, we just need to accept that these are all separate chains. Like we need, I'm almost getting rid of, I'm going to try to get rid of the L1, L2 conversation because like whenever you just view them all as separate chains with their own incentives, with their own motivations and like Ethereum, the team, the researchers, everyone, they can only defend as far as

Ethereum, the actual chain goes, right? Like, that's the end of their domain. You can only do so much to that point. And then from there, it's just like, people are going to do their own thing to drive value to their own pockets. Because like, on a long enough time horizon, that's just how this stuff tends to trend.

So it's like, make sure that you're in a dominant position within your sphere. Try to provide some services and stuff if this is the long-term tail, but like don't prioritize that stuff over giving yourself a value, again, to the properties that you have, like, it's interest of resistance, liveness, all that stuff. Yeah, totally. And I think, like,

even talking about why L2s became so popular and kind of that, like, fad phase of like, oh, we're going to launch an L2 is, you know, if it was as easy to launch a layer one as it was to launch at L2 using some of these, like, roll up as a service things, they probably would have been L1s. They probably wouldn't have been L2s, but it was just, like, the easiest way to do things. And they had, like, some amount of value alignment, you know, BS that they could say. And so, like, I totally agree. They're just their own chain with their own incentives trying to, you know, make their company or their token valuable. And the L2 just at the point in time where they launched it was probably the path of least resistance. You may have already heard about Infinex. Infinex has,

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chain, he's bullish on that particular chain. Doesn't really like stay on the left curve side of that bell curve. You don't have to think about it too hard. If having fun, then bullish on the layer one. Bread, I don't know exactly where bread falls on this, maybe somewhere a little bit closer to John. But then there's also the camp that we've seen from Sam Casmanian and also Ryan, John Adams, of people just saying, hey, just talk about the asset in a reserve asset, global reserve asset context and like meme that into existence. And I'm seeing a little bit of those like the blind man feeling the elephant. Like everyone's kind of seeing this one shape and now, you know, depending on what your bias is, what your interpretation is, you have a different explanation

as to like why ETH is the way that it is and not the way that it's not. Brad, what do you think about this? I'm accepting. So I listen to Sam's podcast on, you know, headed to the day. It's great. I agree that if you aim to achieve higher valuations, like in the realm of a Bitcoin or beyond, even where Ethereum is today, you have to have people that buy into this sovereign money, like ownership, digital oil. Like, you have to have that belief. But I do not think the path to get there is just to be like, Bitcoin's a special snowflake. Like they've done it. They have the hard cap. They have this story that they can tell.

A smart contract platform cannot do that. I think you need, you need fees to generate like the basal level of like bullishness for a chain. And then if you maintain the properties or display properties that are even more powerful than that, again, censorship resistance, maximum decentralization, all this stuff. You allow like a subset of the community to dream higher and tell the story of, oh, you guys are looking at fees, but look at all this other stuff we can do. Right. Like all nation states are willing to participate on this chain because we've shown that we've defended against tornado cash, right? Like we've shown that this is credibly neutral for all of time and it can stand up against other nation states, right? all this stuff. So you let, like, you need the basal level of activity and excitement and fees generated to, like, get like, just like, again, a basal level of valuation to the thing. And then

you let others dream bigger by displaying the money and his properties, which is a byproduct of being useful. I don't think it is something you can just like straight up say, oh, we're money, don't worry about it. And then like everyone's just going to come to, come to, because you have rational people step in and go, what are you talking about? Like, you guys were making a bunch of fees. You're not making a bunch of fees. And then, like, you get in the argument about that stuff. So I think, yeah, That's my general position. You need a blend of the two. I think path dependency matters.

So you're saying like a, we need a strong layer one with strong layer one fundamental value accrual, something that would appease the John Charbonneau's of the world. And then we can take that to the Ryan, Sean Adams of the world and say, hey, here's the foundation that you have to leverage to turn this into what Ryan is calling like the blue money cult. Basically. Yeah. Because you like, John Lewis point out, you can't do the DCF on these things and come to a rational evaluation. You just can't. Right.

I like, so, but you need that to a degree for people like him to build some investor confidence. So people can actually do the DCF stuff, right? Oh, do. Hey, there's yield coming. There's like all this stuff I can do. And like you guys aren't seeing the bigger picture because it's yes, this much on DCF. But also, did you know these properties? Do you see what's coming down the pipe with Russia once they do an exchange with China?

And they can only do it on Ethereum layer one because it's the only thing that's credibly neutral. They're going to buy this thing because they have to do it here. It's like let these people tell the story on top of the actual DCF stuff. I just, I think you need. blend, yeah. So I think you actually need to focus less on the economics if you want eat to have a shot at the like winning as the sovereign money kind of thing. So like I agreed with a lot of what Sam had talked about in there of that kind of the focus on stuff like the burn over the past few years and the ultrasound money thing was the wrong focus. I mean like I have

very openly said like I think that that was the wrong focus. I mean, that was for a mix of reasons. I think that the burn is less important than you know just capturing the valley in the first place. but but then also like so much of the argument of why eith is better money than bitcoin that most ethereum people try to harp on is all economics based and I think that fundamentally you cannot win that argument I do not think that and like I saw this in like Ryan's latest post two of like digital gold plus yield like I think you can say these things if you want I don't think that anything economic based can ever be the core pitch of like why ETH is better money than Bitcoin. I think that it is game that you will, you will just always lose.

If you are going to have any shot at ETH, like, actually being able to flip Bitcoin or any, or any other asset that, like, is actually trying to take this shot at non-sover money, I think you need to win it in just a totally differentiated way. And what that very simply looks like to me is that you just are the winning tech platform. Like, everything is built on Ethereum. And naturally, like, you are the most, like, you are the obvious just like censorship-resistant programmable asset at the center of that ecosystem. And then you hope that that puts you in a good position because I don't think that like eighth will ever be able to like stand in an argument against Bitcoin and say like, you know, pitch black, like, hey, because of these qualities, let's burn whatever we have economics. Like this is better than Bitcoin. They don't care. Like they just want the predictability. This is digital gold. Like that's fine. That wins this bucket. The only shot that I think that you have at winning is being really, really differentiated of like, this is the usable programmable money and like everything is built on us. And then the, it's,

The other half of it is I think that it is still entirely Bitcoin's game to lose. Like if Bitcoin just manages to figure out roll up scaling and like manages to deal with just like the quantum risk in a few years as like in like some manageable way and like figures out the security budget, I honestly don't think there's anything that any chain could do to compete with Bitcoin. I think that like what you need to do if you're just going to best position yourself is like when does the tech platform get everything built on you. Everyone is using your asset. Like you're kind of right in the middle of that. And then you kind of honestly just like hope that Bitcoin just like kind of kind of. drops the ball and then you're naturally the best positioned after that. And I think that also sets you up in the best kind of like fallback scenario anyway. I think that's naturally what will

maximize your cash flows anyway. So I think it ends up looking very similar like what do you actually prioritize to do this is like I think I think that it is a lot of like L1 scaling stuff that's like just going to produce additional cash flows. It's just like what is the pitch and the prioritization that I think is going to matter more in the long run to like give you a shot at winning? I think it's less of like Ryan's article about like we need to talk about Eiff more. Because that was the main thing I disagree with him in there is like he said in there like EF isn't lagging because of tech. It's because the conviction is like all like sharded and mixed up.

That I disagree with. I think it has lagged because the ecosystem itself has like fallen behind a bit on usage versus others. And so the like the probability of, you know, how big is this Ethereum than going to be like has naturally shrunk. If I was like super convinced that Ethereum was actually going to win as you know, this is going to be the big smart contract platform, like all the worlds are going to be built on here.

Like, I think ETH will go up because your probability of that happening, I think would have to go up pretty meaningfully. Yeah. I think we're saying the same thing. Mine was not to like focus on the messaging being the technical stuff. I think you build for the tech platform, talk about the moniness, right? I think that's like that's what I have that frame of my head. You have to build for the usefulness, which brings the fees, which generates that stuff.

But then you have to talk about why you're a better thing than Bitcoin, even though like, yeah, that's a hard battle to fight. but yeah. I think even in the what you talk about, you talk less about the economics than people do today. I think you even talk about that less too. I think you talk about how this is the best tech platform and then we are the natural, like we are the programmable asset at the core of the winning tech platform. Like I think that is higher in the messaging than the economics are better.

Like even when you're pitching black arc and why ETH is better money, I think the proper point is like we win as the tech platform. Like ETH is the decentralized asset at the middle of that. Like if ETH wins fundamentally, the only way you can use Bitcoin in this on-chain economy is like you're using CBBT, some British version, whatever, that's like super trusted. I think it's much easier to make that argument than the economics one because I just don't think anyone's going to care. I don't think you're like just ever going to win that battle to do anyone. It's always just going to be strictly worse. It's just like it's a different smaller thing.

So like even in the investment pitch, I think it needs to be like we're the winning tech platform. And that's like, that's why we're the best money is because like this is the platform that everything is. on top of this is the only asset that can be the most decentralized, most secure asset in this economy if this is the winning platform and the winning rails. So I think maybe John, and you might agree and bred to that maybe the price, the valuation that has deflated out of ETH over the last two to three years has run hand in hand with the decreasing Ethereum dominance as a smart contract platform. And so maybe the notion of ETH as money just disappears when Ethereum dominance is the,

the smart contract platform goes from like 90%, just even down to like 60%, whereas in 90%, you are the dominant smart contract platform. There is no second best. But at 60%, there actually is a second best. And maybe it's not really anything about Solana specifically, but the fact that there is a valid contender in a saturated market. And then after Solana, well, then why can't there be a third and fourth and fifth? And all of a sudden, the notion of a smart contract platform gets very commoditized.

And so the difference between 60% dominant. and 90% dominant is the difference in monetary premium versus being just a tech play with a DCF model. Andy, what's up? Yeah, I just think, like, I think that's that part of it to me is what's most interesting. Because, like, to be honest, I've never cared about the whole, like, Eth's money conversation. As someone who's been building on ETH for a very long time, I've always thought ETH was interesting and got into it because of the tech. And, like, you know, it has, as someone who now makes most, the majority of my living, being a D-Gen on chain, And, like, I have very heavily moved my transactions off of Ethereum, mainnet, and, like,

even off of L2s, for the most part, like, the majority of my transactions for the last couple of years have been on Solana. And, like, if you had told me that three years ago, I would have said that's insane. Like, there's just no way that could ever possibly happen. And so, kind of like you were saying, David, like, the moment there is a second best, and you see that Ethereum is continually not the fastest horse when it comes to upgrading the tech and, like, maintaining lead. just like being cutthroat and competitive,

then it's like, okay, we can extrapolate this out. And there's a lot of money to be made here for no one to come and like really, really come for the king and try to be better. And then it just becomes like very, very reasonable to tell yourself a story of how it continues to fall off more and more. What was the first thing that pulled you over? Was it activity?

Yeah. Yeah, I guess this was like, I guess like pretty post-FTX crash, like relatively close FTX crash. I just like bought a bunch of, I sold almost all of my Ethereum for Solana. And then because of that, like as pump fun and memes all moved over there, there just wasn't really anything happening on ETH.

Like, NFTs had died off for the most part at this point. And it's just like what I'm going to sit in Ave and do nothing. So like, yeah, sure. Some of my stuff does that, but not nearly as much as it used to. Gotcha. So you saw the Black Swan Opportunity, figured that was probably a goodbye, and then just came up with the activity. after that. Yeah, it's just like that was where things continued to happen. That's where the

majority of opportunities have been over the last couple of years. Yeah, this just kind of goes back to this idea that there's a pretty large cohort of people who are just chain neutral and they are just stoked about whatever layer one asset is giving them the opportunities to have fun casino games and potentially make money as well. And like if that's Salon, if that's Ethereum, it doesn't really matter. But if the chain is fun, then there's some sort of like premium. I won't call it a monetary premium, but some sort of valuation premium that is associated with that layer one chain. I don't know. I think that's money in this. Yeah, I was going to say, I think that, like, that actually is the money part.

Like, Eath is not money to me because I could theoretically buy a coffee with it. Like, I don't really care about that. But I use it to, you know, for a long time, every day I was sending hundreds of transactions on Ethereum where it was literally the money that I was paying to do things with. And, like, that has just died off. And so then Solana has, for the most part, replaced it, or like, USDC has replaced it. lot of ways. Yeah, I mean, that's always been my argument for for these things, right? What L2's in the current paradigm, how they add value to Ethereum, right? Like, you, you buy ETH on base because you want to ape 10K into a virtual's protocol, right? Like, that's that

medium of exchange demand that comes from that something. That's the same thing with with Solana, right? You go over a Solana and you're not holding on to a hundred Solana because transactions are expensive because it's pretty cheap, right? Fast and cheap. You buy 20 grand worth of Salana because you want aaped into a shitter, right? Like, that's all. buy pressure, right? Or if I don't, if I don't even want to do the shitter, I can buy, you know, the same amount thinking that Andy's going to go over there and do that stuff because Andy, like, because I see it as a necessary asset to do the next cool thing, right? So you know buy pressure is going to come in as a byproduct of that. So like, you didn't build for moneyness in that same way. They didn't build to be the medium of exchange. They built for a useful tech platform for a pump fund. And because pump fund built there, now people need it as a medium of exchange is the thing next to the hot asset, right, the hot state. And therefore you get some asset appreciation of that and the bullish narratives come out of it and everything else. So if the meta is like, all right, we're all traded meme coins right now and somebody takes $100,000, deposits it into Coinbase because they want to buy a meme coin on Solana, a pump fund

shitter. They take that $100,000. They buy soul. That turns into a $100,000 to buy pressure on soul. Then they take that soul over to pump fund and they dump $100,000 into a meme coin. They sell soul and they dump $100,000 of soul for this meme coin shitter. But that buy pressure is still showed up on Coinbase, and I don't think selling it into a meme coin actually takes away from Solana USD liquidity and Solana USD demand, right? Like, I don't think that's true. Yeah, well, because like, you know, I don't know what the numbers are, but there is like a lot of Solana locked up in dead radium pools of Pump Fun coins that have been totally abandoned. And so it's like the market cap of a completely abandoned coin on pump fund is still like mid-five figures. And, you know,

five or six grand. And so that's a couple thousand dollars of Solana that's locked up literally forever. It is never coming back out. And that probably has been more burn than like the eth-burn over the years if we did the math. It actually made it deflationary for a little bit, which is impressive given Solana's inflation is actually higher than Ethereum. Yeah. And like we all know this pattern, right? Ether was like this reserve currency for the ICO media in 2017. It was the money that everyone used in DFI for DFI the DFI farms in 2020 and then it was the NFT money in 2021. And so, yeah, there's just kind of this, there's this speculative fervor and there is the denominator asset for that and whatever that is. Well, it's

interesting that like right now, I don't know what the current meta is. Maybe Andy, you can kind of tell me what the traders are doing these days, what the kiddos are doing. But like, I don't know what the common denominator asset is because meme coins, meme coins are still alive, but they're not like where they were. Right now, the virtual's ecosystem is up bigly. That's back on on base. But that's actually with the virtual unit of account, interestingly. But there is no kind of hotball of money going around right now. So I don't really know where what happens next in that whole in the trader arc. Yeah, I mean, like Pump Fun is still doing pretty serious numbers as far as revenue and volume goes.

Not as much as, you know, peak mania, but I don't have it in front of me, but it's still a lot. I would say that's probably still the main kind of thing. But it does sort of feel like people. you know, and all my group chats and stuff are just like waiting for the next interesting thing and kind of just like biding their time trading meme coins. And if one goes to even like, you know, five or ten million dollars, they're like, wow,

this was incredible. Whereas previously that's like table stakes. So that part of it definitely has seemingly changed. But yeah, the virtual stuff that launched on base is cool. It's funny that they've gone back and forth like snip, snap, sip snap. But they're trying to like actually address some of the like sniping problems on these like fair launch tokens. And so they moved to a pre-sale model. It's been interesting to see all these different teams

try to figure out ways to launch a token that doesn't just get destroyed by like snipers and scammers. I do think that the snipers is the number one problem about the sustainability of meme coins and token generation events. Like it seems to be like the arc of meme coins ended when these snipers just started winning too hard because that was how the Libre debacle fell off. And so there's this like race to solve the sniper problem

to like unlock the next like progression of meme coins. I'm still surprised that the value problem, it's like for all the faults that the typical L2 constructions have, right, with the sequence or building on the blocks, like you do have the benefits of, of a private mempool, right? So like you don't have to worry about people, sandwich attacking you, right?

Everyone is aware of it at the same time. It's hard to do same block buying that you're seeing with a lot of these launches on me on Solana. It's like I think, I heard blockworks talk about the numbers. And it was something like 80% of all pump fund launches have an initial buy in the exact same block in which the thing is launched, and then like 50% of those end in profit sold five minutes later.

So like the grinder is just ridiculous over there right now. But like that's possible because like, you know, that stuff's open. Like it's been industrialized, right? Because it's been around for a while. The value prop of doing something on an L2 right now is that, you know, that can't happen to the same degree because it's not all fully exposed block building. Yeah, I'm surprised by that as well. It's something that I kind of at different points in time thought that we would get with bass and we got it to certain extent.

But I really, like as silly as it sounds, I kind of just feel like everyone who has a hotball of D-Gen money moved over to Solana and like Phantom Wallet kind of won that world and Pump Fun won already. And it's just so hard to unseat them. Like you really have to have some serious step level improvement and seeming, I think, a lot of these traders don't even know that that would be a step-level improvement for them, that, like, not be, like, they're sandwiching and stuff. They probably just don't even really know it exists. And where they're using G-Do and they don't care. But, yeah, I'm a little bit surprised we haven't seen more activity on L2s for that same reason.

Memcoins itself as a category has been so much more sticky than any other mania that's come before it. You know, NFTs came and went. And, you know, ICOs came and went and, like, DFI somewhere came and went. but and meme coins came and they are still here. And it doesn't really seem like they are going away like anytime soon. And I think every ecosystem is trying to find is like Pump Fun, but nothing's really taking away anything from Pump Fun itself. For this virtual thing, so like I haven't looked at it closely if you guys have.

So I mean, the idea of this like new launch thing that they're doing is it's supposed to be like, you do a pre-sale basically of the token at like some fixed price, right? Yeah. It's the basic idea of it to launch. What is the reason for doing that as opposed to The other main idea that I've heard before That I don't think I've seen before with Meancoins Is like just running like a duck jockin or something

Before you launch it And so you get like an actual market Like floating the market sets the price As opposed to like some arbitrary fixed price here I didn't really understand the mechanic of that as opposed to Yeah I was funny I remember talking to David about this at a Party once while we were drinking wine But I think really the issue because like I agree

theoretically that like a Dutch auction makes a ton of sense. I think like... Technically better. Yeah. Like I think Doppler, what's the name of the... Is it Doppler? Yeah. Yeah.

Like they're doing stuff like kind of in that vein. But the issue is that it doesn't feel like or scratch the itch of like I want to turn one salonah into 10,000 salana. And like that is so much more the driving force than like I need the absolute fair market entry price at the start of this thing. Yeah. And so I think it's just like if you could find a way and like I'm honestly shocked that we haven't seen meme coins on like world chain become popular.

Like some way to like truly civil resistance meme coin launch where like you could have an actually fair, you know, $10 per human meme coin launch or something. Like I think it could potentially work. But it's just like if you don't have that. that lottery ticket style potential. It's just not as compelling for a lot of people. What I'm hearing is it's a mid-curve, a mid-curve approach to meme coins. Everyone's just like, bro, just give me the lottery ticket.

I want a maximum extraction, but also maximum upside. And then, like, oh, but it's not fair. You don't realize you're getting taken advantage of. They're like, what are you talking about? Give me my lottery ticket. Yeah. I was like, I still want to do a 10-leg parlay NFL Sunday. Yes.

I know it's not the right move, but I still want to do it. But I think, David, quickly on what you were talking about of meme coins being sticky. I was talking about this with a couple of friends the other day. And my response was like casinos have had the same casino games for a very long time. And like I kind of feel like we've just gotten to a bit of what the like logical conclusion of like on-chain casino looks like. And I think it will continue to evolve and change for sure. But like people are, people obviously like to risk money and gamble on the blockchain. And I don't see that stopping. And until there is a more efficient way than meme coins to do it for this like true pvp like system i don't think it'll be

replaced and like the flavor of what it is might change whether it's you know a i or animals or whatever but it's still kind of the same thing yeah so it's still on chain liquidity pvping which is what i think everyone is getting pulled into like when you and i were talking indy i was like going down the flaunch rabbit hole and i think talking about like oh yeah there's like what about like a 30-minute window where if you're interested, you can come and you can buy the meme coin. It's just 30 minutes long. And then the people who get in inside of this 30 minutes window, they're the early ones. And everyone else is like, it's only 30 minutes.

But like, I think I still under estimated this like the power of this like human centipede of virality where if you are number one, you are twice as early as number two. And if you are number two, you are twice as early as number four. And so the incentive to just like send some like pump fun shit or live. link to your friend and being like, hey, buy this. And then your friend like repeats that down the line across telegram. Like that that's like, I think that's how like a rail gun works. That that rail gun method of just like a viral meme coin is just so incredibly powerful.

That optimizing for like 20% better execution just does not hold a candle to that, whatever phenomenon that is. Like the problem I still have with all this though is how we're saying like if this is reaching kind of the logical conclusion of like basically on-chain casino is that, and I've heard people argue this before, of like, this is just strictly worse than a casino. Because like, the good thing about a casino is like they have actually optimized basically all of the odds to extract just enough such that you don't like screw off, like screw all of the customers over so that they all leave. They keep coming back versus that's the problem with these meme coins. Like at least

as currently constructed if we don't move to any kind of like auction or whatever kind of different format is everyone who's individually launching a single toction is just like incentivized to max extract. And so the market equilibrium ends up being you just extracts like way more than the users are actually willing to take and then like keep playing over time. Like it just ends up looking like that roller coaster meme of like the like this circle just keep getting like a little bit smaller every time. And it feels like we're just going forward with that.

Where like I don't think mean points are obviously going away. They're never going to. I mean, the big ones are going to last forever. And I don't even think the current iteration is going to go away of this like current pump fun meta, but I can't see that like as currently constructed that it would keep growing or even sustain what it's at. Like it feels like it has to just just start like churning people out at like the kind of the current economics.

Yeah. Well, I think like the one thing though with that, because I agree with you, but it's worse than a casino odds-wise, but it's better than a casino marketing because no one knows the odds. And the average idiot online sees some 19-year-old post-a-old post-a-old. picture of his Ferrari and goes, I could do that. No one thinks that going to sit down at the blackjack table, but they think that when they put 10 Solana in their phantom wallet. And so that's the major difference right now. And so, like, I think that's why it's been so cyclical where there

are these really long periods of lulls and periods of like total mania, because there is a ton of money that is leaving the system every single time. And you just like need time to refresh after that. Yeah, I was just going to say that I don't, that's not act like it's any different than just like crypto broadly, right? Like, these people doing this stuff don't even know the difference between the value of cruel methods and valuations of any of these things, like the layer one blockchains, layer two blockchains, D5 protocols, meme coins, whatever, right? That's a narrative that most of the stuff is meme coins. So for them, it's, it's the same thing. You see the upside from everyone else, and then you get hurt, and then you go, I'm ready to be hurt again after some period of time,

and then you go back in. The thing that's surprising to me is my guess is that more people than you'd expect, understand how bad the odds are, just because of really high-profile blowups at this point of like, like, the Trump coin chart is terrible. Like, that's just not a good chart. Like, most people who have bought that thing are down. And then you look at like the Malay chart, burned a ton of people, just like straight nuke. Like, those are the examples that most people have seen. I have been surprised at the level of meme coin volume that has continued after that of, of like, pump fun is still just ripping. Like, they're just still making a ton of money every day. People are still using it a lot. I have been surprised.

that it didn't make more of a dent having these really high profile examples where everyone sees that, like, yeah, you're probably going to lose money on this. Like, it's not going to be a great outcome. I've been surprised at how sticky it has been, even with that happening. I think it's just like a tale as old as time with gambling in general. I think it's like still just people who are doing this and, you know, think they have a chance if they don't actually have an edge are like pretty irrational, whether they're sports betting or at the blackjack table, or. are playing meme coins. Yeah, I do think that post-Trump, post-Libra, there was a cleansing of the market where people without edge just either did get burned or identify that they don't have edge and they left. And the people who are left playing the meme coin game are sophisticated. They know the game. They are aware of the odds. They are doing it for fun. They're doing it with their funny money. And so the market that is left of doing that is, is the people who are

doing it are not casuals. They are people who are think about this day and day out. And they are the ones for responsible for like this, you know, sustained high volumes here. I describe it as the, like the Malay Libra situation was the lights coming on at the club at 3 a.m. Everyone's like, what is going on? Like, I'm disgusted with myself. Like this is not what I want to be doing. I need to go home and shower, right? So, like, the average person left. And then, like, you know, the people that are, like, doing that every other night are still there playing the game. Chronic partiers. Chronic partiers are still doing that stuff. They're doing a line in the bathroom. Like, they're having a great time. Yeah. But the thing is, like, I saw some comments on the timeline of just people saying

that it was a little, it was like trench warfare between different cults of meme coiners over the last few weeks. But it was starting to heal a little bit. So it was like everyone had formed these little cabals of trying to launch these coins and make these games, whatever. There's actually a lot of dashboards for tracking wallets of, like, key K-Wels and shit. So, like, a lot of that was going on pretty heavily for the last month or so. And then now it's starting like, okay, momentum's starting to pick back up and it's starting to be a little more of PVE. Yeah.

I do wonder, like, once, if this does really, like, actually get frothy again, there's more energy going back into this. If the equilibrium finds a more sustainable place where more people aren't just getting raked over and over and over again, it's actually a little bit more sustainable. and it's, you know, the more casual people can actually play for a longer time without actually getting their shit handed to them. I would hope so, obviously, but I don't really know if there's any sort of reasons why the rake just wouldn't get more rakey over time.

Well, I mean, the one nice thing is, like, generally in the history of crypto things, like, fees have somewhat trended towards zero over time. and like, you know, there was a period of time where it seemed insane that, like, royalties would ever go away or these different things. And, like, sure, there's still going to be extraction events and stuff. But these markets are, like, you know, long enough time horizon. They can be pretty efficient. And, like, I have to think that it will happen eventually. People will only, you know, lose money so much, but they still want to fuel their gambling addiction that will try to get better or they'll move to competitors who are trying to take less.

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Audited by ZK security, the self-app is live on iOS and Play Store. Visit self-x. com. Redirecting a little bit. And if you played in a hyper-liquity ecosystem at all, a little bit not not a ton recently but yeah it's something i was told myself i was going to do it this weekend didn't actually do it but i'm starting to like deploy my strategy because i want to expose

to hype because one because of the fees is generating it's like this enshrined application setup that seems to be um finding a little bit of PMF right like they're routinely at the top of chain chain fees but it's a little unfair again because they have an enshrined application which is their their perps platform but they're they have the the EVM side what's opened up, which is this general programmable side, like side car that has some, I believe their op codes are called builder codes that allow you to like actually inherit or take some information from the PURPS platform and then bring it into the EVM side, which is really slow.

It's not, it's programmable, but like it has some appeal there and there's like a little bit of a scene popping up. And I just think it'll probably continue to to grow a little bit. And I want to make sure you have some exposure. But I don't know if that'll be straight hyper if I want to actually like go a little bit deeper. Yeah, I was actually tweeting with someone about that literally today. funny enough, but I think the challenge with the EVM stuff is like, I mean, I think there's a

couple issues, but like one is just that people who own hype value hype so much as an asset that like they don't want to sell it. They don't want to use it as money. They want to hold it because they value it so much. Like the Orgyne's ecosystem? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, why am I going to sell my hype for some random shit coin on, you know, the launch pad that exists or AI agent or whatever. And so I think that's like a big part of it. And also like you said, the experience on the hype perpsex and the experience on like the hype EVM are just not the same. And I think that you use the two and you're like, I don't really want to use this EPM that there's like not that much to do. And so I think you kind of just need like one or two catalysts to

really get the ball moving and get things to change. And probably at, you know, odds are at some point that will happen and there will be a period of time where there's a lot of money to be made on the hype EVM. But yeah, right now it's been weird. I'm a little bit surprised at how little there has been, because I was actually pretty bearish about the EVM launch for a lot of these reasons. I just thought people really like hype and don't want to use it for that. But I'll be curious to see how it evolves. Yeah, what is the integration, the like synergy between the hype EVM and the actual Purps platform. Like, why, is it, is it just the same currency or like what, what's the deal?

Yeah, like, like Brett said, you, they have some codes that you can use, like kind of enshrined op codes to access data from the exchange. And also, I believe eventually the idea is that you can also, you know, like buy and sell on the exchange through the EVM. I don't think that's live right now. But so theoretically, if there were applications that, you know, that needs. you did oracles or wanted to have like, you know, really deep liquidity for trading different things. You could like build that in the EVM and be able to access data from the exchange at the

same time. That's kind of, I think, a lot of what the core value property is. They have some other stuff that they've changed as well. They have like a dual block architecture, which is interesting, where they have like smaller blocks that are cheaper and faster and bigger blocks that are more expensive. And so, like, you use the big blocks to deploy smart contracts for the most part and, like, do really complex batching or whatever, and you use the smaller blocks for regular transactions. But I think they're a little bit too small still to like two million gas. It's kind of easy to fill them up. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. The notion of an enshrined application actually does make sense. It has, like, all of this very rich data and trading volume and liquidity. Yeah. And so it's like what if finance had a EVM around it where you could build a bunch of other cool stuff on top of finance? Right. Yeah. What if the Binance exchange and B&B were like more intimately connected with each other? Yeah. Yeah. I want to hear John talk a little bit about like the, he was teasing a high capacity or high performance chain little R research paper. But he may never release it so much on and see if I can tease some of it of it right now. Yeah. It's been a while. Did you cover hyper liquid in that? I wrote like 90% of it and then I just haven't finished the last 10% of it. It's been sitting there for like a good month or two at this point. I need to actually finish. it. Yeah, no, I did a bit.

You know, I, like, I, I think the pitch of it definitely makes sense of, like, David to your question of, like, kind of like, why the integration. I mean, a lot of it, I think, is honestly similar to Solana's thesis, just like starting from a different point of it. It's just beneficial to have all these things in the same place. I mean, the simple literal example is, all right, if this is just, like, the best, deepest liquid exchange that has all the users on it, like, where would you want to launch your token in your application? You know, I'm going to launch my app, obviously, right there. And then, like, you know, my, my token will just get listed there right away. Like, this is where all the users are. Like, I have a tough time with it, though, seeing them build this out in practice because, yeah, I mean, part of it is like, you can just like literally look at the numbers of this, obviously. Like, at least as of right now, we'll see where they take it.

The hyper EVM is like not actually performant at all. It's like very on the low end of performance. Yeah. Just for relative numbers, I looked, I looked it up. it's like it's like one 30th of base to give you like relative performance so like if they're if that's their throughput relative to their hyper core side which is the perps thing it's just like like Andy was saying like you have this mental model of like hyperliquit fast go awesome cool whatever thing and then you get over like what what the fuck's going on like it's I'm I mean quicksand

and I don't like it and like I just think that's the not a great move yeah yeah I think it's a like it's a really tough area to play and to just go build another EVM chain and then one to make it good and then to like have a meaningful differentiation then on top of that to get users to come use you it's just hard to start a general purpose chain right now as an EVM. Like even for guys like Mega Ethan Monad who are great and been working at this longer. Like Monat's been working on like literally this problem for years. It seems difficult to me that like a team is just going to show up and say like, oh, yeah, we're going to have the this super optimized EVM and just slap it on top of this

other thing and it's going to work perfectly. It's obviously not how it's going to work. And then building up a whole general purpose ecosystem, it's just going to be really tough, particularly when you've taken away the obvious two applications that would be the thing, you know, the flagship thing that like most applications would build is it's perfect change and spot exchange. Like that's already gone. So go build the other like stuff that people already care about a little bit less. And then, hey, by the way, this actually isn't optimized. It's difficult. So like, yeah, my general bias has been the same for the past few months. It's still. super bullish on them as building a great purpose exchange, a really good exchange for people to use,

but it's going to be super tough to like really, really drive adoption on having a meaningfully differentiated EVM right now, sticking that on there. Yeah, I agree. I think the one thing that they have that a lot of other EVMs don't have, and I've seen this mentioned a few times, is that they just have a massive war chest of hype that they can air drop to people. And so, you know, as we saw with UniChane over the last couple of weeks, like incentives work, And it will get people to move funds. And so that's kind of, to me, the one unknown is I know they just had on TestNet the other day a new like points page show up on their on their UI.

And so I could see them starting to roll out a much more aggressive incentive mechanism for using the hyper EVM. And that could be a pretty big ball mover. Guys, this has been, I've loved this. I think this is great. There's one last conversation that I think we should touch on before. we wrap this one up. This one actually spawned on TikTok apparently. I don't know how or why,

but going around the internet, there is a conversation around 100 men versus one gorilla. And I think it's worth having a conversation here. I think it's nice to see how everyone thinks about this question. Maybe Brett, actually, I think you were the one that suggested this. So maybe you could kind of like lay the foundation about this debate. Yeah.

All right. So first we got a set of parameters. So everyone is aware of the conditions, right? So we're going to say neutral playing field. This is in an arena. everyone is told to go in and fight the other thing, the 100 men versus the gorilla, same thing with the gorilla,

assume we can communicate with it, and says if you don't win, you're dead, right? So, like, there's some motivation there. For me, I think it's pretty clear. I do this on mass, right? So, like, if you do, like, the average weight of an American male, I think it was, like, 190 pounds. That's, like, 19,000, 2,000, or 20,000 pounds,

roughly, and an average silverback gorilla is, like, 400 pounds. She had like 19,500 pounds mass difference there. So I just think logically you have to go with the humans because the gorilla still has soft bits. It's made for burst strength and energy, right? It's not an endurance athlete like the like humans. There you go. A little disproportionate. That's what I think people just like, Jesus.

People don't understand the size of a gorilla. It's not King Kong. It's like 400 pounds. So it's like, you know, a couple of humans. And I just think, yeah, you got to be. go with the girl are you got to go with the humans in that that instance i think the the context of saying you will die if you do not win i think is important because when i was first simulating this in my head i didn't really have that at that prerequisite in the debate because i think like i was

thinking about this okay if i am one of these 100 people and i have to go up against these silver back gorilla uh which uh yeah 300 to 430 pounds okay so you're right about that uh that thing is fucking scary bro and there's no way that I'm going first. And I think most, most dudes like me are also not, are also not planning on going to first. Yeah. Yeah. And so who the hell is going to go first?

And if everyone is scared of going first, that silverback gorilla can just pick us off one by one. That was kind of like my hesitancy about picking humans here. Yeah, as long as you have to do the gladiator thing where like he walks out and just like fights like nine other gladiators one by one and just works through it. And like, yeah, gorilla's going to win every time. But like,

100 people, no way. It really depends on how coordinated the humans are. Yeah, I guess are the humans allowed to plan before the fight starts? I'm not sure that really matters. We'll say you have five minutes as a group. I think that be enough time. I think that's the other aspect of it. It's just like humans are smarter than grow less.

And I think that with enough planning, you could figure it out. And the other thing that I was thinking about is like, could 10 humans beat Andre the Jai? in a fight? How much a he way? Is a gorilla 10 times harder than Andre the Giant? Like, I don't know. So, yeah, I mean, I agree with Brett. I think that it's like definitely the humans. Like, do you think that you could be a hundred rats in a fight? Like, probably not. A hundred rats, yes. I think I could beat 100 rats. Five thousand rats. Now we're, now it's getting weird. Yeah. If, do you think if a hundred rats came at you right now? You're standing there in a hundred Rats for me, you think you would win in a fight?

Are they New York rats? Yeah. They just take some Joe's pizza and they're ready to go. I'm just thinking that like if it's rats, if it's a hundred rats, I can run quickly and all I need to do is while I am running, step on one rat at a time for a while. And if I can get them down to 50, then I'm golden. All right, fair enough. But yeah, no, I just think it's definitely humans. John, what's up?

I waited to go last because I cheated and I went back and forth with the chat GPT, asking what would happen here and went through different scenarios. So four attributes that matter most if the humans are going to win or not. One, willingness to die. If you have a bunch of people who are suicidal, like odd skyrocket. Yes. Two is coordination and strategy. Like if you have a plan going in, so the five minutes is big. And then size and skill of the fighters.

So if you take 100 average men with no plan and a normal will to live, guerrilla wins easily because the reason why is panic. Most humans flee or hesitate when seeing friends being ripped apart. I am fleeing. Fear collapses any chance. Guerrilla wins within minutes. But if you take about 100 NFL linemen who are coordinated and willing to die, there's a greater than 95% chance that they win.

And they will neutralize it fast in under 45 seconds with probably only 10 to 20 casualties. And the greater question here. coordinated plan, and this is part of why it, I don't even think it works if you have people coordinate before, is because you know who's going to die. Like, the people who go in the first wave, like, they're all dead. The first, like, two waves of people, they're all dead. But that is the optimal strategy is you send them in coordinated waves. You take out the lower body first, and then you have, like, dedicated teams for each of the body parts. Like, if a vision crew take at the eyes, poke the eyes out. Yeah, exactly. That's what that's what that's going to do, bread? You're going to go

for the eyes? I mean, look, man, if all my my, if all my homies are on the line, my, the interesting question for me, now that John rattled some of that off is, would you guys say that you have above or below the average will to live? I have above the, I would say I have above average will to live. I think the average person will say that they have above average will to live. Yeah. Yeah. This is like the, if you ask everyone, do you think you're a good or a bad driver, like above average driver? The vast majority of people will tell you that they're an above average driver. I feel like this is the exact same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right.

all right that's great guys this has been fantastic next week we'll talk about whatever the the weekly meta is i think also something that i need to figure out maybe you guys can help me maybe the uh listeners of this podcast can help me we need a name for this subject i was thinking about block party uh seems really fucking generic you can tell i just chat asked chat chbt exactly what i should have called this uh so if there's anyone out there with a possible name for whatever the show format is uh hit me with it and then also just give us a feedback if you like this episode uh what you want us to talk about if you're in the bankless discord at me there if you're on twitter at us there uh andy john bred really appreciate you guys coming on and just talking through the week with me

and looking forward to doing it next week later dudes see it's fun so bankless station you guys know the deal crypto is risky you can lose what you put in but nonetheless we are headed west this is the frontier it's not for everyone but we are glad you were with us on the bankless journey thanks a lot