Bankless - The Ethereum Roadmap Wars | Will Ethereum Win?

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

In this episode of Bankless Takes we dive into the growing sentiment that Ethereum is losing its edge, with its roadmap straying and competitors catching up.  We’ve spent a long time evaluating these arguments, and today, we give our take on the Ethereum Roadmap Wars. This is our best take on how the debate unfolds and why, in the end, we’re still bullish on Ethereum’s future. ------ 🎮B3 | THE FUTURE OF ONCHAIN GAMING https://bankless.cc/b3 ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2    ⁠ 🦄UNISWAP | BROWSER EXTENSION https://bankless.cc/uniswap 🪄 MAGIC EDEN | HOME OF WEB3 https://bankless.cc/MagicEden 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle    🤖 0G | MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE, INEVITABLE https://bankless.cc/0G  ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/82?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E ------ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Start 03:24 The Roadmap Wars 12:22 What Are The Wars Really About? 25:40 Roadmap Proposed Solutions 35:03 Why Are We Fighting Over DeFi 39:15 What Do We Do About It? 44:59 Where Will DeFi End Up? 50:23 What About $ETH The Asset? 53:43 The Bull Case For ETH ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures ⁠

Bankless Nation is time for another bankless takes. We haven't done one of these in a while. And just as a reminder, these episodes are just like David and my pure unadulterated takes. Like take them or leave them? I mean, this is just how we're feeling, what we're thinking at the moment, not investment advice. You have any more disclaimers for the Bankrupt Station here? I think the vibe is like Ryan and I do a ton of podcasts together. And then we need to reflect on the podcast that we've done over recent times.

And so the bankless takes is just kind of like a moment for me to ask Ryan. Ryan, what did you think about the things that we've learned over the last month? And for Ryan to ask me the same. Well, so the topic today is the Ethereum Roadmap Wars, which I feel like we've been talking about since probably June or so. And it's part of this larger feeling that within crypto, and this is a sentiment-type feeling, that Ethereum is losing, that the roadmap has gone astray, that competitors are catching up. That Ethereum and Vitalik Beteran need to get wartime serious and change the roadmap. itself is perhaps off track. Yeah.

And we need to reconsider what track that we're on. And so we have evaluated this position. We've heard many of the Ethereum bears take this position, even some folks that are internal to Ethereum inside the community who are also taking this position. So I feel like now we've considered this position and we've considered the counter evidence and the counter arguments. So it's like maybe time to just talk and regurgitate. So this is about the Ethereum roadmap wars.

and where we are and what we think about them and how they resolve and why, I don't know about you, David, but why I at least am still bullish Ethereum. And of course, we're not the only ones that are considering this. I would say the Ethereum community at large is considering this. And so even though some people are saying, hey, like actually the path that we're on, some people are saying that the path that we're on is just the correct path, it is still being articulated now differently as a result of the conversations. So I think collectively there's been some processing about the conversations that have.

been held. So we're going to get into all these conversations, but first, a moment to talk about our friends and sponsors over at B3. B3 is a gaming ecosystem, a layer three gaming ecosystem built on base, but is also chain agnostic. Think of it like the OP stack, but for games. And right now, there are plenty of just like kind of fun, quirky, addicting games, kind of like flash games, mini-clip arcade for all you 90s kids out there to go play. And in addition to them being built on a chain. There's also tokens, of course, but you can actually send some of these games to your friends, and the B3, Basement.Fund, the website, will spin up a wallet. They'll fingerprint your device, spin up a wallet, so your friends can start immediately playing games and not think about

crypto. And then after earning XP, which is a token, and any other tokens that are go with the game, that will be accrued to the wallet that is either you log into or it spins up for you, and then you can go collect your token. So you can check it out at banklist.cc.c.c.com and start playing some games. That's called basement. Get down to the basement. Basement. Basement. Fun. And David Ngu saw this. Moodang has a crypto blockchain game on here.

And I got to imagine Moodang is over there. How much Mooding XP have you acquired? Well, look at all these tokens that Moodang is collecting. I imagine this is ERC, you know, 20 that you could trade on uniswap. So, you know, that sounds fun. All right. Let's get to the main event here and talk about the roadmap wars, the Ethereum roadmap wars. And I think we should begin this conversation to kind of recap the criticisms so far.

Got to find the problem. Yeah. Let's collect the criticisms and the sentiment so far. And let's do a good job with this, David. Let's steal man the case. And basically, if I were to summarize the sentiment in hyperbole, it's kind of like Ethereum is dead. It's being squeezed. It's being outflanked.

It's being squeezed on one side by, like, Bitcoin is a better monetary asset. And the other side by all of these alternatives. full Bitcoin ETF. Yeah, exactly. And on the other side, by all of these alternative layer ones, there are kind of like fast layer ones, which this cycle, Starling, has been slown up to this point. So it's being out flanked, is being squeezed. And I think there are maybe three reasons for this, at least categories of reason that

I want to bounce by you. And then, David, you and I should do a good job of, like, I want to do a good job of steel manning the case here to get us up to speed. So the first is this. it's an overall sentiment that Ethereum doesn't have a North Star. So, you know, some of the other communities like Salana, for instance, is NASDAQ on chain. That's the vision. That's our North Star.

That's what we're trying to build to. Well, what's Ethereum's? Can you articulate it? It's not digital gold like Bitcoin, is it? That's the purpose of Bitcoin. Everyone kind of knows that. It doesn't have a, you know, like one-line quip. You know, other alternative layer ones is all about fast finance, Bitcoin, the digital

gold. Competitors just have a better North Star. is kind of the collection. This is almost a vibe-based narrative type of critique here. And like that's that's the first. The second big criticism is a Ethereum's roadmap. The creation of layer twos are creating these parasites. Layer twos are parasitic to Ethereum. Ethereum, the layer one, once upon a time, created a ton of value. It created a ton of ethburn. It created a ton of revenue for stakers. And now since the emergence of layer twos and the migration of activity onto layer two's, a lot of that value capture has started to approach zero. It's gone down quite a bit.

ETH has been actually inflationary year over year. Defy activity has migrated onto layer twos. There is less ETH fee capture for Ethereum on the layer one. And also layer twos are just, they're actually just distinct blockchains. You know, centralized sequencers, completely like differentiated block space. And so, you know, the base, we, we've on this on the weekly rollout pretty frequently. Base is making a ton of revenue and that revenue is going to Coinbase. Arbitrum is making a ton of revenue and that revenue is going to the Arbitrum Dow. And in that same era in which the profits of layer twos are very large, those profits are coming out of the profits of the Ethereum layer one as evidenced by the net inflation that Ethereum

has had year over year. Yeah. And I think the data sort of backs at least to some of what you just said, which there's less fee capture for Ethereum. You said base is kind of making all the margin. They're not really passing much onto ETH holders in the form of like a burn or, you know, cash flows for if you're a holder of ETH. And then there is something to the case that L2s, you know, the Ethereum community has been saying, hey, L2s are Ethereum. And they're right in one sense, but they're also like not correct in another sense.

In one sense, I think they're right that L2s are part of the Ethereum ecosystem, part of the Ethereum economy. You know, I think there's maybe lots of reasons to think they are net good for Ethereum the network. But it's also not quite interchangeable. You know, the blocks based on something like base, if it's a, you know, stage zero or stage one, does not quite give you the same security and settlement assurances as something on Maynet.

It doesn't. And the reason why is because it's not all the way, you know, stage two. So there is some potential ability to kind of. of like you like for a you know a centralized actor to to basically do something nefarious and I would also even add to that even if base did become a stage two it still wouldn't be a theory like these are blocks bases are just different they're different blockchains they're not the same thing they they are different in a fashion and also you know the sequencer is centralized right so that's another piece of the puzzle here so I think that like there's some truth in

in in the idea that layer twos are not Ethereum and then also there's truth that layer twos are Ethereum. And so like this subtlety, of course. Like all debates, they end up in semantics. It's semantics. It's semantics. What is Ethereum is up for debate. Okay, so we don't know the roadmap theorem.

It doesn't have North Star. These L2s, they're looking parasitic, at least in the short run to either the asset. And then this third one is Ethereum is fragmented. What do people mean by that? And we started talking about this earlier in the year with a like fixing fragmentation series. But what is the main criticism with Ethereum feeling fragmented? Yeah, so the Ethereum roadmap, which is to eventually produce hundreds of thousands of transactions per second, if not millions of transactions per second. And we are achieving that scale by having a collection of scaling zones that when you add them up, maybe we can get to a million transactions per second.

But maybe that's because you actually add 10 different rollups that each have 100,000 transactions per second. and then you add an aggregate to get to a million transactions per second. And that is fragmentation. It's not exactly what people thought about scaling to a million transactions per second. People want a million transactions per second, like on the same network in the same spot. In the same share of the state. Same wallet. So while the Ethereum roadmap is like, well, we can get a million transactions per second,

but it comes from these different corners of the internet and it's actually not in the same spot. And so this whole multi-chain. UX has emerged, bridge hopping, you know, using a cross to go from one chain to another, which takes time. It creates, like, derivative assets. So there's, like, Arbitrum USDC, there's optimism USDC, there's optimism, ETH. And you can, like, accidentally bridge over, like, an optimism derivative token on to Arbitrum, and then it's another derivative token.

But then that token is also on the layer one, and it's a different one. And so this fragmentation emerges. And it's just a terrible U.S. also liquidity fragments. Like when everything is in the same uniswap pool, liquidity is much better. But when we have like 20 different implementations of uniswap across many different chains across Ethereum, that's just like it provides poor execution. It's literally a worse financial product.

And then in addition to all of that, in addition to the fragmentation, like some of the best places to execute your defy trade or to do your activity or just somewhere else that you are not. And then you need to go take steps to get there. And it doesn't really feel some people are saying, well, this doesn't count as scaling. If you need to add in many, many networks in order to get a million transactions per second, that doesn't, that shouldn't actually count. It should actually just be this one seamless network. And we scale that to a million transactions per second. And that's not what Ethereum is doing. So that's kind of like the whole Ethereum is fragmented concern.

Yeah, the wallet UX really hasn't caught up to this, right? It's kind of like messy. I mean, you know, that can catch up. But that people's lived experiences is every. layer two feels like sort of a separate chain and you're like, you know, starting kind of from scratch. I'll also add to this, this feeling of like, well, you know, in the old days, when somebody was getting on chain for the first time, you had one place to direct them. Just come to Ethereum, right? Well, now where do you direct them? Where do I start? Do I start on base?

Do I start on Arbitram? Do I start on like ZK Sync stack? Or if I'm a developer, where do I deploy my application? I have all of these different chain options. It's no longer simple as it was in the days where there was one Ethereum chain and one main net. So from that new perspective, it's fragmented as well. Yeah. Application developers don't want to also have to make a bet on which they, which horse they think is the fastest in order to deploy the app. They're up.

They just want to deploy an app. Okay. So all of this, critics will say, explains this chart that I'm looking at. This is the Bitcoin ratio. And it has been going down for the last year since the beginning of the year. And the last two years, right? And so this is theory being being squeezed by Bitcoin as a, you know, like a monetary asset. And then on the other side, if we were to look at the ETH ratio or the sole ETH ratio, that would be in the opposite direction.

So Solana and some set of alternative layer ones have appreciated relative to ether over the past like year to like 24 months. You like some rather significantly. So this is an example of evidence for everything you just said. So, you know, the criticisms that we just like said, well, the market agrees with it. because look at what you like what's happening in the market. And it looks like ether, the asset is being squeezed between other assets. And also importantly, like you're actually getting this, you know, ETHBTC ratio from Max Resnick, who is explaining that this is evidence as to like why

the current Ethereum plan is actually failing. This is in a Twitter thread that says in a competitive environment with network effects, we cannot afford to tank for years and cross our fingers. It didn't work for Pocodot. It did not work for Cosmos. But maybe it might work for us. And he's saying, no, they didn't work for them. It's not working for us.

That's why we need to scale of the layer one. And then his evidence for this is the ether Bitcoin ratio. And so people are using Pryte, but like clearly price is down. Therefore, something is wrong. Yeah. And I think we've had an upper of guests that have made this case. Max Resnick is one. There's somebody by the name of Brett on Twitter.

He's just like very active in this space. And John Sharbon, and some of those characters, I would say, sort of inside the community, inside the house. They're working on Ethereum-related projects are traditionally friendly to Ethereum. They've made the case and have some compelling arguments around this. We've also had those that are like, you know, traditionally very antagonistic to the Ethereum community, people like Kyle Samani, obviously, you know, making these

claims maybe for different reasons, people to argue. But there have been some pretty good articulations of these claims. I guess let me just ask you, while we're in the Steelman zone right here, of those three, Ethereum doesn't have a North Star, L2s are parasitic, Ethereum is fragmented. What do you think are the most compelling, like, what are the most accurate, you like, takes out there? And what are the sort of the, you know, most compelling arguments? Probably in the reverse order that we articulated them. So starting with Ethereum is fragmented. That is a real problem that needs to be addressed head on. Layer 2s are parasitic to ETH.

I'm not going to call a problem, although it is worth noting the changing economics. around ether the asset and just paying attention to what's going on there. I think we'll circle back around to that part of the conversation later in this episode. Ethereum doesn't have a North Star, I think, is actually the weakest. People like their memes. So like Solana's NASDAQ on chain or decentralized NASDAQ vision is like easy to articulate. But I also think just like it's one of those things where like if you optimize for decentralized NASDAQ, you accidentally are ignoring some things and then you actually just

walk yourself off of a cliff because you ignore those things. Bitcoin is digital gold. Bitcoin has also been always been very simple, and so it's very easy to meme. Ethereum has always gone for like one of the more complex visions, the most complex roadmaps. But that doesn't mean it's wrong. And just because you can't consolidate like a roadmap into a meme, doesn't at all mean the North Star isn't there. Yeah. One thing I'd say, I might phrase it a little bit differently rather than complex roadmaps,

I might say ambitious roadmaps, because when you look at the Ethereum roadmap, it truly is ambitious. And let's pause while we're still talking about this and acknowledge kind of like a counterpoint to all of this. Because I want to acknowledge this because I want to get your assessment of how much of a factor you think this is actually playing in this. And this is an alternative explanation for all of the criticism and sentiment, Eth is dead. It is being squeezed. Heath is being outflanked that we just heard above is basically David this. price drives narrative, all right? And so, like, we are only talking about this,

and we only have this level of criticism and sentiment because ETH price is down. And so we're looking for an explanation. Do you like Tradify Media does this all the time? If you go on CNBC, stock markets down, there's always, like, you know, 20 analysts who have the reason why the stock market is down. The most adjacent reason to, like, why the price moved

in the way that it moved. And sometimes it is related. to that move. But like a lot of times, it's just part of the random walk of like markets, right? Just like markets go up, markets go down. They don't perfectly reflect all of kind of the accurate, like fundamentals. And so some people would say the only reason these criticisms are actually being surfaced is just because ETH price is down. And this is all cyclical. This is short term. This is not long run. And the conclusion is just be patient. Just wait. And some within the here in community are basically saying well all of these criticisms david and ryan why are you even

platforming them on bangliss they can be safely ignored like just ignore them it's just fud and just like you know don't worry about it what what's your what's your take on that to what extent do you think that is a factoring in here well the eth bTC ratio has been down for two years so at some point you have to ask yourself well how random of a walk is this like two years of a random i i do agree i do agree with a point that like we are i've actually kind of said this in a various capacities and people have disagreed with me with me but like we're in a bear market we're in a bear market uh maybe we're not in bare market of prices which yes that's technically what a bear market would be but like we're in a bare market of like user adoption we're in a bear market of mainstream attention uh no or at least we're

not in a bold market you would say we're definitely not in a bull market right and so inside of this kind of like insular two years of crypto of which there has been not any new users since 2022. 2022 was the last time we got new users, really. Like maybe people got pulled into meme coins, but not really. And so inside of that environment, we haven't had any fresh new blood. We don't know what the outside consumers want. And so I think there is some credence to the idea that, like, you can kind of random walk pretty

far inside of that void of an adoption bear market. But nonetheless, two years is like a long time for a round walk. I think it's irresponsible to say that. because Max Resnick in my debate with him and at Permissionalists made this point. We're like maybe prices are down because of this third thing, which is that the actual roadmap is off track. Right. Maybe the roadmap is off track. Maybe the fragmentation and the prices are actually related to each other. Maybe those are down because of the same thing for the same reason. And I think, like, if we want to be proactive and not rest on our laurels and lean into the fact that, like, yes, Ethereum has a roadmap, that we need to execute change.

And we have the opportunity to consider the changes that we are executing and reevaluate them on a case-by-case basis. We are not Bitcoin. We are not setting a North Star, the very genesis of our network, and then tunnel visioning our way there. We are considering steps along the way. we pivoted the Ethereum roadmap pretty heavily in 2019. We have this option to consider the choices that we're making. And so, therefore, we should do it. And as two years of a downtrend, of a price downtrend and the Bitcoin Ether ratio continues,

we should be considering that more over time. And so at some point, price does become signal, not noise. You were talking about the Bitcoin ratio, but how about the sole-Eth ratio as well or other alternative layer ones? Would you say the same? Yeah, so the sole eth ratio has been going up for one year. The eth Bitcoin ratio has been going down for two years. So, yeah, you are seeing signal on different corners of the crypto industry.

I mean, I have to agree with you there. I think that it would be unwise and just like not in the best interest of Ethereum to just ignore all criticism and dismiss it as fud. Like, at least you have to like look at that criticism and see where the merits are and steal man the case and then kind of like assess. Although I will say like, it could be up to seven. 70% of this is like actually, you know, price driving narrative here. And we'd be having a very different conversation if price was in the other direction. And so there might be something like going on. And there might be some merit to that.

But I'm just like not in a place to like ignore that. Well, like why would you do that? What you then create is kind of a, you know, a environment and a culture that is like immune to all criticism. And you never pivot. You never change. And you never adopt and learn. And I don't think that is a good place for, like, a crypto network to be.

One other thing I'll add to this is, I think there's some unrealistic expectations out there as well. There's actually something that Kyle Simani said in our conversation that I somewhat agree with. He's like, you know, ether is a $300 to $400 billion asset right now. Okay? And so like last cycle,

40x gains from the bottom of the top, you know? Like 100 to, you know, 4,500, something like that, which was the eth. It rose that much. You can't get 40x gains every single cycle. It's just like, it's too big. And so I think that there are some people that are first cyclers, and they're looking at ether the asset.

And they're like, okay, I hear what you're saying about ether being a good asset, but it's not going to be life-changing money. And the reason I came to cryptos is life-changing money. And so, like, I think that there's some mismatch there with... I don't know if that's valid, because that is a U.S. dollar-anchored price reference point, and the angst coming from the Ethereum community is kind of... from the ratio of market caps compared to Bitcoin and Solana. Okay, but so I would say it's more accurate for the sole eth ratio and like the lower market

cap alternative layer ones. Like basically your base case should be a hot L1 that's an alternative to Ethereum is going to pump more than Ethereum this cycle in any bull market environment. It just has to because it's coming off a floor of like $5 to $20 billion or something like this, right? I mean, Salana. $8 billion? when Solana cratered after

XX, which is so low. It was so oversold. Right? And so you're coming off that bottom and it's a much smaller market cap asset. So of course it makes sense. Now I will agree with you though, David, that you can't waive the Bitcoin ratio way. It came off of $4 billion. Exactly.

And what, Heath probably didn't drop below what, you know, $200 billion or $150 billion or something like that, right? So like when your floor is $4 billion, of course you're going to like... $150, yeah. have much more upside potential.

But you are right in that it doesn't, like, you know, that argument doesn't hold sway with the ETH Bitcoin ratio. The fact that Bitcoin has been overperforming is like significant. Anyway, I guess we're both of the opinion that we can't just, you know, like dismiss all of this as fun. You approach things head on. You do hard things. That's generally the most proactive thing.

That's just general life advice. It's just like, don't ignore our fun. Lean into the criticism. Yeah, I mean into it, like figure it out. Yeah. Okay, so as a result of all of this, some people are proposing roadmap solutions. And I would say both people internal to the Ethereum community say we might need a pivot in some way and also people external. So we're going to talk about all that and more.

But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible, including our recommended exchange for 2024. That is Cracken. Go create an account. If you want a crypto trading experience backed by world-class security and award-winning support teams, then head over to Cracken, one of the longest standing and most secure crypto platforms in the world. Cracken is on a journey to build a more accessible, inclusive, and fair financial system, making it simple and secure for everyone, everywhere, to trade crypto. Cracken's intuitive trading tools are designed to grow with you, empowering you to make your first or your hundreds trade in just a few clicks. And there's an award-winning client support team available 24-7 to help you along the way,

along with a whole range of educational guides, articles, and videos. With products and features like Cracken Pro and Cracken and! marketplace and a seamless app to bring it all together, it's really the perfect place to get your complete crypto experience. So check out the simple, secure, and powerful way for everyone to trade crypto, whether you're a complete beginner or a season pro. Go to crackin.com slash bank lists to see what crypto can be. Not investment advice, crypto trading involves risk of loss. Imagine a future where AI and blockchain converge, where decentralized intelligence operates transparently with Web3 infrastructure, unlocking boundless human potential. And that future is here with zero gravity,

the first decentralized AI operating system. Zero gravity isn't just faster, it's 50,000 times faster and 100 times more cost-efficient than current alternatives, unleashing the power of high data applications and modular AI. With unrivaled throughput, limitless scalability,

and a verified AI framework, zero gravity is turning the dream of on-chain AI into reality. Curious about how AI and Web3 can reshape the future, you can visit 0G.AI to explore the infrastructure as revolutionizing decentralized. I'm tired of juggling multiple wallets and websites just to navigate Web3. Meet Magic Eden, the home of Web 3.

It is becoming a super dab where you can do everything cross-chain all in one place. They're solving Ux issues by building products across every chain ecosystem, swaps, borrowing and lending, NFTs, perps, and more, all seamlessly cross-chain. Instead of hopping between countless sites and handling multiple wallets, just use Magic Eden. Save time and get to the meme coining faster. Plus, the M.E. token is coming out this quarter from the M.E. Foundation. If you've used any of their protocols, like the NFT platform, you can claim some. So check out Magic Eden today and watch them become a super DAP and the home of Web3 in real time. You can get there at Magic Eden.com. To get started. So we're back. I would say inside the community, we're talking about the roadmap, inside the community, the Ethereum community, there's this mantra of make the L1 great again. People like Max Resnick are repeating this often. And this is the idea of, you know, repeating this often. And this is the idea of, prioritize L1 execution a little bit more.

Like we have on the Ethereum side really prioritize layer twos and data availability and blob space for layer twos. And that seems to be the continued trajectory of the roadmap. And so some within the Ethereum community are saying, now come back to the layer one. There's some more work we could do here. Let's not forsake execution on Ethereum's layer one. So that's kind of the general philosophy of those inside the community. I would say those outside of the community, those not, like, invested and excited about Ethereum

are basically like, Ethereum's an old horse. Like, just give up and die. It's a buggy. You know, there's all these faster blockchains and just like, you know, you will be legacy tech. It's all about the tech. It's all about the tech, that sort of thing. And so they're just kind of like give up and die. It's the sentiment coming from outside the community.

But that's how I would summarize the proposed solutions for the roadmap. But what do you think this? these roadmap wars are really about because you think there's an underlying logic to it and some prized thing that we're actually fighting for here. I want to reframe a lot of the conversations that we've had, the roadmap wars. Wars implies something that we're fighting over. What are we fighting over? Max Resnick will say we're fighting over layer one execution. I think really a lot of the debate should be reoriented around defy. And this is something that I think is very near. and dear to both of our hearts.

Ethereum created Defi. We both, I think, were very pilled when we both minted die from MakerDal. And we were like, wow, this is amazing. I mean, bankless itself is just another word for defy. For just, it's just defy. And so, like, defy is kind of this very special thing that is coming out of crypto. The idea to break finance out of Wall Street and democratize it and put it on the internet as internet protocols is something that deeply motivates. like me and Ryan, and I think is this fundamental essence that is highly related to crypto.

You can't really have crypto without defy. Like, defy is so important. And so I want to actually reframe the entire roadmap wars as like we are fighting over defy and being the home of defy. And I also want to illustrate defy as like kind of this like one-of-one object, this golden goose that Ethereum, the Ethereum layer one created. currently holds, but is potentially under threat of losing. And it's under threat of losing by its own design.

That's kind of the roll-up-centric roadmap. Like we are going to give this defy one-of-one object up to our layer two's. Or maybe we actually lose it in that transition to layer twos. We actually lose it to Solana and a different network has it. Why is Defi a one-of-one object? There is efficiency network effects when it comes to defy. liquidity begets liquidity. There's that meme that, like, if anything has the most liquid markets,

it's going to just attract further capital to exchange on that market. So liquidity begets liquidity. Capital efficiency begets capital efficiency. Composability begets composability. And so, you know, when we were getting into defy, we had this concept of money legos, right? Like uniswap could work with MakerDAO could work with Avey, could work with, like, anything else that's built on the Ethereum layer one. And this composability is something that you. could find in crypto that you couldn't find in Tradfai. And so there's this idea that the

epicenter of Defi will just be in one specific spot, kind of how we've seen Wall Street be the home of finance. Defi has this one home of finance. And right now, to this day, it is the Ethereum Layer 1. Like the metrics just point to that being true no matter what. But on the margins, we've seen the growth of Defi happen elsewhere. So even though that the Ethereum Layer 1 is the dominant loki of defy. We've seen a lot of new defy be grown on Arbitrum, a lot of new defy be grown on base, new defy being grown on Solana. So even when there is this intense network effects around liquidity and just like defy capital efficiency inside of the Ethereum layer one, we are still seeing the net new growth of defy happen elsewhere. And defy,

the reason why I call it the golden goose is because it has all of the value. Defy has the largest transactions. It creates the most MEV. It produces the most reservation demand for a natural asset, the ether, the asset for Ethereum, Salana for the Salana layer one. And in our opinion, the bankless thesis has been, defy actually can create money of the respective layer one. Like, defy is the thing that Ethereum has that Bitcoin does not and has been a huge component in the ethos money thesis. Like ether, we'll be able to financialize itself, use. using its own homegrown defy economy to be a better money than Bitcoin, whereas Bitcoin kind of still needs Coinbase or Cracken or centralized operators to financialize Bitcoin

the asset. This is kind of like, you know, Professor Omead's idea of ether, the asset being a high-quality liquid asset for defy specifically. And the idea is when you have when you're layer one and when your like economy has decentralized finance, it doesn't have to sort of relinquish. custody to a crypto bank for lending and borrowing, like a Celsius, for instance, or an FTCS for trading, right? You can have a decentralized exchange to all of these things. And that's basically the bankless thesis, what you're just describing here. And this is a thing, like I said, it produces so much

of the value that blockchains really want to capture. It produces, it produces transaction demand and produces large transactions. These large transactions produce second, third, fourth, fifth order consequences in terms of MEV transactions. So so much activity happens, whichever blockchain can be like the Wall Street for defy. And something that we've learned is that defy is also strictly better with fast, cheap execution, fast block times, cheap transaction costs. Slow and constrained blockchains actually don't produce good defy. Slow constrained blockchains produce more MEV than what's necessary. They're less efficient markets. They're slower liquidation. There's slower liquidity balancing, and it costs more for users, which constrains the total

supply of active market participants that can participate in this, like, defy economy, which also therefore reduces the available capital for this economy. Some applications like perps, options, clubs, central limit order books, or anything complex really requires low, low fee fast block times blockchains. It's better UX. It's better UX. And also just users, just enjoy. The U.S.

is better with low fees fast block times. And so for this reason, this has been part of the push for like the max resonant push of like make the Ethereum layer one great again. Optimize the Ethereum layer one for defy. And while going through this, these like series of episodes that we did, I am kind of compelled by that where we have been very constrained at the Ethereum layer one. and we have kind of really incentivized people to migrate to Ethereum layer twos. And so Arbitrum is proudly beating their chest to be the home of DFI for Ethereum. And so if that is true, if Arbiturum does take the one-of-one golden goose and it captures the network effects of D-Fi, well, then you kind of go back to, that's good. It's still inside of the Ethereum ecosystem.

It's good for Ethereum. But it's also not as good for Ethereum because of kind of the concerns around the peritaphys. acidic nature of Ethereum roll-ups. Well, then the value of Defy goes to the Arbitrum Dow, which is less credibly neutral than if it were the much more decentralized Ethereum Layer 1. And so this has kind of been like why execution has been a very prominent subject of these debates. But also I think why what we're really collectively fighting over is this golden goose of DeFi. It's who wins defy. Is it going to be Solana? Ethereum's giving it up, apparently, because the roadmap is saying we are going to continue to have solo stakers at the layer one. We're going to continue to have 12 second

block times for the foreseeable future. We're going to continue to prioritize the centralization. And so therefore, that what people are saying is that choice means that Ethereum is going to give up the one of one golden goose. And who captures that golden goose? It could go to these VC-funded layer twos. Arbitrum, optimism, base are going to squabble over Defy. Solana is also going to fight to capture that one-of-one golden goose. And so where Defy goes has been a part of perhaps why the ETH-BTC ratio is down. The Solana-Eth ratio is up. And then people are talking about their fragmentation of the layer two landscape. I think there's one semantic, you know, definitional element that we have to talk about, which is when we say defy, what do we actually

mean. And I think there's like two types of defy that people mean in crypto and they'd sort of blend these things together. One is what I'll call like strong defy, like defy with strong settlement assurances. And the other is kind of like defy light. Light defy does not have strong nation state resistant settlement assurances. Strong defy does. And again, when we say settlement assurances and kind of like property rights and, you know, these types of things, it basically means the ability, like the inability for any third-party actor to steal, sensor, inflate, cheat in some way the participants inside of that network. And when I say strong defy, what I mean is at the nation-state level, like a nation-state actor does not have power to steal, sensor, or inflate any of the property

inside of that blockchain network. Okay. So it's like the highest-grade security you can get because at the nation-state level, we're operating in kind of the rule of the jungle, and it's all against all. And so there are these like incredibly powerful forces that would like to try to manipulate and control a property rights system. And if they can't, then you are nation-state sovereign, resistant. You have strong defy.

And I would say that only two chains right now have passed into that threshold of being able to host strong defy. One is Bitcoin, as evidenced by the fact that you have countries like El Salvador with Bitcoin, the use case as a store of value on their central bank. So they're using Bitcoin literally to defend against other nation states from a store of value perspective.

And then Ethereum, which in addition to the store of value properties, hasn't been picked up by a central bank yet, but has censorship or resistance against even things like OFAC sanctions. So OFAC sanctions, a set of smart contract, those blocks are still built within Ethereum. Everything else besides Ethereum and Bitcoin has not been tested at the level of nation state resistance like sovereignty. And so a lot of the other category of blockchains are just operating in kind of a defy light type context. They'll work as long as the nation state's cool with it, as long as it's not like illegal in some particular jurisdiction. I would even say that Ethereum has been tested in ways that Bitcoin has not. There has been coin join mixers, Bitcoin mixers, Bitcoin versions of tornado cash that are centralized

companies that have been shut down and seized by the FBI. Bitcoin has always been higher than the level of the nation state for BT. T-C the asset. But it's also been a long-time bankless easter. Well, actually, Bitcoin Defi is actually quite neutered. It's actually quite stunted. Hence why Ethereum Defi is this very valuable place. So there's actually only one defy ecosystem with smart contracts that has been able to operate antagonistically above the level of a nation state. And even Ethereum layer two's and all other layer ones have not actually passed over that threshold. So there's actually only one economic zone, the Ethereum Layer 1, that has strong defy. Everything else is going to be

like weak defy. It's going to be defy light. And I think strong defy is necessary if you're trying to create a store of value or a monetary system for like the entire world. And so when you were talking about like defy is strictly better with fast, cheap, shared execution, that is true holding all things equal. But if in exchange for that fast, cheap, shared execution, you are making compromises and you are leading to a more centralized system that can own. only support like defy light weak defy well what have you really gained here yeah that's not really why we're here that's not that's not why bankless is here and that's not why we believe that crypto is here so there is this question i would say of like what does the rest of the world want and i would contend

that the core of crypto is always going to be something that operates outside of the the nation state and provides you know that grade of security or else why do you not use like a permission fintech database with a set of APIs. And anyway, this all leads to the question of what do we do with the roadmap? And what are some of the, like, so scale the L1, continue with the L2 course that Ethereum is on, taking all of the context, everything we just went over, what are the, what's kind of the what do for Ethereum from a roadmap perspective? These two camps subdivide inside themselves, but the two large camps are we got to pivot

the roadmap. Let's scale the layer one. That's one side. That's like the Max Dresnik side of things. And then there's the stay the course. This is just noise. Just grow the layer two's. Maybe this is also, this is the noise camp. It's also the, well, this is actually just the growing paints camp. This is the side of things we're like, well, Ethereum's going through puberty is actually tough. It makes sense that the ETH BTC ratio is down in this present moment of time because we're doing this weird transition, this weird handoff of D5 from layer one to layer two. But actually the price actually makes sense because we're doing this like evolution thing where we're shedding one era of Ethereum for another. The pivot the roadmap has garnered increasingly more energy

over the last like year or so, and especially with Max Resnick getting really spicy on Twitter. So what about that? What about that road map? Can we just like juice the layer one? And there's like two different ways to do this. There is the Max Resnick F the Solostakers. path where he says solo solo sacers are unnecessary. We don't really need them. They're actually slowing down the network. Slow sacers have captured Ethereum, which is kind of funny. And then there's the Vitalik Buterin scaling the Ethereum roadmap path, which turns out

we actually are scaling the Ethereum Layer 1. That is actually the current plan. And also it's worth noting that Pellenia, I think, wrote the best Ethereum Layer 1 scaling roadmap article all the way back in December of 23. so coming up on a year ago. And they just write a very concise, articulate, somewhat technical, Ethereum layer one scaling plan, where at the end of this roadmap, the part of the Ethereum roadmap that scales the layer one, that we end up with this snarkified Ethereum layer one, which makes it, which takes the power of ZK,

imbues it into Ethereum, and makes it like ZK Ethereum. And at that point, we can like really take off. off the brakes of the Ethereum Layer 1 and have very strong execution capacity at the layer 1, very fast block times. Think like two second block times, very fast for it in Theorem Layer 1. And that would be pretty powerful.

That is the current plan, which then kind of goes back to like, okay, then what's the issue here? This is the plan. We are scaling the Ethereum layer 1. And then Max Resnick will say, well, yes, and we need to prioritize the layer 1 today, not tomorrow.

And so what do we need to do is we actually need to prioritize layer one execution right now instead of prioritizing layer two's so hard. We keep on prioritizing layer two's. Arbitrum is just taking the defy golden goose away from the Ethereum layer one. We're giving it to them for free. We don't get any of that value back. Why are we doing this? Let's just scale the layer one right now. And that's kind of like the contention, the point of contention, I would say, is like can we scale the layer one in the way that Max Resnick wants today?

and that conversation has kind of concluded in the idea of it's actually bandwidth that is the reason why we cannot scale the Ethereum layer one without losing a critical mass of solo stakers. It's actually not hardware that's the constraint. It's bandwidth. And so that is the current phase of Ethereum research right now is how much slack is there in the system, how much can we scale the layer one throughput without kicking off too many participants in the network. So that's like part of like where this current conversation has gone to go research. And then there's the growth of the layer two path, which is, well, we're also competing with Celestia. And Celestia has so much blobs space that they have, you know, infinite slack for all of these roll-ups to come deploy on Celestia. And Ethereum has three blobs per slot. So it's three blobs every 12 seconds. And this is the Vitalik take as well.

we actually need to prioritize growing blob space because we want to prioritize the roll-up-centric roadmap as we always have, because we are almost at target of hitting three blobs per block. And if we hit the target of three blobs per block, then blobs start to become expensive and roll-ups start to have to pay higher fees, and then they are at risk of using a different data availability solution's,

blob space, perhaps Celestia, just leaving the Ethereum, Loki of influence. and going elsewhere. And so we need to prioritize blob space because we want to prioritize roll-ups, because what does that do? That creates more censorship-resistant blog space, block space, and allows more roll-ups to blossom out of the Ethereum layer one. And what is that North Star?

That North Star is growing the total aggregate economy of Ethereum. That is the 4844 strategy. That's what Dang Sharding is. That what Blob Space is that with blob space, we can grow more chains to be secured by Ethereum inside of the Ethereum umbrella. And that is growing the Ethereum economy, which is the correct way to grow the most value. And so these are kind of the different directions that people are all kind of like tugging Ethereum in.

Yeah, I guess my take in hearing all of that and all of the debate is like Ethereum is both scaling the L1 and it's scaling the L2. But it's not, it's consciously not forsaking sort of the properties that make its validator set like special and decentralized, just things like, you know, solo staking and being able to verify the client on like a pretty small, you like hardware footprint, right? So it's not giving up strong defy. Yeah, exactly. And it's always, it's kind of always been doing that.

And, but it's not following the path of alternative layer ones. It's just like still more in the vintage of the Bitcoin, strong defy type of mindset. So in this world where Ethereum scales the L1 and it scales the L2, but it doesn't give up decentralization, what do you think the future of that back to that golden goose? Where will DFI be in this world? Yeah, so this asks the very important question. And in the role of centric roadmap, where will DFI be hosted? Because we are prioritizing layer two's.

So what's the role of layer two's in the hosting of DFI? So there's one possible future, which we're kind of currently at in the Ethereum landscape now, which is a low number, few large-scale generalized roll-ups, maybe even one host Defi. They are the home of Defi. And right now, this is like kind of arguably Arbitrum. Arbitrum says it's the home of Defi. Maybe Arbitrum has the one-of-one Golden Goose where all of the value of Defi aggregates. Base is also in contention for Defi here.

And I kind of find this outcome less desirable, not very desirable at all, actually, just because, well, we have the faster block times and lower fees. So that's really good. But neither Arbitrum nor Base are credibly neutral at all. Those are, that's going to be weak defy. Like neither of these things have really been tested by the nation state. Arbiturum, the Dow has not been tested by the nation state to censor transactions. But Coinbase is a publicly traded U.S. company.

Like, I don't, I think. Not with a centralized sequencer, right? It's not going to be, you know, strong defy with a centralized sequencer. And when you're kind of like stage zero or stage one on the L2B, right, decentralization. path. Yeah. So in the model of a few number of large-scale generalized roll-ups, I find even with like stage two decentralized sequencing, like I'm still concerned that like having one single roll-up being the home of defy is not strong defy. It's not credibly neutral. It's definitely not credibly neutral defy. And you can kind of see like why the Solana ether ratio is up

because maybe people are saying like, well, Solana's capturing more defy and it's going to be a stronger form of defy than arbitrarum or base. And so that's, that's bullish soul. And so maybe that answer to that question there. That's one possible future, which is also kind of the current future, the current state of thing, state of play in the Ethereum role of central roadmap. There's another possible future, which I'm much more bullish on, which I'm hoping is coming, and there are signs of it coming, which is a mesh network of app chains. And we're seeing this with the deployment of the uny chain, as well as the frontier of base roll-ups, which is starting to get underway. And I kind of see these two futures as opposite ends of the same spectrum.

If layer one resource costs are high, as in like we have a constrained, decentralized layer one that we currently have, then it kind of favors the former. It pushes a lot of defy activity to one layer two, call it arbitram. But if we really scale the layer one, if the resource costs are layer one are low, that actually incentivizes the latter, where all these app chains can use the very strong execution of the Ethereum layer one to have stronger sequencing, stronger composability. And so even with, and the reason why I favor this like mesh network of app chains is that if every single defy app that's useful, call it Avey, MakerDAO, you know, uniswap, which now is unichane, if the applications that are defy all have their own chains and they're all independent chains and

they're not going to like one ecosystem, they're not just going to arbitrage from, then I think we preserve in that model credible neutrality. And it's actually still Ethereum that is holding that Defi Golden Goose because it's Ethereum that's doing all of the sequencing, all of the composing of all of this mesh network of app chains. And especially as we get into base roll-ups, which base roll-ups do have near-perfect cross-chain execution. A based roll-up application can instantly. We instantly talk to a second base roll-up application through the Ethereum layer one. But then we go back to like, well, we actually need to go back and scale the layer one because

we need to have fast, cheap transactions for these app chains to compose their defy to. That's where I hope we are going. That's more credibly neutral to me is strong defy because in this world of stage two app chains, they are censorship resistant. They inherit the properties of the Ethereum layer one. then like the defy layer one, the defy golden

and goose is kind of retained by the Ethereum layer one. Yeah, I think it's super early is like one thing I'd add to that conversation.

I don't think any like chain is close to winning. There's also like these economic zones that are kind of forming. Like even if let's say Arbitrum is taking the lead right now,

we haven't seen what the kind of the ZK sync economic zone might look like in the future or like, you know, the optimism super chain with like base and now unichain and the

OP Maynet and a whole bunch of others. So there's going to be a lot of growth here. And I think also just like that growth is good as long as it's kind of like many different parties. And it's somewhat, yeah, like there's no one party that kind of like it controls everything or one chain where all of the defy state kind of accrues. I guess the other question though is what about ether the asset? So in a world where, you know, L2s are maxed out and whether that's in the form of sort of. of L2s with, you know, centralized sequencers or if they're, they're decentralized sequencers and their base roll-ups, that kind of thing. What about eth the asset? Like, what's the future

there? Because that was part of what the main criticism, a criticism has been. It's just like none of this roll-up-centric roadmap stuff is good for ether the asset from a value accrual perspective. So this is actually something I think I learned something from the Kyle Samani episode where he talks about how all the software, the software costs are going. going to zero. Execution is going to zero. Data availability is going to zero. Kalsmani doesn't think that MEV is going to zero, but I think he's wrong about that. MEV is also going to zero, at least from the protocol's perspective. So blockchains won't capture MEV. Applications will capture MEV. And this is evidenced by exactly why Uniswap made unichane, Sorrella is making application

specific sequencing. So if all of these like resource capture value captures are going to zero, then what's left to capture value? And that, answer is, well, the apps actually capture the value. And the only thing left after the apps capture the value is like the equity tokens that govern the apps. So the uny token that governs the unichain and money, the money that's flowing through these apps. And so the money, it becomes the money of these applications that are capturing value. And the applications that are capturing value, hopefully are this like mesh network of app chains that I was talking about. And so this is kind of why we, I think, I think the bankless thesis is that all layer one tokens eventually converge on money as the model for their value capture.

They turn into money for their ecosystem. And I thought this answer from Donkrad in the recent Ethereum researchers AMA on Reddit was really interesting. He kind of laid out the case that in order to have ETH value accrual and ether of the asset, the Ethereum economy needs to create value. And to me, what that means is that we need to grow the GDP of Ethereum by scaling out blobs to host more blockchains that settle to Ethereum and that create valuable applications for apps to capture value and use Ether as money. And so I've kind of been pilled on this idea that the way that eth becomes money is that the Ethereum economy just generates more value. We create more value. And right now, like what we always talk about this, what's one of the best business models

that's been created ever since blockchains? Selling block space. And so in order for ether to become money, we need to sell as much block space as possible because it's going to be all the applications that capture value and the only thing that's left over is money because execution is going to zero,

DA is going to zero, M-E-V is going to zero. Yeah, I mean, I pretty much have sort of, that's what I'm betting on, basically, that layer one tokens are actually like monetary assets. And in like a big way, kind of Bitcoin got it right, right? Which is like, you know, Bitcoin being a store value type of asset. So I think maybe to conclude that this conversation, this is a bull case. Let's talk about the bull case for Ethereum going to 2025. And for me, there are maybe like four or five things that really pop into my mind. The first, this. I think the Ethereum roadmap is stronger than people think. There's a lot of people out there that don't really

understand what Ethereum is building towards or don't understand its North Star and like why it's making the choices that it's making but it's making very long-term choices with no shortcuts. And you can really see that when you go through, you know, recently Vitalik has been

posting about like blog posts on the different, you know, phases over the different swim lanes of the Ethereum roadmap the surge, the scourge, and the purge. And a lot of the considerations that we've talked about are kind of like embedded inside of the decisions that the Ethereum roadmap is making. I also think that the plurality of all of these L2 experiments

where we're just not, it's not just one EVM execution layer, but there's all of this experimentation, the execution layer, I think that's going to pay dividends in the future as well. Like it's just a Cambrian explosion of different experiments. And some of those will hit. those will be incredibly successful and propel innovation for it. So that's the first thing. The second is a lot of the problems that we talked about earlier on, like particularly

the fragmentation type problems or the L2s are still decentralized. They're still centralized. They're still centralized. They're not stage two yet. I think a lot of that's going to be solved in the coming, like the next 12 months, right? So we have lots of different bankless episodes on this, but I can see in 2025 kind of this reconvergence of liquidity, first in sort of these economic zones and superchains, but then there's technologies like Ag layer.

We also mentioned like based roll-ups, which, you know, if you become a base roll-up, it kind of solves the fragmentation problem out of the box. And so we're going to solve that. I think we'll see a lot of L-2s move closer towards stage two as well for regulatory reasons. They don't want all of the responsibility that being centralized kind of like requires. And then I see a bunch of major catalysts ahead for Ethereum. One is we've got this nice, healthy cycle of DA. gets cheap because Ethereum upgrades its data availability. And then that induces more demand for

layer two block blob space data availability, which causes Ethereum fees to go up. And then Ethereum releases another, you know, DA upgrade. And this is kind of a virtuous cycle. We're going to get future DA upgrades for Ethereum with like, you know, full-dank sharding and peer dows and that sort of thing. And all the while, this induced demand is actually doing what you just said, David, which is it's not only creating fees for block space. That's kind of like a temporary type thing that just ebbs and flows, but it's creating induced demand for ether as money inside of these burgeoning L2 economies. So right now there's over like 11 billion in ether being used as money inside of the L2 economy. And I don't think people are looking at that. So that's huge. It's also

notable that Ethereum is winning many of the L2s over. I mean, that is the L2 chain, right? So it's building this complicated, you know, L2 economy on top. And I think people aren't seeing that ether is a monetary asset right now. So that narrative is fully left the barn with respect to Bitcoin, right? Everyone knows Bitcoin's a digital gold. Yeah, it's a non-sovereign store of value. We haven't even scratched the surface of that narrative potential for ether the asset. And I think we will, as these types of things become self-evident. And then you just mentioned based roll-ups. I think next year is going to be a huge year for based roll-ups. And again, out of the box, you know, Justin Drake called these like, it's like a smart contract on Ethereum, but on Ethereum Maynet, but inside of that

smart contract, you have cheap transaction fees. That's one way of viewing it. And it's a really interesting, more aligned, Ethereum-aligned, like design for roll-ups. And then, of course, you have like the fact that Ethereum just feels oversold right now. It's underrated. Honestly, I think this is the most bullish one. The mean will revert. A lot of the criticism is overplayed. And so you want to sort of be looking at the asset when there's like panic, blood in the streets, Ethan's dead type talk.

Like if you did that when Seoul was at its, you know, 4 billion market cap, you'd be doing well. And there's, it's not quite at that level, but there's like similar sentiment going around about Ether right now. So that to me positions Ether for upside in 2025. Of course, none of this is financial advice and like have no idea. But I don't know, still feeling comfy. I think betting on Ethereum when Ethereum is contrarian feels like home to me. Like I've entertained the idea of like maybe I just, maybe I just buy a Drew Slayer 1. You know, maybe I just bet on that horse.

And then I entertain that idea as far as I can as long. as that will go. And I'm like, no, Ethereum's just going to, it's all going to come back to Ethereum. So like, I'm just going to skip my way there. I mean, I really like the roadmap. And if I were to kind of summarize the roadmap, it's scale the L1, scale the L2, scale the Ethereum economy, scale ether as a monetary asset inside of this economy, and do all of this while preserving the decentralization that makes crypto special. That's the road map. Which has always been the plan. That has always been the plan. Well, I feel like for me, that's where I've come at the end of this cycle of episodes on kind of like Ethereum roadmap, like which way? What do we do?

I mean, it's feeling like it's actually in a pretty good spot. I think I would agree. I think maybe there's one exogenous factor, which probably there's a whole episode to talk about here, but what is the environment in which the crypto industry is entering into? Is the industry entering into a more hostile macro geopolitical environment or a more doveish one? And I actually think a more friendly doveish environment is actually more bullish. The juice layer ones that have compromised on decentralization and entering into a more hostile geopolitical macro environment is actually much more bullish Bitcoin and Ether that have transcended that gap. But I can let that be up to the imagination of the listener. I'll let you guys answer that one about what you think. There you go. Well, risk and disclaimers,

of course, none of this has been financial advice. As we mentioned, crypto's risky. You could lose what you put in. But we're headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot. The Uniswap wallet is officially the preferred wallet of bankless, and it's the one we use any time when we want to transact on chain. Whether you're on your browser or on the go, uniswap wallet makes it easier than ever to swap anytime, anywhere. Use your wallet to transfer funds directly from the top centralized exchange and tapping thousands of tokens across Ethereum and over 10 other chains like base, arbitrum,

and optimism. Uniswap wallet delivers deep liquidity, fast execution, and reliable quotes with zero gas swaps through Uniswop X. And when it comes through security, you can rest easy knowing it's backed by Uniswap Labs, one of the most trusted teams in Defyy. Their code is open source and independently reviewed so you know it's protected. So why wait? Download the Uniswap wallet today on Chrome, iOS, and Android. And don't forget to claim your free uni.eath username directly in the mobile wall. Start swapping smarter with Uniswap.

New projects are coming online to the Mantle Layer 2 every single week. Why is this happening? Maybe it's because Mantle has been on the frontier of Layer 2 design architecture since it first started building Mantle DA, powered by technology from EigenDA. Maybe it's because you're not. Users are coming onto the Mantle layer 2 to capture some of the highest yields available in Defy and to automatically receive the points and tokens being accrued by the $3 billion mantle treasury

in the Mantle reward station. Maybe it's because the Mantle team is one of the most helpful teams to build with, giving you grants, liquidity support, and venture partners to help bootstrap your Mantle application. Maybe it's all of these reasons all put together. So if you're a dev and you want to build on one of the best foundations in crypto or your user looking to claim some ownership on Mantle's Defi apps, click the link in the show So getting started with Mantle.