Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum, The [LAST] Steward of Decentralisation

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

The tradition of Epicenter x Vitalik Buterin continued this year as well at EthCC[8], where we got the chance of picking his brain about recent research, interests and Ethereum Foundation’s directio...n going forward. Join us for a fascinating discussion on biotech and how Vitalik’s Shiba ended up funding it, the utility of blockchains in nowadays society and Vitalik’s view on the Ethereum ecosystem and the Foundation’s response to community requests.Topics covered in this episode:Vitalik’s current interestsHow Shiba Inu funded biotech researchThe Merge and its impactVitalik’s motivation and view on blockchain utilityEthereum Foundation’s changesIs supporting ETH price important for EF?Are L2s incentively aligned with Ethereum L1?Native L2sThe risk of quantum computersEpisode links:Vitalik Buterin on XEthereum on XEthereum Foundation on XEthCC on XSponsors:Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.ioChorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.oneThis episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sebastien Couture.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 When I got all the Shibas, and then one day I discovered that, hey, yeah, like, there's actually a significant amount here. And probably, you know, what goes up quickly must come down quickly. And so if I don't, like, scramble to figure out something to do with these coins, then they'll just, the opportunity will be gone. And so I dispersed it to a bunch of charities. And I had been expecting to give them, like, coins that they'd only be able to cash out for, like, maybe, like, $10, $20 million at most. But then somehow, to my great surprise, the dock coins did not crash. They recovered. And so a couple of them were able to cash out hundreds of millions of dollars.
Starting point is 00:00:38 The Ethereum ecosystem going well is a very important thing to particular parts of the world going in the right direction. So that it includes finance, includes things like identity as well. It includes improving governance. and making global finance free and open and just like creating like more of these neutral layers. EF is uniquely suited for. I mean, one is L1 protocol development. Two is on the application side. More insistent approach towards saying like, no, it has to be decentralized.
Starting point is 00:01:20 It has to be private. It has to like not have back doors. It has to not. like a broad poll user is safe. If you're looking to stake your crypto with confidence, look no further than Corse 1. More than 150,000 delegates, including institutions like BitGo, Pinterra Capital and Ledger trust Corus 1 with their assets.
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Starting point is 00:02:04 Hey guys, I want to tell you about NOSIS, a collective of builders creating real tools for real people on the open internet. NOSIS has been around since 2015. In fact, it started as one of Ethereum's very first projects. And today, it's grown into a whole ecosystem designed to make open finance actually work for everyday people. At the center of it all is NOSIS chain. It's a low-cost, highly decentralized layer one that's compatible with Ethereum and secured by over 300,000 valid errors.
Starting point is 00:02:31 So whether you're building a DAP, experimenting with defy, or working on autonomous agents, nosis chain gives you a solid, neutral foundation to build on. But NOSIS is more than just infrastructure. It's also tools that people can actually use. Like Circles, for example, lets anyone issue their own digital currency through networks of trust, not banks. And then there's Metri. It's their smart contract wallet that makes it easy to actually. access circles, manage group currencies, and even spend anywhere visa is accepted, thanks to their
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Starting point is 00:03:36 Of course. Yeah, good, great to see you guys. And a year in a row. Yeah, I feel like now we have like the privilege of being the people who talk to you right after your talk. So hopefully we can keep this going. You know, you talk well. Once again also, like that, serious. We are between two ferns.
Starting point is 00:03:55 You do not know the context, but we'll send you some examples and you'll be inspired. So, yeah, I'm curious, maybe we can start there. Today, if you look at how you spend your time, if we have a pie chart, what does it look like? Okay, so I think for the last six months, I mean, quite a bit of it has been like various EF insertal things. I mean, there's quite a few initiatives that have been started in actually quite a few more in the pipeline, right? So I think, you know, you guys and people have already seen a lot of the stuff on scaling. There's also important things coming down the pipeline in terms of improving security. And in terms of, I mean, like taking a decentralization and privacy first approach to optimal.
Starting point is 00:04:53 the user experience. So a lot of different things that are like that. Then in still research and I mean I generally find like the
Starting point is 00:05:08 the way that I do a lot of these things is through these kind of like medium length sort of deep dives right where like I yeah or you know I can get into understanding 3SF and
Starting point is 00:05:23 And, yeah, we're going to make an implementation of a 3SF, may see that it works, like, see what parts might make sense to improve. And then recently, you have been looking into some of these ZK topics more. I, yeah, so I published, like, that post on, like, properties of ZK ID a few days ago. Then, quite a bit on, like, account abstraction. I mean, which actually ties into privacy, because, one of the one of the UX problems of privacy protocols
Starting point is 00:05:57 is that because they're not first class citizens they need this like rapper address to send the transaction and that's like the source of a lot of UX pain
Starting point is 00:06:05 so the research intense though like basically bounced between topics in that kind of way um yeah EF things then
Starting point is 00:06:16 I mean outside Ethereum I mean of course I'm in know continuing to do the Balvi and the deak things. Though,
Starting point is 00:06:27 in that case, so basically you know what happened over the last a couple of years was we spent that $200 million of dog money on like basically funding
Starting point is 00:06:41 various open source defensive biotech. And now it's going into this process of trying to build that up as a more long-term effort where I'm going to look more other people are involved with building things. Do you talk a bit more about this biotech?
Starting point is 00:07:00 Yeah, okay. So, okay, do you remember the, I forget, have I described the origin story with the dog coins on a previous one over the use? I feel like I must have. I don't think so. I don't think when you got all the Shiba. Yes. Yeah, basically, yeah, when I got all the Shibas and then one day I discovered that, hey, yeah, like there's actually a significant amount here and probably, you know, what goes up quickly must come down quickly. And so if I don't like scramble to figure out something to do with these coins, then they'll just, the opportunity will be gone. And so I dispersed it to a bunch of charities. One of them included the India crypto COVID relief group that Sandipa was doing. And then also like there was the Future of Life Institute. There was like Mathurso Foundation, a couple of others. And I had been expecting to give them like.
Starting point is 00:07:53 coins that they'd only be able to cash out for like maybe like 10, 20 million dollars at most. But then somehow to my great surprise, the dog coins did not crash. They recovered. And so they were like a couple of them were able to cash out hundreds of millions of dollars, which was like way more than you were able to spend. And so basically I got roped into kind of scrambling and like helping to figure out the most effective things to like spend to that level of money on, especially on the COVID and bio side. And we funded a bunch of like really cool stuff that can like basically make society much more pandemic proof in a way that is fully open source, fully globally accessible.
Starting point is 00:08:40 And, you know, like it does not rely on any kind of like centralized and coercive measures. Yeah. And like it includes things like much better. testing. It's, and being able to detect viruses earlier, it includes, you know, like, ways of filtering the air that are, like, basically invisible, but they can make rooms like this one, like basically go from being, like, risks of transmitting things like COVID to just not being risks. So it's like the sort of thing where, like, if all of it was integrated, we would have just been immune to COVID completely. Yeah. And then there's also, I mean, like, stuff
Starting point is 00:09:22 on sort of the level of the immune system where actually, you know, three years ago, the discussion was about vaccines and now it's like things have advanced to basically, like, much more like targeted ways of prompting the immune system that sort of like have more upsides and like fewer downsides and like much better reversibility at the same time. So I asked, actually, I asked Rock before doing this, what were the lists of your top achievements in the last five years? and this was number two. What was number one?
Starting point is 00:09:55 So what do you think number one was? I'm guessing the merge. Yes, the merge. I can't remember what number three was. I think number three was a kind of an overwhelming answer. But yeah, do you think Rock is right? Number one should be the merge?
Starting point is 00:10:10 Interesting. It is actually quite important, right? I think. And if you think back to, you know, like myself 10 years ago and like asked like, hey, you know, what would you think if you knew you'd be involved in an initiative that would directly reduce the Earth's electricity consumption by an entire 0.3%? I think, you know, I would have I mean, mind you, you mean, you created that 0.3% and back to zero. Well, it's debatable,
Starting point is 00:10:41 whether it was like would have been other proof of work coins anyway or possibly it could have been other proof of other proof of state coins that would have done it. of it. And it's still, you know, compared to the counterfact, like, if we're just analyzing the span of those five years, it's a big deal. Then, yeah, so then on the, on the biotech side, it's like, actually, yeah, look, a lot of super cool stuff. Actually, yeah, like, even, you know, like, things that will just, like, even, like, even, be able to make, you know, like, conferences go from being, like, crazy super spreaders of all kinds of diseases to just, like, not being that at all. And, yeah, it's, like, open-source
Starting point is 00:11:33 technology fully, yeah, accessible to anyone. You know, like, doesn't require, like, people to do annoying things and, and change their behavior much. So, and, like, it's, I mean, it's only going to get more importance over, over time, right, especially, yeah, as, like, the viruses keep getting keep getting crazier. So, you know, it was fun. And it was, you know, the facts that like basically a bunch of people trying to sort of like ape on top of Doche coin and make their own thing just ended up funding all that. It was really fun. Yeah, one day there would be like a Wikipedia article that talks about how, you know, a dog meme coin funded all of this, you know, some biotech and disease prevention measures. So in your talk, you made
Starting point is 00:12:21 the point that, you know, maybe in the past, just like growing the crypto space was, you know, inherently good. But at this point, we've kind of at the point where that's no longer necessarily the case. So when you think to your own motivation of working on Ethereum, what's the biggest driver for you? What makes you most excited to keep working on Ethereum? Yeah. Well, I think, you know, the thing that we need to shift gears to, right, is from like, I basically saying something is by defaults, we're like worth building on because it uses blockchains to thinking the things that are worth building on are the things that use blockchains, you know, or use other technologies to have
Starting point is 00:13:04 the best properties, right? So like, and like I think this is, you know, true from both sides, right? Like if you have a blockchain thing that has been going on a backdoor that can just be like Ruck you at any time, then there's sort of no. point. And then on the other case, if you make a decentralized ID system that barely uses a blockchain at all, but at the same time, it really improves people's privacy and
Starting point is 00:13:30 self-sovereignty properties, then like that's a win. Right. And so yeah, I think, you know, we need to go from technologies first to going from to going to properties first. And like that is the space that I think really needs to be grown right now.
Starting point is 00:13:46 Let me ask the question differently. Uh-huh. Like, you know you like you you you've been working on this for 10 years you've spent like most of your 20s I guess now you're like in your early 30s um working on this you've become fabulously wealthy you would have the ability to spend your time on like any number of societally change like important things do you think that blockchain is the best use of your time like you know through, like, at which point you say, okay, I'm going to totally switch focus to something else. Or does that even happen, like, happen?
Starting point is 00:14:26 Yeah. I mean, I think, I mean, the other thing of what you've learned, right, is that, I mean, like, trying to, like, make change in a domain that you don't understand well as, like, itself, often, like, interacting with a very chaotic system. And it's, you know, easy to make mistakes. And, I mean, there's plenty of people who just decide. I mean, like, hey, like, let's, you know, make the government more efficient and then, like, immediately pivot to that. And then, like, it ends up going in a very different way from what they expected, right?
Starting point is 00:14:59 So it's, I mean, I think, you know, to me, you know, it's like the Ethereum ecosystem going well is like a very important thing to, you know, particular parts of the world going in the right direction, right? so that it includes finance. I mean, I think it includes things like identity as well. It includes a lot of the kind of, you know, financial and information layer of the global tech stack. I mean, there are other things that are super important, right? Like the bio layer is important.
Starting point is 00:15:35 And like I have been working on the bio layer. There have been. And even, you know, things like improving governance is important. And, I mean, actually, in that case, I've sort of tried to push the Ethereum ecosystem toward being more something that can be really helpful on that side of things.
Starting point is 00:16:03 So, yeah, I guess I do already work on, work on some of those areas, though I always try to ask the question of, like, what is the intersection of, I mean, like, what is valuable and, like, where I feel like I would be able to contribute something valuable and, of course, where my input would be welcome. And I mean, making, you know, global, like, finance free and open and just, like, creating, like, more of these neutral layers, especially, yeah, in the context of the world. going into this place of this much greater distrust and conflict, I think continues to be an important thing. And I think there are other layers of the stack that are also super important.
Starting point is 00:16:55 And I think like I'm open to, and I have contributed to those other layers. And like, you know, the ideal outcome for me, right, is that I think a lot of people in the Ethereum ecosystem, to the extent that they come into it for the same reasons that I come into it, then they would be persuaded by the exact same arguments that trying to look at those other layers of the stack is the right thing, right? And then we see this in Bitcoin, for example, as well, and there's a lot of excitement around things like Noster, which I think is a really healthy type of experimentation. So I think, you know, like us as a community is sort of expanding in the stack in that way and like starting it from a kind of both the perspective of, I mean, look, what is the right thing for the world and what is the right thing for like some concrete problems that we need to have solved is important. And I mean, like that second thing kind of gives us like measurable grounding to know if we're going immediately in the right direction.
Starting point is 00:18:05 Let's talk about the EF a bit. So there's been a lot of big changes at the EF. Like what triggered the changes and how would you describe for those who haven't followed it too deeply? How would you describe the changes that happened? Yeah, so first of all, I hired that two new executive directors. So Thomas Stanchak and Wang Shailway. And, you know, they've been doing a lot of the work on starting. some of the new initiatives that people have already heard about, right?
Starting point is 00:18:40 And that includes, you know, things about scaling. It includes things about security. It includes aspects of engaging with the ecosystem more and a lot of other things that are still coming down the pipeline. So also, you know, the board was also expanded, right? So it was myself and I and Patrick before and H. Chalway is also there now. I think, you know, the underlying goal is to try to, like, continue to move the EF toward being this, a long-term stable structure that has a clear understanding of, like, what is its role within the Ethereum ecosystem. And, like, that has to change over time because, you know, like, the facts on the ground about what the EF is doing and what people outside the EF are doing keep changing, right? And so the, like, I think earlier on, there was sort of more pressure for the EF to kind of act as, like, this representative and coordinator of, well, that was stage two.
Starting point is 00:19:46 First stage is like builder of Ethereum as a whole. Second is representative and coordinator of Ethereum as a whole. And we are moving toward a point where the EF is more able to, like, focus on representing the aspects of Ethereum as a whole. Ethereum that, like, not just the ones that are, like, weighted by importance, but the ones that are weighted by, yeah, like, which ones is the EF uniquely able to do? And where it's most likely that they would not happen otherwise, right? So, and then at the same time, you know, like, maintaining kind of close links and having good relationships with other people in the Ethereum ecosystem that are doing other things. And so the aspects that, uh, that. And so the aspects that, uh, that. like we think that EF is uniquely suited for. I mean, one is L1 protocol development. Two is on the application side.
Starting point is 00:20:43 You're like taking this like more insistent approach towards saying like, no, it has to be decentralized. It has to be private. It has to like not have back doors. It has to not like rugpole users. And, you know, like user experience is being optimized. but it's being optimized, conditional on those goals.
Starting point is 00:21:04 Like basically look at signal for inspiration, not telegram. And then, like actually, I mean, I could do a high quality job of, like, focusing on those different things.
Starting point is 00:21:18 That's kind of via more putting some social pressure as well. So I think social pressure is actually the thing that we've overused, right? Like, the thing that we've underused, is, I mean, one is like, like basically being involved in actually building, right? Like, I think the EF has, for a long time said it's like layer one only and not application layer.
Starting point is 00:21:43 And we've like actually, yeah, switched over to being, doing much more application layer things. And we think that building is like actually a much healthier way of achieving those goals than just complaining. Right. it's because like if you just complain then I mean the problem is I mean one easy way to understand it is like this is the way that like Europe sometimes gets criticized on Twitter it's like you know you know you know the cartoon right like you have like the dragon with like one type of tech company the dragon with the other tech companies and then you have the bottle cap and like hey you know we bring the regulation and we bring the fundamental values but then like if you do that
Starting point is 00:22:22 but then like you don't have the startups of your own. Or then though that means like the EF actually building apps directly or just? Not right. So not necessarily apps, but I mean being more involved on the wallet side is one example. What does that look like concrete? It could actually, it could look like a lot of a lot of different things. I mean, it could like just. actually directly building
Starting point is 00:22:54 software pieces that makes it easier to do kind of more complex things that include interrupt things between old twos that could include privacy operations that could include other things and doing all of that in a like very open source and
Starting point is 00:23:10 like censorship resistant and kind of not intermediary dependent way is one approach I mean contributing like being more proactive in building standards would be the other. Like if he had to send back information
Starting point is 00:23:28 and a time capsule back to like 2020 and like change a thing about the L2 world, it probably would have been that we needed to set much clearer and like much sooner standards about like what the like asset issuance and bridging would look like. And so like contributing to building standards is one thing. contributing to like different software packages is,
Starting point is 00:23:51 another thing. I mean, contributing to, I mean, like, the development of, like, particular applications, which can happen in all kinds of different formats is also one of those things. But, I mean, this is one of those things that's still, like, really being flushed out at the moment. Do you think the EF should have a more active role in doing things that help support the ETH price? And, you know, there are, For those who don't know, there was an announcement here of this Ethereum Community Foundation, whose main objective is to support initiatives and things that would help increase the 80th price,
Starting point is 00:24:33 including burn maximalism and a bunch of other things. Yeah, I mean, this depends on, you know, like what layer of the stack we're talking about. I guess is it important? Like, do you guys think about the East Price? And like, is it important for the East Price? And you're new to... Yeah. I think there's a balance, right? Because on the one hand, obviously, if
Starting point is 00:24:55 ETH drops by a lot, then it becomes harder to just fund everything else that we wants to do, including both the EF and including all the other actors within the ecosystem. On the other hand, in a lot of the focus areas, it's difficult to say what is the ETH price maximizing thing. And like, and what isn't you know, the the price maximizing thing, like, you know, you have to have some kind of philosophy of like what the thing is that leads
Starting point is 00:25:29 to higher ETH price. And at that point, it's more valuable in a lot of cases to just like focus on the philosophy directly, right? Do you have a view on because obviously over its whole history, Ethereum has done like phenomenally well?
Starting point is 00:25:48 But like, or the Eith price. But then in the last, you know, a few years it has is on the perform Bitcoin and Solana and a bunch of the other do you have your thoughts on what is the reason for it?
Starting point is 00:26:05 I think to a large extent everyone's answer has to be it's like very hard very hard to say because I mean all prices are controlled by just like incredibly unpredictable thing things that like pretty much no one understands and like, you know, like what even is your
Starting point is 00:26:26 theory of, you know, the price of Doche coin, right? And like every single underprice. Exactly. Yes. Like basically every single cryptocurrency. You know, like, when people make a mean, that's a meme of like, oh, you know, we need to focus on REV, right? But the reality is like every cryptocurrency is like if you try to use the RIV model to value what, you end up just like getting numbers that are way lower than the actual price for pretty much everything. And so then we say, well, what is the other thing? And then it's, like, oh, you know, like the centrality of of ETH in the on-chain economy. And like that, yes. So like that is something that, I mean, I think like research circles in general have started discussing more than, you know, is every single
Starting point is 00:27:08 cryptocurrency a meme going to some extent? But then if it is, then like, what even is the meme? Then, yeah, so it's one of those things where I think, you know, you can't, be too confident on a specific view of like what makes eth go up the thing that you can do is you can identify things that are just like clearly true across a wide range of philosophies so like one of them for example is that you know if the ethel one does nothing and the ethel twos can continue to like grow and dominate on their own then like there aren't in like there isn't a direct way in which the Ethel 1 exerts influence. And then there isn't any direct actor with agency to actually support the value of
Starting point is 00:27:59 ETH, whatever that actually means. And so that is the path to ETH becoming more and more irrelevant over time. So should you be more like Trump and tariff to L2s? Okay. So this is an interesting economic question, right? because like, you know, we have talked about like EIPs that make like push up the minimum blob price. And I mean, a lot of people are very open to that, right? And like basically, you know, saying, you know, the minimum blob price is some higher value.
Starting point is 00:28:33 And then that, you know, it's like actually great for aligning everyone's interest because then it means that increasing the blob counts would not be something that decreases the amount that the market pays because of the price is at the minimum. then the only thing that can really shift is in any case, the quantity. The challenge with sort of terrifying L2s beyond that, right, is like people sometimes have ideas of like saying, hey, there should be a 20% tax. But the problem with the 20%, like 820% tax
Starting point is 00:29:06 is that if you, like with purely on-chain enforcement, there isn't actually any way of doing that that can't be pretty trivially avoided, right? Because, like, if you have an on-chain rule that basically says, like, hey, like, the protocol looks at what is the, the fee charged on L2, divides it by five and then hands it over till 1. And, like, the L-2s will just start paying fees through some kind of, like, off-side channel sort of way. And, like, I mean, there even already exists protocols that do that. I mean, even, you know, like ERC 4337 itself as a one of them, right?
Starting point is 00:29:40 So it's like a charging percentage fee is just not a thing that is practical for like that kind of static system. I mean, in general, like yeah, and having a higher of like higher min fee for blobs is something that I am quite in favor of. I mean, having like stronger norms of issuing assets on a one I'm in favor of. the yeah there's a bunch of uh like moderate things that makes sense but then the other thing to keep in mind that all of this right is that i think uh l2s have proven themselves to being a very positive force for the a theory of ecosystem in all kinds of ways right they yeah you know they bring in a lot of applications they bring in a lot of usage you know arbitram brought in uh robin hood this week and also because
Starting point is 00:30:35 L2s have independent sequencing they're able to actually do things like offer virile latency, like offer stronger guarantees that users are not going to be sandwiched or otherwise
Starting point is 00:30:51 subject to toxic MEV and that's like a thing that is fundamentally harder for the L1 to do because you know the L1 like it has to have open decentralized block production.
Starting point is 00:31:06 It's going to have a lot of times. And, you know, they can be decreased somewhat from what they are today. But, like, Ethereum becoming real time, I think is totally crazy. Right.
Starting point is 00:31:17 And, like, I think if Ethereum gets sucked into directly playing the HFT game as an L1, then, like, to me, that just will fundamentally destroy Ethereum's soul, right? Because, like, getting into the HFT game does destroy your soul, right? And I think that's true for individuals. That's true for L1s as well.
Starting point is 00:31:33 And if L2s are able to kind of absorb that... Why would it destroy Ethereum Soul? Because it's an extreme optimization game, and there is a general property of optimization games. That's kind of the Solana path. Right. Yeah, like there's a general property of optimization games that if you optimize, like, too hard for any particular measurable objective,
Starting point is 00:32:00 then like not only does it cease to become a target, but it actually diverges from the target in kind of arbitrarily unbounded ways, right? There was an interesting chart about this from, I think, like, because this gets talked about a lot in like AI safety and like a philosophy type of philosophical discourse, right? That's sort of in a, within some fairly normal context, like a lot of different ways of describing morality end up like basically being the same thing, right? You know, we all agree that, you know, like, wars are bad and helping poor people is good. But then, and then on the other hand, if you, like, define the goal in a particular way, then, like, does that mean that, you know, we should destroy humanity in exchange for a 1% chance of giving really good lives to 500 trillion shrimp, right? I mean, I'm sure people have, you know, seeing these debates on the internet, right? So, like, I mean, okay, fine, maybe, like, a more human analogy.
Starting point is 00:33:00 I'll give you a more human analogy which is like if you try too hard to get excellent scores on every single standardized test in school then like you just become boring across all other dimensions right? Well like I think it's like that general type of pattern right and so yeah like to me yeah L2s are just like a thing that is better at absorbing that kind of load in a more encapsulated way.
Starting point is 00:33:32 And like L1, you know, like it does need to scale more and it does needs to be faster, but like it needs to have a role that's distinct. And do you think there should be native L2s? Hmm. So, okay, this depends what native means, right? Because like in my typology, so I think, so the word, like the word native basically means
Starting point is 00:33:52 that the proof system is native, right? Which is like actually really good. Then there's the question of like, one is, like, basically, is your proof system the same as the L1s? And that's native. Two, is, is your sequencing the same as L1? And that's, like, based roll-ups. And, like, I've gone back and forth and, like, I've disagreed with my previous selves
Starting point is 00:34:14 on the based roll-up question, and I'm, like, very open to myself in the future disagreeing with me on the based-roll-up question. But basically, on the, like, my... I've actually, like, more bearish on that based-roll-ups. than I was before. And the reason is that especially if L1 scales much more, which we actually have very good ways of doing, while even increasing people's ability to verify the chain,
Starting point is 00:34:42 which is what happens with the whole ZK direction and then on top of that, you know, block all the access lists and like that whole chain of things. So if that happens, then basically the main value, lad of L2s at some point stops being about raw scale and it starts being about sequencing. And then if you say, well, we're going to make an L2 where the L1 does the sequencing, then like actually that kills the points to some degree. So there is, like I think there are these sort of two different visions of L2s, right,
Starting point is 00:35:20 where one vision of L2 is that an L2 is a shard of L1 and then, or like I've used the word kind of branded shard before, right? But then the other vision of an L2 is an L2 is like a server that uses the blockchain as a back end for ensuring Mulek security and censorship resistance properties, and potentially even being able to run mechanisms like changing the sequencer with governance if the sequencer goes wrong. Then if you start from that perspective, like the concept of trying to like turn L2's into Bion shards starts to make sense. and like it makes more sense to take this kind of barbell approach of this side of things focuses on just being censorship-resistant, decentralized private offering fundamental guarantees
Starting point is 00:36:06 and having enough capacity to do the stuff that needed for here and then this stuff focuses on hyper speed and hyperscale. Let's talk about, I'm curious about quantum computing. How big of a threat is it, a normal timeline? So if you go, a metaculous. If you just like search metaculous quantum computing, it's like one of these forecasting websites. The median answer that you get is I think for when quantum computer is powerful enough to break cryptography will come and it's like somewhere between 2030 and
Starting point is 00:36:42 2035. And like this is one of those things, right, where there's like people who are wrong in both directions, right? Because there's a lot of grift in the quantum space, right? There is a lot of people who are like, we have a quantum computer and then actually it. It's like something called a quantum adiabatic computer, which is technically quantum, but it, like, basically can't really do anything that interesting that classical computers can do. Like, it definitely can't break cryptography. And so the, but at the same time, there's, like, real and serious improvements that keep happening to the space. And so, like, the question, when someone asks about quantum computers, the question you ask is, like, what is the biggest number that you factor using Shores algorithm? them, right? And like, as long as the answer doesn't, it keeps not getting above 35, then it's
Starting point is 00:37:32 like not super interesting. But at the same time, you know, it's like there are slowly steps that are being taken. So it's important. In terms of like whether or not we'll be able to adapt to it, I think we will. Like, I don't know, like Justin Drake has been working on like quantum resistant aggregation friendly signatures. I mean, Starks are, of course, are quantum resistant. And like, there's a huge amount of progress happening on quantum resisting everything. So I'm actually very optimistic that Ethereum will be able to cover it. What do you think of Khan? How do you like being down here in South of France?
Starting point is 00:38:09 No, that's, you know, it looks like a very nice place. Have you been running? Not here. Here I've only here walking so far. Yeah, I tried to go for a room the other day. 6 a.m. and I think I did two kilometers. Are there any good paths here? I mean, the river, I mean, the sea size is nice, but I mean, basically, I don't think there's
Starting point is 00:38:36 any point of the day that comes below 28 degrees. So it's even... Right, right. Yeah, yeah. I think, I feel like this whole zone is like much more of a January zone, right? Yeah. Cool. Well, yeah. Thank you much for coming on. Thank you. Thank you, thanks for doing us again. And actually, just one, one thing I want to point out here, this episode makes you, actually puts you in a tie with I mean Guns here for the number of, a percent of episodes. Oh, I thought he was already number one. No, he's, this is the eighth.
Starting point is 00:39:04 Okay. So we can do, we can do another one in a couple of months, so you can, you can actually take the first place over Amin. Oh, fun. Okay. Keep it in mind. Cool. Thank you guys.
Starting point is 00:39:14 Okay. Thank you, Tal. Yeah.

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