Arbitrum’s Roadmap To Scale Ethereum | Steven Goldfeder, Raul Jordan

Transcript

I'm not coming and saying optimistic is the way to go I'm not coming and saying ZK is the way to go I'm saying we have a real problem and we have users by the way that want a solution to that problem today they don't want to wait they want a solution today and they want the best technology available today and by the way in five years they're gonna want the best technology available in five years and I can promise you this whether I'm a ZK Maxi or an optimistic Maxi it doesn't matter in five years all this stuff is going to look primitive this episode is brought to you by Circle the issuer of usdc which hopefully as you all know is the preferred stable coin of digital Natives and crypto natives with over 1.5 million holders globally you'll hear more about usdc later in the show

[Music] uh welcome everyone for another great episode in Empire we are have the privilege of having two folks that have been super deep in the ethereum ecosystem since the earliest of days at least as I can remember so we're joined by uh Raul Jordan co-founder of Prismatic Labs core developer of ethereum at ethereum and we also have Stephen goldfender Fetter co-founder of off chain Labs which a lot of you guys know as uh arbitrum so off chain Labs is uh the developer behind the L2 called arbitrum so uh welcome folks thanks for coming on thanks for having us it's a pleasure good to meet you thank you yeah it's great to have you both here

um because I think in this discussion there's a lot to cover obviously you guys announced an acquisition recently uh which uh is super important I think we'll uh definitely get into but before before we get there uh perhaps just level set the conversation maybe Raul Steven give a brief uh background intro on yourselves and then we can get started well yeah so my name is Raul Jordan I'm one of the developers working on the ethereum protocol uh and uh previously part of a team called Prismatic Labs we were independent team of software Engineers that kind of joined the ethereum space because we wanted to make a difference in scalability and shipping the major upgrades that are on the roadmap for ethereum most recently we shipped uh finally ship proof of stake on ethereum mainnet getting rid of all

ethereum ethereum mining this past September which is a significant Milestone because it changes a lot of the Dynamics of the protocol um we've been we've done this in collaboration with several other teams that kind of joined us along the way and uh we built a pretty strong uh pretty strong following currently our software is the most popular software used to run the ethereum blockchain itself it's called prism and uh so we've been we've been deeply involved in the protocol for many years and uh most you know just recently we all joined up we all joined the arbitrine family in octane Labs hey I'm Stephen goldfeder I am a co-founder and CEO of off-chain labs as a team building arbitrum and my background was even before the company off-chan Labs was

founded um during my time at Princeton together with my two co-founders actually so I have my PhD from Princeton and my co-founder Ed was a professor there for for a long time and Harry was also a PhD student in our group and we were doing a lot of work related to uh crypto crypto and blockchains and one of them was how do we scale blockchains and how do we scale some of our contracts and that was a project called arbitrine which started off as an academic project and then um moved into a commercial project and you know arbitrum actually so if you look uh the earliest mentions you'll find of Arboretum online the research phase actually predates ethereum but once ethereum went live as the dominant uh smart contract platform with uh you know that amazing the best tech and the

best community from the first days of the company we're always about scaling ethereum and how do we scale uh this smart contract platform in particular and we are four plus years just over four years into the company now and we are still asking ourselves we've done a lot and we have arbit room is live and it's the leading layer cues uh scaling platform for ethereum today but we're still asking ourselves how do we do better or how do we make the experience even better for for users and developers alike definitely so I want to touch a little bit on the acquisition first um so tell us a little bit about what started the conversation around the acquisition when did that happen um you've been discussing that for a while and how did all this uh came about so one thing to to mention is you know

these were are two very very strong teams and you know uh you know Prismatic Labs is you know by by you know one of the strongest ethereum core developer teams so the first thing that happened this wasn't a team you know like looking to uh you know sell itself I'll say this was really a meeting of the minds and we got to meet each other over the past over the past year you know over the past uh six to eight months probably um more more deeply you got to know each other spend time together virtually and in person and really you know started with I hate to say the word like nerdout sessions um whiteboarding Sessions hey what are you interested in and and you know as Rob will tell you a lot of the ethereum uh core development it has the same goal of like scaling ethereum building

building a scalable smart contract platform and of course there are different components to that there's um the layer one components that need to come into place and also the layer two components but at a very high level from a values perspective we were working on very related and parts of the same problem I would even say and from a technical perspective a lot of the same interests and the conversations were just um at the same time we shared a lot but we also learned a lot right so there's so much we had in common but so much that our experience has complemented one another and as we spent more time together over the past many months um it just became clear that there was so much that can be gained both for us as to as teams us as individuals but also us as a

as the ethereum community by us working together and having a single roadmap um a shared roadmap I should say and so that's basically you know at least my view I don't know if Raul would agree of how this came to be or just over time it became very obvious as we got to know each other yeah this this really all started because you know as we as we work on the ethereum protocols future and we ask ourselves a question like you know where is ethereum going um you know all the research and development has been leaning towards uh you know Layer Two Roll-Ups such as arbitrary right so ethereum is really focused on enabling Roll-Ups and what that means is making them a lot cheaper to use making them a lot more secure and the building tools that are baked into the protocol that just make it uh you

know make rollups that much better so we started you know we're working on these things we started asking ourselves like hey like the next Frontier uh for for ethereum is really at Layer Two and really solving the problems that they that they face and making them uh just amazing pieces of technology so we started looking and you know as clear arbitrum was you know the best solution the the one that had so much so much on the road map so many awesome things in the works and uh you know got a chance to meet uh meet Stephen Ed and Harry and uh yeah we just nerded out we spent some time talking together and we're like hey our teams are so similar um you know we have so much that you know that that is shared on our road maps like why don't we figure out how we

can work closer together and naturally these discussions you know one thing led to another and now we're here that's great and so I'm curious role from your perspective you know having shipped the merge and you know ethereum successful transition to prove a stake which was something that you've been working on for the last couple years what were the kind of the you talk about like the the things that you're focused on after that and that being in alignment with what arbitrum is working on can you can you touch a little bit about on on what those because a lot of people say well the merge happen okay we're done but how what were you working on before this acquisition came about what were kind of your goals more so from like the ethereum roadmap perspective sure so one you know one big misconception that you know a few folks

that might have had is that the merge is going to solve ethereum scaling problems right like that's right oh uh the merge actually was you know it sets the foundation for the future of ethereum and one of the big ones was proof of stake with proof of stake you get so many benefits um at the protocol level just make ethereum that much better to use and uh enables it enables a lot easier upgrades in the future so what we were really thinking about was um you know the late the scaling roadmap for ethereum and it's clear that ethereum is going to scale through Layer Two um the the main thing to work on the the protocol level right now is how can we make Roll-Ups a lot cheaper and more secure to use one of the big ones is that arbitron's biggest cost today is

the money that you know the transaction fees and the cost that it pays ethereum uh to store data on chain right this data is needed in order for arbitrum to maintain its security guarantees uh of fraud proofs so the main thing we're working on is this is this is this thing called the eip4844 which will add more data to ethereum that will lower the cost of Roll-Ups such as arbitrum by probably 100x which is some of the estimates that are being placed so imagine if today arbitrum Nitro is the cheapest roll-up solution out there in the market imagine being you know 10 100x cheaper for many transactions will be a game changer there's so much you can do on that front um so that's the immediate item that kind of we're focused on and we're

looking at with our team and also prototyping inside of arbitrum nitro I want to transition a little bit in more generally like I think prism is open source it's kind of you know free to use ethereum clients the most widely used I believe and that's really amazing in so many ways um you know this open source culture I'm curious like how did the team fund itself how do you think about monetization the ongoing funding of of Prismatic Labs um before the acquisition like how do you build I guess succinctly how do you build like a sustainable business model um as like a you know open source developer yeah for developers that are you know companies that are building

open source software and ethereum you have to ask yourself some pretty hard questions right um for you know you have to make sure that whatever strategy that you pursue is is aligned with you know the best interests of the protocol and also the best interests of your users um you know the work that we did was working on core development it's a public good right we're building ethereum uh you know ethereum already has kind of a uh you know an asset which is ether um you know we can't we can't go out and launch our own chain with our own token or anything like that of course um there are other teams that are working on open source software ethereum that we're thinking about things like uh you know they have like security audit firms on the side they operate more like consultancies where they work with

bigger companies to provide services like that um that was one of the Avenues that we explored um you know over the past few years we were just so laser focused on shipping the merge and getting things ready that we didn't want to kind of distract ourselves in the short term with any of these things um you know and we were funded primarily through grants from the ethereum foundation and uh from generous members of the community that helped us get to this point um but the team was basically laser focused on the shipping the ethereum protocol upgrades and that's kind of what really uh drives us our main mission was really to scale ethereum from the beginning so um you know joining off chain was was really perfect because you know they want to scale ethereum as well so I think we had a lot of shared mission

statements from the beginning yeah and Stephen I want to ask you you know from your perspective I mean I have the benefit of being an investor in arbit term so you know full disclosure there I'm quite familiar with all the work that you guys have been doing I think a lot of people to your point don't really realize that it's been years in development uh and arbitrarily people started learning about it and you know kind of less than a year ago I guess and now it's grown to for across many metrics the most popular L2 and you launched Nitro how does the acquisition change the game for you guys uh based on your roadmap and and what can we expect you know going forward now that you've combined these forces yeah so let me uh just take um Raul's last example and give you uh an example

of how we can like how we're approaching the same problems from different angles we're all mentioned eip4844 which is going to lower uh one of our biggest biggest costs which is a data cost on ethereum and that's something which is uh you know useful across across the ethereum ecosystem it's not just limit it's us really you know it's a multi-team effort that we're participating in a really very valuable for lots of people Nitro which you mentioned this this big upgrade we launched one of the one of the um features of nitro was Advanced compression which is using less data on ethereum so they're the same problem which is hey uh one of the largest costs on arbitrim is the data we put in ethereum and the cost to store that data how do we solve that so the layer 2 solution the Nitro solution says let's

use less data right let's compress it more and really eke out and you know the amount of data that we need to per transaction get that to the minimum so therefore the costs go down because we're using less data complementary to that but but getting at the same problem is you know they're worth the Raul mentioned uh eip4844 and other similar initiatives which is let's get the cost of the data that you have to use lower and it's really the combination of these two that will allow us to have the lowest cost right when we get the data to the cheapest price the points point that it can be but also using the minimal amount of data that we need to do um we will be at our optimal cost and that's just one you know actually very in the weeds example but I think it's uh

it's a good it's a really good um you know way to think about way to see how we can complement each other we can take the same problem and comb it in different angles and I think that's very very valuable and over time you'll I think you know we're just starting right this acquisition we announced it quite quickly so we're it's really the very very early days of us working together um but we'll see we're ready we're already seeing in these just the conversations just the meeting bringing of the minds together but there's so much that we can learn from each other and so many ways to tackle these problems because really we do have these very aligned goals of doing that you know we're also very excited to have prism now under off-chain Labs um umbrella and to continue to support that and that's really something which

you mentioned before how do you think about supporting uh these open source projects and our our commitment is prison will remain open source and we will fund it so that's um something that we're excited to do uh for the community and continue to do for the community and uh one thing that Raul and Preston have told me that at least you know from the few uh weeks that we've already spent together is that they already have more their time to focus on Prison development because a lot of the their previous overhead has been been reduced which is very exciting to us so you know all in all we're excited to for pres you know to continue to fund prism as an open source and neutral project but there are so many synergies that we can have both from the way that we think about it whether we approach the

problems and also the different angles that we have to really um tackle our shared goal which is scale ethereum build a scalable layer one solution and a layer two solution that sits on top of that that can scale smart contracts and also make it user-friendly developer friendly and really open and accessible yeah maybe I want to take a pause here because I don't think a lot of people really know what it is to work in open source kind of like for ethereum if you will like you developing like a an ethereum client um it feels like on one side you know arbitrum you guys were funded and working on an L2 and you know you sort of deployed and that was that and on on the other perspective you know

something like Prismatic Labs is working with the ethereum community perhaps more it's it's more delicate dance and trying to everyone to kind of agree on a particular standard and you know corn the coordination is much much more challenging I think um and so I am curious to get your perspective Raul on on what it what it looks like to kind of work on open source how difficult was it if you can give us kind of the inside perspective on how difficult it was to get the ethereum community just to agree on you know the merge and then now on towards an eye of like how do new eips really get kind of developed and implemented yeah one big challenge is definitely coordination you know

ethereum has been has been long criticized for being very slow to innovate and I think that you know that that criticism is warranted to it to a big extent um you know I think ethereum's governance has been has been pretty pretty fluid and flexible over the years and I think it's it's got it's gotten to a point where I think it's a lot stronger than ever we have a lot of different teams that are that are voicing their opinions that bring really good arguments and points as to what the future of ethereum should be you know it's like there is no you know there is no boss in ethereum right it's a contribute to popular belief italic doesn't have a master node in his bedroom that he can turn off the chain um and you know that's you know it's it's been really great to see how how

you know how how many really great ideas and perspectives there are in protocol development um we have you know we have been navigating this uh this kind of this messy kind of world of ideas for almost I think five years at this point so we bring a lot of perspective into how to navigate ethereum's future upgrades so by kind of by representing off-chain Labs we can kind of bring a lot of bring a lot of ideas from their perspective into the protocol and uh and try to try to basically try to uh try to coordinate with other parties uh to decide whether or not these are good ideas the really great thing is that you know there is one thing to chat about is that we don't have like absolute power over the protocol by any means there are like I said many different teams with

different interests and that's really that's really great um so working on open source has been challenging we've been navigating it for a few years and we feel very comfortable with kind of how to propose new ideas to ethereum and we think that you know joining forces with off chain will just give us a lot more capacity to do that and uh and just do things in the best interest of the protocol so Stephen um you know we talked about the on this earlier uh you know arbitrary recently released the Nitro update um I'm curious what are the next kind of Big Ticket items um on the on the roadmap um what's next on the scaling Frontier for you guys yeah that's a great question so the way Nitro came about by the way wasn't even like a year ago we said okay you know this the big design

spec we're going to launch you know Nitro it was really uh us thinking and going back and saying okay we launched the first uh optimistic World up code complete into production you know how can we improve it um how can we improve it from a cost perspective from a node resources perspective it across many many different metrics and that's what Nitro came out of it really came out of this goal to say you know there's this tendency especially uh you know last year coming out of it was real August 31st that we launched and actually if you look at the Nitro code base the first commit to the production Nitro Corpus was made September 7th so seven day or September 8th seven or eight days after we launched uh you know this big the biggest event in our company history our company was three years old already

and just put its first code into production um we were already thinking about and actually committing code to making it better and really replacing large parts of it and that's basically the mindset we have there's a tendency to say okay we did it uh no we're we're ahead we have a lot of adoption um the technology looks good but we constantly want to try want to think ahead and think how do we get even better because the reason the reason is you know the basic reason you know scaling is really a relative term right so you scale and then more users come and the more demand comes and then um if you stay if the capacity stays where it was the prices go up no you still scale even if you 10x Your Capacity and your 10x demand comes you still have 10x capacity but the prices

will continue to go up and usually when people ask for a scaling solution they want one that has excess capacity so the prices can remain you know relatively low and stable as well so um you know a big question that we have is okay so we did Nitro and we increased our capacity on the order of uh seven to ten X can we do even better right and we also lowered our fees in there can we can we do this again because despite what the market conditions might you know say now we're pretty bullish on the future of ethereum and the future of smart contracts and we're sure that the man is only going to continue to increase and we're constantly thinking ahead because what happens is otherwise you don't think that and then when the market does pop back people come and say hey where were you guys you weren't

working for the past year and a half it was like well you know so we're very much thinking ahead and how do we do the equivalent of nitro again how do we get even better scaling and um there are also some other other things we're working on as well so scaling obviously we are in a very good place now but you know there's a list of different things in order to make like this ethereum and and arbitrum the best platform there's like a list of things you need to do and you solve the top one and then the second and third one become you know most important too so the things that come to mind are questions around State growth and state flow and how to manage that right so a lot of the scale that we've done now is focused really on computation um but the state of these blockchains

continue to grow and are there a way that we can via say like clients or other initiatives manage State better so people can participate in the network without um you know ever increasing State and also we can increase the capacity of the network in a way that's inclusive and does you know you don't need to run these like Mega nodes that have um you know Mega capacity that's one and the other thing that is big on our roadmap as a very general principle there are many projects that that are aligned to this but making the developer and user experience even better right today we we match in many ways the ethereum developer experience and we're very very proud of that and you know it's really an incredible experience and it's it's incredible that we're able to do that inside a layer to roll up you

know there's this very complex machine that allows you to replicate you know The Full evm Experience on top of the evm and Nitro you know basically takes us to as close or as the equivalent to ethereum as possible but then their questions are the question becomes are there things that we can do and innovate in the layer 2 space that are even faster that you know get us to in even better place than ethereum it's not to say that any of the ethereum compatibility will go away it won't um and that will always be there but can we you know make this uh platform even more friendly to developers and to onboard new developers and to onboard new users and that's you know a big question in our mind so you know Evian compatibility and equivalence is is critically important but can we supplement that and as Raul mentioned

before um ethereum sometimes and for very good reason takes uh you know time to innovate but are there other some of these pending eips or these ethereum Improvement proposals that we can maybe adopt first in a roll-up even that would be really interesting and these are things that we're looking at very closely yeah to add on to that I think you know the essence is that we care about evm equivalents and and being really close to ethereum for the security for security aspects so we want to make sure that when you withdraw from L2 to L1 you know all those security guarantees are there and you're not making you're not you're not cutting Corners right but you know that that's that's that's really all we need we can do we can do a lot of crazy Innovation on L2 itself um that kind of that as long as we

maintain those security guarantees and we can maintain a friendliness to developers you can do a lot of really really cool things on L2 and you can move faster on many fronts um you know it's always a delicate Balancing Act but um you can do you can do a lot uh as long as you maintain That Base constraint of security at L1 uh through fraud proofs yeah so Stephen I've heard you say before um there's been great progress on ZK ebms there's a few projects that have been focusing on that but um you know you've said that we aren't kind of ready for prime time uh and as far as I can remember you know zero knowledge proves have been kind of really fascinating uh however you know I would tend to agree with you that it's been kind of slow to

to come about uh I am curious as arbitrum started to work on uh ZK Tech is this part of a road map at some point um and or do you remain kind of in the optimistic roll-up camp that's a great question so first I'll mention that you know for my background I know I mentioned that we started off at Princeton I was doing cryptographic research there I actually wrote papers on zero knowledge proof systems signature schemes using zero knowledge proof systems um um and and you know did a lot of of early work in NPC as well multi-party multi-party computation so it definitely did not come into you know um the arbitrum problem with the bias against the ZK or Advanced cryptography so we came in with a very open mind and our

decision you know back some time ago when we started looking at this but also today is ZK technology is very exciting and very promising and I'd even go further and say the pace of innovation there definitely is is very fast and surprise definitely would surprise the five years ago myself right so um I five years ago would not have expected The Innovation that we've seen but I think we're still breakthroughs away from a ZK system that's uh um competitive with an optimistic roll-up and to go a level deeper what do I mean by competitive among a few axes number one is price the cost of running the the transactions the cost is on on any ZK design I've seen today is orders

of magnitude higher than on an optimistic rollup uh and by the way what I mean by this is you know because it gets a little bit confusing sometimes people like to talk about the cost of verifying ZK transactions that's the lower cost and that's the cost you see on the blockchain but remember the blockchain is handed as proof and then the question is who created this proof and that's where the computational problem is that's where the really heavy machinery is and the part that's a bit opaque to users and users might say well it's okay because there's someone that's generating it for me so I don't have to worry about this but that's actually not a great approach because you want these systems to be sustainable and you want to know hey how much does it cost to generate that proof I'm happy that you're doing it whoever you know you are

I'm happy that you're generating this for us but how much does it cost you and the reason you want to know that is because what happens if you go away or what happens if your funding source goes away we're building scaling technology and you need to scale sustainably right it's not sustainable to say scaling technology is funded by this VC because that money won't last ever and you don't want to get to a place where oh they've cornered the market by making it really cheap but now they're going to increase in some Industries that's the right strategy right you know think about Amazon and diapers.com right these strategies have played out well over time but when they think you're selling is scaling technology you really want to make sure that it's paying for the cost of those systems so uh proving cost is one and also compatibility zero

knowledge proof systems today don't work on the the VM architectures that we run natively on like evm or really any other um you know virtual virtual machine design or typical computer machine design they run on circuits and any any um any any attempt to take an evm or another similar um you know um popular um VM structure and and you know apply it to these systems it's basically attacking on level levels of compilers and levels of inefficiency and sometimes just incompatibilities you just you know you can't always um you know fit the uh the evm you want into the circuitry needed for ZK and what you have is you know then extra inefficiencies to extra cost but also

just incompatibilities and the question then becomes um you know when can we have this technology in a way that's competitive both from cost and compatibility and to date it's not clear to me that that will get there but the thing about us to answer the second half of your question just to hear you say that we'll get there or that will ever get there or is there a state where we will get there similarly to how you were thinking about scalability even before ethereum and now you know we're here with ORS I'm not sure that that that that that will get there to be honest with the ZK to a point where it's cost competitive um we're definitely breakthroughs away but I'm not sure that we won't either honestly I don't really know we're definitely not there today that's what I do know there are some incredibly smart

people working on this and making really good progress so um I would not be shocked if at some point um we got there there are some again some fundamental incompatibilities and and really breakthroughs that need to be made to get to actually get there um but you know based on the pace of innovation I wouldn't say it's impossible that we get there at all I'm not sure but we're definitely not there today and so when I think so what how do I approach this problem or what do we think about it I'll take Nitro as an example so if you look at the arbitrum paper 2018 Arboretum Princeton research paper that's when we published the paper by using security which is a a academic security conference one of the key Innovations was the arbitrine virtual machine really great piece of technology

was optimized to get these one-step fraud proofs to be really really small it was really nice and it was probably the thing that got that paper into this conference musics is a top conference it has a high acceptance you know very low acceptance rate and and that's probably the big innovation there night with Nitro we actually retired the AVM and literally Ed Harry and I spent years working on this piece of technology only to retire it so you might think like nycha was a sad day for me for us but it really wasn't it was an extremely happy day and the reason is we're not coming into this pro pro into this problem or into this um you know into this uh project we're not coming yet saying we need to use this particular tool I'm not coming and saying optimistic is the way to go I'm not coming and saying ZK is

the way to go I'm saying we have a real problem and we have users by the way that want a solution to that problem today they don't want to wait they want a solution today and they want the best technology available today and by the way in five years they're gonna want the best technology available in five years and I can promise you this whether I'm a ZK Maxi or an optimistic Maxi it doesn't matter in five years all this stuff is going to look primitive like you look back five years ago what we were like writing in these uh even smart contract discussion boards it looks early it looks primitive and we know so much more today and that will be the case in five years so I can guarantee you that you know um at least in terms of you know my thoughts on where development will be

across every platform five years from now arbitrine won't look like arbitrum today no optimistic would look like any optimistic system today and those ZK system will look like the ones they do today um and that's why so our our commitment is we will continue to develop and utilize the best and Technology available at that time but with a commitment to um delivering this scale to users and making sure that it's usable because if you tell the user like we're almost there almost a almost there it's like give me what you have today and continue to know get the plane in the air and work on the engine while that's what users actually want and so that's our commitment and now your question might be like okay so is that going to be ZK in five years I really don't know I'm sure it will be much you know many

Innovations on top of what we do today and some of those we're already working on in-house but I don't know if we'll be ZK and I think that's one of our strengths if you look at many of our competitors particularly really across the optimistic and ZK space the name of their company is often like that technology is the tool is is inscribed there of your ZK this or something that has.com businesses right pets.com or you know like yes very much and now yeah so now these all by the way like it's funny I was actually like these like like I think drugstore.com like goes to Walgreens like it's yeah it's like why are we talking about the tool we should be talking about the thing we want to deliver to users and that's really um you know that's really our approach off chain Labs wants to deliver

scaling that utilizes off-chain Technologies those could be ZK Technologies those could be optimistic Technologies but that's what we're really committed to and we have you know and if ZK comes through and those breakthroughs happen and I'm putting myself on the record here I will not eat my words I will Embrace that fully and be happy to be part of it I just haven't seen that today and we have a mission to deliver the best technology to users today and continue to do that in the future yeah I guess like um it's a complex question right because I think when I I'm curious to get your perspective on is you know we've reach these huge Milestones with Nitro and other l2s which have increased the capacity of ethereum in a meaningful way can you just put some more context for users around that um you know how much

there there are a number of like metrics some which are vanities some which are not more substantial when we talk about scalability and you bring up a great Point around the sustainability of set scalability I am curious how many users uh could ethereum support today right now we're in a bear market now but you know in a Raging Bull Market we have nfts we have gaming we have D5 I'm curious like how do you think about the capacity of nitro today and other l2s um for users like to try to kind of wrap their head around kind of can ethereum support X or Y yeah so I guess I'll I'll start there on route please please chime in if you have any thoughts um so Nitro actually it's

it's pretty easy to say to compare it to the capacity of ethereum nitro does about 7x to capacity ethereum or I should say it has the capacity the capabilities to do 7x the capacity of ethereum before it starts to congest and um we actually have another Network called arbitrim Nova which is focused on gaming and um you know Reddit did a big launch on on that that's another 7x capacity and and you know there are other obviously other Road level scaling Solutions all sit on top of ethereum as well so you know in terms of and you know I didn't really answer your questions in terms of because what people like to do is they like to use this TPS or transactions per second metric and then you like look and say what are these transactions that usually like use like null transactions like that's not helpful so yeah seven times

the capacity ethereum is is more meaningful and the way we measure that by the way is is gas per second right and that's the actual metric that ethereum uses and that's the metric that we actually meter so you can have a trans a block that uses um a lot of you know a single transaction or you can have a block that's you know thousands of transactions it doesn't matter um because um the the true resource that we're really measuring and this is the one that we're meeting around is gas per second then so Nitro does arbitrary Nitro does about 7 million gas per second whereas ethereum does roughly 1 million gas per second and by the way a lot of that is is that's why 7 million it really shows around sustainability that's the place where we believe it

could be sustainable the software can can support um you know higher than that you'll see there are some alternative layer ones that actually take ethereum software and go much higher than that but um you know we believe that sustainability is key so we're not comfortable making it higher than that until we solve some of these data problems uh because again we want this to be a system not that as we have a very long-term Vision we're not looking to okay turn it up make trade no subsidize transactions make it super low and then the system just Falls over in a year or two that that's not winning um for us we're thinking about setting up a sustainable system that can last for uh you know decades and and Beyond where does that go with eip4844 it's a great question well imagine that

all of a sudden um you know you get you get this like this to order magnitude reduction in in the biggest cost that arbitrum faces to L1 right so that us directly manifest on users today like when you pay a fee you know you know you're basically amortizing the cost of L1 and L2 uh you know transaction fees and capacity onto users imagine of all sudden applications get 100x cheaper right overall uh it's it's so much you can do and I see this in terms of the ability that to do things that are not even possible on ethereum today uh applications that just have high throughput requirements you know Financial applications games right like famously there's there's this game called Dark Forest that runs on on this gnosis chain that's

um is a pretty popular game that you know on kind of on an ethereum compatible blockchain but it just you know the team cannot ship it to ethereum I won because it's so expensive and uh every transaction that people do and that game goes untamed and that's not possible in L1 right without two and end with things like Nova and even with you know that you know yeah before will bring just such a reduction in that that the next bottom neck would just be execution um and be basically transaction execution so I think about it in terms of what are things that are not even possible to do today when you get 10x 100x cheaper like wow it opens up such a new design space that I don't even know what people will use it for uh but I'm excited for that option

all right everyone time for a quick word from Circle and uscc as a crypto user you know the power of stable coins dollar digital currencies that transcend borders banking hours and Legacy Financial rails while circles usdc has quickly become one of the most trusted and widely used stable coins it's simple people use usdc because of its composability its stability and its reserved transparency and uscc isn't just adopted by a few of us D5 djends and Dows and nft marketplaces crypto companies alike they all leverage usdc to diversify their treasury asset management and ecosystem-wide composibility the adoption's clear usdc has grown to more than 50 billion

dollars in circulation since launching in 2018. we all have and we all will continue to take shots on our favorite volatile crypto assets obviously but usdc is one of the easiest ways to store your funds in a stable asset that can be used to send value around the world World almost instantly it lowers the cost of cross-border payments it integrates into the growing ecosystem of crypto apps as a seamless trusted dollar digital currency usdc is a zero to one opportunity for the financial system if you want to learn more about usdc I would recommend you check out the recently published transparency Hub on circle.com it's a great update to circles content on usdc it outlines everything from links to their weekly

Reserve reports monthly attestations blog posts that are written by their exact team that highlight how and why usdc was built so it is really recommend it just go to circle.com backslash transparency to access it now let's get back to the show yeah uh I want to transition a little bit in March you announced this concept of arbitrim uh any trust chains um can you introduce that concept and how you see these chains kind of playing a role in ethereum scalability future yeah it actually it's a really good transition because it really directly relates to the previous conversation around 4844 any trust chains are just like arbitrine roll-up chains so so actually let me just do a second of

terminology as we have Technologies and we have chains we have two technologies that we develop arbitrum robot which is also a type of optimistic roll-up that's one set of technology that we build on and then the one you just mentioned which I'll talk about is Arbor from any trust now we also have two public blockchains we have Arboretum one which is our roll-up chain um that's the chain that lost last August 31st which many people just call arbitrim um technically called our version one and then there's Arboretum Nova which is uh our public any trust chain right so we have chains and Technologies so just to um make that clear so what is arbitrary any trust technology so it solves the same problem of so eip4844 is getting on you know arbitrum is a large arbitrum Roll-Ups large cost is putting all this

data on chain and again and again so the layer one way to look at that problem is hey let's try to make this data data a lot cheaper um we asked ourselves is there are there other Solutions here and we weren't gonna take the data off in theory of an arbitration one we want arbitrine one to remain a robot we said we build another chain or another technology another another technology that doesn't put all that data on chain but still provides a high level of security and that's what Arboretum any trust is so what it does is instead of putting all the data on ethereum it uses um a committee and sends the data to this data availability committee as the any trust name implies it requires you not to trust the entire committee but only a minimally trusted set of the

committee I think you only have to trust one or two members of the committee and then you know that the data will be available and the committee is doing this they're just saying yes we're storing the data and then rather sending the data to ethereum you're sending these signatures to ethereum the committee members are signing and saying I will provide you the data if you need it and that's what gets sent to ethereum and the question then is how do we get confidence here who is the committee and in practice we set it up with a remember you don't have to trust the whole committees you want a variety of players that everyone will have comfort like oh I trust web 2 people so I trust them I trust web three companies so I trust them so who's on the committee in practice it's all chain lab so us it's

it's Reddit it's uh consensus it's P2P Lido it's Google cloud and um also FTX and quick note so a nice uh you know I'm sure there are a lot of people that trust some and don't trust others and they're a lot of different but hopefully the idea is that everyone can get comfort in someone in that committee and say oh I trust them and they're going to give me the data if need be um so is arbits from any trust chain or roll-up it is not um it is put but it's a lot more secure than a side chain because or a an alternative layer one in these Solutions you have your own consensus you typically require two-thirds of the validators to be honest but here you require against any trust property you just need to have

um you know one or two of these members being honest and and you and you trust them and and then everything works but interestingly and you know I don't know the answer to this um if eip4844 succeeds and the data cost becomes super super low on ethereum you know maybe this just becomes a roll-off and actually one of the one of the affordances that we built in this has a fallback to roll up even today so if the committee stops operating carpentry many trust chain so arbitration doesn't just stop running it just becomes a role and again just starts putting all that data in ethereum so you can imagine in a world where the ethereum will wear Rowell and his team succeeds and you know get the uh ethereum data cost really low we're going to say well revisit this and say hey let's just turn

off the committee and then basically the chain will just become a roll up at that point it will start putting data on ethereum and um maybe at some point that will be confusable but today um and just to say so why do you build this like we have these two products are they are they competitive why do we build this the real reason is um we weren't trying to compete with ourselves or we think roll-up security is is the gold standard and for you know the defy projects that we have you know we have a very very strong defy ecosystem very strong nft ecosystem those those players should stay um those those projects should stay on our original one the conversation with Nova was was really around gaming and social projects these weren't projects that were comment doesn't say hey I could have launched an arbitrine one but

uh you know you have something a little bit cheaper these were projects that were saying I really want to be at ethereum I really want to be an arbitrum but the problem is I'm a game and even paying 10 cents per transaction it just doesn't work and they weren't like making this you could be all principles and philosophical you should believe in ethereum it's like okay but like I am a game and I want to a game has to be fun first and if a user is wallet is getting drained that's not so much fun so it was really around those people that were they weren't choosing between ethereum and oh now and and you know arbitrine one they were saying we're going to go to an alternative solution that has lower security we said hey can we give them something that has a lot of very

high security as well and that's what we developed with arbitrary any trust chains and particularly arbitrim Nova yeah I guess you you touched there at the end on something that I wanted to kind of switch a little bit on from the user perspective and what kind of kind of things you're seeing on the ground in terms of the applications that are getting traction the type of user behavior that is happening once people bridge over to arbitrum maybe if you can comment on kind of from your perspective there are multiple l2s there are other kind of l1s I understand we're in a difficult kind of environment if you will bear Market let's just call it as it is but what will be the key to attract users and applications to

arbitrum like how competitive is it versus other l2s other l1s what's been really resonating with projects when you go to them and really kind of convince them to deploy an arbitrum uh versus another chain or maybe they're doing multiple deployments so a lot of it starts from the the technology which is the technology is future complete you know we're in beta mode today we have administrative controls and we're you know we're comfortable we you know we disclosed on top of every page but the technology is there feature complete fully code complete and it's the only roll up that that can actually uh say that today and um you know that brings a lot of confidence to people that you know the code is there they can look at it they can they can run it and um you know the the technology is is Advanced

and in many ways our team is really leading the roll-up space you know like the our interactive fraud proofs have now become the standard not just for arbitrum but for all um optimistic Road level optimistic Road labs are working towards Building A system that uses the interactive properties that we uh innovated in the roll up context um but the truth is that that's a lot of it I think that's how we got here but also to be very honest one of the one of the nice things about the blockchain space is this synchronous uh call the synchronous calls you can do you can have these interactions right these uh particularly in defy these uh multi-app interactions that happen um atomically and a lot of that is also you know there's a lot of network

effects and ecosystem that just sort of continues to build you want to be rather D5 projects are and one thing that we're seeing an arbitrary one arbitrary one has really become you know a D5 stronghold where many or most D5 projects are looking there and you know it's excited to build on top of these other projects and and build with them one particular area that I think arbitrum is particularly strong is in the derivatives or Perpetual Market we have uh strong projects like GMX and my cldm and and a bunch of others as well that are doing incredible work so I would say defy Innovation is happening on arbitrine and I think the starting point is people want security particularly when it comes to financial applications they want ethereum secure already they want a team that's building

on the roadmap to a fully to a fully operational uh and fully decentralized roadmap and they have confidence in our team to deliver that but also a lot of is then the network effects where just Arboretum is a hub of defy Innovation and because so much of Defy is you know is these are these interactions you need to be where these others are there's also a lot of the liquidity on the Chain as well which helps um we also have incredibly strong nft uh ecosystems on the platform treasure Marketplace and the treasure small brains if you're familiar with these have uh one of the early arbitrum nft projects and I think in the month of January or February the treasure Marketplace in arbitrim was the number two Marketplace by volume anywhere openc was was first and then treasure

Marketplace was was um was second and now actually just recently just a few weeks ago openc launched an arbitrim I think that's going to also continue to fuel the nft ecosystem and arbitrary it's definitely a lot earlier than than the D5 ecosystem but there's it's ready quite strong and um you know a lot of strong projects that are that are building on there and continuing to build on there as well I'm curious how does the merge kind of change the usability of ethereum does it really from a user standpoint does it really change anything uh we of course dispelled recently that it doesn't really improve scalability it's just like set maybe lays a different foundation for it but uh this is something we talk about a lot within the

community but you know for someone that is not as deep into crypto uh maybe if you could just talk a little bit about how important that is say there are there are like two like really really concrete changes that you know people are going to start to see more and one of them is that ethereum has always had variable block times right and the function of proof of work like you have sometimes blocks happening at you know nine seconds uh 15 seconds um you know that that that variance has been reduced over time a little bit but uh with ethereum with the merge actually now you have fixed block time so there will there will always be a block in ethereum um you know at 12 second intervals um you know some blocks could be missed if uh if uh if a validator fails to

propose a block but that's one concrete change for applications right previously it's been it's been a pain for a developers sometimes having these variable block times so having these fixed intervals is pretty nice second thing that happens is now ethereum has built-in light client support um that is basically um now you can you can run a very lightweight kind of node and how lightweight are we talking well like only a few hundred maybe like 100 kilobytes of data per day meaning you can probably run this in like a smart toaster or on like a pocket watch um that validates and follows the actual blockchain uh so some really cool things you can do is when you use something like metamask or infuria you can actually you can actually validate that the data that this third party is giving you is this is the correct data from the

blockchain so like if I request hey what is my account balance on you know on this or how much uh show me my trade history on unit swap you can actually verify against your local node that this data is correct and has a lot more data Integrity so it gives a lot more security than we had before and gives users more agency and verifying data which is pretty pretty cool and pretty concrete like a recent project uh plug-in for metamask I think came out recently or a project launch that lets you build a safer metamask or something that's pretty pretty neat um you know but more more importantly I think the merge really sets the foundation for the next big upgrades to ethereum which is which is this upgrade that will lower the cost of Roll-Ups there are some really cool things on the horizon for um just uh just just better

scalability for ethereum so actually like what we call sharding of data just coming out uh and uh better you know better things around censorship resistance so that's a big one it's a bit been a big topic recently in ethereum with uh you know like top people talking about ofac and blocks being censored that the protocol layer due to like flashbots and things like that so there are big things on the horizon that will just that will just make the protocol a lot stronger and more censorship resistant and the merge sets the foundation for that as we just as we just spoke yeah definitely um Stephen I want to switch the conversation out a little bit to your perspective on which I think is super instrumental we talk about gaming we talk about social applications I'd be remiss not talk about Reddit and and how

important that is so maybe if you can just talk about you know the conversations that happened with Reddit and other similar Enterprises what they're prioritizing there's certainly a lot of um I think still hesitation from a lot of companies because of regulatory Risk Technology risks there continues to be hacks there's you know crypto's not an easy environment we're still very early and these things you know break and have bugs and whatnot but uh you know we we had this moment in 2017 where there was a lot of announcements of companies going into blockchain but not crypto and but now you're seeing folks like Reddit roll out these Community points so is it real do you think that enterprises are appreciating the innovations that are

happening from the scalability front and what can we expect you know going forward uh do are we going to see more red is what does a Reddit deployment look like it's a it's a lot there so maybe you could just um you know comment on it yeah I'd love to um so you know the history of of actually our uh relationship with Reddit goes that goes back about two and a half years or a little less two years to July in July to um to a public what they call the great Reddit scaling bake off or Reddit said hey we have this idea when this is community points right this idea of having a decentralized point system so you contribute to communities you talk you comment you post Etc you've got these points and then you can actually

own your points so they don't um sit in a centralized database where they're actually blockchain points which means once they're granted to you um Reddit or anyone else can you know take them away from you or shut down your account you lose them but it also means they're more portable right so you can have another developer building an experience around reddit's Community points because they're all open and live on the blockchain and reddit's like we have this idea um how can we scale this and about 20 some odd teams um submitted proposals to this and then a year later so July of 2021 was when Reddit said okay we've chosen to go with arbitrim for this and then uh this past summer was when they actually launched it on our arbitranova mainnet and you know the reason actually why I think

it's such an interesting application is because it shows how how Enterprises I think are thinking about blockchains today and which is very different than what you were thinking about it in say 2017 or 2018. 2017 or 2018 version of this would be like hey let's take the entirety of Reddit and move it on to the blockchain right that was like the a lot of the Nuance in the conversations I'm sure you've seen certainly as an investor I'm sure you've seen proposal said let's take all your Healthcare data and put it on the blockchain um yeah so so like a lot of these a lot of these proposals were very early and not very nuanced there's like this new technology let's just swap it out and use it whereas this is a much more mature proposal and a much more mature system being built which is like no

reddit's fine because there's a lot of good reasons to have web you know web3 is not replacing web 2 it's complementing web 2 I think that's something people miss right you have to find yeah where are the synergies right where are What are the where are the ways that you can complement this and that's where you know gaming that's why the problem of gaming and the cost of gaming by the way so it's so difficult and such a hard problem because in 2017 you would say wow look I built this game on a blockchain so what did the the you know every move costs five dollars so what um if like you have to wait 15 seconds every time you press the button but because the people playing then were the enthusiasts and they were excited about these games 2022 moving into 2023 we're talking you know gaming Studios that are

really developing for the mass market and you know what we have to accept that it's okay that many of their users are just looking for a good game they don't really care about the under underlying infrastructure they might not make they might not want to touch the blockchain so our number one um focus has to be not making the experience worse for those users right not blockchain should be additive only um not degrading the experience for those users and that's true I think that's what we see in Reddit so right in Reddit if you watch want to be a user and continue even in these communities that have Community points you don't have to touch the blockchain if you're if you're happy with Reddit just telling you this is your points balance you don't have to go and take custody of them of option but for those users that

want to do that that's available to them and it's available to them at a low cost as well so it's these really nice synergies and it's also very you know it's it's nice it's it's clearly additive right you can now have an ecosystem I can build a game and say hey the currency of my game are these Community points like that's very powerful the ecosystems you can build around this are powerful and that's why I'm excited about it but I think yeah the thing that that generalizes to gaming and Enterprises in general is the maturity of these conversations not going ahead and saying what if I just move my entire staff to to the blockchain but thinking more nuanced is there any part of the blockchain it could be really small but that can actually make my webq app or web 2 experience better and I think in

many cases the answer is yes but it takes um nuanced discussion to find what is that application and is it additive and does it hurt other users because these are the places you have to think because you know we have to be very open and honest about the fact that not every user is going to want to touch the blockchain that doesn't mean the Technologies don't add a lot of value yeah I guess I suggestions they also want to add something about you know why why we've been such you know our team has been such arbitrary Maxis for a long time is that the technology is is simple you know I think that's really important also for institutions like it's it's easy to to understand and can be explained on the back of an applicant I think that's that's a huge advantage that really I

think optimistic Roll-Ups have and um you know we have such a simple Foundation you can build so many great things upon that you can attract a lot more people um you know and I think I think you know it's definitely one big Advantage I guess over ZK technology technology is is is complex to say the least um I'd say they're you know it's it for for develop from a developer perspective I think Simplicity always wins um Simplicity wins when you when you you can attract users to build on your platform uh they understand what's going on um they understand what they you know what they need to know is simple enough to grasp and um and it's a lot easier to rationalize just how close to ethereum it is um to us that's really important especially for you know applications

building for institutions that are looking at the technology are able to grasp it and understand really you know just just how elegant how the solution is yeah I'm going to ask a very basic question gets tossed around a lot steam back to your example Reddit which is just Community points we talk a lot about why can't this just be a centralized database and I'm curious what would you say to that because that continues to be brought up again and again right so I'll give you a few examples of things that make it Power where it's powerful that it's not one is and I'm sure you've seen the story on other on other platforms or even on Reddit where users like work for years a lot of users are very loyal to their communities and work for years and these points but they don't really own

these points and you know it could be a glitch they did nothing wrong and again I'm not saying Reddit but generally I see this on the internet and you know many different uh forums where they lose access and they have to start again so actually you know the in crypto we say like you know it's not your you know your money your keys your keys not your keys not your not you're not you know it's not your uh not your money but that's true also um for the you know the the points and credits that you build on other platforms where you know you want if you really really want to know that when you wake up in the morning um they're still going to be there um then custody them yourself is the only way to do that and again many users might be content you know back to the

Reddit case not actually taking ownership of them you don't have to go to the box gym and claim these there's no like button I read it says claim these points on arbitrary lose them it's you can claim these points in arbitrum if you want to but if you know you don't actually have to do that which is um where I say think it's an example of the additive on the approach where it's nobody doesn't hurt and the other one is also the ability to open up the ecosystem to to other players as well right you see this in like the airline industry for example where um you have status on one Airline and you want to get that as another and you can go through a process often to get that but the idea being you know what are your maybe maybe I have a I

have a store and I say here's a discount I'm a big believer in this particular Community here's a discount to anyone that you know that has some amount of points or some amount of credits in this community right you can actually do this because all the data is publicly verifiable it's public it's open and you can do that and you can do that in the metaverse as well right you can like I said before build a game where you say the currency in my game uh at these points I want to build a game that's targeted at this particular Community there you go you can do that and now um it exists there as opposed to having to somehow otherwise um though the link between you know the Reddit and the blockchain well how do I know and I need to do some sort of

Oracle service and there are actually you know some interesting Solutions on which I've worked on in the academic sense of how do you bring these private data onto the blockchain but you know for Reddit to actually be the issuer and do it um it just enables a very diverse ecosystem where they can use this as the base but build well well beyond Reddit so again you don't have to do any of this but it's it's there for those who want and that's why I think it's added yeah yeah I guess you're in the any trust chain kind of example you need to trust one of n you're still there's still some degree of trust but I guess there is more guarantees of kind of more credible neutrality I don't know if that's the right term that invites other people to then use the points as the

currency as the standard knowing that arbitrum doesn't have sorry knowing that Reddit doesn't have full discretion of just you know like deleting the entering the database if they will yeah and by the way the thing that you're trusting these players to do it's not even like a Target approach is literally to provide like the data of the blockchain now of course you know if so if every single one of you know Google uh Reddit off chain Labs consensus FTX Lido quick note uh got together and said you know we're gonna you know censor this user so yeah you're a thousand percent right there is that one degree of trust but um you know it's it's for most users that is uh that and that is the trade-off that the any trust makes and it makes that to get you know even lower cost for most users that's a good

trade-off and I would argue that it's um a lower trust requirement than or or harder to um have a problem with in this model than it is in many alternative layer ones and therefore I think um you know it's a nice it's a sweet space it's not it's not a roll-up so there is that degree of troughs absolutely but um it does occupy a really um interesting point in the design space you can have low fees and that you know pretty pretty um low trust required environment right before we round up I want to ask you guys a question which has been more in the Limelight as of recently which is this idea of centralization and you know if all sort of validators are in a particular geography you know is the

chain at risk of being halted by a state agent um I'm curious to get your general thoughts on on this increasing concern is it being overblown how real it is are there things that you're doing from a development standpoint to mitigate this um um so yeah open-ended question feel free to comment you may not be able to comment on this but just kind of curious on what your you know both of your takes are on this particular topic yeah I can comment on some of the facts that are happening on on L1 currently with censorship so yeah um you know it's no secret that today a lot of a lot of transactions are going through uh what are known as uh you know uh block relays so operated by entity centralized entities such as flashbots

and the reason people do this is because they you know they want to be able to reap the benefits of sending transactions on ethereum they want to be able to do Arbitrage they want to do things like this and these are possible through these relays that um you know prevent you from being front run and help you package transactions into bundles and things like that so um you know the most popular relay from flashbots is censoring uh currently ethereum transactions um and I believe around uh almost 51 or more of ethereum blocks on mainnet today are compliant with ofac regulations because a lot of them are being produced by these flashbots relays um you know is that is that really as alarming as it seems well even you know if even if only one percent of validators on ethereum

um are are not censoring um your transaction still has a 95 chance of being included within one hour so it doesn't mean that these transactions will never make it on chain they will still make it on chain um and it will just take a little bit longer than normal right can we do something about this because to be frank it is a big problem and I think the only way to do this is to really hard technology that will that will that will prevent this from happening in the first place and there are things being worked on today on L1 that will prevent these these things one of them are what are called a transaction inclusion proofs so as a valid leader on ethereum you can request this relay to give you proof that it will include a transaction and if it doesn't then you can you you will

not use it and basically they will lose you know they will lose you as a validator so there are Marketplace Solutions there are Technology Solutions that can be done to reduce this and they're being very heavily developed um you know it's going slower than expected because you know ethereum proof of stake just happened and this new model just just basically went live less than a month ago but it's definitely you know at the Forefront of all the developers Minds um everyone wants to fix this problem and there are solutions moving forward um and the way to solve it is really through technology basically making it so that no matter what like they won't be able to censor it um and that's just the reality of things because the base layer needs to be as censorship resistant as possible um as of course that's what that's what

L2 is in Rolex rely on so yeah we are working on that and it is it is a problem but it doesn't mean that it that ethereum is you know it doesn't mean that these transactions are censored forever yeah I think you know ethereum obviously is a decentralized network and the nature of being a decentralized network is you have a different a to decentralize makeup of nodes and uh with that decentralized um you know jurisdictions and regulations and um yeah so I think um having you know many different different uh representations there is actually strong for ethereum and building a strong decentralized Network obviously it's one of ethereum's core values and you know one one of the

reasons why we at arbitrim choose to build on top of ethereum is because we believe that the security and the decentralization of ethereum are really um much much stronger than everyone else and that's on the base layer of ethereum right of course there are operators of different levels and you know to the extent that um you know these operators of course individuals or entities you know um they make different decisions but ethereum is certainly um in turn in a smart contract space you know I think the gold standard for security and decentralization but that doesn't mean that it can't be more decentralized over time of course absolutely well it's been a fascinating discussion gents uh we can keep going on for hours I I know you guys have a lot to work on so I don't want to take more of your time I guess any parting

thoughts for listeners out there you know particularly towards the end of where they can learn more about what you guys are doing your roadmap how they could get involved but before we get there just any kind of parting thoughts or things you'd like to talk about before we wrap it up yeah I'll just uh you know say I'm super excited about the Prismatic Labs acquisition and working together with Raul Preston and the entire team I think this is going to be extremely synergistic and beneficial to us and to the community and you'll start to see you know uh start to see that over time where we have just more Minds working together towards these same problems and building really great Solutions but at the same time committed to developing prism as uh completely neutral and open

source projects so I think we'll have very and well-funded projects we'll have the best of both worlds uh here absolutely and um yeah if anyone if this sounds interesting to anyone and you know please feel free to get in touch or you're growing uh our team our joint team so we're going you know we have room for more people building prism have more people building arbitrum and more people uh you know working on these really hard problems so please uh find find us if that's if that's interesting yeah there's just so much there's so much to be said for uh bringing teams that you know have have experience in the community to work under the same roof and I think you know we're also very excited to be part of a part of optane labs I think you know even even the first week we're already starting to

work on some of the some of the really cool things coming up coming to arbitrum and can't wait to see can't wait for the community to see uh what's next uh it's it's really fantastic um there's so much in the works for ethereum and it is really the place to be um you know for applications um so much Innovation so many so many great uh great teams uh building on it thinking about the hard problems and coming up with Solutions um you know this you know this bear Market is a time to build and and it's uh to us it's it's really a pleasure to be part of this um so we're you know we're extremely extremely bullish for the future of optimistic Roll-Ups and for the future of just really scaling you know the technologies that scale ethereum absolutely I think a lot of these

developments go unnoticed during bear markets and I've always found that bear markets are the best time to build core infra that uh we didn't really have the time to pay much attention during Raging Bull market so uh gents thank you for coming on I think you're doing incredible work to scale ethereum or if it's not ethereum whatever the next solution is over the next five ten years I think a lot will change but uh it's uh great to see both of you guys and your teams really be at it um during Crazy uh Market volatility in Cycles over the years and so uh really excited uh to see what comes next uh in this combined chapter uh thanks for coming on and looking forward uh to maybe continuing this conversation uh further down the road uh but wishing you the best of luck and thanks for coming on the show

thank you so much thank you so much it's been a pleasure thanks [Music]