DeFi by Design EP#118: The Future Is Bright For Arbitrum DAO

Transcript

welcome back to the rollup High Roller Community as always nothing on the rollup is to be construed as Financial advice we are just an Educators in the defi space toss us a quick like give us a share a repost send it to a friend who may want to watch this and finally give us a sub or a follow it means the world to help support credibly neutral educational content in def5 we're here to educate Empower and enrich you and let's jump in welcome to D5 by Design where we talk all things block chain and cryptocurrency while striving to educate Empower and enrich what's going on guys welcome back to the D5 by Design podcast um I don't know really what to say other than the last 24 hours have

been a bipolar sense of the imagination that we call crypto um we have aged three years and three days and we are lucky to be talking today with the co-founder of offchain labs stepen gold Felder and an active Community member of the arbitrum decentralized Dow here with Rob of course Rob GM you're a stip maxi uh we did the arbitrum stip marathon space covering all the stip projects Rob how you feeling feeling good man happy New Year Andy happy New Year Stephen this is the first pod that we're doing in 2024 feels like we're just kind of like getting into the groove now and uh what a way to kick it off so Stephen welcome to D5 by Design um we were def5 slate now we're the rollup and I think uh I

think that's a great place to start because uh on arbitrum and as an L2 within this ethereum rollup Centric road map um maybe we could start with like essentially how how you're doing and then and we can get into the vision that you have for arbitrum uh within the ethereum rollup Centric road map hey uh Happy new year thanks for having me super excited to be the guest to kickoff 2024 so that's awesome and congrats to you guys I've been following your progress and uh really uh fantastic so excited to to be here today um yeah happy to uh to get into it in terms of the roll of centric road map which which you mentioned um you know this is super exciting time because we're actually

seeing and you know we've said this uh many times but that's that's the thing like as you scale it's it's more exciting every step you take so you know we this is not the first time we've seen ethereum scale but as we take these additional steps and see new Milestones met new capacities met it's more and more exciting and it's a test to really uh the strong leadership and vision of the talic who set up this Ro of centric road map you know in 2020 when there there were very few we were building but uh we hadn't launched yet uh anything um you know at offchain Labs others most of the current other players in the rollup space weren't even uh building some were but most were not at the time and it's it was an extremely early Vision an incredible vision and uh it's playing

out it's happening right it's it's really really working the roll rollups are scaling ethereum and I am super happy to play a small part of that and excited to uh to continue building uh for ethereum every day awesome and and as most people probably know you're the leader founder CEO of offchain labs um and then when it comes to arbitrum and the Dow you are like one module essentially within this like larger ecosystem of uh decentralized community so could you kind of talk about like the separation like what does offchain labs do why is that different from what arbitrum the Dow does um and we can talk about kind of like what is in store for uh for both

of those entities going into 2024 absolutely so at offchain Labs going back um five and a half years at this point when offchain Labs was founded our vision was to scale ethereum to build uh scaling uh technology for ethereum it was early days back then and this actually was not a new thing this was on the of our academic work at Princeton so offchain Labs spun out from Princeton University and arbitrum the paper the academic paper was published in the summer of 2018 and actually if you go back on YouTube and search for arbitrum you once upon a time I would say just look for arbitrum there's like one video now there's like obviously a proliferation of videos but if you go back for that first first uh video you'll find a a class project at Princeton uh discussing a very early

version of arbitrum I actually predates my involvement this was a project led by Ed Felton in an undergraduate seminar that project went on the shelf for some time and then Ed Harry and I so those are my uh two co-founders Ed and Harry um picked this up in an academic context and we we uh built that out the paper the research uh the initial research I should say was culminated in the paper in 2018 the summer of 2018 that's when the company was founded and we've been building on this Vision to scale ethereum and to build uh additional capacity for what we knew we believed and what's you know looking backwards we were correct on would be the maximum you know massive increase of of demand for ethereum Block space that was our vision at the time and we set out to build that

and we you know built the core arbitrum technology but it became clear to us um at some point that arbitrum technology is not something that should be or could be um controlled in a centralized manner by any company be it offchain Labs be it any company or any individual and therefore decentralizing arbitrum and putting the control of arbitrum the hand of the community um was was important particularly when you think about a technical Point like upgrades how do you upgrade the software um and that has some a lot of uh different uh ramifications for security for just features and for what the community wants and that's obviously needs to be in the hands of the community and uh the arbitrum da and Foundation are the are

the manifestations of the community where the community can and does have input uh onto um you know onto the direction and that includes both the technical direction of like hey what upgrades should the software run and includes the funding direction right hey if the Dow has a treasury what should the Dow spend that on and that those decisions are in the hands of the community now it's it's no secret that you know as part of this offchain Labs uh Team holders um you know were allocated some of the community governance uh uh tokens um but we as a policy at offchain Labs do not vote with those tokens um and therefore we like to really uh make sure that governance is in the hands of the uh community outside of us and we have seen and know happy to

get into this more uh over time really fantastic and so many voices I know we have arbitr OG and stti Maxi here so you guys probably know better than I do but so many voices arise in the Dow you know it's funny the Dow is not even a year old but it's a a vibrant and active community and it's not always a community that agrees and some people mistake this this this uh chaos or something bad but that's something good you know what what uh when people are plugged in they're going to have strong viewpoints and they're going to care and that's what the Dow is so yes I am an arbitrum Community member but you know um uh it's important for arbitrum to be controlled by the community uh and also excited for other voices be them individuals be them other companies be them technical builders that will build

uh build software and contribute software to the community be it at the application layer be it at the core chain uh layer all to contribute here as well and the idea is that this is a community-driven project that's larger than any one team or company so soft chain Labs has a history as a launch partner in uh with with the arbiton foundation in creating what exists today but ultimately you know our goal is to uh more and more empower the community and Empower others to build alongside us we've seen this happen in a really really strong way over the past many months but um I think there's a ton of potential to you know take that even further yeah yeah and needless to say uh number one uh roll up on on l2b as far as

activity tvl all of that goes just crossed a billion dollars of uh Dex volume I believe uh in the last 24 hours um Rob and I are involved in the Dow seamless grants people are active um definitely very very active right which is very uh very important for Dows because Dows kind of die off inactivity but when you have that that level of activity that arbitrum does makes it easier to grow um you know and and to kind of uh get things done um and so kind of bring bring us to that there's a lot to get done in 2024 um from your from your perspective kind of from a almost an outsider viewing in right know you you've been in

the trenches for so long with offchain Labs arbitrum seeing this all kind of Blossom now you know we're in 2024 the arbitrum Dow is established right we're not going anywhere um ethereum scaling uh these these rollup are almost like the original vision of ethereum sharding but not in the same way but in the same sense we've got all these different rollups we're going to bring them all all together uh through different te Technologies um and you know it's happening so it's that is done it's established but now the cool part is that we kind of get to decide the direction as a community um and so kind of from your shoes and from your perspective what are the couple things that you'd really like to see uh from

the Dow in 202 for whether it be Vision or certain initiatives um you know kind of what what objectives or or Dow goals uh do you personally see or have um yeah start there yeah it's a it's a great question and yeah it has been definitely a fantastic time for for adoption and but there's so much more that that one can do so you know I don't like to be uh particularly too strong in my recommendations because um I really appreciate other voices and and want to make sure that other voices uh rise and and and um you know we we sort of limit um you know I don't want to sort of uh have undo influence in any of that but that being said I think the Dow has a

tremendous um role to play in building obviously the arbitrum ecosystem because that's what it is but really ethereum and scanning ethereum and what that looks like and and what the shape of that is and how it can uh bring uh new verticals uh onto onto ethereum and give them the security of ethereum give them the ability to transact uh in web 3 which you know we obviously I believe and I'm sure you you believe as well is a fantastically important revolutionary for many applications and um something that's a massive opportunity and the Dow has a ton of of uh directional input there into what to do uh and that includes both again technical Direction with the Dow so the one thing about arbitrum the arbitrum Dow which is different than any other L2 Dow that I'm

familiar with is that the governance is actually self-executing and what I mean by that is uh in some Dows you'll have governance votes and then a multisig with keys and the multisig are basically supposed to turn the keys when the when the Dow votes but those two things aren't actually glued together it's just sort of an assumption in the arbitrum Dow when you put a proposal on chain uh technical proposal and say and it says okay do this upgrade it's it's the vote that actually makes the upgrade happen if the vote goes through the upgrade happens so the Dow is actually uh significantly in control over real real power the things that I would say that the Dow um you know very very broadly um should way I would like to you know love to see the Dow view itself is you know

it is uh a very well-funded Enterprise and it has the ability to to to uh to um sort of uh shape this uh direction of the ecosystem and it should look for how do we build this Coalition of really strong voices individuals um could be other you know companies other service providers as well to you know embark on this Vision together because the whole theme of the Dow is not one company not one person but this uh cacophony of voices that you need in order to have success and the one thing that arbitr da has uh and I think it's a big big uh step up from from others is it has diverse communities right so it's not just arbitrum we all agree it's well there's there's the treasure community

and there's the GMX Community there's the Camelot community and you know if you just read the D the Dow forums you don't have to go back too far to see that they don't always agree on every detail but they do agree broadly on they want arbitrum to succeed and that's like the really nice thing when you have different voices that have sort of different perspective what's important um but all have the same goal you gonna you're not going to get to an easy answer necessarily there might be some chaos there might be some um you know disagreements you know there might be some wins and losses and some things you know proceed some things don't but that's the engagement which I think is important I think the Dow needs to uh Embrace that engagement right there are some out there that say oh it's chaotic

you know it needs to be more centralized like I would disagree I think you if you look at just to like government right different forms of government yeah democracy is probably the most chaotic if you have a dictator it might seem from the outside less chaotic because you're just someone that tells you what to do and everyone knows that they have to do that and everyone just walks in stride and follows it falls in line but if you have uh real voices that are empowered to direct things then they're going to speak up and there's you know there're going to it's going to look chaotic it's going to look um really messy at times but I think that's where that's what we're doing and that's where the import comes and the down needs to figure out how to channel that and make sure that it that it makes these right

decisions and also look back at decisions it's made and say you know there was like the stiff uh these stps did they achieve the objectives how do you iterate in time you're not going to necessarily get it right the first time whether you're centralize or decentralized you can take input and and put that into a feedback cycle and so then the other thing on terms of other community members and you know getting other companies and Brands to be to to to contribute I think is fantastically important I think it's some something that the Dow should should definitely look to get you know more aligned voices but these should be these should be um these should be companies and these should be people that are uh really committed to to to arbit room success and really excited to say um you know I I work for for for the community and I

am excited to um put all my resources into making sure that uh the community scales and the last thing I'll say is and this is something for me personally but this is something I think that everyone in the arbit community uh and really in the L2 Community more broadly uh can and should focus on it's something which I've been trying to do more in the past few weeks and 2024 is one of the things which I um am committed to to Really uh doing which is you know some of the other ecosystems out there they point to ethereum and say uh there's all this fighting in ethereum like they're hurting theirselves different Al are Waring and hurting themselves and to some extent I think that that's incorrect for the same reason why I think fighting in the Dow is incorrect sure you have other ecosystems that only have one voice it

might sound better and there's less dissent but it's when people care and are committed that that's that's important and that's what actually um you know go makes this uh different in the fact that people are committed in care and there's no way to hide opinions there's no way to to MK that it just has to come out on the other hand though you know so that's one the one hand on the other hand I do think that there is uh some fairness in the criticism in the following sense which um as l2s L2 you know Builders of ler chos um it's sometimes easy to get caught up in the small differences right so your to zoomed in and you're like you know I your guys are doing everything wrong everything incorrect because you're doing this like sort of you know

technical detail of proof in this way and not that way and you can get really really into these like minor differences but you fail to zoom out like hey we agree on like 99% of things right if you look at like you know across the aisle there are those that don't think that ethereum is is the is the you know def should be and is the default smart contract platform we all agree on this we all again want ethereum to succeed so I think zooming out is important and letting people understand that hey I'll be the first to criticize another world they're doing something which I think is bad for ethereum but also realize that hey we're all in this together and all try to do the things that our best for ethereum and um zooming out more particularly in public I think is is is

very important so that's one thing which I personally will be doing um in my uh role at offchain labs in my role as as a community member but I think it's important for us uh as a community to understand that and the thing that the we can do as a community is understand that there's greater purpose here right we're also trying to elevate ethereum at the same time and not lose track of that not lose sight of that when we uh are engaging it's not all about um it's not all about like you know the super intricate zoomed in details it's also the zoomed out details which is hey we're scaling ethereum and that itself is super important and we're doing a really good job at that I love the philosophy you have on chaos because it's like a productive

chaos and it it by accepting that chaos is is going to happen almost inevitably you almost like front run it and then you're able to to switch the you're able to flip the script and go from chaos to Simplicity which is not the normal course of chaos it's normally simple into chaos so by accepting it realizing it it you're able to flip the script and kind of take care of it and then go in a more uh beneficial Direction which I think is really really cool um you mentioned like there's a lot of places almost there's 99% of the the surface area where uh these l2s agree with one another so and then maybe one% where not so much agreement could you kind of like describe like what are the aspects where

people agree or the l2s agree and then what do you think is some of the some of the areas where uh l2s might Clash absolutely so I think from a vision perspective um you know we can get into heated heeded debates on the ethereum level on the arbitrum level about what the best way to do think but like the fact that like l2s leaders generally agree with the vision of we want to elevate e theory we want we want to scale e theory we want to um make the you know increase the availability of ethereum secured block space that that's like a massive agreement and and if you look at over time the way that these debates happen you often see the you know the scuffle in the moment but

Direction directionally teams you know tend to also move together right so teams for example you'll see this around uh how we approach as a community alternative data availability Solutions or how we approach like um hybrid Solutions like uh arbitr many trust or validium and there's there's like a lot of consistency in the debate often like leads in the direction that most people follow in so um there's not just focusing on the debate but realizing we're also kind of agreeing another another example is you know there were some early debates around uh optimistic rollup um withdrawal window how long that should be should it be an hour should be a day should be a week and you know even teams that are quote unquote Waring have been able to come together

and say okay it looks like we as a community wanted to do a week great that's what we're going to do and we're going to build the software in that way so there's a lot that we can just you know through the debates and through the fights through the arguments we come to consensus on it's it's sort of a method to consensus that's number one um also just the vision but but also in terms of actual technical progress and Technical alignment I think is is important as well so a great example is is EIP 4844 this is something which uh many different teams are contributing to and we're contributing to on the ethereum layer and every line of code that we write say at offchain Labs is going to benefit um our competitors at at other at other at other companies as well and

similar for them every line of code that they write towards this goal is going to help us and there is just shared interest there and that that really again in a very literal sense here that shared interest is on ethereum and it's the direction of ethereum hey how do we make ethereum the settlement layer that's optimized for rollups and we can all contribute to that at at offchain Labs so we we talked about our our contributions to arbitrum but we also haven't talked about that much or haven't talked about it all here today is we build prism software prism is the leading consensus client for ethereum and you know we as at the L1 development layer are super involved in EIP 4844 and contributing to to ethereum uh in that way and I think there are plenty of other ways E4 sort of has the community

Spotlight right now but there are plenty of other ways uh that we can contribute as well with the 4844 for example we we collaborate with the ethereum foundation we've published a bunch of papers on um you know analyzing these proposals and seeing how will they affect ethereum ethereum Community how will they affect rool just understanding um and also there's just yeah a ton of shared interest when it comes to um features that we can all agree on or all or all U make use of or standards that's the other thing which I think it's a little bit early still to talk about standards because you know you don't standards and Innovation right so if you have a standard that you have to fit into and you're trying to build

something that's completely new the standard is just going to sort of get in your way as The Innovation happens more and more and more and you built something that's being used standardization becomes more and more important so I think we're still probably early on towards the Innovation uh cycle but I think we're getting closer and we're starting to see places where standardization can and does make sense and that's another place which I think we can all agree on because you know the alt alt l1s are not wrong in the fact if we if we can't ever come together and can't ever agree and can't ever you know focus on ethereum and not argue over every small detail we will end up hurting ourselves I don't think that we've done that I think that there's a an amount of fighting that's good and the amount of fighting that's

helpful to get in that direction but I think we have to have a toal purpose so um those are some technical technical answers I guess um of where we can do that but also just you know uh support each other that's just these the social layer as well just say okay I'm going to understand and really internalize this and try to support uh other projects uh and realize that they are doing um they're set out to do something that's Noble and they agree with me on what I'm doing I might disagree with how they're doing it but still be able to recognize that we're largely on the same yep definitely and that's the ethereum ethos and I think arbitrum is very aligned amongst others um I I remember ECC last year uh Harry was on a

panel with uh three ZK evm Builders Alex from ZK sync um Jordy from polygon and Matt or Dan from Tao and uh they were in a heated debate with regards to uh ZK versus optimistic and they all started ganging up on Harry saying that arbitrum has no choice but to be a ZK roll up in the future and Harry is just sitting back there and of course this is like SE seven months ago so you know the ZK rups hardly had even launched or had any tvl or any users or anything and Harry's just kind of sitting there giggling like guys like look at our chain like look at our our activity like he didn't even have a response right because there's

there's no reason to to to one up anybody there's no reason to kind of attack other people's Solutions but in a friendly way um and for the sake of innovation and I thought that was very outstanding in the sense with regards to Sure perhaps we can agree that ZK technology extremely powerful and you could even agree that it is more futuristic than an optimistic technology or you could say no but the you know having the open mind and being able to just kind of agree to disagree but also have that similar uh you know traction with ethereum is is super important um kind of coming back to to the Dow conversation a bit with regards to this chaos that Rob has mentioned one of the

big drama points for arbitrum in the last couple of months was this big Bank list St thing uh as well as some of these other large uh proposals uh for ARB tokens some some pass some did not um I know you have some thoughts on on on these so maybe I'll frame it to you as kind of where do you draw the line between greed or or excessive uh excessive uh asks from Dows uh and wanting to actually wholeheartedly be a part and attract as many service providers quality minds and people as possible POS uh to ad doubt it's it's a great question so yeah I don't have any specific comments on you know I wasn't have any involvement

there the only comment I'll say is that um sounds like there was some misunderstood identities in in in that whole thing as well and you know I've known uh in terms of the bank HQ side I've known Ryan and David for a long time and only have you know a lot of respect and positive things to say about them and then I and I uh um seems I they got sort of embroided into something larger larger than that um but I I think you know uh generally back on the theme which which I which I said before um is I think it's important for um you know the any da really um to take its job seriously and realize that these resources are are real resources right that's number one and even though it's

in a you know decentralized and a virtual setting they're like real resources and they are people that you should I think alignment is is the most important thing um which is um how do we how do we create alignment and shared vision and shared purpose and shared Mission and again confusing alignment with agreement are like completely like it's an easy thing to do but it's it's not the case at all like we might be aligned in Vision but have radically different views of how to get there and in fact that's a good thing because if we don't we're probably not really aligned because I probably just I'm not paying attention just going to agree with whatever you say uh if I actually care and I'm really aligned deeply committed to a vision I probably won't agree with you when every step and how to get there um so understanding the

process of reaching consensus uh with disagreement I think is important but also um just just focusing on that alignment which is um there are teams out there that um you know might see the Dow as an opportunity um and by the way I'm not talking about the bank situation at all I really uh to be clear I'm talking about like how the Dow should think about this in the future there definitely are teams out there that might um see dows or or exploit the um lack of centralization in in a dow setting it could be an any Dow where they'll say hey um I could just get money uh from a dow for doing some Services then I can go to the next Dow and get money for doing some services

and they can might you know sort of exploit that nature so I think um what the the role of any Dow I think is to understand that it's you know a real real has a real sense of purpose and should have the same um you know anti-conflict and uh alignment values that you'd want when for example in a centralized organization hiring hiring an employee or hiring a service provider which is um are you committed to to the mission are you committed to the vision uh we should find someone who's um you know really excited not just to provide services and get paid obviously that's important and everyone wants to to get paid for their services and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that but it's super excited about about the mission and plugged in and actually in full agreement and wants to make this

particular Dow whether it's the arbit Dow or some other Dow are smashing success so I think and I think you know the arbit me Dow in the ecosystem is fortunate to have a lot of different candidates and players that are very excited what they're doing and could definitely um play that role but that's what I think is is is very important is just um you know finding the people that that are excited about um taking the this to the next that could be application buil developers that could be uh other service providers that could be uh chain developers whether those that write core software core you know cor softare for the chain or those that actually want to launch their own chain there are so many different roles and it can be non- technical roles as well there are so many different different roles uh in this in the ecosystem that

need to be filled and I think um you know Finding aligned voices for those roles are is uh really um going to um be be critical for for the success of of any doubt yep yep and yeah eally was not trying to pick on any specific thing just it's interesting when you have a decentralized organization how to make decisions and filter and it's all new right and the arbitr from DA has done a good job of kind of appointing people in a in a way which are uh you know legitimate have had have had uh tenures with arbitrum you know different types of things and um it's very interesting so I think uh I think most would say

that arbitrum is the defi Hub of LTS like hard to disagree with that so arrom has the dominant like there's just no way around it like I mean I mean unless you guys have an objection but yeah go ahead see before no no objection sorry no no objections right so dominant defab I mean one could even argue across all of crypto in terms of the The Depths the experience the yields the opportunities the builders it's quite dominant but there might be some places where you think that arbitrum isn't so dominant whether it's events or whether it's uh nfts or social or rwas or or um I don't know different languages or Community

what are some of the areas that you are particularly interested in seeing arbitrum flourish outside of defi in 2024 which perhaps aren't weak now but maybe could use some more development to further strengthen uh the kind of position of arbitrum as well as the entire ecosystem of ethereum yeah that's a great question so um number one is I would definitely agree that arbitrium has a core strength in Defi and and and one of the nice things about Defi and one of the things that I think brought defi um to prominence you know a couple years ago was the fact that you can have these sort of synchronous interactions with applications there's uh there's a deep Network effect that has there with whether it's because of the other

applications that are live or because of the liquidity that's there and um I think we we're increasingly seeing innovation in defi happening there right so it's not just hey hey okay I can launch a DEX here another Dex here another lending protocol here it's um how can I combine these different pieces in ways that no one else has and tap into protocol a b and c and by doing so build protocol D that's new and unique and different and differentiated that's uh incredible to see that's uh what I love to see and we see a ton of that Innovation uh on ethereum and on arbitrum right as and you know as as one and and separ as well that's that's what's always made

ethereum different to me which is it's the Mind share and The Innovation and there's so much new and exciting things and you know it's less copycat projects but more like deeply Innovative projects which I think are excited there there are other verticals which arbitrum I think is also very successful one is gaming arbitr Nova is uh really really successful in gaming and has lots of high-profile game doesn't always get the uh in a very financialized uh world where lots of metrics are are financialized like gaming doesn't always get it its uh you know Fair level of recognition because often those aren't the the metrics that they're tracking um and and I think to lots of times their benefit right if you want to be you know in 2017 maybe maybe that was what gaming

was focusing on but today like you have real game gaming uh Studios that are building like priority number one good game number two crypto experience for those who want it right those are that that's the correct in my opinion uh Viewpoint that game should have but like the idea is that therefore they might just not get their their recognition because they don't have you know the tvl numbers that others do but they they do have the transaction numbers and I think anyway it's also a little bit earlier uh in terms of the gaming life cycle and the def defi life cycle but that's a place where Arbitron Nova is is very strong both in terms and also arbit ecosystem for example uh Z xai their their launch uh is uh happening soon and they've seen fantastic success on Tesa

and also a team of core builders that are just really plugged in to the ecosystem and to gaming and um you know know how to build a good experience and we're seeing others as well um on Nova for example you have plenty of proof of play team is doing just record numbers and um really exciting Innovative things when it comes to fully onchain gaming and I can go on but I'll I'll sort of stop there but there's always more to be built there and gaming like I said earlier is earlier in its life cycle so I don't think that that's uh any chain is necessarily One gaming or at this point I think there's a lot of exciting signals but it's earlier on um other other um verticals that you mentioned um real world assets that's an exciting one for me but also really

early on arbitrum has some early successes there um you know Franken Templeton expanded to arbitrum recently um uh centrifuge launch in arbitrum there are lots of others as well that are either launched or in development um and that's where another place where I think defi is going to be helpful because today like trafy and defi even onchain rwas are sort of segregated but a lot of builders that I talk to have a dream of merging those and making experiences that are defi like either connect payments or other defi functionalities into trafi because just taking your trafi you know existing positions and moving the bookkeeping on chain it might actually help for costs

and efficiency but it's not that the most exciting thing to do really figuring out is how can we take this technology and take the users and give the users new powers and new capabilities is the most exciting when you do that um number one is who's the audience it's probably a lot of the people that have been doing defi but number two also is there's just you know ways to tap it you know people are interested or Builders are looking are ways to tap into those markets so I think arbitr role in defi is um going to be very uh important there but there are also others doing important experiments so Kinto is a is a institutionalized chain launching in the arbit ecosystem just focused on on on on uh institutions and sometimes they have different uh needs for example kyc is one of them

where they might just have different kyc requirements and not be able to tap there so there tap into defi sometimes they will sometimes they won't be but there are different ways to sort of experiment here we're seeing a lot of that in the arbitr ecosystem um when it comes to you know to to say where I think you know one place the arbitary ecosystem is uh has some room to catch up um you know social fi is one of the other ones you mentioned and definitely um I think we're we're seeing uh some def exciting and engage projects that are that are working and building really really interesting things um but that's not I would say arbitrum core strength right now um that doesn't mean it can't be I think that there's uh you know exciting possibilities there and you

know those that are looking to build the ecosystem should should think about that which is okay how do we how do we um you know incentivize Builders to to uh to build more here how do we what what fun what functionalities be it technical be it something else can we provide that makes this ecosystem more attractive for that because you know ultimately you know I view arbitrum as a very general purpose uh technology and even the uh public Arbitron chains are for the most part general purpose and you can have uh a ton of different uh applications and Innovations using using this technology um some arum is leading on today some it has really early signs of progress and some I think there's the other one that

is super exciting for Rob and I that which we've been paying attention to is uh the orbit arbitrum orbit launching app chains and launching um kind of playing into like the like the whole modular narrative right arbit orbit just integrated Celestia they're going to integrate alternative da layers for their l3s um basically launching chains on top of arbitr L2 right which then gives almost becomes arbitr L2 almost becomes like a settlement layer right which then elevates arbitrum to a whole different level it's not just a rollup for theorem it's like also a settlement layer itself um yeah I'm curious what what your thoughts are on on the modular thesis on Orbit on these kind of app chain l3s

where do you see this playing out um with arbitrum one thing that I think we at offchain labs when we talk about the technology don't do quite as well as some others is uh we tend to wait to talk about things until they're like built and they exist and you can use them and uh we often don't uh you know play The Narrative game as much as as maybe we should I'm not I'm not saying I'm not saying patting ourselves on the back for that right it might be a good thing it might be a bad thing I'm not sure um and you know arbitrum when it comes to there's there's a lot of different um views and visions of like you know how these different modular Pieces come together but the cool thing about the arbit ecosystem is that there actually is a modular stack a modular

stack that people are innovating on today so as you mentioned Celestia integrated their alternative da uh you know their data availability layer Into The arbit Morbid stack near actually announced something similar last week they're doing um others I know that we're working with are doing this as well um um when it comes to Shared sequencing espresso system is building Integrations for um both a Time boost protocol which is an ordering protocol that can uh you know for for muv capture uh but also um building just generally their shared sequencer capabilities for orbit chains that want to opt into it and there's the list goes on actually if you look back and I'm I'm relatively sure that you know either the first or certainly one of the first alternative

da to go live was actually in the arbitral ecosystem on arbitrum Nova back uh you know in the summer of 22 where Nova went live with a uh the an trust technology which uses alternative da doesn't put all the data on ethereum uses the data availability committee and that's been very successful and that's something else which uh exists on the arbitrum or in the arbitrum orbit ecosystem and actually just today um an announcement came out from in the arbit from orbit space where you can now do customized gas tokens so you can basically go ahead and say Hey I want the fee token here to uh be you know whatever token I want it to be doesn't have to be eth if you're not using alternative da that doesn't always make that much sense because you're paying so

much in ethereum L1 fees in eth so you might as well collect it in eth otherwise you're sort of just um you need to constantly just you know sell them to get the eth because you need eth when you're talking about alternative da your your eth costs go down and and are fixed generally uh per block and you can actually now do things like okay um change the fee token because your fees in ethereum are are much more predictable and even even steady so um we have uh that we something we published for orbit chains is this launch tool tool where you can go ahead and uh you know just toggle like now the custom fee tokens is launched in there as well talking different talk about different customizations sort of customizations that people have expressed they want the more popular once but the cool thing with orbit is

you can go ahead and make whatever changes you want and that's for orbit layer 3es which you mentioned um there are a lot of benefits to layer threes over Layer Two uh tell you what two of them are number one is just the uh lower onboarding cost right so if you are say have your funds in coinbase or binance or some other exchange and you want to get them onto uh your chain if it's a layer two you're going to have to go to ethereum first and then from ethereum to that chain if it's a layer three you're going to actually be able to go directly uh from arbitrum to that chain and you'll have you you'll benefit from the you know 90 95% or so cheaper fees on the arbitrum network than those ethereum transfers and the cost of onboarding users is going to be a lot lower also

the cost of just posting data to ethereum particularly when you don't have high transaction volume um for layer twos you constantly need to hit ethereum for layer 3es you can sort of take the bus so rather than going to ethereum directly you get on the arbit from bus you're package together with all these other transactions and even if you have only one or two transactions uh to contribute that's something which um you know is is something which is totally fine and you'll only pay for the for the space you used and the last really uh crucial feature I think of arbitrum as it relates to orbit is you know to be honest every chain has dreams of becoming like uber successful very early on and having a ton of transactions it doesn't always happen sometimes there's a just a bootstrapping phase right where like okay you have to

and your transactions might be spotty you might go for periods of time without transactions one of the things that differentiates the the arbitrum orbit technology from its competitors is the block time is completely elastic what I mean by that is if you have a lot of transactions coming through it will do up to four blocks per second the fastest of any L2 that I'm aware of if you have like 20 minutes without uh any transactions there will be no block so you're not paying fees of empty blocks to ethereum and that's something which you know when you're calculating your costs if you're in like one of you know our competitors roll up where they have you know fixed block blocks so every two seconds you have to pay these costs for for an empty block doesn't matter if you have users or not you have these fixed

costs that are very high whereas with arbit morbid it sort of scales with your with your users and that's something which I think is important I will mention though um there are or orbit l2s as well so orbit L 3s are definitely the more popular option um there are orbit l2s as well and I know there's an ongoing conversation with Val on this in terms of Licensing models for for for layer twos Layer Three is completely open and permissionless layer twos is uh you know the Dow currently uh controls but there I think there there ongoing conversations how to make that experience more smooth and I'm definitely following those conversations um you know closely from from our from our perspective um but yeah um probably gave you a lot more than you bargained for in that answer certainly the technical details but all arounded that

was saying um there are you know I when I spoke with the team last week uh they told me of they you know they showed me about 50 plus uh chains in development um a few dozen or so have already announced publicly um maybe maybe one or two dozen have announced publicly and that that information is on our is on our uh you know on our blog but we're actually working on adding orbit chains to the Arin portal as well so you can now track these in live live and there are just literally a proliferation of these of these coming live and um I know some Alpha which is I know of some high-profile chain launches happening uh between now and the middle of February so uh we're going to see some really

exciting things that uh I'm aware of coming in the ecosystem nice nice on that note people keep asking me about this because I've been tweeting so much recently like a little airdrop Fanboy about TS stakers and Adam stakers and this and that and and and if if you don't want to comment that's fine but people have been asking me quite a bit about arbitrum staking right and then the the thought about okay well if there's all these orbit chains coming out live launching tokens how do they get the best wi how do they get the arbitral community involved the best well they could they could air drop or they could reserve tokens for ARB holders or ARB stakers or but wait ARB staking and I know plutus is trying to

figure out their ARB staking so like ARB staking like when is it like possible is it a dow thing is it a technical thing like when Wen yeah so that's definitely not you know that's definitely in the Dows realm um not in and I know there's been very active conversation happening there um as as you you you referenced and a lot of different voices there I'll say something technical on this point um uh which is rollups and uh proof of stake chains are are very different in the way that they their technology works so proof of stake chain basically it's a it's a voting protocol basically and you

need uh the stake is sort of helpful to secure the chain because you have different people sort of voting voting with their stake there are slashing conditions where the CH state where the chain is actually like providing real Economic Security to the chain and this is true um you know in in just about every proof of stake protocol that I'm aware of and that's uh that's where sort of most people when they think of staking um think of that in rollups it's a little bit different the key feature of rollups is actually they don't have their own consensus they don't need to have their own proof of work or proof of stake they rely on ethereum's consensus so they do have consensus but that consensus is you know the the API for that consensus is a smart contract on ethereum right interestingly there are we talk about roll validators Ro up

validators don't talk to one another all they need to do is watch ethereum and say is what's happening in ethereum a correct representation of what's happening on the rollup if it is we're good if it's not they engaged in the fraud proof process and they fix that but you know interestingly they're not actually trying to reach consensus with one another um well they are but via ethereum as as the as the consensus vehicle um so it's a little bit of a different technological landscape and the question then the technical question which I think is a very interesting one which I'll which I'll is um is there a a mechanism where staking provides Economic Security for rollups um where it uh you know in a similar way that it can provide Economic Security for proof of stake chain I think it's a fantastically interesting

technical research question and one which I don't know the answer to uh off I have some ideas but I don't have know you know I haven't uh done the uh full amount of work to actually have uh you know I don't have like a a a paper written up on this or anything like I think that's which I think is uh is a very interesting technical question so not exactly the answer to the question you asked but hopefully some good tactical the token itself solves the something for nothing problem of the rollups right like there there has to be value on the r up for people to care for for distribution for marketing for Community but yeah it doesn't it staking doesn't really apply in the same sense as you explain so um yeah rob you

got well yeah what Steph what you say about proof of stake makes sense like any kind of staking mechanism would not be at the protocol level it would be at the application Level on top um and yeah I do I mean I have so many questions I'm trying to formulate no that's question maybe maybe not research to do okay cool I mean yeah I like I have so many questions I'm trying to pull them all into one uh because I realized we're running a bit low on time so like the main Crux of my problem is like as a STI Maxi like what went right with stips and what went wrong with stips and try to improve that for for future incentive

programs you mentioned like incentive allocation and and there are certain areas where uh incentives could be allocated to kind of boost those areas um I heard you mention kind of like the onboarding normies uh and and arbitrum uh layer 3es let that happen a little bit easier by transforming gas costs and the and the directness of the onboarding um and then also some of the other sectors aside from defi uh that are getting a little bit less love but could flourish on arbitrum so with that being said you know whether it's onboarding normies like I If you know you were to look at stip and I think personally that was like one of the light bulb moments

because it got so much attention and generated so much traction what went right with stip and then if you were to do like a STI round two like how would you sh reshape uh some of the allocation of those incentives so that there was more incentives flowing into the areas that could could really benefit from it and benefit arbitrum and ethereum overall by incentivizing those Those portions of the ecosystem yeah so it's it's a great question I I don't you know from from my from my focus and my vantage point I focus much more on the technology and um so I I don't have specific comments on um you know allocation or how the

community think about it I think the process um was a great one I think the process of seeing so many different voices come together um was absolutely wonderful and that's you know you know really made me excited about the uh engagement of the AR ecosystem and that there are people that just care and have strong opinions um whether those opinions are my opinions or not I think is is not relevant um you know the community needs to uh needs to figure out what what it wants to what and how it wants to support but I think it's you know the the thing that makes me excited is the community understands its role and that's that's the most exciting thing here so if you look back I'm sure you know if this probably goes true across the line or if everyone that argu

for something looks back they'd probably change something in hindsight you always will I think that's the community's continued role which is to go ahead and take the input and not just you know uh do it once and then never look back and do it again because then you're just going to do the same process but say hey um what was helpful for the ecosystem what was not helpful for the ecosystem I think having you know obviously different objectives what do helpful for the ecosystem mean obviously getting um you know strongly supported apps the ecosystem is important but also continuing to build the core technology um uh that might be other nodes and service providers that that that want to launch the ecosystem and and and working with them as well and ultimately creating this this uh this Network that has you know it already has the best

core technology but the best um application Level technology the best service technology the best user experience um you know I think we've as just a general directional thought of of where we can improve and you know maybe that's helpful maybe that's not um I think scaling at this point is is not the number one issue U that that we have um we are by the way at offchain Labs continue to do more work on scale right so you always have to think ahead of ahead of time you know we're working on something called arbitral stylus which uh will uh has the ability to provide another you know 10x computational scale 100x memory scale these are like large large large numbers and um you can view scale in two ways by the way you can view it as a reduction in gas cost you

can view it as an increase in capacity and those two things are are both uh can both be true and and are are you know are are really important to in an ecosystem where you believe the demand is increasing but I would say at the current moment um user experience is is is is also very uh probably at the Forefront which is how do you just increase and make the user experience great um two questions to ask there are you know well I you say ARB is doing I think really well there um block times are really fast which is important uh for people the the chain uh generally is reliable and um you know the technology works it has all it's fully built out so the user experience and the security security like tradeoff are I think are

really at a really good place but not being complacent like how do we how do we build the user experience how do you make it more more easy to access how do you do make it you know particularly as you talk about um new verticals like gaming or real world assets or social F you're trying to appeal to a wider user base here that is not necessarily the users that use arbitr today or use ethereum today or use any blockchain today and they might not have the same skill sets and in order to take a sort of um important and well- adopted technology but in more limited circles today and take that to really worldwide Global adoption uh I think the big bottleneck is going to be ux and so the questions I think we can ask are um how do we improve the ux and this can be on

the application basis you know the app layer this can be on the S on the protocol layer I don't know um but that's one important Direction I think where uh we as developers need to think about and maybe there's something for the community to to to also consider uh there as well um and um and B basically also how do what what can we learn from other ecosystems are there other ecosystems that are that are uh doing things well when it comes to arm boarding users making this easy how can we replicate that in the AR ecosystem as well awesome that makes sense as far as incentive allocations I think it's it is an interesting question just related to the to the ARB staking question which is like at a certain point cryptography becomes cryptoeconomics because that's

how we derive consensus and coordination across these chains so it is it is like very very cool to see how the ARB Dow allocates those incentives and then uh reinforces some of the areas that are particularly core to the arbitrum ecosystem um and there was there was a question that was posed by one of like the by one of our community members which was that um if if ZK technology kind of like proved like more efficient apparently you had said that arbitrum would transition to like a ZK rollup if if the research became uh like so supportive of that technology I found that quite

curious like is that is that true that uh there is possibility and essentially my question is like what what would ZK technology have to look like for arbitrum to make that kind of switch good question so one point of clarification is um the only thing I control is what I work on and and well that's not true what offchain labs work works on right and what I mean by that is um we can build technology and we can you know based on certain metrics change or not change our Direction but that's the really cool thing you know bringing you back to where we started here um the Dow is the one that actually has the keys of what gets launched on chain so uh if I become a ZK Maxi tomorrow that

doesn't mean that arbitrum will ever become a ZK chain because I don't have I don't have you know any keys to to the chain at all I'm not on the security Council not like literally um I don't have uh you know I I you know that has to go through the the the process of the arbitrum uh Dow and the arbitrum uh deciding what is the future of the chain and similarly by the way if some ZK Builder out there comes ahead and I have no idea anything about it and says hey we think that the arbitrum chain should should move over to ZK technology and they propose some technical upgrades to the chain that can go through um you know whether or not you know I or offchain Labs agree with that I think that's important to to mention that being said I can talk about our focus on

offchain labs and what we believe and what you know what we're building so um offchain Labs just focusing on the name for a second is is different from most of our competitors um we are offchain Labs the thing you won't see in our name is the word optimistic the word ZK the word snark the word stark uh or anything that really um speaks to a particular technology and and it seems like a a strange point to make maybe but it's actually important because when it comes to our mission and our vision our mission is to scale ethereum with the best technology available to give users you know ethereum security with great usability and do the use the best tools available to do that today our mission

is not to take optimistic rollups and scale ethereum right that is what we're doing because we believe and I believe that optimistic rollup techn techology is the best technology available today to do that on a few planes when it comes to maturity when it comes to cost when it comes to uh security and particularly as it's deployed today and when it comes to flexibility the ability to do things like arbitrum stylist and really innovate and add things evm plus add other languages to this software I think the arbitrum Nitro stack is the best not optimistic rollup stack is the best rollup stack today but that's not hardcoded right and to go back in time I

mentioned earlier that arbitr started off the paper one of the key points of our paper probably the thing that got it published in USIC security US security is the top uh conference for uh academic security um papers that probably one of the things that led to its publication was something called the AVM or the arbitrum virtual machine it was a really interesting design from a research perspective and in fact an arbitrum launch in 2021 in August of 2021 to the public used this what we call now arbitrum classic it had the AVM in there fast forward a year later arbitrum Nitro replaced the AVM with web assembly wasm and off the shelf VM and we were able to take wasm build aover for it and build all the all the rollup using uh other

techn um sort of more standard technology not something we built and we also replac the custom built arbitrum node with gu so ethereum is go ethereum node and you might say to yourself or had our company Mission been a a little bit different right you might say like that must have been super difficult for you right you took your your prize possession here the AVM which Ed Harry and I literally not an exaggeration spent years of our life designing this and it was really cool it is really cool and I'm sure that there are other research papers today that are building on this design whether they have applications or not because you know in the realm of scientific knowledge an extremely Innovative and interesting design and it proved actually to be very useful for some time but as soon as we realized that we had a better approach

uh we being us at off chain labs uh with Nitro that didn't use this we were happy to throw that out we were happy to say I'm not connected to that my mission is not to scale ethereum with the AVM my mission is to scale ethereum with the best technology available and hey look we built something better cool and something better is actually off the shelf you know Tech that's not used you know we did a lot to make it work in a rollup there's a ton of work there and arbitrum is the only chain that actually has that those technical pieces live today like that's amazing and I am super happy to put the AVM uh you know to retire the AVM and that's great and I'll say that similar thing could happen in theory with ZK technology if ZK technology gets to a

point where I think it's competitive with our with optimistic rollup technology to be very clear I don't think that's the case today I'm not convinced that that will be the case ever but I don't know and I don't haven't bet my company on it and I don't need to because our mission is not connected to that right if a plumber came to your house and said said hey I'm going to fix a leak with this tool you might say to them do you want to take a look at the leak first like I don't know or they said hey and if I come back in a year I'm still going to use this tool right that's like like why don't we take a look at the problem and solve the problem and find the best tool available and that's the approach that we take at

offchain Labs we look at the problem and find the best tool available and what I can tell you is that if we fast forward five years from now almost certainly the same way we retired the AVM the same way that in the ZK world there are constant Innovations where they're moving to better proof systems if you go back like five years ago and look what zcash La launched on you with um you know growth 16 like there many many Innovations uh and new protocols and better protocols objectively than those exist today so I can tell you in five years from now we as a community particularly with all the smart people coming into our community every day and all the you know just research time and and and smart people coming in you're you're going to have

better technology than we have today today I mean I'd be shocked if we didn't we'd be wasting our time if if we didn't if were're not at the at the uh at the final point someone want said to me is arbitr technology complete and I turned back to them and said is ethereum technology complete like is is none of this is complete right where where there's constant Innovation and making things better over time you have to figure out how to do that without breaking things and you have constraints um but that you know so certainly in five years from now will be better but if you say to me okay what will be better um I I don't know will we be using ZK maybe uh will we be using something else maybe will we have made optimistic rollups much better with stylus and Innovations and the like

there uh yes and maybe that will be what the path we continue on even past sty list I can't tell you for sure but I can tell you that I probably personally won't be advocating for the same exact technology stack today in five years from now I'd be shocked if I were but I also haven't taken a bet in what the future is so if it's ZK that's awesome if it's something else that's great too am I convinced that ZK no if it turns out that there are a few breakthroughs of ZK which I think will be necessary you afraid to be competitive will I eat my words no that's great and you know we're happy to support the best technology available today today that's indisputably arbit from Nitro uh and the future will bring what the future brings and I think one of the importance of

upgradeability as we talked to the Dows role is to to for it to decide what is the best technology and for it to make sure that it is constantly on the path of the best technology when it when it consider security along with scalability usability flexibility matur and all these other vertical yeah so then just to play a little Devil's Advocate with you then if I if if you are a believer in data in alternative data availability Solutions giving a better ux cheaper fees better overall experience for users I guess a wise arbit from still posting data to ethereum and then then B why what is what is untrue about the

first statement about data availability outside of ethereum being being better than posting to ethereum is it just security um yeah I don't think so I don't think there's a better or worse here I think that there are different applications there's a spectrum different applications require different um technological tools and some are suited better for other some and some are for others so there's no question that posting the data on ethereum is uh the ultimate thing you can do for security and that's the case and there's also no and but let me actually go back and tell you about arbitr Nova and sort of how that came about or where it came about too right so we could stay like firm in our on our values and our

beliefs and say hey the fact is that posting all of day to ethereum is the best from a security perspective and we should always do that but what we saw happening you know like literally in the market what we saw happening is goes back a few years is projects weren't coming and saying okay take a game games or social applications weren't saying okay oh you know stepen says that uh the best thing to do is post an ethereum so we're going to do that they were saying well that's really nice but I can't launch my application with with these fees because even a 10cent fee or a 5-cent fee you know if you're posting this fee every time you do a move in a game that's just too expensive for me I can't do that so it wasn't the case that people were coming and saying like you

have to be pragmatic as well so what were people doing they were going to Alternative uh layer ones that were offering much cheaper fees which much with much lower security and so the question that we asked our is you know from the ethereum Maxi perspective We Believe very much in ethereum is is there something we can offer these people that will meet their pragmatic approach and also offer them you know a large degree of the security of ethereum not necessarily like um the full security of a rollup but something that is better than the security they're going to get and also something that will meet their objectives because if we stood you know just firm on our on our values and didn't think about you know the pragmatic Parts at all we just say okay that's all we're offering they're just going to go and get something

that's strictly worse in every and you know from from every every criteria so that's where that where that came from and to to to apply that thinking um I will tell you I'm not going to tell you that a rollup is not the Ultimate Security but I'll also tell you that there is a place for alternative data availability there's absolutely a place for this because applications aren't deciding between putting everything in eum or not they're saying well I'm a game so if my transaction cost cost this money I I just might not as well might as well not exist so either it's like shutting down or making a compromise and we say can we give you a better compromise to make and that's why uh this spectrum exists so I don't think da is alternative da is good or bad I think

it's good for some or bad for some but if you take like a dii application currently in arbitrum one you know your couple Cent fee is actually fine for for most users and most applications even for you know relatively small trades if you're trading $10 and your fee is a couple of cents it's still okay right so we've you know um is there room to go maybe if you're trying to trade a dollar or trade 10 cents yes and maybe for you know Ultra small CH chain you'll need to find other you know you know relatively small trades um you'll need to you you'll need to find other solutions that can um best serve those but I think it has to be a decision that that understands the application and also understands all the Alternatives right so it's we're not helping anyone if we

stand firm in our values our values and say this is the best and won't offer anything else because they're not saying okay fine we're going to launch there they're going to go elsewhere and have a worse security experience and you know potentially leave the ethereum ecosystem and I don't think that anyone is uh well served from that yeah that's the that was the thing right it was like is the ethos of ethereum and the alignment going to get in the way of your agnostic approach towards delivering the best products and also like is the ethos of ethereum going to keep you in check when it comes to this the sh the shiny new DA or the shiny new VM right and so sitation to be clear like if I didn't

think ethereum could offer them anything then we wouldn't you know we just say okay ethereum can't help you it's not like we're trying like but legitimately I believe that arbitrum Nova for example can offer you a much better secur you know security guarantee than some of the Alternatives that are using leverage ethereum even if it's not leveraging ethereum the exact same way to the exact same extent the rups are ethereum still has a lot to offer you so the question is can ethereum offer these applications something as well but absolutely if the answer to that was no then it's like okay so then we're not going to compromise on ethereum's value but like but here hey here we have something that ethereum can legitimately offer them to uh improve their uh experience uh and security and I think that that the

correct thing to do is to offer that but also make the trade out clear when it comes to Da by the way I think that the important um task at hand for us is to help users understand the trade-offs right so it's not you know just one you know it's not like all arbitrum any trust or on chain now now there's a host of different uh da Services there's like Celestia Ian da um you know espresso etc etc etc there are lots of different um da uh options and I think one thing that we as a community need to do is just give developers the understanding of where do some succeed where others don't or better like why which is best for my application right doesn't mean any is

good or any is bad it means they all have a different use case and where where you know where where will we succeed what is best for what we want to do and where is the rubric that we can make our decision for that's something which I think um sometimes the narrative gets in the way everyone just wants to promote theirs but promote you know helping you promote yours for your users for the users that it best serves is a thing I think we need to do otherwise we'll just have lots of confusion yeah and I I think Rob's jumping from the guns too but I just have one last thing that that that you tweeted it was H scroll scroll is ethereum zky is ethereum arbitrum is ethereum optimism is ethereum all these different uh rollups are ethereum and

you definitely got some backlash from like some Avalanche folks and some uh some other folks so I guess a couple a week or so after that tweet which went totally viral um like any thoughts on where on where the community might be a little bit misled or where or the point that you're trying to drive home um or thoughts on some of the backlash which you received I I I just want to UND have our community understand where you're coming from from your perspective and also perhaps understand some of the counterpoints which some sometimes were a little bit angrily brought up but uh such is the way of crypto Twitter absolutely so my point there which I

believe firmly is that um the the rollup Centric road map is ethereum that is ethereum's road map that's the roll up that that's the road map that italic sent in 2020 and uh We've executed on it to a T and this was not you know the road map for um you know a road map that metallic had for some system that wasn't ethereum this was literally the vision for ethereum how do we tailor ethereum to become this rollup centur ecosystem and we're seeing that ecosystem and we're see that ecosystem succeed if you actually looked at some of the things that falic said in in that post it was like you know some of the criticism that people have right so people some so some people come and say well these are in ethereum because they have their own

token well that's actually right there in the post it says that you know these should have their own token um these people say no it's not ethereum because um they're uh me all doesn't all flow to because chains could monetize me and ways doesn't all flow to e that's actually also right there on the post and vitalic talks about you know funding the ecosystem and funding public goods uh in in in ways that you know the ethereum foundation can't can't can't fund things uh and another actually really interesting thing that he speaks about in the post in this 2020 road map is this he says something like and I'm going to paraphrase here so go ahead and read it so I don't misquote but the idea that I understood is um people like you know having their own little island that

they can fight for and they can defend and expanding the ethereum ecosystem to give people people sort of you know the ability to be very passionate about their project is actually a feature and if you look back at all the criticism that that that people have it's literally in all three of these of these so people say right no can't be ethereum because it has own token it can't be ethereum because uh it has mvv capture it can't be ethereum because hey you guys fight all day about other things it's like no that's actually what ethereum is and what ethereum is become ethereum is the rollup Centric road map it has so many Builders so many more than any other ecosystem so of course there's some descent and fighting if people are passionate about what they're doing and hey that's what that's what makes this work and that's what makes

people excited to go ahead and try to move ethereum in their Direction but to say that this isn't ethereum is is I think just disingenuous and you know and the point of me pointing back to the road map is it's not like oh you know we're looking back it's 2024 now it's like oh look where we ended up let's create some narrative that makes this look like ethereum it's like no no no no there were architectural plans we follow those architectural plans and we did it you can disagree with those plans so I have I have noide I have no issue you know with I think the ethereum ethereum's RO Centric world map is is is is a good one that allows you to both scale and have security at the same time and I I will fight you know anyone who wants to fight this but I don't think

there's anything wrong with someone else disagreeing and saying hey I I don't think this was a good road map like you can say that but to go ahead and say you know you guys are just sort of trying to backfill what you did into ethereum this is not ethereum it's like that's not true this is literally what ethereum tried to be and succeeded at being at a time when most of these projects that I mentioned in that tweet didn't even exist exist yet you know it's set out a road map that's called for their existence I think it's disingenuous for others to to say that this is somehow not ethereum and some of the takes were like well the talic doesn't get to to uh say what ethereum is it's like he kind of does when when it was when it was 2020 and he was you know he but and he

with Community Support set this road map you know if who does get this some alt L1 founder that disagrees they get thisi ethereum is so um I very much stand by to take uh the the The Descent was uh interesting which again made me go back and reread this and really find that you know how robust this was and um you know I think we're going to continue building on this road map continue building uh building ethereum that's what we're doing you got Andy howling over there about who who said who decides what ethereum is um Stephen I I got one last question because this has been an absolutely Banger podcast and uh this is one that we ask everyone who who comes

on it's a pretty easy one so I think we're we're through most of the technical uh the technical weeds here um so if you were to to essentially like run into someone in an elevator and give them an elevator pitch on arbitrum ethereum your vision for the entire web 3 world like who would you choose to be stuck in an elevator with and why that's a great question um yeah um probably I I think the the place where where we as an ecosystem can really benefit most from from ad adoption um and we're seeing a lot of it happen today but more so is when it

comes to um like I would say mainstream uh Tech uh tech companies some of them I think some of them embraced us a little bit some of them embrace you know the blockchain vision but Tred to create their own little version of it their own little world that doesn't really connect to ethereum I would would say that um you know Enterprise Le leadership I think like you know um um like Fang uh companies or the like and really embrace them on the ethereum vision and I I'll I'll sort of you know um end with one thought on that which is there was a time if you go back five or six years ago where people very much thought um as like web 3 and web 2 as um completely

replac for one another or web 3 I should say is a replacer for web two so an early like thought of um social on the Block J might have been said hey let's just take Reddit and put all its data on on on ethereum Boom we've just we just moved ethereum Reddit to web 3 that's awesome um this is probably where you've I'm sure if you've been in this space long enough you've heard someone pitch you on putting all your medical records on the blockchain I think that's a terrible idea um and and but but again there was a lot of these thoughts which is let's just take things that are on the internet and put them on ethereum and that to me is like very not exciting at all the things that are exciting to me is how can we make the internet more

decentralized and take some of the components of web 3 and in you know integrate them with our web 2 experiences you come up with a new differentiated experience that doesn't mean that we don't need data centers doesn't mean that we don't need a local localized CDN there's a lot of efficiencies certainly in places where security is not critical um of uh or or you know or the to the level of security is critical maybe but not to the level of decentralized security is not critical that there are a lot of efficiencies come there so how can these two technologies marry each other what you end up is with web 3 an Internet that um has decentralization and security where it matters but there's also an understanding of there are places where the efficiency actually makes a lot more sense and from a cost

perspective just from a timing perspective from being able to serve content perspective and th those are the the the the places where where I see so if I was in that elevator making a pitch to you know one one of these folks it wouldn't be like hey let's like move Google search onto ethereum so every search query now is a transaction ethereum obviously that seems funny now and it's it's it's an exaggeration of what people are saying to be clear but it would be like hey there are some you know really really good places and by the way you know Google's an example where they are actually very you know um doing a lot uh you know particularly in Google cloud and doing a lot uh you know integrating with with different blockchains including arbitrum so uh I'm not saying that this isn't happening there but those are the places where I

think we can see more and more mainstream not uh wholesale adoption of what we're doing but Integrations into their core products in ways that uh the sum of the parts is just you know the whole is greater than the sum of the parts for the sake of my L1 transactions please do not bring Google's searches on chain we see we're in agreement but I think that you're right you take away that the not just hate on the Bitcoin Maxis man but they some some of them had this idea of you just burn it all down to rebuild it oras I think ethereum's kind of got this more of like this idealistic Everyman approach where it's like welcoming Open Arms um where you see fit uh ways that we can optimize

disrupt but not displac necessarily or like we're not there's no sense in in trying to get your get Tech adoption by telling somebody or a company that that we're trying to come for your Market it's like no like let's just collaborate together and make it a bigger Market or a better Market or better product or Tech right so yeah absolutely I think we made a lot of uh progress as an ecosystem here and even when I speak to Enterprise leaders that could be in the financial sector um but but others as well um there's a deep understanding and appreciation of what ethereum is doing and a looking look for these uh gems where integrating just makes sense make things more efficient um for for everyone involved and I think we've come

and true in gaming too right it's really true and we've come so far on all these verticals and I think that a lot of that's happening today so what I said is probably obvious to most people today probably simple there definitely was a time which I remember there this this wasn't the case but I think we've made a ton of progress as a community there is that an arbitrum yamaka you have on it is no way Rob was telling me about that Stephen thanks man thanks for coming on my pleasure great to uh great to uh great to be here yeah good to meet for the first time in great podcast and yeah thanks for good questions Rob and good answers Steve and yeah excited to see the future of arbitrum likewise

thank you