Ethereum Institutional and Wall Street's front door

Transcript

We want to go out and be open, honest, and objective about Ethereum versus some of the other ecosystems. We want to be very loud about ecosystem. And then also looking at developing case studies, developing use cases over the course of time and then assembling all of these different parts into one unified coherent Ethereum story. >> Ethereum is going whale hunting. Ethereum institutional launched in July of 2026 to be the institutional front door for the Ethereum ecosystem. But what does that mean? What is the plan? Who is on the team? And what do investors need to know about all of this? Hello and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the podcast that knows that the words Ethereum and Institutional are quickly becoming synonyms. I'm your host, John Gill. And today is Thursday, August 6th, and today we are joined by

three of the co-founders of Ethereum Institutional. David Walsh, Matthew Dawson, Mario Smith. These gentlemen's resumes are too long for me to cover in this introduction, so I'm going to let them all tell you about themselves. When we get into the episode here, we're going to break down everything you need to know about Ethereum Institutional. There's going to be a ton of alpha in this one. So, if that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe. Share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it. As a reminder, our podcast today is free and that would not be possible without our wonderful sponsors at Securitize, the regulated rails for tokenization. So, keep an ear out for more information about them and the great work they're doing later in the episode. But for now, welcome to the Milkro Show, Ethereum Institutional, all all of you at once. Uh, gentlemen,

welcome to the Milkro Show. How are you all today? >> Doing well. Thank you for having us. >> You're great. Thanks for having us. >> I'm used to doing one-on-one interviews, so I always get stressed out when I have more than one guest. This is just going to be a lot of fun. Uh, all right. I wanted to start this conversation before we get to Ethereum Institutional and the work you guys are doing there. I think a lot of people in crypto in digital assets are familiar with Ethereum, but may not be familiar with you gentlemen or your work. So, I would like to just go around the circle and quickly give me a couple sentences on who you guys are, what work you were doing at the Ethereum Foundation prior to Ethereum institutional and the work you're going to be doing now, just to introduce you

all a little bit to our audience. Uh, let's start with David. Do you want to lead us off on this one? >> Yeah, I can do. Thanks for having us on, John. Uh, so I'm David, Irish originally, started my career in consulting, spent three years at EY in financial services consulting, um, primarily in banks throughout the UK and Ireland. I spent three years there annoying partners around blockchain technology and had enough. So decided I wanted to work full-time in the space. Um after UI, I spent 5 years in the staking space as a head of business uh at a data company and then head of ecosystem at a liquid staking protocol that were all institutionally focused.

And then last year around June, I joined the EF as a head of enterprise when Tomas was the executive director. Um, and the the aim and the goal of the team was basically to go out and speak to as many different financial institutions as possible, understand who's building what and where, and see how the foundation can support them uh in their mission. >> Okay, great. Uh, Marius, you want to go next? >> Yeah, sure. Happy to. So, I'll be the non native English speaker on on this call. Um, I'm I'm originally from from Denmark, hence the the accent that I can't seem to to get rid of. I started my career at at Google uh working with large enterprises and financial institutions on adopting uh Google's tech stack then went and and joined uh a

new bank revolute competitor called N26 out of Berlin Germany focused on product payment partnerships and I think that's that's really where I got into the the crypto rabbit hole as well and decided that it was time to to go and invest say all all my effort into this industry professionally. So I joined a very small company at the time called Finoa in around uh the beginning of of 2020 which became one of the first regulated custodians in in Europe. Had a lot of fun growing the team from yeah five to I think 150 people at at the tops. Um a lot of early exploration with with tokenization in 2020 2021. Fortunately or unfortunately it it was very exciting

but also a bit a bit too early. Um, so it's it's fun to to to be here now again and and see things really really pick up. Um, but yeah, spent spent 5 years there. Did a bunch of different things. We launched a staking product. We launched a brokerage offering. Um, we had a lot of fun dealing with the regulators that were trying to to wrap their head around uh, you know, the the exciting innovations that that came out of crypto. Yeah, spent spent 5 years there. Um, ultimately then decided that I wanted to go even closer to the the infrastructure side of things. So I joined Iikon Labs, the team behind the IG layer protocol. Um spent time there working on on capital markets and also the the roll out of um of a confidential compute offering and yeah I had I'd

gotten to know David uh over the years and we we started chatting a little bit more um always been intrigued by by Ethereum and uh um and he persuaded me to to come over uh and and join the the team that was that was being set up there. See, I've been working with uh with David in a good part as part of the enterprise team that uh that was set up. Um yeah, now now excited to to go out and do this in a in a full but different capacity. >> Okay. Well, it's nice to meet you, Matthew. You want to back clean up on this? >> Yeah. So, my background is a bit similar to David's. I started off in financial services consulting as well. So, I was working on various projects in banks, but learning about Ethereum at the same time. Spent probably about a year

non-stop just scrolling X or Twitter at the time. and then eventually decided I I probably need to go and work in that space because it will eventually supersede a lot of the the traditional banking rails. So then worked in a variety of roles across crypto before fortunately uh joining the the EF. Hi everyone, this is John. Listen, our Milkroad Pro analysts nailed this AI bull market. They had dozens of calls pay off in a big way for our community. If you want to see how our entire team of analysts are positioning for the crypto bull market that's going to come after this bare market finally ends, you can join us now at Milkroad Pro. It's just a dollar. Link is in the description. You'll get access to all of our analyst trades, their watch list, and see how they're navigating this in their portfolios and get access to ask

us questions in Discord anytime, day or night. It's just a dollar. Links in the description. Milk Road Pro. Join now. I'll see you there. Gotcha. Okay. So, I I want to talk about this decision. We talked about how you guys got to the Ethereum Foundation. Talk to me about the decision to leave and to start Ethereum Institutional. Was this something you guys had been thinking about for a long time? Was this sort of like a spur of the- moment type of thing? What caused this decision to come about? How did this happen? >> Yeah, I don't think it was uh spurof the- moment. So I think it was a series of events, right? Uh that ultimately led to Ethereum institutional. So I think one initially on the sprint that we did when we went out and met with all of these different financial institutions and also with the ecosystem teams, the

reception to our team, our work and our existence was extremely positive. And honestly at that time I was like okay we could grow this team two to 3x in terms of size and still be like cap or uh capacity constrained generally. So that was an an initial early signal. Uh and then I guess as the months progressed to left the foundation the EF put out the EF mandate. it became pretty clear that the foundation was going to revert back to focusing primarily on research and development working uh on yeah focusing on crops values both at the protocol layer but also at the application layer and yeah from our perspective I guess it was necessary to continue like fully in agreement at crops uh at the protocol

layer but given the entities and the types of participants we're working with it's not always possible or it's yeah not doesn't make necessarily too much sense at the application layer whether it's compliance, regulatory, whatever restrictions that they might have. So I think that coupled with uh the pivot back from adoption more to research and development kind of triggered a series of conversations both with EF leadership but also with Tom Lee and Joe Luben around what a dedicated entity could look like if we were to get one stood up. So yeah, a lot of a lot of back and forth and negotiations around what that could potentially look like, but fortunately enough uh Joe Luben and Tom Lee had both seen the work that we had been doing. Thought it was extremely

valuable and decided to to back the mission. So yeah, definitely not an overnight decision. Uh something that we had been working on for months. Uh but I think it worked out best for all parties. We have a dedicated institutional uh focused team that can go out and cater for a specific segment in the market while all of these other ecosystem participants like the EF ETH labs can do what those guys do best too. >> Okay. Well, we'll we'll take all this one piece at a time, but I do want to talk about this launch. You started Ethereum institutional with funding from Bitmine, Sharplink, Joe Luben, and another Ethereum co-founder as you said.

Uh but then you also closed a ecosystem funding round. I think it was last week or the week before that had over a hundred different participants in it and I wanted to get your thoughts on this like why did you guys choose to do an ecosystem funding round and what what is the signal that mean that we should take from the market to see over a hundred different people participating here why is there so much enthusiastic support and and what brought together that ecosystem funding round >> it's a combination of things but to to David's point we we started exploring this idea of of having a dedicated institutional front door uh for for Ethereum and its ecosystem and in so doing obviously went around and and spoke to a lot of different teams that we have been working closely with at at

the EF and I think a lot of consensus there generally on uh on the path um but I guess also the uh the missing piece of the puzzle i.e there wasn't really one entity or interface for institutions to to engage with and there wasn't really one that that did this in a in a in a neutral way in a way that benefited the the ecosystem at large and not just one individual vendor or service provider or application builder. in I think those conversations and and when we you know went out with with with the news what is that four four weeks ago now um I think the the the the reception uh was overly positive and I

think we we had a lot of conversations with with teams that were very eager and excited to to support the mission and and the vision. So I think the the ecosystem round is like a great um I guess reaffirmation of of our aspirations and you know something we we wanted to do to show that there is you know a broad backing from the ecosystem in you know having a dedicated institutional front door that can one you know be the face for institutions that want to explore the Ethereum block space but also it's uh it wider ecosystem um and uh and so I think everything kind of came together uh in in this funding round where a lot of teams came and uh basically showed that

this was something they were very supportive of. >> Okay. So, you're getting a lot of support from the ecosystem because people feel like there needs to be an institutional front door. Um what does that mean having an institutional front door? What does that look like? And then I I want to get some thoughts on this, but you you guys have said um that there are you're trying to drive institutional adoption, but I think it's not really clear to some people what institutional adoption means. What are you trying to get institutions adopt to adopt? Is it just to get them to buy Ethereum? What does that look like? What are those conversations? Talk to me about that.

>> Largely, our focus is on institutional adoption of Ethereum as infrastructure and of course buying Ethereum is part of that, but overall the adoption is much bigger. And I would say for institutions that institutional road maps are at least years long. And so this is quite a long journey. And so we're already seeing the beginning of that adoption and that's deployments across stable coins, tokenized funds um and other activities. And so along that journey, we want to to support on kind of the um the education for teams that are looking to adopt. And for those teams that are already actively adopting, we want to work more collaboratively with them to support those launches, but also learn from their feedback. You know, these

these are quite sophisticated teams as well that understand some of the challenges and concerns of public chain launches. And so we together with the ecosystem teams um can can work to meet some of those challenges and requirements. So it's quite broad and in specific areas we go quite deep as well. >> Okay. Well, let's get take a specific example then to kind of illustrate this. Um, just earlier this week, BlackRock announced that they are tokenizing two new funds on Ethereum. Obviously, they have tokenized funds on other chains as well, but the majority of their capital is on Ethereum. Can you talk to me about what role you see for Ethereum institutional in something like like this that Black Rockck is doing with tokenizing their funds? What role do you guys play? Where do you fit into that

conversation? Uh, what how should people think about Ethereum institutional in that kind of a context? Yeah, I mean the the Black Rockck launches are a great signal and in yeah two big launches this week um coming from one existing fund and also one net new fund but actually an additional 12 products as well uh was announced just a few days after the initial two which is um two share classes per fund. So another 12 as well which is traditional money market funds that will be launched on Ethereum as well. Blackrock is a very sophisticated uh team who obviously like with their with their bid launch initially have kind of led the way with a lot of these tokenized money market fund launches as have others. So I think that there's a

lot of learnings that can come from that and for the teams that don't have the the size scale and capacity of a Black Rockck to understand or or push forward these kinds of deployments there's a lot of learnings that we can take from our conversations with the likes of Black Rockck JP Morgan and others that are involved in these big um these big launches and like I said before understand where there may be challenges but take best practices go to market strategies and learnings to all of the you know thousands of other banks and institutions ions that will follow in their footsteps.

>> I think that's it kind of begs a question here. There's been a lot of reference to Ethereum institutional as a front door and then there's also this idea of like go to market. In other words, like going out and maybe evangelizing or like bringing Ethereum to uh clients or institutions. A front door is somewhere that people come to knock and go to market is somewhere you're going out to advertise. Which one of these is it? Is it like people institutions looking for a front door to knock on and not having one or is it a situation where you need to go out and make them aware of things that they they don't know of right now? And how do you guys think about balancing between the two of those?

>> I think it's both, right? A lot of it goes back to the time at the EF when we did that initial sprint. We went out and had conversations. Usually in the first 5 minutes, it was like, okay, this team exists. We've been waiting for this team. Like, where has it been the whole time? there's like three other ecosystems or four others that are knocking on our door uh and trying to talk to us at all times and for an FI if you're evaluating a chain where you want to potentially deploy for the medium to long term you need to have some answers question or some questions answered uh you need to understand the technology that you're implementing you need to understand the ecosystem you need to have someone to call if there's any uh problems so I think that's where the front door element comes into it and A

little bit to Marius's point, prior to our team, there was several different vendors going out and pitching Ethereum, whether it was L2s or D5 protocol solutions providers that all have their own uh like vested interest and some are agnostic to which chain uh is deployed on. Uh so that that was really the idea with the front door to have one team whose only bias or key focus is Ethereum winning and the ecosystem winning. Um I think in terms of go to market it's something that we've also done historically and we will tend to do. So we we've done an exercise recently where we've evaluated uh 200 of the largest FIS globally and a lot of them are already building on Ethereum. So

supporting those well building on Ethereum in one way or another. So supporting those and advancing some of those products and initiatives. But those who are not building on Ethereum already or potentially working with other other networks going out and having those conversations where they need to be had. >> Okay. I want to ask a question around what going out and having those conversations looks like. In a lot of the announcements I've seen about Ethereum institutional, the language that's been used is that there's a need to be more aggressive about the institutional adoption. You're all smiling.

What What does being more aggressive about this actually look like? What does that mean? and just yeah talk me through what that means. >> Yeah, I did a control F on a few of our docs to look for aggressive. I think it might just come from me. Uh and I'm a sports guy, John. I'm not sure about you, but uh I think about sport like if you think about the sports analogy like your team goes onto a field, you don't necessarily just want them to be passive. You want them to be front-footed, do their best, and do yeah ultimately whatever is possible in some senses to make sure that they win. So I think uh in terms of being aggressive, it's making sure that we we're pushing as hard as we can. Uh not being rude and obnoxious, but that comes across in a couple of different ways. So in terms of

marketing, it's yeah, I think my own opinion anyway is like Ethereum has been relatively passive in terms of talking about its wins, talking about its benefits historically. We want to go out and be open, honest, and objective about Ethereum versus some of the other ecosystems. We want to be very loud about ecosystem wins and you can probably see that in some of our uh coms already on LinkedIn and on Twitter where we're pointing out Ethereum wins. Uh we're pointing to data, we're pointing to scoreboards, seeing where Ethereum is winning. Uh and then also looking at developing case studies, developing you use cases over the course of time and then assembling all of these different parts into one unified coherent Ethereum

story. And it's the same thing on the BD side, right? So like going out reaching out to people who are signaling interest in a digital asset strategy. Uh going talking to them about the roadmap plans, making sure Ethereum is very much front and center of their thinking and then pushing people a little bit further who have already developed on Ethereum to go one or two steps deeper. So maybe what does native issuance look like? What does DeFi deployments look like? uh that's something that's been missing historically and something that we weren't actually necessarily able to do at the foundation too. So I think that's what we mean by when we say aggressive uh as as front-footed as possible is probably a nice way to put it.

>> Yeah. I interviewed Joe Shalom who's the CEO of Sharplink, one of the largest Ethereum digital asset treasury companies, and he said that Ethereum is playing to win. And I think that kind of gets to the same point you're making there. Um I want to ask you about something else that Joe said in the interview I had with him. He said that he views one of Ethereum's major competitions in these institutional arenas not as a canton network or a Salana or some other you know digital asset native ecosystem but rather the legacy infrastructure that these institutions have spent many billions of dollars and and years building up inertia on and I'm curious if that resonates with the experience that you've had and the conversations you've had with institutions in terms of the struggle to get them to adopt Ethereum or to switch to anything else other than

the the legacy the infrastructure they already have. What has that been like and do you agree with that assessment? >> Yeah, I think we we we you know very much agree to a large extent. Um I think integrating with existing infrastructure is is a big challenge not just for Ethereum but for the industry as a whole. We've seen decades of investment into proprietary batchbased systems um that I think work well enough for most institutions today. But those systems I mean as as we all know here they can be expensive, they can be opaque, they can be inflexible um but they are deeply embedded in in in the processes the compliance frameworks and I guess also the the mental model of of the people

that we kind of engage with today. I think on top of that if you factor in you know that financial institutions are very used to markets that that sleep at night that have these batch based reconciliations that have layered immediaries um and so they're now faced with an an always on um global settlement with programmable assets it's a very different paradigm right um and so that that kind of rewiring of of operating models risk governance uh I would agree with Joseph that That is that is like a journey that we're on and something that will will will take a lot a lot of time. I spent a lot of time on the infrastructure side of the industry and I think one of the the core

properties of of of Ethereum and what makes it so great is that it's it's been a long it's been around for a very very long time right and so it is what what most institutions are are very comfortable with today. It has yeah the best documentation, the widest support from any service provider in the industry. It's it's the most widely understood. It also has the largest developer ecosystem. And I think that's that's why you see a lot of major banks as a manager already using Ethereum and its L2s today. Um and that's also why it has become say the default platform for for tokenized assets, stable coins, etc. Having said that and I think I also wanted to to acknowledge competition. I think David

alluded to it as well. So yes, we are on a transformative journey right for the financial services industry as a whole. But competition is also increasing and uh it is a reality of where we are in in terms of maturity. I think 2020 when when I got involved with the first tokenization pilots like the timing wasn't really right. But what we're seeing now is that all the world's major financial institutions are are moving unchained. And there's a window of opportunity here that I think everyone sees the next 6 12 18 24 months will be extremely crucial in terms of how these different ecosystems positions themselves. So I think we also want to acknowledge that competition is

increasing. uh other ecosystems are investing heavily in business development efforts, marketing, a lot of incentives to to support different types of deployments as well. So that is obviously also something that we're faced with and that's also why by the way and I I won't say aggressive David but I think uh proactive is is the the right term like we we want to go out there and we want to meet institutions where where they are. They need someone that they can speak to um and they need someone that can help them accelerate their the digital asset journey uh by then in so doing hopefully also choosing uh Ethereum as the main settlement rail.

>> Real world assets like funds, treasuries and private credit are still running on rails built decades ago. Gated, paperwork heavy, slow to settle. Everyone's talking about tokenizing them, but far fewer can actually do it and do it without cutting regulatory corners. Securitize can. It's the SEC regulated infrastructure bringing real world assets on chain. Nine years in native tokenization not wrapped backed by Black Rockck, Morgan Stanley, and Kathy Woods Arch Invest and chosen by the New York Stock Exchange, Vanek, BNY, and Apollo to do it at scale. It's the regulated bridge between traditional finance and crypto. Tokenize the world at milkroad.com/securitize.

Yeah. Well, proactive or aggressive, as long as somebody's out there playing to win, I think that's what we all want. Um, I'd love to hear, so we've talked a little bit about, you know, this list of over 200 different financial institutions. We've talked a little bit about the growing competition in the space and, you know, I think maybe it was Matthew, but one of you mentioned that prior to, you know, the introduction of Ethereum institutional, there were some players pitching Ethereum, but they were all pitching it from a different angle and it wasn't so coherent and focused. what is the sort of coherent, you know, differentiating value prop pitch that you all make to these institutions when you're approaching them about Ethereum, about ETH? How do you go about doing that and standing out from all this competition?

What does that sound like and what what do you think is actually moving the needle on this? >> I think the key reason that institutions uh adopting Ethereum and what we talk to most is some of the kind of technical aspects. Uh really institutions care about just a few things risk uh liquidity and distribution. I think are some of the key things and from the risk perspective it's already been mentioned that you know Ethereum is is the oldest smart contract enabled blockchain and in now over 11 years hasn't gone down like that is a really really compelling kind of data point and then when institutions as we see increasingly are deploying tokenized assets on chain then it needs to be somewhere where there's uh the majority of liquidity and most stable

coins most RWAs are also on Ethereum mainet and so instead of we we like to point to the data because a lot of that does the talking for us really and so the other thing is if we look at kind of what is already happening it's a move from kind of private chains where institutions felt comfortable they knew that they could kind of experiment and a lot of those struggled but even if we look at some of the ones that did really well or are continuing to do well we could take like JP Morgan's Kexus which was a fork of Ethereum uh about 10 years ago go in the form of Onyx rebranded to Kexus that's doing I think $5 billion a day in in volumes but then we we see a

pretty clear story as well because then JPMD the deposit token was launched on base and Ethereum layer 2 and then subsequently JLTXX which is one of their uh like genius uh compliant collateral uh money market funds is now in public Ethereum and approaching a billion dollars in in TVL and we also as we mentioned a little bit, Black Rockck with with Bidd and now a series of new funds all coming in in quick order in the past week coming to public chains and that's because they're starting to uh become more comfortable having done their uh their initial tests a little bit more clarity is is coming and also the ecosystem who we obviously work closely with because that is what

enables all of this is now really maturing for institutional onboarding and so a lot of it is pointing to what is already happening and then providing clarity on that kind of journey and roadmap and making sure that they have the support there when it's needed. >> I think that that resonates a lot. I did an interview with Austin Arnold from Altcoin Daily. He's one of the biggest crypto YouTubers there is and I asked him about Ethereum. He said the same thing. This security, decentralization, the liquidity and the network effects. It seems like there's consensus on that message that it resonates with a lot of people. Um I I want to ask you all about collaboration because breaking out a lot of these entities from the Ethereum Foundation. Now there's ETH labs, Ethereum institutional, ETH systems,

Etherealize, right? Um how do you all think about the collaboration there? Where are the jurisdictional boundaries between other ETH entities in the organization and you all and what does the collaboration look like? Is it ad hoc? Is there some sort of formal coordination? What does that look like right now? Yeah, I think clearly this has uh been a transition uh not a cold start for us from from the EF and also for some of these other spinouts. Uh and then for others like Etherealize we we've been working with and friends with them for for over a year since we joined the EF. So these are some of them seemingly new relationships but also uh old relationships as well. And I think it's kind of a testament to the decentralization of Ethereum just not at

the you know the protocol layer but also at the the social layer. And so we work um collaboratively with all of those teams that have been mentioned just as we do with the ecosystem broadly. So, um, in in very regular communication with all of them so that we can, uh, you know, share information and support each other on on where all of our strengths are, but then also to to make sure that we can pull them in when people need support. And so, just like all ecosystem teams, we work closely with them from a jurisdiction perspective, most of those teams are are global. So, uh, they cover all regions, but I would say each are are specialized in their own areas. Um we and so yeah the the short answer

really is that we're we're close to them and work closely with them more. >> I think may maybe just to add on that I think like I've seen a couple of comments when I'm scrolling on X or Twitter as well and said why there's there need to be these two institutional BD teams or I don't know the all of these different spinouts. I think it's a sign of maturity right and passion and energy in the space as well. And Ethereum like Matthew mentioned is by a significant distance the largest public blockchain. Yeah, having all of these different teams with different areas that are all rowing in the same direction with their own expertise, I think can only be a positive thing for Ethereum. And it's something that we've already to Matthew's point, we've already been working with all of these teams over the past year of really good

working relationships and for all of us to go out and focus on specific areas can only be beneficial for all of our goals. I think that this is a thing I'd like to understand more just how you guys think about this because I did an interview with Mark Vanderleberg who is the chief market officer of the Algrand ecosystem. Um and he said that Algrand is combining Algrand Labs and the Algrand Foundation. In other words, seeing some consolidation in leadership and it seems like Ethereum is deliberately going in the opposite direction, right, of like breaking out a lot of this talent and teams from the Ethereum Foundation. What is the benefit in your minds of that strategy versus consolidating all of this back into the EF?

>> Yeah, the the EF is a very principled um organization. There's no doubt about that. And they've often talked about a principle of subtraction where typically institutions amass more power, more influence, more control and then you have centralization risk. So I think this is a good example of that principle in action which if as we are doing building infrastructure for you know hundreds of years to come then this is the safest way to kind of um decentralize influence support power however you want to position it and to kind of build in redundancy and um and give the ecosystem the best chance of success I would say. So it certainly comes from um from a principle of kind

of long-term thinking and I would say that that is is uh the core difference probably. >> Okay. So you guys have put together this organization. You've closed the funding round. You're up and running. Um I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about what actual work you guys are doing. Is it mostly just information education like going up a learning curve with people? Are you actually doing development work and and building things with people? Does that live with another organization not Ethereum Institutional? Tell me a little bit about that and what goes on actually like within the organization now that you guys are are off and running.

>> Maybe an example is what what do institutions need that historically wasn't necessarily available? And so we just spoke about how decentralized the ecosystem is but institutions are used to having a counterparty. But so who represents Ethereum when Ethereum is so decentralized? Um and institutions need someone to to talk to and work with on specific things. So if we just take like an RFP process for instance, we can help that institution go through due diligence on Ethereum and help to coordinate across the ecosystem and the teams that that are needed for whatever that product launch may be and to try and help that be successful. That's one aspect. Then the other aspect is that broad engagement with institutions

globally to ensure that they know that they have a point of contact and a team that will support them and help them navigate the ecosystem. And then where there are those key engagements going deeper. So we won't ourselves be uh doing you know large amounts of development work. There's other teams in the ecosystem that are are very well positioned to do that and that's exactly who we would work with. But what we can do is help to um help to essentially do the requirements gathering and discovery with institutions because bringing that information together from a a massive number of institutions can be a big coordination challenge. But that's the information you need to as the ecosystem and as individual service providers push

things forward. understand concerns, challenges and blockers and make sure that where solutions are already available as they often are that is well communicated. So that's part of the education and where it isn't there's structured work to uh to come and try and counter that and that could take the form of um of like collaboration across many teams with specific institutions or groups of institutions in verticals and then the team is also growing. So a big part of uh the the current journey is expanding so that we have capacity to do that at at ever greater scale but also I would say like operationalizing that um so that it can become more efficient and distributed to uh even more teams as

they kind of come on their digital asset adoption journey. >> How does this kind of work with ETH Labs? So I did an interview with the three of the five co-founders of ETH Labs. They are a nonprofit that's focused on research and development. And I guess maybe my question here is more generally like you guys are going out actually talking to market participants about what their needs are, what their concerns are in terms of like taking that information and bringing that back internally into Ethereum so that changes can be made, adaptations can happen, improvements can come about. What is that pipeline like? Do you just like CC them on an email or like is there something more formal? and and who do you direct that information to once you get that feedback from institutions?

>> Yeah, it depends. If we look at what ETH Labs are doing, they're very close to the core protocol. So, if something that um that we identify as an institutional need is associated with core protocol work, then both the EF, the client teams, ETH labs are all appropriate teams to inform of that. And so for instance just today ETH labs have proposed shorter slot times for upcoming hard fork. That is exactly the kind of thing that is very interesting to institutions but also beneficial to the ecosystem and and applications generally. But institutional requirements sit at multiple layers. I'd say they sit at the core protocol layer.

They sit at the application layer. They sit at token standard layers. um and they also touch outside of the ecosystem to regulators um and like government government bodies. So we can try to ensure that the that communication is flowing to the right entities and and trying to make sure that the work and outcomes are are there to to meet what what is required. So ETH labs are um are somewhat specialized and there's lots of other teams that will be appropriate for other requirements as well.

>> Okay, cool. Uh I want to talk about Ethereum and or rather ETH. I want to talk about ETH the asset and where that fits into these conversations right because we've been talking a lot about the adoption of Ethereum as financial infrastructure by institutions and I think a big let's say point of contention or piece of feedback that the broader community has had is that ETH the asset kind of gets left out in these conversations. Where does that the the asset of ETH come into these conversations for you guys? And how do you think about talking about institutions or talking about ETH to institutions?

>> We already touched on like security being so key for for um for institutions and obviously that is underpinned by ETH the asset. So at any point that we're discussing ETH as infrastructure um ETH the asset is is obviously linked there and and so important to to it all. I think institutions there's there's two sides right there's asset allocators who are interested in investing in Ethereum and there's users of Ethereum the infrastructure the majority of our work sits on the side of the infrastructure adoption and I think that ETH the asset um benefits downstream of that so I would say historically we've talked less about ETH the asset to institutions

because that's been our focus but it's increasingly something that institutions are looking at as well >> okay I want to use Robin Hood and the Robin Hood chain as sort of a case study here. I asked the ETHLabs guys about this as well because I think this is fascinating. Obviously, Robin Hood is a major financial institution. They launched the Robin Hood chain which for those who don't know is an arbitrum based Ethereum L2. Um and so they're now part of the Ethereum ecosystem. Um and they brought in I think like 30 million users technically some somewhere like that or potential users to ETH. Um, but a lot of people have been critical of this because a lot of the fees, the revenue generated from all this activity is going to Robin Hood or to Arbitum, but very little and like by very little I mean like a couple of thousand dollars

right now is coming to Ethereum in terms of fees for this. And you know, I asked Joe Luben about this and he said this is part of Ethereum's strategy to continue to grow the ecosystem and bring in more users rather than extracting rent. And then some other people on the other side say that if there's no value being extracted by Ethereum to ETH then it it hurts the investment case for ETH the asset. How do you all think of this as a case study around this tension um between wanting to bring in more institutions wanting to drive value to ETH and balancing between those concerns and just what are your thoughts on all this? I I mean first and foremost the Robin Hood chain has has been a fantastic launch and I think is a great example of institutions leveraging L2s which we'll be happy to talk about um

but also leveraging Ethereum more more broadly. You know ETH is is central to the DeFi ecosystem across all chains but also on Robin Hood's chain and it's the gas token. So that in itself is is key on the scaling side. I I agree with Joe Lubman like Ethereum is still very much in a in a scaling phase not uh and we see that also on the on the straw map the the protocol road map and in order to scale you have to make it um attractive to institutions and you want to make sure that as we are seeing institutional demand is exponentially growing and accelerating that the scale is there to meet it. I think um I don't think it should get caught up like a

public company that is trying to uh kind of optimize for the next quarterly earnings call too soon when there's such a a long um and kind of aggressive roadmap of institutional adoption that's coming. So I would say it's is definitely part of a a scaling and growth strategy. >> Uh David, I want to ask you a question directly here. you know, you you talked about playing to win, and I think that there are a lot of ways to measure or define success for for something like this, but some of those metrics are are different, and I'm curious how you think about defining success, what metric is the most important one to focus on and and how you think you're doing on the scoreboard right now?

>> Yeah. So, I think in terms of engagement from our side, at least initially will be making sure that we go out um we're prioritizing initially asset managers, commercial banks, and market infrastructures. So um going out and speaking to the largest 200 in each region. So primarily we'll focus on the US MINA EMIA and then APAC. Uh and we're hiring appropriately to scale up uh on the BD efforts to go out and make sure that we're in all of the conversations with those leading institutions. So I think that's one uh metric for us to make sure that we're in those conversations having them and Ethereum is well represented and ideally winning business. And I think that naturally converts to onchain activity and TVL

generally. And then I think Ethereum over the past year or two, while it's still top of the scoreboard, there are like we mentioned previously uh competing chains in the ecosystem uh as a whole that are coming and taking uh pieces of Ethereum's uh market share bit by bit. And I think making sure that we're going out and speaking to the entities that yeah where that are maybe migrating to other chains or evaluating other chains and making sure that they they they know the latest Ethereum pitch. They know the possibilities, they know the road map and they know know that Ethereum is building for the long term. So I think those are the major two pieces that we're looking at and

focusing on at least initially as we scale up. I'm not sure Marius Matthew if there's anything else that you'd add to that. It's a coverage exercise in the end, right? And I think to some of the points that were made here, a lot of institutions are taking pretty important decisions right now on on on which infrastructure to to go with. Naturally, you know, Ethereum has benefited from, you know, a lot of organic interest over the years because it yeah has been around for the long for the longest because it has the properties that it that it has. But but institutions also uh take decisions based on on relationships as well and and need someone that can handhold them and guide them through these different deployment processes. Um and that's why it's like

super important for us to also accelerate the not just you know being the institution front door to your point John but like actually going out and and knocking on these doors making sure that Ethereum is heard and and making sure that we also proactively help them on board to Ethereum. I think uh you can uh have them figure it all out themselves, but if you can help them help push them in in in the right direction, uh that is say one very helpful from an adoption perspective and in terms of accelerating those deployments, but two and to Matt's point like when you start to distill some of all those inputs, the current blockers into more scalable patterns uh blueprints, business cases, case studies, uh that allow, you know,

adoption at a much larger scale I think is where you have the real unlock and unfortunately today I think it's fair to say that a lot of institutions they're reinventing the wheel every time uh they go and and do institutional deployments on Ethereum Salana and and and and other chains and I think there's a lot we can do as an industry to to come together and you know effectively align on both uh standards implementation patterns and ways in which we can you know drive this adoption work at a at a much larger scale >> I'll just say as well like institutional uh roadmap maps are are long like they have a lot of approval processes uh due diligence to go through and deployment itself goes through significant testing etc like I think that in the in the tech industry in the crypto industry we're

used to people building in the open building quick shipping quick institutions have a little bit of a different pattern not only does it take a bit of time it's also most of these conversations are obviously behind closed doors and under NDA so we hear a lot of things uh publicly. There's a lot of announcements or or marketing that we might see out there, but it does take a little bit of time for some of the the work that is happening to show itself kind of out in the open. And that's one thing as well that is a little bit different to DeFi for instance or other things where we can see quick integrations and quick partnerships, but it just takes a little bit more time for things to to really reveal themselves.

>> Okay, we've spoken a little bit about road maps. Obviously, Ethereum is still rapidly under development and improvement. Um, the Glamsterdam upgrade is scheduled for sometime in Q3. The Hegod upgrade that will come after Glamsterdam is is kind of being put together right now. Are there any things that you're particularly excited about that Glamsterdam is going to unlock that you think are really going to move the needle or remove some blockers or like quell some objections from institutions who are evaluating whether or not to build on Ethereum? I think it scale continues to be a big thing like um showing institutions that Ethereum is dedicated to scale and therefore able to meet their requirements is is a really big thing because Ethereum still has a little bit of an association or people

associate it with being slow and having high gas fees. And whilst we all remember paying hundreds of dollars to mint an NFT back in the day, that's no longer the case. And so for institutions seeing scale and and continued reliability is is a very important thing. I think that is one of the big things. And then when you look further down the line I think something else that we are looking to do or do is to communicate what Ethereum will look like in a few years time. As I said institutional road maps are slow and looking at uh both scale at the L1 and of course scaling of blobs. So um L for L2s because I think Robin Hood is a great example but L2s are an incredibly

attractive value proposition for institutions and happy to talk about that. And then privacy is is top of mind for all institutions and now the EF or the ecosystem has a dedicated private privacy effort. In fact, it's had a dedicated privacy effort for over 5 years, but now it's a little bit more uh publicly communicated how how uh how central it is to the vision. And last but not least, like quantum resistance. So many institutions are are very interested in this because as we said earlier, institutions care deeply about risk and are are very aware of quantum risks because they have, you know, sophisticated technical teams internally that do due diligence on all of these

things. So having a well-communicated road map as we do uh where we can point to the uh the quantum road map or we can point to how Ethereum will scale uh we can point to how the kind of road map and potential of L2s is all really important for institutions because it gives them confidence as well. just on the postquantum piece too like E I think that's one of the most exciting topics uh in a lot of our conversations right and Ethereum has been thinking about this or the foundation have been thinking about it for a very long time so I think Justin Drake initially started working on it in 2019 or something along those lines there's been tens of millions of dollars invested in it and Ethereum will be uh postquantum resilient before the end of the decade I

believe 2028 2029 I think there's a lot of different uh protocols out there and blockchains that cannot say the same thing. And that's been an exercise that we've been uh running workshops and doing educational sessions on with a number of different banks uh throughout the world and it's something that they've been quite impressed by generally. >> Okay. So, all this R&D and investment and improvements to Ethereum are it is moving the needle and and it's going to pay off. Um I I want to end this conversation with a couple of questions about what Ethereum institutional needs. Um do you guys need more developers? you need more like what are you hiring for?

What could people do if they wanted to help the efforts you're making? How could they do that? What could they contribute? And and what do you all need right now? >> All of the above, John, I guess is the short answer, but no, um we're obviously looking to scale out the efforts and the team pretty significantly. We we have been very blessed to receive funding to know go out and build like a full organization, right? So to David's point, we're now looking to um strategically uh place people in in all the major financial hubs in in the world. And so quite now they're quite quite aggressively hiring to uh to make sure that we have someone that can represent Ethereum um in in all the right rooms in all the the

right places in the world. We will be hiring across like a range of other supporting roles both marketing events uh coms but also looking to set up um solutions architect for deploy engineering team as well so that we'll also have some some resources internally. So all these all these JDs are on our website and we'll we'll update those on an ongoing basis. I would say hiring and and staffing up the team is is very key for us at the moment. So yeah, if if if any of the listeners here are interested, we're very like would be very happy to hear from them. Um, outside of that, I think there's there's a lot of work that we carry over from the Ethereum Foundation and then work with it. There are a lot

of existing relationships with all these financial institutions um that we're not only looking to to nurture, but I think also more proactively and engage with and as we begin ramping up the team as well um uh ramping up those external efforts as well. I think you you you you'll see that we'll be we'll be much more present uh online and and out in in in the real world as well. We'll do more events. We'll do more convenings. We'll uh create more opportunities for the industry to to come together and to tackle some of these, you know, larger challenges or barriers to adoption that that we see or work towards kind of more productive paths to to deployments generally. So, I'd say that's that's top of mind for us right now. Um and uh and

and and obviously as we as we grow and and and scale up the team, I'm sure uh more priorities will will emerge that are not just hiring and acceleration related, but like that's where we that's where we focus efforts right now. >> David, I don't know if you noticed this, but Marius said the words aggressively hiring in his answer. So you're starting to have a corrupting influence. >> Not proactively. No, >> we said that too, but aggressively hiring is a good way to do it. Um, if I am an institution and I am not on your top 200 list, but I want to get in touch with you all, where would I go to do that? How would I start a conversation with Ethereum institutional to learn more about Ethereum?

>> Yeah, I think you can go to the website. So ethereuminstitutional.org. You can reach out to us by email, hellostitutional.org. I think you have all of our Twitter handles here. We all have uh LinkedIn profiles that we're very uh responsive on, so feel free to reach out there. There's quite a few ways to get in touch with us if you're keen to. And we're we're very much excited to talk to anyone regardless of whether they're on that list or whether they're not because there's ways that we'll be um yeah taking this feedback and uh building it into systems that will be scalable over the course of time and those might be um yeah an option for those teams in the future. So the website, the email, LinkedIn, Twitter, we're we're on all

>> Well, I think that's a great place to end the conversation, gentlemen. I want to thank you all so much for coming on the Milk Road Show. I think you all have been working for a very long time in this industry and for Ethereum and for digital assets overall, but this is maybe the first time a lot of people in the community have gotten a chance to hear from you all directly and learn more about your work. So, thank you for coming on the show and sharing with all of us. I hope we can catch up again another time soon. Um, I'm not going to go around the room and say goodbyes, but I'll just say to the audience, thank you all so much for joining us. Until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and we will see you all on the next episode of the Milk Road Show.

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