A faster Ethereum: Quick Slots, finality and L1 to L2 interoperability

Transcript

The reason why ETH will dominate is because Ethereum has the best I say digital infrastructure of all the blockchain. >> The Clarity Act is dead. The Federal Reserve is hiking rates and crypto is carrying on. Anyway, back in July, we asked if ETH Labs could help make Ethereum the root of global finance. Today, we are asking, can they make Ethereum faster? Hello and welcome to Milk Road Crypto, the podcast that's here to remind you that clarity doesn't come from Washington. It comes from the consensus algorithm. I'm your host, John Gillan. Today is Thursday, September 17th, and today we are joined by three friends from ETHLabs, Benji, Derek, and Julian. I'll let them introduce themselves in a second here. We've got a lot to cover today. ETHLabs is publishing a collaborative article on the case for a faster Ethereum. There's

been some drama between Ethereum and Bass. Are they getting divorced? What is account abstraction? What does this all mean? And uh we're going to talk about tokenization a little bit in this episode, too. I hope if that all sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe. Share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it. And as a reminder, our podcast today is free and that would not be possible without our partners at Nexo, the digital asset platform that lets you trade, earn, and borrow all in one place. So keep an eye out for more information on them later in today's episode. But for now, welcome back to the Milk Road Show, ETH Labs. How are you gentlemen today? >> Hey Dan, great to be back. Thanks for having us.

>> Hey, it's my first time. I'm excited. Thank you. >> It is your first time? Yeah. Welcome, Benji. Thank you, Derek. Look, this is always a little bit overwhelming for me when I have multiple guests, but I like doing these uh like, you know, group check-ins with ETH Labs. Um the gentlemen, I thought a great place to start this conversation uh would be with the the recent news from this morning. You all published a piece uh titled It's Time for Faster Ethereum, what the ecosystem has to say about EIP8198. This is all about something called quick slots and making the case for that. For people who maybe haven't read this piece yet or who aren't familiar, uh what are quick slots and what are you saying with this piece? Um who who wants to kick us off with this one?

>> Yeah, I can try to take a stab. Uh so quick slots essentially Ethereum has block times and they're 12 seconds today. Quick slots is a proposal for the next upgrade after Glamsterdam called Higota which is currently being scoped and quick slots essentially is an EIP that is suggesting this approach in which we can reduce that time um incrementally over time. So it's actually a mechanism that allows for us to make Ethereum faster. Right now this mechanism does not exist and 12 seconds hardcoded. Everyone who's building on Ethereum is kind of stuck with that today. People might try to do workarounds around it but at the protocol level you're kind of stuck with the 12 seconds. Quick slots enables that to be tweaked over time and for the reductions to take place. The initial proposal is to reduce it to 10 seconds um and evaluate over time you know h if

that is worthwhile and regarding like the way I think Ethlabs thinks about these sort of things generally like we have this there's an EIP written by Carl Beak and then championed by Barnaby from one of the founders of Ethabs um he shared in the allcore devs in August in the 6th of August and essentially since then has spent a lot of time and massive shout out to Barnab who's not here unfortunately that like to speak to hundreds of people you know this is sort of the kind of upgrade that encompasses everybody, right? Like a faster Ethereum encompasses everyone who uses Ethereum from the user to the builder to everyone um on the L1. And one of the things is like ETH Labs doesn't necessarily need to be the one that like is like hey this is what the faster Ethereum is is like and here's why it's good to chats alone.

Uh instead like if Ethlabs can help build feedback loops across the broader ecosystem here are the needs of all the different people who may be affected by faster Ethereum, who may want a faster Ethereum, who may not want a faster Ethereum. Uh that's a helpful feedback loop and that's something that each labs generally wants to do right like I think if we can walk out of this and be like we helped establish a better feedback loop for these performance related changes um and we're able to advocate for them in our own different ways with the ecosystem that might need it um then that's a good benefit and so this piece was less about like the full technical breakdown I mean if there is if you scroll far enough but uh largely like let's hear from the ecosystem let's like this change exists it can exist it's

time to prioritize it for heota we believe strongly that it's an S tier prioritization and it should happen and we essentially want to help like the broader ecosystem maybe understand it, learn about it and also share with the other developers of other core devs of Ethereum like what exactly uh the demand looks like for it. So the article is very much around us and the 20 plus ecosystem teams and people that we spoke to that are advocating for bricks slots. Okay, so last time we were checking in, Ethlabs had just launched and there was some speculation about what ETHLabs even was going to be. And it seems like you guys have converged around this target of a fast Ethereum and making Ethereum faster. I I'm curious if you could just give me a little bit more of a definition of what fast Ethereum means

and why this is such an S tier priority for ETHLabs and why you think it should be an S tier priority for Ethereum overall. >> Yeah, I could try that. Um so fast Ethereum indeed is the the theme that we're converging around. Why we are doing this basically that we've been hearing this repeatedly from so many builders across the ecosystem and making Ethereum faster goes down to making one interval faster. So that means bridging into L2s from the L1 faster which is something that I focus on every day with the fast confirmation rule. Making sure that L2 to L1 bridging time gets faster as well. This is maybe the the top request that we've been hearing from uh builders on like applications who are building on the L2s or L2s themselves or asset issuers that the L2 to L1

withdrawal time on optimistic rollups which is like 5 days today uh is very painful and so that's something that we want to speed up as well. And then finally what uh I think is driving all of this is faster result slots as Benji just mentioned because this is really like the the smallest atomic unit uh that drives L1 to L2 bridging L2 to L1 bridging and L1 user experience uh there fast Ethereum is is basically the theme that we've identified as something that we can deliver on quite well uh very quickly uh while we set up our systems of for example how we do go to market for technical Ethereum technologies uh as well as how we achieve receive like good inputs from builders in the ecosystem and that's why that's the

thing that we're doubling down on for now. >> Yeah. To to add to the recent news that you mentioned as well like today the SEC basically allowed for I believe there's an innovation exemption for tokenization. Um if we just look at this for example like the line share of tokenizations happening on Ethereum and its L2s. Um volume-wise I think trading volume-wise Ethereum did more volume over this past month than Singapore's stock exchange did right. Uh so if we want to continue being like the globally like competitive settlement layer for value there then there are ways to maybe make this thing better. However, the caveat and we have to really understand this and this is like where there's a big disc discrepancy and something that we I think is worth saying is like making something fast for the sake of

making something fast doesn't make sense in an Ethereum case, right? Like why on earth is Ethereum the home of tokenization and if we look into this it's like it's decentralized. It's credibly neutral as a result of that decentralization. It's secure. That is what gives the the trust to basically you know have billions and billions of dollars of value come on chain and be tokenized on here. It is the home of tokenized assets. Doing anything for performance in sacrifice of those things, not worth it, right? Like if we're going to be like, hey, let's make this thing faster but like slightly less decentralized, like that's going to cook everything, right? That's not going to work. Instead, if we're like, hey, let's make this thing faster with while still preserving all the properties of the reasons why values on here in the first place, then that's compelling.

Interestingly, fast slots. Um, another benefit here is it actually improves censorship resistance, which is a whole like other world. So it it is a really like quick slot sorry is a it's a nice convergence in things. So like in in the general realm of like making Ethereum faster. It's not about like making Ethereum faster while sacrificing everything else. It's about like look Ethereum clearly has product market fit here. It's doing it's seeing great growth like more assets being tokenized. We had the SEC exemption. More assets will be tokenized than ever now. Ethereum can continue being home with those asset will continue being the home of those assets. Can we also make it faster and can we do that without sacrificing the reasons things are on there in the first place? like quick slots especially feels like a perfect convergence of things uh to make that

happen. So it's kind of like a it's a very cool thing that exists uh in the world. We're not it's not necessarily like as trade-off heavy because usually resilience and performance does have trade-offs but in this case uh it actually is moving together which is quite cool to see. Yeah, it's it's inspiring seeing how excited Bingji gets talking about faster Ethereum, you know, but yeah, but just want to add that like uh so fast slots is um one big part of our faster Ethereum road map, but it's only one part of it, right? You know, so there's actually like another big part of it. Um you know, so the way the way I think about it is that like when we talk about making Ethereum fast, there's like making the chain itself fast, right? But then there's also like making the ch settle faster on other chains. So in

terms of bridging, right? So like when you move token from Ethereum to other chains can they happen very fast right? So like that's so that's what so that's what leads to like um like like our other faster Ethereum work streams such as faster finality and the fast confirmation rule. So like at ETLABS at ETLABS we like to call Ethereum the special chain right you know so we know that there will be many chains in the world but Ethereum plays like a very special role because because we think Ethereum is the best place to issue assets right but you so so what makes it like the best place to issue assets is because when you issue assets on Ethereum you can move it seamlessly uh you know you know you can move the assets seamlessly from Ethereum to like any other L2s and like even like other

all the L1 such as Slana right so um without drive towards faster finality and like f and the fast confirmation rule like you know will further reinforce Ethereum's place as like the the truly the truly and the only special chain in the world because it will be the only chain that can settle in like a both like a really fast and also like Bing said in like a truly decentralized and trustless way to other chains you know so like there's like no no trade-off right you know like it's fast and it's like truly truly trustless yeah so so that's like the other part of like the fast Ethereum moment >> hey guys it's LG jumping in here to let you know about an incredible interview that John did the other day with the legendary Raul Pal. It dropped on September 15th and they got into why

crypto has struggled this year, what needs to happen for it to finally move and why Raul thinks crypto could become the financial infrastructure for the entire AI economy. They also got into how Raul himself is actually investing for the cycle. We also recorded a Milk Road Pro after hours for this one, which is where we sit down after the fact to talk about how we're expressing some of Real's views in our own portfolios. So check your pod feed for the episode and head over to Milkroad Pro for the exclusive after hours at the link below. >> Okay, this is all very helpful. I think you guys spoke to hundreds of different members and participants in the in the Ethereum ecosystem. You quoted I think over 20 of them in this and you talk about a lot of these things about like how making Ethereum faster still like

preserves and protects like these these core principles. Um, but I I think a line that stood out to me in the piece is these efforts share an objective making Ethereum more responsive and valuable with gains acrewing to ETH and that got my attention. I would love to hear your thoughts on how a fast Ethereum is uh, you know, aligned with a more valuable ETH the asset um, and just like how you think about that mechanism and what that value acrruel uh, looks like. Yeah, I mean one one thing for sure is if Ethereum can continue being the hub and the home for tokenized assets and can also help the performance of like all the settlement that is emerging within this ecosystem then that makes this ecosystem more palatable for various reasons whether it's increases

to sensor resistance you know in collaboration with in conjunction with Fossil for example or if it's just literally like it's literally faster and the UX is just a little bit better as a result um that creates value propositions for people to want to go on Ethereum. Now the main thing is like what exactly is the reason why someone would want to mint on an any asset on Ethereum in the first place and then we have to go down this like levels of things right it's literally credibly neutral it's globally accessible there's all these other factors if we have that already and we can actually also improve on the performance of it without sacrificing that very key very important I'll keep going on this is like we can never speed this thing up without if we if it means sacrificing the thing that makes it valuable um yeah you can make a

faster NASDAQ you can't make a faster Ethereum that is Ethereum without compromising on its release unless you do it a very concerted way. So these are things that I think like further strengthen the value of Ethereum get more value onto Ethereum and you can kind of go from there regardless of like what that acres to ETH and that like more security is needed etc. Um as well as more volume traded and whatnot. So these are all like factors that we believe can further boost people's uh you know use case for like Ethereum as a network and thus acrew value to ETH given that use case increase. This is this is helpful. I think that's just like an important thing to know that you guys and just Ethereum overall are keeping ETH the asset um kind of at the center of all this. So I think that's

just a helpful perspective. Um I I want to ask about account abstraction. Um Derek, you joined ETH Labs fairly recently and you went viral almost immediately with tweet about how Ethereum and Bass had spent months trying to build a shared account abstraction standard and you recently gave up on those efforts. I I wasn't really aware that a effort was being made between Ethereum and Bass on this. So when I heard it was over, I didn't know how to react. Could you just tell us a little bit about the the context on this? What were you guys working on and uh what what what happened here?

>> Yeah, I mean account is generally like a pretty nerdy topic, right? You know, so I wouldn't I wouldn't fault you for not knowing about kind of like where like when it even started. Um you know, but but the I guess like the general timeline is that um earlier this year, I think back in January, right? Um Ethereum announced it plan to implement you know what we call native account extraction on Ethereum uh you know so what it means is that um today for example right like you have to pay your own guests right you know like so that's why like every account has to have some ETH in order to do anything on the chain right you know but for a lot of like consumer applications that's actually like a really big pain point right you know so there has been like a big push

about like hey can we allow people to use Ethereum why are like for example the wallets or like the applications sponsor the body user for example right and then there's also like the for example another use case like oh if I hold some stable coins can I like pay gas with the stable coin I mean to be clear it doesn't mean that you don't pay gas with the ETH just means that there's will be like a me mechanism in the protocol that's allow you to swap the stable coin to ETH natively you know and then you can pay pay the gas with the ETH uh you know but but from the users perspective they only own the stable coin right and then there's also like other things like for example everyone hates like their 12 C phrases right so can can we use like our Apple pass key

to secure figure out what is right. So basically like there are like all these benefits with accountraction. So earlier this year um you know like the the the EF announced like this new standards called EIP A141 uh aka frame transactions you know which is supposed to be the uh Ethereum standard for account obraction. So over the next I would say six to six to seven months you know there was like this penstaking process of improving the specs getting buy in from like the other core devs you know. So by I think July uh all the core Ethereum developers have pretty much already run frames. So everyone thought that it was like a foregone conclusion that like for the next Ethereum upgrades you know which is heckod uh that uh frame transactions will be implemented

and accepted right but in July you know you know bass like unveiled that you know they are going to do native construction on base as well you know with like a separate standards uh called EIP A130 you know which obviously is authored by Bass. So uh but not only that you know but they also you know you know credits to them right right you know like they also came into the ACD and uh championed like their proposal right know you know by the way I want to say that like this is actually like a good thing this actually like a good thing right you know we want to see L tools like bringing ideas like into the ACD you know because a lot of people complain about is the ACD being too opaque of a process right like people that don't really participate so so it's

always like a really good I think sign for us when when we see like L2 actually participating so in this case B brought in their proposal Um but that's also kind of like created some tension because um you know because again right like everyone already thought that firms was going to be the a proposal so now firms has a competition you know with like uh the with the base proposal so that's when I think um ethlabs you know and myself specifically right like we essentially made a decision that um like instead of presenting this as like a binary choice between the base proposal and frame transactions we were wondering if we can create like a single shield standard that kind of like takes the best part from each proposal because like because these two proposals they have like

different uh strength and weaknesses, right? The L1 proposal like frame transactions is very optimized for the needs of the L1, right? You know, so so for example things like um support for privacy, right? Uh support for quantum signature aggregation, right? You know, just align with the entire postquantum road map of Ethereum. And then like for the base proposal, it's like very optimized for performance and scalability for the L2, right? It's like base they want to target like tens of thousands of transactions per second, right? So the so the entire like a proposal is like very performance um centric right um you know and then there's also some features with the base base proposal that makes it easier for them to for example if there's like a application or like a chain that wants to allow only pass key but like no other authentication method they can enforce

that right you know because like for lource things like compliance is like a very big aspect of that right you know so the a proposal is also very optimized for that so again the idea the the the question we had was like can we have one proposal So that takes the best pass from each proposal. So then like we went through like I think like maybe like a three-week exercise with this collab you know we tried our best right you know like and then like the co-authors from both specs you know heavily engaged right people like metallic people like you know like Matt from from G right you know and al obviously like the people from bass even people people from like arbitran they're all engaged um but at the end I think the you know and that was like the kind of the central point

of my tweet was was that um I think at the end Ethereum wants to be the best version of Ethereum, right? And Bass wants to be the best version of Bass, right? So even though we could have like a standard that kind of does both things, it kind of has to do both things in like a imperfect way and like neither Chen is really willing to like sacrifice their core product goals, right? So that's why like at the end I think we sort of like both align that it was better to just go separate ways even though it will result in a lot of like ecosystem uh fragmentation down the road right you know because now like what is and l tools they have to like support like two different transaction format two

different a standards yeah you know but that's like the the long story short you know of the >> okay I appreciate the summary there but I think the the thing that I is kind of concerning to me and to maybe a lot of our listeners too is it sounds like Ethereum is getting divorced from one of its largest L2s. Is that how you see this or is there like a a silver lining on this where you know like you said base be becomes the best version of base, Ethereum becomes the best version of Ethereum but that long-term alignment still remains in maybe a different way um or do you do you see this more as like these two chains starting to diverge more from each other and like ecosystem fragmentation starting to happen in Ethereum? Yeah, I mean I like I would love to hear Benjes and Julian's

take on takes on this. But personally like I feel like the idea that Bass is devolving from Ethereum is like definitely like way too dramatic of a take from this whole thing, right? You know, because um like I said, you know, like like every time I hear people on Twitter complaining about base being like not ether, I get super triggered, you know, because honestly like I feel like B is actually one of the the most Ethereum alliance um L2s out there, right? Right. For example, the fact that they even participated in in the ACD was not something that we see from every auto like all the time, right? Um but also the fact that they are one of the largest ETH holders, the fact that obviously like E is used all over like the the the base ecosystem, right? Um you know, so I I um you know, you know,

and also like even just when you look at like the base the base architecture, right? just like how they settle to Ethereum and how they accept deposit from Ethereum like basically like all the technical architecture choices they make are very I would say decentralized and very like etherite you know like they they're not taking any shortcuts with like you know like like the multisc bridging you know they're always using like the the the proper Ethereum tag whether it's like like optimistic challenges or whether it's like ZK right you know so they're even technically they're super aligned with Ethereum so um so basically like like but I think the the proper take away from this is that um as Ethereum as the broader Ethereum ecosystem gains traction right I think we can no longer take it for

granted that's every L2 just blindly follow every decision made by the L1 right because today L2s they have very clear product market fits that is distinct from the L1 right for example if you're like um big tre company like Robin Hood you're going to launch an L2 and not on L1 because you want to own your own on block because you want to on your own on block space right so because they serve different use cases naturally they would require somewhat different technologies so the L1 can no longer take for granted that the altos will follow every technical decision that the L1 makes so I think we are so this particular incident is one example of that but besides that you know I think I 100% think that B is still one of the

one of the most uh Ethereum organization and B is bringing a huge amount of value to Ethereum I'd love to >> I was just going to say yeah go ahead. I would just like to hear more thoughts on this and like the the relationship between the L2s and L1 in general but yeah please continue. >> Yeah I'd love to I'd love to add to this like so so personally background I used to work at optimism um and so was within the L2 space for a large part of my life in crypto. Derek is the founder of zerov and zerov today powers and this aa is a wallet oriented like account thing right like Derek invented the thing that essentially powers most of crypto applications today on like literally making the UX better and it's used by every app that most people use in crypto today so like in terms of where we come

from when we think of like okay these this is an account and there's like two separate standards of it and then there's like okay like is base divorcing from Ethereum and like the analogy that I like to use um a lot and we used to use it back in the day was um Ethereum is the internet of value right like And you can use the word internet very well. Like Facebook creating like um yeah like Facebook creating its own website doesn't mean it divorced from the internet. You know Uber having its own payment rails doesn't mean it divorced from Apple, right? It's still on the iPhone. So these are things that can be dramaticized and I think there's some level of this like freedom that L2s can get which are actually make the value proposition even better. Another analogy just for the sake of analogies is

Ethereum is New York and that if every single place in New York was like Tribeca, I'd never go there, right? Like we need diversity. We need more things to do and we need like to allow for this culture to flourish. And at the end of the day, like Bass has billions of dollars of ether um sitting on their L2. Bass is like consuming blobs like nobody's business constantly. These these are there's like other forms of ways in which we're uh definitely like working together across this bigger goal. And I think the bigger goal is like let's build the internet of value, right? Like we have the internet of information. Let's build the internet of value. And that's going to need various websites. It's going to need various different ways and approaches. And in this case, like actually allowing and enabling for, you know, some things to

diverge here and there on like maybe the way the building is designed a bit doesn't mean it's not in New York anymore. Um, and if anything, some more funky buildings could get more people to come in in the first place. So there's like there's a lot of these like analogies that I find very helpful when we think about like the broader mission. Like if we think of this ecosystem as like in a very like more like corporate way almost it's like this a corporate partnership and like this happened like then it's like okay like in the traditional world yes like that is probably a divorce in some ways to think people diverge in opinions but the world we're building is bigger like we're literally our goal must be bigger our goal is literally to build the internet of value like this is where every single

form of digital value can settle and will settle and it's going to be on Ethereum and there's going to be multiple systems that take advantage of the properties that Ethereum L1 provides and base is one of them and we're definitely looking forward to seeing a lot more like they're they're coming up the pipe for sure. So like that that's one way I think about it and yeah like and the standard itself is a great win like it it literally is account abstraction. making accounts better like in both cases like people are going to be holding ETH using ETH for gas you know using applications that now make it way easier to onboard like your family uh all of these things right so and also maybe even using other tokens for gas with the ETH being underlying just to clarify some people freaked out the other day when it was like they're using

other tokens but it's >> I got asked about this on a podcast too by the way and so yeah people are freaking out they're like oh my gosh now ETH isn't money anymore you can pay in anything um but Yeah, please continue. I'd love to hear you say more about that. >> And and and the other other part is like so Der Derrick's been working on this like on the level of counter traction like for ages, right? And he's he's literally built this amazing startup that like literally powers most crypto apps today on this idea of like make the UX better and it's finally getting better at a protocol level. Like that's such a big win. The other win here is like all the work that Derek and like people at YAB and multiple others I can't name all them. There's big group there's this AA group chat with like

10,000 people in it I swear. EA means account abstraction for anyone who's not deep in the jargon here, but yes. Yeah. >> Yeah. So account abstraction and like the nice thing is the only way these solutions could have happened like both bases and the frames one is all the prior work that came before it and that's the beauty of EVM network effects right like it's it's like a stepping ladder like it it is all based on the EVM and the beauty is like we're building this internet value and everyone's using TCP IP um and that already has broader network effects and you know it's it's great for both Ethereum and ETH as a result.

>> Well yeah well appreciate the thoughts on that. Yeah, and I think some people time sometimes forget that Ethereum doesn't want to be a dictator and have like total coherence and control and they want to let a lot of people come in and build a lot of different things. So, I think that framing is helpful. We'll see how all this plays out. Uh Julian, I wanted to ask your thoughts on something we touched on a little bit last time, which is this whole tokenization uh frenzy that we're seeing take place on Ethereum primarily. Um, as Benji said earlier, there's more tokenized stock trading now happening on Ethereum than there is on the S Singapore stock exchange. Uh but there's been a lot of controversy about this too. Any updated thoughts from you on like what's happening in this space? Obviously, we just saw you know announcement of an

innovation exemp exemption from the SEC that means probably going to we're probably going to see a lot more tokenized assets issue issued on Ethereum. What are your thoughts on this and what's your updated outlook here? Yeah, I think at EABS are super excited to see how well Robin Hood and Bass have been doing with distributing their tokenized assets and tokenized equities to many many more people around the world. I think that's both the mission that we believe in of like making assets more available to those in in different parts of the world and something that Robin Hood and based theory believe in as well. I think there won't be like one right way to tokenize assets. I think and we're seeing already different models today with like securities and super states being a transfer agent and so offering a different type of

tokenization than Robin Hood or base can and now with the SEC innovation exemption. I'd imagine more of that happening actually where unaffiliated third parties can tokenize assets in a way that's maybe closer to the securitizing superstate model but still different and allow those tokens to trade um in DeFi applications. The reason I say that I don't think there will be like one right way to tokenize is that we're seeing the products that come from these different tokenization steps lead to like very different outcomes. If you look at securityize uh which tokenize biddro money market fund um we see that bidd can be used to some extent in in unis swap for example but it's a very different product offering

than for example Robin Hood's stock tokens which are paired with with memecoins across the chain right um and that's yeah I think we'll be seeing a lot more of that and a lot more exploration before we condense back to to one uh way that stock tokens would be tokenized if I had to like say some things that I'd be wishing for perhaps of like where we want to see this going. Uh there are two things that that really interests me. I think one is this stock token fragmentation. I think we've seen the memes on Twitter, right, that you can buy like infinite amounts of Nvidia tokens or of Apple tokens or or whatever in in different uh formats. I think one thing to realize here that this reputation exists in chatfi as well.

Like if you've ever tried to like move your storage from like one brokerage account to another, I think for some uh it's actually technically feasible, but it's like practically a nightmare. And I think in crypto, we can really improve on that. Uh still like token fragmentation is an issue. Like lots of front ends, they expose it in a in a very good way, right? If you go on the Robin Hood wallets, you'll see the Robin Hood stock tokens. If you go on Ether, you'll see one particular one. If you go on Lighter, you'll see one particular one. Uh but yeah, we need to make sure that like on the back end that trading cost to go down as well and that fragmentation doesn't cause any problems there. Something that I've seen less speak about which I think is interesting actually is that Robin Hood used their

their chain and their tokens as a way to uh expand into Europe uh where the Robin Hood app uh was with the Robin Hood chain on the back end was the first offering in Europe. Something that I think would really help is that uh if European stocks for example were also widely available on the Robin Hood app. Some of them might be, some I think some others aren't. Uh but obviously uh as someone who who lives in Europe, you'll have a tendency to want to have exposure uh to the companies building around you, right, in the in the physical world. And I think that's something that could really help to organization more if if there were like more global stocks uh available in the places that people live in as well that they can buy next to like the the American stocks that they

want to have exposure to, for example. You know, one of the weird things about crypto is that the longer you're in it, the more accounts you seem to end up with. You buy in one place, trade somewhere else, earn yield somewhere else, and if you actually need capital, you end up having to sell something that you probably wanted to keep. That's why we at Milkroad are partnering with Nexo. These guys keep the whole thing under one account. You can buy, trade crypto, earn interest on what you already hold, and even borrow against your capital without having to sell it, all in one spot, all in one account, all on Nexo. So, if you need liquidity but you don't want to give up your position or you're already holding crypto and you want to be able to do more with it, I think Nexo is worth your time. We love working with

them, I think you will, too. Tell him Milk Road sent you. Benji, something I love about Julian is that whenever he answers a question, he's so polished and organized. It sounds like a diplomat. He's like already thought out what he wants to say, but then Julian, I see you on Twitter, you're just tweeting in all caps, make it faster, about Ethereum. It's it's such a great dichotomy. All right, I'm going to try to get you off your game with this one. I got a question for you. This is kind of a shotgun blast about this. All right. A lot of this tokenization right now is happening on these L2s, right? And you know, you gave some thoughts about what you're seeing there, what you'd like to see happen and some some interesting insight on that, but should there be a push to try to move a lot of this

tokenization activity back to the Ethereum L1? Do you think it's proper that it lives on the L2? Do you not care? Are you kind of agnostic to that? And then who where who benefits the most? Like is it better for issuers to do it on the L1 versus the L2s? Is it better for users? Is it better for ETH? like give me your thoughts on on like how all that breaks out in your mind. >> Yeah, if I had to tweet now, I'd probably say in full caps, we care. Uh because yes, we definitely do care. We want tokens to be asset uh sorry, we want assets to be tokenized on the R1. Um I think what Derek put very interestingly in his announcement post that he was joining ELABS actually is that we're not trying to convince you of um the value proposition of Ethereum

from an alignment perspective or from like an ideology perspective. We're trying to convince you from a product perspective. Um, issuing on the L1 has certain advantages. It means that you have like better distribution for your assets. They more easily transport into other L2s where they can be used as like collateral in certain app chains for example. And and this is not like a hypothetical thing like we're speaking with many of these um many of these app chains and and they're saying that they want to use some of these tokenized assets and they for them it's simply too hard because if they're issued only L2 like they need to have certain bridging infrastructure if they're issued on the L1 they can use the vast information rule for example and get the tokenized assets within their applications within

like a few seconds uh which is just a better product experience uh for users in the end. There are also some uh L1 security benefits uh which I think are are interesting but they're somewhat nuanced. Uh something that I think is really interesting here is that today for tokenization blockchains are are basically their distribution engines. They allow issuers to reach new customers for example but they're turning into like proper financial services technology which is interesting. And for this we have to look at like different parts of tokenization. It's not like the the stock tokens uh the the the rapper equity model. If we're looking at like the money market funds and particularly in the UK where they've been quite leading um what the UK regulators actually said is that blockchains can be

like the the proper ledger of record so that there doesn't have to be like an off-chain mirrored version like actually the blockchain is the the ledger of record that assigns who owns a certain money market venture which is super interesting and then suddenly all of these properties that Ethereum has been working towards start to matter a lot more right it's like livveness starts to matter then and safety starts to matter and you don't want to have like blow ups that we've seen in chatfire where you basically you lose the ledger record like Google Synapse evolved that's such an interesting example here the SEC actually wrote a proposal to follow the UK as regulator in in like a similar direction here so I'm expecting that like we will be convincing people more that the L1 is the right place uh to

tokenize not because of the ide ideology but because of like the the actual benefits that Ethereum brings there >> whose job is it to go out and sort of preach that message to the market. Is that something Ethereum institutional handles? Does ETHLabs play a role in that? Because it sounds like you are pounding the table saying the L1 is the right place to do your issuance. Um, but who's taking that messaging to market and like what role does Ethabs play in trying to communicate that? >> I can try to take a stab, but would probably require help for sure. Uh, as I please let me know if I ramble, but like Julian said and like Derek said initially in his tweets, and by the way, Derek is like the best tweet person Twitter person ever. Like bangers after bangers. It's unreal. Um where he says

like we want to help Ethereum win by product, right? By like actually like building thing as a product. Um so one of the things when we think of tokenization as a product u um like what is the value ad of Ethereum for that? It goes back to these thing ideas of like it's like fully neutral. It has a 100% uptime. You know people are already putting assets on there. How do we keep pushing for that even more? Well like you can make some performance improvements as needed without sacrificing those properties like fast slots. um you can have Ethereum be the hub of assets and make it significantly almost about 30 times faster for it to bridge from L1 to L2s and things. So it can move around easily. Go to one L2, try something there, go to another L2, try something else there. Like there's

like this whole concept that can emerge. A lot of the things that Ethlapse is doing is also like in accordance with like this broader principle of how do we make this very like more efficient for you know all all trading all all these different use cases like if we stick to tokenization it's like make Ethereum faster as a product right um make it easier for things to move across the Ethereum ecosystem as a product without minimizing security uh specifically talking institutional shop like we say decentralization institutions say counterparty risk minimization um this is fairly standard practice for them generally they're very risk averse. So how do you minimize counterparty risk?

Well you can get rid of maybe some you know middle layers there like kind of make those more efficient put those on L1 put them on something that like can en ensure that it works out the way it says it's going to work out without like trusting middlemen whatnot. So like there's all these different ways in which Ethereum as a product as an L1 can be um you know able to house more of tokenization and enable more things and then like on the other side like use cases like we can tokenize all the assets in the world but if they're not used for anything what's the point and that's where like this broader idea of like um you know having more and more builders come in and build unique experiences for stocks like that are now accessible globally 24/7 is really promising and I think it's like an

interesting thing to think about of as Ethereum is like the internet of value where you can program money. So making L1 a better product for that was is helpful. And I think a lot of the efforts that Ethlabs is focused on today is pretty very clear closely in tandem with that whether it's speed or interop or accounts. Um >> okay so Ethereum needs to win on product and if ELABS is focusing on that best product outcome. Um okay let's let's kind of like bring this back because I know we got a heart out here in in a few minutes. I want to give some time for discussion on synthesizing some of this.

Right? So we talked about fast Ethereum. We talked about quick slots and then we talked a little bit about account abstraction and how there are diverse solutions to this that are coming into the Ethereum ecosystem, some of the benefits that unlocks. Uh and then we talked about tokenized assets and issuance on chain on the L1. Can you bring this all back together for me as to why this helps ETH capture value and why all this drives value to ETH the asset um as opposed to just like you know letting the L2s continue to make tons of money on Ethereum. Uh yeah like give me some thoughts on this and and where you guys sit on this question. I mean it's just sounding diplomatic again. I think it really is all of these three like coming together. uh we want to have quick slots, we want to have

better a and we want to have a good product differentiation of why you should issue on the L1. That will attract asset issuers. That will mean that there will be more activity on the L1. E will be more used more for fees both for like actually trading and for like L2 settling on the L1, not just for blobs but also for like verification costs for example. And it means that ETH will be paired against more assets. I'm saying it really is a combination because of these of these three things because when when I'm in calls with some of the institutions for example we actually hear like a large variety of uh technical issues that they are bumping into like bridging time for example is like a very real thing that is that they are bumping into and quick slots will help reduce this. some wallet issues is

something that they're bumping into as well. Like you don't want to have someone sit on the desk and monitor a wallet and and make sure that they sign off on like some custodial flows just to be able to like use your assets. H and you want to have a good standardized way of issuing certain types of assets on blockchains. And so I really think it's like all of those three coming together and they are all necessary otherwise yeah we won't get there. Yeah, may maybe an imperfect analogy here, right? You know, but for example, like why is the US dollar is the dominant asset in the world, right? You know, I think a large reason is because the US has like the most advanced financial infrastructure in the world, right? You know, so that the US dollars can flow seamlessly, you know, not just within the US, but even

like internationally like to, you know, to to other markets, right? You know, so like so you have like all these financial products built on top of the US dollars, which reinforces it dominance. So similarly right like the the reason why ETH will dominate is because Ethereum has the best I say digital infrastructure of all the blockchain right you know like like everything that worked on like like the fast finality fast information rule fast lots makes it possible for ETH as well as tokens issued on Ethereum to flow seamlessly not just with Ethereum but also to like any other to any other ecosystem right so that's why for example right like even though um you know people kind of like talk about how oh L2 start using so little block fees and whatnot. It's true that like like all the successful autos like B arbitum

Robin Hood like if you look at like the top like trading pair right like across their exchanges most of them they're denominated in ETH right you know and that's because ETH is the the token that's can the most easily flow towards these outs thanks for thanks to to the technical properties of Ethereum right so yeah I just want to say that like the financial aspects and the technical aspect of of Ethereum are very much interlin >> yeah I I want to plus plus one that and like on on ETH the asset like if we look at this asset in general compared to any other asset in the world it's one of the most highly liquid neutral assets that doesn't have a central issuer per se right like it it is a neutral credibly neutral asset that like is now powering an increasingly larger globally global

onchain economy u like 170 billion stable coins 50 plus billion in DeFi more and more getting tokenized right like and all of this is being underpinned by likely one of the most neutral assets assets in the world um that is highly liquid, available, global, permissionless, all of the above. And there's a ton of value in that. Um whether it's being used as like to to facilitate this network or as gas or as anything else and all the other use cases or even as a store of value. So like I I think there's a ton there. I I don't think we should divorce like Ethereum progress from ETH progress. I do think they're very much interlin. I think um at the end of the day though like we have to provide value to the world like we have to make this broader sphere so good that people end up

building entirely net new experiences that on board net new people and literally change the way in which value flows around the internet. Uh and we have a lot to do there and I think there's like a lot of interesting directions there too like um we're where there's like hackathons going on. There's a coliseum hackathon, for example, that's uh has a has tracks for people across the Ethereum ecosystem, which is quite interesting. Like, let's get the more and more builders to use these platforms and build novel experiences out of it. Let's get people to program money. Um, and all of this being underpinned by, you know, one of the most credibly neutral, open, highly like uh liquid assets in the world is is quite a quite a nice perfect storm, I think.

>> Okay, that was fun. Very diplomatic. But I think we ran went around the horn and got some bullposting done. So, we we checked that box. I want to end with one quick conversation here around something that's got a lot of attention and capital in the markets these days, which is this idea of um a privacy solution. Zcash has obviously been pumping a lot. There's a ton of other alternatives on the market. There's the Aztec network, there's the Midnight Side Chain and Monero and on and on. Do you all think that it is necessary for Ethereum to compete in the market with a privacy solution natively at the L1? And what are the plans or the updates on Ethereum's efforts to do that? I believe already if we look at some privacy like statistics especially like around DeFi and things like rail gun is on Ethereum

and one uh they were also quoting the article they also by the way supporting fast lots quick slots but yeah that we do have a lot of privacy platforms on Ethereum um already and they're doing incredible work we have the Kohaku initiative from the EF that's trying to essentially build an open open source wallet SDK so everyone can default have uh more privacy as well as like better quantum resistance these things are all kind of moving in tandom So Ethereum is and I I don't know if you caught it but like so spoke from the Ethereum Foundation had an amazing podcast the other day where he talks about the plans for L1 being private based off of the ES road map there. So it's definitely something that is happening in Ethereum and like uh the nice part about Ethereum is you get composable privacy right like

it's like you can send money through these applications I guess but you can also over time participate in DeFi you know do all these different things and um on the topic of privacy as well like if we think of a use case specifically there was a revolute data breach the other day um a lot of people who use Revolute has basically their data leaked and this happens all the time this not just revolute thing this happened with major institutions constantly billions of dollars in stock value get lost because of these data leaks because they're all in the centralized database. And there's interesting ways for us as crypto and as Ethereum to maybe help.

You know, we have like ZK solutions for this stuff like where I can reveal who I am. You can know that I'm not like from North Korea and but you don't need to know my home address. That would be ideal. That's like a really good strong benefit for the world and for the safety, right? We literally have people having unfortunate things happen to them in the crypto space of like kidnappings for example and things like because their address was doxed. you know, privacy doesn't have to end at just like this is the thing happening in crypto right now. It's it is a world thing like we are living in a world in which uh ideally we get to own more of ourselves and not less of ourselves. And if Ethereum can continue being a platform that bolsters that both on a money level but also beyond that on a social level,

um I think that's worthwhile. But again, caveat all of this that like we have to go and build these solutions that users actually touch. Like it's nice for us to have these things here that like some of us can use in a niche maybe, but like it's not enough. If we really want to help and bolster the world and make an impact, like we need these we need to think about privacy as like a very userfacing thing versus um just as a narrative. Um and I I think there's so much happening in the Ethereum ecosystem on that side. So pretty excited to see it. Um and probably need to catch up on a lot. So I have to be sure though. Shout out web three privacy now.

>> Yeah. And maybe just to my perspective, right? You know, I think uh me personally as well like Ethaps as an or we're extremely pro privacy, I think privacy is one of those things that like I think the best way to put is that like if imagine Ethereum had privacy from day one, right? And you try to take away the privacy, right? Like everyone would be like what? Like how can you make the blockchain public, right? Like how can my transaction be public? That's crazy, right? But the only reason why people don't think don't think that way was because Ethereum wasn't privacy from day one, right? You know, so now everyone has come to accept that, oh, blockchain blockchain is public, you know, you know, but but but it's just one of those things that like you have to put in in people's hands and have people

experiences before they realize that this is actually like they cannot live without it, right? Um but but speaking of this, I also want to just give credits to to the Ethereum Foundation, right? You know, because like one thing that we sometimes talk about is like the relationship between EABS and the Ethereum Foundation, right? You know, so I think we are very very laser focused on solving the 10 points of users and builders today, right? Like we're very responsive to builder needs, but I think like really huge credits going to the EF for for thinking about like the long-term road map of Ethereum, right? Like privacy and quantum resistance are the kind of things that that that require long-term investments in like a five to 10 year time scale. But those are the things that will will ensure Ethereum stay relevant for like centuries, right? So I think ju just

like having both organizations like one like one thinking about more like short to medium term uh and then with the thinking about like the long term I think it's like a really good one two punch for in for Ethereum you know so just just really bullish on really bullish on there as well >> really appreciate the thoughts on all this gentlemen we are coming up on a hard stop so I'm going to end it there but I want to end by saying at the end of your article that you published on Twitter from the ETHLabs account you call for everyone to share to retweet to like to engage with this because you guys do not run Ethereum and you do need support from the community. So, I'm going to follow Julian's lead. I'm going to retweet it and say, "Make it faster and we care." Probably in all caps.

We'll see how many exclamation points I throw in there. Um, but I would encourage everyone to do that. As we end here really quickly, could we just go around the horn and let people know where they can find you online to follow more of your work? Um, and maybe just, you know, a word or two about what you're focused on next at Elabs. >> You can find us on Twitter. Uh, actually, we post weekly updates. Uh, and it would be great to follow up with those as well. That's also you can find everything that we're doing next. I'll be focusing mostly on asset issuance understanding what is the current exact product offering like what is the A to Z steps that institutions go through uh to issue assets and how can we improve those from the Ethereum protocol perspective.

>> Yeah. Uh Benji no this way. Benji_x right here. Um I have the best job in the world man. I work with like really really smart people who are doing everything they can to make Ethereum better across every single way that Ethereum could possibly be better. Um and I get to help communicate that. So there's a lot going on still. Uh fast Ethereum obviously today there need a break from that for like the next two three hours and then get back right right back into it. Jillian's got some cool stuff coming up from FCR like Derek has a AA world some interop stuff. We're talking to some really really cool teams. We won't say who but around like novel ways to use Ethereum for markets generally. Um that's already picking up and it's pretty exciting and some of

them have quote tweeted our article already so we're even more friends with them right now. But yeah, man, like there's there's a ton to do. I think there's a gap in Ethereum sometimes and when it comes to communication. So, if we can help fill that gap uh both on a protocol side and application side and in ETH side, um I think that would be a job well done. So, we'll try our best shot. Keep us honest. >> Eric, what about you? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. You know, I I I publish a lot of like I guess long long form contents under my Twitter. Um you know, which is desententric kind of hard to spell. It's like decentralization but with my name Derek in itcentric um you know but basically um yeah you know I I publish long form content about like just really any interesting

technical topics in Ethereum right like lat latest lately seeming about account obstruction but I'm also I'm also starting to write about things like interop fast confirmation rule and like and you know you know and other things so yeah so if you want to dive deep into Ethereum topics uh follow me but also more importantly follow the ethlabs account you know because we have like so much amazing uh team content coming Well, I am available on Twitter at Bitcoin Jesus ETH. I post gifts and uh screenshots of Ethereum's price chart. Uh gentlemen, thank you so much for being on the Milk Road Show. I always learn a lot from these episodes. I think the community really appreciates not only the work that you're doing, but the time you take to communicate about it, which I think is just, you know, really important. So, thank you all so much for

being on the Milk Road Show. I hope we can catch up again soon. Thank you all so much for being here. Until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and we will see you all on the next episode of the Milk Road Show. Thanks for being here, everyone. Bye. >> Thanks for listening to Milk Road. If you enjoyed the show, make sure you like and subscribe. And if you're struggling to find winners in the market, that's exactly what Milkroad Pro is built for. Our analysts have called some of the biggest winners early, and Pro lets you see what they're buying next, every trade they make, and the research behind every position. Check out Milkroad Pro at the link below. Everything you hear on Milkroad is forformational purposes only. These are our personal opinions, not financial advice, and we may own some of the investments we talk about.

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