Fireside Chat with Optimism Co-Founders Jing Wang and Mark Tyneway

Transcript

[applause] >> Everyone, my name is Mark. And this is Jing. >> [clears throat] >> We're here to tell you a little bit about the future of the super chain. But first to start, I want to talk about some spicy things. So we heard some rumors going around that optimism was dead. Just kind of floating around the internet there. But um little known fact, Jing is actually a demon about treasury management. And we have plenty of runway to be building on.

>> because I forced him to sleep in a tent for 2 years >> [laughter] >> on the roof of the office. >> It's true. In New York, in Mexico. You know, all part of the journey. It has been a long journey. Yeah. So um basically uh you know, let's talk a little bit about the L2 sentiment on ETH. So I heard these rumors going around that L2s are actually interested in forking away and becoming L1s because of frustration with the Ethereum ecosystem.

Is this true? >> Um I mean, if you're talking about like the first 6 months of Ethereum L2 hate speech um >> [laughter] >> I would say I would say there's always been frustration with shipping speed inside the EF. I think it's why most L2s spun out into their own teams in the first place. Um but I think that um it's all about finding the right abstractions for us to be building on. And I think um ETH L1 has its place. And there's a reason why we've continued to choose ETH L1 as our DA even though we could use a different DA

and despite the L2 hate speech because it has the properties that we are looking for from our DA. So I'm actually very supportive of also the crops road map which we also know is very controversial. Why do you think that is? >> Oh yeah, the crops road map. I mean crops is really the reason why I got into this space in the first place and it was kind of crazy that everyone was so upset about this announcement that the Ethereum Foundation did because crops really is one of the true value propositions of crypto as a whole.

And really I think maybe maybe to lay it out what even is crops. So censorship resistance capture resistance, open source, privacy and security. Now um why was there pushback? I think it was more about the way that the Ethereum Foundation was communicating rather than the content. You know, the ETH price going sideways and down for a long time. People weren't really sure um what to latch on to it to see what was success.

>> Yeah, I I really resonate with that. I think optimism went through similar struggles. We really bought into this like decentralization maxi vision and in the era where like tokens were just pumping left and right and there was no real signal of product market fit. Like any idea whether hairbrained or good felt like the right idea or a good idea. And so we really took decentralized development very seriously and it was a struggle to ship. Um and you know, over the last year and a half, we've been fixing that. We've re- we've re-merged all of the companies back into just one company, uh which has been really nice. Um in the last 6 months, we've shipped more in the last 2

and 1/2 years combined, which is uh which has been really cool. >> Yeah, it's a lot of fun, you know, growing up, becoming like a graduating from like a little hacker collective into a company. >> Yeah, your frontal cortex finally forming as a human. Yeah. >> Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, yeah, we've been doing this whole Ethereum thing like for almost our whole adult lives. >> I know, someone showed me a photo of us from 5 years ago, and I was like, "Wow, we had some gelatinous cheeks." Like, we were just so glowy and dewy.

But, I honestly, like, I think what people are looking for from the EF is some acknowledgement of the struggles to ship and to execute. Um I think the Crops Road Map is bullish and well, I'm curious what you think of the kind of love and support of Crops uh in the Zcash community for pretty much the same road map, and uh kind of the hate that EF is getting for their version of it. >> Yeah, it's so interesting. If you kind of zoom out for a minute and think, like, everyone is talking about Zcash, and you can see Zcash is just going up like crazy.

Really, um they're building Crops, too. So, it's not Crops that is the problem. Um there's something else. So, I would say that um one of the major problems is that there's nothing quantitative. There's nothing measurable, right? When when you're trying to execute on something, you need to you need to measure it, or else it doesn't exist. And right now, it's really hard to measure Crops usage. So, it's hard to know what the success metrics are of Ethereum. And if we could unify the community all around some metrics and basically have them on a good little website and everyone's pointing at them.

Like I think it would go so far for bringing everyone together and feeling better about Ethereum, it becoming more bullish on ETH and everything. >> Yeah, um I think it's interesting because ETH with the crops roadmap is uh far deeper into the ETH as money narrative and it really positions Ethereum as competing with Bitcoin rather than Solana. >> It's true. It's kind of exciting. I mean, you know, Justin Drake recently was saying that um without a doubt that ETH would flip Bitcoin and it's like the classic debate that's been going on for years and years and, you know, I could really see it with Ethereum shipping

quantum resistance and an enshrined privacy solution that works. And I would love to see a a website where we can, as the Ethereum ecosystem, build the largest anonymity set in all of crypto, larger than Zcash's. And I think that would be the most bullish thing ever for ETH and Ethereum. >> Yeah, I I totally agree. I think what we're seeing in a lot of our conversations with fintechs and institutions is that there's still this huge preference for Ethereum because of its, you know, trustlessness, the quantity of liquidity that's already deployed there, the lendingness.

Um I do feel in many ways it is still the, you know, Ethereum game to lose. And I think if the EF or the broader Ethereum community can figure out how to execute and how to ship, I think it's I think it would be great. Um with L2s, I mean, the whole like L2s are L1s and like forking away debate, I think the crypto community and especially the Ethereum community can just be so unbelievably pedantic about small nuances in the technical architecture that ultimately don't really have any impact on UX at all. And what I would say is, you know, an L2 is, you know, gives you all of the properties of the EVM. Uh it does so

incredibly cheaply and in a way that you can control. Um one of the big things that we've been pushing on with our road map this quarter or this half is a sequencer policies. So, um you know, you [clears throat] can stake your token to get top of block access. So, if you're fintech, you've launched a token, you want your, you know, um highest paid subscribers to have preferential access or free transactions, there's a way to do that programmatically now. Um a lot of companies that want to onboard heavily regulated assets, but they also want to do so in venues where permissionless DeFi protocols can also deploy, they're having a lot of trouble figuring out how to do that. Um and

imbuing the techno imbuing the logic in the sequencer is the strongest form of compliance that you can have. So, if you want to do a trading halt for an equity and you want to do it across all the protocols that it's deployed on and you don't want to have to reach out to every team, you can simply uh block transfers of that asset at the sequencer level. Uh and it doesn't matter if the DeFi protocol has that token wrapped, you don't even need to be aware of what the DeFi protocols are, you can simply uh halt trading for that asset on your on your blockchain or on your trading venue.

And so, these are like, you know, peak control things uh that enterprises care about, but it has to be done on a censorship-resistant settlement layer. Uh because you have the problem of all these different entities wanting to coordinate with each other um across a substrate that everybody can that everybody can trust. Uh which is the funny part about trustlessness. >> Totally. It's the L2 thesis all over again. It's not going anywhere. It's just, you know, kind of we had a ton of L2s.

We Everyone got really excited about it, but the thesis stands even though um you know, there's this whole return to L1 movement. Like L1 will never be able to bring the customer support and the last mile and the customizations that enterprises truly need. But like what Jing said about how Ethereum is this censorship-resistant, neutral settlement layer, the institutions do want that. So L2s are not going away.

L2s are going to continue to grow as we get more adoption. And enterprises want to come on chain. And it's a really slept on thing what Jing said about the sequencer. And this idea of sequencer policy because enterprises they do need restrictions. Like it there's there's laws that exist and I know that, you know, it's a little lawless out there but we have to grow up and you know, sell to institutions who um are integrated into, you know, the existing system. And to do that, you need to follow the law.

And having an L2 with a single sequencer is actually a superpower. It's way more appealing to an institution to deploy to an L2 where they can integrate deeply into the sequencer rather than on a network where who knows who could be sequencing. Like for example, um an institution might be concerned that um you know a sanctioned entity might be a validator on that network like then basically as a sanctioned entity like North Korea could be processing transactions on your behalf and that's just not something that an enterprise wants to be exposed to. So

this idea of sequencer policy is really powerful when it comes to adoption for enterprise. >> Yeah, it's crazy because any logic you can put in a smart contract you can also actually express as a sequencer policy and that includes privacy. So we're working with a bunch of privacy partners on things like private contracts, private transfers. And the other interesting thing is that a lot of these institutions also want fast access to the liquidity on ethereum. So we're finally going to be lowering the withdrawal window from 7 days to 1 day.

>> [laughter] >> And that's been yeah, that's been long awaited. So it's been interesting to kind of see how the narratives are playing out on Twitter and then like look at what the actual kind of customer demands are and translating that into you know protocol terminology has been has been fun. It has ended up with our technical co-founder wearing a freaking suit. >> Yeah, [snorts] it's fun. I used to just be a guy wearing like a hoodie all the time never going outside just like in front of my laptop all day and here.

>> [laughter] >> Oh, good question. I don't know. I'm not ready to give up on these yet to be honest. >> As Mark says either free the pinky toe or cut it off. >> I did say that. Highly recommend the toe shoes though. They they actually were life-changing for me. >> So you know uh to close it all out, optimism is not dead. Mark is no longer in a tent. He's in fact in a suit. Um we have plenty of runway, many, many years. We're working on a lot of exciting things. We're hiring. Um we have a bunch of crazy things shipping. If you've been following along with our Twitter, we've been having new features, new announcements every 2 weeks or so. Uh and we've got more. A lot of people in

the crypto community are especially excited for the one-day withdrawals. Uh and for ZK. So, very cool. Check out our sequencer policies. Uh you can try the stake for priority. It's uh on mainnet currently. >> Cool. >> [applause]