Projects
![]()
No projects found
Investors
New
DAO Treasuries
DATs
Lend / Borrow APRs
Chains
Categories
Spaces
B@B <> Eigenlayer Podcast
Recorded: March 20, 2025 Duration: 0:45:12Space Recording
Short Summary
EigenLayer is revolutionizing blockchain development by simplifying the process for developers, fostering partnerships with AI companies, and engaging with student talent. The conversation highlights key trends in user experience and collaboration within the crypto ecosystem, signaling a shift towards more accessible and innovative applications.
Full Transcription
Yn ystod y cyfle hwn, mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn. Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn. Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn. Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn. you you Yn ystod y cyfle hwn, mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn. Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn.
Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle hwn. Mae'r cyfle hwn yn ystod y cyfle, mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle.
Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Mae'r cyfle yn ystod y cyfle. Hey, everyone.
Welcome to our first Twitter spaces.
I'm Ali and today co-hosting with me is Mason.
I'm currently leading the education department
at Blockchain at Berkeley.
And Mason, do you wanna go ahead
and introduce yourself really quickly?
Yeah, hi everybody.
My name is Mason, also in the education department here
at Blockchain at Berkeley.
Very excited to have Nida today. We're going to be
talking a little bit about developer impact and Web3, what Eigenlayer is, what the future of it
might be, and then we're going to end with some hot seat questions about the Web3 industry.
Okay, yeah, so thanks N Nader, for joining us today.
I just first want to ask you a bit about what is EigenLayer and what do you think is your
long-term vision for the protocol?
Hey, everybody.
Thanks for hosting this and looking forward to this discussion, especially maybe that
question in particular, because we recently had a video where we asked a bunch of people
what EigenLayer was, and it was kind of interesting to kind of see how we got such a wide variety of answers
and it's one of the things that we're really trying to to focus on also in the next year is
trying to kind of really um get the message across about what eigen layer is because you know when
you dive into a lot of the underlying pieces or primitives that make EigenLayer,
it becomes pretty complicated, but the value proposition is pretty simple.
It's just a developer platform for building blockchain applications that removes a lot
of the restrictions that traditional blockchain virtual machines introduce.
So, if you're a software developer and you're building software in a traditional environment like a server, you're writing TypeScript or
you're writing Python or you're writing Rust or whatever, you're making API calls,
you're talking to databases, you have complete control and flexibility over
what you can do. But when you're building on a smart contract, blockchain, which is
what people typically think of when they think of
building blockchain applications is writing a smart contract, you are very constrained in
what you can do. So therefore, it just unleashes a lot of innovation and a lot of things that you
can kind of build when you build with Eigenlayer. Awesome. So just as a follow up to that,
can you talk about what that journey has been
like developing EigenLayer and then what is your vision for the future of the protocol?
Sure. So, well, I can kind of give you my experience, I would say, with EigenLayer because
I've only been here for a little over a year, but EigenLayer itself has existed for a couple
of years. It's only been on mainnet since last year. So for less over a year, but Eigen layer itself has existed for a couple of years.
It's only been on main net since last year.
So for less than a year has it been on main net and kind of available in production for
people to actually use.
So I'll actually share a tweet here.
I'll pin it to the top.
If anyone's interested in kind of like a quick TLDR, what Eigen layer is and what people
are building on it, That's a decent start
because this is like some of the more well-known services that people might be familiar with.
Anyway, so my experience with EigenLayer, yeah, so I met Sriram who's the founder of EigenLayer
back in 2022. I was in New York for a conference and it was actually at a university. I don't even
remember what university now but
anyway I was there for this conference and they had these little breakout rooms and and Sriram was
there presenting Eigenlayer and there were like five people in the room or six people it was just
like very early early on and he it was more of like an idea at the time even though I think at
the time he was like forming the company or something and And, um, I heard his pitch about Eigen layer.
It didn't make a lot of sense to me at the time.
The one thing that was exciting to me though, was, uh, was Eigen DA
because he did have that idea back then.
And, um, I was at the time working at Celestia, which is essentially a
different version of what Eigen DA is in the sense of that it's a data
availability layer for building rollups.
So that kind of caught my interest,
but what caught my interest the most
was Sriram as a person.
He was just very, very compelling,
a very eloquent speaker and obviously very smart.
So I approached him with one of my friends
after the talk was over and we asked him to have coffee.
We went and had coffee, we hung out for like an hour
and then I invited him to dinner and we ended up hanging out like the whole night and I got his telegram.
So like a couple of years later, Igenlayer like blows up and we've been staying in touch
and I'm looking for a new job. So I basically dropped into his DMs and was like, hey,
can you hire me? And he like didn't respond at all for like a couple of weeks so that kind of
sucked so I basically was like out interviewing at other companies and stuff and took a job
somewhere else and then like right after I took the job Sriram finally responded and was like hey
let's chat which was awkward because I had already taken a job somewhere else. Anyway, long story short, I ended up quitting my job after one day and joining
Eigenlayer for less money and less equity because I liked this team a lot better.
Anyway, so that's my story of how I kind of joined Eigenlayer.
How Eigenlayer was started.
It's essentially not a new idea in the sense of like using security to existing security,
pulled security to do other things has been a thing in like Cosmos and Polkadot.
But the constraints that were there in those implementations made it to where there wasn't
as much innovation as what EigenLayer has essentially enabled.
Because you can think of like these
previous implementations of only being chains. But with Eigenlayer, you can build arbitrary
services. So you don't have to be an actual blockchain on Eigenlayer. In fact, there are
so few blockchains on Eigenlayer because there are so many other things relative to like
what a blockchain is. So if you look at that tweet, you can kind of see some of the stuff that people are building.
We have recently, UMA and Polymarket are building like a prediction market specific oracle,
which is really cool because Polymarket is obviously the most successful prediction market
in existence and even has been like on CNN and MSNBC and all these places around how it's kind of like a new way to, I would say,
prove, or not really prove, but it's like a new way for people to learn about news,
breaking news faster than anywhere else and to kind of understand truth around news as
well.
Oracles, on that note, Redstone is one of the most widely used oracles in existence, and it's
built now secured by EigenLayer.
We have dozens of AI companies building on EigenLayer, Ritual, Hyperbolic, I would say
Sentient, Gaia, OpenLedger, just a bunch of different AI companies building verifiable
I don't want to go through the whole list because there's a bunch of stuff and
that's kind of getting off topic.
But, um, the, the general idea behind, I can layer if we're going to get kind of
like into the more, uh, detailed weeds of, of essentially how it works is it's
kind of like a four sided marketplace.
So you have the economic security that needs to exist in order for these
services to, to be built and use the economic security that needs to exist in order for these services to be built
and use that economic security.
So when Eigenlayer was first launched,
the word restaking was used
because essentially to get that security,
Eigenlayer built a set of smart contracts
that allows people to take the stake
that they've already staked into Ethereum
and then restake that into Eigenlayer
to secure more services.
And that poses a problem because when people hear that EigenLayer is a restaking platform,
they don't understand that it's kind of a means to an end. Like the restaking is more of a means
to actually build arbitrary software to build and create and offer a
developer platform for building blockchain and software and verifiable
software.
But anyway, I kind of got off on a tangent.
So I'll just pause and like see if you have any thoughts or questions.
Yeah, no, definitely.
Thank you so much for sharing.
I know you mentioned a bit before you joined Ionlayer.
I know that you spent a while at AWS where you led developer relations.
So I was wondering if you could tell us how it's been maybe comparing contrast to your
time at AWS.
So kind of what you're doing right now at EigenLayer
for like developer marketing and education as well.
Yeah, so like what is my job at EigenLayer?
Yeah, or just like kind of what are the differences?
Are the differences between what, I'm sorry?
You like developer relations at U.S. versus like what you're doing. Totally, okay. You asked versus what you're doing.
Totally. Good question.
Yeah. I'll even go back a little further because
developer relations and developer education are essentially almost the same thing in some way.
I unfortunately did not attend a great college like
Berkeley or any other university to be
like majored in computer science. It was more of a thing that came like later in
my life and therefore for me to learn software development back in 2012 we
obviously didn't really have the LLMs and stuff that you have today. And what I heavily leaned on at the time were people that were creating
video tutorials and blog posts and open source projects that kind of taught me
how to code and I spent years and years following all those things to kind of
get my foot in the door in my career.
And then when I first started seeing like the tiniest bit of success,
I became really, really infatuated
with essentially returning the favor
and wanting to do the same thing.
So from the moment I could,
I was essentially taking the things that I knew
and trying to teach them to other people.
On the side, I was a software engineer,
but on the side, Like I was a software engineer, but like on the side,
I was kind of doing this like a blogging
and video tutorials and stuff.
But one thing led to another,
and I was contributing a lot to Stack Overflow
for React Native.
I somehow became like the number one person in the world
for React Native on Stack Overflow.
And I still am,
even though I haven't really done that in a long time.
And what that ended up leading to was a lot of opportunities
for educational like types of opportunities.
So I would get consulting from Stack Overflow.
People will be like, oh, you're the number one person
in the world on Stack Overflow for React Native,
you must know your shit.
So why don't you come and like either teach my company
how to write code in React Native, or why don't you come and like either teach my company how to write code and react native,
or why don't you come and just do this little prototype for us or whatever.
So I learned at the time that there's this whole world of like software training.
And I was getting paid like 60k a year in Mississippi as a software developer building mobile apps.
But I learned if you do software training,
you can charge 10 to $20,000 per day
for going on site and teaching people how to write code.
And to me, that was insane.
I was like, that's like as much money as I make
in like three or four months.
But I kind of started diving into this whole world
of consulting
and realizing that there was so much opportunity there.
I even found people that were doing this and like just paid them my whole
paycheck essentially to get them on the phone with me and teach me their world
of like how to get your foot in the door.
So one thing led to another.
I had, I had some of this inbound coming from Stack Overflow and I decided to put
up a website called
React Native Training and I basically was like I have this company we teach people how to write
React Native and we know what we're doing but in reality it was like just me and that's kind of
about it. But anyway so I put on this website up and man after that I just started getting an insane amount of inbound. I landed clients like Microsoft, Amazon, Warner Brothers, Chase, you name it.
You name like any big bank.
I had all the big banks.
So that was like my first opportunity to do developer education like as a career.
And when I was in Seattle for training my client, Amazon.
Someone in the audience was from AWS and they were like,
hey, let's go get coffee.
I have this idea, I wanna run by you.
I'm like, cool.
So he kind of like pitched me the front
and web and mobile team at AWS,
which was kind of still fairly early.
And he was like, we're looking for someone
to do developer relations there.
And you seem like you'd be a good fit because you're out here,
you know, teaching and all this stuff.
So I decided to take that opportunity and essentially kind of like shut down my
consulting company because of a few things.
Number one, I was getting a little burnout going around the world, like doing that.
And number two, I was very much doing the same thing over and over every day.
And it became a little, a little like boring and just stressful.
And I'd never really worked with like really insanely smart people like at AWS, who actually had educations and who really, you know, knew their shit and were like, you know, to me, some of the top people in the world that were building software.
So I went to work with AWS spent spent three and a half years there.
We started from around 1,500 developers on our platform.
The platform that I was working on specifically,
which was kind of the front end web and mobile SDKs.
And then by the time I left, we were closer to around 300-ish
thousand active developers, which
meant that a developer built an app and they were
making an API call from the app.
So that was kind of our measure.
So during that time, we grew that, which was a really fun and exciting opportunity.
Discovered crypto and essentially overnight almost decided to just switch careers and
work in crypto.
So from there on, I kind of went and found a job and one
thing led to another and I've been here now four years. The biggest differences though
between crypto and like AWS, DevRel, I would say it's a lot more competitive in crypto,
a lot more cutthroat, a lot less collaborative in practice.
Like in theory and people like to say,
oh, we're partnering with this, that or the other.
But if you're kind of like competing with someone
on a protocol level, there's just a lot of like
negative things that kind of go on behind the scenes
that no one really sees, which isn't the most fun.
But I would say that that's probably
the only negative part about it.
Everything else about working crypto to me is awesome, because it's just a lot more like of a fun, fun, I would say,
like culture and things like that. But in general, like community building, education,
I think a lot of that stuff is kind of the same. You're out there trying to do everything you
possibly can to make developers successful.
Because if they're successful, they're going to go out and tell their story and you don't
really have to do that work as much.
You kind of do everything you possibly can to have a handful of successful people out
there and then they're going to essentially be the mini to mini relationship for your
company and you just want to continue fostering as many of those success stories as possible.
Yeah, I actually wanted to touch on that.
Like Jess said, you were talking about the part about competition.
I was reading back on one of your posts, I believe it was from 2022, but it was
your framework for developer impact.
And you talked a lot about like building bridges as a dev.
What kind of, can you talk about like the bridges that were laid out for you in the past and like how that helped
you and then how you kind of like you're paying that forward to the new devs and trying to
Maybe break down that competitive layer and bring more people on board
Yeah, totally
So the way I see it
It's kind of like a long term.
It's a long term game.
I think a lot of this stuff is a lot more longer.
It's more like a marathon than anyone would like to admit
because a lot of things in crypto seem to be so fast paced
and like things go through these hype cycles
that come and go within sometimes within weeks or months, right?
But in reality, it's a really long term play
to kind of build
a very valuable company. I like to really look at companies like, you know, that have
been around a long time as more of the direction and approach of a company that I would like
to be at in crypto, even though you don't really see that approach taken that often
here. Like I would rather be the next AWS.
Um, and it take 10 years to get there than to be the next, um, I don't know,
like what's a, a company that came and went like fairly quickly anyway, you
know what I'm saying?
Like, yeah.
Um, so therefore like these relationships that you build, you don't have to tell
them, you don't have to sell them on something today, you don't have to tell them, you don't have to sell them on something today.
You don't have to convince them
to come build something today.
Instead, you want to work somewhere
on something that you truly believe is valuable,
because you know that at some point,
people are gonna build things there.
And then number two, you wanna build trust with people.
So you wanna kind of meet people,
build a relationship with them, get to know them, help them out no matter what they're doing. If they're building on
a competitor's platform, fine, help them out, get to know them and stuff. Because
it's more about those relationships that you kind of build over time. And then at
some point, you might have the opportunity to share something really
incredible with them that might make them decide that they want to kind of build
something on your platform, I guess you could say.
So in terms of what building bridges means in that perspective, it's basically just like
out there teaching stuff to people and showing how to build hopefully valuable things.
And half of that would be for the software I work with but the other half would just be in general
So like a lot of my tutorials don't really have anything to do with eigen layer at all
So that's kind of my general take
Do you think like allowing people to code in their own language has been important?
like for eigen layer, yes
Yeah, I think so for sure I mean
I think that it's just essentially just a way
to lower the barrier to entry for building
verifiable applications in general.
Even though where we're at today is still
pretty far away from where we need to be in terms
of developer experience, if you kind of look at really the teams that are building
directly on EigenLayer, they're often very, very sophisticated, advanced teams
that have protocol engineers that are capable of building basically anything.
They can go into our smart contracts, they can figure it out. But that leaves
out the 98% of other developers out there that are capable of building valuable
software if they were to go to AWS or they were even to build just some software right.
But they don't have that deep, deeply technical knowledge to kind of build out something on
Eigenlayer because of the fact that our developer experience still isn't quite there yet.
So thankfully there are a lot of products out there,
or not a lot, but there are a couple of products out there
that essentially solve this problem for us.
So depending on the developer that we talk to,
we either tell them, yes, it's a good fit for you
to just build directly on Eigenlayer,
or we direct them to a team like Authentic,
who has a very, very quality platform with a lot of
success already, launching a lot of very, very valuable companies as EigenLayer ABSs.
Got you.
I actually have a follow-up to that, and this might be unique to me, but I'm a new developer,
so I learned to code just a couple of months ago.
And when I was first
going through this process, reading through a lot of these docs, especially like Web3 docs, I think
it assumed a lot of knowledge. And I'll give you a maybe embarrassing example, which is when I was
first learning how to code, I didn't even know the difference between the code editor and the terminal.
So I was putting these like terminal commands within the code editor, right? So can
you talk about how like, how do you keep a pulse on new devs? Avoid things like this happening,
like try to build those bridges as much as possible, especially when we see the advent of
AI enabled coding tools bringing a lot of new devs into the space.
I mean, I think you just try to make it to where there are no stupid questions at all,
because basically all of us have been there and we've all really, really started from
somewhere and not known anything at all at some point, right?
So I say like have the mentality that no one really cares about the questions that you ask.
They're not going to judge you because even at Eigenlayer,
there are questions that in my head I'm like,
I shouldn't ask this because it's probably an obvious thing I should know.
But then I'm like, no, I should ask this because I need to know this.
It's super important for me to know and no one's
going to judge me because I don't know that.
That never really goes away in your career, in my opinion. Obviously there are some like geniuses that maybe already know the answer to everything
right but for the most part most of us are still going to ask questions that in our head
are like oh this is a dumb question but you should just ask as many questions as possible
and be around people who are non-judgmental who are there to help out and kind of understand that that perspective which in my experience has really been most people
i think in our in our head we're more worried about people judging us than in reality they will
yeah i agree i think one of the most important things is just like asking questions as much as possible. Yeah, I agree.
And just like having no shame about it.
Yeah, 100%.
Okay, I wanna transition it a little bit
about future facing.
Do you wanna talk about something
that you are personally excited by?
This doesn't have to be related to EigenLayer at all,
but what is something that you find very, very exciting
developing right now?
So definitely the AI space has a million things
that are still really exciting to me.
I think the different ways that we're starting to see
verifiable AI are pretty exciting.
But if I had to name one thing specifically,
the thing that I've been diving into the last couple of days
has been a model context protocol.
It just allows you to really supercharge
and extend LLM APIs in different ways.
So it's also just a really fun
and experimental like space right now.
So yeah, if you haven't checked out MCP,
definitely check it out.
Yeah, definitely. On the contrary, what are some developments you think that are a bit lacking in
the space or haven't fully been fledged out and what would you like to see more of?
In crypto specifically, I guess.
Yeah, in crypto.
I think we still don't have a ton of user facing applications that are crypto native, but that don't require the person to be crypto native, if that makes any sense.
So yeah, so like I shouldn't need a wallet to go and use an application, I should be able to just use it because like if I'm like when I was working at AWS, it was crazy. We would have people come to us and say, we're willing to spend like $10 million
to shave off 250 milliseconds from our like response time for these APIs
because they have this information that they've gathered based on whatever that
information that they've gathered based on whatever that they've done with analytics
that tells them that their bounce rate at 250 milliseconds starts really going up and
they're losing money.
That's how important friction is in the real world.
But in the blockchain world, we expect people to download a wallet, learn about seed phrases, buy tokens, transfer tokens, bridge tokens, all this stuff to use applications sometimes.
And I think it's just crazy that anyone would expect to get a lot of users in that way.
So I think the UX for most applications is still like lacking.
But I mean it's obviously a thing that everyone else acknowledges and there's a
lot of people working on building better experiences. I think Warpcast is a decent
experience. I think Infinex in terms of like DeFi is a different decent
experience. Abstract is taking a good shot at building this into their culture and their network
in general.
I think there are some really exciting applications that are built on ZKTLS on Opacity Network
in particular.
So that essentially are using blockchain primitives and creating, like, I would say valuable features into an
application without the user even knowing or caring that it's built on a blockchain.
And one of those is Earnify, which was like the number two finance app in the app store,
along with a couple of other like top apps in the app store that are built using ZKTLS. I think we're going to see a lot more applications like using ZKTLS and that's a cool interesting
protocol that's solving a lot of those challenges. I would say it's solving a lot of the challenges.
It's just like saying it's just kind of proving the value proposition of crypto.
It's just kind of proving the value proposition of crypto for
Right.
I totally agree.
Yeah, I totally agree.
I was actually writing a Twitter thread on ZKTLS and I was, uh, I came across
here YouTube shorts for it, so I was actually going to ask you like what, um,
cool projects you see are developing.
are developing a space, I guess he answered that, so that's super cool.
I guess you answered that.
So that's super cool.
Kind of to follow up, I would say if there's one prediction you could make on
kind of what direction the industry will be moving towards in the next year, what
would you say?
Well, things are, I mean, I don't really, I hate predictions.
So this is so hard to tell about some of this stuff, but I think in
general, you can just assume that things are getting better.
Like the UX is getting better.
Scalability challenges are being solved.
Um, you know, things are moving quickly and slowly at the same time, but when
you zoom out, you definitely see progress.
And the fact that we're starting to see top apps
in the App Store powered by blockchain primitives
without exposing like tokens or wallets and stuff to me
is like a huge, great, good, like positive signal.
And I think we're just gonna continue to see,
I think the one prediction I'm gonna make is is that that we're going to see a ton of applications that are powered by crypto that aren't the main story or the headline of the application. It's just going to be this is a cool application. You should use it. And no one's going to care that it was built using crypto. As opposed to today, it's like the top thing that a lot of us would say, like
in our space, because, um, because like we like to show our protocols and stuff
like that, right.
But, but really where we want to be is like, um, someone launches cursor and
I'm like, oh shit, cursor is so bad ass.
Like I'm going to go use it and I love it. But we don't care like how they built that.
Right.
Like no one, no one knows that they use DynamoDB or did they use a SQL
database or a new SQL database?
Like it's just not part of the discussion.
So that's kind of where I think crypto is going to be in a couple of years.
I think that's really cool.
So basically just abstracting the technology but having an application that's super cool
that everyone would want to get onboarded no matter what the technology is being used.
Yeah that would be my one prediction or hope I would say.
But we're seeing it already so yeah.
No I can really agree on that.
There's a lot of uh, I
Feel like when I'm going to these conferences and hearing about all these new developments
A lot of the value add seems to be very centric to just web 3
Right and you need to understand like the protocols in order to understand the value
but more recently
Things that bring value outside of it like for example like cross-border stablecoin payments, you know
I think it's just like one of those examples that you're abstracting the need for blockchain at all like the bridge for example
But you are actually like providing more value to people inside or outside of web 3. What are your thoughts on that?
So what is the general, I guess the main question?
Um, so what is the general like I guess the main question I
I guess it's just about technologies and developments that have value outside of Web3, where you are abstracting the need for blockchain.
Yeah, I agree with that. I think we're seeing that already and we're starting to...
And I think as these APIs become better, I think the biggest challenge right now is that
it's still tough to build good UX with the existing blockchain APIs that we use or
Web3 APIs. I think the APIs are getting better and it's due to the fact that the underlying
protocols and infrastructure and everything like that is also becoming better.
And we're learning new techniques of how we can build out developer-facing products that don't require a lot of, I would say, domain expertise.
And then also in terms of like the products
that do require wallets and tokens and things like that,
all of that is also kind of being abstracted away
by really nice SDKs.
So like, I think a good example of that
would be privy wallet,
and that you can allow someone to sign up with Google.
They don't know that they're getting a wallet created on their behalf
and all these things that might be happening under the hood.
For example, that wallet might be getting funded by like 50 cents for gas
and might be doing a bridge, it might be doing all these things,
but the user, all they're knowing is that they're signing up with Google.
So, yeah.
Okay, cool. I'm going to kind of change the topic to, I guess, like college students, since that's what we are. I wanted to ask, like, what initiatives has EigenLayer done to help
support students starting out in this space? And how can students just get more involved in
general? Well first of all I would follow Mustafa who is here in the in the chat. I don't know if
we want to bring him on stage but he might be the the best person for this because he's literally
running an entire university program at EigenLayer. Mustafa would you like to speak?
Yeah, if you if you can just request to speak we'll bring you up here maybe
Okay, cool, so I'm not sure he's
Yeah, I don't know if he's in a meeting but if not he might join me anyway, yeah, I mean we we
We have Mustafa on our team and he's literally
spearheaded an entire like university focused
group within our company that is
that is gonna be doing the largest activations.
Gonna be doing like the largest activations. Here we go
Here we go.
Yo, this is my first Twitter space,
so just figuring out how to do it.
Can you guys hear me?
Hey, welcome.
Is that Vassafa? Yeah.
What's up, what's up?
So I guess most recently, most of you have probably seen,
but we hosted the Eigen Games at ETH Denver,
which was the most widespread university competition,
crypto history.
So that was like a very cool milestone.
And I know we had a couple of Berkeley students there as well
and they also did really well.
I think we see, I think it's Sanjay and Deep.
Yeah.
Yeah, shout out Sanjay and Deep.
You guys crushed it.
And yeah, we're actually like in the last two weeks,
we've been working very deeply on the rest
of the activations we want to do with students for the year.
And I definitely think the Ion Games, we had one.
It's not going to be the only one we host this year.
We were definitely considering doing another one and maybe
even a Hacker House or two in between. But we have a lot of activations that we want to do with student
developers and I think the general consensus from people at Eigen layer is
we are all super impressed with the quality of the student developer talent
out there. Obviously especially from schools like Berkeley and whatnot and I
think we definitely want to double down down there and keep working with students
because it's been an amazing journey so far.
So, yeah, I guess I'll just touch on that.
In Denver, it was just really cool to see it all come together because I know it had
been months of work and a lot of time, money, and effort put in not only from us but a lot
of really great sponsors and stuff.
But it was great because not only did they participate in Eigen games, but they also
took a lot of the top prizes at the main ETH Denver hackathon, which I thought was really
interesting to see.
Because when we first met with ETH Denver, I think they were kind of worried that we were putting on like a side event that we were going to be taking away from their event.
But in reality, what ended up happening was that we contributed a lot to the event and made it even more valuable and exciting with more talent based on the people that kind of came in through IGN Games.
Great, thank you. And this is just going to be our last final question. This can be either
Mustafa or not or both, but what would your advice be to college students right now who
do want to build in the Web3 space? I would like Mustafa to take that one.
Yeah, definitely just come speak to us.
Speak to the folks at College Dow.
I think initially people think like the crypto space is like very intimidating for students,
but I actually think it's the opposite.
I think there's so many cool student initiatives and activities that are just happening in our industry that don't happen in Web2.
And I think there's so many cool companies and organizations that are successful in doing that.
Obviously, EigenLayer is doing a lot. I definitely think Solana does a lot of cool stuff as well.
Avalanche. There's just so many cool protocols that are working with students.
And then there's so many student-led initiatives like CollegeDow, like DormDow that are working with students. And then there's so many like student led initiatives like college now like dorm down that are just emerging and I think just rolling up your sleeves and just
try out all this cool stuff that's happening with students just yeah just keep doing more of that.
And yeah that would be my advice. Okay awesome well thank you guys so much for coming on we
really enjoyed you.
If anybody has questions, you heard him, just hit him up on Twitter, right? DMs open, I hope.
Right. My DMs are not open, but I believe Mustafa's are open. Mustafa, yeah, yeah. Okay.
Sweet. Awesome, guys.
Well, thank you so much for coming to the pod.
I appreciate your insights.
Have a good one, okay?
Bye, thanks for tuning in. .
