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ETH Turns 10: The Builders, the Battles, and the Breakthroughs #CHAINREACTION
Recorded: July 30, 2025 Duration: 0:56:51Space Recording
Short Summary
Ethereum marks its 10th anniversary, celebrating a decade of innovation that has transformed the blockchain landscape. With record ETF inflows and a resurgence in interest, Ethereum is positioned as a leading player in the DeFi space, driving trends in institutional investment and cultural tokenization.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. . Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome back to The Chain Reaction. Today is a big show. We
are really looking forward to talking all things Ethereum. It is, of course, the 10
year anniversary of Ethereum today. Lots of people doing the Ethereum flag bearing, really proudly celebrating 10 years of Ethereum.
It's crazy to think that 10 years ago, this protocol went live and it really was the protocol
that changed everything. A lot of us here are big believers in Bitcoin and what it does,
but Ethereum brought smart contract functionality to blockchains and really opened up the door in terms of what we can do on blockchains.
And I don't think we've ever looked back since.
We've seen a load of other protocols to do the same, if not better.
And we've seen a huge ecosystem build around Ethereum.
And we have some of those builders from the Ethereum ecosystem joining us here today.
It's a great pleasure to have Eli Ben Sasson, who is, of course, the co-founder of one of the biggest Ethereum L2 providers.
And Eli himself did a lot of the pioneering work inventing ZK-proof cryptography.
So, Eli, it's a great pleasure to have you with us here today.
We've also got Leon Stern from Polygon.
Thank you, Eli.
We'll bring you up now. We've got Leon Stern from Polygon. Thank you. Thank you, Eli. We'll bring you up now.
We've got Leon Stern from Polygon. I'm waiting for Yatsu to jump on the space as well. Of course,
he needs no introduction to our listeners here today. And we'll have a few other guests jumping
on throughout the space. So we're going to be talking all things Ethereum. But before we do
that, we've got Voltan here, of course, and we've got Rob. Gentlemen, how's it going?
Happy 10-year anniversary to Ethereum. What doesereum mean to you guys rob you first well i it's a difficult
question for me to answer because last cycle i was knee deep in ethereum and the various l2s
it really it was ethereum more than bitcoin that got me into the space I guess because uh Ethereum
um was where people were building uh early games using blockchain technology and that's what sold
me on on the the value of blockchain and how useful it can be and how it can revolutionize
a number of industries and over the years I I've I've leaned more toward Bitcoin but when it comes
to sort of a varied interest of things that's happening, Ethereum has always
been the one.
It's always it's been like the one of the sons.
It's been Web3's son.
I'd say, you know, if cryptocurrency, the son is Bitcoin, then Web3, the son is Ethereum.
And everything has revolved around it in one way or another.
And everything has revolved around it in one way or another.
And even the things that have, the newer protocols that have spawned have tried to, in many ways, imitate what Ethereum did and Ethereum's initial vision.
And they've just tried to execute it slightly differently, which just means to me that Ethereum is on to something, has always been on to something.
And it's been an incredibly quick 10 years.
I'll be honest, I missed the first, what, two years of it,
but it's been incredibly quick.
And I think this is nicely timed as well
because we're starting to see that big uptick
with Ethereum interest again.
We're starting to see people building more than ever before.
The Ethereum ETFs are pumping.
So it's a good time to hit this 10-year anniversary
because Gareth, I know you and I have definitely talked about this a lot.
And Zoltan and I spoke about it yesterday.
It's been a bit boring with Ethereum over the past few years.
It's just been a bit it's felt a bit stagnant from perhaps the outside for builders it wouldn't have.
If you're right in the trenches, I'm sure it feels bustling.
But now even the people on the outside can see what's happening
it's really starting to ramp up and so it's been a big part of my time in this space and i'm looking
forward to speaking to people about it um i actually don't know what zoltan's relationship
with ethereum is uh other than he was at eth cans um so zoltan what does ethereum mean to you i think
that's a lovely question, that.
It is. And this is very unoriginal of me to say, but for me, digital oil is really the best description of Ethereum. As long as Bitcoin is digital gold, I really look at Ether as the oil,
which is fueling most of the DeFi activities, most of the yield opportunities, and really most
of the smart contract functionalities
to this day. So for me, the digital oil description really fits. And back in the day, I actually
came into this space because of Bitcoin, but it didn't take me long to really see the importance
of Ether and how much Ethereum's infrastructure really changed and what smart contracts really
meant for the DeFi space.
So for me personally, digital oil is always the first term that comes to mind when someone
asks about that.
Zoltan, I'm not sure if you are going to do a market update today, but I mean, we've got
such a banger list of guests that list of guests um that we did want to
get straight into that but um you gave me a thumbs up behind stage so he does have a quick markets
update and then we'll we'll be chatting uh at length to ellie uh yatsu and and leon as well
um but yeah uh far away zoltan and we'll get into the topic at hand thanks gareth i definitely don't
want to take too much too much away of our time.
We have a lovely panel discussion going on today.
I just quickly want to reflect on what's going on with Ether
because we are seeing its 10th anniversary.
And just two quick thoughts on macro first.
The Fed's interest rate decision is coming in
in a little less than five hours,
followed by Fed Chair Jerome Powell's press
conference. We are hoping to not see too many bookish remarks, which could ruin the investor
predictions for the next interest rate cut, which we're currently expecting to see in September.
However, we are expecting the Fed to keep rates at 4.25 to 4.50 today, so keeping them steady.
It is just a function of the comments
that we will see from the fact here.
And just speaking of Ethereum,
I really feel like this is amazing timing
because Ethereum is really emerging
as this next corporate crypto treasury asset.
And it's not just the corporate treasury asset right now
because Ether ETFs have also posted a record
of 2.3 billion worth of inflows in seven trading days.
Nexo analysts have seen this as a signal of structural demand for long-term ETH exposure,
not just a short-term price play until the next all-time high,
but really ETF buyers and investors looking to accumulate for the long term.
And what's really interesting here, guys, is that even though we
have this 2.3 billion record from Ether ETFs, the corporate Ether buying has actually been
outfacing ETF buying since the beginning of June, according to a recent Standard Chartered report
we covered yesterday. So that means that since the beginning of June, even though we had these
monstrous ETF inflows, it may be mostly the corporations and the corporate adoption that's really driving Ether's price action.
One last thing to celebrate Ether's anniversary is a recent NASDAQ filing, which has basically asked to enable BlackRock's ETF to be able to stake its holdings. And I really feel like this is huge coming from the world's largest asset manager
because it could really position ETH as more
of a yield bearing asset, not just for us crypto degens,
but also for traditional investors
and institutional ETF buyers.
And where this really is going to
is what also Sander Chartered predicted,
that corporations will end up buying up 10% of Ether supply
because they're already holding 1%.
Publicly known crypto treasurer are already holding 1%.
So 10% doesn't seem really that far.
But that's it for me, guys.
I feel like Ether is in a great position with a lot of structural inflows.
And as long as we don't see any horrendous comments from the Fed,
I really don't see anything stopping our upside here. Gareth, I can see you talking on my second screen,
but I can't hear the words coming out. I guess there's an issue there. Okay, we've got all the speakers on stage now.
So I think we just get into the conversation.
And I'm going to start with a big question because this is the question that has perhaps been on my mind with this anniversary.
Yatsu, welcome.
I'm going to start with you for this one.
Looking back at the last 10 years of Ethereum, do you think we could you
imagine where we are today? Are you pleased generally with where we've ended up? Is it
more or less of what you you hoped would happen with Ethereum over the last decade?
Thanks. Always nice to start off with a really big question. So first of all, I would say that when we first got into the space,
we got into the space with NFTs, and obviously Ethereum was absolutely critical for that.
In late 2017, 2018, the market was much smaller.
And for those who may not remember, 2018 you could buy ethereum at 80
dollars or maybe 100 whatever it was right so so so could i could we have imagined where things
were going to go in terms of value i you know i don't think we took that lens so obviously positive
around where it's gone macro uh you know i think the the the big vision that we were seeing in blockchain, and to me, we
talk about the application of blockchain technology, Ethereum was really the one that demonstrated
that, more so than Bitcoin. Bitcoin ultimately, as the, let's call it, the ultimate digital
store value has immense positive purpose. But in terms of applications and, you know, the
whole idea of, you know, decentralization and the utility in that decentralization,
which is basically how do you create mass human coordination in a decentralized way,
really fits the Ethereum moniker best. When they talk about the world's computer, it's really the
world's coordination engine, if you think about it. whether it's coordinating DeFi, coordinating NFTs, coordinating financial constructs or whatever, or even coordinating L2's building on top of it.
I would argue that, you know, that is kind of what we saw, that the potential for what Ethereum could provide as, you know, basically stores of us owning our digital property and building on top of it in a permissionless manner and coordinating human action is kind of what we hope we would see.
And I would say continues to do so in direct and indirect ways, meaning that Ethereum not only sort of kind of became the world's computer and allowed people to build L2s on top of it,
but also inspired a ton of copycats to try to be their own sort of L1s and compete with that narrative.
But it really, I would say sort of started with Ethereum.
So I'm generally pleased in the direction.
I won't comment on price action per se,
it's obviously positive at the moment,
but in terms of its mission,
in terms of decentralized compute
and decentralizing court and coordinating human action
in a decentralized manner,
I would say Ethereum has been very successful
and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.
Andy, I'm gonna bring you into the conversation here.
I was chatting to Nathan,
who's the head of comms at Stockway,
and he told me that you had a funny story
about kind of turning down the start of Ethereum.
I don't know if you want to talk about that story.
I would love to hear it, but I don't know if you want to.
But just in general, your overall involvement in the development of Ethereum and what you think 10 years later of where the ecosystem and protocol is at.
Yeah, so I'm happy to share that story. So I first went down the rabbit hole of blockchain at the Bitcoin conference in San Jose, 2013. And at that conference, I think a young reporter from Bitcoin magazine by the name of Vitalik Buterin was there and reported on that and I was talking already you know that was actually the moment when I realized that the cryptographic proofs can solve scalability for blockchain and that has changed my life and
it's also putting an impact today even you know on all blockchains and also on aetherium I think like current plans are that you know leaning far more into ZK so so this
all started there like 2013 at this talk that I gave so anyways Vitalik later
traveled to to Israel and he met me I was a professor of computer science at
Technion and we sat in on a bowl of hummus actually at one of the you know cheap
cafeterias on campus and we discussed a whole bunch of things about like how you know proofs
work and how they can help we also discussed how you could put general computation into a blockchain
and you know overcome the halting problem by basically charging you know having the those
who submitted the declare how much computation they're going to take uh which is something that
we always do in proofs anyways and a few months later um he reached out and asked if i would like
to review the yellow paper and you know get on a call and see if there was like some role that i could uh take somewhere there and i remember
going on this one zoom call and like coming off of it like really scared thinking uh because like
there was a lot of tension between the various people there and like uh it seemed to me like
my impression was that um you know in the best of cases uh like vitalik gets into a lot of trouble and lands in prison for whatever he's doing.
And in the worst case, he gets killed or harmed because this whole thing goes south.
So I said, guys, I don't want anything to do with this stuff.
And of course, if there's ever a time machine built, I'm going to go back there and say, hey, yeah, let me in.
I'd like to uh
contribute and be a part of it so that was like uh how i learned of ethereum um of course since then
you know uh ethereum and vitalik and others have been extremely uh instrumental and helpful in our
own journey and we continue to play a very important role for instance
you know Justin Drake and Vitalik met first at speakers dinner that I did a
conference just before the founding of Starkware and then Vitalik was actually
the person who kindly priced the first round of the seed round of Starkware and it was one of the angel investors for it.
We got our first research project from Ethereum and of course everything we did initially
was on Ethereum.
So I have a lot of love and respect for Ethereum.
It's really a great innovation.
But to answer your question, 10 years years later um are we am i satisfied with
where ethereum is i would say uh yes and no yes of course it's amazing how uh important it is today
in the world of uh blockchain but but no because i think that that a lot more could have been
achieved and and i say the same obviously for bitcoin and others like uh i think
you know blockchain doesn't really yet have product market fit for in the sense of like
everyone using a daily once or twice and finds value in it there is a lot of um generally uh
speculative spirit around it which is i think. Like a lot of people are waiting and hoping for it
to change the world.
But for most of our friends and family,
they are not, I mean, they are using the internet.
They are using AI daily,
but they're not using blockchain daily.
So, you know, we still have a gap to close.
But nevertheless, it's, you know, 10 years for Ethereum, you know, the best general purpose blockchain with smart contracts.
It's definitely a very happy day and day of celebration for me.
Yeah, I mean, that's an amazing, amazing timeline there, particularly as, you know, when did
you start hearing about Ethereum?
Oh, 2013.
That's very few people can give that answer.
I want to draft in Leon as well.
Leon Stern, SVP of Marketing at Polygon.
It's only fair that we get your answer as well.
And I think what's really interesting here is that we are going to get three completely
different answers.
And I think it's interesting. Well, I are going to get three completely different answers and um i
think it's interesting well i say we'll get different answers i think most people are more
or less aligned with um what you just said there ellie with uh yes and no to being happy where
ethereum is now i think in 2021 2022 we would have all more or less said yes or close to yes
whereas now i think enough time has passed
that we haven't seen quite the level of progress that we would have liked over the past three years
and so now it becomes a sort of yes and no but there's there's certainly a lot of potential
there um so yes Leon uh can you hear me okay are you there yes can you hear me, Robert? Loud and clear. So yes. What's your answer to this? Yeah. So I'm sorry to disappoint, but I guess it's a very similar answer.
So I look back at 2017. So definitely, yes. When I just heard about crypto for the first time around
that time from my roommate, and I think I bought ETH for like
less than a hundred bucks. So if you told me, if you would have told me then that it will get to
the point it is today, so I will be very surprised. But as you just said, like 2021, it felt like
Ethereum was ruling the world and it will be, and there were jokes about all these Ethereum killers and that no one will be able to beat Ethereum.
And that changed a lot in the last few years, unfortunately,
at least from the Polygon side, we always believed in Ethereum.
The Polygon goal from day one was to scale Ethereum.
And we still believe in that and we're still building around
that if it's
or a CDK chain that it's L2 on Ethereum, if it's
eventually moving the POS chain
to become a full L2 and not just a sidechain.
At Pana that we launched, ActLayer that settles to Ethereum. So everything is still around Ethereum.
So we're very bullish on it and we believe in it.
But yes, I agree.
The last three years have been tough.
I think that we are seeing the change now
and the sentiment is definitely changing again
in a positive way.
But I think I would agree with Ellie.
We're moving probably too slow into the real adoption
that we want. I think we're moving probably too slow into the real adoption that we want.
I think we're finally finding those use cases.
There are many places in the world
like where stable coins and payments
are becoming that product market fit we were looking for
and not just being a speculative industry
or like a gambling industry.
But yeah, I think we're moving towards that but definitely
slower than i would want to gareth we've lost your mic again um i will continue with this line of
inquiry though leon i'm just gonna come straight back to you um and ask that with where we are now and you know you talk about some of the directions
ethereum has been going and i think back to the last cycle and some of the directions ethereum
um some of the paths it was on that were perhaps overvalued um what do you think is the most
exciting area right now like what are you really genuinely interested in when it comes to Ethereum?
I think Ethereum is going back a little bit more to be the direct, I'll call it like,
I don't want to say interface, not on the interface, but like being directly
improving like the user experience, like the PEC upgrades are not just, like it's scaling Ethereum for the end user as well,
and not just to enable other chains to build on Ethereum,
which is obviously,
I say this is a part of Polygon, which has L2s,
but I think that something really exciting for Ethereum,
that's something that was missing
for the last couple of years,
is that focus on people to come and use it.
And in the past, my go-to chain was Ethereum.
Now it became the L2s on top of it,
which is, I think it's debatable.
And a lot of people on the space talk about it, right?
Like how much L2s are actually good for Ethereum.
And now I'm answering just looking at from the Ethereum perspective.
I think that it has to have a balance in between people being able to use it.
And Ethereum has the specific use cases.
There might not be the fast and cheap transactions with almost zero fees,
but there are reasons to use Ethereum directly for its security, decentralization.
So I think that it's just finding that balance and focusing the chain into those and not just enabling the other chains on top of it.
And I think that shift is already happening. I just want to take a quick moment to jump in and ask if you're enjoying the space and enjoying the
conversation, that you please like and retweet. And of course, give all of our speakers a follow.
Yat, Eli, Leon, we really appreciate you guys taking the time to chat to us.
taking the time to chat to us.
Eli and Yat, I'm going to pull you guys back in here. Just in terms of
Eli and Yats, I'm going to pull you guys back in here,
just in terms of the overall sort of progress
of the Ethereum ecosystem.
I went to CAN for ECC about a month ago,
and I spoke to a load of different builders
in the space for a mini documentary
that we're aiming to get out in the next week,
deep in production now, but really, really interesting.
And we were kind of exploring the value of the competition from other next generation
L1 blockchains, the sort of dichotomy between balancing a lot of execution and settlement
functionality on the L1 while also still relying on L2s
to bring a lot of the scale and functionality
to the ecosystem.
Eli, you're probably the best person to comment on this
and just because of what Starkware has built.
But in your mind,
how do you see the balance between things
and changes at the Ethereum Foundation,
the picture upgrade?
Do you think that there is a decent balancing act now
between the L1 and the L2s and what that future looks like?
I'm not sure.
No, I think it is being challenged.
First of all, there used to be a time that all the big waves,
next wave of whatever was the speculative frenzy happened on Ethereum close by.
But that's not so much the case anymore, right?
There are these sort of speculative waves are now on other places.
are now on other places that's number one and number two I think that's
That's number one.
something about the the approach of a theory into scaling and to L2s has been
first of all it's changed a little bit over time and it's still shifting like
even you know as a leading L2 I don't quite know what exactly a theorem wants
to do with L2s or what its approach is about L2s
but I think that even from the start there was something that you know could have been done
better like and I it could still be fixed I think that Ethereum like the way the right way I think
should be to say like we are the place where like big things matter, and we are the very best place
for settling big things.
And when we have L2s and then L3s and everything building on us, that's great.
But we actually, we Ethereum, would like to find ways to bring value back in both directions.
So we would like a way to find a way to tax them in a variety of ways, you know, need them to stake or, you know, use ETH as a token or do a bunch of stuff. And in return, we will also like do stuff that will help them.
like a few steps in one direction that said,
oh, we're just going to make it really, really great
for some of the roll-ups.
It was really mostly for the optimistic roll-ups,
like with the blobs and everything.
And then we're not going to, you know,
even think about how this is going to play back
or pay back to Ethereum.
And then there was like some sort of, I don't know, panic.
And like, oh, wait, shit, this isn't working well.
And we're being challenged by Solana and by Base.
And where's the value accrual to us?
And I think now there's sort of, I don't exactly know what,
but there's still thinking over things.
So I think it's a period of challenge.
And I think the good news is, to some extent, the leadership of Ethereum recognizes this.
And I think, you know, the changes in the foundation and the formation of Ethereum lies are a testament to that.
But I think, you know, the world is still waiting to see whether there is a new vision, whether it aligns with which parts of the ecosystem, and where is Ethereum heading.
And it's a question. I don't know the answer.
I'm hopeful that we'll hear good news, but we're at this stage where we're waiting to see.
Yeah, I think that's an interesting point.
I want to bring in Yat on this as well, because when it comes to the health of Ethereum, I
guess, I've always kind of followed Animoca's investments and what they invest in in the
ecosystem, at least last cycle, because, you know, follow the money is the old cliche, but
it also is very helpful for working out what's growing, what's got eyes at the moment. And
Animoca has, I mean, epitomized that and have been crucial to the growth of Ethereum, particularly
projects on Ethereum have grown as a result of investment from Animoca brands. And I noticed that this year, Animoca
has leaned a bit more into Bitcoin, Bitcoin related stuff. And I wonder what areas of Ethereum
are still of interest when it comes to investment? Do you see any trends that are
emerging that Animoca is excited about that sort of thing?
Yeah, so thanks.
So maybe the first comment I would say,
just because we're investing in other ecosystems doesn't mean that we're not super bullish on Ethereum generally.
So the Bitcoin stuff really relates around sort of, you know,
like you can't be in the Web3 space and not also be in Bitcoin.
And, you know, we did stuff on the treasury side.
But maybe the distinction really is, you know,
Bitcoin is the ultimate store of value in
terms of the reserve asset of the industry. And with Ethereum, really, it's different in the sense
that people in the Ethereum ecosystem spent, right? But we saw this also with, you know,
when Ordinals launched, which effectively called them the NFTs of Bitcoin. It wasn't people who
owned Bitcoin that spent their Bitcoin on it, because they never want to spend their Bitcoin.
It was people from Ethereum that popped over and said, hey, let's go and buy some Bitcoin to buy these ordinals.
So let's see, it's a different culture.
And so, you know, why did we sort of lean into Ethereum and continue to do so, whether it's with L2s or with Ethereum, sort of EVMs, broadly speaking,
is because it actually resembles much more
the movement of an economy, right?
And so call it decentralized, but it's an economy.
And so the thing that excites us is, I mean, Ethereum still has deepest TVL, right?
Most of the stable coins and growing stable coins are in Ethereum.
So both on the institutional side, like if you're, you know, we have a joint venture with Standard Chartered and Hong Kong Telecom
are on stable coins in Hong Kong. And as you may know, the HKMA is now going out to give out
licenses actually starting from August. And again, the very base case everyone's talking about is
it's going to go in Ethereum first before it goes somewhere else. And that's because it's institutionally ready.
It's stable.
It's proven.
It's secure.
And if you're going to put billions of dollars onto something, you want to make sure it's really, really secure and also sufficiently decentralized.
So Ethereum does fit that bill.
bill. You know, maybe the other thing I would also comment around that is that, you know,
with that first wave that we saw when Ethereum really hit its first peak at almost $4,800 for
a brief period in November of 21, what was fueling it was the other area that was around sort of
assets of value. And this was cultural icons, as we see today, whether it's artwork or, you know,
music or this type of stuff that we spend lots of money on.
Ethereum was the backbone of that. And so because Ethereum users spend versus Bitcoin users,
the utility and I guess the value of Ethereum has to be on what to spend on. And so when you fragment it to using the infrastructure in a institutional manner, which is fine.
You know, therefore, L2 is essentially you could call them institutions because L2s are basically call them kind of B2B type clients to Ethereum.
Right. And in terms of that, they create a solution that is sort of, I guess, used differently at mass scale.
scale, the consumer side is on the L2 and I guess the L1 is the infrastructure, you lose the reason
The consumer side is on the L2 and I guess the L1 is the is the infrastructure.
to hold Ethereum as a reserve asset to partake in that opportunity. So when NFTs were, because NFTs
are still half a billion dollars a month in terms of trading, but when 99.9% of all NFT activity
took place in Ethereum, actually that was the reason why a lot of people held onto it for the
opportunity to buy into something of some form of cultural artifact. So I think
what Ethereum has done well is institutionalize itself and scale it that way and build L2s around
it, which to me is a form of institutionalization of form and being very good at the B2B side of
things. And where I think Ethereum needs to be better at is the B2C side of things, as it were, because that's the driver.
That's the narrative that's needed as well.
And I think we don't, I think, frankly, it's because of the core of the team hasn't been focused on that.
I mean, Vitalik has famously sort of said that he is not comfortable with the whole sort of, I guess, you know, what he called million dollar monkeys back in the day. He recognizes their importance, but, you know, he's not on, let's
say he's not super comfortable with it because he maybe doesn't understand. I think we see this a lot
in sort of the utility perspective. People say, well, you know, people don't, you know, what's
the utility of it? But then when you talk about spending on cultural artifacts and things that
mean to our identity and essentially extrinsic spending as it were, that's actually where we
spend 90% of all of our capital, whether this is a Rolex or a Birkenback or a luxury car or whatever
that is, right? And Ethereum was the king of that and has given that crown away a little bit
or distributed, shall we say, it's still 40% or 50% of that. And I think if it
leaned into that, I think it would make a huge, huge impact to Ethereum because you want to keep
the most valuable thing. It's kind of like, where do you want to keep your Picasso? You want to keep
it somewhere safe. So it's not that different between a valuable cultural artifact versus a
valuable amount of TVL that you want to maintain from a pure intrinsic perspective. Both are
important. I think you bring up an excellent point here, Yat. And it's something that you want to maintain from, you know, pure intrinsic perspective, both are important.
I think you bring up an excellent point here, Yat,
and it's something that I want to ask Elie and Leon next,
just in terms of working at, you know,
two of the biggest L2 ecosystem players.
What is, you know, what does the future look like
for L2s then?
And like Elie and Leon, in your mind,
who your main clients are, how that works,
why you settle on Ethereum and potentially why you would settle somewhere else.
I know Eli, of course,
Stockware's been working hard on, you know,
ZK proofs on Bitcoin.
But I think it's an interesting question to probe.
Yeah.
I mean, for us, you know, our, what we bring to the world is the integrity of math.
That is, you know, through the ZK Stark proofs that we invented and productized first and basically convinced the whole world that this is the endgame.
And we're very proud of that.
And we make it accessible through smart contracts and a blockchain and decentralized network
that has already, you know, staking.
Version 14, which is already going to have
decentralized sequencing, mempool, and other things,
is coming to mainnet in like two weeks.
So for us, the end game has always looked
that this technology will be ubiquitous and will be used everywhere and will be an integral part of what I like to call the integrity web, which is this thing that interconnects, first of all, a lot of the blockchains, the existing ones like Ethereum and Bitcoin.
ones like ethereum and bitcoin uh someday you know solana and others sui and uh down the line also
you know all the myriad um um national and corporate um institutions that are gonna you
know they're already coming in and using this stuff so um that's what i think at the end of uh
at the end state starknet will be so for us it's very natural now
now you know we're a small we're a small team we can do only one thing at a time so we started with
ethereum because it was easiest to settle and to offer scale to it now we've expanded to bitcoin
because as yet said that is really where you where most of the value of blockchain is,
and there's a lot of demand there for more scale and more expressibility.
But I don't think we're going to end there.
And yeah, I mean, I would love to see a continuation of a thriving relationship with Ethereum,
which is really the first that has brought smart contracts to the world,
and we'll continue with that, but definitely will also expand to other things.
Leon, maybe you want to jump in there and chat a little bit about that from a Polygon perspective?
Yes.
So for Polygon, I don't know if always, but it has, at least in the last few years, our focus has been to be as close as possible to building products that are good for users, that have real product market feed.
If it's by doing them by ourselves or supporting applications on top of the chain to create those products.
top of the chain to create those products.
And we want to do that as long while maintaining like the
four Web3 ethos, which is like our Ethereum ethos,
which is decentralization and security.
Now, I think for Polygon, like we had many opportunities
and even some would say that Polygon POS is an, it's not an L2,
well, it's a side chain,
but they would say that's even more like an L1.
And we never tried to actually move
into that direction completely
because at the end of the day,
we still deeply believe in those values
that Ethereum represents.
And I don't think there's any intention to move away from that.
As I started saying, like, we believe in building the products
that people can use.
And I think that the best way to do it
while maintaining those values and that decentralization
is still being on top of Ethereum.
I think on Meli's point, I think Bitcoin represents something similar.
So I don't think Bitcoin is an option for a Polygon right now, but I believe that it
could be at least from that perspective.
But yeah, I don't think that Polygon has any intention to move away from Ethereum,
what it represents, and keep building on top of it.
Gareth, I apologize. I have to jump off to another meeting, but great being here.
That's all right. Thanks so much.
Eli, thank you so much for your time again, for all the work that you've done in the Ethereum ecosystem in general. And of course,
those of you that don't follow Eli, please follow him. I think he's got a lot more followers than
the rest of us, minus Yat. So he doesn't need more followers, but follow him anyway. Thank you,
Eli. Yat, I just want to get your general thoughts on the future of all these different blockchains
now.
I think we'll start wrapping up the space from here.
I know the main Ethereum account is going to be having a live stream with Joe Lubin
and Vitalik Buterin.
So if you haven't marked that on your calendar, go check it out.
Cointelegraph will be covering that.
And I think it's going to be really interesting to hear from two of the most important minds in Ethereum
and their thoughts 10 years later
and what the next decade holds.
But yeah, Yacht, for you,
when it comes to Solana Sui,
there's a load of different L1s out there
that are doing amazing things
and bringing a lot of performance and execution
that the Ethereum base there simply probably can't do.
What's your view on the future of all of this? Do you think interoperability takes us to a point
where it doesn't really matter what chain you're doing things on, it's all going to be interconnected?
Yeah, no thanks for that. So first of all, I would say that the, you know, my mental model,
for those of you who might remember the early
days of the internet, is that I think of, I have two mental models around sort of L1 and L2s,
right? And the first mental model is around that of nations, right? Because of the tribalism that
exists within it. And frankly, when you create a set of rules that people operate under, you
basically create, you know, decentralized societies, which kind of mimic nation-like
states of some form, right? Whether it's the priorism of Bitcoin or Ethereum or Sui or Solana
or Ton or whatever you want to call it, they all sort of behave in a certain way and they all
have similar artifacts that you need, you know, like what do you spend on culture or what you
basically build community, what applications are built on it. And many of them are also competing
in similar ways. So I think there's that aspect. so that's on a sort of ground level but then you know when you go into
mass adoption uh we're starting to get to the point where it's very similar to like you know today we
don't talk about mp3s we just talk about music but there was a time when we talked about digital
music in the format of mp3s because that was relevant and for those of you who might
remember back in the day you know we had isps right and now nobody really talks about isps
just have a connection somewhere and just go and use it use the internet you don't care about that
and i think l1 l2s are very similar to the isp construct where a lot of the value is captured
in the beginning because a lot of the applications are not yet as mature as they will be in the future.
And if you take a look at how the internet's developed, it was essentially all infrastructure
and companies like AT&T or PSINet or AOL or whatever telco infrastructure company was
where most of the value was captured and was, of course, critically important.
And then they ended up growing more of these platforms and people, but it was the
applications on top that actually brought in all the mass users. And eventually, I would say on
the consumer side, people might not necessarily care what chain they're on, but on the application
side, call it more B2B, that will matter. And so Ethereum will always have its place because it's
the most secure place to put something. So if you want something valuable and safe, then you're more
likely to put it on something like Ethereum than somewhere else. And that would be always valuable. And that infrastructure
might be the underpinning infrastructure for everything else that's out there for the L2s,
because they may not be able to compete with that, like with stable coins, for instance.
And the other point I will point out, what's beautiful about blockchain is the permissionless
nature. So what we had in the early days of the internet was, you know, the early days of the internet was entirely permissionless and there was no controls.
And then, of course, with Web 2, we had all the platforms take over and we suddenly were captive to them.
And in Web 3, again, you go back to the whole entirely permissionless nature of the chain.
So if Ethereum goes to $10,000 or $20,000, what do you think
happens to every other token ecosystem? It doesn't struggle or suffer as a result. It actually grows
because someone can literally, in this case, move the liquidity from one chain to another because
they're entirely free to do so. If Bitcoin goes to a million dollars, it's great for everyone. It's
not just good for Bitcoin, it's great for the entire ecosystem. Because again, liquidity can move across. And therefore, we called about Web3 as the one where you share the network effect
and where this network effect is distributed across. And you have the entire blockchain is
one entire network effect that may have some weak spots and some strong spots. But similar to Reed's
network effect, basically, they're all still connected in one. And there might be some bigger ones and some smaller ones, but they all benefit.
And that means someone has the opportunity to grow from one network to another, meaning
that someone else can launch another L2 or launch another L3, maybe, or maybe even what
appears to be a competitive L1 because they can bridge assets over and nobody can stop
that.
There's no gating.
And I think this is the power of the permissionless nature of blockchain and therefore much more distributed and better opportunity overall.
So I think there'll be many more tokens, many more chains.
I'll close with this thing, which is when you think about what is the biggest,
it's not exactly RWA, but RWA-like asset in the world
that could benefit from tokenization, it's our attention.
Our attention is worth over a trillion dollars a year.
It's called advertising. And when you tokenize that, how is that tokenized form of advertising represented
in the traditional, call it web one, web two world, in the form of websites, if you remember.
And we used to have these million dollar websites, and now we have still websites. But
if you think of an Instagram or TikTok page as actually a kind of a website, right?
And how many websites do you have?
You probably have 10 or 15 or 20 kind of websites,
all trying to garner forms of attention,
which are monetized through advertising in which you receive nothing today
because the platform has it.
And Web3, through a token, you have that.
And the foundation that started and kicked it all off was Ethereum.
And we'll continue to have that.
And there'll be billions of them. and they'll all consolidate in these networks
to share these network effects.
And who's going to be the biggest ones are the ones that have the deepest pools
of liquidity and the biggest safety and security around them.
So I think it's a it's a bullish long term future for Ethereum and of course,
for the blockchain in general.
You're so good at rounding out these these conversations with like pithy ends,
but I've got a question. So I need to ruin the flow and ruin your ending by asking you a question.
I really like the point about ISPs. So I talked about this a lot on podcasts in like 2021 and
2022 about how I imagine blockchain is going to move to the background.
And again, I think a lot of people use the analogy of the early internet.
But I've thought about this more and more.
And when you were saying that, it occurred to me that there might be a difference here.
And I can't quite make sense of it.
So I'd love to get your thoughts on that.
And that is...
Yes, there's absolutely different.
Yeah.
Sorry, sorry. Let me just add one more one
more uh little nuance to this so with with isps right we it did move to the background and nobody
really cares which isp anyone's on anymore unless your isp shits the bed and you get disconnected
and then you really care who you with are you with ntl they're terrible you know whatever
um and and so it has moved to the background and when it works nobody really
thinks about which which provider you have um but i think one key distinction here when it comes to
blockchains is no one was ever excited to be with aol right you weren't it didn't aol didn't have
this cult fan base that was helping prop it up for good reason. It
was extremely boring. But Ethereum does have that. And when retail was in here in droves last cycle,
it was very, as you said, cult-like. It was very cult-like. And I think if we were to extract that
cult-like mentality, how does Ethereum attract the sort of growth we need?
Or does it just all shift to sort of the institutional side?
That's kind of my area of confusion, I guess.
Yeah, so maybe the lens that we take,
and certainly I take,
is that the reason why nobody,
or it appeared that nobody was in love with AOL,
although frankly, in the early days they weren't. You might remember the same for CompuServe, which was a sort of precursor of AOL, smaller
type of audience, but had a sort of die-hard fan community, is because it was a source of income
for them. It was a form of value that they received and it was pivotal because they ended up building
their communities from them. So the people who did not sort of have an issue about losing AOL
was when they found other places where the community could move or had migrated to.
And that sense of belonging and ownership disappeared.
So the important thing is how do you build and maintain that sense of belonging?
And this is, by the way, true for brand power.
So this isn't just a case of, you know, a company or an institution.
It's about brands. And because telcos generally had a utility frame and were often run
and operated very similarly to like an electricity company or any kind of utility right telcos and
high speeder were kind of like a utility you know you you give it its utility value and it's valued
purely as utility it has zero brand recognition and brand value and brand affinity.
Now, look at the biggest companies in the world.
They have fans, right?
They have fans who love the company.
But again, it comes down from a sense of belonging.
And the powerful thing about blockchain is that belonging is amplified because of ownership.
So every person who owns a bag of Ethereum has a financial incentive on top of it.
And so they all become sales agents for it, if you will, and they become champions of the call.
And that's the big difference.
If AOL had given ownership in a way to every AOL subscriber and they all became shareholders of AOL somehow, if that was even feasible.
Of course, it wasn't.
But they would have like hundreds of millions of tens of millions
of shareholders as a result of that. You would have a very, very different type of community
construct. You would have people pop up and run AOL workshops, and they would be the ones going
to other people saying, hey, you should sign up for AOL. It's not AOL hiring salespeople. It's
AOL shareholders who would do that. And then you can see exactly what's happening in crypto.
Who are the people onboarding onto Ethereum or in Solana or in SWE? It's not the foundation. AOL shareholders who would do that. And then you can see exactly what's happening in crypto, right?
Who are the people onboarding onto Ethereum or in Solana or in SWE?
It's not the foundation.
They do their work.
It's every other person who holds a bag of Ethereum.
And you saw this with NFTs.
If you have a Borde, a Pudgy Penguin, or a Mochaverse, you basically become that champion.
So the big difference and why you will have many more networks in those environments versus the utility of pure blockchain is that there's a layer below and it's a layer of ownership. And of course, as the
industry grows, you're not going to have every person be an owner of the same size. This is
like Bitcoin, right? People going to Bitcoin now have less than the people at Bitcoin before,
but you have essentially a kind of tree and that tree gets distributed. And of course,
there'll be many that won't succeed, but there is a first and early mover advantage because
the earlier you are,
the more value you accrue,
the more value you generate.
And frankly, the more status you have.
If you're in Bitcoin whale or Ethereum whale,
you have more status.
You want to keep that.
So you don't just want to,
it's not just about the money.
It's about what you've attained in that community.
So I think that's a big difference.
And therefore, I think blockchains are always going to be,
and layer one, L2s are always going to be much more enduring than say an isp because it goes way past beyond
the utility construct because of ownership yeah it's leo uh leon and we just want to say thank
you so much for taking the time um we we've been going nearly an hour here and um obviously with
ellie i think we've had a really great discussion about 10 years of Ethereum.
It's crazy to think it's been a decade since the protocol went live.
The amount of change that has happened in the space of 10 years is unbelievable.
I think, and I remember very, very well hosting the X space, I think it was three and a half,
four years ago when the merge happened and how much fanfare there was around that.
People to completely change its consensus mechanism, go from proof of work to proof of a jet while it's in the air 10 kilometers up.
It's a crazy feat of engineering to have done that.
And the amount of change that has happened, good and bad, I think has been healthy.
There's been a lot of criticism of the Ethereum Foundation in the last 18 months.
It's something that we really have explored in depth in this Ethereum documentary that we are going to be putting out in the next week.
We'll be putting out a trader for that a little bit later today and maybe tomorrow.
I'm just waiting for our video team to wrap that up.
But we're really excited to show the wider cryptocurrency space, this mini documentary, and really the big sort of existential battles that have been happening within the Ethereum community in the last 18 months.
And I think we've told a pretty compelling story and we spoke to all the right people to bring that to life.
So really looking forward to showing the community that very, very soon.
Once again, if you did join us today, thank you so much.
Please go ahead, like and retweet the space so we can get it out there.
Of course, the Chain Reaction is live every day at 3 o'clock Central European Time,
9 a.m. Eastern Time if you're in the United States.
And yeah, if you enjoyed our speakers as well,
please give Yacht, Leon, and Eli Ben Sasson a follow.
Of course, Polygon and Stockware,
go ahead and follow them as well.
And Yacht is, of course, the chairman of Animoca Brands
who really need no introduction.
It's been great to have this conversation.
I see Rob's got his hands up, so I'm going to let you do the honours and finish things off, Rob.
Thank you very much, sir.
Yes, thanks to everyone, Yat, Leon, Ellie.
I just wanted to do two quick points.
One, yesterday I said that we're going to have Frank Corver on today to discuss the tornado cash case with Roman Storm.
I spoke to him late last night and he believes that the verdict from the jury could happen today.
So rather than do our call before that, he's going to come on and we're going to do a video episode.
It might be tomorrow. So if the verdict does come out today, we will be discussing the entire case with him tomorrow.
So that's going to be a really big episode. And just before we go, I just wanted to say a really sad piece of news.
A few months ago, we had Dan Hughes, the founder of Radix on the show, an incredibly nice guy,
an incredibly great builder. And Radix announced this morning that unfortunately, he passed away
on Sunday, which is truly devastating. The industry is worse off for it.
Trust me, he was an incredible builder.
He's built an amazing protocol with a lot of dedicated fans.
And now it's on them to keep his vision going.
So it's a really sad piece of news.
And yeah, thoughts to anyone.
I know we do have a lot of the Radix listeners.
Their community is unbelievable. And since Dan came on the show to talk about it but they they
often dip in here and they often interact with it um really proper builders and and web3 to the core
so um very sad piece of news and i just wanted to flag that on the show but that is it for today and
that is it for another episode of the chain reaction we will be back whether it's with frank tomorrow to discuss the case or not we will be on air at
2 p.m london 3 p.m paris 5 p.m dubai and 9 a.m new york no matter what and we will always have
the best guests discussing the biggest stories so thanks again a massive thank you to yatsu
and to leon and to ellie for contributing to a brilliant event, which is the 10th anniversary of Ethereum.
And that was a fast 10 years and there's a lot to achieve over the next 10 years.
And I wonder, hopefully we'll have a space again in 10 years and we'll have you all back on and we'll see where we are and worry about how quick time is passing.
So thank you very much for joining us on this Wednesday and we will see you again tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you.
