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Oregon Blockchain Group🎙#Crypto #Blockchain
Recorded: Feb. 3, 2023 Duration: 1:27:40Space Recording
Full Transcription
So, what are some of the things that you guys do?
What are some of the tools that you equip members with, some of the courses that you guys have taught, and some of the programs or potentially folks that you bring in to help bridge that gap between business and Web3 and set them up for a bright future in the industry?
Yeah, I'll kick us off with that, and then I'll have Bobby share his thoughts, too.
To clarify, yeah, our focus for the short and even medium term is to definitely be that business-confident club, but we do want to cater to our computer science majors, and we're going to be out at UPenn next week for their hackathon.
We're going to be participating in that with some of our more dev-oriented members, and we do want to grow that aspect of our club, but we recognize that we need to, at least in the short and medium term, have a competency.
But that's not to say we don't want our members to be as technical as they are able to be.
In terms of how we equip our members currently for the workforce to get jobs, we've had members go to the likes of protocols like Lit Protocol, all the way to venture capital firms, to Wall Street, to DA Davidson, to all sorts of things that kind of tie back to crypto in one way or another.
These deliverables that I mentioned earlier is one of the primary means by which we equip our members, because it's not only a proof of your education and proof of participation, but it truly does teach you by struggling through it.
It's not only proof in and of itself, but it's a course, like creating the deliverable is a course in and of itself.
So that paired with our weekly Tuesday meetings, in which we bring guest speakers from all around the ecosystem.
Sometimes it's a protocol.
We had Axelar speaking with us a week or two ago.
We had a venture capital firm talking with us, like even behind that.
Next week or two weeks after that, we have Near Protocol speaking with us, and then we'll have Andreessen Horowitz speaking with us later in the term.
We get different perspectives on what the industry needs, where the industry, like where it's at, where it's going.
So we can kind of orient our mission every week by hearing what they have to say and asking them questions.
We even had an IRS agent come and talk to us who is crypto friendly, and he runs a couple of validators on his own.
So our guest speakers, our deliverables, on Thursdays, we run a kind of like a social hour.
It's called Block Talk.
And that's a place where we talk about the headlines, anything from what's going on with the ETH core dev dissension about the Shanghai fork or the Shanghai upgrade.
I think we might have lost Aaron, or maybe I'm lagging out.
I'm not sure which one.
I still hear him.
Okay, Block Talk.
I was mentioning how our members are able to also participate in our Thursday Block Talks, where we talk about all sorts of things in the cryptic ecosystem.
So that's another way just to stay engaged and to be educated on a very surface level.
And then our education course for our new members and existing members in our community does a more thorough job of introducing different topics, providing resources for them to go in and dig in on their own.
And then lastly, I would say one of our kind of like fourth ways that we provide education and value to our members is by paying for courses that they need.
We had a group of six members during the fall term that wanted to participate in a particular crypto and Web3 coding and networking education course.
And so we funded that for them.
And they went through it.
They gave us a presentation on what they learned.
And overall, it was a really good experience to have done.
And we also go to conferences.
So we will learn on the spot.
We'll network.
And the last spring, we went to Permissionless in Miami.
This year, we're sending 20 people out to Austin for consensus 23.
And we're likely also going to attend East Portland just in our backyard.
Yeah, the sum total of what Aaron's all talking about here is the word communication.
That's the one advantage we provide everyone, a place to talk about these things that are incredibly complex and nuanced in one space at one time.
And that's the reason why I'm in the club, because I can exchange those ideas with people that know more than me or know less than me and have a fun conversation or debate about why KYC should or shouldn't exist.
So, like, how we really prepare people is just communicating and allowing a place, an open environment for these ideas to be shared.
So, going to Aaron first, you said that you're a finance major with an econ minor, Aaron.
Am I correct?
That's correct, yes.
Okay.
And without giving away your secret sauce, because you said you had several startup ideas, what kind of work do you want to do in the industry?
Yeah, that's a good question.
I really believe that using crypto as a rails is going to be the first step in mass adoption.
I certainly see the light when it comes to everything being decentralized and having kind of this, like, infinite composability.
But I think that the first step will be having the incumbent companies like Starbucks, like Wall Street, kind of decentralized firms that can, for the most part, be trusted, I think.
And having them offer their services in a decentralized way, because having services and products on blockchain allows for them to be composable with other new ideas.
And I think that gives power back to the people when they own an NFT produced by a centralized company that's still composable, ideally, you know, in the future with different products.
So, I really like that idea, and I want to work in the capacity that bridges real-world assets, real-world services with blockchain to offer that true ownership that's manifested by composability.
And, sorry, I'm losing my train of thought here, guys, so bear with me.
Bobby, you are a master's in finance and computer science.
Yeah, bachelor's.
Bachelor's in finance, excuse me, bachelor's in finance and computer science.
What are your aspirations going into the workforce?
I have so many, let me tell you.
Let me walk you through my mind.
The first thing is, like, kind of, why am I here?
And that answer comes down to, I think, blockchain is a great way to bring people together, period, full stop.
So, what do I want to do after university, and how does my bachelor's in finance and minor in computer science apply?
Well, you know, these are businesses, in my mind, and they function in business-like government structures, but they also have a computer science method at its core.
And so, hopefully, I can understand the business side and the computer science side to both of those things.
But where I see myself going in the future is working in the guts of these systems and trying to be grassroots and provide value in that way.
In 10 years, what I'd like to be doing is applying blockchain systems to government structures and to legacy structures of, you know, Canada or the United States or so on.
I think there's a way to implement our republic in the United States over a blockchain and do it in a secure way.
And ultimately, that's where the end goal is for me.
But for the future, right after I get out of university, I'll probably end up heading into the Cosmos ecosystem because I believe they have the right sauce.
They got the secret sauce over there, and they got a handful of intelligent people working on collective action problems with blockchain and consensus mechanisms difficulties and a bunch of other stuff.
So, to answer your question, I'd hope to be working for a DeFi primitive like Ebmos or Juno, something that enables developers to build financial systems for people in the future.
Guys, what's the general sentiment around this stuff at the greater University of Oregon, amongst the greater University of Oregon student base?
Obviously, being in a blockchain club and being around individuals who are passionate about this stuff the way you two are makes it easy to get stuck in an echo chamber and feel like this is going to be a paradigm shift in technology, which I genuinely believe that it already is.
And it will continue to continue to disrupt industries.
But what's the general sentiment amongst your friends that aren't in the club, that aren't so involved with the space about this stuff, especially in a bear market as cold as this one, or at least where it seems to be thawing a bit, but with all the FTX nonsense and all the bad publicity that we've been seeing over the last six to nine months?
Yeah, that's a good question.
I'll speak about my experiences in the School of Business, and Bobby, you will have a good perspective about the computer science department also.
But yeah, in terms of the business students here, typically when they hear blockchain or that I'm a part of the club or Bitcoin, anything like that, the first thing they say is like, oh, Aaron, our NFTs is going up.
Or like, you know, I've invested in some NFTs or stuff like that.
And I, you know, I hear them and I like the enthusiasm, but I kind of cringe my molars a bit because that's not really the end game of crypto.
And, you know, monkey pictures does not represent what we're doing here.
And the question, are NFTs going up or down, is to me, that's not the right perspective.
And it's not their fault.
That's kind of all they really are able to see from the media, I suppose.
But NFTs are better described as a file format.
You know, that's a way that Professor Steve McKeon likes to put in.
I've kind of adopted that mindset, too.
So it's like, are PDFs going up or down?
That doesn't quite make sense.
And to me, it's the same logic with our NFTs going up or down.
And the other thing I'll kind of say about the attitude here is that it is open for the most part.
People are interested in the tech and they don't completely write it off upon hearing it.
I was recently promoting our club in my Management 335 class, just saying that our applications were open and describing what we do.
And at the end of class, one of my classmates asked me, hey, because in class we were talking about entrepreneurship, solving unmet needs.
And he asked me, Aaron, how is Bitcoin not an unmet need?
And why, like, what's the importance of something that doesn't have a current need?
And I think that is something we need to address with the student body here is that it's an untested technology at scale.
And so largely, there isn't a direct need in the current incumbent systems that most people will realize.
And explaining to them the potential of the technology, I think, reveals the potential need.
But it's not like I can't buy a certain product, so someone just needs to physically manufacture the product.
It's not that direct of an unmet need.
It's much more nuanced and political and cultural and societal than it is physical in nature.
So I would say those two are kind of examples of the attitude here on campus.
Bobby, what's your take in business and maybe computer science?
Yeah, I'd say the level of interest depends on your level of curiosity innately as just a human being.
Those people that are naturally more curious will be able to forgo their predispositions on crypto in order to learn about the possibilities that it isn't what they think it is.
And what I've found is you have to propose to different people in different ways.
I gave around 11 to 13 speeches to classes to recruit for Oregon Blockchain Group.
And the one issue I found across all those classes is they didn't understand how it applied to them.
And they wanted to.
It wasn't the lack of desire, you know, but it was the lack of explanation ever being given to them.
And so when I came to them to do that, that's what I tried to do.
But I would say for the most part, people are open to be subject of understanding the difference between cryptocurrency or digital assets and blockchain.
It just has to be proposed in the right way.
Now, for getting a little more secular in regards to business at our university, it is for OBA majors a more prominent thing in their mind because blockchain solves logistical problems.
For instance, Walmart in Canada implemented, I think over this last year, a blockchain into their system.
And why did they do that?
Well, there was around 70 different logistics sourcing companies they needed.
And 70% of their invoices to these companies would get kickbacked and disagreed with.
But once they implemented a blockchain, it diminished to 0.1%.
And this is an example I tried to use when talking to business, when talking to OBA majors, OBA's operational business analytics.
And it seemed to work.
What I find most interesting is the types of professors that are open to hearing about blockchain.
You'd be surprised to hear that business professors are more open than computer science professors.
Computer science students are don't understand how blockchain is different from a distributed database.
And so that's kind of the thing I tried to get to them when I presented to one of their classes.
So overall, what is the sentiment around blockchain?
I'd say it's confused.
And that's in part due to the lack of teaching at universities.
And that's why one of OBG's goal is to educate and uphold the values that we see fit for blockchain.
It seems a bit counterintuitive, at least for me, when you tell me that computer science majors are having a more difficult time understanding or rather being open to learning than –
or sorry, computer science professors are having a more difficult time than business professors.
I wonder why that is.
Yeah, I think it's for this reason.
They hear the word crypto and they think all these negative thoughts that come along with that word.
So I try to use the word digital assets now.
And then they think of the word blockchain and they think – and the idea that comes to them is distributed database.
I don't know if – okay, let me get really granular because the question we're asking means that.
There are professors.
There's around eight professors in our Python and C classes.
And of those, five were open to the idea and three were not and didn't allow me to speak, which is okay.
I didn't expect everyone to respond.
Now, I would say that's a net positive, a net good thing.
And of the people that were open to it, they came into the mindset with, hey, this blockchain guy has something that could bring me some value.
And versus those other three were something along the lines of, I already know what it is and I'm not curious.
So back to what I was saying at the beginning of this conversation, it just falls on the individual's innate curiosity.
But it's definitely an interesting question that I don't know if I can entirely answer.
Does the University of Oregon have any courses on blockchain?
So there are courses that I'm aware of that are related to crypto and Web3 and blockchain.
Actually, this professor, Stephen McKeon, I've mentioned a couple of times.
He's currently only from the university, but focusing on his VC firm.
But last year, he taught a master's course that was called Alternative Investments.
And the course spent two weeks on venture capital, one week on real estate, and seven weeks on crypto and anything related to that.
And so that was a more top-down approach to what blockchain is.
And there is a class or two in the Honors College that I'm aware of that discuss Bitcoin and some of the fundamentals of that.
I haven't taken that course because I did sit in on the master's course, but I have not taken this other course in the Honors College.
So I don't know the extent to which they really discuss blockchain fundamentals.
And, Bobby, are you aware of any courses in the computer science department that talk about, like, really the hash functions and everything like that?
Yeah, I mean, there's cryptography programs here at University of Oregon.
And I'm sure that – I mean, I haven't taken those, so I can't comment on that.
But I'm sure in some form it's related back to blockchain.
There is a course called Distributed Mechanisms for Consensus.
I think that's the closest we get to it right now.
There's another course for OBA, Operational Business Analytics, that's among the same names, like Distributed Management.
And they talk about how database systems are operated in a distributed environment.
So I'd say that's the two closest things we get to it right now.
But no blockchain course yet.
Baby steps, though.
When I went to school, there was – I mean, none of this existed.
None of this infrastructure existed.
And there weren't any blockchain clubs or even blockchain courses or even pseudo-blockchain or crypto courses, right?
And I guess the most you would hear about this stuff is someone mining Bitcoin in their dorm room.
And I think that's a big reason why so many more Gen Zs, from my anecdotal experience, seem to get this stuff.
I envy you guys for being born a bit later than me because I would have really loved – I think I would have really loved being in college.
I wasn't too crazy about university.
I just kind of did it because I was supposed to.
I think I would have really loved being in college when this stuff was around.
It's really exciting.
Guys, the final portion of the space, I like to do just the fun Q&A.
And it's pure speculation.
These aren't serious questions.
It's more so just me picking your brains.
You're obviously both very intelligent.
And you both know a lot about Web3.
And there's a lot that we could learn from you, which we already have during the course of this broadcast.
But I'd just like to go to the basics.
Bitcoin.
What do you guys think about Bitcoin?
Do you see it as the dominant crypto asset going into the distant future?
And if not, do you ever see it being flipped?
And if so, by which asset?
By which crypto asset?
I'll give a quick take.
I think Bitcoin is a good proof of concept.
And I think it will be interesting to see if we can ascribe more smart contract security to Bitcoin's network.
Because it currently is, I would argue, the most decentralized in kind of all the stacks in terms of like geography, the block builders, the kind of resources poured into it.
All the way through that supply chain, I believe, is the most decentralized out of any current blockchain.
So I think if we could ascribe security guarantees from the Bitcoin blockchain, that is a potential use case, which would be bullish for it.
I think it's not designed for effective transactions.
But I think as a store of value, it is certainly worth looking into.
Again, because of its kind of dominance in the decentralization, whereas Ethereum's switch to proof of stake has been coupled with kind of changes in its decentralization.
I think it's like only a third of blocks right now are not OFAC compliant, which I'm not here arguing whether OFAC sanctions against tornado cash is a good or bad thing.
Just the reality of the situation is that it's like half to two thirds of all blocks on Ethereum are compliant with those sanctions.
And I take that for what you will.
So I think there is a flippening in the future with Ethereum.
I think Ethereum has some of the smartest core developers that are the most aspirational and have the community support behind them, at least for the short term.
So I'm really bullish on Ethereum in terms of its utility and its development.
I think they have a really aspirational roadmap with all their urges.
But I'm by no means bearish on Bitcoin.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I'm taking up.
I'm kind of taking a middle ground here.
We'll see.
The one word that comes into my mind when I think of Bitcoin is actually two words is credible neutrality.
And what this means is that it is neutral in all decisions.
And that is actually a huge competitive advantage in my mind.
And I'll explain why in a sec.
I think the other benefit to Bitcoin is its liveliness.
It's never gone down.
I don't think it will ever go down.
I think the incentive structures are great.
And actually, I would probably be a Bitcoin maxi if I wasn't a Cosmos maxi.
Commenting on one thing that Aaron said that was very interesting is if we could port Bitcoin security over proof of state networks or even other proof of work networks.
There's actually a project from Stanford.
It's called Babylon Chain.
And what they do is they are basically a timestamping mechanism for proof of state chains that submits timestamps to Bitcoin, the Bitcoin network.
What does this mean?
It just basically means that they're porting over some version of security from the Bitcoin network to proof of state chains.
This actually increases something called a subjectivity guarantee, which just basically means, hey, the node I'm syncing up to a network is syncing up to the right chain.
Okay, let me pause and go back to the question because I've kind of gone off track now.
Do I think that Bitcoin will be flipped by something?
I don't think another chain will provide the liveliness guarantees as well as the security guarantees and distributed nature of Bitcoin in a proof of state network.
And that's my personal opinion.
And so in regards to that, I don't think there'll be another proof of work network that will ever flip Bitcoin.
I do see that there's a possibility that a proof of stake network will flip Bitcoin.
And the only reason that is for is because protocols, even in businesses today, the companies that make the most money supply the most utility for consumers on a broad level.
Look at Amazon, right?
Do I see Ethereum or Bitcoin providing more utility?
If Bitcoin's utility is that it's a great money, then sure.
But I think it can definitely be argued that Bitcoin is not great money.
It doesn't have a high enough velocity, which just basically means it doesn't it's not as money isn't traveling over it fast enough.
So I don't think it's a great money.
I think it is a great store of value, like Aaron said.
And in regards to the utility aspect, I think someone or a chain can outpace Bitcoin's utility.
There's no innovation and there probably won't be innovation.
But I think that's what gives it value as well.
So it's kind of a weird paradox.
The answer to your question is yes, I think something will flip it.
I actually don't think ETH will flip it.
So it's something that has yet to be thought of that will.
Definitely a fresh take.
I haven't heard one quite like that before, Bobby.
Okay, so then next up, guys, ETH.
What are your thoughts on ETH?
And I'm talking like ETH with sharding, where the main chain is used, security chain.
And it's a layer of proofs, and then all transactions are happening on highly scalable roll-ups.
What are your thoughts on the future of ETH?
Yeah, I kind of mentioned already one of my reservations about ETH is just that it is proof of stake, which is great.
If you actually look into the amount of energy it's saved, it's arguable whether it actually is 99% or something more like 10%.
But I think that decentralization needs to come first.
I think staking, like Bobby was talking about, the concentration of assets delegated to the top 10 stakers is going to be an issue.
I think both in terms of delegation decentralization and geography decentralization, I think if certain companies operate all their validators in the same physical locations, that's definitely a single point of failure.
So in terms of the roadmap, I think it's a very robust roadmap with tons of aspirations ending with the splurge now, where they just updated it again.
And I think dank sharding is going to be one of the biggest milestones for Ethereum, if not the biggest in terms of, you know, obviously scalability.
But just overall, I think that will finally allow fees to be adjusted to where your everyday consumer won't have to pay, you know, half a dollar, a dollar, two dollars just to buy a cup of coffee from your retailer.
And the assumption with that is that Ethereum is going to be money, I am undecided whether Ethereum is going to be money or not, or we're just going to use it as a rails to, in the short term, transact something like USDC.
And then Ethereum will just be used, obviously, for the transaction fee.
I don't know if Ethereum will be the money itself.
I'm still scratching my head on that, Bobby, maybe you have a take on that.
But I think, yeah, decentralization absolutely needs to come before we onboard the next billion people.
Yeah, the question comes down to, in my mind, multi-chain versus inter-chain.
And let's break those two down.
So, multi-chain is a synchronous environment.
And what that means is that all transactions are processed in a single block.
If I submit one on-chain, if I submit two transactions on two different dApps, they will be, at the same time, they will be in the same block on Ethereum network finalized.
Versus asynchronous networks, if I have two blockchains, not dApplications, two blockchains, and submit an application on one and another, they will finalize at two different times.
Okay, there's inherent network advantages to asynchronous and synchronous communication.
But, with Ethereum, it's called, it will be, let's assume sharding happens, and let's assume they get pressed, all these technical difficulties.
And Joe, one of the members in our blockchain group, we have violent disagreements on this.
So, I will say that I am often wrong.
But, with Ethereum, it is a multi-chain network.
And when we get into a sharded network, transactions will be finalized synchronously.
And what is this likened to, in my mind?
Well, it likens to supercomputers in the 1980s that we were trying to develop, and IBM was trying to create the best supercomputer in the world, but it didn't really happen.
And the reason it didn't really happen is because synchronous transactions on a network, trying to get everything fit into one form, essentially, is very difficult and very cost-effective, hence why sharding exists.
And what happens when you shard is you still have the synchronous network, but you have it partitioned across multiple different areas, so to say.
So, in some ways, it's more efficient than a synchronous network, but it underlyingly is synchronous.
Okay, now let's head to the inner chain.
Well, what is the inner chain?
It's a bunch of singular blockchains connected through a message platform.
We can liken this back to the internet in the 1990s with TCP, which is a protocol that allowed for message passing against through hosts.
A host is like your iPhone, computer, so on.
And why is this important?
Well, in an asynchronous network, it scales horizontally.
And what we found is that instead of building a skyscraper that goes all the way to the moon, it's much more efficient to build a few skyscrapers, maybe a hotel and maybe a house or two and lines to connect those all together.
So, what will happen to Ethereum in the future?
Well, this is certainly a hot opinion.
I think it will lose to networks that provide asynchronous environments.
And what is the network that does that right now?
IBC.
And IBC is inter-blockchain communication protocol.
That's the Cosmos ecosystem.
So, what do I see happening in the future?
Ethereum will probably come across these solutions and will end up in an issue of state bloat.
And the reason it will end up in an issue of state bloat, that just means that there's too much state on the chain and it's too hard to run a validator from Genesis.
It's because it's in a synchronous network and it can't partition that data.
But, like, let me take you out of the technical, you know, stuff for a moment and come back to the overarching question of where do I see Ethereum going in the next couple of years?
Well, I see it accomplishing all of its objectives.
I don't think there's a reason why it shouldn't, but it will be outcompeted by asynchronous networks.
I have no doubt about that.
In the same way, I have no doubt that the TCP outcompeted, that's the Internet protocol, outcompeted IBM supercomputer in the 1980s.
So, I'm an IBC Maxie for everyone who knows.
And now you know the answer to that.
Yeah.
And with that said, first of all, I really appreciate the thorough answer, Bobby and Aaron.
And I want to direct this next one at Bobby and then go to Aaron because Bobby is a Cosmos Maxie.
And we have had Cosmos on twice at this point between Sam, Chango and Bez.
We've learned a lot about Cosmos.
We've learned a lot about Tendermint and their SDK.
We've learned a lot about IBC and the different ways that Cosmos is just innovating differently or innovating in general.
So, what makes you so bullish?
Or rather, let me rephrase the question.
You've explained some reasons why you're so bullish on Cosmos.
But what makes you – what else, rather?
Give us more into what makes you so bullish about Cosmos and Adam.
Okay.
So, the two questions there is what makes me more bullish about Adam and then Cosmos as a whole.
The reason I use the word interchain is because I find that people often get confused with Cosmos and the Cosmos hub.
So, I'll use interchangeably with the Cosmos ecosystem.
And then Adam, I'll answer first and we can go down that rabbit hole.
So, Adam, why do I think Adam will do well?
And what's the reason that I come to that conclusion?
Well, Adam's right now – Adam right now is working on something called interchange security.
It's in many ways the same thing that Ethereum is working on in their network, except it's over an environment that allows for, like we said, multiple different houses.
Okay.
So, let's use that analogy.
Let's stick with that.
Let's say I have, like, a kingdom, right?
And my kingdom is the most secure of all this whole entire land.
But there's also houses on the outskirts of my kingdom.
Well, I can say, hey, I'm going to provide you some security at some cost, right?
It's kind of like feudal systems.
And those houses will say yes or no.
And let's just assume they all say yes.
And their agreement for leasing security from you is that they'll give you a bunch of goods, right?
Okay, now let's apply this to Adam and blockchain right now.
In the coming weeks – in the coming two weeks, actually, a proposal will be on the Cosmos Hub for Adam.
Adam is the native asset.
And it will be updating the Cosmos Hub for interchange security.
And interchange security does exactly what my analogy just said there.
It provides network security to blockchains that desire it.
It's a choice.
And why join the security of the Cosmos Hub?
Well, it's the highest – it, one, has never gone down.
It's the only proof-of-stake network that hasn't gone down.
It was the first proof-of-stake network.
It also has the highest market cap of any chain within the interchain, which provides more security to consumer chains.
And consumer chains are like the houses that we talked about in our analogy.
So the answer to why I think Adam will do well is that.
B2B service there.
There's also much more there that we could talk about.
There's something called the interchain scheduler, but it's a little technical for a conversation today.
So I'll stay away from it.
If you want to do more research, go ahead.
The next question on why the broader interchain, why am I so bullish on that versus the methods of – methods Ethereum are trying to implement or, you know, even Solana.
It comes down to how we communicate as a society, really, right?
We're not all in one building.
Let's think about this just from a really simple logic basis.
If we were all in one building, you know, it's kind of absurd to think about how tall that was or that would have to be.
And what we really do on, like, even at University of Oregon is we actually partition these buildings across vast amount of land, right?
And we allow for the inter-travel between each building and the knowledge to be passed.
And so why do I think the interchain will succeed and ultimately hopefully overpass Ethereum?
And hopefully, actually, Ethereum will join the interchain is innately because of that structure.
It's so distributed and so permissionless that anyone can join at any time.
You can spin up a blockchain with the Cosmos SDK.
That's a huge advantage in 15 minutes.
Not a normal person.
Don't get me wrong.
Not someone that isn't technical.
But a technical person can do that in 15 minutes.
Usually, it takes, I don't know, six, maybe a year to code a chain from Genesis.
But you can do that on Cosmos in 15 minutes.
And it will span the entirety of the world.
You can create a governance structure that allows validators to function within your rules.
And it will span the entirety of the world.
You can't do that with Ethereum right now.
Because it doesn't have the Cosmos SDK.
And the Cosmos SDK is the inherent advantage of the interchain.
The barrier to entry to build these chains has never been lower than it is today.
And that's happening in the Cosmos ecosystem.
Those are a couple of reasons why I believe that the interchain will outcompete the likes of Ethereum or Solana.
Aaron, do you share Bobby's optimism?
I am not as much of a Cosmos Maxi as Bobby, though I'm a full believer in the attributes it provides.
His arguments about the Cosmos SDK may make a lot of sense.
I think the inherent assumption with that is these different developers are going to need their independent blockchains to begin with.
And I am, I think there will be some cases in which that's necessary.
But I think that if you have a secure blockchain and if the fees are low enough, really what you need is just security.
I don't think you need to develop your own blockchain for every different use case.
And I think that from that perspective, Ethereum wins, especially if we can get this decentralization concept under control.
Well, I would be, that's my bull case for Ethereum.
And that's why Dank sharding and the roadmap is so encouraging is because it does lower the fees.
It does bring up the scalability.
And it does lower the entry for validator nodes, especially once the purge happens, the barrier to entry to run those sorts of nodes are going to be a lot different.
And I think it'll be perfect for either using a layer 2 for your dApp or using Ethereum mainchain if you want.
There's speculation as to how that will really play out.
But I don't know if what Cosmos offers is going to be a one-size-fits-all answer.
Okay, so next up, I want to ask you guys about NFTs.
But specifically, which industries do you see NFTs disrupting the most over the next three to five years?
It's not gaming, not music, not art.
We've already seen this.
But what's going to come as a surprise?
I think legal contracts and real-world assets like real estate.
And I think that the tokenization of assets is a really interesting concept.
And with fungible stuff like securities or bonds, that's one thing.
But a lot of the contracts we interact with, and this is a perspective that I've gleaned from Professor Stephen McKeon, so I can't really take credit for this.
But I agree with it that most of the contracts we interact with every day, a lot of our ownership of things are non-fungible.
And I think it will oftentimes be more efficient to interact with those things, like a car payment or a car ownership, like a pink slip, or like I said, a mortgage.
To interact with those as NFTs and to store their history, their immutability, where they've been, their authenticity through blockchains.
I think that's going to be one of the next use cases.
There's a lot of legal red tape that's going to have to be sorted out, but I'm really bullish on that.
Yeah, my two cents is kind of similar to Aaron's, and I'm also taking this from Professor Stephen McKeon's book.
Contract law is going to be hugely impacted by NFTs.
It's intense in my mind how big NFTs can change contract law.
And the reason is, today, contract law can be interpreted in a lot of different ways by different companies.
But when you run something on-chain, it can only be interpreted in one way by multiple of distributed nodes, and you can call those companies.
And that's really amazing.
If we think about how much process efficiency we'll gain from the NFT medium being implemented into contract law over our economy as a whole,
it could be a game-changer for some businesses that only work in contract law, like Walmart, like we were talking before on.
And it could decrease costs in a lot of different ways.
So there's plenty of ways for legacy systems and companies to utilize NFTs.
And the biggest way, I think, I agree with Aaron is contract law.
It's exciting.
And I think that we're going to see a lot of these changes come sooner than people think.
What was my last question for you?
Oh, yeah, my last question for you guys.
I mean, Bobby kind of already answered this with his favorite alt.
Cosmos is an alt layer one, or rather alt.
Yeah, let's just call it that.
But what other altcoins, or rather alt ecosystems, Bobby, are you currently speculating on?
Great question.
I mean, Cosmos is obviously my number one.
And I'm more in it for the community than I am in it for the actual profit.
But my next would be Akash.
You know, something that's super interesting is that the COO of Akash actually graduated from University of Oregon.
And his name is Boz, and he's great.
And so what Akash is, is actually a distributed cloud compute company.
Distributed infrastructure companies are going to be huge, at least in my eyes, in the next 10 years.
And I'm not telling anyone to buy anything, but that is what I am buying right now.
I actually stay away from EVMs because there's so many, and I don't think I can choose the right one right now.
And I focus on companies that I believe have a strong use case and application to the broader crypto environment, as well as broader population in the next 10 years.
Akash is definitely one of those.
Another one that will be coming out at the end of this year is Althea Network.
Althea Network is a distributed internet company that I'm definitely interested in.
All of these are speculative, of course.
The last one I would say, you know, those two kind of have two commonalities, that they're infrastructure.
Last one I would say is Sommelier Finance.
It's a DeFi primitive for the Cosmos ecosystem.
But it also communicates with the Ethereum network through Gravity Bridge.
And what that provides is a service for people to implement trading strategies on and kind of does the work for you.
So it's one of the first DeFi platforms I've tried and actually enjoyed using.
Yeah, I think those are all really good thoughts.
Personally, I think as far as like all coins, all projects, last year I did a really deep dive into API 3, did a presentation for the group actually on it, read their white paper several times, communicated with their devs, and kind of did as much of an in-depth research as I've done on really anything.
And I came to realize that I'm a big fan.
And what they do is they provide decentralized Oracle services for various blockchains, primarily Ethereum right now, but they do provide their service on other platforms.
Their token, the API 3 token, is currently ERC-20.
I believe, I don't think they've upgraded to any L2s as of late, like some like Kyber has or anything like that.
And I think it solves a lot of nuanced problems that Chainlink and Band and some of these Oracle, like alternative Oracle projects have in that they can be civiled and there's no real authenticity check to where or who is hosting the original Oracle.
If I want price data or if I want real, like what the NFL score was, do I know that Fox News is providing that data on chain or is it someone else?
And there's already been mismatches of price data for like gold and stuff like that, and it's resulted in losses.
So the tokenomics to API 3, though I know they have been changing slightly, are really interesting.
And at least when I read the right paper, they had this like rolling incentive program to where the staking awards you would receive were a year out.
So you would always be acting in a rolling basis to one year out in terms of your governance.
And I thought that was an interesting way of aligning long-term incentives with kind of your traditional DAO governance.
I think I'm on board with Bobby.
Anything infrastructure, Graph, Akash, and anything that provides infrastructure at this point is going to be really important.
And that's honestly why I think Oracle providers, again, I've talked about bridging real-world assets.
I think real-world data is also going to be really important.
And that's really my biggest focus at this point.
Well, look, Aaron, Bobby, it's been a pleasure having you guys on.
And it's so impressive to see guys so young that are already so far ahead of most of the people that at least I interact with on a daily basis in this space.
I can speak for the Whalecoin Talk team as well.
We talk to hundreds of people a week, and you guys really stand out and are ahead of the curve when it comes to this stuff.
So anytime you want to come back and talk about updates that's happening with the Oregon Blockchain Group or any kind of events that you guys want us to know about, that you want to come tell our community about, you're more than welcome.
It's been a pleasure having you on.
And if there are any final words you want to leave us with before you head out today, go ahead and do so now.
Yeah, Noah, thanks again for having us on.
I had a great time chatting with you all at Whalecoin.
And if anyone in the audience is going to be at Consensus 23, 20 of us are going to be out there from Oregon Blockchain Group.
So we'd love to meet up and hear about what you're doing.
If you'd like to reach out to our club, if you want to speak, if you're working on anything, we'd love to hear about what you're doing.
So our website or our Twitter are good ways to get in contact with us.
Noah, thanks again, man.
Yeah, Noah, thank you so much.
Really great questions.
I appreciate them.
Made me think a little bit.
And with that said, you know, I hope everyone gains some value from Aaron and I speaking today.
This is just a small glimpse of what OBG can do.
And we're looking forward to growing in the future and continuing the conversation with Whalecoin.
Beautiful.
Thank you so much, gentlemen, for coming on Whalecoin Talk community.
Thank you so much for listening.
Remember that everything you hear on these broadcasts is meant for educational purposes only.
Nothing is financial advice.
So be safe out there.
My name is Noah signing out.
Take care.
Take care.
Take care.
Take care.
Take care.
