Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Good day, good morning, good evening.
Good afternoon, wherever you may be tuning in
We are excited to have you today
as we begin the conversation about Ready Layer 2,
not just the pitch competition that's upcoming,
but startup unicorns on Bitcoin L2s.
If you haven't seen in the last 36 hours,
there has been a crazy amount of attention
and excitement around Bitcoin L2s across the industry.
A number of new research reports,
a number of articles, a number of new companies,
projects, a ton of activity has been released
around Bitcoin L2s in the last 36 hours, which is exciting.
But we're gonna talk about what it takes
to build startup unicorns, what they look like,
who they are, and what it's gonna take
for all of you that are listening,
either participating in the Ready Layer 2 contest
or otherwise as we've got a rockstar cast of speakers
to share their thoughts and insights
of what's happening around Bitcoin L2s today.
Now, that said, everything from here on out
is educational and informative only.
It is not financial advice.
We love to provide education insights.
Again, do your own research.
welcome to this week's Crypto Internet Show.
This is the regular series talking about everything Stacks,
the broader ecosystem, and building on Bitcoin Layers.
I'm your host today, Kyle Ellicott.
With that said, let's get our speakers introduced
to get this conversation started.
First and foremost, Lewis, welcome back to the show.
I know, it's been a long time, isn't it?
Thank you so much for having me.
Quick introduction on yourself
for those who may not know you.
I'm the CEO and co-founder at Wider,
where we actually build a full stack self-custodial wallet
with an app hardware and recovery tag
that combines the speed of salon and security of Bitcoin,
mobile-first UX and easy recovery.
That's pretty much us in a nutshell.
I mean, that's not a small bit.
That's a very necessary thing,
but across the Bitcoin ecosystem and Web3 as well.
Lewis, you, Marvin, and the entire team
have put something amazing together
and excited to talk about what's happening in the latest
in that particular category of the ecosystem.
Jon, I believe you're a cat today.
I'm not sure exactly what's going on with that PFP,
but for those who may not know you.
I hope you guys can hear me well.
My Twitter sometimes rags me pretty hard,
but I hope it's gonna work today.
we're the leading wallet for Bitcoin Web3,
obviously support Stacks as Bitcoin L2,
obviously looking at the L2s in general,
looking at the activity in Bitcoin,
obviously Ordinals and everything,
all the great things that are kind of popping up
in the ecosystem in the past 12 months.
And I'm also the co-host of the Ordinal Show with Trevor,
who I see on the stage here as well.
So you may have heard about us
or maybe you have attended some of those shows
Perfect, and we actually are gonna talk a little bit
about a major topic you guys covered last night on the show,
There's been a lot of discussion, a lot of interest.
So Jan, Trevor, get ready for a little bit
of conversation to rehash from last night as well.
Over on the Alex handle, I believe we have Haddon.
Hi everyone, this is Haddon Espiritia.
I'm the BD lead with the Alex Latt Foundation.
And Alex is building the finance layer of Bitcoin.
Our aim is to seamlessly merge the L1 with L2.
We provide an AMM DAX, a BRC20 order book,
multi-chain bridging between Bitcoin, Stacks,
Ethereum, and Binance, multi-chain launchpad.
And we do work on a Bitcoin oracle
to bring higher security and immutability
to the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Happy to join you all today, thank you.
Wonderful, Haddon, pleasure to have you this week
to represent not just the foundation,
but also Ready Layer 2, a quick intro.
Thanks, Kyle, glad to be here, happy to be back.
My name's Adam Hahn, I'm the community programs lead
at the Stacks Foundation.
And I work with a lot of different builders and developers
and community leaders across the Stacks ecosystem.
and yeah, looking forward to today's session.
Rockstar, last but not least, the one and only Trevor.
Oh, it's T-O, a quick intro for those who may not know you.
Hey, what's up everybody, what's up Kyle,
what's up Yum, what's up Lewis, Adam.
Great to be here, big day for Stacks.
Wow, look at how all the interest in Bitcoin L2s
and the hard work that Stacks uses has put into building
I think is being rewarded, so that's great to see.
I'm the managing partner of the Bitcoin Frontier Fund.
I'm also the CEO of Ninja Alerts
and I co-host the Ordinal Show with Jan and Leonidas.
And I have basically been following the Stacks ecosystem
for well, at least the project for 10 years,
you know, since 2013 when it was like one name.
And yeah, it's come a long way
and I've always been impressed by the executives
in the ecosystem and yeah, I think they've taken a lot
of steps to kind of push this idea of Bitcoin L2s forward.
So Trevor, let's start right there and then Adam,
I wanna come to you around already later too,
but Trevor, you've been following the project for 10 years.
Last 36 hours, you and I have been talking
behind the scenes of just the amount of activity
that has occurred, the amount of interest,
amount of conversations, the amount of headlines,
the everything in between, what has you excited about that?
But more importantly, what do you think is driving
that specifically in the last 36, 48 hours?
I think, you know, it's always hard to break
the timing of these things.
And I think that it was inevitable that like
the interest in building on Bitcoin would arrive.
I think Ordinals was really the catalyst
because it allowed it to happen in a new way on the L1, right?
And in a way that was technically innovative,
that had a lot of momentum behind it
and kind of got a community of people
who wanted to make the culture on Bitcoin different, right?
And I think for the Layer 2s, it's just inevitable
that we needed to see that Layer 1 activity go really high
and become more and more expensive
so that Layer 2s would come in and help scale that effort
and then add more expressivity
to the smart contracting aspect of it.
And so, you know, Stacked I think benefits
from just being in the market, right?
It's like time in the market,
having launched two years ago with this idea
pushing forward as a Bitcoin L2.
Stacked is one of the OGs along with, you know,
RSK and Liquid, but it has been out there, you know,
and really sort of like waving the flag of Bitcoin L2s.
And I think it's just now people,
that's what people are looking for.
Like everybody's looking for Bitcoin L2s right now.
Stacked has been in the market for two years,
has an exciting new update upgrade coming in a few weeks.
I mean, it's very soon around the halving
and being in the market at the right time,
but actually, you know, being really early
and then sustaining and being in the market
So I think that it's just really that simple.
I'd say it's a great breakdown of it.
And in terms of that upgrade,
that is the Nakamoto upgrade who are not familiar with it.
It is due to be released in the time window
between April 15th and April 29th,
a significant upgrade to the Stacks Network,
Thank you, Trevor, for the quick recap.
We talked a little bit last week about Ready Layer 2
and the pitch competition,
but really the need for it now as Bitcoin L2s
really start to get this momentum to Trevor's point
leading into a major upgrade,
but also a cornerstone of a year of 2024.
Tell us a little bit more about what's happening
and the exciting updates that may be announced today
as I got previewed for Ready Layer 2.
Yeah, there's a lot going on
and there's a lot of exciting things
that we're gonna be getting into
in the next couple of days and weeks,
leading up to the start of Ready Layer 2.
So for those not familiar,
the Ready Layer 2 builder competition is going to be,
well, we held our first one last fall
and it was a great success.
We had an amazing turnout.
Lots of projects were formed that continued on
and are still building today.
And so we wanna basically take that same format,
but really kind of expand and amplify
what we did the first time around.
So it's not only going to be a pitch competition
Spotlight and celebrate and put more resources
towards developers and builders.
So we're extending the duration of the program
It's gonna be a total of 19 days from start to finish.
And we're going to have different tracks
where different prizes are offered for different tracks.
And these tracks are gonna be focused on DeFi.
We're gonna have a track focused on Bitcoin and AI.
And then we're still going to stay consistent
with the original theme of this competition
when it was born as a pitch competition.
So our third track is going to be a general pitch track.
So for people who want to explore ideas,
but maybe they're not capable of coding yet
or they can't submit code
or maybe they're just not able to do it
they can be eligible to compete in the pitch track.
So what this means, I mean, to answer your question, Kyle,
I view this as kind of just like an exploration,
a cultivation and a celebration of what's going on.
This is an exploration of new ideas and products
and technologies that we want to pursue
or we want to enable others to pursue.
It's a cultivation of individuals
across the stacks ecosystem.
We have really supportive partners this time around
that are going to be great for them
to give participants exposure to their platforms,
to their technology and allow people to explore it
I'm really excited for that as we've gone a lot,
as we're going a lot deeper on that this time around.
And then the last one is, like I said, celebration,
with kind of like building on what Trevor was saying
with where we're at with the ecosystem
and what's been done and what's possible to date.
We want to celebrate that.
And we also want to celebrate
what's going to be getting built at this event
and spotlighting a lot of what gets built post-program
and helping those projects that get built
during the event post-program move forward.
So a lot to be excited for.
Keep an eye out for announcements.
We're going to be promoting a lot more.
We're going to be showcasing a lot more
and we'll be releasing a lot more information
moving forward with our sponsors,
with the workshops that we're going to be holding,
I'll say, so I'll fill in a little bit of gaps on those.
The prizes, we're going to be offering 15K and prize pool.
And then a lot of other additional goodies,
like tickets to Bitcoin and Leash later this summer.
We have a handful of different digital collectibles.
And I think the biggest one is post-program support.
So like I said before, help these programs,
help these projects continue to move forward post-program.
So it's a hefty load, a lot of good things,
but it wouldn't be possible without the sponsors.
We have Hero on board, we have X-First on board.
We have Alex on board and DLC Link are all stepping in
to help us out, put this together.
And we're in a great spot and can't wait for March 8th
to get this thing officially kicked off.
I think the audience here is also excited
as I'm seeing emojis and gifts all across the tab here.
But Adam, a question for you to not let you go too quickly.
I know post-program support, so you got BFF in here,
You've got N21, the new Nakamoto prep program.
You've got Bitcoin Startup Lab.
You've got the dGrants program.
You've got the program with the foundation.
So much support, which is awesome and exciting.
But with that said, you mentioned
that there were a few different tracks.
What are those tracks that people are going to be able to compete in?
And why did you and the team choose those specific tracks of categories?
Yeah, so the three tracks that we're going to have
are DeFi and Bitcoin and AI and then the general pitch.
And this kind of started as a pitch competition last fall.
We wanted to help these ideas grow after the program.
And really, we just kind of thought, given the state of the ecosystem,
let's expand on this a little bit more.
But we didn't want to neglect people who maybe they only have the bandwidth,
the capacity, or even the know-how to just take a step forward pursuing a pitch.
So we didn't want to totally remove the pitch element.
So keeping the pitch track as is.
The Bitcoin and AI and the DeFi tracks,
these are things that we explored within a hackathon last fall in London.
We had an in-person hackathon with a partner of ours right around,
right after Bitcoin unleashed last October.
And during that hackathon, Kyle, you're very familiar with.
You were one of the judges at that one.
A lot of the ideas that we saw and then just kind of a lot of the excitement
and a lot of just kind of like the direction of the general market
that we're seeing within our ecosystem.
There's just a lot of interest.
There's lots of potential.
There's lots of opportunity that we see with what or what we want to see
and hope to see when you combine the power of Bitcoin and the power of AI.
And there's no really like limiting or capping what could be possible
when you sort of create a path for people to pursue that theme
and then give them the supportive resources to explore as they pursue that path.
So we're really excited to do that.
And there's a working group within the SACS ecosystem
that's focused on Bitcoin and AI.
And I'm excited to start collaborating with them to get their support
and really just trying to build a lot of these educational opportunities
and these supportive resources to help these newer builders
who might not be as familiar with this topic to explore it, to get started
and to see what they can actually build once they're surrounded
and get direct access to this level of expertise
that they might not have previously had access to.
And then the last one is DeFi.
I mean, you know, when we talk about smart contracts and Bitcoin,
how can you not think of DeFi?
If it's not broke, you don't need to fix it.
This is an area that we all know is just perfectly ripe for disruption.
And it's a track that we know that there's still so much potential
and so much opportunity for new ideas and projects that need to get built
and that we want to get built, we want to see get built.
So there's going to be, like I was saying before,
a lot of resources that are tailored to people
who want to explore DeFi-oriented ideas.
And then, you know, that's a really good thing
that we have with our partners is that I mentioned earlier,
they're going to be hosting workshops
and it'll give participants direct access
and also mentorship as they go about exploring
what it looks like to build on top of these platforms.
So that was kind of like the thought behind why we wanted to focus
on those three specific tracks.
It's a little bit of thing that has been tested before
with really great results.
And we're just always looking to make things better
and make improvements on what we've learned in the past.
And that's what we're doing with RL2 this time around.
And Trevor, I want to come to you as one of the judges, as with myself.
You and I have had the pleasure of working with so many companies
over the last decade, but specifically the last two and a half years
through BFF and the Rockstar portfolio companies,
founders and teams within.
In your opinion, what are you going to be looking for as a judge
having worked with these companies,
having invested in so many early projects
that are now headed towards unicorn and beyond status?
But what are you looking for as a judge
Yeah, the biggest thing I'm looking for
is that something solves a real problem in the market
or has a strong use case that the team can execute on.
So right now we're in this phase with Bitcoin,
which I think is like a once in a lifetime opportunity
where we have networks like Ethereum and Solana,
which have done the hard work of figuring out
what use cases are best for this technology, at least to start with.
And I think that we don't have those things yet on Bitcoin,
all these different web through use cases.
And so we have a very easy opportunity
to look at what's working and then build it on the biggest network
that there is that's bigger than all the others combined.
And so I'm looking for teams that are tackling that low hanging fruit
in an intelligent way that's like Bitcoin native
and trying to figure out if they can offer
the 2080 rule of what they're doing on Bitcoin L1
or if they're integrating Bitcoin L2, how they're doing that
and how they've thought through it and the strategy that go to market.
Yeah, that's what I'm looking for because to identify a new use case
that no one has ever done before on they haven't done an Ethereum
or it hasn't worked at an Ethereum or it hasn't worked on Solana,
when there's like, you know, 100 that we don't have yet on Bitcoin
they've been proven to work on those networks.
And all you do is build those.
I think like, you know, I would much rather go with the latter,
like finding new use cases is very, very hard,
probably the hardest problem there is.
But finding in a smart way to build it on Bitcoin is much more well defined
and we can eliminate that market risk from the equation.
Now we have created a company that is ready to take investment
and, you know, go that venture path and accelerate
and use the capital efficiently to grow and onboard new users to Bitcoin.
Love it. And with that, Hayden, Jan, you both are mentors as well as Lewis
having participated in this program and are supporting it in some capacity.
Lewis, we'd love to hear from you to start what your time was in Ready Layer 2
and how you are looking to support some of these companies in this next wave.
And then we're going to get into all this craziness around the Bitcoin L2 space
But one more round from the mentors here.
So, Lewis, what are you looking for in the companies that are joining
and how do you anticipate being able to support them as a mentor?
I would just love to echo what Trevor said.
I think founders that are solving real problem in this space is a big priority for me
and that's what we're doing at Rider as well.
So for me, an interesting topic is always is how do you actually simplify the process
for Bitcoiners to actively deploy their BTC as a productive asset
so that if I see a team that's working on multisig, social recovery,
UX enhancement, and smooth defi integration, I'm all for it.
That's going to pick my interest.
And in terms of support, I'm very good at community and then token.
Those are two arenas that I'm very strong at.
Before I did Rider, that's what I did for Stacks.
So, yeah, those are the two things that I can definitely support,
how to grow protocols from zero to one, how to build community from scratch,
and how to have that first 1000 fans to boost your protocol.
I think that's pretty much it on my end.
Well, you've got at least a few fans on here, if not all fans.
So you're close to your first 100, if not your first 1000 with this audience right now.
That said, Hayden, to you, same question.
As a mentor, what are you looking to support the companies that will be participating in their projects?
And again, just to echo what Trevor and Louis said,
we're always looking for projects that are serving problems, have a unique use case.
From Alex's perspective, we can provide a glimpse into what our own experience has been.
We were part of the first incubator for Bitcoin Frontier Funds.
And Kyle, I believe you are a mentor.
And so we know what the both the emotional and mental journey that ability takes.
And what we are looking to do with the projects that apply to us.
One is to empower them through capital.
We want to connect them to the extensive network of investors that Alex has built up, make introductions.
We also want to focus on robust project economics, because we do think that a well-structured tokenomics is really key for a sustainable and long-term success for a project.
And so having reviewed multiple tokenomics both for ourselves and for projects that have come to a launchpad, we can provide advice and insights onto that.
And on the whole, to really provide comprehensive support for our net web three innovators.
That's in terms of what's your go-to market plan, the strategic planning for rollout.
As we discuss with projects, hopefully we'd like to see some of them come to the the Alex launchpad.
And we would take really a step-by-step approach in advising them, reviewing their business model, looking at their community building channels, assisting them with a marketing boost initially.
When they come to Alex, they have the host AMAs to introduce them to our community, to our Discord, review really what the IDO details would be.
And then with the IDO, also support them later on with the secondary market of opening an AMM DEX.
So it's really a start to finish process that we are looking to advise projects on to explain how to go through them.
And we really look forward to assisting and encouraging new builders.
Perfect. Jan, same to you. You, X-Verse, both participating and supporting in this event and curious how you yourself will be helping as a mentor.
And then we just had a special guest join to talk to us about a new huge technology that just came to the Bitcoin landscape.
So we'll we'll jump right over to that here in just a moment. But Jan, to you.
Yeah, I mean, just real quick, obviously, super excited to see anybody building with X-Verse Infra.
I don't know if people are aware of that, but, you know, we have launched a lot of different APIs and obviously we have, you know, integrations or, you know, the libraries for Stags, but also for Bitcoin, SaaS Connect.
And, you know, we're always excited to see people building on these and, you know, even kind of getting feedback from these developers and builders,
like what else can we introduce into these developer tools to make sure that it's easier for people to build with them, but also we can unlock different other use cases or things that they could be building with them.
And so, you know, for me, always happy to see people using them, giving us feedback so that we can improve.
That's one. And ultimately, how can we support?
I mean, I think it's pretty straightforward, you know, for us being a leading wallet for, you know, obviously, Ordinals and even Bitcoin Web3 in general.
We can obviously support in terms of the go to market and really help people to kind of unlock quite a lot of users from day one whenever they launch the application.
And obviously they support X-Verse.
And so I think that's that's probably the most valuable thing that we can do for people that actually decided to build for X-Verse and with X-Verse Infra.
And beyond that, you know, me personally, I'm always happy to get involved with builders and people that want to push the boundaries.
You know, I am personally involved with a lot of different projects as an adviser or even just as a friend, you know, just helping, you know, with stuff like fundraising or even just like go to market, et cetera.
So always happy to just connect with builders that are excited about this opportunity, building on Bitcoin, which I guess we all are right now.
That's right. And we're here talking about it as well.
So that said, Jan and Trevor, you two hosted a show last night around runes on the Ordinal show.
Shout out to you both and that show in general.
It's a great show of those who haven't listened.
Highly recommend it. It's second to this show.
Selfish promotion. But nonetheless, it is a great show.
You should definitely check it out.
There has been a ton of conversation around runes.
What are they? What are they not?
Jan and Trevor, I'm going to give you both the floor, something a little unconventional.
I don't usually do here on the crypto show.
I'm going to give you to the floor for a minute, break it down, cover what happened in the conversation last night.
What are runes and why were you guys talking for almost two hours?
It seemed like last night and then some on this new topic and experiment in the Bitcoin space.
Trevor, I'm going to open it up to you and again, Jan, both to the floor and I'll jump in at some point to stop you.
I'll just say Jan left early to go to leg day at the gym, but I was there for two hours.
And we were just talking. I mean, we've been talking about runes a lot.
I mean, runes is a fungible token standard on Bitcoin L1 by Casey, the creator of Ordinals.
I like it from a technical perspective.
I liked it from the start. I thought it was innovative and superior to BRC 20.
The question was really, you know, BRC 20 had a head start and had a has a network effect behind it.
In my opinion, again, I wrote a technical op-ed for Bitcoin magazine like I think two days after Casey announced a blog post and we had him on.
I had him on a space. It actually wasn't the ordinal show because I just he dropped the blog post and I threw up a space and he joined right away and kind of told us about the idea.
Actually, I even offered in the first week, I was like, hey, the first person who can implement this, you know, we'll fund them 100K check, you know, no questions asked first person to get it live.
And there were several people who got something live.
And I don't think they took me up on the offer because Casey then announced that, hey, guys, I love the enthusiasm, but I'm going to to make sure this is done right.
I'm going to not grandfather in any of the rooms that are launched before the official launch, where I, you know, have had time to iron out the protocol and the indexing and we'll do a block at activation.
And so that ends up being, you know, you know, it's cool.
It's like Casey kind of did throw a little bit of water on that fire.
But people have been still been developing in the last, I believe, you know, the track ecosystem and pipe have a pipe is a runes implementation, but it won't be part of Casey's runes protocol.
But of course, Casey has the biggest sort of stage and sort of, you know, admiration in the space because of what he he's done with ordinals and that he's come back with another really innovative idea and innovative approach that seems like he's the only person who is able to combine.
His knowledge, like deep knowledge of how Bitcoin works with how we can apply these web through use cases, at least on the on the one or in a way that is really easy to index, I guess, you know, it's really his strength is that he he understands how to do indexing of arbitrary data on Bitcoin in a very scalable, efficient way.
And, you know, he has quite a bit of experience with it now.
And so, yeah, it's like it's runes is going to be is going live in basically under two months, the having, you know, around the same time as the Nakamoto release for stacks.
So people are really pumped about it.
BRC 20 volume and inscribing has gone way down, I think, in anticipation of this.
I don't think the jury's out saying that runes is is taking over, but I think people are just waiting for it.
But I think, you know, I from the start thought that runes would likely become as big as BRC 20 and probably bigger.
And, you know, we'll find out in in two months here as as it launches, you know, there's no guarantee of anything.
But I think people are kind of optimistically looking at it, thinking that it's going to be a really big thing.
And, of course, whatever becomes the fungible token standard on Bitcoin, one is going to be massive.
Right. And there may be, you know, a period of having multiple fungible token standards, you know, BRC 20 runes, Taproot assets, RGB, et cetera.
These are all different competing fundable token standards.
And there's, of course, like BRC 20, SRC 20, BRC 420, I think BRC 69.
You know, you get the idea. There's a lot of these fungible token standards.
I think runes will be the biggest one if all things go well, because it has Casey behind it and is technically from a technical perspective, more efficient, more versatile and has higher security guarantees, I think, than BRC 20.
So, yeah, I mean, people are excited about it.
It's probably easier to build more types of DeFi on top of because of how easy it is to index.
We'll see like more meta protocols and more things built on runes, I think, in the coming six months.
And I think a lot of the builders are just all leaning in to take advantage of this, like early attention, early momentum.
And when that happens, you know, be a similar story to Ordinals, I think.
Yeah, and from my own, maybe just to kind of reiterate what Trevor just said, obviously, you know, Trevor is pretty good at this, you know, he understands the technical side of things.
And obviously, as a VC, you know, he has pretty, pretty good touch with the market, what's going on, what the people are talking about.
But, you know, the same for us, right?
Like, I think I see it pretty, pretty clearly.
And I think to me, it's simple right now.
When you look at Bitcoin ecosystem, when you look at, obviously, the Ordinals ecosystem or the community that was kind of formed around Ordinals and now it's kind of experimenting with the other things.
Like, there are two main metas right now that people talk about, right?
And one of them, obviously, is Bitcoin L2s.
And the second one is runes.
I think that, you know, these are really the two things that the builders are focusing on, you know, in terms of raising capital, in terms of building products, you know, in terms of like really kind of preparing for those things, you know, as we are going up to the halving.
And so it's really interesting to me, you know, like, like, I don't really see much more energy or similar type of energy that is put elsewhere.
Obviously, there are some other things that people are working on.
I'm not trying to say these are the only ones, but if you really look at kind of the magnitude of what people are talking about on socials and in the alpha groups.
And again, we as a wallet, you know, we are going to support runes on testnet fully, you know, in a matter of like one or two weeks, we already are working on that.
And I have people in my DMs every day asking for it and asking for more support.
Hey, we want to start playing around with this.
And you see companies like OKX and like these big companies in Asia doubling down on that as well.
And so from that standpoint, runes are very, very exciting to me.
You know, again, does it mean that it's going to 100 percent succeed, that it's guaranteed?
Definitely not. I think there's always a chance that it's not going to take off.
But the fact that there's just so many builders that are putting their brain power to it, I think I think it's going to definitely be interesting.
I would say the halving block. And a couple of weeks after that, it's going to be pretty crazy period for Bitcoin.
Probably really, really good period for Bitcoin miners, you know.
And so that's something that is really exciting.
And that's why, you know, I personally love runes and I love to talk to builders that are building something around runes because like you can feel the excitement.
Ian, does that mean that you as a mentor for Ready Layer 2 are ready to mentor some companies that might be playing around with runes?
Man, 100 percent. I mean, if that's what people are going to be doing as part of this competition, 100 percent.
You know, we, as I said, I mean, we have not really tweeted about it yet that much, but it's probably going to come soon.
Like, you know, we definitely do support, you know, all the builders on runes.
You know, we we already have some sort of release prepared for the testnet.
You know, we have been talking with the team and like with a bunch of builders already for a couple of weeks.
And so, you know, definitely runes are very, very interesting for us as a company.
But for me personally, kind of as a user and, you know, as a DJ and myself, you know, I'm just excited to see what people are going to build around this.
Yeah, I completely agree.
And in terms of some major headline announcement, we also had just a few hours ago, the Tron Network, Justin Sun announced a Bitcoin Layer 2 solution added into the network and roadmap to come as well.
So a very unique project to add into the number of experiments and projects that are heading up around the Bitcoin L2 space.
That said, again, we have a special guest who has been patiently waiting to talk a little bit about what they have brought into the Bitcoin ecosystem and a very important piece of technology that has been needed.
It is a pleasure. And a few people in here, just a few, may not know who you are.
So a quick introduction and the company that you are behind, please.
Absolutely. Glad to be here.
I am finishing dropping off the kids.
But I am one of the co-founders of a signal, the premier multisig wallet for tap, root and stacks, as well as our continued build out of the infrared layer.
We're doing the STX 20s and the sword knolls, which are inscriptions on L2 on stacks.
And, you know, I'm just a lucky enough IT pro to be here since the beginning of Bitcoin and to make some really cool and smart friends that have been building in the space.
And we've just been able to crank out some really, really cool stuff.
And thanks in large part to all you guys right here.
You know, the the regular to frontier fund, all these all these people here have made such good inroads for us, have supported us so much.
Everyone out there. So, yeah, big thanks.
Well, I got the chance. But yeah, we've we've got the inscriptions on layer two.
So as prices go up, you can keep creating with us.
That's huge. So let's go down that for just a second, because you also I mean, as a company, there's so much more to it.
But s ordinals has been another growing topic, similar to runes, as we were just talking about and a lot of other experiments that Trevor had mentioned.
Why s ordinals? Why bring that to stacks?
What was kind of the thinking behind that? And where does the project go from here?
Absolutely. Honestly, I think the I think the Super Bowl and the the little dip in the mempool and watching everyone deploy their
projects sort of further solidified our thinking that layer twos are going to be necessary to support this, especially as the cost of transactions go up and the complication of interactions with inscriptions and ordinals goes up.
I use cases, you know, moving them around, doing more than just having them sit in your wallet.
Also, if you think about it, if you want to get started on a project or if you want to get started in inscriptions, it's going to cost you thousands of dollars.
On layer one to map this out and to, you know, effectively learn and get experience.
Whereas, you know, you can start out on stacks and really kind of get your flow and understanding down.
And, you know, if it's appropriate, maybe even launch your main project from there with the Nakamoto upgrade coming with SPTC,
there's going to be a lot more ability to move information back and forth between layer one and layer two Bitcoin.
And I think that's what so many of us are really excited about.
And I can see that in many incarnations, right?
I can see people maybe putting their artwork up on a Satoshi, like an IPFS, you know, use it as a storage system and then call to those from the stacks.
I can see people putting the part of their project that is maybe more gamified, you know, on the layer two on stacks and they can link it back to layer one.
I just see a lot of cross compatibility coming and I'm not even the smartest guy in the room.
So I think some people are going to run with this in ways I haven't even thought of right that maybe even our team hasn't thought of.
And that's what we're most excited about.
But yeah, this is just this is scaling.
Let's call it scaling for inscriptions and interoperability for inscriptions is really what we're all about,
you know, offering that ability to get liquidity, move these things around,
play games with them, maybe use them more as as active passes and things like that.
Maybe, you know, like I say, I'm sure some people out there have much smarter ideas than I do, but we're just super excited to see it.
Well, I'm ready later to pitch competitions coming up.
Anyone can take a take a stab at that idea and put something together.
But we do and are very lucky enough to have one of the smartest people in the room.
Trevor Owens over here when it comes to all things, NFTs, ordinals and otherwise.
So, Trevor, I'm going to come to you and give poor overload a break for a moment.
Thoughts on s ordinals, you bring inscriptions to a layer to specifically stacks at the moment.
What are your thoughts around this, having followed the ordinal space for over a year and a half now?
Yeah, I mean, I think the I think we need this right now.
I mean, again, the Bitcoin layer one is going to become very, very expensive to transact on.
Right now we have a one of the last windows to inscribe at very low fees.
And, you know, we've seen the mempool over a thousand, you know, as high as almost three thousand sats per v-byte to give you some context.
That is, you know, essentially 100 times more expensive than what it is right now.
And that's probably where we're going to be when the halving happens and runes drop.
And, you know, if that if the bull market picks up and and, you know, a million new people enter the market and start using,
you know, ordinals and Web three tooling on Bitcoin shortly after the halving and after runes kicks off,
I mean, it's not going to go back down to that, you know, the level that we're at now.
It'll stay at that hundred times more expensive level, potentially, you know, up to three hundred times more expensive or more.
I mean, I think the the first block of the halving, who knows how expensive is going to be sat for v-byte wise,
runes are actually pretty lightweight in terms of how much data you're putting in there.
So I do think people will will bid those up very, very high, potentially, you know, fifteen thousand sats per v-byte,
twenty thousand sats per v-byte would be the high end of what I would expect.
I've had a habit of underestimating these things even when I see put out a number that I feel like I've never seen before.
So, you know, and then after the halving block that first week, it'll be, you know, like easily over three thousand sats per v-byte,
maybe ten thousand sats per v-byte for probably about a month.
And then we'll see, you know, where it goes from there. That's that's my prediction.
So, you know, I think that the ability to wrap your ordinals over to an L2 in a way that's decentralized and the ability to trade it very quickly
with five second transaction times and with very low fees, you know, under a penny, like I can't imagine something better.
So I, you know, I really hope that the s ordinals is introduced quickly and that it's integrated with some some of the different marketplaces and tools.
I know that there's already, you know, integration with stacks via X-verse, which we have up here, leather rider up here and also gamma, you know.
So I think that's a pretty easy layup for the SACS ecosystem. And the sooner we get that, the better.
Yeah, very, very well put, man, and throwing the numbers in. I love that.
I put the high level and pinned my own thesis on how this cost dilemma is going to affect us.
But man, Trevor just really nailed it. That is spot on. Thank you.
Overload. I told you we had someone smarter than us in the room. So it's perfect.
And that that said, Louis, on the rider side, you know, how are you and the team thinking about additional assets like S ordinals when it comes to to rider?
When you know us, we love Bitcoin. My first love is Bitcoin. So we support all things when when it comes to Bitcoin.
Second, of course, is Solana. It's like our second exclusive in the support, but we support the biggest ones.
But when it comes to just prioritization, of course, with the community demands, we support it.
So if you guys want to, we want to support XYZ and then we're going to prioritize it.
That's pretty much it when it comes to just like integration and support.
Love it. Love it. Yeah. Yeah. But like in the first year, we doubled down onto ecosystem.
We doubled down on Bitcoin and Solana. That's pretty much it.
This is this is very exciting and incredible.
Again, anyone that's building in this space, working with S ordinals, you've got some of the best and the brightest in this room right now on this panel.
So make sure to follow them and follow up with any questions, comments, concerns, but also for integration with your projects as well.
Overlord, back to you. One more big question.
Multisig is another component of your company, and you were one of the first to bring multisig to Bitcoin and stacks.
I mean, wow. And the question I have for you is why has this been such a difficult hurdle for many to bring native multisig to Bitcoin and stacks?
And what was kind of that journey putting it together?
Absolutely. So once again, I'm very fortunate.
Vlad, our Chad developer, he is just some next level.
I honestly don't know that anyone could have worked it out as quickly and securely.
You know, we've had our audits and our reviews back and no flaws found.
But but the challenges are is that clarity is a new sort of smart or it's not an EVM, a direct EVM sort of smart contract language.
So not a lot of people are able to just copy and paste their projects and their tooling over to it.
So on top of that, you've got this interaction with main layer Bitcoin itself, which is UTXO based sort of interactions.
So we kind of needed this dual solution.
And then, of course, with Nakamoto and SBTC, we're going to get more of that that cross compatibility between the two.
But essentially, you know, a signal in the multisig was was kind of tough because you got to think split, right?
If you're thinking about the whole ecosystem, but at the same time, you've got to think coherently and kind of keep everything in the same track,
you know, in the same interface and UX so that people are familiar and it's easy to work with.
Of course, on the Taproot side, I think honestly, it was just that no one you know how it is.
People don't believe until they see it, but I don't think anyone understood that ordinals were going to get this valuable even after some of the first ones took off.
You know, I just don't think until the auction started happening that people thought, oh, you know, these are going to be million dollar assets or, you know, 100, whatever.
And now, of course, we had the foresight to realize that anything that's been successful in crypto has had to have a multisig in order to bring big liquidity on.
And we were looking and we were like, how are we going to get the big liquidity on to, you know, this this layer one and sex layer to Bitcoin network if there's no multisig.
So for us, that was just step one, you know, secure a place where we can put massive liquidity where people can store these increasing value of their goods, whether they're just high net worth individuals or institutions.
And then, you know, once we had that premier multisig, we're like, cool, now let's make some more stuff to stuff in it.
But yeah, the challenges were were definitely great because it was just unpioneered yet.
That was really it. There was no place to kind of pull a copy pasta from to start building from, you know, there wasn't really a framework yet.
So we, you know, like you, like I say, I'm just lucky enough to have met some awesome, awesome people here that have supported us that have, you know, taught me and shown me the way and can't say enough about bled.
You know, he's just he's behind all of this and he is just amazing and obviously could could have done none of it without him.
But yeah, also, we do have an death Denver presence.
I just want to say that where I forget we're going to be doing inscribed thons layer to layer one.
It's going to it's going to be great.
I know we got some some ninjas and some other people coming out.
And I think I see maybe Bulldogs in the crowd, Bulldog BTC.
Those are some of our kind of G's cores, STX 20 and sword no builders.
They're going to be hosting the inscripta thon.
There'll be prizes and stuff.
So if anyone's in Denver, there may be ways to participate online.
I don't know. I haven't seen the final version of it, but I just I want to get everyone excited.
I want to get everyone onboarded and I want to get everyone in scribing, whether it's layer two, layer one, whatever.
I just love all the creation and art.
You've got the the amp up, the excitement.
If anyone isn't excited to start building or isn't excited about ready layer to Bitcoin L2 is, I mean,
just get on a call with Overload, who will he will amp you up as he has for all of us.
That said, I want to do a round of updates.
You guys all have awesome projects, a lot of things that have happening with each of your companies.
Overload, thank you for the overview on Insigna and S Ordinals.
What is Xverse and you and the team have going on?
What are some of the latest with the project?
But you also are hosting something major in terms of a conference.
If I am not mistaken, give us a quick hit of what's going on.
Oh, my God, man, this is this is a tough question because there is just so much going on, Kyle.
You know, every day there is something new.
But, you know, as I mentioned, you know, for Xverse side of things on the product side,
you know, we have we have updates launching basically every single week, every single two weeks.
You know, after each spring that we ran, there's just so much going on.
You know, as I mentioned already, definitely focused quite a bit on L2s and everything that is kind of
surrounded by that narrative, you know, kind of like trying to really dissect what's going on.
You know, what's going to happen in the future?
What are some of the applications that people want to build either with stacks or whatever else is going to come in the future?
So that's definitely something that I'm spending quite a lot of time on.
We already talked about ruins, you know, ruins, definitely super exciting stuff.
Again, from my perspective as a user, I definitely want to see this to this come to coming to life.
And so focusing on that, obviously, as I said, like supporting testnet and and really working with the builders,
you know, we are doing a lot of updates for the SaaS Connect, which is basically the the API,
the integration API that developers use to integrate with Xverse.
And, you know, we have, you know, inscription API included in that, you know,
we have so many other kind of additional things that projects are now taken advantage of.
And so many of those things are kind of being improved right now, et cetera, et cetera.
So, yeah, there's just so much on the product side.
I probably could spend like one hour just talking about everything.
So I don't want to monologue.
I obviously want to respect everybody's time.
But you mentioned the conference.
I'm super excited about that. I hope you're coming.
I know Trevor is. He just confirmed with me this morning because I know sometimes it's hard to get a confirmation from Trevor.
But he just confirmed with me that he's definitely coming to Hong Kong.
The conference in Hong Kong, which is during the same week as Bitcoin Asia, Bitcoin Magazine is doing their first Asia conference.
And so we're going to be doing an Ordinals Asia as part of that week that I guess we're going to turn Hong Kong orange during that week.
And so, yeah, I'm super excited about that.
We have a bunch of announcements coming out next week, likely.
We've been confirming speakers, sponsors, you know, partners and, you know, everybody who is kind of going to be involved with the conference.
And so we're going to start announcing more stuff next week.
But yeah, it's going to be the dopest Ordinals event.
And plus it's going to be all about bridging East and West, which I think we don't do.
We don't do much of it or we don't do enough of it, you know, just yet in the space.
And so we're kind of trying to change the game there and super excited.
Yeah, Kyle, you got to come as well.
So I'm hoping to see you in person there.
Thank you, Jan, for the official invite.
I feel honored amongst the stage right now.
And hey, do you want to come to you latest in terms of Alex and what you and the team are working on quickly as well?
And we'll come to everyone else here in just a second.
Sure. So there's about a day left that we have a community governance vote to approve X-Link token.
So the Alex Bridge back in November, our community approved its transition to a separate entity X-Link.
We are now having a community vote to approve X-Link, having its own token.
Looking ahead, you know, definitely in the bull market, that's a very busy season for launch pads.
So I keep an eye out on launch pads, projects launching on Alex and also lots of interesting projects and collaborations going forward.
One of them we're really excited about is Lisa Liquid Stacking, which we are collaborating with the writer on.
And so, yeah, stay tuned to our social channels.
As you all know, we're working hard to bring self-cost to the 516 million people who owns cryptocurrency.
So in terms of product, super quick, we actually upgraded writer's want wireless charging with a larger call, meaning you can use your writer one with an Android or iPhone charger.
Then the next one is we also refined writer's wants assembly process.
So we made the final adjustment in the internal design.
So meaning we can speed up the manufacturing for the software part.
We actually finalized the native transaction support for Ethereum, Solana and Bitcoin.
Lastly, you can still preorder writer on in the go-go and February 28, February is ending.
You can also expect another backer update from us on YouTube.
That's that's a good update.
That was a good cliffhanger to leave everybody on right there.
Trevor updates with Ninja Alerts, The Ordinal Show and BFF Bitcoin Frontier Fund.
What's the latest for everybody here today?
Yeah, we just made some new investments in some ordinals and Bitcoin portfolio companies.
So we'll be announcing those soon from the Bitcoin Frontier Fund side.
Some really, really great companies that you guys already probably know, some of them or most of them.
Yeah, we're continuing to build tools for the traders and degens in the ordinal space.
I'll have an exciting update.
We'll have an exciting new beta at the end of the month and then we'll sort of tease it and let people know what we're doing there.
And yeah, The Ordinal Show.
We're cooking every single every single Monday, every single Wednesday.
10.30 AM ET on Mondays and 6.30 PM ET on Wednesday nights.
So you know where to find us.
What can people expect so much?
I mean, I would encourage everyone that they are the right fit or eligible for an event.
I talked about the tracks earlier.
You don't necessarily need to be technical.
You can do the general track.
You can explore different opportunities with the DeFi and the Bitcoin AI track.
You can learn more about the event.
We're going to launch a lot more in the upcoming days where people can learn more from our dev post page.
They can learn more about the workshops that are going to be offered during the event throughout the program.
So I'm just going to keep driving this message home that if anyone is listening to this space,
if they learned anything from this space, if they're excited, if they're curious,
this is just a little sample of what you're going to get from the Ready Layer 2 program.
Because there's so much opportunities that could be developed for you
if you just sort of explore what's possible in a program like this.
Even if you don't win any of the amazing prizes that we have lined up,
you're going to have an amazing opportunity and direct access
to the people that were speaking and sharing so much insightful information on today's space.
There's going to be mentor hours.
The judges are going to see your projects directly.
You might learn a new skill.
You might learn about a new opportunity.
You might take away a lot of things from the workshops that we're hosting.
You might even find yourself at a new job doing some type of work
for any of the companies that are going to be involved in this as sponsors
or people who are mentoring.
So you can't really say there's just like one direct outcome from something like this.
There's so many things that are good that come from this.
But I can guarantee nothing will come if you don't participate.
So even if you are super excited or you're just sort of curious about it,
it's going to be a good place to attend and learn more.
So ReadyRL2.com to learn more.
Send us an email at hi at ReadyL2.com,
and we will happily answer any questions or provide any more information for anyone who needs it.
Awesome. Thank you so much, Adam, Louis, Jan, Hayden,
Overload, and Trevor for your time today and just all the thoughts and insights,
along with your contributions to the ecosystem and to great events
and initiatives like ReadyL2 as well.
So if you haven't done so already, please make sure to follow all of our speakers
and check out their projects, everything from S Ordinals and Insigna
to ReadyLayer2, the Stacks Foundation, Rider, Xverse, the Ordinals Conference,
also Bitcoin Frontier Fund, The Ordinals Show, Ninja Alert, Alex,
Xbridge, Lisa, and so many more great projects.
Do check all of them out as well.
We mentioned ReadyLayer2, some additional promotions that we've got.
Building on Bitcoin, February 22nd,
BitcoinUnleash.org to get your tickets or to apply to be a speaker.
We've got a rock star list of speakers, including some of those here today,
to talk about everything happening across the Bitcoin layers and ecosystem
of what to expect today in six months and a year and a half from now as well.
If you're looking to learn more, check out Bitcoinlayersreport.com
to learn more about the ecosystem at whole and check out N21,
the Nakamoto prep program that is going on.
If you're looking to integrate Nakamoto and some of the upcoming technologies
that Trevor mentioned earlier around the Stacks ecosystem.
And a big thank you for tuning in to this week's crypto internet show.
If you would like to tune in live, ask questions or join the conversation,
be sure to follow Stacks on Twitter and tune in every week at our usual time,
5 p.m. Eastern on Wednesdays.
Until next time, everybody, I'm your host, Kyle Ellicott.
Take care and have a great day.