Can Ethereum Compete with Bitcoin, Solana & Celestia? | Mike Ippolito & Jon Charbonneau
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There is just a massive hump that people are not going to be able to get over that they like things that cash flow, they can model X A. They like groth growth. So the description of the world computer of a theory um and this network, this economy of different that look like businesses.

You got a lot of people there very quickly. And I think maybe this would be a controversial thing to say. But I think if there am is a Better shot at money on a long term time horizon, something like this point does.

Welcome the bank less where we explore the future of a theory um and ask the question what is the theory of north star and IT? Does that even need one? There has been some axed in the authorities community growing over the last year as etherium has become freezed by its competition.

Bitcoin story as money is growing in mainstream society, while east story, as a financial asset has not experienced the same level of success. Meanwhile, deeper in the cyp to trenches so on has captured the hot ball of money of cypher, attracting the marginal new user and new capital into its ecosystem. And over in in the distance, solis data availability continues to progress.

IT fascinate. And what is found on the m layer one, this is the serious three front war, and recovered this N A topic on a recent episode was just in drake. But this three front war is a technical war, and armies are LED by generals.

Projects have leaders who make both strategic and tactical decisions in pursuit of a goal. What is the theory um school? What is the theme design to do? What are the core dev's building? A theoria has been at peacetime for his entire life and has had the luxuries of building in a peace time world.

Today, more people are thinking that this era of a serious life has come to an end. In a face, change is needed for a serum to enter into a more aggressive stance towards this competition that some manual im plan that is not competing with. On the episode today, we have john Charles now, who recently release one of his best articles to date, which thoroughly contextualized in diagnoses the issue at hand with A I highly recommend reading this article, even if you find yourself averse to the ideas.

In fact, especially if you feel a negative reaction to the article, I even more encourage reading. Joining us on this podcast is mike bleu, who has always been immensely valuable in these conversations, given his breadth of knowledge to all the relevant ecosystems, and his general prag, nani, sm. John and mike and I are on a panel together discussing this very topic at defcon, which was the ground zero for the light bold that triggered john to write the article in question, and also for the podcast that you are about to hear today.

So bank location, I hope you enjoyed this podcast with mica eeo and john n. charbon. up. But first, before we get into that conversation a moment to talk about some these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible, want to know the exchange reveals use to help and trade cypher secure creative platforms in the world with tools for every type of traders to get started. Over thirteen million users trust crack with their funds because they lead with transparency and privacy to top, not security measures, plus to have access to professional twenty four, seven, three, sixty five sport from real humans, because your financial goals deserve real attention. Racking also has a trading platform for advanced traders called tracking for professionals and regents love cracking pro because it's one of the most customizable, high performance and intuit trading platforms in the industry.

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The same time, I got john charmante and Mickey to with me. John charbon, professional lower case r researcher, host of a podcast, a doesn't exist writer of the longest articles that cyp du can somehow still muster the attention to read, and cofounder of dba. John, welcome to banus. And mike tribeless, a bi to professional podcasts, a host of lower case r researchers, closeted sol maxi, a man who can only turn left, and cofounder of block kirks mike, also going to turn .

left is a deep cut. I don't think the audience going to get that one .

will be large in people's heads. great. Have you guys? This podcast is coming on the back of a release of a very long blog post from john turbo, very redial blog post.

I think the length is very kind, deceiving. And IT was a conversation that we also had on a panel at event dev con. I think this content, this post and hopefully the conversion that were having today is like a long time coming.

I think the crypt to world was very ready to read your post done. I think IT kind of distilled a lot of the angst that we have felt in the theory um about a theory about the east Price. Maybe i'll open up the conversation with this.

I think some people might be ready to say, oh, IT was just Price action like eat, Price has returned now the sentiment is fixed. But I kind of want to actually decline that idea because the inks the issue is still there even if Price number does go up. So john, maybe you can kind just give us a speed run of the article and your kind of like diagnosis and your motivation for writing the article for people that haven't reit would just like the big elements that you focused on while .

you are writing IT. thanks. We're prompting to the panel at dev con was actually when I had been like kind of joining down notes on what I thought I was going to do of like a sort of related post.

And then after we did that, panels like, this is great. I need to like, write this. I really want home to my hotel after I was like, this is what i'm doing.

Skip events. That's what I yes, no, I ended up like skip c events out the week. I was like a lot of what I did throughout the week and the week after, the week after I published that in the till. The r of IT for people who haven't ready at is basically like we've kind of had this kind of clear overarching problem in a theory for a while now.

It's like it's not a specific technical thing or like a problem at a very low level, like it's a pretty high level of vision thing that like I think is journey been lacking of when you look at the theory um as now quite a number of like very credible competitors on really all of the different dimensions that a theory um is competing on. And in each of those dimensions, it's a very clear competitor that is like focused on those things like you know what they're like, they'll quote like north star, their goal really is. So I mean, like very specifically like coin, like everyone knows what, but in does not like the whole point of this thing is like a digital goal is money.

And you know it's very easy to talk the story because like everyone knows what that is and then you have he's kind of like financial rail, smart contract platforms. I mean, san is a very clear example there. Everyone knows plan a story, whether you love to hate that.

Everyone knows what IT is. Everyone knows how works. Everyone knows the vision like IT is totally, I want to be centralized.

Nx, no permission. Was markets for everyone of the world equal. Xx information makes sense.

And then the other kind of third leg of IT is journal I would take like last you, which is this kind of like big kind of roll up vision, which is much more of just like a broader, we want to make IT easy for anyone to launch any kind of application. You make unstoppable applications that are not persistent. Everyone can verify these things, know you have a light node on your phone.

And so all three of those are like very clear, coherent visions like this is the thing that we're focused on. And the theory um is like kind of been sitting in the middle for a while and it's actually been like pretty unclear, like one of those dimensions that a theory um wants to compete on. And black why is kind of like the more fundamental underlying question.

If you ask someone like what is the theory of purpose? You get like a hundred different answers if you ask a hundred different people. And so I think the people have ignored that for a long time because that sounds like sort of like, I don't know a semantic thing.

I like adds decently. You know, different people see different things. And so I think that kind of like we d kind of just like like that fly for a long time. But then I think the people have started to realize over the course of the past year.

No, this isn't just like, oh, that makes IT you know hard to talk about IT or just like it's this complicated thing that like makes IT hard to explain to my mom is like actually it's of creating like real coordination problems in particular. I like the one half of IT that I describe as a basically kind of like building coordination. Is that basically if we don't agree on like why we're building this thing that ends up flowing down into, okay, well, then we don't agree on like what properties we need to build.

Like do we need to build. A like fast and cheap chain that's doing execution, all these things. You can answer that if you don't like to know what is the use case that we're building for.

So that's half of IT, and that ends up like slowing down and making a really confusing conversation whenever we try to like actually improve the chain. That kind of those everything down there end up with potentially conflicting goals as well, too. And then the other half of IT is that kind of like marketing part, I would say, is a down's stream of like having a clear north story, like knowing what your product is.

And that does matter a lot whether you're trying to know, communicate to new developers and investors in the ecosystem. Like, hey, this is the reason that we're exciting, like can build on my jane. You need to have a clear story to kind of inspire people and especially if for a theory um does actually want to compete on money. I mean money is just a story so if we don't even ree internally in a theory um on, you know what is the overarching vision, what is the story well then you never going to like self the thing.

So it's this kind of just like high level kind of perspective and realization that we're seen playing out over the past year of increasingly one half as the theory has a lot of like very credible competitors on different dimensions and then the other half is more internal to the theory of, okay, it's really unclear like which of these things that we actually want to compete on the why. And so we need to like really clarify that and then kind of everything falls. Downer reen.

when I was reading your article, I was getting and like two kind of parallel punch lines that really work well together. The first is that etheria has a coordination problem and this is showing up unlike the accord debt calls, and like what discussing what e ips that the irem is going to work on to prioritize. And like some the antidotes that are out there is that there's some technical debates about you, which we do next about like should have be fossil or multiple concurrent proposals. And these are just both technical upgrades and a lot of these are being debated technically.

But with you sume out, they're actually more just like directional differences, like what do we want a serum to be? And so like, well, I might appear to be a technical debate is actually more of just what are we building here debate and without that debate being answered, a lot of progress in the theory um is being slowed. So that's like one half of, I think, the punch line of your articles that the area has a coordination problem, has a north star problem.

And separately, in addition to that, if irm has credible competition and these two points really land extra hard when combined, is because sona laa more aggressively moving, more aggressive teams that can like move fast and break things. And then, you know, bitcoin, which is kind of already very far along, along like a narrow path for itself. IT doesn't want to do too much.

IT just wants to be money. Money is very big, but still nonetheless like pretty clear. And it's like path for what IT wants for itself. And so these two things together kind of create the current like anx that we've seen in a theoria. Mike, you are part of the genesis of this conversation on the panel over in depth on just give me your thoughts about what you had when you are reading your article.

Yeah, I think it's been difficult to have this conversation publicly for a couple of different reasons. One is a psychological element of do we want to admit that there is a problem here? The second is there are multiple conversations that are getting jumbled up into one.

And that's why you have some people describing this is a product problem and others describing this as a marketing problem. I would like to introduce two new dimensions that as well. And just say when you're looking at an organization, whether that's something that's extremely essential, zed, like a theory um or a country like the united states or small startup or corporation, think this are all roughly the same chAllenges.

And you can buck IT into that coordination problem that you mention, David. And there's a leadership component, a strategy component, a product component and a marketing component. And I think I want to return to that.

But the first problem, do we have a problem here? IT also reminds me a little bit of the mega movement not to bring the politics angle to this. I had a really negative interpretation originally of that, because is like, I don't want to admit that there is a problem.

America, I love america. I grew up in america. My parents saw me is the greatest country in the world. Now I don't know. I look at a little bit differently because the first step to solving a problem comes for admitting that there's a problem, no chAllenge.

And I think that basically, just judging by my twitter and little conversations, I think half of people are on the page that, hey, maybe there is an issue that we need to address. There's still another half that says we don't want a bit that there's a problem. Everything is okay.

But to break down what I think the different conversations that are happening, there's a leadership strategy, product marketing. And I think actually from a marketing perspective, I went to maybe take a contrarian opinion that I think the theory um has phenomenal marketing. I don't think there's a marketing problem at all.

I don't think that centralized top down marketing works in the context of l ones. What you really want in l ones is grass roots, community driven, bottom up marketing. You want a bunch of people to basically a the problem.

Everyone has that in states more so than anyone other than bit corn, maybe now cardona or X R P. But the problem is that there are not getting a coherent input about what to yap about. That sounds very discordant. And you have all these arguments that are going on.

Lots of yap is not much message.

Lots of apple is not much message on the leadership side of things. I think that there's a debate to be had around leadership IT. IT ends up getting stymied because people say we don't want some centralized top down thing like swann. But I think there are numerous different ways that you can be an effective leader. And one of those is setting a vision right or north star or a goal or mission or where we're ultimately going and then empowering and interesting other people to act on the mission.

So I am a believe that someone needs to come up with the why someone that has moral authority and then you empower other people to come up with the hell of actually executing that vision, which I think is the right vision for theory um the strategy side of things you can basically think of strategy is saying no to things. And i'm not of the opinion that the theory can't compete on everything that is trying to compete on. I would disagree that I should compete on every single one of those verticals right now.

At the same time, I think IT has to say no to some verticals even on a short term time horizon, get a wedge and become the best that one of the things that is trying to compete on. And then in a number of years, I can ultimately compete, I think, on everything that IT ultimately wants. And I mean, we'll get to this with john's world computer vision, but I would be in the camp that that's probably the best way the world computer leads to the money.

And I think and then there's the product stuff. And I think, yeah, that's everything john mentioned in the article about actually creating a product that people want, making IT measurable and setting you just quantifiable ways of. Is this actually what the market wants?

Could we take some time and try and diagnose how we got here in theory? And the serum has some very interesting properties. IT started off in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen with a pretty centralized teen, but IT very quickly moved to this decentralized p process.

The lic started off with this process being pretty hands off, pretty quickly into a syria s lifespan. Really a theory. M has, to its credit pioneer this decentralized coordination model in a way that, like the world has never seen before, like the level of decency.

Coordination, in theory, is like pretty astounding to me of the kind of a breakthrough of, like what humans can do with flight, the assistance of internet protocols. And that works I really well for a while, especially as we had john mentioned in this post, very clear north stars and like temporary north stars, like the merge, like the merge rally, everyone in the theory um to get the merge done. And again to a theory um credit got a lot of very big things shipped into IT, and I think a lot of the low hanging for IT has been picked off.

And now we're starting to like ask what's the next for a thorium? And some of these problems of being a decentralized, coordinated community are starting to like rear its head and also like things age, right? These systems age, as people kind of know the game, like different pockets of influence emerge.

A syria they really liked in john's post. Political interests have been pressured. The margins and like push away from the center. The ef doesn't want to be top down. And so it's pushed political power away.

And then those political epicentres, the layer tools like the MV supplied chain, started like, you know, things like flash pots, things like optimism started, became like politically powerful. And that influence that started like work is way back in. And now we are dealing with the consequences of that.

And so like that's just an age thing. It's A A timing thing. We are now in the year twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five. And so what decentralized coordination looks like is different now than I did five years ago. Maybe this is my kind of like setting up the context for this question, but like john, help us like diagnose how and why we got here. Where are the properties that got to say this place?

So i'd say half of IT is definitely in natural age. Thing like this is kind of the natural progression of things. The other half and probably the bigger component of that, I would say, is that I think is quite intentional.

And that's a product of kind of what the series roots were, which were very big coining, which is not the case for all of these new you lui salona type genes that you're seeing pop up. Now these are not people who were like, I really wanted to build this thing on bitcoin, but, you know, I guess we just need to go make her own thing. I was just like, they are just building a new tech platform where says a theory, you know had very bit pointer roots like those are of the people who started the project like that was a round up time.

And so that is the kind of cultural inclined of most people in there. And so there is a much earlier and more aggressive push to like very intentionally try to desensitize of the decision making, you know, the whole emphasis on a very multiplying architecture. Try not to have like a very strong single leader and try to like decentralize the decision making process is all of these things and a lot of the culture of kind of manifested the technical road map of we're going to push out a lot of the technical complexity.

And what that ends of doing is that in pushing our technical and complexity, you are also, in practice, pushing out kind of the political power as well. Because if you're not building those things that everyone is using now, well, now the layer tools are building those things. You they are buying client teams like you have all these other different parties that like they end up having a lot of political influence and kind of like what is the theory of itself doing? So i'd say the mix of those two things, like there are some level of natural centralization, and you see that even it's one.

And now where you know they're going to have multiple client teams, he is not just labs doing everything that you know g to has a lot of input in the process. Fire dcor has a lot of input in the process like that is going to slow things down. But they don't have all of these other points of we are going to intentionally, you know like our founder in court team or to be less opinionated about things like they are not going to do that, like they are going to keep opinionated. They are not to have all these old tools that are putting a lot of political influence of process and all of those things. So it's a mix of those kind of two things.

My job want to anything.

No, I agree with all that. I think part of this is just natural growing pains. I just remember that they were literally lock sized wars that got fought in bitcoin over this. It's really sure you can look at out that naval on has this quote about groups don't disagree, they skim.

And you can not understand why that is having lived through cypher, if you consider yourself as being part of a tribe, there's a natural cycle to IT where you know your part of one truck. This happened to me with bitcoin, where that's what he gets you into the space in the first place, you buying to a lot of the arguments. And then once you get a little deeper, you start to see some the issues.

Maybe there's some some chAllenges here. We should talk about that. But for whatever reason that is bad bias or people tying their entire identity, they're coin.

People are less willing to hear that IT turns a certain amount of people off. There is this kind of debate in conflict, and then a little bunch of people end up leaving. And so you can see why this pressure to schism exists.

And so I think, like Johnson said, part of this is just really natural growing pains for a protocol that business successful and will be as successful as a theme going forward to the future. And then I think my opinion would be that is we're not reaching human nature here. Even large, decentralized organza, like the U.

S. Government, which is actually a very decentralized organization, has to have some sort of figure head, because people are just wired a certain way after hundreds of thousands of years, and just having someone to set a kind of high level vision, I think, is important. And their numerous examples, by the way, of those of the leaders of protocols attempting to decentralize, hand over, control the community. And then either those protocols aren't successful anymore without naming any names, or their leaders have come back. And so I think we just needed to recognize that whether or not the leaders of a theory um want to take on the mental of that power, that power exists and if they don't take IT on someone else, well, to way of taking on, I want to bring .

up the illustration of the three wave and diagram because I think that also does a really good job of grounding the conversation. So if three circles all overlapping in the center, you have bitcoin celesta in salona execution data availability consensus is like how I think just draw frame IT. I don't know you agree with that like the relationship between the three ecosystems, but I thought that was a pretty useful metaphor here.

And of course, john, your article is about bitcoin salona solstice as being the three credible competition. To a theory, bitcoin is actually winning versus theoria in the money, but all three are competing with the, and then you have, where overlaps altogether is the theory. Theory is at the center trying to do all three, doing all three with some decent measure of success.

And then also you have celestium with more data availability than the theories of salona, with more execution than in the a theory lair one and then bitcoin withdraw rates up more months than a theory um and so these are like the three players here that are trying to like unbundle a theoria like the idea of like a being drawn and quartered comes to mind or drawn and third by these like three ecosystems and so like I just have this like a picture of like the systemic body with three ropes tied to IT and it's flexing as hard as I can trying to pull data available ding money and execution to IT and then sonus less biton or polling those same resources away to their respective ecosystems. So that kind of like the grounding, I think that helps illustrates this conversation. So on this lonely less a bitcoin three way spectrum, john, where do you think a syrian lies in its like prioritization. And so where do you think IT is? And then where do you think IT oudt to lie with very odd priorities, things?

Yes, I would say broadly, IT is kind of in one, two, three order. Well, tweet to show the evolution of, I would say initially I was, I would say salona bitcoin in then celestium like in the early on where like IT really had that kind of world computer vision.

IT was like just starting and I was like very clearly, like I would say, like more difference rentier from bitcoin, like particularly the genesis of a theoria know you aren't trying to copy bitcoin. There was less focused on the money as there was more focused on the world computer, which is like the kind of vision like I am trying to bring back. So I would say IT almost like looked more like salona at the beginning, which is interesting.

And then I think over time, especially with the altered ones and all these other things popped up, IT started to move more towards like bitcoin as a prioritization of like we're going to be the money thing with like the minimum viable execution and that IT becomes, know this quote of like bitcoin was the vision or whatever like a theory is the execution of that. I'm like we're just doing bitcoin would like just ena functionality that you need for all the different things. And then I D say where that's like started to progress to is still primarily bit coin y, but with like a prety strong emphasis on the celestial leg of IT, we're really bought into this kind of l two vision.

But with a kind of like different l two vision from celestial, where celestis kind of l two vision is you is very important in their like salmon role. Ideology of like IT is much more evy. You know, we are just making this verifiable, unstoppable internet IT is a much more kind of like APP and user centric like we are a platform to like change the internet for you guys versus a theory um is a more a theory um centric and like everything kind of comes out from there and love like eat is money.

And therefore this makes sense as the center of the internet and like all of the other things will build on top of us because of that kind of bruin. So where I think IT is now concretely is like it's kind of shift towards, I say, like largely bitcoin y and that's manifested in a lot of the stuff take about earlier, like you end the decline architecture to as leadership, people are talking about the issues at all, these things of all the time. And then on the technical focus, like what most people tried to do is like stuff c blobs and pear death.

What is concrete before looking, you know, kind of more like lustier and where people have been largely ignoring that kind of you know shui thorium execution, like does this really matter has largely been ignored for a while. I know that part of the push of what I think that makes us much kind of free emphasize again, i'm just to kind of bring more of that back into IT and start that shift over of be a little, little bit coin y at least for now, a little more of focus on the execution, the world computer, you know this like a neutral layer again. And then I think that ends involving until like more money is at the end, but the path dependent of those things matters.

Yeah okay. So the way that you would say is like theme is most like bitcoin with roll ups, you the bitcoin plus alasia and is competing with those two things the most and it's kind of disregarded its own like salona end of the spectrum and disregarded his own execution, which kind of make sense because like which alternative ecosystem has grown the most over the last two years, which ecosystem has taken advantage of that fact that if you is disregarded its own layer one execution, oh, it's the ecosystem that has optimized for layer one execution. Make an any commentary .

here yeah I think a lot of this comes down to path dependence. And I have this memory of the chAllenge that the theory um has right. I think ultron money confused a lot of people, me included.

And I remember describing to my dad early on, you know, I had a lot of trouble getting him around the hump of bitcoin like, but there is no deal that doesn't do anything productive. And you can go and look at guys like jack bogle describe people's natural, why they don't like commodities as an investment in general. There's just this massive hunt that people are not going to be able to get over that they like things that cash flow they can model, except they like groth growth.

So the description of the world computer of a syria and this network, this economy of different applications that look like businesses, you got a lot of people there very quickly. And I think maybe this would be a controversial thing to say. But even the monitor, I think there am, is a Better shot at money on a long term time horizon than something like bitcoin does.

Bitcoin has sort of gone the mean approach to money, and I view IT as a counter reaction to the issues that the money is having. We print too much for up money, so we get a total fix supply that great as a mean. That's a really strong mean on a really long term time rising that doesn't work as A I property, you need amount of flexibility.

And I kind of look at the theory am's monetary scheme and think it's a Better long term scheme. The issue is you're confusing people by trying to ride two horses with the one of and I also think has been a misunderstanding as well of where the leverage for l ones really lies because of these brain damage words like settlement. And i'm not of the opinion that most people choose the l one because of these settling properties.

I think there's a minimum viable amount of the centralization you need with a settlement part, then IT becomes a cost thing. But really what IT is, is it's the liquidity they I want. And why did so many people choose a theory of last cycle? There was a massively liquid asset.

You could build anything you wanted. You could speculate quite a bit. And that was super valuable for the network. And I think there was a misunderstanding among some people in theory um circles that said, oh, we're being chosen because we're the most decentralized and the market was not choosing a theory for that reason.

And so that's why in the camp of world computer focused execution, whatever you want to do, and we can talk about how this, I think doug, tales really nicely with the roll up centric road map. It's all about having leverage and users and liquidity more so than these vae concepts of, or one very bio pic way to measure the centralization. I think yeah.

I think that does extend into the real center, grow up very well because in twenty twenty one, twenty twenty, when cyp du got hundred times more users, they went to a serum because that's where the liquidity was. If you want to minin launch and end of tea projects, you did IT where the money was. So everything went to a theory um that's because of where the money and users were adjust.

To make concrete examples, there was, well look at the early dev apps that got product market fit unis, wap maker ova. What were those protocols allowing people to do? Use the theory in some way, right? Take loans out, level up, get yield, trade things. N, V. All of those initial use cases were based around having a deeper and liquid, a one token that people are to speculate around, right?

And the theory of, I say, is getting its layer to energy is it's powering layer tools. The same phenomenon is not to discredit the fact that the theory is decentralized in layer ti want some level of like property rights incentives to persistence, totally valid. And also later tools will go to where the money is, the intensive go to where the money is and where the users are.

And so I think this also kind of brings into a point that I think john said is like, well, layer tools will follow the liquidity just like users. And so you could like kind of imagine alternative version of a theory um and alternative timing where a theoria priorities the layer on first before prioritising layer tools, which is what song is doing, song is prioritising layer execution. And then you keep everyone on the boat, you keep all the users, you keep all the liquidity, and then you can let layer to spd more emergences from that.

Maybe, john, you can kind of like run that simulation of a road map, maybe like slan as where you actually are on the rollos centric road map, you were totally going to do rolph. We love rops. We love the salesa. We love the Cosmos sion. We're just going to scale the layer one is meaningly as possible, like what could have .

been in this world. So yeah, like all of that, I would say like make sense in hindsight of I think the key term that we'll end of saying here a lot and that like people in more is like this is all just the past dependence thing of like most of us agree, like as vliet is writing as well, like the end game of most of these block chains looks the same. And I think that the theory has had a very strong inclination over time to ignore the like, what is the practical thing today in the past pendants of these things.

And that is probably unsurprising when you have a very, you know this like optimistic research driven community, which is you talking about one shot signatures in these things that are like fifty years away and you are planning for this like, yes, this theoretically makes sense in the end game but ignoring that point of like, okay, but like, yeah, i'm practice why did the are to launch on the theory? I like IT wasn't because we had this like perfect road map that had everything figured out of all these amazing central ation properties. IT was all the users are on a theory um that is where the most assets are.

Eat is worth a lot of money. We can go on bring those people in the orgin. And like now we have product market fit, we can just like take those users in those.

And that particularly makes sense when you realize that kind of like frame of I really like. And this is what like totally pokes out actually all the time. Like you you makes a long and two like what fundamentally is an l two. At the end of the day, when you think this is like it's a good bridge to another chain. So where alt is necessarily going to go is just the bridges they're obviously going to bridge to where the assets are.

And so it's not a surprise that for the first time over the past year and in a pretty consistent line with the salt Price, pretty much in the activity on soul is like people talk about one and two for the first time. And why is that? It's because so long and now here's a lot of users and a high asset value on their chain.

So of course, that makes sense to build like a good bridge effectively salon, get their users, get their assets. IT didn't make sense when salona wasn't work a lot. They didn't have any users.

It's not that sana got you know more decentralized and had these like properties of a settlement layer from a technical level from a year ago versus today, like nothing changed to building the exact same thing. They don't even care about these all two. It's just that they have assets in users now and so people makes like o yeah make sensible on top of them.

And so I think that a theory um kind of in some sense, I probably like look into that benefit from the beginning of obviously, when the theory is started, IT did not have the role of sent for grow map was just like we're building an execution later. This is the thing that we know to do, but that ended up being the right move. And like the example that I was used as, like I would say, the Cosmos was generally the first ecosystem that very clearly understood what is the yg game that mostly matters for.

This is like we're probably going have a bunch of chains. We need to figure out, you know, how do you make IT easy to launch chain? How do you make IT easy to be interrogated? Tween them, they have the generally correct idea.

They just didn't have the right path dependent solution to that, just like you've said. As for like they kind of want right to the Young me right at the beginning and like IT just doesn't make sense. You just ended up with a bunch of fragmented chains and like none of them were actually worth a lot.

So there wasn't like actually much to do on any of them, and they were just like sort of fragmented. And I was like there was no like kind of rallying point for the ecosystem versus the theory um was just like we have one chain like what's be real? This is enough to do like ninety nine percent of the stuff that you can do encysted today, which was very completely and I think that a theory um kind of IT hasn't gone all the way, but there has been a trend of its like sort of Cosmos hubby itself over the past couple years.

And this is the reason I completely like the first time that we got very excited about and investing in sala was I was like IT was fall of twenty three or whatever, like right before the bull market picked up because I one I am part of IT was the market of you. I think the market going to come back. But I like also had a very clear view that like this whole role of thing, again like make sense in the in game, but IT is very clearly does not the present situation of crypt or that we need one hundred trains with all these interpret ability standards and all the stuff figured out, like what in ninety nine percent of people in cropt want to do today, they want, I like trade to mean coins.

Play around with some new like deepen d projects and whatever you can kind of just fit that. I want chain. And so that is still directionally where we are today. I like most of the interesting things that people want to do. You could fit on a chain like a theory and ticul you to. And so I think there's a much more realization now of, yes, obviously a theme I want is not going to fit like the entire future of the world, but that doesn't an that we should just ignore IT completely like IT actually is valuable still as the center of this kind of l to rome, right?

So I want to want to make a point. Let's say you're listening to this conversation and you're in the east as money camp. I want to try to connect the dots in between getting everyone on one single environment and how that actually leads to eat being a Better money.

There's this reflective property in between ef, the l one token versus actual usage of the network and IT comes from the fact that the total addressable market for apps is highly dependent on the market. Capone token high flute concept, two concrete examples, the early like ova and maker, their market size was limited by the amount of people that wanted to borrow against their ease. So the more the east went up, the more the demand where the market size for those applications was same thing for l tools.

Why are altus all very excited about launching the theory? Partly because there was a privatization from the l wana, making IT easier to launch altus, but also mostly because this mass of users and liquidity on that one. And so that's why it's very important actually, there's display reflects of property between the Price of the token and the actual adoption of the network.

The other thing too that I think is gonna bit of a chAllenge just speaking about Cosmos and anticipating the end game is if you look at Cosmos, they were really early to the trend of allowing users to pay in U. S, D, C. As opposed to adam.

The token, and I think that's roughly gna play out on l tus as well. This is one of those areas where l tus. And the theory of one have very different incentives.

And so the broad discussion around this has been work trading off execution fees for liquidity, network effects of ease on altus. But I don't see the incentive for really for altus to make their customers adopt eat. If customers want to pay for things in U S, D, C, the altus are going to make IT very easy to pay for things in U.

S. D. C. And so one of the other benefits, from a monetary standpoint of maintaining more activity on your network. As you have control over what happens on your network, you can much more easily collect taxes that will translate into yael, that will make your asset larger and the market size of your apps larger.

There is an interesting discussion around p one five five nine where they were deciding between a burn and, you know, these other mechanisms that would have made A D sac. And they ultimately be, if you go back and you can listen these great episode, how you did on on common core when that was so podcast. And he's talking with suzi about this concept of economic abstraction. Part of the reason the burn was selected was because they didn't want off chain payments happening until they wanted to control the fact that people needed to pay for block c space in the theory um that's an example of something that you can concretely do that would affect the demand for a theory um if you have everyone Operating on your layer vers, if you move all these users altus that are not incentivize to.

I agree with that. The economic attraction can now return into the authorities ecosystem via the layer tools. Dollars are more easy to reason about. There's just Better U X.

And as we expand cyp to and people just going to want to demand dollars to transaction dollars more than they are going to want to transaction in either, I gently agree with that trend. And I will also say I I want to start to put on my authorities had a little bit more strongly here. And so i'll also say that like, okay, that's great, that people are going to spend their dollars, but really that's like the commodity side.

The payment side of money is a very small fraction of IT as opposed to the store of value side. I will gladly spend dollars and store my ease and sure we can economically, a abstract, either on its layer tools. And people can spend dollars, but like if people are still electing to use and store their value in either and use, eat as money on these later tues, that's actually like eighty ninety percent of what makes the money.

And so if users elect to use eat as my Young yer to, is that way more powerful? And this starts to get into some of the stuff, I think, if I M really has strength on, which is even though eat is not as great of money as compared to bitcoin, a judged by the market of even though IT is not great as execution along IT and even though its erm has less data availability, IT still has a monopoly on the synergies between each of these overlapping and diagrams. So what do you get when you have a money mixed ed with layer tools? Well, you can fuel those layer tools with money, and you can have more demand for either because arbitron got superfast block times, it's got a very strong defy ecosystem.

What's primarily the money in that ecosystem eat? And true, you can maybe even dollars do the plants like eat in these ecosystems. But nonetheless, we are still in a field currency crisis in, nonetheless, societies are moving away from field currencies. And so if to take a leaf out of mic noddy's book is the permissionless money of these eClaire to ecosystems. And that's just like one synergy, like what do you get when you cross the energy of money and execution, bitcoin and sona, you get layer one defi and IT hems.

Layer one defied ecosystem, still has has like eighty eighty five percent market share of defy, like a very strong dominance of where's the etha actually sell on the layer one inside of maker dough, inside of obey and a quote from area wall recently he was like, well, I go gambling on salona but like, I put my winnings in ov on a thereon and so on a theory on the layer one, on the layer one yeah yeah. And so like, nonetheless, I think there's a lot of path pendency things that we can bring up. And like john da, i'd say that like some of the push back that i've heard from some therein people, is not that anything in your article is technically wrong, but the vibe wasn't accurate, as in the theory is this decaying roman empire, these smaller, like city states, so on as less a are going to rise and take over. But like the fundamentals, the stats like are still very strongly, in theory an favor. And so i'll kind of just presented to you like talk about the synergies that the theory um has and like how should we like way these things in these conversations.

So i'll get you the one quick part that I did on on the stats that D I actually disagree with that now .

on some set set. yes. So has like a lot of economic economic engine and .

which I think what has been behind in practice like it's rise over the past years that I think in practice like a like slam has actually surpassed a theory um even including all of its layer tools on a lot of key matrix stuff like rv, just like the total amount like like water users paying between M V N feed used chain.

What is the amount of revenue that the apps on the chain are making? You know the applications like radium jupiter pump on g to like all these, their printing money to degree that like even more than a theory, applications for getting institutional, like a lot of points, the the getting the point, the same thing on something like like all those different things. So I think on a metric, I think that the discrepancy in their market cap is much higher than the discrepancy in actual. I would say like what the metrics would tell you if if you're just looking at those with no understanding of kind of history.

But what about defy though? I think a serum still has a very large dominant market chairs of defy, specifically A T V L. Maybe not fees, but T V L. Yes.

exactly. And this is where I do think that has a serious advantage. And this gets into that kind of role computer convience that like, which is why I do think that makes sense to compete on this is because what era described is like directionally. What I do to, and what I think directly most people do to is like, yeah, I do most of my mean point, trading on slang a and then I have more .

like my saving yeah, my USD c is on .

the theory stuff like that. I think that actually is a .

real product market. It's kind of similar to win like big corners say, oh, i'll go shake inning but then i'll .

sell IT into bitcoin at the end of the day. So yeah, that still is the kind of like directional BIOS right now, which is why I think that makes sense for a theme to lean into that and not just like give that up because otherwise I think that is the concrete of the problems that current trend is so long is clearly gaining on all of these different things. You know IT has more decks volume.

There's more users who are used in this like pain, more fees, more interesting applications to all these things. But the last hold out really is that there's still a lot of a big money on a theory. This is still the place that like I generally trust a little bit more with like big dollar mounts.

But if you just like continue to ignore this execution layer and for the next year to have this mixed messaging where a lot of people are actively telling like applications, there's no future for the I get off the and then slam a you picking up activity and black, Brown and paypal and all these of the your institutions are replying on sala. You eventually there is going to build up there like actual serious tvo and savings there too. And then like the discrepancy, like it's all gone.

And so I think the ratigan ally atheists should not let that happen. IT should understand that. Yeah, a lot of the users will go there. A lot of them will do the same coins, baba, but we want to try to keep a lot of the serious value stuff because I do think that is like a real competitive. And then as far as kind of the center gees and getting into like the economic instruction point that you're talking about as well.

So I think that in practice this was correct, that a theories was able to kind of say altus will like definitely increase the money in neovius because like these are just more places that use internet ks. exactly. And so early on, I think that was correct because economic construction is just like technically complex, like no one did that you just wanted to use.

Like what are you going to use on all these chains? The direction now is obviously you based announced, I will use U, S, D, C for payments like more changes are going to do that. And so I would say that I think the more correct framing, particularly as we play this out of time, is that l tus, expand the kind of the opportunity space for ease to be used as money.

But once economic construction become easier and easier, it's just creating the opportunity for IT to be used that way. If users don't want IT, they're not going to use IT verses today. It's directly more even if you don't want, you're using eat if you want to go using l two.

So it's kind like forced on people. So that will generally be a negative, I would say, unlike eats money in this over the longer term. And so part of that is what you're are saying of and agree with this, like most of the value of this kind of currency thing is not actually from the fact that people using IT for gas paint.

I agree with that. You do the M V equal P U to calculations on this. Like not a lot. It's high velocity on this stuff. But I think in practice, that is very likely very heavily tied to IT being used as the store value in that like core of defied on the chain.

When the on boarding for everyone who goes on this chain is like you're going to own, eat and you're going to use this, and that is the thing that you need to own. IT is very likely in practice. That is kinds going to be the core, the ecosystem.

It's probably going to be the main asset that ends up in all these like define applications. Versus if that is never a step that you need. Like I never need to get eat to go on to this changes, like I just go on there with USD c, then I don't see a compelling reason why a thorium is going to like just naturally become that asset.

People are just get to actually grab towards our they want, which is probably directly going to be B2C in US, D, C. So that is the thing that I think that bitcoin has gotten like very right. And like luckily from the start, like you kind of need to start with the money because ultimately, when the users have the choice, they're going to pick what they actually wanted.

The money, not just like this is the tech platform that I built on top of that is part of the why I think that makes sense and this kind of gets to the world computer and eat these money visions of like a lot of this is really just the time scale thing of like I think that yes, the n game for these things as you want them to play out into money. But I don't think that in practice, the way that you can get this thing to be money is just saying, like our ultrasound money or deflationary, we're Better money than bitcoin. Like piracy, most people don't buy.

Most people prefer a big coin, unlike just sound monetary aspects of IT. So I think that general probably the way to actually just increase the value of youth in the short to medium term, and just like kind of start with that base of how do we increase the moneys ss asset value of IT is to probably refocus on more of the focus on the iwan have a lot of the great execution there, this more world computer vision with that kind of the heart of IT because that is still where in practice, like most of this high value defy is all happening. That is still where most users are. So if you can really just increase that a lot and that becomes the home of IT again, in practice, if it's like probably going to go and IT becomes a Better color, less at all, these are the things. And then that's probably the more path dependently correct way to kind of build yourself into being money over.

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Bring up the north star conversation again. It's last years long. big.

Have very clear. North stars last, yeah. One big by blocks build, whatever so on. Have increased speed, reduced ency. Yeah million.

And then if the conversation is, the theory has this kind of confounded, like north star idea, but I want to present the idea that couldn't be the case. That is simply because these other three ecosystems are just going after a smaller vision. Then what a therion is going for theoria s road map as parallel is complexity is immense, is hard to explain.

Maybe that's because it's going for a super set of what all of these things are going for. IT is the thing in the middle of vent diagrams, right? That's why it's got a marketing problem.

It's why it's got coordination difficulties, why it's difficult to understand. And it's kind of like imagine trying to explain the third vertical dimension to a flat landing. That's just going to be a hard thing to explain. And the syria's governance, its p progress, its aris road map is kinder like this random walk in the towards this like vibe of a direction that is like loosely articulated by vitality.

Maybe that's why a theory um has like this north star vision is the eat that I eat out that was in this direction was what is the theorem s like north star? What is the theory um road map? Better money than bitcoin, more data availability than last year, Better execution than sona.

And that was a hit tweet. And I think that because that actually resonated with a lot of people, people like, oh, this is putting a lot of pieces to the puzzle together for me. What do you guys like this?

five. yeah. So I think that this comes back to the common that I made at the top, this episode about strategy.

I do not think that IT is a bad thing for a theoria vision to compete on all of those dimensions eventually. I think it's a mistake to go out and say they're competing on all of those dimensions right now. Here's another analogy that i'll give you.

If amazon had come out on day one and said we are gonna the everything store, IT would fAllen completely flat just with books, right? And the jeff bases only ever want to sell books. I don't think so.

But he picked a wedge that was easy to understand. He did a Better than everyone else. And then he expanded from there. So again, I want to just also just a zoom out here for a second.

I think that a theory has the best shot at winning the largest market, which i've always viewed as commodities like money that has some amount of you attached to IT. The reasons again, getting back to the mega comment here is i'd be firmly in the camp that there is a problem. You don't solve the problem unless you say that there is not much incentive actually for medical, right? It's like I know there's going to be unpopular for people.

The reason is I care about IT and I want to see the problem solved in the first step that is admitting that there's a problem. And I think that I would disagree the vivid with that tweet that a theory am is more complex than any of these other networks or it's just got a bigger vision. I think all these networks have a very similar vision, and I think there's a very similar amount complexity across all these.

I think a theory has to improve on its strategy here and decide again on the path dependence point, on the time scale point, when do I want to win each of these wedges and which wedge is gna give me the most leveraged to win the next touch up from that. And I think describing IT as competing for everything at once. It's not hitting with people, and I don't think it's the right strategy.

So I would split IT into two. I think half of the other is what might just described, which is, I would say, like very sickly epidemic. Ed, by kobes reply to your tweet watches, you know, man who chases two rabbits catches neither.

But there is a fair argument. IT is very possible, that is the wrong move strategically to, like, go full force on all three days right now. And this is just a matter prioritization at the end of my post. That is like, generally the view that I end up taking is that, you know, I think on some time horizon, you are competing on all these things.

But like we probably need to reprise tize and focus a little bit more on certain aspects of this, like particularly like I think you should probably focus more directly on the kind of like execution front today and a little bit less of the money, you know, that kind of complete. That was like my directional bias. I think IT probably makes sense to do that.

I would say the much larger actual other half of the though is what was a lot of the focus of the piece is I don't think most of the issue today is that we are trying to compete on all of those things. I think that most of the issue today is that none of us agree about whether we are competing on any of those dimensions. I do not think that there is internal agreement that we are competing on money.

I think that like most people want this and like some lose notion, but a lot of people very actively dislike IT and do not care about IT, do not want to see the theme, do IT like they want to be this like decentralized economy tech, all these things like it's not. And I mean like the perfect to pit me of this like I described as, like at the bank summer, like one of the talks, like answer going and talking, like they're been doing a lot of work and this one and all these things, the title the talk is eat is money if we choose IT to be right that like highlights, we do just don't know. Like we haven't decided internally if we're even competing on this thing.

Da, I would says the same thing of, like we have this loose notion of, like like we're going to scale this thing, like we do for for four, we do peer dos, we do that sorting, possible, all these different things. And like I was going to do that, but I was that there is a reasonable amount of disagreement of like I come much. Do we actually after prioritize that? Like how valuable actually is that if we're just doing the whole money thing anyway?

I mean, like bitcoin, to ever can have enough D A for the world, that we're not to have enough D A for the world. So like it's fine if like most of the old tool use last D A and I can da and whatever for da, it's not really priority like we can have this, but like it's not really a huge deal. We don't need to compete with lusty directly.

I mean, Justin even says that directly like I accorded to him in there basically a couple times he was saying like yeah like if da gets little more expensive in the next couple months and if we go to Price discoveries, like, I think IT should be totally socially accept table for two to be the leaders. Like, leave a theory, an b eg, go you ladies, until becomes like cheap. And like, if is like that should be totally fine because, like most of the value is not from the so I was complete disagreement there.

And then was this complete disagreement ment on the army competing with. So I either I would say that that is like a complete fifty fifty split again of I do not think that there's any coherent message at all. I think that there's a mix of I mean, one of points at the highlighted there was like just an vitaliy.

I've said a various points that you know the l one is competing with bitcoin. The l tools were competing with ona and also very explicitly saying at times there is no future for the iwan like when he was debating toilet on your podcast, like for your application developer, no future for the one well, the same time his rope is also like ducks. The execution on the owen and doing precoces for faster than slawa transactions like most of these design like execution genes and a booking like sona.

And I would say a very large amount of people in a firm like do I say directly agree with some stuff that have been we should focus more on the alone. We do want to compete on this front. And I put down crown the number of other people kind of in that count.

So short till the ardia question back to beginning something up is like I think that half of the question is like this is a fair point of like which of these dimensions should be compete on. I think that a fair conversation and we probably are trying to compete a little too hard to them think we read. But I think the much bigger issue is that I don't think that we agree on any other right now, which is one of the things that I called out the end of, like, I think that, like, I directionally prefer this.

Like we should focus more on execution, don't worry about the money right now, like that all kind of come nature is a by product of what we're doing. Like that is my preferred vision. But I also think that would be Better for a thereon today if they just took like a hard right turn them on the other way and you're like cat like kick everyone off one time.

We don't need that anymore like we are competing with big money and like we make that a very clear story. And you know we have Better economics, you know for reasons axy N Z, the coins, blocks, rewards going to be unstable as inflation goes away. Like all these different things are economic metal, but doesn't make sense, like would be Better.

We're going to proper gram, albo, catos africa. You can tell a very coherent story there, even if not preferred path. I think that is like actually much Better path then where we are today, which is like an unclear mix of none of us agree on any of the three dimensions as what we're competing on.

And that breaks IT back to that. Like what is the lack of north store concrete? The end up with you can't tell your story as money if we don't agree what the thing is, money. So you're obviously going to lose there. And you also aren't building the tech platform to compete with ola because we don't even agree if we're competing with salona is last year.

And so that also becomes a self fulfilling prophecies like I would don't even know we're competing with them like were kind of telling people not just leave and so then that he was a self filling property if you lose to them too. So more importantly than honesty, which direction that we like really decide to lean into. I think that the problem is just people to don't agree, which the mena competing on.

I like to get into this practical, actionable items that we can bring to the table for the a theory project, because I think we all agree this is not a technical issue. This is a social and political issue. So I, what are the actionable things that we would like to see out of the theory um governance to really like write the ship.

My attitude, if I can put my like name in the hat here, I think we should kill the five swim lanes. The urges kill the urges. I want the urges gone. Let's replace them with three swim lanes. Did availability the execution of consensus because that's correlated to like the three big economic resources that have blocked has and only a theory um has really identified first and is in the lead to the idea that like we're all building the same system here. So let's go build that.

But I think it's also this reframe and consult ate three routes of progress to optimized for either to be the best money possible, for a theoria to provide the most amount of da possible and for the atheros layer one to have the strongest amount of execution possible. And then the layer two ecosystem will just naturally emerge rather than being forced. IT will just naturally emerge out of that.

And then the cross in probability of the layer tools will have the benefits of a very strong layer one execution to be able to do that interrogation. That kind of what I would see is to, like, refrain, the road map, a drawn mike, like, what would you bring to the table? What advice you have for the authorities team, the serum core dev and the all core dev s call, how would you suggest to them? Like where to days ago?

So the two things I had in the posts more completely where one section was called, like talk to your customers. I think this like a very clear trend anotheh um of there is a pretty large disconnect disproportionate to other networks about what are the court developers is doing and looking at and working on and like what are the use cases and applications of this train. And like a couple of tweet like I had thrown in there very clearly.

Worse I think was like proteus, who is basically saying like you know, one of us course we don't spend time looking applications like that's fine, we don't need to were low level. And then max was pointing out like you're designing E P B S, like every applications transactions are now going to go through this thing. Like shouldn't you probably understand like a little bit Better level, like what to the applications?

Like what are they doing? What are they care about? I think that's fair. And on crowd had also like argued that in a similar vain. In fact, there's a big disconnect between like what is happening on all core debs, like actually having a conversation with a lot more the applications and a lot more focus on like what are we doing in service like our big customers. I remember kyle had mentioned that one of the podcast I member was the one that he done with you or or or one of the others, but I throw the code in there of he was kind of like making the distinction of he was like, know he was like mark eller had done a poca recently who's like the main guy off a who's like the largest application of the theory um and he was talking about you like i've never spoken to anyone at the f before and like that just like seems like that probably shouldn't be the case like that is the biggest application on your chain with like thirty billion dollars or whenever in IT versus the strong contrast that is like look at this, a foundation who was like point alec, A A D five team, a depend team, a stable point team.

All these different things that is interfacing with all the specific cuse cases that are important and they have had like literal technical changes come out as a byproduct of kind of that interaction and conversations like the one that he points out is like taking extension on swank, which is like a feature that they have ended up implementing as a direct results of, like these are conversations that we had. But you know, payment providers and institutional providers like different applications, like they want more control over like programming ability, that talking like this is a useful feature, that they want a gan implement. Those conversations is like largely aren't happening on the theory um and so kind of like the thought process that I end up like calling out in the posts like I think the way you generally should be designing any of these things from first principle is you ask yourself at the first question is like what are we building for like what is the end use case and then after that you can ask yourself if okay, this is the use, what properties do we need for that use case and then you could have an educated conversation.

I go, this is the right E I P. This is the right upgrade to get those properties to like fulfill that use case. And right now, directly in a thurium, there is a lot of just like skipping that first step, which makes that second step of like what properties we OPPO imaging for, like not super clear, like we don't really know.

And so that third step of like what I P S should we put in picture of becomes this kind of like jumbled conversation, like a super unclear, because the property is in the prioritization of use cases, just time is out there. So that is kind of is like a more like cultural fundamental thing. I think that would be quite useful. And then the other aspect of IT is a more just like organization, kind of like leadership style change. And the section that I like I call that was like wartime CEO, which was from a book which I know kyle has like used this energy the same thing over the past few months of like .

it's start talking about .

her thing yeah it's a good and horror who's like one of the. Founders of basic and see has a started background, had run businesses before, and as this chapter called p time C E O wartime CEO really talking about kind of like the different personalities know what are the types of leadership styles and skills that you need in kind of different scenario.

And where I would say a ferial is like had more of a history of like being kind of in peace time earlier on or just like you just focus on like build up the market, everything is good. You know, we're the leader and that will leave to worry about there is now when you have credible competition, you really need to like a lion people a lot more and kind of get this mess in straight because like we actually like to have real competition that we need to worry about right now. We can't just feel like worried about twenty year research ships like someone might overtake us in the next few years.

And the chAllenge that a theory um house right now is that like we have very aggressively destroy zed leadership in a bit of like an odd way that I would say and like one of the quiz I head in there, which that was kind of indicated of IT was press what he was talking on. The guest was kind of describing how like what we end up having in practice in the theory um today is like the lic is putting these posts out on like the road map of your describing like these segments. But what I was calling out and there is like if you look at this post on like possible futures of the theory protocol, all of them are very clearly here, or all of the technical options for you guys to look at like here, the trade offs for each other of the things like asks the big questions of, like a big question that we have to answer is, you know, what should happen on the l one. And then he doesn't actually give opinions on any of those things of like what should we .

do want IT is very like he is defined the possible pats without choosing.

It's very intentional. And like I fully understand the rational, the reason for doing that, trying not to exercise this kind of centralize decision making because yeah and practice of file access, the thing like a lot of people are not going to follow with IT. And like I does, that looks centralized.

The problem is I think we are like a very weird mix today where the practical reality is the talk is putting out his romp, and in practice, ninety nine percent of people like this is just the authorities, right? right? We are still just like, like, effectively like, this is the founder, like, this is the robot.

This is what we're doing. And I was like, I was calling out like, I think in many ways VC actually hold a higher position in the theory. Then like, toli doesn't slain in many ways.

I think that he exercises the less direct control of like saying, like this is what we're going to do. But just like, I mean, subjectively, if you like, look at conversations and sana were like a totally says the thing and a bunch of the santo people think a stupid idea. Tell the student idea.

I know there's a lot less of that inclination in the theory um honestly and so the deal deal of that is like a lot of that kind of dynamic is exasperating. What I was talking about of we have all these technical ideas, like we have all these ips that we could look at, but we don't have a like strong starting vision of OK. Like what are we building for? Like watch the youth case.

Like like what is the thing that we all agree on? What's the purpose of this? What do we need optimize for? And so we decided like going in circles on all like the very specific technical experimentations, because we really need to be fighting about the thing.

That's a kind of a step earlier. And so I think the heart question is how do we in practice solve this kind of social coordination of how do we agree on like what the vision should be? And I think the easiest way to get that is like the world time.

See you you know you have somebody superintended, whether that's fc or just don crowd or or someone who just like does take a much more active role. So at an individual level and then also probably like someone of an organizational level of B, F, I would say has a very similar vibe to what I described. The of like ef .

is downstream of the time.

And like the whole culture, the ef is very similar in a way of we do not take views as an organization. A lot of, a lot of them try not to be two opinions on different. And so we end up with generally a very decentralized leadership.

And a lot of leadership that I would say is directionally much less in client to give you the opinions of verse. If you look at something like they are telling you they're a very, very opinion, strong all the time, and then people fight IT out and like whatever come to a decision. And so I think that in practice, like that is the easiest way.

And like probably the way that IT needs to go is you need some people to step up until little bit more of a leadership role kind of in a theory um like we're going to heard the cats like were going to get people a lying kind on this vision and then you could still have this like so pretty centralize process like you at all these kind teams that are actually going to go figure out the details of the hell and all of this. But taking a little more agency on, okay, we need to allow people on the vision, like we need to degree on the vision to start with. And I think that like the community is ready for that as evidence by, I think like I ve been very pleasantly surprised for the option of like the piece that I put out.

I think a lot of people are more open to this in the last month of the I think that we kind of need to alone around the vision more. And so it's just really a matter of how does that vision kind of come about and how do we end up all coordinating degree on this thing because then everything can to happen down stream over there. And we could figure out, you know, what should would be prioritized or result of that, right?

And I want to bring up the thing that I said at the very beginning of this podcast, which is I noticed there was like two haves of the article. One, the theory um has a coordination problem, which is what you were just talking about. And two, a serum has a credible competition.

And I want to emphasize that the idea here is like theoria has a coordination problem regardless of the existence of his competition. And I think there are some people in the syrian who don't want to admit that IT has a coordination problem because the conversation is being brought in, the context of and the theory is losing to salona. And it's going to have less data availability than last year and because it's not as great money in bitcoin.

And so framing IT in contrast to these other ecosystem, I think sets off a media reaction of like I decline the existence of that and i'm an advocated saying if that trigger you find but like internally, we can identify a series coordination problem inside just discussing a theory um like theory doesn't have a defined what are we building a thereon for? IT has a very decentish ed leadership which has pros and cons. And so there is this trade off space that the theory has made.

And now we are start to run up into a lot of the cost of, again, maybe even early, very big successes for having a decent prized leadership model. And now we need to earn how to contend with these things. And these are the two bits of advice that drain is bringing to the table for the earth community.

Mike, what would you add to IT? I was just going to say so I feel like i've been saying this for a long time. But there's steel, sharp steel. This is why i've always been a massive fan of there being multiple different ecosystems and communities that are focused on solving different parts of this very large multifaceted of how do we create and scale blockchain.

And I think there's a certain reality of how humans work, which is in order to admit that there is a problem, something actually has to break in a really fundamental way. Otherwise, inertia is a really powerful force. And it's too easy to just say no.

This is mostly working and something that used at the top. This episode, David, is something when we did that panel at dev con, we're both little concerned about, which is ultimately everything that we're saying today, I don't think has a massive impact on the Price of the theory. Um on a three or four year time arizon.

I think you're already probably starting to see that theory has an etf. I think it's probably going to go up regardless of what comes out of this discussion. But what I worry about there is that I could paper over this larger problem, which is gonna testified on a longer time horizon.

And there would be a real shame, because I keep saying this also, I think the market that theory ms pursuing here is one of the larger ones in all cyp to. And I agree with johns point about IT feels I don't mean this to sound mean or target IT or you know what do I know really at the end of the day, but I do think leadership is a component here. I would be, this is just one man's opinion, but I would be in the camp that you need the way to from a smaller group of people and then decentralize the how as much as you possibly can.

And I think one of the reasons why people been reticent to do this is because there is some healthy amount of turnover that has to happen. I think this is something that really naturally happens again. And in governments, in startups, in large companies, in different types of communities where if you have two people, two groups of people with competing visions, both of which are viable, one of those visions has to win, and then some amount of those people ultimately need to leave, because people will offer coherence over almost everything else.

And that's, I think, what is lacking. And so I agree with john that I think there needs to be a firmer hand on the stick when IT comes to leadership. And that's going to mean most likely some amount of turn over in terms of potential users.

There's also a consequent start to V, F, to fire your users in the early days. And as you scale and you ultimately end up evolving your product. And so there is going to be some turn over.

And that's not a bad thing. That's the sign of healthy growth, I say. And I think that's why. As a community, we've been relatively reduced to do this. But I would say that firm leadership, the willingness to have some turn over a fire community members or users or wherever that ultimately being so that you can get a coherent vision of how to improve your product.

And the one obviously that I point out, tools, it's not just companies and governments and whatever that happens in exactly what happened a bit line yeah that .

is ah which is why that .

I like I use that example a few times in the post is like there's a reason that pickin has a clear vision that I because the two sides that had very different opinions on what we should do and like what their vision was for bitcoin and they thought IT out I were going to go a separate waves. I were going to go Better thing, and they both focused on that thing in the Better one one out.

And that's where the coin is as a result today because they are in a much cleaner straight for we d play like we all agreed on what we are building. This is what writing and the theory is kind of accept that middle ound for a while without kind of you know if there's twenty percent of the community who disagrees with us completely and you know wants to go like wholehearted eats as money and like kick everyone off the a one and like some of these things that eighty percent to agree with, maybe the twenty percent to go out to different thing. And I think that would be like a reasonable kind of split to kind event up happening, at least on the margin, like we kind of need to start forcing these questions of my mind, start anchor them. I supposed kind of like letting them kind of summer because the result ends up being we end up having two visions .

of which like .

directly in conflict at the other day, right? I personally think there will be a split in the area um community .

in the same way that like the big coin .

train hard for I am that we should force the issue and like we you know numbers going up now and now we can feel a little bit Better about ourselves. But that's just the dopamine like the iv drop that kind like just kick the can down the road like you're not actually solving anything, you're just papering over IT, as mike said. So I do kind of I enjoy the idea of like, hey, let's make that IT has her hurt first before IT feels Better.

And again, a meeting, a problem. That is the first step told the end of the article. John, you actually gave out a couple ideas for north stars, also some money versus world computer. Maybe you can take us through this .

last year article. Yeah, yeah. So the last part of IT was like I was trying to make this point of I think you can very strongly argue for either of the extreme ends and like I kind of like make a case for both of them to kind of highlight that I think you can actually go either these directions, and I think that either these directions is probably Better than kind of sitting around in the medal.

One of them I call like the eat as money, or he is all to money of vision, where you take a very opinionated view of, like we are primarily like we are competing with bitcoin. Like money is the thing, like IT is a failure if you did not become money, and we just like we start from there and we work toward so, you know, then you can be know we are probably going to spend a lot of time about being super obsessed about figure out like what is the perfect issue in policy. Like this is priority number.

We're going to get our story straight so that we could start flooding bitcoin like even more effectively. Like we're going to point out like why the security budget like complete this group and other roles are like definitely not going to work. And like we're going to have a clear, incredible story.

Like why this thing makes sense. And then like once you have a strong story, like, okay, money is the center of this thing, then the rest of the architecture kind of falls out from that of, okay, eat is money. And if this is the thing that matters, and that everyone month, most of the technical stuff we could actually get rid of, one scaling like that s not a big gilling anymore.

For the same reason that everyone is like desperately trying to build bell two on bit point right now. Because if your acid is money, well, then everyone is kind of force to build on you. Because, like you are the ladder of record for that asset, effectively, ultimately, everything does fundamentally have to settle to you as the like settlement.

Yer hate that word, but like like in practice, that's what IT is up being. And so you could take a very strong opinion of view like right? Like get rid the execution stuff, like you know tell all the apps to leave.

We don't care. We're not focused on increasing the gas limit. We're not focused on reducing the block time, but none of that matters.

It's like get the money stories straight, like coherent vision, which I think you like, you can pursue that. And like IT might work. I don't think that will work. Like my directional bias is like that. Probably one because I think it's hard out that at its own game about you, like you can make a very clear story there. And the other kind of argument outside like direction or stars like the world, computer vision, and this is the one that I directly believe in more is like if you look at a theory um today, like the hard question that we need to ask yourself is starting with one problem that I think a lot of people take is I think a lot of people i've seen take this view of, like we should just ignore what the competition is doing and just like look at kind of a year in a bubble, which I don't think makes sense. I think you need to like very much pay attention, al.

Like what is wanted doing, what is what to doing? What is the one doing? Like how do we kind of fit in there? And my general extra questions like what is a theory um currently like it's like real unique and defensible value that is providing a moat that has and right now that thing like very concretely is IT is the most decentralized, credibly neutral permissionless execution layer like that is the thing with this property is really matter the most.

It's not on the D A side rate. Now practice most changes like they don't care for the use sloopy im D I like most of them, like to really care. I really do care if my money is in off on the l one or faton's milt to like I quite Frankly, don't trust most of the tube and light scale with my money.

I'm keeping IT on the alt. Like that is a very strong product market fit for the theory right now, like that example, like whatever was talking about, like I did the mean coins on sona. But like for now i'm keeping my serious money on a theory um and I think that like credible neutrality and kind of this like unstoppable world computer I think is like a very coherent vision of in practice.

The theory does have that advantage today. IT is winning at this game. IT hasn't vote there.

IT has technical properties which to make sense for IT. The multiplying architecture makes sense here. The live ess properties of gasper make sense here.

So long to go down everyone in a while. That is a problem for this. All that we like need to do is we don't need to get us fall on a level execution. The difference is like we preserve the credible intro, the like maxim, centralization, all these things. On baLance though, we can shift the detail a little bit.

I mean, like the example based games, like we can change the no requirement to start from somewhere from, like where a toasters in the sahara desert levels to like maybe you should have to run like a laptop at home, like a pretty good laptop. You in like good home internet like that seems like a reasonable requirement. And no, you're not going to get to song a level performance overnight. It's fine.

Like I don't need so long to level performance, just like have a large amount of money on office and just like use that are Normally, but like to axing the gas limit to start now and just like getting that a few x over the next few years, and like getting the block know down, like from twelve seconds to eight seconds and then, you know, we work away down to four and two over the next like five years and you get single soft finality. And there like we make a very clear, credible company today like we are improving the all one like this is an important thing. I would lean into that.

I think that is like a very strong product and like a real thing that you can offer. So I think that makes a lot of sense for you to like them into that is the kind of like center of the world computer because I think that we have sold ourselves a little bit too much of a story over the last couple years of like don't worry, like the all too are going to figure everything out, like they're all going to be like these trustless, you know, burn the keys on, like the governance, like stage to perfect roll ups and like a year for now and like everything will be totally cross us. That's not the reality, is not going to happen, is ever going to happen.

Majority of them, we're going to remain like they're going to have keys to upgrade these things like company is are going to want to ship fast, are going to want a competitive vantage, like people are not going to trust at the same levels and no one they are great. Like we should still have IT a very l two friendly and l two kind of like centric vision of, you know we're promoting all these things are necessary, but those are to do not the world computer, you know the chain that has you know a few people on the multi sig and is run by a public company is not the world is computer that's baster is is a great product. awesome.

It's very different than you know, a game like a area which you know, a place that you know you can get large international financial players like countries that turing C B D C I, C B D C S. But like through the extreme example, like that's the place we can probably assume them if you just like needed, like a contract where you're just putting the that kind thing. So I think it's a real thing for the theme to lean into.

And then from there, you know you could tell that like that gives you a very good here. Like, okay. This gives us a good grounding for that conversation should be increased to cancel much.

Now I absolutely think that you should, if you like, you agree with that argument that I made. Then you know people like grow retreating, right? Like we should double gas late right now.

That makes a lot of sense, obvious. We should do that and like make a credible commitment to keep scaling of time. And I think that doing those things now is a very good forcing functioning for making us commit to like this is the direction that we are going on this thing.

And at the end of the day, this gets back to the like, the path dependence of you can vent up competing on all these things. In practice, I think that gives you the highest probability of eat. Winning is good money in the long term is actually focusing like a little bit less on like the economics and know shouting money at people. Right now, it's let's just build the world computer, like if you build that thing and that wins, like if this can be really valuable, like that's really not going to be an issue at the end of the day and kind of the rest of the falls out from that. So that's directly like the of the argument that was going out there.

Why do you think about this direction for him or any new direction for the um any new news star?

I don't really have many notes on that. I think it's an interesting thought experiment to think about how the beam right there was just in drake and build the beam chain at decon the great episode they eat with there were mixed reviews I would say, on beam chained.

generally as anything, mostly negative.

There was a good amount of push back. I imagine if he, at one point, had a slide with the three different buckets of what syrian's road map was focused on. There was block production photography.

And I came up with the middle one was, but I do remember he had p zero, p one, p two in each of these three boxes. And at the bottom in red was faster slot times, so four second slot times. And IT wasn't single slot finality.

but IT was a shorter time.

Three, now, I wonder experience, he had the prioritization on that, what the response from the community would have been. Just sit, ask yourself that I, I, I mabe maybe a little Better. I think that would have been because all of these, like, I think i'm with you on this idea that focus on world computer is a single coherent thing that people can get a bit again.

To me, these are all one thing in like the mega trend. I think you, David, you mention bring this world crumbling fiat currency, the way that I have united these two viewpoints, at least in my head, there's a tack component to this and a money component to this is the big driver of capital into the space is concerned around the ocurred cy, and that's what's moving capital into l ones. And that's why I think on a long time arizon, 但是 我 discussion that we're having doesn't really matter。 I basically think these old ones are going to go up over a period of time, but then ultimately people are gonna art asking these questions and they're onna matter.

And I think that the theory um has chosen again the right viewpoint here there is a mean discussion about is this a mean and does this really do anything or is there actual utility here? And I can give you a million analogs and trade fight that would tell you that ultimately on a long time rise and the market size for assets that are productive and have some amount of utility is much larger than the me assets. And so dam has done everything right. It's just this even subtle shift in reorientation in terms of leaning into that originally correct vision, providing more utility generating fees, that type of thing. I agree with, john, that the right way to get there is this world computer move some activity back to that one vision.

As far as the talk, that's what I think was mechanical. I actually agree as a result of what we agree on as the vision that I would fill those priority. The main thing in that I think was lacking was just he didn't say what the vision was, right? IT was the epidemic.

I agree with most of the things that were in that row map on like some time scale and like that's cool but like the example I gave the paper was like the reason why something like the merge or the beam chain campaign a star is because you know you can't pitch a theory um to someone is like this is the chain that by twenty thirteen is going to a have a zk consensus and single slot finality and like fix ordish that's not a compelling vision the vision that like I used, we want to hear like okay. But why like like what does do for me saying it's like we are doing all these things because we are building the world computer and this is going to be the place. Like this can be the home of global finance.

And like you are going to use this thing and like this is going to be where you store your money. And like, this could be great. No computer in the sky like that make sense. So I think there's like giving that vision is largely what we're missing in the rest is kind .

of down to yeah and not to introduce this nuance at the end of this pocket, but there is a difference I thinking between vision and goals and a vision onest ly, one of the guys who comes up with the best visions in the world is you on musk? Well, if you look up, look up what the vision of tesla is. IT isn't to create the best electronic car in the world.

IT is to accelerate the adoption of Green energy. The vision for space ex is not to transport, wait into space that half the cost that IT takes, you know, whoever to do IT today, buying to do IT today. Now they can do anything. It's to move humanity. You do need this long term, huge, like inspires people to get out .

of bed in the morning visions, correct?

But what you ultimately need on a shorter term, time rising, okay, but I need to congress that i'm working to one of two years time.

We still need to sell satellite and make cells like actually delivering satellites into space now to make money now. Yeah, so we can colonize mars later.

exactly. Because everyone needs to know how their work fun s up into that big vision. And okay, you must getting on stage. And we're going to move everyone to mars in twenty years.

Everyone's like to go on, okay, but then the face of engineer that wakes up and thinks about their job on a to your time rise and need to know what am I doing to contribute to that? So you need these two. You need the vision, and then you need the goals that roll up into vision.

And guys been great. John, thank you for right in the post. Things are coming on and helping them pack IT.

And my thank you for join and for helping me out here. Yeah, this been great things. Yes.

I find my song.

Thank you to thank the same tion you guys. I know the deal. Cro is risk. You can lose what you put in.

But we are headed west into the frontier with an unknown north star that maybe we know by the end of this year, maybe next year. But we got that you're with us on the bankers. Jnet seeks a lot.