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Hey Bankless Nation 🏴 – The discourse around this episode is so important, we decided to release this exclusive episode to the public.Ryan and David debrief the recent Eliezer Yudkowsky episode.The Debrief Episode goes out EVERY MONDAY for Bankless Citizens. Want the Debrief Episode? Get the Premium RSS feed by Subscribing to Bankless!📺 NEW DEBRIEFYouTube🏴 JOIN THE NATION 🏴Subscribe: Newsletter | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube | RSS FeedFollow: Twitter | Instagram | Reddit | TikTok | FacebookNot financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here. Thank you for subscribing. Share this episode.

📺 DEBRIEF: Ryan & David Debrief After the “Building Layer 2 on DeFi” Podcast EpisodeFebruary 22nd, 2021David and Ryan Debrief about the recent episode with Justin Moses, Robbie Ferguson, and Matt Finestone, discussing the panel in the context of the ever-evolving DeFi landscape, and answering the question "Is Layer 2 Here?"Listen in Podcast App | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube | RSS FeedWhat’s a Debrief?Debriefs are a new regular part of the Bankless program, only available to paid subscribers! They capture Ryan and David’s raw thoughts after the episode.How do I get them?Make sure you have the Bankless premium feed linked to your podcast app, so you can get these conversations in your podcast player. You can also watch the private video here in Substack.Tools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE  | BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave🚀 GEMINI  | MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini💳 MONOLITH  | GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDS https://bankless.cc/monolith📱 DHARMA | MOBILE ONRAMP DIRECTLY INTO DEFI https://bankless.cc/dharmaGo Bankless. $12 / mo. Includes archive access, Inner Circle & Deals—(pay w/ crypto)Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here. Thank you for subscribing. Share this episode.

You have early access to this episode and a copy of the transcript as a full Bankless Member.53 – Building DeFi on Layer 2 | Synthetix, Loopring, ImmutableGuests:Justin Moses - CTO of SynthetixRobbie Ferguson - Co-Founder & President of ImmutableMatt Finestone - Head of Business Development at LoopringWe discuss how these three voices in the crypto space have been integral in building successful DeFi products on the Ethereum mainnet. Listen in for a deep-dive into the different methods these protocols have taken to implement their apps on an Ethereum Layer 2.Tools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE  | BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave🚀 GEMINI  | MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini💳 MONOLITH  | GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDShttps://bankless.cc/monolith📱 DHARMA  | MOBILE ONRAMP DIRECTLY INTO DEFIhttps://bankless.cc/dharmaRelevant Links:Justin on TwitterRobbie on TwitterMatt on TwitterVitalik’s Incomplete Guide to RollupsSynthetixImmutable XLoopringTranscriptDavid Hoffman  All right, Bankless Nation. We’re here with Matt Finestone of Loopring, Business Development at Loopring. We're also here with Justin Moses, who's the CTO of Synthetix. And then also last but not least, Robbie Ferguson, who is the co-founder of Immutable, which is the studio behind Gods Unchained. So Matt, Justin, and Robbie, welcome to Bankless, and we're so excited to have you guys on the show today. Robbie Ferguson Thanks for having us, David.David HoffmanL2 implementers, assemble! Gentlemen, you guys have all been invited here because you share something in common, you have all built and deployed functioning applications to the Ethereum mainchain and have seen success and adoption in the usage of your apps, which is already a feat. But there's something even more unique about their respective projects that all of you guys work on, and that each of you guys have implemented or are in the process of implementing, which is your guys's app being deployed on Ethereum L2. Synthetix is offloading much of its infrastructure onto optimistic rollups. Loopring is building a complete payments and exchange platform on zk-roll ups. And Immutable is building an NFT asset exchange platform also on zk-roll ups. So again, we brought Jesse, Robbie, and Matt here to tell us the story of their app, their need to scale and their process thus far. So let's start with with you, Matt, and Loopring. Tell us about the nature of your app. What does it do? And at what point did you realize that Ethereum mainchain capacity just wasn't going to be enough?Matt Finestone Thank you, David. Yeah, really excited to be here with fellow L2 implementers. Yeah, so Loopring is a bit different than I think my compatriots here. It's the fact that we were a protocol, and then we built products. And then we built a new protocol ourselves, the L2 protocol to augment the products. So the application did not force us to kind of look elsewhere for a layer two, we built it ourselves. So we're kind of a layer-two protocol and layer-two products. But yeah, we realized long ago that like, you know, we had no business doing what we were trying to do on Ethereum layer one, we're building order book exchanges, the experience was really poor on Ethereum layer one. So we looked for scalability. This was early on, rollups were just kind of being whispered around. And we built our zk-roll up specifically to scale our order book exchange. So we built an application specific zk-rollup, and then you know, we start learning and we actually have users and are iterating. So the product changes a bit and then we enhance the protocol to support AMMs on layer two as well. And then payments as well. So what came from just like an order book DEX protocol, really turned into an order book and AMM exchange and payments protocol. Yes, a bit of a golden all over the place there. But as you see, we kind of did like a full loop. No pun intended, honestly. And yeah, that's where we're at right now.David Hoffman  Maybe you can talk a little bit about how and why building an order book exchange on the Ethereum L1 was such a pain, like why did that not really work out? Matt Finestone So well, very briefly, the biggest thing is to get liquidity on order books, you really need market makers or liquidity providers that are in control of their quotes, what they're, you know, quoting to buy and sell and 15 second blocks and gas crisis to submit to potentially cancel does not allow them to do their thing. And kind of quote, as soon as the market's moving, be quick and cheap, like low latency, low fee. So it's really like a non starter, it's maybe one of the worst things you could do if you're trying to replicate that legacy style order book on a blockchain. But layer two allows us to really replicate that performance, you feel like you're on Coinbase Pro or Kraken except you're on this layer completely coupled to Ethereum base layer security.David Hoffman Market makers, even with Ethereum before scaling was really an issue in the way that gas prices are today, those like 15 second block times, and you know, even pennies worth of a transaction, it was already like that without the congestion that we have today, it was already a poor experience for end, you know, people who are managing order books and need to be able to basically have instantaneous control, not 15 second delays or pennies at a transaction. So even before Ethereum was congested, the L1 was never ever going to be able to do what you guys wanted to do.Matt Finestone That's a great point. Actually, I didn't think of that kind of theme here that like you know, Justin and Synthetix were forced after like their large success on layer one already. And potentially same with Robbie. We couldn't do what we wanted to do even a few years ago. That's very true. And I guess we'll jump to this but the layer one not being suitable for this type of behavior is actually kind of what spawned AMMs where these market makers don't need to jump in and be quick. You're just kind of dumping your money and letting a function do the thing. So it kind of came out of the environment that optimized for it.Ryan Yeah, Matt, they really came out of necessity, right? It was due to this constraint of basically, you know, low amounts of transactions per second that the automated market maker model became so successful and so popular. Maybe Robbie, for you kind of same question. Can you tell us a bit about the nature of your application? And at what point you decided that you needed layer two?Robbie Ferguson  Yeah, of course, the point was actually really early, when we were first launching the original sale of Gods Unchained. It was at the same time FCoin was doing their exchange listing. And I don't know if everyone watching this remembers, but the way they incentivize that was basically as poor as you get, with the incentivize to send transactions to the network with high gas fees. And so for the first time ever, we were seeing gas fees of like 150, 180 gwei. And we did some innovations then which were fine, but fundamentally we did the math, we were like, okay, if we even get to 30% the size of Hearthstone, so a medium sized game, we are taking up some absurd amount of the Ethereum blockchain via NFT transactions, particularly because NFT transactions are a ton more expensive than just ERC-20 transfers, like you can transfer a million dollars worth of ERC-20 value for a fixed cost. So there's a fundamental difference between fungible tokens and non-fungible tokens. And so in picking a solution, really, there were no available solutions I would say three years ago, and there were ideas being thrown around state channels that have yet to come to life. Plasma chains also really have not been implemented in a mainstream way. And this, I think, was what draws people to things like new layer ones or sidechains. And then we had this magical thing called a zero-knowledge proof come out, which I remember being obsessed with when I first heard about it, especially the different parables of ways of explaining it like the parable of the cave, or, you know the numbers and how it's all kind of like probabilistically determined, which gave me some rough approximation of the mass, which is probably like 1% of what it actually is. But this is, as vitalik says, like, the way it will scale. And so I think we determined that solution pretty quickly, that this was the most obvious way to scale in particular NFT transfers, because they were so problematical to Ethereum. And then it was just a matter of choosing what, okay, who do we think the best kind of rollup provider is, and zk-rollups a bit better for NFTs, by now I think optimistic rollup solutions work better if you want generalized programmability, which is I think, why, you know, Synthetixs is going with Optimism, which is also an excellent solution. So yeah, I think that was the genesis of what we knew. And also, when we need to be a solution was when we first saw attraction and deployment of rollups.Ryan So to be clear, Robbie, you are going with a zk-rollup type solution in the same way that Matt's team is with Loopring. Is that correct? Robbie Ferguson  Yeah, that's right. Um, I think we use slightly different providers, I think, Looping do you guys use Matter Labs?Matt Finestone  We use ourselves, Loopring protocol. The protocol was the first zk-rollup as of 14 months ago. So that's our kind of provider, as I was kind of saying we're a bit of a beast. We're a bit of a different beast, like, yeah, we operate across the stack. But yeah, no hard feelings!Robbie Ferguson No, no, no, very cool. Very cool. I'm sorry, I didn't know that. I think I mean, creating those groups is bloody hard. And ultimately, I see there's a few layers of the stack here. There's proof providers, there's a protocol on top of that. So I almost call that like an AWS infrastructure right on the bottom, which is clearly wh

Level up your open finance game five times a week. Subscribe to the Bankless program below.Hugh Karp is the Founder of Nexus Mutual and a leading voice in the Ethereum space. We discuss the recent hack of his Metamask Wallet ($8 Million) and insights into necessary technological innovation, cryptoasset security, and advice for holders.📺 NEW SPECIAL EPISODEListen in Podcast App | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube | RSS FeedTools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE  | BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave​🚀 GEMINI  | MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini​💳 MONOLITH  | GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDS https://bankless.cc/monolith​📱 DHARMA | MOBILE ONRAMP DIRECTLY INTO DEFI https://bankless.cc/dharmaRELEVANT LINKS:Hugh on TwitterNexus Mutual🙏Sponsor: Lattice1 by GridPlus | Secure & Legible DeFi Hardware WalletGive Bankless 5 stars on the podcast!Let’s get to the top of the charts 📈Also...subscribe to Bankless YouTube to watch State of the Nation every Tuesday.Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes | Spotify | YouTube | RSS FeedLeave a review on iTunesShare the episode with someone you know!Don't stop at the podcast!* Subscribe to the Bankless newsletter program* Visit the official Bankless website for more resources* Follow Bankless on Twitter | YouTube* Follow Ryan on Twitter* Follow David on Twitter* Follow Lucas on TwitterGo Bankless. $12 / mo. Includes archive access, Inner Circle & Deals—(pay w/ crypto)Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. I’ll always disclose when this is the case. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

📺 DEBRIEF: Ryan & David Debrief after “The Crypto Milkshake” Podcast with Brent JohnsonFebruary 15th, 2021Join Ryan and David for some post-episode thoughts about Brent Johnson’s macro perspective and the Crypto Milkshake Theory.Listen in Podcast App | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube | RSS FeedWhat’s a Debrief?Debriefs are a new regular part of the Bankless program, only available to paid subscribers! They capture Ryan and David’s raw thoughts after the episode.How do I get them?Make sure you have the Bankless premium feed linked to your podcast app, so you can get these conversations in your podcast player. You can also watch the private video here in Substack.Tools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE  | BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave​🚀 GEMINI  | MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini​💳 MONOLITH  | GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDS https://bankless.cc/monolith​📈 KWENTA  | DERIVATIVES TRADING WITH INFINITE LIQUIDITYhttps://bankless.cc/kwenta​Go Bankless. $12 / mo. Includes archive access, Inner Circle & Deals—(pay w/ crypto)Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. I’ll always disclose when this is the case. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

You have early access to this episode and a copy of the transcript as a full Bankless Member.Brent Johnson, known for his “Dollar Milkshake Theory,” is a macro-focused wealth manager. We discuss the markets from his broad perspective, focusing on the Federal Reserve, the Dollar, and our take on his ideas – The Crypto Milkshake Theory.Listen in Podcast App | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube | RSS FeedTools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE  | BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave​🚀 GEMINI  | MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini​💳 MONOLITH | GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDS https://bankless.cc/monolith​📈 KWENTA  | DERIVATIVES TRADING WITH INFINITE LIQUIDITYhttps://bankless.cc/kwenta​52 - The Crypto Milkshake TheoryGuest: Brent JohnsonWe observed the Federal Reserve coming into the limelight in the past year, with increased attention on Jerome Powell and other central bankers as they become more like players than referees. Brent lays out how our system (and all fiat currencies) are built for exponential growth. An exponentially growing market will be increasingly susceptible to larger and more frequent volatility. This calls for stronger central bank action, which accelerates these fundamental issues.Interestingly, Brent believes in the strength of the Dollar (at least in the short-term), expecting it to be the last fiat currency to get knocked out. The COVID-19 Crash in March 2020 was an example of this deflationary volatility, and Brent views the system’s current narrative as ripe for another market crash and dollar bull run.On the crypto side of things, Brent sees assets like BTC as a valid store of value, and the advantages of non-sovereign wealth stores merit serious consideration. His concerns about the space involve the difficulties of using crypto as money and the power of governments to curb blockchain use. However, blockchain technology is a “genie out of the bottle” and is here to stay.Relevant Links:Brent on TwitterBrent’s Presentation on The Dollar Milkshake TheoryTranscriptDavid Hoffman  All right, we are off to the races. Ryan, you want to take it away?Ryan  Okay, Bankless Nation. We want to welcome Brent Johnson of Santiago Capital, who manages money for high net worth individuals who are looking to grow and preserve their wealth. Brent, welcome to the show. You are a macro thinker known for your Dollar Milkshake Theory, which we're going to talk about. And I love on Twitter that you are willing to push back against maybe Austrians, Bitcoin maximalists, and other dollar bears. Brent, it's awesome to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us.Brent Johnson And thanks for having me. Always, always happy to talk to new people. And I'm looking forward to it. Ryan This is gonna be a lot of fun. So I think you just came from the Jerome Powell meeting, you tuned in as a lot of folks do. What is Powell thinking these days? What are the updates for us?Brent JohnsonWell, I think it's pretty interesting because he was very dovish, he really couldn't have been a lot more dovish, other than to say they were going to increase, you know, QE. But you know, the markets were having a tough day anyway. And they didn't exactly rally on his comments. So I kind of find it pretty interesting, because I think it kind of plays into a number of different themes that we see in the market right now. And some of these things, I don't necessarily agree with the fact that stocks only go up and that, you know, the Fed prints dollars and gives them to the banks and the banks go out and lever up and buy stocks, and therefore, you know, just short the dollar and buy equities, and everything will be fine. And I certainly understand that logic. And it's certainly been hard to argue with over the last eight months, but I think it's going to be a little bit more difficult than that over the next couple of years.RyanCan we talk about that for a minute? Because it seems like everybody in finance tunes into what Jerome Powell says, and I don't know if it's always been like that. But it's certainly true that what central bankers say these days carries a whole lot of weight, maybe more weight than they ever have. Is that weird? Is Jerome Powell, God of finance, now this kind of new thing? And is it weird?Brent Johnson  Well, I don't know that it's new. I agree that it's a little bit weird. I think it's very weird that, you know, normal everyday people who otherwise wouldn't even work in finance actually know who the Federal Reserve Chairman is. I think that's kind of odd. Because, you know, the whole central bankers as God has kind of become a meme unto itself. And they the central bankers around the world have, you know, to a certain extent become celebrities and rock stars. And I don't necessarily think that's healthy. But you know, it is what it is. And at the end of the day my job is to play the world as it is, not as I'd like it to be. And that fact right there is something that I think is very important, and that I think many people overlook, especially when it comes to investing. I think many people invest for the world they would like to see, rather than the world as it is. And I don't necessarily have a problem with that. If you're trying to change the world, and you're all in on your investments that you think are going to do that, then you know, I can respect that. But if your goal is just to make money, I don't necessarily think that's the right way to go about it.David Hoffman  Right, this to me, the role of the central bank historically has been to be this like silent man behind the curtain, right, you know, maybe tinkering and playing with levers and dials, but otherwise being hidden from view. And the attitude is that, you know, a quiet or silent Fed is a good Fed, right? Like if they're not in the news cycle, they're doing their job. And that used to be the perception of the Federal Reserve. And I think that has been decaying over time and has a trajectory of going elsewhere from that perception. Maybe you could give us a brief history lesson as to like perhaps the trajectory of peoples' attitudes or perceptions of the Federal Reserve from what it was in times past to where it is now, to where you think it might be going in the future. How is society changing their thinking around what the Federal Reserve does?Brent Johnson That's a good question. It's kind of a very complicated one. I think you're for the most part right. I think it used to be that they were kind of the man behind the curtain. And, you know, I would argue that in the last 10 years, they are no longer the man behind the curtain. They're actually the magician on the stage. And they're actually putting on a performance. And, you know, there's a certain group of people who like the performance and are trying to profit from the performance. And there's another group of people who are saying, "you just think he's doing magic, but what he's actually doing is a trick and this trick is going to come back and haunt all of us." And so there's some friction between those two different camps. And I think the fact that, you know, central banks have now walked out on stage, and they've even said that this is the trick that we're going to do and they're trying to do it, I don't think that that's a long-term healthy thing. I think it's a bad thing, and the thing I'll say is, you know, I've said this before, I'm not a fan of central bankers at all. I, in fact, I'm very critical of central bankers. But based on the design of the monetary system, I understand why they're there. And again, if you're playing the world as it is, and you understand why, if you understand the design of the monetary system, then you understand why they're there, why they're necessary, and nothing that they do will surprise you because their job is to step in. Now, to your point, their job is to kind of be the man behind the curtain and kind of be silent. But the real role, their job is when there's a problem. And when there's a crisis, their job is to step in and being the lender of last resort to provide, you know, whatever means necessary to perpetuate the system. So while I don't agree with what central banks do, and I wish there was a system that didn't require them, the system as it is today does require them. And so I'm never surprised when they do what they do. For the people who criticize central banks and say, well I'm not gonna buy equities because they're just propping it up through QE or whatever it is and if it wasn't for them, you know, stocks would be much lower. Well, I get that thinking, that's fine if you don't want to play, but to think that they're not going to do those moves and that they shouldn't do those moves, well, it's fine to have that opinion. But they're going to do those moves, that's why they were present. That's why they were put in that position. That's why they were created. So I try not to get too critical of the Fed, of making the moves they make, as much as just kind of criticizing the overall system. But I still have to play against the moves that the central bank is making. So you can't just ignore it either.David Hoffman  The lender of last resort, I think, could be a focal point of our conversation, because I think when we talk about, you know, first the man behind the curtain, and then the magician on the stage, what we're really talking about is that last resort threshold is actually a subjective threshold, a threshold that requires people to believe where the last resort is. And it seems to be that there is this marching, this creeping higher and higher and higher of where that line is crossed. And all of a sudden, like, what the things that end up on the balance sheet of the Fed are becoming closer and closer to like spot markets for so many like US equities. Maybe talk about that dynamic and how that has changed over time?Brent Johnson  Sure, well, I think the first thing you know, and I'm not gonn

📺 DEBRIEF: Ryan & David Debrief after the Vitalik Buterin SeriesFebruary 8th, 2021Join Ryan and David for some post-episode thoughts about Vitalik's recent blog posts and his varied takes on crypto, economics, politics, and society.Listen in Podcast App | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube | RSS FeedWhat’s a Debrief?Debriefs are a new regular part of the Bankless program, only available to paid subscribers! They capture Ryan and David’s raw thoughts after the episode.How do I get them?Make sure you have the Bankless premium feed linked to your podcast app, so you can get these conversations in your podcast player. You can also watch the private video here in Substack.Tools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE | BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave🚀 GEMINI | MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini💳 MONOLITH | GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDShttps://bankless.cc/monolith📈 KWENTA | DERIVATIVES TRADING WITH INFINITE LIQUIDITY https://bankless.cc/kwentaGo Bankless. $12 / mo. Includes archive access, Inner Circle & Deals—(pay w/ crypto)Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. I’ll always disclose when this is the case. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

A discussion with Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin on his recent blog post “Endnotes on 2020: Crypto and Beyond.”You have early access to this episode and a copy of the transcript as a full Bankless Member.Listen in Podcast App | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube | RSS FeedTools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE | BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave​🚀 GEMINI | MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini​💳 MONOLITH | GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDS https://bankless.cc/monolith​📈 KWENTA | DERIVATIVES TRADING WITH INFINITE LIQUIDITYhttps://bankless.cc/kwenta​51 - 2020 Reflections on Crypto and BeyondGuest: Vitalik ButerinVitalik wrote this post from Singapore, noting that 2020 was an extremely interesting year in which we faced “humanity’s first boss-level enemy since 1945.” However, it was also a year that brought much hope in areas like transportation, medicine, AI, and blockchains. We have observed a transition in the Political economy from physical to digital – 2020 served as a high-octane accelerant for these changes. A key piece of this change is shifting emphasis from physical private goods to digital public goods. This transition requires creative solutions to the challenges of effective governance.The phrase “digital nationalism” refers humanity’s recent tendency to polarize and how this extends to the internet. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum have undergone great schisms, resulting in hard forks like BCH and ETC. These phenomena in the rising political economy will likely continue.Vitalik walks through the tricky relationship between our financial and non-monetary social motivations. Culture and narrative can be incredibly powerful tools for innovation, but altruistic people are not the only ones with access to these things. Vitalik concludes with thoughts on the Big X - Big Government, Big Business, Big Tech, etc. This multidisciplinary “dense jungle” is populated by a variety of powerful groups with dynamic interrelationships, and blockchains & cryptocurrencies are set up to play a vital role.Resources:Vitalik’s BlogEndnotes on 2020: Crypto and BeyondVitalik on TwitterTranscriptRyan  Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better and get out and front run the opportunity. I'm Ryan Sean Adams. I'm here with David Hoffman. And we're here to help you become more Bankless. David, we have Vitalik on once again, what topics do we cover?David Hoffman  Yeah, we covered three of his most recent blogs on his vitalik.ca blog, these are all fantastic reads. And in order to help amplify Vitalik's message and try and get out what he's trying to get out, we go through each of these blog pieces together, we start with his recap of 2020 and his forward looking predictions into 2021. That blog was particularly interesting. That's how we start the conversation. We move into his blog post called an Incomplete Guide to Rollups. And he kind of helps us unpack what it is to be a rollup how we as an Ethereum, scaling community landed on rollups as a construction and why they are so powerful. And then we also get into the topic of social recovery wallets. So these are all relatively three different topics. But I would say they are all forward looking topics that Vitalik sees as kind of like the logical conclusion of a lot of different forces, perhaps maybe a lot of them social, a lot of them political in his first blog post that we get into, but then the second two are more technological and about the way that Ethereum the landscape is going to manifest and mature over time. So again, a wide ranging conversation, but still with a lot of awesome throughlines.Ryan Absolutely. If you're listening on the podcast, of course, we have this on YouTube as well, where we actually go through the articles visually. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can check it out on the podcast and get it directly into your ears, make it more portable that way. David, we should just get right into the interview. But before we do, guys, we want to talk about the sponsors that made this episode possible.David HoffmanIf you want to live a Bankless life, you need to get a Monolith DeFi Visa card. Monolith is a one two punch of both an Ethereum smart contract wallet and an accompanying Visa card that lets you spend the money that you have in your Ethereum wallet everywhere where Visa is accepted. When you swipe your Monolith Visa card at the grocery store or at a restaurant it actually makes a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain that spends some of the money you hold in your Monolith wallet. It's insanely cool, and it's one of the best tools out there for living a Bankless but still normal life. Monolith also offers on-ramp services for getting your fiat money into the world of DeFi. So it's trivial to top up your Monolith card if you ever need to and your deposited money goes straight into your noncustodial wallet. So your money is never held by a centralized intermediary. Because Monolith is native Ethereum infrastructure, the money you hold in your Monolith wallet still has the power of DeFi behind it, swapping assets on Uniswap or earning yield in DeFi is at your fingertips. Go to monolith.xyz and sign up to get your Monlith Visa card today. Then there's Gemini, the world's most trusted cryptocurrency exchange. I've been a customer of Gemini since I first got back into crypto back in 2017. And it has been my main exchange of choice to make my crypto buys and sells. Gemini is available in all 50 states and in over 50 countries worldwide. And on Gemini there are markets for over 30 various crypto assets, including many of the hot DeFi tokens like YFI and UNI and also they are one of the few exchanges that has liquid Dai markets. Having both the option of logging into the Gemini.com website or instead opening the Gemini mobile app has allowed me to be able to access any and all exchange and on- or off-ramp services that I've needed to on a moment's notice. With instant deposits and fast withdrawals, I'm able to make my money do the things I want it to when I want it to. You can buy crypto safely and securely on Gemini with the peace of mind of knowing that your investments are insured and protected with industry leading cybersecurity. You can open up a free account in under three minutes at gemini.com/gobankless and if you trade more than $100 within the first 30 days after sign up, you'll be gifted a free $15 bonus. Check them out gemini.com/gobankless.RyanOkay, Bankless nation we have Vitalik Buterin with us once again, who needs no introduction to Bankless. Vitalik, how are you doing today?Vitalik Buterin I'm great. How are you?Ryan I'm doing great. Good morning to you sir. You know we wanted to talk about three of the recent articles you put out and I think the the one to start with, maybe the one you kind of bookmarked on the end of 2020. 2020 was a crazy year, at least for me, it did not go the way I had thought it would go. And I think that's probably true for for a lot of people. So let's start with that article. We're also going to talk about your rollups article and then social recovery after that. But let's talk about 2020. Why was it such a strange year?Vitalik Buterin Lots of things were strange. First of all, you know, the virus was strange, then, politics, and a lot of countries were strange. Life moved onto the internet very quickly. And that made things that were already strange, even more strange. So, I mean, first of all, just a whole bunch of things have happened at the same time. It was also this year that I think really accelerated a lot of the trends that we've seen already moving pretty quickly over the last couple of decades, right. So some of the more important ones that I talked about, I mean, one of them is just to the internet becoming this much more important and quickly, primary force in our lives. I mean, I know you had [inaudible] on your podcast earlier. And, you know, he talks about, like, the primary in the mirror. And this was kind of the flipping where the internet became the primary. And I think that was completely true. But I also think it's important to really think through some of the consequences of what that being true means. Because for a long time, you know, people have talked about things like post scarcity economics, and zero marginal costs. What does a world where most value is virtual and most things people care about are virtual actually mean? The effects actually are profound, right? And you don't kind of appropriately realize just how much needs to be rethought until you actually experience it. And so, then, I've been, like, I highlighted a couple of things, like I kind of talked about how important public goods are on the internet, for example, I talked about how important even just like the different ways in which economics applies. So like, basically, the challenge with kind of online activity generally, right, is that, like, it's just much more difficult to formalize the kind of things that are going on. Because in the physical world, like we've done this fairly thorough job of kind of formalizing, you know, this is a transaction, this is a trade, this is private property, this is me selling something, this is you buying something. But on the internet the lines are inherently much more blurry. It's complicated and has psychology mixing into everything else. And so it's very hard to even just mathematically model things that are going on, right like in, say, the traditional world. I mean, you can use things like demand and supply curves. And you can try to measure, you know, who, like what the price of apples is, how the price of apples will change if someone spins up a new farm or if an old farm shuts down. You even know things like war, you can you have things like Lanchester's Laws, and you can try to measure like how much damage an army will take if it fi

📺 DEBRIEF: Ryan & David Debrief after the Jeremy Allaire EpisodeFebruary 1st, 2021Join David and Ryan for some post-episode thoughts after a deep dive into stablecoins with Jeremy Allaire!Listen in Podcast App | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube | RSS FeedDavid and Ryan discuss their post-Jeremy Allaire episode thoughts in a Debrief Episode, exclusive for Bankless paid subscribers!What’s a Debrief?Debriefs are a new regular part of the Bankless program, only available to paid subscribers! They capture Ryan and David’s raw thoughts after the episode.How do I get them?Make sure you have the Bankless premium feed linked to your podcast app, so you can get these conversations in your podcast player. You can also watch the private video here in Substack.Tools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE | BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave🚀 GEMINI | MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini💳 MONOLITH | GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDShttps://bankless.cc/monolith📈 KWENTA | DERIVATIVES TRADING WITH INFINITE LIQUIDITY https://bankless.cc/kwentaGo Bankless. $12 / mo. Includes archive access, Inner Circle & Deals—(pay w/ crypto)Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. I’ll always disclose when this is the case. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

A discussion with Circle CEO and USDC Founder Jeremy Allaire in which we discuss Cryptoeconomics, Regulation, and the Future of DeFi.You have early access to this episode and a copy of the transcript as a full Bankless Member.Listen in Podcast App | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube (video coming soon) | RSS FeedTools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE - BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave🚀 GEMINI - MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDShttps://bankless.cc/monolith📱DHARMA | MOBILE ONRAMP DIRECTLY INTO DEFIhttps://bankless.cc/dharma50 - Crypto-Dollars, Regulation, and DeFiGuest: Jeremy AllaireJeremy Allaire is a serial entrepreneur and the Co-founder and CEO of Circle, the firm behind USDC. He advocates for the U.S. crypto industry in Washington, paving the way for current and future regulation of cryptoassets. USDC and other stablecoins saw a massive influx throughout 2020 into Ethereum and DeFi as demand skyrocketed, providing a glimpse of possible long-term impacts on the future of money. Jeremy argues for a full-reserve money system based on Austrian Economics, moving away from the money creation inherent to today's fractional-reserve systems. Jeremy details the synergy between fiat stablecoins and non-sovereign, store-of-value, commodity assets. He envisions a future of synthetic digital currencies balanced by a basket of non-sovereign assets. This is a vital time for instituting effective regulatory measures for cryptoassets and protocols, and as a front-line advocate, Jeremy stresses the importance of the crypto industry itself taking the initiative to front-run regulatory issues via creative innovation. Jeremy self-describes as "cautiously optimistic" about establishing meaningful dialogue with regulators like Gary Gensler, Janet Yellen, and FinCen, focusing on specific issues like criminal abuse, self-sovereign identity, and consumer protection. Jeremy concludes with broad market predictions and analysis of DeFi as a massively underrated space, with the long-term goal of DeFi interacting broadly with real-world identities. This was an extremely interesting conversation that shed some much-needed light on stablecoins in a regulatory context, and Jeremy remains a key component throughout this development. Resources: Jeremy Allaire on Twitter Circle USDC Centre ConsortiumTranscriptRyan  Alright, perfect. Bankless Nation, welcome. We are here with Jeremy Allaire. He is a serial entrepreneur. He's the co-founder of Circle. He is also the king of stablecoins in a way. He's definitely an advocate for the US crypto industry in Washington, DC. Jeremy, it's fantastic to have you on the podcast. How are you doing, sir?Jeremy Allaire  I'm great. Thanks, Ryan and David, really awesome to be here with you guys.Ryan Yeah. Okay. So can we start with this question? Nomenclature-wise, is it stablecoin or crypto dollar? What do you prefer?Jeremy Allaire  You know, it's really funny, when we started working on this we sort of called these fiat tokens. But that obviously was like what they were. And then sort of "stablecoin" became what people started referring to these as, and you know, I think now basically people call this stuff stablecoins in the broader sector, like if it's in policy or, you know, financial institutions, big fintechs. In crypto, obviously, stablecoin is pretty well known. I like crypto dollar as well. But I think USDC is both a stablecoin and a crypto dollar. But there are going to be stablecoins that are not crypto dollars. And so I think the category is still stable coin ...Ryan I like this. Okay, so what is the distinction? What is the difference between stablecoin versus stable dollar?Jeremy Allaire  Well, I mean, you could have a euro stablecoin, or you could have the yen stablecoin or a Singapore dollar stablecoin, and those are not crypto dollars, because they're not. David Hoffman  And then also, we should not fit into the category of crypto dollar the Dai, right, because it's not $1.Jeremy Allaire  Right. I mean, that is a sort of this kind of collateralized, you know, instrument, it's a little bit different. I mean, we're getting into semantics, obviously, they're on a spectrum, there's different ways of working with this stuff. Okay. Ryan  Let's start this by talking a little bit about last year, 2020. It was really like the year of crypto dollars, it was the year of stablecoins. We want to get into USDC and the role that it played. I have kind of a question before we get into all of that to you, which is I'm not sure it's totally clear for our listeners or for myself, what is the relationship between Circle and Coinbase with respect to USDC? Because sometimes you kind of hear about Circle and USDC. Other times you hear about kind of Coinbase and USDC. Can you tell us about that relationship? Does one of you own USDC versus the other? Do you both issue? How does it work?Jeremy Allaire  Yeah, so just a little bit of history here. We've been, Circle, very interested in models for how you can kind of represent fiat currency as digital currency. And we've experimented with different ways of approaching that over the years. And then in 2017, we made a decision to kind of work on what we thought of as like a protocol layer for fiat tokens, and with US dollar tokens being the starting point for that. But really importantly, when we thought about it we really believed and obviously continue to believe that the right long term approach for something like this is to have a governed standard, and to really build a governance model around it. And there's a lot of analogies to other things that are standards on the internet, whether it's, you know, the World Wide Web Consortium and the standards around the web, or the IETF, and standards around different protocols that exist on the internet. But in particular with fiat protocols, and the kinds of things that you build around them, you don't just want that to be from a company, you really want it to be something that can be, you know, multiple issuers, multiple companies, multiple geographies, and actually have a governance process around it. So we created something called CENTRE. And Coinbase joined us in the founding of CENTRE and basically from the fall of 2018 until, you know, today, Circle and Coinbase both manage CENTRE Consortium. And we can talk more about that in a little bit because it's growing independently of either Circle or Coinbase. And there's a new, I think, incredibly strong CEO that is going to be building out that consortium in a very significant way, with a lot of different types of firms getting involved. I think Circle and Coinbase together saw an opportunity to build a standard and governance standard that could work as a high quality kind of trusted, you know, dollar market infrastructure in the crypto economy. Technically, you know, Circle operates as what's called the minting issuer of USDC. And Coinbase operates as what is called an issuer of USDC. And we have, we kind of jointly govern the evolution of the smart contracts, the open source project, we all contribute source code to that implementation so that we make decisions together about where that standard goes. There's other policies, like the governance of the reserve model, the compliance and regulatory model, all those things we do together. So that's something that has been a really, really close partnership between circle and Coinbase over the years.David Hoffman  What would you say would be the advantage of the dividing up of responsibilities of USDC? And is that how you would can kind of characterize it?Jeremy Allaire  It's not so much a dividing up of responsibilities. Meaning, there are a lot of pieces to this, I think the first is that, you know, stablecoins are regulated as like a stored value, electronic money technology and payment technology in the United States. And that's increasingly how they're being regulated in other parts of the world. And in that model, there is sort of, you know, a company that is doing the issuing of that money, if you will, and has the fiduciary responsibility to manage the reserves and is ultimately on the hook as the licensed and regulated entity that is doing that. Now, on top of that you can build all kinds of different arrangements around the technology standards and around distribution. And that's what CENTRE really established. But I think the best way to think about this, and the way we think about this is, you know, essentially every kind of major innovation in electronic money has been from a consortium of private sector actors that are working together on technical standards and interoperability. And they build kind of governance models around it. That's what Swift is. Swift is a consortium of private sector actors, they happen to be systemically important. So major central banks also have a supervisory role. If you look at what most people think of as the sort of most popular forms of electronic payments, like card networks would probably be what you think of, card networks are associations of members, they're consortiums, they define sets of technical standards, they define interoperability. And that way, you know, not every bank is issuing their own proprietary system for processing cards, they all can get interoperability with each other. And in a sense, they're creators of a fungible electronic money unit. So stablecoins have the same potential, and I think will be far, far larger in scale ultimately in terms of what they handle compared to those more proprietary models. But that's a little bit of a way to think about it. And so success over time looks like lots of crypto finance firms, large consumer fintechs banks, others that are part of a consortium that are involved in this and involved in governance and involved in the standards. And that's when you know, as that happens, we think this gets into, you know, trill

📺 DEBRIEF: Ryan & David Debrief after the Justin Drake episodeJanuary 25th, 2021Join David and Ryan for some post-episode thoughts after their recent adventure in cryptography with Justin Drake!Listen in Podcast App | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube | RSS FeedDavid and Ryan discuss their post-Drake episode thoughts in a Debrief Episode, exclusive for Bankless paid subscribers!What’s a Debrief?Debriefs are a new regular part of the Bankless program, only available to paid subscribers! They capture Ryan and David’s raw thoughts after the episode.How do I get them?Make sure you have the Bankless premium feed linked to your podcast app, so you can get these conversations in your podcast player. You can also watch the private video here in Substack.Tools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE - BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave🚀 GEMINI - MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDShttps://bankless.cc/monolith📈 DHARMA | MOBILE ON-RAMP DIRECTLY INTO DEFIhttps://bankless.cc/dharmaGo Bankless. $12 / mo. Includes archive access, Inner Circle & Deals—(pay w/ crypto)Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. I’ll always disclose when this is the case Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

You have early access to this episode and a copy of the transcript as a full Bankless Member.Listen in Podcast App | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube (video coming soon) | RSS FeedTools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE - BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave🚀 GEMINI - MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDShttps://bankless.cc/monolith📱 DHARMA | MOBILE ONRAMP DIRECTLY INTO DEFI https://bankless.cc/dharma49 - Moon Math: The Bull Case for Cryptography Guest: Justin DrakeJustin Drake is a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation and is leading the charge of the application of cryptography to Ethereum. Justin speaks about how far with come in the cryptocurrency industry, with only two extremely primitive tools: cryptographic hashes and signatures; the fire and wheel of applied cryptography. Justin leads us through a cryptographic-enabled world, where more recent breakthroughs in applied cryptography supplement hashes and signatures. Multi-party computation, fully-homomorphic encryption, SNARKs, verifiable-delay functions, these are all cryptographic tools that are yet-to-be harnessed by the Ethereum blockchain. Importantly, all of these new modern cryptographic tools are developed well beyond theoretical concepts; all that is left is for talented developers to put rubber to pavement. Justin walks the listeners through the user story of a user making a transaction on Uniswap, and discusses how cryptographic tricks can make the entire user process more secure and more trustless. We finish with a discussion about the long term fate of the Bitcoin blockchain, and its collision course with quanton computing, which threatens to break some of the crucial features that makes Bitcoin, Bitcoin. Justin provides a roadmap for the decoupling of BTC the asset from Bitcoin the blockchain, using a cryptographic two-way bridge between Bitcoin and an alternative new host blockchain, presumably Ethereum, and how BTC can upload itself to a new blockchain, and be rid of the baggage and liability of the Bitcoin blockchain 🤯This is truly one of the most unique pieces of content we’ve produced on the Bankless program, and Justin deserves so much credit for leading this operation!Resources: Justin’s Uniswap Cryptographic Mechanism Solution spreadsheet and their theoretical application to any Ethereum app. Below are the two papers Justin mentioned on long-term Bitcoin (in)security:* "On the Instability of Bitcoin Without the Block Reward" by Princeton researchers. There are two informal explainers here and here.* "On the insecurity of quantum Bitcoin mining"TranscriptRyan Bankless Nation, we are super excited to have on Justin Drake, who is a cryptographer. He's a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation and to say he played a key role in the development of Eth2 is probably an understatement. He's been a key force behind this. He's here to tell us all about how early we are in this crypto revolution, the advances that are coming in cryptography that are about to change everything we think we know about cryptography, crypto, and this entire industry. Justin, how are you doing today, sir?Justin Drake  I'm doing great, guys. Thank you so much for having me.Ryan You know what, I got to ask this before we get into the the moon math, and the really fun stuff Eth launched in 2020. Wow, how does that feel, the Eth2 launch?Justin Drake  Amazing. I mean, I spent three years of my life dedicated to this. And it was a great reward and seeing that we have you know, $3 billion staking and that we basically haven't had issues so far is is pretty astounding.David Hoffman Justin, this is actually kind of a unique episode, I think, that's about to come out of the Bankless podcast. because this is the first episode where you actually pitched the episode to us. And this is something that I would not have thought or have the skills or the knowledge to produce this Soylent sort of conversation. So I know that you are absolutely fired up to talk about what we are going to talk about, maybe you could kind of give us the the to the TLDR, the elevator pitch for what we're about to talk about, and why you are so stoked about this conversation?Justin Drake  Yeah, for sure. I mean, I was inspired by you, because you had this, this Bullish Ethereum, you know, series, and I'm just so bullish on Ethereum. And I just wanted to reflect on why am I so bullish. One of the big reasons is that the fundamentals are so strong, right, the whole space is built on crypto economics, which is, you know, part of cryptography and part of game theory and incentives. And, you know, the cryptography part in particular, we're the very beginning, there's so much room to grow. And it's a story that I think will unfold over many years, possibly even decades. And there's just so many reasons to believe that the the reality we live in today is very, very primitive. And, you know, it might sound like sci fi, but I really do believe that we're moving towards that end goal.David Hoffman  So where does this conversation start? One of the lines that you put into the agenda was that, you know, with regards to cryptography and crypto economics, we are just in the most primitive age, the stone age where we have like, you know, the fire and the wheel, but so much of the world's inventions are ahead of us. Where does this conversation start?Justin Drake  I think, you know, one interesting starting point, I think, is the cypherpunk movement, right? So they had this amazing dream in the 80s, which is, can we try and rebuild all of society on really strong foundations, and specifically cryptographic foundations, and people back then were really fired up, you know, for ideological reasons, in a similar way that some people today in the crypto space are really fired up. But to a large extent, I think that dream kind of didn't pan out the way that people hoped. And, you know, we had a few decades of, of silence there. And then we had a few clues, you know, things like like BitTorrent, which basically allowed us to have really strong foundations in the sense that BitTorrent to large extent is just cryptography. Plus, you know, peer to peer networking, and plus even a little bit of incentivization, the early days. And then we had, you know, Satoshi's big breakthrough, Bitcoin, which to me is kind of the birth of crypto economics in a really big way. And now, we're, I guess we're reaching a point where, in the in the exponential curve, it's the inflection point, everything happening quite slowly. But now we're gonna see this explosion, largely driven with Ethereum.David Hoffman  Where does that inflection point come from? Like, what's different about Bitcoin and crypto economics that we didn't have before? Why is why is there this Cambrian explosion going on now? Justin Drake  I mean, one of the big things I guess, and it was the key innovation of Ethereum, is programmability. So now we're in a position where it feels we can absorb all the innovation that we need to absorb to solve all these problems that we have. So in the crypto space where, you know, we're starting from the foundation, so we have to reinvent the whole stack, we're reinventing the wheel to a large extent. And so even though we have lots of superpowers, such as you know, decentralization and trustlessness, and things like that, we also have a lot of trade offs. And, you know, the superpowers are so awesome that we're happy to live with the trade offs. But oftentimes, in fact, almost all the time I believe that these trades that we have relative, for example, to existing services like centralized exchanges, in the context of decentralized trading, I think we can basically fill in all the gaps that we have today and be at least as good as centralized services in every single respect. And in some sense, in some key respects, this totally outshines them, you know, by by a factor of 10 or 100 times,Ryan  Can we talk about this idea of crypto economics for a second in the context of Bitcoin? Because I just want to make sure that that's clear to all of our listeners, right? So the cypherpunks were very much into cryptography and the revolution that it could bring self sovereign money, privacy, all of these things, but they were missing something. They were missing the economics part that made Bitcoin so special, and that made Satoshi's white paper so special, I'm not necessarily sure that that's completely intuitive to people. The sorts of things you can do when you blend not just cryptography, but it's cryptography plus economics, it's both of those two things together. That was the major innovation and discovery of Bitcoin. Can you talk about that for a minute?Justin Drake  Yeah, one metaphor that I have is that cryptography is this very powerful tool is a very powerful building block, like the brick, right, you want to build a wall and you have the bricks, but if you have bricks alone, that's not gonna work, you need something to glue the bricks together, you need the mortar. And the the the economic part kind of fills in the gap and glues everything together so that you have a coherent system that breathes life. If you take cryptography alone, it's kind of somewhat dry and somewhat abstract. And once you bring in the economic part, which could be a relatively thin layer, but you know, a critical layer, then suddenly, you have pieces of the puzzle that stick together to form a coherence system.David Hoffman  Before Bitcoin, the cypherpunks were really trying to solve this problem for almost decades, right. And they innovated in many different ways. One of them was e-gold. There was a number of different like Bitcoin precursors, that I think all relied on pure cryptography, right? And it was that integration of economics that really was what allowed Bitcoin and therefore this whole entire industry to flourish. Maybe you can talk about just the relationship between

📺 DEBRIEF: Ryan & David Debrief after the Lyn Alden episodeJanuary 16th, 2021Join David and Ryan for some post-episode thoughts after their recent recording session with Lyn Alden!Listen in Podcast App | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube | RSS FeedDavid and Ryan discuss their post-Lyn Alden episode thoughts in a Debrief Episode, exclusive for Bankless paid subscribers!What’s a Debrief?Debriefs are a new regular part of the Bankless program, only available to paid subscribers! They capture Ryan and David’s raw thoughts after the episode.How do I get them?Make sure you have the Bankless premium feed linked to your podcast app, so you can get these conversations in your podcast player. You can also watch the private video here in Substack.Tools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE - BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave🚀 GEMINI - MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDShttps://bankless.cc/monolith📈 DHARMA | MOBILE ON-RAMP DIRECTLY INTO DEFIhttps://bankless.cc/dharmaGo Bankless. $12 / mo. Includes archive access, Inner Circle & Deals—(pay w/ crypto)Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. I’ll always disclose when this is the case Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Lyn Alden of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy comes to the Bankless to discuss the decaying position of the U.S. Dollar in the macro-environment, and gives us her predictive roadmap for the 2020 decade, as it relates to the Dollar, Bitcoin, and Ethereum. You have early access to this episode and a copy of the transcript as a full Bankless Member.Listen in Podcast App | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube | RSS FeedTools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE - BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave🚀 GEMINI - MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDShttps://bankless.cc/monolith📱 DHARMA | MOBILE ONRAMP DIRECTLY INTO DEFI https://bankless.cc/dharma48 - Death of Dollar Dominance | Lyn AldenLyn Alden of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy has quickly risen to fame in the Bitcoin universe for her sharp analysis on long-term macro trends and brings plenty of data to back up her analysis. She’s one of our favorite macro and economics minds. Global macro events have such a strong interplay with crypto. In order to understand crypto, we need to understand the big picture.We ask Lyn about the changes forces around the US Dollar, as demand and supply of the Dollar is less understood and less stable than ever before. We also ask Lyn about the relationship between the position of the U.S. Dollar as the world reserve currency, and the social unrest found inside the U.S. borders. It turns out, that the U.S. Dollar as the world reserve currency is not the best situation for those that reside inside the country!We bring up Ray Dalio's Long Term Debt Cycles mental model, and ask Lyn to connect it to the Fourth Turning Theory, in an attempt to discover some of the hidden forces behind the social unrest found in America. Fourth Turning Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theoryHighly recommended Lyn Alden piece on the Future of the Dollarhttps://www.lynalden.com/fraying-petrodollar-system/Sign up for Lyn’s monthly macro newsletterhttps://www.lynalden.com/january-2021-newsletter/TranscriptRyan Bankless Nation, I want to welcome Lyn Alden to the show of Lyn Alden Investment Strategies. She's quickly risen to fame in the Bitcoin universe for some sharp analysis on long term macro trends. And she's got a ton of data to back up her analysis, her blog is one of my favorite places to hang out to understand macro and economic trends. And because global macro events have such a strong interplay with crypto, we wanted to bring Lyn on to help us understand the big picture here. Lyn, welcome to Bankless. How are you doing today?Lyn Alden  Hey I'm good. Thanks for having me.David Hoffman  Well some people thought that our financial system sat atop a house of cards before COVID hit. So our first question to you is whether our global financial system is in a precarious position right now?Lyn Alden  In a sense, I mean, it depends on what part you're looking at, I would say it was in a more precarious position right back before the great financial crisis. And that's where we saw a lot of the kind of the internal bailouts happening there. Because if you look at for example, how much bank reserves banks had relative to their liabilities, that's actually, you know, when they hit an all time low, since then they've been a lot higher. So it's kind of like the core banking systems have already been built out. But now we have more of a broad array of social issues, wealth, concentration, high debt levels, all sorts of things like that. And so in many ways, what happened, you know, about 12 years ago mirrored a lot what happened in the early 1930s, after the the famous 1929 crash. Whereas the kind of the environment we're going in now, it looks a lot more like the 1940s, hopefully, without the war that they had. But the basically in terms of a fiscal environment, like a massive kind of spending environment, and kind of a broader bailout of society. So that kind of one two punch of a private debt bubble and banking crisis, followed by like a public debt bubble, and you know, that tends to be more inflationary. But then aside from that, we also have, for example, the way the global monetary system is constructed, that's a whole 'nother beast entirely. And so, you know, if you go back before 1944, you had a variety of different gold standards. And then from 1944 to 1971, you had the Bretton Woods system that eventually broke down in the late 60s and kind of officially broke in 1971. And then since then, you've been on the petro dollar system. And science is starting to show that the petro dollar system starting to, you know, basically fall apart as well. And so that's somewhat different than the debt problem. But you know, it all kind of comes to a head probably here, you know, over the next 10 years, as we sort some of this out.David Hoffman  So does that mean to say that you actually thought that the financial system was more precarious before the crisis reset ourselves to to some degree, and we're actually perhaps in a better place than we were pre 2008?Lyn Alden  I think it depends on which part of the system you're looking at. And so for example, in terms of the way the global monetary system is constructed, the whole way that the international countries do trade with each other and what currency they use, that's in a worse state than it was 12 years ago. However, if you look at for example the domestic U.S. banking system it's more capitalized than it was back then. And it's because it basically imploded about 12 years ago. And due to those bailouts, it's at a much higher level of capitalization now and so by that particular metric it's far less fragile. And that's why for example in this crisis despite the fact that this was a much bigger economic impact, we haven't seen a lot of bank failures like we saw back then because that was specifically a banking failure. Whereas this is a broader solvency issue. So it really depends on what what aspect you're looking atRyan  This broader solvency issue that you're talking about, where we start to get into kind of like, what is money and reserve currency status? And that sort of thing? Is it a harder problem to solve, like, more difficult than what we faced in 2008?Lyn Alden Yeah, I think so. Because, you know, what we faced then, basically, there was a handful of actors that could be bailed out. And of course, there are all sorts of issues like what we saw with Occupy Wall Street and others sort of kind of push back against that, because, you know, you had people lose their homes and they didn't get bailed out, but then you had the banks that, they're the ones that often got bailed out. In terms of basically how they capitalized the system, that's an easier problem to fix. Whereas how to basically restructure society is a much harder problem. And if you go back in history, after you get the banking crisis that later part actually tends to be the hardest part. And so that's kind of where we are in the cycle. And it feels a lot different. So a lot of people you know, they fight the last battle, so that they always think that the next recession is going to end up being like the previous one before it. But it ends up basically imploding from another area. And so rather than having another banking crisis this time, we had, you know, a much different area that was impacted. It was the leverage and the bank system that was the issue. It was some of these other broader trends.David Hoffman  So many people, and perhaps we could call them doomers, some people think that there was going to be some sort of event pre, again, pre COVID, that would destabilize the global financial system. And it doesn't matter what that event was. And it was going to create this financial crisis, no matter what the actual pre crisis was. And so now with COVID, we are seeing that there is a health crisis, yet the vaccine is starting to be rolled out, it kind of feels like we're maybe in the sixth or seventh inning of a health crisis. Yet some of these boomers might say that we are actually just in the beginning of a long term financial crisis. And maybe you don't feel so strongly about the crisis word, but I have read some of your writings, that you do believe that we are in a very transitional phase where we are going from one spot to the next. What are you seeing ahead of us that we are transitioning into? And what are the kind of macro forces behind that transition?Lyn Alden  Yeah, so I think kind of the main crux of it is that in the 2020s, I expect a significant currency devaluation. Because we're at the point now, where if you look back, for example, in the 90s they had the implosion of long term capital management. Basically, you had systemic issues among hedge funds, and they basically had a bailout. Then you had the equity bubble in the late 90s right after that. And of course, when that imploded, they cut interest rates, and they kind of kicked that up to the housing level. And then when that all blew up, that's when they transferred the leverage to the sovereign level. And so at that point you really have no further to go other than a currency devaluation. And so that's generally what you see at this stage in the cycle. And there's a couple ways to accomplish that. I mean, they can run massive fiscal deficits, the central bank buys a lot of the bonds to finance those deficits. And then if interest rates try to rise to compensate for any inflation that can happen, they can potentially lock yields below the inflation rate. And even right now, for example, the Treasury markets pricing in 2% inflation, but the yields are like 1%. And so anyone holding treasuries, is currently you know, slowly losing purchasing power. And of course, there's different ways to measure inflation. So it could be faster than that. That was somewhat different than we saw back in the 2010s decade, that was a more disinflationary decade because you didn't

📺 DEBRIEF: Ryan & David Debrief after the Chris Dixon episodeJanuary 11th, 2021Join David and Ryan for some post-episode thoughts after their recent recording session with Chris Dixon!Listen in Podcast App | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube | RSS FeedWhat’s a Debrief?Debriefs are a new regular part of the Bankless program, only available to paid subscribers! They capture Ryan and David’s raw thoughts after the episode. How do I get them?Make sure you have the Bankless premium feed linked to your podcast app, so you can get these conversations in your podcast player. You can also watch the private video here in Substack. Tools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE - BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave🚀 GEMINI - MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDShttps://bankless.cc/monolith📈 KWENTA | DERIVATIVES TRADING WITH INFINITE LIQUIDITYhttps://bankless.cc/kwentaGo Bankless. $12 / mo. Includes archive access, Inner Circle & Deals—(pay w/ crypto)Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. I’ll always disclose when this is the case Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Chris Dixon, a general partner at a16z, comes to the Bankless to discuss how can blockchain technology meaningfully impact the world’s 4 billion internet users. You have early access to this episode and a copy of the transcript as a full Bankless Member. Listen in Podcast App | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube | RSS FeedTools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE - BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave🚀 GEMINI - MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDShttps://bankless.cc/monolith📈 KWENTA | DERIVATIVES TRADING WITH INFINITE LIQUIDITYhttps://bankless.cc/kwenta📺 The Fourth Crypto Cycle | Chris Dixon January 8th, 2021Chris Dixon is a general partner at a16z, a famous private American venture capital firm that has specialized in technologies related to the growth of the internet and computation. Chris transcends the pre-internet, post-internet, pre-crypto-and post-crypto worlds of investing and venture capital, so his perspective is rich, deep, and consistent with the themes that transcend these revolutions. Coming from a16z, Chris approaches this industry from a technological perspective, rather than a monetary one, and seems to be steering the a16z Crypto Fund ship in the direction that typical silicon valley venture capital investors focus on: how can blockchain technology meaningfully impact the 4 billion users of the internet.This conversation with Chris was fast-paced and vibrant! Tune in to hear one of Tech's most experienced investors!Resources mentioned in the podcast* Book Chris mentioned: “The Company”* The Crypto Price-Innovation Cycle * Crypto Fund II * Doing Old Things Better Vs. Doing Brand New Things * What is Blockchain: Computers That Can Make Commitments * Crypto startup school - fantastic educational content (particularly for builders) TRANSCRIPTRSA  Bankless Nation we have a special guest today, we want to welcome Chris Dixon, who is an investor and partner at Andreessen Horowitz. It's a VC firm that probably needs no introduction. He leads crypto investing there. Chris is someone who shaped my mental models for how to see the next big thing while everyone else dismisses it as a toy, including crypto. Chris, welcome to Bankless. How are you doing?Chris Dixon  I'm great. Thanks for having me.RSA  Chris, you are a seasoned VC. You were early to the internet. You're early to crypto. Now you're on Andreessen Horowitz's crypto fund leading that. On Bankless, we're really on a mission into the crypto frontier. So we're investors, yes. But we're also users and builders. And what we're hoping to get out of today's conversation is to get like your mental models to understand what you think crypto holds for the next decade. I mean, we've just kicked off this decade. So you know, where we want to start is actually at the high level, at the 20,000 foot view in crypto. What is going on here? Like, what is crypto? What's happening here?Chris Dixon  Yeah, so I mean, the way I kind of look ... so, let's step really far back. Why when you go and you and you look at a movie from the 1990s, a lot of things look the same. If you go back and look at the TVs and movies from 1990s, like the cars look the same, and the appliances look the same. And the washing machines look the same. But that was very, very different time for computers, right? Over the last 50 years, we've had a very rapid acceleration of better and better computers, better and better connectivity, more and more apps. To me, the most important question when analyzing the past and future of technology is to dig deeply into, you know, what are computers? How does each computing cycle develop? What are the ingredients that go into that development. I see crypto blockchain very much as a new cycle of computing, that fits into that history. So that history is, you know, mainframe computers in the 50s and 60s, PCs in the 70s and 80s. Internet in the 90s and 2000, mobile phones 2000 to 2010. Now, I think we're, you know, on the cusp of a whole bunch of exciting things are stuff going on in AI machine learning, this stuff happening in virtual reality and augmented reality, self driving cars, etc. But to me the most important of this, what I'm most passionate about, and I think will be one of the most impactful areas of kind of new computing is around, you know, what you might call blockchain computers, right? And this can be anything from an application specific blockchain computer like Bitcoin, right? So Bitcoin is a computer that has a specific application, i.e., you know, sort of global censorship resistant store of value baked into it. And it's a very important, obviously, innovation in and of itself. And then you have things like Ethereum, which are more generalized plus general purpose platforms that'll let you, you know, fully program on them. And then you have a whole bunch of other kind of aforementioned things getting layered on top. And I think of it now just sort of drilling into it, I think one of the interesting things you can ask is, when you sort of try to analyze what has happened, and what will happen is where are we in the evolution of the cycle? I've written a lot of blog posts and things about this, if folks are interested. But I think most of these kind of computing cycles go through multiple phases. The first one I call the kind of gestation phase. The second one, the second one is the deployment phase. Like, you know, I think, a really interesting question, and we can talk about this later, is that where are we in that cycle? What are the other key innovations that to happen? One of the really important things that happens, and I think we're starting to see it now in any of these kinds of computing cycles, is you get a reinforcing feedback loop between the infrastructure and applications. So you know, as the first iPhone started off with relatively few applications and  kind of weak infrastructure in terms of its cellular connectivity, you know, kind of weak camera things like this, then as you know, as some applications became popular like Instagram, Snapchat, that in turn created an economic incentive for Apple to go and invest and make better cameras. And so you had this sort of nice kind of ladder effect reinforcing feedback loop, the applications got better and the infrastructure got better. I think we're kind of starting to hit that in crypto right now. Anyways, that's a lot right there to start with, but, uh, you know, happy to happy to dive into any area.RSA  Yeah so we want to get back to cycles, because you've written a lot about this. And I think everyone's wondering like, okay, we're 10 years into this, where are we in the cycle? But before we do, let's talk a bit about what's unique about next era of computing, right? So you took us through the progression, we had mainframes PCs, mobile internet, right and each of these computer paradigms era has had special things you know, PCs have brought computer to your home, the internet networked all of these computers together so we could like you know, communicate across the world. What is special about these new computers that we call blockchain or cryptoeconomic computers?Chris Dixon  It's a great question. I think this is one thing, one of the reasons people are so thrown off by this. So a lot of the people at you know, at, let's say, a company like Google, who are very, who wrote the last two computing waves, right, and who very intimately understand the transition from, let's say, desktop to mobile computing. A lot of those same people don't really fully grok blockchain computers, in fact, a lot of them are actually hostile towards it. And I believe the reason for that is blockchains, they in some ways fit the pattern in that they're, you know, they are a new type of computer that has new capabilities, new sets of trade offs, etc. But the dimensions along which blockchains offer new capabilities are different than what we're used to. Right. So in the past, what we're used to is computers getting smaller, more mobile, higher performance, more connected Blockchains, the way I like to describe it is they are computers that can do a new thing that can never be done before. And that specifically is, they can make commitments, commitments that cannot be overridden by the owners of the blockchain, which of course are just you know, the community. The network cannot be overwritten by the developers behind the applications that you can trust, based on the code itself, that whatever those commitments are that are relevant will be honored. And so specifically, then they'll say, let's take Bitcoin, right, some of the commitments Bitcoin makes, there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins, that you cannot double spend a Bitcoin. There's a whole set of things that the kind of commitments that Bitcoin makes, which in turn, give people confidence that bitcoins could have value, right? If it wasn't for like, for example, the scarcity limit of 21 million limit, presumably, people would have much less faith that Bitcoin would be a good store of value, right? So how do we, why do we trust that commitment, we don't have to trust Satoshi, we don't have to trust the core developers. They may all be trustworthy, but it's just not really relevant. Right? We can just simply look at the network. You have to know how to program and things. But to do that, but if you do, you can either do it yourself, or you can pay someone to do it or whatever. But you can go and look at the open source code. And you can say, okay, I understand how this works. And I trust his commitment. And this is a commitment. Let's contrast that, for example, to let's say I have Chriscoin, or let's say Google has Googlecoin, and Google says, you know, I will only ever have 21 million Googlecoins. Well, in the case of Googlecoin, you have to believe Google will do that, and they won't change management, they won't change their views and etc, etc. A

Vitalik Buterin comes to the Bankless to discuss a number of topics surrounding Proof of Stake!You have early access to this episode and a copy of the transcript as a full Bankless Member. 📺 NEW EPISODE ON PREMIUM FEEDWatch episode 46 | Listen in Podcast AppTools from our sponsors to go bankless:⭐️ AAVE - BORROW OR LEND YOUR ASSETShttps://bankless.cc/aave🚀 GEMINI - MOST TRUSTED EXCHANGE AND ONRAMPhttps://bankless.cc/go-gemini💳 MONOLITH - GET THE HOLY GRAIL OF BANKLESS VISA CARDShttps://bankless.cc/monolith📈 KWENTA | DEVIRATIVES TRADING WITH INFINITE LIQUIDITYhttps://bankless.cc/kwenta📺 Vitalik Buterin on Why Proof of Stake?January 4th, 2021Vitalik Buterin comes to the Bankless to discuss a number of topics surrounding Proof of Stake! We begin discussing the Beacon Chain launch, and the Ethereum's road so far up to this point. What were the unexpected obstacles along the way? How does it finally feel to be at this point?We also discuss the theory and thought-process behind Proof of Stake! Vitalik recently wrote a blog piece 'Why Proof of Stake', and we walk through this piece with him! It does a comprehensive analysis as to the theory behind why Proof of Stake is so strong and lays down economic arguments behind Ethereum’s new consensus mechanism. Why Proof of Stake?https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.htmlLastly, we discuss one of Vitalik's blog pieces 'Concave and Convex Dispositions’, and how these different personality types characterize Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as the design of social groups and human governance organizations. Convex and Concave Dispositions https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/08/concave.htmlOther pieces mentioned:Trust Modelshttps://vitalik.ca/general/2020/08/20/trust.htmlTRANSCRIPTRSABankless Nation, we are pleased to bring you Vitalik Buterin again in front of the nation. We are talking about a few things that are top of mind. Vitalik great to have you. How are you doing?Vitalik Buterin Thank you very much, David and Ryan, it's great. It's great to be on Bankless once again.RSA It is fun. And I feel like this is a really good moment to be on Bankless. The first thing we want to talk about with you actually is this pretty momentous, maybe monumental in the history of Ethereum, achievement, which is we hit the number 524,288 now deposited in the staking contract. How does that feel?Vitalik Buterin It definitely feels great. I think like for a long time, the first few weeks, we were definitely a bit worried because I know the deposits were coming in slowly at the beginning. And it seemed like oh, no, with only four days left when we had 20%. And you know, what the heck is going on here? And I mean, we even saw right that there were a lot of people who were starting to get worried like on our GitHub thread. And I saw Eric opens up that GitHub issue basically suggesting, you know, hey, just in case, there's never enough deposits. So let's set a maximum date. And there is a bunch of arguments around that. But, you know, no the Ethereum community came in and the Ethereum community delivered and just within the last 24 hours we ended up having more deposits than we had in the entire period. Before that, like, it definitely feels a little bit surprising, though in retrospect, it should not be too surprising. I guess. The one kind of event that happened in the past of this reminds me of as if you were here during the original ether sale back in 2014. If you remember that whole event, it was it was this kind of six week long sale, but then the first two weeks were the most important period because that was the period during which you could get the most favorable price for your ETH. And there was like some amount of deposits on the first day or less on the second day. And then it seemed like it was going really slowly and as a whole was petering out at a couple of billion dollars. And then just suddenly in the last couple of days everyone just like whooshed in and then pushed the whole thing up to close to $80 million. So the curve feels kind of very similar to that. And I guess the subject said you should expect that because well, why would someone participate earlier if they can just wait until the end. But, you know, just see that come first slowly and then done all at once is definitely amazing. And it's definitely a great testament to the Ethereum community, its level of confidence in that first time, the ETH sale itself, and then the second time with the proof of stake and sharding as the stuff that we've spent so many years working on.David Hoffman So Vitalik what does this tell you about the Ethereum community like as a result of this? And because we hit the 524,000 ETH. But then we just blew past it by 200,000 more ETH? Like, what is this? If this is a litmus test for the community, what is it telling you, what are your big takeaways about the Ethereum community as a result of this event?Vitalik Buterin I think first of all, there's a definitely wide community buy in and confidence in general. And that's something that I think I definitely believes the whole time. But it's definitely good to have just such a clear sign of it. You know, $300 million worth of people just locking up their ETH, potentially never to see it again, unless ether delivers or we find some kind of further thing to do to make those coins in the in the deposits actually valuable again. So in some sense, that's the ultimate bet on progress. And I think I got a bet on progress is to some extent what Ethereum is all about. RSA I feel like it happened in the perfect way, like in a very climactic way that really fired the Ethereum community up when it actually happened in the way that it did. Like it's almost fitting, I would say that we weren't sure we were going to cross the threshold into the last, you know, 48 to, you know, 24 hours. But I'm curious about this number itself. Why was the number selected? What kind of drove that number to begin with, was it fairly arbitrary that we have to have some amount of stake? And so, you know, why not this particular number? Or was there some sort of rhyme or reason behind it?Vitalik Buterin I guess, like 524,000 was the end of the power of two, that seems like a relatively minimum acceptable threshold for an amount of deposits that we could have to ensure that the chain would actually be safe with that amount. So like to give one example, what's the smallest power of two that the Ethereum Foundation could not individually 51% attack. So the Ethereum Foundation has like slightly above, slightly above that, but no, it would have to put everything in and even then it would only be only be around 50%. So if we had less than just the number of actors that would have enough money to be able to take over the thing individually, and we'll just get higher and higher. And so it actually would be, the chain would just not be that secure with a lower amounts. But on the other hand, like at this level, it's getting to the point where like, there's really very few individual actors that actually have the ability to kind of put in the funds to take over the chain. And aside from the the Foundation, there's also obviously the major exchanges and maybe like ConsenSys, I don't know how much they have, and maybe a couple of whales. If you go higher and we hope to go higher then it is going to get out of reach of even those that are the largest holders. But realistically we don't have to get up to those much higher levels immediately, like this is still the Phase 0 beacon chain, there's nothing completely relying on it. And so we start at a medium level of safety and then go up to the higher level over time as people would naturally become more confident in the system.RSA So this process is getting to that number and exceeding the threshold of ETH that sort of initiates the the rocket launch sequence, right. But the chain is not yet launched, that will happen December 1st 12 o'clock UTC time. So what kind of happens next, what's the next milestone in the beacon chain launch, and in staking now that we filled up the deposit contract to its minimum threshold.Vitalik Buterin So the next milestone is obviously the thing that's happening in five and a half days after I'm saying this, on December 1st. Then the launch itself, we've done lots of testnets, but this is still larger than any testnet it's a different set of stakeholders than any testnet so just making sure that all goes smoothly. Then after that, we would hope the proof of stake chain just runs smoothly for some amount of time. And at some point, we want to adjust and start getting on to the task of kind of upgrading it and bringing on all the full functionality that we want to have. So the big ticket items are, one is sharding. The second is the merge. So bringing ETH1 into the Eth2 system, removing the proof of work chain and kind of properly folding the system back together. And then there's also some smaller things that we want to do. So like for example, we want to add light client support fairly quickly. So if you go into the two specs, GitHub, there is already a PR that we've been working on for about a couple of weeks to add light client support, and there's some just efficiency improvements. And some possible kind of economic tweaks. Like one example of a type of economic tweak we might want to make is just making the chain more friendly to people who are validators who stay online during an inactivity week but don't stay online perfectly. So like basically, if you have 90% of performance during an inactivity week where the people who aren't completely online lose 40%, like you should not lose 4%, right, really, you should lose much less than 4%, you really were doing the best that you can. So I have a proposal around fixing that. Just general efficiency improvements. So basically, the eth2 chain is just going to get into this, this middle progressing and upgrading mode. And it's basically preparing for the th