Ethereum’s Existential Crisis - TOKEN2049 Dubai 2025

Hello everybody. So we're going to jump straight into it. The the conversation of the hour is about the fate of Ethereum and whether Ethereum is going through an existential crisis. Okay. So I want to I want to start by just getting an understanding of what are the views on stage.

So first question just give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Is Ethereum pivoting? Okay. All right. Explain.

Explain. Is Ethereum pivoted? Yes. Explain why. Well, uh I mean the former direction was the roll of centric roadmap and offscaling or outsourcing everything to scaling via L2s.

Um and that was the singular focus, right? It wasn't like they were like saying we're also going to scale the L1. In fact, every time I said that we should do this, uh, they would say, "No, noob. That is wrong. We should actually that's the L1 is for B2B sales or something like this."

Um, and so now that the direction has changed, that is the definition of a pivot, I would say. All right. I'm I'm convinced. You're in the middle. I give up.

Actually, it is a pivot. Merit's right. You You changed your mind. I changed my mind. You convince me it's a pivot.

Why? I I think I agree. Like the definition of a pivot is you're you know you have one direction that you're pushing in which is this very rollup ccentric roadmap and now it's like actually scaled to L1 which is right I think it's a good pivot but definitely a pivot. So okay I I think my my nuance here is that uh this is semantics at the end of the day on the definition but I I don't think a refocus on changing the priority is the same as a pivot. Pivot is directionally you're changing things too.

Um, and I kind of say that with the context that I know of what's always been on the road map and u, yes, the L3 centric road map was prioritized, but it was never set that we're not going to focus on the L1. It was just this is not the rep prioritization rep prioritization. Changing a priority is not the same as pivot because direction is not being changed, just focuses. So for the sake of this this question, let's call it a pivot. Is the pivot working so far?

Is the pivot working so far? Show me thumbs up, thumbs down, sideways. Is pivot No, hold on. Is pivot working so far? Working so far?

I mean, they did it yesterday. Uh, you know, they announced stuff like, oh, we're going to scale the L1 literally yesterday or two days ago or something. I don't know the time yesterday. Uh, and so, you know, I don't know if you can actually tell if it's worked from that time horizon. I mean, I know we're in crypto, but um I think it'll take at least, you know, 6 months to a year for you to really understand if it's working or not.

Okay. Why do you guys think it's working? I think it's working because it is representative of the fact that we are taking competition seriously in the Ethereum ecosystem. So, um you know, there's been a a kind of approach of like ignore everyone, do your own thing, run your own race. um which is, you know, fine until someone's like way ahead of you and then you're like, "No, no, I'm running my own race.

This is fine." Um and and so I think that having to uh make a pivot or an adjustment or rep prioritization or whatever you want to call it and and content coin, new point of content, we don't talk about that. We should coin that. We should coin that. Um but yeah, what whatever you want to call it, the the the recognition that you need to do something differently, that what you're currently doing is not working.

I think is a good signal to the ETH community that um you know everyone's taking this seriously. Yeah. I mean just to kind of add on to what he just said, it's you actually can see faster decision-m you can see action being taken. And if you want to say oh well the things haven't been deployed yet on the next upgrade, that's fine. That will need time.

But uh in just the last two months alone, we've seen actual feedback being listened to and acknowledged and replied to. we've seen way more things immediately kind of make it to the next release and things can taken out and just you you see the feedback loop actually shrinking and that's a great sign of things are directionally going to the right place okay so what what do we think is the cause of this pivot was it Salana that that pressured Ethereum into pivoting is it the ETH BTC price getting to such a low uh you know such such a a a dark place that all of a sudden there's like this capitulation Um, was it just a response to the EF being overly bureaucratic? What what's your what's your story of why this happened? Why not both? I mean, uh, I would say the EF bureau bureaucracy thing is just downstream of everything else.

That's a problem. You know, when things go bad, you just say, "Oh, you know, the foundation is doing this." That used to happen on Salana, too. When Salana went to $8, everybody used to blame the foundation. Um, and so I I don't really think uh that's that's really the sympto or the cause.

That's a symptom. Uh, in terms of this cause, I mean, I think yeah, it's obviously it's crypto, so people are upset about the price. There's always a different meme about the different charts and all this. Um, and then I think there is the Salana factor as well, like now that revenue is maybe looked at as something that's important for the first time in crypto history. M um and then you keep seeing even the block works guys publishing these charts on like well Salana has more revenue um and that wasn't the case before same with volumes and all this stuff so I think it's just both I don't think like Dankrat for example uh just based on his comments on public forums he clearly is concerned about Salana and wants to scale um versus maybe somebody like Justin Drake who's much more concerned about the price right yeah I think the like Ethereum is a big tent end right and it is hard to uh to coordinate at times and so you know it does take time uh to to focus um the efforts in the right direction and and change direction um but you know we've seen historically like go back to the old days of like BSC um you know when when mainnet was super expensive um it really did kind of uh catalyze this reaction of we need to push L2s we really need to fix this problem we need to lower costs we need to um you know get more blocks space.

Now, we're kind of seeing the unintended consequences of that where, you know, we have too much block space. Um, you know, the the value of block space is being captured at the L2 layer, not in the L1. Um, and so, you know, we're now reacting to that. It has been probably slower than I think most people would would um would have liked, but you know, it's all of the things kind of cumulatively having this effect where people are like, okay, we need to do something. We're what we're doing is not working clearly.

Um, and we're going to make some changes. Okay, Carly, what do you say? I think um I I mean the the honest answer is that it's a mix of all these things. It's not just one event that kind of caused this. Uh the the way I kind of see what's happening is effectively we're at a point where we spent we as a crypto ecosystem not matches Ethereum spent a good half decade in kind of getting the basic infrastructure right and it got to a point where we could say that hey for the most common things you want to do you have a basic guarantee that these things are possible and at possible at this the speed whether it's TPS or storage or whatever kind of the the bare minimum requirements are and now that you can't blame the infrastructure for everything you're going to have to uh start building things that people want and people want to use.

And over the last kind of year and a half, we've seen other ecosystems basically get a jump start on that. And uh and because of the L2centric road map, you kind of saw similar attempts happen on on the Ethereum side. It's just that now while the L1 and L2 infrastructure was sort of in a good place, those L2 ecosystems were not good enough for those apps to flourish. And at the end of the day, people were just not happy about the fact that they can see that there's progress being made on other places but not where they are. And uh I mean, yeah, this is the unintended consequences, right?

Like we we created this very fra, you know, we we were too successful. I mean, back in the day, um when optimism was first launching, um I was pushing hard for like let's all coordinate to a single L2 and make that the thing. Make that the thing. And then that didn't work. and then you went from one to two to a thousand which but now everybody's trying to do their own universe and while they're on Ethereum you kind of still notice hey look how come those guys are being able to move faster how come they have way more users in revenue than us while we're kind of stuck on the next upgrade to help me do this thing or this exchange doesn't work with our chain and all those things become just noticeable so you see smart founders smart developers realize that look I'm getting half the things I want even though the prerequisites are being met and just not the destinations and uh they're upset about that and that's kind of the the breaking point that they reached to uh start complaining a few months ago and we kind of saw a faster change.

Yeah. This uprising of like let's do something right. So so one of the proposals that you guys alluded to was Dankrad talking about having an automatic increase to the gas limit on Ethereum such that in two years it increases by 10x and by four years it increases by 100x default. So they they could stop it but that's like the the automatic thing that the client does. Um let let's say that that happens.

Let's say that Ethereum is going to 100x the the throughput within four years. Do you think that's a sufficient answer to what we're seeing in terms of adoption on Salana or on base? Well, let's start with caric do you think that's sufficient answer on scaling? I think the I mean I don't I don't agree with the question. I don't think the question makes sense because you're saying Ethereum the protocol should be responsible for making your app successful as a company.

Like that's uh that seems like a pretty unfair expectation on a chain that is not trying to run your product. So I if if what is Ethereum trying to do if not run applications? No. No. But but let's say you can now deploy a contract that's 100x bigger and have 100x more TPS and you deploy an app and you're like oh well I have 100x the capacity.

why aren't people coming? Are you going to blame Ethereum or uh your product? Um so, so I guess what I don't understand is like what exactly are you comparing in this question? And I don't think that's clear. So, I'm happy to answer, but I feel like this is a this is not an apples to apples.

It's a gotcha question. I I look I think the the challenge is that we all saw what happened with congestion on L1. Yes. It like unequivocally it became too expensive. We reacted too slowly.

Um you know, we should have uh gone into side chains or or whatever um faster. we didn't um and everyone got wrecked and it gave Salana an opportunity to come and you know uh drive a lot of adoption and and they did um so the interesting thing about the question for me is okay should we scale block space by just you know uh increasing um the gas limit there is an unintended consequence or maybe an intended unintended consequence there which is we're supposed to be able to run Ethereum nodes on toasters right like that's one of our north stars weirdly Um and so uh if we kind of decide to not do that then all of the conversations we've been having the talking points for the last five or 6 years of which you know like I remember having a debate with Kyle Sanmani where I'm like Salana is bad because it's run in data centers right um and I still kind of believe that a little bit but like if you just go to a mode where you need a data center to be able to run a node for Ethereum and you can't do homestaking then we're we're really giving up that uh kind of decentralized ethos that uh that you know was I think one of the biggest differentiators between Ethereum and Salana. So so that feels like a dangerous path to go down. Um so you're against this proposal? I'm I'm not against it because I think we have to do it but we need to also be mindful of it will turn us into the thing that we were railing against for a long time.

Right. So what do you think Ethereum should do instead? I I think there the proposal also um presumes that we can get more efficiency as well, right? that we don't just jack it up and and increase the computational cost that we can, you know, use um ZK proofs and other things to like get back to the toaster era and allow to run nodes. Um but uh it's not clear that we'll make that trade-off, right?

Like I do think there's a middle ground there though, right? At the end of the day, increasing the gas limit helps you do a lot more per block. And and that's you definitely want that because even if you have only L2s doing all the activity, you still need those L2s to actually settle on the L1 and the input has to still be to be handled. Um, I think the the compromise here is that or rather like one thing that I have criticized Ethereum developers like the core devs for in the past has been while it's great to strive for the fact that you want people to be able to run their own nodes and and not have like a pretty heavy core requirement for hardware. Um, you have to still update that requirement by the times.

Like storage has gotten cheaper. Even the Raspberry Pies are now three times more powerful than they were 7 years ago. we have more powerful toasters now for the for the seven for the same price and uh it's okay to update the numbers like you don't need 2 gigs of RAM you can assume everything has eight even at market price and uh and those capacities so you can definitely do that and it's I think it's a great setup to actually get people to start upgrading the hardware a little bit more but the other piece is like you actually can test the theory without actually saying I'm going to like make a massive protocol change on just automatically update the gas price and which is you can just repric the op codes uh I and either 100x the the capacity or I can also say let's half the the cost for every operation and reduce the size by by 50% on what it's going to cost me and see if that direction makes a difference and people are trying that a lot of proposals right now are repricing the actions and you're going to still get there so there's multiple ways to do that I think the the thing that they haven't done is actually take action and uh and the push that's coming on to just protocol development now is that hey like it's actually okay to start moving fast and trying things and you actually have the ability to make changes more incrementally instead of thinking of them as massive multi-yearlong releases. Okay. So, so these two long for the days that you could run Ethereum on toasters.

M you've been historically very critical of Ethereum and you've basically said, look, Ethereum is going to take too long to scale. That's why you should just come to Salana today because Salana is where Ethereum wants to be in 5 years. Okay. Now, Ethereum is telling a much more aggressive story about scaling. How do you feel like that potentially threatens the Salana story?

Well, as a great philosopher Anatoli Yakovo once said, "He who catches or chases two rabbits catches neither." Um, I think that was Confucious. Um, but you know, I think it's just not enough like if you're going to scale the L1 um more than it and they should like I think that's actually a good idea and we've been kind of screaming about that for a while. Um, and I think it'll be useful, but it's it's just not going to be enough because one, it's going to take them time to do that and that time is non-trivial. And by the time they're doing that, all the other L1's are also going to scale and that's the only thing they want to do, right?

That's their singular northstar and not even just Salana, but you know, Sui, Monad L2s as well, because now if you're scaling the L1, you know, you can play these Kumbaya alignment games all you want, but you are competing for execution fees. like that is what you're doing. Uh everybody's doing this. Every single L1, L2 that has execution on it. Um so I don't think it's going to be enough.

Um and I also don't buy the decentralization thing with regards to node requirements. I think this is like a huge technical misnomer that I I don't understand why this mistake keeps getting made. But like if you actually read Vitalik himself's post on the endgame of Ethereum, he says something like, well blocks will be produced by specialized entities, right? Maybe I mean he says centralized block production which just means like people who are cuz it's a skill. You need to be very good at doing that.

I mean today 95% of blocks on Ethereum are produced by two entities. Okay. Um and that's just always going to be the case. Whenever there's money to be made, it's going to be the specialists that get in. Where the home uh uh home nodes are important is for verification, right?

So, as a person that has money on this thing and you see the big bad boys are doing something bad, you can actually just see that cuz you can run the known node. You don't have to trust them. Um, and with that in mind, Salana also has a home verification client that's already being developed. And so they actually both have the same endgame, but I think Salon's just going to get there faster cuz there's only one thing to aim at. Sure.

Okay. So another another part of this story is the roll-up centric roadmap, right? This Kane you were describing that this was this was the big gambit that Ethereum played is that hey uh we're we're not going to be able to scale do Ethereum 2.0 do the beam chain all this stuff in time and so in the interim we're going to scale through rollups. It seems like in many ways a focus on the L1 is a little bit of a retreat from the rollup ccentric road map and is saying hey we've kind of prioritized the roll-ups at the at the expense of prioritizing the L1.

Um do we think in retrospect that the rollup ccentric road map was a mistake? I'll actually just start beforehand but I don't think scaling the L1 is against rollups. Um, I think you actually uh so like John Shar wrote a piece that I also helped edit the the point of the L2 is that like if you have an L2 on a ghost chain that's an L1 then what exactly are you extending that's an asset that's useful nothing right the reason why you like for example L2 is on Bitcoin now makes sense too because you can extend Bitcoin the asset with some trust minimization um same with ETH the asset but also all the RWAS and stables that ETH And for those assets to exist on that chain, there needs to be you need to be able to do something with them. You can't be completely passive. Um, and so scaling the L1 has two improvements or or or um benefits.

One is going to be um faster interop, right? You can actually cross communicate much better. Um but then also you have more variety u of assets because there's much more activity L1 to extend to the L2. Um, and I actually also think why this is why L2 salon will start making sense in like two years because once you have all that access be careful my friend be careful like networkions. So, so I think I think you know call them network extensions, call them pivots, whatever whatever you want um semantics, right?

But um the the issue is not a technical one in my mind, right? Like I think from a technical perspective, the rollup ccentric road map worked. Um the unintended consequence of the rollup ccentric roadmap is that we've we ended up with this asset fragmentation. Not just liquidity fragmentation, but asset fragmentation. If you were in the ETH ecosystem, do you buy uh arbitum?

Do you buy OP? Do you buy um you know ZK sync? Which of these assets do you buy? Um it's it's not clear uh to an end user who is mainly transacting on L2s um whether or not like ETH the asset that's on main one that's on L1 that that secures mainet is the asset you should buy. and and that fragmentation and that uh kind of choice paralysis of like which is the investable asset here I think has has done more damage to Ethereum than almost anything because price action uh is very driven by momentum and the momentum that we see in the ETH price um you know this negative momentum I think a lot of that is due to uh this kind of proliferation of L2 tokens and and L2s um and it it's problematic Um, so I think that to me is the Let me dig in on this valuation question because I think this is also core to the question of, you know, what went so wrong with Ethereum.

If your mental model of the value of Ether is that it's money and this was a story that Ethereum was telling for a long time is that we're ultrasound money. If you're money, then perhaps it it really the roll up makes sense because it's exporting ether currency. It's still the case that you pay gas fees on ZK sync and on optimism and on arbitum using ether the asset. Um and so this is like sort of internationalizing the currency. Um on the other hand, if the business but they're shitty economies, right?

Like you can say that you can say that. But if uh as Mert mentioned earlier, if the story is about revenue, if the story is about fees and that's what these things are, they're fundamentally more like equities than they're like currencies, then okay, really we're in the execution business and outsourcing execution to other roll-ups basically means that you're losing a lot of that revenue and that's why Ethereum is down bad. Um, which of these stories like do you think one of these two stories has been vindicated? Well, they're actually related. They're related.

Exactly. Because if Okay, for a currency to be a currency, it needs to be used. And for it to be used, it needs to be usable on top of this whatever you're using it on. Like if you go to export your currency to a place where there's no stores or like, you know, there's one store and the line is always 18 billion people. Um, it doesn't matter.

That currency is just not going to work because the country is not going to work. Um so I think like to be used as money to begin with um you need to be just used at scale by many people um and that needs to be consistent. Um but like that's the problem is altos just have different incentives right like I mean base is already um spinning out like USDC as a token for example right for for gas uh and then that hasn't launched yet sure but like it is objectively the better user experience right but that can't explain why ETH has done what it's done so far well I don't think anything can uh I mean XRP is number three yeah I I think like the the the issue is that you have um a lack of demand for ETH the asset but but there's also the fact that the margin um in block production has been captured by L2s you know base is super profitable um and L1 isn't right and this goes back to this idea if you had um you know base roll-ups or canonical rollups or if you know if you said hey let's print a bunch of ETH buy back all of these L2 tokens and just you know this was CPM's uh suggestion just enshrine 12 rollups, right? So, you know, basically at that point you're shard your sharded blockchain, right? But um you enshrine 12 roll-ups and 100% of the activity that happened on that those roll-ups go to burning ETH on L1, right?

If if you you know re nationalize the the margin that's been lost to L2s, then you could kind of get some of this momentum back into ETH the asset. Um and I think that unfortunately price action drives the narrative to a significant extent. And so when price action is negative and BTC is outperforming ETH, um, you know, when was the last time someone talked about the flipping, right? Like that that meme, you know, was kind of, uh, dead and buried at the moment. There's a different flipping people talk about now.

I don't talk about that's Yeah. Yeah. So So my point is that like getting some momentum back into ETH uh, the asset would um would generate significant momentum for the narratives. Like some of these narratives are good narratives. scaling the L1, you know, figuring out enshrined rollups or based roll-ups or or something.

Um, you know, the overall road map. If price action's good, those narratives feel good. If price action's bad, those narratives feel hollow, right? They they feel um useless. So I I just feel like that uh that alone would have a significant impact if we could So does that mean then the goal of all of this of improving the L1 expanding blobs blah blah blah the real goal is to increase revenue whether you call it revenue or uh you know a byproduct at the end of the day but but I feel like and and this is my kind of expectation of what I think is happening I I think what we're seeing in real time is the L1 trying to compete with than L2 and uh showing you that it's possible to get to like a 80% to 90% compatibility on throughput and proving that it is actually the ability to actually anywhere from uh generate revenue to transactions to actually capture that value while still letting others be successful on their own because kind of the fragmentation issue is real.

If if you fund raise for an L2 and you have now expectation for anywhere from your investors to people who are trying to build something on top of you, you kind of want to give them a platform to be successful, but it's not going to be easy for that to still be consistent with where the L1 is going. And those are not they don't have to be competitive as a zero sum dynamics but um we are kind of seeing the fact that if I want to go back and re simulate the NFT kind of bull market era on the L1 can I actually do things sub $3 on transaction fees and I think that world is like yes you it's actually possible now on fees but can I do like hundreds of transactions like that per second uh soon and and you actually get the ability to say look we can choose the destination to and L2, but we're also saying it's actually possible on the L1 with a slightly smaller premium uh compared to like how things were uh 3 years ago. And that's the real bet we're we're placing here because we we we think that the L1 is a good place to be the default for most activity. Sure. If somebody gets to a certain threshold, they should branch off to being an L2, but um there shouldn't be a case where you have to choose an L2 by default.

Okay. Okay. So, that is a pivot by the way. Okay. Oh, rep prioritization.

Rep prioritization. So, okay. So, I have a question for you. Um, going back to the original idea. I don't know if that's a pivot technically, but yeah.

Okay. So, let's let's call it a rep prioritization. Um, for the for Ethereum developers, right, people who are sort of on the inside. Um, how are they feeling about this? When I read Twitter, I see a lot of people who are ETH holders who are down bad.

I see a lot of people in other camps uh throwing rocks and saying, "Oh, look, Ethereum is is uh, you know, finally admitting that they're wrong." Is the feeling among developers different? Is it the same? Are they feeling down bad? Are they just like look rep prioritization what do you you know this it's totally cool this is part of the plan all along.

Yeah I think um Twitter is wrong here which should be no surprise to uh to people who are actually building things. Um you obviously get sens sensationalization on Twitter for a bunch of narratives but when I actually look at the data from how ETH global has been doing over the last two and a half years specifically um just understanding what the net inflow is for developers um the biggest year for inflow was last year and uh I Ethereum or to the EVM broadly uh to Ethereum which includes L2s okay um and and this is measuring oh yeah the Ethereum ecosystem because because at the end of the day people are still learning solidity and EVM is still the common factor but I'm not talking about like if Salana EVM project exists am I bundling that in no I'm talking about specifically um kind of the main uh L2s that you see on Ethereum um the the cam there definitely a bunch of groups so the first group here that has increased the most uh last year and over the last four months I have data up to to the end of Q1 is um the brand new developers who are learning solidity for the first uh that number has gone up about 30% uh from 2023 which uh I personally found surprising because did not expect that given the sentiment was uh different last year. Uh the second group is uh the group of people who are choosing to deploy and actually launch a project on on Ethereum or an EVM uh and they're default picking to uh picking an L2. They're not doing it on L1. And that's a massively noticeable trend.

You can't refute that. Uh and that's largely because the incentives are now way more powerful on the L2 side because you can get a grant, you can get more funding. Uh people I actually I think this is going to shift though. I I agree agree. But I'm just talking about retrospect today.

I think it's going to shift that like the the incentives uh to go to an L2, you know, whether it was token grants or whatever. Totally agree. Um I think that there are a lot of people on L1 who still have the majority of their assets on L1 that want to be able to transact on L1. Yes. And uh my I'm I would strongly encourage uh you know whether you're building at a hackathon or you know you're about to deploy a new project um considering launching on L1 because I think that you will capture a lot of mind share um and particularly if you're doing something with liquidity because that's where the whales are.

They're still on L1. Um so I I think this will shift and is already shifting. I agree. And the other thing is like people who are building products actually have to think about future proofing their own um future here which is well if I'm betting on an L2 and the L2 doesn't survive what happens to my ecosystem my product and those questions are still unanswered because we we haven't seen a full cycle of what it means to be a successful or an unsuccessful L2. Uh but the third camp which is what you see on Twitter is like okay if I'm a founder and I really want to build a project and I know that I have a great team and a great product uh do I pick Ethereum or Salana or some other chain uh and whether it's an incentive driven decision or a technical possibility of like what I can do in in these ecosystems uh that's kind of where a good decision is being made by a lot of founders and what we see that comes off as oh they're picking Salana over Ethereum or an L2 is is what you look on Twitter but what's actually happening is people are saying where do I get users for my product and uh they don't have to have an allegiance to a chain to to be successful and that's kind of what you see okay so to so to that point one of the one of the weird parts of this whole story is that by scaling the L1 you're creating more block supply right now there's more room on the L1 but uh I think it was way die from 1kx who pointed out that actually gas fees on Ethereum are at basically a historical low and like it's really cheap to transact right now in Ethereum mainet which would that not imply that the problem is not a supply problem but a demand problem and that Ethereum has lost a bunch of the demand so scaling supply why is that the right answer well I I think we L1 just just to context that is just from the last four weeks so so if you're expecting a company just pop up and things no but it is a trend right it's been a long-standing trend for a year or whatever right like I mean I remember sub one guay uh you know in in 2016 and and being like before NFTs before NFTs, right?

And uh and you know, I would have bet I don't know, millions of dollars, right, in 2021 that you would never get back sub sub one, right? So, it is for me as a longtime uh builder on Ethereum pretty astounding the the situation that we're in. Um and I think that that is representative of all of the activity went off to L2s and we did scale block space by allowing, you know, blob space to increase and and getting more efficiency in the L2s. Um and that has created an opportunity I think for projects to come back to L1. Um of course there's a risk right if you go back to L1 and we get congestion again and all of a sudden it's you know 5 10 $20 to transact that's going to be problematic.

So you need a hedge. Um but I think the first movers to come back to L1 of which um you know synthetics is one we've got in our road map now moving back to L1 and we were the first people to go to OP. Um so you know directionally it's it's really the momentum shifted. So you're so the plan is for synthetics come back to L1. Yeah.

Uh when? ASAP. ASAP. Yeah. We're going to launch.

You're like this is a long-term this is a safe move for us. Well, so this is the funny thing, right? Like we went to OP because you couldn't do PERPS on L1 back in 2020, 2019, 2020 because lat because of cost latency and cost and everything and now the technology has gotten much better and you can do per on L1 and no one's tried it. Um and so you know you have a possible like you have a pretty high probability that it's going to get cheaper over time given what we know which is a fair directional bet you can take. Exactly.

So and you know realistically with per you obviously want cheap uh transactions but you know even if they're a dollar um you know on on notional 10,000 $50,000 $100,000 trades a dollar fine um you can factor that into the the spreads and and overall fees. Um so yeah we're like let's go back to L1 5 years later. Fair enough. Come back. That's very bullish.

Yeah. Okay. Um, so one last part of the pivot we have not talked about beyond, you know, UX and interoperability and all this stuff. The one part we haven't talked about is vibes. And that feels also like a big part of the pivot.

Vibes. Vibes. Vibes. Right. So historically, the Ethereum vibe has been, you know, tending the infinite garden.

It's been, you know, we talk about research and academia and vertical trees and and and, you know, ZKifying the blockchain. and nobody I last time I've heard the word virtual tree was like you know months ago. Um now we're talking about scaling the L1 talking about replicating super team. Um and there's there's less of a um of a focus on just purely decentralization and more kind of coming to Solonus camp which is oh actually it's about users. Uh Mer what what is your take on this vibes pivot?

Do you do you think it's real? Do you think it's superficial? And do you think um it's enough? Uh, okay. Well, do I think it's real?

You think it's real? Okay. I think Ethereum is a diverse community, right? I think for some people, like for example, these two gentlemen, real. Uh, for for Dankra, everyone on stage today, let's all for real.

Okay. Like the people who actually kind of know what they're doing, it's real. For banklists, absolutely not. Okay. Um, like, wait, what do you think against bankless?

the podcast industrial complex who just changes their minds anytime the core dev says anything. Uh that's not real. They're just they're just scalifier scaling uh megaphones for nonsense. Okay. Um and so I don't think that's so it really depends.

I think for some people like Justin Drake like he he's been asking me questions and whatnot so from like way back. I know those guys are actually interested in in improving. So like that's what you need. Um, is it enough? Um, I mean, enough for what I guess is the real question.

Um, I think like certainly there's an overcorrection on how down bad ETH is. I think it's just like a very easy meme. So, it's just people are just like piling up on it. People uh people but but uh named people. Um, like I think ETH will be fine.

I don't think there is like this crazy existentialism the asset or Ethereum the network. Oh uh the network I don't know how anything I don't know anything about assets again we're flipped by XRP and BNB true and probably even Cardano at some point. Uh so like I don't know anything about assets but like I think the network itself will be okay and fundamentally all that matters in the endgame whenever that is is the use case right. So like for example, let's take the per thing as an example. It's like okay, if you are a per trader or like somebody who wants to build pers, are you going to build on ETHL1 or you going to build on hyperlquid?

Okay, that's probably not that much of a decision. Or like if you're building an order book, are you going to build on ETH? Like it just really depends very strongly on the use case. And to answer any of these questions, you need to know which use cases will actually be, let's say, adopted at scale. Um, and I don't think we have that answer like stables for sure, but stables work on any chain.

So, I think it's too early to tell, but I think it's there's certainly an overreaction to how much uh let's say uh ETH is down. So, I think they'll uh, you know, come back, so to say. Now, that being said, Solana will keep accelerating, right? Like, it's not like we're just going to be like, oh, you know, let's just watch them come back and fail. It's like, no, no, we're just going to we're going to keep doing it.

We're going to keep doubling down. actually like competition. Um but uh again I want to be very clear that I think the podcast industrial complex vibes are you were very you were very clear on that. You're clear we got you good. So so I think in terms of the vibes right like this is for for people who maybe haven't been uh here for multiple cycles.

There has always been a tension between the flowers and rainbows wing of Ethereum right and the people building uh decentralized finance. there like there's like one guy who sits in the middle um uh who I won't name um uh who's kind of the the you know person who uh kind of um mediates between those two but uh the flowers and rainbows are dead like it's it's that whole like WF soy boy complex like the the non-commercial you know let's all lose together uh vibe like it's it's done it was always and it's done and I think that um the people who uh built DeFi and were building DeFi for the last you know 7 8 9 years um are sick of it. Um last year we all kind of you know stood up and said this is not okay. You need to acknowledge that DeFi is the one thing that has kept Ethereum relevant. If you take away DeFi it's over.

Um you know it's worked it it's scaled. You've got you know people like Stanny who've been building for um a long time like they're they're holding the chain together. They're the ones who are creating demand for blockspace. Um, and those people are the ones you should listen to. You should Vitalic.

Sorry. Who Who are you talking about? I was talking about Hayden. I think I think Hayden kind of sits in between, right? The the unicorn uh vibes and stuff like, but you know, at the same time, Hayden is also building a business, right?

He's building something that uh that is, you know, supposed to generate revenue. It's supposed to get adoption. It's supposed to have distribution. He gets it and he's been grinding hard doing that. I think he also has like a, you know, a soft spot for, you know, the pseudo communism on the other side.

Um, but like I mean that's what it is. Yeah, it is like it really is like we should we like we should be competing with people. It's wild to be like no no no let's all you know just get along, right? Like we should be absolutely competing with people um in the Ethereum community. Pseudoccomus is crazy.

Jeez. Okay, so hold on. So we're we're we're at time so I just want to wrap with a quick turbo round. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Do you agree with the statement?

ETH BTC has bottomed. I love pain. You got You gota I have no idea. You think it's flat? You think it stays flat?

I have no idea. You have no idea. All right, fine. Eat soul has bottomed. I don't know.

No confidence. Okay. Uh and then last, uh now is a good time to short roll-ups. Short rollups rollups. Go short the roll-ups.

How? Yeah. Yeah. What do you mean? How?

They're tokens. No. Oh, those are thumbs down. Thumbs. Yeah.

Yeah. Sure. Okay. I mean, regardless. All right.

All right. You got you've got some financial advice from the folks on stage. With that, we're going to wrap. Thank you guys for a spirited discussion.