LayerZero: New Partner Announcement - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2023

hi everyone good to see a full room good to be back in Singapore uh my name is Simon baxis I lead go to market and Business Development uh for web 3 at Google cloud and I have the pleasure of Fireside chatting today with Brian Pellegrino not to be mistaken with a sparkling water uh Brian is the CEO and co-founder of layer zero Labs Brian welcome how are you fantastic glad to be here excited yeah um while it was mentioned before and we announced a pretty fun and exciting partnership earlier in the week and we'll get into that in just a little bit I will say this is a bit ironic personally for me when we first started our efforts at Google Cloud about two and a half years ago or so and spun up the team we uh started referring to ourselves internally as layer zero you know sort of this like base infrastructure layer that the web3 ecosystem can build on and I went as far as you know adding it to my Twitter profile and my you know LinkedIn tagline and all that and then all of a sudden you guys came out with out of nowhere with a massive funding announcement and it was funny like all of a sudden people started pinging me on telegram they're like hey are you leaving Google are you joining layer zero are you going to work for them um so needless to say my LinkedIn is back to just you know web3 at Google Cloud but it's funny that we're talking about it here today on stage uh the partnership between our two organizations um that said Brian why don't we start with just a little bit about what layer 0 actually is a little bit about your background and what you guys have been up to yeah sure so as you said Brian one of three co-founders CEO of layers your Labs layers are ultimately the way that I think about it in the most reduced framing is when you think about a packet on the Internet it's literally two computers right it's compute generate an array of bytes and then ingest it like figure out what to do with it layer 0 at its core is is just that it's arbitrary contract invocation with a bytes array what we do with that packet on the Internet is like that's how we all watch Netflix and like talk on you know do all of these other things that we do regularly like the goal of layer zero was at the time everybody was building a bridge you could transfer value but to us it seemed kind of insane you know value transfer is just a special case of generic messaging so our goal was build the Primitive for generic messaging that that can really be that base packet that could be anything of moving uh transacting data around around chains um and yeah it's been it's been exciting yeah well obviously you guys have uh done very well for yourselves in the past couple years why was it particularly interoperability that you chose kind of as the problem to solve to be honest we we kind of stumbled into it so we didn't set out to to even start a company let alone solve the problem we uh we were technologists all three of us were tinkering um at the time binance smart chain had just launched and you were uh kind of getting inundated with messages every day of like more volume than ethereum more users than ethereum and as somebody who had been in the space for nine years at the time you know that was there's like other chains existed but like nobody actually used them right so this was like new and interesting and so uh we started to say okay like what could you do with a high throughput execution environment and something that's just different and so we built for ourselves like a toy game that was you know gameplay would live on this chain and all of the assets would be entirely ephemeral and then um on completion you would basically move those assets over to ethereum so this could be mint and nft whatever and so we built this thing just as a toy for ourselves and realized there was no way to trigger events on both chains without a central coordinator and we're like well well that sucks um but but like Bridges exist so surely somebody solved this looked at the state of bridges at the time and were horrified uh like truly horrified back then I was like okay we'd not do any of that and uh ultimately that led us to starting to build this this Transportation layer well it's a big problem to solve and that toy now has become obviously one of the most widely used you know cross-chain messaging protocols in in the world and and that's you know very exciting I mean it's it's interesting how we actually began our conversations here in Singapore at token 2049 exactly 12 months ago so we have now come full circle and get to announce sort of what we're working on you know 12 months later why don't we unravel that a little bit and talk about sort of the three key components of the partnership yeah sure so uh you know the first part the part that everybody saw kind of big announcement is that uh Google cloud is now running in in Oracle uh on layer zero uh which means you know verifying messages across the network which is amazing um for us everything's important to talk about like why is that interesting so this you know when we built layer zero we really took kind of this radical architecture Approach at the time which was everybody else of this approach of we're gonna we're gonna have a structure a chain some monolithic stack that lives in the middle and we're making a bet on that validation layer being able to scale and we took kind of the approach that no validation methodology existing three years ago would exist in five to ten years like it was just too nascent and also that application demands are are wildly different so if you think about the needs secure like when you think about this it's really just a line of cost First Security like that's what an application is thinking about if you can get more security for a cheaper cost you'll you'll always take it and so you have this this curve that you would price security at and you know it's very different when you're dealing with uh multi hundred million dollar liquidations or tens of billions of dollars of real world assets versus like five cent in-game items and nfts right like they're just drastically different demands and applications have different uh requirements for that and so we took this approach that we're a validation layer agnostic that would develop over time and I I think what we've seen that has been incredibly important is is again like you want applications of like if you think about the best possible trusted option for us there's like an organization like like Google Cloud they're they're it like you think about the world and sort of like what Google uh is responsible for in terms of like data and security and uh you know everything from https just like across the board right um like applications want that and when you have applications who demand like the fully other end of the spectrum like it's there right so all of this lives within there and we think that's like incredibly powerful to have um the second part of the partnership um has really been this uh so uh the you know Google is product Google cloud of blockchain node engine right being able to run rpcs and nodes uh we are one of the largest consumers of our PC calls in the world I think at this point with the volume we're doing we're doing something like 50 to 80 billion RPC calls a month you look at chains like you know look at arbitrum for example I think we're five or six of the top 10 gas consuming contracts on the Chain so in terms of like actual message delivery submission to chain consuming RPC data uh we do a lot of it and I don't know if anybody has has worked uh regularly with RPC data but our PCS are are rough right now in the industry you know uh it is very hard to to have reliable access to them to have it at scale to have something that is going to be consistent so uh being able to to leverage that and use that internally for again all of these RPC calls that we're doing everything else that's incredibly uh powerful and then on the third step uh is back to this concept of of optionality this this full spectrum of of cost for security like we have had probably 50 to 100 groups of some of the largest orgs within the industry some of the largest applications who want to run and own their own infrastructure uh who really right now have not been able to largely because it's too onerous right so uh one of the things we've been co-developing that we're exciting to see come out is is the ability to run an oracle or relay or in a single click on gcp uh and basically do that immediately and so that in collaboration with with Essence from our side will make it very very easy for this you know there will be hundreds of uh validation options within layer zero uh which ultimately gives that developer the most optionality yeah and we're obviously incredibly excited about that if I may summarize I think you know number on the on the first point in terms of us running um an oracle on layer zero that really all kind of comes down to trust um I think the the second point about the RPC infrastructure really comes down to you know scale and resilience right um and number three in terms of you know kind of distribution and make uh other oracles and relayers easily Deployable you know on a cloud provider like Google um I think really comes down to that optionality angle right and I think these are sort of like the the core pillars if you will um of of the partnership um but I think maybe just to make it really simple like some folks may have seen the Branded taxis outside right uh layer zero and Google cloud and it's actually a very good analogy right like if you think about it layer zero is basically this you know this taxi Fleet if you will right and we as Google are basically coming in and saying like is the passenger that got in that taxi actually you know the passenger that he says that that or she is and uh is that their first name is that their last name Etc we're basically verifying that right and it just I think it just makes a lot of sense and in general like if you think about this partnership um I think there's a very clear fit between the two organizations right um obviously the teams have been leaned in from both sides over the past couple of months and or sorry 12 months we've been working together very closely and I've certainly enjoyed that but I think the core values really align in terms of what we're trying to to accomplish here right like I think in order for this space our space to reach a billion users which I think everyone in this room wants right we all want that we want sort of mass adoption at least five things need to be true right I think number one we need resilient and sustainable technology and infrastructure I think number two we need to enable proper interoperability between the difference the ecosystems that exist there's you know seems like a new ecosystem every week and so that's important for those ecosystems to to communicate with each other number three we need to provide optionality to have sufficient decentralization right I think that's a very core component to this entire space number four we need to create quality easy to use developer tooling that can actually scale and lastly number five I think we need to do all of that with a very high level of trust and integrity right um and what's interesting about this partnership in particular is that it cuts across all five of those areas right which I think makes it you know incredibly exciting I'm curious from your perspective if you think sort of about the future and now what this means for customers developers users hopefully joint you know users and developers of our ecosystems how does that really impact those those communities yeah yeah I mean I I think again ultimately it comes down to this like at the end of the day there is there's massive demand for for a trusted validation across chains like like ultimately there are a large a large number of applications who like have demand for that like broad spectrum application sort of design space but having somebody who like there's a lot of developers they just they just want it to work right they want it to work they want to know uh who is on the other side that the sort of like the data Integrity is there and I think more than that when you talk about people outside like as much as we all you know again I I've been here for 11 years like I love this space to a lot of incumbents or like existing in the in this sort of like traditional Enterprise institutional space like this is still this is still a toy it's For Better or Worse we're not going to convince them um to use at least now you know again years ago maybe we're not going to convince them that like this this structure that exists here is like safe and have them be able to go through all of these steps and compliance everything to do that like Google cloud is a name that they know they work with across huge spectrums in many cases like that is something like having a trusted entity where they're able to rely on I think is incredibly powerful for opening the doors to allowing people to take the first steps to lean in and I think that matters a lot yeah I I completely agree and I think you know it coincides really well with um our mission right which is to be the best place for web 3 developers to build you know blockchain-based applications blockchain-based Services um and so if you think about a developer that's building a decentralized application right now you know they could come to us for managed RPC infrastructure because that's basically a prerequisite right they could come to us for accurate on-chain data streams right because you also probably need that if you're if you're building a Dap and now you know it's probably inevitable that that dap is also going to have to communicate cross-chain and the fact that uh you know that same developer can also use you know the Google Cloud Oracle on layer 0 to provide safe cross-chain communication that's trusted um I think is is is a really big value prop and that's sort of another tool and you know and sort of the Google Cloud Web 3 belt you know in partnership with you guys which is which is very exciting it does sort of maybe beg the question and I think like we get this a lot right it's sort of like the the centralization versus decentralization dilemma so I'm curious and we obviously have um thoughts on this but curious to hear yours first on on how you're thinking about that yeah I mean I think think ultimately the entire premise of like when you build a permissionless system like there's going to be a lot like in an Ideal World a positive outcome there's there's almost infinitely number of options within there for application developers should choose from and so I think like if you want to maximize on decentralization like polyhedra is the first dk-like client that does the entire ethereum consensus right so literally uh zero knowledge proof of every single signature from entire each consensus right first in the world to do that like if that's what you want that exists within layer zero if you want uh again a trusted entity that any do you know something like that exists right so I think from us the entire point is like you want to give the end application like I I don't wanna I shouldn't actually not even I don't want to it should not be on me to make decisions for the end developer of what is the right uh choice for them what is the right uh amount of security what is the way that they price it what is the thing that they're looking for uh that should be up to the end developer and again in a permissionless system more options is always better so I think from our end we want to be the place that has all of these options that provides the Spectrum and the end developer is able to build and choose what they want to use I'd be curious to hear on your guys said like how does an org like Google like Google Cloud think about decentralization right how do you guys approach them the space like generally how do you think about it yeah um and it's it's a topic that comes up often I think it's um it all comes down to optionality right I think um the the space isn't sufficiently decentralized today like if you really think about it a lot of the infrastructure that exists a lot of the tooling that exists um you know sits in most of the time one single region in you know one single cloud provider um and that's no matter how much you abstract it is not you know it doesn't solve the problem right and so when we think about entering the space um I think we want to provide that optionality for multiple protocols for multiple Technologies developer tooling Etc um to be you know a piece of the puzzle but maybe not the entire puzzle right and I think that's kind of what we're doing here with layer 0 is um you know we're running this Oracle people can use this Oracle but they're absolutely not precluded from choosing a different Oracle or running their own if they'd like to right or relying on different RPC infrastructure that uh that the Oracle sort of verifies against and so as long as I think we can continue to provide that optionality but balance it with live again resilience with availability with with actual scale is is sort of where we need to get to um and and it needs to be you know it needs to be technology that works again like we keep talking about the sort of billion user problem or sort of this goal that the whole entire industry needs to achieve and I would argue that you know some of the Technology's not even ready for a billion users right from like a scale perspective an infrastructure perspective so um that's kind of how we're thinking about it and you know hopefully we can we can again introduce that additional uh resilience and and optionality for for the industry amazing um so again really exciting uh we are kind of running close on time here I do have maybe one question for you uh who do you think is going to win the F1 race this weekend is it going to be Max verstappen or Max verstappen sounds like I don't have a lot of optionality here uh we'll go with Max verstappen I tend to agree um all right well thank you everyone for listening I hope everyone has a fantastic rest of the conference thank you Brian it's a pleasure