The Optimistic Case for How the Superchain Scales Crypto | Jesse Pollak - Base | Tess Rinearson

that was zpp that was great czy set I feel like I'm getting locked in here ready to play the guitar hello everybody happy Friday is it Friday already Jesse no it's Thursday okay good but it's Friday energy it's giving energy for sure Friday in Denver ladies and gents uh all right sweet we've got I think we got a pretty good panel here uh obviously I don't think either one of these Builders need introductions but we'll start with them anyways I don't see why not uh we got Jesse Pollock and of course Tess reers here uh two of the biggest projects right now scaling on ethereum I don't need to tell you more Jesse and Tess will uh Jesse let's talk first for people maybe who didn't hear about the super chain don't understand how important the super chain is start with what it is for that maybe 5% of people who don't know all about it awesome hey everyone I'm Jesse I created base uh Bas is in ethereum L2 incubated by coinbase and we are building as part of the super chain super chain you can kind of think about it like a big group of chains that have decided to come together and create something bigger than any one of them alone and we're doing that by building on a shared technology stack that's open source and accessible to everyone that's the op stack we're doing that by opting into shared security models with some things like the security Council and then we're doing that by actually creating technical interoperability between all the chains so they can actually more seamlessly transact and then the last piece is we're building a bunch of governance uh and financial infrastructure that basically funds those chains and the developers that are building on those chains to make it so they can build more more cool stuff on chain so that's what Bas is and that's what the super chain is that was pretty concise that was very good that's a good way to start Jesse I like that off the bat uh test when we when we think about the title of this one this is called the optimistic case for how the super chain scales crypto so there's a lot to unpack there both optimism in that I suppose and also how we scale crypto so why don't we just talk a little bit about your guys' strategy to do that by building on the op stack yeah absolutely so hi I'm Tess I'm head of product at op Labs um we uh work on the op stack we work on optimism we work on op mainnet uh we work on the software that powers the super chain and the chains in it like base um and we are trying to make crypto more accessible cheaper scalable um you know give people more use cases with it and so the super chain uh is obviously a really big part of that um one thing that's coming up that you know I'm sure lots of uh folks in the ethereum space are talking about is denune and Fort 44 which is going to be huge um EIP 444 is actually created uh in conjunction with the base team so that's one reason why we're really excited about it uh but the other reason we're excited about it is that it is going to lower uh transaction fees on LT who's really really dramatically um and I think you know there's been like a little bit of hesitation to give like exact numbers on that just because we don't really know what demand will look like um but if the traffic stays the same you know from what we've seen uh historically or recently uh we actually think transaction fees are going to go down like 97 98% um so yeah a lot subsense mathematically speaking I believe that number is a lot that's the technical term exactly but I mean all of that matters because we are seeing I know Jesse your big thing is building building on chain right and we are seeing a lot more of that now and obviously the cost wouldn't necessarily matter if the use cases weren't there but there are so many right now as part of the super chain why don't you talk to us a little bit about you know specifically bass but also everything else within the super chain ecosystem what you're seeing yeah I mean I think in the last you know Bas has only been live for 6 months which kind of blows my mind every day we actually announced the test net last year at e Denver um but in the last six months I think on base but on on the super train more broadly we started to see the real rise of consumer apps um and these range from things like foraster uh where people are doing onchain social and you actually have a real organic feed starting to develop with in feed apps called frames uh many of which are built on base right now uh that's been really exciting we've seen uh things like Blackbird that's now in more than 100 restaurants around in New York expanding to San Francisco and in the Bay Area soon targeting 2,000 restaurants by the end of the year all built on chain uh we're seeing you know collaborative art projects like base paint where people all over the world are coming together to create art and then sell that art and earn money from doing it and so I think just in the last really six months what's happened is we finally have fees that are in a low enough place to enable this Innovation then we have wallet experiences that are easy enough that people can actually use the apps that are being built um and then I think we're also finally starting to have a real sense of identity on chain and a social graph which then connects those things together in a way that can let things go viral and so we've been saying for a long time that those were the three missing pieces lower fees better wallets and better identity and now for the first time they're actually all here and I think what that's meaning is that we're going to see the next or we are seeing the next wave of applications that are going to bring Millions tens of millions hundreds of millions billions of people on chain I was waiting for you to also maybe Shi coinage as another project that was built on base as you know a community-owned media outlet but we are also base and I answer yeah coinage coinage baby Colorado co-ops uh I'll talk about that later I don't need to show my stuff but I am talking about it because it's part of the retroactive Goods funding that is core I think to what you guys are doing at Super chain which I think is really cool just in terms of aligned incentives so Tess maybe talk a little bit more about kind of how you've been supporting creators building on the super chain what you've seen thus far and then what's to come yeah absolutely um so a big part of the uh is this in the right place I can't tell um a big part of the optimism vision is around public goods funding and really reinvesting in you know not only the infrastructure that powers optimism and Powers the chains in the super chain um but also just funding everyone who's contributing to the ecosystem giving back um so a big piece of that is definitely creators um we have distributed you know um I think like over hundreds of millions of uh op tokens two creators um across you know across the super chain so it's not just on op mainnet it's also on bass it's on Zora um you know we really want to uh give back to the people who are making the ecosystem so so vibrant and so so much fun and I think this is one of the really remarkable things about what optimism's done if you think about where optimism was a year a year and a half ago optimism was an L2 like we all thought oh optimism it's that L2 um they're going to try and you know compete with other l2s and win market share there and then over the last year your optimism is basically transformed and now optimism is much bigger than a single L2 there's that thing that used to be called optimism which is now called op mainnet which is an L2 but optimism has expanded its definition into the Super chain and that includes Bas it includes Zora it includes worldcoin it includes farcaster includes all of these people who are building incredible applications uh either on general purpose l2s or dedicated l2s that they're starting to spin up and alongside making that shift for what optimism is they've also shifted what they're funding and so whereas the first few rounds of retroactive public goods funding were focused specifically on op mainnet this most recent one was across all of the super chain and that means that in the last six months in in six months of people building on base optimism has given uh 15 million op tokens retroactively to base Builders and today that's about $45 million and so sometimes people ask us yeah go optimism um sometime people ask us like how should we think about Building on Base um you know like do you guys have grants and yes we have fast grants programs you can get you know fast grants if you if you ship impactful things on base but I think the ethos that we've really tried to instill with Builders is if you build on base you will be rewarded and the reason we have been able to instill that ethos is because optimism is creating a funding model that works for Bas that works for Zora that works for other chains where when people make an impact on the ecosystem they make an impact on Bas they make an impact on the super chain they get rewarded and I think that feedback loop of do good things that make an impact and then get rewarded is the feedback loop that we need more of because we need less of this feedback loop of get paid and then maybe don't contribute one question on that too because I think around aligned incentives like the fact that you guys are bringing in Builders who are all aligned and again the op token is the token here base doesn't have a token totally and it's been interesting to kind of watch that play out I think you know it's been are they going to have token are they can we rule out that base will'll never have a token no change there's no plans for a token on Bas and heard you know I think one of the things that's been really powerful about not having a token on base is it's it's kind of like forced us to do things the hard way you know today actually uh Bas crossed a billion dollars of tvl that's completely unincentivized uh completely inorganic in six months I you know there I don't think there are other examples of people doing that and the reason why I think we've been able to accomplish that is because without the token kind of looming over us we've had to say okay what can we do to support builders on our merits how do we get them more distribution how do we give them better tools how do we get them in front of other builders so that they can actually collaborate and do more together than if they were alone and I think that forcing function and that kind of rigor that it's driven with us has been hugely valuable and then of course we've had optimism getting our back and saying hey we know Bas doesn't have a token but if you build on Bas you will be rewarded and I think that combination of creating an environment where base is earning builders on the merits and then optimism is continually showing up to fund Builders who contribute impact is basically unbeatable and and one of the things that gets me really excited about it is it's not like this is a one-off optimism has what like 800 million op tokens that are already set aside to be allocated to builders through retroactive public goods funding so if you build on Bas or you build on Zora or you build on op mainnet 6 mon from now we will go through the same process that we just went through and if you had an impact you will get a large chunk of op tokens and you will be rewarded for Building on Base I think you said rewarded like 27 different times there so I I think it's I think people know now now they know and I will say I you know I learned it too and Tess you were talking about it you mentioned the chains that you could be building on it was even retroactive for people who built on eth too it was I mean let's give that a shout out as well because it wasn't even like you have to do this it's just people who are building for the ethereum ecosystem yeah and it's not I mean like it's not just base Builders getting rewarded right it's across the super chain and it's not just optimism funding this through rpgfan mentioned you know 800 million uh op tokens for rpgfinal for creators on bass and Zora you know again people who are really contributing to that ecosystem um but yeah I mean people who are contributing to Beyond Bas and op mainnet uh I think are also getting a lot of rewards um that go beyond you know rpgfan anced that they paid out $100 million to creators in um like sequencer Revenue giving that back to the people who who are creating their ecosystem um and that was last prot it's not sequence or Revenue it's protocol fees it's from their protocol but yes okay but yeah very excited about that well let's let's talk about I guess you know obviously there are a lot of options in scaling ethereum and as we said there's more creators building on chain which is great but when it comes to I guess the amount of different options on the table how do you guys look at that in I guess all the different right now ways to scale ethereum is there ever going to be too many ways to scale ethereum could it even be that there would be too many ways to scale ethereum um I I think that what's happening right now is we're kind of seeing a Cambrian explosion of people trying a bunch of different Tech technology paths um figuring out okay we have this incredible Foundation now how do we build the next layer on top of it that lets us bring that not just to millions of people but billions of people and whenever you have that sort of kind of caming of explosion of innovation you have massive expansion and I think that's kind of where we've been for the last few years my sense is that what we're going to see over the next few years is we're going to see some natural consolidation and I think this is kindly what's happening with the op stack and optimism in bass like Bas didn't say hey we're going to go and try and build a bunch of new technology that's going to be proprietary and that's going to be the solution instead what we said is we're going to build on open source technology become the second core developer and make it so whatever we build everyone else can benefit from and then where we're going to focus our energies is running a go to market and supporting Builders and building a culture and I think that that's been hugely successful um and if you like kind of think about what's happening in the ecosystem right now I think Bas has kind of established itself as the market leader where people are building new consumer products and I I think what we will likely see in the next few years is that more people take that strategy where they take the technology stack like the op stack and they say hey let's contribute to this thing let's let's bring our unique value maybe that's distribution maybe that's culture and let's uh build something that's bigger than just technology but it actually looks a lot more like a society um when we bring it all together yeah and I think you know I think like you said there is some amount of consolidation but it's consolidation that leads back into diversification but like more aligned diversification right so one thing that's really important to uh optimism and the way that we're working to scale is our multi- prooof road map so this idea that um you know we don't want to just have one single proof securing everything we want to actually have a range of uh uh different implementations both of you know the optimistic proof but then also or the you know the fault proof um but then also having you know ZK validity proofs and things like that and so we're working with you know teams across the optimism ecosystem to build all of these different implementations of the proof system so again like there is kind of a realignment and a consolidation around you know some of these approaches but at the same time it's also about exploring some of these different approaches and directions but in a way that comes together and drives us towards something together yeah it's been so cool I mean people oft times are like so is BAS going to be forever an O optimistic roll up and I'm like that's we're starting but if you look at what's happening on optimism right now we have probably the three best ZK teams who are building general purpose ZK uh VMS not ZK EVMS but um risk zero succinct uh and 01 Labs all working on building op stack proofs and so what that means is it means that you know sometime in the next year or so we're going to be able to take these Market leading teams and the technology they've built and we're going to be able to roll out proofs that are validity proofs for op main net and bass and the entire super chain and we're going to have the best of all these worlds and I think that is really only possible because of the um culture and approach that optimism has taken around saying hey we're not going to try and do this all ourselves instead what we're going to do is we're going to build governance infrastructure and we're going to build funding infrastructure that brings in the best talent to contribute to one shared open- Source framework that everyone can use no I think I think again it's really cool and as as creators have looked at this you know at coinage we kind of the first to put nfts token gated content on chain and you know there were some people even though it was free there are some people who's like I don't know about gas and now as we're talking about scaling ethereum there are so many different possibilities that become real and legit almost overnight you're talking about frames on farcaster I don't we got like maybe four minutes left but I don't know if there's another thing Tess that you would want to shout out is kind of like we've arrived in the way that this is possible now yeah totally I mean I I feel like um I mean so I've been working in crypto for 9 years uh which is kind of unbelievable when I when I say that aloud um and actually this is going to be an a a tangent an anecdote but uh Jesse was a big a big factor in me getting into crypto I was like sort of thinking about going to work for this uh it was a Bitcoin API company at the time but I wasn't really sure about this whole crypto thing I wasn't really sure about this Bitcoin thing uh and then Jesse and I were happened to sit next to each other on a bus on a 4-Hour bus bus ride and he talked about Bitcoin the whole time and by the time I got off that bus I was I was in I was ready to go um and obviously like a lot has has happened and changed in that time I mean even at that time like ethereum hadn't launched that's sort of the the the era that we were in and for a long time like every year or two I'd be like maybe someone will actually like build something with this stuff at some point and I for a long time I'd be like okay I'm going to give it like one more year and I'm going to see what happens and this has really been the year for the first time where I'm not saying it's one more year I'm like this is the year like it's happening that's bullish everyone if Tess is saying that I know I've been say you were the one who had to yeah I've been saying this is the year for like four years so like at this point you got a discount me but I I honestly do think that this is the year um like last last year we we tried to do we we did onchain summer I hope some of you participate ated in that the whole idea was like let's figure out how to get people from never having done anything on crypto to doing something on chain in less than 60 seconds we gave it our best shot it was awesome I think all the crypto people loved it but the reality is that where we were from a usability perspective was it wasn't good enough and we we you know had Billboards up and and you know wheat paste and people would try and do it and it would take them 10 minutes and they would just churn this summer and we're running onchain summer again so if you are a builder yeah if you're Builder and you have cool stuff that you are building on chain get it ready for this summer because we're going to be getting it in front of literally tens or hundreds of millions of people and the difference this time is that the technology has matured we're going to have 10 to 100 times cheaper fees we're going to have much better wallets for instance coinbase today launched a wallet where you can go from never having a crypto wallet to having a fully powered smart wallet controlled by a pass key in less than 10 seconds with no app and no extension that any developer automatically gets out of the box if they've integrated rainbow kit yeah that launched today and what that means is it means that this summer when we have more media on chain when we have more food on chain when we have concerts on chain when we have games on chain when we have our savings on chain when we have literally everything on chain it's going to reach hundreds of millions of people and so this is the Year this is the year it's always the year but no this is actually the year and Tess you can take us home Jesse got you to get into crypto when you were on the bus for four hours you got 45 seconds is to get everybody who's not you're at e Denver so you're probably already on the bus you guys are on the bus but what do you have to look forward to sell us again on where we are yeah I mean I I think this is this is the year we're seeing real use cases we're seeing people who you know are are in it for the new and novel things you can do you know we we talk now about having fun on chane right two years ago we were not having fun on Jane no fun I mean people were doing things on chain but it wasn't that much fun so well I'm I'm super stoked to see what's what's possible now shout out to you guys shout out to the super chain shout out to you Jesse and Tess thank you again everybody Jesse poock from coinbase from Bas call B chess for op lives thank you guys appreciate it thank you