Fireside Chat with Joe Lubin (Consensys) and Kartik Talwar (ETHGlobal) at ETHConf

Hello, Carter. Welcome. Hmm, this is a very special version of our conversation. We usually communicate like this at least once a year least once a year . And, um, one thing that's different from my perspective is that there are a lot fewer T-shirts in the room and a lot more suits.

I know it's hard for me to collect t-shirts at different conferences. I'm running out of supplies. And, um, and one of the things that we both saw on Ethereum from a developer perspective is developers. And, um, a lot of it was just like: let's build the infrastructure. Let's make sure we can support what we think is needed in this space, or how we can replace can replace any existing systems, or just add more efficiency.

And what I find interesting at first is that we're approaching 12 years, um, in this space, 10 years of just Ethereum being fully online. And I'm wondering, from your perspective, do you think this is the normal pace of events, or did you expect things to happen much faster, and was 2026 the year we needed it, or did certain things have to happen for us to get here? Do you think we are on time, on the right path, or have we deviated from it? Um, I think in the beginning, when we were thinking about how long it might take for this to really take off, um, uh, some of the optimists among us, uh, felt like, " among us, uh, felt like, " Hey, this thing is so cool. Um, of course people are going to use it right away."

Um, and that was true, and that was a small portion of the population. Um portion of the population. Um , uh, but technology really takes a long time to spread around the world. Um, Artificial Intelligence Um, Artificial Intelligence is great. Um, it's so powerful that, um, it's the fastest adoption curve, um, to a billion users, I think users, I think , in history.

Um, there are some things on social media that, um, came in handy a few years, uh, before this. Um, but I think, um, uh, the question to ask is, why should people care about this technology, um, for it to really take off? Hmm, so it's easy to see why, um, crypto nerds would be worried about this. We like, um, consensus algorithms consensus algorithms , tokenization, and things like that. It was easy to see why easy to see why , um, certain, um, DeFi- , um, certain, um, DeFi- nerds would be worried about this.

So you have, um, financiers, um, teaming up with crypto people, um, and creating really interesting things. It was easy to see why artists would be interested in, um, controlling their intellectual property, and, um, making interesting things, trading interesting things, um, buying interesting things. Hmm, but from the perspective of the rest of society, hmm, why should people be interested in this? So we've had wave after wave of innovation by these subsets, small subsets of the population, who are actually just creating things and then testing what they've created. So we spent about 12 years, ahem, building the technologies building the technologies that drive Ethereum and decentralized protocols.

Hmm, so why should the world worry? Why should governments worry? Why should financial institutions worry? Why should the general population be worried? Hmm, that's essentially because the world is made up of platforms.

Um, there's, uh, Facebook, Instagram, uh, I've been deplatformed, uh, at least from one or both. Uh, and, uh, you know, Twitter and stuff. Uh, it's easy to deplatform, uh to deplatform, uh , from these platforms. Uh, AWS is a platform. Uh, you need permission to run your stuff on this platform stuff on this platform .

Uh, the United States of America is a platform. Other nation-states nation-states are platforms. You can deplatform from these institutions. Uh, and, uh these institutions. Uh, and, uh , essentially, the world has been, uh , essentially, the world has been, uh , command-and- , command-and- control and platform-based, uh, for millennia.

Uh, and it works very well for building civilization. Uh, but that doesn't usually work most of the time for 99% of time for 99% of people in civilization. So we need platforms, uh, from which we cannot be deplatformed. Uh, we need a new form of trust, not a top-down command-and-control trust. Uh , and then Satoshi came along, uh, a few years ago, and invented decentralized trust.

And Vitalik showed how we can, uh, use decentralized trust in a more expressive version of what, uh, Satoshi, uh, brought to the world. Uh, and so, uh, we're at a point now where we're scalable enough, uh, and we're going to be massively scalable, uh, very soon. Uh, we're pretty easy to use. It's becoming legal enough, uh, so, uh, and in the United States, there's a compulsion function for financial institutions, uh financial institutions, uh , to be online 24/7 365 if they adapt, or die if they can handle it. Uh, if, uh, the president tweets something nasty at 2:30 a.

m. on a Sunday, uh, and that could cause you to have to hedge or move your assets. Uh, retail brokerages and other, uh, players in this space. So hyperliquidity is a function of forcing the entire financial world to, uh, go online. Uh, and so, uh online.

Uh, and so, uh , people are going to have to worry now because, uh, the world is getting more and more complex, and everything, uh, went online quite a while ago, and now, uh, tokenization is going to move everything on-chain as well . There 's a whole set of categories here that you kind of unlock that we can talk about. Hmm, I want to talk about this a little bit, but it seems like one of the themes here is that we now have an alternative choice alternative choice that we didn't have before that we didn't have before , and more and more people are choosing the second option. Hmm, and here you need to get both sides to think about what it means to play from fair to unfair , and just see if you can offer the same value really effectively. Hmm, and this is where the argument about Ethereum as a platform comes into play.

Hmm, I want to talk about this, especially from the perspective of how the Ethereum protocol is evolving and whether we're happy with the pace or what we'd like to see. Hmm, but to digress a bit , I'm curious, from your perspective, how do you think the Ethereum Foundation is evolving right now? Were there a lot of announcements about what, um, they should focus on? We've seen some people talk about leaving to explore new things. Um, when you read this as someone who was not only part of this project at the beginning, but also led the consensus, what are your reactions and thoughts?

Um, the rumors about the decline of the Ethereum Foundation are greatly exaggerated. Um, they understand, uh, because, uh, there were announcements about people taking leave, people leaving the Ethereum Foundation, and some people taking leave. It's been a long hard job, and, uh, they want to clear their heads. Um, I don't think these people who are taking leave are leaving the Ethereum ecosystem, but a very small number are actually taking leave. Um, so the Ethereum Foundation, uh, has a mandate to focus on the ideals of cypherpunk on the ideals of cypherpunk , and I think that's great.

I think that's quite appropriate. Um, so they're going to focus on crop components, and it's going to be a whole bunch of core developers, um, researchers, etc. Um, um, I think there's a lot of respect and appreciation for the initiatives that Thomas Stanczyk has proposed , um, and a lot of work has been done to try to figure out how to maintain, um, this great work, um, and also, um, set up the Ethereum Foundation and the Ethereum ecosystem properly. So I mean, um, if you look at a lot of these, um, candidate decentralized protocols, they look more like slightly decentralized companies, um, than like a reliably neutral, um, decentralized platform, um, that the world can build on. Um, um, so you often have labs, a company, and a foundation, and the foundation has to be a little bit pure, but, um, they're under the same roof, like crypto bros, who do business do business development, and they pay people to, um pay people to, um , um, host their programs on their network.

And, uh, um, so there's network. And, uh, um, so there's not a lot of compelling neutrality in these projects . And, uh, um, I think that's why our ecosystem, um, was designed, uh um, was designed, uh , for Bitcoin and, uh, and Ethereum, to bring compelling neutrality to the world. Do you feel like it contradicts or creates a conflict when you need to support that but you also need to think about how to meet customer demand? And institutions here are saying, "Hey, we're used to XYZ," or "We'd like to see these features, but you're not even interacting with us," or "You're not talking," or "We do n't know when this will be prioritized."

How does this actually affect neutrality while losing a customer to someone else? So, a lot of things have been happening at the Ethereum Foundation over the past few years . Uh, and, uh , what's happening now is what's becoming clear about what to focus on. So, the Ethereum Foundation focuses on the yield components. There is another group of Ethereum core developers who are organizing to negotiate with the Ethereum Foundation to focus more on the platform, such as scalability and usability of a consensus platform consensus platform .

They can have discussions with D5 developers to potentially understand enforcement features . There is another group that has spoken to about 200 different financial institutions and governments around the world. They will be legitimate, reputable, uh, user interface developers for a platform, uh, or product managers for institutional education . Yes. They will accept any inquiries, interested in developing something, and, uh developing something, and, uh , it will be a non-profit organization.

But they will be able to send information about educational seminars, certifications; they, they will probably hold conferences. So this group will announce itself soon. There is another group that works with institutions, which is the Institutional Privacy Task Force. So, they are also in the process of finding the right place to focus. So we're looking at that instead of having conflicts of interest under one roof like other ecosystems do, we're going to clearly, uh, separate, uh, several non-profit organizations, uh, from, uh, for- profit organizations, and we're going to look at all of these organizations, and I would include Consensus as one of those of those steward organizations, as well as Sharplink and BMR, uh, the Ethereum Foundation, these other organizations.

So they will be kind of decentralized, uh, stewards of the Ethereum group. Does this make coordination more difficult? For example, wouldn't you like everyone to have the same mission and KPIs, or, I guess, maintain reliable neutrality reliable neutrality ? You can't build a platform that's supposed to be a reliably neutral application platform for the world, uh, if you don't have a reliably neutral foundation that's flawless. Uh, so, uh, it's not going to be that different in terms of how the protocol is built, because a lot of other organizations are already building the protocol.

So, the process will be exactly the same: a few core developers will move to another group, um, with slightly different focuses. This will give them the opportunity to, um, save money for EF. Um, they will get funding in other ways. Um, but it will also have a different atmosphere. This will potentially attract a different group of developers who may not have been interested in creating components for harvest.

So, um, I think this is the right architecture. This is great. And I think we'll see it very soon, um, publicly about what these initiatives are and how they work. I hope, um, another question that I'm interested in is: in this world where specialized institutions are emerging and they're basically looking at it from a stablecoin perspective, and how can they, um, think about transferring funds, um, between funds, um, between any of the different parties to the organizations...Um, how do you think about the overall value of Ethereum and just in this space, is it going to be an application layer again?

Will it be a chain at the basic level? Are we still thinking about L2 levels coming into play, or will it be something else, and these are just basic models of basic models of any influx? What changes in this version of how you think about brutal ETH? Okay, here's one look at it. Eh, that's my opinion.

It might be shared by some of the people, uh, that I work with, but, uh, the value will accrue across all three, uh, of these levels: applications, second level, third level, uh, not so much on the third level, uh, and the first level for sure, uh. So, the ether token, uh, for Ethereum to always be focused on a certain future, uh , where it becomes necessary, where the world will be, uh, where it becomes scalable enough and ready for the world to, uh, use it. Uh, and I think we're already there. Um, uh, with the agentive hybrid human-machine economy being implemented quite quickly , um, and with traditional finance, um, starting to use our technologies quite significantly or develop them, um, and launching soon. Um, and so, um, building the future meant the future meant that, um, we followed a focused roadmap, that we gave pricing power to the second tier so that they could just establish themselves and thrive, um, so that we could create cutting-edge technologies, um.

So the zero-level, knowledge-less technology, um, was built or accelerated, um, simply because the focused roadmap of the second level, um, offered an opportunity for it to become, um, the obvious dominant technology, um, at the second level. And so, um, it's easy to see how application chains, um, thrive. Um, some levels of the second, some general levels of the second will be very successful. Um, and, um, level 1 is going to be very, level 1 is going to be very, very busy. Hmm, it's really cheap now.

Um, but I expect, um, not only a lot of layers two, but also private permissioned blockchain systems. So, Daniela and Jha were just talking about client Basu. So Basu's client, uh, created it using consensus using consensus . This is our executive level client. Uh executive level client.

Uh , TechU is our consensus-level client. We submitted it to the Linux Foundation or the Hyperledger Foundation a long time ago. Er, so that it could be an enterprise version of Ethereum. Uh, and it was extremely successful. So most large financial institutions use Ethereum internally.

Huge business. Er Huge business. Er , at City Token Services, which works for Basu. Uh, Gianna talked about her supply chain application , uh, and you know BNY and many others are using this technology, uh, so our line team, uh, created, uh, and also, uh, ZISK, Jordi Bina and the people at Nosis, uh, created, uh, synchronous composability technology. Uh composability technology.

Uh , what you can do , what you can do is have a bunch of second-level linear networks, like, uh, and even some private Basu networks that are enhanced with, uh, zero- disclosure security gadgets. Uh, and you can do zero- disclosure proofs on each of these networks. Um each of these networks. Um , and then you can aggregate that evidence, uh, into a block, say, on a linear mainnet or, uh, Ethereum mainnet. Um, and you can create this atomic execution context, a single interface to everything.

You can merge all these fragmented liquidity pools in real time. Um, and, uh liquidity pools in real time. Um, and, uh , to answer your question more directly, there will be a lot of new networks, uh, a lot of corporate chains that will be L2 or permissioned private networks. Um, and if you, uh, I mean, the linear circuits are already burning the ether, uh, and to the extent that we can, uh, cause it to spread, we will . Um, and regardless of whether the linear chain coordinates all this activity, uh, or, uh activity, uh, or, uh , coordinated on the mainnet, uh, it's going to take a lot of ether, uh, to coordinate a lot of transactions across a lot of different chains.

This is exciting. And I think, uh, I'm actually glad to hear that you don't think it's hear that you don't think it's one specific place, and you think it's a lot of places, but it still behaves like a funnel. Yes. So if, uh, if the first tier absorbs too much value, you're going to end up with a whole bunch of application chains, right? That's right.

It's kind of an effective hypothesis that people want to make sure they control all this infrastructure. You said something extremely interesting, and extremely interesting, and , uh, actually we're going to talk about a lot of general Ethereum features, but one interesting thing that came out today was the launch of a new product, MetaMask. I'd like you to tell us about what just launched today and what prompted you to, uh, introduce it as a product. Of course. Yes.

So we, uh, are constantly analyzing who our users are, and we have to work hard on that because MetaMask is a privacy tool, and, uh, we respect that. So when we try to understand different cohorts, we have to do complicated things to draw conclusions about who is actually using it. Uh, and it turned out that, uh, a lot of the people, uh, who used it, uh used it, uh , were more like machines than not. Yes. So, there were people behind the machines , but actually the user interface was, uh, operated by machine intelligence.

And so, uh, we're announcing, uh, today, uh, the MetaMask agent wallet. It will initially be released in a command line version. Uh, we're actually announcing an early access program. So we work closely with, uh, 200 people who, uh, use it, use it, uh, for their trading systems, for their agents, etc. And so, uh, we still need to learn a lot more about, uh, how they want to use our technology.

So they'll use the API, uh, and they'll benefit from, uh, our best-in- class security. Uh, so we'll be modeling and analyzing all transactions. Uh, there will be rules. Uh, if you put it in "beast" mode, you can get around the rules. Then you'll have to give us a thumbs up twice if we give you a warning and, uh, uh warning and, uh, uh , you decide to ignore it.

Uh, we offer insurance offer insurance . Well, so please, please. Yes. So, uh, if something goes wrong something goes wrong , uh, within our security system, uh, within our policies, uh, if you haven't already canceled the policies, uh canceled the policies, uh , then, uh, we will cover any, uh cover any, uh , damages up to $10,000 per transaction. Yes, that's great.

And you can do almost anything in your MetaMask. You can, uh, access swaps, forecast markets forecast markets , you can invest in different things. So, I was wondering: should this be an extension of the developer wallet, or is this a separate product line with the same features as the MetaMask wallet, but you want different audiences and different users to have, uh, different user profiles for both of those things? So it's the same product. Hmm, this is, in a sense, a different interface.

Hmm, hmm, we're worried that, hmm, at some point in the future, if we 're not very careful, hmm, with our offspring, hmm, some people might not appreciate machine intelligence and robots, and we don't want a class war to develop. So we're trying to make it, um, just as user- friendly for people and machines. So essentially the same thing . This is great. Does this mean that you are purposefully betting that UX and UI will not matter as much in the future?

Hmm, that's a good hypothesis. Hmm, and I think you might be right. Hmm, so I think that, um, voice, um, will saturate, um, the user interface for a long time. I think we're all going to get really good at subvocalizing things subvocalizing things . Hmm, just like it seemed really weird when people walked down the street and talked to themselves, and now it's completely normal.

I think that, uh, you and I could sit, uh, have lunch and meet, and I could just sublocalize to my AI, uh, in the middle of a sentence for you, and it would be really weird. But, uh, yeah, I think that, uh uh, yeah, I think that, uh , this cryptocurrency wasn't really built, uh, for people, decentralized protocols weren't really built for us to interact, uh, deep inside machines, like, manipulating bits and, uh, exploiting side effects in general, using protocols manually. Uh, so it's great for, uh so it's great for, uh , smart people who are capable of these things, to create them, to make them accessible as much as accessible as much as we can to put, uh, easy to understand, easy to use GUI interfaces in front of these things, that's great. Uh, but, uh, you know, when was the last time you read the terms and conditions for a web product, or, uh, I increasingly have a better incentive now to summarize it for me and flag what's actually wrong. Uh actually wrong.

Uh , but yes, that's right . I can't tell you the exact time. I just opened a traditional brokerage account. I have n't had it in years. And the number of PDF years.

And the number of PDF documents is simply ridiculous. But, uh simply ridiculous. But, uh , now I can ask machine intelligence to summarize this, which I often do when I sign documents, and, you know, it's going to be an intelligent world. So we will rely on our digital twin to support us, to be a neutral, uh, or biased in our favor, uh, interface with the world. This, uh, depolarizes, uh, news sources and so on.

Uh news sources and so on. Uh , it will work out, uh, in a kind of pub sublimit, like fashionable reality, uh, optimized biased preferences. Uh, yeah, I mean, uh, some good stuff too. That's how it should be. We shouldn't, uh, we shouldn't be, uh, controlled by, uh, big corporations.

We are creating Web 3. It is a user-centric worldwide network. And so, uh , people should have financial, economic, social, political freedom of action in their lives. Uh, we should be empowered with machine intelligence. Uh, so this is how we're, uh Uh, so this is how we're, uh , going to get through this mess we're in .

Uh, and the user interfaces will be, uh , great, educational, uh, and easy to use. I think it would be a wonderful world where, uh, we just simplified what our daily lives look like. Uh daily lives look like. Uh , my last question for you before we wrap up is about our vision for the future of Ethereum. Uh, what would you say Wall would you say Wall Street still gets wrong about Ethereum?

And if you have any advice for institutions that are paying closer attention, really trying to launch pilots and deliver these products to their customers. Uh, what would you say they should think about or refocus on, and, uh, maybe just clarify this is something they can use now so that, uh, they don't go back five years ago and restart these, uh, knowledge and lessons again? Of course. So, Wall Of course. So, Wall Street is not a monolith.

Uh, there are a lot of different, uh, actors with different goals and different capabilities. So, some large financial institutions, ahem, have been using Ethereum technology for a long time. I mentioned City Token Services, a giant business. It was built on Basu. JP Morgan has been developing Ethereum technology, apparently since late 2014 or 2015.

And I think what became real for them was , um, they were... I heard a story about how they were visited every year by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Chairman Hansor's Commission, and asked what they were doing with cryptocurrency, and they said, "Well, we're not doing anything," and they said, " they said, " Okay, so be it." Okay, so be it."

But now they can't do that. That there are coercive functions. This is becoming increasingly legal. The world is becoming more and more complex. Institutions must be online, people must be on the blockchain.

Organizations will have corporate blockchains. Financial institutions will have their own blockchains. Companies or financial institutions will want to issue their own real assets. Um, they will be able to do it on the second level, even on their own private chain, which will be composed with other chains. They'll probably want to do this on the first Ethereum layer on the first Ethereum layer , because even if you're a significant bank, we've seen significant banks die in the past.

So if you're releasing a tool that can work in a bearer context, you don't want it in your corporate chain because you want something that's going to be much bigger. That's right . Um, uh, so all these institutions need to move to blockchain very quickly, and many of them don't know how to do it and are afraid to do it. They are afraid of, um, being responsible for the safekeeping of their users' assets. And so, uh, the consensus is that working with a lot of institutions, financial investors, financial institutions, etc.

is in the early stages to help them set up their own settlement levels, help them with the wallet components wallet components . Um, and, uh, um, they're moving fast, but, uh, uh, as I've said elsewhere, they're not, uh, announcing that they're going to announce anything. They just check off every box, uh, three times, uh, and then launch because they have real customers. Surprisingly. Joe, as always, thank you.

Thank you very much for the great discussion, and, uh, please give him a round of applause.