Interop Die Tryin | Jess Houlgrave | Ben Jones | Steven Goldfeder | James Fry | Margaux Nijkerk

[Music] hello everyone our next panel coming up is called interop or die trying I think we can all can agree that making web3 technology more interoperable and more usable for everyone is very important and so I'm very happy to introduce you to Margo from coindesk hi so yeah today we're going to talk about the interop problem uh or the interop solution I should say the fragmentation problem but maybe we can first get everyone on stage um because they're the experts I'm just going to ask the questions oh yeah great well why don't we start first with you know a little introduction about yourselves a quick I don't know 20 seconds who are you what do you do and why are you here um I'm Jess holgrave I'm the CEO at Ron we're the Builders of the wallet connect Network which is a network that allows over 700 different wallets to connect with some 15,000 different applications um and I guess I've been invited here because um chain abstraction and thinking about liquidity fragmentation and how we work with wallets and apps to make a better user experience around that particularly is a big Focus for us hey what's going on y'all I'm Ben one of the co-founders of optimism we're building the super chain the op stack so you know we're responsible for the problems that we're going to be solving on this stage I suppose in part we all are I think yeah fair enough um I'm James head of marketing at across protocol um you know that song one of these things is not like the other I feel like that's where I am in this group I'm I'm among some Heavy Hitters but really just proud to be on stage here the work we're doing is all around cross chain interrupt so um you know us as a bridge but really probably some of the bigger work that we're doing behind the scenes is working with 7683 intense operation or the intense protocol helping to make bridging easier and faster hey everyone I'm Stephen I'm co-founder and CEO at offchain Labs we build arbitrum uh which is a layer 2 platform as well as uh prism which is uh layer one consensus client and recently we've been taking a large focus on interoperability and building interop standards that can connect chains quickly and doing a lot of works with other folks up here including uh across uh to a large degree so excited to be here today great so we we talked a lot about all the different things you guys do and what you can contribute to this um to solving interop but let's like back it up a little bit to how we arrived at this problem um let's start maybe in 2020 with the ethereum Centric uh the rollup Centric mode map that italic introduced the ethereum community embraced it led to the creation of all these different l2s um um and solve the scalability issue but as a result of that a new problem emerged which is this fragmentation um this clunkiness in a user experience and so now we're here today to solve interop or you guys are here today to solve interop but let's start with then how existential is this fragmentation issue right now um on a scale of I don't know 1 to 10 like where are we in terms of how how like how big of a problem is this anyway one can go for it if you have any opinions I I don't think it's existential actually at all I think that's more of a narrative point and I think it's a narrative Point that's actually pushed by some you know ethereum competitors to be H it so I think it's a real thing we need to focus on but I actually think it's um it's a strength right because ethereum's Core Power and is and strength is its diversity and the experimentation that we have on chain right so you have you know we build arbitri you have Ben here bus optimism there could be 15 other people here who are building you know competing products to us and that's not uh that's not a bad thing it's a good thing and it turns out though if we only had a single development team you wouldn't have fragmentation you wouldn't have this issue so it's a two-sided coin but if I had to take you know a choice I'd take all let's take the diversity let's take the experimentation because I want that to happen on ethereum because I definitely don't think we've reached the end goal of blockchain technology I think I don't know which set of experiments will be but I think one of them you know if we look forward 5 years the blockchain won't look like it looks today and that's be going to be going to come from the experimentation that we're doing so it's a problem but it's a problem that's comes from a very very good place and I'd much rather have that problem than not have uh than only have a single team building um and we can fix it we know how to fix it and we're working hard on actually fixing it and um I don't think it's actually existential I mean I I'll try to throw a number to it by the way I totally agree that every competitor to ethereum is heavily incentivized to overstate the concern and like basic Bally concern troll about this problem um at the same time like there's a reason that this is one of the main concern trolls that comes about from ethereum is I think because there's a degree of legitimacy to it and certainly like agree with Stephen I'd make the BET I'd make the trade every every single time but I don't know you want a number I'll throw out it's like time scale dependent I think I don't know my mind says like 67 today if we looked the same at the end of 2025 I might go to like 89 I'm like I think we're making a lot of good progress if that doesn't pan out I'd be real worried MH yeah no well that's that's interesting and I want to get into that later but that sets things up for you know we have two competitors here on stage a lot of people in this space are competing um for the same users for developers to build on your platform so how do you sort of square building the best user experience within your own ecosystem while also trying to provide a way to jump to these different ecosystems but also the there's these two sort of different ideas that on the one hand like have a lot of synergies together because I guess if you are providing the best user experience by being able to access these other ecosystems they should like your product more but on the other hand what do you do if the other product is more Superior right if the other chain is it just I don't know works better for building so how do you sort of square those two different experiences the same goes for for wallets like how do you how do you do that deal with that side of being a business but also providing for the rest of the community this like seamless experience I mean I think one of the um you have these two different audiences right when you're building an a a chain or or somewhere for Builders to build you've got the developer community that you're targeting who are typically less impacted because they're making a decision I'm going to build on optimism I'm going to build on arbitrum um what where the pain I think is really felt today and I think it is an issue because I think it is especially is really painful for new people coming into the ecosystem is that I as an end user I just want to use an application I want to use something that brings me joy it solves a pain point I just want to pay for stuff with my crypto and if you start explaining especially to somebody who's new to this space like oh yeah that usdc you can't use that cuz that's on a different chain you need usdc on this chain in order to be able to buy your coffee like their head just explodes um and so I think it's really like at this end end user space and and that's why a lot of the solutions that are being proposed are enable both the choice for developers but also solve the end user the end user issue and and it should be I think very invisible to the end user which application the chain is buil being built on at most points MH I was just going to say I think as someone who literally sitting between Ben and step and and we do that as across like we're between these chains the the end user is the person we're serving right like we're we're trying to make it easier for them to move liquidity from one chain to the next and have access to whatever it is that they're trying to do on chain the faster it is the cheaper it is the better it is for that user when when I think about like trying to explain to my dad for example who's not a dummy like he has he was an early adopter to the internet when it came out like he was very I I remember standing in line at Best Buy to buy our first computer for the home and he can't quite understand the same issue that just just said like it's usdc why can't I just use it and that's really I think where the end State needs to be if we're going to serve our users we should let them choose are they on arbitrum are they on optimism are they on base or wherever they want to be based on the apps that are available to them but we should make it that it's just so seamless that they can do that without even thinking about it yeah when I think about building interoperability I don't think about like how do I best connect arbitrum ch chains I think how do I best connect the user to whatever chain they want to be on so you know we're working together with across and others in the in the ecosystem on intent standards uh Universal uh intent engine that we that we put out a few weeks ago and that's open source code and that can go on any Orit chain it can go on any op stack chain we're working together as an ecosystem on open in 10 standards and the idea is that like I want to build as many bridges as we can whenever there's no I don't want to build any artificial walls so if there's no good reason why an arbitrum chain can't interrupt well with no PE stack chain then I'm not going to insert an artificial branding reason there and you might think that's Noble of me but actually I think it's the best product experience for the user and that's what's going to win right because the user is not going to stay on arbitrum because I added some friction they're going to get off arbitrum and then it's going to be actually a bad experience for them if they want to go to a different chain my goal is okay how do I make it as easy as possible for you to get there and you know what it's also going to be as easy as possible to get back yeah no that's oh sorry go for I mean I'll just Echo that for a sec and say like you know in some sense I like the the premise of the question of like these are competitors and therefore they're going to put frictions against each other it's just like Stephen said not the right way to think about it it's like the best product like it's the best product is the one where you can get your money out quick like that's the way that crypto works and you know the other thing i' would say is like I you know if you even if you just look at the examples like the entire basis for L2 as an architecture is that you interrupt with L1 and so it's like already the case that the entire premise of creating an L2 in the first place was because you want interoperability because you want to share Network effects and so like you're just continuing to do that yeah well I do you know want to talk a little bit about like interrupt between the L or you bring up interupt between the L2 and L1 but also you're standing here right in front of me and so I obviously I'm thinking about the super chain um and you know op chains are wide part of the L2 ecosystem I think I checked this morning of the just the rollups that are live I think it was like 35ish chains are built off of op stack and the super chain is obviously a big part of the ecosystem so that all these different chains can you know seamlessly interact with each other but what do you say towards people who make the argument well the super chain is uniting its own little ecosystem and also siloing it away from from the broader ethereum Network and different l2s how do you how do you deal with that kind of um maybe it's criticism or or or or just points that people are making the fundamental answer is that we need to do both and I think all ecosystems need to do both like the reality is that um absolutely we shouldn't throw up walls where there aren't but also the architectural decisions that we made to get the diversity and the like you know multiple blossoming ecosystems on ethereum do imply some degree of technical hurdles that are different across ecosystem boundaries than within ecosystem boundaries and so I think that it's the responsibility of all of us to do both we need to remove the boundaries whenever we can and we also need to take advantage of the shared ecosystems when we can as well I mean it's like this uh you know intents help you help a user Bridge across chains and they do that by offering up a fee and so I think it's completely critical for us to say we need to make those fees go down and if you look at how we're doing super chain interop it's just easier to do that first within the bounds of the super chain so you know it's both I don't know I called this the mullet Approach at eth Denver you've got like intents in the front and settlement in the back in our view every ecosystem needs to have really good intents to get everywhere they want and simultaneously improve the settlement in the back wherever we can I love that we're still trying to get Hart to grow his M mullet out but no no dice I I know I don't want to shave the bangs man yeah yeah for sure well speaking of intense um you know one of the core standards that has emerged is being able to solve part of this issue is er er C 7683 um which across has helped um right or author um so maybe you can explain why this standard specifically has taken off why is it being viewed as like a better standard compared to previous ones in terms of like trans like token transfers and um yeah what like let's start there actually actually I'm curious what Stephen thinks about this first but I'm going to defer and then answer from my perspective because I'd love to hear what a third party thinks because we've gotten a lot of support um URC 7683 has over 50 teams and protocols who have said yes this is the right way we're moving forward arbitrum and optimism are part of that but why why why did you say yes to us when we said hey let's let's move this forward together I think that we uh as a community need a bias towards action for interop so when we looked at 7683 and by the way just for those that don't know 7683 is a know intent message format um and then there are other pie as well how do these intents you know how do you escrow how do you um how do you escrow how do you actually you know send these intents from one chain to another so there a lot of pieces and we're actually working together on building you know out the rest of these pieces as well but in terms of like the 7683 component if we looked at it it was is good it does what it's supposed to do and it works now could we sit in a room for like 3 years and try to like optimize the words on the page and like bicker over every letter of course we can but I think that that's where we get into trouble it's like it works it's it's good it solves the problem done let's move on if someone has a better idea they can propose an upgrade over time we can iterate but we need to bias towards action as a community and not just sit in these working groups and you know okay let's let's spend a year figuring out the standard you put something out there it works awesome let's move on to the next component you know components that we're now working on together it's it's progress instead of perfection um we're not going to stand here and say that 7683 is the perfect solution it is a solution that we are working together with ethereum foundation and many other team teams to get better at and to iterate and continue to edit and make better but it's not perfect today I think it is probably the best chance that we have for moving forward but we need more standardization in the space not less uh a lot of the work that the interop working group at the ethereum foundation is doing is to try to unify these teams to say put put aside your differences the the pie is still tiny and if we're focused on competing over this tiny pie instead of facing our Holy Grail of actually making way for Mass adoption this little pie is just not ever going to be enough and we have the opportunity to grow that but we can invite more people Mass adoption can't happen until we you know get our house in order and that's the work that we're doing yeah and you guys have been a honestly a fantastic partner in just pushing us all forward forward and you know making us commit to something something that's really really good so and building off of that the open intent framework came out last week two weeks ago I don't remember but um but that's also helped unify a lot of things so what are the next steps following that like where this has been announced this is what people are subscribing to like what is what are we supposed to expect next from this yeah so the oif or open intense framework um it's largely led by the ethereum foundation with a lot of contributors uh hyperlane for example lacrosse and many other teams that are working on this it's an it's kind of building on top of 7683 it's not in replacement of it 7683 is a critical part of it but the work that they're doing doing is making uh standard standardizing the settlement layer making things more composable and easier for teams to adopt onto so uh a good example is if you are a builder and you need to prioritize speed over cost and speed is the number one advantage that you're looking for open intense framework makes it so that you can really optimize for Speed and maybe the sacrific is on the cost side um and so that's really it's just another iteration it's another group of people that are saying yes in is the way forward and we have to continue to build on top of that to make it more usable for more Builders from the wallet perspective I'm wondering how you guys fit into all this but also you know what kind of compliance challenges or privacy challenges arise from you know enabling these seamless interactions cross-chain transactions like what what what kind of concerns are there around that I mean for us because we sit as this like network of wallets um I think we are firstly like a big believer that standards make it easy for end users to have a seamless experience um I think if everybody is building in very different ways then the end user experience becomes very very unpredictable also becomes incredibly hard for wallets who are operating across these different things so um I think the the the standardization approaches is critical to success here um a lot of the work that we're doing with um with wallets on the wallet connect network is helping them to figure out the right way to make this easy for their end users um so partnering with people on a abstraction standard that means that the wallet can really easily integrate different Technologies um and especially thinking about like the the end user experience from a UI perspective like what is what should that look like we do a lot of work in the payment space and this has been a massive topic um from like our payment partners and and Merchants is like how does how does does it look as an end user when I have assets on one chain but the merchant wants them to be able to use them one than another what should the wallet experience look like to offer me the option to select a different asset and go through a single uh operation in order to be able to deliver something on another chain to to the merchant so I think for us it's really about like what is that what does it look like in not not underneath uh and and where all the all the tech stuff is happening but what is it really like for for an end user and how does how does that have an impact I want to go back to something you said Stephen at the beginning that when I asked about how existential is this problem around fragmentation um and you had said well this is kind of an narrative that's being pushed outside the community which I I agree with but it is ethereum is part of a wider Community the C you know crypto and blockchain and of itself and The Vibes have been down on ethereum Salon you know whether it's the price token and salana poaching the most new devs the Vibes are not where they used to be we can all probably agree on that and and some of those people have referenced the fragmentation issue uh as part of that but also on the other hand you know if ethereum and crypto is trying to go mainstream it is about meeting the user where they are in terms of adoption and not them coming to you so so I guess like if this doesn't get solved like or if this does get solved this this fragmentation issue interoperability becomes more seamless will this energy can we expect the energy to come back like is you know if we are tapping into that fragmentation narrative like will this all will this all of a sudden next time or this time next year will we I don't know be seeing more people because we can you know use these different chains like seamlessly you know again because I think it's partially a narrative that's push that's like pushed by those who have an agenda to so no if we solve it they're not going to like lay down their arms and just say like you know and just say okay fine you're done they're going to find the next thing so it's we're going to have to always fight the narrative battle as well um but I do think this is a big part of it cuz like as Ben said there is like a kernel truth here they're they're they're latching on to something real they're making a bigger deal about it than it is they're certainly making a bigger deal about it you know it's much easier to solve than than they want you to think but uh fundamentally I think you know the way I think about ethereum's narrative problems I think we as a community are very long-term thinkers right we embark on seven-year engineering projects and we see them through like the merge was was a was a great example of that um the our competitors are much shorter term growth first thinkers and I think the lesson that we have to learn ourselves is I think the longterm is the more important thing but you can't ignore the short term but you have to actually participate in The Narrative of the day I think you know seeing the ethereum foundation tweeting more getting more involved in that conversation like that is important because you're only going to survive to the long term if you actually participate in the short term so I don't think it's like a massive shift I think it's a skew and we do need to take some of that criticism and you know how we support everyday Builders and make sure that they feel welcome make sure that they're part of the narrative and you know make ethereum cool again mhm if I just want add one thing we we can kind of use the external critique of ethereum and use that as a scapegoat but it's also internal there I'm I'm a marketer so I'm going to bring up the narrative side it's not just fragmentation of infrastructure it's fragmentation of unity around a narrative it's so much infighting within the ethereum community that's preventing progress from happening it's folks who are resisting joining arms with teams that should be competing and they're okay with saying no we're going to set aside our differences and work toward a new goal to make this better for everyone we have to clean up inside too it's not just the salon of folks who are saying ethereum is bad it's internally we have a lot of infighting that we need to fix yeah fair so you know we' the last two minutes I wanted to like wrap up where we started and hear from each and every one of you but if the scalability issue you know was the big problem a few years ago and that's been solved and then because of the scalability issue we now have this fragmentation problem and interop is going to solve it what is this next issue that might arise from this that we should keep our eyes on because sounds like everyone wants to work to do better for for ethereum and and for users and so there's definitely going to be things that come out out of this so what might that be what are you keeping your eyes on anyone can start on this I got one governance and figuring out like what is the proper order of our application topology in crypto what I mean by that is I think effectively what you're saying is like once a bunch of this infrastructure gets commoditized what's next and the reality is it's like these are all kind of second order problems today but the reality is like the open- source ethos of crypto and of ethereum doesn't just like naturally fall out of incentives in all cases like the reality is there are countless layer Parts countless different layers of the stack not like layer one layer two but like RPC provider wallet uh you know block exp all of these things are uh quite frankly like monopolies or duopolies or like basically have recentralized due to the Natural economics and like Fallen back into web2 patterns so I don't know where I go when I think about that I think about basic basically how are we going to fund public goods and how are we going to ensure that we don't accidentally recreate all of the monopolies that we accidentally created with the internet but just on web 3 rails where it's like extra Unstoppable and extra irreversible and immutable so to me that's what it's going to be about it's going to be like once we solve the infrastructure how do we preserve the identity of crypto and not have it fail just like the internet did anyone else want to um I definitely you're right we have a track record of solving one thing and out of it emerges 10 more problems um I think that this year I'm actually really optimistic that a lot of those things are getting solved not just around interrup but with pectra coming and other things like certainly as the uh like user experience Advocate I think that um that we're going to see a lot this this year I think probably to point Ben on like the governance is a is an issue but it's also about like how do we get great Builders to want to continue to build products with crypto um and this partly plays into the narrative as well is like why why should you build in crypto but once we once we solve these user experience challenges like there's no there's no good excuse anymore for why users shouldn't be able to use this technology in a really seamless way and so we need to think about the builders um why both like web 3 native Builders should continue to build what they do but also why the the rest of the world should start paying attention and taking this this seriously sure all right well I guess I mean unless you two want to say something but we're kind of up on time so I'm happy to wrap it up here thank you very much for your time to that it was fascinating and thank you everyone for coming let's give it up for Margo yeah great moderator thanks Maro thank you everyone cors are still growing while the world is breaking down we're reaching in a new way some