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- [00:00]
A
Foreign the Ethereum foundation dropped a mandate document describing its values, describing its approach. This caused a reaction. Let's say some some people loved it, some people hated it. We're going to discuss it today and give our takes because it is time for another Bankless Takes episode. David we do these things whenever we're feeling what, like, motivated that there's something to discuss. What's the, what's the cadence of Bankless Takes episodes?
- [00:28]
B
Yeah, when they're, when there is a conversation happening that you and I are like a part of or can contribute to or otherwise have takes about. Ethereum is a very frequent topic of this. We've done other ones in the past as well. I think maybe the most common reason or like way that these episodes come about is somebody in the ef. Usually Vitalik releases a blog post and everyone's talking about it. And then therefore so do we. Which is exactly what happened this week. Galaxy operates where digital assets and next generation infrastructure come together, serving institutions end to end. On the market side, Galaxy is a leading institutional platform providing access to spot derivatives, structured products, defi lending, investment banking and financing. With more than 1600 trading counterparties, Galaxy helps institutions navigate every phase of the market cycle. The platform also supports long term allocators through actively managed strategies and institutional grade staking and blockchain infrastructure. That scale is real. Galaxy has over $12 billion in assets on the platform and averaged a $1.8 billion loan book in late 2025, reflecting deep trust across the ecosystem. Beyond digital assets, Galaxy is also building infrastructure for an AI powered future. Its Helios Data center campus is purpose built for AI and high performance computing with more than 1.6 gigawatts of approved power capacity, making it one of the largest sites of its kind. From global markets to AI ready data centers, Galaxy is serving the digital asset ecosystem end to end. Explore galaxy@galaxy.com bankless or click the link in the show notes why does managing investments still mean juggling multiple apps, accounts and currencies? Crypto trades around the clock stocks, ETFs and commodities are moving on chain, yet most platforms still keep everything split apart, turning diversification into unnecessary friction. Bitget is delivering a different kind of experience with its universal exchange one platform where users can access crypto, tokenized stocks, ETFs and other assets in the same place, all traded directly using usdt. No constant transfers, no currency conversions, just a single account built for how markets actually move. Today, as line between crypto and traditional finance continues to blur, Bitget's goal is Straightforward make trading and investing simpler, not more complicated than it needs to be. Learn by clicking in the link in the show. Notes. This is not investment advice.
- [02:40]
A
Yeah, a lot of these are Ethereum related, let's say. I'm actually very curious in this conversation what your opinion is and how that contrasts with my opinion to see like whether there's a delta on that or not or whether we have somewhat similar opinion. But tell us what happened.
- [02:55]
B
We usually don't have that much of a delta.
- [02:57]
A
That's true. But like, let's tease it. Let's. This could be a big clash. Bankless nation. All right, this could be that. Yeah, gloves are coming off. All right. David and Ryan are going to brawl on this one. What happened was the foundation, the Ethereum foundation released what they call an EF mandate. What was the EF mandate?
- [03:16]
B
It was first a tweet, then a blog that linked to a 38 page document. It's not 38 pages of writing, it's probably a third of that. A lot of art, a lot of. A lot of just like, you know, blank pages, just title pages. Very aesthetic. Aesthetically really like turned up the dials on this one. Yes, the idea. It was stated that the EF mandate is a document by the EF for the ef, but they are publishing it, you know, publicly so that anyone who is interested in following along, you know, the broader Ethereum community can follow along.
- [03:48]
A
So it was for the organization itself, it was for the.
- [03:52]
B
An internal guiding document, but then also
- [03:55]
A
it said also for fellow self sovereign individuals on the journey. So people in the Ethereum community as well was the secondary audience for this, you'd say.
- [04:02]
B
Yeah, that's right, that's right. And like the core of the document are two pillars. There's a technical pillar which outlined this idea of crops. I don't think crops had been a thing. I think this document introduced crops. Is that correct?
- [04:16]
A
I think so. I've never heard of crops. It's not been popularized.
- [04:19]
B
It's not been popularized until now. Now everyone in Ethereum knows what crops are.
- [04:22]
A
It's an acronym. We should say C R O P S. David. David will give us the definition in a minute.
- [04:26]
B
Yes. And then the second pillar of the two is the social pillar. So the technical pillar and the social pillar. The social pillar is really just how the foundation conducts itself and like guides its own decision making. Just like if you want to learn about what the ethos of the EF thinks it should have, that's what it's for, I think.
- [04:46]
A
Crops.
- [04:47]
B
Crops. I Will say was the star of the document.
- [04:50]
A
And yeah, I think so. That was the big emphasis.
- [04:52]
B
Crops, censorship, resistance, open source, private and secure. And so this is a guiding principle boiled down into an acronym about what? The ef, its mandate for itself about how to guide the Ethereum protocol.
- [05:07]
A
Yeah, those are the letters, if you didn't catch us. So the CR is the CR in crops and the O is for open source and the P is for private privacy and S is for security secure.
- [05:17]
B
Yes. And in this document, the document stated that if the EF puts crops above everything else. So that's not only are the crops important, but it is the most important thing.
- [05:28]
A
Yeah, if. I guess if you're asking what the North Star for the EF is and they're saying this is part of the North Star for Ethereum too, it's why it exists, is probably crops, those are the feature set that it wants to bake in. So censorship resistance means they define it. No actor can selectively exclude, valid use or break functionality, including by gaining durable, non competitive control of any critical mechanisms. Open source means open source code. No privileged code, nothing hidden, it's all transparent. Privacy means user data is not exposed beyond necessity or against their interests. And secure to them means things must do what they claim they do, no more and no less. I mean, pretty standard definitions of all of these things. No big surprises here.
- [06:14]
B
Yeah, yeah, it is interesting, Ryan, actually, if you go into the document and go command F North Star, there is a. It shows up once.
- [06:21]
A
Okay.
- [06:22]
B
It says the North Star is disintermediation.
- [06:25]
A
Oh yes, I actually had a take on that. We'll get to that. What this document was not though. This document was not a roadmap for Ethereum. It wasn't the straw map that Justin Drake came out with. It was not an org chart, it wasn't financials, it was not any like Ethereum marketing or product information. It wasn't anything you could, you know, send to your friend who's bullish on eth to get.
- [06:47]
B
To make them further. Bullish on eth?
- [06:49]
A
Yeah, right. It very much was. Was a internal type of document, almost like a mission statement type of document. I'd say for, for the EF, for
- [06:58]
B
Ethereum it would be a. In a 300 level course about what Ethereum is for. This document would be in that curriculum.
- [07:06]
A
One of the words that was used repeatedly, I don't know if you've done a search for this, but was the word the term self sovereignty. I think that was one of the big takeaways from this that what is Ethereum for and what will the EF protect is self sovereignty of users. Actually on the first page of this document, which was maybe my favorite part, is kind of a summary of what Ethereum actually is and I think they, they mentioned self sovereignty. They also mentioned this David, which I was overjoyed to see. Ether is a store of value and money that also happens to be an application. There's going to be many, many more applications, but money was is the first application for Ethereum. This to me is something I have never heard the EF say as explicitly and certainly not in any document. I mean it has felt like there have been members of the Ethereum community that have said, hey, just say eat this money. Say it's a store of value asset.
- [08:06]
B
Please, please just say it. Just say it.
- [08:08]
A
We're saying it. We're viewed as such. The it's very clear the Ethereum economy views it as such and so does Ethereum defi decentralized finance. Why don't you guys say it? Well, this is them saying it. So I was happy to see that on the very first page under a definition of what is Ethereum? Well, Ether is an app. It's a store of value app on Ethereum.
- [08:27]
B
This is one of the very few times where we can say that the Ethereum community kind of wagged back at the EF and got the EF to change its position.
- [08:38]
A
Oh, you think so? I think there's been a lot of other times actually, but this is definitely
- [08:43]
B
one of the, one of the best times. We'll say, we'll say that I got
- [08:47]
A
to tip one of our biggest wins.
- [08:48]
B
One of the community's biggest wins. I do have to tip my hat. I'll give a tip to the of the hat to you specifically here because I think like it wasn't, it was a couple weeks ago where you like got Vitalik to tweet that and now a couple weeks later, now it's in a document.
- [09:02]
A
Yeah, I, I think it's been a slow boil though over the past, you know, probably five to seven years of
- [09:09]
B
work from the sense Etherealize in Tel Aviv in 2020 also I mean let's
- [09:13]
A
be hon honest, Gary Gensler and and different regulators, the boot being off the Ethereum Foundation's neck has probably allowed them to be more open in saying things like this. And plus the proof case is here. I mean Vitalik has always been of the mindset that you know, it can be a money if you earn it and if the community wants it to Be a money, you know, $250 billion or so and over for persistent period of time. This is something, this is a store of value. So because God knows he can't get to a discounted cash flow analysis and see a $250 billion ETH. So that was good to see. And that was on the first page where they defined Ethereum. They talked about it. Self sovereignty of computation users having the ability synchro sanct Self sovereignty.
- [09:58]
B
Sacrosanct.
- [09:59]
A
Sacrosanct. Thank you. Look, the word self sovereignty appears like three times just on this, this first page.
- [10:05]
B
I did a command F. It appears almost 50 times throughout the whole entire document.
- [10:09]
A
All right, that was the big takeaway word I think from this.
- [10:12]
B
So in response to the EF releasing this document, there was mixed opinions, some very bullish, some bearish, some in between. Starting with the bullish takes Lincoln Cusack over at world he goes the new Ethereum foundation mandate is bullish. Abandoning the antiquated concepts of companies differentiating on performance metrics, embracing the network future. All value is downstream of sovereignty. Ethereum is competing with bitcoin and gold, not Tempo and Solana Yevgeny from Wintermute, he said something similar. The EF is currently the only player with both the resources and the network effects to not just keep the cypherpunk dream alive, but to actually make sure it happens. I absolutely think we should have at least somebody at least trying this on a grand scale instead of pursuing financial applications.
- [10:56]
A
I should also say he, he, he makes this point in his tweet. This is Evgeny again. Will this accrue to Eth price wise, short term? Certainly not. Will it accrue to it long term? Only if it wins and and wins under the conditions it set for itself, not because of it being adopted by Tradfi. That's interesting. Maybe we come back to that.
- [11:15]
B
I do think that is a theme that you're right we have to come back to and talk about at the end.
- [11:20]
A
A post from Bankless guest Omid as well. He says kudos to the EF for sticking to what matters in markets and beyond. He wrote a long tweet about this, but he's saying that Ethereum is the clear leader in all the activities, all the crops activities, censorship, resistance, transfer, transparency and security. And that's really what makes blockchain and crypto special. So this is a doubling down on the only thing that matters for blockchains. Why are you a blockchain? It's for crops reasons. So of course doubling down, emphasizing those things that would be bullish. And it separates you from some others in the field.
- [11:57]
B
Potentially all others in the field. Like, I think this is kind of what the Ethereum community. Why this Lexnode tweet was actually a copy and paste retweet of a tweet that was copied and pasted and retweeted back. It's like a chain of copy and pasta.
- [12:09]
A
Yeah.
- [12:09]
B
Because, you know, Ethereum is known to be the only one with meaningful crops. Everyone else has done shortcuts.
- [12:16]
A
Yeah. What is the tweet here?
- [12:17]
B
The Lexone tweet.
- [12:18]
A
Yeah.
- [12:19]
B
I do find it kind of hilarious that the main criticism of Ethereum has been that it's remained laser focused on the reasons blockchains exist at all. And you can go and you can click into that tweet and it'll like turn you into a tunnel of people tweeting that tweet.
- [12:30]
A
Okay. Yeah.
- [12:31]
B
And we also have Stani from AAVE who just gave a broadly bullish take saying resilient vision from the Ethereum Foundation. Just thumbs up from Stein.
- [12:40]
A
Okay, so what are the positives we're seeing in the bull takes here? So this is positive that Ethereum is doubling down on its values, on the things that make blockchains. Blockchains. The reason why we are doing this whole thing in the first place, which is crops, and also saying that this separates them from the pack. Right. It's not like an alternative layer, one chain. You know, Ethereum is the only chain doing this. Maybe at some level, Bitcoin as well, but those are in a class of their own. They are doubling down on crops. It's definitely some trade offs here, but these are the trade offs that Ethereum should be making. And that's bullish. Maybe not short term for price, but in the long run, if it wins, that will be bullish. And because of decisions like this, doubling down on the things that matter. This. It's the long game type of argument.
- [13:29]
B
It's the long game. Yeah. It's like people just getting behind the idea that like crops is the point. Ethereum really established what the broad point of a blockchain ought to be. And we're not getting deterred from that or distracted from that. By pursuing short or medium term themes, we're actually going to double down on focusing on the longest term game possible.
- [13:49]
A
The one other point I'll make here too is the P in crops is something that Ethereum has not traditionally had
- [13:55]
B
or it does not have.
- [13:57]
A
It certainly has not achieved on Mainnet or on the Layer One which is privacy. This has been a theme that has emerged far more at the EF and with Vitalik's emphasis over the last 12 to 18 months, I'd say is this emphasis on privacy and I do think a lot of work is being done to, to push that forward. So the P in crops is something that Ethereum historically hasn't had and also in general crops. It's just like Ethereum is not achieved the crops yet not to the number
- [14:30]
B
of nines that the Ethereum and what I mean by that is like you know, you can have 50% of crops, you can achieve, have a 50% success rate. You know, we're still missing all the P, so we're missing that. A very big component of that. But what I think the EF is really stating here is they are going for a very high number of 9.99.99% success on the crops. Vision is something that the EF is doing that's, that's kind of like my understanding of this document is like optimizing for a lot of nines around crops.
- [14:58]
A
That's right. And some of it's aspirational, some of it is the North Star that we're pointing towards and that the EF wants to guide Ethereum towards. All right, so that was the encapsulation of the bullish takes. There were some bearish takes about this as well.
- [15:11]
B
Yeah. The first one that caught my eye was from Donkrad Dankrad Fais, who notably was part of the Ethereum foundation up until recently. He was one of the largest. I don't know if detractors is the right word but the emphasizing the need or the urgency to, for Ethereum to go in a newer direction, a fresh direction.
- [15:29]
A
Yeah. He was an accelerationist of the L1, should we say, or of just moving faster in general, potentially cutting, you know, getting rid of some sacred cows and, and I don't want to say cutting some corners.
- [15:42]
B
I don't know, I don't think he would cut corners. Making some trade offs, having a level of product urgency and, and promoting product as a core vision, not to the detriment of anything crops related but to the urgency of actually needing to get people on specifically Ethereum. If people are coming on chain, we need to put them on Etherium. We need to do some product research about what it's going to take to get them on Ethereum and that needs to happen in the short and medium term rather than focusing on crops in the long term.
- [16:13]
A
So, so Dankrad also the, the Father of Dank Sharding of course and he notably left about a year ago, maybe a little less than a year ago for Tempo the. Yeah, the. The chain kind of.
- [16:25]
B
With no shortage of product optimization efforts.
- [16:29]
A
Yeah, I'm sure that's right. So what does he say?
- [16:31]
B
Dankard said the EF last year, hey, we want to listen to users to make Ethereum better the ES now jk, we looked at the real world. We don't like building for it after all, we want to go back to building cypherpunk stuff only this is the EF going back to its old ways, undoing the changes from last year. I feared this would happen because Vitalik clearly wasn't in with his heart. But whatever they say about the ecosystem being able to take care of this, the fundamental problem remains. There are very few voices in the Alcor devs call caring about real world Ethereum usage and there is nobody doing Ethereum bd. Everyone else who is doing this also has their own separate interests. So this connects us, this part of the storyline connects us back to the rabbling around the Ethereum pivot which happened around the end of 2024 I would say the start of 2024 to the end of 2024 in Ethereum I will mark as a growing crescendo from the community of a need of a directional pivot from the EF about where to focus this time and energy. We got some sort of pivot. It's debated whether or not the pivot actually happened or not or reprioritization as other people say. Something happened at the end of 2024 where the dev focus of the Ethereum of the. Of the EF turned into the scale layer 1 scale blobs improve UX 3 tracks like simplify the tracks have a level of urgency, focus on product and then we got like, we kind of got the pivot and so this is what donkrad is saying is we're getting a second pivot back to the way things were.
- [18:07]
A
Yeah, we're unpacking. Yeah. Some regression to the way things were before. I think a leader that maybe best exemplified some hope in this change of direction and actually helped to emphasize the three pillars that, that you mentioned at the EF was Tamash coming in from nethermind. He was the executive director and he recently resigned about 30 days ago. Now there, there was some follow up here because you know, people were saying yeah, and, and Tomash leaving. There had to be some drama there. You know the, the board at the EF must have Pushed him out. Right. Tamash like swears up and down that there's.
- [18:45]
B
I don't think that's. Yeah, I don't think that's what happened.
- [18:47]
A
He was not pushed out. He left because basically he was feeling like mission complete.
- [18:53]
B
Yeah. It was a job well done. I've done my job here.
- [18:56]
A
Yeah.
- [18:57]
B
I signed up for this role to like serve my time as a steward of Ethereum.
- [19:01]
A
Right.
- [19:02]
B
But Tomash is inherently an entrepreneur. He sees the power and potential of AI from an entrepreneur's perspective.
- [19:08]
A
Yeah.
- [19:08]
B
And he wants to go back to Ethereum's app layer and do some AI Ethereum thing.
- [19:13]
A
I think that story holds up to me. Like I think that that, that makes sense. And yet still donkrad here is saying that, you know, the EF is going to move back to the pre Tamash, you know, timeline where users. It didn't matter as much. The application layer didn't matter as much. Ethereum was going to build this thing whether the market needed it or not. EF would be slow in terms of build out of the roadmap, kind of the before time era, which is, you know, perceived by people like donkrat as kind of negative. And a reason that he left. A reason he would say that he left for Tempo. I think part of the reason he left for Tempo was so that he could pursue the product market fit of stablecoins, you know, like on chain in an aggressive type way of real world application that he didn't see the Ethereum community and the EF maximizing.
- [20:08]
B
Yeah, my, my take about this is Don Grad went to Tempo to bring crops to Tempo, not because he needed to bring product to Tempo. He wanted to work in a place that had product and distribution that he could bring crops to and he was frustrated that no one could bring product to Ethereum.
- [20:27]
A
That's what he has said publicly.
- [20:28]
B
Yeah, that's right. That's what he said. Yeah.
- [20:30]
A
Yeah.
- [20:30]
B
Okay. Moving on to some other other Bear takes Miles Nystrom from Pantera. He tweeted out words not mentioned in the EF manifest. Product roadmap, finance payments, stablecoins, customer developers, market share, scalability. And he says that the absence of these words speaks volumes. Basically taking a very specific lens about what a blockchain is, applying it to the Manifest and saying none of these words show up.
- [20:58]
A
Like none of the real world use cases were mentioned. We're talking about pie in the sky stuff like self sovereignty and disintermediation and just like flowery sounding language. But we're not actually talking about concrete,
- [21:11]
B
tangible things, the things that the market cares about, which is what these things are, is what what he's saying. Yuga Eth made an even deadlier tweet about Ethereum. Downstream of this release of the mandate, Ethereum is on a trajectory to become the Netscape of crypto, historically foundational with its invention of the EVM, as Netscape did with JavaScript and SSL, unfortunately destined for irrelevance due to an inability to focus on what matters. An EF determined to win would focus on how to make Ethereum the best chain for finance. That's not what it's doing today.
- [21:44]
A
Oof. Yuga Dot eth. Huh? The dot eth are what they used to be.
- [21:49]
B
Used to be a bit more bullish
- [21:51]
A
back in my day, I should say. There was one counter to something that donkrad said from Taylor Monahan over at Metamask and this is taking issue with Dankrad's use of I guess the, the term product when describing Ethereum, what it was building. And she said this. Users do not use blockchains. They use products. The EF is not building a product. They are building a blockchain which is a platform that allows anyone to permissionlessly build whatever the F they want. I know it's confusing because there's a lot of shallow single purpose blockchains out there. Shallow single purpose blockchains are products. The EF is not building a product. So what she's saying is all of the people complaining like Mason that there aren't use cases or like donkrad, that the EF is kind of not responding to real world users, she's saying that's not what the EF should be doing. Okay. They're not the, the, the product development firm building on top of Ethereum. Their job is to just build this permissionless open crops substrate so that the rest of the ecosystem has room and the ability to build out the apps. So and, and she calls that a platform rather than a product. What do you make of this?
- [23:04]
B
Take everything is a product for someone. And so I can agree with Taylor and say okay, sure, like we don't build for the end user. Build for, but you're still, you have to build for somebody else. Somebody is the consumer of the value of semantics. It's a little bit of semantics. And so like yes, I take Taylor's point in the sense that like you know, shallow single purpose blockchains are products are a more direct product pipeline between blockchain and user and like there's fewer moving parts and Ethereum has more moving parts. And so maybe the users aren't the direct customers or maybe not even the apps. Yeah, like Ethereum is a blockchain of chains, but somebody is a product consumer and a better product will be able to better express the values of Ethereum in the first place for someone.
- [23:56]
A
I kind of get that. I, I, I would just say just like if, if you think of the substrate of a nation state, like, you know, America or something like that, is America is the nation state, is that a platform or is that a product? Right. And at some level it's kind of, it's, it's kind of a platform. Right. It's very deep in the stack. But there are services that citizens want and you are, at the end of the day, you need to attract businesses and citizens and talent and individuals, and you provide things like security and rule of law and court systems, and you pick a portfolio and a mix of services for your platform, for that user group. So I kind of agree that no matter what you call it, whether it's a platform or a product, you have to be in the business of providing things that somebody wants, that people want.
- [24:51]
B
Yes.
- [24:51]
A
Yeah. And we'll build on top of. And we'll choose to build on top of due to these features.
- [24:57]
B
Yes. I 100% agree with that articulation. Maybe one last bear tweet or just detractor tweet from Haseeb. He goes, I hate to be the one to say this, but please, no more manifestos. They've made great progress on this in the last year. What people want to see from the EF is less manifesting, more shipping. Yeah.
- [25:15]
A
This is probably the one that I resonated with the most. Yes. If you remember, there was. So this was not a manifesto, to be clear. This was an EF mandate. But there was another recent manifesto that Vitalik advertised and signed onto. This was from November of 2025 called the trustless Manifesto. Bunch of authors, different.
- [25:34]
B
This is exactly what he's talking about.
- [25:36]
A
Okay. And this was a few months ago, and at that time, even in November, I was like, okay, cool. Like we got another kind of manifest. It feels like we're being inundated with these manifestos and vision documents.
- [25:48]
B
Yes.
- [25:48]
A
And I think we are very much in crypto and Ethereum world coming off of like, you know, five years of relatively stagnant growth in a bear market. We're in kind of a show me market, which is. All right, but what are you shipping today? Right. I love the roadmap, but what are you shipping. And so at some level the criticism here is publishing this mandate right now in another document rather than code or like something, something that you're about to ship in order to further crops is, is a little tone deaf or at least it's like not being responded to. Well because we're in the show me phase of the market, we actually want to see code. We want to see you shipping privacy on the L1 rather than just talking about privacy as something that you value. And so that's just the how everyone is feeling right now. And it's certainly how I feel. Not to say, by the way, they should be able to chew gum and walk. I mean they should be able to publish manifestos and mandates and vision documents and all of this while also shipping. And some might argue, well, we just got a hard fork in December and there's another one in the first half of this year.
- [26:57]
B
So for every hard fork we get one manifesto.
- [27:01]
A
Well, some are just arguing that like, no, we're doing both. Okay. And so we're, we could publish mandates, but. And we're also shipping code. It's just, I don't know, the climate is not the environment and the temperament and the feelings right now are not as conducive to long documents when we want price to go up and we want use cases to be manifest in the real world.
- [27:22]
B
So, Ryan, you read my Ethereum weekly post goes out to Bankless Premium subscribers.
- [27:27]
A
Yes, right, I did read this. Yes.
- [27:29]
B
Okay, so like the part about that post that I put out for the premium subs this week was the time to write a mandate of Ethereum's values as a guiding document for the direction of Ethereum was in the 2015-2020 era.
- [27:41]
A
Yeah.
- [27:42]
B
And I'm sure there was something like this published back then too. And it just seems the main export of the EF these days are these kind of mood board documents to remind themselves and us about what their vibe is.
- [27:55]
A
Yeah, that is a take. Although I, I would, I would, I give that a partial agree because I actually think over the past year we've seen an increase in shipping from the ef and so I would say. So, yeah, I do.
- [28:08]
B
We definitely haven't seen a decrease. So I will definitely say that pace has definitely been positive. They get points for increase of urgency. They do get that.
- [28:17]
A
Yeah, I, you know, and this goes into kind of how you perceive this document and what your individual takes are. Maybe we'll do one last retort and then I want to get your takes. David. So this is a poster who said, I've read many criticisms about the new EF mandate, but here's what the mandate actually does and why the criticism is wrong. The criticism is the EF is abandoning adoption, but the reality is the mandate prioritizes crops. And this isn't anti adoption, it's actual sustainable adoption, Right? Without crops, why are people even, you know, adopting blockchains in the first place? Another criticism is that the EF should do business development, institutional outreach. Would have liked to see more in the doc about that, but the reality is that's not what the EF is for and they are staying focused in their lane as a nonprofit protocol steward. They're not a sales team. They're not good at that. Could you imagine Vitalik in kind of a sales meeting? Like it wouldn't go well? The EF can't be all things to all people. The F's job is to ensure the protocol stays credibly neutral. And that's what this type of mandate doc actually promotes. Another criticism. They're undoing pragmatic progress. But the reality is we have a lot of progress. I think you made this point in your article too, Larry Fink building like ETF, staking ETFs. Tom Lee is buying ETH on a weekly basis like 100 million a week. He hasn't stopped. Institutions are adopting it. Like the real world usage of Ethereum is actually growing. It's not stagnant. So I think that's some of the counter to these bearish takes.
- [29:48]
B
What I like to boast about this tweet is that it kind of identified the two camps around this manifest pretty well and it put it into like either or language. And then it pierced right through that, you know, criticism. The EF is abandoning adoption reality, blah blah, blah. It's not like because they are promoting crops, they are therefore not doing non crop stuff.
- [30:11]
A
Exactly.
- [30:11]
B
Which is definitely what a lot of people interpret it as.
- [30:13]
A
Exactly. It can be both and. It can be both and why can't it be both and can be.
- [30:18]
B
Yes. Yeah, that's definitely something to talk about. There's also one more fulcrum before we get into our takes. One more like Fulcrum. I want to bring up Dima Buterin, Vitalik's father. He tweeted this out that I thought was pretty illustrative. He goes, the point is to build the world we want to live in as opposed to building for the real world as the real world stands today. And so this is also the line that I think is drawn between the bulls and the bears from this mandate is some people are like if we build for the world as it stands today, we won't change the world. We'll capitulate on our values. Nothing will really change. What we actually want to do is build something that the net new something the world doesn't have and then will will be the change that we want to be and will manifest a brand new world that will be better. And people are kind of taking two sides of picking a side of that line.
- [31:14]
A
Yeah, that word manifest is good too. I do think a document like this can put a beacon out into the world of like hey, if you're like minded, if you want to build towards a self sovereign future then come aboard. That's what we're doing at Ethereum and you can help manifest that vision for sure. I do think that there's a related fulcrum here. You were talking building for the world or being the change the world as it exists or being the change to change the world. I think that there is a deep worry that some have and indeed sometimes I share that Ethereum becomes too cypherpunk and niche to be important. There's a project that you and I refer to a lot. There's a project called Urbit which has been around since I don't know, 2009 or something. 2012, 2013. A lot like it's. It's been around for a while in kind of geek culture. It's running.
- [32:09]
B
Some people get so pilled by Urbit.
- [32:12]
A
Yes.
- [32:13]
B
That they, it's like they stare into it and then they can't look away.
- [32:17]
A
Yes.
- [32:17]
B
And they just go down the rabbit hole and they become an urban person.
- [32:21]
A
Yeah. It's like whole different approach to an operating system where everyone is. Has a self sovereign operating system. I can't even describe it. Right.
- [32:28]
B
It's not unlike how people saw crypto and you go down the crypto rabbit hole and you become a crypto person. But the difference is is crypto as a technology got 10,000 times the amount of adoption and did change the real world impact and did has changed the world and is currently changing the world. Urban, urban people.
- [32:45]
A
It still hasn't. It's been a long time.
- [32:46]
B
They think it's going to happen but it's, it's right now it's just like a fun little toy to play with.
- [32:51]
A
Niche tech, utopian dream, self sovereign dream that like I don't know, has a few thousand users or something and is always three to five years from being mainstream and being the biggest thing ever and when people see things like this, a doubling down on, on some of the crop stuff without the corresponding. And this is what it means for real world use cases. Yeah. I think the worry is that Ethereum takes a path that is not going to change the world because it's too niche and too disconnected from what's happening in the real world and a bit too ivory tower. And that at some level I think that has always been the risk that Ethereum has had or that crypto has had in general. It's just we saw such mainstreaming like of crypto last cycle and it has seemed to have slowed down since. And there's some question as to whether this direction gets us closer there or if we're better off just doubling down and focusing really on the, on the use cases that do have some traction.
- [33:55]
B
I also think that helps illustrate the environment in which this manifest has come into the world. It's come into the world in which the Linuxization of the crypto movement is at its highest. It's like we are at fear of being irrelevant. Higher than we've ever been since 2019. Yeah, we haven't had this fear of like the crypto industry becoming irrelevant. And so, and then this, this manifest comes into world saying we're optimizing for this mandate, this mandate. And it doesn't, doesn't aid, doesn't abet any of these, these fears that people are having.
- [34:31]
A
Some exciting news. We are launching a new podcast to help people figure out the crypto cycle, how to navigate it. The best crypto cycle investor I know, his name is Michael Naito, he runs the Defi Report. This is the guy that sent me a sell alert before the 10:10 price drop happened. His cycle analysis has been absolutely on point. I've been following him for years and this year we started recording weekly podcast episodes. Each one we get into his portfolio, what he's holding, the market structure, entry targets, fair market value of Bitcoin and Ether. And where we are in the cycle. There's new episodes that are released every Wednesday. They're 30 minutes, they're short, they're punchy. I think this crypto cycle is harder to navigate than most. So let's do it together. Go subscribe to this podcast, search the Defi Report. Wherever you get your podcast, YouTube, Apple, Spotify or find a link in the show notes, there's a new episode waiting for you now. Okay, so what, what, what was your take as, as you read this and, and looked at the, the takes surrounding
- [35:23]
B
it, I have a handful of takes the, the fulcrum that I see is that when it comes to crops, the question is how many nines is Ethereum going to optimize for to produce crops?
- [35:35]
A
Okay.
- [35:35]
B
And like putting words in his mouth, I think Vitalik is saying all of them. All of the nines. Like four nines or more like we're going, we're going for max number of nines and that the higher the better. My preference is that, you know, three nines is really good. Even two nines is like if we can get 99% and if we give up some of these crazy number of nines so that we can 10-100x Ethereum's capability on actually imparting change in the world. That is a trade I would make. Now. It's not black and white. It can be positive sum like it's not. We take from this end and we give it to that end. It is a, it's not, not that, but it isn't such a strict dichotomy, but when I read this document, it seems the EF wants to build an Ethereum to be a check on power of the world's most powerful institutions and not be one of the world's most powerful institutions itself. It's, it's. There was this, we, we did this at Bankless takes on Vitalik's article in defense of Bitcoin maximalism, which came out on an April Fool's day. And he used this metaphor. Blockchains are like the file of Gadriel Galadriel. You, you know this metaphor, right?
- [36:47]
A
This is Lord of the Rings, of course.
- [36:49]
B
What, what is a file of Galadriel? A light to you in dark places when all other lights go out. It is not a low cost light. It is not a fluorescent hippie energy efficient light or a high performance light. It is a light that sacrifices on all those dimensions to optimize for one thing and one thing only. To be a light that does what you need it to do when you're facing the toughest challenge of your life. And so this is what I see Vitalik emphasizing is we are going to make sure that we, that we maximize the DX side of Ethereum. We're going to be a tool in everyone's pocket. Kind of like how the no. 1, no nations, no nation, state uses nuclear weapons. But the existence of nuclear weapons has materially changed the world. But in terms of like the economy around nuclear weapons, I'm saying I want that, but it's just like the existence of Ethereum. He's going he wants it to be a check on the power of everything rather than it being the thing. Now I and many others have dedicated my life up to this point to like help Ethereum be the thing, be the institution. Not a smaller, albeit so powerful, but not a smaller thing that is a check on larger institutions. Like my, my interest in, in crypto and Ethereum has always been to maximize Ethereum. Like people call us Eth Maxis. They mainly kind of mean that for the bags. But like if anything I've always meant it for like I want it the maximum version of Ethereum, the version.
- [38:21]
A
I feel like you're saying maybe two things there if I'm understanding you, David. So the first thing you're saying is David would be willing to exchange some of the kind of the medium term type of make some trade offs, let's say, you know, for decentralization for adoption. Right. And so things that you've brought up in the past are like slot times. Right. You know, bringing those down. I know that, you know, there's some cost, maybe with latency, it's not as decentralized as we, we'd hope. But you make up for that with some real world adoption and those types of trade offs you would be more willing to make than a hard stance of let's not sacrifice anything or very much at all when it comes to crops. That seems to be one of the things that you're saying.
- [39:08]
B
I don't like the word trade offs because I do think we can have like very hard line cypherpunk stuff and get adoption at the same time. Like I don't want people to be in this mindset of it's like either or.
- [39:21]
A
Sure.
- [39:22]
B
And I don't want like, I don't also want people to be like, oh, David is willing to cut corners. Why doesn't he just go to Solana? Solana's cut too many corners. I don't care about Solana. I don't have any interest in being there. I'm actually interested in the ecosystem that doesn't cut corners.
- [39:35]
A
Sure.
- [39:35]
B
I definitely don't want people to think that like because I want user adoption and I want to build for the real world, then that means I also believe in cutting corners. Like I don't, I don't.
- [39:46]
A
No, no, I get it. But you said like rather than four nine, you're fine with two nines. Right. So you're willing to make some changes, which I would. That's a trade off.
- [39:52]
B
Fair. Fair. I would also argue that like going from 99.9, 9. 9 9% to 99.9 doesn't matter. Is the same thing. It's the same outcome.
- [40:01]
A
You're saying pragmatism maybe is what you're saying.
- [40:04]
B
Yes.
- [40:05]
A
Okay.
- [40:05]
B
Ultimately, if we do not put people on Ethereum, put institutions on Ethereum, and if we also optimize for too many and too many nines and made it impossible for them to come, and then what are we even doing here?
- [40:18]
A
Yeah. So you're worried that maybe like a hardline stance on crops or these types of manifesto or these types of mandates maybe shed some of the pragmatism that is going to be valuable if Ethereum is actually going to win and change the world and accomplish its big ambitions here?
- [40:35]
B
Yes, yes.
- [40:36]
A
Okay.
- [40:37]
B
As a North Star for Ethereum, I think we should have Ethereum's like market share of not eth price, but eth price is highly correlated, but like market share. And there was a tweet that I saw in this whole, whole debate that I think does kind of exemplify this whole dynamic. Yeah, this is from Ceteris, from Delphi. He goes, if Ethereum didn't have a token that people wanted to go up, the new EF mandate wouldn't be controversial at all. It would be unanimously celebrated. I agree with that tweet. That's a correct tweet. There would also be 11000 the amount of people having this discussion in the first place. So I want to emphasize the point that there is a very strong correlation between Ethereum having market share of stuff on it, how like percentage of the world on chain and how much can actually change the world.
- [41:32]
A
Yes.
- [41:33]
B
If we just, you know, we all, we have said this many times, decentralization is not the end goal. It is a means to an end to achieve certain properties and things. I'm going to apply that to crops. The point of blockchains is to not produce crops. The point of blockchains is to use crops as a means to an end. And that end must be Ethereum growing in market share. And that is a North Star that
- [41:58]
A
I think is part of your second take, which is, I think if I'm going to summarize your take, you definitely want Ethereum to win. And when you read a document like this, it doesn't convince you that the EF also wants that. There is some language in here that I didn't personally vibe with, but it's this idea again of, you know, subtraction for resilience. And the EF has talked about addition by subtraction. In the past, and that was indeed the mandate four or five years ago. I don't think that has gone so well. I think some of the subtraction has led to a vacuum in the space that has been filled by other entities like TradFi. And then there's this concept, you know, philosophically in the mandate itself of detotalization. I'll read this to you. We believe that detotalization building toward a world in which no organization, system or moral order has total dominance over any individual life is the most reliable, reliably good aim. They also talk about the North Star, as you said, being dis. Intermediation. What I worry about a little bit with the idea of detotalization is does this mean you. You are content with Ethereum just being a niche side type of project? Like, instead I would rather totalization of credible neutrality and totalization of Ethereum. You know what I mean? Like, rather than Ethereum being just like a small thing to the side among these other apparatus. Like, why not the entire world based on this global property rights system that gives everyone their sovereignty?
- [43:38]
B
Like, if we're so proud about the crops we have.
- [43:41]
A
Yes.
- [43:42]
B
What if we put the world on the thing with all the crops.
- [43:45]
A
Totalization of crops, rather than de. Totalization.
- [43:48]
B
Yeah.
- [43:49]
A
And that's sort of. It was kind of been this recurring theme when you sort of ask it, like, ef, like, do you want Ethereum to win? Like, can. Like, are we gonna. Are we going to get eth to 10 trillion in value, 30 trillion in value? Like, what are we doing towards that? Like detotalization, addition by subtraction? I'm not convinced it gets us there. Which is some of the underlying, I think, philosophy of the EF that I don't necessarily vibe with, but I do aspects of it. I mean, if the EF was this hungry monster that was consuming everything and trying to control everything and assert dominance, of course that would be. That would be too much and that would be a negative.
- [44:34]
B
We would probably move elsewhere.
- [44:35]
A
But we are so far away from that being a problem. The problem in Ethereum, if there is a problem, is kind of the opposite of that, where we haven't won enough.
- [44:44]
B
You know what I mean? Yes.
- [44:46]
A
Like, that's kind of the problem. So I get that take. What other takes did you have to round out?
- [44:52]
B
Some of my takes here? We had a recent episode with Zuko, and Zuko brought up a talk that he heard from Moxie, the founder of Signal.
- [44:59]
A
Yep.
- [44:59]
B
He brought this up multiple times in the podcast.
- [45:01]
A
Such a good. Such a good piece.
- [45:03]
B
Yeah. And he talked about like a guiding framework for cypherpunks to build products in 2026. And he said this is what Moxie said in this talk. Cypherpunks built for themselves and then they expected the world to adapt. That never works. You have to meet users where they are.
- [45:18]
A
Yeah.
- [45:19]
B
Scale is the only thing that matters. Under 100 million users, you're irrelevant. Crypto is making the same exact mistake that Linux and other cypherpunks have made. Powerful tools for insiders, meaningless for everyone else. And the bottleneck is always ux. If a user has to learn anything new, you're already lost. And so when I read this manifest, none of Zuko's concerns that about what Moxie said in this one talk seems to be acknowledged. And it seems to be like we're actually driving down on the, towards the failure mode where we're doing the thing. Like Vitalik is building the tool for him and all of his friends and like people who can keep up with them.
- [45:59]
A
Right.
- [46:00]
B
To survive in a very like dystopian totalitarian world of the future. Yeah, but we are not allowing like a very friendly way to get on the ark.
- [46:11]
A
So you would have rather read a document coming from the EF of like the 10 biggest UX problems that help that hinder us from having a million stakers and 100 million people directly on the L1. Wow.
- [46:25]
B
Here they are. How we get an Ethereum node into everyone's home. Like something like that.
- [46:29]
A
Yeah, I think. See, I, I agree with that. I understand. Again, like you could just say the mandate itself was not that document and Ethereum's working on that.
- [46:42]
B
I will also express embarrassment that that document is coming, but I, I will shelve my bearishness for the time. I want to hear some of your takes.
- [46:50]
A
My take. So when I first read the document just raw before you, you read the takes on the takes. Right. And then, then you kind of get colored by that. I loved the ETH is a story value asset thing. I'm so glad that they put that at the very beginning. That to me already cancels out everything else. I'm already bullish because it's five stars, five star review. All right. I did really like the crops thing because in particular, in order to have a store of value asset like Ether, you need crops. That's the thing. That's the thing that Bitcoin is supposed to deliver and that's the thing that Ethereum can even deliver more further. And so it's very beneficial for the ETH application itself. So I like the doubling down on crops and the thing that Ethereum can do that all the other corp chains can't do and that bitcoin is arguably starting to fall down on, which is, you know, crops. So that's all bullish to me. It was also like wholesome, this document. All right. It was a little niche, a little out there, right? Not necessarily. My culture is like anime graphics and such. Yeah, a little m', lady, whatever, that's fine. But the. There was an optimism about it, a hopefulness about it. It's just like Ethereum is good for the world, self sovereignty. And so we're in this world in crypto where we're kind of looking in the mirror and we're like, what have we done? What have we been doing? Is this just a casino? Is there something more here? So this was not a embrace of the nihilism. It was the opposite. Like, hey, we're building for a better future here. And I appreciated that. Some, some other things, maybe some quibbles. Like, I felt it was a little grandiose there. These multiple lines of our mandate is written for a thousand year horizon. I was like, this is. This is probably not the document that's going to live a thousand years in the future.
- [48:35]
B
Funny, I kind of like that part you did.
- [48:39]
A
To me, it just felt a little bit like, I don't know, it was a lot to me. But also the sanctuary tech is kind of cool. There seemed to be doubling down on that meme. Vitalik's been talking about it a lot. I still think sanctuary money is closer because sanctuary tech is a whole field of all sorts of things. Right. But Ethereum is a.
- [48:58]
B
If it's a blockchain, it's a blockchain. It's a luxury blockchain, exhibits and accounts.
- [49:03]
A
It's to do with money. It's sanctuary money. So why don't we just. Just talk about the money use case a bit more. Also, I do echo the Haseeb thing. Like, are we shipping manifestos? Is that the signal that we're putting here? Are we shipping code? Right. We're definitely in the show me era. And yeah, I do share some worries that the EF might be going to a pre tamash era, though. I'm not sure. I'm not. I'm like, I'm not there. I do think, well, sometimes the EF appears a little bit. Feels a little virtue. It is a force for good. I'm like, so glad the EF is here in crypto and so glad that they are the shepherds for Ethereum. And yeah, I think it's, I think it's a good thing that this document exists and this organization exists because I guess maybe my takes on some of the takes, this was the Rorkshire test, the Inkblot test, for problems that people have had historically with the EF or Ethereum. And so if you're bullish on the ef, you remain bullish. If you were, you had problems in the past with the EF and their approach, then you saw that in this document. Another example of I, I do also think that there's an unfair expectation on the EF right now, which is people expect it to be all things to all people, and they expect Vitalik to, like, be all things to all people as well. Okay. And Vitalik is just a guy. Remember that used to be how he signed his, his Reddit is just some
- [50:31]
B
guy, just some guy.
- [50:32]
A
He really is. I mean, Vitalik is just Vitalik, and we are fortunate to have him. If he does one thing for Ethereum moving forward, other than just dream the whole thing up, it seems like he thinks his mission and the EF's mission is to preserve Ethereum's soul. Okay. Preserve its soul.
- [50:49]
B
Yes.
- [50:49]
A
And that might be the thing that is hardest to actually do and the most important thing to this whole project. And when you read this mandate, you get the sense that the risk of Ethereum losing its soul is less. With this kind of social contract out in the world and with Vitalik around and with the EF at the helm, okay, maybe, maybe Ethereum will go into Urbit territory, but at least it won't lose its soul. Okay. And maybe that's the bigger threat here.
- [51:21]
B
Yeah. So on the, the whole, like, Rork thing, I, I, I do notice this pattern. Like, we're doing it. We've done podcasts on this where Vitalik will write a blog, and then all of Ethereum and broader crypto Twitter will be like, well, I interpret it like this and I interpret it like that. It's like we have this prophet giving us the word of, the good word of, of Vitalik. And like, everyone's, like, interpreting it differently. And then we have discussions about our interpretations, and it's like we're at Bible study, like, trying to, like, understand what he meant about stuff.
- [51:54]
A
I mean, there's an element of that, and that is the power, like, the fact that everyone is talking about this mandate is the power of legitimacy of Vitalik and the EF and the organization they're building. And that's part of Ethereum's cultural DNA and its soul. But getting to the point of other people need to step up and do other things, right? If the EF is kind of the soul and the direct and the moral compass of Ethereum, okay, it's not going to be its business development arm. It's not going to do the things that Tom Lee is doing. It's not going to do the things that BlackRock is doing. So if this whole thing is going to work, other organizations need to step up and at some level, we need to just accept the EF for what it is and to realize that it's not. In fact, in the document, they actually say, we're not like a product studio. We're not building end user applications. Like, we're not marketing. And then the community is constantly like, hey, why aren't you guys doing marketing and business development? And they're like, we're not doing that. Now, your counter might be. Well, I worry if you're not doing it, then no one's doing it, and then Ethereum becomes a smaller project. But at some level, this whole Ethereum thing is a bet that, you know, adoption comes through other means that aren't the ef. And I think there's evidence that that is what has been playing out. You could certainly be bearish about it, but you can certainly point to the evidence of massive adoption that Ethereum has had with the EF doing what it's doing. I do think the roadmap is getting shipped. So I do think they are actually being pragmatic.
- [53:30]
B
I think this is. It's a mistake to think that because this manifest got shipped that like, the last year of progress that Tamash has made at the ef, like streamlining the organization and like, doging the EF didn't happen. No, that, like, that still happened. And, like, I find it highly unlikely that Vitalik is like, I'm going to undo what Tamash did.
- [53:51]
A
Yes.
- [53:51]
B
No, no. Like, Tamash did the things to the EF that Vitalik didn't have the executional capacity, the operational CEO capacity to do.
- [54:01]
A
Yeah.
- [54:02]
B
And now those things are done. And that's why Tomash left. He's like, you know, I did it. I don't want to optimize for four nines on this job. I'll call it good at two nines and I'll. And I'll leave. And that's what happened.
- [54:13]
A
So as long as things continue getting shipped on the roadmap, you know, I'm kind of happy. And this mandate is whatever. I mean, ultimately, aren't we all just talking about this because there's nothing else in crypto going on?
- [54:26]
B
You know, I mean, even if there was something going on, when EF does something, I think everyone pals on no matter what.
- [54:31]
A
But part of the response, I think reflects the mood that we're in and of other things going on and the price and all sorts of other things. That's the environment, you know, in which this lands. So overall, I guess my take is nothing has really changed as a result of, of this mandate. You know, the risk to Ethereum we've already talked about is that, you know, it's the orbit niche tech, but we have evidence that that's not been the case. And the bigger risk to me that this whole thing, the mandate mitigates is the risk that Ethereum loses its soul. And you start to get that sense when you look at the rest of crypto that Tradfi has kind of stepped in and they're like, okay, guys, we'll take it from here. And it's all Blackrock and Bitcoin and ETFs and the question of. And Tempo corporate chains like Stripe and the question is like, all right, why are we still here? And this document ultimately helps to preserve why we're here. Crops, self sovereignty. And I think that's a good thing. So overall, I was net bullish on it. Not perfect, but net bullish. And yeah, I was, I was, I was pleased it was published.
- [55:41]
B
So this is a tweet that I retweeted. And this is some guy from the Solana Foundation, Chief product officer at the Solana foundation. And he's, he's subtweeting the EF mandate.
- [55:51]
A
He's trolling it.
- [55:52]
B
He's trolling. Well, I don't know if it's trolling. It's a subtweet.
- [55:56]
A
Counter propaganda.
- [55:57]
B
Counter propaganda. And he goes, my mandate, Ensure Solana captures 90% of global finance, that every asset will want to live on Solana, that every human has a Solana wallet, that Solana will become the preeminent network state that Sol sets us all free. And so then I retweeted this tweet and I go, hey, Vitalik, if Ethereum doesn't build for the real world, then what's the point? And people a, people didn't like that I was retweeting the Solana person to begin with. And then we got like, Taylor Monahan came after me and saying, blah, blah. This is like, crops is the whole point. All this kind of stuff. So we have two. Two different, like, Tale of Two Cities. You have the Ethereum side of things, which is like, crops, crops, crops, crops, crops. And then you have Solana, which is like, users, users, users, users. And we. We should be able to do both. And my biggest complaint about the mandate is that I do not at all think that Ethereum's crops is at risk. The values and ethos that Ethereum has a cypherpunk ethos is so deeply.
- [56:57]
A
We're doing great on that.
- [56:58]
B
We're doing like, we're scoring top marks and yes, to many people's points. The reason why we have BlackRock, base, Robinhood, like TradFi, stablecoins, the reason why Ethereum is a dominant winner in that category is because we are the dominant winner in the crops camp.
- [57:18]
A
Yep.
- [57:18]
B
Optimizing for more crops is good. Is it optimal?
- [57:24]
A
Yeah.
- [57:24]
B
I'm unsure.
- [57:26]
A
Ten years in, you're looking for more use case adoption, change the world, show me the numbers, ship some code.
- [57:34]
B
Yes.
- [57:34]
A
That sort of thing.
- [57:35]
B
And the idea is we have an ecosystem that is both doing crops and doing everything that this guy is, is saying that he wants to do in Solana, you know, 90% of global finance, everyone, whoever lives, will have a wallet on Solana. Like, yeah, that's kind of the energy that is missing from Ethereum. And this mandate does not have. And to your point, maybe it's a different document. Well, maybe we'll do a podcast when that document comes out. I don't think that document's coming out. And there's like a principle in psychology, but you can apply this broadly is like, if you want, if you have like a bunch of things to do, the thing that you need to do in your life that is best for you is the thing you want to do the least. Like, if you, if you are a big, like, weight trainer and the idea of, like, going on a run is like, ugh, running is probably the best thing you need to do. And. And so, like, that's kind of my challenge to the EF is like, yeah,
- [58:33]
A
dude, like, speak more like this. Basically getting users is scary, bro.
- [58:37]
B
Growing products is scary.
- [58:39]
A
And sure, Ethereum captures 90% of global finance that every asset anyone will want lives on Ethereum, that every human an Ethereum wallet.
- [58:47]
B
Ethereum becomes Ethereum maximalism. Ethereum maximalism. Ethereum is the bad.
- [58:53]
A
Speaking like this. Speaking like this wouldn't be so bad. Yes, well, I'll agree with you on that. And maybe this is where we wrap the bankless takes, guys. Hope you enjoyed it. Gotta let you know. Of course. These are just our takes. None of this has been financial advice. Crypto is risky, including eth. You could lose what you put in. But we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone. But we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.