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- [00:00]
A
Just by the way, as a small point there, as an example, it's almost ironic. Today, eth in a way has the worst interop properties of any asset in the Ethereum ecosystem and the worst meaning it shares this with many of the other assets, but basically like there's many of these assets that can directly teleport from chain to chain, right? Like if you, if you use USDC and via cctp, you can just instantly hop from one chain to the next with your bt, usdc. With your eth, you cannot.
- [00:26]
B
Hi everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. Thanks for joining this live stream. Before we dive into today's discussion, let's hear a word from the sponsors that make this show possible. Fidelity has been investing in blockchain since 2014. They're not wondering if digital assets will shape the future. They're hiring the talent to help ensure they do. Explore opportunities today@crypto.fidelitycareers.com Fidelity is an equal opportunity employer. This episode is brought to you by Kape America's Privacy first mobile carrier. Same premium service you'd expect from any other carrier, but designed so your number, your location and your data actually stay yours. Get 33% off six months at Cape Co Unchained. Today's guest is Andkar Dietrich, co founder at evelabs. Welcome Anskar.
- [01:24]
A
Thank you. And thank you for having me.
- [01:27]
B
The structure around Ethereum has been changing quite a bit the last year and a half or so, partly due to an outcry by the community to take a more competitive stance and to also focus more on Eth asset. And the Ethereum foundation is saying it's going to be taking a smaller role and obviously it also had some layoffs to put that into effect. And now we have the introduction of E Labs, which sort of seems to be a response to all of that community demand. So tell us what E Labs plans to do.
- [02:00]
A
Yeah, so basically, I think the way I would describe it is really that to me, really you could feel over the last two years that Ethereum was changing. Crypto overall was changing, right? That like for a very long time, really everything was still pre adoption, at least pre mainstream adoption. Right. Like we were building out all of this infrastructure stack, building out all the primitives and defi everywhere. And then really like the ship, the shift was happening in multiple places at once. Of course, also in the US the regulatory shift and all these things were basically coming together and I think it took at least one well I'm not sure if I would say the Ethereum or the Ethereum Foundation. I think it took a moment to realize, hey, this moment is happening. So then you saw the reaction with Tamash at the Ethereum foundation for a year, and now I think the board really sat down and decided, hey, the Ethereum foundation really needs to now assume a new role in this new time period. And that is going to be a role that's more focused on, I would say, protecting the things in Ethereum that should not change. That's how I usually explain it. And that made it very clear to me and to a small kind of a group of my colleagues that there was a gap forming, specifically, I would say the gap around the things that should change, the things that should evolve in Ethereum that need to evolve. And so we decided to leave and to start ethlabs to address exactly this. So basically, very simply, I think ETH Labs is basically trying to help Ethereum evolve into what we think it should become, which we can talk about it. I really think there is, there's a very specific spot as the global economy is coming on chain, there's a very specific spot up for grabs, potentially up for grabs, that Ethereum would be the perfect fit for. And we really think that we can help make that happen for Ethereum.
- [03:55]
B
And so define a little bit more what you mean by that. Like, describe. So if you were to succeed, describe what that vision looks like.
- [04:06]
A
Yeah. So basically, the way I would say it, right, you only have these paradigm shifts in technologies once every so often. And so usually what that means is that once a shift has happened, the way the architecture of the system often is, around how many, many decades, you can see, if you look at the financial system today, a lot of this basically was built this is many decades ago, over time in the United States and in other places. And you can really kind of trace back how that all evolved during a very dynamic time. And then it more and more kind of like froze into place in the current configuration. And I really expect that something very similar will happen with Crypto now. I think basically we will see similar to how everything came online, right? Like when the Internet first appeared, like everything, all the newspapers, everything basically like came online and then there was a very dynamic time period and then basically the new equilibrium was forming. And so I think that over the next 10 years, we will basically see the financial system of the future forming and figuring out, like, what is this new steady state. And once, once that's all in place, then also always you can See these things like regulations will tighten around the new structure and all these kind of things. So like once it is in place, it will probably be sticky and in place in that configuration for a very long time. And I really think there's two different ways in which this can play out. And both of them could then stay along for a long time. And one of them would be what I would say is the multi chain vision. People have talked about this for many years already, but basically a world where you have many different chains, each one serving different use cases, geographic or app specific or just user base specific, some more trusted set of institutions, some are permissioned, some permissionless, all these kind of different configurations. And then we have seen of course this industry evolve around bridging in between these different chains. And the problem is you can only ever get bridges so good because you ultimately bridge between two autonomous zones. Blockchains always, ultimately are about agreement on shared state and these systems by definition will never have a shared agreement on state. Right? So there's always going to be friction, always going to be brittleness to the links and ultimately I think that's not an ideal kind of foundation for the financial system of the future. The alternative would be in a way the exact same system. Like you still want the customizability that you get from different chain, different systems, but all on top of, or I don't know, I sometimes mix my metaphors like on top of a shared settlement layer or maybe you can say the shared settlement layer is like at the very core, if you prefer that analogy, basically one chain, one substrate where everything links to and that way basically instead of many different places that come to agreement independently and then have to talk to each other through these brittle links, you basically have one system that as a whole comes to agreement and then you have all these customized places. But because they're part of one whole, basically all places can interact transact in a fully trustless, fully frictionless, permissionless way. I think that's a fundamentally better kind of configuration for the financial system, but I think it is very much not guaranteed. And I really believe that actually it's very like it's a very unusual role that a chain like that would need to fill. And I really believe that Ethereum is kind of the only candidate that even exists. So I basically believe it's either Ethereum or no. 1, but it's not automatically going to be Ethereum. So our goal really, I mean this is all very high level day to day. We are very much focused on the incremental, the short term, but high level. I really believe that basically the next step for Ethereum would have to be to really claim that position at the center of the entire financial system.
- [07:49]
B
Yeah, I agree with you on a lot of that. And I saw that ETH Labs released a tweet thread about what you plan to focus on in the short term and so interesting. So L1 scaling was the first thing listed, which is some of what you talked about there. But I was interested to see blob scaling was also on there, which is again creating more activity in these separate zones, as you know, as you called them. But you also had solving the interop, you know, problem. So I guess like it. It almost feels like on some tracks you're furthering the, the problem, but on other ones you're trying to sort of change course and go a different direction. So I'm curious about those, that mix of priorities.
- [08:42]
A
Yeah, I actually think, and that's a question we've gotten a bit. And I think I don't want to overgeneralize but I think sometimes Ethereum has this tendency to go in a specific direction. Be a bit naive about it. The naivete kind of like creates some problems and then Ethereum is like oh no, this was the entirely wrong direction and throws the baby out with the bathwater. And I actually. So I think that I've seen this a little bit happen with the roll up centric roadmap. I do think that Ethereum was a bit too, how to say this, there was a bit of a strategic awareness lacking as Ethereum embarked into this direction. There wasn't really enough of a questioning of how is this good for Ethereum? What is the intended outcome here? How is this going to be synergistic? How is this good for eth? People realized this down the road and then the conclusion was the entire approach was wrong. I actually, I don't believe that's true. I do believe that as we talked about like ultimately the future we are building, it needs a very strong Ethereum L1, a very scalable Ethereum L1. Like my main responsibility at the Ethereum foundation of the last year was to put well responsibility. I pushed for basically Ethereum to prioritize scaling and then basically like put, put Ethereum on what I hope can be a 3x kind of throughput scaling per year plan. And so I think the L1 needs to be very strong. But the L1 will never be the be all, end all. There will be very natural needs for again like app specific, geography specific kind of customer subsection. Specific chains, there will be permission chains, all of this, you know, you call it zones. I think that's actually better because in a way chain is just an implementation detail. But there will be a lot of continued need for customization. So I think we will end up in a very like layered and modular system in the end. But the problem was that again the question was neglected of what role does the Ethereum L1 play in it. And so basically like what we will, what, what we will do is we will help Ethereum be a very strong L1 at the core of an even stronger Ethereum ecosystem consisting of, of, of, of all the chains that settle onto, onto Ethereum. And I think that is the way Ethereum wins.
- [10:49]
B
Okay, let's also talk division of labor because of course we have Etherealized, we have the Ethereum foundation, we have consensus like there's even other companies. And I noticed the press release said that the focus for ETH Labs will be institutional adoption, agentic finance and Defi. And I thought that Etherealized was focusing on institutional adoption. And I know that the ef, you know, has already been working on agentic finance. I had Davide Krapis on the show talking about agentic reputation and I just wonder if you could kind of break out for me how ETH lab's role differs from the EF's role, Etherealize's role and Consensys role.
- [11:34]
A
Yeah, I think that's a very fair question and part of why I'm not sure if everyone listening to this already saw this. We put a, a somewhat longer Q and A thread out earlier today on Twitter. Just going into a bit more detail on our work streams, our thinking on different topics because obviously in these launch announcements there's only so much room for nuance. And so the way I would say it is, I think really I would take it as two separate questions. One is like the difference between us and Ethereum foundation and then on the other side, I would say between us and Etherealized consensus, these types of entities. I think with the Ethereum foundation of course there's a lot of synergy there. I think naturally people will see the Ethereum foundation become more specific in focus, more a bit, I would say maybe narrower though I don't mean this in a negative sense, but a bit maybe narrower in focus over the coming months and really focus a lot on self sovereignty, on core crops values. And that means that for example, on topics like Defi, on topics like agentic finance, I think the foundation will focus mostly on the Parts of those topics that directly intersect with crops. So like where can we push for open source AI? Where can we push for basically privacy preserving, defi? All these things, all these are super valuable. But there's also the more bread and butter of how can we make Ethereum the best platform for finance in the first place? How can we make Ethereum the best platform for AI in the first place? Right. So these more practical make Ethereum useful considerations. I think that's how I would say that's where we maybe will focus more on the Lithium Foundation. So that's the boundary line there. And then on the other side, I think it's mocktail with Etherealized, with consensus with these type of entities. Just because by our nature we are a nonprofit. Maybe I didn't say this at the top of the show, but we see ourselves more as an ecosystem steward. I'm personally a huge fan of both of those companies that you mentioned. But of course there is, and that's a healthy thing. There's only so much influence that they're able to have over the roadmap of Ethereum, over the technical directions, specifically, because Ethereum is meant to be a neutral place. And so we, without our own personal kind of interests, on profit interest, we can really focus exclusively on what's good for Ethereum. And that way we have much more opportunity to actually help shape the direction for Ethereum as a whole. So that's basically, I think there will be a lot of synergies. Etherealize is doing amazing job, for example, with talking to institutions, as you're saying. I think often in these conversations, then we can help be in the room as a neutral entity, as a representative of Ethereum, if that's useful.
- [14:32]
B
How did the idea for ETH Labs come about and how did the other co founders come to be these other EF former employees? Barnaby Monod, Casper Schwartz Schilling, Joseph Rudolph and Julian Ma.
- [14:48]
A
Yeah, so basically, I think, I think it was an interesting process of the last 18 months from inside the Ethereum foundation because again, you could feel that something was changing, but it basically took a long time. Of course, these things always are very hard to describe from the inside. It took a long time to really understand, okay, what exactly what direction is this going in. And then I think for all of us over the last four or five months, it became obvious that, yes, the Ethereum foundation has now picked apart. It really is narrowing down to the specific, specific scope. And we all see, we were all in various ways just worried that on its own that that would be a problem because then there's like a lot of specific work that's left undone. But if someone were to step up to do that work, that could actually be a very healthy division of labor. And then we looked around and we didn't see anyone stepping up. And so after a while it just became obvious that we would be in a good position to step up. So, yeah, the five of us, I think we were all just over the last. Yeah, like already last year, I think we all trended towards the more maybe practical side of the ef. And so it was a natural kind of group of people to come together for this task.
- [16:04]
B
And so you have been a researcher at the foundation and I noticed a bunch of you actually had that role. So this seems like it's going to be some mix of kind of like technical focus, but a little bit on the business side.
- [16:24]
A
Yeah. So basically the way I would say it is we have our own backgrounds and then we have our ambition for eClabs and our backgrounds are relatively clear cut. That is more on the kind of shaping Ethereum's roadmap planning, the kind of the hard forks, the upgrades specifically Barnaby and Josh have over the last year leaned more into these ecosystem collaboration efforts around Interp already. So they've already gone down the road in that direction more. But we are coming mostly from this core Ethereum roadmap place. The gap that we are seeing is bigger than that. The gap that we are seeing really is more like a full stack of help make Ethereum useful for as we're saying, the financial system comes online, comes on chain and so really understand what are the friction points, in what ways does Ethereum structurally need to change to be more attractive? How can we make these pain points around the L1, L2 interactions go away and all these kind of things. So that basically puts us in this position where we have a defined kind of scope of what we want to do. And then it was very easy for us to start filling in the kind of the core chain side of this because that's basically more continuation and maybe a sharpening of the work that we've done over the last years. And now that means that we are now ramping up on these other questions. And so we have talked a lot with people in the ecosystem already. We've talked with amazing potential talent that can and will join us in the coming weeks and months. But definitely, I think if people look at the work streams that we outlined as well, you can definitely see that there's a bias for now on these core protocol topics and hopefully over time we can prove out that we can be just as impactful in the other directions.
- [18:21]
B
All right, so in a moment we're going to talk a little bit more about Eth the Asset. But first we're going to take a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Fidelity has been researching and investing in blockchain since 2014, long before it was a headline, and they're hiring crypto and defi professionals to join their team and discover what's next in finance. Fidelity is looking for people with fresh perspectives from different backgrounds, whether it's tech, UX or product design, whether you're crypto savvy or crypto curious, as long as you have the passion to make a real impact at a company striving to make finance accessible to all. Explore crypto careers at Fidelity today and make the decision that could change your future for the better. Visit crypto.fidelitycareers.com to learn more. That's crypto.fidelitycareers.Com Fidelity is equal opportunity Employer if you hold crypto on your phone, your biggest vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your carrier. AT&T Verizon and T Mobile have been breached again and again and sim swaps are still one of the easiest ways for attackers to drain accounts. That's where Kape comes in. America's privacy first mobile carrier Sane premium service. But Cape rotates the identifier on Your Sim every 24 hours, deletes your call and text metadata after a day, and protects against SIM swaps with a 24 word recovery phrase that only you control. You also get two middle to end encrypted secondary numbers for banking and signups so you stop handing your real number to every app that asks go to Cape Co Unchained and use code UNCHAINED for 33% off your first six months. Back to my conversation with Anskar. So as I'm sure you're very well aware, a lot of people in the community are unhappy that Eth asset hasn't been performing so well. Famously, David Hoffman kind of gave up on eth and yet he I saw his name on the list of supporters of Eth Labs, which is interesting. Anyway, tell us what you view as the problems with Ether the asset.
- [20:36]
A
Yeah, and I actually went on David's podcast just the other day to specifically try to have him reconsider and I think we were somewhat successful basically. I think it is important to start by zooming out a bit. I actually like now this was two days ago, three days ago already when I was on CoinMarketCap and had a look. And if you ignore the stable coins, I think out of the crypto native assets, I think There are only 8 coins left with a market cap above $10 billion. Only 8 coins above $10 billion and only 2 coins above $100 billion. Right? Like obviously Bitcoin and Ethereum, Bitcoin and Ether. And I was a bit shocked actually with the number only eight. And so I think that puts it a bit into perspective. Ethereum and Ether have been very, very successful. Now, the problem and the problem for sentiment, and I share that, is that Ether had that success five years ago, right? Like Ether has been in this category, $100 billion plus for five years. And so basically it won round one. It really had a lot of success, but basically ever since it's been waiting for what else is there? What more is there for Ethereum for Ether to go? And I think we've been failing so far to really clearly outline what is the role for Ether that would justify evaluation above that type of category. Right. Bitcoin is the only one above a trillion. There's really very, very few trillion dollar assets in the world. What is the type of project that, the type of role that would justify Ether to join that category? And I don't think it's impossible. I think the problem has been that the relationship between Ethereum and Ether has been just very vague and very undefined for a long time. People keep asking this. In the early days that didn't matter so much. I think in the early days coins were just sentiment trades anyway. It's like, ah, I'm excited about Ethereum, I buy some Eth. But now, of course, people are getting more and more sophisticated, markets are getting more sophisticated. And so the question is, what is the actual value story here? Like, where does the value of ETH come from? And so on. And now that's a long intro to then say, I don't, I'm not here today to have like a perfect answer for you, for you on, like, what, what is the role of eth? What is like, what is the value story of eth? I think that's also, I think be a bit naive, right, to think that that would be easy to just one shot. I think the much more important thing is that it's time now that these questions are properly centered in the community, centered across the code of space, and that we have a clear answer, we have a clear story. And as we keep evolving and designing Ethereum, we do this with a clear role of ETH in mind. And that can be all kinds of different answers, right? Again, I'm not partial to a specific answer here for now, but we have to be much more intentional about this. And so really, ETH Lab's position on ETH for now is really just this need for intentionality for now. We are here just to say that as Ethereum is being evolved, as Ethereum is being designed, and there needs to be intentionality around the world of eth. And so this is part of our mandate that we, that we set for ourselves, is that in our work we will be intentional about the relationship.
- [24:19]
B
So there was a time period when the price of ether was related to activity on the L1. Do you still feel like that is a good way conceptually? You know, we can leave the mechanics aside, but do you feel like conceptually that that's a good way to approach it?
- [24:39]
A
Well, I think it is a piece of the story, right? So I think the story back then was just very simple. Like you could very easily point to, okay, how is activity on the L1 useful for eth? Because it is directly, like it's directly accruing the value through the burn to eth. And now you can then still make the case, Ah, but actually maybe we want monetary premium. And so you can, once you have the basic value accrual story, right, you can then have a more ambitious story for your asset. But the basic story was very clear. There was a lot of demand and it was directly healthy for eth. I think in a future where we get the relationship between the L1 and DL2s, right? I think there can be many, many activities beyond just DL1 that can be very healthy for Eth, right? There can be, for example, usage of ETH in various ways as collateral in different roles across the Ethereum ecosystem. Just by the way, as a small point there, as an example, it's almost ironic. Today Eth in a way has the worst interop properties of any asset in the Ethereum ecosystem, and the worst meaning it shares this with many of the other assets, but basically there's many of these assets that can directly teleport. Teleport from chain to chain, right? Like if you, if you use USDC and via cctp, you can just instantly hop from one chain to the next with your, with your usdc, with your eth, you cannot. That seems like a problem, right? Like, how is it that eth, the native asset of the system, does not have the best properties into our properties, right? And so, like, if I, if I design my markets, of course it's, it's much more convenient to actually like base everything off of the assets that are, that have the best, the most convenient properties for me available. So it's as simple as in some places this is just a small piece of the story, but in some places it's just as simple as making sure that ETH is a first class citizen. As we for example, look at the Ethereum ecosystem as a whole and then similarly on the L1 as well. What is the role of ETH? Is it just the transaction mechanism? Is it the burn? And of course that always is a big trade off, right? Like a big reason of why people basically left Ethereum and felt the need to, to also help start these other ecosystems specifically was because of the high fees. So that particular mechanism one has to be very nuanced about. But again, I feel like maybe it's an unsatisfying answer, but I think it's really just about taking the consideration of each role seriously. That is the first step. And then there are many other steps necessary. But just I feel like people kind of skipped step one. And so again, we are just here for step one.
- [27:20]
B
What do you think about the criticisms that Ethereum gave away block space at too cheap a price and that basically the L2s should pay more in fees?
- [27:32]
A
Yeah, I think that is a plausible characterization, though I would put it slightly differently. I think again, to me it's always a lack of intentionality. So if we look back, the fee burn was also not never intentional. Right. So 1559 is in principle just a scarcity management mechanism. So we have limited block space on deal one and that's in a way a failure of deal one. Right. So now we are scaling Ethereum block space, but the fee that we're charging for transactions is purely a congestion pricing fee. So only if there's too much Demand for the L1 does the price go up and only then does the burn go up. Like that's very different from any normal product in the real world where there is sometimes there's a congestion pricing mechanism on top, but there's always some sort of reserve price, some sort of minimum price that you get charged that accounts for usability. That's not how Ethereum has done things. And so we use the same mechanism for data as well. So data as well does not have a reserve price on Ethereum it basically is like only if there is congestion, only if there's insufficient supply of data or would we charge a higher price and we've only ever occasionally in Ethereum's history seen that. But again, this is not in that sense a failure because the system was never designed to charge specific fee amount. It's really just that there was no intentionality around fees. Do we want to charge fees? How much fees do we want to charge? What about like the. The ability to charge fees if activity happens on the L1 versus the L2s? Right, like so basically like. And how much fees could we charge if we wanted to? All of this has just been falling out of the mechanism as a purely technical mechanism, not as an economic mechanism. And so just revisiting this and now just asking the question, okay, let's just be intentional. What should Ethereum's optimal fee level be? And maybe that optimal fee level is zero or close to zero. That could be a choice we make, but we should make it as a choice and it should not just fall out of the technical decisions that are being made without intentionality.
- [29:35]
B
All right, so let's now talk process. As we've been discussing, I think there's a number of issues with the way Ether is designed in terms of its tokenomics. And when I think of how tokenomics works, it's something where the design is really intricately interwoven with the entire system. And if we have the Ethereum foundation kind of tasked with research and crops and all of these things, all of these things that will deeply affect the design, that in turn has effects on how the asset itself should work, how it will accrue value, you know, what functions it serves in the overall system. So, and this kind of also goes back to the division of labor question that I asked earlier. But it's like if you are a separate entity from the Ethereum foundation and then you also have these other entities, then how can these questions about tokenomics get integrated with the design? And how can everybody be working on multiple different problems that are interconnected all at once?
- [30:42]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think that question really doesn't just apply for ETH, but for all work streams. Not all work streams, but all the work streams that we will be tackling that are related to Ethereum's core roadmap. And there's the same question of how can we coordinate, collaborate with other Ethereum stakeholders that are actively participating in the shaping of the roadmap. Now, today, that is mostly the Ethereum foundation, other than us, and we are just now starting. So to this point, it's been mostly the Ethereum Foundation. But a, sometimes there are other entities that are already today contributing to Ethereum's roadmap most, namely the client teams. Most of these client teams, with the exception of the one team, the guest team team inside of the Ethereum Foundation. But basically all other Ethereum clients sit outside of the Ethereum foundation and they do contribute to the roadmap today already. And then there are occasionally other teams. Actually, myself, for my first two years in Ethereum, I was in a team that no longer exists, but it was called Quilt and also set outside of the Ethereum foundation and was actively collaborating to the road, contributing to the roadmap. And so we think it's a very natural thing, the roadmap process. While it's more informal, we have basically how to explain this best. I think there's the roadmap process that's shaping more where Ethereum is going in the future, and then there's the governance process that makes the concrete decisions. For Hardcock, the governance process is more formalized because it has to make explicit decisions. The roadmap process is more open, collaborative, research based, and both of these are open to contributions. Though the roadmap is a bit more heavily shaped by the Ethereum Foundation. But we've already now, since our announced departure, obviously internally we had announced this a bit earlier than to the public. We've already had collaborations internally about kind of discussing the future roadmap and priorities. There are already some indications where the Film foundation has told us, hey, we think this topic right now, we will no longer allocate resources to it. If you still think it's a priority, maybe you can take it over. So there's a lot of like back and forth and collaboration and we expect these things to naturally also extend to topics around eth. You use the word tokenomics. I actually believe a lot of people at the Ethereum foundation also care deeply about eth. It's maybe just that the culture of the Ethereum foundation is not one that maybe, you know, you can understand. Also, for some historical reasons, it's a culture that's very careful with having opinions on eth. But maybe we can also help not just ourselves contribute, but also maybe activate some of the latent energy at the Ethereum foundation to talk more about eth.
- [33:21]
B
So one other question that I wanted to ask about ETH was this issue about the L2s. There was this period where L2s would tweet things about how Arbitrum was ETH or whatever. And then now all of a sudden, after Vitalik's post this past winter, there's a recognition, okay, yeah, these other assets are Not Heath, but you know, now you have this whole situation where there are these other stakeholders that have their own assets and yes, it's all tied in the same community, but you know, you could look at them as competitive too. So is there anything that eflabs will do to try to address that situation?
- [34:04]
A
So I don't think I can't speak too much on what specifically we will do in that space because that's more something where we over the coming months will maybe have more things to share. But I think on the general relationship there, I keep talking to L2S that, I mean to entities in that general space that usually have two messages. One is they are very happy to embrace Ethereum and also they're like, hey look, we would also be happy to pay a bit more, right? So there is definitely a willingness to contribute back to Ethereum and if Ethereum just finds good ways to expose that possibility. And then the other one, there's also an ask of like, hey, but also we would really appreciate more help, right? Like basically if you help us make Ethereum overall have more network effects, we are also more in a position where we can contribute back even more. Right? And so I do think today there is the question of we still occasionally see these high level, big name chains launch as, as separate L1s and, and sometimes of course they launch SL2s. I think right now it's not obvious for new chains that being part of Ethereum is a superpower. That it. Because people always have this narrative, oh, it's extractive, but if it was so extractive, everyone would run to, to become an L2. Right? Like that's also not the case. I think it's actually much more the case that right now the benefit of being an L2 is not as high as it could be. I think there's a lot of friction, there's a lot of opportunities that we haven't yet fully taken to really give being part of the Ethereum ecosystem a superpower. It's very simple demand and supply, right? Like if we are able to make being part of the Ethereum ecosystem, if we can make that very, very, very valuable for everyone involved, we can then find ways to actually share some of that value that is created today. I don't think that value exists enough in the first place. So I would rather start by focusing on increasing that value proposition and then once we have increased the value proposition, I think it's a much better conversation to have about sharing that value.
- [36:11]
B
Okay, I did also want to ask because as I'M sure you're very well aware there were a lot of complaints also on the cultural side about the ef and these criticisms had been going on for quite a period. But then I feel like the CROPS Manifesto kind of brought all that to a head. You know, people I think were unhappy that it seemed within the foundation there was a request to sign it. And if, if you didn't want to, then you might have to go. So as you're building this organization that is, you know, basically has been founded sort of out of some of the arguments within the community about how, you know, leadership is, you know, is basically being done in Ethereum, I wonder how you think about the culture of ETH Labs and how it will differ from that of the ef.
- [37:14]
A
Yeah, that's great. And I mean, the way you asked it, it's a bit loaded question, but. So I don't necessarily want to comment on some of the specifics of the managerial decisions at the EF and whatnot. I think the only thing I would say is that I think it's just very hard to effectively lead a 200 person plus organization. So there were definitely, I think some things this year that weren't quite a deal. Overall. We do want to take the opportunity here because we want to be synergistic with ef, but so we think that makes the most sense if we really are complementary in different ways. And that also means culturally very distinct. So obviously we're still also shaping up our own culture and as we bring some additional people on and we'll also of course communicate a bit more and over time I think people will see our culture and we are trying to be very intentional about differences. Some things at the app are very special and they are very special, often very double edged ways. They are sometimes necessary for what makes Ethereum unique, but they also come with a lot of problems attached. And I think because the Ethereum foundation exists, that allows us to maybe not have to, to follow in those footsteps. Right. Like if the Ethereum foundation would disappear tomorrow, I would actually be quite worried and maybe ETH Labs would have to try to basically be a replacement, including maybe for the culture. Because I really think there is also a lot to preserve about what makes Ethereum Ethereum. But because this information already exists, I think that gives us the leeway to lean more maybe into how we can be different and that can be in things like I think prefers to think of Ethereum in isolation. And maybe we will think of Ethereum more in relationship to competitors. Right. And in relationship to the real world and the specific market opportunities. Maybe we are at more leeway to embrace ETH a bit more. Right. We already talked about this. Maybe we are more able to be more opinionated sometimes instead of neutral. I think there are many opportunities for us to. To be different, and hopefully that will be apparent. I think if people in a year look at these two organizations and they have to ask, so what's the difference? Again, I think something went wrong.
- [39:36]
B
And who do you feel like are the main stakeholders you'll be interfacing with? Or which constituencies do you consider yourself to be serving?
- [39:46]
A
Yeah, so I think ultimately I would say the two main constituencies that we always talk about are the ETH holders and the builders. And that's how I would say that. So I think if you also look at our set of donors that allowed us to basically get off the ground here to get this project going, you will see exactly those two categories mostly represented. And we think that's very healthy. And we think that's also very healthy because we now have a run rate for two to three years of operations. But that also means that we will relatively soon have to start going back to the same community and talk again about continued funding. And it creates a very good alignment loop. Basically, if a year from now it's not apparent what value we've created for these groups, we won't be able to basically keep operating. And I think that's actually a very, very, very healthy accountability mechanism. I think all of us were a bit jaded. Again, I don't want to say bad things about the Zoom Foundation. I had an amazing time there. But we were a bit jaded of this lack of accountability that comes with the nonprofit with infinite money setting. And so we were very reluctant even to go back into nonprofit. We were for a while looking more at a for profit model, but decided that nonprofit really is the right choice here. But then we really were discussing a lot the accountability and how can we be different there. And so the setup that we chose here hopefully achieves that. Of course we'll have to see. But yeah, so basically, I don't think that means necessarily, it doesn't mean only blindly following all the feedback, though we definitely want to hear all the feedback we can possibly get. So please, if people have thoughts, do reach out to us. We really, really, really want to hear, and we do want to occasionally be opinionated, but the proof has to be in the pudding. And if it's not clear what value we will have created, I think it's very healthy. That basically There will be some sort of feedback loop for that.
- [41:48]
B
Okay. Yeah, that was actually going to be my next question about the fact that your Runway is only two to three years. Obviously it doesn't seem like a lot of money considering that some of the goals that you have clearly are going to take some time. So is your thought that it's almost like. Yeah, it's truly almost like you're getting a grant or something and then you're trying to fulfill certain goals, and then if you do, then you feel like you are worthy of more funding or some kind of similar concept like that.
- [42:22]
A
So we purposefully didn't yet disclose any money amount. The amount of funding that we did receive is actually specifically shaped to allow us to be quite aggressive in our hiring, in our ability to execute here. So the two to three years of Runway are not for the five of us. That is for somewhat larger in size organization, not EF level size, not even close, but something healthy in the middle.
- [42:50]
B
And just give me a number. Are you thinking like 100 people or what number are you thinking?
- [42:55]
A
No, I would say initially for first stage, that's 20 people. Maybe something in that rough order, I think is what I would be looking at. Plus, minus. We do want to be very responsible with, especially also now in the age of AI, there's so much leverage one can have with lower headcount. So we want to only scale up with our specific work stream. So over the next months, we will. Weeks. Weeks, of course, weeks. And then months, we will announce more and more of our work streams. And then for the specific work streams, we will scale up to more people. Yeah, I think that's actually a very healthy size. Again, I don't think we need to build something here for 1,000 years. I don't think we need to build something here for even 10 years. The really important time for Ethereum is now is these next few years. And so then if we do a good job and if there's a continued need, then we are very willing to keep going and we are very willing to do the job until the job is done. But I don't expect that Runway will be an issue for us.
- [44:02]
B
So your funders are Bitmine, Sharplink, Joe Lubin of ConsenSys. Are there certain metrics that were attached to the funding or any other kind of way for you to. Or for the community to measure whether or not you're achieving your goals?
- [44:21]
A
We have some arrangements in place there. I think we will talk about the details at a later date. Sorry. Sorry for not being Able to give you more details now.
- [44:30]
B
Okay. And then do you have plans to generate any revenue whatsoever or is it truly just focused on technical improvements that generate some kind of value to Ether?
- [44:42]
A
Yeah, so we specifically wanted to have a setup where we don't have the need to do this. So that's why the Runway basically that that does not rely on any kind of ongoing revenue. But we are at the same time exploring this. So there might be, especially in some levels of the stack, there might be some gaps, some needs that we see where actually what is necessary is not just another EAP or just some specs or something. It could be that sometimes we also need to go in and build some tooling, some infrastructure, and that can at times come with some revenue potentially. So basically we are open to this, but we are specifically not considering it in our financial planning.
- [45:27]
B
Okay. And so I actually just realized we talked about how in the press release ETH Labs said it was going to focus on institutional adoption and agentic finance. And also Defi and I noted earlier in the show that institutional adoption and agentic finance are kind of somewhat covered by other organizations in the Ethereum community. Community. But actually I feel like Defi is one of those things where the community is always saying it's so important and they feel like it just doesn't get enough love from the ef. And so I'd love to hear how you're going to focus on Defi and what you think Defi on Ethereum needs.
- [46:07]
A
Yeah, I mean that's a great question. And of course, as I talked earlier about today, I have a very good view of what Ethereum scaling needs and I have a somewhat less precise view of what Defi needs. But a we have in the team. Julian is someone who has already been working much more in that space. He actually hosted the very first ever EF DeFi event last year, if I remember correctly. Or was it earlier this year or something so basic. And he had been pushing internally already for the EF to be more involved in these topics. I think in many ways it is quite simple. I think it is as simple as just talking a lot, understanding the pain points and then helping to address the pain points. Really as simple as that. And we've already had many conversations. Some of our earliest conversations were with Haydn, Haydn from uniswap, who gave a lot of very valuable feedback for us other founders in the Defi space. We've talked already and there is a short list of pain points that keep recurring. There's from very simple topics like please Just increase the contract size. And there we can always give the good news that actually that is already planned anyway, without our help, that's already planned for the next hard fork. So that is coming. And two more complex things like how to think about liquidity across chains, these kind of topics, right? And so that is very valuable because then you can start there and you can work backwards to what are the structural blockers today that basically create issues for the teams that make it hard to leverage Ethereum to the fullest. And how can we help unblock these teams? Be that through EAPs, or sometimes it doesn't even need ERPs, it can be done on the layer above. And I think it sounds so simple, right? And I think there is just a lot of value in just embracing, just simply embracing that Ethereum is primarily for finance. I feel like sometimes the Ethereum's big, big, big strength is that it's a big tent, right? Like, I think. I think the Ethereum is basically a community with a huge spectrum of different viewpoints. But that also means sometimes that Ethereum can never be opinionated about something. I feel like the F. In my. That's just a really personal opinion. I personally think that it could be a bit more opinionated about the fact that the main value for blockchain systems is around economic interactions about finance. And Defi is. That's basically the definition of defi. Defi is the very fear tip of financial innovation, right? Like this is where all our finance will be in 10 years, is where defi is today. And that's a super exciting place. And so these are our superstars, right? Like these Defi founders are really what make Ethereum so incredibly super successful. And so just again, we don't have today, we don't have so much to contribute other than just going to them and understanding how we can help make their lives easier, make them more successful. And I think that alone is already actually quite powerful.
- [49:12]
B
All right, last question. You alluded to this earlier, you are hiring. So I don't know if you want to make a shout out on the show of what types of roles you're looking for or what types of people you'd love to join your organization, but I'm sure there are people out there listening who would be interested to know.
- [49:28]
A
Yeah, exactly. And I will say we already. This was part of why we only got our Q and A out today, on Monday, like a week after the announcement, because we've been absolutely swamped by inbound messages of all sorts, including potential candidates for bringing on board Last week the announcement really got much more attention than we initially expected. So this was exciting to see and I would say for hiring we will have, we have basically we have two stages right now we are in the stage where we are, we're getting going and we just wanted to put out the bad signal, explain a little bit how we think about Ethereum, how we think about our work and see if there are any people out there, just people that feel a very strong calling, that are exceptional talents and it really doesn't matter so much the exact shape of the talent. Just like anyone who with exceptional talents that feels the calling reaching out to us. And you can do this by via email@joinethlabs.org and you can find this on the website as well the email address. And so we've already, we've started to have some conversations with people there probably that will be a limited amount of people we can bring on that way. And then as we get going with individual work streams we will have much more targeted open positions. So if maybe this is too vague for you or me or also if you just don't hear back from us again, apologies, we have really swamped and if you maybe see an open position from us in a few weeks and that open position fits you then would be an amazing opportunity to reach out again.
- [50:57]
B
Perfect. Well, thank you so much for coming on Unchained and sharing your insights.
- [51:02]
A
Absolutely. Thank you so much. This was a great conversation.
- [51:05]
B
Nothing you hear on Unchained is investment advice. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only and my guest and I may hold assets discussed on the show. For more disclosures visit unchained crypto.com.
- [51:36]
A
It.