The Chopping Block: Ethereum's Identity Crisis, Apostates Speak Out, and Is ETH the Microsoft of Crypto?

Summary

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Unchained Podcast: The Chopping Block — Ethereum's Identity Crisis, Apostates Speak Out, and Is ETH the Microsoft of Crypto?

Host: Laura Shin (featuring Chris Burniske, Haseeb Qureshi, Tarun Chitra, guests David Hoffman, Max Resnick)

Date: May 28, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Chopping Block zeroes in on Ethereum’s so-called “identity crisis” amid a torrent of departures from its core community and leadership, sluggish price performance, and fierce questions about its relevance in the rapidly evolving crypto landscape. Laura Shin’s roundtable—comprising regulars Chris Burniske, Haseeb Qureshi, and Tarun Chitra, along with guests David Hoffman (Bankless co-founder) and Max Resnick (early Ethereum advocate, now Solana proponent)—digs into narratives of recent high-profile exits, Ethereum’s existential questions, its future as a technology and asset, and the pointed speculation: Has Ethereum become the “Microsoft of Crypto”—vital but uninspiring?

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Departure of Ethereum Community Leaders: Drama or Natural Cycle?

Timestamps: 03:39–07:38; 16:41–19:19

• High-Profile Exits:
  Chris Burniske recounts (07:38) a long list of EF (Ethereum Foundation) departures, including Tomash, Bastian Au, Tim Bako, Barnaby, Carl Bekrissen, Julian Ma, Josh Stark, Trent Van Epps, Pablo Voor Vart, and others, as well as Vitalik’s rare public statement in response.
• Natural Turnover or Deeper Issue?
  Chris posits some is “standard turnover” (16:41): “Eight years is a really long time to spend at any single company as a technologist.”
  However, Haseeb (16:03): “Go to all the events and people have gotten older, there’s no new blood…follow the talent. Ethereum has bled more talent than the already fast-slowing crypto talent market.”

2. Ethereum’s Identity Crisis & Leadership Vision

Timestamps: 07:38–15:28

• Vitalik’s Stance:
  Chris summarizes Vitalik’s message: “The EF is not the Number go up work. That is not our job…our job is to make Ethereum impressive…prioritizing the core values of Ethereum…We’re not going to be the central node in Ethereum.”
• Technologist vs Money Narrative:
  Max (11:56): “Vitalik is also a technologist first…built this thing that was supposed to be technology first and it turned out there was a way bigger thing there which was like the ethos money…a big identity crisis. What they actually ended up building was this $400 billion asset.”
• Leadership Concerns:
  David (13:29): “Part of the EF DNA is actually adverse to growth and Vitalik truly just doesn’t want the responsibility and baggage that comes with all of the economic strength and power of like a big Ethereum economy.”

3. ETH as an Asset: ‘ETH is Money’ Thesis and Souring Sentiment

Timestamps: 03:39–05:26; 42:01–44:31

• Why Sell Now?
  David (03:39): “My choice to sell ETH came downstream of the fact that I think it’s going to be hard for ETH to get rerated up or down in any direction. The opportunity cost of capital is [that] there are simply opportunities elsewhere.”
• ETH’s Diminished Upside:
  David (42:01): “It’s not bearish. It’s just, it’s going to track the market. It’s not going to go too high, it’s not going to go too low, it'll mostly keep up, but it’s not going to like impress anyone.”
• Utility Company Analogy:
  Haseeb (42:23): “It’s a utility company that is more or less a fixed income asset with dividends rather than equity value.”

4. Ethereum = Microsoft? The ‘Boomer Chain’ and Ossification

Timestamps: 24:55–37:38

• Chris’s Microsoft Analogy (25:27):
  “Ethereum has become the Microsoft of crypto…very old...enterprise beloved...baked into the bread of things...It’s very safe. It moves very slowly. It’s kind of lame, people. It’s not cool...but it’s not going anywhere.”
• Mixed Reception:
  Haseeb: “If I were to redo the basis for Everyone campaign for Ethereum, it would be Ethereum is for boomers because there is a lot of activity, but it is this kind of boring Vitalik’s receding hairline.” (23:59)
• Counterpoint on Market Relevance:
  Chris: “All this stuff has happened…the last week and Ethereum hasn’t really moved that much. It’s not like, ‘oh man, it’s over now’...the intelligentsia of crypto is clearly despondent with respect to ETH.” (27:12)

5. Value Capture, Protocol Design, and Stagnation

Timestamps: 05:26–07:38; 50:06–54:31

• Layer 2s, Value Capture Issues:
  David: “Layer 2 margins are at 98%...Ethereum as an open source project is kind of like a nonprofit. It doesn’t take a take rate...which is…incredible…but for Ether…the money thesis to be fully realized...it needed to have maintained…market dominance.”
• Scaling, the L2 “Fat Protocol” Debate:
  Chris: “We need to scale the L1. I was one of the loudest people saying, we need to scale…move away from the L2 maximalism and redouble the focus on the L1.” (52:15)
• Blocked by Risk Aversion:
  Max: “At this point they’re basically totally risk off, preserve the value of the asset as much as they can and not try to take any risk.” (13:29)

6. ‘Second Foundation’? What Next for Ethereum Coordination?

Timestamps: 30:02–35:06

• Question of a New Org:
  Chris: “There’s always been this idea floating in the air of a second foundation…David, thoughts?”
• David: “There are people at the EF…thinking about how to do this…there needs to be a rallying cry of legitimacy around this hypothetical new foundation…” (30:30)
• Name Recognition and Power Structure:
  Max: “The title itself…is very important. It’s like if you tried to make a new government for the US… nobody’s going to take your meetings. But if you go overseas with the President…you can go in and meet with all the people who want to buy your soybeans.” (32:09)
• Vitalik’s Sway:
  David: “It could just be the EF…But it would require Vitalik not having absolute governance…my fear is Vitalik has so much sway and influence in Ethereum…” (33:40)

7. ETH’s Business/Startup Mindset vs ‘Credible Neutrality’

Timestamps: 18:25–19:21; 43:13–44:31

• Internal Culture Clash:
  Max: “All of the people that you listed were sort of more on the aggressive side of that spectrum…who want to make the protocol look more like a business…not just random.” (18:25)
• Missing Killer Instinct:
  Chris (43:31): “The spiritual leadership, the business leadership, the competitive leadership is what’s missing…that killer instinct doesn't appear to be valued within the Ethereum foundation the same way that it is among other competitive foundations.”

8. Solana’s Position and Quantum Threats—A Solana Viewpoint

Timestamps: 55:50–63:52

• Solana’s Upside:
  Max (55:50): “There are $500 trillion of securities in the world…they are going to come on chain…there’s basically two choices, Ethereum or Solana…Ethereum doesn’t have enough scale to accommodate the global financial system at this time.”
• Quantum Resistance:
  Max refutes Ethereum claims of Solana’s quantum vulnerability: “Quantum is Justin Drake’s last masterful gambit...we have way more bandwidth…this thing is basically a charade…Quantum is coming…but we know how to deal with it on Solana...we’ll be ready to flip the switch when it’s time.” (58:44–61:44)

9. Broader Narratives: ‘Strong’ vs ‘Weak’ Crypto

Timestamps: 19:29–21:17

• David: “Strong crypto is defi NFT crypto culture…‘fuck Wall Street crypto’…Weak crypto is blockchain as backend efficiency for the world’s big institutions. Weak crypto is doing really well right now. Strong crypto, not so well.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• David Hoffman (on opting out of ETH) [03:39]:
  “There are simply opportunities elsewhere...it's not that I'm bearish Ethereum...The thing happened, it was…it had some amount of its success. I was hoping for more. And that's a wrap on the story.”
• Max Resnick (on EF’s attitude) [11:56]:
  “Big identity crisis for a lot of the early people at the EF…they try to build this technology and what they actually ended up building was this $400 billion asset…kind of broke their brains a little bit.”
• Chris Burniske (on the ‘Microsoft’ analogy) [25:27]:
  “Ethereum has become the Microsoft of crypto…enterprise beloved…safe…moves very slowly...not going anywhere and it's really valuable…It's an extremely valuable company and I think that's kind of Ethereum.”
• Haseeb Qureshi (on talent flight and ossification) [16:03]:
  “Go to all the events and people have gotten older, there's no new blood…Ethereum has bled more talent than the already fast slowing crypto talent market.”
• David Hoffman (on internal culture) [13:29]:
  “The EF DNA is actually adverse to growth and Vitalik truly just doesn't want the responsibility and baggage that comes with all of the economic strength and power of…a big Ethereum economy.”
• Chris Burniske (on future leadership) [38:20]:
  “The EF is just going to die, like it just will, which was always the plan…They have no revenue…In the same way the Steve Ballmer generation…eventually died…Satya Nadella…realized like, oh, fuck, we fumbled. We fumbled mobile, we fumbled the web. But let's pick up cloud because there's still a lot of game left to be played.”
• Max Resnick (on Solana’s tech culture) [57:27]:
  “Throughout crypto, we’ve had these huge network effects…and the technologists have come in and said, we want to upgrade the network, and everybody’s been like, no, we love our network…Solana is the first network…that said, we’re going to make it as good as possible.”
• Chris Burniske (on ETH’s future) [51:45]:
  “The only way that it works for any of these chains is to get there on scale…as more and more people, more and more assets…find their way on chain…you make it up on scale.”

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• 03:39 – Why David Hoffman left ETH; narrative and opportunity cost
• 07:38 – Chris Burniske’s detailed roll-call of EF departures
• 11:56 – Max Resnick on Ethereum’s technologist/money mission confusion
• 13:29 – David Hoffman: EF’s psychology and growth aversion
• 16:03 – Haseeb Qureshi: Ethereum’s ossification and loss of talent
• 23:59 – Haseeb: “Ethereum is for boomers”
• 25:27 – Chris Burniske launches the ‘Microsoft of crypto’ analogy
• 30:02 – Discussion on the potential for a “second foundation”
• 38:20 – Chris: EF’s future, comparison to Microsoft’s Ballmer–Nadella era
• 42:01 – David sums up his neutral yet pessimistic ETH thesis
• 55:50 – Max Resnick: Solana pitch vs Ethereum for future global finance
• 58:44 – Max: Solana’s quantum-resistance roadmap

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Conclusion

This episode offers a comprehensive, sometimes bittersweet, but always deeply knowledgeable take on Ethereum’s current juncture. The sharpest minds on the panel argue that while Ethereum—like Microsoft—has succeeded in becoming systemically important, its lack of founder energy, aggressive new talent, and willingness to “do deals” or move fast, means it risks being outcompeted by hungrier platforms (with Solana held up as the torchbearer for tech-centric innovation). EF’s shrinking role, the unresolved scale debate, and the search for leadership and relevance frame Ethereum not as failed—just mature, ossified, and waiting for either collapse or reinvention.

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Notable Moment:

“It's hard to stop being Jesus, I guess.”
— Haseeb Qureshi, on Vitalik's inescapable influence over Ethereum (35:06)

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For more robust debates and links referenced in the episode, see the show notes for further reading and conversation.

Transcript

[Haseeb Qureshi]

That's such a uninspiring story to someone who's 19. Are you kidding me? You're telling me that this Korean guy in a suit who's, like, telling me number go up is, like, the most impressive thing you can do? Like, why would you even bother? I'm just saying, like, it doesn't seem like a very inspiring message. No offense. Look, Tom Lee, this is not offense to you. You're selling the olds, you know, not a dividend. It's a tale of two Kwan.

[Chris Burniske]

Now your losses are on someone else's balance sheet.

[Tarun Chitra]

Generally speaking, airdrops are kind of pointless anyways.

[Chris Burniske]

I named trading firms who were very invol.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Polyc eth is the ultimate defi.

[Chris Burniske]

Protocols are the antidote to this problem. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Chopping Block. Every couple weeks, the four of us get together and give the industry insider's perspective on the crypto topics of the day. Quick intro is first. You got Tom, the Defi maven and master of memes.

[Tarun Chitra]

Hello, everyone.

[Chris Burniske]

Next we got Tarun Giga Brain, and Grand poobah Gauntlet yo. Joining us today, we've got a double feature. First we've got. First we got David, the crypto connoisseur and czar of Superstate. Welcome back, David. Once again, it's been a while since we've had you on the show. People have been missing you. Thanks for joining us. So we're actually. We're specifically doing an Ethereum apostasy episode. And so we've got Max Resnick joining us once again on the show, the OG Ethereum Atheist. Welcome back, Max.

[Max Resnick]

Thanks. Thanks. Good to be back. Well, I guess this is my first time, actually. But back talking about the topic everybody wants to know about, we've had you.

[Chris Burniske]

Didn't we have you on when you were talking shit about when you first transitioned away from Solana? I'm pretty sure. To Solana. I'm pretty sure we did. Oh, really? We did. You did. You're not remembering, but trust me, our guests remember or the audience remembers. The audience remembers.

[David Hoffman]

I'd like to decline the identity of Ethereum Apostate. I still like Ethereum.

[Chris Burniske]

Okay, well, we'll be going through this. We'll be going through this.

[David Hoffman]

Okay.

[Chris Burniske]

Anyway, I'm a c. The head of Hype man of Dragonfly. We're early stage investors in crypto. But I want to caveat that nothing we say here is investment advice, legal advice, or even life Advice. Please keep ChopInBlock XYZ for more disclosures. Okay, so, David, let me Refine that a little bit. You're an Eth apostate, not necessarily an Ethereum apostate, but you've been gone. You've gone viral quite recently. There's been a string of departures from the ef. There's been a lot of drama around. How is Eth the asset doing? You know, there's been. There's been all this back and forth, you know, Max, I think you were the, maybe the OG in the space to turn your back on Ethereum. You originally were a very active and loud proponent of the Ethereum ecosystem. You defected over to Salana. David, you've made the waves.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. How can you say Max is first? That Suzu tweet predates Max.

[Max Resnick]

There's a lot of people who defected

[Haseeb Qureshi]

before me, I think. Yeah,

[David Hoffman]

consensus, exactly. Max was inside.

[Chris Burniske]

Max was. He was. Exactly. He was in the inner chamber. You know, he was in the. The beating heart of Ethereum and he fought his way out out of pure betrayal. So, okay, David, you're the latest in this string of defections and many people. Actually, I asked Twitter, I was like, hey, what do you want us to ask? If we bring David and Max on the show? And they were like, why are you bringing these losers on the show? These guys are turncoats. What do they have to say? So, David, let me hand you the floor. What do you have to say for yourself? Why have you turned your back on Eth asset after? And I should give some exposition, you're one of the co founders of Bankless. Bankless was one of the early podcasts that really proselytized Eth defi many of the core concepts behind these ecosystems. And you were perceived for many years as being one of the central voices in the media space behind Ether and the Ethereum ecosystem. So why are you now turning your back on Eth the asset?

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, we built Bankless, as you said. And this theses around Eth is money. Ether, the asset will elevate itself to be like Bitcoin, just like money, and it's going to be priced as such. And I think that thesis has to some degree played out. We built that thesis in 2020. 2019, 2020. It's now 2026. That's about kind of the time frame that we had, the time horizon that we really had. And really my conclusion, my choice to sell Eth came downstream of the fact that I think it's going to be hard for Eth to get rerated up or down in any direction. And so the ideas that we had the theses that we had the ethos money thesis played out with some degree of success and there were some failures along the way. But really like the decision to sell ETH came at just like the opportunity cost of capital is there are simply opportunities elsewhere. And I don't really, I don't want to like be branded as this guy who's like bearish Ethereum or just like you know, a defector and now he's writing be post. It's none of that. It's just like the thing, the thing happened, it was it had some amount of its success. I was hoping for more. And that's a wrap on the story.

[Chris Burniske]

Well, so the natural question is why now? Why in 2026 announce that hey, I sold my last ETH? Because to the extent that you're like, look, my thesis was realized, made this big call in 2020. Absolutely you did. We nailed it. Ethereum built Defi, they built the Cathedral Bazaar, the ecosystem. We got all the things that we wanted. Mission accomplished, time to go home. What is it about 2026 that makes this the time to say that.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, in order for Ether to be rerated as an asset, to have this idiosyncratic jump up and elevation in status, Ethereum and the Ethereum layer 1 and Ether and everything around it really needs to have momentum. And that's the thing that I think like uniquely in 2026 I see harder and harder for momentum to uniquely come back to the Ethereum layer one and there's just so much structural architecture against value capture. For eth like layer 2 margins are at 98%. For example, you know, the fat app thesis is displacing the fat protocol thesis. And like, as I was writing this article, like Ethereum as an open source project is kind of like a nonprofit. It doesn't take a take rate, it doesn't charge fees, it services everything to its ecosystem at cost, which is an incredible property of Ethereum. And why I think Ethereum is really going to grow because it does all of these incredible things at cost. But for Ether the money to be like the thesis to be fully realized, it would needed to have maintained like a huge market dominance so that it can continue to do things at cost. But While having like 90% of like smart contract revenue and activity shared dominance. And now that it doesn't have those things, it really needs ETH is money in order to be re rated as an asset. It needs somebody to push it there. Like, like we need to do work and have like strong executional leadership. To push ETH back up this hill that it needs to climb back up. And that is the thing I'm kind of bearish on. Because the leadership at the Ethereum foundation aren't really aligned with these goals. And even if they were, I don't necessarily believe in their capacity to like kind of think like a startup and to operate with excellence is they're just a different skill set of people. And so, you know, ETH is in this trough and it needs to be, you know, elevated higher and he needs to be growing in potential energy. And I don't see how it gets pushed there by this kind of diverse set of different stakeholders that don't have strong coordination amongst themselves.

[Chris Burniske]

Okay, so let me recap a bit what's happened with the ef because that's also been a center of discussion that maybe is partially a catalyst for your coming out and saying that you're departing from eth, the asset. So over this year we've had Tomash, who's previously been on the show, he was co executive director and kind of the public face of the Ethereum Foundation. He stepped down after about 11 months. Bastian Au I believe is his name, was named the interim co executive director. Bastian, unlike Tomash, is very non public. I've never met Bastian. I don't know that he's done any media or he's certainly not active on social media. Then we had Barnaby and Tim Baco. Both are the Protocol cluster co leads. They announced they were moving on earlier this month. Carl Bekrissen, seven year veteran who worked on the Beacon chain in POS. He resigned May 29. Julian Ma, who was working on Focil, he resigned after roughly four years there. You also had Josh Stark who was a co steward of the board seven years. Trent Van Epps on the Protocol Guild, he resigned. Pablo Voor Vart, he resigned. And then Alex Stokes announced he was going a sabbatical. You also had Dankrad who left the EF a while ago to join Tempo quite last year also coming out and being somewhat critical of the changes that have taken place within the ef. And Vitalik came out with a post addressing this. I think he'd been pretty quiet about what was going on within the EF. Basically came out to say look, 2025 things changed. We made some changes in response to what we thought we ought to do in order to be more efficient, be more focused on execution, be more concrete in our goals and shipping. We're doing that now. But the EF is not the Number go up work. That is not our job. That has never been our job. Our job is the way that Vitalik put it is our job is to make Ethereum impressive. We want to be impressive technology. And that impressiveness comes from our prioritizing the core values of Ethereum that make it distinct from other layer ones, the crops values of censorship, resistance and all the stuff you know and love. But his claim is that, look, the EF is going to be a smaller ship than it has been in previous years. The EF only has 16 basis points of all the Ether supply, less than many other individual holders. And so he's saying, look, we're not going to be the central node in Ethereum. If that's what you think the EF is going to be, you're wrong. We would like to see other organizations step up to the plate and take on that role and we're going to maybe even try to help enable that. But that's not our job and you should not look to us for that. That was Vitalik's statement coming out to all this. So, Max, I want to bring you in. I see you smiling inwardly at all of this. What is your take on the recent conversation around Ethereum?

[Max Resnick]

Yeah, so my perspective has always been as a technologist first and so the reason that I left was because I didn't perceive Ethereum to be making any meaningful progress on the technology. So on the moneyness side, I didn't have a strong opinion about that then, I don't have a strong opinion about it now. I do think that there's tremendous opportunity with the new regulations, with Clarity coming along and there's $500 trillion of securities in the world and the SEC is saying we want this to be on chain and it's a really big missed opportunity to not have people pounding down the door in Washington and at the DTCC and at the transfer agents to make sure that that happens. So I do think there's a missed opportunity there. But I guess I'm very content with the decision I made because I sort of saw this coming and said, well, that's not the place for me. It doesn't give me any happiness because I still believe in crypto, the mission.

[Chris Burniske]

I do see a big smile on your face.

[Max Resnick]

I will note that it makes me at least content that I made the decision. But I think it's like bittersweet in that it means that the possibility for the future that we all thought was going to come in with decentralized global blockchains has one fewer player pushing to make that a reality. And they may still be pushing to make something else a reality, but it's not basically moving this corrupt financial system with a ton of mailmen onto a blockchain. And so now there's like only a few ecosystems left doing that.

[Chris Burniske]

How would you characterize what Ethereum is trying to do?

[Max Resnick]

I think what happened is that Vitalik is also a technologist first. When I talked to him, I think that part of us, we see eye to eye on that and so that's the part that we can connect on the most. And what happened is he built this thing that was supposed to be technology first and it turned out there was a way bigger thing there which was like the ethos money. And I don't think he liked that very much, although it turned out very well for him personally. But it was like in my opinion, a big identity crisis for a lot of the early people at the EF where they try to build this technology and what they actually ended up building was this like $400 billion asset or whatever it's trading at now. And then that thing was so much bigger than the thing that they had been building towards and it kind of broke their brains a little bit. And I think what this is is a real focus on don't mess up the asset. Like this technology stuff that we're building is cool, but it's not really going to be $400 billion technology project, so let's not mess up the asset. That's my understanding of what they're trying to do is basically not screw up and end up nuking the asset by say taking the chain down or doing some protocol upgrade. They've already done some upgrades that I would argue did do that like 4844, but we can get into that. But I think at this point they're basically totally risk off, preserve the value of the asset as much as they can and not try to take any risk.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, I totally agree with that description of the Ethereum foundation and ETH leadership. It's always been like there's one thing you could say where the EF is just not really focused on BD and price growth and thinking like a startup or thinking like a for profit and they're indifferent to that. A deeper kind of conspiratorial take I have is like part of the ef DNA is actually adverse to growth and Vitalik truly just doesn't want the responsibility and baggage that comes with just all of the economic strength and power of like a big, you know, Ethereum economy and it's not really what he signed up for and it's not really has never been a priority of the Ethereum foundation. And, and so there's actually some amount of like psychological resistance to doing some of that behavior that would lean more towards the growing the economy side of Ethereum.

[Tarun Chitra]

How much of this is do you think, just like reflective of the fact that ETH price has been so stagnant and kind of lagging for the past few years versus like, you know, if ETH were really outperforming, maybe not even as a result of ETH efforts, maybe you know, bit miner or something. We're doing extremely well and ETH were just ripping. I mean it's a little bit of like, kind of like the bitcoin problem where it's like you can be, you can use bitcoin, you could send it and like it still functions as its thing almost independent of like small multiples of the price. So I don't know, I guess when I, when I look at eth, I mean one, it does feel like there's this constant identity crisis where every four months, I mean what was it like four months ago we got the, was it like the booklet?

[David Hoffman]

It wasn't the infinite, the mandate?

[Tarun Chitra]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that. And then before, yeah six months before that there was no, you know, a real business and real applications have to be built. And like it's like this means nothing because six months from now this is probably going to have something else versus like oh, just the asset is underperforming.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, well I categorize ether in a similar category or I aspire to categorize ether in the same category as Bitcoin where bitcoin's fundamentals are the price actually. And so to some degree like the fact that the price is down and has been sustained down or just lagging the market is fundamentals from like an ETH is trying to dethrone bitcoin perspective. And so it's a little bit self referential of just like. Yeah, that's actually the problem. You're correct.

[Chris Burniske]

Tarun, what's your take on the ETH identity crisis as it's now been framed?

[Haseeb Qureshi]

I mean go to all the events and people have gotten older, there's no new blood. That's, that's. I feel like that's the real signal. Right? You don't see, if you don't see new people. I feel like that's kind of an ossification sign in a way that probably means like hey, they're not people building new exciting projects as much. And I don't know, follow the talent. Obviously crypto has bled talent like there's no tomorrow, but Ethereum has bled more talent than the already fast slowing crypto talent market. In my opinion that. I think that's the simplest answer.

[Chris Burniske]

Ethereum is the oldest, right? So it's like if, if, if sort of you imagine, okay, the standard tenure at a company is maybe four, four years, six years. On the high side, eight years is a really long time to spend at any single company as a technologist. So a lot of this is like, okay, the names I rattled off, a lot of those people, yeah, they hit four years, they hit six years, they hit eight years. So there is some natural turnover that you're going to seize on when there's this other outer shell of a narrative that, oh, the EF is falling apart and everything is terrible and the ETH price is down. Only the reality is that ETH is since the highs performance has not been that different than Solana's, it's just kind of the L1, there's just been an L1 drag. Like every L1 is down a ton and like there's it. We're really searching for a story that isolates Ethereum and attributes it to individual personalities. But I feel like it's a little bit of a Jesuit story, you know, on the day.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

I don't know about that. I think like to Tom's point, if Bitmind was ripping and ethos back at 5,000.

[Chris Burniske]

Yeah, yeah.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

I still think a lot more. No, no, no, I. I still don't think I would see new entrepreneurs. And like, I don't think that changes that much if like dats are the final story, right? Like that's, that's such a fucking uninspiring story to someone who's 19. Are you kidding me? That you're telling me that this Korean guy in a suit who's like telling me number go up is like the most fucking impressive thing you can do? Like, why would you even bother? I'm just saying, like, it doesn't seem like a very inspiring message. No offense. Look, Tommy, this is not an offense to you. It's just you're selling the olds, you're not selling the youngs.

[Max Resnick]

I would just say the specific names that you rattled off, Haseeb, are all people, if you know the sort of internal political landscape who are on the side of what David wanted to have happen and also what I wanted to have happen way back, which was for BEF to take an active role for IT to push development faster, for IT to figure out ways for the protocol to make revenue. All of these, like, these are kind of the pushers that there's a natural tendency for every L1 to have the people who are very aggressive, who want to move quickly, who want to make the protocol look more like a business, and then the sort of credible neutrality move slow, keep the thing up, and we have it at Solana, there is certainly a different queue of ranges of that spectrum on Ethereum, but all of the people that you listed were sort of more on the aggressive side of that spectrum. So it's not just random.

[Chris Burniske]

You're also on the aggressive side, I take.

[Max Resnick]

I'm on the aggressive side. I was on the aggressive side for eth, and I'm also on the very end of the aggressive side of the spectrum for Solana as well.

[David Hoffman]

Can I bring up how. There's one other variable that I want to bring up, which is we're talking about Ethereum in the context of competing blockchains, right? Ethereum is. Has not done well as Bitcoin. Other ecosystems have grown further. But also just zooming all the way out, the market environment around crypto collectively has collapsed to some degree. There's a really good tweet that I read about, like the notion of strong crypto versus weak crypto, or strong crypto is defi nft crypto culture. Like, you know, the cypherpunk rebels, where we're going to rewrite finance with our own, under our own power. And like we're doing finance over here. And it's really the culture and activity that got spawned out of 2021, 2022, just drawing crypto, cipher, punk crypto, you know, fuck Wall street crypto. And. And then there's weak crypto, which is, you know, blockchain technology is a backend efficiency upgrade for some of the world's biggest financial institutions. Weak crypto is doing really well right now. Strong crypto, not so well. And you know, Defi especially, which is Ethereum's core driver, is the weakest it's ever been with the amount of hacks coming from AI. And so like strong crypto, which was the environment in which Ethereum produced and excels in is, is also under attack. And so it's not just about Ethereum's not really doing as well as this competition. That's one thing, but it's also the environment about what crypto as an industry is, is also just not the same. And it's something else that's not quite as conducive to, like, eth is money and ETH competing with Bitcoin? You know, when was ETH the most money it ever was is when everyone was stuck inside during COVID under lockdown and everyone was forced to be on their computer. And money was like, okay, okay, most.

[Chris Burniske]

Let me, let me get a word, Let me get a word in that way here. So this is the problem with having

[Haseeb Qureshi]

podcast hosts on a podcast

[Chris Burniske]

today. I'm the podcast host. So David, you got to, you got to calm down. So, okay, first thing I would say, first thing I would say is that I completely dispute this characterization that, like, Defi is the weakest it's ever been. I think this is the standard crypto selective memory. Is that, like, dude, FTX exploded like three years ago. That was, that was a moment where Defi was much weaker than it is today. TVL collapsed on chain. TVL has been grinding its way up over the last several years. Now, look, in the last six months, it has come down. But, you know, yes, on chain, markets are cyclical. But tv, like on chain and Defi look stronger if you zoom out than they have in a long, long time. You look at trading volumes, you look at, you know, on chain flows, they're actually very robust. And the total amount of TV on chain has also been over long periods of stretches of time, very robust. So I think, like, there's a. There's a little bit of like, oh, no, you know, markets are down, therefore everything has been bad and we're rewriting history a little bit. I think that's, that's just not true. And if you look at Ethereum, you know, I would tell you, about a year ago, it really felt like, or maybe even, you know, called a year and a half ago, it really felt like Ethereum was losing the plot and Solana and Base and, you know, Tempo wasn't around back then, but now people are talking about Tempo. They were all coming for Ethereum's lunch and it was, it was just, you know, it was game over. Like the bear was going to come and eat Ethereum alive. And here we are a year and a half later and do you see Base eating Ethereum alive? Do you see Solana eating Ethereum alive? Do you see Tempo eating Ethereum alive? Like, I'd say all those things didn't really happen. Ethereum is still massive, still has vast majority of the tvl. Go ahead, Max, please.

[Max Resnick]

I think if you're being honest, like on the developer side, Ethereum has been losing to Solana over the past, it may not be base, I think basis has not done very well, but Solana has been doing pretty well on our developer metrics.

[Chris Burniske]

Solana has been doing well, but I would not say Solana market share among developers has increased over the last year.

[Max Resnick]

I think that's just not Solana developer

[Chris Burniske]

market share was absolutely. I mean I can just tell you as a vc, we see the leading edge of what founders are building on. Solana was all time high probably a year and a half ago. Like right now it's clearly crested in terms of the market share of people building on Solana. Now that being said, that's not necessarily them building on Ethereum mainnet. There's a lot of other options that are EVM compatible that they're building on. But it's definitely not true that Solana is. I don't know, I mean, Tom Tarun, you guys tell me what you're seeing, but I think Ethereum is not the place you're going to build day one necessarily. But if you're in any way successful, you're going to deploy on Ethereum.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

If I were to redo the basis for Everyone campaign for Ethereum, it would be Ethereum is for boomers because there is a lot of activity, but it is this kind of boring Vitaliks receding hairline.

[Tarun Chitra]

Just like little screenshot of it. We're getting old now.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

It's just more like what Dave is pointing out, right? There's kind of like this boring stuff that's like web 2.5 and that stuff loves Ethereum, right? Like they're just like, that's the place we're going to go. Where the fuck else would we go? And Solana's making an effort there. But like if you look at the volume, it's like clearly not even a question.

[Chris Burniske]

Yeah, but I mean the other thing to keep in mind is that look, the reason why people are so mad at the boomers is because they have all the fucking money. And that's kind of what you see right now. I think that's where all the money is.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

True, I think that's one version of the world, but there's the other version of the world which is like, oh, so multiples equals DTCC's multiple. You know, like it went from like oh, every new technology, maybe the future of the.

[Chris Burniske]

But then to what extent is Nel ones multiple?

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now you're like, oh, okay, like the people who want to use this are all these people whose equity to income ratios are extremely low and so it's like, okay, great. We're the infrastructure for all these people who are building businesses with like PE ratios of 6. You know, like, it's not, that's not like a. That's not a. No, no, it is, it's not. I'm not saying that that's like a horrible place to be. That's, that's a good place to be. But you're kind of an established boring business. You're a utility at that point.

[Chris Burniske]

You're not like, Right, okay, so I wrote this tweet, I wrote this tweet that I said, Ethereum has become the Microsoft of crypto. And I think this got a lot of people arguing.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

I heard some people at the dinner I was at last week really fighting about your tweet. Actually,

[Chris Burniske]

it was a good Rorschach to us because I actually didn't mean it as an insult or as a compliment. I meant it as like a purely descriptive claim, which is that like Microsoft Ethereum is very old. It was the first. It was the original progenitor of the whole space. It is now very enterprise beloved. It is baked into the bread of things. It's very difficult to remove it from a lot of these flows. It's very safe. It moves very slowly. It's kind of lame, people. It's not cool. It's not going to be the first to integrate your new fancy thing. But it's not going anywhere and it's really valuable. So the reality is Microsoft has been that way for whatever, 30 years and it's also not going anywhere. Still one of the three most valuable companies in the world, or four or whatever it is. It's an extremely valuable company and I think that's kind of Ethereum. That said, I find it hard to believe that Ethereum is. I feel like my claim is that I think one, we are over indexing a little bit on the ef. I think the EF actually doesn't have that much explanatory power for the price of ether. And I think you can see that because all this stuff has happened, right? There's been these EF defections and David selling his. All this stuff has happened the last week and Ethereum hasn't really moved that much. It's not like, oh man, it's over now and the great unwashed masses are

[Haseeb Qureshi]

dumping their Ethereum for what it's worth. All I'm saying is not necessarily that it's over. I'm just saying it's like you're at the end of the SIGMOID you're not at like a high gradient part. You're like, okay, we're plateauing.

[Chris Burniske]

I think what it means is that

[Haseeb Qureshi]

negative. It just means you're kind of.

[Chris Burniske]

Yes, yes. Here's what I think it means. I think it means that Twitter is not pricing eth. We might be pricing Zach. We might be pricing, you know, Venice. We might be pricing some of these other things. We're not pricing eth. So whatever Twitter thinks about ETH is just not where the marginal buyer is coming from. It's not why the price is getting set. The Twitter sentiment is kind of like the. The intelligentsia of crypto. The intelligentsia of crypto is clearly despondent with respect to eth.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

This has to be the dumbest intelligentsia in history. If you're calling me CT sounds counts as intelligentsia. That's.

[Chris Burniske]

I mean, our esteemed guests. I'm speaking of our esteemed guests. That's what I'm referring to.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Yeah. I'm just saying it's kind of insulting to people who.

[Chris Burniske]

Okay, charming.

[Max Resnick]

Charming.

[Chris Burniske]

Thank you.

[Tarun Chitra]

It is, it is kind of poetic when you see people on Twitter also posting these screenshots of like, the EF otcing to Bitminer, and it's like that kind of says it all. It's like our ETH is now in the youth of this dat and that's just kind of the way things are going. And I agree. I was mostly concerned, I think, a year ago about all these stablecoin chains. Basically just ETH alive, right? Like, we had Stable and Plasma and Ark and Tepo, and those are really mostly fallen flat. And I don't really see them regaining momentum in the short term. I mean, it's, it's, you know, we still have many, many years to go to play this out, but like, yeah, if anything, it's like the inertia kind of keeps doing its thing and it's. I don't know. I don't. I think on, on the defi side, I think, you know, like the hyper liquid threat, you know, is kind of real, but in the interim, like, I don't see any, any of the stablecoin activity or maybe frankly any of the tokenized RWA activity to going away anytime soon.

[Max Resnick]

All of these metrics are fake. All of this is fake. Stablecoin volume fake. It's just. It's like totally fake. Like, you just see, you break it down into what it actually is. And I'm not just talking about ether. I'm talking about Solana too, because that's the one I spend all day looking at. It's like none of these things make any sense because it's people transferring money from one exchange deposit address to another. And that's $100 million of stablecoin transfer volume. And it's not actually a change that

[Chris Burniske]

people do like the adjusted people do the adjusted volumes in order to.

[Max Resnick]

Yeah, they all suck. Everybody's skill issue on the Internet. You're also talking Aum.

[Chris Burniske]

Aum is real. Aum is real.

[Max Resnick]

No, it's also Max.

[Chris Burniske]

You're still bringing Martin Luther vibes right now about this stuff.

[Max Resnick]

Doesn't make any sense. We all spend all our time looking at.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

All right, Max is Max. Max has graduated from just Ethereum apostate to Ethereum and Solana apostate.

[Chris Burniske]

Just the whole thing. Yeah. Damn.

[David Hoffman]

Max is a good apostate.

[Chris Burniske]

Okay, so one of the last things that Vitalik mentioned in his response to or in his big mega post is this idea about there potentially being other orgs that might be the number go up org for Ethereum and that the EF might put their weight behind them or try to help them in some way. What do you guys thought about this? There's always been this idea floating in the air of a second foundation and that it seems a little bit like what he's alluding to. David, I don't know what what your thoughts were about this little tidbit in his post.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, there are, yeah, there are people at the EF who are talking about this and thinking about this and like thinking about how to do this. I think it's going to need like a combination of the actual EF like getting loud about their support of this second foundation. Bit mine also needs to get involved here Bitmine as like the $1 billion, I don't know what the market cap is $10 billion entity giving its endorsement of this like defi founders. So there needs to be kind of like a rallying cry of legitimacy around this hypothetical new foundation that people are talking about. I mean we haven't. It hasn't. It's not out yet, but people are working on it. So I'm eager to lend my support because as I said in my article, and I'll say again, it's like super bullish Ethereum the network. And really what's missing is just like a for profit startup minded entity who wants to like be a rallying cry for shareholder interest. That's kind of what Etherealize was. But Etherealize only went so far. Part of the Ethereum's Problem is it's just like a discordant collection of different layers of socio cultural tech stack and you need a lot of coordination across all of them. And so this to your point, Haseeb, about how like everyone was kind of over indexing on the EF because kind of like the one thing that we have to point to, we need like more coordination around different parts of what makes Ethereum Ethereum. And having like a for profit, for profit foundation or eth investor foundation is very, very needed.

[Max Resnick]

I just think like one issue with it is that the title itself of like head of the EF is very important. It's sort of like if you tried to make a new government for the US whose job was to go overseas and get them to invest in US companies, nobody's going to take your meetings. But if you go overseas with the President on the China trip, you can go in and meet with all the people who want to buy your soybeans. Right? So I think that was part of what Tamash's role was and the fact that he was. Yeah, I mean that's what his future is all about. He did that.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

We have lost the plot if we're not cypher punk enough. Get onion futures. All right, let's be real here guys.

[Max Resnick]

True this.

[David Hoffman]

Remember our debate, Haseeb, where you took the pro side of Ethereum and I took the, the bear side of Ethereum. One of my arguments and, and, and you, you said, look, look who is in charge here. The market has forced Vitalik's hand to instill Tamash to, you know, make Ethereum more operationally minded. And like my counterargument was like, you know, Bob Iger, what was that metaphor? Something about Disney like the somebody put Bob Iger in charge at Disney but he wasn't really in charge. And actually the market, the market didn't really actually bend over. And in fact it was. I'm butchering this metaphor, but I know Micah Bolito fed me this one, but the idea here is like, is actually it was Vitalik the entire time. Sure, Tamash is in charge, but with if Vitalik and Aya have the board seats, they're actually the ones in charge. And so like it could just be the Ethereum foundation to be this entity, but it would require Vitalik not having absolute governance over whoever this person is. And like that's kind of my fear is Vitalik has so much sway and influence in Ethereum that he can't be doing what he's doing in Ethereum while also giving power to this new differently minded entity.

[Max Resnick]

I just think the entity name matters so much. Like you could take Lily out of Solana foundation and put her in charge of like Solanialize or whatever and she wouldn't be able to do anything because nobody would take her meetings. Right. Like people want to be meeting with the person who's in charge. Like people who are in charge want to meet the other person who's in charge. And I think you could make a new organization that says Ethereum foundation too. And people would be like, I want to talk to whoever's ahead of Ethereum Foundation 1. Because that's where the real power is.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Yeah.

[David Hoffman]

Part of the issue is you can see Vitalik writing an article and he would just say, I'm not in charge anymore, I'm done and don't look at me anymore. And then everyone, Ethereum would be like, oh my God, such a great article. I can't wait for Vitalik to write something next so I can listen to what he says next. Like it's a trap. Everyone just loves and follows Vitalik. And he didn't. He doesn't even want that. He just wants to be some guy who doesn't want this responsibility.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

It's hard to stop being Jesus, I guess.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, it's hard, right? Jesus is Jesus, dude.

[Chris Burniske]

Look, I think these are very well made points. You're absolutely right. Creating a second foundation doesn't make it so doesn't give it the moral authority to be able to go and do the soybean deals with Xi Jinping or whatever it is. And I agree with you, Ethereum has got to do some soybean deals in order to stay powerful and to stay on top of. Sorry, I shouldn't say that. It's helpful to Ethereum to be able to do the soybean deals. Part of my.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Also the soybean farmers are coming to them though in a lot of the artificials.

[Chris Burniske]

Right, right, right. And this is what I was going to say part of my Microsoft thesis about Ethereum is that, look, I think we're kind of in the Steve Ballmer era where Ethereum is kind of dawdling along. It's a little bit. Doesn't know quite what it's doing. It's kind of pulling in a bunch of different directions and it's kind of going to succeed anyway is more or less my thesis is that the reason why Ethereum is Ethereum is not because, okay, Vitalik is such an amazing organizational mastermind or because the rank and file of the EF are just incredible. Executors at everything they do. I think Vitalik is great. I think EF is great at the things that they're trying to accomplish, but I think their centrality within the ecosystem, I think the most valuable thing for blockchains today, the thing that they're really competing on is not performance, it's not the, you know, how many deals you're landing with Canor Fitzgerald or whatever. The thing that they're competing on is just being the biggest, most trusted chain. And I kind of think that's where the premium is going to come from over the long run. Like Ethereum is going to be the last guy to get there. They're absolutely going to be incredibly slow and painful to watch. In the same way that you saw Microsoft just like Fumble Mobile, Fumble the Web, you saw that like 15 years of Microsoft just bleeding in public and making every single mistake possible. And nevertheless they just had, they had nine lives because they had the right to, because of how Lindy and deeply integrated into the enterprise Microsoft was. That's kind of my base case for Ethereum. Is that like, yes, everything you're saying I agree with. I would love to see a more muscular Ethereum. I'd love to see Tomash still running the show. I'd love to see Vitalik giving more voice and being more thoughtful about the fact that yeah, a second foundation or having some head of adoption at the EF is not a solve for the degree to which the EF more works.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

One thing about the Microsoft analogy though is that Microsoft had this huge upswing.com crash kind of flat, switched to Steve Ballmer really flat. And then eventually new leader, new tried to expand markets, whatever. And look, being able to make Microsoft Teams a horribly dog product that still has 5 million times more users than all your competitors, you know, is, is a nice place to be. But they did find ways to evolve eventually. Right? And like I think like that comes from like talent eventually coming in. And so the question is like, where's the new talent? That to me is like everything you

[Chris Burniske]

can say, I think, yeah, I think that renaissance for Ethereum comes when the EF runs out of money. They went from what was it like? Yeah, they went from like how much was it originally? Like 1% plus probably way more than that. Right. What was the original, what was the EF have originally? They had a lot, they had a lot of the Ether supply and now it's down to 15 basis points. So. And they're, and they're spending quite, you know, they, they have, they have it's a little bit of a socialist. 8.3%, 8.3%. Okay, they went from 8.3% of the ETH supply to now down to 16 basis points. Right. And because it's a little bit of a socialist utopia over there, like almost by necessity, they do have to start cutting. They have to. You know, it's like the whole Doge thing is happening out of necessity at the ef, which does mean that the equivalent of the ef, to the extent that there is an equivalent to the ef, has to get reconstituted through private funds, through private organizations just coming together and saying, okay, the EF no longer has the muscle. It's not happening anymore. And of course, the client development still happens at companies that are to some degree funded by the ef, but they also have their own businesses. So a lot of this has already been done in part, but I think you will see just over the next few years, the ef. And this is what Vitalik is saying in so many words. I mean, he didn't put it this way, but he said, look, the EF is going to get smaller. It's going to be, quote, unquote, one node within Ethereum. He points out the fact that there's only 16 basis points. The EF is just going to die, like it just will, which was always the plan. It has no revenue, which was always the plan. In the same way that, like the Steve Ballmer generation, they eventually died. They literally just. They ran out of energy. They all retired. And then Satya Nadella and the new generation of Microsoft leadership realized like, oh, fuck, okay, we fumbled. We fumbled mobile, we fumbled the web. But let's pick up cloud because there's still a lot of game left to be played.

[Max Resnick]

People don't exist. Like, there is no new. There is no Satya Nadella joining the ranks of Ethereum core developers today who will be ready to assume the reins in five years when the EF dissolves itself, which is such a topic, probably

[David Hoffman]

counts for something because, you know, the EF is just one node.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Again, you're not fucking attracting client development

[Chris Burniske]

led by Tom Lee.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Attracting money, you're not attracting talent.

[David Hoffman]

Those things are correlated,

[Haseeb Qureshi]

sort of.

[Chris Burniske]

I think the vacuum itself attracts talent. No, no, no, no. I think the vacuum itself attracts talent. And like, when people see that there's room, like, if you, if you go to the EF today, you want to get hired. I mean, Max, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how close you were to the EF per se. When you were at Consensus. But like you go to the EF today, it's like, okay, great, I can be responsible for absolutely nothing and be responsive to like a bunch of, you know, 80 year old dinosaurs, right? Like that's effectively what working at the EF is like. Like the power structures are there, they are immutable, like Ethereum itself. Like it's not. You have no ability to move anything. If you come to the ef, give

[Max Resnick]

it a few years, but the EF will be gone in a few years.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Right.

[Max Resnick]

And I also think you're very, very much underestimating the effect of the funding on the client development. I think that most of the client development is funded by funds from the ef. Even at companies like Nethermine that have another business, it's just charity work at that point. Like I worked at Consensus, we had clients, they still have clients there, but those are funded by a grant. So if that grant went away, then

[Chris Burniske]

thank God for all the funds anyway. We can cut the client development teams to like.

[Max Resnick]

Client development teams.

[Chris Burniske]

There's one client, it's all written by AI, it's formally verified, done. No more client development teams needed. We can go to single client. Finally. There you go. AI saves us once again.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, I really do enjoy the Microsoft comparison because it expresses what I was hoping to express in my article, which is like not bearish. It's just, it's going to track the market. It's not going to go too high, it's not going to go too low, It'll mostly keep up, but it's not going to like impressive anyone?

[Haseeb Qureshi]

It's a utility company that is more or less a fixed income asset with dividends rather than equity value.

[Max Resnick]

I think there's equity values, there's no dividends, there's zero dividends, it doesn't pay any dividends.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

I meant it metaphorically.

[Chris Burniske]

This is not financial advice, to be clear, just to re underscore that if you're waiting for your Ethereum dividends, you might be waiting quite a while.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

I meant it metaphorically of like there are these companies that just like all the smart people leave like they've reached some point. Everyone's like, why the fuck would I stay here? And the new management that comes in is some Harvard asshole who doesn't know anything about how the company actually works, but says like, you know what, let's just fire everyone, give out dividends and then hope. We hope the power plant doesn't blow up. And that's kind of what, that's kind of what I. Same analogy. Right.

[Max Resnick]

Who's going to go in and raise the.

[Chris Burniske]

Don't know. Okay, so let me push back a little bit against the core of this argument, which is that I actually don't know that the problem is that Ethereum is not moving fast enough from a development perspective.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

No, I don't think it's a clear problem to solve that would change their outcome in their opinion.

[Chris Burniske]

Which tells me, I think most of the problem is not that, oh, client development's not getting done and Vitalik is slowing everything down. I think it's more that the spiritual leadership, the business leadership, the competitive leadership is what's missing. Right. That energy, that drive, that killer instinct doesn't appear to be valued within the Ethereum foundation the same way that it is among other competitive foundations. Tempo has that, Solana has that, a lot of these other groups have that. And if you don't have that for too long, you're going to lose something in like the whole Make America Great again, we want to renegotiate these deals for America. Look, it might be unwise, but the energy behind it is clearly valuable to holding onto your position in the world. You need some of that. You can't have zero of it. Right. I think that is more what the spiritual illness at the core of Ethereum is. I think it's more what people are pointing to. Not that nothing's ever getting shipped or that there are no protocol upgrades like they're having. Max might have that objection, but I don't think that's the main objection that people have.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

I think you need talent to come up with new ideas and new things to do also. Right. And like, that seems to also kind of.

[Chris Burniske]

When you say new ideas, like, what do you mean new ideas? You mean new startups or do you mean new protocol changes?

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Okay, simple. You. You want to keep. We want to really lean into this Microsoft analogy. The Satya Nadella thing was like, stop making people use Microsoft at our data centers, lean into our cloud product and tell people to stop fucking relying on licenses for our existing software, which, yes, that carried us for 20 years. And then also just copy every enterprise SaaS software like Slack and whatever and make a shitty version. So all the lawyers were forced to like, force all their clients to buy Word because they'll only sell it in legal documents and that are full, fully track changes compatible with Word, have to use us still and that, you know, those don't sound that crazy, right? But they were like evolutionary, let's say, changes for Microsoft that were like, completely necessary to get out of the era where Microsoft was like, we're going to build Bing, we're going to build a social network, we're going to build an MP3 player, we're going to build every fucking thing that doesn't make sense for us to build. And I think, like, that there's not that energy, you know, like that there's not like a, like, hey, you know. And my point though is you need to structurally be able to attract the talent that's willing to come into it. And you're saying, like, the existence of a vacuum implies the existence of an antiparticle. It's like, it's like, it's like a positron and it's antiparticle. And it's like, I don't see why the fuck that exists here. Like, I don't see why the existence of vacuum means someone should. There's so many.

[Chris Burniske]

I think Etherealize is the, is a good example. So look, to the extent that the EF is like, okay, crops, decentralization, maxis, like Ethereum is for the dissidents and the people who are running away from governments. That's what Ethereum is for. It's sanctuary technology. Etherealize is not sanctuary technology.

[Tarun Chitra]

Right.

[Chris Burniske]

Etherealize is. We are for enterprises, period. Full stop. End of story. You want to make decentralization compromises, we're going to help you do it. That's what we're here for. We're here to actually get Wall street on chain. That to me, is what you're talking about. That is the, okay, let's violate the sacred cows of the previous administration in the service of adoption and actually winning the game. Now, Etherealize doesn't run Ethereum. It doesn't. I mean, as far as I know, it doesn't run anything besides a company. But I think what you can see is that if the EF weakens in power and becomes less essential. Note of Ethereum, things like Etherealize by definition become a louder and louder part of the overall footprint. And I think in a way, when Steve Ballmer was in his prime. Doesn't like, Cy worked at Microsoft for like 20 plus years. Yeah, there were dudes there.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Well, I think that's Max's. That's Max's point. That's Max's point though. Who is. Are there. Is there a pipeline of that now? Not really. Like, that's what it sort of feels like.

[Chris Burniske]

I mean, look, I'm not, I don't know that there's a. Like, obviously it's not exactly the same because there's no CEO of Ethereum that's going to. Nobody's going to step up and become the CEO of Ethereum.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

No, but someone has to be in the ecosystem to understand the mores and nuances of the ecosystem for a long time. They're not just going to show up and be like, I'm in charge now. Like, obviously that's never going to work.

[David Hoffman]

And the reason why Satya was able to Ascend was, you know, he started low, ended high, was because he was able to ride up a for profit company for that entire time to pay him a salary where there's no equivalent inside of Ethereum. You can do a startup or, you know, Etherealize is a for profit thing, but it's nothing.

[Chris Burniske]

Okay, who, who right now is the spiritual leader of Bitcoin?

[David Hoffman]

Sailor.

[Chris Burniske]

One name Sailor. It's Sailor, right? Why is it Sailor? Why?

[David Hoffman]

Because he's. Because he's. He's pushing Bitcoin up the main questline.

[Chris Burniske]

Because there's nobody else who has a strong enough voice to overcome the financial force of Saylor. Saylor has a stronger gravitational force than anybody else in Bitcoin. Saylor is a fucking public company CEO. He ran an enterprise software company and he is Mr. Bitcoin now, right? Everywhere in the world he's Mr. Bitcoin. So the idea that this can't happen on its own, I think is just insufficiently imaginative. It literally already happened.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

I think it's different when your asset is like the entire goal is just to be like, we're gold. Right? It's easier for Bitcoin, it's much harder for Ethereum. You do need someone with something.

[Chris Burniske]

I think the reason why it's harder is because the EF exists and because Vitalik is Vitalik. I think if you give it a few years and the EF success.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

What if you become the CEO of Ethereum? No, I'm kidding.

[Chris Burniske]

You know what I've got? All I need is the glasses and I can become the Satya Nadella. I'm ready for it. I seem to be the only bullish person left who's willing to say good things about Ethereum.

[David Hoffman]

The most likely outcome here that Haseeb, that I think you're pointing to is like bitmind takes a far more activist role and works well and pairs well with this second foundation that's on its way.

[Max Resnick]

Haseeb, I have a question for you. If Ethereum never made another relevant protocol upgrade again, can they still be successful?

[Chris Burniske]

Are they decreasing? Are they Increasing the gas limit or literally never again.

[Max Resnick]

I mean, let's say that they increase the gas limit by 30% a year, which is what they're doing right now, and that's it.

[Chris Burniske]

I think they're probably fine.

[Max Resnick]

And why do you say they'll be fine? Are they going to make any revenue or what are they going to do? They're not going to make any value if they do that.

[Chris Burniske]

I think what happens is that, look, the thesis that I have for blockchains, and maybe I'm going to hope that there's a thesis that other people have for blockchains, is that it's a classic, you make it up on scale, is that as more and more people, more and more assets, more and more value finds its way on chain. The like you, you forego revenue today because when you get much, much bigger and there are many, many more people running through your pipes, you don't need to be charging 2% on every transaction, which is like what it will look like in 2021. You're charging a very, very small percent on a very, very large economic base. If blockchains don't get there, then we kind of lost. We were kind of wrong about the thesis. And blockchains are this weird little artifact. They're, you know, one of the many things in the world that exist. I don't believe that. I believe they're not going to be one of the many things in the world that exist. I think they're going to be one of the main things in the world that exists technologically. When you describe how the world works in 15 years, blockchains are going to be a big part of the explanation. If I'm wrong about that, then it doesn't matter what Ethereum does. There is no thing that Ethereum is going to do to be able to hold on to that kind of economic might. I think the only way that it works for any of these chains is to get their own scale. That's my claim. I think that the reason why you could get away with the highway robbery that we had in 2021 was because there was no interoperability. There were no other options. There were no escape valves. There was money that was just fundamentally stuck in these ecosystems that couldn't get out. And all the volatility, the snow globe was shaken up too aggressively that so much MEV was getting created that it couldn't escape. I don't think that's going to happen again to the same scale it did in 2021. I think the answer has to be that you make it on scale.

[Max Resnick]

What happens if everybody's ready to come on chain? We get clarity and it's time to put the shit on chain. It's time to put DTCC on chain. Okay. And they go to Ethereum and Ethereum says, well, based on our current rate of increasing the gas limit, we'll be ready for you in 20131 or something like that. Right? Yeah, whatever the date is it. And then they just choose to go somewhere else, like Solana or Hyperlink or wherever else they decide to go. Isn't that a real risk?

[Chris Burniske]

It is a real risk. It is a real risk. And so that's why I am very supportive and was very supportive of all of the. I can't remember the name of it, but the initiative of let's scale the hell out of Ethereum and let's make it. Let's scale the L1. I was one of the loudest people saying, we need to scale the L1. We need to refocus, you know, move away from the L2 maximalism and redouble the focus on the L1. As far as I know, nobody is claiming that Ethereum has abandoned that goal.

[Max Resnick]

Well, except the people who just left were the loudest champions of that goal at the ef.

[Chris Burniske]

If you read, they may well have been. I mean, again, I don't know the politics within the EF as well as you do. So you are.

[David Hoffman]

Do we even know if the DTC is gonna pick a chain? NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange both are doing their own internal blockchains. Why is it coming on the public change? Do we even know that?

[Max Resnick]

I don't think we know that. I think that's.

[David Hoffman]

That's not a game.

[Max Resnick]

We gotta pound on the door and get them to do it. I think it's a real risk for everybody that these guys are going to do their own chain. I mean, they charge 6 cents a transaction at the DTCC just to change the number in the spreadsheet and they make $1.5 billion a year or something like that. But that's still not really enough to justify Theorem's valuation, right?

[Chris Burniske]

Correct, Correct. And look, another thing that's worth underscoring is the narrative for Ethereum has changed over time. So it started as a world computer, then it became, what was it, super ultrasound money. Now, I don't know what exactly it is. There was the L2, whatever. Where? The Grand Bazaar. And then now it's like we're sanctuary technology. I don't know what exactly the new narrative is. And then according to Tom Lee, it's the chatgpt of, of blockchain or whatever.

[David Hoffman]

So stable coins are the chat GPT for crypto. As long as they do it, stable

[Chris Burniske]

coins are the chatgpt of crypto. Sorry, that's what it is. What what is, what is? Eth. What is his line about eth? I don't actually know.

[David Hoffman]

And stable coins are on Ethereum.

[Chris Burniske]

Was his stable coins on Ethereum.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Stable coins are the chat GPT of crypto.

[David Hoffman]

Hey man, that, that line.

[Chris Burniske]

We've talked about this before on the show.

[David Hoffman]

Hundred dollars to all time highs. So you can't really laugh at it.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

I, I can laugh at it just from one standpoint, which is like one involved a lot of technical innovation. One involved taking a decentralized technology and making it slightly centralized. Like what the fuck? How the fuck is that comparison even like, that's like an embarrassment to like, I don't know, whatever.

[Max Resnick]

Sorry.

[Chris Burniske]

I mean, I think it's about adoption as opposed to.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Yeah, yeah, I know but like the technical comparison is like he wasn't making a technical comparison.

[Chris Burniske]

I don't think he was making a technical comparison. Something tells me Tom Lee was not comparing the technological complexity.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

But yeah, this is why, this is why you, this is this. Yeah, I, I, I, this is again, I, I How are you going to inspire anyone smart to want to work on this stuff if you, that's your best selling point.

[Chris Burniske]

Yeah. Okay, so the, okay, so let me, Let me One final question. I guess as we're running up on time, we had, we had some other stuff we wanted to talk about, but I don't know that we're going to, we're going to get anywhere off this. Off of this.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

But okay, wait, wait, wa, I guess my question is Salana pitch the pro salon. I want the other side also.

[David Hoffman]

No.

[Chris Burniske]

Okay, I don't want to hear that Explain to. I just want to hear the, I

[Haseeb Qureshi]

want to hear the yin and Yang, right?

[Chris Burniske]

Is that the Yang? Is that the Yang? Okay.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

I guess it's orthogonal. I don't know whether it's the correct Yang. It's one of the many possible Yang.

[Chris Burniske]

I think tempo is the Yang, to be clear.

[Max Resnick]

Yeah. Okay, let me, let me give it real quick. There are $500 trillion of securities in the world. They are going to come on chain. I do not believe that the regulatory environment will allow them to go on to basically another centralized thing. I actually, you know, we'll see what happens. But I think that the statements from Various members of the regulatory regime have basically said, you know, we are doing this for crypto, not for your centralized piece of shit. Okay. So I think that's going to be very bullish for decentralized blockchains. And then there's basically two choices, Ethereum or Solana. Because everything else, they don't even know what it is because it's a zero in their head. It has no activity, it has no mind share. So it's basically Ethereum.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Hyper liquid was stated in Congress first, literally in a session of Congress.

[Max Resnick]

What did they say? We want to regulate that.

[David Hoffman]

Yes.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

My point is it made it to there. So, like, like, like if we go by mentions by Congress people, they're okay, it's not two, it's three.

[Chris Burniske]

Don't forget Ripple, by the way. Don't forget Ripple.

[Max Resnick]

There are basically two options in terms of public blockchains that you would want to go on that have existing activity, and it's Ethereum and Salana. And Ethereum doesn't have enough scale to accommodate the global financial system at this time. It may in 2031 or 2040 or whenever I figure it out. Yes.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Wow, we've got some Canton Bulls in this chat now. Apparently.

[Max Resnick]

So, yeah. I think one thing that's happened is basically throughout the history of crypto, we have had these tremendous network effects on one or two networks. And then the technologists have come in and said, we want to upgrade the network. And then everybody's been like, no, this is our. We love our network. Slow and low throughput the way it is. And Solana is the first network that has actual traction on it where they didn't fall into the trap of saying, we love our network the way it is. They said, we're going to make it as good as possible. I think that combination of technologists building good technology and the sort of super vacuum of the network effects that we have in Crypto will be very bullish for Solana.

[Chris Burniske]

Okay, Max, I got to ask you about quantum, because this feels to me like the big kind of. What's the term? What's the opposite of a black swan? It's like a white bull or whatever. You know what I'm talking about? Whatever. There's some term for this of like a very obvious bad thing that's coming. Quantum feels like it's actually very, very difficult for Solana, given its architecture. Talk to me about what you see for the post quantum roadmap for Solana. How does it hold onto the properties that make it so special?

[Max Resnick]

Quantum is Justin Drake's last masterful gambit. He's like sacking the queen. He's trying to go in for the kill. It just doesn't make any sense what he's saying. First of all, I've looked at the actual implications of this on our architecture. We have way more bandwidth. So the fact that we're going to have larger transactions is much less impactful to us than for Ethereum. For Ethereum they have a solo staker, Raspberry PI, that can only do so many bits per second. Then they want to take a 4000 byte signature for every single transaction and for every single vote. And they want that to be passed around in their network that has already no bandwidth. Meanwhile, we're going to use a smaller signature, Falcon or even smaller one, which is eight times smaller than that and we have way more bandwidth. I mean, I've just looked at it. This thing is basically a charade. It's true that Quantum is coming. I think it will be here sooner than a lot of the sort of 2040 predictions will happen. But we know how to deal with it on Solana and actually I think we have a way better roadmap, which took us maybe like a few days to come up with because it's not that hard to come up with. Meanwhile they've been working on it for like five years on Ethereum. And you look at the thing, it's like, did you like, were you high when you came up with this thing? This doesn't make any sense.

[Chris Burniske]

Okay, so your claim is post quantum. What is Solana's performance? Throughput transaction latency, what is that going to look like? According to this design, the post quantum design that you guys have sketched out,

[Max Resnick]

I think you will see no impact on the performance whatsoever for the end user. I still think we'll be able to get to a million TPS with a 512bit or 566, whatever it is, like 600 bytes for a falcon signature. And we do 32 bytes right now. And like ultimately this doesn't matter. We have 100 gigabit NICs on our machines right now. Peely's running 100 gigabit NIC. This doesn't matter at all. We can ingest all these transactions. It's very cheap to verify them. Actually, it's even faster to verify Falcon signature than the ones that we use now. And so the bandwidth isn't a problem, the verification time isn't a problem. We're going to be fine on consensus. I think we'll still be able to Scale to.

[Chris Burniske]

So your claim is there's no trade off whatsoever. We get quantum for free.

[Max Resnick]

I mean, it's not that there's no trade off. I can write out the equation for you, but it's a factor of two. It's ultimately a constant factor. And bandwidth is increasing by a factor of two every two years or something like that. So yeah, maybe it will change the timeline by two years, but we were not even close to using the full available bandwidth that we have today. So we'll use a little more bandwidth. We have plenty to spare and we'll be fine.

[Chris Burniske]

So when do you expect the post quantum transition for Solana to be completed?

[Max Resnick]

I expect it will be considerably faster than Ethereum's post quantum transition.

[Chris Burniske]

When would you expect that to get

[Max Resnick]

to before we need to? I mean we're putting all the pieces in place so we're doing larger transaction size for those larger signatures. Later this year we're going to move to a hash so that you can sort of hash your larger public key to that thing. All this is super boring, but we're putting all those building blocks in place so we'll be ready to flip the switch when it's time. But we don't feel the need to, you know, flip the switch before we have a real signal that this thing is coming. So we'll do it when we need to do it. We'll put all the building blocks in place and then we'll flip over probably like in the next five years.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

My thing ignoring the space, like the space aspects, like the compute aspects. Honestly, once a standard is chosen, like every CPU provider is just going to make it a one click, you know, single instruction kind of thing. And it'll be optimized away the way that like SHA was optimized away. And like, I just think about like 2015 when everyone was like, oh my God, Shaw is the slowest fucking thing ever. And then intel added the SIMD opcode and then no one ever complained again. So like I, I, I believe in tech progress for this quantum stuff. Like there's no reason to, to like I, I do agree though that like whatever the future Raspberry PI is, might not, might not make it. There is some truth to that. Like the quantum stuff actually kind of kills the Raspberry PI.

[Max Resnick]

I was looking at it so they have a million validators on ETH because they shot themselves in the foot with a very core architecture decision like 10 years ago. And a MacBook can verify it can aggregate 800 signatures in one second. So what are you really talking about then if you have a million signatures and you need to aggregate a million signatures, you kind of need a big computer, right? Maybe you can sort of aggregate the proofs of proofs and stuff. But still, at the end of the day, you're. You're not talking about a whole lot of performance for their specific chosen scheme that they said, this is the one we're going to use, and it can only do 800 aggregations per second and they have a million validators, so.

[Chris Burniske]

Okay. All right, Max, where can people find you?

[Max Resnick]

I'm on Twitter. I got the Max Resnick handle from the. From the handle store.

[Chris Burniske]

No, you did no good. You're the first person I've ever heard actually got successfully purchased something.

[David Hoffman]

How much do you pay for that?

[Chris Burniske]

Well done.

[Max Resnick]

It was free, actually. It was free.

[Chris Burniske]

Let's see if Aseem's available. David, where can people find you?

[David Hoffman]

Probably currently the most hated person on Twitter. Trustless state.

[Chris Burniske]

Okay, perfect. If you want to yell at somebody, you guys know where to go. Max and David will put their handles up. Thank you both for coming on and sharing your Ethereum apostasy story. I'm sure it's giving people a lot of courage to go through their own journeys. And there, there is a. What's the term? There's like a. What do they call it when, like, people get together to share a traumatic experience. Whatever. Support group.

[Haseeb Qureshi]

Therapy.

[Chris Burniske]

There's support group. There's a support group that we'll leave a link for in the, in the chat. That's it. Thank you, everybody. We'll be back next week. See you all.

[David Hoffman]

Yeah, it.