Can Cosmos Become a Top 3 Ecosystem? Maghnus Mareneck & Josh Cincinnati

Transcript

it became clear that the only way for us to actually be true to our mission uh is to pursue this radical change path and to and to bring uh bring skip when you're building an ecosystem you have to build the whole thing right you have to build the go to market you have to build the technology you have to build the narrative you have to build the community you have to build the Hub and the chain and and the center point where like culture happens all of those things need to be coordinated if you believe in multiple blockchains and not just one blockchain which is ultimately the huge difference between Cosmos and everywhere else if you believe in many and you believe in a world where there is a lot more differentiated architecture and

sovereignty this is the time to sort of be invested because now we have no restrictions [Music] hey I'm here with Josh Cincinnati president of the interchain foundation Council and Magnus marck uh returned gu on the show who's a co-founder of skip which has now been renamed to interchain labs and today we're going to be talking about the news that you know came out about a week ago uh 10 days ago or something like that um that skip had been acquired by the SF and all of the

changes that that is sort of leading us towards in terms of of uh a new Direction and Alignment in the cosmos ecosystem uh there's been lots of reactions about this announcement and um we're going to dive into all the aspects of this and what it means for Cosmos what it means for the interchain uh as a whole and um yeah we'll uh we'll get started right now so guys thanks for coming on the podcast thanks yeah great to be here de so my first question is like H how has the community reacted what is been your sense of uh the the reactions across the community from this announcement I think it's been really

positive um you know one I I don't view myself as separate from the community because you know as of a couple weeks ago I was that skip which I consider to be part of the Boulder Community of Cosmos and one of the things that I wanted that I think the community reflected as well is is real leadership at the ICF and at you know at the level of you know a found to of drive cosos forward uh that is something that we've accomplished right and I think that was at the end of the day that is something that Comm really responded well to I think also you know one one of the things that we've always tried to bleed with is uh you know humility and a real product focus and that is something that

I think was missing uh before in Cosmos is really thinking about Cosmos holistically with the Hub with every with the stack with everything and and driving that forward as a product with a go to market uh and I think language around that you know make the hubba hop right and you know combine everything unify everything all us one is really important to sort of get the community on the same page but I've been thrilled with like the the response yeah Co cosign all of that uh seeing their response has been amazing uh especially given uh so I I joined the ICF uh board also known as the foundation Council um in December of of last year and uh I will say for the vast majority of my tenure uh I have not

really seen that kind of community response it's generally been more of the opposite uh at the ICF which is something that I uh took to heart um quite a bit um even though you know a lot of the the things that happened over the last year they were sort of uh necessary for us as the ICF to um to figure out like how we were going to move forward and and you know I think to to mag's point um one of the things that was really powerful I think for us at the ICF was listening to the community and understanding and be being reflective about the things that we don't have at the interchain foundation uh including like you know really on the ground bu Builder focused um empathy and

Leadership uh and and that was something that um you know immediately made this deal compelling uh to me was you know sort of understanding oh well there there's a lot that we're missing here at at the foundation we should understand that uh we can we can fix this but it's going to involve a really radical shift in how we operate and where we place our uh you know where we kind of place our bets uh on uh other the teams that we want you know building uh building going forward yeah and and you even said this in your uh in in in this exp poost you know you you kind of acknowledged that the ICF has not had the best reputation

uh in in in the space that skip you has a sort of very um very good reputation in uh amongst Builders and amongst the community um you know someone who's been like watching the ICF for a long time and like been in Cosmos for a long time and have had relationships with the ICF for a long time um I I also did feel feel like you know the ICF wasn't getting um credit for where credit was due but at the same time was seen by the community and perhaps with some amount of of reality right that it was a bit dysfunctional and that uh um that like sort of the community had for a long

time been you hoping that um that the ICF would take like really a substantial role in directing the tech directing the Hub um you know with with that in mind how did this particular uh how did this deal come together what what what was the The Tipping Point where you know Folks at the ICF and at the council thought okay like we really need to um correct this situation and and take really strong leadership on the Hub uh on the cosmos e system the stack as a whole so that we can perhaps compete with other

ecosystems or at least be a viable place for developers to to to to want to build applications yeah um yeah I can I can definitely take that from the ICF Council side and then I'll hand it over to mag to talk about it from the skip perspective but um what what I would say is so I if you followed the last year of of earlier ICF drama you know I became uh president of the uh ICF uh the interchain foundation Council in June uh was not what I was expecting uh to happen but that did happen um and and as a result you know from there uh myself Maxim and and Ethan Buckman um who was you know still in the foundation council

at that point uh you know ended up going through a lot of reflection about how we wanted to organize the ICF and and kind of in in tandem with that uh Buckman had uh Ethan had reached out to um uh the folks at skip uh to talk about the prospect of them taking over The Hub um and they rightfully uh I think said there's no way that we'd ever do that unless you know we were in in a more Central you know role for the The Hub and the stack because they view them as like kind of um you know indispensably linked together um and and after that discussion I ended up having some conversations with with Barry that you

know made it uh kind of opened my eyes to the opportunity and then got got me thinking about the path that the ICF was currently on versus this other possible path of of an acquisition because we we had like two two roads you know ahead of us one road was we keep the the model of of core technology development as we have with all these core teams working we iterate and improve on governance and management at at the ICF and sort of do a more gradual transformation um and that was one road right and then the other road was effectively a this model isn't working we need to radically realign um how we

develop the tech and and our relationship with the Hub or what we hope to be our relationship with the Hub uh and and that was this the path ahead of us and Skip and to be honest like after after thinking about those two paths it became clear to me um as a foundation council member the the former path of that very graduat of improvement would it have worked for the organization probably but it would have taken two or three years and by then the entire you know it would be relevant because other ecosystems would have won uh and and they would have won in a way that most importantly and most sadly to me uh would have uh effectively jeopardized everyone's uh ability to have a self- sovereign

Financial uh system because that's that's to me what you know it's important about the cosmos vision and that's unique here uh compared to anywhere else so I I didn't you know I I viewed that as a failure path at that point and and once I I kind of in my view and and in the other Foundation council members views after we discussed it uh it became clear that the only way for us to actually be true to our mission uh is to pursue this radical change path and to and to bring uh bring skip yeah that was super well said I mean I could add a couple things on um you know going back to the time when I first had this conversation with Ethan

where you know he came into the office and he basically said would you do product and and maintenance for the Hub and he said no there's no way we're going to do that unless you give us the range to all of it right because like you can't just do one of these things in isolation and that's something that I I really believe from from a product perspective is when you're building an ecosystem you have to build the whole thing right you have to build the go to market you have to build the technology you have to build the narrative you have to build the community you have to build the Hub and the chain and and the center point where like culture happens um and you you have to build a vision and like all of those things need to be coordinated right and and that's just I think how

you run a successful company is you have one Northstar are that you're all moving to all moving towards and everything is coordinated along the way right you don't have things sort of just developing on the on the sides and I think one of the one of the most pleasant surprises I've ever had in Cosmos was talking to the ICF and realizing that they had the same opinion right and that they believed us that we could you know unify it and and really drive it forward towards this one vision of growing Cosmos massively um and so we're we're here to do that um you know I think some of these things are very very familiar to me and Barry in terms of you know of course the

technology stack the story around the interop platform you know with skip go we're very familiar with that um with the Hub itself you know it's it's it's a cbase that we can easily understand and easily start to work on and then some things are new for us right like building a real go to market right when it comes to attracting new Builders into the ecosystem that is something that we're building up the cap cap abilities to do but I think the important part and and what we're bringing is we have a real dedication to making all those things work well and I don't believe one is more important than another um so I you know really appreciate the ICF sort of like a you know acknowledging that and excited to work together towards that you both talked about this radical shift so you explain

what is this radical shift like so what is going to happen in the next say 6 months to a year um what's the road map in terms of uh of of the product like you know the product that is uh and you know forgive me if I'm missing some pieces here but I think you know product includes the cosmos SDK IBC some lower parts of the stack like you know Comet BF Etc uh but also the Hub right the Hub is a very important part of the product and like for a long time has been sort of separated from the stack somehow and and a lot of folks felt like that needed to be separate uh in or and and the stack was a standalone thing so how how is that radical shift going to affect

all these different parts and uh and forgive me if if I miss some parts but uh yeah yeah I can speak to a little bit of that um so Cosmos is I would argue basically a top three ecosystem in hiding it has been before um it will be a get uh and it's a question of it has been multiple times and it will be again I I truly believe this um and it and the reason for that is because it is correct it's not the right narrative necessarily right now it's it's not that it you know has the best branding or anything like

that it just is the correct architecture um and it is the the architecture that everyone else every other ecosystem no matter what stage they are will end with and we've already seen that happen right we've seen that happen with ethereum we've seen that happen with uh you know the even this salana road map now with network extensions we've seen that happen with Bitcoin and the L2 expansion and we will continue to see that happen we've seen it with Celestia and sort of like Sovereign rollups this model of uh increased developer sovereignty over the cha choices they make for their application will only accelerate because that is how development works is you want to you know continue to modify

customize and own the economics and developer environment that you're building in right to best serve your application um and so it's nice to be working on the right side of History right that is like what I what I believe is that we are now able to accelerate the vision that will ultimately win and I believe that truly um so how do we get there right how do we get from where we are right now to where the right architecture should be right and where the right ecosystem the right Vision should be uh I think the first thing is addressing the realities of how both retail and developers uh think about an a crypto

ecosystem right because it's not just a tech stack at the end of the day it's really an ecosystem which is its own living and breathing entity that has people in it that has things getting minted that has you know assets transferring it's it's it's an economy right the the primary thing that we need to do in Cosmos and the primary thing that I'm going to be focused on is growing a liquidity within the cosmos ecosystem so that means getting more money uh whether that be by unlocking Stak Capital uh in Cosmos or by bridging in external capital from other ecosystems or onboarding new capital from like uh you know onboarding and off-ramps or onramps and off-ramps uh all of that stuff matters because we

need to get more money moving in the ecosystem because money attracts developers right that's just the reality of how it works um and there there are a couple things that I think are are really important to help make that happen the first one is recognizing that the greatest asset of Cosmos is the cosmos Hub itself it is an EXT it is one of the very first proof of stake blockchains it is extremely secure um it has a long history and tenure and distribution among some of the oldest funds and family offices it has huge brand Equity it is something that is very attractive when framed the right way to bring in large amounts of liquidity and to park a lot of liquidity

and so we tend to sort of Leverage The Cosmos Hub to be a real Hub so that means a hub of where people can onboard assets to by making sure it's even more secure than it is today and that means things like you know of course like auditing the software removing the LSM which has concerns over its security replacing it with something better um it also means you know making sure that we're doing a comprehensive you know evaluation of things like you know PTP storms which has been brought up in the past and like other potential security issues that could have affected the Hub uh it also means though becoming a developer Hub right and so as part of that plan we plan to Speed The Hub up

which is not affected security properties to under two seconds so we'll have block terms that are actually very fast and and competitive uh and then launching a way to permission permissionless Deploy on the Hub without affecting its core security right so right now one of the best assets we have in Cosmos is kmm um it is a natively built for the cosmos stack VM that is excellent built in Rust one of the most secure and type safe languages and we can deploy that on on the cosmos toop as is nothing stopping us um that will enable Builders who get excited about Cosmos and the vision to have a very fast way to tap into the heart of it which is the cosmos Hub and all the liquidity that is going to be moving

there um and what you get out of that is a flywheel right you know it's easy to deploy in the cosmos H so people do it deployments and new applications attract new capital and then that Capital will attract more developers right and it's just a cycle and you see that cycle playing out in salana I think the key for Cosmos is there's no locket right so when you develop and if you deploy as a smart contract the intended path for you is to become sovereign right and still maintain a relationship with the cosmos Hub but to be your own full Sovereign native L1 architecture versus being this like lock in into one ecosystem or sort of like this alignment lock in um and that I think is where we we we

differentiate in terms of like our overall architectural plans versus every other ecosystem very cool uh I wanted to maybe uh kind of dive into each of those uh different aspects and particularly the one that I'm quite curious about is like attracting liquidity um I I I think I think you're right that a lot of uh that Adam is a very distributed asset amongst you know family offices funds Etc you know it's it's it has been around for you know since 2019 you with like you know Ico participants in 2017 it's uh it's it's not a dinosaur asset yet but but it has it has long standing um how do you

intend to say like increase the amount of liquidity in Cosmos by an order of magnitude or maybe two orders of magnitude so that we can compete with these you know top top assets like salana like Bitcoin like eth what's the what's the unlock to bring in bringing in that liquidity and making Cosmos an attract place to say Park liquidity yeah so when you're talking about orders of magnitude liquidity increases really what you're talking about are institutional investors right um to some degree you can talk about retail investors but retail investors at the end of the day

are attracted by very different things than institutional investors and the things that retail investors are attracted by are usually quite ephemeral there are things like temporary yield different right you know a farming campaign like liquidity mining things like that um when you're talking about institions who can deploy 50 to 100 to $200 million clips of liquidity into your ecosystem they're they are concerned about a couple things one is security right are their funds going to be safe right are they going to have to worry about this and explain to their investors that they're putting money in a place that is not safe like it sounds simple and you know to developers in the community

today that might sound like something that like okay we've already solved that we have it right we we we need a story for how the Hub which is the most secure chain in Cosmos can become basically a custody provider to then deploy sa liquidity safely into the rest of the ecosystem um that's the first thing is is security the second thing is uh making sure that they that in institions who are not crypto native often right and do not have extreme technical backgrounds can understand the architecture and understand the vision of why Cosmos is superior to every other design and

ecosystem right from a long-term perspective because they are investing just like we are in a vision right a vision for a future ecosystem um and I think what we need to do there is really uh Define and refine the kind of pitch that we're giving to those institutions and make it clear to them how it makes sense from an architectural standpoint so that it can click in their mind and say okay well this is actually a real opportunity to invest in something that makes sense right and like will scale much better and it will scale much better than every other you know ecosystem is designed yeah oh sorry I was just going to and and to add to that um you know

it's it's it's a multi-dimensional problem right and and I think mag's right that that getting that institutional unlock is is going to enable those those you know much bigger uh uh impact in terms of increasing liquidity but the other thing that that then that you need to have as well is is basically everything that mag was talking about in his prior response which is building overall utility uh uh and and features and flexibility into the into the Hub itself um because that's what then begets you know once those institutions have more Capital deployed and they see oh well there there are these other things that can be done with the Hub um that that unlocks

even more opportunities and it unlocks it not just for the Hub but for everyone in the ecosystem that's connected to the hub right right it's it's a flywheel I mean I guess is what you're saying is like you need the products you need the the what attracts liquidity in order for institutions that kind want to put their liquidity there um so do do you anticipate sort of reaching out to like uh and engaging with institutions who already hold atom uh you were thinking of like you know the poly chains the K ones Etc that you know are or early in Cosmos that probably have pretty big atom bags run valid erors for some um and getting them more engaged uh with their own atom liquidity

and then later on on uh perhaps like having a more targeted campaign to family offices institutional funds um VCS Etc hedge funds that uh that don't hold adom um that could be interested by by what the Hub has to offer absolutely yeah uh both so we've already been engaging with you know institutions that hold Adam um you know and and talking through their concerns I think one of the nice things that we've heard back is for the first time ever they feel like they have a team that they can discuss the road mapap with right and give feedback on it I think that's really important if you're to invest if you're

to put millions of dollars into a product and a protocol and a vision you want to know who's working on it right and like who who can make decisions and who can um take feedback right and make sure that that their concerns are addressed the the the plan for uh you know larger institutions I think is sort of twofold the first one is uh you know talking to existing family offices and you know institutions that that you know are considering you know asset purchases and basically making sure that they understand uh the cosmos vision and they understand why it is secure and that requires us making a much tighter version of the ecosystem story that they

can understand for example right if you were to try to pitch Cosmos to an institution today and you were to say this is Cosmos and this is the cosmos Hub and they say oh great well uh you know what does the cosmos Hub do and then you explain oh it's just another chain right um and it it it don't worry about it right uh it's actually all these chains together right now you're asking them to evaluate every single chain individually and make a assessment about the security properties of each one that is not what they have time to do right when they think about ethereum the first thing they want they want to do is invest in eth if that goes well and they feel secure then they will look

at all the other chains and all the other rollups and they will make investments as they have with l2s and things like that that we need we need to replicate that story with investors in Cosmos where we can at least assure them guarantees or security properties of one thing get them to invest in and be part of the vision and see why that's relevant and then I think they are much more willing to expand outwards into into the rest of it um that that is generally how I've seen institutions operate so far interesting uh and one other thing you mentioned earlier was removing the LSM um C can you share your your views on you why we should remove it and if we

were to replace it uh with what and um because I mean I I I I I uh I realize that there are like the security issues with the LSM but I think that in terms of um getting access to liquid stake uh atom it it's actually one of the better features that the Hub has comp compared to some other chains um so yeah curious to dive into that a little bit more yeah absolutely um so uh the LSM I believe is a good product uh at least in its intention which was to essentially allow for very seamless uh transfer of staked atom into liquid staking protocols um liquid staking in general is great

because you can preserve liquidity in the ecosystem while preserving the majority of the staking reward um but the B the main product of the LSM was taking staked atom not having to wait 21 days and putting it into either you know St atom or drop atom right or any other liquid sticking protocols that exist uh we want to replicate that functionality because that that makes sense uh and so the the primary reason for removing the LSM is not because it was a flaw product by Design but because have you know and I don't need to say this again but basically having it be built by questionable developers and being a core piece of Hub software is not acceptable

um and so you know very soon next year we are going to immediately remove it uh from from the next upgrade of the cosmos Hub proposal and replace it with a rebuilt internally audited and externally audited version that that has just that same functionality but a different design this will also serve a purpose of removing a lot of Legacy code out of the Hub enabling us to move faster and maintain the chain much like much much better into a higher standard because then we can upgrade all the versions to the most recent ones which the LSM and its current form is preventing us from doing okay understood I didn't realize it was this other technical Deb uh attached so with the LSM interesting

maybe um like talking about uh again you know the Hub and Adam as as an asset how do you you there there's been a lot of I think opposing views in this space about the hub's role um it feels like over the last couple years at least the Hub has been kind of taken a back seat to other chains uh in the ecosystem and I think people have um PE people have sort of discounted The Hub as just another chain in the ecosystem like the Hub is no no different or or like doesn't have any uh sort of superior standing as any other

chain in the ecosystem it's just like part of the cosmos chains and I think that was probably in part due to the the product being a little bit underwhelming uh um and the development of the Hub and also maybe the drama um where do you think the Hub needs to be in a year from now and like does it need to have a sort of like this kind of does it need to really uh reclaim its title as a hub uh and and and how uh how will that help the ecosystem as a whole not just interchange security chains like replicated security chains that are secured by The Hub itself but you know all the chains in the ecosystem whether that's osmosis Celestia or bar chain or injecta or any other IC IBC connected

train yeah that's a great question um so I think the the the reality which is tough to swallow and was originally tough for us to swallow is that the Hub already has a title right and if you talk to retail investors or institutional investors they think the cosmos Hub is the cosmos Hub right because it's called The Cosmos Hub and because it was the first chain launched on Cosmos and that's what they know right it has five years of brand Equity that is very hard to erase it's almost impossible to erase so I think it's less about proving to people that it is the hub for Cosmos people already think it

is it's about living up to that title and servicing the ecosystem as though it was the cosmos Hub right and so what that means is actually investing funds and providing liquidity to grow the ecosystem in a very direct way what it means is you know providing uh you know uh aggregated vendor relationships so that for example we can do custody relations and centralized exchange relations and then provide those to the rest of the ecosystem to to grow the ecosystem and to take like not a value extractive approach to the ecosystem but a value creative approach right so that when people think about Cosmos and the cosmos Hub and they start with atom they

can then feel good about going outside there shouldn't be this combative energy like the cosmos Hub was built by the people who made Cosmos and the cosmos stack right it was part of the original Vision it's in the white paper it's a service offering just like the stack to grow Cosmos and I think that's a that's a that's a paradigm shift that people need to think about that the cosmos Hub is not an enemy right I don't and we're going to be building it and we're not going to build it to be an enemy we're going to build it to be a great accelerator for other chains and for its own obviously uh Community right but I do these things a lot more united and a lot more um cohesive than I think they'

they've turned out to be and I do agree with your point that it's h it's hard for people to feel good about the cosmos Hub when it doesn't perform hubik activities yeah yeah completely agree and and I would say you know the the one of the strengths that mag brought up earlier uh about the about the Hub is the fact that it's survived that it and it's been for so long and that despite all of the challenges that you know uh that the ecosystem is faced on the social layer um all the challenges that the ICF has faced um you know internally all all the challenges that other you know proponents have you know Builders have faced that that the Hub has stuck

around and not just stuck around you know it's it's it it has been relevant uh and and still part of that broader conversation uh for you know Cosmos despite all of those challenges and I think that the mode shift is exactly what you know mag talked about which is that we need to re-embrace it as as being central part of the cosmos ecosystem and and effectively meeting that that Narrative of the Hub is a hub right uh making making that you know nominative determinism turn out to be true um I think in this cases is really the goal I I think just one last point on that which is I think I think people need to really

internalize and and this is true that attacking the Hub is like attacking yourself right and that trying to you know distance or or deny you know either Cosmos or the cosmos Hub when you're using the technology and you're built within the vision is ultimately hurting yourself because either you end up as first of all people see through that right and people know that you're either using Cosmos technology or that you you know are in the ecosystem and they think you're denying it which makes people think that oh like what are you hiding or um you know when people look at your technology stack and they see

Cosmos there or they see Comet then they immediately think of the cosmos Hub right and and sort of institutions that are funding that that technology and building that technology and maintaining it AKA us right the team behind all of this and the ICF if you're disparaging those people you're really disparaging the creators of your own software right that is running your chain and that is why like I I I really like I want people to internalize and and I want chain Founders to to believe that these things are not zero STM like by by supporting the C H by supporting the cosmos Vision you are supporting yourself and you're supporting what you're built on if

you're in this ecosystem right I think I think that's that's a really important message and and I think honestly something that a lot of people are now it's clicking for them so speaking about of the ecosystem um there are I I yeah we I've talked about this with folks for the last couple years and even recently on like an episode I did with sunny at cosmoverse uh about the cosmos branding problem this is something that we've faced as a fund uh over the last two years of fundraising you know um where you know investors see us perhaps rightly as as a fund that invest primarily in Cosmos or

Cosmos adjacent things and and certainly we've done a lot of investments in the space and and for some some you know the the reaction to that has changed I think over the last two years you know in the beginning there people were excited about it I think like Cosmos still had a lot of positive brand Equity uh even months after the terror collapse then over time it became a little bit more of a like a stain uh you know where um folks would sort of question our our investment in Cosmos and then you know that you know we we sort of have ways to sort of you know um justify our thesis by like you were saying earlier right it is the correct

architecture uh it is the Innovation Hub for crypto um it it it uh provides some of the mo most advanced S of stable and uh production rated technology in the space and um and people get that right uh but but there is this branding problem there is this like you know this this I think because the Hub hasn't performed as well as people think it has or it should have uh Cosmos as a brand has suffered and the entire ecosystem I think has suffered and some of the uh proposals or things that I've talked about with folks that was like why don't we Rebrand the ecosystem to interchain and that allows

people to associate with the stack with the tech with the interoperability of IBC um and I think also uh really aligns with the earlier vision of the of the interchain right which was to have this internet of blockchains and um and I've kind of agreed with that over over the years and thought that you know the the the Hub should continue to be called The Cosmos Hub the stack should continue to be called The Cosmos stack but as an as an ecosystem we should make an effort to Rebrand as the inner chain and that would perhaps allow us to reel in a lot of the projects that have distanced themselves with the brand um that have kind of actively sought to

build with the tech but not be a part of the ecosystem so I wonder what your thoughts are on that and and kind what you think what you see as the best path path forward for the ecosystem and for alignment uh if you will you know if you want to borrow a term here from from from ethereum how do we get Cosmos alignment uh yeah I mean there's there's a lot of thoughts and I think um it's funny for me to talk about this specifically because I was on this trained for a while you know back in skip days I think I posted this this thing of of you know we should we should we should like reconsider the the or cancel the cosmos brand so a couple thoughts the first one is generally if you want to really win you

need a good narrative right and the strongest narrative in all in all in in history basically is the comeback narrative it's not the you know oh we were losing and so now we're this like that doesn't really work with people cuz that isn't genuine I think when people see someone own something and be like we're unashamedly this right and this is great and and in this case this is true uh and and that can be successful that is a much more exciting story right like I love Cosmos be not because like I'm not angry at Cosmos right I just think it's a huge opportunity and like I want to see it be successful I think a

lot of people actually believe this about Cosmos right and we're just saying Cosmos over and over again I think if you were to rename it interchain you're sort of giving up right you're giving up on this Vision um I kind of think of it like you know salana after all of the the terrible things that happened uh back in in 2022 rename to you know fast chain like I think it's just like you you're not really setting yourself up for actually like uh building an identity and an identity that has a good story and at the end of the day when we all look back at our lives and our careers you know what we remember are the stories right and this is the beginning of our story right I mean we've already had a lot of chapters of

the story but like the story is the cosmos story it's not the interchain story right interchain is a great description of what Cosmos is it is an internet of blockchains interchain um and and that is totally something that I think is part of the vision uh but I think ultimately I plan on owning Cosmos um I definitely plan on investing in that brand um I definitely plan on owning atom and investing in that brand and owning sort of the the all the core pieces of what we stand for and investing in that and communicating that I think a lot of it was just there was no real comm's arm for for these ideas right no real entity that felt incentivized to push forward these ideas

because in Cosmos As We Know you know and you know if you if you left all the marketing of salana up to the individual smart contracts they would just be shelling their own things right they wouldn't be pushing four of these ideas so I think now that we have a very well-funded you know core Foundation pushing these things forward I think a lot of that will change the last thing I just want to say on that quickly is I just think also that that the narrative is a little bit misleading that like Cosmos is bearish like what are the things that investors are excited about right now Babylon right um uh uh uh barain inisha right A lot of the things that we're excited about and and that are raising the largest rounds in crypto are Cosmos based l1s right that are

whether they like it or not fitting into the original vision of Cosmos which was an interconnected set of blockchains and I think it just shows that like it's really a branding issue it's not a vision or architecture issue and I'd much rather have a branding issue because we can solve that right that that requires like a bring agency and like marketing right and a good events that people like to go to like these are all doable things that's great I love that yeah and uh you know certainly that that's part of the narrative right like the one of the things I've had to remind people of is that all the frontier chains in the ecosystem are building using Cosmos stack uh whether that's you know Celestia bear chain DTX you know like

you name it at the the the most exciting stuff happening is is is happening on Cosmos uh on on Cosmos Tech now that the alignment with the brand I think has been difficult but uh let's do it man let's um let's realign let's re let's realign Cosmos let's you know yeah yay for the underdog yeah yeah and I think to that to that um you to that point uh to add to me's great response on that being part of a comeback story and being aligned with that that comeback is is one of the things in addition to actually serving the needs of all of these uh other chains uh that are building using the cosmos stack but

those things combined are going to com bolster and and bring more people together right so like the fact that that some of these folks are are uh you know post post acquisition getting excited about being part of the cosmos again is just going to contribute to that positive momentum to to re establish the brand as uh you know as as as being one of the the top brands in uh in the ecosystem more broadly you know um so I'm I'm very I'm very optimistic about about that as well and completely agree that like yeah if we if we had rebranded to Sovereign stack or something it just wouldn't wouldn't have the same ring to it and it would look

like we're we're you know hiding our history as opposed to just embracing at warts and all and and demonstrating that we can do better yeah and I think the history I'm I'm I'm not ashamed of right we built a truly decentralized ecosystem when you build something as truly decentralized No One controls it and so everyone is arguing that's right that's how it works like that that was the outcome of the design right and it was beautiful in that um now I think we're finding a better balance uh between sort of like full decentralization on the social layer and on the architectural layer but that was a reality of that architecture look at ethereum right now right look at all the infighting that's

going on Mac Resnik being like push Max resic being pushed out you know this North Star vision is it a world computer is eth money this is the result of a decentralized ecosystem right like this is how it works um and I think there's a it's fun right like you can really get involved um of course like drama is sometimes is annoying right but I I think we're going to see a lot less of that is my hope um you know I I kind of feel like you know if if you go back to like the last World Cup like do you want to be do you want to be a supporter of France or do you want to be a supporter of Morocco right Morocco made it so far towards the end and their supporters were wild it changed the country's like status right like that is a much more

exciting team to be a part of I think than like just supporting the winner of the of the week well I I I I I live in France and and have French so I was supporting France but you know the I get I get your point uh no cool so I want to come back to the ICF in just a second but before uh I I I want to I want to ask one thing here is you know all ecosystems that are well-run and have a you know well well-run well oiled foundation and and development arm and Business Development run a conference and so you know the ICF hasn't run a conference since 2018 at the or was 2019 maybe 2019 uh in Berlin

uh can people expect another Cosmos conference run by the ICF at some point all right we can expect more conferences um whether they are ICF branded sorry um I I'm not entirely sure but definitely at at infam Labs we are committed to basically we're working with Sito and and you know Seb you should get involved like we want to throw a much better conference um I think uh there there's a number of learnings we had from from cosmoverse which I would argue was actually you know a really good conference especially given the resources that it was

absolutely given um we can do a lot more now um and we can do we can have a lot more fun uh and you know we really can focus these conferences on Builders and and making sure the message is getting across in the right way uh and also you know like there's a couple like quality of life things like these conferences should be I think closer to other conferences um not so you know far away although it is fun to to travel you know that's not accessible for a lot of people and there should be more of them right like one time a year is probably not enough to accommodate a very fast moving and we do intend the future of Cosmos to be very fast moving uh narrative and series of like developments so the pace of that I think

needs to to go up yeah and I I I would say just on you know the ICF side uh we're we're very open to to potentially doing that uh you know in the future but but just to be candid you know we don't have that core competency uh at the foundation right now right um to to be the main organizer or of of a conference um but but to Max point the prospect of supporting uh folks that are making more frequent uh conferences and then doing them uh you know doing maybe more with less uh that way is is something that we would absolutely be uh be open to and you know something that

I've I've now been working remotely for quite some time and it's amazing to be able to do it and live wherever and do do whatever but but honestly some of the the like greatest periods of progress or when you get a bunch of people together that that in in real space you know as much and so the more that we can do that I think the the better we'll serve the ecosystem at large yeah I get it I mean or organizing events is hard I've been doing it for a couple years and it's still not a core competency so I understand that uh you know maybe sort of uh this this approach of supporting folks in the space that are organizing events at the same time organizing your own uh

allows allows us to have just more events and and more diverse events and and uh and I think that's probably the uh the best pass path forward to maintain a little bit of decentralization at least in the conference space CU we need more conferences than just you know one right we we need we need we need more than three we need maybe five uh and and and I'm looking forward to more of those so coming back to the ICF a little bit um you know you mentioned earlier that there there had been some pretty significant change on the on the board level in the last year um there's been some whispers about that the board expanding to have even more members and um and I think that's that's a change

that I'm uh bullish about um but uh yeah broadly can you take talk a little bit about the ICF and um how the organization will evolve with the over over the next little while and is the scope of the ICF going to be any different and and maybe just you know for context here like what is actually the scope of the ICF and you know uh between the ICF and and interchain lab like how are responsibilties shared and how how will you be sort of interacting with each other um and yeah yeah yeah that's a great that's a great question um so just to answer the first part of that first yes the board is expanding uh we we had a previous process where we

had a lot of great candidates come through that were modifying a bit but uh you'll you'll be hearing news about a new board member soon I suspect um uh because obviously with with Bucky resigning we we need to definitely fill that immediate spot but our intent is to still fill out and have a five-person board uh which is the I think the right balance be you know between uh you don't want a giant community of people but you do need uh other perspectives and sound governance um at that level and having having more people there will will will get get us there so um but you know you'll you'll you'll hear more about that you know going forward on the actual like scoping of what the CF does

versus what interchain labs does I spoke a little bit about this previously but uh you know interchain Labs is now we're consolidating development effort uh in a development effort product strategy Hub work all in interchain labs and that's going to be uh you know on them and we're going to be funding them to to do that work uh going going forward um for the you know the interchain foundation we still have this you know broad mission of supporting uh the cosmos and and the interchain and the more connected blockchains the better the more self- Sovereign uh uh blockchain applications the better uh we're on that level you know we're still going to be involved with doing grant making Venture

funding um Maybe not immediately on the Venture funding side but that's something that's still going to be a big activity and we're going to make sure that all of that is lined up with the work that interchain Labs is doing um and you know as Magus said previously you know we have uh we all have the same vision uh at the lab side and the ICF side we're all very aligned on where we want to go um so there will be a degree of a great degree of coordination uh between those activities on the ICF side and on on the lab side yeah um I I think to add to that you know there are definitely things that are majorly changing um so a lot of what we're doing here and as part of

this acquisition is that we are moving the development closer to the ICF so that we can have this very coordinated go to market for how we're building things in unison what the way that it worked previously was the ICF would fund external teams um and a multitude of them this is the team of teams model to do core development so for example SDK development was contracted out to Binary Builders and uh IBC development or at least part of it for the relayer was contracted out to Strange Love and you know cosm Lael was contracted out to confia uh we are ending this and reversing it so now we are maintaining all of these core pieces of software uh

and and the ICF is funding us to do that directly right versus just being another team of team we are part we are fully owned by the ICF right we are we are literally a subsidiary an operational subsidiary um and the idea behind that is one development works better when you have integrated pieces when you're doing it in one place and you're all in person um it it's very difficult to coordinate between different teams that are all separated as their own companies trying to make their own profit margins uh and and and two I just want to say you know those teams did an excellent job but it's going to be very hard to drive at the speed that we want to drive if we can't all be in the same room going towards the same goal and we're serving really One customer which is Cosmos

versus you know being distracted by by a bunch of different things um so those are are some of the major changes I think also we plan to absorb some of the the functions of um what we've seen deploy in the cosmos Hub as as Community efforts uh in into interchain labs in the ICF so you know AA da um I believe is is ending we are going to have an excellent replacement for that that we are going to you know spend a lot of attention to where we invite builders in to be incubated uh at interchain Labs directly you know sitting next to us that we can provide Hands-On help to venture fund with Venture Partners uh and and really make sure that we know there's an end to end pipeline there to get people in the door and then also get

them deployed in the ecosystem that sounds great man uh I'm so bullish on this news and uh I think that bringing Everything Under One Roof is is going to accelerate I mean it it's not just the tangible acceleration of how you know like all the different pieces fit together but I think that it will have compound counting effects that we don't yet understand and that will become evident pretty soon I hope um so yeah like address the community I'd say at this point I'd like to invite you to address the community and and maybe as we wrap up here is you know why why like

for people who are are not as bullish or or maybe are still skeptical about this uh if there is anybody out there that's still skeptical why should the to be bullish Jan go first yeah AB absolutely um so I think the first and foremost um is that we listened you know the the community made an impact they they said that things were not you know going as well as they could be at the ICF and we were not stuck in an ivory Tower just you know hands over our ears you know rocking back and forth in a fetal position I did that a little bit but you know I got through it and uh as

an Adam holder I've also done this um but you know that that I think is the big biggest signal that that we are we're open to change we're open to radical change uh and that we recognized where our weaknesses were as an organization and we resolved to fix it and it was not an easy path to do it but we did it um and there's you know a huge journey ahead of us here uh but I think the fact that we made that that step which I think people would say is a first of its kind um not just in the cosmos but broadly speaking I think in the industry uh for for the decision that we've made I think that that should make people feel very optimistic about the future um and then one thing you

know I know we didn't we can talk about it a bit as as you said Seb I'm a bit of a new face in the cosmos ecosystem but I've been in the cryptocurrency world for a very long time um I I'm a big believer in in privacy and privacy Advocate you know I I was previously executive director of the zcash foundation um and one of the one of the uh things to me that was very exciting about that work is like oh there was technology available for us to be able to make people have more PRI you know privacy that I think is you know something that's fundamental to the operation of any Financial system at all um but it's been clear to me you know and I have I I've have some bias here because I've invested in penumbra um but but it's clear to me that the uh you

know that the the best privacy projects are here in the cosmos too and by us having this trailblazing course where we're saying we can fix uh so much of what's you know these these core governance issues and and actually consolidate development effort and improve this for everyone is going to make those privacy uh projects much more valuable um To The World At Large and I don't mean economically I mean morally right um like there there's going to be uh uh you know an actual uh opportunity to use these projects to uh create uh more private economic systems of which The Hub and and all these other uh chains will be will be a part of it um

and that to me you know that's my my personal hobby horse but also makes me incredibly personally excited about about where we're going um yeah and and I'll leave it to you mag no I love that that's great and uh yeah I mean there are some things that are only possible in Cosmos right right and some of those things are the things that we absolutely need in the world right privacy technology fully Sovereign uh blockchains are fully Sovereign blockchains that are private that you can only make private by customizing your infrastructure in the way that Cosmos allows um I would say you know when I talk to the community I see a lot of people who believe uh in in the vision and in what

we're trying to do um I also believe and so in that way I really empathize I think really what we're going to see now and the reality of how we've restructured things is Cosmos with like the shackles off right like we've been walking around sort of like with our feet Shackled and they're off now right like there there's really nothing stopping us from seeing how far this Vision can go and so if you believe in multiple blockchains and not just one blockchain right which is ultimately the huge difference between Cosmos and everywhere else where everyone else believes in one blockchain right their blockchain it's going to be theirs right if you believe in many and you believe in a world where there is a lot more

differentiated architecture and sovereignty and you believe that that can be successful and that is the way to build the per permissionless you know decentralized web 3 or new internet that we believe it can be in the way that I believe it should be uh this is the time to sort of be invested because now we have no restrictions um and we're going to push that to its absolute limit and see how far we can go let's do it lfg uh I think this is a great note to end on thank you so much guys for coming on and uh very excited about what's to come for Cosmos I have I think uh it's been a long time since I felt so bullish about the cosmos ecosystem and when I learned about this news I was like this is what we need and

this is what is going to really Propel the equal system forward uh to being like a top top 10 top five ecosystem in the space so thank you and have a great uh have a great Christmas happy holidays like on thank you thanks [Music] [Music]