Episode 319 - The Past & Present of the L2 Landscape with Jordi Baylina

Transcript

[Music] welcome to zero knowledge I'm your host Anna Rose in this podcast we will be exploring the latest in zero knowledge research and the decentralized web as well as new paradigms that promise to change the way we interact and transact online this week I catch up with the legendary Jordy BINA ethereum OG and polygon's ZK evm technical lead last time he was on the show we talked about the concept he had at the time for ZK EVMS and how these would be built in the future with this episode we check in on what these systems look like now that

they've been launched I get jordy's take on the general L2 landscape decentralized systems and how these are rolled out the research that has come out of polygon and what keeps him inspired working in the space now before we kick off I just want to let you know about an upcoming hackathon we are getting very excited about ZK hack kco is now set to happen from May 17th to 19th in kco in the spirit of ZK hack Lisbon and ZK hack Istanbul we will be hosting Hackers from all over the world to join us for a weekend of building and experimenting with ZK Tech we already have some amazing sponsors confirmed like Mina 01 Labs polygon alzero scroll Avil nethermind and more if you're

interested in participating apply as a hacker there will be prizes and bounties to be won new friends and collaborators to meet and great workshops to get you up to date on ZK tooling hope to see you there I've added the link in the show notes and you can also visit ZK Haack cow.com to learn more now Tanya will share a little bit about this week's sponsors galot is the first decentralized proving layer with galot users can generate and verify proofs using any proof system for any use case you can use one of the default provs from projects like Aztec Stark net and polygon or you can deploy your own galot is on a mission to dramatically decrease the cost of proving by aggregating

proving workloads from across the industry to better utilize underlying Hardware while not compromising on performance galot is offering Priority Access to ZK podcast listeners so if you would like to start using high performance proving infrastructure for free go register on gal.com and write ZK podcast in the note field of the registration form so thanks again galot Alo is a new layer one blockchain that achieves the programmability of ethereum the privacy of zcash and the scalability of a rollup driven by a mission for a truly secure internet Alo has interwoven zero knowledge proofs into every facet of their stack resulting in a vertically integrated layer one blockchain that's unparalleled

in its approach Alo is ZK by Design dive into their programming language Leo and see what permissionless development looks like offering boundless opportunities for developers and innovators to build ZK apps this is an invitation to be part of a transformational ZK Journey dive deeper and discover more about Alo at al.org and now here's our episode today I'm here with Jordie binaa who is asked to be introduced as a casual developer but is really an ethereum OG and is a polygon ZK evm technical lead someone who's been in the space a really long time Jordy I'm so excited to invite you back to the show welcome it's a huge pleasure to be here

cool so I did a little digging in prep for this episode and I checked out when you had last been on so you've been on twice the first time was in September 2020 Frederick was still the co-host back then and at the time you were working on circom okay snark JS Iden 3 and I think at the very end of that episode you announced Hermes so that's to just place that a little bit yeah it's a long time ago it's a long time ago I met mention it because in that interview we did do a little bit of backstory on you your early work on ethereum the Dow hack your move into ZK and so I'll be adding these links in the show notes if anyone wants to check that out in 2021 we had you back on and that time I was doing kind of a series on

like l2s and you introduced CK EVMS and Hermes in that episode and I remember that being kind of a funny episode because as we recorded it like the next day the merger with polygon was announced and we were a bit like and we had not mentioned that at all on the show so I think if people listen to that I believe we recorded like an extra bit at the end because we felt so kind of out of date but yeah that's how long ago it's been you recorded one day before the the announcement or something like that the reason I wanted to have you back on the show was I really wanted to do a catch up with you it's been almost three years since you've been on and just going back to the topics that we were talking about at the time like back then l2s and ZK

EVMS were still kind of like a figment of our imagination this was like a future plan these were not really real yet they were still kind of being specked out and I really thought it would be cool to catch up with you and learn you know what you make of everything that's developed what's been happening on the polygon side yeah and just generally kind of catch up on all things DK yeah that was some woman where the ZK rollups were like theorically possible I mean we were already in the face because I mean probably I don't know a few months ago were like impossible projects and I mean they were theorically possible but nobody knews how to build it in a practical manner yeah and at that point we realized okay

this should be practical I mean this should be possible and and and doable and at that time where we're starting working in engineering this and putting all this thing that was a theorical in a practical way yeah and that was the point I mean it's like the the moment where you think that okay I think they have a solution for everything but then you start working on that and then you start to face hundreds of challenges so this is what I want to hear about I think maybe we can pick up the story from where we were at that time Iden 3 and Hermes were kind of Standalone entities and as we learned right around that time you merged then into polygon what happened since what was the joining of polygon like what did

that open up for you how did did it change sort of the vision for what you were building I mean at that time we ready to start building the zkm but polygon very much what we did was um well a couple of things well first is to accelerate the process I mean being in um in organization polygon allows us to hire a much better team and to put all the resources to accelerate it also gave us access to other teams here it's very important to mention the zero team at that time was the M team but was the zero team where we just borrowed a lot of the technology they were building all these um small brain Fields Starks and and so on and also bobin I mean bobing with with Maiden was also very

fundamental in getting stks the right way let's say okay so we were building already Starks but I mean Bobby was a super expert on the time so these two teams that they were already part of polygon were fundamental to accelerate and to bring the ZK ABM reality this was uh 2 years work uh more or less was a hard work of a set of Engineers working days and nights and solving challenges I can tell you that from the engineering perspective and even from the personal perspective I enjoy it a lot I mean it's doing is the probably the first time that you you do the work as an engineer I mean what you do in general when you are managing you do a lot of things that

are not engineering but at that point we were building engineering I mean were engineering the the system and going to all the solutions we I mean I think we were able to create an amazing team that was uh mix of people that came from the from the blockchain world from the ZK world but also people that came from other Industries but they were excellent developers in there uh Team I would say the that the average age of this team was relatively High especially for a blockchain the blockchain standards uh say of course there is a variety here but there was a huge quite mature team and we start working very well together and this I mean this has been a I would

say this has been the key of the the the success on the project I want to sort of take it back to Hermes Hermes was not a ZK evm was it it was a rollup it was an only payment rollups okay where the prer was huge proof of Britain fully in circum it was verified in good 16 I see but here we prove a set of and was already a rollup and a working rollup and all the experience that we got building Hermes was uh fundamental for building the polygon CB model learnings and uh that was really really really important having I mean people think oh you do you just do a I mean putting a system in production is it's there is a

lot of things you need to take in account and people that has never put anything in production cannot realize that okay but there is a a lot of work to do in the engineering part on that and this we we had a lot of experience in that site and this was the the starting point of course the ZK State at that point was circum I mean number of constraints was uh limited actually we did a huge Improvement in in in silcom especially for for big circuits like the Hermes one and how to build them the machines I mean we did a huge work on that front but uh that was not the enough for a zkm yeah and uh there is where I would

say that they started like a new generation of brers um is Stark Bas proof with recursion and can talk a little bit about that but that's what the zbm is about is just uh changing the generation of appr I feel like what you just described though the fact that you had already shipped something and how important that is what crossed my mind was just thinking of like 2017 2018 era projects who were like not yet launched some of them came out with like a lot of confidence and I feel like there's nothing more humbling it seems to teams than shipping a blockchain or launching an L2 because a lot of those teams had very short road maps they were like

we're going to ship this in a year no problem easy peasy and then they get blocked on so many fronts and it's like it always takes longer I have a few in mind I won't mention them here but I know that they when they first started they were just like very sure of themselves and by the time they launched there was this maturity and this realization of what it takes to actually ship one of these things yeah I mean I'm an engineer so uh even before I was in crypto my work was to put things in production I mean I was building things for for real for solving real real people uh problems this is what's an engineer about yeah so for me this is what I've been doing you you just go and

and you ship things of course this can be a succeed or they can you ship things and you can mess up but if you don't try it I mean you don't know what's what's going to happen but you need to ship things and shipping things sometimes requires some sacrifices maybe in the research part because when you're putting something in production at some point you need to cut and say okay this is what I'm going to launch I'm going to go for that and you freeze it you need to freeze that okay and this is um I mean for people that's very research based I mean they want to learn more they want to improve more okay and and doing this um I mean freeze things okay that's a stop here this is what we have I know that we can do things much better and things are going to be discovered

but let's launch this let's freeze this let's put this in production and let's start solving problems with that for me this is important I mean this is part of my DNA I would say okay and and and it's about phases I mean just taking things that are in research phase and bringing them to production this has in my personal role here in my life in I mean again and not only in this in this uh in this ecosystem yeah everyone has their own roles I mean there are people that's doing research and they are doing an amazing work in in research we own them a lot there are people that are more maintainers people that the systems they need to be okay they're in production but some point they need to be maintained it and they need to be keeped

and improved okay this is also a role and it's also an important role and depending on the files you will fit better in one place or the other but for me this has been my my place have you seen like is there a phenomenon of Engineers who cannot accept those sort of mistakes what you almost are saying is like once you freeze it there might be things you don't like about it and you still have to ship it and be public do you know sort of an engineer profile that has a lot of trouble doing that like does that happen sometimes in our ecosystem where people are kind of precious they want it to be truly perfect and it stops them yeah yeah I think this but this is um I mean again depending on the environment that you

are this can be a really good thing but this can be also a really bad thing so the the is where you are I mean if you are in a research group and your goal is to uh ship protocols or that that's perfectly fine but shipping or creating engineering products means much more than than that I mean just putting things that are maintainable things that are well documented things that works well that are safe that are audited I mean it requires a lot of things that you need to take in account and it's learning process also but you need to be focused in in the product and what you are shipping what problem actually you are uh you are solving this is very important if you really want to build

things that are useful for Humanity and and don't understand me wrong I mean it's super useful to generate protocols actually it's the base of everything so all the pieces are important but we need to understand what are the different stages and and what are the goals of the different stages and do not underestimate any person that's in one of these stages I mean sometimes is uh there are some faces that they are maybe less uh known well less known or or or maybe they have maybe worse reputation uh on that I don't know but for example giving support to the users this is a fundamental role absolutely fundamental and the people it's super important to

have a good trained people and people that's uh motivated and this is part of the product if you don't have this a product just cannot succeed just to put some examples but again we can talk about documentation we can talk about uh uh maintaining we can talk about auditing we can talk about so there are many many many roles and many many pieces that they need to work perfect and if one of those doesn't work good then the full system may suffer back when we were talking about so actually in that episode we did go quite deep into the ZK evm model in that that was a snark and a Stark in implementing that like I almost want to now ask like at what point did you freeze it because

back then I think you probably had a a vision for it and you started to go out and build it but yeah was there changes that happened along the way like did you use a different system in the end because you connected with bobin yeah stuff like that yeah at some point we we were so that there was very much a decision of course here is also try an error okay because you know what you want to build and then you do things you test things and maybe you see okay this line doesn't work and then you need to change because maybe there is you're doing what you're doing doesn't work but I would say that that big pieces the last important change that we made was switching from 256 bits to God belogs to 64 bits uh Prime field okay this was an

important factor of the of the meditation of the system and this probably was the last thing that we changed it of course right now we are working in new things and yeah we are going to next steps okay but that was the last freezing point how updatable is the ZK evm like have you built it in a way that you can change the system under the hood quite easily or is it like a rewrite every time you'd want to do an upgrade like that or would you have to even almost like redeploy it well actually is just um it's an upgradable smart contract right now is limited with time lock currently I think it's a 10 days time lock it should be 30 days at some point but again I mean this is from

the technical perspective you I mean you decide how you want to upgrade the problem of the upgrades is that uh they are quite dangerous and quite centralized so here is the the importance of governance systems for these upgrades and being sure that the the users of the network they get not affected or at least they have the right to exit before an upgrade here I would say that especially ZK proof are still in a in in in getting mature phas of course the maturity of the systems is much much much much much better that it was one year ago but still requires to get some get some maturity we're are still learning I mean we are still finding

some bus and and because of that we need to set some protections these protections are if you want some centralized systems of things that you don't want them to have but for security reasons you have to you have to have them in there you mean like committees and stuff like that yeah these committees and mean these Escape hatches and and things like that that I mean they're not nice uh from the decentralization perspective or from the idea what we are building I mean an attended system that just works and everybody wants to use it's a common good I mean this is the the final goal but we are I would say a little bit far from this ideal scenario but so it's a path I mean the IDE is to go to that

path and there is no other way to go to that path that getting uh maturity on the systems and we're improving a lot I want to talk about some of those systems so I know that your team is focused mostly on the ZK evm side so really the engineering but from the Polygon Group there's been planky 2 that's come out planky 3 that's come out more recently there's Circle Starks there's been work I think just generally on Stark like constructions at what point did those research pieces become something you could imagine implementing and like are any of them in the works I guess is kind of a followup to that yeah yeah I mean we are clearly we are taking advantage of all these research that

these groups are doing uh just to mention few ones of them is uh we are working with very much in what we call vat cops vat cops is variable degree composite proofs the idea is instead of having a huge monolithic proof the idea is to divide the proof in like sub proofs and with the aggregation with the CK I mean using the recursion part we convert all this sub proof to a single proof and this is much more modular and this allows you to do variable size because you can aggregate as many as you want so this allows us to build like infinite circuits I mean circuits that can be as big as you want you know you are not limited by by a number of constraints I mean you're just aggregating different proofs and you can do that and also you you are using much

better all the polinomial they don't need to be exactly the same degree so you can I mean you have a lot of uh advantages uh on there here for example there is a research from polygon team but all other people in the Starks world that's just connecting gkr to the Starks uh just to do the the idea of the B this is an interesting thing that's happening there is also all the work that currently polyon zero is doing about the plony 3 and 32 bits small Prime Fields um the sent proof and all the circle Starks and all that that's uh looks really promising for that I mean there is also the vus system that looks also

very promising again need to see how everything matches but there is a lot of research and a lot of things interesting things that are uh happening of course they are evolving and getting this these proof systems even much faster but what I can tell you is that the real revolution of the zase is not going to come I mean with all these systems with all these new protocols you can get I don't know maybe a 20% speed up uh 50% speed up 10% speed up they may even not work uh on that but I would say the big breakthrough is going to come from the from the hardware acceleration ooh interesting okay so that that's so if we really want a I don't know a 100x speed

up in the zase it's going to be Hardware I don't know maybe tomorrow somebody invents something really cool and and changes your mind exactly but it doesn't it does not look like this will this will happen yeah and uh when what I see really uh I mean U one two orders of magnitude increase is in the hardware acceleration I mean there are some interesting projects that are working that Direction having a having specific processors for thatt of course Hardware requires its time and it requires also a little bit of stability in the at least in The Primitives of the Z Cas but here clearly looks like The Primitives are becoming quite stable here the

merization entities and MSM in the case of snarks in the case of a Starks less but uh these three Primitives are really important and we are start seeing Hardware that are focusing on this and and this where probably next revolution of ZK will happen in in the coming years I like that you're saying that I also want to quickly throw to a few episodes that we just did actually in the last six months so we had ol Rick on talking about the meren 31 we did an episode on Bas we've done a few episodes on Hardware acceleration over the years and recently we did one with ingonyama I think in that we also mentioned that there's now at least the first sort of Asic prototype I don't know exactly what

it's for in what you're seeing in Hardware is it mostly hardware for snarks or is it also hardware for sort of the kinds of constructions that you've made yeah probably the first thinking is for the snarks because this is was the like the standard ZK provs few years ago but now Starks are becoming the I would say that they are becoming the standard yeah I see that most of the projects they are moving to Stars so Hardware I mean it's following this trend and yeah yeah there is clearly the big acceleration will go to Hardware also Starks I mean they have a some they have a lot of advantages for even for the hardware acceleration mean it's hashing functions are in general faster to

implement you can work with small Prime Fields this is very good for Hardware you can even work with binary Fields this is the vus I mean it's very much is about that uh you can I mean you have a lot of options and these scales I mean starts the scale much much better in the hardware world problem is that the hard mean doing an AIC it takes a while I mean you cannot do an AIC in a week yeah a couple years yeah yeah so that's that we need to see but that's that's clearly is going to change uh the way we write z gay circuits back in the day there was this real battle between the snark world and the Stark world and then I know projects like yours were some of the first to really start to incorporate you use both so you're kind of like there's

a snark that then uses a stark I think right both of those things are being used which one was it actually was the Stark the thing that does the recursion at the end I would say the big breakthrough of a Starks is that recursion is very very natural you can do recursion with a snar but uh it's uh it's harder and then you end up doing these folding schemas and and and you need to do I mean you need to work with different corves and there change of of corves it's not as natural as with a stark Stark you do just recushion really fast and this is super important because recushion enables a lot of things this I mean the real revolution of these new zeron systems is recursion and this is

what Starks is excellent for doing that and the other thing that actually uh makes uh just change the balance a lot was the introduction of these small Prime Fields uh so the combination of these recursion plus the small Prime Fields this actually beats a lot I mean they just win the battle of the snarks the Starks that at some point could be some dopes uh I would say that even the some TR to reactions from the snark team I mean if we say as a competition which is absolutely not I mean just there are Technologies yeah yeah but there was a time right there was a time where it was like Camp had sort of like claimed one of these yeah yeah you can people like

that these kind of competitions and so on but I mean when in our case for example is we use both in the days that we're using a star for for everything and for doing the basic proofs and for for recursion and so on but as snarks are very good in short proofs I mean if you want a short proof and if you want to verify them cheaply in a blockchain then you want to build the snark I mean an elliptic core base proof so what we did is okay just res built on a snark and recursion and fast and all the probabilities and just in the last minute in the last moment okay we convert this we just prove this start with a snark yeah and then we have a snark and and that's what we prove on chain so is you we just use the best of

each technology so I would not say that that's a competition I think to put it to bed the snark versus Stark competition who won both yeah I mean each one is useful for its own thing but for doing these uh big uh circuits and this snarks prob has been much much much uh Superior even I mean there was for this big circuits there was a reaction of Nova here for example Foundation had a lot of interest uh on the Nova this is the IVC like folding yeah all these folding schemas and all that uh yeah but even the performance of these systems being much much much better that traditional recursion in uh Stars they cannot beat at least at this point they

cannot beat uh stks uh Starks and and mainly is because the the Primitive underlying primitive even if you are doing a folding you will end up doing a multis scar multiplication and multis Scar multiplication is going to be always slower than a hashing function yeah and that's that MSM that you mentioned earlier the multiscalar multiplication yeah yeah that's the main reason why why elliptic curves systems are in general slower than hash functions systems okay in the other side the elliptic curves they have the arithmetic structure I mean the has is you cannot do not anything with a hush okay you cannot add them but in

elliptic curve you can you you have some some algebra there so there are some systems that they are trying to use all these algebraic properties of electri cors and trying to get better the basic thing I mean if you have a big circuit you have a big winess and you need to run through all this winess okay and what's the basic function that you are using there the case of starks is just am merization an entity and am merization in a small Prime field in elliptic cor you need to go to 256 bits uh fi and you need to do yeah an MSM which is by definition is lower again here Hardware can change the things I mean because it's almost like if the snark Hardware comes out sooner maybe snar maybe exactly reach sort of like they sort of reach parody with

Starks yeah but I don't think I mean essentially I mean essentially the computation you need is small in Starks versus uh snar I want to sort of take the conversation a little bit to the landscape you know we've talked a bit about like the zkm your building of that some of the like deeper technological choices or the research that's come out around that but kind of pulling back from this the L2 landscape has evolved like crazy in the last few years there's like generation one l2s so there was two optimistic Roll-Ups and like two or three ZK rollups and now there's a new generation of 20 more I think you could almost put that in like three waves of

l2s I'm really curious what you make of it back in 2021 it was still sort of this theoretical ZK EVMS or evm parody to the main net chain the fact that you could redeploy all of these applications again on this L2 it was just starting around then what do you make of it and sort of How It's developed our biggest contribution here was the the architecture that we were using for building the zbm I mean here we built a processor we were using uh a processor built in a stark okay uh processor means a processor with a with a program Britain in assembly that runs on that runs on this processor this was a

processor that was tailor made for the ebm that's what the zbm so actually we just uh did all the modifications we need to these processor and in order for optimize the computation of the evm uh circuits but the fact that okay so we were like I don't know if the first project but Pioneers in a way not I don't know what the project and it's very difficult to say that but so we just took this idea so instead of building a circuit we built a circuit that was a processor with memory with ROM with co-processors and we engineered it like a an electronic system of course was a CK we

didn't have transistors we had polinomial instead of transistors but we built a processor we buil an assembly uh we built a code that was running on that processor we built processors required for uh building the zkm and this architecture um I mean has been proven that uh that was the right the right architecture right now everybody's doing that at this point we're talking about the ZK processors and different way different strategies but this was the probably the the the biggest contribution I mean and being something that was theorical I mean I I didn't invent the ZK processors but we just took this idea and actually built a full system a full operational system that builds an evbm uh based on on this idea

that was an important breakthrough and that doing this way you have the flexibility to build the food evbm evbm is really complex uh it's really it's was not designed for a ZK uh to be built on ZK yeah but this doing the things this way this allows you to even build I mean if you can build an evbm you can build anything and we've seen that actually we're seeing more of like rust full rust you know actually yes risk five yeah risk five sp1 all this is this is I mean we can talk about this is probably the future of of the ZK goes in that direction yeah I think even like there's VMS there's like ZK rollup

there's move language there's Cairo is its own VM there's like a whole thing yeah uh kaido is K of a language processor uh on that oh sorry yeah it's not a it's not the VM what's the VM of Cairo it's the Stark net is the VM yeah something like that I don't know know where the VM is in that stack but okay but it's no no but at the end you have some sort of VM that doing this basic instructions this basic processor so so this idea is is fundamental and again and bringing them further this is what sp1 and re zero is doing I mean it's okay let's go further not do a a specific processor let's put just a generic processor and then just put a rust on top of that and and and then you

have everything I mean this is kind of the Holy the problem is how optimal is that I mean this this is has a lot of advantages I mean at the point that brighting CK uh circuits you just use rust okay so that's the this is this is super super interesting and this is the feature of that the problem is how optimal is that and here I would say two things uh that are important one is of course Hardware acceleration this is where really all these uh r five p1s this will can really explode these systems because you will not care about optimization I mean the systems will go so fast that you just uh design contrast you run it and that's it and maybe in the while there is this

idea of the co-processors okay so there are for C time functions or I mean these specific functions having um mean a catch a co-processor or arithmetic co-processor or a shadow 56 co-processor or a I recover co-processor on lipti Pro I mean you can have like different specific functions functions that you're using many times inside the processor and it's like a special code a special up code of your processor that's doing something specific so probably is going to be this so the next stage will not be like one single processor probably going be one processor with many co-processors so prob designing these co-processors or having a set of toolings of standard

co-processors for doing different pieces so that you can join them together this is where the future of ZK is going at yeah yeah that's so interesting to think of it from that perspective we've done episodes with risk zero I think in October we did a recent one with succinct who released sp1 yeah I mean sp1 people may don't know but sp1 is fully built on top of plony 3 so I would say that the core of sp1 is very much plony 3 and we are I mean here we are collaborating and working together with the sp1 very much work in that direction cuz this is clearly the future of the ZK systems and I think it sort of follows the same story that you had which is

like the realization that for certain parts of these systems you will need a stark because risk Zer always has sort of a stark angle I guess sp1 will now too and in the case of those co-processors are there actually also the snark component or is it is it similar to what you've done with the ZK EVMS where it's like many snark recursed by a stark but just that what's going into those snarks is not evm bite code but rather like the risk five instruction set yeah I mean this this process they require a couple of so well let's say different pieces one is what's called continuations continuations means like okay you have a a code that's

executed but you want your code to keep going I mean you want a long program to to run so you need a way to take an execution another execution another execution that goes after each other M you have like different proofs and then you want to pack them together in a single proof okay so this idea of continuation is because you are executing something that's long and you may want even all these proof to compute them in parallel in different systems but you generate a huge computation in single place okay so then then there is different techniques for doing this continuation which at the end is recursion and again if you want to then prove this computation in in ethereum or in a blockchain you probably will want to do a small proof and a proof that's cheap to verify and then you just take

this final proof and then you convert to a snar okay to a stark you to a stark no to a snark so you have a stark and then you convert it to a snark me to at the very end in our case we're using FL ah okay uh but I mean you can gr use growth 16 or you can use plun or other uh elliptic core based systems that which are the biggest property is that the the proof is really small and is cheaper to verify it on chain and the other piece of course is going to be this um this specific op codes or pre compiles or these um I mean specific co-processors that will be important especially at the beginning I mean maybe when Hardware acceleration is so fast maybe all this

will become less important but uh I would say that in the Next Generation all these co-processors are going to be they're going to make a lot of difference for the systems to be real practical I mean there's also a lot of co-processor projects out there so maybe that's good yeah yeah I mean that well that's the cool thing of the contribution and the open source I mean people is writing I mean sp1 just opened this and people are just writing these co- processors and so I mean we just want to remind people that all these co-processors needs to be audited it's you need to do it in the right way but that's a way I feel like we used to see this image of the main net ethereum with these rollups that came off it with the co-processor it actually adds this different

landscape to what's around this main net I'm curious how you imagine all of these tools working together do you think that eventually these tools are for example connected by a shared sequencer or connected by an agay or there's like a mesh of bridging happening between all of these elements or can you paint a bit of a picture of what you see coming in that regard yeah I can I can go maybe from from the historic perspective ethereum remember at the beginning me 2015 ethereum was designed we were talking already with sharts but sharts were exactly all the Shing but at at 2015 sharding was uh like two different ethereums like running in parallel the

execution layers of ethereum execution environments and I mean but even I mean execution environment even was a it wasn't a concept it wasn't a that time but the full idea is okay we have one ethereum we can have many ethereums and they can run in parallel and they communicate one each other I mean this is the original um ethereum design uh this was the serenity phase uh uh By the time okay and this this sharding but this uh thing here two important things happen in between okay the most important thing is this separation between thata availability and execution environment execution or validity proof if you want okay so you proof in one side the the execution and you keep the data available in one side and E right

now is who very much in that availability that's what they are doing and then the Z case is all these processors okay and we start building these processors and the first impact of that is that these processors they don't need to be uniform they can be different processors and you can have different chains and different like these layers they can be very different I mean each one can have their own token each one can have different dat availability models they can have some centralized sequencer decentralized sequencer some of them can be or even can some of them can be things that are not even evm you can do maybe a zik wasm or maiden like or they are designed in a different way so you already have like different

processors that can run all them on top of uh ethereum but the next challenge is okay you have like a lot of processors a lot of chains that are running on top of ethereum but how you connect one each other how they interact one each other how you build this world that I mean ZK wasm uh private Roll Up is connecting zbm or to a maiden or to optimistic or so how they connect uh one each other and here is the I mean the full idea this is the main idea of the of the aggregation layer that most of the teams are building uh somehow we are until now we didn't have processors so talking about how we connect the processors when you don't have

processors this looks like okay it's very theorical but but now we are start having this processor so we are start worrying about that and here in polygon or proposal is the aggregation layer is the this piece that what it does is okay you can have like different chains you have a single Bridge you have a a unified liquidity uh Bridge so a place where you put all the liquidity and then the idea is how you you can do this transfer between uh uh systems but with the warrantee that the systems are good because there is a zero knowledge proof that give you the warrantee that what you're doing is is correct okay this is the big difference for example with an optimation roll up I mean z roll up they give you this immediate thing okay so

you you just the proof you show the proof and you are there you don't need to White anything else okay and here of course from the ZK perspective having a low latency ZK is becomes really important so this is where zero knowledge takes a lot of importance this breaching this this inter rollup communication even inter layer ones it's important but in our case this is inter inter roll up and here is I see the the world because of here okay it's in polygon but what happen with things that are outside polygon okay so what happened with the people that's working with optimism or that's working with arbitro or with zik sing or with or even a starnet I mean how you connect so here the way that I see it is um it's a

matter of friction so we have the the first level is you are in the same chain if you are the same chain you have a full composability I mean you you are there okay next thing is you are in the same constellation you are in the same aggregation layer in this case here here we can expect that the transferring between chains can be in the order of few seconds I don't know 3 four 5 Seconds the transfer so it's like relatively low friction uh on that if you want the interc constellation roll up then you will have to go through the layer one and layer one here we are talking about maybe lots of seconds or even a minute few minutes each way you're talking about like writing to ethereum and then writing back out to

another constellation if you I mean if you need to wait for finality I hope that ethereum improves the finality at some point finality is relatively bad uh currently it's just I think it's like 2 AAS or something like that so it's uh between 6 and 12 minutes okay but I think this can be improved at some point but in any case so going to layer one you have a little bit more friction and even beyond that you can even have like inter layer one we can mean just I don't think Bitcoin but probably between Solan and ethereum or between ethereum and other layer ones it could be also some let me not call it bridging systems so let me call it double pegging systems because I mean when we talk about Bridge sometimes we see this multi um things stuff I'm talking about systems that are

truly they closer almost right like they're more interconnected yeah I mean that they are not they don't depend on anybody they are just like protocol based TR you don't need to trust anybody this part of the protocol it's a double pegging I mean this is the good good old what's the word you're saying there double pack I mean is the double pegging double yeah double pegging this is the idea is that uh you can lck phones in one network and then you start using in the other site and then you can burn it in the in the other network and then unlock it in that but all that I mean it's very much a bridge but but without having a multi or for example if you lock that in Bitcoin okay who has the multi somebody has the keys of the funds

that you are locking so can you do that in a protocol base well if you are Bitcoin you probably do some some fork and going to be complex but if you are two ethereum networks uh or or maybe Solana and ethereum or or other two layer ones you may want to do that and that's definitively possible and for this breaching the ZK is also very very very important because you can you can build this these systems okay but this this prob is going to take uh longer friction but even with different friction levels you will have a single space where all the chains will connect one each other okay and we are we are designing that okay is there two a layers then is there sort of the a layer

for the polygon and then another a layer for all when we refer to act layer we refer to this single liquidity bridge and and the idea is that you don't move the phones in the layer one you just keep the phones in a single place and you are just pointing in one side to the other and you can go really fast it's like a settlement layer above the L1 a settlement layer yeah okay exactly and then of course I mean you have different settlement layers then you need some mechanism also to interconnect and here we have layer one and here it's a world where everything needs to be designed here this thinking about I start talking with other teams about these protocols but it's very very early stage I mean we actually again uh rollups are very very very new uh we are even putting them the

networks are create are creating now they are connecting now we are start connecting in ping we start connecting uh many layers to the system but it's very early stage it's also a lot of opportunities uh are here but I mean it's like nearly stage yeah you can't you can't tell yet kind of how it's going to shake out just I want to make one quick note you mentioned constellations I think on previous episodes tun had been referring to these different kind of groupings of rollups as like federations almost federations just take the world you want I mean I'm not really good in in in wording but that's the idea no yeah just for the listener to make maybe make a little link to what we were talking about in

those other episodes because it's like I think of them at least now there's people who are deploying kind of chains of a certain nature in like you said constellation or Federation these sort of spaces in l2s so you have like the ZK stack rollup Builder so you could build rollups release them and they'll be immediately tied into the ZK sync ecosystem very easily but to connect them to outside rollups you might have to do extra stuff but that seems like a temporary setup don't you find like I feel like it's right now you have all of the different Federation sort of like new rollups kind of coming out of them but I do think there's going to need to

be some connection like a reconnection yeah I mean this is the aggregation layer this is very much what's that it's important to understand that the aggregation layer is this layer that allows these different processors these different rabs to not only to communicate when other also also to send value between one one each other and right now I mean two years ago there was almost no processors okay and now we are start having like a bunch of processors so all this um value transfer between the processors and the standards for transferring value between the processors this will become every more more more uh important here the ZK Tech is fundamental because at the end is you

have a processor you want to commit to a state and then you want to prove to another processor that this happened and you are committed and and this is what it is and here ZK is is important especially for scaling I mean if you have four processors you can always like try to follow all the rollups and follow all the chains but if you have a world of many processors you don't want to follow all the chains here the chain will be sovereing they will generate a ZK and you you will be able to import this state in your state and that means that you will be able to use your I mean the fonts the the trans that they already commit uh to happen to here and that's why it's so important and this is the the aggregation layer that we're building is very much about that it's

about warranting that this transfers and proposing a standard for different chains with different natur uh by itself to transfer value between one each other in the case of the AG layer the aggregation layer like the level that it holds is really that settlement layer but there are other ideas that have been floated like the sequencer model where I think there they're kind of trying to also unify lots of different l2s but at a different level and I'm very curious do you imagine those things working together do you not think that the shared sequencer is the right approach like yeah how are you thinking about it I see it well here there is like two models I mean when you want to

communicate this especially we when you want to communicate but we even more when you want to transfer values there is these two models I mean the asynchronous model and the synchronous model OKAY share sequencers is very much a synchronous model here you have some locking problems and locking problematics okay and here the biggest do on the shared sequencers is how will they scale I mean I'm very worried on the impact because I mean if if you are waiting for the other network you need to maybe you need to put sometime modes the other network can uh needs to block they have some specific times and these systems and this is more generic things in general the World works better the world is a synchronous and the world

works better when you don't depend on the others you're just transferring message or sending message and of course if you have this mechanism for you lock yourself you transfer you know that these fonts are available you have your time and then then there is this this idea of asynchronous calls or or or things that you can you can build on top of this message passing system we need to see at the end this is part of these algorithms or these protocols that we want to implement in between uh chains what the right solution it's difficult to see I think both of them are complimentary if you ask me I would bet more for an asynchronous model I think it's much easier if we take the the idea of internet I mean the protocols there were at the beginning a lot of protocols

that were synchronous that didn't work and here I want to mention theom Corva uh even the RPC the the first Linux I mean the F Linux RPC they never work well in Internet it was until Dr API web uh that are are very much synchronous systems that uh internet start uh start working well even in the programming language I mean the synchronous programming work much better when you are in an environment where you cannot trust the other side and but again I mean this is very theorical discussion I want to see them to happen we are very early stage here we need to be very open

to all the ideas in the case of the polygon uh aggregation layer theidea is very I mean it's very much and a synchronous layer but it allows easily to create these bundles which is very much a synchronous it's a synchronous sequencer and it also allows you to connect a synchronous sequencer okay so we are not closing the doors to any model but again I mean this is this is a current discussion that's happening a lot of work is happening I'm super excited to see these things starts uh happening right now in the poly and deaggregation layer we already can transfer between the chains and we are actually bridging between the chains uh in a way but we need to see how all

these applications work on this new world in this new uh uh space that we are all building and I sort of I think I said this before I think things still also need to shake out in a few different levels like obviously the tech needs to exist we need to see how people use it but I want to talk a little bit about usage in this like l two present that we live in where I feel like it's hard to tell often when you're looking at the metrics that are used what the users are there for like you have these huge flows of people running into one chain joining an L2 like they're bridging everything into an L2 spending some time in there but then I don't know another L2 beckons and they all sort of head over there I'm very curious what

you make of that kind of activity was this kind of what you thought happen or was this kind of unexpected that this is the way it's playing out and how much of it do you think is real I think that's the real question I mean probably there is a lot of these things that you are mentioning happening I mean uh here is very easy to put Bots generating transactions or just throwing a lot of your own money in your chain just saying just because you're saying that you have a huge TBL I mean well this a little bit more difficult because maybe you are risking your money but besides that I would say that from the technical perspective uh it doesn't add a lot of value and I would say that kind of a honey poot so the only the only useful thing is that could be a honey poot for

somebody else but if it's your if your TBL is based on your token I mean I don't think it's even uh useful that for me what I'm interested is in in in real applications even if they have low TBL even if they have low uh transactions and being able to see how they are using and what are the real needs and the learnings in the case of the CBM for example we have been working in a lot of different projects and and listening them and what are the concerns and uh a lot of the Hidden work that we did during the last year was very much about solving all these things for example we had some issues with accuracy of the time stamp I mean there is for example a lot of defi protocols that the

timing is really important we need that yeah so here for example we need some adjustments on that front in order to to have these applications also the way that the people is using I mean people that's using like a single transaction with many sub transactions so how can we have them to do these things better and the idea is working closer with the different applications and understanding these um developers that are building on top of that and making the things better for them scaling and preparing the things this is what I'm most worried about I mean I mentioned at the beginning about the engineering engineering is about solving real problems well air drop is an application but I don't think that uh building

applications for doing airr drops is uh what we are here for I mean it's an application I respect all applications this is one interesting applications it's interesting because it tests the it can test the network and it can stress the the network at certain point but uh I hope that there are more real applications that uh will happen and it's uh for me it's I mean it's very sentimental here but it's for me it's like okay you just need to put the systems avilable and show them explain them and slowly the people will pick up real applications real real people that really needs to use those chains will will start uh coming and using but it's

a matter of time it can be month even years uh that all these applications and new applications are start happening on on chain so slowly uh in one side is like improving our systems making the systems more relable making the system more safe all the aiting making the systems more stable maybe the system more the centralizes this is one One path that we are taking and the other is the the adoption should come from the the different chains from different networks just for different applications just building on on top of that I believe in Solid Rods not in fast uh in fast uh grow uh but again I mean we will see the market is very sometimes is very

it's very uh irrational I actually want to ask you about the there is like sort of a slight sense of disillusionment akin to maybe November 2022 at times I you've been in this industry a longer time than I and I feel like I've gone through my own Cycles I've felt sort of the the highs and lows and the excitement and then the sort of like oh this didn't really pan out the way we' hoped a have you also gone through those and B what keeps you inspired I mean in one site I'm a little bit sometimes a little bit disappointed in the industry but this is not new prob uh especially in the last years I mean

you see a lot of uh projects applications that they don't care all a lot at all about the the values is a little bit uh annoying but uh I'm an optimistic guy and I I always have the hope that it takes some time to get the full point of what's this industry about and I think that people needs to go to this phase I mean if you come from a different industry you go here you you think in terms of other Industries how it works I mean in a competitive spirit and in products and uh these things but there is some point it can take a while that you realize

that where your building goes beyond normal business product you're just trying to get richer than the the other one and that you are just trying to I mean here you are you are trying to build a different way where all humans organize and you are trying to build this uh this common good something that just works something that's there something that's part of the humanity that don't belong to anybody and that's something that's useful doesn't belong to a country doesn't belong to a company exactly it's kind of amazing and this is I mean and and when you discover that and when you see also how far away we are from that but it's when you discover that this is when you make the click and then you stop okay you see the the the things in a in a very different way of

course you need to build the things in a sustainable way you you need to figure out how to do the things but your view changes very much and then you prioritize other things it's disappointing to see it but at the same time you are convinced that okay it's a face I mean it's normal that people come here and they see it in that way all these people in a few years will become ambassadors of this technology and it's part of the uh understanding process so there is nobody that the first day fully understand what's this Tech about the centralization I mean these values of decentralization this talk about this censorship resistance this Freedom this

this is just there it's like air you just take the air and and use it okay and nobody will ask you this permissionless uh systems I mean nobody will ask you what's even your name for using uh Bitcoin or for using ethereum or for using any of the DBS that we are building when you get this point then you I mean your life change I mean your your your vision of the system change and every time we are we are we are more and this is what we are building steps to go there maybe tough I mean sometimes we are building things that are looks like they are very centralized they have systems that you don't really like and they have centralized sequencers and they have centralized provs and they

have a escape hatch and they have all these things but we need to understand what we're building and I think we will I think well people progressively uh is is getting it uh we are a minority maybe uh at this point but we are a minority very very much because a lot of new people came to the industry so this is the good news exactly it's like a that's still growing along with the whole industry because there's way more people nowadays than there were before even talking to you about this landscape and how how many things we could talk about all these different you know ways of looking at what's there and actually spaces that are now there for people to

experiment it's so cool Jordy thank you so much for coming on the show it's a bless your rner thanks for sharing an update on all of that you're doing yeah thank you very much and yeah see you next time soundss good all right I want to say thank you to the podcast team Henrik Rachel and Tanya and to our listeners thanks for [Music] listening