Ethereum Co-Founder: How Do We Fix Crypto? | Gavin Wood

Transcript

I've got a million things I want to ask you. One of them, I mean, maybe just on a very macro scale, like you, you helped found Ethereum starting in 2014. You were, you know, kind of in the Ethereum world, I guess, left left for like an EF, like an Ethereum Foundation like entity late, I think it was 2015, and then I think left the Ethereum ecosystem full-time in 2017 for Polka Dot. I think I'm getting those dates right. I would love I mean TLDDRS you've been in the industry for a very long time longer than most who are listening to the show. I'd love to just get your macro view on like just crypto as an industry. Like are you happy with where we're at so far? Are you o like overwhelmed with oh my god pro crypto president right now.

Stable coins are booming. Are you like underwhelmed and like damn like I really thought we'd be much farther along than we are today? The latter. say more. Um, uh, I think it was Gandhi that said, uh, there's two types of people in the world. Those who do the work and those who take the credit. And I think we see a a certain bifocation of crypto in this regard as well. There's a lot of, um, there's a lot of hype driven projects out there in the crypto world, in the crypto industry, and not that many that are doing legit work. I mean, there's certainly some that are doing, you know, some proper software engineering, but actually pushing the the original sort

of web 3, crypto, Bitcoin ideals forward, really not that many. Um, whereas there are an awful lot of people trying to well, you know, so to speak, take the credit, which is to say, you know, try to find that buzz and that that that hype that that that that capital inflow to make their that their their token go up. And um and I I you know this is I I mean it's not surprising really but it's uh yeah I mean it's not where I would have uh I would have hoped um hoped to be.

you. So you put this underwhelmed feeling um in the hands of you think the industry has misallocated attention dramatically dramatically. And I mean there was an old cartoon uh in this uh this very ironic uh newspaper, The Viz, uh back in the '9s and it had an advert in an ironic advert, right? A comedy advert. Um, no technological nonsense, just marketing breakthrough. Right, that was the advertising line. And this, I fear, is is really where crypto an awful lot of crypto industry is at. It's not about um it's not about delivering uh a new utility. It's not about uh improving

the technology to the degree that it becomes actually a viable social operating system. Right? this is really just about trying to attract more money um into their specific economies. So maybe if I had to take the other side of it just to make this a fun conversation here, the other side of the argument is that all all technology industries have these boom and bust periods of like crazy attention, but really like when the tide goes out, you know, maybe when the tide goes in, everything feels like it has attention and hype. when the tide goes out maybe one of the 10 things is left standing or you know three of the hundred things are left standing and actually hype is what ends up

building all the companies and then you know most of them fail but the ones that stick around I mean the hype is actually warranted um and that's just part of the you know there's two sides of building a company there's the engineering and product and I know you're an engineers engineer but the other side is long you know sustained periods of hype and that would be bucketed as like marketing and sales, I guess I'd say. So, is there I don't know. I'm curious to just hear how you think about that. So, promotion is certainly an element of marketing.

Um, it is not all of marketing by a long shot. And I would say hype is really just a form of promotion that tends to be chronically uh tends to chronically disregard the fundamentals. Now you're you're right like hype can have a a collateral benefit, right? It can it can benefit um uh broad numbers of projects. It can be the tide that lifts all boats to some extent. Sure. But the problem is that um if only one or two boats are uh sort of

deserving to be lifted, um hype represents an incredibly inefficient capital allocation. Not one that um Adam Smith would be particularly impressed with. Right. And that's the main problem here. Who's deserving of it? like is um is Hyperlid deserving? Is Salana deserving? Is WorldCoin I'm thinking of like very hyped projects who also have talented founders and you know obvious I think you and I would be in the same bucket that you know something like memecoins like a lot of hype maybe not a ton of talent behind a lot of these things but there are things that get a lot of hype but have uh you know actually very talented founders and you

know re real users and stuff like that. So, how do you who's who's warranted of the hype? Real users, I would um I would argue maybe not. Um and of course there are some founders that are talented. Um the question is are those talents um are those talents for the good? In whose interests are those talents working? And I do not I believe there are certain memecoin um founders that are incredibly talented. I mean you might argue they're quite lucky as well. And I would say like part of being talented is making your own luck. Let's talk Salana, right?

Salana, Hyperliquid or Worldcoin like I'm using three very hyped up projects uh who I think they also have talented teams. How do how do you think about those kind of folks? I think they're very talented in making themselves money. Who's to say though that? So, okay. Well, I don't I don't know. It's got Who's to say though that the the users on Salana are not doing things that are productive? It's it's they're just choosing what to trade, what basically what to do, right? And it's and it's kind of the free market that lets them do that. Yeah. So I'm I would question

the utility that is being provided. Now if the utility is unlicensed gambling, if you consider that a utility, that is actually not fair gambling either. That's um mostly insider trading um and and just the appearance of gambling. If we if we start thinking of like utility as basically the ability for an an elite group of insiders to make themselves a lot of money then and I don't see this as a sensible form of utility but if you're going to argue that that that is then sure um then Salana is is giving utility um if we're talking about creating a social operating system the thing that sort of the original web 3 hype cycle started with um then no I do not see Salana as doing particularly

substantial utility and I've written quite extensively about this and this is why um the J jam is a thing right it's because I see that the direction that Salana is going and I see that it's wrong and I I' I've made clear arguments as to why it's