Optimism’s Superchain vs Cosmos

Transcript

all right everyone welcome back to another episode of bell curve before we jump in quick disclaimer the views expressed by my co-hosts today are their personal views and they do not represent the views of any organization with which the co-hosts are associated with uh nothing in the episode is construed or relied upon as Financial technical tax legal or other advice you know the deal now let's jump into the episode all right everyone welcome back to another episode of bell curve for this one you've got Mike and miles miles we're doing a little solo episode just the two of us here love it love it and uh you know I think I think the week's news uh makes it very appropriate we've taken a little uh We've readjusted our

plans for the last two episodes of the season it's like that old saying right if you want to make God laugh just tell them your plans and uh this week we had uh there was a big announcement right everyone's very focused on bass which is the new Layer Two that that coinbase launched you know from the beginning of the Season you know you and I have been very interested in kind of this idea that both ethereum and Cosmos are kind of on a on a collision course right um and that ultimately they're trying to solve the same the same problem just from two very different starting points so you know in addition to the base uh an announcement this week from coinbase that's being built kind of on a version of the op stack there's also uh a kind of a Rebrand that optimism has done so

they're now talking about this thing called the super chain right that's what they're calling it I think from from our standpoint it kind of looks like this idea we've been really curious about which is this app chain or apps app space thesis playing out on on ethereum and we actually created some some slides here for all of you to kind of visually walk you all through this so I'm gonna try to share my screen but do you want to kind of explain miles while I'm uh struggling with technology like what is this idea of the super chain here like why has ethereum or uh has optimism kind of rebranded to this yeah I think you know as we've we've talked about this Collision Course idea before which is that you know ethereum and Cosmos are both building towards a future with app

specific block space um and I think the super chain is a version of really what the cosmos thesis is also trying to achieve um but sharing is common security layer in in ethereum uh L1 right and so this is you know it somewhat of an an admission or really embracing the idea that there are going to be you know thousands of app specific block space you know or app specific chains um and you know I think a big part of this Rebrand is is calling them chains now instead of Roll-Ups um and you know but doing so in a secure

you know ethereum first way um so yeah I mean we just look at the language here right so we have super chain is a horizontally scalable network of chains that share security a communication layer and an open source development stack um two out of the three of those things sound exactly like the cosmos thesis basically um you know you have the cosmos SDK is an open source development stack um that you know allows a lot of these chains to interact more frictionlessly together because they share certain standards um you know a communication layer uh that sounds very similar to a communication standard uh that that you know IPC provides

um the communication layer can also refer to really the original thesis of the cosmos Hub which was to be really a messaging Hub um so that each chain doesn't need to maintain point-to-point connections um so you could see you know the optimism Bridge serving as you know some of somewhat of like a communication standard or communication Hub between all of these you know um app specific op chains um and then yeah the only the only big difference here is that the op chains are secured at the end of the day um by ethereum you know there's one final source of truth that all the op

chains share which is the you know what is actually posted to ethereum L1 um and that that's the big difference here right is is that in the cosmos version of this thesis Every Chain has its own final source of Truth um and you rely on kind of I guess the The credibility of the of each chain you know to believe that final source of Truth which enables IVC right um to to to work um and so I think you know there's a lot of parallels to draw here I think it's really worth paying attention to the language that they're using um because it is it is a big change I

think um and you know I don't think base itself we can get into it later represents you know the app change these is playing out because bass is still a general purpose you know L2 um but we're starting to see you know the the broader Vision here um which is you know thousands of these like app specific chains that you know are sharing the same stack um share the same communication standards um and interact with each other um so I I see a lot of parallels here I think it's I think it's kind of you know you've historically seen sort of example of this as well this is not meant in you know in a derogatory way at all to

ethereum but definitely elements of you know sort of some of the focus um and new ideas that get birthed in kind of the cosmos ecosystem have kind of found their way into the ethereum roadmap here and I'm not sure this this represents total sea change but again you know a lot it's really hard to ignore this this language here that even is being used right on the right on the optimism website to basically indicate what this is I would point out one more thing if you go back to that last slide just in terms of ideas from Cosmos being ported over so the new Revenue model the rewards application Developers for the fees that they're chained to generate I I could be wrong but I believe I saw that that was taken from Kanto which is a new you know fairly recently launched

um chain and Cosmos that is you know basically intends to reward Developers for use of their smart contracts um by paying them a portion of the gas fees um that that you know are used that leverage the contracts they develop um yeah so you have you know the broader Vision I think is is kind of being ported over here um you know the the broader like the the main tools that make this possible um are being recreated um not ported over um and then some of the you know the more nuanced pieces like like this Revenue model for uh protocol developers you can see that's getting mapped over

as well here's the thing about you gotta hand it to them look at this branding and look at that word the super chain what a powerful meme that is you know it's this is this is one of the things that I think what I would kind of call and this was you know kind of I think your your sort of framework for looking at it I just give credit where creditors do but it's kind of like that core ethereum kind of group right there's eth as a brand and that's very closely aligned probably on the deck side with uniswap and on the the L2 side with optimism they they really do get you know how to how to disperse a compelling message and a good meme you know you're going to see probably a bunch of memes about the super chain uh you know where really the the cosmos

version of this is the internet of of blockchains but I wanna I wanna get into some of the more specifics here and again I you know I apologize if if you're if you're not looking at video but just to kind of describe what we're looking at here these are a couple of diagrams basically of a high level version of the optimism uh sort of model right and what you're seeing is a a big blue a purple bar on the top ethereum then there's a connector smaller bar Optimum bridge and then you have a bunch of vertical kind of op chains OB chain one two you know three four Etc um and then on the right you kind of have it the cosmos version of things which on the bottom you've got one block which is networking consensus that's kind of tendermint there's communication

rails which is ABCI and then there's an application layer which is the cosmos SDK and a smart Contracting layer that calls them awesome can you can you kind of uh and I last thing actually on the ethereum or the optimism diagram is this cross chain messaging protocol so um well maybe could you help kind of connect um you know this this diagram on the left uh where does bass kind of fall there where does optimism mainnet fall and just just kind of give us an overview here what we've got yeah absolutely and so I again this is still very early we still haven't seen what this looks like so that we we could be wrong here but um essentially you know obviously to answer that question around where is

optimism mainnet and where is base I think that those are you know OB chain one and op chain two um and it I think they are just sort of laying the foundations for what can be built on top that enables this you know broader Vision to play out um I think that they you know basically serve as an onboarding tool through coinbase and eventually I think you know optimism mainnet will transition to to more of a communication Hub similar someone similar to Adam um and but just to give like maybe a higher level overview of what the similarities are here is you're giving developers a

set of out of the box tools that enable them to build their own blockchains securely um and interoperable with each other um so with you know the cosmo stack you have tendermint which gives you you know networking and consensus engine right out of the box um so you have the tools but you still need to go you know obviously recruit your own validator set to run this software and the you know security of of your networking and consensus layers based off of your own token right and so that Maps over basically to ethereum L1 to some extent so that's not really part of the op stack but the op stack does

have sequencers which do you know similar play a similar role to validators um you know in terms of ordering transactions and uh sending them to you know ethereum L1 um and so you get those out of the box um you know you could still have to either run that sequencer yourself or recruited you know network of sequencers to to run it you know a multi-sequencer network or you could potentially rent you know uh security from a shared sequencer Network which I think we can get into later um and then on top you know you need a set of modules a set of tools that basically you know every single

developer who wants to build their own op chain or their own Cosmos chain they're not Reinventing the wheel they've got you know the core capabilities right out of the box that they can plug in um but you want to make them modular enough so that they can plug and play you know different configurations they can take whatever the out of the box version is and you know customize it more for their use case um and so you know the goal here is basically to with with both Stacks is to reduce the amount of time as much as possible from you know start of development to Launch and then once they are you know launched give them you know a set of tools that allow these These

Chains to communicate with each other um because that that to me is the big missing piece here um and so yeah it's interesting you know I think we're talking about this all season long but they're they're really you know ethereum and Cosmos have just are building towards the same shared Vision but have very different starting places um and so you know I view the op stack as ethereum now you know trying to build their own Cosmos SDK right and instead of this is for allowing you know lots of l1s to use this same stack things are all going to be L2 chains or Roll-Ups as we used to call them um and then on the cosmo side you know

they basically really focused on the interoperability the ibcps they've built out you know the cosmos SDK has tons and tons of modules which you know the more people use it the more you know app chain developers that that adopt it they start contributing themselves and so there's lots of network effects there um and yeah at the end of the day there's these Stacks are basically just to get to you know enable developers to get to from zero to one as fast as possible um and they both are you know and they both achieve that in different ways so we're going to get into some more details of you know sort of what what is in that stack uh the and kind of compare the dop stack versus the cosmos

SDK but before we do I think one other highlight uh that's just worth lagging mentioning is you know you and I have kind of laid out this this uh gosh blanking on the the word for the but the Spectrum right where you've got kind of a full stake full stack app chain like osmosis all the way over here on the left um and then kind of like a roll app layer three uh on the right here on ethereum then there's something like kind of Celestia in the middle which is more modular approach um this what we're talking about here is kind of laying the bass these these are all just you know to be totally clear generalized block space layer twos right so this isn't necessarily that that layer three yet although they've we'll get to a slide later on where they're they're specifically saying that that's

a problem that they're trying to solve for I think another you know just something to highlight the approach that optimism has taken that's a little bit different from some of the other uh folks that we've spoken to such as um you know Sovereign Labs certainly but also Celestia is they are highly aligned with ethereum right there's a you know it's all over their language uh they're you know the it seems like from a developer standpoint they're really trying to make it as easy as possible for uh you know ethereum developer developers to to build on optimism as well whereas you know especially the Sovereign Labs has taken the approach where it doesn't really matter you know sort of the base L1 that we plug into where kind of a uh you know a one-size-fits all it's just a very different kind of strategy for for

scaling yeah it plays into the BD side as well uh right because I think the goal of this you know Rebrand is when you think of ethereum scaling you think of optimism when you think of you know the future of of you know basically a multi-chain world you're thinking of the optimism stack um and you're thinking of all of these chains you know that share all the same qualities because they're using the stack um and you know I think optimism has done this really well uniswap does it does it really well you know in in terms of aligning themselves so what when you think of ethereum you also think of them um you know that's very different from

Sovereign labs and very different from the cosmos approach which is really Bottoms Up and and focusing on you know it's called Sovereign labs for a reason right it's focusing on sovereignty um right and racing that so yeah I think that's an interesting interesting uh point there yeah and I think the you know the trade-offs if if I was sitting in the seat of uh you know Preston who we spoke to last week or maybe Ben right who's the leader at uh or what one of the co-founders at optimism is you know on the ethereum side of things you plug into distribution right you have access to or first of all you kind of have the inherit the shared security of ethereum so it's not something you have to worry about but it's also um you know you kind of plug into this the Sea of users

whereas but the challenge right is obviously if ethereum were to slow or you know adoption doesn't go along the path that they wanted or there's some kind of technical reason why the chain was less feasible than we think it's going to be today uh then they're limited right uh sort of they've kind of tied their their fate to ethereums whereas the approaches of uh let's say a sovereign Labs you you are not limited right to the success of the layer one but also you do kind of lack that that Pipeline and funnel into two users right yeah and it's just we'll see how each of those those two things trade out but that's the way that I would be thinking about kind of the trade-off and yeah like I'd love to get your thoughts on that but also before we go to the next slide I do want to get your thoughts on

this kind of cross-chain messaging which you know could be kind of one of two things there actually was it this is the the much less likely but there was a paper that the ethereum foundation published uh I think back in September or October of this year which was you know what would IBC on ethereum look like so that's what that that's certainly the the messaging solution in the cosmos ecosystem much more likely right this is probably a shared set of sequencers so can you just kind of comment on the the distribution approach and then like let's just talk about what a uh some of the trade-offs are of the the sequencers the communication side um the the challenge right now with Roll-Ups is that for you to bridge from one roll up to another

um or at least optimistic roll ups you need to there's a basically a challenge period of I think it's you know anywhere up to seven days before your before your transaction is you know guaranteed to be you know on basically valid um and then you can bridge over to that other roll-up so you're still going down to the L1 basically to the you know ethereum Bridge contract on L1 waiting the waiting for that challenge period and then going up to op chain two um and so I think ways that they can get around this um you know it does lead you know I

think the most obvious route is to have basically this this shared sequencer Network um so that the you know different Roll-Ups if they use the same sequencer they can trust each other right the whole the whole point of that seven day period is because you know there's one sequencer that knows the truth on one roll up there's another sequencer that is you know not willing to directly trust that other roll-up um and so it has to wait basically for you know their ultimate source of Truth which is L1 you know ethereum L1 to tell them okay it's it's it's totally valid so where I think this starts playing out is you know definitely a shared sequencer Network um and then you know potentially this

you know idea of these l3s that that settle to um you know optimism main net or set to base um that that's another way that you know you can you you could get around this um without having to wait like the seven days um so yeah I think I think that there's a lot more you know work to be done there in order to make that multi-chain super chain future possible um whereas you know with Cosmos Every Chain is its ultimate source of truth right and so as long as you trust that other chain you know you can you can trust what they're telling you uh via IBC

um and so yeah I think I think that that's kind of the biggest missing piece here and the biggest question I have is you know can they figure out a way to you know replicate the benefits of IBC you know between L2 to L2 to L2 or is this really going to look more like you know is there another layer missing in this picture where most of the you know super chains or most of these sorry mostly op chains in the super chain world are actually l3s um that to me would make you know a lot more sense this is just more of a like a market structure question here but I am very curious to see like how many of these op chains are really necessary

right um and it is you know I one question that I'm kind of asking myself we haven't really got into base uh in general but you know it'll be interesting to see who ends up attracting more of the uh the kind of users and activity right between optimism mainnet versus bass because kind of the what bass has going for it we talked about it kind of in detail on the the Roundup edition of uh of bell curve that came out on Friday was it has it has users right there's 108 million uh users that coinbase can funnel into this chain and frankly 108 million is like an order of magnitude you know larger uh than than even the most the most successful I mean it's much larger

even than ethereum right so that that level of users is unprecedented the the disadvantages That Bass has is I think the biggest one ultimately that it's going to have to overcome is okay there's some regulatory stuff right so in terms of flexibility coinbase is limited right they critically they didn't launch for the token right they're not going to be monetizing them right off the bat um you know I think there's there's opportunity once they decentralize the sequencer set but they can't do some of that stuff already I think the other thing too is that even though coinbase has frankly one of the best brands in crypto it probably it risks still being seen as like a corporate chain right as opposed to something like optimism which is kind of this retail Grassroots uh you know authentic to ethereum kind of

feeling also it has a token um so I think frankly like watching where activity sort of flows in between just those two to begin with will be very interesting and then I'm you know to your earlier point I'm very curious to see like how many of these you know generalized kind of layer two spaces do we ultimately need um you know before we start licensing uh a bunch of kind of layer threes I totally agree I think um I think the role of these general purpose or we'll just call it optimism mainnet and base will will shift over time um and the reason I say that is because I think you know general purpose l2s are not all that different than general

purpose l1s um once they get you know a a ton of users in traction um and specific applications that are you know dominating that activity will you know eventually want to move to their own space because they'll deal with congestion they'll deal with fees they'll you know still be you know you're kind of struggling with value capture you don't basically have your own app specific environment right um and so I think that the role of of optimism mainnet and bass will be you know basically serving as the easiest place to stand up a smart contract app um find pmf iterate and then eventually

move to your own L3 now the pace of that really depends on just how fast they can make you know some of this friction of of living on your own L3 you know mainly the cross chain messaging friction um how fast they can solve that but I do think that you know it's optimism and and bass will serve as onboarding tools for users and easy launch opportunities for you know uh new new projects um yeah but over time I think that you know they will shift to being more of like uh a communication Hub between the different l3s that they can all leverage yeah so um I want to bookmark that that exact

language they use a communication Hub I want to return to that later but next I kind of want to go into what actually is the op stack so again if you're following along uh via video you'll bear with me here we'll like kind of describe these different layers but basically what we're looking at in the left of this chart is kind of a all of the different layers of the op stack which at the top you know starting at the top and then going down there's the governance layer there's the settlement layer there's the execution layer uh the derivation layer the sequencing layer and data availability they've also got different sort of solutions uh in the governance layer there's kind of multi-sig and then this broad op right which sort of governance module in settlement there's attestations there's also these are proposed right so not in

stone uh Canon and ZK proofs execution layers they evm derivation layer is there's Roll-Ups today there's a proposed indexer sequencing layer is optimism and then I guess uh you know this is the circle Optimum that's a decentralized uh you know network of sequencers and optimism data availability ethereum and then EI eip4844 on the right we've got uh the cosmos kind of stack and that's where we've got consensus networking which is tendermint then there's the ABCI into this sort of application part uh there's the cosmos SDK at the center and then around it you know sort of in this this Fanning out is you've got staking slashing IBC and and governance so all the SDK modules

basically yeah right exactly so how do you kind of you know compare and contrast these these two stacks models yeah so I mean first of all the cosmosac is truly the full stack right where the op stack is basically plugging into existing parts of you know the full stack which includes ethereum down at the at the very bottom of the base layer right and so you know maybe starting with with Cosmos they've you know basically give you uh a way to you know a consensus and networking engine for at the bottom um obviously it's you're not inheriting any security so that is only as valuable as as you know the validator set that

you can recruit and the you know value of your token then they're giving you basically the you know the the SDK which is a set of application modules um and what's not shown here is is cosmosum which is a virtual machine similar to the evm um and so you know I think the cosmos SDK the cosmo stack really did start from scratch here um and that's why it has taken a long time to build whereas the op stack you know is leveraging a lot of existing tools like you know leveraging the the network effects of the evm you know it's not saying we're going to build a new VM saying we're going to import basically what all the apps are using already

um there will be you know the op stack what's really being introduced here um is like the sequencing layer I think that's that's still you know giving a set of tools to have different options for how you want your roll up or your chain to be um handle sequencing that's you know that's a big piece of this I think um and you know you're basically trying to again make it as easy as possible to to to get from zero to one here um I do think that the you know the op stack is is reusing a lot of what ethereum has given it and that's why you know it is so

aligned with ethereum as well um yeah but maybe it's I think important here to talk about like why a shared stack is you know really really powerful um before you before you go through that like one one ID because I think I know where you're going with that and I want to pick pick apart one difference that I sort of see in the stacks like you know we've spent a lot of the a lot of the conversations about uh you know in the season there's been an extreme Focus kind of on the execution layer right and the op stack like very noticeably right on this diagram there's kind of you know there are multiple different either solutions that exist today or proposed Solutions but around the execution layer there's just the evm right which we know

you know has its own set of of limitations and this this to me gets at kind of the the cultural difference here that you might not even see reflected in sort of the the technology which is Cosmos has been kind of laser focused on on day one right for uh you know the the product um whereas ethereum has approached it from very different uh kind of challenge set so it's just interesting to me to look at at even if you go to the optimism website you know they they say kind of they they see um optimism mainnet really concentrating around kind of the data availability layer and being much more loose and vague around the governance layer uh and you you see that reflected in kind of the dialogue from people who are deep deeply involved in eth or scaling and

they're always talking about these kind of uh you know data availability sort of questions in in Cosmos it's very different right a the governance is is much more contentious and dramatic as we kind of saw from some of their proposals this week remember this last week um and then also like there's this extreme focus on the execution layer and highlighting why that's that's an important layer to focus on so I just think it's important to again kind of on this idea of the Collision Course there still are cultural differences even though they're they're kind of um yeah I I I agree with that um and I think it does get into you know kind of the the op stack you know I think is is extremely powerful for scaling

um and I think the cosmos stack is extremely powerful for really deep Innovation where Innovation that is only possible when the chain understands what's happening at the application layer um so you know we've we've talked about this a little bit but these are things like you know True full stack privacy um through threshold encryption or other sort of um you know encryption mechanisms that really require you know the a dedicated validator set um or things that you know again like have to happen at the validator set like dydx's order book matching system uh right right and that

that to me is where I think it'll be interesting to see where you know what sort of decision an application developer would make when they're looking at okay you know I basically get all the scaling properties I need through building them on the op stack I get all the users right um so maybe that's a good place to start and then at a certain point you know will they run into any sort of I would say you know inability to to innovate to the product because they don't own the full stack I think that that's where I you know it will be interesting to see just how many chains you know how many products

their full chain need to own the full stack basically in order to deliver what they want um yeah and and that's a uh that's that's a limitation of no matter how exciting this and and this is right I think optimism in coinbase they deserve a huge pat on the back this is amazing news but also you know that is still the limitation of this particular design architecture right if you have a shared set of sequencers there isn't that uh understanding or this idea and that's you know kind of sunny and Dave were talking to us about about what your validators can can do for you and having the validators at the very base of consensus understand what's going on on the application layer but you know I sort of interrupted you before you were kind of talking about

um you know the I think kind of starting to get into the uh the original role of the Hub here and I wanna I wanna maybe tee this up by this is the very first uh FAQ right which is what happens to to optimism mainnet right because this is where they they launched the super chain and in their words the optimism mainnet isn't going anywhere and for now it's business as usual in the long run we envision it as an important coordination hub one of the most critical pieces of the super chain so yeah that that wording is is pretty interesting uh can you kind of uh get into I think it would be good to kind of do like a little bit of a history lesson about the Hop and what its original intended purpose was because when I because when I read this

I immediately and I also was thinking about with base in mind I my mind immediately went to the cosmos Hub and and really the role of the Hub um and the rule I mean just as a little history right so the cosmos you know at an Ico which was you know got funding basically to build out all of the parts of the cosmo stack to help grow the cosmos ecosystem um and the specific role of the Hub at that point was to be really a messaging Hub um so that each of the chains did not need to to maintain point-to-point connections um and take on that risk and instead could you know basically connect to the

hub and then from The Hub they can route to you know any other chain that's that's in the ecosystem um the hub's other role was really user onboarding um because the Hub was the you know atom the token is really the only Cosmos ecosystem token that was listed on centralized exchanges um and you know I I see bass and optimism mainnet playing a similar role here um you have bass which is going to facilitate onboarding um and then you have optimism mainnet which I think over time transitions from less of a hub you know I'm sorry less of the home of all the applications and we the majority of usage happening on

optimism mainnet to being really how all these l3s built on top of of you know using the op stack can communicate more frictionlessly um you know rather than having to basically wait for the challenge periods on L on L1 et cetera Etc um and so yeah I I think it is interesting because you know op like optimism optimism I think is playing a similar role to the hub here that they've you know their original role was basically to build out the stack um and eventually you know facilitate communication between all these

different chains that use in stack um and and base is kind of filling that role of being the onboarding tool um by having you know going to users where they are well yeah one question that I have for you is um you know kind of one of the the challenges right initially it is kind of this idea of value accrual so you know even when I when I hear you describe you know bass as being kind of the onboarding uh but eventually right uh these application developers the one that are successful once they've gotten kind of the easy onboarding and uh you know they've gotten the the users and the distribution that kind of this optimism ethereum pipeline give them eventually they'll kind of want more control of the application to move to the L3 in a way right there's this kind of uh

you know it's kind of a rising tide lifts all boats but there's also a little coopetition going on in between you know optimism mainnet and bass and you could almost see like a user Journey right going right from coinbase to base and then to their own L3 and sort of skipping optimism mainnet and one of the challenges right for for the The Hub or Adam in general right which is the Ico that they raise the the funds in is there's never much thought given to Value accrual right that was always kind of the challenge for that so you know not that we really want to speculate on on kind of token prices here but can you kind of you know dig into that a little bit further yeah yeah I think that you know

eventually you could see somewhat of a value accrual tension between apps on optimism mainnet versus you know launching their own L3 to get closer you know more control of of their block space get basically you know a closer relationship with the user I would say you know by having your own L3 um and then okay so what is optimism if optimism isn't really you know the the home of all this activity that's driving like where the actual apps live that's driving you know transaction fees and all the normal value accrual methods what what is it going to be um and I think that's kind of where Adam found themselves you know or the Hub found itself over the past year or two

um where you know the majority of all all the activity right is not the Hub doesn't do anything uh but the activity is you know on these different amp chains um and the app chains turned out you know to prefer point-to-point connections for the most part um so the the original thesis around being you know like the messaging Hub there's really no no value accrual and it wasn't really playing out here um you know I could I could see optimism kind of being in a similar place at some point but the big difference is if it is you know all these l3s are using optimism main net you know as a shared communication layer that there probably

is some you know some Mev there that optimism will have where Adam never will have that um so yeah I think I think there are parallels but um you know the role is really to build out the stack right um serve find a way to onboard users um and then let the application developers you know basically take these tools and and continue to innovate on it themselves um so I think that's the the other piece here that will be interesting is you know when these similar to the cosmo stack how the app genes are are now sort of the biggest contributors to the stack um to the cosmos SDK when did the l3s start contributing to this as well

because that's when the network effects really pick up uh when it's not all on optimism in their team to you know drive this forward um your your biggest users of the stack are also the ones that are continuing to innovate I think that's that's really kind of what we've seen in terms of the network effects of the SDK and if optimism succeeds here then that's that that's what they will you know start to happen on that side can we maybe dig into that idea more on sort of the network effects that accrue to these these sdks that get escape velocity uh it's something that we've been talking about quite a bit this season and one of the one of the things that stuck out to me um about the launch of base is that they

said they've they've considered um they've considered launching a chain twice before in the past um and one of the the analog that I'm sure that they were looking at was Finance smart chain right and and that was actually uh you know originated in the the cosmos ecosystem so you kind of described like you know give us again you're having having a br a little history lesson here again but just on kind of the the experience that binance has had with its it's marching I think that that was that stuck out to me too because I I actually didn't know that they had considered launching their own chain before um and I'm sure that they were looking at binance and saying you know look at all this activity and they're it's like actual you know it's it's not a truly

decentralized blockchain but it's it's closer to you know onboarding users to decentralize Applications than just letting them speculate on coins within a centralized exchange right um and then so they had they have to figure out okay if we're going to launch our own blockchain what's the best way to do it and it would basically going back to to BNB they took you know the cosmo stack um with tender man and the SDK up top and basically forked it uh and then built you know a basically a mini evm chain that is secured by just I think like 20 20 or 30 validators um and then they used a fork of IBC to

to bridge between those two um the two chains and you know I think it's it stuck out to me that they chose to you know take this open source software um you know Rebrand it as their own and then really kind of just forget any sort of alignment to the cosmos Community um what ended up happening you know earlier this year or maybe it was it was last year um was that you know the binance bridge was hacked and that's because that they were using an old version of IBC that had not been patched yet um and so what you know you can kind of see some of the lessons that coinbases may be taken from that and to say okay

let's definitely reuse existing software like or you know we're going to Fork optimism essentially but we're gonna do we're going to launch this in alignment with optimism and and its broader Community um and that way you're almost you know if you are saying we're going to you know upgrade our our base chain you know in alignment with you know any upgrades to the op stack um you're essentially Outsourcing you know a lot of that maintenance and development um that that Finance clearly would have benefited from um because you know you are you're guaranteed to be using like the latest version of whatever

um software of that stack that you've picked um and so I think that you know they probably had looked at Cosmos chains before um they probably thought about you know something that we haven't even thought of um but picking okay you know ethereum so we have alignment with the broader Community it's very strategic then picking um you know a stack that's somewhat battle tested um but you know in in optimism um and building an alignment with them so that you're not you know basically Reinventing the wheel building from scratch and then you know kind of sitting out on your own Island hoping that you know none of the technology you forked from whatever the

original launch was is broken or had bugs that you never you know identified um so yeah I think it's really really I I I appreciate the strategy and appreciate that they've probably taken some lessons from from BNB um but are building a definitely a better version of it um that's more aligned with the community yeah it's it's an important it's an important point to highlight I think because we've sort of been talking about um the the network effects that accrued to to an SDK in one very specific sense but there's also this kind of uh you know crowdsourcing upgrades um sense that's very important to so yeah I'd say it's that it's sharing a

communication standard you know that that's an incredibly powerful Network effect um and we'll see just how that plays out but yeah um yeah I think that's maybe the other point is that you know once more and more developers start using this right they'll start contributing to the stack themselves and so coin is not only Outsourcing you know maintenance and development of the stack to optimism with the team but hopefully at some point it will be you know optimism's team as well as these you know app specific Roll-Ups teams that are that are leveraging the stack and improving it yeah by the way I think you know even just just thinking about this right now it is interesting that binance smart chain you know for

whatever reason right kind of inherited the brand of its kind of corporate Overlord right in the sense that when I kind of think about the this idea of crypto being a 24 7 Global Casino Finance is the embodiment of that right and so is binance smart chain right like most of the you know a lot of the I'm not sure to be honest it's probably one of the corners I know least about crypto but I know it actually has a lot of users and and organic usage and it's really just speculating on kind of meme projects uh overall so it'll be interesting to see if that happens similarly with with coinbase and base the chain inherits the brand of coinbase and it's unclear to me what exactly that

will be within a web 3 kind of context um yeah the big difference again I think you know BNB has its own ecosystem of apps and most of them are also Forks of existing you know ethereum apps like compound and unit swap V2 I think base you know again just similar to the way that they've aligned with optimism to build this they're going to be I think pulling in the Blue Chip applications I don't think you're going to see you know a lot of I think you'll you'll have some coin based products um like CBE full launch there and I'm sure they have many more in mind but I do think you know it's not going to be a bunch of new

names uh in terms of the leading applications on on base um whereas with BNB it you know it's pancake swap it's not uniswap right um so I think I think that'll be a big difference as well maybe we can you know start to wind down here just by talking about um you know what is what is left to build right so they've you know optimism is kind of uh outlined this this new thesis of the super chain yeah but it's still very early days as you pointed out earlier in this discussion so it for those of you who are following along via video we're kind of looking at um what is still needed to uh you know to formalize this vision and you know they've got six things so one is withdrawal claims uh or withdrawal

claims rely on a trusted set of uh chain attesters uh to cross-chain transactions are slow because they require waiting a challenge period three cross-chain transactions are async uh breaking the ability to perform Atomic cross-chain transactions like flash loans for posting transactions to the super chain is not scalable because the transaction data must be submitted to the layer 1 which has limited capacity five there are no easy framework for building scalable dapps which utilize many op chains and six there's no easy wallet for managing assets and dats across many op chains so what kind of sticks out at you I guess um you know from yes I think this is again what sticks out to me is that these are a lot of the same problems that that Cosmos has been

focusing on um because it's saying okay we have this you know net network of chains now it's no longer everything living in one place what made what needs to be built in terms of infrastructure to make those products the best versions of themselves um and you know I think it has a lot to do with first can you you know enable fast bridging between them um so you know not full interoperability but not seven day waiting periods right right um and then second is okay how do you recreate or something as close to recreating the you know composability that you know urine Finance has with compound because they live in the same

execution environment um and so that's when you start to get into okay when can we make you know contract calls on another chain um which is where IBC has evolved to now from just you know transfers to actually controlling accounts on other chains um and I think that you know they're they're going to get there eventually um you know that's where they're they're kind of talking about at number three right um you know you can't basically you know have a like a flash loan type thing um you know that's leveraging a contract on one chain to use another application or another

um because they don't they don't you know trust each other basically um yeah and so yeah they're they're building towards you know they're they're now okay we've like embraced this this you know app chain vision and now they're I think solving for a lot of the the same the same problems that you know we've seen IBC start to address yeah you know what's funny actually this this reminds me of a little bit is or you know one of the things that that jumps out is it seems funnily enough like Cosmos and ethereum align a lot on kind of their their roadmap but they also sort of align on the design the design trade-offs that

they've chosen you know with the big difference being that there will always be more optionality and flexibility in terms of your your apps in Cosmos when you have when you control like do a full Sovereign full stack app chain um but in general like the super chain is kind of just another you know shift towards having the same sort of vision if if you look at something like Solana I think this creates a little bit of positioning opportunity for them because they are still trying to do this all on one layer and one of the big advantages there is uh you could do these sorts of atomic uh transactions and composability just works a lot better and and with much less friction so it's just interesting you know and and frankly

like I think I don't know what kind of use cases are enabled you know outside of flash loans you know by being able to do things so atomically or not asynchronously but it is it is curious to just to just see that yeah I I agree um I think the value of you know synchronous uh composability versus async composability is still very you know TBD um and I think that's because we have not seen the infra that enables like really you know effective async composability um interchange accounts again for you know via IBC will be the first version of this

um but yeah I I do see what you're saying um in terms of a positioning opportunity for Solana um if they you know keep the chain stable um then you know you should they should lean into this basically um and think about you know what one of the what can we you know basically build on Solana that that because everything's living in the same place is not possible on ethereum or Cosmos if this is where ethereum is going so let me ask you this um I guess just to to Really you know dig into this idea of Cosmos and ethereum being on similar road maps it seems to me an idea that we've talked about earlier in this episode but also

on the season that the ethereum road map kind of continues to borrow some of the best ideas that come out of Cosmos right whether it's kind of I think lazy Ledger you could probably draw a pretty straight line in between the the announcement of that white paper in 2019 and this new kind of road map the super chain being the last like you know demonstrable data point uh of of ideas that originated in the cosmos ecosystem potentially communication hubs as well right like right the roll-up the main net changing to the communication Hub similar to like what we've seen you know Adam's kind of role as in Cosmos yeah totally agree yeah what does that look like in Reverse why haven't we seen some of the the ideas or the proofs or

whatever it is that is being kind of pioneered in ethland kind of flow the other way into the the cosmos ecosystem into the cosmos ecosystem because you know what I think the the challenge here looks like you know to me um and now having thought a little bit about it I hope for the season is there isn't that you know kind of uh a subset of users right there isn't that you know unique shared security there are competing models for how uh security might work uh but I think that the bottom part of the stack which has not been the focus of of Cosmos for a long time there's still a lot of work to be done there and I'm just curious why you know the ethereum solution hasn't flowed back into Cosmos and I'm curious like how you think uh shared secure security

is going to work in in a cosmos world I think I would push back a little bit on that because I do think that some Concepts from ethereum are now you know taking hold in in Cosmos um so the one that I would say is probably like less and you know has been less impactful has been the evm coming to Cosmos and so many many chains in Cosmos you know use an evm instead of cosmosm um and you know don't really Leverage The out the capabilities of the cosmos SDK all that much you know at the for their applications um the other piece is I think you know a lot of the shared security

um Concepts from ethereum are coming to Cosmos um and so you know you're starting to see with uh consumer chains on the Hub um which I believe is up for a vote right now whether for that for that to help up upgrade um starting to see you know the concept of hey maybe as you know a early stage app with no users we should you know rent security from from a highly you know a high market cap chain like the Hub um find pmf and then decide if we really really you know need our own validator set um I think mesh security is is is part of that as well

um but definitely more Bottoms Up view but in general I would say that you know the reason it hasn't really flowed you know a ton of ideas have not flown you know in the reverse um from ethereum to Cosmos is really because I think you know things are built on ethereum with you know L1 consensus you know censorship resistance um that's that is everything is being built you know um in a way that is still valuing that the most right that ethos that design Choice sits at the center yeah and they're they're almost finding ways you know to build in like powerful applications in spite of that design choice right right

um whereas with Cosmos it's saying you know we're going to build you know it's as the best applications we possibly can and then the architecture will you know be based off of what enables that product to be built um and and I think now they're seeing okay you know we can build amazing products but it's not a good situation if you know there's more tvl on your chain than the market cap of your token right um that it's a very dangerous situations um and so they're saying okay if we're going to actually scale this to hundreds and you know thousands of of app chains um we need to figure out a shared security method and that's going to be a combination of ICS and mesh

security and Frank I could even see eigenlayer coming coming over and and having like you know E3 staking as as a portion of um of Cosmos you know security for for these app jams um so I think you know you can see a world with app chains that have that are secured by a combination of their native staking token you know close other you know closely aligned other chains through Mass security maybe they're also renting from The Hub um and maybe they're also you know secured by some restaked eth right very non-correlated asset um and yeah I would say that that's the one piece where I do think you know it is

flowing in that direction where whereas you know Cosmos is looking at um starting to see the benefits of shared security yeah absolutely well it's just you know it's it's very timely right that this this is sort of rolling out at the same time that you and I are kind of thinking deeply about it this season I think it will be validated when we see a big ethereum application or or maybe just a lot of new applications being built as l3s um I agree they'll want to make that distinction that you know base and optimism mainnet are General per you know effectively general purpose change right um and they're building the stack to enable a future with with thousands of of apps specific chains or

sector-specific chains um but I think that you know I don't want to confuse viewers because bass is not you know an app chain itself so whenever we get uniswap L3 on optimism that's when we we can say we were right yeah and it's fun I mean uh Daniel olitzer wrote wrote a piece about this uh why why unit chain is inevitable and you know his um he was sort of viewing that he had a bunch of arguments right for why you know swap might want to have its own chain and the kind of discussion was well maybe they'll go over into the cosmos ecosystem when really there's sort of a door number three in that scenario which is to launch their own layer three on on uh Eve you know on

built on either optimism or some other sort of solution and that makes a lot of sense because they've already done they're already so lined with kind of that that core ethereum community that I think leaving that would feel pretty silly yeah I agree I totally agree and I think that a lot of apps will will have that same line of thinking um and then the kind of decision point will basically be something like where dydx was and they were saying well okay we still can't make this like product without our full stack um right or if it's like something like that right where you get because you you are getting a lot of the benefits of of an app chain with an L3 but there's

still going to be a category of you know or a bunch of types of capabilities that you know require a full stack update but yeah it's a powerful value prop right um basically get as close as possible to the benefits of an app chain but you don't lose alignment with ethereum you don't have to pay for security uh and you still have all this you know all of these tools from the op stack that you can you can leverage so you're not you know basically creating a new blockchain or roll up from scratch it's fascinating I mean it's just it's just you know and I guess the probably the uh the best way to conclude this is just yeah congratulations to both optimism and coinbase yeah pretty brave brave move of

them to do this especially especially launching at a time when you know regulation is kind of front and center for for them certainly and uh it kind of seems like they're under attack from a bunch of different vectors like this is just very cool also it's that you know that 108 Million number is that that is a big number and you know even if you look at I made this observation in the Roundup but also I'm not trying to pick on the metamask as like six million no daily active users I mean yeah there's a huge might be monthly actually but yeah that's a huge huge difference in in scale here right if if coinbase is only successful in moving even a small portion of of users into this into this layer too I mean it's still huge and yeah yeah I could not agree more

um they're really leaning into kind of you know the evolution of of their role in the ecosystem right from being just uh you know facilitating the speculation of this technology to you know being a core part of how people use the technology um and so I think you know hats off to them totally agree all right partner this was fun one hope you all enjoyed foreign [Music]