Reddit holds ETH, EigenLayer raises $100mil and more - The Daily Gwei Refuel #736 - Ethereum Updates

Transcript

hello everyone welcome to another episode of the delway refuel where C latest news etherum ecosystem I'm your host Anthony s the 23rd of February 2024 all right everyone let's get into it so apologies for missing yesterday's episode everyone another rug fuel yesterday but you're in luck because I did record a new drive-through episode with Eric today that is 90 minutes long so you'll get to have that uh you know in your feed tomorrow I'll be putting that live tomorrow the same time that the refuel usually goes live uh it was a wide ranging conversation guys like 90 minutes we could have gone for hours but I felt like you know I would I didn't want to kind of go on too long because it was getting late for Eric but uh you know I think uh we're going to try and do it more often going forward and we're

also open to taking questions from the community we answered some on the podcast but we're open to taking more we didn't get to all of them unfortunately because we just ran out of time but each episode we're going to be taking questions and like focusing on topics that the community wants us to focus on I think CU it's just really good to answer questions that have been asked to us and answer them from our perspective because we've both been around for quite a while while I mean Eric's been around longer than I have but I think we offer kind of a perspective that not many people have in this ecosystem given how long we've both been around for collectively right uh so yeah it was just a great uh great uh time to have with Eric great conversation with Eric and that'll be live tomorrow but for

today you've got me and the refuel and this is probably going to be an extra long line cuz there is a lot to get through and there's a few heated topics here actually that uh that I want to get through today I say heated but it's probably just going to be me going on a little bit of my mini Rants and kind of giving my opinion on things but yeah we'll get to that but let's start off with a tweet that I put out today uh where I basically G gave my wish list for the SEC in America we all know the SEC has been incredibly hostile towards crypto it has not been a good regulator at all in the US uh and it's just not doing its job so I put together this wish list it's only three points here it's like a mini wish list I said first

first of all I want Gary gendler to either be fired or step down and is and and gets replaced by Hester P who's been very who's on you know who's part of the SEC is on the commission but he been very Pro crypto right whereas Gary gin has been very uh negative towards crypto second I want the SEC to withdraw their lawsuits against coinbase binance and Kraken uh as I've said countless times on the refu I think these lawsuits are very baseless and I think that they should withdraw them immediately I I really think that they are going to lose these cases um and you know it's going to take years but I do think they're going to lose these cases uh and finally the SEC begins advocating to Congress for sound and fair crypto guidance regulation and I said at the end this would be the best timeline now of course

the reason why this is called a wish list is because they are basically wish items like I don't expect any of this to Really Happen anytime soon unfortunately if I had to put odds on each of these things I think that Gary gendler uh stepping down or getting fired uh well sorry sorry getting fired while Biden or the Democrats hold the president's office um hold the executive bror I should say uh I I don't see that happening because Gary gendler is a Democrat a point T you know firing him would look really bad on the Democrats so they're not going to do that him stepping down I give more of a chance to because he could step down in that he goes and joins like a a private firm or something maybe he goes and joins black rock or something like that right uh but

I do know that he wants to end up at the at the treasury Department but maybe that is not a viable path for him anymore given all of the losses he's taken at the SEC I'm not sure I'm not an expert on how DC works or how politics Works um in the US and all the kind of intricacies there but yeah if he stepped down I imagine he would just go to one of those big private companies uh sorry not not private companies but you know what I mean like those big big non-government uh companies uh and get a job there and do whatever there really uh it's kind of that revolving door that people always talk about with Congress in the US uh so yeah I mean as I said like pretty much 0% chance of him getting fired unless the Republicans win or uh the presidency this year um but

stepping down I give a bit more of a chance to I don't know what percentage I'd put on that but like it's not zero right uh and secondly this the SEC withdrawing their lawsuits against coinbase binance and Kraken I actually give that a pretty decent chance and I have to like maybe qualify this by saying I give it a pretty decent chance with coinbase and Kraken more probably more so coinbase so coinbase probably has the best chance of getting their suit withdrawn but the thing is is that all the suits are very similar so if they were to withdraw the one against coinbase then they would have a very tough time fighting the ones against bayet and Kraken because then the I don't know the judge would basically ask why did you dismiss the one against Queen base but you kept the ones against binance and Kraken like they're

basically the same thing I mean there there are some differences binance got hit with other things and I give binance the lowest chance here because of the fact that they don't have a good reputation within the US right and they're also not a us-based company whereas coinbase and Kraken are uh but yeah I give that a pretty decent chance honestly like I could see it happening I wouldn't be surprised if it happened uh I mean obviously it's a really bad look for the SEC but it probably an even worse look would be them losing again in court on these cases right and the third thing uh the SEC you know beginning advoc advocating Congress for sound and fair crypto guidance or regulation H God I mean that's pretty much a 0% chance as well I mean I really feel like unless Gary gendler is removed and we have like a

pro crypto person at the head of the SEC then we're not going to get any of that so just something of a wish list that I'd like to see in the US I know the US isn't the world but obviously it's still a huge part of crypto it you know a lot of the money comes out of the US uh a lot of the crypto Market is centered around the US so getting you know something off this wish list would be nice I honestly think that the other two things would fall into place immediately after Hester Pierce became commissioner I think she would uh signal to withdraw the lawsuits against Queen based binance and Kraken and she would definitely advocate for more for sound and fairer crypto regulation in Congress it really only takes that but the the thing is is that like if Gary genda steps down

there's no guarantee that Hester becomes the you know the fills in for Gary Gensler right there's there's four other Commissioners that could fill in or sorry three other Commissioners that could fill in uh two of them I believe are aligned with uh with get uh yeah with g and um Hester and and the other one are are are against ginla and ginla is like normally the kind of tiebreaker here uh but yeah we'll have to see uh as I said this is a wish list nothing to be taken too seriously but that's kind of what I would like to see all right so some big news out of Reddit today so uh for those of you who missed it Reddit announced that they're going to be going public soon I don't know when they're going to be doing it but yeah they're going to be IP iping soon honestly not a

shock I felt like this was coming for quite a while uh but there that's not the most interesting announcement out of Reddit now as you guys know Reddit has been involved with crypto and like the web 3 space for quite a while now they've actually been pretty heavily involved with it I remember back in I think 2021 they had the community points thing that they did and they were looking for which L2 to build on and there was like a L2 competition so they've been very involved with crypto uh but today we found out that they invested their ex their excess excess cash right redit excess cash was invested into BTC and eth and they may continue to do so in the future so yeah they have BTC and eth on the balance sheet uh which is awesome I mean another company that has crypto assets on the

balance sheet this is a really big narrative in 2020/2021 it didn't materialize that much like a few companies put BTC on their balance sheet most notably was Tesla and of course s saor through micro strategy but it and a few others here and there but it wasn't really kind of like a big thing so I'm hoping with the Advent of Black Rock and others you know getting BTC ETFs and and hopefully uh by May 8th ETFs it just further legit mizes the asset class and makes it so these companies feel comfortable putting these things on their balance sheet right and and I don't know when Reddit bought this BTC in eth but they you know if they bought it anytime in the last like 12 18 months they'd be up on their investment right maybe not 18 months but like 12

yeah I guess you could say around 12 months if they bought it anytime within the last 12 months they're up on their Investments because both BTC and eth are at their highest price points uh in the last 12 months right so kind of when you when you look at it like that it could it could have have been a good um return on investment for them but I guess we'll probably get more details about that once they uh IPO um but then I think I also saw that they had uh invested in or bought some mic as well I I I think I saw that somewhere and that makes sense because uh Reddit had been working with polygon on a few different things from memory but yeah I I I don't know the numbers on these things and I don't think we have numbers for them yet but

I'm going to be keeping an eye out for that but I really do hope this start to Trend because to say you know they invested their excess cash into BTC and E is basically them saying well we had a bunch of cash here we could have gone into treasuries you know we could have just left in in a bank account or we could have bought something else with it like some other assets with it uh or we could have I don't know reinvested it within Reddit or whatever it is but instead they decided to buy BTC and eth which historically have been considered extremely risky assets to put money into right like even though we in the crypto ecosystem consider BTC and eth to be very safe assets relative to all the other crypto assets the normi world so to speak does not they think that BTC

and eth are incredibly risky because they can go down a lot which is true but I I think that if you look at what happened in 2022 to the stock market I mean stocks maybe not the U the top stocks maybe not the the S&P 500 but like a lot of individual stocks got destroy they actually went down more than BTC and eth did in a lot of cases so I think that this Narrative of crypto like BTC and eth being like riskier than stocks or something like that or being like super risky Investments I think that's going to fade over the next couple of years especially because we have the ETFs and I think the BTC and ether just going to be Staples as part of people's portfolio now yes it'll be still be a small part of their portfolio maybe it's only like 1% or something

like that but that's 1% more than we had before which is which is a lot because as I as I've articulated on the refill before the amount of money that sits in the tradire ecosystem that hasn't touched crypto yet is in the trillions of dollars and 1% of trillions of dollars is still a lot of money and I think that when you uh you know internalize that and you realize the impact that that has and the fact that with an ETFs it's a passive flow vehicle which means that there's pretty much like uh you know ongoing inflows and and maybe uh or hopefully they're less sensitive to crypto Cycles than know Crypton natives are I think that it just bodess well for the value of BTC and e but yeah I'll keep you guys updated on that hopefully we get some numbers out of Reddit to see exactly how much BTC

and eth they hold on the balance sheet all right so speaking of spot eth ETFs uh and I guess like I've talked about this a lot on the refu before so I'm not going to spend too much on this uh quein base actually uh uh uh I guess uh they put out a campaign today or at least are campaigning for spot eth approvals uh and they kind of sent this I believe to the SEC today where they the summary here is given by Nate where they're basically saying that they believe eth is a commodity the SEC approved spot BTC ETFs and also approved eth Futures ETFs eth is not success susceptible to fraud and manipulation tech-wise there's deep spot eth markets and CME eth Futures Market as the um

sharing agreement so essentially what this is is just coinbase advocating for a spot eth ETF basically saying we think that they should be approved because it's basically for all intents and purposes the same as a spot BTC ETF and why I'm bringing this up is because I think it's a huge deal that coinbase is going to you know going to to fight for ethia because I know there's still a lot of Doubt around if these eth ETFs are going to get approved not only by May 23rd but like this year at all and there are good reasons to doubt this as discussed before I'm not going to rehash all those reasons like it's not something that I say is uh you know that these reasons are like fud or anything like that there are actually legitimately good reasons here and probably the best reason is that the SEC

Gary and Gary ginla still seem to really really hate crypto so you know people say well are they actually going to approve the spot e ETF uh after saying you know after approving the spot BTC ETFs but then basically trashing them you know they they approved them because they were forced to and then they were trashing them so and and so I get that argu argument but I do think that they're still going to be forced to approve the E SP EF ETFs as well because of the same reasons that they were forced to approve the spot BTC ones now in saying that maybe they deny them because they won't care if they get sued or something maybe they're like okay well we'll get sued again it's fine maybe we'll lose but like hey let's deny them cuz you know Screw the crypto Bros whatever I I just don't know if that's

going to happen like I just feel like that that's such an own goal I feel like approving these things is just much better for the SEC and it would even be better for like I've said before how Elizabeth Warren is kind of like the puppet master of Gary gendler right it would even be better for her because like if you're I know the crypto voter base isn't a Hu like the as a single- issue voter isn't huge in the US but like if like how many people are going to be angry at the SEC for approving this product right like think about it think about how many people are paying attention to this how many people are going to be angry at the SEC for approving the spot e ETFs how many people are going to change their vote on the Democrats for approving these ETF F

I mean it's not zero of course there's always few loonies out there but you know it's not a large portion at all like it's basically immaterial and the same is true for like how many people are going to vote for Democrats just because they approve this but the reason why I feel like that they should approve it instead of denying it even even even if they they they um you know they hate crypto and even if they think it's not going to be you know it's going to be better for them I think it's going sorry not going to be good for them I think it's going to be better for them to just just approve it because then they don't have to deal with more lawsuits which are in the headlines right which are which are in the media which actually do affect sentiment around these things and

actually do change votes and actually do uh uh kind of um materially affect things so it remains to be seen we're still 3 months out guys like it's still a little while away here as I've said before we should over the next few weeks see some more movement here but generally I just I I understand the reasons why people think this is going to get denied but I think if like anyone within the orbit of the SEC you know Elizabeth Warren and and Gary genser and whoever else have even even half a brain cell they would come to the same conclusion as me that just approving these things and getting this off their kind of like table to worry about uh is is the best course of action especially because there's not going to be any other ETF uh filings for crypto assets for quite a while now because as I've

mentioned before they're not going to get approved if if they don't have a c Futures uh market and no other crypto asset has a CME Futures market right now maybe it will in the future but right now it doesn't which means that these these issuers uh like Black Rock and and and so forth they even going to bother with the other assets right now uh so it's just going to be Ethan BTC so they can get this off their plate and then they don't have to worry about anymore I just feel like that's the best course of action but anyway enough on the ETFs moving on to uh the eth investors Club so I think I announced this maybe a few weeks ago actually probably a couple of months now a couple of months ago now so the eth investors Club is an onchain uh

kind of report that's being put together each quarter all about ethereum as a network and eth as an asset now I had an advanced kind of copy of the report sent to me for the last quarter guys it's like a 100 page report this is so comprehensive and it's not supposed to be just for crypto natives it's supposed to be for basically everyone uh I'm so excited for this report to be published I think it is an absolutely amazing breakdown of what's happening in ethereum um not just you know on the financial side of things but also on the social side of things the gaming side of things there's so much in this report that I even think a lot of crypto natives are going to get a lot of value out of but the report is also meant for people outside of crypto and that's

brings me to my next kind of announcement here and that's why I have joined as an advisor for the eth investors Club they asked me and I was like you know what this is something that I've wanted someone to put together for a very long time now this kind of report that can be sent out to people who aren't in the ecosystem for them to understand what's happening in in in the eum ecosystem and with eth as an asset so I have joined as an advisor and uh this is a bit different to my other advisor ships I have actually forgone my advisor share which was offered to me and said to them hey just donate it to the protocol Guild instead like I don't want to take any money from this uh this is something that I've wanted to see U you know go live for ages and I feel

like it falls into the education remit that I like to I like to do so I want to do it for free so I'll be helping them technically for free but you know my Shares are being redirected to the protocol Guild and on top of that the eth investors Club have also uh um have also announced that they're going to be pledging a total of 2% of all of the revenue that they generate to the protocol Guild now you may be wondering you know what is actually going to the protocol Guild well it's actual Revenue so this report is not free this it's it's a paid report you know you can pay for it on chain and all that obviously because it's very comprehensive and people have put a lot of work into this so it's just your classic you know pay for the report get the report sort of

thing um and then that revenue is 2% of it is going to the protocol Guild including my share that I have kind of given up here so there's no token or anything like that it's a real kind of like uh I don't know if I call it a business but it's like a real kind of product that you can buy and and get value out of and as I said I saw the I've seen the report I went through it I mean I haven't read it all I I kind of like skim through it and and looked at all the sections and kind of like read the summaries for them but guys this is an amazing report so I can't wait for it to come out but yeah I just wanted to announce that I became an adviser for them today uh and that and it's because

I just think what they're doing is really really cool all right so look I could spend like hours on this and I feel like I shouldn't because like if I spend hours on this I'm going to end up kind of ranting for a long time and what I mean by this I mean I should tell you the topic so for a while now now I guess like uh probably a few months I think I've talked about it on the refi before there's been this discussion around uh reducing the issuance that goes to ethereum Stak goes to eth stakers right so basically lowering the overall new eth that is being issued and obviously this goes to people that are staking their their eia now this discussion isn't anything new as I said it's been a hot topic of discussion over the last

few months but there was even discussions around this quite a while ago around things like capping the active validator set on the on the network uh for Network stability reasons but the conversation has been getting heated over the last maybe month or so because uh the ethereum foundation researchers have put out their research and put out their kind of thoughts on this uh and basically the latest I guess proposal which is not going to go into Electra they say kind of like yeah this is a proposal for Electra I guarantee you it's not going to go into Electra because I will literally veto it if you know if it even if there's even a hint of it going into Electra and the reason no I mean I won't be able to veto it but like what I mean is I'll go and like be very loud about it and say like this I

think this is a really bad decision to put this into electure and the reason is not because I think it's a bad proposal the reason is because this is a proposal that drastically Alters ethereum's monetary policy and anything got to do with the monetary policy should not be uh rushed in that's my like that's one of my most hardcore beliefs about um about ethereum is anything got to do with the monetary policy should not be rushed in it there should be uh extensive research done on this which there has been right but then there has to be extensive community discussion there has to be feedback on this uh and and so on and so forth so the actual proposal here has a has good intentions I I I I I firmly believe that I think the people working on this have good intentions and really what they're

trying to do is that they're trying to prevent an LST such as St or CB e or r e displacing eth as the money within the ethereum ecosystem so how it would get displaced is let's just say that there's too much eth steak let's just say we get to like 80% of all eth Stak and most of that is through an LST like St so and then the logic flows does St become the defao money of the ethereum ecosystem uh instead of eth the vanilla eth as an asset right because if so much of it is being staked that means that that's locked in the beacon chain it's not being used as as money but what's being used as the money is Ste right is the actual kind of like I guess you the

receipt token as we like to call it right so I understand that argument I actually agree with that that it could be something that uh you know it could be kind of like negative outcome that ends up happening at some point in the future but the current proposal as it stands I don't actually think it does that much to address that issue because and go and read the proposal for yourself and I'm not an expert on this I'm just giving my kind of like take on this after thinking about it uh pretty much today uh I was thinking about it a lot I went on a walk and I was just thinking about this the whole time the reason why I think this proposal doesn't address it is because what the proposal wants to do is basically cap the amount of eth that's going to be staked uh by

lowering the issuance curve and then potentially making the issuance curve go negative which would basically act as a way to get people to stop staking their e because if the issuance is negative then you kick out the quote unquote I guess like weak stakers or the ones who don't want to stake anymore because they're obviously uh you know not making any money uh and then it would rebalance itself right and it would reach an equilibrium here the reason why I think that this doesn't actually address the issue of an alist displacing eth as a money in the ecosystem is because who do you think's going to leave if the issuance is negative like people and this is the main point of discussion here and this is actually probably the heart of the debate here it's like okay who leaves in that scenario if issuance is negative if if um you know you're

loose you're basically losing money being an e eth validator who is going to leave is it going to be the solo stakers or or home stakers generally is it going to be the people staking with large staking pools is it going to be the people staking with centralized exchanges so on and so forth and there's good arguments on either side of the aisle here but I actually fall more on the side of I I think that this would kick off the home stakers before it kicked off the bigger stakers and the reason is because the biggest stakers such as Lio and coinbase and so on and so forth they can do one of many things to actually cover that negative issuance for their customers they can socialize it across their entire validator set or that sorry across all the validators

that they control they can supplement the the that with other kind of Revenue so coinbase for example example could just be like okay well we'll take some revenue from here we'll supplement it here uh and then we'll be fine for a while right and then if they're able to do that like they're going to start squeezing out the smaller players and it's not just solo and home stakers it's smaller players in the other kind of staking pools that may not be able to do this they may not they may not be able to afford to socialize the kind of negative issuance they may not be able to afford to juice the rewards to make up for the negative issuance right so I actually think that this proposal would result in more centralization of stake and would result in an even worse outcome than what we kind of envisioned

would happen without the this uh this proposal going live in saying that I I think that the logic from what I've read from these researchers is is that if we can cap it that means that we basically uh stop it from getting worse so maybe it's bad today and then we can stop we kind of like give a limit to how bad it can get and then we stop it from getting worse but again it falls back to my kind of uh I guess like um thinking around if issuance goes negative I feel like solo on homestake is going to be the first ones to get to to to exit because they can't eat the the losses so to speak right um and at the same time there when we're in an environment where solo and hom stakers are already a minority and your goal is to try and uh you know

basically keep who you have I don't know if this proposal addresses that so I think that's the heart of the debate here but the reason why I bring this up is because I want the community to be discussing this is actually a lot of great discussions already happening about this but I want the community to be discussing this not so much about the actual proposal itself but more more so around monetary policy changes generally because I do think eventually there will be something that goes in to alter the issuance curve to alter the monetary policy but it cannot be rushed in it cannot be something that gets slated for you know inclusion within uh you know 12 months from when it's proposed I don't think that that should be a thing at all I think that it needs to take quite a while for us to get there but at the

same time I understand why people want this to be Speedy because if if you you know let's say we wait like 2 years to put this in what's the staking ecosystem going to look like in 2 years are we going to be at like 60 70% of all e Stak is it going to be majority through LSS and lrts and then are those the deao money of the ethereum network instead of eth so I get the the worries here um but I mean I feel like you like both it's this is what I mean by like me continuing to rant on about this I feel like like right now both kind of like choices are not great the first choice is putting this proposal on the network right and hoping for the best and changing ethereum's monetary policy too quickly which it um Alters ethereum's

credible neutrality it affects that uh and it's not something that I I'd want to see at all but then the second option is well if we wait too long then do we just lose our opportunity to potentially you know to fix this potential issue so we got to be we have to be discussing this and this is maybe an issue that is very esoteric to a lot of people and it's something that is not immediately obvious like it has a lot of second order effects and third order effects that aren't immediately obvious but anything got to as I said I just want to reiterate this stance here anything got to do with ethereum's monetary policy needs to be rigorously reviewed by the entire community and discussed by the entire Community there is no way in hell that I would want to see this go live in

Electra I have not seen anywhere near enough discussion on this um and I don't even think most people in the ecosystem are aware that this is even an issue or a potential issue and but as I said I understand that the researchers the core researchers have put a lot of work into this and they've been working on this for quite a while and now they're basically going to the community for feedback and they've done a really good job on this not like I'm not uh trying to discredit their work or anything like this they've done a fantastic job of outlining everything of explaining themselves here but it's really up to the community to give them feedback to basically check their work so to speak uh and see where there there's holes that can be plugged but that's going to take a while and yeah this is not going

to go into Electra like I I mean I I I said Al V it before like I control ethereum like I I even sound like in my head I was like that sounds stupid Anthony you correct yourself um but like what I meant was that if like if this was actually slated for inclusion in Electra I would try my hardest to get it removed from it because it's too soon if Electra goes live in November of this year and this was proposed you know in February that's I know it seems like a far like it's it's relatively far away but that's way too soon guys it doesn't give enough time for discussions for for actual analysis to be done on it for the community to digest it and come to consensus on it it's too quick and as I said like ethereum's cable neutrality is

it's it would be affected by this and that's one of its most powerful traits so yeah but anyway you can go read the proposal for yourself I'll link it in the YouTube description below it is very very well argued it's very articulate it's not too long of a post uh and I really really appreciate the researchers for putting this together as I said it's not an issue that people really think about too often but it is something that could become a potential big issue for the ethereum ecosystem uh if something isn't done all right so on to some more I guess like non- ranting news juliam here uh who works at who works as a core developer with gu has uh TW tweeted out saying slow and painful in the making a shadow Fork converting the hsky state to verle has finally occurred guys The

Verge is coming faster than you think vle trees are coming faster than you think I know I've been talking about it for quite a while now but I don't think people realize that this stuff's coming next year and these shadow Forks are already happening these test Nets are already happening of converting the existing uh test Nets to uh to veral uh from from their existing kind of Merle Patricia trees here so just wanted to highlight that this has been done and this is I think the first Shadow Fork that's been done on the the new whole well the relatively new whole Sky test net here there's a little thread from Julian that you can read I'll link it in the YouTube description below uh but this is great it's just great to see movement here it's great to see that these things are actually being

developed in parallel like as I've said before essentially uh people criticized ethereum's road map saying oh look how you know look at that road map like why is it all happening kind of sequentially when in reality it was never happening sequentially it was always happening in parallel and different parts of the road map are being worked on by different people that's exactly what we're seeing here so yeah I just wanted to give that shout out there to the people working on all the the relevant Verge stuff and all the vericle stuff you guys are doing a kick-ass job and keep going basically all right moving on to a massive announcement out of enan layer so they announced that they have raised $100 million from a16z crypto now a16z was the only investor in this round I kind of joked uh with some people in the

dead Discord channel uh well I didn't come up with this um someone else came up with it but they said that it was the series a16z a16z round right instead of a series a it's a series a16z round and that was quite funny I like that play on words there but it really was I mean they they basically carved out around for them it seems um and let them invest $100 million not sure what the valuation was of this but the last time Ian La raised money was the round that I invested in and the valuation was I believe $500 million fully diluted uh value so I and I think they I don't remember how much they raised at the time I think it was like $60 million or something something like that so yeah I'm not sure what the actual kind of valuation here is here but it's

definitely in the billions at this point and I mean it makes sense Igan l i I would say is by far the hottest project in the crypto ecosystem right now I mean even Beyond like ethereum like just in all of crypto a la is definitely the most hyped up project right now I mean it's a brand new primitive with raking it's attracted I think $10 billion or almost $10 billion worth of tvl so far uh brand new um you know ecosystem forming where people can kind of like build upon there they don't you know there's a potential air drop because people have been farming points right and all the Advent of liquid reaking tokens all that sorts of stuff right so there's a lot of hype here and obviously A6 have seen that and we're just basically like hey we'll give you a bunch of money because you really want

to invest in you and I don't know what percentage of like igen layer they own now or anything like that but this is a huge raise so I guess congrats to ig layer on this uh and kudos to a16z I guess as well because you guys are killing it because they've invested in so many different things in crypto and they they're probably the biggest investor in crypto I think in terms of like how much money they have to throw around as a VC cuz they're not just a VC um umed a16 has existed for a long time now and they've been investing in tech for a long time now but they've got their whole crypto arm as well but I do want to make one last comment on this besides congratulating ion layer that like I know some people looked at this and were just like hm a16z getting like

a massive kind of allocation of Ian layer that just seems like very I don't know if I call it icky or kind of like dirty sort of thing I saw some comments about that and I get it I get it like I totally get it like the regular people uh I guess everyday people haven't had an opportunity to invest in Igan layer the opportunity that you have is basically farming points and I get that it can make you feel like you know that you're not worth much and that you're like cattle or something and just like the working class and all these other kind of like uh rich people get to invest in early stage things that frustrates me as much as it frustrates you even as someone who is an angel investor in these things um like I get super frustrated by it because I would

much rather these things do icos like think about it for a sec I mean uh the an Ico uh is like what much better I think than a private investing round because it opens participation up to basically everyone uh and yes there are a lot of scam icos but they're actually like a fair bit of scammy kind of like uh VC razors too guys like it's not like they they don't exist and I think that the tradeoff of letting people anyone invest in what you're doing is better than uh I guess like uh oh sorry is worth the scam that come along with it so yeah while I I do kind of agree to an extent that it's like shitty um I I think that with a6z you have to take more of a long-term view on them I think

they're a net positive for crypto even though I disagree with a lot of their Investments that they make and they're also a VC as well so they're also obviously in it to be profit maximizing but the reason why I think that they're good for the long game is because the money that they make actually does get reinvested into things like fighting on the regulatory side for crypto right funding those um super packs that I highlighted to to basically fund crypto friendly uh kind of politicians and basically uh well fund donate to crypto-friendly politicians right and to basically make real change in the US or which downflows to basically everyone it affects everyone right everyone I mean even if you don't live in the US it still affects you in some kind of way because it means that you that um that the culture is set that okay you can't

do icos because the ACC will screw you over or you can't you know you can't do air drops to us people like it's it's not it's not a great outcome so I think that a16z do give back I mean I'm not trying to s for them or anything but they do give back in that way and that's the more longer game there and they do a lot of other stuff in the background as well so that's not me trying to justify that they should have be you know them putting $100 million into igen ler is is fair or anything I think that a lot of these um things are typically unfair to the everyday person but you have to blame The Regulators for that I you can't blame the teams cuz it's literally illegal for the teams to well actually I shouldn't say it's literally illegal

because I mean I don't actually think it's IL legal for the teams to do this but if you tried to do a token sale and it was a big token sale especially the SEC would almost G I almost guarantee the SEC would sue you right so teams just opt to avoid all that altogether which is unfortunate but that's just the way it is so hopefully we you know we get more positive kind of crypto regulation that basically uh lets people do icos again but it's probably not going to happen anytime soon guys that's just the reality of it and I'm just very lucky that I get to invest in these things as an angel investor um and I wish I could open that opportunity up to other people but I kind of looked into it and the amount of responsibility I would take on creating a fund on on my

own uh would be yeah no it would actually like I thought about it and just thinking about it stressed me out and gave me anxiety because like I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I made a bad investment and it lost people money or you know as part of like an angel kind of fund or something like that uh I wouldn't be able to live with myself that's just the way I am uh and you know when I'm putting money into these as an angel investor it's all my own money and as I've described before I write this stuff down to zero of course because in my head because you it's all my own money but I can't you know I can't do that as like a fund or as like a VC like I have a obligation and a responsibility to not do that so yeah

there's not going to be any kind of like daily G fund or anything like that guys but I am a big advocate for bringing back icos I'm a really big advocate for just like any kind of uh in thing that allows people to publicly uh sorry allows the public to invest in these things um and especially at like an earlier stage because there are some where people can best when it's like the really late stages of of um these projects and I don't think that's I mean I think it's okay but it's not as good as we can do I think the best way the best thing we can do is offer these investment opportunities uh at the earliest possible stages like we did with icos and then people can you know invest the way they want and the perfect example of the greatest success of I an

Ico ever is still ethereum right ethereum was an open Ico obviously different times back in 2014 but it wasn't open Ico anyone could buy in and those who did bought in at 30 cents and if you held to today well you're a very very happy camper right so that's obviously the success story there's many failures but that's just the reality guys like most businesses fail like I think as long as investors understand that and they should be able to invest in whatever they want uh and and don't even get me started on in credited investor laws which are just complete horseshit and completely uh it's basically class Warfare in my opinion but anyway I'm going to digress on that point because I've ranted again and there's so much more left to get through so moving on on to something more positive um starkware has put out an

update today that they have revised the vesting schedule for their investors now you remember that the investor tokens were due to unlock on April 15th and it was going to unlock 1.34 billion tokens or 13.4% of the total Stock Supply directly to investors well the schedule has now been changed whereas only 0.64% or 64 million tokens will unlock on April 15th and then there will be a monthly unlock uh of that same amount until March 15th 2025 and then it will change to 1.27% or 127 uh million tokens uh uh monthly for the next 24 months until March 15th 2027 so this is really positive obviously and obvious and and you guys

know I called out starware pretty harshly on this saying it was very egregious that the investors were getting their their tokens through some loophole so obviously they've gone to their investors and said hey you know we think that this needs to change and the investors have agreed um I think uh because I think that they'd have to probably signed something to agree to this I'm not sure on the exact mechanisms in the background here but they've obviously agreed to it um and it's very very positive I think for for starware I think this is just like a really great thing for them to do and I think it also signals that they're listening back to the community feedback because not only did they do this but they also updated their solo Staker list based on community feedback to cover more solo stakers and I believe they're

working with the rocker poool team as well in order to um you know help rocker pool stakers out so yeah I mean I've been pretty harsh on starware in the past uh and that's because I believed that that what they were doing was you know not not fair but they've taken that feedback on board uh and yes they've had some stumbles here and there I know that the you know some people have said some things they may have regretted on Twitter but they're taken the feedback seriously and they've and they've kind of done this which I think is just a huge vote of of confidence for me in in you know in the team uh and and kudos to the investors to for to agreeing uh for the sorry for agreeing to this as well I think that's a really great I think that they did but yeah just wanted to

highlight that I'm very impressed by this kudos to starware kudos to the team I know you are genuine Builders I know it's been a tough week or week and a half now or whatever it's been but you know just keep building your Tech will live or die based on uh on your building at the end of the day like star is going to live or die based on what they build and the ecosystem that they create uh and the token will reflect that over over the long term I think all right so optimism has has announced today that they've launched something called span batches on Main net so the fixed onchain overhead costs for chain operators to run a standard rollup op chain will be reduced by over 90% so this is a pretty big reduction I don't know what the actual reduction will be for end user fees here I think I

saw something like maybe a 10% reduction maybe it's more than that I'm not I'm not sure don't don't quote me on that but regardless of what it is this is just another example of the l2s being able to reduce fees of their own accord so they don't have to wait for main net ethereum right to reduce fees they can do it of their own accord but on top of this as well optimism announced today that on day one all op stack chain will be able to take advantage of Erp 4844 or blobs like day one March 13th when it goes live here uh and I believe Jesse poac announced that Bas will be doing it on day one as well so op main that and Bas are confirmed to be taking advantage of 4844 so couple that with this new uh span batches uh uh thing that they're

doing uh you're going to see a pretty substantial reduction come March 13th for uh op mayet base uh and I think arbitri is going to be day one as well and a few others out there and I'm super excited to see like what those fees look like like like it's been a long time coming I've been talking about Proto Dan sharting or 4844 for years at this point and as I've said it's pure speculation about what the fees are actually going to go down to based on a number of different factors we'll get like a month or two's worth of data to get a really clear picture here but I'm very much looking forward to seeing it all go live and I'm very glad that the major l2s are going to be ready on day one right speaking of l2s fuel has a big announcement today so you guys may know

fuel uh it's one of the first l2s um that was basically built on ethereum and they've been around for quite a while now but they announced today that they uh something called the rollup OS which is a modular vision for rollup technology that will reshape the future of blockchain development so basically uh they say here fuel is an operating system purpose built for ethereum Roll-Ups unlike existing L2 architectures most of most of which were designed for either arbitrary execution or layer ones fuel has been built with unique a unique architecture optimized to supercharge ethereum rollups so basically it's a kit uh with all the fuels technology in it that uh different kind of like projects and teams can use to make their own rollups so and

basically make them uh with optimized uh kind of with optimized fuel VM as you can see see here it's at its core uh and also a bunch of other features uh relating to Performance sustainability interoperability and so on and so forth so if you want to read the full details about this you can check this out it's in a blog post I'll link it in the YouTube description below uh but it's great to see just another player uh another big name player that's been around for a while getting involved in this stuff because guys like even if 90% of all this stuff like fails to gain traction or doesn't become something anything big it doesn't matter because everything's open source so the good ideas get absorbed by the ecosystems that survive and then they go on to basically improve their own ecosystems

and then everyone benefits from it so even if as I said 90 plus% of all these l2s fail to gain any traction the technology is still there and it doesn't you know a lot of the time time they failed to gain traction based on reasons other than Tech right I mean no one will ever call the evm the best tech but it is the most dominant by far in crypto uh and that's because Network effects rule everything around us when it comes to Tech right so from that perspective uh I I'm just really glad to see that fuel has jumped into this with a new take on rollups that other teams can tap into that other teams can learn from and it just definitely just improves the ecosystem overall instead of kind of keeping us limited to what uh you know to just a couple of teams and this is

what I like the most about the L2 ecosystem as you guys know the experimentation the the the camine explosion that's happening it's all uh really really exciting but yeah you can go read the full details about fuels announcement I'll link it in the YouTube description below for you to do so all right so unisoft has announced today that you can now get your uh uni. e username so your uni. e is a readable username that makes it easy to receive crypto and build your web 3 portfolio and you can claim your uni. e for free in the unisoft mobile app so basically uh you can kind of put your own name at the start so you can have like sassel uni. e and uh then you'll have your un your unique uni name here and this is obviously a subdomain of the the uni.

eth um ens name here but the reason why this is cool is because this is one of the superpowers of ens is it basically allows for the this expressivity and this kind of branding from the different products out there that they can tie to usernames because I guarantee you there's going to be a large cohort of people that they only experience with onchain kind of crypto will be using Unis swop like Unis swop will be their thing like they'll use the Unis swop wallet uh they'll have their assets there they'll trade on Unis swop and they'll have like a Unis swop name and they'll trade with their friends right on there and they'll say hey man you know send me the it's not just erc20 tokens and other assets right it's it's nfts as well it's like hey man like you know what's your uni address sort of

thing right it's like oh it's sassle uni. e and you can send it to them without having to get obviously the long hexadecimal address which I think is really cool but there's definitely going to be a massive cohort of people that that just use unisoft for all of their onchain needs and there's nothing wrong with that and it's a really PR powerful branding tool for unisoft to basically uh be able to do this so kudos to them for for doing this uh and yeah as I said you can claim this on the unisoft mobile app uh and you have to be on the latest version and I believe the claim is free I don't think there's any gas fees to claim this but yeah you can go claim that if you haven't already and I'll link this in the YouTube description below so you can check out the full

details there all right last up here was just a couple of things on so I had a uh King Theodore here reply to one of my refuels wanting me to cover something related to solo stakers So This Thread basically describes how rider. Network's list of solo stakers doesn't include blocks stakers because block stakers don't fit into radi Network's definition of what a solo Staker is and the reason is is because the way it works in blocks is that you don't operate your own execution layer and consensus layer clients uh but you you only you operate your own validator client with um and it's all decentralized you know you control your own keys and all that uh you but you don't control your own kind of full notes so to speak and ra. network

basically says well we don't consider that to be a kind of like true Solo or true home Staker I'm going to like be honest here I actually understand their argument and I actually don't know where I sit here because I agree with King Theodore who obviously Advocates saying that these people using blocks are Solo stakers even if they're not running the full node they still are Solo stakers but then I I kind of uh I get r on networks Point as well because normally when you think of like a solo Staker you think of like the full kind of Suite right the full Stu they're running a full node they're running validators right they're doing it all inhouse because if you're Outsourcing the the the full node to to blocks here then technically by I guess that the definition of what we call a

node operator you're not a node operator right uh and as I've said before I feel like that I mean by definition you're not a not operator cuz you're not running a full no you're running a validator but you're not running a full node right so I actually see both sides of the argument and I've been thinking about this over the last couple days and I actually don't know where I sit here like I don't want to I don't want to just like agree with King Theodore and I don't want to just agree with the blocks um steing Community because it' be something something nice to do I'm just trying to give my honest opinion on this here because whenever I've talked about node operators I've always talked about it as if it's the full stack you have to run a full node which consists of an

execution layer client and a consensus layer client as well as validators either locally on your own uh Hardware or in the cloud it's fine if it's either but like as long as you retain control over it right and I and then but then I get King Theodore's Point here where he says that block stakers still retain control over their validators they just don't run their own full notes so I'm not sure where I sit here that's my honest answer right now um I I I I haven't really decided on where I sit and and because of that like I I don't know if that the these stakers should be included in rider. Network's um uh kind of list here uh but you know what I think that if we're just kind of looking at it from the perspective of wanting to encourage more people to get involved

with the kind of like weeds of the ethereum ecosystem understanding how uh you know the ethereum pro of State Works understanding how full nodes and validators communicate with each other you know running the validator on their own uh uh using blocks I I would say that if if that was the goal which I think it should be the goal then I would ear a little bit on the side of well maybe block stakers should be included in this list as as solo stakers as home stakers because it's kind of a thing that we haven't really thought about too much before but they're still validating from home here uh they're still controlling everything on their own they've got a remote signing uh there's no blocks doesn't hold the the private keys or withdrawal keys or anything like that so it's so it's fully non-custodial they're just running the infrastructure

for people who may not be able to run it on their own because there's that thing as well remember how I said to you guys that there's a cost associated with this but there's not just a cost you have to have the 24/7 power 24/7 internet you have to have it running at home maybe you're a nomad and you can't do that or maybe you don't want to set it up in you know in the cloud yourself maybe you want to use someone else's infrastructure so I think that from that perspective maybe they should be on that list and as I said I'm I'm still undecided about this because I don't want to give an answer just because I want to be nice to people uh I'm just giving my honest thoughts so yeah hopefully that kind of addresses what you wanted me to address King Theodore

um and I'd be open to being convinced either way but uh yeah at this stage I'm like I'm so like I'm I'm indifferent right now I don't know where I sit right now uh and it's kind of it's kind of frustrating for me because as I said I see both sides of the argument here and I want there to be a right answer but I don't think there's a right answer I think there's just like an answer that makes more sense than the other one uh and right now I'm not really seeing that so we'll see we'll see what happens uh I think more conversations around this should be prudent because it's not just blocks it's going to be other services that offer this this as well so I think that more conversations around this is definitely uh needed here all right last up I had Rob here in

the daily way farcast Channel asked me to expand on one of my comments from uh from my refill the other day where I said that I don't consider delegated proof of stake to be uh fa to be real staking or to be real proof of stake so I think I've talked about this on the refi before and we're coming up on 50 minutes here I think this is one of the longest refuels ever that I've done but uh I told you I had a lot to cover and I'm making up for yesterday but anyway uh the reason why I say this is because I mean there's two main reasons one typically most if not all of these delegated proof of stake Networks they do not have slashing right there's no form of slashing at all really from what I know from from pretty much most of

them uh if not all of them if you guys know any delegated proof of statement networks that have slashing please let me know but as far as I know pretty much like most of them do not have that and if you don't have slashing I just don't believe that you have any kind of like economic disincentive to like not attack the chain right to not kind of mess with the chain or to not do something bad and in that environment I don't think you could resist like nation states for example so I just I don't that's one reason why I don't consider it to be kind of real staking here but the second one which is actually probably a bigger uh consideration is that in a lot of these delegated proof of stake networks they only have a small handful of uh of these validators right these valid and

and it depends on which network you're looking at but for example in uh I believe this applies to salana I think they have like 20 or 21 uh validators that make up the the super majority of validators so that if those validators were to go offline or collude or whatever they can bring the network offline cuz uh it favors um safety safety over liveness instead of favoring livess over liveness um like like ethereum does right like sorry like ethereum Pro of stake does so what I'm and why I bring that up is because it means that if there's not that many validators that you can delegate to because it works in a power LW effect what ends up happening is that you have less node operators and the smaller

stakers get completely priced out because they're not getting as much of of of a share as these delegated proof uh these um these big stakers and at at the same time they're also uh uh beef your networks too so these solo stakers aren't prioritized right there's no culture there of this which means that the net result is that you have less nde operators on the network so again like I feel like you need more node operators on the network it's always a good thing to have that and I feel like the more node operators the better but if you've only got like a handful of them if you if you've only got like less than 100 or something like that uh then I mean can you really consider yourself to be like a real proof of stake Network cuz that to me just looks like a proof of

authority Network where essentially you've got like a a bunch of known parties that are signing off on blocks with no staking involved and it's just like trust me bro you know that's that's kind of those those are the two main reasons why why I say this now I do want to be fair here and say though that within ethereum we have we don't have delegated proof of stake but we do have delegation of stake where essentially coinbase for example is one note operator they have 14 15% of all validators on the network and people delegate their eth to coinbase but coinbase has to spin up a validator for every 32 e they get they can't add this eth onto their existing validators uh and they have to spin up new validators for this they're still subject to slashing on all of those validators right and it's not a a delegation in

that you you just kind of like Point your your funds there and um and uh the funds get delegated on chain it's an actual kind of like real deposit you know into the beacon chain and then it's it's at risk it's at basically you know it's it's staked right it's staked at risk and then it's subject to to slashing which is a disincentive to do anything bad on the network um and then you obviously have bigger uh bigger kind of entities like Lido which is like 32% 33% of the network uh but then that's broken up into node operators so that's where my node operator argument comes in where there's like 36 node operators there right which are all separate from each other so we do have delegation of stake within ethereum but ethereum is not a delegated proof of stake network but I think if I had to pick my

strongest argument it would be the fact that typically you see within delegated proof of stake networks they are op they are optimized for lower validated sets which means less nde operators which means uh uh more more possibility of collusion as well and more more calization as well and more economies of scale which means more centralization because of that uh and and that means that like the smaller players the home stakers and and the home node operators aren't prioritized at all uh aren't taken care of aren't aren't respected and you get a weaker networked so maybe calling it like fake St in wasn't the 100% right term but like I don't consider it to be secure staking I should say or secure proof of stake I consider it to be uh in unsecure proof of stake and you just be you would

actually be more secure just running a proof of authority Network and for those of you who don't know what a proof of authority network is it really is just like a set of known entities running nodes that sign off on blocks and it's basically just like trust me bro chain essentially like you'd be better off running that than having something without um without slashing on it at least that's my opinion there but anyway I've gone on long enough for today's episode and I also recorded a 90-minute episode with Eric today for the drive-thru I've spoken about so much stuff today I'm surprised I still have a voice but I'm going to end that one there for today so thank you everyone for listening and watching be sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet give it a thumbs up subscribe to newsletter join the Discord Channel and

I'll catch you all next week thanks everyone