Reflections from Between Two Cycles w/ Hamzah Khan

Transcript

[Music] hello and welcome back to the strange waterer podcast thank you for joining us we may be in the depths of a bare Market but as anyone listening to this podcast already knows despite the un mistakable fog of hopelessness that's creeping ever closer there is still a ton of stuff happening Builders are still working harder than ever DG are still making outrageous bets on little more than memes the Washington Maelstrom is becoming much larger and more violent hackers are hacking scammers are still scamming the volume might be lower but

the show does go on and in these moments of relative quiet the most important thing that any individual can do to prepare for the next turn of the cycle is to reflect on their experiences during the last one how did the winners win what were the crucial differences between them and the losers what will we have next cycle that we didn't have this cycle how do you position yourself to be at the spear tip of the next cycle everyone has the opportunity maybe even the obligation to take these moments and really think about what they've learned and what's coming next even if not many take it but much less

common is the opportunity to ponder these questions with one of the critical Builders of the last cycle one very much responsible for building much of the landscape that we are currently living in I'm pleased to say that today's guest is Hamza Khan one of the people I respect most in defi as head of growth at polygon ham was a huge factor in creating the incredibly complex and dynamic ecosystem that lives on polygon today and given the size of importance of polygon to ethereum his influence has spread far and above the madic network and as you'll hear during this episode you'll hear that Hamza is moving

on to a new venture to conquer the world of defi that he has worked so hard to create today you'll hear us discuss everything from key factors in polygon's success to the implications of ZK for the entire blockchain industry the conversation is so jam-packed with battle earned experience and nuanced Insight that you are sure to get something out of it one more thing before we begin please do not take Financial advice from this or any podcast ethereum will change the world one day but you can easily lose all of your money between now and then all right let's start the

episode Hamza thank you so much for joining us for the strange water podcast thank you thank you for having me of course man so um before we jump into kind of like the meat and potatoes of this conversation uh I'm a huge believer and like the most important part of every conversation are the people involved and so uh just want to spend a few minutes just like understanding who you are and like really how did you find crypto and then more specifically how did you fall in love with it enough to like risk your you know reputation and uh your career on this crazy space yeah I know for sure um I joined crypto actually pretty pretty late uh compared to most of the people that I know and I work with daily so I joined uh I joined

crypto in 2020 around I founded during most of the people like coid uh but uh but before that so I have a I have a uh background in computer science and uh I spent a lot of time during uh right out of college in 2019 uh building machine learning and AI models for uh for banks um so my first job was at City I used to yeah I spent like 18 months that was my first and last I think real job uh I don't think I worked um anything 18 months after that so uh I spent building uh building a bunch of AI models for their uh investment banking business uh but after that I left and uh spent a lot of time doing consulting for uh like Dev

work for a lot of uh startups as well as teaching GRE and GMAT and is and toel to a bunch of students uh and anyone who wanted to in in the Middle East this was 2019 2020 half and then coid happened we all stuck at home and then I found about ethereum um and I think I knew about ethereum in 2017 like so I had bought in 2017 like most people um uh but then sold uh because everything was crashing and I thought this was the biggest scam uh but then when I found a not a I think I found compound and Unis swop and I felt and I read the white paper I used it and I was like oh my God like this is the biggest uh thing ever like because I

was sitting in India and I could access the same financial instruments as someone sitting in the in New York Wall Street and I was like oh this this thing is like you know as can be as big as social media or like whatever with real money involved so that got me really interested and uh and yeah that's how I I started using and then I joined M I joined Matic it was still Matic uh in 2021 January uh to start D like there was no D I started the whole D thing in yeah doing D head of D at met at polygon for past two years I guess two and a half years well awesome man like I like you joined late I actually found ethereum in 2021 and like I'd heard of it and I never like bothered to all I

knew is it was just like kind of Internet money which in my head that meant like kind of porn money or drug money until 2021 when I heard Hayden Adams describe Unis Swap and you know similar idea was that was the first time I realized like the power of like what what decentralized markets like could kind of offer and so I guess like while we're still in this phase of your career can you reflect a little bit on why what what did you see in7 enough that got your toes in the water that um that you didn't like what did you not see in 2017 that like made um made you walk away and like why did like compounder a um in 2020 like made you really realize the promise of ethereum I

think it's a very personal thing but I think I just wanted a job at that time like that's the honest answer was I just wanted a job I didn't understand this I was I don't have a finance background uh so I I didn't really understand like you know how money worked because people have to understand because you're in it for the tech of course you're in it for the tech but like you also have to understand that crypto is a very sociological as well as a very um monetary experiment you know uh like Bitcoin is a very monetary first and ethereum also like the way incentives are structured and the way like why do you need a validator or why do you need the token you Al you need to understand that from a very fundamental monetary Supply point of view I never UND I never

knew about those things so but when I worked in a bank for like 18 months I think I think that like exposed me to uh to like stocks and mutual funds and like I come from a background family where like no one understands any of this so um so everyone is in like you know sales and marketing and all this like you know stuff where people don't understand how money is made or uh all these like monetary things that we Now understand uh I Now understand uh so I think that 18 months at there kind of exposed me to you know stocks and commodities and uh insurance and reinsurance and all that stuff where you make derivatives on top I think and then when I looked into crypto and I started using a and unisoft and all these things and reading a bunch

of more stuff and just getting matured I think I think that was and 20170 didn't have any real like it was all it was all uh you know just white papers like I remember I was I was very fascinated by because I was doing my ma uh thesis uh bachelor's and final thesis uh Iota got very hot um I don't know if you remember but Iota was like this dag based blockchain architecture where everyone is like oh dags are cool because you know graph SQL uh sorry not graph uh no new SQL on uh new 4J sorry new 4J databas is you know graph based and uh Facebook uses it so imagine Facebook has that much data then this blockchain can scale this much and all that stuff uh I remember in 2017 people used to talk and uh and it was no real

product like ethereum barely worked like there was there was nothing there on ethereum I I never did nfts like I just bought eth in like a CI exchange and E I didn't even buy eth I think I remember I bought xrp because I thought oh Banks you know this is the easiest use case for banks um uh but then yeah so I think I think uh just exposure to more financial products changed things yeah very cool and then so can you talk a little bit about your time from transitioning from a bank like a real world spanning Bank to polygon which is like man hopefully reaches like the global significance yeah but but like I mean we can talk about kind of like the startup

aspects we can talk about like what it's like to work outside the financial system but for me as like the widest possible American American possible um like what's what's super interesting to me is to hear what it's like to um to have polygon as such an important pillar of what a theore is to grow out of um basically not the west and not like the Silicon Valley bubble that um weal that basically most technology stems from so can you talk a little bit about like that transition and what your personal experience was like oh yeah I remember when I had joined uh Matic in 200 I had heard of Matic of polygon in 200 17 even

and I I thought like it's an Indian company and uh and I like to try it and like back then also nothing was there uh so but then 2020 happened and I was part of a lot of hackathons I was building some stuff I think on a I was building something on a uh credit delegation I think credit delegation had just come out a V2 I think had just come out this was December 2020 and I was coding something and I found Matic Network on the Discord and I thought okay like what is this um and they had a lot of bounties so I I just got excited by the bounties to be honest uh I didn't understand the tech but then uh I thought okay oh then I remembered okay this is an Indian team and you know I started chat I just called sandep on

Discord uh out of the blue and he didn't pick up but then he pinged me later and that's how like I started speaking with them and uh and I used Matic only quick shop was there back then I remember and uh and you know I started using that and I realized oh like I it's so cheap like it was like a scent or fraction of a scent you know and I was like oh why is this so cheap and ethereum is so expensive there must be some some fundamental difference in the architecture security or whatever and that that got me into the D toilet yeah for sure so um again just like while we're hovering over this space do you think that there's anything like particularly interesting about the cultural differences between like a

western and an Indian company is are there things that like we should be taking from you or that maybe yeah what's the big differences I think I think the most important thing which I learned is the cultural difference in the US versus over here is that uh I don't even say cultural difference I think a lot of teams now also do that over here as well is like the access to Capital over the in the US like I spent two years 2 and a half years in New York and like uh you know you can raise at much more even if you don't have a good product or even if you don't have a good team and I think that that uh fundamentally changes expectations changes yeah changes everything I think uh you you certainly feel that oh you're

worth more than a team out of anywhere else you know you suddenly feel although it brings it brings benefits like it it opens networking opportunities it opens access to Talent or whatever but but now that you know crypto is such a democratic thing we I remember in 2000 when I when I had joined there were so many you know West uh I wouldn't even say West like you know much funded well funded uh projects that polygon killed uh to become what it is today there I mean I would go into the names but like you can easily look up there were so many like I remember like uh tens of you know l2s SL l1s that that had so much

big uh bag uh you know VC backing all these big VC Silicon Valley or New York VCS funding all of them but uh but polygon was like no this is uh with like all the all the crazy BD and um that that had to be pulled off um at the start of 2021 when ZK was not even a thing and then ZK happened uh and now I think uh people still feel that polygon has the best BD of course like I like to really believe that polygon has the best BD but uh I genuinely feel that uh and I think I've said this multiple times but I genuinely feel that polygon has the best tech now uh with polygon 2.0 and all these thing uh and the pole staking

and uh the staking Hub um and especially polygon 2.0 which is going to come where you can you know build your own chain and uh in A in E L2 way not not a sovereign chain where that's simply a side check um I think that changes that changes the game forever I think polygon I genuinely feel polygon uh 2.0 is like the end state of infrastructure like I don't think there is any if there is any there'll be improved but I still I generally feel that this is the last no I mean I think uh you and I have talked about this many times offline like one of you know basically before marchish or whenever it was before 2023 to me polygon was just like another

exciting big but just like another project in ethereum and then it was like one weekend where everything changed which was the release of the ZK evm and that's kind of cool what was really cool was the open sourcing of that and kind of what that portends to um the ecosystem and like the tech infrastructure and I want to get to all that because I think that is like perfectly the Journey of ZK and then as well gets us to where uh Hamza you are today but while we're still like well within the polygon story um Can can you talk a little bit about polygon's excellence in um Business Development and like I think you as head of defi were a huge piece of that but man for

polygon Business Development like you guys set the tone you created the game and it's everything from like Business Development from like you know corporations that you and I would recognize like Starbucks or um like Marvel Disney that kind of stuff to like the actual just like not sexy not interesting uh business development of like getting developers interested in the platform getting protocols to migrate over getting tvl in like can you talk a little bit about like how polygon went from like actually the most Scrappy just like Cutthroat like badass guys in India to this like world class like interconnected um like Business

Development machine I think it was like the north star of for polygon has always been like transaction fees like because that number doesn't lie you know like uh you can always get tbll you call you can call your like five investors and tell them to put 10 mil or 50 mil each and you can know pump up the tvl but that tvl is usess like it doesn't do anything similar thing is with volume or whatever like any one metric can always be gamed but like I think the most important thing is like gas fees uh which means that there is actual demand for that block space real estate so to say that that blockchain real estate and uh and that I think uh like anything that I think when I joined like def there was like one or two protocols like I said

and there was a whole sheet I used to sit with sandep every day and there was a whole sheet tier one tier 2 tier three tier 4 tier one's had you know a compound Unis swop U I don't know whatever synthetics back then Sushi and we used to go each one of them and they used to go like all of the calls and be like okay we are doing this we have this liquidity mining program let's do this uh you know let's do this uh how can we work together so spent like hours of calls on a unop compound like every every one of them and over time I think now and then you had tier two where you know we we we want to spend this much we had tier three we had for that like I just used to do myself uh so uh so a lot

of these things you know were were like a very focused methodical approach okay like we need these many protocols we need like 50 in first month we need 70 in second month we need 100 in third month and then then it becomes like you know it becomes like a Snowball Effect and uh the organic uh thing just happens over time um but but yeah it was a very very focused initial I think from Feb march to to may I think I haven't slept more than four or five hours I think yeah the the problem with the global industry is that there's it's always awake working hours for someone right and and remember this time uh this was the time when Co was uh peak in India this was like India Peak and I used to

literally uh take calls from the from the hospital because my my mother was uh hospitalized so I used to take calls and not me just like many of us used to take calls from the from the Hospital Reception Area because that the only that was the only way no I mean I just want to take a moment to um like recognize and say how like I know I don't know but I know how hard uh Co was in India during that time so to hear how you guys built an Empire at the same time you're watching like your family and Society like really struggle through something is uh even more impressive but we won't dwell on that um I do yeah I mean I again I think like what um for me tell me if this resonates with

you but like the takeaway for me is that like there wasn't a secret sauce to like turning into this like to what you are today like it really was just like actually like the the leadership and the important guys just sitting down making lists and then like rolling your sleeves up and doing the work and I wonder One if that resonates with you and two do you think that um India and like polygon and this group of companies their new access to Capital and their new access to the Silicon Valley Swag Like might have some effects where you lose a little bit of that scrappiness and a willingness to be able to do that work um I I agree like I think uh first point um uh to your point like yeah I I agree

like it was because as soon as I joined I think I have not seen sandep or any of the founders or to say work less than this first day uh because the because polygon was not a well funded at all like you know it was very till that time I think I I didn't even know who the investors were like I didn't know anything like polygon had raised like 500k till then uh and until late 2022 when you know all the big the big fundraise happened but um but I think that's what like crypto does like it it's just such a great leveler of uh of like just good Tech and uh and just honest work around that uh so yeah like

I think just roll your sleeves up and always had like a chip on the shoulder sort of thing uh that okay like we have to get this or otherwise like no one cares about us so um so that was one thing and second thing I think uh to your point where uh sorry what was the what was the second second thing the the second thought was just um kind of a asking you to reflect on do you think that due to polygon success and due to a lot of the success of the crypto companies out of India which will now draw Silicon Valley style Capital do you think that anything special will be lost will be lost I'm sure it'll be lost like I mean uh no one will say this but like the honest fact is like uh like you

need a shredded body to to you know go and uh uh and last like work like 15 hours a day you can't have like a fat uh a fat person or like unhealthy unhealthy person uh working hours a day it's is the fact like it's just simple whatever people want to say um but but um I I think that brings a lot of uh that brings a lot of uh but again like good good uh good teams are raising capital and I think um and I think uh the ecosystem has to grow like there's no way um if if 10 teams are funded two three do well that's good enough now Indian teams are now now like poly chain is investing and you know coinbase uh

coinbase Ventures is leading in fact uh like like socket um coinbase LED that round V we very good friend um uh so yeah I mean I don't think anything is I mean if you look at it like there are always pros and cons but it's always good that teams get funded and you know yeah so you just said that very polite let me make it much more Frank which is like yeah maybe something's lost I guess but like we're like developing as an ecosystem and like that's object a good thing and like even if we're losing something like you Americans must have lost it a century ago and you're doing fine no I don't mean anything like that I I best projects still uh and it's not

like a west or east thing I think it's just India has been very neutral uh we work well with everyone so I don't think it's or E thing um yeah and I I don't mean to make it uh West versus East I do mean to make it about the development of the capital markets but um yeah so anyway so I really want to get to ZK I think that's like the interesting part of this conversation but with our last um like question on like defi World um I would love to hear any of your Reflections on like how your job has changed over the like two and a half years that you were doing it and for the listeners those two and a half years

started with like perhaps the most like exciting and like frothy just like you know bubble times and that was probably the first half of year and a half and then the second year and half was like just the most gut-wrenching like watching everyone fall from like the scammers like s SPF to like some of our closest friends who um didn't do anything wrong I guess like do you have any Reflections on what it's like to survive like the high highs and low lows and still Trek through with like the just like boring work of convincing people that like polygon is like the right tech oh that's a very good good question and a very hard question like I

I I joined Krypto when I was like what 24 or something I don't know I don't know just like a little out of college I had like two years of work whatever and uh from like a tier 2 city in India like I no one in my family has like a finance experience or whatever you know so there was no one to guide so I thought it was just like a tech job you know I I thought it like any other startup so to say I thought genuinely I genuinely say this like I didn't understand the nuances of you know what cryptographic security is or or what U any of that is but I learned a lot on the on the job and I was like you know using everything on the chain and like studying everything um and coding on the side just to learn learn everything and I

think uh I don't I don't know if uh sorry what was the what was the exact question I I Miss oh the reflection yes so I I never because I it was my first cycle I never did any stocks investing or you know traditional investing or anything like I uh not much but then you know in crypto it's a very it's a very different thing like all these startups so to say or Pro protocols so to say become public on day one so they so they are viewed uh in a way as Investments uh by everyone and not just Tech like you

know like if Amazon private so to say you can focus on the on the kpis and the numbers of orders and all those stuff right but there is no Financial expectation of it of course it will come later down the line and uh whatever but uh but when when protocols or projects or whatever apps your DS uh people have this weird expectation of the price going up and like all these kind of things so you have to manage that expectation with the actual metrics which is like you know uh transaction fees going up volumes going up like which is the actual fundamental that benefits the validators and you have to keep the incentives aligned and you have to keep the risk uh risk uh in place

whether you have if you so so I yeah it was I never really understood uh through through the through the first year to be honest like I because I was just so busy with getting projects and like that was my whole thing and building a team so like I hired like you know over five six seven people across different stes of polygon more than like I think 10 uh 10 people across things and then um and then I had Jack this year um then uh uh yeah a bunch of people I think across across teams I think uh I had to hire and fire and many interns I had to hire because at that time there was so much work um I I had hired like about five to six seven interns um across you know different units of polygon and up there there was a lot of work but then when

you know the crash happened uh so I not I had not seen a bare market and and I think that changed a lot I think when when Luna happened I didn't really understand that much but when when um when FTX happened then I saw like I was like oh like this is what this is what it looks like I but then I promis myself I'm not going to leave like there's no way even if every even if my money goes to zero like I didn't lose anything thankfully uh on any of the any of the thing because I was just like I was as lazy I didn't want to keep in any CX I just had it with me um in my ledger uh but but yeah I saw many people lose a

lot of money um and that like just changed the way I looked at a lot of things the the way risks are perceived or have to be perceived infrastructure risk custodian risk multisig risk so much so many risks are there you know in crypto where you're literally at The Cutting Edge and bleeding edge of things so yeah I but um while we're on this moment just for a second I want to share with you that um I too as was my first cycle when I when uh Luna happened like to exactly the same I saw the price go down and was like o totally unemotional like almost curious about it like okay like this sucks but like now I get now

I'm a true crypto person but just like you when FTX happened and honestly it wasn't FTX itself it was the FTX hacker man that was when I was like first time ever and hopefully last time I was scared out of my positions and went from eth to usdc because I was just like holy like what we're standing on the edge of Madness and now I realize like that there's more to go it's infinite and like we can keep going from here and like that that I feel like is the moment that I became a true before we get to ZK with like what what do you think the biggest thing that

changed you um through like the crashing of the bull cycle like what what do you think your biggest takeaway from surviving that and still sticking around was I I learned this thing is that never trust anyone on Twitter no no matter how smart he sounds first thing never never ever ever ever uh trust anyone because everyone has incentives some and I would like everyone to not trust me on uh on those things because like as much and anyone you know just be a bit uh skeptical of what what things are and there's no need when there's the with the whole blockchain says that you don't need to trust you can verify uh

stuff on chain like uh don't trust anyone and I think that that mindset I think uh maybe I think I'm just little more skeptical than before much more skeptical um than before and uh and judicious of like what to trust what not to trust um that's I think that that is like it was not very crypto answer but it was a very like human human behavior answer like I think I think because the the series of hacks and series of all those things were human Le rather than you know like I was I was spending time with a bunch of those people like the Celsius people the 3 people um at of the conferences and then you realize that oh like these guys

are like literally lying to your faces um and then I was like yeah I'm it's start for me I I mean you said that's not a crypto answer it's a human answer but I think what your answer really is trying to say is that we think that in this space we're special because we've created this term trustless but like we are all explicitly trusting each other like even vitalic is not reading all the code at this point there's just too much of it and so like I do think that the that what Sam bankman free did teach us is that like it's at your own Peril to like forget that at the end of the day like we're just like two monkeys trying to like create money out of thin air you

know and so um yeah man' totally hear you and yeah also say is that was like a very scary time and uh yeah let's just um as the bubbles get bigger the crashes kind of uh tame themselves out but anyway so let let's move forward and like while we're on this realm of trustless let's talk about ZK so um as like kind of the segue here let's like use the story of polygon I guess ZK evm or poly 2.0 or what however um polygon frames it internally but like can you um and this is a broad open question I'm happy to pick it up if it's too big but

can you help us like understand um how you see like ZK like really transforming ethereum and like why this is so important and not just like hype in the way that um that that so many like Trends in um crypto have been so far oh I think because fundamentally like you know infrastructure has to improve like it's as simple as internet right like there was there was bottoms there was uh there was uh Broadband there was uh Optical fibers there were glass fiber there was like you know so much so much uh microwave people use for for transmission and all those things so

that if infrastructure is not there like you had GPU you had CPUs you have as6 you have gpus you have F so many so many different kinds of like you know infrastructure that only then you can have good apps on top that the real con uh uh uh consumer uses uh and I think that that's the first cycle we saw with with uh like we know colored coins on bitcoin back for they tried to do the ERC fungible token stuff then you had then you had uh like ethereum crypto kitties where the first congestion on a on a public chain happened and and that's when like L2 discussion started like with State Channels with plasma

that was the first time you know the the narrative had become mainstream that okay like ethereum main chain cannot scale you need you need l2s um and then and that's when you know the plasma group started and uh and you you uh optimistic rollup spun out from there from the Plasma Research U so you have offchain Labs which was also part of that and then optimistic rollups optimism uh which was also was part of the part of the Plasma Research and I think uh that's when like a core infrastructure if the core infrastructure does not improve there's no way that good app can be built on top like next gen apps so to say like not good apps but like next gen apps so like for example right right now uh you saw last year 2021 I think you saw many

multi-chain dii app toys so to say like not apps but like examples of stuff that can be done like cross chain swaps and cross chain lending but the biggest problem with them think about like you can only build so much on one chain like you can have a DEX lending Market uh like you know the four five basic Primitives but to expand out of it you can do a bunch of things um outside your chain um so like cities you have you have you just need better transportation from one chain to other uh from different cities like LA to New York you can go by train or whatever uh different typ of um air flights U but uh that's what happened I think now is that

the bridges were the major problem major points of failure right like you all the Bigg has hacks in22 were Bridges we all know that and then what happened now is that okay we have that uh but ZK so the two ways like uh the bridging part as well as the chain congestion part uh you see that optimistic rollups also sometimes uh not sometimes in fact many times you see that their gas fees also goes up to like $10 $15 I've seen some instances on arbitrum and optimism both that you know it it shoots up and the reason for that is like you know the proof size is lot is a lot larger and you know there's a lot of trust assumptions built on top and game theory

that that you have to take but there's no math uh whereas zups like remove that completely and be like okay like this is pure math and you know uh you don't need to trust anyone there is no fraud there is no possibility of fraud basically and there's no testing window with of 7 days which is there in optimistic and it's just a very uh next gen s to say next gen infrastructure scaling option and God knows after 3 years you know 3 four years 5 years there might be something else but ZK right now it is in that uh production grade and ZK is not a new technology um It's Not A New Concept it is a new stages of Technology but like um there were there were scientists and researchers who were proposing this in

late '90s as well um so uh so yeah like this thing has been there for a while theoretically but now with you know infrastructure and and the blany 2 prover and all those things there are there are a lot of ways where uh where we can scale it up and uh and that that I think is now ZK uh chains and uh and now you're seeing like optimistic chains also exploring ZK for uh compression because they know that is the only way uh you can you can um you know compete with zik raps there's no other way yeah no I mean one of my favorite like favorite favorite things although we're getting like late in 2023 it's it's getting old now but um at the end of 2022 vitalic went on bankless and like

the the bankless boys asked him like what's one of the things you're most uh surprised about and he said you know by this time like I really really thought we'd have optimistic rollups like done and like the the crazy thing is that like today it looks like we are going to get ZK rollups whether it's from any of the teams right polygon uh ZK s scroll any of the team we're going to get get those before we get like optimistic rooll looks finished right and fast forward 10 months and like that we did that did happen like arbitrum optimism they're not like sorry hate to break it to you guys but they're not like fully Sovereign optimistic rollups but like the polygon ZK evm is what was promised

and like it really is like where we're trying to get um and so we we can talk about like during this initial period how um the sequencers permission blah blah blah but point is the technology is moving like so incredibly fast and so I guess to to kind of wrap together what you just said um are what you're saying is like the reason that ZK is so exciting to you is because you're seeing that ZK solves like these incredibly hairy infrastructure problems whether it's in blockchain scaling blockchain interoperability um but like these problems that we have today and like they're ZK is already providing Sol soltions and so you're like man

like I just got to be involved in that yes yes I think I think ZK is the is going to be for for a long time the end state of of infrastructure uh because it just removes any inherent trust assumptions and it is just faster two main things it is faster and removes any inherent trust assumptions the trust assumptions for bridges for interop and uh faster and smaller in size for blockchain compression for sure so and I think that is like the the most understood way that ZK is going going to change things right specifically in rollups and in bridges that like everyone can wrap their head around it like it's well understood there there are more like yeah mainstream these for now yeah yeah exactly like those are the mainstream things but like um I guess

like now would probably be a good time to like explicitly say that like Hamza like you're pivoting into like this like ZK world to um like really blow it up and change it but so like one can you talk a little bit about like where your interests lie but two can you help us understand like why ZK is so much more interesting than just like really these two specific use cases that are in front of us rollups and bridges yeah I mean I think it's a it's a like imagine identity sorry the third one is identity because because imagine like you going to your uh to like immigration or a club or wherever and you have to bring your ID with you uh imagine in a world where literally everything is through the

phone everything but trust TR is through the phone uh like even if you show your picture people will be like oh it is forged I don't really know if your passport picture is real or not uh so you really have to take your physical and and you don't really need to show uh if you if you just need to know that okay you're above 18 or above 21 or whatever you don't really need to show the other guy that okay my mom's name is this my dad's name is this what is my place of birth what is the date of issuance of the passport like that kind of stuff like because because the passport has all that uh whereas with the Z imagine that all that information going through a ZK proof and you just and there's a Boolean that says that okay like above 18 yes or no that's

it and it is inherently trust is baked into the protocol um yeah it's baked into the protocol that okay this is actually above 18 or not you don't need to show everything um and that is a very fundamental difference uh with how databases are created so databases you store everything and um and you know you share everything uh with foreign G and then you you map all the databases with each other uh but but imagine with like ZK databases or a ZK flavor of databases where uh you only give um you only give proofs of stuff to each other uh and that proof is basically just as a as a as an as a truth asset uh giving you the

indication that okay like uh whatever whatever this data is is true uh and whatever like let's say you know are 50% if there's a table and there's like is 50% of this entry above 18 and it just says just gives yes and that yes is goes through a ZK proof so you you are sure that okay this is correct that changes a lot of like it reduces attack vectors on databases the whole surface area of attacks because most Pro biggest problem with social media or any big website that holds all of this is the storage of that data and the privacy data whereas with ZK proofs you can just say that okay like okay this is like you know uh 50% is this or is this user above 18 or

has any fraud claims on them or whatever you know so I think that is a very fundamental difference for sure yeah and I guess like just to really like uh explode open this point about like identity and maybe privacy but more specifically about identity like I the the deeper I get into crypto um I entered like a lot of people through this lens of finance and Defi and thinking like the point of what we were building here was a better or at least a different Financial system and like the the more I go through this stuff the more I watch things like 3ac and Luna the more I like see spf's balance sheet and realize like half the projects I

thought were legit were like basically like kept in place by like really scam you VC incentives like the more I'm realizing that ethereum itself is not about defi like ethereum is um like I truly believe it is part of the history the organic history of the internet right and like let let's Trace back the start of the internet to like let's say 1995 when um when uh Netscape was launched right like we got Netscape we got geoc cities we got like the 2001 boom then crash and then we essentially got Facebook and then like what we're just saying like things stopped since like 200 like we got a little bit better ux and things got faster but like the

internet stopped developing like of course not of course that didn't happen of and and what I believe is that ethereum is like just the identity layer the property layer of the internet like it it exists in the internet and it is like the substrate that it's going to provide us property and I think that like today right now that's just like so Pie in the Sky because of how kind of let's be real shoddy the infrastructure is but like for me ZK is is part of that solution where how like the the evm itself can become like our human's true identity on the internet in a way that's not um doesn't require like centralizing intermediaries or doesn't like

centralize all our data and like provides kind of like the modern security we need so um I want does that like kind of resonate with how you see the purpose of what we're building and yeah and so like how do you think we get from like crypto still being this like weird Niche like speculative like maybe Financial thing into like something that replaces like our Google accounts and our Facebook accounts and like becomes our identity on the internet I think we this it just takes time I think uh we we need uh like cheap cheap uh chains cheap gas uh chains and I think uh I think it's just a matter of time like what's what frch uh no irrespective of whether you like it or not but uh but like I

have been using frch for a while and I think I think it's pretty cool with what they have uh with what they have achieved uh there's 50 million tvl there's there's all sorts of celebrities joining it and even today even by today I thought this it would it would be a fad and then everyone goes away but people are still active my chats are blowing up uh I think it's just uh more consumer apps and it's just a it's just a matter of time I think I think we are finally seeing some good social uh some good social apps come up and uh with lens protocol and now FR Tech and um I saw yesterday one more one more coming on base uh uh I I think it's just it's a matter of like now wallets are also you know there's pwa so you don't really

need to pwa has always been there I don't know what happened why like I I used to work on PWS in 2019 uh so I've did a bunch of testing on how to deploy and how to test them um so I think now people are actually testing uh testing and getting into uh the account abstraction and all those things so I think it's yeah for sure so um let's stay away from consumer world and like keep stay into ZK World um I think like for me the most exciting part about ZK just like to get to the Brass tax of it is that like ZK is the technology that's going to allow us to do like intense crazy computation on like centralized like hardcore machines

that are run by one company or one person but then take that the results of those computation inject it into a public uh really ethereum but inject it into a public uh blockchain and then like through that construction is how we are able to like make ethereum scalable it's like ZK is the magic piece and so um one if I would love to hear if you have any Reflections on like how that's going to work but uh the the thing that I always think about is like we actually need computers to be running this computation and we figured out like this cool way to do it for ethereum and for the ethereum network and like maybe for some of these l2s but do you have any

Reflections on like how a ZK world is going to work from the like incentive uh standpoint like are we looking at just basically like a bunch more tokens do you see igen layer is like the solution like how is any of this going to ZK stuff going to actually work I mean it actually works like right now there's a c there are centralized sequences but like I'm actually uh I was actually speaking yesterday with two protocols because I also want to like learn a bit more about this now uh I I was just focused on Def and uh little FS but like now I think it's important to look at this infrastructure so I was uh speaking yesterday with uh again some of the folks at risk zero um as well as uh

vistara which is another um rollup as a service infrastructure uh as well as ster Labs because they started this reaking service as well so I I don't have a right answer for that to be honest uh I I'm still uh researching on how you know Das and all these things work in a multi-chain in a multi-chain ethereum world uh so yeah I I don't really answer right now no no fair enough and I think um the answer is there is no answer and that's why we're like creating billion dollar startups to figure it out um but it's just like really clear that like to really understand what ethereum is it is the if not the final

manifestation the next manifestation of distributed compute and like that's cool but the question is like who are the distributed computers that are running this and like how do we make sure that like if we can create the technology to remove trust that's amazing but like how do we create the technology and the systems that get literal humans who like need food and Water and Air to take their hard-earned money to buy a computer to plug it into the wall to like run your computer program and I think like that's not a impossible question to solve but it is one that um is like really outstanding for me and like I I hope the answer is not every time you want to run a new service first

you have to come up with your own like proof of stake token and then figure out a way to distribute it to a bunch of people and like kind of go from there not really like if you think about like uh um uh like fch like they didn't do any token um they didn't do any sure but they don't really use ZK or external compute right oh uh yeah you don't need or you just um no if you think about it like you can do it VI apis uh VI simple apis and uh and you can just like call call a server and they're very you know you Z compute service basically uh like axom or something and that a it runs on like ZK enclaves and uh I I read about the architecture a while back but U but I haven't seen uh too much but yeah I

mean there there going to be uh a lot of like ZK ZK based databases and GK based apis that that U completely remove trust uh the requirement of Trust basically yeah and I think maybe our point is like we can use this uh crypto primitive of like proof of stake but we can also use like simple things like fees and apis to like run the same kind of system so fair enough so with the last like 10ish minutes um I like want to just kind of give you like uh the the driver seat a little bit and like as you pivot into ZK professionally like can you tell me like whether you want to talk about specific projects or like um or categories of ZK like what are the the areas that like

you're getting really excited about and um are they like things about taking the ZK that like we all kind of know and understand and putting it into practice like in a rollup up or is it about like the outwards Edge te of like what cryptography is and like really pushing the boundaries of like the math and the science and the tech yeah I am not a math person uh as much as I as my mom says that no you studied math math no no I am not a I'm not a math person but I understand like engineering and like product side of things because I have worked on a lot like I worked on AI stuff out of college and then you know webd and testing and and now crypto monetary stuff so I think I think with

ZK you like the normal ZK evm part is is done like I genuinely believe not be another ZK VM the way you know the the polygon ZK VM team has implemented I don't think there is going to be another one that comes even close uh because like a lot of teams have said that zkn um does not work like it now that I can be very honest it just does not work because of the op codes and you know it it's very hard to deploy real contracts like not like simple decks and stuff but like real options derivative stuff it doesn't work uh whereas on polygon zkm you can literally copy paste like I have asked more than 50 developers good good developers I don't I some of the very public uh

projects out there um because it is built from ground up uh on a a evm completely uh so I think that is already done I think polygon will KVM will win that it's just a matter of time um with you know with uh when the market comes back and I think the the defi team will continue to do great BD and all those stuff I think the other thing is like I I've been I'm I disclosed I'm a personal investor in this zero uh so I really like R zero uh uh I really like it because I think uh in the long term you know I I don't think evm is the one standard for

blockchains I do believe ethereum is the is the standard for blockchains I don't think evm is the standard for blockchains if you think about it like internet that TCP IP layer is constant but you can build with JavaScript you can build with python you can build C++ you can build with uh rust you can build with haskill erlang um and I think I think I mentioned it to you or not but I was reading this was not a biography was some tech Journal I think few many years ago when I I was working on I was actually working on Signal protocol The Signal app right they have the whisper protocol they have whisper protocol which was the first open source end to end encrypted protocol which basically every mobile app mobile chat app uses today including WhatsApp Instagram

Google teams or Google Microsoft teams or whatever they all use that whisper protocol so I was I was reading that and I was building that I building something on top of that I remember and I I stumbled upon uh an article or something something by juc who was the CTO or CEO I don't remember of WhatsApp and he said that uh we chose arang so like the whole back end of WhatsApp is written in arang and people asked him like why did you use such a language like so he said that it is arang is one of the very few I think the only language that is end to end um fall tolerant even on a hardware level uh and because he wanted WhatsApp to run on R

run fall tolerant on any uh physical Android device because he wanted he had seen that he wanted you know billions of people using it not not like an iPhone which was only for like the the selected ones and uh not selected but like the the rich ones back then WhatsApp he wanted it to run everywhere like he wanted communication to be as running water Comm to be as fluid as running water so that I I always think about that because uh because if you want mobile uh mobile phones or watches or whatever you know smart devices which comes to to be communicating with etherum directly uh then we cannot uh because there is no

parallelization in evm there is no fall tolerance there is no so there's a lot of uh flaws but since it is secured by ethereum and no one you know people want it to the Securities the funds Securities of more par amount than uh than functionality right now but over time I think uh that's why I think I r or in general basically anyone building non evm on ethereum l2s I think that is going to be like a major Game Changer in the next three years yeah man I could not agree with you more and like I for those listening at home Hamza was actually the person who put me in touch with RIS zero which was my until chain link God was my most popular episode so thank you Hamza but um I could not agree

with you more and like I've actually been talking to a couple teams um some that you definitely know about like the chains the l2s that they want to build and the conversation is always like okay well how do we differentiate like what can we do that's just not like a straight up fork or um you know and like for a while I was saying like just go Fork polygon ZK VM like you'll be you'll be so far ahead of the game like that's where everyone's going see but I kind of I'm like you know what man like I think the real Alpha is in building the first non like blockchain evm L2 right and like just using R zero

as an example but they're just the first of what hundreds and hundreds of companies are going to figure out is like you can run like you can run Linux using ZK you can run any VM and like that that that I think is the end that like that yeah like the evm is this like clunky thing that was created by like a 14-year-old that was mad about World of Warcraft right like it it is the best we've got but there's no reason that we need to like live in this world in the same way that like yes https exists but like none of us live in the Internet Protocol layer we live like seven layers above it in this like very beautiful very polished like Riverside FM layer you know and so um

yeah man I think you're spot on that like yeah we might be done with like the blockchain layer scaling approach but like that is the beginning of the conversation of like what we can do with um with blockchain and I think like the the secret sauce is ZK so uh I know we've had you for 55 minutes here I want to um like let you walk away so Hamza Before I Let You Go um one can you just tell the audience like where they can find you where they can learn more from you and that kind of thing but two like um are you working on any new projects like anything that you want to tell people um like where your career is going oh yeah uh I'm I'm yeah you can find me on Twitter it's my name

k n Hamza uh k h n h m z h I think that's just my name you can find me there I have a m pfp so that that with cool glasses um uh however uh yeah I'm actually starting a liquid fund very soon I think um yeah I've been in the space not too much but I think uh liquid uh liquid uh uh there lot of good good Alpha and good projects in the liquid market and I think um yeah if anyone uh if anyone is interested you do so we we can we we can take directional bets on tokens as well as provide liquidity on D5 protocols stuff that we have been doing personally for some time but now professionally so it's some personal

money some s LP money uh but yeah we like we can be as activist as possible you if you know me you know how uh how I have have worked for po work with polygon for a while and if if uh yeah we like to be activist uh and we already have a few blogs out I think for the hyper liquid and I think very soon we'll have one on Kanto I think or or more other stuff that is going to come and U yeah we're really excited really excited to get this uh second phase of uh yeah of my cycle so like first you created Defi and then you realize like well man we need some people to play in the the carnival

right no man if there was one person that um I would want to like take a bed on to like understand how defi works and to like capitalize on it it would be you like really the like I I do think of you as like The Godfather for sure of polygon defi but what polygon means in ethereum is like the flagship or the head of the spear for um the whole industry so man Hamza just thank you so much for everything you've done for all of us but for being on the podcast and um dude good good luck deploying out there yes thank you thank you thank you so much for having me of course man well have a good one and uh talk to you soon