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Speaker A: But Ben, you just introduced a newer structure which seems to be a composition of many chains, and you called that a super chain. Okay, super chain. How does the super chain idea tie to what Jesse was saying earlier of getting a billion people on chain? How important is this structural element? Will they all... |
Speaker B: I think the super chain is so cool. I think it's really emblematic of what brought you and me and so many others in the bankless nation into crypto. The conversation of the super chain is one that is about crypto economics. It's about political philosophy. It's about coordination and the relationship between... |
Speaker A: Yeah, I think the whole time for me, I was like, I can't wait to get to the debrief because I want to discuss this. A lot of ideas bouncing around in my head that I want to talk to you. And of course, the debrief is the episode that we do and record right after this episode that is available for bankless cit... |
Speaker B: Bank of the Nation. I am extremely excited to introduce you to Ben Jones, co founder of Optimism, and also Jesse Pollock, the creator of Base. Ben, Jesse, both of you, welcome back to bankless. |
Speaker C: So glad to be here. |
Speaker D: Thank you, Jesse. |
Speaker B: Just two weeks ago, base launched, and Coinbase has been putting a ton of weight behind this launch, both with marketing and promotion. Not just, not just internally to the crypto world, but also externally as well, which is great because we could use some external marketing of what we're doing here in crypt... |
Speaker C: Well, I mean, first off, it's just been awesome to see the response from the broader world about what we're doing with base. I think when we started thinking about base, we kind of had this vision of bringing a billion people on chain, bringing the whole world on chain. And then as we got closer to launch, I... |
Speaker B: Ben, what was it like on the optimism side of things for base chain, which is not the optimism main net, it's its own independent ecosystem, but it's also an op stack fork, and this has been a very long partnership between optimism and Coinbase. So how is it like to view these things from the optimism side o... |
Speaker D: Yeah, no, I mean, and the partnership is deep. I'm sure we'll get more, a lot more into that later. But similar feelings of excitement and gratitude, I think, for the optimism community, this is just an incredible proof point for positive sum in action, where the proliferation of chains like base is going to... |
Speaker B: I think some of the excitement really comes from the clarity that base has provided a lot of the crypto world with what really the next steps for crypto looks like. How are we going to scale ethereum? What does it mean for layer twos to scale? And I think a lot of this excitement comes from just the fact tha... |
Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And before I answer that question, I do just want to, like, emphasize what you said, which is, it feels like we've gotten more clarity about where we're going. And for me, it feels like just in the last three months, like no one's even transacting on Ethereum anymore. Everyone's transacting... |
Speaker B: So Ben base is not the only op stack chain that's dropped. It seems that we get a new op stack chain one or two a week. Lately we have the public goods network. There's Zora, Celo D, bank mode, just to name a few. But the problem that arises here is that all of these op stack chains are their own chains. The... |
Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, great question, and I think I would echo exactly what Jesse said in terms of clarity. I think the one thing, Jesse, I hope this resonates with you. For both of us in working together and forming a partnership, was each of us realizing what the other person's role to play was and understanding h... |
Speaker B: The role to play in the collaboration and the agreement. |
Speaker D: Yeah. And just in general, what does it mean for decentralized governance of a standard? What does it mean to be a centralized party like Coinbase, which has incredible strengths and bring those into the decentralized context? Yeah, absolutely. Time and time again. Look, I'll back up and tell a little bit mo... |
Speaker B: So if I'm understanding this correctly, maybe the op stack is the basement level standard that is being accepted by all these various chains. Right. And the idea of the optimism vision is to actually make that standard grow based off of the shared consensus. What are the shared attributes of every single op ... |
Speaker D: Yeah, I think you can think of optimism governance as basically being a vessel to facilitate those positive sum integrations. Any change that someone makes to a chain that is really, really good, everyone should be able to take that and run with it. But it shouldn't come at the cost of a terribly fragmented ... |
Speaker A: So I want to ask the question, something you said earlier I think is really interesting, Jesse, and both you and Ben and I think all of crypto are kind of working towards this. The idea of base is a kind of day one in this attempt to onboard a billion users into crypto and get a billion users more than into ... |
Speaker C: I was looking, I think in terms of monthly transacting addresses, we just crossed like 700,000 or something like that. So those are addresses, not users. You can't directly connect them. But it's a lot. So I think the 100,000 number, that was just daily people who are coming back daily. Then yesterday, which... |
Speaker A: Absolutely. I mean, that's amazing growth and amazing progress, right? And probably, I mean, I don't know how many years it took crypto to reach those numbers, kind of the numbers that base saw in just like two weeks. So our cycles are accelerating here, which is absolutely phenomenal. |
Speaker C: One other thing that I'll say is base cross number of transactions that Ethereum did. And we were just like, just over, I think we were like, whatever, 16 transactions per second, and Ethereum was twelve. Yesterday was also the largest number of all l two transactions, and it was five x. So Ethereum was at a... |
Speaker A: Okay. All right, so we've got traction so far, and I want to get back to this idea of the super chain, because I have a feeling it's going to take more than base to onboard a billion users, even though we're making great strides here. And I'm interested in something that Ben said about this structure that we... |
Speaker D: Okay, super chain. |
Speaker A: How does the super chain idea tied to what Jesse was saying earlier, of getting a billion people on chain? How important is this structural element? Will they all come through independent chains? Just paint the picture of how this new structure will impact the future here. |
Speaker D: Yeah, so, I mean, a few things to be said there, I think. I love the life analogies. And shout out to the bankless team, both you and David are so good at the life, the slime mold, and the collective. Anyway, one of the great other things that we see there is the notion, or another great thing to talk about ... |
Speaker B: So, Ben, trying to get down to the actual practical details of how a super chain comes to be, and how 10,000 chains blossom without creating 10,000 choices for users. I see this conversation unfolding in the, um, two, um, different domains. One is the social, and then one is the actual technical, like, techn... |
Speaker D: Yeah, so, I mean, it's interesting because that answer will surely change over time on the social layer. But I'll talk about on the technical layer. Right. But I'll talk about the basics is again, the substrate of the future of the Internet needs to be standardized and it needs to be understandable. Right. S... |
Speaker B: The homogeneity of block space is probably a really good foundation to start with. Say we have, you know, 10, 15, 20 op stack chains and they all have homogenous block space, but we also still want to encourage innovation and differences. Right. And so I think this is when we can get into the law of chains, ... |
Speaker D: Absolutely. Very, very, very excited about the law of chains. I think it's also great because what's fascinating is that this is like the law of chains is a fundamentally incredibly important social construct. Okay, so first of all, what is the law of chains? The law of chains is a governing document that is... |
Speaker A: Ben, when I hear you say that, I'm trying to, again, because my brain just works on analogies and maybe some listeners are kind of like me, right? And so David asked this question earlier of, like, what's in it for a chain to join the super chain? And that seemed pretty obvious to me based on something you s... |
Speaker D: I mean, I'll draw on the analogy further, and you're 100% right. And I think the only thing that I would say or add to what you're saying fundamentally is that the standards body and the governance experiment are really one. It was all the same thing. |
Speaker A: It was all the same thing all along. |
Speaker D: Exactly right. So it's like part of the governance experiment is that it's governing this standard. Right. And that makes it a standard spotty. But you're 100% thinking about it the right way. I think one of the fascinating, one of the additional things that the law of chains says, I kind of got into the bas... |
Speaker A: So wild. Yeah. |
Speaker C: And I think from the base perspective, as we were kind of working through this and contributing to law of chains and thinking about kind of how we joined the super chain, there are a few things that we were trying to solve for. One was how do we ensure that base remains open and permissionless, and how do we... |
Speaker B: The tension between the sovereignty of a chain and the alignment of a collective, I think is a really great articulation of this. And you see the same pattern throughout history. This is the tension between defection and coordination, and the balance between the individual and the society, where the best soc... |
Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And I think, again, we're still trying to figure it out. But for the last two years, at the end of 2021, that was the mission I set on. It was, how do we bring Coinbase on chain so that we can kind of show the world what's possible here? And a lot for Coinbase has been building base and contribut... |
Speaker D: Plus one, everything that Jesse was saying, and I just want to take a moment to express my gratitude for you, Jesse and the rest of the base team. I think if we were looking back in the very early stages of this partnership, there was talking about this balance between sovereignty and the collective that onl... |
Speaker B: Jesse, you mentioned that base is going to be part of optimism governance because it's part of the collective, so it's going to participate in governance. Just what does that look like to you? Like, what is actually like base and the optimism governance, what does that relationship look like? |
Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So alongside the revenue contribution or the sequencer fee contribution that we're making to the optimism collective, we're really grateful. That base is going to be receiving a grant that we can earn out over the next six years. That will be up to 2.75% of the total supply of op tokens, an... |
Speaker D: No, I mean, I think the only thing I would add is this is yet check another box in exciting, uncharted territory that we're doing here together with y'all. Having a Fortune 500, participating in the DAO is incredibly, incredibly exciting. So appreciate the thoughtfulness that you're bringing to that. And I'm... |
Speaker B: So, Jesse, you said over the next six years, 2.7% of the total supply of op tokens. Is that like a linear vesting? As in, like every single day, it linearly vests. And so it becomes available to coinbase linearly over six years. Is that the mechanic? |
Speaker C: It's not daily, but yes, that's the mechanic. |
Speaker B: Okay. Not daily, but effectively the same. Okay, cool. |
Speaker C: Yeah, effectively the same. And there's milestones that we have to be hitting along the way, basically, in order to do that. |
Speaker B: What are those milestones look like? What are those parameters? |
Speaker C: It's basically following through on the commitments that we're making. So we have to continue contributing to core development. We have to continue joining the super chain, participating in the Security Council, basically fulfilling on these commitments that we're making around technical decentralization and... |
Speaker B: Basically being an aligned chain and aligned player. |
Speaker C: Being an aligned chain and aligned player. And continuing to provide value to the overall collective and support the public goods that are making all this possible. |
Speaker D: Positive sum, baby. |
Speaker C: Yeah, positive sum. But when we first started thinking about optimism and thinking about kind of building on l two in general, this wasn't a consideration for us. And actually, when we launched the testnet, this wasn't a consideration for us. We hadn't even had a conversation, really about what would this lo... |
Speaker A: I'm just zooming out here. So we were talking about the kind of the social layer here and the social element here. And then I think David maybe wants to pivot to tech. But before we do, I'm going to attempt to kind of summarize this. I just feel like I got some breakthroughs in the conversation that we just ... |
Speaker B: Okay, meta nation, the meta collective. |
Speaker A: So what I see in sort of the super chain and this whole collective that we're building is Ethereum is basically the infrastructure to launch this confederation of states, this confederation of chains, essentially. Right. And so optimism. And the op mainnet is kind of a lead organizer of this confederation, t... |
Speaker D: Yeah, it's a really good question. I would say a couple of things. I think I love the whole digital nations coming to life thing. I totally love that. I also think it's digital nations all the way down. I think we can absolutely think about base as a digital nation. Well, right. And like, probably that, like... |
Speaker B: Right, so coordination all the way down. |
Speaker C: Yeah. |
Speaker D: Right, yeah, yeah. So, so, yeah, I mean, that's the first thing that I want to say is, like, I love that analogy. And I think it just, like, you can draw that analogy all over the place, and none of it is really long. It's like different layers of knowledge and how we're going about it. I would like to think... |
Speaker B: One last topic to make sure that we touch on before we go to the technical details about how these lines between chains become blurred is the 15% fee. That goes to the optimism collector. Ben, why does the optimism collective get to charge a 15% fee, and where is that fee going to go to public goods funding? |
Speaker D: I mean, Jesse talked about this. First of all, having a fee, I think, is a huge win for sustainability because it completes the part of the picture that maybe we didn't previously had. Zooming out when the optimism collective was birthed, we made it very explicit that our mission was here to fund public good... |
Speaker B: The way that we say this on bankless is the freedom to execute. It is always a check on the power. The only reason why a chain will join the collective is that if the 15% fee that's being charged produces more than 15% of value for the chains that join it, otherwise they'll just fork and leave. |
Speaker D: Yep. So that funding should go back to public goods funding, because the people paying will benefit from the technology stack constantly improving. The only other thing that I want to call out is that we have a notion in our public goods funding of the scope, which is basically like, what is the set of publi... |
Speaker B: So I'd like to get into some of the technical details as to how the super chain actually forms, because, okay, we've got, we've say all these organizations that have forked the op stack recently, they all desire to be a part of this super chain base very clearly and has stated that they desire to be about a ... |
Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, I love that meme. That is a hilarious meme. And that's a good analogy to the question that you're asking. I do think that the power of homogeneity is not to be underappreciated, and I think the more time that we spend on it, the more we've realized that that's the table stakes for anything else... |
Speaker B: So maybe to frame this in a timeline that many Ethereum people will be familiar with from 2015 to, I would say 2019 was Ethereum research and development phase, where we had the north star of what we wanted Ethereum to be. But turns out things like proof of stake and sharding were more concepts, concepts mor... |
Speaker D: Oh man, that is a toughie. That is a toughie. I think. Let me think about that. I would say candidly, somewhere in the middle, it's a really tough one to answer. I've been really pleased by the progress of decentralized sequencing protocols. This has been something that's been on the protocol back burner for... |
Speaker B: I wouldn't dare. But maybe. Maybe I can ask you about an engineering timeline on this next question, which is going to come to the conversation of fault proofs. Now, fraud proofs and fault proofs are the same thing for the bank listeners. Maybe Ben will talk about why optimism elects to call them fault proof... |
Speaker D: Twitter. Twitter meme of the month. Yeah, I mean, I'll let Jesse speak to base in his own voice. The fundamental question at hand around the fault proof thing is really a broader question of what is the development, what is work in progress, what is complete, where is the stack app through that broader lens,... |
Speaker B: Okay, we'll get back to the fault proof conversation with the OPSAC in a second. But Jesse, just want to talk about the risk profile of base base without fault proofs. Because since base is part of the op collective and it's been having all the homogenization of the blocks base, because optimism Mainnet does... |
Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And this is something that we thought a lot about. It's like what is the decentralization characteristics that we feel comfortable bringing base to Mainnet with? And one of the big important gates for us was we couldn't launch base in a structure where any single party could have control of... |
Speaker B: So one of the critiques, Ben, of the op stack fork strategy of optimism is that now that anyone can fork the op stack, they're forking this chain that doesn't have fault proofs. And so we are actually increasing the total supply of chains in the market that doesn't have fault proofs enabled. So I want to act... |
Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, the way to. The way to translate that in law of chain speak is governance minimization. Right. So basically, like, the part of what the law of chain says is that, you know, optimism governance is setting this standard and ensuring that users protections are enforced. The best way for optimism g... |
Speaker B: Okay, so when are we getting them? |
Speaker D: Oh, good question. So when are we getting what? And what does it mean to not have fault proofs is probably the dynamic to dig into there. I want to be clear. It's not like we embarked upon bedrock and left the fault proofs as an afterthought that like, oh, hopefully it'll work and we'll figure it out. Right.... |
Speaker B: Yeah, semi familiar. |
Speaker D: Yeah. |
Speaker B: We just did a show with you, arbitrum team, about the whole pie slice and everything. |
Speaker D: Yeah, got it? Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, there's stage zero, stage one, stage two. And stage zero is no fault proofs, or at least they're not deployed because they're sitting there on the Monorepo. Stage one is they're deployed, but there's training wheels and stage two is training wheels off. We are at stage zer... |
Speaker B: Yeah, I think the way that I might re articulate this is that in lieu of a multi client ecosystem, a layer two has to fall back on a multisig as its stand in second client. That is, the role of the multisig is to be like, well, if our first client has a bug, then therefore that bug becomes canon because ther... |
Speaker D: That's exactly right, yeah. From our perspective, the delta to stage two is the big one, not to stage one, because before that it's still on multisigs. And you're exactly right. If you only have one client, the multisig needs to be a backup if that client has a bug. If you have three clients, that's how you ... |
Speaker B: Okay, how many clients does optimism have? |
Speaker D: Oh, that's a good question. And shout out to the folks at base that are working to build out yet another one on Oprah. There are a fair number. Honestly, I'm not sure how long ago it was that Nethermind came out and just randomly released op Nethermind, which we like. I think we had talked to them a little b... |
Speaker B: Jesse, anything you want to add to this before we move on? |
Speaker C: I guess the only thing that I'd add is, I think, plus one to what Ben's saying. We got to find the path to get from stage zero to stage one to stage two. I also just say we clearly have a lot of work to do to get there. Like Ben said, we have a bunch of clients. I'm excited to see those fully productionized ... |
Speaker B: It's almost as if bedrock was meant to be a strong foundation for the layer two ecosystem. Jesse, Ben, I've learned a lot in this conversation and I think anyone who's listened to bankless knows that I get very excited over all things super chain. So this episode, I think is going to be a good one to help cl... |
Speaker C: Yeah, well, we got nine more days in on chain summer and then it's September and so, you know, we're still really focused on just telling the world about base and telling the world about what's happening on chain. Bringing one thing to do every day on chain that we're kind of curating and then helping surfac... |
Speaker B: I will say for the bankless listener out there, the last time I saw Jesse was at ETH, and the time before that was at a different conference. I can't remember which. And then also, then hopping into this chat right here to record. Ever since, every single time, he's running around like a madman talking to 10... |
Speaker D: You've been doing a stream a day for the past month, isn't that right? |
Speaker C: Yeah. Stream a day every day for 15 minutes. We're doing on chain summer stories. It's the first time I've done direct content, and it's been having a lot of fun. Talked to the onboard team who is based in Nigeria today, and they were sharing about how Nigeria is coming on chain and how the african continent... |
Speaker B: Yeah. Ben, same question to you. What's the near term focus for optimism? Op labs collective, what's going on over there? |
Speaker D: Yeah, so technically, there is only one answer, and that is fault proofs. And like Jesse said, you know, go look at the GitHub. We're incredibly thankful to have a community of folks like yourselves and the people at l two beat. Like, there's an entire company basically focused on holding us accountable, whi... |
Speaker A: There we go. We've come full circle in this episode. Jesse, as you said, this is day one. Jesse, Ben, thank you so much for guiding us through the super chain and base today. |
Speaker D: Thanks, y'all. It was a pleasure. |
Speaker C: Thank you. |
Speaker A: Action items for ebankless Nation will include a link to the law of chains. That's what we've been mentioning throughout this episode. There is a governance post you can look at to read more about that. Gotta end with this, of course. Risks and disclaimers. Crypto is risky. So are all the chains that we're c... |
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