🎙️ 75 - The ETHCC Experience

welcome to bagless where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance this is how to get started how to get better and how to front run the opportunity i'm ryan john adams i'm here with david hoffman and we're here to help you become more bankless david standard opener to every bankless episode but this is not a standard bankless episode you are in france right now as we're recording this intro and you just attended ecc dude we all have fomo all right like i wanted

to be there i saw some of the clips coming out of this event a ton of excitement and you have promised the antidote to our fomo so what are we going to dive into during this podcast yeah so the format for this podcast is uh going to be extremely different uh ryan you actually won't be in the podcast because you're not at youth cc yeah sure yeah but this is for those that uh we're not at cc this is the podcast for you uh so these are about roughly 12 to 15 minute clips of just quick interviews with some of the big names that we all know and

love many previous uh bankless podcast guests uh and so i asked a lot of the the familiar names just what their ecc experience is like and also kind of what the the state of crypto is for them uh and so i talked to vitalik staney kane uh and aya mayaguchi and and so many different people from around the ecosystem and uh kind of uh ask them what what is what it's been like for you uh the guest the the ecc attendee what the what the experience is like what uh what uh talks are they looking forward

to uh what are they up to in paris uh what after parties are they going to so if you weren't able to attend ecc at least you have this podcast that's awesome man i'm super excited to listen to it so i haven't heard any of this uh full disclosure to you to podcast listeners as we're recording this intro but but i can't wait to listen to it and i've got a ton of questions but maybe the first is this for for people not familiar with ecc what is the etc event and david is this the first real like ethereum uh physical gathering place event since

since kovid went down was there like an ecc event like just prior to covid as well am i recalling that correctly yeah that's right ecc number three was uh the la basically the last event before everything shut down and unfortunately people who went to the last ecc actually contracted covert there and that's that's where people realized a lot of the crypto communities like oh this covet is an actual thing that was like february march of like 2020 yes yes i think march of 2020 and they try and have ecc at every single uh

the same time every single year um but they delayed this one to be a little bit further into the summer just because they needed you know more time to pass for kobe to be a thing so everyone's still wearing masks uh in in europe the the vaccination the rate of vaccinations in europe's not as fast as it is in america so masks at least in america on the west coast like masks are kind of done um but in in france and paris masks are very much still a thing um and actually today which is today's the actual second day of ecc tomorrow is the third of three days um

uh today is a more more restrictive uh you know rules across all of france uh and so yesterday you could have gotten into ecc without a vaccination card but today you actually had to go and show your vaccination card or a negative test to get into the event uh so yeah so you came prepared with all of that like you knew all of that going in that this would be necessary yes well i also needed to bring my vaccination card to even get into the country uh they wouldn't have let me into france without my vaccination card so that that's a battle that that everyone's been battling some people uh who went to the

the event depending on where they coming from uh had to fight even harder battles uh kane left australia kane warwick from very locked down in australia yes and so he had to like more or less like a petition his government to like hey please let me leave and yeah and and like say like this this me leaving is going to be economically beneficial to australia that's why you should let me go uh and and so he he's here in france and then he also said that he's also not going to go home right afterwards he's just going to do a little bit a tour abroad yeah mario and oconti who i've

been hanging out with all week is in that same in that same boat um so he actually literally cannot go home because they won't let him back into the into argentina um and so everyone's coming from all over the world and everyone has like kind of their own game that they're playing with regards to kovid and what is what it took to get here and what it's going to take to get back home some people just don't have plans to go home they're just going to keep on touring around the world i can understand why so is this is ecc really an ethereum centric conference i think so right because eth in the name

eats cc but also uh seems to be more more broadly defy so what's the overall tone of the thing is it more technology is it more applications like defy or is it more like you know base layer ethereum stuff or is it all of the above yeah it's it's specific to builders and so all the panelists actually there's actually not very many panelists i actually don't think there was a single panel it's all one one speaker giving one talk at a time uh and you had to apply to be a speaker but the the you know common denominator

for all the speakers is that they are a builder and the what's unique about uh this particular eats tc event um and i haven't been to any other ecc event so i'm just kind of going by word of mouth here is that you know what the definition for builder is has really expanded in this particular ecc event um last tc and each cc is a really hard thing to say just say cc yeah um the the last ec event um you know there wasn't really this nft mania or blossoming ecosystem and there's

there was a lot less like non-defy you know platforms right and so this particular ecc there's a lot more surface area for builders to be builders and so now we are when we say builders we're not just talking about um just people who can code but we're talking about people who are content creators like cooper turley uh we uh i interviewed cooper truly and he's big in the creator economy and so i got his take about what it's like to be at ecc and he gave his own talk and he doesn't code he's he's part of the creator world

and he's going to be in this episode too he's in this episode yeah how many people did you get in this episode dude uh nine wow should i list them off uh you can if you can remember them yeah so of course i got vitalik uh i've had 15 minutes with italic first bankless podcast with vitalik in real life so that was pretty cool like i said cooper turley uh also jerome the guy who actually organized and organized ecc number four and also ecc numbers one two three so every single one that was a really interesting perspective uh kane

warwick stani from ave aya miyaguchi um from the east foundation who speaks really really softly so i really had to bump up her audio uh simona pop and then also jordy from from hermes network uh and then uh also oh and um uh joseph de long from sushi and sushi had a really big announcement here at ecc's uh so those are those are all the people that i interviewed and those who are the people that you are all going to hear from okay so aggregate this for us david like what's the overall uh feeling or or vibe i guess the last cc event was

pre-coded but it was also pre-bull run remember like march uh 2020 eth and bitcoin were just starting a like minor ascent but of course i don't know we were still in the 200s 300s right and then kobet totally smashed all of that um now here we are i guess we've had sort of a bull run but we're in uh crab market doldrums eat price below 2k as we're recording this but what was the overall feeling or vibe that you felt from this conference yeah yeah yesterday eth really dipped below to a

new low at 17.50 and then today it's kind of risen up to 1900 and the only reason why i'm talking about press right now is that i have not had one price conversation wow no one is talking about price no one cares right no one cares no one cares and like granted it's largely because we've still had like a big run-up uh you know it's still very much higher than where we were a year ago like you've said um but this has not been a price uh conversation uh at all um that's including at the conference and at the

like peripheral events that i've been going to as well prices not not a topic of conversation not in the slightest so what is the vibe what is the topic of conversation well there's so many different tracks um and so there's like the nft track there's a defy track there's the the non-financial uk use cases of ethereum track um the vibe i think i would say well there's a ton of energy first off everyone is really stoked to be there uh and everyone's just really chatty there's there's uh like many different rooms uh for all the different like conference or panels and and workshops

and talks and so people are going to the talks that they are like really intrinsically interested in as in like th this is my like thing that i care about so i'm going to go to this talk but other than that people are out in the halls they're they're chatting with other people there's booths kind of spread around um and there's a big like congregation room uh and so people are more just hanging out in in the in the overall community and then and then also like an outside area with a nice big tree with a lot of shade so people are sitting under the tree people are talking as you would expect and and and

the the energy is absolutely fantastic i would i would say the overall ambiance is that like i said this is like a builder-focused um event where builder is now kind of more expansively not just not just coders but just people who create uh and people i feel like we all know that there's still so much work to be done like everyone has like their builder hat on uh and everyone is talking about like so many brand new projects that i have never heard of uh are are at this event and you know people are wearing t-shirts

serena like you know repping their their project or their company and a lot of new projects and companies that i've never seen before um so i would say that the vibe is definitely like we're all here to build and talk about building and also talk about like all the new directions that ethereum has taken in the last year since the last cc event uh and and we all want to kind of pow out and you know communicate what we're all up to because we're all builders here yeah i mean it it it seems like since the last conference in person there have been so many catalyzing events like you

know nfts really came out and and were a big thing david there was a raise this week of open c the first nft unicorn like 1.5 billion billion with a b absolutely insane success there and now the ethereum community has layer two actually humming so optimism and uniswap uh just went live with the first layer two solution of a flagship d5 application on a rollup i should say not the layer two solution generally but on a roll-up super exciting so roll-ups are

here we also have eip-1559 we have eth2 that's shipped with staking for over six months that's gone very well a lot of positive catalysts ahead was that some of the enthusiasm that was felt i guess that's why the conversation was so varied it wasn't you know we're trying to solve this one particular problems because a lot of the problems are being solved uh and like the ethereum community has sort of spread out in so many different directions there's so many different avenues that are being pursued mutually

at the same time um was the feeling was there a feeling of kind of enthusiasm about all of this progress or what were some of the main i guess topics of conversation when you're having those conversations with people i i would actually say uh ether as a topic of conversation including like eip159 in the merge that also has kind of in the same way prices have hasn't been a topic of conversation ether really hasn't been a topic of conversation either um uh and there there's definitely a layer two track so there's a lot of layer two

uh talks as as well but also people i think were really a lot of the builders in this space have kind of considered l2 as like you know we've checked that box actually with that like that's done now yeah like how about scalability more broadly yeah scalability yes overall and so here's yeah here's where i was going is uh scala like l2's optimism and like hermes network is here with zk roll ups and hermes network is about to implement their their own version of the evm on hermes network so we got smart contracts

on zk roll ups not just on optimistic roll ups and and so well those are definitely topics of conversations because everyone's really excited about this brand new thing that we have about uh i have on ethereum people are looking towards different directions now uh so like privacy is a big conversation and other applications of zero knowledge uh zero knowledge rollouts i thought there was a booth with the um the dark forest game which is a game based off of zero knowledge cryptography uh and and so people are and so gaming is actually a really big topic of conversation as well

and so uh definitely a lot of talk about l2 but now people are starting to look beyond the horizons because now now l2 is right in front of us and so there's a lot of conversations about you know what's next what's after we have scalability because largely scalability is a solved problem we just kind of need the things to roll out that's incredible how about youth 2.0 any conversation about the merge where what's going to happen in the future of sort of the the base layer protocol um again like not and not a lot of talk about proof of stake in the merge it's

it was really an application layer conference i would say not an ethereum protocol conference and so it's it's really doing projects that are trying to like you know market themselves and also like teach the rest of the community what they're up to and what they're doing um not not a whole lot of protocol level stuff except for except for like cryptography there's definitely a cryptography element as well i know um you went to uh bitcoin miami just a few months prior so contrast bitcoin miami oh my gosh cc what like i and i i get that there

are different conferences like ecc is more you know tied to builders but they are both i guess uh conferences run by their respective communities what are some of the contrast points or similarities oh my gosh there's so much there's so much um and granted i only went to the bitcoin conference for about a couple hours before i left and started doing like some of the ethereum peripheral stuff um but first off each tc the tickets for ecc were 300 and one of the um one of the ethos of the event when i was talking to uh

jerome who organizes ecc is it it wants to be accessible and and you know viable for a broad community of people to attend it you know we we in ethereum like to lower barriers and but also in ethereum we understand that there are economic costs of things like the economic cost of etc was roughly 400 000 uh and so that got funded by you know 300 tickets or also sponsoring the events uh so that's kind of how they they made that and start contrast to like the 1000 or 2000 depending on when you bought your

bitcoin miami tickets it cost you minimum 1 000 and up to two thousand dollars if you bought them i think within a month of the event uh and so bitcoin uh 2021 was definitely like profit maximization and each cc is definitely like okay we paid the bills right like uh and so that that is a stark contrast as well um also with bitcoin 2021 there were i think like three basically main main stages that that people were talking on but with ecc there's one main stage but i think there's like eight or nine like peripheral rooms going on uh and so if

you you actually might have been caught in a rock and a hard place between going to two talks that were happening at the same time and if you wanted to attend both you had to pick one uh because there were so many things were happening in parallel uh and you know that was also true at bitcoin 2021 but there was again there's only three stages and three stages with like like thousands of chairs in each one whereas like each cc is like you know eight to nine smaller rooms some of them have like you know only 50 chairs to maybe a couple hundred shares and then the main event had maybe a thousand

shares um also there were only 500 tickets sold so you know uh you know covet had to bring down the total number of people at the event um wasn't too crowded also bitcoin 2021 definitely over subscribed way too many people were going there uh and it was also in miami which was you know they in miami never people never put masks on in the first place and france and europe you know much more like conscious about covert and careful about cover than i would say um you know i would say about miami and bitcoiners at large uh and so you know masks on inside of the buildings no

matter what and uh even some of the workers there would like have to say like hey like can you put your mask back on please um and so that's that was a little bit of of the vibe there um a bit more price talk i assume and way more price talk at bitcoin yeah at bitcoin yeah uh-huh even though even at bitcoin 2021 like the prices had definitely started to dip by then um and more panels at bitcoin 2021 as well and overall like bitcoin 2021 not a builder's conference because what are you building on bitcoin right like

people are talking about research and development with like core fundamental like functioning of the ethereum blockchain right whereas bitcoin 2021 like i like i say bitcoin is not a place for builders therefore the builders have migrated into the social layer so bitcoin is building on the social layer and that's why that's where you saw like toxic mask maximalism as a conference topic for bitcoin 2021. uh you did not as you could guess you did not see that it's like celebrities right like floyd

mayweather right right seeping bitcoin into the the wider mainstream culture or the big news coming out of that was el salvador adoption right so it's like not actually building it's like we already have this thing called bitcoin it's kind of finished yeah we're doing lightning a few other things but now it's about seeping this into mainstream acceptance and adoption it's got to have a completely different vibe than uh ethereum and its life cycle totally the biggest celebrity there at ecc was vitalik right yeah he he's the only one

that had a little bit of a little bit of a posse uh every and then and then you kind of had the others you know just have a posse uh well there was also we'll get to this topic but there was also a documentary being filmed at ecc and so there were there was some people with you know decent production uh cameras like following vitalik around kind of getting some b-roll of him just you know chit-chatting with with the you know conference goers and so like there was a little bit of like you know posse there um and then the other celebrity aspect was just the other builders like everyone knows

mariano conte he's like he pretty tall so he stands out and he he's also public and you know he he writes really good smart contracts and writes them for a lot of different communities and so everyone knows and loves mariano and so you know having him around like everyone giving him high fives and then you know he had you had kane and stani and and so those were our celebrities they were like the d5 builders uh and and so like i know did anyone know david hoffman and venkless the shirt really helped you know that shirt helped me stand out uh but no everyone it was hard to like walk more

than just like a couple hundred feet without someone saying like hey man i love bankless i love what you guys do and i'm decently like introverted uh actually why podcast actually works well i find that hard to believe i know we've never met in person david hoffman but like i find it hard to believe that you're introvert but i know you've told me that you claim that right yeah so like coming to a an event where people already kind of like know me because i'm a youtuber like people know my face it actually is really helpful it's like i don't actually have to like explain go introduce yourself i don't have to wear

the nape hello my name is david namesack yeah i mean i still introduce myself because i don't want to like assume and be like overly cocky but like yeah it's really helpful just like oh yeah like you've listened to bankless like you know we i don't have to talk too much about that well it's funny because i'm sure if they've listened to bank list they probably listened you and i ramble for like hours right so right they feel like they kind of already know david hoffman right so that's an advantage when you're attending a conference i suppose well tell me more about this uh this documentary so is this the documentary

that was recently funded on the mere protocol made like two million dollars in funding community funding and it's going to be an ethereum specific documentary what's the scoop here yeah so the title is ethereum the infinite garden which is a fantastic name uh and then really the word infinite talks about iterative games uh and versus uh and this is a game theory uh reference where you have um one-off games where you just play one match or you have games that are recursive and you have they're iterative

you play match after match after match and in one-off games you are in competition with your opponent but with iterative games you need to work with your opponent to come together so you guys can survive in the long term that's like the that's the and so that's the reference of the infinite garden uh a garden of growth uh new things being born out of this iteration cooperation garden of cooperation that's great that's great yeah it's a great great uh reference so i love the title uh and so um i i met with the the producers there and

and so they actually filmed me interviewing uh some of the some of the key defy members right and vitalik included right and so i had my like dinky little like macbook laptop like recording like kind of hacky like recording on zoom and so i was just the only person in my one zoom room and the the zoom was recording me talking to vitalik with my microphone and then we had like this big big camera like walking around us while they were well they were recording us and so if you guys are listening on the podcast you can go to the youtube video and check

that out um and so they recorded me talking to vitalik they also recorded me talking to jerome the the coordinator of of ecc and then also aya mayaguchi of the of the ef uh and so there are some bankless content being recorded being recorded by the the uh the actual documentary and ryan uh when i when i met the director she said like oh yeah uh you we want to talk to you and ryan and so i haven't had that conversation yet but uh apparently they they wanna and they wanna talk to us with like

cameras and stuff i would assume i could only i guess it's a documentary yeah that's crazy man so if they do want to film us ryan here's what i think we should do i think they should film a meeting in person for the first time the first meeting in person just for the documentary wow just for the documentary you know what that would actually uh make it pretty epic and definitely a good story we should we should do that if they want to documentary people are listening when does this documentary come out i mean

they're still filming it right so i don't know much of the agenda or itinerary i would imagine just like ethereum it would change as needed yeah so they're kind of just they're trying to fill they're just making content right now filming content and then they'll actually like edit it and turn it into something but i would expect not definitely not this year uh maybe if we're lucky in 2022 i think um but i don't know what it's like to produce a movie i only produce youtube videos that's right on zoom you know simple recording equipment uh that goes

behind the scenes i guess they'll get a taste if they if they watch the youtube or if they watch the documentary as to behind the scenes of of how a bankless interview works um david what else do you want to tell us about each cc is there anything else yeah so uh today like i said is day two of three days of each cc i'm here until sunday this is actually my first time in europe kind of a europe noob um but tonight is french absolutely terrible so i i know a half decent amount of spanish enough to get by and so when i came to

france in france i i came to france i was like okay i can't speak english they don't speak english here what other languages do i know i'll also start speaking spanish like no no no that also doesn't work no there's there's a decent amount of english speakers here where i've been able to get by i actually haven't been able to do too many france things um just because i've been all ethereum focused but after tomorrow i think i might just like straight up turn off like crypto mode and go straight into like french you totally should don't check any prices don't worry about i got everything covered on the bankless stuff just go enjoy paris my friend

but the event that everyone is talking about is tonight which is rave uh and i talked to stan it's tonya about this yeah so ave is throwing a rave and they're calling it robin wow yeah and so uh i talked to sonia about that because i also talked to stani about um ave pro which has now been rebranded to ave arc to something something different fun fact uh and so this is their institutional ave exactly edition right something that compound did recently mm-hmm but but it's cool that ave is also throwing a rave or rob a uh but

they're also throwing or generating like an institutional level uh defy app and so obvi obvious got ave the app for the retails you know the apes like you and me and then it's also got ave arc for institutions and now it's got rave the rave for the party scene right and i would imagine that like this is not going to be the last time that ave throws a a dope party uh and so they're doing it all man and so that i asked johnny that question is like avi's just growing tentacles into like all different spheres of ethereum and and

stanis right on board with us man about like yo this isn't just like financial applications this is like community and culture uh and and one of the the big takeaways i had from my conversation from stanis he talked about how with there's so much new surface area in ethereum lately and there's so many new tracks to talk about at ecc we are no longer talking about like just coding or now just finance but also nfts and culture and more broader applications and so he's calling like all the attendees of ecc a society not just like a society a

society that's fascinating or maybe a nation is in a nation for this what's so interesting about this david is do you remember there was a time where we could like count the number of defy applications projects on our hand right we knew all the founders we knew everyone every time every year that goes by it feels like we have less and less there's just too so much more to keep track of and now it's like it's even it's impossible to keep track of everything in d5 plus nfts you know plus like layer two plus all of these other areas that like identity ethereum

is investing at the same time it's almost like the internet right like the very early days of the internet there were just like a few websites you kind of knew the main ones now go try to keep track of everything that's happening on the internet in parallel that's what is happening with ethereum it is becoming a digital society of of crypto natives super cool to see that man absolutely i don't have anything else to add ryan i think we should just go right into the interviews that's great let's do it guys we are going to cut right into these exciting interviews i can't

wait to hear them myself but before we do we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible living a bankless life requires taking control of your own private keys not your keys not your crypto that's why so many in the bankless nation already have their ledger hardware wallets which makes proper private key management a breeze but the ledger ecosystem is more than just a secure hardware wallet ledger is the combination of the ledger hardware wallet and the ledger live app and if you're used to seeing all of your crypto services and favorite d apps all in one place ledger is where you want to be not

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interacting with arbitrary you can get the performance of a centralized exchange while tapping into ethereum's level of security and decentralization this is why people are calling this ethereum's broadband moment where we get to add performance onto decentralization and security if you're a developer and you want to save on gas costs and make an overall better experience for your users go to developer.offchainlabs.com to get started building on arbitrom if you're a user keep an eye out for your favorite defy apps building on arbitrage arbitrary has been working with over 300

teams including ethereum's top infrastructure projects and will be opening up to all users shortly there are so many apps coming online to arbitrome so you may want to pack your bags in preparation for the great migration to the arbitrary layer 2. to keep up to speed with arbitrary follow them on twitter at arbitrarum and join their discord all right everyone i'm here with none other than vitalik buterin on the second day of eath cc the first major ethereum event after kovid vitalik what's it like to be at east cc it's

it's good to see people again i mean well i saw some people for the last one and a half years but definitely far fewer than i'm normally used to so yeah and so it's just good to see the lovely and friendly ethereum community in person and what about the east cc number four are you particularly excited about and also how have you seen this particular ethereum event be different than the other ones that you've been to in the past hmm i mean i guess i feel it feels like the

ecosystem is just like slowly and steadily maturing like i i don't think there's necessarily like one a sort of zero to one sea change happening but i think that's a good thing right like i think the ecosystem has already for quite a while now just been on this sort of very good forward course and uh the projects keep getting better the kind of bar of uh stuff that people uh actually talk about at the at their presentations just keeps getting higher and things that keep getting more interesting so i think you know things in the ecosystem just

keep improving and it's as obvious here as i as i was hoping there's a bunch of different tracks for ecc a bunch of different like lines of topics uh what's what's new that you are interested in and are there any talks out there that you're particularly excited to listen into or any talks that you enjoyed yesterday hmm let's see they're they were just like a scattering of a lot of different uh and interesting things right like there was there's at the there was the presentation on proof