Ethereum at the Crossroads: Why Layer 1 is Back in Focus

welcome to Banklist today on the podcast I have Zerox Bred and John Charbano bred and John are both informal researchers educators in crypto and both have been active commentators on the evolution of the Ethereum road map and the position that Ethereum finds itself downstream of the design choices that it's made the recent episode that I did with Onscar and Dank has changed the conversation around Ethereum as people are now imagining a different future for what Ethereum could be one where the Ethereum layer 1 has a renewed focus and attention from Ethereum leadership still a rollup ccentric roadmap but all around

a strong layer 1 since Brett and John have been so active in this conversation over the years I decided to get them on to have a discussion about their thoughts and what they think will happen next in Ethereum before we get into the episode a message from our friends and sponsors over at Wallet Connect while Connect has been used by over 255 million connections from 40 different million unique users all around the world all who are simply connecting their wallet to the applications that they want to use in order to decentralize and protocolize Wallet Connect Wallet Connect is entering its final form they recently introduced the

last capstone building block of their ecosystem the Wallet Connect token with the launch of this Wallet Connect is getting closer to a fully decentralized permissionless and communityowned future for itself if you're familiar with the story of how Visa or Swift messaging networks came to be I think you'll find a similar story for what Wallet Connect aspires to be if this piques you go ahead and follow Wallet Connect on Twitter and visit banklist.cc/walletconnect to stay ahead of what's next in addition to talking to Brett and John about the Ethereum road map and his future we also just opened

up the conversation and talked about Bitcoin's rollup ccentric roadmap yes Bitcoin has one of those as well as the story of Ether the asset and what it should be in 2025 we also talk politics in crypto too because we're really just here to have a conversation about the topics that we are interested in and we're going to do this next week too i had fun with Brad and John and they said they had fun too so we're just going to run it back a week from now with one more guest who couldn't make it today and we're just going to chat about the weekly meta whatever is in the meta maybe it's content coins maybe we've moved on to something new by then

whatever floats our boat you'll just have to wait and see so if Bankless Nation you liked this episode do tell if you're a bankless citizen and you're in the Banklist Discord at me and tell me if you liked it or if you didn't or if you're on Twitter you can do the same you can add me there too i want to hear what you think and with all of that out of the way let's go ahead and get right into the episode with John and Bread but first a message from some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible imagine verifying yourself without handing over personal data no hacked databases no unnecessary personal exposure for airdrops and no AI bots

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onchain revolution today banklist Nation I'm here with John Charbano and 0x bread guy uh Brad we just had you on the weekly rollup coming back on for round two just a few days later good to have you back yeah you couldn't quit me so here I am yeah John also it has been a while it's good to see you back on the podcast my man how's it go good to be back on yeah okay um so we just put out this episode uh that we titled Ethereum's strategic pivot i think it's going around the Ethereum community kind of making waves in the Ethereum community haven't really seen it go outwards too far beyond that i think the Ethereum community is still kind of

digesting and processing it but it seems to have struck a pretty meaningful tone um people are taking this episode pretty seriously this conversation very seriously and I want to just start by getting your guys's reactions and reflections on uh the episode john you've been a commentator of Ethereum's malas and what Ethereum needs to do uh and so I think you know this is you know directly in that same arc of content that I think you helped inspire in the first place um so maybe I'll start with you just what were your first thoughts

and takeaways coming out of that episode yeah uh I'm I mean my very tlddr is I thought it was great um uh I I'd sh I share like a mix of kind of the same sentiments that Ansgar and Dunkar kind of had at the end of it um which was particularly don was going out of like uh you know I mean the big next step from here is you know obviously a lot of this is like it's a lot of talk it's a lot of vibe change it's a lot of stuff like that like we need to ship actual things um and so that is obviously the big concrete open question is you know what is this going to lead to very concretely over the next you know 6 12

18 24 months what is actually going to get shipped in reflection of this um but for what you can ask for now is you know what what has changed in the last you know 3 6 months um and I think the vibe shipped have gen genuinely been great over that kind of period period of time um there has been a just very very big shift of you know there is a full just acceptance of all right like we have some problems here we need to fix these problems you know what have we done wrong in the past what can we do better in the future you know it's all those things you know having more product first mindset you know what are the areas very literally that we can improve technically in reflection of that stuff like that um and then also kind of on

the people side like I I I do think the the kind of leadership shakeup I mean that that's always a good way to restart things um and I from talking to people who are involved there and just from you know just having background context of like you know just knowing Damossh previously I mean like I I was super excited about those changes um and when you talk to the people in the f you know people like Donrad like you can you can definitely feel that it is it is different now um how things are working now versus you know a few months ago before he showed up um so everything is like definitely trending in the right direction is is my honest feedback at this point which is great to see would

you say you share the same uh rose and thorn that uh uh was pointed out at the end there by Donrod like the rose was like feels great like acknowledgement of the problem stepping forward but still like yeah well you haven't done anything right still got to deliver would you say you're in that same same camp yeah ve very much the same thing um which is you know I I mean in a in an absolute sense I like that is obviously the more important thing is that nothing concretely has like actually like really changed or shipped or whatever in

reflection of this um but with an understanding of you know I mean like the stuff I was talking about was maybe five six months ago something like that at this point there's only so much you could change in Ethereum like in that period of time I think the best that you could ask for over the course of you know a few months is something like this of like there there is a meaningful vibe change across you know all like people all across the Ethereum community um and particularly at the top and I mean very literally leadership organizational changes at the EF you know what are people prioritizing it's prioritizing you know thinking about these are things we can do on L1 scaling in the next 6 12 months stuff like that um which is so

there is a lot to do I mean this is a small percent a very very very small like singledigit percent of the things that actually need to change in the long term um but realizing that I mean that's that's the best you can hope for in this like pretty short period of time Brad what was your takeaway uh honestly the same except so my My general view I've been calling for a skill of L1 for a long time about as long as John but somehow I've been able to straddle this line of not being uh pointed and laughed at by the uh Ethereum inner circle I guess is probably the best way to say it where it's like Don at the end of that

was very uh very pointed and like you know he's he's always had the position of scale the L1 uh Blogspace is not funible state is valuable all this stuff i share that same opinion uh I I genuinely think that like people have overindexed on just how abstracted a lot of this stuff can actually be and like to actually drive value back to your asset which is like what everyone wants out of this stuff right we're talking about like technological uh handling of a lot of this load and latent demand and global blockspace you know appetite but like in the end people will say like you want to have the the demand pickup but

also the correlation of token price needs to come with it or else no one's going to be happy right so it's uh I I think prioritizing that stuff and driving value back to Ethereum has has is going to come from prioritizing its own block space prioritizing its own state and uh yeah Don Donrod had alluded to that but then said like he opened up the window of saying hey uh I don't know what can happen maybe like the role of ccentric road map is appropriate it's it's uh it can work out but it's because he doesn't understand like what the potential outcome of that abstraction

can be and maybe it can actually get to a point where you know this stuff is semifable like it is interoperable you're interacting with multiple chains but it feels one like maybe that is a future state i'm more skeptical of that but uh yeah I've been able to do it without being uh hit with the Scarlet Letter yeah I I do agree that the general summary of the episode and the Ethereum community's um comprehension of the issue over the last six to nine months has uh focused on this idea that

prioritizing the layer one is the missing piece that has been missing for a while and and also that like the Ethereum culture is uh like concerned with a sphere has a too large of a sphere of concern as in like the sphere of concern for Ethereum is you know rollups layer 2s anything that touches Ethereum is Ethereum uh and that has come at the cost of attention and focus and prioritization of the layer 1 uh and so like you know this this has some

level of like bitcoiner mindset about it where you know you preserve the value of BTC at all costs you preserve you you have your first uh Loki of concern at the innermost core of the system and as things get further away from the core of the system you have a smaller amount of concern for that and Ethereum maybe the malas of Ethereum is that it's loy of concern was so large any layer 2 that settles to Ethereum is Ethereum uh and that's come at the cost of the layer 1 think slowly people are repositioning themselves to think like okay the the

layer 1 actually might be the might ought to be the epicenter of the Loki of concern for the Ethereum community and Ethereum culture and that might be the logical place to focus our energies in order to have a sustainable ecosystem uh brother reflect on that for me do you do you think um BTC's concern is actually the price or is it the values of like you know having a cap money supply defending against like I think you know asset appreciation is a byproduct of that but do you think that is the the number one thing that they are uh optimizing for whenever they say like uh

you know don't change the code don't don't push to L2s don't whatever I think Bitcoin is optimizing for the 21 million hard cap and what I mean what I mean by that by comparison Bitcoin to Ethereum is like Bitcoiners and Bitcoin is concerned with Bitcoin primarily uh and that has not that's not equally true with the Ethereum community the Ethereum community is like concerned about like this large like nebulous cloud of second layers that you know settle to Ethereum which can be some combination of aligned and misaligned with the interests of of

the layer 1 yeah and you're starting to draw lines around that right like you're you put out that image that has the the concentric circles of like how Ethereum quote unquote you actually are within the ecosystem i don't know if you got any like specific feedback from that just like putting it out in the world and hearing people talk what was the what was the vibes you you got back from the world it was mixed yeah so I I've put out a couple images that are going into this article that I'm working on uh and like you know when you put out uh I'm I'm putting out feelers on Twitter right like how does the how does people respond to this and the first image I put out everyone responded to very very

well and that first image was just like a circle of layer 2's optimism world coin uh abstract a circle of layer twos around the layer one around the Ethereum circle and in the first panel in the first image the Ethereum circle was very small and then uh then there was an arrow to the same exact image you know same layer 2s around the Ethereum center but in the second image the Ethereum center was very large the Ethereum circle is very large uh and I said like this is what the Ethereum community wants and I think everyone responded extremely positively to that image the implic application of we just the

Ethereum holders ETH holders just want a larger more powerful layer 1 that's what that's what ETH holders want uh and so like universal acceptance of that even especially from layer 2's uh layer 2's commented on saying like yeah I want we want this like Alice Glowski uh said that the second image the image that you're referring to uh bread where I had like this first circle which was Ether and Ethereum the Ethereum layer 1 the next circle out was based and native rollups uh and then the next circle out from that was based or native roll-ups

and then the next circle out was just roll-ups and then the next circle out from that was layer twos And I put out this um image that I put out this spectrum is like well if you are the Ethereum layer 1 you are Ethereum and as you get away from this concentric circles you are becoming less Ethereum you are you are imbuing less properties of Ethereum into your rollup uh and that was that was very mixed the reaction to that was very mixed uh I think you responded positively to it but uh other leaders of other layer 2s came into my DMs and I said and told me that they felt hurt by this because they they and

it was a little bit of a misalignment of what I was trying to say but people are thinking like okay Ethereum is like the United States of Ethereum and saying that layer 2s are not Ethereum is saying like California is not the United States and they're you it's this like very squishy semantic political um idea of what it means to say layer 2s are Ethereum uh because people want this thing this idea of Ethereum to be Ethereum where other people are interpreting it i think people with something like John's disposition are

saying like no the Ethereum layer 1 is Ethereum and other layer twos are different chains that settle to Ethereum but people like John and I think people like you Brad have this preference for technical objectivity and other people in Ethereum have this preference for this big grand Ethereum vision this idea of like the Ethereum ecosystem the Ethereum network state the Ethereum system and there and there's a these clash these clash and hard to uh they're hard to contend with i'll pause there

i'm not I'm not surprised but I do find it funny how people are more universally positive on that first tweet and then more people have second on more people have problems on the second tweet when necessarily you shouldn't be able to be positive on the first one and then have a problem with the second one because if all of these are Ethereum then it shouldn't matter which circle is bigger or smaller like oh these are the same thing like this is one circle like what like why do you care it doesn't make a difference um but it it's a different like no one's going to say "Oh yeah no no like we we we want the Ethereum layer 1 to like be really small and like go

away." Or at least less people say that because it's seen as like more openly I think confrontational and competitive um to the layer one and like that's where you get like a dicey line as a layer two of being like go away no we want all the users you don't want to say that quite explicitly um versus the I think the other part I'm not surprised that a number of two founders didn't like the uh getting rid of the bases Ethereum arbitrum as Ethereum optin Ethereum because I I think very obviously that has been to the benefit of all of these layer twos over the past couple of years um they get to kind of piggy back off of a lot of that branding and alignment and

association and just like being put in front and center as this like credible uh great thing like we like we are Ethereum i like that has obviously been very beneficial to them um and so I like I I am not surprised that a number of L2s would not love that uh dep prioritization of that but I mean this gets to you know like what what are you just trying to solve for um and I think that a lot of people what people are trying to solve more and understanding their problems now is like very literally I mean like a lot of it's centered around like what what is ETH price doing um and if you do care about ETH doing well and the layer then you probably need to care about the layer 1

doing well um because I I like no one can dispute over the past you know year or whatever that like Bass is doing great like they're not having any Bass has no problems right now there's no malaise in the bass community like yeah like they're having a great time with the rollup ccentric road map so far um I mean their problems will end up being like a technical like if they're bumping up against the the gas something like that they literally do need more of um but like there's no concern about value capture or anything like that from the Coinbase side um th those value capac concerns are at Ethereum level and so like necessarily that means there's

going to be a little bit of you know a rearchitecting a shifting back of like okay what do we need to prioritize in reflection of if we want to move some of the value capture here you're going to care more about like all right we need to actually prioritize L1 scaling and all these things and not just kick all the users to the L2s like you guys figure out all the interop and like whatever um you need to just start providing more of those products yourself in house i think that's why that first image actually carried well because like if you you're right they're saying the same thing and you only see price in one of those two images right you don't see price in the in the alignment image right you just see that like oh I'm no longer I'm doing all this

good work or I thought was good work and like now I'm starting to realize like all this thing that I did that I thought was right is maybe not as right as I was intending and like there's a lot of frustration with that i totally get it like that's that is what it is but in the first one right like the technical property like that doesn't describe technical properties at all there's no differentiation between those two right ethereum is just as good at you know $1,200 as it is for $2,000 and like that's kind of the problem is that the price action hasn't really doesn't really dictate uh at least you know when we get extremes yeah sure just security

it like becomes an issue whatever but uh it it doesn't really change the properties it grants to these L2s purely based on price which is kind of the value proposition issue right is like uh Ethereum being much more expensive at $2,000 $3,000 $5,000 $10,000 is not necessarily a better settlement layer than when it is at $2,000 and yeah people just want the dollar to go up or the the price to go up they don't necessarily care that the technical properties are that much better or that I can actually use Ethereum they just make the asset go up

and the the interesting tweak that you could have made to that first picture too which would have gotten a different reaction and I think actually would have touched that like a different but important point too is if so the the image that you had was strictly positive sum none of the layer 2 shrunk in the second picture if you proportionally shank uh shrank the layer 2's in that second picture by the amount that ETH grew then what would the reaction have been like that that would be a good AB test um you know I say that because as I was making that picture I actually started making that second image actually by shrinking the layer twos and

I was like "Wait wait wait actually that might piss people off let me actually just increase the size of the layer one let me just just do that." And so it's is like all I'm doing is redrawing the size of circles but how you redraw them really really matters yeah and that that actually does kind of touch on the important point of you know whether you would like this or not is what do you think the outcome actually is by you know doing a lot of you know juicing up the L1 scaling do you view this as pretty positive sum to the L2s or are you as in a two L2 viewing this as like just strictly competitive you

know zero sum we have the users they're taking more of the users we have you know we're going to shrink um depending on how you view that outcome uh like playing out actually does end up different um because I think there's good arguments that it's positive sum that it's negative sum that it's zero sum that it's positive sum of you know hey if you know this sends ETH back to like 5k all the L2s are probably going to be doing real you know real well they're going to have more assets more users their tokens are probably going to go up Like I think that's a reasonable argument there is also a reasonable argument that ow the stuff is small right now this is pretty zero sum like they're just going to take the users

away and it might even be worse because now you're bringing them back to the worst UX area and they're really going to want to go somewhere else um so I no one honestly knows how exactly it will play out i think there are like different possible outcomes there um but that actually does kind of touch on like why people would be ignored or not which is interesting yeah and okay so I actually really like that uh line of reasoning i think if the Ethereum layer 1 does you know expand its capacity I don't think that that would be felt equally across all layer 2s um for example coining content on base I do not

think will change because the Ethereum layer 1 grows in capacity and I think like whatever ultimately comes out on Mega ETH for example a streaming blockchain whatever apps fit on a streaming blockchain is not going to be really impacted by the layer 1 going from 17 to 70 transactions per second but I think that there are going to be other layer 2s which do materially lose out because they haven't been able to differentiate themselves they're kind of a commodity maybe they didn't really have a mean a reason to exist in the

first place and I think some layer 2s that don't have strong like differentiation which is what Ongar was saying in the podcast um that uh you know it's kind of like the Fed raising interest rates when the Ethereum raises the capacity of the layer 1 the marginal L2 that we didn't really need doesn't can't really justify its existence anymore is a take yeah I mean not that they were needed anyways right we're seeing power law pretty heavily in the L2 world right like so like yeah 0.5% of transactions are existing on L2 but like if if the capacity of of Ethereum goes

up right it's not mutually exclusive that it does not benefit the the L2s right basis capacity goes up if blob blobs are are gone up the interoperative interop is improved because you know now arbitum and base can can settle faster because the finality is quicker on the L1 right so it's like they are materially improved if Ethereum improves right like Ethereum could be a better settlement layer and if then those those dominant chains that are already showing power law start to become even better as uh as dominant chains right like base has been at capacity and begging for uh

increase in blob space for the last you know what 6 monthsish right so it gets the space back it's been at capacity now that that capacity goes higher probably takes away from other L2s even more than it already has been I think that's just kind of like where we're seeing the market is is going yep yeah and I and I think it's honestly positive to just set the bar a little bit higher of you know what what is the minimum viable thing that you should be providing to just even be able to claim like hey here's a reason why I'm shipping an L2 i I don't think that it should be a reasonable uh like sufficient answer of oh I'm

shipping L2 because it's a little bit faster and a little bit cheaper than the layer 1 and we do the same thing like the layer one should probably just do that um you should just have like a reasonable bar and then there's a million things that I mean player 2 can do to like uniquely differentiate you know whether that's yeah just like ultra low latency for certain types of specific applications or more of this consumer oriented stuff that's just like a different level of throughput that like Ethereum is not getting to anytime soon um like like those kind of things where you can differentiate more like make sense um but yeah if like all you need is like a pretty vanilla you know decent EVM blockchain to just like do

some normal stuff like you should probably just have a layer one that can do that um so you don't have a million people trying to go launch that elsewhere do you think we'll have an uprising of of Ethereum cohort that is going to be like shun L2s as a category broadly like the return to greatness like hey like we don't agree i I've been I've been catching some on Twitter of just like you're a scam meg is a is a scam because like it's not a it's not Ethereum mainet right and I I'm wondering if Wow really yeah yeah ethereum deep culturalist like a layer

one maximalist yeah so I'm wondering if that cohort is going to grow after seeing the last few years that like you know what going down this path seeing how successful Salana has been price action wise adoption wise that like maybe this is the right path and like I still think they want to preserve their values i think that's always been the argument that you know for anyone who is calling for L1 scaling she's like yeah don't try to compete with Salana but push yourselves to the levels that preserve your your actual values right the decentralization everything that's useful um I'm wondering if those people are gonna like if that that cohort is

going to grow and the calls are going to get even louder and then like what happens in that future i don't think it interesting i don't think it will ever get that meaningful just kind of almost definitionally because if that that is I would classify as just basically the most kind of extreme L1 maxi view and I think if you hold that view you're you're just not an Ethereum person you're missing the point of Ethereum yeah yeah like you at at that point you are just like you are are a hardcore like entirely Salana or Suite or like whatever insert your other single chain kind of Bitcoin

I mean yeah possibly even that um but yeah if you are just like super all that we care about is the L1 and you see absolutely zero value in any of these other chains that are like have varying levels of relationship to it I think you're probably just like you're probably just not an Ethereum person like I like someone like me who I I think falls in that more middle category where you know have been very positive on Salana and Bitcoin and stuff like that over the past year critical of a lot of Ethereum stuff like I I very much fall in that middle camp of like this is a spectrum and there are degrees to which L2s are beneficial to the L1 there it's and like the value that they

provide is definitely not zero um it it is definitely not the same as equivalently scaling the L1 but it's definitely not zero um and just like you know understanding what to prioritize is a reflection of that I think that's where most people are now is kind of that middle view of you know these things are all helpful to varying degrees we just got to figure out you know where to put the meter But I do see your your point Bred uh I think culture and community that surrounds blockchains is always downstream of the technical properties that that blockchain has and when the technical properties of Ethereum is trying to reweight the importance

elevate the importance of the layer 1 I would expect it would follow that members a certain sliver a certain frag fragment of the Ethereum community would start to realign their messaging around like oh the layer 1 is the place to be and the the article that I'm writing isn't isn't trying to advocate for like layer 1 maximalism but it is trying to advocate that our messaging as the Ethereum community ought to reflect a higher rep prioritization of the importance of the layer 1 and applications on the layer 1 and so I think part and parcel with that will

come some flavor of like you know fringe Ethereum extreme extreme people that are always about like no Ethereum is a layer 1 is the only layer one uh maybe not reject layer twos but like only talk about the layer 1 like I could see that that whatever fringe that there is there growing in weight because that's what the technicals of Ethereum are pointing towards i think that they'll leave and go become economists at Hanza though i think that's more like I mean okay so what about this thought

experiment um uh one so creating trying to create this narrative and testing out how the Ethereum community is feeling about things i saw a Uni Chain tweet that tweeted out uh Uni Chain is for DeFi and I retweeted this tweet saying the Ethereum layer 1 is for DeFi part of that motivation was coming from the idea that if the Ethereum layer 1 is going to be for anything it's going to be for DeFi defi is the first and last thing that the Ethereum layer 1 will optim will be good for and we see Arbitum also

having this messaging arbitum is for DeFi uni Chain is for DeFi and I am concerned that this branding that some of these layer 2s have are coming at the cost of the layer 1 and we as a community are allowing these layer twos to you know take what I think is Ethereum's golden goose which is DeFi and so I'm trying to again like elevate the importance of Ethereum layer 1 DeFi as the main cohort of applications that really make the Ethereum layer 1 strong and I don't want like you know it's permissionless to add a layer 2 to

Ethereum and if it's permissionless to add a layer 2 to Ethereum and then also to brand yourself as the home of DeFi that is can be viewed as an attack on Ethereum uh or at least it's it's not optimal in terms of value creation for the Ethereum ecosystem uh is is my claim and so I've retweeted this tweet saying uh no not implying I'm saying no the Ethereum layer 1 is for DeFi and then of course I get into a fight with Hayden Adams who you know founder of uh unis swap unis uh unis swap labs also sponsor

of bank list thanks unis swap um but like okay so Hayden has done this fantastic job of building unis swaps v1 2 3 and 4 which are great applications and I'm incredibly grateful that he has built these applications and I would I would like to elevate this thought experiment of what if the ethereum layer 1 was so strong that unis swap didn't feel the need to make a whole entire chain but only and focused on the layer 1 application and the strength of that layer 1 application if the layer 1 is so

weak that it actually incentivizes our best application developers to become chain developers instead of app developers that I'm I'm worried that that comes at the cost of the value and sustainability of the layer 1 and so I would I would like to entertain the idea of this alternative universe where unis swap labs is solely focused on unis swap the layer 1 application in the same way that jupiter is focused on its dex product on salana and I think if I think it's worth considering a failure scenario where if all of our best app

developers the Ethereum layer 1 app develop developers all turn into chains chain infrastructure providers that might just hollow out the the layer 1 to a point where why would anyone care about the layer one in the first place brett what's your take not even that they go to be chains they go to be BD teams amongst all the chains to like look a 75 L2s right so like the manh hours it takes to go and do that is probably just as detrimental as going to do like a dedicated chain right uh now