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been the same since.

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Well, I don't know. There's him in it. Silk Road.

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I thought everything was there.

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There's everything on Silk Road. Yeah.

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No, that you use Silk Road.

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Sure. Yeah.

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Only for him.

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No, no.

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Drugs.

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Welcome to Game of Modes,

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a weekly podcast from independent

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Valorant teams.

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Welcome to Game of Modes,

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a weekly podcast from independent Valorant teams.

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Coming in every week, fighting the good fight,

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doing this podcast, despite illness.

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That's about it, really, actually, at the moment.

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Mainly, it's mainly illness.

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It's mainly a lot of illness,

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Northern Hemisphere, first world problems.

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And, you know, for our American listeners,

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it's the end of the world as we know it.

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And we feel OK.

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Lukewarm.

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Just Lukewarm. Yeah.

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I was about to say fire.

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That was like, I can't even bring myself

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to complete the REM joke because it's fine.

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Would be an overstatement, I think.

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We're feeling, we're feeling what we're feeling.

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I'm keeping an eye on the dolphins,

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see if they suddenly reduce their numbers.

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Yeah. So, yeah, well, I guess we've,

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yeah, a lot has happened, a lot hasn't happened.

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And as as observed already in the chat,

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12 minutes delay, no Nile, no guest.

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Might as well skip the show.

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You know, so, yeah, a few viewers will have worked out

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that for once we were actually all punchy.

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We were.

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We were.

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We were sitting over at the dolphins.

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We were really actually going,

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ah, who said the link?

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No, no, checking side.

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When can everybody remember, like, in 2022,

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were we any more organized?

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You know, when the green,

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when things were more green, were we more organized

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or have we always been this disorganized?

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I think we've always been this disorganized.

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I think we fast in the disorganization back then.

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We reveled in it.

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And now it feels kind of embarrassing.

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Yeah. Yeah, maybe that's it.

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Maybe you have to knuckle down

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and have things more ship shape, you know,

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in times of tough.

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Well, also when times are increasingly

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just becoming stable coins, right?

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Yeah, no shit, right?

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It's all just like,

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like I look into my future and I see,

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I see basically stable coins

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and what's that stupid ass

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Eigen layer stuff.

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More interconnected,

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interconnectivity of stable coins.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Like there's like a difference between IBC,

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which is like connecting things and just like,

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ah, no, homogenize everything into one big blob.

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That would be cool.

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Our moderator is here, our moderator,

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Rama who has a little little wrench icon.

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More green portfolio has never been more green.

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Not quite true, but it's more green than 2223.

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Mine too, actually.

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The things aren't bad, right?

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I mean, they're not.

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This is this is pretty steady state.

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Like this is pretty.

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Well, yeah, I guess the thing is like green green in the context of.

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So ironically, as an individual, right,

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I have like some long hold random crypto

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from very long time ago, atom, theory and blah, blah, blah,

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quite just knocking around.

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Not big numbers, but just a little bit.

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And that's that's quite green, actually.

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So fair point.

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It's just that as a company,

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everything that we were holding was all of the cosmos.

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That is not green.

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No, that was mostly not.

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So, you know, there's that.

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Anyway, we were going to talk to skip about the cosmos, but that's.

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Well, according to Rama, skip ditched us for being in an X space.

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I mean, there's there's really celebrities now, you know,

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we knew when they were small and like unknown and and, you know,

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kind of smelled funny and all that kind of stuff.

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And now they got lambos or driving around that.

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They got that I.C.F.

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money just fucking falling on the.

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It's not a good time for a bullshit.

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Going to wait in the lobby for the liver.

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Exactly. Exactly right.

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We go.

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Well, hey, look, you know,

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friend, friend of the show, artifacts as predicted.

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And it said, hold me to it that 2025 is going to be up only.

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Actually, I think it was Pocotu that said that, but, but many friends of the show

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who does this, this is not financial advice and doesn't mean anything,

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but said it's going to be a good year, which means that we are only ever

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one more role of the dice as validators from also waiting for the limbo.

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Limbo, Lambo, limbo.

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Limbo Lambo.

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Limbo says about right, though.

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What? For one role of the dice away from limbo boys.

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Herdatory.

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As well, it's 2022.

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And it's not but a fun experience.

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But I it's I'm not going to get the banner up, but it's we've we've obviously

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just filed tax returns and stuff, because then the tax year here is like around now.

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And when Juno went up to 50 cents, we might we sold some of our

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we sold some liquid Juno, we still had some stake in wars and stuff.

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Shout out to Bendy, actually, who's in the chat.

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It's like, like, have you seen what's going on?

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So, so good advice, very good advice.

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Yeah, it is.

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It was financial advice and it was good.

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But then like we had to have the conversation with the account that's being

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like, oh, by the way, just so you know, like when when next year's return,

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we actually did sell some of those never like we're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Wow, you've realized a massive loss.

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They just because they've got it on their thing, they just looked at it.

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They're like, oh, you did sell you the business did sell that's some that's a

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well, well, it's I mean, it's better to have that loss on the book.

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So I guess it's just like, yeah, we're legends smashed it lads.

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But yeah, speaking of the amorphous blob,

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or royalty has arrived as royalty arrived.

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Yes, let's make him wait in the lobby now.

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Yeah, or we can proceed directly to the the film.

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Also, I just want to say Rama's comment businesses bankrupt personally rich AF.

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That's almost a drill tweet.

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That's that's amazing.

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That's I mean, that's what you want to run though.

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Yeah, that's how you keep it.

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So you keep the taxes down, baby.

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This is is this is this is the energy of America right now.

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Businesses bankrupt personally rich as well.

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It's like a president.

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Kind of sounds like.

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Max gives up.

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Wow.

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In the private chat.

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All right.

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I'm letting them in.

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There he is.

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Look at are you to first now?

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What would you would you have to do?

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You had to do something?

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No, I was just goalposting Cosmos.

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You got to get me gets me distracted.

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My goodness.

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Look at you.

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How was things, man?

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It's good to see you.

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Things are good.

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Did you happen?

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Did you happen to like walk into a huge volcano at some point in late December,

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early January, like with this?

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Did you know what you're getting into?

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And is it more or less than you thought?

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But by getting into it with the acquisition.

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No, the web.

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Yeah, you're coming in.

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Yeah, the acquisition.

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Well, the weather is very cold right now.

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It is.

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Something not.

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So yeah, I think we had some idea.

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We knew that there was years of dysfunction that we had to fix and reverse trends.

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And we're doing that, but it's taking a lot of work.

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Huge amount of work.

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Yeah, I bet.

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Sorry for the tough question around the bad.

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I was just kind of not actually kind of kidding around, but.

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Oh, man, that's great.

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So yeah, so Magnus is here.

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So what's your role now?

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What's what's your official title at ICF?

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So technically, I'm not at the ICF, right?

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So so one of the ways that this went down was basically skip was acquired by the ICF.

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Okay.

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And what was formed out of that was the ICL, which is Interchain Labs,

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which is a U.S. based entity that basically hosts, it does everything.

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It does all of the cosmos development.

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It does hub stuff.

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It does all of Skip's previous products.

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It's this much larger company that is essentially tasked with growing cosmos at all cost.

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And the ICF no longer has any operational capacity.

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He used to try to do a couple of these things, but now it's all the people who basically did

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anything except serve as a board member have moved into the ICL with us.

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And the ICF is basically in charge primarily just funding the ICL.

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So how many how many people did you pick up then as a part of that?

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How far how big did the ICL grow from the skip days?

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So most of the people that did not move over and were let go.

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There wasn't much operations there basically, right?

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Is that what you're saying?

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Basically, there's I think about 20 people ish.

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Oh, and we took over about five or six.

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And yeah, mostly on the marketing side and the growth side.

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And also on the IVC engineering side.

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So like Yermann, Susanna, Aditya, Serdar, those are all folks that we really liked.

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And we think are excellent and continuing on IVC engineering.

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Yeah.

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And people that remain at the ICF are primarily in charge of regulatory compliance and being on the

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ICF board, which includes like funding is funding and all that stuff on that.

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That's still there funding the ICL.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Exactly.

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It still is the excuse me that the pool of funds, right?

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Sure.

225
00:10:03,680 --> 00:10:04,320
Yeah.

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00:10:04,320 --> 00:10:04,560
Yeah.

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00:10:04,560 --> 00:10:06,560
So is the ICL generate revenue?

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I guess because skip did.

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00:10:07,680 --> 00:10:09,200
So does the ICL generate revenue?

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I guess it does.

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It can if we wanted to.

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00:10:13,280 --> 00:10:13,600
Yeah.

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00:10:13,600 --> 00:10:16,640
That's not really the goal, I would say is to generate revenue.

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The goal is to grow the ecosystem, which solves all those questions anyway for us.

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00:10:24,160 --> 00:10:27,120
I mean, we're huge holders of Adam, right?

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00:10:27,120 --> 00:10:29,760
And we're huge holders of other ecosystem tokens.

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And so generally our strategy is like juice the cosmos ecosystem as much as fucking possible

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over the course of four years.

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Pump the bags.

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Basically.

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00:10:43,440 --> 00:10:44,080
Not necessarily.

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00:10:45,280 --> 00:10:46,640
I don't know what bags you hold.

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00:10:48,320 --> 00:10:49,600
We're deep in cosmos, baby.

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I don't know Adam though.

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00:10:52,560 --> 00:10:53,120
Well, yeah.

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00:10:53,120 --> 00:10:54,800
I mean, that's one goal.

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That's the finance.

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00:10:55,440 --> 00:10:56,560
You do have any asset?

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00:10:56,560 --> 00:10:57,520
Mm-mm.

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00:10:57,520 --> 00:10:59,120
But that's too late.

251
00:10:59,120 --> 00:10:59,760
That's right where you're going.

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00:10:59,760 --> 00:11:00,960
Yeah, that's too late.

253
00:11:00,960 --> 00:11:01,600
Maybe now.

254
00:11:01,600 --> 00:11:02,080
Now that.

255
00:11:02,080 --> 00:11:02,560
What do you mean?

256
00:11:02,560 --> 00:11:02,720
Yeah.

257
00:11:02,720 --> 00:11:03,680
So what do you mean you're too late?

258
00:11:03,680 --> 00:11:05,440
It's like all time lows-ish right now.

259
00:11:05,440 --> 00:11:06,080
Yeah.

260
00:11:06,080 --> 00:11:07,440
Now it's a perfect time to buy in.

261
00:11:07,440 --> 00:11:10,480
No, I met one when I first got involved in Cosmos.

262
00:11:10,480 --> 00:11:12,880
Adam has already, Cosmos was already, you know,

263
00:11:12,880 --> 00:11:14,240
it was already in the 30s and 40s.

264
00:11:14,240 --> 00:11:15,680
So I never really got into it.

265
00:11:15,680 --> 00:11:19,360
And then frankly, frankly, I didn't think it was a token worth buying

266
00:11:20,880 --> 00:11:26,320
at 10 or at five or at six, because I didn't believe the leadership had any

267
00:11:26,320 --> 00:11:27,600
clue what the fuck they were doing.

268
00:11:27,600 --> 00:11:28,320
And I buy teams.

269
00:11:28,320 --> 00:11:29,280
I don't buy tokens, man.

270
00:11:29,920 --> 00:11:30,480
So now.

271
00:11:30,480 --> 00:11:31,120
That's what's basically.

272
00:11:31,120 --> 00:11:31,840
Now you're all in.

273
00:11:31,840 --> 00:11:32,480
No.

274
00:11:32,480 --> 00:11:33,200
All in.

275
00:11:33,200 --> 00:11:34,640
Well, it depends on how this podcast goes.

276
00:11:34,640 --> 00:11:35,680
Remortage the house.

277
00:11:35,680 --> 00:11:36,000
Really.

278
00:11:36,720 --> 00:11:37,920
Depends on how you shop on time.

279
00:11:37,920 --> 00:11:39,520
But you should have done that.

280
00:11:39,520 --> 00:11:40,240
Screw the business.

281
00:11:40,240 --> 00:11:43,040
Screw the business personally.

282
00:11:43,040 --> 00:11:45,520
Business bankrupt, personally rich.

283
00:11:45,520 --> 00:11:47,440
That's the t-shirt, by the way.

284
00:11:48,000 --> 00:11:51,760
I mean, I mean, I do, I do need it to clarify one thing,

285
00:11:51,760 --> 00:11:55,840
which is our purpose is not token go up like only right.

286
00:11:55,840 --> 00:11:56,640
Our purpose is.

287
00:11:57,440 --> 00:11:58,320
It shouldn't be.

288
00:11:58,320 --> 00:11:58,640
It shouldn't be.

289
00:11:58,640 --> 00:11:59,360
Yeah.

290
00:11:59,360 --> 00:12:03,520
Our purpose is to, is to basically make this vision of Cosmos a reality.

291
00:12:04,720 --> 00:12:05,840
And it was a vision.

292
00:12:05,840 --> 00:12:06,880
It is a vision, right?

293
00:12:06,880 --> 00:12:08,880
It's a vision of an Internet of Blockchains,

294
00:12:08,880 --> 00:12:13,760
a decentralized Internet standard, a TCE, a decentralized version of TCP IP,

295
00:12:13,760 --> 00:12:15,200
which we call IBC.

296
00:12:15,200 --> 00:12:18,960
And to make that a viable option in the world and for history.

297
00:12:20,080 --> 00:12:21,280
And we want to do that.

298
00:12:21,280 --> 00:12:23,040
You've always wanted to do that.

299
00:12:23,040 --> 00:12:25,360
We've tried to do that for years.

300
00:12:25,360 --> 00:12:27,920
And this just gives us a much larger platform to do that.

301
00:12:29,200 --> 00:12:32,720
And, you know, around the time when we were considering this acquisition,

302
00:12:32,720 --> 00:12:37,120
we received multiple billion dollar plus term sheets to start our own ecosystem,

303
00:12:37,120 --> 00:12:39,600
because we viewed Cosmos as failing.

304
00:12:39,600 --> 00:12:45,840
And we turned those away and decided to do a much smaller thing for us personally,

305
00:12:45,840 --> 00:12:49,920
I guess, which is the acquisition, because I actually think this could be like the most

306
00:12:49,920 --> 00:12:52,720
amazing story, like comeback story in the history of crypto.

307
00:12:52,720 --> 00:12:53,920
Like I genuinely believe that.

308
00:12:54,800 --> 00:12:56,800
And we have like a lot going for us.

309
00:12:56,800 --> 00:12:59,520
And a lot of the fundamentals are already there for us.

310
00:12:59,520 --> 00:13:01,920
So I'm curious, following off on that,

311
00:13:01,920 --> 00:13:08,480
or is the plan to make Cosmos the hub again, like to have IBC go through the Cosmos at that point?

312
00:13:09,680 --> 00:13:11,040
Yeah, basically, yeah.

313
00:13:13,680 --> 00:13:20,880
Yeah, like the idea of the Cosmos hub originally, right, in the Cosmos White Paper

314
00:13:21,680 --> 00:13:30,240
was for it to be basically a service provider and a interconnectivity provider for all of

315
00:13:30,240 --> 00:13:32,720
the Internet of blockchains.

316
00:13:32,720 --> 00:13:34,240
It hasn't done anything.

317
00:13:34,240 --> 00:13:38,880
It hasn't moved at all since it was first created.

318
00:13:38,880 --> 00:13:42,160
And so, of course, it could never be anything, let alone that.

319
00:13:42,960 --> 00:13:49,120
It's just been a basic Cosmos SDK chain with a couple random things added on bells and whistles.

320
00:13:49,680 --> 00:13:54,080
And so, like the first thing is like giving it a real product roadmap to actually become what it

321
00:13:54,080 --> 00:14:00,880
was designed to be and also the realization that actually the hub can be an incredible service

322
00:14:00,880 --> 00:14:04,000
offering to change in the ecosystem.

323
00:14:04,000 --> 00:14:09,840
Like the thinking of, oh, the hub is going to take or control or things like that.

324
00:14:09,840 --> 00:14:11,120
That's not the right way of thinking.

325
00:14:11,120 --> 00:14:15,120
It's the hub can accelerate the Cosmos ecosystem because at the end of the day,

326
00:14:15,120 --> 00:14:20,080
like Cosmos lives and dies by what people perceive Adam to be, right?

327
00:14:20,080 --> 00:14:25,040
People come in, they think Adam is the center because of just years and years of brand association.

328
00:14:25,040 --> 00:14:26,960
And then they see like Adam is not used for anything.

329
00:14:26,960 --> 00:14:28,480
They immediately lose confidence and they leave.

330
00:14:29,600 --> 00:14:31,920
And so, I think that's important to reestablish.

331
00:14:32,560 --> 00:14:37,280
And then on the like routing perspective, turning Cosmos 7 to this router,

332
00:14:38,160 --> 00:14:40,960
we need to do that via like services versus enforcement.

333
00:14:41,520 --> 00:14:45,040
So, we can't change the IBC protocol to mandate this, right?

334
00:14:45,040 --> 00:14:46,000
We don't want to do that.

335
00:14:46,000 --> 00:14:46,880
It's ridiculous.

336
00:14:46,880 --> 00:14:47,520
It's open source.

337
00:14:47,520 --> 00:14:48,480
People just change it back.

338
00:14:48,480 --> 00:14:51,520
I think what we have to do is what we did with Skip Go, which is essentially build

339
00:14:52,080 --> 00:14:57,360
incredible suite of services that is like next level and next generation that change,

340
00:14:57,360 --> 00:15:04,160
like need absolutely wants 10X is their application performance in order to sort of route

341
00:15:04,160 --> 00:15:07,040
their flow through the hub.

342
00:15:07,040 --> 00:15:11,440
So, is that going to mean a lot of outreach to teams basically then?

343
00:15:11,440 --> 00:15:16,240
Because that's going to demand teams to ultimately, rather than on Genesis Day,

344
00:15:16,240 --> 00:15:21,440
hey, we're going to set up these channels to Osmosis and Axelar, you're going to be like,

345
00:15:21,440 --> 00:15:23,280
hey, I have a better idea.

346
00:15:23,280 --> 00:15:26,560
Set up to Cosmos and then wrap through there and then you have one manage.

347
00:15:26,560 --> 00:15:29,520
As a real heir, love the idea to manage less.

348
00:15:29,520 --> 00:15:30,240
Love it.

349
00:15:30,240 --> 00:15:33,280
But I'm curious what the current thought is there.

350
00:15:33,280 --> 00:15:34,800
Yeah, that's exactly right.

351
00:15:34,800 --> 00:15:41,280
The idea of the product is if you're a chain or you're a sovereign app chain or blockchain

352
00:15:41,280 --> 00:15:44,960
via one single IBC connection to the hub, you get everything.

353
00:15:44,960 --> 00:15:50,320
You get all external assets from every single ecosystem, anything you would ever want.

354
00:15:50,320 --> 00:15:54,640
You get distribution of your token and assets into every other ecosystem.

355
00:15:55,200 --> 00:15:57,600
And all of that happens within 30 seconds.

356
00:15:58,560 --> 00:16:04,320
So any token anywhere 30 seconds in or out and all you need is one IBC connection to the hub

357
00:16:04,320 --> 00:16:05,680
and it's completely free.

358
00:16:05,680 --> 00:16:07,520
Meaning everything is set up for you.

359
00:16:07,520 --> 00:16:11,040
All the relays, all the infrastructure, all the bridge relationships,

360
00:16:11,040 --> 00:16:14,160
all the different versions of ETH are combined into one version,

361
00:16:14,160 --> 00:16:15,520
all the different versions of soul.

362
00:16:15,520 --> 00:16:17,360
You just don't think about this stuff anymore.

363
00:16:19,120 --> 00:16:23,680
Honestly, I don't know if you described the Cosmos Hub or if you just described Skip Go

364
00:16:23,680 --> 00:16:28,320
that existed before you guys were acquired because that was a bit of the vision of what

365
00:16:28,320 --> 00:16:30,480
you guys were building and have built.

366
00:16:30,480 --> 00:16:30,720
Right?

367
00:16:30,720 --> 00:16:32,480
I just used it last night to move a bunch of shit.

368
00:16:33,040 --> 00:16:37,760
And like I don't, behind the scenes, I don't give a shit if it goes through the hub or not.

369
00:16:37,760 --> 00:16:38,080
Right?

370
00:16:38,080 --> 00:16:43,920
So I understand that the IBC web is annoying, but that's an operator issue.

371
00:16:43,920 --> 00:16:46,320
That's not necessarily a user issue at some point.

372
00:16:46,320 --> 00:16:47,520
If assuming it's working.

373
00:16:47,520 --> 00:16:50,160
Ooh, I would push back really far on that.

374
00:16:50,160 --> 00:16:53,840
We manage, I think over a thousand channels right now.

375
00:16:53,840 --> 00:16:54,480
You're an operator.

376
00:16:54,480 --> 00:16:56,080
And we, right.

377
00:16:56,080 --> 00:16:57,440
Well, let me extrapolate.

378
00:16:57,440 --> 00:17:01,280
When we have an issue, we hear like firestorms, right?

379
00:17:01,280 --> 00:17:04,640
And with a thousand channels, it becomes difficult to manage that.

380
00:17:04,640 --> 00:17:10,240
If I only had to manage all the Cosmos ones, which I think we're on like 35 channels in Cosmos,

381
00:17:10,800 --> 00:17:12,240
God, that'd be so nice.

382
00:17:12,240 --> 00:17:13,440
God, it'd be so nice.

383
00:17:13,440 --> 00:17:16,720
Yeah. I guess let's say 70 then because it'd be in Cosmos.

384
00:17:16,720 --> 00:17:17,360
Sure. Sure. Sure.

385
00:17:17,360 --> 00:17:20,960
But this is all about granted.

386
00:17:20,960 --> 00:17:21,920
We're early here.

387
00:17:21,920 --> 00:17:23,280
Need to grow the ecosystem.

388
00:17:23,280 --> 00:17:25,600
Need to incubate blah, blah, blah, blah, blah first, right?

389
00:17:25,600 --> 00:17:26,560
That's a given.

390
00:17:27,440 --> 00:17:33,120
But the whole premise, so, and right, I guess my, let me just say,

391
00:17:33,120 --> 00:17:36,400
take a step back and say, like, I guess my point I'm going to make is that

392
00:17:36,960 --> 00:17:39,280
isn't this all about a failure of economics, right?

393
00:17:39,280 --> 00:17:40,560
Or economic design.

394
00:17:40,560 --> 00:17:44,000
Because the problem you're describing, surely, is a problem.

395
00:17:44,000 --> 00:17:48,400
Like demonstrably is why we started running relays and we stepped back from it

396
00:17:48,400 --> 00:17:52,400
because we saw very, very quickly that our cost and complexity on relays was going to completely

397
00:17:53,200 --> 00:17:57,280
out, was going to dwarf the energy that we put into validation.

398
00:17:58,000 --> 00:18:04,160
And even validation is, you know, the moment not necessarily profitable in the Cosmos, right?

399
00:18:05,040 --> 00:18:07,200
But that's where we are, right?

400
00:18:07,200 --> 00:18:09,600
But that's not where we were designed to be.

401
00:18:09,600 --> 00:18:14,560
The hope was that this ecosystem, you know, not every change can succeed, right?

402
00:18:14,560 --> 00:18:16,000
Not every startup succeeds.

403
00:18:16,000 --> 00:18:20,480
But like whatever that percentage is, like 10% of chains or something,

404
00:18:20,480 --> 00:18:26,240
would form an ecosystem of projects with value that users want to interact with.

405
00:18:26,240 --> 00:18:29,760
And that those associations would pay for themselves, right?

406
00:18:30,720 --> 00:18:35,600
It's necessarily a market-based approach because that's the underpinning economically of most of

407
00:18:35,600 --> 00:18:39,920
the crypto economy that was designed into the Cosmos, right?

408
00:18:39,920 --> 00:18:47,760
So I suppose my question is, like, I can see why that argument makes a lot of sense from where we are now.

409
00:18:48,320 --> 00:18:55,200
But in a sense, isn't that abandoning, like, and again,

410
00:18:55,920 --> 00:19:00,720
surely, tell me that I'm an idiot and say, yes, it is what we're doing and that's fine, fuck off.

411
00:19:00,720 --> 00:19:07,120
But isn't it abandoning a little bit of, like, the design vision, which was this inter-association

412
00:19:07,680 --> 00:19:10,880
that would pay for itself in exchange for ease, right?

413
00:19:10,880 --> 00:19:12,800
It's kind of a...

414
00:19:14,800 --> 00:19:16,480
Well, I think it was originally designed...

415
00:19:16,480 --> 00:19:17,840
It's an important part of the vision, right?

416
00:19:17,840 --> 00:19:24,000
That there isn't a centrality nexus in the ecosystem that's designed in like that.

417
00:19:24,000 --> 00:19:27,440
And we've already seen centralizing efforts, like Osmosis, right?

418
00:19:27,440 --> 00:19:31,360
We've always known, as soon as Osmosis came along, it was a centralizing force, right?

419
00:19:32,480 --> 00:19:34,080
Some of this stuff is inevitable, I suppose.

420
00:19:35,680 --> 00:19:35,920
Yeah.

421
00:19:35,920 --> 00:19:37,760
Well, so sorry, go ahead, Meg.

422
00:19:37,760 --> 00:19:39,120
I'll let you answer.

423
00:19:39,120 --> 00:19:39,840
Oh, yeah.

424
00:19:39,840 --> 00:19:41,680
I think it's a really good question, right?

425
00:19:41,680 --> 00:19:45,360
And I think something that people have struggled with for a long time, right?

426
00:19:45,360 --> 00:19:47,040
Should we be this decentralized?

427
00:19:47,040 --> 00:19:48,800
Should we have no leadership?

428
00:19:48,800 --> 00:19:50,960
Should we have no central token?

429
00:19:51,520 --> 00:19:53,360
Should we have no central chain?

430
00:19:53,360 --> 00:19:55,040
Should it just be what it is, right?

431
00:19:55,040 --> 00:19:57,840
And expand naturally.

432
00:19:57,840 --> 00:20:01,200
I think the reality is you don't lose...

433
00:20:01,200 --> 00:20:05,600
Like, there are properties of the interchain that I think you want to keep.

434
00:20:05,600 --> 00:20:11,760
And some that I think the reason we were acquired is there's ones that we want to get rid of, right?

435
00:20:11,760 --> 00:20:17,040
We want to get rid of this feeling that there's nothing really driving it forward, right?

436
00:20:17,040 --> 00:20:18,320
Who's innovating?

437
00:20:18,320 --> 00:20:19,120
Who's building?

438
00:20:19,120 --> 00:20:20,240
Like, who's in control?

439
00:20:20,240 --> 00:20:23,440
Who's the one managing ecosystem-wide relationships?

440
00:20:23,440 --> 00:20:26,160
Who's the one advocating for the ecosystem as a whole?

441
00:20:26,800 --> 00:20:28,160
Like, people didn't...

442
00:20:28,160 --> 00:20:29,920
People, I think, didn't have that.

443
00:20:29,920 --> 00:20:32,560
And then they started to feel like, well, actually, we really did want that.

444
00:20:33,120 --> 00:20:37,680
And we wanted those things because, like, the results show for themselves.

445
00:20:37,680 --> 00:20:46,640
So I think the reality as well from how people see Cosmos is they need a home base.

446
00:20:46,640 --> 00:20:52,640
They need something that they can associate as the thing initially, especially if they're new.

447
00:20:52,640 --> 00:20:57,040
And for everyone that is Adam, like, very few people come in and are like,

448
00:20:57,040 --> 00:21:00,800
oh, the home base here is Juno or Osmosis.

449
00:21:00,800 --> 00:21:03,040
These are great things that people then go on to discover.

450
00:21:03,040 --> 00:21:09,040
Usually, they start with Adam because, you know, for better or for worse, it's distributed everywhere.

451
00:21:09,040 --> 00:21:11,200
It's on every centralized exchange.

452
00:21:11,200 --> 00:21:16,320
It's cross-listed as Cosmos, you know, and it's so central to the history.

453
00:21:16,320 --> 00:21:21,920
And so I think what we realized is, you know, the tech will always stay decentralized.

454
00:21:21,920 --> 00:21:25,200
And you can always create a direct IBC connection to anyone, right?

455
00:21:25,200 --> 00:21:27,360
And you can always do that, like, sure, do it.

456
00:21:28,080 --> 00:21:33,360
You can create often an island and not be IBC connected to anyone and call yourself whatever you want.

457
00:21:34,720 --> 00:21:39,920
But when it comes to building an ecosystem, right, like an ecosystem is a group of people

458
00:21:40,560 --> 00:21:47,120
that and products and builders that have a culture that believe in something that are pushing it forward,

459
00:21:47,120 --> 00:21:54,640
that needs a central point of funding, pushing, development, you know, effort.

460
00:21:54,640 --> 00:21:59,840
And in order to do that, you have to have a central point because there's nothing to rally around otherwise.

461
00:22:00,400 --> 00:22:07,120
Like, if I'm pushing, you know, Osmosis and you're pushing Juno and someone else is pushing Inisha,

462
00:22:07,120 --> 00:22:11,840
like, you're not really going to have a very value something and you're going to miss out on a lot of

463
00:22:11,840 --> 00:22:18,240
opportunities that are like ecosystem wide, right? And so I think, yeah, we chose Adam

464
00:22:19,120 --> 00:22:24,800
because it makes the most sense. It's not like I, you know, had some deep, strange, like, affection

465
00:22:24,800 --> 00:22:29,920
towards Adam in the beginning. It's the thing that makes sense. It is the thing that I'm talking about.

466
00:22:29,920 --> 00:22:36,080
And the thesis now for this version of the ICF is, well, if you run it in this way, right,

467
00:22:36,080 --> 00:22:42,160
if we make Adam extremely central and we make the Cosmos Hub very relevant and very powerful

468
00:22:42,160 --> 00:22:48,480
and very attractive, that that will actually grow Cosmos at a rate that is significantly faster than

469
00:22:48,480 --> 00:22:57,280
what we were trying before. So I dig the vision for sure. How does that relate to ICS? And what's

470
00:22:57,280 --> 00:23:04,560
sticking out in my mind is the neutron halt, which lasted like 28 hours. ICS right now is a risk factor.

471
00:23:04,560 --> 00:23:14,000
And if the Cosmos Hub becomes this central hub of glory, excuse my cynicism there.

472
00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:19,200
Glory hub. It's a glory hub. Glory hub. You know, I think I've seen that one.

473
00:23:24,160 --> 00:23:28,480
Then that risk factor isn't good. Like you won't reduce risk as much as possible.

474
00:23:29,840 --> 00:23:32,080
Yeah. How does it continue? Should it continue?

475
00:23:32,080 --> 00:23:39,120
No, it should be deleted off of the Cosmos Hub code base, I believe. So I mean, I have this take.

476
00:23:41,520 --> 00:23:48,000
The crowd goes wild. There's thousands of people cheering. You can hear them outside the window.

477
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:52,720
The people who have people are getting out of their cars. They're cheering. They're cheering.

478
00:23:52,720 --> 00:23:57,920
Max, Max, Max, Max. It's really going crazy. This is what I hear 24 seven even though it's

479
00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:05,920
making any noises. They're burning an effigy of ICS. It's just like a string of spaghetti

480
00:24:05,920 --> 00:24:10,800
bullshit. Like, oh, this is wonderful. Sorry. I might just nip out and go join them.

481
00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:17,680
Yeah. So I have this thesis or this take, I guess, which I think at this point has been pretty

482
00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:23,280
well validated and I feel quite confident in which is security as a product is a complete failure

483
00:24:23,280 --> 00:24:29,760
and a huge red herring or like a straw man, meaning if it's easy to go down, it's easy to

484
00:24:29,760 --> 00:24:35,520
rationalize, but it does not scale and it's proven to not scale. I view this as like the

485
00:24:35,520 --> 00:24:41,360
crux of what's destroying Ethereum and has made huge impact on negative impact on Ethereum.

486
00:24:41,360 --> 00:24:44,720
I view it as sort of what kept Polkadot in this like languishing

487
00:24:45,600 --> 00:24:50,160
mire despite having a very strong token and being founded by one of the co-founders of the ETH.

488
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:58,400
Security just doesn't work. I think ICS could have worked for maybe 20 chains tops, but

489
00:24:58,400 --> 00:25:04,080
everything about it didn't scale. The validator relationships did not scale. The economics

490
00:25:04,080 --> 00:25:11,680
did not scale. The amount of security that the hub had to offer did not scale. The security risks

491
00:25:11,680 --> 00:25:17,120
for validators did not scale. If you imagine running like a thousand ICS chains and some

492
00:25:17,120 --> 00:25:24,160
absolute chunk one does something slashable and you're slashed across everything, it's a ridiculous

493
00:25:24,160 --> 00:25:30,960
system. You're taking downside risk for no upside risk and the security and the network isn't even

494
00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:41,440
increasing because the math has been done on this. It's linear. You can't secure it anyway.

495
00:25:41,440 --> 00:25:47,680
You can't secure it with pure money anyway. You can only secure it with social consensus that's

496
00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:54,800
been demonstrated, I guess, economically. It's just not an exciting product. Security is not

497
00:25:54,800 --> 00:26:00,880
really something users care about that much, at least until they know that after their funds are

498
00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:09,200
safe. They don't care until they do care a lot. Of course. You can design systems that are safe.

499
00:26:09,200 --> 00:26:15,840
Look at Noble. What is the economic security of Noble? Zero, right? Is it safe?

500
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:26,880
That's a strong statement. The economic security of Noble is assumed to be very, very strong. Now,

501
00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:34,640
that is an assumption. You are right. The assumption behind Noble is that if there is any

502
00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:40,480
foul play, it can be reverted because it's essentially a closed walk garden. It's not

503
00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:49,600
decentralized in any meaningful form. What I meant to say is, I don't think Noble is insecure,

504
00:26:49,600 --> 00:26:56,960
but its economic security is zero from the point of tendermen, meaning there are no tokens. There's

505
00:26:56,960 --> 00:27:01,760
no economic security. It's not on PSS or ICS, although I know a lot of people...

506
00:27:01,760 --> 00:27:04,960
But that's because permission blockjaded.

507
00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:16,080
Well, yeah, but for example, let's say two-thirds of the validator set decided to go rogue. They could

508
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:22,480
fuck with the chain or do certain things. For example, they could send USDC to an address,

509
00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:26,960
which then immediately dumps it for cash somewhere else or USD. It's very hard to unwind

510
00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:34,080
to these things. Technically, Circle can step in and say, shut it all down. It's over. But in

511
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:40,320
practice, that's not really a security system. I think it's even the threat of that that secures

512
00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:46,960
the chain. Yeah, but I guess it all comes down to probability in the end. What is the probability

513
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:54,080
that the validators would be able to do that without... And get away with any sum of money

514
00:27:54,080 --> 00:28:00,320
that was meaningful enough to validate the desire to do it, to not collapse Noble, to not collapse

515
00:28:00,320 --> 00:28:06,480
their business, and actually make out from a centralized exchange. The probability is zero,

516
00:28:06,480 --> 00:28:10,960
therefore, they're not going to do it. It all comes down to incentives. And actually, again,

517
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:16,000
the incentives as a part of the security mechanism is very, very strong in the case of Noble as a

518
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:23,280
result. But that is tied to the fact that it comes down to being a pseudo-regulated asset. So it has

519
00:28:23,280 --> 00:28:30,000
this... There's the endogenous network, and then there's this exogenous security that's, in this

520
00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:36,800
case, not economic, but is implied by the presence of Circle and their backers who happen to be

521
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:41,520
centralized exchanges. The one group of people who potentially we need to look the other way for

522
00:28:41,520 --> 00:28:49,120
a validator to make away with the SAC with the dollar sign on it, or the SAC with the USDC sign

523
00:28:49,120 --> 00:28:54,640
on it. I think you could explain all these things. And if it happens, it happens. And I think the

524
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:59,600
reality is Noble is secure. I hope people won't take what I said previously out of context.

525
00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:06,960
Noble is secure because it has a secure set of trustworthy validators that are known actors.

526
00:29:08,080 --> 00:29:14,160
And it has an organization watchdogging it. And it didn't need HUB security to do that.

527
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:20,160
And that's all to say. I think there are other things the HUB can offer that are much more

528
00:29:20,160 --> 00:29:26,400
exciting than security. And I think security was basically the only option the HUB had when it was

529
00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:31,840
fighting against this minimalist vision, which is don't put anything on the HUB really, just try to

530
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:38,720
push all that to the sidelines. But I just think that's ridiculous. The minimalism thing is the

531
00:29:38,720 --> 00:29:45,920
biggest, it's such a sigh-up that we need to get away from.

532
00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:50,000
Yeah. I want to ask some questions before we get too deep in these other things. You have to answer

533
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:53,840
these. I'm just curious. And I don't know if you've ever answered these before related to just the

534
00:29:53,840 --> 00:29:58,640
ACK and just kind of all that stuff. Who courted who? How did this start?

535
00:29:58,640 --> 00:29:59,840
I think Barry courted Matt.

536
00:29:59,840 --> 00:30:01,440
I met my girlfriend about a year ago.

537
00:30:01,440 --> 00:30:03,280
No, no, no.

538
00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:09,520
No, no. How did this conversation...

539
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:13,200
I'm sure you guys were working together, right? Because I see up obviously... I mean, you guys

540
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:17,280
are a great team, right? So I'm sure that you guys had long relationship and those kind of things.

541
00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:22,000
But when did it turn into... Oh, I thought I was Barry showing up behind your head.

542
00:30:23,600 --> 00:30:27,760
But at some point, somebody said, wow, this is... Why are we doing this? It's two separate firms,

543
00:30:27,760 --> 00:30:34,880
right? So how did that conversation happen? And what was there? Was there a turning point

544
00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:38,800
or like an event that made that go, everybody go, this is stupid. We should be doing something

545
00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:39,600
bigger here.

546
00:30:39,600 --> 00:30:44,960
Yeah. So I guess a couple assumptions that you made, I guess, are not fully correct.

547
00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:46,880
We had zero relationship with the ICF.

548
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:47,280
That's how I roll.

549
00:30:47,280 --> 00:30:48,320
Didn't know anyone there.

550
00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:48,640
Really?

551
00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:50,400
Why the fuck not?

552
00:30:51,280 --> 00:30:55,760
No idea who's there. The only person we sort of knew was there was Ethan Buckman.

553
00:30:55,760 --> 00:30:56,320
Yeah.

554
00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:00,480
And that's important for the next part of the story.

555
00:31:01,840 --> 00:31:10,800
So Ethan came to the office one day and asked us to be the maintainers of the Cosmos Hub

556
00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:12,480
under some contract with the ICF.

557
00:31:13,280 --> 00:31:20,400
And we said, absolutely not. Because we didn't want to be the next in line for being the next

558
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:25,680
informal, like these people who take all the responsibility and ultimately don't actually

559
00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:30,640
have the power to change things at the highest level where things change as needed. And we

560
00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:34,880
were on our way out. We were on our way to build our own ecosystem. That's what we were thinking.

561
00:31:34,880 --> 00:31:39,600
We had all these ideas of how Cosmos could be better. And as I started to explain that,

562
00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:43,360
and I was like, look man, this is what we're actually doing. It was like, well,

563
00:31:43,360 --> 00:31:49,680
what if you just did that at the ICF? And I said, also, no, there's no chance that's going to happen.

564
00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:57,440
You know, we started to talk a little bit more. At some point, I was like, you know what?

565
00:31:57,440 --> 00:32:03,520
What if we just send them a proposal for full acquisition where with everything we want,

566
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:10,720
meaning we get full control over this stuff, we have full responsibility, we can make all the

567
00:32:10,720 --> 00:32:16,640
decisions we need to make, and we would just make this thing rip and turn it into a startup again.

568
00:32:17,360 --> 00:32:23,440
And we sent that sort of like jokingly because we thought there was no way that this old

569
00:32:23,440 --> 00:32:28,000
organization would agree to that. And they came back and they said, even though I support it,

570
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:35,680
like I would do this. And then it was very hard. The rest of the board did not support it initially,

571
00:32:35,680 --> 00:32:42,240
or took some convincing. We had to fly out to meet them. We talked to them extensively. And

572
00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:45,760
as we thought about it more and more, we were like, wait, this actually could be really good.

573
00:32:46,880 --> 00:32:52,080
We could do a lot with what the ICF has. And everyone was telling us that we were

574
00:32:52,080 --> 00:32:56,560
talking to investors. Everyone's telling us we're so stupid. Like investors literally

575
00:32:56,560 --> 00:33:02,800
got on call and was like, you guys are retarded. This is the worst idea that you've ever had.

576
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:07,440
They thought we were like losing it or something. They were like, why would you ever do this?

577
00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:12,960
Like you have an opportunity to build an incredible new ecosystem, and you're just going to inherit

578
00:33:12,960 --> 00:33:19,280
this horrible slog of a mess. And it kind of, as people did that, I mean, this is a toxic

579
00:33:19,280 --> 00:33:24,320
trade of mine. I got more and more excited about the idea. I was kind of like, well, you, like,

580
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:30,560
we can do this, right? We can do this. Like we could just rip this thing apart. We could rebuild

581
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:36,400
it into something incredible. We could like go completely product focused on a Cosmos ecosystem,

582
00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:40,400
figure out what the problems are, attract in the right people, sell a vision,

583
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:46,080
or create a vision and build it into something amazing. And we eventually won over the rest

584
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:51,440
of the board and we completed the acquisition probably around December.

585
00:33:51,440 --> 00:34:00,880
I think, well, two things. One, so is you guys. And which is kind of how I thought

586
00:34:01,680 --> 00:34:07,440
that conversation would have gone. Knowing the leadership there and I think just the swirl of,

587
00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:12,800
I don't know, I have a real problem with people who are in power with egos, but no ability to

588
00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:18,160
deliver anything or don't have a vision, but don't want to listen to vision. And then kind of, anyway.

589
00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:24,000
I do want to be clear though, at the end of the day, the I say it was great. And there's a lot of

590
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:28,480
people there that were great. And especially the board, like, I thought it would never be

591
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:33,280
successful because I was like, there's no way that these guys would agree to do to take these

592
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:38,960
children and like put them in charge of this huge foundation. And eventually they were like,

593
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:44,320
send it, like, let's just do it. And so like, I have huge respect for that shift in perspective.

594
00:34:44,320 --> 00:34:50,880
Yeah, it didn't come across. You didn't have anything but that. And then I think when we've

595
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:55,040
talked in the past too, like, I think. Before you go too far, can I interrupt?

596
00:34:56,080 --> 00:35:02,080
Have you met much resistance from outside, like the ICF? Yeah, really.

597
00:35:02,080 --> 00:35:03,520
Huge amount of resistance. Yeah.

598
00:35:03,520 --> 00:35:08,720
Interesting. From a validative perspective, like the ICF, I don't want to say that the enemy,

599
00:35:08,720 --> 00:35:16,320
but they were kind of the enemy. And so getting you guys in has felt like more hopeful.

600
00:35:16,880 --> 00:35:20,880
And so it's interesting. Was it more users or validators or where was the resistance from?

601
00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:26,800
Other teams? I would say primarily other teams. I'm not going to name names, but a lot of teams

602
00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:31,520
cut off relationships with us after we told them that we want to do this. Because one,

603
00:35:31,520 --> 00:35:39,680
they view the existence of Adam as competitive to their token. Or two, they view themselves as

604
00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:46,000
co-opting the narrative of being the Cosmos Hub. And I think like the last is, we definitely didn't

605
00:35:46,640 --> 00:35:51,360
make any friends with our investors. We didn't return. We didn't launch a token.

606
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:57,920
And so we didn't return some huge multiple. And we try to explain that this is extremely

607
00:35:57,920 --> 00:36:02,640
values-based. And this is just not what we want to do with our lives. And we want to work on this

608
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:07,760
thing. But still, I think the expectation was that we could have been a team that built a

609
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:16,000
multi-billion dollar token. But we made a lot of friends along the way. We made friends, I think,

610
00:36:16,000 --> 00:36:27,360
with a lot of the Adam people. We did also create enemies ourselves. So we cut off funding to all

611
00:36:27,360 --> 00:36:40,000
of these organizations that were fed on the ICF flow. So strange law of binary, confio, informal.

612
00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:46,000
We just cut this off completely, all the money. And it was in the order of $30 million plus per

613
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:51,680
year. And so that obviously was difficult. I mean, that makes sense, right? It's no different than

614
00:36:51,680 --> 00:36:56,320
any other acquisition. If you're using somebody who's a third party to do a specific role and you

615
00:36:56,320 --> 00:37:02,800
then you acquire somebody to do that role, those vendors are gone. I mean, there's nothing surprising

616
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:07,360
about that. Or they should be surprised around that. They might be unhappy about it. But if they

617
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:10,560
would see that acquisition, they'd be like, well, that's the end of our relationship here. It's

618
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:16,080
time to go find the next one. Yeah. We just decided that in order to do this, we just have to in-house

619
00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:21,680
everything. We need to have Cosmos SDK development, Comet development, Cosmos Hub development,

620
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:28,640
IBC development all happen in one place. Yeah. It was weird when this announcement came out. I was

621
00:37:28,640 --> 00:37:36,000
both shocked and then totally, of course, at the same time. Because we've always talked,

622
00:37:38,080 --> 00:37:42,880
over our relationship, one thing that I think I mentioned was you guys are such a good development

623
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:48,960
team, you have to diversify in terms of ecosystems. You really need to have something that we've

624
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:54,640
tried to do. What's these try to do? And others in terms of saying, I can't have all my eggs in

625
00:37:54,640 --> 00:37:59,920
this basket because there's just too much that is out of my own control to know whether that

626
00:37:59,920 --> 00:38:05,440
basket is going to be successful or not. And I think I said the same thing to you. And then that

627
00:38:06,640 --> 00:38:09,680
acquisition hit and the news hit, and we were talking about it in the channel, and I wrote,

628
00:38:09,680 --> 00:38:13,520
I had to go search for it. I wrote, those skipped guys are true believers. You've got to give them

629
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:18,720
that. And I think that's what I'm hearing from you guys. And that's probably not what your investors

630
00:38:18,720 --> 00:38:26,000
wanted to hear at Skip. But holy shit, there's no greater, I mean, honestly, if anyone questions

631
00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:33,840
this move, you have to look at the just the cultural aspect of building an organization

632
00:38:33,840 --> 00:38:40,640
like Skip and then dedicating it, dedicating it to the ICF. Like, you cannot say, oh, this is like

633
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:45,680
a cash grab or like, they're not going to be in it for the long haul. Bullshit, man. This is like

634
00:38:45,680 --> 00:38:54,000
the most and your investors are right. They're right. But but but but at the same time, you said,

635
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:58,240
I don't you said like, well, they wanted you to build a $30 billion token or blah, blah, blah.

636
00:38:58,240 --> 00:39:02,160
This is still an opportunity to do that. Right. They're not they're not exclusive.

637
00:39:02,160 --> 00:39:07,840
You're just you're just saddling yourself with that you're saddling yourself.

638
00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:10,960
There's no opportunity for the investors, I think, which is well, yeah, well, yeah, I mean,

639
00:39:10,960 --> 00:39:16,000
they're fucked up. But but but but what I'm saying is like, you're saddling yourself with

640
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:21,120
like just all this baggage to take something that you didn't build and you don't own and

641
00:39:21,120 --> 00:39:25,280
trying to bring it over the goal line. Sorry, I just I'm just a guy stretching in the background

642
00:39:25,280 --> 00:39:30,800
with his tummy out. It's amazing. Those who are listening back and play as later.

643
00:39:31,680 --> 00:39:36,320
Just I'm sorry. You're gonna have to mark the spot the stream and go find out.

644
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:44,320
That guy's like six foot eight to anyway. So I mean, but I mean, it's like it's it's pretty

645
00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:49,280
crazy to kind of hear it in those terms because, you know, there are, you know, speaking bluntly,

646
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:55,600
quite a few well backed teams that have exited the cosmos at this point, or, you know, there's

647
00:39:55,600 --> 00:39:59,680
there's quite a few kind of zombie chains and whatnot where a lot of the teams have moved on

648
00:39:59,680 --> 00:40:06,640
or core people or whatever. And, you know, for a team like yourselves who are kind of very, in a

649
00:40:06,640 --> 00:40:12,160
sense, both, you know, strongly tied to the cosmos or really strongly aligned to it, but

650
00:40:12,880 --> 00:40:21,120
quite lightly tied by kind of a formal necessity to run stuff in perpetuity, let's say, or

651
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:26,880
approaching perpetuity and crypto, which is I think about nine to 12 months plus, right.

652
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:34,320
It's kind of interesting to then tie yourself so strongly to the to the ecosystem. And it is

653
00:40:34,320 --> 00:40:39,280
I think there's a very bold move, you know, it shows a lot of belief in your ability to turn

654
00:40:39,280 --> 00:40:45,360
the ship. Yeah. And I think that that that that that deserves, I mean, this is not going to happen

655
00:40:45,360 --> 00:40:49,680
overnight. And I think one of the one of the real issues I think in these types of situations is

656
00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:53,200
like everybody has an unrealistic timeline in terms of how long it takes to turn things around.

657
00:40:53,200 --> 00:40:59,200
And I'm sure you guys have a huge backlog of just technical components of whatever that is. And then

658
00:40:59,840 --> 00:41:06,480
the piece that I I concerned gets concerned about is I don't have an ICL like, you know,

659
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:12,720
I would invest in that today. I see if somehow somehow it still concerns me that even in the

660
00:41:12,720 --> 00:41:18,720
face of success, maybe I see up just decides to put a bullet in its own foot. And that has happened

661
00:41:18,720 --> 00:41:25,520
many different times where even even in the success of in success of turning around, maybe

662
00:41:25,520 --> 00:41:30,320
it's not exactly in the vision of how they thought it would happen or like exactly what role it is

663
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:35,760
or what value it, you know, the chain provides or what the value the ICF provides. And you get like

664
00:41:35,760 --> 00:41:42,720
this internal crap, which is what it's had in the past. So I, you know, I think I always, I always,

665
00:41:42,720 --> 00:41:47,360
you know, I said this somewhere else, but I always believe in, you know, I always take like

666
00:41:47,360 --> 00:41:54,240
engineering and, and intelligence over egos and, you know, fucking politics, but at some point,

667
00:41:54,240 --> 00:41:59,760
those things also win. So it's gonna, I think you guys have a, and my timeline for this is like

668
00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:04,640
two years, three years, right? Like, I think you get, you probably, you guys have probably a pretty

669
00:42:04,640 --> 00:42:07,920
strong vision. And it's not gonna happen overnight, right? It's gonna take some time.

670
00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:14,800
No, um, I mean, just a couple of things, like, so remember when I said we sent over this, like,

671
00:42:14,800 --> 00:42:21,040
list of things that are completely pie in the sky, asks, we are not going to be removed.

672
00:42:22,240 --> 00:42:29,440
It's basically functionally impossible for the ICF to rug us at this point, legally.

673
00:42:30,720 --> 00:42:36,320
And, and also the amount of investment that they put into the ICL already is, is astronomical

674
00:42:36,320 --> 00:42:44,640
and would basically remove their entire raisin to Etra. So we also had a pretty, you know,

675
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:48,720
we're very aligned with the foundation in terms of choosing its new board members.

676
00:42:49,840 --> 00:42:52,800
And the folks that are there right now are the people who green lighted the acquisition.

677
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:57,440
So it is, it's like a relationship with any company and its board, right?

678
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:04,160
And I think the important thing is that that relationship is internal and should not matter.

679
00:43:04,160 --> 00:43:09,920
None of this should matter, right? And like, I think when you're evaluating, you know, a stock,

680
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:13,600
right, you're not really trying to figure out, oh, well, like, what's the relationship between

681
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:19,440
the founder and the board? It doesn't really matter. I think in this case, because of the history that

682
00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:26,240
internal drama has been real. But to, to, to, for every, in every way that I see,

683
00:43:26,240 --> 00:43:29,040
the people that are causing internal drama, they're gone.

684
00:43:30,320 --> 00:43:36,560
They were extremely strict in terms of keeping and not keeping the people who are down for what

685
00:43:36,560 --> 00:43:43,200
we want to do. Or they've like, completely changed perspective and are working sort of like, we've

686
00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:47,920
worked at skip, which is extremely honest and open and transparent and like vision aligned.

687
00:43:49,040 --> 00:43:57,040
So generally, I, I view this as the lowest risk thing in terms of what like the risks are to

688
00:43:57,040 --> 00:44:00,720
accomplish what we want to accomplish. I think there are much higher risk things, right, that,

689
00:44:00,720 --> 00:44:08,080
that are not internal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree with that too. Like, because, I mean,

690
00:44:08,080 --> 00:44:12,080
obviously, those are there, right? Like the outside influences are always bigger than internal, but,

691
00:44:12,080 --> 00:44:18,400
but I appreciate that. Like I, it does make sense. I mean, why, why would, why would there be any,

692
00:44:19,840 --> 00:44:23,440
why would there be any pushback associated to vision when, when you guys are building that

693
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:28,080
vision together and the reason for the acquisition? And, you know, acquisitions have gone through a

694
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:33,440
couple, you know, have usually a pretty solid understanding in terms of what we're trying to

695
00:44:33,440 --> 00:44:39,040
achieve. And sometimes it's, you know, people have to also be flexible and understanding that

696
00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:42,880
even though you, you have this vision, that vision will change over time. And also how you get there

697
00:44:43,600 --> 00:44:46,880
might not be, might be totally different than how everybody, you know, everybody views, there's

698
00:44:46,880 --> 00:44:52,240
a different way to get to that. But in this case, I mean, there's so much, there's so much underlying

699
00:44:52,240 --> 00:44:58,720
engineering and just delivery here that I think, you know, I always, like I said, I always, I always

700
00:44:58,720 --> 00:45:04,080
view that that overrides the, the politics and the bullshit, you know? Yeah, I think so. I think like

701
00:45:04,080 --> 00:45:10,960
it's sometimes difficult to look externally, I think, because it's easier to view and understand

702
00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:16,160
internal problems, right? It's easier to think that the reason for Cosmos not succeeding is, is

703
00:45:16,160 --> 00:45:24,240
trauma or use people at the top that are juicing, you know, that the rewards or enriching themselves.

704
00:45:25,120 --> 00:45:30,720
And the perception things do matter, right? And, you know, that's whatever was there, that's all

705
00:45:30,720 --> 00:45:37,680
gone now. Like those people are out, we cut the funding. That is completely gone. It's wiped away.

706
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:44,640
So now it's sort of like, well, now we have to face the honest truths. Like why, if we assume

707
00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:50,080
that that's not the case anymore, that we have aligned leadership, we have $400 million treasury,

708
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:54,720
like what are the actual things preventing us from getting to where we want to be? And they

709
00:45:54,720 --> 00:45:59,840
start to become a lot more painful, right? Like other ecosystems and what they're doing,

710
00:45:59,840 --> 00:46:04,240
you know, the realities of the games that they play to attract developers,

711
00:46:04,240 --> 00:46:10,400
the realities of token games that other companies play to, to juice it, you know,

712
00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:14,560
these things start to become a little bit more clear and they're unfortunate.

713
00:46:16,480 --> 00:46:19,440
And, and also where we have to start digging in really fighting.

714
00:46:19,440 --> 00:46:24,160
Yeah. I mean, new and shiny is always better, right? That's what happens. That's, that's the

715
00:46:24,160 --> 00:46:27,920
space is all about is you know, it's the same chain over and over. And every time it's, it's

716
00:46:27,920 --> 00:46:31,920
slightly better. And this is the one and you know, the next thing you know, you're in the rear

717
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:38,960
of your mirror, right? So with the history of Adam, I mean, I mean, honestly, Adam would never

718
00:46:38,960 --> 00:46:45,360
still exist in any other ecosystem other than the cosmos, right? Like, like, it would, in any other,

719
00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:49,760
in any other ecosystem, that idea and the, and the token around it and like, just the community

720
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:54,880
would be dead. Well, thank you to you folks for keeping it alive for so long. Yeah, running it

721
00:46:54,880 --> 00:47:05,680
every day by your hard believer. But so to, to kind of pick up Serp's point there, you know,

722
00:47:05,680 --> 00:47:13,040
we are in kind of this, like, you know, industry, this new industry, which has no memory and everything

723
00:47:13,040 --> 00:47:19,520
is, you know, eternal now, it's just the latest and latest and latest and on and on and on.

724
00:47:19,520 --> 00:47:26,320
What, you know, do you think that there are, do you think, do you, I guess, so the answer, the answer

725
00:47:26,320 --> 00:47:31,760
is the answer implicitly to what I'm about to ask is of course not. But I'm going to ask the

726
00:47:31,760 --> 00:47:35,760
question anyway, because that's the format of an interview based podcast. So I have to ask the

727
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:41,280
question. I apologize. You have to participate. I'm afraid I have to ask you questions. And if we

728
00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:47,520
all, we will have to suspend disbelief that you might answer differently. But with all of that

729
00:47:47,520 --> 00:47:58,720
out of the way. So do you think that the Cosmos stack and the Cosmos Hub specifically can compete

730
00:47:58,720 --> 00:48:03,600
on a technical basis with the newer generation of change and things that we're seeing and all the

731
00:48:03,600 --> 00:48:08,640
technological, you know, kind of innovation and development that we've seen since the Cosmos

732
00:48:08,640 --> 00:48:13,280
Hub debuted? Because, you know, in a very real sense, tendering and whatnot, haven't

733
00:48:13,280 --> 00:48:19,280
changed a huge amount since, I don't know, 2018, 2019, when I first bought Asim, something like that.

734
00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:24,640
Like that when the hub came out, like, there have been a number of things that have come out that are

735
00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:31,120
new, IBC being one of them, and then the huge explosion of app chains and things. But like

736
00:48:31,120 --> 00:48:37,840
underneath all of that, like the core of the software has not had, you know, absolute overwhelming

737
00:48:37,840 --> 00:48:43,520
sea changes from the point of view of like what it allows you to do. So the question is, is our

738
00:48:43,520 --> 00:48:47,200
tech stack still competitive? Yeah, is it competitive? And like, what do you think the,

739
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:54,880
and if so, kind of why? And if not, why? And what do you think we can do about that? Yeah.

740
00:48:56,960 --> 00:49:03,440
So competition is, I think, is a multifaceted thing, right? So one of the things that the

741
00:49:03,440 --> 00:49:11,360
Cosmos tech stack has is deep level of adoption and deep history of being safe, right? It's been

742
00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:17,040
around for over five years, most crypto projects, you know, they're founders, barely over five years

743
00:49:17,040 --> 00:49:25,200
old, like, you know, they're, it's something that's been deeply adopted by huge ecosystems like Binance,

744
00:49:25,200 --> 00:49:32,080
you know, Terra back in the day, you know, the Kronos, like all these different chains.

745
00:49:32,080 --> 00:49:36,560
And so it has a level of sophistication that is attractive to new developers,

746
00:49:36,560 --> 00:49:41,040
because a lot of these new stacks, they sound shiny, they sound great. One, most of them are not

747
00:49:41,040 --> 00:49:45,520
shipped, right? So can you name three consensus protocols that have come out and are widely

748
00:49:45,520 --> 00:49:52,480
adopted since TenderMint? No, because there are not any, right? Can you name three chain

749
00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:57,760
development frameworks that have come out since the Cosmos SDK that are widely adopted? No,

750
00:49:57,760 --> 00:50:02,640
like, there aren't any, right? And like the only thing that has happened on the bridge side,

751
00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:08,560
there's no competing interoperable standard. It's all centralized bridges or multi-sig bridges,

752
00:50:08,560 --> 00:50:15,520
like Wyrmhole and Axelar and Layer Zero, right? And these things are great tools, but nothing's

753
00:50:15,520 --> 00:50:20,560
really been built that competes with these things, right? Because these, I think ecosystems are

754
00:50:20,560 --> 00:50:25,360
acutely aware of not falling into the Cosmos trap, which is, well, if we just build all this incredible

755
00:50:25,360 --> 00:50:30,880
open source software, how is it going to pump my token, right? Like, how, what if everyone just

756
00:50:30,880 --> 00:50:35,440
builds their own thing and it doesn't pump me, right? So you have things like the Hyper SDK from

757
00:50:35,440 --> 00:50:42,640
Avalanche, which is licensed and you can only use it if you have like some kind of financial

758
00:50:42,640 --> 00:50:49,440
relationship with Avax or you build it in the Avalanche ecosystem, right? Or you have, I posted

759
00:50:49,440 --> 00:50:53,760
about the other day, like, you know, the ton blockchain and telegrams open framework for

760
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:58,800
building mini apps now is restricted to the ton block. If you have a token there that's not

761
00:50:58,800 --> 00:51:05,520
issued on ton, they delete your app and telegram. So I think like we still have the only real open

762
00:51:05,520 --> 00:51:12,240
source standard for like a decentralized Internet of blockchains. And there's no real competitor.

763
00:51:12,240 --> 00:51:17,040
Now, are some things faster? Are some things a little bit more expressive in some areas or

764
00:51:17,040 --> 00:51:22,640
run better centralized sequencers? Yada, yada, yes, of course, right? Those things do exist. But I

765
00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:27,120
think there's still a contingent of people who actually believe in like wanting to build things

766
00:51:27,120 --> 00:51:34,640
in the open and wanting to build an L1, right? I think everyone hates the idea of an L1 stack

767
00:51:34,640 --> 00:51:39,040
because everyone who hates it is an L1 themselves and wants to believe that they're one of the few

768
00:51:39,040 --> 00:51:45,760
or ideally the only L1. But it's like L1 kind of, there's no value accrual to anything else,

769
00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:51,600
right? Infrastructurally, right? You're not dependent on something. You run your own consensus,

770
00:51:51,600 --> 00:51:56,640
you have your own infrastructure, you have your own token, your own security, your own gas fees,

771
00:51:56,640 --> 00:52:02,560
right? And so I think it's very difficult for an organization to actually spearhead that.

772
00:52:02,560 --> 00:52:07,440
And it's even more difficult to build an ecosystem out of that that generates value in some

773
00:52:07,440 --> 00:52:13,520
consistent way to some kind of centralized or not centralized, central, right? Or like

774
00:52:13,520 --> 00:52:16,240
common thing. And that's sort of the challenge we're trying to take on.

775
00:52:16,240 --> 00:52:20,960
I guess the thing that I'm hearing and I think is interesting is like I'm hearing

776
00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:25,200
like a very, very strong vision for the Cosmos Hub and I'm hearing like a quite sophisticated

777
00:52:25,200 --> 00:52:33,120
thesis, I think, for how it is still relevant in the context of the developments that have come

778
00:52:33,120 --> 00:52:40,240
since and whatnot. But I guess the really difficult thing is how you sort of generalize

779
00:52:40,240 --> 00:52:45,680
that out into an ecosystem. Because what I think we've, we'll move to about it quite a bit on the

780
00:52:45,680 --> 00:52:51,360
podcast actually is that the most recent kind of slew of chains that have been launched using the

781
00:52:51,360 --> 00:52:58,320
Cosmos Hub have broadly speaking not really associated with themselves with the kind of

782
00:52:58,320 --> 00:53:03,440
ideology and the other chains in the network have certainly not branded themselves necessarily as

783
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:08,400
being part of the Cosmos ecosystem. And in some cases not even opened, you know, IBC channels

784
00:53:08,400 --> 00:53:13,440
and whatnot, which is unfortunate because it kind of talks to your point of saying, oh yeah,

785
00:53:13,440 --> 00:53:19,360
you know, we actually are making a strong bet on the tech snack being a solid foundation,

786
00:53:19,360 --> 00:53:26,240
but it's making a kind of a similarly strong statement on a perceived in utility of the

787
00:53:26,240 --> 00:53:31,360
actual ecosystem. You know, I mean, whether that's because they perceive it as like a threat to them

788
00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:35,760
or a drain of liquidity or whether it's some other thing they don't want to be associated with Cosmos

789
00:53:35,760 --> 00:53:41,280
Drama, but they're making a statement by choosing to present themselves in the way that they are,

790
00:53:41,280 --> 00:53:48,320
you know. And so I do wonder like how hard it would be. I absolutely believe that the

791
00:53:48,320 --> 00:53:52,800
ship can be turned on Cosmos. I can take that. I can take and believe that argument. And I think

792
00:53:52,800 --> 00:54:00,880
if any team can do it, you know, fair play. But it is, you know, it is, it is a going to be very

793
00:54:00,880 --> 00:54:07,520
hard one to generalize because not only is potentially, yeah, I mean, people who are very

794
00:54:07,520 --> 00:54:13,440
invested in the hub might see it as against their interest. Number one, number two, it's also kind

795
00:54:13,440 --> 00:54:16,880
of a little bit beyond your control to some extent, because it's about what all of the other L1s in

796
00:54:16,880 --> 00:54:23,120
the Cosmos ecosystem do and what the L1s that you had to launch do. Do they market themselves with

797
00:54:23,120 --> 00:54:29,840
Cosmos? Do they open IBC channels? Because at the moment, some are some aren't right. And that

798
00:54:29,840 --> 00:54:36,720
and that that says quite a bit, I think, sadly. Yeah, I mean, I think the reality is I don't

799
00:54:36,720 --> 00:54:41,840
blame them. And I don't hold any ill will towards them. Like, I don't know, like examples here that

800
00:54:41,840 --> 00:54:47,680
come up kind of are like Baruchain and a little bit Anisha sort of in the middle. I don't know what

801
00:54:47,680 --> 00:54:55,120
else like hyper liquid, which I think just uses tender mint. But yeah, I think, I think for those

802
00:54:55,120 --> 00:55:01,120
things, or for some of those, I get it. Like, what why would you associate with Cosmos, right?

803
00:55:01,120 --> 00:55:06,080
What do you get as a customer of building something that wants to be sick, you want it to be

804
00:55:06,080 --> 00:55:11,920
successful as successful as possible? What do you get by associating with Cosmos, right? Do you get

805
00:55:11,920 --> 00:55:16,560
any kind of preferential treatment within the stack? Do you get customer service? Do you get

806
00:55:17,200 --> 00:55:21,760
a good token to associate yourself with that's going to bring in liquidity and users? Do you get

807
00:55:21,760 --> 00:55:27,520
a good infrastructural ecosystem that provides additional utility to your product? The answer

808
00:55:27,520 --> 00:55:33,280
to all of those is no, or has been no, right? Right. What do you get, right? Like, all you do is you

809
00:55:33,280 --> 00:55:38,640
give, you're not getting anything, right? And what you're giving is maybe legitimacy to Cosmos,

810
00:55:38,640 --> 00:55:45,040
which is then, you know, in your opinion, run by these buffoons who like are are masquerading as

811
00:55:45,040 --> 00:55:48,960
like leaders and not actually doing anything and there's corruption and all this other stuff. It's

812
00:55:48,960 --> 00:55:53,920
like, why would I associate with that? It's interesting to me that despite all of that,

813
00:55:53,920 --> 00:55:59,600
people still use IBC and still use the Cosmos tech stack because it's incredible. It's so good

814
00:55:59,600 --> 00:56:07,600
that they had to, right? Despite all these issues, I think our thesis is that generally, if you take

815
00:56:07,600 --> 00:56:11,920
that to be true, then it's like, well, what would make these people want to associate with the

816
00:56:11,920 --> 00:56:17,600
Cosmos ecosystem, right? Well, they have to get something from that. And so I think that's what

817
00:56:17,600 --> 00:56:22,000
we're trying to build up now. We're trying to create the relationship between the hub and these

818
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:28,080
chains as not a value extractive thing, but a value additive thing, where we can provide them

819
00:56:28,080 --> 00:56:33,440
incredible services that solve their problems so they can focus on their applications and not

820
00:56:33,440 --> 00:56:38,080
have some narrative of where over you or, you know, restricting you in some way.

821
00:56:39,280 --> 00:56:44,560
I think the second thing is we want to make the stack fully accountable to these applications,

822
00:56:44,560 --> 00:56:49,120
meaning we'll take their opinion, we'll listen to them if they're customers of ours by having this

823
00:56:49,120 --> 00:56:54,880
kind of relationship and association with the ecosystem. And to a large degree, we'll financially

824
00:56:54,880 --> 00:57:02,560
support these chains. Like we will offer liquidity from the ICF. You know, we will co-market with

825
00:57:02,560 --> 00:57:07,600
them. You know, we will actually push them and help them be successful and help prioritize

826
00:57:07,600 --> 00:57:12,480
building products on top of their tech stack, which we build that make them more successful.

827
00:57:12,480 --> 00:57:17,440
And if after all that, people are said, we'll still know, fuck you guys, then fuck them. Like,

828
00:57:17,440 --> 00:57:22,320
I don't care about them. Like, that's not Cosmos to me. It doesn't matter that they're using the

829
00:57:22,320 --> 00:57:29,520
tech stack. If they don't want to have a relationship with the organization and the

830
00:57:29,520 --> 00:57:34,720
maintainers of the stack that they're using, that they're inherently building on top of a vision for

831
00:57:34,720 --> 00:57:39,920
that they may reject that vision, which is an internet of blockchains. If they like deny that,

832
00:57:39,920 --> 00:57:44,800
I just think that's really weak. And like, I don't really understand why a team would do that. Like,

833
00:57:44,800 --> 00:57:49,280
it doesn't make any sense to me. Again, again, it's going to take some time. No difference that I

834
00:57:49,280 --> 00:57:55,040
said before in terms of the time that people are giving I CL to be able to turn that ship around.

835
00:57:55,040 --> 00:58:00,320
There's also like just a lot of just not bad blood, but just, I don't know. I don't know how

836
00:58:00,320 --> 00:58:04,640
you call it. But like, what in that strategy that you just talked about, the water under the bridge,

837
00:58:05,280 --> 00:58:09,760
there's a walk. Okay, that's a good way of saying it. Yeah, three ways saying it. But yeah, I like

838
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:15,840
but but like one of like one of those things I think would be like number one on their strategy

839
00:58:15,840 --> 00:58:21,680
as part of that max would be upstream. Like, look like what what bear is doing with beacon D,

840
00:58:21,680 --> 00:58:24,640
right? Like that's just purely in the consensus side. Look how much change has happened within

841
00:58:24,640 --> 00:58:30,960
beacon D. Look at say, like say is completely rewritten that stack that 300 millisecond block

842
00:58:30,960 --> 00:58:36,160
times, everything from state sync to say DB in the pebble side to all this shit. None of that is

843
00:58:36,160 --> 00:58:42,080
upstream. Like, almost none of that is upstream. Like, like, and so not not only are there are

844
00:58:42,080 --> 00:58:47,440
there these, these teams taking some some of the basis. And then the basis might not be meeting

845
00:58:47,440 --> 00:58:51,680
their needs. But then it goes and forks out into something and nobody else is able to take advantage

846
00:58:51,680 --> 00:58:56,320
of that. You know what I mean? And it just seems like that's such a wasted opportunity. And I don't

847
00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:59,280
I don't know who to blame on that. Like, I don't understand the politics of it well enough to

848
00:58:59,280 --> 00:59:03,920
understand if that's in the past, like, nobody for the FcF said, Hey, what are you guys doing with

849
00:59:03,920 --> 00:59:07,680
this? And like, can we learn from this? And can we can we be inclusive around it? Because everything

850
00:59:07,680 --> 00:59:13,040
I've always seen in in in those like SDK GitHub's are always like a bunch of fucking nose. Like,

851
00:59:13,040 --> 00:59:16,880
somebody puts a PR in there, and then they shit all over it. That's why he puts another PR on

852
00:59:16,880 --> 00:59:21,120
the shit all over it. Like, it doesn't meet this vision that we don't even fucking have that doesn't

853
00:59:21,120 --> 00:59:24,800
make any sense. And we're not interested in improving it because we built this ivory tower

854
00:59:24,800 --> 00:59:30,400
type of shit, at least that's what it comes across as. And it seems like there's not only do you have

855
00:59:30,400 --> 00:59:34,880
some development work to do, I think on the SDK, but I think there's so much that people have already

856
00:59:34,880 --> 00:59:39,280
done that would be great to be able to bring back in. And that might be a that might be a branch to

857
00:59:39,280 --> 00:59:44,000
say, Hey, how do we take some of this great work and like, now make this available to everybody?

858
00:59:44,880 --> 00:59:50,160
I was just talking the same team, because we're we ran this issue on a couple chains around Max

859
00:59:50,160 --> 00:59:54,880
Gasper block, not to make it too specific. But the cosmos issue, like there's a huge issue with Max

860
00:59:54,880 --> 01:00:00,160
Gasper block, which means if the gas prices is low enough, people just set the met the wanted to the

861
01:00:00,160 --> 01:00:04,480
whole fucking block size, which means they take one transaction for the whole fucking block, and

862
01:00:04,480 --> 01:00:08,960
then the mempool grows like fucking crazy, because you can't get any transactions there. And there's

863
01:00:08,960 --> 01:00:13,840
no way to stop that zero, like you could do some minimum transactions per block thing, or you could

864
01:00:13,840 --> 01:00:18,240
do something else. But there's no way to stop it, you could just fucking overflow the gas, you pay

865
01:00:18,240 --> 01:00:22,480
eight cents, who gives a shit, and then you just running one transaction every six seconds or whatever

866
01:00:22,480 --> 01:00:27,760
the hell it is. We had this issue on a mint recently, we had this issue on another chain that runs

867
01:00:27,760 --> 01:00:33,200
very fast. And in like, in like a good example, that would be like, funding something that allows

868
01:00:33,200 --> 01:00:38,080
us to do what's it called a really proposal or basically a simulation, right, do a gas simulation

869
01:00:38,080 --> 01:00:43,040
like an like an like a theory, right, and just just fill the gas based off of what the actuals are,

870
01:00:43,040 --> 01:00:47,520
not this fucking wanted thing. That would be an amazing thing that teams, I think, are already

871
01:00:47,520 --> 01:00:52,400
building that the ICF could say, pull, let's pull that in, and make it something that makes every

872
01:00:52,400 --> 01:00:59,600
chain better in an SDK version. And I think, I think that idea, like it's always been like, the

873
01:00:59,600 --> 01:01:03,840
ICF built something, now we're gonna have an hour stuck sucking down this SDK change, or, you know,

874
01:01:03,840 --> 01:01:07,040
we gotta make our change, or we're gonna fork it or we're gonna do whatever. It seems like it's so

875
01:01:07,040 --> 01:01:11,200
fragmented now that like, nobody gives a shit. And so that seems like a real opportunity to

876
01:01:12,240 --> 01:01:17,040
be a leader in that side again. This stuff was a fucking nightmare when I was working in Juno,

877
01:01:17,040 --> 01:01:24,320
like, just the maintaining like the combination of like upstream changes and and also Juno being

878
01:01:24,320 --> 01:01:30,560
early as the as the wasm chain, right, right. And just the number of fucking, I mean, we obviously

879
01:01:30,560 --> 01:01:35,760
have like the two cyber attacks, but yeah. And so that was a whole other thing. But how many times

880
01:01:35,760 --> 01:01:41,760
do they say no, it was just, I stopped asking very, very quickly, I stopped asking. I think that's

881
01:01:41,760 --> 01:01:47,440
what happens, right? You just kind of, we, and then, you know, we just had, we just had continually

882
01:01:47,440 --> 01:01:52,080
sinking forks, we had some private repose, we had some public repose, and we were sinking forks

883
01:01:52,080 --> 01:01:56,880
left, right and center to make sure that we could cover off problems if we needed to cover them off

884
01:01:56,880 --> 01:02:02,560
pretty quickly. And that was like, that was that was the experience of upstream development in 21,

885
01:02:02,560 --> 01:02:10,720
22. And it was such a burning out, like it was genuinely one of the most exhausting experiences

886
01:02:10,720 --> 01:02:16,240
I've had as a developer. And my involvement, you know, bear in mind in that was overwhelmingly

887
01:02:16,240 --> 01:02:22,160
just maintain a ship of what of the code base of junior, like the, the majority of my actual

888
01:02:22,160 --> 01:02:29,840
development work was in Rust in wasm, right, in cousin wasm. And, you know, I, and I still don't

889
01:02:29,840 --> 01:02:34,800
say I'm really a go developer or a core developer, you know, on it's, you know, there's a lot of

890
01:02:34,800 --> 01:02:38,640
stuff in the SDK that I still don't understand to this day, because in my opinion, quite a

891
01:02:38,640 --> 01:02:45,680
complicated code base. But it just, it was like, for what I was trying to do, which is just keep

892
01:02:45,680 --> 01:02:51,760
stuff stable and fix bugs and give us the tiny amount of configuration and additional changes

893
01:02:51,760 --> 01:02:56,960
we needed. It was such an uphill battle. And like, compared to almost any other development gig I've

894
01:02:56,960 --> 01:03:05,760
done, it was, it was crazy. And I was just like, oh, yeah, yeah, if you can make that, like you say,

895
01:03:05,760 --> 01:03:08,960
if you can not only make that easier, but if you can also upstream some of the changes that other

896
01:03:08,960 --> 01:03:14,560
teams have made, that are, you know, quality of life changes that are mitigating these kind of

897
01:03:14,560 --> 01:03:18,160
edge case bugs that we see out in the wild, like that, that would be wild. That would be great.

898
01:03:18,160 --> 01:03:23,680
Or find a way to incentivize those teams for upstream, right? Like, or find a way, I mean,

899
01:03:23,680 --> 01:03:27,040
not to a point of obviously teams are going to build stuff as a strategic advantage. I told you.

900
01:03:27,040 --> 01:03:32,240
But also, but also you talk about, talk about the ecosystem, right? I am not the only developer

901
01:03:32,240 --> 01:03:38,640
that's walked away from Cosmos as a developer, right? Sure. There are plenty out there. And,

902
01:03:38,640 --> 01:03:46,240
I mean, out of the three of us here to have, because I did as well. Exactly, right? And,

903
01:03:46,240 --> 01:03:52,000
and, and I know of others, right? And, and I think that's, that's the interesting thing is that

904
01:03:52,000 --> 01:03:57,440
there were, there were one point, a lot more developers in the ecosystem, a lot more than

905
01:03:57,440 --> 01:04:00,960
there are now. And I know there's still a lot of chains with active development and yada, yada,

906
01:04:00,960 --> 01:04:10,240
yada, yada. And I'm maybe, maybe bringing it a bit warm, you know, but, but, you know, it feels

907
01:04:10,240 --> 01:04:15,440
like the, the, the first step is if you can bring some of those people back, find out what, push

908
01:04:15,440 --> 01:04:21,120
them away and bring them back, then that was, you know, that would be a bullish sign, so

909
01:04:21,120 --> 01:04:28,720
believe the kids say, right? Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to spend time, I think, talking to

910
01:04:28,720 --> 01:04:34,560
developers and, and like begging them. Yeah. Um, I think we just have to show strength. Yeah. Like,

911
01:04:35,280 --> 01:04:40,400
I've also, I come at this from a very realistic perspective, which is either you're an ally,

912
01:04:40,400 --> 01:04:46,240
and I will ride with you and, and support you as much as I can and loop you into things and have

913
01:04:46,240 --> 01:04:51,600
you be a part of this or you're not. And that's fine. But like, I have basically no time for

914
01:04:51,600 --> 01:04:56,400
people who are like, Oh, maybe it's, it's like, there, there are a lot of people are still very

915
01:04:56,400 --> 01:05:02,880
excited, right? And, and, and, and either newer and they don't have that baggage or, um, you know,

916
01:05:02,880 --> 01:05:07,040
are still excited about the vision and want to make it work. And like, I'm sort of one of those

917
01:05:07,040 --> 01:05:12,320
people too. I mean, I had a fucking hard time too developing in Cosmos, our company did, right?

918
01:05:12,320 --> 01:05:16,560
Integrating with all these different chains that are constantly shifting, trying to work with the

919
01:05:16,560 --> 01:05:22,080
SDK team and the informal team, understanding what's coming out, boat extensions, not working,

920
01:05:22,080 --> 01:05:26,880
us having to fix all of it to in order for slinky to work, like these things are difficult.

921
01:05:28,320 --> 01:05:32,880
And we're going to make them easier, right? Like, I think we're going to be significantly more

922
01:05:32,880 --> 01:05:38,960
responsive. We already are that we have been that for everyone for you folks as well, I think

923
01:05:38,960 --> 01:05:45,280
as validators, we want that's in our DNA, we want to be that. But, but yeah, I think it's,

924
01:05:45,280 --> 01:05:51,440
I think it's really, uh, fine finding the developers that, that, that truly believe and, and, and want

925
01:05:51,440 --> 01:05:56,960
to want to be a part of it and trying to make their lives as simple as possible. I think when it

926
01:05:56,960 --> 01:06:02,160
comes to like external contributions, it's a tricky one. I mean, we are working on some external

927
01:06:02,160 --> 01:06:06,640
contributions now, we're working with the injective and Chronos teams on their EVM implementation,

928
01:06:06,640 --> 01:06:13,520
which is excellent. We're working with, um, Osmosis on their tenderment fixes. Um, and there's a

929
01:06:13,520 --> 01:06:18,320
couple others, I think we're working to say on some things as well, actually, um, these things

930
01:06:18,320 --> 01:06:23,840
generally, uh, they're either complicated by the fact that they are competitive, uh, meaning that

931
01:06:23,840 --> 01:06:29,120
that the chains want them to be their chains, things, uh, and they don't want them to be upstream.

932
01:06:29,120 --> 01:06:33,760
But sometimes when they do, uh, you know, it's either like specific to certain infrastructure

933
01:06:33,760 --> 01:06:38,640
or doesn't serve the overall needs of all the Cosmos chains, just like a case by case basis.

934
01:06:38,640 --> 01:06:43,360
But I think the perception is valid, right? The perception that previously these repositories

935
01:06:43,360 --> 01:06:47,760
were extremely closed off and elitist, um, in terms of who is allowed to contribute,

936
01:06:48,480 --> 01:06:52,160
that we want to change. And we, I think, I think we can change that now.

937
01:06:52,160 --> 01:06:56,320
I don't know if that was perception, at least in the past. Now, I understand what you're saying.

938
01:06:56,320 --> 01:07:00,800
Well, I'm saying at least the perception. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm sure, I'm sure it was

939
01:07:00,800 --> 01:07:05,360
true. Yeah. I mean, I think we had a little bit of an easier time getting some changes in, but it

940
01:07:05,360 --> 01:07:09,280
was still challenging for sure. Sure. And I'll let, I mean, honestly, all that's based on relationship,

941
01:07:09,280 --> 01:07:13,600
right? And even, even team saying that they want to, you know, we, it's competitive, and you want

942
01:07:13,600 --> 01:07:17,920
to push X, Y or Z at some point, either there's compensation towards that, or there's a portion

943
01:07:17,920 --> 01:07:22,080
of that you could say, Hey, this is something that, that we need to do as an ecosystem because

944
01:07:22,080 --> 01:07:26,000
rising tide and all that kind of bullshit, right? Um, it's not bullshit. I just, I just think it's

945
01:07:26,000 --> 01:07:30,800
a phrase, but it's a true statement. Like meaning we bring more, it's going to help because the more

946
01:07:30,800 --> 01:07:34,320
eyeballs we have in Cosmos and the more eyeballs that we have in this, then, you know, you get more

947
01:07:34,320 --> 01:07:37,760
visibility and more opportunities and different types of use cases and all that kind of shit.

948
01:07:37,760 --> 01:07:44,720
So I think, I think that's a bit of a 2022 attitude towards Cosmos, but I do think there's

949
01:07:44,720 --> 01:07:50,480
still some validity there. Um, that doesn't have to revolve around ICS and all that kind of stuff,

950
01:07:50,480 --> 01:07:56,480
right? Like that, that, that they are working off a thing like a code base and the SDK coming out of

951
01:07:57,120 --> 01:08:02,960
the ICL can be far more valuable as default than what it is. Like we dealt with this on a chain

952
01:08:02,960 --> 01:08:07,200
that's getting ready to go mainnet here where, you know, the team thought it was, Hey, it's plug

953
01:08:07,200 --> 01:08:12,640
and play. We just go grab it and we shove it out there and she'll see and I run this one. And, and

954
01:08:13,360 --> 01:08:18,080
then they realized then like, they had 4,000 nodes in the network and it wasn't making any blocks

955
01:08:18,080 --> 01:08:24,160
and the peering was awful. And like, you know, the gas is all fucked up and nobody knows what,

956
01:08:24,160 --> 01:08:28,480
like everybody's struggling with everything. Like, like there's a, there's a ton there in terms of,

957
01:08:28,480 --> 01:08:32,240
like you can't launch a blockchain with it, I think out of the gate, the way it runs, like the way

958
01:08:32,240 --> 01:08:36,960
it comes, like there's a tremendous amount of, of knowledge and time and an effort that comes in

959
01:08:36,960 --> 01:08:41,920
there that I think could be raised. I think that could be better for a new team who's entering

960
01:08:41,920 --> 01:08:46,080
and wanting to be able to use that toolset. So it's a lot of educational points that I think

961
01:08:46,080 --> 01:08:51,040
we also need to work on. Debrell, information, like communicating how these things work.

962
01:08:51,600 --> 01:08:58,320
Like that has been pretty much abandoned. And we want to restart that. We want to restart that

963
01:08:58,320 --> 01:09:03,280
internally and then also sort of like bring in other teams to help out with that. Well, honestly,

964
01:09:03,280 --> 01:09:08,080
I couldn't think of a better team for this to happen with. I really couldn't. Like, I mean,

965
01:09:08,080 --> 01:09:12,000
you get like, like it really couldn't. So if you're not getting what you need from the ICF,

966
01:09:12,000 --> 01:09:15,200
you got to make a stink about it. And then we all come and say, Hey, this, these guys should get 200

967
01:09:15,200 --> 01:09:20,400
million out of that 400 to go make this happen on the next year. Because honestly, if we got a two

968
01:09:20,400 --> 01:09:24,480
or three year window here, and then, and then everybody starts giving a shit, maybe, and who

969
01:09:24,480 --> 01:09:30,640
knows, it could be tomorrow, right? But, but it's not forever. I know that. So, so I, I, you know,

970
01:09:30,640 --> 01:09:37,200
I do, I believe you, I understand what you're saying. I hope that I hope that they look at this

971
01:09:37,200 --> 01:09:41,920
as saying, Hey, we only have so many bullets in the gun to make this thing work. And so let's not

972
01:09:41,920 --> 01:09:46,640
be cheap on it. And let's do it the right way. And you guys grow a team and take on enough. And

973
01:09:46,640 --> 01:09:51,440
you guys are able to manage enough to, to do some of these things. Because I think it's important.

974
01:09:51,440 --> 01:09:56,160
Hey, Barry, you're live. What's that shirts? What's that hat say? What does that hat say?

975
01:09:56,160 --> 01:10:03,680
Hold on. Hold on. Let me get the hat. Oh yeah, you don't have that. Make Adam great again. Oh my

976
01:10:03,680 --> 01:10:16,160
God. I got the red tail. You guys, you guys, you guys got to get these. Holy shit. Is that dude,

977
01:10:16,160 --> 01:10:20,400
wait, get it? How do I turn this shit off? Yeah, I'm trying to shut up. Just put it in front of

978
01:10:20,400 --> 01:10:24,640
your face. It'd probably work better for the previous. There you go. Oh my God. Look at that.

979
01:10:24,640 --> 01:10:29,120
They're great to make Adam great again. Had holy shit. That is

980
01:10:32,400 --> 01:10:37,760
working by those. You don't buy them. See, you already fucked it up. What are you doing?

981
01:10:37,760 --> 01:10:41,200
You contribute to the Cosmos ecosystem as you have been. Oh,

982
01:10:42,880 --> 01:10:49,760
realistically, like, like, we need to, we mug you at a conference. We take your hat. Got you.

983
01:10:49,760 --> 01:10:55,360
Right. Cool. I will bring hats for you folks. Right. I feel like I never, do I see you at

984
01:10:55,360 --> 01:11:00,880
conferences? I feel like I always see Shalzy and Brian. I don't come, I don't come stateside because

985
01:11:00,880 --> 01:11:08,240
I have small humans. I'm going to be, I'm going to be a parent. I have a children's side for them too.

986
01:11:11,120 --> 01:11:14,720
Do you really? I have ones for little babies that they can put on. You know,

987
01:11:14,720 --> 01:11:21,280
you need like onesies too. You set up a, does a good trade in game of modes onesies.

988
01:11:22,720 --> 01:11:25,440
Hopefully you guys stop having kids because it's getting expensive. Yeah.

989
01:11:27,440 --> 01:11:31,680
Are you going to Denver by the way? Yes. Yeah. I'll see you there.

990
01:11:32,800 --> 01:11:37,840
See you there. Yeah. I mean, I guess, you know, the, the one thing I, I, I do want to say is

991
01:11:38,400 --> 01:11:42,640
there's a reason you guys are here. Right. At some point there was a reason, right?

992
01:11:42,640 --> 01:11:47,920
Whether that reason was a long time ago. At some point, at some point there's a reason.

993
01:11:47,920 --> 01:11:51,600
And now the hostage take is just slightly out of shot. Right.

994
01:11:51,600 --> 01:11:57,600
It's a fucking Stockholm syndrome over here. So just there, we don't speak about the men with the guns.

995
01:11:57,600 --> 01:12:01,280
Here, here what? Here Cosmos validators? Here, here Cosmos help. Yeah. Okay.

996
01:12:01,280 --> 01:12:07,520
In Cosmos running this podcast, interested in skip, trying to help us out throughout our time,

997
01:12:07,520 --> 01:12:10,960
you know, wanting these things to succeed. And of course there's,

998
01:12:10,960 --> 01:12:17,920
it's a combination probably of emotional, financial, professional reasons. But I think

999
01:12:17,920 --> 01:12:25,280
it's like, there's some kind of investment, right? And I think there's still a lot of that.

1000
01:12:25,280 --> 01:12:31,280
And what I'm, what I'm really trying to do is expand that to other folks, right? And find

1001
01:12:31,280 --> 01:12:38,000
other people who are excited about it. And I think what that, what that is at the end of the day is

1002
01:12:38,000 --> 01:12:43,920
like Cosmos needs to stand for something because it can't just stand for a shitty ecosystem that

1003
01:12:43,920 --> 01:12:50,240
should be successful. That's the only way to solve that is to be successful. Right. Like the goal

1004
01:12:50,240 --> 01:12:55,840
can't be to be successful. The goal has to be a mission because people only join unsuccessful

1005
01:12:55,840 --> 01:13:00,000
things if they have a mission they believe in, right? Or they just join successful things that

1006
01:13:00,000 --> 01:13:07,120
have no mission like Solana, right? And I think that's what like we really need to create. And

1007
01:13:07,120 --> 01:13:14,240
like it just starts one person by one person, like you folks, me, whoever else finding some

1008
01:13:14,240 --> 01:13:18,800
infrastructure guiding like, hey, check this out. They get interested. They start to build tooling.

1009
01:13:18,800 --> 01:13:24,400
Like all of that is just like the little pieces that add up to us being successful and accomplishing

1010
01:13:24,400 --> 01:13:29,840
this mission. But I guess we are always, we always do come back around to you, Serpa's point, right?

1011
01:13:29,840 --> 01:13:34,560
Which is that it's, it's got to be use cases first. And like, and like I respect this is why I

1012
01:13:34,560 --> 01:13:38,480
respect, you know, you're talking about product vision, you're talking about like product,

1013
01:13:39,120 --> 01:13:43,120
product focus and all that kind of stuff, like 100%. That's one of the things that's been missing

1014
01:13:43,120 --> 01:13:49,280
all this time. It's been one of the things that's consistently missing for Cosmos ecosystem chains

1015
01:13:49,280 --> 01:13:54,000
in general, I think actually, like there's very, very few that had really strong product vision.

1016
01:13:54,000 --> 01:13:59,760
Like we've, we've talked a lot about Stargaze, right? On the podcast because they consistently,

1017
01:13:59,760 --> 01:14:05,600
at least in the early days had that. Don't know how much of it is currently there. I mean,

1018
01:14:05,600 --> 01:14:13,120
you said it might have a better idea. I'm less close to that project now. But hey, yeah, it's

1019
01:14:13,120 --> 01:14:18,720
good to hear it coming out. And like, I hope, I hope if anything that attitude can spread to new

1020
01:14:18,720 --> 01:14:22,720
chains that are coming out, because like, you know, how do you create success? Well,

1021
01:14:22,720 --> 01:14:26,240
you need something that people want, right? You need product, product market fit. And,

1022
01:14:26,240 --> 01:14:31,840
you know, we've tried a thousand different kinds of types of derivatives and that hasn't worked out

1023
01:14:31,840 --> 01:14:36,480
so well. So somebody's going to have to come up with a product for these consensus engines.

1024
01:14:37,280 --> 01:14:44,160
Yeah, I think like generally the, the, I don't know, I think we could try to take a, like for

1025
01:14:44,160 --> 01:14:50,880
example, we could stop everything, right? And just take 20 shots on goal, each a different product

1026
01:14:50,880 --> 01:14:56,960
that we try to make into a successful app, right? Because we can build apps, right? Like as, as

1027
01:14:56,960 --> 01:15:03,040
I see L. Sure. Sure can. You know, maybe we build a high yield stablecoin, right? Ideally not

1028
01:15:03,040 --> 01:15:08,640
of the kind that has preceded us. Maybe we try some kind of interesting, a purpose platform,

1029
01:15:08,640 --> 01:15:15,600
some, you know, wallet redesign or some UX redesign. I generally feel like that is not the

1030
01:15:15,600 --> 01:15:21,840
best way. Like I don't view our jobs necessarily as that. I view it as really sort of setting this

1031
01:15:21,840 --> 01:15:28,640
bedrock of a vision and a place that we're all going that people want to go, or at least it's

1032
01:15:28,640 --> 01:15:33,440
divisive, meaning people can say, I don't want to be on that train and get the fuck out of the way,

1033
01:15:33,440 --> 01:15:38,080
or they can be all in, right? That's really my goal because then we have people who are bought

1034
01:15:38,080 --> 01:15:45,840
in who will create those things. But I think like the, I just saw that Mel said thanks for jumping

1035
01:15:45,840 --> 01:15:53,840
on. We really appreciate it. Like, like it's over. Is it over? Okay. We're close. Okay. Yeah. I think,

1036
01:15:55,600 --> 01:16:03,760
okay, so it's over. Yeah. Yeah. So I think like that's really where you start, right? But there's a

1037
01:16:03,760 --> 01:16:09,280
great analysis of this called a protocol market fit that I highly recommend reading. It talks about,

1038
01:16:09,280 --> 01:16:14,080
you know, Ethereum had no use cases, right? It was a vision and people bought into that vision

1039
01:16:14,080 --> 01:16:19,600
and built it out of nothing, right? It wasn't Vitalik. He did barely did anything, right? He

1040
01:16:19,600 --> 01:16:26,960
vented some protocol and like, you know, ERPs. And like, I want that for Cosmos. That is really

1041
01:16:26,960 --> 01:16:31,840
what I think is missing right now. And what does Cosmos stand for? What is that if Cosmos was

1042
01:16:31,840 --> 01:16:36,720
massively successful? Like, what would the world look like? Like the most successful it ever could

1043
01:16:36,720 --> 01:16:41,280
be? Like what it would the world look like? And like, is that something that you want to dedicate

1044
01:16:41,280 --> 01:16:48,000
your career to? Right? If not, what are we doing? Well, I mean, I think it's pretty simple, right?

1045
01:16:48,000 --> 01:16:55,520
Isn't it that Cosmos is the so fuck all of the fuck all of everything. Sorry, I'm not go developer

1046
01:16:55,520 --> 01:17:01,360
either. So fuck the go programming language. The I don't like it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry,

1047
01:17:01,360 --> 01:17:06,720
everybody. But the point that what does Cosmos stands for? It stands for an actually federated

1048
01:17:07,520 --> 01:17:11,600
central architecture. That's it. It's the only player in town. Like you say, it's the only one

1049
01:17:11,600 --> 01:17:16,240
in production that stood the test of time. It's the only one that seems like it has legs. It's the

1050
01:17:16,240 --> 01:17:21,600
only one that regardless of incentivization and whatever in teams feeling like they're

1051
01:17:21,600 --> 01:17:26,560
poaching each other or whatever, people connect to each other by IVC and the shit kind of keeps

1052
01:17:26,560 --> 01:17:31,680
trucking, right? We haven't figured out the economics of it. But it's the only game in town

1053
01:17:31,680 --> 01:17:37,200
that like you say has a TCP IP like quality that is not based on decentralized bridge. So it's not

1054
01:17:37,200 --> 01:17:42,000
based on centralized bridges and is actually widely deployed. There are other options, sure,

1055
01:17:42,000 --> 01:17:45,280
but IBC is currently the only one that you would really look at and say,

1056
01:17:46,000 --> 01:17:52,480
that is proven that right there. Well, and if we can get everyone in the ecosystem to repeat

1057
01:17:52,480 --> 01:17:56,720
just what you said in their own words of what that means, we would already be in a much better

1058
01:17:56,720 --> 01:18:01,600
place. Because it comes back down to what is decentralization or to your point,

1059
01:18:01,600 --> 01:18:06,160
Mac, what is the point? What is the bit of decentralization that matters? Because you're

1060
01:18:06,160 --> 01:18:10,480
talking about like hub routing and stuff. The bit, this bit of decentralization is not the bit

1061
01:18:10,480 --> 01:18:15,120
that I give a shit about. There are other things that are more important and security and yada,

1062
01:18:15,120 --> 01:18:18,480
yada, yada. But it's like, what's the bit of decentralization that actually matters? And

1063
01:18:18,480 --> 01:18:22,800
what is the meaning of decentralization? Decentralization of what? Decentralization of

1064
01:18:22,800 --> 01:18:29,280
what is the question we never ask enough, right? And it's like, if you're talking about the right

1065
01:18:29,280 --> 01:18:37,600
to associate or not associate or be sovereign or not, over decision making, right? And because

1066
01:18:37,600 --> 01:18:42,400
these are consensus engines, they're all about on some level automated decision making. Again,

1067
01:18:42,400 --> 01:18:49,120
maybe the federated model is as decentralized as you can get. Maybe that's the functional limit of

1068
01:18:49,120 --> 01:18:59,040
an actually functional distributed architecture, right? Where people do have control over decisions

1069
01:18:59,040 --> 01:19:04,160
and stuff that does relate to things that they are invested in, right? These are just giant

1070
01:19:04,160 --> 01:19:09,280
cooperatives. They're just giant membership organizations effectively for stakers. Fine.

1071
01:19:09,280 --> 01:19:14,480
If that's the functional limit of this software, then again, we don't know that from the theory yet,

1072
01:19:14,480 --> 01:19:19,120
but that puts IBC in a great position and it puts a lot of the other solutions out there

1073
01:19:19,680 --> 01:19:26,080
looking a bit shabby. The rest of it, I don't know, but I know that still in my bitter twisted

1074
01:19:26,080 --> 01:19:30,560
heart, I'm very bullish on the design of IBC and the ideal behind it. And I think that is kind of

1075
01:19:30,560 --> 01:19:33,760
what that's supposed to be the point of Cosmos, I think. I think that's what the one thing we

1076
01:19:33,760 --> 01:19:40,880
have figured out about Cosmos, right? That we can agree on, maybe. Yeah. It's almost like if you took

1077
01:19:40,880 --> 01:19:48,080
away all the tech today, like my last, right? If you took away everything, right? Let's say we

1078
01:19:48,080 --> 01:19:53,680
deleted all the code, everything, deleted the ICF, right? We deleted all the applications,

1079
01:19:53,680 --> 01:20:00,880
Osmos is, it's all gone. It's just us, right? Like, would you rebuild Cosmos? Like, would you want to

1080
01:20:00,880 --> 01:20:06,960
rebuild the vision of Cosmos again, right? Like, is it strong enough and do you believe in it enough

1081
01:20:06,960 --> 01:20:12,080
that it should exist in the world, right? This concept of an open internet, right? Or an internet

1082
01:20:12,080 --> 01:20:19,120
of blockchains, which is another way of saying the open internet, in my opinion, where things are

1083
01:20:19,120 --> 01:20:26,160
app chains, right? They're their own sovereign, fully self-owned economic systems that are all

1084
01:20:26,160 --> 01:20:31,600
interoperable seamlessly with each other, right? And it's all user-owned and governed by users

1085
01:20:32,160 --> 01:20:38,720
and completely censorship resistant. You can't shut it down. Like, would you want to rebuild that,

1086
01:20:38,720 --> 01:20:43,440
right? I think like the answer for me is like, yes, that is the only thing I would want to build,

1087
01:20:43,440 --> 01:20:51,760
actually, if I was building a blockchain. And so like, yeah. Like, that's what gets me excited,

1088
01:20:51,760 --> 01:20:54,800
right? And I want people around who like feel the same way.

1089
01:20:54,800 --> 01:20:58,560
I'm so pissed I didn't come up with the idea for that hat. I gotta get rid of this whole

1090
01:20:58,560 --> 01:21:03,680
validator thing. It would have paid for like, fucking four years. Like, it could be, it could be,

1091
01:21:03,680 --> 01:21:09,280
it's like, it's both on point, and it can also be sarcastic if you want to be sarcastic. It's

1092
01:21:09,280 --> 01:21:19,440
like such niche. God damn it. It's caused problems with my social life. That's part of the beauty.

1093
01:21:19,440 --> 01:21:27,680
Well, you can't have that hat, but you can put Rama's comment on the hat because as we all know,

1094
01:21:27,680 --> 01:21:34,560
this is a big rub. If somebody comments in your YouTube, you own the intellectual property. That's

1095
01:21:34,560 --> 01:21:41,040
how that works. I am a copyright lawyer. Don't look it up. Megs, any final things you want to,

1096
01:21:41,040 --> 01:21:52,480
any final, final note? Make Adam great.