Episode 141: Skip is Dead, Long Live Skip

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
been the same since.

(00:01):
Well, I don't know. There's him in it. Silk Road.
I thought everything was there.
There's everything on Silk Road. Yeah.
No, that you use Silk Road.
Sure. Yeah.
Only for him.
No, no.
Drugs.
Welcome to Game of Modes,
a weekly podcast from independent

(00:22):
Valorant teams.
Welcome to Game of Modes,
a weekly podcast from independent Valorant teams.
Coming in every week, fighting the good fight,
doing this podcast, despite illness.
That's about it, really, actually, at the moment.
Mainly, it's mainly illness.
It's mainly a lot of illness,

(00:42):
Northern Hemisphere, first world problems.
And, you know, for our American listeners,
it's the end of the world as we know it.
And we feel OK.
Lukewarm.
Just Lukewarm. Yeah.
I was about to say fire.
That was like, I can't even bring myself
to complete the REM joke because it's fine.
Would be an overstatement, I think.

(01:03):
We're feeling, we're feeling what we're feeling.
I'm keeping an eye on the dolphins,
see if they suddenly reduce their numbers.
Yeah. So, yeah, well, I guess we've,
yeah, a lot has happened, a lot hasn't happened.
And as as observed already in the chat,
12 minutes delay, no Nile, no guest.

(01:26):
Might as well skip the show.
You know, so, yeah, a few viewers will have worked out
that for once we were actually all punchy.
We were.
We were.
We were sitting over at the dolphins.
We were really actually going,
ah, who said the link?

(01:47):
No, no, checking side.
When can everybody remember, like, in 2022,
were we any more organized?
You know, when the green,
when things were more green, were we more organized
or have we always been this disorganized?
I think we've always been this disorganized.
I think we fast in the disorganization back then.
We reveled in it.
And now it feels kind of embarrassing.

(02:08):
Yeah. Yeah, maybe that's it.
Maybe you have to knuckle down
and have things more ship shape, you know,
in times of tough.
Well, also when times are increasingly
just becoming stable coins, right?
Yeah, no shit, right?
It's all just like,
like I look into my future and I see,
I see basically stable coins
and what's that stupid ass

(02:31):
Eigen layer stuff.
More interconnected,
interconnectivity of stable coins.
Yeah, exactly.
Like there's like a difference between IBC,
which is like connecting things and just like,
ah, no, homogenize everything into one big blob.
That would be cool.
Our moderator is here, our moderator,
Rama who has a little little wrench icon.

(02:54):
More green portfolio has never been more green.
Not quite true, but it's more green than 2223.
Mine too, actually.
The things aren't bad, right?
I mean, they're not.
This is this is pretty steady state.
Like this is pretty.
Well, yeah, I guess the thing is like green green in the context of.
So ironically, as an individual, right,
I have like some long hold random crypto
from very long time ago, atom, theory and blah, blah, blah,

(03:17):
quite just knocking around.
Not big numbers, but just a little bit.
And that's that's quite green, actually.
So fair point.
It's just that as a company,
everything that we were holding was all of the cosmos.
That is not green.
No, that was mostly not.
So, you know, there's that.
Anyway, we were going to talk to skip about the cosmos, but that's.

(03:41):
Well, according to Rama, skip ditched us for being in an X space.
I mean, there's there's really celebrities now, you know,
we knew when they were small and like unknown and and, you know,
kind of smelled funny and all that kind of stuff.
And now they got lambos or driving around that.

(04:02):
They got that I.C.F.
money just fucking falling on the.
It's not a good time for a bullshit.
Going to wait in the lobby for the liver.
Exactly. Exactly right.
We go.
Well, hey, look, you know,
friend, friend of the show, artifacts as predicted.
And it said, hold me to it that 2025 is going to be up only.

(04:23):
Actually, I think it was Pocotu that said that, but, but many friends of the show
who does this, this is not financial advice and doesn't mean anything,
but said it's going to be a good year, which means that we are only ever
one more role of the dice as validators from also waiting for the limbo.
Limbo, Lambo, limbo.

(04:44):
Limbo Lambo.
Limbo says about right, though.
What? For one role of the dice away from limbo boys.
Herdatory.
As well, it's 2022.
And it's not but a fun experience.
But I it's I'm not going to get the banner up, but it's we've we've obviously
just filed tax returns and stuff, because then the tax year here is like around now.

(05:08):
And when Juno went up to 50 cents, we might we sold some of our
we sold some liquid Juno, we still had some stake in wars and stuff.
Shout out to Bendy, actually, who's in the chat.
It's like, like, have you seen what's going on?
So, so good advice, very good advice.

(05:30):
Yeah, it is.
It was financial advice and it was good.
But then like we had to have the conversation with the account that's being
like, oh, by the way, just so you know, like when when next year's return,
we actually did sell some of those never like we're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wow, you've realized a massive loss.
They just because they've got it on their thing, they just looked at it.
They're like, oh, you did sell you the business did sell that's some that's a

(05:55):
well, well, it's I mean, it's better to have that loss on the book.
So I guess it's just like, yeah, we're legends smashed it lads.
But yeah, speaking of the amorphous blob,
or royalty has arrived as royalty arrived.
Yes, let's make him wait in the lobby now.

(06:18):
Yeah, or we can proceed directly to the the film.
Also, I just want to say Rama's comment businesses bankrupt personally rich AF.
That's almost a drill tweet.
That's that's amazing.
That's I mean, that's what you want to run though.
Yeah, that's how you keep it.
So you keep the taxes down, baby.

(06:41):
This is is this is this is the energy of America right now.
Businesses bankrupt personally rich as well.
It's like a president.
Kind of sounds like.
Max gives up.
Wow.
In the private chat.
All right.
I'm letting them in.
There he is.
Look at are you to first now?
What would you would you have to do?
You had to do something?

(07:01):
No, I was just goalposting Cosmos.
You got to get me gets me distracted.
My goodness.
Look at you.
How was things, man?
It's good to see you.
Things are good.
Did you happen?
Did you happen to like walk into a huge volcano at some point in late December,
early January, like with this?

(07:22):
Did you know what you're getting into?
And is it more or less than you thought?
But by getting into it with the acquisition.
No, the web.
Yeah, you're coming in.
Yeah, the acquisition.
Well, the weather is very cold right now.
It is.
Something not.
So yeah, I think we had some idea.
We knew that there was years of dysfunction that we had to fix and reverse trends.

(07:48):
And we're doing that, but it's taking a lot of work.
Huge amount of work.
Yeah, I bet.
Sorry for the tough question around the bad.
I was just kind of not actually kind of kidding around, but.
Oh, man, that's great.
So yeah, so Magnus is here.
So what's your role now?
What's what's your official title at ICF?

(08:08):
So technically, I'm not at the ICF, right?
So so one of the ways that this went down was basically skip was acquired by the ICF.
Okay.
And what was formed out of that was the ICL, which is Interchain Labs,
which is a U.S. based entity that basically hosts, it does everything.

(08:29):
It does all of the cosmos development.
It does hub stuff.
It does all of Skip's previous products.
It's this much larger company that is essentially tasked with growing cosmos at all cost.
And the ICF no longer has any operational capacity.
He used to try to do a couple of these things, but now it's all the people who basically did

(08:52):
anything except serve as a board member have moved into the ICL with us.
And the ICF is basically in charge primarily just funding the ICL.
So how many how many people did you pick up then as a part of that?
How far how big did the ICL grow from the skip days?
So most of the people that did not move over and were let go.

(09:14):
There wasn't much operations there basically, right?
Is that what you're saying?
Basically, there's I think about 20 people ish.
Oh, and we took over about five or six.
And yeah, mostly on the marketing side and the growth side.
And also on the IVC engineering side.
So like Yermann, Susanna, Aditya, Serdar, those are all folks that we really liked.

(09:39):
And we think are excellent and continuing on IVC engineering.
Yeah.
And people that remain at the ICF are primarily in charge of regulatory compliance and being on the
ICF board, which includes like funding is funding and all that stuff on that.
That's still there funding the ICL.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
It still is the excuse me that the pool of funds, right?

(10:02):
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So is the ICL generate revenue?
I guess because skip did.
So does the ICL generate revenue?
I guess it does.
It can if we wanted to.
Yeah.
That's not really the goal, I would say is to generate revenue.
The goal is to grow the ecosystem, which solves all those questions anyway for us.

(10:24):
I mean, we're huge holders of Adam, right?
And we're huge holders of other ecosystem tokens.
And so generally our strategy is like juice the cosmos ecosystem as much as fucking possible
over the course of four years.
Pump the bags.
Basically.
Not necessarily.

(10:45):
I don't know what bags you hold.
We're deep in cosmos, baby.
I don't know Adam though.
Well, yeah.
I mean, that's one goal.
That's the finance.
You do have any asset?
Mm-mm.
But that's too late.
That's right where you're going.
Yeah, that's too late.
Maybe now.
Now that.
What do you mean?
Yeah.
So what do you mean you're too late?
It's like all time lows-ish right now.

(11:05):
Yeah.
Now it's a perfect time to buy in.
No, I met one when I first got involved in Cosmos.
Adam has already, Cosmos was already, you know,
it was already in the 30s and 40s.
So I never really got into it.
And then frankly, frankly, I didn't think it was a token worth buying
at 10 or at five or at six, because I didn't believe the leadership had any

(11:26):
clue what the fuck they were doing.
And I buy teams.
I don't buy tokens, man.
So now.
That's what's basically.
Now you're all in.
No.
All in.
Well, it depends on how this podcast goes.
Remortage the house.
Really.
Depends on how you shop on time.
But you should have done that.
Screw the business.
Screw the business personally.
Business bankrupt, personally rich.
That's the t-shirt, by the way.

(11:48):
I mean, I mean, I do, I do need it to clarify one thing,
which is our purpose is not token go up like only right.
Our purpose is.
It shouldn't be.
It shouldn't be.
Yeah.
Our purpose is to, is to basically make this vision of Cosmos a reality.
And it was a vision.
It is a vision, right?
It's a vision of an Internet of Blockchains,

(12:08):
a decentralized Internet standard, a TCE, a decentralized version of TCP IP,
which we call IBC.
And to make that a viable option in the world and for history.
And we want to do that.
You've always wanted to do that.
We've tried to do that for years.
And this just gives us a much larger platform to do that.

(12:29):
And, you know, around the time when we were considering this acquisition,
we received multiple billion dollar plus term sheets to start our own ecosystem,
because we viewed Cosmos as failing.
And we turned those away and decided to do a much smaller thing for us personally,
I guess, which is the acquisition, because I actually think this could be like the most

(12:49):
amazing story, like comeback story in the history of crypto.
Like I genuinely believe that.
And we have like a lot going for us.
And a lot of the fundamentals are already there for us.
So I'm curious, following off on that,
or is the plan to make Cosmos the hub again, like to have IBC go through the Cosmos at that point?
Yeah, basically, yeah.

(13:13):
Yeah, like the idea of the Cosmos hub originally, right, in the Cosmos White Paper
was for it to be basically a service provider and a interconnectivity provider for all of
the Internet of blockchains.
It hasn't done anything.

(13:34):
It hasn't moved at all since it was first created.
And so, of course, it could never be anything, let alone that.
It's just been a basic Cosmos SDK chain with a couple random things added on bells and whistles.
And so, like the first thing is like giving it a real product roadmap to actually become what it
was designed to be and also the realization that actually the hub can be an incredible service

(14:00):
offering to change in the ecosystem.
Like the thinking of, oh, the hub is going to take or control or things like that.
That's not the right way of thinking.
It's the hub can accelerate the Cosmos ecosystem because at the end of the day,
like Cosmos lives and dies by what people perceive Adam to be, right?
People come in, they think Adam is the center because of just years and years of brand association.

(14:25):
And then they see like Adam is not used for anything.
They immediately lose confidence and they leave.
And so, I think that's important to reestablish.
And then on the like routing perspective, turning Cosmos 7 to this router,
we need to do that via like services versus enforcement.
So, we can't change the IBC protocol to mandate this, right?
We don't want to do that.

(14:46):
It's ridiculous.
It's open source.
People just change it back.
I think what we have to do is what we did with Skip Go, which is essentially build
incredible suite of services that is like next level and next generation that change,
like need absolutely wants 10X is their application performance in order to sort of route
their flow through the hub.

(15:07):
So, is that going to mean a lot of outreach to teams basically then?
Because that's going to demand teams to ultimately, rather than on Genesis Day,
hey, we're going to set up these channels to Osmosis and Axelar, you're going to be like,
hey, I have a better idea.
Set up to Cosmos and then wrap through there and then you have one manage.
As a real heir, love the idea to manage less.

(15:29):
Love it.
But I'm curious what the current thought is there.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
The idea of the product is if you're a chain or you're a sovereign app chain or blockchain
via one single IBC connection to the hub, you get everything.
You get all external assets from every single ecosystem, anything you would ever want.

(15:50):
You get distribution of your token and assets into every other ecosystem.
And all of that happens within 30 seconds.
So any token anywhere 30 seconds in or out and all you need is one IBC connection to the hub
and it's completely free.
Meaning everything is set up for you.
All the relays, all the infrastructure, all the bridge relationships,

(16:11):
all the different versions of ETH are combined into one version,
all the different versions of soul.
You just don't think about this stuff anymore.
Honestly, I don't know if you described the Cosmos Hub or if you just described Skip Go
that existed before you guys were acquired because that was a bit of the vision of what
you guys were building and have built.
Right?
I just used it last night to move a bunch of shit.

(16:33):
And like I don't, behind the scenes, I don't give a shit if it goes through the hub or not.
Right?
So I understand that the IBC web is annoying, but that's an operator issue.
That's not necessarily a user issue at some point.
If assuming it's working.
Ooh, I would push back really far on that.
We manage, I think over a thousand channels right now.

(16:53):
You're an operator.
And we, right.
Well, let me extrapolate.
When we have an issue, we hear like firestorms, right?
And with a thousand channels, it becomes difficult to manage that.
If I only had to manage all the Cosmos ones, which I think we're on like 35 channels in Cosmos,
God, that'd be so nice.
God, it'd be so nice.
Yeah. I guess let's say 70 then because it'd be in Cosmos.

(17:16):
Sure. Sure. Sure.
But this is all about granted.
We're early here.
Need to grow the ecosystem.
Need to incubate blah, blah, blah, blah, blah first, right?
That's a given.
But the whole premise, so, and right, I guess my, let me just say,
take a step back and say, like, I guess my point I'm going to make is that

(17:36):
isn't this all about a failure of economics, right?
Or economic design.
Because the problem you're describing, surely, is a problem.
Like demonstrably is why we started running relays and we stepped back from it
because we saw very, very quickly that our cost and complexity on relays was going to completely
out, was going to dwarf the energy that we put into validation.

(17:58):
And even validation is, you know, the moment not necessarily profitable in the Cosmos, right?
But that's where we are, right?
But that's not where we were designed to be.
The hope was that this ecosystem, you know, not every change can succeed, right?
Not every startup succeeds.
But like whatever that percentage is, like 10% of chains or something,

(18:20):
would form an ecosystem of projects with value that users want to interact with.
And that those associations would pay for themselves, right?
It's necessarily a market-based approach because that's the underpinning economically of most of
the crypto economy that was designed into the Cosmos, right?
So I suppose my question is, like, I can see why that argument makes a lot of sense from where we are now.

(18:48):
But in a sense, isn't that abandoning, like, and again,
surely, tell me that I'm an idiot and say, yes, it is what we're doing and that's fine, fuck off.
But isn't it abandoning a little bit of, like, the design vision, which was this inter-association
that would pay for itself in exchange for ease, right?

(19:10):
It's kind of a...
Well, I think it was originally designed...
It's an important part of the vision, right?
That there isn't a centrality nexus in the ecosystem that's designed in like that.
And we've already seen centralizing efforts, like Osmosis, right?
We've always known, as soon as Osmosis came along, it was a centralizing force, right?

(19:32):
Some of this stuff is inevitable, I suppose.
Yeah.
Well, so sorry, go ahead, Meg.
I'll let you answer.
Oh, yeah.
I think it's a really good question, right?
And I think something that people have struggled with for a long time, right?
Should we be this decentralized?
Should we have no leadership?
Should we have no central token?
Should we have no central chain?

(19:53):
Should it just be what it is, right?
And expand naturally.
I think the reality is you don't lose...
Like, there are properties of the interchain that I think you want to keep.
And some that I think the reason we were acquired is there's ones that we want to get rid of, right?
We want to get rid of this feeling that there's nothing really driving it forward, right?

(20:17):
Who's innovating?
Who's building?
Like, who's in control?
Who's the one managing ecosystem-wide relationships?
Who's the one advocating for the ecosystem as a whole?
Like, people didn't...
People, I think, didn't have that.
And then they started to feel like, well, actually, we really did want that.
And we wanted those things because, like, the results show for themselves.

(20:37):
So I think the reality as well from how people see Cosmos is they need a home base.
They need something that they can associate as the thing initially, especially if they're new.
And for everyone that is Adam, like, very few people come in and are like,
oh, the home base here is Juno or Osmosis.

(21:00):
These are great things that people then go on to discover.
Usually, they start with Adam because, you know, for better or for worse, it's distributed everywhere.
It's on every centralized exchange.
It's cross-listed as Cosmos, you know, and it's so central to the history.
And so I think what we realized is, you know, the tech will always stay decentralized.

(21:21):
And you can always create a direct IBC connection to anyone, right?
And you can always do that, like, sure, do it.
You can create often an island and not be IBC connected to anyone and call yourself whatever you want.
But when it comes to building an ecosystem, right, like an ecosystem is a group of people
that and products and builders that have a culture that believe in something that are pushing it forward,

(21:47):
that needs a central point of funding, pushing, development, you know, effort.
And in order to do that, you have to have a central point because there's nothing to rally around otherwise.
Like, if I'm pushing, you know, Osmosis and you're pushing Juno and someone else is pushing Inisha,
like, you're not really going to have a very value something and you're going to miss out on a lot of

(22:11):
opportunities that are like ecosystem wide, right? And so I think, yeah, we chose Adam
because it makes the most sense. It's not like I, you know, had some deep, strange, like, affection
towards Adam in the beginning. It's the thing that makes sense. It is the thing that I'm talking about.
And the thesis now for this version of the ICF is, well, if you run it in this way, right,

(22:36):
if we make Adam extremely central and we make the Cosmos Hub very relevant and very powerful
and very attractive, that that will actually grow Cosmos at a rate that is significantly faster than
what we were trying before. So I dig the vision for sure. How does that relate to ICS? And what's

(22:57):
sticking out in my mind is the neutron halt, which lasted like 28 hours. ICS right now is a risk factor.
And if the Cosmos Hub becomes this central hub of glory, excuse my cynicism there.
Glory hub. It's a glory hub. Glory hub. You know, I think I've seen that one.

(23:24):
Then that risk factor isn't good. Like you won't reduce risk as much as possible.
Yeah. How does it continue? Should it continue?
No, it should be deleted off of the Cosmos Hub code base, I believe. So I mean, I have this take.
The crowd goes wild. There's thousands of people cheering. You can hear them outside the window.

(23:48):
The people who have people are getting out of their cars. They're cheering. They're cheering.
Max, Max, Max, Max. It's really going crazy. This is what I hear 24 seven even though it's
making any noises. They're burning an effigy of ICS. It's just like a string of spaghetti
bullshit. Like, oh, this is wonderful. Sorry. I might just nip out and go join them.

(24:11):
Yeah. So I have this thesis or this take, I guess, which I think at this point has been pretty
well validated and I feel quite confident in which is security as a product is a complete failure
and a huge red herring or like a straw man, meaning if it's easy to go down, it's easy to
rationalize, but it does not scale and it's proven to not scale. I view this as like the

(24:35):
crux of what's destroying Ethereum and has made huge impact on negative impact on Ethereum.
I view it as sort of what kept Polkadot in this like languishing
mire despite having a very strong token and being founded by one of the co-founders of the ETH.
Security just doesn't work. I think ICS could have worked for maybe 20 chains tops, but

(24:58):
everything about it didn't scale. The validator relationships did not scale. The economics
did not scale. The amount of security that the hub had to offer did not scale. The security risks
for validators did not scale. If you imagine running like a thousand ICS chains and some
absolute chunk one does something slashable and you're slashed across everything, it's a ridiculous

(25:24):
system. You're taking downside risk for no upside risk and the security and the network isn't even
increasing because the math has been done on this. It's linear. You can't secure it anyway.
You can't secure it with pure money anyway. You can only secure it with social consensus that's

(25:48):
been demonstrated, I guess, economically. It's just not an exciting product. Security is not
really something users care about that much, at least until they know that after their funds are
safe. They don't care until they do care a lot. Of course. You can design systems that are safe.

(26:09):
Look at Noble. What is the economic security of Noble? Zero, right? Is it safe?
That's a strong statement. The economic security of Noble is assumed to be very, very strong. Now,
that is an assumption. You are right. The assumption behind Noble is that if there is any

(26:34):
foul play, it can be reverted because it's essentially a closed walk garden. It's not
decentralized in any meaningful form. What I meant to say is, I don't think Noble is insecure,
but its economic security is zero from the point of tendermen, meaning there are no tokens. There's

(26:56):
no economic security. It's not on PSS or ICS, although I know a lot of people...
But that's because permission blockjaded.
Well, yeah, but for example, let's say two-thirds of the validator set decided to go rogue. They could
fuck with the chain or do certain things. For example, they could send USDC to an address,

(27:22):
which then immediately dumps it for cash somewhere else or USD. It's very hard to unwind
to these things. Technically, Circle can step in and say, shut it all down. It's over. But in
practice, that's not really a security system. I think it's even the threat of that that secures
the chain. Yeah, but I guess it all comes down to probability in the end. What is the probability

(27:46):
that the validators would be able to do that without... And get away with any sum of money
that was meaningful enough to validate the desire to do it, to not collapse Noble, to not collapse
their business, and actually make out from a centralized exchange. The probability is zero,
therefore, they're not going to do it. It all comes down to incentives. And actually, again,

(28:10):
the incentives as a part of the security mechanism is very, very strong in the case of Noble as a
result. But that is tied to the fact that it comes down to being a pseudo-regulated asset. So it has
this... There's the endogenous network, and then there's this exogenous security that's, in this
case, not economic, but is implied by the presence of Circle and their backers who happen to be

(28:36):
centralized exchanges. The one group of people who potentially we need to look the other way for
a validator to make away with the SAC with the dollar sign on it, or the SAC with the USDC sign
on it. I think you could explain all these things. And if it happens, it happens. And I think the
reality is Noble is secure. I hope people won't take what I said previously out of context.

(29:01):
Noble is secure because it has a secure set of trustworthy validators that are known actors.
And it has an organization watchdogging it. And it didn't need HUB security to do that.
And that's all to say. I think there are other things the HUB can offer that are much more
exciting than security. And I think security was basically the only option the HUB had when it was

(29:26):
fighting against this minimalist vision, which is don't put anything on the HUB really, just try to
push all that to the sidelines. But I just think that's ridiculous. The minimalism thing is the
biggest, it's such a sigh-up that we need to get away from.
Yeah. I want to ask some questions before we get too deep in these other things. You have to answer

(29:50):
these. I'm just curious. And I don't know if you've ever answered these before related to just the
ACK and just kind of all that stuff. Who courted who? How did this start?
I think Barry courted Matt.
I met my girlfriend about a year ago.
No, no, no.
No, no. How did this conversation...
I'm sure you guys were working together, right? Because I see up obviously... I mean, you guys

(30:13):
are a great team, right? So I'm sure that you guys had long relationship and those kind of things.
But when did it turn into... Oh, I thought I was Barry showing up behind your head.
But at some point, somebody said, wow, this is... Why are we doing this? It's two separate firms,
right? So how did that conversation happen? And what was there? Was there a turning point

(30:34):
or like an event that made that go, everybody go, this is stupid. We should be doing something
bigger here.
Yeah. So I guess a couple assumptions that you made, I guess, are not fully correct.
We had zero relationship with the ICF.
That's how I roll.
Didn't know anyone there.
Really?
Why the fuck not?
No idea who's there. The only person we sort of knew was there was Ethan Buckman.

(30:55):
Yeah.
And that's important for the next part of the story.
So Ethan came to the office one day and asked us to be the maintainers of the Cosmos Hub
under some contract with the ICF.
And we said, absolutely not. Because we didn't want to be the next in line for being the next

(31:20):
informal, like these people who take all the responsibility and ultimately don't actually
have the power to change things at the highest level where things change as needed. And we
were on our way out. We were on our way to build our own ecosystem. That's what we were thinking.
We had all these ideas of how Cosmos could be better. And as I started to explain that,
and I was like, look man, this is what we're actually doing. It was like, well,

(31:43):
what if you just did that at the ICF? And I said, also, no, there's no chance that's going to happen.
You know, we started to talk a little bit more. At some point, I was like, you know what?
What if we just send them a proposal for full acquisition where with everything we want,

(32:03):
meaning we get full control over this stuff, we have full responsibility, we can make all the
decisions we need to make, and we would just make this thing rip and turn it into a startup again.
And we sent that sort of like jokingly because we thought there was no way that this old
organization would agree to that. And they came back and they said, even though I support it,

(32:28):
like I would do this. And then it was very hard. The rest of the board did not support it initially,
or took some convincing. We had to fly out to meet them. We talked to them extensively. And
as we thought about it more and more, we were like, wait, this actually could be really good.
We could do a lot with what the ICF has. And everyone was telling us that we were

(32:52):
talking to investors. Everyone's telling us we're so stupid. Like investors literally
got on call and was like, you guys are retarded. This is the worst idea that you've ever had.
They thought we were like losing it or something. They were like, why would you ever do this?
Like you have an opportunity to build an incredible new ecosystem, and you're just going to inherit

(33:12):
this horrible slog of a mess. And it kind of, as people did that, I mean, this is a toxic
trade of mine. I got more and more excited about the idea. I was kind of like, well, you, like,
we can do this, right? We can do this. Like we could just rip this thing apart. We could rebuild
it into something incredible. We could like go completely product focused on a Cosmos ecosystem,

(33:36):
figure out what the problems are, attract in the right people, sell a vision,
or create a vision and build it into something amazing. And we eventually won over the rest
of the board and we completed the acquisition probably around December.
I think, well, two things. One, so is you guys. And which is kind of how I thought

(34:01):
that conversation would have gone. Knowing the leadership there and I think just the swirl of,
I don't know, I have a real problem with people who are in power with egos, but no ability to
deliver anything or don't have a vision, but don't want to listen to vision. And then kind of, anyway.
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

(34:24):
people there that were great. And especially the board, like, I thought it would never be
successful because I was like, there's no way that these guys would agree to do to take these
children and like put them in charge of this huge foundation. And eventually they were like,
send it, like, let's just do it. And so like, I have huge respect for that shift in perspective.

(34:44):
Yeah, it didn't come across. You didn't have anything but that. And then I think when we've
talked in the past too, like, I think. Before you go too far, can I interrupt?
Have you met much resistance from outside, like the ICF? Yeah, really.
Huge amount of resistance. Yeah.
Interesting. From a validative perspective, like the ICF, I don't want to say that the enemy,

(35:08):
but they were kind of the enemy. And so getting you guys in has felt like more hopeful.
And so it's interesting. Was it more users or validators or where was the resistance from?
Other teams? I would say primarily other teams. I'm not going to name names, but a lot of teams
cut off relationships with us after we told them that we want to do this. Because one,

(35:31):
they view the existence of Adam as competitive to their token. Or two, they view themselves as
co-opting the narrative of being the Cosmos Hub. And I think like the last is, we definitely didn't
make any friends with our investors. We didn't return. We didn't launch a token.

(35:51):
And so we didn't return some huge multiple. And we try to explain that this is extremely
values-based. And this is just not what we want to do with our lives. And we want to work on this
thing. But still, I think the expectation was that we could have been a team that built a
multi-billion dollar token. But we made a lot of friends along the way. We made friends, I think,

(36:16):
with a lot of the Adam people. We did also create enemies ourselves. So we cut off funding to all
of these organizations that were fed on the ICF flow. So strange law of binary, confio, informal.

(36:40):
We just cut this off completely, all the money. And it was in the order of $30 million plus per
year. And so that obviously was difficult. I mean, that makes sense, right? It's no different than
any other acquisition. If you're using somebody who's a third party to do a specific role and you
then you acquire somebody to do that role, those vendors are gone. I mean, there's nothing surprising

(37:02):
about that. Or they should be surprised around that. They might be unhappy about it. But if they
would see that acquisition, they'd be like, well, that's the end of our relationship here. It's
time to go find the next one. Yeah. We just decided that in order to do this, we just have to in-house
everything. We need to have Cosmos SDK development, Comet development, Cosmos Hub development,
IBC development all happen in one place. Yeah. It was weird when this announcement came out. I was

(37:28):
both shocked and then totally, of course, at the same time. Because we've always talked,
over our relationship, one thing that I think I mentioned was you guys are such a good development
team, you have to diversify in terms of ecosystems. You really need to have something that we've

(37:48):
tried to do. What's these try to do? And others in terms of saying, I can't have all my eggs in
this basket because there's just too much that is out of my own control to know whether that
basket is going to be successful or not. And I think I said the same thing to you. And then that
acquisition hit and the news hit, and we were talking about it in the channel, and I wrote,

(38:09):
I had to go search for it. I wrote, those skipped guys are true believers. You've got to give them
that. And I think that's what I'm hearing from you guys. And that's probably not what your investors
wanted to hear at Skip. But holy shit, there's no greater, I mean, honestly, if anyone questions
this move, you have to look at the just the cultural aspect of building an organization

(38:33):
like Skip and then dedicating it, dedicating it to the ICF. Like, you cannot say, oh, this is like
a cash grab or like, they're not going to be in it for the long haul. Bullshit, man. This is like
the most and your investors are right. They're right. But but but but at the same time, you said,

(38:54):
I don't you said like, well, they wanted you to build a $30 billion token or blah, blah, blah.
This is still an opportunity to do that. Right. They're not they're not exclusive.
You're just you're just saddling yourself with that you're saddling yourself.
There's no opportunity for the investors, I think, which is well, yeah, well, yeah, I mean,
they're fucked up. But but but but what I'm saying is like, you're saddling yourself with

(39:16):
like just all this baggage to take something that you didn't build and you don't own and
trying to bring it over the goal line. Sorry, I just I'm just a guy stretching in the background
with his tummy out. It's amazing. Those who are listening back and play as later.
Just I'm sorry. You're gonna have to mark the spot the stream and go find out.

(39:36):
That guy's like six foot eight to anyway. So I mean, but I mean, it's like it's it's pretty
crazy to kind of hear it in those terms because, you know, there are, you know, speaking bluntly,
quite a few well backed teams that have exited the cosmos at this point, or, you know, there's
there's quite a few kind of zombie chains and whatnot where a lot of the teams have moved on

(39:59):
or core people or whatever. And, you know, for a team like yourselves who are kind of very, in a
sense, both, you know, strongly tied to the cosmos or really strongly aligned to it, but
quite lightly tied by kind of a formal necessity to run stuff in perpetuity, let's say, or

(40:22):
approaching perpetuity and crypto, which is I think about nine to 12 months plus, right.
It's kind of interesting to then tie yourself so strongly to the to the ecosystem. And it is
I think there's a very bold move, you know, it shows a lot of belief in your ability to turn
the ship. Yeah. And I think that that that that that deserves, I mean, this is not going to happen

(40:45):
overnight. And I think one of the one of the real issues I think in these types of situations is
like everybody has an unrealistic timeline in terms of how long it takes to turn things around.
And I'm sure you guys have a huge backlog of just technical components of whatever that is. And then
the piece that I I concerned gets concerned about is I don't have an ICL like, you know,

(41:06):
I would invest in that today. I see if somehow somehow it still concerns me that even in the
face of success, maybe I see up just decides to put a bullet in its own foot. And that has happened
many different times where even even in the success of in success of turning around, maybe
it's not exactly in the vision of how they thought it would happen or like exactly what role it is

(41:30):
or what value it, you know, the chain provides or what the value the ICF provides. And you get like
this internal crap, which is what it's had in the past. So I, you know, I think I always, I always,
you know, I said this somewhere else, but I always believe in, you know, I always take like
engineering and, and intelligence over egos and, you know, fucking politics, but at some point,

(41:54):
those things also win. So it's gonna, I think you guys have a, and my timeline for this is like
two years, three years, right? Like, I think you get, you probably, you guys have probably a pretty
strong vision. And it's not gonna happen overnight, right? It's gonna take some time.
No, um, I mean, just a couple of things, like, so remember when I said we sent over this, like,

(42:14):
list of things that are completely pie in the sky, asks, we are not going to be removed.
It's basically functionally impossible for the ICF to rug us at this point, legally.
And, and also the amount of investment that they put into the ICL already is, is astronomical

(42:36):
and would basically remove their entire raisin to Etra. So we also had a pretty, you know,
we're very aligned with the foundation in terms of choosing its new board members.
And the folks that are there right now are the people who green lighted the acquisition.
So it is, it's like a relationship with any company and its board, right?

(42:58):
And I think the important thing is that that relationship is internal and should not matter.
None of this should matter, right? And like, I think when you're evaluating, you know, a stock,
right, you're not really trying to figure out, oh, well, like, what's the relationship between
the founder and the board? It doesn't really matter. I think in this case, because of the history that

(43:19):
internal drama has been real. But to, to, to, for every, in every way that I see,
the people that are causing internal drama, they're gone.
They were extremely strict in terms of keeping and not keeping the people who are down for what
we want to do. Or they've like, completely changed perspective and are working sort of like, we've

(43:43):
worked at skip, which is extremely honest and open and transparent and like vision aligned.
So generally, I, I view this as the lowest risk thing in terms of what like the risks are to
accomplish what we want to accomplish. I think there are much higher risk things, right, that,
that are not internal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree with that too. Like, because, I mean,

(44:08):
obviously, those are there, right? Like the outside influences are always bigger than internal, but,
but I appreciate that. Like I, it does make sense. I mean, why, why would, why would there be any,
why would there be any pushback associated to vision when, when you guys are building that
vision together and the reason for the acquisition? And, you know, acquisitions have gone through a
couple, you know, have usually a pretty solid understanding in terms of what we're trying to

(44:33):
achieve. And sometimes it's, you know, people have to also be flexible and understanding that
even though you, you have this vision, that vision will change over time. And also how you get there
might not be, might be totally different than how everybody, you know, everybody views, there's
a different way to get to that. But in this case, I mean, there's so much, there's so much underlying
engineering and just delivery here that I think, you know, I always, like I said, I always, I always

(44:58):
view that that overrides the, the politics and the bullshit, you know? Yeah, I think so. I think like
it's sometimes difficult to look externally, I think, because it's easier to view and understand
internal problems, right? It's easier to think that the reason for Cosmos not succeeding is, is
trauma or use people at the top that are juicing, you know, that the rewards or enriching themselves.

(45:25):
And the perception things do matter, right? And, you know, that's whatever was there, that's all
gone now. Like those people are out, we cut the funding. That is completely gone. It's wiped away.
So now it's sort of like, well, now we have to face the honest truths. Like why, if we assume
that that's not the case anymore, that we have aligned leadership, we have $400 million treasury,

(45:50):
like what are the actual things preventing us from getting to where we want to be? And they
start to become a lot more painful, right? Like other ecosystems and what they're doing,
you know, the realities of the games that they play to attract developers,
the realities of token games that other companies play to, to juice it, you know,

(46:10):
these things start to become a little bit more clear and they're unfortunate.
And, and also where we have to start digging in really fighting.
Yeah. I mean, new and shiny is always better, right? That's what happens. That's, that's the
space is all about is you know, it's the same chain over and over. And every time it's, it's
slightly better. And this is the one and you know, the next thing you know, you're in the rear

(46:31):
of your mirror, right? So with the history of Adam, I mean, I mean, honestly, Adam would never
still exist in any other ecosystem other than the cosmos, right? Like, like, it would, in any other,
in any other ecosystem, that idea and the, and the token around it and like, just the community
would be dead. Well, thank you to you folks for keeping it alive for so long. Yeah, running it

(46:54):
every day by your hard believer. But so to, to kind of pick up Serp's point there, you know,
we are in kind of this, like, you know, industry, this new industry, which has no memory and everything
is, you know, eternal now, it's just the latest and latest and latest and on and on and on.

(47:19):
What, you know, do you think that there are, do you think, do you, I guess, so the answer, the answer
is the answer implicitly to what I'm about to ask is of course not. But I'm going to ask the
question anyway, because that's the format of an interview based podcast. So I have to ask the
question. I apologize. You have to participate. I'm afraid I have to ask you questions. And if we

(47:41):
all, we will have to suspend disbelief that you might answer differently. But with all of that
out of the way. So do you think that the Cosmos stack and the Cosmos Hub specifically can compete
on a technical basis with the newer generation of change and things that we're seeing and all the

(48:03):
technological, you know, kind of innovation and development that we've seen since the Cosmos
Hub debuted? Because, you know, in a very real sense, tendering and whatnot, haven't
changed a huge amount since, I don't know, 2018, 2019, when I first bought Asim, something like that.
Like that when the hub came out, like, there have been a number of things that have come out that are

(48:24):
new, IBC being one of them, and then the huge explosion of app chains and things. But like
underneath all of that, like the core of the software has not had, you know, absolute overwhelming
sea changes from the point of view of like what it allows you to do. So the question is, is our
tech stack still competitive? Yeah, is it competitive? And like, what do you think the,

(48:48):
and if so, kind of why? And if not, why? And what do you think we can do about that? Yeah.
So competition is, I think, is a multifaceted thing, right? So one of the things that the
Cosmos tech stack has is deep level of adoption and deep history of being safe, right? It's been

(49:11):
around for over five years, most crypto projects, you know, they're founders, barely over five years
old, like, you know, they're, it's something that's been deeply adopted by huge ecosystems like Binance,
you know, Terra back in the day, you know, the Kronos, like all these different chains.

(49:32):
And so it has a level of sophistication that is attractive to new developers,
because a lot of these new stacks, they sound shiny, they sound great. One, most of them are not
shipped, right? So can you name three consensus protocols that have come out and are widely
adopted since TenderMint? No, because there are not any, right? Can you name three chain

(49:52):
development frameworks that have come out since the Cosmos SDK that are widely adopted? No,
like, there aren't any, right? And like the only thing that has happened on the bridge side,
there's no competing interoperable standard. It's all centralized bridges or multi-sig bridges,
like Wyrmhole and Axelar and Layer Zero, right? And these things are great tools, but nothing's

(50:15):
really been built that competes with these things, right? Because these, I think ecosystems are
acutely aware of not falling into the Cosmos trap, which is, well, if we just build all this incredible
open source software, how is it going to pump my token, right? Like, how, what if everyone just
builds their own thing and it doesn't pump me, right? So you have things like the Hyper SDK from
Avalanche, which is licensed and you can only use it if you have like some kind of financial

(50:42):
relationship with Avax or you build it in the Avalanche ecosystem, right? Or you have, I posted
about the other day, like, you know, the ton blockchain and telegrams open framework for
building mini apps now is restricted to the ton block. If you have a token there that's not
issued on ton, they delete your app and telegram. So I think like we still have the only real open

(51:05):
source standard for like a decentralized Internet of blockchains. And there's no real competitor.
Now, are some things faster? Are some things a little bit more expressive in some areas or
run better centralized sequencers? Yada, yada, yes, of course, right? Those things do exist. But I
think there's still a contingent of people who actually believe in like wanting to build things

(51:27):
in the open and wanting to build an L1, right? I think everyone hates the idea of an L1 stack
because everyone who hates it is an L1 themselves and wants to believe that they're one of the few
or ideally the only L1. But it's like L1 kind of, there's no value accrual to anything else,
right? Infrastructurally, right? You're not dependent on something. You run your own consensus,

(51:51):
you have your own infrastructure, you have your own token, your own security, your own gas fees,
right? And so I think it's very difficult for an organization to actually spearhead that.
And it's even more difficult to build an ecosystem out of that that generates value in some
consistent way to some kind of centralized or not centralized, central, right? Or like

(52:13):
common thing. And that's sort of the challenge we're trying to take on.
I guess the thing that I'm hearing and I think is interesting is like I'm hearing
like a very, very strong vision for the Cosmos Hub and I'm hearing like a quite sophisticated
thesis, I think, for how it is still relevant in the context of the developments that have come
since and whatnot. But I guess the really difficult thing is how you sort of generalize

(52:40):
that out into an ecosystem. Because what I think we've, we'll move to about it quite a bit on the
podcast actually is that the most recent kind of slew of chains that have been launched using the
Cosmos Hub have broadly speaking not really associated with themselves with the kind of
ideology and the other chains in the network have certainly not branded themselves necessarily as

(53:03):
being part of the Cosmos ecosystem. And in some cases not even opened, you know, IBC channels
and whatnot, which is unfortunate because it kind of talks to your point of saying, oh yeah,
you know, we actually are making a strong bet on the tech snack being a solid foundation,
but it's making a kind of a similarly strong statement on a perceived in utility of the

(53:26):
actual ecosystem. You know, I mean, whether that's because they perceive it as like a threat to them
or a drain of liquidity or whether it's some other thing they don't want to be associated with Cosmos
Drama, but they're making a statement by choosing to present themselves in the way that they are,
you know. And so I do wonder like how hard it would be. I absolutely believe that the

(53:48):
ship can be turned on Cosmos. I can take that. I can take and believe that argument. And I think
if any team can do it, you know, fair play. But it is, you know, it is, it is a going to be very
hard one to generalize because not only is potentially, yeah, I mean, people who are very
invested in the hub might see it as against their interest. Number one, number two, it's also kind

(54:13):
of a little bit beyond your control to some extent, because it's about what all of the other L1s in
the Cosmos ecosystem do and what the L1s that you had to launch do. Do they market themselves with
Cosmos? Do they open IBC channels? Because at the moment, some are some aren't right. And that
and that that says quite a bit, I think, sadly. Yeah, I mean, I think the reality is I don't

(54:36):
blame them. And I don't hold any ill will towards them. Like, I don't know, like examples here that
come up kind of are like Baruchain and a little bit Anisha sort of in the middle. I don't know what
else like hyper liquid, which I think just uses tender mint. But yeah, I think, I think for those
things, or for some of those, I get it. Like, what why would you associate with Cosmos, right?

(55:01):
What do you get as a customer of building something that wants to be sick, you want it to be
successful as successful as possible? What do you get by associating with Cosmos, right? Do you get
any kind of preferential treatment within the stack? Do you get customer service? Do you get
a good token to associate yourself with that's going to bring in liquidity and users? Do you get

(55:21):
a good infrastructural ecosystem that provides additional utility to your product? The answer
to all of those is no, or has been no, right? Right. What do you get, right? Like, all you do is you
give, you're not getting anything, right? And what you're giving is maybe legitimacy to Cosmos,
which is then, you know, in your opinion, run by these buffoons who like are are masquerading as

(55:45):
like leaders and not actually doing anything and there's corruption and all this other stuff. It's
like, why would I associate with that? It's interesting to me that despite all of that,
people still use IBC and still use the Cosmos tech stack because it's incredible. It's so good
that they had to, right? Despite all these issues, I think our thesis is that generally, if you take

(56:07):
that to be true, then it's like, well, what would make these people want to associate with the
Cosmos ecosystem, right? Well, they have to get something from that. And so I think that's what
we're trying to build up now. We're trying to create the relationship between the hub and these
chains as not a value extractive thing, but a value additive thing, where we can provide them

(56:28):
incredible services that solve their problems so they can focus on their applications and not
have some narrative of where over you or, you know, restricting you in some way.
I think the second thing is we want to make the stack fully accountable to these applications,
meaning we'll take their opinion, we'll listen to them if they're customers of ours by having this

(56:49):
kind of relationship and association with the ecosystem. And to a large degree, we'll financially
support these chains. Like we will offer liquidity from the ICF. You know, we will co-market with
them. You know, we will actually push them and help them be successful and help prioritize
building products on top of their tech stack, which we build that make them more successful.

(57:12):
And if after all that, people are said, we'll still know, fuck you guys, then fuck them. Like,
I don't care about them. Like, that's not Cosmos to me. It doesn't matter that they're using the
tech stack. If they don't want to have a relationship with the organization and the
maintainers of the stack that they're using, that they're inherently building on top of a vision for

(57:34):
that they may reject that vision, which is an internet of blockchains. If they like deny that,
I just think that's really weak. And like, I don't really understand why a team would do that. Like,
it doesn't make any sense to me. Again, again, it's going to take some time. No difference that I
said before in terms of the time that people are giving I CL to be able to turn that ship around.

(57:55):
There's also like just a lot of just not bad blood, but just, I don't know. I don't know how
you call it. But like, what in that strategy that you just talked about, the water under the bridge,
there's a walk. Okay, that's a good way of saying it. Yeah, three ways saying it. But yeah, I like
but but like one of like one of those things I think would be like number one on their strategy

(58:15):
as part of that max would be upstream. Like, look like what what bear is doing with beacon D,
right? Like that's just purely in the consensus side. Look how much change has happened within
beacon D. Look at say, like say is completely rewritten that stack that 300 millisecond block
times, everything from state sync to say DB in the pebble side to all this shit. None of that is

(58:36):
upstream. Like, almost none of that is upstream. Like, like, and so not not only are there are
there these, these teams taking some some of the basis. And then the basis might not be meeting
their needs. But then it goes and forks out into something and nobody else is able to take advantage
of that. You know what I mean? And it just seems like that's such a wasted opportunity. And I don't

(58:56):
I don't know who to blame on that. Like, I don't understand the politics of it well enough to
understand if that's in the past, like, nobody for the FcF said, Hey, what are you guys doing with
this? And like, can we learn from this? And can we can we be inclusive around it? Because everything
I've always seen in in in those like SDK GitHub's are always like a bunch of fucking nose. Like,
somebody puts a PR in there, and then they shit all over it. That's why he puts another PR on

(59:16):
the shit all over it. Like, it doesn't meet this vision that we don't even fucking have that doesn't
make any sense. And we're not interested in improving it because we built this ivory tower
type of shit, at least that's what it comes across as. And it seems like there's not only do you have
some development work to do, I think on the SDK, but I think there's so much that people have already
done that would be great to be able to bring back in. And that might be a that might be a branch to

(59:39):
say, Hey, how do we take some of this great work and like, now make this available to everybody?
I was just talking the same team, because we're we ran this issue on a couple chains around Max
Gasper block, not to make it too specific. But the cosmos issue, like there's a huge issue with Max
Gasper block, which means if the gas prices is low enough, people just set the met the wanted to the

(01:00:00):
whole fucking block size, which means they take one transaction for the whole fucking block, and
then the mempool grows like fucking crazy, because you can't get any transactions there. And there's
no way to stop that zero, like you could do some minimum transactions per block thing, or you could
do something else. But there's no way to stop it, you could just fucking overflow the gas, you pay
eight cents, who gives a shit, and then you just running one transaction every six seconds or whatever

(01:00:22):
the hell it is. We had this issue on a mint recently, we had this issue on another chain that runs
very fast. And in like, in like a good example, that would be like, funding something that allows
us to do what's it called a really proposal or basically a simulation, right, do a gas simulation
like an like an like a theory, right, and just just fill the gas based off of what the actuals are,

(01:00:43):
not this fucking wanted thing. That would be an amazing thing that teams, I think, are already
building that the ICF could say, pull, let's pull that in, and make it something that makes every
chain better in an SDK version. And I think, I think that idea, like it's always been like, the
ICF built something, now we're gonna have an hour stuck sucking down this SDK change, or, you know,

(01:01:03):
we gotta make our change, or we're gonna fork it or we're gonna do whatever. It seems like it's so
fragmented now that like, nobody gives a shit. And so that seems like a real opportunity to
be a leader in that side again. This stuff was a fucking nightmare when I was working in Juno,
like, just the maintaining like the combination of like upstream changes and and also Juno being

(01:01:24):
early as the as the wasm chain, right, right. And just the number of fucking, I mean, we obviously
have like the two cyber attacks, but yeah. And so that was a whole other thing. But how many times
do they say no, it was just, I stopped asking very, very quickly, I stopped asking. I think that's
what happens, right? You just kind of, we, and then, you know, we just had, we just had continually

(01:01:47):
sinking forks, we had some private repose, we had some public repose, and we were sinking forks
left, right and center to make sure that we could cover off problems if we needed to cover them off
pretty quickly. And that was like, that was that was the experience of upstream development in 21,
22. And it was such a burning out, like it was genuinely one of the most exhausting experiences

(01:02:10):
I've had as a developer. And my involvement, you know, bear in mind in that was overwhelmingly
just maintain a ship of what of the code base of junior, like the, the majority of my actual
development work was in Rust in wasm, right, in cousin wasm. And, you know, I, and I still don't
say I'm really a go developer or a core developer, you know, on it's, you know, there's a lot of

(01:02:34):
stuff in the SDK that I still don't understand to this day, because in my opinion, quite a
complicated code base. But it just, it was like, for what I was trying to do, which is just keep
stuff stable and fix bugs and give us the tiny amount of configuration and additional changes
we needed. It was such an uphill battle. And like, compared to almost any other development gig I've

(01:02:56):
done, it was, it was crazy. And I was just like, oh, yeah, yeah, if you can make that, like you say,
if you can not only make that easier, but if you can also upstream some of the changes that other
teams have made, that are, you know, quality of life changes that are mitigating these kind of
edge case bugs that we see out in the wild, like that, that would be wild. That would be great.

(01:03:18):
Or find a way to incentivize those teams for upstream, right? Like, or find a way, I mean,
not to a point of obviously teams are going to build stuff as a strategic advantage. I told you.
But also, but also you talk about, talk about the ecosystem, right? I am not the only developer
that's walked away from Cosmos as a developer, right? Sure. There are plenty out there. And,

(01:03:38):
I mean, out of the three of us here to have, because I did as well. Exactly, right? And,
and, and I know of others, right? And, and I think that's, that's the interesting thing is that
there were, there were one point, a lot more developers in the ecosystem, a lot more than
there are now. And I know there's still a lot of chains with active development and yada, yada,

(01:04:00):
yada, yada. And I'm maybe, maybe bringing it a bit warm, you know, but, but, you know, it feels
like the, the, the first step is if you can bring some of those people back, find out what, push
them away and bring them back, then that was, you know, that would be a bullish sign, so

(01:04:21):
believe the kids say, right? Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to spend time, I think, talking to
developers and, and like begging them. Yeah. Um, I think we just have to show strength. Yeah. Like,
I've also, I come at this from a very realistic perspective, which is either you're an ally,
and I will ride with you and, and support you as much as I can and loop you into things and have

(01:04:46):
you be a part of this or you're not. And that's fine. But like, I have basically no time for
people who are like, Oh, maybe it's, it's like, there, there are a lot of people are still very
excited, right? And, and, and, and either newer and they don't have that baggage or, um, you know,
are still excited about the vision and want to make it work. And like, I'm sort of one of those

(01:05:07):
people too. I mean, I had a fucking hard time too developing in Cosmos, our company did, right?
Integrating with all these different chains that are constantly shifting, trying to work with the
SDK team and the informal team, understanding what's coming out, boat extensions, not working,
us having to fix all of it to in order for slinky to work, like these things are difficult.

(01:05:28):
And we're going to make them easier, right? Like, I think we're going to be significantly more
responsive. We already are that we have been that for everyone for you folks as well, I think
as validators, we want that's in our DNA, we want to be that. But, but yeah, I think it's,
I think it's really, uh, fine finding the developers that, that, that truly believe and, and, and want

(01:05:51):
to want to be a part of it and trying to make their lives as simple as possible. I think when it
comes to like external contributions, it's a tricky one. I mean, we are working on some external
contributions now, we're working with the injective and Chronos teams on their EVM implementation,
which is excellent. We're working with, um, Osmosis on their tenderment fixes. Um, and there's a

(01:06:13):
couple others, I think we're working to say on some things as well, actually, um, these things
generally, uh, they're either complicated by the fact that they are competitive, uh, meaning that
that the chains want them to be their chains, things, uh, and they don't want them to be upstream.
But sometimes when they do, uh, you know, it's either like specific to certain infrastructure

(01:06:33):
or doesn't serve the overall needs of all the Cosmos chains, just like a case by case basis.
But I think the perception is valid, right? The perception that previously these repositories
were extremely closed off and elitist, um, in terms of who is allowed to contribute,
that we want to change. And we, I think, I think we can change that now.
I don't know if that was perception, at least in the past. Now, I understand what you're saying.

(01:06:56):
Well, I'm saying at least the perception. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm sure, I'm sure it was
true. Yeah. I mean, I think we had a little bit of an easier time getting some changes in, but it
was still challenging for sure. Sure. And I'll let, I mean, honestly, all that's based on relationship,
right? And even, even team saying that they want to, you know, we, it's competitive, and you want
to push X, Y or Z at some point, either there's compensation towards that, or there's a portion

(01:07:17):
of that you could say, Hey, this is something that, that we need to do as an ecosystem because
rising tide and all that kind of bullshit, right? Um, it's not bullshit. I just, I just think it's
a phrase, but it's a true statement. Like meaning we bring more, it's going to help because the more
eyeballs we have in Cosmos and the more eyeballs that we have in this, then, you know, you get more
visibility and more opportunities and different types of use cases and all that kind of shit.
So I think, I think that's a bit of a 2022 attitude towards Cosmos, but I do think there's

(01:07:44):
still some validity there. Um, that doesn't have to revolve around ICS and all that kind of stuff,
right? Like that, that, that they are working off a thing like a code base and the SDK coming out of
the ICL can be far more valuable as default than what it is. Like we dealt with this on a chain
that's getting ready to go mainnet here where, you know, the team thought it was, Hey, it's plug

(01:08:07):
and play. We just go grab it and we shove it out there and she'll see and I run this one. And, and
then they realized then like, they had 4,000 nodes in the network and it wasn't making any blocks
and the peering was awful. And like, you know, the gas is all fucked up and nobody knows what,
like everybody's struggling with everything. Like, like there's a, there's a ton there in terms of,

(01:08:28):
like you can't launch a blockchain with it, I think out of the gate, the way it runs, like the way
it comes, like there's a tremendous amount of, of knowledge and time and an effort that comes in
there that I think could be raised. I think that could be better for a new team who's entering
and wanting to be able to use that toolset. So it's a lot of educational points that I think
we also need to work on. Debrell, information, like communicating how these things work.

(01:08:51):
Like that has been pretty much abandoned. And we want to restart that. We want to restart that
internally and then also sort of like bring in other teams to help out with that. Well, honestly,
I couldn't think of a better team for this to happen with. I really couldn't. Like, I mean,
you get like, like it really couldn't. So if you're not getting what you need from the ICF,

(01:09:12):
you got to make a stink about it. And then we all come and say, Hey, this, these guys should get 200
million out of that 400 to go make this happen on the next year. Because honestly, if we got a two
or three year window here, and then, and then everybody starts giving a shit, maybe, and who
knows, it could be tomorrow, right? But, but it's not forever. I know that. So, so I, I, you know,
I do, I believe you, I understand what you're saying. I hope that I hope that they look at this

(01:09:37):
as saying, Hey, we only have so many bullets in the gun to make this thing work. And so let's not
be cheap on it. And let's do it the right way. And you guys grow a team and take on enough. And
you guys are able to manage enough to, to do some of these things. Because I think it's important.
Hey, Barry, you're live. What's that shirts? What's that hat say? What does that hat say?
Hold on. Hold on. Let me get the hat. Oh yeah, you don't have that. Make Adam great again. Oh my

(01:10:03):
God. I got the red tail. You guys, you guys, you guys got to get these. Holy shit. Is that dude,
wait, get it? How do I turn this shit off? Yeah, I'm trying to shut up. Just put it in front of
your face. It'd probably work better for the previous. There you go. Oh my God. Look at that.

(01:10:24):
They're great to make Adam great again. Had holy shit. That is
working by those. You don't buy them. See, you already fucked it up. What are you doing?
You contribute to the Cosmos ecosystem as you have been. Oh,
realistically, like, like, we need to, we mug you at a conference. We take your hat. Got you.

(01:10:49):
Right. Cool. I will bring hats for you folks. Right. I feel like I never, do I see you at
conferences? I feel like I always see Shalzy and Brian. I don't come, I don't come stateside because
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.

(01:11:11):
Do you really? I have ones for little babies that they can put on. You know,
you need like onesies too. You set up a, does a good trade in game of modes onesies.
Hopefully you guys stop having kids because it's getting expensive. Yeah.
Are you going to Denver by the way? Yes. Yeah. I'll see you there.

(01:11:32):
See you there. Yeah. I mean, I guess, you know, the, the one thing I, I, I do want to say is
there's a reason you guys are here. Right. At some point there was a reason, right?
Whether that reason was a long time ago. At some point, at some point there's a reason.
And now the hostage take is just slightly out of shot. Right.
It's a fucking Stockholm syndrome over here. So just there, we don't speak about the men with the guns.

(01:11:57):
Here, here what? Here Cosmos validators? Here, here Cosmos help. Yeah. Okay.
In Cosmos running this podcast, interested in skip, trying to help us out throughout our time,
you know, wanting these things to succeed. And of course there's,
it's a combination probably of emotional, financial, professional reasons. But I think

(01:12:17):
it's like, there's some kind of investment, right? And I think there's still a lot of that.
And what I'm, what I'm really trying to do is expand that to other folks, right? And find
other people who are excited about it. And I think what that, what that is at the end of the day is

(01:12:38):
like Cosmos needs to stand for something because it can't just stand for a shitty ecosystem that
should be successful. That's the only way to solve that is to be successful. Right. Like the goal
can't be to be successful. The goal has to be a mission because people only join unsuccessful
things if they have a mission they believe in, right? Or they just join successful things that

(01:13:00):
have no mission like Solana, right? And I think that's what like we really need to create. And
like it just starts one person by one person, like you folks, me, whoever else finding some
infrastructure guiding like, hey, check this out. They get interested. They start to build tooling.
Like all of that is just like the little pieces that add up to us being successful and accomplishing

(01:13:24):
this mission. But I guess we are always, we always do come back around to you, Serpa's point, right?
Which is that it's, it's got to be use cases first. And like, and like I respect this is why I
respect, you know, you're talking about product vision, you're talking about like product,
product focus and all that kind of stuff, like 100%. That's one of the things that's been missing
all this time. It's been one of the things that's consistently missing for Cosmos ecosystem chains

(01:13:49):
in general, I think actually, like there's very, very few that had really strong product vision.
Like we've, we've talked a lot about Stargaze, right? On the podcast because they consistently,
at least in the early days had that. Don't know how much of it is currently there. I mean,
you said it might have a better idea. I'm less close to that project now. But hey, yeah, it's

(01:14:13):
good to hear it coming out. And like, I hope, I hope if anything that attitude can spread to new
chains that are coming out, because like, you know, how do you create success? Well,
you need something that people want, right? You need product, product market fit. And,
you know, we've tried a thousand different kinds of types of derivatives and that hasn't worked out
so well. So somebody's going to have to come up with a product for these consensus engines.

(01:14:37):
Yeah, I think like generally the, the, I don't know, I think we could try to take a, like for
example, we could stop everything, right? And just take 20 shots on goal, each a different product
that we try to make into a successful app, right? Because we can build apps, right? Like as, as
I see L. Sure. Sure can. You know, maybe we build a high yield stablecoin, right? Ideally not

(01:15:03):
of the kind that has preceded us. Maybe we try some kind of interesting, a purpose platform,
some, you know, wallet redesign or some UX redesign. I generally feel like that is not the
best way. Like I don't view our jobs necessarily as that. I view it as really sort of setting this
bedrock of a vision and a place that we're all going that people want to go, or at least it's

(01:15:28):
divisive, meaning people can say, I don't want to be on that train and get the fuck out of the way,
or they can be all in, right? That's really my goal because then we have people who are bought
in who will create those things. But I think like the, I just saw that Mel said thanks for jumping
on. We really appreciate it. Like, like it's over. Is it over? Okay. We're close. Okay. Yeah. I think,

(01:15:55):
okay, so it's over. Yeah. Yeah. So I think like that's really where you start, right? But there's a
great analysis of this called a protocol market fit that I highly recommend reading. It talks about,
you know, Ethereum had no use cases, right? It was a vision and people bought into that vision
and built it out of nothing, right? It wasn't Vitalik. He did barely did anything, right? He

(01:16:19):
vented some protocol and like, you know, ERPs. And like, I want that for Cosmos. That is really
what I think is missing right now. And what does Cosmos stand for? What is that if Cosmos was
massively successful? Like, what would the world look like? Like the most successful it ever could
be? Like what it would the world look like? And like, is that something that you want to dedicate

(01:16:41):
your career to? Right? If not, what are we doing? Well, I mean, I think it's pretty simple, right?
Isn't it that Cosmos is the so fuck all of the fuck all of everything. Sorry, I'm not go developer
either. So fuck the go programming language. The I don't like it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry,

(01:17:01):
everybody. But the point that what does Cosmos stands for? It stands for an actually federated
central architecture. That's it. It's the only player in town. Like you say, it's the only one
in production that stood the test of time. It's the only one that seems like it has legs. It's the
only one that regardless of incentivization and whatever in teams feeling like they're

(01:17:21):
poaching each other or whatever, people connect to each other by IVC and the shit kind of keeps
trucking, right? We haven't figured out the economics of it. But it's the only game in town
that like you say has a TCP IP like quality that is not based on decentralized bridge. So it's not
based on centralized bridges and is actually widely deployed. There are other options, sure,

(01:17:42):
but IBC is currently the only one that you would really look at and say,
that is proven that right there. Well, and if we can get everyone in the ecosystem to repeat
just what you said in their own words of what that means, we would already be in a much better
place. Because it comes back down to what is decentralization or to your point,
Mac, what is the point? What is the bit of decentralization that matters? Because you're

(01:18:06):
talking about like hub routing and stuff. The bit, this bit of decentralization is not the bit
that I give a shit about. There are other things that are more important and security and yada,
yada, yada. But it's like, what's the bit of decentralization that actually matters? And
what is the meaning of decentralization? Decentralization of what? Decentralization of
what is the question we never ask enough, right? And it's like, if you're talking about the right

(01:18:29):
to associate or not associate or be sovereign or not, over decision making, right? And because
these are consensus engines, they're all about on some level automated decision making. Again,
maybe the federated model is as decentralized as you can get. Maybe that's the functional limit of
an actually functional distributed architecture, right? Where people do have control over decisions

(01:18:59):
and stuff that does relate to things that they are invested in, right? These are just giant
cooperatives. They're just giant membership organizations effectively for stakers. Fine.
If that's the functional limit of this software, then again, we don't know that from the theory yet,
but that puts IBC in a great position and it puts a lot of the other solutions out there

(01:19:19):
looking a bit shabby. The rest of it, I don't know, but I know that still in my bitter twisted
heart, I'm very bullish on the design of IBC and the ideal behind it. And I think that is kind of
what that's supposed to be the point of Cosmos, I think. I think that's what the one thing we
have figured out about Cosmos, right? That we can agree on, maybe. Yeah. It's almost like if you took

(01:19:40):
away all the tech today, like my last, right? If you took away everything, right? Let's say we
deleted all the code, everything, deleted the ICF, right? We deleted all the applications,
Osmos is, it's all gone. It's just us, right? Like, would you rebuild Cosmos? Like, would you want to
rebuild the vision of Cosmos again, right? Like, is it strong enough and do you believe in it enough

(01:20:06):
that it should exist in the world, right? This concept of an open internet, right? Or an internet
of blockchains, which is another way of saying the open internet, in my opinion, where things are
app chains, right? They're their own sovereign, fully self-owned economic systems that are all
interoperable seamlessly with each other, right? And it's all user-owned and governed by users

(01:20:32):
and completely censorship resistant. You can't shut it down. Like, would you want to rebuild that,
right? I think like the answer for me is like, yes, that is the only thing I would want to build,
actually, if I was building a blockchain. And so like, yeah. Like, that's what gets me excited,
right? And I want people around who like feel the same way.

(01:20:54):
I'm so pissed I didn't come up with the idea for that hat. I gotta get rid of this whole
validator thing. It would have paid for like, fucking four years. Like, it could be, it could be,
it's like, it's both on point, and it can also be sarcastic if you want to be sarcastic. It's
like such niche. God damn it. It's caused problems with my social life. That's part of the beauty.

(01:21:19):
Well, you can't have that hat, but you can put Rama's comment on the hat because as we all know,
this is a big rub. If somebody comments in your YouTube, you own the intellectual property. That's
how that works. I am a copyright lawyer. Don't look it up. Megs, any final things you want to,

(01:21:41):
any final, final note? Make Adam great.

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