# ETH Labs Strategy: Speed, Tokenization, and Value Accrual

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-09-17

## Transcript

The reason why ETH will dominate is because Ethereum has the best, I'd say, digital infrastructure of all the blockchain.
The Clarity Act is dead.
The Federal Reserve is hiking rates and crypto is carrying on anyway.
Back in July, we asked if ETH Labs could help make Ethereum the root of global finance.
Today, we are asking, can they make Ethereum faster?
Hello and welcome to Milk Road Crypto, the podcast that's here to remind you that clarity doesn't come from Washington.
It comes from the consensus algorithm.
I'm your host, John Gillen.
Today is Thursday, September 17th.
And today we are joined by three friends from ETH Labs, Benji, Derek and Julian.
I'll let them introduce themselves in a second here.
We've got a lot to cover today.
ETH Labs is publishing a collaborative article on the case for a faster Ethereum.
There's been some drama between Ethereum and base.
Are they getting divorced?
What is account abstraction?
What does this all mean?
And we're going to talk about tokenization a little bit.
in this episode too.
I hope.
If that all sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe.
Share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it.
And as a reminder, our podcast today is free and that would not be possible without our partners at Nexo, the digital asset platform that lets you trade, earn, and borrow all in one place.
So keep in your eye for more information on them later in today's episode.
But for now, welcome back to the Milk Road Show ETH Labs.
How are you gentlemen today?
Hey, Dom.
Great to be back.
Thanks for having us.
Hey, it's my first time.
I'm excited.
Thank you.
It is your first time.
Yeah, welcome, Benji.
Benji, Derek.
Look, this is always a little bit overwhelming for me when I have multiple guests, but I like doing these group check-ins with ETH Labs.
Gentlemen, I thought a great place to start this conversation would be with the recent news from this morning.
You all published a piece titled, It's Time for a Faster Ethereum, What the Ecosystem Has to Say About EIP 8198.
This is all about something called quick slots and making the case for that.
For people who maybe haven't read this piece yet or who aren't familiar, what are quick slots and what are you saying with this piece?
Who wants to kick us off with this one?
Yeah, I can try to take a stab.
So quick slots, essentially Ethereum has block times and they're 12 seconds today.
Quick slots is a proposal for the next upgrade after Glamstradam called Hegota, which is currently being scoped.
And quick slots essentially is an EIP that is.
suggesting this approach in which we can reduce that time incrementally over time.
So it's actually a mechanism that allows for us to make Ethereum faster.
Right now, this mechanism does not exist in 12 seconds.
It's hard coded.
Everyone who's building on Ethereum is kind of stuck with that today.
People might try to do workarounds around it, but at the protocol level, you're kind of stuck with the 12 seconds.
Quick slots enables that to be tweaked over time and for the reductions to take place.
The initial proposal is to reduce it to 10 seconds and evaluate over time.
you know, if that is worthwhile.
And regarding like the way I think ETH Labs thinks about these sort of things, generally, like we have this, there's an EIP written by Carl Meek and then championed by Barnabé from one of the founders of ETH Labs.
He shared in the all core devs in August, on the 6th of August.
And essentially since then has spent a lot of time and massive shout out to Barnabé, who's not here, unfortunately, that like to speak to hundreds of people, you know, this is sort of the kind of upgrade that encompasses everybody, right?
Like a faster Ethereum encompasses everyone who uses Ethereum, from the user to the builder to everyone on the L1.
And one of the things is like, ETH Labs doesn't necessarily need to be the one that like, is like, hey, this is what the faster Ethereum is like, and here's what's good to core devs alone.
Instead, like if ETH Labs can help build feedback loops across the broader ecosystem, hear the needs of all the different people who may be affected by faster Ethereum, who may want a faster Ethereum, who may not want a faster Ethereum.
that's a helpful feedback loop.
And that's something that ETH Labs generally wants to do, right?
Like I think if we can walk out of this and be like, we helped establish a better feedback loop for these performance related changes, and we're able to advocate for them in our own different ways with the ecosystem that might need it, then that's a good benefit.
And so this piece was less about like, the full technical breakdown.
I mean, there is if you scroll far enough, but largely like let's hear from the ecosystem.
Let's like this change exists.
It can exist.
It's time to prioritize it for Hegota.
We believe strongly that it's an S tier prioritization and it should happen.
And we essentially want to help like the broader ecosystem, maybe understand it, learn about it, and also share with the other developers of other core devs of Ethereum.
what exactly the demand looks like for it.
So the article is very much around us and the 20 plus ecosystem teams and people that we spoke to that are advocating for quick slots.
Okay, so last time we were checking in, ETH Labs had just launched and there was some speculation about what ETH Labs even was going to be.
And it seems like you guys have converged around this target of a fast Ethereum and making Ethereum faster.
I'm curious if you could just give me a little bit more of a definition of what fast Ethereum means and why this is such an S-tier priority for ETH Labs and why you think it should be an S-tier priority for Ethereum overall.
Yeah, I could try that.
And so fast Ethereum indeed is the theme that we're converging around.
why we're doing this basically that we've been hearing this repeatedly from so many builders across the ecosystem and making ethereum faster goes down to making one interrupt faster so that means bridging into l2s from the l1 faster which is something that i focus on every day with the fast confirmation rule making sure that's l2 to l1 bridging time gets faster as well This is maybe the top request that we've been hearing from builders on applications who are building on the L2s or L2s themselves or asset issuers, that the L2 to have one withdrawal time on optimistic rollups, which is like five days today, is very painful.
And so that's something that we want to speed up as well.
And then finally, what I think is driving all of this is...
faster slots, as Binji just mentioned, because this is really the smallest atomic unit that drives L1 to L2 bridging, L2 to L1 bridging, and L1 user experience there.
Fast Ethereum is basically the theme that we've identified as something that we can deliver on quite well very quickly.
While we set up our systems of, for example, how we do go to market for technical Ethereum technologies, as well as how we achieve good inputs from builders in the ecosystem.
And that's why that's the thing that we're doubling down on for now.
Yeah.
So at the recent news that you mentioned as well, like today, the SEC basically allowed for, I believe there's an innovation exemption for tokenization.
If we just look at this, for example, like the lion's share of tokenization is happening on Ethereum and its L2s.
Volume-wise, I think trading volume-wise, Ethereum did more volume over this past month than Singapore's stock exchange did.
Right.
So if we want to continue being like the globally like competitive settlement layer for value there, then there are ways to maybe make this thing better.
However, the caveat, and we have to really understand this, and this is like where there's a big discrepancy and something that we, I think is worth saying is like making something fast for the sake of making something fast doesn't make sense in an Ethereum case, right?
Like why on earth is Ethereum the home of tokenization?
And if we look into this, it's like, it's decentralized.
It's credibly neutral.
as a result of that decentralization, it's secure.
That is what gives the trust to basically, you know, have billions and billions of dollars of value come on chain and be tokenized on here.
It is the home of tokenized assets.
Doing anything for performance in sacrifice of those things, not worth it, right?
Like if we're going to be like, hey, let's make this thing faster, but like slightly less decentralized, like that's going to cook everything, right?
That's not going to work.
Instead, if we're like, hey, let's make this thing faster while still preserving all the properties of the reasons why value's on here in the first place, then that's compelling interestingly fast slots um another benefit here is it actually improves censorship resistance which is a whole like other world so it is a really like quick slot sorry it's a it's a nice convergence in things so like in the general realm of like making a theorem faster it's not about like making a theorem faster while sacrificing everything else it's about like look if you're in clearly has product market fit here it's doing it's seeing great growth, like more assets being tokenized.
We had the SEC extension, more assets would be tokenized than ever now.
Ethereum can continue being home with those assets, will continue being the home of those assets.
Can we also make it faster?
And can we do that without sacrificing the reasons things are on there in the first place?
And like quick slots, especially feels like a perfect convergence of things to make that happen.
So it's kind of like a, it's a very cool thing that exists in the world or not.
It's not necessarily like as trade-off heavy because usually.
Resilience and performance does have trade-offs, but in this case, it actually is moving together, which is quite cool to see.
Yeah, it's inspiring seeing how excited Bingji gets talking about faster Ethereum.
But I just wanted to add that fast slots is one big part of our faster Ethereum roadmap, but it's only one part of it.
So there's actually another big part of it.
So the way I think about it is that when we talk about making Ethereum fast, there's making the chain itself fast, right?
But then there's also making the chains settle faster on other chains, so in terms of bridging.
So when you move tokens from Ethereum to other chains, can they happen very fast?
So that's what leads to our other faster Ethereum work streams, such as faster finality and the fast confirmation rule.
So at Ethlabs, we like to call Ethereum the special chain.
So we know that there will be many chains in the world.
but Ethereum plays a very special role because we think Ethereum is the best place to issue assets.
So what makes it the best place to issue assets is because when you issue assets on Ethereum, you can move the assets seamlessly from Ethereum to any other L2 and even other L1s such as Solana.
Without drive towards faster finality and the fast confirmation rule, we'll further reinforce Ethereum's place as the truly and the only special chain in the world because it will be the only chain that can settle in both really fast and also like Binjee said, in a truly decentralized and trustless way to other chains.
There's no trade-off.
It's fast and it's truly trustless.
So that's like the other part of like the fuzzy theorem.
Hey guys, it's LG jumping in here to let you know about an incredible interview that John did the other day with the legendary Raul Pal.
It dropped on September 15th and they got into why crypto has struggled this year, what needs to happen for it to finally move and why Raul thinks crypto could become the financial infrastructure for the entire AI economy.
They also got into how Raul himself is actually investing for the cycle.
We also recorded a Milk Road Pro after hours for this one, which is where we sit down after the fact to talk about how we're expressing some of Raoul's views in our own portfolios.
So check your pod feed for the episode and head over to Milk Road Pro for the exclusive after hours at the link below.
Okay, this is all very helpful.
I think you guys spoke to hundreds of different members and participants in the Ethereum ecosystem.
You quoted, I think, over 20 of them in this.
And you talk about a lot of these things about how making Ethereum faster still preserves and protects these core principles.
But I think a line that stood out to me in the piece is, these efforts share an objective, making Ethereum more responsive and valuable with gains accruing to ETH.
And that got my attention.
I would love to hear your thoughts on how a fact...
Ethereum is aligned with a more valuable ETH, the asset, and just like how you think about that mechanism and what that value accrual looks like.
Yeah.
I mean, one thing for sure is if Ethereum can continue being the hub and the home for tokenized assets and can also help the performance of like all the settlement that is emerging within this ecosystem, then that makes this ecosystem more palatable for various reasons, whether it's increases to sensitive resistance, you know, in the collaboration or in conjunction with fossil for example or if it's just literally like it's literally faster and the ux is just a little bit better as a result um that creates value propositions for people to want to go on ethereum now the main thing is like what exactly is the reason why someone would want to mint on any asset on ethereum in the first place and then we have to go down this like levels of things right it's literally credibly neutral it's globally accessible there's all these other factors if we have that already and we can actually also improve on the performance of it without sacrificing that very key, very important.
I'll keep going on this.
We can never speed this thing up with that.
If we, if it means sacrificing the thing that makes it valuable, you know, you can make a faster NASDAQ.
You can't make a faster Ethereum.
That is Ethereum without compromising on its release, unless you do it a very concerned way.
So these are things that I think like further strengthen the value of Ethereum, get more value onto Ethereum.
And you can kind of go from there regardless of like what that accrues to ETH and not like.
more security is needed, et cetera, as well as more volume traded and whatnot.
So these are all like factors that we believe can further boost people's use case for like Ethereum as a network and thus accrue value to ETH given that use case increase.
This is helpful.
I think that's just like an important thing to know that you guys and just Ethereum overall are keeping ETH the asset kind of at the center of all of this.
So I think that's just a helpful perspective.
I want to ask about account abstraction.
Derek, you joined ETH Labs fairly recently and you went viral almost immediately with a tweet about how Ethereum and Base had spent months trying to build a shared account abstraction standard and you recently gave up on those efforts.
I wasn't really aware that the effort was being...
made between Ethereum and base on this.
So when I heard it was over, I didn't know how to react.
Could you just tell us a little bit about the context on this?
What were you guys working on and what happened here?
Yeah, I mean, account construction is generally like a pretty nerdy topic, right?
You know, so I wouldn't fault you for not knowing.
about kind of like where like when it even started um you know but but i guess like the general timeline is that um earlier this year i think back in january right um ethereum announced its plan to implement you know what we call native account abstraction on ethereum uh you know so what it means is that um today for example right like you have to pay your own guests right you know like so that's why like every account has to have some eth in order to do anything on the chain right you know but for a lot of like consumer applications there's actually like really big pinpoints right you know so there has been like a big push about like hey can we allow people to use ethereum why are like for example the wallets or like the applications sponsored yes for the user for example right and then there's also like the for example not use case like oh if i hold some stable coins can i like pay gas with the stablecoin i mean to be clear it doesn't mean that you don't pay gas with the eth just means that there's will be like a mechanism in the protocol that's allowing to swap the stablecoin to eth natively, and then you can pay the guests with the, you know, but from the user's perspective, they only own a stable phone, right?
And then there's also like other things like, for example, everyone hates like their 12 word C phrases, right?
So can we use like our Apple passkey to secure our what is, right?
So basically, like there are like all these benefits with account rejection.
So earlier this year, you know, like the EF announced like this new standards.
called eip8141 aka frame transactions you know which is supposed to be the ethereum standard for account transaction so over the next i would say six to six to seven months you know there was like this painstaking process of improving the specs getting buying from like the other core devs you know so by i think july uh all the core ethereum developers have pretty much already run frames so everyone thought that it was like a foregone conclusion that like for the next ethereum upgrades you know which is hecota that frame transactions will be implemented and accepted.
But in July, BASE unveiled that they are going to do native construction on BASE as well with separate standards called EIP A130, which obviously is altered by BASE.
But not only that, but they also, credits to them, they also came into the ACD and champions their proposal.
By the way, I want to say that this is actually a good thing.
this is actually like a good thing right you know we want to see L tours like bringing ideas like into the ACD you know because a lot of people complain about is the ACD being too opaque of a process right you know people that don't really participate so it's always like a really good I think sign for us when we see like L tours actually participating so in this case base brought in their proposal um but that's also kind of like created some tension because um You know, because again, right, like everyone already thought that frames was going to be the proposal.
So now frames is a competition, you know, with like that with the base proposal.
So that's when I think on ETH Labs, you know, and myself specifically, right, like we essentially made a decision that on like instead of presenting this as like a binary choice between the base proposal and frame transactions, we were wondering if we can create like a single shield standard.
that kind of like takes the best path from each proposal.
Because these two proposals, they have like different strengths and weaknesses, right?
The L1 proposal, like frame transactions, is very optimized for the needs of the L1, right?
So for example, things like support for privacy, right?
Support for quantum signature aggregation, right?
You know, just align with the entire post-quantum roadmap of Ethereum.
And then like for the base proposal, it's like very optimized for performance and scalability for the L2, right?
Because like base, they want to target like tens of thousands of transactions per second.
right so the so the entire like a proposal is like very performance um centric right um you know and then there's also some features with the base space proposal that makes it easier for them to for example if there's like a application or like a chain that wants to allow only passkey but like no other authentication methods they can't enforce that right you know because like for altos things like compliance is like a very big aspect of that right you know so the a proposal is also very optimized for that So again, the question we had was like, can we have one proposal that takes the best path from each proposal?
So then we went through, I think, maybe like a three-week exercise with this collab.
We tried our best, and the co-authors from both specs, heavily engaged, people like Vitalik, people like Matt from Geth, and also people from base, even people from Arbitran, they're all engaged.
But at the end, I think the you know and there was like the kind of the central point of my tweet which was that um i think at the end ethereum wants to be the best version of ethereum right and base wants to be the best version of base right so even though we could have like a standards that conduct does both things it kind of has to do both things in like a imperfect way and like neither chen is really willing to like sacrifice their core product goals right so that's why like at the end i think we sort of like both aligned that it was better to just go separate ways even though you were resulting a lot of like ecosystem uh fragmentation down the road right you know because now like what is an ltools they have to like support like two different transaction format two different as then that's yeah you know but but that's like the long story short you know okay I appreciate the summary there, but I think the thing that is kind of concerning to me and to maybe a lot of our listeners too, is it sounds like Ethereum is getting divorced from one of its largest L2s.
Is that how you see this?
Or is there like a...
a silver lining on this where, you know, like you said, base becomes the best version of base, Ethereum becomes the best version of Ethereum, but that long-term alignment still remains in maybe a different way.
Or do you, do you see this more as like these two chains starting to diverge more from each other and like ecosystem fragmentation starting to happen in Ethereum?
Yeah.
I mean, I would like, I would love to hear Benji's and Julian's take on this, but personally, like I feel like the idea that base is divorcing from ethereum is like definitely like way too dramatic of a take from this whole thing right you know because Like I said, every time I hear people on Twitter complaining about Bayes being not Etherline, I get super triggered.
Because honestly, I feel like Bayes is actually one of the most Etherum Alliance L2s out there.
For example, the fact that they even participated in the ACD was not something that we see from every L2 all the time.
But also the fact that they are one of the largest ETH holders, the fact that obviously ETH is used all over the Bayes ecosystem.
i um you know and also like even just when you look at like the base like the base architecture right just like how they settle to ethereum and how they assess deposit from ethereum like basically like all the technical architectural choices they make are very i would say decentralized and very like etherline you know like they're not taking any shortcuts with like you know like with like a multi-stick bridging you know they're always using like the the the proper ethereum tag where it's like optimistic challenges or what is ZK.
So even technically they're super aligned with Ethereum.
But I think the proper takeaway from this is that as the broader Ethereum ecosystem gains traction, I think we can no longer take it for granted that every L2 just blindly follow every decision made by the L1.
Because today, L2 has very clear product market fits that is distinct from the L1.
For example, if you're a big Shopify company like Robinhood, you're going to launch an L2 and not on L1 because you want to own your own block space.
So because they serve different use cases, naturally they will require somewhat different technologies.
So the L1 can no longer be taken for granted that the L2 will follow every technical decision that the L1 makes.
So I think this particular instance is one example of that.
But besides that, I think 100% think that base is one of the most Ethereum-like organizations and base is bringing a huge amount of value to Ethereum.
I'd love to add.
I was just going to say, yeah, go ahead.
I would just like to hear more thoughts on this and the relationship between the L2s and L1 in general.
But yeah, please continue.
Yeah, I'd love to add to this.
So personally, background, I used to work at Optimism.
and so was within the L2 space for a large part of my life in crypto.
Derek is the founder of ZeroDev and ZeroDev today powers, and this AA is a wallet-oriented account thing, right?
Derek invented the thing that essentially powers most of crypto applications today on literally making the UX better and it's used by every app that most people use in crypto today.
So like...
in terms of where we come from when we think of like, okay, this is an account and there's like two separate standards of it.
And then there's like, okay, like it's based divorcing on Ethereum.
And like the analogy that I like to use a lot, and we used to use it back in the day, was Ethereum is the internet of value, right?
Like you can use the word internet very well.
Like Facebook creating, like, yeah, like Facebook creating its own website doesn't mean it divorced from the internet.
You know, Uber having its own payment rails doesn't mean it divorced from Apple.
Right.
It's still an iPhone.
So these are things that can be dramatized.
And I think there's some level of this like freedom that L2s can get, which are actually make the value proposition even better.
Another analogy, just for the sake of analogies, is Ethereum is New York.
And if every single place in New York was like Tribeca, I'd never go there.
Right.
Like we need diversity.
We need more things to do.
And we need to allow for this culture to flourish.
And at the end of the day, like base has billions of dollars of Ether sitting on their L2 base is like.
consuming blobs like nobody's business constantly.
These are there's like other forms of ways in which we're definitely like working together across this bigger goal.
And I think the bigger goal is like, let's build the Internet of value, right?
Like we have the Internet of information.
Let's build the Internet of value.
And that's going to need various websites.
It's going to need various different ways and approaches.
And in this case, like actually allowing and enabling for, you know, some things to diverge here and there on like maybe the way the building is designed a bit doesn't mean it's not in New York anymore.
And if anything, some more funky buildings could get more people to come in in the first place.
So there's like, there's a lot of these like analogies that I find very helpful when we think about like the broader mission.
Like if we think of this ecosystem as like in a very like more like corporate way, almost it's like there's a corporate partnership and like this happened, like then it's like, okay, like in the traditional world, yes, like that is probably a divorce in some ways.
I think people diverge in opinions, but the world we're building is bigger.
Like we're literally, our goal must be bigger.
Our goal is literally to build the internet of value.
Like this is where every single form of digital value can settle and will settle.
And it's going to be on Ethereum and there's going to be multiple systems that take advantage of the properties that Ethereum L1 provides and base is one of them.
And we're definitely looking forward to seeing a lot more like they're coming up the pipe for sure.
So like that's one way I think about it.
And yeah, like in the standard itself is a great win.
Like it literally is account abstraction.
It's making accounts better.
Like in both cases, like people are going to be holding ETH, using ETH for gas.
you know, using applications that now make it way easier to onboard like your family, all of these things, right?
So, and also maybe even using other tokens for gas with the ETH being underlying.
Just to clarify, some people freaked out the other day when it was like, they're using other tokens, but it's- I got asked about this on a podcast too, by the way.
And so, yeah, people are freaking out.
They're like, oh my gosh, now ETH isn't money anymore.
You can pay in anything.
But yeah, please continue.
I'd love to hear you say more about that.
And the other part is like, So Derek's been working on this, like on the level of account traction, like for ages.
Right.
And he's literally built this amazing startup that like literally powers most good apps today on this idea of like make the UX better.
And it's finally getting better at a protocol level.
Like that's such a big win.
The other win here is like all the work that Derek and like people at Yoav and multiple others, I can't name all of them.
There's big group, there's this AA group chat with like 10,000 people in it, I swear.
AA means account abstraction for anyone who's not deep in the jargon here, but yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So account abstraction.
And like the nice thing is the only way these solutions could have happened, like both bases and the frames one is all the prior work that came before it.
And that's the beauty of EVM network effects, right?
Like it's like a stepping ladder.
Like it is all based on the EVM.
And the beauty is like we're building this internet value and everyone's using TCP IP.
And that already has broader network effects.
And, you know, it's great for both Ethereum and ETH as a result.
Well, yeah, well, appreciate the thoughts on that.
Yeah.
And I think some people sometimes forget that Ethereum doesn't want to be a dictator and have like total coherence and control.
And they want to let a lot of people come in and build a lot of different things.
So I think that framing is helpful.
We'll see how all this plays out.
Julian, I wanted to ask your thoughts on something we touched on a little bit last time, which is this whole tokenization frenzy that we're seeing take place on Ethereum primarily.
As Benji said earlier, there's more tokenized stock trading now happening on Ethereum than there is on the Singapore Stock Exchange.
But there's been a lot of controversy about this too.
Any updated thoughts from you on what's happening in this space?
Obviously, we just saw an announcement of an innovation exemption from the SEC.
That means we're probably going to see a lot more tokenized assets issued on Ethereum.
What are your thoughts on this and what's your updated outlook here?
Yeah, I think...
As eFabs are super excited to see how well Robinhood and Base have been doing with distributing their tokenized assets and tokenized equities to many, many more people around the world.
I think that's both the mission that we believe in, of making assets more available to those in different parts of the world and something that Robinhood and Base believe in as well.
I think there won't be like one right way to tokenize assets.
And I think we're seeing already different models today with like securitized and super states being a transfer agent and so offering a different type of tokenization than Robinhood or Base can.
And now with the SEC innovation exemption, I'd imagine more of that happening actually where Unaffiliated third parties can tokenize assets in a way that's maybe closer to the Securitize and SuperState model, but still different and allow those tokens to trade in DeFi applications.
The reason I say that I don't think there will be like one right way to tokenize is that we're seeing the products that come from these different tokenization steps lead to very different outcomes.
If you look at Securitize, which tokenize Biddle, BlackRoch's Money Market Fund, we see that Biddle can be used to some extent in Unisop, for example, but it's a very different product offering than, for example, Romanhood's stock tokens, which are paired with meme coins across the chain, right?
And that's, yeah, I think we'll be seeing a lot more of that and a lot more exploration before we condense back to one.
way that stock tokens would be tokenized.
If I had to say some things that I'd be wishing for, perhaps, where we want to see this going, there are two things that really interest me.
I think one is this stock token fragmentation.
I think we've seen the memes on Twitter, right, that you can buy infinite amounts of NVIDIA tokens or of Apple tokens or whatever in different formats.
I think one thing to realize here is that this fragmentation exists in Chatfire as well.
If you've ever tried to move your stocks from one brokerage account to another.
I think for some, it's actually technically feasible, but it's practically a nightmare.
And I think in crypto, we can really improve on that.
Still, token fragmentation is an issue.
Lots of front ends, they expose it in a very good way.
If you go on the Robinhood wallet, you'll see the Robinhood stock tokens.
If you go on Etherify, you'll see one particular one.
If you go on Liteir, you'll see one particular one.
But yeah, we need to make sure that on the back end, that trading costs go down as well and that fragmentation doesn't cause any problems there.
Something that I've seen Les speak about, which I think is interesting actually, is that Robinhood used their chain and their tokens as a way to expand into Europe, where the Robinhood app with the Robinhood chain on the back end was the first offering in Europe.
Something that I think would really help is that if European stocks, for example, were also widely available on the Robinhood app, some of them might be, I think some others aren't.
But obviously, as someone who lives in Europe, you'll have a tendency to want to have exposure to the companies building around you in the physical world.
And I think that's something that could really help.
tokenization more if there were like more global stocks available in the places that people live in as well that they can buy next to like the American stocks that they want to have exposure to for example.
You know one of the weird things about crypto is that the longer you're in it the more accounts you seem to end up with.
You buy in one place, trade somewhere else, earn yield somewhere else and if you actually need capital you end up having to sell something that you probably wanted to keep.
That's why we at Milk Road are partnering with Nexo.
These guys keep the whole thing under one account.
You can buy, trade crypto, earn interest on what you already hold, and even borrow against your capital without having to sell it.
All in one spot, all in one account, all on Nexo.
So if you need liquidity, but you don't want to give up your position, or you're already holding crypto and you want to be able to do more with it, I think Nexo is worth your time.
We love working with them.
I think you will too.
Tell them Milk Road sent you.
Benji, something I love about Julian is that whenever he answers a question, he's so polished and organized.
It sounds like a diplomat.
He's like already thought out what he wants to say.
But then Julian, I see you on Twitter.
You're just tweeting in all caps, make it faster about Ethereum.
It's such a great dichotomy.
All right.
I'm going to try to get you off your game with this one.
I got a question for you.
This is kind of a shotgun blast about this.
All right.
All of this tokenization right now is happening on these L2s, right?
And you gave some thoughts about what you're seeing there, what you'd like to see happen and some interesting insight on that.
But should there be a push to try to move a lot of this tokenization activity back to the Ethereum L1?
Do you think it's proper that it lives on the L2?
Do you not care?
Are you kind of agnostic to that?
And then who benefits the most?
Is it better for issuers to do it on the L1 versus the L2s?
Is it better for users?
Is it better for ETH?
Give me your thoughts on how that breaks out in your mind.
Yeah, if I had to tweet now, I'd probably say in full caps, we care.
Because yes, we definitely do care.
We want assets to be tokenized on the R1.
I think what Derek put very interestingly in his announcement post that he was joining ETH Labs actually, is that we're not trying to convince you of the value proposition of Ethereum from an alignment perspective or from an ideology perspective.
We're trying to convince you from a product perspective.
Issuing on the L1 has certain advantages.
It means that you have better distribution for your assets.
They more easily transport into other L2s where they can be used as collateral in certain app chains, for example.
And this is not a hypothetical thing.
We're speaking with many of these app chains, and they're saying that they want to use some of these tokenized assets.
For them, it's simply too hard because if they're issued on the L2, they need to have certain bridging infrastructure.
If they're issued on the L1, they can use the fast information rule, for example, and get the tokenized assets within their application within a few seconds, which is just a better product experience for users in the end.
There are also some L1 security benefits, which I think are interesting, but they're somewhat nuanced.
Something that I think is really interesting here is that today we're...
tokenization, blockchains are basically like distribution engines and they allow issuers to reach new customers, for example, but they're turning into like proper financial services technology, which is interesting.
And for this, we have to look at like different parts of tokenization.
It's not like the stock tokens, the wrapper equity model.
If we're looking at like the money market funds and particularly in the UK where they've been quite leading, what the UK regulators actually said is that blockchains can be like the proper ledger record so that there doesn't have to be like an off-chain mirrored version.
Like actually the blockchain is the ledger record that's the science who owns a certain money market puncher, which is super interesting.
And then suddenly all of these properties that Ethereum has been working towards start to matter a lot more, right?
It's like liveness starts to matter then and safety starts to matter.
And you don't want to have like blowups that we've seen in Chatfire where you basically like you lose the ledger record.
Google Synapse Evolve, that's such an interesting example here.
The SEC actually wrote a proposal to follow the UK's regulator in a similar direction here.
So I'm expecting that we will be convincing people more that the L1 is the right place to tokenize, not because of the ideology, but because of the actual benefits that Ethereum brings there.
Whose job is it to go out and sort of preach that message to the market?
Is that something Ethereum institutional handles?
Does ETH Labs play a role in that?
Because it sounds like you are pounding the table saying the L1 is the right place to do your issuance.
But who's taking that messaging to market?
And like, what role does ETH Labs play in trying to communicate that?
I can try to take a stab.
That would probably help for sure.
I was like, just let me know if I rambled.
like Julian said and like Derek said initially in his tweets and by the way Derek is like the best tweet person Twitter person ever like bangers after bangers it's unreal um where he says like we want to help Ethereum win by product right but like actually like building thing as a product um so one of the things when you think of tokenization as a product um like what is the value add of Ethereum for that it goes back to these thing ideas of like it's like fully neutral it has a 100 uptime you know people are already putting assets on there how do we keep pushing for that even more well like you can make some performance improvements as needed without sacrificing those properties like fast slots um you can have ethereum be the hub of assets and make it significantly almost about 30 times faster for it to bridge from L1 to L2s and things so it can move around easily.
If we go to one L2, try something there, go to another L2, try something else there.
There's this whole concept that can emerge.
A lot of the things that ETHLAPS is doing is also in accordance with this broader principle of how do we make this more efficient for trading, all these different use cases.
If we stick to tokenization, it's like make it faster as a product.
make it easier for things to move across the Ethereum ecosystem as a product without minimizing security.
Specifically talking institutional shop, like we say decentralization, institutions say counterparty risk minimization.
This is fairly standard practice for them.
Generally, they're very risk averse.
So how do you minimize counterparty risk?
Well, you can get rid of maybe some middle layers there, like kind of make those more efficient, put those on L1, put them on something that like...
can ensure that it works out the way it says it's going to work out without trusting middlemen and whatnot.
So there's all these different ways in which Ethereum as a product, as an L1, can be able to house more of tokenization and enable more things.
And then on the other side, use cases.
We can tokenize all the assets in the world, but if they're not used for anything, what's the point?
And that's where this broader idea of having more and more builders come in and build unique experiences for stocks that are now accessible globally 24-7.
it is really promising and I think it's like an interesting thing to think about as Ethereum is like the internet of value where you can program money so making that one a better product for that was helpful and I think a lot of the efforts that eCLABS is focused on today is pretty very closely in tandem with that whether it's speed or interop or accounts.
Okay.
So Ethereum needs to win on product and ETH Labs is focusing on that best product outcome.
OK, let's let's kind of like bring this back because I know we got a hard out here in a few minutes.
I want to give some time for discussion on synthesizing some of this.
Right.
So we talked about fast Ethereum.
We talked about.
quick slots.
Then we talked a little bit about account abstraction and how there are diverse solutions to this that are coming into the Ethereum ecosystem, some of the benefits that unlocks.
And then we talked about tokenized assets and issuance on chain on the L1.
Can you bring this all back together for me as to why this helps ETH capture value and why all this drives value to ETH the asset as opposed to just like, you know, letting the L2s continue to make tons of money on Ethereum?
Yeah, like give me some thoughts on this and where you guys sit on this question.
I risk of sounding diplomatic again.
I think it really is all of these three coming together.
We want to have quick slots, we want to have better AA, and we want to have a good product differentiation of what you should issue on the L1.
That will attract asset issuers.
That will mean that there will be more activity on the L1.
ETH will be used more for fees, both for actually trading and for L2 settling on the L1, not just for blobs, but also for verification costs, for example.
And it means that ETH will be paired against more assets.
I'm saying it really is a combination because of these three things, because when I'm in calls with some of the institutions, for example, we actually hear a large variety of...
technical issues that they are bumping into.
Bridging time, for example, is a very real thing that they are bumping into and quick slots will help reduce this.
some wallet issues is something that they're bumping into as well.
You don't want to have someone sit on a desk and monitor a wallet and make sure that they sign off on some custodial flows just to be able to use your assets.
And you want to have a good, standardized way of issuing certain types of assets on blockchains.
And so I really think it's all of those three coming together, and they are all necessary.
Otherwise, yeah, we won't get there.
Maybe an imperfect analogy here, right?
But for example, why is the US dollar is the dominant asset in the world.
I think a large reason is because the US has the most advanced financial infrastructure in the world.
So that the US dollars can flow seamlessly, not just within the US, but even internationally to other markets.
So you have all these financial products built on top of the US dollars, which reinforces its dominance.
So similarly, the reason why ETH will dominate is because Ethereum has the best I'd say digital infrastructure of all the blockchain, right?
You know, like everything that worked on like the fast finality, fast information rule, fast slots makes it possible for ETH as well as tokens issued on Ethereum to flow seamlessly, not just within Ethereum, but also to like any other to any other ecosystem.
Right.
So that's why, for example, right, like even though, you know, people can talk about how L2 is that using so little block fees and whatnot.
It's true that like like all the successful L2 is like base, Arbitrum, Robinhood, like if you look at like the top like trading pair rather like across their exchanges most of them they are denominated in eth right you know and that's because eth is that the token that's can the most easily flow towards this outlook thanks for thanks to the technical properties of ethereum right so uh i just want to say that like the financial aspects and the technical aspect of ethereum are very much interlinked Yeah, I want to plus one that.
And like on ETH the asset, like if we look at this asset in general compared to any other asset in the world, it's one of the most highly liquid neutral assets that doesn't have a central issuer per se, right?
Like it is a neutral, incredibly neutral asset that like is now powering an increasingly larger globally, global on-chain economy, like 170 billion stable coins, 50 plus billion in DeFi, more and more getting tokenized, right?
Like, and all of this is being underpinned by likely one of the most neutral assets in the world that is highly liquid, available, global, permissionless, all of the above.
And there's a ton of value in that, whether it's being used as like to facilitate this network or as gas or as anything else and all the other use cases or even as a store of value.
So like, I think there's a ton there.
I don't think we should divorce like Ethereum progress from ETH progress.
I do think they're very much interlinked.
I think at the end of the day, though, like we have to provide value to the world.
Like we have to make this.
broader sphere so good that people end up building entirely net new experiences that onboard net new people and literally change the way in which value flows around the internet.
And we have a lot to do there.
And I think there's like a lot of interesting directions there too, like where there's like hackathons going on.
There's a Coliseum hackathon, for example, that has tracks for...
people across the Ethereum ecosystem, which is quite interesting.
Let's get more and more builders to use these platforms and build novel experiences out of it.
Let's get people to program money.
And all of this being underpinned by one of the most credibly neutral, open, highly liquid assets in the world is quite a nice, perfect storm, I think.
That was fun.
Very diplomatic.
But I think we went around the horn and got some bull posting done.
So we checked that box.
I want to end with one quick conversation here around something that's got a lot of attention and capital in the markets these days, which is this idea of a privacy solution.
Zcash has obviously been pumping a lot.
There's a ton of other alternatives in the market.
There's the Aztec Network.
There's the Midnight Sidechain and Monero and on and on.
Do you all think that it is necessary for Ethereum to compete in the market with a privacy solution natively at the L1?
What are the plans or the updates on Ethereum's efforts to do that?
I believe already, if we look at some privacy statistics, especially around DeFi and things, like Railgun is on Ethereum.
They were also quoting the article.
They are also, by the way, supporting FastLots, QuickSlots.
But we do have a lot of privacy platforms on Ethereum already, and they're doing incredible work.
We have the Kohaku Initiative from the EF, and that's trying to essentially build an open...
open source wallet SDK.
So everyone can default have more privacy as well as like better quantum resistance.
These things are all kind of moving in tandem.
So Ethereum is, and I don't know if you caught it, but like Soy spoke from the Ethereum Foundation had an amazing podcast the other day where he talks about the plans for L1 being private based off of the ES roadmap there.
So it's definitely something that is happening in Ethereum.
And like the nice part about Ethereum is you get composable privacy, right?
Like it's like you can send money through these applications, I guess, but you can also, over time, participate in DeFi, you know, do all these different things.
And on the topic of privacy as well, like if we think of a use case specifically, there was a Revolut data breach the other day.
A lot of people who use Revolut has basically their data leaked.
And this happens all the time.
It's not just a Revolut thing.
This happened with major institutions, constantly billions of dollars in stock value get lost because of these data leaks because they're all in a centralized database.
And there's interesting ways for us as crypto and as Ethereum to maybe help.
You know, we have like ZK solutions for this stuff, like where I can reveal who I am.
You can know that I'm not like from North Korea and but you don't need to know my home address.
That would be ideal.
That's like a really good, strong benefit for the world and for the safety.
We literally have people having unfortunate things happen to them in the crypto space of kidnappings, for example, and things like because their address was doxxed.
You know, privacy doesn't have to end up just like this is the thing happening in crypto right now.
It is a world thing.
Like we are living in a world in which ideally we get to own more of ourselves and not less of ourselves.
if Ethereum can continue being a platform that bolsters that both on a money level, but also beyond that on a social level, I think that's worthwhile.
But again, caveat all of this, like we have to go and build these solutions that users actually touch.
Like it's nice for us to have these things here that like some of us can use in a niche maybe, but like it's not enough.
If we really want to help and bolster the world and make an impact, like we need these.
We need to think about privacy as a very user-facing thing versus just as a narrative.
And I think there's so much happening in the Ethereum ecosystem on that side.
So pretty excited to see it and probably need to catch up on a lot.
So I'll have to be sure, though.
Shout out Web3 privacy now.
Yeah.
And maybe just from my perspective, I think me personally, as well as ETH Labs as an org, we're extremely pro-privacy.
I think privacy is one of those things that's...
I think the best way to put it is that if imagine Ethereum had privacy from day one, and you try to take away the privacy, everyone would be like, what?
How can you make the blockchain?
public right like how can my transaction be public that's crazy right but the only reason why people don't think don't think that way was because if you know it wasn't privacy from day one right you know so now everyone has come to accept that okay blockchain is public you know you know but but but it's just one of those things that like you have to put in people's hands and have people experiences before they realize that this is actually like they cannot live without it right um but but speaking of this i also want to just give credits to the ethereum foundation right you know because One thing that we sometimes talk about is the relationship between ETH Labs and the Ethereum Foundation.
So I think we are very, very laser focused on solving the 10 points of users and builders today.
We're very responsive to build their needs.
But I think really huge credit is going to the EF for thinking about the long term roadmap of Ethereum.
Privacy and quantum resistance are the kind of things that require long term investments in a five to 10 year time scale.
But those are the things that will ensure Ethereum stay relevant for centuries.
So I think just having both organizations, one thinking about more short to medium term and then with the EF thinking about the long term, I think it's a really good one-two punch for Ethereum.
So just really bullish on that as well.
Really appreciate the thoughts on all this, gentlemen.
We are coming up on a hard stop, so I'm going to end it there.
But I want to end by saying at the end of your article that you published on Twitter from the Ethlabs account, you call for everyone to share, to retweet, to like, to engage with this because you guys do not run Ethereum and you do need support from the community.
So I'm going to follow Julian's lead.
I'm going to retweet it and say, make it faster.
And we care probably in all caps.
We'll see how many exclamation points I throw in there.
But I would encourage everyone to do that.
As we end here really quickly, could we just go around the horn and let people?
know where they can find you online to follow more of your work.
And maybe just, you know, a word or two about what you're focused on next at eFlaz.
You can find us on Twitter.
Actually, we post weekly updates and it would be great to follow up with those as well.
That's also where you can find everything that we're doing next.
I'll be focusing mostly on asset issuance, understanding what is the current exact product offering, like what is the A to Z steps that institutions go through to issue assets and how can we improve those from the Ethereum protocol perspective.
Yeah, Bingy underscore, oh no, this way, Bingy underscore X right here.
I have the best job in the world, man.
I work with like really, really smart people who are doing everything they can to make Ethereum better across every single way that Ethereum could possibly be better.
And I get to help communicate that.
So there's a lot going on still.
Fast Ethereum, obviously, today, I need a break from that for like the next two, three hours and then get back right back into it.
Jillian's got some cool stuff coming up from FCR.
Like Derek has an AA world, some interop stuff.
We're talking to some really, really cool teams.
We won't say who, but around like novel ways to use Ethereum for markets generally that's already picking up and it's pretty exciting.
And some of them have quote tweeted our article already.
So we're even more friends with them right now.
But yeah, man, like there's, there's a ton to do.
I think there's a gap in Ethereum sometimes when it comes to communication.
So if we can help fill that gap, both on protocol side and application side.
and in the east side um i think that would be a job well done so we'll try our best shot keep us honest eric what about you yeah yeah you know i i i publish a lot of like i guess long long-form contents under my twitter um you know which is decent decentric kind of hard to spell it's like decentralization but with my name derrick in it decentric um you know but basically uh yeah you know i publish long-form content about like just really any interesting technical topics in ethereum right like lately lately is being about account abstraction but i'm almost i'm also starting to write about things like interop fast information rule and like and you know you know and other things so yeah so if you want to dive deep into ethereum topics uh follow me but also more importantly for the ether apps account you know because we have so much amazing uh team content coming Well, I am available on Twitter at Bitcoin Jesus ETH.
I post GIFs and screenshots of Ethereum's price chart.
Gentlemen, thank you so much for being on the Milk Road Show.
I always learn a lot from these episodes.
I think the community really appreciates not only the work that you're doing, but the time you take to communicate about it, which I think is just, you know, really important.
So thank you all so much for being on the Milk Road Show.
I hope we can catch up again soon.
Thank you all so much for being here.
Until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and we will see you all on the next episode of the Milk Road Show.
Thanks for being here, everyone.
Bye.
Thanks for listening to Milk Road.
If you enjoyed the show, make sure you like and subscribe.
And if you're struggling to find winners in the market, that's exactly what Milk Road Pro is built for.
Our analysts have called some of the biggest winners early and Pro lets you see what they're buying next, every trade they make, and the research behind every position.
Check out Milk Road Pro at the link below.
Everything you hear on Milk Road is for informational purposes only.
These are our personal opinions, not financial advice.
And we may own some of the investments we talk about.
Always do your own research and make the decisions that are right for you.
See you next time.