Kain Warwick, founder of Synthetix, and Ben Jones, cofounder and chief scientist at Optimism Foundation, discuss the current state of Ethereum Layer 2s, Optimism’s new governance structure, why Synthetix chose to build on Optimism, and more. Show topics:

  1. what Optimism and Synthetix are
  2. how zero-knowledge rollups differ from optimistic rollups
  3. why Synthetix decided to build on Optimism
  4. what makes L2s more enticing to build on than other L1s
  5. how Optimism’s governance is going to change with the launch of the Optimism Collective and OP token
  6. what issues Synthetix has had with Discord governance and early token voting, and how they have now solved this by forcing users to consolidate wallet addresses
  7. what retroactive public goods funding is and how it could create a “flywheel” of development on Optimism
  8. why whales might be excluded from Optimism’s token grant to Synthetix
  9. why Ben thinks the future is about the “superchain” rather than multi-chain 
  10. what Kain and Ben think about bridging between L2s and Mainnet
  11. why Optimism is a staunch backer of EIP 4844
  12. how the merge could affect Optimism and Synthetix

Thank you to our sponsors!

Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021     

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Episode Links

Guests

Synthetix

Optimism

Optimism Collective

Synthetix Launching on Optimism

Synthetix Governance

Kain’s Blog

Rollups

EIP 4844

The Merge

Kain’s previous Unchained appearances

Optimism’s Bridging Solution

Read the episode transcript here