The Sovereign Rollup Thesis & Inevitability of Modular Tech Stacks | Mustafa Al-Bassam (Celestia), Preston Evans (Sovereign)
Today we are joined by Preston Evans and Mustafa Al-Bassam to discuss the sovereign rollup thesis. We discuss social vs technical sovereignty, the Sovereign SDK, why light clients are critical to scale, limitations of optimistic rollups, value accrual in a modular world and more!
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Rollup Designs
(05:40) Social Sovereignty vs Technical Sovereignty
(09:58) Why Does the Rollup Debate Matter?
(18:09) Limitations of the EVM
(20:39) A Blockchains 3 Core Tasks
(24:21) Thales
(25:18) Security Guarantees & the Benefit for Users
(32:21) Modular Inevitability & Breaking the Layer One Loop
(42:34) Why Preston is Bearish on Optimistic Rollups
(46:00) Value Accrual and Moats
(53:40) Sovereign’s Alpha Release & Celestia’s Mainnet Incoming
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Follow Preston: https://twitter.com/prestonevans__
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This episode is brought to you by Thales. Thales is an innovative digital options platform on Arbitrum and Optimism that gets you exposure to crypto assets in the simplest way possible. As simple as choosing UP or DOWN! Experience the simplicity and power of Thales by visiting https://thalesmarket.io/?mtm_campaign=blockworks today!
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Resources
Celestia
https://celestia.org/
https://twitter.com/CelestiaOrg
Sovereign
https://www.sovereign.xyz/
https://twitter.com/sovereign_labs
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Disclaimer: Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Santiago, Jason, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
The Cosmos SDK of Rollups | Preston Evans, Sovereign Labs
Today's episode is a bonus episode from our podcast 0xResearch, produced by the Blockworks Research team. This is one of my favorite episodes they've done, a deep dive into the future of rollups, scaling and zk-tech. The first 15 minutes is the "analyst bullpen" segment on Arbitrum's recent governance debacle, followed by an interview with Preston Evans from Sovereign Labs (use the Timestamps if you want to skip ahead). If you enjoy this episode, follow the link in the show notes below to subscribe!
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Join us on 0xResearch as we interview Preston Evans, the Chief Scientist of Sovereign Labs. Why should you care about Sovereign? Because they're building the Sovereign SDK. Like the Cosmos SDK that enables modular plug-and-play experimentation for L1s, the Sovereign SDK is a modular toolkit for building zk-rollups on any chain with seamless composability. In this episode, we discuss how Sovereign's design compares to the Cosmos SDK and IBC, smart contract vs Sovereign rollups, the role of data availability, decentralized sequencer design and more! This is my favorite 0xResearch episode yet.
And as usual, we start the episode with our analyst bullpen to discuss the recent governance drama at Arbitrum!
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(00:45) Arbitrum's Governance Blunder
(15:04) Blockworks Research
(16:03) Interview Start: What is Sovereign?
(22:23) The Sovereign SDK vs Cosmos SDK
(23:59) Settlement on Smart Contract vs Sovereign Rollups
(28:14) The Role of Data Availability
(32:24) Decentralized Sequencers
(37:54) Optimistic Rollup Tradeoffs
(41:24) Composability and IBC
(52:22) What Is Sovereign’s X Factor?
(54:17) Building Rollups on Bitcoin
(59:11) Sovereign’s Business Model and Timeline
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Follow Preston: https://twitter.com/prestonevans__
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Resources:
Delegate ARB to Blockworks Research
https://twitter.com/blockworksres/status/1639279479368368132
Sovereign Labs
https://www.sovereign.xyz/
https://twitter.com/sovereign_labs
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Check out Blockworks Research today! Research, data, governance, tokenomics, and models – now, all in one place
Blockworks Research: https://www.blockworksresearch.com/
Free Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter
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Disclaimer: Nothing said on 0xResearch is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Dan, Sam, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
