Emin Gün Sirer on Scaling Avalanche and Redefining Decentralization
What does the future of blockchain look like, and where do multi-chain systems fit in? On this episode, we're joined by Emin Gün Sirer, CEO and Founder of Ava Labs and one of the most prominent figures in blockchain innovation. Emin unpacks how Avalanche is reshaping the decentralized world with its groundbreaking consensus protocol, multi-chain scaling, and commitment to maintaining blockchain’s core values.
We also discuss:
Avalanche vs. Bitcoin and Ethereum
Gaming and DeFi innovations on Avalanche
Fighting centralization and the challenges of scale
The role of stablecoins and central banks in Avalanche’s ecosystem
Chapters:
00:00 Defiant intro
00:07 If the future of blockchain is centralized, I don’t want to be here
00:54 intro to Emin Gün Sirer, Founder and CEO of Ava Labs
04:29 Building the fastest consensus protocol on the market
04:43 How is Avalanche different from Bitcoin?
08:10 Avalanche vs. other multi chain systems
12:16 L2 scaling vs. multi chain scaling
16:55 Evaluating Ethereum’s promises
19:45 Interoperability on Avalanche
20:25 What’s the narrative behind Avalanche?
23:47 Avalanche’s long term strategy 💫
26:25 Gaming example: OTG
29:16 How flexible are Avalanche chains?
31:13 How do you maintain the tenets of blockchain across chains?
33:05 What's the liquidity breakdown between these L1 chains?
34:54 Avalanche’s TVL vs users and adoption
38:00 Fighting centralization on Avalanche
43:15 AVAX value and uses
45:58 Increased activity on Avalanche
48:00 It’s been a Bitcoin story: where do alt projects fit in?
53:33 Stablecoins and exciting catalysts for DeFi
53:15 Assets want to be digital
55:35 How do stable coins fit into Avalanche?
56:19 Prediction: central banks getting into stablecoins
57:11 Challenges with central banks getting into stablecoins
59:13 The next major milestones for Avalanche
01:06:52 Closing Remarks
How Avalanche Will Outscale L2s | Emin Gün Sirer, John Wu
In this episode of Empire, Emin Gün Sirer and John Wu explain why Avalanche is the most scalable, decentralized L1. We start with why developers choose Avalanche, then quickly transition into the L2 debate. Emin explains why Subnets are superior and how the L2 vision and L2 reality are miles apart. We also talk about Avalanche's consensus engine, business development, the multichain future and more!
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(01:01) Avalanche’s Core Thesis
(04:17) Why Build on Avalanche?
(14:19) The Problem with L2s
(19:08) Avalanche's Tradeoffs
(23:41) The Consensus Engine
(30:00) Learnings From Other Networks
(33:29) Solana vs Avalanche
(40:59) Avalanche’s Security Guarantees
(45:00) Business Development Strategy
(55:09) Warp: Communication Between Subnets
(1:00:01) On-Chain Governance
(1:01:41) Avalanche’s Community
(1:08:29) A Multichain Future?
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Resources
Avalanche
https://www.avax.network/
Ava Labs
https://www.avalabs.org/
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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 Chopping Block: ETHPoW Is 'a Terrible Way to Fork the Blockchain' - Ep. 396
Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Robert Leshner and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry. In this episode, Emin Gün Sirer, the emperor of Avalanche, also joined the conversation
Show topics: Gün’s take on the Ava Labs conspiracy story and whether there was any truth in the videos
The impact of the Merge on ETH issuance and energy usage
What’s going on with the ETHPoW fork, and how the team has been messing up
The TL;DR of the technical side of Ethereum scaling, explained by Tarun
How, in the beginning, proof of stake was designed to resemble proof of work
What Ethereum miners are going to do after the Merge
Whether increasing hash rates spike prices of PoW coins
How the Basic Attention Token is like the Stanford prison experiment
Whether the fights between Gün and other founders were positive or negative
How an exchange delisted every privacy coin
Whether Coinbase's support of the lawsuit against the US Treasury over Tornado Cash was a PR move
How this moment in history resembles the 90s and the rise of the internet
Whether there are blockchain-haters and what the crypto industry can do better
How there can’t be a single chain to meet every need
How FTX and Coinbase have different approaches to regulation
How would everyone celebrate a successful Merge and whether there’s a chance of it failing
Hosts
Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly Capital
Tarun Chitra, managing partner at Robot Ventures
Robert Leshner, founder of Compound
Guest
Emin Gün Sirer, Founder and CEO of Ava Labs
Episode Links
Ava Labs Accusations: Emin Gün Sirer’s statement
CoinDesk article
Crypto Leaks article
Tornado Cash
Treasury Press release
Coinbase supports lawsuit against US Treasury
Huobi delisting privacy coins
Previous coverage of the Tornado Cash Sanctions on Unchained:
Is TRM Labs Blocking Addresses From DeFi Protocols? Ari Redbord Says No
Tornado Cash Sanctioned. Did the Government Overstep Its Bounds?
The Chopping Block: Did OFAC Overstep by Sanctioning Tornado Cash?
Given the Sanctions on Tornado Cash, Is Ethereum Censorship Resistant?
Preston Van Loon on Ethereum's Merge and His Lawsuit Against Treasury
ETH Proof of Work and Miners: ChainID missing; the request from Coinbase
CoinDesk article
The ETHPoW team said the fork will be deployed within 24 hours of the Merge
ETHPoW team’s promise to abolish EIP-1559
ETHPoW first blocks
The Merge: Ethereum Foundation Merge announcement.
Ethereum carbon emission reductions.
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AVAX's Emin Gun Sirer Says Blockchains Should be Scalable at Their Core; Layer 2s Mean Giving Up
When Emin Gun Sirer first came on The Defiant in May 2020, Avalanche was not even on mainnet yet. Since then, it has risen to become one of the leading smart contract networks, while the AVAX token has risen over 7x in the last 12 months. We talk about how the project got here and how it wants to create a path for faster and more scalable decentralized network, amid heavy competition from other Layer 1 blockchains.
Emin makes the case for Avalache’s novel consensus mechanism, paired with subnets with their own virtual machines, and he also has scathing criticism for Ethereum and other Layer 2 scaling solutions. To him, once a platform starts building Layer 2s, it means they’ve run out of ideas on how to make a good Layer 1. We also discuss the big picture goal for Avalanche; Bitcoin centers around digital gold, Ethereum strives to create the world computer, and Avalanche wants to digitize all assets. If it's on a balance sheet, Emin says, it can be on a blockchain, and we discuss what it will take for it to get there.
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Blockchains are an Extinction-Level Event: Emin Gun Sirer
Emin Gun Sirer is a Cornell University computer science professor who has been deeply involved in the Bitcoin and Ethereum communities from the very early days. We talk about how he got started in the field, building a cryptocurrency long before Bitcoin. Gun, as friends call him, then turned his attention to Ethereum, notably catching the bug in The DAO, but failing to alert the community about it.
After years scrutinizing existing blockchains, he’s back at making one himself with AVA, whose testnet launched two weeks ago. He explains the inner workings of this network, the first built over the Avalanche protocol, and how it can process several thousands of transactions per second at latencies of under one second.
He also talks about his plans to release a subnetwork called Athereum shortly after the AVA mainnet launches in July. Athereum will be almost identical to Ethereum; it will replicate its smart contracts and assets, and ETH holders will hold the equivalent amount of ATH. Sirer says the intention is for Athereum to serve as a safety net in case something goes wrong with ETH 2.0. If this sounds like Ethereum’s old friend wants to bring on some serious competition to the second-biggest chain, that’s because he is. Still, he’s quick to highlight he wants Ethereum to succeed and that he’s not after Ethereum dollars, but rather after money flows that are outside of Ethereum.
What Does Cornell’s Emin Gun Sirer See As The Main Security Threats In Cryptocurrency? ‘Everything’
Cornell University computer science professor Emin Gun Sirer, an influential figure in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space, describes his ideas for improving security in the space, his skepticism about how to scale these networks, and how the last time financial institutions invested in their systems appears to be for Y2K. He also tells us how growing up in an environment where he saw a lot of scams helps him find problems in code, explains why Bitcoin is the “universal bug bounty,” and reveals how two high school students saved burgeoning cryptocurrency network Ethereum “like in the movies — just before the clock was going to expire.”
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