The Rollup

One of the core issues we heard about awhile back on our podcast with Jon Kol from Hyperlane was the ‘indexing’ problem of the modular expansion. Essentially, if we are going to exist in a world of 1000s of chains, we’ll also need to have a streamlined process for data. This is where yesterdays post with Lava Network fits in the puzzle (RPCs). Staying on the data tooling pattern, today’s post is a...

Wow. What a day yesterday. Our modular market map absolutely blew up on X. Including in this map, under data tooling, is Lava Network. Lava is modular RPC data access provider for modular chains. Our discussion today is centered around how Lava's modular data access layer is facilitating better connectivity across various blockchain environments. A Remote Procedure Call (RPC), is a vital mecha...

Dymension was the second massive modular launch following Celestia. Yesterday, the first RollApp on Dymension, NIM Network announced their genesis rolldrop to $DYM stakers, Pudgy Penguins, $PRIME holders and other communities. Of course, we asked Yishay what he thinks of NIM and other RollApps deploying on Dymension. We have been strong believers of Dymension since the middle of last year and brou...

The explosion of modular appchains is happening. Head over to Celenium, Celestia’s main block explorer, to see the chains using Celestia for modular DA. These are typically happening through RaaS providers who offer a seamless setup process. Today we are focused Gelato’s approach to modular appchains, and specifically how founder Luis sees similarities in how Web2 & Web3 scale. We learned how...

In a world of 1000s of rollups and chains, the problem to tackle is unification of these otherwise isolated execution environments. In today’s Modular March presentation, we sit down with NEAR founder Illia to take a look at their data availability layer, account aggregation, and chain abstraction toolkit. We ask Illia about the potential of NEAR DA, how sharding really works for the L1, and his p...

We were speaking to a liquid fund in Denver who just wouldn’t deploy capital into DeFi products on EVM because of the risk of re-entrancy bugs and other exploits. However, what they did mention was they wanted to deploy into Movement’s upcoming L2 and they are actively deployed on Aptos, because of the security of the MOVE programming language. When we heard this, we knew our bullish conviction in...

The value accrual model in the modular stack is akin to that of the rise of the early internet. According to Tarun, founder of Gauntlet and a prominent angel investor, we will see more and more specialized usecases for applications which are highly expressive. As a result of this, the need for a modular stack becomes more and more apparent. We really enjoyed this conversation which drew inspiratio...

One of the biggest things we are leaning into is the design choices behind the certain builders decisions. We really want to understand why projects are choosing execution environments in specific modular architectures. In today’s video we sit down with Cartesi’s co-founder Felipe to gather insights for builders. We take a dive into the differences between app specific rollups and general purpose...

As you may know, this year in the modular space has been characterized by the rise of modular DA solutions bringing in extremely low costs to txs on rollups. We call this “the modular big bang” where the beginning of the modular expansion begins. Today, we’re diving into the next modular DA solution to launch: Avail. Stemming from Polygon roots, this team is set to launch their mainnet very, very...

In today’s Modular March presentation, we’re diving into a topic brought to light by Ethereum foundation researcher, Justin Drake. Interoperability has long been a stumbling block in the path to a unified DeFi space. Traditional bridges and their limitations, the high costs associated with proof aggregation, and the challenges of achieving true atomic composability have fragmented the landscape. Y...

Welcome to the first episode of the series of Modular March Presentations. Today, we delve into the zk side of things with Karel, founder of Union Build, a project focused squarely on bringing together modular chains as part of the modular expansion. At its core, Union leverages the principles of modularity and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to enhance the way different blockchain networks communica...

In today’s podcast, we’re taking a closer look at Zircuit's zkEVM, an innovative L2 focused on going to market in 2024. Zircuit’s leverages zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), a groundbreaking approach that ensures transaction validity without compromising privacy. This feature not only enhances the security of transactions by keeping details shielded but also plays a crucial role in scalability. A...

This was a really fun episode. Alwin is a good character and has some very interesting takes. We talked about Blast a fair bit, as we are particularly interested in the total degen culture going on over at Blast. Truly a chain with a culture, sort of reminds us of the Cosmos early days but less rebellious, more degen. We discussed the Vertex go-to-market strategy on Blast by starting 'Blitz&#3...

If you have been here since day 1, you know we did a podcast with Qiao Wang in 2020 shortly after DeFi summer. What a time to be alive. In todays podcast, we cover a variety of topics, including cross-border payments using stablecoins, the differences between Ethereum and Solana, the significance of L2s, Solana's upcoming upgrade Firedancer, his take on modular vs. monolithic, the state of pri...

Restaking has grown significantly in the EVM land mindshare, yet people don't realize Cosmos has had restaking for a very long time. Liquid staking has also grown significantly in Cosmos thanks to help of several key players. Today, we'll explore the solutions Persistence One has to offer, and their recent launch of stkDYDX (liquid staked DYDX). The app chain philosophy of Cosmos allows fo...

There is > $100M of value being extracted every single year from lending markets by MEV. This value is shared with Ethereum validators, yet makes a small difference in the staking yield... In today’s pod, we'll explore how UMA is planning to recapture this value and distribute it to a different set of users. We discuss how integrating MEV modules, particularly Oval, into different protocols...

The future is Modular. With the rise of specialized solutions in the blockchain development landscape, we will see more onboarding of devs and better UX for users. In today's podcast we talk with Dino, co-founder of Fluent, a company that is spearheading the development of a zkWasm L2. One of the key aspects of Fluent's platform is its support for two distinct categories of applications: s...

As you know, we've become quite the modular blockchain activists and have been focusing on modular rollups quite a bit recently. Today's podcast is a deep dive into how Celestia's Data Availability Sampling (DAS) is changing the way we think about onchain data publishing verification. This modular approach allows for the customization of blockchains for specific use cases, aligning wit...

Change is coming. The era of centralized rollup sequencers is coming to an abrupt halt as builders realize the importance of a shared, decentralized sequencer network to power their censorship-resistant, minimized rollup infrastructure. In today's podcast, we sit down with co-founder of Espresso Systems, Charles Liu, to discuss the possibilities of rollup interoperability and the modular stack...

Berachain is real. With takeaways from this podcast such as "your community is actually like a set of offchain validators" and unpacking what "proof of liquidity" really means, we really enjoyed the deep dive with Smokey. We think Berachain is onto something special, with its focus on fostering an authentic community, and redefining liquidity through their innovative proof of l...

Today, we're diving into the world of SEI Network and its role in the parallelization narrative. SEI Network is a solution that's quietly changing the way we navigate EVM challenges and state bloat. With the mainnet launch in August 2023, SEI Network has boasted a sustained time to finality of 390 milliseconds, outpacing even chains like Solana. Not only that, but the SEI token has outperf...

Today, we're diving into the fascinating world of alternative virtual machines (altVMs) and their role in shaping the future of the modular blcokchain future that we are rapidly approaching. In this podcast with Rushi, co-founder of Movement Labs, we'll be exploring the rise of altVMs within the modular stack, addressing the bottleneck issues on Ethereum, and discussing how these innovativ...

Today, we're shining a spotlight on the Arbitrum DAO, with Steven Goldfeder, the co-founder of Offchain Labs. Offchain Labs has been instrumental in empowering the community and building the way forward. The key highlights from the discussion are around the evolution of the Arbitrum project and its transition to a community-driven initiative. The focus is not just on the technical aspects, but...

Today, we're diving into the world of Avail with co-founder Prabal Banarjee, a 'modular stack' project that's all about user verifiability and data availability. Avail is all about putting the power back into the hands of users, and when asked about value accrual in the modular stack, Prabal made sure to tell us it all comes back to the users. Avail focuses on data availability and...

Osmosis has a chance to solidify the position of the dominant DeFi hub for Cosmos Hub & IBC-based blockchains in the coming year. Seriously. If Sunny can execute this properly, along with the Osmosis community, there's a massive market forming to which Osmosis will capture. Bullish. Very bullish. Our Andy & Rob sat down with Sunny to discuss liquid staking in Cosmos, his involvement wi...