Boy do I have a story for you guys….and it puts two cryptocurrencies face to face.
Battling for the future of Ethereum!
There is no denying the problems Ethereum faces today, are worth multi billion, even
trillions of dollars.
Everyone wants to solve them, and enjoy their slice of the Ether pie.
Well my army loves, Warm Apple Pie...you ready for our Americana...because it’s time for
Chico Crypto!
Let’s begin this story off with cryptocurrency #1.
Chainlink.
I love me some stanky lank.
Of course the meme culture is awesome, but their oracle solution is the dominant oracle
within the blockchain space, including for Ethereum.
A highly important organization to Chainlink is the ic3, the initiative for cryptocurrencies
and contracts, which lists them as their #1 partner and donor, among the other heavy weights
including ethereum and it’s foundation.
But who is the ic3?
Going to their about me page they say about the organization “IC3 is an initiative of
faculty members at Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, Cornell Tech, EPFL, ETH
Zurich, UC Berkeley, University College London, UIUC and the Technion.
It's based at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech in NYC”
It’s an academic based organization, home based at Cornell Tech in New Yawk on the recently
developed Roosevelt Island, Cornell University's answer to Silicon Valley…
But who is both a leading professor at Cornell Tech and is a co-director of the IC3?
Well that is none other than Ari Juels…
What else does Ari do?
Let’s just watch the Flan Man himself introduce him in October of last year…
Yeah, Ari is also the Chief Scientist for Chainlink Labs, working on some of their oracle
solutions and problems.
He was brought on just before this, and guess what was one of the first materials juels
ran with as a chainlink employee?
He dropped it in September, 1 month before that Convo with Sergey….
This blog and research...Fair Sequencing Services: Enabling a Provably Fair DeFi Ecosystem.
And let me tell you this blog has soo much to unpack.
First let’s unpack the problem, it’s front running on Dex’s and DeFi, and they give
a research study, which first highlighted the problem….
Flashboys 2.0, which of course includes Ari Juels.
But Flashboys...doesn’t that sound similar to something we’ve been covering lately?
Flashbots?
Well well well, here weeee GOOOO!
Just look at the Flashboys 2.0 research paper originally dropped in 2019 #1 listed contributor
to the paper is Philip Daian of Cornell Tech…
Let’s just go to the Ether Research announcement blog post of Flashbots, they say “Flashbots
is stewarded by Scott Bigelow, Phil Daian, Stephane Gosselin, Alex Obadia, and Tina Zhen.
We exist thanks to the continued support of members of the MEV Pi-Rate Ship and Paradigm”
Phil Daian broke away from the Teacher.
The padawan broke away from Jedi???
Well it seems to me that may be the case, as Phil’s website still to this day says
“I am advised by Ari Juels and based in New York City”
Well maybe that is the reason for this article he put out in partnership with Coindesk over
the weekend titled “Miners, Front-Running-as-a-Service Is Theft”...specifically calling out Flashbots
in the post saying they systematically exploit users!
While at the same time referencing the flashboys 2.0 paper, Ari and Phil wrote in collaboration
together.
Then at the bottom they kindly note Ari Juels is working on his own approach to fair sequencing
at Chainlink labs..
So who do you think responded to the piece by Ari Juels?
Not Phil, but Stephane of Flashbots, thegostep on Twitter!
“This is the most ethically questionable hit piece I’ve read in a while.
Maybe AriJuels should do research instead of using the media as a weapon against an
OPEN SOURCE RESEARCH ORGANIZATION.
Maybe he should consider disclosing conflicts of interests?
Shaking My Head….with a retweet of the article.
And here we go, one level deeper, I already disclosed the conflict of interest with Phil,
but now it’s time for Stephane’s turn….and the ties and connections just keep getting
crazier.
Remember from my video Monday, I posted that Stephane had been working on the front running
with DEX problem for awhile, since late 2018 early 2019 with lib submarine!
Well let’s just go back to it’s website.
Libsubmarine.org...defeating front running on Ethereum, it explains just how it does
that, but at the bottom it shows the contributors.
They say “Lib Submarine is developed by Lorenz Breidenbach, Tyler Kell, Stephane Gosselin,
and Shayan Eskandari.
It then says “LibSubmarine is based on research conducted at IC3 by Lorenz Breidenbach, Phil
Daian, Florian Tramèr, and Ari Juels” And this libsubmarine, was part of the IC3...
Now let’s just pull up the Fair Sequencing Services blog from Chainlink, right along
side this website...as we can see 2 names from Lib Submarine are on the Chainlink Blog
Ari Juels and Lorenz Breidenbach.
From the flashbots ether research blog post, we can see there are 2 names on there too.
Stephane Gosselin and Phil Daian…
This goes back in time, back to late 2018...and what it looks like to me, is the students
learned quicker and expanded on the Jedi principles, and now the Jedi is mad, so he put out a misinformed
article against them….
But, Chico Crypto always thinks there is more to this than meets the eye.
And this ties into the flashbots backer, listed in the announcement blog...Paradigm.
Yes Flashbots, is listed in Paradigms portfolio companies, right there…
Paradigm is the powerhouse VC, who besides flashbots, is Uniswap’s lead investor and
backer, besides the many other crypto and defi based companies.
Led by Coinbase Co-founder Fred Ehrsam, and Matt Haung...
But how did Paradigm get it’s start??
Well this 2020 Forbes article showed their initial backers.
Of course the title had two them, but it said this about the firm“The pitch worked.
By October 2018, three of the highest-profile endowments, Harvard, Stanford and Yale, had
joined Sequoia in investing in the mysterious new firm Paradigm...their first major forays
into backing a crypto-focused fund.”
Harvard, Stanford, and Yales endowments are invested in Paradigm and its portfolio companies.
Cornell’s endowments is not invested.
Cornell stayed out of crypto for the most part from what I could see, and this hurt
them.
Cornell was at the bottom for Ivy League endowment performance for 2020, and as we can see from
this blog that covered it, Harvard and Yale were listed as leaders, those that had invested
in Paradigm.
And again, Chico loves to find stuff no one else does.
1 day after the Coindesk article from Ari Juel, Hayden Adams, founder of Uniswap, Paradigm
Portfolio company said this in response to not going to an Ivy league school, and another
person saying he could have gone to….CORNELL.
Hayden said “I did apply and get rejected from Cornel
This is actually what would have happened-I might be an avalanche maxi instead of an ethereum
one…
Shots fired?
A little side elbow from Hayden??
Well let’s just go to this chainbulletine blog post from January of this year “Crypto
Research Organization IC3 Receives Chainlink Research Grant” to improve Chainlink oracles...they
say “IC3 is led by a large group of industry experts and academics, including co-directors
Ari Juels, the chief scientist of Chainlink Labs, and Emin Gün Sirer, the founder of
the Avalanche protocol”
You should know that Uniswap v2 doesn’t use Chainlink Oracles & v3 is once again using
Uniswap’s own in house oracles for their version 3.
Ari Juels of Chainlink is working on FSS, Fair Sequencing Services for Chainlink, which
obviously is a precursor from Research done with Flashboys.
Flashboys and it’s precursor, libsubmarine, split….Ari and Lorenz one way, Stephane
and Phil the other…..
Like I mentioned solving this MEV crisis, is a billion, possibly trillion dollar solution...and
the battle of the Nerds...begins.
Luckily I’m invested in it all, Chainlink, Uniswap, and a dash of alchemy.
Cheers I’ll see you next time!