Ethereum scaling...we need to talk more about it, because as I create more content questioning
rollups, the faster they seem to be moving.
First video questing rollups, same week we get the final phase of the optimistic ethereum
testnet.
Video 2 days ago, questioning them again, a tad bit deeper, the security drill was completed
and the team even did a twitch stream.
So let’s question again, and get some more movement.
Because it’s time for Chico Crypto!
To begin, according to Optimism’s own roadmap published a few months ago, things currently
aren’t happening the way they were supposed too.
As we can see, integrate synthetix is supposed to happen within the limited testnet, into
the launch of the full testnet.
Ok great, but then they had their own specific synthetix network roadmap, and it went phase
A, B, Security Drill, C.
Well, phase C with synthetix for some reason went before the security drill.
As we can see synthetix tweeted that the third (c) phase was beginning december 3rd.
And the security drill was completed 3 days ago on the 20th.
So, that doesn’t make sense, but there may be nothing to that...
Although going back to the main roadmap, 2 other dapps are supposed to be integrated
with testnet, their early supporters which in the blog they show are chainlink and uniswap.
Unfortunately we haven’t heard anything from either of them regarding their work on
rollups.
But now it’s time to go back in history to the present and bring up some more serious
questions.
My 2 previous videos brought up all the connections between Vitalik, Joseph Poon, OmiseGo, Jinglan
Wang, MIT, early bitcoin clubs, the lightning network, plasma and optimistic rollups.
So let’s go deeper, beginning with Joseph Poon, author of both the lighting network
paper and plasma.
So poon?
What happened to him?
Well in late 2018, October to be exact...his new project was announced...the hashed podcast
covered it, and it's called handshake.
What’s interesting is what he said in that hashed interview “Later I co-founded a startup
called Lightning Labs, and most recently, I co-authored the Plasma paper with Vitalik.
And it is becoming an emerging collaborative group with a bunch of awesome people.
For a while, within the cryptocurrency space, my principal interest has been scalability.
I think a lot of scalability problems are going to be resolved probably in the next
year.
Right now, my research area is around coordination mechanisms.
So 1st, he said in October of 2018 scalability would be solved in about a year.
FALSE.
And the co-creator of Plasma, wasn’t even continuing research into it, when it wasn’t
completed?
Does that make sense?
No it does not….
But who is behind Handshake?
Well remember in my video 2 days ago, when Jinglan was supporting Interledger over Plasma
in 2018?
Well she also said in that paragraph, she was excited about a dope arse decentralized
naming service aka Handshake...well Jinglan she joined them, September of 2018, wearing
a handshake t-shirt and giving a presentation on Hashed Time Locked Contracts, from Joseph
Poon at an ethereum conference...which is confirmed by multiple of her online profiles.
She didn’t spend long there, like months...and in my opinion she was “re-assigned” to
plasma group.
But obviously the connections get deeper.
I wonder who else is connected to Handshake??
Like providing them money?
Well FOMO Hunt did a profile on the project, and at the bottom they get into the ICO.
It says the list of notable sponsors include “ Paul Veradittakit, Roger Ver, Jun Hasegawa,
Fred Ehrsam and Michael Ma.
As we know, Joseph Poon was the one brought Vitalik along with him, as an advisor for
OmiseGo.
There are the 3 together, including Jun Hasegawa...CEO of then OmiseGo who was the one who tweeted
the photo.
Now Jun, is also invested in Poon’s handshake??
But the other muy interesting person is Fred Ehrsam, Coinbase co-founder & now co-founder
of Paradigm, the crypto venture arm who has supported and invested in Jinglan and Optimism
PBC, and all the big Ethereum dapps looking to use the rollups, including synthetix and
uniswap.
Fred Ehrsam as we can see is also a lead investor in Namespace, and scrolling up it describes
itself as “ We didn't create Handshake, but just like you are, we are Directors of
Handshake and below namespace’s goal is to make Handshake easy-to-use to enable mass
adoption.
Now Handshake, it has been moving...active twitter, active namespace, and browsers being
built around it.
But my question is….what happened to Joseph Poon?
Last time Poon tweeted was around the launch of Handshake, August and September of 2018.
It’s been over 2 years of silence from Poon.
Which doesn’t make sense.
He’s the author of lightning, he’s the author of Plasma, he created handshake??
Where did he go??
You would think you would still want the creator around as Optimistic Rollups from their most
recent blog post title are in “Fraud Proof Security Drills”...which if you read into
his authored Plasma Cash whitepaper…”This construction is achieved by composing smart
contracts on the main blockchain using fraud proofs whereby state transitions can be enforced
on a parent blockchain”
Oh so similar, Roll Ups and Plasma...yet Poon isn’t helping??
Well Poon aint, but handshake is.
Like I said MANY connections.
You dive into the Github of Optimism, and their V2 contracts...you can see who is working
on the code, and there is a tynes.
Clicking into his profile we see Tynes also works on Handshake.
And his linked’n in shows he was a core dev until from March of 2020 to August, before
moving onto Optimism PBC….
Now….let’s move one level deeper.
Back to Paradigm..led by Fred Ehrsam & Matt Huang.
They are connected to a lot, optimism PBC Jinglan, Handshake Poon, those using rollups
to scale, uniswap and synthetix.
But like I mentioned in and ended Monday’s video off with.
Their Paradigm is also invested in Tendermint the Cosmos creator.
Now here is what I find oh so quinkidinkle about that….Matt Huang, in August of 2020...same
exact month when they bright over Tynes to Optimism PBC from handshake, tweeted this
“ charlie noyes got into Bitcoin at age 11, and joined us at Paradigm at 19.
This podcast is a short 90 min peak into his brilliance on DeFi, Ethereum, Cosmos, Bitcoin,
etc…
Well Huang is obviously the one bullish on Cosmos, but let’s listen to what Charlie
had to say regarding ethereum scaling, just a few short months ago, as it’s important,
he’s part of the core Paradigm team.
Well that did not sound good in August whatsoever regarding rollups, which Charlie should know
much about, Paradigm invested in Optimism PBC…..
But Ryan, of Bankless also asked Charlie about Paridigms other investment, let’s listen
in to the full question and answer...it’s a tad bit longer, but you do not wan’t miss
a lick of it.
Oh shiznit ya, that’s contentious, Optimism PBC investor, saying it might not work out??
Let's continue…
So, if you cannot tell, they have something going on with Cosmos...they don’t see Ethereum
2.0 as it.
Paradigm from Charlie’s mouth..think’s Cosmos is it.
Now here is my question???
Cosmos had a major Ethereum project going to build their Chain on it...Aragon, back
in October of 2019, Cosmos tweeted “Aragon Chain, planned to be built with ethermint
& powered by Tendermint.
Then a year later, October 2020, Aragon Dropped the aragon chain plans, and said they would
be focusing on offchain solutions, still using ethermint as there is monetary ties but also
xdai??
Obviously they are dropping their Cosmos plans….but Now why would they do that???
Well something didn’t work, and Cosmos may not be it either….
But Cosmos, it is
coming my friends.
Ethermint is coming, even though Aragon who helped fund it is moving away….
November 5th, they put out this blogpost….The Road to Ethermint...and they say when it’s
going live, In Q1 of 2021, ChainSafe plans to launch an incentivized testnet, the “Game
of Ethermint”.
This will be the last major milestone before mainnet launch.
We will run the “Game of Ethermint” for a long as it takes to be certain that the
network is completely secure and everything runs exactly as it should.
At this point we will announce the Ethermint genesis event and then launch Ethermint as
a fully productionized Cosmos Zone.
So Paradigm has one finger in the side in Cosmos, a pure competitor to Ethereum 2.0...while
Paradigm also has a finger in the side of Optimistic Rollups, and major Ethereum dapps
using it to scale.
I would say a conflict of interest..but you make your own conclusions of what is going
on...
Cheers I’ll see you next time!