Anthony Sassano on Why This Cycle Isn’t Playing Out Like the Last Ones

Bankless Nation, it is time for the Bankless Weekly rollup. Giving you this a day earlier because it is Thanksgiving week, at least for our US listeners. And

today I am thankful to be joined by Anthony Cisano. He is fresh back from

Anthony Cisano. He is fresh back from Dev Connect. I'm pretty sure he woke up

Dev Connect. I'm pretty sure he woke up bullish because it is morning time in Australia time. Uh Anthony, how you

Australia time. Uh Anthony, how you doing man?

>> Good, good. And yeah, you're correct. I

I did wake up bullish today. Uh for

sure. or it's it's about 8:00 a.m. my

time. So, very excited. I mean,

especially seeing ETH back over 3K.

That's been that that was nice.

>> Bullish. You feeling okay about that?

Like, I was going to ask you, how you feeling about these markets overall?

>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously there's a lot of kind of uncertainty uh in in in the kind of markets. Maybe not just crypto, but also the the wider markets.

Everyone's kind of discussing this AI bubble, like is it going to pop? You

know, what's going on here? Uh but for me, you know, I tend to just focus on uh you know, Ethereum most of the time and what what ETH is doing. Um, and

honestly, I think Ethereum is really well positioned right now to have a great 2026. We're firing in on all

great 2026. We're firing in on all cylinders.

>> Oh my god. Okay, so since Anthony is here, we got to spend a lot of time talking about Ethereum today, including next week is the next Ethereum hard fork upgrade. It's called uh Fusaka. What's

upgrade. It's called uh Fusaka. What's

getting shipped? We'll talk about that.

Also, what's the upgrade after the next upgrade? I want to hear Anony's take on

upgrade? I want to hear Anony's take on that, too. And Justin Drake demonstrated

that, too. And Justin Drake demonstrated Ethereum ZKifying. And this is all

Ethereum ZKifying. And this is all happening sooner than we think. Um, also

a few other things. Tom Lee seems simply unbothered by these markets. He says,

"We're still in a super cycle." I got a clip I want to play. Also, Monad goes mainet. The CFTC clears Poly Market for

mainet. The CFTC clears Poly Market for US. And it kind of seems like Bitcoiners

US. And it kind of seems like Bitcoiners are waking up to the quantum threat to their network. There's a Nick Carter

their network. There's a Nick Carter episode uh article I should say I want to get into that's worth discussing.

Before we get in to this episode though, we got a message from our friends and sponsors over at Rhea. So Rhea is a pers dex. Per trading has a problem right

dex. Per trading has a problem right now. Either you get the speed of a

now. Either you get the speed of a centralized exchange or the security of a DEX, but oftent times you can't have both. Well, Rya is giving you both.

both. Well, Rya is giving you both.

They're closing this gap. They have a based rollup chain upcoming with ZK proofs sub 1 millisecond trading zero trading fees and this inherits 100% of

Ethereum's uptime and security. I know

Anony's very much into this. This is

kind of a new architecture based rollup that they are pioneering and they're already one of the top six dexes per dexes out there. They've got an upcoming

token. 80% of the fees from this token

token. 80% of the fees from this token go to Rhea and 20% are actually going to ETH. Buy back and burn ETH. So, this is

ETH. Buy back and burn ETH. So, this is kind of uh deeply aligned with uh Ethereum economics. It's very exciting.

Ethereum economics. It's very exciting.

Go check that out. There's a link in the show notes. Okay, Anthony, let's get to

show notes. Okay, Anthony, let's get to markets today. Um you phrased it as good

markets today. Um you phrased it as good news because ETH is above 300. We've got

Bitcoin about 90K. ETH is above 3,000, I should say. Oh my god, not 300. And

should say. Oh my god, not 300. And

we've got Bitcoin about 90K. So that is up about 1% on the week. ETH up 4% on the week. Um yeah, how are you feeling

the week. Um yeah, how are you feeling about Ethereum right now and and the markets? Is this like in your mind kind

markets? Is this like in your mind kind of end of cycle and we're entering a sustained bare period or do you think the concept of of cycles is over? We

we've not had a chance to talk about that.

>> Yeah, I mean that's a big discussion in the crypto ecosystem kind of always, right? like this concept of a 4-year

right? like this concept of a 4-year cycle. And if you believe in the

cycle. And if you believe in the four-year cycle, then October was the top. Like you believe that we topped in

top. Like you believe that we topped in kind of October and now we're going into a year-long bare market until next October or Q4 next year. Um, I've been pretty vocal for a while now that I

don't think the four-year cycle is a thing anymore, at least how it has been traditionally defined by the crypto ecosystem. I think cycles are always a

ecosystem. I think cycles are always a thing. You know, markets work in bull

thing. You know, markets work in bull and bare and kind of like sideways cycles. So, that's that's always a

cycles. So, that's that's always a thing. I don't think that's going to

thing. I don't think that's going to change, but the concept of a 4-year cycle is up for debate, I think. And

it's something that uh we're seeing play out right now because obviously the prices came down a lot from their October highs. We had that massive wipe

October highs. We had that massive wipe out on October 10th that took out a lot of people uh you know um that were on leverage, especially with all the altcoins. Um but now the open question

altcoins. Um but now the open question is, are we going to go back up? Are we,

you know, in a super cycle as Tom Lee has said, or is that it? Are we just going into a bare market for a year? My

my personal take is that I think that the as I said like the four year cycles aren't a thing anymore. So I think going from here on out it's very kind of difficult to know where we're going to go. But I think that ETH is really well

go. But I think that ETH is really well positioned to capture any kind of I guess like investable money that's coming into crypto. Uh especially on the trady and macro side. Um and I think

that Ethereum as an ecosystem is honestly like in the best place it's ever been. uh there is so much happening

ever been. uh there is so much happening across so many different uh areas and uh you know I think Ethereum is leading where it matters most with stable coins with institutional on boarding uh with

DeFi. So if those things continue which

DeFi. So if those things continue which I think they will I I can't see a world where that doesn't actually play out in the price of ETH.

>> Okay. But why no fouryear cycle? Has

something changed? Because we've always gotten these four-ear cycles. Uh do do you think that investor like institutional investor flows have kind of changed the entire structure? the

happening matters less like why why why are fourear cycles not applicable anymore?

>> Yeah. So it depends on how you define this because there is actually disagreements around how to define this in crypto. Some people kind of measure

in crypto. Some people kind of measure four year cycles from top to top. So you

know the cycle top of BTC at 125k if that was the top right to to the next top or from like 70k to you know 25k uh over over cycle over cycle. And some

people will measure it from bottom to bottom. I think bottom to bottom is the

bottom. I think bottom to bottom is the one that traders like to measure it from. Um, so that I guess like seems to

from. Um, so that I guess like seems to be the canonical way of doing it. But

then you have a lot of crypto natives who say, well, the four year cycle is only a thing if we follow a defined pattern pattern of BTC goes up, ETH goes up, and then altcoins go up, and then everything crashes and we go into a bare market. That's right. We haven't seen

market. That's right. We haven't seen that at all.

>> No, it didn't happen this time. It's

been weird.

>> No. No. And I think what we saw is we saw BTC go to alltime high before the haring, which has never happened before.

And that's another thing people look at to you know define the 4ear cycle by um we saw BTC like if you look at its price action um on a on a chart you can see it's behaved very differently to it has

in previous cycles it's a lot less volatile actually um compared to previous cycles and it seems to be following like a step up architecture where like it'll go sideways step up sideways step up rather than like go up

really really quick and then come down you know just as quick kind of thing like a Christmas tree. Uh that that hasn't hasn't happened really. Um and

obviously we have new sets of buyers with um ETF buyers with DATs and things like that which has changed the landscape of things. But if yeah if you actually look at how I guess like if you

want to call it a cycle from the 2022 bottom to today has played out. Uh we

yeah we didn't get an alt season as it's defined Bitcoin dominance didn't really crater like it has in previous uh cycles. Uh and all of the I guess like

cycles. Uh and all of the I guess like speculative energy that was left went into meme coins. But that was a very quick in-n-out thing. a lot of people got got wrecked on meme coins and I think that retail investors just aren't

really here anymore in crypto. Uh

they've gone elsewhere. So if you take all that together, I just don't think that like the four-ear cycle, no matter how you define it, has has really played out at all um at this time. And that's

why I believe that it it's kind of dead.

And I think the last thing I'll say is that it's kind of a red herring as well because if you actually look at the liquidity cycle versus I guess like the crypto cycles, they have matched up historically where essentially when

rates go lower, crypto goes up, you know, because there's more money in the system, more liquidity in the system and and and you know, vice versa there. But

this time around, we're actually we've actually been pumping into an environment where like the rates are still very high um relatively I should say compared to where they were. And if

we're going into an easing cycle now, because I saw yesterday the chances of a rate cut in December actually spiked up to like 80%. Uh if we're going into an easing cycle, then how does you know if if that if that's how the four-ear

cycles traditionally played out based on liquidity cycles, then it stands to reason that crypto should go up right during that um along with with other markets as well. So if you take that as

I guess like the you the truth or kind of the reality then yeah I just don't see how you can justify a fouryear cycle still being a thing.

>> Somebody who agrees with you Anthony is uh Sir Tom Lee. Okay this is the strategic ETH reserve reporting that Bitine added 200 million ETH to its balance sheet. That is Tom Lee's a

balance sheet. That is Tom Lee's a digital asset treasury holding company for Ethereum. So now bit Bitmine owns 3%

for Ethereum. So now bit Bitmine owns 3% of total ETH supply. It's been

incredible how fast Tom Lee has gotten to this. Actually, uh, somebody asked

to this. Actually, uh, somebody asked Tom in an interview about his Ethereum price predictions. He talks about the

price predictions. He talks about the super cycle. I'm just going to play this

super cycle. I'm just going to play this clip. You made a 60K call on ETH. Um,

clip. You made a 60K call on ETH. Um,

but right now the market seems to be thinking about things differently. Um,

we've seen it pull back, ETH pull back under 3K. Personally, I think it's a

under 3K. Personally, I think it's a great entry point. Um, why do you think this disconnects for something that is so obvious to you, pretty obvious to me?

Why are we trading as we're trading right now with Ethereum? Ethereum and

Bitcoin are uh public tokens and so their price isn't going to be purely anchored on fundamentals. You know,

they're going to be reflecting uh investors perceptions because both Bitcoin and Ethereum are not mature platforms. Um their best utility and

growth and innovation are in the years ahead, right? So, we're already we're 10

ahead, right? So, we're already we're 10 years in, but there's more growth in the future. the percentage of market share

future. the percentage of market share of crypto of total assets is so small that we know that mathematically that's true. Whenever you're when you have

true. Whenever you're when you have something that has a hyper growth onramp and you're discounting the future it's going to be very volatile. So does

Ethereum's price going from 4,800 to 2800. I mean that is a staggering

2800. I mean that is a staggering decline but that probably is a minor change in 2030 fundamentals that is being priced and repriced by investors and that's why there's hyper volatility.

Um it's one reason why Bitmine ended up engaging Tom Demar as a strategic adviser because he is the king of sort of price discovery. you know, he is the father of systematic timing and u in our

conversations uh one when he looks at Ethereum uh he he sees what looks like um engineered or systematic liquidation taking place. So there there is someone

taking place. So there there is someone that is uh in and in crypto we know it's you know market makers play a big role but there is someone that is probably capital constrained uh and is therefore

bleeding or having to sell reflexively as price falls. Um that process is painful but in in his sort of rough timing range uh his downside target and you know we talked about this a few

weeks ago was 2500 for ETH. So I think we're so close to that. It would be ideal actually for us to actually bleed to that level because then uh that that is creating what he calls a buy setup.

You know a bottom in prices for him is when the last seller has sold. So that

stock a stock or crypto no longer falls on bad news. I mean,

>> so Anthony, he's talking about maybe someone was carried out on a stretcher on October 10th and and some of that is unwinding as well, but overall he thinks Ethereum is still in its uh its super

cycle. What do you think about that idea

cycle. What do you think about that idea that um some of this is just margin call someone got out over their skis and this has caused kind of some of the cascade since October, cascade down that we've seen.

>> Yeah, I mean I think there's a lot of truth to it. Uh if if people aren't aware, that October 10th uh kind of crash was the worst in altcoin history.

Not so much for Ethan BTC cuz they didn't go down as as much, but if you actually look at all the other charts out there, all the altcoin charts, uh within a a period of like 2 hours, they

went down an astonishing amount. I think

some of them went down 90 plus%. Which

is >> Do you know Cosmos? You remember Adams?

They went to zero dollars at one point.

like it just the entire order sent it to zero man.

>> Yeah. Yeah. And and that's insane because that that just basically shows that uh you know Yeah. big people got kind of liquidated but also the market makers who usually prov provide liquidity just disappeared like they

just vanished for that period of time for one reason or another. And that's

also led a lot of people to think that there was some funny business going on especially with these kind of offshore exchanges like Binance for example which I mean I've been pretty vocal in the past about Binance uh you know being

still being shady. Um, I think even though they kind of obviously had that whole thing with the Department of Justice going after them, finding them, stuff like that, I think that a lot of these exchanges are still very much

black boxes and they play games, uh, various different games. They may trade against their customers. I'm not saying that Binance does this, but other ones have actually been shown to do this. So,

if you're in that environment of like obviously hyper speculative, hypervolatile assets, coupled with these shenanigans going on, you know, coupled with the fact that this is a 24/7 market and it trades on weekends, it trades

when most people are asleep. So, there's

more kind of I guess like stuff that can go on there, then yeah, it stands to reason that like some big players uh blew up on October 10th. They need to cover debts that they may have. And ETH

BTC are the most liquid, I guess, assets by far. So if you have debts in other

by far. So if you have debts in other that you know if you blew up on altcoins and you have debts now you have to pay but you still have ETH BTC you're probably going to sell those off to pay those debts because you even if you've

got like these altcoins the liquidity there is just very very small if you're a big player so you're not going to be able to sell those things you you may I mean we've seen them decline too so you may be selling those things um but you won't get the same amount of money as

you would for your Ethan BTC so I do agree that there's some kind of systematic stuff playing out uh but yeah I mean these the these markets are so big now that it's really hard to kind of pinpoint where that that is in the

system. But you can see from the price

system. But you can see from the price action that it does seem like a very kind of I guess um I guess the the the sell-off seems very uh unorderly I guess

you could say where if it feels like someone has been forced to sell a lot of these assets or someone's has been forced to sell a lot of these assets.

>> Well, some people are saying that actually entities like Tom Lee, Bitmine, DATs are to blame. Here's a here's a tweet I read. This is all over my timeline this week. Dats are terrible.

They're basically uh turned decentralized pristine assets like Bitcoin and Ether into VC bundled scams with overhang, even worse for alts.

There's another take from uh Ran Nuner.

Ignore the source here, but uh basically his take was that the crash on October 10th can also be linked to a decision by the MCI indicy. This is the world's

second biggest index company. And of

course, kind of the the free money print for Micro Strategy has always been, well, if you can get included in some of these big stock equity indices like eventually the S&P 500, then you become

de facto a port a part of every investor's portfolio who buys an indicy, right? And so the MCI is kind of

right? And so the MCI is kind of questioning whether these crypto uh uh DAT companies should be included in indices at all. there's another decision being made, but one of those decisions

was on October 10th to actually like um you know not include uh some of these DAT companies at the time. Hib has a has a a counter take to all of this and he says it's actually wrong like blaming

DATs is is kind of silly. They they're

not levered up. He says to the extent that DATs start doing buybacks, they're selling tokens they were originally buyers of in the first place, right?

Buying and later selling the same asset is nothing. It just undoes the original

is nothing. It just undoes the original buy. This means that DATs on a whole are

buy. This means that DATs on a whole are not net selling pressure. It's net

nothing even if they completely unwind, which they won't. Likely they stop once they return to 1x MNAV and maybe return cash. You think there's any ticking time

cash. You think there's any ticking time bombs here with some of these dats or do you think this is FUD? I I I mean I think we've seen dats of assets other than Ethan BTC which look kind of dodgy

to me and they they really do look like I guess like some of these I guess financially engineered products that only exist to enrich insiders. So I

think there is an argument to be made there. Um I do kind of disagree with her

there. Um I do kind of disagree with her here that like it's an it's kind of a net zero kind of thing if that's buy and then sell because there's different liquidity at different times in the market, right? There may be lots of

market, right? There may be lots of liquidity at one point in time and then way less liquidity at another point in time. So your buy and sell will have

time. So your buy and sell will have different impacts on the market. So I

don't think it's net zero. I think

that's a kind of a naive way to think about markets. Um and and yeah, I I

about markets. Um and and yeah, I I don't agree with that. But like I do agree with the thing that you know with these DATs, especially Ethan BTC ones, the ones that are selling, they're doing

it so they can return to 1x MNAV because they kind of have to do it like as a publicly traded company. they have a a fidiciary duty to their investors to make sure the stock doesn't you know go

down right like and with these DAT companies the only way the stock you know either stops going down or goes up is if they generate um enough money uh I guess like or I guess increase their ETH

or BTC per share uh in order to get back there. And some of these things are also

there. And some of these things are also kind of like hunted as well. So there's

like hunting the shorts or hunting the longs and playing manipulative games and stuff like that. But yeah, I think when when these big crashes happen, everyone looks for a reason as well. And you can look at a million different reasons and try to explain it a million different

ways. Uh but you're never going to get

ways. Uh but you're never going to get to the source. You're never going to get to the truth because it's really hard in especially a 24/7 global market to kind of pinpoint one thing. There are a lot of things that kind of can come together

and create this sorts of stuff. But I

always find it funny how people only look for a million different reasons when things are going down, but when things are going up, like it it must be, you know, the the market is right. the

market um you know is is bullish everything's fine but no one really tends to look for reasons why things are going up it's more that when it goes down so when I see that I just think okay well it's humans being humans they

want reasons for for things going down and that's fine but yeah I think if you if you think too much about it you end up going crazy because there's just too much going on there's too many moving parts to a market it's very hard to

pinpoint the the one thing there but there is truth to some of the the things that people say I think >> I largely agree I think this is a case of maybe narrative following uh price a little bit. There will be an unwind, but

little bit. There will be an unwind, but it's not going to be a severe unwind. I

I don't think uh Anthony, next I want to pick your brain a little bit more on Ethereum because we've got a big upgrade that is happening next week. Fusaka is

coming and we'll talk about the upgrade after that. Also, a big milestone for uh

after that. Also, a big milestone for uh Ethereum on ZK proving technology.

Justin Drake has re-executed Ethereum blocks without actually he's run an Ethereum validator without re-executing all of the blocks. He's run

essentially a verifier. This is part of the lean Ethereum road map. We'll talk

about all that and more, but before we do, I want to thank the sponsors that made this possible. You can now borrow USDC against your Ethereum and Bitcoin on Coinbase. Cryptobacked loans on

on Coinbase. Cryptobacked loans on Coinbase make assessing liquidity seamless for crypto hodlers. Powered by

Morpho, Coinbase cryptoback loans gives you direct access to onchain financing, allowing you to take out loans at competitive rates using your crypto as collateral. Over $1 billion in loans has

collateral. Over $1 billion in loans has been open through Coinbase to date. On

the Coinbase app, eligible users can borrow up to 1 million USDC using Bitcoin or Ethereum as collateral. Users

can convert their USC into fiat to make down payments, refinance debt, or cover urgent expenses, and more. The benefits

are numerous. Interest rates are variable, typically between 4 and 8% and respond to market conditions. Loans are

approved in seconds without credit checks. Repayment schedules are

checks. Repayment schedules are variable, meaning there are no fixed deadlines. The kicker, Coinbase will not

deadlines. The kicker, Coinbase will not treat borrow transactions as taxable events. Manage loans directly in the

events. Manage loans directly in the Coinbase app with ease. It's currently

available to US customers except New York, and additional collateral types and increased loan limits are coming soon. Want to learn more? Click the link

soon. Want to learn more? Click the link in the show notes or visit coinbase.com/bar.

coinbase.com/bar.

Crypto is risky. Your sleep shouldn't be. Eight's mission is simple. Better

be. Eight's mission is simple. Better

sleep through cuttingedge technology.

Their new Pod 5 is a smart mattress cover that fits on the top of your bed.

It automatically adjusts the temperature on each side so you and your partner can both sleep the way that you like. It's

clinically proven to give you up to one extra hour of quality sleep per night.

Eight Sleeps Pod 5 uses AI to learn your sleep patterns, regulate temperature, reduce snoring, and track key health metrics like HRV and breathing. With a

new full body temperature regulating blanket and built-in speaker, it is the most complete sleep upgrade yet. Upgrade

your sleep and recovery with Asleep. Use

code bankless at eight asleep.com/banklist

asleep.com/banklist to get up to $700 off the pod5 Ultra during their holiday sale. That's

eight.com/banklist.

You also get 30 days to try it risk-free. Link in the show notes for

risk-free. Link in the show notes for more information. Imagine a world where

more information. Imagine a world where traditional finance meets the power of blockchain seamlessly. That's what

blockchain seamlessly. That's what Mantle is pioneering with blockchain for banking. A revolutionary new category at

banking. A revolutionary new category at the intersection of tradi and web 3. At

the heart is UR, the world's first money app built fully on chain. It gives you a Swiss iBand account, blending fiat currencies like the euro, the Swiss franc, the United States dollar, or the raimi with crypto all in one place.

Enjoy realorld usability and blockchain's trust and programmability.

Transactions post directly to the blockchain, compatible with tradi rails and packed with integrated defy futures.

UR transforms Mantel network into the ultimate platform for onchain financial services, unifying payments, trading, and assets like the MI4, the ME protocol, and functions FBTC. backed by

developer grants, ecosystem incentives, and top distribution through the UR app, reward stations, and buy bit launch pool. For MNT holders, every economic

pool. For MNT holders, every economic activity in UR drives value back to you, embodying the entire stack and future growth of this super app ecosystem.

Follow Mantle on X at mantle_official for the latest updates on blockchain for banking. That's x.com/mantle_official.

banking. That's x.com/mantle_official.

All right, Anthony. Next week, Fusaka the upgrade goes live. I think that's December 3rd. I'm going to give you a

December 3rd. I'm going to give you a few headlines of what this does. Um,

maybe let's align it to the Ethereum Foundation's road map that they set out in 2025. So, first, scaling L1 33% more

in 2025. So, first, scaling L1 33% more throughput on the layer 1 60 million gas limit. In fact, I think we've already

limit. In fact, I think we've already achieved this actually. So, we'll talk about that.

>> Number two, we're scaling blobs. So,

there's now a path to get 20x more capacity with some technology called Perdas. That's a headliner. And number

Perdas. That's a headliner. And number

three, we have improved the user experience, including one feature uh that supports native pass keys. Okay, so

you know, your phone's ability to Face ID sign an Ethereum transaction. Um can

we take those one by one because I think those are the the main things, but you might have a few others to talk about.

May let's start with scaling the L2 and what we're doing with blobs. So this is uh forecast.org.

uh forecast.org.

It's got the 12 EIPs that were included in this uh Ethereum upgrade. Let's talk

about data availability and throughput and the current blob target. So, I'm

actually pulling up one of your tweets.

This is average blob count per block. I

think this is where we are now in terms of block capacity and blob capacity.

What does Purdas get us and what does the Fusake upgrade get us in terms of L2 scalability?

>> Yeah. Yeah. So the headliner of Fusaka is is definitely uh Podas which is this massive scalability unlock for blobs. It

essentially uh does I guess like you could call it a form of sharding on blobs where the 100% of the network doesn't need to hold 100% of the blobs.

So the dash stands for data availability sampling. So essentially 50% of the

sampling. So essentially 50% of the blobs um only needs to be held by any one kind of node operator and then you do some complex kind of stuff in the background that I'm definitely not

technical enough to understand in order to make sure the data is available still. So it's a really cool technology.

still. So it's a really cool technology.

It allows for obviously as I said greater scalability but it's being rolled out gradually. So podas goes live with FACO on December 3rd. It's in the network. it's there. But when we're

network. it's there. But when we're talking about the actual kind of uh blob increases, so going from the current target of six blobs per block to something higher than that, that actually kicks in in what's called blob

parameter only forks. So these are things that are baked in with with Fusaka that basically uh I guess increase the number of blobs we have on the network gradually so that we can make sure that we aren't I guess like

overloading the network, which is always obviously a risk when doing these kind of upgrades. So the first blob parameter

of upgrades. So the first blob parameter only or BO fork uh goes live a week later on December 9th. So this kicks in automatically. There's no need for node

automatically. There's no need for node operators to upgrade their software or anything. This is already built into the

anything. This is already built into the pusaka upgrade. And this will increase

pusaka upgrade. And this will increase the blob target from 6 to 10. So almost

a 2x increase in the amount of capacity for blobs on the network, which for those of you who don't know, layer 2 or rollups on Ethereum use blobs. Uh, and

so if there's more capacity for blobs, they have more capacity for scale and keeping their their fees cheap as well.

And then the second BO fork that's scheduled will go live on January 7th, which increases the blob target from 10 to 14. So over a 2x increase in the span

to 14. So over a 2x increase in the span of a of a month here after Faka goes live.

>> Is it right to call those forks? You're

calling these forks, but they do happen in the background. They're not like big version upgrades, right? And like when are they triggered? I mean they do change the underlying protocol kind of

code. So technically they are a fork.

code. So technically they are a fork.

Like I may be wrong on this because the terminology can sometimes get confusing.

Um but they do change a parameter that is in the you know I guess like protocol code. So I think it would be accurate to

code. So I think it would be accurate to call them a fork. But as I said it's already built into the Fusaka client. So

node operators do not need to upgrade their software again. They've already

done it for Fusaka. Um so that's fine.

And this is actually a relatively new thing on the network, a new concept of doing this. And it was done because uh

doing this. And it was done because uh the core developers and researchers agreed that it'd be the safest way to upgrade uh the blobs because we don't want to overload the network cuz if you know podas has a theoretical I guess

limit at least the current iteration of pas which is called one-dimensional podas has a theoretical limit of I think 72 blobs per block. So if you yeah if we were to go from 6 to 72 the network

would definitely become unstable. we

would lose a bunch of node operators because it's just a lot of load to put on the network. So, we want to gradually go up from here and there will be more BO forks, I think, like scheduled or at

least put into the network in 2026, I believe. Um, so so yeah, we're doing it

believe. Um, so so yeah, we're doing it kind of gradually here, but these are pretty substantial uh upgrades, especially because as you can see from my screenshot, we're almost pretty much at the current target of six. So, we're

pretty much capacity.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. So, we've consumed because we just increased it. Did we just doubled it

increased it. Did we just doubled it right earlier this year?

>> Yep. Yeah, we went from 3 to six in in Peterra I I believe. Yeah, it was I think it was 3 to six. Um

>> that was in April.

>> Yep, it was in April. So, we've

basically got straight back up there, which is which is kind of cool. And it's

actually funny the timing of this, too.

Like, we've gotten to the, you know, the capacity here, but now we have Foraka going live um with with the BO forks, which have come just in time. So, so

good timing, I think.

>> Yeah. Okay. And is this going to get us do do you know what this is going to get us in terms of um blob count per block in 2026 with all of these BPOS? So we're

going to get to 10 and then the next upgrade in January 7th or so that gets us another increase and then we can expect to see some steady increases uh

next year. You said this could go all

next year. You said this could go all the way to 72 um per per block. Is that

72 going to happen next year or is it more spaced out?

>> Yeah, I mean it's hard to tell. I I

think it definitely relies on uh a lot of the data that we'll get once we do these things. So once we go to 10 and

these things. So once we go to 10 and then 14, we'll be able to see if the network has kind of degraded at all or if there's too much load on the network.

Uh and then we can kind of schedule the other ones from there. So, I do think it's going to be more of like a touchandgo sort of thing rather than a we know that we can just do it every month, so let's just do it every month cuz we don't know that. We have to, you

know, essentially test the waters. Um,

especially on, you know, mainet where we have 100% uptime and we want to preserve that. There's this one way of doing

that. There's this one way of doing that. Uh, because I I do think there is

that. Uh, because I I do think there is a pretty big risk if we were to go to straight to 72, uh, that the network would, you know, potentially go offline or something, you know, would happen like that because it's just too much,

uh, load. and also the fact that we're

uh, load. and also the fact that we're increasing the gas limit as well, which puts even more load on the network. So,

taking that all together, we definitely need to be, you know, be safe here.

>> And ju just to put some context out there, I was reading a uh Coinbase a base blog post about how Fusaka essentially allows them to scale. They

they have some other things that they're optimizing within their stack, but in the first half of next year, they expect to get to around 10,000 transactions per

second just on base. And so this puts them in, you know, the 500 megga gas uh like range and part of that is due to these um you know the additional data

availability that Ethereum is providing.

So it's really taking off the limiters for L2s. It's like a super stimulus to

for L2s. It's like a super stimulus to L2 block space and um it's just going to increase from here because pure dust is the thing that unleashes this and makes

it all scaling. This is not full dank sharding though yet is it?

>> No. I mean, as I mentioned earlier, this is one-dimensional PIDAS. Um, I I you know, I I think, you know, Podas can be upgraded. I I don't think it's going to

upgraded. I I don't think it's going to happen for a while, though. I would

caution against like, uh, I guess looking forward to this anytime soon.

Uh, but it will, it will eventually happen, I think, where we kind of upgrade PIA into multi-dimensional podas from and my understanding that would give us an even greater sense of scale.

I think hundreds of blobs per block. Uh,

or that's what I guess Justin Drake has spoken about in the past. Um, but yeah, I I I think it's kind of hard to tell like on timelines there because it does depend on observing the network over

time and seeing how much it can handle.

Uh, but then when we unlock ZK, while it may not apply to blobs, it applies to the rest of the network, and then we can just like trade off all of the savings with ZK on the execution layer side,

apply that to consensus layer, which is where blobs are, and just go crazy with it. So,

it. So, >> yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, this is definitely

>> yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, this is definitely we're entering Ethereum scaling season.

There's actually another EIP that was bundled in here that that isn't talked about as much, but there's a different pricing structure that's being implemented for blobs as well. I mean,

some people are calling this a fair pricing structure. This is EIP 7918, and

pricing structure. This is EIP 7918, and it adds a reserve price floor for blob fees. My my takeaway for this is um L2s

fees. My my takeaway for this is um L2s are now are going to be giving more to ETH holders by burning ETH. Uh in

exchange, of course, they're getting this super stimulus of additional supply. But now there's going to be some

supply. But now there's going to be some sort of minimum fee for L2s and kind of the fee structure scales with the execution layer fees as well. So I don't

think we'll expect immediate burn, right? But um it should be more a burn

right? But um it should be more a burn than previously. I'm actually not sure

than previously. I'm actually not sure how to model this other than to to look at ETH burnt from L2s over time and to see how this is impacted, but there's some sort of minimum fair pricing scheme

here. Do you have anything to add to

here. Do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, I mean this is something

that? Yeah, I mean this is something that the community has asked for for a while. Um, right now blobs are pretty

while. Um, right now blobs are pretty much free, which I personally don't have an issue with because I look at blobs as a loss leader for Ethereum growth where essentially we're subsidizing this thing

um, you know, with blobs so that we can keep bringing more and more L2s and L2 capacity to the network which captures more and more users which is good for Ethereum overall. I also don't think

Ethereum overall. I also don't think that fee revenue is a huge value driver for ETH the asset. I think of value of value. Um, but yeah, with this ERP that

value. Um, but yeah, with this ERP that you mentioned, essentially what it does is it makes the uh blob base fee more more I guess like smoothed out and reactive and ties it to the execution layer so that we don't have these I

guess like time periods of time where it takes a long time for the base fee to actually increase when uh blobs are in demand. Uh so yeah, we drive more value

demand. Uh so yeah, we drive more value back to yeah ETH holders um obviously via the burn and also stakers via rewards. But I don't expect this to be a

rewards. But I don't expect this to be a large kind of I guess amount of of revenue for for quite a while because of the fact that as I said blobs are being positioned as this loss leader for the network which means that we're going to

subsidize them for for quite a while. I

think >> I agree. Okay. So that's uh scaling layer 2s. Let's talk about scaling the

layer 2s. Let's talk about scaling the layer 1. So Ethereum L1 gas limit is now

layer 1. So Ethereum L1 gas limit is now 60 million. That's already happened and

60 million. That's already happened and it was also scheduled to happen uh at at Fusaka. Can you explain how this works?

Fusaka. Can you explain how this works?

Yeah. So the gas limit can actually go up or down uh outside of a hard fork. So

what validators can do, what node operators can do is they can set a gas limit manually on their kind of software uh to increase or decrease it. Uh we've

seen this happen this year two times already. So essentially we went from 30

already. So essentially we went from 30 to 36 million uh gas limit at the start of the year. That was done without a hard fork. That was just node operators

hard fork. That was just node operators voting it up. And then we went from 36 to 45 million. Again, same thing. Now

we've gone to 60 million. Before Faka

went live uh for I guess like it's a bit of a different reason here, but with Fusaka the clients uh have defaulted to 60 million. So the the clients the

60 million. So the the clients the software can actually have a default set and it has to have a default set. You

can override that default yourself. Um

as I said with that that manual change, but because the default is now 60 million, everyone who's upgrading their client to the Faka client in ahead of the upgrade on December 3rd is now at 60

million automatically. And that's why

million automatically. And that's why we've seen increase the 60 million before Faka because yes, you can manually change it, but a lot of people don't do that. It's kind of a social coordination thing. It's it's it's

coordination thing. It's it's it's difficult to do, but because the default is at 60 million, we're there now. So

yeah, it doesn't require a hard fork to to do this. And um yeah, we we reached this yesterday, 60 60 million, which is um for those of you who may not know the I guess context around this, the gas

limit is Ethereum's block size. So you

could say that we've effectively increased the block size of Ethereum by 2x this year from 30 to 60 million which has doubled the capacity of the network.

So we've scaled the network 2x this year on the I guess L1 side. And then L2s we scaled by more than two 2x but when the first BO fork goes live on December 9th.

So we've done a huge bit of scaling of the of the network um this year on both L1 and L2 which has been awesome to see.

>> That's right. And I I don't know if you've looked at transaction fees on the L1, but I've never seen them this this shape. I mean, it's been a long time

shape. I mean, it's been a long time since I've seen this cheap. So So um users are are feeling that already. And

okay, so we have done a 2x this year. We

can also further increase that. You've

got this in the second half of your tweet onwards to even greater increases in 2026. Let's aim for at least 3x to

in 2026. Let's aim for at least 3x to 108. Maybe translating some of this,

108. Maybe translating some of this, Anthony, to TPS would be helpful.

Transactions per second would be helpful, too. I I don't know if we're,

helpful, too. I I don't know if we're, you know, with 60 million we're about 30 to 40 transactions per second. Really

depends on the complexity of the transaction, but how do we get another 3x on that next year? Is that through these gas increases from the validators or like is there a path to that that

you've seen?

>> Yeah. So I think for me I personally am not a huge fan of like measuring things in TPS because I think when you look at it from a user perspective all that really matters to them is cheap fees and

fast transactions right um I think that if you as you mentioned earlier L1 fees have really never been this cheap and and I guess like on a sustainable way except when Ethereum first came out right so you know it it's it's

definitely like users >> Exactly. Exactly. So we have a lot more

>> Exactly. Exactly. So we have a lot more users, a lot more activity and that the fees just keep coming down because we keep doing these uh I guess gas limit increases while also I guess like offloading some of the load to the L2s

as well, right? Rather than on on L1 here. So I think that that's how I

here. So I think that that's how I generally view it and as you mentioned depending on the complexity of the transactions, we get different TPS numbers. Like if every transaction was

numbers. Like if every transaction was just an ETH transfer, the TPS would be into the hundreds, right? Uh whereas if every transaction is a really complex defy uh uh uh um transaction then it

would be like maybe 10 TPS or something just because different transactions use different level different amounts of gas on the network which is how we meter things. Um, so in terms of increasing

things. Um, so in terms of increasing this next year, so the general kind of consensus that's been set from the core developers and researchers is that they want to aim for at least a 3x increase

in the gas limit for the next couple of years um and maybe the next 3 years because then it becomes like the ZK era from there because that stuff's moving so quickly. Uh so yeah, the goal is to

so quickly. Uh so yeah, the goal is to get to at least 180 million next year.

Now I've seen 5x thrown around as well.

some core researchers are pretty comfortable with going to 5x next year.

Uh and there's a lot of moving parts happening here to make this a reality because >> the way um I think Vital tweeted about this today as well. The way to look at this is that we can actually do things

on the protocol uh level to uh do what's called repricing of different op codes.

So essentially what we can do is we can make it more expensive to do certain things uh and and I guess cheaper to do other things which I yeah I've tweeted about here with regards to an EIP that will probably go into Glamsterdam. So

for example, you've got the tweet up we can uh lower the cost of a basic ETH transfer from 21,000 gas to 6,000 gas which is a over 70% cost reduction while

keeping the gas limit the same. Right?

But in in the thing is is that when we do these reductions and when we increase the cost of other things, we can actually increase the gas limit. So

we're basically trading efficiencies here u which increases the overall scale of the network for >> and this is your proposal right to actually uh decrease the gas fee down from 21,000 to 6,000 gas for ETH

transfers. And does that effectively

transfers. And does that effectively basically subsidize ETH movement? You

know, is it is it a boon to Ether the asset? Is that why you're proposing

asset? Is that why you're proposing this?

>> Yeah. Yeah. So I I I mean I wouldn't say I'm the proposer of this. I am a co-author because uh Ben Adams who is the champion of this EIP uh now um has been talking about this and proposed it for Glamsterdam I believe. But this EIP

is old. It's like four or five years

is old. It's like four or five years old. You can see when it was created

old. You can see when it was created 2020. Um okay.

2020. Um okay.

>> So this is this is an old EIP. But the

the reason why I'm a co-author on this is because I spoke a lot about doing this on the on my own show and Ben is a uh Ben Adams is a core developer who works at Nevermind. he listened to my

show a lot and was inspired by it to bring this back and the reasoning uh at least the the I guess there's two major reasons why I think this should be done is is one ETH is the only decentralized

asset on Ethereum it is the best asset on Ethereum so we should treat it that way we should treat it as a first class citizen and yes we should make it cheap to transfer ETH on the network uh which which is a boon to everyone because

everyone uses ETH on the network whether it's to pay for gas fees use it as collateral staking whatever it is we use ETH you know, we we want to use Ether as money. We want to promote that. And the

money. We want to promote that. And the

second reason is because we don't want something else replacing ETH, right?

Like like stable coins or LSTs even, which are ERC20 tokens. We want ETH to remain that premier money, that premier asset on Ethereum. So, but we can do this in various different ways, but I

thought this was just like a really easy way to do it.

>> I love it.

>> Yeah. and and and from my from my understanding, this is actually something that's going to go into Glammd U, which is the next upgrade happening maybe like, you know, late Q2, early Q3 next year as a rough estimate. So, yeah,

it seems like this is actually going to make it into the network, which is really cool.

>> So, you think it's realistic to 3x gas limit again next year from the floor? To

be honest, I think that's the minimum. I

think we can go higher than that. Yeah,

>> this is very, very, very bullish. Uh,

Anthony. Okay, so let's talk about maybe the next Ethereum hard fork and Forecast does a great job of talking about this.

This is called Glam Amsterdam. I just

want to say incredibly impressive that ETH has shipped two major hard forks in 2025 this year. We're starting to get some velocity uh for that. There's no

date for the 2026 hard fork. That would

be the one after Fusaka. This is the next one. There are some candidate

next one. There are some candidate headliner EIPs. One is EPBS. This is a

headliner EIPs. One is EPBS. This is a proposer builder separation. It's really

getting enshrined. We've done episodes on this. The other is block level

on this. The other is block level access. It's called BAL. And a third is

access. It's called BAL. And a third is like a maybe it seems like right now, which is Fossil, which would really improve Ethereum's censorship uh resistance attributes. My take is I

resistance attributes. My take is I think EP and BAL get in there block level access. And this is going to I

level access. And this is going to I mean we don't have time to probably get into uh what specifically these things are doing but this is also going to

allow us to increase um uh block size as well on the layer 1 particularly block level access does some parallel transaction processing that will just free up some resources for us to be able

to do that. Um what's your take on Glamsterdam and and when do you think that that happens? Yeah. So, I would say you you mentioned we've done two upgrades this year with Petra in April

and now Faka happening in December. Um I

would say that next year I think we're only going to do Glamsterdam uh just because of the fact that Glamsterdam alone is a huge upgrade and it's going to take time for this stuff to be built out and tested. EPBS is a very

substantial upgrade on the network. Uh I

I think it's very complex. I think that there is a lot of moving parts to it and there is still a lot of contention around it. Um, I agree with you that I

around it. Um, I agree with you that I think EPBS and and BAS will be their headliners of Glamsterdam. They'll be

the two major EIPs that go in. I think

Fossil will end up in the fork after Glamsterdam, which is currently called HAR. It doesn't have a proper name yet,

HAR. It doesn't have a proper name yet, but that will probably happen in 2027, maybe early 2027. But yeah, if I had to guess as like a really rough estimate on Glammsterdam, I would say late Q2, early

Q3. But that's just my own personal view

Q3. But that's just my own personal view on this. Uh it's still too early to tell

on this. Uh it's still too early to tell on timelines, but um yeah, I think EPBS is is a huge upgrade for the network. Uh

I think that everyone kind of seems to want it, but there are there is contention around how to do certain things within it. I think the biggest contention is around how to do trustless

payments uh as part of EPBS. If if that like gets resolved, then we should get Glamsterdam earlier, but if that takes longer to to, you know, get get resolved, it'll probably happen later.

And then bals as you mentioned do does this kind of paralization of of transactions on the network which does kind of afford us more more scalability here. But I I do want to say that even

here. But I I do want to say that even though we're only getting one upgrade with with with Glamsterdam next year are likely to only get one major upgrade. We

still have the gas limit increases that are going to be happening outside of these upgrades. As I said that

these upgrades. As I said that validators can vote it up themselves or the clients can release new versions and just have the default set to whatever is agreed upon. Uh, and then we also have

agreed upon. Uh, and then we also have the BO forks. So, we do have one on January 7th, but as I mentioned, we're probably going to get others throughout the year to increase blobs. So, there's

still stuff happening here, not to mention all of the stuff that's happening on the ZK side, which is just even crazier. Um, but yeah, so

even crazier. Um, but yeah, so >> you want to talk about that next? I

mean, let's talk. So, um, something really cool that happened. And so Justin Drake came on Bank list a couple weeks ago, talked about uh lean Ethereum and one of the things he was going to do by

ETH proof day, which happened um I believe earlier earlier this week or maybe last week, late last.

>> It was on it was on Saturday uh at Dev Connect. Yep.

Connect. Yep.

>> Okay. So he was going to run validators, I should call them maybe verifiers with that would finalize blocks without re-executing the transaction. So

essentially using ZK magic to verify blocks instead of you know re-executing everything. And of course this is going

everything. And of course this is going to unlock an even uh you know faster scalability path for the L1. Justin

Drakes we can thinks we can get this to 100x even a 1000x L1 like I >> I'll convert this to TPS just for for for some listeners. 10,000 transactions

per second or one gigas uh per second.

So he did it. He actually did it and uh he did this from his home. Um pretty

incredible. I think a massive milestone and it seems like ETH proving ZK proving is just like happening faster than everyone anticipated particularly at the beginning of this year and certainly you

know three three years ago. Um do you think this is a big milestone for Ethereum? I think and I maybe caution

Ethereum? I think and I maybe caution myself here but I I will say I think this is one of the biggest milestones in Ethereum's history. uh what Justin has

Ethereum's history. uh what Justin has achieved here in such a short period of time but not just him of course all the teams working on this. So he tweeted out and he said that we can now prove mainet

Ethereum blocks with 2590 GPUs. Now I

want to put some context around this.

Now 2590s obviously is not you know cheap. It's it's still quite expensive

cheap. It's it's still quite expensive to do this. You know they're high-end GPUs. They they do cost a lot of money,

GPUs. They they do cost a lot of money, but I don't think people realize that just a few months ago, it took order like an order of magnitude more GPUs than this. It took like 32 or 64 GPU

than this. It took like 32 or 64 GPU clusters to do this, which is obviously much more expensive. Now, fast forward to today, we're doing it on two 5090s, which as I said, like it's very hard for

me to contextualize this for people who may not know the history, but that is honestly an insane improvement. so

insane that I doubt even Justin Drake saw how fast things were going to improve.

>> No, I don't think he did.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So, I I think that if you fast forward another few months, we could be down to 15090 or an even weaker GPU like a 5080 or a 5070 uh on, you

know, a home PC to to to verify these things. A couple of years ago, if you

things. A couple of years ago, if you had told someone that this was going to happen this quickly, they would have called you utterly insane and you would have been laughed out of the industry.

That's how crazy it was because of the fact that it was so expensive to do it back then and now we're at this point where it's not. And what Justin Drake actually showed in his demo was that he could do this on the network, no hard

fork, nothing without using an execution layer client. So he only used consensus

layer client. So he only used consensus layer clients to do this. And yeah, it's a reality. So I think when you fast

a reality. So I think when you fast forward out the next 2 3 years of of Ethereum you like we're we're actually it's it's it's crazy how like we've been

stuck at you know 10 20 30 TPS for years and within the next 2 to 3 years it is actually not farfetched to say that on L1 we can get to 10,000 plus TPS like I

think that's a reality.

>> Yeah that's wild. Also this this is a take that goes dovetales with what you were just saying is we can increase um gas limits uh in the way that you were

saying also we'll have more full nodes out there. So this is return of the cult

out there. So this is return of the cult of the full node. This is from um Vitalik's keynote at dev connect and it's basically the idea that more people

can run full nodes from home because they're just verifying blocks rather than re-executing all of them. And so

maybe we have 15,000 or so full nodes out in the wild out there. It's it's

hard to find reliable estimates. We

could 10x that. We could have 150,000.

This is the take. If you don't have tens of thousands, ideally hundreds of thousands of full nodes around the world. You don't have a world computer.

world. You don't have a world computer.

You have a computer waiting to be captured. And Ethereum's path is really

captured. And Ethereum's path is really hundreds of thousands of full nodes. And

it can do this because of ZK proving ZK EVM technology. Very exciting. Yep.

EVM technology. Very exciting. Yep.

Yeah. Exactly. And and the dream that Vitalik has spoken about for a long time is being able to run a full node or even a validator on a smartphone, right? Or

like something that is, you know, necessarily has the power but is very constrained in terms of like bandwidth and and other kind of things like that.

So yeah, it's it's it's crazy. Like it's

a crazy next couple of years in Ethereum. That's for sure.

Ethereum. That's for sure.

>> Okay. There's so much more we could talk about including Ethereum interoperability layer. I haven't had a

interoperability layer. I haven't had a chance to fully uh dive into that, but that's coming potentially in 2026. Also,

maybe a little further out there, the idea of native rollups, but you were at Dev Connect yourself. So, what was the most exciting thing that happened uh there in in your opinion, Anthony? What

what was your big takeaway?

>> Yeah, there was a lot of things that happened at Dev Connect. Um a lot of different tracks uh from, you know, DeFi to L1 scaling to L2 scaling. I would say

that if I had to kind of pinpoint where a lot of the energy was focused, I think it was on the EF itself and how the EF has reinvented itself this year in order to be a much more consumerf facing

organization I should say like or a userf facing organization where historically the EF had been quite closed off quite kind of tight you know tightknit like amongst itself and you had to really be in the weeds to know

what the EF was doing. But with this new EF, since uh Shiae and Tomas took over as a new co-executive directors, they're a lot more forward- facing with everyone. And I I saw the EF like

everyone. And I I saw the EF like obviously Dev Connect is an EF conference, but I saw EF presence everywhere across everything in a way that I haven't seen before uh in a

really loud way. And and the Ethereum Foundation members are really proud to basically show off what they're working on, are really proud to be part of the community. They're listening to user

community. They're listening to user feedback. they're working on things that

feedback. they're working on things that that people actually want. Um, so that was the the main thing that I saw. But

definitely the biggest thing that a lot of people were talking about was the ZK stuff. Um, not just from a scaling

stuff. Um, not just from a scaling perspective, but also from a privacy perspective. I know that Aztec's been in

perspective. I know that Aztec's been in the headlines recently because they're doing their token sale right now. Um,

they're doing a a private L2 based on this this ZK technology. Uh, but also institutions demand privacy as well. And

I think ZK applies to them in a really big way because of that. So yeah, I would say the main theme is definitely the EF just seeing the reinvented EF on full display. Uh but yeah, scaling is is

full display. Uh but yeah, scaling is is it was a huge theme as well. And DeFi,

DeFi was everywhere uh at at Dev Connect too which was really great to see.

>> Next year Devcon in India, Mumbai, India. So uh the fourth quarter of 2026

India. So uh the fourth quarter of 2026 and that was announced as well. Hey, uh

Anthony, we've got a few more things to talk about, including Monad launched this week, so we'll talk about that.

Also, quantum computers and Bitcoin.

What could go wrong? We'll discuss all that and more, but before we do, I want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. Ethereum's layer 2

episode possible. Ethereum's layer 2 universe is exploding with choices. But

if you're looking for the best place to park and move your tokens, make your next stop Uni Chain. First, liquidity.

Uni Chain hosts the most liquid UniS swap V4 deployment on any layer 2, giving you deeper pools for flagship pairs like ETHUSDC. More liquidity means better prices, less slippage, and smoother swaps. Exactly what traders

smoother swaps. Exactly what traders crave. The numbers back it up. Uni Chain

crave. The numbers back it up. Uni Chain

leads all layer 2s in total value locked for Uniswap V4. And it's not just deep.

It's fast and fully transparent.

Purpose-built to be the home base for DeFi and crosschain liquidity. When it

comes to costs, Uni Chain is a no-brainer. Transaction fees come in

no-brainer. Transaction fees come in about 95% cheaper than Ethereum mainet, slashing the price of creating or accessing liquidity. Want to stay in the

accessing liquidity. Want to stay in the loop on Uni Chain? Visit uniain.org or follow@ uni chain onx for all the updates. Introducing FRAUSD, the genius

updates. Introducing FRAUSD, the genius aligned digital dollar from FRA. It's a

secure, stable, and fully backed by institutional-grade realworld assets.

Custodied by Black Rockck, Superstate, and Fidelity. It's always redeemable,

and Fidelity. It's always redeemable, onetoone, transparently audited, and built for payments, DeFi, and banking.

The best of all worlds. At the core is FRANET, an onchain fintech platform built to align with emerging US regulatory frameworks where you can mint, redeem, and use FRAUSD with just a

few clicks. Deposit USDC, send a bank

few clicks. Deposit USDC, send a bank wire or tokenized treasuries and receive programmable digital dollars straight to your wallet. Fraet users benefits from

your wallet. Fraet users benefits from the underlying return of US treasuries and earn just by using the system.

Whether you're bridging, minting, or holding, your FRA USD works for you. FRA

isn't just a protocol. It's a digital nation powered by the FRA token and governed by his global communities. Join

that community and help shape FRA nation's future by going to fra.com/r/bankless.

fra.com/r/bankless.

Frack designed for the future of compliant digital finance. A high

performance layer 1 uh parallel EVM uh called Monad. It launched this week. I

called Monad. It launched this week. I

did an episode with uh Kone late last week. I've recorded it. I believe it

week. I've recorded it. I believe it came out this week. And um what what they've basically done is they've re-engineered the EVM and consensus layer from the ground up and really

focused on I guess taking all of the engineering bottlenecks out of it. And

so that is what has launched uh Monad.

Um the token price is I guess doing fairly well uh you know 4.6 billion on that. What was really interesting and

that. What was really interesting and striking to me was just the departure in path. So, Monad is really scaling with

path. So, Monad is really scaling with kind of like this this engineering type focus, rearchitecting the EVM and consensus layer. Not scaling in the way

consensus layer. Not scaling in the way Ethereum is via ZK, but it does have a a reasonably low hardware footprint. Uh

not going to be as low as kind of a ZK EVM in and Justin Drake's setup, but that's the way they're scaling. Do you

have any any takes on on Monad? Of

course, it has number of competitors out there. There's a lot of high transaction

there. There's a lot of high transaction throughput execution chains out there. I

mean, you could point to Salana. You

even point to something like Tempo. You

could point to L1's like Mega ETH and and Rise. What What's your overall take

and Rise. What What's your overall take on on Monad?

>> Yeah, I I think I have a general take maybe not so much on Monad, but like on these chains that are coming out now in 2025. I think when you talk about scale

2025. I think when you talk about scale and high performance, uh that's like table stakes at this point, right? So,

we already have a lot of high performance chains, a lot of chains that offer cheap fees and fast transactions to users. So, if you're bringing out

to users. So, if you're bringing out another one in 2025, I think your differentiator isn't scale anymore.

Like, no one's uh kind of going to a chain because you have more scale than another chain now. Because honestly, if you're on an L2 like Bass or Arbitum, the fees are already extremely cheap and it's already fast to to do transactions.

>> It's only getting faster. I mean, we didn't even talk about L2s like Bass and Arbitum. next year they're going to at

Arbitum. next year they're going to at least 10x maybe more.

>> Exactly. Exactly. And then there are obviously other L1 ecosystems like Salana as well that that have been you know cheap and fast for a while now. So

if you're bringing out a new chain whether it's an L1 or an L2 in 2025 you obviously default have to be scalable.

Like that's table stakes. Um you know if you're not then you're just not going to be in the game. But then I think if you want to grow as an ecosystem you have to be differentiated from the other chains.

So if you just release another chain, another EVM chain that is just kind of fast and scalable, well does that actually u bring new applications to to the ecosystem like does it enable new

applications that haven't been able to to be built before? Is it doing something different? Does your ecosystem

something different? Does your ecosystem have a reason to grow and exist? Do

people have a reason to bring money there? That's how I kind of think of it

there? That's how I kind of think of it these days. I don't really think of it

these days. I don't really think of it as kind of L1, L2, whatever. It's more

about the fact that like why are you creating this thing? Is it actually doing something different? And I think Monad has been in development for a very long time now. I think like 4 years or something. So they obviously started

something. So they obviously started developing it when this wasn't the the the case. The case was we need faster

the case. The case was we need faster and cheaper chains. But yeah, in 2025, we already have plenty of fast and cheap chains. So I'm going to be curious to

chains. So I'm going to be curious to see how Monad does in terms of growing their ecosystem, but also they have competition, too. Like Mega E is

competition, too. Like Mega E is launching soon, as you mentioned, as an L2. Rise is launching as an L2. And

L2. Rise is launching as an L2. And

these are EVM chains, right? So they're

they're essentially the same thing as Monad, but as I said, I think the winning chains are going to be the ones that build up their ecosystem in some way and have a reason for people to go there. Uh because right now I have no

there. Uh because right now I have no reason to go to Monad instead of staying on, you know, base or arbitum in terms of like fees and scalability and apps that I want to use. So again, like why would someone else go there? Like that's

that's always the open question. And

it's not just with Monad, it's with everything um every kind of chain that's launching from here on out, I believe.

>> Yeah, I agree. One of Monad's secret sauces though is is trying to actually have nodes that can run from home but one of the takes I have and you know uh I'm not sure what you think about this

but basically they could run into a latency problem. So they are launching

latency problem. So they are launching with um 400 millisecond latency and there there are some kind of like high frequency trading types of pressures that start to build up when you're going

to that low latency. I mean, Vitalic has talked about you play the HFT game and you kind of lose your soul. That's going

to be something that's interesting to watch because I I've been talking to some um validators that run kind of you know ETF services from Ethereum

validator services to Salana and others and some of the the high throughput low latency chains have a tendency to colllocate and centralize right so whole

bunch of the Salana network let's say like the top 20 validators runs in a data center in Amsterdam right just because of reasons and when you're colllocated you can have certain advantages

And that's something to watch out for is it's not just about running nodes. It's

the entire um block production supply chain that can colllocate and centralize and be a vector there. So I'm going to be interested to see how that plays out

as well. Um the CFTC purportedly is

as well. Um the CFTC purportedly is allowing Poly Market. They have approved Poly Market for US registered brokers

coming to a trading platform near you.

So, I thought this meant I could go to Poly Market, Anthony, and and start using this as a US. I guess I I guess in Australia, you don't get the you don't get the geob block, do you? It's fine to use Poly Market in Australia.

>> Uh, I'm not sure because it's changing all the time. Like, I I think that it was fine and then it wasn't and then maybe it's fine again. Uh,

unfortunately yeah unfortunately these these things just tend to change based on, I guess, like some new regulation or something like that. Um,

but as far as I know, I can still access it. But it might yeah it might have

it. But it might yeah it might have changed again. I don't know.

changed again. I don't know.

>> So uh what is being allowed with the CFTC just approved is for Poly Markets to be um able to be displayed through brokerages. So a brokerage account like

brokerages. So a brokerage account like Charles Schwab or Fidelity or something like that uh is now going to be able to list Poly Markets. So you won't necessarily be able to go to Poly Market

as a as a US user and use it directly, but you might be able to use it through like Erade in the future. and and

certainly this opens the path to Robin Hood. This opens the path to Coinbase

Hood. This opens the path to Coinbase and uh cryptonnative exchanges to list this. So this is Shane saying much props

this. So this is Shane saying much props this the CEO of Poly Market. Much props

to our legal and US ops team. This

process has historically taken years. It

took us 4 months late nights early days.

This admin and commission are built different. The pace, thorough feedback

different. The pace, thorough feedback on applications, working through the weekends unprecedented. He says, "Bravo

weekends unprecedented. He says, "Bravo to one of the the um commissioners of the CFDC." A complete 180 from the

the CFDC." A complete 180 from the regulatory environment that we saw last year where Shane was basically >> FBI rated and uh you know almost getting

arrested for for Poly Market. So that is uh good progress on an app on built on crypto that has scaled to to mainstream.

>> Yeah, definitely. I think people forget how bad it was under Gendler. Um, and I I don't think people realize how good we have it now. Uh, hopefully it it remains this good and keeps getting better. But

yeah, it's it's unfortunate that it's become even more political now, crypto.

I think uh I think the Democrats have just dug in their heels and still really hate crypto. Obviously, the Republicans

hate crypto. Obviously, the Republicans have embraced it, but there are some stuff going on there with like the scams and the griffs and and stuff like that, too. So, I hate how political it is

too. So, I hate how political it is because like the worst case scenario is if um you know the Democrats come back into power and start being on an anti-crypto crusade because they don't like Trump or something.

>> Seems like there's going to be a backlash though, right? Doesn't it feel that way?

>> Yeah. But I guess the saving grace is that if we can get legislation kind of in, then it's really hard to reverse that. So, at least we get that win. But

that. So, at least we get that win. But

yeah, I I feel like for the next few years, like we have it good now, but it's still going to be a battleground in in the US in particular around this because it's so like uh politically charged now. I think

charged now. I think >> quantum has been back in the focus a little bit more. There's been some headlines, but I'm starting to see some notable Bitcoiners actually wake up to

the quantum threat to Bitcoin. Anthony,

um I'm sure you haven't read this yet.

You just woke up. Nick Carter posted it.

It was his second post on Bitcoin and the quantum problem. This is part two and it's like a 14,000word essay. Um I had a chance to actually

essay. Um I had a chance to actually read it this morning and he makes a pretty compelling argument actually that the quantum problem is uh a massive

problem for Bitcoin and it could happen sooner than anyone expects. He says as early as 2030 2032. Nick Carter I think is an uh he's he's very talented at

going deep and researching kind of thorny technical issues and his research is all here in the article but let me give you the the highle summary the

problem for Bitcoin is quantum can basically break um its uh its signatures and so the worst case scenario if Bitcoin does not upgrade its

cryptography to quantum secure cryptography up to onethird of all Bitcoin supply could be yonked by a quantum computing attacker. That's like

6 million to 7 million Bitcoin or something like that. That's uh called a long range attack. There's also the possibility of short range attacks. If

you have a sophisticated enough quantum computer where every transaction you submit on Bitcoin, you know that t-m minute or so lag from it getting, you know, fully confirmed, you could be at risk of losing your Bitcoin during that

10-minute transaction. So that's like

10-minute transaction. So that's like worst case scenario. And that sounds existential to me. You know, a third of all Bitcoin is a big problem. That's if

they do nothing. If they don't upgrade it, if they are able to get their together and actually upgrade all of the cryptography to quantum resistant crypt

uh cryptography, which to be clear, there's no real plan for right now, but if they are able to do this, there is a path to doing this. It still means

almost 1.7 to two million um uh Bitcoin, Satoshi's Bitcoin that essentially, you know, has never been touched. That would

still be susceptible for a quantum attack. And that's the best case

attack. And that's the best case scenario. Um you walked through this

scenario. Um you walked through this article and he gives 10 reasons that quantum timelines have actually gotten shorter and a lot of this progress has happened in the last 12 months. It seems

like it's just a scaling problem at this point. So um error correction has been a

point. So um error correction has been a big issue for quantum right the difference between um physical cubits and logical uh cubits and you know there's a lot of technical complexity

here but we figured out some of the error correction around this uh also funding has massively increased both privately and then it seems like we're at the beginning of a kind of a US

versus China AI type race towards quantum so all of that could further accelerate the timeline in other words like 2030 is actually possible possible for quantum and that could pose a big

threat to Bitcoin. Now, I don't want to throw out FUD. I mean, there there is a path where they could they could correct for this, but I feel like Bitcoiners are starting maybe slowly to to wake up to

this fact. Have you studied this as all

this fact. Have you studied this as all at all, Anthony? Like what's your take on what Quantum is going to do in crypto? I wouldn't say I' I've studied

crypto? I wouldn't say I' I've studied it too deeply, but for a long time now, my I guess like two biggest existential risk factors for Bitcoin has been the security budget, which has been covered

on on Bank list, I think, a number of times. Um, and quantum. And I think for

times. Um, and quantum. And I think for me, I was always focused mostly on the security budget stuff because that seemed more pressing than the quantum stuff because obviously quantum has been talked about for a while, but people didn't realize like how much progress

has been made. So they still thought it was like decades away, but as you mentioned, it could become a problem as early as 2030 here, which is only a few years away now. Um, but I will say that

if you kind of look at the ecosystem as a whole, obviously Bitcoin isn't the only one that's susceptible to this.

Ethereum is also susceptible to this, but it's something that the Ethereum ecosystem and Vitalic in particular has talked about for a very long time. And

Ethereum has a culture of upgrading the chain, right? And has the people that

chain, right? And has the people that can actually build the fixes if we need them. Whereas I think Bitcoin's biggest

them. Whereas I think Bitcoin's biggest issue is that it doesn't have that culture. So in order to fix this, if

culture. So in order to fix this, if they want to fix it, they have to go through the entire kind of pipeline of getting this built and then getting it into the network when traditionally

Bitcoiners have been very resistant to doing hard forks on the network because this would require a hard fork in order to to change the um the the code so that this could uh this could fix Bitcoin.

But as you mentioned, Nick also says that the best case scenario is that it's not a full fix. It's well there is still 2 million BTC or up to 2 million BTC that could be susceptible to these

things. So I'm not, as I said, an expert

things. So I'm not, as I said, an expert on this. I'm not sure on on the

on this. I'm not sure on on the intricate details, but yeah, it's definitely something that I think more and more people need to be focused on.

If I had to say I think that Ethereum could could fix this, like the chain could be kind of made quantum resistant relatively easily. But when it comes to

relatively easily. But when it comes to Bitcoin, I I feel like another civil war is brewing here over this. like how do they even come to consensus on what upgrades to do or what we you know who get to get to build the upgrades because

then there's always the question around capture like can someone sneak in and capture the chain in some way um it's going to be it's just going to be like a

really big kind of um complex issue >> it is now now of course it could take still decades for quantum I mean some of the estimates are you know 2040 2045 but

you know 2030 or to 20 uh 35 are some more recent estimates. And actually um one of the people who's changed his mind is someone we had on the podcast about a year ago talking about quantum. So he's

a a massive name in the space. His name

is Scott Aronson and he has really changed his tune in the next year. He

says this could become a problem as soon as the next presidential election. So,

he's actually talking about some RSA type of encryption being broken possibly, you know, in the late 2030s or sorry, in the late 2020s, which is an

incredible departure from even 12 months ago. Um, actually Justin Drake gave a

ago. Um, actually Justin Drake gave a part two on this and we asked some questions about how Ethereum is, what the readiness for Ethereum is to for for

quantum. And um a few things you know we

quantum. And um a few things you know we talk about lean Ethereum which is you know consensus execution the full stack upgrade all of that is going to use quantum secure algorithms right so

replacing things Justin Drake says replacing things like BLS that's already planned BLS signatures with something quantum resistance that's already planned effectively in the next 5 years

of the Ethereum road map and so almost quantum is less of a threat it's more of a forcing function to just get Ethereum to upgrade to lean Ethereum him a little bit sooner. There's also the lost and

bit sooner. There's also the lost and exposed ETH is just a tiny percentage of supply. It's because Bitcoin, a lot of

supply. It's because Bitcoin, a lot of the Bitcoin submitted put the pub key on chain and um Ethereum is not like that. Justin ballpark's

about, you know, um 0.1% of ETH supply is actually susceptible to these attacks. So I do think overall at least

attacks. So I do think overall at least according to Justin Drake who is definitely in the no on this Ethereum is um in a much better place with respect to to quantum though the full stack

needs to be upgraded. I mean if quantum computers happen next year or 2027 the entire industry is screwed. So cross

your fingers on that I guess.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It is definitely a threat that's uh as I mentioned like not decades away now and as you said like it's become more of a pressing thing but when it when it comes to Ethereum I'm much less worried about it than I am

about like other networks obviously especially Bitcoin because Ethereum can like if we need to we can do I guess like an emergency fork if we needed to right like yes it would probably be a

mess but we could do it uh but Bitcoin I just don't see how they they do it like it just doesn't it's not in their DNA right it's just They're alsified. Very

oified.

>> Exactly.

>> Uh Anthony, thank you so much for filling in for David. It's been a pleasure to have you as always. The

Daily Guay is coming back to a regular cadence starting next year. I saw you announce that this week. That is very bullish. So, I know you kind of took

bullish. So, I know you kind of took some time away from the Daily Guay. It's

been less frequent in 2025. I actually

listened to uh the Daily Guay the portion about you kind of getting um getting super healthy and super fit and uh that that was incredible. I know

that's been a journey for you too and I mean it's it's great to see you doing that. But next year starting in January

that. But next year starting in January the daily is that going to be on a weekly basis?

>> Yeah. Yeah. So it's going to go back to a weekly cadence. I mean, as the name implies, it used to be daily uh quite a while ago, but then I I I think what happened was I just burnt myself out. Uh

and I kept burning myself out. Uh it's,

you know, it's a crazy industry. So, I

needed to take a step back, as you mentioned, like take more care of my physical health. And I think I'm in a

physical health. And I think I'm in a really good spot now generally to to bring back the show on a on a regular cadence, which yeah, it's going to be weekly. So, every every Monday I'm going

weekly. So, every every Monday I'm going to aim to get an episode out for people to enjoy. uh and you know maintain that

to enjoy. uh and you know maintain that as long as long as I can because I think weekly I'm not going to burn myself out if I do that. But yeah, I don't think I'd be going back to daily unfortunately.

>> That's awesome though and it's going to be great to have that back. So we'll

include some links in the show notes so you can get that on YouTube, Spotify, all the regular channels. Got to let you know, of course, none of this has been financial advice. Crypto is risky. You

financial advice. Crypto is risky. You

could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's

headed west. This is the frontier. It's

not for everyone, but we're glad to have you on the bankless journey. Thanks a

lot.