[
  {
    "i": 0,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "You're competing against a whole bunch of dumb idiots that are moving as fast as they can. And effectively they just picked the right kind of market and the right products."
  },
  {
    "i": 1,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Uh, but this is the only way you can actually succeed. A lot of founders, engineers, or whatever are are very analytically intelligent and they analyze risk. And they're like, \"Well,"
  },
  {
    "i": 2,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "I'm not 100% sure that I need to do this.\" But at some level you kind of have to make that gut decision that the only way I can win is if I picked, you know, a horse and I stick with it."
  },
  {
    "i": 3,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> So, we are at a very unique time in the space. I think we all collectively have an opportunity to help the space break out of its OG niche and become a mainstream technology."
  },
  {
    "i": 4,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Solana has been at the center of that from the very start. Uh, I'm curious, what would you advise the Solana community to do to really take advantage of that opportunity?"
  },
  {
    "i": 5,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um, I think um, you know, if you kind of look back at the early days, 2017 and prior to that, people had like a ton of ideas about everything that could be possible with crypto."
  },
  {
    "i": 6,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Um, and they were just one or two cycles early. I think basically when you see technology go through stages and and maturity, just like with the dot-com era, you know, pets.com was a little too early."
  },
  {
    "i": 7,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Um, and now that the technology is mature, it's time to build those businesses and try to find product market fit. All the ideas were the right ideas. They were just the timing was"
  },
  {
    "i": 8,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "off."
  },
  {
    "i": 9,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Um, and that's usually how it goes with tech and and uh, startups. So, rethink of what's possible today given the speed and the reach and uh, the throughput of the of Solana and try to build those"
  },
  {
    "i": 10,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "businesses from the ground up."
  },
  {
    "i": 11,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> There has always been a tension in the space between on one hand building systems that are completely decentralized, censorship-resistant, permissionless, and then on the other hand, building systems that have a few"
  },
  {
    "i": 12,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "more levers of control that are a little bit more centralized, more pragmatic."
  },
  {
    "i": 13,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Uh I feel like this tension has only become more pronounced recently as uh institutions, major financial institutions are entering the space and they have a demand for additional levers"
  },
  {
    "i": 14,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "of control."
  },
  {
    "i": 15,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "How How do you think about navigating that tension and preserving some of the ethos of the space from the very start whilst still meeting institutions that require more control halfway?"
  },
  {
    "i": 16,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> I think um if you really actually dig into it and think about it deeply, um they actually want to build on a base layer where they know nobody else has control. And they have the absolute"
  },
  {
    "i": 17,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "guarantees of what they're doing is deterministic. There's no way for a third party to interrupt or screw up um you know, the the financial systems that they're building on top. So, this"
  },
  {
    "i": 18,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "permissionless, trustless layer is really critical as a foundational building block."
  },
  {
    "i": 19,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And then the ability to express whatever controls that can be that are needed for an institution to to operate in whatever regulatory environment they're in, those have to be expressible by that"
  },
  {
    "i": 20,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "particular actor. What they don't want is the ambiguity that they don't understand the system that they're operating in and the rules of them are opaque and um hard to hard to enforce."
  },
  {
    "i": 21,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Um so, Solana being open source and permissionless is this really great foundational bedrock and the fact that it's cheap and fast um is what allows them to build businesses on top that can actually scale to"
  },
  {
    "i": 22,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "consumers."
  },
  {
    "i": 23,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> Yeah, I agree. I think this is a bet that credible neutrality is the thing that ultimately will matter the most."
  },
  {
    "i": 24,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "That is ultimately the thing that blockchains provide that no no other computer system offers."
  },
  {
    "i": 25,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Of course, like yeah. And I think if you want to eliminate, you know, that layer of finance that depends on a trusted third party, you actually have to prove it that there's no trusted third party"
  },
  {
    "i": 26,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "there that you're relying on."
  },
  {
    "i": 27,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Um the only way to do that that, you know, as far as I know is open source and permissionless."
  },
  {
    "i": 28,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> What what do you see as the most important upcoming milestones in the Solana technical roadmap?"
  },
  {
    "i": 29,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um you know, for me like I think we kind of hit the critical milestone, which is the the client and the the the operating system, that layer that, you know, the validator client has"
  },
  {
    "i": 30,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "kind of disappeared for most of the application, you know, developers point of view."
  },
  {
    "i": 31,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Um like nobody's asking me about when when is this feature ship shipping or what you know, there there's people that are complaining to me directly, but most devs that are building on Solana,"
  },
  {
    "i": 32,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "they're in hackathons that are shipping applications don't even think about the the layer anymore because it's continuously improving and it's doing that, you know, release after release."
  },
  {
    "i": 33,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "But personally, obviously, some core amazing features that are getting ripped out is proof of history, which is what I pitched to you like, you know, 7 years ago at this point. So the"
  },
  {
    "i": 34,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Alpenglow release is basically due due sometime this year, I think next quarter."
  },
  {
    "i": 35,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Um so that to me is this exciting step in the evolution of the protocol because we're going from the ideas that proved out um this core innovation that I think Solana accomplished which is you can scale the"
  },
  {
    "i": 36,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "throughput of the chain with the bandwidth available um on the hardware to um what we can theoretically guarantee in terms of safety and liveness with, you know, really really hard bounds um and at the"
  },
  {
    "i": 37,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "confirmation latency that's like basically one round speed of light around the world. So I'm really excited about that as being kind of in my mind the last lines of my code being ripped"
  },
  {
    "i": 38,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "out of the of the of the validator software means that I'm kind of done."
  },
  {
    "i": 39,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> For sure."
  },
  {
    "i": 40,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "How do you see our privacy as a feature ultimately weaving its way through the kind of the Solana roadmap and ecosystem?"
  },
  {
    "i": 41,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um like everybody wants privacy. I think uh every individual wants it at a visceral level. Like we all deserve privacy."
  },
  {
    "i": 42,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Every business wants it from a practical point of view because when you're selling, you know, widgets, you don't want your competitors to know how many widgets you're selling and which ones."
  },
  {
    "i": 43,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah."
  },
  {
    "i": 44,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um all that Oh. Oh. Everybody wants it, but I think um privacy is not a leading feature that will change consumer behavior. It's a lagging feature. Like once you establish PMF and everybody's using it, and then"
  },
  {
    "i": 45,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "you can add privacy because this is a kind of a core thing that is better for your consumers, then that becomes a moat. So, I think as crypto, you know, matures and develops and and we get to,"
  },
  {
    "i": 46,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "you know, tens of trillions per month transacted on chain. Like I think we're about a trillion right now in terms of stablecoin volume. Um these issues between competitors and between"
  },
  {
    "i": 47,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "consumers are going to start to become serious uh differentiators. And they'll actually start kind of becoming um the requirement. Um but I think it's more of a of a lagging >> Yeah."
  },
  {
    "i": 48,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> uh like technology indicator like a feature."
  },
  {
    "i": 49,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "My hope is that um like there's all the the the challenge here is like there's always tension between privacy and what we want as individuals and what regulators want."
  },
  {
    "i": 50,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah."
  },
  {
    "i": 51,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> So, how that shakes out I think it's going to be kind of the critical thing in the next in the next 2 to 5 years."
  },
  {
    "i": 52,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> 100%."
  },
  {
    "i": 53,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Well, in the past I mean in the past you and I have had this debate as to what the end game of scalability ultimately looks like. Uh I think you've you've once made the case to me that we'll only"
  },
  {
    "i": 54,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "really ever need something like 700,000 transactions per second. That will be enough to put the entirety of the world's finance on chain. I'm curious uh how that has evolved, if it has evolved"
  },
  {
    "i": 55,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "at all, uh given now that agents are becoming potentially now a source of uh transactions, and you can imagine a world where you actually have maybe the majority of transactions, financial transactions in the world"
  },
  {
    "i": 56,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "actually driven by agents as opposed to humans. And maybe there's a world where the number of transactions is actually much, much larger because of the fact that it's all machine to machine."
  },
  {
    "i": 57,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Curious what you think. Uh you you you still feel like that may not be the case, and actually we're we're good with something like 700K?"
  },
  {
    "i": 58,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Yeah, I think the the nuance to that question is that what is the median fee per transaction? Uh and if it's if you start going below half a penny, that means that all the transactions you're not including are"
  },
  {
    "i": 59,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "basically financially insignificant. So, it's kind of like saying, you know, well, Google doesn't actually handle all of the search in the world because every website has their own search, Wikipedia"
  },
  {
    "i": 60,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "has their own search, but none of those are financially important searches. Like Google has 90% or whatever of the of the search market that matters, that is monetizable. So, the layer that matters"
  },
  {
    "i": 61,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "for, I think, blockchains or especially layer ones is that layer above the median fee."
  },
  {
    "i": 62,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And um I think without demand, the median fees are completely insignificant, and it doesn't matter if you're transacting in that chain if the fee is below, you know, a fraction of a"
  },
  {
    "i": 63,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "fraction of a penny means there's not enough demand to actually warrant uh scale. Like there's no point to add to add scale there."
  },
  {
    "i": 64,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Um so, I don't know what that number is. If it's 700,000 TPS, it was my back-of-the-envelope estimate for 1 gigabit. Um 1 gigabit of block space. We're no we're not even near that, right? I think um"
  },
  {
    "i": 65,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Solana I think handles half of the world's blockchain transactions, and it's maybe 2 megabyte blocks right now or something like that. Um New York Times.com website is 20 megabytes. So, in terms of"
  },
  {
    "i": 66,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "how much stuff we can add to the chain and capacity and all these other things, we're not actually adding that much capacity that people need uh that's monetizable. Um if you just simply scale throughput, what"
  },
  {
    "i": 67,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "people actually care right now is how big is your economic tick? Is it 400 milliseconds? Is it 1 second? Is it 50 milliseconds? How fast are you basically synchronizing the state and the world's"
  },
  {
    "i": 68,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "information? And that allows people to actually put more expensive transactions on chain and kind of more revenue and more important stuff actually goes away from traditional markets into these"
  },
  {
    "i": 69,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "decentralized ones."
  },
  {
    "i": 70,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "Um so yeah, I I think while the worlds of agents may at raw amount of whatever transaction throughput may be unlimited, the amount of transactions that matter are all probably going to fit in 1 gigabit"
  },
  {
    "i": 71,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "networks."
  },
  {
    "i": 72,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "So, that means what you're actually optimizing for is the quality of that 1 gigabit. How fast is it? How how low latency, the reliability and all these other kind of much harder engineering"
  },
  {
    "i": 73,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "problems, frankly. Like adding throughput is is somewhat easier."
  },
  {
    "i": 74,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> One final question to round us out. Uh you've been on an an incredible journey having built Solana from scratch. We know each other for something like 7 years."
  },
  {
    "i": 75,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Uh there's lots of founders here in the room. I'm curious what uh words of advice would you have for for founders in the space today?"
  },
  {
    "i": 76,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": ">> Um founders are different than funds or investors. Investors can take multiple bets."
  },
  {
    "i": 77,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And founders can only really take one bet. This is uh in retrospect, you kind of have to be a little stupid almost or a little crazy and kind of build on this vision."
  },
  {
    "i": 78,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And the problem is that the vast majority of founders will fail, like no matter what you do."
  },
  {
    "i": 79,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "And if you change your mind and chase too many the too many visions and and kind of too many product features, you'll definitely fail. And the only ones that survive are basically the ones"
  },
  {
    "i": 80,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "that get lucky. So, you're competing against a whole bunch of dumb idiots that are moving as fast as they can. And effectively, they just pick the right kind of market and the right product. Uh but this is the only"
  },
  {
    "i": 81,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "way you can actually succeed. So, in a in a and that's somewhat hard for intelligent people. Like a lot of founders, engineers, or whatever are are very analytically intelligent and they"
  },
  {
    "i": 82,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "analyze risk. And they're like, \"Well, I'm not 100% sure that I need to do this.\" But at some level, you kind of have to make that gut decision that the only way I can win is if I pick, you"
  },
  {
    "i": 83,
    "speaker": "Speaker 1",
    "text": "know, a horse and I stick with it. So, yeah, good luck."
  },
  {
    "i": 84,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": ">> [laughter] >> Fantastic. Well, that's a excellent note to end on."
  },
  {
    "i": 85,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Uh thank you everyone for being here."
  },
  {
    "i": 86,
    "speaker": "Speaker 2",
    "text": "Thank you, Tolly. Um >> For sure. Thank you."
  }
]