Stephen: This is your host Stephen Sargent, the Around The Coin podcast, and we just have a fabulous episode for you. Arjun Bhuptani, he is the co-founder of Everclear, formerly known as Context Labs. These guys are building the clearing layer for Web3. So think about in the traditional sense, you have Visa that clears through all these different banks.

These guys are doing it in a decentralized way to solve some of the Web3's biggest problems, which is decentralization, interoperability, scalability of Ethereum. This is a really great conversation and he gives an Uber reference and the Uber analogy that's not like, hey, we're the scooters for Uber. It's actually a really great Uber analogy that's going to help everyone think about how their Web2 payments or tech business can plug into the Web3 ecosystem, especially when it comes to tokenization. Listen to this and it's a really great technical episode. I try to bring it down to my level to help everybody out because I am not that technical, but I'm getting better. Hope you like this episode.

Stephen: Arjun, welcome to another episode of Around The Coin. I'm the host, Stephen Sargeant. This is a podcast, it's a technical podcast, but it's about a section of Web 3 that I don't think a lot of people are focusing on. Maybe just give a brief introduction about who you are, and then we'll dive down deep into the technical stuff that you're building there.

Arjun: Absolutely. Well, yeah, thank you so much for having me on here, Stephen. I'm Arjun. I'm one of the founders of Everclear.

I joined this space back in 2016. Before that, I had a background in physics. I became interested in blockchains because I'd actually been interested in a lot of other, like, peer to peer systems and things like that beforehand.

And I became interested in blockchains because of this, like, ability to go and build public goods that are like the internet, right? The thing that's really incredible about the internet is that it's not owned by any single company or any, any government. And I think like the fact that it's not really owned by anybody, the fact that this is like unstoppable piece of global infrastructure has been the reason why it's been so incredibly important in everyone's lives.

And and I think that there's this, there's room for creating more types of public goods, like the internet that are just like supersede, like, like highest level mechanisms for human beings to coordinate with one another that supersede any like government or any like nation states policy or any like.

Uh, Corporate policy or whatever and Ethereum was, was sort of introduced to me back in 2016. And I became really interested in it because it was just like a platform to build exactly these kinds of folk goods. Now since then, I've been doing a lot of stuff in the space.

I was like pretty early to building infrastructure on top of Ethereum and then we started Connext, which was what it was previously called.

In 2017, so a year later very, very old organization. And so we've, we've done quite a bit of everything. We like started out basically with this mission of like, let's figure out how to make this technology usable for like the average user. And like pretty quickly that led us to, to scalability as like the biggest kind of bottleneck.

And so we were, we were a scalability R& D organization for a long time. We, we built like one of the first layer twos on top of Ethereum back in 2018. And then and then in 2020 ish, we kind of noticed that there was this like fragmentation occurring between all of our L2 friends, and so we, we shifted our focus towards Interop because we were like, well, actually, this is the bigger problem and

Stephen: What were you thinking about, like, when you took physics, what were you, you know, scaling all the way back to physics, what were you looking to get into? Like when you first like say I'm signing up for physics, like what was your like dream job at the time or what was the kind of career path you were thinking about

Arjun: Yeah. Well, when I started, I was planning to get into academia. I was planning to study theoretical physics, cosmology actually which is the, the study of how basically the universe functions and at, at kind of like the highest level. And you know, I, I'm still super, super interested in cosmology.

I think a lot of the like mathematics and systems thinking behind it have like really lended themselves super well into crypto and a bunch of other topics too, stuff like AI and like any other kind of like information theory, And but at the same time, like, I think academia, I sort of came to realize over the course of my college career that, like, academia was just this, like, extremely.

You know, closed off gamified thing and that which I was, I was just really kind of averse to. And and so instead, I, you know, I, I wanted to like do something that was going to have like more meaningful impact in my own lifetime. And I wanted to kind of do something that like would, would be sort of more permissionless for entry.

Right. And like more kind of merit, more of a meritocracy. And crypto is exactly that. I mean, there are like, you know, 15, 14 year olds that are like contributing meaningfully to this space. Like Paradigm keeps hiring, like, underage kids. So it's kind of insane that they keep doing that, but..

Stephen: You have lead chicken scratcher on your LinkedIn. I know you're probably, you know, more well known on like Twitter and, and maybe GitHub and LinkedIn. So maybe like, hey, I, I probably haven't updated in the last eight years. I'm always on LinkedIn, so that's always the first place I check. What is that? Is that like an inside term?

Is that like a crypto term? I've never heard about it. Or is that like a joke between you and your you and your team?

Arjun: Yeah, it's actually a social experiment. So I was getting a lot of, like, automated inbound from LinkedIn, or at least my hypothesis was that it was from LinkedIn. I was getting a lot of, like, spam emails and inbound and things like that. Like, like telemarketers, people like calling me, people sending me messages.

And I was like, I want to figure out where they're actually scooping this information from. So, like, I started to put different role titles in different places that were all hilarious to see, like, How much of this is automated? How much of this are they actually like paying attention to? And it's, it's all automated.

Like a lot of it is going for

Stephen: I was going to say, like, I've been on LinkedIn. I'm aggressively on LinkedIn for hours a day. It's awesome. I mean, unfortunately,

Arjun: yeah, I occasionally still get a lot of emails from people. Like now I've managed to spam filter a lot of them. So I set up spam filters based on this term, which is great. But I used to get a lot of like spam emails being like, Hey, we noticed you're the lead chicken scratcher

Stephen: no, that's hilarious. I love it. It's actually why I have the plug, like I have an emoji plug in front of my name, because when they use automation, it automatically changes into like a character. So if you're like, hello, question mark, Stephen, I already know it's automation, but they're, they're even getting better there.

As we begin to look under the hood at Everclear we see that, as you said, it was formerly Kinect Labs. Can you explain, you know, how you built Kinect Labs? And what was the reason for maybe the brand change or just maybe a name change?

Arjun: So I kind of mentioned that like, Connext has sort of been around for a really long time. We've done a lot of things. Now, I think, I mean, you're a marketer, right? Like, I think you, you know, more than anyone that like brands are, it's so important to get brands, right. Just like from the get go. And the more, the more consistently you can keep your brand identity and like get like consistent over the years, the more easy it is for people to understand what you're doing.

And that was, that was basically the opposite of what we had. That's where like, when we went, we started to get feedback from people around, like, you know, what, one of the biggest pieces of feedback that we get from people was Well, we know about Nix. We know you're like this very OG brand. We know you guys have been in this space forever and done a ton of like really important stuff.

We have no idea what you guys are doing. And like, it was just like clarifying the positioning, and things like that is of course so important. Now with, with, with Connect, so like what ended up happening was we, we, like I said, we, we kind of worked on a lot of like early L2 stuff and then, and then pivoted into Interop.

And in 2021, when things started growing with Interop, we, we were, we were building one of the first like intent based bridges effectively. Though at the time that, that terminology just didn't exist. So we were, we were really actually the first intent based bridge. And over time we started to kind of solve problems for our own intent based bridge.

We just encountered like a bunch of things. We were like, Hey, this is, this is a core issue that we need to scale. And, and, And and over the, like, you know, one of the biggest problems was, was the one that Everclear solves, which is this, this problem of like clearing and back and rebalancing of, of solid liquidity, which we, which we can get into in a minute, but

Stephen: would love to, but can you take me back a little to 2018? Like, you know, I got into this space around that time, May, 2015. I was kind of like figuring out, I just heard about Bitcoin. Like imagine being around people. You listen to this podcast is actually what I listened to back then. I was like, they're talking about Bitcoin.

It was like 700. What was happening in 2018? Was there a lot of speculation, like a lot of noise in this space? How is it to build then? And even in 2021, how hard is it to build when there's just so much noise, so much money going after projects that you're looking at, like, hey, they're using certain words, but if you look at their technology, if you look at their code, nothing in that says AI or interoperability, but they sure have it plastered all over their website.

Take me through that experience of, you know, being a builder and watching everybody else in this space kind of chase the hype.

Arjun: So 2018 was basically immediately after the like ICO bubble burst, right? And and if you talk to anybody that was around in that time, they'll say the same thing, which is that it was just like a magical time. Like there is. There were really very few people in the space that were actively contributing, I would say like less than a thousand that were actively like doing stuff.

And like we all knew each other really, really well. I mean, we all still know each other really well. And, and 2018 was like when there, there was 2018 to 2019 was when there was like the peak of kind of research and discussions around layer two scalability and around like, what is going to be the future of Ethereum scalability.

And so. That was like the number one topic. I think everybody like you had, you basically had like all of these ICO driven organizations that have raised a ton of funding and, but like didn't have any way to kind of go to market until this was solved. And then you had, you had a bunch of like scalability R& D teams that were just like racing each other and competing against each other to figure out like, what is the, what is the right way to actually scale Ethereum.

I think that was like, honestly, some of the most productive, like the most productive period of this space. Like in DevCon and Proc, for example, we started to like map out the early ideas behind what became Rollups. We started to think about like, you know, the early kind of tenets of MEV and like how we could potentially like address the MEV supply chain and like, Things like that.

And like, these are, these are now like really staples of the things that people like think about in the space and the biggest sort of like areas of focus for, for, for technology. I think one of the other things that was really interesting that time was that there were no market signals, right?

So you had to be like a, like, this was part of the reason why I was so special. It's like, you had to be a special kind of crazy person in order to be encrypted at the time, because like, Like, nobody had PMF. There was like, you know, like when we, when we built our scalability system it got some traction and we were working, we were basically building like a payment scalability platform, right?

And we got some traction in partnership with a, with a project at the time called Spankchain because they were the only, the only project that had a lot of traction at the time. But it

Stephen: remember SpankChain. Is that the one that was like kind of like OnlyFans tokens or like for the adult space, kind of like tokenization for the adult space?

Arjun: Exactly. Yeah. It was like a payment processing platform only for only like streaming platform and a bunch of other things all like kind of lumped into one.

Stephen: still around? I used to hear a lot about it back then. I haven't heard about it lately, but I guess OnlyFans, people don't care now that OnlyFans is out and credit card companies are definitely processing those transactions.

Arjun: Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it still exists, but I think, I think unfortunately, and this was, this is just true of everyone in the space, right? Like everyone had this thesis around payments, but payments just didn't really tick off and it wasn't, it wasn't until like 2019 that like. Things like people were like, okay, Uniswap, you know, this is interesting, blah, blah, blah.

And then 2020 was when like DeFi summer happened and folks realized, oh, okay, there's actually a market here. And that was when things started to change. But yeah, up until that point, like, because there were no market signals, it was kind of hard to tell, like, what are the most important things to work on aside from scalability.

So there was a lot of like attention going towards scalability and honestly, some of the most like brilliant minds in the space working on our problem, which is awesome. And then you kind of, you fast forward to 2020, that was like. 2019 was when the first kind of like basically several, several products really hit upon Rollups at the same time.

And and 2019 was when like everyone started to like actively work on Rollups as a design. And 2020 was sort of when like, you know, everyone, like at least we kind of started to realize, okay, well, there's going to be fragmentation between all of these Rollups. There's not really like a way around that.

And then 2021, like that was when that thesis sort of came true, right? Like the space started to expand really quickly. All of a sudden liquidity got fragmented across like, you know, Polygon, Binance Chain, Ethereum, XDAI, and then you know, later that year, Arbitrary Monopolism, and and, you know, all of a sudden, Bitcoin went from being this thing that was like, not at all, at all on anyone's radar, to being one of the most, like, fastest growing, like, space, things in the space, which was pretty cool. Yeah.

Stephen: So. What is clearing? Like that's what Everclear does. It's a clearing layer. What is clearing in web two? Maybe, you know, maybe level set us like, what does clearing look like in web two? And then you can discuss how it's evolving with your company and organization going forward.

Arjun: Yeah. So in traditional finance, clearing is the process. Basically everything that happens between like when a transaction is executed. So like, For example, right, when you go and you pay with a card using Visa at a grocery store, everything after Visa authorizes the transaction, which means that, you know, you like the merchant gets told, hey, like this payment went through and then they give you your groceries or whatever.

So everything from there up until the point of settlement, which is when the funds are actually moved from your bank account. Now, in traditional finance, these things are two, like, totally different points in time. And like, There's often hours, sometimes days in between those two steps. And in that time, there is a lot that happens.

You know, for Visa, for example, Visa is aggregating all of these transactions that are being made all around the world. They are then consolidating them and netting them, which means that they are basically taking like, you know, say you and I make like, let's say I pay you or like I'm, I'm Chase and you're at Bank of America and like I'm paying you, but then there's also a bunch of other people paying like in the opposite direction from Bank of America to Chase.

Those things can kind of be netted off, right? So like Chase and Bank of America don't need to send funds back and forth to each other. They can just keep the funds and know, like, just update their balances. So Visa basically does this whole process of figuring out how, how do I most optimally settle and then they give instructions for settlement to all the banks so that banks can then start like actually sending money to each other and or just updating account balances.

Um, this is also true in like the New York Stock Exchange. It's true for like a ton of other kind of financial systems around the world. In crypto, clearing doesn't really exist yet. It didn't need to exist when we were on a single chain. And the reason for this was just like, you know, like the, when you submitted the transaction, it was mined into a block, like it's in the block and it's settled at that point.

Right. But now we're working with this asynchronous environment where there's many different chains and like, Settlement actually has a slightly different meaning where it's like, I may want to like make a transaction happen across chains and I may want that to happen instantly, but the amount of time it takes to actually have communication between chains is longer.

And this is something that we've, we've sort of observed is like, and this is, this is kind of the reason behind you know, this model that we call it, that is now generally called Intents and that we've, we've been working with for a while. It costs money and takes time to send secure messages between blockchains.

Like, security costs money, fundamentally. That's just never, that's like, just a fundamental axiom of the space. It's like, if you want security, you have to pay for it, right? And this is the reason why Ethereum is more expensive than, like, I don't know, like, some other longer tail chain where that is not very secure.

And and so I think, like, given that, we, we sort of realized, okay, there's a need for, for something similar in this space where, like, when you have today, when you use Intents, which is a model of transacting across chains, where instead of me making these transactions, instead of me having to bridge, You Steven as a, as like a service writer can go and just like do things on my behalf.

So, so for example, say I want to go and deposit funds into Avid in on Optimism, but I don't have any funds on Optimism. All my funds are on Polygon. What I can do is just tell you, hey, I'll pay you, you know, a thousand dollars on polygon if you go and deposit nine hundred and nine, nine ninety $5 on our on optimism into, and so you, as a service writer, like who's holding liquidity on optimism, like you're happy to do that because you're earning fees from it, right?

The question here, and this is the interesting and open question, so this is by the way, at a high level, this model of. I want something and then I, I pay you to do it is, is like super common. It's like an, it's an abstraction like a system level abstraction that exists everywhere, right? So like, this is how Uber works where like, I don't, instead of me having to find a cab driver, I ask Uber, find me a Uber finds the right person who is like closest to me.

And it's going to take me somewhere for for the lowest amount of money. So it sort of makes sense that this needs to exist in the space, right? Like it, it abstracts away the complexity because you, as a. As a, as a business or as a service provider can go and like figure out the whole process of getting optimism and paying gas and whatever.

And I don't need to do that as a user. However, this introduces a challenge, which is like, how do you settle? So how do you get the 1, 000 that I supposedly gave, gave you on Polygon? And like, what does that mean for you to then be able to continue providing the service and optimism? This is a core problem.

This is this, we kind of call this the rebalancing problem. This is a core problem that exists It's really, like, for any intent based system, for any intent based bridge. So this exists for, like, Connext in the past, it exists for Across uh, for Squid, for Dibridge, for Synapse, for Honestly, just about every bridge is heading towards intent, so this really exists for everybody.

But it also kind of exists for, like, other capital actors, like centralized exchanges, market makers, etc. Like, anyone that needs to move liquidity in large amounts between chains, this is a It has this kind of trade off where it's like, okay, if you're moving a large amount of liquidity, you're either paying tons and tons of money for it because like there's limited amount of capital and liquidity pools and bridges, or you're going through like the seven day roll up exit.

Right. And and this is a similar situation to where traditional finances, where there's,

Stephen: it's a little bit more riskier. You don't want to, you don't want to move large amounts of crypto if you don't already have to. Why does the system work? And I love your Uber analogy. That's really what like hit this home for me. But why does the system work for Uber? Is it because everyone's using Visa or Mastercard to make the payments and they're pretty much selling these transactions in the background for Uber?

Arjun: So in Uber's case, right, Uber, like the, the drivers are the, the solvers. They are the people that are service riders, right? It works for Uber because of two reasons. One Uber has enough of a monopoly in most places where, you know, it's like if a driver takes you to the airport, chances are they're going to get a ride back.

So Uber doesn't have to pay the cost of the driver coming back. And because, I think like Uber actually does subsidize a lot of this. Like Uber, like the Uber isn't necessarily a sustainable business. But yeah, I mean, I think, I think this is a, it's a, it's an interesting question, right? Like, how does this happen for Uber?

It happens because like they own it up to the market and because like, you know, they're willing to kind of like subsidize the cost of getting drivers back to where they're, they're, they need to go. And they, they assume like, okay, well, The likelihood that you're going to have a driver that's, that's going to, you know, that someone is going to call a ride and take a driver out to the middle of absolutely nowhere.

And like, Uber is going to have to figure out how to like offset the cost of that driver coming back. Like the, the number of times that that happens is like relatively lower. But like Uber does charge a lot for those rides for exactly that reason.

Stephen: That's really interesting. And I think that helps me a little bit understand like, yeah, if you do deposit it in one blockchain, the cost of, like, not being able to do that on the back end to receive the funds on another chain wouldn't make sense. You would just, you just wouldn't drive out, you wouldn't drive out to the airport if you knew that you weren't going to be compensated to come back in one form or another.

Arjun: exactly.

Stephen: Bridges solved, right? If I, hey, I don't have any Ethereum, I'll just, you know, You know, go to a bridge and you know, they'll change it over for me. Where does this relate to bridges that I think most people are familiar with?

Arjun: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's the same kind of problem, right? Like, a bridge has a certain amount of liquidity on a certain chain because they'll, like, the bridges either have minting rights of the tokens because they're canonical bridges, or in which case it's not a problem, right? But the canonical bridges are all slow and expensive.

So like the arbitral roller bridge is slow and expensive, right? So either, either you have a canonical bridge that has minting rights, so you can send any amount of size through it, but you're going to have to wait, or you have you have the opposite end of the spectrum where it's like a bridge that's based off liquidity.

Or like an intent solver or something like that. But then, then what happens when they run out of liquidity, right? So like, say Across has, you know, 5 million of liquidity on Arbitrum, but then Arbitrum launches an incentive campaign. How, like what happens when all the liquidity gets depleted or you know, how do you get more liquidity to Arbitrum to be able to continue facilitating part transactions?

And so what, what crosses solvers have to do, they're liquidity providers that basically service rider that I mentioned that are like, like uber drivers. What crosses solvers have to do is they have to go and rebalance their capital. So like all of their liquidity on arbitrary gets depleted. It ends up somewhere else.

They have to go and figure out how to get that liquidity out of wherever it ever, it got to back to arbitrary. That process is difficult. Right? And it's ultimately, that is the cost basis of the solver. Like if you're, if it costs you like. You know, 2 % of your total amount of like the volume, 2 % of the 10 million that you're, that you're facilitating 10 million of line facilitating to be able to rebalance, then that means that you have to charge the user at least 2%.

And, and, and probably more because you're taking on all of this risk and like deep running infrastructure in your business and things like that. So, ultimately this affects not just this affects like user pricing, it affects like The availability of liquidity, like how, how, how much can you rely on bridges, right?

It affects chain support, like which chains are, are these LPs and solvers even able to get to in the first place? And it generally affects like the, the overall amount of liquidity in the space that is usable across chains. Because like I said, it's, it's not just bridge LPs that are running into this.

It's like, centralized exchanges, right? Centralized exchanges are the same thing. When users withdraw a ton to a single chain, they have to, they have a lot of reserves, so they have to go and rebalance this reserve. So they do this several times a week. And so like, they have to kind of eat the cost of that right now.

There's not really a way around it.

Stephen: Usually that cost gets put onto the customer, which is why everything seems so expensive, even on places like Ethereum with gas. Now, you know, I work with clients like Chainalysis, which talks a lot about these bridge hacks. Does Everclear make this process more secure or safer than bridge hacks? Or is that just one of those things that's a part of doing business that hackers could target Everclear the same way they target some of these bridges?

Arjun: Yeah. So to specify what Everclear is doing, right? Instead of historically, every approach towards moving large amounts of liquidity between chains has, has centered around creating like large liquidity pools or own inventing rights. I think that's created more fragmentation, right? Because now everybody's playing their own like PvP game of like, how do I rebalance my liquidity?

But nobody's thinking about like, how, what is everybody else doing? Whatever clear is, is it as, as a clearing layer, whatever clear is doing is, it is after like the execution of transactions that are going across chains. So like after a bridge gives the user the funds for the bridge LP, Everclear is helping that bridge LP figure out how can they settle, how can they get funds back?

In the most optimal way possible to whatever chain. And so what Everclear does is it's a platform that allows, like, say, say you're an LP for Across and I'm an LP for, for Squid. It allows, and like, you have capital on Arbitrum, but you actually need it on Optimism. And I have capital on Optimism and I actually need it on Arbitrum.

What Everclear does is it allows us to negotiate with each other to do, to find coincidences of wants for any number of people in a totally decentralized way, which is, which is awesome. Like it allows basically any number to work together to figure out. How can we all just like swap funds with each other?

Kind of like I said with the, with Visa, like the Bank of America versus Chase case. You know, it's like, instead of, instead of having both of those, those banks kind of send funds to each other in opposite directions we can just get instructions to be like, okay, well actually, like we could just leave our funds where they are and just kind of like swap them with each other on the same chain.

And this is, this is huge, right? This basically like, In practice, when we, when we look at the amount of, basically, when we've looked at the data we've found that about 80 % of all the flows between chains net off on a 24 hour basis. So that means Out of every like, you know, dollar that you send into like Binance chain, for instance, at the same, in the same time period, 80 cents flows out.

And so that basically that begs the question of like, well, why bother sending like a dollar into Binance chain, right? Only send 20 cents into Binance chain, because that's actually the only amount that you actually really need to send. And in practice, like, I think this number is way higher when you start to consider like, You know, off market flows, like things that are not in the public.

So things like centralized exchanges, OTCs, like market maker inventory, things like that. And we, we think it can be like over 90 % of all the, of all the flows between chains just doesn't even need to exist in the first place.

Stephen: Does this also help with like the centralization issue? Because then if, you know, if this is happening, you're bringing together decentralized parties, but in the way that it could happen now is like, okay, you only have a few of these, you know, protocols or organizations or LPs are doing this specific service.

Technically, they get to charge whatever they want to and there might not be as much transparency in regards to it's more of like a monopoly, like the banking situation here in Canada.

Arjun: Yes, exactly. This is a, this is a big draw is like one of the reasons why we headed in this direction is because until now the prospect of being a, like a solver for, for one of these bridges. was completely impossible for like an average user, right? For like, even, even someone who is like running infrastructure and stuff like that.

And it was just because like, you know, in order to be able to balance your liquidity and manage inventory across chains, you have to be a market maker. So the only people that were doing this scale very profitably were like, Winternet. And so, you know, that's, that's obviously like a very negative outcome.

And you, you kind of have the same situation with centralized exchanges too, where it's like the centralized exchanges are like, Having to just have tons and tons of capital and reserve to like, do, do this whole process and smaller exchanges don't have any way to kind of like compete with larger exchanges on things like chain support.

Whereas what this, whatever clear allows is it allows for like, it would allow for like a hundred smaller solvers, right. With all holding like. You know, 500k each to compete at the same level as Winterbeat holding 50 million or a hundred, you know, small exchanges holding like 10 million each to be able to compete at the same level as Binance that has billions of dollars in liquidity.

And that's, that's the total game changer that like that completely opens up and levels the playing field for all participants. And it has, you had mentioned about security. It has some interesting implications on security as well. So I kind of mentioned earlier, like where, where does like security, where did the security risk come from in this stuff?

I think, I think a big part of it is like, there's just a trial and error on this in the same way that there's a trial and error on blockchain scalability, right? Where you can have, you can have bridging that is, that is like fast and cheap, or you can basically have bridging that is fast or cheap or secure. Basically

Stephen: pick two, right? You can only pick

Arjun: Yeah. And and I think the, the issue is like security, as I mentioned, kind of security costs money, right? Like you, you need to introduce more you either need to introduce more latency to like, to have additional checks or additional time to like batch up a bunch of transactions in order to be able to make these, make like each per transaction, like very cheap, or you need to be verifying every single transaction that goes across chains.

And today, most of the like. Both today and in the past, like most of the bridges that were using like security mechanisms to like send a message between chains are doing it pretty custodially or doing it via multisig. And the reason for this is that like people are trying to send messages, you know, like, I don't know, 10, 000 messages a day or something like that.

Right. And like, that's, That's not scalable. Like if you, from an objective security perspective, if you wanted, like, you know, if you wanted that to be verified by like a consensus set that looks like Ethereum, that would cost you like millions and millions of dollars a day to do. And so the, the way that this improves security is it, is it decouples with, and this is kind of more broadly true of Intents as well, where like with the Intent model, you know, It's like you as a service provider, it's, you are the one that's kind of thinking about security now.

Like as a user, I don't need to care anymore because from my perspective, I'm just putting up a bounty that says like, Hey, I'll pay, you know, 5 to anybody that makes this transaction happen across chains. You as the service provider are going to do it immediately, but then you're the one that's on the hook because you have fronted your own money to make this, make this transaction happen.

Right. And so you're the one that's thinking very deeply, like, okay. What is, what do the security, what does the security of the underlying system look like? And as a, as a business or as a service provider, you're way more, more well equipped to think about this because you're, you're doing tons and tons of these transactions every day rather than the user that's just doing like one or every occasionally.

And so I think like this will have really positive effects on security in general as a, as a, as a broader movement in this space. And also just like, I think decoupling like user transaction execution from a lot of the backend stuff. means that you can have projects like focus and prioritize security, and not do so at the cost of like user experience.

I think that's like a really, really big change.

Stephen: Now you've been building on Ethereum since 2018. Are you ever worried about Ethereum's roadmap? Like if Vitalik just says, you know what, we're gonna solve this clearing issue as part of our roadmap. We're gonna release this, you know, new phase and new new bug. Like, are you ever worried about building in a space where, you know, it's kind of like Facebook.

Like, oh, we came out with Snapchat. Like, oh, okay. Facebook just, or Instagram just steals that feature and now Snapchat's like, okay, what do we have now? Do you ever worry about that when building in a space that's always evolving so quickly?

Arjun: Yes, I do. So like my first project in this space back in 2016 was basically doing gas extraction. So it's still something that is unsolved today and that people are thinking about. And we stopped doing it and part of the reason, I mean, there's a bunch of different reasons, but one of the reasons we stopped doing it was because in 2016, 2017 the Ethereum announced that they were going to include native gas abstraction within the protocol.

That was like something that was like planned for the hard fork that was happening that November. And so we were just like, okay, well, that doesn't seem like there's a business here anymore. Right? Like there's not like. Yeah. Right.

You know, if it's built into the protocol, then like, like, why, why would anybody use a service that's helping accomplish the same thing?

Now, in practice, it didn't happen. So that's, that's quite interesting. It turned out to be quite complex to introduce something like that at the protocol level. So there was, there was actually no reason for us to stop doing it. In fact, gas extraction still is like one of the best, most interesting businesses that people are running on top of crypto today.

But more broadly, I think one thing that it taught me is like, In general, this stuff is super complex. Like, protocolizing, like, protocolizing things into Ethereum is like a valid strategy to help, like, consolidate, you know, fragmentation and things like that. But then, but then it, like, kills businesses and then it pushes people away from, from Ethereum, right?

So I think, I think, like, like the kind of key stakeholders that are helping to decide Ethereum's, like, the future. development roadmap are aligned in the sense that they recognize that like Ethereum can likely only like do one thing really well and and that trying to focus on doing too many things is likely going to lead to a split.

Like performing, underperforming on all of them. And at the same time, like doing, trying to like, you know, capture a lot of this more into a lot more of this into the protocol means like potentially alienating L2s, potentially alienating a bunch of other projects. So beyond that, I mean, look, like if there is an easy way to protocolize this stuff, then like, That should be the way that it happens, right?

Like my, from my perspective, like, I don't know, we've, we've sort of, we've been in this space for a really long time because we really believe in the technology and we really believe like in, in like the outcome and like helping create that impact, like if. Tomorrow, you know, like there is a announcement where like Justin Drake comes up with a proposal where there's like, this all actually can exist within the base layer and it can exist without trade offs and it can, like, because the current proposals just have significant trade offs, right?

So like, if it can exist in a way that everybody coalesces that like, hey, this is the best option, then like, yeah, why, why build a Rube Goldberg machine on top? Right? Like, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense. Like at that point, like we would, we would probably shift our focus because it just, uh, it's just like a better, like more optimal output for everybody.

Stephen: That's super interesting and like, you know, similar to like an Instagram. Ethereum can't be like, oh, look at this clubhouse thing. It's really popular. Let's, you know, let's embed that into the system. Like, you can't just chase every shiny object as well when you have a specific core function. That's working relatively well for everybody.

And then, hey, if you want to do off your specific things, I think that's why Ethereum was built for people that want to do specific things. They have an underlying Foundation that they can do that on that is secure and then they can choose to build on top of it.

Is there any kind of market shifts that you've seen that kind of push people to Everclear?

Like we saw decentralized exchanges and DeFi in general skyrocket when FTX and Celsius went down and people were like, Hey, maybe centralized exchanges shouldn't be trusted as much as they are right now. Let's, let's dabble into the centralized exchanges. Is there any things that you see or trends that you see where people are like, Hey, We need Everclear more than ever or things that are like, Hey, you know, we see a use case.

It hasn't come to fruition yet, but we can see Everclear solving this problem as people are building out on these protocols.

Arjun: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think like a big part of Everclear, this is something that we've tried to answer. It's just like the why now, right? So there's a couple of different reasons. One is, I think the space has finally achieved the level of like maturity in terms of like flows and in terms of like different kinds of actors in the space where like clearing and netting is actually something that is valuable.

You know, a year ago or even two years ago, like a year or two ago, I would have, I'm sure that that data would not have showed that 80 % of folks that I'm sure it would have been much, much lower. So I think that that's like a really, really positive trend. But so that's, that's like one thing that makes it possible today.

But then the other thing that makes it, that's very needed is like.

They just changed, right? We, the number of changes is rapidly accelerating. There's like 63, 64 chains live today rollups. This is just like rollups Ethereum. So this is not including like all the rollups building on top of Celestia.

It's not including like all of the like Cosmos app chains. It's not including like, you know, just Solana and like Sui and Aptos and any, anything else like that. And like. You know, when you, when you include all of that, it's like, you know, 150 plus chains that like are, are actively being built and like are, or are in some sense live and like have users.

And, and then you're talking about like, you know, an additional several hundred that are going live that are in the pipeline. We've been talking to like Rollup as a service providers and like some of the chain teams to figure out what are their pipelines look like. And it's, it's huge. Like I think people are really not ready.

For what the world will look like, you know, even in like six months where there's going to be just this massive, massive explosion of, of new chains coming online. I think chains and chain related growth and like, like basically people building pathchains, right? So like, a Web2 company comes in, like builds up recently, for example, Gelato.

Who, who is a close partner of ours. And then they also have a role as a service product. They announced a collaboration with Fox Fox Media, a news organization, where Fox wants to like go and build a, a chain that can act as like a neutral ground for different media companies to be able to like, like basically post news, historical news such that, you know, you can ensure that that news just isn't changing, right?

Like it provides like a level of like tamper proof, Transparency that can help to fight a lot of the misinformation that exists in the world today. Brilliant, brilliant idea, like incredible projects, huge, hugely beneficial, right? And such a great example of something that is uniquely possible on an app chain, right?

And it's, it's something that like in the past, if you wanted Fox or somebody like that to go and build something like this, how would they do that? They would have had to like build, you know, they would have had to do what Meta did and like try to build their own completely. Unique blockchain from scratch with Diem, right?

And we, we all kind of saw how that went, where it's like, it was just too much work and they kind of had to give up on it. So I think like, I think this explosion of chains I think the way that like, like we're, if we're heading towards like a thousand chain world or a 10, 000 chain world or a million chain world, right?

What will it look like for bridges to support all of them? What will it look like for centralized exchanges to support all of them?

This like liquidity fragmentation problem behind the scenes that, that is like specifically what Everclear solves, right? It just gets exponentially worse, like it's to the point where I think this whole space becomes unusable until, unless something like Eric there exists.

Stephen: And what's interesting, you mentioned boxing. That's funny because that's where my brain was going. I see a lot of these like, Private Web 2. 0 companies are like, hey, we want to do this thing. We need our, and we had somebody from Aptos, I think it was Aptos Labs, talking about Cosmos and what they were doing there.

And that's exactly it. All these companies are coming up with their own sidechains or appchains. But for you, if like collaboration is such a big thing in this industry. So if Vox Media wants to now collaborate, let's just say, you know, CNBC has their own chain. That's so hard to do, especially if they both have their own tokens.

Is that where you kind of come in place where, Hey, you guys want to exchange tokens, we have that ability to do so. And Hey, if everyone wants to leverage, you know, maybe like SushiSwap or something else, you'll have that ability to do so all in decentralized nature where you don't have to go through these bridges.

Would that be the ecosystem that you're thinking that's going to be used within the clearing? Lair?

Arjun: Maybe, I mean, but I think even more basic than that, right? Like if you, if you want people to

Stephen: that was, I'm glad that that wasn't basic, cause I'm not technical so I'm like, oh, like, my imagination's running wild now.

Arjun: Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, just like it, even, even the absolute basics of like, well, how are you going to get USDC to, to Fox chain in order to be able to allow people to be able to do things right? Like, ideally, like, you know, you could, you can easily imagine that like this, like what is the intended for these news organizations to post on this chain?

Well, like you can imagine that they're receiving some sort of payment from something, or like they're, they're going to try and like find ways to monetize this. Right. And so. You know, how will they do that? How will, how will people bridge into the chain to monetize it? That's, it's like an interesting and open question.

And like, you know, it's like, fine, maybe Fox, because they're, you know, heavyweights can like convince them to go there. But what about, you know, all of the other 999 chains that are going to go live? Like, how do they do it? Ultimately, like all of them are having to compete for attention right now because there's just like a limited pool of liquidity that can go towards these things.

With Everclear, the idea is that that liquidity question just goes away completely, right? Like it's not, it's no longer a question of like how much liquidity can a bridge build on a chain. It's a question of like, where, where can you find service writer solvers that are willing to go for it? Right. And like.

That's a way, way easier question to solve.

Stephen: And even if they came up with their own token, unless that token is listed on the exchange or kind of their hands are tied or it gets pretty expensive for somebody that's making, I'd say, micro tokens for making a media post or something like that, to be able to now, hey, how do I cash out, is that your point kind of thing, they need somewhere else that they can kind of cash out these tokens that are not going to be popular enough to make like a Binance or a Bitfinex or a

Arjun: Cash out. Yeah. Cash out or on board or whatever. Right. Like it's like, and there's so much more we, I mean, like the reality is like value is. Like that blockchains are mechanisms to like track and coordinate around values, right? Ultimately, how you define value is an interesting question where it doesn't necessarily have to be monetary value but it ultimately like blockchains are useful for fit for things that are valuable because you have to pay for them to to to do that.

to use them for things that are valuable. The relative value of those things can be low for things like games, but it's still, it's still like a resource that you need in order to be able to like do things in the space. And so the question is ultimately like, how do you, how do you, how do you get that resource?

How do you actually like onboard to these ecosystems? How do you make it so that like, you know, I can go and, you know, do something on you know, some, some longer tail L3, like Treasure Chain or something like that. Right. Like how, how can I make it so that like, as a user, like I want to go and use Treasure Chain's app.

I don't have to like, think about bridging. I'm just able to just use the app and I, and you know, I'm not having to pay like a significant amount of money to do that. I,

Stephen: when we think we're talking about tokens, you know, Everclear has plans. I think you're in the process of releasing your own token. You know,

Arjun: we, we, we have our, we have a

Stephen: My my forte exactly. Is there any way you can do what you're doing with other token? Or is it simply you have to have token as utility in order for everyone to benefit from the ecosystem?

Arjun: we, we already have a live token. Connext actually issued a token last year and like the, since Connext is ever clear, it's, it's still the same token of the same protocol. Yeah. We, that token has largely been used for governance so far, though we had, as part of launching it, we had had plans around, like, implementing staking in a part of the protocol.

We're, we're in the process of developing new plans and, like, kind of working with collecting feedback and working with stakeholders to understand, like, a new model for the token that we, that we, we think can help kind of basically like automate and accelerate this process that we just talked about, which is like, how do we, how do we make it so that like, you know, the system can exist on every chain, all, you know, thousands or tens of thousands of rollups.

And then also the system can inherently be a mechanism to like incentivize Solvers of all these different bridges, like the LPs to go and actually like hold the liquidity where they need to. So like the, a platform for solvers to discover where they should go. I think we have some really interesting ideas on how to do that, that we're planning to kind of like release and like post in the DAO at some point over the next like few weeks.

Stephen: And then from a marketing standpoint, who do you really have to market to? Is it, you know, the LPs? Is it, you know, other chains are like, Hey, we're worthwhile plugging into. Is it developers are going to actually build on top of what you're creating? Is it users? Do you have to be like, Hey, users is a great platform for you to get done.

Is it companies that aren't even in web three yet, but you know, if they come onto web three, A lot of what you're doing makes sense, like traditional financial institutions, you don't have to, I'm assuming, explain Everclear as much as you might have to explain like a layer two privacy blockchain to them.

So like what's your marketing, maybe strategy or like what are some of the discussions you're having across the ecosystem?

Arjun: So we have a few user segments the, there's basically like demand side and then kind of like supply side ish. The demand side or like people like folks who are kind of driving volume into the system are as we mentioned, intent solvers. So like the, the like organizations independently that are like making these transactions happen on bridges and then need to rebalance.

Similarly, market makers and centralized exchanges and and really anybody else that like needs to do like large flows of capital between chains. So this includes type protocols like Renzo, for example, that that are like. You know, allowing users to go and like mint easy ETH, which is an illiquid restaking token on all these L2s.

But then in order to do that, they need to go and like bridge large amounts of ETH back to Ethereum, like every, you know, several times a day. And so, yeah, like I think any, any kind of like actor that is making large value transactions between chains, like one way to think, one very simple way to think about Everclear is that it's going to be like a There's going to be a slow but very efficient like bridge for, for large value transfers.

And then the other side of the market is like, you know, is, is going to be a asset issuers. So like, you know, like Circle, Maker, Tether, et cetera, folks who are, who are like issuing tokens. Thanks. In order to, and like, want those tokens to be available on every chain and like, want to be able to like, work on unifying the backend liquidity of their tokens.

And this is especially true in cases like USDC where like, there's, there's a bit of a fragmented backend, right? Like USDC is used using liquidity, using bridges in a bunch of places, but there's also CCTP, which is like, You know, U. S. like Circle's own mechanism for minting and burning USDC. But CCTP is only supported on a small subset of chains versus like the total number of chains that U. S. does. So it's like, how do you, how do you reconcile those things? How do you negotiate connections to chains where there are CCTP, but from places where there isn't? And then lastly as I mentioned, the, the kind of like last category is chains. So like we, you know, working with these chains to help them get to the point where they can onboard.

Like bridge liquidity so that they can like onboard users. Now one thing you'll notice is I haven't, I haven't really mentioned end users anywhere. End users are not really our target market. And this is something that like, I think is hard to wrap around your head around in this space.

Like, I think like, There's like fairly fewer, fairly few like truly like B2B organizations, but like we are effectively like a B2B organization, right? Like we are trying to solve these like more institutional problems associated with liquidity. And the hope is that like for the end user, you know, you should never, as an end user, you should never know that everything, need to know that everything exists.

But you should, you'll feel the benefits of it, right? Like when you are able to go and bridge with almost zero fees into like every single chain, like it will be because of Everclear.

Stephen: And I think that makes sense. Like in a bank, I don't know what's happening with Swift or anything on the back end when I'm making a wire transfer, nor do I want to know until like, you know, I have to call the bank cause you know, the wire transfer got lost or some other thing.

You just launched on Testnet, I believe a couple months ago.

What are some of the things that you see? What are the challenges that you've already kind of seen on Testnet where you're like, okay, we gotta, we gotta solve this before you go mainnet.

Arjun: Yeah. So I think when we, so we, we launched on testnet with sort of like an initial implementation. And then since then we've been working to kind of like hone that based on feedback from the different folks that we're talking to. And then as well as like figure out sort of. So the way that the system works is that Everclear is its own roll up.

And this roll up, the, the goal of the roll up is to compute the optimal settlement for all of, all of the participants in the system. Right. So everybody deposits funds into like smart contracts that live on every chain. And then Everclear like sort of records all of these deposits onto the chain like onto the Everclear roll up.

And then Everclear then has like a mechanism that basically like in theory can implement any possible mechanism to then. Like figure out how to like stuff. Now the, the, what we wanted, what we needed was of course like a V0 implementation or a V1 that like is, is something that can be good enough to get started with and then eventually can be improved on by opening this up to the public and allowing people to define their own settlement mechanism.

So their own, their own kind of like clearing strategies is what we call them. And and so. The initial kind of clearing strategy is, is a, is a Dutch auction mechanism. Basically, Dutch auctions are like single sided auctions where you kind of start at a high price and you go down. And and then you kind of keep going down until someone says they're willing to like purchase the item.

Right. And so in this case, like, you know, when I put liquidity into the system, like my liquidity is auctioned off where like initially it's like at a one to one basis. So if I put in like 10K. Basically the system looks for 10k available, like, and I say I want it to settle to optimism, the system looks for 10k on optimism, and if there is 10k, it settles immediately at 10k, right?

So, like, that's the kind of one to one netting that is happening, and as a, as a, like, as a solver, I'm paying effectively no cost minus some system fees for that, however, that's not always going to happen. And so the system sort of like decrements when, if, if for example, there's no liquidity available, the system will like continually decrement the like face value, the face kind of price, not the underlying value of this, of the, of this, this invoice is what we call it, but the face value of the purchase cost of the invoice.

So like, you know, at, you know, 20 minutes later, it might be at like 995 or something like that. Right. And, or 9, 995 or something like that. And like, as a someone else that is just observing this can go and arbitrage it. They can go and purchase this, this like, invoice for 9, 995 and then earn, basically get 10, 000 out of it.

Which is pretty sick. Now, the building that and sort of like thinking through that has taken some time and it's something that like we've been, we've been trying to really like get a lot of feedback around because nobody's ever built a system like this before to like solve this kind of problem.

And so like a lot of it is trying to like, we're working with like teams on several teams on like modeling you know, to, to figure out like, okay, what does, how does this system behave in a variety of different circumstances? And we're talking to like market makers and folks like that to be like, Hey, can we provide insurance?

Is that like. You know, if there's nobody that's willing to arbitrage this after a certain point, like, you will come and like arbitrage it yourself because there's, there's profit motive here, but also like, we want to make sure that that's just like, you know, it's just there from day one. So those,

Stephen: real estate agents where they're like, Hey, if I don't sell your house in 60 days, we'll buy it for cash. Cause they know they can buy that at least a value that they're going to make some kind of margin. And this is kind of like an arbitrage where you're like, Hey man, if I'm getting 90 cents on the dollar here, there's 10 cents in there where I'm making a profit.

I still have the effort of holding that now if nobody else wants it, but hey, I just made theoretically 10 cents if I can figure out a way. So I'm assuming market makers, it's attractive. We're like, Hey, we hold everything. We kind of move it around. This is nothing for us. We just got cheap. We just got a cheap invoice.

Like for them, it's, it's, it makes sense. Right. Awesome.

Arjun: Exactly. So we are we are now kind of done with all that process. We've, we've like really worked a lot to try to sort of piece this together and make sure it's kind of done right from the get go. We're kicking off audits tomorrow which is awesome. I guess that's, yeah, thanks. And then I think from here, it's sort of, we're just sort of at the mercy of, of, you know, security gods aka our auditors.

So like, you know, we're, we're kind of optimistic because we, we've been like followed a very like security minded process, but at the same time, like, you know, this, this is again, a system that like, in theory handles a very, very large amount of flows. And so it just needs to be done. Right. Right. Like it's, it's something that like, we can't really like accept any form of like rush or imperfection where like from here on out, the main thing that we're focused on, aside from kind of like shepherding the audits and things like that is going to be around like.

Like gearing up for the mainnet launch. So we, we've already been working with like a lot of the other bridges that are out there to, to kind of like, get them set up. The goal is to have, to be like working with as many people as possible at launch. And we'll be sort of announcing these partnerships on a rolling cadence leading up to, up to when, when the whole system goes live.

Stephen: That's awesome. Is there also a fear of not just security, but of like someone trying to game this system, especially if you're doing a Dutch auction, or is that kind of where you need to make sure that certain market makers will come in at a certain amount to make sure people can't really game what you're doing with the Dutch auction?

Arjun: Yeah, it is definitely a concern. And that's the part of what we've been trying to do is just like really think through a lot of this very deeply to be like, okay, What are the possible cases? What are the possible ways in which people could try to like separate the system? Right. So like, for example, one thing that we were originally super concerned about was like, well, what happens if someone just like on the one hand, like we want to make it so that this system is like very conducive to making large flows of like large transfers between chains.

Right. But at the same time, what happens if someone just deposits a hundred million dollars into the system? Like how does the system respond to that? Well, like if you're kind of following this, like Dutch auction mechanism, right? Like. And it's, and it's, everything is sort of cued, right? So every, it's like you, you make a, you make a deposit earlier on, you're going to be ahead of everybody that deposits after you.

And so one of the open questions was like, well, if somebody deposits like a hundred million dollars, does that just block everything for indefinitely until, until there is a hundred million dollars of liquidity? Like how, how should that be handled? Right? So we, we have to think about like these kinds of like cases.

A lot to get to the point where like, okay, well, you know, we feel like this is a system that would is like can exist in isolation. And like, you know, if people are anonymously depositing into it or doing things so that it's not going to like, we're not going to have unexpected behavior. People are going to be able to exit the system if something goes wrong and things like that.

Stephen: Awesome. What else are you looking forward to? You pretty much like shared some of the roadmaps. Is there anything personally? Are you a degen in anything? Are you on polymarket every night? Like kind of betting on the, betting on the, the presidential election? Like what are some of the things that interest you outside of this? Or is like a hundred % of your attention on testnet right now? Yeah.

Arjun: like I have a deep interest in a lot of the topics in this space and spend a lot of time thinking about them. Some of the things I've been thinking about a lot recently are like governance, how we can improve on governance processes, especially in light of what's happening with the presidential elections.

It's like, this is clearly a failure of governance. It's a failure of the current political system and it has been an ongoing failure of our current political systems that, like, you continue to produce, like, candidates for everybody. It's like, okay, well, both of these suck, but, like, which one sucks less, right?

Like, that's not, I would like to hope that, like, you know, after tens of thousands of years of societal evolution, like, we could get to the point where we're not just, like, settling for what is, like, I think that's an acceptable outcome and instead excited about like, this is going to be something that meaningfully improves the world.

And I think that, I think there are ways to get there. I think like crypto is potentially the answer to that where, you know, I've done a lot of like work around governance in the past. And like, I think you know, one of the things that, that crypto, one of the things that Web3 sort of enables is, you know, The ability to massively reduce the costs of coordination, of like, of governance, right?

So instead of having to have like, governance be enforced by, you know, so in any, in any kind of like, coordination system, how do you keep people honest is like, really the big question, right? And like, I can come up with any arbitrary rule set to define, okay, this is how we're going to govern our like, you know, society of like 10, 000 people or something like that.

But the question, the open question is who enforces it. And so what you have to do is you have to, you have to have some security provider, some, someone who you're, you're paying to enforce certain outcomes. Right. And like, the really fantastic thing is like with blockchain and like, then the question becomes, well, like, how does that security provider stay uncorrupted?

Right. How do you ensure that they are not going to like. Go to the highest bidder. How do you ensure that like, you know, I, as the person that's like implementing the system, don't, don't just like convince the security provider, Hey, like also create a loophole for me. And this is, this is unfortunately like a, like this is a simplification, but this is actually like how the government works today, right?

Like, you know, you have like, you know, political parties going and, and like saying something that they like promising something as part of their like campaign, but then like all of that gets washed out by like money coming in from like corporations and things like that that are like, Hey, we're going to bribe

Stephen: a lot during the pandemic, right? There's PPPE providers. All of a sudden now they're like, yes. We must mandate, and then all of a sudden magically 43 million dollars is going into their husband's bank account a few weeks later. It's like, yeah, it kind of does need to be implemented, but they're making sure that there's back end deals where they're actually going to profit from the implementation.

Arjun: Yeah. It's, it's fascinating because it's like, there's a, a lot of the, like, a lot of the divide in political discourse today is centered around the fact that, you know, like people on the right wing look at this and they say, oh, that's socialism, right? Like that is government getting deeply involved in, in like, in, in people's business or in, in like, you know, regulations and by, by getting super deeply involved and by like reallocating resources towards these things, these programs, like You are not letting the free market figure things out.

And so as a result of that, you're like causing like inefficiencies. And and so, and then on the other side, like you have, you have like left wing people looking at this and being like, no, that's capitalism, right? Like you're explicitly allowing people to bribe the government. And because you're bribing the government, the government's now like creating laws that don't really make sense.

And like, both of these things are true. Like, you know, like it's not just a left versus right thing. It's like. It's just like a, it's an entirely broken system is what it is. And and I think that this is something that I, I, like we, we can fix, I think by having just better and more granular governance, right?

Like, you know, don't try to scale governance to 300 million people. It just doesn't really work. Like allow people to do local governance where if you use a blockchain, like you can enforce it. A certain rule set for governance at almost zero cost. And like, that's incredible. That's like a breakthrough that has never existed in for human species, for the human species.

And like that unlocks a lot of really interesting things that I think people are, we're, we're just sort of now scratching the surface of just

Stephen: And who better to talk to than the lead chicken scratcher? When we're scratching the surface of that.

Where can people get in touch with you? Probably not LinkedIn, the best place, unless they come correct. But where's the best place for people to get in touch with you, Arjun?

Arjun: Yeah. I mean, I, I would recommend hit me up on Twitter is a really great place. My Twitter handle is Arjun Bhuptani you'll see the spelling in the show show somewhere. And then I think you should also, I strongly recommend if this is interesting, you should check out Everclear.

The Twitter handle is at Everclear. org. And and the website is everclear. org. For more specifically, if you are a, like building a bridge or are any kind of project that is doing stuff across chains, and you need to find ways to like, think about how to actually onboard your users from anywhere, like, come and talk to us.

I think this is like, this is something that we have now been thinking about for four years really longer than anybody else has in the space. And we, we are trying to like, help push this whole like, chain abstraction intent space forward. And and to try to support projects and helping to understand, like, what does it actually look like to have an application that is accessible for many people, like, right, where users don't ever need to think about what chain they're on.

So yeah, that is that.

Stephen: I love it, and you know, to be quite honest, I've looked at a lot of websites, documentation, that's not my strong suit. But I have to say, Everclear was very, like, creatively designed. The website is perfectly designed. Some of, you know, the way you broke down the phases and the different players actually makes a lot of sense.

And I know there's going to be a lot of technical people that you're selling to, but a lot of times they have to get their investors or their board on board and they need to really dumb it down and make it a lot more visual. I love your Uber analogy cause that makes a huge amount of sense. So we really appreciate you making it so clear on the website, which is probably something that you intended to do on purpose.

Arjun: Yeah, thanks, I appreciate that. It was, it was a lot of work. I mean, it was, it took like months of work to, for us to be like, okay, how can we boil down this idea into the simplest possible terms? And it took, unfortunately, I mean, I, I went and like sort of like continually was, It was pitching the idea to people throughout the space, like partners, investors just like friends like founders of other projects and just, just like getting on their calendar and talking to them for like 30 minutes to an hour being like, Hey, let me, let's try to talk about this.

And I really feel bad for everybody that was like on the earlier end of that. Cause I think our early pitches, like the early approaches at trying to explain our work there were extremely, extremely bad.

Stephen: And it's always fun when you're giving the Uber example, but you're not trying to say that you're the Uber of,

Arjun: Yeah,

Stephen: I love an example where they're not like, Hey, we're the Uber of scooters or like, ah, or the Uber of sandwiches. This is really great. I think all that work actually paid off.

Because when people like me can see it and then bring in some of the technical aspects, it really does make a lot of sense. And the clearing layer does, you did a great job of not saying, Hey, this is the web three version of what's existing in web two, you really kind of drawn it out to your own kind of path, which I think makes it a lot more clear for people that are getting involved.

Arjun: I appreciate that. Thanks so much.

Stephen: Awesome. This is a great conversation and we hope once you go live we'll have you back on and you can tell us what's going on since the, since you've gone live.

Arjun: Absolutely. Yeah. Zoom TM.

Stephen: Thanks so much.

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