Exclusive Interview with Arbitrum Founder: One Whiteboard, Three “Zhuge Liangs”, Creating the King of Billions in Layer2

Interview with Arbitrum Founder: Creating a Layer2 Billionaire with Three Geniuses and One Whiteboard

Original article: “Exclusive Interview with Arbitrum Founder: 3 People, 9 Years, $2 Billion Market Value”

Interview & Writing: Jack, BlockBeats

As a participant in the Optimistic Rollup track of scaling solutions, Arbitrum was not originally expected to succeed. On one side was the “Scaling Emperor” Optimism team, created by core members of the Ethereum Foundation, and on the other side was the ZK Rollup track, which Vitalik called the “ultimate solution”. Arbitrum was awkwardly sandwiched in the middle, without close ties to the foundation or the conditions to “paint a big picture” for investors. From this perspective, Arbitrum can indeed be considered a dark horse in the Ethereum scaling race.

Since last year, despite the advantage of “Token first” for OP, Arbitrum’s TVL and on-chain activity have surpassed OP in the following period, and have opened up a gap with it after the Odyssey event. In February of this year, with the expectation of airdrops, the Arbitrum ecosystem became exceptionally lively, with popular items such as GMX, Camelot, and Radiant emerging, making Arbitrum the “L2 King” in essence. What is even more surprising is that even after the airdrop ended, the development of its ecosystem did not stop, and even ushered in a new round of meme frenzy for the cryptocurrency market with the emergence of AIDOGE.

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The sustained growth of the ecosystem is closely related to the team’s efforts and path choices. From Arbitrum One to Nitro, the team has been constantly looking for and solving potential challenges. Of course, Arbitrum did not take every step correctly. The “DAO Fund Gate” in early April had an extremely negative impact on the entire cryptocurrency industry, and some even announced that “DAO governance no longer exists.” In the spotlight and controversy of the industry, Arbitrum has recently launched its own new narrative for expansion-Stylus.

Where does the team behind Arbitrum come from? How do they view the competition between Optimistic and ZK expansion? What is the origin of the “DAO Fund Gate,” and what new narrative does Stylus have? To address these questions, BlockBeats interviewed Arbitrum founder Ed Felten. (Related reading: “From White House Officials to Cryptocurrency Pioneers, Reviewing Ed Felten’s Technical Career”)

From the White House to Web3

Like many other “top-tier” Web3 projects, Arbitrum’s founder Ed Felten also comes from academia. However, Ed’s experience prior to entering Web3 was more legendary. In 2003, 40-year-old Ed Felten became a professor of computer science at Princeton University, and two years later, he became director of the university’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CIPT). Between 2006 and 2010, he was elected to the board of directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and was later appointed as the chief technology officer of the US Federal Trade Commission. One day in early 2015, Ed received a call from the White House and was invited to serve as the Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the White House.

Ed’s work in the White House changed his definition of many things. During his tenure, he no longer had the time to research his beloved blockchain technology, but had to spend more time and energy on policy research on AI education, AI military, and information security. After leaving the White House, Ed became an AI expert. At a computing research association summit in 2018, Ed even commented that “blockchain is not as important as AI”. But in the same year, Ed founded Offchain Labs, officially entering the world of blockchain and Web3.

BlockBeats: Can Ed briefly introduce his experience?

Ed: Most of my career has been as a scholar, a professor of computer science at Princeton University, and later a professor of the School of Public Policy. I worked in the US government three times. In the last two years of the Obama administration, I was the Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the US government, serving as the President’s policy advisor and working on various technology policy issues. Around 2012, I started doing academic research in the field of cryptocurrency blockchain. In 2014, I began studying blockchain scaling, which was the initial work that led me to Arbitrum. The initial idea behind Arbitrum was born in 2014, when I developed the idea of interactive fraud proof in a conversation about scaling issues.

However, in early 2015, I was hired by the White House as the Deputy Chief Technology Officer. So I left my academic position and worked at the White House for about two years. After the Obama administration left office, I returned to Princeton University and became a professor again. After that, I started thinking about what kind of research I should do. One day, two Ph.D. students, Harry and Stephen, came to my office and proposed to turn my idea from 2014 into a viable product. So the three of us formed a core team and created an “academic version” of Arbitrum.

Ed Felten (second from right), Vice Chief Technology Officer at the White House, source: Internet

It took us about a year, and in the summer of 2018, we published a peer-reviewed paper about Arbitrum, which was the first publication about Arbitrum. At that time, we realized that we knew how to build something that had commercial value, that solved pain points for Ethereum users, which were high transaction fees and limited throughput, which are really two sides of the same coin, so we decided to start a company. That was the beginning of the Offchain Labs journey, which was three years later when we released our first product on the mainnet from when that academic paper was published.

BlockBeats: Did you have time to think about blockchain technology issues while you were in the White House?

Ed: Yes, I did. My work covered all areas of technology and policy, and probably the biggest project was driving the policy process around artificial intelligence and machine learning. I also tried to promote discussions about blockchain technology among different government departments, and did some early work on blockchain technology, although it was very early days. At that time, the technology had not developed to the point where it was getting a lot of attention from senior government officials, which has changed to some extent now, and I think there’s a lot more attention to blockchain technology in government right now than there was in 2015-2016.

BlockBeats: You are one of the earlier scholars in academia to pay attention to blockchain, but at an academic summit, you mentioned that blockchain as a technological innovation may not be as important as AI. Why did you ultimately choose blockchain as your entrepreneurial direction?

Ed: The most important reason is that in my cryptocurrency research work, we found a technology that could be commercialized, that could solve a problem that was important to a lot of people, and we knew how to build a company that could make an impact. And personally, my research in AI was not like that. In AI, I was studying public policy questions, like what should government do, what should big institutions do, what’s best for the public. But there wasn’t an opportunity for me to start a company in that area, because I didn’t have the kind of innovation that could drive economic value in that area. So for me, there wasn’t an opportunity in AI.

In 2018, Ed Felten gave a speech on AI technology at the computing power research association summit.

From a long-term perspective of human history, the artificial intelligence and machine learning innovations currently taking place may be more important than blockchain innovation. However, from my personal perspective, I can find opportunities and have a business impact in the blockchain field, but I cannot do so in the field of artificial intelligence. That’s why I chose to do Arbitrum instead of a “nominal artificial intelligence company”. Perhaps in another universe, I could be an artificial intelligence entrepreneur, but in this universe, blockchain is my best choice.

“Remember that idea called Arbitrum?”

Like Ed himself, the idea of Arbitrum also originated from campus. In 2014, Ed proposed the concept of interactive fraud proof. In the era when Ethereum was still unpopular, Ed had already begun to study the scaling problem of blockchain. In September, several students recommended by their teachers designed a blockchain project based on Ed’s research. In the final project showcase, three sweater-wearing students stood with their arms crossed in front of the audience, explaining what “Arbitrum” written on the whiteboard meant. That’s how Arbitrum was born. Of course, it was four years later when Ed decided to turn Arbitrum into a product and commercialize it.

BlockBeats: Interestingly, you started researching scaling solutions before Ethereum became popular. Why did you choose scaling solutions as your research direction?

Ed: I have been involved in some other research projects related to Bitcoin, especially economics and incentive mechanisms of Bitcoin and consensus issues. But in early 2014, I became interested in the idea of smart contracts. You can turn a tool that used to only hold and transfer tokens into a platform, where people can build new types of services and products. I realized that this brought together a series of different ideas that I had been interested in throughout my academic work. On the one hand, there is blockchain and this kind of public, permissionless, and trustworthy system; on the other hand, there is the thinking around provable and accountable computing, which comes from my work in public policy, where I have been trying to understand how to complete public processes mediated by technology in an open and accountable way.

I realized that smart contracts were the intersection of these things, so in early 2014, I had a lot of exciting ideas about smart contracts. Although I couldn’t predict what the Ethereum ecosystem would look like in the future, I had an idea that combining the idea of general-purpose computing with blockchain would bring explosive innovation. However, as a computer system researcher, it was clear to me that scalability would be a problem. Because the obvious way to do smart contracts is to have every node in your blockchain system execute every step of every smart contract, which would be a big performance bottleneck, and that’s why I became interested in expanding smart contracts in early 2014.

At the time, it wasn’t clear whether Ethereum would become the “ultimate blockchain” that supports smart contracts, but among the many candidates, Ethereum looked like the leading competitor and the best bet at the time. And no matter which one of them won, they would face the problem of scalability. Therefore, as an academic researcher, my goal was to identify important real-world problems as early as possible and try to develop solutions for them.

BlockBeats: How was the specific idea of Arbitrum born?

Ed: Actually, the idea of interactive fraud proof, which is now the core idea of Arbitrum, first appeared around February or March 2014. At that time, I hosted a conference on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technology for an academic group at Princeton University. It was during this time that I had the idea for Arbitrum. For most of 2014, I had a whiteboard in my office at Princeton University explaining the idea of interactive fraud proof.

By September, my colleague Arvind started teaching a course on blockchain technology, and the students were required to create some blockchain-based projects. A group of students gathered together, and Arvind arranged for them to contact me. I proposed the idea of building a prototype of an interactive fraud proof to them, and so this group of students built a very early version of Arbitrum, which, although not entirely successful, explored many ideas. The name Arbitrum was actually given by a student at the conference, and it was version zero of Arbitrum, a system that was completely different from the current Arbitrum in some ways.

Arbitrum's final presentation, source from the internet

Not long after that, I went to work at the White House, and two years later when I returned to campus, two PhD students, Harry and Steven, came to me and said, “Hey, do you remember Arbitrum before? Let’s turn it into a product!” After that, we formed a company, made several iterations on the technology, and eventually came up with the product we have now. I have to say, it’s been a long journey.

BlockBeats: What did Harry and Steven see in the idea of Arbitrum?

Ed: I think they saw what I saw, which is that scaling smart contract systems will be an important problem, and Ethereum’s finite scale will become a pain point as users grow, that’s the first thing.

Second, in our understanding of Arbitrum, there are some convergences of ideas that can be built into something larger and more valuable. So almost from the first day they came to my office, the three of us had a very consistent understanding, not only of the potential of this technology, but also of the problems we needed to solve in order to bridge the gap from an idea to a complete system that solves people’s problems. So I think we had this vision together. It was because the three of us shared this vision and were willing to invest time and energy into it that it really changed my thinking, from a good idea that I hoped would someday become a project, to the project we are now working together on.

Another point I want to make is that when I first returned to academia from my stressful government work, I wanted to take some time to reflect. Because the White House experience had changed my worldview, I had perspectives I didn’t have before, so I wanted to stop and think about what kind of work I should be doing. When Harry and Stephen walked into my office, an important part of the answer was that we realized we had very similar visions and goals for this project. For me, it seemed like a great opportunity because the idea of Arbitrum could be a successful academic project without question, but it could also be a successful commercial project, it just needed some time.

Arbitrum founding members (from left to right): Ed Felten, Steven Goldfeder, Harry Kalodner, image source from the Internet

BlockBeats: What role did the three founders play in the process of building Arbitrum and establishing Offchain Labs?

Ed: In the early days, there were only three of us, and we made progress by discussing ideas. We didn’t have clearly defined roles. Each of us was just working hard on development because we were a small team, and everyone was trying to find ways to move things forward. We had a single codebase, and everyone worked on it. And we often met together to review progress. Everyone was thinking about every problem or making open suggestions, and this situation has been ongoing.

In 2018, we founded the company, and the scale began to grow, so there was more refinement and differentiation in our roles. Now, each of us has a unique role, although we still have a lot of things to discuss together, and many important decisions are still made together, but now we are more specialized. Stephen serves as CEO and has a large role in the company’s public image. He pays close attention to everything we do. Harry is the CTO, so he focuses more on ensuring that we build and provide the technology we need. And I serve as Chief Scientist, primarily thinking about what Arbitrum needs to develop to keep moving forward. So I’m thinking more about what difficulties we will encounter in six months or a year from now, what we need to prepare and develop, and what are the core technology challenges we need to solve.

BlockBeats: This also leads to a question I’ve been wanting to ask. Why did you choose Ethereum as your base layer?

Ed: I think there are several reasons. Some are where developers have been and are now, but ultimately it is the Ethereum community. The openness of Ethereum and the community it has established are very valuable to us, so we want to go to the Ethereum community. Not only because the value of the community and the value of connecting to it are huge, but also because Ethereum has successfully established the kind of community we want to build around Arbitrum. Therefore, in our opinion, building on top of it is the right choice. Arbitrum is a second-layer technology that requires a first layer. We decided early on that we wanted to use Ethereum exclusively as our first layer. For the reasons I described, I think this has proven to be a very wise decision. We are still very happy to be exclusive to Ethereum.

Ethereum Foundation, OP and zkEVM

As the article mentioned at the beginning, Arbitrum, which chose the Optimistic technology path, is actually in a relatively awkward situation, facing the competitive pressure from the OP team on the one hand, and the questioning of the ZK narrative path on the other. But the team’s choice of Optimistic seems particularly firm, whether it was at the founding of Offchain, or in 2023 when the team collectively launched the ZK track. Where does Ed’s confidence in Optimistic Rollup come from? And how does he view the upcoming ZK track?

BlockBeats: Offchain Labs was officially established in 2018, when Ethereum’s “Scalability Prince” Optimism team had already appeared, and seemed to have a closer relationship with the Ethereum Foundation. How did Arbitrum view the competition between itself and the Optimism team during this period?

Ed: I think in the early days, many people in the Ethereum community assumed that Optimism would win the competition in the Layer2 space. Even if they didn’t assume that, they would at least consider them to be a dark horse in the field. But we believe that we have the technology and the team to effectively solve the scalability problem, so I have always believed in what we are doing at Arbitrum and believe it will bring great value. From what we can see now, I think this has been proven.

Personally, I think it is unhealthy for Ethereum to only have a single Layer2, and having a diversity of Layer2 is valuable for Ethereum. In my opinion, the Ethereum Foundation also sees it this way, and is actively pushing the Ethereum ecosystem in this direction. This is one of the things I really like and appreciate about Ethereum, that the Foundation and the community decide the direction of Ethereum through an open and collaborative process, which reminds me of the early development of the Internet, where there was a healthy, open, collaborative, and technology-based process to do things, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force. I think they did a great job of being open, listening, and incorporating many perspectives, whether they were from people with different technical approaches, from different countries, from different companies, or with different types of interests and perspectives. Anyway, I attach great importance to this and am really grateful and appreciative of the efforts made by the Ethereum community and leadership to push this process forward.

BlockBeats: During the development process of Arbitrum, what support has the Ethereum Foundation given to Arbitrum?

Ed: I think the foundation and Vitalik have always been open to communication, and when we advocate for something, they can give us a fair “hearing.” In terms of financial support, the foundation has always tried to remain neutral and not provide financial support to different Layer2 teams. But as an honest intermediary, negotiating with us, talking with us, cooperating with us and trying to promote things, I think they have done a good job.

Arbitrum has a good relationship with the Ethereum Foundation and their leadership, which has developed over time. Overall, I think the Ethereum Foundation has done a good job in building a strong Layer2 ecosystem. We certainly value the Ethereum Foundation and what they do, and we see ourselves as part of the Ethereum community, so when Ethereum succeeds, we will also succeed.

Offchain Labs and the wider Arbitrum community have been working hard to be a “good citizen” of the Ethereum community. We brought the leading client Prism team that helps Ethereum establish consensus into the company, partly to contribute and help the Ethereum ecosystem, and partly because we believe that understanding what is happening at the Ethereum level and the discussions and communications that take place here are valuable.

BlockBeats: Do you still think that Optimistic Rollup is the more ideal technological path in the Layer2 field?

Ed: Of course, I still think that Optimistic Rollup is the best choice. If the Arbitrum team were to restart Layer2 from now on, I would still choose this technological path. Optimistic Rollup actually has many advantages compared to other alternative solutions, such as ZK Rollup. The biggest advantage is simplicity and lower cost. Optimistic Rollup was launched on the mainnet much earlier than ZK Rollup, which is not accidental, because Optimistic Rollup is simpler and more flexible, and we can innovate in other areas of practical importance and bring a lot of value to users.

A particularly good example is data compression. The biggest cost of Rollup is calling data published on the Ethereum mainnet, so it is very important to compress data as effectively as possible to reduce costs. In the Optimistic Rollup proof system, we can choose almost any compression method we want, which means we can achieve better compression at a lower cost. If we switch the Optimistic Rollup proof system in Arbitrum to a zero-knowledge fraud proof system today, users will not notice any difference except for a slightly higher cost.

BlockBeats: In an interview, you said that zero-knowledge fraud proofs are the “future solution” and will always be. Do you still hold this view?

Ed: I think I was right in what I said, but I want to be cautious on this issue. What I meant at the time was the idea of using EVM solutions with zero-knowledge fraud proofs as the only fraud proof mechanism. Zero-knowledge proofs as part of the entire protocol are indeed very valuable, such as the new data availability system that Ethereum is pushing forward, EIP-4844. This data availability system depends on KZG commitments, which includes a type of zero-knowledge proof system. So I think it makes sense to use zero-knowledge proofs as a tool and to use them locally in the protocol, but the idea of using zero-knowledge proofs for the entire Rollup protocol from start to finish does not have much advantage in practice and does indeed increase costs.

BlockBeats: However, many ZK Rollup projects have launched their mainnets this year, and the heat and competition in the zkEVM track is also high. Compared with the zero-knowledge proof technology path, does Optimistic Rollup still have advantages?

Ed: First of all, I think competition in this field is healthy, which is good for users. We welcome competition, and we also believe we have the best solution. We believe users will continue to choose Arbitrum, but we must prove this every day by constantly providing better services, and I believe we can do this.

Actually, zkEVM has a huge advantage for Arbitrum when it truly faces users, which is that users can now make a real and fair comparison between the services we provide and those offered by the ZK system, rather than comparing the actual performance of Arbitrum with the expected performance of the ZK system. I think that Optimistic Rollup has obvious advantages in areas such as data compression, where users can see that Arbitrum’s fees are lower than those of the ZK system, and these fees are enough to pay for the cost of operating the network. Obviously, in the long run, this means that users can obtain better economic benefits.

BlockBeats: However, during the time when users were claiming ARB airdrops, the Arbitrum network seemed to be congested, causing many people to question the network’s performance.

Ed: Yes, just like Ethereum, Arbitrum has a certain capacity, and if demand exceeds that capacity, gas fees will rise. However, the congestion that occurred during the ARB distribution day was not due to congestion on the Arbitrum network itself, but rather on the airdrop website. This was just a traditional website congestion issue. On the day of the ARB airdrop, the website server traffic reached unprecedented levels, and the result was that the web frontend infrastructure became congested, but the Arbitrum network itself performed well.

It wasn’t just the ARB airdrop site that experienced this, but other website servers as well, such as block explorers. The day of the token distribution was the busiest day many servers not related to Arbitrum had ever experienced, you can ask anyone running a block explorer or other website server when their server was most busy and they will tell you it was on the day of the Arbitrum airdrop. It is unfortunate that this happened. We tested the infrastructure against expected levels of traffic, but in reality, the traffic that day was much higher than we predicted.

“DAO Fund Gate” and Stylus’ New Narrative

In April of this year, the Arbitrum Foundation was accused of transferring nearly $1 billion worth of ARB tokens to its foundation wallet address before community governance proposal AIP-1 was passed, sparking a strong reaction from the community. Comments such as “DAO is a joke” and “Web3 is not decentralized at all” quickly spread on social media. However, “DAO Fund Gate” does not seem to have had much impact on Arbitrum’s progress, as the team has launched a new product, Stylus, in the past two months and given it a new narrative.

BlockBeats: There have been many discussions about the issue of the Arbitrum team transferring tokens before the DAO governance vote was passed. Can Ed explain the details of the incident?

Ed: There were actually some misunderstandings in this matter, which was the Arbitrum team’s fault in terms of communication with the community during token release. However, I want to clarify that these tokens were not transferred, and no transaction moved these tokens anywhere. The 750 million ARB tokens (about $1 billion) that people complained about were originally set to be allocated to the Arbitrum Foundation in the Genesis event. We set up multiple accounts for the airdrop, including a team account, an investor account, an Arbitrum Foundation account, an individual airdrop account, a DAO airdrop account, and a DAO treasury account. The $750 million worth of tokens allocated to the Arbitrum Foundation in the Genesis event were in the foundation’s account from the beginning.

The reason for the misunderstanding was that there was a token distribution chart in the Genesis announcement on the Arbitrum official website, which included a section called Arbitrum DAO, which includes the Token quota of the DAO treasury and the Token quota of the foundation. However, this chart did not distinguish between the 750 million tokens of the Arbitrum foundation and the 360 million tokens of the Arbitrum DAO treasury, which led the community to think that the tokens in the Arbitrum foundation address had been transferred over, but in fact these tokens had not been transferred. To be fair, if the tokens had really been transferred, it would have been reasonable for the DAO community to be dissatisfied with this, but they were not. People are unhappy, so they voted against the initial AIP-1.

BlockBeats: Why is there a governance vote to “approve” this decision when the initial allocation has already been given to the foundation?

Ed: With regard to the initial vote on AIP-1, it must be acknowledged that this was another mistake made by the team, which is that the community should not be allowed to vote to approve something that has already happened, or to agree to something that has already happened is a good thing.

Even in Web3, some things need to happen initially in a centralized way. For example, if there is no initial distribution of tokens or a foundation that acts as a legal entity, there will be no community airdrop. And in order for the foundation to become a legal entity, it needs to have a board of directors, bylaws, and all the things that any legal organization needs to have a structure. But the team believes that it is a good thing to let the DAO community approve these necessary and already happened things, because these decisions are all fine.

However, of course, the community later became angry about the “750 million token incident” and voted against the proposal. At this point, the Arbitrum Foundation realized that it would be better to start over and do it better. That’s why there are AIP-1.1 and AIP-1.2, the team’s second attempt, which was done very well, and if I remember correctly, 98% of the votes were in favor. The code for these on-chain operation proposals has now been written and has passed security audits.

In short, my view is that the team’s actions were reasonable and fair, but due to poor communication, the DAO community had different expectations from the actual situation. But from another perspective, this also reflects a very good point, which is that it shows that the DAO does indeed have control. If someone thinks that the Arbitrum Foundation is just acting according to its own will and that the opinions of the DAO are irrelevant, I believe this has shown them that the DAO does have actual control. I hope that once AIP-1.1 and 1.2 pass the DAO’s on-chain vote, it will be clear that the foundation is moving forward in accordance with the DAO’s wishes, and it will also be clear that the foundation is indeed accountable to the DAO.

BlockBeats: The “DAO Fundgate” has had a big impact on the Arbitrum community, but things have been gradually improving since AIP-1.1 and 1.2. We also noticed that Arbitrum did not stagnate because of this incident, and the team is currently pushing hard to develop a new product called Stylus. Can Ed explain the narrative of Stylus?

Ed: Stylus is a new feature we are currently developing, and we are very excited about it. It’s a “EVM+” approach, which means that Arbitrum will continue to be Ethereum-compatible, and anything that runs on Ethereum should run on Arbitrum as well.

What Stylus brings is the ability to write smart contracts in any programming language. Stylus will compile it to WebAssembly, and then you can run it as a smart contract on the Arbitrum chain. You can interact with it just like you would with an EVM contract, in fact, the people interacting with the Stylus contract don’t even need to know that it’s a Stylus contract. Although written in a different language, the contract will interact seamlessly with the EVM chain.

So what are the advantages of this? There are two main advantages. One is that it allows developers to write smart contracts in any programming language they like, which means that more programmers can enter the field of Layer2 programming or blockchain programming. People who want to write in Rust, C++, or any other language with a standard compiler toolchain can now write smart contracts and run them as real smart contracts on the Arbitrum chain. That in itself is exciting.

Another exciting thing is that since the core of the Nitro stack is this WebAssembly execution engine, Stylus contracts should run more efficiently than EVM contracts. We’ve done a lot of work to speed up the execution of EVM contracts, but Stylus contracts will be another huge improvement, which means you can complete the same calculation with less gas, or more calculations with the same amount of gas.

BlockBeats: Will Stylus be a standalone new chain?

Ed: Stylus is not a new standalone chain, it’s something for developers to use, and users can interact with the Stylus chain. It’s a single chain. Everything can work seamlessly together, which is “EVM+”.

We are working hard to prepare Stylus for deployment to the Arbitrum DAO once it has had some experience on the testnet and undergone a full security audit. It will be up to the DAO to decide whether to deploy it on the Arbitrum One mainnet, but I believe they will be supportive. Of course, anyone else who launches an L3 chain using Arbitrum Orbit will also have access to this technology.

BlockBeats: Do you think “EVM+” or “enhanced EVM” can become the new mainstream narrative for Ethereum scalability in the future?

Ed: I hope so, I think it’s the right approach. The EVM has brought a lot of benefits. The EVM model provides a secure and consistent way for contracts to interact with each other, so the idea of the EVM as a lingua franca for different types of contracts is really important. I think the EVM will become the standard in that regard, but I also think there is a lot of room for innovation in creating new smart contracts and creating Layer 3. We want to open up all of that innovation, but in a way that adds to the EVM rather than takes away from the benefits of the EVM. That’s why we call it “EVM+,” because we think it’s about adding functionality on top of the EVM, not about cutting back on the benefits of the EVM. To me, that’s a very meaningful way to continue the development of the technology. I hope other ecosystems take a similar approach, but obviously it depends on whether they go down that road.

BlockBeats: Thank you very much for your time. Before we finish, is there anything else you want to add, Ed?

Ed: First of all, thank you very much for the interview, it’s very important to have open communication between the team and the community. I also want to emphasize how important the Chinese Arbitrum community is to what we’re doing. We know we have a lot of friends, users, and developers in the Chinese community, and that’s very important to us, and we appreciate everything you’re doing, and we hope to build deeper and more meaningful relationships with the Chinese community in the future.

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