Transition into the crypto space, skepticism, and exploration of white papers and code reviews.

Introduction to Crypto and ICO Era - Discussion about the early days of crypto, skepticism, and the ICO era.

Creation of Yearn Finance and the original purpose of automating fund management.

Focus on Consensus Research - Shift in focus to consensus research and intersection with the Phantom team.

Discussion of the launch of Eminence, regulatory pressure, and the aftermath.

Introduction to Yearn Finance - Creation of Yearn Finance and the original purpose of automating fund management.

Discussion on the limitations of current blockchain technology and the need for efficiency and performance improvements.

Development of Solidly and Conclusion - Development of Solidly, the focus on Phantom, and the conclusion of the speaker's journey in the crypto space.

Exploring the need for efficient software and performance optimization in blockchain networks, with a focus on Solana's approach.

Introduction to Blockchain Limitations - Discussion on the limitations of current blockchain technology and the need for efficiency and performance improvements.

Explanation of Phantom's consensus mechanism and its reliance on communication and knowledge sharing among network participants.

Efficiency and Performance in Blockchain - Exploring the need for efficient software and performance optimization in blockchain networks, with a focus on Solana's approach.

Discussion on the communication protocols used by Phantom, emphasizing the speed and efficiency of information propagation within the network.

Phantom's Consensus Mechanism - Explanation of Phantom's consensus mechanism and its reliance on communication and knowledge sharing among network participants.

Explanation of Phantom's approach to transforming epochs into blocks for the EVM and the concept of constant consensus in the absence of traditional blocks.

Phantom's Communication Protocols - Discussion on the communication protocols used by Phantom, emphasizing the speed and efficiency of information propagation within the network.

Details on the optimization efforts for Phantom's VM, including bytecode compatibility, superset instructions, and parallel execution.

Phantom's Epochs and Block Transformation - Explanation of Phantom's approach to transforming epochs into blocks for the EVM and the concept of constant consensus in the absence of traditional blocks.

Discussion on the performance improvements in Phantom's VM, including parallel execution and optimization of state updates.

Optimizing Phantom's Virtual Machine (VM) - Details on the optimization efforts for Phantom's VM, including bytecode compatibility, superset instructions, and parallel execution.

Insight into the collaboration with Professor Bernard Schultz and the development of new VM concepts such as Carmen and Tosca.

Improving Phantom's VM Performance - Discussion on the performance improvements in Phantom's VM, including parallel execution and optimization of state updates.

Explanation of Tosca as Phantom's new VM and the decision to maintain bytecode compatibility with the EVM.

Collaboration with University of Sydney - Insight into the collaboration with Professor Bernard Schultz and the development of new VM concepts such as Carmen and Tosca.

Emphasis on the application of existing research and proven technology in VMs to improve performance and efficiency in Phantom's network.

Tosca: Phantom's New Virtual Machine - Explanation of Tosca as Phantom's new VM and the decision to maintain bytecode compatibility with the EVM.

Explanation of super set instructions and their impact on optimizing common patterns in Phantom's VM operations.

Optimizations in Phantom's VM - Discussion on bytecode compatibility, interpreter improvements, and the use of 16-bit opcodes for performance gains in Phantom's VM.

Discussion on the implementation of parallel execution in Phantom's VM and its impact on transaction processing and state updates.

Phantom's Super Set Instructions - Explanation of super set instructions and their impact on optimizing common patterns in Phantom's VM operations.

Insight into Substrate as Phantom's testing environment for making small changes and evaluating their impact on the system's performance.

Parallel Execution in Phantom's VM - Discussion on the implementation of parallel execution in Phantom's VM and its impact on transaction processing and state updates.

Discussion on the use of Substrate for testing and optimizing transaction processing, including the use of profilers and performance improvements.

Substrate: Phantom's Testing Environment - Insight into Substrate as Phantom's testing environment for making small changes and evaluating their impact on the system's performance.

Details on the enhancements in Phantom's data store, including live pruning and reduction in storage requirements for improved performance.

Optimizing Phantom's Transaction Processing - Discussion on the use of Substrate for testing and optimizing transaction processing, including the use of profilers and performance improvements.

Discussion on the challenges of state bloat in longest chain systems and the impact on hardware scalability and performance.

Improvements in Phantom's Data Store - Details on the enhancements in Phantom's data store, including live pruning and reduction in storage requirements for improved performance.

Insight into Phantom's approach to true finality and the benefits of live pruning for disk space optimization.

Challenges in Longest Chain Systems - Discussion on the challenges of state bloat in longest chain systems and the impact on hardware scalability and performance.

Discussion on Ethereum's approach to scaling and the challenges of making changes in a high-stakes environment.

Phantom's Approach to True Finality - Insight into Phantom's approach to true finality and the benefits of live pruning for disk space optimization.

Discussion on identifying DApp developers as the primary users and improving their coding experience through various initiatives such as BFT, gas incentives, and gas subsidies.

Ethereum's Approach to Scaling - Discussion on Ethereum's approach to scaling and the challenges of making changes in a high-stakes environment.

Emphasis on the long-term approach to cultivating new energy and talent, and the challenges of fighting for mindshare in the current environment.

Identifying Users and Improving Developer Experience - Discussion on identifying DApp developers as the primary users and improving their coding experience through various initiatives such as BFT, gas incentives, and gas subsidies.

Insights into the use of SVM as the best VM, the impact of regulatory considerations on crypto, and the challenges of navigating legal and regulatory landscapes in the industry.

The Importance of Long-Term Approach and Mindshare - Emphasis on the long-term approach to cultivating new energy and talent, and the challenges of fighting for mindshare in the current environment.

Discussion on the positive sentiment shift in the market and the potential decoupling of crypto from traditional finance, along with the uncertainties and challenges of predicting market trends.

SVM and Regulatory Considerations - Insights into the use of SVM as the best VM, the impact of regulatory considerations on crypto, and the challenges of navigating legal and regulatory landscapes in the industry.

Insights into the distinction between regulated crypto and crypto regulation, and the challenges of navigating nuanced regulatory landscapes in the crypto industry.

Sentiment Shift and Future Outlook - Discussion on the positive sentiment shift in the market and the potential decoupling of crypto from traditional finance, along with the uncertainties and challenges of predicting market trends.

- The speaker criticizes the term "Ethereum killers" and emphasizes that all cryptocurrency networks combined are a small part of the financial world.
- The episode is sponsored by a crypto conference in London and the speaker interviews André Cranjé, the founder of Urine Finance and co-founder of Phantom, who shares his journey into the crypto space during the ICO era.
- Cranjé initially entered the space as a skeptic but became intrigued by the potential of blockchain technology for cross-border payments and settlements.
- He focused on consensus research and eventually became involved with the Phantom team, who raised $40 million in ETH and asked him to use his research for their project.
- Cranjé has launched various projects without VC funding.

- The speaker discusses the challenges of launching projects without VC or investments
- They talk about the development of a consensus system and the limitations of the EVM
- The speaker shares their experience managing funds and developing a smart contract aggregator
- They also discuss the unexpected growth of Yearn and the development of Jobs and Keepers
- The speaker reflects on their past development practices and the unintended consequences of their actions

- The speaker discusses their experiences with developing and deploying various projects in the blockchain space.
- They talk about their disappointment with NFT culture and their efforts to improve AMM curves.
- They also discuss their work on databases and data structures for smart contracts.
- The speaker ultimately decides to focus on the Phantom blockchain full time.

- The speaker discusses the significant increase in throughput capacity of the blockchain system, as well as the focus on making the software as efficient as possible.
- They explain the consensus mechanism of Phantom, which relies on constant communication and reaching consensus through a P2P network.
- The development of a new virtual machine (VM) called Tosca is also mentioned, with a focus on maintaining bytecode level compatibility for developers.

- The speaker discusses the bytecode level compatibility in the EVM space
- They mention the ongoing internal discussion about cutting technical debt and the switch to 16-bit opcodes for performance improvement
- They explain the use of superset instructions to optimize common operations 
- The discussion also includes parallel execution, clairvoyance example, and the development of Substrate for testing incremental changes
- The speaker also talks about VM level improvements, hotspot caching, sha hashing caching, and the evolution of database systems from Badger to Carmen
- They mention the support for live pruning in Phantom due to the ABFT system and true finality without the need for a longest chain rule.

- The speaker discusses the risk of true finality in quantum computing and the importance of live pruning to reduce disk storage in blockchain systems
- They also talk about the bottlenecks in the P2P layer and transaction main pool, and their approach to optimization and engineering
- The speaker criticizes Ethereum's approach to scaling and discusses the challenges and risks of working in the crypto space
- They also address the go-to-market strategy for Phantom and the impact of their reputation on project success.

- The speaker discusses the convergence of different blockchains towards a similar endgame with small differences
- They emphasize the focus on DApp developers as their main users, and the efforts to improve their experience and provide economic incentives
- The speaker also discusses their approach to long-term development and the challenges of airdrops in the current market
- They mention their work with SVM as the best VM and their approach to avoiding quick fixes for long-term success in the blockchain space.

- The speaker criticizes the term "Ethereum killers" and emphasizes the small part of the financial world that cryptocurrency networks represent.
- The episode is sponsored by a crypto conference in London and features an interview with André Cranjé, the founder of Urine Finance and co-founder of Phantom, who shares his journey into the crypto space during the ICO era.
- Cranjé initially entered the space as a skeptic but became intrigued by the potential of blockchain technology for cross-border payments and settlements.
- He focused on consensus research and eventually became involved with the Phantom team, who raised $40 million in ETH and asked him to use his research for their project.
- Cranjé has launched various projects without VC funding and discusses the challenges of doing so.
- The speaker and Cranjé discuss the development of consensus systems, limitations of the EVM, managing funds, and developing smart contract aggregators.
- They also talk about the unexpected growth of Yearn, NFT culture, AMM curves, databases, and data structures for smart contracts.
- The speaker ultimately decides to focus on the Phantom blockchain full time, discussing its throughput capacity, consensus mechanism, and the development of a new virtual machine called Tosca.
- They also discuss ongoing internal discussions about technical debt, performance improvement, and optimization of common operations.
- The speaker criticizes Ethereum's approach to scaling and discusses the challenges and risks of working in the crypto space, as well as the go-to-market strategy for Phantom and the convergence of different blockchains.

- The speaker discusses the benefits of taking a longer approach in building a user base in the cryptocurrency space
- They also talk about the unpredictability of the market and the challenges of crypto regulation
- The speaker shares their experience with three-letter agencies and the potential risks in the industry

- The speaker discusses concerns about regulations for protocol operators
- Andre shares his story and the host expresses gratitude for the interview
- The host promotes the DAS conference in London and offers a discount code for registration

- Speaker discusses benefits of taking a longer approach in building a user base in cryptocurrency space
- Talks about unpredictability of market and challenges of crypto regulation
- Shares experience with three-letter agencies and potential risks in industry
- Discusses concerns about regulations for protocol operators
- Andre shares his story and host expresses gratitude for interview
- Host promotes DAS conference in London and offers discount code for registration

Andre Cronje joins us to discuss his drive to build crypt applications with real use cases. Andre has one of the most incredible stories in crypto and is the founder of multiple blue chip projects (Yearn, Keeper Network, Fantom) and a prolific entrepreneur. In this episode, we discuss the ICO era, the launch of Yearn Finance, Andre's f*ck ups (self-proclaimed), why Andre has dedicated his focus to Fantom, Fantom's unique innovations, why airdrops suck, crypto regulation and more!

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Join us at DAS (Digital Asset Summit) in London this March! DAS is the #1 institutional conference in crypto, hosted by Blockworks. Use the link below to learn more, and use LIGHTSPEED20 to get 20% off your ticket! Sign up now because the price goes up every month. See you there!

Learn more + get your ticket here: https://blockworks.co/event/digital-asset-summit-2024-london/home
- -
Timestamps

00:00 Introduction
01:24 The ICO Era: Andre's Start in Crypto
13:07 Building Yearn Finance
17:46 DAS London Plug
18:43 F*ck Ups and Testing in Prod
26:36 The Fantom L1: Making Software as Efficient as Possible
53:23 Ethereum’s Scaling Roadmap
58:11 Phantom’s Go-to-Market Strategy
01:04:29 The SVM Is the Best Virtual Machine
01:05:20 Airdrops, Regulation and Bull Market Predictions

- -
Follow Andre: https://twitter.com/AndreCronjeTech
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Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/ 

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Resources

Fantom
https://twitter.com/FantomFDN
https://fantom.foundation/

- - 
Disclaimers:

Lightspeed was kickstarted by a grant from the Solana Foundation.

Nothing said on Lightspeed is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Mert, Garrett and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.

This isn't to say Ethereum killers, which I also think is a stupid bloody term, like our economic activity, TBL, all of this, I've combined from everything, Bitcoin, Ethereum, every network, Solana, you name it, is a tiny, minuscule drop in the ocean of the financial world.

If you think this is the cap of a global free access financial solution, then it's absolutely insane.

This episode is brought to you by Das London, BlockWorks' number 1 institutional crypto conference for all the top institutions and people in crypto are going to be this March in London, what's becoming maybe the crypto hub of the world.

Have a link in the show notes where you can learn more and also a discount code that will get you 20% off.

So click the link, find out more, and I'll see you there.

Welcome to another episode of Lightspeed.

Today we're joined by André Cranjé, who's the founder of Urine Finance, also the co-founder of Phantom, the founder of the Keeper Network, and he's a major contributor to a lot of DeFi projects, probably 1 of the most prolific founders, developers in space.

That's a much heftier introduction than I think I deserve.

I'm a dude that likes to write some code.

I was listening actually to your Uncommon Core episodes from 2020 and they were talking about you being a builder and you're like, I'm really not a developer at all, I'm just an integrator.

But I think you're downplaying yourself a little bit.

So you have an absolutely fascinating story and so many insights we can take away from that.

So Maybe we can start back in 2017, 18, when I think you first came into the space during the ICO era.

So it'd be great to hear what brought you into the space and then also for people that just weren't there.

Can you explain how absolutely insane that era was?

Yeah, I mean, so I, before I got into crypto, I was a very standard crypto skeptic.

I come from a traditional finance background.

I was a architect and CTO at a small local fintech bank branch.

We did high throughput stuff that back then we did with Kafka and Scala.

So that was my background in these kinds of high throughput financial solutions.

And out of that, that 2017 era, very similar actually to now in a lot of ways in that there was so much noise, you know, there were so many teams that had claimed they had solved these industry wide problems that sort of traditional finance and traditional distribution systems had struggled with for decades.

And you've got these 18 to 20 year old guys that no work experience, launching an ICO, raising 20, 40, whatever, how many millions, claiming they solved distributed systems or whatever the claim was.

So I originally came in just to test my skepticism, to make sure am I missing something?

Because you know it's not the first time that a disruptive tech was created that displaced the previous technology.

My worry with the blockchain space was just there was not a lot of, you know, research evidence.

There was not a lot of substantiated proof.

So I got into the space, started reading white papers.

And the white papers again made claims and on paper a lot of the claims seem plausible.

But now another thing, and this is happening today as well actually, is that there are a lot of claims that sound really good.

Then, but actually when you build it in a practice, there are hard constraints that don't allow that to work in the way you expected it to work.

Well, no, even though the concept was sound, the theory wasn't.

So having read a lot of these white papers, I started looking at a lot of code.

And I started doing, my original was code reviews.

So I wasn't doing these code reviews from any value creation perspective or as any kind of due diligence.

This was literally just like, I read this white paper, it said it solved X.

And then I go look at the code and I'm like, did it solve X?

And more of like a diary to myself, I just documented it.

So, you know, as I'm going through it on Medium, I'm just writing, okay, well, this code doesn't match what they say here.

This repo has nothing to do with their claim.

And I made those public for whatever reason.

And they became very popular during that ICO time because there wasn't a lot of naysayers.

There weren't a lot of, hey, this isn't going to work, and your code proves that you don't have what you're saying you have.

The problem is, though, and a big reason why I stopped doing the code reviews eventually, is that people started taking them as investment signals and not as any kind of code base.

Because I had shared them for other people to learn and go on sort of my same learning journey that I was trying to go through.

So anyway, did my own public ones and then eventually got involved with a company called Crypto Briefing with Hanukkah and John and those guys, still fantastic, I still talk to them till today.

Started doing the reviews for them a bit, but then it also became a lot more, a shift there that I didn't like is I liked reviewing public code.

So, you know, if it's on a GitHub, I can go look at it, everyone can look at it.

So people can also fact check what I'm saying or, you know, tell me if there's something wrong.

But as that sort of influence grew, a lot more of these teams wanted us to review their private code and then like publish reviews on that.

And that didn't sit well on me because again, that then I mean, that's purely an investor signal.

But anyway, so that's a that's a parallel.

But but having gone through this, you know, 99.9 percent of it was garbage.

But there was a 1 percent real value that was sitting there.

And the, the noise ratio was obviously ridiculously high, but, but that, that 1% is the thing that like kept gnawing at me and kept intriguing me.

So, so, so then my focus kind of shifted from trying to understand what's going on and catching up to kind of where the industry was.

And I think I managed to do that in about 2 years time, I think around 2019, maybe a little bit earlier, maybe late 2018.

I think I managed to catch up, and it's hard to catch up in this space.

I mean, there's so much new stuff coming out every day that you have to like go through.

The amount of real stuff coming out every day is tiny.

It's 1 to 2%, but you still need to read the other 98 published stuff to actually know what's what.

So at that time I had started, like proof of work back then was kind of like the obvious bottleneck.

Like looking at blockchain systems, you were like, okay, so this thing is literally throttling the amount, the speed it can go through by, you know, back then Bitcoin was standard.

So 10 to 30 minutes, depending on your longest chain rule that you want to take.

And the 1 thing where, you know, back then, this was before DeFi, before AMMs, any of this stuff, where it really stuck with me was for cross-border payments, cross-border settlements, instant online payments.

I'm South African isn't even on Swift or IBAN or any of this stuff.

Like we have exchange control for money in, money out.

We have limitations on how much you can spend online.

So like we have a very restrictive banking system, and it has always been a fight and a challenge.

So seeing this sort of free of a singular entity being able to dictate what's going on was really appealing to me and the background that I came from.

So started heavily focusing on consensus research.

And during that time, there was sort of the intersection of this research I was doing slash the code reviews I was doing that had started to introduce me to Phantom and the team there and getting a little bit more involved.

And they had, they had raised in the hypermania phase.

So they managed to raise like $40 million in ETH, which by the way, they kept in ETH all through the bear.

I think they only like finally divested when it was like 300 or something.

So anyway, but, but they had raised on commitments that, you know, again, it's, it's those theories that sound nice, but in practice don't work.

And instead of going for the exit scam and, you know, just spending the money and then getting whatever, They ended up asking me if they can use the research that I had started publishing then and had been contemplating launching my own chain.

And it matched, because I had no experience with interacting with VCs or raising money or capital or any of that stuff.

And it's not, it is a skill set and it's not 1 that I have.

So, and you know, that's the same reason Yarnkeeper, any, anything I've ever launched, never had, you know, VCs or investments or these things.

And a lot of people think it's some kind of ethos slash statement slash I'm making it's not I just suck at it so I figured out ways out to circumvent it.

But so ended up, you know, they, they had funding, they had a team, they had a brand.

So ended up then pushing my research underneath there.

And the original consensus, the ABFT, which they call lack-assist, but it's really just, It's based off of a paper from the late early 1990s, Common Concurrent Knowledge, which is it's just any ABFT, peer-to-peer based communication system.

And when we originally launched that, and that was late, what was that?

It was 1 of the first ABFT solutions out there.

It jumped from at that time, you were looking at max 70 PS.

And this is before we connected a VM, by the way.

We were just doing raw transfer connections because it was just a pure payments network.

And we could, pure payments easily hit between 30 to 50,000 dependent on validator connectivity or participation in the network.

But we wanted to allow a VM because smart contracts are powerful.

We had explored going with Wasm, we had explored going risk-based compilers, these kinds of things.

But back then and even now, you know, getting...

You need a lot of service providers on top of you before a blockchain really becomes viable for like a dapdev to even use.

And it was a real struggle to get people to do anything with the base chain because everyone was just like, well, we're just doing EVM and people are just forking EVM, so we're just going to stick with EVM.

And then we connected our consensus as a base layer, because consensus is just an ordering system.

So it takes transactions, it orders it, and then those transactions get given to the VM and executed into the state.

And then we noticed our throughput drop to like max, max, max 200, between 180 to 200.

And that is a pure limitation of the EVM.

And then like the next 3 years, we spent purely trying to improve the EVM.

And like We've gotten far, but I have to say, if I could go back and change that decision, I definitely would.

I think we chose at the time the easy way out to go the route of the EVM so that we know it was easier to integrate with all of these third-party vendors and stuff.

And that was an active choice because we didn't have the capacity to build our own wallet, to build our own RPC providers, our own InstaDeploy nodes, etc.

But anyway, that's also a topic we can delve into a little bit later.

So, but then, so on an earlier topic, so they had raised 40M, they had left it all in ETH.

By the time that they finally switched it to USD, there was about 2 and a half mil left, just a little bit about that.

So in an effort to manage that money, I had started looking at a lot of these lending protocols that were there at the time.

Compound, BZX, Fulcrum back then, another 1 I don't remember, other than Compound, none of them are still alive.

And on a daily basis, I would go look, and remember this was back when fees on Ethereum was like 3 to 6 cents.

So every single morning I used to go and check each of these sites and check where is the highest API being offered and then I would move it between these protocols manually.

And then as time progressed, I was like, okay, it's getting annoying to check each 1 of these.

Surely they have smart contracts on chain that I can go look at what the interest rates is, collect it all for myself and then display it.

And the original reason why I wrote my first smart contract that I deployed on Ethereum that was purely an aggregator of the APYs.

It fetched it from all of these different places and then displayed it there.

And the reason I did it was because I couldn't figure out the RPC infrastructure like web3, JS, and any of that stuff at the time, to be able to pull that from a node and actually execute it.

So it was easier for me to just deploy it on chain and then read from there.

So I had now started my foray into sort of solidity development with that.

And so now I had this thing that at least in the morning I could just go check it, see which 1 was the highest and then move it.

And then I started to realize, okay, but hey, I can actually just write a smart contract to do this for me.

I mean, later, obviously, it got a lot more smart.

And where it's at now is rocket science in comparison to what I coded.

And, but, you know, that was the premise.

That was, I wanted a, in each step that I was doing manually, I just tried to automate until it got to a point where it was doing that for the funds I was managing.

And the reason I actually made it open so that other people could also use the same system was so that I don't have to every morning go and click the button to rebalance it between the different protocols, because every single time someone else interacts with it, whether it's a deposit or withdraw, it does the rebalancing.

So it ended up automating the whole process so that I didn't even need to worry about it.

But then as Yearn started growing and the token launch, which again did not go as planned, the token launch wasn't some kind of, what did they call it, fair launch or any of that stuff.

I was literally making a satire, I was making a joke on these worthless tokens.

Like when I wrote there worthless, like It was, that's not a meme, I meant this is nothing.

Like I'm going to give the shit away for free if you put liquidity here.

It, in my mind, seemed like the dumbest thing possible.

And yet, obviously, I was 100% wrong on that 1.

But so that attracted a lot of attention.

Things started getting a lot more complex in terms of strategy and start of infrastructure and all of these things.

And then what we spent as strategies got involved and there were like harvesting, harvesting that needed to happen, which is just dumping the token of whatever protocol they're busy vampire feeding.

This again became something that I was doing manually, running a script that's doing this, etc.

So I was like, look, there has to be a way to do this in a public space where anyone can call it and they're incentivized to call it.

That's where Jobs and Keepers came about, which eventually evolved into Keeper Network, which again, it was working well for Yearn.

So we were just like, let's just open this for anyone to be able to connect a job.

See all Lightspeed transcripts on Youtube

Andre Cronje Unfiltered: The Founder of Yearn, Keeper Network and Fantom