The future of AI is a divergent path. On one hand, we have the use of AI for the benefit of all and advancement of our society. On the other, there’s a world where the power dynamic between humans and computers becomes imbalanced and we are as a race are put in an dystopian situation. We believe that the intersection of crypto and AI will be pivotal in not only the decentralization of AI, but also the advancement of crypto adoption. We believe that AI is the unique use case needed to expedite blockchain usage via machine-to-machine economies. AI agents are envisioned to execute trades, manage assets, and facilitate all kinds of economic functions without human intervention. The ethical and practical challenges of AI in crypto was something we discussed in depth. This is crucial for maintaining alignment between AI actions and human intentions, mitigating the risk of AI agents acting with ulterior motives. The blockchain's immutable record-keeping plays a pivotal role in ensuring that every action taken by an AI agent can be audited and verified, providing a layer of security and trust that is indispensable in today’s digital age. Lastly, we discussed the philosophical implications of AI advancement and the future role of humans in an economy increasingly driven by intelligent agents. As AI becomes more capable, its integration with crypto could significantly alter how economic activities are managed and who controls these processes. This conversation was really intriguing. Hope you enjoy.

As we wrap up Modular March, we had one of the early believers in modularity and early angel investor in prominent projects (EigenDA, Avail, and others) to discuss the state of the crypto markets. We discussed the nuanced interplay between technology, ethics, and market dynamics that are at play in crypto now. We discussed the desire for real world applications and why tokens play an interesting part in the way builders create products in crypto. Ajit is a particularly funny personality in crypto, known for his realism and ability to make harsh truths into satirical tweets. We enjoyed this episode as a step out of the technical weeds and into the philosophical and realistic end of the crypto incentive systems. You will too!

Another episode with an Ethereum scaling OG, Nick Dodson, who pioneered the original idea of optimistic rollups before they were the norm. Nick is actually also working on an innovative concept called fast finality optimistic rollups, which we are going to line up another episode for. The team behind Fuel has been working tirelessly for several years to bring their vision to life, and we getting very close to mainnet. In this presentation, we explore the “Rollup OS” of Fuel, powered by the Fuel Virtual Machine (FuelVM), which is notable for its integration of the UTXO model extended for sophisticated transactions including smart contracts. We discussed this in-depth, seeing as the UTXO model has gotten a bit of a bad rap (shoutout Cardano). The Fuel VM also utilizes a hybrid proving model, combining the strengths of optimistic rollups and zk proofs to ensure the integrity and efficiency of transactions. We went onto discuss the "rollup trilemma" and the ways in which Nick is striving to achieve optimal performance, sustainability, and interoperability without compromising on any single front. We pushed back on some of the design choices around Fuel’s customized programming language, Sway, and why this is the choice they made. Nick gave us a quick demo of a very cool compiler tool as well, some sweet alpha there. Get ready for the modular expansion, its happening quickly.

The core innovation of data availability in the modular landscape revolves around minimalism. Due to the minimal smart contract execution capabilities of altDA chains, they can focus solely on providing a specialized service of data verification & publishing. In addition to the design of minimal blocks, these chains are able to perform a unique task of Data Availability Sampling (DAS) which is a revolutionary innovation for blockchain scaling. In today’s presentation, we sit down with John Adler, an Ethereum OG and creator of optimistic rollups. We take a deep, technical dive through the various node types (full, light, and partial) in Celestia’s architecture. After that, we took a second to digest and summarize and then dove right into Blobstream, another cornerstone of Celestia's approach. Blobstream acts as a one-way relay for data attestations between Celestia and other blockchains and recently has been deployed in testnet on Base and Arbitrum Orbit. We also touched on the development of Succint’s Blobstream X, and their zk version of Blobstream. Finally, we asked some rapid fire questions about Celestia’s design and John’s perspectives on the modular space at large. Enjoy!

Not sure we need to write too much about this one! We mostly laughed and had a good time while understanding the definitions of some key terms in the space. Togruhl, one of the early Ethereum contributors and Scroll co-founders, gave us a presentation on his mental models for modular and monolithic design structures. What was particularly interesting was the idea which Togruhl posed about the convergence of these two ideologies into nearly the same place. Monolithic chains will modularize. Modular chains will enshrine more functionality. We also asked if he thinks Celestia is more of a competitor for Ethereum than Solana. Togruhl then posed the question “Is Celestia really modular?” which was kind of mindblowing. Big definitions guy over here. We think you’ll really enjoy this one and we had a bunch of great takeaways which were driven by out of the box thinking.

Finally! Wormhole $W token is here. After a three year journey of shipping filled of ups and downs, Wormhole has announced they are taking the path to decentralizing their community. If you've been navigating the onchain world, you've probably heard the buzz about Wormhole's token, $W (and hopefully qualified for the airdrop). Wormhole has long stood as a critical infrastructure in the blockchain world, offering a bridge that seamlessly connects over 30 chains across five different runtimes. At its core, $W aims to fortify the bridge between diverse blockchain ecosystems, rewarding those who've journeyed with Wormhole over the years. We discussed the reward distribution mechanism of the historic users of Wormhole and specific NFT communities like MadLads. We also talked about the emphasis on cross-chain governance and the general tokenomics of $W. From exploring incentives for governance participants to contemplating novel uses within the Wormhole ecosystem, Robinson and the Wormhole team have their sights set on targets for this year. Congrats to everyone who qualified, and hope you enjoy this!

Typically, you wouldn’t think of Solana having a strong footing in the modular thesis. After all, the design choices they have elegantly pioneered (credit where credit is due) revolve around scaling a single state machine. This simply won’t scale to billions of users, and they will need to modularize. However, the extremely performant and extensible Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) is an effective tool to build an extremely fast rollup atop Ethereum. We can all be friends here, right? Welcome to today's Modular March presentation, where we take our first dive as a team into the fascinating world of Eclipse and its modular approach to blockchain scalability and security. For those who've been around the block(chain), you know the drill: scalability often comes at the cost of complexity or security. Yet, Eclipse offers high throughput without the mess of state fragmentation via their flexible architecture. They're mixing the best of both worlds - Solana's speed and Ethereum's security, with a splash of Celestia for that decentralized data layer cherry on top. We enjoyed this presentation with Sydney while also trying to understand where the tradeoffs or weaknesses in this design lie. We found some edge-cases but what was most interesting was the application possibilities as a result of using the SVM. We had some solid takeaways, you’ll enjoy this.

We really enjoyed this presentation. While we’ve had multiple shared sequencers talks on Modular March, each one has been far different. Today’s deep dive is around the game theory and incentive designs behind creating a rollup ecosystem which feels completely seamless and interoperable. At its core, Espresso leverages a two part system to enforce how transactions are ordered and finalized across rollups via its sequencer. This system mirrors Ethereum's, but with a twist, aiming to streamline interactions between different rollups and thereby improve user experience significantly. We discussed the based sequencing approach, their auction & lottery mechanism, and where Espresso fits in the broader modular thesis. While we are bullish on Espresso (and Ellie is amazing), we didn’t let their vision go untouched so to speak. There were areas where we pushed back around the incentive designs and whether or not this would actually work in practice. We also tried to understand why potentially making things more complex is really the solution for scaling the modular L2 landscape. Also, if Espresso is another chain with trust assumptions, what tradeoffs does that bring for rollup operators? Finally the big question…Will rollup operators really want to use Espresso if it could cause a big revenue reduction? Ellie flipped that narrative on its head, ever so graciously. She helped us understand how Espresso works under the hood and answered our questions. We were impressed and left feeling extremely optimistic on shared sequencing. Happy April Fools Day (no jokes here, yet!) & let’s have a great week!

We’ve heard of the fragmentation problem many times in Modular March, and we’ve came to learn of a variety of solutions like shared sequencing, intents-based interop, and more. Today, in less than 10 minutes, we hear the vision from Avail’s head of product Dan Mills live from Modular Day in ETHDenver. Created in 2020 as part of Polygon, Avail emerged in response to Ethereum's shift toward a rollup-centric architecture, identifying a critical need for enhanced data availability in support of data-hungry rollups. Avail's foundational product, AvailDA, addresses this need by providing scalable, raw block space without necessitating base layer execution features (aka a specialized, modular blockchain). Through the use of validity proofs and KZG polynomial commitments, AvailDA ensures that light clients can trust the data's integrity through efficient random sampling. However, Dan thought past first order consequences and like many of us now realize, there will be thousands of chains. To counter this, Avail is introducing Nexus, a unification layer based on aggregating proofs from various chains to guarantee the accuracy of execution and state transitions. We also dive into Avail Fusion, the eventual security layer and third part of the Avail Trinity. Stay up to speed on the biggest upcoming modular project launch, Avail, in less than 10 minutes with Andy.

If you are modular-pilled this will be a refreshing short chat. If you want to understand the counterargument to building in a modularized fashion, you’ll enjoy this. Andy sat down with Avery Chang, co-founder of Aptos to discuss his perspective on the modular thesis and understand why he is building Aptos in a more integrated fashion. Avery shared his perspective on the intricate dance between modularity and monolithic architectures in blockchain design, and why Aptos leans into the latter with the elegance of a ‘finely tuned sports car’ as a reference. Avery addressed concerns regarding centralization and scalability, explaining that a unified stack simplifies development and security processes. He highlighted the strength of Aptos's community, with over 400 developers contributing to its codebase, underscoring the project's potential for decentralization and scalability. The conversation also delved into Aptos's adoption of the Move VM, which Avery advocates for its ability to reduce the risks associated with smart contract development and introduce formal verification to the ecosystem. Sometimes we can be stuck in tunnel vision with our steadfast beliefs of modularity. It’s good to hear the other side. We’re still modularity enthusiasts, don’t you worry.

What an interesting conversation this was. Going way back to the core ethos of cryptoeconomic systems, we took a bit of a journey through PoW, PoS, and now modularity. It was quite a different presentation from the previous Modular March episodes. We sat down with Alejo, a co-founder of Lumio, to discuss the memetic nature of crypto incentive systems with a focus on designing conservative systems which are aligned with Satoshi’s vision of blockchain. Alejo is an OG and is now building out Lumio, a moveVM based L2 on Ethereum which will likely utilize EigenDA. To be fair, we just briefly touched on what they are actually building and spent most of the time discussing the philosophical side of building in crypto, which we found interesting. Modularity is breaking apart the traditional mental frameworks for blockchain value accrual and design. See for yourself.

Again, we find ourselves returning to the interoperability and fragmentation problem of the modular expansion. We’ll keep it real, there is nothing innovative of building hundreds of siloed execution environments. Even if you value sovereignty as much as the rest of us, having reachable allies in the onchain world is a necessity. As new L2s and appchains are launched (which is happening at an alarmingly high rate), the ability to seamlessly interact across chains becomes crucial for the broader adoption and user experience. In today’s video, we set out to learn if an intent-based design is a viable solution. We had the pleasure of sitting down with Hart, co-founder of UMA & Across, to discuss why he believes intents are the future of interoperability. This design employs third-party actors, known as relayers or solvers, who provide the liquidity needed for cross-chain transactions, thereby allowing sub one second transfers and enhanced security (no ‘honeypots’ for hackers). But, as always, we pushed back. Is there really a way to scale an intents based design to 1000s of chains? Is value transfer the only necessity of bridging in crypto or is there also a demand for messaging? Why are solvers sometimes slow to fill orders vs. extremely quick in other scenarios? We really vibe with Hart well, and he wasn’t fearful of any questioning on his mental models. We enjoyed hearing his perspectives and learning from him. You probably will, too.

After our episode with Tarun Chitra about value accrual in the modular stack, as well as thinking about it deeper we’ve came to our own conclusions. Josh Bowen, ex-Celestia team, and now founder of Astria blew it all out of the water today. Completely shifted the way we are thinking about RaaS providers, shared sequencers, and how they are approaching the competitive market of sequencing. We first dove into the modular architecture of Astria and their relationship with Celestia, and then dove deep into how Josh thinks about early stage tech markets. The vision behind Astria extends beyond facilitation of rollup deployment. Josh aspires to lower barriers to innovation in launching blockchains, in order to create a diverse ecosystem of rollups that transcend the limitations of existing setups. But, is this really possible? Can Astria do what other RaaS providers are doing at a tenth of the cost? Can they actually commoditize RaaS providers? Josh is a straight shooter and did not hold back when he pressed him about his mental models. We left quite impressed.

The checkered cross-chain past is something you just had to live through to understand. We tend to think the best have survived and the unfortunate events of 2021-2022 have led to a completely different way of thinking about interoperability security for the modular expansion. In today’s piece Rob & Andy sat down with Jon Kol, CEO of Hyperlane, to understand their design choices around permissionless. At its core, Hyperlane aims to establish an open framework that enables any blockchain to seamlessly connect with others, creating a interoperable ecosystem without long BD queues and permissioned deployments. But, what does this really mean for security and liveness? Rob and Andy asked Jon about their design choices, security modules, mailboxes, and tried to approach this from a realm of “what could go wrong?” and “how well is this system designed?”. Hyperlane has been a leading part of the Modular Expansion (notably, the team coined the term we believe). We expect them to continue this trajectory as they expand into new verticals like yield routes and other innovative interoperability concepts. We really think the permissionless nature of adding new chains and giving optionality for interoperability partners is a key aspect of their design focused around security.

A core fundamental primitive of blockchain is the unlocking of usecases which are not possibly in any other type of system. We’ve heard a lot of this and we believe the technology stack is being built as we speak which will facilitate an array of “breakout apps” atop of it. In today's piece, we set out to find out what type technological design constraints are present in the current modular ecosystem as well as the necessary solutions. If you’ve been following us for awhile, you know the Lagrange team from our zkAcademy. If you are newer here, you’re in luck. Andy and Rob sat down with Ismael, co-founder of Lagrange, to learn why zk coprocessors are crucial in enabling offchain computation for data queries and processing tasks that are too intensive for standard smart contracts. By creating a decentralized network for ZK proving and prioritizing access to complex onchain information within the modular ecosystem, Lagrange is playing a crucial role in the modular thesis. Let’s have a great week and continue to push forward as part of Modular March.

One of the core issues we heard about awhile back on our podcast with Jon Kol from Hyperlane was the ‘indexing’ problem of the modular expansion. Essentially, if we are going to exist in a world of 1000s of chains, we’ll also need to have a streamlined process for data. This is where yesterdays post with Lava Network fits in the puzzle (RPCs). Staying on the data tooling pattern, today’s post is an interview from ETHDenver with Jack, the founder of Routescan. Andy and Jack discussed Routescan’s journey over the past few months highlighting the growth of their expanding community with over 50,000 users. They also touched on Jack’s approach to embracing modularity by unlocking new block explorers across appchains, rollup frameworks, and subnets. Enjoy this today’s interview live from ETHDenver and Modular March.

Wow. What a day yesterday. Our modular market map absolutely blew up on X. Including in this map, under data tooling, is Lava Network. Lava is modular RPC data access provider for modular chains. Our discussion today is centered around how Lava's modular data access layer is facilitating better connectivity across various blockchain environments. A Remote Procedure Call (RPC), is a vital mechanism for accessing blockchain data. This enables users to perform a wide array of actions, such as checking balances and executing transactions, through effective communication with nodes. The idea here is simple: IF the modular expansion plays out how we think it will, we will have thousands of modular chains which will need RPCs so users can interact onchain. The current solutions are not very extensible and if they are, they lack privacy and/or speed. Lava will take marketshare from the big names of the space who have been monoliths for sometime. Rob sat down at ETHDenver with founders Yair & Gil to discuss where Lava fits in the modular thesis.

Dymension was the second massive modular launch following Celestia. Yesterday, the first RollApp on Dymension, NIM Network announced their genesis rolldrop to $DYM stakers, Pudgy Penguins, $PRIME holders and other communities. Of course, we asked Yishay what he thinks of NIM and other RollApps deploying on Dymension. We have been strong believers of Dymension since the middle of last year and brought on Yishay, the founder, to discuss the progress since inception and the evolution of their rollapps. Dymension is taking a phased deployment approach to their technology to focus on stability, liquidity, and seamless interoperability with their eIBC implementation utilizing an intents based interop solution. Yishay spoke on the importance of scaling in a modular fashion by providing their ecosystem RollApps with grants and other support. As we navigate through Dymension’s architectural evolution from “2D to 4D”, we embrace this new modular ecosystem being built part by part. Watch this video for a catchup into the Dymension ecosystem.

The explosion of modular appchains is happening. Head over to Celenium, Celestia’s main block explorer, to see the chains using Celestia for modular DA. These are typically happening through RaaS providers who offer a seamless setup process. Today we are focused Gelato’s approach to modular appchains, and specifically how founder Luis sees similarities in how Web2 & Web3 scale. We learned how Web3 is drawing inspiration from the evolution of web2 infrastructure, and whereby applying the principles of modularity, we can address scaling challenges effectively. Another interesting, yet relatively experimental concept is zero gas appchains. Its a bit confusing to us how this would really work in practice, so we asked Luis about the edge cases and possibilities of spam attacks. He answered quite well. We also dove into the modular framework which Gelato provides for builders, allowing them to be selective in their modular chain design based on the specific usecase at hand. Overall, we enjoyed this presentation and hope you do as well!

In a world of 1000s of rollups and chains, the problem to tackle is unification of these otherwise isolated execution environments. In today’s Modular March presentation, we sit down with NEAR founder Illia to take a look at their data availability layer, account aggregation, and chain abstraction toolkit. We ask Illia about the potential of NEAR DA, how sharding really works for the L1, and his plans to grow adoption for the DA solution compared to others on the market. However, what was particularly interesting to us was this idea of account aggregation whereby enabling a single wallet to participate across multiple crypto experience, NEAR is building a better end user experience. Illia went on to illustrate his larger vision for chain abstraction of the modular future and how he sees this playing out in the near future. NEAR will continue to play an important role in connecting the modular expansion at the user facing level, in today’s presentation you’ll learn how they plan to do this.