Transcript 0:00 Welcome back to Bitcoin Season Two. The following conversations were recorded live at Inscribing Nashville behind the stage at the Blockspace Studio. 0:09 We are super happy to partner with Inscribing Atlantis on this conference series, and feature extended, unscripted, off-the-cuff conversations with some of the headlining guests of that conference. 0:22 Make sure to subscribe to the new Bitcoin Season Two YouTube channel. Bitcoin Season Two is the handle. And check out other Blockspace media content, in particular the Gouart Show and the Mining Pod. 0:35 If you aren't already, head to blockspace.media to subscribe to our newsletter featuring ordinals, runes, Bitcoin mining, Bitcoin tech content and insights. 0:46 We are doing a lot of, uh, cool stuff in that newsletter over the coming couple months. And make sure to check out the Blockspace social media. We will be announcing some things, including a conference here very soon. 0:59 But without further ado, let's get to this interview. [upbeat music] Welcome to Bitcoin Season Two. 1:12 I've got David Tse, co-founder of Babylon Chain, a, I believe you said Bitcoin security sharing- Yes... protocol. Security sharing protocol. Correct. Security sharing. 1:21 And, um, raised some, uh, seventy million recently, led by Paradigm, and you've had a ton of users on the platform already. 1:31 Um, like, what are your actual, uh, latest numbers on user growth, um, during your rollout phase? Yeah. So, um, in our testnet, we launched our testnet a few months ago. There were... 1:45 In the first forty-eight hours, there were one hundred thousand stakers. Gosh, does that probably represents about a hundred thousand users staking- Bitcoin... Bitcoin. On the testnet. Yeah. 1:57 Well, I'll-- we'll get into Babylon chain and how it works, but I kinda wanna roll back and zoom back and, and, and talk to you about how we got here. Mm-hmm. 2:05 Because I looked at some little background work on you, and you are pretty cross-domain- Mm... in the research space from, uh, like telecommunications and 4G- Yeah... algorithmic, uh, pretty foundational stuff- Yeah... 2:22 for a lot of our, um, phones and telecommunications. Mm-hmm. That's right. And then genomics too, I believe. Yep. Mm-hmm. And you, uh, lead a lab at Stanford. I'm kind of curious to this. What, what would you say... 2:37 You're a researcher, but what, what would you say, what kind of a researcher are you? Yeah, I would say I'm a first principle researcher. 2:45 So I like to look into an area and try to identify the first principles that require research and start from there. 2:53 So because I have this attitude of always, uh, extracting the first principle in an ar- area, I don't confine myself to a particular area. 3:02 So throughout my career I've worked on multiple different areas, depending on areas that excite me at the moment. 3:08 And that makes a lot of sense because if we consider, like, what Babylon Chain is, and even just why professors or specialists would even engage in this crypto landscape, it makes sense that you see more cross-domain people, because I think, like, 3:24 typically, industry experts tend to be myopic about their particular niche expertise, and I see that generalists, people who are cross-domain, tend to really get these systems. 3:37 Would you say that's correct and maybe what drives, like, how you think about these systems? Yeah. I would actually, uh, do a little bit correction. 3:45 Not only industry experts, but also academic experts tend to be very narrow because the nature of the research enterprise, because there's just so much knowledge out there, right? 3:58 This is not back in the Newton days where- Yeah... hardly anything's known. A lot is known. 4:03 To, to become an expert, you really have to dig very deep into an area, and that's how the entire research enterprise sort of incentivize people. 4:13 Uh, so relatively few people like to take a broad view of things, and I'm sort of one of those who like to look into new area, try to identify the bottlenecks in the area, and focus the research on that. So yeah. 4:26 Is that part of what guides your lab at Stanford as well? I'm kind of curious about that 'cause it looks like it's a lab which touches a, several different types of things. 4:34 Uh, it touches several different type of things, but at any moment we focus on one thing. Uh, so I started my career in the telecom area. 4:44 So in the ti- in, around late '90s, it is about like the time now in blockchain, that as infrastructure is only beginning to emerge in telecommunication, particularly in wireless communication. 4:57 At that time, there were less than a million cell phones. Imagine a million. Now we're talking about six, seven, eight billion cell phones. There are more cell phones than human beings, I think, at this moment. 5:09 And so the growth is tremendous. But all this is built on the infrastructure that was done in the early days, and I was lucky to be part of that wave. 5:16 So I had the opportunity to take a first principle look at that area and make some fundamental contribution. So every time you use a cell phone, you'll be using s- an algorithm that I've invented in those days. 5:27 Do you see similar trends? You see, you make analogies to the late '90s or e- even early '90s. Do you see similar trends in blockchain, Bitcoin, decentralized crypto economic systems? 5:39 Are-- Do these feel similar to you, having now experienced both? Yeah. So I think there's a lot of similarity. So in the '90s, okay, uh, when people think about phones, okay, they're thinking about talking. 5:53 You talk on a phone. But nowadays when we use a phone, actually we spend very little time talking to the phone. 5:59 We'll be doing many things on the phone, but talking is like one of the r- relatively low-level activity.And so the transition at that time is to go from voice to data. Okay? 6:15 And at that time, so there was a lot of research effort onto how to... As we know, data is very bandwidth hungry. So the question is how do we increase the bandwidth, the wireless bandwidth, to accommodate all this data? 6:26 But at that time, actually, there was-- the demand is not, like, huge. It's not like billions of people wants to use this phone to communicate. 6:35 But there was just an intrinsic understanding of people that once we build it, people will find the applications to use up that bandwidth. And indeed, that's what happened. We built it, and then the iPhone came along. 6:47 And the iPhone is kind of the, the application that drives all this use of this bandwidth that we have. So that might be a great segue into what Babylon Chain, where you currently sit, in that you are... 7:02 Is this a correct statement? That you are leveraging a proof-of-work chain to improve the, uh, proof-of-stake system. Yeah. Maybe I can clarify a little bit about the, the, the terminology or the name of our project. 7:13 Yeah. So Babylon is actually the protocol that we're building. As one component of this protocol, there is a Babylon chain, but actually the bigger picture that we want to emphasize on is the Babylon protocol. 7:27 So the Babylon protocol is really a, um, cross-chain protocol. It allows the security of one chain, Bitcoin, to be shared with any proof-of-stake chains or even rollups. 7:42 So it's a cross-chain protocol, and the Babylon chain that we built is kind of a intermediary layer that mediate between the Bitcoin and all the other proof-of-stake chain and rollups in the world. Got you. 7:55 And, um, I listened to, um, one presentation of yours where you identify, I think, three of the limitations of proof-of-stake. And I'll invite you to kind of reprise those. 8:05 I think you said, um, you have, uh, longer unbonding times given existing proof-of-stake systems. Yeah. Censorship not accountable, and it's difficult to bootstrap small chains. Could you- Correct... 8:17 eval- Could you elaborate on those for me? Yeah. So, uh, let's start with the thir-- the third one, which is proof-of-stake chain requires capital. Okay? 8:29 So typically when you start a new proof-of-stake chain, typically the way that people have been generating proof-of-stake chain is to launch a token, use that token as the staking asset. 8:42 However, that makes it very difficult to bootstrap a new chain because by definition, a new token is typically very low market cap. And so the security is very low. And so that's the first problem. 8:56 Uh, and essentially, our idea is to use the huge asset of Bitcoin, one point four trillion, to essentially use that as a security asset 9:08 in a, in a, instead of or in addition to the native asset that a chain, uh, generates. So that's sort of the, the first... I would say the first-order idea that we're bringing to the table. Yeah. 9:21 And then the market w- obviously desires quicker unbonding times, and that's just difficult to accomplish securely- Mm-hmm... given most proof-of-stake chains. Yes. 9:31 And yeah, so with our protocol, not only we bring this bigger asset, we also solve the unbonding time problem 9:41 because, uh, in a proof-of-stake chain, the reason why the unbonding is a very safe and secure problem is because, you know, there's a chicken and egg problem in proof-of-stake chain. 9:54 You are running the chain to maintain the stake distribution, but at the same time, you're using that to secure the chain. So it's like a chicken and egg problem. 10:04 By using Bitcoin staking, we sort of break the chicken and egg problem, and so we can solve the unbonding problem as well. 10:11 So instead of fourteen days or twenty-one days of unbonding, we can do it within a short few days. 10:17 And that gets into what I think is one of the most interesting underexplored components of Bitcoin was-- which is its timestamping- Mm... mechanisms. 10:26 I think, you know, we spent fifteen years talking about how Bitcoin is this incredible monetary network- Yeah... but I feel that it's not explored enough, Bitcoin's timestamping mechanism. 10:38 Maybe we could just jump right to that because that's one of the ways, if I understand correctly- Mm... you have designed Babylon protocol for Bitcoin to timestamp, uh, and r- and refer- Mm... back to that. Yeah. 10:54 Could you kinda elaborate on that for me? Yeah. So maybe just take one step back and sort of situate where this timestamping is. In some sense, we are using two aspect of the Bitcoin chain, okay? 11:06 One is this timestamping aspect. That is, by ordering blocks, then you are essentially creating a very secure timestamping system, and you can use that to timestamp events that happen outside the Bitcoin chain. Okay? 11:20 So that's one thing. Two is we're using the asset of Bitcoin. Now, you've mentioned that everyone knows that Bitcoin is a very valuable asset. 11:29 But the question is, whether this valuable asset can be used to provide security benefits for proof-of-stake chains. 11:37 That is our innovation, to be able to connect that asset to the security of a new bootstrapping chain, for example. So, so those are the two things. But let's just focus on the timestamping that you asked. Mm-hmm. 11:51 So, um, timestamping, okay, is basically a way of ordering events. Okay? And ordering of events is kind of the core to consensus. 12:06 And so that's why when we built this timestamping protocol, we're basically using the Bitcoin security to timestamp proof-of-stake blocks.And that would provide a ordering of the proof-of-stake blocks. 12:20 Now, however, what we discovered is that timestamping alone is not enough to provide security. And the reason is because timestamping on Bitcoin is a very slow process, 12:34 because Bitcoin takes one hour to confirm a transaction. So it takes one hour to sort of provide a reliable timestamp. And so that only gives s- what we call a slow timescale security to the proof-of-stake chain. 12:50 If you want to complement that with a faster timescale security, you need stake. You need to provide stake because that allows validators to vote very fast, and that's where the Bitcoin staking protocol comes in. 13:03 So if we combine the two, we get both long-range and short-range security. Um, and when you say long-range, does that also reference the, this long-range attack- Yeah... option? Yeah. 13:15 And that's where the unbonding, that's where the fast unbonding comes from, is because we solved this long-range attack problem using the timestamping. And yeah, it's... 13:24 What's interesting is I think a lot of people think about Bitcoin blocks. 13:28 A lot of people talk about block time, but we're actually talking about the, the times that are s- that are included in the blocks themselves, which are referencing the actual, like, UTC time from the block producers. 13:40 Yeah. And- S- Um, so the time that is included in the block itself is actually not reliable, because the miner that proposed that block can actually put a fake timestamp there. 13:54 So that is not the timestamp we're talking about. The timestamp we're talking about is basically achieved by the block height. Okay? 14:04 And the block height is very reliable because the block height is a result of the mining, of the whole mining population. [gentle music] You're listening to Bitcoin Season 2 by Blockspace Media. 14:15 Check out other Blockspace content like the Gort Show and the Mining Pod, head to our website, blockspace.media, and sign up for our newsletter delivered to your inbox multiple times per week. 14:25 Otherwise, let's get back to the show. You mentioned that one of the core, I think, marketing points, and really selling points of Babylon is that, as you mentioned, there's one point four trillion dollars of Bitcoin. 14:42 [chuckles] A lot of Bitcoiners would say, "Well, saving is using this Bitcoin," and I would agree with that, but i- it is capital, and a lot of it we would consider to be idle. Mm-hmm. 14:52 This is in huge demand, and Bitcoin does struggle sometimes to differentiate itself from Eth, which is kind of this native yield-bearing asset. 15:00 Does the fact that you're able to give Bitcoin a yield component, does it make it more attractive than Eth, perhaps, in some capacity? Yeah. I... So if you compare what happened to Eth and Bitcoin, right? 15:15 Those two are the biggest assets. Yeah. So it's interesting to sort of compare the difference and the similarity. So both Eth and Bitcoin was originally proof-of-work. 15:24 So when you say that Bi- Eth have a native yield-bearing, that's not the case before the merge. Now, after the merge, which was two years ago, Eth becomes a yield-bearing asset because of the staking primitive. 15:40 And essentially what we are doing for Bitcoin is to give Bitcoin the same yield-bearing possibility to Bitcoin as well. 15:49 I, uh, I wanna emphasize that this yield-bearing aspect of Ethereum is very special because this is a very native yield bearing. 16:02 It is very different from participating in a DeFi protocol or in a lending protocol because those are subject to various market risk, and this staking yield has no such market risk. And so therefore, the... 16:17 Having this kind of low-risk 16:20 staking, uh, yield-bearing possibility is very important, I believe, for an asset to be, uh, participate in the DeFi ecosystem, because that becomes like a very basic primitive that people can build other stuff on top of. 16:36 Especially as we... If, you know, you're a true believer like I am, where we will eventually natively denominate things in terms of Bitcoin or other crypto assets, 16:48 it would make sense then to think, "Well, what does a world where those proliferated assets look like? Do we would want to earn yield on those things?" So this is, this does... This is very, uh, forward-thinking to me. 17:02 One of the, um, one of the core components of a successful proof-of-stake system is slashing and figuring out how to slash or disincentivize bad behavior. 17:17 Um, I know you describe it in the, uh, light paper, but can you talk me through how slashing works in the Babylon protocol? Okay. 17:28 So actually, the slash- how slashing works in the Babylon protocol is exactly how slashing works in Ethereum protocol, uh, in Cosmos proof-of-stake protocol. So it's a very common way of building a slashing mechanism. 17:45 So our innovation is actually not creating a whole new crazy way of doing slashing. Our innovation is to enable the slashing to be done natively on the Bitcoin chain without using smart contract. 18:02 So that is the main innovation. Now, going back to how slashing works, basically how slashing works is that when a validator double signs a block, okay? 18:12 That double signs is essentially the same as double spend.In Nakamoto's language. Okay? So this double sign is converted into a provable offense, and that will result in the slashing of the stake fund. 18:28 That's how, in general, how slashing works in proof of stake chain. 18:33 Now, we enable this functionality on the Bitcoin chain, although the Bitcoin chain has no smart contract to process this, and that's really where the heart of the technological innovation of our project is. 18:48 Because in the mechanism for slashing is that you, uh, I might say this wrong, r- uh, expose part of the private key, and you have watchtowers- Mm. -which see this and can spend that slashed- Yeah... Bitcoin. 19:06 But maybe I can... You have certainly done your research. Okay. [laughs] But I may- maybe, maybe I can help to- Yeah... walk through w- for your audience- Yeah... who did not do this research. Yeah. 19:13 Um, so how slashing works on Ethereum is the following. Okay? If you have double signed a block, okay, then this double signing will become an evidence that is processed by the slashing smart contract. Okay? 19:30 The slashing smart contract, which will deduct the staked ETH. Okay? So that's roughly how it works on Ethereum. 19:39 Now, in Bitcoin, there's no smart contract, so therefore there's no way for the pro- contract to process this evidence of double sign. 19:47 Although it's a cryptographically undeniable evidence, there's no smart contract, so it cannot be processed. 19:52 So when you mention about this mechanism of extracting the private key from the double signing, it is basically a cryptographic shortcut 20:03 to help Bitcoin to be able to slash the Bitcoin, the staked Bitcoin, even though there's no smart contract. And to do that, we need to use some cryptographic smartness to help Bitcoin. 20:18 So Bitcoin, shall we say, I know that your, your podcast is focused on Bitcoin. Mm. But Bitcoin is actually a very primitive chain in the s- in terms of the ability to write contracts on it. 20:31 It is primitive for a very good reason, because you want it to be secure. 20:37 So you don't want like a lot of smart contract bugs and so forth, but, but because of the lack of expressibility, there's very limited things you can do. 20:45 And essentially what we're saying is that, hey, actually if you complement it with some smart cryptography, you can actually do something even with the sm- limited expressibility. 20:55 And so you designed the Babylon protocol, and you will implement Babylon chain, and that will be what in... what, uh, you use to power these, uh, through the Cosmos ecosystem, these new Cosmos chains. 21:10 Is that kind of the, the, the model here? Or, um, is the Babylon protocol chain agno- agnostic perhaps? Yeah. So, so may, um... Let's try to, um, un- un-lock a few things that you mentioned, right? 21:27 One is that our, um, protocol, the Babylon protocol, is agnostic to whether or not the POS chain is a Cosmos chain or not. 21:38 We design it in a very modular fashion that can, the protocol can plug into almost any proof of stake chain and provide the Bitcoin security through staking. Okay, that's number one. 21:49 Number two is that the way I described the protocol so far, in fact, there is no Babylon chain. It's just Bitcoin and the proof of stake chain that wants to enjoy the Bitcoin security. So that chain can be any chain. 22:04 Now, the reason why we need a Babylon chain is because we need a timestamping mechanism between the consumer chain, the final chain that uses Bitcoin staking, and Bitcoin. 22:21 And the timestamping is done through the Babylon chain, because if every chain uses the timestamping itself to Bitcoin, that will consume all the Bitcoin space, 22:33 because, you know, you may have thousands of POS chains timestamping to Bitcoin. That's too much. So the Babylon chain acts as sort of a timestamp aggregator to efficiently timestamp all these chains simultaneously. 22:47 Do you like, I guess, hash the timestamps and post those, or- Yeah... how does that? So we... Exactly. So we basically hash all the timestamps of many proof of stake chain and just post one hash into the Bitcoin. 23:03 That's really interesting. We've, uh, when... Yeah, I s- there's some other interesting like, yeah, timestamping mechanisms. There's OpenTimestamps, uh, from Peter Todd, and- That's right... 23:13 and, um- That's one of the early- Yeah... project using timestamp Bitcoin to timestamp files, important files. Yeah. So you're currently in testnet still, right? Yeah. We are in testnet number four, actually. 23:25 We're in f- the fourth testnet now. Fourth testnet. Um, do you know how many more testnets there will be or- This will be the last testnet before the mainnet launch. And mainnet launch, what does that look like? 23:35 Do you have a timeline of what- Yeah. Yeah. So the mainnet will launch in multiple phases. Phase one is the first launch. We're targeting sometime in August. So we are now in July, so we're talking about a few weeks. 23:50 Okay? We're still, uh, working on a few things, but we should be able to launch. So in mainnet phase one... So one step back. The Babylon protocol is essentially a two-sided marketplace. So a good analogy is Uber. 24:09 Okay? So what does Uber have? Uber have drivers, and they have passengers, so that's a two-sided marketplace. In a two-sided marketplace, you need to bootstrap the two-sided marketplace. 24:20 It's very hard to bootstrap from both sides.So in the case of Uber, they bootstrap by first recruiting a bunch of drivers, and then they can tell the passengers, "Hey, there are drivers now. 24:31 You can join the system because now we have cars for you to be on." So for our case, the drivers then actually are the Bitcoin holders, okay? Because they provide the security. 24:44 So phase one is to bootstrap the system by recruiting a bunch of Bitcoin stake, okay? So now in phase one, Bitcoin holders can stake Bitcoin onto the protocol, okay? 24:57 And after we accumulate a su-sufficient level of stake, 25:02 then in phase two, we will now launch a few chains, starting with the Babylon chain, and those chains will receive Bitcoin security from the stake that we accumulated from phase one. 25:13 So that's how we bootstrap the system. We start with the supply, and then we bring in the demand. Got you. What do you think, um, 25:20 what, wow, you know, this would have pretty deep implications, I think, for the proof of stake ecosystem and future proof of stake chains. 25:31 One of the, as you've identified, one of the structural barriers for these young proof of stake chains is that they just, they have, they have structural issues getting off the ground because people get in. 25:44 It's very tempting or even planned to, like, take advantage of their, their economic security weaknesses. Yeah. Or they're very centralized. Yeah. They're very centralized. Or they're controlled by intelligent founders. 25:56 Exactly. So this op- so your, your proposal is that this offers, uh, mitigation or solution to that. Does this-- Do you think this perhaps kicks off a new era for proof of stake chains? 'Cause I feel like 26:14 in the past couple years, there's, like, the launch of new chains has been so proliferated and kind of exhausting. The market has been trying to figure out if a lot of these are even worth throwing money into. 26:29 Maybe this is a missing piece for, uh, capital to- Yeah. So 26:37 what our, our vision is that when you launch a new chain, you should really be focusing on the application that you're building rather than focus on trying to recruit enough stake, 26:50 uh, by offering, like, bribing people, right? To come and stake with you. So the Bitcoin staking will provide a strong level of security on which you can build new applications. 27:01 So that's the vision, and I believe if we're successful, we will indeed usher a new era of how proof of stake chains are launched. 27:12 Uh, instead of everyone launching a token and then use that token to secure itself, we can use Bitcoin as the shared asset. That's number one. 27:21 But I think if we're successful, it is also a revolution, I think, for Bitcoin holders. Because in some sense, Bitcoin holders have never played any significant role in security. 27:36 The miners play all the role, and this is the first time using a primitive that Bitcoin holders can actually provide security in a low risk, yield-bearing way. 27:48 So I think that this is gonna be a very important use case for Bitcoin. 27:53 And so, yeah, I think our project is a pretty ambitious project because if we're successful, then it would impact not only the proof of stake world, but the Bitcoin world as well. That is a very, very big idea. Um, 28:08 maybe let's zoom out in general, and I just have a couple associated questions to run by you. 28:14 One, um, I remember in our first brief chat, um, I asked is Babylon an L2, and you said, "I don't particularly like that term." Yeah. And I would agree, I would agree. 28:25 Like, it's just like ev- ev- everyone's calling everything an L2 now, and I almost don't think anything's an L2. 28:31 What is your thought on just the language you use to talk about these systems which abstract or reference from Bitcoin? Is there such a thing as an L2? Is that a, just a improper mental model for talking about this? 28:46 What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. So, um, okay, so we can go back to the beginning, the, the place where this language L2 start, which is Ethereum. 28:58 So Ethereum, in Ethereum, first you have the Ethereum main chain, and then you have these roll-ups that build on Ethereum, like Arbitrum, OP Stack, et cetera. 29:07 Now, they're called L2 because, number one, they're borrowing the security from Ethereum. Number two, they are also borrowing the asset from Ethereum, the ETH asset. 29:21 So there is a bridging aspect which bridges the asset from Ethereum to the L2 and back again. So I think those two are kind of the key defining features of an L2. One is security, and two is liquidity. 29:37 The liquidity comes from the mother chain. So I think, uh, in my mind, L2 is actually a pretty well-defined concept, so I'm not objecting to the concept itself. I think my objection was to characterize Babylon as an L2 29:52 only, okay? So Babylon is not really an L2 because Babylon is really a mechanism by which security from Bitcoin can be shared with L2s. You can think of it that way. Yes. That's really helpful. 30:04 That helps me wrap my head around it. It also helps me reconcile what I, where I categorize these other, uh, proposals and, and initiatives and projects. Um, another kind of question because, 30:20 you know, you do come from a research background. You are a professor, and, um-You've written various white papers, and I feel now it's fifteen years out from the publish- publication of the Bitcoin white paper Mm. Yes. 30:37 And I feel that we sometimes just kind of hand wave and take a lot of the things in it for granted. Maybe it's the only white paper many people have ever read. Mm-hmm. What are your thoughts as a professor- Mm-hmm... 30:50 who has written white papers and who thinks through these things? Mm-hmm. What are your thoughts on the Bitcoin white paper, just as a white paper in general? I'm curious where your thoughts are. Yeah. 31:02 Actually, I should say I'm a researcher for many years, even before I entered the blockchain space. 31:08 In fact, I never know this concept of white paper until I get into the Bitcoin space, when you start reading Nakamoto's paper, because the papers I'm used to are research papers. Research papers have a lot of details. 31:24 From a research paper, you can actually build systems. There should be enough details to... for intelligent expert to build a new system out of. Now, Nakamoto's white paper, which set the example of white paper in 31:38 blockchain, is not really research paper at that level of rigor. It is really an idea paper to say, "Hey, I have these ideas." Now, of course, it also has a prototype, which is the Bitcoin protocol. 31:51 Uh, but the thing about the white-- that white paper is that all these ideas turn out to be correct. There's no flaw that people could find in it. However, the level of details is lacking, but there are no flaws. 32:04 So that's the remarkable thing about that paper. That is... Yeah, that's-- I, I really appreciate your perspective, especially because 32:13 I, I'm not super familiar with the landscape of white papers, but you say, like, you said there's no-- we've seen no flaws in it. Is it common to find flaws in white papers? No. Yes. It's, it's actually very common. 32:26 Uh, and I'll give you a g-good example, okay? So when the Ethereum proof of stake merge happens, there was a white paper, 32:37 um, that Vitalik and his team, uh, presented on the Ethereum proof of stake protocol. That was about a year and a half before the merge. 32:49 Uh, we, we as in my group at Stanford, we studied that paper, and actually we find several attack vectors, several flaws in that protocol. So it's actually quite common. 33:02 So that's really interesting because sometimes these flaws we don't discover for years. Sometimes they're never discovered until they are exploited, and the Bitcoin protocol is now closer to two decades- Yes. Yeah... 33:20 old and highly proliferated, a backbone of a lot of the American industrial infrastructure, and it's very important [chuckles] that things don't break now. 33:31 A very natural question is, "Hey, well, Nakamoto wrote this white paper, but how do we know this protocol is actually secure? Can someone steal money from this protocol?" Right? 33:42 And it actually, it took researchers, now these are expert researchers, 33:48 about seven years from the point the white paper is wro- written in two oh one-- two oh eight to two oh one five before the first security analysis, 34:01 rigorous security analysis of Bitcoin appeared and showed us indeed Nakamoto's protocol is secure. That's really interesting 'cause I had not heard that. 34:11 I do know that I occasionally see research from that mid-twenty tens era. Mm-hmm. Are you referring to, like, a series of research that was done during that time? I'm actually kind of curious to dig into this. Yeah. 34:24 It was written by a cryptographer. Uh, uh, and it's called the Bitcoin Backbone Protocol. 34:32 So it abstracted away the details of the Bitcoin protocol, wrote a paper about it, and do a formal security analysis about it, and they published it in two oh one five, one six timeframe. 34:44 That was even before I entered the blockchain space. So it's not my contribution, but it is what happened. 34:50 It is done by essentially a very good cryptographer who really want to understand why and how Bitcoin protocol works. 34:59 [sighs] So, um, yeah, I really appreciate you walking me through where you come from, the high level Babylon protocol, and then reflections on Bitcoin. Um, what have I not asked you about Babylon? 35:15 What, uh, what do you think is important for, like, a, a listener of above average technical familiarity? What's important for them to know about Babylon? Babylon protocol is much more than a blockchain, a new chain. 35:29 It's not a new... In my mind, it's not really a new layer of one. It's not like Sui or Aptos of the world. It is really a protocol that connects the Bitcoin world with the proof of stake world, providing benefit to both. 35:45 I think if we are successful, not to be immodest, if we're successful, we should be able to make a pretty significant impact on the whole crypto space because after all, the crypto space is... what is it, right? 35:59 It's Bitcoin and a bunch of proof of stake chains. Yeah. It-- This-- Yeah, this would, this would, this would dramatically change things. 36:08 I, I'm most struck by your comments on that it would change Bitcoin holders 'cause I had not considered that. Um, well, David, I really appreciate you coming by here and giving me your time. 36:18 Um, and I really enjoyed this conversation. Um, what are your thoughts on Nashville? Um, what are your thoughts on the Bitcoin conference in general? It feels a little bit different this year. 36:30 It's got a little more political. That's right. How do you feel about that? [laughs] It's election year after all. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I just arrived here myself for a few hours, and so I'm still absorbing the vibes here. 36:45 Yeah. Uh, but it's great to be here. And, uh, Charlie, thanks a lot for having me on your show. It's really amazing talking to you. [outro music]
