Is Sui the game-changer Web3 has been waiting for? 🤯💡 With unparalleled speed, scalability, and innovation, could this be the Apple of blockchain? 🍏💎
In this mind-blowing interview, Brian Rose sits down with Kostas Chalkias to uncover:
⚡ Why Sui is the fastest blockchain ever built
🌍 How it’s revolutionizing scalability & decentralization
📈 What makes it different from Ethereum & Solana
🔮 The future of Web3 and how Sui fits in
If you're serious about crypto, blockchain, and the future of finance, this is a must-watch!🔥 Get ahead of the curve—watch now!💰
🍿Watch The Full Episode: londonreal.tv/chalkias
💰 The Investment Club: londonreal.tv/club
💰Crypto & DeFi Academy: londonreal.tv/defi
In this mind-blowing interview, Brian Rose sits down with Kostas Chalkias to uncover:
⚡ Why Sui is the fastest blockchain ever built
🌍 How it’s revolutionizing scalability & decentralization
📈 What makes it different from Ethereum & Solana
🔮 The future of Web3 and how Sui fits in
If you're serious about crypto, blockchain, and the future of finance, this is a must-watch!🔥 Get ahead of the curve—watch now!💰
🍿Watch The Full Episode: londonreal.tv/chalkias
💰 The Investment Club: londonreal.tv/club
💰Crypto & DeFi Academy: londonreal.tv/defi
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:01Ask who is the most talented team in Dubai at the moment regarding innovation and engineering.
00:07It's SWE.
00:08We are creating a new landscape where whatever you had on Web2, it's possible now on Web3.
00:13We have the fastest network in the world.
00:15We now have a way to onboard users.
00:17We know how to do it because we're coming from Facebook.
00:19That's why I believe it's going to be the apple of Web3.
00:22It's not the tech, it's the team.
00:24That's the difference with you guys.
00:25You have deep experience and over time that shows.
00:28In this cycle of crypto that everything is changing,
00:31we have the team that is very quickly going into its direction
00:34and we have a new innovation literally every two weeks.
00:36There is an East market for everybody, but I believe we're covering most of the space.
00:40We can win in almost every case.
00:42What are you doing in Dubai? I mean, you could be anywhere.
00:45Here, I realized that people respect technology.
00:47You can easily find use cases because the blockchain has more applications for developing countries.
00:53And Dubai is a developed country but surrounded by developing countries.
00:57And I go with my solution engineers and me as a cryptographer
01:00and we have ad hoc on the spot delivering the smart contract.
01:04Nobody can compete with us.
01:06They say if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.
01:09Is that the story of you?
01:10Yes, I don't feel I'm working. I'm passionate about this.
01:12I'm not sleeping, for example. I live with power and apps.
01:15There is a passion that drives me. I can see why blockchain can change society.
01:19This tool is going to change our everyday life.
01:22And that's why I'm passionate.
01:24Hey, I know investing in crypto is scary.
01:37It takes a real leap of faith because there are so many scams, rug pulls, and bad actors out there.
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02:17I know investing in crypto can be scary. That's why I got to join the investment club on the trigger. Let's do this.
02:28The world is changing. Inspiration is everywhere.
02:39It has never been so easy to connect, share, and bring people together.
02:46We're learning from others and finding the best in ourselves.
02:54Challenging our beliefs.
02:57Sharing our vulnerability.
03:01Overcoming our fears.
03:06Transforming ourselves so we can transform the world.
03:13How far can we go?
03:16This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is...
03:27Costas Haukius, the Web3 expert, white hat hacker, and blockchain engineer.
03:36You are the chief cryptographer and co-founder of Mistin Labs, whose mission is to simplify blockchain, enhance security with AI, and expand real-world Web3 applications beyond finance.
03:46Mistin Labs is the team behind SUI, the world's fastest blockchain, designed to deliver the benefits of Web3 with the ease of Web2, to be more accessible, secure, and user-friendly for everyone.
03:59Before Mistin, you led cryptographic initiatives at Facebook, now Meta, and R3, shaping the security foundations of many of the most influential blockchain projects today.
04:10You believe Web3 shifts the power from platforms to people by eliminating untrustworthy intermediaries and safeguarding privacy.
04:17You have said that direct digital ownership gives everyone greater control, unlocking the Internet's true value.
04:24Your vision is to empower individuals and creators to own their data and content by building a decentralized Web stack that unlocks the full potential of Web3.
04:34Costas, welcome to London Real in Dubai.
04:37Thank you, and I am very happy that eventually I meet you in person and we are staying in the same room together.
04:42I see you around in Dubai. I moved very recently in Dubai and now I have like friends here and I'm doing my passion innovation on the blockchain and happy to discuss about a few things here.
04:53Yeah, I can't wait. I really want to jump in. So, I'm going to start with a quote from you where you said, quote,
04:58quote, honestly, I won't be surprised at all if Mistin Labs and anything that it touches surpasses the levels of what Apple is today.
05:07It's a very rare combination, even for Silicon Valley standards, re accumulated brain knowledge in one organization, unquote.
05:17So, tell us, what is Mistin Labs? What is SUI? And how are you guys different from all the other layer ones out there?
05:23Amazing. By the way, imagine me as an expert living from the UK, originally in Greece, then France, then the UK, eventually ended up into working for Mark Zuckerberg.
05:34For an expert in Silicon Valley, you can realize you're having to do with super brilliant people coming from Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, in all of the big universities in the world.
05:43And I noticed the difference by the time I arrived in the US that the team that we've built for Libra, maybe because Mark was generous enough to hire some of the biggest brains in the world, was so strong.
05:56And I was like an auditor for Ethereum for so many years. And I managed to crack smart contracts. I managed to find some like billion dollar attacks.
06:06The concentration of brain at Facebook at that time was definitely the biggest in the world.
06:11Do you know what happened afterwards and why SUI and Mistin Labs is now this center?
06:16All of the team left after the Libra collapse.
06:19Yeah.
06:20And we got some of the people that were promoted like so frequent, in a so frequent like fashion at Facebook.
06:27But I was personally, I didn't even believe that these people will leave Facebook to go to a startup.
06:32And imagine the concentration of brain power now. It's not only Facebook. There were people coming from Google, Netflix, Microsoft.
06:38We have about 60, 70 folks with PhDs in the company. Imagine like a set of 200 people working for Mistin at the moment.
06:46And pretty much half of them are coming from either PhDs or big universities or they are very successful in their life.
06:53So the concentration as a startup, I haven't seen it in Silicon Valley.
06:58I have many friends working for like multi-billion dollar companies.
07:02I worked at Facebook. I'm interacting with Google.
07:05You know, I had a project with AI vulnerabilities on the blockchain using Gemini.
07:09I know how our team is superior.
07:12So the potential and the probability, if you ask, where would you bet your money now from all of the unicorns that you see around
07:19that will make it to be a funk, like a monk as it's called now, right?
07:24All of the five big companies in the world.
07:26Mistin is probably, even if I try to be unbiased, has the best potential to make it.
07:32So that's why I believe that the rate of innovation is so high that I cannot see if we don't shoot ourselves in the foot
07:40or the market collapses, why we cannot make it and be like the decentralized, you know, the brand.
07:47You know, so many founders talk about the tech and talk about the tech.
07:50And obviously we're going to talk about tech.
07:52Of course.
07:53But I've also heard some very high level founders say it's not the tech, it's the team.
07:56And sometimes people forget or they can't see the team beyond the blockchain.
08:01But you're telling me that's a crucial factor and one of the big reasons that you've had success.
08:06The most important one.
08:07Sometimes even when you're hiring or when you're acquiring a company, like a smaller one, you need to check the people's profile and the people's passion for something.
08:18Smart people.
08:19Imagine when we were taking interviews at Facebook, we didn't even ask the developer to write in the language that he will use while he's joining us.
08:27Write at any language you want.
08:29I know if you are smart and you are like a person who is inspiring and can do like pivots very quickly, you will thrive.
08:37So this is how we're following this like property in our organization.
08:42And we just hire like super smart people to work on the most difficult problems in the world.
08:47And then eventually, even if you don't like something, because not every bet is working, right?
08:51It's very simple for them to pivot to something else, which is again, even better than the previous one.
08:55So having such a team to be able to think in this cycle of crypto that everything is changing, it was the NFT and it was the DeFi.
09:04It was the meme season.
09:05Tomorrow, it might be the AI season.
09:07It might be IoT season, RWAs.
09:10We have the team that is very quickly going into its direction.
09:13And we have a new innovation literally every two weeks.
09:16Every two weeks, if you ask me, there is a new white paper coming from Misten Labs.
09:20Wow.
09:21I mean, this is not compared to Facebook and Google.
09:23I was there. I know.
09:24Okay.
09:25This is huge.
09:26It's special.
09:27It is special.
09:28So the first time I heard about Sui was when I met Sheikh Muala of Gaff Labs and Gaff Capital.
09:33And that was in 23.
09:34And I actually was here, I think for Token or some other event.
09:37And I met him.
09:38And it was at some party they had.
09:40And he came up and I think he knew who I was.
09:43And then he said, would you like to meet CZ?
09:45And that's a question you always say yes to.
09:48And so...
09:49Did you?
09:50Yeah, I did.
09:51He introduced me to CZ.
09:52I met him.
09:53We talked about the UFC and how many push-ups he could do.
09:55He was the coolest guy.
09:56And, you know, I had a meeting with the Sheikh that next week.
09:59And he started mentioning Sui, Sui, Sui.
10:02And they were the team that was really mentioning you a lot.
10:05And I think they had started talking to you.
10:07And I kept hearing him talk more about Sui.
10:09And then I came back last year and went to one of your Sui Connect events with Gaff.
10:13And I met you and Christian.
10:15And talked to you and I could see you guys were special.
10:19Oh, we're very passionate.
10:20Very passionate.
10:21You know my background.
10:22I named my son Kryptos.
10:23So, I mean, what can you do better to actually devote your life for this?
10:28I literally do it.
10:29His name is Kryptos.
10:30His name is Kryptos.
10:31And then I went back home to London in October.
10:33And a couple months later, you know, Sui just lit up.
10:36And now you're probably the 12th largest blockchain protocol by market cap.
10:40And now all of a sudden everyone knows Sui.
10:43But, you know, that literally all happened from a price standpoint in the last three or four months.
10:48And I know that gets you a lot of tension.
10:50So, and that's always good, right?
10:52It's good.
10:53And, you know, Sui, the definition of Sui in Chinese and Japanese.
10:56Do you know what it means?
10:57No, I don't.
10:58Water.
10:59And that's why you can see the drip as the logo of Sui.
11:02Okay.
11:03Bruce Lee, flow like water.
11:04Yeah.
11:05And, you know, all of the innovation is flowing.
11:08So, technically, the name was good.
11:11It inspired us.
11:12And that's the reason that Sui can innovate on all of the, across every industry you can imagine that is attached to Web3 at the moment.
11:20Okay.
11:21You know, I jumped into this market in 21 and I started going through all the layer one heads from, you know, Emin at Avax.
11:29And I talked to Mans at Hedera.
11:31And I talked to Justin Sun at Tron.
11:33And I was just trying to get the lay of the land.
11:35And we all believed that a few years from then there would be fewer L1s.
11:39And then we saw kind of the opposite happen.
11:42And now maybe they were consolidating again.
11:44And so, I guess I'll go back to my original question.
11:46When people come to you and say, why is Sui so special?
11:49Why do we need another layer one?
11:51How do you explain that to someone who's not maybe deep inside the details of blockchain?
11:56It's very simple.
11:57So, if you see now the current landscape of all of the L1s, I will talk only about L1s for the time being.
12:03There is Solidity.
12:05There is Ethereum who had the new language, scripting language, to write smart codecs and all of this stuff.
12:09The only other language that managed to be better and safer than Solidity is Move.
12:14And we created Move, starting from Facebook.
12:17Imagine my CTO, he is the creator of the Move language.
12:20The first one who put the first line of code in Move.
12:23I created all of the cryptographic stack of Move.
12:26And then all of these people coming from Facebook, obviously they knew how to handle billions of people, right?
12:32I mean, we need this.
12:33You cannot go and have a Web3 that is only DeFi and you only have the digits.
12:37You need also the gamers.
12:38You need also the RWAs.
12:39You need people who know how to have a social network because eventually even all of this will come into the blockchain.
12:45Right.
12:46You need it.
12:47So, we have the background that if you see the potential, obviously, I mean, we have this checkmark, right?
12:52There is no way.
12:53These people know how to run big infrastructures.
12:55Web3 originally started as just transfer of money from Satoshi.
12:59But again, it evolved into a smart contract, fully programmable-like space.
13:05And now we have the opportunity to be the creators of this infrastructure.
13:08So, Sui managed and Misten Labs managed to hire some of the best talents to work on every aspect of the stack.
13:14And it's not only Sui.
13:15I'm the chief cryptographer of Misten Labs, but Sui is imagined as the CPU of the blockchain.
13:20Very quickly having transactions.
13:22We managed to have almost 300,000 transactions.
13:24Probably the first blockchain that managed to have this on a testnet phase.
13:28And we're having all of the peaks that we managed to surpass Solana and all of the rest on daily active users, transactions per second, latency, half a second latency.
13:38Who could imagine it?
13:39Imagine Bitcoin is 10 minutes at the moment.
13:41Half a second latency.
13:42Now you can even do AAA games on the blockchain.
13:46You can do arbitrage on chain.
13:49You can do stuff that it wasn't possible with the previous stack.
13:53Right.
13:54Even Ethereum has a 14, 15 second finality.
13:57Now, Sui is creating a new landscape where pretty much whatever you had on Web 2, it's possible now on Web 3.
14:04Even the transaction rate, every blockchain company is chasing Visa.
14:09Visa has 20,000 transactions per second.
14:12Under the peaks, I don't know, you see if it goes to 100k and all of this stuff.
14:16We managed to do it in a decentralized way.
14:19So, these things were impossible before.
14:21What do you need for this, right?
14:22You need a team that is super innovative on consensus algorithm because consensus is defining the TPS and the latency.
14:31Some other L1s probably have some people who are very good at consensus.
14:35But this is like one founder and he doesn't know about all of the rest because crypto is not only technology.
14:41And then you need the cryptographer.
14:43The cryptographer will create new systems.
14:45And myself coming from Facebook, I realized, oh, for everybody to onboard into a new system, you need to do it in one, two seconds maximum.
14:52How can you do this now with mnemonics?
14:54That people have to write their passwords and then get a copy and they don't have in their brain, oh, there is no forgot password in the blockchain.
15:03Because 99% of the population is attached to social networks.
15:06Right.
15:07They don't know it.
15:08People are losing their money.
15:09The 12-word key phrase is terrible.
15:10Yes.
15:11The 12-word mnemonic.
15:12It doesn't work.
15:13Never scales.
15:14Exactly.
15:15And we invented, it was literally my baby, ZK Login.
15:18And ZK Login was the first zero-knowledge proof.
15:20You know it's a privacy-preserving algorithm that I managed to do login with Google or Facebook or Apple and automatically you have an address.
15:29And Google doesn't know your address, which was magic, right?
15:33And this is now the most used zero-knowledge proof technology across any industry in the world.
15:40ZK Login.
15:41ZK Login.
15:42ZK Login is the most used ZK technology in the world.
15:44I don't put a password in.
15:45Even if you add all of them together.
15:46Okay.
15:47I don't put a password in.
15:48Yes, you don't.
15:49You just need Google.
15:50And now we're going to have also pass keys like with your face ID.
15:53And imagine for micropayments and all of these things.
15:55It's amazing.
15:56Then you can have, of course, a second factor for larger transactions.
16:00But who are the people who are moving to the largest transactions?
16:03Only a small part of the population.
16:04But you help them on board very quickly.
16:06You can even hide the fact that there is a blockchain behind it.
16:09Imagine a game that now you start, you're logged in with Google and you play the game.
16:13All of the Web3 attempts to get the games into the ecosystem, they have to find a new way that the players do not see the difference.
16:23And we managed to do it.
16:24That's why SWE, by the way, was a sponsor at Red Bull.
16:27Red Bull had an NFT campaign and everybody logged in with Google.
16:30And in literally a couple of days there were thousands, hundreds of thousands of users having an NFT on Red Bull.
16:38And then we realized, wow, this is amazing, right?
16:41We have the fastest network in the world.
16:42We now have a way to onboard users.
16:44We know how to do it because we are coming from Facebook.
16:47And then I covered now consensus and cryptography.
16:50And then our CTO is a creator of a new language which is better than Solidity.
16:53So we also have the talent for a new language.
16:56And then Evan Cenk, the CEO of the company, he was the head of research at Facebook.
17:01And at the same time he was leading teams in Apple.
17:04You are running his operating system.
17:05He won one of the engineering awards from ACM, one of the biggest organizations in the next year, I believe, after addressing Horovitz from A16Z.
17:15So this guy is also IQ 200.
17:18I don't know.
17:19He's super smart.
17:20He's leading a foundation.
17:22He managed to do Apple, Facebook.
17:24He managed to bring all of us next to him.
17:26And we created this.
17:27And then we have the fifth co-founder, all of them directors or leads at Facebook, who is a Digen.
17:32This guy was leading products for Facebook before that on VMware.
17:37He knows how to deliver.
17:38He had one of the biggest mining farms in London, probably the first one.
17:42You're from London, right?
17:43You know.
17:44So we managed to find like a set of a group of different talents in the leadership level that I cannot see on any other L1.
17:55Go to Solana.
17:57Solana has Toli.
17:58Toli is a, like, I respect him.
18:00He is a very good engineer.
18:01He did something.
18:02There is probably, if you see the innovations that he created personally as an individual, it doesn't even, like, compare to every single founder in Mr. Lambs.
18:14Imagine we have five.
18:15The fact that we're five, by the way, it helps a lot.
18:17Because you need to delegate.
18:19The space is so big at the moment that I moved to Dubai.
18:22My other co-founder is in the UK.
18:23He lives in London.
18:24He's a professor at UCL.
18:26Probably the best consensus expert in the world.
18:29And then the other three people are in Palo Alto now, but they're traveling a lot.
18:32And Denis is everywhere.
18:33Right?
18:34I mean, he has a charisma.
18:36So, in my opinion, this combination of having the founders being able to be magnets for talent to come to us, check my recent tweet.
18:45My recent tweet, I'm creating a commandos team.
18:47This happened 10 minutes before I come to your room.
18:50A commandos team?
18:51A commandos team.
18:52What is that?
18:53It's a special forces team that it's going to be a very, very strict interview.
18:58I will cherry pick them from hackathons, but I will originally start from Asia.
19:03So, I will go Vietnam, India, Pakistan, GCC, Indonesia.
19:08I'm going to cherry pick super good people.
19:11And onboarding will be, you have a tent.
19:13You have boots.
19:14And you're coming with me on hackathons.
19:16You're coming with me in government.
19:17Let's digitize the world.
19:19Wow.
19:20Commandos is with double S at the end.
19:22Open source systems.
19:23Okay.
19:24And you'd literally drop into a city.
19:26Yes.
19:27And on a mission.
19:28Imagine I could have a parachute as well.
19:30I'm crazy.
19:31I will do the parachute.
19:32I will not give them a laptop.
19:34Okay.
19:35I'll give them a parachute.
19:36And then we have Christian.
19:37You met Christian, right?
19:38Yes.
19:39Amazing.
19:40He's on the community front, right?
19:41He's amazed on what we can do now with a commandos team across the world.
19:45And even internally at MISTEN.
19:47This is literally a friend who wants to invest in SUI ecosystem.
19:51And he told me, Costas, help me.
19:52I need to find the best people for special force, for special projects across the world.
19:57And then we said, we will do it.
19:59I know how to do it.
20:00But they have to follow my pace.
20:02Down the road, you're going to ask me about some, like, things that I have on the spectrum.
20:09I'm not sleeping, for example.
20:10I live with power naps.
20:12So, the people who are joining Commandos, they have to follow this pace.
20:16No sleeping.
20:17Just power naps.
20:18Power naps.
20:19The DaVinci mode.
20:20After DaVinci did.
20:21Yeah.
20:22Yeah.
20:23My wife, do you know how many times she has markers in her face?
20:26Because I have markers across my, like, back in the wall.
20:30So, when I wake up randomly at night, and I have some idea that I couldn't solve, I very
20:35quickly write it down to wherever I find.
20:37And sometimes I use my wife's face.
20:39Really?
20:40Because you don't see at that time, right?
20:41You're just literally half sleeping.
20:43Just anything.
20:44Man, she must love you.
20:45That's for sure.
20:46Yeah.
20:47But, you see, the intellectual quality, and the fact that we have also the Digen thing,
20:52it's not only a cryptographer who created a blockchain.
20:56A Digen who created a blockchain.
20:58It's the combination.
20:59Okay.
21:00Everything.
21:01And that's the reason that many talents followed us.
21:03Okay.
21:04They followed me.
21:05They followed Evan.
21:06They followed Antonigi.
21:07They followed Sam.
21:08And they followed George.
21:09From the biggest universities in the world, they came to Mistan Labs.
21:12That's why I believe it's going to be, it has at the moment the best odds for being
21:17the Apple of Web 3.
21:18Okay.
21:19It must be a very senior management team, founding team, where five, you know, high-level individuals
21:24can work together.
21:25And maybe you don't see that in a lot of projects, because maybe they never...
21:28It's very rare.
21:29It is.
21:30Very rare.
21:31But fortunately, we're all sane people.
21:32Obviously, when you're taking decisions, it's not that you agree on everything.
21:35But we're, I mean, we're trying to do it in a way that works for the company.
21:40Sometimes I disagree.
21:41But at the same time, I see the data that they're providing me when we go into these
21:48debates.
21:49And almost always, all of the decisions we took are actually for a good purpose.
21:52Okay.
21:53Even for those I personally disagreed.
21:54Okay.
21:55And sometimes I win on these debates.
21:57But it's always data-driven.
21:58Yes.
21:59It's data-driven.
22:00And we're always voting between each other.
22:02It's literally working really well as a DAO.
22:04Okay.
22:05We have a DAO between the leadership.
22:06And it's not only founders.
22:07We give also the power to our people to give us feedback.
22:10Okay.
22:11You know, feedback is a gift.
22:12It's something you are learning in Silicon Valley.
22:14It's don't be like someone who doesn't accept like getting criticized and all of these things.
22:22Yeah.
22:23Look, you have to understand, get the data, and then you do whatever you want with this data.
22:27Don't let the ego get in the middle.
22:28Yes, exactly.
22:29It's hard.
22:30Because at first, the immediate reaction is defense.
22:32We were trained to do that.
22:33I believe the reason it works is because all of us have worked in these companies, which was part of the protocol.
22:37Yeah.
22:38You cannot work at Facebook if you don't receive feedback.
22:40Yeah.
22:41You will never be promoted.
22:42Yeah.
22:43I think that's the difference with you guys.
22:44You have deep experience, decades and decades, in these high-tech startups in Silicon Valley, whereas some of these protocols are de-gen-ish, where maybe they didn't have that layer.
22:54And I think over time, that shows how quickly...
22:57100%.
22:58And don't get me wrong, right?
22:59I always had Solana under my portfolio, either companies or investments.
23:05I'm a Bitcoin maxi.
23:07There is a niche market for everybody, but I believe Mistin is covering most of the space at the moment.
23:12Okay.
23:13We can win in almost every case.
23:14Let's quickly talk about Libra, because it's part of the story.
23:16Yeah.
23:17And then we can dive in more into Mistin.
23:19Tell us about Libra.
23:20It was obviously killed in the end.
23:23I heard it was killed, really, for political reasons.
23:26But it also created Mistin and everything you're doing at SUI.
23:30100%.
23:31And you said something earlier, which was fascinating.
23:33When you're working at Facebook, you're thinking about 3 billion users from the beginning.
23:36Yeah.
23:37And when you're building in DeFi, you're thinking about a fraction of that and maybe helping them.
23:41Just thousands.
23:42Yeah, thousands.
23:43I know.
23:44And maybe just thousands.
23:45So, you're not even thinking outside the box in some way.
23:47But you're thinking, well, we could roll this out to WhatsApp.
23:49We could roll this out to everything.
23:50And you had to do that.
23:52You worked on cryptography at WhatsApp.
23:53So, maybe just talk about that whole Facebook experience, Libra, how it started, how it ended.
23:58So, it was David Marcus.
24:01I respect this guy.
24:02He actually helped me to get into Facebook.
24:04That Mark Zuckerberg gave him the stamp, go run Libra.
24:08David Marcus is coming from PayPal.
24:10He was at Messenger, leading the Messenger team.
24:13He's a charismatic person.
24:16He created like an allied team where he hired people across the world.
24:21Imagine, he found someone Greek that worked for a UK company.
24:24Come on to Facebook.
24:25We want you.
24:26Right?
24:27You run R3.
24:28You designed everything on R3.
24:30We give you a better offer.
24:32Come to the US.
24:33When I joined, something that I personally realized at Facebook, which was probably something that I didn't like,
24:39is I don't believe Facebook had so many security and crypto talent compared to the Libra team.
24:46The Libra team was more talented on particular parts of science, especially on cryptography, and also creating new languages as well for Web3.
24:57There was not so much like digital culture at Facebook.
25:01We created David Marcus.
25:03He's a Bitcoin maxi.
25:04He created this culture.
25:05Then David hired Evan Cenk.
25:07Evan is a CEO now of Mr. Labs.
25:09Evan ran all of the research team.
25:11The number of people coming from the top universities with the best publications in the world that he hired was amazing.
25:21I haven't seen.
25:22I didn't expect this.
25:23When I joined Facebook, I said, okay, I'm one of the first cryptographers who are joining.
25:26We're going to have a small team.
25:28Like in R3, I was alone, actually.
25:29Right.
25:30Now, at least I have a few colleagues.
25:31I can work together.
25:32Did you have any hesitancy to join Facebook?
25:34No.
25:35Which is the opportunity of a lifetime to be in the center of the valley.
25:37No, R3 was collapsing as well that time.
25:38Okay.
25:39And apart from didn't have an option, I interviewed with many fans, actually, and I literally auctioned my offer at Facebook.
25:47You don't go directly, right?
25:48I mean, this is a hint for everybody who's looking for a job.
25:51If you are good and you believe in yourself, get another offer as well so you can play with the prices.
25:56Okay.
25:57Right?
25:58And I did this, but the reality is Facebook was a better fit for me because I was coming from the blockchain world.
26:04And at that time, Google, Apple, and other companies, they did security, but nothing related to Web3.
26:10Okay.
26:11So, for me, it was a no-brainer.
26:12After I was invited there, the CTO now of SWE, of Mr. Labs, Sam, Sam Blackshear, I met him in a conference.
26:21Oh, it's very interesting how I ended up at Facebook.
26:24This conference was when I invented an algorithm for post-quantum signatures.
26:28If the quantum computer comes, how we can protect ourselves against the power that this machine has.
26:34And Sam joined this session because I had worked with the first developer of Satoshi for the Java library, the BitcoinJ, Mike Hahn, who was my manager at R3.
26:46And Sam said, how bad can this be presentation with Mike Hahn being in the co-authors?
26:51But he doesn't see Mike Hahn, he sees me, okay, which I was the lead cryptographer of Mike Hahn.
26:56And then Sam goes back to Facebook, and he writes a post that, guys, I met a genius, we have to hire him.
27:04And then, when I joined, nobody had deleted that comment, which was months before I joined, six months before I joined.
27:11And I realized that people were talking about getting all of the big brains, and I was considering myself, I was confident I'm good at cryptography.
27:20I have a role at Facebook.
27:22And then I happily accepted, of course, we joined.
27:27Libra was moving very fast, especially at the very beginning.
27:30I will say that one of the problems, eventually, would personally see, coming from this space,
27:35it was slightly slower on adoption of new techniques, because there is bureaucracy.
27:40Even if Libra was operating as a startup inside Facebook, imagine we even had, I personally started being paid at Facebook,
27:47then being paid at Novi, then being paid at DiEM.
27:52You know, different startups inside, where we try to keep our own culture, as WhatsApp did, by the way, at Facebook.
27:59But again, you still have the bureaucracy.
28:01And in this world where the cycle is very short, every few months, I invented new algorithms and I was locked.
28:07I couldn't do anything.
28:09You know that during COVID, I've implemented an algorithm to find a tax on proof of solvency algorithms in all of the big exchanges.
28:16I almost predicted what would happen with FTX.
28:18I was presenting Luna and other things, two days before Luna collapses in the financial crypto conference,
28:24about something is not right in stable coins, algorithmic coins and exchanges.
28:32Because this was something that Mark, not Marcus, I'm sorry, David Marcus gave me as a role,
28:38find all of the algorithms for proof of solvency.
28:40Where Facebook, we have to fix the market.
28:42Okay.
28:43Right?
28:44So, believe me, Facebook did a lot of job to make good signs, to publish stuff, to change the narrative,
28:49and having all of this talent going into other chains afterwards.
28:52Now, Libra, I don't know if it's political reasons, if it was COVID.
28:56You know, during COVID, you cannot even go to every country and say, we're going to launch Libra.
29:00You couldn't even fly.
29:01Right.
29:02It was very difficult times, right?
29:03And then there was a change of administration.
29:06It was, as I told you, it was growing a bit like at a higher rate than I was expecting.
29:11Eventually, indirectly, 1000 people being involved into the project.
29:15And in these cases, you need a commandos team to deliver.
29:18Right.
29:19You cannot be slow.
29:20I had 10, like, piled papers in my desk, that I knew this would change the world.
29:26But we couldn't apply them, because we were already ready for production.
29:29And believe me, we were launching every month.
29:32I lost my paternity leave when Cryptos was born in London.
29:37And then I have my second child, Philip, in the US.
29:41Philip was born during the time that Libra was launching.
29:44And launching.
29:45And launching.
29:46And every month was launching.
29:47And then for one year, it was launching.
29:49And I didn't get my paternity leave, because I said, I cannot live now.
29:52We're launching next month.
29:53So, it's a combination, in my opinion, of bad timing.
30:00The fact that we could, I believe, do a better job on not doing two things at the same time.
30:06Both a stable coin, which was a basket, and a new blockchain.
30:10How do you advertise all of these two things to regulators?
30:13It's very tough.
30:14If you are Facebook, they're afraid as well.
30:15You had the Cambridge Analytica incident in the past.
30:18There were many things that they say, okay, you have all of our socials.
30:20You cannot have all of our nationals.
30:22Now, talent-wise, I don't believe there is a comparison.
30:28It was the best thing in the world.
30:30So, all of this, after the collapse, six months before, I mean, people who are in leadership,
30:35they understand it's collapsing.
30:37So, we left.
30:38Everybody wanted to live, and then, somehow, we all met almost independently.
30:45We had Evan saying, I'm gonna do it.
30:48I said, I'm gonna do it by myself.
30:50George said, I'm gonna do it.
30:51And then, we said, guys, let's do it together.
30:53So, we created SWE, and many people from the Facebook Libra team actually followed us,
30:57and this created a domino effect where people from Netflix, from Microsoft, from Apple,
31:02like former colleagues of us, also joined us, even from R3.
31:05I got people from R3 as well.
31:07Hmm.
31:08Wow.
31:09If this had been the current Trump administration, you might have stayed with Facebook, and Libra
31:14might have launched.
31:15Perhaps.
31:16There is a possibility.
31:17You never know, because I'm telling you, it's multiple factors that affected this, right?
31:21Everybody was visionary.
31:22David Marcus was visionary.
31:23Mark Zuckerberg was visionary.
31:25We were super inspired by this.
31:27I was working from my closet.
31:29When there was COVID, for a moment in my life, I didn't have a big place to live, and I had two, one newborn and a baby, like two years old.
31:40I was working from my closet all day, because you couldn't go out, you couldn't go to the office.
31:45It was also very difficult for the employees to be in this new type of engagement with the company.
31:51Right.
31:52Working at Facebook is literally a campus.
31:54We had pizza, burgers, you know.
31:58Dry cleaning.
31:59Anything.
32:00It was like a small village.
32:01Okay.
32:02And I lost all of this.
32:03And suddenly, I said, okay, you lose all of these perks that you're getting from Facebook.
32:07You're in Silicon Valley.
32:09Silicon Valley, you have to take bets.
32:11Come on.
32:12You're in the center of the world where you can create a new startup.
32:15You know you're confident about your brain, your intellectual property that you have.
32:20You have to be surrounded by the most important people.
32:24This is spoiler, but there was another blockchain that they wanted me to be a co-founder.
32:29Also from Facebook.
32:31A current competitor, perhaps?
32:32Yes.
32:33And I said, no, I'm going with Evan.
32:35Okay.
32:36Because Evan is the brain.
32:37Okay.
32:38I cannot go to people that I didn't believe they were special.
32:43Well, let's talk about Aptos, because this is the other faction of Facebook that's come out,
32:48and there was some healthy or unhealthy competition between the two of you guys.
32:52Yeah.
32:53What is the story with Aptos and Aptos and Sui?
32:56So, at Facebook, after the collapse of Librao, before the collapse, everybody started thinking
33:03that, okay, I can optimize by staying in the Web3 environment.
33:07And I also have some cool ideas.
33:09So Aptos decided to do the following.
33:11Look.
33:12All of these guys, Kostas, Sam, they've built a move, because these are the move language
33:19chains, right?
33:20Aptos and Taz were using the move language, and Sui put a completely different path, and
33:25we made many changes to the move language compared to what we had at Facebook.
33:28Aptos decided to clone it.
33:30In my opinion, it was already too old.
33:35As I told you, delays, bureaucracy, and we had better ideas on how to scale and move in
33:40a different way.
33:41So Aptos decided to get a clone, create Aptos.
33:43Very quickly they launched, even if they started the company later than us, while we implemented.
33:48We were in a stealth mode, trying to build a better system, better than the move of Facebook.
33:53So imagine Aptos as being pretty much the clone of Libra, and as being the innovative part
33:57of Libra.
33:58It's like, you have two kids, and one of them is saying, I will take my own path, because
34:02I know how to succeed better.
34:03And I believe the innovation rate in Sui was, even at the time of hiring, because I knew
34:09the people who were hiring, that they were promoted last month.
34:13They were super good at what they are doing.
34:15While on the other side, I couldn't see this.
34:18I could see more secrecy, more like, we know that Sui is better and let's find another way.
34:24Sometimes I see it as a cloppy paste situation, if you're asking me.
34:28I believe we're by far most innovative.
34:30Anyway, some of their people are okay.
34:33I don't believe all of their team is as gifted as the Sui team.
34:38But they decided to get just the clone of Libra, and then continue over this.
34:42We decided to take another path more innovative.
34:44That's the main difference in the structure of the teams.
34:47Now, we're also more decentralized.
34:49Like, they're more Palo Alto, like, concentrated.
34:52We are having people across the world.
34:54We build, like, offices here in Dubai, the UK, Greece.
34:57We have, literally next to Seedagma, we got a big building that will be announced in the
35:01next few weeks or months.
35:04We were in Asia.
35:06We know how to, because even the founders are technical founders.
35:10I'm still coding.
35:11Three of the founders are still coding.
35:13At Aptos, nobody's coding from, now it's only one, by the way, one left.
35:17Okay.
35:18There is a process of elimination there.
35:20So, for many things that I believe didn't fit to my appetite, sometimes I consider them toxic
35:27as well.
35:28I could enjoy Aptos.
35:29Okay.
35:30It was a no-brainer.
35:31And, you know, if you talk to either Anthony, Evan, George, and Sam, you will realize how
35:41charismatic they are on changing the landscape.
35:46Like, we have to make a leapfrog situation for the blockchain to succeed.
35:53We cannot just have only DeFi users.
35:55We need to find another way.
35:56If you see how even the Aptos team were looking at my work and their leadership team were focusing
36:02on, hey, of course, let's work together and all of these things, you will realize that,
36:06in some sense, at Facebook, they were jealous of what we were doing.
36:10So, I consider them as a, like, it's good that the Move language is also having another,
36:17like, place to be alive and evolve.
36:20At the same time, I consider us by far better either on community or innovation.
36:24I don't believe there is anything else at the moment.
36:25Do you rate any other layer ones?
36:28Like, when you look at...
36:29Better than us?
36:30Yeah.
36:31Or just the top 25?
36:32No.
36:33Are there any that you look at and say, they're doing these things good?
36:35I mean, you obviously said Solana, you know, does some things or early innovations.
36:38I do.
36:39But is there anything you see in any of them?
36:40Or is it just, are you guys superior in everything?
36:43I believe some of them are completely disorganized.
36:45Polygon, for example, they are going here and there.
36:47It cannot work.
36:48At the same time, some others are focusing on stealing from us, like, they are late in
36:56the game.
36:57Some others are like Solana.
36:59Look, Solana has a community.
37:01We believe we can go faster than anyone else on, like, being the next thing after Solana.
37:07And I believe we're doing, like, a really good job here.
37:10It's, I mean, if you can see the numbers on how Sui grew and being the best blockchain,
37:14performing blockchain in 2024, not only on the pricing part, because pricing is another
37:18thing.
37:19I'm a nerd.
37:20I don't care about this.
37:21On technology part, you see all of the biggest innovations in the world came from Sui.
37:26So this thing, I don't see it on other blockchains.
37:29Maybe Avalance has these, like, subnets and they can do, they can get the niche market somewhere
37:34else.
37:35Solana, I believe, there will have competition.
37:37Beta Chain is also joining for community.
37:39We're having a very, very strong DeFi, one of the strongest DeFi ecosystems in the world.
37:44I believe we're approaching with a higher pace than anybody else.
37:48So I don't see the other things.
37:51I don't even know what they're doing.
37:53I don't even know.
37:54If you ask me what Nier is doing with AI and all of this stuff, I believe we have a better
37:57AI team.
37:58We even hired someone who is a very, very popular and intelligent person publishing
38:04on New Rips every year.
38:07He's going to be a great addition for us, even on the AI sector.
38:10I don't believe we have a competitor.
38:12And I try to be unbiased.
38:13I'm telling you, I like science.
38:14I would be honest.
38:15I'm telling you, I had Solana in the past.
38:17I even know a few now.
38:18But Shoei has a better technology.
38:20We even created a decentralized storage network.
38:23Walrus.
38:24Wait for Walrus.
38:26Right.
38:27Because we had Filecoin, we had Arweave, we had a few others.
38:30Go and check on Twitter how it's like a storage layer on steroids.
38:36It's by far better on every aspect.
38:38So Shoei Walrus.
38:39We had Deepook, which is the Nasdaq of the blockchain, literally an order book.
38:45We have Ness, which is the identity.
38:47Who has created all of this?
38:48Like four technologies in two years.
38:51The only team who can do it is us.
38:53All of the rest are focusing in one direction.
38:55This cannot...
38:56I mean, the blockchain is not only execution on transactions.
39:00You have to offer something else that governments can come in.
39:04That Web2 banks, the ThreatFi, anything can go onto the blockchain and don't feel a difference
39:10between Web2 and Web3, just only more transparency and better ownership.
39:14So that's why I'm thinking sometimes, yes, Kostas, if you were unbiased, is there another blockchain
39:19that you work at the moment?
39:20No.
39:21Nothing.
39:22Zero.
39:23There's a famous quote by the UFC fighter, Conor McGregor, who says, he says, losers focus
39:28on winners, winners focus on winning.
39:30Yes.
39:31This is happening, by the way, with some of the teams that you mentioned.
39:35They're looking at you and you're looking into the future.
39:38Yes.
39:39But there is always a niche market.
39:41If you see in the McDonald's, Burger King, there is a high quality and there is also the
39:47very fast food.
39:48But in some regions, people are poor and they're getting McDonald's.
39:52Right?
39:53But there is other high quality like burger places we can go now.
39:59So in my opinion, we managed to actually bring everybody into the chain with this onboarding
40:05stuff that we built.
40:06Imagine that I'm doing even internetless transactions, crazy things that we can discuss as well.
40:11I don't believe anyone else is looking at the full picture.
40:13Everybody is looking at, I don't know, optimizing on their pricing model or everything else.
40:17We optimize on the usability, on something that will change the narrative and bring confidence
40:23even to the people who don't know about Web3.
40:26Imagine, I'm personally talking to many governments.
40:28And you know, the Greek stock market, for example, is coming on SUI.
40:33Big projects that you need to gain confidence.
40:37Forget Aptos for a while because they're also coming from Facebook.
40:41It's very difficult to go to a place which is more traditional and conservative.
40:46If they don't see a team that has succeeded in the past, and it's not a random team who
40:51created the blockchain, they cannot easily move their country's assets into that blockchain.
40:56It's impossible.
40:57They need to see who is behind it.
41:00It's literally a KYC, a profile, a curriculum on who is going to build it for me.
41:05And we're winning there.
41:06Almost every case.
41:08I've heard people say SUI is Solana for institutions.
41:15I would say that SUI is not only for institutions.
41:22If you see how many times SUI was down and more robust and how we can accommodate more users,
41:30I believe we're going to win all of the meme, DeFi, gaming institution space.
41:35All of them.
41:37And the only competitor would be the L2s on Ethereum, probably.
41:41But the L2s, I'm coming from a country that is like a Polynesia country, right?
41:45Greece.
41:46There are so many islands.
41:47Go and live in the islands in the winter.
41:49Good luck.
41:50Too many islands, the liquidity is actually split between different places.
41:55You need this liquidity in the same place.
41:58Do you know why some countries are coming to SUI?
42:01Because of the potential of having the gamers, the DeFi users.
42:05We even have some successful memes on SUI.
42:08And institutional like RWS and all of this stuff.
42:12Because we need everybody to accommodate this liquidity.
42:17The gamer, especially with good things.
42:20Imagine even CZ.
42:21He personally invests now on education and financial literacy for poor people.
42:26All of these folks eventually, due to CZ, will come into the blockchain.
42:30Because he's a public figure, right?
42:32And I believe we have to be the chain that will hack them.
42:38Come with us.
42:39We know how to onboard you.
42:41We know how to get you into a state where you're going to make money from this.
42:45You're going to also invest here.
42:47So if you don't get the gamers and you have the real estate of Greece or some other country, UAE, into the chain, who is going to give you liquidity?
42:57You need all of them.
42:58So for this to win, you need to have the most robust and fastest system and easy system to be easy for everybody who wants to understand something new.
43:10Very difficult.
43:11People, even at Facebook, to make some changes, very simple.
43:15Like moving one button from the left to the right, you're losing users originally.
43:18Right.
43:19People are used to templates.
43:21Even ourselves.
43:22Some people are somehow accepting the reality and they don't try to make a change.
43:28There are only very, very small portion of humanity who are taking bets and they are shifting very quickly.
43:35Most of them, they don't want to change, even if they know they're not having the perfect life.
43:40So for us, it's let's combine.
43:42Let's get these two worlds get married together.
43:45And that's why I believe we don't have a competitor.
43:48And I don't believe that Solana is going to beat us down the road.
43:52We're going to win even against Solana.
43:54Let's talk about Web2 social media companies, because so far we haven't seen any of them come on the blockchain or offer crypto services.
44:01Now, Facebook obviously abandoned Libra for whatever reason.
44:05Elon Musk is always rumored to be bringing crypto transactions on chain.
44:10But I've heard other people say that the app won't be available in the App Store and there's all sorts of other issues.
44:14And it's nowhere near happening.
44:16But do you see this happening?
44:17Because you used to work in one of those companies.
44:20And is this a threat to you or an opportunity for you?
44:22Are you talking about the big companies or smaller companies who want to be the decentralized Facebook and TikTok?
44:27This exists.
44:28I'm talking about the bigger ones.
44:29Yes, this exists.
44:30For example, Sui has FunTV, Record and some other big names are also coming.
44:34Now, what would it take for Facebook, Google, TikTok and Twitter to come into X coming into the blockchain?
44:42There are a few things that we have to consider that sometimes it's a bit more complicated.
44:46Even if crypto is more like liberal and, you know, people can come and do stuff that might not be censored.
44:55There is still some like regulations.
44:59For example, you need some of the stuff to be able to be deleted.
45:02To continue watching the rest of the episode for free, visit our website LondonReal.tv or click the link in the description below.
45:11Thanks for watching.
45:14We'll see you.