Do We Need Another L1? - Inside Monad’s Parallel EVM with Co-Founder Keone Hon
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The monad design delivers performance that is needed right now and also delivers a high degree of decentralization right now and delivers that fast finality right now. Some of the struggles, in other ecosystems are related to slow finality, and in that in particular, that problem is already kind of addressed in Mona.
Keoni, I gotta start with the question that I think is in everyone's mind as we enter this, episode. Do we really need another general purpose layer one chain?
I love the question. Monad is a significant engineering effort. You can think of it as a technology effort to bring new technologies to the EVM and pioneer those in a way that are all compatible with each other and that stack on top of each other to prove what's possible and to prove that decentralization can become more powerful if we focus very deeply on software architecture improvements. I agree with your line of questioning in the sense that new layer ones need to be very different and very innovative. But Monad is an effort that is really grounded in research and engineering to deliver a
I think that's a theme. It's a massive optimization of the EVM. We'll get back to that. But why not just build Monad as a layer two, maybe on Ethereum? Why instead go in the direction of the layer one?
There are really interesting and important optimizations that are needed both at the execution layer and at the consensus layer. Layer twos tend to focus only on the execution side, but consensus is really what gives blockchains their property of decentralization and what really gives blockchains the borderless aspect where control of the network is split across many, many entities that are exist in many different countries around the world. Consensus is a really important problem. It's sort of the, you know, consensus Nakamoto consensus is the basis of the Bitcoin project. And I just think th
You've used this word decentralization a couple times now. What does that mean to you? What does decentralization mean to you in the crypto context, in the blockchain context?
I'll answer your question in two different ways. From a technological perspective, decentralization means that control over the system is split into many different horcruxes, I guess you could say, like split into many different entities that all keep each other accountable and enforce the rules of the system and enforce that only state transitions that are allowed are those that are defined by code. That's an extremely powerful aspect because when you don't have to trust each other, when trust is enabled through just the code itself and everyone following the rules, but also a system that all
Is this like the the you know, our civics class in The US is kind of the separation of powers? Is it that sort of idea where no single branch of the the network gains control and has the ability to execute its own will, like, independent of the other branches?
Correct. Yeah. It's about that aspect and then the ensuing consequences and productivity and efficiency that can come from the fact that everyone knows that there is not a single power that can override state or make arbitrary state transitions.
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