Can Ethlabs Make Ethereum The Root Of Global Finance?

**Ansgar Dietrichs** (0:00)
The more Ethereum is valuable for these chains, the more these chains will be valuable for Ethereum, because then Ethereum can capture some of that value, right? So like, it is our prompt of like, how can Ethereum be maximally valuable for a Robonaut chain, for a, you know, like whatever the chain. That's why we come back to Interop, like what offerings, like what do we need to do that being on top of Ethereum is something that's like, how could you possibly do anything else, right? Like it needs to be a no-brainer. If a new financial institution comes on chain, of course they're gonna do it on top of Ethereum.

**John Gillan** (0:28)
Ethlabs was the first of three new organizations in the Ethereum ecosystem that launched last month. But what is Ethlabs? What do they do? And what does all of this mean for Eth, the asset and for investors? Hello and welcome to The Milk Road Show, the podcast that knows that Ethlabs are much different than the kind that they had on Breaking Bad. I'm your host, John Gillan. Today is Tuesday, July 21st, and we will be releasing this episode on the 23rd. Today we are joined by three of the five co-founders of Ethlabs, a non-profit R&D lab for Ethereum and for ETH. Ansgar Dietrichs, who is the executive director, Barnabe Monnot, who is the head of platform, Julian Ma, who serves as the head of growth. I probably butchered all of their names, but they're going to be very gracious about it. This episode is going to be an absolute banger. If you're excited for some Ethereum Alpha, make sure you like and subscribe. Share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it. Today's episode is brought to you by Securitize, the regulated rails for tokenization, and BitGet, stocks 2 with real liquidity, real dividends. Without further ado, welcome to The Milk Road Show, Ethlabs. How are you, gentlemen? Hey, Joel. I'm super excited to be here. Thanks for having us. I can't wait for this. This is going to be amazing. I don't think I've had this many guests on one episode of Milk Road ever, but I think this is a good way to start.
And I thought a place to start this conversation.
There was a recent interview that I saw Julian did on the mission statement of Ethlabs, and I wanted to get you guys to comment on this. He said that the goal is to make Ethereum and ETH the root of the global economy, which is not a very ambitious goal, but I thought it was a good way to frame this. Ansgar, let's start with you. What does that mean? How does Ethlabs go about doing that?

**Ansgar Dietrichs** (2:02)
Yeah. So I actually think it was really fun. I heard you just now read your opening sponsors, and I think it shows that Ethereum is evolving. I think four or five years ago, we would have had very different sponsors.
I think it shows like Ethereum obviously has done phenomenally well in the past. I think there's been a lot of success in doing the stage where crypto was really about figuring out the basics, figuring out the infrastructure, figuring out even just the things like smart contracts, the basic things. I think for the last two, three years, more and more, I think it's becoming clear that, okay, the basics are in place, and now it's about actually bringing this to the real world, actually having blockchains be practically useful, practically used, and so what are they for, and how can it or should it play out? To us, basically, the root of the global economy is the answer. We really think Ethereum needs a clear answer, a clear vision that it works towards.
I think that it really is in a way, it's very simple. It's a few insets, one just the very simple one, Ethereum is primarily first and foremost for financial applications. That is where the clear product market fit is for Ethereum, where it's the most useful for. Then basically in terms of what different worlds could we end up in, I really think that when we say the root of the global economy, I think there's a very unusual moment in time right now, where there's this special price up for grabs basically, which is the one chain to tie them all together basically, is how I would say it. I don't think it's at all guaranteed that it'll play out this way. I think what we could see is that we could just see the entire world, all the financial applications and institutions, they all come on chain and they all come on chain in their own little pockets. You have some maybe inter-company chain here, some inter-company chain there, some geographic chain here, there, whatever, but it's all kind of disparate all over the place and you just have these duct tape links in between each other. They occasionally fail, it's whatever. We still get into a better world than we have today, but it's quite brittle and not that better. Then I think there's the alternative, the alternative world where you have the same modularity, the same configurability, everyone can do their own thing if they want to, but it's all on top of, mixing metaphors, but around one central hub, where basically all the activity flows through that one chain, everyone settles back to that one chain. In that world, it is incredibly more powerful because by their natures, blockchains are state machines. It's basically like in that world, everyone moves in lockstep. That means that no matter where you are, like point A in the space and point B in the space, you always have a trustless instant link between the two. You can basically have infinite atomic, clear, fast interoperability between all parts of the global economic system. I think that would be A, just so much better for the world.