Ethlabs: The New Org to Make Ethereum Win | Ansgar & Caspar

**David** (0:03)
Bankless Nation, I'm here with Ansgar and Caspar. These are two of the many co-founders of Ethlabs. Ansgar, Caspar, welcome back to Bankless.

**Caspar Schwarz-Schilling** (0:12)
Good to be here. Hi, David.

**Ansgar Dietrichs** (0:13)
Yeah, hi.

**David** (0:14)
So in the same week that the EF has explicitly positioned themselves as just one node in the network, we have the launch of Ethlabs, a new research and development arm under the leadership of U2, as well as a few other names that people would recognize out of the Ethereum ecosystem. Talk to me, what is Ethlabs?

**Ansgar Dietrichs** (0:36)
Yeah, so Ethlabs is a non-profit D-Lab, and very simply put, our mission really is just to make Ethereum and ETH win, as simple as that, right? And to say a little bit more, like I think we had this very strong feeling that right now, Ethereum in particular, crypto as a whole, but really Ethereum in particular is in a very unique moment in time. The first 10 years of Ethereum, there was a lot of infrastructure built out, infrastructure in the broadest sense, the chain itself, things like DeFi, all the rails. Now, it's ready for adoption, it's ready for prime time. The global economy is coming on chain. And we see two different paths how that can play out. One of them with Ethereum at the center.
We think that's better for the world, but that's better for Ethereum. And we think there's a clear shot on goal here, and we intend to take that shot.

**David** (1:24)
Ethlabs is a new R&D lab. The only other R&D lab is the Ethereum Foundation. So now we have two research and development labs for Ethereum.
Talk about that. Is that correct? Maybe there's others that I don't know about, but this is really kind of like the main second research and development arm for the Ethereum project. Is that right?

**Ansgar Dietrichs** (1:46)
Yeah, so we are a new org, and so far a lot of that work, especially up in the pipeline, so more like towards the road mapping, the earlier stages research, a lot of that has been relatively concentrated in Ethereum inside of the Ethereum Foundation.
It's not as binary. There have always been other external orgs that have contributed. I myself started my journey actually at an org called Quilt. That was a minor role, but we really believe that in this moment in time, that that all set up no longer quite works, and actually I think the Ethereum Foundation also believes that, and so now is the opportunity to really start decentralizing that layer of Ethereum as well.

**David** (2:26)
The timing of this is obviously going to be very, very interesting. The EF is talking about downsizing both in the team, the headcount and also the budget of the Ethereum Foundation, and this is being discussed at the same time as the rise and the launch of Ethlabs. Talk about that opportunity for Ethlabs, and also the talent that Ethlabs has. Who is in Ethlabs, who are like the actual team members, and just the shift in the power center of Ethereum and what Ethlabs represents for that.

**Caspar Schwarz-Schilling** (3:02)
The Ethereum Foundation has put out a new mandate at the beginning of this year and has kind of come forward with a lot of clarity in what it intends to work on. And that includes basically reducing its focus to some extent and really double down on crops. So censorship resistance, open source, privacy and security. And that's at the end of the day where we're all here.
These are the core properties that give us credible neutrality. And so naturally by double downing on one core mission and the choice of focusing your attention to that, comes also this reduced focus. And I think I would put those reduced size efforts into connection to that basically. And what this also means is that for the Ethereum ecosystem, that means there's other things that if we care about them, we need to make them happen. And as Ethlabs, we're basically here to see that gap and actually fill that.
And yeah, we think it's a unique moment and we're here to fill it.

**Ansgar Dietrichs** (4:14)
Yeah, and I mean, just because we keep saying it's a unique moment, I think it's actually good to briefly unpack this. I think, really, if you look back, I think you can maybe pinpoint it to maybe two years ago or so. I think when we really, it's of course a transition, but I really think it's probably the single biggest pace change of crypto as a whole, really going from these early years of really figuring out how is this infrastructure even supposed to work?