Vitalik Buterin on The Economic Zone (EEZ) Ep. 642

**Friederike Ernst** (0:00)
The term Ethereum Economic Zone obviously kind of does a lot of the heavy lifting here. But what makes the EEC in your head? What's it take?

**Vitalik Buterin** (0:08)
I think for me, the core, right, is an effort to rethink, you know, what we are to is R. You get more integration and, you know, you get more power at the same time and like at lower cost, right? So it's something that should be a win-win for everyone.

**Friederike Ernst** (0:23)
The fact that we can now allow all of these chains to kind of use Ethereum as the ultimate economic operating system for the Internet, I think that to me is the most exciting fact here. This is not far off in principle. This is a very bounded project.

**Sebastien Couture** (0:45)
Welcome to Epicenter, the show which talks about the technologies, projects and people driving decentralization and the blockchain revolution. I'm Sebastien Couture and I'm here with my co-host, Friederike Ernst. Today, we have a pretty special episode. We'll be diving into EEZ or Ethereum Economic Zone.
It's a new vision for how to scale Ethereum and bring forth a vision that to me, kind of looks like the app chain vision for Ethereum, but tightly coupled with Ethereum network in a way that chains can use Ethereum as an interoperability and proving layer. We're going to get into all the details of that. But first, here's a word from our sponsors this week. This episode is brought to you by Lido. As Ethereum staking continues to evolve, more teams building staking products are running into a familiar challenge. On one hand, pooled liquid staking gives you liquidity and access to DeFi, but can limit customization. And on the other, bespoke staking setups offer more control over things like pricing, performance and operator selection, but they often come with added complexity and less flexibility. Lido V3 is changing that with ST Vaults. ST Vaults is Modular Staking Infrastructure. It lets builders and institutions deploy custom staking vaults tailored to their specific needs. At the same time, they're staying connected to ST ETH as a shared liquidity layer powering Ethereum's broader DeFi ecosystem.
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**Friederike Ernst** (2:29)
I'm good. I'm good. Almost recovered from Berlin Blockchain Week Classic.

**Sebastien Couture** (2:33)
Yeah. Berlin Blockchain Week is great. As always, it's always great to be in Berlin and see the more cypher-punky side of the space. I feel like in today's crypto world, there's a lot of suits and less and less hoodies, but definitely Berlin remains a place where the blockchain hoodies are hanging out.
This episode is actually going to be in two parts. First, we're going to play a fireside chat that you did at Dapcon with Vitalik, where you went into detail about his vision for EZ and what he would like to see built in this new paradigm of Ethereum. Then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about it, and we're going to give you details of what EZ is, and what's the vision, and who it benefits, and how it works technically. So by the magic of editing, let's go to your fireside with Vitalik.

**Friederike Ernst** (3:28)
Fantastic Vitalik. Thank you for being here today. This is the last talk in an EZ-themed block. So I'll ask you for your take on-

**Vitalik Buterin** (3:38)
So the next talk will be in a hard block.

**Friederike Ernst** (3:40)
Yeah, actually, it's okay, kind of medium first and then hard. So kind of like-

**Vitalik Buterin** (3:43)
I see, okay.

**Friederike Ernst** (3:44)
We're still cutting it on the easy side.

**Vitalik Buterin** (3:45)
I see. So we're going to do like a tutorial of like circle starts after this.

**Friederike Ernst** (3:49)
Yeah, absolutely. We already heard Martin's and Jordi's and Philip's take of the EZ. So kind of the term Ethereum Economic Zone obviously kind of does a lot of the heavy lifting here, but kind of what makes the EZ in your head? Is it primarily kind of like an economic thing and kind of like a single market kind of sense or is it kind of like an economic operating system? What's your take?

**Vitalik Buterin** (4:17)
Yeah, I mean, I think for me the core, right, is basically it's an effort to rethink what layer 2s are, in a way that kind of both gets a lot more of the benefits, and at the same time less of the drawbacks of all of the approaches that we've tried so far, right? And to make something, which is much, much more integrated into Ethereum, and so it's not just basically a separate, you know, EVM chain where, like, it can be difficult to, like, see, you know, like, the connection beyond the branding level, right? And it's, like, actually very deeply integrated in a way that's, like, very visible to users and developers, and at the same time, to, like, actually get benefits from that integration, right? And, like, to me, the benefit of being in a, benefits of being in L2 has always been, you know, the tight integration with the Ethereum market and the Ethereum user base, and also the facts that you don't have to be responsible for a lot of your own infrastructure, right? Like, you don't have to be responsible for having your own set of nodes to the same level. I mean, if you have a base to roll up, you don't even need your own nodes. Basically, your infrastructure load on every level is just much, much lighter, right?