AVAX's Emin Gun Sirer Says Blockchains Should be Scalable at Their Core; Layer 2s Mean Giving Up

When Emin Gun Sirer first came on The Defiant in May 2020, Avalanche was not even on mainnet yet. Since then, it has risen to become one of the leading smart contract networks, while the AVAX token has risen over 7x in the last 12 months. We talk about how the project got here and how it wants to create a path for faster and more scalable decentralized network, amid heavy competition from other Layer 1 blockchains.

Emin makes the case for Avalache’s novel consensus mechanism, paired with subnets with their own virtual machines, and he also has scathing criticism for Ethereum and other Layer 2 scaling solutions. To him, once a platform starts building Layer 2s, it means they’ve run out of ideas on how to make a good Layer 1. We also discuss the big picture goal for Avalanche; Bitcoin centers around digital gold, Ethereum strives to create the world computer, and Avalanche wants to digitize all assets. If it’s on a balance sheet, Emin says, it can be on a blockchain, and we discuss what it will take for it to get there.