One day last year I was debating with a dear friend– who’s a bit of an ethereum maxi– about Ethereum vs other L1s.

He said, “Once Eth L2 rollups are up and running, cost and speed advantages of other L1s won’t exist anymore.”

I said, “I’m bullish on Eth L2s as well. But nothing’s stopping other L1s to also have rollups. You can have layer 2s on, say, Solana!”

Honestly though, I didn’t expect L2 for Solana to be happening, at least not soon. But web3 moves at warp speed– Solana L2 is a real thing now.

In this episode of Tascha Labs podcast I talk with Kevin Lim, founder of Nitro Labs, who’s building the first Solana virtual machine (SVM) scaling solution in Cosmos.

This conversation happened at an interesting time though– right after the FTX collapse which created something of an existential crisis for Solana. So I was keen to get Kevin’s take on the situation, even though I had my prior assumptions (https://taschalabs.com/my-top-3-l1-l2-investment-themes-for-the-beginning-of-next-cycle/).

Are we both biased? Yes. Though as always, you should be happy that there are people who bias in a different direction than you. At the end of day, that’s what makes a market possible.

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro1:50 - Kevin's background & what is Nitro3:24 - What is Solana VM (SVM)5:54 - How is SVM better than EVM8:59 - Having better tps with SVM12:45 - Why choose Cosmos instead of Ethereum20:57 - The equivalent of javascript in web 322:46 - Validating the idea of creating Nitro24:44 - Who else is on the Nitro team25:43 - How far along is Nitro in terms of development27:07 - How does the Nitro launch campaign work28:20 - Incentives for builders on Nitro29:43 - Numbers of projects launched at the moment30:21 - What types of projects are interested in Nitro32:51 - Using a separate bridging solution to move assets34:18 - Competitors of Nitro 36:38 - Why is Nitro focusing on building general purpose chain instead of app-specific chain44:33 - Thoughts on challenges faced by Solana ecosystem47:44 - Thoughts on funding and investment for the Solana ecosystem50:47 - Funding for Nitro 52:00 - Kevin's prior entrepreneurship experience54:01 - Major lessons learned being an entrepreneur

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