Hello!
Restaking? Intersubjectivity? Are those just crypto’s word obsessions, or do they make crypto more efficient and accessible?
In today’s episode, our guest Robert Drost, a veteran of internet evolution from Web1 to Web3, explores these questions in depth. The conversation with Robert reminded me a lot of Richard Feynman’s interview, in which he said that the best way to teach is to have no philosophy or method and to be chaotic.
Robert zooms out to draw parallels between Web2 and Web3 infrastructure development and lays the optimistic case for crypto despite what seems like a phase of infrastructure glut and no real applications. He points out that opaque risks in the traditional financial system, decaying privacy on the internet and the declining moneyness of fiat currencies are the opportunities for Web3.
EigenLayer improves Web3 in two ways
It improves asset utilisation by restaking, and
Intersubjectivity, aka a new governance mechanism that brings subjective social truth at a protocol level.
Think of an Actively Validated Service (AVS) brought about by EigenLayer as cloud services or SaaS, but with more redundancies. A decentralised AI service could use Eigenlayer's AVS to run and update machine learning models. Operators would train the model on distributed datasets, reach consensus on model updates, and provide an API for making predictions. This could enable privacy-preserving AI services that don't rely on centralised providers.
The DAO hack was a critical milestone in Ethereum’s history, in which social consensus prevailed over code. Today, Ethereum is the tribunal that judges all disputes on its L2s, adding extra overheads. Eigenlayer has a framework that codifies specific what-if scenarios that allow social consensus to override on-chain transaction ordering. Central to this intersubjective governance model is the EIGEN token, empowering holders to vote on crucial proposals, including those that can supersede on-chain consensus when necessary.
Tune in to our latest episode for some deep insights on the evolution of internet infrastructure, the potential of restaking to revolutionise blockchain economics, and why intersubjectivity might be the key to genuinely decentralised governance.
I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did,
Saurabh Deshpande
Ep 15 - What intersubjectivity is, the future and risks of AVS's with Robert Drost head of EigenLayer Foundation