Hey there
Some quick updates.
We joined the investment rounds for Bonsai and Mezo last week. More on our reasoning behind those investments in the weeks to come.
And, if you are in Dubai next week for Token2049, fill out this form if you are a founder looking to work with Decentralised.co. Joel and Sid are in town.
Alright, back to the podcast. On Monday, we were joined by Sunny Aggarwal from Osmosis labs. Some of our readers may recognise the name, but here’s a quick introduction for those unaware. He started the Blockchain at Berkely initiative in 2016 and was part of the early team at Cosmos. He has been an advisor to Akash Network over the past few years. Sunny and I had a fairly technical discussion on all things L2s, memes, and the Internet of Trust.
For those in a rush, this is what we discuss in today’s episode.
Why will there be many appchains, and how are we solving for interoperability?
Memecoin fatigue?
Tokens and governance
Restaking vs Mesh Security
Why and how is Osmosis labs going mobile?
And, here are the links for iTunes and Spotify
Few career arcs in crypto have likely been as steep as Sunny's. During his early days in the industry, he used to teach concepts in blockchains so he could better understand the technology. That led to an early involvement in Cosmos. During our conversation, he explained why he thinks ATOM has been somewhat of an underperformer whilst laying the case for what a world with hundreds of app chains could look like.
Sunny has some hard stances on a few things. For one, he believes that only a few memecoins have longevity and activity on the memecoins side is likely to gradually fade away. He also thinks some of the centralisation trade-offs on Solana partly fueled its meteoric rise over the past few months. Sunny shares the case for the reasoning behind his stance in our conversation.
Sunny thinks we will likely witness an explosive growth of appchains in the months to come. An obvious question is - do all apps need their chains? He explains why some of the leading applications may prefer dedicated infrastructure because the user experience dictates it. A corollary to the L2 or appchain thesis is the need to connect them via smooth bridges. This is where the Osmosis labs team has been building.
A key learning for me through this chat was how Sunny and the team navigated their product based on the market feedback. He mentioned that privacy alone can’t be the product and people don’t want to pay for it. During its infancy, Osmosis was supposed to be a privacy-focused trading solution. However, when the product was being built, the market had a stronger demand for a decentralised exchange.
In a beautiful instance of "build for what the market wants" - the crew decided to focus on the decentralised exchange part of the equation. As I write these words, Osmosis has over $200 million in TVL. A sign that they have meaningful traction. Osmosis labs is now building towards a future where DEX traders have the privacy they need for on-chain transactions.
The episode is a treat for anyone building in Web3. Sunny shares insights from his abundance of experience, having seen the industry through multiple cycles, a fair amount of drama at cosmos and the rapid rise of Osmosis labs.
Stream the episode from Substack, or stream via iTunes and Spotify.
Have a fun weekend
Saurabh
Podcast Episode : Sunny from Osmosis