Unlayered Combining Ethereum's Reach and Solana's Speed, Eclipse w/ Neel Somani
Neel Somani is the Founder & CEO of Eclipse and has an ambitious vision to build Ethereum’s fastest Layer 2 blockchain by tapping into Solana’s Virtual Machine (SVM) as the execution environment. We start our discussion by deconstructing the landscape of L2s in order to better understand where Eclipse fits in and why Neel views Eclipse’s approach as preferable. We also dig into Neel’s conscious design decision to tap into ETH’s massive network effects while simultaneously leveraging Solana’s high-throughput execution environment. Eclipse’s unique position amongst L2s may ultimately prove to be mutually beneficial to both the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems, and we unpack why that may be the case throughout the interview.
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Time Stamps
0:00 - How did you get to this point
3:21 - Who are Eclipse’s stakeholders
8:37 - Comparison to OP Stack
14:03 - Rollup fundamentals
19:29 - Tradeoffs from losing EVM comparability
22:22 - Key unlock of local fee markets
24:21 - Eclipse positioning across ecosystems
27:14 - Can Eth retain network effects
30:51 - Does Eclipse destroy Eth’s value accrual
33:40 - Would Eclipse ever turn away from Eth
34:50 - Do L2s need tokens
36:42 - Go-To-Market strategy
39:44 - Do L2s need to decentralise their sequencers
43:10 - Who wins the L1 wars
46:40 - How will people use crypto products
49:20 - Which verticals are most bullish
53:32 - Crypto and AI
55:49 - Eclipse roadmap
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Podcast Resources
Follow Sal: https://twitter.com/Sal_The_Bull
Follow Dave: https://twitter.com/SolBeachBum
Follow Unlayered: https://twitter.com/UnlayeredPod
Subscribe on Spotify, Apple, or Google: https://unlayered.io/
Clips on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UnlayeredPod
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Episode Resources
Follow Neel : https://twitter.com/NeelSalami
Follow Eclipse : https://twitter.com/EclipseFND
Eclipse website : https://eclipse.builders
Eclipse blog : https://mirror.xyz/eclipsemainnet.eth
Neel’s personal blog : https://www.neelsomani.com/blog/