AJ Warner - Scaling Ethereum and Aligning Incentives with the Chief Strategic Officer of Offchain Labs

In this episode, we are joined by AJ Warner, the Chief Strategic Officer of Offchain Labs, the main contributors to the Arbitrum ecosystem. AJ is a gigabrain chad who joined the Offchain Labs in November 2020 and has been their CSO since January 2022. 

We dive into AJ’s crypto origin story, how he joined Offchain Labs, the technical and ideological differences between Arbitrum and other scaling solutions, how the scaling solution business model works, the biggest blockers in crypto as investors and builders, and so much more.

We share some massive news in this episode as well, announcing that Arbitrum is our presenting sponsor for Season 4 of the Pod! Season Four is officially powered by Arbitrum and our content will be redistributed across Rug Radio and Decrypt’s platforms. 

Andy and I have been massive fans of Arbitrum since they launched, and both of us invested in Offchain Labs Series B back in 2021. This is a full circle moment for us and we couldn’t be happier to partner with Arbitrum for this season.

If you’ve never felt the frictionless transactions at lightning speeds on the world’s most decentralized L2, what are you waiting for?

Head on over to portal.arbitrum.io to check out their growing ecosystem where you can explore 600+ apps and even participate in missions to earn points.

Show Notes
0:00 Intro
2:00 Crypto Origin Story + Joining Offchain Labs
12:25 First Day at Offchain Labs and early days at Arbitrum 
19:15 How is Arbitrum differentiated in the scaling ecosystem? 
27:00 What’s the rationale for having Offchain Labs separate from Arbitrum DAO? 
31:55 How did Arbitrum Nova come to be? (Layer 3s)
42:45 How is this a feasible business? 
46:49 Getting permission to launch an L2 License from the Arbitrum DAO 
51:10 How does the governance of Layer 3s work? 
59:25 Getting stablecoins onto L3s safely and quickly
1:02:30 Superchains vs. Chain Clusters
1:04:30 The Biggest Blocker in Crypto, misaligned incentives towards launching L1/L2s vs. Apps 
1:20:40 What are you excited about over the next few years?
1:35:30 Slowing down sybil attacks on airdrop farming
1:45:50 Coinbase Fees are insane
1:57:20 Donor advised fund alpha
2:05:57 Passions outside of work
2:13:40 How Offchain Labs is building outside of Arbitrum
2:16:20 How many people work for Arbitrum?
2:24:58 What would the title of your autobiography be?


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