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While You Build Casinos, We Build Real Finance | LayerZero, co-founders

EO25:15Added Aug 31, 2026

From poker player to breaking blockchain's impossible trilemma—this is the story of LayerZero. Bryan Pellegrino and Ryan Zarick were nobodies with zero pedig...

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Contributed by 刘嘉琪

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  1. Intro

  2. 00:00In order to truly change things, in
  3. 00:03order to build something great, you must
  4. 00:05have conviction. A college dropout poker
  5. 00:08player. I didn't go to Harvard or MIT. I
  6. 00:11didn't go to, you know, amazing school.
  7. 00:12I didn't have any connections.
  8. 00:14We were nobodyies. And so I always
  9. 00:16wanted to prove that we could do
  10. 00:19impossible things. You can't do this.
  11. 00:21Nobody can. When I hear that, uh, that's
  12. 00:23all I want to work on.
  13. 00:24Reset everything. Think completely from
  14. 00:26first principles. How can I break it?
  15. 00:28How can I break it? And that the why
  16. 00:30matters more than anything. Why are we
  17. 00:32here? Why why do we get up in the
  18. 00:34morning
  19. 00:34in the shower when you're going to bed
  20. 00:36at night, when you wake up in the middle
  21. 00:37of the night, you have an idea is just
  22. 00:38like it's just a pure obsession.
  23. 00:40Can we have high performance and maximum
  24. 00:43decentralization? It's the holy grail.
  25. 00:45The impossible thing, an impossible
  26. 00:47problem. My favorite.
  27. 00:49What started as an idea now is a
  28. 00:51reality. We were the first company ever
  29. 00:53in history to have both Andre Horwitz
  30. 00:55and Sequoia both co-lead around.
  31. 00:57Vitalic said that trial was broken. He
  32. 00:59means theoretically it's broken, but we
  33. 01:01actually broke it. There were no more
  34. 01:03bottlenecks.
  35. 01:04I'm Brian Pelgro, co-founder and CEO of
  36. 01:07Layer Zero Labs.
  37. 01:08I'm Raz, co-founder and CTO of Layer
  38. 01:10Zero. Zero is the last blockchain
  39. 01:13that'll ever be built.

  40. Two Outsiders, One Impossible Bet

  41. 01:23I woke up one morning, April 15th, and I
  42. 01:25sat down at my computer and there's a
  43. 01:27big seal of the Department of Justice,
  44. 01:30the DOJ, on the website. And what had
  45. 01:32happened was overnight they had banned
  46. 01:34all online poker within the United
  47. 01:36States.
  48. 01:38All of the websites are down. You can no
  49. 01:41longer play online poker in the United
  50. 01:42States. All of the payment processors
  51. 01:44are down. So, you can no longer move
  52. 01:46money between or do anything. And it was
  53. 01:48just like overnight like that the
  54. 01:49industry was just gone. And I think
  55. 01:51those were the first times where you
  56. 01:52said okay you saw the reach of of sort
  57. 01:55of policy and government sort of
  58. 01:57impacting you in your real life. When
  59. 01:59you're a kid you don't think about it
  60. 02:00too much. When you're a young adult you
  61. 02:02don't think about it but there's the
  62. 02:02first time of I need to literally move
  63. 02:05where I live to my entire life and it's
  64. 02:08sort of career just got taken away from
  65. 02:10me. Uh, and so I think that really
  66. 02:11grounded me early on in kind of like the
  67. 02:14libertarian ethos of crypto and having
  68. 02:16something that uh was bigger than a
  69. 02:18single jurisdiction, was bigger than a
  70. 02:20current like given regulatory regime uh
  71. 02:23had the ability to become something
  72. 02:24more.
  73. 02:26For the first 24 hours, I just spent
  74. 02:29feeling sorry for myself, which I think
  75. 02:31is like a kind of natural reaction.
  76. 02:33You're just like, "Oh man, my my career
  77. 02:35is over. All my money is gone." Like,
  78. 02:37you know, you don't really know what to
  79. 02:38do. But then immediately after that,
  80. 02:40like the next day, I woke up and I was
  81. 02:43just very I saw that the world was
  82. 02:45changing very quickly. And so, one thing
  83. 02:47that I noticed was that all of the main
  84. 02:50poker sites were now gone, but there's a
  85. 02:52bunch of smaller kind of shady poker
  86. 02:54sites that still existed and that
  87. 02:56everybody was going to go and sign up on
  88. 02:58those because they needed to continue to
  89. 03:00make a living. And I knew all of the
  90. 03:02highest stakes poker players in the
  91. 03:04world. So, I created an affiliate and I
  92. 03:06signed up all of my friends to all of
  93. 03:08these sites. I found them the best deals
  94. 03:09and I negotiated these things and it
  95. 03:12went from me making, you know, no money
  96. 03:14to me making like 20 $30,000 a month
  97. 03:17within a couple of weeks, right? And so,
  98. 03:19very quickly I saw that a changing
  99. 03:22reshuffle of a landscape created an
  100. 03:25opportunity and then that really drew me
  101. 03:28to entrepreneurship in general. I think
  102. 03:29that was the first real catalyst.
  103. 03:32I grew up in a town of 900 people,
  104. 03:35right? Like very very small village, not
  105. 03:37a lot of opportunity, not a lot of
  106. 03:39anything. And so I really valued for
  107. 03:42most of my life a meritocratic
  108. 03:44environment. I didn't go to Harvard or
  109. 03:46MIT. I didn't go to, you know, amazing
  110. 03:48school. I didn't have any connections. I
  111. 03:50was a poker player who dropped out of
  112. 03:52college, right? And so what I really
  113. 03:53valued was the ability to to just do
  114. 03:56something where I could earn my own way
  115. 04:00or like prove my own value over time. So
  116. 04:02poker was a perfect example of this.
  117. 04:03Poker is purely meritocratic. It doesn't
  118. 04:05matter anything about you. It's just
  119. 04:07you're smarter or better at the game or
  120. 04:09you're not. Like that's it. It was very
  121. 04:10very linear. Those are just the systems
  122. 04:12and environments that I valued. And so
  123. 04:14that was one of the things I was very
  124. 04:15drawn to in crypto. I didn't need to
  125. 04:17know the banking executives. I didn't
  126. 04:19need to have an uncle who worked at
  127. 04:21Goldman Sachs. All I needed to do was be
  128. 04:24able to build something that was more
  129. 04:26useful to the world that actually had a
  130. 04:28higher degree of utility. It was just
  131. 04:29build the best possible system that you
  132. 04:32can build and permissionless open access
  133. 04:34to anybody. Just build the best thing.
  134. 04:37You know, I've been building with Brian
  135. 04:38since we're in school together. And
  136. 04:40nobody would give us money cuz we were
  137. 04:42nobodyies and we didn't come from a
  138. 04:44great pedigree and we didn't have a
  139. 04:45great school. And so I always wanted to
  140. 04:48prove that we could do impossible
  141. 04:50things, great things. And so I'm always
  142. 04:52chasing is when someone says something's
  143. 04:54not possible, right? This is not
  144. 04:56technically possible. this uh you you
  145. 04:58can't do this, nobody can. When I hear
  146. 05:00that, uh that's all I want to work on.
  147. 05:03And Brian was like uh our hero, like my
  148. 05:05hero, our like the older grade's heroes.
  149. 05:07He's a genius to everybody. And so I
  150. 05:09always looked at the Brian and I wanted
  151. 05:11to be like him. I didn't know we were
  152. 05:13going to do that uh to be be working
  153. 05:15together basically our whole lives, the
  154. 05:17rest of our lives. So two things
  155. 05:18happened through the crypto side. All of
  156. 05:20poker, all the shady sites that
  157. 05:21remained, the only way to deposit
  158. 05:23because PayPal, Money Bookers,
  159. 05:25Netteller, Skril, they were all shut
  160. 05:27down, but Bitcoin was the way that you
  161. 05:29would deposit to these sites. So,
  162. 05:31everybody in poker who was in the United
  163. 05:33States in 2011 era found Bitcoin.
  164. 05:35Everybody used it as a way to deposit
  165. 05:37between. So, it was the first real
  166. 05:39product market fit. And then on the
  167. 05:40entrepreneurship side, I'd got really
  168. 05:42interested by this affiliate idea. And
  169. 05:44that created a a doorway for a new
  170. 05:47industry which was called daily fantasy
  171. 05:49sport. Sort of a faster version of that.
  172. 05:51I went to them and said, "Can I just
  173. 05:53work for free? Like just let me do some
  174. 05:55affiliate stuff. I want to learn uh let
  175. 05:57me just, you know, see how it is." And
  176. 05:58they said, "Sure, great." And then the
  177. 06:00sort of board of the company said, "Hey,
  178. 06:01we actually want you to become CEO a
  179. 06:03couple months and run the company." But
  180. 06:04I actually took my two co-founders here
  181. 06:06that I started layer zero with and I
  182. 06:08brought them in and we grew to being
  183. 06:09third overall in revenue. So we were
  184. 06:11just turning profitable. We were just
  185. 06:13doing this and then we got an
  186. 06:14acquisition offer and we sold it. It was
  187. 06:16a hard time like in our lives like that
  188. 06:18was a hard the first time we felt like
  189. 06:20real hardship. Year and a half maybe 2
  190. 06:22years of zero income and me working
  191. 06:2480our weeks. Uh, every day I was on
  192. 06:27because it was just us maintaining a
  193. 06:28site that had, you know, tens of
  194. 06:30thousands of users with real money
  195. 06:32playing on our site and us taking every
  196. 06:34dollar we made. We were making money and
  197. 06:36reinvesting into the business,
  198. 06:37reinvesting in the servers, reinvesting.
  199. 06:38My biggest learning, the biggest
  200. 06:41takeaway was like I worked very hard
  201. 06:42with Brian on it. Brian doesn't really
  202. 06:44give up and I don't and my my whole life
  203. 06:46my father pushed me like never give up
  204. 06:48on things. And it was the first time
  205. 06:50where I I I felt like uh, you know,
  206. 06:53wasn't going anywhere. We were out of
  207. 06:55money. I was paying money out of pocket
  208. 06:57at this point from my wife's salary to
  209. 06:59like keep things alive with Brian. So
  210. 07:01was Brian and we had an offer and it
  211. 07:04wasn't a great offer and Brian said we
  212. 07:06shouldn't I don't think we should take
  213. 07:07it. And I said I have to take it. We
  214. 07:09have to take it. I just need to tap out
  215. 07:10at this point. Like I I can't do it.
  216. 07:12That was the first time I ever tapped
  217. 07:13out. Ryan actually came back to me later
  218. 07:15and said like, I really really believe
  219. 07:19that we can build something incredible
  220. 07:21and I promise you the next time that we
  221. 07:23do something, I will run my life into
  222. 07:25the ground. You know, I'll I'll I'll go
  223. 07:27all the way to maximum suffering and
  224. 07:29everything uh and we won't kind of give
  225. 07:31up early. And we said, okay, like we'll
  226. 07:33do that. And then Ethereum sort of was
  227. 07:36launching at the same time. Ethereum was
  228. 07:38this great layer that you could trust
  229. 07:41and you could build value upon, but it
  230. 07:42was slow and you could never build
  231. 07:44complex applications. It was really the
  232. 07:46spark of well now you can build
  233. 07:48something really interesting. We saw
  234. 07:50that need very early on of of course you
  235. 07:52have to be able to move back and forth.
  236. 07:55You write the code and you'd host it on
  237. 07:57a server. Maybe the server was in my
  238. 07:59house or maybe it was in a data center
  239. 08:00but it was just like one computer and if
  240. 08:02the computer went down like the website
  241. 08:04your application was offline you know so
  242. 08:05you had to make sure that computer was
  243. 08:08online and everything but now when you
  244. 08:10build an application you have a million
  245. 08:12microservices you have databases things
  246. 08:14that are optimized for throughput for
  247. 08:16speed for every different component and
  248. 08:19we saw blockchains will really start to
  249. 08:21leverage that you'll have layers that
  250. 08:23are really optimized for storage layers
  251. 08:25that are really optimized for throughput
  252. 08:27and for high amount bunch of
  253. 08:28transactions layer that are extremely
  254. 08:29security focused and there was a way to
  255. 08:32connect those all together to create
  256. 08:33something that was sort of more valuable
  257. 08:35than the sum of the parts. So I I called
  258. 08:38Ryan and I said like I know you said the
  259. 08:41next time we did something we would like
  260. 08:43really do it. I I was like, I think now
  261. 08:45is the time. And I called him two days
  262. 08:47after Christmas. And within 10 days, he
  263. 08:50had sold his house, packed up his life,
  264. 08:52taken his four-month old daughter, and
  265. 08:54flown across the world to come in
  266. 08:56Vancouver and be in Vancouver with me.
  267. 08:58I want to I want to get the band back
  268. 09:00together and just start building again.
  269. 09:01I don't think we can do this remote. And
  270. 09:03I said, I'll be there in 2 weeks. And I
  271. 09:05never moved back. My daughter didn't
  272. 09:06sleep well and she would be up all the
  273. 09:09time. Uh it was actually like the worst
  274. 09:10time to to go and take a shot and do
  275. 09:12these things. That's where I learned
  276. 09:14GPU. Every morning at I would strap my
  277. 09:17daughter in uh to these straps and I'd
  278. 09:19walk around Brian's downstairs living
  279. 09:21room. I would read the docs and
  280. 09:24everything about that Nvidia had on how
  281. 09:26to GPU program, read textbooks without
  282. 09:29doing the work cuz I couldn't I didn't
  283. 09:31have a computer. So I was just do it in
  284. 09:33my head from 2:00 in the morning to 7:00
  285. 09:34in the morning every single day for 6
  286. 09:37months. And then I sat down and just
  287. 09:40started coding GPU. It was the worst
  288. 09:42time to go, which is the best time for
  289. 09:43me. Finances, stress, um, time, and, uh,
  290. 09:48that's that's when like I have to hit my
  291. 09:50shot.
  292. 09:51The first thing that happened that had
  293. 09:52been really interesting since smart
  294. 09:54contracts was you started to hear
  295. 09:56Binance Smart Chain, more volume than
  296. 09:58Ethereum, more users than Ethereum. It
  297. 10:00was very strange. Uh, there was a bunch
  298. 10:02of other things that had launched, but
  299. 10:04nobody really used them. What could you
  300. 10:05build with that? Can you build something
  301. 10:06that leverages the speed here and then
  302. 10:09brings it back to the security over
  303. 10:10here. We started to build this. We built
  304. 10:12some toy examples and then only then did
  305. 10:14we realize that everything we were
  306. 10:16building you couldn't send a message
  307. 10:18between the two networks. You couldn't
  308. 10:20go between Binance Smart Chain and
  309. 10:22Ethereum. And so we started to build
  310. 10:23kind of a better form of a bridge. And
  311. 10:25then we very quickly realized, hey, this
  312. 10:27is this is really the problem is
  313. 10:29connecting these things. And that became
  314. 10:30that became layer zero. That was us
  315. 10:32solving our own problem. It was us
  316. 10:34building examples. But all of this stuff
  317. 10:36that we had done prior brought us to
  318. 10:38that. You know, what started as an idea
  319. 10:40now is a reality. And now we're sort of
  320. 10:42on the precipice of like really
  321. 10:44meaningfully changing a large part of
  322. 10:47the financial system. November we did $
  323. 10:4938 billion. $38 billion is 5.5 times
  324. 10:53what Western Union does in a month. And
  325. 10:55that is just like crazy to think about
  326. 10:57because you can really change how some
  327. 10:59of this works.
  328. 11:00That's what drives me is solving hard
  329. 11:01problems. And I want to solve a hard
  330. 11:03problem that helps people. And it's not
  331. 11:05about how much money you make, but like
  332. 11:07how much better you can make their lives
  333. 11:09overall, enriching others lives.
  334. 11:11It's very easy to forget growing up in a
  335. 11:14country that was stable and wealthy.
  336. 11:17There's a lot of places that don't have
  337. 11:19any access to any sort of financial
  338. 11:21infrastructure. And even the banks and
  339. 11:23the financial institutions aren't
  340. 11:24trustworthy, right? They'll scam you.
  341. 11:26They'll charge egregious rates. They'll
  342. 11:28go under. There's fraud. Early on, what
  343. 11:30resonated about Bitcoin was that nobody
  344. 11:33could come and just seize your money.
  345. 11:35Nobody could come and do these things.
  346. 11:36You had ownership and control. I think
  347. 11:39Tether is the best possible example of
  348. 11:41this where most companies really try to
  349. 11:44focus on a certain geography. So, you're
  350. 11:47going to be Stripe and you're going to
  351. 11:48be in the United States and you're going
  352. 11:49to service institutions and developers
  353. 11:51there and then you're going to expand
  354. 11:52and you're going to expand. and Tether
  355. 11:54went and they said, "We're going to
  356. 11:56offer access to the US dollar to all the
  357. 11:58places that don't have easy access." So,
  358. 12:01Egypt and Nigeria and Argentina and
  359. 12:03places where their currency is inflating
  360. 12:05at hundreds of percent a year. The
  361. 12:07institutions aren't trusted and the
  362. 12:09central banks aren't trusted and they
  363. 12:11really made arguably one of the best
  364. 12:13businesses in the entire world out of
  365. 12:14that, right? Hundreds of billions of
  366. 12:16dollars of assets, 15th largest holder
  367. 12:19of sovereign debt in the world. And all
  368. 12:21of that was just by giving the average
  369. 12:24person just access to the dollar. And I
  370. 12:26think that is uh as powerful a change as
  371. 12:28the world is going to see in a really
  372. 12:29long time.

  373. Build the World's Last Blockchain- Cracking the Trilemma

  374. 12:33A long time ago, the internet wasn't the
  375. 12:36internet. It was just groups of
  376. 12:37computers. And you would have a group at
  377. 12:39Stanford and a group at DARPA. And they
  378. 12:41each ran in their own cluster, but I
  379. 12:43couldn't talk to each other. And so if I
  380. 12:45had some data or something, I would have
  381. 12:48to take my disk of data, fly to
  382. 12:50Stanford, plug it in, run it on their
  383. 12:52program, and then I would fly back with
  384. 12:54the results. And then we invented the
  385. 12:55internet. And the internet gave us
  386. 12:57connectivity between all of these
  387. 12:59things, global connectivity. If you go
  388. 13:02back to the beginning of blockchains,
  389. 13:04what existed, it was exactly like that.
  390. 13:06You have Ethereum, you have Salana, you
  391. 13:08have different environments. None of
  392. 13:09them could talk to each other. There was
  393. 13:11no way to take your money from here to
  394. 13:13there. There's no way to communicate
  395. 13:15between an application. So all that
  396. 13:17layers did was exactly like the
  397. 13:19internet. It just connected these
  398. 13:21environment. Strange and foreign
  399. 13:23concepts early on. This was, you know,
  400. 13:24felt like fantasy land craziness. But
  401. 13:27now 15 years later, every major
  402. 13:29institution in the world is figuring out
  403. 13:31how do we actually leverage this? And
  404. 13:33there's more and more conviction. And
  405. 13:34Larry Frink just stood up at the World
  406. 13:36Economic Forum in Davos and said
  407. 13:38institutions are not trusted anymore by
  408. 13:40the average person. And so like what
  409. 13:42does a world look like where there is
  410. 13:43not trust in the existing institutions?
  411. 13:45What it looks like is a world where you
  412. 13:47don't have to trust and again is open to
  413. 13:49anybody. And so that's incredibly
  414. 13:51important for us and again I think the
  415. 13:53only true thing of value within the
  416. 13:55space.
  417. 13:56There's it's essentially a series of
  418. 13:57trade-offs and a trauma. You can choose
  419. 13:59two of the trade-offs but you lose one
  420. 14:00of them. You live somewhere in this
  421. 14:02triangle. Every blockchain has to do the
  422. 14:04same thing. They're all in a network and
  423. 14:07they're all communicating with each
  424. 14:08other. And what is a block? It's a
  425. 14:09series of transactions like so I'm going
  426. 14:11to transfer money to from from myself to
  427. 14:13my friend Bill and Bill's friend
  428. 14:15transferring money to somebody else or
  429. 14:16performing this transaction. And they're
  430. 14:18a series of transactions. Every single
  431. 14:20validator or participant in the network
  432. 14:22has downloaded executed. So they ran it
  433. 14:25and agreed on the outcome and then come
  434. 14:27to consensus with each other. And all
  435. 14:28they need to say we all agree on this.
  436. 14:29This is the new block. We all agreed to
  437. 14:31this thing. Now, since everybody's
  438. 14:33taking turns doing this, they all need
  439. 14:35to have the same hardware. You know, the
  440. 14:36bigger the block, the more pipe they
  441. 14:38need, more network communication. And
  442. 14:40so, the trilmma really boils down to
  443. 14:43higher TPS, the faster I want my
  444. 14:45blockchain to be, the bigger the device.
  445. 14:47And the bigger the device means the less
  446. 14:48people who could run it cuz it's more
  447. 14:50expensive. It's less accessible. So, if
  448. 14:52you want somebody in a third world
  449. 14:54country participating and helping
  450. 14:55decentralize the network, um they can't
  451. 14:58if it's a, you know, $40,000 a month
  452. 15:00server that you have to pay through AWS,
  453. 15:02uh that's why Ethereum has chosen, hey,
  454. 15:04we want maximum decentralization. And
  455. 15:06so, they're giving up on performance.
  456. 15:07Salana wants higher performance. So,
  457. 15:09they're giving up on maximum
  458. 15:10decentralization. And this the the
  459. 15:12requirements to participate is you need
  460. 15:13to stake a lot. You need to have a big
  461. 15:15beefy machine. It eliminates that that
  462. 15:17uh ability to have that maximum
  463. 15:19decentralization. and and the more
  464. 15:20performant you go, the less
  465. 15:22decentralized it becomes. But nobody
  466. 15:24could get the best of both worlds. How
  467. 15:26do you have something that's really fast
  468. 15:29and high performant and you could build
  469. 15:30like the actual internet and like
  470. 15:32applications on internet on and like all
  471. 15:34financial rails like uh New York Stock
  472. 15:35Exchange, 2 million TPS, you're never
  473. 15:36going to get that even on a Salana. How
  474. 15:38do you achieve that and still be
  475. 15:39decentralized? Uh it's the holy grail,
  476. 15:42the impossible thing, an impossible
  477. 15:44problem. My favorite.
  478. 15:46What we needed was a spark. Our Wild
  479. 15:49West is full of stories of freedom, of
  480. 15:53ghosts, of riches, of possibility.
  481. 15:57Consider for a moment that maybe at last
  482. 16:00those stories might be true. What if the
  483. 16:02inevitable was finally here? The
  484. 16:05building done, the rails laid. What
  485. 16:07would you do if you saw it with your own
  486. 16:09eyes? Ethereum couldn't scale fast
  487. 16:12enough. And they said, "These layer
  488. 16:15twos, they inherit our security. go
  489. 16:18build there. That's how we scale. When
  490. 16:20they said that, I call that a noble lie.
  491. 16:23A noble lie saying that you know, you
  492. 16:24know, we care about these principles. We
  493. 16:25can't scale yet, so we need to lie to
  494. 16:27you, so you stay. And then we'll
  495. 16:29hopefully find a way to scale in the
  496. 16:30future. That lie struck a nerve with me
  497. 16:33and made me feel like no one is left to
  498. 16:35do this thing. It'll all for nothing.
  499. 16:37This experiment will die. We'll just
  500. 16:39have a more redundant financial system,
  501. 16:41but not a freer one. But it felt like
  502. 16:43the last samurai putting their sword
  503. 16:45down and saying, "This cause is over." I
  504. 16:47felt like I had to pick it up. I felt
  505. 16:49like I had to do it because I thought no
  506. 16:50one else would.
  507. 16:51I don't care to build a technology that
  508. 16:54makes a bunch of money early on but then
  509. 16:55never gets used. Like we want to build a
  510. 16:57technology that is used everywhere that
  511. 16:59is a bit ubiquitous that is adopted
  512. 17:01universally. So it's really a question
  513. 17:03of can we win. My favorite example of
  514. 17:06this is like Demis from Deep Mind is
  515. 17:08like my all-time just personal hero of
  516. 17:10like even from like he's never changed
  517. 17:12his story in like 20 years and the
  518. 17:14industry like blew up in 2014 and then
  519. 17:17it died and then it came back and he's
  520. 17:19like the whole time been like pretty
  521. 17:20intellectually honest of like here is
  522. 17:22what is useful, here is what is not.
  523. 17:24Like we're really focused on like
  524. 17:25protein folding and like solving real
  525. 17:27problems and he's just never wavered and
  526. 17:29he stayed at the very top of the field
  527. 17:31throughout the entire time. And I just
  528. 17:32think that kind of person is just like
  529. 17:35inspirational. Like 10 out of 10, you
  530. 17:37want to bet on them every single time.
  531. 17:39There's been so many times even
  532. 17:41internally where it's so easy to say,
  533. 17:43"Let's let's compromise our principles
  534. 17:45so we win." This corner a little bit,
  535. 17:47just this one time. We get tested all
  536. 17:50the time on how we build or decisions we
  537. 17:52make. Canada certainly showed that to us
  538. 17:54here in this country that I live in.
  539. 17:57When if you donated to the trucker
  540. 17:59cause, you should be outraged at the
  541. 18:01fact that donating to a cause that they
  542. 18:03didn't like, they seized your bank
  543. 18:05accounts and turned off money you worked
  544. 18:07for, you earned. I don't need more
  545. 18:09money. I don't I want impact. I want to
  546. 18:12I want a certain outcome for the world.
  547. 18:14Forget anything in the short term. What
  548. 18:16does the world look like 5 years from
  549. 18:19now, 10 years from now? How is the world
  550. 18:21changing? and how do we build the
  551. 18:23systems such that they are still useful
  552. 18:27then it's great that I can you know send
  553. 18:30money from unis swap here to something
  554. 18:32you know across the two blockchains now
  555. 18:33what does it look like when the entire
  556. 18:35when every bank in the world has a
  557. 18:37ledger when all of the world's assets
  558. 18:39move on chain when stable coins are like
  559. 18:41the dominant way that these things
  560. 18:43happen when global markets emerge right
  561. 18:45uh what does that actually look like how
  562. 18:47does everyone else do it great we can
  563. 18:48make it a little bit better it's reset
  564. 18:51everything think completely from first
  565. 18:53principles. How can I break it? How can
  566. 18:55I break it?
  567. 18:57That architecture unlocks a new
  568. 18:59internet. It would add more freedom
  569. 19:01everywhere. And so web 3 for the first
  570. 19:04time to me is real.

  571. On Conviction, Obsession, and the Long Game

  572. 19:10It is so hard to build a company. There
  573. 19:13was like six different times we could
  574. 19:14have just like walked away. We could
  575. 19:16have killed the company. there were so
  576. 19:17many times that you know we we almost
  577. 19:21didn't make it. You only really do that
  578. 19:23and you only really keep doing it if you
  579. 19:25really really believe in the thing that
  580. 19:27you're doing without conviction. You
  581. 19:29will just in any industry you will just
  582. 19:30never get there. And so I think you're
  583. 19:32way better off finding something you
  584. 19:34really deeply believe in and going for
  585. 19:36that even if other industries are more
  586. 19:39exciting at the time or whatever. I
  587. 19:40think that's the only way you get like
  588. 19:42true success in anything. People are
  589. 19:44really drawn to passion. And so one of
  590. 19:46the things I love about conviction,
  591. 19:48having conviction, is naturally you're
  592. 19:49you're more passionate about the thing
  593. 19:51that you're doing because you know
  594. 19:52you're not questioning, you don't need
  595. 19:53approval from anybody else. You know
  596. 19:54that you believe that a thing is right,
  597. 19:56should exist in the world, like is the
  598. 19:58right way to solve the problem. And I
  599. 19:59think people are drawn to that. I think
  600. 20:01it's good to have something that's
  601. 20:03interesting and you're I think Toby from
  602. 20:04Shopify talks about them hiring for
  603. 20:07spikes. You don't really want a
  604. 20:08perfectly well-rounded generalist. What
  605. 20:10you really want is somebody with with
  606. 20:11crazy spikes. We were the first company
  607. 20:14ever in history to have both Andre
  608. 20:16Horwitz and Sequoia both co-lead out and
  609. 20:18like that is very rare and we're about
  610. 20:20as atypical as you could possibly get
  611. 20:22from like A6Z and Sequoia backed
  612. 20:24founders right they're normally Stanford
  613. 20:26grads who did a PhD who worked in a lab
  614. 20:28who worked at this big company and we're
  615. 20:30like went to the University of H New
  616. 20:32Hampshire like dropped out of school uh
  617. 20:34but it really was that like spikiness I
  618. 20:36think we were completely convinced of
  619. 20:39the thing that we were doing we didn't
  620. 20:41we didn't hair like we didn't need them
  621. 20:44to write a check. They wanted to be
  622. 20:46involved cuz they saw that we were like
  623. 20:47driven in a direction and so we were we
  624. 20:49were definitely going to build the
  625. 20:50thing.
  626. 20:57I think what I would say to people is
  627. 20:58like the whole point of the space like
  628. 21:00the whole premise of everything crypto
  629. 21:02is that you shouldn't have to right
  630. 21:04trust but verify right? You shouldn't
  631. 21:06have to trust me in what I say. You
  632. 21:07shouldn't have to trust us. You're going
  633. 21:09to be able to trust the code. You're
  634. 21:10going to be able to observe it for
  635. 21:11itself. On February 10th, we're going to
  636. 21:13stand on stage. We're going to prove
  637. 21:14Ethereum's history real time verifying
  638. 21:17at a million transactions per second at
  639. 21:18110 bits of security, right? Nobody has
  640. 21:20ever done even remotely close to that.
  641. 21:22And then every step of the way from now
  642. 21:24until September, we will show and like
  643. 21:27you will be able to touch and feel it. I
  644. 21:29want people to go and do that cuz that's
  645. 21:31how you get somebody to have conviction.
  646. 21:32Me telling you something, you're not
  647. 21:33going to have conviction.
  648. 21:34Is it technically possible? Uh or so you
  649. 21:38might also get people saying, "Well, I
  650. 21:39had some of these ideas. They're not
  651. 21:40that smart." Well, I think so. What? You
  652. 21:43haven't done anything yet, right? Talk
  653. 21:44is cheap. So, we're going to go out
  654. 21:46there and do it.
  655. 21:47Building a company is unbelievably hard.
  656. 21:50It's a thankless, miserable job most of
  657. 21:53the time. I could have never ever done
  658. 21:56it without Raz. Like, no, with no
  659. 21:59question. There is zero doubt in my
  660. 22:00mind. Specifically, I mean, specifically
  661. 22:03him. There is just no way I ever could
  662. 22:04have done it alone. I would never.
  663. 22:06People talk about how hard co-founders
  664. 22:08are and they talk about how they could
  665. 22:09never have a co-founder. I could have
  666. 22:11never ever ever done it alone. No
  667. 22:12question.
  668. 22:13Likewise, it's destiny is what it feels
  669. 22:16like. Like almost like everything that's
  670. 22:18happened, it feels like it was meant to
  671. 22:21happen. Like it was pre-ordained. I know
  672. 22:23it sounds crazy and like probably
  673. 22:24cringy, but it does. Like the right
  674. 22:26people show up at the right time for us.
  675. 22:28And it's probably just a matter of us
  676. 22:29putting ourselves in those positions
  677. 22:31where that happens. Uh, I think about
  678. 22:34the first time I met you fairly
  679. 22:36regularly. Like it is a part like it is
  680. 22:38like a that was meant Brian was meant to
  681. 22:40pop over the fence and say, "Hey, I'm
  682. 22:42Brian." Right. And like I couldn't could
  683. 22:45not do this with anybody else.
  684. 22:46Never heard some of this stuff before.
  685. 22:48It's like emot emotional. You know, it's
  686. 22:50uh
  687. 22:52this is the best time of your life. You
  688. 22:55are healthy. You get to work with your
  689. 22:56best friends and you get to work on
  690. 22:58something cool. whether or not we had
  691. 23:00succeeded with layer zero, like before
  692. 23:03layer zero, we were not succeeding
  693. 23:04financially, but I was happy. I didn't
  694. 23:06quite get that until like um a couple
  695. 23:09years ago when my wife kept asking me
  696. 23:11like, "When does this end? What is your
  697. 23:12goal?" And I and I and and I was I kept
  698. 23:15ask what is my goal? It's the doing the
  699. 23:17thing. So people like, "Are are you
  700. 23:18stressed about February launch?" I'm
  701. 23:20like, "No, it's just part of I'm just
  702. 23:22enjoying it. This is part of the moment.
  703. 23:24Every day is the moment. Enjoy it."
  704. 23:27There's only one thing I can have people
  705. 23:29remember. In order to truly
  706. 23:32change things in order to build
  707. 23:34something great, you must have
  708. 23:37conviction. Like it is that the undying
  709. 23:39conviction and passion. Now as I drive
  710. 23:41into work, I listen to a lot of
  711. 23:43biographies. I'm listening to Elon's
  712. 23:44biography and one thing that resonated a
  713. 23:46lot with that is uh he says like it's
  714. 23:49very easy to think that technology just
  715. 23:50progresses automatically, right?
  716. 23:52Egyptians had the pyramids and then
  717. 23:54technology was lost. the Romans and the
  718. 23:56aqueducts and all this stuff lost in the
  719. 23:57dark ages like technology is not
  720. 23:59guaranteed to move forward. The world is
  721. 24:01not even though it's been moving forward
  722. 24:03in a wonderful state over the last
  723. 24:04hundred years not guaranteed to move
  724. 24:06forward or even move in a positive
  725. 24:08direction like technology advances and
  726. 24:11the world changes because a group of
  727. 24:14people are like really really passionate
  728. 24:16and work really really hard to make that
  729. 24:18thing happen. That conviction, that
  730. 24:20passion, that hard work should not be
  731. 24:22taken for granted. it's not expected and
  732. 24:24like it's cool and it deserves the
  733. 24:27utmost respect for anybody who's like
  734. 24:29trying to do those things but it is a
  735. 24:30prerequisite to do and I think people
  736. 24:33should realize that that is what it
  737. 24:34takes and and decide that they want to
  738. 24:36do that thing and caring about something
  739. 24:39is like again it is uh it's the best.
  740. 24:42though. Yeah.
While You Build Casinos, We Build Real Finance | LayerZero, co-founders — Transcriptly