Reflections from Between Two Cycles w/ Hamzah Khan

**Speaker A:** Hello and welcome back to the Strange Water Podcast. Thank you for joining us. We may be in the depths of a bear market, but as anyone listening to this podcast already knows, despite the unmistakable fog of hopelessness that's creeping ever closer, there is still a ton of stuff happening. Builders are still working harder than ever. Degens are still making outrageous bets on little more than memes. The Washington maelstrom is becoming much larger and more violent. Hackers are hacking, scammers are still scamming. The volume might be lower, but the show does go on. And in these moments of relative quiet, the most important thing that any individual can do to prepare for the next turn of the cycle is to reflect on their experiences during the last one. How did the winners win? What were the crucial differences between them and the losers? What will we have next cycle that we didn't have this cycle? How do you position yourself to be at the spear tip of the next cycle? Everyone has the opportunity, maybe even the obligation, to take these moments and really think about what they've learned and what's coming next. Even if not many take it. But much less common is the opportunity to ponder these questions with one of the critical builders of the last cycle, one very much responsible for building much of the landscape that we are currently living in. I'm pleased to say that today's guest is Hamza Khan, one of the people I respect most in Defi. As head of growth at Polygon, Hamza was a huge factor in creating the incredibly complex and dynamic ecosystem that lives on Polygon today. Given the size of importance of Polygon to Ethereum, his influence has spread far and above the MATIC network. And as you'll hear during this episode, you'll hear that Hamza is moving on to a new venture to conquer the world of Defi that he has worked so hard to create. Today, you'll hear us discuss everything from key factors in Polygon's success to the implications of ZK for the entire blockchain industry. The conversation is so jam packed with battle earned experience and nuanced insight that you are sure to get something out of it. One more thing before we begin. Please do not take financial advice from this or any podcast. Ethereum will change the world one day, but you can easily lose all of your money between now and then. Alright, let's start the episode. Hamza, thank you so much for joining us for the Strange Water podcast. **Speaker B:** Thank you. Thank you for having me. **Speaker A:** Of course, man. So, before we jump into kind of like the meat and potatoes of this conversation, I'M a huge believer in like, the most important part of every conversation are the people involved. And so I just want to spend a few minutes just like, understanding who you are and like, really, how did you find crypto? And then more specifically, how did you fall in love with it enough to like, risk your reputation and your career on this crazy space? **Speaker B:** Yeah, no, for sure. I joined crypto actually pretty, pretty late compared to most of the people that I know and I work with daily. So I joined crypto in 2020 around. I found it during most of the people like Covid, but before that. So I have a background in computer science and I spent a lot of time during college in 2019 building machine learning and AI models for banks. So my first job was at Citi. I used to. I spent like 18 months. That was my first and last, I think, real job. I don't think I worked anything 18 months after that. So I spent building, building a bunch of AI models for their investment banking business. But after that I left and spent a lot of time doing consulting for dev work for a lot of startups, as well as teaching GRE and GMAT and IELTS and TOEFL to a bunch of students and anyone who wanted to in the Middle East. This was 2019, 2020, half. And then Covid happened. We're all stuck at home. And then I found about Ethereum and I think I knew about Ethereum in 2017. So I had bought in 2017 like most people, but then sold because everything was crashing and I thought this was the biggest scam. But then when I found aave, not aave, I think I found Compound and Uniswap. And I felt. And I read the white paper, I used it and I was like, oh my God, like, this is the biggest thing ever. Like, because I was sitting in India and I could access the same financial instruments as someone sitting in New York Wall street. And I was like, oh, this thing is like, you know, as can be as big as social media or like whatever with real money involved. So that got me really interested and. And yeah, that's how I, I started using. And then I joined Matic. I joined Matic, it was still Matic in 2021, January, to start DeFi. Like there was no Defi. I started the whole Defi. And yeah, doing Defi. Head of Defi at. At Polygon for past two years, I guess. Two and a half years. **Speaker A:** Well, awesome, man. Like, I, like you joined late. I actually found Ethereum in 2021 and like, I'd heard of it And I, I never, like, bothered to. All I knew is it was just like, kind of Internet money, which in my head that meant like, kind of porn money or drug money. Until 2021, when I heard Hayden Adams describe Uniswap and, you know, similar ideas, that was the first time I realized, like, the power of, like, what, what decentralized markets, like, could kind of offer. And so I guess, like, while we're still in this phase of your career, can you reflect a little bit on why, what, what did you see in 2017 enough that got your toes in the water that, that you didn't. Like, what did you not see in 2017 that, like, made, made you walk away? And like, why did, like, compound or AAVE in 2020, like, made you really realize the promise of Ethereum? **Speaker B:** I think it's a very personal thing, but I think I just wanted a job at that time. Like, that's where the honest answer was. I just wanted a job. I didn't understand this. I was. I don't have a finance background, so I didn't really understand, like, you know, how money worked. Because people have to understand, because you're in it for the tech, of course you're in it for the tech. But, like, you also have to understand that crypto is a very sociological as well as a very monetary experiment. You know, like, Bitcoin is a very monetary first. And Ethereum also, like the way incentives are structured and the way, like, why do you need a validator or why do you need the token? You need to understand the. That from a very fundamental monetary supply point of view. I never understood, I never knew about those things. So. But when I worked in a bank for like, 18 months, I think, I think that, like, exposed me to, to, like, stocks and mutual funds and like, I come from a background family where, like, no one understands any of this, so. So everyone is in, like, you know, sales and marketing and all this, like, you know, stuff where people don't understand how money is made or all these, like, monetary things that we now understand. I now understand. So I think that 18 months at there kind of exposed me to, you know, stocks and commodities and insurance and reinsurance and all that stuff where you make derivatives on top, I think. And then when I looked into crypto and I started using AAVE and Uniswap and all these things and reading a bunch of more stuff and just getting matured, I think. I think that was. And 2017 didn't have any real shit. Like, it was all, you know, just white papers, like, I remember I was, I was very fascinated by. Because I was doing my thesis, bachelor's and final thesis. IOTA got very hot. I don't know if you remember, but IOTA was like this DAG based blockchain architecture where everyone is like, oh, DAGs are cool. Because you know, Graph SQL. Sorry, not Graph NewSQL on Neo4j. Sorry. Neo4j database is, you know, graph based and Facebook uses it. So imagine Facebook has that much data, then this blockchain can scale this much and all that stuff. I remember in 2017 people used to talk and there was no real product like Ethereum. Barely worked. Like there was nothing there on Ethereum. I never did NFTs. I just bought ETH in a CEFI exchange and I didn't even buy ETH. I think I remember I bought XRP because I thought, oh, banks, this is the easiest use case for banks. But then, yeah, so I think just exposure to more financial products changed things. **Speaker A:** Yeah, very cool. And then. So can you talk a little bit about your time from transitioning from a bank, like a real world spanning bank to Polygon, which is like man, hopefully reaches like the global significance. Yeah, but, but like, I mean we can talk about kind of like the startup aspects. We can talk about like what it's like to work outside the financial system, but for me as like the whitest possible. American. American possible. Like what's. What's super interesting to me is to hear what it's like to, to have Polygon as such an important pillar of what Ethereum is to grow out of. Basically not the west and not like the Silicon Valley bubble that we talk basically most technology stems from. So can you talk a little bit about like that transition and what your personal experience is like? **Speaker B:** Oh yeah. I remember when I had joined Mattech in 2000, I had heard of Matic, of Polygon in 2017 even. And I thought like this, it's an Indian company and I would like to try it. And back then also nothing was there. So. But then 2020 happened and I was part of a lot of hackathons. I was building some stuff, I think on aave. I was building something on aave. Credit delegation. I think credit delegation had just come out. AAVE v2, I think had just come out. This was December 2020 and I was coding something and I found Matic Network on the Discord and I thought, what is this? And they had a lot of bounties. So I just got excited by the bounties. To be honest, I didn't understand the tech. But then I thought, okay, oh, then I remembered, okay, Indian team. And you know, I start chat, I just called Sandeep on Discord out of the blue and he didn't pick up. But then he pinged me later and that's how like I started speaking with them. And, and I used Matic. Only Quicksoft was there back then, I remember. And, and you know, I started using that and I realized, oh, like I, it's so cheap. Like it was like a cent or fraction of a cent, you know, And I was like, oh, why is this so cheap? And Ethereum is so expensive. There must be some, some fundamental difference in the architecture, security or whatever. And that, that got me into the rabbit hole. **Speaker A:** Yeah, for sure. So again, just like while we're hovering over this space, do you think that there's anything like, particularly interesting about the cultural differences between like a Western and an Indian company? Is other things that like, we should be taking from you or that maybe. Yeah. What's the biggest differences? **Speaker B:** I think, I think the most important thing which I learned is the cultural difference in the US versus over here is that I wouldn't even say cultural difference. I think a lot of teams now also do that over here as well is like the access to capital over the, in the us Like I spent two years, two and a half years in New York and like, you know, you can raise at much more even if you don't have a good product or even if you don't have a good team. And I think that fundamentally changes expectations. Changes. Yeah, changes everything. I think you suddenly feel that, oh, you're worth more than a team out of anywhere else. You know, you suddenly feel, although it brings, it brings benefits, like it opens the networking opportunities, it opens access to talent or whatever. But now that, you know, crypto is such a democratic thing, we. I remember in 2000 when I, when I had joined, there were so many, you know, West, I wouldn't even say west. Like, you know, much funded, well funded projects that Polygon killed to become what it is today there, I mean, I would go into the names, but like you can easily look up. There were so many, like, I remember like tens of, you know, L2s, L1s that, that had so much big bag, you know, VC backing all these big VCs, Silicon Valley or New York VCs funding all of them. But, but Polygon was like, no, this is with like all the, all the crazy BD and that, that had to be pulled off at the start of 2021 when ZK was not even a thing. And then ZK happened. And now I think people still feel that Polygon has the best bd. Of course, I like to really believe that Polygon has the best bd, but I genuinely feel that, and I think I've said this multiple times, but I genuinely feel that Polygon has the best tech. Now with Polygon 2.0 and all these things and the poll staking and the staking hub and especially Polygon 2.0 which is going to come where you can build your own chain and Ethan L2 way, not, not a sovereign chain where that's simply a side check. I think that changes. That changes the game forever. I think Polygon, I generally feel Polygon 2.0 is like the end state of infrastructure. Like, I don't think there is any, if there is any, they'll be improved. But I still, I genuinely feel that this is the last. **Speaker A:** No, I mean, I think you and I have talked about this many times offline. Like one, you know, basically before March is or whenever it was before 2023, to me, Polygon was just like another exciting big, but just like another project in Ethereum. And then it was like one weekend where everything changed, which was the release of the zkevm. And that's kind of cool. What was really cool was the open sourcing of that and kind of what that portends to the ecosystem and like the tech infrastructure. And I want to get to all that because I think that is like perfectly journey of ZK and then as well gets us to where hamza you are today. But while we're still like well within the Polygon story, can. Can you talk a little bit about Polygon's excellence in business development? And like, I think you as head of Defi were a huge piece of that. But man, for Polygon business development, like, you guys set the tone, you created the game and it's everything from like business development from like, you know, corporations that you and I would recognize, like Starbucks, like Marvel, Disney, that kind of stuff to like the actual, just like not sexy, not interesting business development of like getting developers interested in the platform, getting protocols to migrate over, getting TVL in like, can you talk a little bit about like how Polygon went from like actually the most scrappy, just like cutthroat, like badass guys in India to this like world class, like interconnected like business development machine? **Speaker B:** I think it was like the North Star for Polygon has always been like transaction fees, like, because that number doesn't lie, you know, like you can always get TVL you call, you can call your like 5 investors and tell them to put 10mil or 50mil each and you can pump up the TVL. But that TVL is useless. Like it doesn't do anything similar thing is with volume or whatever, like any one metric can always be gamed. But like I think the most important thing is like gas fees, which means that there is actual demand for that block space real estate. So to say that that blockchain real estate and, and that I think like anything that I think when I joined like Defi, there was like one or two protocols, like I said. And there was a whole sheet. I used to sit with Sandeep every day and there was a whole sheet. Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4, Tier 1s at, you know, AAVE compound, Uniswap, I don't know, whatever synthetics back then, Sushi. And we used to go each one of them and they used to go on like all of the calls and be like, okay, we are doing this. We have this liquidity mining program. Let's do this, let's do this. How can we work together? So spent like hours of calls on AAVE swap compound, like every one of them. And over time, I think now and then you had tier two where we want to spend this much. We had tier three, we had tier four that like I just used to do myself. So. So a lot of these things, you know, were like a very focused, methodical approach. Okay. Like we need this many protocols. We need like 50 in first month, we need 17 second month, we need 100 in third month. And then, then it becomes like, you know, it becomes like a snowball effect and the organic thing just happens over time. But. But yeah, it was a very, very focused initial. I think from February to May, I think I haven't slept more than four or five hours. I think. **Speaker A:** Yeah. The problem with the global industry is that there's. It's always awake working hours for someone. Right. **Speaker B:** And remember this time, this was the time when Covid was peak in India. This was like India peak. And I was to literally take calls from the, from the hospital because my, my mother was hospitalized. So I used to take calls and not me. Just like many of us used to take calls from the, from the hospital reception area. Because that is the only, that was the only way. **Speaker A:** No, I mean, I just want to take a moment to like recognize and say how. Like, I know, I don't know, but I know how hard Covid was in India during that time. So to hear how you guys built an empire at the same time you're watching like your family and society, like really struggle through something is even more impressive. But we won't dwell on that. I do, yeah. I mean, I, again, I think, like, what for me, tell me if this resonates with you. But like the takeaway for me is that like there wasn't a secret sauce to like turning into this, like to what you are today. Like, it really was just like actually like the, the leadership and the important guys just sitting down, making lists and then like rolling your sleeves up and doing the work and I wonder, that resonates with you. And two, do you think that India and like Polygon and in this group of companies, their new access to capital and their new access to the Silicon Valley swag, like might have some effects where you lose a little bit of that scrappiness and a willingness to be able to do that work? **Speaker B:** I agree. Like, I think first point, to your point, like, yeah, I agree. Like, it was because as soon as I joined, I think I have not seen Sandeep or any of the founders, so to say work lesser than this first day because, because Polygon was not a well funded at all. Like, you know, it was very. Till that time, I think I didn't even know who the investors were. Like, I didn't know anything. Polygon had raised like 500k till then and until late 2022 when all the big fundraise happened. But I think that's what crypto does. It's just such a great leveler of just good tech and just honest work around that. So yeah, I think just roll your sleeves up and always had a chip on the shoulder sort of thing that, okay, we have to get this, otherwise no one cares about us. So that was one thing. And second thing, I think to your point where. Sorry, what was the, what was the second. Second thing? **Speaker A:** The, the second thought was just kind of asking you to reflect on. Do you think that due to Polygon success and due to a lot of the success of the crypto companies out of India, which will now draw Silicon Valley style capital, do you think that anything special will be lost? **Speaker B:** Will be lost? I'm sure it'll be lost. Like, I mean no one will say this but like the honest fact is like, like you need a shredded body too to you know, go and, and last, like work like 15 hours a day. You can't have like a fat, a fat person or like unhealthy, unhealthy person working as a day. It's just the fact, like, it's just simple, whatever people want to say. But, but I, I think that brings a lot of, that brings a lot of. But again, like, good, good, good teams are raising capital and I think, and I think the ecosystem has to grow. Like there's no way. If 10 teams are funded, two, three do. Well, that's good enough. Now. Indian teams are now, now like Polychain is investing and you know, Coinbase, Coinbase Ventures is leading. In fact, like, like Socket. Coinbase led that round. Very good friend. So, yeah, I mean, I don't think anything is. I mean, if you look at it like there's always pros and cons, but it's always good that teams get funded and you know. **Speaker A:** Yeah, so you just said that. Very polite. Let me make it much more frank, which is like, yeah, maybe something's lost, I guess, but like, we're like developing as an ecosystem and like that's objectively a good thing. And like, even if we're losing something, like, you Americans must have lost it a century ago and you're doing fine. **Speaker B:** No, I don't mean anything like that. I project still and it's not like a West or east thing. I think it's just India has been very neutral. We work well with everyone. So I don't think it's east thing. **Speaker A:** Yeah. And I don't mean to make it west versus East. I do mean to make it about the development of the capital markets. But yeah, so anyway, so I really want to get to zk. I think that's like the interesting part of this conversation. But with our last question on Defi World, I would love to hear any of your reflections on how your job has changed over the two and a half years that you were doing it. And for the listeners, those two and a half years started with like, perhaps the most like, exciting and like frothy, just like, you know, bubble times. And that was probably the first half of the year and a half. And then the second year and a half was like just the most gut wrenching, like watching everyone fall from like the scammers like SBF to like, some of our closest friends who didn't do anything wrong, I guess. Like, do you have any reflections on what it's like to survive, like the high highs and low lows and still trek through with like the just like boring work of convincing people that like Polygon is like the right tech? **Speaker B:** Oh, that's a very good, good question and a very hard question. Like, I, I, I joined crypto When I was like what, 24 or something? I don't know, I don't know. Just like a little out of college. I had like two years of work or whatever and from like a tier 2 city in India. Like, I. No one in my family has like a finance experience or whatever, you know, so there was no one to guide. So I thought it was just like a tech job, you know, I, I thought it was like any other startup, so to say, I thought genuinely, I, I genuinely say this, like I didn't understand the nuances of, you know, what cryptographic security is or what any of that is, but I learned a lot on the, on the job and I was like, you know, using everything on the chain and like studying everything, encoding on the side just to learn, learn everything. And I think, I don't, I don't know if. Sorry, what was that? What was the exact question I, I missed? So I, I never, because I, it was my first cycle. I never did any stocks investing or, you know, traditional investing or anything. Like, I. Not much. But then, you know, in crypto it's a very different thing. Like all these startups, so to say, or protocols, so to say, become public on day one. So they, so they are viewed in a way as investments by everyone and not just tech. Like, you know, like if Amazon was private, so to say you can focus on the, on the KPIs and the numbers of orders and all those stuff, right. But there is no financial expectation of it. Of course it will come later down the line and whatever. But when protocols or projects or whatever apps here, Dapps people have this weird expectation of the price going up and all these kind of things. So you have to manage that expectation with the actual metrics, which is like transaction fees going up, volumes going up, which is the actual fundamental that benefits the validators and you have to keep the incentives aligned and you have to keep the risk, risk in place or whether you have. If you. So, so I, yeah, it was. I never really understood through the first year, to be honest. Like I, because I was just so busy with getting projects and like that was my whole thing and building a team. So like I hired like you know, over five, six, seven people across different stairs of Polygon, more than like, I think 10, 10 people across things. And then, then I had Jack this year then, yeah, a bunch of people, I think across teams I think I had to hire and fire and many interns I had to hire because at that time there was so much work. I hired like about five to six, seven Interns across different units of polygon and up there there's a lot of work. But then when the crash happened, so I had not seen a bear market and, and I think that changed a lot. I think when, when Luna happened, I didn't really understand that much. But when, when FTX happened, then I saw like I was like, oh, like this is what, this is what it looks like. I. But then I promised myself I'm not gonna leave. Like there's no way. Even if every, even if my money goes to zero. Like I didn't lose anything thankfully on any of the, any of the things because I was just like I was as lazy, I didn't want to keep in any cx, I just had it with me in my ledger. But I saw many people lose a lot of money and that just changed the way I looked at a lot of things. The way risks are perceived or have to be perceived. Infrastructure risk, custodian risk, multi sig risk. So many risks are there in crypto where you are literally at the cutting edge and bleeding edge of things. So yeah, I. **Speaker A:** But while we're on this moment, just for a second, I want to share with you that I too, as it was my first cycle when I, When Luna happened like to exactly the same. I saw the price go down and was like totally unemotional, like almost curious about it. Like, okay, like this sucks. But like now I get, now I'm a true crypto person, but just like you when FTX happened. And honestly it wasn't FTX itself, it was the FTX hacker man. That was when I was like first time ever and hopefully last time I was scared out of my positions and went from ETH to USDC because I was just like, holy shit. Like we're standing on the edge of madness. And now I realize like that there's more to go, it's infinite and like we can keep going from here. And like that, that I feel like is the moment that I became a true cryptopian. So I gu. Let me reframe this last question before we get to ZK with like, what. What do you think the biggest thing that changed you through like the crashing of the bull cycle? Like what, what, what do you think your biggest takeaway from surviving that and. **Speaker B:** Still sticking around was I. I learned this thing is that never trust anyone on Twitter, no matter how, no matter how smart he sounds. First thing, never ever, ever, ever trust anyone. Because everyone has incentives some. And I would like everyone to not trust me on those things because like as much on anyone. You know, just be a bit skeptical of what things are. And there's no need when there's the. With the whole blockchain says that you don't need to trust. You can verify stuff on chain. Like, I don't trust anyone. And I think that that mindset, I think maybe. I think I'm just a little more skeptical than before, Much more skeptical than before and judicious of, like, what to trust, what not to trust. That's. I think that that is, like, it was not very crypto answer, but it was a very, like, human. Human behavior answer. Like, I think. I think because the. The series of hacks and series of all those things were human led rather than, you know, like, I was. I was spending time with a bunch of those people, like the Celsius people, the three SE people at some of the conferences. And then you realize that, oh, like, these guys are, like, literally lying to your faces. And then I was like, yeah, I'm start. For me. **Speaker A:** I mean, you said that's not a crypto answer. It's a human answer. But I think what your answer really is trying to say is that we think that in this space we're special because we've created this term trustlessness. But, like, we are all explicitly trusting each other. Like, even Vitalik is not reading all the code at this point. There's just too much of it. And so, like, I do think that what Sam Bankman Fried did teach us is that, like, it's at your own peril to, like, forget that at the end of the day, like, we're just like two monkeys trying to, like, create money out of thin air, you know? And so, yeah, man, totally hear you. And yeah, I'll also say is that was, like, a very scary time. And, yeah, let's just hope as the bubbles get bigger, the crashes kind of tame themselves out. But anyway, so let's move forward and, like, while we're on this realm of trustlessness, let's talk about zk. So as, like, kind of the segue here, let's, like, use the story of Polygon, I guess, zkeVM or Poly 2.0, or however Polygon frames it internally. But, like, can you. And this is a broad, open question. I'm happy to pick it up if it's too big. But can you help us, like, understand how you see, like, zk, like, really transforming Ethereum and, like, why this is so important and not just, like, hype in the way that so many, like, trends in crypto have been so far? **Speaker B:** Oh I think because fundamentally like you know infrastructure has to improve. Like it's as simple as Internet, right? Like there was modems, there was broadband, there was optical fibers, there were glass fiber, there was like you know so much, so much microwave people use for, for transmission and all those things. So that if infrastructure is not there, like you had GPU, you had CPUs, you have ASICs, you have GPUs, you have FRES. There's so many, so many different kinds of like you know, infrastructure that only then you can have good apps on top that the real consumer uses. And I think that's the first cycle we saw with colored coins on Bitcoin back they tried to do the ERC20 fungible token stuff. Then you had Ethereum cryptokitties where the first congestion on a public chain happened. And that's when L2 discussion started with state channels, with plasma. That was the first time the narrative had become mainstream that okay, like Ethereum main chain cannot scale, you need L tools. And that's when you know the plasma group started and optimistic roll ups spun out from there from the plasma research. So you have off chain labs which was also part of that and then optimistic roll ups, optimism which also was part of the, part of the plasma research. And I think that's when like a core infrastructure, if the core infrastructure does not improve, there's no way that good apps can be built on top like next gen apps so to say like not good apps but like next gen apps. So like for example, right, right now you saw last year 2021, I think you saw many multi chain defi app toys so to say like not apps but like examples of stuff that can be done like cross chain swaps and cross chain lending. But the biggest problem with them because think about like you can only build so much on one chain. Like you can have a dex lending market like you know, do four or five basic primitives but to expand out of it you can do a bunch of things outside your chain. So like cities you have, you have, you just need better transportation from one chain to other. From different cities like LA to New York. You can go by train or whatever, different types of air flights. But that's what happened I think now is that the bridges were the major problem. Major points of failure. All the bigger has hacks in 2022 were bridges, we all know that. And then what happened now is that okay we have that but zk so the two ways like the bridging part as well as the chain congestion part. So you See that optimistic rollups also sometimes not sometimes, in fact many times you see that their gas fees also goes up to like $10, $15. I've seen some instances on Arbitrum and Optimism both that, you know, it shoots up and the reason for that is like, you know, the proof size is a lot larger and you know, there's a lot of trust assumptions built on top and game theory that, that you have to take. But there's no math. Whereas DK rollups like remove that completely and be like, okay, like this is pure math. And you know, you don't need to trust anyone. There is no fraud. There is no possibility of fraud, basically. And there's no test of seven days which is there in optimistic. And it's just a very next gen, so to say next gen infrastructure scaling option. And God knows after three years, you know, three, four years, five years, there might be something else. But ZK right now it is in that production grade. And ZK is not a new technology. It's not a new concept. It is a new stages of technology. But like there were scientists and researchers who were proposing this in late 90s as well. So yeah, like this thing has been there for a while theoretically, but now with infrastructure and the plonky 2 prover and all those things, there are a lot of ways where we can scale it up. And that I think is now ZK chains. And now you're seeing optimistic chains also exploring ZK for compression because they know that is the only way you can, you can, you know, compete with ZK rollups. There's no other way. **Speaker A:** Yeah, no, I mean one of my favorite, like, favorite favorite things, although we're getting like late in 2023, it's getting old now. But at the end of 2022, Vitalik went on bankless and like the bankless boys asked him like, what's one of the things you're most surprised about? And he said, you know, by this time, like I really, really thought we'd have optimistic roll ups, like done. And like the, the crazy thing is that like today it looks like we are going to get ZK rollups, whether it's from any of the teams, right? Polygon, ZK Sync scroll, any of the team. We're going to get those before we get like optimistic Rolex finished, right? And fast forward 10 months and like we did, that did happen, like arbitram optimism. They're not like, sorry, hate to break it to you guys, but they're not like fully sovereign optimistic roll ups. But like the Polygon ZK EVM is what was promised and like it really is like where we're trying to get and so we can talk about like during this initial period how the sequencers permission, blah, blah, blah. But point is the technology is moving like so incredibly fast. And so I guess to, to kind of wrap together what you just said. What you're saying is like the reason that ZK is so exciting to you is because you're seeing that ZK solves like these incredibly hairy infrastructure problems, whether it's in blockchain scaling, blockchain interoperability, but like these problems that we have today and like they're. ZK is already providing solutions and so you're like, fuck man, like I just got to be involved in that. **Speaker B:** Yes, yes, I think, I think ZK is going to be for a long time the end state of infrastructure because it just removes, removes any inherent trust assumptions and it is just faster. Two main things, it is faster and removes any inherent trust assumptions. Trust assumptions for bridges for interop and faster and smaller in size for blockchain compression for sure. **Speaker A:** So, and I think that is like the, the most understood way that ZK is going to change things, right? Specifically in roll ups and in bridges that like everyone can wrap their head around it. Like it's well understood there are, there. **Speaker B:** Are more but like yeah, mainstream these for now. **Speaker A:** Yeah, yeah, exactly like those are the mainstream things. But like I guess like now would probably be a good time to like explicitly say that like hamza, like you're pivoting into like this like ZK world to like really blow it up and change it. But so like one, can you talk a little bit about like where your interests lie? But two, can you help us understand like why ZK is so much more interesting than just like really these two specific use cases that are in front of us. Roll ups and bridges. **Speaker B:** Yeah, I mean I think it's a, it's a like imagine identity. Sorry, the third one is identity because, because imagine like you going to your, to like immigration or a club or wherever and you have to bring your ID with you. Imagine in a world where literally everything is through the phone. Everything but trust is through the phone. Even if you show your picture, people will be like, oh, it is forged. I don't really know if your passport picture is real or not. So you really have to take your physical and, and you don't really need to show if you, if, if you just need to know that, okay, you're above 18 or above 21 or whatever you don't really need to show the other guy that, okay, my mom's name is this, my dad's name is this, what is my place of birth? What is the date of issuance of the passport? Like that kind of stuff. Like, because, because the passport has all that. Whereas with the zk, imagine that information going through a ZK proof and you just. And there is a boolean that says that okay, like above 18, yes or no, that's it. And it is inherently. Trust is baked into the protocol. Yeah, it's baked into the protocol that okay, this is actually above 18 or not, you don't need to show everything. And a very fundamental difference with how databases are created. So databases, you store everything and you share everything with foreign keys and then you map all the databases with each other. But imagine with ZK databases or ZK flavor of databases where you only give proofs of stuff to each other. And that proof is basically just as a truth asset, giving you the indication that okay, like whatever this data is, is true and whatever. Like let's say you know, R 50%, if there's a table and there is like is 50% of this entry above 18 and it just says it gives. Yes, and that yes, it goes through a ZK proof. So you, you are sure that okay, this is correct. That changes a lot of like it reduces attack vectors on databases, the whole surface area of attacks. Because most biggest problem with social media or any big website that holds all of this is the storage of that data and the privacy of the data. Whereas with ZK proofs you can just say that okay, like, okay, this is like you know, 50% is this. Or is this user above 18 or has any fraud claims on them or whatever, you know. So I think that is a very fundamental difference for sure. **Speaker A:** Yeah. And I guess like just to really like explode open this point about like identity and maybe privacy, but more specifically about identity. Like I, the, the deeper I get into crypto, I entered like a lot of people through this lens of finance and Defi and thinking like the point of what we were building here was a better or at least a different financial system. And like the, the more I go through this stuff, the more I watch things like 3ac and Luna, the more I like see SPF's balance sheet and realize like half the projects I thought were legit were like basically like kept in place by like really scammy VC incentives. Like the more I'm realizing that Ethereum itself is not about defi. Like Ethereum is like I truly believe it is part of the history, the organic history of the Internet, right? And like, let's trace back the start of the Internet to like let's say 1995 when, when Netscape was launched, right? Like we got Netscape, we got GeoCities, we got like the 2001 boom, then crash and then we essentially got Facebook. And then like what we're just saying, like things stopped since like 2004. Like we got a little bit better UX and things got faster but like the Internet stopped developing. Like, of course not. Of course that didn't happen. And what I believe is that Ethereum is like just the identity layer, the property layer of the Internet. Like it exists in the Internet and it is like the substrate that it's going to provide us property. And I think that like today, right now, that's just like so pie in the sky because of how kind of let's be real shoddy the infrastructure is. But like for me, ZK is, is part of that solution where how like the, the EVM itself can become like our human's true identity on the Internet in a way that's not. Doesn't require like centralized intermediaries or doesn't like centralize all our data and like provides kind of like the modern security we need. So I want. Does that like kind of resonate with how you see the purpose of what we're building and. Yeah, and so like how do you think we get from like crypto being this like weird niche, like speculative, like maybe financial thing into like something that replaces like our Google accounts and our Facebook accounts and like becomes our identity on the Internet? **Speaker B:** I think with this it just takes time. I think we need like cheap, cheap chains, cheap gas chains. And I think, I think it's just a matter of time. Like what's. What friend tech, irrespective of whether you like it or not. But I have been using fintech for a while and I think, I think it's pretty cool with what they have, with what they have achieved. There's 50 million TVL, there's all sorts of celebrities joining it. And even today, even by today I thought this, it would, it would be a fad. And then everyone goes away, but people are still active. My chats are blowing up. I think it's just more consumer apps and it's just a, it's just a matter of time. I think, I think we're finally seeing some good social, Some good social apps come up and with Lens protocol and now friend tech. And I saw yesterday one more, one More coming on base. I think it's just a matter of like now wallets are also, you know, there's pwa, so you don't really need to. PWA has always been there. I don't know what happened. Why like I used to work on PWAs in 2019 so I did a bunch of testing on how to deploy and how to test them. So I think now people are actually testing, testing and getting into the account abstraction and all those things. So I think it's. **Speaker A:** Yeah, for sure. So let's stay away from consumer world and like stay into ZK world. I think like for me the most exciting part about ZK just like to get to the brass tacks of it is that like ZK is the technology that's going to allow us to do intense crazy computation on centralized hardcore machines that are run by one company or one person, but then take the results of those computation, inject it into a public, really Ethereum, but inject it into a public blockchain and then like through that construction is how we are able to like make Ethereum scalable. It's like ZK is the magic piece. And so one if I would love to hear if you have any reflections on like how that's going to work. But the thing that I always think about is like we actually need computers to be running this computation and we figured out like this cool way to do it for Ethereum and for the Ethereum network and like maybe for some of these L2s. But do you have any reflections on like how a ZK world is going to work from the like incentive standpoint? Like are we looking at just basically like a bunch more tokens? Do you see Eigen layer is like the solution like how is any of this going to ZK stuck going to actually work? **Speaker B:** I mean it actually works like right now there are centralized sequences, but I was actually speaking yesterday with two protocols because I also want to learn a bit more about this. Now I was just focused on DeFi and NFTs, but now I think it's important to look at this infrastructure. So I was speaking yesterday with again some of the folks at Risk Zero as well as Vistara, which is another roll up as a service infrastructure as well as Stater Labs because they started the series taking service as well. So I, I don't have a right answer for that to be honest. I'm still researching on how you know, DAs and all these things work in a multi chain, in a multi chain Ethereum world. So yeah, I, I don't really answer right now. **Speaker A:** No, no, fair enough. And I think the answer is there is no answer. And that's why we're like creating billion dollar startups to figure it out. But it's just like really clear that it's like to really understand what Ethereum is, it is the, if not the final manifestation, the next manifestation of distributed compute. And that's cool. But the question is, who are the distributed computers that are running this and how do we make sure that like if we can create the technology to remove trust, that's amazing. But like how do we create the technology and the systems that get literal humans who like need food and water and air to take their hard earned money to buy a computer, to plug it into the wall, to like run your computer program. And I think like that's not a impossible question to solve, but it is one that is like really outstanding for me and like, I, I hope the answer is not. Every time you want to run a new service, first you have to come up with your own like proof of stake token and then figure out a way to distribute it to a bunch of people and like kind of go from there. **Speaker B:** Not really. Like if you think about like, like friend tech, like they didn't do any token, they didn't do anything. Sure. **Speaker A:** But they don't really use ZK or external compute, right? **Speaker B:** Yeah, you don't really. Or you just. No, if you think about it like you can do it by APIs via simple APIs and you can just like call a server and they're very, you know, ZK compute service, basically like Axiom or something and that Axiom runs on like ZK enclaves. And I read about the architecture a while back, but I haven't seen too much. But yeah, I mean there are going to be a lot of like ZK based databases and ZK based APIs that, that completely remove trust, the requirement of trust, basically. **Speaker A:** Yeah. And I think maybe your point is like we can use this crypto primitive of like proof of stake, but we can also use like simple things like fees and APIs to like run the same kind of system. So. Fair enough. So with the last like 10ish minutes, I like want to just kind of give you like the driver's seat a little bit and like, as you pivot into ZK professionally, like can you tell me like whether you want to talk about specific projects or like, or categories of zk, like what are the, the areas that like you're getting really excited about and are they like things about taking the ZK that like we all kind of know and understand and putting it into practice like in a roll up or is it about like the outwards edge tech of like what cryptography is and like really pushing the boundaries of like the math and the science and the tech. **Speaker B:** Yeah, I am not a math person as much as I as my mom says that. No, you studied math? Math? No, no I am not a, I'm not a math person but I understand like engineering and like product side of things because I have worked on a lot like I worked on AI stuff out of college and then you know web dev and testing and, and now crypto monetary stuff. So I think with ZK you like the normal ZKEVM part is done like I genuinely believe not be another zkevm the way the Polygon ZKE VM team has implemented. I don't think there is going to be another one that comes even close because a lot of teams have said that Zksync does not work. Now that I can be very honest. It does not work because of the opcodes and it's very hard to deploy real contracts like not like simple text and stuff but like real options, derivative stuff. It doesn't work. Whereas on Polygon ZKVM you can literally copy paste. Like I have asked more than 50 developers good, good developers, I do I some of the very public projects out there because it is built from ground up on a new EVM completely. So I think that is already done. I think Polygon will, KVM will win that. It's just a matter of time with you know, with when the market comes back and I think the, the Defi team will continue to do great BD and all those stuff. I think the other thing is like I. I've been, I'm a disclosure, I'm a personal investor in ris0 so I really like risk0 I really like it because I think in the long term, you know I, I don't think EVM is the 1 standard for blockchains. I do believe Ethereum is the, is the standard for blockchains. I don't think EVM is the standard for blockchains. If you think about it like Internet the TCP IP layer is constant but you can build with JavaScript, you can build with Python, you can build C, you can build with Rust, you can build with Haskell Erlang and I think I think I mentioned it to you or not but I was reading this, I was not a biography or some tech journal. I think few many years ago When I was working on, I was actually working on Signal protocol, the Signal app, right? They have the Whisper protocol. They have Whisper Protocol which was the first open source end to end encrypted protocol which basically every mobile app, mobile chat app uses today, including WhatsApp, Instagram, Google Teams or Google Microsoft Teams or whatever, they all use that Whisper protocol. So I was reading that and I was building that, building something on top of that, I remember and I stumbled upon an article or something by one Kom who was the CTO or CEO, I don't remember of WhatsApp. And he said that we chose Erlang. So like the whole backend of WhatsApp is written in Erlang. And people asked him like why did you use such a language? So he said that it is Erlang is one of the very few, I think the only language that is end to end fault tolerant, even on a hardware level. And because he wanted WhatsApp to run on run fault tolerant on any physical Android device. Because he had seen that he wanted billions of people using it. Not like an iPhone which was only for the selected ones and not selected but the rich ones back then WhatsApp, he wanted it to run everywhere. Like he wanted communication to be as running water, to be as fluid as running water. So I always think about that because if you want mobile phones or watches or whatever smart devices which comes to be communicating with Ethereum directly, then we cannot. Because there is no parallelization in evm. There is no fault tolerance. So there's a lot of flaws. But since it is secured by Ethereum and no one, you know, people wanted to the securities, the funds securities of more paramount than functionality right now. But over time I think that's why I think I like Risero or in general basically Anyone building non EVM on Ethereum L2s I think that is going to be like a major game changer in the next three years. **Speaker A:** Yeah man, I could not agree with you more. And like for those listening at home, Hamza was actually the person who put me in touch with Risk Zero, which was my until Chainlink God was my most popular episode. So thank you Hamza. But I could not agree with you more. And like I've actually been talking to a couple teams some that you definitely know about like the chains, the lts that they want to build and the conversation is always like okay, well how do we differentiate? Like what can we do that's just not like a straight up fork or you know. And like for a while I was saying like just go for Polygon zkevm. Like you'll be, you'll be so far ahead of the game. Like I agree that's where everyone's going, but I kind of, I'm like, you know what man? Like I think the real alpha is in building the first non like blockchain EVM L2, right? And like just using risk zero as an example. But they're just the first of what hundreds and hundreds of companies are going to figure out is like you can run like you can run Linux using zk, you can run any vm. **Speaker B:** And like that I think is the end. That. Like that, yeah. **Speaker A:** Like the EVM is this like clunky thing that was created by like a 14 year old that was mad about World of Warcraft, right? Like it is the best we've got but there's no reason that we need to like live in this world in the same way that like yes, HTTPs exists but like none of us live in the Internet protocol layer. We live like seven layers above it in this like very beautiful, very polished like Riverside.fm layer, you know. And so yeah, I mean I think you're spot on that like, yeah, we might be done with like the blockchain layer scaling approach but like that is the beginning of the conversation of like what we can do with, with blockchain. And I think like the, the secret sauce is ZK. So I know we've had you for 55 minutes here. I want to like let you walk away. So Hamza, before I let you go, one, can you just tell the audience like where they can find you, where they can learn more from you and that kind of thing. But two, like are you working on any new projects? Like anything that you want to tell people like where your career is going? **Speaker B:** Oh yeah, I'm, I'm. Yeah, you can find me on Twitter. It's my name. K H A N Hamza. K H A N H A M Z D H. I think that's just my name. You can find me there. I have a milady pfp so. With cool glasses. However. Yeah, I'm actually starting a liquid fund very soon I think. Yeah, I've been in the space, not too much but I think liquid, liquid. There are a lot of good alpha and good projects in the liquid market and I think yeah, if anyone, if anyone is interested, you do. So we can take directional bets on tokens as well as provide liquidity on defi protocols, stuff that we have been doing personally for some time but now professionally, so it's some personal money some upside LP money. But, yeah, we can be as activist as possible. If you know me, you know how I've worked for Poly work with Polygon for a while, and if, yeah, we like to be activist and we already have a few blogs out, I think, for the hyper liquid, and I think very soon we'll have one on Canto, I think, or more other stuff that is going to come. And yeah, we're really excited, really excited to get this second phase of my cycle. **Speaker A:** So, like, first you created Defi, and then you realize, like, well, man, we need some people to play in the. The carnival, right? No, man, if there is one person that I would want to, like, take a bet on to, like, understand how Defi works and to, like, capitalize on it, it would be you. Like, really the. Like, I. I do think of you as like the Godfather, for sure of Polygon Defi, but what Polygon means in Ethereum is like the flagship or the head of the spear for the whole industry. So, man, Hamza, just thank you so much for everything you've done for all of us, but for being on the podcast. And, dude, good. Good luck deploying out there. **Speaker B:** Yes, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. **Speaker A:** Of course, man. Well, have a good one and talk to you soon. **Speaker B:** Sam.