BLOCKCHAIN DEBATE: Binance Smart Chain Vs. Ethereum | 7PM ET on July 8

Welcome, ladies, gentlemen. This is the event we have all been waiting for. This is the BSC Verse eth debate. I am Benton with Cointelegraph. I'm going to be hosting and moderating the debate tonight. To my right you have Spinning Nichols from BSC and Blizzard Money Ogle is below him from BSC Gems. To the left of me you have Defi dad, who is advisor to ZapperFi and 4th Revolution Capital. And Evan Van Ness, the Ethereum expert and content creator. Welcome. Tonight we're going to be diving into many different topics, controversial topics that are about both chains. We're going to have great discussions, we hope you guys are excited. And we're going to get right into our opening remarks. Each person is going to have two minutes. The way this debate will be structured is each side will have one and a half minutes which will be strictly time to make concise arguments for each topic that we bring up tonight. So let's go ahead and start off. Defi dad, if you want to give your opening remarks here, just give us two minutes. Tell us a little bit about yourself and why you love Ethereum so much.

Yeah, yeah. Hi everyone. So I'm normally just classify myself as a defi super user, but I've also worked at Zapper for the last year. I'm now an advisor to Zapper and I'm just about to start working for 4th Revolution Capital, which is a Defi focused fund. But yeah, I mean, God, to put it in a nutshell, I've been working on or with Ethereum projects for about four years now. I also pay actually very close attention to BSC projects and I think my thesis is less about Ethereum being better. But I do recognize that we have, I think obviously more innovation going on just because there's that much more economic activity. The on chain numbers sort of speak to that, or I think they clearly speak to that. But yeah, hopefully we'll get to talk more about the differences because my goal is, I think more to highlight the differences so that people are educated on all the different projects that you can get involved in on both Ethereum and bsc.

Excellent. Nichols, why don't you tell us your opening remarks here? You have two minutes.

Yeah, it's been Nichols, founder of Blizzard Money. Before that I was a community member over at BP Finance and then I helped at BCS Gems with Ogle as well. Obviously I'm a little biased because I run a project on bse, but you know, I really enjoy the community. I think it's more positive in nature than, than some of the Ethereum community, obviously, the, the cheaper TXVs, the speed, you know, that's, that's pretty basic stuff.

Excellent. All right, and we're going to shift over to Evan Van Ness. Tell us a little bit about yourself. And you have two minutes for your opening remarks.

Evan, you're muted.

Looks like we need to unmute there.

I know how computers work. I'm Evan Van Ness. I founded a newsletter called Weekend ethereum news. That's weekendethereumnews.com and I like to tweet polemics on the old Twitter. You know, that's about it for me. I live in Texas, so I like to say things like howdy when I'm opening my remarks. I think Ethereum is great. And I think the whole point of Ethereum is that it's a platform to build decentralized applications and blockchains can be accretive things, as in value add and win, win for everything. And I think BSC in some ways has, has been that by Binance. I do think that, you know, users should be clear that what they're getting is a platform controlled by Binance. And, you know, it's pretty much not decentralized at all. But, you know, you know, there are sometimes higher rewards available there and, you know, as long as you understand that higher risk is, goes quite along with higher rewards, then let's set up the risk you take.

Right.

Excellent. And we will shift this over. Last but not least, Ogle, have yourself a little bit of an introduction and tell us why you love BSC so much.

Yeah, sure. I just want to say first off that I'm sorry for not being on the video. I lost my mask like 10 minutes prior to the stream starting. And so that's just how it is. So I founded BSC Gems back in August, whenever the Binance smart chain first came out. This is after having spent some time on, on the Ethereum network and also spending time just working with Ethan prior to that BTC for about the past nine or ten years. BSC for me is mostly all the good things that I would hope to have out of the Ethereum network, with a couple of drawbacks that I think Evan was alluding to. And so the reason I love bsc though, is you have virtually all of the good things about eth. You have the ability to create projects of your own if you like. You have the ability to have access to capital and interesting ideas that you might not otherwise have. Typically, you have a lot of kind of cool stuff in a future, we'll have a place in a future financial ecosystem. This decentralized financial ecosystem, but you have it at a speed and at a price and an accessibility that you don't get on the Ethereum chain. And so this enables not just somewhat wealthy first world countries to get involved, it allows other people in other parts of the world to get involved and to better their lives. And I really, really appreciate that part about it. The second thing that I really appreciate as someone who runs the channel BSC gems, is that the community that I experience on the Ethereum side is very different than the one that I experienced on the BSC side. It's just, and I'm not saying one's better or worse, but they're different. And the one on the BSC side works better for my kind of, my demeanor, I should say, which is kind of a relaxed, you know, kind of a nice, nice guy, you know, versus a little more kind of serious and hardcore, which is what you get a little bit more on the Ethereum side.

All right, looks like everyone has made their opening statements. We appreciate you guys with the brief introductions. Now let's get into it. The first topic for tonight is going to be about leadership. We're going to spend six minutes total per, per topic here giving each side one and a half minutes each per person. So we're going to start this off with bringing this over to the Ethereum side. So let's, let's talk about it. Leadership on both chains, whether you want, As we know, Vitalik Buterin is the figurehead of Ethereum and then Binance has CZ as their figurehead. So let's start off ton with the question, who would you rather have at the helm of your, of your blockchain? Let's hand this over to the Ethereum guys first. Who would like to step up?

Yeah, I totally disagree. I mean, I don't think Vitalik is the figurehead of Ethereum by any means, is a decentralized ecosystem. I think it's a challenge that 2 million followers on Twitter and other people don't. But you know, Vitalik was one of the founders of Ethereum. He is a very bright guy and has a lot of good ideas and he's come up with some great ideas. But he's like really frankly not very involved in the governance of Ethereum. One thing that he was involved in, which was his idea three years ago, was now known as EIP 1559, which is Transaction fee, a different type of fee market which will hopefully involve a better user experience for users, just more predictable gas fees. And it will also mean bringing about half of the Gas used in the traction, which will, you know, have some interesting effects on the total supply of Ethereum.

Excellent. BSC guys. Which one do you guys want to jump in first here?

I'm happy to, unless. Nichols, you want to pick up? You okay?

Yeah, go ahead.

All right. Yeah. So. So. So I think that it is indisputable that at least on the BSC side, the CZ is the figurehead. He owns the company. He founded and owns the company that deployed the Binance smart chain system itself. So obviously he's the one. He's also very outspoken. He's happy to start problems once in a while, but he also seems to be a pretty nice, easygoing guy in some other ways. I think that the leadership of the Binance side, in my view, is superior for this becoming a dominant chain. And the main reason for that is that, first off, there is a leader, which, to Evan's point, maybe Vitalik, is not per se, like the leader or the figurehead, the 100% figurehead. There is a leader who has shown his ability to grow something, his ability to manage something through bear and bull markets, his ability to motivate people, thousands of people to work for him, many of them not for a ton of money. He's been able to take the best parts of other systems and learn from those and then deploy things that are better for the rest of the people than just the wealthy folks like we were talking about earlier. I mean, he's. You know, in short, he's able to actually lead. And so from my perspective, leadership is a very clear winner on the BSC side.

Excellent. And defi. Dad, feel free to jump in here.

Yeah, I think this actually cuts to the core of knowing the differences, so you can choose basically, which ecosystem is a better fit for you. And I think actually a lot of what Ogle said I agree with in terms of, like, who CZ is as a leader. The problem for me is that I want to. To grow defi. We'd need decentralization. And I think that decentralization ultimately becomes a spectrum. So without going into, like, how decentralized is Ethereum, how decentralized is bsc? I think it's unequivocal. Or we know, based on just the number of validators, that Ethereum is more decentralized. And so that requires the personality that we have in Vitalik. We have a very sort of selfless, high EQ sort of personality. And, you know, it took a lot, obviously, to launch the network. It takes a lot of brilliance to be able to create what is Ethereum's network today. But that being said, I do see the difference in leadership style with cz, where he is more of a trust me, I will take care of you. I know what's best. And I'm not suggesting either one is better. I think it's interesting we get to sort of watch it as an experiment. I obviously lean towards Ethereum's leadership style with Vitalik and yeah, I kind of leave it at that.

Excellent. And Nichols, your thoughts and opinions here?

Yeah, so I agree with both points that Vitalik's a very selfless guy. And, and you know, that works very well in a, in a extremely, you know, decentralized blockchain. That's, that's the type of personality you need, you need to work with a community and listen to, to thoughts and, you know, of your community and. But at the same time, you know, CZ knows how to monetize products. You know, he's a very good marketer. He has a large social following that has built this massive, massive, you know, bank crypto bank basically. And, and I think a lot of BSC people put their trust in that. They're, they're users of finance, so they just naturally are comfortable with Binance marching.

All right, we heard it from both sides. We're going to move on to the next topic, security. All right, folks, we're getting into security. We want to figure out the evolutions moving forward for Ethereum and bsc. Which chain is safer and how are users incentivized to participate in a DeFi ecosystem when it's full of rug pulls or exploits. We're going to start this one off on the BSC side, guys. Which one do you guys want to jump in first?

Nichols, if you don't mind, just so I can get my connection issues right here. Thanks.

Yeah, yep, no problem. Yeah. So part of what appealed to me with, with Binance Smart Chain at the beginning was the idea of this, you know, semi walled garden to where if you had some massive or, or medium rug pull or exploit that, that, that centralization effect could come into play and resolve that. Which at the beginning was really nice. I mean, we had a couple exploits of, you know, wine swap and we had a Venus issue that, you know, that's where Mothership Binance stepped in and was able to recover user funds. Running a project and being part of a telegram group, you, you do see a lot of users that don't necessarily know how to check themselves with smart contracts and so on. And I think that's a big issue with DEFI and, and having that. You Know, semi walled garden gives them comfort in operating in the space. Now I. It seems that Binance is, has had less of a approach to that lately. We'll see if, if user pushback, you know, makes that come back around. But that, that's what appeals to me from Binance Smart Chain and you know, compared to eth, you don't get that type of. Of course you don't get it because it's decentralized, but it's, it's actual theft, whether it be an exploit or a rug pull or whatever by a project. I think that's what appeals to a large user base in Binance.

That's great. Evan, what are your thoughts about the security of each chain? Which chain is safer at the end of the day? What are you seeing?

Well, I think it's pretty unequivocal that right now all of the hacks are happening on Smart Chain and not on Ethereum. You can literally go to Rekt and Julian Boodaloop's DAO project and you can literally see that like, there basically hasn't been a single attack on ETH in like two months because they all moved to bsc. And you know, I think that's a little unfortunate. And my understanding is that, you know, Binance has not stepped in and gotten any of those people's money back. And to be fair to me, that sort of means that you have the worst of both worlds, where you have a centralized product, which also you have the disadvantages of centralization. But then the hackers have all gotten away with it, like in the past month, as far as I understand. So you have all of the benefits or all of the disadvantages of decent centralization as well. Also, one small point, which I haven't seen anyone make anywhere, but since BS copied Geth entirely, an Ethereum client, they inherit all of Ethereum's or at least Geth's technical issues, and they have not, as far as I know, fixed a spam attack issue that was fixed in the last hard Fork called EIP 2929. So literally someone could probably DOS the network to death with unless they fix this with 10 bucks an hour if they know how to do the attack. So they should really fix that asap.

You bring up a good point, Ogle, do you have thoughts as to which chain is safer and why? How are users incentivized in this DEFI ecosystem today?

Yeah, I think that actually Evan made a good point. He said that after all the exploits, quote, moved to bsc, that means they were somewhere else before that they were on Ethereum. And you know what it is, is the very, very high cost of Eth gas makes it more exciting or I guess cheaper to come over to somewhere else and do exploits. And I remember back in August, September, October, November, December, we had hundreds of thousands, millions of wallets actually were doing just fine. And then come January we saw that any swap was launching on the BSC side and I was like, oh Christ, here we go. As soon as that happens, there's a way for these folks to come from Ethereum over here and steal money, do exploits and then take it back over to Ethereum where they're from in the first place. Which is exactly what happened because then there was a bridge that was not going straight through Binance. And so I think that the fact that there are issues that occur in BSC right now doesn't mean that BSC per se is less secure. It just means that's where the exploits are happening right now. Just like the prior to that they were happening on Ethereum. All last week I was on Kucoins chain checking it out the kucoin and basically 99.99% of things on there are just rugs, you know, and so I mean something, it's just, you know, people will go where it's cheap and easy to do an exploit. But as Nichols was saying, there have been situations in the past where people were stopped at the gate. They were not stopped at the gate so much by Binance, but they were stopped at the gate in a few other ways via other platforms with the exclusion of any swap who refuses to participate in that process. To me it seems very clear to me that BSC is more secure if even one project has an exploit that is recovered, which it has. I mean I can cite many Ethereum, I can't think of any.

And defi. Dad, what do you think here? Which chain is safer and why?

Yeah, I think so. The difference between the two chains has been called out here with bsc, I think of it as you sort of inherit this benevolent dictator and again the community knows that CZ is in charge. And again there's a lot of upside to that, but it is a double edged sword. You have to put your trust, trust into this one very powerful person. On the flip side of that, with Ethereum, when we have a rug pool, unless you have bought decentralized insurance, you have to basically just own that decision. And I want to call out those are two very different types of people and they sometimes get mixed up too between using both chains. So if you are, you will notice that people own their accountability when they are not experienced a rug pull. But then when one happens we do find some screaming for help and I think it just takes time and experience to know the difference. I would rather bask in the fact that I know that I'm working in a more censorship resistant blockchain like Ethereum versus bsc. But I think the benefit for some users on BSC has been to look to the Binance mothership to sort of shut off the bridge and prevent a hacker from exiting the system with funds. So yeah, that's my take on it.

We bring up some great concerns about the security because I think that's going to be a huge key for both the evolutions of both chains. So it'll be interesting to see kind of what happens here moving forward. We are going to move into our next topic tonight, speed and scalability. So one of the big things that really separates the differences between Ethereum and Binance smart chain as we all know is the transactions and speed. So how does each chain plan to maintain transaction speed while scaling user growth? Let's start this off with default. Why don't we hear from you on the Ethereum side?

Yeah, so Ethereum currently is in, it's in like an inflection point because we have a number of layer two solutions that are working but are just launching. And I want to call out the difference that a true L2 is more like an elevated train above a city. You're still inheriting the security, the decentralization of the Ethereum or Manhattan community. But obviously you're able to transact at cheaper costs and faster transaction speeds. The problem is right now is there's insatiable demand to transact in defi. And so over the past year we've seen there are those that have remained on Ethereum and not touched another chain. There are those that began to experiment with bsc, there are those that have chosen to use BSC end of day, I think, depending on what is your preference. Do you need the speed and basically next to zero cost to transact today with some of the downsides we've called out about bsc. If that's your preference, BSC is the right choice for you. Otherwise for me, I choose more of the cornucopia of new opportunities and innovations on Ethereum. But I also choose to pay higher transaction fees and have to be a little more patient. Long term though, the question is what happens when Ethereum has equivalent transaction speeds, you know, the same low costs. We'll find out what users do in the next few years. My bet is that Ethereum wins that long term race.

Very good, Ogle. Let's hear your thoughts on the speed and scalability topics.

Yeah, I think that the speed and scalability as things are right now is really kind of, you know, there's really no comparison. Obviously BSC is significantly faster. Obviously it's significantly more scalable as it is. As Defi dad mentioned, Ethereum 2.0, quote unquote, which is theoretically going to come at some point in the next couple of years. That may solve some of those issues. I think the problem that Eth 2.0 is going to run into, or could run into, which, which I would be fearful of, is that in a couple of years that's not where these ecosystems are like the BSC and MATIC and all the other. All the other side or L2s are not where they are now in two years. And so Eth is basically two years behind trying to catch up to where things are today in that case. And so I'm not so sure. I think that probably in a couple years, if the price goes down, the speed goes, the speed goes up on E 2.0, I mean, that'll be fantastic, that'll be a lot better situation. But these L2s and the side chains at that point will have, I imagine, innovated well beyond that to even cheaper, even faster.

And Evan, I see you chomping at the bit here. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on each chain and kind of where you see the scaling and user growth happening on Ethereum.

Yeah, look, speed and scalability are sort of different issues. I think the first thing to say is that the idea that BSC has innovated is like obviously wrong.

Right?

BSC is not innovated at all. They have literally forked geth and they haven't even kept up. As I said, like, I'm pretty sure that the like, basically life and death, if somebody like decides to spam the chain, they are completely vulnerable to it right now. So literally they have every issue that Ethereum has in the long term. But magnitude's worse. That's not debatable. I mean, you look at the tech, it's there, it's the exact same. It's just a fork that is behind Ethereum at this point. As for speed, so I consider BSC to be sort of a subset of the Ethereum ecosystem. Right. Part of the whole point of Ethereum is that you can do a lot of things by bridging to all these sidechains. So if you want to take crazy amounts of risk on a centralized platform, like bsc. You should go do that if you want maybe a little bit more decentralized. There's stuff like Matic and Polygon and xdai where they're still pretty centralized but they're more decentralized than bsc. And then there's of course roll ups and layer two and those things of course are faster than bsc. For instance, I use Sellers layer two finance and I instantly had a transaction go through. Right. And same with rollups. I can go use the ZK rollup right now and I might transfer the funds and it's instant. It's all a choice and that's what Ethereum gives you.

Excellent. And Nichols, let's hear your thoughts about speed and scalability. What's going on with BSC on this side of things?

Yeah, I mean just add on Ogle's point is, you know, by the time E 2.0 comes around, you know what to add on to this point, what, how ingrained are the communities in BSE, you know, other sidechains and L2 is going to be. And then furthermore, you know, and for DEFI to grow there has to be adoption out of, you know, out of the people that are in DEFI right now. Whether that's an east or Binance Smart chain or Matic. And I feel like Binance itself is in the best position to onboard those new users and it's obviously going to be on Binance Smart chain. That's the market facing material that they're providing and they see the speed and transaction costs right there. That's the first experience I think also Even with these 2.0, I don't, I don't think you're going to match necessarily the transaction cost of sidechains or, or you know, something like BSE or an L2 as well. So I, I just think it's gonna east and, and I see this a lot from, from you know what you call eth Maxis is, is they're extremely worried about, you know, is he 2.0 going to be too late? You know, our users going to be ingrained in other solutions as well. So. And maybe a ZK roll up or, or your, you know, Matic or Polygon or whatever is that is an answer for them. But I, I just feel like you know these main net itself runs the risk of time.

Excellent. We are going to roll right into accessibility. You've heard the thoughts about speed and scalability. Now let's get into accessibility for both chains. We've seen rapid growth in the DEFI space on both sides. Ethereum and bsc. But ultimately what chain is better for onboarding users? Let's hand this off to Evan, start us off on the Ethereum side.

Yeah. What is best for onboarding users? You know, I mean, Binance. Part of the way that they got so many people to use BSC was that they sort of tricked their users into using bsc. And like that's, that's not me saying that. I mean you can literally go search and every wallet's message board is full of complaints saying I was tricked into using bsc. I mean, so, but you know what, like hey, if people want to use it, they should use it. And that, that's totally cool. You know, BSC is cheap. Like it's cool to try something out. It's sort of like a centralized option of Ethereum. You know, if you want to like try it out for the first time with some ephemeral keys and whatnot that you can, you know, that you don't have to lose because key management is a, is a significant hurdle to getting people involved in crypto, then like BSE is a great option for that. And you know, actually I would agree with something that I think Nichols said on the last one, which is that like Mainnet Ethereum will always have higher transaction costs than like a centralized side chain.

Right?

I mean that is just a fact of life because decentralization has costs, right? Like if you want the trustlessness and the censorship resistance, then you know, you're going to have to, to pay for it, you know, and, and if you really want really cheap, then you should just use SQL, which is known as your bank.

Interesting thoughts. Very good. We're going to hand this over to Nichols. Which chain is better for onboarding New New Year's and why?

Yeah, I mean I think I kind of made it, made the point last time. But you know, I kind of look at Binance smart chain as any other solution is, you know, polygon and so on as, as more the people's change chain. They're, they're the new people that are getting into defi are from, you know, places where, you know, a 30 cent transaction, you know, is reasonable, but a 300 hour transaction is not. And I think, I think you have to have something like that to gain mass adoption. You know, everybody can participate in Binance marching, not everybody can participate in on ether mainnet. You know, I wouldn't dare farm on ether mainnet with less than $20,000. And I think it's, I think it's simple. I think that's a simple conversation that it's Just more accessible, it's more user friendly and cost friendly to, to an everyday user.

Yeah. And Defi, what are your thoughts about this? Go ahead, you still have time.

Sorry.

And I think to Evan's point, you know, maybe, maybe there are some risks to Binance Smart Chain, but you know, the risk of making a bad decision with a low amount of funds on Ethereum and paying a 300 transaction fee is to me a greater risk. I, I don't believe that Binance Smart Chain is going to just stop working one day. I think that's a, that's a smaller risk than, than other risks that you take on in, in Defy in general. That makes sense.

Yeah. Defi dead. What are your thoughts here?

I think this question goes back to your time frame. So part of the reason that Defi, I think has grown so rapidly on Ethereum is the fact that first off you have better developer tooling. I think this is a truth that everybody can agree upon and that comes from a larger, more active developer community. And that has led to more Defi applications and more protocols launching, which attracts more talent. And I would say the thing that the real difference I've noticed with Ethereum based Defi, especially over the last six to 12 months is I think we're just seeing better design. Design has become so important to the core of mass adoption for Defi and so basically we're attracting that much more talent I think at the moment. Now, long term, I have no doubt that BSC has a number of applications like PancakeSwap, I think has some incredible design, like it's just so easy to use. And so I see these are not like you can't basically create and hide that innovation from others, so it'll continue to spread. But the core of that innovation, the core of the excitement, I think as a developer community still lies in Ethereum. So anyways, I'd say right now there's that much better tooling. I've obviously worked with Zapr the last year and I think Zapper has. We've done about 5 billion in transaction volume and there's a reason for that because we just continue to work with the community that lives on Ethereum. So yeah, that's anyways why I think we've got the lead right now in terms of accessibility on Ethereum.

All right, and Ogle, what are your thoughts here in regards to accessibility for BSC versus Eth?

Yeah, it really depends on the audience. I mean, I think that Defi dad is 100% correct when it comes to accessibility for new developers. ETH is much more accessible because there's a lot more helpful communities on that. There are a lot of places people can go to find information. There are lots of copy and paste the codes that they can use and sort of get started and stuff. And I think that's fantastic. If you're a developer, it's a lot more accessible to be on the ETH side. If you're pretty much anyone else. I think that BSC is and I think that this is clear. I mean you have. First off it's more accessible because you have easy on ramp. You have the ability to go just to Binance and press a button. Bada bing. Now you're on the BSC network as opposed to having to find some other route. You can do it from Kucoin as well. Two is, I think that the accessibility conversation is proven by looking at the transaction sizes. If you go to something like Dextools and you look at the last transactions on different coins, try to find on Ethereum anywhere where someone's making a $50 transaction where they buy $1.50 of a coin or $2.50 of a coin or $5 of a coin, it's not going to happen because they pay 10 times that in the transaction cost. On the other hand, I can see here and look at the same stuff like a Dex tools or any of the other number of places I see people making 50 cent purchases, $1.50 purchases, $2 purchases. And you can't discount the fact that these are only possible because of the low fees. I mean the. You know, I think it's kind of interesting the top BSE countries, the top countries where BSE is actually used, Russia, Turkey, Nigeria, Vietnam, Brazil. These are places that don't have enormous amounts of money in general and can't afford to get onto something like that. So de facto accessibility is clearly on the BSC side when it comes to actual uses of product.

Interesting. We're talking accessibility in terms of developer side and then actually end user side. So it seems like there's kind of two angles of accessibility that we're all discussing here, which is pretty fascinating because I think both bring great value for that. Now we are going to move into the next topic for tonight. The elephant in the room. Ethereum 2.0. All right, with Ethereum 2.0 lingering. What, what is this? What's going on with this? Is it overhyped? Is this the right direction for Ethereum? We're going to allow defi. Dad, why don't you take this one away for us?

I was going to say, I need to let Evan lead off on this.

Okay.

He is probably the foremost expert on this. It would be of not using him. So please, Evan.

Yeah, sure, jump in.

So. So eth2 is, is really sort of a misnomer. You know, there's. We could go how it became Eth 2, Eth 2.0, whatever people use. What really makes sense is to talk about what's coming on the roadmap and what's coming on the roadmap is, you know, this 1559 that is going to burn about half of transaction fees is coming on August 4th. And then about six months from now we are going to turn off proof of work and use the Eth2 staking system that has been live since December. And we're going to use that for consensus for all of Ethereum. So there's this idea that Eth2 is a separate thing and it's not really we're going to use Ethereum staking that we've been working on and been using in production, but in a very isolated production and getting it ready for about six months from now. We've already had a bunch of prototypes. It's a relatively simple concept. Basically, we're going to hitch the quote unquote eth1, the mainnet client, onto the eth2 client, which is the staking client, and then just let the two talk to each other. And instead of using proof of work, mining and waste a lot of electricity, we will use staking, the staking system that's been working for the last six months. About six months to a year after that we'll have rollups, we'll have more data availability for rollups on a bunch of different shards, but at the moment we don't really need that because roll ups aren't quite at capacity on Mainnet.

Excellent. That's super informative because I actually didn't really know a lot of what that roadmap looked like for E2, so that's pretty insightful.

I could talk an hour.

I'm curious. I know. I wish I could dive a little bit deeper with that, but I do want to kind of toss this over to the BSC guys because I'm curious to hear your insights. Ogle especially, what does eth2 from your perspective look like and is this the right direction? Kind of an outsider looking in to the Ethereum ecosystem.

What does Eth2 look like? To me there's actually this GIF file that I've seen in a lot of telegrams and it shows Vitalik and he's like 85 years old and it's like a news thing. At the bottom it says eth2 finally released. That's what eth2 looks like to me. I'm sure that theoretically something interesting can come out of it. I mean, that would be fantastic. But until something happens, we're really just debating dreams right now. I can talk about ETH as it is right now, I can talk about BSC as it is right now, but otherwise we're just talking about dreams. I can't argue the points that Evan made and I can't argue what the specs claim will happen. And if they do happen, that's fantastic. I mean, look, I use ETH myself. I'm not going to say I don't, because I do. That's where I started off at. Like I said earlier, I still use it today for certain things. There are a lot of good reasons to use eth, but for the regular user, and just in general, I think that BSC is the better place to be. And that's what we're debating, really.

Sure. In defi. Dad, we're going to toss this over to you. We've been talking about eth2 for a while. Is it overhyped? And in your opinion, is this the right direction of where the next evolution of Ethereum, the blockchain, should go?

Yeah, my response is going to be super short. Eth 2.0 has really been more of just like some bad framing, some bad marketing over the last years. So Eth 2.0 was always going to take so much more time. And the problem is if you're not tuned in to everything that Evan just mentioned, which is a lot to take in, I would recommend there's some incredible podcasts with from ETH Hub that you can learn all about ETH 2.0. But long story short, we really are that close. It's just that now I will say, personally, I just look forward to seeing this all roll out. I've tried to avoid telling people, oh, it's this much closer, but it really is. It's finally here. And the biggest win in the past year, of course, has been the beacon chain launching and having the staking go live, because we can watch that number tick upwards of validators on Ethereum. And I think we're around like $12 billion now, like about 6 million ether is staked, so we're about to get there. That being said, one final point, kind of going back to the last bit about accessibility, is at the end of the day, I look to defi protocols to launch liquidity on as many chains as they see fit, as the community votes and sees fit and just let the users decide. That's been one of the cool things is to see there's been a number of projects I love on Ethereum that decided to launch on bsc. Working at Zapper, we decided to support BSC because we at the end of the day said the users need to be able to make their own choices. And I think we're seeing that on the opposite end where you will start to see projects that launched originally on BSC that will launch on Ethereum. And I'm very interested to see what, what users do as, as those options become available.

Yeah, definitely. And Nicholas, what are your thoughts here in regards to the direction of eth 2.0?

Yeah, I agree with Defi Dad. I actually read an article, I don't remember who, who wrote it. I can, I can retweet it today but you know, the idea of projects being multi chain and letting the users decide and the article also talked about, you know, when E 2.0 comes out, is anybody going to care? You know, it could be the greatest solution, but is it not going to come out, you know, in six or a year or, or two years? Is anybody going to care by then? Because they can basically use their favorite defy platform on their preferred chain, you know, whatever is convenient to them. So you know, has, has E2.2.0 kind of lost its splash and you know, is not going to create as big as an impact as everyone hopes it will.

Interesting deploy on Cardano though, right? We, we're pretty sure.

No. Hell no.

We're all in agreement about that. We'll be on E 10.0 before Cardano has any apps.

Shots fired. No.

All right guys, there won't be a.

BSE east versus Cardano debate.

Plus Ethereum.

Exactly. All right guys, we're going to shift over to. Our next topic tonight is BSC validators. As we touched on earlier, the biggest differences between chains is the amount of validators with BSC being a little bit more centralized and, and having only 21 validators versus now thousands upon validators. On the Ethereum side, what is the most secure form of the blockchain in regards to proof of authority versus proof of stake or proof of work Spitting Nichols, we're going to start off with you on the BSC side.

As Defi dad deferred to Evan, I'm going to defer to Dogle on this one. He is my validator.

Not a lot of these breaking rules discord qualified.

All Right, we'll jump in here for us. Let's handle this. Let's see what bsc. Why is each chain more secure? Or what's the argument for proof of authority versus proof of stake?

Okay, so consensus is a little bit slightly different conversation than the validator topic. As for what I'm going to say, but I'll say that, okay, so there's this position that because there's 21 validators, that there's, that there's, you know, that basically like their own, they're all owned by, by, by, by cz. And he can just call up the hallway and tell people, hey, Terry, you know, do this thing, roll it back, you know, or whatever the case may be. I've seen this over and over and over again, and it's just nonsensical. I mean, it's just not the case. And I can tell you this from experience. My group, BSC Gems, we, we had enough BNB together back in January, which was about 104,000 BNB, to, to have our own validator and be in the top 21 at that point. Right now, it's over 500,000 BNB required to do that. But at that point, we, you know, we had the ability to do that. Now, to be fair, in order to be a validator on the BSC side, it does require approval from the, from the Binance crew or the BSC crew. Actually, I'm not sure if it's the BSC crew or the Binance crew, but it requires approval. And I think there's, there's good and bad to that. The bad is what they'll point out in a minute. So I'll point out the good. The good side of that is, is basically you do have this ability to have a filtering mechanism such that someone ultra wealthy can't come in and take over all the validators or several of the validators and then start to have, start to screw with the transactions the way that has been the case on some other chains. And so I don't really see this as quite the issue that some other people do, but I do see it definitely as a form of centralization. And for those who might be much more concerned about decentralization versus centralization, I'll concede the point. I'll gladly concede the point that in this aspect, ETH is certainly more decentralized and in some ways safer.

Okay, you already conceded the point, which is that, you know, somebody can already take, come in and take it over because it's, it's already been taken over. So I actually looked into BSC's architecture to prepare for this call. And so one interesting thing that I learned is that Binance Smart Chain is actually a side chain of Binance Chain, which I think not a lot of people know. So there are 21 validators on Binance Smart Chain, but all of the. So basically Binance chain, which is a tendermint chain, it has 11 validators which are I think entirely run by Binance. I think the 21 on BSC are a little bit more. I think they might be friends of Binance, but not just Binance. Flat out, I believe the Binance chain is actually just flat out run by Binance. And there are 11 validators and every day they choose the 21 BSC validators for the next day. I looked at the tech stack as well. It's a pretty rickety tech stack. There are some oracles which are also controlled. There's quite a few points of failure. You know, I think sort of makes sense why we've seen some very deep reorgs, despite the fact that it's centralized and there's not many validators and how difficult it is to run a node, of course, because. And that's only going to get worse. But you know, I don't think Ogle and I really disagree on, you know, this all that much. Right. Which is like it's centralized. And as long as users know about that, then that's a reasonable thing to choose.

And Ogle, do you want to rebut that? Or Nicholas, do you want to jump in and maybe talk more about the centralized centralization of bsc?

One thing that I'll say, if you don't mind just for one second, just in terms of who owns the validators, because it is a point that's brought up a lot. If you look at the validator list on BSC Scan, for example, you can see, you can see who owns these because usually they're kind of advertisements in a certain sense. The number one, the last time I checked, was owned by a BSC Scan. You know, the one of them was BNB48, which is basically a club of like a DAO, basically of people who just have a bunch of BNB Cream, which is a project that a lot of people are familiar with. That's one of the top ones. They just take all the BNB that's in there and they, they use that to vote to be a validator. And so, you know, these aren't projects or groups that CZ or someone else can call up and say, hey, hey, hey, let's do this all together. It's not going to happen. You know, it doesn't work like that. The, the approval mechanism is to make sure they're not malicious. It's not to make sure they agree with, you know, with what cz, how he sees the world. It's not like a test, you know, it's not some kind of litmus test you have to go through to become approved. I just want to be clear about it.

Yeah, well, does that ultimately go ahead?

I do want to say though, I mean, it is a side chain of finance's chain, right? So there are 11 validators, so that choose every day the 21 on BSC. So like given like how much, you know, Binance owns at the BNB supply, it is, you know, they do control who is the validators on bsc. I mean, I think this is probably a small point, but it is worth making.

And I will agree with Evan that theoretically that is the case. I'm not sure that actually occurs. I don't have any proof that that occurs. But there is a theoretical risk there that is, that is worth paying attention to. And I agree with him about that.

I can cap off this.

Yeah, go ahead.

The best part about this conversation is that it's being informative and truthful.

So.

The point of the debate is ultimately which chain is better, which one should you ultimately use? And I would argue this is one of those points actually that I don't think matters much to, to any users because I think you've already made your decision. By the time you get this deep, you know, down the rabbit hole, you've already chosen Ethereum for decentralization security, xyz, whatever. Or you've chosen BSC because you need to be able to transact with $10 or less and pay, you know, a few cents per transaction. Or you're, you know, as Ogle pointed out, I love the fact that BSC is reaching users in parts of the world who desperately need access to alternative finance. So yeah, I think my main point here is it's so important to understand these differences. I wish everyone would. I think the truth is probably less than like what, 5, 10% of users, unless they watch Tonight Will and that. That's it. If you're going to, you need to. People need to be truthful about it. And there's one person that bothers me who I think is somewhat misleading at times, and that is CZ. That's the.1 of the few things about him that bothers me is I think he sort of paints it as apples to apples as opposed to, again, I Think how forthcoming like this conversation about the differences are.

Benton. Is it possible. If I can have just 20 seconds, just really quick. I want to make one apple.

You're not allowed.

Come on, please.

Both sides had their statements. We had Ethereum guys make their last word there. We are going to shift over to the.

Yeah, I think let's hear from Ogle.

All right, all right, we'll give you. We'll give you 20 seconds here.

Thank you so much. And thank you. And it's actually not even an argument. I just want to make a. Make a kind of a question here. So. So my understanding. I mean, Evan said that there are. There are 11 validators on Binance Chain that. That basically choose the validators for bsc. That's. That's not my understanding. My understanding is that the BSC validators are based on just the top number of staked bnb. So if possible, Evan, if you don't mind tweeting the information about that afterward, I would just like to see it because it's just totally different than what my understanding is. That's all I want to say. Thank you.

All right, very good. Well, we're going to roll into the next. The next topic here. It is consensus mechanisms, which we're going to kind of fold into a little bit more here and touch more on kind of validators and stuff. So let's jump right in. And this will give us our chance to kind of segue and maybe rehash some of the topics we were just talking about with Ethereum being proof of work, as we just touched on currently shifting over to proof of stake and Binance Smart chain being proof of authority. Does this compromise network integrity? I. I think we kind of touched on this a little bit. And then would this provide a stop gap for scammers at all? Ogle, do you want to start us off and kick this one off.

But let Evan start this one.

Sure.

Since. Since we got extra 20 seconds, we'll let him go first.

Okay. I'm actually going to have to reconnect, guys. So. So, so Evan or Nichols or D5. Dad, I'll be. I'll be just right back. Please. Go ahead.

Evan. Feel free to jump in here, man.

So I. I said it, but I think I was talking over someone. I'm sorry, I wasn't listening to the question because it was their turn to talk.

I see. So we're going to be talking about how is there. Is their network compromising the integrity of the network by being proof of authority versus proof of stake and does this provide A stopgap for scammers?

Yeah, I mean, compromised, it's centralized. You know, I think it's, it depends on, you know, what your threat model is. And I think we've talked about that a lot so far on this call. Does it provide a stopgap for scammers? You know, you know, I think that Binance has stepped in and stopped some of the scams early on, but I, like I said earlier, I think that like, no longer do they do that because there's some bridges and you know, although it's centralized, they managed, you know, it's not fast enough. And so people can literally like programmatically get it in in the next block and you know, once it's into that bridge, it's basically good enough for them. I'm not really an expert on any of those bridges or anything like that, but my understanding is that the hackers, which, you know, at this point I think we're up, you know, north of a billion dollars over the past, over BSC hacks in the past couple months, or maybe it's half a billion, I'm not sure. I think they've all basically gotten away with it and bridged off the chain. So, yeah, like I said to me, there's, in some ways there is the disadvantages of centralization and the disadvantages of decentralization.

Excellent point. Nicholas, do you want to jump in here.

Yeah.

To kind of clarify my point earlier about that. So in the past, you know, I, I think I may have misled you down the, the wrong path of, you know, Binance, you know, stopped a transaction on Binance Smart Chain itself that was generally done through, you know, third party communication with, you know, perhaps another bridge or even at the sex, the, the centralized exchange level of, you know, a user sending funds to, to binance.com and, and freezing funds there. So it's, it's not like they've interjected into the blockchain itself, you know, the transactions itself. Yeah. So I just wanted to kind of clarify that. It's more of a cooperation between different projects which, which has kind of went down the wayside with, with bridges, like any swap and a couple other, you know, more decentralized bridges that, that aren't willing to cooperate in that manner. That's extremely unfortunate. And, and it's led to more scams on, on BSC than, than there was in the past. And I, and I hope that cooperation comes back. That, that's what I'm, I'm hoping myself, because that was a major appeal to Binance. Marching for for some user and especially new users as far as like consensus mechanisms, I don't, you know, I, I won't get technical in it, but I don't think the average user really either doesn't know the differences or doesn't care because they've accepted that risk on the chain that they're operating. You know, they. So I, I don't see that as a, as a very important thing for the average Defy user in the worlds that I plan at least.

Yeah, Defi dad, you're going.

I accept. Sorry. I pause and then I, so I accept that risk that in, in my book that's a low risk versus other risks of interacting with smart contracts and, and so on. And I think the focus at BSC has been to educate the community on how to further advance their knowledge and reading smart contracts and interacting with them and so on, that's like baby step one of the new Defi process for a new user.

Yeah, and defi. Dad, feel free to jump in here.

Yeah, yeah, this isn't, I kind of meant to like pair this with even like the last point we discussed with BSC validators. Yeah, this, this falls into a category that users don't generally know about or care about. But I also like, because we're getting like near the end here, like as like I'm, I've definitely learned a few things here today, more about bsc. I've actually learned a little bit more too from Evan, just about Ethereum, things that I wasn't even aware of. And I just keep being reminded that.

Like.

Whatever differences there are between Ethereum, bsc, Phantom Polygon, Cosmos, these are alternatives to the legacy system. The problem is the legacy system. The legacy system needs to be burned to the ground and it needs to be rebuilt using what we've got here. And I do think like going back to I guess this original question about the proof of authority versus proof of stake. I will say the reason that I of course bet on Ethereum with proof of stake is that my worry is that Defi will just end up turning into like a Frankenstein sort of thing of what it was supposed to be, but looking more like legacy finance because regulators, you know, those who run the governments and hold us, you know, accountable in the countries we live in, those people are going to be threatened. And I'm very worried that without the most censorship resistant, decentralized network that we're at risk of, we're threatened by these people. And so that's where these sort of stop gaps we've talked about. But you know, with bsc, those Concern me only because of those enemies out there. Like if we're all on the same side of the fence, it's those people that concern. So anyways, that's why I sleep a little. I sleep better at night with my money on Ethereum.

Very good. And Ogle close us out here with your thoughts about consensus mechanisms. Be a C versus E. Yeah.

And as a regular user, a very knowledgeable user, I can see why Defi dad might sleep better on Ethereum. I can tell you the people that don't really sleep better on Ethereum and that would be for example, someone who owns a hedge fund or someone who is a family office manager, private equity manager, they're not going to be able to sleep because if there's a totally decentralized network with no chance of the ability to get their money back in the case of an exploit or a rug, then they're frankly, they're probably illegally breaching their fiduciary duties to their clients. They're probably introducing a level of risk that could get them in trouble for malpractice. And so I think that depending upon who you are and what your uses are, as we've said multiple times here, the chains have different advantages. But I think that when it comes to mass adoption of regular, everyday, not wealthy people, BSC wins. And I think when it comes to mass adoption of very large institutional or money managing type of situations, BSC makes more sense. I think that in the middle there, which is wealthy private individuals, I think that Ethereum wins that one probably.

Hey, very good one. 10 second point.

10 seconds.

Google makes a really interesting point I hadn't thought about and I again I think it kind of reinforces my concern is I want Defi to truly be, to not be controlled by the governments of the world. I want it to be, you know, a self sovereign sort of alternative peer to peer finance system. So I do see the point Ogle and I kind of scares me like what could happen beyond that? But I think we'll find out because. Because they're going to coexist.

Living up to your name.

Hey, yeah, that's all right. Defy dad.

I rented some kids from Amazon.

Good, good marketing. Yeah, he's doxed. He's a dad.

We are gonna we real quick. I want to jump in here is we do have a poll tonight on Cointelegraph's Twitter Go vote. And this was a friendly debate tonight. This turned out to be a great informative debate between both sides. But we want to hear your voices. Let's see, you know who you thought made some of the better points and maybe one of the chains that you learned more about tonight. Cast your vote. BSC versus eth. You have five minutes to go do that. Right now. We are going to move into our closing remarks. So I'm going to start this off with the BSC side. Nichols, give us your closing remarks. What were some of your biggest takeaways and thoughts after kind of being able to talk with Evan Defi, dad Ogle, take it away.

Yeah, I mean, great discussion. I didn't expect it to be terrible. You know, combative, you know, everybody's good people. You know, when we're speaking to the community, I think, I think we need to look at, and maybe this is a tip more or less for the youth community is we need to look at, you know, what the users outside of DeFi right now. What are they looking for? What are their needs specifically? Not only in the US or the UK or more wealthy areas, but the entire globe, you know, and I don't think, you know, high transaction costs and super decentralized blockchain is stuff that is one. Transaction costs aren't desired, obviously. And massive decentralization I don't think is big on their list of requirements for decentralized finance or DeFi. I think east loses sight of trying to create this perfect thing in this bubble and not looking at what the mass adoption of what people are, are going to use this thing in this bubble, you know, what, what are their needs and, and what matters most to them. I think you see you, you know, with cz, he very much saw that with Binance Smart Chain, he knew what the people wanted.

Yeah, Defi. Dad, give us your closing thoughts here. What, what was kind of some of your biggest takeaways and what would you like the world to know about Ethereum?

Yeah, I know I like strike a very, like kumbaya vibe with all this, but I am always surprised. I've talked with a lot of founders of BSC projects and I really like, I think it's important to keep a pulse and actually to try applications on bsc. Whether or not I choose to keep, you know, my money in it, I, you know, I am just simply reminded that the enemy is not in the room. The enemy is out there and the enemy is legacy finance. And I don't mean to say that they're evil people and we need to absolutely nuke them out of existence, but 20, 30 years from now, I really do believe that the majority of the world is going to be transacting in crypto asset networks and So I obviously, I think that Ethereum turns out to be the largest island in that mix. But one of the cool things I'm enjoying about BSC and Ethereum right now is that there's a lot of. If you were going to like, AB test, do people care about decentralization security? Do they just want fast transactions, cheaper costs? It's very interesting because you get to kind of watch BSC running alongside Ethereum and even the tooling you can use Metamask on either one. Long term. That's the thing, is long term. I just wonder what happens if Evan and I are correct and Eth 2.0 delivers here finally. And now we reach parity in some of these killer features that users do love about bsc. What happens then? I guess we'll come to find out. I have a very tough time believing that people will just abandon BSC. Just like if Eth 2.0. Technically, if it never delivered, it will, but if it never did, people aren't just going to abandon Ethereum. And so that's why I see them growing and continuing to coexist. And yeah, I'm excited for the ride. Future.

Very good, Ogle. Let's hear your closing thoughts and arguments.

Yeah, yeah. I just want to say thanks a lot to Defy dad and Evan for being cool today during this. Ben, you've done a fantastic job moderating and Nichols, of course, is the absolute goat over here. And so I just want to say first off, thanks, and it's good to meet those of you I didn't know beforehand. Look, Ethereum is amazing. There's no doubt about it. The group of people that worked on it for the past five or six years, actually more than that now, to create it. And they have worked on all of the different developments that have happened and continue to happen. They're fantastic. I mean, these are real geniuses that are helping to create the future of certain infrastructures. I also think the people working on BSC are amazing. And I think that the folks working on bsc, not just Binance itself, but the folks developing itself, although they might not be as polished as someone earlier said, they might not be as beautiful in some cases, as someone else said earlier, they are still working very hard, learning a lot, and becoming really the builders of tomorrow for their communities and for the BSC community itself. So I'm stoked about that. I grew up in a very disadvantaged situation and so I have a lot of, I have a very, you know, I have clearly have a bias toward people who don't have a lot, getting access and the ability to bring themselves up to better their lives. And I think that BSE provides that. It's something that Ethereum right now, just simply because of the fees. It just doesn't allow that to happen. And so for that reason and that reason, even if nothing else existed, for that reason alone, alone, I think that BSC is clearly the better chain for just the average person.

All right, and Evan, let's hear your closing thoughts and arguments.

So, once upon a time, I was in a chat group for stablecoin OTC trading for Argentines. And this was, you know, maybe a year ago now. And I realized quickly that they were, first of all, they were often trading tether, which has some of its problems, opaque backing. And they were often doing it on chains, which I consider to be scams, frankly, much worse than bsc, which is relatively honest about its centralization. This bothered me for a little bit, but at the same time, if you're literally just cashing out really quick, it actually serves a purpose, right? And these people were not leaving their money in for a long period of time. And these, this, this chain in particular worked for the use case. I think the same is true for bsc. You know, I think they're like, if you're, you know, if you really want low transaction fees, you should consider using centralized sidechains, especially if there's, you know, rates that are worth the reward. The rewards are worth the risk. However, personally, I got into crypto because centralization is power and power corrupts. So I think we need to decentralize.

Everything.

To the greatest extent possible. And so that's why I'm an Ethereum, and that's why I will continue to keep Miami and Ethereum and not bsc. I think that a lot of BSC users will eventually move money that they want to be sure is outside of the reach of a government or a corporation. They'll eventually move it back to Ethereum.

Yes. Awesome debate and super insightful. Like I mentioned earlier, I've learned so much just hearing some of the most brilliant minds on both sides of Ethereum and BSC tonight. I do want to bring up our poll ended. We thank you all for joining and all those that watched through this evening. Thank you. And until next time, we appreciate everybody.