Tegan Kline, founder of Edgenode, argues that true Web3 requires a fully decentralized stack, not what Meta is building. She sees NFTs as gateways to creator sovereignty and expects a multi-chain future where Solana handles high throughput while Ethereum uses layer-2 scaling like ZK proofs.
Questions this video answers
Breakpoint conference, Lisbon — November 12, 2021.
Giovanni (interviewer) and Tegan Kline (interviewee, founder of Edgenode).
Chapters
Foreign. Hi, everyone, it's Giovanni from Breakpoint in Lisbon. Today I have the pleasure to be joined by Tegan Klein, the founder of Edgenode. How are you doing, Tegan?
I'm doing well. Thanks so much for having me.
It's a pleasure for us. How are you enjoying the conference so far?
It's been great. A lot of really great energy here at the Breakpoint conference around Solana and exciting times in the blockchain space.
Yeah. And I wanted to talk to you about a very important topic right now, which is the topic of the Metaverse. So I know that you are involved in this discussion about what is the Metaverse and about what it means for the future of cryptocurrency in general, for the future of humanity. We heard that Facebook rebranded itself into Meta, and so now there is a lot of discussion about it, about what it means for you. It's a bad or a good thing that Facebook is trying to get into this Metaverse discussion?
Yeah, I mean, listen, I've been in the blockchain space for six years now, and so it's great validation. I think this is the trend. Right. A lot of Web2 companies are going to try to move to, quote, unquote, Web3. But I think what's really important to keep in mind is Web three is about a fully decentralized stack. It's about, like, fully decentralized applications on top of blockchains. And so Facebook will never be Web3, in my opinion. But I think it's great to see them kind of coming into the blockchain space.
So how do you think his centralized kind of structure would fit into this dimension of full decentralization?
Yeah. So I think over time it will hopefully change. But you have to think, like, Facebook has closed APIs. It's a lot about keeping the data to themselves. And I think Web3 is really about making the data transparent and open and private in some circumstances. And so I don't know if Facebook will be willing to kind of give up that control. Similar to a lot of, like, centralized companies.
Yeah, exactly. And so I'm. I'm just wondering, how is this confrontation going to. Going to evolve? So we as a community, of course, we are very passionate, we are very determined to kind of project this future of decentralization. But the other side, there are like, very big conglomerates with a lot of financial resources, a lot of power, a lot of networking power. How do you see us taking the upper hand in this confrontation, if we want to call it a confrontation? Maybe you've Seen it a different way.
Yeah, well, I think people want sovereignty. Like look at the rise of NFTs now, giving artists kind of the opportunity to make a living in this space. I think a lot of the NFT platforms are centralized right now, but I think this is a great gateway into that decentralized future and you have to start somewhere. And so it's great to see Facebook kind of starting somewhere. Also with Twitter, like Twitter adding NFTs, like verified NFTs to the Twitter platform, it's a great step in the right direction.
Let's talk about Ethereum. So we see that Ethereum has been going through several technical difficulties in the sense that it's difficult to scale, it's very expensive. We see some technical limitation regarding Ethereum. We see Solana coming in as a potential competitor, but still Solana doesn't have the first mover advantage that Ethereum has. So how do you see this competition evolving? Do you see Solana taking the upper hand eventually or do you see theorem keeping the status of the dominant protocol in defi? How do you see this evolving?
Yeah, so I don't look at Solana and Ethereum as competitors. I think Solana is more of a competitor with NASDAQ or with centralized finance. I think when you compare Solana to Ethereum as a competitor, that's when it gets tricky because Ethereum provides a different use case. Right. And it has great security. And as we see zero knowledge proofs and roll ups emerge in layer twos, I think that it's really difficult to compete with Ethereum and so I wouldn't position it that way. I think we're going to live in a multi chain future and that future is starting to arrive and we'll see a lot of bridges and a lot of composability across chains.
Interesting, because you seem to have a very open view on this coexistence of different protocols of different chains. But not everyone in the industry right now thinks like you. For example, lately I interviewed one of the top developers of Polygon who told me that according to him, there is space for just one layer, one protocol. And he sees it as Ethereum. He thinks that Ethereum will remain the only one. And so there is a lot of this maximalism around the space. I think you seem to have a much different view on this. So how are we going to make this revolution happen if inside our same space there is such a fractionalization, such a tribalism going on? How can we solve this conflict?
Yeah, absolutely. So I believe in the multi chain future I believe that we will live in this interoperable future working with the graph. That's what we do. We provide indexing and querying to help with interoperability at that layer of. And so I think that it's great that there are maximalists, right? They hold the values for each chain. Each ecosystem has maximalists. And this is true for, like, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, you know, you name it. And I think that they serve a great purpose, though I am not a maximalist. I appreciate the maximalist view, but I think we'll. We'll unite the space and I think we'll be stronger together and we need to focus on kind of the centralized powers that be instead of kind of the infighting within these communities.
Last question would be your view on 2022. So we saw 2021 was a great year. We achieved a lot of important milestones. What are the milestones that you're looking forward to see in 2022 in terms of development of the space?
Yeah, absolutely. So I think we're arriving at a fully decentralized stack. I think in 2022 we will have this fully decentralized web 3 stack at the indexing and query layer, at the storage layer, at the blockchain layer. And so we'll see a lot more development happening on blockchains, and it will become as easy to spin up a DAP in the blockchain space as it is to spin up a website in Web two.
