Bitcoin Renaissance 2024 Keynote by Jullian Duran, Marathon

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00:07

hello everybody nice to see all of you guys a lot of interest in Bitcoin my name is Julian I'm the product lead over at Marathon digital and as some of you may know we recently announced our new layer 2 initiative so this is basically me trying to explain where that is coming from and why it's different some legales to start off and starting now with what the problem is so this is pretty clear but defi is by and large not happening within Bitcoin right it's happening on other chains but not all defi comes equal right there's there's

00:38

different types of decentralized financial products and decentralized financial use cases and we believe the institutional one is perhaps one of the most important specifically rwas and rwa should be something that are on bitcoin I mean let's just think about what the Bitcoin Network really is we're talking about the most resilient Network we're talking about the most globally appealing Network and we're talking about a network with regulatory clarity so if you have a real world asset if you

01:02

have millions of dollars of real world assets and you are trying to bring the mun chain where are you going to do it you're going to probably want to do it on a chain that is related to or is Bitcoin institutions in particular are looking for thing you know they're they're tokenizing things like real estate they're token tokenizing things like bonds but in particular what they're looking for is that security that resilience and it's very hard to make a pitch to some decision maker that

01:28

owns a lot of assets without first explaining that the technology stack you're building on is actually something that's secure but of course Bitcoin is not ready to handle that institutional demand in particular you have this trilemma and the scalability on bitcoin isn't that great at the moment this is something of course that we all know however you know that sacrificing of scalability even though Bitcoin might be the most resilient and the most powerful of the chains out there at the end of the day institutions respond to

01:58

things like fees to things like bad uiux and in particular to things like Network congestion and so then that of course leads us to layer twos and to how can we exactly cater to these institutional needs right so institutions need a few things right they're going to be issuing really powerful assets and I already explained why that needs to be on bitcoin they're also looking for compliance now that's a bit of anema within the Bitcoin community and within the blockchain world generally speaking but we have to be realistic here if we

02:26

are to get institutions there need to be some elements of compliance that are guarant at a protocol layer and of course this is what's something that you know the layer 2 narrative in Bitcoin needs more of but in particular they're also looking for evm all right ethereum compatible smart contracts it's not just about a standard and it's not necessarily the best standard but if you talk to institutions from across the world this is the standard they want to build on and you can't disagree with a

02:51

decision maker and try to force them to adopt a completely new development team and so Bitcoin has layer twos right we're at this conference because you guys are interested in what the landscape is ordinals you know is it a layer to is it not you it's some type of scaling mechanism but are these addressing the current problem right am I or you know is Marathon just creating a Layer Two For Nothing most of these layer tws and ordinals in particular are focused on retail and this is a narrative that you see dominated within

03:16

the Bitcoin layer 2 conversation now that's not to say that this isn't an important narrative to talk about and it's not to say that we shouldn't be building at the Forefront of retail defi it is just to say we're missing solutions that Target institutions and so layer twos in particular are the best way to go forward just given the fact that you need extra programmability you need that evm uh compatibility and in particular we need to think about how the layer two we build needs to be different from what the market currently

03:46

offers and so there's a few things that we've laid out at Marathon that we have seen from our own experience and from partners that people are looking for in a layer two the first and foremost is of course a clear value proposition now it's kind of ironic I've been here saying layer two maybe a 50 times but using terms like layer 2 using terms like onchain using terms like evm that distracts the audience so we need to have much clearer value propositions in terms of what exactly we selling these

04:11

decision makers the events need to be professional you got to get people who can suit up you got to get institutions that are blue chip compatible that need to be behind these sort of networks in order to convince decision makers that hey that billion dollar in real world asset probably should be tokenized on some blockchain you're going to need chains that of course are specialized to use cases but in particular you're going to need this regulatory Clarity this transparency right so the layer two just

04:36

because you say it is built on bitcoin does not necessarily mean that it is Bitcoin native and Bitcoin compatible we need to pay attention to that not just for the theoretical or for the philosophical but really for the compliance and the last bit is utility it needs to actually serve the the institutions have something to do with their bottom line and so I think I no no and so enter Enduro this is exactly what what we are building today at Marathon this is the vision that we've announced as of yesterday and that we're going to

05:05

keep building on for the years to come so complicated set of Graphics here but this flows from everything that I've just told you the point here is to have a multi-chain stack it's supposed to have a chain that is evm compatible others that are compatible with other programmability standards we want to abstract away the developer complexity and in particular make it easy for decision makers to integrate blockchain right off the bat number two the goal here is to have something that is as Bitcoin native as possible this is not a

05:34

fundraise I'm not selling you guys a new token in fact you know the the whole thing of a pre-int and a pre-sale is something that within Marathon we're not interested in doing now nor are we ever the goal with Enduro is to create a series of side chains where the native assets are Bitcoin and I've actually gotten a lot of flack for that some people have said well what is going to be the incentive to build on this chain if the native asset is Bitcoin uh what about utility what about transacting what about the use case the clear value

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proposition I mentioned earlier we don't believe there needs to be a native token that is new and we have to teach people how to use we can use Bitcoin right off the bat and the most important part every single side chain that we are creating is going to be backed by proof of work so you guys are here at this Bitcoin conference some of you guys are probably Bitcoin holders some of you guys are native some of you guys might be new to the community but proof of work at the heart of consensus is important for one reason and one reason

06:24

only you cannot be a Bitcoin layer to if you're not paying the Bitcoin main chain for inheriting its security its transparency its appeal all of that sort of stuff right and so every single side chain that we create being that we are a minor we know what it takes to do proof of work we're building these side chains to be compatible with the entirety Network the permissionless network of Bitcoin mining right off the bat that's Endura a nutshell but where it's going is toward these institutions what we

06:52

believe is we're creating a layer two that is the most reliable on the market and most importantly it is a layer two that I think is going to stick stick with people that are crypto natives stick with people that maybe are new to blockchain generally speaking and so that's what we're doing in a nutshell that's where endur was coming from if you guys are interested in learning more if you want to you know partner together if you're you know advising institutions and you feel like they should be

07:15

building on bitcoin but you quite haven't quite the stack you haven't found the stack where they should build on come see us over at the marathon Booth we're more than happy to chat with everybody and with that I leave you guys to lunch the best time of all thank you

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