GRTiQ Podcast: 182 Emily Lin

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Emily Lin (00:19):

As a rollup both on the Linea side, and on the Scroll side, I have to have Graph because there are so many existing dapps that we would want on our chain to port over that require The Graph. There are so many new use cases, and new dapps that will need product like The Graph in order to succeed.

Nick (01:07):

Welcome to the GRTiQ Podcast. Today, I’m speaking with Emily Lin, developer relations at Scroll, an L2 scaling solution for Ethereum. Scroll aims to provide a more efficient, and scalable platform for Ethereum transactions, enabling greater adoption, and usability.

(01:25):

During this interview, Emily shares her journey into the tech and web3 space. We begin by discussing Emily’s background, and how she discovered her interest in computer science. She then recounts her experiences working at various tech companies, including her time at Appian, her early entrepreneurial ventures, and how she got started at ConsenSys, working on Linea before her recent move to Scroll.

(01:47):

We also explore the importance of L2s, and Emily’s perspective on why The Graph is essential to her work, both at Linea, and now at Scroll as a DevRel supporting various ecosystems, and builders. I started the conversation by asking Emily where she’s from.

Emily Lin (02:05):

I am born and raised in Texas, near the Dallas area, so I grew up in the burbs. Take what you will from that, I guess. All the stereotypes of a girl from American burbs trying to make it out in the big city probably apply to me.

Nick (02:22):

What were some of those early interests as you were growing up? Did you have hobbies or things that interested you as a young person?

Emily Lin (02:27):

I did a lot of different extracurricular activities. I can say off the bat, I was not active. Anything requiring hand-eye coordination was not my hobby. But I did various types of things. I did a bit of dance, and ballet, did some musical stuff. I grew up playing piano, violin, and a bit of ukulele. I don’t know. What else did I do? Songwriting, kind of. About dumb stuff, not actual music, but the YouTube people who make songs really mundane things. I guess, an example is I had really bad constipation one time, so then I wrote a song about it in ukelele. Yeah, that was my claim to fame, freshman year of high school, dumb little things like that.

Nick (03:15):

This idea about people being interested in music, and then somehow ending up in tech, coding, and building, there’s enough of a list of guests that have that same background that makes me suspicious that there’s some link between being interested in music, and eventually finding your way into coding. Have you ever thought about that link? Is there a correlation there in your own life?

Emily Lin (03:37):

Okay, just to not misrepresent myself, I’m actually not super into music. I would say music was something my parents forced me in, to enrich myself as a child. I think songwriting was more so I liked the writing process. If I was going to say on the creative side, I’m more of a writer.

(03:54):

I have a personal blog right now, which will be a secret forever, so don’t ask me what it’s called. It is a common thing. I think there is a link in the sense of it’s just a creative aspect. At least tech from a coding perspective is all about creating a program, I guess, an application at the end. There’s a lot of building blocks that go to it, in the same way that I think creating art does. You’re putting in effort, thought, and things like that. You come out with an outcome. How you get there is a little, I guess, different when you’re using a right brain, left brain.

Nick (04:32):

When did you first become interested in tech? When did that fire get lit?

Emily Lin (04:36):

I guess, in college. This is also a funny story. I took my first computer science course, I think, it was sophomore year of high school. I hated it. I was like, “I’m never going to go into engineering, tech, or whatever. This is the worst thing in the world.”

(04:53):

I went to college. I started off being like, “Oh, maybe I’ll be a doctor.” Then I took a biology class. I was like, “I hate this.” Then I went to Dartmouth, which is very econ heavy. It’s like, “You know what? It seems like everyone nowadays wants to be a consultant.” Obviously, the sexiest job ever. Then I took Econ 1. I was trying to evaluate like, “What do I want out of my job?”

(05:18):

I think the catchphrase was, “I don’t want to wear a suit to work.” What enables me that opportunity? I was like, “Okay, you know what? Tech is really big. It might be something I want to explore.” I heard that basically that quarter, a very popular teacher was teaching the Intro to CS course. I was like, “You know what, Emily, I’ll try it out.”

(05:40):

I won’t say I fell in love with it immediately, but what I really liked again was that creative aspect of it. Going in, and the class being about creating projects versus being measured on a test basis. I get a lot of test anxiety. I’ll be honest to you, multiple choice gives me the hives.

(06:00):

There was an element of like, it’s a bit slower paced in that sense. But yeah, I think that’s when I fell in love with knowing that this was a bit of my call or at least my first entry point into what my career might look like post-graduation.

Nick (06:16):

Longtime listeners of the podcast know that I always like to ask this follow up. When somebody studied computer science in college, as you mentioned there, you did at Dartmouth, did you come across any web3 crypto blockchain type themes during your study that would’ve primed you for what you’re doing now?

Emily Lin (06:32):

That’s a super interesting question. The answer is no, but yes, I should have. I think two things. Within the standard track at Dartmouth, there was no mention of blockchain. My first interaction with blockchain was actually like the Bitcoin bull run in 2016, 2017. That was a smack dab of life when I was I guess a poor college student. I never really gave any thought putting money in anything other than my education.

(07:03):

Obviously, regrets now. But that was my first exposure. Though ever since joining web3 professionally, we do have a group chat called Dartmouth in Crypto. It’s actually quite big. One of the co-founders of Livepeer was one of my friends from Dartmouth. He was doing blockchain research at the time. That’s another aspect of, I should have known because I should talk to my friends, but maybe it’s good that we never talked about our work. We just chatted about our lives, and things outside of academia. I don’t know.

Nick (07:37):

If you go back then to that frame of mind you had in college, you’re pursuing computer science. You said one of the criteria is you don’t want to wear a suit, you didn’t want to become a doctor, you didn’t fall into the econ track. What was the vision for your career at that stage? Were you thinking, “I’ll be a tech entrepreneur, I’ll just go find a job, 8:00 to 5:00, work at a big tech firm?” Or were you even thinking that far ahead?

Emily Lin (08:00):

Talking about being an American burb kid, honestly, I think I followed the very standard immigrant child experience. I’m not sure how many people would resonate with this, but just to dive into parents expect a very rigid lifestyle, like your goal is to have a stable income, good hours, stable job. Which really only opens you up to doctor, lawyer, engineer, and of those three, engineer was a thing that made the most sense.

(08:30):

My frame of reference was like, “What is a safe job that will set me up for …” I guess, you could say it was like work hard, play hard, or work to live and not live to work was my mindset at the time. I later realized, and this is why I’m in crypto now, the mantra has flipped. I don’t know if we’ll get into the change of my philosophy from live to work versus work to live.

(08:52):

To be honest, frankly, I was a very norming person. I was like, “Okay, yeah. My dream is to work a 9:00 to 5:00.” Maybe I go into engineering. I think product was something that I would probably be more interested in, from the level of, I definitely didn’t want to spend my entire life coding. I felt like I had skills outside of that that would better serve me in more of a cross-functional role.

(09:17):

I did one internship as a product intern. My gut feeling was like, “I feel like the most competent product managers have an engineering background.” Not to throw shade on any product managers who don’t have an engineering background. At least for me personally, in terms of developing my ideal career path, I was like, “Okay, yeah, going into full-time engineer I think would help me build context for being more successful later on.” That’s how I was framing my thought process.

Nick (09:50):

When I started this podcast, and began shining a light on people like you building in web3, one of the things I didn’t anticipate but has happened time and time again is, I interview the children of immigrants. This theme has come up a lot. I’m starting to pick up on some of the things you just mentioned there. Can you just share, and I’ve asked other guests to do the same, how being a child of immigrants shaped the way you approach career, and how you spend your time?

Emily Lin (10:18):

I think to put it frankly, a lot of immigrant parenting is just discipline. I’m very, I guess you could say, stereotypical Asian girl. Mom, dad wanted me to only care about grades, college, and success in the traditional sense, financially, and things like that. Which I think has shaped my career from the perspective of like, I think in order to be successful, there is a level of discipline needed. Like setting yourself up with the correct building blocks, understanding the path to get there.

(10:52):

On the flip side though, I think this is probably also why I might’ve ended up in crypto or just generally non-traditional roles, is growing up in a disciplined environment, I think can take you two ways. You’re either always disciplined or you get really angry at the system. You’re like, “F this, mom and dad, I’m going to go do something you don’t understand. Exert my own independence as an individual, do something wild, and unrestrained.”

(11:22):

Yeah. I think that’s probably part of it, too. Being an immigrant child, I think, led me to having the foundation in order to achieve things that I wanted to, but on the other hand, feeling stifled kind of fire the vengeful spirit that makes me want to do other things.

Nick (11:44):

That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Again, I think I’ve heard some of that in some of the prior interviews I’ve done with children of immigrants. I appreciate you sharing that insight about your experience.

(11:56):

Let’s return then to your story here. You’re at university. You do computer science. What did you do after you graduate?

Emily Lin (12:03):

Yeah. My very first job after school was I was just a backend engineer at a low-code software company called Appian. I don’t know how many people are familiar with low-code industry, just as a high level. It’s basically adding on an abstraction layer so non-coders can code. It’s low amount of code. That comes in different levels. There’s no-code where you don’t need to know how to code at all. That might be a square space. Low-code is kind of the intermediary. We were a B2B SaaS, so our customers were people like the government or big financial institutions.

(12:41):

Yeah, I was just your standard engineer there. That was my very first job. At that time, I think when I was getting back to the like, “Oh, this is not what I want to do full time.” I predicted that in college. This is me setting myself up for success later on in a product job. That’s when I started thinking, “Okay, what are my next moves? How do I pivot?”

(13:04):

This is I think where I took a weird turn, at the same time of holding my engineering job. Was it one or two years in, I started a beverage business? The external messaging is, I was so passionate about gut health after discovering probiotic drinks in Malaysia. I knew I just had to bring it to the states. Especially with the rise of the functional beverage market in kombucha, there was a prime opportunity to hit the market running with this new product that didn’t taste like kombucha, but had all the same benefits, with a different bacterial profile that did not create the same vinegary aftertaste.

(13:42):

Okay, that’s externally. But internally, my head was like, “Okay, I need experience to either put on my resume, either to go to business school, or be in product or whatever.” It was a two prong thing. I was definitely very interested in what it would look like to explore a different industry. I think I had been so locked into tech, and I wasn’t fully happy. That I was like, “You know what I really love? I love food. Maybe I should work in food.”

(14:13):

That was a bit of an experiment. There was another part of, “Yeah, I wanted to see what it was like to build something on my own, rather than be a task rabbit-ish character where features come in, and then I just implement.” Then it’s one of the things I was like, “Yeah, if the business takes off, it would be amazing to get sold to Coca-Cola.” But worst case scenario, it’s a really cool story I can tell on a podcast, put on my resume, and then apply for other jobs that are also stable but require a more multifaceted background. I don’t know.

(14:45):

I did a bit of that actually as well. Then I also did a third thing. Basically what happened was I started that. I started building that up for a year. I think people are impressed. I think my life has been a hack. I got very lucky because I launched my beverage business through a food incubator in DC. They were pretty cool because they had a commercial kitchen, a distribution center. They distributed to Whole Foods, and other local grocery stores, east coast chains, as well as specialty boutique grocery stores in the DC Virginia area.

(15:23):

The founder of that incubator was a Dartmouth alum. When people are like, “Ah, college is so expensive, I’m kind of like, yeah, but sometimes you just pay to know one person.” That was my one person. Yeah. I got really lucky because beverage was something I was interested in doing.

(15:39):

I had no idea how to get started, so I was just looking into incubators in the first place. I just found this guy on the top 10 incubators to look into on Google. I was like, “Oh, this guy went to my school.” Then I went through the alumni directory, and we got chatting. Yeah, I built out. I guess I developed a product, and we launched in a few of the grocery stores nearby. First off, his boutique grocery stores as well as I was in some local coffee shops, and another little chain.

(16:15):

That was a really interesting, I think, process going from brewing drinks in my home. That’s really, really funny. It naturally carbonates. At one point, I didn’t handle it properly, I opened it, and the pot hit the ceiling, all the soda spread out all over the top of my ceiling. But I was like, “Oh, no. Hopefully when the super comes in, and is evaluating security deposit, they don’t look up.” You know what I mean? I don’t know. My security deposit was fine, so I think they didn’t notice the stain on the ceiling. I’m getting ahead of myself. I don’t know what I was saying.

Nick (16:53):

Let me ask you this. What did you learn about entrepreneurship by virtue of that experience? Did you learn, “I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to continue on that track?”

Emily Lin (17:03):

Yeah. I think there was an element of like, “Maybe entrepreneurship is down the line in my future.” I think what I realized then was in order to grow to the next step, I was actually about to quit my engineering job to do this full time, I guess I landed a big contract that didn’t go through because of COVID. The next steps was I would need to hire, and I would need to basically invest a lot of capital into upgrading my machinery.

(17:34):

I’m fine with the capital aspect. The thing that really scared me was hiring people, because I was still in such a shaky stage where I wasn’t even sure if I was fully committed to it. Transparently, this all started out as a resume builder. It just became more successful than I expected.

(17:51):

But to that point, it was like, “Oh, my God, I am not even 25. I’m going to put someone on payroll, feel responsible for their life, and their livelihoods.” I think that was a responsibility. At least at that age, I wasn’t ready to accept. But what I did really enjoy about my job that solidified my suspicions was, from before is I just really liked the experimental aspect of it, not knowing what was happening next, doing very different things that stretched my brain in ways that I hadn’t done before.

(18:27):

The last part, too, is not even necessarily about running businesses, but just the components of the business that I like the most. I absolutely hate paperwork. That’s what I learned about myself. That’s the worst thing. You’ll probably have to do that everywhere, no matter what if you’re an entrepreneur.

(18:42):

My favorite part of the job was going into grocery stores, demoing the beverage to people, and getting their reaction, seeing what resonated, and what didn’t. I think one of the interesting things was the easiest way to understand it is compare us to kombucha. But the problem we were trying to solve was taking away the ick factor that came with kombucha from people who weren’t comfortable with that, what does that look like in terms of branding, explanation, and basically customer education.

(19:14):

Then in general, just chatting with people about their lives, and maybe they’ll dive into why they’re interested in functional beverages. But, I don’t know. That was the really fun part. I was like, “Okay, yeah. I know regardless of wherever I am in my career next, I definitely want it to be people-focused.”

Nick (20:39):

You mentioned earlier that you came across or were aware of Bitcoin in 2016, 2017 when you were in college. Take us back in time to when you actually became interested in it as a tech, whether it be Bitcoin or Ethereum. But do you remember that light bulb moment or experience with it all?

Emily Lin (20:58):

Yeah, yeah. I would definitely say everything ebbs and flows with the market. I guess maybe it was ’20 and 2021-ish is when NFT summer hit. For me, I think that’s when it really clicked. Because I was never really interested in the financial part of it. But what really excited me about NFTs was specifically ownership for creators. Like I said before, I had creative aspirations. I had friends who are artists, especially digital art when it comes to how do I attribute ownership? How do I monetize something that is so easily replicable? Is that the word? That makes sense to me.

(21:43):

The other part of it was, to be honest, I only really rediscovered that. I moved in with my sister in, I don’t remember what the year is, but her backstory is she also heard about Bitcoin during that time, got really excited about it, stayed in it. The other part of my story, I guess, is my sister was the first person to get into DevRel at a crypto company.

(22:08):

Obviously, when I was going through my quarter life crisis, and trying to figure out what I want to do, I call up big sis. Okay, I was living with her. I just went to her room. I was like, “Hey, I need to figure out what I want to do with my life.” It became a really process of like, “Okay, what did you like about your previous job?” Like I said, I liked that I was stretching my brain in different ways.

(22:28):

I think the thing I didn’t like about being an engineer at B2B SaaS was people were all there just to make a living, and then go home. I had really intelligent, fun, nice coworkers. But I never felt like we were working towards some bigger mission, which I think was hard for me to get excited about going in.

(22:50):

The other point was I had heard about NFTs happening. I was like, “Oh, this is cool.” But then I was lucky to basically live with a person who was familiar with the space, was much more interested. At that time, she was actually working at Facebook before it was Meta. But she was, I guess, tangentially part of or close to the Libra Project, and things like that. I kind of had a crypto enthusiast in my own home. I think through that I got to talk with her more, things made sense.

(23:22):

Something I was wanting to do in my next job was also I want to be connected to creators, and see what the next generation of interacting with the world looks like. The whole story of Decentraland think was actually the second, coolest thing I thought. I was like, “Oh, my God, I have to buy land. This is so sick.”

(23:42):

I want to be in a virtual reality world where I can meet my coworkers in person online or online, but face-to-face. All the interesting, sexy things that came along with imagining that space. How reachable it is in the immediate future is still a question mark. But I think that was like, if I want to be somewhere where no one knows what they’re doing, but everyone knows what they’re doing, in that sense, and discovering new frontiers or just interacting with really intelligent people working on things that they’re passionate about, crypto seemed like a good place to work.

(24:21):

That’s when, I guess, first got hooked and peeled. In general, I’m very bad at doing things on my own. I need deadlines, if that makes sense. I was like, “Okay, I could research web3 on my own, or I could just try, get a job, and make it my job to learn about it.” I felt like that was my path of least resistance. I don’t know.

(24:50):

I was fortunate to be looking for a job at one of the height of the bull. I think it was 2022, early in January-ish. Where essentially I was like, “Okay, I’m ready for the next stage of my career.” I had two priorities. The first thing was I want to be either a DevRel, which after talking to my sister, I felt like was that good marriage between being technical but also a bit massaging customer education that I got from working in food, and that human element to it that I really liked.

(25:28):

Or I wanted to work in crypto, which fulfilled that I’m working on something really interesting with passionate people. The ideal situation is I would like to do both, but I have experience in neither. I have 10 gentle things that made sense for each one that I could create a story around. But in terms of actual line item on my resume, that didn’t exist.

(25:50):

I just threw the net of DevRel job, crypto job, DevRel crypto job. Who knows? I’ll pray, and, I don’t know, give sacrifices to the LinkedIn Lords, and see if anything comes out of it. I was really fortunate because I guess at the time, yeah, web3 was definitely hiring a lot. It was pretty easy. I don’t want to sound arrogant. A lot of interviews were coming in, I guess offers too, from DevRel and crypto, which really surprised me.

(26:24):

I’m going to say it’s because I wrote a really good cover letter. My first job in crypto was at Truffle at ConsenSys. Truffle is a smart contract developer tooling project. They were the, I think, very first smart contract developer tool for Ethereum in its history, I guess.

(26:43):

Yeah, I was talking to one of my coworkers. They were like, “Yeah, Emily, one of the reasons we really liked you was your cover letter.” Anytime someone asks me for career advice, I’m like, “Okay, yeah, you should write a cover letter.” I think it was definitely a bit of luck, and timing, for sure.

(27:02):

That interview was, I think one of my favorite, it’s very practical. The way it was set up was like, “Teach us a technical topic.” Then they also just ask, “Why are you interested in web3, and stuff like that?” I don’t know. My impression of the space is people are still so open, and excited to onboard anybody who has some minimum interest, that getting a job in web3 isn’t as scary.

(27:29):

For me, at least in my process, I was like, “Oh, God, I need to have been a crypto degen to fit into the space, and have discovered Bitcoin when it was still on the Minecraft servers in order to,” you know what I mean? But during my job hunting process, then also my time at ConsenSys, and being in this space, I feel like that’s not true at all.

(27:51):

I remember when I was opening up roles for hiring, and I was talking to a recruiter, they’re like, “What are you looking for, Emily, in a person to bring on?” I was like, “Honestly, spunk.” That’s a horrible thing to tell a recruiter to screen for. But there’s something there that I think spunk encapsulates from it rhymes with cypherpunk, which I think is the crypto value maybe. But that’s an arbitrary thing.

(28:20):

But yeah, just excitement, and execution. Something I tell people, “If you want to work in crypto, obviously you have to be okay with working really weird hours, because it’s such an international industry.” I was used to always working with purely US people, and now my team is all across the world. We all try to make it work with each other’s time zones, and stuff like that.

(28:44):

I would not say web3’s current iteration is for the faint-hearted if you really want to go balls to the wall, which is why it requires spunk, and a little bit of youth maybe.

Nick (28:56):

Let’s talk about your time at ConsenSys. You said you got started there. You started working on Truffle. What other projects did you work on, and how was that experience there? What did you learn about web3 by virtue of going to work at ConsenSys?

Emily Lin (29:10):

Truffle was the very first. I did not know how to write a smart contract going into ConsenSys, which is also crazy. But actually it’s not, because it’s a pretty common paradigm in engineering in general. Once you know how to code, you know how to code in any language. That was the very first thing I learned was, how do I build dapps? What does it look like to go from smart contract, also to the front end side of connecting a web app to on chain transactions?

(29:41):

The Truffle team is super, super OG. I am really fortunate that I guess I got onboarded through that team specifically. Really, I was just accelerated on all things, everything. I don’t know. From the very basics, it’s super open team, no stupid questions. Then this is actually how I got into the L2 space was while I was at Truffle, one of the things they were potentially pivoting into was tooling specifically geared towards multi-chain dapps. We were just emerging. The proliferation of L2s was just happening at that time, and has since increased.

(30:21):

But yeah, that was my first introduction to a more in-depth view of what L2 development looked like. If I had not been working at Truffle at the time, I might not necessarily be working at Scroll right now, for example. I attribute that a lot to anyone’s familiar with Faina, I think her handle is bitsplaining on Twitter. But she every week would do an L2 roundup of the most important, and hottest topics across Twitter, just collate them into this 20 thread tweet or whatever. She’s super passionate about it. She was one of my mentors in the space. She now works at Optimism, I believe. But yeah, that was I think something I was really, really fortunate to have learned about, and have been exposed to at an early stage.

(31:13):

That’s kind of how I started. That was also how I started getting used to what does it look like to be a DevRel? That’s when I got into livestreaming, and buying a fancy mic. Not that that’s what DevRel is, but I don’t know, just other different ways of content creation than I was used to. Like I said, I was a writer. It’s more like a personal blog, but what does education look like outside of just talking to a customer at a store? Maybe the equivalent would be at a workshop, but how does that extend into public presentations, and just those kinds of general soft skills that help translate deeply technical content to something that’s a bit more accessible.

(31:53):

Anyways, from Truffle, I moved on to Linea in 2023. The primary reason for that was transparently, we hit the bear market. ConsenSys was reconsidering where it’s going towards its resources. Truffle was just in the unfortunate position of being open source dev tooling. I guess diverting company resources to something that isn’t revenue positive is something that is a tough decision to make, but has to be made, especially when you’re considering the bottom line. I don’t know. This is why I don’t want to be an entrepreneur, because I don’t want to think about things like this.

(32:31):

Then it just became a thing of, “Emily, we really like you. We want to keep you on, but you have to change teams. What do you want to do?” ConsenSys, I guess for those who aren’t familiar with, I think they’re most famous for being the company that has MetaMask, but they cover a very wide variety of projects. Truffle being one of them, MetaMask being the most famous.

(32:56):

I guess, for developers in the space, if you’re familiar with Infura, they’re a node provider. They do other projects like security auditing with diligence, and other stuff. Basically, they came like, “Emily, what do you want to work? You have three options. You have MetaMask. You have Infura. We haven’t launched this yet, but it’s going to go public testnet in a month or two. You can work on Linea.”

(33:23):

That to me, felt like the perfect fit. One part because I was really interested in L2 is just from my time of being exposed to the mentors on my team. I think the other part that I really liked about being an infrastructure dev tooling as compared to … I’ll give you an example. My sister works at 0x. For those who aren’t familiar, 0x is a DEX aggregator. They’re very DeFi focused. The projects that she works on, and the problems she thinks about are very DeFi specialized. Whereas Truffle is basically just your baseline tool to build any dapp ever.

(34:02):

In that sense, I get a very wide breadth of exposure to different verticals. Where she might know a lot about DeFi, I know a little bit about everything. Good and bad, there’s positives and negatives to everything. I’ll always feel stupid in a room at one point, and that’s totally fine.

(34:23):

I think moving on to Linea is also a good fit in that sense because as a chain, they are a generalized roll up. In the same way I got at Truffle, I got a little piece of the pie everywhere on the Linea team. Or I knew that’s what would enable me to do that.

(34:41):

I joined Linea 2023, before it was even called Linea, actually. I was there when it was still ConsenSys zkEVM. The answer is no, they did not name it after me. I get that question a lot. There was an element I was like, “Can I leverage this as job security?” But yeah, yeah, no. Then I was there from I guess before public testnet, to when it was renamed to Linea, to Mainnet, and then when it launched, we got to 1 billion in TVL.

(35:18):

Then I made my departure for Scroll about actually a month ago. I’ve had some time to sit, and marinate, not a good word to use, in my new role. It’s been really interesting seeing how, I guess again, how my brain can be stressed in different ways despite working in the same part of the stack, if that makes sense.

Nick (35:44):

A lot of listeners to this podcast are enthusiastic about The Graph, and so the name Linea, the name Scroll will be top of mind for most listeners because of recent integrations with The Graph Network. As you mentioned there, just a few months ago, you left Linea, you went to work at Scroll.

(36:00):

Talk to us about what you’re doing at Scroll, and what makes Scroll different. I think a lot of listeners would like some education maybe from you about this part of the industry, and why is Scroll unique?

Emily Lin (36:12):

Yeah. I think a lot of the reason I moved to Scroll was I think there was a lot more opportunity for growth. I would say what I really liked about Scroll was you work with a lot of different people, but I think Scroll has a much stronger, global presence that I was really excited about, especially when it came to commitment towards emerging markets.

(36:36):

I think the cynical side of me is a lot of projects in general will talk about how they care about LATAM, Southeast Asia, and things like that. Really, you only saw LATAM get big maybe because DevCon went there. Then now Southeast Asia is getting really big because Thailand DevCon has it in Thailand.

(36:56):

But what I thought was really cool about Scroll was we care about those regions. We have actually really talented people who work there, live there, speak the language, which is already culturally speaking wise, just having that native understanding of what it looks like. Super amazing. I think a really strong point for just general health and ground building, especially since it is in these emerging markets where we first found the actual use case for crypto. I think just that narrative, and ability to execute in these regions was really inspiring.

(37:32):

The other piece that makes Scroll really interesting is when you talk about zk-rollups in general, I don’t know how many people are familiar with the different types of zkEVMs, but to just briefly gloss over it, there’s four types. The fourth being the farthest away from EVM, that just means from a developer experience-wise, coding, your tools are going to change. If you’re used to using Hardhat and Foundry, you’ll probably have to download a plugin, and unexpected things will show up that don’t match exactly.

(38:05):

Whereas something like Linea, and Scroll are like, “Okay, we’re going to go type 2, we are bytecode compatible.” There should be very minimal difference in developer experience. That’s the marquee headline, but I think when it comes to actual seamless experience from like, “Hey, we are supporting …” I’m getting really into the nitty-gritty, “But supporting Sepolia from the start, really already demonstrates how committed you are to making sure you have parity with Ethereum.

(38:34):

I think the other piece is Scroll is really research-oriented, in the sense that we do things that I think move the space forward. We’re kind of like what I see Scroll as a future looking chain. There’s an element of like, “We are the only chain …” I don’t want to say only, because the space moves so fast that eventually somebody else also does it, and it gets salty in the background. We are the only chain so far that I know until somebody corrects me, otherwise, that supports all the curves necessary in order to use something like Noir.

(39:10):

When it comes to building DAS with privacy-preserving features, that requires very specific primitives on chain that Scroll as a ZK-rollup offers that not others do. To that extent, too, we just put out a proposal for something called L1s load. I guess also for the technical people in the audience, this means you can read L1 state directly on the L2. From a practical point of view, this just makes multi-chain way more accessible because if you think every L2 can now read directly from the L1, then that makes interoperability a lot easier, and a lot smoother.

(39:44):

That is a rollup improvement proposal we recently put out. It’s little things like this when you think about where you want to be, I think in the same way I moved from B2B SaaS to crypto, and then within crypto, who are the ones who are actually paving new ways to think about improved tech outside of just maybe your bread and butter of being a rollup.

(40:04):

That’s how I have fallen into, I guess, the space of what I think makes Scroll really unique outside of just … Because I think everyone can just be a chain, but it’s more about what you build on top of it. Be that the dapps you onboard, which are priority one obviously, but then priority two, how do you also invest your own internal resources into making sure the ecosystem moves forward as a whole?

(40:30):

Rollup improvement proposals. We’re working on Scroll paths, which is actually really cool. I guess in general, if people are, or if anyone’s here, Zuzalu, Maxis, Zoo Pass, Scroll is helping to build out Scroll paths, which is basically decentralizing, anonymizing Zoo Pass. I don’t know. It’s just these little things that are really fun, interesting, and demonstrate how you can use blockchain in different ways is what makes Scroll really unique.

Nick (40:56):

As I mentioned earlier, a lot of listeners to this podcast are enthusiastic about The Graph, and I believe you had interactions with The Graph both at Linea, and at Scroll. Can you just explain for The Graph community the importance of The Graph for someone in your role? You’re working on the L2 side, you’re trying to build a developer community, and here’s this partner or resource like The Graph. Talk to us about how that fits into the story.

Emily Lin (41:21):

Yeah, yeah, that’s a really good question. At the end of the day, rollups are ecosystem builders. Our job is to onboard dapps, and fix the US problem by being fast and cheap. But that’s baseline. A dapp cannot exist without the other developer tooling, and infrastructure needed.

(41:41):

For a lot of DeFi dapps, you’re going to need something. For DeFi dapps as well with The Graph, you need Oracles, you need Indexers. These are things that are just baseline requirements in order to exist. As a rollup, both on the Linea side, and on the Scroll side, I have to have Graph because there are so many existing dapps that we would want on our chain to port over that require The Graph. There are so many new use cases, and new dapps that will need a product like The Graph in order to succeed.

(42:13):

If we don’t have that basic tool, then we are basically eliminating a whole cut of whatever city we could be building on top of Scroll. You guys are key. Very, very, very important. I remember when I was Linea, and then they’re like, “Emily, The Graph is integrating.” I was like, “Hallelujah, this is amazing.” We talk about developer experience, and EVM parity, but then I’m like, “But yeah, okay.”

(42:37):

But if you don’t have your most basic, I want to say The Graph, because you guys are one of the giants of the Indexer, I guess, ecosystem out there, it’s just so hard to bring on a really interesting project because they’re going to go where their tools are.

Nick (42:56):

You work a lot with developers, and again, you have long pedigree on these chains side. One thing that makes The Graph different is this commitment to decentralization. I’m always curious, speaking with people outside the ecosystem, how important that component of decentralization is. How do you think about that?

Emily Lin (43:15):

Yeah, that’s a spicy question. I think it really depends. Someone got mad at me about this set UCC, because this is how I answered the question. From a philosophical point of view, and I think why we’re all in this together in crypto or web3, is decentralization is the core of our identity. We’re here to beat out the centralized institutions that own our data, that prevent us from, I don’t know, transacting on a weekend. That is most basic.

(43:47):

Being centralized is antithetical to the core of Ethereum’s values. I guess also when you talk about chains, you wanted to think about centralization as well. I think Scroll, I also say this is kind of, it’s a buzzword in the same way I think a billion users in a Flywheel is, but Ethereum aligned. Scroll is definitely committed to decentralization. You need that for censorship resistance, and all of those things. I personally think it’s super important. You have to have that.

(44:20):

On the flip side, I think from interacting, and this comes from the side of being a chain, has exposed me a lot to the user side of things. I think when I’m at Truffle, I was exclusively talking to devs. I’m talking to users. That’s a whole different ballgame because each person has a degree of comfort in which they are okay with centralization.

(44:45):

We look at things like Solana is so popular. It is proof that there are people who are interested in blockchain who are not as concerned about decentralization. I think that’s a fact. If you are an application, a user, or a person who actually cares about security and decentralization in all the values and all, yes, you need The Graph, you need a decentralized rollup. I think from a practical speaking point of view, if you’re thinking about users, the majority of the users won’t notice.

(45:21):

But regardless of that, outside of Graph’s decentralization position, which I think is the number one, there’s a level of you guys have really good infrastructure in place already, a really good dev experience that makes you more than just being a decentralized Indexer. Does that make sense?

Nick (45:40):

Yeah.

Emily Lin (45:40):

Right. Yeah. That was a really long answer. I don’t know.

Nick (45:45):

No, it’s super helpful.

Emily Lin (45:47):

Yeah.

Nick (45:48):

I want to ask you just a couple more questions before I ask you the GRTiQ10. I don’t know if you got to see these, but these are 10 fun questions I ask each guest in the podcast every week. Gives us a chance to get to know you a little bit better on the personal side.

(46:00):

The first question is, clearly coming out of ECC, and I think this has been a talking point in the industry for quite a while, there’s this concern about we have the infra, now we need the dapps. What’s your opinion on that argument, and how are you thinking through what all that might mean?

Emily Lin (46:18):

Yes, I get this question a lot. The answer is yes, I absolutely agree. I think it hurts my feelings because I’ve only ever worked on the infra side. It is absolutely paramount. I think a lot of times when people ask me about why, I guess my normal friends, “Okay, we’re not normal.” My non-web3 friends ask me about it. I can tell them a lot of the reasons why blockchain is important. I think it resonates with people.

(46:46):

But then the next step of like, “Okay, Emily, you’ve convinced me. What can I do? How do I access this?” Then the process just ends. If you don’t have that dapp to actually have someone interested, interact with it long-term, the story falls flat. The thing that I think is really interesting is the story has always been like, “We need infrastructure in order to produce dapps.”

(47:19):

Maybe this is also my other hot take of that narrative to me, is a bit of a crutch. Builders are super smart, in my opinion. They should be able to. Infrastructure was not there. I think it was really, really, really hard to build a strong dapp. But I think it was possible. I think infrastructure in the regards of something like a rollup like infrastructure preventing interaction, and usage was what we needed. That’s when I’m speaking specifically to rollups as infrastructure. As long as Ethereum was expensive, and slow, I don’t think anything would’ve stuck. That is an infrastructure that I think was requisite for a UX experience.

(48:10):

Along the same lines of when we talk about how to count abstraction got super, duper hot. Was that like 2022? Was it also 2023? I don’t remember. But that was another type of infrastructure that was required for the UX problem. I think we are at a place where we have good infrastructure in play to, I guess, basically support the part where you can’t say like, “I can’t build apps anymore because there is a bit of a …” That onboarding process is somewhat removed.

(48:41):

I think the other counter argument, too, maybe where it’s like, “Oh, maybe web3 UX is okay.” It’s like people will still use really difficult financial instruments anyways. Do I understand how to file taxes? Not really, but I will. Yeah, I don’t know.

(48:57):

The other thing I think whenever people ask me that is I’m always like, “Yes, I absolutely agree.” But also if I had the perfect idea, I would not be doing my job right now, and I would be building it. I understand, it is a really, really, hard thing to execute on from a perspective of like, “You have to want to be a founder, and take on all that responsibility.” Then the other half of actually building it is also very, very difficult.

Nick (49:23):

Then the second question was this. You mentioned account abstraction, and of course, every cycle, every time within crypto, there’s these themes that emerge as the things everyone’s talking about. I don’t know where we are in the present cycle. I don’t know any of that type of stuff, but if you had to project out based on your intuition, what the themes will be this time around, do you have a sense for that?

Emily Lin (49:50):

Yeah. I think we just touched on it. The theme was consumer apps. Like I said, we’ve been saying infrastructure not being there is the reason we’re not there yet. The answer is like, “Yeah, we kind of are there,” in my opinion. There’s always improvements to be made for sure, absolutely. We had the MVP, so now we need to build the other MVP on top of our MVP. Does that make sense?

Nick (50:12):

I think it does. I think it does.

Emily Lin (50:12):

Okay, perfect. Perfect.

Nick (50:15):

It’s a good challenge for any listener out there who wants to get started.

(50:18):

Emily, as I said, I now want to ask you the GRTiQ10. These are 10 questions I ask each week. They’re always the same. I ask them because I think it introduces listeners to new ideas, encourages them to try different things, or maybe even achieve more in their own lives. Emily, are you ready for the GRTiQ10?

Emily Lin (50:36):

I hope so, yes. Absolutely.

Nick (50:50):

What book or article has had the most impact on your life?

Emily Lin (50:54):

I don’t remember the name of it. I think it’s something like Chase the Cheese or Get The Cheese. I don’t know.

Nick (51:00):

Who Moved My Cheese? Or Who Moved The Cheese?

Emily Lin (51:02):

Who Moved My Cheese, I think is that the one where it’s like humans have a really hard time finding the cheese, and the mice are super nimble. They can change on the fly, and find the cheese properly. I read that in fourth grade maybe. I was like, “Okay, yeah. This is how I should act.”

Nick (51:21):

How about this one? Is there a movie or a TV show that you would recommend everybody should watch?

Emily Lin (51:25):

My taste in movies is probably really mediocre. I love 90’s kind of era, high school rom-com stuff. If you want to watch 10 Things I Hate About You or She’s the Man, let me know.

Nick (51:42):

How about this? If you could listen to only one music album for the rest of your life, which one would you choose?

Emily Lin (51:47):

Yeah, I don’t actually listen to a lot of music either, but there is one song that I will listen to over and over again. It’s Animals by Neon Trees.

Nick (51:56):

What’s the best advice someone’s ever given to you?

Emily Lin (51:59):

Dress for the occasion. I’m really bad at going to the gym, but if you just force yourself to get into your athleisure or your athletic clothes, you’ll end up at the gym. Same thing. I don’t know. If you’re going to go do something important, wear something nice. Set your mindset from the outside.

Nick (52:16):

Emily, what’s one thing you’ve learned in your life that you don’t think most other people have learned or know quite yet?

Emily Lin (52:23):

I don’t know if people don’t know this, but my catchphrase is everything in life is a trade-off. I think that helps to put things into perspective. It’s very easy to get bogged down in things, but if you just think about like, “Is it more worth it to do X, Y, Z or not, it’s super helpful.”

(52:42):

That’s also the key to a happy relationship. I’m going to be honest. If we want to get into relationship advice, that is also my piece of relationship advice.

Nick (52:49):

Yeah. It is good advice. What’s the best life hack you’ve discovered for yourself?

Emily Lin (52:56):

Life hack. Okay, this is weird, but if your fish gets a little too fishy, and you want to remove the taste, soak it in milk for maybe like an hour. You’ll get rid of the fishy taste.

Nick (53:13):

It’s a great hack. Then Emily, based on your own life experiences, and observations, what’s the one habit or characteristic that you think best explains how people find success in life?

Emily Lin (53:28):

That’s really hard. I don’t know. My general vibe is just try to be happy, man. Even if you’re successful by all the traditional metrics, it doesn’t feel like success if you’re everything else is kind of a meh.

Nick (53:46):

Then the final three questions are complete the sentence type questions. The first one is, “The thing that most excites me about the future of web3 is …”

Emily Lin (53:54):

Ownership.

Nick (53:55):

How about this one? “If you’re on X, I still always call it Twitter, you should be following …”

Emily Lin (54:01):

Frogs without context.

Nick (54:04):

Then the last question is this. Emily, “I’m happiest when …”

Emily Lin (54:08):

I am with people I care about.

Speaker 5 (54:12):

The GRTiQ10.

Nick (54:19):

Emily, thank you so much for joining the GRTiQ Podcast. It was a lot of fun to get to know your personal story, the journey you took to where you are at Scroll now. I imagine a lot of listeners are going to want to follow you, stay up to date on the things you’re working on, and learn more about Scroll, and some of the things that are coming out of that community. What’s the best way for them to connect?

Emily Lin (54:36):

Yeah. My Twitter is at underscore E-M-J-L-I-N. Otherwise, you can find about all things Scroll at Scroll underscore ZKP.