GRTiQ Podcast: 210 Alexei Zamyatin

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Alexei Zamyatin (00:18):

If you can reach that milestone, then we’ve succeeded, because we’ve shown that we can offer and operate an alternative system that is able to onboard millions, if they have to.

Nick (00:59):

Welcome to the GRTiQ Podcast. Today, I’m speaking with Alexei Zamyatin, co-founder of Build on Bitcoin, also known as BOB. BOB is developing a pioneering hybrid Layer 2 solution that combines Bitcoin security with Ethereum’s programmability, aiming to create an open financial ecosystem that enables Bitcoin utility, beyond simple payments, while maintaining trust-minimized principles through technologies like BitVM. Born in Moscow, but raised in Austria, Alexei is focused on Bitcoin security and interoperability since 2015. His research at Imperial College of London, where he earned a PhD in computer science, led to a lot of interesting work on noncustodial Bitcoin bridges, cross-chain light clients, and mining pool security.

(01:44):

During our conversation, Alexei discusses the challenges of building cross-chain infrastructure, the development of trustless Bitcoin bridges, and his vision for expanding Bitcoin’s role in DeFi. He also shares insights on mining pool centralization and the future of merged mining. I started the conversation with Alexei by talking about his view that Lightning Network has failed as a payment system, exploring why people aren’t yet ready to use Bitcoin for payments.

Alexei Zamyatin (02:12):

That’s an interesting one to start with. I think we’ve seen the markets give us that information, right? People want to use stablecoins. I remember a lot of the Core Lightning community was always saying, “Well, Latin America, Argentina, they’re all going to use Bitcoin for micropayments because of the hyperinflation and the restricted access to the US dollar,” and so on. And what would happen? They’re using USDT on TRON, which has nothing to do with Bitcoin, but it just works. It’s basically that. I don’t think people really perceive Bitcoin as a payment asset just yet. Maybe one day. I generally think it has the potential, but I wouldn’t buy coffee with my Bitcoin. The only time I ever used it was at Bitcoin conferences. That’s just a personal take. And also, just looking at the markets, where stablecoins clearly are dominating.

Nick (03:01):

Another thing you said was this interesting comparison to Bitcoin, to BlackBerry, and you weren’t saying necessarily that it is the case, but you did make mention of the fact that if Bitcoin doesn’t sort of evolve beyond just a store of value, it’ll probably follow the similar fate to BlackBerry. And for listeners that aren’t familiar, of course, BlackBerry, a smartphone technology that was totally made inefficient, ineffective in the market. People stopped buying it, and other smartphones emerged. What about Bitcoin’s positioning, and what does it need to do to avoid that fate?

Alexei Zamyatin (03:33):

There is different narratives that Bitcoin followed. The narrative, as global mutual reserve currency, okay, it can kind of achieve that, but it won’t be Bitcoin anymore if it doesn’t evolve. So my take on this is, now we have ETFs, we have big banks buying Bitcoin, or we’re seeing Bitcoin integrated back into the old financial system, the whole thing that Bitcoin set out to actually revolutionize and change. And in my opinion is, if Bitcoin ends up being centrally controlled, and the only way for you to use Bitcoin is through a centralized exchange or going to your local bank, it’s not Bitcoin anymore. It’s just another version of digital gold, which is different to what Bitcoin is a thing to many people. And when I made the comparison to BlackBerry, I honestly, and I firmly believe that Bitcoin has to innovate.

(04:20):

Look back at the last year, people and a lot of laser IMAXs were so focused on, “Oh, the legal playbook of the US is going to make Bitcoin the only thing that can win in the crypto market, just because it’ll be the only thing that gets a spot ETF.” And I’m so happy that that got wiped out by at least getting a spot ETF approval, just because it makes some sense. We’re putting our entire hopes for Bitcoin to become a global digital asset, and building a new financial system, just because the US government said it’s fine. That’s not how Bitcoin works. And that’s not why I joined Bitcoin. So when I say Bitcoin has to evolve, it has to adapt.

(04:58):

Ethereum tried to challenge Bitcoin as a digital asset, as money, it failed. No one got even close. Ethereum tried fair shot, didn’t work. Ethereum beat Bitcoin in everything else, in the sense of adoption, user experience, programmability, doing things that do not require centralized third-party. Ethereum is now losing to Solana because they offer better UX, and it’s faster. And it’s making, well, for some users, is the right traders, for other users, it’s unacceptable. And I think Bitcoin also has to evolve. I don’t think Bitcoin itself has to change a lot though. We just need a few small changes maybe in the next 5 to 10 years. We already have everything we need, almost everything we need, to at least build a first version of Bitcoin Layer 2s that get us a step closer. And then eventually, hopefully, we can get a few additional updates to make these designs more robust, more secure.

Nick (05:53):

Well, Alexei, I’ve had the opportunity to interview other members of the Bitcoin ecosystem that have very strong feelings and opinions about the evolution of Bitcoin, and the things that sort of need to happen, and we’re going to dive deep on your perspective on those things. Before we do though, I want to turn back the time a little bit. And why don’t you tell us about where you’re from, and sort of how you first got interested, as a young person… technology.

Alexei Zamyatin (06:14):

So I grew up in Austria. I’m Austrian. My name obviously gives away that I was born in Moscow. We moved to Europe when I was two years old. I speak German better than anything else, with a heavy Viennese dialect. My co-founder, Dominik Harz, he always complains that I use words that he doesn’t understand. I like spending my time in the mountains. So I’m there actually right now. It’s a very nice break from traveling with, I guess, the crypto circus. The Formula One travels around, and I feel like crypto does the same thing. We have different stops and everybody’s just there, and you have to be there, kind of a thing. I got into crypto. So I’m a computer scientist by trade, I studied computer science. I also took quite a few courses in economics. I found the intersection of these two things quite interesting, which made Bitcoin a natural transition. More of an extension of these studies, I guess.

(07:04):

I was doing a bachelor’s thesis, and I was initially very interested in IT security. I thought it was very interesting, because, sure, it’s cool. You’re trying to participate in capture the flag contests, and I found it very exciting. And of course, I guess, [inaudible 00:07:18]. I don’t know what attracted me to this direction. I think it was also kind of censorship resistance, and that kind of fighting for a better internet, but protecting people and also improving the systems. And I was looking at obfuscating Tor traffic behind Skype traffic, so that your internet service provider doesn’t see that you’re using Tor, but it looks like you’re just using Skype. And my supervisor was also offering Bitcoin related topics. And so he was a PhD student himself, and he was suggesting, “Well, take a look at Bitcoin, take a look at Silk Road, because it overlaps. Tor was mainly used for things like Silk Road. Not only, but that’s a very active use case. So why don’t you take a look at Bitcoin?”

(07:57):

And I heard about it before, and I got really excited when I read the Bitcoin white paper, but even more so when I bumped into Namecoin, the first AltCoin. Because what got me interested was not the financial aspects of Bitcoin, but the fact that we could build decentralized things on top, that can be censorship resistant. And I really got onto this idealistic trip of, “Well, we could revolutionize the internet, we could improve the DNS, we could make it decentralized, revenue dependency on decentralized registrar and agencies.” And kind of got into Namecoin. Did a bunch of research, realized that all the names were squatted, so people would just buy up all the domains, you couldn’t really register anything. Looked into why, realized, well, it’s the miners. And then I learned about merge mining. I learned that Namecoin and Bitcoin were the first two things that ever inherited the same security.

(08:45):

Namecoin was using Bitcoin security to sustain its ecosystem, and its ledger essentially. And miners would get a Namecoin token for free. But because there was no liquidity and it wasn’t really… Back then, things were not even closely as developed in centralized exchange side and DEX side as they are today. So they were just registering these names, but they didn’t know what else to do. And from that point on, I went down the rabbit hole. So I then wrote the first research paper on merge mining, looking at effects and applications. That also ended up being my master’s thesis. And then by coincidence I was doing an internship at a Imperial College London. I would be doing a semester abroad, and actually looking into attacking mining pools. So specifically on Ethereum side, so game theory optimizations. Something very different to what I’d done before, but it was quite interesting.

(09:33):

And then I got offered the position to actually do my PhD with the same group, becoming essentially the first full-time PhD student to work on crypto at Imperial College, together with my co-founder. So we met in this office, very ugly office, very cold, big, big office. And with the only windows we had looked into the inner courtyard of the chemistry engineering building, where there’s always pipes coming out. I’m trying to paint a picture here. And usually no sun, because it was in London. But that’s kind of how we met. And then we started doing research together. And we always wanted to actually do more and kind of build these things and bring them into production. And we tried a couple of times with our consultancies, and eventually we ended up spinning out and starting to build the things that we’re doing in research, and that specifically were Bitcoin side chains, bridges. And we used to use Bitcoin, the ecosystems.

(10:22):

And as background, my co-founder, Dom, he comes from Ethereum land. He’s one of the few people that actually learned crypto, not through Bitcoin first, but Ethereum. So we kind of had this interesting combination, a merger of these two ecosystems in the company, which I think set us up for the path that we are on now with BOB.

Nick (10:39):

You’re obviously a very smart guy. You got some really impressive educational pedigree there, and you’re exploring very technical type of concepts. I want to ask you this follow-up question about understanding your frame of mind at this time, when you’re at university. And the question, you sort of alluded to it yourself there, that most people, when they become acquainted with or introduced to Bitcoin, it’s the speculative nature of it. But your university, you’re understanding the tech side of it, and there are these things that I presume are drawing you closer and closer to wanting to understand Bitcoin and the technical implications. For non-technical listeners, how would you explain that? This guy in college, studying computer science, studying all these incredible things related to tech, gets turned on to the tech underneath Bitcoin? Why?

Alexei Zamyatin (11:26):

I’ve asked myself this question quite often. So first of all, maybe to just allude to what you just said, I don’t think having these degrees qualifies me more than the majority of people in crypto. I actually learned, like, yes, academia is great, but there’s so many people in crypto that never go to college, but they build brilliant products. That’s why I really like the space, because it’s so fast-paced. Just because I have a PhD, it doesn’t mean I know stuff. In fact, I probably know much less than people who are in the trenches, and that’s why we left academia. I call myself a recovering academic, because I wouldn’t want to go back. So why did I get into Bitcoin? It was compelling, that year was grand. And I think, for me, it was really this idealistic time of, during my degree, when I was really excited about, “Okay, we can build a better internet.” And Bitcoin came out of the financial crisis, trying to replace the banks, to offer a better financial system. It was so easy to identify with.

(12:26):

It was so easy to, I guess, fall in love with, because these are values that we kind of all have. And the fact that it was there, it had this open source community, you could just get involved. And you weren’t frowned upon. I was asking stupid questions in the Namecoin forum, and the core devs were replying. And I was raising concerns about name squatter. You could get involved. It was all there, it’s open source. Everybody could join, everybody could become a member of the community. And I think that’s what really ended up attracting me the most. I felt that I was contributing to a larger movement, to make things better. At that time, I really thought, “Okay, Bitcoin and the Namecoin and the blockchain, but we could use this for so many things. Improve transparency, improve security, improve access to digital assets globally.” So I felt you are part of movement. It’s not just you’re building for a company, no, you’re building for something bigger.

(13:17):

And at that time, that’s what made me so much more excited. I think it was also the luxury of coming fresh out of university, or being at university, not having to deal with, maybe not yet so much molded into the corporate world. And basically I had experiences, I worked sometime at the consultancy agencies during my studies. And I had this contrast where you are at the bleeding edge of technology, something that people were already talking about, could revolutionize the world, and it really felt that way. The tech was there, it really made sense versus consulting people about, I don’t know, optimizing NT processes, and so on. And that’s also interesting, but it’s just so different. Yeah, I never looked back. I’ve been doing this for 10 years now.

Nick (14:05):

At that time in your life, those early days, was it sort of a endeavor of learning about this experiment that seems to be budding throughout the world, or did you see it more as inevitability? This was the next evolution for technology, so you were maybe an early adopter of what must be the next sequence of how we sort of use and develop the internet?

Alexei Zamyatin (14:27):

I was pretty quickly sold on it. It doesn’t mean that I really knew that it was inevitable, and what it meant. I got really excited about it. And I think being a student, I feel like you are more inclined to really get passionate about these things. And I generally tend to get passionate about a lot of things. I get passionate about anything I do, and also very competitive. And in this case it was like, okay, all of my friends were saying this as nonsense. My family was asking, “Why are you doing this? This makes absolutely no sense.” And it just felt like, “No, you don’t understand. No, this is actually going to make a big difference. I wish I had money to actually buy these things.” For me, the grandest investment was, sure, playing around with a few test coins, and actually investing the time during my studies, because nobody else was looking at it.

(15:13):

Everybody else was ignorant, and saying it’s nonsense. And it was all associated with Silk Road and dark markets, and it was going to die. A lot of my friends that I studied with, we’re still close friends, and I actually like keeping friends, a lot of people outside of the crypto bubble, which I think keeps them sane, but they still, they’re all getting into it in these waves of when crypto comes back up. And now with the Trump meme coin, and these conversations are so funny, because in this scenario, this Trump meme coin, they was like, “Well, it didn’t quite turn out as you thought.” And the other times they’re really bullish about it, but there’s definitely some realization that, “Okay, we were told about this long time ago and we didn’t believe in it, and now it is actually, it has materialized.”

Nick (15:58):

So you’re academically inclined, in terms of your research approach. You’re doing some very deep dives, you’re publishing, you’re working in a PhD program and you’re really interested in, as you said, going down the rabbit hole on Bitcoin. You’ve also mentioned that you’re sometimes excluded from some of these circles that we might categorize as Bitcoin maxis, and it’s sometimes due to your work on bridges and cross-chain protocols. I don’t know if I’ve sequenced it right, such that all of that arrived at this period of your life as we’re telling your story, or if this came later? But is that true? Do you feel sort of excluded from that Bitcoin maxi type of circle?

Alexei Zamyatin (16:37):

I think the definition of Bitcoin maxi is very vague, and everybody has their own definition. I’ll define myself as a Bitcoin maxi. I’ve been working in Bitcoin for 10 years. What else do I have to do to be considered a maxi? Right? For me, in my head, for whatever reason, I call them [inaudible 00:16:51] maxis, or the Bitcoin podcast mafia. There was this time where Bitcoin basically started turning into a cult. And I had brilliant experiences with conferences, like Building on Bitcoin, Breaking Bitcoin, which arguably were Bitcoin maxi conferences, people who were doing nothing but Bitcoin. And Core Lightning was obviously a very big topic. And I met a lot of people who were dedicated to Bitcoin and had started early, early, early days, and it was amazing. And that ultimately also just kept me focused on Bitcoin.

[NEW_PARAGRAPH]And I was talking about bridges and all these kind of things, and they were not fans of Ethereum. But would people tell me, “Well, you’ll eventually come back. Go do your exploration researcher. It’s good, try it out. And you’re trying to bridge Bitcoin over. And yeah, it could make sense. There seems to be some demand.” Where I did get excluded back then, I’d get uninvited from these more cult-like events, which talked about selling all your stuff and buying Bitcoin, and holding only. And you had all these podcasters that had never actually done anything on the technical side. They were doing education. I just don’t believe that this cult, that everything that isn’t Bitcoin is shit, and calling everything a shitcoin, and that being your number one argument against anything that is in any way… I just really despise that. Because I think, for me, that was kind of like, Bitcoin had this spirit of the dark age when people were traumatized after The Blocksize Wars. And this maximalism and this cult status became quite predominant. And a lot of my friends and colleagues and researchers left to do other things.

[NEW_PARAGRAPH]If you look at a lot of the L1s, Bitcoin researchers, people who started and actually did a lot of research on Bitcoin, left to do those, even Vitalik for example. That was also the time when it was really hard for me to kind of identify with some parts of the community. And I mean this has changed now. I find it quite interesting, when BitFame came out, and also the change after Taproot, and the community shifting, and Bitcoin magazine shifting, and a lot of the media starting to become more open about changes and new stuff that happens on Bitcoin, suddenly it was like I would get invited to these events again. And to be fair, nobody was ever mean to me. I always have to say, nobody was ever, in any way, abusive or mean. People were always very polite. And it’s a bit of talk, where we’d offer to sponsor, and we’d go back and forth and suddenly they’d be like, “Oh, no, we can’t doing other stuff, but here’s a discounted ticket.”

(19:16):

So people were still very nice. So I cannot complain about people not being nice to me, but it was quite frustrating. We were working on Bitcoin, and just because it isn’t Lightning, doesn’t mean it’s not innovation. But this has changed now, I guess, for the better. It was never as bad as some people experienced it. So I was quite lucky. And I think what really kind of protected me was this academic kind of research background, that we weren’t as… Now I’m thinking it would be different, right, with BOB, where it’s obviously more product driven and so on. We were much more opinionated. It would’ve been different. Back then I was not as aggressively opinionated on Twitter, so kind of stayed out of the fights, in that sense.

Nick (19:59):

Well, let’s turn our attention to BOB then, and talk a little bit about Build on Bitcoin, which is, I think, your first project that you sort of formally started building on within the space. And you can correct me if I’m wrong. But if you don’t mind, can you just take us back in time and talk about what was in your mind at the time, what the problem set you were thinking about was, that sort of led to starting this venture?

Alexei Zamyatin (20:21):

So it’s actually not the first project. The company that we ended up spinning out from, from university, is now five years old. We started as a consultancy. And we were basically consulting chains, like Polkadot, Cosmos, also just talking to almost all the big L1s, including Solana, Avalanche, NEAR, and so on, about how to build bitcoin bridges. And we ended up then, because we didn’t feel that we should onboard too many different clients and be at risk of… These are all startups, and building across five different tech stacks. We ended up forming a company, and also raising venture capital to build a Bitcoin interoperability layer, you could call it. So it was called Interlay. And we ended up building, using the Polkadot stack, because the goal was that Polkadot was supposed to be interoperable. We solve a difficult problem of getting Bitcoin into an interoperable layer, and then you could use Polkadot to distribute that across multiple chains. That didn’t work out quite well.

(21:19):

So we built the bridge and we had a bit of a too academic mindset. The bridge is, to this date, because Bitcoin is level-mainnet, it is the most secure and most trust-minimized Bitcoin bridge there is. It uses over-collateralization, so it is economically secure. So the idea is that we don’t care who the operators are, they lock up collateral. And if they steal a Bitcoin, we use their collateral to reimburse you as a user. And they’d lock up collateral in different tokens, including stablecoins and so on. And we kind of think of the make or die design, but apply to a bridge. That’s very secure, but it doesn’t really scale well because you have to always, if you’re bridging 1,000 Bitcoin, you have to have another 1,000 Bitcoin worth of collateral there, whatever. Maybe like 500. No, sorry, it has to be over-collateralized. It has be 1 to 1 or 1 to 1.5, over-collateralized, which makes it highly inefficient.

(22:12):

But we tried a lot, and we build DeFi around it, and the Polkadot ecosystem, and learned a lot of interesting lessons there, what it means to build an ecosystem. To be also on the receiving end of ecosystem support, or some difficulties around that. We helped, as part of that spin out, Polkadot’s business development arm, and helped a lot with ecosystem business development. And I don’t think I’ve talked about this as openly in public before, to be fair. A lot of our friends and colleagues and partners, and people in this space know, but we haven’t really openly discussed this. We’ve always tried to avoid kind of conflict and the fights in that direction, but our experience at Polkadot wasn’t ideal, and we ultimately had to pivot out. And the reason was that, I think the tech was great, but then tech and knowledge isn’t enough. You have to build an ecosystem. You have to consider that apps on the projects building, and your ecosystem on your clients, and you have to work on go-to-market, and actually make sure that you are not working only on your…

(23:12):

If you have a lot of runway as a big crypto L1, and you have a 10 years runway, that may be the case, but everybody else doesn’t have that. So you can’t just let all your projects die because you’re focused on things that might have impact later, and it’s only decentralization and so on, and decentralized governance. These are all primitives that now Ethereum, and Ethereum 2s, are copying from Polkadot, but all the projects we’re dying out. And essentially we started BOB, and that was in 2023. And same vision, same mission, make Bitcoin accessible. But we learned that we have to take a pragmatic and product-oriented approach, and make sure that the ecosystem we’re building, they’re successful. And that’s our number one priority. And our dogma is, builders on BOB are our clients. If we don’t view it this way, something’s wrong. All core members that stayed on, and had been there for us for a long time, and that kind of helped us a lot because we were on the receiving end, and we’re saying tough communication.

(24:14):

Or even just, I don’t think it was on purpose, but Polkadot was shipping so many new features, and constantly breaking the network and the framework, made it impossible for us to actually build up products. We just kept catching up with upgrades. And things like this, I think helped us a lot to prioritize what I think really matters. And it’s not just tech. And I think, yes, tech is super important, and Bitcoin L2 is in bridging, and Bitcoin security are the only reasons Bitcoin L2 should exist. But then there is also two other things, and that’s ecosystem development. Meaning, make sure that projects that are building on BOB can go to market fast, and focus on things that matter, and they don’t have to waste their time with vertical upgrades or looking for libraries, looking for dev tooling. Make sure that they have the best possible environment, and support them in things like fundraising, go-to-market, marketing, everything they need to launch the product successfully. At the same time, provide them with access to liquidity and stablecoins, access to exchanges.

(25:06):

So not just the technical tools, but also the financial tools and primitives that you need to build a product in the Bitcoin space. And that’s why BOB is designed as it is. It’s not a pure Bitcoin L2, it’s a hybrid which leverages both Bitcoin and Ethereum, and in the future, also other networks, to create an ecosystem where Bitcoin and DeFi can thrive. And I think the experience from Polkadot, and the fact that we’ve built there, we went through a lot of this ecosystem growth process and the struggles, I think it ultimately led to BOB being designed as it is today. And I think that’s also why this hybrid design offers an advantage to builders over isolated kind of designs. Or I, for example, don’t believe that building an L2 VM, as a Bitcoin L2, makes a difference. No, it actually makes it more difficult for you to build. Because I know, we tried.

(25:59):

But if you have to re-implement every single tool yourself, well, not every single, I’m exaggerating, but a lot of the tools yourself, and simple things like a uniswap, like AMM decks, or like a stable swap, or I don’t know, even wallet infrastructure, you’re wasting your time as a startup that’s supposed to build a product. And we’ve seen this in countless other ecosystems, including the Bitcoin L2s or sidechains that have existed so far. Yeah, sorry, I kind of went off track there, but that’s essentially how we ended up with BOB. So I just wanted to flag that we’ve not only spent a bunch of time in academia, we actually had to earn our stripes and learn our lessons, what it means to be a builder. And what the hardships are that you have to face when you’re building an ecosystem that does not necessarily prioritize the success of its builders. And this could be for multiple reasons. I don’t think there was any ill intent. It was just oversight, but it still meant that it was killing off projects.

Nick (27:01):

I think this is a good follow-up question, but I’ll let you sort of decide. But my question is, in a very generic sense, I feel like founders in the web3 ecosystem have to make trade-offs, and their trade-offs they make are similar to what you sort of articulated there. Are we going to focus on the tech and be a research endeavor? Are we going to focus on the token, and just drive all this token interest and narrative? Are we going to focus on the builders, and be kind of maybe product centric? Maybe that’s the way to frame that third one. And there’s probably other things that they can sort of make trade-offs on.

(27:36):

You are saying, “Hey, one of the lessons we learned, because of our journey, was that you really need to become user and builder centric.” The market’s still quite small. I mean web3 is emergent, and it’s still not have a ton of builders in the space. And so that trade-off, in some ways, looks like a huge risk. It might be the case that a founder should not put all their attention there, because even if they had a hundred percent market capture, it wouldn’t be enough to justify their efforts and all their work. So a very long-winded follow-up question, to say, what do you think about those trade-offs? And obviously you made the one you made, but is that a fair sort of articulation of the trade-offs that people building the space have to make?

Alexei Zamyatin (28:20):

I mean a hundred percent you have to prioritize it, can’t do everything at once, even though you have to. It’s quite interesting. You have to try a lot of things. Our approach, and what people have been telling us, I don’t know if it’s a compliment, to be fair, we’re pragmatic. And I definitely think it really depends on which ecosystem you’re building, in which product. If you’re building a gaming project, I mean maybe that, no, you have to be quite opinionated and you have to spend a lot of time on actually the story, the game itself, and then probably the blockchain infrastructure should come last. Games are games, and you can add additional stuff to it, but this game still have to be really good. Again, the dynamics have to make sense. When working in Bitcoin, I think you need pragmatism. Because Bitcoin is a different beast. If you’re trying to rush it…

(29:06):

You have to find a balance. And I don’t know, I will see if we are finding the right balance, the market will tell. But I think if you’re trying to rush it really quickly, just focusing on your own token, Bitcoin is going to chew you up and spit you out. But that’s not how Bitcoin works. But also if you get really opinionated and think only about the tech, you’re going to end up building another Lightning that ends up being not used by anyone. Because yes, you might listen to the very vocal people, the laser maxis, but they will still not use your protocol, because they’re not users. I think that is the balancing you define. On Bitcoin, you have a very vocal community, but not everybody is actually a user. You have to identify who the users are. In our case, our first users, the ones that we prioritize, because we want to make Bitcoin accessible to DeFi.

(29:51):

I find it controversial that you can’t use Bitcoin for anything else on payments, but they’re trusting a centralized provider, and that’s what we’re trying to solve. So our first user base is DeFi users, on Ethereum, on Solana, on other networks. Why? Because they know DeFi, they already decided that DeFi is great for them, and they all have Bitcoin. They all do have Bitcoin, and some of them are trying to use Bitcoin and DeFi using RappiTC and on it. I mean you kind of say, well, the market might not be big enough. Well, RappiTC has what, $10 billion in a market cap right now. That is a fairly big market, right? It’s $1 billion+ market just there. Sure in finance, $10 billion is great. Is it enough to really scale and reach a scale that we want for Bitcoin? No, it’s just the start. And then if you look at Bitcoin overall, I mean the number of users globally is what, 100 million, 200 million+.

(30:42):

And if you look at the market cap and the liquidity that’s just there, and that’s dormant, and that is trying to do things with the Bitcoin, but usually gets blocked and stopped by centralized providers, and either they’re trusted, but then people keep losing money, or they’re not trusted and then people don’t do anything. I think Bitcoin is a market that’s big enough, it’s bigger than everything else in crypto. And I think I spend my time living in the crypto bubble in work, crypto Twitter, and so on. In our bubble there’s Solana, there’s Ethereum, there’s Movement, there’s all these other things. If you step outside, it’s all Bitcoin. If the media reports about the crypto market changing, it talks about Bitcoin dropping in price. It does not talk about Bera or Solana or anything else. It’s still Bitcoin. And that, in my opinion, is a market that’s big enough.

(31:38):

But then again, coming back to your question, I just wanted to emphasize that I do think that by now crypto is a big enough market. And if you look at Avid or Coinbase, and you rank them among the banks, they’d be worth, I think, in the top 50 banks in the US, at this point, in size. So yes, it is growing fast. But as a founder, at least for us, what I think for the Bitcoin ecosystem, what matters is not only tech, I think you need to have good fundamentals. And that takes time to develop. And that’s something you have to learn. It’s not something you can just buy with money. That takes time. And that’s why if you look at the builders who are in Bitcoin, a lot of them are seasoned entrepreneurs who have done this before, have worked in Bitcoin before. It’s a different beast. You’re playing at the high stakes table. I mean you win in Bitcoin, you win the entire market. Not just in the Bitcoin space, you win everything.

(32:26):

But on the other hand, you need distribution. You need to make sure you get access to users. That’s why Base is winning, because they have Coinbase, they have distribution. So you need to actually figure out that, and how do we use Bitcoin as a distribution channel? Bitcoin has so much adoption. It has a brand stronger than Apple, or almost as good an Apple. I mean hard to compare the two, but if somebody sees a Bitcoin logo, they know what it stands for. And Apple spent billions of dollars until it got their brand to that point, Bitcoin already has that. I don’t have to sell you Bitcoin anymore. At this point, I just have to sell you why you should be using Bitcoin in DeFi rather than going to Binance. That’s the selling point, which is much, much easier than me having to first explain to you what Polkadot or Cosmos or Berachain is, and why you need these additional things, and then explaining to you what my application is doing.

(33:16):

So I think figuring out the strong fundamentals of, how do you make your product secure and robust? But then actually looking at the distribution channel, is probably what I would say are the most important things right now to succeed.

Nick (33:28):

So let’s dive a little deeper on BOB and sort of how it creates value. And so lets kind of create a thought experiment. Let’s assume there’s a listener to this interview who either has some Bitcoin, and participates a little bit in DeFi, or maybe it’s a developer that’s just listening to this podcast, and they also have some Bitcoin, and they’ve bought it maybe as an investment, a long-term hold. What are the ways in which they sort of would come into contact with BOB and the solution you’re building there? And what would make that experience different from other things they could do?

Alexei Zamyatin (33:58):

I’m talking here about the BOB and its time of state, because obviously there are multiple stages of the roadmap. And happy to go into more detail about where we are now and what we’re shipping next. But if you look at BOB, as the vision, and what we’re building, and what the tech is supposed to do, and the product is supposed to do, BOB is a new type of Layer 2. So Layer 2 means that we inherit security from another chain, and we inherit security from Bitcoin. So BOB is not just a Bitcoin Layer 2, BOB is a hybrid. Now, hybrid means that we are connected, not only to Bitcoin, but to other networks as well. So Ethereum, primarily, because Ethereum obviously is the home of DeFi. And the idea is that we leverage Bitcoin for security. We create ways for you to then use Bitcoin in DeFi applications on BOB in a way that does not require trust in a centralized custodian.

(34:55):

And the technology that’s relevant here is BitVM. It’s a new concept, and basically it allows us to create, for the first time ever, an arguably trustless Bitcoin bridge. So you can deposit Bitcoin into BOB, and you know that as long as there’s one person in the network that is paying attention, it will not get stolen. That is revolutionary. So we create the most secure way for you to use Bitcoin in applications that are decentralized. We don’t stop there, because we acknowledge that building an isolation is not enough. You have to use Bitcoin with something, you want to trade it against something, you want to use it in other applications. And a lot of these other things are built on the networks. There is chains that specialize in DeFi, there chains that specialize in more consumer applications. So what BOB does is, we use Bitcoin secured bridges to connect to other networks, Ethereum, Solana, Bera, Tron, whatever you want.

(35:51):

And the idea is simple. I’m sure you’re aware that there is many, many protocols that try to solve interoperability, right? Solving the cross-operability. In fact, I try to solve it during my PG times. We came to quite a few very difficult problems that nobody’s really solved so far. And what usually happens is, people create another network. You create another blockchain that is supposed to connect other blockchains, like Polkadot, Cosmos. And then all of these axilars, they’re well positioned to do that, but they introduced another network, another protocol, another chain. Now what we do is, is we say, “Look, instead of introducing another network, just use Bitcoin. Why don’t we use Bitcoin? The one thing that we can all agree is secure.” Whether you’re Bitcoin maxi and ETH maxi, Solana maxi, we all agree on at least one thing, Bitcoin is secure. It’s the most secure decentralized network that we have. So if Bitcoin breaks, our entire industry is going to go belly up. So that’s just an assumption we can make.

(36:45):

And trust is always perceived. Bitcoin is perceived as secure. And that allows us to leverage this trust, to then bridge these different ecosystems. And the way it works is, all these chains have smart contracts. This means that they can easily verify what’s going on on Bitcoin. They build a like client. So the same thing you have on your phone when you’re running a Bitcoin wallet, that accepts a proof that a certain transaction has happened. And you can do the same thing on Ethereum, on Solana, on Berachain, anything that has more contracts. And this has been possible since 2016. So why am I telling you all this? Well, the idea is that not only does BOB have Bitcoin security, and the most secure way to use Bitcoin and DeFi without trusting centralized providers, no, we allow you to export that and use it on other networks.

(37:33):

So we allow you to then deploy Bitcoin into Ethereum, into DeFi product, because there might be more liquidity, or be bank that is specialized, or into Solana. And then actually access these opportunities, and use your Bitcoin and DeFi across all these networks, in a way that is secured by Bitcoin. Yes, you will still trust that Ethereum doesn’t break while you’re using Bitcoin there, but you will only trust Ethereum, the target platform, and that Bitcoin security is securing the network, is securing BOB and this whole ecosystem. And this, at the same time, allows users from Ethereum or Solana, and other networks, to bridge their native assets, ERC20, Solana tokens, whatever tokens, into BOB. Again, all secured by Bitcoin, traded against Bitcoin and other assets, and withdraw back to the underlying Layer 1s. So essentially what we use centralized exchanges for today, except that you’re not trusting a centralized provider, you’re trusting that Bitcoin is secure.

(38:28):

And that, ultimately, is I think what sets BOB apart. It’s not just a Bitcoin L2. I know we get classified as that very often, but it’s a grander vision. It’s a vision to leverage Bitcoin and position it as the center of DeFi, as the center of the entire crypto ecosystem. Because it is the center, it is the most trusted network. It is the largest digital asset, and it is the least controversial thing you could do. People trust Bitcoin and that allows us to create these, and leverage this network effects, to grow the ecosystem. Instead of fighting against Solana and Ethereum, you just say, “Look, everybody has Bitcoin, everybody wants to use Bitcoin. You can use it in a more secure way now.”

Nick (39:14):

So if that represents the grand vision and long-term strategy for BOB, talk to us about where you’re at now. And for any listeners that want to get activated, learn more, get involved, what are the ways to do it?

Alexei Zamyatin (39:26):

So the best way to learn about BOB, is just going to the website, gobob.xyz. And then you can find links to our docs, to the blog, to the white papers. All the materials are easily accessible there. And then if you join our community, we’re always there to answer questions, whether you’re a builder, a user, I think we have a pretty big community that actually will just help you answer questions and get on board. Now, where is BOB today? So we’re rolling out BOB in three stages. So phase one is bootstrapping, and we’re bootstrapping BOB as an ETH L2. So we start from Ethereum. Why? Because one, this allows us to create the same builder friendly environment that you have on base and optimism, and start focusing on building, and building out Bitcoin focused applications with the tools we have today. So instead of waiting for the completion of our research and development on BitVM, and more secure Bitcoin security models, we started by doing these two things in parallel.

(40:26):

So we have the research and the engineering efforts going on in the background, and at the same time we work with protocols. And we try to identify, what do people want to do with Bitcoin? What are the biggest problems? What do we need to consider when we build these Bitcoin secure bridges and Bitcoin security protocols? What do people really care about? What do we need to take into account? And so BOB’s life today, it has over 100 projects building, or live already. And these are teams that either build infrastructure or products, that, a lot of them come from other ecosystems but are looking to launch and build out a Bitcoin strategy. And we have around $240 million of assets deployed onto the network in different wrapped Bitcoin versions. So today, BOB works with almost all the major wrapped Bitcoin providers, because we want to give the users a choice, and also learn what do people care about. Which ones will be mostly used? What are the properties? So we can account for this when building a more trust minimized version.

(41:25):

And the things we focused on, on the product side, is making Bitcoin DeFi UX easier. So we build things like, we call it BOB Gateway. And BOB Gateway is, as it says, it’s your gateway to use Bitcoin in DeFi applications, instead of you figuring out which bridge to use today. And also in the future, once BitVM is live, you don’t want to navigate the different UX complexities that come with trustless technologies. And then instead of click, click, click, finding a bridge, going into the interface, they all look different, and then you finally wrapped your Bitcoin, you maybe had to go through KYC, or there was a minimum deposit amount, and then you go to deeper protocol, you have to identify which one have… They all look different. You have to understand what are their promises, what does the yield come from? Click, click, click. And then you have to manage your position there. And then if you have want to use it in another DeFi protocol, you have to again go to another website.

(42:24):

And what you have on Bob now is, one click. You can one click deploy Bitcoin into a variety of different strategies, and you can build these things like Legos. So what we handle, and we have the first ever… The technology behind this is intense. So this is a new thing that was kind of born out of Ethereum, and we made it accessible on Bitcoin within months of it fostering out of the Ethereum ecosystem. And the idea is that you tell us what you want to do with the Bitcoin, and we have a network of searchers that will go and make sure that they execute this strategy on your behalf. At the end, it’s glorified automic swaps. You’re swapping your Bitcoin on the L1 for the final position in DeFi on BOB, or any other chain, in the future. And all you need to do is make one Bitcoin transaction. And that’s one of the things we focused on, is really simplifying the usability and making onboarding users into DeFi, on Bitcoin, as easy as possible.

(43:19):

So that’s what’s live today, and that was phase 1. Now phase 2 makes a leap on the technology side, and that’s rolling out on Testnet, essentially starting right now in Q1 2025. We’re adding Bitcoin finality to the ETH L2. So we work with Bitcoin staking that allows users who lock up their Bitcoin, and then run nodes that verify what’s going on with the BOB Layer 2, and then sign off on this, using the Bitcoin stake. If the majority of the Bitcoin stake has signed off on everything being correct, that this adds another layer of finality and security. So the idea now is, not only if you want to attack BOB once this rolls out, you’ll have to attack the sequencers that process transactions, and so on. You have to prevent fraud from happening on Ethereum, because BOB is an ETH roll up, and at the same time you have to corrupt the majority of BTC stakers, because they need to sign off on any updates as well.

(44:22):

So you actually get a system that combines both Bitcoin and Ethereum security, making it the most secure ledger in production. Now this is one thing. So we get Bitcoin security. And the second part that this adds on the technical side, it allows us to complete the first ever production ready BitVM bridge. So BitVM, and I keep repeating this, is what essentially kicked off this run for Bitcoin Layer 2s. It allows us to create optimistic fraud-proof based systems. So think of Arbitrum on Ethereum or Optimism on Ethereum. Bitvm is basically the fraud-proof logic, but built on Bitcoin. It’s basically that. It’s not a virtual machine. The name is maybe confusing. It just allows us to execute arbitrary computation, and if there’s a dispute, execute the dispute on chain. And that is more efficient than running everything on Bitcoin itself. We can run programs that would never fit into Bitcoin block, and we can still get Bitcoin security. And we use BitVM to create a trust-minimized bridge.

(45:25):

And the interesting thing about this BitVM concept is, it really only works well for things that are Bitcoin-secured. So if you want to use BitVM to build a Bitcoin bridge to Ethereum, that is not really going to work. There’s technical reasons and complexities for that. And it works really well, however, if you’re using Bitcoin security for your network, because it’s more native to Bitcoin and it just works better with that system. And having Bitcoin finality on BOB allows us to complete this part of our roadmap as well. So at the end of phase 2, and this is going to be rolling out throughout 2025, first testing and then gradually to mean it. And it’ll take time, of course, to grow liquidity on this new bridge, because people still have to get familiar with the new tech. But this means that BOB will have Bitcoin security and the most secure way of using Bitcoin and DeFi. And that basically is almost the complete vision.

(46:18):

The last step, and this is phase 3, would be to remove the Ethereum fraud proofs and execute the fraud proofs for the entire state of BOB on Bitcoin. So have full Bitcoin security. And Ethereum users, when they would be using BOB, they’d be trusting Bitcoin, not Ethereum and Bitcoin. Which is a subtle change. And the only reason we can’t do this now is because doing this on Bitcoin, continuously posting data to Bitcoin so we can use fraud proofs for the entire chain, is very expensive. So it’s more of a cost and efficiency problem than a theoretical problem. It ultimately really only works once BOB is big enough. Once we can spread the cost of these additional, like posting data to Bitcoin continuously, among a lot of users, so that each user maybe only pays one similar per transaction, then we can do it. And the reason we’re not doing this now is because I honestly don’t think people will pay a hundred X more in fees just to have a bit more Bitcoin security, versus Solana or like an ETH L2.

(47:18):

So that was a quite lengthy explanation of the BOB roadmap. But ultimately what’s relevant is that right now, in the next couple of months, we’re rolling out Bitcoin finality, and a trust-minimized BTC bridge, which gets us pretty much into the finish line of this hybrid vision. And from there we can start building out more products, and then when we’re able to, then add even more security.

Nick (47:45):

I’ll put links in the show notes for anybody that wants to click away, learn more and dive deeper. What excites you most about the future of Bitcoin? You’re working on exciting things. You have a vision about DeFi, and unlocking more use case than just a store value for Bitcoin. But outside all of that, are there any milestones or anything that you’re watching as you see your vision for the future of Bitcoin emerge?

Alexei Zamyatin (48:13):

So I think this naturally leads us to the debate about whether institutional adoption of Bitcoin is only good, or whether it actually also brings risks. I think ETFs are very important, it takes Bitcoin mainstream. It also means that a lot of the non-crypto media is no longer attacking Bitcoin as much. And generally, I think the general population is not bullish on Bitcoin. It is mainstream now, and they’re selling it to my parents and my grandparents. The banks that used to hate Bitcoin and just try to frame it as the most illegal thing, and it’s a Ponzi and whatnot, now they’re selling it. So that’s good. This means Bitcoin press is going to go up, this means more users will onboard. This means more activity. That’s good. But on the other hand, it also is controversial, because as mentioned at the beginning of the show, we’re kind of plugging Bitcoin into the old financial system that we’re supposed to replace. Is that the only thing we’re actually setting out to achieve?

(49:09):

And so what I’m really excited for, is seeing Bitcoin L2s, be it BOB, be it others, succeed, one way or the other, be it with or without a Bitcoin fork. We can do it without a Bitcoin fork, a fork like additional UpCodes, additional operations, definitely make our lives easier, but we don’t have to rely on them. That is also a first. Previously the only way that we could achieve this was always debated as, “Oh, we have to change Bitcoin.” Now this is no longer the case. We can do it without changing Bitcoin. And so what makes me really excited is to see more Bitcoin deployed into Bitcoin secured Layer 2s than into the ETF. Think if we can reach that milestone, then we’ve succeeded. Because we’ve shown that we can offer and operate an alternative system that is able to onboard millions, if they have to.

(49:56):

I think generally, as a lot of the Bitcoin maxis like to say, hyper-Bitcoinization is not going to happen instantly. And I think a lot of things have to go wrong in the world for everybody to instantly switch to Bitcoin. And honestly, I’m not sure we want that, right? I don’t think we want that kind of doomsday scenario to happen right now. What I think we need to do is to create a system, and these are ballpark numbers, that maybe 10% of the population can use for 30% of their daily needs, whereas 10% of the population use Bitcoin from 30% of their daily transactions. That means we’ve built a system that is scalable and robust, and then can be scaled further, and onboard more people, as needed, if they ever have to switch to Bitcoin as an alternative. If they ever get debanked, or lose access to the financial system, or entire countries enter into issues, then Bitcoin is there to be the fallback. I think if we achieve that, that is a success. Because then everything else has nothing to do with Bitcoin, it actually has to do with a geopolitical state of things.

(51:00):

And honestly, I’m not sure it’s our job to meddle with that. Yes, it’s relevant, but on the other hand, as builders, what can we do? The biggest contribution we can make is make it accessible, and make it easy for people to use, and then let people decide if they need and want to use it. And support them in whatever way. As long as it’s not illegal, obviously. Got to say that.

Nick (51:25):

Alexei, well, now we’ve reached a point where I’m going to ask you the GRTiQ 10. These are 10 questions I ask each guest of the podcast every week. And they’re fun. They allow us to get to know you a little bit better on the personal side. And as I always say, I also think it helps listeners learn something new, try something different, or hopefully achieve more in their own life. And so Alexei, are you ready for the GRTiQ 10?

Alexei Zamyatin (51:45):

All right, let’s go.

Nick (51:57):

What book or articles had the most impact on your life?

Alexei Zamyatin (52:02):

I’m going to be very boring and say the Bitcoin white paper, because I’ve been working on this for the last 10 years. So yeah, it is probably going to be the Bitcoin white paper.

Nick (52:11):

Is there a movie or a TV show that you recommend everybody’s got to watch?

Alexei Zamyatin (52:15):

I thought about this one. One that I really, really, really enjoyed is, I’m a fan of science fiction, so The Expanse. Especially the first few seasons are really good. It’s not fundamental, it’s not really educational, it’s just, if you want to nerd out on science fiction, that’s a good one.

Nick (52:32):

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

Alexei Zamyatin (52:37):

This is a tough one, because I don’t know many music albums. I’m one of the people that would just listen to these things on their iPod and so on. But if I had to choose only one, I’d probably listen to the Lord of the Rings film music. And I actually do a lot.

Nick (52:55):

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

Alexei Zamyatin (52:58):

That would be my grandfather. And one thing that always stuck with me, and had a lot of impact on my life was, if your idea is too complex to explain to other people, it’s not a good idea. You have to be able, not just to have an idea, but you have to be able to put it into plain words, and explain it in a way that people can not only understand it, but they can go and then test it and verify it. Because that’s the only way that things can get built, and you make progress. And he brought a very good example of, they were competing in research, for some prize. And there was this kind of super technical system, marvelous technical execution, like super complex engineering, and they were theorists. But then their concept was so much better explained, they were producible and people understood why it worked and why it was relevant. They won. Whereas the other system was so complex and nobody really knew how it works. And there was just visual demonstration. But that was it.

(53:55):

And what happened was that the system that they developed become a part of that fundamental research later on. So I think that had a lot of impact. And it still does, like when we build things and when we write papers. And for example, a BitVM, why we spent so much time putting the BitVM to paper out into public as soon as possible, is because I felt like things have to be easily explained to people. That’s the only way that people can ever use them and build on them.

Nick (54:21):

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

Alexei Zamyatin (54:28):

The one thing I’ve learned is sharing ideas. So that’s one thing I had to learn. But sharing ideas is a net positive, and it will heal the net positive in the long term. And if you just keep everything for yourself and you don’t talk to people about your idea because you’re scared that they’re going to steal it, the only thing it’s going to do is, it’s actually going to hinder you. Unless you are one of a million genius and you have this one brilliant idea, sure, but what are the chances that this idea that you have is the one of a million? I think that kind of being chromatic about it, and realizing, “Look, not every idea I have is going to be the billion-dollar idea.”

(55:05):

And in fact, the best way of figuring out, is actually telling people and getting feedback. And yes, sure they might copy, but realistically speaking, they all have their own ideas. The chance of somebody dropping everything they’re doing just to steal your idea, is so low, that usually I feel sharing and being transparent… And that’s why I love open source. It just works better and that’s how we achieve progress.

Nick (55:29):

What’s the best life hack you’ve discovered for yourself?

Alexei Zamyatin (55:32):

So for me, I have a cat. When I get stressed out, I go and I pet the cat. And for me, that really works. It takes the stress off. And I guess the life hack is, find something that when you’re stressed, lets you just quickly escape. So for me, it’s like playing with a cat, reading a book, gaming for a bit. It doesn’t matter, the life hack, it doesn’t matter what other people say about it. Gaming is often scrutinized like, “Oh, you’re wasting your time.” No, you’re not. You’re doing something for yourself. If it helps you recover your mental state, it’s good.

Nick (56:07):

And Alexei, 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?

Alexei Zamyatin (56:18):

I think it’s being confident in yourself and trusting yourself, being positive about it. I realized if you want to feel good, you start by pretending to feel good. And it doesn’t always work, right? And this really is not meant to be an advice against depression or anything. So it doesn’t work for everyone, but it certainly helped me. When people would ask me how I’m feeling, instead of like, “Oh, I’m so busy. It’s such a tight thing, it’s so hard.” I’d be like, “Oh, it’s great. I’m feeling great. Things are going great. And yes, we’re busy.” And then sure, you can talk about the problems, but you kind of frame it in a positive way.

(56:54):

And sure, terrible things can happen in life, and it’s not always possible. But for me personally, it is just like this, “Okay, it’s going to be fine. I feel good.” And just telling people that you’re feeling good and you’re okay. I think that’s the first step to actually then believing it yourself, and realizing, “Wait, wait a second, if I zoom out. This problem I’m so focused and I’m obsessed about, it’s not that big of a problem, I’m still actually fine. Everything else is okay.”

Nick (57:20):

And then Alexei, the final three questions are complete the sentence type questions. So the first one is, the thing that most excites me about the future of web3 or crypto or blockchain is…

Alexei Zamyatin (57:30):

That it constantly moves so fast, and that there is no, “My use case is better than your use case.” So we keep finding new things that people want to do with it. And as absurd as they might be, people will still come up with things. And from that absurdity, sometimes you actually get really cool new technologies and new products that actually then change the market.

Nick (57:54):

And how about this one? If you’re on X or Twitter, I don’t care what people call it anymore, you should be following…

Alexei Zamyatin (57:59):

I’d say Bitcoin Layers. And then of course, if you’re interested in Bitcoin and Layer 2s, follow Bitcoin Layers, because these guys are really doing the entire ecosystem a favor. They’ve created Layer 2 for Bitcoin, L2s, wrappers and sun, and they really help you understand what are the risks, what really works, what doesn’t. Again, this is really for people interested in crypto and Bitcoin, but that is probably your best resource of navigating the Bitcoin space right now.

Nick (58:26):

And then Alexei, the final question. I’m happiest when…

Alexei Zamyatin (58:30):

I’m happiest when I’m doing sports or petting my cats, or just spending time with family, which is kind of boring, but honestly, that is the plain truth.

Nick (58:47):

Alexei, thank you so much for joining the GRTiQ Podcast. It was fun to get to know a little bit about your background, your history, the journey you took into crypto. You’ve been around for a while, started off as an academic, became a founder, and are doing some very important things. And I’ll be very excited to watch the evolution of BOB. If listeners want to follow you, stay in touch with all the things you are working on, what’s the best way for them to stay in touch?

Alexei Zamyatin (59:10):

I think probably the best way is where I’m quite active. My DM’s always open. And otherwise, join the BOB community on the website. You can find the Telegram, the Discord, whatever messenger you’re using. And yeah, you can always find us and reach us, as a team, in the trenches, I guess.