The Big Whale: A lot has happened in six years for the Tezos blockchain. After a very promising start, you quickly became a minor player. Where are you now? Has your turn not passed?
I remain very confident about the future of Tezos , and its mission remains the same: to be a very comprehensive layer 1 blockchain that meets all the needs of users and developers.
Now, of course, things have evolved significantly since 2018, and we have had to adapt and take into account the arrival of new competitors in the layer 1 space, such as Avalanche or Solana.
This is what we have started to do, both by working on the economic mechanisms of Tezos with a reduction in inflation and what we have initiated with EtherLink, which should allow us to be compatible with other ecosystems, such as Ethereum (EVM).
You continue to want to create a complete ecosystem, while the key today seems to be specialization. Isn't this a mistake and the reason for your loss of ground against others?
It all depends on what kind of specialization you're talking about. Is it from a business or technological perspective? For me, from a technical point of view, the question doesn't really arise. A blockchain remains a blockchain. It all just depends on what you want to do with it commercially, and there you will have different strategies. We can be focused on this or that vertical, but from a technological point of view, there aren't necessarily many differences. The specialization of blockchains is more of a marketing issue than a technological one.
In the meantime, Tezos has some difficulties in its commercial development. How do you explain this delay compared to other protocols?
Tezos was able to do many things before others. We were among the first to implement smart contracts, but the platform was not designed as a decentralized applications (Dapps) platform. Initially, tez (the cryptocurrency of Tezos) was a means of payment and a store of value. Given the evolution of the market, we adapted to the growing demand for programmability, but without abandoning the payment and store of value aspect, which left us somewhat in between and prevented us from fully capitalizing on the decentralized finance wave.
What wasn't ready?
A lot of things! There was both a speed problem, the latency was too high, and when you target a trader market, it's complicated. There was also a lack of integration of smart contract calls in wallets, and a lack of tools around programming languages. And we could have done better in our relationship with developers.
Indeed, that leaves some gaps!
Yes, we lacked strategy, which may have penalized us while the markets soared with decentralized finance.
Beyond strategic questions, what explains the gap that has developed between Tezos and some other blockchains like Ethereum, but also Solana?
Today, blockchains are financed by funds that hold a large portion of the tokens, often more than half, which is an advantage in terms of financing but also a major problem in terms of centralization, with these funds pushing the companies in their portfolio to build on protocols in which they have invested.
On the other hand, with Tezos, we don't have the same power, but we have a solution: to always be at the forefront of innovation. Since 2018, we have always been at the cutting edge. For example, we were the first in Proof of Stake with unique economic incentives.
But you were quickly joined by others… Others are working too! Several blockchains have arrived with very interesting value propositions, whether it's Cosmos with interoperability or others like Solana with the number of transactions per second. We quickly found ourselves challenged in many areas.
Isn't that precisely the problem with Tezos, wanting to be good at everything and ultimately excellent at nothing?
If you want to be really competitive as a challenger, you need to be at the forefront of innovation. Ethereum does not have these constraints because they already have the largest network. They can afford not to be technically competitive because people come for the network effect.
In 2024, does this vision still work? As you say, today it's the network that matters more than technology and innovations…
In 2021, Tezos experienced a significant wave of adoption in the NFT space, particularly in the artistic wave. Even though the total amount of transactions on the blockchain wasn't huge, this influx created enormous cultural influence. This was because Tezos offered Proof of Stake before everyone else, while Ethereum was still in Proof of Work (since 2022 in Proof of Stake) with much higher transaction fees. We had a real technological advantage. So even if these advantages have a limited lifespan, you have to know how to take advantage of them.
This is exactly what Solana did. How did they succeed? There is obviously the massive fraud behind FTX that benefited them (FTX and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, were major investors in Solana). That obviously counts. We're talking about 30 billion dollars. But Solana also has its own merits; they came with blocks per second and the ability to do 60,000 transactions per second! That brought them something huge, and it's this kind of technological edge that I'm looking for.
Aside from art, in what other areas has Tezos established itself?
Other sectors include gaming with beautiful projects like Stables, supported by PMU and the Tezos Foundation. There is also, of course, decentralized finance where we are quite innovative. We have platforms like Kord.Fi or Youves that are interesting.
What interests you in DeFi?
One of the interests of DeFi is to tokenize assets to make them more liquid, like for example on commodities. Since these are large assets, there is potentially more volume and need for exchange. It is also to capture this new market that we developed Etherlink, which will bridge Tezos and the Ethereum ecosystem.
Etherlink is one of the major projects you have worked on. Why develop a layer 2 that is compatible with the Ethereum universe? We've already talked about this, but isn't it a way of admitting that you've lost the battle for independence?
Interoperability has become an unavoidable topic. It's a way for us to seek new users. Etherlink is already available on the Tezos mainnet in Beta, and applications are running on it. The official launch will take place in a few weeks.
Looking at the figures, your "capitalization" (750 million euros) has significantly decreased over the past three years. Is this a problem?
I think our sector suffers from its reflexivity: many people are in this market without really knowing what they are doing and end up following others, thinking that they know what they are doing. Except that's obviously not the case, so everyone ends up doing like their neighbor. Capitalization is an issue, but the use of the blockchain is also very important. We have been around for a long time, and that will continue.
Could you merge with other protocols?
We recently saw a major operation around the ASI Alliance. I have thought a lot about this question. It has to be said that if we were in any other sector, there would be a lot of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), because we have an industry where network effects are huge and where many players have money.
How do you explain that these operations do not happen?
The fact that projects are decentralized is a real obstacle. Take 2 blockchains that need to merge: if the projects are truly decentralized, there is no way to be sure that the blockchains won't continue to exist in parallel. Will users follow? The problem is that the value of these tokens depends on the community; it's a very subjective topic.
And even if the two blockchains agree, technological issues also need to be managed. It's very complicated to properly merge two ecosystems, and it's a real topic for the industry.
Listening to you, there aren't many alternatives for a layer 1.
Indeed. Layer 1s have no other choice but to succeed or die; there are no alternatives.
And why not discuss with more traditional companies?
We have thought about it, and we are still thinking about it. Today, there is an interesting model emerging: coupling a blockchain with a community and a distribution channel.
This is what Binance did with the BNB blockchain, Coinbase with the Base blockchain, Telegram with the Ton blockchain, and even FTX with the Solana blockchain. It's an interesting vertical integration.
After that, we would have to know what this would concretely mean for Tezos and what acquisition we could consider. Partnerships can also work very well.
In recent years, you have indeed made many partnerships, especially with sports clubs. Everyone saw your logo on the Manchester United football club jersey.
Wasn't that money somewhat wasted?
We have significantly reduced these partnerships. And we must not forget that when we did it, there was a real demand from the community for Tezos to gain visibility.
What are the results of these campaigns?
Overall, it was disappointing because it doesn't bring in long-term users. They only come momentarily. More generally, crypto remains a niche sector, so even by sponsoring a football team or Formula 1, the impact remains limited.
Today, what is Tezos' target? Are you still targeting companies?
Individuals and companies, but our goal is obviously to build and develop projects with companies on Tezos. The foundation has been very active with companies, with many grants, but here too we have scaled back.
Today, we want results, and we look at the number of accounts and the activation it really creates. We are ready to invest, even aggressively, but the impact must be measurable and obvious. We can spend a lot if it's worth it.
How many people work on Tezos between Nomadic Labs, Trilitech, and the Tezos foundation?
About 150.
What today should drive a company to go to Tezos?
We have a very good reputation, very good security. We are not a hype blockchain. If you're looking for a solid, resilient blockchain, you need to come to Tezos.
