Pomp and Sei Founder Discuss the Greatest Risks Facing Blockchain Evolution

Popular crypto commentator Anthony Pompliano had Sei Co-founder Jay Jog on his YouTube channel to discuss the current layer-1 landscape. Pomp highlighted a common sentiment, which is that there won’t be one crypto-ecosystem for all problems. The world is going to be multi-chain and cross-chain.

Sei for example is an open-source, layer-1 with a focus on trading, optimising each layer of its stack to provide infrastructure for a wide range of trading applications. Sei is not limited to DeFi; it also supports the exchange of digital assets across gaming, social media, and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens).

Three Blockchains of Relevance

Jog said that, in his view, there are three blockchains that were revolutionary. Bitcoin, for obvious reasons, as the one that started the whole ecosystem; Ethereum, which brought in smart contracts; and then Solana, which Jog says made blockchain accessible to the masses with its speed and ease of use. He also highlighted the excessive fees on the Ethereum network which tend to exclude those who can’t or don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on gas fees – something Solana fixed.

EVM has Its Strength and Weaknesses

Jog also recognised the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) as a lasting and influential technology in the digital ecosystem. Its significance lies not only in its technical capabilities but also in the ecosystem, he said, adding that the EVM’s deep integration into its ecosystem makes it challenging to replace.

And everyone that builds on top of the EVM, they’re essentially not only getting that technology, but they’re also getting that entire ecosystem of users, existing applications, other developers, liquidity. So, it becomes really difficult to replace that.

Jay Jog

But currently, Ethereum is plagued by scalability issues and transaction speeds, Jog said. Enter Sei, which seeks to solve the EVM limitations.

Mitigating Risk and the Importance of Community

But, Jog mentioned he isn’t too worried about the technological aspects of developing the blockchain, rather more about the ecosystem itself – and especially about community. He emphasised the difficulty in creating a community that genuinely cares about and engages with the infrastructure.

The biggest things are just ecosystem and community. I think communities honestly [are] the thing that’s most difficult to basically acquire, to create because there’s so many different types of infrastructure, having your infrastructure be the one that people actually care about, it’s really tough to set that up.

Jay Jog

He sees the emergence of an organic community as a catalyst for further ecosystem development, attracting more developers. A symbiotic relationship between community growth and ecosystem development is key here. 

Jog finally considered the possibility of failure, suggesting that if the project does not succeed within a three-year timeframe, it would likely be due to insufficient developer involvement and the inability to cultivate a strong community.