Alexei Zamyatin, Co-founder of BOB, on the Bitcoin Ecosystem, Hybrid Layer 2s, and Bitcoin’s Brand and Recognizability | Ep. 344
Cryptonews Podcast’s Matt Zahab sat down for a wide-ranging, exclusive interview with Alexei Zamyatin, a co-founder of BOB, a hybrid Layer-2 powered by Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Zamyatin talked about enabling people to use Bitcoin on the chain itself and what BOB is doing to enable this as the app store of finance.
He discussed the possibility of Bitcoin becoming irrelevant if it fails to evolve, but also its key advantage over all other chains in the space.
Zamyatin is the co-founder of BOB, also known as ‘Build Everything on Bitcoin’. It is described as a first-of-its-kind hybrid chain powered by both Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Therefore, it merges the best parts of both chains and turns them into a Layer 2.
Zamyatin has worked on Bitcoin for nearly a decade. But soon after getting into it, he started thinking of ways in which this chain could be more useful.
Also, a major issue he quickly noticed is that users have to go to centralized exchanges to utilize BTC, borrow against it, and generally use it for “more interesting financial primitives.”
“That never made sense to me,” Zamyatin said. “Why don’t we have this on Bitcoin, on the chain itself?”
Almost all Bitcoin yield is currently offered by centralized exchanges.
This is fine in the short-term, but we must learn our lessons from "CeDeFi" and be careful.
DeFi on Bitcoin L2s will gradually accumulate enough liquidity to enable truly decentralized $BTC yield.
— Alexei Zamyatin | Hiring (@alexeiZamyatin) June 18, 2024
He found that many of the answers to his questions lie in “the intersection of Bitcoin and other things.”
And this is where Ethereum and its innovative ecosystem come into play.
Bitcoin is often observed exclusively as a store of value. And in its current form, it does work,
