Will layer 2 for Solana be a thing? with Kevin Lim of Nitro Labs

One day last year I was debating with a dear friend– who’s a bit of an ethereum maxi– about Ethereum vs other L1s. He said, “Once Eth L2 rollups are up and running, cost and speed advantages of other L1s won’t exist anymore.” I said, “I’m bullish on Eth L2s as well. But nothing’s stopping other L1s to also have rollups. You can have layer 2s on, say, Solana!” Honestly though, I didn’t expect L2 for Solana to be happening, at least not soon. But web3 moves at warp speed– Solana L2 is a real thing now. In this episode of Tascha Labs podcast I talk with Kevin Lim, founder of Nitro Labs, who’s building the first Solana virtual machine (SVM) scaling solution in Cosmos. This conversation happened at an interesting time though– right after the FTX collapse which created something of an existential crisis for Solana. So I was keen to get Kevin’s take on the situation, even though I had my prior assumptions (https://taschalabs.com/my-top-3-l1-l2-investment-themes-for-the-beginning-of-next-cycle/). Are we both biased? Yes. Though as always, you should be happy that there are people who bias in a different direction than you. At the end of day, that’s what makes a market possible. Timestamps 0:00 - Intro 1:50 - Kevin's background & what is Nitro 3:24 - What is Solana VM (SVM) 5:54 - How is SVM better than EVM 8:59 - Having better tps with SVM 12:45 - Why choose Cosmos instead of Ethereum 20:57 - The equivalent of javascript in web 3 22:46 - Validating the idea of creating Nitro 24:44 - Who else is on the Nitro team 25:43 - How far along is Nitro in terms of development 27:07 - How does the Nitro launch campaign work 28:20 - Incentives for builders on Nitro 29:43 - Numbers of projects launched at the moment 30:21 - What types of projects are interested in Nitro 32:51 - Using a separate bridging solution to move assets 34:18 - Competitors of Nitro 36:38 - Why is Nitro focusing on building general purpose chain instead of app-specific chain 44:33 - Thoughts on challenges faced by Solana ecosystem 47:44 - Thoughts on funding and investment for the Solana ecosystem 50:47 - Funding for Nitro 52:00 - Kevin's prior entrepreneurship experience 54:01 - Major lessons learned being an entrepreneur