Host John Gillen speaks with OP Labs co-founder and CTO Carl Flourish about Optimism’s thesis that companies and financial institutions will increasingly launch their own layer 2 networks. Flourish explains why organizations may favor the OP Stack’s customizable, production-tested infrastructure over building a new layer 1 or relying entirely on another network.
They examine how institution-specific chains could balance compliance, privacy and control while remaining connected to Ethereum. The discussion also covers Korean adoption, the evolving relationship between Ethereum and its layer 2 ecosystem, the role of the OP token, and Optimism’s shift toward more predictable fixed-cost pricing for institutional clients.
Flourish argues that crypto remains in the use-case validation stage, with less than 1% of global finance currently onchain. His core takeaway is that differentiated chains can create a positive-sum ecosystem—provided they offer interoperability, jurisdiction-specific controls and clear value to the organizations deploying them.
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