In this episode of Deeply Intents, I chat with James Prestwich of Signet, the team behind Signet. This episode is a masterclass on rollups. To begin the episode, James breaks down exactly what a rollup is while taking us through their history that includes Bitcoin, roll_ups, Plasmas, minimum viable merged consensus, and sovereign rollups. Thereafter we unpack Signet, including no proving system as a feature, conditional transactions, instant bridging, and application-controlled execution. We continue by discussing Signet's sequencer design featuring decentralized block building. Later we discuss unexplored rollup designs by reviewing init4's article titled  "(Re)Based Rollups" which unpacks possible rollup fork-choice rules. We finish the episode by discussing building products on Ethereum, the philosophy behind building developer tools, and history repeating itself in Bitcoin.

Timestamps

(00:00) - You can build a rollup in a completely different way
(03:14) - What is a rollup?
(06:17) - History of rollups
(09:57) - Plasmas
(14:34) - Minimum viable merged consensus
(18:45) - Signet from first principles
(21:27) - No proofs
(23:01) - Conditional Transactions
(27:42) - Instant bridging
(31:15) - App-specific Conditional Transactions
(31:47) - App Controlled Execution (ACE)
(37:45) - Third party native issuance
(39:44) - A rollup that actually scales Ethereum
(41:16) - Sequencing and block building
(45:33) - More Builders than Ethereum
(48:08) - Finding the right partners
(53:45) - Benefits of an app chain and general purpose chain
(56:03) - (Re)Based Rollups
(1:00:04) - Unexplored design space for rollups
(1:03:41) - Mistakes building products on Ethereum
(1:07:39) - Making developer tools
(1:11:37) - Bitcoin repeating history 

Disclaimer
Nothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice. The host does contract work for Heliax, a public goods laboratory, focusing on Anoma.