121: Database Innovations Meet Blockchain: The =nil; Foundation Story with founder and builder Misha Komarov

In this episode, I interview Misha Komarov, founder of =nil; Foundation. I speak with Misha about how he entered the crypto space by designing databases and blockchain protocols. He discusses the origins of =nil; Foundation, which sought to merge achievements from traditional database architectures into blockchain to enable highly scalable infrastructure. We explore some of the technologies =nil; has built, like zero-knowledge applications, a circuit compiler, and a proof generation marketplace. Misha explains their proposal for zero-knowledge sharding as a method to scale Ethereum while retaining composability. He shares his contrarian perspective that Layer 2 rollups may fragment, rather than effectively scale, Ethereum's liquidity. Misha argues that for crypto projects to be taken seriously by large non-crypto companies, they first need to grow substantially in usage and size. He sees finding product-market fit and real-world use cases as the core challenge confronting the crypto industry currently. Nothing mentioned in this podcast is investment advice and please do your own research. Finally, I don’t run ads on my podcast. It would mean a lot if you can leave a review of this podcast on ApplePodcasts or share this podcast with a friend. Connect with Misha and =nil; Foundation here:- https://nil.foundation/ https://twitter.com/nemothenoone?lang=en  Connect with me here - https://samkamani.com/#linktree