From Princeton to Protocols: How Offchain Labs CEO Steven Goldfeder Invented Arbitrum

Offchain Labs CEO Steven Goldfeder’s crypto origin story is classic geek gold. As a student at Princeton, he first heard about Bitcoin in 2013 during a visit

In the heart of Princeton, as students gathered for a visit day in 2013, a tale unfolded that would later become classic crypto geek folklore. Professor Ed Felten—the future inventor of rollups on Ethereum, co-founder of Arbitrum and a White House science advisor—gave a five-minute lightning talk on the cost of a government destroying Bitcoin.

Among the audience was Steven Goldfeder, Offchain Labs CEO, whose curiosity was piqued. That night, other students hosted a poker game with a 0.5 BTC buy-in.

“That was back in the days when that was just ten bucks. If only I’d held onto it…,” muses Goldfeder.

Now, as Arbitrum faces competition from faster rollups like MegaETH, which already boast 20,000 TPS on testnet, and Coinbase's Base, which is rapidly gaining attention, it seems that some of the technology underpinning Arbitrum might not be necessary after all.

As explained in January during a lively session on the ‘sequencing call’—a monthly meeting of major optimistic rollup teams—Arbitrum could be integrating the core technology for "based" optimistic rollups, a concept proposed by Ethereum Foundation researchers to introduce interoperability and composability among L2s.

However, in a recent interview with Magazine, Goldfeder expressed skepticism about Arbitrum adopting the tech.

“Just to clarify the terms, you know, a based rollup is basically a rollup without a sequencer that uses Ethereum for sequencing. Actually, if you look at that initial Arbitrum paper that we wrote in 2018, you might call it a based rollup. It doesn't have a sequencer; that only came later,” said Goldfeder.

“And one thing we experiment in is different execution models. So, Arbitrum is fully EVM but also has something called Stylus, which gives you the ability to write smart contracts in other languages such as Rust, C and C++.

“But I think having put this system in production for four years, in different testnet phases, I think the design that we’ve come on is actually the correct one.

“So, I don’t think Arbitrum will become a based rollup anytime soon, and I don’t think that it should when it comes to native execution.”

After the interview was conducted, Magazine decided to seek further clarification and context from Arbitrum on its position.

Regarding the chances of his L2 becoming a based rollup, Goldfeder confirmed in a statement that he believes Arbitrum’s current design is “more efficient, practical, and cost-effective” than based rollup designs.

“I support Vitalik’s view of native rollopu, which envisions a common core that we factor out that will be useful by many rollups, but also provides for rollups to extend that with additional features. Some rollups may choose to stop at the common core, but it’s crucial that we also support continued innovation and experimentation at the execution layer,” he said.

The interview continues below:

At the heart of Princeton University, a tale unfolded that would later become classic crypto geek folklore. As students gathered for visit day in 2013, Professor Ed Felten—the future inventor of rollups on Ethereum, co-founder of Arbitrum and a White House science advisor—gave a five-minute lightning talk on the cost of a government destroying Bitcoin.

Among the audience was Steven Goldfeder, now CEO of Offchain Labs, whose curiosity was piqued. That night, other students hosted a poker game with a 0.5 BTC buy-in.

“That was back in the days when that was just ten bucks. If only I’d held onto it…,” muses Goldfeder.

Now, as Arbitrum faces competition from faster rollups like MegaETH, which already boasts 20,000 TPS on testnet, and Coinbase's L2, Base, is quickly heating up, it seems that some of the technology underpinning Arbitrum might not be necessary after all.

As explained in January during a lively session on the ‘sequencing call’—a monthly meeting of major optimistic rollup teams—Arbitrum would be integrating the core technology for "based" optimistic rollups, a concept proposed by Ethereum Foundation researchers to introduce interoperability and composability among L2s.

However, in a recent interview with Magazine, Goldfeder expressed skepticism about Arbitrum adopting the tech.

“Just to clarify the terms, you know, a based rollup is basically a rollup without a sequencer that uses Ethereum for sequencing. Actually, if you look at that initial Arbitrum paper that we wrote in 2018, you might call it a based rollup. It doesn't have a sequencer; that only came later,” said Goldfeder.

“And one thing we experiment in