Women Scaling Blockchains: The Vision Behind Ethereum Layer 2 Solution Metis

In this week’s episode, CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Consensys’ Ben Edgington interview Elena Sinelnikova, the co-founder and CEO of Metis and CryptoChicks, about her layer 2 scaling project and her role in bringing women into crypto.

This episode is sponsored by Unique One Network and Mimo.

Metis, named after the Greek goddess of prudence and wisdom, is a layer 2 solution to help boost the speed and lower the cost of transactions on Ethereum.

Sinelnikova called the Greek goddess the icon of her project and explained her goals to “move forward with the same spirit as Metis as well as hiring more women,” who make up half of the project’s team.

Sinelnikova also heads up CryptoChicks, co-founded with the mother of Vitalik Buterin, Natalia Ameline. CryptoChicks is a non-profit organization with the goal of educating women of all ages about blockchain and cryptocurrency. Without outside funding, the team is made up of predominantly volunteers but has secured sponsorships from the likes of Microsoft, IBM and the Royal Bank of Canada.

Blockchain engineering jobs have typically been dominated by men, and Kim noted there are “implicit biases that females are less technically minded,” which makes foundations like CryptoChicks even more important. In Sinelnikova’s hiring experience, all of her female employees have been over-qualified for their jobs.

“We noticed that when the guys apply, they apply without experience and knowledge. When women apply, they’re 200% ready for that job,” said Sinelnikova.

The female-led Metis team is gearing up for a main network release of their product later this month. While boasting a higher transaction throughput than Ethereum, the Metis network will not sacrifice decentralization or security for its speed, according to Sinelnikova.

Among the many technical solutions for blockchain scalability being developed on Ethereum’s layer 2 such as state channels, side chains, zk-rollups, plasma and others, Metis uses a technology known as optimistic roll-ups to process and validate transactions in batches.

To learn more about optimistic rollups, female empowerment in crypto and Circle’s recent $4.5 billion dollar SPAC deal, listen in to this week’s episode of "Mapping Out Ethereum 2.0" with Christine Kim and Ben Edgington.

Links:

Crypto Chicks (https://cryptochicks.ca/)

Dai Collateralization Data (https://daistats.com/)

Metis (https://metisdao.medium.com/)