The Hidden Bottleneck Slowing Ethereum (and How Optimum Fixed It) | MIT's Muriel Médard

In TradFi, speed is money. Onchain, it's becoming the same — but you can't just co-locate a decentralized network. So how do you make Ethereum faster without centralizing it?

Muriel Médard, CEO and Co-Founder of Optimum and MIT professor, has spent 20 years proving that decentralized networks can be as fast — and actually faster — than centralized ones. Now that research is live on Ethereum through mump2p, used by node operators like Everstake and P2P.org. Camila and Muriel break down the "paperwork" validators do on the consensus layer, how better propagation translates into higher APY, Optimum's free-for-validators model and upcoming trader products (pre-confirmation visibility and faster trade landing), the expansion to other chains, and — yes — the token question.

🔗 Explore the network dashboard and research: https://getoptimum.xyz

[MEDIA PARTNERSHIP]

0:00 — Intro

0:53 — From ETHDenver to Ethereum mainnet

1:28 — What is Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC)?

1:47 — Two fields, one idea: is decentralization a cost?

4:52 — Why the blockchain trilemma doesn’t hold for data propagation

6:58 — The validator “paperwork” problem

8:38 — Mainnet results: ~2x faster, ~8x less jitter

9:53 — Why testnet showed 6x and mainnet 2x

10:30 — Who measures performance? A/B tests with validators

11:24 — A sidecar, not a replacement: no consensus changes

12:15 — 2.4M+ ETH already running Optimum

13:21 — How faster propagation boosts validator APY

14:50 — Biggest users: Everstake, P2P.org…