China’s lockdown censorship inspired Ethereum ‘based rollup’ Taiko
Daniel Wang, co-founder of Taiko Labs, was inspired to create a decentralized publishing network during a two-month COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai. Frustrated by censorship and the inability to express dissent against China's zero-COVID policies, he initially sought to develop an ‘unstoppable’ social network. Wang found that existing solutions relied on centralized components, which could be shut down by various governments. This realization led to the formation of Taiko, an Ethereum layer-2 solution that eliminates central sequencers and focuses on true freedom of speech through robust technology. The Taiko framework allows anyone to publish anonymously without government interference. Wang emphasizes that demonstrating the effectiveness of this decentralized approach is more important than Taiko becoming the most popular rollup. His vision includes open-source collaboration, encouraging others to improve upon Taiko's code to collectively enhance Ethereum's scalability, regardless of the success of his own project.
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