319: Parallel Settlement, Unlimited Speed — Inside Pi Squared with Grigore Rosu

In this episode I sit down with Grigore Roșu (Grigore Rosu), former NASA researcher and computer‑science professor, now building the Pi Squared Network. We dive into what Web3 really means (hint: it isn’t just blockchains). Grigore explains why the conventional blockchain model is inefficient, how his team is creating a parallel settlement network that scales, and what this could mean for everything from payments to gaming to AI‑agent economies. Whether you’re a founder, developer, or curious about the next wave of crypto infrastructure—you’ll get fresh insights plus a roadmap of what’s coming next.

Key Learnings

[00:00:00] The common idea that Web3 = blockchain is flawed — blockchains are one implementation, not the only way.

[00:05:00] How good academic ideas at university can migrate into startup innovations (Rosu’s lab → Runtime Verification → Pi Squared).

[00:06:00] The core scalability problem in Web3: transaction throughput and cost. Why traditional chains struggle.

[00:08:00] The paradigm shift: dropping “total order” of transactions across the network and moving to parallel, independent settlement.

[00:09:00] How the original blockchain design (chain + blocks + ordering) addressed double‑spending, but introduces a scalability ceiling.

[00:12:00] The potential: with massive parallelism, transaction cost could fall to “a hundredth of a cent” and throughput could reach millions per second.

[00:15:00] What this means for layers: If the infrastructure supports massive parallelism, the whole stack changes (Layer 1, Layer 2, app chains).

[00:21:00] Why the language ecosystem matters: restrictive smart‑contract languages (e.g., Solidity) limit developer adoption.

[00:30:00] Why it’s taken a decade for this to shift: new scientific results, protocol research, and building the infrastructure take time.

[00:36:00] Pi  Squared’s roadmap: upcoming network launch, opening to validators, then expanding languages, reaching decentralization at scale.

[00:40:00] The “north star” metric: 1 million organic transactions per second. Makes everything else fall into place.

[00:43:00] Real use‑cases unlocked: Web3 gaming, AI agents interacting at speed, truly low‑cost settlement for mass‑market.

Disclaimer

Nothing mentioned in this podcast is investment advice and please do your own research. It would mean a lot if you can leave a review of this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share this podcast with a friend.

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