You can view the full version of each answer by clicking on the corresponding question.

How did Michael Steuer get involved with Casper?

I’ve been working in tech since the Web 1 era, from launching Europe’s first e-commerce platforms to pioneering mobile games in the early 2000s. I co-founded Casper in 2018 after seeing that no Layer-1 truly served enterprise needs, and returned in 2023 as CTO and President to help deliver on that original vision.

How did your experience in previous tech waves shape Casper’s design?

I’ve participated in multiple waves of technology adoption: Web1, Web2, Web3, and one thing has remained true: real adoption doesn’t follow hype, it follows utility. Enterprises want infrastructure that’s secure, compliant, and fits into their existing workflows, and that’s exactly what we designed Casper to deliver from the start.

What are the core innovations in Casper 2.0?

Casper 2.0 brings in the Zug Consensus protocol with deterministic finality, upgradable smart contracts, built-in access control, and multi-VM support. These upgrades solve real-world problems from legal clarity in asset transfers to fine-grained permissioning, while making blockchain feel more like modern software development.

Is Casper actually accessible to traditional developers?

Absolutely. You can write Casper smart contracts in Rust using WebAssembly, and we offer SDKs in JavaScript, Python, Go, and more.  Casper also provides SDKs in JavaScript, Python, Go, and .NET, so millions of existing developers can build on-chain without learning Solidity.

How is Casper governed, and what role does the Association play?

The Casper Association is a Swiss nonprofit that supports the network’s long-term development, and we’re also stewards of its decentralized governance. What’s unique is that Casper combines on-chain voting with real-world legal enforceability; some of our governance decisions are binding under Swiss law.

Who can propose changes, and who are the validators?

Anyone can submit a proposal, and validators vote; upgrades pass with 67% of the stake. Our validator set is a healthy mix of enterprise-grade operators and grassroots nodes, which gives us resilience, inclusivity, and real decentralization.

What kinds of real-world apps are building on Casper?

We’re seeing strong momentum in real-world assets. Projects like EquityBrix, WiseLending, and Band Royalty) are already launching on Casper because we offer the compliance, security, and upgradeability they need to operate at scale.

Is there a burning mechanism on Casper?

Yes, Casper 2.0 includes native token burn support. The community can activate fee burning or other deflationary mechanics through on-chain votes; the functionality is there, but the decision rests entirely with CSPR holders.

Why is it called “Casper”?

We named it after the original Ethereum Casper protocol, which our research team completed and implemented. Fun fact: we incorporated in Casper, Wyoming, on Halloween 2018, so the name also ties in with the city, the date, and yes, even the ghost.

What does Casper’s security look like?

We completed a full audit with Halborn Security ahead of Casper 2.0, and security is woven into every layer of the protocol. As a Layer-1 serving real businesses, our security bar has to be higher than typical Web3 projects, and it is.

How do upgradeable contracts work on Casper?

Instead of relying on proxy hacks, we built native upgradability into the protocol. Developers can version, activate, or deactivate contracts safely using a built-in package manager, which eliminates common vulnerabilities and gives teams real flexibility.

What does multi-VM architecture unlock for developers?

Casper’s multi-VM architecture lets different execution environments run side by side, meaning gaming, DeFi, and identity apps can each run in optimized environments without compromising on performance or security.

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Thank you so much for having me here. It’s really great to spend some time with the OKX community, a community that’s near and dear to our hearts.

I’m the CTO and President of the Casper Association. I started my tech journey in the mid-90s during the early days of Web1. I was part of Europe’s first e-commerce wave, building some of the first online services in the Netherlands, which is where I’m from.

From there, I transitioned into mobile technology, rolling out SMS-based services and later bringing Japan’s i-mode platform to Europe. I eventually became the CTO for mobile at THQ, one of the leading video game publishers globally at the time. We put the first downloadable mobile games on cell phones back in 2001, which really marked the start of the mobile gaming industry. That era laid the foundation for what would become the mobile app economy we all participate in today.

Later, I moved into social and mobile gaming, riding the wave of Web2. Around 2012, while living in Silicon Beach, Santa Monica, California, I began getting involved in early blockchain and Web3 projects. I worked with the teams behind Tether and WAX, two of the very early innovators in the space. Both were founded in Santa Monica and Silicon Beach — actually, in our office.

After we sold the gaming company I was the CTO of in 2016, I made Web3 my full-time focus. By 2018, several co-founders and I recognized a clear gap: no Layer-1 blockchain truly met enterprise needs. That’s what led us to found Casper at the time.

I was a co-founder of Casper back in 2018. I stepped away from the project for a number of years, but returned last year as the CTO and President of the Association, and that’s where I am now.

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 It’s funny, because today we talk about working in the Web3 industry, but back then, we didn’t say we were working in the Web1 industry, because that wasn’t a thing yet.

I’ve participated in multiple waves of technology adoption: Web1, Web2, Web3. What I’ve learned is that real adoption takes time. You always see a burst of enthusiasm from early adopters. Everyone thinks mass adoption is going to happen immediately, but businesses move much more cautiously.

In Web3, there has been an overemphasis on hype. Most enterprises don’t do hype. They need security, compliance, and the ability to integrate new technology without overhauling their entire operation.

Casper was designed with all that in mind. We deliberately focused on infrastructure that supports existing workflows, offers upgradable smart contracts, strong access controls, and flexibility in programming languages. These are the kinds of features businesses need to feel comfortable exploring blockchain.

You can’t expect them to adopt something just because it’s new. They need to see practical value, security, compatibility, and long-term viability. And I believe we’re now at the precipice of real-world, real-business adoption.

For anyone in the audience who’s new to the Casper ecosystem, it might be useful to give a quick overview of Casper before diving into 2.0.

Casper was founded in 2018, and we launched mainnet in 2021 as a Layer-1 blockchain built on the original proof-of-stake model that was developed in the Ethereum research group and then finalized by our own research team. From day one, the network was designed to support enterprise use cases by focusing on what enterprises actually need to integrate blockchain into their existing stacks.

Enterprises need things like end-to-end testing, support for mainstream programming languages instead of Solidity so they don’t have to retrain or hire entirely new engineering teams, stronger access controls, better workflows around software upgrades, and real modularity. That enterprise foundation is exactly what shaped Casper 2.0 and what positions it so well for enabling the next generation of real-world applications and users.

So let’s dig into what’s new in Casper 2.0. We launched Casper 2.0 on mainnet three weeks ago. One of the most important changes is the introduction of a new consensus protocol called Zug, which brings deterministic finality. This is different from most major blockchains today, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many Layer-2s, which rely on probabilistic finality.

In those networks, a block isn’t immediately final after it’s added to the chain. You usually have to wait for multiple confirmations before you can be sure the transaction won’t be rolled back. That’s why exchanges and other parties make you wait minutes before accessing your funds. While that may be acceptable for crypto-native use cases, it’s not ideal for real-world applications where certainty matters.

Casper focused on that problem. Zug enables the network to reach agreement the moment a block is produced and accepted. There’s zero waiting period. Once a block is finalized, it is final immediately and permanently. That’s essential for things like financial transactions, regulated asset transfers, and legal agreements, where ambiguity creates risk or liability.

For example, if you’re selling a major real estate asset, you don’t want to sit around waiting for 64 confirmations to know if the sale went through. That’s a major differentiator.

Beyond Zug, Casper 2.0 introduces several other upgrades. We now offer built-in access controls, allowing developers to define who can do what in a smart contract without rebuilding permissions every time. That’s critical in real-world environments. In companies, for example, the CFO has different permissions than the marketing manager. Casper lets app developers encode those rules directly into the smart contracts, and those rules are enforced at the protocol level, which makes it not only easier but also much more secure.

Casper also supports upgradeable smart contracts. Developers can change the business logic of a contract without redeploying or migrating user data. That matters because business requirements and regulations evolve constantly, and companies need to respond transparently, quickly, and securely. Casper provides this functionality natively, without the need for workarounds like proxy patterns.

Another big step forward is the multi-VM architecture. Different execution environments can now run side by side on the same network. These aren’t rollups or sidechains, they are actual parallel VMs operating within the same Layer-1. They can still interact with one another and target each other’s contracts, but they run as distinct environments under a unified protocol. That’s valuable because real-world applications have different needs, and now they can all run on the same network without compromise.

The last thing I’ll mention is developer experience. That has always been a major priority for us. We support Rust and use WebAssembly for execution, which means developers can write smart contracts in mainstream programming languages. We also offer SDKs in popular environments to make it easier for traditional developers to build on-chain.

It’s often said that Web3 has maybe 20,000 developers who know obscure blockchain-specific languages like Solidity. The broader software world has tens of millions of engineers who use mainstream languages. Casper is focused on enabling them to participate in blockchain as well.

All of this adds up to a protocol that’s not just designed for crypto, but one that’s built to support long-term, real-world systems that need to be secure, flexible, and adaptable.

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I think we touched on a lot of it already. Casper supports smart contracts written in Rust using WebAssembly (Wasm). WebAssembly can be compiled from many mainstream programming languages, not just Rust, which means developers don’t have to learn a new blockchain-specific language like Solidity to start building on Casper.

Are you familiar with Stack Overflow? It’s probably the most popular developer forum globally. Every year, they conduct a developer survey where they ask their community about the tools and languages they use. In those surveys, Rust consistently ranks as one of the most popular programming languages in the world, while Solidity barely even shows up; it’s somewhere near the bottom of the list. It’s essentially not a factor in global software development.

The key point here is that instead of focusing on the relatively tiny pool of developers who work with Solidity, maybe 20,000 to 25,000 people globally, many of whom aren’t working at real companies but are just dabbling or adjusting existing contracts. We’re building for the tens of millions of engineers who already work in mainstream software environments. If you think about those 20,000 Solidity developers, they’re mostly enthusiasts or solo builders, which is still fine for crypto-native projects, but that space has largely limited itself.

To really find adoption, we need to go broader. And I think that’s being acknowledged now. Even Vitalik recently talked about the need to replace Solidity and completely rethink the EVM architecture. There’s a growing realization that Solidity-led adoption has stalled, and if we want real-world traction, we all need to move beyond it.

That’s something we already acted on over a year ago. On the accessibility front, we have SDKs available in familiar languages like JavaScript, Go, .NET, and Python, so that makes it accessible to almost anyone in the developer world.

Just as important, our developer tooling is built to feel like modern software engineering. We support modular development and automated testing out of the box. Blockchain development on Casper is meant to feel like regular development, that’s key to lowering the entry barrier. Because ultimately, real innovation in blockchain will only happen once it’s accessible to the broader software industry, not just the niche group of Web3 specialists who operate outside of traditional business environments.

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The Casper Association is a Swiss nonprofit organization. We are based in Switzerland, and the Association is responsible for supporting the ongoing development and the long-term health of the Casper Network.

The Association helps guide the technical direction of the network towards real-world utility, enabling systems to be built on chain with auditability, upgradability, and access controls embedded directly into them, all of which we discussed earlier.

We also help ensure that core protocol developers working on the Casper protocol can collaborate effectively across different teams. We make sure that application developers have the documentation and tools they need to build on Casper, and that node operators, including validators and exchange partners like OKX, have everything they need to run their nodes reliably.

Beyond that, the Casper Association has a clear mandate to promote maximum decentralization of both the network and the protocol. We strongly believe that decentralization means giving the community a real voice in governance. In recent months, we have announced and begun implementing on-chain governance mechanisms that allow CSPR token holders to directly influence decisions about projects.

Casper will be governed through a hybrid model that combines on-chain voting with real-world legal accountability. What makes our governance model unique is that some of the decisions made through on-chain voting are legally binding under Swiss law. That is really a first in the blockchain industry.

It means that token holders and validators do not just influence protocol changes; they can directly shape the organization itself. And this model gives us the best of both worlds: decentralized community governance backed by the rule of law. We believe this is a breakthrough for Web3 governance and a blueprint for how blockchain projects can interact with real-world institutions and regulations.

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Yes, proposals can come not just from the Casper Association. Validators can vote on upgrades and protocol-level changes, and anyone in the community can initiate an on-chain vote as well.

For a protocol upgrade to pass, at least 67% of the stake must support it. With this recent upgrade to Casper 2.0, that’s really how it worked: the Casper Association proposed the software upgrade, and then we needed to see whether or not 67% of the network accepted it. If it does, then it activates.

You asked about our validator landscape. Our validator set is pretty diverse. We have major players, but also smaller and community-run nodes.

That balance between professional infrastructure providers and grassroots participants helps maintain network security and reliability, and, importantly, also inclusivity. This diversity strengthens our ecosystem and ensures that decision-making is not concentrated in just a few hands.

So, it’s really another example of decentralized governance in action for us.

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We see really strong momentum in the real-world asset tokenization space. We have a number of projects that are already on Casper and more that are coming.

EquityBrix is a real estate deals platform that runs on-chain with Casper. Then there is WiseLending, which is creating yield-bearing instruments based on physical infrastructure like telecom towers. These instruments allow you to generate significantly high APYs backed by actual real-world revenue from physical infrastructure.

We’re also working with Band Royalty, which is tokenizing music rights on the Casper Network. Most recently, we announced a partnership with Americorp Investments, which is a massive player in the US parking industry. You may not be familiar with the US parking market specifically, but it is expected to generate $144 billion per year by 2030.

Parking involves many stakeholders who need to trust each other, even though they don’t always work directly together. You have parking lot owners, landowners, third-party aggregators who sell available spots based on supply and demand, and tax authorities who need transparency to confirm that revenues are properly distributed and accounted for.

Americorps has fast solutions that will leverage the Casper Network to bring trust to that data, enable faster clearing of payments, easier and real-time auditing, receivable factoring, and eventually tokenized ownership of revenue-generating parking assets.

Just as we mentioned with cell towers and other real-world infrastructure, parking assets are very reliable, revenue-generating instruments that can back RWA-type financial products on-chain. The first implementations of these solutions will roll out in major US markets later this year.

What all these projects have in common is a need for compliance, transparency, and on-chain governance, all things that Casper supports natively. These are not speculative hype experiments, they are real examples of blockchain solving real-world problems at scale with legal and regulatory alignment.

Ultimately, blockchain needs to reach a point where retail users don’t think about it at all. They just expect it to work.

When you go to the supermarket and pay for groceries, you don’t think about whether you’re paying over the SWIFT network, Visa, MasterCard, or something else. You just expect it to function. Blockchain should operate behind the scenes in the same way, powering real-world industries in the background.

Parking is a significant part of daily life, whether you’re commuting to work, traveling, or parking at an airport. Everyone deals with it, but nobody currently thinks about the technology behind it. And yet, there’s a lot of room for disruption, improvement, transparency, and revenue realignment.

That’s what real-world assets on-chain can enable.

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There is actually a new capability introduced in Casper 2.0 that supports native token burning at the protocol level. This means that developers can integrate burn mechanisms directly into applications.

More importantly, the community can vote to activate a deflationary model, such as burning transaction fees. That’s something that’s been done in other ecosystems as well. The functionality is already available in the protocol; it hasn’t been activated yet, because the community hasn’t voted, but it’s ready to go.

If the community decides that this is in the network’s best interest, it can be turned on through a governance vote. That gives CSPR holders a direct say in the token’s long-term economics and supply dynamics.

Economic decisions like this must be made by the community. We’re extremely decentralized, even in terms of token ownership. Unlike other ecosystems where the foundation or core team controls large portions of the supply, the Casper Association holds less than five percent.

That means 95% of all CSPR is in the hands of the community, and ultimately, they need to decide the economics around it. We’re never going to be in a position to force economic changes; any decision around burning or deflation needs to come from community consensus through on-chain governance.

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 It’s fairly straightforward. Casper Network is the first provably live implementation of the Casper protocol, which is a proof-of-stake protocol originally developed by Ethereum researchers back in 2015. They realized that proof of work wouldn’t scale in the long term. Our Casper research team took over that work and completed it, creating the first provably live implementation.

When we founded the project, the intention was to finish that research and launch a layer one after the protocol was complete. Interestingly, we incorporated the project in Wyoming, in a city called Casper, on Halloween in 2018. So, there’s a nice overlap: the protocol, the city, and the date, Halloween, which ties into ghosts, and of course, Casper the Friendly Ghost. So there are a lot of little connections: the name of the protocol, the location of the project’s founding, and the cultural reference.

Yes, of course. That’s a very good question, thank you for bringing it up. With the release of Casper 2.0, we went through a very lengthy and detailed security audit with one of the leading firms in the space, Halborn Security.

And it’s important to highlight that Casper is not a token or a smart contract on top of another chain. We’re a layer 1 protocol, meaning this is the foundational blockchain itself. That makes security even more critical, especially since, as you’ve heard throughout this conversation, we focus on real-world applications with real-world businesses. The security needs in those environments are arguably even more important than in crypto-native projects.

Security is front and center in everything we do. That includes ongoing audits and deeply embedded security considerations in the protocol’s design itself.

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Many blockchains have realized that immutability, while a core blockchain principle, can become a problem for smart contracts. Regulations change, businesses evolve, and applications need to adapt. To work around that, many ecosystems use the proxy pattern.

Here’s how that works: instead of users interacting with the actual contract, they interact with a proxy contract. The proxy then forwards those calls to the real contract. Admins can later change what that proxy points to. It allows for upgrades, but it’s also the root of many exploits. If an attacker redirects the proxy, they can inject malicious functionality. So, it’s highly insecure.

We took a different approach at Casper. From day one, we designed native upgradability into the protocol itself. Casper includes a built-in package manager, much like what developers know from tools like NPM.

With Casper, you can deploy smart contracts as versioned packages, activate and deactivate versions, and upgrade cleanly, without proxies

All of this happens at the protocol level, eliminating the attack surfaces introduced by proxy workarounds. So our approach gives developers flexibility and security, by design.

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That’s a great and very timely question. The multi-virtual machine architecture introduced in Casper 2.0 allows different execution environments to run in parallel on the same layer 1.

Think about it: applications like DeFi platforms and gaming dApps have very different requirements. A gaming app might be focused on in-game asset management and real-time performance. A DeFi app needs precision, security, and auditability for financial operations.

One-size-fits-all execution environments don’t serve everyone well.

Casper’s design allows tailored virtual machines optimized for specific use cases, different programming languages and toolchains running side-by-side without interfering with one another

This architecture eliminates the need for centralized rollups and enables true scalability, privacy, and specialization, opening the door for mass adoption across diverse industries.

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