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#478: Alex Shevchenko, Co-Founder of Aurora & Defuse, on NEAR Intents, User-owned AI, and How AI Agents Will Power the Crypto Economy Sep 29, 2025

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Alex Shevchenko is the Co-Founder of Aurora & Defuse, pioneering next-gen UX with Intents and Chain Signatures for an agentic, user-first future. Defuse Labs develops NEAR Intents to enable seamless cross-chain interactions in an automated world, connecting AI, services, and financial applications. Alex is on a mission to make blockchain invisible, creating seamless, secure, and intuitive crypto experiences for everyday users.

In this conversation, we discuss:
- In crypto, we have investors, not users
- AI & Intents
- User-owned AI
- Building Rainbow Bridge and Aurora
- Decentralized Confidential Machine Learning (DCML)
- The AI LLM lifecycle
- How AI agents will power the crypto economy
- The importance of chain abstraction
- NEAR intents are unlocking autonomous finance
- Creating intuitive automated agent workflows
- AI agents that can transact, adapt, and execute cross-chain

Aurora Labs
Website: auroralabs.dev
X: @auroraisnear
Discord: discord.gg/auroralabs

Alex Shevchenko
X: @AlexAuroraDev
LinkedIn: Alex Shevchenko

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#477: Macbrennan Peet, Founder of Project 0, on Borrowing Against Your Entire DeFi Portfolio, Onchain Credit Markets, and Entertainment Finance Sep 25, 2025

Show notes

MacBrennan Peet is the Founder of Project 0, the first multi-venue, DeFi-native prime broker on Solana. Mac has built and scaled companies across finance, trading, and healthtech, with multiple successful exits and acquisitions, previously founding and exiting Temporal, selling Cabana Health, and being acqui-hired from his hedge fund, KCM. He also co-founded marginfi, a leading decentralized margin protocol, and MRGN Research. Earlier in his career, he worked on mid-market deals at MedEquity Capital and in institutional consulting at Morgan Stanley. He has also advised organizations like Late Checkout and founded two cancer-focused nonprofits. Today, Mac focuses on building systems that manage billions in value and enable more efficient capital access for decentralized finance.

In this conversation, we discuss:
- Creating the first DeFi-native prime broker on Solana
- Borrowing against your entire DeFi portfolio
- Building a credit and risk engine
- Liquidity fragmentation
- Simplified multi-venue portfolio management
- Entertainment finance
- Onchain prices are becoming better than offchain prices
- Onchain vs offchain credit markets

Project 0
Website: 0.xyz
X: @0dotxyz
Telegram: t.me/p0dotxyz

MacBrennan Peet
X: @macbrennan_cc
Website: macbrennan.cc

#476: Czhang Lin, Head of LBank Labs, on Stablecoins, PayFi, LBank’s Growth, and Current Crypto Outlook Sep 22, 2025

Show notes

Czhang Lin, a seasoned crypto investor with traditional finance expertise, serves as Head of LBank Labs and Partner at LBank Exchange. Transitioning to crypto in 2017 after honing macro strategies, he led investments as Director at PreAngel and Partner at JRR Crypto, driving over 100 successful projects.

As Head of LBank Labs, Czhang leads a global Web3 venture capital platform with over $100 million AUM, dedicated to early-stage investments in compliant blockchain infrastructure, regulated DeFi applications, AI integration, and scalable decentralized solutions—supporting founders and scaling innovation into real-world impact.

In this conversation, we discuss:
- Living in China
- Chinese super apps
- LBank
- Crypto exchange founders are working 24/7
- LBank’s Global Blockchain Forum at Korea National Assembly
- Crypto market outlook
- The ongoing competition among stablecoins
- CEXs launching their own Layer 2 solutions
- PayFi (payment solutions)

LBank Labs
Website: lbanklabs.com
X: @LBankLabs
LinkedIn: LBank Labs

Czhang Lin
X: @Czhang_LBank
LinkedIn: Czhang Lin

#475: Joseph Chalom, Co-CEO of SharpLink, on DAT Financing Structures, Ethereum DATs, and The Ethereum Long-Term Investment Thesis Sep 18, 2025

Show notes

Joseph Chalom joined SharpLink as Co-Chief Executive Officer, bringing with him over 20 years of institutional leadership at the intersection of traditional finance and digital assets. As former Managing Director and Head of Strategic Ecosystem Partnerships at BlackRock, Joseph was instrumental in driving the firm’s global strategy across digital assets, fintech innovation, and blockchain infrastructure.

In this conversation, we discuss:
- The Ethereum long-term investment thesis
- Ethereum DATs
- SBET is not just an investment
- Explaining Ethereum to TradFi
- The history of ETH in public markets
- Staking ETH
- Co-competition it great for Ethereum DATs
- Generating revenue in ETH
- DAT financing structures
- The importance of mNAV in DATs
- Institutions care about 2 things = security & liquidity

SharpLink
Website: sharplink.com
X: @SharpLinkGaming
LinkedIn: SharpLink (SBET)

Joseph Chalom
X: @joechalom
LinkedIn: Joseph Chalom

#474: Alexander Cutler, Core Contributor at Aerodrome, on Becoming The Largest DEX on Base and The Future of DeFi Sep 15, 2025

Show notes

Alexander Cutler is a Core Contributor at Aerodrome Finance, the largest decentralised exchange on Base with over $600m TVL. He also serves on the core team at Velodrome Finance, a leading decentralised exchange on the Optimism network. Before entering decentralised finance, Alex built experience across politics, technology, and consulting. His work is driven by a belief in democratising access to liquidity, governance, and ownership opportunities.

In this conversation, we discuss:
- How Aerodrome started
- Bootstrapping growth to become the largest DEX on Base without VC funding
- Community ownership and governance through veAERO
- What does the Syndicate community-first launch on Aerodrome signal for the future of token launches
- DEXs vs CEXs
- The distribution rails of the onchain economy
- The future of DeFi
- Liquidity fragmentation is one of the biggest challenges in DeFi
- Long-term ambition for Aerodrome
- The case for DeFi on Base and why it’s a unique ecosystem
- DeFi maturing beyond speculation toward sustainable financial infrastructure

Aerodrome
Website: aerodrome.finance
X: @AerodromeFi
Discord: discord.gg/aerodrome

Alexander Cutler
X: @wagmiAlexander

#473: Ian Rogers, CXO at Ledger, on Hardware Wallet Evolution, Onchain Identity, Stablecoins, and The Merger of Crypto & TradFi Sep 11, 2025

Show notes

Ian Rogers is the Chief Experience Officer at Ledger, leading the consumer-facing arm of the business. Ian was previously the Chief Digital Officer at LVMH, working with a portfolio of nearly one hundred brands across luxury, including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Sephora, and Hennessy. He also sits on the boards of Dr Martens and Lyst. Ian has a background in music and culture, having spent twenty years bringing digital music to the mainstream, first with Winamp then Yahoo!, Beats, and Apple. He contributed to the 2015 launch of Apple Music, including Beats 1, their digital streaming channel. Ian built some of the earliest music-related websites in the early 90s and has been working with the Beastie Boys since 1993.

Ian collaborated closely with Tony Fadell (Godfather of the iPod) to launch Ledger’s latest hardware, Ledger Stax and Ledger Flex. These devices represent the fusion of cutting-edge security technology with an intuitive design that bridges cultural adoption.

In this conversation, we discuss:
- Crypto is legal now and we have clear rules
- Present day crypto market
- Permissionless payment rails have proven to be useful
- Luxury brands buy solutions to make the consumer exp more seamless
- Corporate-issued stablecoins
- Ledger Recovery Key
- Hardware wallet evolution
- The growing importance of user-friendly security infrastructure
- The merger of crypto & tradfi
- Living in the future is the best form of cheating
- Value, Identity and AI = the future

Ledger
Website: ledger.com
X: @Ledger
LinkedIn: Ledger

Ian Rogers
X: @iancr
LinkedIn: ian rogers

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#472: Robinson Burkey, Co-Founder of Wormhole Foundation, on Interoperability, Routing Liquidity, and The Current Crypto Landscape Sep 08, 2025

Show notes

Robinson Burkey is the Co-Founder of the Wormhole Foundation. With an impressive track record spanning nearly a decade, Robinson has consistently excelled in leading growth and go-to-market strategies for startups, making a significant impact in the crypto industry since 2021. Prior to joining the Wormhole Foundation, Robinson held a key position at Acala, where he spearheaded Business Development and Ecosystem efforts within the Polkadot ecosystem. As a co-founder, Robinson is dedicated to accelerating the foundation's growth trajectory and fostering the widespread adoption of Wormhole as the leading interoperability platform powering multichain applications and bridges at scale. Wormhole provides developers, institutions, and users seamless connectivity between over 40 leading blockchain networks. The wider Wormhole network is trusted and used by teams like BlackRock, Apollo Global, VanEck, Google Cloud, Circle, and Uniswap. To date, the platform has enabled over $60 billion in all-time multichain volume, the most of any protocol in the world.

In this conversation, we discuss:
- NYC is the Silicon Valley of crypto
- Interoperability
- Wormhole connecting 30+ blockchains with 1B+ messages processed
- Fixing the liquidity fragmentation issue
- Cross-chain communication
- Wormhole’s Native Token Transfer (NTT)
- Routing liquidity
- Current ecosystem around DATs
- Securing the most value between all blockchains
- Stablecoins are still crypto’s killer use case

Wormhole
Website: wormhole.com
X: @wormhole
Telegram: t.me/wormholecrypto

Robinson Burkey
X: @robinson
LinkedIn: Robinson Burkey

#471: Dan Rysk, Co-founder of Rysk, on DeFi Options Vaults (DOVs), Trading Options on Hyperliquid, and Why Volatility Yield is the Missing Layer in DeFi Sep 04, 2025

Show notes

Dan Rysk is the co-founder of Rysk, a DeFi protocol building options strategies as a new financial primitive. He has been focused on options and structured products in DeFi since 2020, beginning with Opyn, one of the first options protocols. Before that, he worked in investment banking at BofAML and founded and exited a web2 startup in online education.

In this conversation, we discuss:
- The inception story of Rysk
- Trading Options on Hyperliquid
- What is ‘options trading’ in tradfi?
- Options provide volatility exposure, whereas perps do not
- DeFi Options Vaults (DOVs)
- Volatility yield = the missing yield layer in DeFi
- Why Hyperliquid is the right place for Rysk and options to work at scale
- What’s next: roadmap, integrations, and how Rysk expands from here

Rysk
Website: app.rysk.finance
X: @ryskfinance
Discord: discord.gg/ZH34Fc3D5S

Dan Rysk
X: @DanDeFiEd
Telegram: @DanDeFiEd

#470: Lorenzo R, Co-founder of USDT0, on Stablecoins, Hyperliquid, Plasma, and Omnichain Fungible Tokens Sep 01, 2025

Show notes

Lorenzo R. is an active leader in the Tether ecosystem with five years of experience in cross-chain liquidity and stablecoin infrastructure. He is currently the co-founder & USDT0, a unified liquidity framework for USDT, allowing for connectivity across blockchain ecosystems without friction. He is also the Co-Founder of Everdawn Labs and a contributor to multiple DeFi DAOs.

Previously, Lorenzo spearheaded Alloy by Tether, a groundbreaking Tethered Asset designed to track reference asset prices using Tether Gold (XAU₮) as collateral. This innovation introduces a new level of stability and value to digital assets, with its first token, aUSD₮, serving as a USD-denominated Tethered Asset backed by gold. His passion fuels his commitment to shaping the future of financial interoperability across Web3 ecosystems.

In this conversation, we discuss:
- USDt0 Stats and Growth
- Top 3 on DeFiLlama bridges, $6B+ in volume in 6–8 months
- Challenges USDt0 Solves
- Lorenzo’s Journey to USDT0
- Do we need more stablecoins?
- $1B in Plasma deposits to USDT0
- USDT0’s growth on Hyperliquid
- Eliminating third-party bridges
- USDT0’s XAUt0, the omnichain evolution of Tether Gold (XAUt)
- Omnichain Fungible Tokens

USDT0
Website: usdt0.to
X: @USDT0_to
LinkedIn: USDT0

Lorenzo R.
X: @zerolore
LinkedIn: Lorenzo R

#469: Rekt, Founder of HyperStrategy, on Acquiring and Looping $HYPE, Onchain Convertible Bonds, and Why Hyperliquid is The Best Ecosystem in Crypto Aug 28, 2025

Show notes

Rekt is the Founder of HyperStrategy. He is a builder and yield farmer with 11 years of experience in crypto. Previously, Rekt was in trad-fi.

In this conversation, we discuss:
- Why Hyperliquid is the best ecosystem in crypto
- HIP-3
- Capturing part of the perp-flow
- Hyperliquid’s ecosystem flywheel
- What is HyperStrategy?
- Onchain treasury protocol on HyperEVM
- Acquiring and looping as much HYPE as possible
- How do Onchain Convertible Bonds work
- HyperStrategy vault
- The Hyperliquid looping effect

HyperStrategy
Website: Hyperstrategy.com
X: @Hyper_Strategy
Telegram: t.me/Hyper_Strategy
Rekt
X: @Iam_rekt_
Telegram: @iam_rekt

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This episode is brought to you by EMCD.
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