The Defiant

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Bridging East and West in Crypto | Erica Kang of KryptoSeoul Mar 25, 2024

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Erica Kang is the CEO and founder of KryptoSeoul, a leading community building team in South Korea that focuses on blockchain projects. Erica has been a bridge between the East and the West for a very long time, and today we get to dive deep into her journey. She grew up in Korea, then moved to the United States and did a stint in Vietnam. She has not only reshaped the blockchain landscape, but she's also championed a new era of community driven empowerment. Before we dive into all of that, Erica will share a little bit about how she first got involved in the crypto community.

0:00 Intro

0:48 Community in Crypto

5:16 Erika Kang's Personal Journey

8:03 Differences in Culture

13:12 BUIDL Asia + ETH Seoul

15:47 Crypto Projects in Korea

20:30 Kimchi Premium

22:20 Information Flow

26:55 BTC as SOV

30:09 Terra's Implosion

33:00 KryptoSeoul Community

38:17 Events in Asia

40:50 How are you defiant?

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Funding the Future Onchain: Empowering Open Source & Public Goods with Gitcoin | Kevin Owocki & Meg Lister Mar 18, 2024

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In today's podcast we host two guests: Kevin Owocki, co-founder of Gitcoin, and Meg Lister, GM at Gitcoin Grants Labs. Gitcoin is a platform that connects developers with open-source projects for funding, collaboration, and building digital public goods through various forms of contribution like coding, design, and more. In our conversation we learn about the origin story of Gitcoin and breakdown the main funding mechanisms, such as quadratic funding and retroactive funding, benefits of onchain capital allocation over traditional funding mechanisms, and we delve into Allo Protocol, an open-source protocol that enables groups to efficiently and transparently allocate pooled capital.

0:00 Intro

1:37 Kevin Owocki and Meg Lister

4:12 The Story of Gitcoin

12:39 Quadratic and Retroactive Funding

18:21 Main Usecases

24:35 Grants Programs in the Bull

28:44 Onchain Capital Allocation

33:53 Allo Protocol

37:33 Gitcoin Token

38:17 Revenue

41:01 Ultimate Vision

49:05 Fiat Onramps

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Exploring the Ex-Apple Engineer Led Sui Network Mar 11, 2024

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Evan Cheng is the Co-founder & CEO at Mysten Labs, which is the team behind Sui Network. In their words, Sui is a Layer 1 blockchain and smart contract platform "designed to make digital asset ownership fast, private, secure, and accessible". In our conversation we explore the potential of this up and coming Layer 1 by learning about the underlying motivation of the founder, what makes it different from other blockchains, in particular Aptos, the current main uses cases, and more.

0:00 Intro

1:06 Who is Evan Cheng

8:32 Why Web2 doesn't work

12:05 Lessons from building Libra

15:46 Sui vs Other Layer 1s

27:11 Modular Blockchains

28:50 Sui Use Cases

33:51 Challenges of usng Move

36:43 Future of DeFi

44:00 Bull Market 2024

46:12 Incentive Program on Sui

51:30 Future of Blockchains

53:50 What's Next for Sui?

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How USDe Pays The Highest Stablecoin Yield | Ethena Founder & CEO Guy Young Mar 04, 2024

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Guy Young is the founder and CEO of Ethena Labs, which is the entity behind Ethena, the synthetic dollar protocol built on Ethereum. Ethena also introduces a universally available dollar-linked savings option known as the 'Internet Bond'. Ethena introduces an innovative stablecoin model. Throughout our discussion, we thoroughly explore the mechanics and intricacies of Ethena, gaining a deeper understanding of its operation and the risks involved.

0:00 Intro

1:24 Guy Young's Background and Ethena Origin Story

5:33 How is USDe Different?

11:56 Off Exchange Provider Risks

20:23 ETH Short Positions

31:08 Insurance Fund

38:35 USDe Scalability

42:44 New Collateral

45:35 Staked ETH Depeg

48:48 Stablecoin / USDe Use Cases

57:33 Ethena Airdrop

1:00:00 Biggest Risk

1:02:42 Success for Ethena

1:05:40 Revenue

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The Ultimate Guide to Aptos (APT) in 2024 with Co-Founder Avery Ching Feb 26, 2024

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Avery Ching is the co-founder and CTO of Aptos, which is a Layer 1 blockchain developed by former Facebook employees that launched towards the end of 2022. Aptos uses the Proof of Stake consensus mechanism and aims to achieve high throughput and high security for smart contracts. In our conversation, we cover the fundamentals of Aptos, with Avery highlighting the unique features that set Aptos apart from other Layer 1s, we delve into the technical aspect, focusing on the concept of Dynamic Parallelism, Avery addresses the concerns surrounding the significant venture capital investment in Aptos, we also explore the current and potential future use cases, including the introduction of the Aptos Phone.

Chapters

0:00 Intro

0:45 What makes Aptos different?

10:15 Trilemma

15:07 Aptos fundamentals

17:45 Aptos VS Sui

20:07 Dynamic Parallelism

23:30 VC Chain

25:15 Points and Airdrops

27:05 Aptos Labs + Foundation

28:27 Aptos Use cases

38:17 Verifying Content On Chain

42:30 Aptos Phone

48:33 Future of Blockchain

51:45 Success for Aptos

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Polygon's Plan for a Simplified Blockchain Experience Feb 19, 2024

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Brendan Farmer is the co-founder of Polygon, which is a project that is focused on scaling Ethereum.

Brendan's contributions have been instrumental in the research and development of key scaling technologies within Polygon's framework, including Polygon PoS, Polygon zkEVM, and Polygon Miden. Our conversation begins with an exploration of the foundational elements that constitute the Polygon ecosystem. We then delve into the realm of ZK technology, discussing its advantages as a preferred scaling solution, its comparison with optimistic rollups, and the intricacies of Polygon's Aggregation Layer and CDK. We also discuss how the future of blockchain activity can be made more efficient and optimized with Aggregation Layer.

Chapters

0:00 Intro

1:13 Polygon's Products

7:55 Zero Knowledge Proofs

11:15 ZKP vs Optimistic Rollup

15:42 Aggregation Layer

38:00 Non-EVM Chains x AggLayer

41:40 Monolithic Chain

47:40 Consumer Apps

50:30 Polygon in 2024

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Crypto's Most Dystopian Project? Worldcoin Deep Dive with Alex Blania Feb 12, 2024

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Alex Blania is a cofounder of Worldcoin alongside Sam Altman and Max Novendtsern. Worldcoin is aiming to become the world's largest digital identity and financial network, giving ownership to everyone. Worldcoin could be considered the frontrunner in terms of ambition, leveraging unique methods to accelerate the widespread adoption of cryptocurrency technologies globally, to a point where critics have labelled it as "dystopian". In our conversation we dive into the controversial aspect of Worldcoin, get a better grasp of what the project is about and its founding story, the $WLD token, the (new) Orb, how scanned data is stored, and much more.

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0:00 Intro

1:20 What is Worldcoin?

7:52 $WLD Token

8:35 Who is Alex Blania?

12:04 The Orb

22:28 Dystopian Scenario

27:16 How Scanned Data is Stored

31:08 Bribing with Crypto

33:40 $WLD Utility

34:36 UBI

36:00 Usecases of Worldcoin

48:20 Bigger Issues

50:55 The New Orb

53:30 Decentralizing

54:50 The End State

56:30 Biggest Risk

57:30 Treasury

01:00:50 Doing things differently

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How Terra is Trying to Rise from its Ashes with Terraform Labs' New CEO Chris Amani Feb 08, 2024

Show notes

⚠️IMPORTANT NOTICE ⚠️

Today we're joined by Chris Amani, who's the CEO of Terraform Labs. Our conversation with Chris unfolds in two parts. Initially recorded on January 17th, we begin by catching up on the latest developments and the new strategic direction of the Terra ecosystem following its collapse in May 2022. Intriguingly, just days after our initial dialogue, Terraform Labs announced its filing for bankruptcy. In the latter part of our discussion, we delve into the intricacies of this voluntary decision to explore the potential implications and expected outcomes stemming from the bankruptcy filing.

Chapters

0:00 Important Notice

0:49 Podcast Intro

1:50 Terra Reborn

5:55 The Day of the Crash

18:58 Terra Recap

31:20 The SEC Trial

36:30 Terra Classic vs Terra 2.0

41:04 Terra 2.0 Vision

54:02 TFL Treasury

58:00 Lessons from Building in Crypto

1:13:00 Terra 2.0 Roadmap

1:15:28 EXTENSION: Terraform Labs Files for Bankruptcy

1:22:54 Ideal outcome

1:26:13 Impacts on Roadmap

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Deep Dive into Celestia (TIA) with CEO Mustafa Al-Bassam Jan 22, 2024

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Today we're joined by Mustafa Al-Bassam, CEO and Co-Founder of Celestia Labs. 15 years after Satoshi, we finally have what a blockchain actually is Celestia provides the ability to publish data and make sure that data is available. Celestia had what many are calling one of the best launches of 2023, and they are the first Data Availability Layer live today. In our conversation we get into how Mustafa built Celestia, other Data Availability Layers in the space, how Celestia can be thought of as a bulletin board for computers with some cryptographic and economic assurances - computers posting info so everyone can see it. It's so simple. It's an obvious fundamental building block. Yet they were the first to do it. Prior to Celestia, Mustafa was generally known for his expertise in ethical hacking. He had the US government at the age of 16 and was sentenced for it. We get into this and so much more, but first to ground the conversation, Mustafa shares what he is focused on at Celestia today.

0:00 Intro

1:10 Mustafa Al-Bassam

8:45 Hacking the US Government

10:47 Lazy Ledger

14:13 Colab with Vitalik

16:00 Challenges

18:00 DA and Celestia within Blockchain

19:27 Modular Blockchain

21:54 Monolithic Chains

24:55 Celestia within Cosmos

25:40 Celestia technicals

29:08 Requirements to run a node

35:05 The Graph vs Celestia

36:42 Developer experience

38:23 Starting fresh

40:21 Advice for teams

41:10 Celestia's culture

43:27 Payments

45:10 Decentralized Stablecoins

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The Real Impact of Bitcoin ETFs on Markets: Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan Jan 15, 2024

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Matt Hougan is the CIO of Bitwise, which is a crypto index fund manager and one of the issuers of Bitcoin ETFs. Hougan is a renowned figure in the financial sector, known for his expertise in cryptocurrency and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). In our conversation we get into Matt's initial reaction to the BTC ETF launch, the expected inflows for 2024, and the often underestimated impacts of these developments. We also discuss unique Vanguard's stance, the evolution of Bitcoin ETFs, why Bitwise maintains the lowest fees, Matt Hougan's background, possibility of Ethereum ETFs, and the growing understanding of Ethereum in traditional finance. Finally, we touch upon the centralization risks of Bitcoin, the future of Bitcoin ETFs, and Bitcoin price forecast.

0:00 Intro

0:46 Initial thoughts on BTC ETF launch

2:17 Inflows for 2024

4:37 Underestimated impact

8:11 Vanguard is goofy

9:40 Self sovereignty

12:30 History of Bitcoin ETFs

16:53 Why Bitwise has the lowest fees

20:20 Matt Hougan's background

23:10 ETF hate

26:45 Crypto ETFs

29:08 Ethereum ETF

31:07 TradFi understand Ethereum better than Bitcoin

36:30 Normalizing Bitcoin

42:00 Centralization risk of Bitcoin

45:47 What's next for Bitcoin ETFs

47:20 We're in a bull market

48:40 Bitcoin price forecast

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