The Defiant

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Cosmos Co-Founder Ethan Buchman on Building an Internet of Sovereign Blockchains Apr 04, 2022

Show notes

Ethan Buchman is the co-founder of Cosmos, an ecosystem of interoperable blockchains which includes Terra, Osmosis and Crypto.org, and has the most value locked after Ethereum. It's a complex network with many moving parts, and in the past year it has exploded with activity. Cosmos was born out of Ethan’s research into a switch from proof of work to proof of stake, and his idea to enable each project and community to be able to build and secure their own blockchain. It was Ethan’s goal to bring about a community computer revolution, stemming from the personal computer revolution.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

Zerionis Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection
Unstoppable Domains is The #1 provider of NFT domains. Get YourName dot crypto, dot x, dot nft or a range of other endings for as low as $5
Nexo: Invest in crypto, earn interest of up to 20%, paid out daily, and use crypto as collateral to receive a credit line at premium rates.
Step Finance's portfolio management dashboard enables Solana users to visualize, analyze, execute and aggregate transactions across all Solana contracts at the click of a button.

🎙 Blockchange Ventures' Ken Seiff: Betting on Crypto's Base Layer and a Multi-Chain Future Mar 28, 2022

Show notes

Ken Seiff is the managing partner of Blockchange Ventures, one of the longest-standing venture funds focusing on early-stage blockchain startups. One of his very first forays into crypto was as one of the investors in Ethereum’s token sale, as I describe in my book, The Infinite Machine. He went on to focus on various other Layer 1s at Blockchange, investing in Polkadot, Solana, Near and Flow, among others. Ken’s investments look to capture not just the potential value of the venture itself, but the overall growth of a space that is still in its infancy, and his bet is that taking exposure at the base protocol layer is the best way to do that.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

Zerionis Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection
Unstoppable Domains is The #1 provider of NFT domains. Get YourName dot crypto, dot x, dot nft or a range of other endings for as low as $5
Nexo: Invest in crypto, earn interest of up to 20%, paid out daily, and use crypto as collateral to receive a credit line at premium rates.
Step Finance's portfolio management dashboard enables Solana users to visualize, analyze, execute and aggregate transactions across all Solana contracts at the click of a button.

Gitcoin's Kevin Owocki on Fueling Public Goods Funding for the Ethereum Nation Mar 21, 2022

Show notes

Kevin Owocki is the founder of Gitcoin, which helps coordinate crowdfunding for projects and software developments on the Ethereum blockchain. With 300,000 builders and over 25,000 funders, Gitcoin has become a key pillar of the Ethereum nation, making sure public goods can thrive. We talk about how Gitcoin was born as a reaction to the ICO era, after Kevin realized many of the business models and funding mechanisms on Ethereum were broken. Open-source software is carrying a huge weight, while its builders are not being properly compensated or incentivized, and Gitcoin wants to change that.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

Zerionis Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection
Unstoppable Domains is The #1 provider of NFT domains. Get YourName dot crypto, dot x, dot nft or a range of other endings for as low as $5
Nexo: Invest in crypto, earn interest of up to 20%, paid out daily, and use crypto as collateral to receive a credit line at premium rates.
Step Finance's portfolio management dashboard enables Solana users to visualize, analyze, execute and aggregate transactions across all Solana contracts at the click of a button.

Fabian Vogelsteller, father of the ERC20 Standard, on the Shift from Blockchain Addresses to Social Profiles with Lukso Mar 14, 2022

Show notes

Fabian Vogelsteller is a Blockchain veteran who was part of the Ethereum community in its very early days. He helped shape the Ethereum space, building an ETH Wallet and a web3 Browser, which were one of the first of their kind. Fabian is the co-founder of the Lukso blockchain and together with Vitalik Buterin, created the ERC-20 standard, a foundational building block for Ethereum. The next standard Fabian is excited about is ERC725, which he says will help introduce blockchain-based profiles as opposed to accounts. Fabian believes this approach would be a seismic shift, improving usability and protecting users’ assets.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

Zerionis Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection
Unstoppable Domains is The #1 provider of NFT domains. Get YourName dot crypto, dot x, dot nft or a range of other endings for as low as $5
Nexo: Invest in crypto, earn interest of up to 20%, paid out daily, and use crypto as collateral to receive a credit line at premium rates.
Step Finance's portfolio management dashboard enables Solana users to visualize, analyze, execute and aggregate transactions across all Solana contracts at the click of a button.

Laura Shin on Solving Ethereum's Greatest Mystery with Her New Book, The Cryptopians Mar 07, 2022

Show notes

In this week’s episode of The Defiant podcast, we speak to Laura Shin, the former senior editor at Forbes and host of the popular podcast Unchained, about her new book ‘The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze.’ In Cryptopians, Laura may have solved Ethereum’s biggest mystery; the identity of the DAO hacker. In this interview, she goes into the backstory of how she came up with the most credible suspect to date.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

Zerionis Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection
Unstoppable Domains is The #1 provider of NFT domains. Get YourName dot crypto, dot x, dot nft or a range of other endings for as low as $5
Nexo: Invest in crypto, earn interest of up to 20%, paid out daily, and use crypto as collateral to receive a credit line at premium rates.
Step Finance's portfolio management dashboard enables Solana users to visualize, analyze, execute and aggregate transactions across all Solana contracts at the click of a button.

Polkadot's Gavin Wood on Building a Layer 0 to Underpin the Entire Blockchain-Based Economy Feb 28, 2022

Show notes

Gavin Wood’s crypto journey started with Ethereum – he was one of the eight original founders and the project’s CTO in the early days. Today though, he’s busy building Polkadot, a chain that is attempting to improve where Ethereum falls short. Gavin wants to turn Polkadot into a multichain powerhouse where financial systems and web apps can run and interact seamlessly. To Gavin, Polkadot can be the base infrastructure for a web3 future, a set of technologies that can guarantee privacy, trustlessness and decentralization, which to him, will be crucial if the free world is going to survive.

ZerionZerion is Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection
Oasis is a leading, scalable, and privacy-enabled, layer-1 blockchain, ideal for DeFi. Learn More
ICHI enables crypto projects to create a sustainable economy that attracts users and keeps value locked in your community
Eden Rocket RPC, providing the fastest private transactions on Ethereum (90%+ hashrate). Trade better anywhere on Ethereum with Eden Rocket RPC.

Sovryn's Edan Yago on Building Bitcoin DeFi; Slower Growth But Strongest Foundation Feb 21, 2022

Show notes

Edan Yago is a co-founder of Sovryn, a Bitcoin-based lending protocol. He’s maybe the first Bitcoin builder we have had on our show and that’s because DeFi on the first blockchain network has been slow to pick up — but Edan says that’s about to change. Ethereum and other smart contracts platforms have evolved over time with use cases like tokens, DAO’s and NFTs flourishing. Meanwhile, Bitcoin has mainly looked from the sidelines. Edan says there has been a gradual mentality shift, as Bitcoiners accept the first cryptocurrency should be able to support a wider array of use cases to become the backbone of a more decentralized financial system.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

ZerionZerion is Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection
Oasis is a leading, scalable, and privacy-enabled, layer-1 blockchain, ideal for DeFi. Learn More
ICHI enables crypto projects to create a sustainable economy that attracts users and keeps value locked in your community
Eden Rocket RPC, providing the fastest private transactions on Ethereum (90%+ hashrate). Trade better anywhere on Ethereum with Eden Rocket RPC.

Vitalik Buterin on Building a Base Layer for the Global Economy Without Compromising on Decentralization Feb 14, 2022

Show notes

Vitalik Buterin wrote the Ethereum white paper when he was just 19. His aim was simple yet comprehensive, to create a ‘world computer’ that was designed to be a flexible base layer for all online applications without the need of any third party. Since its inception in 2015, Ethereum has become the most active and largest smart contracts platform, but has it achieved the ‘world computer’ goal?

Vitalik says yes and no. In the interview, it’s clear that to him, it’s almost a given that Ethereum will achieve this goal. The bigger concern is not whether the network becomes a settlement layer and decentralized engine for smart contracts used globally, but how much value and impact applications running on top of it will bring.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

ZerionZerion is Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection
Oasis is a leading, scalable, and privacy-enabled, layer-1 blockchain, ideal for DeFi. Learn More
ICHI enables crypto projects to create a sustainable economy that attracts users and keeps value locked in your community
Eden Rocket RPC, providing the fastest private transactions on Ethereum (90%+ hashrate). Trade better anywhere on Ethereum with Eden Rocket RPC.

Giveth's Griff Green: Super-Charging Public Goods and Charity With Crypto Feb 07, 2022

Show notes

Griff Green is one of the co-founders of Giveth, which aims to build the future of charity using the Ethereum blockchain. It wants to become the gateway for non-profit organizations into web3, giving them the tools to grow their own communities via DAOs and crypto. The primary source of revenue for any non-profit organization is donations, but relying on individuals giving voluntarily can limit their impact, Griff says. He argues a system that better aligns incentives can allow non-profits to have a much larger role in society, potentially even stepping in where local governments are failing. The big vision is for donors and volunteers to become akin to investors in an organization, and be rewarded for their participation too.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

ZerionZerion is Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection
Oasis is a leading, scalable, and privacy-enabled, layer-1 blockchain, ideal for DeFi. Learn More
ICHI enables crypto projects to create a sustainable economy that attracts users and keeps value locked in your community
Eden Rocket RPC, providing the fastest private transactions on Ethereum (90%+ hashrate). Trade better anywhere on Ethereum with Eden Rocket RPC.

AVAX's Emin Gun Sirer Says Blockchains Should be Scalable at Their Core; Layer 2s Mean Giving Up Feb 03, 2022

Show notes

When Emin Gun Sirer first came on The Defiant in May 2020, Avalanche was not even on mainnet yet. Since then, it has risen to become one of the leading smart contract networks, while the AVAX token has risen over 7x in the last 12 months. We talk about how the project got here and how it wants to create a path for faster and more scalable decentralized network, amid heavy competition from other Layer 1 blockchains.

Emin makes the case for Avalache’s novel consensus mechanism, paired with subnets with their own virtual machines, and he also has scathing criticism for Ethereum and other Layer 2 scaling solutions. To him, once a platform starts building Layer 2s, it means they’ve run out of ideas on how to make a good Layer 1. We also discuss the big picture goal for Avalanche; Bitcoin centers around digital gold, Ethereum strives to create the world computer, and Avalanche wants to digitize all assets. If it's on a balance sheet, Emin says, it can be on a blockchain, and we discuss what it will take for it to get there.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

ZerionZerion is Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection
Matcha: Matcha makes sure you’re getting the best possible price by routing orders across all the various DeFi exchanges, now with an integrated fiat on-ramp. Start trading at matcha.xyz/defiant
Nexo.io: Nexo is a crypto lending and exchange platform where you can buy cryptocurrencies at the touch of a button and start earning double-digit annual interest that is paid out daily.
Unstoppable Domains: Go to unstoppabledomains.com and replace your long, complex wallet address with YourName dot crypto, dot x, dot nft or a range of other endings for as low as $5.

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