Unchained

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**Unchained**

Crypto assets and blockchain technology are about to transform every trust-based interaction of our lives, from financial services to identity to the Internet of Things. In this podcast, host Laura Shin, an independent journalist covering all things crypto, talks with industry pioneers about how crypto assets and blockchains will change the way we earn, spend and invest our money. Tune in to find out how Web 3.0, the decentralized web, will revolutionize our world.

Latest Episodes:

Uneasy Money: Who Owns Stolen Crypto? The $71M Fight Testing DeFi Limits May 06, 2026

Show notes

A legal battle over frozen KelpDAO hack funds is forcing DeFi to answer questions it has long avoided.

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When the Arbitrum Security Council froze $71 million in funds tied to the KelpDAO hack, it was hailed as vigilante justice. Now lawyers representing families of North Korea's victims are claiming that same money in a New York federal courtroom, as if theft transfers title.

Meanwhile, an AI agent running on Base got robbed via a prompt injection hidden in Morse code, and Coinbase cited artificial intelligence when announcing 14% layoffs.

Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan, Luca Netz, and Kelsie Nabben, author of Decentralised Digital Security, work through what DeFi's security layer actually is, who gets to decide when to act, and whether any of it survives the arrival of autonomous agents.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠⁠⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kelsie Nabben, Research Fellow at RMIT University — Author of 'Decentralized Digital Security: Code, Community, Crisis' (2025)

Timestamps 🚀 0:00 Introduction ⚖️ 1:55 The $71M legal battle over Arbitrum-frozen KelpDAO hack funds 🔍 7:44 But legally, are those funds DPRK’s? Would that claim hold up in court? 🏛️ 9:16 Why stealing funds doesn’t transfer ownership 🕵️ 14:15 The vigilante security layer in DeFi: who acts and who hides behind 'decentralization' 🧑‍⚖️ 21:13 Questions the judge asked the first day of the Gerstein case 👮 26:24 When Kain was also sued by Gerstein … and Luca was also served 🔵 35:30 Coinbase One ad: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan ⛓️ 37:01 Multichain Advisors ad: Get help navigating TGEs, go to market, BD, partnerships and more 🤖 37:44 BankrBot prompt-injected via Morse code: the LLM-to-LLM attack surface 🛡️ 43:38 Can DeFi survive the agents? AI security risks and what 'blast radius' means 🏢 59:18 Coinbase's 14% layoff and what it really says about AI and org structure

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Ben Fielding: Gensyn, Decentralized AI, and the Prediction Market That Settles Itself: Bits + Bips May 03, 2026

Show notes

A prediction market trades on outcomes. An information market trades on knowledge. Fielding makes the case for the latter.

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If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠ and wherever you get your podcasts.

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What if the biggest constraint on AI is not compute or data, but trust? Ben Fielding, CEO and co-founder of Gensys, spent years as a machine learning researcher before concluding that decentralized hardware was the only path to true scale, and that blockchain was the only technology that could make machines trust each other without human intermediaries. With the launch of Delphi, Gensys's onchain information market built on an OP stack L2, Fielding puts his theory to the test while making the case that prediction markets have been asking the wrong question all along, and that the long tail of markets no one has thought to create yet is where the real opportunity lies.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Steve Ehrlich, Head of Research at SharpLink and Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview - https://x.com/Steven_Ehrlich

Guest:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Fielding, CEO & Co-Founder, Gensys @BenFielding

Timestamps 🔗 07:47 Why AI and blockchain were always meant to solve the same problem ✅ 11:16 The three things AI agents need to transact -- and the one that didn't exist yet 🤔 14:56 How do you build against trillion-dollar data centers? 📊 15:59 Why calling Delphi a prediction market is selling it short 🌾 25:05 The orange farmer who could never hedge drought risk -- until now ⚖️ 37:33 The markets no society should allow, and how Delphi stops them 🪙 41:02 Why every airdrop after the first one was a mistake 🔐 46:56 After KelpDAO: how Gensyn thinks about security differently

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After April's $606 Million in DeFi Hacks, What's the Fair Value Yield Rate? May 03, 2026

Show notes

$606 million in DeFi exploits in one month. Two of the space's sharpest risk thinkers debate whether lenders are being paid anywhere close to enough.

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One month, $606 million in exploits. And yet DeFi lending yields for blue-chip collateral sit close to SOFR, as if nothing happened.

Tom Dunleavy, head of venture at Varys Capital, did the math and concluded that fair risk-adjusted DeFi yields should sit around 12.5%. Adrian Cachinero Vasiljevic, co-founder of Steakhouse Financial, thinks that number paints with too broad a brush, and that for the right primitives, with the right collateral, the market rate might actually be close to correct.

Host Laura Shin queries them on the TradFi equations that underpin the debate, the DeFi-specific risks that those equations miss, and on whether depositors are sleepwalking into tail risk they cannot fully see.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠⁠⁠⁠Tom Dunleavy, Head of Venture, Varys Capital — @dunleavy89
Adrian Cachinero Vasiljevic, Co-Founder, Steakhouse Financial — @adcv_

Timestamps 🔥 01:14 How Tom and Adrian are rethink yield rates after $606M worth of DeFi hacks in one month 📊 08:46 How TradFi prices risk, and why the same framework still applies to DeFi ⚠️ 13:54 The DeFi-specific risks TradFi can't model: hacks, oracles, governance, exotic collateral 🔢 18:20 Adrian on why loss-given-default in DeFi is 'almost total', and what that changes 🤝 23:52 Where Tom and Adrian actually disagree: resolution, not structure 📉 32:34 Luca Prosperi's additions: continuous collateral observation, liquidation timing, legal process 💬 41:49 Dan Robinson's pushback: if risk is mispriced, shouldn't demand fix it? 🏗️ 53:59 RWAs as collateral: why non-crypto-native assets may be the most dangerous mismatch 🔭 57:19 Which protocols actually reduce the risk premium, and how to think about the rest

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Pump.fun’s $370M Burn Was a Mistake, Says Luca Netz: Uneasy Money May 01, 2026

Show notes

Pump.fun set fire to $370 million in tokens. Luca lays out the airdrop math that says they should have done the opposite.

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Pump.fun had a choice with $370 million worth of its own tokens. It burned them.

On this week’s Uneasy Money, Luca Netz argues that was the worst option on the table. He lays out the “people’s champ” math that, in his view, could have turned Pump.fun into a $5 billion-a-year business if Alon Cohen had launched the biggest airdrop crypto has ever seen—and bought the tokens back at the bottom.

Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan also dig into the 137,000 ETH community effort to plug the KelpDAO hole, why Tay thinks Aave—not Layer Zero or KelpDAO—is the key player in DeFi’s latest blowup, and Luca’s blunt new take on whether DeFi yield is even worth the risk right now.

Plus: Meta paying creators in USDC, the ghost of Libra, and OpenAI’s leaked AI-native phone.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins

Timestamps 🩸 01:23 137K ETH drive to cover KelpDAO losses 🪤 07:40 Is DeFi yield actually paying you for tail risk? Tom Dunleavy thinks no 💀 18:08 Luca on whether the DeFi yield game is even worth playing right now ⚖️ 22:13 The ‘Aave users were idiots’ take, and why Tay wants no moral-hazard talk 💸 27:29 Meta is paying creators in USDC. The Instagram stablecoin pipe is on 🪦 33:31 How Facebook’s 2019 Libra blunder helped birth the Gensler era of crypto 🔥 40:55 Pump.fun burned $370M of tokens. Luca says that was the wrong call 📱 58:10 OpenAI’s AI-native phone, and why Kain says the OS is dumber than the apps

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The Chopping Block: Defi United’s “Bailout,” MegaETH’s KPI Vesting, and Prediction Market Chaos Apr 30, 2026

Show notes

Is the era of protocol bailouts upon us? The Chopping Block crew and MegaETH's Shuyao Kong debate Defi United’s community-funded rescue, the KPI vesting experiment shaking up token launches, whether DeFi yields truly underprice risk, and the first major PolyMarket insider trading bust—all delivered with the usual insider banter you won’t hear anywhere else.

Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week, the squad is joined by MegaETH co-founder Shuyao Kong, fresh off their headline-making KPI-gated token launch. First, we dive into the whirlwind that is Defi United: a who’s-who of Ethereum OGs and protocols pledging hundreds of millions to fill bailout holes from the massive KelpDAO hack—voluntarily. Are we witnessing a new age of protocol do-gooder vibes or just kicking the moral hazard can down the road?

Then, we tear into the “are DeFi yields way too low” debate, prodded by Tom Dunleavy’s viral thread—should degens really be earning more for taking protocol risk, or are the markets just as weird as they seem? Shuyao gives us an under-the-hood look at MegaETH’s radical KPI vesting mechanics, why they made the token vesting play risky pre-TGE, and whether dynamic tokenomics could be the industry’s way forward (with plenty of banter about airdrop farming and governance theater along the way).

Finally, we spin through the saga of PolyMarket’s big DOJ insider trading bust: is “insider info” a feature or a bug in prediction markets? All that, history lessons, cynicism, and more—let’s get into it.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights

🔹 Defi United’s “bailout”—how a crowd-sourced effort filled the KelpDAO hack hole and melted crypto Twitter

🔹 Are protocol donations precedent-setting, a warning shot, or just vibes maxing?

🔹 Inside debates about moral hazard, socialized losses, and why kumbaya only works once

🔹 Surprising names (and missing ones!) from the bailout contributor list: Consensys, Mantle, Lido, Arbitrum, Circle, more

🔹 Why airdrop farmers sending dust is the most on-brand thing for crypto

🔹 The “are DeFi yields too low?” debate and why the true risk-free rate may be a myth in DeFi

🔹 MegaETH’s “KPI vesting” tokenomics—how gating TGEs by actual ecosystem milestones might fix launch incentives

🔹 Insight on why pre-TGE KPI mechanics might actually be the future (and why most fail after launch)

🔹 PolyMarket’s first big insider trading bust—when is secret alpha “market info” and when is it treason?

🔹 Vintage history, cyber insurance analogies, and philosophical banter you can only get on TCB

Hosts

⭐️ Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️ Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️ Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

Guest

⭐️ Shuyao Kong, Co-founder at MegaETH

Disclosures

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How Microsoft Won the OpenAI Fight as Markets Rally on Iran Apr 29, 2026

Show notes

One side wins the OpenAI-Microsoft divorce, Ram calls a 19% earnings growth year 'bananas,' and Chris wants the US to hack back against DeFi exploiters. Here is the full rundown.

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Heads up!

If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠ and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Chris Perkins and Ram Ahluwalia cover a lot of ground this week: Iran appears to be seeking a deal to end the Strait of Hormuz blockade as US economic pressure mounts, and the US government just worked with Tether to seize over $300 million in Iranian-linked stablecoins.

Bottoms-up S&P earnings estimates are running at 19% year-over-year growth, tech earnings are about to hit, and both hosts think the setup for markets is unusually constructive.

They also break down the new Microsoft-OpenAI agreement, the arrest of a special operations soldier for betting on the Maduro raid on Polymarket, and what the Kelp DAO hack means for DeFi's path to institutional adoption.

Hosts:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ram Ahluwalia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of Lumida
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Chris Perkins⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of 250 Digital Asset Management

Timestamps 🕊️ 01:41 Iran wants a deal. What the blockade is doing to its oil exports 💰 05:53 How Tether helped the US seize $300M from Iran 📈 06:18 Ram on why 19% earnings growth is 'bananas' and what it means 🤖 09:55 Microsoft and OpenAI rewrite their deal. Why Microsoft won 🔐 22:28 Why Bitcoin-gold is the chart to watch 🏛️ 34:09 Why the Clarity Act may be stalled over Democrats’ concerns over Trump’s crypto conflicts 🎯 36:16 A soldier bet on the Maduro raid and got arrested. Right call? 📊 42:52 How prediction markets are changing investing

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How Microsoft Won in Its Revised Deal With OpenAI Apr 29, 2026

Show notes

Microsoft restructured its agreement with OpenAI, and Ram Ahluwalia has a clear verdict: Microsoft won.

In this segment from Bits + Bips, Ram explains the three things Microsoft secured from the new deal, walks through the contract-breach context that shifted the negotiating leverage, and argues that Microsoft now holds a free call option on all of OpenAI's future model development, at no additional cost.

Chris Perkins (@perkinscr97) — Co-Founder & Managing Partner, 250 Digital Asset Management

Ram Ahluwalia (@ramahluwalia) — CEO, Lumida Wealth

This clip is from a longer conversation on markets, tech earnings, DeFi security, and prediction markets. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/GE_847Xrj9E

We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET — subscribe to catch it live.

If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, X, Unchained and wherever you get your podcasts. 🔥 Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bits-bips/id1827931786 🔥 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuKiSkbYrUOOEEiYQEVPniQ 🔥 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6aSBMrOyi33aVDCULJ9mjN?si=NTLk-jl5QGeytA6-2kxMVQ&nd=1&dlsi=42f0b13dd53c4ba0 🔥X - https://x.com/bitsandbips 🔥 Unchained - https://unchainedcrypto.com/bitsandbips/

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How Morpho Survived a $300M DeFi Hack With Only $1M Exposure Apr 29, 2026

Show notes

People think of Aave and Morpho as competitors. But Morpho only lost $1 million when North Korea drained $300M from a DeFi protocol. The architecture explains why.

========================================================

Thank you to our sponsors!

Coinbase One

20% off first year of annual plan + $50 Bitcoin bonus. Offer valid until May 31.

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Bitcoin changed how money works. Satya changes how Bitcoin scales.

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Ether.fi

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ether.fi/unchained

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After North Korea's Lazarus Group drained nearly $300 million from Kelp DAO's bridge, the contagion spread fast, leaving close to $200 million in bad debt on Aave. Morpho, one of the largest lending protocols in DeFi, ended up with about $1 million in exposure.

Paul Frambot, co-founder and CEO of Morpho, explains why the protocol's modular, isolated architecture produced a different outcome, and what it reveals about how DeFi lending is supposed to work.

He also addresses the ongoing debate over whether DeFi lenders are fairly compensated for risk, the institutional reaction to the hack and what it means for the sector's timeline, the moral complexity of Arbitrum's decision to freeze stolen funds, and why formal verification may be DeFi's last line of defense in an age of increasingly powerful AI.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

⁠Paul Frambot, Co-founder and CEO of Morpho Labs

Timestamps 🦋 02:25 How Morpho ended up with only a $1M shortfall when Lazarus stole $300M from Aave 🔑 05:43 Are DeFi lenders being compensated for the risk they take? 🏛 11:12 What the Kelp-LayerZero blame game reveals about DeFi risk 🔍 14:01 Morpho's 'Etherscan for lending' model, and how to pick a vault 📞 15:53 Paul's calls with institutions after the hack, and what they said 🤔 24:08 Arbitrum froze $71M of stolen funds. Was that the right call? 🚀 29:54 Why Paul thinks DeFi 2.0 is just getting started 🤖 33:31 Why AI makes DeFi an open target, and the one defense that still works

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Bits + Bips: How the Kelp rsETH Hack Left Aave With $193M in Bad Debt Apr 28, 2026

Show notes

Luke Leasure and Shaunda Devens of Blockworks Research explain how three compounding failures, Kelp's one-of-one bridge signer, Layer Zero's permissive default settings, and Aave's failure to flag it as a collateral risk, set up the conditions for the exploit.

Shaunda Devens then breaks down the monolithic pool design that concentrated risk, showing how 98% of rsETH collateral was backing a single leverage looping strategy.

This clip is from a longer conversation on the Kelp rsETH hack and its implications for DeFi. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/hJ9X_btsvD0

We go live every Thursday at 12:00 PM ET — subscribe to catch it live.

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Arbitrum Froze $70M From North Korea? Griff Green on the Decision + Miguel Morel on the Hack Apr 26, 2026

Show notes

KelpDAO’s hackers left telltale signs pointing to one culprit, North Korea. Then, in a surprise move, the Arbitrum Security Council decided to fight back.

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In this episode about the hack on KelpDAO that had a broad impact across all of DeFi, Miguel Morel of Arkham, explains what digital fingerprints made it clear North Korea was the likely hacker, plus how it is that Arkham’s users are using the platform to figure out how to get their bad debt out of Aave and when.

Then Griff Green, a member of the Arbitrum Security Council, explains some of the reasoning that went into the decision to freeze $71 million of the funds stolen by DPRK, how the surprise move worked technically, and why blockchains are immutable only by social consensus — and how even Bitcoin could be changed by social consensus.

Host:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:

Miguel Morel, CEO of Arkham Intelligence
Griff Green, Arbitrum Security Council Member, Leader of the DAO Security Fund, Co-founder of Giveth

Timestamps 🎤 0:00 Introduction: Griff's history with the DAO hack and how he joined the Security Council 🔑 0:53 How North Korea's 48-hour pause made the Arbitrum freeze possible ⚙️ 5:09 Forced inclusion: how an L1 transaction froze funds without touching a single node 🏛️ 8:01 What the Arbitrum Security Council is and who's on it 🤔 14:31 Why Griff initially opposed the freeze and what changed his mind 🗣️ 19:17 Why social consensus, not immutability, is blockchain's real accountability layer ⚖️ 26:23 How the crypto community has responded and what Gabe Shapiro got right 🛡️ 34:31 Why Ethereum is secure but not safe, and the DAO Security Fund's mission

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