Unchained

Latest Episodes:

The Chopping Block: Why Solana’s Frequent Downtime Doesn't Bother Kyle Samani- Ep. 362 Jun 13, 2022

Show notes

Welcome to The Chopping Block – in person at Consensus in Austin! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Robert Leshner, and Tarun Chitra are joined by guest Kyle Samani of Multicoin Capital to chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry. Show topics:

why Kyle believes people are too negative about the macro environment
how the only crypto product with product-market fit is parties
what soulbound NFTs are, and what their pitfalls might be
why Kyle and Robert have a beef between them
why Kyle has a lot of run-ins with other people in crypto
how Kyle thinks about Solana’s 12 instances of downtime over the last six months
how this has caused problems for SOL held in cold storage
how Kyle and Robert think projects need to make tradeoffs between stability and adaptability
why Kyle thinks every layer 1 and 2 will have a major failure over the next several years
how Kyle thinks EVM chains are value-destructive
how Tarun thinks zk L2s might be better aligned with the Ethereum ethos
how Optimism’s market-making partner Wintermute was hacked for $20 million in OP
why the hacker returned most of the money
how programming language centralization makes sense
how the Lummis-Gillibrand bill is a good opening salvo with respect to crypto regulation
why they believe that being paid for staking is not the same as being paid a dividend
how disclosure requirements could be onerous for small new projects
how they think the crypto industry is moving up the learning curve for lobbying
why they believe the Lummis/Gillibrand bill will be changed to target stablecoins and DeFi more

EPISODE LINK

Hosts

Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly Capital
https://twitter.com/hosseeb
Robert Leshner, founder of Compound
https://twitter.com/rleshner
Tarun Chitra, managing partner at Robot Ventures
https://twitter.com/tarunchitra

Guest

Kyle Samani, cofounder and managing partner of Multicoin Capital
https://twitter.com/KyleSamani?s=20&t=DN1G0CNY7JR11OoXOAFD2g

Show Topics

Wintermute Compromise
Optimism Foundation statement:

https://plaid-cement-e44.notion.site/A-Message-to-the-Community-from-the-Optimism-Foundation-f49b913bb0974d8a854a8bdd409a9dd6

Wintermute statement:

https://gov.optimism.io/t/message-to-optimism-community-from-wintermute/2595

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/06/09/15m-of-optimism-tokens-stolen-by-an-attacker-after-wintermute-sent-wrong-wallet-address/#:~:text=Optimism%20is%20a%20permissionless%20network%20and%20behaved%20as%20intended.&text=Wintermute%2C%20for%20its%20part%2C%20says,make%20the%20protocol%20whole%20eventually.%E2%80%9D
Osmosis Hack
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/150752/osmosis-dex-on-cosmos-exploited-for-5-million-as-validators-halt-the-network
https://twitter.com/stake_fire/status/1534598315441913856?s=20&t=VvGyUlOjGSlhXXUwZvKszw
Litecoin Delisting
https://decrypt.co/102350/crypto-exchanges-delist-litecoin-privacy-feature-concerns
Solana outage re: durable transactions (12 serious outages this year, about 2 a month)
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/149698/solana-blockchain-suffers-new-network-outage
https://solana.com/news/06-01-22-solana-mainnet-beta-outage-report-2
Unchained episode with Andre Cronje about Solana’s downtime: https://unchainedpodcast.com/the-chopping-block-did-andre-cronje-pull-an-epic-crypto-rug-pull/
Cynthia Lummis & Kirsten Gillibrand presents landmark crypto bill
Coindesk Coverage:

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/06/07/key-us-senators-introduce-bill-outlining-sweeping-plan-for-future-crypto-rules/

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The Lummis/Gillibrand Crypto Bill: Is the 'Ancillary Token' Approach the Best Way? - Ep. 361 Jun 10, 2022

Show notes

Lewis Cohen, lead attorney at DLx Law LLC, joins to discuss the recently proposed Lummis-Gillibrand bill, the Responsible Financial Innovation Act, which he helped shape. In this episode, we cover:

how Lewis was impressed by Gillibrand’s and Lummis’s offices’ hard work and bipartisanship
how the bill creates a new definition for an “ancillary asset” with split oversight responsibilities between the CFTC and the SEC
how the bill proposes a test of managerial centralization as a determinant of disclosure requirements for digital assets
his response to criticism that the ancillary token approach is more complicated than need be and gives too much power to the SEC
why the bill didn't adopt an approach more similar to something like SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce’s token safe harbor proposal
how Lewis would respond to SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s contention that the vast majority of digital assets are securities
how Cohen is concerned about legislation or regulation impinging on basic freedoms to transact by over-applying securities regulation
what kind of SEC disclosures will be required for “ancillary assets” and the requirements for projects to be able to cease mandatory disclosure
how the bill defines stablecoins
whether the requirement for stablecoins to maintain reserves means the end of algorithmic stablecoins or whether they will just be called something else
how the bill handles DAOs and how legislation in this area must be delicate
why Lewis believes the proposal is a “bright spot” for thoughtful US legislation and bipartisanship
why he doesn’t see the bill being adopted in the current Congress

Thank you to our sponsors!

Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021
Ava Labs: https://avax.network

EPISODE LINKS

Lewis Cohen

DLx Law LLC: https://dlxlaw.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NYcryptolawyer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lewis-cohen-a3211410/

Lummis-Gillibrand Proposal (Responsible Financial Innovation Act)

Legal Memo from DLXLaw : https://dlxlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/DLX_FSV-summary_RFIA_060722.pdf
Lummis-Gillibrand Section by Section Overview (summary by bill authors): https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Lummis-Gillibrand%20Section-by-Section%20%5bFinal%5d.pdf
Responsible Financial Innovation Act (full text): https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Lummis-Gillibrand%20Responsible%20Financial%20Innovation%20Act%20%5bFinal%5d.pdf
Blog post intro (by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand) : https://gillibrandny.medium.com/the-responsible-financial-innovation-act-218a764abd6c

Commentary:

CoinDesk recap: https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/06/07/key-us-senators-introduce-bill-outlining-sweeping-plan-for-future-crypto-rules/
Fortune on what the bill means for algo stablecoins: https://fortune.com/2022/06/08/algorithmic-stablecoins-terra-luna-crypto-regulation-senate-bill-lummis-gillibrand/
JW Verret's critique: https://twitter.com/JWVerret/status/1534165678831325191?s=20&t=nIWYdZKJzXsr-SVK7F_W9w

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How Soulbound Tokens Could Reduce Speculation and Improve DAO Voting - Ep. 360 Jun 07, 2022

Show notes

Glen Weyl, RadicalxChange Foundation founder and political economist & social technologist at Microsoft Special Projects, and Puja Ohlhaver, strategist at Flashbots, discuss “soulbound tokens” and their implications for collaboration and social organization in a variety of spaces. Topics covered include:

how Glen got involved in crypto, wrote a book, and came to co-write a paper with Vitalik Buterin
how Puja studied economics and got in touch with Glen in pursuit of a middle ground between left and right politics
what soulbound NFTs are and how they work
how Vitalik’s paper articulated how the concept of the soulbound token could advance decentralized collaboration in web3
how decentralized reputation can enable larger networks of coordination
how identity can be understood through the lens of community participation
how the name ‘soulbound token’ came about
how these tokens could provide a technology for those who value scarcity but disdain speculation
how identity-dedicated tokens could work on a technical level (including recovery)
what is DeSoc and why is it important?
how non-transferable tokens can improve DAO organization, including resolving issues with quadratic funding
how identity-locked tokens can be protected from bots and AI abuse
how these tokens could support community privacy and responsible information disclosure