This is my conversation with Uma Roy, cofounder and CEO of Succinct. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:00:57) - origin story (00:02:19) - SP1 architecture (00:09:43) - STARKs, FRI, and hash-based cryptography (00:15:09) - recursion (00:21:12) - upgrading the proof system (00:33:11) - sponsor: Splits (00:33:54) - security in ZK systems (00:37:46) -…

This is my conversation with Andrew Huang, the founder and CEO of Conduit. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:00:42) - onchain and cloud compute (00:05:20) - parallel execution (00:09:08) - the application's perspective (00:16:14) - scaling the sequencer (00:26:52) - sponsor: Splits (00:27:36) - interoperability (00:33:11) - rollup economics (00:42…

This is my conversation with Georgios Konstantopoulos, General Partner and CTO at Paradigm. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:00:47) - iterating on rollups (00:07:52) - Reth architecture (00:25:44) - sponsor: Splits (00:26:27) - feedback loops with performance, stability, extensibility (00:36:14) - feedback loops with the team (00:49:17) - writing…

This is my conversation with Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:00:33) - the crypto lens on political philosophy (00:15:12) - the transition from the 20th to the 21st century (00:24:29) - sponsor: Splits (00:25:12) - the dimensions of uncertainty (00:46:14) - the duality between being idealistic and effective (…

This is my conversation with Eric Alston, faculty director at the Leeds School of Business at CU Boulder and research associate with the Comparative Constitutions Project. Timestamps: (00:00) - intro (01:29) - choice in institutions matters (08:53) - secondary rules as rules for making rules (17:41) - constitutional moments (20:41) - how the US con…

This is my conversation with Jesse Pollak (creator of Base), Ben Leventhal (founder/CEO of Blackbird), Julian Holguin (CEO of Doodles), and Yele Bademosi (cofounder/CEO of Onboard). Timestamps: (00:00) - intro (00:50) - Jesse Pollak, Base (09:41) - how the Base team is structured (17:25) - how the mission and strategy came together (27:43) - the fo…

This is my conversation with Colin Armstrong, the founder of Paragraph. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:00:49) - Substack network effects (00:03:53) - new business models (00:15:32) - the content layer and the economic layer (00:21:18) - sponsor: Privy (00:22:34) - mechanisms to think about as a writer (00:29:32) - markets and social networks as…

This is my conversation with Justin Glibert, CEO of Lattice and cofounder of 0xPARC. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:00:44) - digital physics (00:06:27) - changing physics + capitalism = theme parks (00:16:12) - objective functions are political (00:22:53) - sponsor: Optimism (00:23:58) - individual agency (00:27:25) - violence on the internet (…

This is my conversation with Jonny Mack, Cofounder of Fabric and Hypersub. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:01:05) - motivations (00:05:43) - pooled capital for shared ownership and upside (00:09:24) - the computer and the casino, the purist and the tourist (00:13:59) - sponsor: Privy (00:15:15) - $higher, memecoins, cashflow, headless brands (00…

This is my conversation with Stephane Gosselin, cofounder of Flashbots, Frontier Research, and OneBalance. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:01:29) - sponsor: Optimism (00:02:34) - my existential question about crypto (00:07:13) - global consensus is the problem (00:14:27) - architecting a new system (00:21:56) - OneBalance and Credible Accounts (…

This is my conversation with Molly Mackinlay, Head of Engineering, Product, and Research Development at Protocol Labs, and CEO at FilOz. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:01:59) - sponsor: Privy (00:03:15) - motivation (00:09:30) - exabytes of network capacity (00:12:11) - edge computing, bringing compute to data (00:14:26) - the history of IPFS, …

This is my conversation with Rish, cofounder of Neynar, building infrastructure for Farcaster. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:01:51) - sponsor: Optimism (00:03:01) - the idea maze for Neynar (00:12:46) - exit, building blocks, and monetization models (00:17:20) - how Neynar is architected (00:21:52) - handling Frames Friday (00:25:04) - scaling…

This is my conversation with Sreeram Kannan, founder at EigenLayer. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:01:21) - sponsor: Optimism (00:02:42) - the AVS economy (00:05:24) - blockchains separate trust and innovation (00:16:53) - sponsor: Optimism (00:18:02) - specialized services and SaaS on EigenLayer (00:24:50) - rollups are open verifiable web ser…

This is my conversation with Doug Petkanics and Eric Tang, cofounders of Livepeer. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:01:45) - sponsor: Optimism (00:03:55) - Livepeer origin story (00:11:54) - FFmpeg and the video infrastructure stack (00:17:07) - compute capacity and cost in open vs closed systems (00:22:59) - GPUs as the supply side, working at N…

This is my conversation with Martin Köppelmann, cofounder of Gnosis. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:01:47) - sponsor: Privy (00:03:08) - Gnosis Pay as an onchain bank account (00:13:49) - security, passkeys and recovery (00:21:19) - privacy, Tornado Cash (00:28:25) - sponsor: Optimism (00:29:35) - AI agents as a new form of life (00:36:43) - tr…

This is my conversation with Varun Srinivasan - cofounder of Merkle Manufactory, the company building the Farcaster protocol and the Warpcast client. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:01:34) - sponsor: Optimism (00:02:44) - Farcaster origins (00:05:59) - sufficient decentralization, namespaces, hubs and CRDTs (00:16:02) - type 1 vs type 2 decision…

This is my conversation with Rebecca Rettig and Michael Mosier. Rebecca is the Chief Legal and Policy Officer at Polygon Labs. Michael is cofounder of Arktouros and partner at Ex Ante. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:01:38) - sponsor: Privy (00:02:59) - Rebecca's background, the Silk Road case, Aave, Polygon (00:07:22) - Michael's background, De…

This is my conversation with Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:01:07) - sponsor: Optimism (00:02:17) - micro prediction markets, community notes, AIs as participants (00:14:13) - decentralized social networks, zk identity, Dark Forest, and Frogcrypto (00:25:54) - the dense jungle (00:30:08) - sponsor: Privy (0…

This is my conversation with Hart Lambur. We talk about Hart's path in building UMA (an oracle using schelling points to bring data onchain), Across (an intents-based bridge connecting ETH/L2s), and now Oval (MEV capture for oracle price updates). Timestamps: (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:29) - Sponsor: Privy (privy.io) (00:02:50) - The idea maze, Gold…

This is my conversation with Jesse Pollak. He led retail engineering at Coinbase for many years — building Coinbase, Coinbase Pro, and Coinbase Wallet. More recently, he is leading the development of Base, Coinbase's L2 built on the OP Stack. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:01:43) - sponsor: Optimism (optimism.io) (00:03:07) - motivation behind …

This is my conversation with Liam Horne, former CEO and advisor to Optimism Labs. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:00:59) - sponsor: Privy (privy.io) (00:03:35) - early influences, classmates with Vitalik in Waterloo (00:08:31) - Ethereum's potential and why scalability matters (00:10:06) - learning from Jeff Coleman (00:17:23) - defining a commo…

This is my conversation with Aya Miyaguchi, Executive Director at the Ethereum Foundation. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00:01:20) - sponsor: Optimism (optimism.io) (00:02:32) - reflecting on early days of Ethereum (00:08:54) - Ethereum as an Infinite Garden (00:19:08) - books and ideas that influenced Aya (00:24:48) - the insignificance of title…

This is my conversation with Dan Romero about Farcaster - a decentralized social network being developed as an open protocol. We talked about how product decisions in social networks have ripple effects on society, Farcaster’s strategy in the highly competitive world of social products, and Dan's personal philosophies around hiring and team buildin…

This is my conversation with Jango and Nnnnicholas from Juicebox Protocol. Juicebox is a playful but ambitious project: the DAO operates as a full-stack instantiation of the protocol it's building, and fully reconceptualizes the relationship between contributors and shareholders. It has powered projects like SharkDAO, ConstitutionDAO, and AssangeDA…

Nadia Asparouhova is an independent researcher. She previously wrote about her research on open-source communities in "Working in Public", and more recently, has been researching the history of and approaches to philanthropy - which she defines with this phrase “if venture capital is risk capital for private goods, philanthropy is risk capital for …

Julien Niset is the cofounder and Chief Science Officer at Argent, a crypto wallet that's used and loved by many people in the crypto ecosystem. In this conversation, we talk about how Argent has evolved to get to where it is today. How Julien sees user experience evolving broadly in the ecosystem, and what the flow of a new person interacting with…

Pedro Gomes is the cofounder of WalletConnect, a communications protocol that enables wallets and apps to securely connect and interact. In this conversation, We talked about WalletConnect v2 and its architecture, account abstraction, potential downstream effects of a crypto-native chat protocol, and other topics. Timestamps: (00:00:00) - intro (00…

Here is my conversation with Josh Stark. Josh has a long history in the Ethereum ecosystem going back to the early days of the community. He cofounded one of the first L2 scaling protocols with Counterfactual. He also cofounded ETHGlobal which is a much-loved series of hackathons/events that brings the community together and which acts as an entry …

0age is the Head of Protocol Development at OpenSea, and this was a conversation about Seaport, the new marketplace protocol for buying and selling NFTs. 0age takes us through a tour of the Seaport protocol, talking about how it's architected; how conduits and zones work; and we even get into the low level gas optimization work they've done on the …

Charles St.Louis is the COO at Element Finance, a protocol for fixed and variable rate yield markets and previously the governance architect at MakerDAO. In this conversation, we talked about Element’s governance system - with a particular focus on voting vaults, a powerful new primitive that decouple the relationship between capital and voting pow…

Here is my conversation with Henri Stern who is building Privy. Henri was previously a research scientist at Protocol Labs and worked on Filecoin’s consensus protocol. And after many years of thinking through problems related to data privacy and security, he recently co-founded a new company called Privy where they provide a suite of API tools to s…

Matthew Chaim is building a laboratory experimenting at the edges of music and web3. It's called Songcamp, and right now they're running their third immersive experience. They're coming together with a group of musicians, visual designers, developers, and at the end of this process, will be releasing new music under the moniker of a single headless…

Here is my conversation with Simon de la Rouviere. Simon’s exploration of creative mechanism design through the years is documented on his blog. His contributions to the space range from seeding the idea of bonding curves and curation markets, to building one of the first creator platforms with Ujo, to writing a full length novel experimenting with…

Here is my conversation with David Greenstein, Matt Masurka (Gigamesh), & Vignesh Hirudayakanth, the cofounders at Sound.xyz. Sound is a platform that helps musicians host listening parties and engage with their fans. It's a suite of tools that will grow over time to help musicians make a living using NFTs and other web3-native primitives. I was pa…

Mike Sall and Blake West are the founders of Goldfinch, a decentralized protocol facilitating uncollateralized credit. “One of the borrowers is a company based in Uganda. They provide rent-to-own loans for motorcycle taxis to thousands of customers. They've borrowed $5m to expand their operations." Thousands of people in countries like Uganda, Indi…

The conversation on publishing today is the very first one I recorded for the podcast about six months ago. It's a conversation with Justin Glibert about patterns he's uncovered while building Ember (an onchain game) and Lattice (the engine behind the game) — patterns related to inflation and zero sum resources, spacial constraints, and user impers…

This is a conversation with Phillip Wang and Nate Foss two of the co-founders of Gather. Gather is a video chat platform that puts you and the people you're communicating with in a virtual space - and gives you the ability to move around and interact with them based on your locations in that space, just like in real life. It's had a ton of traction…

This is a conversation with Tracheopteryx about the evolution of Yearn, Coordinape, and pseudonymity. Tracheopteryx has been a key leader in the Yearn Finance community since its legendary genesis event. In this conversation, we talk about key moments in Yearn's evolution with an eye towards takeaways that might be useful for other projects. We tal…

This is a conversation with John Palmer and Danny Aranda about PartyDAO and PartyBid - the product that lets people pool their funds and participate in NFT auctions as a team. We dive deep into their experience building this project. We talk about what they see as the role of product vision in the DAO, how they think about hiring, the organizationa…

This is a conversation with Austin Griffith about his continued journey as a builder/educator, and learnings from onboarding thousands of developers onto Ethereum. Austin is a friend and someone I've had the good fortune of working with extensively in our shared time at the Ethereum foundation. In this conversation, we take a tour through the diffe…

This is a conversation with Gubsheep about Dark Forest and building crypto-native games. Dark Forest is a uniquely crypto-native game, and embodies patterns that we can all learn from. It's a game that takes place in a procedurally-generated universe that's shared by all players, where the smart contracts enforce the rules of the game, but where th…

My guests today are Tim Beiko and Danny Ryan - the lead coordinators for the Eth1 and Eth2 development efforts. In this conversation, we go deep on the future of the Ethereum protocol together. We talk about the Merge (the transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake via the Beacon Chain - which is the most substantial Ethereum network upgrade t…

This is a conversation with Vitalik Buterin and Karl Floersch. Vitalik is the creator of Ethereum, and Karl is a long-time Ethereum researcher who is working on Optimism (the Layer 2 optimistic rollup). We begin the conversation with a focus on retroactive public goods funding - a compelling idea that Vitalik and Karl shared earlier this year. We t…