🎙️ METACAST: Top Crypto Podcasts of February 2022
Here is a quick overview of what we’ve been listening to last month!
- The Defiant podcast hosts Vitalik Buterin. Vitalik explains the significance of the upcoming merge between Ethereum’s proof of stake chain an application layer, walks us through the different stages of the process, and provides guidance as to when it will happen.
- Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum and a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, explores quadratic funding, pluralism, and Sybil resistance, as well as dives into why he cares about public goods and how we can utilize novel mechanisms to fund them elegantly.
- Karl Floersch, the co-founder of Optimism, the Ethereum rollup scaling solution, as well as one of the primary advocates in the space for public goods funding, explores the concept of ‘Ether’s Phoenix,’ a hypothetical being that rewards you for manifesting it — directly contrasting the concept of Roko’s Basilisk.
- ETHDenver 2022: Kevin Owocki and Erik Voorhees join the show to synthesize the respective merits of individualism and collectivism, and Andrew Yang stepped up to give an impromptu call to action for the community to rally around productive goals.
- The Defiant Podcast’s Camila Russo speaks to Griff Green, one of the co-founders of giveth, a community focused on building the future of charity, using the Ethereum blockchain as its base infrastructure.
- Anna of Zero Knowledge chats with Mihailo Bjelic one of the co-founders of Polygon. Mihailo takes us through the evolution of Polygon and how the promise of web3 has led them to bet big on ZK-focused technologies.
- Ryan Wyatt, the CEO of Polygon Studios and former Head of Gaming at Youtube, presents a number of fascinating takes, including his feelings on Anti-NFT sentiment, the future of games, and the growing influence of gaming content.
- Two crypto tax experts, Shehan Chandrasekera, certified public accountant and head of strategy, Tax, at Cointracker, and John Cardone, senior director of Washington National Tax at RSM US LLP, explain everything crypto traders need to understand when filing taxes for 2021.
- Shrina Kurani, a Democrat running for a House seat in California, and Morgan Harper, a Democratic candidate running to represent Ohio in the US Senate, explain why they are running pro-crypto campaigns.
- Congressman Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, discusses crypto and decentralization, his new book, and how to regulate the crypto industry.
- The Defiant podcast host speaks to the founder and CEO of Ava Labs Emin Gün Sirer.
- Anna of Zero Knowledge chats with Dean Tribble, co-founder and CEO of Agoric. Dean walks us through the landscape of programming languages and Agoric’s philosophy behind building a blockchain that has Hardened JS as its smart contract language.
- Illia and Alex, co-founders of NEAR, joined the Epicenter hosts to chat about NEAR’s protocol design and recent advances, such as the launch of Aurora, NEAR’s EVM shard.
- The Bankless hosts are bringing on ARK analysts Frank Downing and Yassine Elmandjra to discuss the why, how, and when of their hot crypto price predictions–and why it’s more than just the price that matters.
- The Epicenter hosts were joined by Julian’s brother Gabriel, and Stellar Magnet, core contributors of the AssangeDAO. They spoke about Julian’s case as it currently stands, how the DAO was born and why they chose to purchase the NFT, and the road ahead.
- The Erica Show is back with an episode with Mariano Conti, who’s been a passionate builder and angel investor in the Ethereum DeFi space.
- Jesse Walden and Li Jin, co-founders and general partners at Variant, join Unchained to discuss the ownership economy, issues with web2 and web3, NFTs, the future of work, and more.
- Sreeram Kannan, Associate Professor at University of Washington where he runs the UW Blockchain Lab, looks at how information theory and blockchain intersect and map the progression of Bitcoin security.
- Dapper Collectives CEO and Friends With Benefits founder Trevor McFedries joins Unchained to discuss social tokens, NFTs, the creator economy, FWB, VC snacks, DAOs, Cooper Turley, and more.
- The Unstoppable podcast hosts welcome Dwight Torculas, the Co-Founder and CEO of Mint Songs, a platform for discovering and collecting NFT music.
- Unstoppable Domains CEO Matt Gould talks all about digital identity and how this will work in a Web3 world.
- Dean Eigenmann and Edgar Aroutiounian from Project Blanc, a team building bots and developing MEV strategies, revisit the topic of MEV, what it is and how teams like Project Blanc work to capture it.
- Will and Ian, the founders of Syndicate, come on the Blochcrunch show to share: how the future of VC investing is radically different, why Syndicate investment clubs are the future of investing, pitfalls and best practices when setting up DAOs, and more.
- And much more!
Unchained
- Your 2021 Crypto Taxes: How to Handle NFTs, DAOs, Airdrops and More: Two crypto tax experts, Shehan Chandrasekera, certified public accountant and head of strategy, Tax, at Cointracker, and John Cardone, senior director of Washington National Tax at RSM US LLP, explain everything crypto traders need to understand when filing taxes for 2021.
- How Law Enforcement Tracked Down $3.6 Billion in Bitcoin: Last month, the US government seized $3.6 billion in bitcoin from the 2016 Bitfinex hack and arrested two individuals, Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, on charges of money laundering. Tom Robinson, cofounder and chief scientist at the blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, breaks down how la enforcement was able to seize the BTC, what techniques the alleged money launderers used to avoid capture, and who could have pulled off the initial hack.
- How Writing ‘The Cryptopians’ Shaped My Views on Ethereum: In a fun change of pace, Steven Ehrlich, editor of Forbes Cryptoasset and Blockchain Advisor, joins Unchained to interview Laura Shin about her book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze.
- Exclusive: Crypto’s Biggest Whodunnit: Who Was Behind the 2016 DAO Attack on Ethereum?: While researching for her book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, Laura Shin found evidence that her believe resolves the biggest whodunnit in crypto: who hacked The DAO? This podcast is coming out in conjunction with an article in Forbes revealing the prime suspect’s identity.
-Part 1: Who Attacked the DAO? Here’s the Evidence: To document the process of finding the alleged attacker, she wrote an article for Forbes, with which she opened the podcast.
-Part 2: Contextualizing the DAO Attack: Forbes’s Steven Ehrlich comes onto the pod to interview Laura about finding the DAO attacker
- Congressman Ro Khanna: How to Get More Democrats into Web3: Congressman Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, discusses crypto and decentralization, his new book, Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us, and how to regulate the crypto industry.
- Are Democrats Against Crypto? These Two Congressional Candidates Say No: Shrina Kurani, a Democrat running for a House seat in California, and Morgan Harper, a Democratic candidate running to represent Ohio in the US Senate, explain why they are running pro-crypto campaigns. They discuss how crypto will affect the 2022 midterms, justify being both pro-crypto and pro-environment, and talk about the importance of educating regulators about Web3.
- Will Every Piece of Media Enter the Internet as an NFT? Variant Fund Says Yes: Variant Fund is a venture capital firm that describes itself as “a first-check crypto fund investing in the ownership economy.” Jesse Walden and Li Jin, co-founders and general partners at Variant, join Unchained to discuss the ownership economy, issues with web2 and web3, NFTs, the future of work, and more.
- How NFT DAOs Could Shape the Next Blockbuster, Fund Poetry and Change VC: Dapper Collectives CEO and Friends With Benefits founder Trevor McFedries joins Unchained to discuss social tokens, NFTs, the creator economy, $FWB, VC snacks, DAOs, Cooper Turley, and more.
The Chopping Block:
- The Chopping Block: Why Hacking The DAO Is ‘Something to Be Proud Of’?: Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry.
- The Chopping Block: SBF on a Crazy Week of Bitfinex, Wormhole and ENS Drama
Bankless
- Vitalik Buterin — Green Pill #1: Vitalik Buterin is the founder of Ethereum and a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. As the visionary behind the network, Vitalik’s values are embodied within the ethos of Ethereum’s community-centric nature. Exploring quadratic funding, pluralism, and Sybil resistance, the hosts dive into why Vitalik cares about public goods and how we can utilize novel mechanisms to fund them elegantly.
- Ether’s Phoenix with Optimism’s Karl Floersch | GreenPill #2: Karl Floersch is the co-founder of Optimism, the Ethereum rollup scaling solution, as well as one of the primary advocates in the space for public goods funding. Karl is inspiring on many levels — both individually with his seemingly boundless optimism and energy, and also his prolific work in the Ethereum ecosystem. Optimism is simultaneously scaling Ethereum’s transaction space and its values & ethos, pledging to recycle its fees into public goods. A central goal of regenerative finance is to align economic value with our moral values, and Karl’s work on retroactive public goods funding is pushing us towards that brighter, solarpunk future. The hosts explore with Karl the concept of ‘Ether’s Phoenix,’ a hypothetical being that rewards you for manifesting it — directly contrasting the concept of Roko’s Basilisk.
- Announcing the GREEN PILL Podcast | Kevin Owocki: Kevin Owocki returns to Bankless with a very special announcement — the GreenPill Podcast. The Gitcoin OG is the embodiment of the best parts of the crypto ethos, and his commitment to public goods is making the world a better place.
- ETHDenver 2022 is Scaling Vibes | Andrew Yang, Erik Voorhees, Kevin Owocki: Kevin Owocki and Erik Voorhees join the show to synthesize the respective merits of individualism and collectivism, and Andrew Yang stepped up to give an impromptu call to action for the community to rally around productive goals.
- What’s Real About Crypto Gaming | Ryan Wyatt: Ryan Wyatt is the CEO of Polygon Studios and former Head of Gaming at Youtube. Ryan is always on the frontier of gaming, having stewarded a new generation of content creators. He’s now shifting his focus to Web3, where the next wave of innovation is set to happen. Ryan presents a number of fascinating takes, including his feelings on Anti-NFT sentiment, the future of games, and the growing influence of gaming content. By building out the Polygon Metaverse, Ryan is colliding games and economies. In this episode, he shares what he’s learned — what’s real about crypto, and what’s not.
- How to Become a Whale | Tetranode: From gaming guppy to Orca whale, the hosts are talking to Tetranode. Who is this whale man? Well, he’s an anonymous DeFi billionaire who has been a part of and has shaped the crypto world since the early days of the space.
- Why Everything Is Weird | Kyla Scanlon: Everything is weird right now, and Kyla Scanlon is here to tell us why. Kyla is an independent, Gen Z friendly, new age content creator with a fantastic newsletter and youtube channel. In addition, she is the BanklessHQ TikTok correspondent, dropping weekly recaps of the crypto world.
- Crypto in Washington | Congressman Tom Emmer: Is D.C. taking crypto seriously? Congressman Tom Emmer shares the latest from the ongoings in Washington. Minnesota Representative Emmer is a 4th term member of the House of Representatives. He sits on the House Financial Services Committee and is a dedicated crypto advocate.
- ARK Analysts call $1M BTC, $180K ETH | Bullish Crypto Price Predictions: These numbers may seem outrageous in a short time frame, but with a broader perspective about the total addressable market for cryptoassets over the next decade, these ambitious predictions sharpen into something more than exuberance. With paradigm shifts underway, the hosts are bringing on ARK analysts Frank Downing and Yassine Elmandjra to discuss the why, how, and when of these hot price predictions–and why it’s more than just the price that matters.
- Will MetaMask Drop a Token? Breaking Down the Biggest Wallet Merge Ever: MetaMask and MyCrypto are teaming up to build the ultimate crypto wallet. Revamping efforts on security, user experience, as well as features & integrations, this is a massive moment in the world of non-custodial crypto wallets.
- GAMESTOP NFTs via ImmutableX | Robbie Ferguson: GAMESTOP is announcing they’re partnering with zk-rollup Immutable X, to open up an NFT marketplace. Immutable and Gamestop are also creating an up to $100 million fund dedicated to supporting the gaming ecosystem on Immutable X.
- Why $ETH is going to $3T | Ryan Allis: Ryan Allis is the managing partner at Heart Rithm, and a serial entrepreneur with 20 years in technology, marketing, and business. Ryan writes about Ethereum, Bitcoin, Polkadot, DeFi, Blockchain, Web3, and the future of money on his substack — Coinstack.
- Finding Common Ground | Solana, Avalanche, Terra
Layer Zero:
- Behind Axie Infinity’s Engine | Jiho (Layer Zero): Jeff ‘Jiho’ Zerlin — or jiho.eth on Twitter — was an early Axie Infinity community member before becoming the project’s Co-Founder. Ever since he could remember, Jiho was a gamer, collector, and entrepreneur.
- Boys Club | Layer Zero: The Boys Club is a DAO-in-training that is building products, resources, and communities to make the crypto space a more welcome place for women. Crypto has traditionally not been a particularly women-friendly place, with a sub-culture of basement-dwelling libertarian bros. But that is changing.
Rollups:
- ROLLUP: Standing with Ukraine & All Those Affected | Macro Analyses & More
- ROLLUP: ETH DENVER | SEC Fines BlockFi | Canada Freezes Protester Funds | Geopolitical Chess
- ROLLUP: Bitfinex Hack | Super Crypto Bowl | Aave Social Network | Vitalik Supports Assange DAO
- ROLLUP: Wormhole Hack | Wonderland Follow Up | Justin Bieber Bored Ape | Gamestop X Immutable
Zero Knowledge
- Episode 219: Scaling Ethereum with Polygon’s Mihailo Bjelic: This week, Anna chats with Mihailo Bjelic one of the co-founders of Polygon. Mihailo takes us through the evolution of Polygon and how the promise of web3 has led them to betting big on ZK-focused technologies. We learn about their approach to the two main challenges within their mission to scaling Ethereum — security and data availability; and how their suite of products aims to tackle these. Lastly, we hear about what’s next on the Polygon roadmap to onboarding the first billion to Ethereum — for the products themselves and the ecosystem as a whole.
- Episode 218: Hardened JS and the Architecture of Agoric with Dean Tribble: Anna chats with Dean Tribble, co-founder and CEO of Agoric. Dean walks us through the landscape of programming languages and Agoric’s philosophy behind building a blockchain that has Hardened JS as its smart contract language. We hear about the two big challenges in using JavaScript in blockchain development, malleability and non-deterministic, and how Agoric addresses these. Dean explains the security implications of many popular blockchain languages and how this led them to build Agoric’s smart contract infrastructure allowing JavaScript functions to run with specific access control — leaving the money management to the larger framework. They touch on what to expect from the upcoming development phases of Agoric, various bridging partnerships to come, and last but not least — if, when and how they envision ZK roll-ups getting implemented into the stack.
- Episode 217: Information Theory & Blockchain with Sreeram Kannan: Anna and Tarun chat with Sreeram Kannan, Associate Professor at University of Washington where he runs the UW Blockchain Lab. In this episode, they look at how information theory and blockchain intersect and map the progression of Bitcoin security. They discuss Sreeram’s early work on P2P mobile networks and how this evolved to work on consensus and fair sequencing. Sreeram takes us through his philosophical reasoning of shifting from genomic research to blockchain research and the two major areas in P2P systems that he focuses on: maximum throughput and low latency.
- Episode 216: A Dip into the Mempool & MEV with Project Blanc: Anna chats with Dean Eigenmann and Edgar Aroutiounian from Project Blanc, a team building bots and developing MEV strategies. They revisit the topic of MEV, what it is and how teams like Project Blanc work to capture it. They also dive into the concept of re-orgs, accelerationism as a philosophy and get a look at what goes on in the Dark Forest.
Epicenter
- AssangeDAO — The NFT Funding the Julian Assange Case with Gabriel Shipton & Stellar Magnet: It’s been just short of 2 years since we had Julian Assange’s father John, and Harry Halpin, on the show to chat about his imprisonment and the impact it could have on the crypto community. At that time it was unknown if/when Julian would be extradited to the US to face trial. On December 10 2021, the US government won its appeal of a British court ruling that barred Assange’s extradition to the US. On the very same day the AssangeDAO was born and now has a thriving community of 10k people behind it. The DAO raised over $50 million and the funds were used to bid on an NFT, Clock, which is part of a collection between Assange and digital artist Pak. The bid was successful and proceeds from the sale of the Clock NFT will go to support Assange’s legal defence fund and awareness campaign about the free speech implications of his case. The Epicenter hosts were joined by Julian’s brother Gabriel, and Stellar Magnet, core contributors of the AssangeDAO. They spoke about Julian’s case as it currently stands, how the DAO was born and why they chose to purchase the NFT, and the road ahead.
- NEAR Protocol — Scaling Blockchain to a Billion Users with Alex Skidanov & Illia Polosukhin: NEAR Protocol is a leading smart contract platform that aims for simplicity, security and scalability. NEAR was one of the first sharded blockchains and allows deploying smart contracts using Web Assembly on currently four different shards. NEAR’s sharding design, Nightshade, splits the blocks into different segments, which allows for great scalability without negatively impacting user and developer experience. Since its launch NEAR has evolved into one of the most active smart contract ecosystems. Illia and Alex, co-founders of NEAR, joined the Epicenter hosts to chat about NEAR’s protocol design and recent advances, such as the launch of Aurora, NEAR’s EVM shard. They also discussed how their sharding solution works and how it can scale to support a massive amount of users and applications.
- Gitcoin — Building and Funding the Open Web with Kevin Owocki: Gitcoin is a platform which funds software developers for work in open source ecosystems. Open source creates value without capturing it: Gitcoin creates a funding mechanism to correct the asymmetry between value created and value captured. So far they have raised $51million, which were then distributed to public goods projects. The hosts were joined, for the second time, by Gitcoin’s founder Kevin Owocki. Hear as they chat about quadratic and public good funding, the Internet of Jobs, and Kevin’s book, Greenpilled — Regenerative CryptoEcononmics, which is out soon!
- Agoric — The Secure JavaScript Smart Contracts Platform with Dean Tribble: Agoric is an Proof-of-Stake blockchain built on the Cosmos-SDK that allows developers to create secure smart contracts written in JavaScript. It offers developers safe, reusable DeFi components and built-in economic primitives like a stablecoin, while connecting to the larger blockchain ecosystem via IBC. Besides covering the Agoric platform, they dove into the long prehistory with Agoric CEO Dean Tribble. Dean and his co-founders have been working on smart contracts and secure computing for decades, long before cryptocurrencies were invented, and a lot of that work shaped the Agoric platform today. They talked about underlying design principles like the Object Capability Security Model, but also the tradeoffs between Ethereum’s model of scaling on a single chain versus the Cosmos model of sovereign chains interoperating asynchronously.
Blockcrunch
- How Syndicate Disrupts the VC Industry — Ian Lee & Will Paper, Syndicate Protocol, Ep. 185: Syndicate provides the tools for anyone with a crypto wallet to create an Investment Club in < 1 minute. Will and Ian, the founders of Syndicate, come on the Blochcrunch show to share: how the future of VC investing is radically different, why Syndicate investment clubs are the future of investing, pitfalls and best practices when setting up DAOs, and more.
- Is Celestia the Monolithic Chain Killer? The Future of Modular Blockchains — Nick White, COO of Celestia, Ep. 184: After Layer 1s and 2s, a new primitive is capturing the attention of the crypto community: the modular blockchain. Celestia, the first-mover in this arena, is determined to solve the infamous blockchain trilemma with its unique infrastructure. Nick White, COO of Celestia joined the Blochcrunch podcast to shares with us: what exactly is Celestia? What is the data availability problem? Will Celestia eliminate monolithic chains like Solana?
- What’s Next? 4 Crypto Mega Trends in 2022 — Jason Kam, Folius Ventures, Ep. 183: Jason Kam (@MapleLeafCap) left a lucrative career at a hedge fund to pursue crypto full time. With backing from ParaFi and Dragonfly Capital Partners, Jason launched Folius Ventures to bet big in crypto in 2022 — with a strong focus in China.
The Unstoppable Podcast
- The Future of Music in Web3 with Dwight Torculas from Mint Songs: In this episode of The Unstoppable Podcast, the hosts welcome Dwight Torculas. Dwight is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mint Songs, a platform for discovering and collecting NFT music.
- The Five New Frontiers for NFTs in 2022 with Maria Shen from Electric Capital: In this episode of The Unstoppable Podcast, the hosts are talking to Maria Shen, a Partner at Electric Capital, and she has a ton of experience working with crypto projects and NFTs.
- The Evolution of Digital Identity In Web3 with Matt Gould from Unstoppable Domains: In this episode of The Unstoppable Podcast, Unstoppable Domains CEO Matt Gould talks all about digital identity and how this will work in a Web3 world.
- Building a Digital Fashion Marketplace with Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee from DIGITALAX: In this episode of The Unstoppable Podcast, the hosts are talking to Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee. She is the founder and CEO of DIGITALAX, the first digital fashion project on Ethereum.
The Defiant
- Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum Will Most Likely Be Mainstream and the Most Secure Base Layer: The Defiant podcast host chats with Vitalik Buterin. Vitalik 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 also explains the significance of the upcoming merge between Ethereum’s proof of stake chain an application layer, walks us through the different stages of the process, and provides guidance as to when it will happen.
- Let’s replace monopolistic government services with competing public goods: The Defiant Podcast’s Camila Russo speaks to Griff Green. Griff is one of the co-founders of giveth, a community focused on building the future of charity, using the Ethereum blockchain as its base infrastructure. It aims to essentially become the gateway for non-profit organisations into web3, giving them the tools to grow their own communities via DAOs and crypto. The big vision is for donors and voluteers to become akin to investors in an organization, and be rewarded for their participation too.
- AVAX’s Emin Gun Sirer: “Blockchains Should be Scalable at Their Core; Layer 2s Mean Giving Up”: The Defiant Podcast host speaks to the founder and CEO of Ava Labs Emin Gün Sirer. When Emin first came on The Defiant in May 2020, Avalanche, Ava Labs’ smart contract platform, 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. So just what has happened over the past year? And where did all this start for Emin?
- Sovryn’s Edan Yago on Building Bitcoin DeFi; Slower Growth But Strongest Foundation: The Defiant Podcast host speaks to Edan Yago. Edan is a co-founder of Sovryn, a Bitcoin based lending protocol. He’s maybe the first Bitcoin builder they have had on the show. That’s because DeFi on the first blockchain network has been slow to pick up but Edan says that’s about to change. So what exactly is Sovryn and how did Edan’s path lead him to becoming a contributor?
MISC
- The Erica Show EP47 — Mariano Conti, Friend of Ethereum and Web3 Angel Investor: The Erica Show is back and she has Mariano Conti, who’s been a passionate builder and angel investor especially in the Ethereum DeFi space. Mariano shares his personal story of getting into Ethereum and Maker in the early days, and what makes those journeys special. He also shares insight on the current stablecoin ecosystem as well as the DeFi market.
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