🎙️ METACAST: Top Crypto Podcasts of June 2023

Hello, everyone!

Check a quick overview of what we’ve been listening to this month!

TL;DR

• SEC’s Hester Peirce tackles ‘frustrating’ crypto regulation — and why it’s so slow.
• Gary Gensler and the SEC officially filed lawsuits against crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase. The Bankless hosts break it all down and share some hot takes on what this means for the crypto industry as a whole.
• Will the SEC Kill Crypto? with Jake Chervinsky & Amanda Tuminelli.
• $30k BTC & beyond? BlackRock Bitcoin ETF with Austin Campbell, the managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School.
• What is money in the digital age? with Brendan Malone from Paradigm’s Policy Department.
• 100M$ fight for crypto in D.C. with Ryan Selkis, the Founder and CEO of Messari.
• 400M PayPal users to crypto with Jose Fernandez da Ponte, the Senior Vice President of Blockchain, Crypto, and Digital Currencies at PayPal and Venmo.
• The CEOs of Dynamic Labs and ZenGo unpack a vexing question: Can crypto self-custody ever be easy for the masses?
• Uniswap founder Hayden Adams on how ‘hooks’ make v4 different.
• The Defiant hosts were joined by Coinbase’s head of cryptography, Yehuda Lindell to dive into the cryptography at Coinbase, the new innovative wallet that might just be the key to mass adoption for crypto, bringing self-custody to the masses.
• Matter Labs CEO Alex Gluchowski explains why he thinks zk-rollups will win.
• Jacob from Zora announces the Zora Network, a layer 2 solution that allows creators of any kind the ability to mint their ideas in a much more scalable way.
• The Epicenter hosts were joined by Zac Williamson & Joe Andrews, to discuss the evolution of Aztec, from ZK Money to their upcoming privacy-preserving hybrid ZK rollup.
• How Arbitrum is scaling Ethereum, Layer 2 challenges, governance scandal, and ZK threats with Steven Goldfeder, the founder of OffChain Labs.
• Chhi’mèd Künzang and François Garillot from Lurk Labs talk about all things Lurk, Lisp and zk languages.
• Benedikt Bünz and Binyi Chen from Espresso Systems discuss ProtoStar and how it compares to works such as Nova and HyperNova.
• The Epicenter hosts were joined by Luka Müller, co-founder of MME Legal Firm & Sygnum Bank, to discuss crypto regulations, institutional investors, user privacy & CBDCs.
• Martin Karlsson on AI x DeSci — Making research more efficient and accessible with Lateral.
• AI is a ticking time bomb with Connor Leahy, the CEO of Conjecture.
• EthPrague recordings of talks.
• And much more!

Unchained

• Uniswap Founder Hayden Adams on How ‘Hooks’ Make v4 Different: The announcement of the upcoming launch of Uniswap v4 sparked fresh versions of old debates. Is it OK for DeFi’s leading DEX to not be fully open source at launch? What counts as composability and what counts as plagiarism? Is Uniswap’s dominance a threat to decentralization? Founder Hayden Adams joins the show to respond to the critics and explain the novel features of Uniswap v4.

• SEC’s Hester Peirce Tackles ‘Frustrating’ Crypto Regulation — And Why It’s So Slow: SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce has a reputation in the industry for being more supportive of crypto than her peers. After a rough year for the industry, Peirce weighs in on whether the agency was right in recently naming several crypto tokens as securities, the state of the current regulatory framework, and the slow pace of change. “All I can say is that I’ve been at the agency for over five years, and it’s very frustrating to me that in that time we haven’t done something more productive,” Peirce tells Unchained.

• Hong Kong’s New Crypto Regulation: Will It Attract the Industry?: On June 1, Hong Kong implemented new crypto regulations to license exchanges. Two experts — Angelina Kwan, CEO of Stratford Finance (and former COO of BitMEX), and Adrian Lai, founder and managing partner of Newman Capital — weigh in on the new rules in Hong Kong, which tokens can be listed, recent reports that China may be sanctioning this activity, and how the crypto community is responding so far. Plus, they dissect the latest developments of the digital yuan, whether China will ever embrace public blockchains, and the shifting global regulatory landscape for crypto, and more.
• SEC Sues Binance, Coinbase: ‘This Is Not the End of Crypto in the United States’: Electric Capital General Counsel Emily Meyers joins the show to read between the lines of an action-packed time for Gary Gensler’s SEC. Meyers lends her lawyerly eye to the key differences between the two lawsuits, the SEC’s potential strategy, and whether federal legislation will beat the courts in providing clarity.

• What’s Next for Wallets After Ledger Recover Outrage?: The CEOs of Dynamic Labs and ZenGo unpack a vexing question: Can crypto self-custody ever be easy for the masses?
• Laura Shin Reflects on 500 Episodes of ‘Unchained’: Crypto’s leading podcast host reacts to some standout moments stretching back to 2018.

The Chopping Block:

• The Chopping Block: Why Uniswap V4 Creates a Bigger Attack Surface Area
• The Chopping Block: Jake Chervinsky on How the SEC Has Lost Credibility
• The Chopping Block: Will Modular Blockchains Win?

Bankless

• AI is a Ticking Time Bomb with Connor Leahy: AI is here to stay, but at what cost? Connor Leahy is the CEO of Conjecture, a mission-driven organization that’s trying to make the future of AI go as well as it possibly can. He is also a Co-Founder of EleutherAI, an open-source AI research non-profit lab.

• What is Money in the Digital Age? with Brendan Malone: Brendan Malone currently works at Paradigm’s Policy Department. But before that, he focused on crypto policy issues at no other than the Federal Reserve. In this episode, they get deep into answering one, if not the most Bankless questions. What is Money? And what does the answer look like in the Digital Age?

• 400M PayPal Users to Crypto with Jose Fernandez da Ponte: Can we go Bankless using PayPal? The hosts brought on Jose Fernandez da Ponte, the Senior Vice President of Blockchain, Crypto, and Digital Currencies at PayPal and Venmo to help us answer that question. Jose is responsible for driving PayPal’s efforts to bring the utility of crypto-assets and crypto-networks to their hundreds of millions of global consumers. He also knows a thing or two about how the banking system works and how to fix it.
• EigenLayer Will Change Ethereum Forever: Is re-staking the biggest thing to happen to Ethereum since MEV? The hosts are joined by Sreeram Kannan who walks them through Eigenlayer. The re-staking protocol that is set to change the trajectory of Ethereum forever.
• The SEC is Suing Coinbase & Binance | Ryan & David: Gary Gensler and the SEC officially filed lawsuits against crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase. The Bankless hosts break it all down and share some hot takes on what this means for the crypto industry as a whole.
• Will the SEC Kill Crypto? with Jake Chervinsky & Amanda Tuminelli: Chervinsky & Amanda Tuminelli answer all hosts’ questions about the SEC and its assault on the crypto industry as a whole.
• SEC vs. Coinbase with Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer, Paul Grewal: The SEC is showing all of its cards. Gary Gensler doesn’t want the crypto industry to exist at all. After the Binance suit, the SEC is going after Coinbase too. the hosts brought on Coinbases’s Legal Officer, Paul Grewal to hear how Coinbase plans to fight, how you, a Bankless listener, can join the fight, and what’s next for the crypto industry. Should we be optimistic?
• $30k BTC & Beyond? BlackRock Bitcoin ETF with Austin Campbell: Austin Campbell is the managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, and used to work at Paxos in both Portfolio Management and Chief Risk Officer. He also was Co-Head of Digital Assets in Global Rates at CitiBank at JP Morgan for a decade.
• 100M$ Fight for Crypto in D.C. with Ryan Selkis: The Bankless hosts are joined by Ryan Selkis, the Founder and CEO of Messari and an outspoken political advocate for the crypto industry. We explore the current state of Crypto Regulation and how Ryan plans to fight in Washington with the Digital Freedom Alliance.

• Zora Announces The “Zora Network”: Jacob from Zora is here to announce the Zora Network, a layer 2 solution that allows creators of any kind the ability to mint their ideas in a much more scalable way. Tune in as Jacob walks us through everything new and improved with Zora.

• Announcing Uniswap V4 With Hayden Adams: Hayden Adams joins the show to announce the release of Uniswap V4. He walks us through innovations new to Uniswap like hooks and singleton contracts in addition to a new upgrade that can lower gas costs up to 90%.

Rollups:

• ROLLUP: What BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF Means For Crypto
• ROLLUP: Prometheum SEC Psyop Exposed
• ROLLUP: Gary And The SEC Will Not Defeat Crypto
• ROLLUP: China Turns Bullish On Crypto | Celsius Bailout Plan

Zero Knowledge

• Episode 281: Exploring Lurk: a New Language for Recursive zk-SNARKs: In the last week’s episode, Zero Knowledge host Anna Rose chats with Chhi’mèd Künzang and François Garillot from Lurk Labs about all things Lurk, Lisp and zk languages. They discuss the history of the Lurk project, from its beginnings with Protocol Labs (the team that built Filecoin), to its emergence as a Turing-complete programming language for recursive zk-SNARKs. They discuss Lurk’s relationship with Lisp, what Lisp is, and how developers familiar with that family of languages would be able to interact with Lurk. They then discuss how Lurk compares to other zkDSLs and the new innovations this Lisp-based language brings to the table.

Zero Knowledge Episode 281: Exploring Lurk: a New Language for Recursive zk-SNARKs

• Episode 280: ProtoStar with Benedikt Bünz and Binyi Chen: In this episode, Anna Rose dives back into accumulation schemes with Benedikt Bünz and Binyi Chen from Espresso Systems. They discuss ProtoStar and how it compares to works such as Nova and HyperNova, as well as explore some definitions for commonly used terms in the accumulation literature.
• Episode 279: Intro to zkpod.ai with Anna and Kobi: Anna Rose and Kobi Gurkan continue their conversation with a full episode dedicated to their new side project zkpod.ai — the voice ai trained on transcripts from this show which uses both Anna and Kobi’s voices to share insights and answer questions about zk topics. They cover the origin of the project and discuss their motivations and concerns around its uses as well as how they could see the project developing and what this could mean for the field of zk. Kobi shares his thoughts on the current tooling available, where this could progress and the potential limitations it holds.
• Bonus: zkpod.ai & Attested Audio Experiment with Daniel Kang: In this bonus episode, Anna jumps back on the mic for a quick interview with guest Daniel Kang. They describe the Attested Audio Experiment, a joint project they are doing around zkpod.ai which explores how to create attested audio using zkps. In this experiment, they create proof that some piece of edited audio originates from original audio recorded by Anna, Kobi and Daniel. This proof helps to distinguish this from zkpod.ai generated audio. In the future, some iteration of this architecture could be used by content creators to distinguish deepfake audio from the real thing.

Zero Knowledge: Bonus: zkpod.ai & Attested Audio Experiment with Daniel Kang

Epicenter

• Luka Müller: Sygnum Bank & MME Legal — Crypto Regulations & Institutional Investors: As institutional money set its eyes on crypto, some degree of centralization and regulation was inevitable. However, the key aspect is to limit it to access gateways and not affect protocols’ decentralization. Recent events have shown that price manipulation is easily achieved in conditions of low liquidity, hence regulated fiat on- and off-ramps will, in the end, also benefit retail consumers. It once again all boils down to achieving these goals while maintaining privacy for users and ensuring that regulations will not stifle innovation. The Epicenter hosts were joined by Luka Müller, co-founder of MME Legal Firm & Sygnum Bank, to discuss crypto regulations, institutional investors, user privacy & CBDCs.

• Fig: Squid Router — Sub-20 Second Cross-Chain Swaps. Axelar-Powered Interoperability : As crypto evolves, it becomes clearer that the future will be multi-chain. Presently, moving funds between different blockchains is frustrating…to say the least. The current bridging solutions are prohibitive from a UX perspective, mainly due to how finality is reached across different blockchains. This translates to long wait times and anxiety when interacting with new protocols, caused by the incertitude of funds arriving safely on the other side. Another major blockage consists of gas fees, particular to each blockchain, which often require an additional swap. But what if, users could enjoy near-instant cross-chain swaps (sub-20 seconds) and one-click transaction aggregators? The hosts were joined by Fig, co-founder of Squid Router, to discuss how they leverage Axelar’s infrastructure to achieve one-click, near-instant cross-chain swaps, creating user-friendly interoperability.
• Zac Williamson & Joe Andrews: Aztec — Privacy-preserving hybrid ZK rollup: In order to achieve true transaction privacy, it is not enough to encrypt or build ZK proofs for transaction bundles, as long as the underlying blockchain uses an account-based model. Aztec is building a ZKVM that superposes a UTXO model so that balances are constantly updated as new, untraceable, log entries. The upcoming Aztec 3 aims to enable privacy-preserving smart contracts, using a hybrid, multi-layered rollup. This approach allows for both public and private smart contracts to be executed simultaneously. The Epicenter hosts were joined by Zac Williamson & Joe Andrews, to discuss the evolution of Aztec, from ZK Money to their upcoming privacy-preserving hybrid ZK rollup.
• Epicenter — Looking Back on 10 Years of Crypto. AI Doom & Gloom? SPECIAL: As Epicenter hits the 500-episode milestone, the hosts look back on almost 10 years of crypto developments, analyzing the good, the bad and the ugly. What projects & narratives have surprised our hosts? Has Bitcoin failed in becoming a reliable store of value? Will ZK proofs provide the much-needed solution to AI’s alignment problem? Last but not least, are we still early? Get ready for a fascinating discussion, albeit gloomy for this special occasion.

The Defiant

• The Key to Crypto’s Mass Adoption? Coinbase Says it’s Wallet as a Service (WaaS): The Defiant hosts were joined by Coinbase’s head of cryptography, Yehuda Lindell. He has big news to share as Coinbase just released WaaS which is an MPC wallet. Some are calling this one of the most exciting products from Coinbase yet. Yehuda has an impressive track record. He’s a former professor and the former CEO of Unbound Tech, a cybersecurity company specializing in privacy and key management solutions. Unbound Tech, the company Yehuda co-founded, was acquired by Coinbase. Yehuda leads the cryptography team at Coinbase, driving innovation in the field of secure computation and increased privacy and data security. On this podcast, they dive into the cryptography team at Coinbase, the new innovative wallet that might just be the key to mass adoption for crypto, bringing self-custody to the masses.

• Ethereum Layer 2 Battle: Matter Labs CEO Explains Why He Thinks ZK-Rollups Will Win: The Defiant hosts are joined by Alex Gluchowski, the co-founder and CEO of Matter Labs. Matter Labs is the initial team behind zkSync. Alex is a renowned physicist and entrepreneur. They dive into the founding story of zkSync, the launch of zkSync, why they chose to help scale Ethereum, and if they stand by that decision today, the zkSync mission, alpha around getting into zkSync today, when token, as well as new use cases on zkSync and so much more.

• How Arbitrum is Scaling Ethereum, Layer 2 Challenges, Governance Scandal, and ZK Threats: Steven Goldfeder is the founder of OffChain Labs. OffChain Labs is a company focused on Ethereum scaling solutions and known primarily for building Arbitrum, which is currently Ethereum’s biggest Layer 2. In this conversation, Steven will explain how OffChain Labs is addressing the scalability challenges of Ethereum by utilizing off-chain computation and optimistic rollups. They get into the Arbitrum airdrop, its governance drama, the big vision for Arbitrum and Layer 2s as a whole, and what the next milestones are for the scaling solution.

• Goldfinch Founders Talk Triple-Digit Growth and UX Upgrades in DeFi: The Defiant hosts are joined by the cofounding forces behind Goldfinch, Blake West and Mike Sall. They share with us a bit about what they learned from over 70 user interviews from everyone from Blackrock, Apollo to retired nurses, as well as their excitement around the user experience improvements for the entire Web3 and crypto space and how that UX and UI improvement will impact the Goldfinch Protocol, how they see 162% year over year growth in 2022 with no defaults. Blake and Mike give us insight into their thoughts on how crypto will reshape the global economy, expanding access to capital around the world and what they’re building to make that possible.

The DeSci Podcast

• Revolutionizing Drug Discovery with AI — The Arctoris Approach with Martin-Immanuel Bittner: Dr. Martin-Immanuel Bittner is the CEO of Arctoris, which is the world’s first fully automated platform for drug discovery, focused on accelerating the drug discovery process. In this episode, he explores a variety of fascinating topics related to drug discovery. Dr. Bittner shares insights on the story behind building Arctoris and its mission to accelerate the drug discovery process. Other topics discussed were challenges stemming from the lack of rigorous funding in biotech, common misconceptions about automation, and many more.

• Martin Karlsson on AI x DeSci — Making research more efficient and accessible with Lateral: Martin Karlsson is the CEO of Lateral, an innovative web app designed for scientists, enabling them to read, find, share, and organize their research seamlessly in a single platform for enhanced efficiency. In this episode, he delves into a wide range of intriguing topics. Martin shares insights on Lateral’s AI tools and the best way to effectively utilize these tools.

MISC

• EthPrague recordings of talks.
• Top Stories of the Week 06–19–23: A roundup of the week’s most valuable crypto stories for Saturday, June 24, 2023.
• How AI Will Change Web 3 Forever — Cem & Fran, Giza, Ep. 242: In part 2 of Blockcrunch “AI x Web 3’ series, they spoke with Giza, an end-to-end platform that makes it easy for developers to bring AI onto the blockchain to find out more about why AI should D be onchain, and why onchain AI is the next biggest unlock since the invention of smart contracts.

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