🎙️ METACAST: Top Crypto Podcasts of May 2021

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

• Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin returns to ‘Bankless’ for a deep dive into one of his recent blog posts, titled “The Most Important Scarce Resource is Legitimacy.” The catalyzing example for Vitalik’s discussion of legitimacy comes from Bitcoin and Ethereum, who both have the power to mobilize a tremendous amount of capital but are restricted in how this capital is used. Vitalik posits that legitimacy is the deep and powerful social force behind this.
• Danny Ryan, Eth2 Researcher with Ethereum Foundation joined the ‘Epicenter’ show for a progress update and talked about how the protocol will work in its steady state, what has launched so far, what happens in The Merge, and how PoS will affect centralization tendencies.
• Preston Van Loon talks about the latest in ETH2 — he says Etheruem’s big migration into its proof-of-stake chain is about six months away, give or take two months.
• Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-1559 is a proposal to make several tightly coupled additions to Ethereum’s transaction fee mechanism. Tim Roughgarden is a Professor of Computer Science and member of the Data Science Institute at Columbia University, who did an extensive game theoretical review of EIP-1559. He talks about what the proposal is trying to do and why, and how it is doing it.
• Kain Warwick, founder of Synthetix, and Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital, debate the merits of Ethereum, Solana, and Binance Smart Chain.
• Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev and Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla on how to avoid another GameStop.
• Learn all about Gitcoin DAO, GTC distribution, and the responsibilities of the governors with Kevin Owocki.
• Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation, and James McGinniss, CEO and co-founder of David Energy, come onto the ‘Unchained’ to discuss Bitcoin, the petrodollar, and how to contextualize the energy usage of the first cryptocurrency (BTC) versus the leading fiat currency (USD).
• Novogratz, founder, CEO, and chairman of Galaxy Digital, digs into the drivers behind the market selloff.
• Arbitrum’s founders Ed Felten and Steven Goldfeder talk about their Optimistic Rollup architecture.
• dYdX’s Antonio Juliano on using STARKs for scalability.
• Alchemix co-founder Scoopy Trooples, who gave a deep look into how the protocol works, alUSD and the ALCX token.
• Curve Finance Founder, Michael Egorov, talks about why he created the protocol and his long term vision for the project.
• Tor Bair, founder of the Secret Foundation joins ‘Blockcrunch’ in discussing why privacy matters, and the tenuous balance between data protection and the risks of money laundering.
• On the latest episode of ‘The Unstoppable Podcast’, the hosts are talking to Matthew Gould, the CEO and Founder at Unstoppable Domains.
• The ‘The Unstoppable Podcast’ episode with Alex Masmej, co-founder and CEO of Showtime — a new social networking platform built for showing off your NFTs.
• Interview with Santiago Siri, the founder of Democracy Earth Foundation, who has been working on improving the way democracy works for over a decade. H‘The Delphi Podcast’ Host and GP of Delphi Ventures Tom Shaughnessy and Can Gurel, analyst at Delphi Ventures, host Sam Williams the Founder of Arweave.
• Andy Chorlian shares his journey through DeFi and Maker to NFTs with NBA Top Shot and PleasrDAO, as well as his recent venture Fractional.
• Episode 23 of ‘Metaverse Musings’ with Jake Brukhman, the Founder and CEO of CoinFund which was one of the earliest institutional crypto investors in the world.
• DeFi Dad, chief DeFi officer at Zapper.fi and the host of Yield TV, talks about his various projects and the decentralized finance space in general.
• And much more!

Unchained/Unconfirmed

Unchained:

• How Solana and Binance Smart Chain Could Take Ethereum’s Lead: Kain Warwick, founder of Synthetix, and Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital, debate the merits of Ethereum, Solana, and Binance Smart Chain.

• Bitcoin vs. the Petrodollar: Which Is More Environmentally Friendly? Last week, Tesla announced they will no longer accept Bitcoin as payment for vehicles. In a timely episode, Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation, and James McGinniss, CEO and co-founder of David Energy, come onto the show to discuss Bitcoin, the petrodollar, and how to contextualize the energy usage of the first cryptocurrency (BTC) versus the leading fiat currency (USD).
• Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev and Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla on How to Avoid Another GameStop: In this discussion Laura moderated for Paxos, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev and Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla discuss GameStop, the broken traditional financial infrastructure, and how blockchain technology may change the future of settlements.

• Crypto’s Gender Disparity: What Can Be Done About It? 4 Women Weigh In: Crypto’s Gender Disparity: What Can Be Done About It? 4 Women Weigh In Crypto sits at the intersection of two male-dominated industries: tech and finance.

Unconfirmed:

• Mike Novogratz on the 5 Reasons the Crypto Markets Plummeted: Mike Novogratz, founder, CEO, and chairman of Galaxy Digital, digs into the drivers behind the market selloff.

• How Elon Musk Pushed DOGE Up and BTC Down, With Arca’s Jeff Dorman: Jeff Dorman, the chief investment officer at Arca, comes on the show to give a macro perspective on the crypto environment.
• Should NYC’s Pension Funds Invest in Crypto? This Comptroller Candidate Says Yes: Reshma Patel, a Democratic candidate for New York City’s Comptroller position, talks about her “future proof” plan for the city, which centers on investing in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

Bankless

• Legitimacy | Vitalik Buterin: Vitalik is back on Bankless to discuss his recent blog post: The Most Important Scarce Resource is Legitimacy.

• Crypto, Legacy, and Value | Mark Yusko: Mark Yusko has been at the forefront of institutional investing throughout his career, in both the legacy and crypto. He is the Founder, CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Morgan Creek Capital Management.
• Crypto’s Existential Threat | MEV Panel: Phil Daian, Georgios Konstanopolus, Charlie Noyes: Phil Daian is a researcher and software engineer and is leading the charge into mapping MEV with the Flashbots Project. Georgios Konstantopoulos and Charlie Noyes are both partners at Paradigm.
• The Crypto Renaissance | Josh Rosenthal: Josh Rosenthal is a former historian and is now a partner at 6ixth Event Cataclysmic Capital. In this episode, they take a wide lens and examine the similarities between the European Renaissance and what is happening in today’s society with both the internet and blockchain technology.
• SotN #45 — Chainlink 2.0 with Chainlink God: This is the first piece of Bankless content focusing on Chainlink. Who better to tell us about the decentralized oracle solution than ChainLinkGod himself?
• SotN #46 — The ETH Trade with Su Zhu & Kyle Davies of Three Arrows Capital: Su Zhu and Kyle Davies are legendary crypto investors & founders of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. They join the State of the Nation to discuss the bullish case for ETH.
• SotN #47 — Gitcoin DAO & $GTC token, with Kevin Owocki: Come learn all about Gitcoin DAO, GTC distribution, and the responsibilities of the governors.

• RELEASE: Gary Vee DEBUTS VeeFriends NFTs: Gary Vaynerchuk (aka GaryVee), serial entrepreneur and Chairman of VaynerX, released his first NFT collection called VeeFriends.
• AMA — Liquity & LUSD | Founder Robert Lauko:

• ROLLUP: 1st Week of May (Uniswap V3, Elon Musk SNL Dogecoin, Bankless DAO, ETH & BTC)
• ROLLUP: 2nd Week of May, 2021 Vitalik Rugs For Charity | Elon & Bitcoin | Balancer V2
• ROLLUP: 3rd Week of May (Dip Week, The Rise of Polygon, Elon Crypto, Coinbase Outage, China)
• ROLLUP: 4th Week of May (Uniswap WSJ | Arbitrum Launch | Gamestop NFT)

Zero Knowledge

• Episode 182: The dive into ZK with Iron Fish’s Elena Nadolinski: Anna and James chat with Elena Nadolinski, founder of Iron Fish and learn about her journey from Ethereum into ZK to build a private-by-default blockchain.
• Episode 181: Aping into DeFi and NFTs with Andy Chorlian and Tarun Chitra: Last week, Anna and Tarun chat with Andy Chorlian. Andy shares his journey through DeFi and Maker to NFTs with NBA Top Shot and PleasrDAO, as well as his recent venture Fractional.
• Episode 180: dYdX’s Antonio Juliano on using STARKs for scalability: Anna and James chat with Antonio Juliano, founder of the dYdX derivatives exchange on Ethereum that recently transitioned to a StarkEx-powered L2 infrastructure.
• Episode 179: Diving into Arbitrum’s Optimistic Rollup: Anna and James Prestwich chat with Arbitrum’s founders, Ed Felten and Steven Goldfeder, and learn about their Optimistic Rollup architecture.

Epicenter

• Ethereum Foundation — An Eth2 Progress Update with Danny Ryan: Ethereum will switch from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) likely already later this year in a much anticipated upgrade to Ethereum 2. The switch to PoS aims to make Ethereum both more secure and more sustainable by securing the network through Ether instead of mining. A second Eth2 update will address scaling through sharding at a later time. Danny Ryan, Researcher with Ethereum Foundation, has been a major driving force behind the Eth2 project. He joined the show for a progress update and talked about how the protocol will work in its steady state, what has launched so far, what happens in The Merge, and how PoS will affect centralization tendencies.

• EIP-1559 — Tackling the Gas Fee Problem on Ethereum with Tim Roughgarden: Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-1559 is a proposal to make several tightly coupled additions to Ethereum’s transaction fee mechanism. Central to the design is a base fee, which plays the role of a reserve price and is meant to match supply and demand. Every transaction included in a block must pay that block’s base fee (per unit of gas), and this payment is burnt rather than transferred to the block’s miner. The base fee is adjusted after every block, with larger-than-target blocks increasing it and smaller-than-target blocks decreasing it. Tim Roughgarden is a Professor of Computer Science and member of the Data Science Institute at Columbia University. Tim did an extensive game theoretical review of EIP-1559 and joined the show to chat about what the proposal is trying to do and why, and how it is doing it.
• Alchemix — Financial Alchemy Through Self-Repaying Loans with Scoopy Trooples: Alchemix is a DeFi protocol that enables users to create self-repaying loans. Users deposit collateral (DAI) to take out a loan in Alchemix’s native synthetic stablecoin, alUSD. Alchemix then uses the DAI deposits and puts them into the Yearn protocol to earn yield and over time, that yield automatically pays off your debt. The hosts were joined by Alchemix co-founder Scoopy Trooples, who gave a deep look into how the protocol works, alUSD and the ALCX token.
• Curve Finance — The Stablecoin Exchange Protocol with Michael Egorov: Curve is an Automated Market Maker (AMM) that lets users and other decentralized protocols exchange stablecoins (DAI to USDC for example) with low fees and low slippage. Unlike exchanges that match a buyer and a seller, users transact with the smart contract itself. By providing a flatter curve targeted for relatively stable pairs, Curve has established the lead position for these markets. Curve is also leveraging its own token CRV to incentivize long-term adoption of the protocol and decentralize control of governance. Curve Finance Founder, Michael Egorov, talks about why he created the protocol and his long term vision for the project.
• Flashbots — The Good, Bad and the Ugly of MEV with Phil Daian & Stephane Gosselin: Flashbots is a research and development company focussed on Miner Extractable Value (MEV). MEV is the profit a miner can make through their ability to arbitrarily include, exclude, or re-order transactions from the blocks they produce. Flashbots has created a fork of the ethereum geth client, MEV-geth, to allow miners to exploit MEV, currently run by 80% of miners. Co-founders of Flashbots, Stephane Gosselin and Phil Daian, recently joined the show to chat about the protocol and to deep dive into the good, the bad, and the ugly of MEV.

Into the Ether

• EthHub Weekly Recap #167: Wild price swings, China BTC news, Fed looking at digital currency, Optimism integrates Etherscan, big updates from Synthetix, Coinbase wallet extension and Vitalik’s post on the limits of scalability

• EthHub Weekly Recap #165–166: VanEck files for ETH ETF, Tether reserve info, Uniswap v3, Bankless DAO, Maker Foundation returns MKR to DAO, Core dev apprenticeship program, Gitcoin’s plans to decentralize and Balancer v2
• EthHub Weekly #164: ETH hits $3500, SquishChaos’ bullish ETH report, A16z raising $1bn for crypto fund, MetaMask crosses 5mn MAUs, OKEx announces Arbitrum support, Gnosis protocol v2 + Balancer collab and Polygon announces $150mn DeFi fund

Blockcrunch

• Alpha Leak: The Algo Coin to End All Algo Coins — Sam Kazemian, Frax, Ep. 147: Algorithmic stablecoins like Ampleforth, Terra Luna, and Yam have had varying degrees of success — but what is the ideal model? Sam, founder of Frax, a partially-collateralized algo stablecoin, joins the show in discussing: current landscape of algo stablecoins, why he thinks Frax’s model is superior, trade offs made by Frax’s partial collateral model, use cases for algo stables beyond speculation and more.
• Alpha Leak: Does DeFi Need Privacy? — Tor Bair, Secret Network, Ep. 146: Privacy in DeFi (or lack thereof) is a real challenge, but Secret Network promises to solve that by bringing encryption to Ethereum transactions. Tor Bair, founder of the Secret Foundation joins the show in discussing why privacy matters, and the tenuous balance between data protection and the risks of money laundering.
• A Pro Trader’s Take on Uniswap V3 (And Other Things!) — Will Sheehan — Ep. 145: One of the biggest updates to DeFi is here — the launch of Uniswap’s groundbreaking v3. But how does it work? What are its tradeoffs? How will it affect DeFi? Former quant trader, DeFi power user and developer Will Sheehan joins the show to answer any questions you have about Uniswap v3, and the wider DeFi landscape.
• Spartan Capital on Upcoming DeFi Trends — Jason Choi & Ben Sparango — Ep. 144: Ben Sparango, currently growth at Solana and former investment analyst at Multicoin Capital, turns the spotlight on the host Jason Choi.

Chain Reaction

• Sam Williams: Pay Once and Store Data Forever on Arweave: The Delphi Podcast Host and GP of Delphi Ventures Tom Shaughnessy and Can Gurel, analyst at Delphi Ventures, host Sam Williams the Founder of Arweave.
• Alethea: Laying The Foundations For Trusted Synthetic Media — Metaverse Musings Ep 25: Host Piers Kicks and sits down for Episode 25 of Metaverse Musings with Arif Khan, the founder and CEO of Alethea. Arif possess a rare blend of technical excellence and philosophical grounding that has allowed him to execute upon such an interesting project. It seems clear that artificially intelligent media is going to play a large role in our digital future, and it’s great to see a project leveraging blockchain technologies to enable it early on.
• Tascha of Alpha Finance: Part 2, A Magical Founder’s Quest To Build A Cross Chain DeFi Empire: The Delphi Podcast Host and GP of Delphi Ventures Tom Shaughnessy hosts Tascha Punyaneramitdee of Alpha Finance.
• LUKSO: Building The New Creative Economy — Metaverse Musings Ep 24: Host Piers Kicks and sits down for Episode 24 of Metaverse Musings with Fabian Vogelsteller, the author of the ERC-20 standard and founder of LUKSO.
• Kieran and Aaron Warwick: Illuvium Enters the Arena: The Delphi Podcast Hosts Yan Liberman and Colm Buckley have Kieran Warwick and Aaron Warwick, Co-Founders of Illuvium, on the podcast to discuss the upcoming launch of their new game. Tascha of Alpha Finance: Part 2, A Magical Founder’s Quest To Build A Cross Chain DeFi Empire: The Delphi Podcast Host and GP of Delphi Ventures Tom Shaughnessy hosts Tascha Punyaneramitdee of Alpha Finance.
• Jake Brukhman: Backing The Best In Crypto & NFTs — Metaverse Musings Ep 23: Host Piers Kicks and sits down for Episode 23 of Metaverse Musings with Jake Brukhman, the Founder and CEO of CoinFund which was one of the earliest institutional crypto investors in the world.

The Unstoppable Podcast

• 45 — Fixing the Global Financial System With Crypto: On the latest episode of The Unstoppable Podcast, the hosts are talking to Matthew Gould, the CEO and Founder at Unstoppable Domains. They’re discussing how crypto can be used to fix the global financial system.

• 44 — Making NFT Investment Mainstream with Andrew Steinwold from Sfermion: The hosts are talking to Andrew Steinwold. He is the managing partner at Sfermion and a podcast host and content creator at Zima Red. He’s here to share his NFT knowledge and talk about the future of this technology.
• 43 — Making DeFi Available to Everyone with DeFi Dad: The episode with DeFi Dad, chief DeFi officer at Zapper.fi and the host of Yield TV, about his various projects and the decentralized finance space in general.
• 42 — Using NFTs as Collateral with Stephen Young from NFTfi: The episode with Stephen Young, the founder and CEO at NFTfi, a peer-to-peer marketplace for collateralized NFT loans.
• 41 — Building Better Communities with DeFi, with Niran Babalola from Panvala: The episode with Niran Babalola, founder at Panvala, a donation matching fund for communities that runs on its own cryptocurrency.
• 40 — The Fascinating Potential of Decentralized Interest with Marc Zeller from Aave: In this episode of The Unstoppable Podcast, the hosts are talking to Marc Zeller. He’s the integrations lead at Aave, an open source and non-custodial liquidity protocol.
• 39 — Introducing Interest-bearing Tokens with Ben Lakoff from Charged Particles: The episode with Ben Lakoff, the co-founder of Charged Particles — a brand new protocol allowing users to deposit any ERC token into any NFT. He’s also the host of the Alt Asset Allocation podcast.
• 38 — Bringing Crypto to YouTube with Girl Gone Crypto: The episode with Lea Thompson, otherwise known as Girl Gone Crypto. She is a blockchain content creator on YouTube.
• 37 — Creating a Cryptocurrency for the Black Community with Tavonia Evans from Guapcoin: On this episode of The Unstoppable Podcast, the hosts are talking to Tavonia Evans, founder of Guapcoin, a cryptocurrency that was initially created to amplify the economic voice of the black community.
• 36 — NFTs and Social Networking with Alex Masmej from Showtime: The episode with Alex Masmej, co-founder and CEO of Showtime — a new social networking platform built for showing off your NFTs.

• 35 — How DeFi Helps Marginalized Communities with Isaiah Jackson, Author of Bitcoin & Black America: In this episode of The Unstoppable Podcast, the hosts are talking to Isaiah Jackson. He’s the author of Bitcoin and Black America, a book about how decentralized finance can help create a fairer economy for black Americans and other marginalized communities.

The Defiant

• “Ethereum is About Six Months Away from Proof-of-Stake:” Preston Van Loon: Preston co-founded Prysmatic Labs, one of the main teams building Ethereum 2.0, and has been leading that team for the past three years. On top of that, he recently founded a DeFi project which bundles the entire crypto market cap in one token to allow anyone to easily buy something like a crypto index. We talk about how the desire to make a bigger impact inspired him to leave his job as a Google engineer and work in crypto full time. And how it was a spontaneous donation via Twitter from Vitalik Buterin that pushed him to finally make the jump. Preston talks about the latest in ETH2 — he says Etheruem’s big migration into its proof-of-stake chain is about six months away, give or take two months. He says Ethereum may be at a disadvantage relative to other Layer 1s, which are launching with more scalable technologies. But he also believes it will be hard for other chains to build the community Ethereum has, faster than Ethereum will upgrade.

• “Identity is The One Vulnerability Being Exploited Across All Systems:” Santiago Siri: In this episode the host interviews Santiago Siri, who has been working on improving the way democracy works for over a decade. He started from the inside, co-founding a political party in Argentina, his home country, but realized traditional politics would change him before he could change politics. So he started building better representation for the new world and founded Democracy Earth Foundation. It’s worth noting that he’s been hacked by communists two times in the process. The Democracy Earth Foundation is developing a project called Proof-of-Humanity. Proof of humanity wants to crack the problem of identity in the decentralized era of web3 — how to prove who you are without relying on centralized entities. Proof of humanity has been able to create 5,000 on-chain identities in two months. What’s more, all of those in the network are getting streamed UBI token, which stands for universal basic income.

The Erica Show

• The Erica Show EP29 — Adrian Brink, Founder of Anoma: For the 29th episode of The Erica Show, Adrian Brink shared his amazing journey in crypto and founding story of Anoma, which is a privacy-focused PoS protocol suitable for multi-party bartering. Adrian also introduces Ferveo, an important element to be added to Anoma that is targeted to prevent front-running. As the project is just getting started, Adrian shares plans to expand the ecosystem and upcoming milestones.

• The Erica Show EP30 — pplpleasr, Digital Artist: In episode 30 of The Erica Show, she has the first artist on the show as well as the second female guest. Pplpleasr is an experienced 3D artist as well as DeFi’s high quality meme generator. In this interview, pplpleasr describes her journey into DeFi and two NFTs on Foundation in which the proceeds from the auctions were donated to charities supporting good causes. She shares her insight on how NFTs, DAOs, DeFi can be intertwined and change our original boundaries, especially by experiencing the capabilities of PleasrDAO.

MISC

• The Road to $150,000 Ethereum with Nikhil Shamapant on Villa Straylight.
• Sam Bankman Fried from FTX on his Masterplan to Build an Exchange Powerhouse on Cryptotesters.

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