🎙️ METACAST: Top Crypto Podcasts of May 2023
Hello, everyone!
Check a quick overview of what we’ve been listening to last month!
TL;DR
- Join Vitalik Buterin from The Ethereum Foundation for a talk titled “Protocol economics the Ethereum protocol’s perspective”.
- Did Ethereum break or what actually happened? Bankless brought on Preston Van Loon & Terence Tsao, two Ethereum Protocol Developers, to help to answer that question.
- Burning MEV with Justin Drake and Domothy. They walk us through the research and reasoning behind this next upgrade.
- The future of Bitcoin with Nic Carter, Eric Wall, & Udi Wertheimer.
- Bitcoin educator Dan Held and Bitcoin Frontier Fund Managing Partner Trevor Owens join Unchained to discuss the breakneck rise of BRC-20s and why they’re both bullish on what meme coins mean for the original blockchain.
- Bankless welcomes back to founder and CEO of Binance, CZ for his second appearance on the show.
- Dan Berkovitz went from being a CFTC commissioner to an SEC lawyer. Find what’s his view of the U.S.’s regulatory turf war over crypto in the latest Unchained episode.
- Is Ledger safe? with CTO, Charles Guillemet. He walks us through how exactly this recovery feature functions, breaking down how a Ledger actually functions, and possible paths moving forward.
- Coinbase moving offshore?! with Tom Duff Gordon VP, International Policy, Coinbase.
- Nova and beyond with Srinath Setty, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and author of notable works such as Spartan, Nova, SuperNova, and HyperNova.
- Sebastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal sat down with Emin Gün Sirer for a fascinating conversation exploring future innovation narratives in crypto.
- The Epicenter hosts were joined by Ali Yahya, GP at Andreessen Horowitz, to discuss a16z structure, operations, and investment thesis, as well as the broader crypto landscape and value proposition.
- Maker of the first Ethereum Wallet: Taylor Monahan explains the $10M hack and how to stay safe in crypto.
- What causes bubbles? with Edward Chancellor, a financial historian, and journalist.
- Author Brady Dale takes us inside the process of chronicling the rise and fall of FTX.
- Lumida Wealth CEO Ram Ahluwalia joins Unchained to unpack what could happen to Genesis creditors, Gemini Earn users, and the markets should DCG fail to cover its debt obligations.
- Expanding computation on Ethereum with Yi Sun, co-founder of Axiom.
- Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic: Layer 3’s, zkEVM, and NFL, Starbucks, Disney, Reddit brand deals.
- From AWS to Aave & Lens Protocol: Nader Dabit explains Web 3 social media and gasless transactions.
- Building in public with Sandy & Ye from Scroll. They delve into updates about their zkEVM L2, the progress they have made over the past year, and what it really means to build in public.
- Ben DiFrancesco, founder & CEO of ScopeLift, talks about Umbra’s privacy-preserving stealth token transfer system and if the need for privacy on blockchains outweighs any implicit UX frictions.
- In the latest episode of the DeSci Podcast, the hosts were joined by Niklas Rindtorff, a physician-scientist and co-founder of LabDAO, an online community of life scientists collaborating to make life scientific tools more accessible.
- CryoDAO — advancing cryopreservation research using Web3.
- Axelar’s general message passing launch with Sergey Gorbunov, Zaki Manian, & Steven Goldfeder.
- Staking in Ethereum is increasingly harder to understand. Experts Sreeram Kannan and Konstantin Lomashuk go deep into all things staking, and how to understand the risks.
- Collin Myers & Oisín Kyne: Obol Network — Distributed Validator Technology (DVT).
- AI and Web3 with Mohamed Fouda & Qiao Wang of Alliance.
- ETHGlobal Lisbon 2023 videos.
- ETHGlobal Tokyo 2023 videos.
- Autonomous Worlds 2023 hackathon videos.
- And much more!
Main
- Protocol economics the Ethereum protocol’s perspective — Vitalik Buterin: Join Vitalik Buterin from The Ethereum Foundation for a talk titled “Protocol economics the Ethereum protocol’s perspective”.
- ETHGlobal Lisbon 2023 videos: Playlist.
- ETHGlobal Tokyo 2023 videos: Playlist.
- Autonomous Worlds 2023 hackathon videos: Playlist.
Unchained
- Ex-CFTC Commissioner Berkovitz Says ‘DeFi Should Be Regulated’ — But How? Dan Berkovitz went from being a CFTC commissioner to an SEC lawyer. What’s his view of the U.S.’s regulatory turf war over crypto?
- The IRS Wants $44B From Bankrupt FTX. How Is That Possible? News emerged this week that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) placed $44 billion in claims on the FTX bankruptcy estate. Now creditors of the defunct crypto exchange are worried that the taxman is going to gobble up funds that would otherwise be used to make users partially whole. Wassielawyer, a lawyer specializing in restructuring and insolvency, joins the show to explain what’s going on, how that huge number is even possible, and why the so-called “trust argument” is not going to be the silver bullet that some FTX customers are dreaming of.
- The Ugly Tradeoffs of Ledger’s New Recovery Service: Ledger, the crypto industry’s leading hardware wallet manufacturer, rolled out a new recovery feature this month that caused an uproar. The recovery service has dangerous implications for crypto self-custody, says Foundation Devices Head of Content “Seth For Privacy.” He joins the show to discuss the downsides of closed-source code and the security risks that come with compromising for mainstream adoption.
- Bitcoin’s BRC-20 Mania: Is It Sustainable? Ordinal theory has unleashed a new wave of NFTs, memecoins and innovation on Bitcoin — but not without controversy. Bitcoin educator Dan Held and Bitcoin Frontier Fund Managing Partner Trevor Owens join the show to discuss the breakneck rise of BRC-20s and why they’re both bullish on what memecoins mean for the original blockchain.
- Writing the Book on FTX’s Downfall: ‘It Was All Just Sam’: Longtime crypto reporter Brady Dale has beat Michael Lewis to market with the first book on the dramatic collapse of FTX. In stores today, “SBF: How the FTX Bankruptcy Unwound Crypto’s Very Bad Good Guy,” tells the tale of the outsized role that Sam Bankman-Fried played in the FTX-Alameda death spiral. Drawing on years of reporting and interviews with SBF himself, the book charts the rise and fall of the one-time crypto wunderkind. “It became clear to me that Sam got really addicted to fame,” said Dale.
- $630M Due Next Week: Is DCG at Default Risk?: The Genesis bankruptcy is about to take a high-stakes turn with a $630 million payment from Digital Currency Group (DCG) due by May 11. Barry Silbert’s DCG, the parent company of Genesis, is on the hook for the massive payment, but doubts are swirling as to whether the crypto conglomerate can cover it. Lumida Wealth CEO Ram Ahluwalia joins the show to unpack what could happen to Genesis creditors, Gemini Earn users, and the markets should DCG fail to cover its debt obligations.
- Do You Need to Think Twice Before Restaking Your Assets?: In this episode, Sreeram Kannan, founder of EigenLayer, and Konstantin Lomashuk, cofounder of Lido Finance, discuss the complex world of staking in Ethereum’s post-Shanghai ecosystem.
The Chopping Block:
Bankless
- CZ & the State of Binance: Bankless welcomes back to founder and CEO of Binance, CZ for his second appearance on Bankless. The last time CZ was on, Terra Luna hadn’t collapsed yet and FTX was still competing with Binance. A lot has changed.
In this episode:
1) How can we tell what’s real vs. FUD with Binance?
2) What Happened with FTX from CZ’s perspective?
3) The difference between the current bear market vs. previous ones
4) Community questions from Justin Drake & Degen Spartan
- DEBATE: Why We Need a Digital Dollar | Rohan Grey vs. RSA: Rohan Grey is an assistant professor at Willamette University College of Law and has been involved in the world of politics and government as it relates to our public money systems. You might remember him as the guy behind the STABLE Act (Stablecoin And Bank Licensing Enforcement).
- Is Ledger Safe? with CTO, Charles Guillemet: Ledger has been the center of attention since the announcement of their new “Recover” feature which has brought into question how secure the Ledger devices actually are. Charles joins Bankless to walk through how exactly this recover feature functions, breaking down how a Ledger actually functions, and possible paths moving forward.
- Burning MEV with Justin Drake and Dom: Ethereum is getting yet another economic upgrade. The scarcity engine is getting a massive level up with the advent of the MEV Burn. With Justin Drake and Domothy, they walk us through the research and reasoning behind this next upgrade.
- Did Ethereum Break? with Preston Van Loon & Terence Tsao: Did Ethereum break or what actually happened? Bankless brought on Preston Van Loon & Terence Tsao, two Ethereum Protocol Developers, to help to answer that question.
- What Causes Bubbles? with Edward Chancellor — “The Price of Time”: Edward Chancellor is a financial historian, journalist, and author of, “Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation” and his latest, “The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest”.
- The Future of Bitcoin with Nic Carter, Eric Wall, & Udi Wertheimer: Taproot was the trojan horse that opened the door to a new wave of Bitcoin innovation and culture. At the forefront of this culture are Udi, Eric, and Nic, the taproot wizards causing a shift in the world of Bitcoin.
- Are Democrats Against Crypto? Rep. Ritchie Torres Answers: That’s the question the Bankless hosts bring in the episode of State of the Nation with New York Representative Ritchie Torres. It seems that crypto is becoming an increasingly divisive and polarized topic in the halls of Congress, and we are hopeful that we can find some common ground on both sides of the aisle. Crypto is good for the American people. It’s as simple as that.
- Ram Ahluwalia Predicts MORE Bank Failures: Ram Ahluwalia, CEO of Lumida Wealth Management, joins for his second time on Bankless to discuss the latest bank failure and what it means for the rest of the traditional finance system.
- ETH to $50k by 2030?! VanEck’s Bull Case: Can the price of Ethereum really reach $30,000 by the end of the decade? On the show, the Bankless hosts go on a journey through VanEck’s new report detailing how exactly Ethereum can get there.
- Coinbase Moving Offshore?! with Tom Duff Gordon VP, International Policy, Coinbase: Ryan and David bring on Coinbase’s VP of International Policy, Tom Duff Gordon VP to discuss Coinbase’s exploration out of the United States.
- AI and Web3 | Mohamed Fouda & Qiao Wang of Alliance: AI is exploding into every facet of the internet. The convergence of Crypto and AI is inevitable, Qiao Wang and Mohamed Fouda discuss the opportunities and challenges this presents.
- Axelar’s General Message Passing Launch with Sergey Gorbunov, Zaki Manian, & Steven Goldfeder: We’re entering a new multi-chain and secure cross-bridge world very soon. With Axelar’s General Message Passing launch, a new era for interoperability has been unlocked. Tune in to hear from CEO/Co-Founder Sergey Gorbunov, Zaki Manian, Co-Founder of Sommelier Protocol, Co-Founder of Iqlusion, & Steven Goldfeder, Co-founder of Offchain Labs, and contributor to Arbitrum.
- Why We’re Dumb: How to Think in the 21st Century with Tim Urban: Society is off track. We all feel it. What’s wrong? How do we fix it without throwing out all the good parts? Bankless brought on Tim Urban to help us answer these questions.
Rollups:
- ROLLUP: Binance Commingling User Funds | Ledger Recover Postponed
- ROLLUP: Ledger Recovery Concerns | Ethereum Finality Issues
- ROLLUP: Memecoin Frenzy | BRC-20 Tokens | Brad Sherman
- ROLLUP: Will FAILING Banks Bring Down the Economy?!
Zero Knowledge
- Episode 277: Nova and Beyond with Srinath Setty: In this episode, Anna Rose and Nico Mohnblatt interview Srinath Setty, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and author of notable works such as Spartan, Nova, SuperNova, and HyperNova. This discussion covers Setty’s early work and how this led to him working on SNARKs, folding schemes and sumcheck protocols, as well as his views on the future trajectory of the ZK space. Given the current chatter around Nova-style accumulation schemes, this interview offers a chance to explore the perspective of a key contributor behind these developments.
- Episode 276: Expanding Computation on Ethereum with Axiom: In this episode, Anna sits down with Yi Sun, co-founder of Axiom. Yi was recently on the show to discuss ZK ML’s, however, this time they take a closer look at the Axiom project and what it means to be a ZK coprocessor for Ethereum. During the interview they also explore what problems Axiom are trying to solve, how ZKPs are used to help bring historic data into smart contracts and what new use cases this architecture can support.
- Episode 275: Building in Public with Sandy & Ye from Scroll: Anna Rose chats with Scroll co-founders Ye Zhang and Sandy Peng, delving into updates about their zkEVM L2, the progress they have made over the past year and what it really means to build in public. They discuss the challenges and rewards of founding a fully remote organization and how the team navigates the ever-changing ZK landscape.
- Episode 274: SNARKs: A Trilogy with Ariel Gabizon: Anna and Ariel Gabizon cover the SNARK trilogy; a history of pairing-based SNARKs in 3 acts. Starting from Jens Groth’s early works on SNARKs, Ariel takes us on a journey through key moments and breakthroughs in SNARKs over the last decade. They also dive into the emerging accumulation research streams on folding schemes and Ariel’s latest work surrounding lookup tables.
Epicenter
- Collin Myers & Oisín Kyne: Obol Network — Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) #497: Ethereum’s merge and transition to a proof-of-stake consensus implied switching from proof-of-work mining to transactions being validated by entities that have an economic stake in the network. Proof-of-stake distributed networks are subject to complex game theory models (e.g. slashing). Distributed validator technology (DVT) enables a more modular validator stack at every level: key pairs, hardware and entities. This reduces trust dependencies and increases security for validator entities. The Epicenter hosts were joined by Collin Myers & Oisín Kyne, founders of Obol Network, to discuss Ethereum’s 2.0 PoS consensus, the current validator landscape and how distributed validator technology (DVT) allows for increased security and overall smoother UX for validator entities.
- Ben DiFrancesco: Umbra — Privacy Preserving Token Transfers #496: Public transaction history in blockchains represents one of their key features which, alongside immutability, aim to provide an alternative to CeFi. However, this transparency comes at a price: privacy. As a result, different solutions have been proposed, that preserve privacy while maintaining all the other benefits of blockchain technology, but there currently isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to this problem. For example, zero-knowledge proofs convey the validity of a transaction batch without sharing any other details, but the underlying arithmetic circuits are both complex as well as computational intensive. Umbra proposes a system that relies completely on elliptic curve cryptography, employing multiple private-public key pairs to achieve stealth payments. The Epicenter hosts were joined by Ben DiFrancesco, founder & CEO of ScopeLift, to talk about Umbra’s privacy-preserving stealth token transfer system and if the need for privacy on blockchains outweighs any implicit UX frictions.
- Emin Gün Sirer: Avalanche — The Future of Crypto: From Gaming to LLM-Powered Smart Contracts #495: As the second Avalanche summit drew to a close, Sebastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal sat down with Emin Gün Sirer for a fascinating conversation exploring future innovation narratives in crypto. A longtime friend of Epicenter, Ava Labs’ founder and CEO shared his unique insights on the industry, from both a founder, as well as a former academic perspective. Given Avalanche’s consensus & architecture, it boasts high TPS and scalability properties, incentivizing founders to build better products in the AVAX ecosystem. One of the most controversial narratives is that of LLMs (i.e. ChatGPT) powering smart contract development by bypassing programming languages and even bytecode altogether. The question arises if replacing the human third party with an AI fixes trust issues or not, but only time will tell which piece of code we can actually consider ‘law’.
- Ali Yahya: Andreessen Horowitz — A16z Crypto Investment Thesis #494: When it comes to top-tier VCs, very few equal Andreessen Horowitz’ (a16z) impressive portfolio, which stretches over both Web2 and Web3. Their crypto venture arm includes investments in most industry verticals, from infrastructure projects to NFTs and blockchain gaming. Constructing such a solid investment thesis requires conviction in the long-term prospects of the industry, as well as an influential network. The Epicenter hosts were joined by Ali Yahya, GP at Andreessen Horowitz, to discuss a16z structure, operations and investment thesis, as well as the broader crypto landscape and value proposition.
Blockcrunch
- The AI and Crypto Episode You’ve Been Waiting For — Jake Brukhman, CoinFund, Ep. 241: If you have been on the internet for the past 6 months, chances are you have realized that we’re entering into the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and maybe even experimented with ChatGPT. As investors, you might have also considered what’s the best way for you to capitalize on this paradigm shift — Jake Brukhman is here to answer that.
- Ex-BitTorrent CTO on Decentralized Social Networks — Ryan Li, CyberConnect, Ep. 240: Despite complaints about privacy and exploitative revenue sharing, social media giants like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter still dominate the social media landscape after more than a decade Why aren’t users and creators exploring other platforms? Well, they can’t since these giants own their data and audiences, and moving means losing all the progress they’ve built. In this Blockcrunch episode, Ryan Li, Co-Founder of CyberConnect, a decentralized social graph protocol trying to revolutionize the relationship between social media platforms and users, shares with us why Web 3 social graphs are necessary, why you should switch over to Web 3 platforms, the future of social media.
- “This will change NFTs forever” — Andrew Hill, Tableland, Ep. 239: NFTs today are mostly static profile pictures. What if we could create more engaging experiences with dynamic NFTs in a decentralized manner? Tableland, a database protocol is revolutionizing data management in Web 3, allowing developers to build dApps in a Web 3-native manner while overcoming the limitations of existing databases In this Blockcrunch episode, Andrew Hill, Co-Founder of Tableland shares with us:
- Problems with existing databases
- Use cases unlocked by Tableland
- Entering Web 3’s data era
The Defiant
- Maker of first Ethereum Wallet Taylor Monahan Explains $10M Hack and How to Stay Safe in Crypto: Taylor Monahan is the founder of MyCrypto, an Ethereum wallet, and today she’s helping build MetaMask. As part of her job, as become a full-time blockchain detective. She’s also a character in my book, The Infinite Machine! She’s the first one who alerted us to the fact that in the past several months, a mysterious hack has taken over crypto wallets, draining $10 million worth of ether from OGs in the space. They begin the conversation with Taylor breaking down the hack from the beginning and also the latest in this saga. Then they go over her own, long history in the space, she gives risk management advice for crypto users and developers, and ponders some deep questions on whether code is law and whether DeFi should really be immutable.
- Chainlink Challenged: Competition Emerges for LinkMarines: Today we’re joined by Jacob and Marcin, co-founders of RedStone. RedStone is an oracle in the crypto space picking up steam. They get into the nitty-gritty details of oracles, how RedStone is going up against the oracle monolith Chainlink, and how they differentiate, and they share an exclusive update with us.
- Polygon Co-Founder Mihailo Bjelic: Layer 3’s, zkEVM, and NFL, Starbucks, Disney, Reddit Brand Deals: This episode stars Mihailo Bjelic, co-founder of Polygon. He discusses details behind what went on with the zkEVM launch a few months back, Mihailo’s thesis on Layer 3’s, how Polygon secured brand deals with the NFL, Starbucks and others, and what he’s most excited about in 2023.
- From AWS to Aave & Lens Protocol: Nader Dabit Explains Web 3 Social Media and Gasless Transactions: The Bankles hosts were joined by the all-around dev phenomenon Nader Dabit. Nader has become a household name across the developer community with his combination of to-the-point tutorials, live coding demos and interviews focused on modern web development, Web 3, AI, cloud computing and more. He’s always learning and experimenting in public. Nader is currently the Director of Dev Relations at Aave/Lens. In this episode, he’ll get to do some details behind his journey into Web 3 starting with The Graph, decentralized social media, the devs building on the Lens Protocol, Lens infrastructure and he’ll give us a mini deep dive into gasless transactions via Lens.
The DeSci Podcast
- LabDAO on Accelerating Advancements in Life Sciences through Accessible Scientific Tools: In this episode of the DeSci Podcast, the hosts were joined by Niklas Rindtorff, a physician-scientist and co-founder of LabDAO, an online community of life scientists collaborating to make life scientific tools more accessible. Niklas shares insights about the benefits of conducting life science research online, how scientific research has evolved over the years and the importance of collaboration within the scientific community. Going further, he delves into the complex topic of ownership rights within decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and how LabDAO navigates this space.
- CryoDAO — Advancing Cryopreservation Research using Web3: In this episode, the hosts were joined by Dr. Emil Kendziorra and Kai Micah Mills, both co-initiators of CryoDAO, a decentralized community dedicated to advancing cryopreservation research. In this podcast, they discuss the field of cryonics, including its origins and how it has evolved over the years. Dr. Emil and Mills also explain how cryopreservation works, the underexploited areas in the field of Cryonics, and how it should be Improved.
