The Defiant - DeFi Podcast

Stader Labs, a multi-chain liquid staking platform with 40k+ DeFi partnerships across 6 chains, is coming to Ethereum soon. Sign up to get alpha on ETHx—their ETH LST. Be the first to know about $1M in DeFi rewards!

Stader Labs, a multi-chain liquid staking platform with 40k+ DeFi partnerships across 6 chains, is coming to Ethereum soon. Sign up to get alpha on ETHx—their ETH LST. Be the first to know about $1M in DeFi rewards!

Sidney Powell is the co-founder and CEO of Maple Finance. Maple is a DeFi platform that offers uncollateralized loans and facilitates interactions between institutional borrowers and lenders. In our conversation we dive into Sidney’s background, how uncollateralized loans work, how the bear market affected Maple, the benefits of blockchain-based financial systems and more. We begin our conversation with Sidney giving us an intro to Maple Finance.

Also, if you’d like to have a say in The Defiant Podcast, and ask questions to the following guests, please join our discord channel or sign-up for a Premium account, by following this link.

🙏 Thanking our podcast sponsors:

Harsh Rajat is the founder of Push Protocol and a leading figure in the world of decentralized messaging. Push Protocol is a messaging protocol that utilizes the power of decentralized networks to create secure, private, and efficient communication between dApps and Web3 users. In our conversation we dive into Harsh’s background, the founding story of Push Protocol, their business model, the intersection of Web3 and AI, challenges in Web3 UX, and more. We begin our conversation with an introduction to Push Protocol from Harsh.

🙏 Thanking our podcast sponsors:

This episode is brought to you by Silo Finance, the risk-isolated lending market on Ethereum and Arbitrum. Lend and Borrow your favorite crypto without compromising on security. Learn more: https://silopedia.silo.finance/welcome/what-is-silo-finance

Also, a quick side note, make sure to check out our YouTube channel to keep up with our regular uploads on DeFi news, market updates, monthly investigations and more to come soon.

Recent developments include the latest draft of the DCCPA bill, Sam Bankman Fried’s industry standards proposal, the CFTC charging Ooki DAO, and the Tornado Cash sanctions. We begin our conversation with Gabriel sharing his thoughts on the current state of the crypto regulatory landscape in the U.S.

There are currently seven government bodies that govern crypto in the US. These are the SEC, CFTC, CFPB, IRS, FinCEN, OFAC, and Congress. We discuss how setting an overarching framework within which these bodies can operate could prevent them from regulating their own corners of the market.

In comparison to other DeFi projects that offer similar services, Ooki DAO is a relatively small player. With the CFTC coming after Ooki DAO, we explore the potential implications for the biggest players in the space like Aave and Compound.

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Finally, we discuss the $160M hack that Wintermute suffered recently and the lessons learned.

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Following the fallout from CeFi services such as Voyager, BlockFi, and Celsius, the focus has shifted back to the core values of decentralization, which Liquity tries to apply to the fullest: LUSD is backed purely by Ether and Liquity is governance-free and has no centralized frontend.

Crypto mixer Tornado Cash was recently sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury together with addresses that interacted with the protocol.   This prompted other DeFi protocols such as Aave and dYdX to blacklist those addresses in a bid to minimize legal risk.  Robert discusses how DeFi projects can deal with censorship.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

1inch is a DEX aggregator that finds the best rates across multiple networks. Why use a single DEX when you can use them all? Find your best deal at 1inch.

Pods stETHvv allows you to accumulate more ETH in only one click. Every time ETH price bounces, up or down, the vault earns more ETH. In this market it's not a matter of IF price will move, but WEN.

ZenGo a crypto wallet that uses biometric encryption, 3FA authentication and MPC  wallet cryptography instead of private keys.

ApeX Protocol: Engineered for high-performing precision trades in the decentralized derivatives market.

This week on the Defiant Podcast we speak to Stani Kulechov, founder & CEO of Aave, one of the first lending protocols in the DeFi space. He has been around since the inception of DeFi, now Aave Labs is the leading force in this completely new side to the web3 universe; social media. Lens aims to reimagine how social networks are built; providing an open protocol for applications to flourish, and giving users the freedom to own their information and take that data with them when they from one app to the next. Creators and influencers would monetize their content by reaching their audiences directly, and applications would gain revenue from these transactions, rather than relying on ads.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

1inch is a DEX aggregator that finds the best rates across multiple networks. Why use a single DEX when you can use them all? Find your best deal at 1inch.

Pods stETHvv allows you to accumulate more ETH in only one click. Every time ETH price bounces, up or down, the vault earns more ETH. In this market it's not a matter of IF price will move, but WEN.

ZenGo a crypto wallet that uses biometric encryption, 3FA authentication and MPC  wallet cryptography instead of private keys.

ApeX Protocol: Engineered for high-performing precision trades in the decentralized derivatives market.

1inch is a DEX aggregator that finds the best rates across multiple networks. Why use a single DEX when you can use them all? Find your best deal at 1inch.

Pods stETHvv allows you to accumulate more ETH in only one click. Every time ETH price bounces, up or down, the vault earns more ETH. In this market it's not a matter of IF price will move, but WEN.

ZenGo a crypto wallet that uses biometric encryption, 3FA authentication and MPC  wallet cryptography instead of private keys.

ApeX Protocol: Engineered for high-performing precision trades in the decentralized derivatives market.

This week on The Defiant Podcast we speak to Jake Chervinsky, the executive vice president and head of policy at Blockchain Association, a non-profit trade association representing the crypto industry in Washington DC. Jake is one of the most qualified to discuss the US Treasury Department sanctioning Tornado Cash, a development that’s caused shockwaves through crypto.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

1inch is a DEX aggregator that finds the best rates across multiple networks. Why use a single DEX when you can use them all? Find your best deal at 1inch.

Pods stETHvv allows you to accumulate more ETH in only one click. Every time ETH price bounces, up or down, the vault earns more ETH. In this market it's not a matter of IF price will move, but WEN.

ZenGo a crypto wallet that uses biometric encryption, 3FA authentication and MPC  wallet cryptography instead of private keys.

1inch is a DEX aggregator that finds the best rates across multiple networks. Why use a single DEX when you can use them all? Find your best deal at 1inch.

Web3 with a16z, a new podcast about the next internet, from a16z crypto

0x/Matcha makes sure you’re getting the best possible price by routing trades over various DEXs, without taking commissions. Head over to matcha.xyz/defiant.

1inch is a DEX aggregator that finds the best rates across multiple networks. Why use a single DEX when you can use them all? Find your best deal at 1inch.

Web3 with a16z, a new podcast about the next internet, from a16z crypto

0x/Matcha makes sure you’re getting the best possible price by routing trades over various DEXs, without taking commissions. Head over to matcha.xyz/defiant.

This week on The Defiant podcast we speak with Justin Drake. Justin is a researcher for the Ethereum foundation. He’s at the forefront of the biggest change to happen in Ethereum's history: The transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake, also known as The Merge. We go into what the next steps are before this change happens, how exactly it will be executed, and what the risks are. Last week, right after we recorded this interview, fellow researcher Tim Beiko suggested the switch would happen in September.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

1inch is a DEX aggregator that finds the best rates across multiple networks. Why use a single DEX when you can use them all? Find your best deal at 1inch.

Web3 with a16z, a new podcast about the next internet, from a16z crypto

0x/Matcha makes sure you’re getting the best possible price by routing trades over various DEXs, without taking commissions. Head over to matcha.xyz/defiant.

dYdX has launched a Grants program with funding allocated to open-source builders. Come help build the future of decentralized trading at dydxgrants.com

Nexo is a platform where you can swap 300+ market pairs and borrow against your crypto from 0% APR. Sign up to Nexo until June 30 & get a welcome bonus of up to $150 in BTC.

Avalanche Subnets allow anyone build custom, app-specific blockchains - the future of Web3 scaling.

APWine - get your future yield today, speculate on APY evolution or fix APY rates. Discover the latest yield tokenization trend in Web3 with 'APwine'

Joseph Delong is the former CTO of SushiSwap, one of the biggest decentralized exchanges, and the founder of Astaria, a recently created NFT lending protocol. Joseph has been heavily involved in building and managing DAOs. With the recent controversial proposals surfacing on MakerDAO and Lido, we are once again reminded of the importance of DAO governance. We begin by talking about Joseph’s analogy on what would happen if a lemonade stand was run by a DAO and reflect on some of the DAO experiments that occurred over the last couple of years.

Thanking our sponsors:

1inch is a DEX aggregator that finds the best rates across multiple networks. Why use a single DEX when you can use them all? Find your best deal at 1inch.

0x/Matcha makes sure you’re getting the best possible price by routing trades over various DEXs, without taking commissions. Head over to matcha.xyz/defiant.

Web3 with a16z, a new podcast about the next internet, from a16z crypto

This week on The Defiant Podcast we speak with Hasu, strategic advisor at Lido, strategy lead at Flashbots, MakerDAO delegate, researcher at Paradigm and host of the Uncommon Core Podcast. That’s a lot of titles and it goes to show just how deeply plugged into DeFi and crypto this anon researcher is.   In this episode, we’ll focus on Lido, as it’s become a crucial piece of infrastructure for Ethereum.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

dYdX has launched a Grants program with funding allocated to open-source builders. Come help build the future of decentralized trading at dydxgrants.com

Nexo is a platform where you can swap 300+ market pairs and borrow against your crypto from 0% APR. Sign up to Nexo until June 30 & get a welcome bonus of up to $150 in BTC.

Avalanche Subnets allow anyone build custom, app-specific blockchains - the future of Web3 scaling.

APWine - get your future yield today, speculate on APY evolution or fix APY rates. Discover the latest yield tokenization trend in Web3 with 'APwine'

dYdX has has launched a Grants program with funding allocated to open source builders. Come help build the future of decentralized trading at dydxgrants.com

Nexo is a platform where you can swap 300+ market pairs and borrow against your crypto from 0% APR. Sign up to Nexo until June 30 & get a welcome bonus of up to $150 in BTC.

Avalanche Subnets allow anyone build custom, app-specific blockchains - the future of Web3 scaling.

APWine - get your future yield today, speculate on APY evolution or fix APY rates. Discover the latest yield tokenisation trend in Web3 with 'APwine'

dYdX has has launched a Grants program with funding allocated to open source builders. Come help build the future of decentralized trading at dydxgrants.com

Nexo is a platform where you can swap 300+ market pairs and borrow against your crypto from 0% APR. Sign up to Nexo until June 30 & get a welcome bonus of up to $150 in BTC.

Avalanche Subnets allow anyone build custom, app-specific blockchains - the future of Web3 scaling.

APWine - get your future yield today, speculate on APY evolution or fix APY rates. Discover the latest yield tokenisation trend in Web3 with 'APwine'

Adriana Hoppenbrouwer-Pereira is the co-founder and CMO of The Fabricant, a digital fashion house for the metaverse founded in 2018. Their belief is that fashion is identity, and digital fashion is simply an extension of the digital identity we’re building in web 3. The Fabricant is one of the most prolific digital garment creators today and we discuss how (and if)  these pieces are being used and whether the market slump has affected adoption. Adriana discussed The Fabricant’s collaboration with World of Women and how these two communities are seeking to make sure women feel represented and welcome in web3.

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Yoni Assia is the founder and CEO of eToro, one of the most successful crypto and stock buying apps with over 27 million users in more than 100 countries.   Originally founded in 2007, it was one of the pioneering companies to incorporate crypto as early as 2013. Yoni speaks about what led to being so early and where the idea for Etoro stemmed from. He also dives into the importance of the user experience in creating a mainstream crypto trading app, and how including a social aspect to the product early on helped in accelerating growth.

We talked about the next phase for eToro and the role NFTs and DeFi will play in the platform, as he looks to integrate both. Yoni is convinced finance will become increasingly digital, and believes eToro’s role is to help investors diversify their holdings. He sees a change in investment attitudes as the younger generation is interested in taking a more active role with their assets, and trading is becoming a more social experience. Finally, we talk about some of the lessons he has learned about entrepreneurship and taking big risks.

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Kevin Zhou is the founder of crypto quant fund, Galois Capital and former head of trading at Kraken. Last week, Terra, one of the most prominent ecosystems in crypto, effectively disintegrated in days. Its native token Luna had over $40 B in market cap at its peak, and nearly all of it was wiped out while UST, which was supposed to be a stablecoin worth $1 crashed. It was a historical moment in crypto as never before had a project that big, crashed so hard, so quickly. Kevin was one of the few who saw it coming and predicted the fall just a couple of months ago. In this interview, he talks about the red flags that helped him get to that conclusion. We also talk about whether there’s any hope for algorithmic stablecoins and explore potential alternatives for this type of asset.  Kevin discusses the ripple effects we’re already seeing in crypto and more broadly, what to expect for the coming bear market.

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This week we speak to Diego Fernandez, the secretary of innovation and digital transformation for the city of Buenos Aires. Recently, news broke that Buenos Aires will be taking tax payments via crypto, an initiative that Diego helped shape. We talk about what this means for residents of the city and how it works in practice. Diego also addressed critics’ response to the measure, who questioned why Argentines would spend crypto instead of holding it as a store of value. Diego dives into the city’s broader plans with crypto, including how it wants to leverage the tools and data at its disposal to build a blockchain-based identity system.

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BoredElonMusk is one of the most prominent Twitter personalities in the crypto space with over 1.7M followers at the time of recording. With decades of online gaming experience, he is now taking his skills offline with his new venture, Bored Box, a curation platform for blockchain games. BoredElon grew his Twitter profile by consistently tweeting wacky but relatable inventions. We talk about how he built out his brand on Twitter, at what point he was able to leverage and monetize his audience, and also his take on the OG Elon’s move to try to buy the social media platform. We also get into how he was able to transition to crypto, first through NFT artist collabs, next by investing in startups and now building his own project.

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Fabian Schär is one of the most prominent academics focusing on blockchains and specifically DeFi. He has a great deal of experience speaking with regulators and studying different laws and frameworks being applied to crypto. He argues regulators should not be using old laws to regulate new tech. He also says regulation should happen at the off and on-ramp level, and at individual businesses, but not in the non-custodial world of on-chain transactions. Fabian has the somewhat controversial opinion that regultaros should ditch consumer protection as a goal all together, and trust that each individual should be free to decide what to do with their money, and take responsibility for their decisions.

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Jill Gunter is the co-founder and chief strategy officer at scaling solution Espresso Systems and a venture partner at Slow Ventures. She became interested in Bitcoin via her experience with Latin American markets — which is somewhat of a pattern in the space. She was a debt trader at Goldman Sachs, focusing on Argentina and Venezuelan bonds, and saw crypto’s potential to help those in corrupt or repressive regimes. She continued exploring how crypto can help skirt currency controls and enable more global and efficient markets, and we discuss how those themes are playing out right now in the war in Ukraine. We talk about how Jill went from Wall Street to crypto, and from VC to founder. Her latest venture is Espresso Systems, which aims to bring scalability and privacy to web3.

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We have a special podcast episode this week — a live conversation between Defiant founder Camila, our head of video Robin, and our editor Alp, recorded directly from The Defiant’s video studio in the Netherlands. Robin and Alp were one of the very first team members working with Camila in making the best DeFi and web3 content out there. In this episode we hear their story, how they came to work together and what moves them. We also go behind the scenes on their intense production process and schedule. Together with Camila, they also try to make sense of the latest drivers behind the crypto market, including the war in Ukraine, last year’s massive bull run and the recent volatility.

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Ethan Buchman is the co-founder of Cosmos, an ecosystem of interoperable blockchains which includes Terra, Osmosis and Crypto.org, and has the most value locked after Ethereum. It's a complex network with many moving parts, and in the past year it has exploded with activity. Cosmos was born out of Ethan’s research into a switch from proof of work to proof of stake, and his idea to enable each project and community to be able to build and secure their own blockchain. It was Ethan’s goal to bring about a community computer revolution, stemming from the personal computer revolution.

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Ken Seiff is the managing partner of Blockchange Ventures, one of the longest-standing venture funds focusing on early-stage blockchain startups. One of his very first forays into crypto was as one of the investors in Ethereum’s token sale, as I describe in my book, The Infinite Machine. He went on to focus on various other Layer 1s at Blockchange, investing in Polkadot, Solana, Near and Flow, among others. Ken’s investments look to capture not just the potential value of the venture itself, but the overall growth of a space that is still in its infancy, and his bet is that taking exposure at the base protocol layer is the best way to do that.

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Kevin Owocki is the founder of Gitcoin, which helps coordinate crowdfunding for projects and software developments on the Ethereum blockchain.  With 300,000 builders and over 25,000 funders, Gitcoin has become a key pillar of the Ethereum nation, making sure public goods can thrive. We talk about how Gitcoin was born as a reaction to the ICO era, after Kevin realized many of the business models and funding mechanisms on Ethereum were broken. Open-source software is carrying a huge weight, while its builders are not being properly compensated or incentivized, and Gitcoin wants to change that.

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Fabian Vogelsteller is a Blockchain veteran who was part of the Ethereum community in its very early days. He helped shape the Ethereum space, building an ETH Wallet and a web3 Browser, which were one of the first of their kind. Fabian is the co-founder of the Lukso blockchain and together with Vitalik Buterin, created the ERC-20 standard, a foundational building block for Ethereum. The next standard Fabian is excited about is ERC725, which he says will help introduce blockchain-based profiles as opposed to accounts. Fabian believes this approach would be a seismic shift, improving usability and protecting users’ assets.

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In this week’s episode of The Defiant podcast, we speak to Laura Shin, the former senior editor at Forbes and host of the popular podcast Unchained, about her new book ‘The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze.’ In Cryptopians, Laura may have solved Ethereum’s biggest mystery; the identity of the DAO hacker. In this interview, she goes into the backstory of how she came up with the most credible suspect to date.

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Gavin Wood’s crypto journey started with Ethereum – he was one of the eight original founders and the project’s CTO in the early days. Today though, he’s busy building Polkadot, a chain that is attempting to improve where Ethereum falls short. Gavin wants to turn Polkadot into a multichain powerhouse where financial systems and web apps can run and interact seamlessly. To Gavin, Polkadot can be the base infrastructure for a web3 future, a set of technologies that can guarantee privacy, trustlessness and decentralization, which to him, will be crucial if the free world is going to survive.

Edan Yago is a co-founder of Sovryn, a Bitcoin-based lending protocol. He’s maybe the first Bitcoin builder we have had on our show and that’s because DeFi on the first blockchain network has been slow to pick up — but Edan says that’s about to change. Ethereum and other smart contracts platforms have evolved over time with use cases like tokens, DAO’s and NFTs flourishing. Meanwhile, Bitcoin has mainly looked from the sidelines. Edan says there has been a gradual mentality shift, as Bitcoiners accept the first cryptocurrency should be able to support a wider array of use cases to become the backbone of a more decentralized financial system.

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Vitalik Buterin 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 says yes and no. In the interview, it’s clear that to him, it’s almost a given that Ethereum will achieve this goal. The bigger concern is not whether the network becomes a settlement layer and decentralized engine for smart contracts used globally, but how much value and impact applications running on top of it will bring.

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Griff Green is one of the co-founders of Giveth, which aims to build the future of charity using the Ethereum blockchain. It wants to become the gateway for non-profit organizations into web3, giving them the tools to grow their own communities via DAOs and crypto. The primary source of revenue for any non-profit organization is donations, but relying on individuals giving voluntarily can limit their impact, Griff says. He argues a system that better aligns incentives can allow non-profits to have a much larger role in society, potentially even stepping in where local governments are failing. The big vision is for donors and volunteers to become akin to investors in an organization, and be rewarded for their participation too.

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When Emin Gun Sirer first came on The Defiant in May 2020, Avalanche 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. We talk about how the project got here and how it wants to create a path for faster and more scalable decentralized network, amid heavy competition from other Layer 1 blockchains.

Emin makes the case for Avalache’s novel consensus mechanism, paired with subnets with their own virtual machines, and he also has scathing criticism for Ethereum and other Layer 2 scaling solutions. To him, once a platform starts building Layer 2s, it means they’ve run out of ideas on how to make a good Layer 1. We also discuss the big picture goal for Avalanche; Bitcoin centers around digital gold, Ethereum strives to create the world computer, and Avalanche wants to digitize all assets. If it's on a balance sheet, Emin says, it can be on a blockchain, and we discuss what it will take for it to get there.

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This week, we sit with Kain Warwick, DeFi OG and founder of Synthetix. In some ways, last year wasn’t a great one for the synthetic assets protocol. As many DeFi projects boomed, SNX’s price and TVL dropped. Kain says he was too optimistic about how soon Synthetix would be able to scale with optimistic roll-ups. If he were to do things again, he would probably use Polygon first and move to Optimism once the solution was ready. But last year was also a time to build on a strong foundation. He’s looking forward to the months to come, when all of that effort hopefully comes to light, with the protocol fully live on Optimism, with perpetual swaps expected to be launched too. He’s a firm believer that Ethereum and its Layer 2 solutions will capture the most value being built in DeFi and web3.

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Welcome back to The Defiant podcast! After a brief break at the end of last year, we’re back stronger and better than ever to continue chatting with the greatest and brightest minds in DeFi and web3. Our first guest is our very own Robin Schmidt, aka SuperMassive. Robin leads multimedia at the Defiant and produces our video content, which has become known for raising the bar way beyond what’s expected not just from crypto videos, but from all of YouTube. If you haven’t already, check out and subscribe to our channel. I wanted to do the first video of the year with Robin to get the chance to talk about The Defiant itself – what moves us, what sets us apart and what we’re expecting for this year. After over a year working together, I also wanted to finally shine the spotlight on the man behind the video host, and hear the story of how he got here.

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In this week’s episode I speak with Nick Johnson, founder and lead developer of Ethereum Name Service, or ENS. Nick talks about the journey of ENS, from an internal project within the Ethereum Foundation, to spinning off to become a public good for Ethereum and other blockchains, and recently decentralizing and becoming a DAO controlled by token holders. Nick talks about the big vision of ENS, which is to become the naming service for every digital resource in the world.

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In this week’s episode I speak with Geoff Cook, co-founder of Base, a design studio with huge clients from all industries, including The New York Times, MoMA, ING Bank and large-scale projects like JFK’s Terminal 4 and the Meatpacking District in New York. Geoff hopes to soon add crypto to the list. He recently wrote an article stating that "For Crypto, Branding Could be the Highest Currency” as the success of these projects will rely on communicating complex concepts and features to gain mass adoption. We discuss that crypto is in its teenage years in terms of branding: crypto, and especially DeFi projects, are rebelling against traditional finance and web2, but they’re still seeking to belong to a group and are not expressing their own individual characteristics and values. This is making all DeFi brands look alike. Geoff says that a company, or in the case of crypto, a protocol, that wants to build a powerful brand needs to figure out the story they want to tell.

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In this week’s episode I, speak with Nadya Tolokonnikova, one of the founding members of the feminist punk rock protest collective, Pussy Riot. Nadya has been protesting against the repression of individual freedoms in Russia since she was 17. She started Pussy Riot to focus on women and non-binary people as she noticed leadership would always fall on men. The group started performing in the streets of Moscow and were being repeatedly arrested for a few hours at a time, until one day in 2012, Nadya was put in jail for two years, for performing in a church. She believes art is a more effective vehicle for influencing hearts and minds than politics and that’s why she continues to perform. This year, she discovered she can use cryptocurrency and NFTs as tools to amplify her art, and coordinate people and capital on a global scale.

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Zeneca is an NFT investor and content creator who grew his collection of non-fungible tokens from 0 to about 3,000 pieces worth millions in less than a year. He comes on the podcast to talk about how he went from professional poker player to full-time NFT trader, and what lessons from poker he has brought over to crypto.Zeneca believes the NFT market has hit a downturn amid rising crypto prices because it has become saturated with the same types of projects. He believes avatars will take a back seat to projects where NFTs have utility beyond displaying the art itself and being part of a community. That’s why gaming is setting up to be the next big movement in NFTs, he says. Still, he doesn’t believe we’ve seen a true bull and bear market yet — that will come when NFTs better integrate with DeFi and leverage comes into play.

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In this week’s episode I speak with Eric Wall, chief investment officer at Arcane Assets. He used to be known as the Altcoin Slayer, thanks to his brutal takedowns of non-bitcoin tokens in the 2017 ICO era, which made him popular among Bitcoin maximalists. But he’s not a maximalist anymore, and sees value in other blockchains as he has recognized they can fulfill use cases that Bitcoin can’t. He even argues Bitcoin risks being overtaken by Ethereum if it doesn’t adopt some ETH’s own features and developments, such as a fee-burning mechanism and a more expressive scripting language.

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In this week’s episode I speak with Scoopy Trooples, founder of Alchemix, a protocol that programs self-paying loans without the risk of liquidations. Think about that; here’s a DeFi application that promises to automatically pay users’ collateralized loans, and on top of that, guarantee they won’t be liquidated. Scoopy explains how something like that can work and it’s all about plugging into other money legos like Yearn Finance to earn yield off that collateral and use that yield to pay off loans. Scoopy also goes into Alchemix v2 and into what he believes is a new movement in DeFi, which he helped coin as DeFi 2.0. Scoopy says dapps will now have options besides yield farming to attract liquidity to their protocols, which will allow teams to better control assets in their smart contracts, increasing capital efficiency.

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In this week’s episode, I interview Adam Jackson, co-founder of Braintrust, a user-owned talent network. Think Fiverr for web3. Braintrust runs on Ethereum, has thousands of users, household names like NASA, TaskRabbit, Nike and Nestlé are clients, it has processed millions of dollars, yet not many people in the crypto community have heard of it.  And it may be by design, as the team has focused o