Welcome to The Chopping Block – where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. In this episode, the crew tackles a triple-header of crypto’s growing pains: the bizarre saga of James Wynn—a memecoin gambler whose billion-dollar positions on Hyperliquid ended in public ruin; the Ethereum Foundation’s surprise rebrand into “Protocol” and its sudden embrace of hierarchy; and a bold manifesto from Miles Jennings calling for the end of crypto foundations as we know them. Is radical transparency a feature or a trap? Is Ethereum finally prioritizing execution over vibes? And are foundations just offshore theater—or necessary guardians of decentralization? The gang debates all this and more in a conversation that asks: who’s really in control of crypto—and should they be?
Show highlights
🔹 James Wynn: From $1B to $16 – The infamous Hyperliquid trader wipes out, then begs for donations… and opens new positions days later
🔹 Liquidation Theater – Was Wynn’s downfall market manipulation, a psyop, or just crypto doing what it always does?
🔹 Hyperliquid Transparency Debate – CZ, Jump, and Hyperliquid clash over whether radical openness helps or harms
🔹 Stop-Hunting Season – Tarun explains why onchain liquidation is more deterministic—but not necessarily more malicious
🔹 Ethereum Foundation Rebrands – Meet “Protocol”: a new structure, a new strategy, and maybe… a new hierarchy
🔹 The End of Purge & Surge – Is Ethereum finally abandoning the meme roadmap and focusing on shipping?
🔹 Tim Beiko’s New Role – A surprising centralization of coordination—and why the ETH community seems to like it
🔹 DUCS vs. DUNA – The crew proposes a new Ethereum acronym—and debates Miles Jennings’ push to end the foundation model
🔹 Are Foundations Just Offshore Theater? – Haseeb argues it’s time to kill the Cayman entity and rethink DAO legal structures
🔹 The Legal Marketing Wars – Tarun and Tom debate whether crypto’s governance evolution is genuine—or just “intellectual shilling”
⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly ⭐️Robert Leshner, CEO & Co-founder of Superstate⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly
The end of the foundation era in crypto by Miles Jenningshttps://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/end-foundation-era-crypto/
Announcing Protocol by Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, Alex Stokes
https://blog.ethereum.org/2025/06/02/announcing-protocol
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
02:12 The Saga of James Wynn
06:20 Market Manipulation vs. Transparency
17:37 57, Tarun’s Favorite Number
20:12 EF's “Protocol”
33:45 DUCS! Decentralization, UX, Censorship Resistance, and Scaling
36:55 The End of the Foundation Era
45:04 The Role of Legal Structures in Crypto
52:49 Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up
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