Welcome back to the Gwart Show! Today we are joined by Alex Watts, CEO and co-founder of Fastlane Labs. They discuss MEV, Ethereum's challenges, and UX. He explores the tensions between DeFi and traditional finance, the potential risks of stablecoins, and the need for crypto to focus on real-world outcomes beyond just decentralization.

Follow our guest on Twitter: @ThogardPvP

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:57 Alex's background

01:35 Becoming a Seeker

03:13 MEV opportunities

04:56 Fastlane

06:36 Polygon sidecar?

09:36 MEV extraction

12:01 Composability

17:15 App Specific Sequencing on Solana

22:41 End of the PBS experiment

27:28 Fixing PBS

29:50 Multiple concurrent proposers

33:56 Effects of MPC

39:59 ETH l1 fees

43:37 Future of ETH L1

45:30 ETH as money

50:21 Are l2s parasitic?

52:33 ETH & hard truths

56:31 Valuing blockchains based on MEV

1:04:05 Validators: more than construct blocks

1:05:34 Institutionalization of validators

1:09:28 Future of blockchain activity

👋The Gwart Show is proudly presented by Ellipsis Labs! Ellipsis Labs is building foundational products in DeFi. Their first product @PhoenixTrade is the leading orderbook DEX on Solana. The team is growing—visit ellipsislabs.xyz for engineering opportunities.

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Sequencing and Layers With Thogard