CoinDesk Podcast Network
UNCHAINED: The Catalysts for This Crypto Bull Market | AI, DeFi, Real World Assets?
Episode guests
Podcast summary created with Snipd AI
Quick takeaways
- Crypto and AI intersecting for future growth in the crypto space.
- Hack VC's strategic focus on early-stage Web3 infrastructure and value-based investing.
- Importance of security improvements and AI integration in decentralized applications.
Deep dives
Polkadot 2.0 Upgrade Accelerates Ecosystem Growth
The Polkadot 2.0 upgrade is set to boost the ecosystem's speed, security, and adaptability. With over 2,000 developers, Polkadot is a key player in Layer Zero blockchain technology. The upgrade aims to enhance GameFi and DeFi capabilities, offering a faster and more secure platform for scalability and growth.
HackVC Raises $150 Million Fund in Bear Market
HackVC's recent funding success of $150 million during a bear market indicates their confidence in early-stage Web 3 opportunities. With a focus on fundamental value investing and supporting transformative technologies, HackVC prioritizes infrastructure investments over meme-driven sectors like NFTs and metaverse. Their strategic approach aims to deploy capital behind visionary VCs, emphasizing a fundamental and value-based investing style.
Modular vs. Monolithic Blockchain Architecture: HackVC's Focus on Modularity
HackVC leans towards a modular blockchain architecture approach, emphasizing specialization and optimization for scalability, decentralization, and security. While acknowledging the benefits of monolithic architectures like Solana for current user experiences in DeFi, HackVC believes modularity is crucial for future technological advancements and solving infrastructure challenges. By fostering specialization, modularity enhances interoperability and enables addressing core blockchain fundamentals for long-term sustainability.
The Future of DeFi: Financial Middleware and Infrastructure
DeFi represents a significant use case in crypto, particularly in providing financial middleware and plumbing for various decentralized applications. Beyond the hype, DeFi's integration promotes financial interactions within blockchain-based applications, enhancing user experiences and utility. Stablecoins within DeFi emerge as crucial components, leveraging financial layers to transform applications into financial games with native and intrinsic financial features. DeFi's role as central infrastructure and financial plumbing fuels its relevance as the foundational layer for diverse consumer applications within the crypto ecosystem.
DeFi's Complex Landscape and Need for Real-World Assets
DeFi, specifically Ethereum-based DeFi, navigates a complex landscape characterized by high volatility and intense but functional structures. The DeFi ecosystem offers a range of use cases such as overcollateralized lending and trading crypto assets, operating as a separate realm from traditional finance. The call for more real-world assets like stablecoins to enhance DeFi's utility and transparency remains vital for broader adoption. Despite challenges in regulatory compliance, active institutional participation in DeFi signals ongoing evolution and the necessity of solid infrastructural development for sustainable growth.
Enhancing Security and Infrastructure for Crypto Market Evolution
Security in the crypto space remains a prominent concern necessitating solutions both at the smart contract level and blockchain security infrastructure. Improving programming languages like Move and implementing formal verification services aim to enhance smart contract security. Moreover, exploring reversible blockchains and shared security protocols can mitigate risks and make blockchain interactions more resilient. The crypto market's evolution hinges on robust infrastructure development, efficient capital management in DeFi, and innovations fostering enhanced security measures and user accessibility.
As the crypto bull market gets started, Alex Pack of Hack VC dives into why he thinks crypto is still so early and how his firm believes crypto and AI will intersect.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
In this episode of Unchained, Alex Pack, managing partner at Hack VC. Pack discusses the firm's recent $150 million fundraise, the challenges of raising capital in a bear market, and the firm's focus on early-stage Web3 infrastructure. He also shares his thoughts on the intersection of crypto and AI, the future of DeFi, and the importance of security in the crypto space. Pack believes that the current infrastructure of crypto is still in its early stages and needs significant improvement before it can reach mainstream adoption. He also sees potential in the development of more secure smart contracts and the integration of AI into decentralized applications.
Show highlights:
- How Hack VC was able to raise $150 million in a bear market, especially after the blowups of FTX, 3AC, and Terra
- Alex's interaction with SBF, whom he calls a "sociopath," and why he didn't invest in FTX
- Hack VC's philosophy to "back hackers" in crypto
- The goals behind Zuzalu, the new community that resembles Balaji Srinivasan's idea of a network state
- What the main focus of Hack VC's investments are, including scalability, AI, and DeFi
- Why Alex believes that "we are still so early"
- How Alex believes crypto and artificial intelligence will intersect
- The role of AI agents and how to use them in decentralized applications
- Why he thinks that EigenLayer is a great solution for middleware applications
- Alex's opinion on the modular vs. monolithic approach for scaling blockchains
- How DeFi survived the last bear market, contrasted with the collapses of CeFi companies like Celsius, BlockFi and FTX
- Whether algorithmic stablecoins can ever work and what Alex thinks of Ethena's USDe
- How to improve security in crypto, according to Alex
- Why the outcome of the Bitcoin ETFs exceeded Alex's expectations
- What he believes the catalysts are for the next bull market
Thank you to our sponsors! Polkadot
Guest |
Alex Pack, Managing partner at Hack VC
Previous appearances on Unchained:
Dragonfly Capital on Why Ethereum Is So Far in the Lead
‘The Last Big Whale’: Why the Crypto Contagion of 2022 Eventually Hit Genesis
Links |
New fund
Bloomberg: Hack VC Raises $150 Million for Bets on Battered Crypto Industry
Hack VC Closes $150M Venture Fund I, Bringing AUM to $425M
Stablecoins:
Unchained:
What Is Ethena’s USDe Synethic Dollar? A Beginner’s Guide
What Is Terra and Why Did It Fail?
Why It's so Hard to Keep Stablecoins Stable
What Is Depegging in Crypto and Why Does It Occur?
What Is Real-World Asset (RWA) Tokenization? A Beginner's Guide
EigenLayer ecosystem
Unchained: What Is EigenLayer? A Guide to the Decentralized ETH Restaking Protocol
The Block: AltLayer closes $14.4 million strategic round co-led by Polychain and Hack VC
Modular vs. monolithic approach
Unchained:
What Are Modular Blockchains? A Beginner's Guide
Three Crypto Pioneers on Crypto’s Monolithic vs. Modular Debate
Crypto x AI crossover
io.net and Ritual Collaborate to Boost Global AI Compute Landscape
Ritual x EigenLayer: Restaking for AI
Unchained: 5 Use Cases of AI in Blockchain
Zuzalu
Decrypt: I Spent a Month Inside Vitalik Buterin’s Social Experiment—Here’s What It Was Really Like
-
Unchained Podcast is Produced by Laura Shin Media, LLC. Distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Michele Musso and Executive Producer is Jared Schwartz.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts
