In this week’s interview I talk with Alexis Gauba, the cofounder of Opyn. Alexis and her team built the first decentralized options market, on Ethereum. These instruments give investors a tool to protect against market volatility and Black Swan events, like hacks, bank runs, and big price crashes. In DeFi the risk is especially high, which explains why Opyn has taken off since its February launch.

Options are a key piece in traditional finance and make up the most liquid market in the world, with contracts representing trillions of dollars in value. Opyn contracts are not quite yet, and even if notional volume grew five times in the past month, it’s still under $40 million. But if DeFi ends up overtaking centralized finance, we could be witnessing the rebirth of this monster-sized market. The difference is that this time, everyone can access it, and anyone can build their own financial instruments on open sourced protocols.

Alexis shares more about how Opyn was born, the project’s traction, the next markets the team plans to add and what innovative projects devs are building on top of the protocol. She also gives a peak at what Opyn V2 might look like.