
Uncommon Core 2.0
Uncommon Core 2.0 is a crypto research podcast. This show goes beyond speculation and investing, looking deeper. We explore the fundamental technology and incentives that make public blockchains work under the hood. This show is co-hosted by Hasu and Jon Charbonneau. They’ll be joined by occasional guests, speaking with some of the incredible builders and researchers who are looking to evolve this infrastructure stack to make the mass adoption of crypto possible.
Latest episodes

4 snips
Dec 22, 2024 • 2h
Ethereum & Solana: MEV & Beyond
Robert Miller, a product steward at Flashbots and former MEV searcher, discusses Ethereum's evolving landscape and its rollup-centric roadmap. He contrasts Ethereum's long-term decentralization goals with Solana's immediate results focus. The conversation dives into Flashbots' innovations like Rollup-Boost and BuilderNet, designed to tackle MEV challenges. Miller highlights the implications of transaction sequencing and the role of sequencers, while shedding light on the competitive dynamics between Ethereum and Solana, emphasizing the future of decentralized finance.

5 snips
Mar 22, 2024 • 2h 24min
Ethereum’s Staking Endgame
Ansgar and Caspar from Ethereum Foundation propose changes to ETH staking economics to prevent over staking. Topics include PoS economics, liquid staking, restaking, centralization concerns, and taxes. They discuss targeting stake ratios, the role of LSTs, MEV, and security. The episode delves into the complexities of economic security, validator decentralization, and stake targeting in the Ethereum ecosystem.

4 snips
Dec 7, 2023 • 1h 1min
SVM vs EVM
The podcast discusses the latest developments in the EVM and SVM worlds, including vertical scaling efforts in Ethereum, Solana's growing momentum, and Eclipse's SVM Ethereum L2. They explore the differences between EVM and SVM, the reasons for not adding state access lists to Ethereum, and the challenges of state growth in Ethereum. Additionally, they discuss MEV challenges in Ethereum and alternative approaches to address state growth.

Sep 2, 2023 • 1h 59min
An Incomplete Guide to PBS - with Mike Neuder and Chris Hager
Mike Neuder from Ethereum Foundation and Chris Hager from Flashbots join to discuss the design philosophy of proposer-builder separation (PBS) and its implementations on Ethereum. They talk about MEV-Geth and MEV-Boost, the benefits of PBS, censorship prevention, enshrined PBS, PBS on L2, PEPC, and the trade-off between decentralization and usefulness.

25 snips
Jul 14, 2023 • 1h 22min
How will Rollups Decentralize? Proof-of-Governance and more
In this episode, we explore Jon’s journey into crypto and our mutual passion for research and the writing process. We then give an overview over the key areas of crypto infrastructure today. Finally, we zoom into rollup decentralization roadmaps, and Jon shares a controversial new thesis about sequencer decentralization.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(02:42) Interview start
(03:44) Jon's work week
(08:04) ChatGPT & writing
(10:57) Jon's start in crypto
(14:45) How to pick things to work on
(17:08) Outsider's perspective on crypto
(19:05) Jon's research process
(22:00) Jon's proudest moment in crypto
(23:06) Crypto Infrastructure overview
(29:58) Why crypto infrastructure is interesting
(35:57) Rollup decentralization overview
(42:44) Challenges decentralizing the sequencer
(47:46) Ethereum vs Cosmos approach to governance & decentralization
(53:35) User ability to opt out
(56:37) Staking vs. governance deciding sequencers
(01:08:31) L3s
(01:13:34) Superchain
(01:16:38) Summary of rollup decentralization
(01:21:08) Outro
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Hasu - https://twitter.com/hasufl
Jon Charbonneau - https://twitter.com/jon_charb
UCC2 - https://twitter.com/UCC2_xyz
Website - https://ucc2.xyz
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Disclaimer: The material and information presented in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the speakers and are not the views of any entity or other person with whom the speaker is affiliated, including, without limitation, DBA Crypto, LLC. The “DBA Crypto” name and all forms thereof are the sole property of its owner, and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.

May 25, 2022 • 1h 27min
The Merge (Part 2) - with Stephane Gosselin, Danny Ryan, Tim Beiko, and Hasu
Listen to conversations between two veterans of the crypto industry: Su Zhu, CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, Strategy lead at Flashbots. Exploring the big ideas in crypto from first principles.
In this episode, Hasu continues the conversation with Danny Ryan and Tim Beiko, two researchers from the Ethereum Foundation. The three are joined by Stephane Gosselin, co-founder of Flashbots, who makes his podcast debut and stands in as Hasu's co-host.
Together, they discuss:
MEV before and after the Merge
mev-boost and proposer-builder-separation (PBS)
The rise of liquid staking pools
Whether Lido should cap its own growth
How the Ethereum Foundation sees its role in interacting with very "protocol-adjacent" projects like Flashbots + Lido
SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast
Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncommon-core/id1517659188?uo=4
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/3vuV292Him90EjQ5YL4XIw
Youtube https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8yNTc4ZDVhMC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==
Other https://anchor.fm/uncommoncore
FOLLOW your hosts
Su Zhu https://twitter.com/zhusu
Hasu https://twitter.com/hasufl
Our homepage and mailing list https://uncommoncore.co/podcast/
Transcripts, if available https://uncommoncore.co/blog/

May 12, 2022 • 1h 11min
The Merge (Part 1) - with Danny Ryan, Tim Beiko, and Hasu
Listen to conversations between two veterans of the crypto industry: Su Zhu, CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, Strategy lead at Flashbots. Exploring the big ideas in crypto from first principles.
In this episode, Hasu sits down with two Ethereum Foundation researchers, Danny Ryan and Tim Beiko, to explore Ethereum's upcoming transition to PoS. Topics discussed include:
Why do blockchains need consensus?
How does PoW consensus work today, and how will it change after PoS?
What happens between the last block of PoW and the first block of PoS?
The role of client modularity and diversity
How to test for such an important upgrade
00:00 Intro and guests 03:02 Proof of Stake since 2017 08:18 PoS - Idea to production 12:24 Why do Blockchains need consensus? PoW & PoS Basics 22:21 Why switch to PoS? 37:03 The Merge - How does it happen? 45:14 The Merge - Unbundling of the Consensus & Execution layer 1:01:45 How do you test for such an important upgrade? 1:09:55 End
SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast
Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncommon-core/id1517659188?uo=4
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/3vuV292Him90EjQ5YL4XIw
Youtube https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8yNTc4ZDVhMC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==
Other https://anchor.fm/uncommoncore
FOLLOW your hosts
Su Zhu https://twitter.com/zhusu
Hasu https://twitter.com/hasufl
Our homepage and mailing list https://uncommoncore.co/podcast/
Transcripts, if available https://uncommoncore.co/blog/

85 snips
Apr 1, 2022 • 59min
The Sovereign Individual - with Su Zhu and Hasu
Listen to conversations between two veterans of the crypto industry: Su Zhu, CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, Strategy lead at Flashbots. Exploring the big ideas in crypto from first principles.
In this episode:
The state of our macroeconomy
Destruction of the nation-state
The rise of the Sovereign Individual
How crypto fits into all of this
SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast
Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncommon-core/id1517659188?uo=4
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/3vuV292Him90EjQ5YL4XIw
Youtube https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8yNTc4ZDVhMC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==
Other https://anchor.fm/uncommoncore
FOLLOW your hosts
Su Zhu https://twitter.com/zhusu
Hasu https://twitter.com/hasufl
Our homepage and mailing list https://uncommoncore.co/podcast/
Transcripts, if available https://uncommoncore.co/blog/

4 snips
Dec 16, 2021 • 1h 37min
Hasu gets STARK-pilled - with Eli Ben-Sasson (StarkWare)
In this episode, I had the opportunity to sit down with Eli Ben-Sasson of Starkware. If you listened to my last episode with Su where we talked about the scaling approaches of different L1s blockchains compared to Ethereum, I argued that L1 blockchains do not scale and that the only way to create true scalability is to perform all of the computation off-chain and only post the results of that computation on-chain. STARKs are a technology that allows huge amounts of computation to be compressed into succinct proofs that anyone can easily verify.
Our goal for this episode was to create the most approachable and comprehensive audio resource on how STARKs work and how they will scale blockchains in the future. We start by explaining inclusive accountability and the true meaning of scalability. Then we dive into STARKs, how proof systems work in general, and where they fit into the context of unbundling blockchains. Next, we use DYDX as a comprehensive case study to learn about the StarkEx system, before diving into StarkNet and its tradeoffs to StarkEx. Finally, we talk about StarkWare’s programming language Cairo and how the different costs of proving, verifying, and storage are going to scale into the future. If you’re a developer, you should also gain a very good idea of the tradeoffs between building on a regular L1 blockchain, the general-purpose StarkNet blockchain, and a StarkEx application-specific chain.
Enjoy!
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
2:03 Eli’s backstory
5:27 What is computational integrity?
14:22 What are STARKs and how do they work?
29:03 How can validity proofs scale blockchains?
34:13 Looking at DYDX + StarkEx as a case study
56:20 What are the differences between StarkNet and StarkEx?
1:02:46 Cairo
1:13:52 What are the different costs for the end-user?
Listen to conversations between Su Zhu, the CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, an experienced crypto researcher and writer. Together with occasional guests, we explore the transformative nature of trust-minimized currency and financial services.
SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast
Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncommon-core/id1517659188?uo=4
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/3vuV292Him90EjQ5YL4XIw
Youtube https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8yNTc4ZDVhMC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==
Other https://anchor.fm/uncommoncore
FOLLOW your hosts
Su Zhu https://twitter.com/zhusu
Hasu https://twitter.com/hasufl
Our homepage and mailing list https://uncommoncore.co/podcast/
Transcripts, if available https://uncommoncore.co/blog/
FOLLOW the guest
Eli Ben-Sasson https://twitter.com/EliBenSasson
Learn about StarkNet: https://starknet.io/
Learn about Cairo programming language: https://www.cairo-lang.org/
Learn about ZK-STARK math: https://starkware.co/stark/
StarkNet Discord https://discord.gg/uJ9HZTUk2Y

26 snips
Dec 13, 2021 • 1h 23min
Ethereum vs. Alt L1s - with Su Zhu and Hasu
In this episode
What the “Crypto Villain of the Year” thinks about his image
The arguments for Ethereum’s scaling roadmap
The arguments for Alt L1s to out-scale Ethereum
What parallels to BTC maximalism Su sees in the ETH community
Listen to conversations between Su Zhu, the CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, an experienced crypto researcher and writer. Together with occasional guests, we explore the transformative nature of trust-minimized currency and financial services.
SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast
Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncommon-core/id1517659188?uo=4
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/3vuV292Him90EjQ5YL4XIw
Youtube https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8yNTc4ZDVhMC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==
Other https://anchor.fm/uncommoncore
FOLLOW on Twitter
Su Zhu https://twitter.com/zhusu
Hasu https://twitter.com/hasufl
Our homepage and mailing list https://uncommoncore.co/podcast/
Transcripts, if available https://uncommoncore.co/blog/
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