Uncommon Core 2.0

Today, I’m sitting down with Su Zhu, my co-host and friend, to talk about the state of the crypto market and what he’s seeing on the horizon. Su is the CEO as well as Chief Investment Officer at Three Arrows Capital, one of the largest trading firms in crypto.  Just one thing before we dive in, we make no money from this podcast we do want to grow our audience. so please take the time to leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps a lot with discovery. Thank you. Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncommon-core/id1517659188 Su Zhu https://twitter.com/zhusu Hasu https://twitter.com/hasufl 

Today, we bring you a special episode. This is actually Part II of an interview I did with Anna Rose of the Zero Knowledge Podcast, and Tarun Chitra of Gauntlet. We explore the rise of governance tokens by looking at Sushiswap as our case study. Part I has been released on the ZK podcast and you can find the link to it in the show notes. It's not necessary for you to follow along, but it was a great and very lively discussion and I still recommend you listen to it first. Finally, we recorded this episode the day before Uniswap launched its own token. So keep that in mind when you hear as speculate about its future. Enjoy! Listen to Part I https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/148  (RSS: https://feeds.fireside.fm/zeroknowledge/rss) Anna Rose https://twitter.com/AnnaRRose Tarun Chitra https://twitter.com/tarunchitra Hasu https://twitter.com/hasufl

Today, Su and I talk to Will Price and Trent Elmore of YAM.finance. YAM launched last month as a mix between Yearn’s fair launch, Ampleforth's supply elasticity, and Compound’s on-chain governance. And while its launch was short-lived (it had to shut down from a bug only two days later), it inspired a whole wave of food coins that tried to replicate its initial success. In this episode, we explore what made YAM so successful and what might be in store for the future. Will Price https://twitter.com/will__price Trent Elmore https://twitter.com/trentelme Su Zhu https://twitter.com/zhusu Hasu https://twitter.com/hasufl

Today, I brought on Dan Robinson and Georgios Konstantopoulos, who are both research partners at Paradigm. Together, we explore the topic of MEV, or “Miner Extractable Value”. Blockchains like Ethereum have this dirty little secret that, while in most regards they are very decentralized, the ordering of transactions within a single block is actually completely in the hands of a single miner. They can insert their own transactions, rearrange those of users, or even censor them completely. MEV describes how much value a miner can extract from users and other miners by using these powers to their advantage. If you’ve never looked into MEV before, I think you’ll be both shocked and fascinated by the complexity and sophistication of the war that’s raging inside Ethereum’s memory pool. Enjoy Dan Robinson https://twitter.com/danrobinson Georgios Konstantopoulos https://twitter.com/gakonst Hasu https://twitter.com/hasufl Flash Boys 2.0 (Daian et al) https://pdaian.com/flashboys2.pdf

For today’s episode, I sat down with Su Zhu to learn all about perpetual swaps. There’s probably not a person in crypto who has more authority on this topic than him. The first half of the episode serves as a general introduction to perpetual swaps, while in the second half, we explore how perpetual swaps are coming to DeFi and why they are the single biggest primitive that is still missing from the DeFi puzzle. While the episode can get pretty technical at times, we tried to follow a logical buildup, so no prior knowledge should be required. Please note that I put some links to definitions and followup reading into the show notes. Enjoy the episode. In this episode: What is a perpetual swap and how does it work The history of perp swaps and their usage outside of cryptocurrency How the oracle problem is misunderstood AMM and central limit order book: mapping the two approaches to perpetual swaps in DeFi Tradeoffs between perps in CeFi and DeFi Perpetual swaps as money legos How DeFi perp swaps will enable a new form of stablecoin The role of insurance funds and auto liquidation Hasu Twitter https://twitter.com/hasufl Su Zhu Twitter https://twitter.com/zhusu Episode transcript https://uncommoncore.co/uncommon-core-podcast-episode-8-transcript/ Definitions and further reading: TWAP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-weighted_average_price LIBOR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor CFD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_for_difference Tom next swaps: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tomorrownext.asp Rolling a futures contract https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rollforward.asp yTokens and yVaults: https://anchor.fm/uncommoncore/episodes/6-Andre-Cronje-and-the-Philosophy-of-Yearn-Finance-ei4vds Synthetix tokens and inverse tokens: https://docs.synthetix.io/tokens/ Article on crypto banking https://insights.deribit.com/market-research/the-great-race-to-crypto-banking/ Design space for auto liquidation mechanisms https://insights.deribit.com/market-research/crypto-derivatives-exchanges-liquidation-pioneers/

We return for the second half of our interview with Andre Cronje, a long-time DeFi developer, and creator of Yearn Finance. You can think of Yearn as a smart bank account that automatically allocates your assets to different low-risk investment strategies that execute on the Ethereum blockchain. My co-host is Tarun Chitra, the CEO and founder of Gauntlet, a company that helps stress test the incentive structures and economics of cryptocurrency protocols, especially of DeFi protocols. In this episode, we explore governance in Yearn in particular and how governance in DeFi should work in general. What roles exist, and how can we align their incentives? Is governance a feature to be tokenized and sold off, or an attack vector to be closed? How does the price of a governance token affect the security of its parent protocol? And why does Andre eventually want to retreat from being the lead developer of Yearn Finance? Yearn Finance Gauntlet Hasu's article "Is Yearn.finance safe to use?" Episode Transcript

This week, I - Hasu - talk to Andre Cronje, a long-time DeFi developer, and creator of Yearn Finance. You can think of Yearn as a smart bank account that automatically allocates your assets to different low-risk investment strategies that execute on the Ethereum blockchain. My co-host is Tarun Chitra, the CEO and founder of Gauntlet, a company that helps stress test the incentive structures and economics of cryptocurrency protocols, especially of DeFi protocols. We're releasing this interview in two parts. The first gives you an introduction to Yearn Finance, it's future, and Andre's design and investment philosophy in building it. Part II explores the design space for governance systems in DeFi - one of the hottest topics in crypto right now. Yearn Finance Gauntlet Hasu's article "Is Yearn.finance safe to use?" New: Episode Transcript

In this episode, Su and Hasu talk to Matt Castro and Brad Koeppen of CMT Digital, one of the longest-standing trading firms in crypto. Topics covered - What their firm does in crypto - What CMT thinks about DeFi - The rise of AMMs and their future - Why CMT co-founded the Chigaco DeFi Alliance - Why community-funded coins have performed better than VC-funded ones, and whether this trend will continue Su Zhu is the CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital. Hasu is a cryptocurrency researcher and writer. Together, they publish on Deribit Insights and uncommoncore.co.

In this episode, Su and Hasu are joined by James Prestwich, one of the leading technical experts and thinkers in this space. Topics covered: - What is Blockstream Liquid - The bug James found - Disclosure and aftermath - Sidechains, channels, plasma, and rollups - How Bitcoin isolates itself from innovation happening on other chains (recommended reading) - Bitcoin in DeFi Su Zhu is the CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital. Hasu is a cryptocurrency researcher and writer. Together, they publish on Deribit Insights and uncommoncore.co.

In this episode, Su and Hasu talk about decentralized finance (DeFi). Topics covered: - What DeFi means to Su - Why use DeFi over CeFi? - Is the current demand organic or subsidized by VC money? - Where users will allocate on the trust spectrum - The delicate dance between regulatory arbitrage & attracting talent and capital - The path to decentralization - Most important DeFi use cases today and in the future - How AMMs work and can be improved - The core building blocks of DeFi - Incentive mechanisms - Tokenized balances - Atomic transactions - Will a boom in DeFi translate to ether? Su Zhu is the CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital. Hasu is a cryptocurrency researcher and writer. Together, they publish on Deribit Insights and uncommoncore.co.