Empire

Ramon Recuero, co-founder and CEO of Memori Labs, joins Jason and Santiago to discuss Kinto, a secure layer 2 built on Arbitrum Nitro that provides KYC at the chain level. They explore the pain points that led Ramon to build Kinto, the importance of compliance and security for mainstream adoption, how Kinto manages user data privacy, and Ramon's vision for the future of KYC in a Web3 world.

Topics discussed include the Solana outage, Ethereum's scalability roadmap, the intersection of AI and crypto, and building ecosystems in the crypto industry. The speakers delve into technical details, market expectations, concerns about value flows, and challenges of building on Ethereum. They also explore the relationship between crypto and AI, discuss challenges in choosing AI inference models, and highlight the importance of strategic resource allocation in ecosystem development.

This podcast discusses the recent surge in adoption of Farcaster and analyzes its features like channels and programmable posts. They also dive into the controversy surrounding airdrops and the high costs of current models. Other topics include using Dimension in app roll-ups, challenges of attracting validators for app chains, and the potential impact of staking on ETFs. They also explore the advantages of blockchain technology and speculate on its future.

Decentralized social networks and headless marketplaces are explored in this episode. Farcaster, a decentralized social network built on Ethereum, has seen a 400% increase in daily active users. The discussion unpacks headless marketplaces, onchain identity and money, permissionless composability, frames, and the ownership economy. Physical NFTs and the bridging of the physical and digital worlds are also discussed.

Illia Polosukhin, Co-founder and Near Foundation CEO, explores key innovations in Near Protocol targeting mass adoption, including account aggregation, sharding, and chain abstraction. They discuss strategic partnerships, onboarding challenges, and their vision of a decade with over a hundred million users. The conversation also delves into user-owned AI, software generation, and the concept of an 'AI president' in forward-thinking governance.

Crypto experts Haseeb and Avichal discuss the bull market in crypto and the debate between EVM and alternative chains. They also touch on the sustainability of meme coins, scalability trilemma, regional fragmentation, and financialization in gaming.

Logan Jastremski, Co-founder of Frictionless Capital, discusses the need for high-throughput blockchains for mainstream crypto adoption. They explore the limitations of existing chains, parallelization, and performant validator nodes. The conversation covers cross-chain transfers, investment strategies, and comparing performance levels. They also highlight the potential applications of high throughput blockchains and the importance of technical expertise in understanding blockchain projects.

Kyle Samani of Multicoin Capital and Dmitriy Berenzon of Archetype debate the decentralized physical infrastructure industry, discussing token incentives, business models, and mainstream adoption challenges. They explore B2B vs B2C models, token issuance, and the differences between centralized and decentralized infrastructure. They also discuss quality controls, branding, revenue distribution, and the future of the industry, as well as the importance of supply and demand in crypto adoption.

Matt Hougan and Eric Balchunas discuss the impact of the ETF on Bitcoin's price. They cover topics such as building a new audience in the crypto world, emotional relief and practical considerations of a Bitcoin ETF, cross chain interoperability, outflows from Grayscale, Bitcoin's growing role in investment portfolios, and the impact of ETF on Bitcoin's price. They also express excitement for DAS London and compare it to Salt in the early days of crypto.

Michael Sonnenshein, CEO of Grayscale Investments, joins to discuss the approval of a Bitcoin spot ETF, the fee war between issuers, Grayscales place in the market, potential for an Ethereum ETF, and crypto assets in mainstream finance.