Omer Goldberg, founder of Chaos Labs and former tech leader at Instagram and Facebook, shares his insights on risk management in decentralized finance. He discusses his company's innovative solutions and growth trajectory since inception. Omer delves into the evolving landscape of DeFi governance, emphasizing efficient voting systems. He also highlights the crucial role of blockchain oracles and their complexities, alongside the increasing integration of traditional institutions into DeFi, reshaping asset management and risk practices.

In this episode, we chat with Kubi, co-founder of Gattaca, most well known for its Ethereum block builder Titan. We discuss Gattaca’s journey as a trading firm and how that led them to infrastructure development across the Ethereum MEV supply chain. We then explore their strategic approach to launching Titan Builder in an already competitive builder market, and touch on the catalysts involved in its rapid rise in market share. We also dive into the broader MEV landscape, including vertical integration, offchain auctions, private and exclusive orderflow, and the growing focus on recapturing MEV and returning value to the user. Lastly, Kubi shares more about Gattaca’s latest release - an off-chain bundle inclusion mechanism with custom configurations for transaction originators, including value recapture, timing preferences, and more.

Josh Lee, founder of Keplr and Osmosis, discusses building Korean Crypto companies, lessons in infrastructure building, best practices for chains integrating with Keplr, resource allocation strategies, user-friendly improvements in inter-chain wallets, challenges of interacting with multiple blockchains, importance of ecosystem partnerships in DEX projects, and exploring the Korean crypto scene and international variances.

In this episode, we chat with Anand Gomes, founder of Paradigm and Paradex, two different crypto derivatives products. We begin with Anand’s journey as a derivatives trader, which led him to build Paradigm, an institutional block trading platform for crypto options. After the FTX crash, Anand was inspired to create a new decentralized exchange – Paradex. We dive into the derivatives market exploring user categories, the popularity of perpetuals, market volatility, liquidations, and the role of convexity. We discuss Anand’s transition to building a decentralized exchange, and their decision-making process for launching on StarkEx. We also explore different bootstrapping mechanisms like user points, institutional liquidity, and long-tail markets.

In this episode, we chat with Cem Ozer, founder of Sovereign Labs. We begin with Cem’s personal journey in crypto, and how this experience led him to build Sovereign Labs. We then discuss how developers evaluate the many permutations of rollups and blockchain frameworks available today, and where Sovereign Labs fits into this landscape. We dive into why Cem believes that the most successful projects will choose app-specific rollups and the challenges that have impeded broader adoption of appchains to date. We also explore a few themes that are top of mind for many developers including the potential of proof aggregation systems to facilitate interoperability, and the state of the modular versus monolithic debate (please forgive our Start Wars reference).

In this episode, we chat with Jacob Arluck, head of strategy at Celestia Labs, and Andrew Huang, founder of Conduit. We cover a number of topics in the modular blockchain space, starting with the impact of DA solutions on the rollup landscape and the budding partnership between Conduit and Celestia, the leading RaaS and DA solutions in the market respectively. With the recent implementation of EIP 4844 and a new DA solutions set to launch in the near future, we then put on our prediction hats with a discussion around the future of the DA market. In particular, we share opinions on what will ultimately drive purchasing decisions for developers, the economics of DA solutions, and the most likely end state market structure outcomes. We also cover the critical role of RaaS providers in facilitating a rollup centric future, how RaaS solutions determine which frameworks to support, and the emerging ecosystem of Base L3’s.

Emily and Alvin Hsia, co-founders of Shadow, discuss their journey in DeFi and MEV, challenges with on-chain data, and the development of Shadow. They explore the impact of shadow forks, broader adoption ideas, and standardizing shadow events. They also touch on building a company as siblings and future plans for Shadow.

Edo and Ross, founders of Blockade, discuss their background in Israeli cyber intelligence units and their expertise in cybersecurity. They highlight the importance of protecting web3 customers and fostering a customer-first culture. They also delve into the motivations and origins of attackers in the crypto ecosystem, emphasizing the need for a defensive approach. Blockade's culture is centered around quality work and product development, prioritizing security partners early on. They explore the role of block IT engineers in tracking attack groups and defending crypto users. The chapter also examines bug bounties and security audits in crypto security, emphasizing proactive measures and running internal attack scenarios.

Michael Shaulov, co-founder of Fireblocks, discusses the early days of building the company, finding product market fit, and lessons learned on customer relationships and market expansion. Topics include decision-making in a growing business, the role of luck in success, company culture, and acquiring customers as an international founder.

Henri Stern, Co-founder and CEO of Privy, talks about his journey in Crypto and how it led him to build Privy. They discuss Privy's product mindset, the current wallet landscape, and the tradeoffs of building embedded wallets. They also explore the future market structure for wallets and the importance of user-focused ecosystems.