I Pledge Allegiance

In this episode, we chat with Lakshman Sankar, contributor to Personae Labs, an R&D lab focused on applying zero-knowledge technology to advance digital identity. Lakshman has been a long-time Crypto researcher, and was previously at the Ethereum Foundation. In this episode, we chat about Personae's new private voting tool - HeyAnoun, and the first deployment on NounsDAO. We also discuss the commercial applications and timelines of zero-knowledge research. 

In this episode, we chat with Travis Scher, founder of North Island Ventures. Travis has been investing in crypto startups since 2015, and has a wealth of experience across many market cycles. We go into detail about what Travis looks for when evaluating early stage startups, his experience at Digital Currency Group, and the importance of ethics/integrity in Crypto. 

In this episode, we chat with Stani Kulechov, the founder of Aave. We cover the history of Aave, from the transition of ETHLend to Aave, to its current positioning as the leading lending project in DeFi. Aave has had a unique journey, and this episode goes into the nitty-gritty details behind the scenes. We also cover Stani's thoughts on Aave Governance, the challenges of risk management in bear markets, and how he thinks about Aave's value capture and long-term positioning within the DeFi stack. 

In this episode, we chat with Mike Ippolito and Jason Yanowitz, the founders of Blockworks. Since 2018, they've built Blockworks up into one of crypto's largest and most prominent media companies. We dive into the early history, various product lines today, and where they see Blockworks in the future. They also share valuable feedback on how crypto founders and operators should think about and engage the media. 

In this episode, we chat with Sam Hart, longtime contributor to the Cosmos hub and author of the ATOM 2.0 whitepaper. We talk about the history of Cosmos and how its governance has evolved since inception. We also discus how protocol narratives evolve over time, and how Cosmos' story compares to that of Ethereum and Bitcoin. Lastly, we talk about the journey of writing the whtitepaper, and what the future holds for the Cosmos ecosystem. 

In this episode, we chat with Joe Lallouz, the head of Coinbase Cloud and founder of Bison Trails. We cover the history of Bison Trails from early inception to acquisition by Coinbase, as well as broader thoughts on the crypto infrastructure landscape. We also discuss the staking industry's evolution over time, and how Bison Trails' value proposition changed with it. Joe and I also discuss the Crypto M&A experience, the broader infrastructure landscape, and the future innovations in staking he's excited about.

In this episode, we chat with Esteban Castaño, co-founder of TRM Labs. TRM is a crypto compliance company working with some of the leading exchanges and protocols in Crypto including FTX, Binance, Uniswap and more. We chat about TRM's early history, how they settled on building a B2B risk and compliance product, and tips for other B2B crypto founders. We also discuss TRM's role in the broader crypto ecosystem, thoughts on the state of DeFi, and how future privacy innovations may impact the business.

In this episode, we chat with Hasu and Sam Kozin (Lido) about Lido governance and the LDO <> stETH Dual Governance proposal. Due to Lido's key role in Ethereum, a major goal is to make the protocol more resilient from both a technical and governance perspective. We go through some of these governance initiatives, and discuss the LDO + stETH dual governance proposal, which better aligns incentives between the DAO and stakers. We also cover Lido's future roadmap and the other ways Lido will evolve. --- LDO + stETH Dual Governance 

In this episode, we chat with Rune Christensen, the founder of MakerDAO. We cover the original history behind MakerDAO, Rune's transition out of MakerDAO and his  year-long hiatus. We also go into why he felt compelled to return, and his new Endgame plan he hopes to implement for MakerDAO's long-term survival. This episode is a dense one, and goes deep into Rune's personal viewpoints on clean energy, DAO governance, working group structures, and his overall feeling about MakerDAO's future.

In this episode, we chat with Fredrik Haga, founder and CEO of Dune Analytics. We cover the complete history behind Dune, their community and brand-building strategy, and the journey to finding product-market fit. Other topics covered include the future of the crypto data and analytics market and Dune's long-term plan. Lastly, Fredrik shares pieces of wisdom for other early-stage founders around fundraising, building sticky product, and general startup-building philosophy.