I Pledge Allegiance

In this episode, we chat with Omer Goldberg, founder of Chaos Labs, a company that builds economic security and risk management tooling for protocols. Omer has been in the trenches contributing to various DeFi protocols for the past few years, and shares some stories about that journey. We also chat about how Chaos has grown since inception, and what the future product roadmap looks like. Lastly, we touch on the challenges and nuances of on-chain governance, what it's like to work with the different protocols they've partnered with, and also discuss their recent Series A funding.

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.

In this episode, we chat with Josh Lee, founder of Keplr. We reminisce about the early days of Keplr, and what building a Korean Crypto company is like. We also touch on the origin story behind Osmosis, and what Josh has learned from being a co-founder of both Keplr and Osmosis. Josh also shares lessons from building an infrastructure company in Crypto, and shares some wisdom on best practices for chains looking to integrate with Keplr. Lastly, we touch on how Josh thinks about internal resource allocation between supporting new chains, new features, and R&D.

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.

In this episode, we chat with Emily and Alvin Hsia, co-founders of Shadow. We begin with their journey working on DeFi, MEV, an early idea to unify on-chain data, and their journey to building Shadow. They walk us through the challenges with events, their solution for developers, users, and data consumers, and other details on the product such as pricing. We dig into the impact of shadow forks, ideas for broader adoption, and their goal for standardizing shadow events with ERC 7571. We also get a glimpse of what it’s like building a company as siblings, and where Shadow goes from here.

In this episode, we chat with Ido Ben-Natan and Raz Niv, co-founders of Blockaid, a crypto security firm. They share their journey from the Israeli Defence Force cybersecurity unit to launching Blockaid, discussing their product and the importance of protecting web3 customers. Later, we dig into Blockaid's approach to a stealth launch, fostering a customer-first culture, and scaling the product in a fast-moving market. We also discuss the landscape of malicious actors in crypto and their never ending game of cat and mouse to chase them away.

In this episode, we chat with Michael Shaulov, co-founder of Fireblocks. Michael revisits with us the early days of building Fireblocks and finding product market fit by solving customer pain points. We chat through both strategic and tactical approaches to building a B2B product in crypto, exploring lessons learned on early customer relationships and market expansion. We then discuss broader topics like decision-making in a growing business, the role of luck in success, cementing core principles for company culture and acquiring customers as an international founder.

In this episode, we chat with Henri Stern, the co-founder and CEO of Privy. We begin with Henri’s personal journey in Crypto, how it led him to build Privy, and how his vision for Privy has changed over time. We then get into Privy’s product mindset, how the primitives it enables benefit both users and developers, and where the product goes from here. We also explore the current wallet landscape and how Privy fits in, what their forward-looking vision for embedded wallets is, the tradeoffs that must be taken into account when building embedded wallets and the ones Privy is optimizing for, as well as how Henri thinks the end state market structure for wallets will shape up.