"There's the Opportunity to Make Really Complex Financial Instruments More Accessible”: Opyn's Alexis Gauba

"There's the Opportunity to Make Really Complex Financial Instruments More Accessible”: Opyn's Alexis Gauba

In this week’s interview I talk with Alexis Gauba, the cofounder of Opyn. Alexis and her team built the first decentralized options market, on Ethereum. These instruments give investors a tool to protect against market volatility and Black Swan events, like hacks, bank runs, and big price crashes. In DeFi the risk is especially high, which explains why Opyn has taken off since its February launch.

Options are a key piece in traditional finance and make up the most liquid market in the world, with contracts representing trillions of dollars in value. Opyn contracts are not quite yet, and even if notional volume grew five times in the past month, it’s still under $40 million. But if DeFi ends up overtaking centralized finance, we could be witnessing the rebirth of this monster-sized market. The difference is that this time, everyone can access it, and anyone can build their own financial instruments on open sourced protocols.

Alexis shares more about how Opyn was born, the project’s traction, the next markets the team plans to add and what innovative projects devs are building on top of the protocol. She also gives a peak at what Opyn V2 might look like.

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Omer Goldberg: The DeFi Exploit That Exposed a Bigger Problem

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How the DTCC is Tokenizing $100 Trillions in Assets | Tom Sullivan

How the DTCC is Tokenizing $100 Trillions in Assets | Tom Sullivan

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Will Aave’s New Plan Change DeFi Forever? | Stani Kulechov Explains

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Optimism Is Done With “Ethereum Alignment” — Users Come First

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Did L2 Fragment Ethereum? - With Yuval Rooz, CEO of Digital Asset, Co-Founder of Canton

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Layer 2 was supposed to scale Ethereum.But what if it fragmented it instead?In this episode, we break down:• Why public chains are “expensive databases”• Why composability is Ethereum’s real value• Wh...

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The Bitcoin Renaissance Legacy : Beyond Digital Gold Ep. 2

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Why DAO Governance Always Turns Political

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"In a decentralized governance system, it's unavoidable to develop politics."Rune Christensen explains why DAO governance becomes a struggle for resources, how the "iron law of bureaucracy" emerges, a...

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Robinhood’s Crypto Head Johann Kerbrat on Why Public Blockchains Will Win

Robinhood’s Crypto Head Johann Kerbrat on Why Public Blockchains Will Win

Robinhood is opening the testnet for its Arbitrum-based Ethereum Layer 2. In this episode, we sit down with the fintech’s head of crypto, Johann Kerbrat, to discuss the strategic move to build on Ethe...

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