Kain Warwick on Infinex, Synthetix, and the Future of DeFi UX and Stability

This week on The Defiant Podcast, Tegan Kline speaks with Bogdan Alexandrescu, co-founder and VP of Engineering at SAGA. SAGA is focused on lowering the barrier of entry for building in Web3 so that developers can spin up a blockchain in a single click, and the company places emphasis on the metaverse. In this conversation, we dive deep into Bogdan’s departure from Apple after six years to work full-time in crypto, any advice that he has for anyone looking to make a similar switch, what the metaverse is, more about SAGA, and the current innovator program they’re running.

24 Marras 20221h

Dear Defiers, In addition to our weekly podcast series, we are happy to now bring our Weekly Recap show to all podcast platforms. Weekly Recap is a show where we discuss the hottest news of the week together with The Defiant writers and share further insights from our reports. It goes live on our YouTube channel every Friday. In this week's recap, we went through all the latest on FTX, how far the contagion spread, and discussed how DeFi benefited from the recent events. Hope you enjoy it. Also, a quick side note, make sure to check out our YouTube channel to keep up with our regular uploads on DeFi news, market updates, monthly investigations and more to come soon.

19 Marras 202256min

This week on The Defiant Podcast we speak with Tyrone Lobban, the head of blockchain at JPMorgan’s Onyx, a business unit focused on digital assets. In the craziness of the past couple weeks, it’s easy to overlook or forget good news and positive developments. JP Morgan recently made history by becoming the first major bank to execute a live DeFi trade. The trade involved tokenized forex and government bonds and it all happened on the Polygon blockchain. In our conversation, we dive into the details of the trade and discuss the implications of major banks like JP Morgan and the rest of TradFi using DeFi, and start by getting a better understanding of Onyx. JP Morgan’s first DeFi transaction took place on 2 November 2022 and was facilitated by Project Guardian, a pilot initiative of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. The trade had a lot of moving pieces and was rather complex. Tyrone takes us behind the scenes and walks us through the steps taken to ensure adherence to KYC/AML standards. Due to regulatory and privacy concerns, JPMorgan is currently running its DeFi experiments on a permissioned sidechain. We discuss the likelihood of a shift from private infrastructure to a public blockchain. 🙏 Thanking our podcast sponsors: This episode is brought to you by Circle, the sole issuer of USDC, and a leader in crypto that’s held to a higher standard. Learn more at https://www.circle.com/en/usdc Aave Grants is a community-led grants program, focused on growing a thriving ecosystem of contributors within Aave by funding ideas, projects and events that benefit the protocol or surrounding ecosystem. Head to aavegrants.org to learn more and apply for a grant. Now for the first time, you can keep your crypto and NFTs safe with tech the “big guys” have used for years, thanks to ZenGo. Download the ZenGo app from the App Store or Google Play and use code defiant to get $20 back on your first purchase of $200 or more. Terms and conditions apply. See site for details. Built by the team behind Avalanche, Core is an all-in-one command center for Web3 supporting Avalanche, Ethereum, and Bitcoin, a rich ecosystem of dApps, Bitcoin & Ethereum bridges, NFTs, Subnets, and more. Visit core.app to download now.

18 Marras 20221h 4min

Dear Defiers, In addition to our weekly podcast series, we are happy to now bring our Weekly Recap show to all podcast platforms. Weekly Recap is a show where we discuss the hottest news of the week together with The Defiant writers and share further insights from our reports. It goes live on our YouTube channel every Friday. In this week's recap, we went through the latest updates from the FTX / Alameda collapse and discussed how we ended up here in the first place. Hope you enjoy it. Also, a quick side note, make sure to check out our YouTube channel to keep up with our regular uploads on DeFi news, market updates, monthly investigations and more to come soon.

14 Marras 20221h 3min

This week on The Defiant Podcast we speak with Hamzah Khan, Head of Defi at Polygon. Polygon is one of the biggest players in DeFi with $1.5B in TVL and in the blockchain space in general. Hamzah begins by giving us a brief overview of the Polygon ecosystem. Despite the bear market, Polygon has been forging high-profile NFT partnerships with companies like Instagram and Reddit. Its network was also used by JP Morgan’s Onyx unit to conduct the first interbank on-chain forex swap and was chosen by Robinhood to debut its Web3 wallet. We dive into the details of these partnerships with Hamzah. Unlike its sidechain counterpart, Polygon zkEVM will be directly built on Ethereum to serve as a Layer 2. Hamzah goes on to explain the main differences between the two scaling solutions and breaks down the advantages and disadvantages of each. And finally, Hamzah shares his insights into the DeFi ecosystem on Polygon —where most of the activity happens and the innovations he’s excited about. 🙏 Thanking our podcast sponsors: This episode is brought to you by Circle, the sole issuer of USDC, and a leader in crypto that’s held to a higher standard. Learn more at https://www.circle.com/en/usdc Aave Grants is a community-led grants program, focused on growing a thriving ecosystem of contributors within Aave by funding ideas, projects and events that benefit the protocol or surrounding ecosystem. Head to aavegrants.org to learn more and apply for a grant. Now for the first time, you can keep your crypto and NFTs safe with tech the “big guys” have used for years, thanks to ZenGo. Download the ZenGo app from the App Store or Google Play and use code defiant to get $20 back on your first purchase of $200 or more. Terms and conditions apply. See site for details. Built by the team behind Avalanche, Core is an all-in-one command center for Web3 supporting Avalanche, Ethereum, and Bitcoin, a rich ecosystem of dApps, Bitcoin & Ethereum bridges, NFTs, Subnets, and more. Visit core.app to download now.

10 Marras 20221h 11min

This week on The Defiant Podcast we speak with A.J. Warner, the Chief Strategy Officer at Offchain Labs, the builders of Arbitrum, one of the leading scaling solutions for Ethereum using Optimistic Rollups. We also welcome Tegan Kline, the co-founder of Edge Node, the initial team behind The Graph. The Defiant’s Camila Russo and Tegan are co-hosting the podcast for the first time. Going forward, they will record shows together, and Tegan will also have her own Defiant podcast episodes. Scaling is now a hot topic on Ethereum and throughout the blockchain ecosystem, as all of our listeners are likely aware. According to L2Beat, Arbitrum has nearly $2.7B in total value locked. AJ goes on to explain the dapps and protocols building on Arbitrum and how they’ve managed to make Arbitrum the leading destination among Layer 2s. Arbitrum is one of the few scaling solutions that doesn't nod to the underlying technology it uses in its name. As AJ mentioned, their goal is to scale Ethereum without being a proponent of any scaling technology. Does this mean Arbitrum will have a zero-knowledge (ZK) component in the future? 🙏 Thanking our podcast sponsors: This episode is brought to you by Circle, the sole issuer of USDC, and a leader in crypto that’s held to a higher standard. Learn more at https://www.circle.com/en/usdc Aave Grants is a community-led grants program, focused on growing a thriving ecosystem of contributors within Aave by funding ideas, projects and events that benefit the protocol or surrounding ecosystem. Head to aavegrants.org to learn more and apply for a grant. Now for the first time, you can keep your crypto and NFTs safe with tech the “big guys” have used for years, thanks to ZenGo. Download the ZenGo app from the App Store or Google Play and use code defiant to get $20 back on your first purchase of $200 or more. Terms and conditions apply. See site for details. Built by the team behind Avalanche, Core is an all-in-one command center for Web3 supporting Avalanche, Ethereum, and Bitcoin, a rich ecosystem of dApps, Bitcoin & Ethereum bridges, NFTs, Subnets, and more. Visit core.app to download now.

3 Marras 20221h 4min

This week on The Defiant Podcast we speak with Gabriel Shapiro, general counsel at Delphi Labs and a member of the LeXpunK group of crypto lawyers. He’s regarded as one of the most prominent voices on regulation in the crypto space, which has lately been a major point of discussion. Recent developments include the latest draft of the DCCPA bill, Sam Bankman Fried’s industry standards proposal, the CFTC charging Ooki DAO, and the Tornado Cash sanctions. We begin our conversation with Gabriel sharing his thoughts on the current state of the crypto regulatory landscape in the U.S. There are currently seven government bodies that govern crypto in the US. These are the SEC, CFTC, CFPB, IRS, FinCEN, OFAC, and Congress. We discuss how setting an overarching framework within which these bodies can operate could prevent them from regulating their own corners of the market. In comparison to other DeFi projects that offer similar services, Ooki DAO is a relatively small player. With the CFTC coming after Ooki DAO, we explore the potential implications for the biggest players in the space like Aave and Compound. 🙏 Thanking our podcast sponsors: This episode is brought to you by Circle, the sole issuer of USDC, and a leader in crypto that’s held to a higher standard. Learn more at https://www.circle.com/en/usdc ZenGo is a secure Web3 wallet, and the best place to keep your crypto, NFTs, and assets secure - it’s also fully recoverable using their Biometric recovery kit. Download the ZenGo app from the App Store or Google Play and use code DEFIANT to get $20 back on your first purchase of $200 or more.

27 Loka 20221h 15min

This week on The Defiant Podcast we speak with Ali Yahya, General Partner at a16z, also known as Andreessen Horowitz. a16z is an investment giant - they’ve raised $6.7B between their crypto funds in the last two years and are the largest crypto-dedicated fund in the world. We start by discussing how a16z got its start in crypto - their first investment, where they channelled their focus, and how they evolved to where they are today. According to Ali, we’re entering the Golden Age of blockchain applications. We talk about how building in the middle of the bear market is laying the foundation for the next bull run. Ali notes several key developments he’s observing in blockchain that span from networking to usability at the application layer. These include innovations in privacy, programming languages, proof-of-stake, consensus algorithms, zero-knowledge proofs, scalability and interoperability. An important takeaway from our conversation is that Ali believes in a future of multiple blockchains that coexist with each chain serving a particular purpose. Will we see today’s biggest players maintain their dominance in the future? Or are the next generation of blockchains yet to launch? 🙏 Thanking our podcast sponsors: This episode is brought to you by Circle, the sole issuer of USDC, and a leader in crypto that’s held to a higher standard. Learn more at https://www.circle.com/en/usdc ZenGo is a secure Web3 wallet, and the best place to keep your crypto, NFTs, and assets secure - it’s also fully recoverable using their Biometric recovery kit. Download the ZenGo app from the App Store or Google Play and use code DEFIANT to get $20 back on your first purchase of $200 or more. Aleo is enabling developers to build their own private and scalable apps. Currently in their third incentivized testnet phase, you can find more information at https://leo-lang.org/

21 Loka 20221h 5min