Spark (SPK): The DeFi Protocol Redefining Finance with Explosive Growth and Innovation

Spark (SPK): The DeFi Protocol Redefining Finance with Explosive Growth and Innovation

In this episode of The Defiant Podcast, we sit down with Sam MacPherson, CEO and co-founder of Phoenix Labs, to discuss Spark (SPK)—the DeFi protocol making waves in the cryptocurrency world. From its groundbreaking subDAO model to its recent $10 billion TVL milestone, Spark is reshaping decentralized finance. We dive into the latest developments, including the Ignition Airdrop and institutional adoption. Tune in to explore how Spark is bridging the gap between traditional finance and DeFi, and what the future holds for this rapidly evolving ecosystem.Chapters00:00 - IntroductionMeet Sam Macpherson, CEO of Phoenix Labs, and the vision behind Spark.01:23 - Spark’s Rapid GrowthHow Spark became one of the biggest DeFi protocols with $10B TVL.05:10 - The SubDAO ModelBalancing decentralization and nimbleness to scale effectively.08:05 - Why Decentralization MattersSam’s passionate defense of decentralization as a core principle for global infrastructure.12:00 - Challenges of Traditional DAOsThe limitations of flat governance structures and how Spark overcame them.15:30 - Ignition Airdrop and Overdrive PhaseHow staking incentives are driving SPK adoption and price action.20:00 - Institutional AdoptionSpark’s partnerships with Coinbase, BlackRock, and the rise of tokenized RWAs.24:00 - Spark Liquidity LayerEnhancing governance and liquidity.27:16 - Spark Token LaunchGovernance, staking, and how SPK empowers the community.30:00 - Transparency in DeFiSpark’s commitment to making every layer of its ecosystem visible.35:00 - The Future of StablecoinsWhy scaling stablecoins requires diverse collateral types.38:00 - Bitcoin-Backed LoansTapping into new markets with OTC Bitcoin loans and institutional interest.42:00 - Bridging DeFi and Traditional FinanceHow Spark is integrating with fintechs and creating seamless user experiences.45:00 - Ethereum’s Role in DeFiSam’s thoughts on Ethereum’s evolution and its renewed optimism.

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Cosmos Co-Founder Ethan Buchman on Building an Internet of Sovereign Blockchains

Cosmos Co-Founder Ethan Buchman on Building an Internet of Sovereign Blockchains

Ethan Buchman is the co-founder of Cosmos, an ecosystem of interoperable blockchains which includes Terra, Osmosis and Crypto.org, and has the most value locked after Ethereum. It's a complex network with many moving parts, and in the past year it has exploded with activity. Cosmos was born out of Ethan’s research into a switch from proof of work to proof of stake, and his idea to enable each project and community to be able to build and secure their own blockchain. It was Ethan’s goal to bring about a community computer revolution, stemming from the personal computer revolution. Thanking our podcast sponsors: Zerion is Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection Unstoppable Domains is The #1 provider of NFT domains. Get YourName dot crypto, dot x, dot nft or a range of other endings for as low as $5 Nexo: Invest in crypto, earn interest of up to 20%, paid out daily, and use crypto as collateral to receive a credit line at premium rates. Step Finance's portfolio management dashboard enables Solana users to visualize, analyze, execute and aggregate transactions across all Solana contracts at the click of a button.

4 Huhti 20221h 5min

🎙 Blockchange Ventures' Ken Seiff: Betting on Crypto's Base Layer and a Multi-Chain Future

🎙 Blockchange Ventures' Ken Seiff: Betting on Crypto's Base Layer and a Multi-Chain Future

Ken Seiff is the managing partner of Blockchange Ventures, one of the longest-standing venture funds focusing on early-stage blockchain startups. One of his very first forays into crypto was as one of the investors in Ethereum’s token sale, as I describe in my book, The Infinite Machine. He went on to focus on various other Layer 1s at Blockchange, investing in Polkadot, Solana, Near and Flow, among others. Ken’s investments look to capture not just the potential value of the venture itself, but the overall growth of a space that is still in its infancy, and his bet is that taking exposure at the base protocol layer is the best way to do that. Thanking our podcast sponsors: Zerion is Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection Unstoppable Domains is The #1 provider of NFT domains. Get YourName dot crypto, dot x, dot nft or a range of other endings for as low as $5 Nexo: Invest in crypto, earn interest of up to 20%, paid out daily, and use crypto as collateral to receive a credit line at premium rates. Step Finance's portfolio management dashboard enables Solana users to visualize, analyze, execute and aggregate transactions across all Solana contracts at the click of a button.

28 Maalis 20221h 7min

Gitcoin's Kevin Owocki on Fueling Public Goods Funding for the Ethereum Nation

Gitcoin's Kevin Owocki on Fueling Public Goods Funding for the Ethereum Nation

Kevin Owocki is the founder of Gitcoin, which helps coordinate crowdfunding for projects and software developments on the Ethereum blockchain. With 300,000 builders and over 25,000 funders, Gitcoin has become a key pillar of the Ethereum nation, making sure public goods can thrive. We talk about how Gitcoin was born as a reaction to the ICO era, after Kevin realized many of the business models and funding mechanisms on Ethereum were broken. Open-source software is carrying a huge weight, while its builders are not being properly compensated or incentivized, and Gitcoin wants to change that. Thanking our podcast sponsors: Zerion is Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection Unstoppable Domains is The #1 provider of NFT domains. Get YourName dot crypto, dot x, dot nft or a range of other endings for as low as $5 Nexo: Invest in crypto, earn interest of up to 20%, paid out daily, and use crypto as collateral to receive a credit line at premium rates. Step Finance's portfolio management dashboard enables Solana users to visualize, analyze, execute and aggregate transactions across all Solana contracts at the click of a button.

21 Maalis 202258min

Fabian Vogelsteller, father of the ERC20 Standard, on the Shift from Blockchain Addresses to Social Profiles with Lukso

Fabian Vogelsteller, father of the ERC20 Standard, on the Shift from Blockchain Addresses to Social Profiles with Lukso

Fabian Vogelsteller is a Blockchain veteran who was part of the Ethereum community in its very early days. He helped shape the Ethereum space, building an ETH Wallet and a web3 Browser, which were one of the first of their kind. Fabian is the co-founder of the Lukso blockchain and together with Vitalik Buterin, created the ERC-20 standard, a foundational building block for Ethereum. The next standard Fabian is excited about is ERC725, which he says will help introduce blockchain-based profiles as opposed to accounts. Fabian believes this approach would be a seismic shift, improving usability and protecting users’ assets. Thanking our podcast sponsors: Zerion is Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection Unstoppable Domains is The #1 provider of NFT domains. Get YourName dot crypto, dot x, dot nft or a range of other endings for as low as $5 Nexo: Invest in crypto, earn interest of up to 20%, paid out daily, and use crypto as collateral to receive a credit line at premium rates. Step Finance's portfolio management dashboard enables Solana users to visualize, analyze, execute and aggregate transactions across all Solana contracts at the click of a button.

14 Maalis 20221h 5min

Laura Shin on Solving Ethereum's Greatest Mystery with Her New Book, The Cryptopians

Laura Shin on Solving Ethereum's Greatest Mystery with Her New Book, The Cryptopians

In this week’s episode of The Defiant podcast, we speak to Laura Shin, the former senior editor at Forbes and host of the popular podcast Unchained, about her new book ‘The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze.’ In Cryptopians, Laura may have solved Ethereum’s biggest mystery; the identity of the DAO hacker. In this interview, she goes into the backstory of how she came up with the most credible suspect to date. Thanking our podcast sponsors: Zerion is Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection Unstoppable Domains is The #1 provider of NFT domains. Get YourName dot crypto, dot x, dot nft or a range of other endings for as low as $5 Nexo: Invest in crypto, earn interest of up to 20%, paid out daily, and use crypto as collateral to receive a credit line at premium rates. Step Finance's portfolio management dashboard enables Solana users to visualize, analyze, execute and aggregate transactions across all Solana contracts at the click of a button.

7 Maalis 202254min

Polkadot's Gavin Wood on Building a Layer 0 to Underpin the Entire Blockchain-Based Economy

Polkadot's Gavin Wood on Building a Layer 0 to Underpin the Entire Blockchain-Based Economy

Gavin Wood’s crypto journey started with Ethereum – he was one of the eight original founders and the project’s CTO in the early days. Today though, he’s busy building Polkadot, a chain that is attempting to improve where Ethereum falls short. Gavin wants to turn Polkadot into a multichain powerhouse where financial systems and web apps can run and interact seamlessly. To Gavin, Polkadot can be the base infrastructure for a web3 future, a set of technologies that can guarantee privacy, trustlessness and decentralization, which to him, will be crucial if the free world is going to survive. Zerion Zerion is Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection Oasis is a leading, scalable, and privacy-enabled, layer-1 blockchain, ideal for DeFi. Learn More ICHI enables crypto projects to create a sustainable economy that attracts users and keeps value locked in your community Eden Rocket RPC, providing the fastest private transactions on Ethereum (90%+ hashrate). Trade better anywhere on Ethereum with Eden Rocket RPC.

28 Helmi 20221h 10min

Sovryn's Edan Yago on Building Bitcoin DeFi; Slower Growth But Strongest Foundation

Sovryn's Edan Yago on Building Bitcoin DeFi; Slower Growth But Strongest Foundation

Edan Yago is a co-founder of Sovryn, a Bitcoin-based lending protocol. He’s maybe the first Bitcoin builder we have had on our show and that’s because DeFi on the first blockchain network has been slow to pick up — but Edan says that’s about to change. Ethereum and other smart contracts platforms have evolved over time with use cases like tokens, DAO’s and NFTs flourishing. Meanwhile, Bitcoin has mainly looked from the sidelines. Edan says there has been a gradual mentality shift, as Bitcoiners accept the first cryptocurrency should be able to support a wider array of use cases to become the backbone of a more decentralized financial system. Thanking our podcast sponsors: Zerion Zerion is Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection Oasis is a leading, scalable, and privacy-enabled, layer-1 blockchain, ideal for DeFi. Learn More ICHI enables crypto projects to create a sustainable economy that attracts users and keeps value locked in your community Eden Rocket RPC, providing the fastest private transactions on Ethereum (90%+ hashrate). Trade better anywhere on Ethereum with Eden Rocket RPC.

21 Helmi 20221h 6min

Vitalik Buterin on Building a Base Layer for the Global Economy Without Compromising on Decentralization

Vitalik Buterin on Building a Base Layer for the Global Economy Without Compromising on Decentralization

Vitalik Buterin wrote the Ethereum white paper when he was just 19. His aim was simple yet comprehensive, to create a ‘world computer’ that was designed to be a flexible base layer for all online applications without the need of any third party. Since its inception in 2015, Ethereum has become the most active and largest smart contracts platform, but has it achieved the ‘world computer’ goal? Vitalik says yes and no. In the interview, it’s clear that to him, it’s almost a given that Ethereum will achieve this goal. The bigger concern is not whether the network becomes a settlement layer and decentralized engine for smart contracts used globally, but how much value and impact applications running on top of it will bring. Thanking our podcast sponsors: Zerion Zerion is Mission Control for Web3: an intuitive DeFi portfolio manager, multichain tracking & trading and the best place to show off your NFT collection Oasis is a leading, scalable, and privacy-enabled, layer-1 blockchain, ideal for DeFi. Learn More ICHI enables crypto projects to create a sustainable economy that attracts users and keeps value locked in your community Eden Rocket RPC, providing the fastest private transactions on Ethereum (90%+ hashrate). Trade better anywhere on Ethereum with Eden Rocket RPC.

14 Helmi 20221h 31min