Unchained

Kevin Zhou, co-founder of Galois Capital, and Evgeny Gaevoy, founder and CEO of Wintermute, discuss how to trade the Ethereum Proof of Work fork, what the market is telling about the Merge, and whether the Merge affects Bitcoin.    Show highlights: what will happen at the time of the Merge according to Kevin and whether there’s uncertainty when the ETH Proof of Work chain will emerge and how that affects trading opportunities the mistakes of the ETHPoW team, like repealing EIP-1559 what percentage of ETH market cap ETHPoW will accrue what the first few blocks of ETHPoW will be like what the strategies are to earn the ETHPoW airdrop and what the on-chain activity looks like whether there is an “up-only” monoculture in Ethereum what stETH is, how it should be priced and what the futures market indicates where the value of a chain comes from and the likelihood of ETHPoW failing catastrophically how to protect from replay attacks the price action of ETH after the Merge how ETH becoming deflationary affects Bitcoin’s narrative as digital gold how the ESG-friendly image of Proof of Stake could affect the narratives of ETH and BTC   Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com Ava Labs a16z Kevin: Twitter Evgeny: Twitter   Episode Links   Previous Coverage of Unchained on the Merge: Preston Van Loon on Ethereum's Merge and His Lawsuit Against Treasury Arthur Hayes, Former Ethereum Skeptic, on Why the Merge Makes Him Bullish on ETH  With the Merge, Will Ethereum Take Over Bitcoin’s Title as Digital Gold? Why Kevin Zhou Believes Ethereum Will Have 3 Forks After the Merge Post-Merge, If Lido Becomes Dominant, What Does That Mean for Ethereum? ETH Proof of Work: ChainID missing; and the request from Coinbase Kevin’s analogy CoinDesk article ETHPow Token  Summary of Kevin’s thoughts ETHPoW team’s promise to abolish EIP-1559 ETHPoW first blocks Tether supports PoS Circle (USDC) supports PoS   ETH Trade Ether’s backwardation Eth-Flexive by Arthur Hayes Whether Ethereum’s Merge is priced in Gauntlet’s view on the Merge BTC correlation with stocks   ETH Post-Merge Dynamics: Onchain Wizard post Cumberland on the Ethereum dynamics after the merge  Miles Suter on the implications of the Merge Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

13 Sep 20221h 11min

Preston Van Loon, cofounder and Ethereum core developer at Prysmatic Labs, talks about the Merge, its impact on an environmental level, and why he is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the Treasury Department over Tornado Cash.    Show highlights: what the Merge is on a technical level and what its impact will be  whether the proof of stake consensus mechanism makes the network more decentralized and secure what happens if the Merge fails and whether there’s a contingency plan why Preston founded Prysmatic Labs and how Prysm works what the next steps are for Ethereum and what the community is working on whether Preston thinks a proof of work Ethereum fork would succeed when and how Ethereum’s high fees and scaling issues are going to be resolved why Preston joined the lawsuit against the US Treasury over the Tornado Cash sanctions how Preston would celebrate a successful Ethereum Merge Thank you to our sponsors!   1inch Crypto.com Messari   Preston Twitter    Episode Links   Previous Coverage of Unchained on the Merge: Arthur Hayes, Former Ethereum Skeptic, on Why the Merge Makes Him Bullish on ETH With the Merge, Will Ethereum Take Over Bitcoin’s Title as Digital Gold? Why Kevin Zhou Believes Ethereum Will Have 3 Forks After the Merge Post-Merge, If Lido Becomes Dominant, What Does That Mean for Ethereum?   Lawsuit against the US Treasury: Coinbase is supporting a lawsuit against the Treasury Department by six users of Tornado Cash. Fortune article on the lawsuit Why Preston joined the lawsuit.   The Merge: Ethereum Foundation Merge announcement. Ethereum carbon emission reductions.   ETH Post-Merge Dynamics: Cumberland on the Ethereum dynamics after the merge  Miles Suter on the implications of the Merge The triple point asset   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

9 Sep 202239min

Arthur Hayes, cofounder of BitMex, discusses how he’s trading the Merge, the impact of macroeconomic policy in the markets, his career as a writer, and much more.    Show highlights: how crypto is reconfiguring how humans do finance over the internet why Arthur initially thought Ethereum was worthless  how NFTs allow users to trade human culture and will unlock trillions of dollars of value why Ethereum doesn’t even need to be deflationary whether other layer 1s can take some market cap from Ethereum why Arthur thinks that a successful Merge is understated and why this is a valid reason for hedging why he thinks an Ethereum proof of work chain won’t succeed and how Arthur will trade ETHPoW why LDO, Lido’s token, is a riskier bet but has more potential gains how he believes the Shanghai upgrade will impact ETH’s price whether the Merge affects BTC’s narrative as digital gold and whether the inflation hedge theory of Bitcoin still holds why Bitcoin is a measure of USD liquidity and why the Fed rates don’t matter as much as everyone thinks whether hedge funds and institutional investors would want to invest in crypto given the high correlation with traditional markets what Arthur believes the impact of a potential US recession would be on the crypto markets  why he believes the real economy is not relevant to the financial markets whether algorithmic stablecoins are doomed to fail how the credit cycle works and how it repeats again and again Arthur’s method for identifying good projects to invest in how Arthur became such a good writer whether BTC is money and the religious aspect of the Bitcoin culture Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com Ava Labs a16z   Arthur: Twitter Medium    Episode Links   Previous Coverage on Unchained: With the Merge, Will Ethereum Take Over Bitcoin’s Title as Digital Gold? Why Kevin Zhou Believes Ethereum Will Have 3 Forks After the Merge Post-Merge, If Lido Becomes Dominant, What Does That Mean for Ethereum? Arthur’s posts discussed during the show: Eth-Flexive Ether, a double digit shitcoin Teach me Daddy (on USD liquidity and Macroeconomics)   Macroeconomics: Adam Cochran on the Fed’s QT Pantera Capital’s newsletter   ETH Trade: Whether Ethereum’s Merge is priced in Gauntlet’s view on the Merge BTC correlation with stocks   ETH Post-Merge Dynamics: Cumberland on the Ethereum dynamics after the merge  Miles Suter on the implications of the Merge The triple point asset Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

6 Sep 20221h 5min

Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi and Tom Schmidt chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry. In this episode, Jill Gunter, the empress of Espresso, also joined the conversation.    Show topics: Whether product management is the new consulting What is going to happen with macroeconomics and whether monetary policy is data-driven Why Jill’s faith is getting renewed, especially after listening to Fed authorities The TL;DR on the Ava Labs conspiracy story Why the industry needs a decentralized RPC The role of Flashbots and Ethermine in censoring transactions  Potential over-compliance from the biggest crypto projects on how to deal with sanctioned addresses Whether social slashing allows Ethereum to stay uncensored The importance of educating regulators on crypto What Haseeb thinks lawyers would recommend to Coinbase about validating transactions from sanctioned addresses The significance of both transactional and application-layer privacy How stablecoin providers need to implement some basic levels of privacy Why corporations do not run Ethereum and whether users are pro-OFAC restrictions Hosts Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly Capital https://twitter.com/hosseeb Tom Schmidt, general partner at Dragonfly Capital https://twitter.com/tomhschmidt   Guest Jill Gunter Twitter: https://twitter.com/jillrgunter Episode Links   Tornado Cash Treasury Press release  Tornado Cash developer arrested  Circle freezes USDC in sanctioned wallets Crypto exchange dYdX blocked accounts that received funds from Tornado Cash What the sanctions mean for privacy coins Celebrities get dusted Previous coverage of the Tornado Cash Sanctions on Unchained: Is TRM Labs Blocking Addresses From DeFi Protocols? Ari Redbord Says No  Tornado Cash Sanctioned. Did the Government Overstep Its Bounds? The Chopping Block: Did OFAC Overstep by Sanctioning Tornado Cash? Ava Labs Accusations: CoinDesk article  Crypto Leaks article   Social Slashing and Censorship on ETH Axios summary of the situation BitMex research on how the sanctions affect Ethereum Ethermine banning transactions Nic Carter’s article Eric Wall’s article on social slashing Hetzner banning Ethereum users Previous Coverage on Unchained Given the Sanctions on Tornado Cash, Is Ethereum Censorship Resistant? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

3 Sep 202259min

Miles Jennings, general counsel at a16z crypto, talks about its new “can’t be evil” NFT licenses and how they help to solve many problems within the NFT industry. Show highlights: what “can’t be evil” NFT licenses are and what problems they solve what can these licenses achieve for content creators which are the five rights that the licenses address whether the NFT licenses help resolve hate speech issues for creators why a16z described its licenses as “can’t be evil” how these licenses will be enforced how anyone buying NFTs should now be able to understand what they are buying why previous attempts to create standardized NFT license didn’t succeed why Miles thinks these new NFT licenses are going to succeed Thank you to our sponsors!   1inch: https://1inch.io/ Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021 Messari: https://mainnet.events/    Guest Miles Twitter: https://twitter.com/milesjennings   “Can’t be evil” NFT licenses: a16z article: https://a16zcrypto.com/introducing-nft-licenses/ Miles’ thread: https://twitter.com/milesjennings/status/1564991860824674305?s=20&t=pJEE9HfA9DnC_9PlsGelEw Wiki article: https://www.nftstandards.wtf/NFT/NFT+License   Previous coverage on Unchained:  What legal rights NFTs come with: https://unchainedpodcast.com/what-exactly-do-you-get-when-you-buy-an-nft-three-lawyers-discuss/ Understanding intellectual property rights with NFTs: https://unchainedpodcast.com/excited-about-your-bored-ape-or-crypto-punk-make-sure-you-understand-your-ip-rights/ Punk 6529 on how rights helped Bored Apes succeed: https://unchainedpodcast.com/punk6529-on-the-significance-of-bored-ape-yacht-club-and-cryptopunks/    IP issues around prominent NFT collections:  Galaxy Digital report on NFT owners being misled about rights: https://decrypt.co/107827/bored-apes-moonbirds-misled-buyers-nft-ip-rights-galaxy-digita  CryptoPunks gets IP rights: https://decrypt.co/107184/as-cryptopunks-nft-owners-get-commercial-rights-yuga-hopes-to-secure-their-legacy-as-artwork  Bored Apes’ more permissive license helps it become more valuable than Crypto Punks: https://www.thedefiant.io/bored-apes-yacht-club-cryptopunks-copyright-fight  Moonbirds controversy ignites after move to CC0 license: https://www.thedefiant.io/moonbirds-cc0-license-nfts   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2 Sep 202236min

Show highlights: the legal meaning of the OFAC sanctions on Tornado Cash and why it is causing complications how legislation is built for the fiat world, and how in DeFi and crypto there’s no clarity  how miners have changed their behavior prior to the Merge whether a proof of work chain or a proof of stake chain would be more censorship resistant whether laws apply to validators in a PoS chain the ways in which the government could provide more clarification  the different entities involved in Proof of Stake the liabilities for each entity in PoS and what secondary liability is how the task of the bidder can be described as a mathematical optimization problem whether Lido is exposed to US regulations how long would it take for a large staker like Coinbase to stop being a validator how a user-activated soft fork works and the conditions in which a fork could happen whether social slashing is enforceable considering it is not in the protocol the likelihood of Ethereum becoming a permissioned system the role of Flashbots’ relay code and what it means for Ethereum’s censorship resistance how DeFi’s exposure to US-based institutions can affect the likelihood of the chain complying with sanctions whether DAI is just wrapped USDC how MakerDAO is trying to be more independent of USDC why US-based companies will choose a conservative path, considering the lack of guidance the importance of educating the regulators  how cash and crypto are the only remaining private payment methods  Thank you to our sponsors!   Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021 Ava Labs: https://avax.network a16z: https://link.chtbl.com/HObAJQDL?sid=unchained   Andrew Twitter: https://twitter.com/propelforward   Martin Twitter: https://twitter.com/koeppelmann   Previous Coverage of the Tornado Cash Sanctions on Unchained: Is TRM Labs Blocking Addresses From DeFi Protocols? Ari Redbord Says No: https://unchainedpodcast.com/is-trm-labs-blocking-addresses-from-defi-protocols-ari-redbord-says-no-ep-387/ Tornado Cash Sanctioned. Did the Government Overstep Its Bounds?: https://unchainedpodcast.com/tornado-cash-sanctioned-did-the-government-overstep-its-bounds-ep-384/ The Chopping Block: Did OFAC Overstep by Sanctioning Tornado Cash?: https://unchainedpodcast.com/the-chopping-block-did-ofac-overstep-by-sanctioning-tornado-cash-ep-386/     Social Slashing and Censorship on ETH Axios summary of the situation: https://www.axios.com/2022/08/23/how-transactions-might-be-censored-after-ethereum-changes-next-month BitMex research on how the sanctions affect Ethereum: https://blog.bitmex.com/ofac-sanctions-ethereum-pos-some-technical-nuances/ Ethermine banning transactions: https://twitter.com/takenstheorem/status/1560690035955011585?s=20&t=59hWdhr8_O-hYA8uYnZJ8w Nic Carter’s article: https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/08/25/if-ethereum-starts-slashing-it-burns/ Eric Wall’s article on social slashing: https://ercwl.medium.com/the-case-for-social-slashing-59277ff4d9c7 CoinDesk article: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/08/23/as-censorship-on-ethereum-begins-could-this-open-sourced-code-help-counter-it/?outputType=amp Hetzner banning Ethereum users: https://twitter.com/koeppelmann/status/1563146729314467840?s=20&t=ubFhCQqrQyHKfflgMHEmJw   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

30 Aug 20221h 24min

Travis Kling, Chief Investment Officer at Ikigai Asset Management, talks about how ETH changes after the Merge, what factors are going to affect its price action, and whether it can decouple from traditional assets.    Show highlights: how the supply and demand dynamics of ETH will change after the Merge why he believes the Merge is the most significant catalyst in crypto history what the risks are in terms of price action  whether there is an estimate of how much ETH will be locked up and how this lockup resembles Mt. Gox’s BTC the impact that being a deflationary asset will have on the price of ETH and whether it will actually become deflationary after the Merge how activity levels have been decreasing in the Ethereum network  whether ether is underpriced or overpriced, and how to evaluate it how institutional money is sitting on the sidelines at the moment after all the de-leveraging events that happened this year how the Merge affects BTC’s narrative and value-proposition how institutions have never been more interested in ether  what the futures market is saying about the price action of ether whether ETHPoW has any value and how to trade it how macroeconomics has been impacting the crypto markets and whether ETH can decouple from the macro setups Thank you to our sponsors!   1inch: https://1inch.io/ Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021 Messari: https://mainnet.events/    Travis Twitter: https://twitter.com/Travis_Kling   ETH Post-Merge ETH Dynamics: Ultra sound money dashboards: https://ultrasound.money/ Dune dashboards on the Merge: https://twitter.com/DuneAnalytics/status/1562021273575751680?s=20&t=HELDvcJ6gI3Z5RmVsGHdiA Cumberland on the Ethereum dynamics after the Merge: https://res.cloudinary.com/drw/image/upload/v1661351279/comm-cumberland/uploads/The_Ethereum_Merge_-_Derivative_Market_Opportunities_Changes_to_SupplyDemand_Dynamics_1_zwearq.pdf Miles Suter on the implications of the Merge: https://twitter.com/milessuter/status/1560070819518234624?s=20&t=qjolzcydMY_nTU__vZNciQ Robert Leshner on the Ethereum Merge: https://twitter.com/rleshner/status/1559727104903757826?s=20&t=cKkI7b_Hj7dDe0DKmgP13g The triple point asset: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/ether-a-new-model-for-money Previous coverage of Unchained: Is ETH on Its Way to Becoming Ultra-Sound Money? Yes, Says Justin Drake: https://unchainedpodcast.com/is-eth-on-its-way-to-becoming-ultra-sound-money-yes-says-justin-drake/ Why Kevin Zhou Believes Ethereum Will Have 3 Forks After the Merge: https://unchainedpodcast.com/why-kevin-zhou-believes-ethereum-will-have-3-forks-after-the-merge-ep-381/ Why Ethereum’s Merge Was Delayed and Why It Won’t Reduce Gas Fees Much: https://unchainedpodcast.com/why-ethereums-merge-was-delayed-and-why-it-wont-reduce-gas-fees-much/   ETH Trade Whether Ethereum’s Merge is priced in: https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/08/22/is-ethereums-merge-priced-in/ Arthur Hayes on the ETH trade: https://blog.bitmex.com/eth-flexive/ ETH flips Bitcoin open interest: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/08/01/ether-flips-bitcoin-in-options-market-for-the-first-time/ “Max bidding” by Arthur Hayes: https://cryptohayes.medium.com/max-bidding-7a1c56c1cd07 Gauntlet’s view on the Merge: https://medium.com/gauntlet-networks/gauntlets-view-on-the-merge-7c79e39e4b59     Macroeconomics Arthur Hayes on USD liquidity conditions and how it affects assets:https://cryptohayes.medium.com/teach-me-daddy-33e7a66dfe76 Adam Cochran on the Fed’s QT: https://twitter.com/adamscochran/status/1562077260819173378?s=20&t=Jh2DRYu-nr2mRg_4kJEFqA Pantera Capital’s newsletter: https://panteracapital.com/blockchain-letter/ethereum-tightening-more-than-fed/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

26 Aug 202238min

Stephane Gosselin, cofounder and chief architect of Flashbots, and Uri Klarman, CEO of bloXrouteLabs, joined Unchained to discuss everything about MEV, an especially important topic now with the Merge coming.  Show highlights: what MEV is, how it works under Proof of Work some examples of MEV, like frontrunning and arbitrage how MEV is a rabbit hole full of monsters the role of Flashbots in the MEV industry and how Flashbots enabled a reduction of gas fees for users how MEV-geth functions and how it relates to auctions systems how bloXroute, Uri’s company, is working with MEV where Stephane and Uri disagree on MEV, despite agreeing on many fundamental things how MEV changes with the implementation of Proof of Stake what MEV-Boost is and the problems it solves what proposer-builder separation is and the motivation behind this idea whether DeFi would flourish more if there wasn’t frontrunning and why MEV-Boost doesn’t prevent it what externalities MEV-Boost or proposer-builder separation (PBS) would solve for users how MEV exists in other industries and in traditional finance why Flashbots’ own investors would rather trade on a fair-sequenced rollup than on Flashbots how the number of MEV extractors has been decreasing and whether this would end up centralizing MEV whether exploiting certain types of MEV is illegal how other chains are trying to solve frontrunning, like Osmosis with threshold encryption what are the levers that can be pulled to solve MEV, according to Uri how eradicating MEV can positively affect the price of ETH, and by how much whether validators can potentially share MEV profits with users how to determine if a network has a good MEV supply chain Thank you to our sponsors!   Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021 Ava Labs: https://www.avax.network/ a16z: https://link.chtbl.com/HObAJQDL?sid=unchained   Show Links   Uri:  Twitter: https://twitter.com/uriklarman   Stephane:  Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegostep   Previous coverage of MEV on Unchained: The Debate Over Ethereum MEV: Should It Be Minimized or Boosted?: https://laurashin.bulletin.com/the-debate-over-ethereum-mev-should-it-be-minimized-or-boosted The Other Side(s) of Ethereum's MEV Argument: https://laurashin.bulletin.com/the-other-side-s-of-ethereum-s-mev-argument MEV What is MEV: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/mev/#:~:text=Maximal%20extractable%20value%20(MEV)%20refers,of%20transactions%20in%20a%20block Proposer-Builder separation: https://www.alchemy.com/overviews/proposer-builder-separation Uri’s blog post: https://medium.com/@uri_61495/flipping-the-table-on-the-mev-game-dc31df8baaf7 MEV Profit sharing validators: https://www.recvc.com/mev-2-0-the-rise-of-mpsvs/ Panel conversation mentioned in the episode (39:53): https://youtu.be/UKfBFV1TuEM?t=2393 Sealed auction design: https://ethresear.ch/t/mev-sgx-a-sealed-bid-mev-auction-design/9677  Priority Gas Auction (PGA): https://www.mev.wiki/terms-and-concepts/priority-gas-auctions#:~:text=What%20is%20a%20priority%20gas,up%20fees%20for%20other%20users. Dune’s dashboard - amount of MEV extractors: https://dune.com/queries/1171509  The MEV Game of the Crypto Economy: Osmosis' Threshold Encryption vs. SGX of Flashbot?: https://mirror.xyz/infinet.eth/SFjR1H1-RMnKoIoPjqkxpauVPrLYGqLHQP1dY9FHvx4 Bank of International Settlements report on MEV: https://www.bis.org/publ/bisbull58.pdf   Flashbots Flash Boys 2.0 paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.05234.pdf Flashbots Dashboard: https://dashboard.flashbots.net/ Flashbots auctions: https://docs.flashbots.net/flashbots-auction/overview Flashbots relay open source: https://twitter.com/hasufl/status/1559908331145265156?s=20&t=gtHe5sVetxQXVKfZL2VMYg MEV Boost: https://www.alchemy.com/overviews/mev-boost MEV in ETH PoS: https://writings.flashbots.net/writings/mev-boost-call-for-testing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

23 Aug 20221h 16min