Gm! Bell Curve's season 7 will be back soon. This week our friends Mert and Dan from the Lighspeed discuss the state of the network, MarginFi drama, Uniswap vs the SEC, airdrops, Monad's $225 million raise & more. Enjoy! -- Follow Mert: https://twitter.com/0xMert_ Follow Dan: https://twitter.com/smyyguy Follow Lightspeed: https://twitter.com/Lightspeedpodhq -- Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/43o3Syk Subscribe on Apple: https://apple.co/3OhiXgV Subscribe on Spotify:...

In this week's round up the Mike and Vance dive into the recent Bitcoin correction, discussing the narratives surrounding interest rates, politics, and the upcoming halving. They explore the launch of Runes on Bitcoin and its potential impact on the ecosystem. The conversation also delves into the merging of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the challenges faced by Solana, and the importance of L1 performance for L2 functionality. They discuss the concept of profits and fees for L1s, the growth of...

In this episode, Mike is joined by Nick Trileski, a crypto options trader at Cumberland DRW, for an in-depth discussion on the current state of the crypto options and derivatives market. They explore the growth of options trading, the psychology around all-time highs, and the increasing institutional demand as evidenced by rising open interest. The conversation also touches on the dynamics of perps versus options, the risks and opportunities in basis trades like Athena, and the potential for...

In this week's round up the Mike, Michael, and Vance break down Uniswap's fight with the SEC over a Wells notice and the implications for DeFi, as well as Bearchain's massive $100M raise. The risks of hedging altcoin investments using perpetual futures contracts are explored, along with the significance of Circle and BlackRock uniting to bridge traditional finance and DeFi. They also dissect the implosion at lending protocol MarginFi and the fierce competition heating up between Eigen and...

In today's episode, Mike is joined by Eugene from Ellipsis Labs and Lucas from Jito to discuss the current state and future of MEV on Solana. The trio dives into the philosophical divergence between Solana and Ethereum's approaches to mitigating MEV, with Solana prioritizing user experience and low fees while Ethereum focuses on incentive compatibility and decentralization. They explore the challenges Solana faces with record volumes, network congestion, and the ongoing debate surrounding...

In this week's round up the Mike, Michael, and Vance examine the new market structure emerging as fresh capital starts to flow back into the space and debate whether this could break the traditional crypto market cycles. They also discuss the impact of early liquidity on founders and teams through token launches. Additionally, they analyze the impressive growth and revenue numbers from Coinbase's layer 2 Base. Finally, they explore the role of collateral and yield in the crypto ecosystem...

Season 7 | Episode 7 In today's episode Kyle Samani from Multicoin Capital joins Michael and Hart to discuss the complex dynamics of network effects in the blockchain ecosystem. The conversation dives deep into the different types of network effects at play, the phenomenon of anti-network effects caused by high gas fees, and the potential for blockchain technology to revolutionize global finance. Kyle shares his insights on the end state of L1 blockchains, the role of interoperability, and...

In this week's round up the Mike, Michael, and Vance examine the new market structure emerging as fresh capital starts to flow back into the space and debate whether this could break the traditional crypto market cycles. They also discuss the impact of early liquidity on founders and teams through token launches. Additionally, they analyze the impressive growth and revenue numbers from Coinbase's layer 2 Base. Finally, they explore the role of collateral and yield in the crypto ecosystem...

Season 7 | Episode 6 In today's episode Mike and Hart are joined by Jonas from Chainbound and Murat from Prime to dive deep into the emerging world of pre-confirmations on Ethereum L2s. They discuss the current challenges facing L2s including centralized sequencers and limited composability, and explain how pre-confirmations act as credible commitments to include transactions, enhancing both UX and usability. Different pre-confirmation models are explored, such as builders or L1 proposers...

In today's episode, Mike is joined by Myles and special guest Jim Parillo from Figment Capital to explore the latest developments in the restaking ecosystem. They dive into lessons learned from shared security models in Cosmos and Polkadot. The conversation also touches on the differences between liquid staking tokens (LSTs) and liquid restaking tokens (LRTs), as well as the emergence of Solana L2s and their potential implications for the future of the network. Stay tuned for all of this and...

In this week's round up the Mike, Michael, and Vance discuss the impact of the Dencun hard fork on Ethereum L2s, which has lowered fees and opened up new opportunities for L2 business models and applications. The conversation also covers Maker's DSR hike, the return of meme coin mania, Jito's decision to end its mempool product, the AI investing craze, and whether this crypto cycle will be fundamentally different from previous ones. - - Wormhole is a decentralized interoperability platform...

In today's interview Sam and Brick are joined by Vance, Mark, and Hasu. Together they dive into MakerDAO's endgame. They discuss the current state of MakerDAO, including the DAI stablecoin and RWA adoption. The conversation then shifts to the bull case for Maker, with a focus on the new subDAO structure and how it aims to drive demand for the Maker token through a flywheel effect involving token farming incentives. The guests also debate the challenges MakerDAO faces in igniting organic...

In this week's roundup the Bell Curve crew is joined by Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, joins us to discuss the evolution of Chainlink from a focus on price feeds to a platform for data, compute, and cross-chain services. Sergey explains how Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) enables the secure transfer of both data and value across chains, with built-in risk management and programmable token transfers. He describes his vision for an Internet of Contracts that seamlessly...

Season 7 | Episode 5 In today's episode Mike and Hart are joined by Uma Roy to dive deep into the world of zero-knowledge proofs and their transformative potential for blockchain interoperability. The conversation explores the fundamentals of ZKPs, the current ZKP landscape, and the economics of generating and verifying proofs. Uma shares insights on how ZKPs can enhance capital efficiency, security, and scalability across various blockchain architectures, including rollups and crosschain...

In this week's round up the Mike and Michael kick things off with their takes on ETHDenver and the excitement around restaking and AI applications in crypto. Shifting gears they analyze the recent crypto market performance and debate whether crypto's regulatory outlook is positive in an election year. Regarding institutional interest, Vance describes skepticism at a pension fund conference while Michael predicts FOMO from investors who missed previous crypto funds. Thanks for tuning in! -...

Season 7 | Episode 4 In today's episode Mike and Hart are joined by Bryan Pellegrino, co-founder of LayerZero, to debate the the end state of the multi-chain future. They debate technical specifics like message passing protocols, bridging frameworks, censorship resistance, and security tradeoffs, as well as philosophies around infrastructure layers versus service providers, decentralization compromises, and application interoperability needs. The conversation explores modular versus...

In this week's round up the crew kicks things off with discussing recent commentary and analysis around Bitcoin ETF dynamics and the case for a potential Ethereum ETF approval. A debate then ensues on conceptual frameworks for valuating crypto tokens using market capitalization versus fully diluted valuation metrics and draw interesting parrelels of start-up equity vs token distributions. To close out they dig into Dencun, a controversial proposal to cap max percentage of ETH staked, and...

In this week's interview Sam and Ren from 0xResearch are joined by Brendan Farmer, the Co-Founder of Polygon. Brendan unpacks why no single blockchain can scale like the internet due to heterogeneous requirements across chains. He then introduces Polygon's solution - an Aggregation Layer that enables low-latency, trustless interoperability between ZK rollups to scale access to shared liquidity and state. They dig into interoperability and liveness, updates on ZK proof innovation, how the...

In this week's roundup the team checks in on booming Bitcoin ETF inflows versus declining gold ETF interest. Debating the likelihood and demand dynamics of an Ethereum spot ETF launch, they analyze whether restaking poses leverage risks and how to value Eigenlayer's opportunity. They then shift gears and discuss Starkware’s critiqued token distribution. Stick around for all of this and much more! - - Wormhole is a decentralized interoperability platform powering multi-chain applications and...

Season 7 | Episode 3 In today's episode Mike and Hart are joined by Sam Hart of Skip Protocol and Illia Polosukhin to dive into the world of chain abstraction. They discuss the consensus around the need for intent-based interoperability solutions, the incentives (or lack thereof) for ecosystems to be interoperable, and predictions around rollup consolidation and abstraction. Other topics covered include how user funds could be escrowed and verified in cross-chain architectures, the role of...

In this episode of Bell Curve, Robbie Ferguson of Immutable joins to discuss the state of blockchain gaming. They cover the core thesis behind web3 games - giving gamers real ownership of in-game assets to capture the $150B yearly market. Robbie explains Immutable's focus on providing the best platform for developers through solutions like ZK rollups, aggregated liquidity via the Global Order Book, frictionless wallets, and more. The group discusses strategies to create sustainable game...

Season 7 | Episode 2 In today's episode Mike and Hart are joined by Christopher Goes, Founder of Anoma. Chris unpacks flawed assumptions baked into current blockchain design and explains his vision for an intent-centric topology. Chris critiques the limitations of existing virtual machines modeled on outdated centralized mainframes, arguing they cannot keep pace with user needs. The discussion then explores the two key phases of intents - counterparty discovery and settlement. Chris then...

Today's episode explores the intersection of liquid staking and the modular money ecosystem. Mike is joined by Stride Labs co-founder Aiden Salzman and John Charbonneau general partner of DBA. The trio dives deep into the architecture of the Stride protocol, including stTIA and the liquid staking module (LSM). The discussion touches on incentive alignment between protocols, demand drivers for liquid staking adoption, using liquid staking tokens as modular money across rollups, managing...