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 Chris critiques the limitations of existing virtual machines modeled on outdated centralized mainframes, arguing they cannot keep pace with user needs.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...

In this week's roundup Mike and Vance dive into the latest developments across crypto including the state of Bitcoin ETFs, return of ETH as money, and the growth of prediction markets. They discuss the recent impressive growth of Polymarket, a prediction betting platform now generating substantial interest and volume without any incentive programs. Shifting gears, they cover the launches of liquid staking tokens enabling easy yield capture for holders and the emergence of "modular money"...

In today's Season 7 premiere Mike is joined by our season co-host Hart Lambur, co-founder of Across Protocol and UMA Protocol. Join them as they explore the emerging multichain endgame. First, they discuss different models for interoperability between chains and how protocols may connect in the future. This ties into the rise of an intent-centric blockchain paradigm, rethinking how users specify outcomes. Next the touch on modularity as blockchain components become unbundled from entire...

In this week's roundup Mike and Myles dive deep into the dichotomy emerging between Ethereum the protocol and Ethereum the Asset. As Ethereum pushes activity to rollups and prioritizes exporting ETH's value, tough questions arise around stake rates, liquid staking derivatives, and monetary policy. Should Ethereum target a lower stake rate to favor liquid ETH? What are the risks of validator centralization? How should app tokens accrue value in a multi-chain future? Hear all of this and much...

In today's episode of Bell Curve we are joined by both the UMA and Flashbots to dive into their latest collaboration, Oval. Oval unlocks a new MEV capture mechanism for protocols to monetize the value that they create. We unpack Oracle Extractable Value (OEV), a type of MEV that has historically been uncaptured by protocols. Stay tuned for all this and much more! - - Follow Hart: https://twitter.com/hal2001 Follow Quintus: https://twitter.com/0xquintus Follow Tarun:...

In this week's roundup Mike is joined by Michael and Vance of Framework Ventures. The trio kick things off by discussing macro sentiment and if a "soft landing" is truly on the horizon. The conversation then explores signs of excess in private market deals. The team also analyze the BTC ETF flows data so far, evaluating the implications of over $11 billion in trading volume. They then shift onto how overturning the Chevron doctrine could reshape the SEC's interpretation powers and authority....

Eugene Chen joins us to discuss why Solana's local fee markets aren't real. Well, they are real, but they don't yet work as advertised. Eugene is the co-founder of Ellipses Labs, Phoenix Protocol, and Umbra Research and he is one of the sharpest builders in Solana! In this episode, we discuss how Solana transactions work, how to improve Solana's fee markets, MEV on Solana, how apps can accrue their own MEV, Solana's DeFi risk, Phoenix's limit order book and more! - - Timestamps 00:00...

In this week's roundup Mike is joined by Blockworks Research Analysts Westie and Brick to dive into Maker Protocol's evolution into a cash flow machine. They analyze Maker's financials, revenue streams, and balance sheet metrics to showcase its impressive fundamentals. The discuss Maker's ambitious decentralized governance plans, including the introduction of subDAOs and a token redenomination. They also discuss Maker's moves into real-world assets, associated risks and revenue opportunities....

Today Michael and Myles are joined by Zaki of Sommelier Finance and Sreeram of Eigenlayer for a deep discussion on the converging visions of Ethereum and Cosmos. They analyze how restaking could serve as a bridge between the two ecosystems, providing security to Cosmos chains while opening up new services for Ethereum. Zaki explains how the evolutionary "marketplaces of ideas" tend to succeed over centralized visions, while Eigenlayer offers flexible shared security and permissionless...

In this week's roundup Mike and Myles dive deep into Ethereum, analyzing its roadmap, monetary qualities, demand drivers, and commodity-like attributes. They review Vitalik's updated roadmap, discussing rollups, scalability, centralization concerns, and criticism around complexity. The conversation explores whether Ethereum can be "money", comparing it to Bitcoin and analyzing the demand side - from gas fees to rollup settlement to restaking. They also explore rollup sovereignty, the...

In this week's interview Dan and Sam are joined by Alluvial co-founder and CEO, Mara Schmiedt. They explore Alluvial's role in Liquid Collective's innovative offerings in the staking market. They dive into the trends of staking in crypto markets and the overall growth of liquid staking. Mara provides insights on the introduction of service level agreements (SLAs) in liquid staking, contributing to superior staking performance. We touch upon the and much more in the world of decentralized...

Today's episode is from our friends over at the Lightspeed team joined by Meow, the co-founder of Jupiter, joins us to discuss how Jupiter is building crypto's leading aggregator. Jupiter is a DEX aggregator on Solana that routes over 80% of all DEX trades! It's an absolute killer app that has served as the entry to Solana's vast ecosystem. In this episode, we discuss how Jupiter found PMF, why Meow chose Solana, how Jupiter will onboard millions of users, Jupiter's airdrop, Solana's massive...

Today's episode of Bell Curve explores the intricacies of blockchain fee markets, from their origins in Bitcoin to modern innovations like Ethereum's EIP-1559 and multidimensional fee markets. Mike is Joined by Pranav and Sam to dive deep into the challenges of balancing spam prevention and positive user experience by analyzing fee structures in major chains like Solana. They unpack the "fee market fallacy," fee burning debates, and using credits to shape desired user behaviors. This episode...

In today's episode Vance, Michael, and Michael reflect on their 2023 predictions and dive into each major ecosystem's outlook for 2024. They share outlooks on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos, gaming, and NFTs. They touch on crypto's evolution, its key players, the reshuffling of top investors, and conclude with each sharing their biggest winners and flops of 2023. Tune in for all of this and much more! - - Follow Mike: https://twitter.com/MikeIppolito_ Follow Michael:...

In this bittersweet season finale of Bell Curve Mike and Dan recap key themes from this season. They dive into specific topics like the impact of blocktimes on MEV and innovations in fee market structures. They also hit on rethinking simplistic metrics like TVL for assessing capital efficiency, how execution models like frequent batch auctions can optimize swappers’ experience, and the viability of bringing meaningful on-chain price discovery to compete with centralized exchanges. This leads...

In this episode of Bell Curve, the Myles and Mike dive into the Data Availability (DA) wars and explore potential strategies for DA solutions towards the enhancement of Ethereum Roll-ups. They analyze the trade-offs in choosing between different DA solutions and the influence of significant shifts in the blockchain ecosystem. The also touch on Solana fee markets and how successful applications may be economically enticed to eventually launch an app-chain. To close out they touch on the...

In this episode, the Bell Curve team returns to explore the recent launch of JTO token airdrop and discuss a Bitcoin NFT hot take. They dive into Jito's future, business model, and link to MEV and liquid staking. The conversation then shifts to Bitcoin NFTs and how they are rapidly gaining attention. Finally, they also talk about a wealth transfer effect in the upcoming years, the role of millennials, and how they are looking for more advantageous ways of creating wealth, including crypto. -...

In this episode of Bell Curve, Mike and Dan dive into the world of decentralized derivatives trading with Antonio Juliano, founder and CEO of dYdX. They explore how dYdX leverages the Cosmos SDK to build an app-specific blockchain that aligns incentives between validators, token holders, and traders. They unpack dYdX's journey from Ethereum to Layer 2 to finally their own custom blockchain, detailing how each transition aims to solve core issues around performance, fees, and decentralization....

This week's roundup the Michael, Vance, and Michael trio are joined by Sam Hart, the head of product and strategy at Skip Protocol, to cover the biggest news including Binance CEO CZ stepping down, the controversial launch of BLAST L2, and the forking of the Cosmos hub. They also touch on the odds of an institutional rally, Blur market share dominance, and USDT redemptions for fiat, silver, and gold. To close out the team covers the Bitcoin block size wars, Cosmos Prop 848, and Elon Musk's...

Qiao Wang from Alliance DAO (a web3 accelerator) joins us to discuss the applications and protocols that are primed to dominate crypto's next cycle. Qiao reviews thousands of crypto startups every year, has an uncanny ability to predict future narratives and is one of my favorite thinkers in the space! In this episode, we discuss why RWAs and payments are crypto's massive opportunity, how speculation is crypto's killer feature, Solana's comeback vs Ethereum's headstart, Coinbase's giant...

In today's episode, Mike and Myles dive deep into the emerging world of liquid restaking. They take a deep look into the inner workings of depositing staked ETH into protocols like Eigenlayer to earn additional yield. They discuss competitive dynamics between these protocols, whether this is positive or dangerous for Ethereum, and implications for ETH becoming "crypto native treasuries" that export security and create collateral for DeFi. We hope you enjoy! Follow Myles:...

Today we are diving deep into the world of interoperability and intents. Hart Lambur, co-founder at Risk Labs and UMA, joins us to analyze the trade-offs between different bridge architectures like atomic swaps, canonical bridges, and optimistic bridges. They discuss how intent-based protocols like Uniswap X and Across Protocol are reimagining bridges by introducing third parties to enable faster, cheaper transfers. To close out the team explores UX challenges in bridging assets across chains...

In today's episode of Bell Curve we are joined by Link Marine legend Chainlinkgod.eth. Mike, Michael, and Vance dive into the past, present, and future of Chainlink. They kick off with Chainlink's community origins in 4chan. They move on to introduce how Chainlink aims to be a decentralized oracle network that securely connects blockchains to external data sources and APIs. They discuss key elements like its variety of services like price feeds, CCIP for cross-chain messaging, real world...

Season 6 | Episode 5 In this episode of Bell Curve we dive into the world of batch auctions with special guests Anna, co-founder of CowSwap, and Ludwig, Founder of Sorella Labs. The team digs into how Cowswap's innovative batch auctions function and how Sorella Labs' Angstrom project tackles LVR for sustainable liquidity. They unpack how app layer innovation and MEV-conscious design can mitigate value extraction. To close out they discusses whether price discovery will ever move from...