This is my conversation with Sreeram Kannan, founder at EigenLayer. Timestamps:- 00:00:00 intro- 00:01:21 sponsor: Optimism- 00:02:42 the AVS economy- 00:05:24 blockchains separate trust and innovation- 00:16:53 sponsor: Optimism- 00:18:02 specialized services and SaaS on EigenLayer- 00:24:50 rollups are open verifiable web servers- 00:41:35 rollup economics and business models- 01:55:14 the transition from academic to builder/operator- 01:06:38 impact per unit action- 01:10:26...

This is my conversation with Doug Petkanics and Eric Tang, cofounders of Livepeer. Timestamps:- 00:00:00 intro- 00:01:45 sponsor: Optimism- 00:03:55 Livepeer origin story- 00:11:54 FFmpeg and the video infrastructure stack- 00:17:07 compute capacity and cost in open vs closed systems- 00:22:59 GPUs as the supply side, working at NVIDIA- 00:40:27 finding latent demand- 00:46:10 sponsor: Privy- 00:47:30 learnings on go-to-market, Livepeer Studio, AI video processing- 01:00:54 AI subnets in the...

This is my conversation with Martin Köppelmann, cofounder of Gnosis. Timestamps:- 00:00:00 intro- 00:01:47 sponsor: Privy- 00:03:08 Gnosis Pay as an onchain bank account- 00:13:49 security, passkeys and recovery- 00:21:19 privacy, Tornado Cash- 00:28:25 sponsor: Optimism- 00:29:35 AI agents as a new form of life- 00:36:43 training with prediction markets as RLHF- 00:46:00  agents and prediction markets as interconnected concepts- 00:56:21 why now for prediction markets- 01:09:08 outro Show...

This is my conversation with Varun Srinivasan - cofounder of Merkle Manufactory, the company building the Farcaster protocol and the Warpcast client. Timestamps:- 00:00:00 intro- 00:01:34 sponsor: Optimism- 00:02:44 Farcaster origins- 00:05:59 sufficient decentralization, namespaces, hubs and CRDTs- 00:16:02 type 1 vs type 2 decisions- 00:21:23 the protocol, channels, clients, spam- 00:30:13 direct messaging and end-to-end encryption- 00:36:38 a turing complete social protocol- 00:41:58...

This is my conversation with Rebecca Rettig and Michael Mosier. Rebecca is the Chief Legal and Policy Officer at Polygon Labs. Michael is cofounder of Arktouros and partner at Ex Ante. Timestamps:- 00:00:00 intro- 00:01:38 sponsor: Privy- 0:02:59 Rebecca's background, the Silk Road case, Aave, Polygon- 00:07:22 Michael's background, Department of Justice, FinCEN, Espresso Systems, the White House, ex/ante - 00:15:12 the current regulatory regime, Bank Secrecy Act, sanctions laws,...

This is my conversation with Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum. 00:00:00 intro00:01:07 sponsor: Optimism00:02:17 micro prediction markets, community notes, AIs as participants00:14:13 decentralized social networks, zk identity, Dark Forest, and Frogcrypto00:25:54 the dense jungle00:30:08 sponsor: Privy00:31:29 political instability, technology00:34:16 coordination and technology in climate00:36:13 AI, debugging and drawing, agency, security00:44:02 timeline for the singularity00:52:36...

This is my conversation with Hart Lambur. We talk about Hart's path in building UMA (an oracle using schelling points to bring data onchain), Across (an intents-based bridge connecting ETH/L2s), and now Oval (MEV capture for oracle price updates). Timestamps: 00:00:00 Intro00:01:29 Sponsor: Privy (privy.io)00:02:50 The idea maze, Goldman Sachs, RFQ systems, legal vs smart contracts00:11:03 UMA, schelling point and optimistic oracle00:16:41 Raising the seed round00:19:38 Across, intent-based...

This is my conversation with Jesse Pollak. He led retail engineering at Coinbase for many years — building Coinbase, Coinbase Pro, and Coinbase Wallet. More recently, he is leading the development of Base, Coinbase's L2 built on the OP Stack. 00:00:00 intro 00:01:43 sponsor: Optimism (optimism.io) 00:03:07 motivation behind Base 00:11:12 pitching Base to the Coinbase exec team 00:14:24 challenges of innovating on a schedule 00:17:54 failing repeatedly to find the right answer 00:22:09...

This is my conversation with Liam Horne, former CEO and advisor to Optimism Labs. 00:00 Intro 00:59 sponsor: Privy (privy.io)03:35 early influences, classmates with Vitalik in Waterloo08:31 Ethereum's potential and why scalability matters10:06 learning from Jeff Coleman17:23 defining a common language 21:06 importance of community in Ethereum26:34 hackathons lead to progress31:36 collaboration as a core ETH value38:30 humility and collective learning47:27 building a public good53:07 building...

This is my conversation with Aya Miyaguchi, Executive Director at the Ethereum Foundation. 00:00 intro 01:20 sponsor: Optimism (optimism.io) 02:38 reflecting on early days of Ethereum 9:01 Ethereum as an Infinite Garden 19:14 books and ideas that influenced Aya 24:54 the insignificance of titles 32:02 what does “Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation” mean? 40:33 the “teacher” mindset and how it applies to management 47:24 the importance of diversity 51:41 sponsor: Privy...

This is my conversation with Dan Romero about Farcaster - a decentralized social network being developed as an open protocol.

Jango and Nnnnicholas are contributors to Juicebox Protocol, the programmable funding protocol that has powered ConstitutionDAO, SharkDAO, and AssangeDAO.

Here is my conversation with Nadia Asparouhova about the second-order effects of wealth booms in tech/crypto, different perspectives on public goods, and peer production in open-source and in crypto.

Julien Niset is the cofounder and Chief Science Officer at Argent, a crypto wallet that's used and loved by many people in the crypto ecosystem.

Pedro Gomes is the cofounder of WalletConnect, a communications protocol that enables wallets and apps to securely connect and interact.

If you're building a new crypto-native product/protocol, get in touch by Friday August 26 to participate in Zeitgeist season three: zeitgeist.xyz

Here is my conversation with Josh Stark from the Ethereum Foundation.

0age is the Head of Protocol Development at OpenSea. This is a conversation about Seaport, the new marketplace protocol for buying and selling NFTs.

Charles St.Louis is the COO at Element Finance, a protocol for fixed and variable rate yield markets.

Henri Stern is building Privy - a suite of API tools to store and manage user data off chain. He was previously a research scientist at Protocol Labs and worked on Filecoin’s consensus protocol.

Matthew Chaim is building a laboratory experimenting at the edges of music and web3.

Simon de la Rouviere’s contributions to crypto range from seeding the idea of bonding curves and curation markets, to now working on bottom-up storytelling with Untitled Frontier.

David Greenstein, Matt Masurka (Gigamesh), & Vignesh Hirudayakanth are the cofounders of Sound.xyz, a web3 platform that helps musicians host listening parties and engage with their fans.

Mike Sall and Blake West are the founders of Goldfinch, a decentralized protocol facilitating uncollateralized credit.