Credible Commitments

In this episode of Deeply Intents, we sit down with Rachin Kalakheti, founder of Twine. We discuss Rachin's background, growing up in Nepal, his natural curiosity, and making his way to Stanford University. Rachin then breaks down multichain settlement — we discuss Twine's ultimate design, define settlement layer, breakdown the nuances of reorgs, decentralized sequencing, light clients, and application use cases in the multichain settlement context. Later, we discuss Rachin's end goals for Twine in the context of changing the world with stable coins and payments on crypto rails. In the final segment, we discuss the nuances of token design and open experimentation. 

Timestamps 
(00:00) - Origins
(05:27) - Twine origins
(08:44) - Studying CS is Nepal
(10:40) - Stanford
(16:03) - Natural Curiosity
(20:16) - Latency is business, research, and building
(24:17) - Multi-chain settlement & Twine
(27:27) - ZK Rollouts
(29:25) - Defining Settlement Layer
(36:11) - Re-orgs in multi-chain settlement systems
(39:20) - Canonical state
(43:00) - Twine's Ultimate Design
(50:52) - Decentralized sequencing
(55:39) - Ordering policies
(1:00:00) - Adding light clients
(1:01:45) - Applications and use cases
(1:04:32) - Permissionless asset creation
(1:08:15) - Replacing centralized exchanges
(1:11:11) - End goals
(1:14:57) - Changing the world
(1:20:17) - Protocol-Token unbundling
(1:24:22) - Open experimentation
(1:29:10) - Founder led communications 

Disclaimer
Nothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice.

In this episode of Deeply Intents, Katia Banina and I discuss her impressive journey from data analytics with the London Stock Exchange Group to the Final Boss at Bebop. We had a wide-ranging conversation about the current state of speculation and trading in crypto markets including pump fun, RFQs, L2s, market makers and AMMs. Later, we focus on crypto meme culture and subculture feedback loops. We finish by discussing crypto use cases and the importance of DeFi. This was a fantastic conversation.

Timestamps

(00:00) - Origins
(04:57) - Pricing FX forwards
(06:53) - Speculation vs. Fundamentals
(11:09) - Token narratives
(21:39) - Pump fun
(28:12) - L2s vs. Solana
(32:09) - Chain Abstraction
(35:03) - Where to deploy your app?
(39:48) - Onboarding application devs
(45:13) - Optimizing Telegram use
(48:56) - Bebop quotes
(50:34) - RFQ & RFS
(55:01) - Working with market makers
(1:01:00) - Intents aren't real
(1:06:00) - Semantic games
(1:10:00) - Market Makers, AMMs & MEV
(1:14:46) - Price risk
(1:19:22) - Women in crypto
(1:25:25) - Crypto meme culture
(1:33:03) - Subculture feedback loops
(1:37:55) - Crypto use cases
(1:43:00) - Closing thoughts

Disclaimer
Nothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice.

In this episode of Deeply Intents, Drew (founder of Commit-Boost & FABRIC Ethereum) discusses his journey from small-town overachiever to Ethereum public goods builder. In particular, this episode is deeply personal. We share our about our crypto journeys and experiences of working with the Ethereum community, as well as the good and bad of crypto VCs. We discuss Drew's projects Commit-Boost and FABRIC at a high level. Furthermore, we finish by discussing Ethereum's North star, public goods funding, and growing the ecosystem.

Chapters 

(00:00) - Origins 
(07:46) - Working at Goldman Sachs 
(12:20) - Help and generosity in Ethereum 
(20:43) - You can just do things 
(23:50) - Reflection on VC investing 
(30:24) - Don't be the sucker at the table 
(34:15) - Commit-Boost 
(40:44) - Translating technical details 
(43:40) - Mastering Ethereum 
(49:22) - FABRIC 
(56:58) - Effective Coordination 
(1:01:53) - Ethereum's North Star 
(1:06:23) - Ossification acceleration 
(1:07:58) - We need to scale blobs 
(1:13:10) - Public Goods Funding 
(1:20:00) - Attracting new developers 
(1:22:38) - Tradfi embracing crypto 
(1:27:32) - What is Ethereum winning look like?

Disclaimer
Nothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice.

In this episode of Deeply Intents, ThogardPVP co-founder of FastLane, and I discuss his path from Tradfi to MEV savant. In particular, we explore yapping, application-specific sequencing, throughput, reputation systems, OSS and moats, the story of Cincinnatus, More success more MEV, Intents and solvers, Solana, Monad, and FastLane's shBundler. In the last segment of the episode we discuss conflicts of interest, perceptions and chain maximalism. 

Timestamps

(00:00) - Intro
(03:20) - Tradfi to Iron Finance
(07:38) - Assembling a team
(12:17) - Yapping MEV
(20:00) - ASS 
(25:48) - Spam on Polygon
(26:57) - Flash Execution
(30:14) - Fat TXs
(35:29) - Gas costs
(39:20) - Talking to apps
(44:17) - Throughput
(52:30) - Reputation systems
(59:50) - More success, more MEV
(1:02:55) - OSS and moats
(1:12:01) - Integrated products
(1:18:49) - Story of Cincinnatus
(1:23:00) - Making money
(1:28:17) - DeFi Contagion
(1:34:41) - Stablecoin collateral 
(1:40:34) - Fastlane and Monad
(1:44:37) - The shBundler
(1:52:58) - Increase quality, decrease spam 
(1:56:57) - No ASS on Solana
(2:05:00) - Intents and Solvers
(2:09:12) - Bridges and MEV bubbles
(2:15:32) - Conflicts of interest
(2:23:06) - 7702 vs. 3074
(2:27:58) - Perception and honesty 
(2:32:27) - Team Avengers vs. Team Thanos
(2:35:25) - Study Cosmos
 

Disclaimer
Nothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice.

In this masterclass, Markus, Co-Founder and CEO of Propeller Heads, and I discuss his background in AI and journey into crypto. We spend a good deal of time unpacking Solvers, market making, role specialization, and AMMs. Markus shares key insights regarding block times and their impact on LVR, the challenges with the current trade supply chain, and Tycho, his new product which solves the integration nightmare. We finish by discussing Markus' time as a digital nomad and how it inspires his writing. 

Chapters

(0:00) - Intro
(02:15) - Working in AI
(04:23) - Communication in remote team
(07:54) - MEV feedback loops
(12:43) - Crypto culture
(19:10) - Defining solver
(21:26) - What solvers do
(22:00) - Market makers
(24:57) - Relayers / Fillers
(28:25) - Role specialization
(32:24) - AMMs
(37:46) - Blocktimes & LVR
(41:30) - Onchain liquidity
(46:40) - Trade supply chain
(59:44) - Barriers to entry
(1:03:54) - Tycho
(1:07:03) - Integration nightmare
(1:13:31) - Verifiable data
(1:15:03) - Solarpunk trading
(1:20:27) - Compliance criteria
(1:23:59) - Chain agnostic design
(1:25:50) - Digital nomad reflections
(1:29:14) - Friends everywhere
(1:31:50) - Writing

Disclaimer
Nothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice.

In this episode of Deeply Intents C-Node and I talk about his journey through crypto from Ethereum to MPC research to Solana and eventually Cosmos (Celestia). We discuss C-Node's twitter lore, his research on based rollups and profitable censorship MEV. We talk about regulatory arbitrage, stable coins, subjectivocracy, hard forks, L2 bridge hacks, building on permissionless systems, rollup governance, and recursive proofs of consensus history. 

Chapters

(00:00) - C-Node Introduction
(07:37) - Twitter lore
(15:20) - Vitalik's Trilemma
(21:25) - Celestia 
(28:14) - Based rollups
(33:53) - Profitable censorship MEV
(39:33) - FOCIL + MCP
(42:02) - Favourite rollup stack
(50:22) - Flipping the bird
(52:00) - Regulatory arbitrage
(57:00) - Cash based society
(1:02:00) - Unfuckwithable money
(1:05:45) - Hypothetical hard forks
(1:15:00) - L2 bridge hacks
(1:19:40) - You can just build things
(1:26:09) - Rollup governance
(1:30:40) - Succinct residency 

Disclaimer
Nothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice.

In this episode Bo Du, co-founder of Polymer Labs, and I discuss his journey from Web 2, with a focus on database systems, to building in crypto. We discuss his time in Cosmos, the past and future of IBC, and building on Ethereum. The conversation progresses towards Polymer's approach to interop, rollup clusters, high performance infra, the best use cases for on chain liquidity, and leveraging tokens to incentive coordination. We finish by discussing Bo's time working on based sequencing (Ethereum) in Chiang Mai and his personal journey through leadership at Polymer.  

Chapters

(00:00) - Introduction 
(02:58) - DB systems to crypto
(07:00) - Cosmos
(09:03) - IBC
(16:24) - Building on Ethereum 
(20:43) - State Proving 
(28:37) - Polymer as Kafka
(36:00) - Rollup clusters
(41:04) - High performance infra
(46:50) - Latency
(52:25) - Building on chain
(1:00:25) - Token-Protocol seperation
(1:10:56) - Ethereum community
(1:22:00) - Leadership Journey

Disclaimer
Nothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice.

In this episode of Deeply Intents, Jeremy traces the evolution of programming languages starting with Lisp. We explore Lisp's role in AI development, the AI winter, and why static languages like C and Rust dominate today instead of live systems like Lisp. Jeremy breaks down Anoma as a distributed OS challenging Unix's paradigms, along with the benefits of live hackable systems realized with Anoma Level. We then weave through systems design, specs driven software development, and the limitations of blockchain programming environments.

Chapters 

(00:00) - Introduction 
(03:05) - Lisp
(06:01) - The Rise of C
(09:14) - PL as Pop Culture
(11:53) - AI Winter
(17:53) - Operating Systems (OS) 
(33:56) - Programming and Society
(41:20) - Intentional vs Accidental OS
(46:49) - Introducing Anoma Level
(55:02) - Applications of Anoma
(1:00:41) - Effective Executives
(1:20:29) - Limits of  blockchains
(1:29:09) - Incentives in crypto 
(1:35:56) - PL Innovation
(1:45:49) - Advice 

References

Worse is Better - https://bit.ly/lispworseisbetter
Anoma Level - https://bit.ly/AnomaLevel

Disclaimer
Nothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice.

In this episode of Deeply Intents, I talk with Vishwa, co-founder and CEO of Anera Labs. He shares insights on entrepreneurship across India and the West. We explore Intents, MEV and Solvers. We zoom in on Solvers - discussing their decomposition and Vishwa proposes a new definition. We discuss onchain liquidity, compare Solver dynamics in Solana vs. Ethereum, and examine UX and best execution for DeFi users. We finish the episode by exploring AI (Agents/LLMs), ways to close the competitive gap between centralized and decentralized exchanges, and the future of OTC markets, privacy, and counterparty discovery. 

Chapters

(00:00) - Introduction to Vishwa and Anera

(05:59) - Challenges and Opportunities in Indian Startups

(08:54) - Regulatory Landscape in India

(11:49) - Cultural Differences in Innovation

(14:56) - Building Tools for Indian Entrepreneurs

(20:58) - Talent and Labor Dynamics in Crypto

(26:53) - User Experience and Market Fit

(30:10) - The Journey into MEV and Intents

(49:05) - Understanding Solvers: Definitions and Roles

(1:02:51) - The Future of On-Chain Liquidity

(1:06:34) - User Experience in DeFi: The Role of UX and Innovation

(1:16:46) - Challenges in AI and Blockchain Data

(1:22:06) - Decentralized vs Centralized Exchanges

(1:30:41) - Bridging Centralized and Decentralized Finance

(1:39:54) - The Future of OTC Markets and Privacy

(1:42:42) - Final Thoughts and Future Directions

Disclaimer
Nothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice.

This episode features Christopher Goes, co-founder of Anoma. Together, we explore Anoma's architecture, intent-centric applications, the Resource Machine and how it relates to the EVM, and Anoma's north star. We had a blast recording this one. 

We start by diving into Anoma as a distributed operating system, unpacking what intent-centric applications mean in the context of Anoma, Ethereum smart contracts, and app chains. Indeed, we covered practical examples like ride-sharing, crowdfunding, and mechanism design with programmable privacy. Later, we compared the Anoma Resource Machine (ARM) with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), and touched on Resource Plasma for scaling. We wrapped up discussing Anoma's north star, political philosophy, and user agency in contemporary systems.

Timestamps

(00:00) - Introduction to Anoma and Christopher Goes

(03:14) -  Understanding Anoma: A Distributed Operating System

(10:13) - Building Applications on Anoma vs. Traditional Blockchains

(22:32) - The ART Process: Internal Peer Review and Research

(32:20) - Affordances of Intent-Centric Applications

(38:27) - Decentralizing Ride-Sharing Protocols

(42:34) - Insurance in Decentralized Applications

(46:27) - Programmable Privacy and Financial Applications

(49:38) - Public Signal: A New Crowdfunding Approach

(54:19) - The Anoma Resource Machine Explained

(01:12:50) - Exploring Plasma as a Scaling Solution

(01:15:33) - Leveraging Anoma's Peer-to-Peer Network

(01:17:14) - The Future of Networking Protocols

(01:23:39) - Anoma's North Star: Principles and Philosophies

(01:32:50) - Addressing Regulatory Capture and User Empowerment

Disclaimer
Nothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice.