April 07, 2022

Dan Robinson (Head of Research, Paradigm VC): How the best unkept secret in crypto venture is changing the game | Will, Lee, & Andrew Learn Web3 #66

1 hour

Dan Robinson is a Research Partner and the Head of Research at the VC firm, Paradigm. Paradigm was founded in 2018 by Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and former Sequoia Capital partner Matt Huang. Today with a $2.5 billion fund, Paradigm is one the most high profile and active crypto native venture firms. Some of Paradigm’s investments include FTX, Coinbase, BlockFi, Maker, Uniswap, and Sky Mavis.

Paradigm first hired Dan as a weird experiment of embedding a protocol researcher at an investment firm. 3 years later, Dan has built an industrial research organization within the firm. Giving Paradigm an incredible competitive advantage.

Learn more about Dan and Paradigm

Dan’s Twitter: @danrobinson
Georgios Konstantopoulos’s Twitter: @gakonst
samczsun’s Twitter: @samczsun
Paradigm Website: https://www.paradigm.xyz

Articles and Research Papers referenced in episode

Ethereum is a Dark Forest - Dan Robinson
Escaping the Dark Forest - samczsun
Uniswap V2 Whitepaper
Uniswap V3 Whitepaper
Uniswap v3: The Universal AMM Research Paper
Liquidity Mining on Uniswap v3 Research Paper
APE/ETH Liquidity pool impermanent loss - 0xfbifemboy
TWAMM (Time Weighted Average) Research Paper
Power Perpetuals (SQUETH) Research Paper
RICKS (Fractionalized NFTs) Research Paper
Gradual Dutch Auctions Research Paper
Paradigm Foundry Toolkit

In this episode we discuss:

How Dan went from Harvard Law School graduate to protocol researcher
How Dan was recruited by Matt Huang to Paradigm
How Dan built out the research team at Paradigm
- Georgios Konstantopoulos kept showing up in their portfolio companies
What is the pitch to Georgios, samczsun, and other insanely talented people to join Paradigm?
Issues with a CLOB:
- Very inefficient way to complete trades on Blockchain
  - Market makers typically make and close orders frequently
What is Uniswap?
What is an Automated Market Maker?
- Decentralized exchange
- Central limit order book (aka CLOB)
  - Issues with a decentralized CLOB:
    - Very inefficient way to complete trades on Blockchain. Market makers typically make and close orders frequently.
What are the differences between Uniswap V1, V2, and V3?
How is the price set in an AMM?
New DEX concepts that still need to be explored
What is MEV (Miner extractable value)?
- Flash Boys 2.0
  - Miners continuously bidding up the right to mine first, so they can extract the value
- What is the downside of the miners maximizing MEV? Estimate over $500,000 a day.
  - Could be a threat to proof of work mining.
How does the research team work with portfolio companies?
- What are power perpetuals? Squeeth
- What are NFT fractionalized primitives? Fractional
How the ultimate future goal for Paradigm’s research team is build the next Bell Labs

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By Will Chang, Lee Chang, Andrew Hsu

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