In this episode of Deeply Intents, I talk to 0xTaker (MEV janitor at searcher.dev) about his journey in crypto beginning with Bitcoin, progressing to building exchanges, operating as a market maker, and co-founding Aori. 0xTaker takes us down the MEV rabbit hole. We converse on welfare maximization, ASS, and Intents. Later, we spent time discussing chain abstraction through the lens of user experience, coming out on the other side with a discussion on culture and protocol development. We also discussed tokens. In particular, their different use cases. In the final segment 0xTaker opens up about his personal philosophy of building remote startups, autonomy, and purpose.

Timestamps

(00:00) - Origins
(01:26) - Starting with gaming
(06:10) - Bitcoin solving payments in 2014
(07:21) - Building an exchange
(19:36) - Down the MEV rabbit hole
(26:50) - Welfare maxing
(29:55) - ASS Experimentation
(33:04) - Intents
(37:04) - Hyperfinancialization
(42:18) - Accelerationsim
(46:23) - Chain Abstraction
(53:36) - Chain Abstraction is inevitable
(58:18) - Protocol development & Aggregation
(1:00:41) - Culture, Product, Brand
(1:05:00) - User experience
(1:09:49) - Aggregation breakouts
(1:11:16) - Talk about tokens
(1:16:36) - Trust me bro tokens
(1:25:18) - VC backed infra tokens
(1:28:35) - Token use cases
(1:37:50) - Building remote startups
(1:42:57) - Autonomy vs. employment
(1:46:18) - Advice to a younger self

Disclaimer
Nothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice. The host does contract work for Heliax, a public goods laboratory, focusing on Anoma.  

In this episode of Deeply Intents, we chat with Vaibhav Chellani, co-founder of Socket, about chain abstraction. VC recounts his journey from building Polygon POS to working on Plasma and ZK rollups at the Ethereum foundation to building Socket and Bungee Exchange. The conversation illuminates misconceptions around chain abstraction and replaces them with emergent mental models. In particular, we discuss chain abstracted applications, bootstrapping marketplaces, and the role of transmitters, solvers, fillers, and market makers in counterparty discovery and settlement. We finish by discussing the future of chain abstraction and playing a win-win strategy. 

Timestamps
(00:00) - Scaling Ethereum
(05:21) - Building Polygon
(06:56) - Shoutout to Cosmos
(08:29) - Experience at EF & Polygon
(12:47) - Builder recognition
(14:58) - Scaling
(20:06) - Chain Abstraction in practice
(24:16) - Chain Abstraction rants
(33:18) - Pivot from cross-chain to chain abstraction
(36:18) - Take users to a global state
(39:57) - Permissionless watchers
(42:39) - Transmitters, Solvers, Fillers, Market Makers
(47:47) - Chain Abstracted Swap Applications
(49:53) - Bungee Exchange
(52:37) - Counterparty discovery
(56:48) - Bootstrapping a marketplace
(59:29) - Magic Spend++
(1:02:54) - Ethresearch aura  
(1:05:44) - Modular order flow auctions
(1:10:34) - Positive sum games
(1:14:21) - Advice for new developers

Disclaimer
Nothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice. The host does contract work for Heliax, a public goods laboratory, focusing on Anoma.  

In this episode of Deeply Intents, we sit down with Ankit Chiplunkar, co-founder of OneBalance. We discuss his path from aerospace engineering to resource locks. Ankit breaks down his prior research at Frontier, including MEV, order flow auctions, and the CAKE framework. Next we invest time into discussing OneBalance, resource locks, credible accounts with TEEs and the future of chain abstracted applications. Finally, Ankit shares the secret sauce of how he balances startup life and family time.

Chapters
(00:00) - Origins
(01:36) - Aerospace engineer
(06:54) - Time at Coinbase
(09:49) - EV_Signal & EV_Ordering
(14:32) - Orderflow Auctions
(19:07) - Order types and user preferences
(21:16) - Solver speed and price auctions
(26:20) - Baking CAKE
(29:12) - Different types of users
(38:12) - Users have chains
(43:25) - One Balance & Resource Locks
(52:35) - Credible Accounts with TEEs
(58:49) - New user preferences every cycle
(1:04:50) - Access to users across networks
(1:10:14) - The path for chain abstraction
(1:15:00) - Intents + Chain Abstraction
(1:20:58) - Balancing life

Disclaimer
Nothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice. The host does contract work for Heliax, a public goods laboratory, focusing on Anoma.  

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. The host does contract work for Heliax, a public goods laboratory, focusing on Anoma.  

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. The host does contract work for Heliax, a public goods laboratory, focusing on Anoma.  

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. The host does contract work for Heliax, a public goods laboratory, focusing on Anoma.  

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. The host does contract work for Heliax, a public goods laboratory, focusing on Anoma.  

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. The host does contract work for Heliax, a public goods laboratory, focusing on Anoma.  

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. The host does contract work for Heliax, a public goods laboratory, focusing on Anoma.  

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. The host does contract work for Heliax, a public goods laboratory, focusing on Anoma.