On today’s episode of DeFi Decoded, Alex sits down with Ethan Buchman, co-founder of Cosmos and inventor of Tendermint, the consensus algorithm which powers a huge chunk of the blockchain economy. Ethan is a true polymath, versed in biology, philosophy, and political economy, which informs his view on how blockchain can bring about a more sustainable and just world and a new kind of financial system called Regenerative Finance (ReFi).

Ethan is also an enormously successful entrepreneur: In less than three years, Cosmos has grown into a nearly $10 billion protocol that supports hundreds of different blockchains and over $100 billion in value. Investors in the original token offering for Cosmos ($ATOM) are up approximately 300x their money. As the “internet of blockchains” Cosmos is knitting together different platforms into one interoperable network. In addition, the DeFi ecosystem on Cosmos is growing fast, with Osmosis nearing in on $1 billion in TVL since launch.