November 02, 2025

Restaking's Killer App w/ DeFi Dave

54 minutes

DeFi Dave, Head of Growth at Cap Money, joins us to talk about how Cap found product-market fit for restaking. Dave breaks down Cap's three-sided marketplace connecting stablecoin users, market makers (operators), and risk takers. Operators access undercollateralized loans backed by restaked ETH/BTC, paying 8-11% to beat their strategies. If they fail, risk takers eat the loss—users stay protected. We also dive into lore building, why most restaking hype was overblown, and how Cap brings Wall Street on-chain.

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Notes:

- Cap has $15-20M currently lent to operators

- Operators pay 2-4% premium fees to risk takers

- Total borrowing costs range from 8-11% hurdle rate

- Risk takers earn 6-7% all-in real yield

- Uses EigenLayer and Symbiotic for restaking layer

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

01:12 Who is DeFi Dave?

02:19 What is Cap?

07:31 Restaking & yield

09:22 Yield range

11:48 Institutional flows

12:50 Cap vs Wildcat

14:07 Legal recourse?

15:42 Staked CUSD vs CUSD

16:25 Current operator marketcap

17:08 Loan terms

19:42 CUSD vs Others

21:48 Ready for institutional capital?

23:59 Other staking use cases?

27:26 Stablecoin regulation

30:23 Collateralization

32:09 Lore building

35:38 The power of belief

41:29 What does Dave do all day?

43:56 Competitive advantage

47:57 What are Caps?

49:08 Gwarts opinion on Cap

The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs. Backed by Paradigm, Electric Capital and Haun Ventures. The founders, Eugene and Jerry, have experienced Citadel Jane Street in the Solana Core team since launching their order book DEX, Phoenix. They’ve done over $80 billion in trading volume by making onchain order books competitive with centralized exchanges.

Ellipsis is hiring for New York-based engineers. Work with a small focus team who are results driven, collaborative, and use a modern stack. If you’re an engineer who wants to work on infrastructure that’s already proven itself in the market, go to ellipsislabs.xyz.

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