The Decrypting Crypto Podcast

We sit down with Shane Mac, the cofounder of XMTP, which aims to become the communication network for web3. We discuss the evolution of communication and how there's a huge gap in web3 for wallet-to-wallet communication that requires an infrastructure layer like SMTP to power it.

In this week's episode of Off-Chain, we dig into the biggest web3 stories of the week, including:

• The $320mm Otherside land sale.
• Square Enix goes all-in on GameFi.
• The $55mm Fantom liquidation that's been causing chaos on the network.
• Tennessee is legally recognizing the formation of DAOs.
• Fort Worth is running a small Bitcoin mining experiment.
• Coinbase takes out the first Bitcoin-backed loan.
• Kraken's new NFT marketplace.

I speak to Bumzy, one of the early contributors to the Crabada ecosystem, and now leading growth at CrabaDAO. We take a look under the shell of the play & earn game that's accounting for over 60% of the Avalanche network's transactions.

• Bumzy's Twitter.
• Crabada website.
• CrabaDAO website.

This is the first episode of our new weekly series, Off-Chain, that covers the biggest stories in web3 from the past week.

In this week's episode, we cover:

• Stripe launching crypto payments.
• Fidelity offers Bitcoin as a 401(k) investment option.
• Optimism has announced its token launch (plus airdrop).
• Coinbase announces beta of NFT marketplace.

• Palmer's Twitter.
• Monster Champions website.

• Cointracker website
• Shehan's Twitter

Jones Dao is a protocol that’s focused on managing options trading strategies for retail investors through their vaults. Options trading in DeFi is just starting to take off, with Dopex really leading the charge here, and Jones Dao are very closely aligned with them, using Dopex for the majority of their options trading.

Options trading in general is an enormous part of traditional finance. Even retail investing platforms like Robinhood see the majority of their revenue (~38%, in fact) come from options. And what’s great about this for DeFi is that options trading can be extremely profitable regardless of wider market conditions.

Ice Cream, one of the cofounders, talks through this in more detail in the episode, and shares their plans for going multi-chain, adding new vaults, the introduction of veJONES, and something I’m particularly interested in - their synthetic options LPs.

• Jones DAO website.
• Jones DAO docs.
• Ice Cream's Twitter.

• STEPN website.
• STEPN whitepaper.
• STEPN Twitter.

If, like me, you grew up in the 90s and loved football, you probably spend a disproportionate amount of your time playing football management games like Championship Manager (later Football Manager).

Well, Metasoccer is bringing all of that nostalgia onto the blockchain. They're building a play & earn football management game. You own everything from the players, backroom staff, and stadia as NFTs, and you compete in a league against others around the world.

In this episode, I speak to Gustavo Sabino, the head of growth at Metasoccer, about how it all works.

• Metasoccer website.
• Metasoccer documentation.
• Metasoccer Twitter.

Nat Eliason runs the treasury at Crypto Raiders, a popular play & earn game within the Polygon ecosystem. We discuss how Nat made the leap from working in web2 to taking on a major role in an emerging web3 project, as well as sharing what he's helping to build at Crypto Raiders.