This week’s Defiant Podcast is from a conversation I had with Alex Zhang at the Unfinished Live conference. Alex is the mayor of Friend with Benefits, or FWB, a prominent DAO of creatives.

Friends with Benefits started as an experiment when its founder minted and airdropped the FWB token to an early community.  FWB holders gained access to private chat groups on Discord.  From there, it developed into a community of thousands of members, live events and even proprietary software.  Alex explains the evolution and growth of Friends with Benefits.

A common criticism of Web3 is that it over-financializes communities and social media. To join Friends with Benefits, a user must hold 75 FWB in their Ethereum wallet.   At its peak, membership would have set you back $14,000. At current prices, it costs roughly $600, which can still be considered a prohibitive price for most people. Alex shares his thoughts on this exclusionary feature of Web3.

In the past two years, we’ve seen a boom in Web3 communities sprouting from DeFi, DAOs, and NFTs.   As we’re still in an experimental phase in this regard, meaning there are no strict rules and practices, we discuss how Alex finds running a DAO in this environment, given the less hierarchical and structureless nature found in Web3 communities.

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This week on The Defiant Podcast we speak with David Micley, the business development director at Wintermute, one of the largest digital asset market makers in the world.

With all the macro headwinds pummeling markets, from the energy crisis in Europe, global inflation, and war in Ukraine, to the recent turmoil with Credit Suisse, we can’t help but feel a sense of deja vu about the 2008 financial crisis.

David believes we’re just in the first inning of what could be a multi-year crypto winter.

But he’s seeing that institutional investors are still signing up to trade with Wintermute’s OTC desk, which indicates that large players are still committed to the space this time around.

David also shares his views on the venture side of crypto.   He believes some of the biggest bets right now are blockchain infrastructure plays. With funding getting harder to come by for crypto startups, he provides insights on where he sees the space evolving.

Finally, we discuss the $160M hack that Wintermute suffered recently and the lessons learned.

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This week on The Defiant Podcast we speak with Uri Kolodny and Eli Ben-Sasson, the co-founders of Starkware, one of the leading Layer 2 scaling solutions for Ethereum.

Post Merge, Ethereum continues to rely on scaling solutions like Starkware and will continue to do so, according to the network’s long-term roadmap.

Visa processes 1700 transactions per second, and that number is often quoted as the Holy Grail for a blockchain to become a viable settlement layer for finance. They explain how that can be achieved with the help of Starkware.

In the early stages of building Starkware, Uri and Eli had decided not to launch a token. After two years of running Starkware and StarkNet being in alpha, is a STARK token on the horizon?

Currently, Starkware is solely used for scaling Ethereum. We talk about Uri and Eli’s plans to expand Starkware’s services to other Layer 1s.

Finally, we discuss the future of scaling solutions, decentralized applications, DeFi, NFTs, and more.

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This week on The Defiant Podcast we speak with Ben Edgington, the product owner of Teku, an Ethereum 2.0 client being developed at Consensys.

It’s been a week since Ethereum switched from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and Ben has been heavily involved in the process. We start our conversation by taking a look at the aftermath of the Merge.

One of the biggest criticisms of The Merge was that Ethereum under PoS would become centralized. Proof-of-stake enables individuals to delegate their ETH to entities that stake on their behalf, as running a node might be inconvenient or infeasible. We discuss how roughly half of the staked Ether is held by a handful of validators and what Ben thinks about this.

Finally, Ben shares his thoughts on the future of Ethereum and what comes next, now that the Merge is complete.

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This week on The Defiant Podcast we speak with Robert Lauko, founder & head of research at Liquity, an overcollateralized DeFi lending protocol and issuer of the LUSD stablecoin.

Following the fallout from CeFi services such as Voyager, BlockFi, and Celsius, the focus has shifted back to the core values of decentralization, which Liquity tries to apply to the fullest: LUSD is backed purely by Ether and Liquity is governance-free and has no centralized frontend.

Crypto mixer Tornado Cash was recently sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury together with addresses that interacted with the protocol.   This prompted other DeFi protocols such as Aave and dYdX to blacklist those addresses in a bid to minimize legal risk.  Robert discusses how DeFi projects can deal with censorship.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

1inch is a DEX aggregator that finds the best rates across multiple networks. Why use a single DEX when you can use them all? Find your best deal at 1inch.

Pods stETHvv allows you to accumulate more ETH in only one click. Every time ETH price bounces, up or down, the vault earns more ETH. In this market it's not a matter of IF price will move, but WEN.

ZenGo a crypto wallet that uses biometric encryption, 3FA authentication and MPC  wallet cryptography instead of private keys.

ApeX Protocol: Engineered for high-performing precision trades in the decentralized derivatives market.

This week on the Defiant Podcast we speak to Stani Kulechov, founder & CEO of Aave, one of the first lending protocols in the DeFi space. He has been around since the inception of DeFi, now Aave Labs is the leading force in this completely new side to the web3 universe; social media. Lens aims to reimagine how social networks are built; providing an open protocol for applications to flourish, and giving users the freedom to own their information and take that data with them when they from one app to the next. Creators and influencers would monetize their content by reaching their audiences directly, and applications would gain revenue from these transactions, rather than relying on ads.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

1inch is a DEX aggregator that finds the best rates across multiple networks. Why use a single DEX when you can use them all? Find your best deal at 1inch.

Pods stETHvv allows you to accumulate more ETH in only one click. Every time ETH price bounces, up or down, the vault earns more ETH. In this market it's not a matter of IF price will move, but WEN.

ZenGo a crypto wallet that uses biometric encryption, 3FA authentication and MPC  wallet cryptography instead of private keys.

ApeX Protocol: Engineered for high-performing precision trades in the decentralized derivatives market.

This week on The Defiant podcast we speak to Zooko, the founder of  Zcash.

Privacy remains one of the hottest issues in crypto after the U.S. Treasury’s recent move to sanction Tornado Cash. Zooko believes the ability to consent to what information is made public is more about freedom than privacy and he thinks that eventually, this will be expected in the blockchain space.

We explore what a private transaction using ZEC actually looks like, with shielded addresses visible only to the sender and receiver.

Finally, Zooko talks about The Electric Coin Company’s future plans, which include moving Zcash from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake and a standalone wallet.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

1inch is a DEX aggregator that finds the best rates across multiple networks. Why use a single DEX when you can use them all? Find your best deal at 1inch.

Pods stETHvv allows you to accumulate more ETH in only one click. Every time ETH price bounces, up or down, the vault earns more ETH. In this market it's not a matter of IF price will move, but WEN.

ZenGo a crypto wallet that uses biometric encryption, 3FA authentication and MPC  wallet cryptography instead of private keys.

ApeX Protocol: Engineered for high-performing precision trades in the decentralized derivatives market.

This week on The Defiant Podcast we speak to Jake Chervinsky, the executive vice president and head of policy at Blockchain Association, a non-profit trade association representing the crypto industry in Washington DC. Jake is one of the most qualified to discuss the US Treasury Department sanctioning Tornado Cash, a development that’s caused shockwaves through crypto.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

1inch is a DEX aggregator that finds the best rates across multiple networks. Why use a single DEX when you can use them all? Find your best deal at 1inch.

Pods stETHvv allows you to accumulate more ETH in only one click. Every time ETH price bounces, up or down, the vault earns more ETH. In this market it's not a matter of IF price will move, but WEN.

ZenGo a crypto wallet that uses biometric encryption, 3FA authentication and MPC  wallet cryptography instead of private keys.

This week on The Defiant Podcast, we speak Will Warren, founder and CEO of 0x labs, one of the oldest and largest decentralized exchanges.  0x API is currently the 5th largest DEX by trading volume but is structurally different from other DEXs as it aggregates liquidity from multiple venues.

We talk about the effect this bear market has had on the DEX ecosystem and how sliding prices have affected DEX volumes in 2022.

We discuss the evolution of DEXs, having seen some massive innovations such as concentrated liquidity with Uniswap V3. Will goes on to talk about the major impact that miner-extractable value (MEV) has had on the DEX sector.

Finally, Will talks about 0x’s vision to see a world where all forms of value are tokenized on public blockchains, from fiat currencies, stocks and bonds, to video game items and airline miles.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

1inch is a DEX aggregator that finds the best rates across multiple networks. Why use a single DEX when you can use them all? Find your best deal at 1inch.

Web3 with a16z, a new podcast about the next internet, from a16z crypto

0x/Matcha makes sure you’re getting the best possible price by routing trades over various DEXs, without taking commissions. Head over to matcha.xyz/defiant.

This week on The Defiant Podcast we speak to Hart Lambur, co-founder of the UMA protocol. UMA is an optimistic oracle on Ethereum that aims to record any knowable truth onto a blockchain.

We discuss his take on the crypto market and how the current crisis is not a DeFi crisis, but rather a failure of risk management at centralized institutions.

We dive into UMA's plans for its 2.0 release, the risks posed by centralized cross-chain bridges and Outcome Finance, an upcoming brand that will encompass all the DAO tooling that the UMA team has been building.

Thanking our podcast sponsors:

1inch is a DEX aggregator that finds the best rates across multiple networks. Why use a single DEX when you can use them all? Find your best deal at 1inch.

Web3 with a16z, a new podcast about the next internet, from a16z crypto

0x/Matcha makes sure you’re getting the best possible price by routing trades over various DEXs, without taking commissions. Head over to matcha.xyz/defiant.