The Defiant

The chip that stole more than $90 million from Ledger users costs less than $20 to build, snaps into place with three solder points, and has gone through at least three generations of design. Whoever makes it isn't planning a short run.

Ledger says its own chip and software were never compromised, and that every confirmed case traces back to one Malaysian reseller, CryptoBilis. But implanted devices have also been reported from authorized shops in Singapore and from MediaMarkt in Germany, and Ledger had photos of the newer implant on its website months before the drains.

Camila Russo talks with Mark Karpelès, the former Mt. Gox CEO who now runs Karpeles Lab, and who found the mass-produced implant after buying a half-price Nano X on Amazon Japan. He explains how the board is installed, why he thinks someone is selling it as a product, and why weighing your wallet won't catch it. He also responds to Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier, who said Mark's Mt. Gox record makes him no white knight, and argues that one well-placed warning could have saved most of the money.

So who is building these implants, and who else is buying them? Mark walks through what to check on your own device, why panicking is the bigger risk, the open-source antenna detector he's building, and why he still thinks self-custody is the whole point of Bitcoin.

"If you have a hardware wallet, it shouldn't contain a mobile antenna."

Guest: Mark Karpelès (Karpeles Lab)Topics: Ledger, Nano X, hardware wallet implant, supply chain attack, CryptoBilis, MediaMarkt, seed phrase, Mt. Gox, Pascal Gauthier, Joe Grand, self-custody, multisig, crypto security, hardware security

What do you actually own when you buy a tokenized stock? Backpack founder Armani Ferrante breaks down the transfer agent, DTCC, SPV debt-security and Backpack models. Backpack’s version is 1:1 redeemable stock you can move between your brokerage and DeFi. Armani explains how that unlocks arbitrage and better price execution, how 24/7 trading and in-kind dividends work, and why the BP token gave zero tokens to founders, team or investors, with 20% of company equity set aside for stakers.Explore The Defiant ✨

Starknet says it is “actively considering becoming an L1” — leaving Ethereum to become what it calls the first fully quantum-resistant network, with 2027 as the target. StarkWare co-founder and CEO Eli Ben-Sasson joins Camila Russo to explain the plan.The announcement came as a post on X on Oct. 8, with no governance proposal attached. STRK ran from $0.05 to $0.12 in five days and has since given back most of it. In the same week, StarkWare shipped Shadow Accounts, a privacy primitive that gives users a separate address per app, and launched OffMarket, a service for trading on Polymarket without linking positions to a public wallet.We get into:— What becoming an L1 actually means for Starknet, and what replaces Ethereum’s settlement guarantees— Who approves the move, and when a proposal goes to governance— Why Ben-Sasson thinks the quantum threat is “much closer than we think”— Where he lands in the “bunker mode” fight between Justin Drake, Vitalik Buterin and Yehuda Lindell— Why StarkWare is demoing ML-DSA signatures when Buterin named lattices as the next risk— Shadow Accounts, OffMarket, and building privacy on a counterparty that can switch you off— Starknet’s revenue, emissions, and whether an L1 changes the economicsGuest: Eli Ben Sasson

Up to $93M drained from more than 300 wallets, and the software was never touched. Ledger confirmed a physical implant inside signers sold through reseller CryptoBilis, reading recovery phrases off the screen at setup and sending them out over a mobile network.So the question stops being what happened and becomes who you trust. The vendor? The reseller? The sealed box? The device already sitting in your drawer? Yourself?Guest: Pablo Sabbatella (@PabloSabbatella), founder of Opsek (@opsek_io)

The SEC just gave tokenized U.S. stocks a five-year path to trade on AMMs outside exchange registration rules. The largest tokenized stock platform in the market doesn't qualify.Days after the Senate declined to move ahead on the CLARITY Act, the SEC issued an exemption order for "tokenized securities venues." It sets conditions: permissioned pools, public blockchains, and tokens that carry the full rights of the underlying share. Synthetic and linked products are outside the sandbox.Camila Russo sits down with Peter Curley of Ondo Finance, whose offshore equity-linked notes hold about $1 billion in TVL but aren't eligible; Gabriel Otte of Dinari, whose broker-dealer-issued dShares fit the order almost exactly; and Rodrigo Seira of Cooley, who explains why the order is a proof of concept built to survive a legal fight with Citadel and others.Gabe calls synthetic stock tokens "indisputably worse" for investors and says he's never heard a good argument for permissionless securities. Peter says Ondo already has product-market fit and the SEC has left room for more models. So is the order a set of red lines, or a first draft?"There is no rule book here. We're literally trying to build the future."Guests: Peter Curley (Ondo Finance) | Gabriel Otte (Dinari) | Rodrigo Seira (Cooley) Topics: tokenized stocks, SEC exemption order, tokenized securities venues, AMMs, Ondo Global Markets, Dinari dShares, synthetic stocks, equity-linked notes, permissioned DeFi, CLARITY Act, Hester Peirce, Paul Atkins, RWA

Solana just took the most historic step in its governance history: its first real on-chain vote, where any SOL holder — not just validators — could weigh in on the network's constitution, inflation and fees.Camila Russo sits down with Nick Almond, Head of Governance at the Jito Foundation, right as that shift collides with a new threat: Robinhood's own chain moving in on meme coins, the one corner of crypto that was always Solana's. Nick breaks down how the vote actually played out — including the disinflation proposal that was decided with eight seconds left after Kraken flipped its vote — how JitoSOL swung its entire stake pool with a 13% quorum trigger, and why he still thinks Solana's shot at attracting new apps, from tokenized stocks to meme coins, is stronger than people give it credit for.Presented by Oasis — a self-custody wallet built on a 2/3 multisig. You hold two keys, Oasis holds a recovery key, and never has unilateral access. Oasis is giving away a CryptoPunk to the first 500 new or upgraded plans through October 31: https://www.oasisvault.io/cryptopunk

Robinhood is surging on Arbitrum's stack, and today we're joined by ARB co-founder Steven Goldfeder to break down the boom.On this stream we discuss:Does the tokenization / meme craze have legs?Spiking Robinhood feesWhere's crypto's decentralization promise when Robinhood owns the sequencer?The landlord model and the ARB rallyWho's the next Robinhood?Guest: Steven Goldfeder, Co-Founder and CEO of Offchain LabsLike, subscribe, and hit the bell so you don't miss our next streams.

About a third of all ETH — over 41 million coins across nearly 900,000 validators — is already locked into staking. A new Ethereum proposal, EIP-8363, wants to make sure it never crosses 50%, by tapering staking rewards down to almost nothing as that threshold approaches.The proposal landed just 48 hours before the deadline to be considered for Ethereum's next upgrade, and it immediately set off one of the most heated governance fights the ecosystem has seen in years.We brought on both sides. Jérôme de Tychey, one of the EIP's co-authors and a solo staker since Ethereum's genesis, makes the case that an unchecked staking ratio threatens the network's neutrality and security. Mike Silagadze, CEO of ether.fi, argues the fix is worse than the disease — that it would push out solo stakers, gut DeFi, and hand more power to the biggest institutional players it claims to guard against.At the center of it all: does Ethereum have a real problem with how much ETH is staked, or is this a solution in search of a crisis?Jérôme has a public bet on the table with a co-author. Mike has one of his own, worth a million dollars. Neither is backing down.Guests: Jérôme de Tychey (EIP-8363 co-author) | Mike Silagadze (CEO, ether.fi) Topics: Ethereum, EIP-8363, staking, issuance, solo stakers, DeFi, liquid staking tokens, ether.fi, Lido, Ethereum governance

DTCC holds $114 trillion in assets. On July 15th, it showed the world how those assets can be converted into digital tokens, traded in real production conditions, and converted back — without disrupting anything. Nadine Chakar joins The Defiant to explain the digital twin model, why they chose Besu and Canton, what the Russell 1000 SEC authorization covers, and what realistic demand will look like at October's launch. She also confronts the big philosophical question: did blockchain disrupt Wall Street, or did Wall Street absorb blockchain? The answer might surprise you.Explore The Defiant ✨📰 Websitehttps://thedefiant.io/✉️ Free Daily Newsletter https://thedefiant.io/newsletter/defi...🤑 Weekly Premium Newsletter https://thedefiant.io/newsletter/defi...✊ Follow The DefiantX/Twitter: https://x.com/DefiantNews📬 Contact our [email protected]🤝 Sponsorships & [email protected]#TheDefiant​ #DeFi​ #Decentralized​ #Finance​ #Blockchain #Web3

Brian Armstrong changed his profile picture to a memecoin. It pumped to thirty million. Ten thousand wallets piled in. Less than twenty-four hours later, he changed it back — and every one of those wallets felt it.

That one move cracked open the week's biggest debate: what should Coinbase and Base actually be for? And what does it mean that Robinhood's new L2 — launched three weeks ago, supposedly for tokenized stocks — already has five hundred million in memecoin volume versus thirteen million in RWAs?

This week on The Defiant, Camila Russo sits down with three guests who can't agree on anything — and that's exactly why this conversation works.

Austin Campbell (Zero Knowledge / NYU Stern) says Base's behavior was both an intellectual and moral failing — memecoins are gambling, and Coinbase can't build payment infrastructure while promoting gambling to young people at the same time. Jason Yanowitz (Blockworks) says the strategy is closer to right than people admit, and the real problem is execution, not direction. Michael Lee (LienFi), a Base builder since day one, says Armstrong's PFP move caused real damage — but mercenary traders have also paid twenty million dollars to creators on Base, and nobody else is stepping in to do that.

School bus. Rocket ship. Same company. That's the problem.

Guests: Austin Campbell (Zero Knowledge / NYU Stern) | Jason Yanowitz (Blockworks) | Michael Lee (LienFi) Topics: Memecoins, Coinbase, Base, Robinhood L2, content coins, Brian Armstrong, crypto regulation, everything exchange