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Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today, Carl Dong, founder of Obscura VPN and former Bitcoin Core developer at Chain Code Labs, joins us to talk about his transition from Bitcoin development to building privacy infrastructure. We discuss his work on reproducible builds, supply chain security, the funding dynamics of Bitcoin development, and why he created the first multi-hop VPN that eliminates single points of trust.

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Timestamps:

00:00 Start

01:09 Carl's professional background

02:54 Personal background

07:50 Open source vs product dev

18:14 Chaincode's influence

23:05 Ellipsis Labs

24:06 Funding open source work

30:21 Obscura VPN

36:07 The state of TOR

40:30 VPN user base

45:10 Easy personal privacy steps

47:57 Privacy in Bitcoin

53:21 Simplicity

58:02 Innovations from the "crypto" space

1:00:21 Wrap up

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👋 The Gwart Show is proudly presented by Ellipsis Labs! Ellipsis Labs is building foundational products in DeFi. Their first product @PhoenixTrade is the leading orderbook DEX on Solana. The team is growing—visit ellipsislabs.xyz for engineering opportunities.

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Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today, Robert Chang, crypto trader and prolific Twitter shitposter, joins us to talk about his wild ride through crypto's highs and lows - from being a Luna lunatic to losing everything on Hyperliquid, navigating AI agent metas, getting rugged by VCs stealing his ideas, and why internet capital markets might just be elaborate poker chips with better marketing.

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• Luna looping strategy led to total account loss

• Hyperliquid refunded liquidation due to oracle issues  

• AI agent tokens hit incredible market caps in 2024

• Worm project went from idea to 4M market cap

• A16Z agent reached peak before January market top

• Most crypto VCs are "incredibly stupid" mercenaries

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:24 Robert's background

01:20 Working in crypto

05:11 Lately

07:07 Traders vs users

11:07 Hyperliquid early days

13:10 Markets recently

15:05 Bigger names enter market

16:27 Current market

20:50 AI agents

22:48 WORM

26:12 WORM goes to zero

28:47 Elipsis Labs

29:48 VCs sniping ideas

32:43 ICM

36:08 ICM (this time is different)

44:05 AI16z value proposition?

47:15 Base

50:05 The future

54:15 Bullish VC coins?

58:28 Alliance DAO

1:01:28 Bullish on what?

1:04:32 Ryan Park

1:07:28 ETH (don't call it a comeback)

1:08:23 BTC is mid

1:09:16 Wrap up

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👋 The Gwart Show is proudly presented by Ellipsis Labs! Ellipsis Labs is building foundational products in DeFi. Their first product @PhoenixTrade is the leading orderbook DEX on Solana. The team is growing—visit ellipsislabs.xyz for engineering opportunities.

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Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today, Doug Colkitt, co-founder of Fogo and Ambient Finance joins us to talk about building the fastest Solana-based blockchain for trading. Doug explains why order books are winning over AMMs, how Fogo's 21-validator set enables 40ms blocks, and why verifiability matters more than full decentralization for perp DEXs.

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Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:13 Doug history

02:28 What is Fogo?

02:53 Why not L2?

06:29 Ambient perps

09:07 Are blockchains the right database?

10:00 Why DEX at all?

12:32 Composability as an unlock?

16:17 AMMs

19:18 Decentralization doesn't matter

24:19 Problems with perps on orderbooks

25:51 Fogo vs Hyperliquid

27:35 Ellipsis Labs

29:35 MEV & flashloans

32:42 Tragedy of the commons

35:00 MEV of Perp DEX

37:44 Opportunities for innovation

41:22 Coinbase launching Perps

44:24 Is no KYC an unloack?

46:24 Verifiability

49:00 Liquidity injection

51:41 24/7 markets

52:36 Perp-ify THE WORLD!

54:05 Zero Day Futures

55:08 Ambient Perps elevator pitch

58:10 Gold oracle price origin

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👋 The Gwart Show is proudly presented by Ellipsis Labs! Ellipsis Labs is building foundational products in DeFi. Their first product @PhoenixTrade is the leading orderbook DEX on Solana. The team is growing—visit ellipsislabs.xyz for engineering opportunities.

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Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today, Liam from Through (formerly Fire Dancer engineer) joins us to talk about building a high-performance L1 blockchain from scratch. We dive into why Solana has structural limitations, his leaderless consensus design, proof-of-burn mechanisms, and why economic security is overrated. Plus takes on trading, Fire Dancer's progress, and the future of DeFi.

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NOTES:

• Fire Dancer has ~10% of Solana network

• Through team is only 5 people currently

• Testnet launching in 1-2 months timeline

• SDK support targeting July release

• Solana chain halts if clients disagree

• Economic security was higher than ETH

Timestamps

00:00 Start

00:12 Liam's background

02:18 Early trading

03:13 Firedancer experience

03:58 What's Unto?

05:40 Solana L1 limitations

08:07 Applications

09:51 CLOB wars

11:58 Proof of stake flaws

18:23 Multiple concurrent proposers

21:38 Burn design

25:27 Improvements in trading

27:47 Commodities on chain

30:08 Onto chain performance

32:52 Performant L1 chain competition

35:38 Desired apps

38:00 Firedancer progress & marketshare

42:10 Decentralization & price discovery

45:57 The value of a market

50:10 MEV on Solana

53:56 L1 token value

1:01:28 Through updates

1:03:42 Wrap up

The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs. Ellipsis Labs is building Atlas, the blockchain purpose-built for verifiable finance. You may know of Ellipsis Labs by their first product Phoenix, a fully on-chain orderbook DEX that’s done over 50 billion dollars in unincentivized volume.They are one of the strongest teams I know in crypto. If you’re interested in working for a mission-driven company, Ellipsis Labs is hiring engineers passionate about crypto and finance to work on Atlas. You can learn more and apply on Ellipsis Labs’ Twitter “at Ellipsis_Labs”. Don’t forget to check out Atlas too, @atlasxyz on Twitter.

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Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today, Bitcoiner Post Capone joins us to talk about the risks of OP_CAT activation, MEV extraction concerns on Bitcoin, how increased expressivity could lead to mining centralization, the promise of scaling solutions like Arc and Spark, and why constrained covenants like CTV might be a better path forward than unlimited expressivity.

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Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:27 Who is Post Capone?

03:05 OP_CAT

07:11 Erosion of MEV

11:29 Expressivity of OP_CAT

20:56 Execution on L2

23:33 Elipsis Labs

24:33 OP_CAT vs CTV

28:20 What should be on Bitcoin?

35:32 Stablecoin Maxi

38:42 Programmatic lending contracts

40:30 Ark

44:14 BitVM

47:02 Scaling solution adoption

50:07 Oden.fun
54:12 Rollups

The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs, which is building Atlas, a blockchain for verifiable finance. Ellipsis Labs is known for Phoenix, an on-chain orderbook DEX with over $50 billion in unincentivized volume. They are a top crypto team. Ellipsis

Labs is hiring engineers passionate about crypto and finance for Atlas. Learn more and apply on Twitter at @Ellipsis_Labs. Check out Atlas at @atlasxyz.

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Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today, Wilson Huang from DRW Cumberland joins us to talk about the explosive growth of Bitcoin options markets, why crypto volatility attracts both miners and hedge funds, how ETFs are reshaping institutional adoption, and why traditional finance principles are finally making sense in digital assets. We dive deep into market structure, OTC trading, and the future of crypto derivatives.

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Notes:

• Bitcoin dominates 90% of crypto options volume

• DRW started 30 years ago in CME trading pits

• ETF volumes reached historic highs recently

• Crypto vol trades in 40-60% range typically

• Cumberland handles thousands of BTC clips OTC

• Mining companies hedge at specific cost levels

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:48 Background

02:04 Crypto options markets

04:52 Requirements for a good options market

10:13 How exposed are miners?

19:05 OTC

21:24 Custody

29:53 Spot selling

36:13 Coinbase buying Deribit

41:40 Options & DeFi

45:02 Perpetuals

49:11 The future

👋 The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs. Ellipsis Labs is building Atlas, the blockchain purpose-built for verifiable finance. You may know of Ellipsis Labs by their first product Phoenix, a fully on-chain orderbook DEX that’s done over 50 billion dollars in unincentivized volume. They are one of the strongest teams I know in crypto. If you’re interested in working for a mission-driven company, Ellipsis Labs is hiring engineers passionate about crypto and finance to work on Atlas. You can learn more and apply on Ellipsis Labs’ Twitter “at Ellipsis_Labs”. Don’t forget to check out Atlas too, @atlasxyz on Twitter.

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Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today, Smac, partner at Compound VC, joins us to talk about why stablecoins have become the dominant crypto narrative despite being "boring fintech," DePIN opportunities in energy and water networks, venture capital market structure issues with massive fund sizes, the lack of creativity in crypto development, and why most social crypto apps are features not companies. 

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Follow our guest on Twitter: @0xsmac

Notes:

• Compound VC focuses on pre-seed/seed stage investments

• $100M checks at $3B valuations more like growth investing

• Stablecoins captured outsized narrative due to lack of innovation

• Virtual power plants represent distributed energy networks

• Crypto needs more non-crypto native talent for creativity

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:16 Who is Smac?

01:53 Market overview

03:25 Are stablecoins the killer use case?

06:09 Stablecoin are just FinTech

09:51 Let a thousand stablecoins bloom

13:16 Decentralization & stablecoins

16:04 Users don't care about centralization

21:47 Worldcoin

24:20 DePin

25:19 Virtual power plants

30:20 ElLipsis Labs

31:21 Water harvesting

34:17 Venture funding is too high

41:21 Funding NOT infrastructure projects

43:25 What's interesting?

52:23 Friend.Tech

1:01:24 Wrap up

👋 The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs. Ellipsis Labs is building Atlas, the blockchain purpose-built for verifiable finance. You may know of Ellipsis Labs by their first product Phoenix, a fully on-chain orderbook DEX that’s done over 50 billion dollars in unincentivized volume. They are one of the strongest teams I know in crypto. If you’re interested in working for a mission-driven company, Ellipsis Labs is hiring engineers passionate about crypto and finance to work on Atlas. You can learn more and apply on Ellipsis Labs’ Twitter “at Ellipsis_Labs”. Don’t forget to check out Atlas too, @atlasxyz on Twitter.

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Welcome to The Gwart Show! Today, Ethereum bull Ryan Berckmans joins us to dissect Ethereum's current strategy and why he believes it remains on the right path despite recent challenges. Ryan explains the "hub and spokes" L1+L2 model, arguing that communication failures—not technical problems—damaged ETH sentiment. He breaks down why L2 growth combined with L1 scaling will drive Ethereum toward becoming a multi-trillion dollar asset, how blob fees will generate significant revenue, and why Solana's success doesn't threaten Ethereum's long-term dominance in the institutional market.

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# Notes:

• L2s like Base hit 100M+ in Bitcoin-backed loans

• World L2 has 12M verified humans with 25M accounts

• Ethereum plans to scale to 48 blobs per block

• Current blob usage at ~80% full (2.4 per block)

• Rollups may pay ~30% of revenue for blob space

• Median user fees could remain at ~$0.01 with scale

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:22 Who is Ryan B?

01:12 Why bullish on ETH?

06:38 Failure to communicate

11:01 Is this a pivot?

18:32 Justin Drake is bad at PR

24:31 Lido

28:05 Solo staking

31:50 It's all SOL's fault

33:03 Vitalik changing narratives

35:14 Thoughts on Solana

44:03 WHY NGU now?

48:50 Blobs need to pay up

👋 The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs. Ellipsis Labs is building Atlas, the blockchain purpose-built for verifiable finance. You may know of Ellipsis Labs by their first product Phoenix, a fully on-chain orderbook DEX that’s done over 50 billion dollars in unincentivized volume. They are one of the strongest teams I know in crypto. If you’re interested in working for a mission-driven company, Ellipsis Labs is hiring engineers passionate about crypto and finance to work on Atlas. You can learn more and apply on Ellipsis Labs’ Twitter “at Ellipsis_Labs”. Don’t forget to check out Atlas too, @atlasxyz on Twitter.

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Welcome to The Gwart Show! Today, Noah Goldberg of Theia Research, joins us to dive deep into the world of liquid token markets. Noah breaks down why the "token premium" is unsustainable, how his firm evaluates fundamental value in DeFi applications, and why the market structure creates perverse incentives. He explains why on-chain finance hasn't supplanted traditional finance as quickly as many expected, discusses problems with market making in crypto, and offers insight into how crypto can build sustainable moats. A must-listen for understanding crypto's real financial underpinnings.

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Notes:

• Token premium is unsustainable long-term

• RTV (Revenue to Transaction Volume) models for L1s

• Market makers often artificially prop up token prices

• Money markets account for $800B in traditional finance

• Most tokens are marked at unrealistic valuations

• Venture investors create circular valuation patterns

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:37 Who is Noah?

02:36 Why Liquid?

05:03 Tokens vs equity

09:03 Token premium

12:25 Are tokens irrational?

17:55 Why isn't RadFi embracing DeFi?

23:26 Global investor base for tokens

25:46 Infrastructure apps

29:30 Cash flow modeling

31:31 REV on L1

32:32 Investing in L1s & REV

35:46 Is the market valuing REV?

39:16 Unitoken

42:43 Uniswap valuation vs equity

45:53 Token moats

48:18 Liquidity as moat

58:50 Improvements for markets

1:02:00 Market making vs token price

1:06:29 Whay are weak tokens valued so high?

1:11:28 Value of low liquidity tokens

👋 The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs. Ellipsis Labs is building Atlas, the blockchain purpose-built for verifiable finance. You may know of Ellipsis Labs by their first product Phoenix, a fully on-chain orderbook DEX that’s done over 50 billion dollars in unincentivized volume. They are one of the strongest teams I know in crypto. If you’re interested in working for a mission-driven company, Ellipsis Labs is hiring engineers passionate about crypto and finance to work on Atlas. You can learn more and apply on Ellipsis Labs’ Twitter “at Ellipsis_Labs”. Don’t forget to check out Atlas too, @atlasxyz on Twitter.

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Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today, Santisa @Tiza4ThePeople from Lucidity joins us to discuss market neutral strategies in DeFi. He breaks down how his fund extracts alpha from stablecoin pairs and incentive programs while maintaining a risk-neutral position. We dive into the sophistication behind monitoring protocols, identifying opportunities through on-chain analysis, and why DeFi tokens rarely represent true equity value. Santisa explains why his fund immediately dumps governance tokens, how they achieved double digit APY with "negligible risk," and why Bitcoin remains his primary conviction despite years in the DeFi ecosystem.

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Notes:

- Fund achieved 21.3% APY with "negligible risk"

- Stablecoin strategies focus on risk-adjusted returns

- DeFi getting safer but smart contract risks remain

- Massive accounts ($40-50M) farming UniChain

- Athena paying up to 39-40% yields initially

- Most DeFi tokens lack fundamental value connection

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:28 Santisa's story

01:48 Lucidity

02:22 What's a market neutral strategy?

03:50 Can a pleb trade market neutral?

06:33 Long or short ETH?

08:10 Structure risk strategies

10:22 Unichain

12:46 Farm & dump

12:57 Farming in size

15:15 Market maturity & deal killers

19:10 Covering hacking losses

23:18 USDC pairs & incentives

24:40 Are you long ANY asset?

25:46 Bearish DeFi tokens

27:24 Any hope for DeFi tokens?

31:14 It's a Bitcoin market, hop on

33:51 Maker DAO buy back model

36:46 Athena is NOT a stablecoin

39:20 Athena farming

41:06 Athena token losing value

42:49 Token vs VC money burn

45:16 What is actually exciting

47:17 SOL

48:48 Future of Lucidity?

50:40 Identifying opportunities

52:21 Outperforming BTC

56:14 Is crypto VS over?

👋 The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs. Ellipsis Labs is building Atlas, the blockchain purpose-built for verifiable finance. You may know of Ellipsis Labs by their first product Phoenix, a fully on-chain orderbook DEX that’s done over 50 billion dollars in unincentivized volume. They are one of the strongest teams I know in crypto. If you’re interested in working for a mission-driven company, Ellipsis Labs is hiring engineers passionate about crypto and finance to work on Atlas. You can learn more and apply on Ellipsis Labs’ Twitter “at Ellipsis_Labs”. Don’t forget to check out Atlas too, @atlasxyz on Twitter.

Enjoy the show? Check out our website and newsletter by clicking here.

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