Eli Ben-Sasson, CEO of Starkware, joins The Gwart Show to discuss Ethereum L2s and Bitcoin scaling solutions. We go through rollup controversies, Starkware’s airdrop drama, and how we might actually scale protocols through ZK proofs and STARKs. Lastly, we touch on OP_CAT, which the Starkware team has been pushing behind the scenes.

Follow our guest on Twitter: @EliBenSasson

00:00 Start

00:44 Guest introduction

01:25 What is Starkware working on?

03:15 Working on BTC vs ETH

06:27 Why did Bitcoin dev stagnate?

08:44 Chain agnostic

11:52 Why will Validity Rollups win?

14:59 What Starkware is doing differently

18:17 Hardware

20:38 ETH's Rollup roadmap

22:13 Optimistic rollups

25:37 ETH Starknet adoption

31:27 Airdrop fumble

39:48 Would you do the airdrop differently?

42:33 Stark token for gas

45:13 Selling Bitcoiners on Stark token?

47:26 Based Rollups won't work

50:01 Base capturing marketshare

54:51 Is OP_CAT required?

57:00 What if no OP_CAT?

58:57 Why should Bitcoiners care?

👋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. 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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Charlotte, creator of Milady NFTs, discusses building a counter-cultural art movement, embracing controversy, fostering community through derivatives, and aiming for "thousand-year dynasty" influence across tech, politics, and culture while rejecting traditional VC-backed NFT models.

Follow our guest on Twitter: @CharlotteFang77

00:00 Start

01:01 Who is Charlotte Fang?

01:29 Inspiration for Milady ?

04:39 Art style

10:24 Path to success?

17:43 Community engagement

21:37 Milady Cancel?

25:10 Milady 911

27:08 VC backed NFTs

35:07 Memecoins

37:17 Crypropunks

44:08 Derivatives

51:04 Future of NFTs

57:15 Fidenza

1:02:22 Ordinals

1:05:28 Base

1:08:54 Grand vision

👋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. 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.

Questions or want to sponsor? [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today we are rejoined by Jon Charb of DBA. A fellow podcaster and SOL bag holder, Gwart digs into Jon’s recent blog post on Ethereum’s future, community alignment, value of ETH, and Bitcoin rollup development.

Follow our guest on Twitter: @jon_charb

00:00 Start

00:41 ETH's North Star Blog Post

03:57 Is SOL a true competitor?

05:44 WTF is a settlement layer?

09:35 Main points of North Star post

16:08 Community alignment

19:21 Gas limit increase

22:30 L1 performance increase

25:35 Is the value in the execution?

28:28 TradFi does care about credible neutrality

34:44 L1 blockspace premium

40:35 Does world computer = money?

44:15 Store of value vs utility

48:38 ETH at $1

50:39 Effects of 32 ETH to stake

52:29 Distribution of stake now

57:28 Beamchain

1:02:36 Why would Bitcoin rollups be different?

👋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. 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.

Questions or want to sponsor? [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Max is leaving Ethereum, and we have the details. On this Gwart Show special filmed at Pubkey in NYC, Max and Eugene join Gwart to go through Max’s decision to leave Ethereum dev shop Conensensys in favor of a Solana client which frankly we don’t know how to spell or pronounce. We go through Ethereum’s major problems basically one-by-one in this 1.5 hour show, finishing with a Holiday Special game of ‘cooked or not cooked’ narratives.

Follow our guest on Twitter: @MaxResnick1 @0xshittrader

00:00 Start

00:32 Quitting ETH

02:38 Other people quitting?

04:08 Did you always doubt?

06:20 Execution layer

07:51 ETH Foundation blinders

09:51 New role in Solana?

11:42 Leadership in SOL vs ETH

14:10 Launching an L2 on ETH

16:58 Jitter

18:38 More rollups, more problems

21:48 Does SOL end up w/ L2s?

24:54 Solana is a real ETH competitor

26:11 MEV research on SOL

33:32 Is a meme sandwich really a sandwich?

36:06 Does SOL take MEV seriously?

37:37 Cooked or not cooked?

37:47 Intents

41:27 Interoperability

44:27 L2s functionally becoming l1s

46:46 ZK tech

52:21 Allowing innovation is the killer app

55:24 Nodes faster than tradfi

57:55 Ultrasound money... LOL

1:05:40 MEV kings will be Citadel

1:08:04 Forcing tradfi to play our game

1:09:50 Bitcoin cooked?

1:10:40 Memcoins cooked?

1:12:26 Depin cooked?

1:13:51 Prediction markets cooked?

1:18:06 Hype cooked?

1:20:10 Time boost cooked?

1:24:28 Futarchy cooked?

1:31:06 Future of Solana

1:33:02 Is Solana gonna win

👋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. 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.

Questions or want to sponsor? [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Justin Drake joins us as the dust settles on his ‘Beam Chain’ pivot (?) for Ethereum.

Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation joins The Gwart Show! We discuss his Beam Chain proposal, covering improvements in block production, staking mechanics, and cryptography. He explains the path toward more efficient validation and the future of Layer 2 scaling solutions.

Follow our guest on Twitter: @drakefjustin

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:57 Beam chain

05:36 Beam Chain highlights

11:19 What is the Bean Chain meme?

13:06 Speculation about Beam Chain

17:22 Pre-confs require capital centralization?

19:53 Temporary trusted relay

20:32 Inclusion vs execution pre-confs

25:44 Changing ETH issuance, again?

28:08 Centralized validator set?

30:16 Cost of capital wins?

34:40 Base rollups

39:50 Base rollups are App Chains?

44:19 Merge mistakes

49:15 Was PBS a mistake?

52:25 Legitimate criticism

58:17 Building on L1 vs L2

1:00:41 Decentralized stablecoins

1:03:05 Restaking

1:04:59 Exciting use cases?

1:06:56 Don't care about DeFi?

👋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. 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.

Questions or want to sponsor? [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can we get Ethereum without tradeoffs? Probably not but we’re gonna try. This week we’re joined by MEV searcher and developer 0xprincess to discuss “trustless order flow operations layers,” or how 1-second block times with no protocol changes or L2s can happen today. Later on we get into Wintermute, Flashbots and chain order flow.

Follow our guest on Twitter: @0x9212ce55

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:47 Who is 0xPrincess?

03:52 How does T.O.O.L. work?

05:30 Designing TOOL

07:41 Trusted execution environments

11:05 We'll decentralize it soon(TM)

15:50 Network participants

18:24 Validator load

21:02 TOOL reduces ETH block times

26:23 TOOL v pre-confirmation

28:55 Wintermute & Flashbots

34:54 Bye bye builder?

38:25 Off chain order flow

41:46 Private order flow, obvious in hindsight?

45:45 Can't get rid of monopolies?

50:01 ETH protocol development

55:08 L2s

58:58 MAKE THE L1 GREAT AGAIN!

👋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. 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.

Questions or want to sponsor? [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rebecca Rettig, Chief Legal Officer at Polygon Labs, joins The Gwart show to discuss crypto regulation, the future of DeFi, stablecoins, and the impact of upcoming elections on crypto policy. Deep insights into regulatory challenges and opportunities in the evolving crypto landscape. Note this show was recorded before the election occurred!

Follow our guest on Twitter: @RebeccaRettig1

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:50 Rebecca's bio

01:38 Appearing in Congress

05:06 Language matters

07:17 What the "people" want

09:28 Talking to representatives

10:32 What has been the biggest failure?

12:44 What regulation would be good?

16:21 The role of tokens

20:27 KYC & tokens

22:17 Stablecoins

24:04 Using stablecoins

26:16 Stablecoin in US future?

28:13 What have we done wrong?

29:58 Do you actually NEED a token?

33:22 Vampire attack on fiat

34:41 What's Gensler's deal?

36:00 Uniswap fees

38:44 Validators & OFAC

40:04 Politics

45:49 Memecoins

49:19 Line in the sand

50:39 Privacy

52:37 Predictions

53:45 Banks gonna crush

👋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. 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.

Questions or want to sponsor? [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Spirits on the blockchain? We’re joined by a digital marketplace for Whiskey, BAXUS, to get a better understanding of RWAs. 

Follow our guest on Twitter: @BAXUSco @web4o

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

01:27 Baxus background

03:20 Whisky quality level

07:19 Creating Baxus

11:28 How does Baxus work?

12:54 KYC

17:48 Low end whisky market

22:23 Whisky fandom

23:53 The oracle problem

26:52 Why does this need a blockchain?

32:05 Brick and mortar locations

33:27 UI & blockchain

34:10 Crypto users vs normies

38:34 Web 3 future?

40:25 Blockchain as trusted ledger

44:55 Trend toward high value assets

47:00 User arbitraging the assets

48:41 Wouldn't makers just go to Baxus not stores?

49:21 Distributors & regulations

51:37 Opting out of legacy systems

54:58 Investing in bottles

59:17 Whisky as store of value

1:04:42 Subject theory of value

👋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. 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.

Questions or want to sponsor? [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elijah, protocol designer at DeFi exchange Neutron, joins The Gwart Show! We get pretty deep into some tech topics on Ethereum like decentralizing oracles and AMM designs so be sure to bring a notepad.

Follow our guest on Twitter: @PossibltyResult

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:42 Elijah background

01:25 Multiple concurrent proposers

05:03 App integration

09:31 Hyperliguid

12:10 Opinionated blockspace

17:27 MCP risks

21:27 ETH's goals?

29:56 Is DeFi just FinTech 2.0?

35:33 Future of AMMs

40:56 Long tail assets

47:07 How dumb is restaking?

58:52 ETH vs BTC

1:03:41 The ETH vision

👋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.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to the Gwart Show! Today we are joined by James Prestwich, a OG Ethereum engineer and leader of @init4tech, an Ethereum research group. On the show, we dive back into Ethereum’s plight, beginning with the fundamentals. We start with a review of Ethereum’s origins, James’ mental model for ETH, why PBS is broken (and was from the start), if Rollups work and how we skipped sharding, Vitalik and more Vitalik, and what Solana really means for Ethereum.

Follow our guest on Twitter: @_prestwich

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:50 Jame's bio

02:30 ETH's evolution

06:08 Mental models for ETH

08:40 How's ETH doing these days?

13:05 Current Roll Up sequencers

14:42 Other sequencer models

20:48 Fixing PBS

24:38 Not addressing known problems

28:54 Current roll up landscape

31:54 Macro & crypto

32:48 Future of roll ups

35:01 Real world impact

40:22 Goals for ETH

42:37 Consensus for ETH

46:32 Vitalik 's bad decisions

48:48 Vitalik from a tech perspective

51:47 Hard & soft power in ETH ecosystem

54:16 SOL vs ETH

56:28 If SOL is better rails, what should ETH do?

58:35 What are you optimistic about?

👋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.

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

Questions or want to sponsor? [email protected]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices