Untangling Web3

Trading markets are undergoing a major shift as blockchain technology brings greater transparency, faster settlement, and new ways to access capital. Proprietary trading, or prop trading, has traditionally relied on centralized firms to evaluate traders, manage risk, and distribute profits. Now, onchain infrastructure and AI trading agents are creating new opportunities to make these markets more transparent, accessible, and efficient.

In this episode of Untangling Web3, Louis Régis, Founder and CEO of Propr, explores how onchain prop trading is reshaping financial markets and what happens when AI agents compete alongside human traders. Drawing on his experience in quantitative trading at Credit Suisse and crypto trading at Rothschild & Co, Louis explains how blockchain can improve risk management, why trading performance is about more than generating returns, and how artificial intelligence could transform the future of markets.

Key Points Discussed:

• Onchain Prop Trading Brings Transparency to Markets: Traditional prop trading firms face challenges around opaque rules, risk management, and payouts. Propr uses blockchain infrastructure to make reserves, market exposure, and hedging activity more transparent, while combining simulated trading evaluations with real onchain risk management.
• AI Traders Are Changing How Markets Operate: Around a third of Propr's funded traders are AI agents, which demonstrate more consistent risk management and higher evaluation pass rates than human traders. While humans still generate the largest individual profits, AI agents are showing how disciplined execution and risk-adjusted performance can compete with discretionary trading.
• The Future of Trading Is Human, AI, and Onchain: AI agents could increasingly manage portfolios, support trading decisions, and identify market inefficiencies. As onchain markets expand into perpetual futures, equities, options, and prediction markets, automated strategies may improve efficiency while also amplifying volatility around shared trading signals.

Onchain trading is not just about moving financial transactions onto blockchain infrastructure. It is about creating markets where risk, liquidity, and performance can be assessed more transparently, and where talented traders can potentially access capital based on verifiable trading history rather than relying solely on traditional evaluations.

As AI becomes more integrated into financial markets, the relationship between human traders and automated agents will continue to evolve. The future of trading may combine human judgment with AI-powered analysis and risk management, while blockchain provides the infrastructure for more transparent, accessible, and continuously operating global markets.

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Learn more about Propr here:

https://www.propr.xyz/

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Learn more about Web3 at:

https://untanglingweb3.com/

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Untangling Web3 is brought to you by hosts Jack Davies and Alec Burns, with music by Daniel Paigge. Got a question or topic suggestion? Send us an email at [email protected].

Love what you're hearing? Show your support by becoming a subscriber and don't forget to leave us a stellar review.

The views we express here are our own, and do not represent the views of our employers. Nothing discussed or stated in the show should be considered advice.

Credit is one of the most important foundations of the global financial system, yet traditional lending remains fragmented, opaque, and heavily dependent on intermediaries.

As stablecoins and tokenized assets bring more capital onchain, private credit represents a major opportunity for blockchain technology to improve how businesses access financing, how collateral is managed, and how lending risk is distributed.

In this episode of Untangling Web3, Benjamin Sarquis Peillard, Founder and CEO of Cap, explores how bringing credit onchain could reshape private credit markets and unlock new forms of institutional lending.

The conversation covers why traditional credit infrastructure struggles with transparency and misaligned incentives, how tokenized collateral and financial guarantees can make lending safer, and why connecting blockchain liquidity to the real economy is essential for the next phase of DeFi adoption.

Key Points Discussed:

• Private Credit Has a Trust and Incentive Problem: Traditional credit markets rely on intermediaries making lending decisions with other people's capital, creating misaligned incentives, opaque risk, and opportunities for collateral fraud. Bringing collateral onchain makes ownership and pledging more transparent, helping prevent the same assets from being used to secure multiple loans.
• Tokenized Collateral Unlocks New Lending Markets: Cap connects stablecoin depositors, real-world borrowers, and specialist underwriters through an onchain credit marketplace. Underwriters pledge their own collateral to guarantee loans, earn credit spreads when borrowers repay, and absorb losses when they do not. Smart contracts automate collateral management and align lending decisions with financial risk.
• Connecting DeFi Liquidity to the Real Economy: Sustainable onchain credit depends on financing productive businesses rather than relying on speculative token incentives. Cap is building infrastructure to provide stablecoin loans to institutions and businesses across finance, robotics, manufacturing, and other industries, bringing real-world private credit opportunities into DeFi.

Bringing credit onchain is about more than tokenizing existing financial products. Blockchain technology can fundamentally improve how credit markets operate by making collateral verifiable, automating risk management, and allowing specialist underwriters to participate in lending opportunities that would otherwise be inaccessible or economically impractical.

As stablecoins become mainstream financial infrastructure, private credit could become one of the most important bridges between traditional finance and DeFi. The long-term opportunity is a more efficient, transparent, and scalable credit system where tokenized collateral protects lenders, smart contracts enforce financial guarantees, and onchain liquidity flows directly into productive economic activity.

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Learn more about Cap here:

https://www.cap.app/

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Learn more about Web3 at:

https://untanglingweb3.com/

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Untangling Web3 is brought to you by hosts Jack Davies and Alec Burns, with music by Daniel Paigge. Got a question or topic suggestion? Send us an email at [email protected].

Love what you're hearing? Show your support by becoming a subscriber and don't forget to leave us a stellar review.

The views we express here are our own, and do not represent the views of our employers. Nothing discussed or stated in the show should be considered advice.

Vibe coding is changing who can build software and how quickly ideas can become real products. With AI, LLMs, and coding agents improving at speed, the barrier between having an idea and launching an app is collapsing. Software that once required developers, budget, and months of work can now be prototyped, tested, and iterated in days.

In this episode of Untangling Web3, Colin Fitzpatrick explores how vibe coding is reshaping software creation, entrepreneurship, and the future of work.

This conversation covers how tools like Lovable, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI coding agents are enabling non-technical builders to create functional products, why distribution is becoming more important than development, and what this shift means for developers, startups, SaaS companies, and solo founders.

Key Points Discussed:

• Vibe Coding Turns Ideas Into Products Fast: AI coding tools now allow non-technical builders to create apps, prototypes, and internal tools without writing traditional code. Colin explains how recent improvements in LLMs and coding agents have turned vibe coding from a novelty into a practical way to build real software.
• The Bottleneck Moves From Building to Distribution: As AI lowers the cost and complexity of software development, more apps will launch than ever before. The challenge is no longer just building a product; it is getting users, earning trust, standing out from AI-generated noise, and proving that the product solves a real problem.
• Developers, Startups, and SaaS Are Being Rewritten: Vibe coding will not replace every developer or enterprise platform, but it will change how software is prototyped, tested, and launched. Solo founders can validate ideas faster, developers can become far more productive, and smaller tools or simple SaaS products face pressure from AI-built alternatives.

Vibe coding is not just about coding faster. It represents a broader shift in how people use AI to think, build, test, and automate. LLMs and agents are turning software creation into a more conversational process, where builders can describe what they want, iterate with models, and use different AI systems to challenge, refine, and improve the result.

As AI coding tools mature, the future of software will depend less on who can afford to build and more on who can identify real problems, design useful products, and reach the right users. Vibe coding gives more people the ability to create, but it also raises the bar for originality, trust, marketing, and execution.

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Learn more about Colin's projects here:

https://colinfitzpatrick.io/

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Learn more about Web3 at:

https://untanglingweb3.com/

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Untangling Web3 is brought to you by hosts Jack Davies and Alec Burns, with music by Daniel Paigge. Got a question or topic suggestion? Send us an email at [email protected].

Love what you're hearing? Show your support by becoming a subscriber and don't forget to leave us a stellar review.

The views we express here are our own, and do not represent the views of our employers. Nothing discussed or stated in the show should be considered advice.

Privacy is becoming one of the most important infrastructure questions in blockchain. Public ledgers made transactions transparent, verifiable, and trustworthy, but full transparency creates limits for real-world adoption. Businesses, institutions, governments, and individuals all need systems that can prove what is true without exposing everything by default.

In this episode of Untangling Web3, Charles Hoskinson, CEO and Founder of Input Output Group, explores why privacy infrastructure is essential for the next generation of blockchain systems. The conversation covers selective disclosure, trust, smart compliance, privacy-preserving transactions, and how networks like Midnight could help bridge the gap between transparency, confidentiality, and real-world adoption.

Key Highlights:

• Privacy and Transparency Need to Work Together: Blockchain does not need to choose between public verification and private information. Zero-knowledge proofs and selective disclosure allow users to prove specific facts — such as identity, eligibility, or compliance — without revealing unnecessary personal or transactional data.
• Trust Is the Core Problem Blockchain Can Solve: Modern institutions, platforms, and governments are facing a crisis of trust. Blockchain creates shared, auditable infrastructure where rules are transparent, transactions are verifiable, and no single party can secretly change the system. Privacy infrastructure strengthens that trust by giving users control over what they reveal and when.
• Midnight and the Future of Smart Compliance: Midnight is designed as privacy infrastructure that can sit across blockchain ecosystems, enabling private transactions, account abstraction, smart compliance, identity proofs, and regulated asset flows. The goal is to make blockchain easier to use while allowing businesses and users to meet rules without surrendering full transparency.

Privacy infrastructure is not about hiding everything. It is about creating systems where disclosure is intentional, verifiable, and proportionate. That matters for financial transactions, identity, voting, real-world assets, AI-generated content, and any environment where trust depends on proving facts without exposing everything.

As blockchain moves into mainstream finance, commerce, and public infrastructure, privacy will become a core requirement rather than an optional feature. The next phase of adoption will depend on systems that combine transparency with confidentiality, allowing people and institutions to transact, verify, and build trust without giving up control of their data.

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Learn more about Midnight at:

https://midnight.network/

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Learn more about Web3 at:

https://untanglingweb3.com/

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Untangling Web3 is brought to you by hosts Jack Davies and Alec Burns, with music by Daniel Paigge. Got a question or topic suggestion? Send us an email at [email protected].

Love what you're hearing? Show your support by becoming a subscriber and don't forget to leave us a stellar review.

The views we express here are our own, and do not represent the views of our employers. Nothing discussed or stated in the show should be considered advice.

Blockchain infrastructure is becoming the real battleground for institutional adoption. As more capital, assets, and applications move on chain, the question is no longer whether blockchain technology has potential, but whether the underlying networks can deliver the speed, scalability, reliability, and security required for global finance.

In this episode of Untangling Web3, Kent Lin, Co-Founder and COO of Optimum, explores what it takes to build infrastructure capable of supporting institutional-scale blockchain adoption. The conversation covers why performance matters under stress, how data propagation affects blockchain scalability, and why faster, more reliable networks are essential for the next phase of onchain markets.

Key Highlights:

• Institutions Need Reliability, Not Hype: Institutional adoption depends on infrastructure that performs consistently under pressure. Banks, asset managers, and financial platforms care about latency, bandwidth, security, accountability, and downside risk — especially during volatile market conditions when blockchain networks are most likely to degrade.
• Speed and Scalability Start at the Network Layer: Optimum is building a universal data acceleration network designed to make blockchains faster and more efficient. By using network coding technology developed at MIT, Optimum can reduce wasted bandwidth, improve data propagation, and help validators, builders, and users access blockchain data faster and more reliably.
• Decentralization Can Improve Performance: Blockchain scalability does not have to come at the cost of decentralization. Faster data transmission, better network topology, and more efficient validator communication can make decentralized networks more performant, secure, and institution-ready without requiring major changes to consensus or core blockchain architecture.

Blockchain infrastructure is moving from a background technical concern to a central requirement for the future of digital assets. If trillions of dollars are expected to move on chain, blockchains need to behave like serious financial infrastructure: fast, reliable, secure, and resilient under real-world conditions.

As tokenization, stablecoins, DeFi, and institutional adoption continue to grow, the winners will be the networks that can scale without sacrificing trust. Better infrastructure will not just make blockchains faster; it will determine which ecosystems are capable of supporting the next generation of global financial activity.

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Learn more about Optimum at:

https://www.getoptimum.xyz/

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Learn more about Web3 at:

https://untanglingweb3.com/

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Untangling Web3 is brought to you by hosts Jack Davies and Alec Burns, with music by Daniel Paigge. Got a question or topic suggestion? Send us an email at [email protected].

Love what you're hearing? Show your support by becoming a subscriber and don't forget to leave us a stellar review.

The views we express here are our own, and do not represent the views of our employers. Nothing discussed or stated in the show should be considered advice.

DeFi lending is becoming one of the clearest examples of how blockchain technology can improve financial infrastructure. Stablecoins have created a global base layer for digital dollars, while lending markets allow those assets to remain liquid, transparent, and productive. As institutional interest grows, the next challenge is making DeFi safer, more efficient, and mature enough for large-scale capital allocation.

In this episode of Untangling Web3, Sam MacPherson, Co-Founder and CEO of Spark, explores how DeFi lending has evolved from early crypto-native experimentation into serious onchain financial infrastructure. This conversation covers stablecoin adoption, liquidity, risk management, real-world assets, and why lending markets are becoming a core part of the digital assets ecosystem.

Key Points Discussed:

• Stablecoins Are Driving DeFi Adoption: Stablecoins have found real product-market fit by giving users access to digital dollars, especially in markets where local currencies are unstable or hard to move. Once users hold stablecoins, the next natural step is earning yield, making DeFi lending a key layer of onchain finance.
• DeFi Lending Creates Transparent, Productive Liquidity: Spark enables users to deposit stablecoins such as USDC and USDS into lending markets that allocate capital across crypto-backed loans, real-world assets, treasury bills, and other yield sources. Unlike traditional finance, DeFi can make collateral, liquidity, risk exposure, and balance sheet composition visible on chain.
• Risk, Security, and Efficiency Matter More Than Hype: DeFi lending only works at scale if users can trust the infrastructure. Spark focuses on conservative risk management, secured lending, deep liquidity, and strong withdrawal availability, aiming to provide efficient stablecoin yield without chasing unsustainable returns or exposing users to unnecessary risk.

DeFi lending is moving from speculation toward financial utility. The core value is not just higher yield, but a more efficient system where capital can move faster, remain transparent, and be allocated through programmable infrastructure.

As stablecoins continue to scale and institutions enter digital assets, lending markets may become one of the most important bridges between traditional finance and DeFi. The future of onchain finance will depend on liquidity, security, and disciplined risk management — not just innovation for its own sake.

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Learn more about Spark at:

https://spark.fi/

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Learn more about Web3 at:

https://untanglingweb3.com/

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Untangling Web3 is brought to you by hosts Jack Davies and Alec Burns, with music by Daniel Paigge. Got a question or topic suggestion? Send us an email at [email protected].

Love what you're hearing? Show your support by becoming a subscriber and don't forget to leave us a stellar review.

The views we express here are our own, and do not represent the views of our employers. Nothing discussed or stated in the show should be considered advice.

As digital assets move from experimentation into live institutional deployment, the challenge is no longer just getting financial products on chain.

Banks, asset managers, fintechs, and crypto-native protocols now need the same level of security, risk controls, modelling, simulation, and operational predictability expected in traditional capital markets.

In this episode of Untangling Web3, Andrej Benčić, Co-Founder and CEO of Tenderly, explores how hybrid onchain institutions are emerging as traditional finance and crypto-native infrastructure move closer together.

This conversation covers why simulation before execution is becoming essential, how institutions can manage complex blockchain risk, and why operational tooling will be critical for the next phase of digital assets.

Key Points Discussed:

• Onchain Finance Needs Institutional-Grade Risk Controls: As more capital moves into digital assets, small operational mistakes can create major reputational and financial risk. Smart contract security is only one part of the equation; institutions also need stronger processes for execution, monitoring, modelling, and day-to-day blockchain operations.
• Simulation Before Execution Becomes Standard Practice: Tenderly’s simulation infrastructure allows teams to model transactions, protocol behaviour, cascading failures, market stress, and complex multichain scenarios before anything happens on chain. This creates a safer environment for testing assumptions, understanding exposure, and reducing risk before real capital is deployed.
• Hybrid Onchain Institutions Are the Next Phase: Crypto-native protocols are becoming more operationally mature, while traditional institutions are learning from DeFi’s transparency, composability, and programmable financial infrastructure. The future sits between both worlds: institutions that combine traditional risk discipline with onchain technology, simulation, and real-time digital asset infrastructure.

Hybrid onchain institutions represent a new model for financial infrastructure. The goal is not just to tokenize assets or launch protocols, but to operate on chain with the same discipline, predictability, and security that large-scale financial markets require.

As blockchain adoption grows, simulation and modelling will become core infrastructure for managing risk. The institutions that succeed will be the ones that treat onchain operations as a full lifecycle challenge: not just launch day, but every transaction, upgrade, stress event, and market scenario that follows.

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Learn more about Tenderly at:

https://tenderly.co/

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Learn more about Web3 at:

https://untanglingweb3.com/

--

Untangling Web3 is brought to you by hosts Jack Davies and Alec Burns, with music by Daniel Paigge. Got a question or topic suggestion? Send us an email at [email protected].

Love what you're hearing? Show your support by becoming a subscriber and don't forget to leave us a stellar review.

The views we express here are our own, and do not represent the views of our employers. Nothing discussed or stated in the show should be considered advice.

Money is entering a new phase. Stablecoins are moving from crypto-native tools into real financial infrastructure, tokenization is bringing traditional assets on chain, and digital assets are becoming increasingly embedded in the future of finance.

In this episode of Untangling Web3, Sean Lee, Co-Founder of Open Stable Network, Host of the Onchain Capital podcast, and former CEO of the Algorand Foundation, explores the future of money through stablecoins, tokenization, digital assets, AI, and global financial infrastructure.

The conversation covers why stablecoins are gaining traction, how regulators and institutions are approaching blockchain, and what the next decade of money could look like.

Key Highlights:

• Stablecoins as the Next Layer of Money: Stablecoins are becoming one of the clearest real-world use cases for blockchain technology. By representing fiat currencies on chain, they offer faster settlement, easier cross-border movement, and practical utility without the volatility of crypto-native assets. As more jurisdictions develop stablecoin regimes, digital money is moving closer to mainstream financial infrastructure.
• Tokenization and the Convergence of Finance: Digital assets now sit across multiple categories: crypto-native assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, tokenized assets like stablecoins and money market funds, and traditional financial products wrapped in blockchain infrastructure. Institutions are no longer treating tokenization as an experiment; major financial firms are building real products around digital assets, on-chain settlement, and programmable markets.
• AI, On-Chain FX, and the Future Financial Stack: The future of money will be shaped by stablecoin-based settlement, tokenized markets, AI-powered financial agents, and on-chain foreign exchange. As more currencies, assets, and financial products move onto blockchain rails, AI could help users research, manage, and execute financial decisions — but questions around trust, liability, identity, and quantum security still need to be solved.

The future of money is not simply about replacing banks or making everything crypto-native. It is about building a financial system where stablecoins, digital assets, and tokenized markets work alongside existing institutions while improving speed, access, transparency, and interoperability.

As money becomes programmable and more assets move on chain, the financial system could become more global, automated, and efficient. Stablecoins may become the settlement layer, tokenization may unlock access to broader markets, and AI may become the interface that helps people navigate an increasingly complex world of digital finance.

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Learn more about Web3 at:

https://untanglingweb3.com/

--

Untangling Web3 is brought to you by hosts Jack Davies and Alec Burns, with music by Daniel Paigge. Got a question or topic suggestion? Send us an email at [email protected].

Love what you're hearing? Show your support by becoming a subscriber and don't forget to leave us a stellar review.

The views we express here are our own, and do not represent the views of our employers. Nothing discussed or stated in the show should be considered advice.

Private markets have become home to some of the world’s most valuable and transformative companies, from AI and robotics to space technology and fintech. But access to these markets remains restricted, fragmented, illiquid, and difficult for most investors to reach.

As more companies stay private for longer, the ability to participate in the upside of innovation is increasingly limited to a small group of institutions, funds, and high-net-worth investors.

In this episode of Untangling Web3, Ultan Miller, CEO of Hecto, explores how private markets can be unlocked through standardized, compliant access to pre-IPO investments.

This conversation covers what is broken in today’s private market structures, how tokenization and blockchain can create new forms of access and liquidity, and why the future of investing may involve private market index products built around the most exciting sectors in technology.

Key Points Discussed:

• Why Private Markets Are Locked Away: Many of the most important technology companies now stay private for longer, meaning everyday investors miss out on much of the growth before IPO. Access is restricted by regulation, wealth thresholds, deal scarcity, complex SPV structures, and layers of fees that make private market investing difficult even for eligible investors.
• Tokenization as a New Access Layer: Tokenized private market products can give investors financial exposure to high-growth companies without requiring direct equity ownership. By using blockchain infrastructure, standardized frameworks, and compliant structures, private assets can become easier to access, hold, transfer, and integrate into broader digital markets.
• Building Private Market Indexes for the Future: Hecto is creating index-style products for private markets, starting with exposure to the largest pre-IPO companies and expanding into themes such as robotics, AI, quantum, longevity, and other high-growth technology sectors. The goal is passive, long-term access to innovation — not short-term speculation or day trading.

As blockchain, private markets, and compliant financial technology converge, the opportunity is to build a more open system where access to innovation is no longer limited to insiders. The future of private market investing may look less like exclusive deal-by-deal access and more like transparent, standardized, tokenized products that allow broader participation in the companies shaping the next generation of technology.

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Learn more about Hecto here:

https://www.hecto.finance/

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Learn more about Web3 at:

https://untanglingweb3.com/

--

Untangling Web3 is brought to you by hosts Jack Davies and Alec Burns, with music by Daniel Paigge. Got a question or topic suggestion? Send us an email at [email protected].

Love what you're hearing? Show your support by becoming a subscriber and don't forget to leave us a stellar review.

The views we express here are our own, and do not represent the views of our employers. Nothing discussed or stated in the show should be considered advice.

Business finance is undergoing a major shift. For years, companies have relied on fragmented tools, manual processes, slow settlement, unpredictable costs, and financial infrastructure that still feels disconnected from the speed of modern tech.

As blockchain, stablecoins, tokenization, and AI continue to evolve, finance is moving toward a more automated, transparent, and programmable market structure.

In this episode of Untangling Web3, Pierre Person, CEO and Co-Founder of Usual Labs and Fira Money, explores the future of finance through the lens of regulation, DeFi, stablecoins, tokenized markets, and on-chain financial infrastructure.

Drawing on his experience as a former French MP involved in crypto policy and now as a founder building financial products, Pierre explains why traditional finance and decentralized finance are starting to converge — and why the next generation of financial markets will likely be built on blockchain rails.

Key Points Discussed:

• Stablecoins as the Foundation of Future Finance: Stablecoins are becoming core infrastructure for global finance, not just crypto trading tools. Pierre explains why stablecoin issuers need to move beyond the traditional model of privatizing collateral yield, and how Usual is building a more transparent system where users can access ownership, governance, and value generated by real-world assets such as T-bills and money market funds.
• Tokenization, DeFi, and the Convergence of Markets: On-chain finance is not about reinventing every financial product — it is about rebuilding market infrastructure with automation, liquidity, transparency, and lower costs. Fixed-rate lending, tokenized assets, on-chain settlement, and institutional capital moving into blockchain markets point toward a future where traditional finance and DeFi increasingly merge.
• Regulation, Privacy, and AI in Financial Infrastructure: Regulation must protect markets without freezing innovation, especially in a global technology like crypto. Pierre argues that finance needs better alignment across jurisdictions, stronger privacy protections, and practical AI tools that help users understand markets, manage savings, and access financial knowledge that was previously limited to institutions.

The future of finance is likely to be more open, automated, and on-chain. Stablecoins are emerging as the liquidity layer, tokenization is bringing real-world assets into programmable markets, and DeFi infrastructure is creating new ways to lend, borrow, settle, and manage capital.

As traditional financial institutions move closer to blockchain infrastructure, the key question is no longer whether finance will adopt crypto rails, but how quickly markets, regulators, and users will adapt. The long-term opportunity is a financial system where capital moves faster, assets are more transparent, and access to modern financial tools is no longer limited by geography, legacy systems, or institutional gatekeepers.

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Learn more about Web3 at:

https://untanglingweb3.com/

--

Untangling Web3 is brought to you by hosts Jack Davies and Alec Burns, with music by Daniel Paigge. Got a question or topic suggestion? Send us an email at [email protected].

Love what you're hearing? Show your support by becoming a subscriber and don't forget to leave us a stellar review.

The views we express here are our own, and do not represent the views of our employers. Nothing discussed or stated in the show should be considered advice.