Validated

In this episode, Austin chats with David and Daniil Liberman of Gonka about the case for using crypto to build a permissionless, meritocratic AI compute network focused on inference rather than decentralized training. They argue that centralized AI infrastructure is rapidly concentrating both revenue and compute, and contrast Bitcoin’s immutable, open rules with corporate systems whose promises can change. With Bitcoin as their north star, Gonka’s protocol aims to verify inference outputs and validate the underlying hardware to guard against fraud, censorship, and model substitution, using proof-of-work-like measurements of real, always-on hardware rather than proof-of-stake incentives.

00:00 - Why Crypto for AI

03:10 - Inference Over Training

05:02 - Bitcoin as Compute Incentives

07:21 - OpenRouter Critiques 

18:51 - How Gonka Works

20:14 - Verifiable Inference Proof

24:22 - Privacy and Encryption

29:07 - Decentralized Training Roadmap

34:16 - Keeping Frontier Labs Honest

42:44 - More on Why Bitcoin Provides an Ideal Compute Model

44:23 - Where to Learn More

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In this episode, Austin chats with Declan from Aurora Labs about building on NEAR’s Intents architecture. Declan explains why intents go beyond “a better bridge UI" and how Aurora Intents actually work, enabling one-click cross-chain journeys. They discuss how the protocol helps create liquidity, adoption metrics (over $21B lifetime volume, about $1B monthly), and use cases across wallets, neobanks, payments, RWAs, and more. The conversation also explores inherent cross-chain risks, as highlighted by a Litecoin reorg double-spend incident, and the need for insurance-like protections for onchain products. 

0:00 - Aurora Intents Overview 

02:57 - Intents vs Bridges 

05:21- Solver Network Explained 

06:23 - Aurora Intents’ Behind the Scenes Flow 

07:43 - Liquidity and Market Making 

08:55 - Real World Use Cases 

11:25 - Confidential Intents 

16:11 - Intents’ Speed Tradeoffs and Risks 

17:30 - Litecoin Incident Earlier This Year 

19:51 - Liability and Insurance 

26:08 - Future Verticals for Intents 

28:36 - Where to Learn More

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In this episode, Austin and Tori join David Hoffman (Bankless) to talk about "anything but crypto." Their conversation spans longevity and mind-uploading, the challenges of changing opinions in public, and how modern media incentives distort nuanced ideas. They also discuss social media, the future of long-form content, AI risk and alignment, what it means to “win” the AI race, regulatory uncertainty, and ... yes, David's ideas around fitness. 

00:00 - Welcome and intro 

01:46 - How Do You Want to Live? 

06:17 - Changing Your Mind as a Public Figure 

09:35 - Media Distortion Effects 

14:34 - Quality of Content vs Virality 

16:33 - Yudkowsky and AI Doom 

24:58 - Base Models' Values 

27:55 - China and AI's Moral Core 

30:01 - What Winning the AI Race Means 

36:46 - Why CLARITY Stalled 

41:47 - Hypertrophy and Longevity 

44:23 - Conclusion

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And now for something (almost) completely different. 

Welcome to Out of Scope, a new sub-series where Austin and Tori Pastore (aka Birb Bernake) riff with guests on hot takes from the frontiers of tech, finance, policy, and whatever else is the flavor of the week In this debut episode, they sit down with Austin Campbell to discuss... quite a few things: running stablecoin reserves, repealing the 17th Amendment, why banks resemble cartels, insider trading, market structure, why regulators should be paid more and held to higher standards, modernizing the BSA, and—most importantly—a definitive ranking of video conferencing tools.

00:00 - Introducing Tori 

01:24 - Chinese Peptides Explained 

02:45 - GLP 1 Hype Cycle 

05:40 - Peptides and Food Science 

10:49 - Enter Austin Campbell 

16:11- Stablecoin Reserve Rules 

20:35 - Gold Doom Scenarios 

22:59 - Banks' Payment Monopoly 

34:38 - AI Lobbying and EA critiques 

38:20 - Prediction Markets Incentives 

43:59 - Fixing Regulator Accountability 

47:39 - Prediction Markets 

48:47 - Market Manipulation Debate 

59:54 - Perps Versus Futures 

01:02:51 - Assassination Markets Debate 

01:06:21 - Austin's Magic Wand Reforms 

01:10:40 - Blooper Reel

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In this episode, Austin chats with Mert about why privacy is becoming essential for crypto and on-chain finance. They discuss how ZK-based privacy works via shielded pools, commitments, proofs, and nullifiers, contrasting it with Monero’s probabilistic obfuscation. Mert explains Zcash’s renewed adoption through improved usability, macro and regulatory shifts, and fairer historical distribution. He argues privacy layers fail when they lack tangible benefits, and outlines a new fully on-chain, composable, atomic privacy protocol for Solana built with Light Protocol’s compression approach, including permissionless and enterprise “zones” with configurable compliance features and reduced MEV via encrypted swaps. 

00:00 - Why Privacy Matters 

03:05 - Zcash And ZK Origins 

06:26 - How Shielded Pools Work 

09:56 - Why Zcash Broke Out 

15:52 - Why Privacy Layers Fail 

19:47 - Solana Privacy Protocol 

22:57 - Composability Breakthrough 

25:51 - Go-To-Market Plan 

30:50 - Compliance And Zones 

32:40 - Onchain Versus Off Chain 

34:58 - Zcash And Solana’s Future 

40:29 - Bitcoin Privacy And Quantum 

43:48 - Closing And Where To Find

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In this episode, Austin chats with Seth (Cake Wallet) about why privacy is gaining traction after years of being niche, tracing Seth’s entry through Monero and other privacy-preserving products. They compare Zcash’s seemingly influencer-driven pump with Monero’s quieter but rising real-world usage, discuss Cake Wallet’s UX-driven approach (including enforced auto-shielding for Zcash), and debate how criminal adoption can actually validate that privacy tools work in adversarial settings while emphasizing legitimate use cases and storytelling. They explore why app-layer privacy on major L1s has weak adoption versus privacy-native L1s, the importance of defaults, and what’s next for privacy in DeFi and stablecoins.

00:00 - Seth’s Personal and Professional Privacy Journey 

05:53 - Zcash vs Monero Adoption 

09:51 - Crime Compliance and Privacy Ethics 

15:25 - Why Privacy-Preserving Wallet UX Has Lagged 

20:49 - Privacy L1s vs. App-Layer Privacy 

27:30 - What’s Next Private DeFi 

30:07 - Why Monero Has Survived CEX Delistings 

32:35 - Privacy in the Age of AI Surveillance 

41:51 - Conclusion 

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In this episode, Austin chats with Emmett Hollyer about the evolution and future of Solana Mobile. They reflect on how the successes and missteps of the Saga phone informed the more refined Seeker, with a focus on improvements in design, pricing, and usability. Emmett discusses scaling production to meet over 100,000 preorders, strategies for attracting developers, and the rationale behind launching a token to align incentives across the ecosystem. The conversation also explores plans to expand beyond in-house devices through partnerships with Android manufacturers, positioning Solana Mobile as a broader crypto platform rather than just a hardware company.

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In this episode, Austin chats with Rahul Jain (Head of Trading at Ellipsis Labs) to explore the evolution of market making in crypto. Rahul discusses what gives crypto market makers an edge, why being early matters, and how crypto has created new challenges around MEV, transaction landing, and execution. They explore the future prospects of prop AMMs, perps, MCP, and what it will take for on-chain finance to scale beyond crypto-native users and compete with traditional markets. 

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In this episode, Austin sits down with Brennan to unpack Constellation, Solana’s latest market structure proposal, and what it could mean for the network’s future. The conversation centers on Brennan’s perspective on why Solana’s current leader-based design creates challenges around transaction ordering, predictability, and censorship resistance, and how Constellation aims to address those issues through a new multi-proposer framework. They explore the trade-offs between latency, complexity, and fairness, debate whether the proposal strikes the right balance for traders and validators, and discuss how it fits into Solana’s broader roadmap.

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In this first part in a series of debates on Constellation (Anza's MCP proposal), Austin chats with Ben from Temporal. The conversation focuses on Ben’s measured critical perspective, highlighting his concerns around the proposal’s trade-offs, including added complexity, potential unintended effects on market structure, and whether alternative approaches could achieve similar gains in censorship resistance and throughput. They dig into the proposal’s underlying motivation, debate whether current limitations in Solana’s architecture are being correctly diagnosed, and explore what these design decisions could mean for the next generation of on-chain trading and market infrastructure.

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