Wallfacer Podcast

Today’s guest is Piotr Szlachciak, the co-founder of L2BEAT — the Ethereum space’s go-to resource for analytics on L2 scaling solutions. In addition, Piotr has several years of experience working as a software engineer and leading engineering teams in the Ethereum ecosystem.

https://twitter.com/PiotrSzlachciak

https://twitter.com/l2beat

[0:00] Introduction and Piotr's crypto history
[7:45] L2BEAT's founding story
[12:00] Decentralized vs traditional companies
[15:30] L2BEAT user personas
[21:35] Do L2s conform to L2BEAT's standards?
[25:22] Governance in L2 communities
[33:58] L2BEAT as a public goods company/business model
[48:40] The state of the L2 ecosystem
[51:43] The risks of cross-chain bridges
[58:00] Alternative data availability solutions
[1:00:54] Gathering data for L2BEAT
[1:09:50] What's next for L2BEAT

Today’s guest is Alan Keegan. Alan is the co-founder and CSO of Mamori Labs, the company building the Kinto Network. Kinto is a soon-to-be-launched L2 with user permissioning built into the base layer. Prior to that, Alan worked at numerous companies including Bridgewater Associates and Sense Finance. 

Get involved: https://engen.kinto.xyz/

Learn more about Alan: https://twitter.com/MisterKeegan

Follow Kinto: https://twitter.com/KintoXYZ

[00:00:00] Introduction 

[00:00:30] What is Kinto?

[00:05:45] The levels of on-chain compliance

[00:08:30] Comparing against other solutions in the market

[00:13:35] Unlocking RWAs full potential 

[00:18:00] Attracting capital to the chain 

[00:22:30] Discussing the bear case of permissioned chains

[00:27:00] State of ecosystem apps on Kinto on Day 1

[00:30:50] Benefits account abstraction 

[00:36:10] Kinto and bridging 

[00:38:00] Balancing Kinto with broader crypto ethos 

[00:41:00] Alan's background 

[00:44:00] Alan's time at Bridgewater 

[00:51:25] Co-Founding OmegaOne

[00:52:45] Founding a clothing company

[01:00:00] The concept of "participatory design"

[01:04:40] Alan's time at Sense Finance

[01:06:50] Differences between application vs networks

[01:09:00] Initial draw to the ideals of Kinto

[01:11:45] Get involved with Kinto! 

Getty Hill is the CEO and Co-Founder of GFX Labs, a blockchain research & development company.

[0:00] Introduction and Getty's time at Grapefruit Trading

[10:00] Starting GFX 

[14:00] Breaking down the team and work at GFX

[19:20] Funds delegating to GFX 

[20:30] The role of activist investors in DAOs

[22:00] The state of MakerDAO 

[27:00] GFX's involvement at Uniswap

[31:40] The Uniswap Fee Switch

[39:00] Would the vote go differently today?

[40:00] Relationship between protocols and Labs co's

[43:00] The risk management space within DeFi 

[47:30] Other exciting developments in borrow/lend

[48:20] Oku Trade

[1:02:00] Raising from VCs vs grant programs 

[1:04:00] Metrics for success and next 12-months of Oku

[1:07:30] POINTS 

[1:11:00] Retro on Optimism's RetroPGF 3

[1:16:00] The world of many chains 

[1:18:00] What excited Getty about the future

Today's guest is Masa, who many of you may know as TheSkyHopper on Twitter (https://twitter.com/TheSkyhopper). Masa is the co-founder of Bastion Trading and has a long history trading and investing across traditional markets as well. 

[00:00] Introduction and background 

[01:30] 2017 arbitrage opportunities 

[03:00] Arbitrage and the life cycle of markets 

[07:10] A role in governance activism and "RFV" trades 

[11:30] how do you structure the team at a trading firm 

[14:00] developing edge within trading firms 

[18:00] Trading and being active in the markets post-FTX

[27:00] How do DeFi venues actually replace CeFi venues?

[29:00] The small offshore exchange niche 

[32:00] M&A (or lack of it) within DeFi

[36:00] Bad actors in crypto 

[38:00] Risk management 

[41:00] Unique traits of successful crypto traders 

[47:00] Trading NFTs and private market investing 

[48:55] Animoca's venture book, fundiraising and more

[52:00] Options markets in crypto 

[55:00] Whale in the options market 

[1:01:00] What catches Masa's attention today?

[0:00] Introduction, background, joining MakerDAO from Twitter

[2:45] Initial spark with crypto

[4:45] One-year anniversary of the Unreal Primer on Real World Assets report

[7:20] Birth and Rebirth Assets

[11:40] Why are most assets today rebirth?

[17:00] RWA adoption happening via a pincer movement

[19:00] High-risk credit markets drying up on-chain and the inevitability of defaults 

[23:00] Standards in RWA

[26:30] Who develops the standards?

[29:00] Figuring out the buy-side and secondary liquidity 

[33:00] Where will see cost declines?

[37:00] The other side of Maker's "success" with its RWA deals 

[39:00] Where TJ sees opportunity in RWAs

[41:50] What would TJ change about RWAs today?

[45:00] Entheos Network, TJ's new company

[53:00] Battery Management Systems and Go-to-market

[59:50] Is there a crypto tie-in for Entheos? DePin?

[1:07:32] The TJ Ragsdale Health optimization function 

Marcus Leanos is the Founder of CIO of MJL Capital (https://twitter.com/MjlCapital) a multi-strategy digital asset hedge fund, and Adapt3r Digital (https://twitter.com/Adapt3rDigital), a trusted bridge between real-world asset origination and decentralized finance. 

[00:30] Introduction to Marcus and MJL Capital

[3:00] Jump to crypto from traditional investing 

[7:30] Fintechs and community banks

[11:30] Innovation in the capital structure of DeFi protocols

[19:55] State of the community / regional bank sector

[27:00] What do fundamental investors in crypto look for?

[36:00] Fundamental investor traits and models

[39:50] Credit and RWA

[55:30] Opportunities for innovation in Credit/RWA

[57:11] What is Adapt3r Digital?

[59:20] What products come next?

[1:01:08] New asset managers vs. the large institutions and RWA

[1:06:30] Investment case studies, Nexus Mutual

[1:15:30] Investment case studies, Convex 

[1:24:00] Closing and thanks for listening! 

• [0:00] Leslie's Background and intro to crypto 
• [10:00] The decision and process to join Binance in the depths of the 2018/2019 bear. 
• [17:00] Early keys to the Binance success story and embracing Chinese work culture
• [18:50] The culture of Binance 
• [21:00] How CZ Runs the Firm 
• [33:00] Leslie's time within Binance 
• [39:00] The 2018/2019 Hong Kong crypto scene
• [41:00] What most people from tradfi don't get when they transition to crypto?
• [47:00] Coinflex chapter
• [50:00] Coinflex vs. FTX at the time 
• [53:00] The binance vs. ftx competition 
• [55:00] Starting GBV 
• [58:00] GBV Investment pace 
• [1:01:00] Themes and current interest areas 
• [1:07:00] More on themes and applications 
• [1:10:00] RWAs and Credit markets 
• [1:17:25] L2s, Boba, and OP Stack
• [1:25:40] Thinking about valuations of L2 apps
• [1:29:00] Macro and turning points for crypto