My guest today is Alex Masmej, founder of Drakula, Showtime, and $ALEX token.

Alex's new app, Drakula, is a so-called SocialFi mixture of TikTok, friend.tech, Farcaster, and $DEGEN.

On this episode, Alex and I discuss consumer crypto product iteration methodology, team composition, how to sustain setbacks including departing co-founders, the bear market, owing the tax man, and US work visas. We also get into the power of taste, long term vision, and community in building crypto products.

It was fantastic chatting with Alex who is a dynamic and unique voice at the intersection of crypto and consumer. I hope you enjoy the show.

As always, this show is provided as entertainment and does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto has risks and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

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My guest today is Partha Ramanujam, co-founder of Etherspot.

Etherspot is a 4337 Account Abstraction service provider.

On this episode, Partha and I discuss the Pillar personal data locker, and how it led them to account abstraction and founding Etherspot. We get into the details of their AA Bundler, React library, and embedded wallet services. We also discuss the exciting new p2p bundler they've been working on, which is seeing adoption from peers in the space.

It was great getting to know more about Partha and Etherspot. I hope you enjoy the show.

As always, this show is provided as entertainment and does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto has risks and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

My guest today is Cameron Robertson, founder of Arx.

Arx is an NFC chip with a ECDSA private key.

On this episode, Cameron and I dive into the devices and protocols at the intersection of NFC and blockchain. We discuss tamper resistance, signing APIs, and the interaction patterns available in today's mobile device ecosystem.

It was great learning more about Arx from Cameron. This episode was recorded in person at EthDenver. I hope you enjoy the show.

As always, this show is provided as entertainment and does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto has risks and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

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My guest today is Haseeb Awan, founder of Efani.

Efani is a telephone service provider for people and companies that are concerned about SIM swapping.

On this episode, Haseeb and I dive into his history founding the original Bitcoin ATM network as a computer science student in Canada, going to YC, and becoming an American citizen. We dive into the details of Efani, his new company, which provides $99 a month US eSIM phone plans with an 11-factor process for SIM swapping that makes it very difficult to SIM jack their customers.

It was great learning more about Haseeb's journey and how Efani is able to provide more secure SIM cards for its customers.

As always, this show is provided as entertainment and does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto has risks and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

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My guest today is Andrew Huang, founder of Conduit.

Conduit is a rollup as a service provider, which lets anyone deploy their own rollup in only a few clicks. Conduit operates Zora, Aevo, Mode, Frame, Public Goods Network, and several other rollups, and each of these ships with a suite of helpful infrastructure like robust RPCs, block explorers.

On this episode, Andrew and I discuss the ins-and-outs of 1-click L2 and L3 rollups deployments, the costs of running a Superchain rollup, and the different data availability options available today, including L1, Celestia, and AnyTrust. Andrew also shares how he gained the experience required to run a complex service like Conduit.

It was great getting a chance to learn from Andrew. I hope you enjoy the show.

This episode is sponsored by Daimo. Daimo is building a stablecoin personal bank. Their small team is shipping quickly and is looking to make their first engineering hire. Daimo prides itself on self-custody and free and open source software. Their mission is to deliver liberatory cryptography to a global audience. If you're passionate about real-world ethereum, reach out to [email protected]. And if you'd like to know more about the founders DC and Nalin, you can search DAIMO on web3galaxybrain.com and listen back to the fascinating episode we recorded together a few months ago. My thanks to Daimo for sponsoring this episode. Email [email protected] if you're an engineer interested in joining the team.

As always, this show is provided as entertainment and does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto has risks and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

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My guest today is Jango, co-founder of Juicebox Protocol, Revnets, Defifa, and Bananpus.

Launched in 2021, Juicebox is a programmable fundraising protocol that has processed more than $180 million of contributions to over 1000 projects, from culture DAOs to open source projects. Most recently, Juicebox Protocol facilitated over 300 ETH in donations to the legal defense fund for Tornado Cash developers Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm.

Juicebox's core mechanic issues receipt tokens for each contribution to a given project, which can be redeemed at a later date for a portion of the remaining treasury. Issuance schedules can be defined onchain up-front, making possible trustless token launches and clear onchain relationships between project founders and contributors.

On today's episode, Jango joins me to discuss a bunch of new projects that have emerged from the Juicebox ecosystem. Bananapus, Juicebox's much anticipated cross-chain evolution, will enable contributing funds to a project on any L2, while maintaing Juicebox's trustless receipt token mechanics. Revnets, a fully automated form of Juicebox project, will replace DAO governance with predefined and immutable token issuance rules, simplifying project diligence and ongoing maintenance for project creators and contributors. Finally Bannyverse, a new NFT project, will bring Juicebox's beloved Banny the banana mascot onchain with a plethora of customizable accessories, with unique wearables for each L2 chain.

It was fantastic catching up with Jango about all of the exciting projects he's been working on over the past year. I hope you enjoy the show.

This episode of Web3 Galaxy Brain is sponsored by Zapper. Zapper is a smart block explorer that allows you to view the chain in a simple and human-readable way. Track your NFT and DeFi portfolio, search any Ethereum address, discover new opportunities, and trade, all from one place. Try Zapper on the web at zapper.xyz, or download the Zapper mobile app from the Apple App Store and Google Play! See you onchain! My thanks to Zapper for supporting Web3 Galaxy Brain.

As always, this show is provided as entertainment and does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto has risks and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

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My guest today is Vidy Thatte, co-founder of Trace.

Trace is a website that lets you build SwiftUI components with LLM text prompts, screenshots, and drawings on a canvas. In short, Trace lets you build iPhone apps with AI.

On this episode, Vidy and I take a walk down memory lane, chronicling his illustrious history of app development projects and startups that led him to where he is today. We discuss the technical details of how the current version of Trace uses GPT-4 and a code database to create smooth feeling UIs, and how powerful Trace may become in the future.

It was excellent getting a chance to meet Vidy, whose journey I've been following online for years. I hope you enjoy the show.

As always, this show is provided as entertainment and does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto has risks and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

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My guest today is Nick Dodson, co-founder and CEO of Fuel.

Fuel is a moduler execution layer that's designed to facilitate performant L2 rollups.

On this episode, Nick and I discuss the history of rollup design, the scaling challenges facing the EVM, and how his years of experience writing Solidity, EVM Assembly, and participating in the EIP process contributed to Fuel's design. We dive into Fuel's underlying UTXOs model, which allows Fuel nodes to validate transactions in parallel across multiple cores simultaneously. Finally we discuss Predicates, which are stateless conditions that can be attached to Fuel transactions, allowing users to pay for gas in ERC20s, SOL, or other coins, and to sign transactions with different eliptic curves like BLS, p256, or EDDSA.

It was great learning more about the exciting technology Fuel has been cooking up for the past few years. I hope you enjoy the show.

As always, this show is provided as entertainment and does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto has risks and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

My guests today are Draper and Facu, co-founders of Smol and contributors to Yearn and Ajna.

Smol is a set of practical EVM tools born out of Draper and Facu's experience building frontends and marketing material for Yearn Finance.

On this episode, Facu and Draper walk us through the variety of tools and projects they've worked on together, and give us insights into how DeFi protocols do successful go to market. We also get a sneak peek at upcoming projects like Smol v2, and a new interface to Yearn Finance.

It was great learning about dapp development and GTM from Facu and Draper, and to hear more about their unique collaborative relationship. I hope you enjoy the show.

This episode is brought to you by Speedrun Ethereum. Speedrun Ethereum is a hands-on crash course in Web3 development that’ll teach you how to build an NFT contract, a DEX, a multisig wallet, and more, all through hands-on step-by-step project based learning. If you’ve always wanted to get more technical, or to expand beyond your comfort zone in Web3 dev, Speedrun Ethereum is the place to go. Get started at speedrunethereum.com

As always, this show is provided as entertainment and does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto has risks and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

Farcaster Frames are an exciting new feature of the Farcaster protocol that let developers quickly build mini apps with a few lines of code. Frames extend the OpenGraph meta tags, which are typically used to serve rich media embeds when pasting a link. Frames add interactive buttons which, when clicked inside of a compatible Farcaster client like Warpcast or Supercast, let the server know which Farcaster user clicked the button. The Frame's image can be updated in response. In short, developers can build polls, NFT claims, airdrop slot machines, games, and more, all with the very simple primitives provided by Frames.

On today's show, I'm joined by some of the first developers building Farcaster Frames. My guests today are Cassie Heart, Farcaster dev and founder of Quilibrium, Christopher Wallace, founder of Unofficial, and Jacopo Ranalli, founder of Deframe and Slice. We discuss the technical mechanisms and product possibilities for Frames, and the guests field questions from members of the community. This episode was recorded on February 2, 2024.

If you're interested in Farcaster Frames, consumer crypto UX, open web standards, and exciting moments in social software design, this episode is for you. I hope you enjoy the show.

As always, this show is provided as entertainment and does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto has risks and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

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