Denver was the place to be in Feb - March 2023. Not because weed is legal there 🍁. Lol no, but because one of the oldest + largest Ethereum Hackathons happened in Denver. And the Normie was there in the front row. 👀

Raghu, our resident CHAD BUIDLER, flew down to Denver for ETH Denver (not to cover it for the pod 🤦 ) – to organize a bunch of events around the Buildathon. There he met with hackers, venture capitalists, builders, and even non-EVM believers. 🫢

In this episode he drops the 🔥on:

- Are Ethereum devs excited about Bitcoin Ordinals?

- What does the room think about ZK-rollups?

- Everyone’s building a wallet. Are they wrong?

PLUS: Was that SBF song the most cringe moment of ETH Denver?

Brought to you by Doodhwala. 🥛

Get smarter on crypto in 2-minutes: https://www.doodhwala.xyz/

Subscribe to Prashanth's Substack: https://prashanthswaminathan.substack.com/

Listen to the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8CfRrJWnPEREXhxtxuiZbw

Why did this IIT-IIM dude get into Liquid Staking? ft. Amitej Gajjala from Stader

LSDs are quite popular in crypto. Wait, not that weird drug devs take to stay up all night. We’re talking about liquid staking derivatives. One company that’s doing a 🔥 job with LSDs across proof-of-stake blockchains is Stader Labs.

In this episode of the Web3 Normies podcast, Raghu and Prash talk to Amitej Gajjala, the Founder of Stader Labs.

They talk about:

• How Amitej went from IIT – IIM – Swiggy – Staking cryptos?

• Is staking meant to secure the network or earn passive income or both?

• What’s the learning curve for a web2 engineer to transition into a web3 developer?

Brought to you by Doodhwala. 🥛

Get smarter on crypto in 2-minutes: https://www.doodhwala.xyz/

Subscribe to Prashanth's Substack: https://prashanthswaminathan.substack.com/

Listen to the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8CfRrJWnPEREXhxtxuiZbw

Timestamps:

0:00- 8:18- Amitej's Story of Web3

8:19- 12:24- Amitej's view on Staking 

12:31- 19:22- What is LST? 

19:39-25:34- How does the PEG get affected & role of ETH 

26:33-28:11- How big is his team, How does he hire?

28:14-30:22- His views on $ to % ratio of ETH 

30:25- 36:54- What about his competition in the markets? 

36:56 - 38:30- Will there be bonding of Stader Tokens 

38:38- 40:54- What is the future of Stader? 

41:10- 49:02- What worked after Terra?

49:05-50:11- What are his plans for India? 

50:57-53:54- His thoughts on Restaking 

54:10-56:11- Parting thoughts

One of the most boring phrases in all of crypto is – “Enterprise Blockchain Technology.” 🥱

But we know someone who can make it fun and someone who’s been in the enterprise blockchain space since 2016. 😯

In this episode, the Normies talk with Vijay Krishnan, the director of technology at ConsenSys, a blockchain software company founded by a co-founder of Ethereum, Joseph Lubin.

They chat about:

- Cool use-cases for Metamask!

- What tf is Infura and how does it work?

- How Vijay set up a mining rig in THREE days!

Brought to you by Doodhwala. 🥛

Get smarter on crypto in 2-minutes: https://www.doodhwala.xyz/

Subscribe to Prashanth's Substack: https://prashanthswaminathan.substack.com/

Listen to the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8CfRrJWnPEREXhxtxuiZbw

Timestamps:

0:48-9:42- Vijay's Intro and backstory 

9:46- 12:35- 2016 Ethereum vs Current Ethereum

12:38-17:22- What is Consenys

17:24-18:23- How does Consenys manage the product

18:27-22:25- Future of Consenys

22:46-26:16- Some exciting use-cases

26:17-27:20- Future for Metamask

27:21- 28:49- Will Consensys go non-EVM 

28:54-33:43-Views on Account Abstraction 

37:51-41:56- The Infura story

41:57-45:09 Will the world be multichain? 

45:11-49:42- About ZK EVM

49:45-52:56-Will Consenys go vertical? 

53:00-56:15- Consenys' India plans

Metaverses are cool. In some of them, I can even have a real girlfriend. But how are metaverses built, why are they cool (besides the girlfriend part ofc), and what can they become?

To understand all of 👆the normies brought on Sai Krishna, from CopeStudio, Polygon-acquired company building tools for the metaverse. 

He answers a very important question:

Can we really drink 2-day old doodh ❌

Does a metaverse really need a token ✅

Catch the Normies dropping some 🔥in English and in God’s favourite language.

By God we mean, the only and only SUPERSTAR Rajnikanth. 😎

Brought to you by Doodhwala. 🥛

Get smarter on crypto in 2-minutes: https://www.doodhwala.xyz/

Subscribe to Prashanth's Substack: https://prashanthswaminathan.substack.com/

Listen to the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8CfRrJWnPEREXhxtxuiZbw

0:00- 4:43- What tf is SAI?

5:26- 11:20- Sai's background Polygon Story 

11:21-14:42- Polygon Story

14:59-20:00- Should a metaverse be open? 

20:11-10:57- Three J's Story and Metaverse

31:01-40:24 - Web3 & Metaverse intersection 

40:32-48:44- GPU power for rendering Metaverse

49:35- 55:30- How to get users into the Web3 Metaverse 

55:42-59:58- State of the Metaverse current

1:00:29-1:03:06- State of the Metaverse future

1:04:08- 1:08:20- How will humans deal with metaverse ethics

1:08:23 -1:09:43 - The Normies' view on the Metaverse

DeFi is more complicated than my last girlfriend. And more useful than a swiss knife. Damn, that’s a weird combination.  

To make sense of this weird combination, we’ve got Karan Ambwani (that’s Ambwani, not Ambani!!) the lead for dYdX India. 

He joins the normies to talk about all things decentralized finance.  

Karan does 3 things: 

1. Make sense of DeFi (weird! but okay) 

2. Is Interesting in DeFi (really weird) 

3. Builds real things in DeFi (ok, weirdo confirmed)  

Catching him dropping some knowledge bombs with the normies.

Brought to you by Doodhwala. 🥛

Get smarter on crypto in 2-minutes: https://www.doodhwala.xyz/

Subscribe to Prashanth's Substack: https://prashanthswaminathan.substack.com/

Listen to the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8CfRrJWnPEREXhxtxuiZbw

Track pants and hoodies or a suit and tie. What would you rather wear? 

Either, as long as there’s a doodh stain ofc.  

Arjun Kalsy, however, has worn them both. He’s also worn a buncha hats, with Polygon, and now he’s with Mantle, a BitDAO incubated project.   

He joins the normies to talk about his hustler story, the early days at Polygon, and the big things brewing at Mantle.

Brought to you by Doodhwala. 🥛

Get smarter on crypto in 2-minutes: https://www.doodhwala.xyz/

Subscribe to Prashanth's Substack: https://prashanthswaminathan.substack.com/

Listen to the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8CfRrJWnPEREXhxtxuiZbw

Founders. Crypto is full of them. Some of them could be the next Sandeep Nailiwal, while others could be the next Sam Bankman. You know who you are. 👀

How can you tell the difference between them? 🤔

That’s 👆what Prashanth, the Big Brain VC gets into in this episode of the Web3 Normies. 

Raghu also gives a lowdown of layoffs galore and some cool name drops on DeFi companies bringing real-world bond (read: boring) assets on-chain.

Brought to you by Doodhwala. 🥛

Get smarter on crypto in 2-minutes: https://www.doodhwala.xyz/

Subscribe to Prashanth's Substack: https://prashanthswaminathan.substack.com/

Listen to the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8CfRrJWnPEREXhxtxuiZbw

Solana, like Chelsea FC, has had a rough few months.

So, the normies call in Akshay BD, the head of international expansion at the Solana Foundation to give them a lowdown of what’s up at the L1?

BD drops some 🔥stories about his days at Uber speaking to Arvind Kejriwal about surge pricing in Delhi, the early years at Solana, and the blockchain’s future as the Wall Street for Crypto.

Pareen besides hanging onto that beautiful lock of hair, probes into the aspects of hiring, web3 culture, and some other fun stuff.

Brought to you by Doodhwala. 🥛

Get smarter on crypto in 2-minutes: https://www.doodhwala.xyz/

Subscribe to Prashanth's Substack: https://prashanthswaminathan.substack.com/

Listen to the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8CfRrJWnPEREXhxtxuiZbw

2022 sucked. But can 2023 be better?

A builder and a VC hash it out and deliver some spicy hot takes on everything from crypto gaming to "DeFi regulations." Let's hope newsletters are safe tho. 🤞

Oh, and if you wanna know how the big bad FED affects crypto, Prash drops some knowledge bombs. 💣 

Brought to you by Doodhwala. 🥛

Get smarter on crypto in 2-minutes: https://www.doodhwala.xyz/

Subscribe to Prashanth's Substack: https://prashanthswaminathan.substack.com/

Listen to the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8CfRrJWnPEREXhxtxuiZbw

The first episode of Web3 Normies (aka the Genesis Block), where Raghu and Prashanth talk about current trends in the market heading into 2023. 

Raghu gives the builders' perspective, having seen it first-hand from BuildersTribe, and Prash brings in the investor's thesis. 

They close with some interesting thoughts on why this bear market is the best to BUIDL.

Brought to you by Doodhwala. 🥛

Get smarter on crypto in 2-minutes: https://www.doodhwala.xyz/

Subscribe to Prashanth's Substack: https://prashanthswaminathan.substack.com/

Listen to the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8CfRrJWnPEREXhxtxuiZbw