In this first episode of DEX in the City, hosts Jessi Brooks of Ribbit Capital, Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos of StarkWare, and Vy Le of Veda dig into the questions that DeFi keeps forcing the industry to confront.

They debate how projects should respond after exploits like the recent Balancer hack, what “programmable risk management” could look like in practice, and why the idea of “pure DeFi” might be more myth than model. They also cover the MIT Brothers trial (and what its mistrial revealed about the law’s limits in crypto) and end with why the long-awaited crypto market structure bill still isn’t close to the finish line.

Hosts:

Jessi Brooks, Ribbit Capital

Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, General Counsel at StarkWare

Vy Le, General Counsel at Veda

Links:

Paper: Trust Without Intermediaries: A Programmable Risk Management Framework for the Future by Jessi Brooks and Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos

Paper: Blockchain May Offer The Investor Protection SEC Seeks By Tuongvy Le

Timestamps:

👏 0:00 Introduction

🌆 0:43 Welcome to DEX in the City — meet the hosts and the mission

⚙️ 6:16 What “programmable risk management” could mean for DeFi’s future

💥 10:38 How the Balancer hack exposed huge differences in how projects respond to exploits

🧩 17:48 Can “pure DeFi” really exist, or is it just a myth?

⚖️ 22:23 The MIT Brothers trial: why no one paid attention and why it matters

🏛️ 28:26 Inside the Senate’s new crypto market structure bill draft

🕒 33:13 Vy’s prediction on when (or if) the bill finally passes

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