Season 7 | Episode 8 In this wrap-up episode of Season 7, Mike and Hart dive deep into the multichain endgame of crypto. They discuss how the user and developer experience might evolve in a multichain future, the role of ZK tech in enabling interoperability, and the importance of standardization across chains. They explore the potential for L1 asse…

Gm! Bell Curve's season 7 will be back soon. This week our friends Mert and Dan from the Lighspeed discuss the state of the network, MarginFi drama, Uniswap vs the SEC, airdrops, Monad's $225 million raise & more. Enjoy! -- Follow Mert: https://twitter.com/0xMert_ Follow Dan: https://twitter.com/smyyguy Follow Lightspeed: https://twitter.com/Lights…

In this week's round up the Mike and Vance dive into the recent Bitcoin correction, discussing the narratives surrounding interest rates, politics, and the upcoming halving. They explore the launch of Runes on Bitcoin and its potential impact on the ecosystem. The conversation also delves into the merging of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the challenges fac…

In this episode, Mike is joined by Nick Trileski, a crypto options trader at Cumberland DRW, for an in-depth discussion on the current state of the crypto options and derivatives market. They explore the growth of options trading, the psychology around all-time highs, and the increasing institutional demand as evidenced by rising open interest. The…

In this week's round up the Mike, Michael, and Vance break down Uniswap's fight with the SEC over a Wells notice and the implications for DeFi, as well as Bearchain's massive $100M raise. The risks of hedging altcoin investments using perpetual futures contracts are explored, along with the significance of Circle and BlackRock uniting to bridge tra…

In today's episode, Mike is joined by Eugene from Ellipsis Labs and Lucas from Jito to discuss the current state and future of MEV on Solana. The trio dives into the philosophical divergence between Solana and Ethereum's approaches to mitigating MEV, with Solana prioritizing user experience and low fees while Ethereum focuses on incentive compatibi…

In this week's round up the Mike, Michael, and Vance examine the new market structure emerging as fresh capital starts to flow back into the space and debate whether this could break the traditional crypto market cycles. They also discuss the impact of early liquidity on founders and teams through token launches. Additionally, they analyze the impr…

Season 7 | Episode 7 In today's episode Kyle Samani from Multicoin Capital joins Michael and Hart to discuss the complex dynamics of network effects in the blockchain ecosystem. The conversation dives deep into the different types of network effects at play, the phenomenon of anti-network effects caused by high gas fees, and the potential for block…

In this week's round up the Mike, Michael, and Vance examine the new market structure emerging as fresh capital starts to flow back into the space and debate whether this could break the traditional crypto market cycles. They also discuss the impact of early liquidity on founders and teams through token launches. Additionally, they analyze the impr…

Season 7 | Episode 6 In today's episode Mike and Hart are joined by Jonas from Chainbound and Murat from Prime to dive deep into the emerging world of pre-confirmations on Ethereum L2s. They discuss the current challenges facing L2s including centralized sequencers and limited composability, and explain how pre-confirmations act as credible commitm…

In today's episode, Mike is joined by Myles and special guest Jim Parillo from Figment Capital to explore the latest developments in the restaking ecosystem. They dive into lessons learned from shared security models in Cosmos and Polkadot. The conversation also touches on the differences between liquid staking tokens (LSTs) and liquid restaking to…

In this week's round up the Mike, Michael, and Vance discuss the impact of the Dencun hard fork on Ethereum L2s, which has lowered fees and opened up new opportunities for L2 business models and applications. The conversation also covers Maker's DSR hike, the return of meme coin mania, Jito's decision to end its mempool product, the AI investing cr…

In today's interview Sam and Brick are joined by Vance, Mark, and Hasu. Together they dive into MakerDAO's endgame. They discuss the current state of MakerDAO, including the DAI stablecoin and RWA adoption. The conversation then shifts to the bull case for Maker, with a focus on the new subDAO structure and how it aims to drive demand for the Maker…

In this week's roundup the Bell Curve crew is joined by Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, joins us to discuss the evolution of Chainlink from a focus on price feeds to a platform for data, compute, and cross-chain services. Sergey explains how Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) enables the secure transfer of both data and value acr…

Season 7 | Episode 5 In today's episode Mike and Hart are joined by Uma Roy to dive deep into the world of zero-knowledge proofs and their transformative potential for blockchain interoperability. The conversation explores the fundamentals of ZKPs, the current ZKP landscape, and the economics of generating and verifying proofs. Uma shares insights …

In this week's round up the Mike and Michael kick things off with their takes on ETHDenver and the excitement around restaking and AI applications in crypto. Shifting gears they analyze the recent crypto market performance and debate whether crypto's regulatory outlook is positive in an election year. Regarding institutional interest, Vance describ…

Season 7 | Episode 4 In today's episode Mike and Hart are joined by Bryan Pellegrino, co-founder of LayerZero, to debate the the end state of the multi-chain future. They debate technical specifics like message passing protocols, bridging frameworks, censorship resistance, and security tradeoffs, as well as philosophies around infrastructure layers…

In this week's round up the crew kicks things off with discussing recent commentary and analysis around Bitcoin ETF dynamics and the case for a potential Ethereum ETF approval. A debate then ensues on conceptual frameworks for valuating crypto tokens using market capitalization versus fully diluted valuation metrics and draw interesting parrelels o…

In this week's interview Sam and Ren from 0xResearch are joined by Brendan Farmer, the Co-Founder of Polygon. Brendan unpacks why no single blockchain can scale like the internet due to heterogeneous requirements across chains. He then introduces Polygon's solution - an Aggregation Layer that enables low-latency, trustless interoperability between …

In this week's roundup the team checks in on booming Bitcoin ETF inflows versus declining gold ETF interest. Debating the likelihood and demand dynamics of an Ethereum spot ETF launch, they analyze whether restaking poses leverage risks and how to value Eigenlayer's opportunity. They then shift gears and discuss Starkware’s critiqued token distribu…

Season 7 | Episode 3 In today's episode Mike and Hart are joined by Sam Hart of Skip Protocol and Illia Polosukhin to dive into the world of chain abstraction. They discuss the consensus around the need for intent-based interoperability solutions, the incentives (or lack thereof) for ecosystems to be interoperable, and predictions around rollup con…

In this episode of Bell Curve, Robbie Ferguson of Immutable joins to discuss the state of blockchain gaming. They cover the core thesis behind web3 games - giving gamers real ownership of in-game assets to capture the $150B yearly market. Robbie explains Immutable's focus on providing the best platform for developers through solutions like ZK rollu…

Season 7 | Episode 2 In today's episode Mike and Hart are joined by Christopher Goes, Founder of Anoma. Chris unpacks flawed assumptions baked into current blockchain design and explains his vision for an intent-centric topology. Chris critiques the limitations of existing virtual machines modeled on outdated centralized mainframes, arguing they ca…

Today's episode explores the intersection of liquid staking and the modular money ecosystem. Mike is joined by Stride Labs co-founder Aiden Salzman and John Charbonneau general partner of DBA. The trio dives deep into the architecture of the Stride protocol, including stTIA and the liquid staking module (LSM). The discussion touches on incentive al…

In this week's roundup Mike and Vance dive into the latest developments across crypto including the state of Bitcoin ETFs, return of ETH as money, and the growth of prediction markets. They discuss the recent impressive growth of Polymarket, a prediction betting platform now generating substantial interest and volume without any incentive programs.…

In today's Season 7 premiere Mike is joined by our season co-host Hart Lambur, co-founder of Across Protocol and UMA Protocol. Join them as they explore the emerging multichain endgame. First, they discuss different models for interoperability between chains and how protocols may connect in the future. This ties into the rise of an intent-centric b…

In this week's roundup Mike and Myles dive deep into the dichotomy emerging between Ethereum the protocol and Ethereum the Asset. As Ethereum pushes activity to rollups and prioritizes exporting ETH's value, tough questions arise around stake rates, liquid staking derivatives, and monetary policy. Should Ethereum target a lower stake rate to favor …

In today's episode of Bell Curve we are joined by both the UMA and Flashbots to dive into their latest collaboration, Oval. Oval unlocks a new MEV capture mechanism for protocols to monetize the value that they create. We unpack Oracle Extractable Value (OEV), a type of MEV that has historically been uncaptured by protocols. Stay tuned for all this…

In this week's roundup Mike is joined by Michael and Vance of Framework Ventures. The trio kick things off by discussing macro sentiment and if a "soft landing" is truly on the horizon. The conversation then explores signs of excess in private market deals. The team also analyze the BTC ETF flows data so far, evaluating the implications of over $11…

Eugene Chen joins us to discuss why Solana's local fee markets aren't real. Well, they are real, but they don't yet work as advertised. Eugene is the co-founder of Ellipses Labs, Phoenix Protocol, and Umbra Research and he is one of the sharpest builders in Solana! In this episode, we discuss how Solana transactions work, how to improve Solana's fe…

In this week's roundup Mike is joined by Blockworks Research Analysts Westie and Brick to dive into Maker Protocol's evolution into a cash flow machine. They analyze Maker's financials, revenue streams, and balance sheet metrics to showcase its impressive fundamentals. The discuss Maker's ambitious decentralized governance plans, including the intr…

Today Michael and Myles are joined by Zaki of Sommelier Finance and Sreeram of Eigenlayer for a deep discussion on the converging visions of Ethereum and Cosmos. They analyze how restaking could serve as a bridge between the two ecosystems, providing security to Cosmos chains while opening up new services for Ethereum. Zaki explains how the evoluti…

In this week's roundup Mike and Myles dive deep into Ethereum, analyzing its roadmap, monetary qualities, demand drivers, and commodity-like attributes. They review Vitalik's updated roadmap, discussing rollups, scalability, centralization concerns, and criticism around complexity. The conversation explores whether Ethereum can be "money", comparin…

In this week's interview Dan and Sam are joined by Alluvial co-founder and CEO, Mara Schmiedt. They explore Alluvial's role in Liquid Collective's innovative offerings in the staking market. They dive into the trends of staking in crypto markets and the overall growth of liquid staking. Mara provides insights on the introduction of service level ag…

Today's episode is from our friends over at the Lightspeed team joined by Meow, the co-founder of Jupiter, joins us to discuss how Jupiter is building crypto's leading aggregator. Jupiter is a DEX aggregator on Solana that routes over 80% of all DEX trades! It's an absolute killer app that has served as the entry to Solana's vast ecosystem. In this…

Today's episode of Bell Curve explores the intricacies of blockchain fee markets, from their origins in Bitcoin to modern innovations like Ethereum's EIP-1559 and multidimensional fee markets. Mike is Joined by Pranav and Sam to dive deep into the challenges of balancing spam prevention and positive user experience by analyzing fee structures in ma…

In today's episode Vance, Michael, and Michael reflect on their 2023 predictions and dive into each major ecosystem's outlook for 2024. They share outlooks on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos, gaming, and NFTs. They touch on crypto's evolution, its key players, the reshuffling of top investors, and conclude with each sharing their biggest winners …

In this bittersweet season finale of Bell Curve Mike and Dan recap key themes from this season. They dive into specific topics like the impact of blocktimes on MEV and innovations in fee market structures. They also hit on rethinking simplistic metrics like TVL for assessing capital efficiency, how execution models like frequent batch auctions can …

In this episode of Bell Curve, the Myles and Mike dive into the Data Availability (DA) wars and explore potential strategies for DA solutions towards the enhancement of Ethereum Roll-ups. They analyze the trade-offs in choosing between different DA solutions and the influence of significant shifts in the blockchain ecosystem. The also touch on Sola…

In this episode, the Bell Curve team returns to explore the recent launch of JTO token airdrop and discuss a Bitcoin NFT hot take. They dive into Jito's future, business model, and link to MEV and liquid staking. The conversation then shifts to Bitcoin NFTs and how they are rapidly gaining attention. Finally, they also talk about a wealth transfer …

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This week's roundup the Michael, Vance, and Michael trio are joined by Sam Hart, the head of product and strategy at Skip Protocol, to cover the biggest news including Binance CEO CZ stepping down, the controversial launch of BLAST L2, and the forking of the Cosmos hub. They also touch on the odds of an institutional rally, Blur market share domina…

Qiao Wang from Alliance DAO (a web3 accelerator) joins us to discuss the applications and protocols that are primed to dominate crypto's next cycle. Qiao reviews thousands of crypto startups every year, has an uncanny ability to predict future narratives and is one of my favorite thinkers in the space! In this episode, we discuss why RWAs and payme…

In today's episode, Mike and Myles dive deep into the emerging world of liquid restaking. They take a deep look into the inner workings of depositing staked ETH into protocols like Eigenlayer to earn additional yield. They discuss competitive dynamics between these protocols, whether this is positive or dangerous for Ethereum, and implications for …

Today we are diving deep into the world of interoperability and intents. Hart Lambur, co-founder at Risk Labs and UMA, joins us to analyze the trade-offs between different bridge architectures like atomic swaps, canonical bridges, and optimistic bridges. They discuss how intent-based protocols like Uniswap X and Across Protocol are reimagining brid…

In today's episode of Bell Curve we are joined by Link Marine legend Chainlinkgod.eth. Mike, Michael, and Vance dive into the past, present, and future of Chainlink. They kick off with Chainlink's community origins in 4chan. They move on to introduce how Chainlink aims to be a decentralized oracle network that securely connects blockchains to exter…

Season 6 | Episode 5 In this episode of Bell Curve we dive into the world of batch auctions with special guests Anna, co-founder of CowSwap, and Ludwig, Founder of Sorella Labs. The team digs into how Cowswap's innovative batch auctions function and how Sorella Labs' Angstrom project tackles LVR for sustainable liquidity. They unpack how app layer …

In this week's roundup, the Michael power duo dives into the recent market rally and explore its implications in crypto including debt proceedings and VC appetite. They explore the Ethereum ETF approval potentially becoming a reality and the controversy surrounding Wintermute’s CEO Evgeny Gaevoy and the Near Foundation. To close out they discuss th…

In this week's Bell Curve roundup Mike and Myles discuss the return of "token season" - with recent launches like DYDX, Celestia, and Jupiter on Solana. They debate distribution strategies like airdrops, and whether excessive costs are justified. They also discuss Solana's price explosion and admire Solana for its focus on the app developer experie…

This week on Bell Curve you're going to be hearing an episode of Lightspeed interviewing Jon Charbonneau on how integrated and modular chains are on an inevitable path toward the same endgame. Jon is an investor and the most prolific researcher in the space who understands the nuances and tradeoffs of the Solana and Ethereum ecosystems. In this epi…