Beacon Podcast

For Jeff Zirlin, aka Jiho, the third time was the charm to get into Web3. It could have been in the early days of Bitcoin when his friends started a crypto fund, or it could have been in the days of the Cypriot financial crisis when Jiho wanted to look into currencies that sovereign powers could not overtake. But what really catapulted Jiho’s interest in the Web3 space was CryptoKitties which he f...

Yat Siu, Founder of Animoca Brands discusses how he went from learning music to becoming a tech entrepreneur, the ventures he has worked on and launched, his early days in Web3, his advice for Web3 founders, and so much more. Coming from a musician family, Yat Siu was training to be a musician when he wrote software on his Atari ST in the 1980s to read music notations. While his software did not w...

Lily Liu is the President of the Solana Foundation. She is an entrepreneur and investor focused on the cryptocurrency industry. She has a background as a CFO and operating executive in the US, China, and throughout emerging markets. Lily is the Co-Founder of Anagram, and part of the founding team of Osmosis, and an advisor to Brave. Previously, Lily co-founded Earn.com which was acquired by Coinba...

Polygon is one of crypto's greatest underdog stories if not all of tech. And it all boils down to what makes one of its co-founders, Jaynti “JD” Kanani, a believer in Web3: that all you need is a laptop and an internet connection to build anything. “You don’t need to be out there; put your name or face anywhere. You don’t have to go to Stanford or any big college. You don’t even have to go to...

In this week’s episode of Web3 Unlocked, Kenzi Wang, and Diksha Dutta speak to Illia Polosukhin, the Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol. He discusses NEAR’s creation, what it takes to have true scalability in Web3, and building through a bear market. Here is a list of the selected time stamps on the different topics discussed during the podcast: 0:25 to 2:01 : What inspires Illia to work in Web3 2:02 to...

In this epsiode, Alex Svanevik shares his journey from data scientist to Web3 Founder, the business model of Nansen.ai, and how to scale a user-centric product in Web3. Topics: 00:35 to 1:35: What is your favorite thing about Web3? 1:35 to 3:47: How did you get into Web3? 3:47 to 9:05: Idea of Nansen.ai and building a startup in Web3 9:05 to 17:59: Labelling and Privacy Concerns 18:00 to 22:00: Cu...

In this episode of Web3 Unlocked, Kenzi Wang, Sachi Kamiya, and Diksha Dutta speak to Matthew Gould, the CEO of Unstoppable Domains. He discusses building a digital identity-focused Web3 company, what founders need to focus on for fundraising, and why he thinks token funding may be harmful to protocols.  Here is a deep dive into the conversation, featuring edited excerpts from the podcast. &n...

In this episode of Web3 Unlocked, Kenzi Wang, Diksha Dutta, and Sachi Kamiya speak to Harsh Rajat, Founder of Push Protocol. Push Protocol is the communication protocol of web3. It enables cross-chain notifications and messaging for dapps, wallets, and services tied to wallet addresses. In a chat with us, he discusses how they approached Ethereum Foundation for funding, their learnings in communit...

In this episode of Web3 Unlocked, Kenzi Wang, Diksha Dutta and Sachi Kamiya speak to Jack Lu, CEO and one of the four co-founders of Magic Eden. Before co-founding Magic Eden, Jack worked at FTX, Google, and Boston Consulting Group.  Magic Eden is an NFT marketplace launched in September 2021 and serves as a home base for SOL NFT collections. Initially launched on the Solana blockchain, it ha...

In this week’s episode of Web3 Unlocked, Kenzi Wang and Diksha Dutta speak to Chris Gonsalves, the CEO of Community Gaming. He discusses how Community Gaming was created, how the Web3 gaming ecosystem differs from traditional eSports, and how Web3 gaming will change in the future.

In this episode of Web3 Unlocked, Kenzi Wang and Diksha Dutta speak to Sandeep Nailwal on his entire journey with Polygon so far. He discusses how he got into Crypto, his commitment to the developer community, and what the future looks like for Web3 today. Website: web3unlocked.xyz Twitter: @web3unlockedxyz

In this episode of Web3 Unlocked, Kenzi Wang and Diksha Dutta speak to Lucas Vogelsang , CEO, and Co-Founder of Centrifuge , focusing on bringing Real World Assets to Defi since the early days of Ethereum. During the discussion, Lucas covers the future of Defi, the Polkadot ecosystem, and his experiences of being a founder in the Web3 bear market.   Lucas had always been passionate about comp...

In this episode of Web3 Unlocked, Kenzi Wang speaks to Sota Watanabe , Founder of Astar Network , on being a Japanese founder in the crypto world, parameters that affect Web3 company valuations the most, the multichain future and the exciting new projects at Astar. Here are edited excerpts of the episode. Before Sota Watanabe founded Astar Network in Japan in 2018, he studied information technolog...

In this episode of Web3 Unlocked, Kenzi Wang and Diksha Dutta speak to Nischal Shetty , Founder of WazirX and Shardeum , on decentralization, the right way to build communities, and making it in web 3. Before Nischal launched WazirX and Shardeum, he started his entrepreneurial journey by creating a social media company (what began as JustUnfollow is now Crowdfire) in 2010. He was a software develo...

In this episode of Web3 Unlocked, Kenzi Wang speaks to Andrew Durgee on the work Republic is doing, its various arms, the current market cycle, the impact of the recent Terra-Luna crash, and why Republic has zero attrition. In terms of structure Republic has four different companies - a holding company, Republic Retail, Republic Capital, and Republic Crypto. Its mission has been to democratize fin...

In this episode of Web3 Unlocked, Kenzi Wang and Sachi Kamiya speak to Ciara Sun, Founder & Managing Partner at C² Ventures, on being a woman in web3, the challenges she faced, and the road ahead for her investment firm. Before she dived into the world of web3, she was a management consultant with Boston Consulting Group and Deloitte. Her journey to discovering crypto began in New York in 2017...

In this episode of Web3 Unlocked, Kenzi Wang talks to Miles Anthony , Founder of Decentral Games. Decentral Games builds games that give players economic freedom through aligned incentives, self-custody and delegation of yield-bearing metaverse assets. . The game first launched its closed beta in September 2019 and currently includes poker, blackjack, roulette, backgammon, and slots. In a candid c...