Base Layer

Fredrik, the co-founder of Dune Analytics joins me on Base Layer to discuss how they have become one of the key players in Digital Asset data analysis. With their boards that are created by community members they have been a flash point of analysis on DeFi and many of the sub sectors of Digital Assets. We discuss this and much more.

Aleksander joins me on Base Layer for one of the most interesting conversations we've had about the intersection of digital collectibles, gaming and digital asset based ecosystems that are becoming incredibly mature. We discuss how Axie Infinity was born, how it's becoming the Pokemon of Digital Assets and what the future has in hold for the game and its community participants. Must listen to epis...

Diane joins me to discuss one of the most talked about new projects in DeFi: DODO. After raising a round led by some of the biggest investors in Digital Assets DODO is working to build upon their next generation on-chain liquidity provider platform which leverages the Proactive Market Maker algorithm (PMM) to provide pure on-chain and contract-fillable liquidity for everyone. Great conversation on...

Sergey, the Co-Founder of Chainlink, joins me again for a tremendous conversation about the role smart contracts are beginning to play in society, helping unbanked people become banked, helping those with identification become part of a larger technological society and much more. We also discuss the evolution of smart contracts and the need for real world data to make them work and the role Chainl...

Mounir joins us to discuss Paraswap, a new platform that aggregates multiple decentralized exchanges into one place so that the rates often beat the market price. We discuss the role that aggregators are beginning to play in DeFi, how the incentive models work for liquidity providers and the underlying technology that makes this work. You can find more about Paraswap here: https://paraswap.io/#/

Amrit joins me on Base Layer to provide insight into Zilliqa, a high-throughput public blockchain platform designed to scale to thousands of transactions per second. Zilliqa aims to drive the blockchain industry forward by developing the highest quality technology infrastructure which can create measurable and real-world impact. To that end, we have sought to establish partnerships across industry...

Artur joins me on the show from Somnium Space, an open and social virtual reality world built on the Ethereum blockchain. You can buy land, build or import objects, and instantly enjoy or monetize assets. Somnium space is a universe shaped entirely by its community of users. This world continues to fascinate me as what our potential future may be (or is becoming already) so enjoy! Check it out her...

Devin, the co-founder of Opensea, joins me on Base Layer for a great review of how they are building what I am calling the Amazon of NFT's. OpenSea is a marketplace for digital goods, including collectibles, gaming items, digital art, and other digital assets that are backed by a blockchain like Ethereum. On OpenSea, you can buy, sell, and trade any of these items with anyone in the world. OpenSea...

Matthew joins me on Base Layer for a great conversation about the furthering of the institutionalization of Digital Assets. Matthew spent a large percentage of his career at GCM Grosvenor, a global alternative asset management firm started in 2971 that currently has around $55 billion in assets. We talk about his transition to Digital Assets, especially the 'why'. You will also hear a great conver...

JP joins me for an excellent show in which we delve deep into the state of the state of Bitcoin mining, hitting on the health of mining here in the United States and also on the technological aspects associated with it. For those learning about digital assets, Bitcoin and this ecosystem we also give a primer on hash rate, discuss the use of renewal energy associated with mining and discuss where i...

Andrew, the Managing Partner at Sfermion, joins me for a comprehensive discussion on the entire world of NFT's and the "Metaverse". There has been a shift from all things DeFi to the world of NFT's where art and gaming is taking a whole new shape. For anyone trying to understand what is happening in this sub sector of Ethereum based platforms this is a must listen. Also check out Andrew's blog: ht...

Alex joins me on Base Layer for what I can describe as a master class in NFT's. What is an NFT and why is everyone talking about it? Alex answers that and much more and tells us what Rarible is; one of the best marketplaces today for this world of art, gaming and more intersecting. It allows people with no experience create NFT's and really experience this world. Must listen to episode!

Tor rejoins us on Base Layer to discuss Secret Network, the first blockchain to allow privacy-preserving smart contracts. That means applications built on Secret can utilize encrypted data without revealing it to anyone, even the nodes in the network. By supporting encrypted inputs, encrypted outputs, and encrypted state for smart contracts, Secret Network allows for new kinds of powerful decentra...

Rich joins me on Base Layer for a great conversation about some of the macro trends in Digital Assets throughout the summer; we discussed Bitcoin and spent a good amount of time on DeFi, what's happening in that world and the opportunity set. We discussed some of the solutions GSR provides investors such as growing the size of your balance sheet with customized yield enhancing strategies such as l...

Tegan joins me for a great episode of Base Layer to discuss all the things The Graph are working on. The Graph Network is core infrastructure for Web3—a necessary component for delivering decentralized applications with consumer-grade performance. The Graph is a decentralized protocol for indexing and querying data from blockchains, starting with Ethereum. We discuss the complexity of completely r...

Nodar joins me on Base Layer to talk about his exciting project, Zapper which aims to increase the GDP of DeFi by abstracting the complexities of accessing unique opportunities faced by retail investors, fund managers and builders around the world. We had a detailed conversation about how current DeFi works, yield farming and all the nuisances involved to participate. Zapper is a project a lot of...

Sam joins me on Base Layer and it's a really interesting chat! From his days at Everipedia all the way to Frax we discuss a full body of work in Digital Assets. Frax is the first stablecoin with an end goal of fully algorithmic mechanism that seeks to achieve this goal by beginning fully collateralized and slowly removing the collateral through on-chain smart contracts as long as the price remains...

Richard joins us on Base Layer for a great show! During the later part of a 17 year career at Nomura, Richard began to see the potentiality of Digital Assets and pursued multiple venues to participate, including being an investor in Diginex. He saw the institutional grade infrastructure they were building and their focus on Compliance, Trust and having the best security available for custody that...

Camila joins me on the show for one of the most truthful and sometimes raw takes on what's happening in DeFi. We talk about everything from yield farming and some of the blow up's that have happened to metrics we should be using to evaluate success. We discuss some possible ways that the DeFi community could self govern and what happens if that doesn't happen. This was one of my favorite conversat...

Jed and Denelle join us for a full review of Stellar; an open-source payments network that serves as a distributed intermediary blockchain for global financial systems and circulates a native asset, Stellar Lumens (XLM). Before co-founding Stellar, Jed also co-found Ripple -- he has been an integral part of Digital Assets for nearly a decade. Before joining Stellar's Foundation, Denelle spent 8 ye...

Garry Tan is a legend...end of story. Listen why here. No seriously, Garry is a designer, engineer, and investor in early stage startups. Cofounder and managing partner of Initialized Capital, an early stage venture capital fund that was earliest in Coinbase and Instacart. They are a team of 6 investing partners with over $770M in assets under management and our startups have created more than $40...

Nate joins us for a great conversation on the work he took part in to analyze the stablecoin market (report found here). In this podcast we discuss the rise of stablecoins, their purpose in digital assets, the velocity and growth of them in 2020 as a function of global economic issues and the rise of DeFi and much more. If you're learning about stablecoins or just want to make sure you're up to da...

Hart joins me on Base Layer to discuss his journey from Goldman to start his company, UMA which is designed to power the financial innovations made possible by permissionless, public blockchains, like Ethereum. Using concepts borrowed from fiat financial derivatives, UMA defines an open-source protocol that allows any two counterparties to design and create their own financial contracts. But unlik...

Anton joins me for a great episode of Base Layer as we learn all about 1inch after news of the $2.8M investment round closure with some significant investors in Digital Assets. For those unfamiliar, DEX's are Decentralized Exchanges vs what we call CEX's (Centralized: Coinbase, Kraken, etc). 1inch has recently surpassed the landmark figure of one billion USD! Real-time stats are available here: ht...

Tom Trowbridge is former President of Hedera Hashgraph, a public distributed ledger based on the Hashgraph consensus algorithm. Mr. Trowbridge has been advising and investing in technology companies since 1996. He started his career in 1996 as an investment banker in the telecom group at Bear Stearns & Co., and subsequently spent three and a half years at the telecom and media private equity firm...