Bell Curve

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 tokens (LRTs), as well as the emergence of Solana L2...

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 craze, and whether this crypto cycle will be fundame...

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 token through a flywheel effect involving token f...

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 across chains, with built-in risk management and prog...

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 on how ZKPs can enhance capital efficiency, securi...

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 describes skepticism at a pension fund conference while M...

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 versus service providers, decentralization compro...

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 of start-up equity vs token distributions. To close...

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 ZK rollups to scale access to shared liquidity and...

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 distribution. Stick around for all of this and much more!...

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 consolidation and abstraction. Other topics covered i...

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 rollups, aggregated liquidity via the Global Order Book...

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 cannot keep pace with user needs. The discussion the...

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 alignment between protocols, demand drivers for liqu...

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. Shifting gears, they cover the launches of liquid...

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 blockchain paradigm, rethinking how users specify o...

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 liquid ETH? What are the risks of validator centra...

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 and much more! - - Follow Hart: https://twitter.c...

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 billion in trading volume. They then shift onto h...

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 fee markets, MEV on Solana, how apps can accrue thei...

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 introduction of subDAOs and a token redenomination. Th...

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 evolutionary "marketplaces of ideas" tend to succeed over...

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", comparing it to Bitcoin and analyzing the demand side - fr...

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 agreements (SLAs) in liquid staking, contributing to...

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 episode, we discuss how Jupiter found PMF, why Me...