Chain Reaction

Art Malkov, the marketing mastermind behind Polymarket's rise and IoTeX's 2.5 billion market cap peak, joins Chain Reaction to discuss his latest project: Electroneum. Despite Bitcoin hitting $100K, Art argues we're still in a bear market because alts haven't followed - and explains why only projects building real utility will survive. Electroneum represents the "sleeping giant" strategy Art speci...

Philipp Weiling from Botanix shares how the 2013 Cyprus banking crisis - where the EU seized 47% of deposits over €100K - sparked his journey from traditional finance to Bitcoin DeFi. After building enterprise partnerships at Polygon, Philipp joined Botanix to solve Bitcoin's scaling trilemma. Botanix launches as the first Bitcoin L2 offering "real Bitcoin yield" - not yield paid in other tokens,...

Porter Adams from Matter Labs joins Chain Reaction to discuss ZKSync's biggest technical milestone in years: achieving full EVM equivalence. No more custom compilers, no more modified tools - developers can now truly copy-paste their Ethereum code to ZKSync. But that's just the beginning. Porter reveals how major banks like Deutsche Bank and UBS are already experimenting with ZKSync chains, using...

Episode Highlights: In this deep-dive conversation, Prabal Banerjee, co-founder of Avail, takes us through his incredible journey from academia to building critical blockchain infrastructure. From his early days researching at Polygon to spinning out Avail as a chain-agnostic data availability layer, Prabal shares insights that every Web3 builder needs to hear. What You'll Learn: ✅ Why data avail...

Stanford Professor and Baylon Labs Founder David Tse, whose wireless research powers every smartphone today, explains how Babylon Protocol has attracted 50,000 Bitcoin (~$5B) to secure proof-of-stake networks. We explore the technical and philosophical differences between proof-of-work and proof-of-stake, why Bitcoin holders trust Babylon's trustless approach, and the mysterious whale who staked 1...

Tyler Sloan, Product Lead for Asphere's scaling solutions, demonstrates how enterprises and developers can launch custom blockchains in 15 minutes using their no-code deployer. We explore the evolution from L2s to L3s, different rollup stacks (Arbitrum, OP, Polygon, ZK), and enterprise demand for private chains. Tyler reveals major partnerships, including Solana permission environments, Polkadot r...

Nick Emmons, co-founder of Allora, discusses the evolution from Upshot's NFT pricing to building decentralized AI coordination networks. We explore how Allora transitions from model-centric to objective-centric AI, creating markets for intelligence that enable developers to access the best AI outputs without having to choose specific models. Nick shares his vision of hyperfinancialization, AI as p...

In this episode of Chain Reaction, Feroz Lakhani interviews Chase Allred from Arbitrum/Offchain Labs about how Arbitrum is revolutionizing the Ethereum ecosystem through advanced Layer 2 scaling solutions. Chase explains Arbitrum's role as the first and largest optimistic rollup on Ethereum, providing faster and cheaper transactions while maintaining Ethereum's security guarantees. With 250 millis...

In this episode, Feroz Lakhani interviews Andre S (Head of Product at Bitcoin L2 Labs) and Jonas Gerber (Hero Systems) about Stacks - a Bitcoin Layer 2 solution bringing smart contract capabilities and DeFi to Bitcoin. Discover how Stacks has grown into a genuinely decentralized ecosystem with over 30 independent entities working together to expand Bitcoin's functionality without compromising its...

In this insightful episode of Chain Reaction, host Feroz Lakhani sits down with Andrea Muttoni, President of Story Foundation, to explore how blockchain technology is revolutionizing intellectual property rights. Andrea shares his journey from Amazon and Dapper Labs to now leading Story Foundation, where they're building a decentralized protocol that makes IP registration and licensing as easy as...

In this episode of Chain Reaction, host Feroz Lakhani speaks with Tyler Van Der Hoeven, a 10-year veteran of building on Stellar who currently works at the Stellar Development Foundation. Tyler shares insights on Stellar's longevity in the blockchain space, having recently celebrated its 11th birthday. They discuss how Stellar has maintained its core mission of facilitating value transfer and micr...

In this episode of Chain Reaction, host Feroz Lakhani sits down with EJ Ayala, Head of Partnerships at Ex Populus and core contributor to XAI blockchain, to discuss the evolution of Web3 gaming. EJ shares insights on XAI's origin as a Layer 3 blockchain on Arbitrum created to solve actual gaming problems, and introduces Raijin.gg - their new platform that rewards Steam gamers with real-world prize...

In this thought-provoking panel from Asphere's "Blueprint: Mapping the Future of Web3 Infrastructure" event at ETH Denver, industry leaders from Zerebro and ElizaOS dive deep into the evolving landscape of AI agents. Watch as these pioneers discuss: -The current state of autonomous AI agents and their frameworks -Technical challenges in building truly autonomous systems -Business models and moneti...

Panel discussion from ETH Denver featuring infrastructure innovators from Facet, DIA, and Somnia discussing their unique approaches to blockchain architecture. Tom Lehman (Facet) advocates for truly decentralized rollups, Dillon Hanson (DIA) explains their transparent oracle systems, and Ignacio (Somnia) showcases their ultra-fast EVM implementation. The panel explores key tensions between decentr...

Join our insightful panel discussion from ETH Denver featuring industry leaders exploring the cutting-edge innovations happening on Bitcoin. Moderated by Tyler Sloan, Product Manager at Ankr, this conversation brings together experts from TAC, Botanix, and BitFlow (representing Stacks) as they discuss the renaissance of development on the world's first cryptocurrency. Our panelists explore the lat...

Join host Feroz Lakhani for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at how Asphere is revolutionizing blockchain technology through AI integration. In this episode, Feroz sits down with CTO Stanley Wu and Infrastructure Lead Roman Fasakhov to explore the development of Moniqa, an innovative AI system enhancing blockchain infrastructure. Learn how this groundbreaking project began, the challenges the t...

Host Feroz Lakhani sits down with Kevin He, co-founder of Bitlayer, for a deep dive into the evolution of Bitcoin from a simple payment system to a programmable DeFi ecosystem. Kevin shares his journey from translating the Bitcoin whitepaper into other languages to building four EVM-compatible chains and now pioneering Bitcoin Layer 2 solutions. Discover how Bitlayer is achieving on-chain verifica...