Genesis Block

As part of Genesis Block's guest interviews series, our 12th guest interview is with Sid Sheth, Growth & Capital Markets at Maple Finance. Maple provides the technology for credit experts to start and scale a lending businesses. Their marketplace is where capital allocators participate in a growing range of yield opportunities offered by credit experts. We interview Sid about his journey f...

As part of Genesis Block's guest interviews series, our 11th guest interview is with Adam Helfgott, Co-Founder of Valence. Valence is a data enablement company that leverages public blockchains to connect businesses to consumer data. They aim to drive new revenue streams and innovation opportunities by helping all parties receive value for data transactions while remaining secure. Their soluti...

As part of Genesis Block's guest interviews series, our 10th guest interview is with Halcyon Price, DeFi Derivatives Lead at Chainlink Labs. Chainlink, one of the core infrastructural components in the blockchain realm, enhances smart contracts by connecting them to real-world data sources and off-chain computation - via a technology known as Oracles - across any blockchain, and provide global...

As part of Genesis Block's guest interviews series, our 9th guest interview is with Phillip Kassab, Growth Lead at Sei Network. Sei is an open-source Layer 1 blockchain specialized for trading, optimizing every layer of the stack to offer infrastructure for trading apps of all types. Leveraging a novel consensus mechanism and technical breakthroughs, Sei claims to be the fastest blockchain in...

As part of Genesis Block's guest interviews series, our 8th guest interview is with Chris James Murphy, founder of Klink Finance. Klink Finance is a gamified crypto asset management platform created to enable a completely new approach toward creating wealth among its user populations in a sustainable and exciting way. Klink's prize-linked deposit account aims to reward users with the chanc...

As part of Genesis Block's guest interviews series, our seventh guest interview is with Aki Balogh, founder of DLC.LINK. DLC.link enables self-custodied Bitcoin to be safely used in collateralised lending. It eliminates the need for third-party intermediaries such as custodians, wrapped tokens or bridges (which have led to over $140 billion in lost assets to date). They've raised $1 millio...

Social media built on Web3 wants to make the relationship between all stakeholders – creators, users, and the social media platform – more mutually beneficial, and make the presence of a highly extractive middleman obsolete. Web3 social is a fundamentally new approach at re-architecting the traditional Web2 social media stack, where closed databases and opaque algorithms become open networks where...

ZKPs let someone prove that they know, have, or are something without giving up any information about what they know, have, or are. At their core, ZKPs have strong cryptographic guarantees, with the use of cryptographic techniques like digital signatures and hashing providing assurances that the underlying data has not been accessed, modified, or disclosed in an unauthorised manner. Watch on to le...

As part of Genesis Block's guest interviews series, our sixth guest interview is with Harshal Madnani, founder of Xade Finance.   Xade aims to be the 'The Revolut of DeFi', providing all traditional banking services powered by in-house DeFi Protocols with the user experience of a digital bank, through a mobile application intended to be a SuperApp.    Xade is a moonshot. Harshal, on...

As part of Genesis Block's guest interviews series, our fifth guest interview is with Florian Strauf and Mason Fasco, co-founders and core members of Tokenomics DAO.   Tokenomics DAO is a community of individuals who explore and collaborate on the tokenomics of Web3 protocols and blockchain applications.   They produce content and offer services and tools to help builders and invest...

Commencing in the summer of 2021, NFTs have successfully widened the scope of “crypto” to a much larger audience. The primary reason for this is the technology’s ability to blend media and culture into the existing financial components of blockchain technology.   Given this, NFTs – implemented in their many forms – are meant to be the gateway to help onboard mainstream internet users. Not jus...

New Order DAO is a Venture Incubator DAO that aims to build and grow DeFi protocols.   They provide selected early stage startups with growth opportunities, networking, fundraising, and functional and technical support. To date, New Order DAO has incubated [REDACTED] , OptyFi , H2O , Frogs Anonymous , and Y2K Finance , and is in the process of bringing Motherboard , Sector Finance , and Wynd...

The creator economy refers to the rise of individuals or groups who produce media with educational and/or entertainment value, in order to grow and monetise an audience.  This is in contrast to the ownership economy, which refers to the use of Web3 technology to enable participants of a platform, product, or network to gain ownership stakes in said platform, product, or network.  It is t...

As part of Genesis Block's guest interviews series, our fourth guest is Vokkant Thakkar, a research associate at Woodstock Fund, India's first Web3-native venture fund.   Vokkant primarily focuses on the infrastructure and gaming verticals of Web3, but is well versed across various sectors in this nascent space of ours.   We discuss topics like the inner workings of a Web3 fund, the futu...

FRAX is a permissionless DeFi protocol that offers a range of DeFi products and services. Its primary product is a partially-collateralised algorithmic stablecoin that enables liquidity systems and lending markets.  FRAX also offers three other products:    - FRAX Swap, an Automated Market Maker (like Uniswap)  - FRAX Lend, a Lending Market (similar to Compound or AAVE)  -...

Today's episode is an open discussion in light of the events of the last week.   We discuss FTX, SBF, the state of the market, and what comes next for our industry as a whole.   This episode structure will not be routine, and will only be called upon when there are pivotal developments in the market.   ---------------------------------------------  📰 Subscribe to our Newslette...

As part of Genesis Block's guest interviews series, our third guest is Paul J Lei, a protocol program manager at Gauntlet, one of the premier DeFi and crypto risk simulation platforms.   After having completed his undergraduate studies in Statistics from Harvard University, Paul worked in a couple of TradFi roles at investment banks like Jefferies and Goldman Sachs, where he advised the Finan...

From the point of view of an insider, it may seem as if the Web3 space is moving at warp speed, with a Cambrian explosion of innovation in all directions -- L1s, L2s, infrastructure, NFTs, DeFi, GameFi, and so on.   But the fact remains that the majority of the value on-chain is generated by "crypto money games", with little to no influence on the physical world.   For blockchain technol...

As part of Genesis Block's guest interviews series, our second guest is Carlos Saavedra.   Born and raised in California, Carlos has spent most of his career in traditional finance. From working in investment banking to venture capital to even portfolio management at Deutsche Bank. His crypto journey started way back in 2014 when he first bought Bitcoin, and since, has been actively angel inv...

Music is an industry rife with conflicts of interest and shocking contradictions.   While the top most followed individuals in the world are music artists, the industry collectively generates less revenues than it did 2 decades ago.   However, NFTs and other Web3 technologies are promising to change this unfortunate reality.   Today, we dive into the history of the Music industry, p...

Cryptocurrencies and other Web3-related technologies have revolutionised how value is exchanged.    Middle-men like banks and other centralised entities are gatekeepers who authenticate and secure transactions in exchange for exorbitant fees.    Crypto has replaced these centralised intermediaries with blockchains that are validated by decentralised entities all over the world....

Nexus Mutual is a protocol built on Ethereum, offering a decentralised alternative to insurance.   Using blockchain technology, Nexus Mutuals has created a risk-sharing pool in the form of a mutual to return the power of insurance to the people.    It replaces the idea of a traditional insurance company because it is wholly owned by the members. The model encourages engagement as me...

Founded in early 2018 (and mainnet going live in Oct 2020) by Roneil Rumburg and Forrest Browning, Audius is a decentralised music streaming service that connects fans directly with artists.    Think Soundcloud but built on a blockchain.    Artists on Audius can upload any and all audio they want, and users can stream, comment, like, and perform other actions you would expect o...

GMX is a decentralised derivatives exchange that allows users to trade spot markets for certain assets as well as trade perps (perpetual swaps) using leverage up to 30x.    GMX has a pool of assets known as the GLP pool through which spot and perp trades are executed. The version of GMX on Arbitrum and the version on Avalanche have two separate GLP pools with differing constituent assets...

One of the most technical, interesting, and crucial features of blockchain, one that only a few are aware of and even fewer can actually see, is the concept of Maximal Extractable Value (MEV).   Interestingly, it has a clear parallel in traditional finance – high-frequency trading (HFT), which is a form of algorithmic trading that conducts huge numbers of trades within seconds, attempting to...