Lightspeed

Antonio García Martínez joins us to discuss why onchain attribution and advertising are crucial to crypto's growth. Antonio is a prolific ad tech entrepreneur, the author of Chaos Monkeys and now the founder of Spindl. In this episode, we discuss the evolution of Web2 advertising, crypto's massive onchain attribution opportunity, data privacy and ownership, potential catalysts for crypto's adoptio...

Antonio Juliano, the founder of dYdX, joins us to discuss why dYdX is launching an appchain. dYdX has over $1T in exchange volume, 50%+ market share of onchain perps market, and is one of the few crypto products that's found a semblance of product-market fit. Despite this, dYdX is moving from Starkware (an Ethereum L2) to a Cosmos-based appchain, officially launching this month! In this episode, w...

Arianna Simpson, Riyaz Faizullabhoy and Nass Eddequiouaq join us to discuss how crypto needs to shift its focus back to the user experience. We cover crypto's friction points, the application vs infrastructure phase, how Bastion can enable simple onboarding and a Web2-like user experience, crypto's misplaced defaults, over-indexing on decentralization and more! - - Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction...

Kain Warwick, the founder of Synthetix and Infinex, joins us to discuss how permissionless frontends are crypto's next battleground. Crypto has the infrastructure to support the next wave of users, but the user experience is lightyears behind Web2. What can solve this? Permissionless frontends. In this episode, we cover why Kain is building Infinex, the missing piece to get users onchain, crypto's...

Abhay Kumar, the CEO of the Helium Foundation, joins us to discuss how DePIN and Helium are bringing undeniable utility to crypto. Helium is a DePIN protocol that coordinates and incentivizes the buildout of wireless infrastructure around the world. In this episode, we discuss the secret to Helium's success, why Helium migrated to Solana, DePIN competition and moats, the value of onchain identity...

Joe McCann and Mike Dudas join us to discuss their Web3 investment framework. We cover Solana's core advantage and if SVM adoption impacts their thesis, investing in monolithic vs modular infrastructure, the state of crypto venture capital, the key to attracting new developers, crypto's most exciting verticals and more! Joe and Mike are two prolific investors with unique insights you won't want to...

Ryan Wyatt is the former Head of YouTube Gaming and President at Polygon Labs. He is a master at business development, strategy and product. In this episode, Ryan explains why crypto gaming is here to stay. We discuss Ryan's time at YouTube and path to Web3, the value of Web2 business development, what crypto unlocks for gaming, the consolidation of crypto's infrastructure layers and more! - - (00...

Anatoly joins Mert to discuss his 5-year vision for Solana. In this discussion, we cover Solana's changing narrative, Firedancer's performance, Solana's shrinking hardware requirements, why Anatoly wants people to fork the SVM, the key to crypto adoption and why multiple slot leaders will be a huge upgrade for Solana! This was a discussion from last week's Permissionless II conference. - - Timesta...

Luigi DeMeo and Patrick O'Grady join us to discuss Avalanche's core thesis and roadmap. We cover Avalanche's cored design, why projects will leverage subnets, what's holding Avalanche back, legacy vs next-gen chains, L2 rollups and appchains, the RWA use case and more! - - Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (01:05) Avalanche’s Design and Core Thesis (10:34) Avalanche's Consensus Mechanism and Valida...

Ted Livingston joins us to discuss how to build consumer crypto products that solve problems users actually care about. In 2009, Ted founded Kik, which grew to over 300M users and led the way for today's messaging apps. Ted is now working on Code, a Solana-based payments app that makes it easy to pay anyone, anywhere in the world. In this episode, we cover Ted's learnings from building Kik, why Ki...

Could Solana's payments narrative create the schelling point that drives new adoption? Welcome to Lightspeed's first "Roundup" episode, where Mert and Garrett discuss the top stories of the week and trends they are seeing in crypto. In this episode, we cover Visa's Solana announcement, Rune's proposal to fork the SVM, Solana DeFi 2.0, Lido's liquid staking trouble on Solana, how to bring new users...

Tristan Frizza, Marius Ciubotariu and Ben Chow join us to debate if Solana has hit an inflection point that will usher in new users and use cases. We discuss the implications of Visa's Solana partnership, how Solana has changed since 2021, why people should care about Solana DeFi 2.0, go-to-market strategies, Rune's SVM fork proposal and more! Tristan, Marius and Ben are prolific Solana DeFi found...

Keone Hon and Kevin G join us to discuss how Monad is scaling the EVM. Every project in crypto right now is launching an L2 or marketing how their execution environment is better than the EVM. Monad has taken the opposite approach and is building an L1 that leverages the EVM with new optimizations like parallel execution. In this conversation, we discuss Monad's EVM optimizations, the blockchain t...

Jeff Morris Jr. joins us to discuss how crypto can build products users love. Jeff is a venture capitalist and product genius who previously led Tinder's Revenue team as Tinder went from $20M to $1.2B in ARR and became the #1 grossing app in the App Store. In this conversation, we cover user acquisition and branding, the power of subscription business models, how to find crypto market fit, how to...

Nic Carter joins us to discuss how digitized dollars are crypto's killer use case. We explore predictions for stablecoins, what people get wrong about Tether, US regulation, why L1 networks over-index on scarcity, crypto's most over/underrated sectors and more! Nic is a crypto OG, prolific writer and investor. You don't want to miss this one! - - Timestamps (00:00) Introduction (00:34) Stablecoins...

Today we are joined by the team from Magic Eden to discuss the state of NFTs. We cover what went wrong with the 10K PFP collections, royalty fees and creator monetization, horizontal vs vertical marketplaces, Magic Eden's multichain strategy, the advantages of different L1s and more!  - - Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (00:47) Is the 10K PFP Collection Dead? (05:26) Why Should People Care About...

Nick White (COO of Celestia) and Neel Somani (founder of Eclipse) join us to debate the tradeoffs of modular vs integrated blockchains. We cover the modular thesis, how Eclipse is bringing the SVM to Ethereum, the hidden costs of modularity, centralized sequencers and L2s, where value will accrue in a modular paradigm and more! - - Timestamps (00:00) Introduction (01:17) What are Modular Blockchai...

Chase Chapman and David Phelps join us to discuss what crypto governance gets wrong. This is the most fun conversation we've had on Lightspeed yet! We cover how to make people care about governance, what's holding crypto back, the importance of onchain identity, where Balaji's network state falls short, why you can't L2 your way to PMF and more! - - Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (01:46) What Cr...

Cindy Leow and Chris Heaney join us to discuss how Drift is building the #1 trading experience on Solana. In this episode, we cover Drift's core design and liquidity layers, the advantages of perps, why Drift built on Solana, vertical vs horizontal integration, Drift's distribution framework, what DeFi got wrong and more! - - Timestamps (00:00) Introduction (00:48) Drift: Solana’s Perpetual Swaps...

Anatoly joins us to discuss why Solana is uniquely designed to utilize ever-increasing bandwidth and compute. We cover Solana's core thesis, how blockchains benefit from hardware improvements, the fundamental flaws of L2s, Anatoly's favorite applications, decentralization and more! Anatoly is a legend, you don't want to miss this one! - - Timestamps (00:00) Introduction (01:47) Solana’s Core Thesi...

Ansem joins us to discuss why Solana DeFi is the best opportunity in crypto right now. Ansem is one of the top traders in the space who is a master of finding crypto's next narrative. In this episode, we cover the Solana opportunity, why Ansem is bullish on crypto gaming, how to think about L2s vs appchains, the closing investment opportunity, Ansem's favorite crypto applications and more! - - Tim...

We're joined by Kyle Samani, the co-founder of Multicoin Capital and one of crypto's most independent thinkers. In this episode, we cover why "monolithic L1s" is a misnomer, the value of global state, how a protocol establishes moats, why DePIN is finding product-market fit, how Kyle synthesizes new ideas and more! - - Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (00:34) The Modular vs Monolithic Debate (07:4...

We're joined by Vibhu Norby, the founder of DRiP, to discuss why DRiP is crypto's best shot at mainstream adoption. DRiP has already minted 18 million NFTs to 800 thousand wallets. If one crypto app has found product market fit, it's DRiP. In this episode, we cover what makes DRiP unique, what crypto should learn from the gaming industry, how creators can leverage DRiP, the future of NFTs, how DRi...

In today's episode, we're joined by Ilja Moisejevs and Richard Wu to discuss how Tensor is building the #1 NFT marketplace in Solana and why compressed NFTs are Solana's new unlock. We cover why Ilja and Richard chose Solana, the advantages of professional vs retail products, compressed NFTs, Tensor's roadmap, crypto's path to mass adoption and more! - - Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (00:20) Te...

In today's episode, we're joined by Balaji Srinivasan and Akshay BD to discuss crypto networks, sovereignty and the practicality of decentralization. If you only tune in to one episode of Lightspeed, this is it. We discuss if crypto is a bet on tech or financial collapse, blockchain infrastructure ideologies, Balaji's Network State, how to build effective communities, the future of open source, co...