Messari's Unqualified Opinions

In this episode of the Fully Diluted, AverageJoesCrypto sits down with Alex, co-founder of Octra, a privacy-focused L1 blockchain built around Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). Unlike mixers or ZK-based privacy tools, Octra performs computations directly on encrypted data without ever decrypting it. This represents a genuine step-function evolution in on-chain privacy, not just an incremental im...

Research Analyst @CryptoRick98 sits down with KF, co-founder of edgeX, to break down the State of edgeX Q4 2025 report. The conversation covers edgeX's explosive growth in TVL, perp trading volume, and fees — all achieved amid one of the most volatile quarters in crypto history. KF also discusses edgeX's upcoming TGE, the Circle Ventures investment and native USDC integration, RWA perps no...

In episode 21 of Messari's Fully Diluted, Alex Beaudry is joined by analysts Hayden Booms, Dillon Shirley, and Qorban Ferrell to break down the most important moves happening across DeFi, derivatives, and on-chain AI. The team dives deep into Hyperliquid's HIP3 markets, Uniswap's fee switch expansion to L2s, and the rising Venice AI (VVV) controversy. Dylan brings real volume data show...

Conor Moore, co-founder and COO of USD.AI, joins Messari's Fully Diluted podcast to discuss the emerging on-chain credit market for GPU-backed loans. USD.AI provides financing for neoclouds and AI infrastructure companies, competing directly with traditional banks and private credit funds. The protocol has successfully originated loans backed by NVIDIA GPUs including H100s and H200s. The episo...

The Messari team analyzes prediction markets after the Super Bowl drove record volumes across Kalshi and Polymarket. With $6.2 billion in weekly volume split between sports betting and political markets, the question is whether this represents a local top or sustainable growth. Will prediction markets scale to entertainment, culture, and long-tail markets, or is volume topping out? The discussion...

Dylan Bane sits down with Anirudh from Robot Ventures to discuss a provocative thesis: stablecoin issuers could become the marginal buyers of US debt, helping finance the explosive growth of AI infrastructure. Anirudh explains how Tether and Circle have already become the 15th largest holders of US Treasuries, and why this matters for both crypto and American competitiveness. The conversation expl...

The Shoot the Sh*t Podcast #19 dives deep into DePIN's real state in 2026. While token prices are down dramatically, revenue is surging and networks are becoming genuinely profitable. InfraFi emerges as the most exciting DePIN development, offering stablecoin holders 10-15% yields by financing off-chain infrastructure like GPU compute and energy projects. USDAI is leading this charge and could...

Sam Elfarra, Community Spokesperson at TronDAO, reveals how Tron’s first-mover advantage on USDT has created a liquidity revolution in emerging markets, making crypto accessible to the unbanked and transforming cross-border payments. With annualized settlement volumes nearing $8 trillion and stablecoins accounting for over 42% of USDT circulation, Tron’s influence on world finance is unprecedented...

Dabba is building the future of connectivity in India through decentralized physical infrastructure on the Solana blockchain. This episode of Fully Diluted features founder Karam Lakshman discussing how Dabba has become one of the fastest-growing DePIN networks globally, expanding from 1,000 to 75,000 WiFi hotspots in just 18 months with nearly 500,000 daily active users. The project taps into Ind...

In this episode of Fully Diluted, Messari’s Dylan Bane sits down with Sal Gala, co-founder and managing partner at Escape Velocity Ventures, and Connor Lovely, founder at Proof of Coverage Media, to explore the current state of DePIN in 2025. They delve into the evolution of DePIN, its revenue growth, and the challenges faced by the sector. They cover: • The impressive revenue growth of GeoNet and...

Drones, not satellites, might power the next generation of maps and spatial AI. In this episode of Fully Diluted, Messari’s Dylan Bane sits down with Alec Wilson, COO of Spexi and founding contributor to LayerDrone, to break down how their DePIN-powered drone network is creating a standardized, ultra–high-resolution imagery layer of the Earth. They cover:- Why drone imagery (1–3 cm per pixel) can...

Join us for another episode of Fully Diluted with Messari Analysts Matthew Nay, Sam Ruskin, Qorban Ferrell, and Jake Koch-Gallup. This week, we explore Jake's insightful analysis of RAILGUN, a cutting-edge ZK privacy tool for EVM networks, and discuss its valuation and market impact. We also cover the resurgence of meme coins, the rise of equity perps, and the macro trends driving the metals m...

Prediction markets may be the first real breakout product for consumer crypto—and they’re only getting started. In this episode of Messari’s 2026 Theses consumer series, we’re joined by Tulip King and Baba, two former Messari analysts, to unpack where consumer crypto actually goes next. The conversation spans prediction markets as base infrastructure, why memecoins and NFTs needed a reset, how wal...

Perps are leveling up from a crypto-native niche into a global trading primitive—and equity perps may be the breakout narrative of 2026. In this year-in-review episode of Messari: Unqualified Opinions, Messari Research Analysts Sam and Qorban are joined by Messari alumni Sunny and Kunal to unpack 2025’s biggest DeFi themes: Hyperliquid’s rise, the equity perp inflection, the maturation (and loomin...

In this episode, Dylan, Sami and Seth break down why crypto + AI isn’t just a moral counterweight to Big Tech—it’s a faster innovation engine. They explain how BitTensor’s subnet model turns AI development into an open, incentive-driven competition (similar to how Bitcoin relentlessly optimized SHA-256), and why 2025’s biggest shifts—open-source catching up, reinforcement learning’s rise, and mass...

Messari’s Theses 2026 multi-chain roundtable breaks down who’s really winning the L1 / L2 wars and what that means for the next cycle. The Enterprise team dives into: - How Ethereum clawed back from peak despair in 2025 - Why Arbitrum and Base are pulling away from the L2 pack - What a Robinhood L2 could mean for every existing rollup - MegaETH’s token + native stablecoin experiments - Jeremy’s ne...

In this episode of the Messari Thesis Podcast, the Enterprise research team recaps the wild year that was 2025 and lays out their highest-conviction bets for 2026. We dig into why Bitcoin has clearly separated from the rest of the market, how Hyperliquid and a handful of standout apps stole the spotlight, and why long-tail L1s are running out of room. The team debates whether institutions really b...

How much of “crypto AI” is still just narrative—and how much is finally real? In this episode, Messari’s Enterprise team unpacks findings from Messari’s newly released State of AI Report and what they mean for decentralized AI, infra, and the broader market. Chris walks through why post-training, reinforcement learning, and test-time compute are pushing us into a new decentralized AI paradigm, fro...

What if the smartest AI didn’t live in a hyperscale data center—but across millions of everyday devices? In this episode, Chris Davis sits down with Ivan Nikitin, co-founder of Fortytwo, an AI network built on crypto rails that turns idle consumer hardware into a global swarm of specialized models. After a decade in traditional AI—training agents, conversational systems, and even a spatial reasoni...

In this episode, Messari's Chris Davis sits down with Shayon Sengupta, Partner at Multicoin Capital, to unpack how crypto-native markets are reshaping everything from wireless networks and AI compute to data collection and talent markets. They trace the lineage from Bitcoin mining to Helium and today’s DePIN / “internet labor markets,” dig into why verification is the hardest (and most under-rated...

The public internet wasn’t built for high-performance blockchains. In this episode of Fully Diluted, Messari’s Dylan Bane and Matthew Nay sit down with Austin Federa, co-founder of DoubleZero, to unpack how a global mesh of privately contributed fiber links is becoming the low-latency “private internet” for Solana and other high-throughput chains. Austin explains why 20–30 hops over the public int...

Monad is gearing up for one of crypto’s most anticipated launches — a high-speed, censorship-resistant L1 built to merge scalability with true decentralization. In this episode of Fully Diluted , Dylan Bane and Matthew Nay sit down with Monad’s Kevin and Jack to discuss the tech behind Monad’s 10,000 TPS architecture, how decentralization fits into the next phase of crypto, and what users can expe...

Messari CTO Diran Lee sits down with Karam Lakshman, CEO & co-founder of Dabba, to unpack how a DePIN marketplace, local cable operators, and crypto incentives could build a new Telco in the world’s toughest market—India. We cover broadband vs. mobile realities, Dabba’s business model and token system, the choice of Solana & BONK, incentives, and the growth roadmap. 0:00 Introductions 1:33...

Q3 was ETH’s quarter. Messari Research digs into why ETH ETFs saw more inflows than BTC, how ETH-focused DATs amassed ~3.8% of ETH supply in one quarter, and what MNAV convergence means for future buy pressure. We also cover stablecoin growth (and USDe’s breakout), the slow-but-real maturation of tokenized equities/commodities, the rise of “corporate chains” (Stripe/Tempo, Circle/Arc, JPMorgan/Kin...

In this episode of Fully Diluted, Messari’s Dylan Bane and the Messari Research team sit down with Mert Mumtaz, Co-founder and CEO of Helius, to unpack the evolving privacy landscape in crypto. They dive deep into Zcash’s resurgence, Solana’s growing DeFi ecosystem, and the regulatory and technical hurdles shaping the next generation of privacy-preserving systems. Mert discusses why privacy is fun...