The status quo for developers choosing an ecosystem for their blockchain usually revolves around trade-offs: do they go for Ethereum’s network effect, liquidity and decentralisation, or sacrifice some features in favour of a higher throughput. Monad aims to combine the best of both worlds, while not being limited by excessive hardware requirements. Monad built an EVM-compatible L1 from the ground up, completely rethinking execution and consensus, in order to achieve the infamous 10,000 TPS. This extreme scalability is made possible through Monad’s optimistic parallel execution which is asynchronous from consensus. The latter has also been optimized in order to achieve single-slot finality. Monad’s proprietary database architecture allows for states to be stored on SSDs instead of RAM, which ensures that consumer-grade hardware can run a Monad node, further increasing decentralisation.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Keone’s background
• TradFi vs. DeFi and how Monad was founded
• EVM’s network effect vs. other VMs
• How Monad aims to improve EVM’s performance
• MonadDB
• MonadBFT - New consensus mechanism
• Asynchronous execution
• MEV and proposer-builder separation (PBS)
• Monad’s throughput
• Further scaling and limitations
• Alternatives & trade-offs
• DevEx
• Community & ecosystem development

Episode links:

• Keone Hon on X
• Monad on X

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

Polynomials are quintessential in machine learning for establishing relationships between outputs and inputs. However, there is also a field in cryptography which could not be made possible without polynomials - zero-knowledge technology. In zero-knowledge proof systems, computations are often represented as arithmetic circuits, and these circuits are translated into polynomials. This process is crucial for generating proofs that can demonstrate the correctness of computations without revealing the underlying data. The involved complexity explains the massive adoption hurdle for zk rollups compared to optimistic ones. Succinct aims to simplify the use of zero-knowledge proofs by providing a zkVM (SP1) that allows code written in languages like Rust to be proven in a privacy-preserving way. By doing so, it aims to lower the barrier to implementing zk-rollups and increase their adoption.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Uma’s background and her interest in zero knowledge tech
• How Succinct’s story began
• ZK light clients
• ZK circuits
• SP1 and the RISC-V instruction set
• The prover network
• Use cases
• ZK rollups and commoditizing ZKPs
• Incentivizing provers
• Succinct’s business model
• Supported blockchain applications
• Bottlenecks in ZK adoption
• Succinct metrics
• SP1’s competitive advantage and future roadmap
• The real world impact of verifiability

Episode links:

• Uma Roy on X
• Succinct on X

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

Bitcoin’s Taproot update paved the way for a new & exciting era for Bitcoin, as it expanded its use case far beyond that of an immutable ledger. However, Ordinals, BRC-20 tokens and, more recently, Runes, have limited functionality compared to what DeFi is capable of, on other smart contract blockchains. BitcoinOS envisions a revolutionary Bitcoin economy that stems from truly programmable tokens, unlocking staking, governance and many other use cases. Using BitSNARK and Grail, BitcoinOS enables Bitcoin “rollups”, which act as execution environments that use BTC as gas fee and inherit security from the L1. The missing link was always a trustless bridge between Bitcoin L1 and any potential L2. And Grail Bridge achieved just that - using zero knowledge cryptography, BTC could be transferred to other chains without relying on other custodians’ trust assumptions. In that sense, Bitcoin block #853626 is historically meaningful as it contains the first-ever onchain verification of a zero knowledge proof, on Bitcoin. A truly programmable smart contract operating system on Bitcoin was no longer a mere concept…it became a reality through BitcoinOS.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Yago's background
• The effect of Trump’s election on the crypto industry
• The goal behind BitcoinOS
• The history of Bitcoin’s programmability
• Verifying ZK proofs on Bitcoin
• Taproot
• Ordinals
• BitSNARK, Grail bridge and Merkle Mesh
• BitcoinOS modularity and sequencing
• An impending (r)evolution of the industry
• Bitcoin vs. Ethereum L2 landscape
• Bringing Bitcoin liquidity to Cardano
• BitcoinOS roadmap

Episode links:

• Edan Yago on Twitter
• Bitcoin OS on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture.

Bootstrapping and maintaining a validator set can be a challenging endeavour, especially for projects that are in search of a product market fit. However, this does not mean one should abandon the ethos of decentralisation in favour of a more streamlined centralised approach. The notion of shared security had been previously explored in the Cosmos ecosystem, but Symbiotic takes it a step further, making it readily available for any project, regardless of its native blockchain, through restaking. Symbiotic is a modular coordination layer that sources node operators and economic security in a maximally capital-efficient manner.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Misha’s background
• Symbiotic’s origin story
• How Symbiotic tackles decentralisation
• The role of restaking in proof-of-stake models
• The economics of restaking
• The architecture of Symbiotic
• Liquid restaking tokens (LRT)
• Expanding restaking beyond Ethereum
• Slashing
• Symbiotic smart contract immutability and future updates
• Ecosystem development

Episode links:

• Misha Putiatin on Twitter
• Symbiotic on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

A smart contract’s rigid rule system represents a double-edged sword. ‘The Code is Law’, but what happens when rogue large language models or AI agents bend the Law? Can smart contracts be weaponised to serve a criminal agenda? In his ‘Oracle’ novel, Ari Juels explores this thesis and issues an eery warning regarding the blockchain x AI intersection. In this imminent future, oracles play a crucial role, allowing LLMs to push data on-chain or smart contracts to pull off-chain data.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Criminal Smart Contracts
• Oracle x LLM convergence
• Preventing malicious intents through oracle systems
• AI x crypto use cases
• DAOs
• Entropy in voting behaviours
• Dark DAOs
• TEEs & private smart contracts
• MEV & proofs of transaction ordering
• Future blockchain research

Episode links:

• Ari Juels on Twitter
• 'The Oracle: A Novel' by Ari Juels
• Chainlink on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

Bitcoin’s lack of native programmability, coupled with advancements in zero knowledge cryptography, has led to rollups being explored as a substitute for an execution layer. Citrea’s approach involves using Bitcoin as a data availability & settlement layer for their zero knowledge rollup. These rollups not only lower transaction costs, but they also enable smart contracts to use Bitcoin’s L1 security and further incentivise miners to secure the chain despite halving rewards. In order to inherit Bitcoin’s security, zk proofs are inscribed in Bitcoin blocks.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Orkun’s background
• Inscriptions, BitVM and zk rollups on Bitcoin
• Optimistic bridging
• Sequencer
• Programmability solutions on Bitcoin
• BitVM development
• Citrea ecosystem development
• cBTC vs. custodial wrapped BTC
• There is no second best!
• PoW, halving block rewards and how rollups incentivise miners
• Citrea’s efficiency & fee reduction
• Bitcoin as an inflation hedge

Episode links:

• Orkun Mahir Kilic on Twitter
• Citrea on Twitter
• BitVM

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch.

Inspired by Cosmos’ IBC ethos, Anoma takes interoperability a step further, from VM (virtual machine) to IM (intent machine). While traditional dApps that run on virtual machines require step-by-step instructions to achieve a desired outcome, Anoma’s universal intent machine design allows users to simply define their end-results which are then aggregated and an optimal combination of intents is selected - cross-chain, simple, elegant. Moreover, intents also enable on-chain privacy, a concept explored by Namada.

Topics covered in this episode:

• The vision behind Anoma
• OS for decentralised applications
• What is Anoma?
• Building dApps with Anoma
• Native generalised intents
• Anoma’s L1 blockchain
• The importance of decentralisation
• On-chain privacy
• Namada
• The collapse of the banking system
• Roadmap

Episode links:

• Adrian Brink on Twitter
• Anoma on Twitter
• Namada on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

In a world where everyone chases every basis point of marginal return, core values are often overlooked. The emergence of liquid staking protocols made stake delegation a norm rather than an exception. The hassles of running their own node and dealing with slashing risks were often too much of a burden for regular users. Dappnode offers both hardware and open-source software solutions for home stakers which are as facile to implement as a plug-n-play device. Their newly released Dappnode Smooth aims to offer the advantages of staking pools (via smart contracts), without centralisation risks.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Eduardo’s and Pol’s backgrounds
• Founding Dappnode
• Dappnode userbase
• Supported networks
• Dappnode’s tech stack
• Setting up Dappnode
• Dappstore
• Updating nodes
• Dappnode hardware usage percentage
• Dappnode Smooth
• Solo staking vs. liquid staking
• Distributed validator technology (DVT)
• Restaking
• ETH issuance
• Future roadmap for Dappnode

Episode links:

• Eduardo Antuna on Twitter
• Pol Lanski on Twitter
• Dappnode on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

One of the best known educators in the space and OG Bitcoin maxi, Dan Held joined us to discuss his crypto journey from entrepreneur to marketing & growth specialist and why he decided to start the Asymmetric Bitcoin DeFi Fund. Although initially a contentious topic, the emergence of Ordinals revealed Bitcoin’s untapped potential, sparking tremendous interest for Bitcoin L2s and DeFi on the ‘mother chain’. Apart from bringing new utility to the highest liquidity blockchain, the new-found demand for blockspace significantly increased fees, thus incentivising miners to further secure the chain despite halving rewards.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Dan’s background
• ZeroBlock
• Increasing marketing reach
• ZeroBlock acquisition & marketing at Kraken
• Asymmetric Bitcoin DeFi Fund
• Bitcoin’s history: NFT & DeFi emergence
• OP_CAT & trustless bridging
• Bitcoin ‘governance’, forks & BIPs
• Usecases for DeFi on Bitcoin
• Bitcoin block reward subsidy and long-term security

Episode links:

• Asymmetric on Twitter
• Dan Held on Twitter
• Blockchain.com on Twitter
• Taproot Wizards on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

From a cross-platform media company, to launching their own conference and, more recently, an advisory branch, Blockworks has seen and done it all. We couldn’t miss Permissionless III, one of the largest crypto conferences in the US, where we sat down with Jason Yanowitz to discuss emerging trends in the industry and where the attention might shift over the coming months.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Blockworks’ evolution
• The crypto conference landscape
• Blockworks advisory
• Apps & infrastructure
• Regulations
• ZK & AI
• Stablecoins
• Podcasting

Episode links:

• Jason Yanowitz on Twitter
• Blockworks on Twitter
• Permissionless on Twitter
• Empire Podcast on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal.

Outside of BTC’s cypherpunk movement, the early days of crypto were more or less barren in terms of innovation. However, this presented a huge opportunity for visionaries and angel investors to either launch or back bold projects, recognizing the potential of crypto stretching far beyond than just payments. One of them was Konstantin Lomashuk, co-founder of cyber•Fund which was a key actor in bootstrapping the cybernetic economy. Apart from early investments in Ethereum, Polkadot, Cosmos, Solana and many others, Konstantin recognized the potential threats to the core ethos of decentralisation and also co-founded Lido DAO in order to stave off Ethereum’s centralization risks.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Konstantin’s background
• cyber·Fund & cybernetic economy
• Entrepreneurship vs. angel investing
• Delegating tasks and scaling businesses
• Lido’s origin story
• Lido DAO proposals and improvements
• Solana vs. Ethereum
• The evolution of Ethereum’s economy
• Konstantin’s other areas of interest
• AI’s risk of centralization
• The impact of AI on crypto
• How CyberFund invests in new narratives

Episode links:

• Konstantin Lomashuk on Twitter
• cyber·Fund on Twitter
• P2P org

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.