Podcast

Bryan Pellegrino is the Co-Founder & CEO of LayerZero Labs. Backed by Sequoia, a16z, Coinbase Ventures, Uniswap Labs, & more, LayerZero is a user application (UA) configurable on-chain endpoint that runs a ULN. In this episode we discuss interesting second-orders / downstream effects if their work continues to gain traction, Bryan’s fascinating perspective on the history and future of crypto, advice for crypto founders working on hard technical problems, & much, much more.

Michael Shaulov is the Co-Founder & CEO at Fireblocks. Backed by Sequoia Capital, Coatue, Paradigm, & more, Fireblocks is a digital asset infrastructure provider, with thousands of crypto businesses building on top of its products, 170M+ wallets created, $4T+ transactions secured. In this episode we discuss the Michael’s journey to creating Fireblocks, a unified view of the various products and services Fireblocks provides, how Fireblocks navigated the bear market, a deep-dive on stablecoins (present, future), how the future of crypto might look (from Michael’s vantage point), best advice for new crypto founders, & much more.

Jon Kol is the Co-Founder @ Hyperlane. Backed by Variant, Galaxy Digital, Circle, & more, Hyperlane is the first interoperability layer that enables you to permissionlessly connect any blockchain, out-of-the-box. In this episode we discuss how his past work as an investor at Galaxy Digital helped him reach conviction on the Hyperlane opportunity, why permissionless interoperability is valuable and what it unlocks when widely distributed, how to think about team composition for a complex build, his state-of-the-union on the crypto space these days, and much more.

Fabian Vogelsteller is the Founder and Chief Architect at LUKSO, plus the creator of the Mist Browser, Ethereum Wallet, web3.js, and author of ERC 20 and ERC 725. LUKSO is a multiverse blockchain network where the worlds of fashion, gaming, design, and social media intersect. LUKSO allows brands, creatives and developers to dictate the distribution of wealth and influence from lifestyle activities, by having Universal Public Profiles, creating Digital Identities and Certificates, and by building Tokenized Communities. In this episode we cover Fabian’s extensive and exemplary history in the blockchain space, the exciting advancements that LUKSO represents, and the state-of-play for the space as a whole (including thoughts on what’s missing, important trajectories, and much more).

Brandon Thorpe is the Founder of FORMLESS.  Backed by WAGMI Ventures, a16z Crypto CSS, & more, FORMLESS is a decentralized network and digital space that empowers individuals to connect, create, collaborate and share in a multiplayer digital economy. In this episode we talk about Brandon’s background across music (signed artist) and technology (Apple, Google), his experience navigating the legacy music industry (and how lessons there flowed into creating FORMLESS), how to shift the natural processes of distribution in a creator-friendly way, interesting FORMLESS use cases thus far, advice for founders at the intersection of Web3 + creative industries, & much more.