Podcast

Sreeram Kannan is the Founder and CEO of EigenLayer. Backed by Blockchain Capital, Figment Capital, WAGMI Ventures, & more, EigenLayer is the first market for decentralized trust—creating an ecosystem for restaking, which enables staked ETH to be used as cryptoeconomic security for protocols other than Ethereum, in exchange for protocol fees and rewards. In this episode we discuss Sreeram’s journey through academia, the key insights that produced EigenLayer, the many use cases enabled by EigenLayer, the importance of focus for early-stage projects, and much more.

Blake West is the Co-Founder & CTO of Goldfinch. Backed by a16z, Goldfinch is a decentralized credit protocol that allows anyone to be a lender, not just banks. With ~$100m in active loan value at time of recording, Goldfinch is the clear leader in on-chain emerging market credit – aka, crypto lending meets real-world businesses. In this episode we discuss challenges and surprises in the early days of Goldfinch, blockers to emerging market credit formation (and why obstacles exist), speculation about the possibility of a unified/global on-chain capital market, and Blake’s best generalizable advice for founders across web3 (hint: ignore the token at first).

Annabelle Huang is a Managing Partner at Amber Group. Backed by Sequoia, Dragonfly, Paradigm, Pantera, & more, Amber Group is building the future of digital assets—with $1 trillion in traded volume, 150+ countries supported, 1k institutional clients, and $500m in returns generated for investors worldwide. In this episode we chat through Annabelle’s journey from TradFi into digital assets, how Amber adapted to the bear market, what gets her most excited about the future of Amber Group, her perspective on the evolution of crypto over time, her most generalizable advice for crypto executives, & much more.

Zac Williamson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Aztec. Backed by Variant, a16z, & more, Aztec is a first-of-its-kind hybrid zkRollup supporting both public and private smart contract execution. In this episode we learn how Zac got into crypto from his past life as an Oxford researcher in particle physics, his perspective on the practical uses of privacy (and the implications for the future of the internet), the limitations of blockchains today (compared to the past), the advice he would impart to his earlier self from his present self, & much, much more.

John Linden is the CEO of Mythical Games. Backed by a16z (and recently achieving unicorn status), Mythical Games is a game technology studio at the intersection of blockchain and games. In this episode we discuss his past work as Studio Head for the Call of Duty franchise, the past and future of blockchain gaming, what unique unlocks are enabled by web3 for games, and an announcement about their work building an EVM-compatible chain (in anticipation of the Merge). Show notes here.