This week I'm releasing a 90 min conversation with @sgoldfed - Co-founder of @OffchainLabs, the company behind @arbitrum
We talk about:
- The origins of Arbitrum, from a Princeton research project to a foundational @ethereum L2 - What does Ethereum's success look like - Why doesn’t Solana work - How Steven left his day job to focus on Offchain Labs - How some of his biggest failures led to where he is today - How Steven disagrees with the founder of MystenLabs / SUI - who says ETH doesn’t work - How Steven managed to get Hyperliquid & Robinhood on Arbitrum - Energy management vs time management and how Steven avoids burnout while scaling - Building with the same cofounders for nearly a decade, and why they’ve never had serious cofounder drama
@aeyakovenko remembers how the vital tweet from @VitalikButerin in 2020 saved @solana
Now, @ethereum is going through some trouble, but for Anatoly, this is a good thing - their ability to evolve, even in the face of massive scale and risk, is what’s keeping Ethereum alive. Shifting a $300B network is difficult, but it can and will be done.
Stagnation is riskier - which is why Bitcoin might be more at risk than Ethereum.
The 4th episode of DROPS, our series for upcoming crypto founders and projects, is out on Tuesday with @shanicucic96 , the Founder & CEO of @redactedcoin , right on time for the Redacted TGE!
We talk about:
- How Shan was an accidental founder and tried multiple businesses until he found a fit with Redacted - How to Handle FUD with the 24-Hour Rule - What Redacted is and why it makes sense - How to align investors and why transparency matters so much - Redacted goal to reach a $100M market cap and why the team is tying personal stakes to the project success
I get it that you guys have been in deep pain for years
But that’s not not how you’ll onboard more people into your ecosystem
And more generally, as a space, we should (finally) learn to work together and be happy for each other to onboard non crypto people instead of shitting on each other
The way the $ETH maxis have been behaving in the last 24H tells me there is room for improvement (to say the least)
I get it that you guys have been in deep pain for years
But that’s not how you’ll onboard more people into your ecosystem
And more generally, as a space, we should (finally) learn to work together and be happy for each other to onboard non crypto people instead of shitting on each other
The way the $ETH maxis have been behaving in the last 24H tells me there is room for improvement (to say the least)
During my Lisbon trip, I not only sat down with Gavin Wood, the Founder of @Polkadot but also with 2 others of the 3 Polkadot musketeers
One of them is @edhesse79 , the man behind @energywebx which is unlocking another level of the power of the blockchain - in the energy markets!
Imagine if your Tesla could be trading and making money on the price of electricity while it’s just there - sitting in your garage all day and all night?
That’s one of the crazy things that might be possible in the next 3 years and that we discuss with Ed, together with:
- Web Energy - How Ed met Gavin and founded @scytaledigital with @gavofyork and @mark_cachia_ - Self Sovereignty - the Polkadot ecosystem and its future - why Ed built Web Energy on Polkadot and why no other chain could have accommodated for the level of complexity and granularity that the energy markets require on the blockchain
And much much more
Out in June , as part of our WSH x Polkadot mini series
Quick in and out at the SUI Basecamp conference in Dubai - in between 2 podcast recordings - to speak with Nikos Porfyris, the Boss of the Greece stock exchange, on the main stage in front of a full house!
More specifically, we dove into how the @SuiNetwork is helping the Athens Stock exchange to improve its Bond IPO settlement process
It’s excited to see the blockchain delivering more and more real world use cases, and not just a 24/7 Casino for degens
Massive respect to SUI and @Mysten_Labs for pulling off a mega event and thank you for inviting me 💧 ❤️
When we shot the podcast last week, ETH was lagging BTC - but it seems that we called the bottom live on camera. Since then, it’s ripped. Price action flipped, and the narrative’s catching up.
Ethereum isn’t flashy - it’s foundational. Like Microsoft, it’s the backbone. When TradFi moves onchain, it won’t bet on the latest L1 - it’ll choose what’s proven: Ethereum and its L2s.
And now, the price is starting to reflect that reality.
Another day at the (swiss) office, this time with the one and only @0xsebastiena from @sophon
We talked for 90 minutes about:
- Why crypto doesn’t have a tech problem, but a crypto problem - How Seb’s ADHD made him a much better entrepreneur - and person - Why Switzerland is the best country in the world - How consumer crypto can help our industry move from zero sum games to positive sum games to grow the pie - Why ZK TLS is a game changing tech - How Sophon is changing the game with its «social Oracle » - How Sophon managed to raise 21,000 ETH just a few months after being founded
While your favorite KOLs got you REKT while profiting off your naiveté and then disappeared in in Feb and March when the market was down bad, at WSH we:
not only doubled down to line up the biggest guests in the history of crypto podcasts
BUT ALSO
Funded and built a small « crypto village »: homes for Cambodian families that used to live in the streets
This was done with a mix of WSH funds, as well as the SHIFT private dinner community (made of a bunch of my podcast guests) together with @MMPowerFdn , a charity that I lead with my best friend
Look at what they do, not what they say
Crypto is a blessing and it should be used to do Good
Not to buy watches and cars to show off on your instagram or on this forsaken X app
Now back to work
Job FAR from finished 🫡
Special thanks to @gametheorizing , @tn_pendle , @YeouJie , @SalsaTekila , @web3ddy from @CoinsiliumGroup and @joedoe_ for helping make a true difference to these people’s life ❤️
While your favorite KOLs got you REKT while profiting off your naiveté and then disappeared in in Feb and March when the market was down bad, at WSH we:
not only doubled down to line up the biggest guests in the history of crypto podcasts
BUT ALSO
Funded and built a small « crypto village »: homes for Cambodian families that used to live in the streets
This was done with a mix of WSH funds, as well as the SHIFT private dinner community (made of a bunch of my podcast guests) together with @MMPowerFdn , a charity that I led with my best friend
Look at what they do, not what they say
Crypto is a blessing and it should be used to do Good
Not to buy watches and cars to show off in Dubai
Now back to work
Job FAR from finished 🫡
Special thanks to @gametheorizing , @tn_pendle , @YeouJie , @SalsaTekila , @web3ddy from @CoinsiliumGroup and @joedoe_ for helping make a true difference to these people’s life ❤️