TheCoordinate by Soubhik Deb

Soubhik Deb

TheCoordinate is a long-form research podcast on AI x crypto: digital intelligence meets digital institutions. We unpack consensus, market design, governance, privacy, and tradeoffs with the researchers and builders pursuing work at the bleeding edge of this intersection. Hosted by Soubhik Deb. Powered by EigenCloud.

Episodes

  1. Market Design & Agentic Commerce : Part 1 | Scott Kominers

    2 DAYS AGO

    Market Design & Agentic Commerce : Part 1 | Scott Kominers

    With Episode 6 of The Coordinate, we are taking the podcast to a whole new level by kicking off a series on post-AGI economics. Recently, there has been a sharp rise in discussions around agents engaging in commercial activity, with some even projecting that agentic commerce could eventually eclipse the human-based commerce we know today. But many of these conversations stop short of exploring the deeper question: how do markets need to be designed or redesigned to accommodate our silicon-based counterparts? To unpack the nuances of agentic commerce and the market design it will require, Sreeram Kannan and I had the wonderful opportunity to sit down with the one and only Scott Kominers, Professor at Harvard Business School and Research Partner at A16Z. What began as a planned 90-minute recording session turned into a 3 hour conversation in aggregate, so we decided to split the episode into two parts. Today, we’re releasing Part 1. In part 1, we cover: • what market design is in plain English • why prices alone are often not enough • how Uber, Airbnb, food delivery, and auctions reveal deeper market structure • stable matching and the medical residency match • privacy, transparency, and information in markets • why crypto and AI could transform agentic commerce If you’re curious about market design and the future of agentic commerce, this episode is for you. This is Part 1 of Episode 6 of TheCoordinate. Hope you enjoy it!

    1h 4m
  2. Tempo: The payment-first blockchain | Mallesh Pai

    27 FEB

    Tempo: The payment-first blockchain | Mallesh Pai

    Payments are the electricity of the economy and Stripe’s annual letter even called out Tempo as part of where payments are going. In Episode 5 of The Coordinate, I sat with Mallesh Pai, Researcher at Tempo and The Lay Family Professor in Department of Economics at Rice University to discuss why Tempo is building a payments-first blockchain: TIP-20 (opinionated ERC-20) w/ policies + RBAC + transfer memosPasskeys/WebAuthn + native AA via TempoTransactionsFees paid in stablecoinsPayment lanes so payroll & bills don’t break during congestionSub-second finality

    1h 5m
  3. Ethereum's Quantum Leap: Lean Ethereum | Justin Drake

    20 FEB

    Ethereum's Quantum Leap: Lean Ethereum | Justin Drake

    Ethereum is starting from the endgame. Episode 4 of TheCoordinate is a deep dive into Lean Ethereum: a clean-slate rethink of consensus, execution, and data availability. I sat down with Justin Drake from Ethereum Foundation to unpack: need for the rewrite,rewrite items: post-quantum security + fast finality,endgame finality (3-slot -> 2-slot -> maybe 1-slot),slot anatomy, networking constraints, and the "SOL slots" meme,real-time ZK proving changing the execution roadmap,censorship resistance with FOSSIL,role of L2s in the world of Lean Ethereum,incentives across proposer, builder, prover, includer, attester. If you’re building on Ethereum or trying to understand where the base layer is headed, this one is for you.

    1h 17m
  4. Solana's Biggest Upgrade: Alpenglow | Roger Wattenhofer, Kobi and Quentin Kniep from Anza

    12 FEB

    Solana's Biggest Upgrade: Alpenglow | Roger Wattenhofer, Kobi and Quentin Kniep from Anza

    Solana is rewriting its core. Episode 3 of TheCoordinate is about one of the most ambitious protocol upgrades in crypto right now: AlpenGlow, a redesign of Solana's consensus + data propagation stack. I sat down with Roger Wattenhofer, Kobi and Quentin Kniep from Anza Labs to break down: what was structurally limited in TowerBFT + PoH?how AlpenGlow works end-to-end: Rotor (erasure-coded dissemination via relays) + Voter (a dance of fast and slow paths)why they are optimizing for a 20% Byzantine + 20% crash-fault model?what changes for validators + RPCs when votes move off-chain (VAT/fee mechanics, different cost structure, and a smaller ledger footprint)?what 100s-of-ms finality means in practice for MEV, remote validators, and upcoming multi-proposer designs? If you’re building or operating on Solana, this is one of those quiet-but-fundamental stack shifts and you may wanna listen to this episode to learn how this upgrade touches you. This is Episode 3 of TheCoordinate. Hope you enjoy it.

    52 min
  5. Blockchain Engineering in 2026 | Patrick O'Grady and Brendan Chou from Commonware

    5 FEB

    Blockchain Engineering in 2026 | Patrick O'Grady and Brendan Chou from Commonware

    What does state-of-the-art blockchain engineering look like in 2026? In Episode 2 of TheCoordinate podcast, I sat down with Patrick O’Grady & Brendan Chou (Commonware) to unpack their Anti-Framework philosophy: build chains by composing optimized primitives—not inheriting a monolithic stack. We go deep on: how Commonware is designed in practice (and how to use it)who it’s for vs Cosmos-style frameworkshow their newest consensus protocol Minimit works (arguably the hottest kid in the consensus neighborhood)what’s coming with ExoWare This is Episode 2 of TheCoordinate. Hope you enjoy it.

    58 min
  6. Consensus from First Principles| Kartik Nayak from Duke University

    30 JAN

    Consensus from First Principles| Kartik Nayak from Duke University

    Most people treats consensus protocols as boring and impenetrable. That’s a mistake. Under the hood, there’s an intense race to design faster, higher-throughput, and adversary-resilient consensus protocols. That work directly determines retail UX and explains why Ethereum, Solana, and other L1s obsess over consensus. For Episode 1 of The Coordinate, I sat down with Kartik Nayak, one of the world’s leading consensus researchers, to pull consensus out of the black box and build a first-principles mental model: how consensus actually works, how it evolved over last 50 years, how today’s sprawling protocol families fit together, and what the next frontier of consensus research looks like. This is Episode 1 of The Coordinate. Hope you enjoy it.

    1h 52m
  • 6 Episodes

About

TheCoordinate is a long-form research podcast on AI x crypto: digital intelligence meets digital institutions. We unpack consensus, market design, governance, privacy, and tradeoffs with the researchers and builders pursuing work at the bleeding edge of this intersection. Hosted by Soubhik Deb. Powered by EigenCloud.

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