The Gwart Show | Bitcoin Tech & Culture Blockspace Media

Walt Smith of Cyber Fund joins The Gwart Show, sharing his take on venture capital in the crypto–and specifically Bitcoin–space. He discusses the potential of Bitcoin rollups, the future of Ethereum, and the drama among crypto VCs. Walt also dives into the idea of merge mining as a scaling solution for Bitcoin and shares his thoughts on the end game of tokenization.

Chapter Markers:
00:00 Start
01:22 Walt's background
02:45 Working at Galaxy
04:22 Major investments
05:36 Restaking
08:19 Multi-asset pool model
10:55 Open infrastructure "free banking"
13:47 Are DOAs dumb?
20:24 Tokenizing equities
26:32 Interest in Bitcoin
29:50 ETH minimum viable issuance
35:22 Lido DOA
40:15 Restaking controversy
44:11 VC cat fights
50:04 Bitcoin season 2
53:04 Bitcoin L2 VC investments
55:51 Merge mining Bitcoin
58:22 Bitcoin covenants
03:34 Attrition to L2 on Bitcoin
08:28 BTC vs ETH in 10 years
13:49 realistic growth projections
17:03 Wrap up

Follow our guest on Twitter: @waltjsmith

Follow our host: @gwartygwart

👋The Gwart Show is proudly presented by Ellipsis Labs! Ellipsis Labs is building foundational products in DeFi. Their first product @PhoenixTrade is the leading orderbook DEX on Solana. The team is growing—visit ellipsislabs.xyz for engineering opportunities.

Enjoy the show? Check out our website and newsletter by clicking here.

Questions or want to sponsor? hello@blockspace.media

Welcome back to the Gwart Show! This week, Gwart sits down with Janus of the Bitcoin Layers team to discuss–well you probably get it. Still, they do go over Bitcoin sidechains, L2 approaches, tokens & dapps and what not on L2s , if this Zk thing makes sense, CatVM and more.

Do we really want this and what do we want are frequently asked questions!

Published weekly on Sunday afternoons, "The Gwart Show” gets to the bottom of crypto’s toughest topics.

Timestamps:

00:00 Start
00:32 Janusz background
02:32 Sidechains on Bitcoin
06:29 New L2s?
11:36 L2 approaches
17:25 ETH vs BTC L2s
19:00 Non-updateable contracts
22:09 No receiving BTC on L2s without trust?
23:02 L2 onboarding without L1?
27:28 L2 product market fit?
33:04 L2 app wish list
37:34 VCs love shitcoining on Bitcoin
40:21 L2s tokens, seriously?
45:33 Decentralization & tokens
49:59 L2 interoperability
55:11 ZK tech & proof verification
58:43 Forking bitcoin
03:30 CATVM
05:14 WTF do we REALLY want?
10:20 MEV on L2s
18:07 Direct L2 onboarding
21:31 Wen stablecoins on BTC?
26:35 Gradual dedollarization please!
28:12 Wrap up

This show is produced by Blockspace.media

Welcome back to The Gwart Show! This week, Job Charbonneau of crypto venture fund DBA joins Gwart to discuss Ethereum's issuance debate, centralization of stake, roll-ups vs. Solana, the future of DeFi on Bitcoin, solving MEV, crypto's VC landscape shifts, and key insights from his recent Research Day event. 

Follow our guest on Twitter: @jon_charb

Follow our host: @gwartygwart

👋The Gwart Show is proudly presented by Ellipsis Labs! Ellipsis Labs is building foundational products in DeFi. Their first product @PhoenixTrade is the leading orderbook DEX on Solana. The team is growing—visit ellipsislabs.xyz for engineering opportunities.

Enjoy the show? Check out our website and newsletter by clicking here.

Timestamps:

00:00 Start
00:45 Jon's background
01:19 Research Day
03:21 Favorite Research Day talk
06:07 Current VC crypto landscape
10:54 Wen Uncommon Core?
11:46 Why ETH issuance changes?
14:13 Why mess around with issuance?
17:43 Concentration of stake
19:05 Economic security
22:03 Appreciating proof of work
24:43 We knew this would happen!
27:46 Restaking
34:43 Restaking predictions
37:00 MEV & order-flow
40:52 Why does this taste like a sandwich?
45:32 Should we seek to fix MEV?
48:02 MEV proposals
51:06 Rollup problems
56:28 Rollup interoperability dreams
1:00:50 Solana
1:04:07 Defi 

Questions or want to sponsor? hello@blockspace.media

Welcome back to The Gwart Show! This week, Colluding Node from the Celestia joins Gwart to unravel the mystery of memecoins, stablecoins, governance tokens, Ethereum scaling via grifters and how Celestia works under the hood. Gwart and C-Node talk about like 20+ blockchains in this podcast so it probably has something for everyone.

Follow our guest on Twitter: @colludingnode

Follow our host: @gwartygwart

👋The Gwart Show is proudly presented by Ellipsis Labs! Ellipsis Labs is building foundational products in DeFi. Their first product @PhoenixTrade is the leading orderbook DEX on Solana. The team is growing—visit ellipsislabs.xyz for engineering opportunities.

Enjoy the show? Check out our website and newsletter by clicking here.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Start
01:29:09 What are blockchains good for?
02:29:16 Evolving understanding of blockchains
05:34:17 Bullish ETH?
08:37:21 The future of DeFi
10:50:08 DeFi privacy
14:20:12 Are meme coins the final boss of stupid?
15:54:19 Permissionless
18:39:19 Are lobbyists focusing on the right things?
21:44:16 Are lobbyists serving plebs or companies?
24:03:17 Companies don't care about P2P tnxs
25:52:17 Centralized stablecoins
28:30:16 Stablecoins > Crypto?
30:06:02 Money separated from state
31:52:28 Maker DAI
34:12:29 Governance tokens
37:24:02 No governance not MORE governance
40:00:10 ETH scaling w/ grifters
41:45:11 Solution to confusing scaling?
43:54:01 Solana reservations
47:14:14 Solana nodes
48:50:25 Celestia light clients
50:51:19 Light clients & trust assumptions
52:27:21 Celestia's vision?
54:25:07 Sovereign roll ups on Celestia
56:34:11 Appchains?
57:28:08 Defi interoperability

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Dean Eigenmann, a Miner Extractable Value (MEV) searcher, joins The Gwart Show to give an insiders look into the MeV landscape, strategies, decentralization challenges, and regulatory concerns. He discusses key differences between Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, DeFi's future, L2 developments, and offers a critique of Bitcoin.

00:00 Start
01:23 Dean intro
02:16 MEV = Oligopoly
03:19 Builder centralization on ETH
04:36 PBS design
05:53 Enshrined PBS
07:32 Atomic strategies & inventory risk
09:02 Censorship
10:29 Censorship & geographic distribution
12:46 MEV on BSC
13:43 MEV developer crossover
13:59 What chains do they do?
14:49 MEV on Solana
15:42 Faster chain = less MEV?
16:46 MEV on L2's?
17:46 Shared sequencing
20:06 Intents
22:17 Operating at a loss
23:52 AMM execution
24:52 Define MEV?
25:13 Is sandwiching bad still?
26:57 Private relays
28:05 Can you prevent private relays?
29:11 Is there a way to promote geographic distribution?
30:48 Is MEV like High feq trading?
32:06 Timing games
33:12 SEP of BSC
33:38 MEV searchers on the downlow
35:39 Legal aspects of MEV
36:30 Sandwiching illegal?
39:49 Regulating builders
40:31 OFAC transactions
41:41 Encrypted mempools
43:11 Ideology
45:15 What's missing
45:58 Restaking
46:42 Rollups good?
47:39 Bullish L2's?
49:06 ETH L1 innovation
49:57 Thoughts on Solana?
50:56 BSC happenings?
52:31 Bitcoin sucks

Follow our guest on Twitter: @DeanEigenmann

Follow our host: @gwartygwart

👋The Gwart Show is proudly presented by Ellipsis Labs! Ellipsis Labs is building foundational products in DeFi. Their first product @PhoenixTrade is the leading orderbook DEX on Solana. The team is growing—visit ellipsislabs.xyz for engineering opportunities.

Enjoy the show? Check out our website and newsletter by clicking here.

Questions or want to sponsor? hello@blockspace.media

Allen Farrington, co-founder of Axiom, discusses Bitcoin scaling, the role of venture capital in Bitcoin's ecosystem, his thoughts on DeFi, NFTs, and stablecoins, and the potential for Bitcoin to supplant fiat money. He also shares his insights on the ordinals debate and the future of Bitcoin infrastructure.

00:00:00 Start
00:00:32 Allen intro
00:01:22 Allen's background
00:06:30 Investing in public Bitcoin companies
00:10:44 Axiom
00:13:26 What wrong with DeFi
00:20:38 How does Axiom decide what to invest in
00:24:11 Lightning gaming
00:28:49 Criticisms of lightning
00:33:02 Do L2s have to have trust tradeoffs?
00:36:00 Will BTC kill fiat?
00:38:52 How is Axiom NOT like other VCs?
00:42:23 Are tokens always silly?
00:48:56 Stablecoins
00:53:06 Are stablecoins doomed?
00:57:56 People want centralized stablecoins
00:59:42 What is DLCVM?
01:06:25 Rollups
01:10:47 Companies must ROI
01:19:20 Ordinals
01:27:25 The circular logic of scams
01:38:56 Wrap up


Follow our guest on Twitter: @allenf32

Follow our host: @gwartygwart

👋The Gwart Show is proudly presented by Ellipsis Labs! Ellipsis Labs is building foundational products in DeFi. Their first product @PhoenixTrade is the leading orderbook DEX on Solana. The team is growing—visit ellipsislabs.xyz for engineering opportunities.

Enjoy the show? Check out our website and newsletter by clicking here.

Questions or want to sponsor? hello@blockspace.media