The Crypto Conversation
Harsehaj Singh is the CEO and co-founder of Avantis, an on-chain exchange for trading and market-making cryptocurrencies, forex, and commodities. Why you should listen Built on Coinbase’s Layer 2 chain, Base, Avantis is designed to offer traders permissionless access to crypto, forex, metals, and real-world commodities—all directly from their wallet. It's backed by serious players like Pantera Capital, Founders Fund, and Galaxy Digital. Unlike typical decentralized exchanges that just handle crypto, Avantis allows you to trade a wide array of assets with leverage—up to 100x on forex and...
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Srini Parthasarathy is the CTO of Shardeum - an EVM-based autoscaling blockchain. Shardeum's architecture addresses the blockchain trilemma of decentralization, scalability, and security. Why you should listen Shardeum is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain designed to tackle the blockchain trilemma—scalability, decentralization, and security—without compromise. Utilizing dynamic state sharding, Shardeum achieves linear scalability, meaning that each additional node increases the network's transaction throughput. This architecture ensures consistently low gas fees, even as the network...
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Ciarán Murray is the founder and CEO of Olas, an open protocol for sharing, interrogating, and aggregating trustworthy information. Why you should listen Olas is an ambitious open protocol aiming to revolutionize how we produce, verify, and consume information online. Unlike traditional media platforms driven by advertising and subscriptions, Olas operates as a decentralized, ownerless network designed to foster trust and accuracy through innovative economic and technological frameworks. At its core, Olas seeks to address the shortcomings of current media incentives. Traditional models...
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Constantine Zaitcev is CEO at dRPC.org - a new generation web3 infrastructure and data service that combines the advantages of distributed systems with first-class UX and support. Why you should listen dRPC (decentralized Remote Procedure Call) is a protocol designed to facilitate secure and efficient communication between decentralized applications (dApps) and blockchain networks. It enables dApps to interact with blockchain nodes in a decentralized manner, reducing reliance on centralized infrastructure and enhancing the resilience and censorship resistance of blockchain ecosystems....
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Ryan is the Head of Product at Stabull Finance, a Stablecoin and tokenized RWA DEX on Ethereum and Polygon. Stabull Finance is the new home for non-USD, fiat-backed stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets, providing crypto and forex traders with access to 24/7/365 FX markets. Why you should listen Stabull is a next-generation Decentralized Exchange (DEX) built to become the central source of liquidity for all local stablecoins and tokenized Real World Assets (RWAs). Stabull Finance addresses a critical, underserved niche within the expanding DeFi landscape - to provide a specialized,...
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Barna Kiss is a co-founder of Malda, a decentralized lending protocol for individuals, institutions, and protocols to access financial services. Why you should listen Malda is a Unified Liquidity Lending protocol on Ethereum and Layer 2s, delivering a seamless lending experience through global liquidity pools, all secured by zkProofs. Malda is the first DeFi protocol built on a zkCoprocessor technology to create unified pools within the Ethereum ecosystem that act in sync to provide uninterrupted money market services, solving the problem of liquidity fragmentation. Malda is a next-gen lending...
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Boris Bohrer-Bilowitzki is the CEO of Concordium, a secure, scalable, regulatory-ready blockchain designed for real-world applications. With its built-in ID layer, predictable fees, and high-performance smart contracts, developers can build with confidence while ensuring compliance and privacy. Why you should listen Concordium is a public Layer 1 blockchain platform that integrates identity verification at its core, aiming to balance privacy with regulatory compliance. Founded in 2018 by Lars Seier Christensen, Concordium embeds encrypted identity into every transaction at the protocol level....
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Jens Willemen is a Partner & Co-Founder at Kairon Labs, an advisor and crypto market maker for digital asset issuers. Why you should listen In this conversation, Jens Willemen, co-founder of Kiron Labs, discusses the evolution of market-making in the crypto space, emphasizing the importance of ethical practices and the challenges faced by new token launches. He shares insights on market sentiment, regulatory complexities, and the future of tokenization, highlighting the need for compliance and the role of algorithmic trading in managing risks. Jens also reflects on the current state of the...
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Josh Bowen is the founder of Astria, the easiest way to deploy decentralized rollups. Why you should listen In this conversation, Josh Bowen, co-founder of Astria, discusses the evolution and significance of decentralized sequencing in the blockchain ecosystem. He shares insights on the current state of rollups, the impact of regulatory changes, and the future of decentralized finance (DeFi). Josh also introduces Astria's new rollup, Flame, and emphasizes the importance of user experience in attracting wider adoption of DeFi. The discussion touches on the existential questions surrounding...
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Seek Protocol is a cutting-edge ecosystem on Solana at the intersection of AI, augmented reality (AR), geolocation, and GameFi. Why you should listen Don Reijke is the Founder and CTO of Seek Protocol, and Lukas Novotny is COO of Seek Protocol. Seek Protocol is a technology initiative dedicated to blending cutting-edge innovation with human experience. At the crossroads of Augmented Reality (AR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Web3, Seek Protocol is revolutionizing how people interact with the digital and physical worlds. Seek Protocol is building an ecosystem where creativity,...
info_outlineSebastien is the CEO and co-founder of Sophon - building amazing onchain experiences focused on entertainment and lifestyle applications.
Why you should listen
Sophon is reimagining the future of blockchain by making it invisible to the end user, focusing on delivering seamless entertainment experiences that feel natural to mainstream consumers. Unlike most crypto projects that emphasize technical innovation within a niche audience, Sophon is breaking out of the echo chamber by embedding blockchain's advantages—ownership, engagement loops, and decentralized infrastructure—into products people already use. Backed by Binance Labs, Maven11, and a successful $60 million node sale involving 200,000 participants, Sophon is led by former ZKSync executives who understand that mass adoption won’t come from convincing people to use crypto, but rather from offering better internet products powered by onchain technology.
To achieve this, Sophon is prioritizing high-impact sectors such as gaming, social platforms, AI, and prediction markets—where users are already engaged—while stripping away the complexity that has traditionally hindered crypto adoption. Features like seamless logins, gasless transactions, and intuitive interfaces remove friction, making blockchain’s benefits accessible without requiring technical knowledge. Beyond just financial speculation, Sophon is enabling the financialization of culture through sustainable, value-driven ecosystems, moving past the short-term hype of meme coins. Their curation model ensures that only high-quality applications with strong user retention make it onto the platform, differentiating Sophon from previous blockchain iterations that flooded the market with low-value projects.
Additionally, Sophon’s network is designed to align incentives through a node-based participation model, turning retail investors into active contributors rather than passive speculators. This approach fosters a more engaged and decentralized ecosystem, reinforcing its long-term viability. By partnering with industry leaders like Beam (gaming), Aethir (decentralized compute), and OPEN (ticketing), Sophon is proving that blockchain’s future lies in enhancing real-world applications, not just creating financial instruments. The shift toward an onchain-powered internet is already underway, and Sophon is positioning itself at the forefront of this transformation.
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