Hasu and Jon bring on Robert Miller from Flashbots. They have a wide-ranging conversation including Ethereum’s roadmap, L1 vs. L2, convergent architectures across chains, and differences vs. Solana. They also discuss how Flashbots’ newest products (Rollup-Boost and BuilderNet) address MEV. __ Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (02:07) Ethereum's Rollup-Centric Roadmap (07:21) Ethereum L1's Role (16:47) We're All Building the Same Thing (23:53) L2 Innovation (28:13) Solana & Ethereum MEV (47:48) MCP v...
Dec 22, 2024•2 hr•Season 2Ep. 5
Hasu and Jon bring on Ansgar and Caspar from the Ethereum Foundation to discuss the ETH staking endgame. Ansgar and Caspar recently published two controversial research posts which included a proposal to change Ethereum’s issuance curve. They are concerned that the current ETH staking economics could lead to nearly 100% of ETH being staked, with much of that in LSTs. They propose reducing issuance and targeting a lower stake rate. We go deep in this episode on PoS economics, liquid staking, rest...
Mar 22, 2024•2 hr 24 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Hasu and Jon catchup on what’s new in the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) and SVM (Solana Virtual Machine) worlds. For the EVM, Ethereum has pushed vertical scaling efforts to other chains. This includes Monad, who is building a new EVM L1 with fundamental optimizations to improve scalability. For the SVM, the Solana ecosystem continues to gain momentum across the board. Meanwhile, Eclipse is gearing up to launch their SVM Ethereum L2. DBA is an investor in Eclipse Laboratories, Inc. and SOL. Jon...
Dec 07, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Hasu and Jon bring on Mike Neuder (Ethereum Foundation) and Chris Hager (Flashbots) to discuss the design philosophy of proposer-builder separation (PBS). They first dive into the past and present implementations of PBS, including MEV-Geth and MEV-Boost on Ethereum. Then they discuss the future of PBS - whether PBS should be enshrined, protocol-enforced proposer commitments (PEPC), PBS on L2s, how to prevent censorship, and more. __ Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (01:12) What is PBS? (05:37) The Hist...
Sep 02, 2023•1 hr 59 min•Season 2Ep. 2
In this episode, we explore Jon’s journey into crypto and our mutual passion for research and the writing process. We then give an overview over the key areas of crypto infrastructure today. Finally, we zoom into rollup decentralization roadmaps, and Jon shares a controversial new thesis about sequencer decentralization. __ Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (02:42) Interview start (03:44) Jon's work week (08:04) ChatGPT & writing (10:57) Jon's start in crypto (14:45) How to pick things to work on (1...
Jul 14, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Listen to conversations between two veterans of the crypto industry: Su Zhu, CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, Strategy lead at Flashbots. Exploring the big ideas in crypto from first principles. In this episode, Hasu continues the conversation with Danny Ryan and Tim Beiko , two researchers from the Ethereum Foundation. The three are joined by Stephane Gosselin , co-founder of Flashbots, who makes his podcast debut and stands in as Hasu's co-host. Together, they discuss: MEV before...
May 25, 2022•1 hr 27 min•Season 1Ep. 37
Listen to conversations between two veterans of the crypto industry: Su Zhu, CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, Strategy lead at Flashbots. Exploring the big ideas in crypto from first principles. In this episode, Hasu sits down with two Ethereum Foundation researchers, Danny Ryan and Tim Beiko, to explore Ethereum's upcoming transition to PoS. Topics discussed include: Why do blockchains need consensus? How does PoW consensus work today, and how will it change after PoS? What happen...
May 12, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 36
Listen to conversations between two veterans of the crypto industry: Su Zhu, CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, Strategy lead at Flashbots. Exploring the big ideas in crypto from first principles. In this episode: The state of our macroeconomy Destruction of the nation-state The rise of the Sovereign Individual How crypto fits into all of this SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncommon-core/id1517659188?uo=4 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/...
Apr 01, 2022•59 min•Season 1Ep. 35
In this episode, I had the opportunity to sit down with Eli Ben-Sasson of Starkware . If you listened to my last episode with Su where we talked about the scaling approaches of different L1s blockchains compared to Ethereum, I argued that L1 blockchains do not scale and that the only way to create true scalability is to perform all of the computation off-chain and only post the results of that computation on-chain . STARKs are a technology that allows huge amounts of computation to be compressed...
Dec 16, 2021•1 hr 37 min•Season 1Ep. 34
In this episode What the “Crypto Villain of the Year” thinks about his image The arguments for Ethereum’s scaling roadmap The arguments for Alt L1s to out-scale Ethereum What parallels to BTC maximalism Su sees in the ETH community Listen to conversations between Su Zhu, the CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, an experienced crypto researcher and writer. Together with occasional guests, we explore the transformative nature of trust-minimized currency and financial services. SUBSCRIBE ...
Dec 13, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Season 1Ep. 33
With BTC and ETH making new ATHs, new and old investors are asking themselves the same question: How do you value cryptoassets? Listen to conversations between Su Zhu, the CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, an experienced crypto researcher and writer. Together with occasional guests, we explore the transformative nature of trust-minimized currency and financial services. SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncommon-core/id1517659188?uo=4 Spoti...
Nov 10, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Today, I’m sitting down with Anish Agnihotri , who is a research associate and colleague of mine at Paradigm. Anish has a fascinating backstory from becoming an entrepreneur at a really young age to later going deep into skin trading. We discuss how that skill transfers to NFT trading and how we see the market structure of both primary and secondary markets for NFTs. Finally, Anish shares some actionable advice on how he learns and how to build projects in crypto. This was a deep and fascinating...
Oct 28, 2021•1 hr 39 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Today, we welcome Jordi Alexander , a former professional poker player turned macro trader turned crypto trader. Jordi competes in the Mind Sports Olympiad and is an expert in games and game theory in general. Together we discuss How to pick up new games and improve How you can apply game theory to the crypto markets What Jordi and Su think about the market, especially the role of Bitcoin & Ethereum Why Su is Doge-pilled and whether he can convince us of his thesis Enjoy! Listen to conversat...
Aug 25, 2021•1 hr 28 min•Season 1Ep. 30
For our latest episode, I sat down with MEV Senpai , one of the top searchers in Ethereum . He gave us the unique inside perspective of someone who finds and captures MEV himself. The result was a long & intense convo, one of the best I've had in a while. We discussed: The structure and actors of the MEV game What is searching, how can you learn it, what edges exist Intro to private relays and transaction bundles The role of Flashbots in DEX trading and, of course, the hot topic of the day: ...
Jul 19, 2021•2 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 29
After a tumultuous month in crypto, Su and I discuss the state of the market and what we see on the horizon . Enjoy! Listen to conversations between Su Zhu , the CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu , an experienced crypto researcher and writer. Together with occasional guests, we explore the transformative nature of trust-minimized currency and financial services. SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncommon-core/id1517659188?uo=4 Spotify https:...
Jun 17, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 28
In this episode, Su Zhu and Hasu invited Kyle Samani from Multicoin Capital, one of the most successful venture funds this cycle. Kyle is a day-one supporter of Solana, a smart-contract platform optimized for high throughput. They talked about: Multicoin's approach to investing How will the winning blockchain scale? What is enough decentralization? Win conditions for Solana What is Serum Enjoy! Listen to conversations between Su Zhu, the CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, an experien...
Jun 07, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Earlier this week, I did a deep dive on a new DEX trading protocol called CowSwap, which combines many good features into what is possibly the most complete trading experience in Defi. First, you no longer publish a fee-paying transaction to the public mempool. Instead, you sign a transaction and submit it off-chain to the CowSwap relayer, which handles all the execution. For you, this means you can safely set a very low slippage tolerance because you only ever pay a fee if your trade succeeds. ...
May 29, 2021•49 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Su is sitting out today, and I instead welcome Charlie Noyes and Georgios Konstantopoulos of Paradigm, one of the largest investment funds in crypto. We cover a lot of ground in this episode, including: How Paradigm can so consistently identify and back the category-defining protocols and companies in crypto MEV and how it can be mitigated, including some actionable advice on how you can avoid getting sandwich-attacked today The new features and remaining challenges of Uniswap v3 Paradigm’s thes...
May 18, 2021•1 hr 31 min•Season 1Ep. 25
For this episode, Su and I invited the legendary trader Cobie , who goes under @CryptoCobain on Twitter. Together, we talked about The bull case for Ethereum and its upcoming catalysts Whether ETH can flippen BTC What advice has helped Cobie to survive several market cycles Enjoy! Listen to conversations between Su Zhu, the CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, and Hasu, an experienced crypto researcher and writer. Together with occasional guests, we explore the transformative nature of trust-min...
Apr 27, 2021•1 hr 44 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Crypto commands unusually high yields relative to the traditional financial system, allowing investors to earn 20% on fiat and stablecoins and even more on other assets. In this episode, Su and I unpack a very simple question: Where are these yields coming from? Topics discussed: Unpacking the three major sources of yield in crypto How sustainable are they? What are the risks? How the GBTC premium or discount affects the market Su Zhu https://twitter.com/zhusu Hasu https://twitter.com/hasufl Our...
Apr 05, 2021•52 min•Season 1Ep. 23
We are super hyped to bring you our conversation with Richard Galvin , one of the best performing VCs of the last years and frontrunner to the DeFi opportunity . In this episode, Richard and Su make the most condensed case for Defi that I've heard to date. In this episode, we covered Richard’s history on Wall Street Why crypto is in a megatrend How he goes from thesis to investment Why society needs finance How Defi improves on traditional finance; and the best investment opportunities inside De...
Mar 05, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 22
This is part two of our conversation with Matti and Fiskantes of Zee Prime Capital . While the first half was more philosophical in nature, this time we talked exclusively about different blockchain projects and how they might connect to each other in the future. I believe that with gas fees in Ethereum being as high as they, the advent of sharding and layer two solutions, and the first credible Ethereum competitors like Polkadot, Cosmos, and Solana coming to mainnet, this topic has never been m...
Feb 21, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Today, Su and I are sitting down with Matti and Fiskantes of Zee Prime Capital . These two have consistently been among my favorite people to follow on Crypto Twitter, so I’m very glad that they agreed to have this conversation with us. In fact, we ended up talking for so long that we have to release the episode in two parts. In this first half, we covered The value of Crypto Twitter in finding and spreading ideas Zee Prime’s unique investment thesis and how it is to be an outsider in the VC spa...
Feb 16, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Today, Su and I discuss the rise of WallStreetBets and financial populism in general. As one of the most experienced market participants I know, Su has a unique perspective on the story behind the GameStop short squeeze . We explore why he thinks it is going to end in tears for small investors, which invisible rules of the traditional financial system have been laid bare for everyone to see, and how all of this massively validates crypto and Defi going forward. Su Zhu https://twitter.com/zhusu H...
Feb 02, 2021•49 min•Season 1Ep. 19
This is Part Two of our conversation with Arthur0x on the Top 20 Defi (Decentralized Finance) coins by market cap. Arthur0x went from being one of the earliest users and investors at Synthetix, Aave, and Kyber, to running the largest Defi-focused fund in all of Asia. Arthur0x https://twitter.com/Arthur_0x Defiance Capital https://twitter.com/DeFianceCapital Su Zhu https://twitter.com/zhusu Hasu https://twitter.com/hasufl Our homepage and mailing list https://uncommoncore.co/podcast/...
Jan 07, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 18
After our episode on the top 20 crypto coins by market cap, we got a lot of requests to do one for Defi as well. For that discussion, we brought in one of the foremost experts on Defi. Arthur0x went from being one of the earliest users and investors at Synthetix, Aave, and Kyber, to running the largest Defi-focused fund in all of Asia. Arthur0x https://twitter.com/Arthur_0x Defiance Capital https://twitter.com/DeFianceCapital Su Zhu https://twitter.com/zhusu Hasu https://twitter.com/hasufl Our h...
Jan 02, 2021•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Today, I’m sitting down with Su Zhu, my friend and co-host, and Josh, of Orthogonal Trading. Josh is one of the biggest and most experienced options traders in crypto and joined us for a very interesting and wide-ranging conversation. Together, we touched on topics like how options work differences between options and futures Different strategies for using them in crypto as well as what Josh thinks about options trading platforms in Defi Resources: https://www.optiontradingtips.com/options101/pa...
Dec 23, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 16
When our scheduled guest had microphone issues, Su and I decided to record an improvised episode for you guys instead. In this one, we go through all the coins in Coingecko's Top 20 by market cap and discuss our thoughts and predictions for them going forward. Su Zhu https://twitter.com/zhusu Hasu https://twitter.com/hasufl Our homepage and mailing list https://uncommoncore.co/podcast/...
Dec 11, 2020•1 hr 51 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Today, I’m not only joined by a very special guest, but the format of this episode is highly unusual as well! I interviewed the man who goes by the name @DegenSpartan on Twitter and who is one of the biggest and most enigmatic Defi investors there is. I have wanted to have him on for a long time, but there was one problem: DegenSpartan, or DS in short, is fully pseudonymous and did not even want to have his voice known. So we looked for a solution and ended up doing a text interview instead. The...
Nov 13, 2020•38 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Today, I sat down with Su Zhu, who is the CEO and CIO of Three Arrows Capital, as well as LightCrypto. Light is a real crypto OG and one of the largest and most successful prop traders in this space. We’ve known each other for two years now and I have tremendous respect for his skill and clarity of thought. He’s usually very secretive, so we are thankful that he has recorded his first-ever interview with us. In this conversation, we go very deep into the process and mindset of trading, as well a...
Oct 23, 2020•1 hr 25 min•Season 1Ep. 13
