Today, I’m joined by Robin Schmidt, video creator and former Head of Video & Content at The Defiant . In this episode, Robin and I talk about his love of cinema, 16mm film, Firewire, and anamorphic lenses. Robin tells me how his team found their groove making irreverent explainers and analysis with their video about Curve , and we discuss how The Defiant’s video team scaled production to 7-videos a week. Robin also sheds light on BasedAF, his upcoming PFP collection, and his ambition to crea...
Oct 28, 2022•59 min
Today, I’m joined by Matt Galligan , co-founder of XMTP Labs. XMTP is a messaging protocol built atop EVM wallets. Situating itself in the lineage of email protocol SMTP and Jabber IM protocol XMPP, XMTP aims to make DMs, notifications, group chats, and more available to everyone with a blockchain wallet. XMTP Labs, Matt’s new company, is the primary developer of the protocol. In this episode, Matt shares what it was like to be one of the very earliest Twitter users. We discuss his prior startup...
Oct 23, 2022•53 min
Today, I’m joined by SirsuHayb to learn all about the past, present and future of esports gaming DAO BLVKHVND . Sirsu is a prolific Web3 builder and organizer. In 2021, Sirsu co-created The Mint Fund, Crypto Cookout, The Well, and the primary subject of today’s conversation, BLVKHVND. BLVKHVND is an esports DAO. It’s essential premise: put ownership of an esports team into the hands of the players and fans. At the time of recording, BLVKHVND’s world class teams participate in Halo Infinite, Apex...
Oct 01, 2022•57 min
Today, I’m joined by NounsDAO developer Brian (aka @pbrianandj). Brian is one of a small group of developers in residence at NounsDAO. His work for the DAO is focused on the nouns.wtf website, which is the primary interface to the DAO’s daily auctions. Brian is also the creator of AddressForm, a Google Forms for Web3 SaaS product. In this episode, Brian tells me about his experience working on NounsDAO and the DAO’s builderly culture. We also discuss his new project, AddressBoard, which aims to ...
Sep 20, 2022•51 min
Today I’m joined by LordOfAFew (aka LOAF), Cairo developer and core dev at Realms. Realms started life as a Loot derivative NFT collection on Ethereum Mainnet. In the year since the collection’s initial deployment, LordOfAFew has led the charge transforming Realms into an onchain multiplayer resource management game. The first module will be called Realms: Eternum. In this episode, LOAF tell me about the creative constraints of onchain gaming. We dive into the game feel and mechanics of Eternum,...
Sep 13, 2022•1 hr 21 min
Today I’m joined by Jonah Erlich and Ittai Svidler , cofounders of Den . Building on their experience coordinating multisig transaction signing in ConsitutionDAO , Jonah and Ittai are creating a suite of tools for operational multisig teams to create, track, and execute Gnosis Safe transactions. At the time of recording, Den comprises a webapp interface for building and annotating multisig transactions. Den also maintains Discord, Telegram, and SMS bots that can notify teams of pending transacti...
Sep 06, 2022•51 min
At the end of each week, I sit down for a Friday afternoon conversation with some of the brightest people building web3. In this episode, I'm joined by David Silverman, Project Manager at Lens Protocol and Aave. Lens Protocol is a set of social publishing primitives, built for the EVM and currently deployed on the Polygon Network. David and I discuss the motivations for building Lens, its essential architecture and data structures, and the design decisions his team made when building this first ...
Aug 30, 2022•1 hr 30 min
Today, I’m joined by Nader Dabit , founder of DeveloperDAO. DeveloperDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization composed of thousands of Web3 developers. In this episode, author, educator, and developer relations specialist Nader Dabit walks us through discovering his passion for programming in his late 20s, his time at AWS and Edge & Node (creators of The Graph Protocol), and how he created the Devs for Revolution NFT that became the membership token for DeveloperDAO. We’re joined by De...
Aug 25, 2022•1 hr 24 min
Today I’m joined by Dan Romero . Dan is the co-founder of Farcaster and former VP of Operations at Coinbase. Farcaster is a decentralized communication protocol that uses Ethereum as a username registration service. Farcaster promises users a direct and uncensorable relationship with their audience. It promises developers permissionless access to all content on the network, no API required. In this conversation Dan walks me through the early days at Coinbase, and what he learned interfacing with...
Aug 23, 2022•1 hr 12 min
In this episode I’m joined by GUN founder Mark Nadal to discuss GUN . GUN, also known as GUNDB, is a real-time, decentralized, offline-first, graph database. In practice, GUN provides a Javascript API that allows webapps to sync data between peers with no centralized server dependency. GUN peers use WebRTC and similar transport protocols to sync data to localStorage and IndexedDB in the client. GUN also provides access controls, which allow developers to store encrypted data on the network. The ...
Aug 02, 2022•1 hr 1 min
On this episode, I’m joined by Luke (aka @worm_emoji ) and Adam Ludwin , co-founders of Context . Our conversation focuses on mint.fun, their nft mint aggregator. Mint.fun is the best place to see what’s minting right now. The site prominently features a list of the NFT collections that have been minted on the most in the last hour on Ethereum. The site generates mint buttons at every popular price point for all ERC721 and 1155 collections that are not yet sold out. Luke, Adam and I discuss thei...
Jul 26, 2022•49 min
On this episode I’m joined by Jasper and Thomas, the co-founder developers of Arcadia Finance. Arcadia is a forthcoming lending protocol whose modular contract architecture will allow users to deposit any onchain asset into a user-controlled vault, and withdraw a credit line against it. Arcadia lets users combine several types of collateral into a single basket, and for loans to be borrowed against the cumulative value of the vault. A vault could contain NFTs, fungibles, and future asset types t...
Jul 21, 2022•1 hr 3 min
On today’s episode, I’m joined by Wijuwiju and Anna who are building Interface , a human readable social web3 feed. At the time of recording, Interface is an iOS and Android app that lets you follow wallets and scroll through an infinite feed of their recent activity. It’s a great way to see recent swaps, mints, and transfers, and over time the team is developing richer indexing and transaction parsing, to show things like Snapshot votes, Mirror blog posts, and their most recent feature, Gnosis ...
Jul 12, 2022•1 hr 10 min
In this throwback episode, I’m joined by Oliver Zerhusen , Decentralized Governance coordinator at Graph Advocates (previously Graph Protocol), and Ross Campbell , legal engineer at LexDAO and KaliDAO. In this episode, Oliver explains how The Graph’s $GRT tokenomics incentivize subgraph indexing and how The Graph’s 4 core teams are organized. Ross explains why it’s so hard to work with lawyers, and we explore cool DAO related contracts like Radicle Drips, DictatorDAO, Aragon Optimistic Governanc...
Jul 05, 2022•1 hr 35 min
In this episode, I’m joined by three voices in the ETH liquid staking space. WalshyNFG works on business development at Lido, Crews works on product and growth at Index Coop, and Leo Glisic is a blockchain watcher who is active on Twitter. This episode is all about Lido Staked ETH, Index Coop’s leveraged icETH, and more. Topics discussed: - Lido Staked ETH - Rocket Pool ETH - Index Coop $icETH - Leo’s thread on icETH...
Jun 28, 2022•1 hr 17 min
On today's episode I'm joined by Peter Kieltyka, CEO of Horizon Games, creators of blockchain trading card game Skyweaver, Jamal Raees, Blockchain Strategy Head at Wyre, and Craig Lou, Project Manager at Wyre. This episode is all about Smartramp, Wyre's new fast fiat onramp, and how its enabling more players to get started playing Skyweaver. Smartramp is an API that lets people interact with EVM smart contract functions directly from a Credit Card transaction. We also discuss Horizon's Sequence ...
Jun 21, 2022•52 min
The conversation opens with a recap of the Curve wars and the fascinating relationship between yield emission governance tokens and staking aggregators like Convex. The conversation then turns to veBanny, the work-in-progress staked Juicebox ($JBX) token and the many intriguing designs active contributors are considering. Topics Discussed · @Mr__Goldstein - Juicebox Contributor · Juicebox - A programmable treasury for community-owned Ethereum projects · @squarishbread -FinTech PM and defi thinke...
Jun 14, 2022•1 hr 10 min
In this episode, I'm joined by Devan Non , Ape Dev , and Jiran for a fascinating discussion all about NFT MEV. MEV, or Maximum Extractable Value, is the value that can be extracted from block production in excess of block rewards and transaction fees. Two of today's guests, Devan Non and Ape Dev , are a professional MEV searcher team. They observe the mempool to find arbitrage opportunities that they can act upon for profit. In this very special episode of Web3 Galaxy Brain, they reveal their te...
May 31, 2022•1 hr 12 min
In this episode, I'm joined by @remnynt , creator of onchain NFT collections vibes.art and the reliquary . We chat about remnynt’s background as a mobile game dev, his transition into generative NFT art, and the influence of Artblocks, Terraforms, and Corruptions on his practice. We dive into vibes.art, his first on-chain Javascript based collection, and the reliquary his latest creation, which combines his interest in on-chain generative art and fantasy RPGs. I've never seen anyone use source c...
May 24, 2022•47 min
In this episode, I’m joined by solidity devs w1nt3r and Tyler Angert to talk about button.lol, watchfaces.world, and onchain SVG. Button.lol is a website with a single button that holders on the optimism network can click once every 6 hours to collect points. watchfaces.world is an on-chain SVG time piece NFT collection. Each NFT is customizable at mint time and will forever display the current time through the use of on-chain SVG rendering. While telling the story of watchefaces world, w1nt3r a...
May 18, 2022•42 min
In this episode, I'm joined by four exceptional guests. Jiran Z is a blockchain sleuth and nft mev brain, Andrew Thurman is a journalist who has worked at CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, and now Nansen.ai. Nodar Janashia is the creator of DeFi Zaps and co-founder of crypto dashboard Zapper . He and Igor Yuzo , the host of the Web3 Frontier podcast, are co-founders of DeFragFinance , a new NFT loan protocol. In this episode, Jiran, Andrew, Nodar, Igor and I jam on EthDenver, NFT burnout, and DeFragFinan...
May 10, 2022•2 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 6
In this episode, I'm joined by Sean McCaffery of the gamified governance DAO JokeDAO , and Zeugh from community management DAO CanuDAO . In the first hour of today's show, Sean explains the origins of JokeDAO, a joke writing contest whose winner is decided by $JOKE token voting. We get into the project's origins using Mirror Write Race, and the DAO's transition to building their own multichain voting-as-entertainment dapp. In the second half of the show, Zeugh and members of the Slice community ...
Apr 21, 2022•2 hr 17 min•Ep. 5
In today's episode, I'm joined by XR dev Avaer , and XR philosopher and community builder Jin for an exciting conversation all about their dream of an open and composable metaverse. This conversation is a behind the scenes look at the most exciting projects at the intersection of NFTs and XR. Avaer and Jin teach me all about Webaverse, an in-development web-based open source 3D social experience that stands as a counterpoint to the centralizing tech conglomerate's vision of the Metaverse future....
Apr 01, 2022•3 hr 34 min•Ep. 4
In this special Monday-night episode, I'm joined by TimShel , Shahruz , Fabian , and Scotato to talk all about Dom Hoffman 's Corruption(*s) . The Corruptions crew explains the project's origin story, from its original discovery on Context.app , to their decision to band together and communicate as one with the mysterious figure on the other side of the collection. This conversation taught me a lot about the intriguing participatory performance art that sets Corruptions apart. Topics discussed C...
Mar 16, 2022•1 hr 50 min•Ep. 3
Nicholas is joined by Dennison Bertram ( Tally ), Danny Aranda ( PartyDAO ), John C. Palmer ( PartyDAO ), and Jango ( Juicebox ) for a wide ranging conversation about DAO governance. In the first half of the show, we discuss the history of DAOs and Tally , the origins story of Dennison's Loot derivative Dope Wars and the DAO that sprung up around it. Danny and Dennison are surprised to learn they both joined the famed Park Slope co-op to study the cooperative roots of collective governance. John...
Feb 23, 2022•3 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Web3 Galaxy Brain is a series of casual conversations with the people building Web3, recorded on Friday afternoons. For the inaugural episode, @nnnnicholas is joined by Ellie Day , programmer, decentralized thinker, and partner at SeedClubVentures. We talk about about Ellie’s new project, Always Online, and Ellie teaches Nicholas all about Decentralized Joint Ventures (DJV). Later in this episode, Nicholas is joined by Danny Aranda , of PartyDAO , Stefen Delev of Carribean Blockchain Alliance , ...
Dec 23, 2021•2 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 1
