Episode description

Luca Prosperi is the co-founder and CEO of M^ZERO LABS_, a team building a new backend for the banking system.

Luca is a deep thinking analyst, economist and builder, with a background in institutional finance, alternative and credit investments and more recently DeFi lending and governance. Luca publishes analysis on Dirt Roads, a must read for anyone thinking about the construct and evolution of money and associated topics.

M^ZERO sprang into life recently with the announcement of a $22.5m seed round from investors including Pantera. AirTree, ParaFi, Mouro and Earlybird. The team is building decentralized infrastructure with the vision of ultimately replacing the commercial banking backend, starting with a better stablecoin.

In this conversation, Luca and I discuss the inspiration and vision for M^ZERO, Luca’s learnings from his time at MakerDAO, governance considerations for decentralized institutional infrastructure, the shortcomings of existing stablecoins and his team’s proposed approach, M^ZERO with respect to the current banking industry turmoil and more.

Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Luca Prosperi.