Adam Efrima is the SSV Core team Co-founder. He has been active in the crypto industry since 2013. Over eight years living in China working in the financial industry and fintech space, Adam has worked in CITIC Bank covering outbound investments for Chinese SOEs, he was also in charge of setting up the eToro Shanghai operation. Since then, Adam has been deeply involved in Ethereum staking, co-founding top performing staking project Bloxstaking as well as co-founding SSV Network, a decentralized validator infrastructure for ETH staking.

Adam Simmons is Chief Strategy Officer at RDX Works, a key contributor to the Radix public ledger. He has over 13 years of experience in building &amp; growing businesses in a range of industries including online video, blockchain &amp; digital marketing. With experience in both senior leadership &amp; hands-on roles, he has repeatedly recruited, managed, and trained highly successful teams within marketing, customer success and operations functions. Adam is also a previous member of the UK Paralympic Sprint Kayaking Team and has competed in multiple World and European Championships.


Adam Swick is the Chief Growth Officer at Marathon Digital Holdings. Prior to joining Marathon, he served as a principal at Refinery Ventures, where he was responsible for identifying and recommending business strategies to accelerate the growth of all companies in Refinery’s portfolio. Before Refinery, Swick was the director of strategic finance at Kraken Digital Asset Exchange, where he managed the company’s balance sheet, debt program, investor relations, and all forecasting activities. Prior to Kraken, he founded Swick Capital, a crypto-asset hedge fund, worked at Pritzker Group Venture Capital, and was a consultant at Boston Consulting Group. Swick holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a BS in finance from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Adrian Brink is the co-founder of Namada and Anoma, where he focuses on building privacy-preserving systems that are resilient to global crises. Previously, he was a core developer at Tendermint (Cosmos) and worked at the Web3 Foundation. He also co-founded Cryptium Labs, which was later sold to Chorus One, and Metastate, where he contributed to major upgrades to the Tezos protocol​.

Adrien Stern is the founder &amp; CEO of Reveel, the omnichain payments infrastructure that enables one-click cross-chain payments to connect people across borders and networks. Before founding Reveel, Adrien led digital transformation efforts at BNP Paribas CIB. He was also previously a venture builder, and owns Bridge Music, a record label and recording studio. Adrien has a Bachelor’s degree in Sciences of Management from The University of Lausanne and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Esade. 

Alex Hoffman is Head of Ecosystem at Superposition Finance. Superposition is revolutionizing DeFi by addressing its core challenges through robust risk management powered by Concordia’s best-in-class risk engine, omnichain functionality, and transparency.

Alexei Zamyatin is a co-founder of BOB, a first-of-its-kind hybrid Layer-2 powered by Bitcoin and Ethereum. He has been a Bitcoin and interoperability research contributor since 2015 and is most known for his work on trustless cross-chain bridges and L2s. Alexei holds a PhD in computer science from Imperial College London.


Alison Haire is the CEO and founder of Lilypad, a serverless, decentralized compute network that democratizes access to computational power by providing scalable infrastructure for AI, machine learning and other high-demand processes. Before founding Lilypad, she held roles at companies such as Filecoin, IBM and Accenture. Under her leadership, Lilypad leverages idle GPU capacity worldwide to fuel an open AI economy, providing cost-effective and scalable compute resources. Her work focuses on making high-performance computing accessible to more developers and researchers, while challenging the dominance of large centralized cloud providers​​.

With over 20 years of experience leading and designing games and tech companies, Alun is well-versed in creating innovative products that tackle experiential and developer challenges. In addition to his stewardship of LAOS Network, he is CEO and co-founder of the company building LAOS, Freeverse, which focuses on building scalable blockchain infrastructure. His history as the co-creator of ‘Barcelona World Race - THE GAME,’ a cutting-edge video game enabling virtual participation in real-world events, and his wider passion for gaming, have fed into his vision for LAOS Network as a solution for the intersection of Web3 tech with both gaming and real-world applications. Alun also led Shar3d.io, a pioneering company enabling collaborative 3D web applications, and served as CTO of Bodypal.com, a virtual garment services company. He holds a Ph.D. in Medical Physics from University College London.



Amanda Cassatt is the founder and CEO of Serotonin. Amanda previously served as Chief Marketing Officer of ConsenSys from 2016 through 2019. Joining one year after the launch of Ethereum, Amanda played a crucial role in defining, creating, and growing the narrative for ConsenSys, Ethereum, and blockchain overall.

Amanda stewarded the ConsenSys brand through its global expansion across enterprises, governments, developers, and consumers. She created and scaled the marketing team to over 50 people, serving both the ConsenSys brand and 50+ portfolio companies such as MetaMask, Infura, Truffle, and Gitcoin; managing teams in product marketing, growth, design, content, community, events, email, analytics and SEO. Amanda’s contributions to some of the most successful product launches, token sales and fundraises landed her on Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2016. Amanda is the author of the world's first web3 marketing book, Web3 Marketing: A Handbook for the Next Internet Revolution.

Amanda Keleher currently serves as Chief People Officer at Consensys, one of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the blockchain technology space. A well-rounded business leader with an over 25-year career in the technology space, Amanda is the driving force behind the human element of Consensys where she is responsible for overseeing all of the aspects of people, from building and maintaining the company culture to harnessing human capital as a key driver of business. 

Before joining ConsenSys, Amanda served as the Head of People at ThoughtWorks, a global technology consultancy company, for nearly ten years, where she led the global scale expansion by opening offices around the world and recruiting a diverse workforce at a time when the DevOps movement had just been born and a new skill set were yet to be developed. After her time at ThoughWorks, she served as the Executive Vice President, People &amp; Culture of Index Exchange, one of the world’s premier ad tech organizations; and as VP of People at Little Bits and Intent Media where she excelled in designing effective and creative strategies to attract and retain world-class talent in hyper competitive environments

Andrea Berry is a seasoned online video strategist with 15+ years of experience in transformative media partnerships. 

Her early successes include helping to launch Qello Concerts, the first direct-to-consumer live-music OTT service, later transforming it into Qello Media Services and Vimeo’s OTT channels offering across various industries as their first strategic sales director for their enterprise.

Currently, as the Head of Business Development at Theta Labs, Andrea leverages her expertise in online video and blockchain to drive strategic partnerships and growth opportunities for the company. She helps enterprises take advantage and lean into the opportunities Web3 presents. 

Andrew Redden is the CEO and CTO of Last Network, a blockchain platform focused on sustainable cash flow and reinvestment. Previously, he worked at Gitcoin and has contributed to numerous DeFi and Web3 projects. Redden's career reflects a commitment to developing technologies that prioritize long-term viability and community engagement​.

Andrew Thurman is a Data Editor based in Washington, DC. He previously wrote for CoinDesk and Cointelegraph, and worked in various roles for Chainlink and Nansen. His analysis has been quoted in The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, Reuters, The BBC, CNBC, and elsewhere. Contact Andrew at andrew@blockworks.co.

Andrey Sergeenkov writes educational articles as a freelancer. His works have been published in Coindesk, Cointelegraph, Entrepreneur and CoinMarketCap. He believes that transforming society towards lifelong learning, combined with decentralization in government and business, will lead to exponential social development.

Andy Bromberg is CEO of Beam and Contributor to the Eco Protocol. Eco has raised more than $90 million from an array of leading investors, including a16z Crypto, L Catterton, Activant Capital, Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and others. Prior to Eco, Andy was Co-founder and President of CoinList. Andy is also a founding board member at FreeWorld, a non-profit seeking to end institutionalized poverty in the United States by providing access to living-wage jobs for people with criminal histories. He studied Mathematics and Computer Science at Stanford University and co-founded the Stanford Bitcoin Group.

An established and versatile Financial Executive with over two decades of experience running multiple trading businesses across top-level banks such as HSBC, Barclays, and UBS. After running the top Agency and SSA business for both UBS and Barclays, he took over Emerging Markets macro trading for Barclays. In 2018, wanting to go deeper into Emerging Markets he took a role as Head of Latam local markets trading where he was responsible for trading activities across Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile. In 2021 DeMartino moved into Crypto when he became CEO and founder of Coinbase Risk Strategies focused on DeFi and Derivatives trading. More recently he started Trident Digital Group, a crypto-native solutions firm that is focused on lending and safe yield generation and stablecoin adoption.


Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio.

Prior to founding SkyBridge in 2005, Scaramucci co-founded investment partnership Oscar Capital Management, which was sold to Neuberger Berman in 2001. Earlier, he worked in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs &amp; Co.

In 2022, Scaramucci was ranked #47 in Cointelegraph’s Top 100 Influencers in Crypto and Blockchain. In 2016, he was ranked #85 in Worth Magazine’s Power 100: The 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. In 2011, he received Ernst &amp; Young’s New York Financial Services “Entrepreneur of the Year” Award.  Anthony is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a board member of the Federal Enforcement Homeland Security Foundation. He is the author of five books.

Scaramucci served on President Donald J. Trump’s 16-person Presidential Transition Team Executive Committee, and in 2017 briefly served as Chief Strategy Officer of the Export-Import (EXIM) Bank and White House Communications Director.

Scaramucci, a native of Long Island, New York, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Tufts University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

Antoni is a co-founder of Aleph Zero Foundation (Switzerland), an organization overseeing the development of the Aleph Zero blockchain, and a Managing Partner of Cardinal Cryptography (Poland), firm focused on core development of the Aleph Zero ecosystem.

Ari Juels is the Weill Family Foundation and Joan and Sanford I. Weill Professor in the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and the Technion and a Computer Science faculty member at Cornell University. He is a Co-Director of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3). He is also Chief Scientist at Chainlink Labs. He is the author of crypto thriller novel The Oracle (Talos Press), which was released on 20 February 2024.

Austin Alexander is co-founder of LayerTwo Labs, a company focused on advancing the Bitcoin ecosystem through innovative solutions and specializing in the development of Drivechain, a specific type of blockchain sidechain designed to foster creativity and scalability within Bitcoin.

Austin Campbell is the founder and managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. Previously, he has run portfolio management at Paxos for the stablecoins as well as being the chief risk officer of Paxos National Trust, has managed fixed income trading desks at JP Morgan and Citi, and has been a portfolio manager and structurer at Stone Ridge, the parent of NYDIG. He holds a BS in Mathematics from CSU Chico and a MBA from NYU Stern.

Ben Mills is the co-founder of Meso, a payments platform connecting banks and blockchains. Prior to Meso, Ben spent a decade building payments products as an early team member at Braintree (acquired by PayPal), as Head of Product at Venmo, and working on Solana Pay at Solana Labs.

Ben Rubin is the CEO and co-founder of Towns, a decentralized messaging platform dedicated to redefining online communication. Rubin has a rich background and a decade of experience in creating digital spaces that build trust and foster human connection. Prior to founding Here Not There Labs, the developer of Towns, Ben founded two venture-backed startups, Meerkat and Houseparty, both of which reimagined how people interact digitally. He scaled his communication products to hundreds of millions of users and raised over $70M in funding from Sequoia Capital and Greylock. After Houseparty was acquired by Epic Games in 2019, Ben went on to found Here Not There Labs, a venture-backed startup with over $30M in funding from a16z crypto and Benchmark Capital.

Ben Strack is a senior reporter covering macro and crypto-native funds, financial advisors, structured products, and the integration of digital assets and DeFi into traditional finance. Prior to joining Blockworks, he covered the asset management industry for Fund Intelligence and was a reporter and editor for various local newspapers on Long Island. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism.

Contact Ben via email at ben@blockworks.co

Bessie is a Brooklyn-based reporter covering DeFi and technology. Bessie worked as a tech journalist for The Org prior to joining Blockworks and was a management consultant for KPMG in another life. She is originally from Melbourne, Australia and holds an MA from New York University. She is also the mother of a bratty cat named Mochi. You can reach Bessie at bessie@blockworks.co

Bezalel Eithan Raviv, an ex-member of IDF Cyber Unit 8200, is a seasoned entrepreneur with deep expertise in technology and innovation. He now leads Lionsgate Network, a blockchain analysis firm specializing in professional money recovery services for digital asset investors in the +$2.5 trillion market. Prior to this role, Bezalel founded an investment banking firm supporting AI startups and developed Halleluiah, a pioneering web3 migration pattern for global music copyrights.

Billy Luedtke is the CEO and founder of Intuition, an information protocol powering a more trustful internet. Billy previously served as senior technology advisor at EY, a leading global professional services organization providing assurance, tax, audit, strategy and transactions. At EY, Billy created the company’s blockchain consulting practice, leading the technical development of blockchain-enabled distributed systems. Billy later became a senior token engineer at Consensys, a leading Ethereum developer (MetaMask, Infura, Linea). Billy continues to serve as an advisor at Consensys and MetaMask.

Billy Sebell is the Executive Director of the XDC Foundation and an early contributor to the XDC Network. Since early 2018, Billy has worked to develop the XDC community, focused on ecosystem and network growth and implementing use cases in trade finance. Billy previously spent more than 25 years in manufacturing and consumer products, dealing with the challenges businesses face in capital markets and international trade.

Bob Bodily is the Provo, Utah-based CEO and Co-Founder of Bioniq, a BTC Ordinals wallet and marketplace. He has a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and a Ph.D. in educational/instructional technology from Brigham Young University, with 25 articles and 1K citations. He is a data engineer with 100K+ lines of production Python code, and he has two previous software startups, including an EdTech SaaS that sold in 2021.


Bogdan is the Co-Founder and CTO of Tenderly, the full-stack infrastructure solutions provider powering Web3 developer teams with the essential tools and services throughout their development journeys. 

Prior to co-founding Tenderly, Bogdan worked as a software engineer for major software platforms such as MVP Workshop and Go Daddy where he was responsible for constructing and managing the development of distributed cloud systems before realizing the lack of infrastructural support for Web3 developers. With his vast experience in constructing, expanding, and overseeing extensive distributed cloud systems, he is well-versed in the intricacies of blockchain technologies and their practical applications. 

Brandon Truong is lead product contributor for ZetaChain. He previously co-founded social platform Yada (which was acquired in 2020) and spent time building products for BuzzFeed and Udacity. 


 Brian Pak is CEO &amp; Co-Founder of ChainLight, an award-winning blockchain security firm that specializes in smart contract audits and on-chain monitoring. He is also a co-founder of Theori, an established US-based offensive cybersecurity company, since 2016, which he still leads today, having now amassed trusted partners including Microsoft, Google and Samsung. Brian’s early career started when he co-founded and developed Kaprica Security, inventing and patenting the Skorpion Charger, an Android mobile charger that can detect malicious software with no user action required. He has worked on research and development projects with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the US. Brian is also a founder of the team PPP (Plaid Parliament of Pwning) which won DEF CON CTF, one of the most prestigious hacker competitions held in Las Vegas, in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2023. Brian graduated with a Masters Degree in Software Security Research from Carnegie Mellon University.

Three years ago, his act of burning a physical Banksy ignited global discourse on NFTs and Web3, exposing the industry's flaws. Now, through XION, founder Burnt Banksy leads a mission to democratize Web3 to the masses, making ownership accessible to all by removing unnecessary barriers and complications through chain abstraction. To date: XION has raised over $36M in funding with the goal of "making crypto disappear." Ultimately, Burnt Banksy wants to provide the benefits of crypto to people without requiring them to know anything about crypto.

Byron Donalds grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and he is also the proud son of a hardworking and loving single mother. His mother dedicated her time instilling in him that greatness requires sacrifice, which drives him as a devoted family man and United States Congressman.  

Byron is a graduate of Florida State University and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in finance and marketing. Byron's career led him to Southwest Florida, where he worked in the banking, finance, and insurance industries. Elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2016, Byron represented Hendry County and east Collier County in the State Capitol. During his tenure in the Florida House, Byron served as the PreK-12 Quality Subcommittee Chair during the 2018-2019 Legislative Session and served as the Insurance &amp; Banking Subcommittee's Chairman 2019-2020 Legislative Session. While serving in the Florida House, primarily focused on elder affairs, criminal justice reform, and ensuring that each child has access to a world-class education. 

Byron is committed to serving and giving back to the community that gave him so much. He has served Southwest Florida in many ways, including previously serving on the Board of Trustees for Florida Southwestern State College after being appointed by then-Governor Rick Scott. Byron continues to volunteer in his church as a youth leader and a mentor. He also enjoys volunteering as a coach in youth football and basketball leagues.

Congressman Byron Donalds lives in Naples, Florida, with his wife, Erika, and their three sons: Damon, Darin, and Mason. Byron has spent his entire adult life serving others, whether it be through volunteering, business, or leadership. He is committed to representing Florida's 19th Congressional District's conservative values in Washington DC to ensure a stronger Florida and a stronger nation.

Byron Gilliam writes the Blockworks Daily newsletter, in which he tries to explain crypto markets to traditional investors and traditional markets to crypto investors (while trying to explain both to himself). Before joining Blockworks, Byron spent 25 years trading international equities for banks and brokers in Frankfurt, London, Paris and New York. He holds a bachelor's degree in History from Binghamton University. Contact Byron at byron@blockworks.co.

Cameron B. Pick is a partner and patent attorney at the Chicago-based intellectual property boutique law firm Marshall, Gerstein &amp; Borun. He prosecutes patents for emerging technologies, including blockchain and crypto, among other innovative areas. He may be reached at cpick@marshallip.com. 

Candace Kelly is the Chief Legal and Policy Officer for the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization that supports the development and growth of Stellar, an open-source network that connects the world's financial infrastructure. She leads the team responsible for SDF’s legal affairs and the policy team that is focused on bridging the gap between the public and private sectors. Previously, Candace worked for Uber Technologies, Inc., where she helped navigate the company’s response to regulatory investigations and advised on safety, security, privacy, consumer protection, and law enforcement response. Prior to that she served for 17 years at the United States Department of Justice.

Carlos Mercado is a data scientist at Flipside Crypto, specializing in the convergence of data science, cryptocurrency, economics, and open-source research. His expertise spans the Ethereum ecosystem and over 20 other blockchains, where he leverages SQL, R, Python, and Solidity to develop innovative data models and analytics tools. Carlos's notable contributions include the creation of the True Freeze DeFi primitive and leading the production of the 2023 Crypto Users Report, generating significant industry impact. Prior to Flipside, he applied his skills in AI strategy and product development at Guidehouse and offered data science consulting services.


​​Casey Wagner is a Senior Reporter based in New York. Casey covers crypto regulation, markets and central banks. Prior to joining Blockworks, she reported on macroeconomics at Bloomberg News. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Media Studies. Contact Casey via email at casey@blockworks.co

Charles Hoskinson is a Colorado-based technology entrepreneur and mathematician. He attended Metropolitan State University of Denver and University of Colorado Boulder to study analytic number theory before moving into cryptography through industry exposure.

His professional experience includes founding three cryptocurrency-related start-ups – Invictus Innovations, Ethereum and IOHK – and he has held a variety of posts in both the public and private sectors. He was the founding chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation’s education committee and established the Cryptocurrency Research Group in 2013.

His current projects focus on educating people about cryptocurrency, being an evangelist for decentralization and making cryptographic tools easier to use for the mainstream. This includes leading the research, design and development of Cardano, a third-generation cryptocurrency that launched in September 2017.

Chris Barrett serves as the Director of Communications at Chainlink Labs and has been involved with Chainlink since 2017. Chainlink is the only on-chain data and cross-chain platform that enables financial institutions to develop customized, flexible, compliant, and future-proof blockchain applications and tokenized assets. Before this role, he founded a leading PR agency for technology startups, where he worked with over 1,000 innovative companies. Chris is also an avid runner, having maintained a streak of running for over five consecutive years. 

Chris Brooks founded CryptoAssetRecovery.com in 2017 to help digital asset owners recover lost assets. Chris was a programmer at Fidelity Investments, VP of Technology at venture-backed Carescout (which sold to GenWorth, a spinoff of General Electric) and has founded and sold three bootstrapped internet companies. 

Chris Swenor is a seasoned entrepreneur and blockchain pioneer with a 20-year career that kicked off as a self-taught programmer at age 13. He swiftly moved from corporate roles into startups, leading several to successful acquisitions. Chris started venturing into blockchain and cryptocurrency in 2013, founding Reach in 2019, a platform that has since attracted over $13M in funding and onboarded more than 8,000 developers.

In recent years, Chris founded Humble, a decentralized exchange on Algorand, and Alloy, a blockchain gaming platform acquired in 2023. He is currently working on Voi Network, a layer 1 blockchain empowering its community with user-centric governance and economics. 

Christopher Perkins is President of CoinFund, a web3 focused Registered Investment Advisor.  He is also a member of the CFTC’s Global Markets Advisory Committee and its Digital Asset Markets Subcommittee.

Ciarán Murray is a seasoned veteran of the blockchain industry. Aside from advising on numerous blockchain projects over the years, and releasing a synthetics assets proof-of-concept last year, Ciarán previously worked in the media industry for British Sky Broadcasting. He is not only well placed to understand the issues facing the media industry but also how to apply blockchain and other distributed technologies to remedy them.

Da Hongfei is the founder of Neo, an open-source, community-driven blockchain platform designed to welcome developers into the Smart Economy. Hongfei operates as CEO of Neo Global Development (NGD), the executive arm of the Neo Foundation that is committed to developing the Neo protocol and its supporting ecosystem. He is seen as a luminary in the Web3 space and as a blockchain pioneer in Asia. Hongfei received his education at the South China University of Technology, receiving degrees in technology and English.

Damian Alvarez is a communications professional helping Web3 clients get their stories heard. He is currently the Head of Communications at Aori, an omni-chain logic layer that leverages off-chain data storage to enable high-frequency on-chain trading. He has worked at agencies such as Edelman and YAP Global to assist a variety of emerging and established clients to engage in industry-wide narratives surrounding technology. He may be contacted at damian@aori.io.

Dan Keeler is Editor-in-Chief at Blockworks. Prior to joining Blockworks, he was Frontier Markets Editor at the Wall Street Journal where he managed the Journal’s coverage of smaller emerging markets as well as created a number of high-profile events and a highly regarded newsletter. Before joining the WSJ, he was the Editor of Global Finance magazine. He is also the founder of New York’s FM Network, a group that hosts gatherings of finance professionals focused on smaller emerging markets.

Contact Dan via email at dan@blockworks.co

Dan Smith is a Senior Research Analyst based in the United States covering Curve, Convex, Aave, and Compound. Daniel previously worked in tax and valuation at EY and Bennett Thrasher. He is focused on using data visualization tools to better understand the health and profitability of various DeFi protocols. Contact Dan at daniel@blockworks.co

Daniel Batten is a ClimateTech investor, Bitcoin environmental impact analyst, CEO advisor and author. He is most widely known for his data-driven approach to Bitcoin mining research.


Daniel Cawrey has been involved full-time in the crypto space since 2013, including as an editor at CoinDesk. He is author of 2020’s “Mastering Blockchain” and 2023’s “Understanding Crypto” books, both available on Amazon.

Daranee Ganesh is a publishing and production manager based in Washington, DC. She holds an LLB with a focus on emerging technologies. Prior to Blockworks, Daranee worked on several legal and non-profit projects aimed at integrating decentralized solutions in the social justice framework, specifically within immigration and environmental law. Contact Daranee at daranee@blockworks.co.

Darren Kleine is an Alberta-based reporter covering podcast content at Blockworks. Previously reporting for Cointelegraph, he wrote feature content and a weekly series focused on the personal stories of influential figures in the Web3 space. He has been an active participant in the NFT art scene since 2020, creating works on curated platforms including SuperRare and KnownOrigin and hosting an NFT art-focused podcast called NFP with DKleine. Contact Darren Kleine at darren@blockworks.co.

David is an Editor based in the Netherlands focused on data-driven journalism. Previously, he wrote for TheNextWeb's crypto vertical before launching Protos in 2021. He's a reformed hardline Bitcoiner passionate about permissionless and decentralized networks. Contact David at david@blockworks.co

David Schwed serves as the Chief Operating Officer at Halborn, an elite blockchain security firm. Prior to Halborn, he was the Global Head of Digital Assets Technology at BNY Mellon, the world's biggest custodian bank, where he integrated the IT strategy for the company's digital asset services. David was also CISO for Galaxy Digital, where he led the development of information security and IT infrastructure, and served as a risk committee advisor, evaluating emerging threats in financial services. He also founded the Cybersecurity Master's Program at Yeshiva University’s Katz School of Science and Health, sharing his expertise as a practitioner-in-residence.


Delphine Forma is the policy lead for Europe &amp; UK at Solidus Labs, a leading market compliance and market integrity firm in digital assets. With a career spanning roles in major banks and blockchain ventures, she brings extensive experience in compliance and legal across sectors. She is the founder of the crypto compliance and legal TG group with 1,400 members. A Sciences Po Lyon alumna, Delphine also holds advanced degrees in European Criminal Business Law and anti-money laundering.

Denelle Dixon is the CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization focused on working with and supporting changemakers to create equitable access to the global financial system through blockchain technology. She leads the teams that help maintain Stellar's codebase, support the communities around Stellar, and advocate on behalf of the network with international stakeholders. Before joining Stellar, Dixon served as COO of Mozilla, one of the most successful mission-driven open-source organizations.. During her tenure at Mozilla, she led the organization’s business, revenue and policy teams including the ongoing fight for net neutrality and the global effort to ensure that people can control their personal data.

Dermot O’Riordan serves as a Director at the POKT Network Foundation where he helps steer product development and strategy. From Ireland to Silicon Valley, Dermot’s career ranged from advising tech companies and VC firms to leading marquee industry events. His interest in Web3 was sparked in 2016 with the rise of DAOs, leading him to dive deeper into the blockchain space, where he served as an advisor to projects like Radix and Dusk, and later, spearheading growth at Eden Block.

Donovan is a reporter based in Singapore. He previously worked in editorial at Bankless and is a huge fan of spaghetti Westerns and the Wu-Tang Clan. Contact Donovan at donovan@blockworks.co.

Elena leads product marketing at Hiro Systems, a developer tooling company bringing smart contracts to Bitcoin. She has spent the past six years working in blockchain and cryptocurrency startups. Elena co-founded Blockchain Latinx, an online community that explores what blockchain means for Latinos and for Latin America. She has an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.

Eli Cohen is a corporate lawyer with 25+ years of experience in commercial transactions, financial services and regulatory matters and has worked in Asia, Europe and the United States. He is the General Counsel for Centrifuge, a real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and securitization platform and Chief Compliance Officer for Anemoy Capital SPC Limited a British Virgin Islands fund company issuer of the tokenized Anemoy Liquid Treasury Fund 1. He is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, has a Masters in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Eli Zeger writes about democracy and its relationship with technology. His work has been published in the Boston Review, Noema Magazine, Strange Matters, Zora Zine, among numerous other publications.

Elliot is the Head of Climate Strategy at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, where he is helping unlock Bitcoin's clean energy potential by bridging sustainable miners and climate-conscious investors. In his role at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, Elliot educates policymakers and NGOs on Bitcoin’s relationship with the energy system. He is a climatetech operator focused on alleviating energy poverty, bridging the digital divide, and promoting financial inclusion through technologies such as Bitcoin. Elliot was previously a Schwarzman Scholar and has served in the military, US Department of Energy, Clinton Foundation, and more. 

Evan Thomas is General Counsel for Alluvial, a software development company supporting the Liquid Collective liquid staking protocol. He was previously at Wealthsimple, Canada’s largest consumer fintech, where he was Head of Legal for Wealthsimple’s crypto trading platform. While at Wealthsimple, Evan helped launch Canada’s first regulated staking product. Before Wealthsimple, Evan was a litigator at Osler, Hoskin &amp; Harcourt LLP for nearly 15 years. Among other notable cases, Evan was hearing counsel to 3iQ Corp. in its appeal securing regulatory approval for Canada’s first publicly traded bitcoin fund in 2019.

Felix Jauvin is the host of the On the Margin podcast. Based in British Columbia, Canada, he lives and breathes where crypto and macroeconomics intersect.

Felix Xu, crypto geek, early adopter, and NFT collector. Felix graduated from NYU Stern and founded two crypto projects, ARPA and Bella Protocol, among the global top 500 by market cap. Felix previously worked at Fosun Investment, Sackler family office, and Vertical Research in New York and Beijing. Felix loves sailing, kitesurfing and was featured in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for his NFT collection.

Frank has a diverse career that spans creative writing, day trading, and a 12-year stint in financial planning. After experimenting with blockchain and being an early adapter to the Solana ecosystem, Mathis co-founded GenesysGo in 2021 to create a faster, more reliable and more secure decentralized data storage protocol. Their flagship product, shdwDrive is built on Solana and aims to bridge the gap between blockchain technology and traditional business infrastructure. GenesysGo is powered by a new type of decentralized data storage consensus mechanism, built from the ground up by the GenesysGo team.

Fraser is co-founder &amp; CTO of Cubist and an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She is an expert in software correctness: her research focuses on systems security, automated bug finding, and formal verification, from verifying (parts of) production systems like browser JITs, to finding exploitable bugs in real codebases. Her tools have found many zero-day bountied bugs and CVEs in the Chrome and Firefox browsers and multiple operating systems. Fraser received her BA in English and her MS and PhD in Computer Science from Stanford.


Garrett Harper is the producer for the Empire podcast. Garrett worked in private equity and product management before jumping into crypto full-time in 2021. His favorite thing about crypto? It conflates art, gaming, finance, software, and psychology into one hyper-growth industry.

Gijs op de Weegh is the CEO and Founder of StablR, where he leads the strategy, business operations, and investor relations. He founded StablR out of his passion for implementing blockchain technology in the financial industry and exploring its possibilities. Before founding StablR, Gijs co-founded Payvision, an e-commerce payment service provider, in 2002. Under his leadership, Payvision grew to over 300 employees and achieved a turnover exceeding €4 billion.

Gísli Kristjánsson is co-founder and CTO of Monerium, the first company to issue fiat onchain. He fell in love with programming at the age of 13. After working as a bonds broker, Gísli saw the inefficiencies of securities settlements firsthand and recognized the potential of Bitcoin. Prior to co-founding Monerium in 2015, Gísli founded and sold a platform to give users access to geo-blocked content. Fun fact: Gísli’s Ethereum address is among the 1% of the oldest addresses.

Haden Patrick is Director of Business Operations of Cordial Systems, a provider of institutional-grade self custody software using a Zero Trust security model.  Haden has executive experience in team leadership, engineering and education originating from his 24 year career as a Naval Officer. After co-founding SoloKeys, the first open-source security key company, he went on to manage projects connecting web3 to traditional finance at a cryptocurrency trading firm before joining Cordial Systems.

Hadley Stern, Advisor to MPCH, has extensive experience in leadership roles within TradFi and digital asset industries. As Global Head of Custody at the Bank of New York Mellon (BNYM) from 2021 to 2023, Hadley spearheaded the creation of the industry’s first bank-grade crypto-custody platform. Hadley also previously served as Chief Operating Officer at Bloq where he was responsible for the P&amp;L, product roadmap, and general operations. Hadley was Founding President of Fidelity Digital Asset Services where he led Fidelity's Blockchain Incubator and Digital Currency group and was pivotal in early product launches, including activating Bitcoin donations to Fidelity Charitable and building and running Fidelity first Bitcoin mining Operation.



Hannah Finnerty is Blockworks' editorial operations manager and is based in the US. Hannah previously worked in podcast production for The National in Abu Dhabi. She graduated from Bowling Green State University with a degree in multiplatform journalism and Middle Eastern politics. Contact Hannah at hannah@blockworks.co.

Hatu Sheikh is the co-founder and CMO of DAO Maker, the largest on-chain funding platform with 1.5M+ users. The platform's contracts have distributed over $600M, with a cumulative return of around 10x. Hatu has a strong background in marketing and strategy and has played a pivotal role in driving the success of various blockchain-based projects and tokens, crafting effective marketing strategies, and forging powerful synergies within the industry.

Harry Duckworth, a law graduate, embarked on a unique journey that led him to become the youngest trader at global commodities giant Trafigura. He then went on to set up desks for several hedge funds worldwide, accumulating over a decade of experience in trading, hedge funds, and emergent technologies. 

Through his work, he became fascinated by the revolutionary power of blockchain tech soon after the inception of Bitcoin. Years later he founded AgriDex International, to provide digital marketplaces and supply chain information for all participants in the global food chain. 

Hind Kurhan is a Co-Founder of Thesis Defense, a decentralized technology security auditing company whose mission is the facilitation of broad adoption of decentralized technology by improving security and audit consistency throughout the blockchain sphere.


Ian Rogers is the Chief Experience Officer at Ledger, leading the consumer-facing business delivering the world’s #1 way to buy and secure cryptocurrency.  Prior, Ian was the Chief Digital Officer at LVMH for five transformative years, working with a portfolio of nearly one hundred brands across luxury including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Sephora, and Hennessy.  Ian also sits on the boards of Dr Marten’s and Lyst.

Ian spent twenty years bringing digital music to the mainstream, first with Winamp then Yahoo!, Beats, and Apple.  Ian contributed to the 2015 launch of Apple Music including Beats 1, their digital streaming channel. Ian graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science (with honors, Phi Beta Kappa) from Indiana University in 1994.  Ian built some of the earliest music-related Web sites in the early 90s and has been working with Beastie Boys since 1993.

Igor Telyatnikov is the CEO and co-founder of the blockchain and financial services technology company AlphaPoint. Headquartered in New York, AlphaPoint supports over 10 million users, powering marketplaces and wallets in over 35 countries. With 15 years of experience in tech and innovation, Igor has empowered over 150 clients, including CME Group and Scotiabank. In 2022, he partnered with the Government of El Salvador to upgrade its Chivo Wallet into a national Bitcoin and dollar wallet, creating the first nationalized crypto ecosystem. Igor previously held roles at Cvetlo, LiftDNA, and Ingersoll Rand/Allegion, and has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Marketing from Penn State University. He is a frequent speaker at industry events.

Ishan is a University of Texas McCombs School of Business graduate with a BBA in Finance &amp; Marketing. He founded and managed a Private Equity Fund that reached an eight-figure Assets Under Management (AUM) and has also gained experience with many top 200 projects of crypto market cap. In 2022, he helped found SCRIB3, a Web3 Marketing and PR venture. He was notably among the first to raise an alert about potential deceptive and unethical business practices by FTX. Ishan contributes as a DeFi analyst, an active angel investor, and an advisor in projects like Polygon Technologies.

Jack Kubinec is a Solana ecosystem reporter based in Brooklyn, New York. Jack previously interned at Blockworks before joining full-time. He graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a degree in sociology. Contact Jack at jack.kubinec@blockworks.co.

Jag is the CEO and co-founder of re.al, an L2 build to facilitate deep onchain liquidity for tokenized RWAs. re.al seeks to redefine how RWAs are integrated into DeFi, using yield-generating real-world assets as novel building blocks in existing DeFi primitives.

James Cirrone is a breaking news reporter based in New York. Prior to joining Blockworks, James was a reporter and newsletter writer at Bloomberg News. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism. He also played trumpet in the university’s marching band. Contact James via email at james.cirrone@blockworks.co.

Jason Allegrante is the Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at Fireblocks. He is an experienced Counsel with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry with both large, traditional financial institutions as well as early stage fintech startups.



Jason Dehni is the co-founder and group CEO of Credbull, a leading DeFi platform offering structured high fixed yield solutions in SME private credit. Jason has over 25 years of senior management experience in asset management, private banking, SME lending, insurance, risk management, and crypto across North America, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. His background includes serving as group COO &amp; MENA CEO of a publicly traded crypto asset management company, co-founder &amp; CEO of an SME trade finance platform, and senior leadership roles in asset management, wealth management,  insurance, and management consulting. Jason holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an Honours BA in Economics &amp; Political Science from the University of Toronto. 

Jean-Marie Mognetti is Chief Executive Officer of CoinShares, a publicly listed investment firm that manages over five billion in digital assets on behalf of a global investor base, and an experienced commodities trader with a background in quantitative strategies. A veteran of the Global Advisors group of companies since 2011, Jean-Marie has served in various leadership roles throughout his tenure, most recently as CEO of Global Advisors (Jersey) Limited and director of GABI, the world’s first regulated Bitcoin fund. In addition to his management responsibilities as CEO, Jean-Marie oversees the firm’s proprietary trading arm, capital markets portfolio, and risk management practices – areas in which he has developed unique expertise over his career. Prior to joining Global Advisors, Jean-Marie was a quantitative strategist with Hermes Commodities Fund Managers, and an Energy Trader Assistant at Lehman Brothers. He holds Master of Science degrees in Mathematical Trading and Finance from Sir John Cass Business School in London, and Bank-Finance-Insurance from Université Paris Dauphine in Paris, in addition to a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and Finance from Université Paris Dauphine.

Jeff is an editor at Blockworks, based in the United States. He has been a part of the blockchain space for over a decade, most recently working as US news editor at Cointelegraph. His areas of focus include empowering artists and creators through technology, using proof-of-participation methods to reward self-improvement, reducing the effectiveness of Sybil attacks, seeking transparent equity for disadvantaged communities, and exploring fairer models of world governance. Contact Jeff at Jeffrey@blockworks.co.

Jesper Johansen is the founder and CEO of NORTHSTAKE, a regulated custodial staking company specialized in building regulatory compliant crypto staking products for institutional investors and financial institutions. The team holds backgrounds from financial institutions, pension funds, large investment companies to consulting, technology and audit firms, such as Accenture, Deloitte, PwC as well as blockchain and crypto projects e.g. DAI Foundation (MakerDao), Ethereum and L1/L2s. 

Prior to NORTHSTAKE, Jesper held leadership positions with Accenture Strategy and Deloitte Consulting advising clients in heavily regulated industries to implement new technologies and drive business transformation. He holds a MBA from Copenhagen Business School and a B.Sc. in International Business. 

Jess is the CEO of Reown, the onchain UX platform and builders of the WalletConnect Network. Previously she led Crypto at Checkout.com, a global fintech company. Jess was also a member of the Bank of England CBDC Engagement Forum and a member of UK Finance New Digital Money Steering Group, Innovate Finance Fintech Strategy Group and Department for International Trade Fintech Group.

Jess Sun is an independent writer and content strategist. She loves bringing good ideas to light, helping the people behind them shine, and bridging gaps in understanding. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn. Go to her website to learn about working with her.

Jesse Knutson is the head of operations at Bitfinex Securities, where he is responsible for expanding the platform’s issuance pipeline, overseeing distribution and building its user base while ensuring compliance with regulatory standards. Prior to this role, Knutson served as vice president of financial products at Blockstream, and held roles at prominent investment banks including Macquarie Group and Barclays.

Jim Myers is an engineer, early-stage investor, and the CTO &amp; Co-Founder of Flipside Crypto, a leading blockchain data analytics and business intelligence platform. Prior to co-founding Flipside, Jim developed the core technology that took products from 0 to 1 at companies such as Mylestone, Pluralsight, and Smarterer. Jim’s journey into the crypto industry began in 2015, eventually co-founding Flipside Crypto in 2017 to help empower crypto communities to create and share data-driven insights on the projects they care most about. Jim's passion for building extends to the broader startup community via his developer event series, Stack Dive, and as an angel investor to several local Boston-area startups, including AdHawk and LinkSquares. In a previous life, Jim developed advanced models to quantify risk and abnormal returns in the market for Financial Transmission Rights, a type of energy derivative.

JJ is an advisor, mentor and co-founder working across Bitcoin, mining and web3. He currently mentors for Outlier Ventures new Bitcoin Base Camp program and has co-founded a new protocol operating in stealth mode.

Joey is ranked by Chambers and Partners as one of the top 12 lawyers in the world, advising many of the largest platforms around the globe in the space. He co-chaired the Gibraltar Government’s working group on Blockchain for 3 years, which was established to develop the infrastructure to accommodate a DLT regulatory framework. Joey is also a specialist consultant to the United Nations and trains and assesses authorities primarily around South East Asia in virtual asset developments, DeFi and regulation. He is a member of several think tanks including the prestigious global ‘Wharton Reg@Tech’ initiative, the Blockchain Industry Parliamentary Roundtable on Blockchain Technologies at Parliament in the UK, and also contributed to the UK Law Society on the Blockchain Legal and Regulatory Guidance publication. He was the Xapo Representative on the Libra/Diem Association and has also contributed to various stablecoin and CBDC developments. 

Joeyz Yu is an entrepreneur with over 18 years of experience in product design and development. He co-founded Sending Labs to revolutionize communication protocols and social applications for Web3, leading the development of their flagship products SendingMe and SendingNetwork. Previously, Joeyz co-founded MoboTab, where he created the Dolphin Browser, used by over 200 million users and later acquired by ChangYou. Joeyz's passion for empowering users and building exceptional teams drives his mission to shape the future of the internet. 

Byron Gilliam

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/brand/the-breakdown" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



The legendary Peter Lynch advised investors to stop following the news.



&#8220;The person who never bothers to think about the economy, blithely ignores the condition of the market, and invests on a regular schedule is better off than the person who studies and tries to time his investments, getting into stocks when he feels confident and out when he feels queasy.&#8221;



The news has been unusually nauseating this year: trade wars, real wars, recession fears, AI doomerism.



And yet, here we are, right back at the all-time highs in both the Nasdaq and S&amp;P 500.



There’s nothing particularly new about this.



Writing in the simpler times of 1993, Lynch noted in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/One-Up-Wall-Street-Already/dp/0743200403/ref=asc_df_0743200403?mcid=06a3bcc798a1339bb508b59f992086b6&amp;hvocijid=18147238387577396879-0743200403-&amp;hvexpln=73&amp;tag=hyprod-20&amp;linkCode=df0&amp;hvadid=721245378154&amp;hvpos=&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvrand=18147238387577396879&amp;hvpone=&amp;hvptwo=&amp;hvqmt=&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvdvcmdl=&amp;hvlocint=&amp;hvlocphy=9004338&amp;hvtargid=pla-2281435179778&amp;psc=1">One Up on Wall Street</a> that “if you had paid close attention to the negative tone of most of our ‘whither the economy’ sessions over the past six years, you would have been scared out of your stocks during the strongest leg of the greatest market advance in modern history, when investors who maintained their blissful ignorance of the world coming to an end were merrily tripling or quadrupling their money.&#8221;



Markets have gone on to far greater advances since then, and I&#8217;d argue that the only way to have fully captured them was to have remained blissfully ignorant of the world.



It&#8217;s easy to look at the long-term performance of stocks and think everyone should always be fully invested.



It’s much harder to look at the daily news and think now is the time to be invested.



Lynch suggests you don’t try.



&#8220;The best way not to be scared out of stocks is to buy them on a regular schedule, month in and month out.&#8221;



US investors have taken that advice to heart, to a degree that Lynch probably would not have imagined.



Now, an <a href="https://www.ici.org/401k">estimated</a> 70 million American workers invest in 401k plans, metronomically pouring pre-tax money into equities, no matter what the news is.



This makes the stock market <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w21749">less volatile</a> than it otherwise would be. Or should be, probably.



And that should make them more valuable, too, because investors will accept lower returns (i.e., higher valuations) for assets that cause them less worry.



So it makes sense that equities would be more expensive now than they used to be.



They might get even more expensive.&nbsp;



As long as we have jobs — and therefore 401k plans — it might be hard for the market to go down much.



That would make stocks increasingly less scary — and increasingly more valuable.



Let’s check the charts.&nbsp;



Still saving:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf0CdTEdndC0ELMWMKRXea2e5gXkHrAzqXdHLxm7EO765pJWKMrB6dH5sY6x3hmmcby86ZRcIlEbi9Asa1g1xNE3kyOle_H1dcPAfP7TnIkRntJt0DYgakh0wLhj9ZRUPww7LeHOQ?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



The US personal savings rate ticked down to 4.5% in June. That’s low by historical standards, but still 4.5% of a large and ever-growing number. Some portion of those savings will go into buying equities every month, whatever the news.



Sentiment still has some catching up to do:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdOxbmvGu24eXZ--zEKV2pO3rnBTvsufLyBiszLsZPqRtJtaEJ0gQ2cZmYCnMV1xuCCdQDEftIWLXbiI6RdazxyKdmh2mHn6ZVEj3-DHv8kahrLFXSRWSVHLaVolIChyJvz1TQo8Q?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Stocks are back at all-time highs, but investor sentiment, as measured by AAII, remains on the bearish side of neutral.



Moving out on the risk curve:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdaw4Qltlu2yDv4jQh5FgswdigVK0lIuGUjRkGoJ4i1GS_tQXsdFA_u1gvIv9MHelOS-wdPV4x2_saINMbeoe4q3tGlA5ThMixq6FBhQwaXi5u3UbW1rD0qjQqceUH3FgJ3YIKWTg?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



US investors are embracing risk, perhaps because stocks seem less risky after weathering all the seemingly bad news this year. If equities are less risky overall, it makes sense to buy higher-risk equities.



The rest of the world is buying value:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd0wBUVjqfswDbw8ZHcmrNKjIFGcGYEwPqYGI7YSqQNAnHGWkoQeN4zA80t6-ghDYzJNdUt0R2utT4RPW7S4Zmy3f4xaCSwHSA5jlqZhN_TPE3rCx5DSTSjr69k20fdGfWI51zkWw?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Per Goldman Sachs, there’s been an unprecedented divergence between the outperformance of growth stocks in the US (the dark blue line) and the outperformance of value stocks in the rest of the world (the light blue line). While the rest of the world reaches for safety, US investors are all-in on growth.



Is everything safe now?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdWvbyWbMIN-wmQJh8a9yWe9hviXJwu5P9PT8sTd9Sb50HdUnrkfJS_E5MGUfwDyfDd5WBHJQb9BBcLcX5Lv0T8XBANj3L4ALED4zC6xciB1eF_usCKwVP6JjYjoKRe8ukyhCXmoQ?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Ed Yardeni notes that profit margins in the semiconductor industry continue to rise. Semis were historically the most cyclical and therefore riskiest sector to invest in. Now, they seem almost defensive.



Good news or bad for humans?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd2kPoU8IplUKpwRTpnZw25Cai9qnrmofuyHa6isuIz1j_gk2hgPyin07QTEZ2OoHnUBOkaEC94TzPNiisxY4lnUDQMUzq1vENlqyQLXCHc0mgF-0JHoJ0MTKP9qi_BZCcoCPvG?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Less than 10% of companies polled by the US Census Bureau report employing AI over the past two weeks. That might mean AI has only just started disrupting the job market. Or it might mean humans are more useful to employers than the AI hype would have you believe.



The proximate cause for all-time highs?



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf8yLCrXPDYXEXMjlgL7fdZyQpj_B5F_qsXu5p2HaJWImXDAJefM1ijWVn089QGO7PWlN7HYhnoGTNFKUUkT4Z0klxtkWngQF3jV8dJ58dMctf23CVuOFej3THEZyLp0R1MifgUzQ?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Expectations for an imminent rate cut are giving investors a reason to buy now.



One less reason to worry:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeyxhbgXm5wszaF7lxyyBCtAz2Bp3GU9DwaPmk18KHbDToCLAdjdaQdX3kfddOFDuG3D1j_1YdhDutccQNcyiKvG4ed02_Mkljny1-Nissd6pK8CRZqHGNb7EdP8kFbZz6_G0X-2g?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



The Cleveland Fed InflationNow model sees US prices, as measured by CPI, rising at an annual rate of just 1.6% in Q2.



Stocks for the long run:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcuydBiqR10sZL6C1QpRNdyoF7k3OMmOLKYlz-ZlM8Pd7iLH1bH0uP9f468MNIA2TrDrBvk461FWwFpaKfDi_zhKzoY-5tiz4YENUB7_DXIaGb407Cy9w9fTtLQhVQy48BN7PO60Q?key=womsqVlgj8jTxzn3VX3-yA" alt=""/></figure>



Bank of America strategists say US equities are on the cusp of just the seventh “great breakout” since 1990.



Noting the new highs in equities this week, a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-26/wall-street-goes-all-in-on-risky-stocks-as-bears-race-for-cover?fromMostRead=true">Bloomberg article</a> listed all of the things that should be worrying markets at the moment — tariffs, the economy, consumer spending, and even professional advice to be cautious — and then concluded that “investors appear to be ignoring all of it.”



Peter Lynch would approve.



Have a great weekend, breakout readers.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



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Friday charts: Retail is one-upping Wall Street

Ben Strack

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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A major topic at Permissionless was stablecoins and broader tokenization. It was, in fact, one of the main themes of the “Rebooting the Global Financial System” panel I moderated yesterday.



“Rebooting” could have been replaced with “rebuilding,” a couple panelists agreed.&nbsp;



But first, from an offstage chat with CoinFund president Christopher Perkins: He told me “stablecoin summer” is going to unlock “DeFi fall.”&nbsp;



“Tokenization is the new ETF,” he explained. “It’s a new wrapper with superpowers — of instant settlement…and 24/7 access to capital formation.”



Those using stablecoins will want yield, and will seek that out onchain via money market funds, alternatives, etc.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“So you’re going to see those dollars coming [onchain] translate to second- and third-order implications for DeFi,” he said.



Tokenized public equities are particularly exciting, Perkins added, as it unlocks constant access to those companies for anyone with internet access.&nbsp;



That sentiment was elaborated on by Inversion founder (and Empire podcast host) Santiago Santos, who took the Day 3 main stage with Blockworks founders Jason Yanowitz and Michael Ippolito.



Crypto has historically tapped into “trapped pools of capital” around the world in part because of the lack of access to the US stock market, he argued. A Chinese investor with such limitations, for example, might resort to holding ETH to express a long position in technology.



“What happens when you now have tokenized stocks onchain?” Santos posed. Capital that previously flowed to layer-1s or memecoins could migrate, he noted.



While we’re on the tokenized stocks subject, Dinari said yesterday it secured Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) broker-dealer approval for its Dinari Securities subsidiary.



Why is this significant? Dinari believes it’s the first company tokenizing publicly traded shares outside the US with an affiliated company now licensed to do the same for American customers, Chief Business Officer Anna Wroblewska told me.



Dinari Securities expects to start offering tokenized stocks to US users in Q3. As this begins, Dinari plans to test a blockchain ledger system for brokerage clients as it continues talking with the SEC about a tokenization framework, Wroblewska explained.



During the aforementioned panel, Ondo Finance CEO Nathan Allman noted the firm’s plans next month to launch a tokenization platform offering exposure to public US stocks, bonds and ETFs. (He called these highly liquid securities the “low-hanging fruit” in my latest <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoins-iceberg-rwas-mature-ondo">interview</a> with him.)



Sitting beside Allman, Apollo Global Management’s Christine Moy noted efforts to tokenize the more illiquid private markets (the firm brought its Diversified Credit Fund on-chain in January).&nbsp;



On the segment growth evolution front, an S&amp;P Global <a href="https://www.spglobal.com/en/research-insights/special-reports/look-forward/future-of-capital-markets/tokenization-financial-markets-value-flow">report</a> published this week addressed tokenization use cases expanding in three phases.



The first (from 2025-2028) centers around cross-border payments and collateral operations. The ability to instantly swap an asset for a cash payment offers tangible commercial benefits to institutions involved with repo transactions and intraday liquidity management, the report notes.



Phase two (2027-2033) would include credit expansion as tokenization connects borrowers to lenders. Corporations using tokenization for cross-border payments will also seek onchain loans, the analysts wrote.



In a third phase (2031-2035), blockchains could support transactions between wallets controlled by AI agents, for example.



The S&amp;P Global analysts conclude: “If the adoption of tokenization increases as expected, it will intersect with other megatrends — such as the growth of private credit and AI — to significantly disrupt the future of capital markets over the next five to 10 years.”



Gradually, then suddenly.



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Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thebreakdown">The Breakdown</a>: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire</a>: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
</ul>

How tokenization’s ‘superpowers’ could transform US stock access

Kate Irwin

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Brave is one of the few web browsers that’s embraced crypto.



It has the affiliated BAT rewards token and a built-in crypto wallet, to name a few of its tie-ins.&nbsp;



But it’s also taken a privacy-forward approach — and splashed that across its marketing to help set it apart from other Chromium-based browsers.



“We’re kind of in [a] metaphysical rebellion against the big tech surveillance powers that evolved on JavaScript,” Brave CEO and cofounder Brendan Eich, who created the JavaScript language, said onstage during Blockworks’ Permissionless conference this week.



“We didn’t think about this enough in the mid-90s. The cookie was for keeping your login tokens,” he added. “It wasn’t for third-party traffic, but that’s how it evolved, and JavaScript was just fuel on that fire.”



Eich argued that internet advertising is inherently a “toxic system” where involved parties are “all fighting each other and cheating each other.”&nbsp;



But tech that can use blockchain rails, like ZK Proofs for privacy plus “proof of humanity” verification for fraud prevention, could help bring about a new, browser-native, more private ad system.



“We’ve gotta get onto blockchains that are faster and private by design,” he <a href="https://x.com/StakeWithPride/status/1937916138425618523">said</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true"><a href="https://twitter.com/brave?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Brave</a> in May 2025 passed 88M Monthly Active Users (MAU). On track for 100M in Q4. The well-known &quot;summer slump&quot; on desktop (school breaks, holiday trips =&gt; people outside) started, but overall browser + search growth holds strong. Also, we saw a nice bump in user-minutes. 1/6 <a href="https://t.co/aDakeadfCS">https://t.co/aDakeadfCS</a>&mdash; BrendanEich (@BrendanEich) <a href="https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1930811477365293561?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Brave began as a web browser, because that type of product is a starting point with the potential to reach a mass consumer audience.&nbsp;



“It’s the universal app, the daily driver. We have more user minutes and a smaller user population than X does,” Eich said. Brave’s <a href="https://brave.com/transparency/">transparency</a> page lists 38.6 million daily active users and 88.1 million monthly.



And while not all Brave users may like this bit, Brave Search is helping the firm’s AI business by using that data to refine its LLM (Brave offers Leo AI).



“It seems like the browser is still relevant, but we found that the flipside of the browser coin is Search,” the CEO said.



Eich previously cofounded the Mozilla Foundation and its affiliated company and worked on Mozilla projects for 11 years. He spoke onstage with Midnight Foundation President Fahmi Syed (Midnight is a Cardano-affiliated, ZK- and privacy-focused chain). Midnight, whose foundation <a href="https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/midnight-foundation-launches-to-support-growth-of-secure-and-decentralized-blockchain-network-822794925.html">launched</a> just last month, is planning to include BAT holders in its upcoming NIGHT airdrop.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Had a great discussion with <a href="https://twitter.com/BrendanEich?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BrendanEich</a> of <a href="https://twitter.com/brave?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@brave</a> at <a href="https://twitter.com/Permissionless?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Permissionless</a> on building a user-first web. We covered privacy, wallet-native identity, and <a href="https://twitter.com/MidnightNtwrk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MidnightNtwrk</a>’s new tokenomics and incentives whitepaper. Catch the recording:<a href="https://t.co/M8SmAMfZb4">https://t.co/M8SmAMfZb4</a> <a href="https://t.co/i0TPOlZ6jd">pic.twitter.com/i0TPOlZ6jd</a>&mdash; Fahmi Syed (@F_ZK_Now) <a href="https://twitter.com/F_ZK_Now/status/1937955388260815161?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Last month, Brave <a href="https://x.com/brave/status/1921945493870874799">said</a> it’s adding Cardano support to the Brave Wallet, which already supports lots of chains including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and others.&nbsp;



During the Permissionless talk, Eich concluded with some advice for crypto devs that may give vibe-coders pause: Rewrite your code.&nbsp;



Then maybe consider writing it again, and again.



“Human intelligence is not about to be surpassed by these [AI] models,” Eich said. “Be a human, write and read code.”



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Brave CEO: We’re in a ‘metaphysical rebellion’ against big tech surveillance

Donovan Choy

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Permissionless Day 3 concluded yesterday, and we’re back with some highlight quotes. In case you missed it, we also did a recap of Day 2 <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0x-permissionless-day-2">here</a>.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">What role will crypto play in working AI products?</h4>



Haseeb of Dragonfly Capital: “We all know the obvious answers which [are]: engineer, accountant, lawyer, girlfriend, maybe in reverse order.”



Casey Caruso of Topology cited brain models coming within the decade: “The long story short is that we don&#8217;t have enough data on neural activity to train a brain model today and one thing that crypto is really good at is incentivizing people to aggregate data, so I&#8217;m super convinced that there&#8217;s going to be a DePIN network to collect this data, and from there we&#8217;ll have a model that can actually unlock things like mind reading — as crazy as that sounds.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Does this Bitcoin-treasury-strategy thing going on in TradFi actually have legs?</h4>



Thomas Lee CIO of FundStrat Capital is optimistic:



“Oil companies have historically traded on a premium to their proven reserves because of expectation of future reserves. ExxonMobil was in the top five largest stocks in the S&amp;P 500 for 25 years from 1990-2015. Never valued on earnings but a price premium to its proven reserves.&nbsp;



“[Strategy] will probably become the biggest stock in the US. It doesn&#8217;t make earnings — it’s valued purely on its price to bitcoin reserves.”&nbsp;



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Joe Lubin of Consensys on what motivated their lawsuit against the SEC:</h4>



The SEC “secretly decided to reclassify ether as a security…[and] tried to pin it on essentially people responsible for the Merge — on us as promoters, EIP writers, builders and Danny (Ryan)&#8230;When we saw that researchers were getting subpoenas, that’s when we decided to sue the SEC.”&nbsp;



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Felix Jauvin on the macro factors driving stablecoin hype:</h4>



“We’re going into this world now where fiscal deficits are increasing…The big question at hand is, who is to be the one buying this debt? There’s a very logical reasoning for why we’re seeing such a push for the GENIUS Act right now, because that is a huge unlock for US T-bills coming forth.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Joe Cutler, Partner at Perkins Cole, lamenting the entry of institutions into crypto thus far:</h4>



Crypto was about “democratizing access to the control over value, and that&#8217;s not happening in the institutional rebuild. I worry about that.&nbsp;



“The second thing is, it was also destined to sort of remake the value propositions of aggregation of wealth, money, power and control into a more balanced system than it was before, and I don&#8217;t see that happening either in the march towards institutional adoption…&nbsp;



“I just hope that we get out the map once in a while and remind ourselves what country we&#8217;re in, not what road.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Is <a href="https://www.jpmorgan.com/kinexys/content-hub/deposit-tokens">JPMD</a> a permissioned coin on a permissionless network?</h4>



Suresh Shetty CTO of Kinexys by JPMorgan: “I’d say JPMD is a deposit token that is going to connect to public chains of which its primary use cases are cross border payments and settlement of securities.”



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Recapping Day 3 of Permissionless IV

David Canellis

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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It’s satisfying to think that Bitcoin has won. After all, the sitting US President himself is a big fan.&nbsp;



Regulators are, meanwhile, paying it little mind, at least publicly, while many of Wall Street’s largest operators support bitcoin trading and even offer ETFs directly to their customer base.



The US strategic reserve is the ultimate cherry: Bitcoin — both the asset and the underlying blockchain — are now formally intertwined with the health of federal finances, even if that’s only marginally so compared to gold.



Sounds bullish. But it’s enough to make any card-carrying cypherpunk a little nervous.



There&#8217;s a lot of precedent for the government wanting to monitor crypto and personal data. 



Thirty years ago, activists were gearing up to rally against a new Senate bill that would’ve made encryption tools, as we know them today, outright illegal.



On June 27, 1995, Senator Chuck Grassley introduced the so-called “<a href="https://archive.epic.org/crypto/ban/grassley.html">Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act</a>.” Grassley was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee on administrative oversight at the time.&nbsp;



Today, he’s President Pro Tempore of the Senate, the third in line for succession of the Presidency behind the Vice President and Speaker of the House.



Grassley sought to crystallize an existing drive from the Clinton administration to ensure the government could decrypt any and all encrypted communications, indefinitely, under the guise of protecting society from criminals and other baddies who might want to hide their wrongdoing from authorities.



At the time, the administration was pushing for a government-backed hardware encryption system known as the <a href="https://www.wired.com/1994/06/nsa-clipper/">Clipper Chip</a>, which used a classified encryption algorithm known as Skipjack.&nbsp;



Such an implementation would require two US government agencies to keep copies of all encryption keys related to Skipjack in escrow. This was meant to be a national standard for secure voice and data communications, but the public itself was not to be mandated to use Skipjack.



Grassley’s bill took it one step further by criminalizing the use of computers to facilitate racketeering, particularly through the lens of encryption. The most offensive provision was for a “universal decoding device” for any encryption method that would need to be shared with the Justice Department — meaning the only legal forms of encryption were those that could be easily decrypted by the US government.



The proposed law would’ve also made it a crime to distribute encryption software that didn’t have a backdoor over any network accessible to foreign nationals, which of course, included the internet.&nbsp;



US authorities were mulling whether to prosecute legendary cypherpunk <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/zimmermann-cypherpunk-bitcoin">Phil Zimmermann</a> over his creation and dissemination of the source code to Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), one of the first-ever encryption tools available to the public.&nbsp;



PGP’s source code had been uploaded online and printed in book form to sidestep US export restrictions that were central to the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cypherpunk-movement-history-wired-1993">Crypto Wars</a> of the ‘90s. After years of probes, no charges were ever brought against Zimmermann.



Grassley’s bill never made it off the ground, thanks in no small part to the barrage of denouncements from tech professionals, scholars and activist groups — including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Computer Professionals for Responsibility, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, among others.



Obviously, Bitcoin could never exist if the US government had a secret backdoor to everyone’s private keys. It’s not unimaginable that at some point in the past decade and a half of discourse, officials might have hoped that a backdoor would be possible.



The conversation around encryption has clearly evolved since 1995. The same can be said of Bitcoin over the past five years.&nbsp;



But in a world where Bitcoin is on par with gold or oil for strategic and economic importance to the most powerful governments on the planet, would those governments be inclined to stay hands off?&nbsp;



Perhaps Bitcoin is impervious to that level of influence. 



But odds are that it won’t go without saying — as was the case with Grassley’s bill.



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Why the fight for Bitcoin to exist might not be over yet

Jack Kubinec

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Firedancer has quietly delegated stake to 32 Solana validators to kick off its new delegation program, according to the client’s <a href="https://delegation.firedancer.io/validators">website</a>.



Delegation, or staking some of an organization’s crypto with a number of validators based on some criteria, has been <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-foundation-pruning-validators-delegation">used by the Solana Foundation</a> to help smaller validators get started on the network. Firedancer may be hoping the delegation program can help convince validators to start running its Frankendancer client, which currently <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/solana?dashboard=131">accounts</a> for just 8% of all staked SOL. That <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/4-big-questions-following-the-solana-accelerate-conference">proportion is up</a> from 5-6% around a month ago.&nbsp;



Firedancer is a from-scratch rewrite of Solana’s software being created by Chicago-based trading firm Jump. Firedancer would be Solana’s first true alternative client from the original built by Solana Labs, which is now known as Agave. With two clients, Solana would be protected from having a single point of failure on the client side — which can cause things like network downtime.



A limited version of the client, called Frankendancer because it combined chunks of the Agave client with Jump-written code like Frankenstein’s monster, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-solana-firedancer-testnet">went live in late 2024</a>. Full Firedancer is live in <a href="https://x.com/solana/status/1837375225341583686">non-voting</a> mode. The participants in Firedancer’s delegation program are running Frankendancer.



Onchain data <a href="https://solscan.io/account/AjLzAtJHDVQ4c2WMnSXt94a5BNt4CorH63af2uEmgkyF#stakeAccounts">shows</a> an account labeled as having been funded by Jump Crypto delegated roughly 20,000 SOL to the approved validators. One validator, Watchtower, received over 1.2 million SOL. In a Discord message, Solana Foundation validator relations lead Tim Garcia <a href="https://discord.com/channels/428295358100013066/1069760203240784002/1385498863070347345">said</a> a user named italo, who is <a href="https://x.com/italoacasas?lang=en">associated</a> with Watchtower, is running the delegation program for Firedancer.



The Firedancer delegation participants I spoke to had generally positive things to say about the client.&nbsp;



H2O Nodes noted that Frankendancer is more stable now than the original Solana client was when it started running a validator in 2022. Ian Unsworth from Kairos Research said the firm’s validator has been packing more compute units into blocks since switching to Frankendancer, which translates to incrementally higher rewards compared to the network average. RockawayX founder and CEO Viktor Fischer agreed — estimating that Frankendancer offers 10-15% higher performance when measured by average compute units.&nbsp;



Unsworth said Frankendancer is yet to face a true stress test, but added that the reported forthcoming pump.fun token could spike network activity and push Frankendancer’s limits.



Firedancer has <a href="https://delegation.firedancer.io/blog/introducing-the-firedancer-delegation-program">said</a> that it plans to delegate 2 million SOL to around 100 validators in the first phase of its delegation program. It also noted every iteration of the program will run for around 3 months.&nbsp;



Notably, Firedancer’s initial delegation standard of 20,000 SOL per validator is less generous than the Solana Foundation’s Delegation Program. The Solana Foundation stakes 35 million SOL across 569 validators, for an average of roughly 60,000 SOL per validator.



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Firedancer begins delegating stake to Solana validators

Macauley Peterson

The stage is set for Lido DAO to finally implement “Dual Governance.”&nbsp;



A vote of LDO holders running through 10:00 a.m. ET on Monday, June 30, will determine whether to change how power is distributed within Ethereum’s largest liquid staking protocol.



If approved, the proposal will activate a new framework that gives stETH holders — users whose ether is staked via Lido — a formal mechanism to delay or veto governance actions, adding a novel layer of accountability to the voting system. The new technical mechanism has implications for all of crypto, not just Lido, according to the prominent albeit pseudonymous researcher and advisor Hasu.



“Lido really reduces the risk that users have from any kind of governance attack [and] the trust that they need in the maintainer companies and the LDO holders,” Hasu told Blockworks.



That should further institutional adoption of stETH, the team expects.&nbsp;



At the heart of Dual Governance is a custom-built dynamic timelock module. Unlike static timelocks that simply delay execution by a fixed period, this design scales in response to opposition registered from <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/steth">stETH</a> holders. For example, if 1% of the total stETH supply signals objection to a proposal, execution is delayed by an additional five days. If opposition grows to 10%, the delay extends linearly up to 45 days. This mechanism ensures that in the event of a controversial or potentially harmful decision by LDO token holders, stETH users have a predictable window to exit before changes take effect.



That’s never been done before in a governance system, but is absolutely essential for Lido, given the variability of the Ethereum staking withdrawal queue itself.



The idea emerged from the core tension between providing liquidity and minimizing trust assumptions. Liquid staking protocols inherently rely on pooled delegation and active protocol maintenance to stay compatible with Ethereum upgrades. We saw this in practice during <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-hard-fork-updates">debates around the delayed Pectra upgrade</a>, in which Lido’s Ivan Metrikin was an important voice in the All-Core Devs decision-making process.



While traditional time locks give users a chance to exit before governance decisions are enforced, to withdraw stETH back to native ether can sometimes take weeks, making a short fixed period inadequate. The dynamic timelock aims to bridge that gap by adjusting execution delays to match the scale of user opposition, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all delay. Simple or uncontroversial changes can pass quickly, while the governance system will automatically hit the brakes on the process if big stETH holders begin to object.



Lido contributors, including Hasu and Victor “kadmil” from the DAO operations team, acknowledged the design was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lido-dao-proposes-governance-switch-up">years in the making</a> and incorporated dedicated stress tests to ensure it could resist governance attacks and flash loan manipulation.



“We have paid people to try to break the design with flash loans,” Victor told Blockworks, with subsequent adjustments tailored “to make it flash-loan resistant.”



Wrapped versions of stETH — like those used in <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/eigenlayer">EigenLayer</a> restaking or <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/0xresearch/65fe22d6-fd1e-11ee-b6dd-27c1387857db">Pendle</a> yield strategies — are not eligible to vote directly, but the withdrawal process gives holders time to reclaim their base stETH and participate if needed.



This is about giving users access to liquidity while preserving the right to exit in a way no other protocol has managed, Hasu explained.



“There used to be this dilemma between trust and liquidity, and dual governance is effectively breaking that dilemma,” he said. “You no longer have to choose — you can have both.”



The initiative has drawn comparisons to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/makerdao">MakerDAO’s</a> “emergency shutdown” lever, but differs by offering a non-destructive, graduated response rather than a single catastrophic reset. It also reflects a broader trend in DeFi governance toward more nuanced, multi-stakeholder systems that separate capital voting from user safeguards.&nbsp;



Hasu expects Lido’s implementation to become a blueprint for other protocols facing similar governance risks.



An earlier Snapshot vote on the proposal <a href="https://snapshot.box/#/s:lido-snapshot.eth/proposal/0x3bdf528b31956e029e867ebf79b02ee07e9a973987b34c5cffc14392e8b4480c">passed</a> nearly unanimously. If the on-chain Aragon vote passes as anticipated, it will formally decouple the authority to propose and pass measures from the power to immediately execute them, thus placing stETH holders effectively in the role of constitutional overseers of the DAO.



As of 9:00 a.m. ET Friday, just 4% of token holders have participated. To pass, <a href="https://vote.lido.fi/vote/189">the on-chain Aragon vote</a> requires a minimum quorum of 5%.



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Lido gears up for Dual Governance

Katherine Ross

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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I know Permissionless is over, but let’s take it back to the main stage one more time. Specifically, I want to focus on the Bell Curve x Empire Round Up.



One of the most interesting parts of the conversation between Blockworks co-founders Mike Ippolito and Jason Yanowitz, Framework’s Michael Anderson, and Inversion’s Santiago Santos is the idea that crypto could — at some stage — have its own version of the Mag 7 (a term coined to describe the “magnificent seven,” or some of the top stocks over on Wall Street).&nbsp;



“The meta-narrative is: Tokens need to make money. Tokens need to have a business model. There needs to be a value accrual to the token, just in the same way that there is to Robinhood and Coinbase or anything else that&#8217;s publicly traded and we don&#8217;t have GAAP accounting,” Anderson said.&nbsp;



“The next step is going to be: How do we get GAAP accounting so that everybody can look at these things on an apples-to-apples comparison basis? And if you&#8217;re making money, then you have a shot at being in the Mag 7. If you&#8217;re not, you don&#8217;t have a shot.”



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">i think the meta narrative that is forming is maybe we don&#39;t have the mag seven quite yet, but we will, and it&#39;s moving in that direction. the meta narrative is, tokens need to make money. tokens need to have a business model. there needs to be a value accrual to the token, just… <a href="https://t.co/EVMBBqTCOp">pic.twitter.com/EVMBBqTCOp</a>&mdash; Permissionless (@Permissionless) <a href="https://twitter.com/Permissionless/status/1938240575657930950?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 26, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



At this point, Anderson thinks that pump.fun, when it launches a token, could be considered part of crypto’s top tokens. But he also thinks that BNB, Binance’s native token, has the “best token model that exists.”



“As US persons, we&#8217;re not allowed to be Binance customers, and therefore nobody knows about it, but that is the fundamental basis of BNB. Not only is it 20% or 25% of the profits, which I don&#8217;t think is actually the case anymore, that&#8217;s how it started…Now, BNB is — if you stake BNB within Binance, you get discounted fees, but you also get airdrops of any tokens that are listed on Binance, which you can sell — and they do — immediately.”



Meanwhile, Santos says that the focus right now is very heavily on: What’s the next public crypto company (not meaning a SPAC or Treasury vehicle, but an actual crypto firm), and how can investors get a piece of the pie like Circle, Robinhood or Coinbase?



“I would probably take the bet that more and more liquidity is going to go in the public markets,” he said, adding that folks are more likely to look at ETFs and crypto stocks than tokens currently.&nbsp;



And that, I would say, was a pretty constant theme of Permissionless. I, admittedly, wasn’t there in person, but I watched nearly all the panels via livestream, and the themes were pretty dang obvious.



Stablecoins took up a whole lot of space, alongside discussions of how the industry improves token frameworks; and of course everyone’s curious about the next company to debut via the public markets. If the rumors are to be believed, it’s quite a long list.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



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Do tokens need fundamentals?

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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.” — Steve Jobs
</blockquote>



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcV3kLIRva-_oRY1fjMdlO1HuKiv4B9XH2Of4YZ059fpLU0-M-5aDH9wtG2iVtkuXA_05gvzMj3wG2dksL82rjPgnrjhGMlgqQ0oMw5iPpISLWVTWlRBp2aus_ER4YNBC9H-Pih-A?key=jAbiypjm3gXzOvW6tKo1fw" alt="" style="width:612px;height:auto"/></figure>



Steve Jobs <a href="https://youtu.be/njYciFC7mR8?si=jDinkTcfmeVGT2Df">liked to tell a story</a> of a “slightly scary” old man from whom he did odd jobs as a kid, including, one time, gathering some rocks out of the yard.



The man put the rocks into a tumbler in his garage, added some liquid and grit, and told Jobs to come back the next day to see the result.



Jobs says he was amazed as the rocks emerged from the tumbler as smooth, shiny objects of desire.



Later in life, he found this works with people, too.



“A group of talented people, bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise. By working together they polish each other and they polish the ideas.” In other words, put a group of people in a room together and they’re all likely to look smarter when they come out.



Unlike rocks, however, they do have to be the right kind of people.



As individually visionary as Steve Jobs was, he <a href="https://pca.st/episode/26dcb911-925b-4fae-b13c-9c7ccc50688c?t=1697">attributed his success</a> at least in part to the people he chose to be around:&nbsp; “I think I consistently figured out who the really smart people were to hang around with. You must find extraordinary people.”



One place to find extraordinary people is at conferences.



The magic of an innovation cluster like Silicon Valley is the critical mass of tech people constantly bumping into each other.



Conferences create temporary innovation clusters, like a pop-up version of Silicon Valley.



“One way to think about an industry conference,” Byrne Hobart <a href="https://x.com/ByrneHobart/status/1800537690787471849">explains</a>, is that it “synthesizes high real estate prices by charging an entry fee (and plane tickets plus hotels are also going to have the same economic effect); they make time more expensive, so they raise the relative value of the highest-utility interactions.”



Translation: the high cost of attending conferences weeds out the riff-raff.



If you’re still wondering why people incur the cost of attending a conference in person that they could watch for free at home, I think that’s pretty much it.



You get to meet the kind of people you’d want to be tossed into a rock tumbler with.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A panel on crypto’s current meta: Treasury Asset Companies</h2>



I’m a skeptic of crypto treasury companies (to put it mildly), simply because I think companies should be in the business of making things, not just holding them.&nbsp;



I still feel that way after listening to this morning’s panel with three enthusiasts for companies that mostly just hold crypto, but there was more nuance to the story than I had expected.



Dan Kang notes that DeFi Development Corp also runs validators, which allows it to grow its Solana stake independently of the NAV multiple that investors assign to its stock (DFDV).



Could they earn enough Solana by running validators to service their dollar-denominated debt if their stock fell below 1x NAV? I expect we’ll find out, eventually.



In the meantime, DeFi Development Corp “gives you the ability to accumulate crypto even faster than you could on your own.”



I’d like to see the math on that for people paying <a href="https://defidevcorp.com">3.1x NAV</a> for DFDV today, but that’s the service they provide to investors.



Thomas Lee rationalized the seemingly inexplicable valuations that crypto companies command by saying it’s “similar to how oil companies trade on a premium to its proven reserves.”



“MicroStrategy will probably become the biggest stock in the US,” he predicts. “And it’s not valued on earnings, it’s valued at a premium to its bitcoin reserves.”



Call me old-fashioned, but I’d prefer the biggest stocks in the US be valued on earnings — because earnings are a measure of how valuable a company’s product or service is to their customers.



Lee says the crypto treasury companies with the highest NAV multiples have effectively turned their investors into customers.



That’s true, but I’d bet that most of these “customers” still think they’re investing, which could cause problems.



David Grider injected a welcome note of caution, predicting that “several of these will go bankrupt.”&nbsp;



He didn’t sound particularly concerned about it, but I think people should be, because how is this meant to end?



Treasury Asset Companies “equitized tokens,” as Thomas Lee phrased it, and earlier this week, DeFi Development Corp <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/06/23/3103316/0/en/DeFi-Development-Corp-Partners-with-Kraken-to-Tokenize-DFDV-Stock-on-Solana-Becoming-the-First-U-S-Listed-Crypto-Treasury-Strategy-to-Go-Onchain.html">announced</a> that its stock will soon be tradable as a token on Solana.



Tokenizing a Crypto Treasury Company is the equivalent of tokenizing equitized tokens.



If that’s worth doing, it’s only a matter of time until someone starts a Crypto Treasury Company that will equitize the tokenized equity that equitized tokens.



This, I fear, risks a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wrEEd1ajz4">Ghostbusters moment</a> in which the streams will be crossed and the crypto world comes to an end — and maybe take the rest of the world with it.



I see no other logical end point because, as Joe Lubin said on another panel, there’s a “race to acquire the highest-power money” (bitcoin and ether, in his view).&nbsp;



Whatever the risks, Crypto Treasury Companies are one way to run it.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">One newsy panel</h2>



Speaking this morning, Joe Lubin casually filled in some recent crypto history — from his well-informed vantage point, at least.



Explaining why Ethereum seemed to have fallen behind over the last couple of years, Lubin shared his suspicion that “Gary Gensler was given a mandate, probably from Elizabeth Warren, to kill or slow Ethereum.”



In particular, “It appears they had secretly decided to reclassify ether as a commodity.



“They were trying to pin it on people who were responsible for The Merge,” he explained. “When we saw a bunch of researchers were getting subpoenas, we decided to sue the SEC.”



I imagine few Permissionless attendees would find any of that surprising, but it hasn’t been part of the official record, so I think we got to hear it first.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Day III Quotes</h2>



“It’s the ultimate meme.” — Santiago Santos on the bull case for bitcoin



“The highest-power money is bitcoin and ether, because they’re permissionless.” — Joe Lubin&nbsp;



“Ethereum got their shit together. The Ethereum Foundation is firing on all cylinders now.” — Joe Lubin



“MSTR is so big it has a sovereign put.” — Thomas Lee



“The meta-narrative is: Tokens need to make money.” — Michael Anderson, Framework Ventures



Overheard: “The product is how to get rich quick.” — Anonymous, on crypto’s true product-market fit



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Permissionless IV Newsletter Awards:</h2>



Best elevator pitch: <a href="http://zeoapp.com">zeoapp.com</a> — WeChat + Pinduoduo with crypto rewards. (IFKYK.)&nbsp;



Best merch: personalized coin purses, Aptos



Wackiest moment: Jason Yanowitz interviews Dennis Rodman (I hear he had alpha)



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdQgeUBE6PywnaJSMNrY5eaPgRR2IQ2FDH910Td-IfuRR03ioa_8wPB-RQ608mIWY2tQZlo8tJYkBleWI9IL98oJ1vuXtg75_RpVMj810zcXh-1XFLrkdYrlHxpyyKRxYfDr0Qd?key=jAbiypjm3gXzOvW6tKo1fw" alt=""/></figure>



Best guerilla marketing: Uniswap posters on construction walls blocks from the venue



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdSjvJPriQ0t-IRcPhZYBUZu4okDaO0VZdbc8jQvgcmJqEqXEc-4YFDacolDWXXSUGrVd30wtnvEJs_HcBmAUE_PivPcFX_Wo5Dv6bzw3e6yhTFjC8DJI32y3fRg3uhiE1IDJC14g?key=jAbiypjm3gXzOvW6tKo1fw" alt=""/></figure>



The color-coordinated bicycle appeared to be serendipitous, unlocked, and there all week. Who says New York City has a crime problem?



Most mind-bending experience: The <a href="https://www.ryanoakes.com/?doing_wp_cron=1750957031.5636379718780517578125">magician/mentalist</a> in the Aptos lounge who made me question the laws of physics.



Most degen branding: “One App. 150x Leverage. 113% APR” — Merkle Trade.



Final Permissionless takeaway: It’s good to get off the sofa and see people for real.



And that’s a wrap for Permissionless IV.



Thanks for following along this week and I’ll see you at the next one.



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Permissionless IV, Day 3 takeaways

Felix Jauvin

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Economic data is rolling over.&nbsp;



After an artificial bounce in economic data due to tariff front-running, the underlying economic data is beginning to roll. What comes next?



A couple of months ago on the Forward Guidance Roundup, we discussed the idea of an economic “mirage” forming, driven by the front-running of incoming tariffs.&nbsp;



The argument went like this:



Since the threat of tariffs was dangled for so long before they went live, companies were able to import as many goods as they could beforehand.



Because of this, net exports cratered, since that metric is computed as imports − exports, which mechanically leads to a lower GDP calculation. This is why we saw a very negative GDP print last quarter despite the actual economy being mostly fine.&nbsp;



This also led to a major acceleration in the trade balance:



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeTNVEzrcqQoO7Tx_xU77qMJfkmzsH2dCRJtI8F3SrhjpJMn7wNXaIGjkmydPNXpZMVdWjZlqZesaCUd9paQayfF4dhvSR2f1i08cQo2uM81C6h9htPP0YvwuNkwD1O6jyASc1Znw?key=jflsIHXMPKozAm1AwT1nrQ" alt="" style="width:579px;height:auto"/></figure>



Since companies had front-run all their imports, this dynamic reversed, where imports were minimal once the tariffs were actually implemented. 



This led to a huge positive reversal in GDP nowcast:



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfY4eDY3rZkoh3TkgKQwfxY6x58eFc4QClgjF-Skna7aQ5kKfqNB0_766g1P042XPZYhP9OmdzCUEJtvlgeHfn1lA4ynWrVncqsnm2fn-wXWTOTo02IWV0Zt4dkBSrbh60AP906Ng?key=jflsIHXMPKozAm1AwT1nrQ" alt="" style="width:708px;height:auto"/></figure>



Mechanically, this reversal in the other direction has trickled through the economy and led to a strong bounce in the soft data:



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdpoJ5Z-g1g7D_okb-gkRIXIT4c6EA5i9FEEszk4WILIHiFt7sYijyjK6BcFplXaEzkETfY2oA7b16gHXjI1PFgY2NwcF3S2-bypgEtX7sqYqPATB3qfbplL-R-0S9WWws-U9YZBQ?key=jflsIHXMPKozAm1AwT1nrQ" alt="" style="width:731px;height:auto"/></figure>



We’re now beginning to see early signs that this mechanical bounce in growth is beginning to head back lower.&nbsp;



In the labor market, although the topline data like the unemployment rate hasn’t increased, leading labor indicators are continuing their march higher:&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdXInmmz6KVlmKM-Wu3ZeVHESHadghmM3xwN_oQ6wjsk5EdUGzP9oUarr3-XIGX1y2p2OUe7Q2mmCM2ZYiQ5Cuj8Bh2uMByKpW9jJPRoBt_0rriClpuNGvQlKKEgPdXJQ_aIPtdmw?key=jflsIHXMPKozAm1AwT1nrQ" alt="" style="width:674px;height:auto"/></figure>



Further, it looks like the housing market is beginning to deteriorate after being frozen in place for the last year:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1218" height="952" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-104452" style="width:556px;height:auto" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=1218 1218w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=329 329w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=334 334w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=280 280w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/image-4.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1218px) 100vw, 1218px" /></figure>



Overall, with the FOMC committed to being as late to restart rate cuts as possible, the risks are building up.



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Is the ‘mirage’ of reassuring economic data ending?

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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At least one VC thinks Coinbase’s “Just Coin It” strategy is a bad, bad idea.



This week, Coinbase exec Jesse Pollak <a href="https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1937959125461487756">called</a> BaseDrop, which is powered by rapper Waka Flocka Flame’s memecoin, “the new creator economy.” He described <a href="https://x.com/BaseDrop">BaseDrop</a> as an “onchain record label, where value for songs accrues back to $FLOCKA.”



Framework Ventures cofounder Vance Spencer hit back with a takedown, arguing that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/base-coinbase-content-coin-crash-pump-memecoin">Coinbase’s “content coin” push</a> is “destroying broad swaths of the [crypto] industry.”



The idea that everything should have a token harms retail because said retail buyers are losing money on lowcaps and memes and will be alienated from crypto as a result, he argued.&nbsp;



Spencer also took aim at Coinbase’s decisions around its wallet, likening it to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/farcaster-blockchain-onboarding">Farcaster</a> and saying it’s “not what anyone wants or needs.”&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">The Just Coin It Ethos is what is destroying broad swaths of the industry and burning retail badly to the point where they will never re-engage with crypto. Instead of focusing on a few coins that have legitimate PMF and generate real business metrics, people like Jesse are on… <a href="https://t.co/jUpBM6zU0a">https://t.co/jUpBM6zU0a</a>&mdash; Vance Spencer (@pythianism) <a href="https://twitter.com/pythianism/status/1937961002622222685?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Coinbase recently overhauled its wallet to include a slew of social media-like features in a move that turns it into more of a consumer superapp than a crypto wallet. The overhauled version remains in beta, and hasn’t been fully released yet.



My question is: Are we sure “retail” is actually who is buying these? More likely yes, in the case of celebrity-backed coins. But I suspect there’s also a lot of crypto-native degens and builders participating in the “Just Coin It” trend.



Coinbase’s head of Base and Coinbase Wallet responded, unsurprisingly, by <a href="https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1937976222438592528">rejecting</a> Spencer’s argument and calling what’s happening innovative for crypto.



“Tokenizing content is a powerful way of letting the market value content and then drive value back to creators and consumers,” Pollak <a href="https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1937976222438592528">said</a>.&nbsp;



“I think it&#8217;s cool that a large, well-known artist is literally pushing the boundaries of what can be done onchain with value accrual,” he added.



While some might be more open to taking Ls on content coins than others, Waka Flocka specifically has been accused of promoting questionable tokens, including his Solana memecoin, in the past:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd262ycotF0Ty7hxM-uRz-SwPw3GiLd-Tl8RgkKyMEvF6f9Pqn_yLMzBw8GBcNN-fv1mKwSCc5mKtPXOpte8brDeoqdufU5GI9W60mDwZuveq3TBTMrOVUbmIACzVTVuuF4112LnQ?key=a8-j85qSk8vPZxeUFTrtNg" alt=""/></figure>



When the rapper was <a href="https://youtu.be/C8IgNaz2Yfc?feature=shared&amp;t=366">asked</a> last year if his <a href="https://www.geckoterminal.com/solana/pools/7EcvDoojcej6aC99VPWwJcdZSw7fYTDNqwkbhLrrmRGh">FLOCKA</a> coin on Solana had a fair launch in light of ZachXBT’s findings that 40% of its supply was sniped beforehand, Flame claimed there had been an “Operation Take Down Flocka” against him.&nbsp;



Pollak <a href="https://x.com/jessepollak/status/1938028341631893535">said</a> he’s also spoken with the rapper and believes Flame, whose real name is Juaquin James Malphurs, was “convinced” to launch a coin by a team that then “rugged him.”&nbsp;



“Do I wish he had been able to see through the scammers in the first place and not made the mistake? Absolutely,” Pollak said.



“But do I think we should blackball an earnest, talented creator and musician who someone else scammed [&#8230;] and who, rather than giving up, doubled down on figuring out how to use onchain to do good in our space? Absolutely not.”



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Coinbase is ‘destroying’ retail crypto: Framework Ventures cofounder

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If you’ve been to crypto conferences, you know you’re not “supposed” to actually be at the panels. They’re recorded anyway — networking is priority. Opportunity costs abound!



To cope with my FOMO from Permissionless, I listened to every panel (almost) on Day 2. So ironically, I probably got more out of Permissionless from halfway around the world than most attendees.



Here are several choice quotes from Day 2 panels.



Konstantin Richter, founder of BlockDaemon, was asked how his investors would feel if he IPO’d onchain rather than on the NYSE. He responded:



“If my investors feel like the return they would get is a lot better, then I think it’s a fairly easy conversation in this regulatory landscape, (assuming) we could get the right legal structures to avoid ending up in an orange jumpsuit.”&nbsp;



Wen World Liberty Financial token?



Zak Folkman, co-founder of World Liberty Financial, said: “I don’t want to give away too much, but if you pay attention over the next couple weeks, everyone who wants to know ‘wen World Liberty?’ is going to be very, very happy. We’ll leave it at that.”



Cryptic.



Brendan Eich, co-founder of Brave, on what he thinks of his Javascript creation: “Javascript&#8217;s over 30 now, so it should get out of my basement. It&#8217;s doing fine.&#8221;&nbsp;



How should crypto purists feel about DeFi today integrating with centralized finance?&nbsp;



Here’s Kain Warwick’s excellent answer, paraphrased from the DeFi Renaissance panel:&nbsp;



“If you look at the history of fintechs over the last two decades, it&#8217;s kind of disastrous, because they’re dealing with a ton of regulation and legacy systems that aren&#8217;t interoperable. That&#8217;s the big difference between DeFi and fintech: in fintech, if you want to do something, you got to go to a bank, beg for access to an API which you probably won&#8217;t get. Whereas in DeFi, anyone can turn up and use it.&nbsp;



“A hybrid CeFi-DeFi system at least means that the rails are still interoperable in an environment where any new entrant can come in. The barriers to entry are lower. And that, to me, is the win. Even if we didn&#8217;t get ‘pure’ DeFi replacing the world, I think we’ve still won.”



A masterclass in marginal thinking if you ever find yourself reminiscing about the good ol’ cypherpunk days…



What are the biggest impediments to adoption today?



Privy co-founder Henri Stern: “Onramping and moving from fiat to crypto remains the single biggest hurdle for adoption today.”



What’s the most important scaling decision Ethereum has to make in the next year?



Dan Robinson of Paradigm: “Increase the gas limits on L1. I’d love to see some progress on latency by then, but I’m doubtful that we will.”



Unfortunately, the percentage of Ethereum validators signaling for a higher gas limit has slowed in recent weeks. The last time gas limits were <a href="https://blockworks-research.beehiiv.com/p/starkware-has-a-new-prover">raised</a> from 30m to 36m was in February 2025.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdC4470nvn4lkBc_JQjhJ2rtEOzhOgK3HDNOUwCJ6eP97XAPp4JAgh1BspyqUIbDAL8xPywWerUHIU3zmH5fMQGXhUcumukx2JGqvxXuZh63bOSOUGCpTG04cs3GTZjep06tGtZdw?key=mZseu0WZI1kaGIeSaOtTiw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://gaslimit.pics/">gaslimit.pics</a></figcaption></figure>



Why would apps not just go off and build on their own chain?



Max Resnick of Anza: “If you want users, you should stay on Solana — that’s where they are. If you want to bring your own users and have them use a product, frankly, I don’t really know why you’re building on the blockchain.”



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">if you want users, you should stay on solana, that&#39;s where they are. If you want to bring your own users and have them use a product, like, frankly, I don&#39;t really know why you&#39;re building on the blockchain. &#8211; max resnick <a href="https://t.co/WpjuYY4OpX">pic.twitter.com/WpjuYY4OpX</a>&mdash; Permissionless (@Permissionless) <a href="https://twitter.com/Permissionless/status/1937970915092140178?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Here’s another spicy one from DBA fund’s Jon Charbonneau: “If I had to take a bet, I would bet Base would not continue paying 10-15% (to Optimism), because I don’t think they’re getting sufficient value in return. My gut is the same for most rollups with their relationship to Ethereum. There just isn’t pricing power there.”



How is AI being used for ZK? Uma Roy from Succinct: “There was a fun example of a big Hyperliquid whale with zero formal programming background that vibe-coded an SP1 application over the weekend. The app proved he owned addresses with ~25m of HYPE across accounts and bootstrapped an anonymous X account without revealing his addresses.”



Finally, some dunk tank action from the folks over at Blockworks Research.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">We just dunked <a href="https://twitter.com/defi_kay_?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@defi_kay_</a> 🤣 Courtesy of <a href="https://twitter.com/_dshap?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@_dshap</a>! Come dunk more <a href="https://twitter.com/blockworksres?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@blockworksres</a> employees! <a href="https://t.co/odlg4T7hy6">pic.twitter.com/odlg4T7hy6</a>&mdash; Marc Arjoon | Blockworks Research 🟪 (@marcarjoon) <a href="https://twitter.com/marcarjoon/status/1937979336390304129?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



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Breaking down Day 2 of Permissionless IV

This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Bitcoin is full of catchphrases.



“BTC is a store of value” just means that you can buy it, and if the price remains steady, you wouldn’t have lost any money.



That Bitcoin protects against “currency devaluation” is only a brainy way of saying that it might go up, while the foreign exchange rate for whatever fiat currency you use in everyday life could go down.



My favorite of all is that bitcoin is a &#8220;hedge against global instability.”



So how does that play out in real life?



Around this time in 2016, the UK was reeling: the people had just voted to leave the European Union. Brexit was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-36620375">happening</a>.



The British pound had been trending down against the US dollar since mid-2014, but this was different. On Friday, June 24 — the day after referendum day — GBP fell more than 8% to a 31-year low.&nbsp;



It was the pound&#8217;s largest one-day fall in history, per <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/23/british-pound-given-boost-by-projected-remain-win-in-eu-referendum">the Guardian</a>, which was extended by another 3% on the following Monday.



Meanwhile, bitcoin’s price against the dollar was on the up, rising 70% between the last week of May and the week before the Brexit vote, from about $440 to nearly $760.



BTC briefly corrected by 20% in the days leading up to the referendum. But once it was done, bitcoin continued to grind higher as the pound sunk deeper over the following months.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcJxrsABoMtQJEQqUIPn2EuiUMyapyNiKE1S0HkXzCotFm71_NuLEmtLvRS28zdMQGTlaOIFYRILmztfjLPYeBKgiw8Rdi6Uj5pjcCPtkVkGb7fI9UmGqnYfXxBVI5teo6JU2kIiA?key=ymCxxPMjKOBJWuNIbHpTuw" alt=""/></figure>



It’s always difficult to directly prove that bitcoin going up has anything to do with macro events like Brexit.&nbsp;



Looking back and zooming out, BTC/USD was clearly in an uptrend that started almost 18 months before the Brexit vote.&nbsp;



That uptrend, while not a straight line, went on for another year and a half, culminating in the December 2017 all-time high close to $20,000. The devil’s advocate might say it was a coincidental correlation.



But there are hints that the connection ran deeper, regardless of how short-lived. Fintech payments app TransferWise (now Wise) <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/23/bitcoin-surges-past-650-as-brexit-result-sends-uk-pound-tumbling-to-30-year-low/">warned</a> users of volatility for the pound around the Brexit vote, and even cancelled all GBP transfers that weren’t fully processed by 8pm UK time on referendum day.



Those moves are in and of themselves perfect advertisements for Bitcoin.&nbsp;



Before Brexit, the 2013 banking crisis in Cyprus had shown there was an appetite to hedge against instability by escaping into BTC. The price of bitcoin rose almost 350% in two months as local banks <a href="https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/bitcoin-hits-record-exchange-values-with-cyprus-banking-crisis/">teetered</a> on collapse.



It happened again two years later, in 2015, when bitcoin jumped 10% to break out of middling price action as the broader Greek debt crisis spiralled. But it was <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/29/greek-crisis-stokes-bitcoin-prices-higher.html">never</a> really clear just how much of that could be attributed to Greeks dumping euros for bitcoins.



Ten years later, the situation feels different. The US dollar reached three-year lows this morning as bitcoin continues to trend more-or-less sideways, as it’s done the past month and a half, sans some brief volatility around the renewed Israel-Iran conflict.



One read would be that bitcoin’s price is holding strong because US dollars are currently worth less. Another would be that Bitcoin’s hedge-case is clearly intact. Both are good for Bitcoin.



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Bitcoin’s best slogan: It’s a ‘hedge against instability’

Casey Wagner

A federal judge on Thursday denied a joint motion from the US Securities and Exchange Commission and Ripple Labs seeking to dissolve an injunction against the blockchain infrastructure company.&nbsp;



Ripple and the SEC in May submitted a settlement agreement to the court, requesting the judge vacate a prior ruling against Ripple and reduce its civil penalties from $125 million to $50 million. In the SEC’s initial lawsuit, it sought a $2 billion payment from Ripple.&nbsp;



Judge Analisa Torres, who issued the summary judgment in the case in 2023, denied the settlement proposal, citing Supreme Court precedent that judgments cannot be determined solely by private litigation between parties. 



“The parties must show exceptional circumstances that outweigh the public interest or the administration of justice,” Torres wrote in the ruling.&nbsp; “They have not come close to doing so here.”



The implications of this case are significant, Torres added, and the SEC and Ripple cannot erase a ruling simply because they have come to a private understanding.&nbsp;



“The Court respects the freedom of parties to amicably resolve their disputes,” Torres wrote. “It is also true that the SEC, like any other law enforcement agency, has discretion to change course after an enforcement action is initiated.&nbsp;



“But the parties do not have the authority to agree not to be bound by a court’s final judgment that a party violated an Act of Congress in such a manner that a permanent injunction and a civil penalty were necessary to prevent that party from violating the law again.”&nbsp;



Thursday’s ruling is the latest development in a years-long legal battle between Ripple and the securities regulator. The SEC filed a suit against Ripple in December 2020, alleging the blockchain firm sold its XRP token without registration.&nbsp;



The court eventually sided with the SEC in part, ruling in a summary judgement that while the institutional XRP sales constituted as an unregistered securities offering, its retail sales were not.&nbsp;



The SEC pursued an appeal under former Chair Gary Gensler, but issued a joint motion with Ripple to pause the appeal after Gensler left the agency in January. The Second Circuit granted this motion, issuing a 60-day pause in the case while the Southern District of New York reviewed the settlement motion.



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Federal judge denies Ripple, SEC motion for indicative ruling

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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“It&#8217;s the first time in US history, since the Great Depression, that you really can financialize anything,” Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said yesterday during a Permissionless panel.&nbsp;



His talk, which was moderated by Paradigm’s Charlie Noyes, covered a range of topics from the rise of prediction markets to Kalshi taking on the CFTC and winning.&nbsp;



&#8220;The reason why [the legal fight against the CFTC] was important is, I never thought that there would be institutional adoption the way that we&#8217;re seeing today if we didn&#8217;t get regulated,” Mansour explained.&nbsp;



The fight, which he clarified started before Coinbase even took on the SEC, opened doors for both Kalshi and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/07/polymarket-plans-to-return-to-the-us-founder-says-.html">other prediction markets</a>.&nbsp;



And then, just a few hours after the two were on stage, we got some news.&nbsp;



Kalshi raised $185 million in a Series C led by Paradigm. Other investors included Sequoia and Multicoin. The raise, according to Mansour, puts Kalshi at a $2 billion valuation, making yet another crypto-related unicorn.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">I’m excited to announce our $185M Series C valuing Kalshi at $2B. The round was led by Paradigm with participation from Sequoia, Multicoin, Peng Zhao, Neo, and Bond Capital. People choose to work at Kalshi not because of the money we&#39;ve raised, but because of our ambition:… <a href="https://t.co/OGgZSwOPvj">pic.twitter.com/OGgZSwOPvj</a>&mdash; Tarek Mansour (@mansourtarek_) <a href="https://twitter.com/mansourtarek_/status/1937947818276339734?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Polymarket is in a similar boat, with a recent Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-24/polymarket-is-set-to-raise-funding-at-1-billion-valuation">report</a> claiming that Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund is leading a round that would put Polymarket’s valuation over $1 billion.&nbsp;



Is the $2 billion valuation for Kalshi a bit much? Actually, based on Mansour’s comments yesterday, I don’t think so. Prediction markets have really hit a mainstream audience — and are akin to stablecoins in that everyone acknowledges there’s a need and a product-market fit for them. Then there’s also the fact that Mansour, yesterday, said that Kalshi’s doing roughly $1 billion in monthly volume.&nbsp;



“We have around 1500 markets live today, up from 80 back in October. So, yeah, I think in terms of broader asset classes, I think prediction market is definitely the fastest one,” he said.&nbsp;



Mansour also alluded to where Kalshi — and prediction markets in general — may be going.&nbsp;



“Imagine a world where basically any difference of opinions can be settled on prediction markets, like you debate about something on a dinner table, and, whether this is the price of an asset or something happening in the future, and you can basically trade it actively on a prediction market,” he explained.&nbsp;



Getting a payout for a debate at the dinner table…and getting bragging rights…sounds pretty good to me.&nbsp;



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Why Kalshi’s new $2B valuation makes sense

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/brand/the-breakdown">subscribe</a>.



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Trust is one of the greatest economic forces on Earth.”



— Charlie Munger
</blockquote>



The only thing I miss about being an equities trader is being around other traders, because the trading desks I worked on were a lot of fun.



They always have been: “Horse-play starts over nothing, and sometimes infects all but the staid oldsters,” a 1920 account of the outdoor “Curb Exchange” on Wall Street reported. “One irrepressible youth furtively knocks off another&#8217;s hat. The indignant victim grabs and throws the hat nearest to his clutching hand, and in a minute the air is full of sailing head-gear.”



Crypto, by contrast, isn’t nearly as lighthearted — partly because it’s a WFH industry (it’s difficult to knock off a colleague’s hat over Zoom).



But, it’s also because the founding ethos of crypto is that it&#8217;s “money for enemies.”



It’s difficult to have fun around someone you consider an enemy.



Bitcoiners in particular often come across as a bit humorless; perhaps more inclined to mansplain money and banking than they are to go for a laugh.



The rest of crypto, too, can feel like an adversarial, player vs. player and negative-sum place.



That is fun while you’re winning, but most of the time, most people aren’t.



This matters because fun is important in finance.



Even in <a href="https://x.com/MaxfieldOnBanks/status/1920569223509602378?t=sjxSuzc99arSp6NjGdHlTQ&amp;s=19">staid commercial banks</a>, going for laughs helps build the kind of trust that the finance industry runs on.&nbsp;



Nothing would happen in TradFi if people didn’t trust each other.



That is a feature, not a flaw, of both finance and humans.&nbsp;



The evolutionary biologist Joseph Henrich <a href="https://pca.st/episode/3101c90c-96ad-4c40-86d1-cb0239478b2e?t=1301">explains</a> that “humans haven’t succeeded because of our raw intelligence. Humans have succeeded because they cooperate.”



In other words, the reason humans made it to the moon and not, say, alligators isn’t because we’re individually smarter than alligators, but that we’re collectively smarter..&nbsp;



Henrich <a href="https://pca.st/episode/b724ebb0-b896-405f-bd6f-cfc21e0731d1?t=1411">notes</a> that human brains have been shrinking over the millennia as we’ve been naturally selected for our willingness to trust one another, not for our raw computing power.



As our individual brains have shrunk, our “collective brain” has grown.



But trust doesn’t scale over fiber-optic cables alone.



As Henrich puts it, “the collective brain requires trust in strangers,” and <a href="https://www.iese.edu/standout/face-to-face-conversations-power/">trust</a>, research shows, is built through real-life, face-to-face interaction.



That, I think, is why conferences are more valuable than they might seem.



Despite the industry&#8217;s dour reputation, crypto conferences are surprisingly fun.&nbsp;



Dunk tank, after parties, free merch and, most importantly, an abundance of actual people to talk to — not just Twitter handles.



I think that’s good news, because if crypto wants to fulfill its promise, it might need a little more trust and a lot more fun.



One good talk: Leo Dorlöchter, <a href="https://www.peaq.xyz">Peaq</a>



To the oft-asked question about crypto’s purpose, Peaq founder Leo Dorlöchter offers a sci-fi answer: Crypto will be “the computer of the machine economy.”



Specifically, Dorlöchter sees a near future in which autonomous self-driving taxis recharge their batteries with a “tokenized EV charger” that, in turn, sources energy from “tokenized solar panels.”&nbsp;



Humans might not have much gainful employment in that world (“machines will do most of the work”), but we will be able to invest in the machines.



DePIN, Dorlöchter says, is “creating a new asset class” by allowing people to “earn from autonomous machines.”



We’ve never been able to invest directly in a machine, he points out — only in the companies that own the machines.



That could change with “initial machine offerings,” in which crypto investors have the opportunity to finance the critical infrastructure needed for the fully autonomous machine economy to emerge.&nbsp;



(Don’t tell Eliezer Yudkowsky, though, he might want to <a href="https://futurism.com/ai-expert-bomb-datacenters">bomb</a> us.)



Beyond DePINs, the “good news” for crypto is that “the machines will go onchain” — for payments, identity, sensors, user interfaces and data.



Dorlöchter categorizes these activities as a “trust infrastructure” where autonomous machines will need to cooperate with each other.



Perhaps ironically, it’s only trustless crypto that can provide it.



Another good talk: Tarek Mansour, <a href="https://kalshi.com">Kalshi</a>



Kalshi isn’t a crypto company, but its founder Tarek Mansour thinks that’s a distinction that won’t matter for much longer.



“Any kind of fintech company is inevitably going to be a crypto company,” Mansour predicted this morning.



Kalshi, he said, will increasingly do business on crypto rails “because they work better.”



To my surprise, they’re doing a lot of business: $1 billion a month in prediction market betting volume, with millions of active customers and 1,500 live markets, according to Mansour.



I expected that prediction markets would remain a once-every-four years phenomenon, but it’s starting to look like people want to bet on more than just presidential elections.



Mansour thinks it will get a lot bigger, too: “In 10 years, I don’t see any reason why prediction markets wouldn’t be bigger than the stock market.”



I’m not sure that would be good news for the world.



Mansour says prediction markets are the fastest growing “asset class,” but if so, they are a weird kind of negative-sum asset — different in kind from positive-sum stocks, bonds and real estate.&nbsp;&nbsp;



If investors put money into prediction markets instead of productive assets, it seems like that would be a net negative for the world.



But Mansour asks us to “imagine a world where any debate can be settled in prediction markets.”



That might make them a net positive, because one thing I agree with Mansour on is that “financial markets see the future better than anything else.”



If prediction markets help us see the future better, we can all make better decisions.



Also, the markets will be settled in crypto, so that will be fun.



Miscellaneous quotes:



“We really want to reverse engineer into a Pizza Hut franchise.” — Konstantin Richter, Blockdaemon, in satirizing the current craze for crypto SPACs



“USD1 will be the biggest stablecoin…World Liberty Financial will be a household name.” — Zak Folkman, World Liberty Financial (in a moment of Trumpian understatement)



“The first thing in crypto that’s starting to work.” — Ali Yaha, a16z, on stablecoins



“If you want to do great things, you should reach out.” — Luca Prosperi, M0



“Be a human. Write and read code.” — Brendan Eich, inventor of JavaScript, after arguing that LLMs will never be as smart as humans



“We just ate shit for longer than anyone else and worked out.” — Tarek Mansour on the success of Kalshi



“If you sue a regulator, make sure you win.” — Tarek Mansour



“In the next five years almost all financial transactions will be driven by agents.” — Ali Yaha, a16z



Overheard: “I went to a cypherpunk meet up in 1994.”



Crypto conference innovation: Giant beanbags in lieu of chairs. (Bonus tip: Find one up against a wall, it’s less awkward.)



Today’s takeaway: Two slices and a Coke.



See you tomorrow for day three!



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