FILL OUT THE SURVEY BY CLICKING HERE
Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today, Carl Dong, founder of Obscura VPN and former Bitcoin Core developer at Chain Code Labs, joins us to talk about his transition from Bitcoin development to building privacy infrastructure. We discuss his work on reproducible builds, supply chain security, the funding dynamics of Bitcoin development, and why he created the first multi-hop VPN that eliminates single points of trust.
Subscribe to the newsletter! https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
01:09 Carl's professional background
02:54 Personal background
07:50 Open source vs product dev
18:14 Chaincode's influence
23:05 Ellipsis Labs
24:06 Funding open source work
30:21 Obscura VPN
36:07 The state of TOR
40:30 VPN user base
45:10 Easy personal privacy steps
47:57 Privacy in Bitcoin
53:21 Simplicity
58:02 Innovations from the "crypto" space
1:00:21 Wrap up
👋 Enjoy the clip? Click below to listen on a podcasting app!
Apple http://tiny.cc/e7wuwz
Spotify https://tinyurl.com/aj3ymv6h
RSS http://tiny.cc/wbwuwz
YouTube https://tinyurl.com/4kwhu4s7
Newsletter https://blockspace.media/newsletter/
👋 The Gwart Show is proudly presented by Ellipsis Labs! Ellipsis Labs is building foundational products in DeFi. Their first product @PhoenixTrade is the leading orderbook DEX on Solana. The team is growing—visit ellipsislabs.xyz for engineering opportunities.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
--------
1:01:21
--------
1:01:21
State of the trenches with Robert Chang
FILL OUT THE SURVEY BY CLICKING HERE
Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today, Robert Chang, crypto trader and prolific Twitter shitposter, joins us to talk about his wild ride through crypto's highs and lows - from being a Luna lunatic to losing everything on Hyperliquid, navigating AI agent metas, getting rugged by VCs stealing his ideas, and why internet capital markets might just be elaborate poker chips with better marketing.
Subscribe to the newsletter! https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com
• Luna looping strategy led to total account loss
• Hyperliquid refunded liquidation due to oracle issues
• AI agent tokens hit incredible market caps in 2024
• Worm project went from idea to 4M market cap
• A16Z agent reached peak before January market top
• Most crypto VCs are "incredibly stupid" mercenaries
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
00:24 Robert's background
01:20 Working in crypto
05:11 Lately
07:07 Traders vs users
11:07 Hyperliquid early days
13:10 Markets recently
15:05 Bigger names enter market
16:27 Current market
20:50 AI agents
22:48 WORM
26:12 WORM goes to zero
28:47 Elipsis Labs
29:48 VCs sniping ideas
32:43 ICM
36:08 ICM (this time is different)
44:05 AI16z value proposition?
47:15 Base
50:05 The future
54:15 Bullish VC coins?
58:28 Alliance DAO
1:01:28 Bullish on what?
1:04:32 Ryan Park
1:07:28 ETH (don't call it a comeback)
1:08:23 BTC is mid
1:09:16 Wrap up
👋 Enjoy the clip? Click below to listen on a podcasting app!
Apple http://tiny.cc/e7wuwz
Spotify https://tinyurl.com/aj3ymv6h
RSS http://tiny.cc/wbwuwz
YouTube https://tinyurl.com/4kwhu4s7
Newsletter https://blockspace.media/newsletter/
👋 The Gwart Show is proudly presented by Ellipsis Labs! Ellipsis Labs is building foundational products in DeFi. Their first product @PhoenixTrade is the leading orderbook DEX on Solana. The team is growing—visit ellipsislabs.xyz for engineering opportunities.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
--------
1:12:24
--------
1:12:24
Designing The Optimal Perp DEX With Doug Colkitt
FILL OUT THE SURVEY BY CLICKING HERE
Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today, Doug Colkitt, co-founder of Fogo and Ambient Finance joins us to talk about building the fastest Solana-based blockchain for trading. Doug explains why order books are winning over AMMs, how Fogo's 21-validator set enables 40ms blocks, and why verifiability matters more than full decentralization for perp DEXs.
Subscribe to the newsletter! https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
00:13 Doug history
02:28 What is Fogo?
02:53 Why not L2?
06:29 Ambient perps
09:07 Are blockchains the right database?
10:00 Why DEX at all?
12:32 Composability as an unlock?
16:17 AMMs
19:18 Decentralization doesn't matter
24:19 Problems with perps on orderbooks
25:51 Fogo vs Hyperliquid
27:35 Ellipsis Labs
29:35 MEV & flashloans
32:42 Tragedy of the commons
35:00 MEV of Perp DEX
37:44 Opportunities for innovation
41:22 Coinbase launching Perps
44:24 Is no KYC an unloack?
46:24 Verifiability
49:00 Liquidity injection
51:41 24/7 markets
52:36 Perp-ify THE WORLD!
54:05 Zero Day Futures
55:08 Ambient Perps elevator pitch
58:10 Gold oracle price origin
👋 Enjoy the clip? Click below to listen on a podcasting app!
Apple http://tiny.cc/e7wuwz
Spotify https://tinyurl.com/aj3ymv6h
RSS http://tiny.cc/wbwuwz
YouTube https://tinyurl.com/4kwhu4s7
👋 The Gwart Show is proudly presented by Ellipsis Labs! Ellipsis Labs is building foundational products in DeFi. Their first product @PhoenixTrade is the leading orderbook DEX on Solana. The team is growing—visit ellipsislabs.xyz for engineering opportunities.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
--------
1:02:08
--------
1:02:08
Meet the Solana engineer who defected for his own L1
Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today, Liam from Through (formerly Fire Dancer engineer) joins us to talk about building a high-performance L1 blockchain from scratch. We dive into why Solana has structural limitations, his leaderless consensus design, proof-of-burn mechanisms, and why economic security is overrated. Plus takes on trading, Fire Dancer's progress, and the future of DeFi.
Subscribe to the newsletter! https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com
NOTES:
• Fire Dancer has ~10% of Solana network
• Through team is only 5 people currently
• Testnet launching in 1-2 months timeline
• SDK support targeting July release
• Solana chain halts if clients disagree
• Economic security was higher than ETH
Timestamps
00:00 Start
00:12 Liam's background
02:18 Early trading
03:13 Firedancer experience
03:58 What's Unto?
05:40 Solana L1 limitations
08:07 Applications
09:51 CLOB wars
11:58 Proof of stake flaws
18:23 Multiple concurrent proposers
21:38 Burn design
25:27 Improvements in trading
27:47 Commodities on chain
30:08 Onto chain performance
32:52 Performant L1 chain competition
35:38 Desired apps
38:00 Firedancer progress & marketshare
42:10 Decentralization & price discovery
45:57 The value of a market
50:10 MEV on Solana
53:56 L1 token value
1:01:28 Through updates
1:03:42 Wrap up
The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs. Ellipsis Labs is building Atlas, the blockchain purpose-built for verifiable finance. You may know of Ellipsis Labs by their first product Phoenix, a fully on-chain orderbook DEX that’s done over 50 billion dollars in unincentivized volume.They are one of the strongest teams I know in crypto. If you’re interested in working for a mission-driven company, Ellipsis Labs is hiring engineers passionate about crypto and finance to work on Atlas. You can learn more and apply on Ellipsis Labs’ Twitter “at Ellipsis_Labs”. Don’t forget to check out Atlas too, @atlasxyz on Twitter.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
--------
1:04:58
--------
1:04:58
OP_Cat, Bitcoin MEV, and Scaling Bitcoin With Post Capone
Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today, Bitcoiner Post Capone joins us to talk about the risks of OP_CAT activation, MEV extraction concerns on Bitcoin, how increased expressivity could lead to mining centralization, the promise of scaling solutions like Arc and Spark, and why constrained covenants like CTV might be a better path forward than unlimited expressivity.
Subscribe to the newsletter! https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
00:27 Who is Post Capone?
03:05 OP_CAT
07:11 Erosion of MEV
11:29 Expressivity of OP_CAT
20:56 Execution on L2
23:33 Elipsis Labs
24:33 OP_CAT vs CTV
28:20 What should be on Bitcoin?
35:32 Stablecoin Maxi
38:42 Programmatic lending contracts
40:30 Ark
44:14 BitVM
47:02 Scaling solution adoption
50:07 Oden.fun54:12 Rollups
The Gwart Show is sponsored by Ellipsis Labs, which is building Atlas, a blockchain for verifiable finance. Ellipsis Labs is known for Phoenix, an on-chain orderbook DEX with over $50 billion in unincentivized volume. They are a top crypto team. Ellipsis
Labs is hiring engineers passionate about crypto and finance for Atlas. Learn more and apply on Twitter at @Ellipsis_Labs. Check out Atlas at @atlasxyz.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Through conversations with crypto’s brightest lights, Gwart embarks on a one-man crusade to find the real value of cryptocurrency. Once weekly episodes with guests.
Pseudonymous, Gwart is a crypto-Twitter troll and thinkboi seeking answers to non-existent problems in blockchains. Follow along for the most colorful conversations in crypto.