Unchained - 10 Years In, Here's Why Aave's Founder Isn’t Done Betting on Ethereum - Ep. 878

Episode Date: August 1, 2025

Ethereum just turned 10, and Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave, one of the earliest and most influential lending protocols in DeFi, is more bullish on the OG layer 1 blockchain than ever.  In this wide-ranging interview, he reflects on Ethereum’s resilience, explains why Aave is still laser-focused on it despite the rise of competitors like Solana, and gives us a preview of Aave V4 and its institutional play, Horizon.  If you want to understand where DeFi is going, you’ll want to hear what Stani has to say.   Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com Thank you to our sponsors! Focal by FalconX Xapo Bank Guest: Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave and ETHLend Links: Recent episode of Unchained with EF’s co-ED Tomasz: As Ethereum Turns 10, Where Is the Foundation Focused Next? Unchained: Aave Labs Unveils V4 Upgrade Proposal, Introducing a Unified Liquidity Layer and 'Fuzzy' Rates DefiLlama: Aave stats Reuters: JPMorgan considers offering loans backed by clients' cryptocurrency holdings  Timestamps: 🎬 0:00 Intro 🎉 4:58 What Ethereum’s 10-year milestone means to Stani 🏗️ 9:09 How Aave became the top lending protocol on Ethereum 🧐 13:02 Why Stani has been critical of the Ethereum Foundation 🏦 17:16 How TradFi institutions could quietly run on Aave infrastructure 💸 25:08 What Stani thinks about the complaints over Ethereum revenues and fees 🌉 30:27 Why Aave hasn’t launched on Solana 💼 35:32 How Ethereum treasury companies are putting Aave to work 🔧 41:15 What Aave V4 is bringing to the protocol and why it matters 🌍 48:18 How Horizon could bridge DeFi and real-world assets 🤝 50:43 Why DeFi might thrive even as TradFi and fintech move onchain 🗳️ 57:57 Whether DAO governance is fundamentally flawed Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm more bullish on Ethereum than anything else. And I think the new strategy of actually making kind of like a beefed-up L-1 is actually quite interesting because that helps you to scale more on the main net while still having these more specialized alt-toes. Hey, everyone. Continuing our coverage of Ethereum's 10th anniversary, today's guest is Stani Kulichoff, founder of Avey. one of the OG lending protocols in DFI. Stani reflected on Ethereum's evolution over the past decade to what he sees coming next for DFi. I found it remarkable just how bullish Stani is on Ethereum, despite all the criticism of the last year and change. He has full conviction in Ethereum as still

being the best place to build, and that's why he's especially excited for Ethereum to scale the L1 while leaving room for specialized to L2s. In fact, he pointed out that when looking at growth charts, The biggest network where Avey has grown the most is Ethereum Mainnet. So Avey's core business is there, and they're doubling down on that and making sure that they're successful on Ethereum L1 and that they onboard real-world assets there as collateral for institutions. And for Avey, Solon's ecosystem so far hasn't brought in the kind of players that Avey would like to work with. What also stood out to me was his vision for how Tradfai, FinTech, banks, and other centralized entities will have front ends and have distribution, but be powered by Defi in the background.

It's a compelling vision. Software that's more trustworthy, secure, and reliable than the current opaque system. At one point, he said, OnChane does it better, which I feel like will be conventional wisdom in the future. He also gave me a bit of a preview for Ave 4, which he describes as a major step toward making defy infrastructure more seamless, especially for institutions. To that end, Horizon, Avey's new platform, aimed at bridging traditional finance and defy, has already been bringing real-world assets on chain so those users can borrow stable coins.

As he said, quote, tokenization doesn't really add value until you have some sort of use case. As for his take on all these new treasury companies, he said some of the Ethereum ones are actually using Avey to get free leverage for their positions, since what they're earning on borrowing is more than their cost. If you're wondering where DeFi is going over the next 10 years,

I think you'll find his presentation. perspective, really insightful. As always, let me know in the comments what you think. We might feature your remarks on the show. Hands up, everyone, we've got exciting news. Bits and Bips, our Macro Meets Crypto Show, is officially spinning off into its own podcast feed, YouTube channel, and X account. If you've been enjoying the deep dives into interest rates, monetary policy, and how they intersect with the crypto markets, make sure to follow Bits and Bips wherever you get your podcasts on YouTube and on X. You'll find the links to YouTube X and other podcast platforms in the show notes.

If you're watching this, there's a QR code on screen. We'll be posting here for a few more weeks, but starting in September, Bits and Bips will launch on its own feed. For now, we will publish longer clips from the show on those accounts. Remember, go to the show notes now and subscribe to Bits and Bips. That's Bips, plus sign Bips spelled BIPS on YouTube, X, and wherever you get your podcasts. One early bitcoiner sold 30,000 BTC too soon, missing out on over a billion dollars. Don't want to make the same mistake?

With Zapo Bank, eligible members can get instant cash without selling their Bitcoin. Check out Zappobank.com slash unchained for more. Imagine an AI that speaks crypto and does the work of a team of analysts. Trusted by 80-plus institutions, now open to serious traders like you. Visit askfocal.com. Hey, everyone. Welcome, Unchained. You're a no hype resource for all things, crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. I'm here with Stani Kulashaw, founder of Avae. Welcome, Stani. Thanks for having me here, Laura. Pleasure to be at Ethereum's 10th birthday. I know. It's so exciting. So, you know, on this 10th anniversary, first of all, I want to give you a congratulations. And I know you don't work directly on Ethereum, but you're a major part of the end of the anniversary.

Ethereum community, AVE especially is. And, you know, Ethereum really has had a tremendous achievement. It's had zero downtime. There's been all of these technical upgrades. It has a $450 billion market cap. And Avey, it's far away the largest lending protocol. It's got $30 billion total value locked. So I'd love for today to just be a little bit more of a free flowing conversation. And I was just interested, like what are your main thoughts when you think about this huge milestone that Ethereum has reached. 10 years is quite a long time. And I mean, it's a full decade.

And we started building on Ethereum in, I mean, I started to explore as early as 2016 and D5 wasn't really kind of like a coin yet at that point. And there was ideas about these interest exchanges. Ether Delta back in 2016 was really interesting. idea and that basically took a little bit more. Well, it started after the Dow hack, but it didn't get any traction because the experience wasn't really as smooth as, you know, swapping assets today in these interest exchanges and later in 2016 took a little bit more traction. But that is the time when

I stumbled upon on Ethereum and thought it was a really interesting idea of actually bringing lending and borrowing and bringing the interest rate markets onto Ethereum because in some ways the way I saw EVM smart contracts is a kind of a perfect environment for building financial applications and in 2017 we actually started to build Eidland short for Ethereum lending which was a first kind of like a protocol and a doubt decentralized application of lending and borrowing. So for me, seeing kind of like at that moment of starting something small as a more of like a hobby side project while still studying in university and being so young and now kind of seeing that's almost like now it's been like eight years building.

on top of Ethereum. It really feels amazing because Defi has grown, stable coins have become a substantial part of Ethereum and also something that is really getting mainstream adoption and legislation as well, and also RDA centralization. So for me, this is kind of really a moment to look back and realize how small the community and ecosystem was in the first place and everything was purely like an experimentation. And as of today, we have protocols like Alva that is actually having 56 or something billion net deposits and 30 billion in TVL. It just feels like kind of like a surreal, to be honest. But it's what our aim was, like decentralizing finance and here we are.

And between now and then, there hasn't been any kind of an issue. you on the underlying network. So it proves that resilience is and what it as a kind of blockchain and a network can achieve. So very happy about the moment. Yeah, it's funny. I got into this little back and forth on Twitter earlier today, what Dan held, who I respect.

I mean, he's very successful and super smart. And, you know, I like him as a person. And he is a bit coiner. And I had tweeted something about how Ethereum had zero downtime, during those 10 years and he, you know, kind of was disputing that and saying like, oh, but there was the Dow and, you know, they had hard fork and all this stuff. And I was like, yeah, okay, but there was no downtime in any of that. And, you know, just when you think of like all the travails that Ethereum has been through, because, you know, that year in particular was like the Dow and then it was

the DDoS attacks in Shanghai. And, you know, and that was the time when like the multi-client, you know, strategy really paid off for them because, you know, there were moments when some of the attacks kind of like, you know, were more targeted to one client versus the other end so they could kind of like trade off between those. But anyway, I just wanted to also ask you, you know, you were talking about like when you first started getting into Ethereum and how you used her with Ethelund and everything. And I mean, it's just so crazy that, you know, now here you are, you've grown so much. You know, I'm curious, like when you started, what was your conception? of what you were building.

And how did that change along the way? Like, you know, how did you become the number one lending protocol on Ethereum? At least when we started, there wasn't really liquidity on change. So a lot of these assets that were on Ethereum in the first place, they, it was a group of assets and mainly consisting of governance tokens or some really ambiguous economics. And that was like 2017. So you name it, like everything. We saw like, you know, projects that were trying to do something really exciting, serious,

to do something not so serious, like putting cats on the blockchain and whatnot. Or dentecoin. Yeah, yeah, there was basically an ICU for every single flavor. But what I realized back in 2017 is that, you know, what we wanted to achieve, like the vision, couldn't really be achieved at that point. So what we were building is more of kind of like a peer-to-peer system that is using smart contracts, securing the user's collateral into an e-scrow, and then you can lend against these collaterals and earn interest,

and that's great and amazing. But a lot of these collateral assets were not that liquid in first place. And this was a time when stable coins didn't really exist on Ethereum. So if you look at the bigger stable coins like USDT and USC didn't exist in that time yet, that was in a Omni network and traded mostly on centralized exchanges. So we try to come up with different kinds of hacks and solutions where a user basically locks up a collateral and borrows, let's say, USD pegged Ethereum. So borrows 1,000 USD USD worth of Ethereum and returns later the same amount of USD,

word of Ethereum with some interest. So we had to kind of like a half hacks back then. And something kind of like what happened between that like 2017, 18 and later 19 is that we saw more liquidity coming on chain. It was still not as concrete as it is, for example, today. But that changed completely the dynamics on how to build the decentralized financial applications. So, for example, instead of building these kind of like isolated risk models like we did with Eatland, we came up with a new model with Alvey that followed this old model, for example, what UNISOP had.

Well, basically, you pool liquidity together. And that kind of like a model is something which is pretty much all Defi is based on. Because when you pull liquidity, you have better network effects, liquidity network effects in that perspective. So a lot of the things we wanted to build, you couldn't really achieve yet then. And also another thing I want to say from like developers' perspective is that the tooling was very kind of, there was very little tooling. So if you are building DFI today, you're kind of blessed on Ethereum because you have really good development and environment.

You have ability to do very seamless testing. You have a lot of tooling around simulations, and a lot of this tooling didn't exist back in 2017-18 and onward. So I think that's how kind of like things change at least on our side. And so throughout this time, you know, I'm curious to hear also like what it's been like just as a builder in the ecosystem, you know, even including things like the foundation. Like I actually just finished a conversation with Tomash Stancheck, one of the new co-executive directors of the Ethereum Foundation. And I wondered, you know, for you as a builder, just what you feel like the evolution of Ethereum and the EF has been during that time. because as I'm sure you're aware, you know, last year there was a lot of, what's the word, a little bit of criticism. Yeah, a bit of revolt.

People, you know, were even calling for, you know, the leadership of the EF to change. And some people were saying, you know, I'm leaving Ethereum. You know, Eric Connor is probably one of the more well-known. And I was just curious, like, you know, during this whole time that you've been building, like, what has it been like for you? Yeah, I mean, we don't typically think much about. Ethereum Foundation when we understand their role in the ecosystem as a kind of like guiding and signaling. So, you know, Avae would be successful regardless of Ethereum Foundation.

But what Ethereum Foundation can do is make certain choices that can accelerate the ecosystem, accelerate DFI, and, you know, it's a fundamentally big node in the network. And I think that's something I've been very critical of EF for the past years is that the very little involvement in Defi, both from like the Treasury management perspective, but also highlighting decent finance as a kind of like a flagship use case for blockchain. And I think it really makes sense because blockchain in the first place was coined from a, financial use case transactions, what, for example, Bitcoin was all about. And Ethereum credit is kind of like a decent trust computer. And obviously you can do financial transactions and also like non-financial use cases. And for me, kind of like seeing Defi getting into a place where there is a lot of resiliency.

I mean, the biggest moment for me personally was seeing the FDX hack happen. And at that point, we had a lot of inflows of users that actually wanted to use decentralized alternatives and non-custodial wallets instead of keeping their funds at an exchange. And at that same point, because FDX wasn't like the main thing. There was FDX, but then there was also sales to buy their business lending. There's so much contention happening in, you know, just like kind of like a chaos. everywhere. For me, like the resiliency, which is kind of like a foundations for Ethereum as a network and Ave's of the lending that was happening off-chain by these centralized crypto businesses basically completely disappeared. And a lot of that business came on chain, effectively towards

the point that as of today, UNISO are being able to achieve really significant trading volumes compared to centralized exchanges. So my kind of criticism was like, if Defi has been able to get this far and we proved this resiliency, why EF couldn't actually double down on DFI and make this opportunity kind of more clear to everyone. And that can be a ways of utilizing the treasury in DFI, helping to get more talented to the Defi space,

kind of like a moment for EF to really make this change and then actually realize how they can participate more in the ecosystem. So I'm quite happy about the outcome, at least what it relates to defy and also accelerating the Ethereum roadmap. Yeah, I love what you said about how on-chain does it better, because I do feel like that was such a big learning from that year of 2022. But what's interesting, I'm sure you saw the news about how you. JP Morgan is going to offer Bitcoin and Ether lending. I don't know if you had any thoughts about that. Do you just like that, does that give you pause or make you worry?

Or I don't know what your thoughts are on that? Well, typically when institutions are thinking about borrowing lending, they try to figure out how to do this infrastructure on their own. But actually in reality, where you're using a system like ABE is actually quite, interesting for fintech banks and asset managers who want to do this type of crypto-backed loans because if you think about like how what kind of infrastructure you need to run if you do this as a business so the amount of people you need to actually manage the risks matters the collaterals manage the operations of that business model and then you have to develop that technology

I think you actually get, and you need to run it in a resilient way. So I think you are better off of using something like ABE as an infrastructure or the type of a business. And the reason for that is that when you are using smart contracts, you really can offload a lot of the operations to and automatize a lot of the business logics into the protocol. And this is the kind of benefit of Define is where if you use something like Uniswap or AVE, you're able to limit a lot of risks that might be related to execution risk, whether it's the underlying network like Ethereum or the protocol itself.

And you can actually ensure that economically you have a secure and resilient model. So we quantified that AVE has so far liquidated over 3.2 billion worth of collateral. And the biggest amounts, for example, has been 300 million a week. And we had even 200 million liquidation earlier this year, which was liquidated in a few minutes. So it just showcases that what you can actually do and offer to your customers as a distributor, like a bank. while using this technology in the backend. It's so-called defy model where you have a centralized business, you have distribution, but then in the background,

you are using decentralized finance. So this is kind of like my hope of the direction, all the fintechs, and also banks are going to when they're thinking about using... Of course, the reality is that it will take time when banks go take another step towards decent chess finance. But I think that's the ultimate goal. Oh, that is so interesting.

So basically, and I understand this obviously isn't where these banks are going to start. But you would say, like, ideally, there would be some sort of like white label solution or something or it doesn't even have to be. It's just like they are, there are multiple front ends to Avey or whatever other, you know, defy lending protocol. And it could be the bank that you've always used or, you know, maybe you go to a website, like maybe you decide that you, you know, just want to kind of do it on your own. But there's like a whole kind of spectrum of ways to access the same backend technology.

Is that what you're? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, typically when we have developers or anyone that wants to integrate of it, they integrate directly the existing pools. So we recently announced an integration from Metamask, and they simply allow users to use AVE directly from Metamask. So they see their balances, they see USDC, and they can supply and earn.

And those funds go directly to the main pools. But there's another cases like, for example, with Krakken and Inc, where actually they wanted their own infrastructure. So they wanted their own market deployed on their own network. And in that case, they're simply using AVE as a infusructor there. So in some ways, you have two options. You can access the direct liquidity that is already in DFI. And the other option is that you basically have more control and use this white labeling mechanism.

And I think that's an interesting way for DFI to actually offer solutions. as well for these traditional institutions that are entering the space, but they might want some sort of own customization, own type of assets or risk parameters, or even interest rate models. So I think that's the kind of like a way where DFI and traditional finance or fintechs will kind of like converge. All right. So in a moment, we're going to talk a little bit more about what's, you know,

on tap for AVE coming forward. but first a quick word from this post suit to make the show possible. Selling your Bitcoin just to get cash? One early Bitcoiner did and missed out on over a billion dollars. With Zappo Bank, you can access up to $1 million instantly without selling a single set. Eligible Zappo Bank members can borrow up to 40% of their Bitcoin's value. No stress, no selling, no buying back in. Use it for what matters most.

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YouTube channel, and X account. If you've been enjoying the deep dives into interest rates, monetary policy, and how they intersect with the crypto markets, make sure to follow Bits and Bips wherever you get your podcasts on YouTube and on X. You'll find the links to YouTube, X, and other podcast platforms in the show notes. If you're watching this, there's a QR code on screen. We'll be posting here for a few more weeks, but starting in September, Bits and Bips will launch.

on its own feed. For now, we will publish longer clips from the show on those accounts. Remember, go to the show notes now and subscribe to bits and bips. That's bits, plus sign, bips, spelled BIPS on YouTube X and wherever you get your podcasts. Next to my conversation with Stani. So, you know, we referenced this briefly before about how last year was a bit of a challenging time for Ethereum. You know, we saw the ETH price didn't gain anywhere near as much as Bitcoin or Saul, obviously kind of the center of the mania last year was on Solana. You know, during the time when, like, people were kind of making a lot of noise about wanting

change in Ethereum, I had Mark Zeller, head of the Avey Chan initiative on the show. I asked him about deploying on Solana and he basically just, I should have looked up the exact quote, but he said something dismissive about how he didn't see the metrics that he needed to, you know, to say that he would want to do that. And, you know, I was just curious to know, you know, how you think about that particular sort of choice that is out there because, you know, Ethereum definitely has gone more in this direction of modular, you know, to, like, I would say, so they went very far in the direction of modular.

Now they're saying they're going to scale the L1. So there's a little bit more of like a, I guess you could say, like a. a little bit of a course correction. I mean, you know, it's not that they're giving up on this strategy, but that they're sort of recognizing that they probably could have scaled the L1 as well. But then here we have Salana with a different path. Potentially maybe someday they will do their network extensions, which is more similar to the Ethereum model.

But, you know, as a builder, I was curious, like when you're looking at sort of the different options in the market, like how do you think about them? Yeah, I mean, Ethereum had a kind of like a weird situation where everyone wanted a little block space. And a lot of block space then means that you have a lot of growth essentially. So you can have all kinds of applications and you don't have the congestion and high L1 fees that it typically would have. And obviously, that affects the economy. So when you have a lot of book space, it means that users are paying less because they are, you know,

they're benefiting for L2. It's kind of the same thing as when cellular phones came and you had text messages and they were quite pricey. I mean, like sending one message was quite a lot and later at some point the pricing went down and you had packages and now it's pretty much kind of like a package and almost free to send these messages. And same with internet bandwidth. So I think kind of like the really challenging part is that when the Ethereum scaling went towards the L2s and you got all this bulk space, obviously that affected the economics. Now it means that you will charge less of the users from transactions.

They can do a lot of different things, but that means also less revenue comes into the network. So then that kind of like a created Well, not specifically that, but the lack of revenue, for example, created also this narrative of whether, like, you know, Ethereum should actually charge more, like, and tax more of these L2s and propose all kinds of things that actually, I would say, like, if you think about Ethereum as like a startup, you know, you have to just like focus on growth, investing growth. and you don't think really about monetization or revenue until you have a significant market share. Or you kind of like, it's the classical like a Uber example. Invest aggressively into growth and you want to grab the deepest market share. And then because you have almost like a monopoly, you can actually then charge everything back.

So that was a kind of a challenging piece. And now, obviously, last year, a lot of discussion came, and Ethereum is now going towards this direction. Well, what if we start to scale the L1? When it comes to Solana, I think one of their benefits, obviously, has been the low cost of the centralization. and you can do, you are not decentralized, for example. And I think that some ways was helpful for onboarding a lot of these mean coins.

Everything goes, and we sell pumped at fun. It's interesting to think about how valuable that is. But I could argue that any type of attention is important and creates value. That's essentially what social networks are for. And from more of like, so user perspective, I understand why there was a lot of growth there. And you can now have the same type of experience on one out twos, but obviously you have to create that culture that existed.

And base is kind of like Ethereum's, on an Ethereum side, trying to capture that type of market share. But from the builder's perspective, I think the challenge, The challenging part, obviously, on building a Solana is that lending and borrowing specifically from another type of an animal. And, you know, you don't have memples, for example, you need to think about liquidations and how to ensure them when you have basically first in, first out type of rules. So then you're dealing with different type of a code base. the expertise is different,

and the people, auditors, the tooling is different. It's not in par, for example, with Ethereum. So there's a lot of kind of like nuances that you have to think when you build. And the thing is that it's not really impossible idea to go and build a version of AVE there. And it definitely can be successful because ABE has this kind of of like a sense of culture, brand, and really brings this, you know, trust in the user base. And I think I do agree also on the fact that there has to be a lot of reasons to do that. But at the same time, if you look at all the growth charts, basically the biggest networks

where AVE has grown is the Ethereum main net. So even if the transaction costs are cheaper on our two. choose, the most growth is still happening by far on the main. So that's where the kind of like a or business exists at the moment. So yeah, that's my kind of like thinking. It's totally possible. It takes time. It requires expertise.

But at the same time, you know, we want to focus on making sure we're by far successful on main net. And there's a lot of actually work to be done on mainnet, especially as RDABAs are coming and using demo as a collateral, working with the institutions. So I would say like there's a lot of participation. And one question, just because, in my opinion, the whole sort of, you know, smart contract blockchain space is like,

it's, you know, Ethereum clearly is the leader right now. But it's also so early in crypto. And, you know, Solana sort of is this like up-and-combered, you know, there's some potential it could, it's already competed directly in certain ways. Like, you know, we saw in the Electric Capital Report last year that they said that that was the first year developers in Ethereum had decreased. And Solana had, you know, was actually the one that had the highest percentage increase. But it seems like you feel comfortable kind of like putting your eggs in the Ethereum back. Like, you just seem to have faith that that will be, you know. Yeah, I would like, I think that the developer report is a really good piece of resource.

But also I want to highlight that, you know, when you have a new ecosystem, you will see a lot of copy-paste projects. And it's always kind of like the same thing that all the same D5 projects are replicated. And yes, there is like a lot of action and activity from development. developers writing code, but at the same time, what's really interesting is like what is the kind of like innovation that really sticks. And that's silly, that really isn't proven on Solana. I mean, you know, Pump. That fund has been doing pretty well in terms of fees and in terms of the potential economy, but at the same time, you know, 90 something percent of the, the users are losing funds.

So it's still kind of like unclear if that will be the main driver there. I do think defy is really kind of the cornerstone of all blockchains. And that's somewhere, you know, where we probably see more growth in Solana. But at the same time, you know, a lot of institutions are choosing Ethereum, what are the developers are choosing Ethereum. And because it can bring that resiliency and guarantees, end of the day, I know it for some people, it might not matter from like the security perspective, but at the end of the day when you're dealing with really significant amount of funds,

it does matter at that point when you put everyone on the same line and compare. So I'm more bullish on Ethereum than anything else. And I think the new strategy of actually making kind of like beefed up L1 is actually quite interesting because that helps you to scale more on the mainnet while still having these more specialized altos. So one other thing that I just needed to ask you about, and so I just have a few more Ethereum questions, and we're going to shift more to ABE in a bit.

But here we are. We're in the midst of this big crypto treasury trend. It sort of feels like every single day, there's a new Ethereum vehicle. So we have Bitmine, Sharplink, Bit Digital, GameS, BTCS, Ether Machine, Isola. There's others that I'm sure I didn't catch.

But I was just curious to hear what you thought of the trend, because as somebody who's running a defy lending protocol, you're very well aware of liquidations, of kind of cascading effects. And there have been a lot of people who have been talking about how they feel like they're watching that in the making right now as they're watching this trend to take off. And it was just curious.

curious if you worried about how that might impact AVE or its users or Ether or, you know, any of the above. Two interesting observations. So I think the trend will continue to the extent that we will see that kind of like a premium between holding underlying EADs or any other assets and then and then they actually premium of the shares kind of like evaporates. So I think we will see that in a lot of these initiatives are truly just replicating obviously the the micro strategy play. And something interesting about the micro strategy is that they do have a really like good marketing angle as well.

So you have Michael Saylor. And you know, that plays a key role. So I think the success of that kind of like premium depends on that side of the vehicles like the actual marketing, the distributions and so forth. But I do think that we do see like big Ethereum eat movements at the moment. And some of these treasury vehicles are also using ABE for essential leveraging a little bit of their position at a kind of like a net basis free. BTCS is putting roughly 180 million worth of or 200 million worth of ETH as a collateral, and they're

borrowing roughly 50 million worth of stable coins to buy more ETH that they further collateralize. So what they're earning from their colonization interest is offsetting their borrowing costs. So effectively they're getting a free leverage on their holdings. I think the cascading liquidations, individual basis of what are they used, let's say, AVE directly. Obviously, I personally don't want to see high leverage, but I do understand that seeing AVE is interesting you have a transparency and anyone can follow that position for shareholders, for example. But at the same time, and you have that, you know, like kind of like a best execution there. but I don't want to see it to over-leveraged positions from that regard. And in terms of liquidations, I think that the biggest kind of moment was when we saw the news

about the tariffs when suddenly overnight Ethanium dropped for 30, 25% of a lot of these liquidations. And one kind of like a single day, in action, in a few minutes, we liquided over 200 million or of collateral and most of it is basically it. So it just showcases that actually, yes, if you have a lot of liquidations, they can affect systemic risk. But the best place to actually handle the systemic risk is a system like Defi where you have full visibility and you also can quantify the systemic risk across not just other, but let's say Sky and all these other protocols.

and it's a decentralized liquidation mechanism where everyone can come and step in and to liquidate. And this kind of like reminds me back in the Black Thursday in 2020, when early days of AVE actually when AVE launched on version 1 in January 2020. And obviously, COVID hit quite hard on March. And at that point, it was like just kind of a kid. chaotic situation in DFI, which was fraction of a fraction of a small it is today, everyone was trying to liquidate these positions and a lot of protocols successfully. And it just showcases kind of like when you have an open system where anyone can participate,

you can actually increase the resiliency versus in a closed system. So that's why I'm kind of like excited to build DFI and try to get all these like centralized market participants, whether it's treasuries or whether it's fintechs looking to offer crypto-back loans or banks looking to do something similar to actually just like use defies the backbone because that gives everyone the same disability access and participation. And I think that creates more resilient system. So it's not only Ethereum that has reached a major market. milestone, but AVE has several to report on its own. So, you know, you recently reached

$170 million in cumulative revenue. You have about $23 billion in active loans on AVE, which is more than every competitor combined. If Avey were a bank, it would be the 42nd biggest bank in the U.S. based on deposits. And you've reached $2.85 trillion in all-time supply to assets. So all of this is just massive. And yet, here we are, you're soon going to be launching your long-anticipated AVE4. So tell us what we can expect in that new version and, yeah, why people should be excited about it. Yeah, I think the new version is quite interesting because it's a really new type of, I'll say, like, a next generation of landing protocols. And the reason for that is we basically take everything we learned with the previous versions of AVE and improve certain features or added certain features that really doubles down, for example, on capital efficiency, doubles also down on better and granular risk management tools and just pricing liquidity better compared to the risk itself.

change the whole architecture in a way where we have a concept called liquidity hubs, where all the liquidity is stored when users are supplying these assets. And then the hub allocates the liquidity into different kinds of spokes. And these spokes are just borrowing certain assets, collateral facts you can borrow against per asset. And it's a sort of credit line. So, Think of it as the liquidity hub is a central bank, and these spokes are more of a commercial bank with their own lending strategies. So with the AVD4, as any kind of developer,

you can create a borough configuration, want to see, and then request a credit line from the liquidity hub and get funded. So you can innovate from ground zero without actually needing to put in census. or what some protocols do, they go and kind of like a rent the liquidity. So they go and pay to third parties, even like absurd amounts of funds like 25% APY, just to get those funds into their platform because there's a lot of computation around liquidity.

So what we really wanted to achieve with other V4 is that every developer can actually actually innovates with AVE, and the more successful the innovation is, the more capital is getting allocated to that Bafah innovation. And this is really important because over the past two years, a lot of DFI has been built. And the more I talk to DFI developers and founders with really amazing innovation, whether they're building on top of AVE or not, they all say that's one of the key kind of like issues that they have is that, you know, they are having issues to attract liquidity. And they don't necessarily want to, you know, create a token and put rewards into their products because they're so early stage of their product and they want to see the product market at first or they don't have capital to rent the liquidity, which I don't think

projects should do in the first place. So this will actually allow any developer to then access to the obvious deep liquidity by creating any type of borrowing and lending in the future. So that's one of the things I'm super excited about. And the second part is this idea of risk premiums. So now when you borrow, let's say, Go or USDAC from AVE, every borrower pays the same. border rate regardless of their collateral composition. So in the future, depending on your collateral composition, if it's less riskier, you pay the base rate and risk premium. But if you have more riskier collateral composition, you pay more. So effectively, what we want to do is that

within a single pool, we can price these positions based on how much risk they're subscribing into these pools. And this means that if you are having very lean position, like borrowing only against it or prep Bitcoin, you just pay the base rate compared to some more riskier setup. And this makes the pricing more fair because those borrowers who have that lean position, they're not basically getting overcharged. And those who then are bringing more risk into the protocol,

they're not piggybacking the rates that, these less riskier positions were paying. So it's a really interesting innovation on ending and borrowing. Okay, wait, and I'm so sorry. So I guess, like, I didn't understand. I thought you would initially said that they pay the same rate, but it sounds like they're paying different rates. Yeah, so the same rate is the same rate is the base rate.

So typically now in ABA, when the user supplies liquidity or, or let's say boroughs, the rate is fluctuating because it's purely algorithmic supply and demand. So this concept will still exist in other V4, and there will be that type of a base rate. But on top of the base rates, the users will pay a premium if they are bringing more riskier assets into the protocol. We didn't accept that, Chris, spectrum, of course. Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah. So it makes the whole thing safer for everybody. That's safer. Yeah. Safer, but also better pricing as well. And yeah, that's the kind of idea. They're price better between what are the collateral's compositions and then ensuring that kind of like if you are not bringing risk into the protocol, you are. not paying a higher rate for that. So you're incentivized basically bringing less risk into the protocol.

That's the kind of concept there. Yeah, yeah, it's more fair. So then the other thing that looks like it's on the roadmap is Horizon, which is your institutional solution for RWAs. Can you talk a little bit more about, you know, what that will look like and what your goals are with that? Yeah, the best way to explain Horizon is that we build this really incredible technology that is applicable to native crypto assets. So Bitcoin, Ethereum,

collaterals and borrowing stable coins. And it's proven to be resilient. That side of the business is growing really well. And now what we want to experiment is that we use the same architecture, but we are going to use for RWA. So with Horizon users are able to use RWA assets, permission assets, as I collateral to borrow stable coins with the same infrastructure. And these RWAs are assets that are liquid off-chain, but not liquid essentially in on-chain. So it really creates new kind of opportunity

where institutions that are tokenizing assets, they actually now have a really interesting use case because the organization is just a tool. It doesn't really make a... you know, it doesn't really add value until you have some sort of kind of a use case. And for me, being able to collateralize your assets, you basically can or borrow within working outside of the working hours. You can't do that over the weekend, but you can't do that with Albe because you're not relying on people. You're relying on smart contracts that are

automated, you know, they're resilient and trust minimized. And I think that's a kind of like a valid proposition that defying infrastructure can do things much better than the old school type of financial banking products. And that's the kind of like experience that. Horizon is experiment, but I think it's going to be a big revenue driver in a big kind of like a growth category for for all in the upcoming this this new decade that that is done yeah seriously i mean you know if if once we look back we're definitely going to characterize this is the time when um you know trot phi and wall street really started coming into crypto and you know obviously um you know we're seeing this every day like with all the news that's coming out um you know robin hood is like

obviously that was a big deal. But, you know, even if we think about just like continued news from like Black Rock, which has already, you know, been here for a while or, you know, I even saw like headlines about Western Union. And, you know, there's kind of like, it just feels like every single FinTech and Tradfai company has, you know, its own kind of crypto strategy. But it does look like more of them want to play in the defy space. So, you know, I think you guys are well positioned. So last question, I just wanted to ask like, you know, when you think about the future of defy, so here we are, you know, Ethereum has been around for 10 years, but really,

Defi kind of, you know, you could say it's like five years old because obviously Defy Summer was five years ago. I can't remember who tweeted this, but somebody tweeted a poll of like, what's your favorite time in crypto history? And I remember I selected Defi summer and then I saw it was the, it was the most popular option because, yeah, that's just that era seemed kind of, yeah, it just seemed the most fun. But yeah, I was curious, like, you know, when you look at where you think Defi is headed, especially now that we're seeing this kind of connection between TradFi and crypto coming together, like, what do you think the future of that is going to look like? And last thing, because, you know, I know you guys have created. your own solution here for the fact that we have silo liquidity at this point in time.

But that is going to be a problem going forward. And I just wondered what your thoughts were on that. Defy server was really fun, you know, because you could go into a application and you put some funds and you get some things called Yam or, you know, like pickle and, you know, they have value and you sell them and suddenly like, you know, you kind of like were able to create money out of it and very meany and fun, right? But at the same time, whole kind of like a DFI summer and DFI first wave was also, in my opinion, born out of the macroeconomic conditions. And I believe that every like a fintech or financial, some sort of kind of like a growth happens in some sort of, favorable macro conditions.

So back then COVID happened and interest rates were at zero, meaning that's, you know, the only way to actually find yield or actually make money is to go to the stock market or go to some sort of alternative platforms and lending. And people were technical enough. They found defy and they saw like, oh, you could earn like 3 to 4%. on these things called stable coins in there, pegged to the value of dollar, and you can buy them on a central asset exchange.

And then later in the summer, you had these governance tokens that actually were getting ownership of these protocols. And then you have additional revenue. So additional API. So it really gave a big contrast. And then these Mimi funny yield farms actually then made it even crazier

because you saw double digits or like three digit numbers for a while. So the macro conditions were there. And I think that the next big catalyst for the defa is going to also be macro. So interest rates are going to go down. So it's happening already in Europe. There are 2%. And Ave is actually now, if you borrow USC, sorry, if you supply Euroc on to AVE,

somewhere of 4% which is double of the Yeah, 4.9 I think. Yeah, it's basically bidding every single fintech in the Europe. And then the central bank in the UK is going to drop their rates

and already starting. And Fed is keeping it's still on hold to drop because if it's for a long period of time, the economy will start slowing down because people and businesses they don't have enormous appetite to

operate and borrow interest and environment. So when that starts to happen, you will see again this spike that defy opportunity increases compared to the initial finance and it's going to be really a big catalyst again for defy and stable coins wider. So it's the only way to access defy yield. So if defy is going to be the place where the best financial opportunities will exist, because it's an environment where there's the best programmable, algorithms and even AI on top of that that actually searches for versus revenue, you need stable coins. And then you need RWA's to grow because native crypto assets can go so far. And if you need yield for 8 billion people, you do the ecosystem.

Stable coins already, the centralized months are already essentially doing that. So RwAs, DFI stable coins are just kind of like a triangle that will be like the key components for DFI crows. And then good macro control make D5 more attractive. And then we'll see more fintech integrating ABE and more banks integrating ABE and D Functional. And that's going to be the main thing. And liquidity segment, I think, has been always a little bit challenged. And I think that's what we are trying to solve with Ava V4, where all the liquidity can be stored in these liquidity hubs

and just allocated to different types of lending and borrowing strategies. The more concentration there is on liquidity, the less friction there is in better. So my hope is that we get away from this kind of like fully K by CREC models. I understand that with some financial institutions, fully like a KYC version of AVE is essential at that point. But I really hope that we move towards direction where institutions are comfortable with permissionless liquidity down the line.

Institutions abandoned the whole private blockchain, that the idea that existed two years ago, that they didn't really make any sense because blockchain as a network, it makes sense and Defi as a network makes sense when you can connect peers together across globally and increase this liquidity opportunities down the line. And so that's my kind of like thinking and also hope. Yeah, actually, I do want to ask one more question, which is just we are singing that in crypto and defy, there's like a swing toward centralization. I'll just call it. You know, so the Aitcoin Dow is they're going to go more centralized.

You know, Miles Jennings of A16C said that he thought the foundation model was broken. And, you know, there's just been talked generally. You know, you see more people talking about how when you have a token team, but this, you know, other entity, this foundation is kind of more in charge of the token. There's like this disconnect between what the real incentives are and like who can kind of deliver on that for the users. Yeah, another example is the Jupiter Dow kind of pausing on Dow voting for six months. And I just wondered what you thought about that. I wondered what you thought about how the Dow experiment has gone so far for Defi. You know, like even another kind of data point is, you know, Pump Fund had this massive ICO,

but they're a centralized company. You know, it's not like they're saying you can have this milk in and it gives you governance rights. No, that's not what they're offering. So just curious for your thoughts on that kind of trend. Yeah, I think the model is hard where essentially, you have a foundation and you have a labs and they essentially somewhat doing the same thing, there's no clear better proposition. I think kind of like you up somewhat is suffering for the reasons, but I but I think that unisop model is difficult because the foundation

doesn't charge the fees and then the labs gets all the fees so it creates like a really imbalance equilibrium with winter Tao and the labs uh, entity. Where I think what's interesting in Avidau is that, you know, the protocol is earning revenue. And it's really actually hard to make a really revenue driven profitable Dow. Like it's, it's so hard to actually accomplish that as a business where everyone is aligned and there's a clear structure in your key. Whereas in a Dow, you have a lot of coordination and so forth. So I'm really proud of like what's where the Avidow has been able to and so far to achieve and a couple of other examples in DFI because it's extremely hard to be honest.

But you achieve a lot of resiliency in that way. And I think that the way to manage this kind of imbalance is that not have it by having like a clear mission. So obviously on the Dow perspective, that's to actually govern. an infrastructure set economical fees, which is, in my opinion, the most important aspect of a, like there's a lot of parts that can be actually immutable, you know, reduce the governance overhead, but managing that economical piece is the most important. And then on the last perspective is simply of increasing the distribution.

So if the labs fully focuses on distribution and then the actual Dow focuses on the economics of the protocol, then you have like a clear separate missions, but that are actually feeding each other. And whatever distribution the labs can create, then that goes into the protocol itself. And then obviously protocol development is another thing, but that also can be done in a very decent way

where there's multiple teams and contributors and obviously Ethereum ecosystem is a great example of that. So I think it's a more of like how to align incentives. And in most cases where they don't work, these incentives aren't aligned as an example. So does UNISOP labs, for example, whole enough UNIT tokens? You know, if not, maybe that's one of the reasons why they might be less interested

and vice versa. So I don't know the actual answer to that exact question on their part. But that what I would assume were the kind of like frictions come if there's not enough alignment between these foundations or labs entities and the actual Dow. All right, Stani. Well, this has been a super fun conversation. Thank you so much for joining me on Ethereum's 10th anniversary. Thank you so much for having. It was really very much fun. All right. Thanks everyone for joining us today to learn more about Ethereum's 10th anniversary.

And Stani and Ape, check out the showness for this episode. Looking for your next big trade? Want to track every move in your portfolio, news, unlocks, price action, and open interest in one place? Meet Focal, your personalized AI assistant for crypto. Built for institutions now open to serious traders like you. Focal surfaces high signal insights, automates your workflows, and helps you move faster in 24-7 markets. Find out why the smartest desks use Focal to stay ahead. Sign up at askfocal.com.

Welcome to this week's Crypto Roundup. We begin this week with a sweeping policy shift from Washington. The White House has released a 168-page crypto policy report, offering sweeping recommendations to shape the future of digital asset regulation in the United States. Compiled by President Trump's Working Group on digital asset markets, the document proposes reforms spanning tax policy, regulatory jurisdiction, and digital asset custody. The report urges the SEC and CFC to collaborate on clarifying rules for custody, trading,

and record keeping of cryptocurrencies. It also recommends giving the CFTC authority to oversee spot markets for non-security digital assets while advocating self-custody rights for individuals. On taxation, the group backs a crypto asset reporting framework that would require U.S. residents to report foreign-held digital asset sales to the IRS. The Treasury and IRS are also encouraged to issue new guidance covering wrapping transactions and to minimize crypto receipts. There is a lot to get done.

But this is a fantastic roadmap on what's next for true regulatory clarity for crypto in the U.S., wrote crypto lawyer Rebecca Retig on X. That said, it offered little new information on the U.S. Strategic Crypto Reserve. Just one day later, the SEC followed up with its own initiative to reshape crypto regulation. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins has unveiled Project Crypto, a regulatory initiative aimed at updating securities rules to accommodate on-chain technologies. The project directs SEC staff to modernize guidelines around custody, trading, and digital asset classification. Project Crypto will help ensure that the United States remains the best place in the world to start a business,

develop cutting-edge technologies, and participate in capital markets, Adkins said. The initiative includes collaboration with Commissioner Hester Pierce's Crypto Task Force and seeks to implement the President's Working Group recommendations. A key goal is to classify digital assets into categories such as stable coins, digital collectibles, and digital commodities. Atkins also highlighted future rule proposals for token. organized securities and decentralized finance platforms stating, Decentralized Finance and other on-chain systems will be part of our securities markets,

not drowned out by unnecessary regulation. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, a new proposal is looking to bring crypto into the housing market. Senator Cynthia Lemmiss has introduced the 21st century Mortgage Act, a bill that would allow long-held crypto assets to be considered in mortgage underwriting. The proposal aims to support borrowers, especially younger Americans, by including certain digital holdings in their financial profiles without requiring conversion to U.S. dollars. The legislation codifies a directive already underway from Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pult.

In June, Pult instructed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to explore incorporating qualified crypto reserves into mortgage risk assessments. Under Lummiss's bill, digital assets held in a qualified custodial arrangement for at least two years could count as borrower reserves. This legislation embraces an innovative path to wealth building, Lemma said, emphasizing the digital shift among younger homebuyers. And in platform news, Coinbase is widening its horizons in a big way. Coinbase is preparing to roll out a broad expansion of its platform,

introducing tokenized stocks, prediction markets, and early-stage token sales to U.S. users in the coming months. The move is part of the company's push to become, and everything exchange, integrating both crypto-native and traditional assets into a single on-chain platform. We're bringing all assets on-chain, stocks, prediction markets, and more, said Max Bransberg, Coinbase's vice president of product in a statement to CNBC. The upcoming features will position Coinbase alongside competitors, like CalShe and Polymarket in the prediction markets space, and rival global tokenized stock offerings from Robin Hood, Gemini, and Cracken.

However, Coinbase's new services will be available to U.S. customers first, with plans for international expansion pending regulatory approvals. Turning now to the courtroom, where a high-profile case took a sharp turn. The U.S. Department of Justice has clarified that Crypto Venture firm Dragonfly is not a target in its criminal investigation into Tornado Cash, reversing earlier suggestions made in court. The update followed a hearing in the trial of Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm, where prosecutors had initially indicated that Dragonfly executives could face charges related to their 2020 investment in the privacy-focused crypto mixer. At the time, internal emails between Dragonfly

partners Tom Schmidt and Haseeb Qureshi and Tornado Cash developers were presented, including discussions about potentially adding KYC features. Schmidt, called as a defense witness, declined to testify by invoking the Fifth Amendment. Following the hearing, Kureishi stated, the government's comments were aimed at limiting defense testimony. The DOJ has now backtracked, he posted on X, adding that Dragonfly has been cooperating since receiving a subpoena in 2023 and intends to defend itself if necessary. Elsewhere in regulatory news,

ETF markets just received a long-awaited upgrade. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has authorized in-kind redemptions for all-spot, Bitcoin and Ethereum Exchange traded funds, aligning crypto-ethefs with traditional commodity products. Previously restricted to cash-only structures, ETF issuers can now redeem and create shares directly with Bitcoin or Ether. This shift is expected to reduce trading friction, tighten spreads, and improve tax efficiency. Authorized participants, typically large financial institutions,

will be able to exchange ETF shares for the underlying crypto assets rather than Fiat, a model long requested by asset managers. The move is seen as a milestone in ETF market infrastructure, reflecting growing regulatory acceptance. In a parallel development, the SEC acknowledged a NASDAQ proposal to enable staking for Black Rock's I shares Ethereum Trust. If approved, the EF could generate yield by staking ether while distributing rewards to shareholders. The application now enters a regulatory review window that could last up to 90 days. In related news, a new plan from CBOE could fast-track crypto-etefs like Solicester.

and XRP by bypassing individual SEC approvals, potentially opening the door to multiple listings as early as October. And speaking of major institutions, one of the biggest U.S. banks is stepping deeper into crypto. J.P. Morgan Chase and Coinbase have announced a strategic partnership that will enable Chase credit card holders to purchase cryptocurrency directly through Coinbase, beginning in fall 2025. The collaboration marks a major step in integrated.

digital assets into traditional banking services. Starting in 2026, Chase customers will also be able to redeem their ultimate rewards points for USDC, a dollar-pegged stable coin issued by Circle. This reward redemption will take place on base, Coinbase's Ethereum Layer 2 network, and represents the first time a major credit card program will allow points to convert into crypto. The agreement includes additional features such as the ability for users to directly link Chase Bank accounts to Coinbase, streamlining fiat-to-crypto transactions. Coinbase noted that credit card purchases may be treated as cash advances under existing terms. Staying on the topic of stablecoins, three different developments this week show how far their

adoption has come. Stablecoins are taking center stage in the latest wave of crypto innovation, with major firms and projects pushing forward new use cases and infrastructure. PayPal has launched Pay with crypto. a service enabling U.S. merchants to accept over 100 digital assets at checkout. Customers pay in crypto while merchants receive U.S. dollars or PayPal's native stablecoin, PYUSD. The platform touts potential savings of up to 90% on cross-border transactions compared to traditional credit cards. Merchants can also hold PYUSD and earn yield on balances.

Meanwhile, interactive brokers is considering launching its own stablecoin to offer 24-7s7. account funding and faster crypto transfers. The $110 billion brokerage is also evaluating broader integration of third-party stable coins to enhance its digital asset services. Adding to the momentum, Bitcoin side chain plasma concluded a public sale of its token XPL, raising $373 million. The project claims it will launch with $1 billion in Stablecoin total value locked, setting a record for main net adoption speed.

Now to a high-profile legal reversal that could set a precedent in the NFT space. A U.S. appeals court has overturned the conviction of former OpenC product manager, Nathaniel Chastain, who has previously found guilty of wire fraud and money laundering in connection with NFT trades made using confidential company information. Chastain was originally charged in 2022 for allegedly purchasing NFTs ahead of their promotion on OpenC's homepage, then reselling them at profits of two to five times the purchase price. He was convicted in 2023 and sentenced to three months in prison. However, the Second Circuit Court ruled Thursday that the jury was incorrectly instructed.

The court agreed with Chastain's argument that using confidential business information does not constitute property theft unless it involves a recognized property interest. We cannot say that the jury would have reached the same verdict if it had been properly instructed, the judges wrote. The ruling also referenced Chaston. claim that OpenC's co-founder engaged in similar conduct. Now let's talk about a shift in launch pad dominance, which highlights a changing dynamic. Coinbase's layer 2 network base has overtaken Solana in daily token launches,

marking a shift in crypto activity not seen since early 2023. The spike is largely driven by Zora, a social media protocol that automatically mints a token for every user post. On July 27, Zora set a record with over 54,000 tokens, launched a single single token, launched in a single day, significantly outpacing Solana platforms, Pump Fun, and Let's Bonk combined. According to analytics firm, C-Launch, Dex's volume of Zora coins has also spiked, as both creators and refers earn a share of trading fees. Despite base's rising numbers, Solana still holds a much larger overall market cap in Launchpad tokens, with $5.9 billion compared to Bases $422 million.

It's a different model, noted Helius Labs, CEO Mertumptaz, who emphasized that Zora's token creation is tied to social content rather than traditional meme coin speculation. And before we go, one network faced an unexpected test this week. Polygon experienced a temporary disruption on Wednesday when its Heimdahl Consensus layer halted for roughly one hour due to a validator unexpectedly exiting the network. The issue followed a recent upgrade to Heimdahl 5th 2, described by Polygon, as its most technically complex hard fork since 2020. While Heimdahl handles coordination among validators and communicates with Ethereum, the outage

did not affect the bore layer, which continued to process transactions normally. This meant that core user activity, such as sending and receiving tokens, remained uninterrupted. Some developers and users, however, faced difficulties accessing services with RPC endpoints and block explorers like Polygon scan showing no new blocks during the disruption. RPCs serve as the connection points that wallets and applications use to interact with the network. Polygon stated that the POS chain has remained live, but acknowledged degraded performance during the outage. A patch was issued and most RPC providers were restored within hours. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, with help from Matt Peltjard, Juan Uranovich, Pamma Jumdar,

and Marka Curia. Thanks for listening. Thank you.