Unchained - Chris Blec on Why He Believes a16z’s Uniswap Vote Exposes DeFi as a Farce - Ep. 454

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

Chris Blec, DeFi researcher and founder of the Blec Report, explains why he believes the involvement of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) in a contentious Uniswap governance proposal flies in the face of crypto’s core value: decentralization. He argues that the venture capital firm’s ability to potentially sway the vote in favor of a portfolio company undermines claims that DeFi is “people-powered.” The vote, which is not yet concluded, is the latest venue for people to debate the merits of DeFi governance and whether one token really should equal one vote. Show highlights: why a16z decided to vote against a key section of the Uniswap governance proposal the problem Chris sees with the current design of DAOs whether there is a parallel to be drawn between TradFi and DAO governance why Chris says people are mistaken when they think about the goals of crypto VC whether the fact that some VCs control so much voting power goes against the ethos of decentralization how Chris thinks VCs are funding lobbyist groups to push for their interests, not those of crypto as a whole why Chris believes the "one token, one vote" system doesn't work some alternatives that could be pursued to help the issue of whale token voting whether regulators will come after DAOs and especially the ones that are using current governance mechanisms Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com Guest Chris Blec, DeFi researcher and founder of the Blec Report Twitter Tweet about token voting Tweet about engaging with a16z Links Unchained: Does a16z Control Uniswap? CoinDesk: Contentious Uniswap Vote Highlights the Opaqueness of Decentralized Governance Related Twitter threads: From Eddy Lazzarin From Defi Ignas From Abdullah Umar From Philipp Zentner From Macro Mate From Adam Cochran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone. Welcome to Unchained. You're no hype resource for all things Crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto seven years ago, and as the senior editor of Forbes was the first Metriameter reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the February 10th, 2023 episode of Unchained. With the Crypto.com app, you can buy, earn, and spend crypto in one place. Download and get $25 with the code. Laura, link in the description. Today's guest is Chris Black, DFI researcher and analyst and founder of the Black Report. Welcome, Chris. Hey, Laura. Thanks for having me on. This week, A16C Crypto's participation in a Uniswap vote caused quite a bit of uproar in the community.

The proposal was whether or not to deploy Uniswap V3 on the B&B chain and in an initial temperature check vote before the formal proposal. more than 60% of the community wanted to deploy using the wormhole bridge rather than using layer zero, which is an A16C portfolio company. However, at that time, A16C was actually not able to participate in that temperature vote check. And then so when the formal vote started, and this again was just on whether or not to deploy on B&B and kind of tucked in there would be that they would also deploy using wormhole. At that time, A16C crypto used. 15 million of its unitokens to swing the vote in a different direction. The voting is still occurring. So the period's not over. And at this moment, actually, it looks like they're definitely

going to lose. But talk a little bit about, you know, what your perspective was as you were watching this play out. We've seen large token holders like A16Z in the past come in and and basically use their might in order to change outcomes that look like they're favored by the community. And what we saw here in this case was A16C coming in, laying down 15 million unitokens in a direction that was opposite to basically all of the votes up until that point almost. So it did appear on that day that they were trying to swing the vote in their favor. Since then, we've seen things shift quite a bit.

and more and more votes have come in on the side opposite of A16Z, including votes from their very own delegates, which is very, very interesting. And now it's tilted the scales in a way that is opposite to what A16Z wanted. And they admitted right up front in some form posts that they wanted this outcome because they wanted it to favor a company, Layer Zero, that's part of their investment portfolio, which made it very interesting, you know, incentives. of situation for them and their uni tokens. So as you mentioned, A16Z has quite a large number of tokens. It has at least 55 million uni, the 15 million that it voted with, and then the 40 million

that it delegated out to other groups, many of them, educational blockchain groups, such as ones affiliated with different universities. How do you think Dow's should deal with these kinds of entities that have large numbers of tokens like that? How should they deal with them? I mean, it's kind of by design, right, the way that it's this whole thing works. It's one token, one vote. And these large entities like A16Z have that many tokens because they purchased them from

the Dow or the company that was starting this thing up or whatever it might be. So I don't think it's a situation where the system is broken per se because it's working as it was intended. The problem comes when they pitch these things. things as decentralized and as people-powered, but then these entities come along and they just throw their tokens in when they feel like things aren't going their way, which is something that A16 Z does have a history of doing in DAOs like this. So do you feel that there's anything faulty with Dow design, or do you think that that's a good system, one token, one vote,

and there's whales in the system? Yeah, my personal opinion is it's a horrible system. If you you're trying to create a decentralized autonomous organization, which is what a Dow is supposed to be, right? So if you have a situation like we've seen before with Uni, with MakerDAO, with a bunch of other DAOs out there, where these small token holders operate and they do the work and they vote on things and they're able to do what they want to do until something that they want to do goes against the interests of one of those large whale organizations or whatever it might be, then that whale organization comes in and just votes on those certain proposals that do go against their financial interests. That is a problem, right? Because you are creating this illusion that it is decentralized

and that it is people powered when in reality, it's always being watched by the actual owner, in this case, A16Z. Wait, I'm sorry, the actual owner, you mean just of those tokens? or owner of what? That's a great question. And that's something that I've been trying to answer myself. A16Z has a pretty considerable percentage of the voting power, both between what they operate with in their own wallet and what they've delegated out to other entities, universities, et cetera,

like what you said. Plus, who knows, we have no way of knowing how many other UNIT tokens they might have. Okay, there's no way to know for sure exactly what that total is beyond just what they say. Now, how is that different from looking at a private company that might have four, six, 10 percent of the voting shares in that company? You would call them still one of the owners of that company. It's a lot different from me if I have 10 uni versus this entity over here that has 50 million. So at some point, we need to start to see the parallels that are

happening between a traditional company and what's supposed to be a Dow, you know, when in reality, it's really being, in this case, the whole debate is happening between A16Z and jump because of their competing interests in these two bridge organizations and everybody else just has little, you know, little bits of input here and there. What's making this really interesting, though, like I said, is that delegates of A16Z are voting against them. So it's going to be interesting to see how A16Z reacts to that down the road, because why would they keep these delegates if they're not supporting their interests? just to clarify for listeners, so Jump Capital is the major investor in Wormhole and A16C is

major investor in Layer Zero. And Wormhole, after it was hacked, was basically kept alive with an fusion of $300 million from Jump. So obviously they have a strong vested interest there. You know, you talked about how it is that A16C is actually delegated out the majority of their tokens. And some of those different educational groups like the Michigan. I was sorry, I don't remember their official name, but, you know, something like the Michigan Blockchain Club, the University of Michigan. You know, there were others with different universities. They did not vote in line with A16C. They voted against, as you pointed out. And so doesn't that kind of undercut your argument that A16CZ is sort of like controlling all of their tokens? And doesn't it sort of, you know,

align with that idea that even though they are the owners that they're delegating in order to foster decentralization? It doesn't undercut it because A16Z chose their delegates, right? And they chose delegates for very specific reasons because they lent legitimacy, because they thought they would think in a certain way, because they thought they would vote in a certain way that would ultimately help A16C. And the biggest mistake that I think people make when talking about this issue is is assuming that A16Z or any venture capital firm has any reason at all to be philanthropic. They're not here to be charitable. They're not here to give you and I more rights in the world or to help us in any real way.

They're here to make money. That's what venture capital firms do, right? When they're choosing their delegates, they're choosing their delegates because they think those delegates are going to help them make more money. So the real question to me now is when they, you know, they can't force their hand, right? They're not forcing the delegates to do anything, but they chose them and they can get rid of them and they can get new ones too. Or they can choose not to if they think that's going to look bad and that's going to cost the money. Whatever's going to make the more money is what they're going to do.

So it's up to us because there's no regulation in this space because there's nobody else doing the work. It's up to us to look at it and interpret what's going on so that we can manage these things. better in the future and we can tell people when it's decentralized and when it's not. Clearly, this situation is not decentralized, though. So when you say that it remains to be seen how A16C will react to the fact that the entities that it delegated its votes to voted against them, what do you mean by that? I mean that A16C is a for-profit corporation. They're not doing this for philanthropic reasons.

they are operating in a way that's going to ultimately make them money, whether it's through their tokens, through their investments and other companies, you know, and it's pretty clear that A16Z, hey, they're smart, they're savvy,

they want to put together a DFI ecosystem. I like to call it a cartel, but, you know, an ecosystem of companies that work together and create this like little bubble of their investments, their different companies. And the beautiful thing about DFI is it's interconnected.

and everybody can benefit each other in their portfolio. So when their delegates start standing in the way of that, then you have to start to wonder, what's the benefit of keeping those delegates? So either they're going to end up keeping them and say, this is proof to the world that we're not trying to be tyrannical and to dictate what goes on here, or they're going to get rid of them,

and they're going to get other delegates that are going to vote more in line with the way that they want to invest and the way they want to make money with their business. So that's the part that is going to be interesting to watch. I happen to think they're probably going to keep these guys on and say, hey, look, it's decentralized because our delegates are voting against us, you know. But again, it's not because they really care about decentralizations, because they care about looking decentralized. All right. And just to bring in one of the voices, so blockchain Michigan is the group that I was thinking of. They were one of the delegates of the A16Z Unitokens.

And they tweeted, we voted incongruently with A16Z because we believe that Wormhole is an adequate messaging solution for cross-chain governance. A16C is an investor in layer zero. They have an interest in seeing layer zero succeed. We don't. Although we like layer zero, our priority is what's best for uniswap protocol. So in a moment, we're going to talk a little bit more. about the role that VCs should play in a decentralized world. But first, a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. With the RBC Avion Visa, you can book any airline, any flight, any time. So start ticking off your travel list.

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No sugar added? Neutral. Refreshingly simple. Amazon presents Jamal versus the Shih Tzu. Descending from the gray wolf, Shih Tzu's live by their own untamed primal code of not giving a single Shih Tzu. But Jamal shopped on Amazon and bought dog treats, chew toys, and 32 ounces of carpet cleaner. Hey, Jamal, you've been promoted to pack leader.

Save the everyday with deals from Amazon. Join over 50 million people using crypto.com, one of the easiest places to buy, earn, and spend over 250. cryptocurrencies. Spend your crypto anywhere using the crypto.com visa card. Get up to 5% cash back instantly. Plus, 100% rebates for your Netflix and Spotify subscriptions and zero annual fees. Download the crypto.com app now and get $25 with the code Laura. Link in the description. Back to my conversation with Chris. So you hinted at this a little bit in some of your answers, but do you feel that VCs don't really have a place at all in a technology that's meant to foster decentralization, or what

role do you see them playing? Personally, I come from the point of view of somebody who entered the space because of Bitcoin, because of the promise of decentralization, of self-sovereign money, of trustlessness. Venture capital firms don't, and they can't share those same interests, because those interests are not necessarily profitable. They're not billion-dollar company unicorn startup ideas, right? You can't build a unicorn company and have it be completely trustless because then you have no real solid way to make money and to change your product with the times and to keep up with things. So I don't think that VC investments, when it comes to blockchain tech, are compatible with a lot of the principles that Bitcoiners in general

come into the space for. So with that being said, they could be doing a lot better. They could be doing a lot better to actually prove that they're interested in decentralization, like they say. But, you know, we've seen and we're seeing right now this play out. This vote that's going on is not necessarily about what's best for decentralization or what's best for trustlessness or anything like that. This is turning into what's best for each party's investing strategy. What's best for their portfolio, for their bottom line? And that's not really why I entered this space at all. Yeah, you tweeted, the part that many are missing is that behemoth VCs, like A16C, are using the free market excuse to foster a regulatory environment that will ultimately

stifle competition and make it impossible for indie devs to operate and defy legally. What did you mean by that? What I mean is that big money in the space, whether it's A16C or other big investing firms, have an interest in fostering a regulatory environment and working with regulators to develop a regulatory environment that favors their business. They're not interested in running pirate operations that go against the grain or go against the law or anger the government. They're not going to become giant billion, billion, billion dollars companies that way. The way that they become huge is by working with the regulators, working with, with the government in order to put together laws, regulations, whatever they might be that benefit them

over the next 5, 10, 20 years. And that's happening right now. And ironically, a year or two ago, A16Z actually used their tokens to vote into existence an organization called the Defi Education Fund, which if anybody wants to look back can see A16Z made that happen. They used their tokens to make this thing happen. And what it is, it turned out it was like a $30 or $40 million fund intended specifically to lobby to work with regulators and educate them about the way that regulations should come into existence. But because of the way it's funded and incentivized, it's not about creating regulations that are privacy friendly, that are liberty friendly. It's about creating regulations that are going to ultimately allow A16Z's portfolio to grow and to become huge

companies, become huge successes. And those two things are not compatible. So that's what I'm talking about when I say they're trying to foster something that almost goes against a lot of the languages they're using to describe these organizations. You tweeted, I've been asking A16C to engage in a public dialogue with me about DFI governance for over two years. So if you had that opportunity, what questions would you like to ask them? I'd like to know how, well, first of all, I'd like to know how they choose and why they choose delegates the way that they do. They've done some blogging about that. They talked about that somewhat.

But the bottom line is, like I said before, they're coming out from the point of view of they're trying to be these goodwill ambassadors. And, you know, we're being so generous in doing these delegations. let's get down the brass tax. You want to make money. You're choosing delegates that you think are ultimately going to help you make money. Why are you making these choices the way that you're making them? So that's one thing for sure. And then beyond that, it's really about how can we consider these things to be decentralized when it really comes down to just a handful of giant organizations like yourself, you know, maybe there's four or five organizations that can swing any vote with a lot of these dows. you know, and I know that the long-term thing is for them to unload the tokens and to dump them on

people who might come in later. But, I mean, for now, to call these things decentralized autonomous organizations, it's like a slap in the face to everything that Bitcoin in the first place built. And to continue to use that term is just crazy to me. So do you feel that there's any optimal way that you would like to see, defy governance operate? Or are you saying that you feel that defy protocols in general can never be truly decentralized? Or in general, what do you think this says about defy, not just VC participation in defy? I think there's a lot of experiments that have yet to actually be tried as far as

using tokens to vote. And really the most popular method still is one token, one vote. And what we've seen over and over is that doesn't work for decentralization. That method with the money, the amount of money that's involved with it is absolutely going to end up being captured by regulators or governments down the road just because it's clear. You have these parties that have five, 10 percent of the voting power. They're saying this thing's decentralized, but they can sway things in so many different ways. That's not working. You know, it's not working for decentralization. Now, I think, you know, there's other things going on out there, other DAOs that are trying different things, quadratic voting or time lock voting and stuff like that. But that stuff is less profitable for venture capitalists.

You know, so they still favor the one token, one vote, and they're going to push that as far as they can go. So my objective right now is just to make people aware of what's going on because a lot of people just can't wrap their heads around how this thing, how this stuff is working. You know, and the almost false type, false like advertising that's happening from a lot of the VCs in the space isn't helping. You know, so it's really up to us to explain to people. Here's why it's not as you centralize as you think. And here's where it's going to lead. It's going to lead to regulation. It's going to lead to less privacy for you.

It's going to lead to governments having a huge say over how these things work in the future. And that's almost certainly what a lot of these VCs want. they want that type of regulation because that's going to be the path to big money for them. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I guess you alluded to that earlier. I did want to ask you, though, directly. So you wrote, again, in a tweet, all DAOs using unadulterated one token, one vote governance mechanisms will inevitably be captured by governments slash regulators. How do you see that happening? Like, what do you mean exactly when you say that? I mean that. I mean that there are, there's a lot of money right now going into lobbying and trying to push regulations

into existence. Big institutional money won't come in to defy until there is clear regulation until we know exactly what's legal and what's not. And those regulations ultimately are going to control what's legal, what's possible with a Dow, with a Dow that is selling tokens and is, is, is operated through these type of voting tokens. So at a certain point, we're going to have on the books very clear rules about how this is going to work. And there are rules that are going to favor big whales that are actually out there, you know, greasing palms and making sure that things happen the way they want them to. But those same rules are going to apply to new DAOs. They're going to apply to small DAWs.

They're going to apply to indie developers that are thinking of new projects that they want to launch. it's going to be up to them to make sure they're not breaking these new laws. And that's part of the reason that the existing organizations want to have a say in how these laws look, because they want to make it harder to lose their competitive advantage. And this isn't unique to blockchain. This is every industry. We've seen it over and over for decades. The first movers want to come in.

They want to take advantage of their relationship with regulators, teach the regulators about how it should be. and then all of a sudden you've got these laws. And we've seen from what we're seeing now to the internet, to telephone, to radio, go back 100 years. This is always the way it's been. And so anybody new that wants to enter the space needs to hire lawyers, have tons of software, tons of stuff to navigate the bureaucracy. It's going to make it harder for new people to come into the space.

All right, Chris. Well, thank you so much for sharing your insights. My pleasure, Laura. Thank you. Don't forget. Next up is the weekly news recap. Stick around for this week in crypto after this short break. Thanks for tuning into this week's news recap.

In SEC settlement, Cracken agrees to shut down its crypto staking services. On Thursday, the SEC announced that it had charged Cracken, one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the U.S., and disclosure, a former sponsor of the show, with violating securities laws with its staking as a service program. The exchange announced it was immediately shuttering its crypto-staking activities as part of the settlement, which also included a $30 million fine. The implication is that such programs that do not register and offer the disclosures that are required of securities offerings are unregistered securities offerings. Coinbase, the largest and only publicly traded exchange in the U.S., offers a similar program. As might be expected, SEC Commissioner Hester Purse, aka Cryptomomom, published a dissent,

criticizing the SEC for going after staking as a service programs via an enforcement action. She notes that since such programs are all structured differently, it's not clear how this one-off action would apply to other exchanges. She wrote, quote, A paternalistic and lazy regulator settles on a solution like the one in this settlement. Do not initiate a public process to develop a workable registration process that provides valuable information to investors. Just shut it down. On Wednesday night, hours before news broke out about the Cracken Settlement, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong expressed concern that the SEC may try to eliminate staking for

retail customers in the U.S., calling it a terrible path for the country. And there's more in the Crypto Regulation Roundup. Just after the news of the SEC settlement broke, the IRS filed a court document seeking permission to enforce a summons on Cracken for information on who may have tax liabilities for the years 2016 through 2020. CoinDesk reported that the New York Department of Financial Services is investigating Paxos, which issues the Pax Dollar and Binance U.S.D. This week, the SEC listed cryptocurrencies and emerging technologies as one of its priorities for the year. The SEC also issued a warning to investors to be cautious of cryptocurrencies in individual retirement accounts,

stating that many crypto assets could be unregistered securities trading on unregistered exchanges. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is preparing for a big year of cryptocurrency enforcement actions, according to Chairman Raustin-Benem. DCG and Genesis reach an agreement. Digital Currency Group and Genesis, the crypto lending platform that filed for bankruptcy last month, reached a preliminary agreement with the main creditors, including Gemini, which has agreed to contribute $100 million in additional funds to its earned program users. The creditors had claims totaling $2.4 billion against Genesis.

The agreement involves winding down the loan portfolio, selling off assets, and refinancing outstanding loans with $500 million in cash and $100 million worth of Bitcoin from DCG. It also involves a restructuring of the debt owed by DCG to Genesis and the issuance of a class of convertible preferred stock. Moreover, the Financial Times reported that DCG has begun to dispose of its stake in various investment funds run by its subsidiary gray scale at a significant discount. Adam Cochran, partner at Sinemhane Adventures, said, DCG is starting to dump ETHE and GBT on their own bagholders to bail out their sketchy lending practice department gross. The last hours at FTX were filled with chaos and confusion. According to a report by the Financial Times, the final hours at FTCS were marked by chaos

as customers withdrew their funds and employees fled the company's Bahamas offices. As Bankman Freed faced harried messages from Bahamian officials and panicked questions from staff, top leaders like Caroline Ellison, who ran Bankman Freed's other company, the Crypto Hedgefront Alameda Research, scrambled to handle the logistics of the company's downfall. In the end, Ellison was reportedly relieved when the chaos came to an end and admitted to feeling trapped by the company, a colleague said. SPF appeals to keep co-signer's names confidential. Sam Bingman-Fried, former CEO of FTCS has contested the court's decision to make the names of cosigners of the $250 million bond public. He has submitted an appeal to keep the names confidential as disclosure could lead to privacy and security concerns for the co-signers. The initial court decision was made after media outlets requested that the names be unsealed.

U.S. judge has concerns about SBF's communications. At a hearing in New York on Thursday, which Sam Bankman-Fried's legal team intended to cancel, Judge Lewis Kaplan indicated that he had concerns about SBF's ability to potentially hide or delete his communications. Judge Kaplan ordered his lawyers to submit a new proposal for modifying his bail conditions, which would include the installation of monitoring software on Bankman-Fried's phone. to automatically record and archive all of his communications. This would put an end to the ongoing disagreement between federal prosecutors and Bankman Freed's lawyers over the conditions of his bail.

Earlier this week, the legal team from Bankman Freed and prosecutors had reached a deal to modify the terms of the FTC's bail regarding electronic communications, but Judge Kaplan rejected it. New FTX-related token sparks controversy. On Sunday, Huo B, a cryptocurrency exchange, edited. a new token to its platform called FTCX user debt or FUD. This derivative token represents 2% of FTCS's total debt and is issued by DECDAO. It provides creditors with priority in asserting their claims on the debt owed by FTCS. During the early bird issuance phase, the debt will be sold at a reduced

price. The initial release has been set to 20 million FUD tokens. Despite this, there are some concerns about the listing. Wasey lawyer, a bankruptcy expert, called it a violation of of securities laws and pointed out that not all debt claims are equal and fungible. However, only hours after the announcement, the FUD tokens experienced a lot of volatility, which resulted in a decision to destroy most of the token supply permanently. 18 million FUD tokens will be burnt to bring its valuation in line with debt Dow's fair value of under $1. Politicians should return donations, FTX says. FTX is requesting the return of political donations linked to its former CEO and executives by end of this month,

as part of its review of $93 million in political contributions made between March 2020 and November 2020. If the money is not voluntarily returned, the FTX debtors have stated that they will reserve their right to reclaim the funds in a bankruptcy court. A recent report from CoinDesk estimated that over one-third of the 535 members of Congress, Congress received money from FTCS executives. In other developments regarding the FtX case, U.S. prosecutors requested to postpone the civil fraud cases against Sam Binkman-Fried until the completion of the criminal case against him. A Delaware bankruptcy judge decided to let lawyers negotiate a mutually agreed solution instead of ruling on an examiner's appointment in the bankruptcy case. An independent examiner would be more unbiased, but would also cost millions of

potentially diminishing the return to creditors. Speaking of costs, the bankruptcy costs of the FTCS case are piling up. Even though FTCS wants to save money on examiners, it is definitely spending a fair share of creditors' money on other bankruptcy-related matters. According to court documents, the exchange and its related firms have incurred over $20 million in legal and consulting expenses in the initial stages of its bankruptcy proceedings. Sullivan and Cromwell, a law firm, charged 9.000. $9.5 million for its services, and John J. Ray III, who was appointed as the replacement CEO,

charged the exchange $690,000 for his first few weeks of work. Robin Hood to pursue repurchaseed shares from SBF and Wang. Robin Hood announced plans to buy 55 million shares previously owned by emergent fidelity technologies controlled by former FTCX executives Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang that were seized by the U.S. Department of Justice. Robin Hood's CEO Vlad Tenive stated that the repurchase would be accretive for the company, though the timeline for the purchase is unclear due to the ongoing fraud case against Bankman Freed and disputes over ownership of the stock by various entities, including BlockFi and FTX. 3A.C co-founders established in exchange. The founders of Failed

Crypto Fund, Three Eros Capital, Suu and Kyle Davies, along with the co-founders of CoinFlex, have created open exchange, a platform to trade crypto claims and derivatives. The venture is proposed as a solution to the $20 billion market of claimants seeking resolution for money lost at bankrupt crypto firms such as FTX, Voyager, Celsius, Genesis, BlockFi, Mount Cox, and 3AC. Kyle Davies disregards court mandate. Also this week, Kyle Davies did not comply with a court subpoena for the hedge fund's financial records. The current representatives of the bankrupt company, Russell Krumpler and Christopher Farmer, have lodged a complaint against Davies for obstructing the investigation in promoting new crypto ventures. According to the complaint, Davies has only provided limited information and has

been uncooperative in their efforts to gather the required records. A hearing has been scheduled for March 2nd to determine if the court will enforce the subpoena and force Davies to comply. Crypto donations pour into Turkey and Syria after devastating earthquakes. In response to the deadly earthquake in Turkey and Syria, the crypto community has rallied together to provide aid and support to those affected by the disaster, raising as much as $3.5 million for Turkey and still counting. Crypto companies such as Binance, Tether, Bitfinex, and Ku Koi pledged over $9 million in aid. Crypto donations have become a well-established way of providing relief in times of crisis. After the initial invasion of Ukraine by Russia, crypto was widely used to donate

funds and provide much needed support to those affected by the conflict. For those who would like to donate to the relief effort in Turkey and Syria, the addresses are in the show notes. Time for FunBits. An extremely bored ape. The FBI seized a bored ape, which turns out to be a pretty hilarious story. Why don't you listen to it from Unchained Social Media Managing? Jenny Hogan. So the FBI has seized a bored ape, which now that it's mired in government bureaucracy, is an extremely bored ape. Going to a recent report, the FBI seized the ape, a doodle NFT, about 87 ETH, and a $40,000 watch, all for an infamous crypto scammer named horror. By far the most shocking part of this story is that when the government seized the assets,

the ETH was worth about $116,000, and today, it's worth about $144,000. That is a twist for the ages. Of course, the FBI themselves did not actually find horror. Doing things, achieving goals, helping people that's not really like what the government's all about. Independent blockchain investor Zach XBT to the rescue. We don't know the real identity of Zach XBT. He is not, as his name suggests, when a Bilan must's children. But get this. Horror was discovered because of a $40,000 watch that he bragged about on social media.

Doesn't he have anything normal to post about, like an avocado? All of which is to say, if you're going to steal a shit ton of crypto, have the decency to use your iPhone. to keep pack of time. Thanks so much for joining us today. To learn more about Chris and the drama around the governance of Uniswap, check out the show notes for this episode. Want more short bites of crypto content? Unchained has started releasing original videos.

Find our latest on whether A16C controls Uniswap on our YouTube channel. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, without from Anthony Yun, Mark Murdoch, Matt Pilchard, Zach Seward, Bonavanovich, Sam Shre Rum, Shinny Hogan, Ben Munster, Pamajumdar, Shishonk, and CLK transcription. Thanks for listening.