Masters of Web3: Recent Episodes
Transak
Masters of Web3 gives blockchain industry professionals an exclusive look into the stories behind the world’s most well-known crypto startups like Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Solana, and more. Join Transak CEO Sami Start and former CNBC money journalist Megan DeMatteo as they speak to the high-profile founders, developers, and innovators building the world’s most widely adopted decentralized ecosystems.
Let’s be honest. Crypto has a compliance problem. Blockchain is a global, permissionless, borderless digital technology that expands beyond geography. Yet, regulatory bodies exist in every nation, state, and locality — making it hard for industry players to know what’s legal and what’s not.
That’s why the work of people like James Young, Head of Compliance & MLRO at Transak, is so important.
Join us as we discuss:
- The headlines driving the newest crypto compliance concerns
- Why blockchain provides a safer avenue for regulation
- Why crypto is misunderstood
- How compliance can make your team shine
For more, check out “Startups see gold in crypto compliance” in Protocol.
After witnessing political volatility and moving to the U.S. from Moscow in the early 1990s, Anastasia decided as a child that she wanted to create world change through technology.
That led to an undergraduate degree in political science, a varied career in media, and a six-year period in Rwanda bringing education and tech to East African citizens.
Then the Cambridge Analytica data scandal happened, and Anastasia knew she wanted to move into the crucially important digital privacy field.
Anastasia Uglova is the Head of Communications & Ecosystem Development at Lighthouse, an alumna of Cornell with a Masters in InfoSec from UT Austin and an experienced skydiver.
Join us as we discuss:
- How do we preserve digital privacy and consent in increasingly immersive spaces?
- Preserving your identity in the metaverse — and the role crypto tech plays
- Why technology evolves faster than our cognitive adaptability
- Dark pattern design and taking control of your user journey
There are not enough hours in the day for Marek Olszewski. As co-founder and CTO of cLabs and president of Valora, Marek, along with partners, are developing a crypto ecosystem (Celo) that is not only profitable but of service to people.
Marek and cLabs are making it easier and cheaper for people to send money with fewer fees at a faster rate.
Join us as we discuss:
- The synergy between Marek’s values and the technology to make his ideals a reality
- The practical uses of Celo’s Layer 1 blockchain
- Celo’s development of tokens for smartphone use
Like many platforms in the blockchain space, Ambire was created out of necessity. The founders wanted to monetize their content and also have transparency in the supply chain management of ad sales.
Vanina Ivanova is the Chief Marketing Officer of Ambire, navigating the company through the convolution of the ad tech world. Vanina is using her experience to maximize the profits of clients through ad tech.
Join us as we discuss:
- How decentralization offers solution from a marketing and advertising perspective
- How Ambire is supplementing for the current high gas fees
- What type of companies or people are utilizing the wallets
The cryptocurrency market has taken quite a nose dive recently. But while the market is down, new innovations are happening with blockchain so that DeFi may one day be widely adopted.
Luigi D’Onorio is the Head of DeFi at Ava Labs on the Avalanche ecosystem. Luigi and his team are building new protocols, products, and applications in the DeFi space so that institutional adoption of DeFi will be a thing of the future.
Join us as we discuss:
- What is causing DeFi to be so expensive currently
- What will bring peer-to-peer DeFi adoption to the institutional level
- What implications Luigi and Sami see comprehensive crypto legislation having on DeFi
Since first investing in Bitcoin, Aziz Zainuddin aka Atticus has always had an interest in cryptocurrency. But given his traditional financial background, he saw practical limitations for developing crypto products within traditional corporate structures.
However, Atticus and his partners saw early that decentralized models scaled through automation had the potential to experience faster growth and fewer scaling issues. So they founded StellaSwap, one of the first automated market-making DEXs for Moonbeam.
Join us as we discuss:
- What made Atticus and Sami go “all-in” on crypto
- Finding the balance between DeFi and regulation
- Scaling DEXs and AMMs
While the web3 space is a fairly new and exciting space, it does have room for improvement and creativity.
Mark Dawson, along with his partner Daniel Stratton, saw that there was a need for artists to be able to sell their work on Optimism, where a NFT marketplace did not exist.
In light of this need in the marketplace, Mark Dawson became the Co-Founder, along with Daniel Stratton, of Quixotic, which is the first NFT marketplace for Optimism, an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution.
Join us as we discuss:
- Whether crypto and web3 communities are ready for mainstream NFT adoption
- The importance of your NFTs following you around on the internet
- The innovation dilemma occurring in the crypto ecosystem
The complexity of blockchain scalability is one of the biggest barriers to adoption. Yan Martins, the CEO of Hathor Labs, along with his partners are working to solve this issue.
Yan Martins used the experience he obtained from his previous internet startup company to properly identify issues within blockchain, assess the market, and find his niche in the web3 space with Hathor Labs.
Join us as we discuss:
- The barriers to enterprises adoption of crypto
- Network scalability vs. speed & stability
- Hiring the right developers in a competitive market
What started out as a school project at Princeton University, became Arbitrum, an Ethereum scaling solution platform that allows you to make low cost but highly secure transactions.
Harry Kalodner is the Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Offchain Labs, leading the engineering team that is developing Arbitrum.
Harry gives us insight and how he and his team began to develop Arbitrum and how even when issues came along the way, he and his team continued to forge forward doing what they loved to do.
Join us as we discuss:
- How every Arbitrum transaction is an Ethereum transaction
- How Harry and Sami adjusted when stepping into the role of co-founder
- On-ramping to crypto on Arbitrum’s Layer 2 rollup
Kadena which is a scalable layer one smart contract blockchain. As more adoption is occurring in the crypto world, businesses are becoming weary because of congestion. Kadena believes that they have solved the scalability problem within crypto.
Anatasia Bez is the Director of Operations at Kadena. She is celebrating her fourth year with Kadena coming from a background as a civil liberties researcher.
Join us as we discuss:
- What intrigued Anatasia about Kadena, blockchain, and cryptocurrency
- Advising Kadena Eco, Kadena’s ecosystem fund initiative
- The major benefits of Proof of Work
When it comes to investing in cryptocurrency, or anything for that matter, you should fundamentally know what you are investing in. Beefy Finance helps make that initial researching process and investing a little bit easier by simplifying DeFi yields.
Weso, who once worked at a Fortune 50 company, is the lead developer and strategic partnerships coordinator for Beefy Finance. Listen to our conversation with Weso as we discuss:
- How transferable business skills create better DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations)
- How Beefy structures its compensation packages for its 16 contributors
- What legal questions developers need to consider when building a DAO-based business model for your DeFi protocols
With the financial climate being relatively uncertain to many, people are turning to cryptocurrency. Sandeep Nailwal and his partners predicted this turn back in 2016 when they started Polygon Technology.
Originally known as Matic Network, Polygon has become the most widely adopted Layer 2 scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain. The goal of Polygon is to provide a scalability platform which has very low transaction fees,
Hear our conversation with Sandeep Nailwal, Co-Founder of Polygon Technology about:
- How Polygon come into existence
- How Polygon built community
- The challenges for mainstream adoption of crypto in India
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Crypto is a field for visionaries, but unfortunately, buying and transferring cryptocurrency can be a complicated process. Thankfully, there are plenty of new Web3 teams, DAOs, and blockchain companies working to make the crypto onramp process easier. So, twice a month, we’re going to talk to them.
In this introductory episode, the co-hosts share an informal conversation about the show and what the audience can come to expect from Transak’s new podcast, Masters of Web3.
Hear our co-hosts’ conversation:
- Sami’s crypto origin story
- What listeners can expect from the podcast
- Whether crypto is sustainable or not
- Transak’s use case
More information about the co-hosts and today’s topics:
- LinkedIn Profiles:https://www.linkedin.com/in/samistart/#experience https://www.linkedin.com/in/megandematteo/
- Company Website: https://transak.com/
To make sure you never miss an episode of the Masters of Web3 podcast, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and the website.
Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Masters of Web3 in your favorite podcast player.