Unchained

One side wins the OpenAI-Microsoft divorce, Ram calls a 19% earnings growth year 'bananas,' and Chris wants the US to hack back against DeFi exploiters. Here is the full rundown.

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Chris Perkins and Ram Ahluwalia cover a lot of ground this week: Iran appears to be seeking a deal to end the Strait of Hormuz blockade as US economic pressure mounts, and the US government just worked with Tether to seize over $300 million in Iranian-linked stablecoins. 

Bottoms-up S&P earnings estimates are running at 19% year-over-year growth, tech earnings are about to hit, and both hosts think the setup for markets is unusually constructive. 

They also break down the new Microsoft-OpenAI agreement, the arrest of a special operations soldier for betting on the Maduro raid on Polymarket, and what the Kelp DAO hack means for DeFi's path to institutional adoption.

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ram Ahluwalia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of Lumida


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Chris Perkins⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of 250 Digital Asset Management

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Microsoft restructured its agreement with OpenAI, and Ram Ahluwalia has a clear verdict: Microsoft won. 

In this segment from Bits + Bips, Ram explains the three things Microsoft secured from the new deal, walks through the contract-breach context that shifted the negotiating leverage, and argues that Microsoft now holds a free call option on all of OpenAI's future model development, at no additional cost.

Chris Perkins (@perkinscr97) — Co-Founder & Managing Partner, 250 Digital Asset Management

Ram Ahluwalia (@ramahluwalia) — CEO, Lumida Wealth

This clip is from a longer conversation on markets, tech earnings, DeFi security, and prediction markets. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/GE_847Xrj9E 

We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET — subscribe to catch it live.

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Luke Leasure and Shaunda Devens of Blockworks Research explain how three compounding failures, Kelp's one-of-one bridge signer, Layer Zero's permissive default settings, and Aave's failure to flag it as a collateral risk, set up the conditions for the exploit. 

Shaunda Devens then breaks down the monolithic pool design that concentrated risk, showing how 98% of rsETH collateral was backing a single leverage looping strategy. 

This clip is from a longer conversation on the Kelp rsETH hack and its implications for DeFi. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/hJ9X_btsvD0

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People think of Aave and Morpho as competitors. But Morpho only lost $1 million when North Korea drained $300M from a DeFi protocol. The architecture explains why.

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After North Korea's Lazarus Group drained nearly $300 million from Kelp DAO's bridge, the contagion spread fast, leaving close to $200 million in bad debt on Aave. Morpho, one of the largest lending protocols in DeFi, ended up with about $1 million in exposure. 

Paul Frambot, co-founder and CEO of Morpho, explains why the protocol's modular, isolated architecture produced a different outcome, and what it reveals about how DeFi lending is supposed to work. 

He also addresses the ongoing debate over whether DeFi lenders are fairly compensated for risk, the institutional reaction to the hack and what it means for the sector's timeline, the moral complexity of Arbitrum's decision to freeze stolen funds, and why formal verification may be DeFi's last line of defense in an age of increasingly powerful AI.

Host:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:


⁠Paul Frambot, Co-founder and CEO of Morpho Labs

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KelpDAO’s hackers left telltale signs pointing to one culprit, North Korea. Then, in a surprise move, the Arbitrum Security Council decided to fight back.

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In this episode about the hack on KelpDAO that had a broad impact across all of DeFi, Miguel Morel of Arkham, explains what digital fingerprints made it clear North Korea was the likely hacker, plus how it is that Arkham’s users are using the platform to figure out how to get their bad debt out of Aave and when.

Then Griff Green, a member of the Arbitrum Security Council, explains some of the reasoning that went into the decision to freeze $71 million of the funds stolen by DPRK, how the surprise move worked technically, and why blockchains are immutable only by social consensus — and how even Bitcoin could be changed by social consensus.

Host:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:


Miguel Morel, CEO of Arkham Intelligence


Griff Green, Arbitrum Security Council Member, Leader of the DAO Security Fund, Co-founder of Giveth

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