Unchained

A prediction market trades on outcomes. An information market trades on knowledge. Fielding makes the case for the latter.

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What if the biggest constraint on AI is not compute or data, but trust? Ben Fielding, CEO and co-founder of Gensys, spent years as a machine learning researcher before concluding that decentralized hardware was the only path to true scale, and that blockchain was the only technology that could make machines trust each other without human intermediaries. With the launch of Delphi, Gensys's onchain information market built on an OP stack L2, Fielding puts his theory to the test while making the case that prediction markets have been asking the wrong question all along, and that the long tail of markets no one has thought to create yet is where the real opportunity lies.

Host:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Steve Ehrlich, Head of Research at SharpLink and Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview - https://x.com/Steven_Ehrlich

Guest:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Fielding, CEO & Co-Founder, Gensys @BenFielding

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$606 million in DeFi exploits in one month. Two of the space's sharpest risk thinkers debate whether lenders are being paid anywhere close to enough.

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One month, $606 million in exploits. And yet DeFi lending yields for blue-chip collateral sit close to SOFR, as if nothing happened. 

Tom Dunleavy, head of venture at Varys Capital, did the math and concluded that fair risk-adjusted DeFi yields should sit around 12.5%. Adrian Cachinero Vasiljevic, co-founder of Steakhouse Financial, thinks that number paints with too broad a brush, and that for the right primitives, with the right collateral, the market rate might actually be close to correct. 

Host Laura Shin queries them on the TradFi equations that underpin the debate, the DeFi-specific risks that those equations miss, and on whether depositors are sleepwalking into tail risk they cannot fully see.

Host:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:


⁠⁠⁠⁠Tom Dunleavy, Head of Venture, Varys Capital — @dunleavy89


Adrian Cachinero Vasiljevic, Co-Founder, Steakhouse Financial — @adcv_

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Pump.fun set fire to $370 million in tokens. Luca lays out the airdrop math that says they should have done the opposite.

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Pump.fun had a choice with $370 million worth of its own tokens. It burned them.

On this week’s Uneasy Money, Luca Netz argues that was the worst option on the table. He lays out the “people’s champ” math that, in his view, could have turned Pump.fun into a $5 billion-a-year business if Alon Cohen had launched the biggest airdrop crypto has ever seen—and bought the tokens back at the bottom.

Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan also dig into the 137,000 ETH community effort to plug the KelpDAO hole, why Tay thinks Aave—not Layer Zero or KelpDAO—is the key player in DeFi’s latest blowup, and Luca’s blunt new take on whether DeFi yield is even worth the risk right now.

Plus: Meta paying creators in USDC, the ghost of Libra, and OpenAI’s leaked AI-native phone.

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins

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Is the era of protocol bailouts upon us? The Chopping Block crew and MegaETH's Shuyao Kong debate Defi United’s community-funded rescue, the KPI vesting experiment shaking up token launches, whether DeFi yields truly underprice risk, and the first major PolyMarket insider trading bust—all delivered with the usual insider banter you won’t hear anywhere else.

Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week, the squad is joined by MegaETH co-founder Shuyao Kong, fresh off their headline-making KPI-gated token launch. First, we dive into the whirlwind that is Defi United: a who’s-who of Ethereum OGs and protocols pledging hundreds of millions to fill bailout holes from the massive KelpDAO hack—voluntarily. Are we witnessing a new age of protocol do-gooder vibes or just kicking the moral hazard can down the road? 

Then, we tear into the “are DeFi yields way too low” debate, prodded by Tom Dunleavy’s viral thread—should degens really be earning more for taking protocol risk, or are the markets just as weird as they seem? Shuyao gives us an under-the-hood look at MegaETH’s radical KPI vesting mechanics, why they made the token vesting play risky pre-TGE, and whether dynamic tokenomics could be the industry’s way forward (with plenty of banter about airdrop farming and governance theater along the way). 

Finally, we spin through the saga of PolyMarket’s big DOJ insider trading bust: is “insider info” a feature or a bug in prediction markets? All that, history lessons, cynicism, and more—let’s get into it.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights

🔹 Defi United’s “bailout”—how a crowd-sourced effort filled the KelpDAO hack hole and melted crypto Twitter  

🔹 Are protocol donations precedent-setting, a warning shot, or just vibes maxing?  

🔹 Inside debates about moral hazard, socialized losses, and why kumbaya only works once  

🔹 Surprising names (and missing ones!) from the bailout contributor list: Consensys, Mantle, Lido, Arbitrum, Circle, more  

🔹 Why airdrop farmers sending dust is the most on-brand thing for crypto  

🔹 The “are DeFi yields too low?” debate and why the true risk-free rate may be a myth in DeFi  

🔹 MegaETH’s “KPI vesting” tokenomics—how gating TGEs by actual ecosystem milestones might fix launch incentives  

🔹 Insight on why pre-TGE KPI mechanics might actually be the future (and why most fail after launch)  

🔹 PolyMarket’s first big insider trading bust—when is secret alpha “market info” and when is it treason?  

🔹 Vintage history, cyber insurance analogies, and philosophical banter you can only get on TCB

Hosts

⭐️ Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️ Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️ Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly 

Guest

⭐️ Shuyao Kong, Co-founder at MegaETH

Disclosures
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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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Heads up!

If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠ and wherever you get your podcasts.

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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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