You Can't Code Your Way Out | Amor Sexton, Blockdaemon

In the last few weeks, Drift and Kelp lost $577 million between them. Neither one was a code exploit. Both were operational and governance failures.

Amor Sexton, Chief Operating Officer at Blockdaemon, was last on MoneyNeverSleeps in October 2022 (EP 193) talking about how institutional client expectations of resilient processes would drive blockchain adoption. Three and a half years later, the industry just got an extremely expensive lesson in exactly that thesis.

In this episode, Pete and Amor get into:

- Why "this isn't a hack, it's a governance failure" is the conversation the industry isn't having

- How compliance is a subset of risk — and why DeFi keeps confusing the two

- The Web2/human layer compromise that exploits a legitimate Web3 feature

- Pluto on Castle Island: "Everything that TradFi has built in terms of circuit breakers, we're just speed running relearning those things in crypto"

- The Kelp configuration was a known vulnerability — and 47% of operators chose it anyway

- The two or three governance questions every DeFi protocol and LP should be asking right now

- Why it always comes back to people, not code

Chapters:

00:00 Cold open

00:24 Welcome back to MoneyNeverSleeps

00:55 $577M, 18 days, no code exploit

02:00 Compliance is a subset of risk

03:15 Guardrails and governance

04:30 The Web2 layer compromise

05:45 Speedrunning what TradFi already built

07:30 Why 47% chose the risky configuration

09:00 Three governance questions every protocol should answer

12:30 It always comes back to people

13:30 Sign off

Connect with Amor:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amor-sexton/

Blockdaemon: https://www.blockdaemon.com/

About MoneyNeverSleeps:

MoneyNeverSleeps is hosted by Pete Townsend, GP at Norio Ventures. Sharp riffs, big ideas, and real insights from smart people in crypto, fintech, AI, and onchain finance.

Connect with Pete:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petetownsendnv/

X: @petetownsendnv

Norio Ventures: https://www.norioventures.com

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