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- [00:00]
Ryan Watkins
Centralized exchanges are the most threatened they've ever been in their existence and decentralized exchanges across all fronts, both spot and perps, just continually market share.
- [00:15]
Laura Shin
Hi everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hate resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. I'm here with Brian Watkins, co founder of Syncrecy Capital, and Sunny Shi, investor at Secrecy Capital. But before we dive into this discussion, we are going to give a little love to our sponsors, Token 2049 and.
- [00:33]
Sponsor Announcer
The crypto world is buzzing. On October 1st and 2nd, 25,000 people will be at Token 2049 Singapore, the largest crypto event in the world, featuring headline speakers like Eric Trump, Vlad Tenev, Tom Lee, Balaji Srinivasan and Arthur Hayes. Visit asia.token2049.com now to get 15% off tickets with the code Unchained. Binance is the world's number one crypto exchange, trusted by over 290 million users. With leading liquidity, security and a wide range of digital asset products, Binance is the place to buy, sell, trade and earn crypto. Download Binance today to get started.
- [01:15]
Laura Shin
Welcome, Ryan and Sunny. So everyone's been buzzing about hyperliquid versus Aster, and I feel like we're doing the show a little bit late. Like there's been a lot of discussion. But as Ryan especially knows, we were trying to get a show with different perspectives, like somebody who was kind of more on the hyper liquid side and somebody more on the Astro side. Honestly, we had a bit of a difficult time finding someone who had a strong conviction that Astro was going to win. So we decided to have Ryan and Sunny. They're both hyper liquid bull. Secrecy, I think, has a big position there. So just take what they say with the knowledge that, you know, they, they have their hyper liquid bags. But, you know, to give some context, Hyperliquid obviously has been this darling of the industry for this past year. There was a lot of talk about whether or not it could take on Binance, which is kind of funny because I just realized that they're one of the sponsors of the show. But anyway, so cz, the founder of Binance, and Jeff Yan, the founder of Pepper Liquid, kind of got into these like little mini tweet debates about, you know, the merits of having this perp Dex with information that was transparent to everyone. But in the last 10 days, Aster, which is backed by YZ Labs, formerly Binance Labs, it's actually jumped to the top of the list of perp Dex volume. Some of the reasons Might be like it just launched a token. But also CZ has been promoting it to his 10 million followers. And so when you look at Defi Llama now it's at the top of the volume rankings for 30 days, 7 days, 24 hours. And hyperliquid is like generally around third for I think most of them. Lighter is what's in second place. I don't know about all of them but definitely for 24 hour. So you know, if we also look at the tokens, the aster price has gone from $0.56 to A$58 as of like an hour ago when I wrote that. And across the same time span the high price dropped from its all time high of $58 down to about 45 now. So Ryan and Sunny, why don't you go ahead and explain, you know, why you think we're seeing this flip flopping of the Aster and Hyper Liquid volumes. I know you know you guys are bullish long term but just explain kind of what we're currently seeing and either.
- [03:42]
Ryan Watkins
One of you sure. So I think in a, in a snapshot it can look like anything is true. And if you look at a snapshot today you will see ass are doing a ton of volume layer. Doing ton of volume and even surpassing Hyper Liquid. But I think what's really important here is just to zoom out on what is the big thing that is happening underneath the surface. And what's really happening is that centralized exchanges are the most threatened they've ever been in their existence. And decentralized exchanges across all fronts, both spot and perps just continually market share. So if you look at it just statistically, decentral Exchanges account for 30% of all spot volumes right now. Most of that was led by early on to Solana and its meme coin trading. And then now even some of the more majors are starting to capture on unit's been doing a good job for Hyper Liquid then for the perps that's usually around 5 to 10% as well and growing. And mind you, both of these numbers were, I mean barely a rounding error even two years ago. So it's just been up and to the right and it's been a big threat. And why do these centralized exchanges care in the first place? It's because perps, just as one example, are the single largest source of revenue for these exchanges. And we're not talking about this being a single digit. This is like a double digit billion dollar opportunity many times over. This is like the largest source of profit pool for them. And finally they're being threatened. And when you think about during 2021, during that cycle with the rise of defi, a lot of these exchanges just didn't really care. They're like, all right, people can trade all the little defi tokens on their AMMs, it's not going to compete this long term. But now they're actually starting to step up to the plate and really play ball here. So when we look at Aster versus hyper Liquid, I think that's almost not even the right framing. To me it's just decentralized exchanges versus centralized exchanges and not even just like hyper liquid versus Astor, hyper liquid versus the field. And it's no surprise that you see not only Binance backing Aster, but you even see BYBIT building its own kind of like decentralized perps exchange because they realize that okay, if trading is going to move on chain, if perps are single largest source of revenue going to move on chain, then we need to play here too so we can capture this. And I think that's really what's happening right now.
- [06:08]
Laura Shin
Sunny, what about you?
- [06:10]
Sunny Shi
Yeah, really quickly, I think Ryan put it really well. Before I joined Secrecy, I was at Messari where I wrote two pieces in this series called the Clob wars where I was highlighting the rise of these on chain order books. So on chain order books I thought was a better distinction than let's say Dex versus Dex for this specific scenario. Because a lot of these next generation perp Dexs are launching as on chain order books and the opportunity is huge. As hyperliquid has painted, there is still 80% left market share to capture from decentralized exchange pie of perp volumes, derivatives volumes, overall trillions of dollars of volume a year. And I think it was a matter of time before this meta would emerge is kind of what I thought because you never have a leader like hyperliquid come out, take a 90%, take 90% share in this on chain vertical and then hold that into perpetuity. It always gets more competitive at some point. Like we saw this with spot dexes with AMMs like Uniswap and Sushiswap Dydx getting disrupted by hyperliquid after holding like a monster market share for perps in 2023. And so this is just something that we've seen occurring. And I think some nuances is probably warranted here in that there is very, very much plenty of white space left to capture against centralized exchanges. But one is remarkable detail flow. They've been able to aggregate and I think that's the key distinction here, is how much of the volumes we're seeing are real organic flows coming from retail users who are willing to put on a position for a certain period of time and either lose money or make money. And I think in that regard hyperliquid is still undisputed. I don't think it's even, it's even a dispute what might come out grams and what might come out of this competitive landscape between these different on chain clubs kind of fighting for market share. I think we'll start to see the waters get a little bit more contested. But I think for now it should be, I think the nuance should be addressed when it comes to what is organic and what is innovations are driving this on chain clop Meta forward. What are real innovations? What are just paper narratives being touted by members of ct. So that's, I think, kind of where we'll get into the meat of this discussion today, where it'll be pretty interesting. But in general, I agree with Ryan. This is the megatrend of onchain clubs and on chain order books and on chain dexes taking share from centralized exchanges.
- [08:49]
Laura Shin
Yeah, before we get into kind of that, all that stuff, because I agree that that's like the more significant bigger trend, let's just talk about like some of the kind of like recent news to just put all that into context and then we can get into what it all means. So when you talked about like organic versus inorganic, I'm assuming you're talking about the Astro airdrop that's coming up. You know, they have this points campaign, they're saying this airdrop will happen in Q4. So you know, maybe just like explain like what effect you think that that's having on this temporary or like, I'm assuming you're saying that you think it's temporary like what we're seeing in the, in the volume. So just like talk about, you know, why we're seeing this action. Like, you know what you meant when you were referring to like organic and inorganic.
- [09:33]
Sunny Shi
When you look at the early stages of hyper liquid point seasons, it was a little bit under the radar, I think, because people did not understand the true opportunity at hand. So people were farming HyperLiquid back in 2023 and 2024 and they thought that hyperliquid would just be maybe like another iteration of DYDX, maybe a $2 to $4 billion protocol. I think if you made it very clear from the beginning that hyperliquid would be a $50 billion FDV opportunity you would have seen much higher levels of inorganic volumes coming in and farming that point season. And so the cat's side kind of out of the bag. This is an exciting meta. Everyone wants to be involved already from like an FTV perspective I think is north of $10 billion. And so that is a massive token opportunity if you're planning an airdrop. And obviously the response from people who might want a slice of that action is going to be larger relatively to what we saw with hyperliquid. And you can kind of parse through the data and see some of the differences in what early hyperliquid usage looked like relative to aster usage. So some of the things that people have talked about on CT are volume versus oi. And so it's incredibly easy to put on short timeframe positions and close them to farm notional volumes without actually holding a position for a long period of time paying funding, risking P and L. I think it's just more complex if you're farming a protocol to hold positions for longer. And so the volume OI ratio is something that people have referenced for hyper liquid versus Aster versus lighter. I think something else we look at is the percentage of long tail activity relative to majors activity in terms of what pairs are being traded. And the reason why this is the case is because if you're farming volumes, paper volumes on a platform, it's much easier to farm Bitcoin ethereum.
- [11:23]
Laura Shin
Ryan, why don't you pick up on what I think.
- [11:29]
Ryan Watkins
Hyper liquid open interest is larger than lighter and aser. And I think that's like a really good sense check to balance out with the volume numbers you're seeing because the volume numbers, as Sunny mentioned, when there is a clear market opportunity that everyone is playing for and they can make, you know, these, these big predictions on what the airdrop will be, it just attracts a lot of farming activity. So I think what Sunny was getting at is how for a lot of the volumes for Aster and light are concentrated in the majors because these are really easy positions should just trade in and out of positions and just like farm farm those protocols. Whereas I think for some of the long tail stuff it's a little bit less, less easy to do. And that's also one of the areas where I think hyperliquid has done very well and a reason why I think some of the central exchanges are so concerned about its growth anyways. And this can actually be like a leading indicator in some places, in some cases, if you look at like the last. I don't know, maybe three big TGEs like cogeneration events over the past three months. So think about like Pump, you think about Plasma and you think about Aster, right? Like as of the big three, HyperLiquid had more open interest for those markets than Binance. That's why they're concerned, that's why, that's why they're so concerned about hyperliquid because they're like, all right, well if all the hottest new markets like Hyper Liquid is winning that, and not only is it winning it in purse, but it's also winning it in terms of spot as well, like hyperliquid was like one of the dominant venues to trade spot pump out the gate, then I mean they can kind of see the writing on the wall too that like we really need to play ball here because if Hyper Liquid has a structural advantage and that anyone in the world can access it and you have all of these third party distribution platforms like Phantom that are plugging into hyperliquid and giving it to their, you know, 10 million plus users, then this might just end up running away with it if we don't do anything. So yeah, that, that's how the safe.
- [13:35]
Laura Shin
But Ryan, I just wanted to ask you so just to. Can you just make clear like what you think this relationship is between CZ or Binance and Aster? Like obviously YZ Labs or I don't know how to pronounce that, but the former Binance Labs has invested in Aster. But you know, if, if you feel like it's that Binance is worried about, you know, this competitor Hyper Liquid, then like is it that, you know, sort of like Aster is almost like the base to, you know, instead of BSC or BNB or whatever it's called so many names that it's you know, kind of like creating its own on chain perp Dex and that, that will be like the, the new, like the new version of that for Binance or something to take on Hyper Liquid or something. I'm just extrapolating but like yeah, talk a little bit about strategy. Is there?
- [14:30]
Sunny Shi
Yeah, I think if you look at the way that Aster is constructed, it is an off chain matching engine with multiple on chain front ends to different chains. And so it is not a BNB exclusive. Perpdex. You can onboard from any number of chains. The activity itself is not actually happening on bnb. And I think, you know, CZ without like assuming what his intentions are, I think he very much sees the writing on the wall that the future of trading might actually occur on decentralized venues rather than centralized venues. He's actually talked about this in the early days of, of Hyper Liquid's rise, dominance and even pre predating Hyper Liquid. He's talked about his interest in replicating their business on chain in a decentralized venue. So I do believe he genuinely thinks this is the path forward. Whether or not he's going to throw all of his resources behind Aster and spend all of his time building Aster, as he's saying right now. I think that's something that I'm unsure of today, like will he have multiple different iterations or products or teams working on this and he's going to monitor the situation and kind of get a, get an assessment of what is going to be his best probability to build a winning on chain product. Like I think that that could still happen. As I've talked about on Twitter, the Aster product itself is relatively new. It is not as fleshed out as even some of the more serious Hyper Liquid competitors, like Lighter, like Fogo, like Bullet that we're seeing come down the line. And so I think for now he's definitely genuinely interested in this, in this sort of mega trend that we talked about. Whether or not all of his eggs are behind this Astro Basket.
- [16:11]
Ryan Watkins
One thing I was just saying, CZ has been talking about this trend for a long time and I just think that the exchange founders have been aware of this trend for many years, even dating back to last cycle. What was the original motivation for spinning up Biance Smart Chain or BNB Chain that actually preceded that, which was like a cosmos chain? What is the motivation for Coinbase spinning up Base or any of the other Asian exchanges spinning up their own blockchains? It's because they can see that their business is inevitably going to be done on chain and it's actually better to be doing it on chain. If you can swap, say Seoul for example, and you can do it on chain then and it's non custodial, that is a better product. If it's, if you can get the performance and the latency down and everything, that's a better product because you don't have to worry about sending your money to some opaque offshore exchange and then some guy just like runs off and steals it or North Korea hacks you, right? So they kind of seen this for a long time and they've been, they've been experimenting with different ways of playing ball here, right? Whether it be spinning up their own chains or like maybe spinning up their own amm, there's Just all these different ways I've been trying to experiment here. So yeah, I think, you know, Sunny's right to kind of situate this within the, you know, the kind of larger and long running story of central exchanges in a way like disrupting themselves.
- [17:42]
Laura Shin
Yeah, honestly, everything you were saying there, it reminds me of how, you know, for so long, even though like in the wider world people thought of Coinbase as a crypto exchange, we in the industry thought of it more like fintech. Right. Because like their main product for so long was just like they had a very smooth and easy way to just buy crypto from your bank account so that, you know, that's more of a like a fintech thing. It's just like how do you connect bank accounts to a place where you can buy crypto? And like, of course I understand that you actually buy in crypto. Like that's, you know, another challenge. But still. And then now, you know, there's this moment where it's almost like late 90s Internet or something where everybody knows there is going to be a Google that comes out of this, but which one will it be? And Google of course spawned like Gmail and Google Calendar and Google Meets. And literally so much of our lives now runs on Google. And so yeah, whoever brings more people on chain, they have a shot at that. So kind of like last little recent news event that I want to just cover because it made a lot of headlines and I'm, I'm curious also, as I'm sure you saw, Arthur Hayes, he talked about how he thought that hyperliquid was gonna, that, you know, he called it that. He said it had a potential upside of 126x of where it was trading. This was in late August when he read this essay about it. Less than a month later he sold.
- [19:22]
Sponsor Announcer
His height position because as he put.
- [19:24]
Laura Shin
It, he needed to put down a deposit on a new Ferrari. So his team also kind of wrote something about the token unlocks for hyper liquid that are going to start coming up in November. Maelstrom, his family Office tweeted, Starting November 29th, 237.8 million HYPE tokens will begin vesting linearly over 24 months at $50. A token that's $11.8 billion in TEAM unlocks nearly $500 million notional hitting the market every month. And they said that leaves a $410 million month supply over per month supply overhang post buybacks. So I wondered, obviously you guys are bullish on hyperliquid. As we discussed at the beginning of the show. But when you look at the token unlocks, what are your thoughts about what the price action would be over the next few years?
- [20:21]
Sunny Shi
Yeah, I can take this one real quick. Hopefully I don't cut out anymore. I swapped over to my mobile device but I think, you know, I just actually went to a hyperliquid event yesterday at Token. I'm repping the Hyper Liquid shirt, got the Hyper Liquid plushie over here. Hopefully this is going to be worth a little bit of money. But I think, I think, I think a lot of this does come down to the familiarity that we have with the team. And you know, typically this is, this is kind of an opaque thesis where like look like some people are going to have questions about this team. You know, some people might not know them with the level of understanding that we have following them over the past year plus and how they've executed. But you know, I think it is. We are confident that Jeff will figure out how Jeff and the team will figure out a way to go about these unlocks that will minimize market impact on hype the asset. And I think that right now there's a lot of FUD surrounding what might happen post the unlocks. And we're taking a directional bet here that the team is going to make the best decision for token holders, make the best decision for the platform as they've continuously done over the past two, three years that they've been building this project. And whether that means relocking their token, whether it means selling a bit in a transparent manner and then committing to holding the rest, whatever it is, we're not sure what it's going to look like, but we think this is a decision that they're going to act methodically, they're going to act in a well thought out and rational manner. And I think that they're going to prioritize the health of the token and the health of the platform as they continue to die, as well as the health of the community.
- [22:10]
Sponsor Announcer
And are you saying that based on.
- [22:11]
Laura Shin
Conversations with them that they're thinking about like different ways to kind of cushion the blow? Is that what you're saying? Or are you just like speculating or like where is this coming from?
- [22:22]
Sunny Shi
If you, if you have had any interactions with this team, you'll know that they tell you nothing. There is no, there is no information leakage from the hyperleak of team. Trust me. Like when I was at Messar and I was trying to write these reports, it was very difficult to get, get like long, long answer Long winded answers about anything. And so I think, I think no, we, we, we have no. The short answer is no. We had no unique information or insight into what the team has been telling us. This is just sort of a, kind of a, a pattern matching decision that we're making based off of the, you know, stellar track record of this entire.
- [22:57]
Ryan Watkins
I think one thing I'll just bring up too is there's, there's a ton of anxiety about unlocks. And I think people used to, I Remember back in 2020 or 2021, no one cared about unlocks. Like bullish unlocks was a meme, right? All the investors I remember like Solana in 2021, this was like January 1, 2021, there's this huge unlock and I remember everyone sharing on Twitter that it was going to nuke because 90% of suppliers coming online and you know, Solana was at, I don't know, maybe like $1 heading to the year and the rest is history, right. It went up to like 250 by the end of the year. So no one cared about it back then. And it's only over the past couple of years that this has become a huge overhang on projects. Right. And everyone's concerned about investor unlocks and team unlocks. And what is the reason why? Well, I think it's because, well, a lot of these coins are being unlocked at higher valuations that many of these projects can't sustain. So yeah, if you're some new L1 or L2 and you're trading at a 5 to 10 billion dollar valuation and no one's using the platform, then fine. If it's unlocking at $10 billion valuation, I mean it's going to go down. I mean you'd be stupid if you were gotten to seed route like $50 million, something like that and you're up a crazy amount to not take any profits, right? So I think it's like one key distinction here is that I do think that, you know, you can actually justify the hyper liquid valuation fundamentally and I think that provides like good support. But another key factor here is there are no investor unlocks. And I think the investor unlocks to me tend to be more dangerous than the team unlocks because many funds actually have obligations to return money back to investors over a different period, over a period of time. Maybe your venture fund, this is one of your biggest wins and you haven't sent any money back to investors. Well, here's a big win. Take some off the table, send it back to investors. You can Go raise your next fund. The team doesn't really have the same set of obligations, right? They just can sell if they want to. So then what are you making a bet on here? You're making a bet on the team. It's always a founder bet at the end of the day. And you just have to ask yourself, are these people that created this project to exit one year after the TGE or these people who want to actually build the one of the largest projects or largest blockchains in the world? And I think that's really the bet that we're making here with the team unlocks that these people have the right, they have the right set of values here.
- [25:34]
Laura Shin
Okay, so in a moment we're going to talk more about kind of like the greater significance of what this trend means and what is going to be happening in this space. But first we're going to take a quick word from the sponsors to make this show possible.
- [25:46]
Sponsor Announcer
Binance is the world's number one crypto exchange, trusted by over 290 million users globally. With world class liquidity, security and a wide portfolio of digital asset products, Binance makes crypto easy for everyone. Whether you're new to crypto or a professional, Binance offers a simple user experience. Learn with Binance Academy, browse hundreds of tokens and track your portfolio on an easy to use dashboard. For experienced users, Binance Pro provides industry leading services and bespoke trading products with some of the lowest fees and deepest liquidity in the market. It's no wonder over 290 million users choose Binance for everything. Crypto. Buy, sell, trade, earn, Live Crypto. Download Binance today and begin your journey into the future of finance. Binance is not available in certain countries, including the US. Check its terms for more information. Binance.com en terms Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. Tom Lee Vlad Tenev Paolo Arduino Balji Srinivasan, Arthur Hayes. These are just some of the headliners at Token 2049 Singapore, the largest crypto event in the world. Happening October 1st and 2nd. Over 25,000 attendees, 500 exhibitors and 300 speakers will converge for an unmissable week. Token 2049 will take over all five floors of Marina Bay Sands, transforming it into a pop up City with 1000 side events, nonstop networking and immersive experiences all leading into the Formula One Grand Prix weekend. Ticket prices are rising this week. Visit asia.token2049.com and use code UNCHAINED for 15% off tickets.
- [27:35]
Laura Shin
Back to my conversation with Ryan and Sunny. So I See in September that Hyperliquid actually had almost 14% of Binance's monthly perpetuals volume. And we're literally streaming here in the last hours of September or, sorry, that was, sorry, August. And in September it's looking like it'll be more like 12%. So obviously, you know, this, this is a, a figure that has just kind of been climbing and you know, I understand it's like down slightly. I didn't, I didn't look at, you know, kind of what the aggregate is of all these different perp Dexes. But Sunny, I know you kind of did like a big analysis of a bunch of these perp Dexes. So I was wondering if you could kind of like walk us through the analysis and through that lens of how likely is it that these would take on these centralized exchanges.
- [28:33]
Sunny Shi
Basically, my thesis for how this might play out in the long run is if we can get performance parity with centralized exchanges, and by that I mean roughly comparable levels of latency, roughly comparable levels of order book liquidity depths, roughly comparable levels of ux, then the decentralized platforms will win because they'll be able to aggregate global users easier. I think a permissionless venue is going to have a larger TAM than a permissioned KYC'd one. And so I think what you're seeing now is some of these new exchanges that are being built on chain, whether it's hyper liquid or some of the new iterations, you're getting pretty close in terms of performance. You're not there yet. I mean, obviously running a private, you know, private server is going to be more performant than trying to run like a fully transparent on chain L1 like HYPERLINK was trying to do. But you know, there's been some clever market structure design choices that Jeff has made to kind of level the playing field and the performance is getting close now. There is a big difference and a big nuance that we should kind of account for, which is that what we're seeing today on the hyper liquid platform when we talk to market makers is there is a plethora and an abundance of profitable retail flow. So these are people who are genuinely trading because they either love trading because they think they're going to make money, but they don't have an edge. They don't have, you know, there's, there's, they don't have, they're not toxic takers, they, they're kind of just vanilla, vanilla traders who you might like into the average retail user on Robinhood. And these people are not going to be putting in billions and billions of dollars of annual trading volumes alone. But they are going to be putting in very, very valuable desirable flow to a market maker and it's also going to generate higher levels of profit for the platform down the line. If you look at something like Binance, there is a large percentage, we don't know what the true percentage is, but on certain days over 50% of Vol could be driven by HFT to HFT volume. So these are high frequency trading firms, whether they're market makers or toxic takers or people like jump trading who are basically running high frequency trading strategies on Binance. And this probably will not exist on an on chain venue for some time. And so when you account for that difference, I think there will come a point where you kind of see this growth shared chart trends start to slow down a bit because there's just a lack of that serious, serious contributor of just daily volumes from these institutional players that we're not going to see on chain for quite some time. But with that in mind, I think the growth trends that we're seeing today are usually from net new perpetrators, net new retail takers, people who are genuinely trading, people who are offering profitable non directional flow. And I think that that's going to be probably more valuable down the line because the institutional players are going to come when, when they come. And when they come it'll probably be fast. It'll be kind of whether it's a compliance hurdle they need to get through, whether it's just getting more comfortable with the idea of operating on, on hyperliquid or any of these other venues. I think that switch will flip fast and when it does you'll see a migration of those volumes. But for now it is going to be difficult to get to 60, 70, 80% of Binance's volumes without that institutional presence.
- [32:07]
Laura Shin
And a couple of questions, so wait for institutions, don't they need to like for compliance reasons like how can they use a no KYC Dex? Like I don't know how that works.
- [32:17]
Sunny Shi
Well that's the problem. They can't or most of them cannot. The market makers can. A lot of market makers have been underwriting a business on hyperliquid. I think basically every large crypto market maker, except for a few are on hyper liquid at this point. And that's just a decision of going to your team and saying we're missing out. Our competitor X is making a killing market making hyper liquid. We need to be on there and then they'll get it done. But there are certainly some Other players that are slower.
- [32:42]
Ryan Watkins
To one other thing I'll say too volumes is there's a huge opportunity and we talk about this all the time with Hip3 where you will introduce new markets to hyperliquid that don't exist on the centralized exchanges. So when people can trade US equities or pre IPO companies or even build prediction markets on Hyper liquid, those are markets that, like I said, they just don't exist on Binance. So then if any of those start to catch any kind of traction, then you can see those volume numbers as a percentage continue to rise and even surpass some of these centralized exchanges just because of this expansionary potential that hyperliquid has.
- [33:30]
Laura Shin
Yeah, and just for listeners who aren't familiar, it's builder deployed perpetual. So in a way it's almost like you could think of it as like, you know, kind of creating like a liquidity pool that for like unusual assets or something on Uniswap. But it's, it's you know, your, your own unique perpetuals offering. So now walk through now. I, I am so curious because like there it, I mean there's just so many competitors. You know, if I, I have like D5 llama up over here and I could just see like so many different, you know, perp dexes are competing in this space. So you know, I think you guys have kind of like analyzed all of them and I'd just be curious to hear how, you know, you're evaluating them and like which ones you think are kind of like stronger, stronger competitors. You know, obviously it looks like, you know, your conviction is behind Hyper Liquid, but I'm sure you probably have other ones where you're like those might put up a good fight. So yeah, I'd be curious to hear your analysis.
- [34:32]
Sunny Shi
Yeah, I think this is one that I've been mulling over because something that you've seen with Solana for example is Solana at this point is not the most performant chain out there when it comes to raw power. Like whether it's speed, I think there are chains coming out that are faster, whether it's bandwidth, there are chains coming out with higher throughput. But Solana today still has continued to aggregate most of the liquidity, most of the users, most of the activity. And it's because it's performant enough and it will continue to become more performant, but it's sufficiently performant to the extent that any incremental x percent increase in latency or decrease in latency or increases. Nathalis is not going to matter as much as being able to aggregate that set of user. And I think we're at a point today where that's happening for hyperliquid, where if you want to see a competitor come out and really drive a change in how the market share is split up today, you're going to either need something just far more performant than Hyper Liquid, which is something that we haven't seen today. Certainly it's not an aster or some of these older protocols, but some of the newer ones even are not offering marginal tech improvements that we think is noteworthy enough. But really, I think what's interesting is trying to compose with a wider set of user. And so one of the criticisms that hyperliquid has had is it's a little bit too isolated and there's nothing they can do about that. Their own separate L1, they have the Hyper EVM to compose with, but as a whole, the HyperLiquid order book is separated from the rest of the crypto economy. And so what we're seeing today are some interesting options being built on Solana, like whether that's Bulk or whether that's Bullet with a network extension, or whether that's Fogo Chain, which is a different L1, but it has an SVM client. We think that's probably the interesting next thing to explore, which is what happens when you give Solana users an option of something that is as potent or as performant as Hyperliquid to trade perps. What happens when you introduced Pump Fun Traders or Meme Coin Traders to perpetuals and, you know, 25x50x leverage? I think that will be a fun experiment, but that's probably what I'm excited about most is, is what is going to happen on Solana. Because right now I think the team has taken a direct initiative to get something like a Hyper Liquid, at least in close proximity to or directly on the Solana Blockchain or Solana Network? And that will probably be the most interesting thing to see for me, because that isn't about marginal tech, it's about, you know, moving your product closer to this large set of user.
- [37:04]
Laura Shin
So basically, like, let me make sure that I understand because, like, the way that I'm interpreting what you're saying is that in a way, hyperliquid kind of became the next competitor for Solana. And so now the question is, will Solana have its own perp, Dex, that could just compete directly with Hyper Liquid and not have people leaving Solana to hyperliquid? Is that what you're doing okay, or.
- [37:30]
Sunny Shi
At least more contained within the broader Solana network.
- [37:34]
Ryan Watkins
Yeah, Ryan. Yes, obviously I agree with Sunny, although we don't always agree. That's what makes it for a good investment team. So I think blockchains are network effects businesses. And I think one of the reasons why I think we called out Solana as being the next place where we'd be of most interest in identifying like a winning purse exchange is Solana has very powerful network effects. And what do I mean by this? Like when I talk about network effects for hyperliquid or Solana? Well, let's just look at hyperliquid as an example. Hyperliquid is supported by a number of the leading custodians. There's a number of leading stable coins that are now issued on top of it. Leading front ends and wallets that support it. Right. Exchanges that you can trade hype on and projects that are building on Hyperliquid. And over time all these integrations and all these assets are issued on it, all of these people that are using it, it becomes like a superstructure. And if you're starting from scratch, it is really hard to replicate that over time. Like the actual code is all for many of these blockchains is open sourced and it's extremely easy to replicate. What's not easy to replicate is like the ecosystem that forms around it. That is what actually makes this stuff really sticky long term. So then when you look at Hyper Liquid compared to the field, you can see why there is not as much concern and why it will take a long time for any of those to become competitive. We look at it versus Solana, that's where it actually can be really interesting because Solana has a ton of assets that are issued on top of it. More than Hyper Liquid, there's more stable coins in Solana. There's more just normal spot tokens on Solana, more wallet to support it, more exchanges that support it, more on ramps. Like all these different things on Solana. So if you can tap into that ecosystem, then that's actually like a really exciting opportunity. That's also one of the big DCS behind many of the early Solana Dexes or on purpose exchanges, whether it be like Drift or any other ones. Is that. Imagine if you could take your collateral that's being on this on a Camino and use it as collateral for a trade that would be really interesting use case of composability. Right?
- [40:04]
Laura Shin
Okay, yeah, that is interesting. But of those ones that are on Solana, which do you feel are Some, some of the more competitive ones.
- [40:12]
Sunny Shi
It's far too early. I think a lot of the newer perp Dexs are not even in Mainnet, some are barely in testnet. But I think what we're seeing with these conversations that we're having with these teams that are building Per Dex is on or around or close to Solana is they are trying to come out with a better product than HyperLiquid on day one. And I think when you look at some of these other competitors, whether it's Aster or any of these other, I guess staler like perp Dexs is they do not have the luxury to kind of wait around and try to get better to match the performance of a hyperliquid over time or the user experience of a hyperliquid over time. Because hyperliquid exists today and it's going to continue to aggregate liquidity, it's going to continue to aggregate users. And what we're excited about is this next generation of order book based perp Dex exchanges on Solana that are offering what we think are real UX improvements. And I think that will be one to watch. Those will be the ones to watch out for. But it's far too early today to tell you what I'm excited about. I think most of these players are still, I mean just to name a few, like Bulk, Pacifica Bullet, they're basically still in Testnet phase, if not even earlier.
- [41:29]
Laura Shin
Okay, and why is Ethereum or any of the L2s not part of this conversation since so much of Defi is on Ethereum and it has even more stable coins than Solana?
- [41:40]
Sunny Shi
Well, I think the amount of people that use the confluence between the Ethereum layer 1 and users who are likely going to be Power Probe Dex users, probably low. But I think for some of these layer twos there's Avantis, which has gotten a bit of attention on base Maga ETH is going to launch with an incredibly fast chain and there's going to be a couple of perp Dexs on there. So some of the ones include the Mega east ones are like gte, Valhalla amongst some others that I'm forgetting. But anyway, I think there's just going to be a lot of these things. It's going to be very hard to track all of them. And so yeah, if you're a perp Dex points farmer, it's probably going to be a great few months, great year for you.
- [42:30]
Laura Shin
Okay. But you didn't really answer my question about Ethereum. Like, like you, you Basically said there are competitors there. But, but your thesis I guess of syncy is more like if there's going to be a competitor to hyper liquid it'll pop up on Solana. So like why, why is the Ethereum bit not part of your thesis?
- [42:52]
Sunny Shi
Because we think that the, the power user for a, for a Perpetu product there's probably a higher percentage of Solana users today who are willing to try a product like that or who like their trading activity today on the blockchain aligns more closely with that of a hyper liquid power user than people on Ethereum who are depositing into abe, et cetera, et cetera. I think it's just kind of like a different customer cohort demographic.
- [43:20]
Ryan Watkins
I think we're open for the perpetuals usage first I guess you can't build a perpsdex on Ethereum main net, you just can't run an order book on it. So it'd have to be an L2 like a lighter or mega eth. And we are monitoring all of those and I think remain open minded to it. But yeah, I think in both those cases these exchanges are much earlier in their life cycle than a hyper liquid is and I guess in our eyes don't meaningfully differentiate themselves from the field.
- [43:55]
Laura Shin
Okay, so I'm sure you've heard this before. Everyone always talks about how hyper liquids main advantage is just that there's no kyc. And I wondered like, I mean obviously things have changed a lot in the US under President Trump for crypto but you know, issues around KYC caused problems for Bitmex in the past which I know it's a centralized exchange so obviously like potentially the rules are a little bit different but I just don't know if you ever think like potentially that quote unquote advantage that they have now would ever go away in any respect or like yeah, just yeah, I'm not sure what the future is for them. Like do you feel like there'll always be no KYC or.
- [44:39]
Ryan Watkins
Yeah, I mean that's an open question. Decentralized exchange including ones that are even on Solana. Right. Like should people be able to trade any asset in the world without having to kyc? And that's just a question that I don't think we'll have the answer to anytime soon. That being said, I do not think that. And maybe one thing I'll add too is I think we're in a really accommodative regulatory regime in America which is by the way one of the reasons why so many of these central exchanges even feel confident launching these Frankenstein versions of Hyper Liquid is because they're like, all right, we can just launch a no KYC exchange too. And we don't even have to give the pretense that this is actually decentralized or this is on chain at all. It's just not what those are. That being said, I think it's more than just no KYC that makes Hyper Liquid special. Right? So I think it has. You know, one of the things I really started to appreciate about hyperliquid recently, and this is not necessarily versus central exchanges, maybe just even versus like other blockchains, is that it has a very opinionated approach to building an ecosystem. But it's not the core team that is doing everything. So what does that mean? So when it comes to building spot markets, the core team did not decide to go and build out the necessary infrastructure to it themselves. They outsourced it to the unit team. The unit team now handles majority of spot markets. And then they're thinking, okay, how do we actually launch new markets on Hyper Liquid? Well, let's actually put that responsibility in the hands of the community with Hip3. So now anyone can spin up a new a new purse market and then you have independent teams doing that. In a way like HIP3, it is in a way like Restaking, which was introduced on Ethereum, except it's just like opinionated. This is not some open canvas of restaking for everything. We have no idea what to build. It's like, let's just do restaking for this one use case right now and channel all the builder energy towards this. Right? And then also builder codes, I think was like a really big one where hyperliquid doesn't need to go build out its own mobile application and it doesn't need to get that mobile application distributed in every single country. You can leave that to all these third parties. You can have Phantom do it. You can have one in Japan and one in Korea and all these spaces in the world that are all working like a swarm to onboard new users to HyperLiquid. And it might be one of the last things too, is that, you know, even before Hip3 goes live, HyperLiquid is listing new assets faster than all these exchanges. Like, one of the reasons why so much of the open interest for all these new assets, whether it be plasma Aster pump, isn't Hyper Liquid, is because it was the first ones to have it, like no one else has it. And you want to go longer short pump before it comes out. You just go to Hyper Liquid and you kind of built up that habit amongst the users that okay, anytime there's a new hot market I'm just going to go to Hyper Liquid. That's going to be it. So yeah, I think like no KYC is definitely a key advantage it has over the central exchanges like undeniably but I wouldn't say that's like the only thing and the only reason why it's actually winning.
- [48:01]
Sunny Shi
To double click on that point really quickly. Unit Hyper Unit today has like a, a revenue share with, with Hyper Liquid Labs. I don't think there's any scenario where Binance would give up a portion of their real estate to a third party and share 50% plus revenue with them. And what is the result of that? Well I think already Hyper Unit has announced that a double zero token is going to be live on the hyperliquid platform Tomorrow, Thursday, Thursday 1pm UTC. I'm in Singapore, I have no idea what day is what but, but I mean on day one the 00tge is going to be tradable on Hyper Liquid spot and that's the kind of pace and execution quality that you get when you start opening up your platform.
- [48:41]
Ryan Watkins
I think that's like a really good point too. Is one thing I always wondered is at what point would we start to get some extremely high quality founders coming into the space? Because I do think that there were high quality founders in the previous generations but they're more sparse and what usually attracts these people it's opportunity to make money. It's maybe a change in the regulatory environment, it's maybe the technology improving to the point where you can build a product that people want to use. Now some of these people are here and I think that's one thing that I mean even as a hyperkit bull I've been surprised about when we bought this thing first day and I was not expecting them to ship all these products as fast as they did because I'm just so used to these super long product cycles in crypto where the devs just take like you know, two years to ship something and they say they're going to ship it in two years, it actually comes out in three years and it's just like super slow and it's just clearly not like it's not product minded people and that's just not what's happening here. This kind of feels almost like what you would expect in like AI. Like this is where this is like a cutting edge field and there's like a race to actually win the vertical. That's what it seems like these guys are competing for. They realize that Binance is this huge opportunity. We see a line of sight to being able to disrupt them and let's go after it. And we have to move fast as hell because if we don't, someone else is going to come and take it from us.
- [50:08]
Laura Shin
Yeah, I just was having another conversation with another crypto founder and they were making jokes about how, you know, in crypto there was a time when you could be sort of this like mad scientist and you show up and you like, you know, kind of make people go gee whiz with your fancy math and whatever. And nowadays, no, you know, like, product is really important. Like, you know, I'm sure everybody saw the Robinhood chain announcement. Like, and just knowing like how Robinhood is with product, like, that's the kind of mindset that people are, you know, is sort of leaning toward now in crypto. So. Okay, I don't know if you guys heard this, but on the chopping block the other day, they were talking about this Aster Hyper Liquid thing and Haseeb had this really interesting point and I was so curious what you. What your thoughts are on this. But he basically said, and I know, I know these are like huge generalizations. He also admitted these are huge generalizations, but he was like, well, the west kind of innovates and then Asia like executes. So he had this like, kind of theory about how. Yeah, like Hyper Liquid. And I, he didn't say this explicitly, but from the context I thought he was saying like, hyper Liquid being from the west has innovated, but then potentially aster or like any other, you know, he, I mean, he kind of called out like, just like a number of, like in, you know, previous times in history, there have been a number of exchanges that, that did quite well. So I don't know what, what do you think of that? Like, do you think there could be competitors that come from Asia or from the east and. Yeah, sort of like adopt what Hyper Liquid has done, but maybe do it better. I don't know.
- [51:52]
Sunny Shi
Yeah, absolutely. Well, one, I would say that hyperliquid is kind of. There's a global builder base and the team. I mean, Jeff is. I'm not sure what his citizenship situation is these days, but like, he, he. I'm not sure it's fair to, to, to blindly characterize this as an east first vested west situation. And even if it were, I think, look, you can, you can mention that sort of broad strokes and they are they are generalizations. I think the truth is there is no, there is no competitor that we've seen that even seems like it's on track to be able to replicate what Hyperliquid has done, creating like this custom fit L1 to house all of these different financial applications. And it's certainly so far not Aster. I mean, it's interesting that these comments and no shout to Haseeb, but a lot of these talking points seem to come from people who are not actually using the Perp Dexs. And I think if we want to talk about the Aster token and the Hype token in sort of this relative style and kind of debate, which one is more exciting? That's a conversation. I think that's an interesting conversation. But if we want to talk about the products themselves, I don't think it's even close. To be fair, I don't think it's even close. And I think the people who actually use these products will tell you that.
- [53:11]
Ryan Watkins
I think another thing I will just to pull on that thread a little bit, you know, I think what it is is that the offshore exchanges, most of which happen to be based in Asia, just have historically moved much faster and are more loose. Right. Than some of the US exchanges. And I get it, because if you're coinbase, what is your advantage is that you're building this regulated exchange that at this point can custody Bitcoin and ETH for all these ETFs. That's something that the offshore exchanges would never do. And that's why Coinbase will always be more conservative. So even if they do see an opportunity to copy something and replicate it, they'll be like a last mover. Example of this is all these exchanges launched their own blockchains at some point, but when did the ones in Asia do it like Binance marching? That was 2020. It was late 2020. Okx Huobi like all these people launched their chains in that kind of 2020, 21 period. But when did Coinbase launch base? That was in 2023, right? And when are they going to launch their base token? Because that was also something that was rumored recently. Binance has had their token since 2017 during the ICO boom. Same thing, all other ones. I mean, you're talking about like at this point, eight years later, Coinbase is finally contemplating launching a coin. So I think that's maybe like probably what he's getting at. I think it's like less to do with east and West. It's more just like offshore and onshore.
- [54:50]
Laura Shin
Huh? Okay. Oh, yeah. But I don't know, it seemed like from the way he was describing it, it's like stuff happens in the US first, but then like Asia kind of copies and, but executes better. But anyway, okay, okay, last question. So, you know, as I said at the beginning of the show, I know you guys have heavy hype bags and I was wondering, like, as investors in hype, what do you feel is Hyper Liquid's main weakness? Or like, what's the main thing that you worry about? You know, that like, if this bet ever goes wrong, like, you'll look back and be like, oh, that was the thing. That was, you know, the reason why this didn't pan out the way we thought.
- [55:29]
Sunny Shi
Yeah. I think there are some obvious ones that everyone has considered, and they're mostly in that black swan camp of what happens if the exchange gets hacked? Like, what happens if these co located validators go down? What happens if Jeff is malicious? And I think these are all real concerns and I think that they're hard to kind of forecast the probability of, but you kind of have to take this investment with that in mind, which is that, okay, there are a bunch of different ways that this can dramatically upend and go wrong. But currently, given the environment that we're in, this has the potential to be one of the highest ceiling protocols in crypto. And so I think it's almost something that you just have to take into account with a bunch of these different crypto investments, which is that, man, the potential downside is just so huge. But there are very few protocols like Hyper Liquid that have this incredible ceiling of being able to become a potential everything exchange. So, yeah, I'll toss it over to you, Ryan.
- [56:39]
Ryan Watkins
Anything else on, like the obvious, like Sunny said, just like regulatory black swan or anything like that. There's really two areas that I think are long term concern to me. One is, do exchanges have moats? Right. So in the traditional world of finance, what gives an exchange a moat? In many cases, yeah, it's like liquidity, network effects and things like that. But it's actually just regulation. It's like, all right, you're like the only person that can actually do regulated trading in Shanghai. And that's the reason why you're the number one exchange. There is no competition, no one else has the license to do it. What is the difference here? There are no licenses, Everyone can run an exchange. So that just means it's like much more competitive. And at a certain point, a certain level of just like liquidity, the experience of Trading exchanges can actually become similar. So what makes the difference for our industry or just like decentral exchanges from first principles perspective? For me, it's the same way that we evaluate the differences between smart contract platforms. If you were to have a exchange where the validator set is sufficiently distributed, it's been running for a long time without any history of hacks. It has all of these integrations with custodians and wallets and assets that have been issued on the platform. Over time they start to build a network effect that is really hard to break into over time. And that's how potentially you can build a network effect long term without regulation. But that's an open question and that's one I do question. It's not about hyper liquid, it's just about this entire exchange opportunity within a crypto economy. Is it just something where there's always going to be fluctuating market share long term? Because that kind of has been the history of decentralized exchanges. The market share changes all the time. The second one is around, I guess, like the co located validator set. So I think there has been great progress we've made as an industry from having all of these blockchains experiment with the limits of at least questioning the assumptions that the prior generation had. So for Ethereum they're like, all right, you know what, what if we actually did have smart contracts and we actually had more expressivity and the Bitcoin is like oh no, we can't do that because that increases the tax surface. And then the Ethereum's like oh no, let's actually do that. And then we actually get defi. That's a great innovation. And then Solana comes along, they're like, you know what, what if we actually just didn't care if some random user ran a server on their computer and they actually roll it and ran a data center? And if you're going to be like oh no, you can't do that because self sovereignty and all this stuff, they're like no, no, it doesn't matter, we're going to get more performance. And then you get Solana and great, that's where all the spot trading on chain happens. Now as both Ethereum and then Hyper Liquid similarly comes along, they're like, you know what, what if we actually don't even globally distribute the validator set? What if we just all colocate them in one place and then we'd have super low latency and potentially be competitive with centralized exchanges and then we can build like for the first time an on chain order book and that's what they did. And I think that's been a great innovation. But I do wonder long term is if the fact that the value set is co located ultimately will limit the tam. And in the sense of, you know, what makes bitcoin special is that, you know, it doesn't matter if I'm, you know, the United States or China, I can reliably hold Bitcoin and not have to worry that it's going to be seized for me or that someone is going to center my transaction. It is like true, truly like a global and neutral platform. And that's one of the reasons why it's a $2 trillion asset today. I would think that the exchange of future would need to be a neutral platform as well. And that's what give people the confidence, whether they're adversaries like us or China, that if I do an exchange here, I will get my money or I'll get the other asset on the other end of the trade. And I just wonder if the dollar set is co located, if it makes it harder to trust because maybe that co located valor asset in a specific city. I don't know, there's like a tsunami, the servers go down or maybe the government shuts it down and they have to switch where the validator is running. That would just be a concern. I have long term and that's one is hard to question. But I also think that there might be some solutions long term about how to maintain the benefits of colocation but even have some level of geographic distribution. I think the Fogo team is an example of this potential.
- [61:18]
Laura Shin
Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean like what you're talking about there, it just goes like, you know, all the way back to bitcoin. And I know like everybody talks about decentralization and like sometimes people talk about it in this very idealized way but like another way of like using that word is to say like resilience, you know. So that's. That's what you're talking about? Yeah, because like, you know, back in the like sometimes I feel like newer bitcoiners don't understand things like jurisdictional decentralization. And anyway, like, I don't know, just like even stupid things like when I forget was it Trump who was like all of the bitcoins are going to be mined in the US And I was like, that is not a good idea. But anyway, okay, well, yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. All right, well you guys, this was super fun breaking this down. I'm glad we finally made it work. And Sunny, thank you for doing this from Singapore where. Yeah, I know, like you're probably jet lagged or something. Anyway, we will catch you all later.
- [62:22]
Sponsor Announcer
Thanks for tuning in to the weekly news recap. Let's begin. Trump administration pulls Quinten's nomination for CFTC chair the Trump administration has withdrawn its nomination of Brian Quintens to lead the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, leaving the agency to continue operating under acting chair Caroline Pham Quintenz, a former commissioner and head of crypto policy at Andreessen Horowitz, confirmed to cointelegraph the decision and said he plans to return to the private sector. His withdrawal follows opposition from Gemini co founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who publicly lobbied against the nomination. Quintenz released text messages suggesting the brothers sought commitments on how the CFTC would handle Gemini's regulatory disputes requests. He said he declined. Quote I believe these texts make it clear what they were after from me and what I refuse to promise, he said. The CFTC remains without a permanent chair as Congress debates new crypto legislation. Swift partners with Consensys on blockchain settlement system Global payments network Swift has announced a partnership with Consensys and more than 30 major financial institutions including JP Morgan, HSBC, bank of America and Deutsche bank to build a blockchain based settlement platform. The initiative aims to support, quote, real time 24. 7 cross border payments and facilitate transactions involving stablecoins and other tokenized assets. Consensys, led by Ethereum Co founder Joseph Lubin, will develop the first prototype. Quote in conversation with these institutions, you clearly feel that the moment is now to bring the collaboration together, said Thierry Shilohsi, Swift's Chief business officer. Swift CEO Javier Perez Tasso added that the project is part of its mission to, quote, create the infrastructure stack of the future, end quote. Also, there's been a ton of positive news this week in the intersection of tradfi and crypto. Here's a recap. Visa began testing stablecoins for business payments across borders, letting firms use USDC and EURC to pre fund transfers via Visa Direct. In a bid to speed up settlements and lower costs. Deutsche Burze teamed up with Circle to integrate euro and dollar backed stablecoins into into its trading, settlement and custody platforms under new EU crypto rules, marking the first tie up between a major European exchange and a global stablecoin issuer. Chainlink and UBS ran a pilot that let banks use the Swift messaging system to subscribe to and redeem tokenized investment funds. A move aimed at bringing blockchain infrastructure to the $100 trillion fund industry without replacing existing tools. Lastly, Societe General's crypto arm SG Forge deployed its euro and dollar stablecoins on Ethereum based Defi platforms Morpho and Uniswap, enabling clients to borrow, lend and trade them around the clock using crypto and tokenized fund collateral. SEC advances plan to put U.S. stocks on blockchain the securities and Exchange Commission is moving forward with a proposal to let American investors trade tokenized stocks on blockchain platforms. According to the information, the plan would provide exemptions from certain trading rules, potentially allowing companies like Coinbase and Robinhood to let customers buy shares of firms such as Apple or Netflix directly through their crypto wallets. Tokenized stocks mirror traditional equities in offering ownership and dividends, but are issued as blockchain tokens that represent a claim on the underlying shares. Supporters argue the approach would speed up settlement times, which currently take at least a day. Industry giants such as Citadel securities have warned of risks to market stability and compliance, and legal challenges from Wall street firms could delay the rollout. SEC Chair Paul Atkins has described tokenization as a quote innovation, end quote. The agency should foster Stripe opens door for companies to issue their own stablecoins Stripe has unveiled Open Issuance, a new platform designed to let businesses create and manage their own stablecoins quote with just a few lines of code. The service, powered by Bridge, the crypto infrastructure firm stripe acquired for $1.1 billion last year, allows companies to mint and burn tokens, customize reserve ratios between cash and Treasuries, and select partners like BlackRock and Fidelity to manage those reserves. To comply with US rules, Stripe will apply for a federal banking charter and a New York trust license, according to the information. Zach Abrams, co founder and CEO of Bridge, joined Unchained to explain the vision. Quote if money movement is core to your business, you should build with stablecoins, but don't build on top of someone else's coin, he added. We think this is going to become a core part of stablecoin money movement, that people are just going to want the money to be their own. ZeroStack's $401 million raise masks just $13.7 million in cash. ZeroStack, the newly rebranded Flora Growth Corp. Announced a $401 million raise to back the AI focused Zero Gravity blockchain, But reporting by Unchained shows that only $13.7 million came in as fresh cash, with the rest made up of recycled tokens, warrants and in kind contributions. SEC filings detail that Zero Gravity Labs supplied $150 million in zero G tokens and $215 million in warrants valued at $3 per token, while DeFi Development Corporation added $22.9 million in Solana. The actual cash portion came from investors including DAO5 and Abstract Ventures. Analysts warned the structure created an early liquidity opportunity for insiders, bypassing typical vesting schedules. One industry investor described the deal as the ultimate grift. Robinhood eyes global expansion of prediction markets Robinhood is exploring ways to take its fast growing prediction markets business outside the United States, beginning with talks with regulators such as the UK's Financial Conduct Authority. JB McKenzie, vice president of futures and international at Robinhood, explained the challenge Quote It's a swap here in the United States, so the question would be where is swap oversight, let's say in the uk? That's a question that we've been asking the fca. The company, which already operates equities and crypto trading in the UK and eu, says demand for prediction markets is especially strong in Europe. CEO Vlad Tenev noted in an X post that Robinhood has already facilitated more than 4 billion event contracts this year, calling the product a major growth driver. 00 launches fiber network to speed up blockchain transactions Blockchain infrastructure startup Double Zero has launched its mainnet beta, introducing a private fiber network built to move blockchain data faster and more reliably than the public Internet at launch. 386 Solana validators, representing over 20% of the network's stake, have agreed to route traffic through 00's backbone, which spans more than 70 fiber connections across 30 cities and five continents. Quote we are building a parallel Internet for high performance distributed systems like blockchains, said co founder Austin Federer on Unchained. He explained that public Internet routing creates delays and inconsistent speeds, limiting Blockchain's true capacity. The network is operated by independent contributors who are compensated in 00's native 2Z token jump. An early investor and contributor received 28% of tokens, sparking debate about its influence. Cronehe's Flying Tulip debuts with $200 million raise and investor protections Andre Cronhe's new venture, Flying Tulip, has raised $200 million at a $1 billion token valuation, but the spotlight is on its novel fundraising model. The project introduces a quote on chain redemption, right? End quote, giving investors the ability to burn FT tokens and redeem their original principle at any time. Cronhe described the design as a way to provide a financial quote floor end quote that eases pressure on teams to make short term decisions. Unlike many crypto launches, the Flying Tulip team has no initial token allocation, with compensation instead tied to protocol revenue and token buybacks. Investor Dan Elitzer of Nascent said the structure quote forces teams to deliver, aligns incentives and gives investors real protection, a shift some see as a new template for defi capital raising. In related news, Kraken secured $500 million from investors including its co CEO Arjun Sethi, valuing the crypto exchange at $15 billion and setting it up for a long anticipated public listing next year after a year of major acquisitions. Jump Crypto pushes Solana toward bigger blocks after alpenglow upgrade Jump Crypto's Firedancer team has put forward a proposal SIMD0370 to remove Solana's block compute unit limit following the network's upcoming alpenglow upgrade. The change would eliminate the current 60 million compute unit cap, allowing block size to scale dynamically with validator performance. Supporters argue this flexibility could boost throughput during periods of high demand, such as token launches or spikes in decentralized finance activity. Validators unable to process larger blocks could skip them, incentivizing higher performance operators to expand hardware and software capacity. Still, concerns over centralization have emerged. Solana co founder Anatoly Yakovenko questioned whether validators would, quote, increase hardware to support some crazy leaders big block end quote warning. Instead, they might, quote, fail it and steal all the mev, end quote. The proposal remains under community discussion. Unchained is produced by Laura Shin, with help from Matt Pilchard, Juan Aranovich, Margaret Curia, and Pam Majumdar. The weekly recap was written by Juan Aranovic and edited by Stephen Ehrlich. Thanks for listening.