Token Talks – Interviews with the Best Projects in Crypto
31 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 4 years ago - ★★★★★ - 36 ratingsJoin Zach DeWitt as we highlight the best emerging projects in crypto through unbiased and exclusive interviews with blockchain technology founders. Token Talks intends to make the cryptocurrency ecosystem more accessible by connecting thought leaders and entrepreneurs with mainstream companies, consumers, and investors. This podcast is produced by Wing Venture Capital (aka “Wing”), a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm. Multiple episodes are released every month and discussions include ICOs, altcoins, decentralization, token economics and the future of digital currency in tech. Visit www.wing.vc for more details.
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Episodes
StarkWare: Scalability and Privacy for Blockchains
September 03, 2019 12:00 - 33 minutes - 30.8 MBStarkWare is solving two of blockchain’s biggest issues, scalability and privacy, using STARK technology and zero-knowledge proofs. Listen to learn how StarkWare and their new product StarkExchange work, the future use-cases of this technology, and how StarkWare plans to move the source of truth from big trusted parties back to the end-users. ##Addressing the two problems of blockchains StarkWare wants to solve scalability and privacy on blockchains with no trusted set ups and no hidden f...
NEAR Protocol: Community Operated Cloud
August 06, 2019 12:00 - 38 minutes - 35.3 MBWhat if launching an application on the blockchain was fast, simple, and user-friendly? Today, we are joined by Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, a community operated cloud platform which aims to enable developers to write, test, and deploy scalable, decentralized applications in minutes. Listen to learn about how the protocol works, the potential use-cases and what they’re currently experimenting with, and the exciting things we can expect to see from NEAR in the future. ##W...
Grin: Global Digital Cash
July 16, 2019 12:00 - 30 minutes - 28.3 MBWhat if there was a way retain total privacy with your digital transactions? Today’s guest is Daniel Lehnberg, a core developer for Grin, an exciting new cryptocurrency that launched earlier this year. Join us for a look at how Grin aims to be the first private electronic cash, how it compares to Bitcoin, and the important impact this technology could have on democracy. ##Cash-Like Cryptocurrency Grin is a new cryptocurrency with the goal of becoming a global, digital cash. This means th...
Gauntlet and Computable Labs: Blockchain Simulation and Fair Data
June 25, 2019 12:00 - 39 minutes - 35.8 MBWhat is blockchain simulation? When launching a public blockchain, it’s essential to think through and understand the incentives, behavioral economics, and crypto economics prior to going live, and the most accurate way of doing that is through simulation. On this special episode, we’re joined by both Gauntlet and Computable Labs to discuss what both companies are doing in the space and how they’re working together. ##Gauntlet - Blockchain Testing, Analysis, and Simulation Decentralized...
UMA: Decentralized Financial Contracts
June 04, 2019 12:00 - 37 minutes - 34.2 MBUMA stands for universal market access, and UMA’s co-founder Hart Lambur, along with the rest of the team, wanted a name that reflected their bigger vision and what they’re trying to do, which is create universal market access for financial products. ##A decentralized financial contracts platform UMA is a decentralized financial contracts platform that believes financial markets should be universally accessible. UMA is designed to power the financial innovations made possible by permission...
Tagomi: Crypto Prime Brokerage
May 14, 2019 12:00 - 34 minutes - 31.2 MBExecuting large orders of digital assets is really difficult. Tagomi makes it simple by combining institutional grade services with superior execution technology for digital assets and cryptocurrencies. Join us as we chat with Marc and Kevin from Tagomi to learn how their products provide operational ease and reduce trading costs for institutional investors. ##Electronic agency brokerage in the digital asset space Tagomi connects to multiple liquidity sources and allows clients to place l...
Rocket Pool: A Simple, Decentralized Ethereum Staking Service
April 30, 2019 12:00 - 39 minutes - 36 MBWhat if you could earn interest on your Ethereum holdings using a decentralized network that removes any barriers to entry? Rocket Pool wants to allow users to do just that. There’s no need to worry about maintaining an extensive staking infrastructure. Just plug and play. Our guest today is CTO and co-founder of Rocket Pool, David Rugendyke. Join us to learn about Rocket Pool’s features and services, when you can expect to starting using the network, and what David thinks about proof of st...
CoinList: A Trusted Platform for Compliant Token Sales
April 09, 2019 12:00 - 39 minutes - 35.8 MBWhether a token issuer wants to launch a private sale with 10 investors or a public sale with 10,000 investors, the goal of CoinList is to help that issuer succeed by managing capital formation and building community. A trusted platform CoinList is a trusted platform for running compliant token sales. CoinList’s infrastructure has supported over $400 million in investments for over 30 token sale projects since August 2017. Some of the projects that have run token sales on CoinList include...
The Graph: A Decentralized Query Protocol
March 19, 2019 12:00 - 36 minutes - 33.8 MBHow do decentralized applications get data from underlying sources and transform it in meaningful ways? Yaniv Tal is the Project Lead at The Graph, a new decentralized query and indexing protocol for Web3 making data easily available to developers using GraphQL. ##Getting data from blockchains is difficult Anyone building smart contracts on a blockchain like Ethereum will need to access specific data with queries, and to do those kinds of queries, indexes are needed, which will be applica...
Bitwise: The First Cryptocurrency Index Fund
February 26, 2019 13:00 - 40 minutes - 36.7 MBWhat is a crypto index fund? Tune in as our guest, Hunter Horsley, CEO and cofounder of Bitwise, discusses how crypto index funds work, the firm’s Bitcoin ETF application, and how it could potentially impact the space if it gets approved. ##Bitwise is the first cryptocurrency fund Bitwise is the leading provider of index funds in the crypto space. They launched the first cryptocurrency index fund in 2017, and they have both index products as well as beta products. Based in San Francisco,...
Castle Island Ventures: Investing in Infrastructure
February 05, 2019 13:00 - 40 minutes - 37.1 MBCastle Island Ventures is an early-stage venture fund with a focus on equity investments at the pre-seed or seed level into companies that are building in and around permissionless blockchains. Listen to hear from some of the smartest investors in the space--co-founders and managing partners of Castle Island, Nic Carter and Matt Walsh--as they discuss current trends, predictions, and what they’re looking out for. Pick and shovel oriented businesses Castle Island has the view that permissi...
Oasis: A Privacy-First Smart Contract Platform
January 22, 2019 13:00 - 45 minutes - 42 MBThe internet has fundamentally changed our lives, but along with the many benefits, what kinds of challenges has it created? For Dawn Song, founder and CEO of Oasis Labs, the issues of security and privacy are a top priority. She and her team of world renowned, top security researchers and professors from Berkeley and MIT are developing new technologies to address many of these challenges. Listen to learn how Oasis could radically change how our personal data is secured and shared, elimina...
Set Protocol: Bundle Your Tokenized Assets
January 08, 2019 13:00 - 32 minutes - 29.6 MBWhat does it mean to bundle your tokenized assets? And what are the potential benefits? Felix Feng is the founder and CEO of Set Protocol, a platform to create, manage, and purchase baskets of tokenized assets. Rather than buying five different tokens and paying a gas fee to purchase those tokens individually, with Set, you can bundle all five of those tokens and buy them in a single order. Decentralized Finance Felix is most excited about crypto’s potential to transform the financial se...
Spacemesh: A Blockmesh Operating System
December 04, 2018 13:00 - 37 minutes - 34.8 MBWe’ve all heard of the blockchain, but what is blockmesh? Spacemesh is building a novel, layer-one protocol with the aim of developing a blockmesh operating system accessible to anyone. Listen as Spacemesh CEO and cofounder Tomer Afek explains how the Proof of Space Time (PoST) consensus protocol is built around the notion of fairness, and what that means in the creation of a decentralized, programmable cryptocurrency. ##Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, Proof of Space Time Rather than usin...
Figure: Home Equity on the Blockchain
November 20, 2018 13:00 - 37 minutes - 34.2 MBMike Cagney, co-founder and CEO of Figure, is applying blockchain technology to traditional financial services in compelling new ways. Listen to learn how Figure and its new native blockchain Provenance are changing the way consumers access home equity products, and what exciting things are in store for the future of the financial services industry. ##Faster and Cheaper Home Equity Products with Figure Figure is an equity release business, offering an alternative to a traditional HELOC (h...
OpenSea: A Marketplace for Non-Fungible Assets
November 06, 2018 13:00The CryptoKitty craze brought some attention to the world of non-fungible tokens, but what else is possible for this type of crypto asset? OpenSea co-founders Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah want to focus on growing this new space, and their platform, which is like an Ebay for crypto assets, allows users to buy and sell non-fungible assets of any kind. Listen to find out how users can interact with the OpenSea marketplace and learn about some of the exciting potential use cases in the future...
Ledger: Secure Hardware Wallets
October 23, 2018 12:00 - 35 minutes - 32.9 MBWhat are the advantages of using a hardware wallet to secure your crypto assets? Thomas France, co-founder of Ledger, wants to make it easy for average users--as well as power users--to safely generate and manage their keys offline in a secure environment. Listen as Thomas explains the simple steps to using Ledger and why it’s the most popular hardware wallet in the world, with over one million devices sold across 65 countries. ##Why choose a hardware wallet? With hot wallets and cold wa...
dYdX: Decentralized Derivatives and Margin Trading
October 09, 2018 12:00 - 34 minutes - 31.7 MBAntonio Juliano, founder and CEO of dYdX, wants to add another layer to the decentralized financial stack, and dYdX is doing this by building a protocol that lets you go short or get leverage on any cryptocurrency. Listen to learn how dYdX makes decentralized financial derivatives and margin trading possible, and what the future may hold for the crypto counterpart of the most massive market in the world. ##The Decentralized Financial Stack Derivatives are far and away the largest market i...
Electric Capital: Investing in Programmable Money
September 25, 2018 12:00 - 36 minutes - 33.6 MBAvichal Garg, co-founder and managing partner at Electric Capital, says programmable money is currently the most valuable segment of the cryptocurrency market. Listen to find out how the team at Electric have developed their crypto investment strategy, and why programmable money is at the foundation of this strategy. ##Who is Electric Capital? Electric Capital is a digital asset management firm, founded by Avichal Garg, prominent angel Elad Gil, and Curtis Spencer, that invests in both li...
Basis: A Stable, Scalable Cryptocurrency
September 12, 2018 13:00 - 37 minutes - 34 MBIf cryptocurrencies were more stable, would more people use them? Nader Al-Naji, CEO and Co-Founder of Basis, believes price volatility is the biggest barrier to more widespread use, and his answer to this is Basis: a new cryptocurrency with an algorithmic central bank designed to keep the price of Basis stable and usable around the world. Listen as Nader explains how Basis is different--and more scalable--than other stablecoins. ##A Basket of Goods Many stablecoins are said to be “pegge...
Coda: Accessible Blockchain Verification
August 28, 2018 12:00 - 30 minutes - 28.3 MBWhat if you could verify the entire blockchain from your smartphone? Izaak Meckler and Evan Shapiro are cofounders of Coda, a new cryptocurrency protocol that reduces the size of the blockchain from gigabytes down to the size of a few tweets. Izaak and Evan explain how cryptocurrency can be more accessible to everyone: ##The Tradeoff Between Scaling and Decentralization Today, if you want to verify a transaction on a cryptocurrency, you need to first download a full copy of the blockchai...
Compound: An Ethereum Money Market Protocol
August 14, 2018 12:00 - 36 minutes - 33 MBToday, Zach sits down with Robert Leshner, the CEO and founder of Compound, a protocol that creates money markets on the Ethereum blockchain. Compound will allow users and distributed applications to systematically earn interest or borrow assets on-chain in a trustless, transparent, and predictable way. Robert’s insights point to crypto’s increasing importance within the financial system: ##Crypto is Transforming How Finance Works Robert points out three major advantages to cryptographic ...
Vest Protocol: Staking Pools and Tokenization
July 31, 2018 12:00 - 39 minutes - 36.2 MBZach had an awesome talk with Axel Ericsson, a cofounder at 1protocol, focusing on providing proper incentives to both token holders and miners on blockchains. Although a work still in progress, 1protocol’s Vest system aims to allow all players to collaboratively supply work for staking protocols. Here’s what Axel, a new Thiel Fellow, had to say: ##Staking protocols are the future Moving away from opportunity cost to participate in a blockchain to a staking-based incentive system allows f...
Radar Relay: Reliable Token Trading
July 17, 2018 18:17 - 38 minutes - 34.9 MBZach had a refreshing chat with Alan Curtis, the CEO and co-founder of Radar Relay, a peer-to-peer trading platform for Ethereum-based tokens built on the 0x protocol. Radar allows for direct wall-to-wall trading, which means that you never lose custody of your tokens. Here’s what Alan shares with us: ###A decentralized solution to the operational risk of attack The token economy is the intersection of two systems: the token system and the exchange (mediated or peer-to-peer) system. The g...
Harbor: Tokenized Private Equity
July 03, 2018 12:00 - 37 minutes - 34.4 MBZach had a great chat with Joshua Stein, the CEO of Harbor, a company building a decentralized, blockchain-based protocol for issuing and trading securities. With a strong focus on legal compliance (Josh has worked for years as a lawyer), Harbor brings a legitimate solution to the future needs of private equity on the established Ethereum platform. Here’s what Josh had to share with us: ##There’s a market opportunity for compliance-focused tokenized securities While Harbor has a few compe...
Republic: Trusted Token-based Fundraising
June 19, 2018 14:00 - 1 hour - 85.5 MBZach had an interesting discussion with Kendrick Nguyen, a co-founder of Republic, a company that enables non-accredited investors to purchase equity in startups. One of their focuses is crowdfunding of cryptocurrency-based and blockchain-based companies. With hopes to become the industry standard for crowdfunding in this space, Republic puts its money where its mouth is, using token tech to power its platform. Kendrick was enthusiastic, with a lot to say: ##Republic hopes to become the Am...
Dharma: Tokenized Debt Agreements
June 05, 2018 12:00 - 36 minutes - 33.8 MBZach had a great chat with Nadav Hollander, the founder of Dharma, a generic protocol for tokenized debt agreements. It’s pretty exciting stuff. For a long time, the blockchain community has been talking about the technology’s potential to enable vast suites of new, decentralized financial services. Dharma, which continues to undergo development, will provide a means to allow for tradable debt agreements on top of a blockchain. Now on the Ethereum mainnet in a closed beta, Nadav, a former G...
TrueBit: Scalable Decentralized Computing
May 22, 2018 12:00 - 37 minutes - 34.5 MBRobbie Bent from Truebit chats with Zach DeWitt about decentralized computation using off-chain and on-chain solutions with Truebit. Truebit provides a means to tap beyond the Ethereum gas limits for trustless decentralized computation. It does this by enabling computational problems to be solved and verified off-chain, while only looking to the broader Ethereum network to address disputes about the validity of a particular step of a computational result. Rewards are distributed to both sol...
NuCypher: Building Scalable Privacy in Blockchains
May 08, 2018 13:00 - 35 minutes - 32.7 MBMacLane Wilkison from NuCypher joined Zach DeWitt to talk about scalable privacy and data control in public blockchains. A Y Combinator alumnus, NuCypher is proxy re-encryption for modern blockchain technology. That is, it allows a central controller to encrypt data held on public blockchain systems, like IPFS, using a public key, with the ability to generate special, private decryption keys to authorize access to others. It’s akin to public-key encryption but much more scalable. MacLane h...
Quantstamp: Securing Smart Contracts
April 24, 2018 12:00 - 33 minutes - 30.5 MBRichard Ma and Don Ho from Quantstamp joined Zach DeWitt to discuss scalable smart contract security auditing. A recent admit into Y Combinator’s Winter 2018 batch of startups, Quantstamp is building an automated protocol to audit smart contracts along a blockchain. It does this by using blockchain technology itself, in a manner akin to how Ethereum nodes provide for transactional authentication. Here’s what we learned from them about smart contract security: Most blockchains are secure, ...
Introducing Token Talks - The Best Emerging Projects in Crypto
March 21, 2018 18:09 - 52 seconds - 861 KBIntroducing Token Talks, hosted by Zach DeWitt. Join us as we highlight the best emerging projects in crypto through unbiased and exclusive interviews with blockchain technology founders. Token Talks intends to make the cryptocurrency ecosystem more accessible by connecting thought leaders and entrepreneurs with mainstream companies, consumers, and investors. This podcast is produced by Wing Venture Capital (aka “Wing”), a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm. Multiple episodes are rel...