Unchained

Across Protocol wants to retire its token in exchange for equity. Is the DAO model structurally broken?

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Adaptive Security

With Across Protocol proposing to retire its ACX token in favor of equity, a long-simmering question in crypto governance is finally breaking into the open: do token holders actually have meaningful ownership, or just the illusion of it? 

As the regulatory environment under the new U.S. administration shifts dramatically from the Gensler era, the structures that crypto teams were forced to build may now be working against the very communities they were meant to serve. 

Ryan Yi, founder of Onchain Group, and Felipe Montealegre, co-founder and CIO of Theia, have studied these incentive structures closely, and what they have found is uncomfortable. From PumpFun's suppressed valuation to the perverse incentives baked into token buyouts, this conversation examines whether the DAO model was ever built to last, and what governance actually needs to look like if crypto is going to compete with global finance.

Guests:


⁠⁠⁠⁠Ryan Yi, Founder of Onchain Group


⁠⁠⁠⁠Felipe Montealegre, Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer at Theia

Links:

Read our Aave deep dive here

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Crypto insiders debate the Ethereum Foundation’s new “CROPS” mandate: is the EF losing touch with builders, why does Solana keep pulling startups away, and what will it actually take for Ethereum to stay ahead? Expect a candid conversation on governance, comms, and crypto culture wars.

Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week we’ve got plenty of firepower with special guests Taylor Monahan (formerly of MetaMask, now a security sensei) and Bankless impresario David Hoffman. The crew digs into the Ethereum Foundation’s freshly dropped “CROPS” manifesto — a 38-page PDF full of cypherpunk values, new acronyms, and debate fuel.

What does it really say about where Ethereum is headed? Is EF finally embracing “sanctuary tech,” or just giving startups another reason to choose Solana? Who deserves credit for Ethereum’s growth: the Foundation, the community, or the market?

Expect sharp takes on EF’s endless comms problems, why L2s aren’t a cure-all, and whether crypto culture matters as much as the tech. It’s a spicy, insider-heavy episode — so grab your popcorn and dive in.

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

Show highlights

🔹 Ethereum Foundation’s new CROPS mandate—what it says, what it avoids, and why it sparked a vibe war  

🔹 Is Vitalik’s “sanctuary tech” vision pushing builders away or just keeping Ethereum pure?  

🔹 The never-ending battle between “cypherpunks” and “pragmatists” in Ethereum’s governance  

🔹 Why Ethereum’s “bad comms” tradition keeps causing existential crises  

🔹 Solana’s support playbook: How culture, not tech, is dominating the builder mindshare  

🔹 Are new projects ditching Ethereum L1 for Base, Arbitrum, and Solana—and does platform risk even matter now?  

🔹 Should EF just stick to research, or actually help grow the ecosystem? And what does “supporting builders” actually mean?  

🔹 Can you keep your values if you don’t win? The hard truths of crypto capitalism  

🔹 Lessons from Defi Summer, NFT mania, and what L2 drama says about ecosystem incentives  

🔹 Haseeb goes “political”: Why virtue-signaling and simple narratives are killing real debate

Hosts

⭐️ Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️ Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️ Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly 

Guest

⭐️ Taylor Monahan, Security expert & Host of Uneasy Money⭐️ David Hoffman, Host of Bankless

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

01:51 EF Mandate Explained

03:23 Pragmatists vs. Cypherpunks

05:13 Tay’s Middle Ground

08:54 David Reads Between Lines

13:51 Tom & Tarun Push Back

18:20 EF Factions & Solana Shadow

24:13 Does Ethereum Want Growth

31:01 Virtue Signaling

35:35 Where to Build Now

39:16 Solana Support vs Ethereum Stability

42:12 EF Promotion & Builder Support 

47:54 Goldilocks Time Horizons

51:10 Ethereum Soul and Body

56:03 Does EF Leadership Matter?

01:02:45 Stewardship and Market Failures

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The crew unpacks the Binance case against the Wall Street Journal. Is the lawsuit just for optics? Plus, why crypto can't turn a blind eye to one Aave user's $50 million loss.

Thank you to our sponsor, Adaptive Security

Binance has sued the Wall Street Journal for defamation over a report that money has flowed from its platform to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp. 

DEX in the City hosts Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos and Jessi Brooks are joined by Arktouros Partner Jane Khodarkovsky to discuss the sanctions implications of the story, what is at stake in the lawsuit and the burden of proof on Binance. 

Is Binance fighting a losing battle? And could the case backfire amid a parallel DOJ investigation?

Beyond the Binance case, the crew unpacks recent efforts by the CFTC and SEC to provide crypto with regulatory clarity. Find out why KK says the CFTC's recent prediction markets guidance is a “nothingburger” and why a no action letter to Phantom is not a carte blanche for all crypto frontends.

Plus, is it time for crypto to consider best execution rules as an Aave user loses $50 million in a DeFi swap gone wrong?

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital


⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at StarkWare

Guest:


Jane Khodarkovsky, Sanctions expert

Links:


Unchained:


CFTC Moves to Rein In Prediction Markets as Industry Booms


SEC and CFTC Move Toward Unified Crypto Rules


Dueling Post-Mortems Reveal How a $50 Million DeFi Swap Went From Bad to Catastrophic


Vy Le's paper on on-chain best execution:


Fairness by Design: Verifiable Execution in On-Chain Markets


This week's good news:


Tech boss uses ChatGPT to create cancer vaccine to save dying dog

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Ram is bearish on equities, oil is keeping the Fed frozen, and Bitcoin is holding up anyway. The hosts debate whether crypto has bottomed or whether worse is still ahead.

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Thanks to our sponsor, Nexo!

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Three weeks into the Iran conflict, oil is keeping inflation elevated, rate cuts are getting pushed out, and hedge funds are being forced to sell good names just to reduce exposure. So why is Bitcoin holding up? 

Ram sees a market on the right shoulder of a bubble, with industrials like Caterpillar at 35x earnings and no real capitulation yet in equities or private credit. Chris is watching trading desks pick up the “short-gold, long-Bitcoin” trade, and sees Ethereum's fundamentals quietly strengthening. Austin wants to know what happens to DeFi the day a major stablecoin gets compromised on a censorship-resistant chain with no network-level controls. 

And all three are asking the same question investors need answered now: does the Iran conflict end fast enough to stop oil from triggering a true inflationary regime, or is a harder correction still ahead?

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ram Ahluwalia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, CFA, CEO and Founder of Lumida


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Campbell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, NYU Stern professor and founder and managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Christopher Perkins⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Managing Partner and President of CoinFund

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For the first time in a geopolitical crisis, bitcoin held its ground while safe havens faltered. But can it keep holding if the VIX moves from yellow to red?

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The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Oil is past $100 a barrel. The traditional safe haven playbook, from treasuries to gold, is failing to perform the way it should. And yet bitcoin is up 4% since the conflict started, holding steady in a tight range that Andy Baehr, newly installed as managing director of asset management at GSR, calls "base camp." 

What signals should investors watch to know if the next move is up or down? Why does the VIX suggest calm when the world feels anything but? And why might the tokenization boom be built on demand that doesn't exist yet? 

Baehr, who spent years constructing the crypto index ecosystem at CoinDesk, brings a structural lens to a market moment where nothing is where it should be.

Host:


⁠⁠Steven Ehrlich, Host of Bits + Bips: The Interview

Guest:

Andy Baehr, Managing Director of Asset Management, GSR

Links:

Bitcoin = Safe Haven


Is Bitcoin Now a Safe-Haven Asset? If So, Then It Could Be Hugely Undervalued at Just $70,000


How Bitcoin and Gold Reacted Differently to the Iran War Shock

Hyperliquid Oil Perps


The Hottest New Crypto Trade Is 24/7 Oil Futures


Crypto Markets Track War Risk as Iran Conflict Endures

Tokenization


Wall Street Pushes Tokenized Stocks, but Institutions Aren’t Eager to Trade Them


Nasdaq Partners With Kraken in Plan for 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading

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