Plasma's Successful Launch, Revenue Over TVL & the Future of Pump.fun - Ep. 910
How do stablecoin-first blockchains win distribution? Does TVL actually map to value? And why speculation may become the default language of online culture.
In this 3-part episode, we explore three different important stories.
Segment 1: CoinFund’s Seth Ginns explains how newly launched stablecoin chain Plasma aims to compete, plus why the “stablecoin race” with Circle and Stripe is just beginning.
Segment 2: Solana Foundation president Lily Liu lays out why revenue—not TVL—should be crypto’s north-star metric, whether TVL can be easily gamed, and what a better DeFi metric stack looks like.
Segment 3: Figment Capital’s James Parillo makes the case for Pump.fun and “AudienceFi”: how creator coins can financialize streaming, whether token collapses are a feature, and why both perps and memecoins rhyme with gambling.
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Guests:
James Parillo, General Partner at Figment Capital
Lily Liu, President of Solana Foundation
Seth Ginns, Managing Partner and Head of Liquid Investments at CoinFund
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2024 Was Solana's Best Year Yet. Can It Sustain the Momentum in 2025? - Ep. 755
2024 has been a transformative year for Solana. With a surge in developer activity, bold innovations in DePIN, and its ambitions to become a “decentralized Nasdaq,” the ecosystem is making waves. But are these changes enough to differentiate it from competitors like Ethereum and L2 solutions such as Base?
In this episode, Lily Liu, president of the Solana Foundation, and Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius, join Unchained to discuss how Solana is carving out its niche. They debate whether Base is a serious contender, why they’re not concerned about the 2025 token unlocks, and how Solana’s unique approach to MEV could shape its future. Plus, they tackle the ecosystem’s broader challenges and why they believe Solana’s vision will endure.
Show highlights:
Why Mert feels paranoid but also vindicated
Why Lily started working on Solana after being known as a hardcore bitcoiner
How Mert’s background in Coinbase led him to found Helius and become the voice of Solana online
Whether Solana can become a place where unique innovations are built, rather than copying Ethereum
Whether Solana can achieve its vision of a “decentralized Nasdaq”
Why the ecosystem has attracted so many developers in 2024
Why Lily believes that Base is no competitor to Solana
What network extensions actually mean, according to Mert
How Mert responds to the criticisms around Solana’s MEV
Why Mert and Lily are not worried about the token unlocks of 2025
How the Solana mobile phone will compete with the giants
Why DePIN showcases the real value of blockchain technology
Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com
Thank you to our sponsors!
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Guests:
Lily Liu, President of the Solana Foundation
Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius
Links
Unchained:
Pudgy Penguins See NFT Floor Price Drop Almost 50% After PENGU Launch -
Pump.fun Becomes First Solana DApp to Top $100M in Monthly Revenue
How Solana Beat Out Ethereum to Nab New Crypto Developers in 2024
Are Solana's 'Network Extensions' Just Like Ethereum's Layer 2s But by a Different Name?
What Are DePINs in Crypto? A Beginner’s Guide
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
02:34 Mert’s mix of paranoia and vindication about Solana
07:08 Why Lily shifted from Bitcoin to working on Solana
09:43 Mert’s journey from Coinbase to becoming Solana’s online advocate
14:47 Can Solana foster unique innovations rather than mimic Ethereum?
19:47 Solana’s vision of a “decentralized Nasdaq” vs. center of memecoin mania
27:54 What’s driving Solana’s surge in developer activity
30:26 Why Lily sees Base as no real competitor
33:04 The meaning and implications of network extensions
37:07 Mert’s take on criticisms of Solana’s MEV approach
42:11 Why they aren’t worried about the 2025 token unlocks
44:26 Competing with tech giants through the Solana mobile phone
50:48 How DePIN highlights blockchain’s true potential
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Live From Distributed: Amber Baldet, Matthew Roszak and Lily Liu on 'Innovate or Reinvent?' - Ep.76
In July in San Francisco, I moderated a panel at "Distributed 2018: Unlocking the Global Power of Decentralized Business." The title of our discussion was "Innovate or Reinvent?" and the panelists were Amber Baldet, cofounder and CEO of Clovyr, Matt Roszak, cofounder and chairman of Bloq, and Lily Liu, cofounder of Earn.com. We had a wide-ranging discussion, which included topics such as how the "Crypto 50" combined have more budget for blockchain development services than Fortune 50 companies, how developing in the blockchain space and revolutionize an existing market requires that the new offering be many times better than existing options, and why enterprise needs to wait to get permission rather than ask for forgiveness, which doesn't hinder new projects. We also discussed how government is also a competitor in the space, that building entities don't include only decentralized projects and corporations, and how regulation could affect the development of the space.
Thank you to our sponsors!
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Episode links:
Distributed conference: https://2018.distributed.com
Amber Baldet: https://twitter.com/AmberBaldet
Clovyr: https://clovyr.io
Matt Roszak: https://twitter.com/MatthewRoszak
Bloq: https://www.bloq.com
Lily Liu: https://twitter.com/calilyliu
Earn.com: https://earn.com
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a16z Podcast: Building Companies in Crypto, from People to Code
with Tina Bhatnagar (@tinab), Preethi Kasireddy (@iam_preethi), Lily Liu (@calilyliu), and Kim Milosevich (@kimbatronic)
Whether it’s sharing the decision-making behind joining a crypto company to the perspectives of a passionate early adopter (or relative latecomer), this episode of the a16z Podcast -- based on a panel from the “Intro to Crypto” event that Andreessen Horowitz and #Angels put on in April 2018 -- covers what it takes to build companies in crypto, from people to code. You can find other sessions from the event, covering the building blocks of crypto to decentralization to the regulatory landscape, here.
Why crypto? What was the biggest surprise in the space? Do the same skills from other domains apply? This discussion, moderated by Kim Milosevich, explores these questions with Coinbase VP of Operations Tina Bhatnagar; CEO and founder of TruStory Preethi Kasireddy; and Lily Liu, co-founder at Earn.com.
photo credit: Erin Brethauer
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