The Defiant - DeFi Podcast

For consumer crypto to thrive it needs to embrace financialization to deliver a better experience, and maker sure crypto disappears everywhere else. Projects doing this right sit in an emerging sector called fantech. In this episode of the Avalanche Ecosystem Series, we explore the rise of Fantech: a new category where sports fans, music fans, creators, and event-goers become participants in real digital economies. From loyalty programs and ticketing to creator monetization and on-chain rewards, we look at how these experiences get a 10x lift when they go onchain, and why Avalanche is emerging as one of the leading infrastructures powering this shift.The episode opens with a real story from the Champions League final and expands into a global look at how blockchain is quietly reshaping fan engagement, payments, and ownership at scale.Featured conversations:Rain — using stablecoins to power global consumer payments and rewardsUptop — building wallet-based loyalty for major sports teamsThe Arena — enabling creators to monetize directly through social cryptoTixbase — rebuilding ticketing with on-chain transparency and fan identityIn this episode:Why loyalty and rewards are a multi-billion-dollar global marketHow on-chain points and fan engagement differ from traditional programsWhy ticketing may be one of the most natural consumer use cases for blockchainHow creators and fans are earning, not just speculatingWhy Avalanche’s architecture is uniquely suited for consumer-scale appsWhy the future of consumer crypto won’t feel like crypto at allChapters:00:00 – The Ticket That Didn’t Work01:30 – What Is Fantech?04:00 – Payments as the Base Layer06:30 – Loyalty Goes On-Chain10:00 – Social + Fan Economies13:00 – Fixing Ticketing17:00 – Why Avalanche Works for Consumers19:00 – The Future of FandomSubscribe for more deep dives into crypto, DeFi, and the technologies reshaping finance and the consumer internet.

In this episode of The Defiant Podcast, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams joins us right as the UNIfication (Unification) proposal has moved to a final governance vote—a sweeping plan from Uniswap Labs + the Uniswap Foundation that would activate protocol fees, introduce a programmatic UNI burn, and realign how value accrues across the Uniswap ecosystem. We go deep on what’s actually inside the proposal (and what isn’t), why this moment feels like the end of one DeFi era and the start of another, and how years of “regulation by enforcement” shaped Uniswap’s product decisions—down to Hayden’s firsthand experience with debanking, legal pressure, and the chilling effect on builders. What we coverWhy UNIfication is being pitched as a once-in-a-cycle reset for UniswapThe real mechanics of the fee switch(es) (plural) and how the “token jar” burn design worksThe perceived tension between UNI token holders vs. equity/VC value capture and whether this vote changes thatWhy Uniswap wants to shift from “best frontend” to protocol-first infrastructure (APIs, ecosystem engineering, aggregator hooks)How Unichain fits into the broader strategy—and what “near-free trading” could mean in practiceGovernance backlash: is Uniswap becoming more centralized or more decentralized?Context: the vote is live! Hayden shared that the UNIfication proposal is now in the final governance vote stage.Subscribe for more founder-level conversations at the intersection of DeFi, regulation, and market structure.

In this episode of The Defiant podcast, Camila Russo sits down in Buenos Aires (Devconnect) with Marissa Foster (Product, Ethereum Foundation) and Yoav Weiss (security researcher, Ethereum Foundation) to unpack The Trustless Manifesto and the Ethereum Interop Layer (EIL), why “trust assumptions” are quietly creeping into Ethereum’s stack, and what it will take to preserve Ethereum’s core values while making UX actually usable.We dig into the hidden places users are forced to trust intermediaries, from cross-chain interoperability and solvers to something most people never question: RPCs. Then we get practical: the guests walk through the EIL, a new approach to cross-chain UX that aims to deliver one-signature interop without introducing new trust assumptions, plus why the wallet becomes the center of the user’s security model.Finally, we zoom out: how should wallets warn users, what does “walkaway test” really mean, and why institutions may end up being one of the strongest forces pushing crypto toward less counterparty risk.Topic list: • Why Ethereum’s next phase is “mainstream adoption” — and why that raises the stakes • The Trustless Manifesto: what it is, why it was written, and what it’s trying to prevent • Where trust assumptions sneak in: bridges, interop protocols, sequencers, oracles • RPCs as a giant blind spot: “we trust RPCs blindly” and why that can have real-world consequences • Trustlessness vs UX: why “great values + bad UX” can still lose users • “You can’t build something trustless on top of something that isn’t trustless” • What users should demand — and why it can’t require everyone to be a security expert • How “beat” frameworks help: L2BEAT, upcoming interop criteria, and Walletbeat • The walkaway test: what happens if the team/server/intermediary disappears (or turns hostile)? • L2 sequencers: permissioned vs permissionless, censorship risk, and practical exit paths • Cloud dependencies (Cloudflare outage) and what it reveals about today’s “decentralized” apps • Ethereum Interop Layer (EIL) explained: one-signature, wallet-centric, self-executing interop • Why “solvers open the envelope” — and how EIL avoids that trust model • Liquidity providers, vouchers, and how users pay gas cross-chain without the usual friction • Standards and coordination: wallets, L2s, and dapps all need to meet in the middle • The HTTP analogy: Ethereum today as the “pre-HTTP internet” and what seamless interop could unlock • Institutions and counterparty risk: why big players may push hardest for trust-minimized infrastructure • What’s next: testnet learnings, audits, standards, wallet integrations, and 2026 mainnet targetExplore The Defiant ✨📰 Websitehttps://thedefiant.io/✉️ Free Daily Newsletter https://thedefiant.io/newsletter/defi...🤑 Weekly Premium Newsletter https://thedefiant.io/newsletter/defi...✊ Follow The DefiantX/Twitter: https://x.com/DefiantNews📬 Contact our [email protected]🤝 Sponsorships & [email protected]#TheDefiant​ #DeFi​ #Decentralized​ #Finance​ #Blockchain #Web3

In this episode of The Defiant podcast, Camila Russo sits down in Buenos Aires (Devconnect) with Marissa Foster (Product, Ethereum Foundation) and Yoav Weiss (security researcher, Ethereum Foundation) to unpack The Trustless Manifesto and the Ethereum Interop Layer (EIL), why “trust assumptions” are quietly creeping into Ethereum’s stack, and what it will take to preserve Ethereum’s core values while making UX actually usable.We dig into the hidden places users are forced to trust intermediaries, from cross-chain interoperability and solvers to something most people never question: RPCs. Then we get practical: the guests walk through the EIL, a new approach to cross-chain UX that aims to deliver one-signature interop without introducing new trust assumptions, plus why the wallet becomes the center of the user’s security model.Finally, we zoom out: how should wallets warn users, what does “walkaway test” really mean, and why institutions may end up being one of the strongest forces pushing crypto toward less counterparty risk.Topic list: • Why Ethereum’s next phase is “mainstream adoption” — and why that raises the stakes • The Trustless Manifesto: what it is, why it was written, and what it’s trying to prevent • Where trust assumptions sneak in: bridges, interop protocols, sequencers, oracles • RPCs as a giant blind spot: “we trust RPCs blindly” and why that can have real-world consequences • Trustlessness vs UX: why “great values + bad UX” can still lose users • “You can’t build something trustless on top of something that isn’t trustless” • What users should demand — and why it can’t require everyone to be a security expert • How “beat” frameworks help: L2BEAT, upcoming interop criteria, and Walletbeat • The walkaway test: what happens if the team/server/intermediary disappears (or turns hostile)? • L2 sequencers: permissioned vs permissionless, censorship risk, and practical exit paths • Cloud dependencies (Cloudflare outage) and what it reveals about today’s “decentralized” apps • Ethereum Interop Layer (EIL) explained: one-signature, wallet-centric, self-executing interop • Why “solvers open the envelope” — and how EIL avoids that trust model • Liquidity providers, vouchers, and how users pay gas cross-chain without the usual friction • Standards and coordination: wallets, L2s, and dapps all need to meet in the middle • The HTTP analogy: Ethereum today as the “pre-HTTP internet” and what seamless interop could unlock • Institutions and counterparty risk: why big players may push hardest for trust-minimized infrastructure • What’s next: testnet learnings, audits, standards, wallet integrations, and 2026 mainnet target

In this episode of The Defiant podcast we speak with Morgan Krupetsky, VP of OnChain Finance at Ava Labs, to break down one of the most significant shifts happening in crypto today: the rapid institutionalization of blockchain and Avalanche’s strategy to lead it.Morgan walks us through Avalanche’s “real-world adoption first” ethos, explaining how its unique architecture enables enterprises, fintechs, banks, governments, and consumer apps to build purpose-designed blockchains while tapping into a shared liquidity hub.