For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Jesse Pollak, the lead for Base and head of protocols at Coinbase. Base is an Ethereum-focused layer 2 blockchain launched by Coinbase in February. Pollak previously led all retail engineering at Coinbase, including building Coinbase, Coinbase Pro, and Coinbase Wallet. In a past life, Pollak started Clef, a 2FA mobile app and was an engineer at BuzzFeed. A number of crypto businesses, platforms, marketplaces and infrastructure firms have committed to building on Base. Those that plan to be involved include Blockdaemon, Chainlink, Etherscan, Quicknode, Aave, Animoca Brands, Dune, Nansen, Magic Eden, Pyth, Rainbow Wallet, Ribbon Finance, The Graph, Wormhole and Gelato, to name a handful.

We’re thrilled to be nominated for a Webby award in the Best Technology Podcast category. You can help Chain Reaction win by voting at vote.webbyawards.com. Voting closes April 20.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Arianna Simpson, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (commonly known as a16z). Prior to joining the a16z family, Arianna founded Autonomous Partners, an investment fund focused on crypto. She also helped launch Crystal Towers Capital, which is an early-stage fund investing primarily in YC companies. A16Z has dug deep into the crypto space after launching four funds dedicated to the industry, with the most recent one being about $4.5 billion in May 2022. Some of its portfolio companies include big crypto players we’ve interviewed in the past like Alchemy, Avalanche and Aptos.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Emin Gün Sirer, the founder and CEO of Ava Labs. Ava Labs created the layer-1 blockchain Avalanche, a platform that lets developers build Solidity-compatible multi-functional blockchains and dApps with a focus on speed and low transaction costs. Hundreds of projects are a part of the Avalanche ecosystem, ranging from decentralized exchanges like 1inch to digital asset security firms like BitGo. Ava Labs has raised a total of about $640 million, according to Crunchbase data and is backed by firms like a16z and Polychain Capital, among others.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Jack Mallers, the founder and CEO of Strike, a bitcoin-based payment network and financial app that is trying to grow cross-border payments and remittance markets. Last year, Mallers’ company raised $80 million in a Series B round to grow into that space and also has partnered with major companies like Visa, Clover and Fiserv. Mallers is also the CEO of Zap, a bitcoin investment and payments company that transacts on the Lightning Network, which is a second layer on Bitcoin’s blockchain that allows for off-chain transactions between parties.

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for—the winner is announced! In this episode, we get to know the winner of the 2022 Startup Battlefield competition. We’ll hear what’s next for their company and get insight from TechCrunch staff, VCs, and audience members on why they were the right choice. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast.

Inside Startup Battlefield is back in our feed with episode three. There are 180 companies solving crucial problems that didn’t make it to the Disrupt stage, but that doesn’t mean they’re making any less of an impact. TechCrunch writers Devin Coldewey and Harri Weber take us on a walk through the Expo Hall and let us listen into their conversations with a handful of the most interesting companies in the Battlefield 200. New episodes of Inside Startup Battlefield drop every Monday. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Alex Adelman, the co-founder and CEO of Lolli. Founded in 2018, Lolli is a bitcoin rewards app that lets people earn bitcoin or cash back when they shop online or in-person at over 10,000 stores like McDonalds, Starbucks, Dunkin, CVS, Costco and so on. Adelman previously was on the team that built a commerce gateway Cosmic that was acquired by PopSugar in 2015 then Ebates and Rakuten in 2017. Lolli has grown significantly over the past few years from partnering with less than 1,000 stores to over 10,000 stores, to date. Adelman dived into the rewards system in the crypto ecosystem and how it has evolved over the years – and what the future holds for Lolli.

Inside Startup Battlefield is back in our feed with episode two. In the second episode of Inside Startup Battlefield, we take a trip to TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 to hear pitches from the top five companies: Aaron Hall from Intropic Materials, Elizabeth Lawler from App Map, Chad Mason from Advanced Ionics, Sheeba Dawood from Minerva Lithium, Tim Lichti from Swap Robotics. We get to know the companies and the unique problems they’re solving through their pitches and the judges’ follow-up questions. Plus we hear from our host and Battlefield Editor, Neesha Tambe, about what working with each company was like. New episodes of Inside Startup Battlefield drop every Monday. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast.

Check out the newest podcast from the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Inside Startup Battlefield, the four-part series that takes you behind TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield competition. In this episode, our host and Startup Battlefield Editor Neesha Tambe breaks down how the Battlefield companies are selected for the TechCrunch Disrupt stage. Then we take a deep dive into what makes a pitch perfect with pitch coach and TechCrunch writer Haje Jan Kamps and Startup Battlefield judge and VC Nisha Dua. You’ll also hear from: Julia Somerdin from Labby, Young-Jae Kim and Tara Peters from Anthill, Quddus Pativada from Digest AI, Blessing Adesiyan from Mother honestly, Hikari Senju from Omneky, Mitch Tolson from Ally robotics, Elizabeth Lawler from App map, Aaron Hall from Intropic materials. Sheeba Dawood from Minerva. New episodes of Inside Startup Battlefield drop every Monday. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn talked to Gwendolyn Regina, investment director at layer-1 blockchain BNB Chain. Prior to her current role, Gwen worked at Facebook, or as some call it now – Meta, building up a new business unit for venture capital partnerships and startup growth. She’s also a founder of a few different businesses and a founding team member for an early stage tech investment firm Thymos Capital. BNB Chain was launched in 2020 and initially kicked off by Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume. Since then, BNB Chain aims to be a decentralized, community-owned separate entity from Binance with a focus on three audiences: retail markets, builders and developers and bridging Web2.0 businesses to web3, Regina shared.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn talked with Mo Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of the layer-1 blockchain Aptos. Shaikh is a three-time founder with over a decade of experience in financial services as well as blockchain technology and crypto. He also worked on blockchain strategic partnerships for Novi, Facebook’s wallet and was the strategy director at Consensys. Last year was huge for Aptos – as the blockchain launched publicly and raised about $400 million in funding, amid a bear market. The new layer-1 got backing from major investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Circle Ventures and the now-defunct FTX Ventures, to name a few. Looking forward, Aptos plans to focus on making 2023 its year of “intention,” Shaikh said.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn talked with Ryan Wyatt, president of Polygon Labs, one of the biggest market shakers and layer-2 blockchains in the crypto space that’s building on top of the Ethereum ecosystem. The past year has been huge for Polygon as it partnered with big-brand names like Starbucks, Disney and Mastercard to launch loyalty rewards and accelerator programs. Now, Polygon is looking to 2023, new opportunities and Wyatt shares what’s in store for it and how the space still has room to grow.

For this week’s Tuesday episode where we chat with a web3 expert, we’re playing a recording of our discussion live on stage with Alchemy’s CEO Nikil Viswanathan at TechCrunch Sessions: Crypto 2022.

For this week’s Tuesday episode where we chat with a web3 expert, we’re playing a super timely recording of our discussion live on stage last week with Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao, known as “CZ.

Web3 this week really reminded us that even the best-laid plans aren’t always reliable. We tore up the script for our Thursday episode this week, which we recorded live on stage at our TechCrunch Crypto conference in Miami, and talked instead about the leaked DMs between Sam Bankman-Fried and a Vox reporter. We shared some of the most notable quotes from the surreal, absurd exchange and unpacked why they matter.

For this week’s Tuesday episode where we chat with a web3 expert (or three), we’re playing a recording of our discussion live on stage with Brett Harrison, former president of FTX, Mary-Catherine Lader, COO of Uniswap and Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa, at TechCrunch Disrupt.

We had to talk about the news that rocked the crypto world this week in our Thursday episode: the Binance/FTX deal that never was. To begin, we gave you a rundown of WTF just happened with the beef between two of the largest crypto exchanges in the world and how Sam Bankman-Fried’s storied exchange fell so far so fast, bringing down investors, cryptocurrencies and other companies in the space tumbling down with it.

For this week’s Tuesday episode where we chat with a web3 expert, we’re playing a recording of our discussion live on stage with Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of the Solana blockchain, at TechCrunch Disrupt.

For our Thursday episode where we discuss the latest in crypto news, we talked about a string of troubles that have unfolded for various bitcoin mining companies over the past month, from Argo Blockchain to Core Scientific, and what it would take to unearth (ha ha, get it?) the sector from its woes.

For this week’s Tuesday episode where we chat with a web3 expert, we’re playing a recording of our discussion live on stage with a16z GP Chris Dixon that took place at Disrupt last month. We chatted with Dixon about: The venture firm’s new creator economy-focused crypto accelerator program Why a16z backed controversial WeWork founder Adam Neumann Where he’s seeing opportunity across the web3 landscape in this bear market

Welcome to Chain Reaction, where we unpack and explain the latest in crypto news, drama and trends, breaking things down block by block for the crypto curious.For our Thursday episode where we discuss the latest in crypto news, we talked about Apple’s new App Store guidelines announced this week and how they could make life harder for NFT exchanges and crypto companies looking to grow through mobile adoption.

For our Tuesday episode where we chat with a web3 expert, we talked to Andrei Brasoveanu, a venture capital investor at Accel, about his web3 investments in companies such as Nansen and Sorare and how the firm competes with crypto-native VC players for top deals in the blockchain space.

We shook things up this week and recorded our Thursday episode live from stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. We talked through the Aptos mainnet launch snafu and what this hyped, VC-backed blockchain’s starting troubles mean for other layer-ones. We also chatted about Twitter’s decentralized social plans and Mastercard launching crypto trading for banks.

For our Thursday episode where we discuss the latest in crypto news, we talked about a report this week that the SEC is investigating Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs. We discussed what regulatory action against the NFT startup could mean for the crypto ecosystem.