For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Scott Dykstra, CTO and co-founder of Space and Time. Before diving into web3, Scott spent almost 8 years at the cloud analytics and data platform Teradata and throughout the years he held roles of senior architect, director of cloud solutions and worked his way up to VP of the firm’s global cloud. As for Space and Time, the company aims to be a verifiable compute layer for web3 that scales zero-knowledge proofs, or ZK proofs, on a decentralized data warehouse. Zero-knowledge proofs are a cryptographic action used to prove something about a piece of data, without revealing the origin data itself. Space and Time has indexed data both off-chain and on-chain from Ethereum, Bitcoin, Polygon, Sui, Avalanche, Sei and Aptos and is adding support for more chains to power the future of AI x blockchain. This episode is wrapping up Chain Reaction’s monthly series diving into different topics and themes in crypto. This month’s focused on blockchain and AI integrations.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Tegan Kline, the CEO and co-founder of Edge & Node. The company is focused on creating and supporting decentralized applications, or dApps, and protocols. It was also the initial team behind The Graph, an indexing and query protocol, or what some have referred to as the Google of Web3, which aims to organize open blockchain data and make open data a public good. Tegan began her career in investment banking before shifting to work as an executive VP of a patent marketplace powered by blockchain and analyzed by AI. This kickstarted her career in web3, data and AI solutions. Before co-founding Edge & Node, Tegan worked as an international business development manager for Orchid, an a16z and Sequoia VC-backed VPN. This episode is a part of Chain Reaction’s monthly series diving into different topics and themes in crypto. This month’s focused on blockchain and AI integrations.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Melody Hildebrandt, CTO of Fox Corporation and Mike Blank, COO at Polygon Labs. Why these two companies? Well, Polygon Labs, the layer-2 blockchain focused on scaling Ethereum, and Fox Corporation, the well-known media conglomerate, joined forces in January to tackle deepfakes as artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent. Fox released Verify, an open source technical protocol for media companies to register content and grant usage rights to AI platforms, while also allowing consumers to verify content through Polygon’s tech. This episode is a part of Chain Reaction’s monthly series diving into different topics and themes in crypto. This month we’re focusing on blockchain and AI integrations.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Dee Goens, the co-founder of Zora. Zora is a platform and protocol that helps developers and creators bring their ideas on chain and on Ethereum through an open and shared environment. The platform has minted over 4 million NFTs, has over $300 million in secondary sales and about 1 million unique collectors, according to its website. Dee previously worked at Coinbase for 2.5 years doing risk management, operations and brand partnerships. Before that, he analyzed emerging technologies’ risk with a focus in blockchains at KPMG. Chain Reaction is doing monthly series diving into different topics and themes in crypto. This month we’re focusing on blockchain and AI integrations. As we just wrapped up our NFT series for February, Dee is the perfect guest to transition from that topic to AI and blockchains given Zora’s focus on bringing AI on-chain.

For this week’s episode, we’re resharing a conversation I had in June 2023 with Jack Lu, CEO and co-founder of Magic Eden. When we recorded this episode, NFT sales were down around $640 million at the beginning of the month, compared to today where February 2023 NFT sales volume hit $1 billion, for the first time since February 2023. Looking back on this conversation, we decided this episode was a great addition to the NFT series to add some context for what a crazy year it has been, how much things have changed (and some things stayed the same) especially for people building in the NFT space.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Steve Kaczynski, co-author of the book “The Everything Token,” and co-host of a web3 morning show Coffee with Captain. He also co-authored the first Harvard Business Review article about NFTs and outside of that, he consults with agencies and brands about building their web3 strategies including his role with Starbucks where he is a community lead for its NFT-focused loyalty program, Starbucks Odyssey. Before getting into the web3 world, Steve worked in communications and marketing roles at places for over 15 years.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands. Yat co-founded Animoca in 2014 and since then it has invested in over 400 web3 projects across a range of sectors like DeFi, education, infrastructure, blockchain gaming and the metaverse. Animoca also has its own NFT collections, blockchain products and games like its web3 NFT-based community Mocaverse, the blockchain game and NFT collection REVV Racing, and The Sandbox, a decentralized virtual world with over 40 million mobile installs. The company has also worked with other well known brands and personalities like Disney, WWE, Power Rangers, The Walking Dead, Formula E and Snoop Dogg.

This year, Chain Reaction is doing monthly series diving into different topics and themes in crypto. To start things off, this month we’re focusing on NFTs. For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Devin Finzer, the CEO of NFT marketplace OpenSea. He co-founded OpenSea in 2017 and it quickly climbed to become one of the most well known – and well funded – NFT marketplaces. Two years ago, it raised $300 million in a Series C round at a $13.3 billion post-money valuation, bringing its total capital raised to over $400 million. Some of its investors include firms Andreessen Horowitz and Paradigm as well as celebrities like Kevin Durant and Ashton Kutcher. Despite the NFT market’s trading volume falling from all time highs in late 2021 early 2022, OpenSea is still pushing forward even though other NFT marketplaces have popped up and challenged their dominance.

This week we have a bonus episode with Hester Peirce, commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Jacquelyn moderated a fireside chat with Commissioner Peirce at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business alongside Eddie Cullen, a former candidate for New York City Mayor in 2021 and co-founder and CEO of Crescite Innovation Corporation. They discussed a number of timely topics including the SEC’s spot bitcoin ETF approval, policy making to keep crypto innovation alive in the U.S. and the commissioner’s Token Safe Harbor Proposal 2.0 and whether she’s considering a new one.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Chris Dixon, general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Chris has been at the firm since 2012 and founded and leads a16z’s crypto team, which invests in the web3 world through four mega-funds with over $7 billion under management. He’s also an author of the recently released book Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet. Prior to a16z, Chris co-founded two startups, SiteAdvisor and Hunch, both were acquired by McAfee in 2006 and eBay in 2011, respectively. He also attended Columbia University for his bachelor of arts degree and masters in philosophy and has an MBA from Harvard University.

This is a bonus episode, where Jacquelyn interviewed Alex Blania, CEO and co-founder of Tools for Humanity, in a fireside chat at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco. The startup was co-founded by Alex, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Max Novendstern. To date, it has raised about $250 million from investors like a16z, Bain Capital Crypto and others. It is also the entity that created a crypto-focused project called Worldcoin. The startup is well-known across the venture capital, AI and crypto spaces for its futuristic-looking Orb device, which scans peoples’ irises then assigns them a “World ID” that lets users access Worldcoin’s application and a digital passport. The verification process aims to prove individuals’ identities and stop anyone from making multiple accounts. They discussed how Alex got involved in Tools for Humanity over four years ago, how World ID could help improve digital verification during the rise of AI and more.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs, the technology company that aims to help grow the ecosystem for the layer-1 blockchain Solana. The conversation focused on Solana Mobile and its flagship web3 Android smartphone, Saga, which sold out in mid-December, as well as its new phone, Chapter 2 – which was announced last week. Within its first 30 hours Chapter 2 had over 30,000 preorders – signaling a lot of demand for the next generation Android-based phone. At the time of recording, Anatoly shared there were over 40,000 preorders. Anatoly and Jacquelyn discussed the long road to selling out Saga, how important rewards and developers are and the nitty gritty details for Chapter 2. They also dove into the company’s strategy and long-term mission of going up against Google and Apple app stores and how long it may take for Solana Mobile to breakeven.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Monica Long, the president of Ripple, a blockchain-based digital payment network and protocol. Monica has spent the last 10 years at Ripple, working her way up from the director of communications to now, president. Ripple has been around since 2012 and is one of the oldest crypto entities. In recent years, it was in a legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from December 2020 until summer of 2023, over whether or not its token, XRP, should be registered as a security. Then, this past July, Ripple scored a victory against the SEC after a US federal judge ruled that secondary XRP sales, or sales to retail investors, aren’t investment contracts or securities. But when it comes to sales with institutional clients, it could be treated as one. In the meantime, Ripple had been doubling down on global transactions, payments and its ledger, among other elements.

For this week’s bonus episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Michael Sonnenshein, the CEO at Grayscale Investments. Grayscale is a digital asset investment firm that aims to provide products and services to institutional and individual investors, it is well known for its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and now, its new bitcoin spot ETF product. The company was founded in 2014 and is one of the world’s largest digital asset currency managers. The GBTC fund holds over 3% of the outstanding bitcoin supply, worth tens of billions of dollars. The firm and its executives have made headlines in the past for their tenacious efforts to get their bitcoin spot ETF approved after it was originally denied by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in June 2022 and later the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of it. And now, Grayscale’s bitcoin spot ETF was approved.

For this week’s news episode, Jacquelyn dove back into the latest developments on spot bitcoin ETF applications in the U.S. as anticipation builds. Fred Thiel, the CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings, a digital asset technology company and largest publicly traded bitcoin mining firm, joined to help break down the latest developments on spot bitcoin ETFs. As it stands, there’s 14 asset management firms including BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale and VanEck, hoping to individually win approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for their spot bitcoin ETFs. And some reports are now saying it might happen soon given the frequent meetings and updated filings in recent weeks. We also discussed what a spot bitcoin ETF could mean for investors, institutions and miners, as well as bitcoin’s price.

For this week’s episode, we're remixing an episode from earlier this year. Jacquelyn interviewed Deana Burke and Natasha Hoskins, the co-founders of Boys Club. Boys Club is a social decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for the “crypto curious,” originally designed to get women and non-binary people into the web3 world, it now aims to be an open space for anyone looking to get into the space. Although it’s a social DAO, Boys Club has a handful of other ventures like their newsletter and podcast, which I was a guest on, as well as events like crypto conference parties and trivia nights. Before Boys Club, Deana and Natasha were co-founders of a recently acquired travel platform Allcall. Deana was also a communications partner for the blockchain-based Celo Foundation and Natasha previously worked at Fora Travel as a general manager.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Staci Warden, the CEO of the Algorand Foundation, the organization behind the layer-1 blockchain Algorand. Previously, Warden worked at the Milken Institute and oversaw initiatives relating to capital market development, FinTech financial inclusion, cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Before that she was at JPMorgan, where she was an executive director leading public sector coverage. She also worked at Nasdaq and the U.S. Treasury. Warden sits on the advisory boards for the United Nations Capital Development Fund, the European Parliament's Science and Technology Options Assessment, and the U.S. Financial Technology Association. As for Algorand, it's a Singapore-based blockchain that aims to be fast, secure, decentralized and “the greenest” with its carbon-negative network. It had about 615,000 active addresses at the time of recording.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Johann Kerbrat, the general manager of crypto at Robinhood. Johann is leading the application's effort to expand its crypto exchange business and make digital assets more accessible to retail investors. Before joining Robinhood, Johann was an engineer at Airbnb and was the head of engineering at Uber and VP of engineering at Iron Fish, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency startup.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed David Pakman, managing partner and head of venture investments at CoinFund. Before CoinFund, David spent 14 years at the venture capital firm Venrock. He also led the Series A and B rounds at Dollar Shave Club which was acquired by Unilever for $1 billion. And in 1991, David co-created Apple Music when he was a part of Apple’s system software product marketing group

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Optimism’s CEO and co-founder Jing Wang and chief growth officer Ryan Wyatt. Optimism is an Ethereum-focused layer-2 blockchain that focuses on scaling and speed, while also lowering costs for users. It helps users interact with Ethereum for about 10x cheaper through its blockchain and provides developers the ability to build decentralized applications (dApps) in a faster, scalable way. Before taking on this new role at Optimism, Ryan had a little bit of a break but was the president of Polygon Labs (he came on the podcast at the beginning of the year to talk about it) and before that, he was Youtube’s Head of Gaming. Jing co-founded Optimism in 2018 and before that she founded Plasma Group, a research firm focused on addressing challenges related to scaling Ethereum. She also previously managed blockchain projects at companies like Zcash and Nasdaq.

For this week’s episode, we're re-sharing Jacquelyn's conversation with Tiago Sada, head of product for Tools for Humanity and core contributor to Worldcoin, at TechCrunch’s Disrupt 2023 in San Francisco. The saga behind Sam Altman’s departure from OpenAI has been a whirlwind, but his involvement in his crypto project Tools for Humanity, the team building Worldcoin, is uninterrupted, a source close to the matter told TechCrunch. Given that OpenAI is the talk of the town this week — we thought it would be a great idea to resurface this episode to give listeners a refresher on Worldcoin. 

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Stani Kulechov, the founder of Avara, formerly known as Aave Companies. The company is probably best known for Aave protocol, its platform-focused stablecoin GHO and its social network protocol Lens. The web3-focused software technology company announced exclusively on our podcast their rebranding as well as a strategic acquisition of an Ethereum-based crypto wallet. The name Aave will still exist, but through Aave Protocol and Aave Labs, two organizations’ under Avara’s umbrella brand.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Brendan Quigley, partner at Baker Botts law firm. Quigley is a former U.S. Marine, now attorney who represents clients on matters related to white-collar government investigations and commercial disputes. Previously, he was a former federal prosecutor as an Assistant U.S Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which we call SDNY. If that rings a bell it’s because one of our other guests, Josh Naftalis also had that role. Brendan has tried over 12 cases that were brought to verdicts and was a senior member of the Office’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Unit.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn is joined by TechCrunch+ Editor in Chief, Alex Wilhelm, to discuss the end of the trial for Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of FTX, who is facing seven charges related to fraud and money laundering.

For this bonus episode of Chain Reaction, Jacquie is joined by TechCrunch+ Editor in Chief, Alex Wilhelm, go over the FTX/Sam Bankman-Fried trial before getting into his testimony from Thursday and Friday.