FRAX & the 4pool Curve Takeover | Sam Kazemian
Bankless
Bankless
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 13 April 2022
⏱️ 85 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sam Kazemian is the founder of Frax, the fractional-algorithmic stablecoin protocol. After co-founding the decentralized Wikipedia startup Everipedia, Sam set out to pioneer the algorithmic stablecoin space. The FRAX stablecoin now has a market cap of over $2.6 billion, and the protocol’s FXS governance token is up 300% in the last year.
In this episode, we explore the Stablecoin Wars, in which different protocols compete for liquidity and composability in DeFi. Sam brings a 1st-person perspective into the developments surrounding UST and the recently launched 4pool on Curve, which consists of stablecoins UST, FRAX, USDT, and USDC.
A highlight of this conversation is Sam’s parable of an archetypal central bank, in which he cruises through a number of salient takes on money markets and macroeconomics. There is a lot to learn about this Cambrian explosion of financial technology, and Sam is a great teacher. Stick around to find out why walked away from this conversation bullish on Frax.
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Topics Covered:
0:00 Intro
3:30 Sam from Frax
7:50 The Stablecoin Narrative
13:45 The Central Bank Parable
24:45 Backing an Exchange Rate
28:10 Frax Analytics | What is Frax?
37:34 Frax Analytics | The Peg
42:30 Frax Analytics | Comparing
45:03 RSA Gets Frax-Pilled
49:42 MIM vs UST
53:16 The LUNA Token
56:41 Frax Roadmap | FPI
1:04:36 The 4pool
1:14:00 The Stablecoin Wars
1:18:35 What Happens Next?
1:23:20 Closing & Disclaimers
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Resources:
Sam on Twitter
https://twitter.com/samkazemian
Frax Finance
https://app.frax.finance/
Decentralized Finance and the Debt Cycles
https://academy.blue-swan.io/blog/decentralized-finance-and-the-debt-cycles
Market Share Chart
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/data/decentralized-finance/stablecoins/total-crypto-backed-and-algorithmic-stablecoin-supply
Do Kwon’s 4pool Tweet
https://twitter.com/stablekwon/status/1510021707377287170
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Stable coins are one of the three trillion dollar narratives of crypto. |
| 0:07.8 | And I think that three trillion dollar narratives are Bitcoin, ETH, and Stable coins. |
| 0:15.3 | Hey, Bankless Nation. We've got a fantastic episode for you today. This is the Stable coin |
| 0:19.2 | wars we're talking to Sam from Frax, who is deep in the Stable coin wars. He's one of them, |
| 0:25.3 | actually, and you know, his framing is maybe not so much wars, but we're going to talk all |
| 0:29.6 | about Algo Stable coins. We're going to talk about USD, the four-pool curve pool that was just |
| 0:36.8 | launched. What all this means, how it turns into, actually, we are pre-recording this entire |
| 0:42.8 | episode, so we've already had our conversation with Sam, and it's a fantastic conversation. David, |
| 0:47.6 | what were some of your takeaways? Well, first off, Sam starts the conversation with a story |
| 0:52.9 | about Central Baking, kind of a made-up story, a parable, but really grounds. We like to |
| 1:00.1 | say a number of times before in Bankless that crypto is just speedrunning the history of money and |
| 1:03.8 | finance, and so Sam speedruns through the history of Central Bank management, right? In a very |
| 1:09.3 | fantastic story that really frames the whole rest of the conversation, and I had a fantastic time |
| 1:14.8 | just sitting and listening to that story and had so much to learn just in that one story, and I |
| 1:20.0 | kind of understood exactly how the rest of the conversation was going to unfold because of that |
| 1:24.3 | story. So I'm excited for listeners to be able to, because that's where this conversation starts |
| 1:27.8 | first, but then we even get to lean into, again, the four-pool, the USC, the Doquon spiciness, |
| 1:34.1 | and how Frax has gotten caught up in the middle of this. Two Fraxes benefit. |
| 1:38.2 | Yeah. I'm going to be honest, David. I walked away from this conversation really bullish on Frax. |
| 1:42.7 | Yeah. Like, really actually excited. It's been a while since the project was just like, wow, |
| 1:46.9 | this is really neat. And so we were in education, though, that entire time, actually, |
| 1:52.0 | on receiving and learning. Guys, we're going to get to that conversation. One quick announcement, |
... |
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