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Unchained

Olaf Carlson-Wee: 'If There Is a Money-Losing Exploit, the Money Is Gone' - Ep.189

Unchained

Laura Shin

News, Tech News, Business News

4.61.3K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2020

⏱️ 71 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Olaf Carlson-Wee, the founder and CEO of Polychain Capital, goes deep into yield farming, fair launches and how decentralization will upend the traditional notion of the corporation. In this episode, he talks about: when it makes sense for a team to introduce a liquidity mining scheme, and when it doesn't the difference between yield farming and ICOs when it comes to investing his thoughts on YFI, as well as YAM, and the pace at which unaudited DeFi projects are moving forward the three advantages he sees in automated market makers as opposed to centralizedexchanges his thoughts on Uniswap and SushiSwap and why he's not sure Uniswap will make a token his thoughts on fair launches and whether he thinks they will threaten traditional crypto VCs whether the CRV token launch really was instigated by someone unrelated to the team his thoughts on the yEarn yETH vault and what it says about where the DeFi space is going what he sees as the pros and cons of rebasing why he sees projects like YFI as a new kind of corporation whether he thinks Ethereum will scale fast enough to meet the demand already being put on it why he thinks systems like Polkadot are going to expand what is possible in the same way that Ethereum expanded beyond what was possible with Bitcoin whether he thinks the yields from yield farming will pull investors away from staking on Ethereum 2.0 what he thinks DeFi teams should do to improve security Bitcoin on Ethereum and what he believes it could mean for DeFi in the future the chatter around a potential public offering from Coinbase, and what's in store for Polychain in the future   Thank you to our sponsor!  Crypto.com: https://crypto.com/   Episode links:  Olaf Carlson-Wee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olafcw/ Polychain Capital: https://polychain.capital   Previous interviews with Olaf on Unchained and Unconfirmed: https://unchainedpodcast.com/why-the-first-employee-of-coinbase-launched-a-hedge-fund/   https://unchainedpodcast.com/to-the-moon-and-back-with-polychains-olaf-carlson-wee/   https://unchainedpodcast.com/special-episode-with-cnbcs-crypto-trader-olaf-carlson-wee-on-why-this-crypto-winter-is-different-from-previous-ones-ep-028/   https://unchainedpodcast.com/all-things-cryptoeconomics-pt-1-with-olaf-carlson-wee-and-ryan-zurrer-of-polychain-capital/   Why trading on automated market makers has risen so quickly: https://unchainedpodcast.com/why-decentralized-trading-has-10xed-in-a-few-months/    Launch of yEarn/YFI: https://medium.com/iearn/yfi-df84573db81   Dex volume over time: https://defiprime.com/dex-volume   YAM recap: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/74810/yam-token-market-cap-collapses-by-more-than-90-flaw   YAM team’s plans going forward: YAM Post-Rescue Attempt Update. At approximately 6PM UTC, on Wed August… | by Yam Finance | Aug, 2020 | Medium   SushiSwap vs. Uniswap: https://unchainedpodcast.com/sushiswap-takes-on-uniswap-which-should-win-and-why/   Ian Lee of IDEO CoLab Ventures on fair launches vs. VC coins: https://synthesis.substack.com/p/fair-launches-will-disrupt-crypto   And on fast-follower forks: https://synthesis.substack.com/p/fast-follower-forks-in-defi   CRV token launch: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/genesis/74921/the-story-of-the-botched-crv-launch   yEarn's yETH vault: https://www.coindesk.com/yearn-finance-yeth-vault-defi-triforce   Ethereum's transition to 2.0: https://unchainedpodcast.com/vitalik-buterin-on-ethereums-five-year-anniversary/   Security in DeFi: https://unchainedpodcast.com/defi-security-with-so-many-hacks-will-it-ever-be-safe/ Whether Coinbase will do a token offering when it goes public: https://unchainedpodcast.com/will-coinbase-do-a-token-offering-when-it-goes-public/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Unchained is about a lot more than just podcasts.

0:03.0

On our website unchained crypto.com,

0:06.0

you can also find crypto news, web three tutorials,

0:09.0

and original videos.

0:10.0

Check it all out at unchained crypto.com.

0:13.0

Hey everyone, just a heads up about this episode, which is a fascinating conversation with

0:18.8

Olaf Carlson Wee of Polychain capital mostly about things happening in Defi.

0:24.0

Because, as I'm sure you all know, things in Defi change very quickly.

0:28.0

Some key events occurred after we recorded,

0:30.8

and so are not discussed in this episode. Namely, what's missing is that the

0:35.3

creator of sushi swap, Chef Nome, cashed out, causing a firestorm in the community and

0:41.8

prompting the anonymous developer to hand over the

0:44.3

admin keys to sushi swap to Sam Bankman Freed the CEO of cryptocurrency

0:49.6

derivatives exchange of TX which is building the serum project on the salon and

0:54.4

blockchain. It was a stunning sequence of events and each step of it is probably

0:59.7

worth unpacking. However, that will have to wait for another time. Despite these events

1:04.9

not being covered here, there is still so much meat to dive into in this episode.

1:08.7

Especially since I think we are all wondering whether sushi swap being a fast follower fork or uniswop would have prevailed

1:17.7

had Chef Nomi not cashed out early and that is just one of many juicy topics that Olaf and I dive into.

1:26.0

Without further ado, here is my conversation with Olaf Carlson Wee of Polychain Capital. Hi everyone, welcome to Unchained, your no-hife resource for all things crypto.

1:39.4

I'm your host Laura Shin, a journalist with over two decades of experience. I started covering

1:44.2

crypto five years ago and as a senior editor at Forbes was the first mainstream

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