every opportunity that can be exploited, whether there are actual hacks that we call exploits,

or whether they're just social hacks, like trying to follow the breadcrumbs to discover a new

protocol, they're going to be exploited. That's what markets do. Markets create incentives

for people to find every edge they can.

We deny that and we forget that at our own peril.

Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

The breakdown is sponsored by Crypto.com, Bitstamp, and nexo.io, and produced and distributed by CoinDesk.

What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, September 29th, and this is the second of two episodes for today.

I explained this at the beginning of the previous episode on the new

Coinbase No Politics at Work Policy. But basically, I discovered when I recorded this morning

that I actually was doing two full shows that were smashed uncomfortably together. So if you

want to hear about Brian Armstrong and his letter and the response to it, go check out that episode.

This one is focused on the Eminence hack, a hack of a Defy protocol that hadn't even yet been

launched. So let's try to bring you up to speed about what happened with Eminence, which you may

see on Twitter abbreviated as EMN.

I'm actually going to kick this off with a thread from Sam over at FTX because I think

he did a good job of summarizing it. He writes, all right, so here's what I gather happened

with EMN. Andre Crohnier was working on new protocol. It was still in the testing phase not ready to be

released in case, e.g. it had bugs. He hadn't yet vetted it. It did, in fact, have an exploit.

People were digging around Andre's code, found what he was working on, and started to talk about it.

To be clear, Andre hadn't promoted it and wasn't intending it to be used yet.

...