Why These DeFi Builders Are Betting It All on Coinbase’s L2, Base - Ep. 894

Unchained

Laura Shin

News, Tech News, Business News

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2025

⏱️ 88 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Subscribe to the new Bits + Bips channels! 📺 YouTube 🎧 Podcast → Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Fountain 🐦 X / Twitter Coinbase’s L2 Base is quickly becoming the most powerful distribution funnel in crypto — and two builders are betting everything on it. In this episode, Aerodrome’s Alex Cutler and Moonwell’s Luke Youngblood explain why they aligned early with Base, how Coinbase’s strategy could transform token launches by offering “one-click distribution” to 100M+ users, and why they believe Coinbase is set to become the world’s largest “crypto bank.” They also debate whether exchanges should decide which assets people can trade, how DeFi must evolve to reward token holders sustainably, and whether Uniswap’s push to keep liquidity fragmented is a moat or a weakness. Finally, they unpack the future of sequencing — and why Flashbots could deliver Solana-level speed while making trading fairer for everyone. Thank you to our sponsors! Walrus Guests: Alexander Cutler, Co-founder of Aerodrome Finance Luke Youngblood, founder of Moonwell Finance Links: Unchained: Companies Are Competing to Bring Crypto to the Masses. Who Is Best Positioned? Crypto Firms, Fintechs and Banks Hope to Dominate Stablecoins. Who Will Win? Moonwell stats Aerodrome stats Timestamps: 🎬 0:00 Intro 👥 2:56 Why Alex and Luke aligned early with Base, and how their backgrounds shapes that decision 📢 6:32 How Coinbase is positioning itself as the distribution partner of the onchain economy ⚖️ 21:12 Whether exchanges should be the ones deciding what assets people can trade 🌱 33:15 How DeFi needs to evolve to reward token holders sustainably and focus on long-term growth 💧 41:32 Whether liquidity fragmentation is actually a feature, not a bug, for Uniswap 💸 57:50 How Moonwell and Aerodrome justify issuing more incentives than they currently earn in revenue Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What differentiates aerodrome and moonwall days, we are based focus. We've been based
0:03.5	focused in the line for over two years now. And we just know that eventually Coinbase is going to be
0:08.4	the biggest on-chain economy in the world. The Defi 2.0 protocols like aerodoms and moonwalls
0:14.1	and hyperliquids of the world will succeed because they actually accrue real value back to token holders
0:18.6	in a way that is not just snapshot voting. I think any protocol that has a sustainable flywheel associated with it
0:25.6	is far more sustainable than the traditional cell tokens allocate them to themselves.
0:32.6	Incentivize insiders so you can, I guess, larp about being sustainable on the outside.
0:42.0	With Coinbase's transition to having a defy mullet underway, I thought it would be a good idea
0:47.5	to catch up with some base defy builders. Alex Cutler of Aerodrome and Luke Youngblood of
0:53.3	Moonwell talked about why they see so much opportunity to be building defy on base when it seems like this next phase of crypto adoption will be about distribution, which means that C-Fi and defy mashups will be how defy builders access users.
1:08.6	They talked about the benefits of building on base with automatic token listings on Coinbase,
1:13.4	plus liquidity benefits, as well as a big advantage in accessing a user base of more than
1:18.7	100 million people.
1:21.1	They also threw some shade on Uniswap, plus made some other digs at other centralized exchanges,
1:27.1	including defunct ones, whose balance sheets were propped up by their own coins.
1:31.5	All of that makes this a spicy episode, but it also gives a lot of insight into how builders are preparing for the latest,
1:37.9	and probably the most competitive phase that we've seen in crypto thus far.
1:43.2	I hope you enjoy it.
1:46.8	At Unchained, we believe the future should be decentralized, and that includes our data. That's why we use Walrus, the fast, dynamic,
1:53.1	verifiable data layer. Learn more about the platform that's powering our future at walrus.xy-Z.
2:00.2	Hands up, everyone. We've got exciting news. Bits and Biffs, our Macro Meets Crypto Show,
2:05.2	is officially spinning off into its own podcast feed, YouTube channel, and X account.
	...

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