Into the Bytecode

Julien Niset is the cofounder and Chief Science Officer at Argent, a crypto wallet that's used and loved by many people in the crypto ecosystem.
In this conversation, we talk about how Argent has evolved to get to where it is today. How Julien sees user experience evolving broadly in the ecosystem, and what the flow of a new person interacting with a crypto application for the first time might look like in the future.

Another topic we get into deeply is L2s, how Julien and Argent have thought about the topic of EVM equivalence and compatibility, and why they ultimately chose to build on ZK Rollups like ZkSync and StarkNet.

And lastly, we dive into what has been like to build on StarkNet, what the early community feels like today, what it's been like to write code in Cairo, and as a bit of a snapshot into this experience we do a deep dive into what account abstraction looks like on StarkNet.

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) - intro
(00:01:56) - leaning into zk rollups and account abstraction
(00:07:29) - scaling the self-custody experience
(00:13:20) - what onboarding users to crypto will look like in 3 years
(00:20:24) - some of the friction points that still need to be abstracted
(00:33:52) - L2s and the trade-offs between different rollups
(00:39:45) - is breaking EVM-equivalency worth it?
(00:48:01) - Julien’s experience in the StarkNet ecosystem
(00:58:24) - a technical primer on account abstraction
(01:15:38) - session keys
(01:28:17) - starting a sensible wallet set up from scratch

Links:
Julien Niset - https://twitter.com/jniset
Argent - https://www.argent.xyz/
StarkNet - https://starkware.co/starknet/
zkSync - https://zksync.io/
Topology - https://www.topology.gg/

Into the Bytecode:
- Sina Habibian on X: https://twitter.com/sinahab
- Sina Habibian on Farcaster - https://warpcast.com/sinahab
- Into the Bytecode: https://intothebytecode.com

Disclaimer: this podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell securities. The host and guests may hold positions in the projects discussed.

Mike Sall and Blake West are the founders of Goldfinch, a decentralized protocol facilitating uncollateralized credit.

“One of the borrowers is a company based in Uganda. They provide rent-to-own loans for motorcycle taxis to thousands of customers. They've borrowed $5m to expand their operations."

Thousands of people in countries like Uganda, India, and Brazil have been financed by Goldfinch loans through local lenders, largely without realizing crypto is the source of funds.

These local lenders are largely innovative fintechs in the global south, and have historically fallen into an uncanny valley — they need too much capital for what is available in their local financial markets, and too little capital to navigate foreign institutional markets.

Timestamps:
(00:03:09) - The 'lightbulb' moment
(00:08:20) - The financing gap for emerging-market borrowers
(00:13:04) - Borrower profiles; Tugende, DiviBank, and Greenway
(00:15:43) - Interfacing with Goldfinch
(00:20:37) - Crypto-native KYC and how UID works
(00:23:18) - Bottlenecks for the global adoption of crypto
(00:34:40) - Compliance requirements for Goldfinch in the United States
(00:45:25) - Compliance requirements for borrowers in emerging markets
(00:50:56) - Demographics of ‘Backers’
(00:52:43) - Incentive alignment and fraud-prevention
(01:03:53) - Learnings from shipping a production smart contract system
(01:15:01) - Launching GFI token and governance of the protocol
(01:26:04) - The macro point of view

Into the Bytecode:
- Sina Habibian on X: https://twitter.com/sinahab
- Sina Habibian on Farcaster - https://warpcast.com/sinahab
- Into the Bytecode: https://intothebytecode.com

Disclaimer: this podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell securities. The host and guests may hold positions in the projects discussed.

The conversation on publishing today is the very first one I recorded for the podcast about six months ago. It's a conversation with Justin Glibert about patterns he's uncovered while building Ember (an onchain game) and Lattice (the engine behind the game) — patterns related to inflation and zero sum resources, spacial constraints, and user impersonation. I hope you enjoy.

Into the Bytecode:
- Sina Habibian on X: https://twitter.com/sinahab
- Sina Habibian on Farcaster - https://warpcast.com/sinahab
- Into the Bytecode: https://intothebytecode.com

Disclaimer: this podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell securities. The host and guests may hold positions in the projects discussed.

Charles St.Louis is the COO at Element Finance, a protocol for fixed and variable rate yield markets and previously the governance architect at MakerDAO. In this conversation, we talked about Element’s governance system - with a particular focus on voting vaults, a powerful new primitive that decouple the relationship between capital and voting power and allow much more expressiveness in how users are given a governance voice in the ecosystem.

Timestamps:
(00:02:54) - MakerDAO’s arc of decentralization
(00:07:51) - how Maker influenced Element’s design
(00:10:22) - the Governance Steering Council
(00:21:25) - voting vaults
(00:29:10) - L1 and L2 for governance
(00:33:23) - qualitative evaluation for contributions
(00:37:50) - the ElFiverse and NFTs in the Element community
(00:42:24) - on being a protocol delegate

Links:
The Governance Steering Council - https://medium.com/element-finance/the-governance-steering-council-63aea7732262
Voting Vaults - https://docs.element.fi/governance-council/council-protocol-smart-contracts/voting-vaults
The Elfiverse - https://elfiverse.element.fi/

Into the Bytecode:
- Sina Habibian on X: https://twitter.com/sinahab
- Sina Habibian on Farcaster - https://warpcast.com/sinahab
- Into the Bytecode: https://intothebytecode.com

Disclaimer: this podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell securities. The host and guests may hold positions in the projects discussed.

This is my conversation with Justin Glibert, CEO of Lattice and cofounder of 0xPARC.

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) - intro
(00:00:44) - digital physics
(00:06:27) - changing physics + capitalism = theme parks
(00:16:12) - objective functions are political
(00:22:53) - sponsor: Optimism
(00:23:58) - individual agency
(00:27:25) - violence on the internet
(00:39:17) - monoliths
(00:47:24) - sponsor: Privy
(00:48:40) - value systems
(00:58:34) - homo economicus and homo ludens
(01:10:50) - Emissary’s guide to worlding
(01:16:55) - reading weird books
(01:28:49) - outro

Links:
Justin Glibert - https://x.com/justinglibert
Lattice - https://lattice.xyz/
0xPARC - https://0xparc.org/

Thank you to our sponsors for making this podcast possible:
Optimism - https://optimism.io
Privy - https://privy.io

Into the Bytecode:
- Sina Habibian on X: https://twitter.com/sinahab
- Sina Habibian on Farcaster - https://warpcast.com/sinahab
- Into the Bytecode: https://intothebytecode.com

Disclaimer: this podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not financial advice nor a recommendation to buy or sell securities. The host and guests may hold positions in the projects discussed.