Unchained

Pump.fun set fire to $370 million in tokens. Luca lays out the airdrop math that says they should have done the opposite.

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Pump.fun had a choice with $370 million worth of its own tokens. It burned them.

On this week’s Uneasy Money, Luca Netz argues that was the worst option on the table. He lays out the “people’s champ” math that, in his view, could have turned Pump.fun into a $5 billion-a-year business if Alon Cohen had launched the biggest airdrop crypto has ever seen—and bought the tokens back at the bottom.

Kain Warwick and Taylor Monahan also dig into the 137,000 ETH community effort to plug the KelpDAO hole, why Tay thinks Aave—not Layer Zero or KelpDAO—is the key player in DeFi’s latest blowup, and Luca’s blunt new take on whether DeFi yield is even worth the risk right now.

Plus: Meta paying creators in USDC, the ghost of Libra, and OpenAI’s leaked AI-native phone.

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kain Warwick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Taylor Monahan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Security Expert


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Luca Netz⁠, CEO of Pudgy Penguins

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Is the era of protocol bailouts upon us? The Chopping Block crew and MegaETH's Shuyao Kong debate Defi United’s community-funded rescue, the KPI vesting experiment shaking up token launches, whether DeFi yields truly underprice risk, and the first major PolyMarket insider trading bust—all delivered with the usual insider banter you won’t hear anywhere else.

Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week, the squad is joined by MegaETH co-founder Shuyao Kong, fresh off their headline-making KPI-gated token launch. First, we dive into the whirlwind that is Defi United: a who’s-who of Ethereum OGs and protocols pledging hundreds of millions to fill bailout holes from the massive KelpDAO hack—voluntarily. Are we witnessing a new age of protocol do-gooder vibes or just kicking the moral hazard can down the road? 

Then, we tear into the “are DeFi yields way too low” debate, prodded by Tom Dunleavy’s viral thread—should degens really be earning more for taking protocol risk, or are the markets just as weird as they seem? Shuyao gives us an under-the-hood look at MegaETH’s radical KPI vesting mechanics, why they made the token vesting play risky pre-TGE, and whether dynamic tokenomics could be the industry’s way forward (with plenty of banter about airdrop farming and governance theater along the way). 

Finally, we spin through the saga of PolyMarket’s big DOJ insider trading bust: is “insider info” a feature or a bug in prediction markets? All that, history lessons, cynicism, and more—let’s get into it.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Show highlights

🔹 Defi United’s “bailout”—how a crowd-sourced effort filled the KelpDAO hack hole and melted crypto Twitter  

🔹 Are protocol donations precedent-setting, a warning shot, or just vibes maxing?  

🔹 Inside debates about moral hazard, socialized losses, and why kumbaya only works once  

🔹 Surprising names (and missing ones!) from the bailout contributor list: Consensys, Mantle, Lido, Arbitrum, Circle, more  

🔹 Why airdrop farmers sending dust is the most on-brand thing for crypto  

🔹 The “are DeFi yields too low?” debate and why the true risk-free rate may be a myth in DeFi  

🔹 MegaETH’s “KPI vesting” tokenomics—how gating TGEs by actual ecosystem milestones might fix launch incentives  

🔹 Insight on why pre-TGE KPI mechanics might actually be the future (and why most fail after launch)  

🔹 PolyMarket’s first big insider trading bust—when is secret alpha “market info” and when is it treason?  

🔹 Vintage history, cyber insurance analogies, and philosophical banter you can only get on TCB

Hosts

⭐️ Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️ Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️ Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly 

Guest

⭐️ Shuyao Kong, Co-founder at MegaETH

Disclosures
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One side wins the OpenAI-Microsoft divorce, Ram calls a 19% earnings growth year 'bananas,' and Chris wants the US to hack back against DeFi exploiters. Here is the full rundown.

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Chris Perkins and Ram Ahluwalia cover a lot of ground this week: Iran appears to be seeking a deal to end the Strait of Hormuz blockade as US economic pressure mounts, and the US government just worked with Tether to seize over $300 million in Iranian-linked stablecoins. 

Bottoms-up S&P earnings estimates are running at 19% year-over-year growth, tech earnings are about to hit, and both hosts think the setup for markets is unusually constructive. 

They also break down the new Microsoft-OpenAI agreement, the arrest of a special operations soldier for betting on the Maduro raid on Polymarket, and what the Kelp DAO hack means for DeFi's path to institutional adoption.

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ram Ahluwalia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of Lumida


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Chris Perkins⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of 250 Digital Asset Management

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Microsoft restructured its agreement with OpenAI, and Ram Ahluwalia has a clear verdict: Microsoft won. 

In this segment from Bits + Bips, Ram explains the three things Microsoft secured from the new deal, walks through the contract-breach context that shifted the negotiating leverage, and argues that Microsoft now holds a free call option on all of OpenAI's future model development, at no additional cost.

Chris Perkins (@perkinscr97) — Co-Founder & Managing Partner, 250 Digital Asset Management

Ram Ahluwalia (@ramahluwalia) — CEO, Lumida Wealth

This clip is from a longer conversation on markets, tech earnings, DeFi security, and prediction markets. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/GE_847Xrj9E 

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Luke Leasure and Shaunda Devens of Blockworks Research explain how three compounding failures, Kelp's one-of-one bridge signer, Layer Zero's permissive default settings, and Aave's failure to flag it as a collateral risk, set up the conditions for the exploit. 

Shaunda Devens then breaks down the monolithic pool design that concentrated risk, showing how 98% of rsETH collateral was backing a single leverage looping strategy. 

This clip is from a longer conversation on the Kelp rsETH hack and its implications for DeFi. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/hJ9X_btsvD0

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