Unchained

A $300M bridge exploit is forcing the question DeFi has been avoiding: when users lose money, who is actually responsible — the protocol, the infrastructure provider, or both?

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A $300 million bridge exploit at Kelp DAO has put DeFi's most uncomfortable question back on the table: when users lose money, who is actually responsible? 

Katherine, Jessi, and Vy dig into the Kelp and Layer Zero finger-pointing and ask whether the industry's core values — permissionlessness, open composability — have become its greatest vulnerability. 

Then: the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments on prediction markets last week, and the panel's pointed questions signal the case is headed to the Supreme Court sooner than most expect. 

Finally: American Express just solved three of agentic commerce's hardest problems — identity, mandate, and accountability — with a product that's live today. The crypto industry, which should be leading this race, is watching from the sidelines.

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠, General Counsel at StarkWare. Previously held senior legal roles across DeFi and centralized exchanges.


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TuongVy Le⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Veda

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The Chopping Block crew and guest Monet Supply break down the $200M Kelp DAO bridge exploit, finger-pointing between LayerZero, Kelp DAO, and Aave, the wild “reverse hack” Arbitrum bailout, and what it all means for DeFi lending protocol risk, L2 trust, and the future of socialized losses in crypto.

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, we’re joined by Monet Supply, DeFi governance OG and current Spark brain, for a front-row seat to crypto’s hack-of-the-week: the $200M “Kelp DAO—LayerZero—Aave” debacle. If you thought DeFi risk was just about liquidations, buckle up. The team untangles the hack mechanics, the musical chairs of collateral across bridges and lending markets, and—most importantly—the prime time blame game: is it LayerZero’s fault for running a single-signer bridge, or did Kelp DAO or Aave drop the ball?

We dive deep into the “socialized losses” mess facing Aave depositors (especially on L2s), unpack Arbitrum’s extraordinary move to confiscate coins back from North Korea (yes, really), and debate whether rollups can—or should—aspire to Ethereum’s censorship resistance. Finally, the squad discusses concrete remediation: rate limits, portfolio triage on risky collaterals, and the meta-game of DeFi crisis response. If you want the blunt, unfiltered, and occasionally spicy take on DeFi’s latest chaos, 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

🔹 Kelp DAO bridge exploit: $200M minted, North Korea fingered, DeFi lending protocols left holding the bag  

🔹 Why LayerZero’s single-validator bridge design was a disaster waiting to happen  

🔹 The Spider-Man meme comes to DeFi: KelpDAO, LayerZero, and Aave point fingers  

🔹 Aave’s socialized losses headache: who eats the bad debt, L1 vs L2 depositors  

🔹 Arbitrum’s Security Council “reverse hack” to claw back stolen ETH—feature or bug?  

🔹 DeFi lending protocol design flaws, cascading risks, and pooled markets explained  

🔹 Remediation: rate limits, fewer LRTs, and the “surface of death” in risk management  

🔹 Rollups & L2s: why “Ethereum with training wheels” isn’t always the goal  

🔹 What this week means for DeFi precedent, governance, and future hacks  

🔹 DeFi’s growing pains: market demands bailouts, but who should actually pay up?

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly 

Guest

⭐️ Monet Supply, Head of Strategy at Spark

Disclosures
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Digital Asset’s CEO faces pointed questions about Canton’s core claims and admits something surprising about the network’s architecture.

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As Bitcoin's application layer, Citrea gives you access to the first trust-minimized BTC on a fully programmable platform and a native stablecoin for Bitcoin, ctUSD. 

You can now participate in Bitcoin capital markets with lending, privacy, payments, Bitcoin yield, trading and predictions. You get expanded Bitcoin utility without sacrificing its security. 

Citrea mainnet is live. Put your BTC to work at citrea.xyz/unchained.  

Ether.fi is giving Unchained listeners 15% cashback on food and ride apps — and that's on top of the 3% you get on everything else. 

Your bank is charging you to use your own money. Laura switched and loves her card!

Go to ether.fi/unchained to claim your offer.

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Canton is the chain behind JPMorgan’s deposit token, DTCC, Broadridge’s $400 billion repo book, HSBC, Visa, and a growing roster of the biggest names in global finance. It describes itself as a public permissionless blockchain. But is it? 

Yuval Rooz, co-founder and CEO of Digital Asset, faces off against Alex Gluchowski, co-founder and CEO of Matter Labs, and Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi in a live debate. 

The charges range from foundational: Canton cannot enforce financial rules without a trusted third party, its validators are permissioned in everything but name, and there is no universally shared ledger. Rooz fires back on all of it and, at one point, concedes something that may surprise you. 

If the label matters as much as the technology, this episode will force you to decide what blockchain actually means, and whether that answer has consequences for the institutions staking their infrastructure on it.

Host:


⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained

Guests:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Yuval Rooz: Co-Founder & CEO, Digital Asset



Haseeb Qureshi: Managing Partner, Dragonfly



Alex Gluchowski: Co-Founder & CEO, Matter Labs

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The $290 million Kelp DAO hack, attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group, has DeFi TVL down $13 billion in 48 hours. Do DeFi's foundational assumptions need to change?

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If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to Bits + Bips, since the show will migrate there in a few weeks. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, X, Unchained and wherever you get your podcasts.

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DeFi TVL fell from $99.5 to $86.3 billion in 48 hours after the $290 million Kelp DAO exploit — the latest nine-figure attack attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group, this time via a compromised Layer Zero bridge. 

Meanwhile, a new class of yield-bearing instrument is staking a claim on capital fleeing private credit: Apyx's APY USD, backed by Strategy's STRC preferred stock, launched on Kraken this week with a 12% yield target and $180 million in supply after just seven weeks. Is STRC-backed yield a legitimate financial primitive, or a Bitcoin derivative with extra steps? 

And as DeFi absorbs yet another devastating security failure, is the industry's core assumption — that incoming transactions should be treated as legitimate — finally due for an overhaul? Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins dig in with Parker White of Apyx and Michael Bentley of Euler.

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Austin Campbell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host of Bits + Bips, Zero Knowledge Consulting


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ram Ahluwalia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Co-Host, CEO of Lumida


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

Hosts:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Parker White — @TheOtherParker_ — Founding Contributor, Apyx.


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Bentley — @euler_mab — Former CEO, Euler Labs

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Bitcoin's spot-led rally looks healthy on the surface. But derivatives say conviction is thin. Josh Lim from FalconX on what the market structure is actually telling you right now.

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Thank you to our sponsors!

MultiChain Advisors is an emerging technology growth firm that has helped create $50B+ in enterprise value for 80+ clients over the past 4 years. They're the partner to help navigate markets. 

Build real traction today at multichainadv.com

As Bitcoin's application layer, Citrea gives you access to the first trust-minimized BTC on a fully programmable platform and a native stablecoin for Bitcoin, ctUSD. 

You can now participate in Bitcoin capital markets with lending, privacy, payments, Bitcoin yield, trading and predictions. You get expanded Bitcoin utility without sacrificing its security. 

Citrea mainnet is live. Put your BTC to work at citrea.xyz/unchained. 

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Bitcoin is trading near $75,000, but the market structure around it tells a more complicated story. Implied volatility has collapsed to sub-50, funding rates are negative, and the options market is dominated by sellers, not buyers. Meanwhile, Bitcoin miners are liquidating holdings to fund the transition to high-performance compute, generating a persistent offer just as breakeven retail holders look for an exit. 

FalconX Global Co-Head of Markets Josh Lim joins Steve Ehrlich to map exactly what is keeping Bitcoin range-bound, where the rotation into ETH and alts is actually coming from, and what signals in derivatives and on-chain data would indicate the market is ready to move. 

They also get into whether the Clarity Act changes the long-term structure of the altcoin market, how Hyperliquid is being used for institutional RWA arbitrage, and what the quantum threat means not for cryptography, but for trading Bitcoin.

Host:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Steven Ehrlich⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Head of Research, SharpLink

Guest:


⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Josh Lim — Global Co-Head of Markets, FalconX. Repeat guest; previously covered market structure and institutional crypto flows on Bits + Bips.

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