What if opening a trading account was as easy as downloading an app?

Lucas Bruder, CEO of Jito — a Solana-based liquid staking protocol — breaks down why he thinks all of finance is moving onchain, and what his small team is doing to make that happen.

During the 2022-2023 bear market, Jito was getting pitched constantly to jump ship to other chains. Lucas explains why they turned everything down, doubled down on Solana, and chewed a lot of glass.

We also cover how Jito acts like a Cloudflare for Solana, why cheap transactions create surprising problems, what convinced Lucas that the Solana engineers were in it for the right reasons, and his vision for a financial system anyone can access with just a phone.

Follow Jito: https://www.jito.network/

Follow Lucas: https://x.com/buffalu__

Highlights

• 0:00 — Intro
• 0:49 — What is Jito and why does it exist
• 1:11 — Why Solana transactions are less than a penny
• 2:00 — What attracted Lucas to Solana from Ethereum
• 2:39 — How Jito is like Cloudflare for blockchains
• 5:02 — The $1,500 Ethereum transaction fee problem
• 7:21 — The vision: all of finance onchain
• 7:46 — Onchain vs. opening a Robinhood account
• 8:37 — Lucas's journey from robotics to crypto
• 9:55 — Solana's rate of improvement and Anatoly's Law
• 10:44 — The pitch for people new to crypto
• 15:00 — Staying lean at 21 people
• 15:17 — Nicotine as a productivity hack
• 15:58 — Sleep, alcohol, and the Oura ring
• 16:40 — Smallest hill you'll die on: littering and shopping carts

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As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

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Should we push AI forward as fast as possible, or be more careful about how it develops?

Two competing views are emerging:

• e/acc (effective accelerationism): go faster, progress is the only path forward
• d/acc (defensive / decentralized acceleration): accelerate, but carefully, or risk losing control

In this episode of the a16z crypto show, Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum founder) and Guillaume Verdon aka "Beff Jezos" (Extropic founder & CEO,) join Eddy Lazzarin (a16z crypto CTO) and Shaw Walters (Eliza Labs founder) for a deep debate about these two perspectives and what they mean for AI, crypto, and the future.

They discuss:

• Whether acceleration is something we can control
• The biggest risks of AI, from surveillance to concentration of power
• Why open source and decentralization may shape who benefits
• Whether slowing down AI is realistic or even desirable
• How humans stay relevant in a world of increasingly powerful systems
• What the next 10, 100, and 1,000 years might look like
• At its core, this episode asks: Can acceleration be steered, or is that beyond our control?

Highlights:

00:00 Opening

07:02 Thermodynamics and first principles

16:04 Acceleration, entropy, and civilization

28:29 The core disagreement

32:42 Comparing and contrasting e/acc and d/acc

36:20 Open source, open hardware, and local intelligence

54:18 Should AI be slowed down?

1:02:35 Autonomous agents and artificial life

1:21:07 Crypto as the trust layer between humans and AI

1:35:37 Closing arguments

Follow a16z crypto for more...

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📩 Subscribe for more industry reports, trend updates, news analysis, builder guides, and other resources: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/subscribe/

*** As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

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What does the future of the creator economy actually look like? The economics of content creation are changing, what happens to copyright in a world of abundant generated content, and why human taste, curation, and connection may matter even more going forward.

In this episode, host Robert Hackett talks with Justin (CEO, Bond) and Michael Blau(Head of Product, Bond) about the changing relationship between creators, audiences, platforms, and technology.

They unpack how today’s platforms shape creator behavior, why audience relationships are often trapped inside algorithms, and what a more direct creator-fan connection could look like. They also explore broader questions around crypto infrastructure, stablecoins, and whether blockchain can enable new kinds of internet-native products without needing to be the focus of the user experience.

Along the way, Justin reflects on his path from music into crypto, Michael talks about how magic shaped the way he thinks about originality and performance, and both share thoughts on NFTs, digital ownership, productivity tools, books, and creative inspiration.

Highlights

• 0:00 Intro 0:47 The biggest misconceptions about creator monetization
• 1:04 Why creators still don’t know their audience
• 1:34 Trading, speculation, and the limits of past creator crypto models
• 2:31 Why creator-fan relationships could move onchain
• 4:41 Stablecoins and global internet products
• 6:55 Justin Michael’s journey from DJ to crypto builder
• 8:12 What artists still don’t get from platforms
• 10:09 Subscription models, fan support, and alternative mechanics
• 17:57 AI, content abundance, and the future of creativity
• 18:57 Why human curation still matters
• 19:36 Copyright, IP, and a world shaped by AI
• 25:00 The difference between AI and crypto products
• 25:38 What magic teaches about creativity and originality
• 28:23 Inspirations: John Mayer, Zedd, Brian Chesky, David Blaine
• 35:06 Why NFTs still matter
  

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