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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.

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