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, Helius’s Mert returns to defend Zcash’s ~400% run and the “encrypted Bitcoin” framing, digging into anonymity sets, privacy UX, and why Bitcoiners are so riled up. We then tackle the Tempo bombshell — a ~$500M raise at a ~$5B pre, Stripe/Paradigm ties, Dankrad’s move from the EF — alongside Péter Szilágyi’s letter on EF culture and compensation: public goods priesthood vs. market incentives. Next up: Mert’s “USD Manlet” rethink (why coordinating Solana around one stable is hard, and why pushing USDT to compete with USDC may be the sharper play) plus a gripe-fueled tour of today’s DeFi trading UX. Finally, an AWS-outage autopsy: Coinbase downtime, Base sequencer hiccups, Infura/MetaMask ripple effects, and the case for multi-region/multi-cloud redundancy when real money — and sometimes safety — are on the line. And no, despite the memes, Mert is not launching a DEX.

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

Show highlights

🔹 Zcash’s 400% run — Mert defends the “encrypted Bitcoin” framing, flags a huge education gap on privacy/anonymity sets, and reminds folks that centrally issued stables can be frozen.

🔹 Why Bitcoiners are mad — Panel debates the cultural shift from cypherpunk ideals to ETF talk; Tom cites Satoshi’s early musings on zk-privacy, Robert frames BTC reflexivity (price → attention → adoption).

🔹 Pump-and-dump accusations — Mert rejects the claim: ZEC is old, widely distributed PoW; privacy code carries legal risk; “you don’t need ZEC to run a scam if that were the goal.”

🔹 Hold both — Mert: it’s not a fixed pie; sensible portfolios can include BTC + ZEC with different risk/ethos profiles.

🔹 Tempo fundraiser drama — ~$500M at $5B pre; Stripe/Paradigm incubation; Dankrad leaves EF to join Tempo as criticism flares (RSA/Lubin) over “maximizing for Tempo, not Ethereum.”

🔹 EF culture & pay — Peter Szilágyi’s letter alleges politics, undercompensation ($600k over ~6 years), and mixed incentives; Vitalik’s “if no one complains they’re paid too little…” quote sparks calls for market-rate comp and better org design.

🔹 Public goods vs. capitalism — Is an EF “priesthood” valuable, or should everything be market-driven? Panel contrasts Ethereum’s social layer with Solana’s ruthlessly competitive, results-oriented culture.

🔹 USD “Manlet” update — Coordination is hard when Phantom/Jupiter control UX and cut USDC deals; Mert now favors incentivizing USDT on Solana to force Circle to compete.

🔹 DeFi UX gripe — Mert teases work on cleaner trading UX/data (not a perp DEX): today’s Solana UIs feel chaotic for normal users.

🔹 AWS outage post-mortem vibes — Coinbase downtime, Base sequencer issues, Infura/MetaMask ripple effects; consensus that multi-region/multi-cloud failover and better testing should be table stakes.

🔹 Infra reality check — Solana nodes rarely on AWS (bandwidth costs push bare-metal), while many EVM stacks lean on cloud; reliability > vibes when real money (or safety) is on the line.

🔹 Parting beat — Friendly sparring, spite-driven building jokes… and no, there’s still no Mert DEX.

Hosts

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly
⭐️Robert Leshner, CEO & Co-founder of Superstate
⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

Guest

⭐️ Mert, Co-founder & CEO at Helius

Disclosures

Links

“One Long Memo” [A Letter To The EF] by Péter Szilágyi