In this episode of Ventures, my guest Eric Chen (https://twitter.com/EricInjective) - co-founder of Injective (https://injective.com/) - and I talk about all-things Web3 and DeFi. Injective is an open interoperable smart contracts platform optimized for DeFi applications. We talk about Eric’s academic background in the cryptography space, the story behind Injective, design decisions for primitives that Injective is advancing, the CosmosSDK, the future of stablecoins in Web3, and the vision for Injective long-term.

You can watch this episode below or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts (search for “Ventures”).

1:22 - Tee-up and background for the episode

1:54 - How Eric got into Web3

2:55 - What were the cryptography tricks that got Eric so excited about Web3? (Verifiable delay functions – see: https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/601.pdf)

6:06 - Where did Eric’s journey take him into DeFi and Injective?

8:44 - Injective 101: what is it? Why is it different? Who should use it? https://injective.com/ 

10:20 - MEV 101 - Miner Extractible Value - why does it matter? How is this accommodated for w/ Injective? See also: https://medium.com/citadel-one/injective-overview-a00ea7796f7b 

12:32 - Transaction fees, clogging ETH mainnet; demand for blockspace. Free market vs. usability.

14:54 - Design decisions w/ Injective for the developers and users.

19:16 - Differences between AAM and an orderbook DEXes - primitives that Injective are building.

22:19 - Impressive underlying architecture of the CosmosSDK - recapping what we learned from collapses like Terra.

29:19 - The future of stablecoins

33:22 - The type of applications on Injective

37:24 - The types of developers that should build on Injective

38:41 - Best place to get a hold of Eric @EricInjective on Twitter (https://twitter.com/EricInjective) and https://injective.com/