The Defiant

Ethereum’s “HTTP Moment” with Marissa Posner & Yoav Weiss

The Defiant

Show Notes

In this episode of The Defiant podcast, Camila Russo sits down in Buenos Aires (Devconnect) with Marissa Foster (Product, Ethereum Foundation) and Yoav Weiss (security researcher, Ethereum Foundation) to unpack The Trustless Manifesto and the Ethereum Interop Layer (EIL), why “trust assumptions” are quietly creeping into Ethereum’s stack, and what it will take to preserve Ethereum’s core values while making UX actually usable.We dig into the hidden places users are forced to trust intermediaries, from cross-chain interoperability and solvers to something most people never question: RPCs. Then we get practical: the guests walk through the EIL, a new approach to cross-chain UX that aims to deliver one-signature interop without introducing new trust assumptions, plus why the wallet becomes the center of the user’s security model.Finally, we zoom out: how should wallets warn users, what does “walkaway test” really mean, and why institutions may end up being one of the strongest forces pushing crypto toward less counterparty risk.Topic list: • Why Ethereum’s next phase is “mainstream adoption” — and why that raises the stakes • The Trustless Manifesto: what it is, why it was written, and what it’s trying to prevent • Where trust assumptions sneak in: bridges, interop protocols, sequencers, oracles • RPCs as a giant blind spot: “we trust RPCs blindly” and why that can have real-world consequences • Trustlessness vs UX: why “great values + bad UX” can still lose users • “You can’t build something trustless on top of something that isn’t trustless” • What users should demand — and why it can’t require everyone to be a security expert • How “beat” frameworks help: L2BEAT, upcoming interop criteria, and Walletbeat • The walkaway test: what happens if the team/server/intermediary disappears (or turns hostile)? • L2 sequencers: permissioned vs permissionless, censorship risk, and practical exit paths • Cloud dependencies (Cloudflare outage) and what it reveals about today’s “decentralized” apps • Ethereum Interop Layer (EIL) explained: one-signature, wallet-centric, self-executing interop • Why “solvers open the envelope” — and how EIL avoids that trust model • Liquidity providers, vouchers, and how users pay gas cross-chain without the usual friction • Standards and coordination: wallets, L2s, and dapps all need to meet in the middle • The HTTP analogy: Ethereum today as the “pre-HTTP internet” and what seamless interop could unlock • Institutions and counterparty risk: why big players may push hardest for trust-minimized infrastructure • What’s next: testnet learnings, audits, standards, wallet integrations, and 2026 mainnet targetExplore The Defiant ✨📰 Websitehttps://thedefiant.io/✉️ Free Daily Newsletter https://thedefiant.io/newsletter/defi...🤑 Weekly Premium Newsletter https://thedefiant.io/newsletter/defi...✊ Follow The DefiantX/Twitter: https://x.com/DefiantNews📬 Contact our [email protected]🤝 Sponsorships & [email protected]#TheDefiant​ #DeFi​ #Decentralized​ #Finance​ #Blockchain #Web3

More from The Defiant

Oct 22, 2026

The chip that stole more than $90 million from Ledger users costs less than $20 to build, snaps into place with three solder points, and has gone through at least three generations of design. Whoever makes it isn't planning a short run. Ledger says its own chip and software were never compromised, and that every confirmed case traces back to one Malaysian reseller, CryptoBilis. But implanted devices have also been reported from authorized shops in Singapore and from MediaMarkt in Germany, and Ledger had photos of the newer implant on its website months before the drains. Camila Russo talks with Mark Karpelès, the former Mt. Gox CEO who now runs Karpeles Lab, and who found the mass-produced implant after buying a half-price Nano X on Amazon Japan. He explains how the board is installed, why he thinks someone is selling it as a product, and why weighing your wallet won't catch it. He also responds to Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier, who said Mark's Mt. Gox record makes him no white knight, and argues that one well-placed warning could have saved most of the money. So who is building these implants, and who else is buying them? Mark walks through what to check on your own device, why panicking is the bigger risk, the open-source antenna detector he's building, and why he still thinks self-custody is the whole point of Bitcoin. "If you have a hardware wallet, it shouldn't contain a mobile antenna." Guest: Mark Karpelès (Karpeles Lab)Topics: Ledger, Nano X, hardware wallet implant, supply chain attack, CryptoBilis, MediaMarkt, seed phrase, Mt. Gox, Pascal Gauthier, Joe Grand, self-custody, multisig, crypto security, hardware security

Oct 19, 2026

What do you actually own when you buy a tokenized stock? Backpack founder Armani Ferrante breaks down the transfer agent, DTCC, SPV debt-security and Backpack models. Backpack’s version is 1:1 redeemable stock you can move between your brokerage and DeFi. Armani explains how that unlocks arbitrage and better price execution, how 24/7 trading and in-kind dividends work, and why the BP token gave zero tokens to founders, team or investors, with 20% of company equity set aside for stakers.Explore The Defiant ✨

Oct 16, 2026

Starknet says it is “actively considering becoming an L1” — leaving Ethereum to become what it calls the first fully quantum-resistant network, with 2027 as the target. StarkWare co-founder and CEO Eli Ben-Sasson joins Camila Russo to explain the plan.The announcement came as a post on X on Oct. 8, with no governance proposal attached. STRK ran from $0.05 to $0.12 in five days and has since given back most of it. In the same week, StarkWare shipped Shadow Accounts, a privacy primitive that gives users a separate address per app, and launched OffMarket, a service for trading on Polymarket without linking positions to a public wallet.We get into:— What becoming an L1 actually means for Starknet, and what replaces Ethereum’s settlement guarantees— Who approves the move, and when a proposal goes to governance— Why Ben-Sasson thinks the quantum threat is “much closer than we think”— Where he lands in the “bunker mode” fight between Justin Drake, Vitalik Buterin and Yehuda Lindell— Why StarkWare is demoing ML-DSA signatures when Buterin named lattices as the next risk— Shadow Accounts, OffMarket, and building privacy on a counterparty that can switch you off— Starknet’s revenue, emissions, and whether an L1 changes the economicsGuest: Eli Ben Sasson

Oct 15, 2026

Up to $93M drained from more than 300 wallets, and the software was never touched. Ledger confirmed a physical implant inside signers sold through reseller CryptoBilis, reading recovery phrases off the screen at setup and sending them out over a mobile network.So the question stops being what happened and becomes who you trust. The vendor? The reseller? The sealed box? The device already sitting in your drawer? Yourself?Guest: Pablo Sabbatella (@PabloSabbatella), founder of Opsek (@opsek_io)

Sep 25, 2026

The SEC just gave tokenized U.S. stocks a five-year path to trade on AMMs outside exchange registration rules. The largest tokenized stock platform in the market doesn't qualify.Days after the Senate declined to move ahead on the CLARITY Act, the SEC issued an exemption order for "tokenized securities venues." It sets conditions: permissioned pools, public blockchains, and tokens that carry the full rights of the underlying share. Synthetic and linked products are outside the sandbox.Camila Russo sits down with Peter Curley of Ondo Finance, whose offshore equity-linked notes hold about $1 billion in TVL but aren't eligible; Gabriel Otte of Dinari, whose broker-dealer-issued dShares fit the order almost exactly; and Rodrigo Seira of Cooley, who explains why the order is a proof of concept built to survive a legal fight with Citadel and others.Gabe calls synthetic stock tokens "indisputably worse" for investors and says he's never heard a good argument for permissionless securities. Peter says Ondo already has product-market fit and the SEC has left room for more models. So is the order a set of red lines, or a first draft?"There is no rule book here. We're literally trying to build the future."Guests: Peter Curley (Ondo Finance) | Gabriel Otte (Dinari) | Rodrigo Seira (Cooley) Topics: tokenized stocks, SEC exemption order, tokenized securities venues, AMMs, Ondo Global Markets, Dinari dShares, synthetic stocks, equity-linked notes, permissioned DeFi, CLARITY Act, Hester Peirce, Paul Atkins, RWA

See all episodes →