Ethereum's Perp Dex, Black Friday, Binance Listing Fee, and More

Good Sunday! Here’s what we unpacked this week on Unchained:

• ⚙️ Synthetix Returns to Ethereum – Can a perp DEX on the Ethereum layer 1 really work?

• 🌐 Aptos Takes Aim at Black Boxes – Inside its push for transparent onchain trading.

• 💰 Binance Listing Fee Showdown – One founder’s tweet shook the world’s biggest exchange.

• 📉 Bits + Bips: Crypto’s Great Reset – After billions wiped out, can markets recover?

• 💥 Crypto’s Black Friday Explained – What really triggered the $19 billion liquidation storm?

• 🪓 The Chopping Block: ADL Chaos and Hyperliquid Whales – Breaking down the biggest perp crash in history.

Ethereum’s Layer 1 Lacks a Perp DEX. Synthetix Intends to Change That

What if the next great perps exchange is on Ethereum itself?

Kain Warwick, founder of Synthetix and Infinex, is returning to Ethereum Layer 1 with a bold new experiment: a perpetuals DEX built directly on mainnet. In this episode, he joins Laura to explain why Synthetix is taking this contrarian step, how its hybrid “optimistic order book” can run efficiently on Ethereum’s slower block times, and why he believes the future of trading will move fully on-chain.

Warwick also discusses the tradeoffs behind using USDT, what it will take to match centralized exchange performance, and his “super app” vision for how DeFi platforms could finally outcompete CEXs.

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

Aptos Is Betting Big on Transparency After Crypto’s Black Friday, Says CEO

Avery Ching says Crypto’s Black Friday revealed exchanges are black boxes, but upcoming perp DEX Decibel will change that. Plus, here’s how Aptos is bringing crypto to 500M users.

Last Friday, billions evaporated in a liquidation cascade—and nobody knows exactly what happened because centralized exchanges won’t share the data.

In this sponsored episode recorded at Aptos’ NYC event, Aptos CEO Avery Ching says if their Decibel perpetual exchange had been live, traders would have seen every order, every spread change, every liquidation in real-time onchain. But while critics argue existing perp DEXs like Hyperliquid are already decentralized, Ching says most still match orders off-chain in black boxes.

Avery explains why Decibel (launching Q1 2026) will be different, how 500 million Indian users are coming to crypto through Reliance Jio’s JioCoin, and why Aptos partnered with World Liberty Financial despite VCs calling it “garbage in your living room.”

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

Binance Listing Fee Fight: What’s a Fair Price to List on the Top Crypto Exchange?

How one founder’s viral tweet shook the world’s biggest exchange.

When CJ Hetherington revealed the token listing terms Binance allegedly offered his startup, the crypto world exploded.

In this episode, CJ, founder of prediction market app Limitless, and his investor Nick Tomaino of 1confirmation join Laura to discuss why he went public, how Binance responded, and what the incident reveals about the power dynamics between exchanges and builders.

The conversation tackles how retail gets dumped on, why transparency is the next frontier for crypto, and why both guests agree that the “revolution won’t be centralized.”

Then, Kenny Li, co-founder of Manta Network, joins to reveal why Manta is pivoting away from being just another L2. He argues that the scaling wars are oversaturated, that mercenary users make infra battles a fight for crumbs, and that the real prize is at the application layer.

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

Bits + Bips: Crypto Had Its Reset. Will It Go to New Highs Now?

The crash exposed crypto’s weakest links. Now the question is: will it recover?

Crypto just went through its biggest crash.

In the wake of “Black Friday,” when $19 billion in positions were wiped out in hours, Bits + Bips hosts Steve Ehrlich and Ram Ahluwalia are joined by Carlos Guzman of GSR and YQ of AltLayer to dissect what really happened.

Was it a coordinated attack exploiting Binance’s oracles? A failure of market structure? Or simply too much leverage waiting for a trigger? Or some combination of the three? The group breaks down how liquidity vanished, why hedges failed, how this flash crash echoed the worst moments of traditional markets, and why the industry urgently needs reform before it happens again.

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

Crypto’s Black Friday Was Its Largest Liquidation Ever. What the Hell Happened?

After Trump posted that the U.S. would impose tariffs on China, all hell broke loose.

When Trump tweeted about 100% tariffs on China, crypto collapsed — $19 billion in liquidations in just hours.

Altcoins plunged 95%, exchanges froze, and stablecoins depegged. In this special episode, Diogenes Casares, founder of Klyra Protocol, joins Laura to break down the chain reaction: what really caused the crash, whether insiders knew it was coming, and how infrastructure failures and extreme leverage turned a policy tweet into crypto’s Black Friday.

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

The Chopping Block: Inside the $19B+ Perp Crash, ADL Explained, Binance’s USDe/Staked-Token Depeg, and the Hyperliquid Whale Debate

$19B+ in liquidations, ADL chaos, and Binance’s USDe/staked pegs snapping while APIs buckled and gas hit $400—we dissect the Hyperliquid whale, delta-neutral blowups, HLP vs. LLP incentives, and ask: should perps protect vaults or winning traders?

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, Doug Colkitt, Founder Ambient Finance & Founding Contributor at Fogo, joins us as one of the wildest weekends in crypto history drags us back on air: a record $19B+ in liquidations, gas spiking toward $400, exchange APIs wobbling, and ADL ripping through perps as hedges vanished. We unpack what ADL actually does, why delta-neutral farmers got nuked, and how Binance’s USDe and staked ETH/SOL pegs snapped amid index design and mint/redeem gaps—followed by refunds. We get into HLP vs. LLP (vaults vs. winning traders), the Hyperliquid “whale” short ahead of the tariff tweet, cross-margin reflexivity that torched alts, and why market makers wore outsized pain. Then we zoom out to infra: sequencers, force-inclusion in practice, and the case for on-chain clearing plus real insurance funds before the next

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

In Case You Missed It 👀

Why the Black Friday Whale’s $192 Million Crypto Trade Was Legal

Some fortunate traders likely knew ahead of time that Trump was going to announce tariffs on China, and got rich while likely facing no legal consequences.

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