Crypto infrastructure under pressure.
The Rollup brings crypto builders, finance people, and protocol voices into brisk interviews about what is actually shipping. Its strongest episodes turn technical claims about chains, stablecoins, privacy, robotics data, and tokenized markets into sharper debates about product demand and market fit.
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The Rollup is built around long-form crypto interviews with a trading-desk sense of urgency. It is not a beginner tour. The show assumes listeners can keep up with rollups, EVM compatibility, stablecoins, perps, privacy systems, token incentives, and the recurring fight over blockchain performance. Its best moments come when a guest makes a broad claim and the interviewer keeps narrowing it until the technical choice has market consequences. That pressure gives the show its shape. MegaETH becomes a debate about throughput, sequencer design, Ethereum security, and whether users care more about performance than decentralization rhetoric. Midnight becomes a conversation about programmable privacy, Zcash’s legacy, post-quantum proof systems, and why large companies may want privacy in crypto systems. Project 11 turns the quantum threat into a practical migration problem for Bitcoin, Zcash, Algorand, and other chains that still depend on older cryptographic assumptions. Lighter brings the discussion back to high-frequency trading, cross margin, EVM deployment, liquidity, and the attempt to make onchain finance feel more like a unified balance sheet. The show also keeps one eye on traditional finance. A conversation with Max of Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions frames digital assets alongside goals-based investing, tokenization, IPO demand, and the fading simplicity of the 60/40 portfolio. Stablecoin episodes push into FX, yield, the Clarity Act, FraxNet, and the fight over who captures value in digital dollars. AI and robotics show up as part of the same incentive map, not as a separate trend. In the Jansen Tang episode, crypto economics is discussed as a way to coordinate robotics data collection where real buyers exist for the output. The tone is brisk and occasionally blunt. Guests are often people with strong theses, and they are usually allowed to explain the full architecture before the next challenge arrives. The show can be dense, especially when conversations stack crypto jargon with market structure and product strategy. That density is part of the appeal. The Rollup suits listeners who want current digital asset debates from inside the room, with fewer polished slogans and more argument about what will actually work.
Made for: For crypto-native listeners, digital asset investors, DeFi builders, and finance operators who already understand the basics and want sharper context on live infrastructure debates.
What sets it apart: The Rollup stands out by pairing guest access with aggressive thesis testing. It does not just cover launches; it asks whether the architecture, incentives, liquidity, and regulation can survive contact with real markets.
Where the leaders of digital assets and finance converge. Live from the financial capital of the world.Website: https://therollup.co/
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
The Rollup connects crypto market arguments to the protocol design, security assumptions, and financial machinery beneath them.
Robbie and Andy build The Rollup around direct, guest-led conversations about how crypto systems work and where they meet finance. Their questions move easily between market conviction and technical design, giving discussions of blockchain infrastructure a practical frame rather…
Ethereum gets called dead; your next question is how fast a trade reaches Singapore.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sharp, performance-first argument for prioritizing roll-up speed over sequencer decentralization.
MegaEth's mainnet is live, and this review uses that milestone to sharpen a familiar layer 2 question: what should come first, speed or decentralization?
A practical privacy pitch that keeps circling back to engineering, liquidity, and what can actually ship.
Charles Hoskinson frames Midnight as a privacy project and spends the episode on what has to work in practice: programmable privacy, federated validators, and a proof system that can keep pace as the field moves.
A focused look at crypto incentives as a possible answer to robotics' data gap.
Robotics comes into focus here through a practical economic problem: who gathers the egocentric and teleoperation data needed to train world action models, and what makes that labor worth doing?
Quantum risk is treated as a concrete cryptography and migration challenge, not a distant hypothetical.
The piece frames quantum risk as a live engineering question, tying Project 11, Brian Armstrong's public interest, and the Google paper into a wider shift in how the ecosystem talks about the issue.
A blunt look at tokenization, goals-based investing, and why 60/40 feels too tidy.
This episode presents Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions' deputy CIO as treating tokenization as early, unsettled, and unlikely to settle into a single answer.
A blunt chain argument about speed, value, and who gets there first.
The conversation settles into a clear chain-thesis debate around Ethereum, Solana, and Hyperliquid. Logan argues that Ethereum is effectively dead from an institutional and product-use angle, and that it still looks overpriced.
Vladimir Novakovski frames Lighter around verifiability, speed, and what developers can build on top.
Lighter's argument turns on a fairly narrow trade: a single sequencer can still protect a core value often tied to decentralization if every action is verifiable and the important code stays open source.
A chain-architecture argument that widens into gold, Bitcoin, and 2026 sentiment.
The piece uses Haseeb Qureshi to reopen a familiar crypto question: when chain architecture matters, and when tooling, users, and money take over.
Crypto markets, miners, and adoption in plain view.
Crypto headlines with market read-through.
Haseeb Qureshi joins The Rollup to review his 2025 crypto predictions and forecast trends for 2026.
Vladimir Novakovski, founder of Lighter, discusses the platform's latest developments, including the Lighter EVM and universal cross-margin.
This episode features an interview with Sam Kazemian, CEO of Frax, discussing stablecoin integration, real-world use cases, and predictions for 2026 in the digital finance space.
This episode reviews the 2025 tokenization landscape, focusing on why Real World Assets (RWAs) are gaining momentum in 2026, featuring insights from Chris Yin and Teddy Pornprinya of Plume.
Shuyao Kong says MegaETH’s mainnet went live after three years, with the chain running “really, really freaking fast” and the team focused on apps, USDM, and sustainable chain economics.
Charles frames Midnight as a practical privacy project built around a March 31 mainnet launch, federated validators, and technology that is already well proven.
Jansen Tang says Virtuals Protocol is moving from agentic crypto tools to Eastworld, a robotics effort built around teleoperations and autonomous physical agents.
The episode opens with Alex Pruden in the tokenization tower in New York.
Vladimir Novakovski discusses Lighter's latest developments, including the Lighter EVM for Ethereum developers and upcoming universal cross-margin features for improved capital efficiency in crypto trading.
Max Gokhman sits down as the Deputy CIO at Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions.
The episode opens on World War III noise.
This episode discusses how Codex is disrupting the $7 trillion FX market through stablecoins, featuring an interview with Haonan Li about crypto innovations and industry challenges.
This episode discusses the decline of altcoins, the rise of tokenized real-world assets, and market dynamics with Bitget CEO Gracy Chen, including commentary on Binance's influence.
This episode discusses the potential of stablecoins to disrupt traditional banking and credit card businesses like American Express, featuring insights from Will Nuelle of Galaxy Ventures on capital allocation and crypto trends.