This week was packed with insight, from the decisions behind embedded wallets, to Hyperliquid’s ascendance, to why onchain attribution may be Coinbase’s most underrated bet. Here’s what we’re tracking:
At Paradigm’s Frontiers conference, Henri from Privy gave a refreshingly honest talk on what it actually takes to build a good embedded wallet.
Performance vs. privacy. Sync vs. security. Speed vs. standardization.
Every choice has a cost, and Henri breaks down how Privy navigated them.
They’ve quietly become the default infra layer for a generation of consumer apps — not by doing everything right, but by doing the painful engineering work that most wallet teams won’t.
Kyle @0xkyle dropped a compelling post on speculation and crypto’s lack of imagination. One example stands out: Hyperliquid.
No venture funding
Revenue-backed token
ICM mechanism
100% founder/operator controlled
“It seems that most of crypto has forgotten how to dream, while TradFi is learning to dream again.”
Hyperliquid isn’t just beating Binance on volume in some pairs — it’s doing it with no listing fees, no marketing blitz, and no VC crutches. This is what a modern, sovereign trading venue looks like.
Galaxy’s crypto + AI strategy sounds fluffy, until you run the numbers.
A recent pod laid out a base-case sum-of-the-parts (SOTP) analysis:
Segment | Val ($B) | Per Share |
|---|---|---|
Balance Sheet (NAV) | 3.5 | $8–9 |
Core Crypto Business | 6.5 | ~$16 |
Helios AI Datacenter | 12 | ~$30 |
Base SOTP Total | 22 | $55 |
If the AI thesis plays out, and GLXY becomes a core infra play, $100+ isn’t out of reach.
Cambrian’s latest landscape covers agentic finance — autonomous trading agents running in DeFi. Two projects stand out:
Mamo and Bankr — both launched tokens, both are powering UX layers atop Base’s new app
These are early experiments in turning wallets into intelligent execution layers
The UX today is rough. But as Cambrian notes:
“This is the worst it will ever be.”
Tommy Sheng’s post nails something we’ve been seeing in dealflow too:
“Crypto-adjacent businesses are finally here — and they’re mostly consumer focused. Thank god.”
From gaming to commerce to fintech UX layers, we’re seeing teams sidestep the identity baggage of crypto-native and instead build sticky businesses with crypto infra beneath the hood.
Spindl has been flying under the radar since being quietly acquired by Coinbase. But this week’s post is a reminder:
In crypto, everything is an ad — wallets, mints, tips, follows, buys.
Onchain attribution isn’t just analytics, it’s the foundation of performance-based crypto media.
Spindl is already powering ad rails on the Base App. That might end up being Coinbase’s most important consumer play of the year.
Across these pieces, a few patterns are emerging:
Founders who opt out of the obvious, funding rounds, SDK templates, narratives, are often the ones building the real primitives.
We’re entering the adjacent crypto era, where consumer experiences win by hiding the stack, not flaunting it.
Attribution, embedded infra, and execution agents are converging into a new surface area: the programmable wallet. Whoever owns that wins distribution.
We’ll keep backing the builders leaning into this mess, and sharing what we learn along the way.
Until next week,
Social Graph Ventures
