Jacob Phillips
@JacobPPhillips
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CoFounder @Lombard_Finance prev: Polychain, Perennial
NYC
Joined July 2019
I think this is a new DeFi First? $500mn+ asset acquisition Here's the gist of it: BTC onchain is broken. Users want the real thing — not branded wrappers, high mint/redeem fees, and gated access. At best, your current BTC wrapper is a 3rd or 4th priority for the team
EXCLUSIVE: Lombard Finance acquires BTC.b, Avalanche's bridged bitcoin asset, from Ava Labs
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Great move for Circle & exciting opportunity for Interop Labs, but there's gotta be a better way to do this. Teams can't be expected to work on protocols forever, but at a minimum, there should be economic alignment with token holders. Seems like that wasn't the case here.
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.@axelar's core team acquired by @circle — $AXL now likely worthless. A little over 3 years since token launch, so team fully vested. The outcome "feels" off: Team & (maybe) investors sell tokens & make some money, while token holders are left betting on a pipe dream.
Great 2025 trend: Tokens fighting for ownership Big thing still missing: "Related Entities" clauses with Founding Teams — a tactic commonly used by VCs to ensure value cannot be diverted by teams working on other projects. For Tokens/DAOs, the team is most of the value.
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Note, this perhaps doesn't directly relate to the aave situation, as aave is later stage and has multiple teams building upon it, but for 95% of DAOs, the team stepping aside is the biggest risk.
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Great 2025 trend: Tokens fighting for ownership Big thing still missing: "Related Entities" clauses with Founding Teams — a tactic commonly used by VCs to ensure value cannot be diverted by teams working on other projects. For Tokens/DAOs, the team is most of the value.
Did Aave Labs quietly redirect millions in swap fees away from the DAO treasury? https://t.co/lwXbsbkZPx $Aave delegate @DeFi_EzR3aL just posted some on-chain research. The following thread breaks down his post 🧵 @Marczeller @StaniKulechov @DeFi_EzR3aL
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Day 3 of The 12 Days of Bracemas Over 10,000 $APE in prizes for @eyeversed holders of our Apechain collection. Giving away so many amazing NFTs and over 7000 in $APE prizes. one gift box, per token, per day
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Killer team just announced @cascade_xyz: "First autonomous neo-brokerage" — Unified account for stocks, crypto, borrowing/leverage + connects directly to your bank, for the full brokerage experience (powered by @Stablecoin) "Engineered for America" 🇺🇸
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Stablecoin ecosystems, powered by BTC. People forget that BTC ignites the entire flywheel! Large stablecoin borrowing (backed by BTC) -> higher yield for stablecoins -> drives more Stablecoins to the chain.
Stable is live, with BTC.b as its canonical BTC! Lombard joins @stable as its Bitcoin partner, enabling stablecoin liquidity powered by BTC. Mint BTC.b today to leverage deeply liquid markets, borrow USDT0 at market beating rates, and join the 21 day Lux Campaign ✨
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Instos are changing their minds faster than ever! @Vanguard_Group a year ago: crypto doesn't belong in a long-term portfolio Now: $11 trillion in AUM exposed to crypto p.s. Biggest ETF launch of 2025 across ANY asset class — @BitwiseInvest BSOL 🤯 https://t.co/Nt2EgYjZ81
fortune.com
The brokerage firm, long averse to crypto, will let traders buy and sell blockchain-wrapped funds.
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On Investor lockups: Which is better: VCs dumping directly at/near launch when hype is high and execution is still very uncertain. OR VCs dumping after 1-4 years of lockups when the project is mature and the market is well developed. The latter seems much better for all
This is ahistorical nonsense. When I first started investing in crypto in 2017, the norm was no vesting for anyone. For investors, founders, employees, all tokens circulated immediately. This norm was changed after the 2018 ICO collapse because it was led to so much bad
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Did you know GSPs are natural swimmers? They’re born to dive into life’s adventures 🌊🐾.
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Lot of respect for both teams. Surprising to see this dispute/outcome, and will be interested to learn more about what happened if it becomes public.
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Scary situation: BTC LST from Maple and Core is impairing users’ BTC. Reserving comments/judgement until more clarity. This was heavily market as “Real Yield” and an Institutional product — despite quite a bit of complexity (ex. Hedging of Core tokens).
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Nothing is set in stone in DeFi: Fintechs & Insto B2B will drive distribution, bringing massive capital & userbases onboard — this has huge implications + potential to unravel network effects. Protocols are adjusting: [OLD] User facing --> [NEW] Backend (Finance Infra).
@hasufl I largely agree with you, network effects and maturity matter more than tech for DeFi growth, but I think the other component here is user distribution Corpo chains being able to onboard their own existing users and assets/liquidity onto their chain means they can sidestep a
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Yesterday, $1.7 Billion was deposited to @hourglasshq vaults. Big shoutout to @Charlie_Pyle & the team. These guys embody what makes DeFi great — any weekend, they may or may not invent a new financial primitive. Keep these guys on your radar!
KYC links for the @Stable Pre-Deposit Vault — Phase 2 are now live. We’re excited to share that over 24,000 wallets, representing ~$1.74 billion in deposits, successfully passed wallet screening. FAQs below: - Each user has until Tuesday, Nov 11th at 11:59 PM UTC to complete
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Speaking at SmartCon here shortly + hosting an event tonight with @Fidelity & @chainlink! https://t.co/c6vWqcpbMC
Join @JacobPPhillips and leaders across finance, Web3, and government at @Chainlink SmartCon in NYC this week. During a fireside chat tomorrow, Jacob will present the launch of BTC.b and how Chainlink CCIP is being used to securely bridge BTC.b and LBTC across ecosystems.
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The most important thing to understand from this $500M+ asset acquisition is one thing — it makes no sense for any chain, app, protocol, custodian, fintech etc to launch their own Bitcoin wrapper. For @Lombard_Finance, the additional TVL is great, the CT chatter is great, but
I think this is a new DeFi First? $500mn+ asset acquisition Here's the gist of it: BTC onchain is broken. Users want the real thing — not branded wrappers, high mint/redeem fees, and gated access. At best, your current BTC wrapper is a 3rd or 4th priority for the team
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Unbelievable energy from @HHorsley @hongkim__ and the @BitwiseInvest team! Wild fact: SOL Staked ETF was the biggest ETF launch of 2025.
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Lombard has acquired BTC.b—the leading Bitcoin asset on Avalanche with ~$538M in circulation. BTC.b will operate exclusively on Lombard's protocol infrastructure as a neutral public good, and introduce a permissionless, decentralized, next-generation BTC asset to the masses.
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