In this episode of Empire, Jason is joined by Blockworks co-founder Mike Ippolito & Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko. Anatoly has spent over 20 years as an engineer working for companies such as Qualcomm & Dropbox whilst contributing to open source software development. After the recent success of Solana, we invited Anatoly onto Empire to discuss how Solana was founded, the current layer 1 wars, the growth of crypto vs the internet, DeFi, DEXs vs CEXs and so much more! -- Avalanche: Thank you to Avalanche for sponsoring Empire. Avalanche is one of the best and fastest growing smart-contract platforms in the industry. Learn more about them at https://www.avax.network/ -- ParaSwap: If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out paraswap.io. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage. --- Empire is brought to you by Blockworks, a financial media brand delivering breaking news and premium insights about digital assets to millions of investors. For more content like Empire, visit http://blockworks.co/podcasts Follow me on Twitter @JasonYanowitz and let me know what you thought of the show!