Why Across Wants to Turn its ACX Token into Equity

In this episode of Talking Tokens, Jacquelyn Melinek speaks with Hart Lambur, co-founder of Across Protocol and UMA, in two segments: breaking news about Across's token-to-equity proposal and a conversation from ETH Denver. Hart first unveils the Bridge Across proposal, a first-of-its-kind "token buyout" where, if approved, ACX holders can exchange tokens for equity in a new C Corp at 1:1 ratio or redeem for USDC. He explains why the DAO structure has become a bottleneck as institutional demand grows, why long tail tokens are undervalued, how enterprise partners need enforceable contracts DAOs can't provide, and addresses concerns around US security law restrictions before the two-week community discussion period. The ETH Denver segment covers why competition from Stripe's Tempo and Circle's Arc will push Ethereum into "war mode" and drive innovation, the evolution of the Open Intents framework and two-second bridging experiences, how the L2 thesis didn't stick while EVM architecture remains strong, whether stablecoins will be consumer-facing or backend infrastructure for fintechs, the power law distribution of stablecoins as a key competition metric, and why AI agent-to-agent payments are a natural fit for crypto rails.

TIMESTAMPS

(00:00) Intro (01:54) The Bridge Across proposal for token-to-equity exchange or USDC buyout options (02:40) Why DAOs can't sign enterprise contracts and long tail tokens are undervalued (08:52) Across Protocol maintaining decentralized governance and non-custodial protections (10:46) What happens next: two-week discussion period before snapshot vote (14:13) Intro to ETH Denver conversation (15:27) Energy in bear markets: focus on building over hype and token prices (16:05) Ethereum going into "war mode" with competition from Tempo and Arc (17:22) How blockchain fragmentation benefits Across while challenging user experience (18:23) Open Intents framework's evolution since launch (20:18) L2 thesis not sticking as expected, but EVM architecture remains strong (24:33) Future of blockchain interoperability and solving fragmentation for users (29:12) Stablecoins as consumer products versus backend fintech infrastructure (34:48) How Robinhood and Stripe are approaching stablecoin adoption differently (38:23) Power law distribution of stablecoins as key metric for competition (42:28) AI agents and agent-to-agent payments as natural crypto use case (43:32) Final advice: stay the course through bear markets

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