Reminiscences of an MEV Operator - 0xTaker

In this episode of Deeply Intents, I talk to 0xTaker (MEV janitor at searcher.dev) about his journey in crypto beginning with Bitcoin, progressing to building exchanges, operating as a market maker, and co-founding Aori. 0xTaker takes us down the MEV rabbit hole. We converse on welfare maximization, ASS, and Intents. Later, we spent time discussing chain abstraction through the lens of user experience, coming out on the other side with a discussion on culture and protocol development. We also discussed tokens. In particular, their different use cases. In the final segment 0xTaker opens up about his personal philosophy of building remote startups, autonomy, and purpose.Timestamps(00:00) - Origins(01:26) - Starting with gaming(06:10) - Bitcoin solving payments in 2014(07:21) - Building an exchange(19:36) - Down the MEV rabbit hole(26:50) - Welfare maxing(29:55) - ASS Experimentation(33:04) - Intents(37:04) - Hyperfinancialization(42:18) - Accelerationsim(46:23) - Chain Abstraction(53:36) - Chain Abstraction is inevitable(58:18) - Protocol development & Aggregation(1:00:41) - Culture, Product, Brand(1:05:00) - User experience(1:09:49) - Aggregation breakouts(1:11:16) - Talk about tokens(1:16:36) - Trust me bro tokens(1:25:18) - VC backed infra tokens(1:28:35) - Token use cases(1:37:50) - Building remote startups(1:42:57) - Autonomy vs. employment(1:46:18) - Advice to a younger self DisclaimerNothing in this episode should be interpreted as financial, technical, or legal advice. The host does contract work for Heliax, a public goods laboratory, focusing on Anoma.