Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies (Epicenter Media Ltd.)
Explorez tous les épisodes de Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies
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| 09 Feb 2022 | Kevin Owocki: Gitcoin – Building and Funding the Open Web | 01:22:34 | |
Gitcoin is a platform which funds software developers for work in open source ecosystems. Open source creates value without capturing it: Gitcoin creates funding mechanism to correct the asymmetry between value created and value captured. So far they have raised $51million, which were then distributed to public goods projects. We were joined, for the second time, by Gitcoin's founder Kevin Owocki. Hear as we chat about quadratic and public good funding, the Internet of Jobs, and Kevin's book, Greenpilled - Regenerative CryptoEcononmics, which is out soon! Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/430 | |||
| 28 Jul 2023 | Patrick O'Grady: Avalanche – Building High Performance VMs With HyperSDK | 01:17:35 | |
The recent history of L2s has shown that there doesn’t need to be ‘one chain to rule them all’ or an ‘ETH killer’. Instead, a healthier approach would be to find the best solution for a specific need, taking into consideration any potential tradeoffs. Avalanche has done just that, focusing from the get-go on delivering high transaction throughput, using their unique subnet architecture, consensus protocol and warp messaging. HyperSDK continues this conviction, offering a framework for developers to spin up customisable, high performance virtual machines. We were joined by Patrick O’Grady, VP of Engineering at Ava Labs, to discuss HyperSDK and how it enables building customisable, high performance VMs on Avalanche subnets. Topics covered in this episode:
Episode links: This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/506 | |||
| 07 Oct 2024 | Konstantin Lomashuk: '#bitcoin is like a #memecoin' - cyber·Fund | 01:06:57 | |
Outside of BTC’s cypherpunk movement, the early days of crypto were more or less barren in terms of innovation. However, this presented a huge opportunity for visionaries and angel investors to either launch or back bold projects, recognizing the potential of crypto stretching far beyond than just payments. One of them was Konstantin Lomashuk, co-founder of cyber•Fund which was a key actor in bootstrapping the cybernetic economy. Apart from early investments in Ethereum, Polkadot, Cosmos, Solana and many others, Konstantin recognized the potential threats to the core ethos of decentralisation and also co-founded Lido DAO in order to stave off Ethereum’s centralization risks. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. | |||
| 07 Jul 2023 | Sveinn Valfells: Monerium – Regulated On-Chain Euro (EURe) | 00:59:55 | |
Stablecoins represent the backbone of DeFi, allowing complex financial applications to be protected from external volatility. From fiat-backed to algorithmic, there are multiple approaches to issuing and backing stablecoins. While US regulations are looming over the crypto industry, Monerium released a fully regulated on-chain euro stablecoin, the EURe, enabling direct SEPA transfers, on- and off-ramp. We were joined by Sveinn Valfells, CEO of Monerium, to discuss the European E-Money Directive and how it set the ground for fully regulated on-chain currencies (EURe) built on top of SEPA. Topics covered in this episode:
Episode links: This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/503 | |||
| 29 Oct 2019 | Rhys Lindmark: MIT's Digital Currency Initiative – Why We Need Blockchain Ethics | 01:12:44 | |
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have the potential to change the world in meaningful ways. And this change may drastically impact people’s lives – both for the better and for the worse. While ethics are often discussed for technologies like AI, the ethical considerations around blockchain technologies have received less focussed attention. We’re joined by Rhys Lindmark, Head of Community and Long-Term Societal Impact at the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative. Previously the host of the podcast “Creating a Humanist Blockchain Future,” Rhys’ approach to blockchain was always about considering its potential impact. Since joining the DCI, his podcast, now “Gray Mirror,” continues to explore these questions. He has also recently started teaching a blockchain ethics course with the DCI’s Director, Neha Narula. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/311 | |||
| 24 Dec 2019 | Increasing Wallet Usability to Decrease the Anxiety of Self-Custody | 00:50:27 | |
Managing crypto-assets can be an anxiety-inducing experience for a lot of people. While it's quite empowering to “be your own bank,” it's also scary for a lot of people who understand the risks associated with self-custody. Although cryptocurrency wallets have made tremendous progress since the days when a full-sync of the blockchain was required, there are still significant hurdles that limit broad adoption. This conversation on the future of wallets at SF Blockchain Week Epicenter conference includes Taylor Monahan of MyCrypto, David Gold of FIO Protocol, Dan Finlay of MetaMask, and Ouriel Ohayon of ZenGo. They discuss design, app store policies, and the evolution necessary to enable more people to send, receive, and manage their tokens confidently. The panel is moderated by Epicenter host Sebastien Couture. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/319 | |||
| 30 Nov 2022 | Fredrik Haga: Dune Analytics – The Open Data Platform | 01:07:16 | |
Dune Analytics is a platform aggregating blockchain data, making data easier to query and understand for the larger public. Over the past years, Dune has become the go-to tool for blockchain analytics, as well as the home of a community of dune wizards numbering in the thousands, with its fundraising at a 1 Billion valuation as a testament to the growth of the project over the past 4 years. In today's episode, we are joined by the project's co-founder, Fredrik Haga. We discuss the products Dune Analytics offers, why it's hard to aggregate data that in principle is public, and how a community of data wizards was built in a grassroots effort. We also chatted about product focus and vision for the future, as well as useful lessons for bootstrapping a project on a shoestring budget. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/472 | |||
| 18 Jun 2019 | Hayden Adams: Uniswap – An Automated Decentralized Exchange for Ethereum | 01:12:29 | |
The concept of a decentralized exchange has been a holy grail in the cryptocurrency space for many years. Many attempts have been made, but most decentralized exchanges suffered from central points of failure, poor user experience and little liquidity. Launched during Ethereum's DevCon 2018, Uniswap is one of the first fully decentralized exchanges and managed to become the leading DEX very fast. We were joined by Uniswap Founder Hayden Adams to discuss Uniswap's unique model, the different participants in the protocol and the importance of decentralized exchanges for the blockchain space. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/292 | |||
| 30 Jun 2021 | Cassidy Daly & Lucas Vogelsang: Centrifuge – Introducing Real-World DeFi | 01:03:22 | |
Centrifuge is an open and permissionless protocol built on Polkadot and Ethereum that unlocks collateral for DeFi. Centrifuge allows for the tokenization of real world assets such as invoices, real estate, or goods, and puts them on the blockchain. This allows users to borrow against these assets from investors. Investors lend dai in exchange for an interest rate that depends on the borrower and the asset used as collateral. We were joined by Lucas Vogelsang, CEO & Centrifuge Co-founder, and Cassidy Daly, Token Design & Research at Centrifuge. They explained why they built the protocol and how it works, the first application built on top, Tinlake, its integration with other DeFi platforms such as Maker, and their vision for the future. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/398 | |||
| 09 Dec 2022 | Epicenter Hosts – The Bear Is Back: Recollections From 2022 | 01:13:01 | |
This year has been quite a rollercoaster for the crypto industry. From the long-awaited success of the Ethereum Merge to the spectacular collapse of FTX, this year has been full of lessons, resilience, and insights. This is also one of a few bear markets where activities and developments continue to feel vibrant across the board, while long-term adoption and regulations seem evermore uncertain. With that backdrop, our hosts sit down for a conversation on the current state of crypto and look back on 2022. The topics range from the general public sentiment to key developments within the industry, as well as exciting themes that the hosts are looking forward to in the upcoming future. Throughout the conversation, the hosts also express concerns over the issues with privacy and regulations, and how the ecosystems can resiliently move forward. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/473 | |||
| 23 Aug 2024 | Zeal: The Day-to-Day Crypto Wallet for EVM Chains - Hannes Graah | 00:55:27 | |
Self-custodial wallets often represent the first point of contact for crypto users that venture away from centralised exchanges. As a result, their security and user experience should be paramount. This often explained Metamask’s first mover advantage and the users’ reluctance to change. However, as infrastructure evolves, new wallets are equipped from the get-go with features that are designed for normie adoption, such as: account abstraction, gas fee abstraction, easier on- and off-ramp, etc. Zeal was envisioned as a day-to-day wallet solution, allowing users true freedom to transact, both on-chain, as well as off-chain (i.e. real world spendings). Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. | |||
| 16 Jul 2019 | Jerry Brito: The Case for Electronic Cash in an Open and Free Society | 01:09:56 | |
We’re joined by Jerry Brito, Executive Director of Coin Center. Having discovered Bitcoin in 2011, Jerry was among the first lawyers to talk about crypto in the U.S. capital. In 2014, he founded Coin Center, a leading research and advocacy center focussing on cryptocurrencies. In this enlightening conversation, we talk to Jerry about his paper titled “The Case for Electronic Cash,” in which he articulates why private peer-to-peer payments are essential to an open society. We also discuss Libra and the possible regulatory challenges the proposed private cash system may face. Finally, Jerry explains the recent FinCEN guidance on cryptocurrencies, which broadly follows the recommendations of Coin Center. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/296 | |||
| 26 May 2020 | Sam Williams: Arweave – Bringing Permanence to the Web | 01:18:53 | |
The internet was originally created as a platform to communicate freely, but it soon became a place where people could be monitored, controlled, and censored. 98% of content on the internet is deleted every 20 years. More surprisingly, based on a Twitter study, a third of links change their content fundamentally or are removed completely, within three months of their creation. | |||
| 19 Mar 2021 | Joey Zacherl: KeeperDAO – The On-Chain Liquidity Underwriter | 01:13:54 | |
KeeperDao is an on-chain liquidity underwriter for DeFi that combines yield farming and profits single-block arbitrage. The mining pool for Keepers incentivizes a game theory optimal strategy for cooperation among arbitrageurs. Their goal is to capture profit opportunities and distribute them to the various participants involved. We were joined by Joey Zacherl, Co-founder of KeeperDAO, to chat about what the protocol does and its mission, the grim triggering strategy, the ongoing hiding game, and the roadmap for the future. Topics covered in this episode:
Episode links: This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/383 | |||
| 20 Jul 2024 | How Gnosis 3.0 Paves the Way for Mass Adoption - Friederike Ernst | 01:10:20 | |
One of the OG flag bearers for decentralisation, Gnosis initially set out to build a prediction market on Ethereum. However, unlike the vibrant ecosystem of today, the early Ethereum days were barren. As a result, Gnosis team decided to build out their own infrastructure and tooling to suit their needs. Before long, tools such as Gnosis Safe, Zodiac, etc. were quickly adopted by the entire industry. Nowadays, since the foundation has been tried and tested, Gnosis 3.0 aims to focus on improving consumer dApp UX in order to facilitate widespread adoption. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. | |||
| 30 Mar 2024 | Wintermute: 'Avoid These Trading Mistakes!' Secrets of a Market Maker - Yoann Turpin | 01:21:36 | |
Market makers help create more efficient markets and liquid order books, by positioning themselves on the receiving end of a trade that other market participants are unwilling to fill. Quantitative analysis is crucial in determining their position and size. Wintermute defines itself as a tech-first company that also became one of the largest spot market making firms in Web3. From angel investing in Web2, to market making in Web3, Yoann Turpin (co-founder of Wintermute) has a vast experience in both tech products & financial markets. He shares what differentiates good traders and how he approaches investing, trading and market making. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. | |||
| 28 Jan 2020 | Yaya Fanusie: Bitcoin and Terrorism – How Compliance Will Shape Cryptocurrencies | 01:14:25 | |
Many within the cryptofinance industry have been patiently waiting for regulatory oversight to deliver the clarity required for institutional adoption. Recent updates by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which issues guidelines for 200 countries and territories, attempts to apply the same rules and regulations required of traditional finance to the world of virtual currencies. Yaya Fanusie's background as an intelligence analyst at the CIA, and research on the national security implications of cryptocurrencies, provide valuable insight into the necessity of regulation in the space to mitigate the risk of bad actors. Yaya discusses the history and evolution of “Know Your Customer” and where he believes the industry is heading as it faces policymakers who attempt to regulate such rapid technological change. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/324 | |||
| 25 Aug 2020 | Cory Doctorow: Reviving the Cypherpunk in All of Us | 01:06:19 | |
Republic is an investment platform that allows anyone pretty much anywhere in the world, of any income and net worth, to invest in some of the best private equity startups. It allows regular people, not just a few wealthy accredited investors, to invest in highly vetted private startups, with as little as $10 or as much as $100,000 per investment. In the past, accredited investors were the only ones allowed to invest in startups through equity-based incentives. However the JOBS Act of 2016 created an exemption under the federal securities laws so that crowdfunding can be used to offer and sell securities to the general public. Republic launched just after the JOBS Act was passed with a goal to create an investment platform which was truly accessible to everyone. This was around the time that companies began raising funds with ICOs, and Republic was among the first platforms to offer a framework for Security Token Offerings. Republic has recently innovated again with their Republic Note product. This is a profit sharing token which allows investors to receive dividends when companies who raise money on the platform make an exit. The tokens are issued by Republic which distributes a portion of the exit profits to investors in proportion to their holdings. This is a similar model to the Binance Token, which isn't surprising since Republic was the first portfolio company of Binance Labs. Ken Nguyen, Co-founder and CEO of Republic, explains the advantages of crowdfunding over traditional investing, the long term regulatory implications, and the opportunities this model opens up for startup funding. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/353 | |||
| 17 Aug 2021 | Joe Andrews & Zac Williamson: Aztec Protocol – Bringing Scalable Privacy to DeFi | 01:01:43 | |
Aztec Protocol enables private transactions on Ethereum. It uses a zero-knowledge proof system, allowing users to effectively create shielded representations of tokens, which can then be sent and redeemed for the underlying token. They recently launched Aztec 2.0 and their rollup service for Ethereum, zk.money. This allows users to submit Ether to the Aztec rollup contract with the options to shield, send privately, unshield and emergency ushield (escape hatch). The latest version also allows DeFi users to save gas and participate anonymously in DeFi transactions. We were joined by Zac Williamson, Co-founder and CTO, and Joe Andrews, Head of Product, from Aztec, to give us an in-depth look into the Layer 2 project and explain how version 2 of the protocol in a game-changer in terms of privacy and scalability. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Dev Ojha. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/405 | |||
| 10 Feb 2024 | David Goldberg: Founders Pledge – Maximising Charity Efficiency & Impact | 01:02:39 | |
Measuring the social impact of a charitable donation is, oftentimes, an impossible task. Founders Pledge is a non-profit organisation that aims to funnel and streamline donations from successful entrepreneurs in order to maximise their efficiency, based on data and research. Having built a network of nearly 2000 like-minded philanthropists, the vision behind Founders Pledge was to ensure transparency, unbiased assessment, ease of access and incentive alignment for its members. Despite the hurdles of running and scaling a non-profit organisation, Founders Pledge managed to stay true to its values throughout its 10 years of activity. In the end, where there’s a will, there’s a way. We were joined by David Goldberg, founder of Founders Pledge, to discuss the landscape of charitable non-profit organisations and how data can streamline donations and maximise their social impact. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/534 | |||
| 19 Nov 2019 | Nishant Sharma: Bitmain – Rising to Mining Dominance | 01:05:38 | |
Bitmain is one of the most well known, and one of the most polarizing companies in the blockchain space. The largest ASIC manufacturer and operator of several mining pools, Bitmain is the center of many controversies and discussions around centralization in the space. But not only is it the subject of discussion, Bitmain breaks out of the “passive miner” stereotype and is very active in many of the discussions in the community, most notably the Great Scaling Debates. In this episode, we sit down with Nishant Sharma, Head of Community Relations, who is responsible for acting as a bridge between the Bitmain company and the many communities it interacts with through its mining and ASIC operations. We explore the origins of Bitmain and its founders, the economics of ASIC production, its past and current relationships with different communities, and the future of the company. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/314 | |||
| 28 Apr 2020 | Marc Zeller & Stani Kulechov: Aave – Unlocking Access to Capital With Flash Loans | 01:08:02 | |
Aave is building a suite of non-custodial DeFi tools that allow users to earn interest on their deposits and borrow assets. Earlier this year, Aave released its Flash Loans feature, which is drumming up a lot of excitement in the ecosystem. Flash Loans have a number of applications like executing liquidations or refinancing and require no collateral on the part of the borrower. As we have seen since they were introduced, they have also been used by malicious actors to exploit vulnerabilities in some DeFi protocols. Nevertheless, this powerful tool is an important “money lego” component that enables various new use cases. Stani Kulechov, Aave Founder & CEO, and Marc Zeller, Integrations Lead, explain their vision for the Aave protocol as an essential part of the DeFi ecosystem. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/337 | |||
| 16 Apr 2019 | Yaniv Tal: The Graph – A Marketplace for Web3 Data Indexes Based on GraphQL | 01:13:23 | |
At the core of the Web 2.0 stack lies the REST API. It's the fiber which allows frontend applications to communicate with their backend counterparts, as well as the services on which they depend. But the API model is highly constrained and inflexible. The API is divorced from the data model, which creates a number of restrictions and inefficiencies. Most blockchain clients, including Geth, Parity and Bitcoin Core, use a JSON-RPC model which suffers from similar issues. Several Ethereum DApps maintain high-availability, centralized data indexes which sit between the client and the blockchain. Thought user experience is greatly improved, the practice means most of the ecosystem relies on centralized infrastructure. We're joined by Yaniv Tal, Project Lead at The Graph. The project aims to create a scalable marketplace of robust and high-availability blockchain data indexes. Relying on the modern GraphQL data query language initially developed by Facebook, The Graph allows developers to make complex queries to a robust and high-availability data infrastructure. Launched as a hosted service earlier this year, The Graph plans to move to a decentralized model in the future. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/283 | |||
| 22 Oct 2019 | Eli Ben-Sasson: StarkWare – Productizing zk-STARKs to Provide Blockchain Scalability and Privacy | 01:17:14 | |
This past year, we have witnessed what some are calling a “Cambrian Explosion” in zero-knowledge proof systems. New proof systems based on a variety of cryptographic assumptions are popping up every week. And while zero-knowledge systems are known for their privacy-preserving characteristics, they have proven particularly useful for scaling blockchains through off-chain computations. We're joined by Eli Ben Sasson, Co-founder and Cheif Scientist in the East at Starkware. His company is developing a full proof-stack, which leverages STARKs. Pioneered by Eli, STARKs are zero-knowledge cryptographic proofs, which are succinct, transparent, and post-quantum secure. StarkWare has demonstrated how zkSTARKs may be leveraged to provide off-chain scalability by generating proofs of computational integrity which may be verified on-chain. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/310 | |||
| 27 Oct 2023 | Simon Harman: Chainflip - Native cross-chain AMM | 01:03:59 | |
While competition fosters innovation, the proliferation of different blockchains has resulted in the fragmentation and isolation of liquidity within each ecosystem. Early attempts to address this issue primarily involved bridges and wrapped assets. Unfortunately, these solutions were often vulnerable to hacks and exploits, and the value of wrapped assets was contingent on the security of the wrapper contract, rather than the underlying asset. Cross-chain swaps of native assets hold the promise of resolving liquidity fragmentation, but numerous technological challenges must be overcome to make them as seamless as same-chain swaps. We were joined by Simon Harman, founder of Chainflip, to discuss multi-chain liquidity fragmentation and how Chainflip’s JIT AMM (Just in Time) aims to solve this, by providing cross-chain native swaps. Topics covered in this episode:
Episode links: This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/519 | |||
| 10 Nov 2020 | Martin Köppelmann: Circles – Creating Universal Basic Income Economies for Everyone | 01:18:02 | |
Circles UBI is a blockchain-based Universal Basic Income created to promote local economy within communities. It was recently launched on Ethereum’s POA network. The idea is to create a parallel economy by forming trust lines within Circles. Anyone who joins Circles receives a basic income regularly, without conditions. And the more connected your community is, the more valuable your Circles become. Also it is fully decentralized. What makes Circles special is that it doesn't market itself to anyone specific in crypto. It positions itself as an ecosystem and protocol that can help anyone create and promote a local economy within their local community. In the current economic crisis, this is a hugely powerful tool for societies to utilise. Martin Köppelmann, CEO of Gnosis, joins us for his third appearance on the show. He is also the creator of Circles and chats to us about why he believes the world needs this, and how the project works. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/365 | |||
| 21 Jul 2020 | Allison Lu: UMA – The Open Financial Platform for Building Synthetic Assets | 01:20:27 | |
UMA, or Universal Market Access, is an open source financial contracts protocol for building synthetic assets. It allows any two counterparties to design and create their own financial contracts for derivatives. An example of these assets in the traditional finance world, are interest rate derivatives. These are used to hedge against fluctuations in currency exchange rates. Today, interest rate derivatives are commonly used and the contracts to create these are standardized. Similarly, UMA allows anyone to create a derivative on a blockchain. Enforcement of agreement will be enforced by the network and so will settlement. What’s unique about UMA is how it ensures proper collateralization of derivatives. Maker and other platforms based on collateralized positions use a price oracle and will automatically liquidate positions if they go below a certain threshold. UMA is ‘priceless’ and does not use an on-chain price feed as the primary means to determine proper collateralization. Rather, it incentivizes participants to identify improperly collateralized positions. UMA token holders essentially vote on the price. Allison Lu, co-founder of UMA, chats in-depth about the platform and provides a great introduction to the world of financial derivatives. Topics covered in this episode:
Episode links: This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/349 | |||
| 07 Jul 2020 | Dieter Fishbein & Joe Petrowski: Polkadot – Claiming Digital Sovereignty on Blockchain | 01:14:21 | |
Polkadot is a unique protocol connecting multiple purpose-built blockchains into one scalable network. It's using blockchain technology to make way for new markets and future decentralized economies and has many stand out features. It's a sharded multichain network enabling many transactions on several chains in parallel. It offers interoperability and cross-chain communication. Communities on Polkadot govern their own network, and hold a stake in the future of Polkadot’s network governance as a whole. It also enables forkless upgrades, allowing blockchains to evolve and adapt easily. Over 100 projects have been or are currently being built for the Polkadot ecosystem, in a wide range of services and systems. After being in the development stage for 3 years, Polkadot was launched earlier this year. It's the first project by Web3 Foundation, and Parity are behind the development. Dieter Fishbein, Head of Ecosystem Development at Web3 Foundation, and Joe Petrowski, Research Analyst at Parity Technologies, share an in depth overview on the economics and incentives behind the protocol. Polkadot is designed to take back our digital sovereignty from powerful third-parties who currently control the web. It promises to take blockchain technology to the next level, and we believe it will do just that. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/347 | |||
| 01 Sep 2020 | Marek Olszewski & Rene Reinsberg: Celo – Towards Prosperity for Everyone | 01:10:41 | |
Celo has a clear mission - to build a financial system that creates the conditions for prosperity, for everyone. The Celo Foundation is a non-profit organization that supports the growth and development of the open-source, decentralized Celo Platform. Its aim is to build a flexible network of applications built on a blockchain to facilitate payments and remittances to people’s phone numbers. Guided by the Celo community tenets, the Foundation contributes to education, technical research, environmental health, community engagement, and ecosystem outreach. These activities support and encourage an inclusive financial system that solves real-world problems such as lack of access to sound currency, or friction for cash-transfer programs aimed to alleviate poverty. They are aiming to create a new platform to connect people globally and bring financial stability to those who need it most. Rene Reinsberg and Marek Olszewski, founders of Celo, talk about how they are using blockchain technology to achieve this. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/355 | |||
| 28 Sep 2022 | Sebastian Bürgel: HOPR – The Peer to Peer Network Changing Data Privacy | 01:14:45 | |
HOPR is a decentralized and incentivized peer-to-peer mixnet open to anyone who wants to join and run a node. The network allows people, companies, and devices to exchange information online with its metadata stripped. People who communicate and transact using HOPR — or apps and services which run on top of the platform — can be sure that no-one can find out what data is being shared, who is sending or receiving it, or even how much data is being sent. HOPR gets its name from the fact that it provides metadata privacy by sending data packets through multiple nodes - or “hops” – in the network. Decentralization ensures that the network is fully independent and there is no entity that can control it or intercept the traffic. We were joined by HOPR founder Sebastian Bürgel, who chatted about the need for a platform such as this in the space, how it works by sending packets through nodes, the HOPR token, and The DecenGov DAO. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/463 | |||
| 10 Nov 2023 | Charles d'Haussy: dYdX V4 - Decentralised Perpetual Exchange on a Cosmos Appchain | 01:12:39 | |
Leading decentralised perpetual exchange, dYdX V4 recently migrated to Cosmos to build its own sovereign appchain, in order to provide its users a much better trading experience, while continuing to deliver DeFi innovations (e.g. permisionless markets). By having full control over the appchain’s parameters, the dYdX DAOs can shape the future of the protocol, starting from the very bedrock, ensuring proper distribution and incentives for the validator set. From early adopter of L2 zero knowledge proofs (STARKs), to building its own Cosmos appchain, dYdX has proven once again to be a trailblazer for new technologies. We were joined by Charles d’Haussy, CEO of dYdX Foundation, to discuss dYdX V4’s recent migration to a Cosmos appchain and what challenges it solves in terms of: order book decentralisation, validator distribution and user experience. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/521 | |||
| 06 Apr 2022 | Adrian Brink & Christopher Goes: Anoma – The Blockchain 'Undefining Money' | 01:15:11 | |
Anoma is a set of protocols that puts privacy front and center. It aims to facilitate “Self-Sovereign Communities” by providing tools that grant increased control to individuals and communities governing their day-to-day interactions and activities. We were joined by co-founders Adrian Brink and Christopher Goes, to help unravel the complex offering that is the Anoma Network. Hear as we chat about why they created Anoma, some use cases to explain how it works, and the roadmap going forward. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/438 | |||
| 14 Sep 2022 | Dappcon – Roundtable: The Ethereum Merge | 01:03:59 | |
In the countdown to the merge, Sebastien and Friederike teamed up with Eduardo Antuña, Co-founder of DappNode, at this year's Dappcon which is back after a 2 year hiatus. Hear as they chat about what the merge means for the broader Ethereum ecosystem. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/461 | |||
| 02 Sep 2022 | Preethi Kasireddy: DappCamp – Becoming a Web3 Developer | 00:54:57 | |
DappCamp is a 21-day cohort-based course for Web2 developers making the shift to Web3. It offers hands-on experience on how to architect, develop, and scale a Web 3.0 app on Ethereum. Participants are given the opportunity to collaborate with like-minded peers to learn and build together, and also meet world-class founders who built some of the most successful apps on Ethereum to understand best practices and common pitfalls. Preethi Kasireddy, Founder of DappCamp, started her crypto journey while at a16z and later joined Coinbase as a software engineer. After teaching herself Ethereum Dapp development during the 2017 ICO boom she built smart contracts for various crypto projects and created TruStory where she and her team built a blockchain on Cosmos. She also writes a great blog which often see her posts go viral. Preethi joined us to chat about how her journey in crypto has evolved, her love of writing, learning and teaching, why she created DappCamp, and being a woman in the crypto space. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/459 | |||
| 22 Sep 2023 | Misha Komarov: =nil; Foundation – The Marketplace for ZK Proof Generation | 00:52:07 | |
Zero knowledge proof systems have found tremendous cryptographic utility in scaling blockchains, due to their ability to prove computational integrity, succinctly. However, despite recent advancements in ZKP R&D, their construction still requires special prover circuits. Their complexity is what gatekeeps zero knowledge technology to a select few astute teams. =nil; Foundation aims to challenge this status quo by providing an alternative through their zkLLVM circuit compiler and zk proof marketplace. By commoditising the production of custom proofs, =nil; Foundation unlocks an entire new range of applications employing zero knowledge technology. We were joined by Misha Komarov, co-founder of =nil; Foundation, to discuss the use cases and challenges of building the first marketplace for (outsourced) zero knowledge proofs. Topics covered in this episode:
Episode links: This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/514 | |||
| 24 Nov 2021 | Emin Gün Sirer: Avalanche | 01:02:00 | |
Avalanche is an open, scalable, and secure smart contracts platform. It targets three broad use cases; building application-specific blockchains, building and launching highly scalable decentralized applications (dapps), and building arbitrarily complex digital assets with custom rules, covenants, and riders (smart assets). It prides itself off on being blazingly fast, low cost, and eco-friendly. Emin Gün Sirer is the Founder & CEO of the Avalanche network. He is also a long time friend of the show, and joined us again for the 4th time after a 5 year break to share his journey since then, which led him to creating Avalanche. We also dove deep into the technical aspects of the protocol and how it fits into the blockchain ecosystem as a whole. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/419 | |||
| 03 May 2023 | Ali Yahya: Andreessen Horowitz – A16z Crypto Investment Thesis | 01:12:50 | |
When it comes to top-tier VCs, very few equal Andreessen Horowitz' (a16z) impressive portfolio, which stretches over both Web2 and Web3. Their crypto venture arm includes investments in most industry verticals, from infrastructure projects to NFTs and blockchain gaming. Constructing such a solid investment thesis requires conviction in the long-term prospects of the industry, as well as an influential network. We were joined by Ali Yahya, GP at Andreessen Horowitz, to discuss about a16z structure, operations and investment thesis, as well as the broader crypto landscape and value proposition. Topics covered in this episode:
Episode links: This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/494 | |||
| 10 Mar 2020 | Jacob Arluck: TQ Tezos – Meet the Independent Driving Force Behind the Growth of Tezos | 01:08:05 | |
We are joined by founder of TQ Tezos, Jacob Arluck. TQ Tezos is a company that works to advance the Tezos ecosystem by creating open source software and other public goods. It's been over two years since we last did an episode about Tezos and this was a good refresher on how that project is shaping up. We hear about the decentralized and permissionless nature of the Tezos infrastructure, the protocol development of Tezos, and how TQ is working to make Tezos more accessible. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/330 | |||
| 28 May 2019 | Dan Robinson: Rainbow Network – Off-Chain Synthetics Exchange or “Multicolored Lightning” | 01:12:48 | |
We’re joined by Dan Robinson, a research partner at Paradigm, and the author the “Rainbow Network” paper. The paper describes an off-chain decentralized synthetics exchange which leverages payment channels. The Rainbow Network is based on the idea that “rainbows are basically just multicolored lightning,” borrowing from the concepts used in the Lightning Network. The protocol relies on trusted oracles and allows participants to trade any type of liquid asset off-chain. All that is necessary to complete a transaction is an on-chain payment channel collateralized by a single asset. Though it is still at the idea stage and has yet to be implemented, the Rainbow Network could have applications in prediction market and as a new type of decentralized exchange. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/289 | |||
| 05 May 2020 | Marco Streng: Genesis Mining – Taking Bitcoin Mining to the Cloud | 01:12:48 | |
Genesis Mining is a leading hash power provider offering cloud cryptocurrency mining as a service. They offer mining for Bitcoin, Zcash, Dash, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero and serve over 2 million users in 100+ countries. The company was formed in 2013 and saw tremendous growth in its seven years in operation. In the mining business, process optimization, controlling costs, and vertical integration are key. Crypto prices, difficulty adjustments, hardware availability – all can have an impact on profits. Co-founder & CEO Marco Streng shares how he built his company from the ground up, and is now expanding beyond crypto to address other profitable markets in cloud computing. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/338 | |||
| 25 Aug 2023 | Marko Baricevic: Cosmos SDK - The Internet of Appchains | 00:58:04 | |
From the very beginning, Cosmos set out to provide an alternative to the monolithic blockchain architecture proposed by Ethereum. Cosmos SDK was the cornerstone of this vision, as it allowed developers to spin up blockchains effortlessly. Its modularity enabled custom, self-sovereign chains to become a reality. And, instead of being a jack of all trades, those chains were centred around a sole purpose, thus transforming them into appchains. In turn, as the ecosystem grew, appchains had to be interoperable with one another, but this was already a core feature of Cosmos, via IBC. Before Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap, appchains were thought to be a much-needed scaling solution. However, with the advancements of zero knowledge technology, the Cosmos SDK now faces another set of challenges as it navigates the market demand for L2 scaling solutions. We were joined by Marko Baricevic, Cosmos SDK product lead, to discuss the development philosophy behind the Cosmos Hub and how appchains evolved over time. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/510 | |||
| 10 Dec 2019 | Taylor Monahan: From Side Project to Center Stage – The Story of MyEtherWallet & MyCrypto | 01:09:33 | |
Many people find that the crypto-finance space is quite difficult for non-technical people to understand and interact with the technologies. Some projects and people have made tremendous progress in creating tools and interfaces that allow a broader audience to participate, speculate, and learn. Taylor Monahan started MyEtherWallet as a side project in 2015, only for it to grow into one of the significant pieces of software people used to participate in the 2017 ICO boom. She has since "design-forked" the codebase and created MyCrypto, an open-source tool for generating ether wallets, handling ERC-20 tokens, and interacting with the blockchain with a clean and intuitive design. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/317 | |||
| 03 Mar 2023 | Jesse Pollak: Base – The Optimistic Gateway to Crypto Adoption | 01:04:15 | |
Layer 2 scaling solutions are widely regarded as the next step forward in the mainstream adoption of crypto as they enable higher throughput and lower transaction fees. Coinbase’s recent announcement of building an optimistic rollup solution called Base is proof (no pun intended) that major centralized actors view this as an opportunity to onboard new users in a decentralized crypto economy. The following years will abound in innovation as both optimistic and zero-knowledge rollup solutions still have plenty of room to grow, but the involvement of centralized entities will act as a catalyst from a technological, as well as a regulatory standpoint. We were joined by Jesse Pollak, Head of Protocol at Coinbase, to discuss the thesis & business model behind Base and how it will act as an interoperable bridge to onboard the next billion users on-chain. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/485 | |||
| 18 Feb 2020 | Itamar Lesuisse: Argent – The Self-Custody Crypto Bank | 01:06:06 | |
Decentralized finance (DeFi) is continuing on its remarkable path to the broad adoption of permissionless financial services. While many people celebrated passing $1 billion locked in DeFi products at the start of February 2020, only a week later, an additional $200 million had entered the ecosystem. DeFi products thus far have proven useful to early adopters with the resilience and knowhow required to navigate the often clunky user experience of Web 3.0. Companies like Argent are building the interface and user experience essential for the masses, with a vision to bring a billion people into the future of finance. Itamar Lesuisse, Co-founder and CEO of Argent, joins us to discuss his vision of the future of DeFi, and the necessity to build products that enable intuitive, secure, and permissionless access to finance for anyone with a smartphone. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/327 | |||
| 02 Jun 2022 | Dan Finlay: MetaMask – The ETH Based Wallet for Swaps and dApps | 01:10:14 | |
MetaMask is the de-facto standard self-custodial wallet for Ethereum. It started off as a web browser extension on chromium. More recently, it also launched a mobile app. MetaMask allows you to interact with decentralized applications (dapps) natively. We were joined by Dan Finlay, Founder & Group Manager at MetaMask, to chat about the motivation for building MetaMask, the security of the platform, decentralization, the future of seed phrases and much more! Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/446" | |||
| 07 Apr 2023 | Ryan Zurrer: Dialectic AG - A Decade of Crypto Ventures: From BTC mining to P2E gaming | 01:22:57 | |
Considering the abundance of cryto projects launching constantly, making sound investment decisions requires both ample experience in the space, as well as a reliable network. Predicting future trends in such a volatile industry is a skill very few possess, especially since narratives evolve at a rapid pace. Ryan Zurrer is one of the OG participants and investors in the blockchain industry, with an experience of more than 10 years and an impressive portfolio of investments. From BTC mining to ICOs, DeFi and more recently NFTs & play-to-earn gaming (P2E), Ryan has witnessed all the major cycles in crypto. Topics covered in this episode:
Episode links: This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/490 | |||
| 19 May 2020 | Daniel Wang: Loopring – A Scalable DEX Protocol Using ZK-Rollups | 01:16:45 | |
Decentralized exchanges have been around for some time, and various designs have been attempted. Although they provide a number of privacy and censorship resistance benefits, one of their pitfalls has been transaction throughput. However, recent advancements in Zero-Knowledge Proof-based scaling solutions is creating a new breed of scalable DEXes. Loopring is a non-custodial DEX protocol that achieves high-throughput trading. It leverages ZK-Rollups to achieve upwards of 2,000 transactions per second with on-chain settlement. As an order book-based exchange, it sets itself apart from other DEXes like Uniswap and the Gnosis Protocol. However, users should keep in mind that the orderbook is centralized. Daniel Wang, Founder & CEO of Loopring, talks about why they decided to focus on DEXes and their plans beyond the current version 3.0. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/340 | |||
| 15 Jun 2021 | Alex Gluchowski: zkSync – The First EVM-Compatible zkRollup Protocol | 01:08:51 | |
zkSync is a trustless protocol for scalable low-cost transactions on Ethereum. It's also the only zkRollup protocol which supports EVM smart contracts. Alex Gluchowski is co-founder of Matter Labs, and co-creator of zkSync. We spoke with Alex in depth about how the protocol works and the potential for a highly scalable transaction and application layer on Ethereum. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/396 | |||
| 19 Apr 2021 | Adrian Eidelman: RSK – The Bitcoin-Based Smart Contract Platform | 01:09:15 | |
Bitcoin just got smarter. This episode is brought to you by RSK, the Bitcoin-based smart contract platform leading the DeFi for Bitcoin revolution. Be part of the future while building your personal wealth with the Bitcoin you already have. RSK is a secure smart-contract platform that enables decentralized applications secured by the Bitcoin Network to empower people and improve the quality of life of millions. The platform incorporates a Turing Complete Virtual Machine to Bitcoin. RSK believes that new use cases are necessary in order for Bitcoin to become the leading global cryptocurrency, and that adding smart-contract capabilities is key to secure that future. It also provides other enhancements to the network such as faster transactions and better scalability, features that they also believe will enable new usage scenarios. We chatted to Adrian Eidelman, Co-founder of RSK, about the vision they have for the project, how it works on a technical level, and how you can become involved. Visit rsk.co/openfinance to find out how you can put your Bitcoin to work. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/B005 | |||
| 22 May 2019 | Jill Carlson: Open Money Initiative – Free Access to Finance as a Human Right | 01:27:48 | |
A common meme in the cryptocurrency space is that it has the potential to help people in countries where only the rich and powerful access to global financial markets. But ten years after the Bitcoin white paper was released, just how many “unbanked” people has cryptocurrency helped? Some see crypto as a tool to empower vulnerable populations in places where hyperinflation and strict capital controls make day-to-day survival a nearly impossible challenge. We’re joined by Jill Carlson. Previously at Chain and Tezos, Jill has been writing about the cryptocurrency industry for several years. In 2016 she published a paper titled “Cryptocurrency and Capital Controls” which observes the use of Bitcoin in Argentina. Recently, she co-founded the Open Money Initiative, a research organization which looks into how people use money in closed economies. Their initial focus is on Venezuela where years of economic downturn and strict currency controls have created a humanitarian crisis which has political repercussions well beyond the country’s borders. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/288 | |||
| 23 Jun 2020 | Hugh Karp: Nexus Mutual – The Decentralized Insurance for Ethereum | 01:00:03 | |
Nexus Mutual provides an alternative decentralized insurance solution for Ethereum. The protocol is built on the public chain and operates under a discretionary mutual structure meaning it is owned wholly by its members. It allows anyone to become a member and buy cover, and the model encourages engagement as members receive incentives for participating in Risk Assessment, Claims Assessment and Governance. At present the product offered is cover to protect against hacks in smart contract code. When Nexus Mutual is alerted to a claim, members will also be asked to vote on whether to pay out on that claim or not. Hugh Karp, the CEO and Founder of Nexus Mutual, has combined his insurance industry knowledge with his passion for decentralized technology to build this platform which is replacing the traditional insurance setup. They are currently looking into expanding to offer more insurance products and we are excited to see where they go next. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/345 | |||
| 31 Mar 2020 | Albert Wenger: Union Square Ventures – Towards the Knowledge Age and the World After Capital | 01:28:16 | |
What will the World look like when capital is no longer scarce? In his book, World After Capital, Albert Wenger makes the case that technological progress throughout the ages (foraging, agrarian, industrial) brought a change in scarcities. As society transitions from the Industrial Age to the Age of Knowledge, scarcities will also shift – human attention will become our most valued scarce resource. Albert Wenger is a Managing Partner at the VC firm Union Square Ventures. A graduate of Harvard and MIT, he holds a Ph.D. in Information Technology. Before joining USV, he founded several companies in the aughts, and was the President of del.icio.us when the company was sold to Yahoo! in 2005. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/333 | |||
| 09 Mar 2022 | Amir Haleem: Helium – The People's Wireless Network | 01:00:42 | |
Helium is a global, distributed network of long-range wireless coverage hotspots for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, powered by the Helium blockchain. Community run hotspots create 'The People’s Network' and they are rewarded with $HNT, the native cryptocurrency of the network, through the Proof-of-Coverage mechanism. Helium has managed to build the largest P2P network with over 600,000 hotspots and is now starting to deploy other networks like a 5g cellular network. We were joined by Founder and CEO of Helium, Amir Haleem, to chat about how Helium works and the most interesting use cases, how the Proof-of-Coverage mechanism allows the community to participate, and the road ahead for the network. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/434 | |||
| 08 Oct 2019 | DappCon 2019 – Tales of Governance: DAOs, Swarms and Anarchic Systems | 00:45:21 | |
As we take some time to record new interviews, we’re releasing content from DappCon which took place in Berlin in August. This week, you’ll hear a panel moderated by Sunny all about blockchain governance. The panelists where Ameen Soleimani of MolochDAO, Stephanie Hurder of Prysm Group, Jorge Izquierdo of Aragon One, and Sebastian Gajek of ditCraf. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/308 | |||
| 30 May 2024 | PsyDAO: Decentralising Psychedelic Research - Dima Buterin & Paul Kohlhaas | 01:21:46 | |
One could argue that psychedelic research has experienced a similar journey as crypto, in the sense that decentralised communities bound together to fund research where centralised entities refuse to do so. One of the greatest hurdles in modern science is access to research funding, and DeSci aims to provide a solution through decentralised crowdfunding. In addition, IP rights are incontestably attributed with the help of blockchain technology, as they cannot be altered at a later date. However, as the human mind is unique and moulded by each individual’s life story, establishing a causal relationship between consumption and their beneficial or detrimental effects can be extremely biased. We were joined by Dima Buterin & Paul Kohlhaas, to discuss the vast subject of psychedelics (especially in relationship to trauma), how research has progressed and how decentralisation pushes the field forward (DeSci). Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. | |||
| 14 Jul 2022 | Mona El Isa: Enzyme – The Future of Asset Management | 01:21:33 | |
Enzyme Finance, previously named Melon, is a decentralized protocol built on Ethereum (ETH) that allows users to create, manage and invest in custom crypto asset management vehicles onchain. Using Enzyme Smart Vaults, individuals and communities can build, scale and monetize investment strategies that employ the newest innovations in decentralized finance. Enzyme enables Depositors to interact with Vaults in a way that is non-custodial and requires minimal trust between parties. Vault Managers can be bound to performing certain actions or forbidden from others. We were joined by Mona El Isa, CEO & founder at Avantgarde Finance and Enzyme Finance, for the second time after her first appearance 5 years ago. We chat about the transition from Melon to Enzyme and the current state of the protocol, how vaults work on the platform, decentralized governance and how to survive a bear market. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/452 | |||
| 06 Oct 2021 | Vasiliy Shapovalov: Lido – The Liquid Staking Solution for Ethereum 2.0 | 01:01:07 | |
Lido is a DAO that provides a liquid staking solution for Ethreum 2.0. It lets users stake their Ether, without locking assets or needing to maintain infrastructure, whilst participating in on-chain activities. Lido attempts to solve the problems associated with initial Ethereum 2.0 staking - illiquidity, minimum requirements, immovability and accessibility, by making staked Ether liquid and allowing for participation in DeFi. Vasiliy Shapovalov, Co-founder of Lido, joined us to talk about all things Ethereum staking and the benefits of liquid staking with Lido. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/412 | |||
| 14 Jul 2020 | Richard Craib: Numerai – The Crowdsourced Predictive Model Hedge Fund | 01:19:15 | |
Numerai, the "hardest data science tournament on the planet". It's a hedge fund with its own distributed research platform designed specifically for AIs. It's the first of its kind and takes a radically different approach to making market predictions. It's completely crowd-sourced and data scientists around the world compete to create the best predictions and get paid with cryptocurrencies. Users are completely blind to the data and Numerai is blind to the code, and the predictive models users generate. The result is a hedge fund which is market neutral, currency neutral, and geography neutral. It makes all decisions solely on the data. Richard Craib, Founder of Numerai, was first on the show 3 years ago when the project's token, Numeraire, was just launched. Since then they have released a number of additions to the network including Numerai Signals and Erasure Bay, with plenty more in the pipeline. Topics covered in this episode:
Episode links: This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/348 | |||
| 30 Jun 2020 | Dan Guido: Trail of Bits – The Evolution of Smart Contract Security | 01:05:44 | |
Just like all software, smart contracts on the blockchain are subject to serious security vulnerabilities and coding errors. The fact however that smart contracts are often directly in charge of assets and cannot be changed once they are on the blockchain, makes secure development and running essential. Some smart contract platforms have their own languages, for example Solidity in Ethereum. Bugs and vulnerabilities in the source code, and errors in the virtual machines used by the network, are the main reasons behind security issues in smart contracts. Projects using blockchain applications should expect constant changes in the security landscape. New bugs, security risks, and best practices will continue to emerge over time. Trail of Bits is a software security firm who advise in a range of industries for some top companies, including in the blockchain space. They are experts at identifying top-level risks and implementation vulnerabilities, and providing essential recommendations on best practices. Dan Guido, the CEO and Co-founder, explains all things software security in a really detailed and technical, yet easy to digest way. We also recommend you check out their exceptional blog packed with invaluable resources. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/346 | |||
| 14 Jan 2022 | Harry Halpin & Jaya Klara Brekke: Nym – The Next Generation of Global Privacy | 01:10:35 | |
The current lack of privacy on the internet exposes billions of people to mass surveillance and data breaches, undermining trust in digital services and stifling innovation. Nym is a mixnet and develops the infrastructure to prevent this data leakage by protecting every packet’s metadata at the network and application layers. We were joined by Nym's CEO & Founder Harry Halpin, and CSO Jaya Klara Brekke, to chat about the threat mass surveillance has on society, what Nym sets out to do and take a deep dive into the architecture of the protocol. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/426 | |||
| 03 Mar 2020 | Joe Lallouz: Bison Trails – Building a Better Proof of Stake Ecosystem for Everyone | 01:23:51 | |
Joe Lallouz is the CEO of Bison Trails, who provide staking infrastructure for a variety of PoS blockchains. They have built a really impressive system for deploying nodes across multiple cloud services. In light of the $25m recently raised by Bison Trails, Joe shares their vision to build a better PoS ecosystem for everyone, the types of customer they run validators for, and the cutting edge stuff they're working on in terms of deployment, redundancy and key storage. We also hear their view on infrastructure centralization in PoS, protocol improvements, and Bison Trails' role with Libra Association. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/329 | |||
| 21 May 2021 | Scoopy Trooples: Alchemix – Financial Alchemy Through Self-Repaying Loans | 01:17:58 | |
Alchemix is a DeFi protocol that enables users to create self-repaying loans. Users deposit collateral (DAI) to take out a loan in Alchemix's native synthetic stablecoin, alUSD. Alchemix then uses the DAI deposits and puts them into the Yearn protocol to earn yield and over time, that yield automatically pays off your debt. We were joined by Alchemix co-founder Scoopy Trooples, who gave us a deep look into how the protocol works, alUSD and the ALCX token, and what is coming out soon with V2. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Zubin Koticha. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/392 | |||
| 12 Oct 2021 | Jeff Wu & Teddy Woodward: Notional Finance – The Fixed-Rate Lending Protocol | 01:07:17 | |
Notional is a protocol on Ethereum that facilitates fixed-rate, fixed-term crypto asset lending and borrowing. The core concept of Notional is fCash, a zero-compound bond defined by a currency type and maturity date. Notional’s liquidity pools are built by liquidity providers who contribute cTokens and fCash and act as counterparty to the lenders and borrowers that are active on the protocol. We were joined by co-founders Teddy Woodward and Jeff Wu to chat about the benefits and tradeoffs of fixed rate interest borrowing, how Notional operates, and comparisons to other lending protocols in the space. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/413 | |||
| 06 Apr 2024 | Movement Labs: 'Facebook's MOVE Will Bring Billions of Users to Crypto' - Rushi Manche | 00:58:14 | |
Classical, monolithic blockchains are inherently limited in their throughput due to their single-thread execution architecture. Modern VMs attempt to solve this issue through parallelisation being implemented from the get-go. Movement Labs employs the Move-VM to build a ZK L2 rollups on Ethereum, thus also deriving its security. Through parallel execution threads, Movement achieves a theoretical TPS of 160,000 while also ensuring sub-cent transaction fees. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. | |||
| 27 Aug 2019 | Anthony Sassano & Eric Conner: EthHub – Ethereum Education and the Quest for Ether Dominance | 01:40:09 | |
We’re joined by Eric Conner and Anthony Sassano, founders of EthHub. Started in January of 2019, EthHub’s goal is to provide a trusted, objective source of information for the Ethereum ecosystem. The platform is made up of an open-source documentation website, a weekly newsletter, and a podcast, “Into the Ether” hosted by Eric and Anthony. Both active and vocal members of the Ethereum community, they are known to embody what some consider to be Ethereum Maximalism. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/302 | |||
| 20 Sep 2024 | Numerai & Predictoor: How AI Changed Crypto Prediction Markets - Trent McConaghy & Richard Craib | 01:20:36 | |
Prediction markets were one of the first use cases of smart contracts, yet their popularity only recently spiked, following Polymarket’s social media spread. However, while prediction markets are generally zero-sum games, the rise of AI models trained on large datasets led to AI-powered prediction feeds and hedge funds. Crypto offers a unique array of use cases as it allows data scientists to not only share their data sets and models with complete privacy, but also access decentralised computing and model training. While Predictoor employs Ocean’s data infrastructure to run AI-powered prediction bots on lower timeframes, Numerai developed its own AI hedge fund for stocks, that recently also expanded to crypto (Numerai does not trade cryptocurrencies, and Numerai’s Hedge Fund(s) have no relation to Numerai Crypto). Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. | |||
| 21 Dec 2022 | Ted Blackman & Gary Lieberman: Urbit - Decentralized Computing Platforms | 01:11:28 | |
When discussing the widespread adoption of true, peer-to-peer decentralization, one could easily identify various social and political obstacles. However, there is also an often overlooked technological impairment as the underlying architecture of computer networks was not designed to achieve global-scale decentralization. Ideally a complete restructuring would be necessary, from applications and programming language, to as profound as rewriting operating system kernels. This is what Urbit is trying to achieve; a decentralized network where users have full control over their computer, running a unified operating system, where applications function seamlessly, without centralized chokepoints. We were joined by Ted Blackman, CTO of Urbit Foundation, and Gary Lieberman, the Chorus One Team Lead for Urbit, to discuss how Urbit reshapes the way we interact with computers, its current development stage, and what challenges it has to overcome. Topics covered in this episode: | |||
| 14 Apr 2023 | Tim Galebach: Uqbar – Smart Contracts on Urbit | 01:31:25 | |
Building a truly decentralised, peer-to-peer network, based on a built-in identity system, limits the ecosystem’s interoperability with the outside world. Onboarding developers and users to Urbit was only the first hurdle. On-ramping crypto was a whole different & daunting task. Uqbar set out to build an execution layer on top of Urbit, enabling smart contracts, which would ultimately settle, via a ZK rollup, on Starknet. We were joined by Tim Galebach, founder of Uqbar, to discuss the different design choices involved, from Hoon programming DevEx to a hybrid ZK-optimistic rollup. Topics covered in this episode:
Episode links: This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/491 | |||
| 31 Dec 2019 | Monetary Systems in an International Context | 00:32:38 | |
With global commerce and finance continuing to digitize, the world’s borders are seemingly becoming more fluid, even as physical walls are built. How does this globalization affect the sovereignty of nation-states and their ability to democratically direct their own economic future? In a panel moderated by Epicenter host, Sunny Aggarwal, we explore the interpretation of monetary policy from a global context, discuss the morality of impacting other nations, and the potential for new technologies to offer alternatives in a dollar-dominated world. The conversation includes Jae Kwon, CEO of Tendermint; John P Conley, Professor at Vanderbilt University; Steve Randy Waldman, Author of Interfluidity, and Baek Kim, Senior Associate at Hashed. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/320 | |||
| 04 Mar 2022 | Sergey Gorbunov: Axelar – The Blockchain Interoperability Network | 00:55:29 | |
Axelar is a highly scalable, decentralized blockchain that aims to connect all existing blockchains. The proof of stake network, built on the Cosmos-SDK, allows application developers to choose the best blockchain to deploy their applications and use Axelar’s cross-chain communication protocols to lock, unlock, and transfer assets between networks, as well as communicate with applications on other blockchains. Co-founder and CEO of Axelar, Sergey Gorbunov joined us to chat about his experience working on Algorand, the importance and future of interoperabilty protocols, and the vision behind Axelar. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/433 | |||
| 27 Oct 2021 | Ariah Klages-Mundt & Lewis Gudgeon: Gyroscope – The All-Weather Stablecoin | 01:05:34 | |
Gyroscope is an "all-weather stablecoin" that is backed by a reserve portfolio that tries to diversify across many risk factors. By maintaining a reserve of many decorrelated assets, it makes Gyro Dollars more resilient, similar to how it is hard to move a spinning gyroscope. In a market where there's an explosion of new stablecoins, Gyroscope attempts to find a niche by providing a very stable and resilient option. We were joined by co-founders Lewis Gudgeon and Ariah Klages-Mundt to chat about how Gyroscope works and their strategy to try to make it a standard throughout DeFi. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/415 | |||
| 20 Oct 2023 | Guy Young: Ethena - USDe Synthetic Dollar via Delta-Neutral Staked Ethereum Hedging | 00:52:52 | |
Stablecoins represent a safe haven against crypto’s volatility, allowing participants to remain in the market, without off-ramping to fiat. While the major stablecoins are centrally issued (e.g. USDT, USDC, BUSD), there is a pressing need for an algorithmic variant or a synthetic dollar asset. (DAI is somewhere in between since approximately 50% of its collateral is USDC). After Luna’s collapse, many jumped to point out its design flaws, yet such a concept would be crucial for crypto’s decentralisation and self-sustainability. Arthur Hayes proposed an interesting concept of NAKA synthetic dollar (NUSD), backed by Bitcoin and its inverse perpetual swap short. However, yield generation on $BTC is significantly lower than that of $ETH. A sustainable yield would help balance the cases in which funding rates would be negative (a minority in crypto). We were joined by Guy Young, co-founder of Ethena, to discuss the stablecoin landscape and their synthetic eUSD, backed by staked ETH and its inverse perpetual swap. Topics covered in this episode:
Episode links: This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/518 | |||
| 18 Dec 2020 | Leonard Tan & Yong Zhen Yu: The Decentralized Key Management and Login System for Web3 | 01:15:08 | |
Torus is an open-source and universal key management system for the Web3 ecosystem. It's simple, secure and non-custodial, and suitable for anyone to manage their keys. Torus runs a Distributed Key Generation protocol built on Shamir's Secret Sharing. Supporting over a hundred thousand authentications a month on popular applications like AAVE, KyberSwap, Augur, GoodDollar, and MyCryptoHeroes, Torus empowers decentralised applications with seamless user onboarding flows while maintaining recoverability and high standards of security for key management. The Torus Wallet is the second layer to the system and allows one-click login and authentication on partners including Gmail, Facebook, or passwordless logins on Web3 applications. It is however reinforced behind the scenes by a clever distributed architecture. Notably, clever cryptography makes it possible for users to send crypto to social accounts that don't yet have crypto wallet. For example, one could send crypto to a Twitter username, which could be claimed once the recipient creates an account. We were joined by Founders of Torus, Yong Zhen Yu and Leonard Tan, who gave us fascinating insight into why and how Torus was built, the recent products released, and what their aims are for the future. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/B003 | |||
| 30 Mar 2022 | Federico Kunze Küllmer: Evmos – The Ethereum Virtual Machine on Cosmos | 01:11:00 | |
Leveraging the Cosmos SDK, Evmos is the first IBC-compatible EVM-based blockchain, bringing composability, interoperability, and fast finality to Ethereum. While much of the Cosmos ecosystem has embraced CosmWasm to deploy smart contracts, Evmos brings EVM capabilities to the Interchain and allows developers to write contracts in Solidity, the most widely used language in crypto. While the Evmos launch was halted in early March due to a critical vulnerability and a failed chain upgrade, the project is highly anticipated by the Cosmos community as it promises to bring speed, scale, and interoperability to Ethereum. This week, Sebastien was joined by the co-founder of Evmos, Federico Kunze Küllmer, to chat about the innovation that Evmos is bringing to the EVM ecosystem and the long-term vision for the project. This episode is an excerpt of an extended interview with Federico released on The Interop, a new podcast hosted by Sebastien Couture. To hear the full interview and subscribe to The Interop, check the episode links. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/437 | |||
| 09 Aug 2024 | Nansen: AI & Blockchain Analytics - Alex Svanevik | 00:58:06 | |
The saying goes that knowledge is power, and this perfectly applies to blockchains due to their innate transparency and immutability. However, raw data could seem, at first, unusable. This is where analytics companies, such as Nansen, play a major role in demystifying blockchain data by labelling it. In turn, curated data holds value as it can give an edge to traders, by tracking ‘smart money’ wallets. In the age of AI, most of the heavy lifting of data analysis is performed by LLMs, but human input is equally valuable for discerning nuances and fine tuning the process. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. P.S.: Our friends from @nansen_ai have offered us 10 discount codes for 10% off on their professional and pioneer plans! If you are interested in unlocking Nansen's true power, DM us on Twitter (X - @epicenterbtc) and we'll hook you up with a code (FCFS). | |||
| 17 Mar 2023 | David Schwartz & Jordi Baylina: Polygon zkEVM – From Mainnet to Mass Adoption - Part 2 | 00:55:13 | |
While Part 1 (#486) focused on the technological advancements that allowed proofs to be generated in a practical manner, lowering both the time and the hardware requirements, in this episode, we take a closer look at the use cases of different types of zk rollups and how they could promote blockchain mass adoption. Polygon's zk EVM equivalence, coupled with low transaction fees, promise a frictionless user experience. As with all L2 rollups, sequencer decentralisation remains a pressing issue that needs to be solved. We were joined by Jordi Baylina (tech lead) & David Schwartz (CTO) from Polygon's zkEVM, to discuss the relationship between Polygon's multiple zk rollups, their use cases, as well as network statistics for zk-EVM. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/487 | |||
| 30 Apr 2019 | Mike Pieciak: NASAA – A “To The Moon” Approach to Regulating Crypto | 01:17:33 | |
We're joined by Mike Pieciak, President of the NASAA. Not to be confused with the space agency, the North American Securities Administrators Association brings together state, provincial, and federal securities regulators in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. This relatively unknown organization helps align the financial regulation policies of over 50 agencies across North America and coordinates enforcement action in cross-border cases. In 2018, the NASAA launched “Operation Cryptosweep” in which over 200 ICOs and cryptocurrency-related investment products were investigated for potential investor fraud. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/285 | |||
| 04 Aug 2021 | Paul Kohlhaas & Tyler Golato: VitaDAO – The Collective Funding Longevity Research | 01:27:50 | |
VitaDAO is a decentralized collective funding early stage longevity research. Their mission is to extend human lifespan by researching, financing, and commercializing longevity therapeutics in an open and democratic manner. We were joined by Tyler Golato and Paul Kohlhaas, co-founders of Molecule and initiators of VitaDAO to talk about how drug discovery and approval currently works, what the status of longevity research is, what role IP plays -- and how all of this could change in the future with DAOs like VitaDAO. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/403 | |||
| 24 Aug 2021 | Dominic Williams: DFINITY – Smart Contracts and the Internet Computer | 01:38:16 | |
The DFINITY Foundation is a not-for-profit scientific research organization with a mission to build, promote, and maintain the Internet Computer. The IC is a layer 1 smart contract enabled blockchain which achieves remarkable scaling properties through native sharding. We were joined by Founder and Chief Scientist of DFINITY, Dominic Williams, who explained his deep support for smart contracts, gave us an insight into the Internet Computer Ecosystem, and shared his visions for its future. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Martin Köppelmann. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/406 | |||
| 15 Oct 2019 | Yoni Assia: eToro – The Social Trading Platform | 01:14:23 | |
We’re joined by Yoni Assia, Founder and CEO of eToro. The concept behind this world-leading social trading platform is users invest smarter by automatically copying the top traders in the community. With over 10 million users, over a trillion dollars traded on the platform just last year alone, this fascinating approach to trading is making huge waves. A decade after its original launch, eToro entered the crypto space with eToroX, their crypto exchange. More recently, they added cryptocurrencies to the growing list of assets that users can add to “Copy Trades.” Yoni shares his long-term vision in which he sees the tokenization of all traditional asset classes eventually taking place. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/309 | |||
| 17 Nov 2021 | Anatoly Yakovenko: Solana – at Breakpoint | 00:53:17 | |
Solana has pursued the vision of a single, fast and scalable blockchain from the start. Today, it has become one of the fastest growing ecosystems in crypto with hundreds of projects spanning DeFi, NFTs, Web3, and more. Last week 2,000 attendees descended on Lisbon for the first-ever Solana conference, Breakpoint. We caught up with Co-founder and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko at the event for a chat about the Solana journey and some of the most important questions they are facing today around decentralization, scalability, governance, and MEV. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/418 | |||
| 10 Aug 2021 | Chris Spadafora: BadgerDAO – Bridging Bitcoin and DeFi | 01:08:07 | |
Badger is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) with a single purpose: To build the products and infrastructure necessary to accelerate Bitcoin as collateral across other blockchains. BadgerDAO is extremely community focused and has succeeded in creating a seamlessly operating DAO out of a group of random people with a shared set of values and a mission. BadgerDAO's founder, Chris Spadafora, joined us to talk about how he built this decentralized community, why Bitcoin & DeFi, and the products they have created including Sett and Digg. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/404 | |||
| 28 Feb 2020 | Clinton Donnelly: Bitcoin & Crypto Taxes – What Every US Taxpayer Needs to Know (sponsored) | 00:46:03 | |
Income tax. Not a particularly exciting topic, especially when it comes to paying them. But something we all need to deal with nevertheless. We are all (or at least should be) aware of what our personal tax returns entail. But are you fully aware of the implications holding crypto can have on your tax filing? Clinton Donnelly, Founder of CryptoTaxAudit has done hundreds of tax returns for US citizens, both domestic and expatriated, and is an expert when dealing with filing crypto and Bitcoin taxes. He is also an Enrolled Agent, which means he meets the requirements of the IRS to represent taxpayers. Clinton has seen it all, and there's no situation too complicated. In our interview with Clinton, we explored the ins and outs of crypto taxes for US citizens – it was an information-rich conversation. US taxpayers who hold crypto will learn what they need to report to the IRS, as well as the practical, concrete actions one can take to make sure they are complying with the Tax Code of the United States of America. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. This podcast episode was sponsored by CryptoTaxAudit.com. | |||
| 24 Mar 2023 | Laurence Ion & Vincent Weisser: Vita DAO – From DeSci to Longevity Research | 01:14:29 | |
Scientific research & publishing are gruelling tasks that extend outside the scope of science itself. Centralised publications abound in archaic practices that span from submitting a paper to getting it peer-reviewed and finally published, process which may take even up to years. In addition, research requires funding from very early stages of pursuing an idea, all the way to its finality (i.e. clinical trial or real-life applications). In TradSci (traditional science), funding is usually obtained once progress has already been achieved or when a startup has been formed. We were joined by Vincent Weisser & Laurence Ion, stewards of Vita DAO, to discuss the advantages of DeSci in general, and the progress of longevity research in particular. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/488 | |||
| 07 Apr 2020 | Ryan Sean Adams: Mythos Capital – On Becoming Bankless | 01:06:57 | |
Ryan Sean Adams is the Founder of Mythos Capital, a crypto fund and staking provider for “big fish” stakeholders. He also writes the popular DeFi newsletter, Bankless. In addition to providing excellent insights about the ecosystem, Bankless takes a very practical approach to leveraging DeFi. Ryan shares strategies and encourages readers to complete action items to utilize the full potential of decentralized finance and become bankless. He also hosts a podcast by the same name with David Hoffman. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/334 | |||
| 11 Feb 2020 | Kevin Wang: Nervos – Scaling Smart Contact Blockchains With Proof of Work and Generalized UTXO | 01:24:33 | |
While recent blockchain launches seem to leverage various Proof of Stake consensus mechanisms, some believe Satoshi’s consensus mechanism is optimal for distributed protocols. As decentralized ledgers jockey to become the chain of choice for enterprises looking to leverage blockchain technology, projects are looking to offer a solution that maximizes security, decentralization, and transaction throughput. Kevin Wang, a Co-founder of Nervos, joins us to discuss why Proof of Work was implemented as the consensus mechanism for the network. To enable greater flexibility for application developers, Nervos created a Common Knowledge Base (CKB) to focus on the security of assets, enabling a complementary layer of Virtual Machines (VM) to scale and facilitate computation. Kevin also discusses the active initiatives underway with the Nervos Grants Program to foster ecosystem development and encourage developers to evolve the permissionless network. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/326 | |||
| 07 May 2021 | Tim Roughgarden: EIP-1559 – Tackling the Gas Fee Problem on Ethereum | 01:37:06 | |
Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-1559 is a proposal to make several tightly coupled additions to Ethereum’s transaction fee mechanism. Central to the design is a base fee, which plays the role of a reserve price and is meant to match supply and demand. Every transaction included in a block must pay that block’s base fee (per unit of gas), and this payment is burnt rather than transferred to the block’s miner. The base fee is adjusted after every block, with larger-than-target blocks increasing it and smaller-than-target blocks decreasing it. Tim Roughgarden is a Professor of Computer Science and member of the Data Science Institute at Columbia University. Tim did an extensive game theoretical review of EIP-1559 and joined us to chat about what the proposal is trying to do and why, and how it is doing it. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/390 | |||
| 24 Jul 2019 | Ameen Soleimani: Moloch DAO – A Simple Yet Unforgiving DAO to Fund Ethereum Development | 01:17:59 | |
We’re joined by Ameen Soleimani, Co-founder and CEO of SpankChan. From his humble beginnings at ConsenSys, he went on to create SpankChain in 2017 at the height of the ICO boom. The project aims to create a better and safer environment for sex workers by removing the intermediaries who take significant commissions on their revenues. SpankChain’s initial product, an adult cam platform, allows users to pay performers in crypto with a native asset over sophisticated payment channels. More recently, Ameen headed a project called Moloch DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization with the goal to fund Ethereum 2.0 development. Moloch has but few simple functions: making proposals, voting on proposals, and exiting. This simple design, heavily inspired on “The DAO” of 2016 has attracted funding from Vitalik Buterin, Joe Lubin and other prominent community members. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/297 | |||
| 20 Jan 2022 | Auryn Macmillan & Kei Kreutler: Zodiac – The Expansion Pack for DAOs | 01:10:11 | |
Zodiac is a collection of tools built according to an open standard which proposes a composable design philosophy for DAOs. Built by the Gnosis Guild team, this extension pack for DAOs enables connection between platforms, protocols, and chains, no longer confined to monolithic designs. It not only changes access, but bridges chains, organizations, and networks through DAO-to-DAO (D2D) collaboration mechanisms. We were joined by Kei Kreuther and Auryn Macmillan, founders of Gnosis Guild, a core contributor to the Zodiac platform. Hear as we chat about the rise of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, the Zodiac Toolset and how it works, and the future of DAOs in not only the blockchain space but also in the real economy. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/427 | |||
| 30 Dec 2022 | Anna Rose & Kobi Gurkan: Zero Knowledge Proofs – State of the ZK Ecosystem - Part 1 | 00:53:12 | |
Blockchains are immutable record keepers, storing information about every transaction ever recorded. However, this attribute comes at a cost: as more and more transactions occur, so does the size of the record expands. In turn, the hardware requirements for running a node increase which ultimately affects decentralization. Another aspect frequently criticized is how transactions are being processed by legacy blockchains in terms of speed. For both of these aspects there is a cryptographic solution that addresses scalability: zero knowledge proofs (ZKPs). These allow one entity (prover) to prove to another entity (verifier) that a statement is true, without revealing any additional information about the process or data involved. When applied to blockchains, ZKPs improve scalability and privacy by certifying that state transitions occurred, without the need to relay the underlying information. In Part 1 of this 2-part episode, we were joined by Anna Rose, host of Zero Knowledge Podcast and founder of ZK Summit, ZK Validator and ZK Hack, and Kobi Gurkan, Head of Research at Geometry, to discuss the state of the ZK ecosystem and how this promising technology is evolving. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/476 | |||
| 19 Oct 2021 | Alessio Delmonti: PieDAO – The Asset Manager for Tokenized Portfolios | 00:58:34 | |
PieDAO is is a decentralized asset manager for tokenized portfolios and enables anyone to create allocations for both crypto and traditional assets. PIES are non-custodial pools available to anyone in the world with an internet connection. PIES require no minimum deposits for users. DOUGH is the token that governs the platform. Token holders are given voting rights on all decisions. We were joined by the Founder of PieDAO, Alessio Delmonti, to talk about how the project works and why he is so committed to making wealth creation more accessible to all. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/414 | |||
| 06 Aug 2022 | Stephane Gosselin & Vasiliy Shapovalov: MEV-Boost – Preparing for the Merge | 01:18:17 | |
Flashbots has pioneered the work around MEV which has become one of the most important topics in crypto today. MEV-Boost is an implementation of proposer-builder separation (PBS) built by Flashbots for proof of stake Ethereum. Validators running MEV-Boost maximize their staking reward by selling their blockspace to an open market while protecting Ethereum decentralization. It is estimated that validators running MEV-Boost can increase their staking rewards by over 60%. MEV-Boost is free, open-source, and neutral software. Lido has become the leading liquid staking solution on Ethereum with a huge amount of stake and has also taken on a key role in shaping the future of staking on Ethereum. We were joined by Stephane Gosselin, co-founder of Flashbots, to chat about MEV and the importance of MEV-Boost, how it works and it's impact on Ethereum. Also joining the chat is Vasiliy Shapovalov, Tech Lead at Lido, to share with us the significant impact MEV-Boost will have on Lido. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/455 | |||
| 24 Nov 2023 | Rand Hindi: Zama - Fully Homomorphic Encryption in Blockchain Applications & Privacy | 00:59:21 | |
Homo- (Greek prefix meaning ‘same’); -morphic (Greek suffix meaning ‘having a specific shape/form’) We were joined by Rand Hindi, CEO of Zama, to discuss fully homomorphic encryption solutions, how they differ from ZKPs & MPC, and how they can be leveraged to ensure compliant programmable privacy. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/523 | |||
| 06 Nov 2019 | Anatoly Yakovenko: Solana - Reaching for the Limits of Blockchain Performance | 01:37:19 | |
The vision of a world computer on which anyone can deploy smart contracts has captured our imagination since the publication of the Ethereum whitepaper. But while Ethereum demonstrated the viability of the concept, its shortcomings in terms of capacity and throughput prevent it from realizing the vision. Today, throughput has become a major bottleneck for widescale adoption of decentralized technologies. Many projects have set out to deliver where Ethereum 1.0 falls short. Most projects, including Ethereum 2.0, aim to create some kind of sharded network with many interoperable chains. Solana may be the only project that went the other way. Through identifying every performance bottleneck for a single blockchain and developing novel ways of removing them, they target to achieve throughput of 50,000 tps. We were joined by Solana creator and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko to discuss Solana's approach to building a web-scale blockchain. We covered some of their novel ideas including proof-of-history and parallelizing smart contract execution. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/312 | |||
| 16 Feb 2021 | Muneeb Ali: Stacks – Building Decentralized Apps and Smart Contracts on Bitcoin | 01:11:21 | |
Stacks is an open-source network of decentralized apps and smart contracts. It is a Layer-1 blockchain that connects to Bitcoin. Stacks uses a Proof of Transfer mining mechanism with bidding and staking capabilities. Clarity is the programming language used, a Turing-incomplete language which aims to give developers a safe way to build complex smart contracts where the code itself clearly shows what the program will do when run. Muneeb Ali is the CEO and Co-founder of Hiro Systems, one of the companies creating Stacks. He joined us to chat about why he felt there was a need for Stacks, why he chose to build on top of Bitcoin, and the types of apps that are currently being run on Stacks 2.0. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/379 | |||
| 14 Apr 2020 | Tom Pocock & Zac Williamson: AZTEC Protocol – Bringing Zero-Knowledge Transactions to Ethereum | 01:00:28 | |
AZTEC Protocol is a protocol that enables private transactions on Ethereum. At its core, AZTEC is an Ethereum contract, otherwise known as the AZTEC Cryptography Engine. The protocol uses a zero-knowledge proof system, allowing users to effectively create shielded representations of tokens, which can then be sent and redeemed for the underlying token. CEO and CTO, Tom Pocock and Zac Williamson have plans to build AZTEC into a fully functional DeFi stack with which all kinds of trades, swaps, and financial operations will be possible, with privacy. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/335 | |||
| 04 Jun 2019 | Dominic Tarr: Secure Scuttlebutt – The “Localized” but Distributed Social Network | 01:12:27 | |
We’re joined by Dominic Tarr, a sailor, and the Founder of Secure Scuttlebutt. This curiously named project has a fascinating approach to creating a truly distributed social network. One might even say that Secure Scuttlebutt is “localized” as it gracefully degrades to Sneakernet, something few blockchain projects can claim. In actuality, the SSB protocol isn’t a blockchain in the traditional sense – each user’s feed acts as a sort of localized chain of posts, signed by their public key, and possibly encrypted for a friend's key to decrypt. When users meet, the system syncs their local databases using a gossip protocol and replicates the data. Encrypted data is transported from peer, to peer, to peer (or friends of friends) until it reaches its intended recipient. User may also optionally rely on public servers to sync data over the internet. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/290 | |||
| 13 Oct 2020 | Kyle Samani: Multicoin Capital – The Thesis-Driven Cryptoasset Investment Firm | 01:09:34 | |
Multicoin Capital is a thesis-driven investment firm that invests in cryptocurrencies, tokens, and blockchain companies. They manage a hedge fund and a venture fund, investing across both public and private markets. They are extremely bullish on smart contract platforms and DeFi is one of their main areas of focus. They've invested in several projects and companies such as Algorand, Arweave, Nervos, Skale, Solana, to name a few. We originally had Multicoin on the show in February of 2018 when they were still reasonably new and we were in the height of the ICO bubble. Kyle Samani, Co-founder and Managing Partner, joins us back on the show to share not only how Multicoin has changed since then, but also the cryptoasset industry as a whole. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/361 | |||
| 23 Feb 2024 | Gil Binder & Yair Cleper: Lava Network – Decentralising RPC and Node Providers | 00:54:43 | |
The monolithic blockchain era appears to be sunsetting. Among the first to contribute to this paradigm shift was Cosmos, which introduced the idea of specialized sovereign blockchains (appchains), made possible by the Cosmos SDK. Nowadays, the modular thesis employs external data availability and even execution solutions, which enables the creation of countless new chains. Each new blockchains comes with its own ‘specs’, and centralised RPC and node providers have to adapt to each chain’s setting. However, the saying ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ applies in this scenario too - we have often witnessed RPC failures during high demand periods. Lava Network aims to provide a competitive marketplace for RPC and node providers, which would compete based on their performance and user feedback. We were joined by Gil and Yair to discuss Lava Network’s RPC decentralisation in the modular, multi-chain landscape. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/536 | |||
| 16 Jul 2021 | Sunny Aggarwal: Osmosis – The AMM Protocol Built for Liquidity Providers | 01:01:44 | |
Recently launched Osmosis is a Cosmos based and IBC enabled AMM protocol that allows for a high level of customization by liquidity providers. As the main dex on the Cosmos network, Osmosis provides liquidity for IBC-enabled Cosmos assets like AKT and ATOM for the first time. Head of the Osmosis development team, Sunny Aggarwal, joined us for a chat about why the protocol was built and the problem it solves, the wider Cosmos ecosystem, and the roadmap for the protocol. Topics covered in this episode:
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Zubin Koticha. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/400 | |||