Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies

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Jason Yanowitz, Co-Founder of Blockworks, joins Sebastien Couture on Epicenter to discuss why crypto is entering its biggest transformation yet. From institutional adoption and the Clarity Act to token transparency, AI, on-chain capital markets and the acquisition of Messari, this conversation explores where crypto is actually heading.

Jason explains why Wall Street is preparing for crypto, why token fundamentals finally matter, how Blockworks acquired Messari, why capital markets are moving on-chain, and why the next crypto cycle could look completely different from previous bull markets.

The conversation also covers Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, stablecoins, RWAs (Real World Assets), tokenisation, venture capital, crypto regulation, SEC policy, the Clarity Act, Token Transparency Framework, AI, Robinhood, Coinbase, Hyperliquid, self-custody, crypto infrastructure, institutional finance and the future of blockchain adoption.

In this episode:

Why Wall Street is preparing for crypto
The Blockworks × Messari acquisition
The Clarity Act and US crypto regulation
Token transparency and the future of crypto markets
Stablecoins, RWAs and on-chain capital markets
AI's role in the next generation of crypto businesses
Why the next crypto cycle will reward real fundamentals
Building one of crypto's leading media and data companies

If you enjoyed the episode, don't forget to subscribe for more conversations with the builders, founders and investors shaping the future of crypto.

Links:

Lido: https://lido.fi/stvaults?mtm_campaign=epicenter

Sponsors:

Lido V3 introduces stVaults: a modular staking infrastructure that lets builders and institutions deploy custom staking vaults, while staying anchored to stETH as a shared liquidity layer.

Get started building with Lido V3 today: https://lido.fi/stvaults?mtm_campaign=epicenter

Block Space Forum: https://blockspace.forum/

NEAR AI Cloud now lets developers deploy OpenClaw—the rapidly growing open-source AI agent platform—inside Trusted Execution Environments, providing hardware-level encryption with cryptographic attestations. With OpenClaw on NEAR AI Cloud, you can run agents with cloud convenience, but without traditional cloud data exposure. No hardware to manage. No trust assumptions required. Learn more at near.ai.

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In this special episode, we revisit a fireside conversation between Vitalik Buterin and Friederike Ernst at DappCon 2026 in Berlin. They explore the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ), a new vision for Ethereum built around synchronous composability, app chains, and real-time proving.

Following the fireside, Sebastien and Friederike break down the ideas behind the EEZ and discuss what this new paradigm could mean for Ethereum's future.

Topics covered include:

• The Ethereum Economic Zone and synchronous composability

• App chains, privacy networks, and prediction markets

• Ethereum as an economic operating system for the internet

• Sequencing, MEV, and shared liquidity across chains

• Enterprise, government, and institutional use cases

• Why this approach differs from Cosmos, Polkadot, and other ecosystem visions

• The future of Ethereum beyond rollup fragmentation

Links:

Lido: https://lido.fi/stvaults?mtm_campaign=epicenter

Sponsors:

Lido V3 introduces stVaults: a modular staking infrastructure that lets builders and institutions deploy custom staking vaults, while staying anchored to stETH as a shared liquidity layer.

Get started building with Lido V3 today: https://lido.fi/stvaults?mtm_campaign=epicenter

Block Space Forum: https://blockspace.forum/

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In this episode, host Friederike Ernst is joined by Kubi Mensah, CEO and co-founder of Gattaca, the company behind Titan Builder. Kubi sheds light on the highly competitive and often opaque world of Ethereum block building, explaining how Gattaca evolved from a centralized exchange proprietary trading firm to one of the three dominant builders responsible for constructing the vast majority of Ethereum blocks today .

They dissect the true "journey of a transaction," revealing why over half of all Ethereum transaction value bypasses the public mempool in favor of private order flow auctions and MEV-protection services . Kubi explains the intricate mechanics of top-of-block bidding by high-frequency DeFi arbitrageurs, the necessity of extreme latency optimization, and the "flywheel effect" that makes block building a natural oligopoly . Finally, the discussion turns to the future of the Ethereum roadmap, unpacking how upcoming upgrades like ePBS (enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation) and FOCIL (Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists) aim to permanently alter the power dynamics between block builders, validators, and originators .

Topics

04:15 Transitioning from TradFi Trading to Ethereum Block Building
09:30 Redefining the Builder: Relays and Order Flow Auctions
15:00 Unpacking the Mempool: Public vs. Private Transactions
21:45 The Anatomy of a Block & "Top-of-Block" Arbitrage
27:10 How Builders Pay Proposers to Win Auctions
35:20 The Oligopoly: Why Only 3 Builders Dominate Ethereum
42:15 Trust in the Dark Forest: Handling Searcher Bundles
49:00 The Convergence of Builders and Solvers
55:30 The Impact of ePBS, FOCIL, and Pre-confirmations

Sponsors:

Lido V3 introduces stVaults: a modular staking infrastructure that lets builders and institutions deploy custom staking vaults, while staying anchored to stETH as a shared liquidity layer.Get started building with Lido V3 today: https://lido.fi/stvaults?mtm_campaign=epicenterBlock Space Forum: https://blockspace.forum/

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In this episode, host Sebastian Couture is joined by Torab, CEO of Move Industries, to discuss the tension of radical transparency and the decision to scrap Movement's complex L2 architecture in favor of a sovereign L1 powered by the Move VM. He explains how this transition drastically reduced latency and AWS infrastructure costs while improving the builder experience.The conversation explores Movement's core thesis: "Move is for Money". Torab argues that general-purpose L1s are becoming saturated and that Movement's true product-market fit lies in the Global South, serving nations battling currency devaluation.

They discuss the implementation of AI agents for continuous security auditing, the "Move Alliance" for ecosystem financial alignment, and why the industry must move past "decentralization theater" to offer pragmatic, yield-bearing stablecoin products to users who actually need them.

Finally, Torab teases the upcoming roadmap, including institutional-grade yield on USD, BTC, and Gold. Topics

00:00 Intro & Context
04:15 The Movement Turnaround
09:30 Why Movement Pivoted
15:00 The Move VM & Overcoming Developer Friction
21:45 AI Agents for 24/7 Security Audits
27:10 The Global South
35:20 Currency Devaluation & The Demand for Stablecoins
42:15 The Move Alliance
49:00 Pragmatism vs. Decentralization
55:30 Roadmap: Bringing Yield to USD, BTC, and Gold

Episode Links

Torab on X: https://x.com/utorabyou
Movement: https://movementnetwork.xyz/
NEAR: https://near.ai/

Sponsors:NEAR AI Cloud now lets developers deploy OpenClaw—the rapidly growing open-source AI agent platform—inside Trusted Execution Environments, providing hardware-level encryption with cryptographic attestations. With OpenClaw on NEAR AI Cloud, you can run agents with cloud convenience, but without traditional cloud data exposure. No hardware to manage. No trust assumptions required. Learn more at near.ai.

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In this episode, host Friederike Ernst is joined by Alex Svanevik, CEO of Nansen, to explore the platform's radical pivot from passive on-chain analytics to active, AI-driven agentic trading. Alex unpacks the technical hurdles of labeling over 500 million addresses, the transition from raw data into harmonized insights, and why true alpha now lies in attribution rather than raw data . He explains how Nansen uses ClickHouse databases and a mix of algorithmic heuristics, agentic teams, and human specialists to maintain the highest industry precision.

The conversation dives deep into the intersection of LLMs and blockchain, exploring how standard AI models lack domain-specific common sense and why Nansen augments them with real-time data and visual "artifacts". Alex introduces "Nansen Gym," a simulated historical replay environment for training trading agents and teases the upcoming release of "Smart Money 2.0", which aims to predict future profitable addresses with 2-3x uplift on precision. Finally, they discuss the existential risks of AI, the striking parallels between open-source AI and early DeFi, and why Alex believes agentic trading will be the absolute default by 2028.

Chapters

00:00 Intro & Context
04:15 Nansen's Evolution & Agentic Trading
09:30 Harmonizing Data & The Attribution Layer
15:00 Deterministic vs. Inferred Labeling (Uniswap vs. Binance)
21:45 Evaluating AI Agents: LLMs as Judges
27:10 User Privacy & Public Blockchain Realities
35:20 Building a Unified Trading OS
42:15 Smart Money 2.0: Predicting Which Wallets Win
49:00 The Limitations of Vanilla LLMs in Crypto
55:30 Nansen Gym & Time-Traveling AI Agents
59:45 The Open Source AI vs. DeFi Parallel

Links

Alex Svanevik on X: https://x.com/ASvanevik
Nansen: https://www.nansen.ai/
NEAR: https://near.ai/

Sponsors:

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In this episode, host Friederike Ernst is joined by John Paller, founder of ETH Denver, to reflect on nine seasons of North America's largest Ethereum gathering and where the ecosystem goes next. John shares his "red pill" moment in 2016 and the subsequent realization that Ethereum was not just a corporate efficiency tool, but a way to rewire the global economic system. He discusses the evolution of the Biddle meme and how ETH Denver has become a market-driven aggregator for crypto's shifting narratives, from DeFi summer to the current era of institutional adoption.

They delve into a candid critique of the Ethereum Foundation’s "Infinite Garden" philosophy, with John arguing for more "structural vision" and actionable roadmaps to compete with the aggressive narratives of chains like Solana. The conversation highlights Agentic AI as the ultimate "Trojan Horse" for mass adoption, enabling a future where users interact with sovereign bots rather than complex private keys. Finally, John explains his Regulation Membership proposal to the US Congress, aiming to provide a federal securities exemption for on-chain cooperatives and restore true economic agency to the "little man."

Topics

00:00 Intro & Context
04:15 Recruitment Tech to Ethereum: John’s Genesis Story
09:30 Inventing the "Biddle" Meme at Denver 2018
15:00 Is Ethereum a "Neo Casino" or a Settlement Layer?
21:45 Critiquing Idealism: The Infinite Garden vs. Reality
27:10 Why Solana is Not "Sufficiently Decentralized
35:20 Agentic AI: The End of signing Transactions manually
42:15 The Roman Catholic Church & Institutional Co-opting
49:00 German Cooperative Culture & On-Chain Credit Unions
55:30 Regulation Membership & The SEC Challenge
59:45 Zero Knowledge Identity & Privacy Rights

Links

John Paller on X: https://x.com/PallerJohn
ETH Denver: https://www.ethdenver.com/
Opolis: https://opolis.co/
Lido: https://lido.fi/stvaults?mtm_campaign=epicenter
NEAR: https://near.ai/

Sponsors:

Lido V3 introduces stVaults: modular staking infrastructure that lets builders and institutions deploy custom staking vaults, while staying anchored to stETH as a shared liquidity layer. Get started building with Lido V3 today: https://lido.fi/stvaults?mtm_campaign=epicenter
NEAR AI Cloud now lets developers deploy OpenClaw—the rapidly growing open-source AI agent platform—inside Trusted Execution Environments, providing hardware-level encryption with cryptographic attestations. With OpenClaw on NEAR AI Cloud, you can run agents with cloud convenience, but without traditional cloud data exposure. No hardware to manage. No trust assumptions required. Learn more at near.ai.

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In this episode, host Sebastian Couture is joined by Chris Yin, CEO of Plume Network, to deconstruct the current state of Real World Assets (RWAs) and why the sector is at a pivotal inflection point. Chris argues that most RWA projects today are functionally "worse on-chain" because they lack liquidity, composability, and the "crypto-native" user experience that made stablecoins successful.

He details how Plume is solving this through a custom L1 stack and the Nest vault protocol, which tokenizes high-yield assets like Brazilian credit card receivables and oil production for a global market.

They explore the friction between traditional finance and DeFi, highlighting why private credit's long duration makes it unsuitable for the "looping" and leverage that drives crypto demand. Chris explains the significance of Plume’s SEC Transfer Agent license and its role in bridging the gap between regulated funds and permissionless rails.

Finally, the conversation tackles the "bleak" vs. "optimistic" future of crypto, asking whether the industry will maintain its core principles of self-custody and decentralization as it searches for a "new daddy" in institutional capital.

Topics

00:00 Intro & Context
04:15 The Job of a Founder: Finding Change
09:30 Crypto Natives vs. TradFi Suites
15:00 Stablecoins: The Only RWA That Matters (Today)
21:45 The Bottleneck: It’s Not Tokenization, It’s Demand
27:10 Why Build an L1 for Assets?
35:20 SEC Transfer Agent License Explained
42:15 Nest Alpha: Blending Oil, Credit, and T-Bills
49:00 Is Leverage Sustainable for Institutions?
55:30 The Exodus: Will Crypto Values Survive?

Links

Chris Yin on X: https://x.com/chriseyin
Plume Network: https://www.plumenetwork.com/
Nest: https://nest.plumenetwork.com/
NEAR: https://near.ai/

Sponsors:
NEAR AI Cloud now lets developers deploy OpenClaw—the rapidly growing open-source AI agent platform—inside Trusted Execution Environments, providing hardware-level encryption with cryptographic attestations. With OpenClaw on NEAR AI Cloud, you can run agents with cloud convenience, but without traditional cloud data exposure. No hardware to manage. No trust assumptions required. Learn more at near.ai.

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In this episode, host Friederike Ernst is joined by Michael Svoboda, CEO of Liquid AG, to discuss Liquity V2 and the launch of the BOLD stablecoin. Michael explains how Liquity maintains a governance-free, immutable architecture to provide "sovereign dollars" that are not dependent on human committees or centralized backstops. He introduces user-set interest rates, a novel DeFi primitive where borrowers determine their own rates to balance their cost of capital against the risk of being redeemed by stablecoin holders.

They explore the technical mechanics of the BOLD stablecoin, its multi-collateral backing of ETH and LSTs, and why the protocol funnels 100% of fees directly to users rather than extracting rent. Michael also shares his analogy of crypto-native stablecoins as "electric engines" that offer a fundamentally different risk profile from traditional banking rails. Finally, the conversation dives into the impact of global regulations like MiCA and why the future of finance belongs to peer-to-peer credit markets.

Topics

00:00 Intro & Context
04:15 Why Banking is Under Pressure
09:30 From V1 to Liquity V2
15:00 User-Set Rates Explained21:45 Redemptions & Peg Stability
27:10 Collateral Risk: ETH & LSTs
35:20 Cefi vs. Defi Risk Spectrum
42:15 Is Immutability Dogmatic?
49:00 Revenue Distribution & Self-Sustainability
55:30 Non-USD Stables & Global Shifts

Links

Michael on X: https://x.com/svobodamichael
Liquity: https://www.liquity.org/
Bluechip: https://bluechip.org/
Lido: https://lido.fi/stvaults?mtm_campaign=epicenter

Sponsors:

Lido V3 introduces stVaults: modular staking infrastructure that lets builders and institutions deploy custom staking vaults, while staying anchored to stETH as a shared liquidity layer. Get started building with Lido V3 today: https://lido.fi/stvaults?mtm_campaign=epicenter

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In this episode, host Friederike Ernst is joined by Thomas Thiery, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, to discuss EIP-7805 and the implementation of FOCIL (Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists). Thomas explains how the rise of MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) has created a centralized builder market where a few actors now control over 85% of Ethereum's block production, creating a dangerous bottleneck for censorship. FOCIL addresses this by empowering a decentralized committee of 16 validators to mandate transaction inclusion, making any block that ignores these lists invalid.

They explore the "Tornado Cash" moment and the risks of "silent censorship" for competitive or regulatory reasons. Thomas explains why FOCIL intentionally prioritizes the public mempool over MEV-heavy transactions to prevent the system from being co-opted. Finally, the conversation looks at the future of the Ethereum roadmap, including the Osaka fork and the technical trade-offs between inclusion lists and long-term privacy solutions like encrypted mempools.

Topics

00:00 Intro & FOCIL
04:15 MEV & Centralization
09:30 The Builder-Searcher Pipeline
15:00 Silent Censorship Risks
21:45 FOCIL Architecture & Committees
27:10 Validity Rules for Attestors
35:20 Spam Protection & Invalid TXs
42:15 FOCIL vs. Encrypted Mempools
49:00 EIP-7805 Status & Fork Timelines
55:30 Future: PQC & ZK EVM

Links

Thomas Thiery on X: https://x.com/soispoke
Ethereum Foundation: https://ethereum.foundation/
EIP-7805 (FOCIL): https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7805
Gnosis: https://gnosis.io/

Sponsors: Gnosis: Gnosis has been building core decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem since 2015. With the launch of Gnosis Pay last year, we introduced the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Start leveraging its power today at http://gnosis.io

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In this episode, we are joined by Zach Abrams, CEO of Bridge, to unpack the infrastructure behind the next generation of global payments. Zach discusses Bridge’s mission to move stablecoins beyond mere trading use cases and into core financial services, a vision that recently led to its landmark acquisition by Stripe . He explains how stablecoins function as an innovation at every layer of the money stack, enabling payments that are fundamentally faster and cheaper than legacy systems like ACH or SEPA.

They delve into the technical "puzzle pieces" of payments, from the inefficiencies of FBO bank accounts to the "cheat code" of compounding growth in the stablecoin sector. Zach introduces the concept of Stablecoin Orchestration and details why the current USDC/USDT duopoly is unaligned with high-velocity payments due to rent-seeking burn fees and AUM-focused models . Finally, the conversation explores the future of consumer finance, where non-custodial wallets act as bank replacements and a pluralistic ecosystem of local, company-issued stablecoins challenges the dominance of the US dollar

Topics

00:00 Intro & Context
04:15 Legacy Rails vs. Stablecoin Innovation
09:30 The "Cash App" Hack & Payments Creativity
15:00 Why Bridge Joined Stripe
21:45 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Startup Needs
27:10 Stablecoin Orchestration & Issuance Explained
35:20 The Duopoly Problem: Why USDC/USDT Isn't Enough
42:15 Orthogonal Competition: The "Europe" of Stablecoins
49:00 Wallets as the New Primary Bank Account
55:30 Regrets of a "Child of the Depression" Founder

Links

Zach Abrams on X: https://x.com/ZCAbrams
Bridge: https://bridge.xyz
Stripe: https://stripe.com
Gnosis: https://gnosis.io/

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In this episode, recorded live at Buidl Europe 2026, host Sebastian Couture leads a panel with Ben Lakoff (Bankless Ventures), Richard Muirhead (Fabric Ventures), Aurora Orellana (G20 Strategies), and Matthew Arrow (Dark Forest). Together, they tackle the existential question facing the industry: can Cypherpunk values like self-custody and permissionless survive as multi-billion dollar institutions become the primary drivers of adoption?

The discussion delves into the tension between individual sovereignty and the regulatory reach of organizations like the FATF, which they describe as a "Goliath" accountable to no one. They explore the concept of the "DeFi Mullet" a centralized user interfaces powered by decentralized backends and how privacy tech is becoming essential not for institutions seeking defensible competitive moats. Finally, the conversation looks at how global competition between jurisdictions will define the next decade of financial freedom and what it truly means to be a Cypherpunk in 2026.

Topics

00:00 Intro & Context
04:15 Cypherpunk Values in an Institutional World
09:30 Permissionless Deployment & Self-Custody
15:00 The Regulatory Spectrum: KYC vs. Freedom
21:45 The FATF & Global Financial Surveillance
27:10 Jurisdictional Competition & Portability
35:20 Selling Privacy to Institutions vs. Individuals
42:15 The DeFi Mullet & Atomic Settlement
49:00 Barriers to Entry: Legacy Mainframes & Career Risk
55:30 What it Means to be a Cypherpunk in 2026

Links

Ben Lakoff on X: https://x.com/benlakoff
Richard Muirhead on X: https://x.com/RichardMuirhead
Matthew Arrow on X: https://x.com/mattarrow
Bankless Ventures: https://bankless.ventures/
Fabric Ventures: https://www.fabric.vc/
Gnosis: https://gnosis.io/

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In this episode, host Brian Crain is joined by Gracy Chen, CEO of Bitget, to discuss the exchange's rapid ascent and its ambitious roadmap for 2026. Gracy shares her journey from a mathematics background and journalism into the C-suite of a top-tier exchange, detailing Bitget's growth from a team of 150 to over 2,200 employees. She outlines the concept of the "Universal Exchange" (UEX) a unified platform where the boundaries between crypto, tokenized equities, and commodities effectively disappear.

They explore how Bitget is leveraging Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and AI-driven advisory tools like Get Agent to redefine user acquisition and trading intelligence. Gracy also provides a candid outlook on the "altcoin fading" phenomenon, arguing that the market is shifting toward blue-chip assets and real-world utility. Finally, they discuss the immense challenges of global regulatory compliance, including Bitget’s priorities for securing MiCA licenses and navigating a potential entry into the complex US market.

Topics

00:00 Intro & Crypto Beginnings
05:45 The Origin of Bitget
10:15 The "Universal Exchange" (UEX) Vision
16:30 Tokenized Stocks vs. TradFi Brokers
22:00 Competition: CEX, DEX, & Robinhood
28:15 AI in Trading: Get Agent & GEO
34:40 The State of Altcoins in 2026
41:00 Global Compliance: MiCA & US Markets
55:30 2026 Market Predictions

Links

Gracy Chen on X: https://x.com/GracyBitget
Bitget: https://www.bitget.com/
Bitget Wallet: https://web3.bitget.com/
Gnosis: https://gnosis.io/

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In this episode, hosts Sebastien Couture, Brian Crain, and Friederike Ernst gather for their annual wrap-up to discuss the end of the "infinite money glitch": the era where tokens traded at billions without proven product-market fit. They explore the 2025 "spring cleaning" that devastated the altcoin market and the quiet, efficient entry of web2 incumbents like Revolut and Stripe. The discussion centers on the industry's maturation into a space where protocols are finally judged on their ability to generate real revenue and growth.

The team analyzes the 2025 "spring cleaning" of altcoins alongside Polymarket’s mainstream breakout. As giants like Stripe and Revolut scale crypto integrations, the hosts debate if consolidating distribution power is diluting the original promise of decentralized agency. Finally, they address the existential quantum threat to Bitcoin and share their 2026 "hot takes.

Topics

00:00 Intro & Notable Memories
04:30 The Bybit Hack & Price Action
08:15 Polymarket & The Mainstream Breakout
12:00 The Altcoin "Spring Cleaning"
18:45 Axelar & The Circle Acquisition
25:30 Incumbents: Back-end Upgrades vs. Values
33:15 Social Media & The Economics of Attention
42:00 Staking Consolidation & Distribution Power
50:30 The Quantum Threat to Bitcoin
58:45 2026 Predictions: RWAs & Perps

Links

Sebastien on X: https://x.com/seb3point0
Brian on X: https://x.com/crainbf
Friederike on X: https://x.com/tw_tter
Gnosis: https://gnosis.io/

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In this episode, host Sebastian Couture is joined by Ismael Hishon-Rezaizadeh, CEO of Lagrange, to explore the intersection of frontier cryptography and national security. Ismael discusses the transition of zero-knowledge (ZK) technology from a "token-centric" crypto tool to a vital component of defense, specifically focusing on its role in securing autonomous drone swarms and closing the hypersonic missile gap.

They delve into Deep Proof, Lagrange's ZK-machine learning library, which facilitates verifiable AI execution while protecting sensitive model intellectual property and private input data. Ismael introduces the concept of "Accountable Autonomy," arguing that cryptographic proofs are necessary to ensure that lethal "kill chain" decisions are made by the correct models under verified inputs, removing the risks inherent in "black box" AI decision-making. Finally, the conversation touches on the geopolitical competition with China, the importance of domestic chip manufacturing, and why the US market's ability to align private sector innovation with military needs is a decisive strategic advantage.

Topics

00:00 Intro & Context
04:15 ZKML vs. Venice
09:30 Protecting Model IP
15:00 Dual-Use Defense Pivot
21:45 The Palantir Comparison
27:10 US-China Chip Race
35:20 Drone Swarm Consensus
42:15 Accountable Autonomy Explained
49:00 Kill Chain Verifiability
55:30 EU vs. US Defense

Links

Ismael on X: https://x.com/Ismael_H_R
Lagrange Labs: https://www.lagrange.dev/
Anduril Industries: https://www.anduril.com/
Gnosis: https://gnosis.io/

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Fresh off the launch of the Ignition Chain and a successful community-led $61M token sale, Aztec Network co-founder Zac Williamson joins Friederike Ernst to unpack the "existential" journey of building programmable privacy. Zac opens up about the "sacrificial altar" moment where the team decided to kill their live product, Aztec Connect which had 60k users because they realized true decentralized privacy required rebuilding from scratch rather than iterative upgrades.

They dive deep into the architecture of the new network, which utilizes a hybrid state model (encrypted UTXOs for privacy, public accounts for transparency) to enable composable applications. Zac challenges the cryptographic dogma of "don't roll your own crypto," arguing that for pioneers, relying on "battle-tested" libraries is impossible. He explains why decentralized sequencers are not just a moral choice but a security necessity to prevent government-mandated backdoors.

Finally, Zac contrasts the chaotic but decentralized resistance to surveillance in the US with the increasing top-down control in the UK and Europe, framing Aztec as essential "defense in depth" for the digital age.

Topics

00:00 Intro
03:45 The "Sacrificial Altar": Killing Aztec Connect
10:15 Hybrid Architecture: UTXOs vs. Accounts
16:30 Why You Must "Roll Your Own Crypto"
22:00 Decentralization as a Defense Against Backdoors
28:15 Performance: Throughput & Latency Trade-offs
34:40 Private Smart Contracts: Gaming & Identity
41:00 The Macro View: US vs. EU Surveillance

Links

Gnosis: https://gnosis.io/
Zac Williamson on X: https://twitter.com/Zac_Aztec
Aztec Network: https://aztec.network
Noir Language: https://noir-lang.org

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Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin joins Friederike Ernst to discuss why we are at the "end of a supercycle," a chaotic transition period where legacy institutions are finally adopting blockchain rails not just for efficiency, but for survival. They explore the "inevitable convergence" where the US government may actively rely on stablecoins to absorb debt, effectively using crypto to extend the lifespan of the dollar. At the same time, banks scramble to compete with self-custodial wallets.

Joe also details the structural evolution of Consensys, from an "organic blob" incubating projects like Gnosis to a focused software powerhouse. He differentiates Linea from competitors by highlighting its commitment to permissionless innovation where anyone can deploy a rollup without a "sign-off". He shares his vision for MetaMask evolving into a user-owned "full-service bank.

Topics

00:00 Intro & Paradigm Shift
04:15 Crypto-Anarchy vs. Enterprise
10:30 Banks & Stablecoins
16:00 The Economic Supercycle
24:45 Consensys History & Spin-outs
33:20 Linea & Decentralization
42:15 L1 Scaling & ZK
48:00 Permissionless Rollups
55:30 Future Optimism

Links

Joe Lubin on X: https://twitter.com/ethereumJoseph
Consensys: https://consensys.io
Linea: https://linea.build
MetaMask: https://metamask.io
Gnosis: https://gnosis.io/

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Quantum computing is often dismissed as a distant sci-fi future, but Ethereum OG John Lilic and Oxford physicist Stefano Gogioso argue the timeline is shrinking fast with roadmaps converging around 2030. In this episode, they break down the "woeful" state of quantum readiness in crypto, explaining how Shor's algorithm could eventually shatter the elliptic curve cryptography protecting Bitcoin and Ethereum.

They also explore the terrifying concept of "harvest now, decrypt later," which implies that encrypted data and privacy coins like Monero may essentially be compromised already. Finally, they introduce "Quantum Money," a revolutionary form of digital cash developed by Stefano’s startup NeverLocal, which relies on the laws of physics rather than blockchain consensus to prevent double-spending.

Topics

00:00 Intro
03:00 John’s Quantum Awakening
08:00 Defining Quantum Computing
13:30 Logical Qubits Explained
18:15 Crypto’s "Woeful" Readiness
23:30 "Harvest Now" Threat
28:45 Monero’s Privacy Risk
33:15 What is Quantum Money?
40:00 Investment & Hedging

Links

John Lilic on X: https://x.com/LilicJohn
Stefano Gogioso on X: https://x.com/StefanoGogioso
NeverLocal: https://neverlocal.com
Quantum.info: https://quantum.info
Gnosis: https://gnosis.io/

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis has been building core decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem since 2015. With the launch of Gnosis Pay last year, we introduced the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Start leveraging its power today at http://gnosis.io

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“DevConnect 2025 was about touching and feeling Ethereum IRL”Nathan Sexer, lead of the DevConnect 2025 and Events team at the Ethereum Foundation, gives a peek into the largest iteration of Devconnect ever, with 20,000 attendees, and why the team pivoted to a "World's Fair" format, creating tangible districts for DeFi and Privacy to let attendees truly "touch and feel" the ecosystem.

The conversation gets real about the friction of the physical world. He explained why Argentina’s crypto-native culture makes it the perfect host, how hyperinflation fueled bottom-up adoption, and even the venue-wide internet failure became an accidental "feature," breaking the on-screen silos and pushing genuine face-to-face connections.

A massive geopolitical win was how the team worked with the government to issue 1,000+ visas for attendees from over 130 nationalities to make this event in the true spirit of borderless crypto.

The Ethereum Foundation is heading to Mumbai in 2026! The goal for India is to unify a fragmented developer diaspora and bring regulatory attention to one of the world's most critical tech hubs.

Topics

00:00 Intro & Scale
04:15 World's Fair Concept
09:50 Why Argentina?
14:30 Operational Challenges
18:15 Internet Blackout
22:00 Booth Renaissance
28:30 Privacy Priority
33:00 Devcon Mumbai
37:40 Indian Developers

Links

Devcon Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/EFDevcon
Nathan Sexer on X: https://x.com/nethan_eth
Ethereum Foundation: https://ethereum.org
Gnosis: https://gnosis.io/

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At DevConnect 2025, Sebastian and Friederike speak with Peter Van Valkenburgh about the rapidly evolving battle for digital rights. Peter challenges the industry's comfort with transparency, arguing that "transparency will destroy neutrality." He uses the history of SWIFT to illustrate how a once-neutral messaging system was captured by geopolitical interests because it wasn't "technically blind" to the data it processed. He argues that for blockchains to survive as global settlement layers, they must be "actually blind" to transactions, making neutrality a technical reality rather than a policy choice.

The conversation turns to the aggressive legal tactics currently deployed against developers. Peter highlights the Pereira Bueno case, where prosecutors charged MEV searchers with wire fraud for being "dishonest validators" a concept Peter argues completely undermines the game-theoretic security of permissionless networks. He also breaks down the mixed bag of Tornado Cash litigation. While the sanctions against the protocol were successfully challenged and invalidated for Americans, the criminal conviction of developer Roman Storm for "unlicensed money transmission" sets a terrifying precedent for anyone publishing open-source code.

On a constructive note, Peter introduces Coin Center's "John Hancock Project," which advocates for replacing the current, ineffective KYC/AML regime (which seizes less than 1% of illicit funds) with a system based on privacy-preserving attestations and self-sovereign risk scores. Finally, Peter shares surprising optimism regarding the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He notes that under the influence of Commissioners Hester Peirce and Paul Atkins, the agency has shifted from an aggressive adversary to a potential ally, openly discussing the benefits of full asset tokenization and the constitutional necessity of financial privacy.

Topics

00:00 The Telegram vs. Signal security rant
05:15 The "Transparency Paradox": Why transparent Layer 1s cannot remain neutral in the long run
10:40 The SWIFT Analogy: How a neutral messaging layer became a politicized settlement enforcer
15:50 The Pereira Bueno Case: Why labeling MEV strategies as "wire fraud" threatens all validators
23:10 L2 Sequencing Risks: Centralization and the need for "dumb pipes"
28:30 The Failure of KYC: Why 99.8% of illicit funds are missed and the cost of mass surveillance
35:00 The "John Hancock Project": Using ZK-proofs and attestations to replace identity surveillance
42:15 Tornado Cash Update: Sanctions invalidated vs. the dangerous precedent of Roman Storm’s conviction
49:00 The SEC's 180: Hester Peirce, Paul Atkins, and the push for tokenized equities

Links mentioned in the episode:

Gnosis: https://gnosis.io/
Coin Center: https://www.coincenter.org
Epicenter - All Episodes: https://epicenter.tv/
Report: Tear Down This Walled Garden: https://www.coincenter.org/tear-down-this-walled-garden/
Pereira Bueno Amicus Brief: https://www.coincenter.org/amicus-brief-mev-wire-fraud/
Peter on X: https://x.com/valkenburgh
Sebastian on X: https://x.com/seb3point0
Friederike on X: https://x.com/tw_tter

Sponsors:Gnosis: Gnosis has been building core decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem since 2015. With the launch of Gnosis Pay last year, we introduced the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Start leveraging its power today at http://gnosis.io

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Captured live at Cosmoverse 2025, this episode brings host Sebastian in conversation with Michael (better known as Cryptocito, Cosmos investor via Cito Ventures) and Magnus (@0xMagmar, Co-CEO Cosmos Labs).

Against a backdrop of institutional gravitas, central banks mingling alongside Revolut executives, the conversation traces Cosmos' arc across five Cosmoverses, from Medellín's raw developer fervor to the polished, enterprise-oriented event unfolding here. It's a marker of the ecosystem's maturation, one that demands Cosmos "grow up" to weave itself into the fabric of global finance, governance, and economies beyond its insular origins.
Magnus lays out Cosmos Labs' forward path: Systematically acquiring and refining homegrown innovations, such as the EVM rebuild over six months into a core stack component and consolidating privacy primitives from projects like Secret Network and Penumbra into seamless, enterprise-grade tools.

These advancements, long championed by Cosmos builders, now stand ready for institutional adoption. On quantum threats, enterprises show little concern for now, but the panel underscores blockchains' unique vulnerabilities: Unlike centralized systems, they require broad coordination for upgrades, where Bitcoin's inertia pales against Cosmos' app-chain flexibility, allowing isolated chain overhauls without dragging down the broader network, a resilience Ethereum lacks.

Topics covered in this episode:

0:00 Introduction & Cosmoverse Vibe Check
2:30 Reflections on Five Cosmoverses
6:45 Ecosystem Maturation: Grassroots to Institutional Focus
11:20 Cosmos Labs' Roadmap: Unifying Privacy & EVM Innovations
16:50 Building Cohesive Stack Features for Enterprises
22:15 Privacy Tools: Secret Network, Penumbra, and Nym
27:40 Quantum Computing Threats & Blockchain Vulnerabilities
33:10 Coordination Challenges: Hard Forks vs. App-Chain Modularity
38:25 Sovereign Day Argentina: CBDC & Gov Sovereignty Summit
43:50 Leadership Adaptation & Community Inclusion
49:20 Future Vision: Cosmos as Global Finance Enabler
54:00 Closing Thoughts & Event Shoutouts

Episode links:
- Michael (@Cryptocito) (https://x.com/Cryptocito )
- Magnus (@0xMagmar) (https://x.com/0xMagmar)
- Gnosis (https://gnosis.io/)
- Epicenter - All Episodes (https://epicenter.tv/)
- Cosmoverse 2025 (https://cosmoverse.org/)

Sponsors:
- Gnosis: Gnosis has been building core decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem since 2015. With the launch of Gnosis Pay last year, we introduced the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Start leveraging its power today at http://gnosis.io

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture.

Show notes and listening options: https://epicenter.tv/

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Brian Fabian Crain and Michael Egorov, Curve Finance founder, discuss Curve's origins: solving inefficient DAI/USDC swaps after MakerDAO borrows by creating a DeFi AMM for stablecoins and LSTs.

It hit 1M TVL with a bonding curve concentrating liquidity at 1:1, more effective for pegged assets than Uniswap. Features grew to include BTC wrappers, stETH pairs, and crvUSD (a CDP stablecoin with reversible liquidations & a peg-keeper).

Governance uses veCRV: Locking CRV grants voting power proportional to lock duration, a mechanism now refined in Yield Basis.

Yield Basis solves impermanent loss in volatile pools (e.g., BTC/crvUSD). Users deposit BTC; the protocol borrows crvUSD, pairs it at 2x leverage (50% debt/equity), and uses LP tokens as collateral. This gives 1:1 asset tracking, while fees accrue from auto-rebalancing arbitrage.

Simulations show 20%+ APY (may decline as BTC volatility drops) under a $50B TVL cap. It complements Curve by directing veCRV incentives to crvUSD pools, enhancing liquidity, fees, and DAO revenues. Key considerations: manual migrations, deterring forks, and dev support to scale.

Topics Discussed

00:00 Introduction to Curve Finance and YieldBases
02:24 Understanding Curve's Unique Mechanisms
07:58 The Concept of veTokenomics
15:27 Lessons Learned from Building Curve
22:20 Exploring YieldBasis and Its Innovations
29:47 Understanding Yield Basis and Collateralization
32:25 Navigating Market Volatility and Liquidation Events
35:32 Metrics and Performance Insights of Yield Basis
38:35 Scaling Yield Basis: Future Directions
40:33 Yield Expectations and Market Dynamics
43:12 Potential Growth and Liquidity Challenges
46:18 Expanding to Other Chains and Governance Tokens
49:35 The Symbiotic Relationship with Curve
54:31 Upcoming Milestones and Future Developments

Links Mentioned

Michael Egorov on X
Curve Finance
Yield Basis
Gnosis
Epicenter - All Episodes

Sponsors

Gnosis: Building decentralized infrastructure since 2015. With Gnosis Pay, the first Decentralized Payment Network. Start leveraging its power at gnosis.io

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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Sci-fi titan Neal Stephenson, whose Snow Crash coined the term 'metaverse' and Cryptonomicon, which foreshadowed crypto in 1999, joins Friederike to discuss his "hard sci-fi" method: building immersive, consistent worlds, not prophecy. He's now co-founder of Lamina1, aiming to restore Web1's ethos and give creators IP sovereignty with direct micropayments, breaking free from Web2's "walled gardens."

Neal unpacks Web3's promise like "intent-casting" flipping ad models while citing its critical traps: abysmal UX, criminal stigma, and the "soul-crushing" risk of just upgrading incumbent systems.

Spotlighting Lamina 1's game "Artifact," he argues Web3's true success will be measured when the technology becomes invisible and safe, proving its value by restoring sovereignty to its users and creators, rather than through speculative hype.

Topics discussed in this episode:

(00:00) Introduction to Decentralization and Blockchain
(01:20) The Role of Storytelling in Technology Prediction
(03:48) The Balance of Optimism and Pessimism in Fiction
(06:27) Web3: Promises and Pitfalls
(08:36) The Evolution of the Web: From Decentralization to Centralization
(13:37) Metrics for a Decentralized Web
(15:55) Lamina One: A New Vision for the Metaverse
(23:44) Creating a Financial Layer for the Creator Economy
(25:08) Legal Implications of Smart Contracts
(27:38) The Strength of Smart Contracts
(31:04) Decentralization vs. Centralization in the Creator Economy
(36:21) The Decline of Centralized Platforms
(41:23) Financialization and the Creative Economy
(45:47) The Future of Web3 and User Experience
(51:17) Potential Failure Modes of Web3

Links mentioned in this episode:

Neal Stephenson, Co-founder Lamina1: https://x.com/nealstephenson
Lamina 1: https://lamina1.com/home

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis has been building core decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem since 2015. With the launch of Gnosis Pay last year, we introduced the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Start leveraging its power today at gnosis.io

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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As blockchain tech gets co-opted by legacy players for efficiency gains, has the revolution lost its edge? Crypto philosopher Paul Dylan-Ennis and Jito's Head of Governance, Dr. Nick Almond, join Friederike to probe this shift from 2017's visionary DAOs to today's Telegram-negotiated votes and whale capture.

Rooted in philosophy and complex systems, they unpack mind-hacking risks via data micro-targeting, the polycentric bulwarks (full nodes, prediction markets) shielding against cultural flips, and why epistemic tools could fortify crypto against real-world censorship.

Their call: Reclaim the ethos through event evangelism and normie outreach for grassroots empowerment.

Topics discussed in this episode:

0:00 - Introduction
1:32 - Nick's journey: Physics to DAOs
3:59 - Paul's path: Philosophy to crypto counterculture
5:54 - Crypto's shift from niche to incumbent tool
7:37 - Governance as crypto's "soul"
10:54 - Early DAOs vs. today's backroom reality
11:45 - Diluted ideas & human workarounds
1:03:44 - Elevating better leaders & social consensus tools
1:05:05 - Hacking minds: Post-ideological vs. cypherpunk
1:07:21 - Polycentric defenses & full node bedrock
1:10:50 - Advice: Evangelize at events & outreach to normies

Links mentioned in this episode:

Dr. Nick Almond, Head of Governance at Jito
Paul Dylan-Ennis, Crypto Philosopher

Sponsors: - Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at gnosis.io

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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Brave has spent a decade building a privacy-first browser that empowers users with tools like ad-blocking and fingerprinting protection, now serving 100 million monthly active users.

Security engineer Kyle Den Hartog joins Friederike to unpack the centralization traps in digital identity from email's spam-driven dominance to one-size-fits-all DeFi lending rates and how Brave counters them with BAT's user-rewarding ad model, zero-knowledge personalization, and wallets that act as privacy guardians.

Kyle warns of on-chain transparency's risks to consumer behavior, advocates for intent-based "vendor relationship management" advertising, and draws historical lessons on censorship's chilling effects amid rising regulations like EU chat controls.

He shares Brave's vision for seamless private payments and user-controlled algorithms to reclaim the open web from Big Tech monopolies.

Topics discussed in this episode:

Introduction
Kyle's background in security and identity
Why identity and privacy matter
The history and centralization of digital identity
Email as a cautionary tale for decentralization
Brave's privacy-first vision and 100M users
BAT: Rewarding users for attention
Challenges and evolutions in Brave's ad model
Zero-knowledge for intent-based ads
Brave Wallet: Privacy by default
On-chain privacy pitfalls and wallet solutions
Browser wallets vs. built-in security
Censorship, regulations, and history's lessons
Fixing social media algorithms
Brave's 5-year vision

Links mentioned in the episode:

Kyle Den Hartog, Security Engineer at Brave: https://x.com/PryvitKyle

Brave Browser: https://brave.com/

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at ⁠⁠gnosis.io ⁠⁠

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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In this episode, Sebastien is joined by Jelena Djuric, co-founder of Noble, a generic asset issuance chain built for the Cosmos ecosystem. Jelena shares her journey into crypto, which began with an interest in political science, leading her to discover Bitcoin's potential. She describes the origins of Noble, created to solve a critical need within Cosmos: a native, fungible source of liquidity like USDC.

Before Noble, assets were often bridged in fragmented ways, creating poor user experiences. Noble was designed as a simple, secure, and neutral "asset issuance hub," a purpose-built chain for natively issuing assets and distributing them throughout the Cosmos network via IBC.

Jelena emphasizes that Noble is intentionally "boring," with a minimal feature set to reduce the attack surface. It operates with a proof-of-authority consensus model to meet the compliance needs of asset issuers like Circle. Jelena also discusses the importance of CCTP for moving USDC between Cosmos and other ecosystems, with Noble as the routing hub. Looking ahead, Jelena sees a future where Noble supports a diverse range of assets beyond stablecoins, including RWAs.

Topics discussed in this episode:* Introduction * Jelena's background and entry into crypto * Why fragmented liquidity is holding crypto back * Noble's vision for unifying liquidity * Why a "boring" chain is a more secure chain * Noble's proof-of-authority model for issuer trust * Bringing a single source of truth for USDC to the Interchain * Using CCTP to connect liquidity across ecosystems * Noble's business model * The future of solving liquidity for RWAs

Links mentioned in this episode: * Jelena Djuric, Co-Founder, Noble: https://x.com/jelena_noble * Noble: https://x.com/noble_xyz

Sponsors: * Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at gnosis.io

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture.

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In this episode, Sebastien Couture is joined by Benjamin, the founder of CAP, a stablecoin protocol designed to provide insured yield. The protocol features two main products: CUSD, a digital dollar, and stCUSD, its staked, yield-bearing version. Yield is generated through an "allocation engine" where third-party operators borrow from the protocol's reserve to execute yield strategies. To ensure user deposits, these operators must be vouched for by restakers on protocols like Symbiotic. If an operator defaults, the restakers who vouched for them are slashed, protecting the stablecoin holders' funds. This model shifts risk from the end-user to the restakers, who have a bilateral relationship with the operators they underwrite, often backed by legal agreements.

Topics covered in this episode:

Benjamin's background and perspective on China
Journey into crypto and stablecoins
Hot Take: Stablecoins are not as safe as you think
The evolution of stablecoin models
Has DeFi forgotten about decentralization?
CAP's design: CUSD and stCUSD
How CAP generates yield with operators and restakers
The role of restakers and legal agreements
Integrating with Symbiotic and views on EigenLayer
The best use cases for shared security
Navigating the Genius Act and global regulations
Rebuilding trust in the DeFi ecosystem
Why the stablecoin space is not too crowded

Episode links:

Benjamin on X
Cap Money

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/618

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TradFi FX markets are slow, expensive and often lack liquidity for direct swaps between different world currencies, having to route through USD pairs. While crypto could technically solve pairing through AMM pools, those needed to be arbitraged in order to reflect TradFi rates. With 15 fully-backed stablecoins, Mento is building the largest FX infrastructure, bringing world currencies onchain through its robust multi-currency stablecoin platform. In order to provide traders with accurate real-word FX rates, Mento employs FPMM (fixed-price market makers) which gather offchain data from multiple oracles. Instant settlement, cross-border, at a fraction of a cost of conventional remittance providers, while also avoiding traditional banking limitations.

Backed by strong on- & off-ramp integrations, Mento also caters towards day-to-day use cases, empowering locals and businesses to diversify their FX exposure without the hurdles of TradFi. Mento enables smooth cross-currency transactions without traditional banking limitations, unlocking DeFi yield for a wide variety of currencies.

Topics covered in this episode:

Markus’ background, from TradFi to DeFi
Unbanking the banked
Starting a stablecoin protocol on Celo
The role of stablecoins
FX markets & Mento’s design
FPMM vs. AMM
Mento’s target audience
Centralised vs. decentralised stablecoins
Mento governance
M0’s approach
Integrating with banking systems

Episode links:

⁠Markus Franke on X
Mento on X
Celo on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - ⁠⁠gnosis.io⁠⁠

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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Without a doubt, the introduction of stablecoins has vastly increased overall crypto liquidity, adoption and real-world use cases as they offered a safe haven against the industry’s volatility, especially during bearmarkets. However, despite being extremely efficient, the main stablecoin actors (i.e. Circle & Tether) are centralised entities. Many attempts have been made to create a reliable decentralised stablecoin, but regulations and the resounding collapse of Terra’s UST have only pushed towards more established, yet centralised, variants.

f(x) is a new generation CDP (collateralised debt position) protocol that offers on-chain perpetual trading for BTC & ETH with near-0 funding rates and a novel liquidation mechanism which protects users against hard liquidations. The leverage component is powered by emitting fxUSD, the protocol’s decentralised stablecoin, which boasts robust peg-keeping mechanisms, the main one being fxSAVE’s stability pool. The fxSAVE strategy bestows nearly 10% APY to the yield-bearing fxUSD-USDC pair.

Topics covered in this episode:

Cyrille’s background
AladdinDAO
Decentralised stablecoins
f(x) perps and sharing liquidation risks
The efficiency of progressive liquidations
Removing funding rates
fxSAVE’s stability pool yields
fxUSD’s organic adoption
The importance of decentralised stablecoins
Winning in the perp arena
Opportunities in the stablecoin adoption race

Episode links:

Cyrille Brière on X
f(x) Protocol on X
AladdinDAO on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - ⁠gnosis.io⁠

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture.

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Euler is a DeFi lending protocol built around the idea of permissionless modularity, enabling users to lend and borrow almost any crypto asset with flexible, permissionless pools, tailored to individual risk profiles. Moreover, Euler Vault Kit (EVK) and Ethereum Vault Connector (EVC) enable the creation of custom lending vaults which, in turn, can be used as collateral for other vaults. Earlier this year Euler also announced EulerSwap, a new DEX with a built-in AMM powered by Euler’s lending infrastructure and integrated with Uniswap v4’s hook architecture. EulerSwap integrates directly with Euler’s lending vaults, allowing assets to be used across multiple pools. This turns the lending protocol into a shared liquidity layer, improving capital efficiency across the ecosystem via swaps, lending yield or collateral for borrowing other assets.

Topics covered in this episode:

Michael’s background
The history & vision behind Euler
The Euler hack
Euler V2
Euler vs. other lending protocols
Diversifying offerings
Variable vs. fixed rates
How Pendle works
Euler’s future
RWAs
Privacy in DeFi
Euler roadmap
The impact of AI in DeFi

Episode links:

⁠⁠Michael Bentley on X⁠⁠
Euler on X⁠⁠

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - ⁠gnosis.io⁠
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - ⁠chorus.one⁠

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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Blockchains operate as a public ledger, ‘disclosing’ the entire transaction history and associated data to everyone. While verifiability and traceability are key traits, as blockchains gain global adoption, those very features hinder the process. Self custody, on-chain identities, corporate strategies, transaction history, private deals, all represent highly sensitive information that call for provable confidentiality. Fully homomorphic encryption has long been considered the ‘holy grail’ of cryptography as it enables computation to be performed on encrypted data without the need of prior decryption. This basically translates to true end-to-end encryption, both on-chain and off-chain. As cryptographic research advances, so does the scalability and applicability of FHE. As a result of more than 5 years of work, Zama has now released Zama Protocol, which enables confidential smart contracts on top of any L1 or L2 using FHE, without any additional execution burden. By encrypting all ciphertexts with the same public key, FHE ensures composability and seamless integration across different blockchains and applications, making it a true cross-chain confidentiality layer. Through parallel execution, Zama Protocol already surpasses Ethereum’s throughput, yet future roadmap includes open-source development of FPGA & ASIC in order to scale it even further, to accommodate faster, non-EVM chains.

Topics covered in this episode:

Zama’s progress in FHE
Zama's confidential blockchain Protocol
Security guarantees of MPC coprocessors
Maintaining a healthy operator set
Slashing and governance
Zama’s throughput
Open-sourcing FPGA & ASIC development
The Zama token & its implications
Zama’s public testnet
Private voting
Zama funding
Regulations
Expanding use cases beyond blockchains
Future goals and expectations

Episode links:

Rand Hindi on X
Zama on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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Built primarily for institutional-grade clients, Pareto delivers customizable on-chain credit markets designed to expand DeFi liquidity and TradFi tokenization through structured yield strategies tailored to diverse risk profiles. Pareto allows its users to construct individualized credit lines in specific risk-ajusted tranches, with custom: interest rates, lockup periods, withdrawal cycles, reserve ratios, etc. In addition, Pareto’s USP is an yield-bearing synthetic stablecoin, fully backed by major stablecoins, that can be deployed into a diversified portfolio of liquid, short- and long-term credit, thus increasing capital efficiency.

Topics covered in this episode:

Matteo’s background
Idle Finance yield optimization
Pivoting to Pareto
Institutional borrowers in early DeFi
Competitive advantage of Pareto
Outsourcing underwriting
Managing defaults
Customized lending
KYC requirements
Timeline terms ‘marketplace’
USP, Pareto’s synthetic yield-bearing dollar
Legal framework & credit allocators
USP yield, liquidity & integrations
‘Opaque’ credit vs. DeFi
Pareto smart contracts and redeems
Success in on-chain credit markets

Episode links:

Matteo Pandolfi on X
Pareto
Pareto on X
Idle Finance on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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In an age when AI models are becoming exponentially more sophisticated and powerful, how does one ensure that proper results are being generated and that the AI model functions in desired parameters? This pressing concern of AI alignment could be solved through cryptographic verification, using zero knowledge proofs. ZKPs not only allow for verifying computation at scale, but they also confer data privacy. Lagrange’s DeepProve zkML is the fastest in existence, making it easy to prove that AI inferences are correct, scaling verifiable computation as the demand for AI grows.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ismael’s background and founding Lagrange
AI x crypto convergence
ZKML use cases
AI inference verifiability
AI safety regulations
Revenue accruing tokens
Pitching Lagrange to enterprise clients
Assembling a dedicated team
Cryptography research

Episode links:

Ismael Hishon-Rezaizadeh on X
Lagrange on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture.

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Inspired by Urbit’s minimal assembly language, Nockchain fuses Urbit’s vision of sovereign computing with a novel proof-of-useful-work consensus mechanism, creating a blockchain where every computation fuels progress and scaling. The crypto-economics behind Nockchain’s zkVM incentivise competition between zero knowledge provers, ultimately bootstrapping ZKPs as a new computational commodity.

Topics covered in this episode:

Logan’s background
Urbit’s values
Nock, Urbit's minimal assembly language
Use cases for zk proofs
Nockchain’s zkVM efficiency
Useful proof-of-work
Launching Nockchain
Future roadmap for Nockchain
Building apps on Nockchain
Store of value vs. revenue generation
The impact of quantum computing

Episode links:

Logan Allen on X
Zorp on X
Nockchain on X
Urbit on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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Universal Market Access (UMA) was founded by 2 ex Goldman Sachs traders that wanted to make global markets universally accessible through financial smart contracts that used synthetic assets on Ethereum. However, this was taking place long before the massive boom of DeFi summer of 2020. As a result, UMA shifted to building an optimistic oracle to power prediction markets as a decentralised ‘truth machine’, thus expanding oracle use cases. Through game theoretic models, UMA managed to properly incentivise its token holders to act as voters, rewarding them for good predictions & disputes, and vice versa. Later on, Hart Lambur also co-founded Across, an intent-based optimistic bridge that set out to create a seamless UX for unifying EVM chains. Through their solver network, Across managed to achieve fast (as low as 2 seconds) and cheap bridging, abstracting away crosschain complexities, without any security tradeoffs.

Topics covered in this episode:

Hart’s background
Universal Market Access, from synthetic assets to oracles
Building Across
UMA’s optimistic oracle
Incentivizing voters & resolving disputes
Dealing with invalid outcomes
Optimistic security assumptions
UMA x Across dual token interactions
Across’ intent-based bridge
Pricing mechanism & solver competition
ZK settlement
Bridging fragmentation
Abstracting & unifying cross-chain bridging
Bridging between rollups
UMA & Across governance systems

Episode links:

Hart Lambur on X
Across Protocol on X
UMA Protocol on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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Founded in 2018, Dragonfly has quickly become one of the most prestigious crypto VCs. Dragonfly was one of the first to adopt a global approach to backing founders and disruptive tech, all while building a strong brand that allowed them to secure top-tier deals. Join us for a fascinating discussion with Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly, to learn the secrets behind running a top-tier crypto VC and what made Dragonfly succeed where others have failed.

Topics covered in this episode:

Haseeb’s background, from poker to crypto
Effective altruism
Crypto investment
Developing judgement
The vision behind Dragonfly
Consensus vs. non-consensus deals
KPIs
People, Product & Markets
Thoughts on the current crypto market
The evolution of crypto VCs
Advice for crypto founders
The importance of discipline
Is the golden era of crypto investing sunsetting?

Episode links:

Haseeb Qureshi on X
Dragonfly on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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‘Attention Is All You Need’, co-wrote by Illia Polosukhin in 2017, laid the foundation for arguably one of the most consequential tech breakthroughs in our recent history. 1 year later, Illia founded Near AI, which later became Near Protocol. They were visionaries ahead of their time and, although AI took several more years before becoming a viable product, the experience of scaling databases would later prove valuable and applicable in blockchain world. As a result, Near Protocol aims to become the infrastructure layer for AI apps and the agentic economy. In order to achieve this, scaling was paramount, thus Near is one of the first blockchains to implement execution layer sharding, asynchronous execution and stateless validation, which brought the finality time down to 1.2 seconds, with a block time of 0.6 seconds.

Topics covered in this episode:

Bowen’s background
Near’s pivot from AI to blockchains
The role of Near One
Near’s tech stack upgrades
Optimizing network architecture
Stateless validation & block propagation
Sharding & asynchronous execution
Message passing between shards & shard ‘equality’
Challenges of implementing stateless validation
Applications benefiting from Near’s finality speed
Intent-based infrastructure
AI use cases on Near
Expanding Near’s ecosystem
Development challenges
Near’s vision and goals

Episode links:

Bowen Wang on X
Near One
Near on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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The tradition of Epicenter x Vitalik Buterin continued this year as well at EthCC[8], where we got the chance of picking his brain about recent research, interests and Ethereum Foundation’s direction going forward. Join us for a fascinating discussion on biotech and how Vitalik’s Shiba ended up funding it, the utility of blockchains in nowadays society and Vitalik’s view on the Ethereum ecosystem and the Foundation’s response to community requests.

Topics covered in this episode:

Vitalik’s current interests
How Shiba Inu funded biotech research
The Merge and its impact
Vitalik’s motivation and view on blockchain utility
Ethereum Foundation’s changes
Is supporting ETH price important for EF?
Are L2s incentively aligned with Ethereum L1?
Native L2s
The risk of quantum computers

Episode links:

Vitalik Buterin on X
Ethereum on X
Ethereum Foundation on X
EthCC on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sebastien Couture.

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Stripe has established itself as a leading payment solution for both enterprises as well as startups and individual sellers. By abstracting away all the complexities of traditional payment rails through simple plug-and-play APIs, Stripe created a facile route for cross-border payments, simplifying e-commerce. Similarly, Stripe’s recent integration of stablecoins could further bolster the adoption of decentralised payment solutions, be them USD or other currency proxies. This allows businesses to reach more markets, at a lower cost, with near-instantaneous settlement.

Topics covered in this episode:

John’s background
Stripe’s mission
How Stripe solves the complexity of internet payments
Integrating crypto for payments
Supported blockchains
Stripe’s Web3 services
Upsides of accepting stablecoin payments
Non-USD stablecoins
Merchant UX
Expanding crypto support outside the U.S.
On- and off-ramping
Acquiring Bridge and Privy
The best of both worlds: CeFi & DeFi

Episode links:

John Egan on X
Stripe on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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While L2 rollups did help scale Ethereum, they also created siloed ecosystems, all fighting over the same liquidity, users and devs. t1 Protocol is building layer-2 infrastructure to achieve seamless cross-rollup interoperability through real-time proving, powered by TEEs. t1's low-latency with 1-second block times provides faster preconfirmations, significantly improving UX, all while maintaining full Ethereum composability.

Topics covered in this episode:

Can’s background
Why Enigma/Secret Network built on Cosmos
Solving Ethereum’s liquidity fragmentation
t1’s rollup & real-time proving in TEEs
Sequencer setup inside the TEE
Dealing with other rollup trust assumptions
Integrating new L2s
Permissionless TEEs
Potential attack vectors
TEE alternatives
Asset issuance on mainnet vs. L2s
t1 development
Partnerships & BD
Solana vs. Ethereum UX
TEE misconceptions

Episode links:

Can Kisagun on X
t1 Protocol on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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As the summer tour of European crypto conferences landed in Berlin, one of crypto’s cradles, we couldn’t miss DappCon 25, where we got to sit with Jerome de Tychey, Nixorokish & Joshua Dávila to discuss Ethereum’s restructure and whether its culture is still relevant to the wider crypto community. Join us for a fascinating discussion on the impact of crypto politicization and how Ethereum’s ecosystem evolved amidst a society with ever-changing values.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jerome, Nixorokish & Josh backgrounds
Ethereum Foundation restructuring
Ethereum’s culture & crypto politicization
DAOs & the evolution of Ethereum’s ecosystem
Is privacy still a societal value?
User experience & account abstraction
Future hopes for Ethereum

Episode links:

Jerome de Tychey on X
Nixorokish on X
Joshua Davila on X
DappCon on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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Bitcoin remains an untapped source of net-new liquidity that could be injected into DeFi. This would completely reshape Bitcoin’s utilization from a mere store of value to a liquid asset that can be ported cross-chain and traded like a liquid staking derivative. Lombard’s LBTC builds upon Babylon’s Bitcoin staking primitive and aims to unlock new yield sources for the industry’s leading asset by increasing its DeFi utilization.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jacob’s background
Lessons gathered from Polychain
Focusing on Bitcoin
Why Bitcoin staking is crucial for BTC DeFi
Building on top of Babylon
LBTC minting
Sources of BTC yield
PoS inflation and native token incentives
BTC as a trading pair in DeFi
Lombard chain
Future challenges to overcome
Bitcoin L2s
Lombard milestones

Episode links:

Jacob Phillips on X
Lombard on X
Babylon on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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Apart from incentivising market participants to secure the network through inflationary rewards, many consider staking as an equivalent of stock dividend yield. As a result, although Bitcoin is regarded as digital gold, protocols are looking for ways to increase its utilisation in DeFi and, ultimately, generate yield. Nowadays, while newer networks are struggling to attract investors and sustain a healthy, decentralised validator set, more established blockchains capture the lion’s share of PoS actors. However, in a constant race for profit basis points, centralised consolidation of stakers seems inevitable. Join us for a fascinating discussion on the staking landscape and the challenges it may present to decentralisation.

Topics covered in this episode:

Increasing BTC utilization through BTC yield
Looping yield products
The maturation of the staking market
Chorus One staking portfolio
How to prevent staking consolidation
Retail vs. institutional-grade operators
Symbiotic, Eigenlayer & restaking yield

Episode links:

Mirko Schmiedl on X
Tobias Jung on X
Staking Rewards on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sebastien Couture.

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After a decade of existence, Ethereum has gone a long way from its initial whitepaper, yet many efforts in scaling and finding product-market-fit have been severely criticized for falling short of their promise. However, despite numerous other ‘Ethereum killers’ being launched over the years, none has managed to attract so many developers and liquidity while sticking true to ethos that (once) powered and united this industry. This year’s ETHPrague plans to confront exactly these existential challenges and steward community culture towards addressing outside criticism and external reality checks. Ethereum’s development, while adapting to market pressures, it always aimed to stick true to its core values in order to remain a technological bedrock for the future of humanity.

Topics covered in this episode:

The vision for ETH Prague
Takeaways from main sessions
High-level overview of ETH Prague
The resurgence of Polkadot
European crypto summer events
The general state of the Ethereum ecosystem
Celo’s transition to L2
L2 liquidity fragmentation
Choosing the right L2 to build
Improving hackathons
Lightning round
Final words

Episode links:

Austin Griffith on X
Marek Olszewski on X
Brenda Loya on X
Joseph Schweitzer on X
BuidlGuidl DAO on X
Celo on X
Tellor on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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We couldn’t miss the Avalanche Summit where we sat down with Emin Gün Sirer, co-founder & CEO of Ava Labs, to discuss the evolution of Avalanche’s ecosystem and how HyperSDK ushers in a scalable, interoperable, multi-chain future. Join us for a fascinating discussion on Avalanche’s approach to decentralisation, scalability & interoperability, and learn why real-world applicability relies heavily on bespoke blockchain solutions.

Topics covered in this episode:

Gün x Epicenter bromance
How the Avalanche ecosystem & community evolved
The future vision for Avalanche
Scaling Avalanche and the HyperSDK
Interoperability and the multi-chain future
Decentralising Avalanche L1s
Use cases and institutional adoption
On-chain privacy
AvaCloud
The impact of AI in crypto
Gün’s focus in the near future

Episode links:

Emin Gun Sirer on X
Avalanche on X
Ava Labs on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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Blockchain architecture is constantly being forced to adapt to new technologies, as well as to meet new demands from users and builders. While the idea of apps building their own chains was first explored by Cosmos, it lacked the support and tooling to see it succeed. Later on, rollups also took the centerstage of Ethereum’s scaling roadmap, but due to their general purpose design, it led to a cannibalistic ecosystem. Initia learned from these 2 models and combined the best of both worlds: it built a full-stack framework for a seamless DevEx from the get-go and, more importantly, it designed its tokenomics in order to ensure maximum incentive alignment for its appchains. While the former decision removed the need for each separate chain to reinvent the wheel and risk ending up ‘a jack of all trades, master of none’, the latter ensured that appchains would not extract value away from the L1.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ezaan’s background
From building on Terra to Initia
How Initia is rewriting the appchain thesis
Initia’s enshrined liquidity & vested interest program (VIP)
Metrics & Initia’s bet on crypto innovation
Solving liquidity fragmentation
Delphi’s involvement in Initia
Future roadmap

Episode links:

Ezaan Mangalji on X
Jose Maria Macedo on X
Anil Lulla on X
Initia on X
Delphi Digital on X
Delphi report on Initia

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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As society evolves, so do its values and principles, but is that desirable for technology that seeks to build the most reliable, trustless and censorship resistant global settlement layer? Ever since the rise in popularity of Solana with its inflow of retail capital in a memecoin gold rush, Ethereum became even more criticized for sticking true to its core values despite the completely divergent demands of market participants. Moreover, the rollup centric scaling roadmap seemed to further silo attention and cause liquidity fragmentation, driving away value from Ethereum mainnet. As institutional demand is expected to grow with the introduction of staking ETFs, a new executive leadership took charge of Ethereum foundation to help steer the protocol’s narrative at the intersection between community demands and Ethereum’s ethos.

Topics covered in this episode:

Hsiao-Wei’s & Tomasz’ backgrounds
How they became co-executive directors of Ethereum Foundation
Ethereum Foundation’s role moving forward
Decision making in Ethereum Foundation
Shaping Ethereum’s narrative
The layer 2 landscape
Scaling Ethereum as the global settlement layer
Sharding
Rollup scalability & their trade-offs
What values drive adoption
L2 interoperability
Future goals

Episode links:

Hsiao-Wei Wang on X
Tomasz Stanczak on X
Ethereum Foundation on X
Ethereum on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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Taiko is a decentralized, Ethereum-equivalent (type I) rollup scaling solution which uses ZK technology. Taiko's goal is to scale Ethereum efficiently while maintaining security and decentralization. Being a type I zkEVM, Taiko retains full Ethereum equivalence, which creates a seamless DevEx, although this comes at the expense of UX as slower proof generation is the main trade-off. Moreover, in order to stay true to its decentralised ethos, Taiko operates as a based rollup, meaning that transaction sequencing is performed by L1 validators.

Topics covered in this episode:

Joaquin’s background
Loopring and Taiko’s beginnings
The 4 types of zkEVMs
Taiko's zk circuits vs. Polygon’s
Based sequencing
Data availability and blob commitment
Ethereum’s role in the future
The L2 landscape and its compromises
Sequencer security model
Dealing with MEV
Based preconfirmations & Taiko ecosystem UX

Episode links:

Joaquin Mendes on X
Taiko on X
Loopring on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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Founded by former Meta Diem team members, Sui is a high-performance, layer-1 blockchain designed for horizontal scaling and low-latency transactions. It uses an object-centric data model and the Move programming language to enable transaction parallelization which can handle >200,000 txs/s. Sui’s goal is to combine the benefits of blockchains with Web2’s security & frictionless UX. From account abstraction & ZKLogin, to on-chain storage & data availability solutions like Walrus, Sui rebuilds the Google/AWS stack, fully on-chain and composable.

Topics covered in this episode:

Adeniyi’s background, from Libra to Sui
Sui’s long-term vision
The tech stack of Sui & its primitives
ZKLogin & account abstraction
Object-based approach
Transaction processing & parallelization
DevEx on Move vs. EVM vs. SVM
Consensus & scalability
MEV
Gaming & SuiPlay
DeFi on Sui
Walrus data storage
Nautilus
Future roadmap

Episode links:

Adeniyi Abiodun on X
Mysten Labs on X
Sui on X
Walrus on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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With an extensive experience in traditional money markets, Maple Finance was envisioned as an institutional capital marketplace which combines the transparency & capital efficiency of blockchains with the regulatory framework of TradFi. Unlike many DeFi protocols that require over-collateralized loans (e.g. Aave), Maple also specializes in under-collateralized lending, enabling greater capital efficiency for institutional borrowers. With over $6b in loans since its inception, Maple plans to further expand its offerings by including RWAs as collateral assets.

Topics covered in this episode:

Sid’s background
The vision behind Maple Finance
Maple’s tech stack
Deciding risk profiles
Over-collateralized vs. under-collateralized loans
Assets accepted as collateral
Deploying to other blockchains
Institutional appeal
Managing defaults
RWA
Converging DeFi & TradFi
Biggest challenges
Exciting upcoming trends
Future roadmap
Crypto correlation or decoupling?

Episode links:

Sid Powell on X
Maple Finance on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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Tally is a software platform designed to support tokenized organizations, particularly Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) and crypto communities. It provides tools for launching tokens, governing protocols, and enabling staking to foster community participation and growth. Tally facilitates onchain governance, allowing transparent and decentralized decision-making for managing funds, grants, and protocol upgrades. It powers major blockchain ecosystems like Arbitrum, ZKsync, Uniswap DAO and Wormhole DAO by providing interfaces for proposal creation, voting, and staking. The Tally Protocol further enhances this by offering a liquidity layer for governance tokens, that allow token holders to earn staking rewards while retaining voting rights and participating in DeFi.

Topics covered in this episode:

Dennison’s background
Has crypto won?
Does privacy still matter?
The vision behind Tally
The evolution of DAOs
Are grassroots DAOs viable?
Corporate vs. DAO PMF
How developer activity & contributors evolved
Tally’s roadmap
ICO vs. IPO

Episode links:

Dennison Bertram on X
Tally on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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Namechain is an L2 developed by ENS Labs, to enhance the scalability and efficiency of managing decentralized identities on Ethereum. It is designed to work in tandem with ENS V2, which introduced a hierarchical registry system for more efficient subdomain management and custom resolvers. A key vision for Namechain is to unify multi-chain user identities, creating a "digital identity chain" that simplifies how users interact with the broader blockchain ecosystem. This is achieved through features like L2-to-L2 bridging, which allows users to initiate ENS-related activities from various Ethereum Layer 2 networks, not just Namechain itself.

Topics covered in this episode:

High level overview of ENS
Crosschain functionality through CCIP Read
Domain squatting
Onboarding ENS users via Paypal and Venmo
Google & GoDaddy integrations
ENS V2 upgrade & Namechain
Transferring tokens from Namechain to L1
Sequencer security assumptions
Scalability
New features & use cases
ENS roadmap & metrics
Ethereum ecosystem status

Episode links:

Nick Johnson on X
ENS on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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Ethereum’s transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake created a unique set of conditions (i.e. lack of protocol-level delegation, 32 ETH requirement, long exit queues, etc.) that led to Lido’s liquid staking model to gain huge traction, significantly eclipsing other LSD providers on native PoS chains. stETH added on-demand liquidity, bypassing withdrawal windows, while also increasing DeFi utilization and increasing yields. Moreover, by allowing users to stake any amount of ETH in pools, it removed the requirement for 32 ETH increments, ultimately improving decentralisation through long tail distribution of individual stakers. Lido V3 introduces modular stVaults which enable staking customization. This allows professional actors, such as institutional stakers, to have granular control over validators, MEV and other parameters, diversifying their investment strategies.

Topics covered in this episode:

Hasu’s background
Discovering Lido
Liquid staking and the early days of Lido
Why liquid staking gained traction on Ethereum
The evolution of Lido
Initial decentralisation concerns and the importance of dual governance
Restaking
Lido V3 and vaults
Institutional staking & ETFs
Ethereum’s ‘crisis’ and its values

Episode links:

Hasu on X
Lido on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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While DeFi’s ultimate goal is to provide an alternative for TradFi, blockchain gaming caters to retail masses, onboarding millions of users to crypto through incentives and fun gameplay. The greatest success story in Web3 gaming thus far has been, without a doubt, Axie Infinity. Apart from creating an engaged community whose early adopters also experienced rags-to-riches stories, it kickstarted an entire movement around play-to-earn gaming. Many have tried copying it, yet most of them failed. Axie Infinity managed to design a sustainable economy that combined NFTs and fungible tokens. The result was the first gamified crypto mining event, at scale. In order to accommodate such a massive demand, in a time when L2 rollups were still in R&D, Sky Mavis founded Ronin, a gaming-oriented Ethereum sidechain. The community that formed around Axie Infinity created a tremendous network effect, solidifying Ronin’s PMF as a gaming powerhouse. Before long, many up-and-coming titles migrated to Ronin, and the growth effects in all their key metrics (i.e. DAUs, transactions, revenue, etc.) further fuelled the flywheel.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jeff’s background
Cryptokitties
Joining Axie Infinity and how it evolved
Monetizing Axie’s economy
The recipe for successful blockchain games
Building Ronin, the gaming L1
On-chain vs. off-chain game elements
Community building
Ronin’s economy & composability
Most suitable gaming genre for Web3
AI x gaming
Crypto gaming investments
Ronin’s current state and future roadmap
Axie’s upcoming MMO

Episode links:

Jeff Zirlin on X
Axie Infinity on X
Ronin on X
Sky Mavis on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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Solana needs no introduction. Ever since its inception, it pushed throughput scaling on a single chain, without the need of sharding or rollups. Despite its ups and downs that culminated at the bottom of the bear market after the FTX crash, it managed to not only survive, but build a vibrant community around crypto's (arguably) most prominent PMF (thus far).

Join us for a fascinating discussion and learn about Anatoly's take on controversial topics such as MEV, concurrent block leaders (the equivalent of Ethereum's PBS proposal), L2 rollups, Solana economics, how to tackle potential exploits and more.

Topics covered in this episode:

How the original Solana vision turned out
What makes blockchains valuable
MEV & program writable accounts
Concurrent block proposers
Current bottlenecks for scaling Solana
Mainnet vs. L2 rollups
Firedancer upgrade
Halting the network vs. rollbacks
Solana’s scaling roadmap
DoubleZero
Worst hacks on Solana
UI exploits, Bybit hack and smart contract security
Solana economics and the SIMD-0228 proposal
Future improvements
Use cases for blockchains
Solana mobile

Episode links:

Anatoly Yakovenko on X
Solana on X
Solana Mobile on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Martin Köppelmann.

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Bitcoin’s security and reliability as a store of value are undeniable. However, its liquidity remained untapped for too long due to a lack of trustless bridges and native smart contract capabilities. As BTC is only native to Bitcoin’s L1, any attempt to include it in DeFi relies on the trust assumptions of third party custodians that wrap it. Build On Bitcoin (BOB) aims to expand Bitcoin’s functionality by integrating it with Ethereum’s smart contract capabilities. BOB operates as an OP Stack L2 with a hybrid design incorporating ZKPs, Bitcoin staking, and Ethereum for data availability. By functioning as a rollup, BOB processes transactions off-chain and batches them for settlement on Bitcoin and Ethereum, significantly improving transaction speed and reducing costs compared to Bitcoin’s base layer.

Topics covered in this episode:

Alexei’s background
Setbacks for Bitcoin DeFi
Bitcoin bridges
BitVM
BOB operators and trust assumptions
BOB architecture & Bitcoin staking
Bitcoin LSTs
The future of Bitcoin DeFi

Episode links:

Alexei Zamyatin on X
Build on Bitcoin on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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In the digital networked age, people’s attention often overlooks local problems in favour of global ones, which don’t necessarily impact them in their daily lives, or over which they don’t have a say due to the skewed Pareto distribution of power in modern day societies. Puja Ohlhaver, in her recent research paper ‘Community currencies’, proposes a dual-currency model that prices attention and influence in each community, with the ultimate goal of creating a Gaussian distribution of power, either locally, or globally through the dynamic interaction of multiple local communities. This model allows community members to stake their currency to earn non-transferable governance rights, creating a substrate for decentralised societal coordination that favours social innovation.

Topics covered in this episode:

Puja’s background
Web3 research
‘Community currencies’
Pareto vs. Gaussian distributions
Global vs. local power distributions
The community currencies model
Meritocracy vs. influence
Quadratic funding
Governance, bribery and the crisis of legitimacy
Experimenting with community currencies

Episode links:

Puja Ohlhaver on X
'Community Currencies' Research Paper
'Decentralized Society' Research Paper

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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Even though current LLM providers usually charge flat rates regardless if the subscriber is a ‘power user’ or not, as AI agents become the workhorses of the online economy, a dynamic AI-to-AI payments infrastructure would prove crucial for proper remuneration. Nevermined proposes a blockchain-agnostic, AI-agnostic credit system, that each builder can use to implement custom pricing strategies for their users. As the next trillion transactions will be mostly performed by AI agents, a universal payment system would help streamline integrations and economic interactions.

Topics covered in this episode:

Don’s background
Integrating payment systems in the agentic economy
Marketplaces vs. payment systems
AI agentic economy
Fixed vs. variable pricing strategies
License tokenization
Settlement and payment for AI agents
Estimating price and avoiding overcharges
Nevermined’s tech stack and integrations
Value prop
Nevermined metrics

Episode links:

Don Gossen on X
Nevermined on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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As more and more protocols compete for marketshare, user acquisition represents one of the most important elements of the GTM strategy. Web3 projects, through their governance tokens, can incentivise users directly to participate in meaningful activities for each protocol, subsidising their revenue generation through vested upside in the project. Turtle Club built the first distribution protocol of Web3, helping its users maximise their rewards they get for meaningful on-chain activities that help bootstrap projects.

Topics covered in this episode:

Esfandiar’s background
The evolution of DeFi
Yield sustainability in DeFi
DeFi vs. TradFi
Quantifying risk
Main blockers for DeFi adoption
On-chain transparency or privacy?
What is missing in DeFi?
Genesis story of Turtle Club
How Turtle Club users accrue rewards

Episode links:

Esfandiar Lagevardi on LinkedIn
Turtle Club on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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As online content becomes predominantly AI-driven, intellectual property (IP) rights should not be neglected as (human) creators will heavily rely on them. While the main use cases for blockchains revolve around financial applications, one could argue that our everyday lives constantly intersect IPs in different forms. Although the legal framework is abundant, proper recording, monetization and disputes are often a burden for independent creators. Story Protocol aims to create a decentralised framework for IP management, tokenizing it both through NFTs and fungible tokens, allowing creators to register fully programmable IP, that is also recognized and enforced through the traditional judiciary system. Using smart contracts and programmable metadata, Story Protocol ensures proper monetization for creators whenever their IP is used.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jason’s background
Current IP pain points
Tokenizing IP
Story Protocol blockchain
Preventing IP infringement
Story Protocol validators
Interoperability
Onboarding traditional IP to Story Protocol
Story Protocol’s legal framework
Enforcing IP rights on Story Protocol
Hiding or demonetizing on-chain IP
Governance & disputes
Roadmap

Episode links:

Jason Zhao on X
Story Protocol on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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While AMMs (automated market makers) represent a DeFi innovation in themselves, research and experimentation have pushed the possibilities well beyond the limitations of the classic x*y=k constant product formula originally used by LPs. One of the main innovators in this field remains Balancer - from multi-token pools with different weights replicating TradFi indices, to dynamic ratios that can be changed under certain conditions preventing further imbalances, Balancer set in place user protection measures. With the recent release of Balancer V3, developers get more freedom to experiment with AMMs, introducing features such as hooks that enable limitless pool customisation, boosted pools that combine LP fees with yield farming from money markets, and many more.

Topics covered in this episode:

Balancer’s inception
The evolution of AMMs
Balancer vs. other AMM competitors
Fungible vs. non-fungible liquidity
Balancer v3
Boosted liquidity pools
DevEx and hooks in Balancer v3
Preventing stablecoin depegs
MEV mitigation & CoW AMM
Scaling to L2s
Gyroscope & QuantAMM
Balancer’s B2C & B2B solutions

Episode links:

Fernando Martinelli on X
Balancer on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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Kiln operates as a staking-as-a-service platform, primarily focused on Ethereum, enabling users to stake assets programmatically, managing validators, rewards, and commissions through an API-first approach. In addition, it offers white-label solutions that allow institutional clients to integrate staking functionalities into their own offerings, with unified API for all assets and rewards, making it easier for businesses to provide staking services without developing the infrastructure themselves. With more than $13bn worth of assets secured, Kiln has proven its reliability, having no slashing events thus far. Moreover, Kiln widget offers a no-code experience for launching custom earn options, integrated with every major wallet and custodian.

Topics covered in this episode:

Laszlo’s background
Founding Kiln
Enterprise-grade validators and slashing
DevOps & infrastructure maintenance
ETH staking and custody
Liquid staking and restaking
The evolution of staking providers and requirements
DeFi yield
Institutional investors
Kiln roadmap

Episode links:

Laszlo Szabo on X
Kiln on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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Throughout the years, there were many attempts of tapping into Bitcoin’s liquidity and security, but almost all of them came with different caveats. Most notably, wrapped BTC (wBTC) depended on the wrapper contract security. However, the recent surge in research and development for native solutions has led to breakthroughs previously thought impossible. Babylon launched native BTC staking and plans to further expand this to secure other blockchains, in a model similar to that of mesh security. This would not only help secure other networks, but it would also unlock liquidity from the mother chain through liquid staking derivatives.

Topics covered in this episode:

David’s background
The evolution of Babylon
The Bitcoin Renaissance
Technical challenges of implementing Bitcoin staking
The OP_CAT upgrade
Babylon’s Bitcoin staking & Bitcoin-secured networks
Bridging liquidity & LSTs
Securing multiple chains and slashing
Babylon chain - aggregating Bitcoin-secured networks
Could Bitcoin become a POS chain?
Babylon upgradeability

Episode links:

David Tse on X
Babylon on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sebastien Couture.

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The DeFi landscape has significantly evolved since 2018 when Chainlink was launched. Recent developments such as L2 rollups, liquid staking, restaking and the rise of BTC DeFi have created huge demand for more customizable, modular oracles that would be able to provide accurate data for countless use cases, crosschain. RedStone set out to do exactly that and are now securing over $6.6 bn worth of assets (1000+ assets), across more than 60 chains, without a single mispricing event.

Topics covered in this episode:

Marcin’s background
Early oracle landscape
RedStone’s technical architecture
Network incentives
Data aggregation module
Node operator module
Push vs. Pull oracles
RedStone’s business model
The role of RedStone token
Pyth vs. RedStone
Restaking
Oracle extractable value
Synergies between oracles and institutional investors

Episode links:

Marcin Kazmierczak on X
RedStone on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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Traditional KYC and AML regulations have often forced companies to comply, without having the right tools to do so. Simply storing users’ personal information led to the creation of security honeypots which haven’t gone unnoticed by hackers. Web3 solutions like Privado ID aim to cryptographically prove certain traits from a user’s personal data, without disclosing it to the enquirer. This is usually made possible through zero knowledge proofs which allow users to store their personal data on their own device and only exchange verifiable credentials with trusted issuers. City of Buenos Aires has adopted a similar implementation through their Quark ID system, a digital trust framework that creates a new digital identity system, giving people control over their information.

Topics covered in this episode:

Evin’s background and founding Disco
Polygon ID acquisition and blockchain agnostic decentralized IDs
Diego’s background, from private to public practice
Privado ID and its registry of reputation issuers
Use cases, DevEx and UX
KYC and regulations
Buenos Aires digital ID system
Real world applications of Quark ID
UX frictions and solutions
ZK verification
Societal impact and adoption
Ethical considerations around DIDs
The role of blockchains in other real world applications

Episode links:

Evin McMullen on X
Diego Fernandez on X
Privado ID on X
Quark ID on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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One of the most limited blockchain resources is blockspace. From Bitcoin’s Blocksize Wars to Ethereum’s scaling roadmap, a common denominator seems to have emerged in the form of rollups. Advancements in zero knowledge proofs have enabled trustless bridges, which are a cornerstone to onboarding liquidity to any blockchain. Furthermore, Celestia’s modular approach to blockchain architecture and their recent commitment to gigabyte blocks of data availability marked the beginning of commoditization for rollups. Abundance is the first rollup-as-a-service platform that is able to scale to 1 gigagas/second throughput, finally bringing off-chain applications, on-chain.

Topics covered in this episode:

Gelato’s pivot to rollup-as-a-service platform
Sovereign rollups
Enshrined bridges and settlement proofs
Abundance and 1 Gigagas/second rollups
Modularity
Security assumptions
Sequencer (de)centralisation
Social consensus
Celestia’s DA layer bandwidth
Ethereum native rollups
Decentralisation and censorship-resistance

Episode links:

Hilmar Orth on X
Gelato Network on X
Abundance on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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The status quo for developers choosing an ecosystem for their blockchain usually revolves around trade-offs: do they go for Ethereum’s network effect, liquidity and decentralisation, or sacrifice some features in favour of a higher throughput. Monad aims to combine the best of both worlds, while not being limited by excessive hardware requirements. Monad built an EVM-compatible L1 from the ground up, completely rethinking execution and consensus, in order to achieve the infamous 10,000 TPS. This extreme scalability is made possible through Monad’s optimistic parallel execution which is asynchronous from consensus. The latter has also been optimized in order to achieve single-slot finality. Monad’s proprietary database architecture allows for states to be stored on SSDs instead of RAM, which ensures that consumer-grade hardware can run a Monad node, further increasing decentralisation.

Topics covered in this episode:

Keone’s background
TradFi vs. DeFi and how Monad was founded
EVM’s network effect vs. other VMs
How Monad aims to improve EVM’s performance
MonadDB
MonadBFT - New consensus mechanism
Asynchronous execution
MEV and proposer-builder separation (PBS)
Monad’s throughput
Further scaling and limitations
Alternatives & trade-offs
DevEx
Community & ecosystem development

Episode links:

Keone Hon on X
Monad on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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Polynomials are quintessential in machine learning for establishing relationships between outputs and inputs. However, there is also a field in cryptography which could not be made possible without polynomials - zero-knowledge technology. In zero-knowledge proof systems, computations are often represented as arithmetic circuits, and these circuits are translated into polynomials. This process is crucial for generating proofs that can demonstrate the correctness of computations without revealing the underlying data. The involved complexity explains the massive adoption hurdle for zk rollups compared to optimistic ones. Succinct aims to simplify the use of zero-knowledge proofs by providing a zkVM (SP1) that allows code written in languages like Rust to be proven in a privacy-preserving way. By doing so, it aims to lower the barrier to implementing zk-rollups and increase their adoption.

Topics covered in this episode:

Uma’s background and her interest in zero knowledge tech
How Succinct’s story began
ZK light clients
ZK circuits
SP1 and the RISC-V instruction set
The prover network
Use cases
ZK rollups and commoditizing ZKPs
Incentivizing provers
Succinct’s business model
Supported blockchain applications
Bottlenecks in ZK adoption
Succinct metrics
SP1’s competitive advantage and future roadmap
The real world impact of verifiability

Episode links:

Uma Roy on X
Succinct on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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Bitcoin’s Taproot update paved the way for a new & exciting era for Bitcoin, as it expanded its use case far beyond that of an immutable ledger. However, Ordinals, BRC-20 tokens and, more recently, Runes, have limited functionality compared to what DeFi is capable of, on other smart contract blockchains. BitcoinOS envisions a revolutionary Bitcoin economy that stems from truly programmable tokens, unlocking staking, governance and many other use cases. Using BitSNARK and Grail, BitcoinOS enables Bitcoin “rollups”, which act as execution environments that use BTC as gas fee and inherit security from the L1. The missing link was always a trustless bridge between Bitcoin L1 and any potential L2. And Grail Bridge achieved just that - using zero knowledge cryptography, BTC could be transferred to other chains without relying on other custodians’ trust assumptions. In that sense, Bitcoin block #853626 is historically meaningful as it contains the first-ever onchain verification of a zero knowledge proof, on Bitcoin. A truly programmable smart contract operating system on Bitcoin was no longer a mere concept…it became a reality through BitcoinOS.

Topics covered in this episode:

Yago's background
The effect of Trump’s election on the crypto industry
The goal behind BitcoinOS
The history of Bitcoin’s programmability
Verifying ZK proofs on Bitcoin
Taproot
Ordinals
BitSNARK, Grail bridge and Merkle Mesh
BitcoinOS modularity and sequencing
An impending (r)evolution of the industry
Bitcoin vs. Ethereum L2 landscape
Bringing Bitcoin liquidity to Cardano
BitcoinOS roadmap

Episode links:

Edan Yago on Twitter
Bitcoin OS on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture.

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Bootstrapping and maintaining a validator set can be a challenging endeavour, especially for projects that are in search of a product market fit. However, this does not mean one should abandon the ethos of decentralisation in favour of a more streamlined centralised approach. The notion of shared security had been previously explored in the Cosmos ecosystem, but Symbiotic takes it a step further, making it readily available for any project, regardless of its native blockchain, through restaking. Symbiotic is a modular coordination layer that sources node operators and economic security in a maximally capital-efficient manner.

Topics covered in this episode:

Misha’s background
Symbiotic’s origin story
How Symbiotic tackles decentralisation
The role of restaking in proof-of-stake models
The economics of restaking
The architecture of Symbiotic
Liquid restaking tokens (LRT)
Expanding restaking beyond Ethereum
Slashing
Symbiotic smart contract immutability and future updates
Ecosystem development

Episode links:

Misha Putiatin on Twitter
Symbiotic on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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A smart contract’s rigid rule system represents a double-edged sword. ‘The Code is Law’, but what happens when rogue large language models or AI agents bend the Law? Can smart contracts be weaponised to serve a criminal agenda? In his ‘Oracle’ novel, Ari Juels explores this thesis and issues an eery warning regarding the blockchain x AI intersection. In this imminent future, oracles play a crucial role, allowing LLMs to push data on-chain or smart contracts to pull off-chain data.

Topics covered in this episode:

Criminal Smart Contracts
Oracle x LLM convergence
Preventing malicious intents through oracle systems
AI x crypto use cases
DAOs
Entropy in voting behaviours
Dark DAOs
TEEs & private smart contracts
MEV & proofs of transaction ordering
Future blockchain research

Episode links:

Ari Juels on Twitter
'The Oracle: A Novel' by Ari Juels
Chainlink on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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Bitcoin’s lack of native programmability, coupled with advancements in zero knowledge cryptography, has led to rollups being explored as a substitute for an execution layer. Citrea’s approach involves using Bitcoin as a data availability & settlement layer for their zero knowledge rollup. These rollups not only lower transaction costs, but they also enable smart contracts to use Bitcoin’s L1 security and further incentivise miners to secure the chain despite halving rewards. In order to inherit Bitcoin’s security, zk proofs are inscribed in Bitcoin blocks.

Topics covered in this episode:

Orkun’s background
Inscriptions, BitVM and zk rollups on Bitcoin
Optimistic bridging
Sequencer
Programmability solutions on Bitcoin
BitVM development
Citrea ecosystem development
cBTC vs. custodial wrapped BTC
There is no second best!
PoW, halving block rewards and how rollups incentivise miners
Citrea’s efficiency & fee reduction
Bitcoin as an inflation hedge

Episode links:

Orkun Mahir Kilic on Twitter
Citrea on Twitter
BitVM

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch.

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Inspired by Cosmos’ IBC ethos, Anoma takes interoperability a step further, from VM (virtual machine) to IM (intent machine). While traditional dApps that run on virtual machines require step-by-step instructions to achieve a desired outcome, Anoma’s universal intent machine design allows users to simply define their end-results which are then aggregated and an optimal combination of intents is selected - cross-chain, simple, elegant. Moreover, intents also enable on-chain privacy, a concept explored by Namada.

Topics covered in this episode:

The vision behind Anoma
OS for decentralised applications
What is Anoma?
Building dApps with Anoma
Native generalised intents
Anoma’s L1 blockchain
The importance of decentralisation
On-chain privacy
Namada
The collapse of the banking system
Roadmap

Episode links:

Adrian Brink on Twitter
Anoma on Twitter
Namada on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

View Details

In a world where everyone chases every basis point of marginal return, core values are often overlooked. The emergence of liquid staking protocols made stake delegation a norm rather than an exception. The hassles of running their own node and dealing with slashing risks were often too much of a burden for regular users. Dappnode offers both hardware and open-source software solutions for home stakers which are as facile to implement as a plug-n-play device. Their newly released Dappnode Smooth aims to offer the advantages of staking pools (via smart contracts), without centralisation risks.

Topics covered in this episode:

Eduardo’s and Pol’s backgrounds
Founding Dappnode
Dappnode userbase
Supported networks
Dappnode’s tech stack
Setting up Dappnode
Dappstore
Updating nodes
Dappnode hardware usage percentage
Dappnode Smooth
Solo staking vs. liquid staking
Distributed validator technology (DVT)
Restaking
ETH issuance
Future roadmap for Dappnode

Episode links:

Eduardo Antuna on Twitter
Pol Lanski on Twitter
Dappnode on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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One of the best known educators in the space and OG Bitcoin maxi, Dan Held joined us to discuss his crypto journey from entrepreneur to marketing & growth specialist and why he decided to start the Asymmetric Bitcoin DeFi Fund. Although initially a contentious topic, the emergence of Ordinals revealed Bitcoin’s untapped potential, sparking tremendous interest for Bitcoin L2s and DeFi on the ‘mother chain’. Apart from bringing new utility to the highest liquidity blockchain, the new-found demand for blockspace significantly increased fees, thus incentivising miners to further secure the chain despite halving rewards.

Topics covered in this episode:

Dan’s background
ZeroBlock
Increasing marketing reach
ZeroBlock acquisition & marketing at Kraken
Asymmetric Bitcoin DeFi Fund
Bitcoin’s history: NFT & DeFi emergence
OP_CAT & trustless bridging
Bitcoin ‘governance’, forks & BIPs
Usecases for DeFi on Bitcoin
Bitcoin block reward subsidy and long-term security

Episode links:

Asymmetric on Twitter
Dan Held on Twitter
Blockchain.com on Twitter
Taproot Wizards on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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From a cross-platform media company, to launching their own conference and, more recently, an advisory branch, Blockworks has seen and done it all. We couldn’t miss Permissionless III, one of the largest crypto conferences in the US, where we sat down with Jason Yanowitz to discuss emerging trends in the industry and where the attention might shift over the coming months.

Topics covered in this episode:

Blockworks’ evolution
The crypto conference landscape
Blockworks advisory
Apps & infrastructure
Regulations
ZK & AI
Stablecoins
Podcasting

Episode links:

Jason Yanowitz on Twitter
Blockworks on Twitter
Permissionless on Twitter
Empire Podcast on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal.

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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:

Konstantin’s background
cyber·Fund & cybernetic economy
Entrepreneurship vs. angel investing
Delegating tasks and scaling businesses
Lido’s origin story
Lido DAO proposals and improvements
Solana vs. Ethereum
The evolution of Ethereum’s economy
Konstantin’s other areas of interest
AI’s risk of centralization
The impact of AI on crypto
How CyberFund invests in new narratives

Episode links:

Konstantin Lomashuk on Twitter
cyber·Fund on Twitter
P2P org

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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As Ethereum’s roadmap shifted to a rollup-centric approach, a plethora of rollups have been launched, to the point where L3s have been conceptualized. Celestia sits at the forefront of modularity as it aims to replace the monolithic blockchain architecture with specialized layers that are more suited for scalability and customization. As a result, Celestia strictly focuses on data availability to accommodate the recent rollup expansion, as data storage represents the largest portion of fees on L2s. The Lemongrass upgrade lays the foundation for further use cases being enabled through Celestia, mainly revolving around interoperability and zk proof enabled ‘lazy bridging’.

Topics covered in this episode:

The vision behind Celestia
Rollup architecture
Centralised sequencers and the role of fraud proofs
Celestia’s market share
Rollkit & sovereign rollups
Governance & light clients
The importance of decentralisation: L1s vs. rollups
Celestia’s data availability capacity
Latency & Celestia block times
Interoperability & ‘lazy bridging’
The Lemongrass upgrade
On-chain economics & value accrual
Interchain accounts on Celestia
Crypto’s mainstream adoption
Future roadmap

Episode links:

Mustafa Al-Bassam on Twitter
Ismail Khoffi on Twitter
Celestia on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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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:

Predictoor & Numerai overview
Prediction markets
Prediction feeds
Prediction markets in TradFi and other use cases
Implementation of Ocean’s tech in Predictoor
Predictions vs. Futures
Market participants
Numerai hedge fund
Numerai’s trust assumptions
The role of AI
The evolution of AI and how it might solve market inefficiencies
Numerai crypto and how it differs from Predictoor
Predictoor x Numerai collaborations
The future of prediction markets

Episode links:

Trent McConaghy on Twitter
Richard Craib on Twitter
Predictoor on Twitter
Numerai on Twitter
Ocean Protocol on Twitter
Oasis Protocol on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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Interoperability is the holy grail for a multi-chain future or the ‘internet of blockchains’. However, while IBC (inter-blockchain communication protocol) revolutionised permissionless cross-chain transfers, it was Skip Protocol’s Go API that took advantage of Cosmos’ infrastructure (and its numerous messaging protocols), to create an end-to-end interoperability platform, allowing developers to design seamless cross-chain user experiences.

We were joined by Sam Hart, head of product at Skip Protocol, to discuss the challenges of interoperability across Cosmos & Ethereum, and how Skip:Go API & Skip:Connect push the crosschain boundaries towards end user adoption.

Topics covered in this episode:

Sam’s background
The Other Internet
Skip Protocol: bringing seamless interoperability to Cosmos
Monetization for Skip:Connect & Skip:Go
The Skip:Connect oracle and how Cosmos chains pull data
Cross-chain MEV
MEV blockers
Ethereum vs. Cosmos ecosystem development and activity
Ethereum bridges vs. Cosmos IBC
Cross-chain interoperability
Skip’s multi-chain expansion

Episode links:

Sam Hart on Twitter
Skip Protocol on Twitter
The Other Internet

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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In this day and age, privacy and confidentiality are more important than ever. Advancements in the cryptographic research of zero knowledge proofs (ZKPs), fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) and multi-party computation (MPC) paved the way for computational integrity and confidential computing. While FHE allows for computation to be performed on encrypted data without the need for prior decryption, it is MPC that enables compliance with regulations (e.g. AML). Arcium aims to build a global super computer for parallelised confidential computing, powered by custom MXEs (multi-party computation execution environments).

Topics covered in this episode:

Yannik’s background
Confidentiality & decentralised compliance
Confidential computing
TEEs (trusted execution environments) & side-channel attacks
ZKP vs. MPC vs. FHE
Arcium’s global super computer architecture
How Arcium differentiates itself from other privacy protocols
Use cases
Censorship risks
Ecosystem development

Episode links:

Yannik Schrade on Twitter
Arcium on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Felix Lutsch.

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The future is multi-chain, scalable and modular. However, while Cosmos’ IBC set the standard for interoperability, Ethereum’s L2 shift revealed a huge problem of liquidity fragmentation across the many rollups fighting for market share. Polymer aims to bridge the two ecosystems and bring the best of both worlds: Ethereum’s native liquidity and Cosmos’ interoperability, through a modular framework using the OP-stack and IBC.

Topics covered in this episode:

Bo’s background and the evolution of Polymer
Scaling limits of L1s vs. L2s
The ‘endgame’ for rollup frameworks
IBC
Interoperability & network topology: 70’s/80’s vs. blockchains
Polymer hub
Monomer framework
Pre-confirmation & finality trade-offs
Cross-rollup interoperability
Building appchains with Monomer
Modularity

Episode links:

Bo Du on Twitter
Polymer Labs on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture.

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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:

Hannes’ background
Existing wallet solutions and Zeal’s userbase
Wallet UX, account abstraction and passkeys
Security assumptions and passkey recovery
Smart contract interactions
Zeal’s mobile-first focus
IBAN & Gnosis Pay integrations
Capturing market share
Banking the unbanked
Gas fees
Cross-chain interoperability
DeFi & staking
Monetisation
Privacy
Zeal’s backend
Growth & business scaling in Web3
Zealot recruitment

Episode links:

Hannes Graah on Twitter
Hannes Graah on LinkedIn
Zeal on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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As the crypto industry matures, more sophisticated market participants become involved. As a result, risk management and hedging will evolve to levels seen in TradFi. However, regardless of the preferred market activity, when interacting with a blockchain, every actor competes for the same limited blockspace. Based on demand levels, the cost for securing that blockspace can fluctuate (in the form of miner fees for Bitcoin transactions, or gas fees for PoS blockchains). Therefore, a particular niche of power users could lower these costs by reserving blockspace in advance of elevated demand levels. Alkimiya set out to build just that - a marketplace for blockspace.

Topics covered in this episode:

Leo’s background
The vision behind Alkimia
Market participants for blockspace
Hedging costs
Use cases on Ethereum
Proposer-Builder Separation and preconfirmations
Reserving blockspace
Polkadot’s blockspace allocation
Current market sentiment. ETH vs. SOL

Episode links:

Leo Zhang on Twitter
Alkimiya on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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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:

Alex’s background, from AI to crypto
Nansen’s values
Querying blockchain data
Supported chains
Ensuring data accuracy
Generating wallet labels
The role of LLMs and AI
Data privacy and monetisation
On-chain transparency, privacy and ethics
Roadmap and further enhancements

Episode links:

Alex Svanevik on Twitter
Nansen on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

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).

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In 2017, Vitalik Buterin defined the ‘Scalability Trilemma’ which consisted of 3 attributes that every blockchain had to balance depending on its intended use cases: decentralisation, scalability and security. While Ethereum sacrificed scalability in favour of security and decentralisation, others prioritised throughput over the other two. However, a solution was proposed, inspired from Web2 computer science - sharding. Despite the fact that Ethereum’s ossification and significant progress in zero knowledge research led to a shift in Ethereum’s roadmap away from execution sharding towards L2 rollups, there were other L1s that were designed from the get-go as sharded blockchains. One such example was Elrond, who implemented the beacon chain PoS consensus alongside a sharded execution layer. Their recent rebranding to MultiversX alludes to a multi-chain, interoperable ecosystem, in which sovereign chains can communicate in a similar manner to cross-shard transaction routing.

Topics covered in this episode:

Lucian’s background and founding Elrond (MultiversX)
Elrond’s validator & shard architecture
Cross-shard composability
VMs, smart contracts and transaction routing
Self sovereignty and modularity
MultiversX vision
Roadmap

Episode links:

Lucian Mincu on Twitter
MultiversX on Twitter
xPortal on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch.

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Web3’s decentralisation is currently limited to smart contracts as they can be verified on-chain. However, until scalability and UX become on par with that of Web2, the only realistic way for crypto to reach mass adoption is threw off-chain dApps. This creates the premise for a security bottleneck in the form of centralised APIs used for on-chain querying. Mel Project aims to expand on-chain security and decentralisation (consensus) to off-chain apps, basically achieving off-chain composability through trustless light clients. Earendil, the backbone of their ecosystem, designed to resist ISP-level censorship, is a decentralized anonymous communication and payment network that enables autonomous applications and true P2P protocols.

Topics covered in this episode:

Eric’s background and founding Mel Project
Why Ethereum came short
Is Infura a security bottleneck?
Liberating markets (and the Internet)
Light clients and how Mel Project tackles them
Use cases
Smart contracts on Mel Project
Scaling the ‘world computer’
Mel Project’s consensus: Streamlet
Why Mel Project chose an UTXO model
Earendil & ISP-level censorship resistance
Roadmap
The Geph VPN
Mel Project’s low volatility (stable) coin
$SYM: PoS token
Misc.

Episode links:

Eric Tung on Twitter
Mel Project on Twitter
Geph VPN on Twitter
Moxie Marlinspike's 'My first impressions on web3' article
Streamlet BFT consensus model

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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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:

Gnosis’ background and vision
Gnosis 3.0
Gnosis DAO
Capital allocation management
How Gnosis Pay revolutionizes payment rails
The ‘Baguette Conundrum’: privacy & regulatory compliance for on-chain payments
The future of the EVM vs. modularity
Would Gnosis shift to an L2 architecture?

Episode links:

Friederike Ernst on Twitter
Gnosis DAO on Twitter
Gnosis Chain on Twitter
Gnosis Pay on Twitter
Safe on Twitter
CoW Swap on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture.

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We couldn’t miss EthCC 7, nor the chance to chat with Vitalik Buterin about Ethereum’s status quo as an L1 amidst the plethora of L2s competing for market share, and what challenges will most likely arise along the way (e.g. staking decentralisation).

Tune in for a captivating discussion on the importance of decentralisation as a last stand of human empowerment in the current geopolitical context and how it could positively impact AI's trajectory.

Topics covered in this episode:

Types of Ethereum ‘hardnesses’ (sic)
The L1 status quo
Staking decentralisation & block building
Non-financial crypto applications
Account abstraction & interoperability
Solana & Bitcoin ecosystems
DeSci, biotech & longevity
Geopolitics
Ethereum nation state?
The impact of AI
Do not go gentle into that good night

Episode links:

Vitalik Buterin on Twitter
EthCC on Twitter
Ethereum on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain.

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One of the bluechip DeFi projects and backbone of Ethereum liquidity markets, Aave has recently announced their V4 upgrade proposal, which aims (among others) to unify crosschain liquidity.

We were joined by Stani Kulechov, founder & CEO of Aave, to discuss the DeFi (r)evolution since ETH Lend to Aave V4, expanding to non-EVM chains and potentially even building a self-sovereign chain.

Topics covered in this episode:

The evolution of Aave
Aave V3 risk management & MakerDAO feud
Aave V4
Unified liquidity layer & risk pricing
GHO stablecoin
How the unified liquidity layer improves UX
RWA & liquidation strategies in Aave V4
Expanding to non-EVM networks
Building a self-sovereign chain
Aave’s role in the future of DeFi
How stablecoins will evolve
DeFi institutional adoption
Future roadmap

Episode links:

Stani Kulechov on Twitter
Aave on Twitter
Lens Protocol on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst.

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It is one thing to invest in early stage companies, but to do so in a nascent industry that constantly reinvents and rediscovers itself is a whole different venture. Richard Muirhead co-founded Fabric Ventures in 2012 around the thesis of supporting the Open Economy. While at first this meant investing in Bitcoin-related projects, once Ethereum was announced, a new horizon unveiled, filled with tremendous potential. Since then, the Open Economy thesis was adapted to match technological breakthroughs, and it is now centered around artificial intelligence, distributed computing and self sovereignty (over both fungible, as well non-fungible assets).

Topics covered in this episode:

Richard’s background and how he founded a crypto VC
Fabric Ventures’ thesis
How the AI thesis evolved
User-generated AI
On-chain autonomous agents
Upcoming DeFi innovations
Web3 trends that took Richard by surprise
Missed opportunities
The impact of crypto liquidity & market cycles on VC investing
How to vet projects in early investment phase

Episode links:

Richard Muirhead on Twitter
Fabric Ventures on Twitter
Fabric Ventures

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst.

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In a world constantly torn by social division amplified by polarizing scissor statements throughout social media, Taiwan conducted a social experiment aimed at strengthening social unity while also embracing diversity. Plurality details how Taiwan’s Digital Minister Audrey Tang and her collaborators achieved inclusive, technology-fueled growth that harnessed digital tools to provide an antidote to information chaos and warfare. The open-source book is living proof that present global challenges can be solved through democratic solutions that embody a decentralised ethos.

We were joined by Audrey Tang and Glen Weyl, co-authors of Plurality, to discuss the social dynamics they studied and how technology can be used to unite rather than divide.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Audrey & Glen met and Plurality’s genesis
Audrey’s journey from civic hacker to Taiwan’s Digital Affairs Minister
How democracy is perceived around the world
Establishing a co-creating mentality
Scissor statements and how to avoid division
How Polis works
Leveraging Web3 to strengthen democracy & social collaboration
Decentralised co-ownership
Web3 governance
Human facilitators

Episode links:

Audrey Tang on Twitter
Glen Weyl on Twitter
Plurality Book on Twitter
Plurality Institute on Twitter
Radical xChange

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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As more and more L2s launch promising to scale Ethereum, they end up competing for the same market share, userbase and liquidity. Apart from this harsh reality, crosschain interactions should be as seamless as possible in order to bridge different L2 ecosystems. Polygon envisions a scalable future in which various zero knowledge rollups post their proofs on an aggregation layer before settling on Ethereum, thus lowering latency and transaction costs as crosschain interactions take place expeditiously, without involving the L1 mainnet.

We were joined by Sandeep Nailwal & Brendan Farmer, to discuss Polygon’s aggregation layer and how it aims to solve the current fragmentation of Ethereum L2 scaling solutions.

Topics covered in this episode:

Polygon’s ZK expansion and the acquisition of Mir Protocol
Polygon’s aggregation layer
Block building between different L2s
Shared sequencing & asynchronous sequencing
Security guarantees of the aggregation layer
Sequencer decentralisation & censorship resistance
Chains using Polygon’s aggregation layer
Pessimistic proofs
Can optimistic rollups be included in the aggregation layer?
Type 1 prover and Plonky3
The evolution of ZKP systems
Ensuring ZK rollup integrity
The future of scalability

Episode links:

Sandeep Nailwal on Twitter
Brendan Farmer on Twitter
Polygon on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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In a world where a handful of (centralised) entities hold the majority of staked Ethereum (either directly or via delegation), the network’s decentralisation and security might be in peril. While there are multiple proposals being discussed to address this pressing matter, from reducing issuance after a certain breakpoint (~30% of total ETH being staked) to introducing more severe slashing for colluding entities, education and guidance remain paramount. EthStaker is a community led project whose goal is to guide, educate, support and offer resources for stakers, in order to lower the barrier of entry for solo stakers.

We were joined by Superphiz & Nixorokish, to discuss the current Ethereum staking landscape and what challenges need to be addressed to ensure the network’s decentralisation and security.

Topics covered in this episode:

Superphiz’ & Nixorokish’ backgrounds
Ethereum staking evolution
Staking options
Liquid staking
Centralization risks
Incentivizing solo staking
Lowering ETH issuance proposal & network security
Solo stakers
How a healthy staking ecosystem looks like
The importance of client diversity
Socio-political collusion
Misc.

Episode links:

Superphiz on Twitter
Nixorokish on Twitter
EthStaker on Twitter
EthStaker

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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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:

Dima’s & Paul’s backgrounds
Discovering psychedelics
Dealing with trauma
Psychedelics throughout history and societies
How Molecule DAO was founded
DeSci & on-chain IP
Ethereum early days, causality & rationality
PsyDAO
Network states
Misc

Episode links:

Dima Buterin on Twitter
Paul Kohlhaas on Twitter
Molecule DAO on Twitter
Psy DAO on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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The approval of Ethereum spot ETFs sent shockwaves through the industry as policymakers pivoted abruptly from threatening to veto FIT21 bill, to a pro-crypto discourse. One could say their hand was forced by the imminent US elections, but Ethereum is now officially classified as a commodity, nonetheless. As the regulatory hurdle seems, for the time being, surpassed, one should not forget the values promoted by the crypto movement from the get-go: decentralisation and permissionlessness. However, everyday users tend to overlook these aspects in favour of a more streamlined user experience. As technology evolves and scaling solutions mature, better UI & UX represent crucial goals in the race for end user adoption.

Topics covered in this episode:

Crypto regulations: FIT21 & Tornado Cash trial
Ethereum spot ETF
Is Ethereum a commodity or a security?
Scaling solutions & end user adoption
The importance of decentralisation
How Web3 lowers barriers of (permissionless) competition
Regulatory and legal hurdles
Educating ‘normies’ & UX
Technology: depoliticising money
Berlin blockchain week & Dappcon 2024 wrap-up

Episode links:

Austin Griffith on Twitter
Mona El Isa on Twitter
Peter Van Valkenburgh on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst and Brian Fabian Crain.

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The massive success of the recently approved spot Bitcoin ETF showed tremendous interest from large institutional players. Even despite negative takes in public appearances, behind the curtain, more and more ‘smart money’ accumulate $BTC, either directly or through ETF shares. The same is to be expected for Ethereum, yet uncertainty still looms due to its proof-of-stake consensus model and, ultimately, staking yield. While crypto natives quickly embraced both ETH staking as well as liquid staking, institutions could not justify the higher risk profile and lack of regulatory compliance. Alluvial and Liquid Collective seek to change this and provide ultrasound infrastructure for enterprise-grade security in liquid staking.

Topics covered in this episode:

Mara’s background
ETH 2.0 and the current staking landscape
Liquid Collective
ETH ETF and staking concerns
The risks of adjusting staking emissions
Restaking and new opportunities
Institutional staking and risk optimization

Episode links:

Mara Schmiedt on Twitter
Alluvial on Twitter
Liquid Collective on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch.

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5 years, 20 Grants, 3715 projects crowd-funded and over $60M raised towards public goods funding, from 4.2M unique donations. Gitcoin’s headline numbers are indicative of the massive success their quadratic funding (QF) and public goods funding models (PGF) have seen over the years. With Gitcoin 2.0, crowd-funding is further decentralised, Allo Protocol being open-source and permissionless: any ecosystem treasury can create their own Gitcoin Grants program to help their community fund what matters to them.

Topics covered in this episode:

Kevin’s background and Gitcoin’s journey so far
The utility of Gitcoin Passport
Gitcoin Grants sybil protection dilemma
Public goods & capital allocation
Quadratic funding (QF) & retroactive public goods funding (RPGF)
New allocation models introduced by Gitcoin 2.0
$GTC token utility & decentralising Allo Protocol
The current landscape of DAOs

Episode links:

Kevin Owocki on Twitter
Gitcoin on Twitter
Gitcoin Governance Forums

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

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The initial scaling roadmap for Ethereum featured execution layer sharding. However, the rapid advancements of layer 2 scaling solutions in general, and zero knowledge proofs in particular, caused a restructuring of the original plan. The reason was that rollups would have required less changes made to Ethereum’s base layer, hence lower risks. On the other hand, Near Protocol was designed from the ground up as a sharded system, capable of withstanding billions of transactions simultaneously, without sacrificing decentralisation or security.

Topics covered in this episode:

Illia’s & Alex’s backgrounds
Sharding and blockchain scalability
Challenges of building a sharded blockchain
Near namespace
Shard security & validator sampling
Stateless validation and data availability
State witnesses and chunk producers
Block production
Shards vs. Rollups
How Near could further improve
Leaderless chunk production
Chain abstraction

Episode links:

Illia Polosukhin on Twitter
Alex Skidanov on Twitter
Near Protocol on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy.

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Long regarded as an impending black swan, Tether has successfully weathered out the contagion and bank runs caused by Luna’s collapse in the depths of the 2022-2023 bearmarket. Since then, a large portion of Tether’s reserves has been shifted to treasury bills, which are the closest dollar proxy, positioning Tether among the top 20 holders of T-bills, worldwide. However, navigating the Tether FUD was not the first rodeo for Paolo Ardoino, as he has also previously led Bitfinex, which successfully recovered after a $72M hack, back in 2016. The worldwide adoption of USDT, especially in emerging markets and developing economies, serves as a testament to Tether’s commitment to create a product with tangible real-life applications.

Topics covered in this episode:

Paolo’s background
How Bitfinex succeeded
DEX vs. CEX UX
Entrepreneurship and company culture
Founding Tether and its use cases
Expanding Tether’s cross-chain support
Tether’s reserves and long-term vision
Stablecoin wars: BUSD & USDC
Decentralized stablecoins and bank runs
The potential of diversifying physical backing
Holepunch & Keet - the P2P renaissance
Incentivising P2P interactions

Episode links:

Paolo Ardoino on Twitter
Tether on Twitter
Bitfinex on Twitter
Holepunch on Twitter
Keet on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst.

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What started out as a plan to build prediction markets, Gnosis ended up building crucial Ethereum infrastructure and tooling. Safe is one of its many successes, which originated during the 2017 ICO mania, as a solution for managing the raised capital securely, via a multi-sig. Even back then, the multi-sig model was quickly adopted by the entire industry, as a gold standard for asset security. Smart accounts and ERC-4337 represent the next step towards mass-adoption, through achieving a Web2-like UX.

Topics covered in this episode:

Lukas’ background and how Safe was founded
Bitcoin vs. Ethereum multi-sigs
Smart accounts & ERC-4337
Safe’s design phylosohpy
Safe CORE, SDK & API
Safe wallet UX
Expanding cross-chain support
Safe account recovery
OpSec
Safe’s smart contract security
Gnosis ecosystem evolution

Episode links:

Lucas Schor on Twitter
Safe on Twitter
Gnosis DAO on Twitter
Gnosis Chain on Twitter
Gnosis Pay on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture.

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One of the most important hurdles to mass adoption is represented by blockchain scalability, which also hinders the real-life utility of its numerous applications. While there are different solutions being experimented with, one should not overlook the importance of security and decentralisation. Saga introduces the concept of chainlets, interoperable Cosmos-based sovereign blockchains that share the security of Saga’s mainnet validator set. The majority of their parameters are fully customisable, allowing developers to tweak them towards their own needs. Saga’s main focus is building their very own Web3 gaming ecosystem, providing game devs the scaling needed to unlock their full potential and creativity.

Topics covered in this episode:

Rebecca’s background and Saga overview
‘Infinite’ horizontal scalability
Saga chainlets and their focus on blockchain gaming
Saga validators and fee model
Building a gaming ecosystem. UGC
Validator & infrastructure challenges
Saga mainnet rollout
$SAGA token launch and airdrop
Takeaways

Episode links:

Rebecca Liao on Twitter
Saga on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch.

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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:

Impressions from ETH Denver
Rushi’s background
Move vs. Solidity
EVM compatibility
Parallelisation vs. intent-based transactions
Security and parallel state transitions
Transitioning from EVM to newer VMs
Berachain’s approach to EVM-compatibility
Movement Labs’ tech stack
Decentralising the sequencer
Movement’s M1 and M2 chains
Celestia DA and the Dencun upgrade
Restaking
Bitcoin L2s
IBC-compatibility and USDC on Movement
Ethereum x Cosmos convergence
dApps on Move

Episode links:

Rushi Manche on Twitter
Movement Labs on Twitter
Nebular Podcast 'Ethereum x Cosmos Convergence'

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst.

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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:

Yoann’s background and his interest in trading
The ever-changing trading landscape
Wintermute’s genesis
Trading vs. Investing vs. Market Making
What defines a good trader
On-chain trading vs. CEX trading
How Wintermute succeeded
Wintermute culture
rsync blockbuilder
Longterm predictions
AI impact
Misc. Learning new languages

Episode links:

Yoann Turpin on Twitter
Wintermute on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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Credit is a widely used term, which could essentially be summarised as “more capital so you can do whatever you want”. In DeFi, there are numerous ways of getting exposure to an asset in a leveraged manner: from looping to perpetuals and margin trading, the possibilities are endless (especially when you also account for synthetic versions). Gearbox Protocol aims to create a universal, composable, on-chain ‘credit layer’, through credit account abstraction. This approach simultaneously addresses three concerns: liquidity, security and, ultimately, user experience (UX).

Topics covered in this episode:

Mikael’s and Ivan’s backgrounds
Composable leverage explained
Leveraged staking
Gearbox credit account
Managing smart contract risk
Quotas and rate limits
Leveraged restaking
Governance and safety parameters
Scaling Gearbox
Fee structure

Episode links:

Mikael Lazarev on Twitter
Ivan on Twitter
Gearbox Protocol on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy.

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While large language models (LLMs) are rather passive from an economic perspective on their own, AI agents offer a preview of what truly autonomous AI applications can achieve. Fetch.ai aims to create a platform for economic interactions in the AI economy, where participants can provide many different kinds of stake, ranging from purely financial, in the form of cryptocurrency tokens, to utility based, in the form of data sets that LLMs can be trained on. It thus creates a supply chain that links different actors of the AI economy.

We were joined by Humayun Sheikh, co-founder & CEO of Fetch.ai, to discuss AI economic models and how LLMs can be integrated by agentic systems as a foundation for autonomous AI apps.

Topics covered in this episode:

Humayun’s background
Founding Fetch.ai
Multi-agent systems
Autonomous economic agent
Building a Cosmos based blockchain
Integrating ML with agent economy
Scalability & interoperability
Use cases & partnerships
AI x crypto projects
Incentivising developers
AI alignment problem
Fetch AI roadmap
The future of ML & LLMs

Episode links:

Humayun Sheikh on Twitter
Fetch.ai on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/539

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As technology progresses, infrastructure should be commoditised, especially in Web3, in order to avoid the creation of bottlenecks and gatekeepers. Blockchains are naturally oblivious to off-chain data, so they need oracles to fetch data. However, given their past technical limitations, oracles have failed to provide a decentralised and permissionless framework for data query. SEDA seeks to change this by creating an intent-based modular data layer, which brings off-chain data on-chain, in order for it to be available to any party, regardless of who requested it first.

We were joined by Jasper De Goojier, co-founder of SEDA Protocol, to discuss the oracle landscape and how SEDA aims to decentralise it and make data access permissionless.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jasper’s background
High level overview of SEDA
Oracle use cases
How SEDA Protocol functions
Intent-based data availability
Verifying subjective data & LLM integration
ZKPs & FHE for data privacy
Interoperability & bridging
Roadmap & optimistic oracles
SEDA token migration
Chain abstraction

Episode links:

Jasper De Goojier on Twitter
SEDA Protocol on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/538

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Blockchains are, by default, public ledgers containing every transaction recorded by the network. While this ensures transparency, it also violates users’ privacy once an address is linked to an entity. Apart from creating additional risk for self-custody, institutions are also limited by what they can publicly share on a blockchain. As a result, there is great demand and utility for on-chain, compliant privacy, which still requires KYC (& KYT), but protects them through cryptographic constructs. Zero knowledge proofs attest computational integrity, allowing for transactions to be bundled together and their correctness verified, without revealing each individual interaction.

We were joined by Anish Mohammed, co-founder & CTO of Panther Protocol, to discuss the importance of compliant privacy for on-chain transactions, powered by zero knowledge technology.

Topics covered in this episode:

Anish’s background
Panther’s value proposition
UX & on-chain privacy
Panther’s multi-asset shielded pool architecture
KYC & KYT
Shielded zones and transactions
Zone administrator
Address mapping
Roadmap & Panther mainnet
Target audience & adoption
Fee model & tokenomics

Episode links:

Anish Mohammed on Twitter
Panther Protocol on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/537

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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:

High-level overview of Lava Network
What problem Lava Network solves
Decentralised marketplace for RPC providers
Quality of centralised vs. decentralised RPC providers
Gateways
Lava Network participants
Specs & APIs
Quality of service & provider optimizer
How services are priced
Relayers
Modularity & chain abstraction
Magma & Lava mainnet

Episode links:

Yair Cleper on LinkedIn
Gil Binder on Twitter
Lava Network on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/536

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Prolonged range bound markets are a hallmark of bearmarkets and they usually end up chopping inexperienced or over leveraged traders. Customised structured products offer a solution for market participants that want to limit their downside, but also the upside, by introducing knock-outs at certain levels or triggers. Such custom options, usually with lower probabilistic chances of occurring, naturally come at a discount. This allows traders to hedge their risk, while also betting on certain outcomes or market scenarios.

We were joined by Zhiming Yang, co-founder of Orbit Markets, to discuss crypto derivatives and how TradFi expertise applies to customising structured products for crypto markets.

Topics covered in this episode:

Zhiming’s background in investment banking
FX derivative products
Exotic options
Crypto structured products
Custom solutions for crypto miners
Hedging Uniswap V3 impermanent loss
Options based on prediction markets
Managing counterparty risk
Protocolising structured products
Differences between TradFi and DeFi

Episode links:

Zhiming Yang on LinkedIn
Orbit Markets on Twitter
Orbit Markets website

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/535

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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:

David’s background
Founding Founders Pledge
How Founders Pledge works
Joining Founders Pledge
The challenges of managing a non-profit organisation
Building a great company culture. Hiring process
Maximising impact
Assessing non-profit organisations’ efficiency
Effective altruism
How philanthropy changed over time
Pledge Ventures
Future challenges for Founders Pledge

Episode links:

David Goldberg on Twitter
Founders Pledge on Twitter
Founders Pledge website
Pledge Ventures

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/534

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We are, arguably, still early in the crypto industry, but some people were really…really early. One of them is Lefteris Karapetsas, who joined EthDev in 2014 and contributed to building the Ethereum ecosystem, since before the genesis block. His crypto journey is one for the history books, as after EthDev he joined Slock.it, right around the time of The DAO raise…and hack. Lefteris remained a core supporter of decentralisation and an active member of the Ethereum community, being involved (and delegated) in multiple projects’ governance. More recently, he founded Rotki, an open source portfolio management app that aims to preserve user privacy.

We were joined by Lefteris Karapetsas, true Ethereum OG, to discuss his 10-year long journey through the Ethereum ecosystem, from joining EthDev (pre-Devcon 0) to founding Rotki.

Topics covered in this episode:

Lefteris’ background
Ethereum’s beginnings
Joining Slock.it
The DAO r(a)ise and hack
Ethereum classic hard fork
Brainbot & Raiden Network era
Founding Rotki
Crypto accounting privacy
The challenges of building a local app
Rotki membership tiers
Upcoming portfolio management on Rotki
Future roadmap for Rotki
How Ethereum’s culture evolved over time
Ethereum public good funding. Optimism governance
Hopes and fears regarding Ethereum’s future

Episode links:

Lefteris Karapetsas on Twitter
Rotki on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/533

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The Autonolas stack aims to address the ‘A’ in DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation), through its Open Autonomy framework, which enables the creation of autonomous, off-chain services for crypto applications. A key component for ensuring the proper operation of these off-chain autonomous economic agents, is the consensus mechanism. The protocol is overseen by the Governatooorr, the world’s first autonomous, AI-powered governor.

We were joined by David Minarsch, co-founder of Valory, to discuss the ever-changing landscape of AI agents and how they can be used to automate crypto applications.

Topics covered in this episode:

David’s background and founding Valory
Agentic AI systems
Multi-agent systems
Autonolas’ agent framework
Collaborative agent economy & composability
DAO optimisation via autonomous agents
Potential attack vectors & AI risks

Episode links:

David Minarsch on Twitter
Autonolas on Twitter
Valory on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/532

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Web2 file storage relies heavily on centralised entities, which have mostly outgrown their competitors, establishing a quasi-monopoly. The reasons for this are twofold: enormous operating costs and seamless user experience (e.g. social logins and account recovery), which, until recently, could only be solved through centralisation. Add to this the reluctance to change platforms as users need to re-upload their files, and you get an ossified user base. However, data leaks and hacks are a constant threat to users’ privacy, and indicate the disruptive potential of decentralised file storage and sharing.

We were joined by Andreas Tsamados & Vijay Krishnavanshi, co-founders of Fileverse, to discuss their decentralised file sharing solution and how they plan to disrupt the Web2 quasi-monopoly.

Topics covered in this episode:

Returning to the P2P roots of the Internet
Web2 vs. Web3 user experience (UX)
Business models for Web2 data
Decentralising data
Web3 data storage
Costs of data storage
Managing file updates and permissions
Fileverse use cases
The business model of Fileverse
Improving UX
Future roadmap

Episode links:

Andreas Tsamados on Twitter
Vijay Krishnavanshi on Twitter
Fileverse on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/531

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Fully homomorphic encryption, also known as the Holy Grail of cryptography, allows for computation to be performed on encrypted data, without the need for prior decryption. Its blockchain applications would enable programmable, institutional-grade, compliant privacy. With the addition of fhEVM libraries, solidity developers don’t have to worry about the complex cryptography and only decide what layers of the UX should be private.

We were joined by Guy Itzhaki & Guy Zyskind, to discuss fully homomorphic encryption and how Fhenix plans to leverage it to build an end-to-end encrypted Ethereum L2 with compliant privacy.

Topics covered in this episode:

Guy(s)’ backgrounds and why they chose FHE
The differences between TEE, MPC, ZK and FHE
Threshold decryption
The challenges with FHE. Hardware acceleration. Zama’s fhEVM
Fhenix architecture
fhEVM
Use cases for FHE & composability
Compliant privacy
Fhenix roadmap

Episode links:

Guy Zyskind on Twitter
Guy Itzhaki on Twitter
Fhenix on Twitter
Encryption Day @ ETH Denver (Feb. 28, 2024) registration

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/530

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What began as an AI company trying to seek solutions in order to pay remote (unbanked) workers, Near AI became, in 2018, Near Protocol. Its sharded design was inspired by modern database architecture and large language model (LLM) training. Near Protocol aimed to solve the scalability trilemma, through a modular approach, combining data availability sharding with stateless validation. By abstracting away archaic blockchain standards, Near basically enabled decentralised full stack development and, in terms of UX, a distributed custodial solution via chain abstraction and account aggregation.

We were joined by Illia Poloshukhin, co-founder of Near Protocol, to discuss Near’s journey, from AI company to high-throughput L1 blockchain, and how LLM training influenced the modular design choice.

Topics covered in this episode:

Illia’s background in AI & ML
Scaling large language models (LLMs) and the role of attention
Stochastic Parrot vs. Understanding spectrum
From Near AI to Near Protocol and the role of LLMs
How Near abstracted the blockchain away and enabled decentralised full stack development
Defining ecosystem standards to improve UX
Chain abstraction, account aggregation and interoperability
Chain threshold signature
Near’s intent layer
Near’s modularity, Nightshade sharding & stateless validation
EigenLayer integration

Episode links:

Illia Polosukhin on Twitter
Near Protocol on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/529

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As Ethereum ‘merged’ to its current proof-of-stake consensus model, the steep (for retail) minimum stake of 32 ETH created a serious risk of centralisation through staking delegation to centralised entities. Lido DAO was envisioned to preserve staking decentralisation, while also providing additional value for staked ETH in the form of liquid staking tokens (LST). However, as its market share reached the first threshold of 33%, concerns have started to be voiced regarding Lido’s own risk of centralisation. Through its dual governance model where stakers can veto $LDO voters, and the upcoming implementation of distributed validator technology (DVT) and community staking module (CSM), the Lido DAO aims to preserve staking decentralisation.

We were joined by Isidoros Passadis, contributor and Master of Validators at Lido DAO, to discuss Ethereum’s current liquid staking landscape, Lido’s governance model and what steps it takes to ensure staking decentralisation.

Topics covered in this episode:

Isidoros’ background and how he started working at Lido DAO
Lido’s core architecture and how it ensures decentralisation
Transitioning from a curated node operator set to a permisionless model
Distributed Validator Technology (DVT)
Lido’s dual governance model
stETH bridging and use cases in DeFi
How Lido adapts to Ethereum forks & EIPs
Maximum validator effective balance and minimal staking issuance
Ethereum vs. Lido governance
Lido’s approach to MEV
Restaking & Eigenlayer
Expanding Lido to other chains
Lido’s market share and other liquid staking competitors

Episode links:

Isidoros Passadis on Twitter
Lido on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/528

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10 years ago, Adam B Levine, the host of ‘Let’s Talk Bitcoin!’, decided that it was time to encourage other voices to step onto the crypto podcast scene. Among many applicants, Sebastien and Brian were the only 2 Europeans, so Adam suggested that they teamed up in order to record the pilot episode. On December 20th 2013, Sebastien and Brian released ‘Regulation and the Future of Bitcoin’, which marked the beginning of a 10-year (and counting) long journey. The rest is history.

On this anniversary episode, our hosts were joined by special guests and friends of Epicenter, to share their favourite moments and fun stories gathered during the 10 years of epicness.

Topics covered in this episode:

Adam B Levine - Epicenter’s godfather & the early days of Epicenter
Trent McConaghy - From Ascribe to Ocean. Ahead of the NFT and inscription hype
Sebastien Buergel - How he got into crypto, early ventures and Meher’s secret
Griff Green & Lefteris Karapetsas - The DAO hack and Sebastien Buergel’s alleged role
Sam Jernigan & Anna Rose - From TradFi to ZK
Jordi Baylina & Ryan Zurrer - Standing in the Epicenter of the storm and the unsung hero of the DAO hack
Richard Muirhead - The future of zk proofs, privacy and AI

Episode links:

Adam B Levine on Twitter
Trent McConaghy on Twitter
Sebastian Buergel on Twitter
Griff Green on Twitter
Lefteris Karapetsas on Twitter
Sam Jernigan on Twitter
Anna Rose on Twitter
Jordi Baylina on Twitter
Ryan Zurrer on Twitter
Richard Muirhead on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst, Meher Roy, Felix Lutsch and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/527

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gnosis.ioUnlike Ethereum ‘programmable money’, Bitcoin lacks native smart contracts by design. In an attempt to expand Bitcoin past its store of value narrative, wrapper contracts provided wBTC on other chains for DeFi applications. However, wBTC does not directly represent the native asset and it is, therefore, subject to potential exploits. DLC Link introduces a novel approach, by allowing entities to self-wrap dlcBTC.

We were joined by Aki Balogh, co-founder of DLC Link, to discuss discreet log contracts, their trust assumptions and what they mean for Bitcoin’s use cases and liquidity.

Topics covered in this episode:

Aki’s background and switching from AI to crypto
Discrete Log Contracts (dlc)
Trust assumptions in dlc
BTC bridges and dlc attesters
The non-fungibility of dlcBTC
Potential regulations
Current status and roadmap
Other BTC bridges

Episode links:

Aki Balogh on Twitter
DLC Link on Twitter
Epicenter's 10-year anniversary live stream

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/526

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When it comes to NFTs and blockchain gaming, very few companies can rival with Animoca Brands’ early conviction, investment thesis and time horizon. They understood early on that community building and network effects are the core pillars for a true paradigm shift in gaming. However, culture and narratives transcend the boundaries of gaming, becoming social phenomena. Animoca’s latest undertaking, the Mocaverse, aims to unite communities in a truly open metaverse.

We were joined by Yat Siu, chairman of Animoca Brands, to discuss the importance of digital culture in our modern-day lives and how NFT ownership unlocks community building in the open metaverse.

Topics covered in this episode:

Yat’s background and Animoca Brands’ interest in NFTs
Digital culture & narratives
Animoca Brands’ investment thesis
Blockchain & NFT adoption by Web2 brands
Financial inclusion & financial literacy
Ownership & play-to-earn gaming: East vs. West
NFT use cases & IP rights
Interoperability
Decentralisation & the value of ownership
Mocaverse
Long-term vision & the open metaverse

Episode links:

Yat Siu on Twitter
Animoca Brands on Twitter
Sandbox on Twitter
Axie Infinity on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/525

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With an average block time of 5 seconds and sub-cent transaction gas fees, Celo focuses on scalability and ease of access in order to bring DeFi to those that need it the most. Celo’s vision of ensuring equal access is reflected through their mobile-first design, aiming to disrupt legacy TradFi. The upcoming transition to an L2 rollup aims to tap into Ethereum’s security, while maintaining minimal costs through Celo’s scalability and EigenLayer’s data availability solutions.

We were joined by Marek Olszewski & Rene Reinsberg to discuss Celo's mobile-first approach to building a low-fee, high-throughput blockchain with real-world applications, and their transition to an Ethereum L2.

Topics covered in this episode:

Rene’s and Marek’s backgrounds
Celo’s design principles
Celo’s scalability
Mobile compatibility for blockchains and dApps
Wallet UX
Stablecoins as gas token & transaction confirmation times
Optimising mobile accessibility
SocialConnect & off-chain social identifiers
Celo’s transition to an Ethereum L2
Single block finality in an optimistic rollup
Sequencer decentralisation
Lowering costs of settling on Ethereum via EigenDA
Credit Collective & Impact Market
Mento DAO
The future of Celo

Episode links:

Marek Olszewski on Twitter
Rene Reinsberg on Twitter
Celo on Twitter
MiniPay on Twitter
cLabs on Twitter
Credit Collective on Twitter
Impact Market on Twitter
Mento Labs on Twitter

Sponsors:

dYdX Foundation: The recently launched dYdX chain features new governance and token economics, that empower stakers and promote validator decentralisation. Bridge your DYDX tokens and contribute to the evolution of dYdX chain, fully permissionless and community driven. - https://bit.ly/47kqG59

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/524

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Homo- (Greek prefix meaning ‘same’); -morphic (Greek suffix meaning ‘having a specific shape/form’)
Intuitively, one could deduct that homomorphic encryption indicates that the initial data and the encrypted result (cipher) could share the same form. Based on this property, it can be inferred that computation can be performed on the encrypted data, without prior decryption. By decrypting the result, you get the same output as the computation performed on the unencrypted data. While homomorphic encryption can be either additive or multiplicative, fully homomorphic encryption supports both types of operations. Unlike ZKPs, which are proofs of computational integrity, fully homomorphic encryption allows for encrypted data computation, without revealing additional information about the original data. This could provide the missing link for ensuring private transactions on blockchains’ public ledgers.

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:

Rand’s background and his interest in privacy
Meeting Pascal and founding Zama
Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE)
Zero knowledge proofs vs. Multi-party computation vs. Fully homomorphic encryption
Taking fully homomorphic encryption 'mainstream'
Zama’s products
fhEVM
How multi-party computation would secure fhEVM
Multi-key homomorphic encryption & functional encryption
Deploying an FHE rollup
FHE use cases
Privacy
Zama’s business model

Episode links:

Rand Hindi on Twitter
Zama on Twitter
Fhenix on Twitter

Sponsors:

dYdX Foundation: The recently launched dYdX chain features new governance and token economics, that empower stakers and promote validator decentralisation. Bridge your DYDX tokens and contribute to the evolution of dYdX chain, fully permissionless and community driven. - https://bit.ly/47kqG59

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/523

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"The advancements of zero knowledge proving technology, hardware acceleration and proof recursion have significantly increased the efficiency of EVM-compatible zk provers. As a result, the former tradeoff in efficiency implied by EVM-compatibility is gradually improving. Translating Ethereum’s virtual machine bytecode ensures seamless scaling for applications, without the need for additional audits and security compromises.

We were joined by Ye Zhang, co-founder of Scroll, to discuss the EVM-compatible zero knowledge landscape and how Scroll aims to stay true to Ethereum’s values and community.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ye’s background in zk research
Hardware limitations for zk tech
Founding Scroll
Why Scroll went for EVM compatibility
Efficiency of EVM- vs. non-EVM-compatible zk provers
The timeline of ideating Scroll
Scroll mainnet launch
Building the Scroll community
Scroll token
Sequencer decentralisation
Data availability, validiums and security tradeoffs
L2 bridges and interoperability
Roadmap

Episode links:

Ye Zhang on Twitter
Scroll on Twitter

Sponsors:

dYdX Foundation: The recently launched dYdX chain features new governance and token economics, that empower stakers and promote validator decentralisation. Bridge your DYDX tokens and contribute to the evolution of dYdX chain, fully permissionless and community driven. - https://bit.ly/47kqG59

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/522

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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:

Charles’ background, from Asia to CEO of dYdX
dYdX’s history and V4’s transition to a Cosmos appchain
How perpetual futures work
dYdX supported assets and permissionless markets
DeFi innovations vs. CEX UX
The current state of dYdX V4’s alpha mainnet
dYdX validator dynamics & order book decentralisation
dYdX’s DAOs & governance
Mitigating MEV (feat. Skip Protocol)
Migrating to Cosmos
Astropolis
The intersection of crypto & AI

Episode links:

Charles d'Haussy on Twitter
dYdX on Twitter
dYdX Foundation on Twitter
Charles' Astroprolis Keynote (Cosmoverse Istanbul)
Cosmos on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/521

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The very nature of Ethereum addresses, expressed as random hexadecimal character strings, represents a big hurdle for mass adoption, as they are not human-readable. ENS domains were envisioned to not only solve this and provide a seamless UX, but to also be the cornerstone of on-chain identities. However, in the current multichain landscape, a plethora of decentralised naming services arose, which led to a heterogeneous domain name pool. As a result, ENS aims to expand to L2s and non-EVM chains, attempting to provide consistency, in order to further reduce user friction and limit conflicting domain names.

We were joined by Nick Johnson, founder of ENS, to discuss the current state of decentralised naming services from a multichain and L2 perspective, and how these ultimately tie into decentralised identities.

Topics covered in this episode:

Nick’s background and ENS history
The plethora of decentralised naming services
ENS use cases
Interacting with Web2 DNS
L2 compatibility for ENS via CCIP Read
ENS wrapper and subdomains
CCIP Read
Bridging ENS to non-EVM L2s
Coinbase’s cb.id
ENS and on-chain privacy OPSEC
Account abstraction
The future of ENS
Governance

Episode links:

Nick Johnson on Twitter
ENS on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/520

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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:

Simon’s background
(Legacy) Bridging vs. Threshold Signature Scheme
Chainflip’s Just in Time (JIT) AMM vs. Uniswap’s V3/X
Providing liquidity on Chainflip
Slippage and UX
Deciding trading pairs
Chainflip validators
Validator stake auctions
Governance
Roadmap and bootstrapping liquidity

Episode links:

Simon Harman on Twitter
Chainflip on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/519

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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:

Guy’s background and founding Ethena
The history of stablecoins
The stablecoin trilemma and transparency
eUSD synthetic dollar mechanics
Ethena’s insurance fund and hedging
Minimising the impact of depegging
Leveraging centralised liquidity while maintaining self custody through MPC
User experience
Risk factors
CEX vs. DEX: liquidity, infrastructure, UX
The potential of fixed return rates
Supply & rates equilibrium

Episode links:

Guy Young on Twitter
Ethena Labs on Twitter
Arthur Hayes' article proposing the Naka synthetic dollar

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/518

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One of the best known memes in crypto is: 'Not your keys, not your coins'. This usually resurfaces whenever a (custodial) centralised exchange is hacked or goes bust altogether. Although Web3 provides the infrastructure for self custody, this often shares the fate of Pandora. Self-custody requires increased security measures, from both end-users, as well as application developers. Web3 wallets are the interface between users and decentralised applications deployed on blockchains. While Metamask still maintains the largest market share, a multitude of wallets have emerged, promising additional features and a better UX.

We were joined by Evgeny Yurtaev, co-founder & CEO of Zerion, to discuss the challenges of building a Web3 wallet and how Zerion aims to improve user experience, while still maintaining security.

Topics covered in this episode:

Evgeny’s background
The motivation behind building a Web3 wallet
Zerion UX and security
Seed phrase storing
Zerion user profile
Challenges in building a new wallet app
Protecting users and potential attack vectors
Supported blockchains and (seamless) bridging
Account abstraction and MPC
Business models for Web3 wallets

Episode links:

Evgeny Yurtaev on Twitter
Zerion on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/517

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Back in 2017, there was no DeFi as we know it today, yet MakerDAO were already envisioning and building towards what they thought to be a certainty. The backbone of DeFi is represented by stable coins, and MakerDAO quickly understood this: they set out to build a decentralised stable coin, $DAI (and its precursor $SAI). Being collateral-backed, the smart contract needs to know the value of that collateral, but any off-chain price data is not readily available on-chain. This is where oracles come in and provide data feeds on-chain. MakerDAO’s internal oracle has been active since 2017 on Ethereum and has recently branched out, forming Chronicle. By using aggregated Schnorr signatures, Chronicle solves the problem of oracle cost-efficient scaling.

We were joined by Niklas Kunkel, founder of Chronicle, to discuss the challenges and tradeoffs that oracles regularly face, and how Chronicle is solving them, continuing the ethos of early MakerDAO.

Topics covered in this episode:

Niklas’ background and the early days of MakerDAO
How MakerDAO evolved over time and the adoption of DAI
MakerDAO’s core principles
Why Chronicle branched out from MakerDAO
Oracle challenges & tradeoffs
Oracle validators
Business model for oracles
Providing oracle services to different blockchains
Schnorr signatures
Chronicle’s supported chains and oracle offerings
Real-world assets (RWA) and credit delegation

Episode links:

Niklas Kunkel on Twitter
Chronicle on Twitter
Maker DAO on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/516

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Data immutability and transparency are key features that define a blockchain’s public ledger. However, while transactions are indeed transparent, information surrounding the blockchain’s infrastructure layer is not readily available. Since Ethereum’s Merge to PoS and the introduction of staking delegation, actionable data on the validator and client status quos became crucial for the wellbeing of the network. Rated Network aims to build a reliable ‘reputation system for machines’ forming the infrastructure layer, through better data curation and improved transparency.

We were joined by Elias Simos, founder of Rated Network, to discuss data interpretation in blockchain infra and what conclusions can be drawn about validator performance, client diversity & much more.

Topics covered in this episode:

Elias’ background and founding Rated Network
Providing transparency in blockchain infrastructure layer
Tapping into Ethereum’s data. The subjectivity of performance
The consumer profile of Rated data
Ethereum’s credible neutrality & client diversity
EIP-7514 & managing Ethereum’s state bloat
Governance: dev council vs. on-chain
Expanding Rated to other PoS networks

Episode links:

Elias Simos on Twitter
Rated Network on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/515

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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:

The vision behind =nil; Foundation
Use cases for zk tech
zkLLVM circuit compiler
Homomorphic encryption, ZKPs & privacy solutions
ZKP marketplace
Why proof markets (currently) run on DBMS
Marketplace actors
Proof generators vs. PoW miners
Infrastructure challenges
Future roadmap

Episode links:

Mikhail Komarov on Twitter
=nil; Foundation on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/514

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Apart from its numerous financial applications, blockchain technology could also disrupt the gaming industry, causing a paradigm shift towards true digital ownership, one that would create new incentive models for both players, as well as developers. Up until recently, technological barriers seemed cumbersome for most game developers, but the advancements of layer 2 scaling solutions made on-chain integrations viable. Immutable set out to create an all-in-one platform for developers, empowering them to create a lush gaming ecosystem to seamlessly onboard Web2 players.

We were joined by Robbie Ferguson, co-founder of Immutable, to discuss the state of Web3 gaming and Immutable's contribution to this paradigm shift.

Topics covered in this episode:

Robbie’s background and founding Immutable
The pitfalls of centralised in-game asset marketplaces
Web3 game development challenges
Onboarding the Web2 gaming scene
Immutable’s value prop
Integrating Polygon’s zkEVM with the STARK-powered Immutable X
Immutable SDK & DevEx
AppStore’s Web3 policies
Immutable Passport
Enforceable royalties
$IMX

Episode links:

Robbie Ferguson on Twitter
Immutable on Twitter
Gods Unchained on Twitter
Guild of Guardians on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/511

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Social media revolves around content creation, and while the content itself could be tokenised through NFTs, SocialFi aims to take it a step further. The recently released friend.tech app went to show that users might be interested in something more than just content - creator shares. This implicitly links back to handles and profiles, and we can slowly start to unveil the primitives of social media. Lens Protocol predates the friend.tech venture, in both timeline, as well as scope. While social media became synonymous with monopolistic central entities, Lens Protocol aims to build the decentralised bedrock for Web3’s social layer. These primitives would not only be interoperable with any Web3 application, but they would redefine content creation, feed generation and monetisation.

We were joined by Stani Kulechov, founder of Lens Protocol & Aave, to discuss decentralised social graphs and how to leverage smart contracts to build the primitives for Web3's social layer.

Topics covered in this episode:

The vision behind Lens
Lens V2 and smart contract capabilities
Social media development platform
Defining the Web3 social media primitive
Feed generation algorithm on Lens
Integrating on-chain and off-chain infrastructure
The tragedy of the commons in decentralised social media
Can a public good architecture also accommodate private goods?
Growth model, sponsored transactions and monetisation
Governance and decentralised social media

Episode links:

Stani Kulechov on Twitter
Lens Protocol on Twitter
Aave on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/512

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The maximal extractable value (MEV) problem, if left unchecked, could represent an existential threat to Ethereum’s core values. One might argue that it is a natural result of solving market inefficiencies, but it entices to centralisation and collusion in order to extract the highest amount of value. Additionally, through front-running and back-running, it creates unnecessary overhead, which caused up to 2.4% of the total network congestion back in DeFi summer of 2020 (according to Flashbots’ research). As current infrastructure cannot eliminate MEV altogether, Flashbots and other research groups have tried to come up with solutions to address its aftermath.

We were joined by Stephane Gosselin, co-founder of Flashbots and Frontier Research, to discuss the MEV landscape, what research breakthroughs have been recorded and how they impact DevEx and UX.

Topics covered in this episode:

Reflecting on ‘Frontrunning the MEV crisis’
Decentralising the MEV ‘supply chain’
The vision behind Frontier Research
Request-for-Quotation (RFQ) explained
Block building
Uniswap X and how it might impact LPs & block building
Decentralising block building
Proposer-builder separation (PBS)
MEV burn
How MEV influenced different applications’ UX
Intents

Episode links:

Stephane Gosselin on Twitter
Frontier Research
Frontier Research on Twitter
Flashbots

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/511

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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:

Marko’s background
Cosmos SDK’s history and high-level overview
Cosmos SDK modules and VMs
Ethereum’s & Cosmos’ development philosophies
Cosmos SDK value prop and use cases
Cosmos SDK vs. other frameworks (e.g. Substrate)
Token value accrual and the fragmentation dilemma
Using the Cosmos SDK to build rollups
Cosmos SDK vs. Avalanche’s HyperSDK
Adoption of fraud proofs and validity proofs by the Cosmos SDK

Episode links:

Marko Baricevic on Twitter
Cosmos on Twitter
Cosmos SDK on Twitter
Interchain Foundation on Twitter
Binary Builders on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/510

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What started out as Matic Network, in 2017, and later rebranded to Polygon, in 2021, it is now facing another major milestone: Polygon 2.0. Apart from a tokenomics update, their plans include building an aggregation layer for every scaling solution that will settle on Ethereum. This will not only provide crucial rollup interoperability, but it will also further offload Ethereum by recursively combining multiple proofs into a single one.

We were joined by Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, for a fascinating discussion on Polygon’s future revamp, their views on infrastructure decentralisation and interoperability.

Topics covered in this episode:

Sandeep’s background and the vision behind Matic
Polygon 2.0
ZK rollup vs. Validium
Multi-purpose sharding
Tokenomics
Staking decentralisation
Interoperability
The multi-chain future outlook
Blockchain adoption and use cases

Episode links:

Sandeep Nailwal on Twitter
Polygon on Twitter
Polygon Labs on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/509

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After a 2021 frothy bull market, NFTs are currently experiencing the depression phase of the market cycle. However, despite the fact that only NFT art has truly found its product-market fit, NFTs in general represented the consumerist moment for crypto. In addition, they also provided a solution for tokenising real world assets (RWA) and intangibles, potentially penetrating markets worth hundreds of trillions of dollars. Moreover, similar to digital art, the advent of AI poses a challenge when it comes to establishing provenance, but this represents another utility for NFTs, as they can be traced back to their origin, given the public nature of blockchains.

We were joined by Stephen Young and Storm from NFTFi, to discuss the general state of the NFT market, future prospects for NFT development and how their P2P NFT lending platform unlocks new sources of liquidity in this bear market.

Topics covered in this episode:

Stephen’s & Storm’s backgrounds and what allured them to NFT finance
NFT market overview
Tokenised real world assets (RWA)
NFTFi’s peer-to-peer vs. peer-to-pool models
How other DeFi derivatives apply to the NFT market
NFT vs. fungible token market size
Blur’s Blend
NFT royalties
NFT lending protocols differences
How escrow contracts affect NFT ownership and utility
NFTFi roadmap
Interest rates for different collections
NFT art market
AI art
Collateralizing RWA

Episode links:

Stephen Young on Twitter
Storm on Twitter
NFTFi on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/508

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Ethereum scaling solutions often resort to tradeoffs, sacrificing security or decentralisation in favour of scalability. However, zk rollups hold the potential of increasing throughput, while also inheriting the layer 1’s security. This is achieved through zero knowledge validity proofs, which are published on Ethereum mainnet. The final hurdle remains the sequencer decentralisation. zkSync was designed around EVM-compatibility, offering custom scaling solutions through its hyperchain architecture.

We were joined by Alex Gluchowski, co-founder & CEO of Matter Labs, to discuss the zk rollup landscape, its bottlenecks, and what makes zkSync stand apart as the most popular rollup.

Topics covered in this episode:

High-level overview of zero knowledge proofs
ZK rollups
zkSync Era
ZK ecosystem taxonomy
Rollup performance: bottlenecks & tradeoffs
Bridging between zkSync hyperchains
Data availability. Validium vs. Volition
Governance & security layers
Sequencer decentralisation

Episode links:

Alex Gluchowski on Twitter
zkSync on Twitter
Matter Labs on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/507

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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:

Patrick’s background
Avalanche’s consensus protocol
Subnets
AvalancheGo design concepts
Warp messaging
Staking and subnet validators
HyperSDK
HyperSDK vs. Cosmos SDK
Avalanche throughput parameters
Custom solutions for developers

Episode links:

Patrick O'Grady on Twitter
Ava Labs on Twitter
Avalanche on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/506

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We couldn’t miss EthCC 6 and we got to sit down with Vitalik Buterin to discuss hot topics from the Ethereum ecosystem: MEV, staking derivatives, privacy, decentralisation and future interoperability. Ethereum’s merge to proof-of-stake brought with it the emergence of liquid staking derivatives (LSD). Similarly to mining pools in proof-of-work consensus models, staking pools could pose a risk to Ethereum’s decentralisation. In terms of privacy preserving solutions, the advances in zero knowledge research were a big breakthrough, especially as EVM-compatibility became possible. Maximal extractable value (MEV) remains a pressing matter, but hopes are that the upcoming proposer-builder separation (PBS) will alleviate it.

Topics covered in this episode:

EthCC 6 updates and development across Ethereum’s ecosystem
MEV and proposer-builder separation (PBS)
Liquid staking derivatives (LSD), governance and decentralisation
Privacy
ZK proofs and decentralised identifiers (DID)
Ecosystem interoperability
Cross-chain bridge security
Conclusions

Episode links:

Vitalik Buterin
Ethereum Foundation on Twitter
EthCC on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Friederike Ernst & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/505

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Blockchains are secured through the economic incentives offered to their validators/miners. The more robust the network effect among validators, the more difficult it is for that blockchain to be compromised. However, building a truly decentralised and reliable validator set is not a trivial task. As a result, hub and spoke ecosystem designs like Cosmos’ (and even Polkadot’s), aim to share the main hub’s validator set and security to their ‘consumer’ chains (parachains in Polkadot’s case). Neutron relies on interchain queries, interchain accounts and interchain (replicated) security to deliver the most secure CosmWasm smart contract platform in the Cosmos ecosystem.

We were joined by Avril Dutheil, GM at Neutron, to discuss Neutron’s smart contract platform and how it leverages replicated security (ICS) and interchain accounts (ICA).

Topics covered in this episode:

Avril’s background and the value prop behind Neutron
Practical examples
Interchain accounts and different use cases
Interchain security
Atom hub vs. Polkadot relay chain. Onboarding and security models
Offboarding Cosmos consumer chains
Replicated security vs. Modular blockchains
Neutron’s token utility and governance

Episode links:

Avril Dutheil
Neutron on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/504

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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:

Sveinn’s background and building Monerium
Regulated on-chain EUR and seamless SEPA on- and off-ramps
How electronic money regulation differs from MiCA
What assets back EURe
Monerium’s business model
EURe’s adoption compared with other stablecoins (USDC, USDT)
Issuing other currencies on-chain
CBDCs and the banking sector
Challenges of building on SEPA
IBAN discrimination
KYC limitations
DeFi and stablecoin backing
Real world assets used as on-chain collateral

Episode links:

Sveinn Valfells on Twitter
Monerium on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/503

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Layer 2 zero knowledge roll-ups have initially been used for achieving private transactions on blockchains. However, past simple transfers, interacting with a public smart contract posed a serious challenge. As research and technology evolved, proof construction became much more efficient, enabling zk-powered scalability. There is a variety of pros and cons for each type of proof system, but given the impending rise of qunatum computers, we have witnessed a recent migration from SNARKs to STARKs. While the former relies on trusted setups, zk-STARKs are quantum-resistant.

We were joined by Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder of Starkware, to discuss Starknet's layer 2 architecture, as well as the upcoming update to Cairo 1.0 and how it will impact scalability performances for STARKs.

Topics covered in this episode:

Shifting from privacy to scalability
ZK roll-up taxonomy and main differences between SNARKs and STARKs
Why scalability is easier to implement than privacy solutions
Constructing proofs efficiently in Cairo
Starknet’s layer 2 architecture
Built-in account abstraction
Volition, data availability and trust assumptions
Sequencer decentralisation and crypto regulations
Storage proofs
Cairo upgrades & TPS
Council-based vs. DAO governance
Future developments

Episode links:

Eli Ben-Sasson on Twitter
Starknet on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/502

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As institutional money set their eyes on crypto, some degree of centralisation and regulation was inevitable. However, the key aspect is to limit it to access gateways and not affect protocols’ decentralisation. Recent events have shown that price manipulation is easily achieved in conditions of low liquidity, hence regulated fiat on- and off-ramps will, in the end, also benefit retail consumers. It once again all boils down to achieving these goals while maintaining privacy for users and ensuring that regulations will not stifle innovation.

We were joined by Luka Müller, co-founder of MME Legal Firm & Sygnum Bank, to discuss about crypto regulations, institutional investors, user privacy & CBDCs.

Topics covered in this episode:

The evolution of MME Legal Firm & Sygnum Bank
Sygnum Bank’s pro-crypto services & target clients
The impact of FTX’ collapse. DeFi vs. CeFi
Investor protection post-Terra Luna’s demise
Expanding in the APAC region
Switzerland’s pro-crypto regulations
User privacy vs. KYC & AML
US’ crypto policy: regulation by enforcement
EU’s MiCA framework
Luka’s insights on crypto’s value proposition
CBDC vs. cash privacy
Exciting crypto trends and innovations

Episode links:

Sygnum Bank on Twitter
MME Legal on LinkedIn

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/501

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As Epicenter hits the 500 episode milestone, our hosts look back on almost 10 years of crypto developments, analysing the good, the bad and the ugly. What projects & narratives have surprised our hosts? Has Bitcoin failed in becoming a reliable store of value? Will ZK proofs provide the much needed solution to AI’s alignment problem? Last but not least, are we still early? Get ready for a fascinating discussion, albeit gloomy for this special occasion.

Thank you for being part of this amazing journey! We wouldn’t have made it so far without your continuous support! Looking forward to the next 500 episodes!

Topics covered in this episode:

Brian’s health update
Looking back on 10 years of Epicenter & crypto development
Are we still early on Bitcoin or has that ship already sailed?
Stores of value: Bitcoin vs. Gold vs. Market Indexes
The need for stablecoins, including algorithmic ones!
Projects & narratives that took a 180 degree turn
AI vs. verifiable computation via ZK proofs
The control & alignment AI problems
Decentralised identity systems (DID)
Looking forward to the next 500 episodes

Sponsors:

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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst, Meher Roy, Sunny Aggarwal & Felix Lutsch.

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In order to achieve true transaction privacy, it is not enough to encrypt or build ZK proofs for transaction bundles, as long as the underlying blockchain uses an account-based model. Aztec is building a ZKVM that superposes an UTXO model, so that balances are constantly updated as new, untraceable, log entries. The upcoming Aztec 3 aims to enable privacy-preserving smart contracts, using a hybrid, multi-layered rollup. This approach allows for both public and private smart contracts to be executed simultaneously.

We were joined by Zac Williamson & Joe Andrews, to discuss the evolution of Aztec, from ZK Money to their upcoming privacy-preserving hybrid ZK rollup.

Topics covered in this episode:

The evolution of Aztec, from ZK money to Aztec 3
How Aztec’s ZKVM ensures privacy for Ethereum transactions
The need for UTXO model for privacy-preserving encrypted databases
Interacting with public smart contracts in a private manner
Technical roadmap and challenges faced along the way
How Aztec differs from Mina protocol
Recursive proofs
Estimating gas
Main-net sequencer decentralisation
Goblin Plonk
The future of programmable privacy

Episode links:

Zac Williamson on Twitter
Joe Andrews on Twitter
Aztec on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/499

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As crypto evolves, it becomes clearer that the future will be multi-chain. Presently, moving funds between different blockchains is frustrating...to say the least. The current bridging solutions are prohibitive from a UX perspective, mainly due to how finality is reached across different blockchains. This translates to long wait times and anxiety when interacting with new protocols, caused by the incertitude of funds arriving safely on the other side. Another major blockage consists of gas fees, particular to each blockchain, which often require an additional swap. But what if, users could enjoy near-instant cross-chain swaps (sub-20 second) and one-click transaction aggregators?

We were joined by Fig, co-founder of Squid Router, to discuss how they leverage Axelar's infrastructure to achieve one-click, near-instant cross-chain swaps, creating user-friendly interoperability.

Topics covered in this episode:

Fig’s background
How Squid tackles interoperability
Building a better DevEx & UX on top of Axelar’s security
Choosing what DEXes to wrap & aggregate in Squid
Optimising gas fees, prices & MEV cross-chain
Squid’s business model
Integrating other messaging protocols
Addressing finality to reduce swap times below 20 seconds
How Squid x Axelar solve other bridging protocol issues (e.g. multichain hack)
Squid use cases

Episode links:

Fig on Twitter
Squid on Twitter
Axelar on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/498

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Ethereum's merge and transition to a proof-of-stake consensus implied switching from proof-of-work mining to transactions being validated by entities that have an economic stake in the network. Proof-of-stake distributed networks are subject to complex game theory models (e.g. slashing). Distributed validator technology (DVT) enables a more modular validator stack at every level: key pairs, hardware and entities. This reduces trust dependencies and increases security for validator entities.

We were joined by Collin Myers & Oisín Kyne, founders of Obol Network, to discuss Ethereum's 2.0 PoS consensus, the current validator landscape and how distributed validator technology (DVT) allows for an increased security and overall smoother UX for validator entities.

Topics covered in this episode:

Collin’s & Oisín’s backgrounds
Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) explained
How DVT improves user experience for different staking models
Reducing validator costs and increasing fault tolerance through DVT
Obol middleware approach
Obol v.2
Interacting with other middleware from the Ethereum stack
Expanding DVT to other ecosystems
Future validator landscape
How post-Danksharding data availability will be handled by an Obol cluster
L2 Ethereum equivalence

Episode links:

Collin Myers on Twitter
Oisín Kyne on Twitter
Obol Network on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/497

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Public transaction history in blockchains represents one of their key features which, alongside immutability, aim to provide an alternative to CeFi. However, this transparency comes at a price: privacy. As a result, different solutions have been proposed, that preserve privacy while maintaining all the other benefits of blockchain technology, but there currently isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to this problem. For example, zero knowledge proofs convey the validity of a transaction batch without sharing any other details, but the underlying arithmetic circuits are both complex as well as computational intensive. Umbra proposes a system that relies completely on elliptic curve cryptography, employing multiple private-public key pairs to achieve stealth payments.

We were joined by Ben DiFrancesco, founder & CEO of ScopeLift, to talk about Umbra's privacy preserving stealth token transfer system and if the need for privacy on blockchains outweighs any implicit UX frictions.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ben’s background
Umbra's mission
How Umbra works
Non-interactive key distribution
Potential solutions (& trade-offs) for Umbra's computational intensity
Generating private-public key pairs by the Umbra smart contract
User experience (UX) for senders and receivers
Fee structure for deterring griefing attacks
How Umbra works for ERC20 tokens & NFTs
Privacy preserving withdrawals from stealth addresses
Privacy vs. UX friction
Smart wallets & account abstraction
Prioritising privacy

Episode links:

Ben DiFrancesco on Twitter
Umbra on Twitter
ScopeLift on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/496

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As the second Avalanche summit drew to a close, Sebastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal sat down with Emin Gün Sirer for a fascinating conversation exploring future innovation narratives in crypto. Longtime friend of Epicenter, Ava Labs' founder and CEO shared his unique insights on the industry, from both a founder, as well as a former academia perspective.
Given Avalanche's consensus & architecture, it boasts high TPS and scalability properties, incentivising founders to build better products in the AVAX ecosystem.

One of the most controversial narratives is that of LLMs (i.e. ChatGPT) powering smart contract development by bypassing programming languages and even bytecode altogether. The question arises if replacing the human third-party with an AI fixes trust issues or not, but only time will tell which piece of code we can actually consider 'law'.

Topics covered in this episode:

Emin’s background, from academia to running a multi-billion dollar company
Main takeaways from the 2nd Avalanche summit
Innovation narratives in the Avalanche ecosystem. NFTs & blockchain gaming
The Avalanche architecture, consensus & scalability
Avalanche’s evolution
ChatGPT smart contracts & no-code blockchains
Auditing AI & security
Innovation vs. Stagnation
Bitcoin, BTC.b & ordinals
Bridging Cosmos with Avalanche: IBC x Warp
Best & worst products built by crypto

Episode links:

Emin Gün Sirer on Twitter
Avalanche on Twitter
Ava Labs on Twitter
Shrapnel on Twitter
Gunzilla Games on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/495

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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:

Ali’s background
Why Google didn’t embrace crypto
a16z’s team structure
The role of a GP in a VC
a16z’s thesis when it comes to crypto investing
Which crypto niches Ali is most bullish on
Governance vs. platform risk
Valuation-based investments
Protocol revenue and monetary premium for L1s
Token vs. Equity
How to prevent banking crisis contagion for crypto projects

Episode links:

Ali Yahya on Twitter
a16z crypto
a16z

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/494

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The end of 2022 and beginning of 2023 were marked by centralised institutions failing: from CEXes to CeFi itself, contagion spread quickly in over-leveraged and opaque entities. Amidst this chaos, (crypto)people turned their hopes, once again, to DeFi. However, in lack of traditional enforcing mechanisms, not even battle-tested decentralised lending protocols could find a solution to provide under-collateralised loans, aka credit. Mars Protocol, with its unique hub & outposts architecture, aims to answer this need in the Cosmos ecosystem, by deploying on Osmosis and tapping into its deep liquidity. From manual leverage to credit and yield farming, Mars will feature a wide suite of DeFi products.

We were joined by Jose Macedo, founder of Delphi Labs, to discuss the history of Delphi Digital, their learnings from incubating projects and the vision behind Mars’ ‘Red Bank’ DeFi products.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jose’s background
Delphi Digital’s history
Incubating projects on Solana and Terra
Learning from Terra
The vision behind Mars Protocol
Mars’ DeFi suite
Different risk parameters and collaterals
Mars’ module architecture (outposts) in the Cosmos ecosystem
How Mars Protocol differs from Osmosis
Mars Protocol roadmap & Mars v.2
Ecosystem accelerator

Episode links:

Jose Macedo on Twitter
Delphi Labs on Twitter
Delphi Digital on Twitter
Mars Protocol on Twitter
Astroport on Twitter
Osmosis on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/493

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We often take data storage for granted, but the rise of centralised storing facilities (i.e. AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.) hangs over like Damocles’ sword. When it comes to blockchains, full nodes store that network’s complete data history. Even if storage costs are set to decrease as technology evolves, so do blockchains accumulate more data over time. An interesting solution would be to create a decentralised backup for blockchain data and Arweave is a prime candidate for it. There is but a missing link represented by uploading and validating different blockchains’ data. This is where KYVE steps in, offering a decentralised validating solution to verify uploaded blockchain data and even retrieve it from Arweave, on demand. This also extends to off-chain data, opening new possibilities for data availability and scalability.

We were joined by John Letey, founder and CTO of KYVE Network, to discuss the challenges and use cases of decentralised data storage and how blockchain interoperability could benefit from it.

Topics covered in this episode:

John’s background
Why KYVE migrated to a Cosmos app-chain
High-level explanation of KYVE
KYVE’s data pools and data streams
How KYVE connects to Arweave
Validating uploaded blockchain data
How Arweave works
KYVE v.2
How slashing is handled
KYVE use cases
Future roadmap

Episode links:

John Letey on Twitter
KYVE Network on Twitter
KYVE Network
Arweave

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/492

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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:

Tim’s background
Urbit explained
How Uqbar took shape
Integrating crypto in the Urbit stack
Hoon’s usability and DevEx
AI-enabled Uqbar
Uqbar interoperability
Rollup vs. L1 approach for Uqbar
Hybrid ZK-optimistic rollup
Getting from programming in Hoon to ZK proofs
Use cases for Uqbar & Urbit

Episode links:

Tim Galebach on Twitter
Uqbar on Twitter
Urbit on Twitter
Uqbar

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/491

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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.

We were joined by Ryan Zurrer, founder of Dialectic AG, to discuss about the crypto investment landscape and the evolution of the industry from BTC to P2E gaming.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ryan’s background, from BTC mining to ICOs and P2E gaming
Keepers in blockchain networks explained
Axie Infinity and the evolution of play-to-earn gaming
Web2 vs. Web3 gaming and the importance of communities
NFTs in art, culture and blockchain gaming
Traditional vs. digital fine art
Dialectic’s investment strategies
MEV & market efficiency
Geopolitical climate and crypto investments
Psychedelics & MAPS

Episode links:

Ryan Zurrer
Dialectic AG
Vine Ventures
MAPS

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/490

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When it comes to scaling blockchains, there are 2 main types of off-chain solutions: sidechains and L2s (i.e. rollups, state channels). These are all intended to scale monolithic L1 blockchains. However, the core functional layers of a blockchain could also be reinvisioned as customisable building blocks. This idea led to the creation of modular blockchains, which handle execution, consensus and data availability separately from one another, thus considerably increasing throughput.
Dymension is a Cosmos modular blockchain hub that acts as settlement layer for RollApps (app-specific chains).

Sebastien was joined by Barry, Head of Product at Dymension, to discuss the advantages of developing modular blockchains, their scalability and how RollApps integrate in this environment.

Topics covered in this episode:

Barry’s background
The evolution of scaling solutions & Dymension’s RollApps
The nuances of different types of rollups (L1 vs. L2, Ethereum vs. Cosmos)
The scalability trilemma and modular blockchains
Cosmos’ ICS scaling
The architecture of Dymension and its RDK
How RollApps choose the data availability layer
RollApp interoperability
Incentivising sequencer neutrality
Network roles in Dymension and differences between SDK & RDK
Use cases & limitations of RollApps
Future roadmap

Episode links:

Barry on Twitter
Dymension on Twitter
Dymension's website
The Interop Podcast on Twitter
Celestia on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/489

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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.
DeSci (decentralised science) sets out to change this paradigm by funding early stage research via DAOs. When it comes to scientific publications, peer reviewing is also decentralised and incentivised, considerably speeding up the process. Moreover, contributions can be clearly retraced, avoiding false claims over IP, and the research itself becomes much more easily accessible and disseminated.

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:

Vincent’s background and his interest in longevity
Laurence’s background and his interest in biotech
The purpose of DeSci
Which science branch is better suited for DeSci
How DeSci fixes contribution acknowledgement & incentive misalignment
From research idea to startup via DeSci funding
$VITA token utility
Accelerating scientific publishing via DeSci
How IP is attributed in a DeSci setting
Project review and governance in Vita DAO

Episode links:

Vincent Weisser
Laurence Ion
Vita DAO
Molecule DAO
Vita DAO projects
Molecule
Bio DAO launchpad
The Longevity Prize
The Longevity Decentralized Review

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/488

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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:

The relationship between Polygon and zkEVM
The differences between Polygon’s multiple zk rollups
Network participant roles in zkEVM
Transaction submission stages
Sequencer decentralisation
Transaction costs
Use cases for different zk rollups
Open-sourceness, decentralisation and the licensing of zkEVM’s prover
The decentralised identity project (DID)
Roadmap after main-net launch

Episode links:

Polygon zkEVM – From Circuits to Mainnet – Part 1
Jordi Baylina on Twitter
David Schwartz on Twitter
Polygon zkEVM on Twitter

Sponsors:

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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/487

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With the upcoming launch of Polygon's zkEVM mainnet, L2s are undoubtedly a huge narrative that is unfolding in 2023. It is time to take a step back and recognise the incredible amount of effort that has gone into researching and building L2 scaling solutions in general and zk rollups in particular. Tech-wise, we barely scratched the surface of general purpose processors that can handle zk circuits, so there is still tremendous room to grow. As layer 2s become more efficient, so will the applications that are dependent on blockchain throughput.

We were joined by Jordi Baylina (tech lead) & David Schwartz (CTO) from Polygon's zkEVM, to discuss the different milestones & challenges they had to overcome in designing a zk rollup, from circuits to mainnet.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jordi’s & David’s backgrounds
The idea behind Hermez Network
zkEVM scaling & validity proofs
How different ZK rollup models function
What challenges zkEVM encountered during development
Evolutionary pathways in the realm of ZKPs
Auditing zkEVM
Trusted setup requirement for zkEVM

Episode links:

Jordi Baylina on Twitter
David Schwartz on Twitter
Polygon zkEVM on Twitter

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/486

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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:

Jesse’s background and his role as Head of Protocol at Coinbase
Base’s business model & thesis
Building on the Optimism stack
Permissionlessness
How regulations are going to influence users of Base (vs. Coinbase)
Learning from the competition (BSC)
Different fee markets to offset transaction costs
Why Base chose the Optimism stack
Base’s upgradeability
Tackling Optimism’s withdrawal period
Bootstrapping Base
Future roadmap and mainnet timeline

Episode links:

Jesse Pollak on Twitter
Base on Twitter
Coinbase on Twitter
Optimism on Twitter

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/485

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Building a blockchain from the ground-up is a daunting task in itself, one that should not be a concern when designing an end-user application. Moreover, as Web3 aims to move away from centralized vertical scalability towards a multi-chain decentralized environment, horizontal scalability and cross-communication should represent a standard. While Cosmos solves the latter, deploying application-specific blockchains has not been a streamlined process. Saga aims to address this by providing automated means of deploying application-specific blockchains, called chainlets that use the validator set of Saga. This leads to a simplified user (and developer) experience, presently much needed in the Web3 gaming and entertainment industries.

We were joined by Rebecca Liao, co-founder & CEO of Saga, to discuss bootstrapping app-specific chains in just one click, leveraging the scalability & security of Cosmos, thus allowing developers to focus more on the product and less on the blockchain infrastructure.

Topics covered in this episode:

Rebecca’s background & building Saga
Leveraging Cosmos SDK, IBC & ICS to bootstrap other chains
Chainlets
Saga validators & tokenomics
IBC & elastic scaling for chainlets
ICS & Saga’s tech stack
Chainlet customization
Partnerships & use cases
Chainlet ‘Musical chairs’ auction
Targeting gaming and entertainment industries
Multi-chain future and inter-chain communication

Episode links:

Rebecca Liao on Twitter
Saga on Twitter

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/484

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Web3 has always been criticised for its not so friendly user experience. While one might argue that it requires a mere learning curve, similar to that of e-mail services when first introduced, Web2’s ease of use has become the norm. Account abstraction and smart contract automation are just 2 solutions for unlocking higher flexibility in transaction execution logic. These backend improvements, alongside scaling solutions and a more user-friendly frontend (e.g. wallets, interfaces) will represent the main drivers of adoption.

We were joined by Luis Schliesske & Hilmar Orth, founders of Gelato Network, to discuss about Gelato Network’s approach to decentralising Web3's backend through automation and relaying, in order to onboard the next 100 million users.

Topics covered in this episode:

Luis’ and Hilmar’s backgrounds
The need for automation in smart contracts
How bots operate in automation processes
Interacting with Gelato’s node network
Automation, relayers & gasless transactions
How automation impacts trust assumptions
Gelato beta start & use cases
Account abstraction & user experience

Episode links:

Luis Schliesske on Twitter
Hilmar Orth on Twitter
Gelato Network on Twitter

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/483

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The Metaverse has taken the world by storm in 2021 and even though many have and are still opposing it, the fact that we are spending the majority of our lives online is an undeniable truth. The boundaries between physical and digital worlds are slowly eroding away. Our digital presence generates a data footprint that is currently being stored in big tech’s centralized silos. As a whole, these user-generated data breadcrumbs represent our digital identity. Web3 has, so far, mainly focused on financial aspects, disregarding user specific data even though the latter actually represents the vast majority (>90%) of all generated data.

We were joined by Joel Thorstensson, co-founder of 3Box Labs, to discuss Ceramic’s goal of decentralizing ‘social’, account-based data in the form of user-generated event streams, that could unlock true application interoperability built on a composable data layer.

Topics covered in this episode:

Joel’s background & founding Ceramic
The concept behind Ceramic
Ceramic’s event stream design vs. other data solutions
The need for consensus in Ceramic
Use cases for Ceramic
Data privacy potential
Application interoperability
Data redundancy & protection
Ceramic’s ecosystem & business model

Episode links:

Joel Thorstensson on Twitter
Ceramic on Twitter

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/482

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From technological breakthrough to philosophical defiance, the topic of AI has always sparked intense debates ever since Alan Turing & John McCarthy advanced this branch of computer science. One might argue that this was caused by expectations overwhelmingly surpassing technological capabilities. However, the recent public release of ChatGPT has rekindled former sci-fi apocalyptical scenarios, even if it is (still) just a trained language model. Humanity gazed in awe as a simple input/output text interface could instantly disrupt fields such as software engineering or copywriting. Worst part? It also challenged (arguably) the most important human-specific trait: creativity (Midjourney). Data is the lifeblood of AI as it increases the model’s prediction accuracy: larger input sample translates into more outputs that help fine-tune weights during back-propagation cycles (the model ‘learns’).

We were joined by Trent McConaghy, founder & CTO at Ocean Protocol, to discuss the advantages of implementing blockchain (& NFT) technology in data management and trading, what makes a particular data set valuable and what challenges derive from AI implementations and the data digital gold rush.

Topics covered in this episode:

Trent’s AI background & founding Ocean
The evolution of Ocean Protocol
Managing third-party access to data NFTs
Minting data NFTs & their metadata
Discovering & verifying data quality
AI generated data sets & intellectual property
Ocean marketplace user base
Data farming
Data curation & veOcean rewards

Episode links:

Trent McConaghy on Twitter
Ocean Protocol on Twitter
Ocean Marketplace

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/481

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DeFi lending protocols operate accordingly to their smart contracts and are perfect examples of ‘Code is law’, even if some recent exploits have not quite abided to this harsh truth. From well established protocols to degenerate DeFi farms with astronomic APYs, they all mainly use liquidity pools. Morpho Labs proposes a peer-to-peer approach that operates on top of another protocol’s liquidity pool (i.e. Aave, Compound), offering better rates for lenders as well as borrowers.

We were joined by Paul Frambot, co-founder and CEO of Morpho Labs, to discuss about the benefits and challenges that arise from a peer-to-peer lender-borrower matching system and what failsafes are in place.

Topics covered in this episode:

Paul’s background and diving into DeFi
Founding and funding Morpho
The concept behind Morpho
Improving lending & borrowing APYs
How lenders and borrowers are matched
Managing gas fees in a P2P setting
Securing collateral in peer matches
Sharing liquidity with Aave and Compound
Morpho token economy
Managing liquidations
User experience & integrations
Morpho’s business model
Future roadmap

Episode links:

Paul Frambot on Twitter
Morpho Labs on Twitter
Morpho Labs

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/480

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2022 has proven time after time that centralised entities are prone to multiple points of failure, intentional or not. Decentralised finance (DeFi) addresses these, but the user experience has often been lacklustre compared to that from centralised finance (CeFi). Exchanges are the backbone of any market, but high throughput is required in order to ensure that both makers and takers can proficiently use them. Decentralised exchanges have long faced issues due to bandwidth constraints native to blockchains, but recent L2 scaling solutions have provided a considerable increase in terms of throughput. For example, dYdX is currently the largest consumer of STARKs, but growing institutional and retail interest in derivative financial products urges for an even better alternative.

We were joined by Antonio Juliano, founder & CEO of dYdX perpetual exchange, to discuss about the upcoming transition to dYdX V4 and what challenges decentralised exchanges have to face amidst technological bottlenecks and upcoming regulations.

Topics covered in this episode:

Antonio’s background & timing products
dYdX product overview
Price feed oracles
dYdX user demographics & UX
Development timeframes & taking risks
Order book vs. AMM
Building a sovereign blockchain on Cosmos
The challenges of decentralising order books
IBC integrations and composability
Current state of scaling solutions
Migrating from dYdX V3 to V4 & token utility
DeFi vs. CeFi
DeFi education & regulatory outreach

Episode links:

Antonio Juliano on Twitter
dYdX on Twitter
dYdX exchange

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/479

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The recent advancements of layer 2 scaling solutions, especially zero-knowledge rollups, led to a complete redesign of Ethereum’s scalability roadmap. As a result, the initial concept of sharding the execution layer was abandoned and replaced by the idea of data sharding. This proposal, named after its author, is know as Danksharding. EIP-4844 is also referred to as proto-danksharding as it sets the foundation for data sharding, through the introduction of data blobs.

We were joined by Carl Beekhuizen & Trenton Van Epps from the Ethereum Foundation, to discuss about the upcoming EIP-4844 timeline and its KZG ceremony.

Topics covered in this episode:

Trent’s and Carl’s backgrounds
Danksharding and scaling Ethereum
Data BLOBs and data availability
KZG ceremony
How trusted setups evolved
KZG commitment requirements
How trust is ensured
Combining randomness
How storing secrets is prevented
General contribution details
Special contributions
Quantum vulnerability
General EIP-4844 timeline

Episode links:

Carl Beekhuizen on Twitter
Trenton Van Epps on Twitter
Morgan Peck's article

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/478

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While Part 1 (#476) focused more on the general landscape of the ZK ecosystem, covering team updates and developments, in this episode, we take a closer look at specific use cases for ZK proofs and if the focus has shifted from privacy to blockchain scalability. Moreover, as the dusk of 2022 introduced chatGPT to the world, it seems only fitting to explore ZKP integrations in machine learning (ML).

In Part 2 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 current applications for ZK proofs and what narratives are going to shape 2023 for the ZK ecosystem.

Topics covered in this episode:

Applications and use cases for ZK proofs
ZK bridges
Audits and ZK security
ZKML (Machine Learning)
Succinctness vs. Privacy
2023 predictions for the ZK ecosystem
Privacy - human right or concern?

Episode links:

Zero Knowledge Podcast on Twitter
Zero Knowledge Podcast on YouTube
Anna Rose on Twitter
Kobi Gurkan on Twitter

Sponsors:

Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/477

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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:

Anna’s background & her involvement in the ZK ecosystem
Kobi’s background in cryptography
Trusted setups, a brief history: Plumo & Aztec
ZK Hack(athon)
The State of the ZK ecosystem
How the ZK landscape evolved: from SNARKs to STARKs
Trade-offs: compatibility, security, performance
Aztec & Noir DSL
The need for performance benchmarks
ZK L1s: Zcash, Mina, Aleo

Episode links:

Zero Knowledge Podcast on Twitter
Zero Knowledge Podcast on YouTube
The paper Kobi mentioned (by Ariel Gabizon)
Anna Rose on Twitter
Kobi Gurkan on Twitter

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/476

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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:
- Ted's background
- What Urbit is building
- The disruptive potential of Urbit
- Gary's motivation behind joining Urbit
- Urbit's impact on user experience
- Current development stage and potential limitations
- General timeframe for Urbit adoption
- Other use cases for Urbit
- Implications Urbit might have for crypto (synergies)
- Privacy vs. Accountability

Episode links:
- Urbit: https://bit.ly/3A9COrX
- Urbit Foundation: https://bit.ly/3G8KZXR
- Ted Blackman: https://bit.ly/3Wuqyde
- Gary Lieberman: https://bit.ly/3YJcRt6

Sponsors:
- Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: https://epicenter.tv/475

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As crypto adoption increases, so does the pressing need for blockchain scalability. Monolithic blockchains provide data availability, consensus and execution on a single, base layer, which makes scaling them a difficult endeavour. Multiple layer-2 (L2) scaling solutions have been proposed to address computation and/or data availability, but they reach the same design bottlenecks: limited bandwidth, account state models, sequential transaction processing, etc. Modular blockchains separate the core functionalities, redesigning them as customisable building blocks. This allows for greater flexibility and scalability, adapting blockchain structure to its intended function.

We were joined by Nick Dodson, CEO and co-founder of Fuel Labs, to discuss modular execution layers and how they approach different aspects of blockchain design and scalability.

Topics covered in this episode:

Nick’s background and founding Fuel Labs
Why most blockchain designs are not scalable
The vision behind Fuel Labs’ modular execution layer
The difference between L2 roll-ups and modular execution layers
Blockchain design philosophies and integrations
UTXO and multi-thread parallel transactions
UTXO vs. account model systems
Fuel Labs’ own virtual machine (VM)
Multiple native assets support
Developer experience switching to Sway DSL
Bridging to a settlement layer and interoperability
Building on Fuel

Episode links:

Fuel Labs
Fuel Labs on Twitter
Nick on Twitter

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/474

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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:

General public sentiment heading into the new year, after Luna and FTX collapse
CeFi versus DeFi
Crypto Regulations and adoption trends
The Ethereum Merge, MEV, and OFAC-sanction
Roadmap and community development for censorship resistance
zkEVM and Eigen Layer
The future of Cosmos Ecosystem and Cosmos Hub
The state of Urbit
Urbit and crypto
Thoughts on the Solana community and ecosystem

Episode links:

Brian on Twitter
Sebastien on Twitter
Felix on Twitter

Sponsors:

Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/473

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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:

The beginning of Dune
The challenges and difficulties in building a blockchain data product.
Technical improvements on Dune V2
Supporting for non-evm chains
Business models, userbases, and valuations
Interesting use cases on Dune
Community Building
The focus on product experience and next steps for the project

Episode links:

Dune Analytics's website
Dune Analytics Twitter
Fredrik Haga's twitter

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/472

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Artificial Intelligence is a fascinating field that has made tremendous development over the past few years. From GPT-3 to Dall-e and Stable Diffusion, the vastness of the scope of applications for AI and neural computing is becoming clearer than ever. At the base layer, there is a need for decentralized p2p AI compute platform that provides flexible access to the wider public. Gensyn sets out on the mission to provide just that by building a market place protocol for AI compute - ultra-low cost, hyperscale, permissionless.

In today’s episode we are joined by the project's co-founders Ben Fielding and Harry Grieve. We take a deep dive into the current landscape for AI and AI compute, the reasonings and trade-offs in building Gensyn, the protocol’s focus and edge cases, and how the protocol is utilizing the blockchain technology as both incentive layer and credibly neutral platform.

Topics covered in this episode:

The founders' background and reasonings for development on Blockchain
The current state of AI development and breakdown of AI concepts
The current landscape for AI modeling and compute
Gensyn's difference to other protocols, such as Golem
How Gensyn is adhering to the decentralized default, and making trade-offs in product building
Building Gensyn as a Layer-1 protocol
Deep dive into the Gensyn Protocol and edge cases
Other players in the protocol: solvers, verifiers, and whistle blowers
Building a blockchain

Episode links:

Gensyn
Gensyn on Twitter
Ben Fielding on Twitter
Harry Grieve on Twitter

Sponsors:

Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/471

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EigenLayer is a 'programmable slashing' layer2 protocol built on Ethereum which leverages security through the method of restaking. This is a bootstrapping mechanism which allows existing Eth2 stakers to access the collateral in the staking system to provide additional services, for additional yield, while taking on additional risk.

We were joined by founder Sreeram Kannan who explained to us the concept of re-staking, how this works in the EigenLayer protocol, use cases, and the roadmap ahead.

Topics covered in this episode:

Sreeram's background and how he got into crypto
His role at the University of Washington Blockchain Lab
EigenLayer and the concept of re-staking
The risk with 'programmable slashing'
The participants in the EigenLayer economy
Impact on decentralization and home stakers
EigenDA and other EigenLayer use cases
Combatting malicious slashing
The EigenLayer roadmap

Episode links:

Episode B007 - Devcon Panel – Censorship Resistance and Credible Neutrality
EigenLayer
EigenLayer on Twitter
Sreeram on Twitter

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/470

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For centuries, we have been led to believe that nation states are the only way to organize humankind at scale. But governments all around the world are failing to react swiftly to the severe destruction of our planet from things like war and climate change, and this is endangering our whole species.

Nation3 is ready to overturn this, by building a Web3-powered, tax-free, solarpunk sovereign cloud nation. It is structured as a DAO, meaning there is no legal entity, no gatekeepers, and no influence by trad states. The goal is to gradually build or invest in products and services that allow citizens to be actively involved in economic activity. The $NATION token serves as the gateway to participate in the community Discord, participate in governance decisions, receive an NFT passport, and eventually receive services provided by the new cloud nation.

We were joined by founders Luis and Anastasiya to chat about why they see this is as necessary for humankind, how the legal, governance and economic aspects will work, and the long term visions for the project.

Topics covered in this episode:

Luis and Anastasiya's backgrounds
The problem that Nation3 is trying to solve
How the legal system works
The differences between Nation3 and traditional nations
The core services Nation3 will provide
Why is the nation tax-free and how will the economy be supported?
Issues with selling passports
How will democracy work?
The biggest learnings from Aragon
What is the vision for acquiring land

Episode links:

Nation3
Nation3 Techtree
Nation3 on Twitter
Anastasiya on Twitter
Luis on Twitter

Sponsors:

Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/469

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Wormhole is a decentralized cross chain messaging protocol powering the transfer of value and information across high value chains. A network of Guardian nodes secure the protocol by observing and attesting to events and data on its connected chains. These attestations are gossiped around the open Wormhole peer-to-peer network, allowing anyone connected to the network to observe the flow of information. Portal is a bridging app built on top of Wormhole where users can seamlessly bridge tokens and NFTs across supported chains and easily enter the network’s ecosystem.

We were joined by Dev Bharel, Developer Relations for Wormhole. He gave us great insight into how the protocol works, security assumptions and incidents, the concept of generalized messaging passaging, and the Portal Bridge as a first adopter of the Wormhole protocol. We also chatted about what else is being built on Wormhole, and how you can get involved.

Topics covered in this episode:

Dev's background and how he got into crypto
An overview of Wormhole
The different network ecosystems in Wormhole and challenges with adding new networks
The Wormhole guardian network and its plans for expansion
The user experience on Portal Bridge
Relayers on the network
Using Wormhole bridge assets directly with non-native tokens
The Wormhole hack and the changes that have been made
Using zero knowledge proof on bridges

Episode links:

Portal Bridge
Wormhole hack
Bug bounty program
Developer docs
Wormchain
xHack hackathon
Wormhole on Twitter
Dev on Twitter

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/468

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With the long awaited Ethereum Merge successfully executed last month, we caught up with Vitalik at DevCon in Bogota to talk shop: How does he see the state of the network, does he think looming centralization is a threat. Was Ethereum's danksharding plus third party layer 2s a good architecture decision? How much of an issue is MEV?

Topics covered in this episode:

The state of the network and credible neutrality
Should validators have agency?
How much of a problem is MEV
The Ethereum Surge
The road to Danksharding
Decentralizing the sequencer
The future of the space
The one most important thing we need to get right in the coming year for the ecosystem to succeed

Episode links:

Ethereum
Devcon 6
Episode 402 - Ethereum – Can It Go Beyond DeFi?
Join the Epicenter team!

Sponsors:

Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/467

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Since its announcement a few weeks ago at Cosmoverse in Medellin, Atom 2.0 has sparked intense debate in the Cosmos community and throughout the blockchain ecosystem. It proposes three pillars for the Cosmos Hub: Interchain Security, the Interchain Allocator, and the Interchain Scheduler. However, parts of the paper have been contested and debated over fears of token holder dilution, potential treasury mismanagement, and even the collapse of the Hub. We chat with Ethan Buchman and Zaki Manian to dive deep into Atom 2.0 and its vision for Cosmos moving forward.

Topics covered in this episode:

The ATOM 2.0 announcement and follow up
The goal of the whitepaper
Interchain Security and its role in Cosmos' future
Interchain Security vs. Mesh Security
Cosmos scalability
Liquid staking in the Cosmos ecosystem
Distributing funds through the Allocator
Atom issuance model
The motivation behind the Interchain Scheduler
The governance process - voting on the whitepaper
Next steps to community adoption

Episode links:

Atom 2.0 Whitepaper
Atom 2.0 forum post
Atom 2.0 Debate episode on The Interop
Ethan on Twitter
Zaki on Twitter
Join Epicenter!

Sponsors:

Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/466

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After a 2 year hiatus, Devcon was back for its 6th and best year so far, this time in Bogota, Colombia. As things wrapped up we grabbed a few of the Ethereum community's most prominent names for a recap on the conference. Hear as we chat to Nick Johnson from ENS, Anett Rolikova from Nethermind, David Hoffmann from Bankless, and Joseph Schweitzer from the Ethereum Foundation, about their particular standouts of the event, the LatAm and wider Ethereum community, and what they see coming next for Devcon 7 and beyond.

Topics covered in this episode:

Introductions and a look back over the conference
The LatAm Ethereum community
Favourite talks from the conference
Having a booth at Devcon
What's in store for Devcon7 next year
The future vision for the event

Episode links:

Devcon
Devcon 4 recap from Prague

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/465

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Bonus Episode: At a side event at Devcon in Bogota Colombia, Friederike moderated a panel discussion on censorship resistance and credible neutrality with Phil from Flashbots, Patrick from Infura, Sebastian from HOPR, Martin from Gnosis, and Sreeram from EigenLayer. We dove deep into what credible neutrality constitutes, whether it needs defending, and if so how we should go about it.

Topics covered in this episode:

Introduction to the panel
What is censorship resistance and credible neutrality?
When has Ethereum been or not been crediably neutral, and where is it today
Recent cencorship instances in the space
The roadmaps for more credible neutrality

Episode links:

Devcon

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/B007

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We caught up with Cosmoverse co-founder and YouTuber Cryptocito, for a chat from this year's event in Medellin. We look back on the 2nd edition of the conference and how the ecosystem has grown since last year. We also dive into some of the announcements, notably, ATOM 2.0.

Topics covered in this episode:

Cosmoverse in Medellin
Cryptocito's background and how Cosmoverse was born
Highlights from the conference
Mesh security systems
Cosmos community growth
Thoughts on Interchain Foundation (ICF)
ATOM 2.0

Episode links:

Cosmoverse
Crytpocito's youtube
Cosmoverse on Twitter
Cryptocito on Twitter

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/464

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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:

Sebastian's background
An overview of HOPR
Mixnet vs onion routing
Who is the HOPR user?
How packets move through the network
The distribution requirements for HOPR nodes
The costs involved
The HOPR token
The DecenGov DAO
Why privacy systems in crypto have such a hard time finding traction

Episode links:

HOPR
HOPR on Twitter
Sebastian on Twitter
Join the Epicenter team!

Sponsors:

Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/463

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Crescent is an AMM/Orderbook Hybrid Decentralized Exchange that allows trading inter-chain assets in a cost-efficient manner. Crescent is a sovereign Cosmos chain that was created after migrating the Gravity Dex from the Cosmos Hub. Crescent particularly focuses on efficient use of liquidity by giving powerful tools to market makers to use their capital and provide good prices for traders.

We were joined by the founder of Crescent Network, Hyung Lee, to chat about his involvement in the Cosmos ecosystem, B Harvest, the Gravity DEX, and combining AMMs and orderbooks. We also hear about Crescent's roadmap and future role within the ecosystem.

Topics covered in this episode:

Hyung's background and how he got into crypto and the Cosmos ecosystem
Launching Crescent on its own chain
The vision for Crescent's role within the ecosystem
Liquidity formation for the project
Comparing AMM and orderbooks and the advantages/disadvantages of each
How AMM and orderbooks have been combined
The future of AMMs
Difference between a market maker and a liquidity provider
Cross chain dex aggregation
MEV and the interchain world

Episode links:

The Crescent Ethos
Crescent Network
Crescent on Twitter
Hyung on Twitter

Sponsors:

Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/462

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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:

Update on Dappcon
The implications of the Tornado Cash sanctions in the wider crypto space
ZK bridging and the merge
The Gnosis ecosystem
The importance of privacy
The user experience in crypto and how its important for onboarding
POAP distribution

Episode links:

Dappcon
The Merge
Dappcon on Twitter
Eduardo on Twitter

Sponsors:

Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/461

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Decentralized stablecoins have long been regarded as a fundamental building block for the decentralized web. The first ground-breaking project in this area is Maker with their stablecoin DAI. Multiple ideas existed for how Maker should evolve and the path Maker chose was to add multiple types of collateral and rely on governance input to maintain stability. Over time, the vast majority of Maker's collateral came to be represented by USDC, a centralized stablecoin issued by regulated US institutions.

Rai Reflex Index (RAI) decided to fork Maker and choose a path favoring trust-minimization over faster scaling. Unlike with Maker, only ETH is accepted as collateral and a different mechanism is used to maintain low volatility that doesn't rely on governance input. We were joined by Reflexer Labs' co-founder Ameen Soleimani to chat about the philosophical differences to Maker, the mechanisms used to ensure the stability of RAI, the threat of regulatory intervention for DAI and how we can create truly trust-minimized stablecoins to ensure the resilience and neutrality of DeFi.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ameen's background and the vision behind Reflexer
How RAI differs from Maker
The problem with DAI becoming multi-collateral and adding more governance control
RAI's stability mechanism
The function of the redemption price
Who holds RAI and how stable is it?
FLX governance
How decentralized stablecoins can scale

Episode links:

Reflexer Labs
Reflexer on Twitter
Ameen on Twitter

Sponsors:

Steakwallet: Steakwallet is your new favorite multi-chain, mobile wallet. Tired of having a different wallet for every chain? Get Steakwallet today and get the power of Web 3 across all chains right at your fingertips: https://steakwallet.fi/ -

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/460

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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:

Preethi's background and how she got into crypto
Her early days with Coinbase and TruStory
Preethi's love of writing which led to her blog
DappCamp
What are the major struggles people face with learning web3 development?
Opportunities for DappCamp graduates
How DappCamp will evolve in the future
Being a woman in crypto
Keeping up to date with the crypto industry

Episode links:

DappCamp
Preethi’s Blog
DappCamp Twitter
Preethi’s Twitter

Sponsors:

Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/459

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On August 8, 2022, the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash, citing allegations it helped North Korea's Lazarus hacker group launder millions of dollars worth of crypto proceeds stolen from various crypto projects over the past few years. Coin Center believe that OFAC has overstepped its legal authority by adding certain Tornado Cash smart contract addresses to the Specially Designated Nationals And Blocked Persons (SDN) List, potentially violating US Americans' constitutional rights to due process and free speech.

Peter Van Valkenburgh, Director of Research at Coin Center, joined us for an in-depth look at how OFAC operates, why he believes this sanctioning represents an overreach, what's next for Tornado Cash, and what this means for the rest of the blockchain ecosystem.

Topics covered in this episode:

An overview of the Tornado Cash case
What is the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)?
How is it determined who gets on the OFAC list? What happens to you if you're on the list?
Does this only apply to US Americans?
How does one get removed from the list?
What did Tornado Cash do wrong, and what should they have done?
Is there an acceptable level of maliciousness within the system?
Comparison to PGP
Why Tornado Cash was targeted over other privacy enhancing tools
The reaction from the crypto ecosystem

Episode links:

OFAC - The Office of Foreign Assets Control
Coin Center
Tornado Cash on Twitter
Coin Center on Twitter
Peter on Twitter

Sponsors:

Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/458

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CosmWasm is a smart contracting platform built for the Cosmos ecosystem. It's the Cosmos (Cosm) way of using WebAssembly (Wasm). CosmWasm is written as a module that can plug into the Cosmos SDK, meaning that anyone currently building a blockchain using the Cosmos SDK can quickly and easily add CosmWasm smart contracting support to their chain, without adjusting existing logic.

We were joined by the project's founder, Ethan Frey, for a deep dive into what WebAssembly is and the benefits of its integration with Cosmos SDK, its interaction with IBC and use cases for other cross-chain apps, and the roadmap ahead.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ethan's background and how he got into crypto and in particular Cosmos
What Ethan worked on during his time at Tendermint
Why CosmWasm was created
What is WebAssembly and what are its advantages
How does WebAssembly compare with the EVM?
What are the pros and cons of developing Cosmos SDK modules vs building things in CosmWasm?
How CosmWasm interacts with the IBC module
The roadmap for CosmWasm
Potential use cases on cross-chain CosmWasm apps
The CosmWasm Academy

Episode links:

CosmWasm
CosmWasm Academy
WYND DAO
CosmWasm on Twitter
Join the Epicenter team!

Sponsors:

Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/457

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A cashless society - one where paper and coin currency is no longer used and instead replaced with electronic transactions. Many countries are already moving in this direction with benefits noted as including lower crime rates and reduced money laundering, and of course convenience. But going cashless does have its downsides.

Brett Scott is the author of Cloudmoney, a revelatory story about the fusion of big finance and tech, which requires physical cash to be replaced by digital money or 'cloudmoney'. Diving beneath the surface of the global financial system, He uncovers a long-established lobbying infrastructure waging a covert war on cash, as banking and tech companies promote a cashless society under the banner of progress.

He joins us to dive deeper into the thesis behind his book and to share his views on how cryptocurrency and blockchain fits into this.

Topics covered in this episode:

Brett's background and how he got into the Fintech space
The central thesis of Cloudmoney
The meaning of 'not all money is created equally'
The arguments around Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism
Privacy and the value of digital payment data
Central bank digital currency
Brett's views on the blockchain industry
IOU vs money as a commodity
Where to buy Brett's book

Episode links:

Cloudmoney
Brett's newsletter
Brett on Twitter
Join Epicenter as our Community Manager

Sponsors:

Steakwallet: Steakwallet is your new favorite multi-chain, mobile wallet. Tired of having a different wallet for every chain? Get Steakwallet today and get the power of Web 3 across all chains right at your fingertips: https://steakwallet.fi/ -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/456

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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:

Stephane and Vasily introductions
What is MEV and why is it important?
MEV supply chain and the centralization risks with it
The significance of MEV for Lido
Lido MEV policy for node operators
The economics around MEV-Boost
Flashbot Protect - will this still exist in MEV-Boost?
Beyond Ethereum - what are the solution for cross-chain MEV
The impact of L2s and rollups on MEV and MEV-Boost
Timelines as we approach The Merge

Episode links:

Flashbots
Lido
MEV-Boost in a nutshell
Why your blockchain needs an MEV solution - Hasu
Stephane on Twitter
Vasily on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/455

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An interesting question that has sparked debate in the Twittersphere and amongst our hosts. Hear as Meher, Friederike and Brian discuss scaling visions currently in the ecosystem, with particular focus on Ethereum Layer 2s and whether or not this is a good path forward for holders of Eth.

Topics covered in this episode:

Introduction to the hosts
Meher's opinions and recent twitter thread on Ethereum
How Layer 1s and Layer 2s work together
Smart contract sharding
Bitcoin vs Ethereum
Solana
The Ethereum roadmap from here

Episode links:

Meher's twitter thread
Epicenter - About Us
Brian on Twitter
Friederike on Twitter

Sponsors:

Steakwallet: Steakwallet is your new favorite multi-chain, mobile wallet. Tired of having a different wallet for every chain? Get Steakwallet today and get the power of Web 3 across all chains right at your fingertips: https://steakwallet.fi/ -

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/454

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EthCC is over for another year and what a week it was! 6 stages, 2,000 attendees, over 200 speakers, 40 hours of talks and content, 40 sponsors, and 130 side events (and parties) all over Paris. The Ethereum France team pulled it off again with the fifth edition of the Ethereum Community Conference bringing the community together in the city of love.

Keeping with tradition we did an EthCC recap panel and were joined by Ethereum France President Jerome de Tychey, EthCC Project Manager Bettina Boon Falleur, and Founder of Giveth Griff Green. We talk about the standout moments of this year's event, how the conference has grown over the years, NFT tickets, the European Ethereum community, and the future of EthCC.

Episode links:

EthCC 5
Ethereum France
Giveth

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/453

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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:

The transition from Melon to Enzyme
Has the vision for Enzyme changed?
How does the protocol work?
Choosing your vault and redeemability
Who are Enzyme users?
Becoming a vault manager and sharing your vault
24/7 reporting
The MLN token
Governance - Enzyme’s path to decentralization

Episode links:

Episode 158 - The Polkadot Protocol – One Blockchain to Connect Them All
Enzyme
Enzyme on Twitter
Mona on Twitter

Sponsors:

Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash
Steakwallet: Steakwallet is your new favorite multi-chain, mobile wallet. Tired of having a different wallet for every chain? Get Steakwallet today and get the power of Web 3 across all chains right at your fingertips: https://steakwallet.fi/ -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/452

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The hotly anticipated Ethereum merge due later this year, will see the joining of the existing execution layer of Ethereum (the Mainnet we use today) with its new proof-of-stake consensus layer, the Beacon Chain. It eliminates the need for energy-intensive mining and instead secures the network using staked ETH. This is a truly exciting step in the Ethereum vision of more scalability, security, and sustainability.

Tim Beiko, Protocol Support for the Ethereum Foundation, is heavily involved in the project. He joined us to give some deep insights into governance within Ethereum, a full update on how the merge is coming along and the next steps, and how Ethereum will look post-merge.

Topics covered in this episode:

Tim's background and how he got involved in the space
Unpacking governance on Ethereum
The Ethereum client ecosystem
The current state of Ethereum's testnet landscape
The Merge: what is it, and where do we stand?
What is coming next in the lead up to the merge and how is success measured?
How did the very recent Sepolia test go?
Scaling - what will the ecosystem look like post-merge?
The Ethereum roadmap

Episode links:

Nebular Summit
Ethereum Foundation
The Merge
Ethereum on Twitter
Tim on Twitter

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Joseph Schweitzer. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/451

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Urbit is an exciting new operating system and peer-to-peer network that’s simple by design, built to last forever, and 100% owned by its users. Under the hood it's a from-scratch software stack compact enough that individual developers can understand and control it completely. Urbit deconstructs the client-server model in favor of a federated network of personal servers with built-in, cryptographically-owned identity, each of which is capable of distributing and running their own applications that communicate over the Urbit network.

We were joined by the Executive Director of the Urbit Foundation, Josh Lehman, who explained in depth how the Urbit ecosystem was built and now runs, the advantages of the network from user and developer perspectives, the bridge with crypto, and how the roadmap for the kernel is looking going forward.

Topics covered in this episode:

Josh's background and how he became involved with Urbit
An overview of Urbit and the current state of the system
What’s changed about Urbit over the last three years
Urbit's address space consisting of galaxies, stars and planets
What Urbit applications are and how they differ from iphone applications or a dApps
The advantages of the Urbit user and developer experiences
The connection between Urbit and crypto
The projects currently being built on Urbit - Holium, Uqbar, Tirrel
What the roadmap for the underlying Urbit kernel looks like
How you can get involved

Episode links:

Episode 205 - A Digital Republic Reinventing the Internet
Urbit
Urbit Grants
Urbit on Twitter
Josh on Twitter

Sponsors:

Steakwallet: Steakwallet is your new favorite multi-chain, mobile wallet. Tired of having a different wallet for every chain? Get Steakwallet today and get the power of Web 3 across all chains right at your fingertips: https://steakwallet.fi/ -
Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe
Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/450

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Wyre is a leading fiat-to-cryptocurrency and payment infrastructure company for the cryptocurrency ecosystem. In blockchain time, Wyre has been around forever -- it was founded in 2013. Wyre leverages blockchain to facilitate cross-border payments, bridging the gap between traditional payment processing and digital assets. Focusing on developers, the company provides easy-to-integrate APIs which enable thousands of developers to bring cryptocurrency to the masses. The company has “on-ramped” over 15 million end users to their partners and has processed over $10B in payments since inception.

We were joined by Co-founder and CEO Yanni Giannaros, and Director of Crypto Strategy Jamal Raees, to chat about payments applications in general and in web3, how Wyre works on a technical and business level including regulatory constraints, their recent acquisition by Bolt, and the roadmap for the platform.

Topics covered in this episode:

The history of Wyre and the changes they have seen in the space over the past 10 years
Yanni and Jamal's backgrounds and how they met
A technical overview of Wyre
The challenges of running an onramp
Bolt's recent acquisition of Wyre
Payments applications in web 3 - what works and what doesn't
The Wyre business model and fees
The jurisdictional restrictions for using Wyre and Yanni and Jamal's thoughts on the current regulatory environment
The future of crypto interfaces
The Wyre roadmap

Episode links:

Wyre
Wyre on Twitter
Yanni on Twitter
Jamal on Twitter

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/449

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Arbitrum is a Layer 2 scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain which helps reduce high transaction gas fees. Arbitrum uses a multi-round optimistic rollup that regularly checks in with Ethereum’s main chain.

OG cypherpunk and ex deputy CTO of the USA, Ed Felten, is one of the creators of Arbitrum. He joined us for an in depth chat about how transactions are processed on the protocol, who validates them, what the security guarantees are, and how the economics will work in the longer term.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ed's background (including his time as deputy CTO of the USA!) and what led him to creating Arbitrum
A walk back to pre-blockchain crypto
Why Arbitrum chose to build on top of Ethereum
What are roll-ups and what's the user experience with them on Arbitrum?
A deep dive into how transactions work on Arbitrum
How nodes work on the platform
Transaction fees on Arbitrum
How is Arbitrum designed differently to Optimism?
Arbitrum and bridges to ETH and other assets
How will different scaling solutions co-exist in the future?

Episode links:

Arbitrum
Arbitrum on Twitter
Ed on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe
Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash
Steakwallet: Steakwallet is your new favorite multi-chain, mobile wallet. Tired of having a different wallet for every chain? Get Steakwallet today and get the power of Web 3 across all chains right at your fingertips: https://steakwallet.fi/ -

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/448

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Connext is a crosschain liquidity network that speeds up fully-noncustodial transfers between EVM-compatible crosschains (xapps) and L2 systems. Connext works in tandem with nomad bridge technology, enabling fast transfer of value between blockchains and interchain DeFi protocols. Their goal is to create a world where users never need to know what chain or rollup they're on, and developers can build applications that utilize resources from many chains/rollups simultaneously.

We were joined by Connext founder Arjun Bhuptani to chat about bridge technology in general, Connext's pivot from state channels to bridges, their recent partnership with Nomad, and what is coming next.

Topics covered in this episode:

Arjun's background and how he got into the space
Arjun's involvement with the Moloch DAO
What is Connext?
The history of interoperability
Connext and the bridges they utilize
Connext's partnership with Nomad
Bridge hacks
Finality and rollbacks - dealing with reorgs and probabilistic finality
What is Connext's capital efficiency model

Episode links:

Connext
Nomad
Connext / Nomad partnership
Connext on Twitter
Arjun on Twitter

Sponsors:

Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash
Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/447

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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:

Dan's background and how he got into the space
The journey of creating MetaMask Consensys
Why this was built as a browser extension
MetaMask mobile: What’s the scope? How do people use it?
Number of MetaMask accounts, funds stored in MetaMask wallets and some use cases
Security on the platform
The future of seed phrases
How thinking has shifted from smart wallers to EoA's with enhanced capabilities
What is MetaMask Snaps?
When will we see the MetaMask token?

Episode links:

MetaMask
Forum
Twitter
Dan on Twitter

Sponsors:

CowSwap: CowSwap is a Meta-Dex Aggregator built by Gnosis. It taps into all on-chain liquidity - including other dex aggregators such as Paraswap, 1inch and Matcha - offering the best prices on all trades. It provides some UX perks (no gas costs for failed transactions!) and protects traders against MEV. - https://epicenter.rocks/cowswap
Steakwallet: Steakwallet is your new favorite multi-chain, mobile wallet. Tired of having a different wallet for every chain? Get Steakwallet today and get the power of Web 3 across all chains right at your fingertips: https://steakwallet.fi/ -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/446"

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The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) allows users to register .eth domain names, which can be used natively in some browsers and all Ethereum wallets. It provides a solution to long crypto addresses with a human-friendly format, analogous to DNS domain names that point to IP addresses. There are now 1.1 million registered domains on ENS.

Nick Johnson, Lead Developer of ENS, was last on the show 5 years ago when ENS had just been created. We had him back on to give us an update on how the project had evolved and to chat about the kinds of content ENS domains point to, the ENS token airdrop, the governance of the platform, and the road ahead, particularly with respect to scaling solutions and spiralling Ethereum gas costs.

Topics covered in this episode:

What is Domain Name Service (DNS)?
How do you register a top level domain?
The relevance of ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)
The kinds of content ENS domains point to and some use cases
The fees associated with .eth domains
The ENS token airdrop
Governance - how the process of using delegates worked
The kinds of decisions delegates have made so far
Trading ENS tokens
Nick's views on the major challenges facing the ethereum ecosystem today

Episode links:

Episode 183 - ENS – A Global Naming System for Ethereum
ICANN
ENS
ENS Governance
ENS on Twitter
Nick on Twitter

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/445

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Aave is an open-source moneymarket protocol. An Ethereum native, it's deployed on Avalanche and Polygon, with more than $1 billion deposited on each. V3 is now live on seven different blockchains, including Fantom, Arbitrum, Optimism and Harmony. Aave, which has a decentralized governance system, collects about $50 million in revenue per year to its treasury through its various activities, which makes it self-sustainable.

Two years after his last visit to the show and after the recent Aave 3.0 release, we had Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave, back on to chat about governance within the DeFi space, his new project Lens Protocol, and the road ahead for not only his projects, but also the ecosystem as a whole.

Topics covered in this episode:

In view of the situation this week with Terra and UST, we hear Stani's take on stable coins and stable coin mechanisms and how this has evolved over time
New collateral - how a collapse of an asset can affect lending markets
Governance within Aave and DeFi protocols in general
How interoperability looks for a lending protocol
Stani's new project LensProtocol - the composable and decentralized social graph
Why have other decentralized social networks not managed to take off?
Stani's recent ban from Twitter #freestani
The roadmap for both Aave and Lens over the next 2 years
What is coming next for the ecosystem?

Episode links:

Aave
Lens Protocol
Aave on Twitter
Lens on Twitter
Stani on Twitter

Sponsors:

Steakwallet: Steakwallet is your new favorite multi-chain, mobile wallet. Tired of having a different wallet for every chain? Get Steakwallet today and get the power of Web 3 across all chains right at your fingertips: https://steakwallet.fi/ -
CowSwap: CowSwap is a Meta-Dex Aggregator built by Gnosis. It taps into all on-chain liquidity - including other dex aggregators such as Paraswap, 1inch and Matcha - offering the best prices on all trades. It provides some UX perks (no gas costs for failed transactions!) and protects traders against MEV. - https://epicenter.rocks/cowswap
Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/444

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Chun Wang started mining Bitcoin in 2011 and later created F2Pool, one of the leading Proof-of-Work mining pools. Despite his deep involvement in Proof-of-Work, Chun also recognized the transformative impact of Proof-of-Stake and started stakefish. stakefish has become one of the leading staking provider.

Chun joined us to talk about his journey and reflections on Bitcoin, Ethereum and Proof-of-Stake. We also dove into the topic of humans becoming a multi-planetary species and whether Bitcoin's consensus could be modified to allow mining on different planets.

Topics covered in this episode:

Chun's background and how he got into crypto
Why he created the mining pool F2Pool
The biggest differences between running validators like stakefish vs a mining pool like F2Pool
What led him to build stakefish
Chun's views on Ethereum
Why Bitcoin is more decentralized than Ethereum
The future of Proof-of-Stake
Stakefish's Ethereum staking product
Chun's thoughts of MEV and how will stakefish deal with it in the future
Making Bitcoin multiplanetary

Episode links:

stakefish
F2Pool
stakefish on Twitter
Chun on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe
Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash
Steakwallet: Steakwallet is your new favorite multi-chain, mobile wallet. Tired of having a different wallet for every chain? Get Steakwallet today and get the power of Web 3 across all chains right at your fingertips: https://steakwallet.fi/ -

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/443

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Florian Glatz, blockchain.lawyer, is one of the most knowledgeable OG's at the intersection of crypto and law. He was last on the show 6 years ago when we talked in great detail about smart contracts and the DAO. We welcomed him back to discuss the regulatory environment, with a focus on Europe. We covered key topics like the recently floated Proof of Work ban, Travel of Funds Regulation (TFR), and Markets in Crypto-assets (MiCA) regulation. We also discussed the European Crypto Initiative, a new lobby organization that Florian co-founded, which is advocating for crypto-friendly regulation on a European level.

Topics covered in this episode:

What Florian got wrong about DAOs when he was on the show in 2016
The story of the Geman blockchain association Bundesblock that Florian co-founded and was president of
The European Crypto Initiative - Why a European-level organization is needed
The most important regulatory questions facing crypto today
Why crypto taxation is a particularly challenging issue
How will competition between different nation states play out?
Whether we will see the rise of new nation states or digital nations

Episode links:

Episode 125 - Defining a Legal Framework for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO)
The Sovereign individual
blockchain.lawyer
Florian on Twitter

Sponsors:

Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/422

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Multicoin Capital is a thesis-driven investment firm that invests in the crypto space. They manage a hedge fund and a venture fund, investing across both public and private markets. Since their founding in 2017, they have become known for their high returns.

We were joined by founders Kyle Samani and Tushar Jain, for Multicoin's third visit on the show, to chat about how they came together to form Multicoin, their current investment thesis and how it has evolved, and the road ahead in the blockchain ecosystem.

Topics covered in this episode:

Tushar and Kyle's backgrounds and what led to Multicoin
Why did they choose to create an investing company?
Their current investment thesis and how it has evolved
Multicoin's decision to not invest in certain lucrative projects
How they chose what to invest in
The Proof of Physical Work thesis
The process of how they select an investment and the strategy behind their portfolio
Projects they regret not investing in
A prediction of how the blockchain ecosystem will look in three years
Dominance of DeFi

Episode links:

Episode 361 with Kyle
Episode 223 with Kyle and Tushar
Protocols dont capture value, DAOs manage risk - thesis
Multicoin on Twitter
Kyle on Twitter
Tushar on Twitter

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/441

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Regen Network is a blockchain focused on ecological regeneration and reversing climate change. Their aim is to reinvent the economics of agriculture so that farmers are seen not only as food producers, but also as land stewards. Regen Network serve as the foundation on which which other projects and protocols may build upon and harness to execute their own climate-focused business models. Using a distributed ledger and modern remote sensing technology, the Regen team are creating new tools allowing humanity to reconnect with the environment.

We were joined by CEO & Co-founder of Regen, Gregory Landua, to chat about what has motivated him to create Regen. We took a deep dive into how Regen Network works and especially discussed carbon credits and the Nature Carbon Ton (NCT), a novel carbon credit token they are launching.

Topics covered in this episode:

Gregory's background and what motivated him to create Regen
Why he chose to build Regen on Cosmos
What are carbon credits and how is their impact measured?
How the Nature Carbon Ton (NCT) token works and what is the vision for how it evolves
The 2 modules Regen have built on Cosmos SDK - Ecocredits and Data
Regen 4.0 - what is coming next?

Episode links:

Regen website
Regen on Medium
Regen on Twitter
Gregory on Twitter

Sponsors:

Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/440

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Brian was joined by Felix Lutsch, CCO of Chorus One, for a discussion of what is going on in crypto today. The discussion included the evolving Proof-of-Stake landscape, the role of and trends around liquid staking and interoperability. They also discussed the crypto markets and the possible impact of a changing macro environment with increasing inflation.

Topics covered in this episode:

Felix's background and how he got into crypto
How the staking landscape is evolving
The increasing complexity within the staking industry and the impact this will bring, including compliance and MEV
Liquid staking - where it is today and where it is headed
Interoperability - IBC adoption, Terra, composability
Crypto markets - inflation and predicting the future

Episode links:

Chorus One
Chorus One on Twitter
Felix on Twitter
The Q-Trap by Arthur Hayes

Sponsors:

Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/439

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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:

What led Adrian and Christopher to starting their own PoS blockchain
What 'undefining money' actually means
How Anoma works
The Namada blockchain
Multi asset shielded pools - why aren't they used more often?
A deep dive into the technical components of Anoma
The relationship between Anoma and Namada
Thoughts on FATF and recent moves to make sending KYC information with transactions mandatory
Timelines for upcoming launches

Episode links:

Anoma
Discord
Anoma on Twitter
Adrian on Twitter
Christopher on Twitter

Sponsors:

Tally: Tally is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash
CowSwap: CowSwap is a Meta-Dex Aggregator built by Gnosis. It taps into all on-chain liquidity - including other dex aggregators such as Paraswap, 1inch and Matcha - offering the best prices on all trades. It provides some UX perks (no gas costs for failed transactions!) and protects traders against MEV. - https://epicenter.rocks/cowswap

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/438

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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:

Fede's background and how he got into crypto
The early days at Tendermint and contributing to Ether Mint
The delayed launch of the Evmos upgrade and how that has affected the project
What innovation does Evmos bring to the EVM now and in the future
Evmos' interoperability with other chains
Bridges and the issue asset fungibility
How sovereign chains will interact with smart contracts or addresses on Evmos
What DeFi applications will be launched on Evmos
Standout features of the token model
Is fragmentation on the Interchain a good approach?

Episode links:

Hear the full interview on The Interop podcast
Evmos
Evmos on Twitter
Federico on Twitter

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/437

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After more than three years in the making, Laura Shin has just released her first book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze. In it she dives into the history of Ethereum and the 2017 ICO craze by telling the tale of the early tensions and power struggle that defined Ethereum's founding. It gives the inside story of The DAO, and depicts 2017's global initial coin offering tidal wave that boosted prices and fortunes.

Laura Shin, former Forbes journalist, podcast host, and now author, joined us for a fascinating chat about the research that went into the book (including the 200+ interviews), revealing the infamous Ethereum hacker, and how the book has been received and her future plans for another.

Topics covered in this episode:

Laura's background and how she got into crypto
Why did Laura choose to write this book?
Researching for the book and the people she interviewed
Laura's takeaways about the Ethereum founders
The reveal of the hacker and the reactions from those close to them
The Ethereum 'Shadow Government'
The importance of Vitalik to Ethereum today and where he might be headed next
Where are the other co-founders of Ethereum now?
What's next for Laura?

Episode links:

Buy the book
Laura Shin
The Unchained Podcast
Laura on Medium
Laura on Twitter

Sponsors:

CowSwap: CowSwap is a Meta-Dex Aggregator built by Gnosis. It taps into all on-chain liquidity - including other dex aggregators such as Paraswap, 1inch and Matcha - offering the best prices on all trades. It provides some UX perks (no gas costs for failed transactions!) and protects traders against MEV. - https://epicenter.rocks/cowswap

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/436

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Worldcoin is a start-up trying to engineer widespread adoption for its cryptocurrency by giving away tokens. Sound too good to be true? Depends how you look at it (literally). Participants must be willing to have their eyes scanned on registration by a proprietary iris scanner dubbed 'orb'. Worldcoin says the scan is necessary to prove that users are human and to verify they only register once. The start-up has attracted big investors but it has also raised concerns among an increasingly privacy-conscious public with some labeling it a MLM.

We were joined by co-founder and CEO, Alex Blania, who explained the idea behind Worldcoin and the aspect of UBI, the current number of orbs in circulation and users, and he addresses the criticisms they have faced so far. Worldcoin is due to launch later this year.

Topics covered in this episode:

Alex's background and how he got into crypto
The idea behind Worldcoin and the aspect of UBI
How does the orb work?
How they have reacted to some of the criticism regarding privacy and onboarding
A deep dive into how the protocol works
The incentive mechanism with Worldcoin
An overview of Worldcoin users
The corporate structure of Worldcoin
Regulatory issues

Episode links:

Worldcoin
Worldcoin on Twitter
Alex on Twitter

Sponsors:

Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/435

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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:

What is a wireless network and what makes them so interesting
The objective of Helium
The use cases Amir is most interested in
How cellular networks are utilized
Helium and censorship resistance
The architecture of the Helium Network
Proof-of-coverage
The HNT and Data Credit tokens
The possibility of Helium becoming interoperable and hosting smart contracts
The biggest challenges in Helium's future

Episode links:

Helium
Helium on Twitter
Amir on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe
Tally: Tally is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/434

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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:

Sergey's background and how he got into crypto
The lessons he learnt from his time at Algorand
Why and how Axelar was built
The future of interoperabilty protocols
What are security challenges around interoperability
Interoperability use cases beyond token transfers
Atomic transactions with Alexar
The road ahead for Axelar

Episode links:

Axelar Site
Axelar Discord
Axelar on Twitter
Sergey on Twitter
Nonconventional Podcast by Ela Crain

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/433

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It's been just short of 2 years since we had Julian Assange's father John, and Harry Halpin, on the show to chat about his imprisonment and the impact it could have on the crypto community. At that time it was unknown if/when Julian would be extradited to the US to face trial. On December 10 2021, the US government won its appeal of a British court ruling that barred Assange’s extradition to the US. On the very same day the AssangeDAO was born and now has a thriving community of 10k people behind it.

The DAO raised over $50 million and the funds were used to bid on an NFT, Clock, which is part of a collection between Assange and digital artist Pak. The bid was successful and proceeds from the sale of the Clock NFT will go to support Assange’s legal defence fund and awareness campaign about the free speech implications of his case.

We were joined by Julian's brother Gabriel, and Stellar Magnet, core contributors of the AssangeDAO. We spoke about Julian's case as it currently stands, how the DAO was born and why they chose to purchase the NFT, and the road ahead.

Topics covered in this episode:

Julian Assange and his imprisonment from his involvement with Wikileaks
The Assange DAO and why an NFT was purchased with the funds raised
What are the next step options that the DAO is considering?
Where to learn more about the Assange DAO
How to contribute

Episode links:

Episode 339 - What Julian Assange Represents to the Crypto Movement
AssangeDAO site
US based site
UK based site
AssangeDAO on Twitter
Gabriel on Twitter
Stellar on Twitter

Sponsors:

Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/432

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NEAR Protocol is a leading smart contract platform that aims for simplicity, security and scalability. NEAR was one of the first sharded blockchains and allows deploying smart contracts using Web Assembly on currently four different shards. NEAR's sharding design, Nightshade, splits the blocks into different segments, which allows for great scalability without negatively impacting user and developer experience. Since, its launch NEAR has evolved into one of the most active smart contract ecosystems.

Illia and Alex, co-founders of NEAR, joined us to chat about the NEAR's protocol design and recent advances, such as the launch of Aurora, NEAR's EVM shard. We also discussed how their sharding solution works and how it can scale to support a massive amount of users and applications.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why Illia and Alex decided to build NEAR
NEAR's core idea to scale through sharding
NEAR’s Nightshade sharding design
Dealing with interactions between programmes
How cross-shard interoperability works
Aurora - the EVM shard
NEAR's focus on user experience
Pagoda - the first web3 startup platform
The biggest challenges ahead

Episode links:

NEAR Protocol
Aurora
NEAR on Twitter
Alex on Twitter
Illia on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe
Tally: Tally is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/431

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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:

An update on what's happened since Kevin was last on the show
High level funding stats and measuring the success of Gitcoin
Quadratic funding - why and how?
Public good funding
Impact DAOs and Regenerative CryptoEconomics
Gitcoin's transformation to a DAO
The Internet of Jobs (IoJ) - advantages and disadvantages
Greenpilled - Kevin's book

Episode links:

Episode 257 - Gitcoin – Aligning Incentives in Open-Source Development
Gitcoin results
Greenpilled - Regenerative CryptoEconomics - book coming soon
Take the Green Pill
Gitcoin on Twitter
Kevin on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe
Tally: Tally is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/430

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Agoric is an Proof-of-Stake blockchain built on the Cosmos-SDK that allows developers to create secure smart contracts written in JavaScript. It offers developers safe, reusable DeFi components and built-in economic primitives like a stablecoin, while connecting to the larger blockchain ecosystem via IBC.

Besides covering the Agoric platform, we dove into the long prehistory with Agoric CEO Dean Tribble. Dean and his co-founders have been working on smart contracts and secure computing for decades, long before cryptocurrencies were invented, and a lot of that work shaped the Agoric platform today. We talked about underlying design principles like the Object Capability Security Model, but also the tradeoffs between Ethereum's model of scaling on a single chain versus the Cosmos model of sovereign chains interoperating asynchronously.

Topics covered in this episode:

Dean's background and how he got into crypto
Smart contracts in pre-blockchain times
Why was Agoric created?
The Object Capability Security Model
Why they chose to build on the Cosmos SDK and the problems that solves
IBC transfers
How much can Agoric scale?
What's coming next for Agoric

Episode links:

Episode 286 - Agoric and the Decades-Long Quest for Secure Smart Contracts
Agoric website
Agoric on Twitter
Dean on Twitter

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/429

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Olympus is a hotly debated project in the DeFi space. It posits to be a decentralized reserve currency protocol. Each OHM token is partially backed by the Olympus treasury, but how large the treasury is, depends on what is counted towards it. We would argue that OHM tokens should be discounted for this purpose. Users can interact with Olympus DAO through staking and bonding, which incentivizes users to deposit or sell their collateral to the Olympus treasury in return for discounted OHM tokens.

We were joined by Olympus Founder Zeus to chat about why the protocol was created and how it works, and we address the debate about it being a Ponzi scheme.

Topics covered in this episode:

Zeus' background and how he got into crypto
Why and how the OHM was created
Bonding and staking within the protocol
APY on Olympus DAO
How Olympus would deal with a DAO run
Is Olympus a Ponzi?
The goals for Olympus this year

Episode links:

Olymus DAO website
Olympus Discord
Olympus on Twitter
Zeus on Twitter

Sponsors:

Tally: Tally is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash
CowSwap: CowSwap is a Meta-Dex Aggregator built by Gnosis. It taps into all on-chain liquidity - including other dex aggregators such as Paraswap, 1inch and Matcha - offering the best prices on all trades. It provides some UX perks (no gas costs for failed transactions!) and protects traders against MEV. - https://epicenter.rocks/cowswap

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Zubin Koticha. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/428

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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:

Kei and Auryn's backgrounds and how they got into crypto
Where DAOs came from and the arc of their evolution
The overlap between DAOs and cooperatives
Unraveling the abundance of DAO tools
The components and modules of the Zodiac Toolset
The types of legacy organizations or governance structures that are most ripe to transition into DAOs
The future of DAOs and their place within the real economy

Episode links:

A prehistory of DAOs
Ep 33 - Reality Keys – A Certificate Authority for Facts
What DAOs and Cooperatives can learn from each other
Fostering Worker Cooperatives with Blockchain Technology: Lessons from the Colony Project
Gnosis Guild Blog
Zodiac
Gnosis Guild Discord
Gnosis Guild on Twitter
Kei on Twitter
Auryn on Twitter

Sponsors:

Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/427

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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:

Harry and Jaya's backgrounds and how they got into crypto
Harry's personal experience with surveillance
Mass surveillance on the internet
The rationale behind the cypherpunk manifesto “transparency for the powerful, privacy for the rest of us”
The 'general public's' attitude towards privacy
The Nym infrastructure, purpose and benefits
How Nym works with other applications
How does incentivization work
Harry's relationship with Julian Assange

Episode links:

“Privacy for end users, transparency for the infrastructure” blog post
Ep 339 - What Julian Assange Represents to the Crypto Movement
Nym website
Main Telegram
Node Setup Help Chat
GitHub
Documentation
YouTube
Harry on Twitter
Jaya on Twitter
Nym on Twitter

Sponsors:

Tally: Tally is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash
CowSwap: CowSwap is a Meta-Dex Aggregator built by Gnosis. It taps into all on-chain liquidity - including other dex aggregators such as Paraswap, 1inch and Matcha - offering the best prices on all trades. It provides some UX perks (no gas costs for failed transactions!) and protects traders against MEV. - https://epicenter.rocks/cowswap

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/426

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Formerly Enigma, Secret Network is a blockchain-based, open-source protocol built using the Cosmos SDK. It uses Trusted Execution Environments on nodes to marry privacy-by-default with smart contracts.

We welcomed Guy Zyskind, Founder & CEO of Secret Network, back on the show to chat about the progression of the project into the new protocol and why this is now built on Cosmos, advantages and drawbacks in using Trusted Execution Environments and SGX technology over cryptography only, and why people might want to keep NFTs private.

Topics covered in this episode:

Guy's background and how he got into crypto
How Enigma/Secret Network evolved
Why the Switch to Cosmos?
Trusted Execution Environment and SGX
The levels of privacy within the network
Why CosmWasm?
The future of SGX computation
Secret contracts interacting with other IBC enabled chains
The types of applications running on Secret today
NFTs on Secret

Episode links:

Episode 246 - Enigma
Secret Network
Discord
Secret Network on Twitter
Guy on Twitter

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/425

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The DarkFi squad return for the second part of this 2 part episode. We chat about the FreeAssange DAO, totalitarianism in crypto, and hear about Amir's early involvement in many projects including Bitcoin, DarkMarket (OpenBazaar) and even Ethereum. Diving a bit more technical, we also cover the DarkFi platform, a new blockchain that prioritizes privacy. As a base layer for anonymous applications and smart contracts, it's a multichain interoperable, and open source product that anyone can build any type of applications on utilizing zero-knowledge proof.

Topics covered in this episode:

The Free Assange DAO
Is transparency ever a good thing?
DarkMarket
Totalitarianism in crypto
Amir shares his views on Ethereum
Solarpunk

Episode links:

Dark.Fi
DarkFi manifesto
DarkFi Element channel
DarkFi on Twitter
Amir on Twitter
Rose on Twitter
Ivan on Twitter
The Dark Forest

Sponsors:

Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe
Tally: Tally is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/424

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DarkFi is a new DeFi platform that prioritizes privacy. As a base layer for anonymous applications and smart contracts, it's a multichain interoperable, and open source product that anyone can build any type of application on utilising zero knowledge proof. The goal is to create a universe that anyone can access irrespective of their nationality or political beliefs.

Amir Taaki, Rachel-Rose O'Leary and Ivan Jelincic, the members of the squad, joined us to chat about the importance of darkness and privacy within crypto utilizing zero knowledge proof technology. This is a 2-part series and in the next episode we explore AMMs, and the Free Assange DAO

Topics covered in this episode:

An introduction to the DarkFi team and how they got into crypto
Darkness and why it's important
The crisis of civilization in the West
Crypto anarchy
The connection between crypto and moral fiber
The problems within crypto DarkFi is aiming to solve and how they are doing it

Episode links:

DarkFi Element channel
DarkFi on Twitter
Amir on Twitter
Rose on Twitter
Ivan on Twitter
The Dark Forest
The Sovereign Individual
Secular Cycles

Sponsors:

Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/423

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Fei Protocol is a decentralized, liquid, and scalable stablecoin platform, based on a new concept called Protocol Controlled Value (PCV). After a rocky start, Fei is now back on the road to growth with an upcoming v2 and one of the biggest token mergers in crypto history.

On the day before the Fei v2 launch, we were joined by Founder Joey Santoro to chat about the differences between v1 and v2, how the platform works on a PCV model, TRIBE and protocol governance, and the Rari merger.

Topics covered in this episode:

Joey's background and how he got into crypto and stablecoins specifically
The Fei launch
The mechanisms of Fei v1
Redeemability
Use cases of Fei
The Fei PCV system and Balancer's role
The Rari Merger
What's next for Fei

Episode links:

Fei Protocol
Discord
Fei on Twitter
Joey on Twitter

Sponsors:

Tally: Tally is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash
Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Statelayer. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/422

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2021 was an exciting year for the crypto space. We've seen all time market highs, dramatic regulatory shifts, and some use cases hit the main stream. 4 of our hosts got together to dissect the standout events of this year, and share their predictions for what is coming next.

Topics covered in this episode:

The NFT explosion of 2021
The DeFi bluechip decline
Layer 1 wars & bridges
DAO proliferation, tooling, and emergence of new organization paradigms
Return of Dogecoin
Bitcoin in El Salvador
Looking ahead - crypto and its tax implications
The future of MEV
Urbit

Episode links:

Episode 374 - The Great Epicenter Host Extravaganza 2021
Epicenter - About Us
Brian on Twitter
Friederike on Twitter
Sebastien on Twitter
Sunny on Twitter

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/421

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Sorare is a blockchain sports game which bridges fantasy football and NFT collectibles. A player collects a team of players in the form of NFTs and based on the performance of the players in the real world, scores points. At the end of the tournament, the Sorare participant is ranked and earns rewards.

Nicolas Julia, Co-founder & CEO of Sorare, created the game in 2018, way before the NFT craze of 2021. He joined us to chat about fantasy sports and what convinced him of NFTs, working in the football industry and the impact of licenses, and the regulatory push backs they have faced as a company.

Topics covered in this episode:

Nicolas' background and how he got to into the crypto space
How Nicolas got into NFTs in 2018
An overview of fantasy sports and Sorare
Why did Sorare choose to work with licenses and how they work
The challenges of working in the football industry
Sorare as a Web3 product
The size and value of the Sorare community
Regulatory push backs against Sorare
The motivations behind the numerous platform transitions
The biggest entrepreneurial lessons Nicolas took away from his time at Stratumn and his vision for Sorare

Episode links:

Sorare website
Sorare Community
Discord
Sorare on Twitter
Nicolas on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/420

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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:

Gun's journey over the past 5 years which led him to creating Avalanche
The unique features and trade-offs in the protocol
A deep dive into bridging within Avalanche
MEV extraction within the protocol
Avalanche consensus - reliance on seed anchors

Episode links:

Episode 76 - From Selfish Miners to The Miner’s Dilemma
Episode 103 - Bitcoin-NG – Scientists Versus the Church
Ep 134 - On a Rocky DAO
Avalanche
Ava Labs
Avalanche on Twitter
Gun on Twitter

Sponsors:

Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/419

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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:

Solana's origin story and thesis
The current state of Solana
What censorship resistance is and why it matters
Solana's bottlenecks and remaining scaling challenges
Anatoly's views on governance
Solana and Miner Extractable Value (MEV)
Rollups as an Ethereum scaling solution
Market and adoption cycle

Episode links:

Episode 312 with Anatoly
Breakpoint
Solana on Twitter
Anatoly on Twitter

Sponsors:

CowSwap: CowSwap is a Meta-Dex Aggregator built by Gnosis. It taps into all on-chain liquidity - including other dex aggregators such as Paraswap, 1inch and Matcha - offering the best prices on all trades. It provides some UX perks (no gas costs for failed transactions!) and protects traders against MEV. - https://epicenter.rocks/cowswap

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/418

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Coin Center is an independant not-profit research and advocacy organisation focused on the public policy issues that affect cryptocurrencies and open permisionless blockchain networks. Their mission is to build a better understanding of technologies like Ethereum and Bitcoin and to promote a regulatory climate that preserves free speech and privacy.

Jerry Brito and Peter Van Valkenburgh joined us for a fascinating chat about the current regulatory landscape in the US and how that might affect the crypto ecosystem going forward.

Topics covered in this episode:

An overview of Coin Center
How the political and regulatory has changed in the past 2 years since the release of Libra
The regulatory topics currently impacting the US
Ransomware and investor protection law
Is the consumer protection force too tough?
The Infrastructure Bill
The US vs Europe approach
The future of the ecosystem

Episode links:

Epicenter Episode 296 with Jerry
Epicenter Episode 227 with Peter
Coin Center on Twitter
Jerry on Twitter
Peter on Twitter

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/417

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Cometh is a game on Ethereum that lets users own yield-generating NFTs, integrating both DeFi and NFT features into a single, fun gaming experience. As a player, you control spaceships (also called astronomers) orbiting around giant stars and your goal is to position yourself close to the asteroids (also known as smart asteroids) passing by. When you are close enough, you will be able to mine tokens from that asteroid.

Jerome de Tychey, founder of the project, joined us to chat about how the game works, interactions with AMMs and lending protocols, and the future of blockchain gaming.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jerome's background and his involvement building the French Ethereum community
Jerome's role at Ledger and ConsenSys
An overview of Cometh and how the game works
How Cometh interacts with AMMs and lending protocols
The game’s native tokens: MUST and DUST
Cometh's use of Polygon and the launch of its own layer-2 network
How Cometh taps into the existing NFT world
The potential for games built on top of existing DeFi infrastructure
The future of blockchain gaming and NFTs

Episode links:

Cometh
Docs on Cometh
Github
GeckoCon
Cometh on Twitter
Jerome on Twitter

Sponsors:

CowSwap: CowSwap is a Meta-Dex Aggregator built by Gnosis. It taps into all on-chain liquidity - including other dex aggregators such as Paraswap, 1inch and Matcha - offering the best prices on all trades. It provides some UX perks (no gas costs for failed transactions!) and protects traders against MEV. - https://epicenter.rocks/cowswap

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/416

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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:

Their backgrounds and how they got into crypto
An overview of the Gyroscope Stablecoin
The collateral being used
The mechanism used for stabilizing reserves
Use cases of the Gyrodollar
SAMMs and PAMMs
Leverage loans
Governance within the protocol
The goals of the current testnet
How to get involved

Episode links:

Gyroscope
Discord
Gyroscope blog
Twitter
Lewis on Twitter
Ariah on Twitter

Sponsors:

Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/415

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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:

Alessio's background and how he got into crypto
Alessio's views on 'financial inclusion'
What is PieDAO and its mission
A breakdown of the different components of PieDAO
NFTs in PieDAO
Using ETFs in their methodologies
KPI options and how that plays into governance
The PieDAO Oven
The roadmap for the project

Episode links:

PieDAO
The Oven
PieDAO Discord
Governance Forum
PieDAO on Twitter
Alessio on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/414

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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:

Teddy and Jeff's backgrounds and how they got into crypto
The benefits of a fixed rate over a variable interest rate loan
The product from a user perspective
The role of liquidity providers in the protocol
Tradeoffs of using Notional as opposed to other lending platforms
Lender and borrower obligations
How Notional maintain security
The ERC1155 token standard which is implemented on fCash
The maturity parameter and how it's determined
The Notional governance model

Episode links:

Notional Finance
Notional Discord
Notional on Twitter
Teddy on Twitter
Jeff on Twitter

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/413

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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:

Vasiliy's background and how he got into crypto
An overview of Lido and the problem it solves
How Ethereum 2.0 staking works
Lido's fee structure and business model
Lido's governance model and the LDO token
How the ETH/stETH peg is maintained
Liquid staking and its role in DeFi
Lido for other blockchain networks like Solana
The LEGO Grant program

Episode links:

Lido
Vasiliy's talk at EthCC
Lido on Twitter
Vasiliy on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/412

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The Reserve project is on a mission to provide every person in the world access to stable currency. They are working to rebuild financial services in countries such as Argentina and Venezuela, that have suffered from high inflation and ongoing currency devaluation. The protocol is designed to host a completely decentralized stablecoin that can not be manipulated by governments, with an end goal of a fully self-sustainable platform with decentralized governance and developments.

We were joined by Co-founder & CEO, Nevin Freeman, to chat about Reserve's focus in Latin America, their support of activism, and the road ahead for the project.

Topics covered in this episode:

Nevin's background and how he got into crypto
What is Reserve and what is the problem it's solving
How do they get around regulatory pushbacks in Latin America
The main components of the Reserve system - RSV and RSR
Tackling high gas fees
Reserve's go to market strategy and why the focus on Latin America
Why Reserve encourage's activism
Reserve's goal to eradicate hyperinflation
The connection with Peter Tiel (Paypal)
The Reserve business model

Episode links:

Reserve
Reserve on Twitter
Nevin on Twitter

Sponsors:

Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/411

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Hermez is an open-source ZK-Rollup optimised for secure, low-cost and usable token transfers on the wings of Ethereum. The Hermez network team is currently developing the next version of the decentralised ZK-Rollup with full support of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) by making a full set of zkEVM opcodes.

Jordi Baylina, the Technical Lead at Hermez, joined us to chat about how the protocol works, the recent merge with Polygon, and the roadmap leading to Eth2.0.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jordi's involvement in the infamous DAO hack
The Giveth community he created with Griff Green
How Hermez use EVM opcodes to combine zk and EVM
How the protocol works as a user
How do token transfers work?
Currently the advantage is in scaling, could this also translate to privacy?
Hermez's merge with Polygon - how the joint model will look
The Hermez roadmap and how it fits with Eth2.0
Jordi's views on the future of blockchain

Episode links:

Hermez
Giveth
Jordi at EThCC 2021
Hermez on Twitter
Jordi on Twitter

Sponsors:

CowSwap: CowSwap is a Meta-Dex Aggregator built by Gnosis. It taps into all on-chain liquidity offering the best prices on all trades and provides some UX perks (no gas costs for failed transactions!) and protects traders against MEV - https://epicenter.rocks/cowswap

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/410

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Erik Voorhees, CEO & Founder of ShapeShift, joins us for his 4th appearance on the show. ShapeShift recently announced they are decentralizing the company and its products, which would see the company transition from a centralized entity and platform to a DAO. With the largest airdrop in history they distributed FOX tokens to over a million customers and DeFi community members, who will eventually fully control the exchange.

In this episode we hear the reasoning behind this shift, cross-chain Interoperability, the FOX token, and the future of the Shapeshift platform as a DAO.

Topics covered in this episode:

The journey of ShapeShift since Erik's last appearance on the show
What led ShapeShift to becoming decentralized and the process so far
ShapeShift as a product - its features and how it will be accessed
The future structure of Shapeshift as a DAO
Cross-chain Interoperability and the Cosmos ecosystem
The goal of the FOX token
The future of the ShapeShift ecosystem

Episode links:

Episode 300 - ShapeShift – There’s a New Fox in Town
ShapeShift
ShapeShift to Decentralize Entire Company; Largest Airdrop in History
Shifts Governance to the Community
FOX token airdrop
ShapeShift on Twitter
Erik on Twitter
Seb's new podcast – The Zen Crypto Show

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/409

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ParaSwap is a DEX aggregator that aims to provide the best prices over multiple DEXes on the Ethereum blockchain. Users are able to scan dozens of exchanges for the best possible crypto price points, and get the most for their swaps.

We were joined by ParaSwap Founder, Mounir Benchemled, to chat about his role in the French DeFi community, DEX aggregators in general, and what makes ParaSwap an important slice of the DeFi ecosystem.

Topics covered in this episode:

Mounir's background and how he got into crypto
Why did he start a DEX aggregator?
The French DeFi ecosystem and community
An overview of DEX aggregators - the advantages and challenges
The role of the ParaSwap router
The prospect of a ParaSwap token
A DEX aggregator from a legal perspective
How ParaSwap makes money
Mounir's views on Layer 1 and Layer 2s
The future of DeFi trading

Episode links:

ParaSwap
ParaSwap on Medium
ParaSwap on Twitter
Mounir on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/408

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Mike Novogratz is the CEO of Galaxy Digital, an investment bank targeting institutional investors, which he also founded. He was formerly a Partner and President of Fortress Investment Group LLC and prior to that Partner at Goldman Sachs. Considered quite the risk taker, he has made and lost many fortunes over the years.

We chatted to Mike about the cross over between finance and blockchain, regulatory affairs, and of course, wrestling.

Topics covered in this episode:

Mike's background in wrestling and transition into finance
How he got into the crypto space
How Mike and Galaxy Digital are providing a link between crypto and traditional finance
The long term impact of crypto on the world
The vision for Galaxy Digital
Mike's views on the market cycles

Episode links:

Galaxy Digital

Galaxy Digital on Twitter

Mike on Twitter

Sponsors:

Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting-edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/407

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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:

Dominic's background and an update on DFINITY
The advantages of smart contracts
The Internet Computer ecosystem
How DFINITY compares to Ethereum
The concept of sharding - subnets
The tokenomics of The Internet Computer
Vision for the Internet Computer's future

Episode links:

DFINITY
The Internet Computer Roadmap
DFINITY on Twitter
Dominic on Twitter

Sponsors:

Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Martin Köppelmann. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/406

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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:

What has happened in the last year since Aztec were last on the show
High-level overview of Aztec
How the Aztec rollup works in DeFi applications
The challenges privacy introduces for DeFi
SNARK, the core technology that powers Aztec
Noir (zkSNARK DSL)

Episode links:

Episode 335 - Aztec Protocol – Bringing Zero-Knowledge Transactions to Ethereum
zk.money
Discord
Aztec on Twitter
Joe on Twitter
Zac on Twitter

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter - paraswap.io/epicenter
Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Dev Ojha. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/405

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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:

Chris' background and how BadgerDAO came about
How they successfully built a strong community
Why Bitcoin and DeFi?
Who is the target audience for Badger?
The Sett vaults - strategies
Digg - the rebase system
Chris' thoughts on “DeFi on Bitcoin”

Episode links:

Badger website
BadgerDAO Wiki
Discord
Badger on Twitter
Chris on Twitter

Sponsors:

CowSwap: CowSwap is a Meta-Dex Aggregator built by Gnosis. It taps into all on-chain liquidity offering the best prices on all trades and provides some UX perks (no gas costs for failed transactions!) and protects traders against MEV - https://epicenter.rocks/cowswap

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/404

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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:

Paul and Tyler's backgrounds and how they came to work on VitaDAO
Longevity - thinking of aging as a disease
Where is the research at today?
How longevity research currently takes place in the pharmaceutical industry
How VitaDAO is alleviating patency issues
The first funded project with the Knudsen lab in Copenhagen - Molecule
How DAOs make the decisions

Episode links:

The Molecule blog
VitaDAO
Goldman asks: 'Is curing patients a sustainable business model?'
VitaDAO Discord
VitaDAO on Twitter
Molecule on Twitter
Paul on Twitter
Tyler on Twitter

Sponsors:

Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/403

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Vitalik Buterin joins us for an in-depth conversation at EthCC 4 in Paris. During his keynote presentation, he expressed his hope for Ethereum to go beyond DeFi as he wishes to see more non-financial applications built on the platform. From better social media platforms to novel approaches for funding public goods, from his perspective, Ethereum has the potential to change the world for the better, beyond financial applications.

Topics covered in this episode:

How has the past year been for Vitalik and Ethereum
The state of crypto today
What interesting experiments are in crypto now defining membership
Has Ethereum gone too far into financial applications
Vitalik's views on using rollups on non-DeFi applications
What are the biggest problems of the world today?
NFTs and social media
The concept of retroactive public goods funding
The future of DAOs

Episode links:

Episode 171 - DAO Lessons, Casper and Blockchain Interoperability
Vitalik's talk at EthCC 4
Vitalik on Twitter

Sponsors:

CowSwap: CowSwap is a Meta-Dex Aggregator built by Gnosis. It taps into all on-chain liquidity offering the best prices on all trades and provides some UX perks (no gas costs for failed transactions!) and protects traders against MEV. - https://epicenter.rocks/cowswap

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/402

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EthCC is back and stronger than ever! Despite the pandemic, ongoing travel restrictions and sanitary passes, the Ethereum France team hosted the fourth edition of the Ethereum Community Conference in Paris. Over 1,000 people attended the week-long affair, which saw an impressive number of side events and, as always, legendary parties. For many attendees, it was their first conference since last year's edition, and the first time they were able to embrace their fellow Etherians since the beginning of the pandemic.

For this EthCC recap panel, we're joined by Kaiko CEO Ambre Soubiran, Ethereum France President Jerome de Tychey, and ParaSwap Founder Mounir Benchemled. We discussed the conference, how the ecosystem has evolved this past year, the rapid growth of DeFi and NFTs, and what to look forward to as the community continues to grow.

Episode links:

Kaiko
ParaSwap
Ethereum France

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter
Chorus One: Start earning rewards and contribute to network security by staking with Chorus One, a staking provider securing over $1bn in assets on over 25 decentralized networks. Head over now to chorus.one to start your staking journey.

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/401

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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:

Why the Osmosis project was built
How Osmosis works on Cosmos
What is IBC?
What the ecosystem looks like
What the AMM landscape looks like on Cosmos
What the roadmap of Osmosis looks like
The Gravity Bridge
How was the chain bootstrapped?
What is the ION?
The Osmosis community

Episode links:

Osmosis
Cosmos
Osmosis on Medium
Osmosis on Twitter
Sunny on Twitter

Sponsors:

Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Zubin Koticha. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/400

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Originally started with a focus on prediction markets, Gnosis has done innovative work around automated market makers (AMMs) and decentralized exchanges for years. The latest protocol launched by the Gnosis team is CowSwap. CowSwap introduces various innovations that could improve user experience, reduce gas costs, reduce the effects of MEV and result in better outcomes for retail traders.

We were joined by Felix Leupold, software developer at Gnosis to discuss CowSwap and the future of decentralized exchanges.

Topics covered in this episode:

Felix's background and how he started working on CowSwap with Gnosis
Why did Gnosis make the shift away from prediction markets, and why the return to focus on AMMs
The relationship between Gnosis Protocol and CowSwap
How CowSwap works from a user perspective
How are solvers chosen and what are the incentives around providing solutions
What MEV is and why it’s a problem
The upcoming integration with Balancer V2
How fees in CowSwap work and the effect on LPs
Where is CowSwap today and what is its roadmap
Felix's views on the future of order-book based exchanges

Episode links:

CowSwap
Gnosis
CowSwap on Twitter
Felix on Twitter

Sponsors:

Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter
Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/399

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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:

How did Centrifuge come about and what is its vision
What challenges do they face using real world assets as collateral
How users are protected against spam and fraud
The underwriter token model
What are the value limits on what can be borrowed?
Some use cases of where Centrifuge can make the biggest impact
Who are the lenders involved in the protocol?
How the protocol works on a technical level
The Centrifuge token - CFG
Altair - the Kusama parachain on Polkadot
What the integration of Tinlake assets in DeFi looks like

Episode links:

Centrifuge website
Tinlake
Understanding Tinlake
Centrifuge on Twitter
Lucas on Twitter
Cassidy on Twitter

Sponsors:

Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter
Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter
ParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/398

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Ethereum 2.0 is an upgrade to the Ethereum network that aims to improve the network's security and scalability. Recently, we chatted to Danny Ryan about the Merge and switch to Proof of Stake. As a follow up to that episode, we were joined by Dankrad Feist, who heads the sharding and statelessness research at the Ethereum Foundation.

We dove deep into the technical infrastructure of how Eth2 addresses scaling through sharding, the pros and cons of data shards vs. execution shards, and how this links up with ZK-rollups. We also talked about the Ethereum state and how the state can be altered for protocol improvements.

Topics covered in this episode:

Dankrad's background and how he came to work on Ethereum
An overview of potential protocol updates and where they’re at right now
Data availability shards and the overall concept of sharding in the protocol
How shards are maintained with validators and Proof of Stake
How Rollups work and the vision for their future
The role of execution shards and what they provide that data availability shards don't
Composability across data shards
Statelessness; what the Ethereum state is and how it is used
What is state rent?
EVM and parallelization
Dankrad's views on the future of Ethereum and what it will bring to the blockchain space

Episode links:

Episode 393 with Danny Ryan
Eth Research
Ethereum Blog
Ethereum Community
Eth R&D Discord
Ethereum on GitHub
EF on Twitter
Dankrad on Twitter

Sponsors:

Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter
ParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/397

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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:

Alex's background and how he got into the crypto space
An overview of existing Ethereum scaling solutions
Difference between Optimistic Rollup and zkRollup
Transferring funds to the zkSync Layer 2 and gas fees involved
How the zkSync transaction sequencer works
Withdrawing funds to Layer 1 and timescales involved
How the procol deals with reorgs
How block formation works on zkSync
The function of the zkSync token

Episode links:

zkSync
For Developers
zkSync on Twitter
Alex on Twitter

Sponsors:

Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter
Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter
ParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/396

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By default, all transactions made on Ethereum are public. Tornado Cash is a decentralized privacy preserving solution built on Ethereum which adds privacy through obfuscation. Users can place Ether and some stable coins in prescribed increments [1 Eth, 10 Eth, 100 Eth...] into the Tornado Pool. In return, they are issued a private note, with which they can withdraw funds at a later time to a different address.

We were joined by Roman Semenov, co-founder of Tornado Cash, to talk about how the protocol works, how it was set up, community governance, and where he sees Tornado Cash's position in the quickly growing privacy ecosystem on Ethereum.

Topics covered in this episode:

Roman's background and how he got into crypto
The problem Tornado Cash solves and how the protocol works
What tokens are supported and can you swap tokens?
Smart contracts and zero knowledge
Costs involved for deposits and withdrawls
Weaknesses of the protocol
The Compliance Tool feature
The regulatory threat to private coins in the future
Tornado Cash's roadmap and how they see themselves positioned in the wider ecosystem

Episode links:

Tornado.cash
Dune Analytics
Tornado Cash on Twitter
Roman on Twitter

Sponsors:

Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter
ParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter
Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/395

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Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are tokens that we can use to represent ownership of unique items. They let us tokenize things like art, collectibles, even real estate. They can only have one official owner at a time and they're secured by the Ethereum blockchain. And they have taken the crypto space by storm is recent months. Showtime is a NFT social media network where creators & collectors showcase their digital art. It reads all marketplaces and instead of buying and selling, you can comment, share and like. It's been described as the Instagram for NFTs.

We were joined by Alex Masmej, Co-founder and CEO of Showtime, to chat about why he got into NFTs and in particular crypto art, how Showtime works and its purpose, and the future of the platform.

Topics covered in this episode:

Alex's background and how he got into crypto
The story behind the $ALEX token
Uncollateralized lending and why it's important
The vision for Showtime
Alex's views on the NFT craze
What is the open social graph
Why Alex chose to focus on crypto art
How Showtime compares to similar platforms like Opensea and Zora
The Showtime business model, funding sources, and 5 year plan

Episode links:

Showtime
Showtime on Twitter
Alex on Twitter

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter
Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter
Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/394

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Ethereum will switch from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) likely already later this year in a much anticipated upgrade to Ethereum 2. The switch to PoS aims to make Ethereum both more secure and more sustainable by securing the network through Ether instead of mining. A second Eth2 update will address scaling through sharding at a later time.

Danny Ryan, Researcher with Ethereum Foundation, has been a major driving force behind the Eth2 project. He joined us for a progress update and we chatted about how the protocol will work in its steady state, what has launched so far, what happens in The Merge, and how PoS will affect centralization tendencies.

Topics covered in this episode:

Danny's background and how he got into crypto
An overview of Eth2 - Phase 0, Beacon Chain
The role of a validator and building blocks
Penalties and rewards within the protocol including slashing
What the epoch is and how it relates to finality
The Proof-of-Stake merge
Why Proof-of-Stake is favorable for security purposes
What is the roadmap for sharding?
Ethereum fees

Episode links:

Ethereum Community
Eth R&D Discord
Ethereum on GitHub
Eth Research
EF on Twitter
EF blog
Danny on Twitter

Sponsors:

Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter
Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter
ParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Martin Köppelmann. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/393

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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:

Scoopy's background and how he got into crypto
What is the story behind the name Scoopy Trooples and his anonymity?
A high level overview and use case of Alchemix
Scoopy's vision for alUSD
The integration with Yearn
Will alUSD drive down yields of other stablecoins?
How Transmuter works to maintain the 1:1 peg
The long term vision for Alchemix and biggest potential risks
The Alchemix community
How they raised their funds

Episode links:

Alchemix Website
Alchemix Discord
Alchemix on Twitter
Scoopy on Twitter

Sponsors:

Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter
ParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter
Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Zubin Koticha. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/392

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Curve is an Automated Market Maker (AMM) that lets users and other decentralized protocols exchange stablecoins (DAI to USDC for example) with low fees and low slippage. Unlike exchanges that match a buyer and a seller, users transact with the smart contract itself. By providing a flatter curve targeted for relatively stable pairs, Curve has established the lead position for these markets. Curve is also leveraging its own token CRV to incentivize long-term adoption of the protocol and decentralize control of governance.

We were joined by Curve Finance Founder, Michael Egorov, to chat about why he created the protocol and his long term vision for the project.

Topics covered in this episode:

Michael's background and how he got into crypto
How Curve works from the perspective of a trader and as a liquidity provider
How they came up with the stableswap design
How Curve compares to Uniswap v3
Michael's take on forks, fork threat, and Curve's moat
Curve's thesis on good governance
How they keep the protocol secure
An overview of the Curve community and ecosystem
The long term vision for Curve

Episode links:

Curve Finance
Curve Resources
Curve on Twitter
Michael on Twitter

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter
Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter
Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Zubin Koticha. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/391

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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:

What Tim's research focuses on and how he became involved with blockchain
What made him interested in the fees problem
The current fee system on Ethereum - the first-price auction and base fee
EIP-1559 - the problem it solves and how it does it
Increasing and decreasing of block sizes
The threat of miners colluding to drive down base fees
Deep dive into how the proposal works
What are some alternatives to EIP-1559

Episode links:

Tim Roughgarden
EIP-1559 on GitHub
An Economic Analysis of EIP-1559
Tim on Twitter

Sponsors:

Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter
Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter
ParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/390

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Flashbots is a research and development company focussed on Miner Extractable Value (MEV). MEV is the profit a miner can make through their ability to arbitrarily include, exclude, or re-order transactions from the blocks they produce. Flashbots has created a fork of the ethereum geth client, MEV-geth, to allow miners to exploit MEV, currently run by 80% of miners.

Co-founders of Flashbots, Stephane Gosselin and Phil Daian, recently joined us to chat about the protocol and to deep dive into the good, the bad, and the ugly of MEV.

Topics covered in this episode:

Stephane and Phil's backgrounds and how they got into crypto
What led them to creating Flashbots and what it does
What is Miner/Maximal Extractable Value (MEV)
A technical deep dive into how the project works with miners and searchers
The progress on the SGX solution
Spam attacks and reorgs on Flashbots
Phil's reply to the perspective that MEV extraction is theft
What is Generalized Frontrunning?
How MEV differs at L1 vs L2
What's the plan for Flashbots going forward?

Episode links:

Flashbots on GitHub
Flashbots on Medium
MEV...what do?
Stephane on Twitter
Phil on Twitter

Sponsors:

Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter
ParaSwap: Give ParaSwap a try at https://paraswap.io/epicenter. This URL will allow you to claim a 50% refund on gas fees for your first swap of at least 1 Eth. This offer is available until May 1st 2021 and refunds will be made every Friday starting April 9th, 2021*Terms and conditions apply. -
Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/389

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Trevor McFedries joined us for a fascinating chat about his background in the football and music industries, and how this led him into crypto. Trevor is the cofounder of Brud, a technology startup specializing in artificial intelligence and media. At Brud, they create social media personas with the help of CGI technology, the most well known being Lil Miquela. Lil Miquela is a sentient robot navigating life in LA -- and has millions of followers on instagram.

Trevor also started Friends With Benefits, a gated online community on a private discord server with a community token. We talked with Trevor about the increasingly immersive social media experience, the future for creators and the future of organizations.

Topics covered in this episode:

Trevor's background in football and music, including his time working at Spotify
An overview of Brud
Who is Lil Miquela?
How do these fictional characters fit into the 'real world'?
How Trevor got into crypto
The Friends with Benefits community
Trevor's views on the future of DAOs
Brud's experience with VCs as opposed to crowdfunding
Trevor's take on NFTs and Lil Miquela's NFT drop
The cultural impact of crypto to society and what the future looks like

Episode links:

Brud
Lil Miquela
Friends with Benefits
Friends with Benefits on Twitter
Trevor on Twitter

Sponsors:

Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter
Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter
ParaSwap: Give ParaSwap a try at paraswap.io/epicenter. This URL will allow you to claim a 50% refund on gas fees for your first swap of at least 1 Eth. This offer is available until May 1st 2021 and refunds will be made every Friday starting April 9th, 2021*Terms and conditions apply.

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/388

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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:

The journey of RSK since they were last on the show 5 years ago
The vision they have for RSK
The building blocks of the project
RSK's 2-way peg
How merged mining works
RSK's compatibility with EVM
Projects being built on RSK
How you can get involved

Episode links:

Website
Developers Portal
Public Slack Workspace
Github
Public community discussions
RSK on Twitter
Adrian on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/B005

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The ability to move Bitcoin on other chains isn't a new idea, and many are trying to overcome the technical limitations which make this a technically challenging feat. The latest representation of Bitcoin on Ethereum is tBTC, a fully-backed ERC-20 token representing bitcoin collateral. tBTC is fully decentralized and relies on Keep Network, a decentralized multi-party computation which enables cross-chain bridging.

We were joined by Matt Luongo, CEO of Thesis (the team behind tBTC and Keep Network) to chat about the tBTC technology, his vision for the future of interoperability and value propositions of different chains.

Topics covered in this episode:

Matt's background - how he got into crypto and his experience in the space
The Keep Network - dencetralized multi-party computations
Why trustless minting of tBTC is important
tBTC and its security model
Dark DAOs and vote buying
The merge between Keep Network and NuCypher
What other mergers are being looked at for the future
Matt's views on the idea of BTC existing as tokenized asset on Ethereum and other chains

Episode links:

Sponsors:
- ParaSwap: Give ParaSwap a try at paraswap.io/epicenter. This URL will allow you to claim a 50% refund on gas fees for your first swap of at least 1 Eth. This offer is available until May 1st 2021 and refunds will be made every Friday starting April 9th, 2021 - Terms and conditions apply.
- Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter
- Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/387

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1inch Exchange is a DEX aggregator routing cryptocurrency purchases through different DEXs to reduce slippage and get a better conversion rate for the user compared with just using a single DEX. The platform launched its governance token, 1INCH, in December 2020.

We were joined by Co-founder of 1inch Sergej Kunz to chat about how 1inch works, how the 1INCH token provides liquidity to their liquidity platform, its integration with platforms such as Uniswap, and the roadmap from here.

Topics covered in this episode:

Sergej's background and how he got into blockchain
How slippage is used in the 1inch protocol
The liquidity protocol used
The integration between Uniswap and 1inch network and the new restrictions with Uniswap v3
Their AMM protocol, Mooniswap
The aggregation that 1inch has focused on and its defensibility
The function of the 1inch token and where it is headed in terms of governance
How 1inch plan to implement DAO
How 1inch deal with the regulatory impacts of DEXes
1inch's stance on Ethereum gas costs

Episode links:

1inch website
1inch blog
1inch on Twitter
Sergej on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/386

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Zubin Koticha, CEO & Co-founder of Opyn, joined us again on the show to give us an update on Opyn v2.

Opyn v1 was focused on insurance. It's successor, Opyn v2, offers a more traditional options infrastructure. We discuss the problems of building trustless options infrastructure: choice of collateral, partial collateralization and efficient trading mechanisms for options.

Topics covered in this episode:

An overview of Opyn v1 and the different options created by DeFi users
How options in DeFi work
What is new in Opyn v2
How the oracle specification works
Capital efficiency - nesting options for collateralization
Fungibility of different options
What makes Opyn different to other option platforms?
Options and the AMM design

Episode links:

Opyn
Epicenter Episode 344 - Opyn
A beginner's guide to options: Opyn v2
YieldSpace
Opyn GitHub
Opyn on Twitter
Zubin on Twitter

Sponsors:

ParaSwap: If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out paraswap.io/epicenter. ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage. *Terms and conditions apply.

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/385

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Liquity is a decentralized borrowing protocol that allows you to draw interest-free loans against Ether used as collateral. In addition to the collateral, the loans are secured by a Stability Pool containing LUSD and by fellow borrowers collectively acting as guarantors of last resort. Liquity as a protocol is non-custodial, immutable, and governance-free.

We were joined by Robert Lauko, CEO & Co-founder, and Kolten Bergeron, Head of Growth, of Liquity. We chatted about how the protocol is built and the mechanisms used, how to borrow, and the stability pool and liquidations.

Topics covered in this episode:

Robert and Kolten's backgrounds and how they got into crypto
What led Robert to create Liquity
What Liquity is and the liquidation mechanism used
The function of the stability pool
The process of existing troves taking on the debt of undercollateralized troves
Liquity vs Compound & MakerDAO
LUSD redemptions
How the Recovery mode works
The purpose of the LQTY token
How the algorithmic monetary policy works

Episode links:

Liquity
Liquity docs
Liquity on Medium
Liquity on GitHub
Robert on Twitter
Kolten on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Zubin Koticha. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/384

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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:

Joey's background and how he got into crypto
An overview of VolleyFire
What KeeperDAO does and its mission
How KeeperDAO users pool funds to to profit from on-chain arbitrage and liquidation opportunities
The grim trigger and hiding game strategies
KeeperDAO integrations and gas costs
The KeeperDAO governance roadmap
The ROOK token
Can keepers carry out malicious attacks?

Episode links:

KeeperDAO
KeeperDAO on Medium
The KeeperDAO whitepaper
KeeperDAO on Twitter
Joey Zacherl

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/383

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NFTs are a new paradigm that opens possibilities for new types of interactions. In digital art, it has caught on like wildfire and is transforming how people think of ownership.

Alex Salnikov has been immersed in the crypto world for many years and recognized the potential of NFTs. He created Rarible, an NFT marketplace that has seen rapid growth. But the vision of Rarible is to be more an open transaction protocol for NFTs and serve many different markets.

He joined us to discuss the different NFT use cases and how NFTs can scale and function in a multi-chain world. It's a great conversation at the unfolding of a new paradigm.

Topics covered in this episode:

Alex's background and how he got into crypto
How Rarible was created and why they decided to focus on NFTs
What are NFTs and how are they different to other cryptocurrencies
What’s driving the massive growth of NFTs right now?
The link between owning an NFT and legal ownership
How does Alex see NFTs and Rarible evolving in the future
How NFTs work on a technical level, storing metadata securely, and the costs of minting NFTs
The roadmap of Rarible as a marketplace and the challenges associated with it

Episode links:

Rarible
Rarible on Medium
Rarible on OpenSea
Rarible on Twitter
Alex on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/382

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Julien Bouteloup is a serial entrepreneur, Ethereum developer and addict of crazy innovative ideas. He started his entrepreneurial career building websites and selling hardware technologies at age 14. Today he is involved with many projects including Stake Capital, Rekt, Curve Finance, and he advises several crypto companies.

Julien strives to bring to light the dark side of crypto. As DeFi grows, so do the number of questionable projects and ethical concerns around certain practices. Julien joins us to talk about the excesses in the DeFi space and how the ecosystem should cope with them.

Topics covered in this episode:

Julien's background, how he found crypto, and the various projects Julien is working on today
The Stake DAO - its purpose and vision
Julien's views on the state of DeFi today
Price arbitrage attacks in the ecosystem - Flashloans
Julien's involvement in Curve Finance and how this platform is pushing towards more resilient DeFi protocols
Julien's thoughts on NFT and Decentralized Monopoly
Curve's reaction to the launch of Saddle
The role of validators in the space

Episode links:

Stake Capital
Rekt News
Rekt Capital on Twitter
Decentralised Monopoly
Julien on Twitter

Sponsors:

Stacker Ventures: A community-run protocol for initiating and managing pooled capital on the Ethereum blockchain. Structured as a DAO, it initiates decentralized funds, accelerates portfolio investments through an involved community, and provides checks and balances to fund management - https://epicenter.rocks/stacker

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/381

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Namebase is a top-level domain (TLD) name registrar that operates on the Handshake blockchain. It creates an ecosystem of TLDs that may be bought and sold using an on-chain auction mechanism. It takes a different approach to other decentralized domain name systems as Namebase is compatible with the ICANN namespace, the organization governs domain names globally. Users may register TLDs that don't yet exist in the ICANN namespace, like .epicenter or .ethereum, for example, creating the opportunity for new niche domain registrars to emerge.

Tieshun Roquerre, CEO of Namebase, joins us to discuss his vision for Namebase and his ambitious goal to decentralize ICANN.

Topics covered in this episode:

Tieshun's background and how he got into crypto
Why and how Namebase was created and its relationship to Handshake
Domain name systems on blockchain
The history of ICANN and how it functions
Domain name censorship and security issues surrounding certificate authorities
How are they preparing for the inevitable fork between ICANN and Handshake
Namebase and Handshake improve on DNS and certificate authorities
Namebase's business model and roadmap

Episode links:

Namebase
Handshake
Namebase on Twitter
Tieshun on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/380

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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:

Muneeb's background and how he got into crypto
Why Stacks was created
How this works being built on Bitcoin
Mining and bidding on blocks
Smart contracting on Stacks - Clarity programming language
Stacks vs “Bitcoin on Ethereum”
Stacks vs Rootstack
The apps that currently run on Stacks 2.0

Episode links:

Stacks website
Stacks whitepaper
Stacking
Proof of Transfer
Hiro
Stacks on Twitter
Muneeb on Twitter

Sponsors:

1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/379

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Radicle is a decentralized platform for code collaboration. It's built on Git and is an open-source decentralized alternative to platforms like GitHub. Tools like Radicle are an essential component of the decentralized technology stack and will enable DAOs to commit code through governance.

Co-founders Alexis Sellier & Eleftherios Diakomichalis joined us to chat about why they felt it was important to create Radicle and how it fits into the DAO ecosystem with a more accessible governance system of code.

Topics covered in this episode:

What Radicle is and the vision they are pursuing
After both working on Soundcloud, the lessons that were carried over to this project
The Cathedral vs Bazaar model
Git usage with the tool
The technical architecture of Radicle
The other differences between Radicle and GitHub
Storage and replicating solutions between peers
How Radicle promotes open source sustainability
Ethereum integration with the tool

Episode links:

Sponsors:
- 1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/378

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Ethereum Push Notification Service (EPNS) emerged from the Indian startup scene in 2020. It's a decentralized notification protocol that enables DApps to send push notifications to Ethereum wallet users. EPNS also provides incentives to users that opt-in for push notifications, creating the possibility for an ecosystem communities around topic-centric channels.

We are joined by Harsh Rajat, Project Lead and Co-founder of EPNS. We chatted about why and how the protocol was built, its technical structure, the purpose of incentivizing users to receive notifications, and how they tackle spam.

Topics covered in this episode:

Harsh's background and how he got involved in crypto
The beginning of Ethereum Push Notification Service
The design patterns considered when building EPNS
What is a decentralized push notification service?
Unique use cases that could benefit from DeFi push notifications
The structure of the protocol and how it actually works
The purpose of incentivizing users to receive notifications
The Spam Score - how EPNS filter spam
How EPNS plan to onboard and incentivize wallets to integrate

Episode links:

EPNS website
EPNS app
Whitepaper
EPNS on Twitter
Harsh on Twitter

Sponsors:

1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/377

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Aaron Wright is a professor at Cardozo Law School and Co-founder of OpenLaw. Before this he was a successful entrepreneur, having sold his first company to Wikia - the for-profit version of Wikipedia. Today Aaron is a renowned thought-leader in the blockchain space at the forefront of DAOs. Last year OpenLaw launched The LAO, a DAO on Ethereum for investors looking to earn returns on Ethereum-based projects.

Aaron joins us to share his expert legal knowledge on all things DAO, and discuss his latest projects the LAO and Flamingo DAO.

Topics covered in this episode:

Aaron's background and how he got into blockchain and the DAO space
The early vision for DAOs
Stakeholder participation in DAOs
Wrapped and unwrapped DAOs
Proxy voting on DAOs
Governance mechanisms
The multi-token model
How DAOs are characterized under law and the legislation surrounding them
The Wyoming Blockchain Bill
The different categories of DAOs
Where does Aaron see the DAO ecosystem headed in the future

Episode links:

OpenLaw website
The LAO
Mike Hearn: Autonomous agents, self driving cars and Bitcoin
Aaron's book - Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code
OpenLaw on Twitter
The LAO on Twitter
Aaron on Twitter

Sponsors:

1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/376

Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code

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During the DeFi Summer of 2020, YAM Finance launched with a bang, and had its share of ups and downs within its first couple of days. It started out as an experiment to bring together some of the more innovative ideas in the space. It sparked a movement which brought massive attention to yield farming, and started the food token craze. After a bug was discovered in the v1 contract, many thought the project was dead. But no, the team and community have been working diligently to bring the protocol back to life and it's now a community-run DAO innovating at the intersection of decentralized governance and programmable finance.

Trent Elmore is one of the creators of YAM. He joins us to talk about the incredibly swift birth of the project, the rebase mechanism, the treasury, the infamous bug and how they saved the project. He also shares some of the new upcoming products on the YAM Roadmap, and how a truly decentralized community is rebuilding its brand.

Topics covered in this episode:

Trent's background and how he got into crypto and DeFi
How YAM and food tokens were born
The team behind YAM
What was the vision of the project at the beginning?
The proposed utility of the protocol
How the treasury funding works in the context of the rebasing mechanism
The Game Theory for YAM holders
How they built their communities and choose tokens
YAM's connection between their governance and Snapshot
The infamous bug in V1 and how they recovered from it
What plans do they have for the treasury and products going forward, including the recent UMA collaboration

Episode links:

YAM on Twitter
YAM Finance
Discord
YAM on Medium
Trent on Twitter

Sponsors:

1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/375

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The new year has brought with it a new bull run. This is great news for crypto holders, but at what cost? Will this bring with it a number of negative implications such as regulatory push back and privacy battles? Listen as the five hosts of Epicenter come together for an in-depth chat to share their predictions for the crypto space in 2021.

Topics covered in this episode:

Each of our hosts share how 2020 went for them
In-depth individual predictions on where things are headed with the current bull market
Public backlash to the crypto system
Regulatory and tax related implications to crypto
The battleground of privacy
US regulatory pressure and the effect on the US Dollar

Episode links:

Omen Prediction Market - Will The Flippening happen in 2021?
Brian on Twitter
Friederike on Twitter
Meher on Twitter
Sebastien on Twitter
Sunny on Twitter

Sponsors:

1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Meher Roy, Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/374

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Eric Wall is the Chief Investment Officer at Arcane Assets, but you may already know him from his writing and his presence on Twitter where he offers valuable insights on crypto markets. He joined us on the show to share with us his deep and timely insights into the current bull run and how this compared to 2017, where it is headed from here, and also he opens up on his normally guarded thoughts on the future of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Topics covered in this episode:

Eric's background and how he got into crypto
Eric's experience working with Cinnober and Nasdaq
Using blockchain as an underlying substrate in the traditional finance ecosystem
An overview of Arcane Assets
Eric's thesis behind Bitcoin
The current Bitcoin bull run
How Arcane deals with transaction fee problems and solutions that may address these over the coming years
Using the value proposition of Ether when Bitcoin is store value
Eric opens up on how he thinks Ethereum will become adopted in mainstream finance
Why does the Bitcoin community reject tokens?
What is different in the current bull market compared to 2017
Eric's predictions on how this bull market will play out

Episode links:

Arcane Assets
Arcane Crypto
Nine Bitcoin Charts Already at All-Time Highs
Crypto Market Structure 3.0
Arcane on Twitter
Eric on Twitter

Sponsors:

1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch

Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/373

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In this digital age, counting ballots by hand, as recently seen in the US Presidential Election, is very analogue and behind the times. Although the US constitution is over two centuries old and hasn't had a major version update since 1992, European democracies are much more recent and utilizing the technology available today.

This panel discussion looks at how open technologies and new systems of governance could be a path toward a future of democracy. We also hear about the avenues for improvement with modern voting techniques and liquid democracy.

Topics covered in this episode:

Introductions to all panel members
The state of democratic processes in G20 countries today and which are at the forefront of innovation
What are the incentives for different stakeholders in liquid democracy
How can digital voting systems be trusted?
Implementing and reviewing new democratic systems
The journey forward for digital democracy

Episode links:

An information-theoretic model of voting systems
Hacking Democracy with Fabric Ventures
Jon Nash on Twitter
Santiago Siri on Twitter
Professor Amrita Dhillon
Dr Grammateia Kotsialou
Fabric Ventures
CogX

Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/372

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In today's world, life and business is moving more into to a virtual space and this has of course been accelerated as a result of the Covid pandemic. Now more than ever it is important to rethink the very basis of how we organise, make decisions, and structure the world’s governance. And how can we do this in the context of crypto and Web3?

Web3 infrastructure can provide the foundations of a digital jurisdiction. In the Web3 world rules are enforced by decentralized governance and DAOs allow for a group of stakeholders to participate in governance of an organisation that has no affiliation to a nation state. How do we treat that in the judicial system and how does it sit within existing national jurisdictions?

Topics covered in this episode:

What is a digital jurisdiction?
How Aragon is helping create decentralised autonomous organisations and communities
The behaviours of millennials today and how geographical borders have fallen
How to ensure new digital jurisdictions remain utopian
Some applications currently being built on Aragon
Where new systems sit within current judicial systems
Why Tim invested in the Aragon Network Token (ANT) model

Episode links:

Powered By Aragon
Aragon Project on Twitter
Draper Associates
Luis Cuende on Twitter
Tim Draper on Twitter
Luis on Epicenter: Episode #236
Rethinking the Justice System: A Digital Jurisdiction for Decentralised Organisations | CogX 2020
Fabric Ventures
CogX

Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/371

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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.
The team also recently released a custom version of two-factor authentication (2FA), tKey.

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:

Zhen and Leonard's backgrounds and how they got into crypto
How and why Torus was formed
The path Torus has followed over the past year
Unwrapping the base layer, the Torus Network
How Shamir's Secret Sharing works and why Torus chose to build on it
The Torus Wallet and a step by step of how it works
Torus and account portability
Use cases and applications built on Torus
The second layer of security, tKey
Their plans for introducing Touch ID
How Torus educate their users on how to stay secure
The long term goal for Torus and how users are protected in the future

Episode links:

Torus website
Torus Status
A beginner’s guide to Shamir’s Secret Sharing
Developer documentation
Torus on Telegram
Torus Charity Twitter Campaign
What Distributed Key Generation Is
Key Assignments, Resolution and Retrieval
How to Share a Secret in Production
tKey - An open standard for threshold key management - HackMD
Torus on Twitter
Zhen on Twitter
Leonard on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/B003

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Crypto is largely reliant on incentive mechanisms, and liquidity mining is one of the more recent cryptoeconomic incentive models to emerge. When decentralized exchanges need liquidity, they can leverage liquidity mining to incentivize users to provide it. In turn, the “miners” generate revenue, generally in the form of a native tokens, proportional to their share of liquidity in a pool. This summer saw a surge in activity surrounding this concept, with Synthetix a notable player.

Kain Warwick is the founder of Synthetix, a company creating synthetic assets for DeFi, enabling exposure to fiat currencies, commodities, and cryptocurrencies. Hasu is a crypto researcher and writer with a focus on game theory and economics. They joined us to explain the key concepts behind liquidity mining, how and why it was created, and its increasingly important role in DeFi.

Topics covered in this episode:

Introductions by Kain and Hasu
How and when liquidity mining was created
What they hoped to achieve with their liquidity mining programs
How liquidity mining works in Synthetix
Incentive mechanisms
Yield Farming and 'getting rich'
How Automated Market Makers (AMM) played a part in the success of liquidity mining
How Uniswap leverages liquidity mining
Projects that don't currently have liquidity mining but would benefit from it
Use cases in pre-blockchain systems

Episode links:

Synthetix website
Kain on Epicenter, Episode 325
Uncommon Core
Deribit Insights
Synthetix on Twitter
Kain on Twitter
Hasu on Twitter

Sponsors:

cPanel: cPanel's WordPress Toolkit is the all in one solution that makes hosting your website easier than it's ever been - https://epicenter.rocks/cpanel
Algorand: Learn more about Algorand and how it’s unique design makes it easy for developers to build sophisticated applications - https://algorand.com/epicenter
1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/370

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Matic Network is a Layer-2 scaling solution that provides instant, low cost, and secure transactions on Ethereum. Built on an adapted implementation of Plasma and a decentralized network of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) validators, its goal is to solve the scalability and usability issues for developers building Dapps, whilst not compromising on decentralization and user experience.

Sandeep Nailwal, COO & Co-founder of Matic, joins us to chat about how Matic works and the problems it's solving, and we also get a fascinating look into the crypto and startup community in India.

Topics covered in this episode:

Sandeep’s background and how he got involved in crypto
What the crypto scene looks like within Bangalore’s startup ecosystem
How have the Indian regulations on crypto affected Matic's business
What Matic is and the main problem it’s solving
A deep dive into Matic’s technical infrastructure and building on Tendermint
Why choose Matic over other off-chain scaling solutions for Ethereum
Matic's leveraging of hackathons in their go-to-market strategy
Some of the trade offs one needs to make when using Matic
How Matic will fit into the Ethereum 2.0 ecosystem as it develops
Dagger, and other tools they are planning to build
Learning more about Matic

Episode links:

Matic website
What is Matic Network?
Episode 352 with Jack O'Holleran of SKALE Labs
Episode 336 with Jinglan Wang & Karl Floersch of Optimism
Episode 340 with Daniel Wang of Loopring
Matic on Twitter
Sandeep on Twitter

Sponsors:

cPanel: cPanel's WordPress Toolkit is the all in one solution that makes hosting your website easier than it's ever been - https://epicenter.rocks/cpanel
Algorand: Learn more about Algorand and how it’s unique design makes it easy for developers to build sophisticated applications - https://algorand.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/369

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Filecoin is a peer-to-peer network data storage network, with built-in economic incentives for storage providers. It facilitates open-markets for storing and retrieving data, in which anyone can participate. Users can pay the network to access storage space, which can be encrypted, replicated, and highly available. After years of development and iteration, Filecoin recently launched its mainnet. The long term vision of the protocol is a fully decentralized future for the web.

Juan Benet, Founder & CEO of Protocol Labs, returns for the second part of this 2-part episode. In this show we deep dive in to the technical aspects of Filecoin, how Juan and his team decided to design it, and the types of projects that are building on top of it.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Filecoin works under the hood and the life cycle of data
The role of miners in the protocol
The bridge between Filecoin and Ethereum
How the economics of Filecoin were designed
How governance works in the Filecoin network
The Filecoin Foundation
The projects that are building on top of Filecoin
Juan’s views on blockchain scalability and Ethereum 2.0, and the challenges Web3 faces

Episode links:

Filecoin website
Protocol Labs website
IPFS website
Episode #367 with Juan Benet (Part 1 in this series)
Episode #100 with Juan Benet
Filecoin on Twitter
Juan on Twitter

Sponsors:

cPanel: cPanel's WordPress Toolkit is the all in one solution that makes hosting your website easier than it's ever been - https://epicenter.rocks/cpanel
Algorand: Learn more about Algorand and how it’s unique design makes it easy for developers to build sophisticated applications - https://algorand.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/368

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IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) is a fully decentralized distributed system for storing and accessing files, websites, applications, and data. Released just over 5 years ago by Protocol Labs, it has had a tremendous impact in the Web3 space as the standard for how blockchain projects store data. Filecoin is a complementary protocol to IPFS and was recently launched on the mainnet. Filecoin is the economic layer which powers IPFS's decentralized file storage network. It enables users to store their files at hypercompetitive prices and verify that their files are being stored and replicated correctly. And it allows storage providers to sell their storage on an open market.

Juan Benet is the Founder & CEO of Protocol Labs, which has had a huge impact in the blockchain ecosystem, as organisation behind IPFS and Filecoin. Juan returns to the show after 5 years to give us an important update on the long-term vision to fund innovative technologies, IPFS since it was created, and Filecoin as a foundation to a new decentralized cloud.This is a 2-part series and in the next episode we deep dive in to the technical aspects of Filecoin.

Topics covered in this episode:

An update on Protocol Labs and how it has grown on the Bell Labs model
How they bridge the gap between a research foundation (Bell Labs) and a company (Protocol Labs)
The intersection between computer science and crypto
How the Protocol Labs organisation is setup and how Juan has led it as a solo founder
An overview of IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) and how it has evolved since our last interview
An introduction to the Filecoin blockchain and its unique design
How Filecoin is fundamentally different from other layer-1 blockchains
How hash rates and storage fees affect the Filecoin blockchain consensus system
The potential impacts of Filecoin on a global level

Episode links:

Filecoin website
Protocol Labs website
IPFS website
Episode #100 with Juan Benet
Filecoin on Twitter
Juan on Twitter

Sponsors:

cPanel: cPanel's WordPress Toolkit is the all in one solution that makes hosting your website easier than it's ever been - https://epicenter.rocks/cpanel
Algorand: Learn more about Algorand and how it’s unique design makes it easy for developers to build sophisticated applications - https://algorand.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/367

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Data is a huge industry, worth about $500 billion in Europe alone. And currently there's a fundamental misalignment between those creating data and those consuming it. There's a one direction value flow in terms of those who are providing the value (the data) and those extracting it. These are big tech platforms that typically use that data to sell signals and advertising to brands and merchants. This is referred to as a shadow data economy and it's time to flip this model on its head.

Ocean Protocol is a platform which creates data marketplaces, providing an alternative to the current model. Data providers can sell their data to the platform to whoever wants to buy it and that data set is represented as a token. The value is a function of the usefulness of that data. This creates a much more equitable market where value flow is more cyclical than one directional.

Trent McConaghy, Founder of Ocean Protocol, joins us to chat about the platform. They have just released V3 which has seen the introduction of the data token, the Ocean Market, and a new home on the Ethereum Mainchain.

Topics covered in this episode:

Trent’s background and long history of building blockchain products
The business models built around data and the “Shadow Data Economy”
What Ocean Protocol is and what it achieves
Technical components and stakeholders in the Ocean Protocol
Staking and providing liquidity for datatoken markets
The Ocean Market and activity since the launch
Ocean Protocol and its compliance with privacy regulations like GDPR
Ocean Protocol V3 and migrating from a sidechain to the mainnet
The future of Ocean Protocol and the potential for data stream markets

Episode links:

Ocean Protocol website
Ocean V3 release
Episode 78 - Ascribe – The Internet of Ownership
Episode 126 - BigchainDB – Scalable Public Distributed Databases
Episode 184 - IPDB – The Interplanetary Database and its Applications in AI
Ocean Protocol on Twitter
Trent on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/366

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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:

What Universal Basic Income (UBI) is and Martin’s interest and support of it
Pros and cons of funding UBI through taxation
Explaining Circles’ decentralized UBI
How ‘personal tokens’ work in Circles
Issuance and trust connections
Dealing with sybil attacks
On throughput limits
Conditions attached to your account
How UBI keeps up with inflation
Getting started with Circles
Attracting non crypto users and driving demand
Can Circles move onto Layer-2 - UX Design choices
Learn more about Circles and get involved

Episode links:

Circles UBI website
Circles Whitepaper
Martin on Epicenter - Episode 271, How the dxDAO could become the world’s largest organization
Martin on Epicenter - Episode 139, Gnosis – The Ethereum Prediction Market
Find Circles on Meetup
Circles Twitter
Martin Twitter

Sponsors:

Algorand: Learn how to start building on Algorand – Free webinar on November 17th - https://algorand.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/365

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Alchemy is a powerful blockchain developer platform providing a suite of developer tools. Developers building apps which interact with Ethereum can use Alchemy's powerful APIs to supercharge their apps, and leverage features not available in vanilla nodes. They also provide services like analytics, monitoring, alerting, logging and debugging.

Today, a number of the top Dapps in the Ethereum ecosystem use Alchemy, and the company recently made their API available to the general public. We chatted to Nikil Viswanathan, CEO & Co-founder about the platform, how it works and the problems it solves. We also addressed the concerns around centralization and ecosystem resiliency.

Topics covered in this episode:

Nikil's background and how he got into crypto
The Blockchain infrastructure
Why Alchemy chose to focus Ethereum
On building developer tools, and what Alchemy offers
How it works on a technical level and how it’s different from what else is available on the market
What can users do with supernodes
Plans for expanding into validation and other services in the future
Concerns for user privacy
Adoption of Alchemy among crypto projects
Nikil’s views on centralization concerns and ecosystem resiliency
How Jay-Z become an investor/advisor and other interesting partnerships with Alchemy
Where to learn more and join Alchemy

Episode links:

Alchemy Website
Get started on Alchemy
Alchemy Supernode
Alchemy on Twitter
Nikil on Twitter

Sponsors:

Algorand: Learn how to start building on Algorand – Free webinar on November 17th - https://algorand.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/364

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Alameda Research is a quant trading fund founded in 2017. Today it manages over $100 million in digital assets and trades $600 million to $1.5 billion per day across thousands of products: all major coins and altcoins, as well as their derivatives. Whilst running this fund, the team thought there was space for a robust crypto derivatives exchange build for traders which solves some of the issues they saw in derivatives trading. FTX is the crypto derivatives trading platform which came out of Alameda. In just under two years of existence, it has grown to become one of the top trading platforms for crypto, trading over $1B per day in derivatives.

The FTX team are also working on Project Serum. It’s an ambitious project to create a fully decentralized and permissionless DEX and DeFi ecosystem with trustless cross-chain trading. Serum is being built on Solana to allow a centralized orderbook. This offers a much higher speed and throughput than Ethereum. The goal is to create a robust DEX ecosystem which can compete with centralized exchanges on speed, all while being fully interoperable with Ethereum.

Today our guest is Sam Bankman-Fried, he is the CEO of FTX and Alameda Research, and co-founder of Project Serum. We hear all about his journey from Alameda, to FTX, and to his latest venture, Serum.

Topics covered in this episode:

Sam’s background and how he became involved in crypto trading
Why and how FTX was created
How FTX works and why the big focus on derivatives
The cross-over between FTX and Alameda
What Serum is and how it fits in the long term vision of FTX
Sam’s view on where products on DeFi are falling short and how it can be fixed
What are the trade-offs on Serum?
The off chain Serum order book
How cross-chain swaps work
The boundaries of the Serum ecosystem in relation to Solana
What is the governance mechanism on Serum
Sam’s view on the AMM argument
Where Sam thinks the DeFi ecosystem is heading and what is needed for it to gain legitimacy in the traditional finance world

Episode links:

FTX
Alameda Research
Project Serum
Epicenter episode 312 with Anatoly Yakovenko, Co-founder and CEO of Solana
SushiSwap Twitter thread
FTX on Twitter
Sam on Twitter

Sponsors:

Algorand: Learn how to start building on Algorand – Free webinar on November 17th - https://algorand.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/363

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Adan (Association for the Development of Digital Assets), is an organization which helps promote the development of the crypto industry in France, and more broadly in Europe. Its President, Simon Polrot, is also the Co-founder Ethereum France, which host the EthCC conference in Paris.

The European Commission has released a regulatory proposal, MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets), which falls under The Digital Finance Package. The Adan team have been working hard to understand, dissect and establish positions with regards to this regulation. The scope of this MiCA is vast, and it covers nearly every type of activity which relates to cryptocurrencies, utility tokens, stablecoins, and security tokens in Europe. In addition to being broad, it puts enormous restrictions on the DeFi ecosystem by merely ignoring most decentralized use cases, making it nearly impossible for DeFi to continue existing as we know it. It's an important piece of regulation which would apply to almost every crypto asset company or issuer across the European continent, as well as companies who have customers or do business here.

We chat to Simon who explains what the draft proposal means and the effects it will have on the European crypto industry. He also shares how the community can get involved in steering the regulation in favour of the industry before it's passed into law.

Topics covered in this episode:

Simon's background and how he became involved in crypto
Adan's mission in France en Europe
The high level principles of crypto regulations in Europe and the frameworks already in place
The EU Commission's Digital Finance Package explained
What MiCA is and who falls under this regulation
How the Commission identifies “token issuers”
How MiCA affects DeFi stablecoins like DAI
What are Crypto-Asset Service Providers (CASPs) and how they are concerned by MiCA
How the regulations may impact mining and staking
How MiCA favors financial institutions over startups in the crypto space
Why Simon thinks there is a positive side to this regulatory proposal
What Adan is doing to raise awareness and lobby to amend this proposal and repair the issues arising out of the draft proposal
How crypto companies can take part in the work of getting this regulation amended before it passes into law
The possibility for an alternative crypto finance ecosystem to emerge from this regulation

Episode links:

Adan Website
About Adan
Adan Webinar: Understanding the MiCA and Pilot Regime crypto regulation
Become a member of Adan
Adan on Twitter
Simon on Twitter

Sponsors:

Algorand: Learn how to start building on Algorand – Free webinar on November 17th - https://algorand.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/362

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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:

What are the Multicoin theses and have they changed since Kyle was last on the show
Why the most used smart contract platform will produce the winning store of value
The role of gold in today's economy
Bitcoin gaining traction in today's asset management circle
Other assets that will eventually displace Bitcoin
Which projects Multicoin are backing at the moment
DeFi vs CeFi and latency
Discussing what DeFi actually is
Cryptocurrency's future role in the traditional financial system and the impact of potential new regulations
How the cryptoasset industry has changed since Multicoin started and where it is headed
The underrated areas Multicoin are looking at today

Episode links:

Multicoin Capital
Multicoin's first appearance on Epicenter
Multicoin blog
The Multicoin Thesis
Multicoin on Twitter
Kyle on Twitter

Sponsors:

Algorand: To learn more about Algorand and how it’s unique design makes it easy for developers to build sophisticated applications. - https://algorand.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/361

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Sögur, formerly known as Saga, aims to provide a global digital currency that acts as a store of value, a unit of account, and a medium of exchange. It is not impacted by any single nation state agenda and complements national currencies. And it is governed by its holders.

The SGR is Sögur's digital coin. It's built to provide a self-sustaining, democratic and global currency. It uses a bonding curve market maker, which is modelled to control and mitigate volatility exposure and value loss when market conditions are fast-changing and unpredictable. All whilst creating an opportunity for sustainable intrinsic value growth. SGR holders are the currency decision makers, and enjoy democratic voting rights over how SGR operates now and as it continues to evolve.

Sögur is interesting as it starts off looking like a stablecoin, but as the market grows it departs from its peg to become a free floating currency. It is currently pegged to the SDR (Special Drawing Rights). Deposits are held in FIAT reserves and as demand for SGR increases, the reserve ratio decreases. This causes the relative price to go up.

Ido Sadeh Man is chairman of the board and founder of Sögur. He joins us on the show to discuss the background of the project and what it is hoping to achieve, and an in depth look into the monetary policy of the SGR. He also talks about the impressive team and advisory board that is behind the project.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ido's background and how he got into crypto
Why the time is right for Sögur to have a positive impact
Centres of stability on a global scale
What Sögur is and what problem it solves
How it works as a stablecoin
The economics of the Sögur (SGR) currency
The connection to the SDR (Special Drawings Right)
Redeemability of reserves
Why Sögur was built on Ethereum and not its own blockchain
The effects of limitations and gas fees
Will SGR bridge to all networks?
The bonding curve model
The governance structure of Sögur and the smart contract itself
Stake-based voting vs participant-based voting
Where reserves are held
The team of investors backing Sögur
The effects of changing regulations on Sögur
The long term vision for Sögur

Episode links:

Sögur Website
Sögur Monetary
The Voting Mechanism
Sögur on Medium
Sögur on Twitter
Ido on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. This podcast episode was sponsored by Sögur.

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Hidden Forces is a podcast devoted to exploring the underlying forces driving the most powerful changes we see in the world. Demetri Kofinas, host of the show, holds conversations with some of the most brilliant minds in technology, finance, social science, and the hard sciences. He consults blockchain and distributed ledger technology companies, and hedge funds and venture capital firms on how to invest in and around these same emerging technologies.

We chatted to Demetri about a range of current topics from the US presidential election, the financial crisis and the role of the federal reserve and how it's reacting to the crisis. Also the role of central banks going forward in this new reality in which we live. We also discussed crypto and specifically his thoughts on the DeFi space. He has some very interesting views there. Demetri does not hold back on what he wants to say, so this was a fun and interesting conversation which we are sure you will enjoy too!

Topics covered in this episode:

The US presidential election
Demetri’s background and why he started Hidden Forces
Hidden Forces and how he chooses guests and topics
Demetri's health
How Demetri sees the impact of blockchain on a societal level
The current economic crisis
The fundamental difference of the handling between past crises and the current one, by financial institutions
Is the US on the brink of collapse?
What is the role of the central bank if it can no longer function how it is supposed to, and can crypto play a role
What are some past dApps that would contribute value to society
Demetri’s views on Ampleforth
Can a cryptocurrency become a world reserve currency?

Episode links:

Hidden Forces
The story of Demetri's tumour
Demetri's website
Demetri on Medium
Hidden Forces on Twitter
Demetri on Twitter

Sponsors:

Algorand: To learn more about Algorand and how it’s unique design makes it easy for developers to build sophisticated applications. - https://algorand.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/360

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NB: Since the recording of this podcast LazyLedger changed their name to Celestia.

Celestia is a scalable general-purpose data availability layer for decentralized apps and trust-minimized sidechains. It is a minimal, viable blockchain which does time stamping and block ordering.

Think back to Bitcoin in the early days, before Ethereum. Layer-2 systems were being built on top of Bitcoin and were leveraging Bitcoin’s consensus layer. This is what Celestia is doing, although it is purpose built and scalable for the exact use case. The implementation details are a lot more complex, and the vision is to create a modular pluggable Layer-1 that does nothing but consensus and data availability. It is designed for people who want to create their blockchain without consensus.

The project is yet to be launched, however we had Ismail Khoffi, Co-Founder and CTO, and Mustafa Al-Bassam, Co-Founder and CEO on the show to give us a deep technical overview and vision of Celestia.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ismail and Mustafa's backgrounds, and how they got into the crypto space
How Ismail and Mustafa met and created Celestia
The Data Availability paper which was co-written with Vitalik and introduction to Celestia
The purpose and function of Celestia
How data availability works and the advantages and disadvantages to their ledger
The purpose of Celestia
How transaction fees work
The interoperability aspect
Honest validators on the block
Non-interactive proofs on Celestia
The interaction between Celestia and Cosmos SDK
How will Celestia compete with other Layer One's, in particular Filecoin
When the ledger will be launched

Episode links:

Celestia website
Celestia blog
GitHub
Celestia Twitter
Ismail on Twitter
Mustafa on Twitter

Sponsors:

Algorand: To learn more about Algorand and how it’s unique design makes it easy for developers to build sophisticated applications. - https://algorand.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/359

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Camila Russo is a financial journalist, starting her career writing for Chile's largest national newspaper. She then spent 8 years at Bloomberg covering the Argentine market from Buenos Aires, the European stocks from Madrid, and analysed macro emerging markets moves for the Markets Live blog in New York.

She is the founder of the Defiant and recently wrote and released a book on the foundations of Ethereum, “The Infinite Machine”. This tells the story of how 19-year-old coding genius Vitalik Buterin led a “ragtag group of feuding hackers with no business plan and no live product” to pioneer a whole new way of raising money, on a platform that’s grown to a value of $27 billion. It is being hailed a complete hit and we highly recommend you give it a read.

Camila joined us to chat about how her journey through journalism led her to crypto, and how she became a successful author.

Topics covered in this episode:

Camila's background and how she got into the crypto space
Becoming involved with Bitcoin in Argentina back in 2013
Her move to the US and the introduction to Ethereum in 2017
What made her decide to write a book and the process involved
Some interesting stories that didn't make the final cut
Camila's views on the Ethereum narrative and how it has changed over time
Camila's view on the current DeFi situation and the risks of regulators becoming more involved
What is The Defiant?
How to follow Camila

Episode links:

Camila Russo
The Defiant
The Infinite Machine
Excerpt from The Infinite Machine
“The Infinite Machine” review
Camila on Twitter

Sponsors:

Algorand: To learn more about Algorand and how it’s unique design makes it easy for developers to build sophisticated applications, visit algorand.com/epicenter - http://algorand.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/358

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NuCypher is a decentralized threshold cryptography network offering interfaces and runtimes for secrets management and dynamic access control. It provides cryptographic infrastructure for privacy preserving applications and it exists as a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain. They are currently in testnet but once launched you will be able to use NuCypher to carry out proxy re-encryption.

Proxy re-encryption is a cryptographic method that allows you to delegate re-encryption of data to a third party and in this case validators in the NuCypher network. With this method you issue a re-encryption key that is assigned to a specific public key and a third party has the ability to re-encrypt data for that third party to decrypt. In this case the NuCypher network acts as the third party service. It is useful for when you want to share data, with the ability to revoke access at a later stage.

They also have an interesting token distribution mechanism called the WorkLock. This is similar to a Lockdrop but with work required from the participants.

MacLane Wilkison, Co-founder and CEO of NuCypher talks about how and why the protocl was created, the challenges faced with it, and the problems it solves.

Topics covered in this episode:

MacLane’s background and how he got into the blockchain space
Challenges with working with corporate entities and getting people to understand privacy preserving technologies
The zeroDB protocol and how that led to NuCypher
What was MacLane’s goal with starting NuCypher
What proxy re-encryption is and why it’s desirable over manual systems
What are threshold signatures
Attributability on the protocol
Some use cases of using FHE on NuCypher and why they have chosen this for the protocol
MacLane’s thoughts on trusted hardware
The infrastructure of NuCypher and why it is on Ethereum
Results from the testnet
WorkLock - their token distribution mechanism and how it compares to Lockdrop
How you can set up a node on NuCypher
Current gas costs and the impact of this
The NuCypher business model and how they make money
Where to learn more about NuCypher

Episode links:

Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/357

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Gauntlet is a simulation platform for building financial models of blockchain protocols and applications. Their platform uses machine learning methods to simulate different environments with various user behaviors and see how the system holds up in those conditions. They perform analysis on things like core mechanisms to test for liveness, block propagation, and at higher layers like simulating markets. Their offering is complementary to security audits as their analysis goes beyond code functionality and looks at how systems may behave in real-life conditions.

Tarun Chitra, CEO & Founder of Gauntlet, talks about his previous life in chip manufacturing and how he built Gauntlet. He also goes deep into the machine learning and statistical analysis involved with Gauntlet. It is quite a fascinating concept and when applied to blockchain systems, there is huge potential for this to become something that is expected by users, investors, and the community for new protocols.

Topics covered in this episode:

Tarun’s background and how he got into crypto
Chip manufacturing in the US and its geopolitical implications
What sorts of things does Gauntlet model?
How does historical data play a part in predicting blockchain protocol behavior
Simulation models used by Gauntlet
Game design analysis
The parts of the crypto economic stack that would benefit from this simulation work today
How does Gauntlet complement a security audit for a new blockchain
What tools they use for simulation
What Gauntlet looks like as a business and what is the roadmap going forward

Episode links:

Gauntlet website
Gauntlet on Medium
Tarun on Medium
Tarun's papers
Gauntlet on Twitter
Tarun on Twitter

Sponsors:

Algorand: To learn more about Algorand and how it’s unique design makes it easy for developers to build sophisticated applications, visit algorand.com/epicenter - http://algorand.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/356

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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:

Rene and Marek’s backgrounds and how they got into blockchain
The history of Celo and its mission
Some of the friction points with the project and how they have overcome them
What Celo are doing differently than other networks
How Celo are dealing with privacy issues
Why they chose to build on the EVM
The go-to-market strategy that Celo has chosen
How cUSD works and how they deal with the scalability issue on the system
As the reserve holds Bitcoin, how does the transfer of cUSD work?
cUSD vs Maker
The issuance protocol for transferring assets
Host debrief

Episode links:

Celo website
The Celo blog
cLabs announces acquisition of Summa
Rethinking Remittances with Blockchain Technology and Celo
Celo Dollars
Plumo Channel on Discord
Valora
Celo on Twitter
Rene on Twitter
Marek on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/355

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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:

Ken’s background and his history with AngelList
The implications from the JOBS Act 2016
Ken’s vision for Republic and making investment more accessible for more people
Overview of the US Securities Law and investing
The interaction between Republic and crypto
The types of start-ups and investors using Republic
The importance of the community aspect within start-ups on Republic
The Republic Note token
Republic Note’s Reg A offering and what the benefits of this will be
Where Republic Note can be traded

Episode links:

Republic website
Republic on Medium
Republic Note
When will the Republic Note’s Reg A offering be qualified?
Republic Twitter
Ken Nguyen Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/353

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Topics covered in this episode:

Ken’s background and his history with AngelList
The implications from the JOBS Act 2016
Ken’s vision for Republic and making investment more accessible for more people
Overview of the US Securities Law and investing
The interaction between Republic and crypto
The types of start-ups and investors using Republic
The importance of the community aspect within start-ups on Republic
The Republic Note token
Republic Note’s Reg A offering and what the benefits of this will be
Where Republic Note can be traded

Episode links:

Republic website
Republic on Medium
Republic Note
When will the Republic Note’s Reg A offering be qualified?
Republic Twitter
Ken Nguyen Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/353

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SKALE Network's modular protocol is one of the first of its kind to allow developers to build application specific blockchains. These are interoperable and compatible with the Ethereum mainchain, and the entire Ethereum ecosystem. They provide the benefits of decentralization without compromising on computation, storage, or security.

The focus of SKALE Network is slightly different to other scaling solutions, many of which we have had on the show in the past. SKALE Network aims to scale smart contracts, not necessarily transaction throughput. Think of it as a highly performant Ethereum as a service side chain, where developers can deploy their own app specific blockchains. Within the scale network, their dapps will benefit from thousands of TPS with zero gas fees, and addons like file storage. In the future, it’s possible that SKALE will support other addons like machine learning.

Jack O'Holleran, CEO and Co-Founder of SKALE Labs, talks about how they are tackling the scaling issues on Ethereum.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jack's background and how he got into cryptocurrency
Jack's thoughts on the problem of scaling on Ethereum
What is a SKALE node and how to start one
Comparisons to Cosmos, Polkadot and Eth 2.0 sharding
The SKALE Network
The purpose of the SKALE Manager and how it interacts with validators and nodes
Creating a dapp on the SKALE network
What is the future of access to connectors - are stores an option?
How security properties work on the network
Who are the users of SKALE and how does one onboard to the network
The NODE Foundation - the launch and grants available

Episode links:

SKALE Labs Website
SKALE Whitepaper
SKALE Developers
SKALE Discord
The NODE Foundation
SKALE Labs Twitter
Jack Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/352

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Ampleforth is a cryptocurrency attempting to become an essential building block to an alternative financial ecosystem. The protocol’s native token, AMPL, is a non collateralized cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, but with a twist: It is supply elastic. This means the token and protocol will automatically increase or decrease the quantity of tokens held in user wallets based on 24 hour weighted volume price. AMPL operates as an ERC-20 token on top of the Ethereum blockchain.

Some claim that the Ampleforth protocol’s implementation of “countercyclical” economic policy makes it a good complimentary collateral because they posit that this mechanism ought to give AMPL a low correlation to the likes of BTC and ETH. Others are not so sure: Does it really make a difference whether you have an inelastic supply without a target price, or an elastic supply with a target price of one? Is AMPL really not correlated to other types of collateral, and should this be so, does it even matter?

There has been a lot of chatter about Ampleforth in recent months. Is it legit, or is it a scam, 'HEX with Stanford credentials', as one pundit commented? We spoke with the co-founder Evan Kuo, who attempts to explain how it all works and straighten out misconceptions surrounding the protocol.

Topics covered in this episode:

Evan’s background
What is Ampleforth and its mission
What is Ampleforth’s value proposition and the rules based system it uses
How the rebasing works
Slow traders vs fast traders
Where profits from fast traders come from
Using Ampleforth as base money
Token distribution
The integration hurdles with AMPL
Does the community truly understand the protocol?

Episode links:

Ampleforth website
AMPL Talk
AMPL Token Distribution
Ampleforth White Paper
Ampleforth Twitter
Evan Kuo Twitter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/351

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Balancer is a generalized automated market maker (AMM) protocol built on Ethereum. It allows anyone to create or add liquidity to customizable pools and earn trading fees. On one side there are liquidity providers (LPs) that generally seek to balance their holdings, and they get rewarded with trading fees. On the other side, traders that are looking for the best rate possible.

One way to look at Balancer is as a generalization of Uniswap, however Balancer pools aren't restricted to the same 50/50 split between 2 tokens. A Balancer pool can support up to 8 tokens with any weights. It supports smart order routing which ensures trades get sent to the pools which provide the best rate possible. They can be seen as self balancing index funds which pay you for contributing liquidity to the platform. Instead of paying fees to portfolio managers to rebalance your portfolio, you collect fees from traders, who continuously rebalance your portfolio by following arbitrage opportunities.

The inner workings are quite complex but CEO & Co-founder of Balancer, Fernando Martinelli, breaks down the token economics and governance of the protocol for us.

Topics covered in this episode:

Fernando’s background and how he got into the space
Balancer's connection to Maker
An introduction to liquidity mining and some of the problems with this
The connection to the Uniswap formula
What Balancer is and how the protocol works
How does this work as a Portfolio Management tool and how dynamic are the fees
How smart pools wok - The network of pools and the offchain set up
How the weighting system works on Balancer
The options for users - keeping it simple and the data that is available in your Balancer account
Governance tokens
How the BAL token is designed and how it works
How finance for the protocol is raised
The future plan of dissolving Balancer
How they plan to attract volume
What’s coming up in Balancer V2

Episode links:

Balancer Website
Balancer White Paper
Balancer Discord
Balancer Blog
Balancer Twitter
Fernando Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/350

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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:

Allison’s background and how she got into blockchain
What derivatives are and how they work in the legacy financial system
How the UMA protocol works
How synthetic tokens are traded and fungibility
Creating put options on the framework
How does this compare to prediction markets
UMA’s liquid mechanism
Priceless synthetics
What are the incentives on the protocol
The importance of delayed reaction times
How liquidation work and minting works
How to prevent scamming
The dispute process and corruption
What makes the UMA protocol unique
The UMA roadmap

Episode links:

UMA Website
UMA Docs
UMA Github
UMA Medium
UMA Twitter
Allison Lu Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/349

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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:

An overview of what the past 3 years since the last episode
The Numerai staking model
Numerai datasets
What is a market neutral fund
Numerai’s current assets and their position in the market
Staking liquid NMR
The latest project - Numerai Signals
Numerai's prediction markets Erasure Bay
How the future looks for hedge funding on the blockchain

Episode links:

Numerai website
Erasure Bay
Numerai Signals
Numerai Medium
Numerai Twitter
Richard Craib Twitter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/348

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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:

Dieter and Joe’s backgrounds and how they got into the crypto space
The Polkadot vision
The key components of the Polkadot protocol
Kusama - Polkadot's cousin
Scalability, Security, and Interoperability
The stages of the Polkadot launch and what is coming next
Building with Substrate
The parachains being developed
Leasing parachain slots
Running validators on Polkadot

Episode links:

Polkadot Website
Kusama Website
The Polkadot launch
Polkadot Twitter
Dieter Fishbein Twitter
Joe Petrowski Twitter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/347

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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:

Dan’s background and how he came to create Trail of Bits
What led Dan into the blockchain field
How security software has changed over the last 20 years
The unique challenges for security on blockchain and smart contract protocols
Smart contract languages and security
Slither - Trail of Bits’s suite of Ethereum based security tools
Dan’s opinion on Solidity’s future and Vyper as an alternative
Formally Verified Languages
A use case on how Trail of Bits works
Working with upgradeable contracts
Composability and security
Are compilers trustworthy?
Other security issues in the blockchain space as DeFi grows
The future of software security and the role of AI

Episode links:

Trail of Bits Website
Anatomy of an Unsafe Smart Contract Programming Language
Slither, Github
Slither: The Leading Static Analyzer for Smart Contracts
246 Findings From our Smart Contract Audits: An Executive Summary
Rapid Risk Assessment (RRA)
Our Full Report on the Voatz Mobile Voting Platform
A Guide to Post-Quantum Cryptography
BSides Lisbon 2016 - Keynote - The Smart Fuzzer Revolution by Dan Guido
The Smart Fuzzer Revolution
Trail of Bits Twitter
Dan Guido Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/346

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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:

Hugh’s background in insurance and how he moved into the blockchain space
What drove Hugh to build this decentralized platform
Mutual insurance and the regulations involved
The scaling problem in mutual companies
The benefits this type of insurance can bring to the DeFi world
The claim assessment process
The native token, NXM
How Nexus tackle price discovery
How does Nexus manage correlation risks
How much has been contributed to the pool so far
Mutual vs other models of insurance on the DeFi space
The legalities behind Nexus
Where they are looking to expand and what the next 12 months look like

Episode links:

Nexus Mutual Website
The White Paper
Nexus Mutual Use Cases
Nexus Mutual Discord
Nexus Mutual Twitter
Hugh Karp Twitter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/345

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Opyn is a smart contract-based insurance platform built on a generalized (supports both put and call) options protocol called Convexity. It is intended as a platform to protect DeFi users against both technical and financial risks, and a place where ETH holders can earn substantial premiums on their holdings by providing insurance.

Opyn uses tokenized ERC20 put options, oTokens, on ETH to allow option buyers to keep their upside while limiting their downside. If you buy Opyn protection, you are buying “the right but not the obligation to sell an asset at a pre-specified price”. Currently, you can buy insurance for DAI, ETH, and USDC deposits on Compound and it is completely noncustodial and trustless.

Zubin Koticha, CEO & Co-founder of Opyn, is currently working on V2 of the platform with his team. Their focus for improvements are in 3 main areas; cash efficiency, trading mechanism, and network effects. They are hoping to release this within the next 6 months.

This is a much-needed generalizable insurance solution against some attacks/ vulnerabilities within the DeFi ecosystem and it will be very interesting to see how their contribution to DeFi progresses.

Topics covered in this episode:

Zubin’s background and how he got into crypto
How Opyn was created and the roles within the company
The evolution of the Opyn product
Using options as an insurance solution
The difference between traditional markets and Opyn
American vs European options
Improvements they are making in V2 - capital efficiency, fungibility, network effects
The collateral as a different asset feature
Trading venue
An overview of VegaSwap
Timelines for the new version

Episode links:

Opyn Website
Opyn Whitepaper
What is Opyn?
Opyn Discord
Opyn Twitter
Zubin Koticha Twitter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/344

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In late 2017, Gabriel Jimenez was approached by the Venezuelan presidency and asked to create a national digital currency, the Petro. Although very much against the regime, Gabriel saw this as a chance to save his country which was on the brink of economic collapse. A new currency that would move freely over an open network, like Bitcoin. And the government would not be able to control it. So he agreed.

Things didn’t go as Gabriel had envisioned. Months later, Gabriel almost paid with his life when he was held at gunpoint by military guards in the President’s palace. He was accused of being a traitor to the government and was forced to hand over the project, which still hasn’t taken off. Last year he fled to the US to avoid being arrested and has since been granted asylum status. He is passionate about cryptocurrency and his country, and is working on a new way to combine the two.

From the safety of the US, Gabriel is finally able to share his side of the story and wants to set the record straight on why he did what he did.

Topics covered in this episode:

Gabriel’s background growing up in Venezuela
Gabriel’s return to Venezuela from the US
Venezuela in the pre-Chavez days
Living in Venezuela during Chavez’s rule
The introduction of crypto to Venezuela
The Maduro regime and how things got worse from there
When the government turned on Gabriel and his team
Knowing the risks of this project
The current state of the Petro
How things could have gone differently so that Petro could have worked

Episode links:

The Coder and the Dictator - Gabriel's first interview with the NY Times
The Petro Website
The Petro - Wikipedia
Gabriel signing the documents on Live TV
Gabriel Jimenez Twitter
The Social Us

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/343

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We've heard it over and over again, Covid-19 has plunged us into a crisis like none other we’ve experienced in our lifetime. Although it is primarily a public health issue, it is also having a major impact on the global economy and financial system. Many businesses have been forced to shut down sparking debates on whether this is supply or demand shock.

Wall Street proclaims that any increase in economic activity is a good sign. However, Jim Bianco, President and Macro Strategist at Bianco Research, says a return to 90% of pre-crisis level will still not be enough to recover. Bianco Research is a Chicago-based firm that provides research and analysis for institutional finance. Jim started to take serious notice of the Covid-19 outbreak back in January. Since then he has been sharing his views on the long- term, macroeconomic consequences of the pandemic. He brings an enormous amount of clarity and insight into this issue.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jim’s background on Wall Street and how he transitioned into research
Why he was so early to talk about the pandemic and the crisis
The lessons learned from this pandemic and what’s next
What long-term economic and societal trends we can expect
The FED: their response, the effects on the economy and where we go from here
Jim’s views on UBI and the legitimacy of taxes if states can just print money
The US debt problem caused by the slowing of international trade
The US dollar as a reserve currency and how it could be displaced
The prospect of crypto-based reserve currencies and the disruption of central banks
How close are we to Crypto and Bitcoin becoming an asset class in the traditional finance system
Jim’s visions for the post virus world

Episode links:

Bianco Research
“Is the Fed Making it Better?” Reset Everything Talk
Jim Bianco Twitter
Bianco Research Youtube
WTF Happened In 1971?
Mainnet 2020 – Messari's Flagship Crypto Event (June 1 to 3)
Free tickets to Web 3.0 Forum (June 8 to 10)

Sponsors:

Least Authority: Learn how Zero-Knowledge Access Passes can help you build a more privacy-minded business by disconnecting payment and user data. - http://www.leastauthority.com/zkaps

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/342

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In this inaugural post-interview chat, Friederike and Sebastien discuss their recent interview with Arweave Co-founder and CEO, Sam Williams.

Moving forward, these conversations will be released every week on Substack. Subscribe to never miss an episode at https://epicenter.rocks/substack

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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.

Arweave is a new data storage protocol that enables economically sustainable permanence for the very first time. Built on a blockchain-like structure called the blockweave, one of the applications on Arweave is what they have coined “the permaweb”. This is an array of data, websites, and decentralised applications, to which anyone can contribute and maintain. This system provides an incentive to store your data without compromising your privacy, solving one of the key issues facing the current web.

Sam Williams, Co-founder & CEO of Arweave, talks about the technical solution they have built, the economic model around endowment, and the ethical and philosophical questions the permanence of information against concepts like “the right to be forgotten” raises.

Topics covered in this episode:

Sam’s background and how he got into the blockchain space
Breaking down BitTorrent – the first scalable decentraized file sharing system
Data sustainability on the web and what should be kept
Arweave under the hood and what is a blockweave
How data is stored and retrieved in blocks
Arweave’s economics and incentive model
Data replication within the infrastructure and ensuring decentralization in the future
The AR tokens and how the Arweave endowment works
Arweave vs Skynet vs IPFS
Does Arweave help with the data availability problem in Ethereum?
Arweave's business model
Community projects that Arweave are involved with and what’s next for the project

Episode links:

Sponsors:
- ShapeShift: ShapeShift is the leading crypto platform offering zero-commission trading - https://shapeshift.com/

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: [epicenter.tv/341](https://epicenter.tv/341

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Today, half of the internet is built on top of Amazon S3. Although the cloud has allowed Internet applications to scale, centralized infrastructure means less control over one's own data. And when it goes down, so does half of the internet.

Sia CEO David Vorick is back on the podcast to talk about a new product recently released by their team: Skynet. Skynet builds on Sia and enables web applications to be developed and deployed over a decentralized data storage infrastructure. David also shares his thoughts on Trusted Setups, why he thinks they're "busted," and how the crypto industry can create better and more secure Zero-Knowledge primitives.

Topics covered in this episode:

What is Skynet and how it builds on Sia
Skynet compared to IPFS/Filecoin
The need for a decdentralized data marketplace
An example of how the Sia network works
What are trusted setups and how they are used
Threat models in trusted setups and what can happen when they break
The alternative to trusted setups and solutions for the future

Episode links:

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/B005

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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:

Daniel's background and how he became involved in crypto
Loopring's 2017 token sale and why they needed to return funds to investors
The concept of ring matching in the Loopring protocol
Loopring's use of ZK-Rollups
The current throughput and transaction cost
Looping vs Binance and centralized exchanges
Why Loopring chose to build on a centralized order book model
The differences between the Optimistic Rollup and the ZK-Rollup
The Loopring token (LRC) and how it's used in the protocol
Daniel’s views on the future of the DEX ecosystem

Episode links:

Loopring website
Loopring 3.0
Loopring’s Frontend Vulnerability, Explained
Loopring Exchange frontend password bug: Postmortem
Loopring Twitter
Daniel Wang Twitter

Sponsors:

Learn how Zero-Knowledge Access Passes can help you build a more privacy-minded business by disconnecting payment and user data. Learn more at leastauthority.com/zkaps

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/340

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Julian Assange, the creator of WikiLeaks, is currently in a maximum-security prison in London facing extradition to the US for violating the Espionage Act. This charge came, among other things, from exposing US war crimes in Iraq. This has put journalists around the world under fear of being prosecuted for exposing the truth. Opinions on Julian Assange are divided, unsurprisingly. But we can assume that a conviction would set a dangerous precedent for journalism, free press, and freedom of speech.

John Shipton, Julian's father, is seeking support from the crypto community to help fund Julian's legal defense. Harry Halpin, CEO of Nym Technologies and friend of Julian's, teams up with John to discuss how a conviction could jeopardize the values of censorship resistance, permissionless innovation, and privacy.

Topics covered in this episode:

John and Harry's backgrounds and their connection to Julian Assange
The extradition case against Julian
How the outcome of the orders could impact the Ethereum community
The negative effects of WikiLeaks
Making changes to journalism and legacy media
The effects of Social Media
How this case could open the gates for more prosecutions within the crypto/technology community
Contributing to Julian's legal fund

Episode links:

Nym Technologies
State and Terrorist Conspiracies & Conspiracy as Governance, Julian Assange
WikiLeaks on Wikipedia
Courage Foundation
Harry Halpin Twitter
Nym Technologies Twitter

Sponsors:

ShapeShift: ShapeShift is the leading crypto platform offering zero-commission trading - https://shapeshift.com/

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/339

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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:

Marco's background and how he started Genesis Mining
The biggest challenges they faced in the early days
The company's cost structures and vertical integration
Why they got into cloud computing and the applications of GPUs
The major shifts in the mining industry since they were founded
The ecological footprint of mining
Why people would buy cloud mining and its profitability opportunities
The risk of mining centralization
Bitcoin halving and the impacts of this on the mining industry
Marco's views on Proof of Stake

Episode links:

Genesis Mining website
Bitcoin Halving - What to Expect as a Miner
Genesis Group
Genesis Cloud
Genesis Mining Twitter
Marco Streng Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/338

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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:

Stani and Marc's backgrounds and how they became involved in crypto
Marc's previous project, Variabl, and why it failed
How Aave came out of EthLend
Switching from an OTC model to a pooled model
Yield hacking and other DeFi use cases
What the Flash Loan is and why it is useful
How one can do DeFi refinancing with Flash Loans
The Flash Loans attacks which happened in February
Smart contract security and how the community should response to attacks
Why privacy is DeFi is desirable, but also hard to do

Episode links:

Aave Protocol website
Sneak Peek at Flash Loans
Flash Loans - One Month In
Aave Twitter
Stani Kulechov Twitter
Marc Zeller Twitter

Sponsors:

Least Authority: Register for Security Sessions on April 30th to learn about security audits for your blockchain project - https://leastauthority.com/meetup
ShapeShift: ShapeShift is the leading crypto platform offering zero-commission trading - https://shapeshift.com/

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/337

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The Plasma Group was a not for profit research group focussing on layer-2 scaling on Ethereum. Optimism is a new Public Benefit Corporation that builds on the lessons of the Plasma research and is implementing Optimistic Rollups. This solution scales Eth 1.x and offers near-instant transaction finality on Ethereum, while providing over 100x transaction throughput. Jinglan Wang and Karl Floersch, co-founders of Optimism, explain the transition to this new entity and its goals moving forward.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jinglan and Karl's backgrounds and how they came to work together
How the Plasma Group and all of the Plasma research evolved into Optimism
Funding of Optimism through Gitcoin, and the lessons learned from donation funding
What are Optimistic Rollup and how they achieve scaling
How to make an Optimistic Rollup chain
Optimistic Rollups compared to other scaling solutions like Truebit, sharding and zkRollups
How Optimistic Rollups fit within the Eth 2.0 roadmap
The role of an aggregator and how to become one
Submitting transactions, the fees involved, and different finality levels
Problems that could arise from mining transactions on incorrect states
Who is using the OVM alpha and what's next for the project

Episode links:

Optimism Website
Plasma Group Website
Introducing the OVM - Plasma Group Blog
""Ethereum Smart Contracts in L2: Optimistic Rollup - Plasma Group Blog
A New Way to Scale - Optimized Optimistic Rollup — IDEX Blog
Optimism Twitter
Jinglan Wang Twitter
Karl Floersch Twitter

Sponsors:

Least Authority: Register for Security Sessions on April 30th to learn about security audits for your blockchain project - https://leastauthority.com/meetup

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/336

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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:

How Tom and Zac met and founded AZTEC Protocol
What AZTEC is and what problem is solves
How AZTEC enabled transactions work in practice from a user perspective
The challenges of making DeFi systems like MakerDAO fully private
How ERC-20 tokens could be issued as private tokens
The AZTEC trusted setup ignition ceremony
ZKPs for privacy vs scaling solutions
Growing the privacy ecosystem and getting people excited about privacy
The security guarantees of using AZTEC and other ZKP systems

Episode links:

AZTEC Protocol
AZTEC Protocol - SDK
AZTEC Protocol - research papers
AZTEC Protocol Twitter
Tom Walton-Pocock Twitter
Zac Williamson Twitter
Reset Everything

Sponsors:

Least Authority: Register for Security Sessions on April 30th to learn about security audits for your blockchain project - https://leastauthority.com/meetup
Status: A multi-purpose communication tool that combines a peer-to-peer messenger, secure crypto wallet, and web3 browser - https://status.im/

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/335

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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:

Ryan's background as a tech entrepreneur and how he got involved in crypto
Launching Mythos Capital and the thesis behind this fund
The importance of becoming “bankless” to preserve self-sovereignty
What good analogies we can use to describe DeFi and the use of clear terminology to describe cryptoassets
The power and advantage concentrated in centralized exchanges
Trustless nature of Ethereum vs. Bitcoin
The role of nation-states in the DeFi ecosystem as it continues to grow
The idea that “Eth is money” and Eth as a store of value asset in Ethereum
The impact of Covid19 on the economy and crypto markets
The future of Ethereum and Bitcoin

Episode links:

Mythos Capital
Bankless newsletter
Bankless podcast
Ryan Sean Adams on Medium
Mythos Capital on Twitter
Ryan Sean Adams on Twitter
Reset Everything

Sponsors:

Least Authority: Register for Security Sessions on April 30th to learn about security audits for your blockchain project - https://leastauthority.com/meetup

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/334

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In another of our bonus episodes recorded at EthCC in Paris, we caught up with Jason Goldberg, CEO and Founder of Pepo and Ost, and James Dyer, Co-founder and Head of Product at Decrypt. At the time of recording Decrypt were about to announce they were launching their own token that rewards audience engagement, built on Ost technology. We chatted to Jason and James about this relationship, the problems solved by these monetization models, the link between Pepo and Decrypt tokens, and DeFi, and what the future holds for media and tokens.

Topics covered in this episode:

Background of Jason and James
Decrypt's affiiation with ConsenSys
The issues and problems being solved with the respective monetization models
The levers Pepo are using to ensure users trust the platform and promote growth in the ecosystem
The reasons Decrypt chose Ost to build their platform on
The different components of the Ost toolkit and how these are leveraged
The technology involved with getting tokens to sponsor a 'season'
How Pepo and Decrypt market themselves
The bridges between Pepo and Decrypt tokens, and DeFi
How good UX standards of the wallet are reached, in particular the recovery wallet feature
Overcoming the challenges of civil attacks and malicious acts
The future of media and tokens and what the new models look like

Episode links:

Pepo
Ost
Decrypt
Ost Powers Decrypt Token for Media Engagement
Pepo Twitter
Ost Twitter
Decrypt Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture.

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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:

His motivations for writing “World After Capital”
How the properties of near-zero marginal cost and universality are unique to the digital age
Human attention as the primary scarce resource in the Knowledge Age
The shift towards the Knowledge Age and the role of capital in the future
Covid19 as a catalyst for positive societal change, and things like universal basic income
Potential upsides for crypto in the current economic crisis
The asymmetry between technological progress and privacy

Episode links:

Union Square Ventures
World After Capital
Continuations by Albert Wenger
Putting the Economy in Suspended Animation: A Proposal
World After Capital: Laying a Foundation (Regulation & Self-Regulation)
Albert Wenger Twitter
Reset Everything Virtual Conference – April 29th

Sponsors:

Status: A multi-purpose communication tool that combines a peer-to-peer messenger, secure crypto wallet, and web3 browser - https://status.im/

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/333

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We caught up with Joseph Lubin, Founder of ConsenSys, at this year's EthCC. It has been over a year since he last came on the show, and we wanted to get his take on what has been happening in the ecosystem since then. We talked about the ConsenSys reorganization, interoperability between public and permission blockchains and the opportunities there, government-backed stable coins and the possibilities of nation-states building their own, DeFi and the phenomenal growth in the ecosystem, his predictions for 2020, and thoughts on the challenges facing Eth2.0.

Topics covered in this episode:

A look back on the past year since we last had Joe on the show
The ongoing ConsenSys reorganistaion
Joe's views on the recent Twitter discussion that “Ether is the ConsenSys token”
Interoperability between public and permission blockchains and the opportunities there
Government-backed stable coins and the possibilities of nation-states building their own
The evolving naratives around Ethereum
Joesph's vision on how DeFi compliments the existing financial system
Joseph's predictions for 2020
The challenges ahead for Eth 2.0

Episode links:

ConsenSys
Joe Lubin on Epicenter (episode 269)
EY and ConsenSys Announce Formation of Baseline Protocol Initiative to Make Ethereum Mainnet Safe and Effective for Enterprises
Joseph Lubin Twitter
ConsenSys Twitter
Reset Everything virtual event

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/ethcc-joe-lubin

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In this episode we are joined by David Hoffman, Chief of Operations at RealT, a company which tokenizes realestate assets into security tokens. He is also well known for numerous pieces he has written on Ethereum and DeFi and is co-host of the POV Crypto podcast. Hear us as we talk about his writings, how tokenizing real estate assets works, Bitcoin on Ethereum, the feedback loop problem and effects of the USD in DeFi, and a debate on whether Ether is an asset.

Topics covered in this episode:

What RealT is and how tokenizing real estate assets works
Using the Uniswap protocol for trading
The thesis behind David's “Defining Ether as an Asset” post
The crypto-economics economics of Bitcoin on Ethereum (tBTC, wBTC)
The feedback loop problem in DeFi
The effects of the USD price on volatility in DeFi
The argument that Ether is a ”triple-point asset”
The utility value of Ethereum
Rebutting the argument the Ethereum will eat all of the world's value

Episode links:

RealT
Defining Ether as an Asset
Ethereum is an Emergent Structure
Ether Is Equity
Ether: A New Model for Money
POV Crypto Podcast
Reset Everything Event
RealT Twitter
David Hoffman Twitter
POC Crypto Podcast Twitter

Sponsors:

Nervos: If you’re a developer or project seeking funding for an innovative idea, check out the Nervos Grants Program today - https://www.nervos.org/grants

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/332

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This week we have a special episode on the entire globe's most talked about topic, the Corona Virus. We are joined by guest Ryan Selkis, CEO of Messari. Ryan was one of the first people in the space to start talking about Covid19 and has been very vocal on this subject on Twitter and his newsletter since the crisis began in January. We discuss how this virus has become so deadly and the current health and economic conditions, containment and protecting yourself, how the markets, crypto and startups have been affected, and what is yet to come.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Ryan become so interested in the Corona Virus
The current global health and economic impact of Covid19
The provisions Ryan is making personally and on a company level
Messari's plans for virtual events over the coming weeks
A deeper look into the global financial impact of Covid19
What does this all have in store for startups
The stimulus being put in place in the US and its monetary effects
The current state of the markets
The long term effects from a societal perspective
Ryan's prediction on what happens next

Episode links:

Ryan Selkis Twitter
Ryan's List of Must Follow Expert Accounts on Twitter
TBI/Messari 2019-nCoV Tracking
Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now
RIP Moon Times
Messari Corona Coverage & Resources
Mainnet Events, by Messari
Donald G. McNeil Jr.
Google Sheets - create and edit spreadsheets online, for free.
Epicenter 2020 Audience Survey

Sponsors:

Status: A multi-purpose communication tool that combines a peer-to-peer messenger, secure crypto wallet, and web3 browser - https://status.im/
ShapeShift: ShapeShift is the leading crypto platform offering zero-commission trading - https://shapeshift.com/

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/331

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This episode was recorded at the third annual Ethereum Community Conference in Paris last week and we were joined by Gonçalo Sá, Co-founder of ConsenSys Diligence, Jérôme de Tychey, President of Ethereum France, and Cassidy Daly, Token Designer at Centrifuge. We discussed the issues surrounding centralization and DeFi in token governance, the security complexities of composability attacks like the ones we saw recently which leveraged flash loans, and of course, the coronavirus.

Topics covered in this episode:

Gonçalo and Cassidy discuss their talks at the EthCC event
The current points of interest around centralization in DeFi
Defining ecosystem decentralization guidelines
Issues with token governance in DAOs
Security complexities of comparability attacks and the recent flash loans
How the Ethereum community is improving response times to attacks
EthCC, hugs and coronavirus

Episode links:

Ethereum Community Conference 3
EthCC - Twitter
Jérôme de Tychey: “Opening Speech” at EthCC
Jérôme de Tychey: “Closing Speech” at EthCC
Friederike Ernst: “Prediction Markets” at EthCC
Cassidy Daly & Abbey Titcomb: “Putting the 'De' back in 'DeFi'” at EthCC
Cassidy Daly: “The Gateway for Real-World Assets into the Blockchain Multiverse” at EthCC
Gonçalo Sá Twitter
Jérôme de Tychey Twitter
Cassidy Daly Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/episodes/bonus-ethcc-3

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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:

Decentralized nature of Tezos development and the teams that make up the ecosystem
Who is funding Tezos protocol development
Permissionless nature of the Tezos architecture and governance mechanism
How TQ is working to make Tezos more accessible
The impressive number of development languages and issues around interoperability and comparability
Michelson – the stack-based DSL (domain-specific language) and the shift towards Michelson 2.0
The types of applications being built on Tezos
The role of the Tezos Foundation and the Breitmans today
A look back on Tezos governance two years in, and the future of the protocol

Episode links:

Amending Tezos
Reflecting on Athens, the first self-amendment of Tezos
Jacob Arluck Medium
Jacob Arluck Twitter
TQ Tezos Twitter
Tezos Twitter
Epicenter 2020 Audience Survey

Sponsors:

Nervos: If you’re a developer or project seeking funding for an innovative idea, check out the Nervos Grants Program today - https://www.nervos.org/grants

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/330

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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:

How Bison Trails got started and their vision to build a better proof of stake ecosystem for everyone
The types of customer they run validators for and their approach to improving the product
The networks they support and their approach to adding new networks
Bison Trail’s technical infrastructure design and the cutting edge stuff they're working on in terms of deployment, redundancy and key storage
How the company thinks about infrastructure centralization in PoS
The company’s involvement in different crypto communities and discussions around protocol improvements
Bison Trail’s role with Libra Association and how they are participating in the technical design of the protocol

Episode links:

Bison Trails Website
Bison Trails Raises $25M in Funding Round Led by Blockchain Capital
Bison Trails - Libra
Bison Trails - Blockchain Capital Blog
Bison Trails Twitter
Joe Lallous Twitter

Sponsors:

ShapeShift: ShapeShift is the leading crypto platform offering zero-commission trading - https://shapeshift.com/
Status: A multi-purpose communication tool that combines a peer-to-peer messenger, secure crypto wallet, and web3 browser - https://status.im/

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/329

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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:

Your tax obligations are as a cryptocurrency holder
What you need to report and how you can prepare a Bullet Proof tax return
How to put yourself in ths shoes of a IRS tax auditor
What to do if you get an IRS audit letter (hint don't panic)
The biggest mistakes people make when filing their tax return and the risks they face
What to do if your crypto transaction history is messy
What proactive steps you can take to improve your situation

Episode links:

CryptoTaxAudit
Donnelly Tax Law
IRS Refused to Clarify Its Crypto Tax Guidance Isn’t Binding, US Watchdog Says
IRS Explains What Crypto Owners Must Know to File Taxes This Year
Clinton Donnelly, Twitter
Clinton Donnelly, Linkedin

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. This podcast episode was sponsored by CryptoTaxAudit.com.

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Gabriel Shapiro is an independent attorney who has spent the last two years focusing on the tokens and crypto. He has published several pieces diving deep into US Securities Law, in which he shares his vision and philosophy for how Tokenized Networks should be regulated. In light of the recent “safe harbor” framework proposed by SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce, Gabriel offers his thoughts and suggests how these measures could be improved in a way that would benefit the entire industry.

Topics covered in this episode:

Gabriel’s background and how he got into the blockchain space
What motivated Gabriel to write his series of posts
Why Securities Laws in the US appear more complex than other countries
The classifications we give tokens - commodities, currencies
The Howey Test and how it applies in the crypto space
What the Exchange Act 1984 is and the impact this has on companies that issue securities
Why crypto networks not complying with the Securities Law aren’t being punished
What is wrong in the blockchain industry and what it has to do with Securities Law
Gabriel’s philosophy and how Securities Law should be applied when issuing tokens and launching networks
The Safe Harbor proposal - what it is, how it defines things like decentralization and network maturity
Gabriel’s thoughts on how things can be improved

Episode links:

ZeroLaw Website
Tokenizing Corporate Capital Stock
An open letter to SEC Commissioner Peirce on token safe harbors
Size Does Matter — Part 1, Gabriel Shapiro
Size Does Matter — Part 2, Gabriel Shapiro
Size Does Matter — Part 3, Gabriel Shapiro
Size Does Matter — Part 4, Gabriel Shapiro
Ethereum’s ‘Bazaar’ Development Model Will Pay Off in 2020
Hester Peirce: Tell Me How to Improve My Safe Harbor Proposal
Preston Byrne: Peirce’s Safe Harbor Proposal Would Be Hilarious if It Weren’t so Serious
ZeroLaw Twitter
Gabriel Shapiro Twitter
Epicenter Meetup at EthCC
Epicenter 2020 Audience Survey

Sponsors:

Pepo: Meet the people shaping the crypto movement - https://pepo.com/epicenter
Nervos: If you’re a developer or project seeking funding for an innovative idea, check out the Nervos Grants Program today - https://www.nervos.org/grants

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/328

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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:

Itamar's background and journey to crypto
Creating a Web 3.0 product for mass adoption
Restoring a wallet with Argent Guardians
The DeFi products accessible in Argent today
Accommodating DeFi products on protocols other than Ethereum
Building a business model for wallet products
Who Argent's users are, and the DeFi products they use
Solving mass adoption of crypto with a frictionless on- and off-ramp
Itamar's vision of the future of DeFi and the role Argent will play

Episode links:

Argent
Earning interest has never been easier - Medium
Itamar Lesuisse - Twitter
Argent - Twitter
Argent - Medium
Download Argent and skip the waitlist
Epicenter Meetup at EthCC
Epicenter 2020 Audience Survey

Sponsors:

Pepo: Meet the people shaping the crypto movement - https://pepo.com/epicenter
Status: A multi-purpose communication tool that combines a peer-to-peer messenger, secure crypto wallet, and web3 browser - https://status.im/

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/327

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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:

Kevin’s background at IBM, his open source development, and journey to crypto
What the blockchain scene is like in Hangzhou, China
What’s unique about Nervos, and the importance of each layer within the network
Introducing Nervos’ consensus mechanism, NC-Max
Why Nervos decided to implement Proof of Work
Explaining the Common Knowledge Base (CKB), and its significance in the Nervos network
How developer experience is in the Nervos ecosystem
The economic model of CKB, Nervos’ native token
Progress of the network, and a call for developers to consider the recently announced Nervos Grants Program

Episode links:

The Nervos Network homepage
Nervos Network on Twitter
Why We Love Nakamoto Consensus - Nervos Blog
Nervos CKB in a Nutshell - Nervos Blog
Nervos developer resources
Nervos Telegram channel
Nervos grant information

Sponsors:

Pepo: Meet the people shaping the crypto movement - https://pepo.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/326

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Like previous crypto winters, those actually building the ecosystem have been working diligently to create applications with industry-changing potential. The year 2020 may prove to be the year of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), with many exciting projects re-creating financial products common to the world of traditional finance, in the open and permissionless blockchain space.

Synthetic assets enable exposure to the price action of an asset without actually holding the underlying asset. Kain Warick is the Founder of Synthetix, a company creating synthetic assets for DeFi, enabling exposure to fiat currencies, commodities (gold and silver), and cryptocurrencies. They have large aspirations to create synthetic assets for many more things, including traditional equities.

Synthetic equities in DeFi is a massive opportunity that demands everyone's attention. Once traditional equities become accessible in DeFi, anyone in the world with internet access will be able to gain exposure to financial products currently only available to the privileged few with access to markets like the Nasdaq or NYSE.

Topics covered in this episode:

Kain’s eclectic background and his path to crypto
Why the world needs synthetic assets
Retrospection on the Synthetix crowdsale
How Synthetix works
The SNX token and its governance
Price stability and the collateralization ratio
The price oracle, and a battle with front-running bots
The long-term vision of Synthetix
How Kain believes DEXs will compete with centralized exchanges in the future

Episode links:

Synthetix Website
Synthetix on Twitter
The Synthetix Blog
Synthetix Dashboard
Synthetix on Discord
Synthetix on ViewBase
Synthetix 2020 Roadmap
Bending Metal on Amazon (Kain's sci-fi book)

Sponsors:

Nervos: If you’re a developer or project seeking funding for an innovative idea, check out the Nervos Grants Program today - https://www.nervos.org/grants
Pepo: Meet the people shaping the crypto movement - https://pepo.com/epicenter
Status: A multi-purpose communication tool that combines a peer-to-peer messenger, secure crypto wallet, and web3 browser - https://status.im/

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/325

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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:

Yaya’s background in the CIA and how he became interested in bitcoin
Bitcoin from a national security perspective
How terrorist organizations leverage cryptocurrencies for funding
The evolution of AML/KYC and complicance regulation in the financial sector
The cost of AML/KYC on business and society
Trying to regulate rapid technological change
Privacy in communication vs. Privacy in payments
The travel rule and how it affects cryptofinancial companies
Cryptocurrencies over the next decade

Episode links:

Yaya Fanusie's website
Yaya Fanusie on Twitter
FinCEN’s Regulations to Certain Business Models Involving Convertible Virtual Currencies
Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) Podcast
Stronger AML Enforcement Might Actually Save Crypto (FDD)
Crypto Rogues (FDD)
Anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing (European Commission)
Cryptocurrency AML Strategies
KYC in Stablecoins (Bits on Blocks)
Rhythm of Wisdom Podcast

Sponsors:

Pepo: Meet the people shaping the crypto movement - https://pepo.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/324

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The blockchain trilemma is the generally accepted concept that it's not possible to scale public and permissionless blockchains without compromising on security, decentralization, or both.

While the industry seems focused on building Layer 2 solutions to scale the transaction capacity of public networks, Algorand believes it has solved the trilemma, offering a network that scales without compromise to security or decentralization.

Silvio Micali, Algorand's Founder and Head of Research, as well as the company's CEO, Steven Kokinos, discuss the project's background, recent protocol upgrades, and how Algorand will create a great ecosystem for developers.

Topics covered in this episode:

Silvio’s path from academia to blockchain entrepreneurship
What Algorand addresses that other blockchains don’t
The blockchain trilemma: security, decentralization, scalability
How Algorand mitigates risk present on other blockchains
The TEAL smart contract language and how it's unique
Building primitives: atomics swaps, asset issuance, and a smart contract language called TEAL
Applications and use-cases for Algorand
The Algorand Foundation
What’s next for Algorand

Episode links:

Algorand Website
Whitepaper
Algorand on Twitter
Algorand on Medium
Algorand on YouTube
Algorand Year in Review (YouTube)

Sponsors:

Status: A multi-purpose communication tool that combines a peer-to-peer messenger, secure crypto wallet, and web3 browser - https://status.im/
Cosmos: Compete to win 100,000 ATOM by building and running Cosmos Zones - https://cosmos.network/goz/
Pepo: Meet the people shaping the crypto movement - https://pepo.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/323

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Governance within any community has been a work in progress for humanity's history. The blockchain ecosystem continues to develop and offer an alternative to today's centralized powers. With this, distributed projects and technologies will need to enact clear governance to ensure viable competition with the streamlined decision-making processes present in today's institutions.

The absence of codified governance in Bitcoin may be one of its most significant traits, signaling to the world its predictability due to its inability to change drastically. New projects like Edgeware, however, hope to encode the rules of governance on-chain and ensure a transparent process for stakeholders wishing to participate.

Edgeware is a smart contract platform built on Polkadot's Substrate. Focused on developing community-owned governance tools, Edgeware is a distributed project where participants use the tools themselves to vote, delegate, and fund each other to upgrade the network. While initially developed by Commonwealth Labs, Edgeware at launch will be entirely managed by the community, which holds 90% of the tokens and resulting influence.

Topics covered in this episode:

What attracted Dillon to crypto and why he co-founded Commonwealth Labs
Multi-chain governance
How Edgeware is unique
Building Edgeware on Polkadot’s Substrate
Retrospection from the soft-launch of Edgeware
What a “lockdrop” is, and why Edgeware had one
The issues and controversy around the Edgeware launch and lockdrop
The zero-day fork of Edgeware, Straightedge
The future of Edgeware

Episode links:

Edgeware Homepage
Commonwealth Homepage
Relaunch: A Clean Genesis for Edgeware
Edgeware White Paper
Edgeware blockchain launch gets hijacked by rival fork - Decrypt
Edgeware Participation Statistics
Straightedge
Hey Straightedge - Conspiratus episode
Edgeware on Twitter
Edgeware on Discord
Edgeware White Paper

Sponsors:

Pepo: Meet the people shaping the crypto movement - https://pepo.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/322

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Charlie Shrem became fascinated with Bitcoin in 2011 but grew frustrated with the hassle of buying it from the leading exchange at the time, Mt. Gox. To make the process faster and more convenient, Charlie created BitInstant in 2012. BitInstant quickly grew and by 2013 became responsible for processing a third of all Bitcoin transactions. This was with the help of Roger Ver and the Winklevoss twins, who were his seed investors, and Erik Voorhees, who led their marketing efforts.

The success of BitInstant was short-lived. In a time where Bitcoin's primary applications were price speculation and buying things on the Silk Road, Charlie spent time in prison after a lack of customer due-diligence attracted the attention of the law enforcement. Our conversation with Charlie recounts the Bitcoin industry at its beginning, his time in prison, and what he is doing now that he's able to continue his work as a Bitcoin advocate.

Topics covered in this episode:

Learning of Bitcoin on IRC in 2011
The Bitcoin community in the early days
Collaborating with competitors to grow the ecosystem
Frustration with Bitcoin infrastructure in 2011
Why Charlie decided to create BitInstant
Meeting Roger Ver, Erik Voorhees, and the Winklevoss Twins
Charlie’s time in prison and its effect on his personal life
Podcasting and daily life after prison

Episode links:

Untold Stories Website
Untold Stories on Apple Podcasts
Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption
Charlie and Best Selling Author Ben Mezrich Discuss Bitcoin's History
60 Minutes Podcast - Sunday, May 19, 2019 with Charlie Shrem
Crypto.IQ
Charlie Shrem on Twitter

Sponsors:

Status: A multi-purpose communication tool that combines a peer-to-peer messenger, secure crypto wallet, and web3 browser - https://status.im/
Cosmos: Compete to win 100,000 ATOM by building and running Cosmos Zones - https://cosmos.network/goz/
Pepo: Meet the people shaping the crypto movement - https://pepo.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/321

Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption

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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:

A moral perspective on making monetary policy that is beneficial to one nation, and detrimental to another
Who matters when determining externalities in governmental policies
The possibility of a fiscal union without a monetary one
USD stablecoins promoting the notion that the US should control the world’s monetary policy
Comparing the Libra to the Euro

Episode links:

Dani Rodrik's Blog: The inescapable trilemma of the world economy
Euro and Rodrik's Trilemma
Interfluidity Blog - Steve Randy Waldman
John Conley Macro WTF Talk
Steve Randy Waldman Macro WTF Talk
Jae Kwon | Twitter
Steve Randy Waldman | Twitter
John P Conley | Twitter
John P. Conley Personal Website

Sponsors:

Pepo: Meet the people shaping the crypto movement - https://pepo.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/320

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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:

Advancements in the usability of cryptocurrency wallets over the last year
The importance of mobile-first development
Frustrations with iOS and Android app stores
How to make developing wallets economically feasible
The future of wallets
Self-custody vs. custodial wallets
Regulation of self-custody wallets
What to look forward to in the near-term

Episode links:

MetaMask
ZenGo - Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency Wallet
FIO Protocol Developer Hub
MyCrypto
Taylor Monahan on Twitter
Dan Finlay on Twitter
Ouriel Ohayon on Twitter
FIO Protocol on Twitter
MetaMask on Twitter
MyCrypto.com on Twitter
ZenGo on Twitter

Sponsors:

Cosmos: Compete to win 100,000 ATOM by building and running Cosmos Zones - https://cosmos.network/goz/
eToro: Automatically copy every trade of eToro's top crypto traders at the exact price in real-time - https://www.etoro.com/
Pepo: Meet the people shaping the crypto movement - https://pepo.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/319

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Much of the digital world now operates in the cloud. A handful of companies are responsible for the massive market, and the centralization makes many people worry about censorship, privacy, and network resilience.

David Vorick’s passion for distributed file storage had him start Sia in 2014. He’s been working fervently ever since to develop a viable competitor to the centralized solutions that are responsible for much of the content on the internet today. David aim’s to create a more private, resilient, and secure alternative to Amazon Web Services while also outperforming it.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why David started Sia rather than taking a job in big-tech
The Sia launch in 2015
Why Sia has prioritized development over marketing in the beginning
The importance of decentralized storage solutions
How decentralized storage can be cheaper than AWS
Why Sia needs its own blockchain and protocol's tech stack
David's views on Proof of Work how that lead him to start a mining company
The circumstances around the Sia blockchain fork of 2018
Where David envisions decentralized storage in the next few years

Episode links:

Sia API Documentation
Sia Blog
Decentralization & Cutting-Edge Cryptography - Starkware Sessions Talk
Busted Setup - MIT Bitcoin Expo 2019 Talk
Recovering Payment Channel Midstates Using only The User's Seed - Scaling Bitcoin Talk
The Sia Ethos (Sia Blog)
Blockchains of the Sia family
Obelisk
SiaStats
David Vorick on Twitter
Sia on Twitter

Sponsors:

Pepo: -
eToro: Automatically copy every trade of eToro's top crypto traders at the exact price in real-time - https://www.etoro.com/

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/318

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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:

Taylor's background, and how she got into cryptocurrency
What her experience was with Ethereum so early in the projects lifecycle
How Reddit comments helped guide the feature list in the early days of MyEtherWallet
How the DAO hack got her working full time on MyEtherWallet
Building a project before “founding a company”
Experiencing the ICO boom as the main wallet used to participate in token generation events
Where MyCrypto is at today
How Taylor wants MyCrypto to change the user experience in cryptocurrency
Taylor’s view on centralized exchanges and view of the future

Episode links:

MyCrypto Beta
MyCryptoWinter is back! (Medium)
Try The New MyCrypto! (Medium)
MyCrypto Twitter
MyCrypto GitHub
MyCrypto Discord
Taylor Monahan Twitter

Sponsors:

Cosmos: Compete to win 100,000 ATOM by building and running Cosmos Zones - https://cosmos.network/goz/
eToro: Automatically copy every trade of eToro's top crypto traders at the exact price in real-time - https://www.etoro.com/
Pepo: -

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/317

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We were joined by Luka Mueller, who played a key role in establishing Switzerland as a cryptocurrency center and in laying the legal groundwork for the ICO boom. In 2014, his law firm MME worked with the Ethereum team to set up the Ethereum Foundation and run its public fundraiser. A model that was later copied by countless other projects and led MME to work with many other leading protocols like Cosmos and Tezos.

We also discussed his new project Sygnum, a cryptocurrency-focused bank. Nearly every company that works in the cryptocurrency space has had problems with its banking partner. Legal uncertainty, lack of knowledge, or simple unwillingness to work with cryptocurrency companies has made this a frequent nightmare for companies in this emerging sector. With a presence in both Switzerland and Singapore, Sygnum aims to fill a piece of missing infrastructure in the crypto-ecosystem: a bank that is able to receive, hold and transfer protocol tokens while offering a secure fiat gateway to easily transfer from the old world of finance to the new.

We also discussed Switzerland’s regulatory environment and why it is able to provide more regulatory clarity.

Topics covered in this episode:

What life was like for Luka before blockchain
How Luka met Vitalik and went on to set up the Ethereum Foundation and run their fundraiser
What protocols his law firm, MME, helped launch
The lessons learned over the years, and how he would do it differently
Why Switzerland is a great jurisdiction for crypto projects
What Luka thinks of asset-backed tokens
What is Sygum, and why did he decide to start a crypto bank
What Luke believes will happen when the tech giants release their own currencies
The difference between Sygnum and similar banks
What Luka's fears are in the space, and what he is hopeful for

Episode links:

MME Law Firm
Sygnum Website
Institutional Custody: A Portal to the Digital Asset Economy (Sygnum Blog)
How Tokenization is Closing the Gap Between Public and Private Markets (Sygnum Blog)
Sygnum gets green light to operate in Singapore (SwissInfo)
Switzerland’s first crypto bank reports “overwhelming” demand (Decrypt)
Sygnum on Twitter

Sponsors:

eToro: Automatically copy every trade of eToro's top crypto traders at the exact price in real-time - https://www.etoro.com/
Cosmos: Compete to win 100,000 ATOM by building and running Cosmos Zones - https://cosmos.network/goz/

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/316

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As the crypto ecosystem continues to grow, wallets and exchanges are quickly evolving to differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace. Viktor Radchenko, CEO and founder of Trust Wallet, joins us this week to talk about why he created a noncustodial wallet solution, what makes Trust Wallet unique, and how the acquisition by Binance has allowed his team to focus on a long term vision. Viktor helps us understand what it means to be part of the Binance Ecosystem, and what he believes the future holds for wallets, key storage and custody.

Topics covered in this episode:

Victor's bio and how he ended up moving from the Ukraine to the US
How hacking games got Victor into cryptocurrency
What Trust Wallet is and its' strengths in the wallet landscape
What it means for Trust Wallet to be secure, opensource, decentralized, and anonymous
What Vicktor believes the future holds for wallets and key storage
The Binance acquisition of Trust Wallet
Trust Wallet's policy for adding new coins and the criteria they look at

Episode links:

Trust Wallet
Trust Wallet Blog
Crypto exchange Binance buys Trust Wallet in first acquisition deal (TechCrunch)
7 Essential Steps to Keep Your Crypto Wallet Secure (Trust Wallet Blog)
Ethereum Name Service is Now Supported (Trust Wallet Blog)
Trust Wallet DEX is growing up, Order book and Trading History added (Trust Wallet Blog)
Wallet Core documentation
Wallet Core on GitHub

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/315

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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:

Nishant's Story in the Bitcoin mining space and how it led to joining Bitmain
Origin of Bitmain and its founders, notably Jihan Wu
Does Bitmain contribute to centralization in the blockchain space
How Bitmain maintains its superiority in the ASIC manufacturing space
Economics of ASIC production and manufacturing
Balancing business models of ASIC production, operating multiple mining pools, and exploring new verticals
Bitmain's role in blockchain debates like the scaling debate, Bitcoin Cash split, and ProgPow

Episode links:

Bitmain Website
Nishant on Twitter
Bitmain on Twitter
Fallout: Everyone’s a loser after Bitcoin Cash split – Brave New Coin
Bitmain Wikipedia
BTC.com Pool
Antpool
Leaked Transcript Details Power Struggle Inside Bitcoin Mining Giant
Bitmain – CoinDesk
Dovey Wan on Twitter

Sponsors:

Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com
Cosmos: Change the future of finance at the SF Blockchain Week Defi Hackathon – $50,000 prize pool for winning teams - https://epicenter.rocks/sfcosmos

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/314

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As the cryptocurrency space has grown, exchanges have become the dominant juggernauts of the industry. One of the earliest and most reputable exchanges is Kraken. From the company's formation in 2011, Kraken has grown to 4m users and almost 1,000 employees.
We are joined by Kraken Founder and CEO Jesse Powell. We dove into the history of Kraken, their values and the vision that's driving them.

Topics covered in this episode:

How selling virtual goods for games led Jesse to discover Bitcoin
Why cryptocurrencies will lead to a better financial system
How Kraken launched and ended up getting strong traction in Europe
The challenges and changes of the regulatory environment
His thoughts on DeFi and decentralized exchanges
Kraken's approach to listing assets on the exchange
How to create a strong culture in a distributed company
His vision for Kraken to become a general trading and investment platform

Episode links:

Kraken
How to Grow A Decacorn | Crypto Podcast | Kraken
How to Trade Crypto On Kraken
Kraken on Wikipedia
Kraken Exchange Twitter
Jesse Powell Twitter

Sponsors:

Cosmos: Change the future of finance at the SF Blockchain Week Defi Hackathon – $50,000 prize pool for winning teams - https://epicenter.rocks/sfcosmos
Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/313

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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:

The performance-obssessed engineering background of the Solana team
The arguments against sharding for scalability
The value of a shared sense of time in a distributed system
How Solana's Proof-of-History creates a global clock for the network
How Solana uses GPUs to parallelize smart contract execution
How value could be accrued for the native token if transaction throughput is abundant
Solana's upcoming Tour de Sol testnets and launch timeline

Episode links:

Solana Website
Proof of History: A Clock for Blockchain
The World Computer Should Be Logically Centralized - Multicoin Capital
Multicoin Capital: The Separation of Time and State - Multicoin Capital
How Solana's Proof of History is a Huge Advancement for Block Time
Tower BFT: Solana’s High Performance Implementation of PBFT

Sponsors:

Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com
Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/312

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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:

Rhys’ background as a podcaster and proponent of Effective Altruism
His advocacy work around universal tithing and donating to charity
The controversy surrounding the MIT Media Lab and the resignation of their Director Joi Ito
The difference between ethics and morals
Why we need to study blockchain ethics
Should we have ethics committees in blockchain as there exists about AI
The ethical considerations for different use cases and applications of blockchain technology
The role of miners and should they have ethical obligations to censor certain transactions
The DCI’s blockchain ethics class and what students learn

Episode links:

Blockchain Ethics Class
Blockchain Ethics Class Syllabus
Why it’s time to start talking about blockchain ethics (MIT Technology
Review)
Jeffrey Epstein case: Federal prosecutors broke law, judge says (Miami
Herald)
Director of M.I.T.’s Media Lab Resigns After Taking Money From Jeffrey
Epstein (New York Times)
MIT Digital Currency Initiative
Rhys Lindmark on Twitter

Sponsors:

Cosmos: Change the future of finance at the SF Blockchain Week Defi Hackathon – $50,000 prize pool for winning teams - https://epicenter.rocks/sfcosmos
Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com
B9Lab: Level up and become a Solidity smart contract auditor – 5% off the with the code EPICENTER - https://solidified.b9lab.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/311

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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:

Eli's trajectory and transition from academia to the startup world
The origin story of Starkware and the founding team
The current explosion of zero-knowledge proof research
An overview of zero-knowledge proof systems and how they work
What are STARKs and what are their properties
How STARKs are different from SNARKs and Bulletproofs
What are zk-Rollups and how they are used by StarkWare to achieve scalability
The StarkDEX experiment and scalability benefits it had demonstrated
The issue of data availability with layer-2 scaling solutions
StarkWare's business model and the solutions they are building for customers

Episode links:

StarkWare
StarkWare resources
StarkWare blog
StarkWare Twitter
StarkWare Sessions conference videos
Epicenter Podcast SFBW Week Meetup
DeFi Hackathon sponsored by Cosmos
SF Blockchain Week 2019 (use the code EPICENTER for 20% off tickets)
Macro.WTF

Sponsors:

Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com
B9Lab: Level up and become a Solidity smart contract auditor – 5% off the with the code EPICENTER - https://solidified.b9lab.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/310

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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:

Yoni's background and how he first became interested in financial trading
How Yoni and his brother came up with the idea for eToro
The background of the Bitcoin community in Israel
Yoni's predictions for the finance industry
How the power of tokenization paved the path for eToro
What makes eToro unique compared to other crypto trading platforms
eToro's blockchain wallet
The launch of the eToroX crypto currency exchange
eToro's views on custody of assets and DeFi

Episode links:

eToro
eToro on GitHub
The eToro Crypto Wallet
eToroX
eToro Twitter
Yoni Assia Twitter

Sponsors:

Cosmos: Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains - http://cosmos.network/epicenter
Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/309

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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:

Hard Governance vs. Soft Governance
What types of governance we should apply to different systems
Different approaches to governance formalization
How we should govern things like trademarks
Representing all stakeholders in a governance system
Building in exit mechanisms in DAOs
Conservatism over Liberlism in governance mechanisms
How to account for different value systems

Episode links:

DappCon
Ameen Soleimani on Twitter
Stephanie Hurder on Twitter
Jorge Izquierdo on Twitter
Sebastian Gajek on Twitter
Community manager job posting
Epicenter Meetup at SF Blockchain Week

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/308

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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 Sebastien on usability and user experience in blockchain-based apps and products.

The panelists where Chriss Sugg of AirSwap, Alex Van de Sande of the Ethereum Foundation, Itamar Lesuisse or Argent and Pedro Gomez of Wallet Connect.

Topics covered in this episode:

The state of usability in the blockchain space
How evolving technology inform concepts in user experience
Building products in Web2.0 vs. Web 3
Creating dialog between engineers and designers
Why crypto product haven't gained adoption from non-crypto savvy people
Adoption of crypto by the unbanked
Gathering usage data for the purpose of product development

Episode links:

Chriss Sugg on Twitter
Alex Van de Sande on Twitter
Pedro Gomez on Twitter
Itamar Lesuisse on Twitter
Community manager job posting
DAPPCON

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/307

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Those who have been in crypto long enough remember the not-so-good-ol’ days when an air-gapped machine was the only way to store private keys securely. Thankfully, the wallet space has come a long way from that era. But we still live in a world where the seed phrase is the single atomic point of failure. Enter threshold signatures schemes (TSS), a multi-party computation (MPC) where different parties generate a key and are all required to create a valid signature.

We’re joined by Omer Shlomovits and Ouriel Ohayon, Co-founders of ZenGo. Their product is a ‘keyless’ crypto wallet, which means users never need to generate or store a key which gives them access to their funds. Keys are created with an MPC, where both ZenGo and the user are required to sign a transaction. TTS opens up exciting new possibilities like social recovery, user permissions for teams, and inheritance planning schemes. The important distinction between ZenGo and existing multi-signature wallets is that they achieve this using only cryptography, and do not rely on on-chain elements like smart contracts or op_scriptSig in Bitcoin.

Topics covered in this episode:

Omer and Ouriel’s respective backgrounds in academia and online consumer-facing products
What lead them to want to build yet another crypto wallet
The state of custody in the crypto wallet ecosystem and the challenge which remain unaddressed
A quick refresh on cryptographic primitives and multi-party computations (MPC)
The building blocks of cryptographic signatures and threshold signature schemes (TSS)
How TSS is different from Bitcoin multi-sig and smart contract multi-sig
TSS in ECDSA vs. Schnorr signatures
Applications and use cases for TSS
ZenGo’s on-boarding, restore process and use of biometrics
The future of wallet interoperability in a world of proprietary cryptographic schemes

Episode links:

Sponsors:
- Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com
- Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/306

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We're joined by Sharon Goldberg, CEO of Arwen, a protocol solution for non-custodial trading. From communications engineering to Internet protocol security, to then becoming a Professor at Boston University, she shares her journey into the world of cryptography. Beginning as a whitepaper on eclipse attacks, Arwen has grown into a platform enabling atomic swaps on centralized exchanges. Sharon chats about Arwen's integration with KuCoin, how it compares to ShapeShift, Interledger, and Lightning, and the exciting new release of the Layer-2 atomic swaps from Ethereum into Bitcoin.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Sharon became interested in blockchain technology
The meaning of an eclipse attack
Arwen's co-founder Ethan Heilman
The backbone of Arwen
The Arwen protocol and how it uses atomic swaps
How trading takes place on the exchange
Arwen vs Shapeshift and Interledger
Creating multiple orders using the same channel
Arwen vs Lightning and the use of SegWit
How the relationship with KuCoin was formed

Episode links:

Sponsors:
- Cosmos: Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains - http://cosmos.network/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/305

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We’re pleased to be joined by the legendary cryptographer and computer scientist, David Chaum. From his early beginnings at Berkley, David pioneered many of the cryptographic techniques used in secure systems and cryptocurrencies today. Blind signatures, which are used in zero-knowledge proofs, and mix networks, used in Tor heavily rely on his work. At the dawn of the Internet, David founded DigiCash, what many believe to be a direct ancestor of Bitcoin. Today, David continues to pursue his mission to bring data privacy to all as his most recent project, Elixxir, aims to create a truly private messaging and payment app with a mass-market appeal.

Topics covered in this episode:

David’s background as a Ph.D. student at Berkeley and his thesis entitled “Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups”
What drove him to work on cryptography and privacy systems
His relationship to the early cypherpunk movement
David’s contribution to cryptography primitives such as blind signatures, undeniable signatures, group signatures and mixers
The story of DigiCash and how the company was founded
The idea behind Cyberbucks and why the company ultimately went bankrupt
Cryptocurrency adoption as a chicken-and-egg problem
David’s personal views and practices with regards to online privacy
His thoughts on the blockchain space today and his views on the future of the industry
His current project, Elixxir, a messaging and payment app which protects users’ data and metadata

Episode links:

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/304

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We're joined by Ayo Akinyele, CEO of Bolt Labs. Bolt is building a new privacy-focused layer-2 payment channel network design. Initially designed by Matt Green and Ian Meyers, Bolt is being commercialized by Ayo and his team. Beginning with a Zcash integration, they have plans to implement on several crypto networks. We chat with Ayo about the technical design of BOLT channels, their privacy guarantees, how they complement designs like Lightning, and their synergies with the Zcash team.

Topics covered in this episode:

Privacy in Lightning
Technical design of Bolt channels
Architecture of Bolt channel networks
Integrations with existing networks
Synergies with Zcash project
Regulatory aspect of payment channel hubs

Episode links:

Bolt Labs website
Bolt: Anonymous Payment Channels for Decentralized Currencies (white paper_
Bolt Zcash implementation
Bolt: anonymous payment channels for decentralized currencies – Part I
Bolt: anonymous payment channels for decentralized currencies – Part II
Ayo Akinyele on Twitter
Starkware Session: September 16th in Tel Aviv – 20% off with the code EPICENTER
Chain-Aviv #4: The era of new rising chains and assets – September 11th in Tel Aviv

Sponsors:

Cosmos: Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains - http://cosmos.network/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/303

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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:

What is EthHub and why they decided to start the organization
Eric and Anthony’s view on the current state of the Ethereum community
The different cliques, factions, and sub-groups in Ethereum
The role of the Foundation and Vitalik Buterin as they see it
A close look into project funding in Ethereum and the emergence of DAOs for funding
Reflections on Anthony’s “Why Ether is Valuable” piece
The state of Ethereum 2.0 research and the different parties involved
Their views on where the crypto space is heading in the next 5 years

Episode links:

EthHub website
Into the Ether podcast
EthHub Newsletter
Why Ether is Valuable
Is Ether needed for transaction fees?
Ethereum Project Funding
EthHub on Twitter
Anthony Sassano on Twitter
Eric Conner on Twitter
Epicenter Meetup at TelAviv Blockchain Week – Monday September 16th

Sponsors:

Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com
Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/302

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This week we're joined by Daniel Shin. He is the Co-Founder of Terra Money and previous CEO and Co-Founder of TMON, one of Korea's largest players e-commerce platforms. Today he talks about his success in that area and how that drove him to enter the cryptocurrency and blockchain space with this new project.

Daniel was lead to blockchain when looking for a solution to reduce transaction fees paid by online merchants. Not satisfied with just using an existing stable coin, he set about to make his own, which is how Terra was born.

Topics covered in this episode:

Daniel's background with TMON and his need to explore new transaction cost-cutting ideas
How Daniel discovered that cryptocurrencies may help reduce intermediaries in the payment space
Terra's impressive partnerships with some of Korea's largest e-commerce players
The stability mechanism and the role of the Luna token
The role of miners in Terra and the currency's seigniorage model
Comparisons to other stablecoins like Maker DAI and Libra
The contingency plans in the event of a catastrophic plummet in demand
How Cosmos formed the basis on which Terra was built
Terra's business model and product roadmap

Episode links:

Terra on GitHub
Terra white paper
Introducing the new Terra Protocol
Use Cases for Decentralized Money (Stablecoin)
Scaling Seigniorage
Terra Research Forum
Terra Twitter
TMON

Sponsors:

Cosmos: Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains - http://cosmos.network/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/301

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We’re joined by Erik Voorhees, Founder & CEO of Shapeshift. His third appearance on the podcast is timed nicely as July marked ShapeShift’s fifth anniversary. From its early days as the “Google Translate for cryptocurrencies”, it has grown into an organization of 75 people, and Erik talks about the learning curves he has endured on his journey. Our conversation also coincides with the launch of ShapeShift’s brand new V2 platform, which includes a self-custodial asset management dashboard, hardware wallet support, and many other new features. One notable change is that ShapeShift now requires users to create an account and perform KYC, something which very much pains Erik. We also discuss Bitcoin, Libra, and the future of money, topics which are always fascinating to approach from Erik’s Libertarian viewpoint.

Topics covered in this episode:

ShapeShift celebrating its 5th anniversary the lessons learned since launch
What is ShapeShift 2.0 and the problems addressed by this product
ShapeShift's new features and what people can expect to come in the future
Why users now have to register and perform KYC
What is the FOX token and what is it's utility
ShapeShift's business model and target segment
Why the company chose to shut down Prism
Erik's views on the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems today
Speculations about Libra and the future of money

Episode links:

ShapeShift
ShapeShift on GitHub
Building a Bridge to Financial Sovereignty (ShapeShift 2.0 announcement)
Erik's tweetstorm on Libra
KeepKey Release Notes
ShapeShift Twitter
Erik Voorhees Twitter

Sponsors:

Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com
Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter
StarkWare Sessions: September 16th in Tel Aviv – 20% off with the code EPICENTER - https://epicenter.rocks/starkware

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/300

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We're joined by Igor Barinov, the tech lead of the POA Network. The POA Network achieves a reduction in transaction costs by many orders of magnitude by having a set of trusted validators. All validators must be US public notaries, so their identities are known and legal recourse against them can be taken in the offchain world. We also talk about the xDai network, which enables Dai transactions on a POA chain: Dai are transferred into a smart contract on the mainnet and then become available to be transferred at much lower cost on the POA Network. Similarly, they can be transferred out of the xDai network and become available again on the mainchain. We talk about use cases, governance, and limitations.

Topics covered in this episode:

Igor's background and how he got into blockchain
The POA network setup and how to become a validator
What informs design decisions and how to find suitable notaries
The consensus mechanism on the POA Network
The role of the POA token
The xDai network and its purpose
The role of the DPOS token
Use cases of POA and xDai Networks

Episode links:

POA Network website
POA products overview
xDAI Chain
POSDAO White paper
Ocean Protocol releases own POA network
Beginners guide: What's the POA network

Sponsors:

StarkWare Sessions: September 16th in Tel Aviv – 20% off with the code EPICENTER - https://epicenter.rocks/starkware
Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com
Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/299

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We're joined by Rune Christensen, CEO and Co-Founder of MakerDAO. We discuss the rise of Maker DAI as an algorithmically backed stable token and get into the weeds of the new version featuring multi collateral DAI as well as the ability to natively generate interest on DAI. We also cover the current governance model and how this can be attacked. The governance will undergo an overhall for the new version of Maker, introducing an Emergency Shutdown that can be triggered through MKR holders and promises to make the system more resilient. Lastly, we venture into what Rune hopes the future will bring for MakerDAO.

Topics covered in this episode:

Recap of how single collateral DAI is kept at peg of 1 USD
Why was DAI intermittently trading at < 1USD
Governance functions exercised by MKR holders
Sale of MKR tokens and MKR distribution
Is the current governance model satisfactory?
New governance mechanisms to be rolled out soon
Introduction of multi collateral DAI
Interest generating DAI: Implementation and rationale
Future of Maker DAO: What will be able to serve as collateral?

Episode links:

MakerDAO white paper
MakerDAO CDP portal
MakerDAO Blog
Roadmap Multi Collateral DAI
DAI in numbers
DAI in DeFi

Sponsors:

Cosmos: Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains - http://cosmos.network/epicenter
Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/298

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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:

Ameen’s background as an early ConsenSys employee working on payment channels
Why Ameen decided to found SpankChain and how the project has evolved since its inception
What is Moloch DAO and why he decided to launch it
The mechanism behind Moloch and how it compares to other DAOs
How one becomes a member of Moloch and participates in governance
The simplicity of Moloch DAO and its essential functions
How Moloch DAO scales and its intended lack of a smart contract upgrade mechanism
The attention and funding the project has already received
Proposals already made on Moloch, including YangDAO, and their utility to the ecosystem
Ameen’s views on the broader Ethereum space, his outlook on Eth 2.0 and the future of the project

Episode links:

Moloch DAO
Moloch Ventures · GitHub
Moloch DAO white paper
Moloch Summoning Guide
The State of Ethereum 2.0 report
A Study of Libp2p and ETH2
A Call for a Temporary Moratorium on The DAO
YangDAO
Ameen Soleimani on Twitter
Moloch DAO on Twitter
SpankChain
DappCon – 20% off with the code “EpicenterDappcon2019”
Epicenter Meetup at Berlin Blockchain Week – Thu 22 Aug 2019
Berlin Blockchain Week 2019

Sponsors:

Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter
Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/297

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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:

Jerry’s background as a lawyer and his crypto beginnings in D.C.
Coin Center, it’s mission and the primary battles which the organization is fighting
“The Case for Electronic Cash” paper and why cash is vital for a free and open society
The main dysfunctions of cashless societies
Jerry’s high-level views on Libra
How Libra is different from other cryptocurrencies and electronic payment systems
The backlash immediately following the announcement and how it was received by governments
Ways in which Libra could be regulated
The recent FinCEN guidance and how it affects cryptocurrency users and companies

Episode links:

Coin Center
Jerry Brito's website
FinCEN’s new cryptocurrency guidance matches Coin Center recommendations
The Case for Electronic Cash
The differences between Bitcoin and Libra should matter to policymakers
Jerry's thoughts on Libra (tweetsorm)
Jerry response to Libra Association's Head of Policy on sanction's list (tweetsorm)
Buidl Asia
HackAtom Seoul
DappCon – 20% off with the code “EpicenterDappcon2019”
Announcing the Chorus One Podcast
Cosmology – A newsletter about the Cosmos network

Sponsors:

Vaultoro: Vaultoro - Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg
Azure: Azure - Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/296

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In this episode, we caught up with Robert Leshner, founder of the Compound protocol. Compound is a fascinating smart contract protocol, running atop Ethereum, that allows users to lend and borrow specific ERC-20 tokens with a duration-free interest model. The protocol acts as a central borrower and lender of user tokens and algorithmically prices the interest charged to borrowers and lenders. Compound is one of the first examples of a well-functioning lending market built using smart contracts.

Topics covered in this episode:

Robert's background and how he came to found Compound
The workings of the compound protocol
Statistics of usage of the protocol
Intended plan for governance of the protocol in the future
Business model of the company and the protocol
Comparison of compound to other lending protocols on Ethereum
Outlook and future plans

Episode links:

Compound Website
Compound Protocol Stats
Our plan to create Compound v2
Robert Leshner on Twitter
Robert Leshner on Linkedin
Compound Finance on Twitter

Sponsors:

Cosmos: Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains - http://cosmos.network/epicenter
Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/295

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We're joined by Rob Dawson, Head of Product at PegaSys. PegaSys is the protocol engineering spoke of ConsenSys, and the team building Pantheon, a Java implementation of the Ethereum client. The Pantheon client was built from the ground up as both a mainnet, and consortium chain client. Written in Java with an Apache 2.0 license, it benefits from being easily accessible to enterprises, who predominantly use that language. The PegaSys team has built additional features into the Pantheon client like privacy, permissioning, and the ability to deploy chains on IBFT, a consensus algorithm better suited for consortium networks of up to 40 validators. Working closely with other protocol teams (Geth and Parity), and being a founding member of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance, PegaSys is also working towards Ethereum 2.0.

Topics covered in this episode:

Rob’s background as an enterprise Java developer and how he became involved in the blockchain space
The role of PegaSys in the broader ConsenSys ecosystem
The Pantheon client and why they chose to build a new Ethereum client
The case for Java and why enterprise has a preference for this language
Pantheon’s unique features of privacy, permissioning, and performance
What is Istanbul BFT and how it differs from Parity POA and Tendermint BFT
The types of applications which are better suited for IBFT
The Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA) and PegaSys’ work on standards
PegaSys’ work on Ethereum 1.x and Ethereum 2.0
The team's recently announced certification program

Episode links:

PegaSys Website
Introducing Pantheon, a Mainnet Java Client - Demo & Roadmap (Devcon4)
Another day, another consensus algorithm. Why IBFT 2.0?
Scaling Consensus for Enterprise: Explaining the IBFT Algorithm
Blog Posts and Webinars - Pantheon
PegaSysEng/pantheon: An enterprise-grade Java-based, Apache 2.0

licensed Ethereum client * PegaSysEng/artemis: Java Implementation of the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon

Chain * Komgo

Sponsors:

Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com
Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/294

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The complex and evolving regulatory landscape for cryptocurrencies has been a topic for many years. After a long period of waiting, the SEC started pursuing fraud causes in the last 1-2 years. But the recent lawsuit against Kik is the first time that the SEC goes after a large, non-fraud case.

We were joined by lawyer Stephen Palley to discuss the Kik case, the US regulatory landscape and recent announcement of the Libra cryptocurrency promoted by Facebook.

Topics covered in this episode:

The SEC lawsuit against Kik
The potential path of the process and how it could resolve in the end
Why the Kik case is unlikely to provide any regulatory clarity in the next few years
What a settlement in the Kik case could look like
Whether the Howey test is still a sensible way to regulate securities
How US regulators will deal with decentralized exchanges
Stephen's thoughts on Libra

Episode links:

Annotated Guide to the SEC's Complaint against KIK - Katherine Wu
Kik and the SEC: What’s Going On and What Does It Mean for Crypto? -

Katie Haun * Kin Sets Up $5 Million DefendCrypto.org to Take on the SEC - Unchained

Podcast * SEC vs. Kik: The Lawyers Speak - CoinDesk * Episode 135 with Stephen Palley: Lawmodynamics – How to Sue a DAO * Stephen Palley on Twitter

Sponsors:

Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com
Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/293

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This is part two of a two part bonus series. These sessions were recorded at the first Interchain Conversations conference which took place in Berlin on June 13th and 14th, 2019.

The firs part of this bonus episode features the validator panel moderated by Brian Fabian Crain, Co-founder of Chorus One. The panel included Florian Liss of Staking Facilities, Hendrik Hofstadt of Certus One, Aurel Iancu of Dokia Capital, and Jun Soon Kim of stake.fish. The conversation goes into the role of validators beyond staking, ways in which we can avoid too much centralization, and how validators will differentiate in a market which tends towards homogeneity.

The second part of this episode is a governance debate moderated by Sunny Aggarwal. The first topic is on plutocracy and features Jae Kwon and Rigel Rozanski. The second is about revokable governance and features Chris Goes and Jack Jampolin.

Subscribe to Epicenter for new episodes every week.

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This is part one of a two-part bonus series. These sessions were recorded at the first Interchain Conversations conference which took place in Berlin on June 13th and 14th, 2019.

The first part of this episode is “Epicenter Live,” a live podcast recorded on stage at the event. It features hosts Meher Roy, Sunny Aggarwal, Brian Fabian Crain, and Sebastien Couture. In this conversation, we discuss the topic of blockchain interoperability. We look at how different projects address interoperability and seek to form a picture of how these projects might interact in a multi-blockchain future. We also discuss how these protocols address application comparability and speculate on how they will remain competitive.

The second segment is the opening Q&A between Jae Kwon and Sebastien Couture. Among other things, Sebastien spoke with Jae about the recent Cosmos launch, the Interchain Foundation, and the future of the Tendermint company.

Subscribe to Epicenter for new episodes every week.

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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:

How Hayden's exploratory project to learn smart contract development took off and became Uniswap
How Uniswap works and its different participants
The advantage of an automated exchange instead of using order books
The role of liquidity providers in Uniswap
Feedback loops that can make Uniswap markets popular or collapse
The challenging economics of liquidity shares
Addressing Arthur Hayes' criticism of decentralized exchanges
Why Uniswap didn't create a tokeneconomic monetization model

Episode links:

Uniswap Exchange Protocol
Uniswap Whitepaper
Uniswap: Getting Started & Documentation
Unisocks Exchange
Distributed 2018: Presentation about Decentralized Exchanges by Arthur Hayes (BitMEX)
Buidl Asia 2019 Conference in Seoul, Korea on July 22-23
HackAtom Seoul on July 19-21

Sponsors:

Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter
Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/292

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We're joined by Tal Moran, Chief Scientist at Spacemesh. This new consensus protocol is designed to run on home desktop PCs, filling free space on users' hard drives to create a Proof of Space-Time. The goal of this new blockchain protocol is to solve the issues with Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, that is, energy inefficiency on the one hand, and possible centralized plutarchy of rich validators on the other.

Topics covered in this episode:

Tal's background as an academic and researcher
The problems with Proof of Stake and Proof of Work
What is Proof of Space-Time and how it works
How miners use their hard drive space to establish proofs
How randomness is generated in Spacemesh
Spacemesh's DAG architecture and how blocks are added to the chain
The tortoise and hare protocols proposed by Spacemesh
The Spacemesh team and recent funding round
The project's business model and roadmap

Episode links:

Spacemesh
Spacemesh white paper
Tal's CESC18 talk in San Fransisco
Spacemesh on GitHub
Spacemesh on Twitter
Spacemesh on Medium
Interchain Conversations Berlin event – use code EPICENTER for discounted tickets
Cosmos Hackatom Berlin

Sponsors:

Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com
Cosmos: Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains - http://cosmos.network/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/291

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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:

Daniels background and life living on a boat off the coast of New Zealand
How being at sea gave him the idea for Secure Scuttlebutt
What is Secure Scuttlebutt and what are the goals of the project
The issues with centralization and redefining decentralization as a positive statement
The notion that the technological singularity only serves the goals of centralized power
How SSB stores information and how posts get propagates from between friends, and friends of friends
How the network leverages “Pub” servers to sync data over the internet
Usage of the platform and the communities which thrive there
The cost of spam and how users protect against DDoS attacks
The project’s funding and roadmap

Episode links:

Secure Scuttlebutt website
Scuttlebutt Protocol Guide
Manyverse mobile client
Designing a Secret Handshake: AuthenticatedKey Exchange as a Capability System
EfficientReconciliationandFlow ControlforAnti-Entropy Protocols
Scuttlebutt: an off-grid P2P social network that runs without servers and

can fall back to sneakernet * The Nomad Who’s Exploding the Internet Into Pieces * Counter-Anti-Disintermediation * “The Third Web” interview with Dominic Tarr * Dominic Tarr on Twitter

Sponsors:

Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com
Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/290

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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:

Dan’s background as a securities layer turned coder
His trajectory from working at Chain, to spending some time at Stellar, to joining Paradigm Fund
His involvement in the development of the Plasma Cash and Plasma Debit protocols
Thoughts and criticisms of using HTLC’s in Lightning
What is the idea behind Rainbow Network and how to understand it in the context of Lightning
What are synthetics assets and the ability to trade multiple assets in a single payment channel
The ability to have leverage in a Rainbow channel trade
Next steps in research and implementation
Dan’s contribution to the Ivey “smart contract” language for Bitcoin

Episode links:

Rainbow Network white paper
Ivy Playground for Bitcoin
Mirror project
Paradigm
Dan Robinson on Medium
Dan Robinson on Twitter
Interchain Conversations Berlin event – use code EPICENTER for discounted tickets
Cosmos Hackatom Berlin

Sponsors:

Cosmos: Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains - http://cosmos.network/epicenter
Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/289

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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:

Jill’s beginning working at Goldman Sachs in the Latin America market
Her journey from trading bonds to entering crypto space working at Chain
A brief history of Venezuela leading up to the current situation
What it’s like to experience hyperinflation
The Open Money Initiative and the organization’s goals
How cryptocurrency and specifically Bitcoin is used in Venezuela
The political motivations behind the Open Money Initiative
The story behind Venezuela’s Petro currency
Jill’s podcast with Meltem Demirors, What Grinds my Gears

Episode links:

Jill Carlson’s website
Open Money Initiative
Petronomicon (blog post)
Crypto Is Not An Asset Class (blog post)
What Grinds my Gears podcast
Jill Carlson on Medium
Jill Carlson on Twitter

Sponsors:

Cosmos: Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains - http://cosmos.network/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/288

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The Ethereum Foundation has played a crucial role in the evolution of the blockchain ecosystem. They pioneered the Swiss foundation structure and ran one of the first token sales. They played a key role in developing the second-most valuable blockchain network and still play a key role in funding research and steering the future of Ethereum.

At the same time, it has been frequently criticized for a lack of transparency, being too slow in funding development and poor financial risk management. Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi joined us to discuss her journey into the space, the role of the Ethereum Foundation and their plans for the future.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Aya went from high school teacher to enter the crypto space
Joining Kraken and building their presence in Japan
The role of the Ethereum Foundation in the Ethereum ecosystem
Decision making processes and governance in the Ethereum Foundation
Ethereum's grant program and funding priorities
The Ethereum Foundation's plans to attempt to become more transparent
The Ethereum Foundation's approach to conflicts of interest
Why the EF decided to support MolochDAO
Whether Ethereum should be concerned about competition from other blockchain networks

Episode links:

Ethereum.org
Ethereum Foundation to Spend $30 Million on Development Over Next Year
Ethereum Foundation Website
Ethereum Foundation Values by Aya Miyaguchi (Devcon4) - YouTube
Ethereum Devcon 5 Japan - Oct 30 to Nov 2
DappCon Berlin - August 21 to 23

Sponsors:

Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/287

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We were joined by Mark S. Miller, Chief Scientist at Agoric. Mark is a computer scientist who has done ground-breaking work on many topics relevant to blockchain and smart contracts going back decades.

We discussed his visionary 1988 Agoric papers, which explored how markets could be applied to the world of software. We also covered how his view of smart contracts, which focused on secure bilateral agreements complements and converges with blockchain. Finally, we covered his new company Agoric and their conceptualization of higher order smart contracts.

Topics covered in this episode:

Mark's effort to prevent the government from suppressing the discovery of public key cryptography in the 1970s
The legendary project Xanadu and its attempt to create censorship-resistant web publishing
Mark's Agoric papers and the vision of markets for computation
Why AI hasn't changed the shortcomings of central planning
The difference between his view of smart contracts and Nick Szabo's
Their decade-spanning work on making JavaScript the best language for smart contracts
Agoric's work on higher order smart contracting

Episode links:

The Agoric Papers
Computer Security as the Future of Law - YouTube
Capability-based Financial Instruments (2000)
Distributed Electronic Rights in JavaScript – Google AI
Agoric at SF Cryptocurrency Devs - Programming Secure Smart Contracts -

YouTube * The Duality of Smart Contracts and Electronic Rights by Dean Tribble at

Web3 Summit 2018 - YouTube

Sponsors:

Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter
Cosmos: Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains - http://cosmos.network/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/286

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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:

Mike's background as a lawyer and the Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation
What is the NASAA, it's goals, members and jurisdiction
The story of “Operation Cryptosweep” and what came out of that action
Mike's thoughts on the future of blockchain regulation
How regulation might apply in the context of transnational projects which are nation state-invariant
The United State's restrictive securities laws in the context of Defi and security tokens
Vermont's attempt to attract blockchain projects, and the “Blockchain-Based LCC”
Vermont DFR's pilot project in Captive Insurance
What Mike hopes to achieve during his one-year term as president of the NASAA

Episode links:

NASAA
Operation Cryptosweep
NASAA Reminds Investors to Approach ICOs with Caution
Get in the Know About ICOs (video)
Vermont Governor Signs Bill Clearing Way for Blockchain Companies
Captive Insurance Blockchain Pilot Press Release
Vermont Department of Financial Regulation
Mike Pieciak (@mspieciak) on Twitter

Sponsors:

Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/285

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We're joined by Griff Green, one of the founders at Giveth. The organization, which emerged out of the ashes of the DAO, aims to create a better model for charitable work. Operating as a Dapp, Giveth aims to bring new governance models in the nonprofit space. The goal is to create better incentives for donors and charity workers, in all types of social good projects.

Topics covered in this episode:

Griff's background as a gold-hodling digital nomad
His time spent at Slock.it and his involvement in the aftermath of the DAO collapse
How traditional charity organizations work
The problems these organizations face and how funds get allocated
The Giveth backstory and why the team chose to start the project
Incentive alignment in the charity space
The use of bonding curves and continuous organizations to fund charity projects
The project's roadmap and future

Episode links:

Giveth website
Rewriting the Story of Human Collaboration
Griff's talk at EthCC
Crowdfunding the Commons
The Future of Giving is Crowdfunding the Commons
Deep Dive: Augmented Bonding Curves
Episode 282 with Simon de la Rouviere
The Giveth blog
Giveth on GitHub
Join the Giveth community

Sponsors:

Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/284

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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:

The vision of The Graph and why the team chose to work on this problem
The REST API client-server model in the Web 2.0 paradigm
The state of the Ethereum ecosystem and the challenges relating to data availability
How DApps work behind the scenes and their backend infrastructure
GraphQL as the evolution of the API model
How The Graph addresses the issue of data querying and availability
Their hosted services and plans to move to a hybrid model
How The Graph addresses privacy and scalability
The incentive mechanisms and economics related to data integrity
Early applications and the project's near-term roadmap

Episode links:

The Graph - A Query Protocol for Blockchains
The Graph on Medium
Browse and Explore Subgraphs
Graph Docs
GraphQL Will Power the Decentralized Web
The Graph’s Research and Specifications are Now Open Source
Our Investment In The Graph - Multicoin Capital
GraphQL
Yaniv Tal on Twitter

Sponsors:

Cosmos: Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains - http://cosmos.network/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/283

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Human beings have a penchant for creating lists. We make lists for things like the top music artists at any given time, the best restaurants in the world, companies which people can trust, and the most wanted criminals. Lists take many forms. They can be maintained by a single authority, or curated by a crowd. But almost always, they remain in the custody of a central party. Token Curated Lists propose a model by which a) the content of lists are decentralized, and b) contributors are incentivized to curate their content according to social consensus.

We’re joined by Simon de la Rouviere, an independent researcher and blogger. Previously, Simon was one of the first employees at ConsenSys and founded Ujo Music. He also contributed to the ERC20 token specification and has written about blockchain and token economics since 2014. In recent months, Simon’s research has focused on Token Curated Registries (or TCRs), and the economics of curation markets.

Topics covered in this episode:

Simon’s background and interest in blockchain, music, and economics
Bonding curves as a mechanism for continuous token issuance
Curation markets and how they relate to bonding curves
Practical applications of curation markets
The connection between curation markets and cultural memes
Token Curated Registries and their applications
The role of TCRs as a crypto economic primitive
The economics and game theory of TCRs
Simon’s recent project “This Artwork is Always for Sale”

Episode links:

Simon de la Rouviere – Medium
Bancor’s Smart Tokens vs Token Bonding Curves – Medium
Introducing Curation Markets: Trade Popularity of Memes & Information (with code)! – Medium
Ujo Music
This Artwork Is Always On Sale – Medium
This Artwork Is Always On Sale
Simon de la Rouviere – Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture and Meher Roy . Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/282

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The shipping container brought standardization to the way we move goods around the world. Similarly, TCP/IP packets normalized how information transits over computer networks. Today, blockchains remain siloed ecosystems and interoperability is practically non-existent. A new wave of third-generation blockchain protocols aims to change this. In this new paradigm, blockchains communicate natively and value moves seamlessly from one network to another. One of those projects is Cosmos.

We’re joined by Ethan Buchman and Sunny Aggarwal of Cosmos. With its recent mainnet launch, we discuss how the network is running and address potential issues relating to governance and centralization of power.

Disclaimers:

– Cosmos (All in Bits) is a sponsor of the podcast.

– Brian is a former employee of Tendermint (All in Bits) and founder of the Cosmos validator Chorus One.

– Sunny, is a regular host on Epicenter and founder of the Cosmos validator Sikka.

– All participants in this interview are Atom holders.

Topics covered in this episode:

The Cosmos vision and how it differs from Polkadot and Ethereum 2.0
Building Cosmos and the “Game of Stake”
The Cosmos governance process and current proposals
Voter participation in the Cosmos governance model
The role of validators and the importance of decentralization of power
Validator market economics, related inherent issues, and centralization risks
The Cosmos SDK and how it differs from Substrate
The Cosmos Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) Protocol
The role of the Interchain Foundation moving forward

Episode links:

Cosmos website
Cosmos SDK websitt
Cosmos SDK (GitHub)
Cosmos blog
Sunny Aggarwal on Twitter
Ethan Buchman on Twitter

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/281

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Dogecoin was born from the association of two browser tabs: one was an article about the popularity of the doge meme, and the other, CoinMarketCap. The idea quickly gained traction on Twitter, and before long, a new cryptocurrency was born. Dogecoin gained adoption as a tipping currency, the community took part fundraising for charities and other causes, perhaps most notably sending the Jamaican bobsled team to the Sochi Winter Olympics.

We’re joined by Jackson Palmer, co-creator of Dogecoin. Though he has left the project, Jackson shares the story of how he created the most popular meme cryptocurrency as a joke.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jackson’s background and early interest in cryptocurrency
The Dogecoin origin story
The uniquely charitable nature of the community and The Dogecoin Foundation
How the currency became widely used for tipping
The NASCAR sponsorship and Moolah exchange scam
The technological choices which went into early versions of Dogecoin
Dogecoin’s unique monetary policy and economics
Jackson’s thoughts on Doge Ethereum and the state of the project
Why Jackson stepped away from the project and his thoughts on the crypto space
Jackson’s other projects and YouTube channel

Episode links:

Jackson Palmer's website
Dogecoin Github
“Not actually capped at 100 billion?” GitHub issue
Moolah, The Divisive Startup Heavily Involved In The Dogecoin Community, Is Closing Down – TechCrunch
Excerpts from the Moolah Scam - YouTube
Complete conversation with Mintpal/Moolah's ""Alex Green"" AKA Ryan Gentle AKA Ryan Kennedy - YouTube
Epicenter episode 5
Jackson Palmer - Twitter
Jackson Palmer - YouTube

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter.
Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains. Learn more at cosmos.network/epicenter.

This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/280

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In the early days of Bitcoin, much of the community’s focus was around payment and getting merchants to adopt cryptocurrencies. Although the technology and narratives have evolved, some projects continue to embrace that original vision of peer-to-peer business, where merchants and their customers interact directly, and if they so wish, anonymously.

We’re joined by Brian Hoffman and Washington Sanchez of OpenBazaar. Since we last interviewed Brian in 2015, the project has grown to become a mature decentralized marketplace where people come together to buy and sell products and services anonymously with crypto. Its polished interface and reputation system gives users a similar experience to that of using eBay, but without fees or the risk of censorship.

Topics covered in this episode:

Brian and Washington’s respective backgrounds
The origins of OpenBazaar as the Dark Market project
The history and evolution of OpenBazaar since their last appearance on episode 67
How OpenBazaar managed to survive all these years and how the vision has evolved over time
Who uses the platform and to what ends
How it compares to traditional dark markets like The Silk Road
OpenBazaar’s position on deplatforming and how it responds to pressure to censor content
How OpenBazaar works under the hood as a collection of decentralized technologies
The company’s business model and future plans

Episode links:

OpenBazaar website
Dark Market project on GitHub
Episode 67 of Epicenter with Brian Hoffman
Trust is Risk
Brian Hoffman, Twitter
Washington Sanchez, Twitter

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains. Learn more at cosmos.network/epicenter.

This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/279

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Three years ago, a mysterious txt file signed by a pseudonymous Tom Elvis Jedusor was dropped in the Bitcoin-Wizards IRC channel outlining a proposal called Mimblewimble. It proposed a novel way of combining many ideas from Bitcoin research in order to create a new blockchain protocol that will be highly scalable and increase privacy, while still using the same cryptographic assumptions as Bitcoin. A few months later this project was picked up by another pseudonymous individual who started working on an implementation he called Grin. Grin slowly began to draw attention from the Bitcoin community and got a lot of traction.

We join Michael Cordner (Yeastplume) and Daniel Lehnberg, two of the core developers of the Grin blockchain. In this episode we discuss some topics around Grin’s cypherpunk origins, privacy and scalability features, no-premine fair start, and interesting monetary policy.

Topics covered in this episode:

Origins of the Mimblewimble proposal and the prior work it draws upon
Andrew Poelstra’s contributions to improving and fixing the original proposal
Scalability and fast sync times achieved through mimblewimble’s UTXO set compression
How UTXO compression when combined with the Dandellion p2p protocol can increase privacy
Changes in user experience from Bitcoin to Mimblewimble
Beginning of the Grin project as an implementation of the Mimblewimble protocol
Comparision to BEAM, a competing Mimblewimble implementation
Innovating on fair Proof of Work through dual Cuckoo Cycle
Grin’s Monetary Policy and the Mining Fair Start

Episode links:

MimbleWimble Origin
Andrew Poelstra's Improved Paper
Introduction to Grin
Grin for Bitcoiners
Grin Newsletter
Michael Cordner on Twitter
Daniel Lehnberg on Twitter

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter.

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/278

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Amaury Séchet is the lead developer of Bitcoin ABC, the largest client for the Bitcoin Cash blockchain. Amaury first got started with Bitcoin in 2010 and closely followed the Bitcoin block size debate as it progressed through the early years of Bitcoin. Predicting the eventual failure of SegWit2x, Amaury was part of the original team that helped coordinate the Bitcoin Cash hard fork, timing it with the activation of SegWit on the main Bitcoin blockchain. We discuss with Amaury the roadmap for Bitcoin Cash, especially with regards to their approach to scalability. We cover many of the novel features the Bitcoin Cash development teams are innovating on such as Canonical Transaction Ordering and Avalanche Pre-Consensus, as well as cover some of the more juicy drama that plagued the Bitcoin Cash community in late 2018, leading to split off of Bitcoin SV.

Topics covered in this episode:

Block Size Debates in Bitcoin
Origins of Bitcoin Cash and the Fork
Year 1 Technical Development of Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin ABC vs Bitcoin SV
Future Roadmap

Episode links:

Bitcoin Cash Roadmap
Graphene Whitepaper
Avalanche Post-Consensus
The Case for Canonical Transaction Ordering
Bitcoin ABC vs Bitcoin SV Hashwar
Bitcoin NG Episode
EthCC Meetup

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains. Learn more at cosmos.network/epicenter.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/277

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Topics covered in this episode:

Block Size Debates in Bitcoin
Origins of Bitcoin Cash and the Fork
Year 1 Technical Development of Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin ABC vs Bitcoin SV
Future Roadmap

Episode links:

Bitcoin Cash Roadmap
Graphene Whitepaper
Avalanche Post-Consensus
The Case for Canonical Transaction Ordering
Bitcoin ABC vs Bitcoin SV Hashwar
Bitcoin NG Episode
EthCC Meetup

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/276

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Artificial Intelligence is often misunderstood. And much like blockchain, those who fiercely stand by the technology believe it will change the world for the better. Others fear the negative repercussions it could bring it and would rather see it disappear.

We’re joined by Ben Goertzel. Ben’s interest in AI and robotics date back to his childhood and he has made these his life-long passion and work. He is the CEO of SingularityNET, a company building a marketplace for AIs which leverages blockchain. He is also Chief Scientist at Hanson Robotics who has brought us the now famous Sophia robot. When he’s not building blockchains and robots, he leads the OpenCog open-source AI framework and is Chair of Humanity +, an organization which focuses on technology and ethics.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ben’s background as a mathematician and his lifelong passion for AI and robotics
What is AI, AGI and machine learning, and how these technologies differ
What is the killer application for AI
The problem of data and power centralization as it relates to AI
AI safety and with what we should be most concerned when it comes to AI dominance
Hanson Robotics and the Sophia robot
How blockchains and AI are relevant to each other
The role of AI in blockchain governance and the potential for AI systems to compete amongst each other
What is SingularityNET and what the company is building

Episode links:

Ben Goertzel's Website
SingularityNET website
SingularityNET whitepaper
Ben Goertzel portraied in Silicon Valley
Ben Goertzel's Website
Creating Internet Intelligence
Accelerando

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

Simplify your hiring process & access the best blockchain talent . Get a $1,000 credit on your first hire at toptal.com/epicenter.
Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains. Learn more at cosmos.network/epicenter.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/275

Creating Internet Intelligence: Wild Computing, Distributed Digital Consciousness, and the Emerging Global Brain (IFSR International Series in Systems Science and Systems Engineering, 18)

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We’re joined by Alexey Akhunov, an independent Ethereum researcher. Alexey has been working on an ambitious project called TurboGeth. As the name implies, it is a version of Geth which features a number of speed and performance optimizations.

Alexey also leads the state rent working group of the Ethereum 1.x project. Ethereum 1.x came out of Devcon when core developers began to realize that the full migration to Serenity would likely take several years. The team hopes to bring progressive improvements to Ethereum in parallel to the development of Serenity.

Topics covered in this episode:

Alexey’s background as a computer scientist
The story behind TurboGeth and how it differs from the original Geth client
The speed and performance optimizations of TurboGeth, as well as its trade-offs
What is Ethereum 1.x in the context of Ethereum 2.0 (Serenity)
Which people and projects are part of Ethereum 1.x
What is state rent and why it may be beneficial to Ethereum
Implementing state rent in Ethereum 1.x and 2.0
eWASM and how it can be introduced in Ethereum 1.x and 2.0
The future of Ethereum and the progress towards Serenity

Episode links:

Alexey Akhunov on Medium
TurboGeth talk at Bevcon4
Ethereum State rent for Eth 1.x pre-EIP
Ethereum state rent - rough proposal
State Rent proposal version 2 (rushed)
Ethereum state rent proposal 2
ETH Roadmap AMA
EthCC
EthCC Epicenter Meeup

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter.

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/274

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When the Lightning Network (LN) was conceived in 2015, it was quickly embraced by the Bitcoin community as the way to dramatically scale Bitcoin’s capacity. There was an expectation of LN being available quickly. Instead, development proceed more slowly in the background with different teams contributing to a standard specification. That spec is now almost ready and last year interest and early activity on the LN increased dramatically.

We were joined by Christian Decker, a core engineer at Blockstream, where he works on their LN client. We discussed the history and progression of the LN and what remains on the road to scaling Bitcoin.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Christian ended up writing the world’s first PhD on Bitcoin
The vision of the Lightning Network
How the Lightning Network evolved in the last 4 years
Approaching the 1.0 specification
The current state of the network
Why centralization concerns around hubs are often misguided
eltoo and the future of lightning network
The case against other chains being better layer 1 networks than Bitcoin

Episode links:

Lightning Network Whitepaper
Christian Decker - Scaling Bitcoin with Duplex Micropayment Channels
Joseph Poon & Tadge Dryja - Scalability and the Lightning Network
Blockstream - Lightning Network
A Simplified Update Mechanism for Lightning and Off-Chain Contracts
Lightning Network Specifications on Github

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

Simplify your hiring process & access the best blockchain talent . Get a $1,000 credit on your first hire at toptal.com/epicenter.
Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/273

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We’re joined by Jameson Lopp. Jameson is the CTO of Casa, a company providing key storage solutions. Previously, he was an early engineer at BitGo. However, to most people, he is perhaps known for his Twitter presence and his excellent writing. Over the years, Jameson has written extensively about Bitcoin development, cryptocurrencies, and personal operational security. A self-proclaimed “Professional Cypherpunk,” aligns with the ideas of libertarianism and volunteerism.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jameson’s background and how he learned about Bitcoin
His political view before and after discovering crypto
What stands out for Bitcoin in 2018
His writing on the decentralized nature of Bitcoin Core development
His views on how Bitcoin compares to Ethereum on the topic of development control
His thoughts on the Lightning Network and smart contracts on top of Bitcoin
Jameson’s approach to personal operational security
The tradeoffs of having air-tight personal OpSec
Casa and its vault offering

Episode links:

Jameson Lopp's website
Jameson Lopp's Bitcoin Resources
CRYPTO 101 interview with Jameson Lopp
Bitcoin Full Validation Sync Performance (article)
Reflections Upon a SWATting (article)
Bitcoin By the Numbers: 2018 Recap (article)
Who Controls Bitcoin Core? (article)
Professional Cypherpunk Jameson Lopp on the Lightning Network (article)
Decentralized Summit 2019

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/272

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The concept of DAOs has been captivating to many in the crypto space for years. When “The DAO” was created in 2016, in the few weeks of its existence and despite obvious flaws, it gather tremendous momentum and amassed 14% of the entire ether supply. Since then the technology has matured and Martin and Matan argue that the time for DAOs has finally arrived.

We were joined by DAOstack Founder Matan Field and Gnosis Founder Martin Köppelmann. We talked about the decentralized exchange protocol DutchX. We also talked about how the two projects together created the dxDAO, which will manage the DutchX protocol, but could go onto its own path. A path that could even lead to being the DAO for all of DeFi.

Topics covered in this episode:

The unifying vision behind the various Gnosis projects
Why Gnosis decided to build decentralized exchange protocol DutchX
DutchX’s usage of batch auctions to provide good prices and liquidity for any market
Incentivizing market makers with the Magnolia token
Why the DutchX needs a DAO
The role of Reputation in the dxDAO
How Reputation will be distributed
Why DAOs unlike companies could become more efficient as they grow
How the dxDAO could become the biggest organization on earth in the next 10 years
How one can get involved in the dxDAO

Episode links:

dxDAO Website
Joint AMA: Martin Köppelmann & Matan Field - dxDAO
DAOtalk.org
Introducing the dxDAO
A brief discussion of the protocol governing the dxDAO
The DutchX as an Open Protocol

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

Simplify your hiring process & access the best blockchain talent . Get a $1,000 credit on your first hire at toptal.com/epicenter.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/271

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Epicenter turned 5 years old this month – that’s a long time in the blockchain space! When the podcast began in January 2014, the entire ecosystem was made up of only Bitcoin and a handful of altcoins. Soon after, the Ethereum white paper was published which ushered in a new era of crypto assets and decentralized applications. Since then, we have released 270 episodes and interviewed some of the leading thinkers, entrepreneurs, and engineers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry. Needless to say, we have learned a lot about the blockchain industry, but also what it takes to run a successful podcast in this space.

This week, we look back on the early days of Epicenter and how the podcast has evolved over the years. We also answer your questions in our first ever AMA. Finally, we take stock of 2018 and the trends that marked this past year.

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst, Sébastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/270

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We’re joined by Joseph Lubin, Founder and CEO of ConsenSys. Joseph founded ConsenSys as an Ethereum development studio on the heels of the Ethereum crowd sale in 2014. The company has since grown to a distributed organization of over 1,000 people. Over 50 companies and projects have emerged from ConsenSys, including Metamask, uPort, Gnosis, and GitCoin, to name only a few. Today, the company continues to invest in growing the Ethereum ecosystem by funding projects, and through consulting services for companies and institutions.

Topics covered in this episode:

Joseph’s background working as a technologist in the financial industry
How he discovered Bitcoin in 2011
What lead Joseph to meet Vitalik Buterin and the founding Ethereum team
How he founded ConsenSys and the company’s vision
The company’s impressive growth and output
The recent round of layoffs at ConsenSys
How he thinks blockchain can change the world for the better
His advice to companies feeling the pressure of the current bear market
Joseph visiton for the future of ConsenSys and Ethereum

Episode links:

ConsenSys website
The Prophets of Cryptocurrency Survey the Boom and Bust (The New Yorker)
The Uncanny Mind That Built Ethereum (WIRED)
ConsenSys Monthly Report — November 2018
A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol
Joseph Lubin on Twitter

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

Simplify your hiring process & access the best blockchain talent . Get a $1,000 credit on your first hire at toptal.com/epicenter.
Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter.

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/269

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When token sales and ICOs took off in 2017, most projects chose to push ahead despite large regulatory risks. One of the few that went the other direction and put compliance first was CoinList. The platform made its debut by running the massive Filecoin token sales in which $205m was raised from accredited investors. CoinList also played a major role in popularizing the SAFT and creating tools to efficiently and legally raise in the US.

We were joined by CoinList President and Co-founder Andy Bromberg to discuss the history of CoinList, token sales, securities regulation and the potential of security tokens.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Andy became interested in Bitcoin and co-founded the Stanford Bitcoin Club
The Filecoin token sale and CoinList’s genesis story
CoinList’s due diligence for listing projects
Why they created a whitelabel token sale offering
The regulatory framework under which CoinList token sales take place
The logic behind the SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens)
How a token could transition from security to non-security
The recent SEC crackdown on projects that did ICOs
CoinList’s stance on security tokens

Episode links:

CoinList Website
Introducing CoinList
The Current State of Initial Coin Offerings
Introducing Airdrops by CoinList
The SEC reiterates their stance on crypto
Andy Bromberg on Twitter

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/268

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Lending is one core pillar of the economy, enabling one person or company to be entrepreneurial with someone else’s capital. However, in the traditional banking system processes in lending are often opaque and the barrier to entry into this market is high. The emergence of easy to use Decentralized Finance is one of the hallmarks of 2018: To date, DeFi has brought us crypto-collateralized stable coins, decentralized exchanges, tokenized credit default swaps, trustless derivatives, and decentralized margin lending.

We’re joined Nadav Hollander, co-founder and president of Dharma. Dharma is a decentralized protocol for credit products which connects debtors with creditors through a transparent mechanism. The protocol itself is agnostic towards the collateral and terms used, however, the team recently introduced a crypto-collateralized margin lending application running on top of the Dharma protocol, Dharma Lever.

Topics covered in this episode:

Nadav’s background and how he became interested in both blockchain technology and debt
The vision behind distributed lending
The mechanics of the Dharma protocol
The role of underwriters in the Dharma protocol
Dharma lever, an application for margin lending on the Dharma protocol
Dharma’s business model
The future of decentralized finance

Episode links:

Dharma
Dharma Lever
Introducing Dharma Lever (article)
Request For Blockchain Lending Startups (article)
Current and Future Approaches to Unsecured Lending in Dharma Protocol (article)
Dharma protocol: Debt & Liquidity for ETH (video)

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/267

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Since the rise of digital currencies and cryptocurrencies, central banks are considering the role these new forms of money may play in our evolving digital economy. One of the ideas studied is the notion of a central bank digital currency. While people and companies can hold central bank liabilities in the form of cash, only licensed banks have access to digital cash accounts with central banks.

We’re joined by David Andolfatto, VP of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. David was previously on the podcast to discuss his idea for Fedcoin, a central bank issued cryptocurrency. In a recent paper, he explores the impact central bank digital currencies may have on the monopolistic banking sector.

Topics covered in this episode:

The state of central bank research on digital currencies and cryptocurrencies
The idea that central banks may hold Bitcoin reserves
David’s new paper on the impact of central bank digital currencies (CBDC)
The potential impacts of CBDC’s on the banking sector and our economy
The role of fractional reserve banking in our economy
How fractional reserve banking applies to cryptocurrencies
The Debreu model and the need for money in an entirely liquid market
David’s outlook for the future of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies

Episode links:

Assessing the Impact of Central Bank Digital Currency on Private Banks (paper)
Smart Contracts and Asset Tokenization (article)
My perspective on the Bitcoin Project (article)
The Trust Machine: The Story of Bitcoin (article)
Fedcoin: On the Desirability of a Government Cryptocurrency (article)
David's last appearance on the podcast

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/266

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While trustless interactions on Ethereum are native to the protocol, trustless interactions between the Ethereum blockchain and other blockchains are difficult to implement. Interoperability protocols heavily rely on atomic swaps, which typically come with a free option problem.

For this episode we’re joined by James Prestwich, CEO at Summa. Summa designs and implements cross-chain financial contracts and instruments such as swaps, options, futures, and auctions. Summa recently conducted a dutch auction spanning the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains: Ethereum NFTs were auctioned off trustlessly to bidders on the Bitcoin network. We also discuss Riemann, a framework for deploying transaction scripts to UTXO-based chains, as well as the advantages of the predictability of transactions in UTXO-based chains and how to bring some of those advantages to Ethereum smart contracts.

Topics covered in this episode:

James background in Japanese and how he became interested in blockchain
James contributions to Bitcoin Script
Summa’s recent cross-chain auction in which Ethereum NFTs were auctioned off to participants on the bitcoin network
Riemann, a framework for deploying script based transactions to UTXO blockchains
Atomic swaps leading to free options
Advantages of transaction predictability in UTXO based chains

Episode links:

Summa Website
Cross-chain Auctions via Bitcoin Double Spends (article)
Statesless SPV (article)
Declarative Smart Contracts (article)
Introducing Reimann (article)
James Prestwich on Twitter

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/265

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We enter dozens of trust relationships ever time we interact with the Web. Browsers, ISPs, DNS providers, cloud hosting companies, all the way down to the handful of people who control certificate root keys; we rely on the integrity of these intermediaries to serve reliable, and accurate information. The concentration of power by any one of these actors threatens to compromise the very foundational principles of the Web. Decentralized technologies, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tor, and IPFS seek to reverse this trend.

We’re joined by Nick Sullivan, Chief Cryptographer at Cloudflare. Founded less than 10 years ago, the company offers content delivery services (CND), DNS, and DDoS protection to over 12 million websites. The company contributes to open source cryptography libraries, some of which are used by Etherum. They recently launched an IPFS gateway and features which allow users to have strong guarantees as to the integrity of the content.

Topics covered in this episode:

Nick’s background as a cryptographer and previous position at Apple
The Internet’s infrastructure and trust model
How Cloudflare is experimenting with IPFS
The challenges to hosting static websites with IPFS
Cloudflare’s Onion routing service (Tor) and the benefits to users
The Roughtime protocol and encrypted SNI
Cloudflare’s contribution to open-source cryptography libraries
The vulnerabilities of DNS and Cloudflare’s free private DNS service (1.1.1.1)

Episode links:

Welcome to Crypto Week (article)
Roughtime: Securing Time with Digital Signatures (article)
Introducing CFSSL - CloudFlare's PKI toolkit (article)
End-to-End Integrity with IPFS (article)
Introducing the Cloudflare Onion Service (article)
Cloudflare's Distributed Web Gateway
Nick Sullivan's website

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

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This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/264

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The Ethereum vision has always been to create a world computer. But its scalability and performance limitations have meant that it has fallen far short of that vision. Yet, work on scaling Ethereum has exploded in breadth and complexity over the past years. From variants of PoS, to Plasma / Plasma Cash, sharding, EWASM, BLS signatures, everything has been on the table. While confusing on the surface, underneath a coherent vision for a new Ethereum that will scale near infinitely has emerged.

We were joined by Ethereum Researcher Justin Drake to discuss the Ethereum Serenity vision, its core components and the roadmap ahead. A particular focus was the beacon chain, the role of randomness and Verifiable Delay Functions.

Topics covered in this episode:

Justin’s previous project building on top of Open Bazaar
Why he made the switch from application development to Ethereum consensus research
The high-level vision for Ethereum 2.0 / Serenity
The Ethereum Serenity roadmap to scaling the world computer by 1m times
The crucial role of the beacon chain
The difference between Ethereum Serenity and Polkadot
The role of randomness in making Ethereum Serenity work
The limitations of existing trustless sources of randomness
How Verifiable Delay Functions can be used to create better randomness
The Ethereum Foundation plans to develop an open-source VDF ASIC

Episode links:

DevCon4 Talk by Justin Drake about VDF & Randomness
DevCon4 Talk by Vitalik Buterin about Ethereum 2.0
VDF Research
Minimal VDF randomness beacon - Sharding - Ethereum Research
Ethereum Project
Two Point Oh: Explaining Validators
Two Point Oh: The Beacon Chain

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/263

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Most observers of the ecosystem will probably agree that 2015-2017 were the years of the enterprise blockchain. It was during that time that many startups catering to enterprise were founded and funded, including Monax and Stratumn (where Brian and Sebastien previously worked). For the permissioned blockchain camp, adoption would come in the form of enterprise use cases, arguing that public networks carried too much risk, and lacked needed features like privacy. While much of the hype has subsided, large companies in every sector are forming consortia and leveraging blockchain to provide better process traceability and transparency, and reduce their reliance on third parties.

We’re joined by Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director of Hyperledger. When Brian was last on the show, he had recently started his role at the Linux Foundation. Now, two years later, Hyperledger has gone from a nascent project to a mature ecosystem of technologies with hundreds of members. With dozens of networks in production, and backed by companies like IBM, Hyperleger is the most widely used blockchain technology for permissioned networks.

Topics covered in this episode:

The most important developments in Hyperledger in the last two years
Hyperledger’s family of technologies
Production networks on Hyperledger
How Hyperledger Fabric differs from Tendermint and Ethereum
The evolution of the enterprise blockchain ecosystem
The separation between the permissioned and public blockchain ecosystems
Industry use cases for Hyperledger Fabric
Brian’s skepticism about ICOs and tokens
The growing Hyperledger community and upcoming Global Forum in Basel this December

Episode links:

Hyperledger website
Hyperledger Global Forum
http://sdxcentral.com
Unbounded - To Network with Networks
Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad - Wikipedia

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/262

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The difficulties of compensating content creators for their work has been a driving force of the web for decades. It gave rise to advertising-driven tech giants like Google and Facebook and contributed to the decline of industries like music and publishing. Coil aims to change this and leverage blockchain and the Interledger Protocol to build a new business model for the web.

We were joined by Coil Founder and former Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas and Coil Co-Founder Ben Sharifian to discuss their ambitions to change how content is consumed and paid for.

Topics covered in this episode:

What web monetization is
The difference between web monetization and web payments
The negative effects of advertising-driven business models
What the Interledger Protocol (ILP) is
The current state of ILP
Why Stefan and Ben decided to leave Ripple and start Coil
The case for web monetization as an initial use case for Coil
The idea of users paying a fixed bandwidth per second to content creators
Possible user experiences that could be built on top of Coil
How to bootstrap Coil and get adoption

Episode links:

Coil Website
Coil: Building a New Business Model for the Web
Layer 3 Is for Interoperability
Talk about Ripple and Coil at TOA18 - Stefan Thomas
E92: Stefan Thomas - Understanding Ripple
E131: Evan Schwartz & Stefan Thomas - Building the Internet of Payments with Interledger

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/261

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It’s that time of year again, Devcon time! Just as the conference was wrapping up, we sat down at the Prague Congress Center for a Devcon4 recap. Join Brian, Friederike, Sebastien, and a surprise guest host as we share our thoughts on the event, and how the Ethereum ecosystem has evolved since we last met in Cancun.

Topics covered in this episode:

Devcon4 compared to Devcon3
Changes to the Ethereum Foundation management
Serenity (Ethereum 2.0) roadmap
The shift from HODL to BUIDL
The apparent departure of ICOs from the landscape
The growth of grant programs
Brian’s talk at the Generalized Mining panel
This year’s emphasis on security
Web3 Summit in Berlin the previous week

Episode links:

Devcon4 website
Devcon3 recap episode from Cancun

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/260

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From one of the main Ethereum clients, to Polkadot to Substrate; Parity has become exceptional at developing successful open-source blockchain projects. Their latest effort Substrate provides a framework to easily create custom blockchains. Building on cutting-edge technologies like Web Assembly, Substrate also offers automated on-chain upgrades.

We were joined by Gavin Wood, who was previously co-founder and CTO of Ethereum and founded Parity. We talked about the early Ethereum days, how Parity got started, Substrate, Polkadot and his views on on-chain governance.

Topics covered in this episode:

The genesis story of Ethereum
Why Gavin prefers reasoning from first principles to reading
How Parity shunned Silicon Valley principles to build an developer-driven company
Why they decided to work on a scalable blockchain from scratch instead of improving Ethereum
An overview of Substrate
The relationship between Substrate and Polkadot
How Substrate allows switching consensus in a live blockchain
Why Ethereum’s governance process is centralized
Polkadot and the case for on-chain governance

Episode links:

Parity Technologies Website
Polkadot Website
E199 - Peter Czaban - Polkadot: The Internet of Blockchain Networks
Substrate: A Rustic Vision for Polkadot by Gavin Wood at Web3 Summit 2018
Substrate in a nutshell
What is Substrate?
How Polkadot tackles the biggest problems facing blockchain innovators
Substrate testnet launched
Epicenter episode from 2014 with Gavin Wood about Ethereum & Ether Sale

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/259

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We’re joined by Monica Quaintance, Head of Engineering and Adoption at Kadena. While most companies providing enterprise solutions focus primarily on permissioned systems, Kadena is building both a public network protocol and private blockchain infrastructure. Their Chainweb protocol will soon launch as a public network and smart contract platform. The company claims their novel approach to proof of work offers enormous gains on transaction throughput, even at scale, while benefiting from the same security as Bitcoin. Alongside Chainwebs, Kadena is building a permissioned protocol more suited for enterprise applications in insurance and finance.

Topics covered in this episode:

Monica’s background at the SEC
The genesis of Kadena and why the founders left JP Morgan
Kadena’s unique approach to building both public and permissioned protocols
The Chainweb protocol and it’s approach to proof of work
The incentive mechanisms in Chainweb
How Chainweb protects itself against common attack vectors
The PACT smart contract language
Kadena’s enterprise blockchain offering
The company’s go-to-market strategy and business model

Episode links:

Kadena Website
Chainweb Whitepaper
ChainWeb Protocol Security Calculations White Paper
Kadena White Paper
Confidentiality in Private Blockchain White Paper
The Pact Smart-Contract Language White Paper

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The open, decentralized trading protocol for ERC20 tokens using the Dutch auction mechanism. More at epicenter.tv/dutchx.
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This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/258

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Building open source software is a collaborative process which relies on good faith and willingness of volunteers. While most of the software we use daily relies heavily on open-source libraries, incentive models are broken. Repo maintainers are eager to see their projects evolve, but have little leverage to encourage developers to contribue. And projects contributors create enormous value by dedicating their time and expertise while getting little in return. Both open and closed-source projects utilize bountied to source engineering talent. Combined with blockchain technologies, there is a potential to create efficient, two-sided markets which align incentives for all participants.

We’re joined by Kevin Owocki, who is the Founder of Gitcoin. The Ethereum-based platform leverages the open source community to incentivize and monetize work, remunerating developers for pull requests made to projects. Gitcoin was itself built using Gitcoin and is today facilitating bug bounty payments for dozens of blockchain projects. At the time of writing, over 200 projects have used the platform to distribute over $340,000 in bounties to developers. As Gitcoin continues to grow, the goal is to expand its reach to the broader open-source ecosystem.

Topics covered in this episode:

Kevin’s background as a software engineer
The fundamental challenges in open-source development and funding
What is Gitcoin and how it addresses incentive alignment
How Gitcoin works from the perspective of both project funders and contributors
The platforms usage statistics (projects funded, contributors, bounties paid, etc.)
How Gitcoin may be used to fund closed-source bountied and public goods
Kevin’s proposal for recurring payments in Ethereum (EIP1337/ERC948)
How Gitcoin is funded and the project’s business model
Gitcoin’s roadmap moving forward

Episode links:

Gitcoin website
Gitcoin leaderboard and top earners
Gitcoin stats
1337 Alliance
EIP 1337 - Subscriptions on the blockchain
ERC948 - Recurring Subscription Models on Ethereum
Delphi Systems
Bountysource

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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/257

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CoinFund is one of the earliest crypto-funds to have taken shape, forming in early 2016. The fund is well known for running an active Community Slack, conducting great podcast interviews with cryptocurrency projects and an emphasis on building network nodes / services.

We are joined by Jake Brukhman, CEO, and Alexander Bulkin, Chief Alchemist, to discuss their latest thoughts on investing in the cryptocurrency space. We cover a wide variety of themes such as their opinions on the “fat protocol hypothesis,” thesis on value capture in the cryptocurrency space, their efforts to build network nodes; and their effort to build an open source token-less technology that allows entrepreneurs to launch their blockchains.

Topics covered in this episode:

Coinfund’s history
What is a cryptofund?
Coinfund approach to investing in the cryptocurrency space
Generalised mining – what it is, and how it offers cryptofunds a competitive advantage
The ADAPT toolkit – a tokenless toolkit for rapid blockchain innovation

Episode links:

CoinFund Slack
CoinFund interviews
The ADAPT project
Fat protocols are not an investment thesis
Generalised mining
CoinFund Twitter

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/256

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The Tezos whitepaper, published in 2014, anticipated several areas that would become major issues for blockchain networks. Especially around governance and smart contract security, Tezos proposed original solutions. The project later went on to raise $232m in the biggest token sale at the time. Recently, the Tezos network launched as the first of a wave of innovative next-generation blockchain networks.

We were joined by Tezos co-founders Arthur and Kathleen Breitman to discuss the history of the project, how the network functions today and how it could develop going forward.

Topics covered in this episode:

What inspired the original Tezos vision from 2014
The critical importance of formal verification and governance
Why Arthur thinks the blockchain scalability problem is overrated
The case against decentralized applications
Why the ability to evolve and adopt new features is critical for Tezos success
Tezos’ Proof-of-Stake and emerging baking ecosystem
The Tezos Foundation drama and Johann Gevers
The relationship between their company DLS and the Tezos Foundation

Episode links:

Tezos Website
E136 - Tezos – A Self-Amending Crypto-Ledger
Tezos Whitepaper
The $1 Billion Tezos Blockchain Is Officially Launching Monday
Inside the Crypto World's Biggest Scandal | WIRED
Tezos Twitter

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/255

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Public blockchains produce enormous amounts of data. In theory, anyone can access the raw contents of transaction and blocks. In practice, however, querying blockchains can prove to be a daunting task.

The difficulty lies in the fact that blockchains are particular types of distributed databases and thus carry several limitations. Most, if not all, blockchains lack the most basic SQL querying capabilities supported by nearly every off-the-shelf database system.

Take Bitcoin as an example. Its API lacks even the most basic calls which would allow a user to query any address and receive the balance. In order to achieve this, block explorers and alike have developed sophisticated middleware infrastructure that parses the blockchain, normalizes the data, and stores it in a database, where it can be queried. In the best of cases, companies offer API calls for only a limited set of operations. Google hopes to change this by freeing blockchain datasets.

We’re joined by Allen Day, Science Advocate at Google’s Singapore office. Earlier this year, he and his team released the Bitcoin blockchain as a public dataset in Big Query, Google big data IaaS offering. In August, they added Ethereum to their list of freely available public datasets, which includes US census data, cannabis genomes, and the entirety of Reddit and Github. Anyone wishing to query the data can do so in SQL on the Big Query website or via an API. For instance, a relatively simple query would return the daily mean transaction fees since the Genesis Block in just a few seconds.

Coupled with Google’s AI and Machine Learning infrastructure and other open data sets, one can only imagine the potentially groundbreaking insights we could gain from this data.

Topics covered in this episode:

Allen’s background as a geneticist
The similarities between blockchains and evolution process in lifeforms
Google’s cloud platform and its various components
Big Query and its publicly available datasets
The Bitcoin and Ethereum datasets in Big Query
Why this data is useful to the public and for what it may be used
The particular challenges in implementing Ethereum as opposed to Bitcoin
Insights we may gain by crossing blockchain dataset with other data
How machine learning and AI could help us better understand specific transaction patterns

Episode links:

Bitcoin in BigQuery: blockchain analytics on public data
Bitcoin Blockchain Public Dataset
Ethereum in BigQuery: a Public Dataset for smart contract analytics
Ethereum in BigQuery: how we built this dataset
Ethereum Blockchain Public Dataset
Change Agent by Daniel Suarez
Real-time Ethereum Notifications for Everyone for Free
ethjs-abi library, compiled for use in Google BigQuery
Kaggle: Your Home for Data Science
The Strange Inevitability of Evolution - Issue 20: Creativity - Nautilus
Reddit_
Google Cloud

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This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/254

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The expectation has become widespread that blockchains will end up underpinning major societal infrastructures. The narrative in the blockchain space is that networks are decentralized and trustless and thus regulation should not apply to networks directly. Legal scholar Angela C. Walch has been questioning terms like decentralization and trustlessness and argues that blockchains shift the need for trust rather than remove it. Her controversial ideas include that key developers of open-source project should be treated as fiduciaries and held accountable for the consequences of their work.

Angela Walch is a professor of law at St Mary University School of Law and a Research Fellow at the Center for Blockchain at UCL. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and has been doing academic work on legal issues surrounding public blockchains since 2013.

Topics covered in this episode:

How she became interested in Bitcoin and issues around the narratives of decentralization and trustlessness
How her work has been received in the blockchain space
The problematic lack of a clear definition of terms like trustless, immutable and decentralized
Why blockchains should be looked at as trust-shifting, not trustless
The definition and role of fiduciaries in society
Why blockchain developers could be considered fiduciaries
The practical implications and difficulties of regulating blockchain developers as fiduciaries
How the SEC’s stance on blockchains connects with the question of developers being fiduciaries
Her personal views on the value and promise of blockchain tech

Episode links:

Angela Walch
Angela C. Walch - St. Mary's Law
Angela Walch – Medium
In Code(rs) We Trust: Software Developers as Fiduciaries in Public Blockchains
The Path of the Blockchain Lexicon (and the Law)
Open-Source Operational Risk: Should Public Blockchains Serve as Financial Market Infrastructures?
Coin-Operated Capitalism paper
Journal of Financial Technology
Introducing: The Journal of Financial Technology – Angela Walch – Medium

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/253

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Legendary scientist and cryptography pioneer Ralph Merkle joined us to discuss his recent paper on DAOs. Merkle examined how the voting mechanisms in today’s democracies are flawed and how a decentralized, transparent DAO making decisions using prediction markets could create more efficient democratic systems.

Topics covered in this episode:

Merkle proofs, Merkle Roots and his early forays into cryptography
Blockchains as living organisms
Why DAOs will be subject to a Darwinian evolutionary process
Why voting is flawed and we need new governance methods to save democracy
The concept of a DAO democracy
How prediction markets and futarchy would help govern a DAO democracy

Episode links:

Ralph Merkle DAO Democracy Paper [PDF]
Ralph Merkle's Homepage
Ralph Merkle's Wikipedia page
Episode 98 with Robin Hanson on futarchy & prediction markets
Tim Urban: Why Cryonics Makes Sense
Alcor - Life Extension Foundation

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/252

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The rise of populism and increasing inequality have led to widespread questioning of democracy and capitalism. Glen Weyl, a political economist and Principal Researcher at Microsoft, along with legal scholar Eric Posner, published a book called ‘Radical Markets’. Radical Markets explores how restructuring property rights and voting systems could lead to more efficient markets and a more just society. Glen joined us to discuss the book and why the blockchain space is a fertile testbed to explore these radical new ideas.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why blockchain is on a trajectory to exacerbate inequality and fail at improving the world
Why property should be seen as a monopolistic institution
How property rights create inefficient markets
The radical idea of transforming property rights via a Common Ownership Self-Assessed Tax (COST)
How the one-person-one-vote system contributed to the crisis of democracy
How quadratic voting works and leads to fairer outcomes
Whether or not buying of votes should be allowed in QV
His work with Vitalik and radical markets experiments in blockchain

Episode links:

Radical Markets
Glen Weyl Website
Property is Only Another Name for Monopoly (2017)
On Radical Markets - Vitalik Buterin Book Review
Liberation Through Radical Decentralization – Post by Vitalik & Glen
This economist wants to abolish private property using blockchain | Wired

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/251

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Dispute resolution is the process by which contracting parties settle disagreements. Whether in the form of litigation, arbitration, or other means of mediation, every contract defines a dispute resolution mechanism and jurisdiction. It is the metaphorical Lady Justice, measuring the strength of each party’s arguments, and reaching a decision based on evidence.

Smart contracts are unique in this sense. Unlike traditional contracts, they are rigid and deterministic. Written in computer code, nuances in human language and vagueness of terms do not exist in this realm. There are no judges, no jury, just calculated execution.

The DOA hack and other similar events have prompted observers of the space to express the need for smart contract dispute resolution. Some have suggested “exit switches” that would allow for human intervention when edge cases appear. But could the arbitration process be integrated into the smart contract and on the blockchain?

We’re joined by, Federico Ast and Clement Lessage, respectively CEO and CTO of Kleros. This dispute resolution layer provides contracting parties with a fast and secure process for arbitration. The system is broken up into courts and sub-courts, each specializing in specific matters like e-commerce, insurance, and transport. In the event of a dispute, parties submit their case to Kleros, where a crowd of expert jurors analyses the evidence. When all votes are cast, the decision is enforced by the smart contract, which may unlock funds, or provide parties with additional time to fulfill the terms of the agreement. Clever incentive mechanisms reward jurors who vote with the crowd, making Kleros resistant to bribe attacks and collusion between jurors.

Topics covered in this episode:

Federico and Clement’s respective backgrounds, including a crowd arbitration project called Jury.
The vision behind Kleros and the problem it addresses
The case for crowd-sourced jurors as a means to find the best judgment
The game theory and incentive mechanisms embedded in Kleros
Kleros’ hierarchical system of courts and sub-courts
How jury selection works and who administers courts
The system’s built-in governance mechanism and its purpose
The Kleros token, Pinkaion coin, and it’s utility in the system
“Doge on Trial,” a clever experiment to find authentic doges
The current status of the project and roadmap

Episode links:

Kleros Website
Kleros White Papper
Doges on Trial
Why Decentralization Matters by Chris Dixon

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/250

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We are joined by Ryan Zurrer, Principal and Venture partner, at Polychain capital. Polychain capital is a breakout crypto hedge fund with over $100 million in assets under management, and large investments in major crypto projects such as Dfinity, Polkadot, Filecoin and Vest. Ryan was the first person to join Olaf Carlson Wee in managing this fund. He built multiple companies in the wind energy industry prior to making a switch to the cryptocurrencies.

In this episode, we go behind the scenes of the Polychain success story. We get details on what crypto hedge funds are, how Polychain got started, reasons for its breakout success, its approach to blockchain investments and the current challenges of running a crypto hedge fund. Ryan also walks us through Polychain’s interest areas – Layer 1 blockchain protocols such as Filecoin, Dfinity and Polkadot; and financial derivative protocols. If you want to understand how some of the leading minds allocate capital at a large scale in the cryptocurrency industry, check out the episode.

Topics covered in this episode:

What is a crypto hedge fund?
Differences between a crypto hedge fund and a venture capital firm
The Polychain success story and how it played out
Polychain’s approach to cryptocurrency investments and entrepreneurs
Polychain’s major flagship investments – Filecoin, Dfinity and Polkadot
Polychain’s perspective in the “frozen Parity ether” debate

Episode links:

Polychain capital website
Fortune article on Polychain
Previous Epicenter episode on Polychain with Olaf Carlson Wee
Polychain's perspective on the “Parity frozen ether” controversy

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/249

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Until now, proposals to improve blockchain scalability have addressed the problem in one of two ways. One seeks to increase efficiency by optimizing the blockchain or improving the consensus algorithm. The other comes in the forms of layer-2 solutions such as payment channels or side chains.

However, none have addressed the core bottleneck to scalability: TCP/IP network limitations. Improving the speed at which blocks propagate through the network is the layer-0 problem few people consider when thinking about scaling.

Fundamentally, network bottlenecks are what prevent blockchains from increasing their transaction throughput. Raising the block size or reducing the time between blocks has devastating effects on usability as the probability of a fork increases. At a certain point, the blockchain simply breaks as forks occur faster than blocks can propagate to all validators.

Remarkably, the web figured out how to scale decades ago with the invention of Content Distributions Networks, or CDN. This is what enables platforms like YouTube to steam thousands of hours of video to hundreds of thousands of people every second. However, traditional centralized scaling solutions lack the privacy and censorship resistance necessary to serve the decentralized web.

We’re joined by Uri Klarman, CEO of bloXroute. Founded by a team of researchers and systems designers from Northwestern and Cornel University, including Emin Gün Sirer, bloXroute allows practically every blockchain network to “scale today.”

As a scalability infrastructure service, their Blockchain Distribution Network, or BDN, sits underneath blockchain networks. Anyone operating a miner can use the BDN without any changes to their consensus algorithm or protocol. By simply pointing their software to a bloXroute node, miners immediately benefit from propagation speeds orders of magnitude higher than the time which is currently required for blocks to be seen by all validators. This global network of servers is optimized to receive and stream massive amounts of transaction data to vast networks of nodes and miners.

While bloXroute relies on some level of centralization, it is provably neutral and cannot discriminate based on the contents, provenance or destination of a block. It also includes clever redundancy mechanisms which ensure availability in the event of an attack on the network.

Topics covered in this episode:

Uri’s journey as an academic working in the field of networking
Defining the blockchain scalability problem as a networking problem
Past work and attempts to scale blockchains
The vision behind bloXroute and the problem it aims to solve
The Blockchain Distribution Network (BDN) and its technical architecture
How the BDN optimizes blocks and achieves 1,000x faster propagation times
How bloXroute archives provable neutrality and ensures network resiliency
The BLXR token and incentive mechanisms
The project’s goals, milestones, and product roadmap

Episode links:

bloXroute Website
bloXroute White Paper

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/248

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Since he started blogging as Two Bit Idiot in 2013, Ryan Selkis has been both industry insider and industry critic. Consistently calling out excesses and abuses, but also maintaining his sights on the long-term potential.

He recently founded Messari, a project that aims to bring more transparency and fairness to the industry. Messari has narrowed in on siloed, inaccurate and incomplete data as a key factor that allows insiders to profit at the expense of the public. We talked about the various ways in which Messari tackles that problem, ranging from a community-led effort to gather project data to the ambitious goal of a token-curated registry of stand-up projects.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ryan’s start into the crypto industry as pseudonymous blogger Two Bit Idiot
His insights from being the Digital Currency Group’s first employee
CoinDesk and the challenges of journalism in crypto
Why poor and inaccurate information benefits industry insiders at the expense of retail investors
Messari’s mission to lead a self-regulatory effort for the crypto industry
How an open, distributed crypto data library could help create a fairer playing field
The plans for Messari’s token-curated registry of projects following reporting standards
The economics and game theory around the Messari token and TCR

Episode links:

Messari - Crypto News, Pricing, and Research
Introducing Messari: An Open-Source EDGAR Database for Cryptoassets
Messari Whitepaper
A token to self-regulate tokens. But really.
Cryptoasset network value, market cap, rankings & metrics | OnChainFX
Ryan Selkis (@twobitidiot) | Twitter
Messari Community Analyst Application

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/247

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Privacy and scalability are arguably the most challenging issues blockchains face. Scalable privacy-preserving state machines are inherently difficult. While cryptocurrencies like Zcash have proven trustworthy for simple transactions, privacy in smart contract platforms is an entirely different animal.

We’re joined by Guy Zyskind, CEO of Enigma, a platform for scalable decentralized apps which preserves privacy. The Enigma network treats Ethereum smart contracts as “secret contracts” and can perform computations on encrypted data. Inputs are broken into pieces and distributed to network nodes which perform computations on a segment of the full data. Once returned to the Ethreum chain, data is reassembled and may be decrypted to reveal the result. Leveraging secure multi-party computation and Trusted Execution Environments (TEE), Enigma prevents a malicious actor from gaining access to the input data and the computation results.

Topics covered in this episode:

Guy’s background and secure computation research at MIT
The different approaches to privacy preservation in computing
The different multi-party computations methods and how they work
Fully Homomorphic Encryption in the context of MPC
How Enigma would preserve privacy for a simple application like tallying votes
How Enigma reads encrypted data from the Ethereum network and leverages Trusted Execution Environments to perform computations
How developers build smart contracts which use Enigma
The role of the Enigma token as an incentive mechanism
How Enigma ensures network availability by penalizing nodes which go offline
The current state of the project and upcoming milestones

Episode links:

Enigma Website
Enigma Protocol Docs
Enigma White Paper
Decentralizing Privacy: Using Blockchain to Protect Personal Data
Guy Zyskind's Personal Website

This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/246

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Martin Becze is a researcher at Dfinity working on a next-generation “Blockchain Operating System” called Primea – a continuation of his work on the eWASM project from his time at the Ethereum Foundation. Primea is an actor based IPC layer intended for use with WebAssembly programs.

Martin first learned about Ethereum in 2014 and was immediately drawn into the possibilities opened by having a contracting virtual machines on a blockchain. While the EVM was impressive, Martin saw the possibility for greater usability and efficiency by using the new WebAssembly standards being created, and so led a team at the Ethereum Foundation in the creation of a new blockchain virtual machine, called eWASM. We learn about Martin’s experience on the eWASM project and how the limitations of backwards compatibility led him to begin writing a brand new execution environment from scratch, rethinking some of the core designs and mechanics of the EVM – this project became known as Primea. Martin explains many of the fundamental design shifts involved with the Primea platform, including his focus on using the actor-based model and object capabilities (and what these even mean!). He also lays out how the Primea platform fits into the larger design of the Dfinity blockchain.

Topics covered in this episode:

eWASM – Ethereum flavored WebAssembly (eWASM) Design.
Primea – an actor based IPC layer intended for use with WebAssembly programs.
Webassembly
Dfinity – blockchain-based cloud computing project. Its aim is to develop a decentralized internet computer that will become the cloud 3.0.

Episode links:

Primea GitHub
Communication Semantics - Edcon talk
Primea Technical Deep Dive - EthCC talk

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/245

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The 2016 Ethereum hard fork left us with two distinct Ethereum chains. While the main Ethereum chain dwarfs Ethereum Classic in terms of market cap, ETC has sustained its position as a significant actor in the broader blockchain ecosystem. ETC’s recent listing on Coinbase demonstrates its credibility as a significant industry player.

We’re joined by Anthony Lusardi, Director of the Ethereum Classic Cooperative, an organization who’s goal is to promote the development of the Ethereum Classic Network. Similarly to other industry organizations, The Cooperative invests in core development of the ETC blockchain, community building, marketing, and brand awareness.

Topics covered in this episode:

Anthony’s background and how he became involved in the crypto community
The Ethereum Classic Cooperative and the goals of the organization
What the ETC ecosystem looks like two years after the fork
The people and companies contributing to the project and building on the platform
The overlap and friction points with the broader Ethereum community
ETC’s unique value proposition as a blockchain platform
SputnikVM as an alternative to the Ethereum Virtual Machine
The potential attack vectors on ETC, including 51% attacks
Why the ETC community stands behind Proof-of-Work
The Cooperative’s plans to remain relevant and the project’s development roadmap

Episode links:

Ethereum Classic Cooperative Website
Ethereum Classic Website
Crypto51: Cost of a 51% Attack for Different Cryptocurrencies
@eth_classic on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/244

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One of the key scalability challenges with public cryptocurrency blockchains is that their size grows linearly with the number of transactions. Mature blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum contain >170GB and >1 TB of historical data respectively. New nodes joining these chains need to download this data and verify it in order to become a “full node”. The number of full nodes is a key measure of decentralization, and difficulty becoming a full node translates into future centralization.

In this episode, we are joined by the duo of Evan Shapiro and Izaak Meckler, CEO and CTO at O(1) Labs respectively. O(1) Labs is a pioneering company that uses zkSNARK technology in order to construct a cryptocurrency blockchain, called Coda, that solves the blockchain size scalability bottleneck. New nodes joining the Coda network will be able to trustlessly boot up in under a minute by verifying cryptographic proofs that attest to the validity of the current chain. This technology has great potential to enable decentralization, and for one blockchain to be a light client of another blockchain.

Topics covered in this episode:

Scalability challenges of current cryptocurrencies
Background on O(1) Labs and their mission statement
How Coda uses succinct computational integrity technology (zkSNARKs) to enable further decentralization of blockchains
Snarky – a domain specific language for zkSNARK computations
Current state of Coda and roadmap

Episode links:

Coda protocol website
Coda Whitepaper
Presentation on Snarkly by Izzak Meckler
zkSNARKs in a nutshell by Christian Reitweissner
zkSNARKs in a nutshell by Vitalik Buterin
Coda presentation at hack.summit("blockchain") 2018

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/243

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When the Bitcoin Foundation fell apart and funding for Bitcoin core development was needed, the MIT founded the Digital Currency Initiative to step in. In the years since, the DCI has evolved into a vibrant center of cutting edge research on some of the most difficult challenges around blockchain technology.

DCI Director Neha Narula joined us to discuss the DCI’s position between academia and industry, their policy on conflicts of interest, and their most fascinating research topics.

Topics covered in this episode:

How her interest in distributed systems and scaling lead led her to the blockchain space
The mission and history of the MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative
How cryptocurrency might evolve over time as an academic field
The DCI’s project on digital fiat currency
How zkLedger could enable privacy-preserving auditing for distributed ledgers
Why sharding is unlikely to succeed in the short- and medium term
Why Neha is most optimistic about layer 2 approaches to scaling like lightning network
The story of discovering and writing about IOTA’s vulnerability
How DCI handles conflicts of interest and strives for neutrality

Episode links:

MIT Digital Currency Initiative
Neha Narula Personal Website
What’s New at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative
The Importance of Layer 2
Cryptographic vulnerabilities in IOTA
zkLedger | the future of audit
zkLedger Whitepaper
Neha Narula: The future of money | TED Talk

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/242

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Before founding what is now one of the most successful companies in the cryptocurrency industry, Eric Larchevêque and his co-founder opened La Maison du Bitcoin, a Bitcoin education center and co-working space in the second district of Paris. It was through chance encounters in this space that Leger was born in the basement of 35 rue du Caire, where the company also operated a Bitcoin exchange desk and a handful of crypto miners.

Eric Larchevêque, CEO of Ledger, joins us again since his last appearance as a guest 200 episodes ago. We discuss the meteoric rise of Ledger from a ten-person team to now nearly 150 people across three continents. This fascinating discussion is a master class in product development, scaling at lightning speed, and staying true to your vision when everyone is pushing you to change course.

Topics covered in this episode:

Eric’s background and how he became involved in the Bitcoin space
La Maison du Bitcoin and the early days of Ledger in Paris
The meteoric growth of Ledger and how the company managed to scale without imploding
The appointment of Pascal Gautier as President how to hire the right people when scaling fast
Ledger’s various funding rounds and lessons learned from working with corporate investors
The particularities of building products for the crypto community
Ledger’s product lineup (Nano S, Blue, and Vault) and target clients
The upcoming release of the revamped wallet app
Ledger Vault as a security solution for institutional investors
Ledger’s hardware technology and rock-solid approach to security

Episode links:

Ledger Wallet Website
Ledger Corporate Website
CoinHouse (formerly La Maison du Bitcoin)
Announcing the new Ledger Wallet desktop and mobile applications
Former CRITEO COO joins leading security player in Cryptocurrency space
Ledger raises USD 75 million to secure cryptocurrency assets

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/241

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While many cryptocurrency holders have thought about how to secure their assets, how to pass on cryptoassets in case of one’s death is rarely on people’s mind. Lawyer Pamela Morgan has been helping people and organizations build solutions to safely store their cryptoassets and has recently turned her attention to inheritance planning. Though we have often explored the legal issues surrounding blockchains and cryptocurrencies on Epicenter, never have we discussed the topic of inheritance.

We discussed her new book “Cryptoasset Inheritance Planning” and how people can design a simple plan to give heirs a high chance of recovering assets in less than an hour.

Topics covered in this episode:

How an impassioned talk on Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos started her crypto journey
Common misconceptions lawyers have about crypto
Her work through Empowered Law on educating lawyers
Third Key Solutions and building non-custodial key management solutions
The most frequent mistakes people make when it comes to protecting cryptoassets
How to do inheritance planning for cryptoassets
Differentiating between technical and legal aspects to inheritance planning

Episode links:

Empowered Law – Law and Education to Empower the World
Third Key Solutions – Non-Custodial Key Management and Consulting Services
Cryptoasset Inheritance Planning Book
Inheritance Planning for Cryptocurrencies: 3 Steps in 3 Minutes
When Disaster Strikes: Developing a Recovery Plan for Bitcoin and Digital Tokens
Pamela Morgan on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/240

Cryptoasset Inheritance Planning: a simple guide for owners

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In the past few years, we witnessed the development of multiple smart contract languages – Solidity, Viper, Michelson, Scilla etc. These languages need to enable developers to write correct, predictable behavior smart contract code. Each language development effort therefore ends up spending resources into building formal verification toolsets, compilers, debuggers and other developer tools.

In this episode, we are joined by Grigore Rosu, Professor of computer science at UIUC (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) for a deep dive into the K framework. The K framework is mathematic logic and language that enables language developers to formally define all programming languages; such as C, Solidity and JavaScript. Once a language is formally specified in the K framework, the framework automatically outputs a range of formal verification toolsets, compilers, debuggers and other developer tools for it. Updates to the language can be made directly in K. This technology has massive implications for smart contract programming language development, and formal verification efforts in the blockchain space.

We also cover his efforts to express the Ethereum virtual machine using the K framework, and to develop a new virtual machine technology, called IELE, specifically tailored to the blockchain space. Check out the episode to understand a game changing technology in the formal verification and smart contract safety space.

Topics covered in this episode:

Grigore’s background with NASA and work on formally verified correct software
Motivations to develop K framework
Basic principles behind the operation of K framework
How K deals with undefined behavior / ambiguities in a language definition
The intersection of K framework and smart contract technology
Runtime Verification’s collaboration with Cardano
KEVM and IELE, smart contract virtual machines developed by Runtime Verification
Broader implications of the K framework for the blockchain industry

Episode links:

Defining the undefinedness of C - formalisation of C using the K framework
IELE - a new virtual machine for the blockchain
Runtime verification - Grigore's company
K Semantics of the Ethereum Virtual Machine
Short video on Grigore's partnership with Cardano
An overview of the K framework by Runtime Verification
A detailed technical overview of the K semantic framework

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/239

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With the rise of smart contract technology, we’ve become acutely aware of the need for smart contract code to accurately reflect the intentions of its author; and for the code to have certain (safe) behaviors in all circumstances. Creating the languages and software tools to enable ordinary developers to write safe contracts has become an intense research endeavor in the cryptocurrency space.

Scilla is a Turing incomplete intermediate level language; inspired from the paradigms of functional programming and formal verification; that makes it easy for smart contract developers to automatically prove statements about smart contract behavior. For example, Scilla could allow a future multi-signature smart contract author to mathematically prove that funds in that contract would always be retrievable by certain addresses (and never get stuck like the Parity incident). The ability to mathematically prove such safety properties of the smart contract has the potential to be an enabling invention prior to widescale use of this technology.

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Amrit Kumar and Dr. Ilya Sergey to discuss Scilla, the smart contract language of the upcoming Zilliqa blockchain. In a previous episode, we’ve already covered the vision and technical approach of Zilliqa to solve the transaction scalability problem of permissionless blockchains. This episode focuses specifically on their smart contract language development efforts.

Topics covered in this episode:

Updated on Zilliqa’s progress since our last episode
The technology of mechanised proofs
Dr. Ilya Serger’s effort to mechanically prove safety properties of a blockchain consensus network
Aims of the Scilla language
Future capabilities enabled by the Scilla language
Developer experience and perspective using formal verification tools
How Scilla compares to Michelson, Tezos’ approach to smart contract languages with a similar end goal
Current state of development of Scilla, and next milestones

Episode links:

Our previous episode on the Zilliqa platform
Ilya Sergey's paper on mechanising blockchain consensus
Scilla whitepaper
Michelson, Tezos platform's smart contract language
Zilliqa blog for updates on platform development
Coq, a formal proof management system

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/238

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As a society, we have organized as tribes, hierarchies, and markets to accomplish the most impressive of achievements. Human cooperation and collective organization are present at nearly every significant milestone in the history of human civilization. As we move towards an increasingly connected and automated society and economy, there will become a need for decentralized infrastructure which enables companies and markets to make fast decisions at scale.

We’re joined by Matan Field, CEO of DAOstack, a new platform that aims to become the operating system for collective intelligence. DAOstack is building a toolset to allow decentralized governance and building self-organizing collectives at scale.

Topics covered in this episode:

Matan’s background and journey since founding Backfeed
What is a DAO and the necessary components to create a functional DAO
The role of DAOs in today’s society and over the long-term
DAOstack as “WordPress for DAOs”
The different layers of DAOstack and their respective roles
Holographic Consensus and the governance model of the DAOstack Genesis DAO
The purpose of the GEN token and the idea of circular token economies
DAOstacks recent crowdsale and upcoming project roadmap

Episode links:

DAOstack Website
DAOstack Introduction Video
DAOstack on Medium
An Explanation of DAOstack in Fairly Simple Terms
Decentralized Governance Matters
DAOstack White Paper
Epicenter Episode 115 with Matan Field on Backfeed

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/237

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Aragon Founder Luis Cuende joined us to discuss their work on building tools for decentralized governance. We covered the origins of his deep drive, why this is a crucial fight for humanity and the tools that Aragon has built.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Luis became an advisor to the European Commissionas as a 16-year old
Why freedom and technology became Luis’ prime obsession
The origin story and vision of Aragon
The risk surveillance and authoritarianism pose to humanity
Why decentralized governance is the key to freedom
How to think about inequality and blockchain governance
Why on-chain governance makes more sense on application than protocol level
AragonOS and its different applications
The Aragon Network Token and potential role in a decentralized court system
The road to decentralizing Aragon organizationally

Episode links:

Aragon Network
The Aragon Manifesto
Decentralized organizations can solve the world’s worst problems
Aragon - The fight for freedom Video
Decentralizing Aragon’s development – Aragon
Decentralizing Aragon’s development II: Minimum Viable Foundation
Decentralizing Aragon's development III: Onboarding new teams

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/236

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The rise of Binance is one of the most astonishing stories in the blockchain space. Within less than a year of its launch, Binance has become the most popular crypto exchange trading over $2bn per day. In the past quarter, Binance made profits of $200m, likely the fastest company ever to reach this success.

Binance Founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao (“CZ”) joined us to discuss why he started Binance and the extraordinary organization they built. We discussed the role of the Binance token, how their strong commitment to values helped build a loyal community, and how he sees the organization evolve in the future.

Topics covered in this episode:

CZ’s journey in the blockchain space from blockchain.info, to OKCoin to founding Binance
The astonishing rise of Binance to $200m/quarter profits in less than 1 year
How Binance went from deciding to do an ICO to finishing it in 2 weeks
Why strong values are a key differentiator for Binance
How Binance built a vibrant and loyal community
The critical role of the Binance token in its success
The principles CZ uses to run an efficient distributed organization
How regulatory competition is rapidly improving the conditions to build crypto companies
Binance’s plans to build a decentralized exchange

Episode links:

Binance Website
From Zero To Crypto Billionaire In Under A Year: Meet The Founder Of Binance
The World's Biggest Crypto Exchange Is Heading to Malta
Binance CEO: The Future of Cryptocurrency - YouTube
Binance Whitepaper
I Don't Like Big ICOs
ICOs — Not Just “Good-to-Have,” But Necessary

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/235

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We are joined by Charles Hoskinson, who played an early role in developing Ethereum and BitShares, and is currently the CEO of IOHK. IOHK is an engineering company that undertakes cryptocurrency research, contributes development efforts to the Ethereum Classic ecosystem, and is spearheading the release of Cardano – a third generation blockchain protocol. IOHK has made the news recently after the publication of fundamental research papers on the Proofs of Proof of Work and the Ouroboros PoS algorithm, and its recruitment of highly rated academics.

Topics covered in this episode:

IOHK’s role in the Ethereum Classic ecosystem, and how Ethereum Classic differs from Cardano
Cardano as a “”third generation blockchain”” and what this means
Governance system of Cardano and the challenges behind developing a decentralized governance system
Ouroboros PoS algorithm – why was it developed and what’s special about it
Ouroboros Genesis: how full nodes can be bootstrapped without requiring checkpoints
Cardano’s bet on K framework for smart contract execution

Episode links:

IOHK analysis of the Dash governance system
Ouroboros Genesis intro by Prof Aggelos Kiayias
Ouroboros technical paper
Ouroboros Praos technical paper
Algorand
Proofs of Proof of Work
K Framework formal analysis technical paper
K framework website

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/234

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We are joined by Humayun Sheikh and Toby Simpson, founders of the Fetch.ai project. Humayun Sheikh is well known as the first investor in DeepMind, one of the leading AI companies in the world. This ambitious project seeks to create a self-learning blockchain network that fosters economic activity/combinations between off-chain AI agents. The fetch blockchain network will allow an AI agent, such as a delivery robot, to autonomously discover economic partners that would find its services and data valuable. Towards this goal, Fetch.ai claims to have found solutions to designing a useful proof of work system and building a scalable block chain.

Topics covered in this episode:

Humayun and Toby’s background at Deep Mind
Toby’s background in the videogames industry building virtual worlds
The vision behind the Fetch.ai project
On solutions to useful PoW, salability and the complexity of the project
Timelines and what to expect from Fetch

Episode links:

Fetch.ai white paper
Fetch.ai video
Documentary from DeepMind on AlphaGo
Mike Hearn autonomous agents and Bitcoin talk

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/233

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Ethereum Foundation researcher Karl Floersch joined us to discuss the main projects to upgrade Ethereum: Casper, Sharding and Plasma. Karl has been playing a key role in creating a new and simpler specification for Ethereum sidechains called Plasma Cash. We discussed the evolution of the Plasma project and what Ethereum’s evolution in the coming years could look like.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Karl originally became involved in Ethereum
The role of Casper, Sharding and Plasma in the Ethereum roadmap
The problems with the original Plasma concept
How Plasma Cash provides a simple scalability solution
The challenge of data availability
Use cases and timeline for Plasma

Episode links:

Plasma Cash Simple Spec
Ethereum Plasma MVP Overview
Plasma Cash Discussion on Ethereum Research
Cryptoeconomics: An Introduction
Plasma & The Public Ethereum Chain - Joseph Poon (Ethereal Summit 2017)
Plasma - Original Whitepaper

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/232

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With the advent of mature quantum technologies, many of the critical cryptographic protocols which secure the Internet, financial transactions and even military secrets may become susceptible to new attack vectors. For instance, while it may take a computer millions of years to decipher a public key’s corresponding private key, a sufficiently powerful quantum computer might achieve this in a reasonable amount of time. With this reality looming over us, many in the blockchain space worry that someone with access to a quantum computer might one day have the ability to steal their hard-earned crypto.

We’re joined by Ajay Prakash and Gavin Brennen, founders of the Qubit Protocol, a decentralized blockchain-enabled governance protocol that is meant to select and fund the best startups in the quantum world. As a co-author of the recent paper “Quantum attacks on Bitcoin, and how to protect against them,” Gavin walks us through the primary threats that quantum computing poses on Bitcoin. Among the major vulnerabilities are hashing functions and Elliptic Curve algorithms used for digital signatures, both fundamental components of Bitcoin, as well as many other blockchain protocols.

Topics covered in this episode:

What are quantum technologies and how they differ from the existing paradigm
The areas and industries which are to benefit most from quantum computing
A refresher on hashing algorithms as one-way functions
What a quantum attack on Bitcoin mining might look like
How Elliptic Curve digital signature algorithms work and how public and private keys are generated
The three types of attacks a quantum computer could perform digital signatures
The expected timelines for these attacks to be viable
The potential countermeasures which could circumvent quantum attacks on Bitcoin
The Qubit Protocol as a DAO to fund quantum technology startups and the challenges of investing in the quantum space
The project’s roadmap and upcoming ICO

Episode links:

Qubit Protocol
Quantum attacks on Bitcoin, and how to protect against them
Quantum Computers Pose Imminent Threat to Bitcoin Security - MIT Technology Review"
Shor's algorithm - Wikipedia
Elliptic-curve cryptography - Wikipedia

This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/231

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Dark pools have existed for as long as there have been financial markets. Over-the-counter, or OTC markets, are sometimes also referred to as ‘upstairs trading,’ evoking the era when firms and high-net-worth individuals would meet in the upper quarters of financial markets to make large trades privately. A dark pool is a private forum where one has access to high volumes of liquidity outside the boundaries of public markets. Orders and trades represented in dark pools typically remain confidential outside the purview of the general markets, thus preventing undesirable market impact.

We’re joined by Taiyang Zhang and Loong Wang, who are respectively CEO and CTO of Republic Protocol. Republic operates as a decentralized dark pool for cryptocurrency trading pairs such as Ether, ERC20 tokens, and Bitcoin. Buy and sell orders remain confidential in a hidden order book until matched without any of the parties having access to the underlying details. Trades are settled using cross-chain atomic swaps without the intervention of a trusted third party.

Topics covered in this episode:

Taiyang and Loong’s respective backgrounds
Dark pools, their role in traditional financial markets, and their economic impact
Dark pools in crypto markets
The Republic Protocol and the problems it aims to address
The different components and participants of the Republic Protocol
The Shamir Secret Sharing Scheme and its role in protecting orders from being divulged to the public
The role of nodes in Republic Protocol’s DHT network
The purpose of the REN token as an incentive mechanism protecting against malicious actors
Republic Protocol’s use of atomic swaps for decentralized settlement
The project’s recent ICO and release roadmap

Episode links:

Republic Protocol
GitHub - republicprotocol/whitepaper: Republic Protocol whitepaper
Dark pool - Wikipedia
Shamir's Secret Sharing - Wikipedia
De/Centralize - YouTube

This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/230

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In just over ten years, geospatial tracking has gone from being a niche technology used by the military and outdoor enthusiasts to mass adoption, available to just about every connected device in existence. GPS and other location-tracking systems not only allows us to find our way and share our location but is critical to businesses and governments. However, while GPS has become a standard thanks to its accuracy and availability, decentralized applications can’t rely on its location data as it can be easily spoofed and lacks reliability.

We’re joined by Ryan John King, CEO of FOAM, a blockchain protocol which aims to offer secure location services independent of external centralized sources such as GPS. FOAM introduces a novel crypto-spacial coordinate system that is better suited to blockchains than standard addresses or latitude and longitude coordinates. It also provides a Proof of Location Protocol, which leverages long-range low-power radio networks, and incentive mechanisms, allowing network participants to arrive at consensus on whether an event or agent is verifiably at a particular point in time and space.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ryan’s background and how he became involved in the space
How geospatial tracking works and the pitfalls of GPS
The vision for FOAM and the problem it is trying to solve
The proposed Crypto-Spatial Coordinate Standard
FOAM’s Spacial Index fullstack visualizer
The Proof of Location Protocol proposed by FOAM
Low-power radio networks and their role in the system
The civil and business applications for FOAM

Episode links:

FOAM Website
FOAM Blog

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/229

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The healthcare industry is paradoxical. On the one hand, treatment technologies represent some of the most advanced science known to humankind, while some administrative tasks are still performed using paper and fax machine. Studies have shown that the administrative costs of healthcare can represent up to one-third of the total cost of care. Also, as diagnosis, treatment, and care, becomes increasingly data-driven and patient-specific, the industry needs to adopt more secure and robust technologies to manage patient data and communications between the patient and the different participants in the healthcare supply chain.

We are joined by John Bass and Corey Todaro, who are respectively CEO and CPO of Hashed Health, an innovation firm focused on accelerating the meaningful development of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies for the industry. Hashed Health works to build solutions which leverage blockchain to solve some of the most important challenges facing this sector.

Topics covered in this episode:

John and Corey’s respective backgrounds in the building technology for the healthcare sector
Nashville as a hub for the US healthcare industry
What is Hashed Health and what problems the company is trying to solve
The particular issues facing the US and global healthcare sectors
How healthcare in the US differs from that of European countries
The different entities of Hashed Health: Hashed Collective, Hashed Labs, and Hashed Enterprise
Hashed Enterprise and the products they are building for the industry

Episode links:

Hashed Health Website
Hashed Health Blog
Hashed Health Podcast

This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/228

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Over the past year, as cryptocurrencies and ICOs started to go mainstream, we have seen a huge surge in regulatory activities. In the US, many different regulatory bodies including SEC, CFTC and FinCEN stepped forward to regulate crypto projects in different ways. Seemingly contradictory statements have added to confusion and fear of a broad crackdown looming.

We were joined by CoinCenter Director of Research Peter Van Valkenburgh to shed clarity on recent developments and understand where things are heading.

Topics covered in this episode:

The recent congressional hearings about cryptocurrencies and ICOs
How the US regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies evolved in the last year
Whether overly broad and contradictory regulation is emerging in the US
Understanding the difference between CFTC and SEC
Why CFTC regulating existing cryptocurrencies and SEC ICOs would be a good outcome
Why decentralized exchanges will be a likely target by SEC
The recent letter by FinCEN about ICOs and money transmission
Comparing US to European regulation and why the US could end up more friendly

Episode links:

Coin Center Website
The Bank Secrecy Act, Cryptocurrencies, and New Tokens: What is Known and What Remains Ambiguous
FinCEN raises major licensing problem for ICOs in new letter to Congress.
Federal Court Adopts CFTC Position on Cryptocurrency Authority
SEC.gov | Statement on Cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offerings
Gibraltar Plans to Regulate ICO Tokens as Commercial Products
E182: Peter Van Valkenburgh - Towards Sound Bitcoin Policy
Donate to Coin Center

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/227

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According to the World Bank, universal financial access is vital to reducing poverty, and lack of access to credit plays a significant role in widening inequalities between developed and developing nations.

For producers at the end of the supply chain, and who typically have little access to capital, waiting for customers to pay for their products puts them at high financial risk and threatens their livelihood. What if there was a way to bring more liquidity to global supply chains, by allowing anyone to create liquidity from their existing assets.

We’re joined by Bob Summerwill, Community Ambassador at Sweetbridge, an ambitious project that aims to change the way global business operates at a fundamental level. While supply chains account for about two-thirds of the World’s GDP, value is trapped in non-liquid assets sitting in warehouses, on store shelves, or in the form of outstanding invoices. Sweetbridge acts as a sort of OSI model for global business. In the Sweetbridge economy, working capital is freed up by enabling individuals and organizations to borrow from themselves interest-free.

Topics covered in this episode:

Bob’s background as a game developer
How Bob got involved with Ethereum and his role at The Ethereum Foundation
What is the Sweetbridge and how it aims to transform global business
How one can use Sweetbirdge to collateralize assets and borrow money
The different protocol layers of Sweetbridge
How Bridgecoin and Sweetcoin work, and their respective roles
The role and goals of the Sweetbridge Alliance
The upcoming token sale
The project roadmap and upcoming product releases

Episode links:

Sweetbridge
Sweetbridge Whitepapers
SweetTalk with Vinay Gupta & Scott Nelson

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/226

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We were joined by Anson Zeall, who is one of the leaders of Singapore’s blockchain and FinTech community. We discussed how the Singapore ecosystem evolved, why it became a popular place to locate cryptocurrency project, its current regulatory framework. We also dove into some of the projects he is currently involved in including one involving tokenizing cows!

Topics covered in this episode:

The evoluation of the Singapore blockchain ecosystem and role played by ACCESS
The favorable mechanics of Singapore’s regulatory regime
Singapore’s experiment to tokenize the Singapore Dollar on Ethereum
How Anson’s startup CoinPip uses Bitcoin as a payment rail in South East Asia
Sentinel Chain and its efforts to provide financial access to the unbanked
The upcoming Singapore blockchain conference De/Centralize

Episode links:

ACCESS: Association of Cryptocurrency Enterprises and Startups, Singapore
CoinPip
Sentinel Chain
InfoCorp - Rebuilding Inclusive Fintech
Singaporean Dollar Tokenized Through Ethereum’s Blockchain by the Monetary Authority of Singapore
Singapore Becomes Favored ICO Destination for Blockchain
Cow Token White Paper
De/Centralize 2018

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/225

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We’re joined by Jeff Garzik, who was among the very first developers to work with Satoshi in the early days of Bitcoin. Later, he was a core developer at Bitpay and even tried to put a Bitcoin node on a satellite in space. Today, he is co-founder at Bloq, a company providing enterprise-grade blockchain infrastructure. Bloq recently announced a new project called Metronome that challenges some of the design and governance principles of many public blockchain networks.

Metronome is cryptocurrency that sits on top of existing blockchains and aims to allow tokens to easily move from one network to the other. A series of standard blockchain contracts allow for daily descending price auctions to occur automatically, and for users to buy and sell the tokens using a Bancor-like system with built-in liquidity.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jeff’s background as a web developer at CNN and as a Linux developer
His early days in Bitcoin working with Satoshi
His thoughts on Bitcoin governance and lessons learned from the Segwit2X episode
The lessons learned from founding Bloq
What is Metronome and what problem does it aim to solve
Metronome’s self-governance and how the system is meant to evolve
The different smart contracts which make up Metronome
How Metronome allows MTN tokens to move to different blockchains
The economics of the protocol and the descending price auction system
The upcoming Metronome token sale and development roadmap

Episode links:

Metronome: The Built-to-Last Cryptocurrency
Metronome Owner's Manual
Metronome FAQ
Metronome Git Repo
DSS - Dunvegan Space Systems, Inc
The Long Now Foundation
Bloq

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/224

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That decentralized networks represent a massive investment opportunity is no longer a controversial view. In the last year alone, over 200 funds dedicated to investing in cryptoassets have been created.

But the principles and frameworks to understand this new world are still in its infancy. One fund at the forefront of advancing this understanding has been Multicoin Capital. Their Founders Kyle Samani and Tushar Jain joined us to discuss some of the concepts they use to invest in decentralized networks.

Topics covered in this episode:

Google Glass and the origin story of Multicoin Capital
Why the most used smart contract platform will produce the winning store of value
Why they are bearish on Bitcoin
Why money is best thought of as an adjective not a noun
Differentiating between work, payment and burn-and-mint tokens
Why work tokens capture network value better than payment tokens
The future of Multicoin

Episode links:

Multicoin Capital Website
New Models for Utility Tokens
Blockchains: A New Social Order
The Smart Contract Network Fallacy
The Opportunity for Interoperable Chains of Chains
Multicoin Capital Podcast

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/223

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Decentralized exchanges have been a holy grail in the cryptocurrency space, since at least the MtGox hack. They promise to derisk the act of exchanging cryptocurrency by leaving custody of funds in the hands of the users. And they should be resistant to regulatory pressure, creating a permissionless way to trade cryptocurrencies.

Among decentralized exchange projects, 0x has gained by far the most traction in the short time since launching. Co-founders Will and Amir joined us to discuss the 0x protocol, the emerging 0x economy and the vibrant community they’ve built.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Will and Amir started 0x
The definition of a decentralized exchange and why decentralized custody is key
The 0x architecture
Why 0x built a protocol and not just a decentralized exchange
The role and business model of relayers
The 0x token and its economy
The 0x governance process

Episode links:

0x: The Protocol for Trading Tokens
0x Whitepaper
Front-running, Griefing and the Perils of Virtual Settlement (Part 1)
Front-running, Griefing and the Perils of Virtual Settlement (Part 2)

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/222

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We’re joined by Greg Meredith and Nash Foster of the RChain Cooperative. A fundamentally new kind of blockchain platform, RChain is rooted in a formal model of concurrent and decentralized computation. Powered by the Rho Virtual Machine, and secured by Casper proof-of-stake, RCain is partitioned, or shareded by default, forming a network of coordinated and parallel blockchains. The project, which is formed as a coop, leverages correct-by-construction software development to produce a concurrent, compositional, and massively scalable blockchain.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Rchain spun out of the Synereo project
The primary objectives RChain seeks to establish
The fundamental principles of RChain and RLang
The concepts of concurrency and parallelism in simple terms
How building concurrent systems implies scalability
The unique features of Casper consensus in the context of RChain
The importance of namespaces in RChain
Why this project was started as a cooperative
The current status of the project and roapmap

Episode links:

RChain Website
RChain Rholang SDK (v0.1) Released
A Visualization for the Future of Blockchain Consensus
Introducing Rholang! at Devcon 2

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/221

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Zeppelin Co-Founder and CTO Manuel Araoz joined us to discuss his journey from building one of the first non-financial Bitcoin applications in 2012 to improving development and security practices for Ethereum smart contracts. We discussed the OpenZeppelin framework, a library of audited smart contracts as well as their new project zeppelin_os. Through on-chain, well-vetted and upgradeable smart contracts zeppelin_os aims to make developing Ethereum applications both easier and more secure.

Topics covered in this episode:

Manuel’s journey in the blockchain space from proof of existence to BitPay to Streamium to Zeppelin
Why Manuel moved away from a pure Bitcoin focus to working on Ethereum
Why Zeppelin focuses on smart contract security
How smart contract security evolved since the start of Ethereum
The OpenZeppelin framework of audited Ethereum contracts
Why zeppelin_os and standardized, upgradeable on-chain contracts are the next evolutionary step
The core component of zeppelin_os: Kernel, SDK and markeplace
The ZEP token and its role in zeppelin_os

Episode links:

Zeppelin Website
OpenZeppelin Framework
zeppelin_os
zeppelin_os Whitepaper

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/220

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Hashgraph is a new consensus algorithm that radically differs from proof-of-work as well as proof-of-stake consensus algorithms. While work on Hashgraph begun in 2012, it’s design is radically different from today’s blockchain architectures. The Hashgraph team claims that it has found an optimal consensus algorithm design that will be impossible to significantly improve upon.

We were joined by Mance Harmon, who is CEO of the Swirlds, the company developing Hashgraph. Our conversation covered the origin story of hashgraph, how it compares to existing consensus algorithms and how Hashgraph works.

Topics covered in this episode:

Leemon Baird and Mance Harmon’s long history of building companies together
What motivated Leemon Baird to start working on Hashgraph in 2012
The existing categories of consensus algorithms and their problems
How Hashgraph consensus combines voting and gossip protocols
The performance characteristics of Hashgraph
How a public Hashgraph network could look like

Episode links:

Hashgraph Homepage
Hashgraph Whitepaper
Hashgraph Consensus - Detailed Examples
Sybil Attacks in Hashgraph
Hidden Forces Podcast Episode on Hashgraph
Lemon Baird's Talk on Hashgraph at Harvard Business School

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/219

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Over the past year, cryptoassets have exploded in popularity. From a mere $18bn at the start of 2017, the aggregate market cap of all cryptoassets recently reached $820bn as interest in Bitcoin and its cousins went mainstream. Jack Tatar and Chris Burniske joined us to discuss their new book ‘Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond’. It is one of the first systematic views on cryptoassets from a mainstream investor’s perspective.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Jack and Chris originally became interested in Bitcoin and cryptoassets
Why the term cryptoassets is a good umbrella term for the different kinds of tokens
The different categories of cryptoassets: Cryptocurrencies, cryptocommodities and cryptotokens
How cryptoassets fit into an overall investment portfolio
How to value cryptoassets
Whether we are in a cryptoasset bubble and expectations for the future

Episode links:

Cryptoassets on Amazon
Cryptoassets - Book Website
Cryptoasset Valuations – Chris Burniske – Medium
Why I like the term, “Cryptoassets” – Chris Burniske – Medium
The Crypto J-Curve – Chris Burniske – Medium
Bitcoins are the best investment in my retirement account - MarketWatch

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/218

Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond

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A significant part of the modern digital economy, is underpinned by machine learning models that are trained to perform tasks such as facial recognition, content curation, health diagnostics etc. Data to train machine learning models is the essential commodity of this century – a sentiment captured by epithets such as “”Data is the new oil””. Today’s dominant AI paradigm has companies focus their efforts on gathering data from their users in order to train models and monetise usage of the model. This model has many consequences such as loss of privacy for the user, consolidation of data in a handful of large companies, low access to data for startups and a fundamental impossibility of collecting sensitive data such as markers for depression.

Our guest, Andrew Trask, is building OpenMined – a platform that merges cryptographic techniques such as homomorphic encryption and multi-party computation and blockchain technology to create the ability to train ML models with private user data. OpenMined will allow AI companies of the future to develop models, have them trained on user data without compromising user privacy, and incentivise users to train their model. We walk through the OpenMined vision and its potential impact on AI business models and AI safety

Topics covered in this episode:

Challenges with the current AI paradigm
OpenMined’s vision to allow training of AI models with private user data
How OpenMined works under the hood
Applications enabled by OpenMined
Current state and OpenMined hackathon

Episode links:

OpenMined hackathon
OpenMined website

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/217

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Blockchain technologies are changing the way we think about data archival and storage. For instance, most database systems can only capture the current state of a data set. This means we must rely on secondary backup systems to ensure historical data can remain accessible, a stark contrast from what the most basic of blockchains provide out of the box. Database systems that offer immutability and historical context for data would be greatly beneficial for companies as it would make internal and external audits much less costly and time-intensive.

We’re delighted to bring you an interview with Flip Filipowski and Brian Platz. Flip is a veteran entrepreneur whose career spans 50 years, having worked for and founded some of the world’s largest software companies of the 80’s and 90’s. He is also the CEO of SilkRoad Equity and a Founding Partner of Tally Capital. Brian’s background includes having founded A List Appart in 1994, which is among the oldest and most influential web development blogs, and SilkRoad Technologies.

Flip and Brian join us to talk about their new company, Fluree. Their product, FlureeDB, is a scalable graph database which provides the benefits of blockchain technologies, such as immutability, replayability and fault tolerance. Currently, in development, the goal for FlureeDB is to support various consensus rules based on the network configuration: private systems, federated (or consortium) clusters, and fully decentralized public networks.

Topics covered in this episode:

Flip and Brian’s respective backgrounds and entrepreneurial ventures
How blockchain will disrupt most major companies that exist today
FlureeDB and the problem it is trying to solve
How FlureeDB improves compliance procedures for enterprise
How FlureeDB can address some of the challenges ahead with regards to GDPR
FlureeDB’s technical infrastructure and elementary components
The different consensus modes and scalability properties of FlureeDB
Why they chose to structure the company as a Public Benefit Corporation
FlureeDB’s development roadmap

Episode links:

Fluree Website
FlureeDB Whitepaper
Blockchain, Meet Database

This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/216

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The prospect of providing digital cross-border payments for the world’s unbanked and underbanked population has always been one of the key use cases for Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies can be seen as a way for people in developing countries to participate in the global financial market by allowing easy cross-border payments, cheap remittance transactions, and simplified lending options.

We’re pleased to be joined by Elizabeth Rossiello, CEO and Founder of BitPesa. BitPesa provides companies in frontier markets with the financial infrastructure to facilitate commerce and payments, where traditional financial markets are known to be fractured and expensive. As an early Bitcoin company founded in 2013, BitPesa is now present in a handful of African countries and provides essential financial services to businesses, allowing them to send and collect payments, and perform quick and affordable Forex trades.

Topics covered in this episode:

Elizabeth’s journey to Bitcoin and BitPesa
BitPesa’s vision and how it compares existing mobile money platforms present in Africa
BitPesa’s offering and how it has evolved since the company was founded in 2013
The primary pain points and barriers to doing business in developing African markets
Foreign exchange markets in Africa
The challenges and opportunities regarding blockchain adoption in African markets
The future of Bitcoin as a payment system

Episode links:

BitPesa
Elizabeth Rossiello Describes How BitPesa Slashes International Payment Fees
BitPesa Founder Elizabeth Rossiello Keynotes at ConsenSys' Ethereal Summit
Elizabeth Rossiello on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/215

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We’re joined by Christopher Fabian, Co-founder of Unicef’s Innovation Unit. We discuss how the global non-profit institution leverages innovative technology to solve real-world problems in humanitarian work. We explore the different applications of blockchain in the UN and Unicef, as well as the challenges we can anticipate when deploying these technologies in the developing world. Shaun Conway, Founder of Ixo Foundation, also joins the discussion as a startup working Unicef and talks about the value of a global reputation network for humanitarian projects.

Topics covered in this episode:

Chris’ and Shaun’s respective backgrounds
A bit of background on the UN and Unicef
Unicef’s Innovation Unit and Venture arm
How Unicef evaluates the different technologies in the space (public, permissionned, etc.)
The challenges faced when deploying new technologies in the developing world
Unicef’s recent experimentation with an Ethereum smart contract
Potential applications for blockchain at the UN and Unicef
Unicef’s Venture arm and the types of projects in which they invest
Ixo Foundation, their collaboration with Unicef and the value of a Proof of Impact blockchain network

Episode links:

Blockchain at UNICEF
Christopher Fabian - Wikipedia
UNICEF Ventures: Exploring Smart Contracts
ixo foundation
ixo foundation – Medium

This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/214

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In the blockchain world, few people are as brave as Tim Swanson when it comes to busting hype. Tim’s unbiased, honest, and sometimes controversial opinions provide a refreshingly realistic view of blockchain adoption and applications of this technology by people and businesses. Cutting through the hype, the over-sold press releases ad the blind optimism of a completely decentralized economy, Tim’s insights provide a sobering look at the state of the blockchain.

Topics covered in this episode:

Tim’s background and recent departure from R3
The current state of the enterprise blockchain market
The state of Bitcoin in the context of the recent price increase
Tim’s thoughts on the recent spike in ICO’s
The rumors and concerns surrounding Bitfinex and Tether
The rise of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as an asset class
Current problems in Bitcoin: governance and centralization of power
Tim’s new project: Post Oak Labs

Episode links:

Tim's Blog: Great Wall of Numbers
Bitcoin Is Now Just A Ticker Symbol and Stopped Being Permissionless Years Ago
Who are the administrators of blockchains?
Eight Things Cryptocurrency Enthusiasts Probably Won’t Tell You
Post Oak Labs

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/213

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We were joined by Founder Adam Perlow and Developer Asher Manning of Zen, a public blockchain project focused on building a decentralized financial system. The core premise of Zen is that none of the public blockchain networks are focused on financial asset. Zen is aiming to fill that gap through a Bitcoin-like UTXO architecture that supports multiple asset and smart contracts to enforce complex ownership rules.

We talked through their original design choices, their use of formal verification, connection to Bitcoin and vision for a fully decentralized financial system.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why existing public blockchains are ill-suited for financial instruments
Why Zen chose to use a Bitcoin-like UTXO architecture
How Zen uses formal verification to allow smart contracts without a virtual machine or needing gas
How the Active Contract Set reduces the burden on the miners
Walking through creating, trading and settling a call option on Zen
How Zen allows payments to be settled in Bitcoin
Getting data from the outside world with oracles
Zen’s use of Proof-of-Work regulated by on-chain governance

Episode links:

Zen Protocol - A Financial Engine
Zen Protocol - Whitepaper
Zen Protocol - Deck
Google Campus Presentation - YouTube
Zen - Alpha Version
Zen Protocol Founders Film - YouTube
Oracles and Zen – Zen Protocol
Zen’s contract lifecycle – Zen Protocol

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/212

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Neufund CEO Zoe Adamovicz joined us to discuss how Neufund is creating a platform to allow companies to sell tokens backed by actual company equity.

Topics covered in this episode:

Neufund’s thesis of the revolutionary implications of token equity
The difference between ICOs and Equity Token Offerings (ETO)
Why from a regulatory perspective ETOs are uncomplicated
How Neufund’s token Neumarks serves to build a community
How the Initial Capital Building Mechanism is bootstrapping the ecosystem
The long-term vision of creating a global stock market

Episode links:

Neufund
Neufund Whitepaper
Neufund Light Paper
Neufund | ICBM Commit Page
German Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) on ICOs and cryptocurrencies

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/211

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Chaincode Labs Founder Alex Morcos joined us to discuss his journey, the role of the company in Bitcoin’s development and the views that drive his work.

Topics covered in this episode:

Alex’s background in high frequency trading as a founder of Hudson River Trading
How Alex first learned about Bitcoin
The vision of Chaincode Labs
Why Bitcoin represents our only chance of creating digital gold
Why Bitcoin’s resistance to change is one of its core features
Why the NYA & SegWit2x approach was misguided
How getting consensus around a hard fork blocksize increase could work
Why Alex is not excited about the efforts to use blockchains in banks

Episode links:

Chain Code Labs, Inc
Twitter Alex Morcos
Why Bitcoin doesn’t need a solution – Alex Morcos – Medium
No2x: Centralized Services – Alex Morcos – Medium
No2x: Full Nodes – Alex Morcos – Medium

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/210

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Scaling public blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum is a long standing technical challenge. In this episode, we cover Zilliqa which has pioneered a design to scale public blockchain throughput with the number of nodes by sharding the blockchain. Sharding has been hitherto proposed as a scaling technique by Ethereum. Zilliqa is one of the first projects to propose a concrete design with an operational testnet processing a couple thousand transactions per second across several shards.

Our guests, Xinshu Dong (CEO) and Amrit Kumar (Crypto Lead), walk us through the objectives, protocol design and fundraising structure of this innovative project. We also briefly cover Zilliqa’s novel approach to designing a smart contract language and execution environment.

Topics covered in this episode:

Sharding as a scaling technique
Different kinds of sharding, including state sharding and non-state sharding
How Zilliqa works under the hood – consensus algorithms & transaction processing
Zilliqa’s novel approach for a smart contract language
Details of a new cryptocurrency, Zillings

Episode links:

Zilliqa Website
Zilliqa Blog
Zilliqa Whitepaper
Prateek Saxena and his research group at NUS Singapore

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/209

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For the very first time, all three Epicenter hosts found themselves in the same location. After attending Ethereum’s DevCon 3 in Cancun, we were at a Cosmos Retreat and discussed the conference, retreat, state of the Ethereum ecosystem and recent Parity hack.

Topics covered in this episode:

Recap of Ethereum’s DevCon 3 conference
Current state of Ethereum
The most interesting new projects at DevCon
The post-DevCon Cosmos retreat
The internet of blockchain thesis
The case for blockchain’s having sovereignty
The massive loss of funds due to Parity’s flawed multisig contract
The pros and cons of an Ethereum hard fork

Episode links:

Ethereum Developers Conference (Devcon3)
Cosmos - Internet of Blockchains
Many Chains One Ecosystem Slides
Many Chains One Ecosystem - YouTube
"Ethereum Client Bug Freezes User Funds as Fallout Remains Uncertain - CoinDesk"
Parity Multi-Sig Wallets Deployed After 7/30 Issue : ethereum
Paritytech - Security Alert

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/208

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We are joined by Micah Winkelspecht, CEO and Founder of Gem. What started as a Bitcoin API in 2014 has evolved into a leading provider of blockchain solutions for enterprise. Gem addresses the problem of digital data silos and the complexities they introduce when companies and individuals collaborate and share information. Their product, GemOS, provides a full-stack blockchain middleware platform which allows companies to build applications on top of blockchains protocols like Ethereum or Hyperledger Fabric.

Topics covered in this episode:

Micah’s background and how he got involved in the Bitcoin space
How the company and product have evolved to support his original vision
How blockchain technologies are transforming process digitization
The siloed identity problem and what complexities it introduces for people and companies
How GemOS is addressing fundamental issues in health care and insurance
How blockchain technologies can support regulated industries
Micah’s insights on creating awareness among enterprise clients
The importance of building ecosystems and network economies which enterprise can leverage

Episode links:

Gem.co

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/207

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Energy markets form a complex ecosystem of actors. Wholesale energy producers create energy through various means, grid operators transport electricity over long distances and deliver it to homes and businesses, who buy it from local utility companies. The utilities act as resellers in this scheme and take on much of the financial risk associated with selling a commodity which is consumed long before payment settlement from consumers. However, utilities have high operation and marketing costs and charge a high markup on the electricity they buy from wholesalers.

Karl Kreder, Co-founder of Grid+, a Consensys project, joins us to talk about how blockchain technology can help disintermediate utilities and allow consumers buy electricity directly from producers. The Grid+ Agent is a hardware device which sits in your home, is connected to your energy meter and can interact with the power grid. The Agent has built-in logic allowing it to respond to your energy needs and predict usage. It is also equipped with a Trusted Execution Environment and a wallet which keeps private keys secure and can make near real-time payments to the network.

Topics covered in this episode:

Karl’s background and how he became part of Consensys Energy
A high-level overview of the energy market and the different players in this ecosystem
Where lie the inefficiencies and how they can be improved
The challenges facing the energy market today
The Grid+ Agent and its functionality
How the Grid+ Agent works and how it interacts with the grid
Other potential applications for the Grid+ Agent
The economics of the Grid+ smart contract and how it handles risk
The Grid+ token sale

Episode links:

Grid+
Grid+ Whitepaper
What is Grid+? - YouTube

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/206

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Galen Wolfe-Pauly, CEO of Tlon, the company behind Urbit, joined us to discuss one of the most radical and curious projects to come on the podcast. In development for 15 years already, Urbit aims to unravel the cloud computing paradigm that led to the creation of internet monopolies like Google and Facebook. Instead, in Urbit, each person has a personal server, a kind of digital sovereign entity, where applications are run, which leaves control and data in the hands of users.

Galen joined us to discuss what the philosophy and ideas driving Urbit, how a radically different internet could look like and what our path is to get there.

Topics covered in this episode:

The 15 year long history and evolution of Urbit
Understanding Urbit through the metaphors of a personal server, a personal blockchain, a republic or an operating function
The main Urbit components Nock, Hoon and Arvo
How Galaxies, Stars and Planets create Urbit’s hierarchy
The Urbit namespace and why it has value
How Urbit aims to radically reengineer how the internet works

Episode links:

Urbit - Website
Urbit - An Overview
Urbit - Beliefs and Principles
Urbit - Interim Constitution
Urbit and the Blockchain Wars

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/205

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As the ICO boom continues to drive funding and interest in cryptocurrencies, mainstream consumer applications are increasingly looking towards tokenization. One of these was social network Pepo, founded by veteran entrepreneur and previous founder of fab.com Jason Goldberg. Faced with the difficulties of integrating blockchain, they decided to start Simple Token – a company focused on building easy solutions for mainstream applications to use blockchain.

Simple Token CEO Jason Goldberg and Chief Technology Strategist joined us to discuss the case for branded token, Simple Tokens architecture and the balance between easy user experience and decentralization.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jason’s long history as an entrepreneur and the turbulent story of fab.com
The perils of raising too much money
How the quest to tokenize social network Pepo lead to founding Simple Token
The opportunity in tokenizing mainstream consumer applications
How Simple Token uses Ethereum and sidechains to allow companies to issue branded tokens
How Simple Token backs branded tokens through a staking contract on Ethereum
The economics of Simple Token and upcoming ICO

Episode links:

Simple Token | The Bridge between Cryptocurrencies and Consumer Apps.
Jason Goldberg - This Week In Startups
Simple Token Pitch Deck
Simple Token Technical Whitepaper
On the Rebound from Epic Failure – Hacker Noon
Simple Token Telegram Channel

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/204

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Nasdaq is one of the largest and most well known financial institutions in the World. As the second-largest stock market by market capitalization, Nasdaq is also one of the leading software companies in capital markets, providing its Nasdaq Financial Framework to exchanges all around the globe.

Fredrik Voss, VP of Blockchain Innovation at Nasdaq, joins us to discuss how Nasdaq is leveraging blockchain technologies to propel itself into the future. Having invested in Chain and Stratumn, Nasdaq is taking a very hands-on approach, building products which it integrates into the various software solutions they sell.

Topics covered in this episode:

A high-level overview of Nasdaq as a stock exchange and software company
Nasdaq’s thesis regarding blockchain technologies
The potential challenges ahead
What blockchain technologies bring to regulators regarding oversight and auditing
Nasdaq’s Venture Program and its investment thesis
Why Nasdaq chose to invest in Chain and Stratumn
Types of applications built in partnership with Chain and Stratumn
Fredrick’s views on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)

Episode links:

Why Nasdaq Is Even More Optimistic About Blockchain Than It Was 3 Years Ago
Inside Linq, Nasdaq's Private Markets Blockchain Project
Nasdaq Executive Fredrik Voss Optimistic About Blockchain in Capital Markets
Fredrik Voss, Nasdaq Vice President – About Blockchain

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/203

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For many years, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies were regarded as little more than a nerdy curiosity by the financial world. But with the rise of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the process of cryptocurrencies becoming a recognized asset class has begun.

One person at the forefront of this transformation is Ari Paul. Previously a portfolio manager at the University of Chicago’s $8 billion endowment, he recently left to start the cryptocurrency hedge fund BlockTower Capital. He joined us for an insightful conversation about one of the biggest trends in the industry.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ari’s background as a portfolio manager at the University of Chicago
The difficulties of investing in cryptocurrency for a large endowment
Why he started the cryptocurrency hedge fund BlockTower Capital
How to construct a cryptocurrency portfolio
The hedge fund vs the VC model in the cryptocurrency space
Why cryptocurrencies represent an exceptional investment opportunity
The operational complexities of running a crypto hedge fund
Why an avalanche of institutional money is entering the blockchain space

Episode links:

The Cryptocurrency Investor Blog
How to Think About Investing in Cryptocurrency: Why Exceptional Opportunities Exist
How to Think About Investing in Cryptocurrency: What needs to exist
Table Selection | The Cryptocurrency Investor
The Wall Street Moment | The Cryptocurrency Investor
BlockTower Capital
Twitter - Ari Paul

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/202

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Enterprise consortium blockchains have gained a lot of interest in recent months. And although we can see many applications for this particular type of network deployment, many questions remain to be answered before these systems can move to production. Issues related to scaling, network deployment, access controls and key management remain open at this point. With its deep roots in the enterprise, Microsoft hopes to have answers to these questions.

Matt Kerner, Partner GM for Blockchains at Azure, joins us to discuss Coco Framework. Coco is an open-source system which promises to enable high scalability and offer confidentiality for enterprise blockchain consortiums. This novel framework leverages Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) to deliver blockchain networks with throughput comparable to database speeds.

Topics covered in this episode:

Matt’s background and role at Azure
Azure’s high-level thesis regarding blockchains
Coco Framework and how it fits in Microsoft’s vision
The different components of Coco and its architecture
The role of TEE’s in Coco
How Coco achieves confidential transactions
Identify management and network governance in Coco
How Coco fits into other blockchain initiatives at Microsoft
The framework’s roadmap

Episode links:

Announcing the Coco Framework for enterprise blockchain networks
Introducing the Coco Framework - YouTube
Coco Framework Whitepaper

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/201

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In the past year, the first killer application of blockchain technology has emerged: venture funding. As blockchain-facilitated crowdfunding is disrupting venture capital at blistering speed, we are joined by Ciaran O’Leary, Founder and General Partner at BlueYard. BlueYard stands at the intersection of this transition. Structured as a traditional VC fund, its thesis focuses fully on the decentralized economy and it invests in tokens too. Ciaran joined us to discusses what blockchain means for VCs and its implications for BlueYard.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ciaran’s journey as a VC
How the VC industry has been changing
Why he founded Blue Yard and its investment thesis
Value creation in a blockchain economy
Buying equity vs buying tokens
Why tokens and ICOs are erroding the distinction between hedge funds and VC funds
Best practices for running ICOs

Episode links:

BlueYard Capital
BlueYard Investment Thesis
Filecoin Investment Article
Protocol Labs Investment Article
Userfeeds & why the web needs a new information ranking system
OB1 & OpenBazaar – BlueYard Capital – Medium

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/200

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Scalability and interoperability are two of the main issues facing blockchain protocols today. In a future in which entire industries and economies rely on distributed technologies, it is unclear how blockchain networks will support massive amounts of data, and exchange transactions in a trusted way.

Peter Czaban, co-founder of Polkadot, joins us as we dive deep into the Polkadot Network. Polkadot is a heterogeneous multi-chain network, consisting of many connected chains (or parachains), all of which have their own set of features and characteristics. Transactions flow across chains, while Polkadot ensures the global security and consensus of the network, forming an ‘Internet of Blockchain networks’. Scalability is achieved through the parallel processing of transactions on the different parachains.

Topics covered in this episode:

Peter’s background and his role at Parity technologies
What is the Polkadot project and what problems it is addressing
How Polkadot handles the issue of scaling
The different components of the Polkadot Network
The various players in the network
The consensus model used in Polkadot
The types of applications Polkadot would enable
The Web3 Foundation and its goals

Episode links:

Polkadot Website
Polkadot Pre-Sale Website
Polkadot Community Chat
Aura Consensus

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/199

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Nick Morgan, a former attorney at the SEC, joined us to discuss their recent report on the DAO and what it means for the ICO boom.

Topics covered in this episode:

The history and mandate of the SEC
Nick’s years as a trial attorney at the SEC
How the Howey Test is used to determine if something is a security
The application of the Howey Test to the DAO case
The weaknesses in their argument that token holders relied on the effort of others
Why the SEC did not prosecute the Slock.it founders
Why the SEC will likely focus on token sales involving fraud
How the SEC’s limited resources will make it hard for it to impact the ICO boom
The implications of the SEC report for cryptocurrency exchanges

Episode links:

SEC Press Release on The DAO
SEC Report on Investigation of The DAO
Seven Takeaways from the DAO Report - Kyle Mitchell
EB134 – Emin Gün Sirer And Vlad Zamfir: On A Rocky DAO
Nicolas Morgan Website
The DAO Report: Understanding the Risk of SEC Enforcement - CoinDesk

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/198

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After Bitshares and Steemit, Dan Larimer’s latest project EOS has also gathered lots of attention. Their record-setting crowdsale has already raised $300m and is continuing for another year. Dan joined us to discuss his journey in the industry, what connects the different projects, how EOS works and how the EOS crowdsale works.

Topics covered in this episode:

A history of Dan’s previous projects Bitshares and Steemit
How Dan knows when the time has come to move to the next project
Why they describe EOS as a decentralized operating system
The EOS approach to scalability
Benefits and downsides of the EOS fee model
EOS’ Delegated Proof of Stake consensus
How EOS handles malicious validators
Addressing criticisms around EOS’s crowdsale terms and governance structure

Episode links:

EOS Website
EOS Whitepaper
EOS Consensus Presentation May 2017 - YouTube
Vitalik Buterin Criticisms of EOS
Dan Larimer's Response to Vitalik
block.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/197

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Prior to hosting his ground breaking podcasts Beyond Bitcoin and The Ether Review, Arthur Falls had left his home country of New Zealand to fish lobster off the coast of Maine. Like many people in the blockchain space, his unlikely journey into the world of decentralized technologies is a fascinating one, and he shares it with us in this episode.

Arthur recently traveled to over a dozen locations around the World, conducting interviews for an upcoming documentary. He shares what he learned and his favorite experiences from this trip.

Topics covered in this episode:

Arthur’s unlikely journey from lobster fisherman to blockchain podcaster
A brief history of his past projects and what he has going on at the moment
His recent blockchain world tour and what he learned from that experience
His views on the state of the ecosystem and institutional investment money now flowing into the space

Episode links:

The Ether Review
Ether Review Legal Discussion #1 — Challenges in Blockchain Law
Initial coin offerings now surpass early stage VC funding
Hedge Funds Investing in Cryptocurrencies 'Exploding' - 62 in Pipeline

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/196

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We’re joined by Loi Luu, Co-founder of KyberNetwork. This new decentralized exchange protocol, built on Ethereum, aims to match buyers with reserve operators, who create liquidity for crypto-asset pairs. Trades occur instantaneously and without the need for a trusted third party exchange operator.

Topics covered in this episode:

Loi’s background and involvement with various projects such as TrueBit, Smart Pool, and Oyente
The desirable features of a decentralized exchange
Other decentralized exchange projects and how they compare to KyberNetwork
KyberNetwork’s unique design philosophy
KyberNetwork’s user experience and how a trade occurs from start to finish
The various actors in the network and their respective roles
How KyberNetwork mitigates certain vulnerabilities, such as transaction front running
How network actors are compensated
KyberNetwork’s DAO governance model and development roadmap

Episode links:

KyberNetwork
KyberNetwork Blog
KyberNetwork White Paper

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/195

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Bancor is a simple, but hard-to-understand protocol that enables price discovery and liquidity even for assets that aren’t actively traded. Co-Founder Eyal Hertzog joined us to explain how the Bancor protocol works and why they think it will play a key role in enabling a massive wave of small, but interconnected user-generated currencies. We dissected the workings of the protocol, its radical implications as well as the takeaways from their record-shattering, but controversial crowdsale.

Topics covered in this episode:

Eyal’s background in early internet startups
The origin story of Bancor
Why asset markets suffer from the double coincidence of wants problem
The benefits of Bancor-based Smart Tokens
How Bancor and BNT can create a liquidity network
Why BNT benefits from network effects
What went well and what didn’t go well about the Bancor Crowdsale
Why Eyal thinks the price floor was a good idea

Episode links:

Bancor protocol
Bancor Whitepaper
Response to “Bancor is Flawed” – The Bancor Protocol
Bancor at Coinfest 2017 in Amsterdam - YouTube
Bernard Lietear, EURO architect discusses Bancor

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/194

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Dave Collins and Jake Yocom-Piatt join us to talk about Decred, a cryptocurrency which introduces an innovative system of community-based governance into its blockchain. Decred implements a hybrid Proof of Work and Proof of Stake system in which miners validate transactions, while users can vote on new features and upgrades to the protocol. This clever approach enables efficient blockchain governance, which has demonstrated to be successful in a recent protocol upgrade on the live network.

Topics covered in this episode:

Dave and Jake’s respective backgrounds in the blockchain space
The challenges addressed by Decred, specifically regarding blockchain governance
Decred’s hybrid Proof of Work/Proof of Stake approach to governance
How users of the network vote on protocol upgrade with “”tickets””
Possible downfalls and attack vectors to this approach
How Decred’s governance model successfully implemented a hard fork on the production network
Decred’s approach to development funding

Episode links:

Decred Website
Decred Documentation

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/193

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Hebrew University academics Aviv Zohar and Yonatan Sompolinski joined us to discuss their research at the forefront of blockchain technology. We talked about their early proposals for scaling Bitcoin using the GHOST protocol, which later inspired Ethereum. And then we discussed SPECTRE and a new type of network based on directed acrylic graphs (DAG). DAGs abandon the blockchain data structure to allow constant generation of blocks that later get merged achieving block times of seconds and throughput many orders of magnitudes above current blockchain network.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Aviv Zohar wrote one of the first academic papers on Bitcoin in 2011
The GHOST protocol and how it could allow much faster block times
The difference between what Ethereum built and the GHOST protocol
Why DAG (Directed Acrylic Graphs) have massive advantages over blockchains
Towards massive on-chain scaling and speed with the SPECTRE Protocol
Their view on existing DAG-based networks like IOTA and Byteball

Episode links:

SPECTRE Medium Post
SPECTRE (full paper)
Accelerating Bitcoin's Transactions
Inclusive Blockchain Protocols
On Bitcoin and Red Balloons
Aviv's Website
Yonatan's Website

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/192

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Numerai Founder Richard Craib joined us to discuss his radical project to build a hedge fund with network effects. Numerai manages its portfolio by giving its data in encrypted form to data scientists who compete to create the best predictions and get paid with cryptocurrencies. Numerai expects to radically alter the structure of the hedge fund and asset management industry.

Topics covered in this episode:

How hedge funds work and what trends effect them
Quantitative trading and the role of AI in investing
How Numerai uses crowdsourcing and AI to manage its portfolio
How Numerai lets data scientists build models without knowing the underlying data
The Function of Numerai’s own token Numeraire
Why Numerai is switching from paying data scientists in Bitcoin to Ethereum
Numerai’s crazy goal of managing all the money in the world

Episode links:

Numerai
Numerai Whitepaper
An AI Hedge Fund Goes Live On Ethereum – Numerai – Medium
A New Cryptocurrency For Coordinating Artificial Intelligence on Numerai
Encrypted Data For Efficient Markets
Building the Numerai Meta Model
Introducing Numeraire

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/191

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Shapeshift CEO Erik Voorhees joined us to discuss his journey in the industry, the evolution of the decentralized exchange Shapeshift and their latest project Prism. We spent most time diving into the mechanics and enormous potential of Prism. Prism allows users to create a portfolio of digital assets that is purely managed on the Ethereum blockchain and illustrates how blockchain-based financial products can be built.

Topics covered in this episode:

Erik’s journey in the blockchain space from SatoshiDice to Shapeshift
Shapeshift’s evolution and long-term vision
Erik’s view on ICOs and why they will disrupt the stock markets
Prism – The world’s first trustless portfolio market platform
The mechaniscs of Prism
Why Erik supports SegWit2x

Episode links:

Shapeshift Website
Erik Vorhees' Blog: Money and State
Erik Vorhees Twitter Page
Prism Exchange
Introducing Prism - Blog Post
Epicenter 130 with Erik Vorhees

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/190

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After years of what has seemed like an endless debate, bitcoin may be at a crucial turning point in its relatively short lifetime. The question network scalability has divided the community into several factions which are seemingly irreconcilable. However, in just a few weeks, the future of bitcoin may be decided as miners and users throw their support behind one of many proposals to propel the bitcoin network into a new era.

Bitcoin Developer and Principal Architect at Paxos, Jimmy Song, joins us to discuss the different scalability proposals for which miners are currently signaling their support. Among others, Segregated Witness (BIP 141), Emergent Consensus (Bitcoin Unlimited) and SegWit2x (The New York Agreement), are gaining significant traction among miners. Will one of these proposals gain majority support, allowing for the network to upgrade with relative ease, or will we enter a situation where one proposal is backed by a strong minority of users, potentially forking the network into two?

Topics covered in this episode:

Jimmy’s background as a Bitcoin Developer and former VP of Engineering at Armory
A broad overview of bitcoin network’s current situation
An overview of the different scaling proposals for which miners are signaling their support
Important dates coming up in July and August of 2017
The difference between Segregated Witness and SegWit2x
The UASF and how it may affect SegWit2x implementation

Episode links:

BIP91: The SegWit Activation "Kludge" That Should Keep Bitcoin Whole
Examining Bitmain’s Press Release
BIP 148 UASF Q&A
Greg Maxwell: "a hasty snapshot of a few of my views"
UAHF: A contingency plan against UASF (BIP148)
How to Give Everyone More Control
"Bitcoin Scaling Agreement at Consensus 2017
Bitcoin, UASF and Skin in the Game
UASF BIP148 Scenarios and Game Theory
Why the UASF Segwit Scenario is Hopelessly Naive
[bitcoin-discuss] [Bitcoin-segwit2x] Alpha Milestone

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/189

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Token sales, often called Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), are exploding in popularity. Seemingly each week a new record is hit with huge sums being raised by alpha-stage projects in almost no time. William Mougayar, an investor, author and blogger, who has been at the forefront of the token sale movement joined us to unpack the most dynamic trend in the blockchain ecosystem. We cover the great promise of token sales in disrupting venture capital and changing how startups are build and grown. We also address the apparent irrationality of valuations and what distinguishes a responsible from a reckless token sale.

Topics covered in this episode:

The current state of the ICO market
Issues with recent ICOs such as BAT, Bancor and Gnosis
Why more attention needs to be paid to the relationship between token and application usage
How one should think about token valuations
Whether we are in a bubble or not
How VCs are responding to disruption through ICOs

Episode links:

Startup Management Blog
"The Ultimate Reading List for Blockchain, Token and Cryptocurrency Sources"
"Tokenomics – A Business Guide to Token Usage, Utility and Value"
Raising Tokens to Build a Company or an Ecosystem?
Business Blockchain on Amazon
Vitalik Buterin on Token Sale Mechanisms
Buyer Beware – AVC
Token Summit YouTube Channel
Token Summit Website
Thoughts on the Bancor Token Sale

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/188

The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology

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With most of the world’s computing power concentrated in Internet companies’ data centers, the Internet has become a very centralized place. The Golem project aims to build the sharing economy of computing power. This “global, open sourced, decentralized supercomputer” will function thanks to the combined power of a massive network of machines, from personal laptops to whole data centers.

We’re joined by Julian Zawistowski and Alex Leverington, CEO and P2P engineer at Golem. We discuss how Golem hopes to create a more balanced distribution of computing power for the Internet.

Topics covered in this episode:

What is Golem and the problem it is addressing
What may people and companies use Golem for
How Golem compares to other projects like iExec or TrueBit
Who are the different participants in the Golem network
How Golem executes computations
The role Ethereum has to play in Golem
How payments work in Golem
The economic model for Golem’s decentralized marketplace
The project’s current status and roadmap

Episode links:

Golem Website
Golem Blog
Pre-Brass Golem 0.6.0 Released!

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/187

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Our regulatory expert Siân Jones joined us to discuss her work on a regulatory framework for distributed ledger technology (DLT) for Gibraltar. We discuss how the framework differs from other efforts and aims to attract rather than curtail blockchain businesses. We also covered why the rapid changes require the flexibility of a principle-based approach to regulation. Finally, we discussed current trends around ICOs and how they could be impacted by regulation.

Topics covered in this episode:

How the Gibraltar DLT Regulatory Framework came about
How Gibraltar’s approach differs from others like BitLicense
Why a principle-based approach is preferable for technology regulation
Why the framework focuses on custodial services, not decentralized protocols
The path from proposal to regulation
Recent trends in how ICOs are conducted
Why principle-based regulation could improve the ICO market

Episode links:

Proposals for a DLT Regulatory Framework
Want To Hold An ICO? CoinList Makes It Easy -- And Legal
Thoughts on Tokens by Balaji S. Srinivasan
Tezos
COINsult

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/186

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The saying goes: if you’re not paying for it, it’s likely that you’re the product. And with the rise of targeted ads, user behavior tracking, and alike, more and more users are turning to ad blocking software to protect their privacy and improve their browsing experience. In the last 25 years, the content monetization and Internet advertising industries have evolved to become complex ecosystems with multiple intermediating layers between users, publishers, and advertisers. This has created a situation where user’s rights are constantly violated and where little accountability exists.

We’re joined by Brendan Eich, Founder, and CEO of Brave. As an early Internet pioneer, Brendan created Javascript while working at Netscape in the mid 90’s, and helped found the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation, where he served as CEO for several years. Brave is a new desktop and mobile browser which blocks ads and tracking by default. This has the advantage of drastically improves page load times while protecting users’ privacy. But Brave is much more than just a browser. Their team will launch the Basic Attention Token, which will serve as the currency of attention marketplaces between publishers, advertisers, and users. With the ambition to turn the Internet advertising industry on its head, this new attention economy marketplace will eliminate the need for unneeded intermediaries, provide publishers with new content monetization models and remunerate users when they chose to share their data with advertisers.

Topics covered in this episode:

Brendan’s background as an early Internet pioneer
How monetization of content and attention on the Internet are broken
How the Internet advertising industry works and the players involved
A high-level overview of the Brave browser
Brave’s features and product roadmap
The Basic Attention Token and its role as a currency for attention
How BAT will serve to create attention marketplaces between publishers, advertisers, and users

Episode links:

Brave Website
Basic Attention Token

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/185

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Data is the new oil, and those who control massive amounts of it have a major competitive advantage. That advantage becomes exponential when that data is used to teach artificial intelligence. Companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon have a far greater probability of building strong AI than smaller actors simply by the sheer amount of user data and metadata they possess. Let’s now envision an alternate reality where big data lives on public infrastructure and is accessible to anyone who wishes to use it for the purpose of teaching AI. Big data as a public resource could have the potential to enable vast amounts of innovation at the edges, far greater than that of a small set of incumbents building large centralized AI systems.

We’re joined by Trent McConaghy, who is the CTO and Co-founder of BigchainDB and Ascribe. Trent brings along a special surprise guest, Fred Ehrsam, former Co-founder at Coinbase. For the first half of the show, we have a fascinating discussion with Trent and Fred about the intersection of AI and blockchain technologies, and the implications of publicly available data sets on innovation in AI. For the second half of the show, we talk with Trent about the public implementation of BigchainDB, the Interplanetary Database (IPDB), and the applications for a public big data storage network accessible to all of humanity.

Topics covered in this episode:

The issues which arise with big data centralization in the context of building artificial intelligence
How blockchain technologies could serve as the public data infrastructure for teaching AI
How an AI might gain financial dominance over humanity by selling art on a DAO
An update on Ascribe and BigchainDB
The IPDB network and what goals it hopes to achieve
The IPDB Foundation, its members and governance rules
The technical components of the IPDB network
Use cases and applications for a public decentralized global database

Episode links:

IPDB - Interplanetary Database Foundation
IPDB Dev Portal

This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/184

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Naming systems are an important component of any networked information system. It’s difficult to imagine how the Internet could have been adopted by the masses had it not been for the Domain Name System, which translates machine-readable IP addresses into human-readable domain names. Blockchains, with their long and complex address formats, suffer from a similar problem. One might think a solution would be to apply the same naming system architecture we have for the public Internet to public blockchains. But DNS, in the eyes of many, is a largely flawed system. Centrally controlled by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Internet domain names are vulnerable to censorship and barriers to entry are kept artificially high – registering a new Top Level Domain (ex: .epicenter) costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We’re joined by Alex Van de Sande and Nick Johnson to discuss their approach to creating an open, secure and decentralized naming system for the Ethereum Network. The Ethereum Naming System (ENS) allows users to register .eth domain names, which can be used in supporting Ethereum wallets and clients. Names are reserved by placing a deposit in a smart contract and can be mapped to any Ethereum addresses. So rather than sending funds to 0x8cd…0935, one would simply need to type a memorable name like epicenter.eth into their wallet. Backed by the Ethereum Foundation, ENS will likely become the defacto standard for name registration in Ethereum.

Topics covered in this episode:

Alex and Nick’s respective backgrounds and roles in the Ethereum Foundation
How the Internet’s Domain Name System works
The problems and pain points with DNS and how it is governed today
What is ENS and what problems it is addressing
The ENS auction system and how names are registered
The different parties involved in ENS
ENS’s technical architecture and governing smart contract
The current governance model of ENS and future plans for increased decentralization of governance
ENS’s economic model and technical roadmap

Episode links:

Ethereum Name Service
ENS Registrar
ENS Github Project
ENS Gitter Channel
ENS Twitter Bot

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/183

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Coin Center is a non-profit in Washington DC that focuses on research and advocacy issues facing public blockchain networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Their aim is to protect users and foster innovation through achieving sound policies and regulations.

Director of Research Peter Van Valkenburgh joined us to discuss the work of the center and the most pressing regulatory issues facing the industry today.

Topics covered in this episode:

The origins and objectives of Coin Center
How to judge the success of Coin Center
Why Peter is more bullish on permissionless than permissioned blockchains
The three areas of blockchain regulation: Consumer protection, anti money laundering and securities
His view about ICOs
Why people should pay attention to money transmission regulations

Episode links:

Coin Center Website
Open Matters: Why Permissionless Blockchains are Essential to the Future of the Internet
Framework for Securities Regulation of Cryptocurrencies
Twitter Peter Van Valkenburgh

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/182

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The road to mainstream adoption of blockchain technologies is a long one. Although the user experience of wallets has greatly improved since the dark days of command-line only interfaces, decentralized applications continue to struggle with onboarding non-technical users.

Jarrad Hope and Carl Bennetts, join us to discuss Status, a mobile Ethereum client which aims to turn the standard wallet experience on its head. At its core, Status is a mobile instant messenger client that leverages the Whisper protocol for secure peer-to-peer communication. Through its familiar messaging interface and elegant design, users can chat and send Ether directly in the app. As the first implementation of Ethereum’s Light Client Protocol, users may also use decentralized applications such as uPort, Gnosis and Aragon on their mobile phones. Built as an open source project, Status’ developer platform also allows developers to easily port their Dapps to the app.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jarrad and Carl’s background and journey to the Ethereum space
Status’ vision for a friendly, mobile Dapp client
Status’ technical architecture
How Status leverages Ethereum’s Light Client and Whisper protocols
The Status user experience and feature set
Jarrad and Carl’s views on privacy and how Status fulfils their goal of privacy by default
The long term vision for a Status Network
The project’s roadmap and business model

Episode links:

Status: The Mobile Ethereum Client
Status Reddit

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/181

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Anyone who has ever started a company knows just how tedious that process that can be. Whether it’s establishing a shareholder’s agreement, defining the company’s constitutional structure, raising funds, or transferring shares, corporate governance procedures remain largely paper-based, requiring validation from multiple stakeholders, and their lawyers. Blockchain technologies, and specifically smart contracts, provide the rails upon which these processes can be digitized and streamlined, reducing operational costs, eliminating errors and automating menial tasks.

Manu Thanabalan, CTO of Otonomos, joins us to discuss how his company is leveraging smart contracts to accelerate incorporation and automate corporate governance. Otonomos provides the tools and services which allow for anyone to start a company in any of the jurisdictions they support. Using their platform, founders are able to define board members and issue shares, while captables are kept up-to-date in real-time. Day-to-day governance mechanisms and standard procedures such as voting and share transfers are automated through a smart contact, which complies with local jurisdictional regulation.

Topics covered in this episode:

Mano’s background as a quantitative trader and how he transitioned into blockchain
The fundamental problem Otonomos is addressing
How we may be able to unlock a tremendous amount of value by liberating shares currently locked in private companies
Leveraging smart contracts to automate standardized corporate legal procedures
The types of constitutional rules which can be digitized and automated with smart contracts
The ability to simplify accounting and auditing with Otonomos
The Otonomos technology stack
The current state of Otonomos and their product roadmap

Episode links:

Otonomos Website

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/180

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Years into the great Bitcoin scaling debate no solution is in reach. Neither bigger blocks nor Segregated Witness have anywhere near consensus support. With the conflict escalating, a Bitcoin fork has become a real possibility.

Electrum Developer Thomas Voegtlin joined us to discuss the state of the Bitcoin scaling debate. We discussed Bitcoin Unlimited, ASICBoost, SegWit activation without miner support and how a Bitcoin fork could play out. Possible outcomes include that Bitcoin Unlimited gains a majority of hashing power and starts mining bigger blocks. In the event of a fork, a proof-of-work change could be done to defend the minority chain from miner attacks. And lately a proposal was brought forward to activate SegWit without the support of the hashing power.

Topics discussed in this episode:

ASICBoost and its potential role in the conflict
How a Bitcoin fork could happen
How to split coins in case of a fork
How UASF could be used to activate SegWit without miner support
Requirements for UASF to be safe
How Electrum would handle a fork

Episode links:

Electrum Bitcoin Wallet
ASICBoost – Hacker Noon
Bitcoin's New Controversy: The AsicBoost Allegations Explained - CoinDesk
Timo Hanke on ASICBoost and SegWit Non-Activation
From AsicBoost to UASF: Greg Maxwell on Bitcoin's Path Forward - CoinDesk
[bitcoin-dev] Thomas Voegtlin: Soft Fork Threshold Signaling Proposal
UASF Working Group
[bitcoin-dev] Greg Maxwell: I do not support the BIP 148 UASF
Thomas Voegtlin: Electrum, SPV Wallets And Bitcoin Aliases — Epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/179

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For decades, science and academia have leveraged distributed computing to solve massive computational problems. Distributed grid computing schemes allow donors to volunteer their desktop computer’s idle resources toward scientific projects in physics, biology, and chemistry, where large amounts of parallel computing resources are necessary. Relying on software like BONIC, these networks provide features such as built-in fault tolerance and result verification. And with the proliferation of mobile and IoT, the potential for massively distributed grid networks has never been greater.

Gilles Fedak, a researcher at the French computer science research body Inria, joins us to discuss a new project which aims to build a high-performance distributed cloud infrastructure marketplace. Relying on mature grid computing technologies, iExec utilizes Ethreum to organize a peer-to-peer marketplace of computing resources, allowing anyone to rent their idle resources to grid networks. If it succeeds to execute on its vision, this game-changing project could revolutionize distributed computing through cost reduction and the commoditization of resources.

Topics covered in this episode:

Gilles’ background as a distributed computing researcher
Distributed computing and it’s applications in science and industry
The problems we see in distributed computing networks
The iExec project and its vision for a distributed computing resource marketplace
How iExec works as an Ethereum smart contract
The different components and participants of iExec
The iExec token and upcoming crowds ale
The project’s business model and roadmap

Episode links:

iEx.ec Website
Gilles Fedak Home Page at ENS Lyon
iEx.ec White Paper
iEx.ec Crowdsale

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/178

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Bitcoin and Ethereum miners collectively make up what is perhaps the most powerful computational resource in the world. However, mobile phones from the early 2000’s could arguably run more complex operations than these networks combined. While blockchains themselves may never reach the level of computational power of modern computers, they may be leveraged as the underlying verification layer for centralized computing.

We’re joined by Jason Teutsch and Christian Reitwiessner. They are the co-authors of a visionary whitepaper which describes Truebit. This protocol would allow complex computations to be executed on off-chain systems while being validated by Ethereum miners. The results of these computations would consequently be available to on-chain smart contracts. Truebit makes clever use of proof systems and game theory to build a protocol where a Task Giver can ask a third party, the Solver, to execute a complex computation in exchange for a reward. Not limited to Solidity, these could be executed in traditional languages such as Go, Python or C++. Verifiers could then challenge the results, incentivising the Solver to be honest or see his reward be stripped away. This incentive structure would guarantee fast and reliable results while eliminating the need for a trusted third party.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jason and Christian respective backgrounds in the ecosystem.
The core problem being addressed by Truebit
Why a scalable decentralized computational resource is desirable
How Truebit makes use of proof systems and game theory to enable trusted computations off-chain
How the verification game works the incentive structures proposed in Truebit
The various use cases for Truebit
How Truebit could allow for blockchain interoperability without the need for “blockchain of blockchains” type networks

Episode links:

TrueBit Website
TrueBit Subreddit
TrueBit: Scalable Computation talk by Christian Reitwiessner at Ethereum Meetup in Berlin
Slides for the Scalable Computation talk

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/177

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In the world of Bitcoin podcast, there is one show which definitely stands out as the longest running, Let’s Talk Bitcoin! In its 4-year history, the show has produced over 320 episodes and expanded to become a network of podcasts which includes Epicenter and many others.

We’re joined by Adam B. Levine the founder and host of Let’s Talk Bitcoin! It was thanks to Adam that Sébastien and Brian first connected in 2013, so in many ways, we consider him as the “”spiritual grandfather”” of Epicenter. Adam reflects on his signature show and the network he created in 2014. He discusses the future of the network and makes an announcement live on the show, which even takes us by surprise.

Topics discussed in this episode:

The history of the Let’s Talk Bitcoin! podcast
What listeners can expect for the future of the show
The LTB Coin reward token experiment, what was learned and the future of that project
The Let’s Talk Bitcoin! Network and how it’s evolving
The Tokenly project and its use cases
Token.fm: a platform for music creators to sell licences to their music as tokens

Episode links:

Token.FM - Early Access
BTC Media
Adam B. Levine: Let’s Talk Bitcoin Network, LTBCoin, Monetizing Content & Crowdfunding — Epicenter
Let's Talk Bitcoin!

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/176

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For a long time the native asset of the Ripple network XRP was the cryptocurrency with the second biggest market cap. But with much of the supply controlled by Ripple, it remained surrounded by controversy. Still, XRP remains an interesting asset to enable cross-border payments in the future. Miguel Vias recently joined Ripple after a long career on Wall Street to develop XRP as a liquid and widely accepted asset.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Miguel Vias went from trading precious metals to XRP
The similarities between precious metals and cryptocurrencies
The role Ripple sees for XRP
The connection between XRP and interledger
Why the FinCEN fine changed Ripple’s course
XRP’s role in cross-border payments
How Miguel is trying to create liquid markets for XRP

Episode links:

Ripple Website
CME Group Executive Miguel Vias Joins Ripple | Ripple
"Ripple and R3 Team Up with 12 Banks to Trial XRP for Cross-Border Payments | Ripple"
Q4 2016 XRP Markets Report | Ripple
Welcome | Interledger
FinCEN Fines Ripple Labs for Bank Secrecy Act Violations

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/175

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In the footsteps of the finance industry, the energy sector has been caught by the blockchain fever. Conceived over a century ago, increased usage and an explosion of devices have made energy grids outdated. Smart grids offer a two-way dialogue where electricity and information are exchanged between utilities and its customers. This new grid takes advantages of connected devices and green energy production to provide more reliability, security and sustainability.

Carsten Stöcker, Senior Manager Machine Economy & Blockchain at Innogy, shares his vision for how blockchains will serve as the transactional fabric for tomorrow’s smart grids. In this new paradigm, energy is locally produced and blockchains provide the rails on which local energy marketplaces can be built. The German utility has been conducting blockchain experiments for several years and is soon releasing the Mobility Transaction Platform moveX. The Ethereum-powered platform will serve an ecosystem of electric vehicles with transaction layer needed for charging, car sharing and mobility as a service.

Topics covered in this episode:

Carsten’s background in technology
The history of RWE and creation of Innogy
Business models in a decentralized economy
How the energy grid system works
The transition from the traditional grid to the smart grid
How blockchains can be integrated in tomorrow’s smart grids
Use cases for blockchain and energy
Innogy’s moveX blockchain experiment for mobility

Episode links:

innogy Innovation Hub
World Economic Forum - Decentral Blockchain Transaction Platform
Share and Charge - Mobility on Blockchain
Blockcharge - Electric Vehicle Charging on Ethereum Blockchain
Genesis of Things - Industry 4.0 on Blockchain
"Automating Machine Transactions and Building Trust in the 4th Industrial Revolution"
"Free Electrons" - a new global energy start-up program

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/174

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Writing his college thesis on Bitcoin in 2012 and becoming Coinbase’s first employee in 2013, Olaf Carlson-Wee has been at the forefront of cryptocurrency for many years. Recently, he left Coinbase to start Polychain Capital, a hedge fund focused solely on investing in cryptocurrencies and protocol tokens. Olaf joined us to discuss his journey in the industry and the investment thesis behing Polychain.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Olaf Carlson-Wee became Coinbase’s first employee
The investment thesis behind Polychain Capital
Why protocol tokens represent a huge investment opportunity
The current state of tokensales
Why the blockchain crowdfunding campaigns will start resembling VC deal structure
His view on the state of the Bitcoin network and community

Episode links:

Polychain Capital
Beyond Bitcoin: The future of cryptocurrencies - The Signal
Bitcoin Will Never Be a Currency—It's Something Way Weirder | WIRED
The Golden Age Of Open Protocols – AVC
Blockchain Tokens and the dawn of the Decentralized Business Model
Fat Protocols | Union Square Ventures
a16z and USV invest $10m in new digital asset hedge fund
The future is a decentralized internet | TechCrunch

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/173

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With both the Bitcoin Unlimited and Segregated Witness efforts far from reaching majority support and exploding transaction fees, the debate around how to scale Bitcoin continues on. One of the key arguments against bigger blocks and Bitcoin Unlimited is that a blocksize restriction is needed to create a healthy fee market. Dr Peter Rizun has been researching the economics of transaction fees in Bitcoin extensively and joined us to discuss what dynamics affect fees and why he thinks the blocksize limit will eventually fall.

Topics covered in this episode:

Bitcoin seen through the eyes of a physicist
The dynamics that determine transaction fees in Bitcoin
How orphaning risks drive the fee market economics
The relationship between the block reward and the fee market
Why the blocksize limit will eventually fall
Why Peter supports Bitcoin Unlimited
The state of discussion between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited

Episode links:

Dr. Peter Rizun's talk at Scaling Bitcoin Montreal 2015
Dr. Peter Rizun: "A Transaction Fee Market Exists Without a Block Size Limit"
XT Nodes - Bitcoin Hashrate Distribution
Bitco.in Forum
Ledger - Peer-Reviewed Journal on Cryptocurrency and Blockchain

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/172

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Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin joined us once again to discuss the state of Ethereum and the efforts to innovate the protocol. We covered the takeaways from the DAO fork, switching to the proof-of-stake system Casper and how to think about blockchain interoperability.

Topics covered in this episode:

– Lessons from the DAO hack
– The security flaws of Proof-of-Work
– Why Proof-of-Stake will provide more security and scalability
– The state of Casper and transition timeline
– Blockchain interoperability

Episode links:

Ethereum Foundation
Ethereum R&D Roundup Valentine's Day
December Development Roundup
R3 Chain Interoperability Paper
Epicenter 58: Ethereum, Proof-of-Stake and Future of Bitcoin
Epicenter 91: Frontier Launch and Scalability

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/171

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One of the key issues with blockchain networks is the lack of interoperability. In the early days of Bitcoin, blockchain interoperability was far from people’s minds. However, as new networks continued to emerge and gain traction, the ability to move assets freely from one blockchain to another has become a critical feature.

We’re joined by Jae Kwon, CEO and Founder of Tendermint, the team which is launching the Cosmos Network. Cosmos aims to build the internet of blockchains: A global network of blockchains, connected through hubs that allow trustless token transfer. Jae joined us to discuss the Cosmos vision, the underlying Tendermint consensus algorithm and upcoming fundraiser.

Topics covered in this episode:

What Cosmos is and the problems it hopes to solve
How Tendermint and Ethereum relate to Cosmos
How Cosmos differs from other attemps to solve blockchain interoperability
Cosmos’ consensus algorithm, BFT-PoS
The role of Hubs and Zones in the Cosmos Network
Cosmos’ native asset, Atom, and its role in creating liquidity for inter-blockchain exchange
How validator nodes will be chosen
Governance in the Cosmos Network
Applications for Cosmos
The Atom fundraiser and Cosmos’ product roadmap

Episode links:

Cosmos: Internet of Blockchains
Tendermint
Epicenter 113: Tendermint - Private Modularized Blockchains
Cosmos Whitepaper

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/170

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There is no doubt that proof of work, introduced in the Bitcoin white paper, has stood the test of time as a robust and resilient Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus mechanism. However, many issues may prevent Nakamoto Consensus from securely scaling over the long term. The risk of validator centralization, network forking, block scarcity and high energy costs required to mine a block have all been extensively debated with no realistic long-term solutions to date. A new paper titled “Algorand” attempts to addresses these problems.

We’re pleased to be joined by Professor Silvio Micali, a computer scientist at MIT, who is known for his work in many of the technologies blockchains rely on today. As one of the co-inventors of zero-knowledge proofs, he has been decorated with a number of prizes and awards, including the Turing Award, which he received in 2012 for his work in cryptography.

Prof. Micali describes the concept of Algorand, an alternative approach to proof of work which offers high security guarantees while allowing the network to scale with demand. Relying only on a trivial amount of computation to validate transactions, Algorand also reduces the probability of network forks to near-zero. It uses novel mechanisms to select validators for blocks and enabling them to come to consensus on them.

Topics covered in this episode:

Professor Micali’s fascinating career in the fields of computer science and cryptography
The technical limitations of proof of work
The ideal properties for a truly decentralized, secure and scalable cryptocurrency
Algorand’s new approach to Byzantine consensus
Algorand’s strong adversarial model
How validators are randomly selected by the network
How validators are chosen and how they arrive at consensus
How Algorand guarantees a low probability of network forks
How Algorand addresses the issue of scaling and block size
Algorand’s roadmap and future plans

Episode links:

Algorand White Paper
Algorand talk by Silvo Micali on YouTube
Silvio Micali - Wikipedia

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/169

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In the last year, blockchain protocols have matured at an exciting pace. Open source projects like Ethereum, the Eris stack and Tendermint are behind much of the experimentation being conducted at leading companies. These protocols would not be where they are today if it wasn’t for the hard work of dedicated open source developers.

One of those people is Rick Dudley. An opinionated and passionate developer, Rick is involved in multiple projects. He works as a DevOps at Monax, works closely with Vlad Zamfir on implementing Casper in Ethereum, is a leading member of the Coala organization and is Founder and CEO of the startup Vulcanize. Rick gives us insider insights on Ethereum and on how the project may evolve, in particular, once Casper is implemented and when more robust, strongly typed language VMs are made available to the protocol.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Rick got involved with blockchain and Ethereum
His views on the Ethereum’s planned transition to Casper
The risks and benefits of moving to Casper
The subtle differences between Casper and Tendermint
The recent break up of the Synereo project
Greg Meredith’s work on Rchain and Rholang, and how that relates to Ethereum
Potential synergies between Zcash and Ethereum
Vulcanize and VulcanizeDB

Episode links:

Time waits for no one (Medium post)
"Method for portability of information between multiple servers patent"
Vulcanize.io
Coalition of Automated Legal Applications
Epicenter episode with Vlad Zamfir
Strong and weak typing - Wikipedia
π-calculus - Wikipedia

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/168

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After the successful Ethereum crowdfunding campaign, musician and web developer Peter Harris saw a path to creating a fair, decentralized music streaming platform. Out of that Resonate was born. Peter joined us to discuss why the dysfunctional structure of the music industry results in a bad deal for musicians and why a decentralized platform supported by blockchain technology and run as a cooperative represents a better way forward.

Topics covered in this episode:

How technology changed the ability of musician’s to make money
Why streaming platforms don’t compensate musicians fairly
The story of how Peter came to found resonate
Why Stream-to-Own is a better way to compensate artists
Why Resonate chose to build on BigchainDB
The benefits of the cooperative structure for decentralized platforms
The Resonate crowd-owning campaign

Episode links:

Resonate Website
Resonate Crowd-Owning Campaign
Resonate - Stream-to-Own
Resonate - Building a Blockchain Database
Epicenter 126: Trent McConaghy on BigchainDB
COALA IP

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/167

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Years into the controversy around how to scale Bitcoin, there have been many challengers to Bitcoin core’s dominance. After XT, Classic and others have faded, Bitcoin Unlimited has been gaining traction and emerged as plausible new way forward.

Bitcoin Unlimited wants to make the block size a parameter that is set by miners and nodes, but not fixed at a network level. They argue a natural fee market would emerge, allowing Bitcoin to rapidly scale and realizing its promise of electronic cash as well as store of value. The project is also member-driven, with democratic decisions driving its development decisions.

Core developer G. Andrew Stone and Bitcoin Unlimited President Andrew Clifford joined us for the episode.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Stone and Clifford first got involved in Bitcoin
The history of the blocksize debate and Bitcoin core alternatives
Why the Bitcoin block size should be determined by miners not developers
The natural fee market that would arise controlling the size of Unlimited blocks
How the non-profit organization behind Bitcoin Unlimited works
How a transition to Bitcoin Unlimited could look like

Episode links:

Peter Rizun: How Bitcoin Unlimited deals with large blocks
Bitcoin Unlimited Website
G. Andrew Stone: Examining Effect of Single Transaction Blocks on Network
Peter Rizun: A Transaction Fee Market Exists Without a Block Size
Bitcoin Unlimited Member Forum
Bitcoin Network Hashrate Distribution

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/166

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It’s been an eventful year in the blockchain space, for the Epicenter podcast, and its hosts. Brian, Meher and Sebastien look back on 2016 and provide a few personal updates, give their thoughts and insights on how the space evolved, and make predictions on where they feel the industry will go in the next year.

Topics covered in this episode:

Brian, Meher and Sebastien give a few updates on their personal lives and professional projects
The current state of VC funding in the blockchain space
The application of blockchain technologies in enterprise and the corporate development cycle
The current state of the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems and provide our thoughts on their respective futures
Predictions for 2017 and speculations on how the industry will continue to evolve

Episode links:

Bitcoin Venture Capital Funding
Not Just Bitcoin: The Top 7 Cryptocurrencies All Gained in 2016
Validity Labs
Stratumn Website
Tendermint
Cosmos - Internet of Blockchains
Dictator's Handbook

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/165

The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics

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Ari Juels, a Professor at Cornell Tech (Jacobs Institute) and former Chief Scientist of RSA, joins us to discuss his work two of his blockchain-related research topics: Authenticated Data Feeds for Smart Contracts and criminal smart contracts.

One of the shortcomings of decentralized smart contracts is their inability to retrieve information from the outside world. Smart contracts can’t make API calls to websites and data feeds, but rely on oracles to feed real-world information to the chain. This potentially requires a high trust in the oracle operators. Authenticated data feeds promise to solve the problem by relying on Intel’s novel SGX hardware.

We also talked about how criminals could use smart contracts to more efficiently conduct crimes such as incentivizing the theft of private keys or even soliciting real-world crimes such as murder.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ari’s background in cryptography and cryptocurrencies
The pain points with oracles as we describe them today
The idea behind Authenticated Data Feeds
The hardware and software architecture of the Authenticated Data Feed model and how hardware isolation works
How Authenticated Data Feeds could be used to create criminal smart contracts
The differents ways in which criminals could use Authenticated Data Feeds to release bounties for crimes such as private key theft or even murder
Countermeasures to fight criminal smart contracts
The Initiative For Cryptocurrencies & Contracts (IC3) and its raison d’être

Episode links:

Ari Juels' website
Town Crier: An Authenticated Data Feed for Smart Contracts (white paper)
The Ring of Gyges: Investigating the Future of Criminal Smart Contracts (white paper)
IC3 - The Initiative For Cryptocurrencies & Contracts
CCS 2016: Criminal Smart Contracts Talk
Zero Days: Stuxnet Documentary

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/164

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Roger Ver is one of the earliest Bitcoin investors and through his tireless evangelizing of the cryptocurrency became known as ‘Bitcoin Jesus’. Roger joined us to discuss Bitcoin’s incredible potential to foster liberty. We also discussed how the current stalemate about how to scale Bitcoin is threatening that potential. And, finally, the mining pool operated by his site Bitcoin.com that is supporting the Bitcoin Unlimited client.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Roger Ver became the first investor in Bitcoin startups
What the Bitcoin community was like in 2011
The appeal of Bitcoin for voluntaryists
Why the scalability stalemate is crippling Bitcoin
Bitcoin.com’s new mining pool and support for Bitcoin Unlimited
His vision for the future of Bitcoin

Episode links:

Bitcoin.com
Roger Ver Uncut Video
Bitcoin Unlimited
BLOCKTRAIL | Bitcoin API and Block Explorer
Hashrate Distribution Mining Pools & Clients
BLOCKTRAIL | Bitcoin API and Block Explorer
Roger Ver: TIme to End the Block-Size Blockade
Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/163

Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money

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Few crypto projects have gotten as much attention and caused as much controversy as Steem. The blockchain-based social media platform launched early this year and managed to gain real user traction building up a vibrant community of contributors. The Steem token quickly entered bubble territory reaching a market cap of almost $400m and losing 90% of its value since.

Steem Co-Founder and CEO Ned Scott joined us to discuss the ambition of the project and its short tumultous history. We also discussed some of the accusations against Steem and its unorthodox launch.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Steem was launched out of the BitShares community
The different components and tokens of the Steem system
How Steem rewards content contributors
The controversial Steem launch and criticisms of the project
Why Steem transitioned from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake
The potential disbalance of power due to the Steem distribution
How Steem managed to build a vibrant user community

Episode links:

Steem Website
Steemit.com
Why Every Blockchain Needs a Constitution
Charlie Shrem Article on Steem Launch
The History of Steem Launch in Words of Dan Larimer
Bitcoin Talk Thread on Steem Launch
Bitcoin Stackexchange: What is Steem?

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/162

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In their relatively short lifespan, blockchain technologies have already undergone significant milestones. Bitcoin’s blockchain, often referred to as Blockchain 1.0, features a simple database ledger that records transactions in a chronological order and represents the state of the network to participants. Ethereum, or Blockchain 2.0, introduced the notion of smart contracts. Microsoft’s Bletchley Project introduces a new modular architecture which might mark a new milestone for blockchain technologies.

Marley Gray, Principal Program Manager Blockchain at Microsoft, joins us to talk about Microsoft’s approach to blockchain architecture. With enterprise in mind, Bletchley introduces the concept of “Cryptlets”, the core building blocks for introducing a secure middleware tier into blockchain application infrastructure. These computational units, running off-chain, on secure trusted container enclave hardware, could provide trusted data to on-chain smart contract logic.

Topics covered in this episode:

Marley’s background and experience at Microsoft
Why Microsoft is aggressively pursuing blockchain technologies (compared to other large tech companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc)
Microsoft’s Azure Blockchain-as-a-Service offering
Project Bletchley, its goals and the problems it is trying to address
The primary use cases in which Bletchley may provide value
How Bletchley addresses the issue of deploying consortium style blockchains
What are Cryptlets and how do they relate to Bletchley
How Cryptlets are different from Oracles
How Cryptlets could provide data to Ethereum-style smart contracts

Episode links:

Bletchley Whitepaper
Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) | Microsoft Azure

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/161

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As a lead developer of the Apache webserver and founder of the Apache Software Foundation, Brian Behlendorf has played a central role in building internet architecture. Recently, he became Executive Director of the Hyperledger Project that aims to build foundational blockchain technology in an open-source, collaborative way.

Topics covered in this episode:

Brian’s role in the development of the Apache server and Apache Software Foundation
The flaws in how blockchain software is currently being developed
Why blockchain needs a foundation to steer the development of its foundational technology
The key lessons from the Apache Software Foundation that inform Hyperledger’s approach
Hyperledger’s membership and organizational structure
The role of software licenses and why he favors Apache

Episode links:

Hyperledger Website
Brian Behlendorf's Wikipedia page
Brian Behlendorf's Website
Blockchain Meetup Berlin Hyperledger Talk

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/160

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Stratumn CEO Richard Caetano and Head of Research Anuj das Gupta joined us to discuss their work to bring security and integrity to processes. We covered the philosophy behind the company and why they use cryptography and other technologies coming out of the crypto space while shunning a classical blockchain design.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Paris-based startup Stratumn was founded
Why Stratumn’s thinking revolves around processes
How Proof-of-Process secures the who, what, where, when and why of each step of a process
How Stratumn uses Zero Knowledge Proofs to protect privacy
The connection between Proof-of-Process and blockchain protocols
Why using cryptography to secure processes didn’t gain traction earlier but does so today

Episode links:

Stratumn Website
Proof-of-Process white paper
Use case book
Chainscript
Stratumn Blog

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/159

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System scalability and extensibility of system features are two central problems around which research in the cryptocurrency / blockchain industry has centered. For example, the Blockstream sidechains project foresaw hundreds of blockchains coordinating together to form an ‘Internet of Chains’ delivering extensibility to the Bitcoin system.

Recently, Dr. Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum and Parity, put forth Polkadot, a technical vision to achieve the similar end-goals using different system architecture. Polkadot could enable individual blockchain networks to share security and communications infrastructure with other blockchain networks, forming in effect an ‘Internet of Blockchain networks’.

Melonport, a team based out of Zurich, has taken up the challenge of deploying the Polkadot network and also building decentralized asset management software on the same network. In this episode we converse with Mona El Isa and Reto Trinkler, co-founders of Melonport, in order to discover more about the overall vision.

Topics covered in this episode:

Melonport, a team based out of Zurich, has taken up the challenge of deploying the Polkadot network and also building decentralized asset management software on the same network. In this episode we converse with Mona El Isa and Reto Trinkler, co-founders of Melonport, in order to discover more about the overall vision.
Description of problem(s) Polkadot seeks to resolve
Analogous design problems from technological history
Overview of Polkadot network
Overview of Melonport asset management software
How Melonport and Polkadot connect with each other
Next steps for the team

Episode links:

Melonport website
Melonport white paper
melonproject on GitHub
Melonport explainer video
Polkadot Network
Polkadot white paper
Parity and Melonport joint press release

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/158

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String Labs founders Tom Ding and Dominic Williams joined us to discuss their project DFINITY, a next-generation blockchain network. Through leveraging technological advances, DFINITY aims to deliver an infinitely scalable decentralized cloud that will be able to power applications from decentralized search to supply chain applications. We covered DFINITY’s approach to scalability, interoperability, consensus as well as their sophisticated approach to governance: The Blockchain Nervous System.

Topics covered in this episode:

Tom and Dominic ended up founding String Labs
The DFINITY project and objective of an infinitely scalable decentralized cloud
How consensus works in DFINITY
Governance in DFINITY through the Blockchain Nervous System
Threshold Relay signatures and other new technologies that are part of DFINITY
The importance and mechanics of public/private blockchain interoperability
DFINITY’s business model

Episode links:

String Technology
DFINITY Shanghai Talk
DFINITY Shanghai Presentation Slides
Introducing Random Beacons Using Threshold Relay Chains
Random Beacons in Decentralized Networks

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/157

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As is the case with most luxury goods, the diamond industry is faced with the issues of theft, fraud, and counterfeiting. Illegal activity is present at every level of the supply chain, which collectively costs the industry and its insurers hundreds of millions of dollars each year. In recent years, international treaties and regulation have been put in place in an attempt to combat illegal activity, but criminals are most often a step ahead.

Leanne Kemp, CEO of Everledger, joins us to explain how her company is using advanced geological techniques, and blockchains, to bring more traceability to the diamond industry. Everledger, whose clients include many of the largest insurance companies, builds software which allows for a diamond’s unique characteristics to be hashed and notarized in the blockchain. Hence, a stone’s provenance, and the trail of ownership can be traced, therefore limiting the opportunities for fraud and making it difficult for stolen diamonds to re-enter the market.

Topics covered in this episode:

Leanne’s background as a technologist
A broad overview of the diamond industry
A look at the diamond supply chain
What roles banks and insurance companies play in the supply chain
How diamonds are uniquely fingerprinted
The Kimberly process and other regulations
Everledger’s technology stack and business model
Other sectors which can also benefit from increased traceability

Episode links:

Everledger
Kimberley Process

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/156

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Attracting over 70 of the world’s biggest financial institutions to its consortium in just over a year, R3 has accomplished a formidable task. Aiming to rethink the fabric of the financial system, they first conducted experiments testing blockchain platforms for their member and last year began developing their own distributed ledger platform: Corda.

The effort to build Corda was lead by R3 CTO Richard Brown and the former Bitcoin developer and R3 lead architect Mike Hearn. In a wide-ranging discussion, we covered the vision of the project and why it represents a radical departure from existing blockchain platforms.

Topics covered in this episode:

The origin story of R3
Why existing blockchain designs didn’t meet their needs
How the R3 team lead a design effort to develop a new platform from scratch
The business problem Corda is aiming to solve
The components of Corda’s architecture
How Corda handles privacy
Notaries and preventing double spends
Open sourcing Corda and the plan to join Hyperledger

Episode links:

R3 Corda: What Makes it Different
Introducing R3 Corda: A Distributed Ledger for Financial Services
Corda: An Introduction [PDF]
R3 Website
E151 - Ian Grigg: Ricardian Contracts and Digital Assets Prehistory
Smart Contract Templates: Foundations, Design Landscape & Research Directions

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/155

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As content becomes more and more abundant and immediately available at our fingertips, our limited attention is a barrier for those whose business it is to attract and harness it. In this context, large (social) media companies understand that attention is a scarce commodity, and, as has been demonstrated, those who control attention wield enormous power over our society.

We’re joined by Greg Meredith, CTO of Synereo, to talk about how this new Blockchain platform rebuild the attention economy. In a sense, Synereo is to attention, what Bitcoin is to money, in effect, removing intermediaries from the transaction between those who have attention, and those who wish to attract it. Greg, also gives his insights on how functional programming languages could allow for verifiable computational smart contracts.

Topics covered in this episode:

Greg’s background as a mathematician and his work on Microsoft’s BizTalk Process Orchestration
How he transitioned into the crypto-currency space
What is Synereo and what the project is trying to achieve
Greg’s thoughts on the attention economy and how it is fundamentally broken
Synereo’s technology stack
How Vlad Zamfir’s Casper consensus algorithm influenced Synereo
Rholang, Synereo’s functional smart-contracting language
Synereo’s economic model and product roadmap

Episode links:

Synereo
Synereo White Paper
Logic as a distributive law
Quit social media by Dr. Cal Newport
Deep Work by Dr. Cal Newport

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/154

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

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A topic which is often discussed is the limited use of Ethereum applications without stable cryptocurrencies. Prediction markets are a prime example of this. When one makes a prediction using Ether, he or she is in fact entering into to speculations: one being the outcome of the actual prediction, the other being the price of Ether when the prediction resolves. Projects like Maker DAO try to solve the problem by developing complex systems to ensure that a blockchain token keeps its value in sync with fiat currencies. But Decentralized Capital is taking a different approach by issuing fiat-pegged tokens on Ethereum that are backed by bank deposits. CEO Alex Wearn joined us to explain their approach to providing a fundamental piece of Ethereum infrastructure.

Topics covered in this episode:

The problem Decentralized Capital is trying to solve
What the architecture of Decentralized Capital looks like
The relationship between Crypto Capital and Decentralized Capital
Why the ability of freezing and confiscating assets is required
Some of the best use cases for Decentralized Capital
The regulatory environment of Decentralized Capital
The Decentralized Capital business model

Episode links:

Decentralized Capital Website
Decentralized Capital is Live article
Introducing Decentralized Capital Video
Decentralized Capital and Dapp Integration
Compliant Decentralized Exchange IDEX
Decentralized Capital's DVIP Memberships

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/153

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In 2012, a year after discovering Bitcoin in Argentina, Dutch economist Tuur Demeester became one of the first people to advocate investing in Bitcoin to a mainstream audience. Tuur joined us to discuss his thesis for investing in Bitcoin and how it has evolved over time. We also talked about the road ahead and how other cryptocurrencies and Ethereum compare as investment opportunities.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Tuur discovered Bitcoin in Argentina in 2011
The case for investing in Bitcoin
The current state of Bitcoin and metrics he looks at
Projections for the Bitcoin price
How Bitcoin compares to gold
The current state of the financial markets

Episode links:

How to Position for the Rally in Bitcoin Report
Why I'm Short Ethereum (and long Bitcoin)
Why Bitcoin is the Petroleum of Our Time
Bitcoin - Why It Now Belongs in Every Porfolio
Adamant Research Podcast on Soundcloud
Tuur Demeester Twitter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/152

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Before 2013 few people paid attention to Bitcoin and blockchain, yet even back in the 1990s a vibrant group of prioneers pursued the vision of financial cryptography and digital cash. One of these was financial cryptographer and software developer Ian Grigg, who today works as an architecture consultant for R3.

Grigg joined us for a discussion of the history of the digital cash, Bitcoin and his work on Ricardian Contracts, which foreshadowed today’s smart contracts.

Topics covered in this episode:

The origin story of financial cryptography
DigiCash and the startup scene around it in the 1990s
Ricardian Contracts and why contracts are central to digital assets
Ricardian Contracts vs blockchain

Episode links:

Ricardian Contract Paper
Financial Cryptography Website
Financial Cryptography in 7 Layers
R3CEV
Brown, Carlyle, Grigg & Hearn: Corda - An Introduction

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/151

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Last week the biggest blockchain-focused developer conference took place in Shanghai, China: Ethereum’s DevCon 2. Epicenter show host Meher Roy was at the conference and brought back his impressions and insights for a comprehensive discussion of the current state of Ethereum projects and the Ethereum community.

Topics covered in this episode:

What Ethereum’s developer conference DevCon 2 was like
The big change in going from concepts to alpha version over the last year
The continued lack of sustainable business models in Ethereum
The lack of interest by Venture Capitalists and the big tech companies in Ethereum and blockchain technology
The current state and incentive problems of crowdsales
Three areas of focus in Ethereum: Scalability, Privacy and Governance
The search for the next protocol

Episode links:

Ethereum Foundation Website
Ethereum YouTube Channel
Insanity and Brilliance at Ethereum's Developer Conference
Melonport: Decentralized Asset Management on Ethereum
Golem: Worldwide Supercomputer
Metamask: Ethereum Browser Extension
Cosmos Whitepaper

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/150

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That blockchains represents a fundamental technological revolution has become widely accepted. What is still more nebulous, but could turn out just as disruptive is how smart contracts while transform the legal system and our understanding of what contracts are and how they work.

Legal researcher Lukas Abegg who is currently finishing his PhD on copyright issues around 3d printing and has been researching smart contracts as well joined us to discuss the question whether code is law and what blockchain can learn form 3d printing.

Topics covered in this episode:

The copyright questions around 3d printing
How legal issues around 3d printing are like issues around smart contracts
How information theory can help us conceptualize smart contracts
The thesis of Lessig’s book ‘Code is Law’
The case for law regulating code
Why Alternative Dispute Resolution has big potential for blockchain applications

Episode links:

Code is Law? Not Quite Yet
Lessig's Code
Lawrence Lessig Talk 'Thinking Through Law and Code'
EB125 - Florian Glatz A Legal Framework for DAOs

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/149

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We’re joined by Kyle Torpey, a freelance writer, and journalist who writes for a number of publications in the blockchain space including Bitcoin Magazine, Coin Journal, and others. Know for his well-written articles and in-depth reporting on the important topics affecting Bitcoin today, Kyle provides his point of view on the scalability debate and gives an update on the recent and upcoming changes to the bitcoin protocol.

Topics covered in this episode:

An update on the scalability debate
The outcome of the recent Hong Kong scalability workshop and code dev meeting in California
The Bitcoin core development process
The recent release of Bitcoin Code 0.13.0
The inclusion of Segregated Witness and what it enables
Upcoming features in the roadmap
Takeaways from the Ethereum hard fork
Division in the Bitcoin community
The evolution of the Bitcoin ecosystem in the last 2 years
Potential mainstream applications for Bitcoin

Episode links:

The Five Most Useful Properties of Bitcoin
When Should Developers Turn to Bitcoin?
Darknet Customers Are Demanding Bitcoin Alternative Monero
The Power of Schnorr: The Signature Algorithm to Increase Bitcoin's Scale and Privacy
BIP-47 vs BIP-75: How Will Bitcoin Wallets Maintain Privacy While Becoming Easier to Use?

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/148

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With academic research on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies still in its infancy, Sarah Meiklejohn’s track record of publications in the area stands out. The UCL computer science professor has explored topics ranging from anonymity in Bitcoin to how a central bank could go about issuing a cryptocurrency.

Topics covered in this episode:

What techniques can be used to deanonymize Bitcoin users
How Bitcoin’s usage evolved over time
Whether privacy-enhancing overlays in Bitcoin currently work
What a cryptocurrency issued by a central bank could look like
The architecture of RSCoin

Episode links:

Sarah Meiklejohn UCL Website
Meiklejohn & Orlandi (2015): Privacy-Enhancing Overlays in Bitcoin
Danezis & Meiklejohn (2016): Centrally Banked Cryptocurrencies
Meiklejohn et al (2016): A Fistful of Bitcoins
EB70 - Michael Gronager: Chainalysis
EB83 - David Andolfatto: Fedcoins and Cryptocurrencies Issued by Central Banks

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/147

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In the last 20 years, content publishing platforms have proliferated to an almost insane number. There are countless places where people and companies can post articles, blogs, videos, photos, live content and so on. Despite this diverse offering, little innovation has happened in monetizing content, which still mostly remains ad-based.

We’re joined by Ryan X. Charles, Bitcoin Developer and Founder of Yours. Yours would like to address the monetization problem by allowing content producers to earnBitcoin when they create good content. Yours is an in-browser application which implements a Bitcoin wallet and enables micro-transactions through their own implementation of the Lightning Network. Content Creators are paid by Curators who attribute value to the content. Curators are themselves rewarded when content they find valuable goes viral.

Topics discussed in this episode:

Ryan’s background as the Lead Developer of BitCore, and his experience at BitGo and Reddit
What is Yours and what types of applications it enables
The technical components of Yours
The Yours application and how users post and access content
Why he chose to build Yours on bitcoin
How micropayments are implemented in Yours
How Yours addresses the issue of copyright infringement
What challenges Yours may face in order to reach critical mass

Episode links:

Yours website
Yours client

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/146

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One of the sectors which is ripe for disruption is the real estate industry. In the US for instance, a handful of historic and very powerful players operate what is known as MLS, or Multiple Listing Services, and hold unofficial monopolies on residential and commercial real estate listings. Brokers, who depend on these listing services to sell properties, agree that their incumbent positions have created a situation where fees have continued to rise, while little to no added value has been added for their users.

Stephen King and Russel McLernon join us to explain RexMLS, a decentralized Multiple Listing Service built on Ethereum and IPFS. Currently in beta, the DApp would allow brokers to list properties at a very low cost, and be accessible to international markets, something which is lacking in the current model.

Topics covered in this episode:

The basics of MLS or Multiple Listing Services
What is RexMLS and the problems it is trying to address
The benefits of a decentralized MLS
The different technical components of RexMLS
Why they chose Ethereum and IPFS
The user experience of RexMLS
The product’s roll-out phases
How users are incentivized to participate in the system
The RexDex token exchange and the token injection model
RexMLS’s governance model

Episode links:

RexMLS Website
RexMLS Beta
RexMLS White Paper

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/145

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From BitShares to his central role during the inception of Ethereum Charles Hoskinson has continually influenced key projects in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. After departing the Ethereum project in 2014, he has recently stepped back into the limelight by pledging support and resources to turn the fledgling Ethereum fork ETC into a viable project.

Charles joined us together with Alex Chepurnoy, a developer at his company IOHK. Besides Ethereum Classic, we talked about IOHK and Scorex, IOHK’s modular blockchain framework project that Alex Chepurnoy has been leading.

Topics covered in this episode:

The vision and activities of IOHK
Scorex: A Modular Blockchain Framework
Conflicts of vision that lead to Charles’ departure as original CEO of Ethereum in 2014
Why the hard fork broken Ethereum’s social contract
Why ETC should differentiate and find its own path
The role governance could play in ETC’s future

Episode links:

IOHK Scorex
IOHK - Input Output Hong Kong Website
Charles Hoskinson: Hoskus Parvum Opus: A Brief Sojourn Back to Ethereum
Ethereum Classic: keep censorship-resistant Ethereum going
ETC Declaration of Independence
Let's Talk Bitcoin #304 Immutability vs Consensus Debate

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/144

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Prediction markets are fascinating financial instruments which have proven to be accurate at making predictions on things like the outcome of elections, geopolitical events and sporting events. But in our heavily regulated financial world, they are the subject of much controversy. In 2013 for instance, a well-known US prediction market, Intrade, was forced to shut down following a civil suit filed by the CFTC. While some people consider prediction markets to be a useful tool for society, others consider them to be a form of gambling, which is one of the reasons why they have been met with such resistance in certain countries. A purely decentralized prediction market would operate outside the scope of the regulated financial world and be resistant to censorship and outside intervention.

We’re joined by Joey Krug, Co-Founder and Core Developer at Augur, a decentralized prediction market built on Ethreum. The project, which was initially meant to be a Bitcoin sidechain, has ported to Ethereum and is currently in beta on the Testnet. Users can forecast real-world events, such as the outcome of the US election, and earn profits if they are accurate in their predictions. Reporting on events is crowdsourced using a consensus-based system similar to proof-of-stake.

Topics covered in this episode:

How prediction markets work
The controversy around prediction markets
The Augur project and what it is trying to achieve
The evolution of Augur
The different components of Augur
Reporting on events and the reputation token
Security, attack vectors and how they can be mitigated
Augur’s business model
The ethical aspects of prediction markets
Augur’s structure and governance

Episode links:

Augur
Augur Git Repo
Augur Docs
EB139 – Martin Köppelmann: Gnosis – The Ethereum Prediction Market
EB97 – Paul Sztorc: Truthcoin & Prediction Markets, From Information-Overload To Crowd Intelligence
EB98 – Robin Hanson: Futarchy, Prediction Markets And The Challenge Of Disruptive Technology
EB141 – Ralph Merkle: Revolutionizing Democracy Using DAOs

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/143

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Blockchain smart contracts are self-executing contracts composed of computer code. These programs, which are executed by the entirety of the network, enforce the rules described within the code. Effectively, in this realm, code is law. And as we’ve seen recently, altering the outcome of that code after it has been deloyed, should we later realize that it was flawed or did not produce an intended result, can be messy. In addition, there are instances where human intervention can be necessary or even desirable. Take a mortgage agreement for example. Should a smart contract be entrusted with the responsibility of making a decision when the borrower can no longer make his payments? In cases such as this, subjective human intervention is be necessary.

Scot Farrell and Claire Warren, lawyers at the global law firm King & Wood Mallesons, think that humans should not be automated out of every process. While code is logical and predictable, it cannot act reasonably or take into account certain unforeseen events. They have proposed DnA contracts (Digital and Analog), where automation can occur when absolute automation is possible, but where humans may intervene at the edges and provide input when needed.

Topics covered in this episode:

What issues DnA contracts are trying to address
The basic concepts behind DnA contrats
The scenarios where DnA contracts may be valuable
Examples of DnA contracts applied to interest rate swaps and mortgages
How DnA contracts could be integrated with blockchain technologies
The impact of DnA contracts on legal services

Episode links:

How to use humans to make “smart contracts” truly smart
DnA Contracts proposal on GitHub

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/142

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Topics covered in this episode:

Merkle proofs, Merkle Roots and his early forays into cryptography
Blockchains as living organisms
Why DAOs will be subject to a Darwinian evolutionary process
Why voting is flawed and we need new governance methods to save democracy
The concept of a DAO democracy
How prediction markets and futarchy would help govern a DAO democracy

Episode links:

Ralph Merkle DAO Democracy Paper [PDF]
Ralph Merkle's Homepage
Ralph Merkle's Wikipedia page
EB98 - Robin Hanson: Futarchy, Prediction Markets
Tim Urban: Why Cryonics Makes Sense
Alcor - Life Extension Foundation

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/141

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Exchanges are often criticized as a central point of failure of the cryptocurrency space. This isn’t without justification as, in recent years, we have seen a number of exchanges get hacked, robbed, or embezzled by their founders, which is far from insignificant. One proposed alternative are decentralized exchanges that would allow people make peer-to-peer trades using sophisticated smart contracts. However, there remains the fundamental challenge of interfacing with the legacy banking system.

Manfred Karrer joins us for a lengthy discussion on Bitsquare, a decentralized cryptocyrrency exchange which supports most fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies. Built to be a decentralized equivalent of LocalBitcoins, the Bitsquare client, which connects to the peer-to-peer network, uses Tor by default, which makes it almost completely anonymous. There are also a number of safeguards in place to eliminate the potential for fraud and theft, as well as an arbitration system to resolve disputes between traders.

Topics covered in this episode:

The motivation behind Bitsquare
The Bitsquare client and user experience
A walkthrough of a typical trade
The mechanics of the order book
The fiat currency transfer mechanism
The current and future arbitration process
Manfred’s thoughts on DAOs
Bitsquare’s product roadmap

Episode links:

Bitsquare Website
Bitsquare Whitepaper
Risk Analysis
Arbitration System
Github Repo

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/140

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Few things arouse among free market believers and enthusiasts of decentralization as prediction markets do. By allowing people to bet on any range of outcomes they promise more efficient markets and better information. Few people have worked with as much dedication on making the promise of prediction markets a reality as Martin Köppelmann.

After founding the Bitcoin prediction market Fairlay, he turned to Ethereum and started the Ethereum-based prediction market Gnosis. We discussed his views on the DAO heist, differences between Fairlay and Gnosis and their upcoming tokensale.

Topics covered in this episode:

How the DAO heist happened and what we should learn from it
The Bitcoin prediction market Fairlay
From Fairlay to Gnosis: Building a prediction market on Ethereum
The Gnosis architecture
Gnosis’ planned crowdsale and DAO
Gnosis business model and what will determine the value of the tokens
The difference between Gnosis and Augur

Episode links:

Gnosis Website
Gnosis Forum
Fairlay
7 Reasons to Make a Prediction
The Big TheDAO Heist FAQ - Part 1
The Big TheDAO Heist FAQ - Part 2
EB98 - Robin Hanson: Futarchy and Prediction Markets episode

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/139

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Security researcher and RSK co-founder Sergio Lerner joined us to discuss RSK (also Rootstock), the project to launch a turing-complete smart contract sidechain to Bitcoin. We talked about how he got into the industry, spending countless days analyzing Bitcoin for vulnerabilities and finding a few along the way. And, of course, RSK, the ambitious project to strenghten the Bitcoin ecosystem through adding smart contract capabilities.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Sergio initially got involved in the Bitcoin space
His early work on turing-complete cryptocurrencies going back to 2012
Why financial inclusion is the most important problem to solve
Merged mining and RSK’s security model
How RSK compares to Ethereum
RSK’s business model

Episode links:

Rootstock (RSK) website
Drivechain BIP Proposal

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/138

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With recent news surrounding The DOA and the Brexit vote causing a stir in the blockchain world and beyond, it seems like a regulatory update is due. So we called up our favorite regulatory affairs specialist Siân Jones to enlighten us on some of the recent developments in Bitcoin and blockchain regulation.

Topics covered in this episode:

The Brexit and it’s potential impacts on the Blockchain and Fintech space in the UK
The Bank of England opening its doors to more than a thousand financial institution and payment service providers
Some of the initiatives by the UK government to potentially adopt blockchain technologies
The recent European Parliament plenary sitting on virtual currencies and the Distributed Ledger Technology Task Force
An update on BitLicense and its impacts a year and a half after being adopted in New York
The potential regulatory implications of DAOs

Episode links:

European Digital Currency & Blockchain Technology Forum
Coinsult

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/137

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The lack of an explicit governance mechanism has created deep problems for Bitcoin. Ethereum, with the DAO-related soft/hard-fork discussions, may face similar challenges ahead. Yet, already in 2014 Arthur Breitman quietly started working on cryptocurrency network Tezos that has an explicit mechanism to let coinholders vote on protocol upgrades.

Our discussion with Breitman centered around how explicit governance could lead to a more secure and evolutionary protocol. We also discussed Tezos’ approach to smart contract that tries to prevent bug-riddled and insecure smart contracts such as the DAO which has thrown Ethereum into a deep crisis.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why stakeholders voting on forks can prevent consensus attacks
The mechanics of Tezos’ governance
How an upgrade mechanism could allow Tezos to rapidly and radically evolve
Why the programming language in which smart contracts are written is crucial for security
Why a functional language that allows formal proofs such as OCaml is more suited for smart contracts than Ethereum’s solidity
The road ahead for Tezos

Episode links:

Tezos website
Tezos position paper [PDF]
Tezos whitepaper [PDF]

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/136

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For many the promise of decentralized applications and DAOs is to be beyond the limitations and rigidity of the existing legal system. There is no question that where DAOs can roam freely, innovation can accelerate. But can the law, courts and regulations be left behind so easily?

Lawyer Stephen Palley joined us to discuss what happens when the new and old worlds collide and how courts will look at what goes on in the land of DAOs and DApps.

Topics covered in this episode:

Whether trust is reduced, removed or just shifted elsewhere in blockchain systems
If creating decentralized applications could create liability risks
Why courts will impose a legal structure if a formal one doesn’t exist
The concept of jurisdiction and how it could affect DAOs
Why one should be careful with saying a DAO provides insurance

Episode links:

How to Sue A DAO
Blockchain Jurisdiction
Smart Contracts and Smart Lawsuits
Blockchain and the First Law of Lawmodynamics
Smart Contracts, Performance and Trust
DAO Insurance Company, Inc
All of Stephen Palley's LinkedIn Posts
EB125 Florian Glatz: Defining a Legal Framework for DAOs
EB132 Stephan Tual: A Universal Sharing Network and a $150m DAO

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/135

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Raising $150m+ through its toke sale, ‘The DAO’ has become the most notable decentralized application to date. The ambitious goal of the project is to form an decentralized organizations that efficiently makes investment decisions and generates a return for the token holders.

Computer Science professor Emin Gün Sirer and researcher Vlad Zamfir joined us to discuss the various security issues with the daring project and why they’ve called for a temporary moratorium on funding proposals.

Topics covered in this episode:

How the DAO works
What the role of the curators is
What splits are and how they became a way to withdraw funds
Why the DAO has a bias towards approving proposals
How attackers could ‘stalk’ token holders when withdrawing their funds
How the DAO can be upgraded

Episode links:

A Call for a Temporary Moratorium on The DAO Blog Post
A Call for a Temporary Moratorium on The DAO Full Paper PDF
EB132 – Stephan Tual: Building A Universal Sharing Network On Ethereum And A $150M DAO
Understanding the DAO Accounting
The DAO website
Meher's 'split DAO' reward token attack

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/134

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One of the problems often cited when talking about cryptocurrencies is their level of volatility compared to traditional fiat currencies. This makes most cryptocurrencies a poor instrument for storing value, and introduces complexities when making purchases in fiat amounts. Stable cryptocurrencies include mechanisms which allow them to stay pegged to fiat currencies like the US Dollar or Euro. They present a number of advantages, and, in addition to taking the headache out of making purchases, can be used by cryptocurrency traders who need a stable unit of account for hedging their assets.

We talk to brothers Pascal and Julien Hamonic, Core Members of the Nu team about the NuBit stable cryptocurrency. Similarly to the mechanisms that keep our body temperature stable, NuBits relies upon the introduction of new coins into circulation when demand increases, and for coins to be taken out of circulation when demand drops. Shareholders (NuShareholder) vote on these measures as the network relies on custodians who bring liquidity into the market in exchange for dividends, and on speculators who “”park”” coins in exchange for potential returns when demand increases again.

Topics covered in this episode:

What is NuBits and what is the goal it is trying to achieve
The different components of Nu (NuBits, NuShares)
The economic mechanisms behind the $1.00 USD peg
Who are the different participants in the network (NuBits users, NuShareholders, custodians)
The important role of custodians in providing liquidity to the network
The consensus model used in Nu
The initial allocation of NuBits and NuShares
The governance mechanisms in Nu

Episode links:

Nubits
NuBits Whitepaper

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/133

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In this episode we welcome back Stephan Tual, the COO of Slock.It, a German startup working at the intersection of the Internet of Things and the Ethereum blockchain. Slock.It’s small team also wrote the smart contracts that power ‘The DAO’, a decentralized capital management entity that recently raised north of $160 million for investing into Ethereum based projects. ‘The DAO’ has been featured in many mainstream news outlets, such as New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Economist.

The interview explores the vision, motivation and challenges behind both ‘The DAO’ and Slock.It.

Topics covered in this episode:

Stephan’s background and role as CCO at Ethereum Foundation.
What is ‘The DAO’ and how it relates to Slock.It.
DAOlink and the business opportunity of enabling interactions between DAOs and traditional firms.
Opportunities, assumptions and challenges for ‘The DAO’.
Vision and products of Slock It – Univeral Sharing Network and the Ethereum computer.

Episode links:

Slock It Website
The DAO
The DAO on Github
The DAO Whitepaper
Why I’ve Resigned as a Curator of the DAO
Is The DAO going to be DOA?

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/132

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One of the foundational problems in payment networks is that they are mostly uninteroperable. This problem exists at all levels, from consumer payment solutions like PayPal, to national and multi-national banks. This complexity is brought on by the proprietary nature of payment networks, and moving value from one to another requires a negotiation between parties on which common payment network to use in a transaction. We saw similar problems in the early days of the Internet, assembled around protocols which allow for data to be routed and move between networks in a standardized way.

We’re joined by Stefan Thomas and Evan Schwartz, co-creators of Interledger. This neutral protocol would bring the same level of interoperability we know take for granted around the flow of data, to payments, thus allowing money to move freely across networks. A market maker, who holds accounts in both networks, would receive funds in escrow from a sender, and move funds to an escrow account with the receiver, getting paid by the sender when he shows the proof the funds were delivered to the receiver.

Topics covered in this episode:

What is Interledger and what problem is it trying to solve
Interledger’s architecture
How connectors and routing works, and how we may compare it to the way data flows on the Internet
Cryptographic Escrow and its role in Interledger
Requirements for payment solutions to become Interledger compatible
Interledger’s community group at the W3C
How Interledger applies to micropayments
Ripple’s role in Interledger

Episode links:

Interledger
Interledger Whitepaper
Interledger + WebTorrent - Demo by Evan Schwartz
Interledger Architecture
Interledger Github
Interledter Slideshare
Ripple Lab
Episode 92 with Stefan Thomas

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/131

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In the short history of the Bitcoin industry, there has been an impressive amount of high profile hacks, ranging from a few hundred thousand to many millions of dollars. In all of these, customers, Bitcoin users, where robbed of their funds because poor security policies, negligence, incompetence, or plain old scamming. Recently, the cryptocurrency conversion service ShapeShift fell victim to a hack in which over $200,000 of company funds were stolen, initially by an employee, and then by a hacker to whom this employee had sold sensitive company information. Luckily, no customers lost any money as ShapeShift does not hold any funds on behalf of users.

We talked to ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees who walks us through this captivating ordeal, which sounds like it could be the plot of a movie. He speaks about how the company is trying to recover and what he has learned from this unfortunate event.

Topics covered in this episode:

How the ShapeShift hack went down
What steps the company has taken to avoid this from happening again
What he learned from the hack
ShapeShift’s long-term vision as a company and product
Ethereum’s role in their recent growth
His history as an entrepreneur in the Bitcoin space
His views on libertarianism and the long-term impact of Bitcoin on that movement

Episode links:

Looting of the Fox: The Story of Sabotage at ShapeShift
Bitcoin.com podcast - Details of the Shapeshift.io Hack
The Slaying of Bearwhale
Erik's Blog

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/130

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As the blockchain field continues evolving rapidly, Sebastien, Meher and Brian take some time to discuss the current environment and the longer term implications of blockchains. We discussed how smart contracts could affect the pace of innovation and the competitiveness of industries. We also talked about the role DAOs will play and what we can take away from the current DAO crowdsale and its connection with Slock.it.

Topics covered in this episode:

How companies running on smart contracts could impact the pace and cost of innovation
A smart contract-based insurance example
Why smart contracts and blockchains will challenge our understanding of organizations
The current state of DAOs
Slock.it and the DAO crowdsale

Episode links:

Maciej Olpinski's Blog
Slock.it
The DAO
EB108 - The Big Chain Powwow

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/129

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When Jed McCaleb discovered Bitcoin, there didn’t even exist an online marketplace to trade the cryptocurrency yet. The experienced founder who had earlier started file sharing site eDonkey, acted fast and started the first Bitcoin exchange MtGox which he later sold to now-infamous Mark Karpeles. Jed later founded the pioneering Ripple project before leaving to start Stellar.

We discussed his journey through the industry and the ambitious plans Stellar has to create an open financial system that will give access to financial services to a much broader spectrum of humanity.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jed’s early involvement in the industry and founding of MtGox and subsequently Ripple
Why Jed left Ripple and started Stellar
How Ripple and Stellar differ
The Stellar Consensus Protocol
Why the organization behind Stellar is a non-profit foundation
Stellar’s focus on developing markets and Nigeria in particular
The role and distribution of Stellar’s currency Lumen

Episode links:

Stellar Website
Stellar Consensus Protocol
Bitcoin-Lumen Giveaway
Stellar Graphic Novel
Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/128

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We were joined by repeat guest Anthony di Iorio, a definite contender for having (co-)founded the most projects in the blockchain space including Ethereum, Kryptokit, Decentral and Jaxx. We got an update on the vibrant Toronto blockchain scene and Decentral. The main discussion revolved around the new wallet Jaxx that is simultaneously a Bitcoin and Ethereum wallet and takes a significant step towards a more unified and accessible cryptocurrency experience. Finally, we discussed his recent appointment as Chief Digital Officer at the Toronto Stock Exchange / TMX Group and the upcoming trade show Blockchain World Expo.

Topics covered in this episode:

Update on Decentral and Kryptokit
How the Jaxx wallet
Unique UI challenges of Ethereum wallets
The role of community in bringing innovation to corporates
His role as Chief Digital Officer at the TMX Group
The upcoming Blockchain World Expo in Toronto

Episode links:

Jaxx Bitcoin and Ethereum wallet
Decentral
Decentral.tv
Blockchain World Expo

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/127

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One of the major drawbacks of Bitcoin is its low transaction throughput. Maxing out only a handful of operations per second, there have been many proposals to scale it up so that it can compete with existing distributed database technologies. As the blockchain’s demand continues to increase, it’s unclear if the Bitcoin protocol will ever be able to handle thousands, if not millions of transactions per second. BigchainDB is taking a different approach. Rather than trying to scale up blockchain technology, it starts with a big data distributed database, RethinkDB, and adds blockchain features and characteristics.

Trent Mcconaghy, Co-founder and CTO of Ascribe and BigchainDB, joins us to talk about how this protocol may become to databases, what IPFS and Ethereum are to distributed filestorage and computing, respectively. Able to perform more than one million writes per second and capacities in the petabytes, BigchainDB has the ambition to become the world’s public database platform.

Topics covered in this episode:

A brief update on Ascribe since Trent was last on the show
The motivations behind BigchainDB and that problems it’s trying to solve
How BigchainDB plans to solve the typical scalability bottlenecks found in blockchain protocols
BigchainDB’s capacity, performance and latency characteristics
BigchainDB’s consensus model, applied to RethinkDB
Potential application for BigchainDB, in both centralised and decentralised application stacks

Episode links:

BigchainDB
BigchainDB Whitepaper
Ascribe
Left Gallery
23vivi

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/126

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The relatively new concept of a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), is often praised as a new type of organizational structure that has no identifiable owner or owners, and whose actions are automated and determined solely by a pre-defined set of rules. Views on DAOs differ widely. On one hand, members of the Bitcoin/blockchain space often portrayal them as AI-like swarm organisms, free from the shackles of nation-states, and that can act at will regardless of laws or regulation. On the other hand, legal experts caution that, like corporations, DAOs and their creators could be held liable in civil lawsuits, and that they may be served a hard dose of reality when they end up in court.

We are joined by Florian Glatz, attorney, researcher and software developer (not to mention the proud owne r of the awesome domain name blockchain.lawyer). We discuss some of the basic legal concepts surrounding contracts and in what ways smart contracts may or may not fit within our existing legal framework. We also dive deep into DAOs, and address some of the challenges they may pose in the near and distant future.

Topics covered in this episode:

The history of innovation in law
How merchant law (Lex Mercatoria) emerged in the 13th century
How we can define smart contracts
The legality of smart contacts
The need for natural language contracts vs. contracts which are written in code
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
The Slock.it DAO
What would happen if one tried to sue a DAO

Episode links:

Florian's Website
What are Smart Contracts? In search of a consensus
Smart Contracts, Platforms and Intermediaries
How to Sue A DAO
How to Incorporate a DAO

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/125

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The challenges Bitcoin’s wild volatility represents for achieving mass adoption have made the necessity for stable cryptocurrencies apparent long ago. With Ethereum applications, the problem is even more apparent as many use cases from predcition markets to insurance are impractical using the even more volatile ether. Maker DAO is an ambitious attempt to solve the problem by building a bank-like system to issue a value-stable currency on Ethereum.

Rune Christensen joined us to discuss the need for Maker and the complex system to guarantee stability.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why money is the most successful product ever
What makes stablecoins are necessary
The different components of Maker such as the stablecoin Dai, the token MKR and the role they play
Why Maker needs insurance against black swan events
Maker’s different planned stages of increasing decentralization
The MKR token sale and its value proposition for investors

Episode links:

Maker DAO
Maker DAO Whitepaper
Maker DAO DevCon Talk
EB60 with Robert Sams: Volatility and the Search for a Stable Cryptocurrency

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/124

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We’re joined by , Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, investor and all around emblematic figure of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Brock tells his story, from his early beginning a entrepreneur in his teens, to the massively successfull video game industry businesses he built in the early 2000s.

As Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, he gives us his perspective on how the Foundation’s role has evolved over time and its areas of focus going forward. Brock also weighs in the recent debates around governance and block size.

Topics covered in this episode:

The lemonade-stand beginnings of Brock’s entrepreneurship story
How he became involved in gaming and pioneered the sale of digital goods
The 400,000-strong professional gamer supply chain he built in China
His first contact with Bitcoin and the initial concerns he had
Blockchain Capital and how he ended up investing in dozens of Bitcoin startups
The blocksize debate and whether Bitcoin needs an explicit governance process
The future of the Bitcoin Foundation

Episode links:

This Week in Startups with Brock Pierce
The Finanser Interview with Brock Pierce
Blockchain Capital
Brock Pierce – Bitcoins Are The Digital Gold 2.0

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/123

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For Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn, part of the cypherpunk movement since the early 1990s, the vision of a decentralized financial system that has both openness and privacy has existed since long before Bitcoin. After many failed attempts, Bitcoin proved that that vision could be achievable. But Bitcoin also failed to deliver on the privacy features as blockchain analysis allows tracing movements and deanonymizing many users.

Zooko joined us to discuss his project Zcash, a fully anonymous cryptocurrency that is scheduled to launch in July. Through Zcash’s use of ground-breaking Zero Knowledge Proofs (or zkSNARKs) the blockchain will leak no information about sender, recipients nor amounts. It was a fascinating discussion of the most anticipated launch of a cryptocurrency since Ethereum.

Topics covered in this episode:

Zooko’s long cypherpunk history
How overconfidence derailed many cypherpunk projects
Why Bitcoin’s privacy is broken and how Zcash provides true privacy
The too-good-to-be-true Zcash team
Why Zcash is based on a fork of Bitcoin
How the initial parameter generation creates a potential security weakness
Why Zcash believes in an evolutionary approach to designing cryptocurrency protocols

Episode links:

Zcash website
Why Zcash - Project Announcement
Zerocash: Decentralized Anonymous Payments from Bitcoin [PDF]
EB116 - Eli Ben-Sasson: Zero Knowledge Proofs

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/122

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For orthodox Bitcoiners central banks are often seen as the incarnation of evil. But , alas, in the case of two Carribean central banking economists the feeling of reprehension wasn’t reciprocated. Winston Moore and Jeremy Stephen were formerly associated with the Central Bank of Barados and fascinated by the potential of cryptocurrencies, they explored the consequences of their central bank holding Bitcoin as part of their international reserves. They joined us for a discussion of central banking, the pecularities of monetary policy in a small island nation and what Bitcoin could bring to the equation.

Topics covered in this episode:

The function of central banks
The role international reserves hold for central banks
The peculiar challenges of central banks of small island nation states
How speculative attacks on central banks work
Why central banks may want to hold cryptocurrencies as part of their portfolio
How Bitt plans to issue Barbados Dollar using the Bitcoin blockchain and the open asset protocol

Episode links:

Paper on inclusion of cryptocurrencies in international reserve portfolio of Central Bank of Barbados [PDF]
Barbados Cryptocurrency Startup Bitt
Bitt launches Barbados Dollar on blockchain
Winston Moore's Website
Jeremy Stephen's Website
EB Episode 83 with David Andolfatto on Fedcoin and central bank issued cryptocurrencies

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/121

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The problem around content monetization is one which content producers are constantly trying to solve. At the core of this problem is a mismatch between supply and demand. Content, which is increasingly abundant, is captured by human attention, which is in limited supply. The volume of content being produced is growing at staggering rates while total human attention remains flat.

Our guest, , argues that the current content monetization model is outdated, broken and is in need of an overhaul. Previously at Google and YouTube, Maciej has a broad understanding content monetization models and lays out a vision for open marketplaces for attention using blockchains. He argues that content discovery systems like the Google Page Rank algorithm and Facebook’s News Feed could be replaced by open networks based on the mechanics of Bitcoin.

Topics covered in this episode:

How the current content monetization model works and why it’s broken
The inner workings of content discovery
The economics of content discovery
Open marketplaces for attention and reputation
New web-native business models for content discovery

Episode links:

Maciej's blog

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/120

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A pioneering feature of Bitcoin is verifiability of transactions: It is designed to enable low-power devices and high end computers alike to be able to verify occurrences on the blockchain.

This observation led our guest, Adam Gibson, to wonder why webpages aren’t so easily verifiable as a Bitcoin transaction? Can I prove to you that I have certain bank account balance over the internet? Why do we submit photocopies of passports rather than furnishing a cryptographically verifiable proof of citizenship by logging on to a Government site?

Born out of this intellectual itch is the TLS Notary protocol. It pioneers a new kind of auditing that enables participants to prove that a certain https page was in their browser. This protocol paves the way to brilliant designs for Proof of Reserves, Smart contract oracles and Decentralised fiat-to-bitcoin exchange.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why is the current Web structured to be not easily verifiable?
What is TLS and how does it work?
How TLS differs from SSL
The TLS Notary protocol
Capabilities and limitations of TLS Notary
Applications of TLS Notary including provably honest smart contract oracles

Episode links:

The TLS Notary website
Oraclize, the provably honest oracle service
The TLS specification (TLS 1.0 RFC 2246)

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/119

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A typical online transaction today isn’t very different from how it was done 25 years ago at the dawn of the Internet. In fact, online payments haven’t changed much at all. When we want to pay for something online, we copy very sensitive credit card information into a form on a website and trust that website to capture it securely and make proper use of it. If this seems like an old and antiquated way to pay, that’s because it is, and it costs billions of dollars per year in security and fraud prevention. The World Wide Web Consortium wants to standardize the way we pay online, making it more secure, and hopefully a better experience for users.

is a computer scientists and Standards Lead at the W3C. We talk about some of the core problems with dealing with credentials on the web and making online payments. Specifically, we discuss the Web Payments Working Group (WPWG), and their efforts to bring banks, payments providers and browser manufacturers together to converge around a standard set APIs to make for a better and more secure payment experience for all users.

Topics covered in this episode:

Manu’s interest in Bitcoin and blockchains
His role in building the JSON-LD standard
What is the W3C, what are it’s roles and how does it operate
The level of interaction between the Bitcoin community and the W3C
The fundamental problems of dematerialised payments online
What it means to standardize payments online
The Interledger Payments Community Group
Manu’s company Digital Bazaar

Episode links:

Web Payments at the W3C
Digital Bazaar

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/118

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In the midst of the heated blocksize debate one could be forgiven to think that there is very little Bitcoin developers are able to agree on. Yet, when core developer and Blockstream co-founder Pieter Wuille introduced the concept of segregated witness at the Scaling Bitcoin conference in Hong Kong most of the Bitcoin community quickly rallied behind the proposal.

Eric Lombrozo, CEO of wallet company Ciphrex and responsible for running the segregated witness testnet, joined us to discuss the proposal and its implications. Segregated witness, it turns out, does not only provide an elegant way to increase the blocksize via a soft-fork, it also solves transaction malleability and greatly simplifies updating the Bitcoin’s scripting language. It’s a crucial topic and may well enable a new wave of accelerated innovation in Bitcoin.

Topics covered in this episode:

The various benefits of segregated witness
The mechanics of segregated witness
How segregated witness solves transaction malleability
How segregated witness could increase the blocksize to 2-3MB with a soft fork
What segregated witness means for wallet developers
How segregated witness could facilitate development of off-chain networks such as Lightning Network
The important difference between hard forks and soft forks
How segregated witness will allow updates of Bitcoin’s script language via soft forks

Episode links:

Scaling Bitcoin Talk by Pieter Wuille
Let's Talk Bitcoin! #277 Separating Signatures with Segregated Witness
Gavin Andresen: Segregated Witness is Cool
Bitcoin Magazine Series on Segregated Witness Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Eric Lombrozo's company Ciphrex

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/117

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Zero Knowledge Proofs are methods of providing cryptographic proofs to another party while keeping some information secret. The simple concept of ZKP offer tantalizing possibilities: Banks could prove solvency without revealing depositors. Governments could prove the fairness of an election without compromising privacy.

Computer science professor Eli Ben-Sasson joined us to discuss where blockchains and cryptocurrencies intersect with Zero Knowledge Proofs and related technologies such as zkSNARKs. It offered a fascinating view into what will surely become a core part of blockchain tech in the future.

Topics covered in this episode:

What are proof systems?
Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) and other terminology such as SNARKs and zkSNARKs
The mechanics of Zero Knowledge Proofs
The role of performance in Zero Knowledge Proofs
Applications of ZKPs
The widespread potential impact of ZKP to verify processes

Episode links:

Eli Ben-Sasson's Website
SNARKs for C talk by Madars Virza
Stackexchange: What are SNARKs
SNARKs for C paper [PDF]
Zerocash Talk

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/116

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The idea that in the future tokens will play a crucial role in networks and organizations to incentivize decentralized collaboration and reward contribution is not new. It’s the original decentralized autonomous organization idea that has informed many projects that have been on the podcast (Swarm, Ethereum, Factom, Storj, etc). For Matan, the vision originally led to found decentralized ride-sharing application LaZooz. One year ago, he left LaZooz to found Backfeed, which is building the tools that so far have been missing to make mass collaboration without a central party possible.

Topics covered in this episode:

How he became interested in blockchains and started the ridesharing application LaZooz
Backfeed’s vision for a social operating system for decentralized organizations
The role of reputation, proof-of-value and tokens in Backfeed
The applications Backfeed is currently building
The business of model of Backfeed

Episode links:

Backfeed website
Backfeed: An Introduction for Mere Mortals
Matan Field DevCon Talk about Backfeed

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/115

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Vinay Gupta has been a programmer, 1990s cypherpunk, ‘resilience guru’, Ethereum release coordinator and currently collaborates with Consensys to mainstream smart contract technology. He also invented the Hexayurt, a cheap and resilient architectural structure for disaster-stricken communities.

Recently, Vinay has become a thought leader in the cryptocurrency space. He is famed for his eloquence and ability to distill the crypto-finance technological paradigm into easy big-picture visualisations. Check out this podcast for some unique insights into technology, politics and history.

Topics covered in this episode:

His work on resilience. The connection between resilience and cryptocurrencies
A history of the cypherpunks – who they were, what they believed in and why they failed.
Why smart contracts matter? What is special about them?
The impact cryptocurrencies will have on capitalism
Why cryptocurrencies could be a great tool to explore basic income

Episode links:

Vinay Gupta - Dangerous Old Men: cypherpunk's failure, Ethereum's success
Vinay Gupta - Resilience Guru | London Real
Simple Critical Infrastructure Maps
Vinay Gupta | Computers that just work | State of the Net 2015
Vinay's site re.silience.com

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/114

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As blockchain technologies mature, new protocol specifications are emerging, which take unique approaches to software design and how consensus is achieved. We have talked about Multchain and OpenChain in the past, but Tendermint promises to be a viable solution for many permissioned blockchain use cases. It’s design is modular, meaning that the application layer (smart contract) and the consensus layer are completely independent. This provides added flexibility and allows for business logic to be written in practically any programming language. In addition, its unique approach to consensus, a round-robin Proof-of-Skate algorithm, is much better suited for permissioned blockchain scenarios than Proof-of-Work.

Meher and Sebastien talk to Tendermint co-founders, Jae Kwon, Dustin Byington and Ethan Buchman, about this promising new blockchain protocol and how it is different from other projects we’ve seen so far.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Tendermint came to be and how it has evolved since its creation
Smart contract programming and the Tendermint Socket Protocol (TMSP)
How Tendermint makes use of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)
Tendermint’s approach to PoS consensus and its scalability benefits
Use case for permissioned and public blockchains
Future plans and business models

Episode links:

Tendermint
Tendermint for fast settlements
Tendermint vs PBFT
Tendermint specification

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/113

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Permissionable blockchains have gained much attention from enterprise this past year, and specifically, the traditional fiance and FinTech sectors. As new protocols emerge and the technology is matures, it is becoming apparent they are simply a new class of database, one which integrates business logic (smart contracts) and a consensus layer (PoS, PoW, etc).

is the CEO of Eris Industries, a company which specializes in building permissioned blockchain systems for enterprise. Their aim is to deliver the technologies which enable companies to easily build and deploy applications which make use of blockchain and smart contract technologies.

Topics covered in this episode:

Casey’s impressive background as an engineer, Marine soldier, lawyer and startup founder
Eris Industries and what the company is trying to achieve
Permissionable blockchains and their usefulness in industrial applications
Smart contracts, how to explain them and legal status
How blockchains can be used to revolutionize the way organizations construct business processes
The idea of Blockchains-as-a-Service
The various use cases for blockchain technologies

Episode links:

Eris Industries
2Gather

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/112

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Andrew Miller is a computer science PhD student at the University of Maryland who focuses on cryptocurrency. Having gotten involved in Bitcoin in 2011 and focused on cryptocurrencies early in his research work, he is one of the most prolific researchers in the field.

Our discussion mainly focused on security aspects of Ethereum including their gas model, Proof-of-Work algorithm and plans to switch to Proof-of-Stake.

Topics covered in this episode:

How he got involved in doing research on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies
The blossoming of academic interest in the topic
His work on analyzing Ethereum’s gas model
Potential vulnerabilities of the Gas model
Ethereum’s PoW algorithm
How Ethereum handles the block size limit

Episode links:

Andrew's University Website
Ethereum Analysis: Gas Economics and Proof of Work Overview
Ethereum Analysis: Gas Economics
Ledger Journal
Hawk: Privacy-Preserving Smart Contracts

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/111

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With over 600,000 views, James D’Angelo’s educational videos at the World Bitcoin Network are among the most popular resources on Bitcoin. Besides his excellent technical explanation, he has also been vocal about the dangers of the increasing centralization of mining.

James joined us to talk about his background as a rapper, the World Bitcoin Network, his proposal to use the Bitcoin blockchain to fight climate change and his argument that keeping Bitcoin decentralized would require sacrificing the anonymity of miners.

Topics covered in this episode:

How he first learned about Bitcoin and started the World Bitcoin Network
His proposals on identity and climate change
The crucial mistake Satoshi made in designing Bitcoin
Why none of the current ideas can solve the underlying problem of the centralization of mining power
Why decentralization should be the only design criterion for Bitcoin
His Axiom: That anonymity and decentralization of miners are inversely correlated
How Identity-based Mining could foster decentralization

Episode links:

World Bitcoin Network YouTube channel
Article about his Sno-Caps proposal to use Bitcoin to fight climate change
Sno-Caps Whitepaper
Bitcoin Nodes and Noses
A new mystery about Satoshi hidden in the Bitcoin block-chain
'Typical American' from James D'Angelo earlier rap band The Goats
James D'Angelo's talk 'What is the Bitcoin Revolution?'
Bitcoin in Uganda video with James

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/110

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Identity is probably one of the most important constructs in our society. In our modern world, protecting one’s identity has become complex, as we no longer rely solely on governments to prove who we are. In addition, most identity sources can be easily compromised. Credit cards and social security numbers weren’t developed with the Internet in mind, and other identifiers such as logins and passwords aren’t well suited truly secure authentication and authorisation.

We’re joined by Tim Pastoor, Founder of 2way.io, to discuss how we can improve control of our identities using concepts borrowed from Bitcoin. Tim walks us through how people could better manage different identities and build reputation networks using Identifi, a global address book protocol invented by Martti Malmi, one of the very first Bitcoin users. We also talk what role this system could play in the future as autonomous agents and artificial intelligence become more prevalent.

Topics covered in this episode:

The history of identity systems and how traditional identity systems are broken
How the invention of Blockchain technologies changed the way we think of identity
The Identifi protocol and how it works
How we can build reputation through Webs of Trust (WoT)
The future of identity and how Identifi could provide ID for IoT, robots, autonomous agents and artificial intelligence
2Way.io and what the company is trying to achieve

Episode links:

2Way
Identifi protocol
Identifi service

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/109

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The Bitcoin and blockchain industry has been through a lot this year. While the Bitcoin price has experienced relative stability, perhaps indicating slow growth, the space has grown into a rich and diverse ecosystem of startups and open technologies. Through inspiring proof-of-concepts and exciting use cases, blockchain technologies have gained legitimacy as a viable technology to improve transparency, reduce costs and optimise processes, to name a few of it’s benefits.

In this episode, all three Epicenter Bitcoin hosts, Brian, Sebastien and Meher, come together to look back on the events which marked the space this past year, and speculate on where thing may be heading in the future.

Topics covered in this episode:

Shift in focus from Bitcoin to blockchain technologies
Public vs. private blockchain debate
Bitcoin blocksize debate
Media censorship and r/Bitcoin dictatorship
Ethereum and it’s flourishing ecosystem
Sebastien’s new startup: Stratumn

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/108

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Gideon Greenspan, a computer scientist and CEO/Founder of the Israeli startup Coin Sciences, joined us for a discussion of their private blockchain platform MultiChain. Besides diving into the popular question of what’s the point of a private blockchain, we covered his earlier colored coins implementation as well as his view that blockchains are best understood as a novel database paradigm.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Gideon got involved in the blockchain space
Their colored coins implementation MultiSpark and why it failed to get traction
Why he saw a market for an open-source private blockchain platform and started MultiChain
What mining diversity is and how it is used for consensus in MultiChain
How permissions work in MultiChain
The issues of privacy in blockchains and why you can’t have auditability and privacy
How private blockchains differ from regular distributed databases
The five criteria to decide if a project needs a blockchain
The problem he sees with smart contract blockchains

Episode links:

Multichain website
Multichain Whitepaper
Colored coin protocol CoinSpark
Avoiding the pointless blockchain project
Private blockchains are more than 'just' shared databases
Smart contracts: The good, the bad and the lazy

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/107

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Christian Decker is a PhD student at ETH Zurich, where he is currently finishing up the world’s first PhD thesis entirely about Bitcoin. The computer scientist has been part of the Bitcoin community since 2009 and just recently turned off his last miner after 6.5 years!

We talked about the current scalability debate and what his research indicated what blocksize could reasonably be handled today. We also discussed his proposal for Duplex Micropayment Channels. Like the Lightning Network, Duplex Channels use a network of payment channels to enable cheap, instant and trustless offchain transactions. The proposal, which he is currently implementing, is one of the most promising approaches to scaling Bitcoin.

Topics covered in this episode:

How losing 9000 btc got him on the front page of the New York Times
The scaling Bitcoin debate and what blocksize could be handled today
How payment channels work and could be used for off-chain transactions
The advantages Duplex Micropayment Channels have with regards to privacy
The differences between Duplex and the Lightning Network
Whether off-chain transactions could work on Ethereum as well

Episode links:

Christian Decker's ETH homepage
A Fast and Scalable Payment Network with Bitcoin Duplex Micropayment Channels [PDF]
Bitcoin Meets Strong Consistency [PDF]
Information Propagation in the Bitcoin Network [PDF]
Epicenter Bitcoin Lightning Network Episode

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/106

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With Proof-of-Stake (PoS) a blockchain is secured not by spending an external resource such as electricity but by using value internal to the chain itself. The promise of higher security at a lower cost is what also drives Ethereum to plan a move away from Proof-of-Work to PoS in the future.

Ethereum researcher Vlad Zamfir, who leads their effort in the complex search for the optimal PoS consensus system joined us for an in-depth discussion of the challenges of PoS, the approach Casper is taking and what consensus in Ethereum land could look like in the future.

Topics covered in this episode:

How he became interested in consensus and Proof-of-Stake (PoS)
Why Ethereum plans to switch to the PoS systems Casper in the future
What the Long-Range Attack and Nothing-at-Stake problems are and how Casper addresses them
How a betting mechanism is used to get validators to reach consensus
What centralization pressures exist for validators and what operating a validator will look like
The role of security deposits in Casper
The difference between Tendermint and Casper
Whether forks create big UI/UX issues for Casper
Why Casper is very light client friendly

Episode links:

Introducing Casper - Ethereum Blog
Review of Casper, Ethereum’s proposed Proof of Stake Algorithm
Casper Protocol Specification
Slasher, Ghost and Other Developments in Proof-of-Stake
Epicenter Bitcoin Episode 58 with Vitalik Buterin on Proof-of-Stake

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/105

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Businesses with the alleged potential to become the next Google are plentiful in Bitcoin-land, but finding actual commercial success is a lot harder. The best example of a commercial success is gift card company Gyft that became known as the first place to give access to a wide range of merchants for bitcoin holders and later achieved the largest exit so far in the crypto space in an acquisition by payments company First Data.

Gyft CTO joined us to talk about how he got involved in FinTech, what makes gift cards so interesting and how recently Gyft has been trying to reinvent gift cards by using the power of the blockchain.

Topics covered in this episode:

Giyom’s early involvement in FinTech in the early 2000s
His previous projects Bernal Bucks and Credibles that explored gift cards and alternative currencies
Why gift cards are a great place for financial innovation
The mechanics of gift cards today and why their security is broken
How Gyft Block can improve the security of gift cards using the blockchain
Why Gyft moved their gift cards off the Bitcoin blockchain onto private blockchains
Giyom’s view on the utility of Bitcoin and private blockchains

Episode links:

Giyom's blog
Gyft’s Giyom Lebleu: Following Linux ‘The Most Likely Path for Bitcoin’ [CoinJournal]
Future of Money Interview. Part I. On Credibles and owning digital currencies issued by brands you love
Gyft
Payments giant First Data acquires Gyft in an effort to bring digital gift cards to the masses [Pando]
Gift Block
Bernal Bucks
Credibles

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/104

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One of the concerns confronting the Bitcoin community is that of scaling the transaction throughput rate: How do we go from the current rate of approx. 5 transactions per second to a thousand times that?

In this episode, we talk to Emin Gun Sirer and Ittay Eyal from Cornell University regarding Bitcoin NG; a next generation Bitcoin blockchain design that addresses some protocol based limitations preventing Bitcoin from increasing transaction throughput.

Their proposal also enables fast (initial) transaction confirmations on the order of 10-20 seconds.

Topics covered in this episode:

Metrics to measure the security and fairness properties of Nakamoto consensus as implemented in Bitcoin.
A network emulation of Bitcoin designed by their team to study properties of Bitcoin network.
Technical design of Bitcoin NG
Concerns with Bitcoin NG
Impact of Bitcoin NG on various stakeholders if it is adopted in the main Bitcoin network.

Episode links:

Bitcoin-NG White Paper
Bitcoin-NG: A Secure, Faster, Better Blockchain
Bitcoin-NG and the Blockchain Test bed (Scaling Bitcoin Workshop Slides)

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/103

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Among the dividing themes in the Bitcoin space is the idea of public versus private blockchains. While some argue that private and permissioned blockchains can offer better scalability and lower latency for enterprises, others insist the Bitcoin blockchain will offer the best level of security and robustness longterm. Recently, projects have emerged that propose the best of both worlds by leveraging both off-chain and on-chain transactions.

This is the idea behind Openchain, an “open source distributed ledger technology, suited for organizations wishing to issue and manage digital assets in a robust, secure and scalable way.” Openchain uses a client-server model where there is only one authoritative validating node. Read-only observer nodes keep the central node honest by auditing transactions in real time. About every 10 minutes, a copy of the Ledger, and its transactions, is hashed and inserted into a Bitcoin transaction so that it can be fossilised in the blockchain.

We’re joined by Flavien Charlon, the one-man operation behind Predictious, Coinprism, the Open Transactions Protocol and now Openchain. We talk about this fascinating new software, which aims to offer enterprises a digital ledger protocol that is highly scalable while enjoying the benefits of the Bitcoin blockchain for immutability.

Topics covered in this episode:

Flavien gives an update on Coinprism and his other projects
The Openchain protocol and what it’s trying to achieve
The technical architecture of Openchain and the client-server model it implements
How Openchain uses the Bitcoin blockchain to “anchor” transactions into every block
Openchain’s consensus model
The ability for Openchain to interoperate with other ledgers and blockchains
Flavien’s thoughts on what the ecosystem might look like in 10 years

Episode links:

Openchain
Openchain Docs

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/102

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A brilliant fact about crypto-economic blockchains is that they enable the construction of naming systems that transcend limits imposed by Zooko’s triangle. Traditional naming systems such as human names, Domain Name System (DNS) and Facebook profile names are subject to Zooko’s triangle and cannot be secure, human memorable and decentralised at once. For instance human names such as Meher Roy are human-memorable and decentralised but not secure (nothing prevents hundreds of people being called Meher Roy). Domain Names like are secure and human-memorable but require a central authority to hand out names.

OneName leverages Bitcoin to build a Global Identification system called blockchain ID. Blockchain IDs for users can be associated with real world identity data such as social media profiles, government issued papers etc. In this episode we converse with Ryan Shea and Muneeb Ali, co-founders and leaders of OneName, Blockstore and BlockStack. They explain the rationale and vision behind their push for a Global Decentralised Identification and Verification system.

Topics covered in this episode:

Zooko’s triangle and how Bitcoin breaks the triangle
The general idea behind blockchain ID, how it works and its component transactions
Why OneName migrated their blockchain ID system from the Namecoin to the Bitcoin blockchain
Technical design of Blockstore and how it enables decentralised storage and association of large datasets to blockchain IDs
Vision and use cases for Decentralised Identity, authentication and identity verification.
The notion of Probabilistic Identity

Episode links:

Intentional Naming System
Zooko's triangle
Why Onename is Migrating to the Bitcoin Blockchain
Blockchain ID
Organization of Schemas
Blockstack
BlockStore

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/101

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We’ve made it to episode 100! Our guest for our celebratory episode is Juan Benet, inventor of the Inter-Planetary File System and founder of Protocol Labs. IPFS is a distributed file system that seeks to connect all computing devices with the same system of files. The possibilities for IPFS could range from distributed cloud hosting to websites without central servers to even replacing HTTP. It’s a project as audacious as any we’ve had on the podcast and Juan did an outstanding job explaining the technology and vision.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why HTTP is broken and how IPFS could complement and ultimately replace it
The different technologies IPFS is based on including DHT, Git, Bittorrent and SFS
How IPFS could enable the ‘permanent web’ by distributing file storage
Content-addressing and how hosting works on IPFS
Mutable content and the Interplanetary Naming System (IPNS)
Filecoin and incentivizing hosting on IPFS
Why IPFS is a great fit for smart contracts
How he wants to build and monetize core internet protocols with his company Protocol Labs

Episode links:

IPFS website
IPFS whitepaper (PDF)
Replication on IPFS
Neocities blog post
Filecoin
Protocol Labs

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/100

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One of the key innovations of Bitcoin is the ability to easily implement payment channels. A number of use cases have been discussed or demonstrated, among which is the idea of pay-per-use. This is particularly useful when charging for things like WiFi or streaming video by the second. With this in mind, one could imagine a line of communication between two peers, where data flows in one direction and payments flow in the other.

This is the idea behind Streamium, a free and open-source service which allows content creators to stream live video directly to viewers, and get paid instantly. We’re joined by Manuel Aráoz and , the two brilliant software engineers from Argentina who created Streamium. They have worked together on numerous Bitcoin projects these past few years, including ProofOfExistence.com, Faradam, Decentraland, RelayStore, and actively contributed to the BitCore javascript library.

Topics covered in this episode:

The current state of Bitcoin in Argentina
The general idea behind Streamium, how it works and its technical components
How payment channels are implemented in Streamium and its various use cases
The Faradam project
The prospect of alternative content funding models made possible by Bitcoin micropayments
Proof-of-existence and what innovations blockchain technologies brings to data notarization
The Decentraland project and the vision for a blockchain-based virtual reality

Episode links:

Streamium
Faradam
Decentraland
Proof of Existence
The Mental Accounting Barrier to Micropayments by Nick Szabo
Manuel Aráoz's About.me profile
Esteban Ordano's personal website

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/099

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When invented the concept of prediction markets almost thirty years ago, he felt he had stumbled on a concept with huge implications. By allowing people to bet on the likelihood of future events, prediction markets promise to allow better forecasts and better decision making.

Research into the area has been vibrant, culminating in Hanson’s concept of Futarchy: A prediction-market based governance system. At the same time, the real-world applications have been few and far.

Hanson, an associate professor of economics at George Mason University, joined us to discuss his invention, futarchy and the challenges of disruptive technology.

Topics covered in this episode:

How prediction markets can surface information
The history of prediction markets
How futarchy works
Whether futarchy could settle the blocksize debate
Why prediction markets failed to get wide adoption
How Bitcoin is facing a similar adoption challenge

Episode links:

Science 'The Promise of Prediction Markets' (PDF)
Futarchy: Vote Values, But Bet Beliefs
Robin Hanson's Blog Overcoming Bias

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/098

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Prediction markets are considered one of the most promising applications of blockchain technology. Although the concept and some early implementations have existed for years, decentralized prediction markets present a number of advantages to their centralized counterparts.

joins us to discuss Truthcoin, a “Peer-to-Peer Oracle Protocol which absorbs accurate data into a blockchain so that Bitcoin-users can speculate in Prediction Markets”. We dive deep to explore the advantages of decentralized prediction markets, their various real-world applications, and their potential to revolutionize the creation and propagation of knowledge in our society.

On this episode, we are thrilled to introduce a new co-host on Epicenter Bitcoin, Meher Roy. He has a biochemical engineering background and previously worked as an adviser to HyperLedger. Since discovering Bitcoin, he spends most of his free time understanding blockchain technology and its potential impact on our lives. We’re confident that Meher will bring a high level of understanding and critical thinking to the topics we cover, and we’re certain our listeners will be as happy as we are to have him on the show.

Topics covered in this episode:

What are prediction markets and why they are useful
The mechanics of prediction markets
The potential for prediction markets to provide useful aggregation to today’s abundant information
The parallels between crowd intelligence and artificial intelligence
The different components of Truthcoin and the state of the project
How Truthcoin differs from other decentralized prediction markets

Episode links:

Truthcoin Website

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/097

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It is often said that technology is neutral. It’s certainly commonplace for Bitcoin to be thought of as such. In reality, technologies may be characterized as an embodiment of human intention, and therefore, cannot be considered as culturally or politically neutral. At least, this is the opinion of our guest, . A research scientist at MIT Media Lab and CEO of ID3, a nonprofit which aims to deploy a new generation of trusted digital institutions, John has spent the last seven decades researching the interaction between technology and society.

He joins us for a fascinating discussion on the flaws of our institutions in present day society and how we can leverage technology to build a new social ecosystem.

Topics covered in this episode:

The political values of Bitcoin
The idea of cooperative currencies
The current state of identity and data ownership, and how it may be improved
The governance of decentralized technologies
How cybernetics and self-organizing systems may be applied to governance
The Open Mustard Seed framework

Episode links:

ID3 Institute for Data-Driven Design
From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond
From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond (Amazon)
Open Mustard Seed
Talk by John Clippinger: Bitcoin and Beyond

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/096

From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond: The Quest for Identity and Autonomy in a Digital Society

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As the debate about forks, the blocksize and decision making in Bitcoin continues, we are joined by Adam Back. Adam is best known for his invention hash-cash which became one of the fundamental building blocks of Bitcoin. He is also the inventor of the sidechains concept and founder and president of Blockstream, the single biggest employer of Bitcoin core developers.

With Adam we talked about the different blocksize proposals and how a decentralized cryptocurrency should be governed in general. He is an influential conservative voice in the current debate and has been warning that a rapid increase of the blocksize could undermine the decentralization of Bitcoin.

Topics covered in this episode:

Adam’s concerns with Bitcoin XT and the approach by Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn
Why Adam favors a slower blocksize increase to preserve decentralization
How Bitcoin will function as a settlement network in the medium-term with the bulk of transactions going through the Lightning Network or sidechains
Why forks are in Bitcoin are different from forks in other open source projects
The upcoming Scaling Bitcoin workshop in Montreal

Episode links:

Scaling Bitcoin Montreal Event
Blockstream
Gavin Andresen's BIP 101
Jeff Garzik's BIP 100
Adam Back's blocksize proposal
List of different blocksize proposals

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/095

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As the debate about the blocksize continues to roar through the Bitcoin community, Gavin Andresen joins us to take a step back and ask the big questions: How should these decisions be made in the first place? What does the governance of Bitcoin look like now and what do we want it to look like in the future?

In a challenging time for Bitcoin, it’s a critical discussion to have with the Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation and successor of Satoshi. We cover everything from the current blocksize debate to the nature of forks to how decisions will be made in Bitcoin XT.

Topics covered in this episode:

MIT Digital Currency Initiative
The way Gavin thinks about Bitcoin
How were decisions made throughout Bitcoin’s history
What the Nakamoto/market consensus is
Forking the software vs a fork of the blockchain
Who should make decisions in Bitcoin and how the interest of different stakeholders should be reconciled
Why the desirable state is to move towards many different implementations
How decisions will be made for the Bitcoin XT code base

Episode links:

Eli Durado: How should Bitcoin be governed?
Arvind Narayanan: Bitcoin faces a crossroads, needs an effective decision-making process
Matt Asay: Why you should fork your next open-source project
Robles & Gonzalez-Barahona, A comprehensive study of software forks
Chinese Mining Pools Call for Consensus; Refuse Switch to Bitcoin XT
Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies - Chapter 7: Community, Politics, and Regulation
BIP 100 Proposal

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/094

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Ever since the financial system collapsed in 2007, the call for alternatives has grown louder. Bitcoin itself can be seen as such an alternative. Simon Dixon’s search for a way to put capitalism on a sounder financial footing began before Bitcoin with a focus on equity crowdfunding. Since then he has built Bank to the Future into an innovative crowdfunding business that takes an aggressive contrarian stance. He has also launched an investment fund focused on cryptocurrencies together with Max Keiser called Bitcoin Capital.

He joined us for a fascinating discussion about the flaws of the banking system, Bitcoin and the search for alternatives.

Note:

Our sponsor Vaultoro is raising an equity crowdfunding round on Bank to the Future. Read about the details and invest here:

Topics covered in this episode:

Why capitalism is built on a broken banking system
The problems Bitcoin solves
The flawed ways banks approach blockchain technology
How Bank to the Future is a contrarian bet on the financial system
Bitcoin Capital, the fund he started with Max Keiser
How Bitcoin Capital and BnkToTheFuture work together

Episode links:

Bitcoin Capital Tranche 2
'Bank to the Future' Book on Amazon
Bitcoin Capital on the Keiser Report
Simon Dixon TEDx Talk
Money Creation in the Modern Economy
Naked Capitalism

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/093

Bank to the Future: Protect your Future before Governments Go Bust

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In a long-overdue episode, we finally had the chance to dive into one of the most known but poorly understood cryptocurrency/blockchain project: Ripple. Reviled by many in the Bitcoin space, we put aside any prejudices and sat down for a fascinating conversation with Ripple Labs CTO Stefan Thomas.

We talked about his early days in the Bitcoin space, how Ripple came about, what the Ripple network looks like today and how its consensus protocol works.

Topics covered in this episode:

‘ early experiences in the Bitcoin space
How Ripple was created
The problem Ripple is trying to solve
How the Ripple consensus algorithm works
Whether Ripple is decentralized or not
What the correspondent banking system is and how Ripple wants to disrupt it
The recent FinCen fine and what it means for Ripple

Episode links:

Ripple
Ripple Labs
Ripple Labs Fined $700,000 by FinCen
Richard Gendal Brown: The Deep Insight at Ripple's Cores
Peter Todd Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm Review
Ripple Consensus Protocol Whitepaper

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/092

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Close to two years after the initial whitepaper, the revolutionary Ethereum network has finally launched. The decentralized smart contract platform is, without a doubt, the most exciting cryptocurrency project since Bitcoin. The versatile platform with its turing-complete scripting language aspires to power the distributed applications of the future.

Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin joined us for the second time to discuss the Frontier Launch, future plans for scalability, governance and the road ahead for the organization and the protocol.

Topics covered in this episode:

Ethereum’s frontier launch and the upcoming development stages
The plans for how to create a scalable blockchain architecture
The thinking around transitioning to proof-of-stake
The state and new board of the Ethereum Foundation
How Ethereum’s development will be funded in the longer term
His thoughts on the governance of Ethereum and Bitcoin
When private blockchains make sense and if Ethereum
What mistakes were made during the development of Ethereum

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/091

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Bitcoin mining and the intricate game theory that surround it is a topic that we’ve visited many times. Difficult to grasp in its complexity, it is these dynamics that determine the security of Bitcoin in the short and in the longer term. This time we were joined by none other than Dave Hudson. He is the author of the leading mining blog hashingit.com, VP of Software at PeerNova and had a long career in chip manufacturing including at Qualcomm.

We talked about dynamics in the mining market, security issues with Bitcoin’s design and his data-informed views on the blocksize debate.

Topics covered in this episode:

How he became interested in mining and what metrics he finds most interesting
How miners would be affected by a blocksize increase
The flaws in Satoshi’s design of the reward scheme
Why transaction fees will not make up for the block reward decrease in 2016 and why that will lessen the security of Bitcoin
The long-term role of Bitcoin as a settlement network
The problem with accepting 0-conf transactions
The future of mining and why 21 Inc’s plans seem nonsensical

Episode links:

Dave's Personal Blog
Waiting for blocks
The Myth of the Megabyte Bitcoin Block
The Future of Transactions Fees
Bitcoin SF Devs Seminar: A deep dive into understanding Bitcoin mining hashrates
Dave's company PeerNova

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/090

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Amidst all the discussion of alternative uses of blockchains, it is often forgotten that the very first fork of Bitcoin, Namecoin, pursued a daring vision for a decentralized, censorship-resistant internet. Greg Slepak, co-founder of the okTurtles Foundation joined us for an interesting discussion of DNS, Namecoin and how blockchains can be used to decentralize the internet.

Topics covered in this episode:

What DNS is and the role it plays in the architecture of the internet
What man-in-the-middle attacks are and why certificate authorities offer poor protection
How certificate authorities, SSL, IP routing and VPNs work
Why the current model is broken from a privacy and security perspective
How Namecoin and the blockchain could enable a decentralized and more secure internet
The security risks when online identity is tied to a private key and how they could be mitigated
What DNSChain is and what projects okTurtles is working on

Episode links:

okTurtles Foundation
Namecoin Primer
Namecoin Website
Airplane Wifi is not safe
DNSChain demo

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/089

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In this episode, we revisited the perennial topic of digital currency regulation with Siân Jones, our regulatory correspondent and founder of the regulation-focused virtual currency consultancy COINSULT. With the final version of the BitLicense, what may turn out to be the most influential document for digital currency regulation, is now out. Besides diving into many different aspects of the onerous BitLicense, we talked about California’s coming rules, how Bitcoin startups will be affected and the implications of Ripple’s fine.

NOTE: Since the episode was recorded the advocate general at the EU Court of Justice recommended that Bitcoin be exempt from VAT.

Topics covered in this episode:

A brief primer on BitLicense and the process by which it emerged
What the key aspects of BitLicense are and how they changed through the revisions
Why BitLicense will stifle innovation by dramatically increasing the cost and bureaucratic burden of running a digital currency startups
How different companies are responding to the rules
Why California’s virtual currency draft bill got a lot of things right
What Ripple got fined for and why FinCEN could go after most cryptocurrency startups for the same reasons
The status of the European Court of Justice case on VAT

Episode links:

NY BitLicense rules and regulations
California's virtual currency draft bill
FinCEN fines Ripple Labs Inc.
What Ripple's FinCEN fine means for the digital currency industry
Canada Senate digital currency report
ECJ official proposes Bitcoin VAT exemption
Siân's company COINSULT

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/088

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Solving the pain points of online payments was the applications that garnered the most attention in Bitcoin’s early days. In recent times, as consumer adoption of Bitcoin payments has been underwhelming much of that attention has shifted elsewhere. Nevertheless, companies keep working hard on making the vision of a universal, global payment system a reality.

Among those companies, one stands out as the top contender to compete with existing payment systems: Bitnet. Funded with a heavy warchest and the company is ran by veterans of Visa and Cybersource, a company started in 1994 to help merchants accept credit cards online that was sold to Visa in 2007 for $2bn. They have been working behind the scenes to get Bitcoin to break through with merchants.

CEO John McDonnell joined us for an important discussion of how online payments work today, why they are broken and how Bitcoin will revolutionize the industry.

Topics covered in this episode:

The story of Cybersource and payments in the early day of the internet
The pain points with online payments for merchants and consumers today
The role of the different actors such as payment processors, card networks, merchants and issuing banks
The niches where Bitcoin payments could break through first
Why coming from inside the payment industry provides Bitnet with a huge advantage
Why they are focusing on Payment Service Providers instead of acquiring merchants directly
His view on BitLicense and how it will affect Bitcoin payment processors

Episode links:

Bitnet
Richard Gendal Brown: Why the payment card system works the way it does
Richard Gendal Brown: Simple explanation of fees in the payment card industry
Wikipedia e-commerce credit card payment systems

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/087

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Peter Thiel argued in his book ‘Zero to One’ that the way to build a great and highly profitable company is to build a monopoly. But with decentralized technologies, there is a real question whether these monopolies can be built or whether the monopolies will end up being publicly owned goods (like Bitcoin) that can’t be monetized directly.

William Mougayar, who is an experienced tech executive and angel investor, has been writing extensively about these issues and was one of the investors in OB1, the venture-backed company launched by the founders of the decentralized market place Open Bazaar. He joined us for a discussion of the cryptocurrency space, Ethereum, Open Bazaar and monetizing decentralized technologies.

Topics covered in this episode:

Bitcoin as the new, thin cloud
His long-term predictions about where the space is going
What kind of business models are the most promising
Why he chose to invest in OB1, the company behind Open Bazaar
What the state of Venture Capital in the cryptocurrency space is

Episode links:

Predictions in Cryptography, Blockchains and Consensus Protocols
The Old Cloud is Dead, Welcome the New Cloud
The Business Imperative Behind the Ethereum Vision
An Operational Framework for DAOs
Union Square Ventures: Introducing OB1
Peter Thiel: Competition is for Losers

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/086

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Revolutionary progress doesn’t happen without lots of work and in the case of Bitcoin that requires many different startups building technology. Few have contributed to this as much as Silicon Valley based startup accelerator Boost VC, which has been focusing on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency startups since 2013. Focusing exclusively on Bitcoin for an extended time, they’ve invested in companies such as Blockcypher, Coinprism, Coinjar, Mirror, Snapcard, Zapchain and many others.

Boost VC Founder Adam Draper joined us to discuss running an accelerator, their investment thesis and why they’ve chosen to add Virtual / Augmented Reality startups to the program.

NOTE: Applications to join the next tribe of Boost startups can be submitted until Wednesday July 1. If you’re interested in applying go here:

Topics covered in this episode:

The qualities they look for in companies (8:50)
What the overarching Boost VC investement thesis is (14:40)
His view on the BitLicense rules and how they affect cryptocurrency startups (38:14)
How regulatory concerns have risen among their startups (41:40)
Why they chose to add Virtual / Augmented Reality to the program (47:50)

Episode links:

Boost VC
Adam Draper: New York's BitLicense Will Hurt Startup Incubators
William H. Draper III: The Startup Game
But with bitcoins...
AB 129 California Cryptocurrency Law

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/085

The Startup Game: Inside the Partnership between Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs

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One topic that is guaranteed to cause heated discussion among cryptocurrency enthusiasts is the idea that blockchains can be controlled by known validators and function without an underlying cryptocurrency. Some think this is a non-sensical idea fabricated by those spineless enough to want to appease regulators and but clueless enough to miss the whole point of cryptocurrencies. But others believe that Bitcoin is unsuited for a lof of ‘Bitcoin 2.0’ applications and that permissioned ledgers have wide-reaching potential to increase efficiency and transparency.

Tim Swanson joined us for an important discussion of permissioned ledgers. He’s among their best-known proponents and has recently published a whitepaper discussing how they work and looking at different startups in the space.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why the ‘blockchains without bitcoin’ idea is so controversial
Why it is strange that KYC is done widely on Bitcoin users but not on the validators
Why even semi-decentralized blockchains can provide big efficiency gains
Why the 51% attack possibility is an obstacle for the use of the Bitcoin as a settlement network
Why financial institutions don’t care about censorship resistance but do care about irreversibility

Episode links:

Tim Swanson: Permissioned Distributed Ledgers Whitepaper
Tim Swanson: Needing a Token to Operate a Distributed Ledger is a Red Herring
Robert Sams: No, Bitcoin is not the future of securities settlement
JP Koning: Why bitcoin has failed to achieve liftoff as a medium of exchange

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/084

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Many people think of Bitcoin as the ultimate contender against the power of central banks, most importantly the Federal Reserve System. But that is certainly not the only way that cryptocurrencies and the blockchain can be used and one particularly interesting idea is that central banks could issue their own cryptocurrencies.

To discuss how this could be done and what the consequences could be we were joined by David Andolfatto, a Vice President of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and a professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University.

The views and opinions expressed by ou guest are his own and should in no way be attributed to his employer.

Topics covered in this episode:

What makes good money? How does Bitcoin fare in comparison?
What is Fedcoin and how could it work?
Why the tension between a governments desire for control and the desires for ‘permissionless innovation’ could make this difficult to implement
Whether Fedcoin would threaten fractional reserve banking
Why competition between currencies, both governmental and non-governmental, could be a good thing

Episode links:

David Andolfatto: Why Gold and Bitcoin Make Lousy Money
David Andolfatto: On the Desirability of a Government Cryptocurrency
Business Insider Interview with David Andolfatto
Robert Sams: Seignorage Shares

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/083

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Whether the block size should be increased to 20MB has created more controversy than any other question in Bitcoin’s recent history. For some, it is an urgent and necessary step in Bitcoin’s evolution. Their view is that leaving the block size at 1MB would be irresponsible inaction with potentially catastrophic consequences. Others see increasing the block size as unnecessary and a dangerous first step down a slippery slope towards a more centralized Bitcoin.

We were joined by Mike Hearn, along with Gavin Andresen the most outspoken supporter of a block size increase. He is also the creator of Bitcoin XT, a modified fork of Bitcoin Core, that may become the vehicle for the push for bigger blocks if no agreement is reached regarding Bitcoin Core. Don’t miss this crucial conversation!

Topics covered in this episode:

What would happen if blocks started being consistently full
Whether bigger blocks create a centralization risk
Why Bitcoin core development has become pervaded with toxic division
What Bitcoin XT is and how it differs from Bitcoin Core
The roadmap ahead and how a transition to BitcoinXT would occur
Update on Lighthouse

Episode links:

The Capacity Cliff
Crash Landing
Let's Talk Bitcoin! #217 The Bitcoin Block Size Discussion
Gavin Andresen Moves Ahead with Push for Bigger Blocks
Bitcoin Dev Mailing List
Lighthouse

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/082

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From the mysterious creation story, to the early development among a small group of cypherpunks, to the emergence of the Silk Road, the collapse of MtGox, to the entry of a tidal wave of VC money and the Silicon Valley elite, Bitcoin’s short history has been action-packed. It’s no surprise that this could make for a riveting story and NY Times journalist Nathaniel Popper’s book ‘Digital Gold – Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money’ is precisely that.

Popper joined us for a conversation about his must-read book about the remarkable story of Bitcoin.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Nathaniel Popper ended up writing a book about Bitcoin
Why he chose ‘Digital Gold’ as a title and some of its different connotations
Why he chose to focus on the people and stories of Bitcoin rather than the technology
The story of the Silk Road and how it played such a critical role in the early days of Bitcoin
How Xapo CEO Wences Casares came to play a crucial role in evangelizing Bitcoin among Silicon Valley’s power players
The rising tension and passing of influence between the old, ideological guard and the newer Silicon Valley crew

Episode links:

Get 'Digital Gold' on Amazon
Nathaniel Popper's website
Can Bitcoin Conquer Argentina article
Decoding the Enigma of Satoshi Nakamoto

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/081

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Since Gavin Andresen’s proposal to increase the Bitcoin block size, how Bitcoin can scale to accommodate higher transaction volumes has been heatedly debated among developers. One of the most promising long-term options to allow near infinite scalability is the Lightning Network. Joseph Poon and , the co-authors of the whitepaper, joined us for a discussion of scalability and how the lightning network could allow massive numbers of off-chain transaction in a trustless way.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why Bitcoin has a scalability problem
How payment channels work and the architecture of the Lightning Network
Why the Lightning Network would still require a block size increase
How transaction fees would work in the Lightning Network
How the Bitcoin blockchain would take on a court-like function to ensure honest off-chain behavior
The risks and downsides to the Lightning Network

Episode links:

Gavin Andresen - Why Increasing the Block Size is Urgent
Mike Hearn - The Capacity Cliff
Mike Hearn - Crash Landing
Rusty Russell - Series on the Lightning Network Part 1
Rusty Russell - Series on the Lightning Network Part 2
Rusty Russell - Series on the Lightning Network Part 3
Rusty Russell - Series on the Lightning Network Part 4
Lightning Network Whitepaper
Lightning Network website

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/080

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Started in May 2013, Coinkite has by now almost advanced to senior citizen status in the short-lived Bitcoin startup space. CEO Rodolfo Novak joined us for a discussion about what drove their initial interest in Bitcoin, why they initially focused on providing ‘bank-like’ services and how they’ve transitioned to powering the infrastructure of countless Bitcoin startups with their API. We also discussed multi-sig and the business strategy they pursued that allowed them to be profitable and not require venture funding.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Coinkite started
Why they have come away from calling themselves a Bitcoin bank
Why they have been putting so much emphasis on multi-sig
How they’ve ended up building an insane amount of features
The transition of their business model to providing a powerful API for startups
What the Bitcoin ecosystem in Toronto is like

Episode links:

Coinkite
Coinkite-Ledger Partnership
How to use Ledger Nano with Coinkite
p2sh.info

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/079

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The idea of using the Bitcoin blockchain to represent and track the ownership of off-chain assets is almost as old as Bitcoin itself. One of the startups that is pursuing this vision is Berlin-based Ascribe, which allows creators to register (‘ascribe’), transfer and archive digital art.

Ascribe CTO joined us for a fascinating discussion of their ambitious goals to enable a so-far elusive secondary market for digital art, help creators monetize their work and ultimately retrofit an entire ownership layer to the internet.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why ownership in the internet is broken
How Ascribe wants to realize the vision of Project Xanadu of an internet with bi-directional links and baked-in copyrights
How the SPOOL (Secure Public Online Ownership Ledger) protocol works
The components of the Ascribe tech stack
How Ascribe will crawl and similarity-match the entire internet to retrofit an internet of ownership
Why Ascribe focuses first on the digital art market

Episode links:

Ascribe
SPOOL Protocol
Cointemporary
Project Xanadu Wikipedia
Rewiring the Internet for Ownership with Big Data and Blockchains
Slides

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/078

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Few question that educating people about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is one of the most important and challenging tasks to achieve mass adoption. And perhaps even fewer disagree that there is no one more gifted at communicating the revolutionary potential of Bitcoin than Andreas M. Antonopoulos. A technologist, entrepreneur, LTB host and author, he has been speaking, writing and educating about Bitcoin for years and become one of the most popular people in the Bitcoin space.

He joined us to talk about his new book, his journey in the Bitcoin space, educating lawmakers about Bitcoin and the exciting future awaiting us.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why he wrote ‘Mastering Bitcoin’ and how the reception has been so far
What he currently spends him time on
How he introduces new people to Bitcoin
What NOT to do when telling someone new about Bitcoin
His experiences speaking in front of the Canadian and Australian Senate
Why he believes in the community’s ability to keep evolving Bitcoin

Episode links:

University of Nicosia Digital Currency MOOC
Canada Senate Hearing
Disrupt Athens Talk
Personal Website
Mastering Bitcoin on github
Mastering Bitcoin on Amazon

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/077

Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies

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Bitcoin’s approach to solving the double spending problem is to make a collusion and attack on the network prohibitively expensive. One of the main factors that will determine Bitcoin’s chance of survival in the long-term is whether the behavior that maximizes the profits of miners contributes to or sabotages the health of the network.

The game theory that determines this is complex and our understanding of it still incomplete. But research is increasing and two people who have been at the forefront of this work are , a professor in computer science at Cornell University, and Ittay Eyal, a post-doc at the same department.

They joined us for a fascinating discussion of their work on ‘selfish mining’, the incetive structure that underlies Bitcoin and their recent positive conclusions from the Miner’s Dilemma.

Topics covered in this episode:

Emin Gün Sirer’s early interest in cryptocurrencies and work on a cryptocurrency to incentivize bittorrent users in 2004
What selfish mining is and how miners could profit from withholding blocks
How an attacker would execute a selfish mining attack
Why the miner’s dilemma implies that the equilibrium might be small mining pools
Why the lack of security of clients and servers is holding back adoption

Episode links:

Selfish Mining paper (PDF)
Miner's Dilemma blog post
Miner's Dilemma paper (PDF)
Hacking, Distributed
Meni Rosenfeld's paper on mining pool reward systems (PDF)

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/076

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As the cost of computing continues to plummet, the number of connected devices is increasing dramatically. In the future powerful computing capacity will be in billions of devices ranging from the lightbulb to the car door to new wearables. This new internet of things (IoT) will dramatically change our lives.

Paul Brody, a Technology Strategist and the former VP of Mobile and IoT at IBM, joined us for a discussion of where the IoT is going. We discussed their white paper on why a decentralized, blockchain-based internet of things could solve the problems of the current IoT in terms of privacy, scalability, and business models.

Topics covered in this episode:

What the Internet of Things and its core value proposition is
Why the current IoT business models are broken
How a decentralized IoT infrastructure would be more secure, scalable and economically feasible
What role the blockchain could play in a decentralized IoT
The three components of IBM’s ADEPT proof-of-concept

Episode links:

IBM Democracy of Devices Whitepaper
Paul Brody IFA Talk
IBM Empowering the Edge Report
IBM Empowering the Edge Use Cases
IBM & Samsung ADEPT Demo at CES

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/075

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In the crowded race to become the leading ‘Bitcoin 2.0’ platform, Counterparty has stood out by avoiding fancy crowdsales and instead building a platform that works. The protocol, which sits on top of Bitcoin and thus benefits from the security of its mining power, allows issuing assets, paying dividends or trading in a decentralized way. Over the past year, it has been the platform of choice for many crowdsales and is also what powers LTBCoin.

Co-Founder Robby Dermody joined us for a discussion of the features and evolution of the project.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why they create the initial XCP supply by destroying bitcoins
What the different components of the Counterparty system are
What distinguishes embedded consensus systems like Counterparty
Why crowdfunding has become a major use case for Counterparty
Why Counterparty’s Ethereum-style smart contracts will play an important role in the future
Their new company Symbiont, which aims to commercialize Counterparty’s technology

Episode links:

Counterparty
Counterparty Architecture
Devon Weller A Specification for the Counterparty Protocol
Counterwallet
Symbiont
Blockscan Voting Scoreboard

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/074

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The cryptocurrency ecosystem is increasingly divided into different camps. There are those betting and working on the eventual mainstream success of Bitcoin. And there are those who take elements of Bitcoin’s technology and repurpose them to improve existing systems.

Hyperledger is one of the projects firmly in the latter camp. They are envisioning a world where innumerable interoperable ledgers are operated by different parties. Hyperledger is their tool for the creation and management of these ledgers. CEO Dan O’Prey and CTO joined us for a discussion of the project, underlying technology and their view of where the cryptocurrency ecosystem is going.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why Hyperledger is trying so solve a fundamentally different problem than Bitcoin
How networks consisting of known parties can have massive performance and scalability advantages over anonymous networks
Why Hyperledger doesn’t have or need its own currency
How Hyperledger can vary the degree of decentralization and security depending on use-case
Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT)

Episode links:

Hyperledger
Meher Roy’s Internet of Money Whitepaper
Practical Bynzantine Fault Tolerance

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/073

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When one is busy driving a technological and societal revolution forward, complying with complicated regulatory requirements is rarely a top priority. Yet, the reality is that at this stage the often ambigious and rapidly evolving regulatory landscape can have an outsized impact on the fate of cryptocurrency startups and on the adoption/integration into existing systems.

Epicenter Bitcoin Regulatory Correspondent and founder of COINsult Siân Jones joined us for an update on the state of Bitcoin regulation in a variety of jurisdiction.

Topics covered in this episode:

The recent statement by the UK’s treasury on digital currencies
How the Isle of Man keeps pioneering a cryptocurrency-friendly environment
The stance of the FATF (Financial Action Task Force) towards Bitcoin
The insanity of the looming BitLicense rules and difficult-to-predict consequences they may have

Episode links:

COINsult
UK HM Treasury: Digital Currencies - Response to the Call for Information
Isle of Man Introduces Regulation for Bitcoin Businesses
California Bill Proposes License Requirement for Bitcoin Businesses
Bitlicense Comment Period Closes

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/072

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Creating a new token and selling it to fund the development of software has become a preferred way of fundraising for cryptocurrency entrepreneurs. It’s a tempting tool, allowing startups to avoid traditional investors, build a community and allow anyone anywhere to own a stake in the project. For participants, there is the promise of big financial upside and being part of novel undertakings.

Lisa Cheng, whose consulting firm Vanbex has accompanied many crowdsales, joined us for a discussion of this revolutionary way to fund and monetize open source software.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why crowdfunding and cryptocurrency are a natural fit
A brief history of crowdsales in the cryptocurrency space
US securities law and the questionable legality of token sales
The value of writing a solid white paper before launching a sale
Elements of a successful coin launch
The role of companies like Swarm and Koinify in conducting crowdsales

Episode links:

An Interview with Lisa Cheng
Tokenizing the User Experience
Token Sales and the US Securities Law
David Johnston DApps Whitepaper
Vanbex Group

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/071

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When spinning up a few hundred data-gathering Bitcoin nodes prevented some breadwallet users from transmitting bitcoin transaction, a minor panic quickly erupted about the Bitcoin compliance startup Chainalysis and their supposed sybil attack on the Bitcoin network.

Chainalysis CEO Michael Gronager joined us for a discussion of what happened and what role transaction monitoring will play in the future. We dove deep into the tension between the desires for user privacy and the requirements to achieve integration into existing financial services.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Chainalysis’ nodes caused problems for breadwallet
What damage a large scale sybil attack could really do to Bitcoin
The role transaction monitoring will play to achieve Bitcoin integration in existing systems
Why transaction-related blockchain analysis does not threaten Bitcoin’s fungibility
The best way users can protect their anonymity

Episode links:

CoinDesk: Chainalysis CEO Denies Launching Sybil Attack
Bitcoin Talk Discussion
Reddit: A Bitcoin Compliance Startup is Sybil Attacking the Network
Reddit: Chainalysis versus Mycelium Story
Inside Bitcoin Article

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/070

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Powering an estimated 5-10% of all Bitcoin transactions, Electrum is one of the leaders of the Bitcoin wallet space. The open-source walled was started in 2011 and played a key role in the development of the light-weight SPV wallets. Developer Thomas Voegtlin joined us for a discussion of Electrum, their recent 2.0 release and the rapidly evolving Bitcoin wallet space in general.

Topics covered in this episode:

The evolution of Bitcoin wallets and what motivated him to start Electrum
Electrum 2.0 and its new features such as Multi-sig and hardware wallet support
The security tradeoffs between using an SPV wallet versus a full node client
How Bitcoin aliases could do away with Bitcoin addresses

Episode links:

Electrum
Electrum Github Repo
On the Privacy Provisions of Bloom Filters in Lightweight Bitcoin Clients
BIP 39
BIP 37
Versum MIT paper

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/069

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Is Bitcoin secure from attacks that could destroy the currency? To a large part, this is determined by how expensive it is to carry out an attack and by the potential profits the attacker could generate. Ideally, an attack is so expensive to carry out that no profit-driven attacker would engage in it.

But in this episode, Brian argues that the cost of attacking Bitcoin will likely decrease in the future and the ability to short Bitcoin and thus benefit from an attack will increase dramatically.

Topics covered in this episode:

How an attacker would need to go about shorting bitcoin
How the kamikaze mining pool could be used to bribe miners to join the attacker
Why all profit-driven miners will have an incentive to join the attack, whether or not they believe it will succeed
Why the block halving in 2016 could be an exceptionally dangerous time for Bitcoin, since an attack would be cheap to execute and likely to succeed
How a gradual decrease of the block reward, instead of the 4-year halving rhythm would reduce risk

Episode links:

Bitcoin Development Mailing List Thread - Death by halving

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/068

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What Bitcoin did for money, OpenBazaar is trying to achieve for commerce. Born as a fork of the Dark Market project, OpenBazaar aims to facilitate online trade by removing unneeded middlemen. Built as an open source protocol, users simply install the application on their computer to gain access to marketplaces available on the network. From the app, they may also place items or services for sale by creating “Ricardian contracts”, which get propagated to the network and made accessible to everyone to see. The protocol, which uses Bitcoin as a means of payments, utilises multi-signature transactions. This makes it possible for transacting parties to include third-party arbitrators, who may intervene in the event of a dispute. We talked to Brian Hoffman, the project’s Lead Developer, about this paradigm-shifting project and the potential it has to disrupt person-to-person marketplaces such as eBay. Currently in beta, OpenBazaar is due for a full release in Q1-Q2 of 2015.

Topics covered in this episode:

History and current status of the project
Mechanics of a simple transaction on OpenBazaar
Ricardian contracts
OpenBazaar’s proposed arbitration model
Reputation and the important role it plays in peer-to-peer trading
Business models that may be threatened by this technology

Episode links:

OpenBazaar
OpenBazaar Git Repo
Ricardian Contracts
OpenBazaar Reddit
Bitrated

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/067

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Levin Keller is known to many in Berlin as the man who warned everyone about the dark scenario where buying Bitcoins in Europe would be subject to VAT. As with the VAT issue, Levin was also concerned with the complexity of filing tax returns. For merchants and companies dealing in Bitcoin, keeping track of gains and losses makes proper accounting a messy ordeal.

His startup, Coyno, hopes to solve that by providing standalone, read-only bookkeeping for your existing wallets. Coyno allows you to import the public seed from your HD wallet and keeps track of transactions. The service, currently in beta, reads your wallets’ public addresses and stores bookkeeping information whenever a transaction occurs. By recording the exchange rate at the time of transaction, Coyno can generate reports of taxable events, allowing users to more easily file their taxes. By allowing Coyno to read all your wallets, it’s able to differentiate incoming and outgoing transaction from funds being moved within your organization, a feature lacking from other reporting tools.

Levin also talks about his journey of being incubated at the Axel Springer Plug and Play Accelerator in Berlin. He also weighs in on some of the challenges of building a Bitcoin startup and attracting investors in Europe.

Episode links:

Coyno Beta
Coyno announcement
Axel Springer Plug and Play

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/066

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Backbone to the financial system? Powering decentralized technology? The first true world currency? There is probably who hasn’t dreamt of a world ten years from now when Bitcoin would be all those things. The promise of cryptocurrencies are enormous, but will Bitcoin really emerge as the winner? And how can we reconcile this grand vision for Bitcoin with an ecosystem where projects launch new coins and blockchains every day?

The one project that rekindles those Bitcoin dreams and paints a potential path to Bitcoin’s ultimate success are sidechains. Developed by Adam Back, Greg Maxwell and several other Bitcoin core developers, sidechains aims to allow the permissionless, rapid innovation of alt chains, but using the established monetary base and network of Bitcoin.

It’s a complex project, but with Blockstream founders and sidechains visionaries Adam Back and Greg Maxwell we couldn’t have had better companions on our journey into understanding the coming Bitcoin-Sidechains-Macrocosm.

Topics covered in this episode:

The motivation behind sidechains
The concept of digital scarcity
Concerns about the security of sidechains
Different stages of sidechains from federated pegs to merged mining to block extension

Episode links:

Blockstream
Sidechains white paper
Saving Bitcoin From Destruction

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/065

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Adam B. Levine, the “Spiritual Grandfather” of Epicenter Bitcoin and Editor-in-Chief of Let’s Talk Bitcoin, joins us to share is “crazy” passion for information and cryptocurrency. Never shy when it comes to talking about complicated subjects, Adam divulges his ideas about the next iteration of the experimental Let’s Talk Bitcoin Network and his newly launched standalone token vending machine, SwapBot. Adam also opens up about his role as the Chief Visionary Officer of CoinPowers and why it ultimately failed as a project. We also get Adam’s take on the future of crowdfunding and what role he sees himself playing within the crypto community moving forward.

Topics covered in this episode:

The integral part Adam played in the creation of Epicenter Bitcoin
How the Let’s Talk Bitcoin podcast show and network were born
The Tokenly Platform
The recent discontinuation of certain LTB Network shows
LTBCoin and the problems it aims to solve
Tokens Vs. cryptocurrencies
Content monetization and crowdfunding

Episode links:

Let's Talk Bitcoin
LTBCoin
SWAPBOT Prototype
Tokenly Project

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/064

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When it comes to Bitcoin, Tim Swanson is known to many as the man who sees the glass half empty. Whether or not that’s true, it’s fair to say that Tim has critical opinions about Bitcoin and questions many of the assumptions held by those who wish to see it succeed. A researcher and educator, he is the author of several books including “Great Wall of Numbers: Business Opportunities and Challenges in China” and “Great Chain of Numbers: A Guide to Smart Contracts, Smart Property and Trustless Asset Management”. He also blogs about Bitcoin, economics and various other topics at OfNumbers.com. He currently serves as an advisor to Hyperledger and is Head of Business Development at Melotic.

Topics covered in this episode:

True cost of Bitcoin transactions
Bitcoin as a niche technology Vs.
Consensus-as-a-service and semi-trusted networks
Hyperledger, a decentralised ledger platform
Melotic, a digital asset exchange
Bitcoin’s adoption as a payment system
Trusted transparency in mining
Remittances

Episode links:

OfNumbers.com
Dave Hudson's Blog (Hashing It)
Slicing data: what comprises blockchain transactions?
OP-ED: The Rise and Rise of Lipservice: Viral Western Union Ad Debunked
A Year After the Non-Apocalypse: Where Are They Now?
Architecture of Internet Money

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/063

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Eris Industries spawned when three people got together to come up with a solution to Olivier Janssens’ £100K bounty to replace the Bitcoin Foundation with software. Their proposal, initially called Project Douglas and built on top of Ethereum, was designed to replicate the functions of a trade association on a blockchain. Today, Eris has evolved into a Distributed Application Software Stack, with which developers can rapidly deploy distributed applications that are flexible, legally compliant and secure. Interestingly, Eris allows organisations and companies to adopt blockchain technology without being fully decentralised.

We’re joined by one of the Founders and COO of Eris Industries, Preston Byrne, who explains how Eris works and talks about some of the practical use cases which may arise. Siân Jones is also here to weigh in on some of the innovative aspects of this exciting open-source project.

Episode links:

Eris Industries:
Deserver White Paper
Thelonious White Paper
Eris Package Manager White Paper
Eris Legal Markdown White Paper
Blockchain Your Business in 7 Steps

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/062

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Every quarter, CoinDesk releases its excellent State of Bitcoin Report proving an accurate benchmark of where the Bitcoin ecosystem stands. We were very fortunate to be joined by the man who compiles the State of Bitcoin Report, Garrick Hileman. As an economic historian at the London School of Economics and a frequent contributor to CoinDesk, Garrick is best know as an expert on Bitcoin and other currencies.

We would like to pay our respects to the 17 innocent people who lost their lives in the recent terror attacks in Paris. Our thoughts are with their families and loved ones. Je suis Charlie!

Topics covered in this episode:

The recent $5m hack on Bitstamp
Startup activity and VC investments
The continually slumping Bitcoin price
Merchant and user adoption
What we should look forward to in 2015

Episode links:

Garrick's Website
Stake of Bitcoin 2015 Report (CoinDesk)
New Index Ranks Argentina 'Most Likely' to Adopt Bitcoin (CoinDesk)

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/061

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That the bitcoin price is highly volatile is no secret. Opinions differ on whether that is just an inevitable roadblock to be passed on the way to world domination or whether it represents a fundamental flaw that will prevent Bitcoin from ever achieving widespread use as a medium-of-exchange. Seasoned hedge fund trader and monetary systems expert Robert Sams, is of the latter view and has been among the leaders in conceptualizing what a stable cryptocurrency should look like. It’s an issue that is at the very heart of how the cryptocurrency ecosystem will develop.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why volatility is an obstacle to cryptocurrency adoption
The two big problems of creating a stable cryptocurrency
His proposal for a stable cryptocurrency: Seignorage Shares
How finance professionals perceive Bitcoin

Episode links:

Seignorage Shares Whitepaper
Robert Sams Blog
Ethereum Blog Search for a Stable Cryptocurrency
XeroClear Twitter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/060

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As we wrap up 2014, Brian and Sebastien have a fireside chat and look back on some of the areas of Bitcoin they thought were the most defining. They also look out to 2015 and give their thoughts about what to expect in the coming year. This episode also marks the show’s 1-year anniversary, so celebratory drinks are in order. No guests or scripts for this one, just a candid conversation between the Epicenter Bitcoin founders.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/059

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At just 20-years young, Vitalik Buterin is one of the most brilliant minds in the cryptocurrency space. Previously, a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine, he has conceptualized Ethereum, the most radical and ambitious cryptocurrency project since Bitcoin. After raising $18m in a crowdsale, a team of over 30 are working on launching the project by March 2015. In his work on designing a system for the future, he has been grappling with many of the hardest problems in the cryptocurrency space over the past year.

Topics covered in this episode:

How Ethereum has evolved since the white paper
The problems of Proof-of-Work
Why Proof-of-Stake is the future of consensus protocols
Why his main focus has been on consensus issues and scalability
Why Bitcoin will never be stable enough to price things in
The flawed ideology of ‘Bitcoin maximalism’ that prevents people from considering Proof-of-Work alternatives

Episode links:

Ethereum
How to get started: Your first DApp in under one hour
Ethereum Proof-of-Concept 7
Proof of Stake: How I Learned to Love Weak Subjectivity
Slasher: A Punitive Proof-of-Stake Algorithm

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/058

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CoinTelegraph Chief Editor, Allen Scott, and writer, Ian DeMartino join Sebastien (Brian is away) for a conversation about the independent Bitcoin media. Cryptocurrencies enable new business models and monetization opportunities for content producers, which CT is fully utilizing. Allen and Ian explain their innovative system whereby content creators are paid according to the success of their articles, which it determines by measuring the number of shares on social media. CoinTelegraph is an independent news site that specializes in Bitcoin and digital currencies. Freelance writers, who all get paid in Bitcoin, produce the vast majority of their content. CT’s long-term ambition is to grow along with Bitcoin and become a front runner in the cryptocurrency news space.

Episode links:

Cointelegraph
Article Contest

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/057

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We are joined by Daniel Krawisz, the Director of Research at the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. Daniel co-founded that organization last year with Michael Goldstein and Pierre Rochard to educate the Bitcoin community on the foundational ideas that led to the creation of Bitcoin. The Satoshi Nakomoto Institute is dedicated to shedding light on the ideological history of Bitcoin and keeping its controversial roots from being marginalized.

Topics covered in this episode:

What it means to be a libertarian, crypto-anarchist
The perception of Bitcoin and the future of the bitcoin ecosystem
The viability of alternative currencies

Episode links:

The Satoshi Nakamoto Institute
Bitcoinist.net
Youtube channel

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/056

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SolidX Partners CEO Daniel Gallancy joined us for a discussion of Bitcoin, institutional investors and how his company is working on creating a bridge between the two. While there is no question that interest in cryptocurrencies has risen dramatically – also among the financial elite, there is still a big chasm separating the two worlds. With Daniel we explore how it could be bridged, when it will happen and what the consequences could be.

Topics covered in this episode:

How SolidX offers institutional investors exposure to bitcoin using Total Return Swaps
The perception of Bitcoin on Wall Street
The relationship between VC investments and direct bitcoin purchases
If a derivatives market could undermine the security of Bitcoin

Episode links:

SolidX

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/055

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Daniel Peled, CEO of Gems, and Tom Kysar, Marketing Lead at Koinify, join us to talk about a project that aims to revolutionize social messaging.

As one of the first decentralized social networks built on blockchain technology, Gems hopes to put the ownership of the network back in the hands of its users. While large centralized social networks collect your information and sell it to advertisers, Gems is building on a different model in which users only receive solicited messages and get paid when companies advertise to them. Gems is also a cryptocurrency which can be traded between users within its mobile app. The initial crowdsale, organized by Koinify, will run from December 1st to January 5th.

Episode links:

Gems
Koinify
Gems Token Sale Details & Update on the Koinify blog

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/054

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Keeping Bitcoins safe from theft is probably one of the things Bitcoin holders worry the most about. Historically, there have been a number of recommended best practices like paper wallets, BIP 38 wallet cards and cold storage. Although these remain relatively safe ways to store Bitcoins, implementing these solutions can be complicated and difficult to manage for day-to-day transactions. Recently, some companies have begun introducing multi-signature HD wallet services, where 2-out-of-3 signatures are required to sign transactions. These solutions offer security and usability, with the assurance that Bitcoins will remain safe, and the ability to transact with ease. In fact, the website P2SH.info tracks the adoption of multi-sig, and it has been growing exponentially in recent months.

Which brings us to our guest: Arianna Simpson, an Account Specialist at BitGo, a company that provides a simple multi-signature HD wallet solution for individuals and businesses. We talked to Arianna about BitGo and the services they offer, discuss different use cases for multi-sig HD wallets and make projections about the evolution of the wallet space from different angles.

Episode links:

BitGo
Arianna's blog
Amount of Bitcoins held in multi-sig addresses

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/053

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Today’s episode is all about Factom, an open source project which aims to solve three core problems which apply to all Bitcoin 2.0 applications: Speed, Cost, and Bloat. Rather than writing every transaction to the blockchain, Factom allows decentralized applications to write blocks of transactions to Factom blocks, which themselves get hashed and stored to the bitcoin blockchain. At its core, Factom provides Proof of Existance, which allows for any digital artifact to be reduced to a hash that proves that artifact’s existance at a specific point in time.

We are joined by Factom CEO, Paul Snow, and President, Peter Kirby, to explore the different applications of Factom as well as the technical workings of this very interesting and promissing project.

Episode links:

Factom
Factom White Paper

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/052

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David A. Johnston is a very active member of the Bitcoin community. Aside from speaking at about every Bitcoin conference there is, David is the Managing Director of the DApps Fund, a board member MSC Protocol Foundation, as well as Co-founder and Executive Director of the BitAngels Network.

On this episode we go deep in to decentralized applications, and who better to talk to about DApps than the creator of “Johnston’s Law” which states “Everything that can be decentralized, will be decentralized”. We talked to David about the recent whitepaper he co-wrote titled “The General Theory of Decentralized Applications, DApps” which defines the different types of DApps and a number of best practices with regards to funding, token distribution, business models, etc. We also discussed the DApps Fund, BitAngels Network and the Master Protocol, and his involvement with those projects.

Episode links:

DApps Whitepaper
"Decentralized Applications - the future of Bitcoin and virtual currencies?" - CoinSummit San Francisco 2014
Crowdsale Best Practices Paper
DApps Fund
BitAngels Network
Mastercoin Foundation

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/051

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Nicolas Courtois is a cryptographer and senior lecturer at University College London. He has been studying cryptocurrencies for some time and has written a number of papers on bitcoin. His talk is titled “Cryptographic Security of ECDSA in bitcoin” in which he exposes the security vulnerabilities in the specific variation of the Elliptic Curve digital Signature Algorithm used in bitcoin.

Episode links:

Slides for this presentation
Nicolas Courtois’s Wikipedia Page
Personal blog
On The Longest Chain Rule and Programmed Self-Destruction of Crypto Currencies paper
Nicolas’s Bitcoin Publications

This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/050

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Meni Rosenfeld is Founder of Bitcoil and Chairman of the Israeli Bitcoin Association. Having organized several meetups and conferences in Israel, he is a very active member of the Israeli Bitcoin community. Meni has been studying mining pool reward methods for several years and in 2011, wrote a paper titled “Analysis of Bitcoin Pooled Mining Reward Systems”. This research gave him a broad understanding the reward system landscape and the issues with many of the methods used by pools. He later wrote proposals for alternative non pay-per-share methods and which would render pool hopping impossible: the geometric method and double geometric method.

Episode links:

Mining Pools Reward Methods Talk - Bitcoin 2013 Conference
Analysis of Bitcoin Pooled Mining Reward Systems [paper]
Summary of mining pool reward systems [paper]
Analysis of hashrate-based double-spending [paper]
Meni Rosenfeld's vanity thread [Bitcoin Talk Forum]
Geometric method [Bitcoin Talk Forum]: New cheat-proof mining pool scoring method
Double geometric method [Bitcoin Talk Forum]: Hopping-proof, low-variance reward system
Mine in multiple pools to reduce variance [Bitcoin Talk Forum]
Multi-PPS [Bitcoin Talk Forum]
ASIC will not centralize Bitcoin mining [Meni’s blog]
Blocksize Economics by Gavin Andresen [Bitcoin Foundation]
Proof of Activity: Extending Bitcoin’s Proof of Work via Proof of Stake [paper]
Israel Bitcoin Meetup Group
Israeli Bitcoin Community Facebook Page

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/049

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BTC2B Brussels conference on October 16 & 17, 2014

This episode features two parts of a session on Bitcoin marketing. First, Richard Caetano, founder of Handshake and btcReport, talks about the importance of sharing stories to create user engagement. Then, you’ll hear a panel discussion moderated by Richard with Jeremy Garder, Executive Directory of the College Cryptocurrency Network, and Sebastien Couture, as panelists. They talk about how the Bitcoin industry can grow adoption though integrated product & marketing strategies.

This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/048

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The College Cryptocurrency Network is a non-profit organization which aims to provide students, academics, and faculty with the guidance and resources required to start independent Bitcoin clubs on college campuses and in schools. Since being founded in early 2014, the CCN has grown to well over 100 chapters, on every continent, from middle schools to PhD programs.

Director of Student Outreach, Jacob Sears, and Creative Director, Dean Masley, join us to talk about the CCN’s work and their personal experiences with starting clubs in their respective universities. We also talked about how the concept of Bitcoin is received by students and the potential for blockchain innovation and adoption on university campuses.

Episode links:

College Cryptocurrency Network

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/047

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Shawn Wilkinson, founder and lead developer of Storj, joins us for our first deep dive into a decentralized application. Storj’s particular domain is the decentralization of cloud storage. Their applications allow users to store their files in a decentralized peer-to-peer network that promises to be more secure and effective. At the same time, it creates a market where people can earn money by renting out spare hard disk space.

Topics covered in this episode:

Why cloud storage lends itself to decentralization
How the efficiency of Storj compares to conventional providers like Dropbox
The architecture of Storj including the applications Driveminer and Metadisk
How Storj interacts with protocols such as Counterparty and Ethereum
The Storjcoin X crowdsale and its economics

Episode links:

Storj
Metadisk
Metadisk Beta
Driveshare
Stroj Talk
Storj & Metadisk whitepapers

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/046

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Every quarter CoinDesk puts out its excellent State of Bitcoin Report providing a snapshot of where the Bitcoin ecosystem is at. We took this opportunity to go back to our original formation and have a discuss of the report and the state of Bitcoin in general. It was lots of fun!

Topics covered in this episode:

Bitcoin Adoption Metrics
Our January Predictions
The continually slumping Bitcoin price
Merchant adoption
Startup activity and VC investments

Episode links:

CoinDesk State of Bitcoin Q3 2014
Epicenter Bitcoin Predictions 2014
EB30 - Radko Albrecht

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/045

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Mehdi Medjaoui (Co-founder and COO) & Elie Chevignard (CMO) are the two guys behind Oauth.io, a service which aims to provide a simple and standardized way for developers to implement Oath. Working in digital identity management, they have an interesting proposal on how to build personal identity management into the blockchain. This proposition would effectively take the power away from centralized single sign on services like Facebook and Google and make them decentralized.

Episode links:

Oauth.io
API Days
OneName
NameID
Namecoin
SQRL

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/044

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The Isle of Man has been an area of interest for many Bitcoin companies as of late. The local government of this small British Crown Dependency, located in the middle of the Irish Sea, wants to attract Bitcoin businesses by adopting light regulation as well as providing accessible banking relationships and infrastructure for companies dealing in crypto. This business-friendly approach has made the island an ideal place for tech, aerospace and e-gaming companies to establish, which has been a great benefit for the local economy in the last few decades. As an example, the leading online gaming site Poker Stars now employs some 200 people on the island.

With the support of the Economic Development Department, the Isle of Man recently hosted Crypto Valley Summit to help promote their wiliness to work with Bitcoin companies. Siân Jones was at the event and captures this enthusiasm in three interviews, which we discuss on the show:

Topics covered in this episode:

Peter Greenhill, CEO of e-Gaming Development at Isle of Man Department of Economic Development
Paul Davis, CEO of Counting House who specializes in payment solutions
Archie Watt, Head of e-business and Micky Swindale, Head of Advisory at the global consultancy firm KPMG

Episode links:

Crypto Valley Summit
Isle of Man Economic Development Department
COINsult

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/043

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Tom Ding is the CEO and Founder of Koinify, a platform for funding decentralized applications. Think of Koinify as a sort of Angel List to bootstrap and fund a new decentralized economy, specifically decentralized applications. With his company, Tom hopes to help build the decentralized app which help push this technology to the mainstream. With his extensive knowledge of this space, we talked about the future of DACs and DAPPs and discussed some of the challenges these new models are facing, from profitability to the obvious legal aspects.

This episode was recorded over a live Google Hangout. It was our first attempt at doing a live video show and unfortunately we didn’t get the recording right. Our apologies for the bad sound quality, we’ll get the next one right.

Episode links:

Koinify
2020: A Call for DApps and DAOs

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/042

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Siân Jones was recently in London for the Inside Bitcoins conference. She interviewed two people with extensive knowledge of regulation and how it should apply to Bitcoin.

Marco Santori is Chairman of the regulatory affairs committee of the Bitcoin Foundation and recently appointed Global policy council of for Blockchain. As the New York Department of Financial Services BitLicense proposal nears the end of it’s second 45-day challenge period, Mr. Santori gives his predictions on what the legislation will look like when it is passed, which he expects to happen by the end of this year.

Amor Sexton is a lawyer at Adroit in Sydney Australia, a commercial law firm that specializes in Bitcoin and actively represents the Bitcoin industry when hen liaising with the Australian government. In her talk with Siân, she spoke about the Australian government’s recent guidance and draft ruling on the tax treatment of crypto currencies, with regards to income tax, capital gains tax and GST. They point out how these draft rulings differ from those proposed in other jurisdictions and explore how they will affect merchants and Bitcoin holders in the future.

Episode links:

Inside Bitcoins London
COINsult
COINsult Blog

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/041

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La maison du Bitcoin is a dedicated Bitcoin center located in the heart of ”Silicon Sentier”, which is situated in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris. Founded by entrepreneurs Eric Larchevêque and Thomas France, La maison du Bitcoin is an open space where people are encouraged to walk in and get information about Bitcoin. It also offers a variety of services such as a co-working space for bitcoiners and the ability to purchase Bitcoin over the counter. It’s also the home to meetups, conferences and training seminars.

For 10% off the upcoming Euro Bitcoin conference happening on October 8 in Paris, go to EuroBitcoin.org and use the code EPICENTER.

Episode links:

La Maison du Bitcoin
French Bitcoin Association
Coinhouse
Euro Bitcoin Conference

This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/040

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Dr. Bastian Brand is an investment manager at Pathfinder Capital. Pathfinder Capital is a London-based Venture Capital firm that focuses on frontier markets and cryptocurrencies. He is also the founder of the Bitcoin Startups Munich group and was previously a consultant at McKinsey.

The episode focused on his comprehensive paper surveying the investment landscape in the cryptocurrency space. We discussed the advantages of buying bitcoins versus investing in cryptocurrency startups, the prospect of Bitcoin 2.0 projects, and his views on the different sectors of the Bitcoin industry.

Episode links:

Pathfinder Capital
The Intelligent Cryptoinvestor Blog
Bitcoin Startups Munich
Bitcoin Startups Munich Meetup

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/039

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Flavien Charlon is the founder of coloured coin wallet Coinprism. Colored coins allow people and organizations to securely issue and trade real-world assets like commodities, stocks and bonds on the bitcoin network. Coinprism recently won the global Startup Challenge hosted by the Bitcoin Foundation in May 2014. Other notable projects include Predictious, a Bitcoin-based prediction market. He has 8 years of experience in software engineering at Microsoft, building large scale distributed systems, and is a graduate of Ecole Centrale Lyon, where he received an Msc. in Engineering.

For 10% off Inside Bitcoins London on September 15 and 16, use the discount code EPICIBC14

Episode links:

Coinprism
Colored Coins
Open Assets Protocol
Flavien Charlon speaking at CoinSummit San Fransisco

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/038

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Thomas Spaas, director of the Belgian Bitcoin Association and an international tax lawyer in Antwerp, and our regulatory affairs correspondent Siân Jones, join us to discuss a Swedish court case on VAT, the European Value Added Tax. The case has made it all the way to the Court of Justice of the European Union and may set the precedent for how the sale of Bitcoin will be taxed.

For 10% off Inside Bitcoins London on September 15 and 16, use the discount code EPICIBC14**

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/037

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Today’s panel discussion is called “The ever changing landscape of Bitcoin mining” where moderator Jez San is joined by some of the most prominent figures in the mining industry, Marc Aafjes of Bitfury, Dave Carlson of Megabigpower, Timo Hanke of Cointerra and Naveed Sherwani of Peernova. The discussion revolves around several key topics, notably, everyone seems to agree the industry should move away from the term mining and start calling it transaction processing. They also discuss the rapid evolution of ASIC processors in the last year, the importance of improving the overall power efficiency of the network and where ASIC production is heading. They also talk about a highly debated subject which is the shift from home mining to centralised data centers. The panels ends with predictions on the total hashing power of the network at the end of this year.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/036

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George Samman is co-founder and COO of the Bitcoin derivatives exchange, BTC.sx. George helps us get a broad understanding of derivatives as a financial product, and we explore their uses in the context of Bitcoin. He also brings his perspective with regards to bridging the gap between Wall Street and the Bitcoin ecosystem. As a Chartered Market Technician, he has a very technical view on market movements and gives us his thoughts on the recent BTC price fluctuations.

Episode links:

BTC.sx
SeedCoin
George Samman

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/035

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This episode features a panel discussion called “Decentralized Applications and Appcoins.” Flavien Charlon, founder of Coinprism, Ron Gross of the Mastercoin Foundation and Gavin Wood of Ethereum discuss the fascinating things which are happening in the so-called Bitcoin 2.0 space. The panel starts with a short status update on each of the panellist’s respective projects. They also dig into some of the legal implications, lay out the security challenges and give their thoughts on how they feel the appcoin and DAC space will evolve in the coming years.

Episode links:

Coinprism
Mastercoin
Ethereum

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/034

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Edmund Edgar is the founder of Reality Keys. His startup won the Startup Challenge award at the Bitcoin 2014 Conference in Amsterdam. They are providing cryptographic data feeds on real-life events. This can then be used to base derivatives, contracts or insurances on. There is no question that services like Reality Keys will play a key role in crypto currency’s future. Previously he was Director of Information Technology at Princeton Review Japan and he is also a graduate of Oxford University.

Read the blog post summarising this episode on Bitcoinist.net.

Episode links:

Reality Keys
By My Coins
Edmund Edgar on Twitter
Codius
Truth Coin

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/033

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CoinSummit London Conference Series – July 10 and 11, 2014

In this episode we talk to Olivier Janssens, a Bitcoin early adopter and investor, and his associate Andrew Turner. We discussed Olivier’s recent $100,000 bounty replace the Bitcoin Foundation. He told us why he chose Mike Hearn’s Lighthouse project as the winner of 40% of that bounty and the effect that Lighthouse could have on Bitcoin core development funding.

We also interviewed Michael Jackson. He’s the former COO of Skype and currently a VC at Mangrove Partners. We discussed the recent EBA opinion paper. We also talked about his experiences with the regulation of new and disruptive technologies from his days at Skype as well as investing in Bitcoin companies.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/coinsummit-london-04

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Coinapult’s CEO Ira Miller and marketing specialist Freya Stevens join us for a discussion about their company and plans for the future. We particularly dove into their new Locks feature, which allows people to ‘lock’ the value of their bitcoins to other assets such as US Dollar, Euro or gold from directly within the Coinapult wallet. The goal is to remove one often-named barrier to mainstream adoption: volatility.

We also talked about the amazing ‘Let the Bit Drop’ project, which involves sending bitcoin per SMS to every resident of a small Carribean island. A party in Q4 will launch the project and educational materials will be given to residents via government channels.

Episode links:

Coinapult
Coinapult Locks
Let the Bit Drop
Bitcoin UK Podcast

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/032

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CoinSummit London Conference Series – July 10 and 11, 2014

This episode features a panel discussion called “The challenges of operating a Bitcoin business in Europe”. Peter Smith, COO of Blockchain.info, Mark Lamb, CEO of Coinfloor and Frank Schuil CEO, of Safello provide their insights on some of the challenges of running a Bitcoin business on the old continent. These challenges include regulatory compliance, establishing banking relationships and establishing trust with consumers. The panel is moderated by Adam Vaziri of Diacle.

Episode links:

European Banking Authority
EBA opinion on “virtual currencies”

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/coinsummit-london-03

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Gavin Wood joins us for an episode that is all about Ethereum. The uniquely ambitious Ethereum project with its turing-complete programming language is building a platform on which the next generation of decentralized applications can be run. While the project is still in development, the goal is to provide the infrastructure for the completely decentralized web of the future. The first part of the episode features an interview of Ethereum CTO and lead developer of the C++ client Gavin Wood. In the second part of the episode, Brian discusses the crowdsale of Ethereum’s own cryptocurrency ether that is currently going on from an investment perspective.

Episode links:

Ethereum

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/031

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CoinSummit London Conference Series – July 10 and 11, 2014

Our second CoinSummit Episode is out! In it we have two fantastic interviews. In the first one we discussed transaction fees, the economics of Bitcoin and the coming relaunch of Coinometrics with Jonathan Levin. Jonathan is a co-founder of Coinometrics and just finished his Master’s thesis on Bitcoin at Oxford University.

In the second interview we talked with Peter Todd, one of the thought leaders in the Bitcoin space. We covered the economics of transactions, mining centralization and the state of Bitcoin development. Peter is a core developer and also an advisor to projects such as Mastercoin and Dark Wallet. He’s also come up with a number of important innovations such as treechains and stealth addresses.

Episode links:

CoinSummit
Coinometrics

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/coinsummit-london-02

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Radko Albrecht joins us to discuss his startup, the Bitcoin-based peer-to-peer lending platform, BitBond. We dove deeply into why Bitcoin-based peer-to-peer lending is such a compelling proposal. We also talked about a lot of the intricacies such as volatility, reputation and loans pegged to fiat currencies. The final part we discussed raising venture capital for European Bitcoin startups and how Bitcoin will change the financial industry.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/030

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CoinSummit London Conference Series – July 10 and 11, 2014

We start our coverage of CoinSummit with Garrick Hileman, CoinDesk contributor & Economic Historian at LSE, who delivers the opening “State of Bitcoin” keynote, a data-driven assessment of how the Bitcoin Ecosystem is developing. The second part of the episode features a panel discussion called Will Bitcoin Last the Distance where Jeff Garzik, Bitcoin core developer, Prof. Emin Gün Sirer, Cornell University, Peter Todd, Bitcoin a core developer discuss the issue of mining centralization. This panel is moderated by Angel Investor Jez San.

Episode links:

CoinSummit
CoinDesk State of Bitcoin 2014
“How to Disincentivize Large Bitcoin Mining Pools” by Emin Gün Sirer
“It's Time For a Hard Bitcoin Fork” by Emin Gün Sirer
“Jeff Garzik Announces Partnership to Launch Bitcoin Satellites into Space” on Coindesk

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/coinsummit-london-01

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Steven Morell and Gabriel Mirón join us to discuss the recent New York Department of Financial Services BitLicense proposal. Our regulatory affairs correspondent Siân Jones also joins us briefly to give a general overview of this proposed legislation. We also take the opportunity to talk about Bitcoin’s development in Latin America, notably as a means to disrupt the remittance market, a multi-billion dollar industry. Our guests also talk about their respective companies. Steven is Chief Product Officer at Moneero, a company based in Uruguay and which is building a full suite of Bitcoin services. Gabriel is CEO of MEXBT, a Bitcoin exchange based in Mexico.

Episode links:

BitLicense draft proposal press release
BitLicense draft proposal document
MEXBT
Moneero

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/029

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This episode is part of our coverage of the Bitcoin 2014 Conference which took place in Amsterdam from May 15 to 17, 2014. These interviews were conducted by Siân Jones and focus on the area of regulation.

Topics covered in this episode:

Patrick Murck, General council of the Bitcoin Foundation
Preston Byrne, Securitisation lawyer at Norton Rose Fulbright in London

This episode is hosted by Siân Jones. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/bitcoin2014-08

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The recent publication of a European Banking Authority opinion on “virtual currencies” has caused great concern among actors of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Siân Jones joins us to dissect this 46-page document and the 70+ risks it identifies. Siân also helps us better understand the EBA, its role and the extent of its influence in the European Union. We also briefly recap the Coinsummit conference which took place in London and which we attended.

Episode links:

European Banking Authority
EBA opinion on “virtual currencies”
Bitcoin receives red carpet welcome in the Isle of Man [City A.M.]
sle of Man Launches Digital Currency Startup Incubator [Coindesk]
COINsult

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/028

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Topics covered in this episode:

Bryan Skarlatos, Partner at Kostelanetz & Fink
Estaban van Goor, Indirect Tax Lawyer at PwC
Jerry Brito, research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Luis Cuende, hacker and European Commission advisor

This episode is hosted by Siân Jones. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/bitcoin2014-07

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Today we’re joined by two guests. Tatiana Moroz is a singer-songwriter, anti-war activist and a very active bitcoin enthusiast and evangelist. Recently, Tatiana created Tatiana Coin, the very first musical artist coin on the Counterparty Protocol. She also recently joined Bitcoin Magazine as their sales director and joins us from New York. Wendell Davis is also with us again from Thailand. He’s the creator of the beautiful Hive wallet and CEO of Humint, a company which aims to help companies create and deploy branded coins. Wendell is quite knowledgeable in crowd sale platforms as well as new crowdfunding models and will help us dissect some of the challenges and opportunities of creating custom coins.

Episode links:

EBA: Financial Institutions Should Avoid Bitcoin, Await Regulation (CoinDesk)
EBA opinion on “virtual currencies” document
Tatiana Coin Website
Tatiana Coin on Coinpowers
Woman’s Crypto Association
Hive Web
Hive Wallet
Hummint

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/027

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Topics covered in this episode:

Anthony di Iorio (Founder Decentral, Founder Ethereum, Toronto Bitcoin Meetup, Executive Director Bitcoin Alliance of Canada)
Arthur Corry (Managing Director Decentral Accelerate)
Ethan Wilding (Resident Philosopher and Ethereum)
Michael Perklin (Bitcoinsultants, Director Bitcoin Alliance Canada, Founder Crypto Currency Certification Consortium)

Episode links:

Decentral
Decentral Accelerate
Bitcoin Alliance Canada
Bitcoin Toronto Meetup
Crypto Currency Certification Consortium (C4)
Bitcoinsultants
Bitcoin: The End of Money Kickstarter As We Know It
Bitcoin: The End of Money - Matt Miller Interview

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/026

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This episode is part of our coverage of the Bitcoin 2014 Conference which took place in Amsterdam from May 15 to 17, 2014.

Topics covered in this episode:

Adam Ludwin, Devon Gundry & Eric Rykwalder of Chain.com
Rodolfo Novak, CEO of Coinkite
Roop Gill, videographer for Coindesk
David Bailey, Founder and Editor-in-Chief yBitcoin magazine
Nic Cary, CEO of Blockchain

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/bitcoin2014-06

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Today out guest is Mike Hearn who many of you are familiar with. He’s one of the first Bitcoin users and the developer of bitcoinj, a Java library used by a number of popular Bitcoin wallets such as the Andoid wallet, Multibit and Hive. Until recently he was working at Google and is now working full-time on Bitcoin, including an interesting crowd-funding platform called Lighthouse.

Episode links:

Lighthouse
Assurance contracts
Arianna Simpson - Game Theory, Assurance Contracts, and Crowdfunding with Bitcoin
Venumeris
Mike Hearn talk at Coinscrum 2014 in London
BitcoinJ
BitcoinJ on Github

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/025

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This episode is part of our coverage of the Bitcoin 2014 Conference which took place in Amsterdam from May 15 to 17, 2014.

Topics covered in this episode:

Adam Cleary, founder of Bullion Bitcoin and Tamás Blummer of Bits of Proof
Frédéric Martin and Nicolas Baca of Prismcide
Patrick Melton of the Coinsider This Podcast
Marco Peereboom, CEO of Coinvoice

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/000-2

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Guest Joel Dietz talks about his new company Swarm, a very exciting cryptocurrency-based fundraising platform. Their idea is to provide a more efficient, decentralized and versatile version of Kickstarter. In the future, they also hope to allow companies to sell shares or share-like coins to raise funding. Our conversation took place just a day before the start of the commencement of their own coin SwarmCoin, which will finance the development of the platform.

Episode links:

Swarm
CounterWallet
US Marshals Bitcoin Auction
Google & Yahoo add Bitcoin prices
CoinSummit

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/024

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This episode is part of our coverage of the Bitcoin 2014 Conference which took place in Amsterdam from May 15 to 17, 2014.

Topics covered in this episode:

David Schwartz, Chief Cryptographer at Ripple Labs
Jon Peters, CEO of Cambrian
Edward Karatov, responsible for business development at Cryptonit.net
Eiso Vaandrager, VC with Green Gateway Fund
Richard Caetano & Matt Tuzzolo developers of BTC Report app

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/bitcoin2014-04

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On today’s show, we have Eddy Travia who joins us from Hong Kong. Eddy is co-founder and Chief Startup Officer at Seedcoin, a seed-stage virtual incubator for Bitcoin startups. He is also the founder of the Bitcoin Institute, a platform to facilitate research into different aspects of cryptocurrencies such as trading, market making, and entrepreneurship. Eddy along with Seedcoin also organised the first Bitcoin conference in Asia in November 2014.

Topics covered in this episode:

Crypotopay
BTC.sx
Coin Simple
Hive Wallet
MEXBT
DealCoin
zSIM: no URL

Episode links:

Apple Policy Update May Open Door for Bitcoin Transactions (Coindesk)
CoinJar back in the App Store (reddit)
Fred Ehrsam on CNBC (reddit)
CoinJar on iTunes
Apple App Store Review Guidelines
Seedcoin
Havelock Investments
Bitcoin Institute

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/023

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This episode is part of our coverage of the Bitcoin 2014 Conference which took place in Amsterdam from May 15 to 17, 2014.

Topics covered in this episode:

Bobby Lee, CEO of BTC China (@btcchina)
Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin and software engineer at Coinbase (@litecoin)
Philippe Rodriguez, President of Bitcoin France (@philrod)
Filip Roose, co-founder of Orillia and co-founder of the Belgian Bitcoin Association (@filiproose)

Episode links:

BTC China
Litecoin
Coinbase
Bitcoin France
Belgian Bitcoin Association
Orillia

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/bitcoin2014-03

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On episode 22 we had Wendell Davis on, who is CEO of two Bitcoin startups. The first one is Hive, a popular and user-friendly Bitcoin wallet targeted at Mac Users (and Android). His second startup, Humint, aims to help companies and brands issue their own cryptocurrencies – think loyalty points.

Our discussion of Hive covered wallet business models, usability and the payment protocol. After we talked about the crazy future awaiting us when everyone from a hot dog stand to your grandmother starts issuing their own currency. Finally, we covered some news topics such as the announcement by DISH to start accepting bitcoin and Bitex.la raising $2m to build Bitcoin exchanges in South America.

Episode links:

Hive Wallet
Hive’s Payment Protocol Implementation
Humint
DISH Press Release
bitex.la

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/022

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This episode is part of our coverage of the Bitcoin 2014 Conference which took place in Amsterdam from May 15 to 17, 2014.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jon Matonis, Executive Director and board member of the Bitcoin Foundation (@jonmatonis)
Marc Barach, CMO of Jumio (@MarcBarach)
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase (@brian_armstrong)
Radoslav Albrecht, Founder of Bitbond (@RadkoAlbrecht)
JF Gallas, Chairman of the Board of the German Bitcoin Foundation (@jfgallas)

Episode links:

Bitcoin Foundation
Germany and the Netherlands join the Bitcoin Foundation as affiliates
Jumio
Coinbase
BitBond
Bundesverband Bitcoin

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/bitcoin2014-02

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For episode 21 we had Asher Tan on CEO of CoinJar, a very successful Australian Bitcoin startup that offers similar services to Coinbase. We talked about the plans with CoinJar, what we think of Circle’s new product and the recent price increase.

Levin Keller, who is a board member of the German Bitcoin foundation, joined us to talk about a recent statement by the German Finance ministry on Bitcoin. He has been warning about a possible sales tax on Bitcoin for months and that seems to be happening now. We talked through what the recent announcement means for businesses and where we’re likely to go in the future.

Episode links:

CoinJar
CoinJar Stories
Circle
Circle Product Video
Bitstamp requiring proof of source before withdrawal
Statement by Bundesverband Bitcoin on sales tax

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/021

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This episode is part of our coverage of the Bitcoin 2014 Conference which took place in Amsterdam from May 15 to 17, 2014.

To start off our coverage of the event, we have the keynote presentation by Patrick Byrne (@OverstockCEO), CEO of Overstock.com. Mr Byrne talked about the history of liberalism and the upcoming crypto revolution.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/bitcoin2014-01

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We recorded episode 20 in Amsterdam the morning after the Bitcoin 2014 conference organized by the Bitcoin Foundation.

Our two guests for the post-conference sit-down were Jorge Timon (twitter.com/timoncc) and Mark Friedenbach (twitter.com/MarkFriedenbach). Jorge is the founder of Freicoin, which is, from an economic perspective, one of the most innovative altcoins. They are also the creators of Freimarkets, which aims to bring Bitcoin 2.0 capabilities into the Bitcoin feature set itself. Finally, they are part of the newly formed Blockstream company, which will develop the Sidechains proposal.

Episode links:

Freicoin
Freimarkets Whitepaper
Understanding Sidechains
Blockstream

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/020

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For episode 19, we had David El Achkar on as our guest host. He is a Bitcoin entrepreneur in Beirut and the founder of the Bitcoin Lebanon group. We talked about the broken state of payments in the Middle East and David’s startup, Yellow Pay.

Episode links:

Yellow Pay
Shu Bitcoin
Dark Wallet
Moolah
Moolah Publishes Dogecoin Customer Funds Audit Amid USD Deposit Freeze (Coindesk)
Proof that Moolah.io is a legitimate business (reddit)
BitBay raises $30 million in funding
Bitcoin 2014 Amsterdam Conference

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/019

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For episode 18, Meinhard Benn was on as our guest host, while Sebastien was enjoying a few days off. Meinhard is the lead software developer for Bitcoin Brothers, a Bitcoin mining startup based in Berlin.

Topics covered in this episode:

Dark Wallet: Features, privacy and is this good or bad for Bitcoin?
Every MIT undergrad will receive $100 in BTC
Can Bitcoin scale? Blocksize, bandwidth, etc.
Bitcoin Brothers’ ambitious mining project

Episode links:

Dark Wallet
Bitcoin Brothers
MIT Bitcoin Club

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/018

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After having guests on for our last few episodes, it was back to the original cast of Brian and Sebastien for an episode.

Episode links:

Spin-offs on Bitcoin Talk Forum
BitUndo
Xapo debit card
Bit-Card

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/017

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We had two excellent guests on. Stephan Tual is the Chief Communications Officer for the Ethereum project, founder of the London Ethereum meetup and has played a crucial role in building out the Ethereum community. Max Kaye is a Australia-based developer focused on decentralized applications and the developer of Cryptonet, a library to build arbitrary blockchain-based structures.

Episode links:

Ethereum
Ethereum Whitepaper
London Ethereum Meetup
Eudemonia
Cryptonet on github

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/016

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This week, we have Joel Hampton on as a guest host, a rather nomadic entrepreneur, currently based in Sydney. His startup Spendr.io is building a site to help people find high-quality, bitcoin-accepting businesses.

Episode links:

Cyprus police issues arrest warrant for bitcoin entrepreneur (Cyprus Mail)
Danny Brewster Bitcoin Talk post
Spendr
Understanding Sidechains
Square Market Accepts Bitcoin

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/015

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Brian’s away on vacation this week so joining us as a guest host is Jaron Lukasiewicz, CEO of Coinsetter. We talk about IRS guidelines and what impact they may have on everyday Bitcoin use, China’s “crackdown” on Bitcoin and the effect on price, a new startup brings wallets to iPhones and Jaron tells us about Inside Bitcoins New York were we will be taking part in a panel about the future of exchanges.

Episode links:

Coinsetter
IRS Virtual Currency Guidance

This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/014

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On today’s show we have Sian Jones as a guest host. Sian is a consultant at Coinsult and specialized in cryptocurrency regulation. She helps us get to the bottom of recent rulings and guidances about Bitcoin.

Episode links:

Coinsult
IRS Virtual Currency Guidance
Tax treatment of activities involving Bitcoin and other similar cryptocurrencies
HMRC scraps VAT on virtual currency Bitcoin (BBC)
Isle of Man Welcomes Digital Currency Exchanges ‘No License Required’ (Coindesk)
UK Digital Currency Association (UKDCA)

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/013

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Topics covered in this episode:

The new update of the core Bitcoin client to version 0.9
Strange rumors about a Bitcoin ban in China
OKCoin and Bitstamp raising $10m each and the business of Bitcoin exchanges
KnCMiners’ first Scrypt mining product the Titan goes on preorders
The proposal for a new Bitcoin symbol

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/012

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This episode is part of our coverage of the Inside Bitcoins conference which took place in Berlin February 12 and 13, 2014.

This episodes features two talks with different perspectives on Bitcoin exchanges. In the first segment, Jaron Lukasiewicz, CEO of Coinsetter gives a talk on the interesting business opportunities in and around the Bitcoin exchange ecosystem. Then, Nir Halutzy, Account Executive, Incapsula talks about some of the security challenges exchanges face every day and takes us through an actual DDoS mitigation scenario.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/eb-inside-bitcoins-berlin-05

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On today’s show we have Jonathan Levin on as a guest host. He’s an economist at Oxford University and co-founder of Coinometrics.

Topics covered in this episode:

Our meetups in Berlin and Lille
Jonathan’s thoughts on the vibrant London Bitcoin scene
The latest updates on the MtGox story
The future of Bitcoin exchanges
Xapo’s $20m funding round
Whether altcoins will inflate the money supply?

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/011

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This episode is part of our coverage of the Inside Bitcoins conference which took place in Berlin February 12 and 13, 2014.

This episode features two inspiring talks on Bitcoin its potential as a tool for change. We kick off with Oliver Flaskaemper (twitter.com/flaskaemper), Managing Director at Bitcoin.de who gives his keynote presentation on why Bitcoin cannot be banned. Then Marcia Hoffman (twitter.com/marciahofmann) an attorney involved in broad range of technology law and policy issues, gives an amazing talk about privacy, free speech and government policy as it applies to Bitcoin. Enjoy

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/eb-inside-bitcoins-berlin-04

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Topics covered in this episode:

The curious story of Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto
Recent transactions indicating MtGox may still possess large amounts of bitcoin
Mark Karpeles’ shady Past
Blockchain.info’s acquisition of RTBTC
The new VAT guidance on Bitcoin in the UK

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/010

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This episode is part of our coverage of the Inside Bitcoins conference which took place in Berlin February 12 and 13, 2014.

In this episode, we bring you feature interviews we did with five people bringing innovation to the Bitcoin space.

They talked to us about the innovative projects they are working on, their impressions on the conference as well as their outlook on bitcoin’s future. Enjoy

Topics covered in this episode:

Johann Barbie – 37coins.com
Támas Blummer – bitsofproof.com
Pamir Gelenbe – hummingbird-ventures.com & coinsumm.it
Jaron Lukasiewicz – coinsetter.com
Hans Henrik H. Heming – bips.me

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/eb-inside-bitcoins-berlin-03

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On today’s show we’ll talk about the Mt. Gox situation, covering : the history of recent events, the Crisis Strategy Document and what it means, theories on what really could have happened as well as the outlook for Mt. Gox, Bitcoin exchanges and Bitcoin in general. In addition, we’ll talk about Neo & Bee’s opening in Cyprus and the new decrease in transaction fees.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/009

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This episode is part of our coverage of the Inside Bitcoins conference which took place in Berlin February 12 and 13, 2014.

This episode features a first set of interviews we did over the course of the 2-day event. You’ll hear the many conversations we had with entrepreneurs, developers, investors and the conference organizers.

Thank to all the people who agreed to talk to us!

Topics covered in this episode:

Alan Meckler of Mediabistro – twitter.com/alanmeckler
Thomas Hessler of UFOstart – twitter.com/ThomasHessler
Andreas Schildbach, developer of the Android Bitcoin Wallet – twitter.com/schildbach
Elie Chevignard, freelance journalist – twitter.com/Elie__
Philippe Rodriguez of Avolta Partners – twitter.com/philrod
Hubert Gertis of gertis.media – twitter.com/hubert
Rafael Rodriguez organizer of the Texas Bitcoin Conference – texasbitcoinconference.com
Stanislav Wolf of bitcoin-konferenz.de – twitter.com/bit_stan
Moe Adham of BitAccess – twitter.com/moeadham
Josh Zerlan of Butterfly Labs – butterflylabs.com
Tuur Demester, investor and economist – twitter.com/tuurdemeester

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/eb-inside-bitcoins-berlin-02

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On today’s show we talk about:

Topics covered in this episode:

Last weekend’s ‘Berlin, Texas Bitcoin Hackathon’ here in Berlin.
The continued MtGox-journey of disaster.
The arrival of the Bitcoin ATM wave to US shores.
TigerDirect’s Bitcoin offer & Balanced’s Bitcoin integration.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/008

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This episode is part of our coverage of the Inside Bitcoins conference which took place in Berlin February 12 and 13, 2014.

The night before the conference, we were at Room 77, the world’s first brick and mortar establishment to accept bitcoin. We were joined by many members of Berlin’s bitcoin community and attendees of the conference.

Thank to all the people who agreed to talk to us!

Topics covered in this episode:

Max Gotzler from Biotrakr – biotrakr.de
Felix Weis from Bitalo – bitalo.com
David Bailey from yBitcoin Magazine – ybitcoin.net
Johnathan Brown – twitter.com/bluedroplet
Oscar a developer from Vienna
Bastian Brand from Pathfinder Capital – pathfinder.vc
Matt Roszak from Silk Road Equity – silkroadequity.com
Onyx Ashanti – onyx-ashanti.com
Eric Benz from ZipZap – zipzap.com
Gary Ubsdell from ICE3X – ice3x.co.za
Joerg Platzer from Room 77 and CECG – cecg.biz
Tatiania Moroz – tatianamoroz.com

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/eb-inside-bitcoins-berlin-01

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On today’s show, we’re joined by Johann Barbie, founder of 37Coins, an SMS based wallet solution. Johann weighs in on the recent transaction malleability fiasco and helps us better understand what’s really going on. We also talk about recent news out of Florida where two men where arrested after selling Bitcoins to Federal Agents posing as criminals.

Thanks again to Johann for joining us and letting us record out of his kitchen where he brewed us some mean Nero (Burning ROM) tea.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/007

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Topics covered in this episode:

Apple banning Blockchain.info’s iPhone app
The breakdown and looming death of MtGox
Auroracoin: A new and innovative Icelandic cryptocurrency
BitWall’s paywall experiment with the Chicago Sun Times
BitTag: A cool bitcoin price tag

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/006

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Topics covered in this episode:

The arrest of Charlie Shrem – BitInstant CEO and ex-Vice Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation
The guy who’s taking on the US government to get his Silk Road coins back
New York hearings on bitcoin regulation
The latest bitcoin regulation news in France
BTC China accepting bank deposits again
Dogecoin’s olympic quest
A brief Ethereum update

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/005

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Topics covered in this episode:

TigerDirect becoming the largest retailer to accept bitcoin
The prospects of the mighty Google accepting bitcoin
Marc Andreessen’s post comparing bitcoin to personal computers and the internet
BitCologne
The latest bitcoin ATM stories
Ethereum Update: News on the fundraiser terms and launch

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/004

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Topics covered in this episode:

A host of new businesses start accepting Bitcoin
Coinye Coin gets shut down
The FBI may sell Bitcoins seized from Silk Road
Skyhook announces a sub-$1000 Bitcoin ATM
French Senate holds Bitcoin hearings
Ethereum: what it is and what it means for the future of Bitcoin

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/003

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Topics covered in this episode:

Bitcoin ATMs as they pop up around the world
Zynga starts accepting Bitcoin in some of its games
A new service that allows you to easily create your altcoins
India changes positions on regulation
GHash.io reaches critical mining power and how the centralization of mining threatens the stability of Bitcoin
Elliptic Vault offers a new Bitcoin insurance service

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/002

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In our first episode of Epicenter Bitcoin, we make our predictions for 2014. From security to regulation to mainstream adoption, we discus 9 areas where bitcoin could face the most change.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/001

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In our pilot episode, we talk about the latest news in regulation. Specifically, we talk about the recent regulatory stories out of France, Switzerland and China.

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/000

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