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

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

Epicenter Media Ltd.epicenter.tv
Epicenter brings you in-depth conversations about the technical, economic and social implications of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. Every week, we interview business leaders, engineers academics and entrepreneurs, and bring you a diverse spectrum of opinions and points of view. Epicenter is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst, Meher Roy and Felix Lutsch. Since 2014, our episodes have been downloaded over 8 million times.
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Episodes

Elias Simos: Rated Network - Reputation for Machines = Transparent Blockchain Infrastructure

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 inf...

Sep 28, 20231 hr 10 minEp. 515

Misha Komarov: =nil; Foundation – The Marketplace for ZK Proof Generation

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 mar...

Sep 22, 202352 minEp. 514

Robbie Ferguson: Immutable - The Web3 Gaming one-stop-shop

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 ...

Sep 16, 20231 hr 1 minEp. 513

Stani Kulechov: Lens Protocol – Decentralised Social Media Primitive

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...

Sep 08, 202352 minEp. 512

Stephane Gosselin: Frontier Research - Solving Ethereum's MEV Problem

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’ r...

Sep 01, 20231 hr 1 minEp. 511

Marko Baricevic: Cosmos SDK - The Internet of Appchains

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 int...

Aug 25, 202358 minEp. 510

Sandeep Nailwal: Polygon 2.0 - The New Value Layer of the Internet?

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, f...

Aug 18, 20231 hr 11 minEp. 509

Stephen Young & Storm: NFTFi – P2P NFT Lending Protocol: From PFPs & Art to RWA

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 i...

Aug 11, 20231 hr 7 minEp. 508

Alex Gluchowski: zkSync - A new Era for EVM-compatible zk rollups

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 architectu...

Aug 04, 20231 hr 19 minEp. 507

Patrick O'Grady: Avalanche – Building High Performance VMs With HyperSDK

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...

Jul 28, 20231 hr 18 minEp. 506

Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum - MEV, Staking Derivatives and Privacy (EthCC 6)

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...

Jul 22, 20231 hr 3 minEp. 505

Avril Dutheil: Neutron – Interchain Smart Contracts on Cosmos

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). Neutr...

Jul 14, 20231 hr 17 minEp. 504

Sveinn Valfells: Monerium – Regulated On-Chain Euro (EURe)

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 ...

Jul 07, 20231 hrEp. 503

Eli Ben-Sasson: Starknet - zk-STARKs and Cairo 1.0 upgrade

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...

Jun 30, 20231 hr 8 minEp. 502

Luka Müller: Sygnum Bank & MME Legal – Crypto Regulations & Institutional Investors

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 ensuri...

Jun 23, 202356 minEp. 501

Epicenter – Looking Back on 10 Years of Crypto. AI Doom & Gloom? SPECIAL

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 amazin...

Jun 16, 20231 hr 22 minEp. 500

Zac Williamson & Joe Andrews: Aztec - Privacy-preserving, hybrid ZK rollup

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 execu...

Jun 09, 20231 hr 18 minEp. 499

Fig: Squid Router – Sub-20 Second Cross-Chain Swaps. Axelar-Powered Interoperability

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,...

Jun 02, 202346 minEp. 498

Collin Myers & Oisín Kyne: Obol Network - Distributed Validator Technology (DVT)

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 w...

May 27, 20231 hr 11 minEp. 497

Ben DiFrancesco: Umbra – Privacy Preserving Token Transfers

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...

May 19, 20231 hr 9 minEp. 496

Emin Gün Sirer: Avalanche – The Future of Crypto: From Gaming to LLM-Powered Smart Contracts

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...

May 11, 20231 hr 3 minEp. 495

Ali Yahya: Andreessen Horowitz – A16z Crypto Investment Thesis

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 structur...

May 03, 20231 hr 13 minEp. 494

Jose Macedo: Mars Protocol – Red Bank' Credit on Cosmos via Osmosis

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, a...

Apr 28, 202359 minEp. 493

John Letey: KYVE – Decentralised and Accessible Data Storage

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 l...

Apr 21, 20231 hrEp. 492

Tim Galebach: Uqbar – Smart Contracts on Urbit

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 diffe...

Apr 14, 20231 hr 31 minEp. 491

Ryan Zurrer: Dialectic AG - A Decade of Crypto Ventures: From BTC mining to P2E gaming

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 IC...

Apr 07, 20231 hr 23 minEp. 490

Barry: Dymension – Modular Blockchains and RollApps

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 ...

Mar 31, 20231 hr 11 minEp. 489

Laurence Ion & Vincent Weisser: Vita DAO – From DeSci to Longevity Research

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 ob...

Mar 24, 20231 hr 14 minEp. 488

David Schwartz & Jordi Baylina: Polygon zkEVM – From Mainnet to Mass Adoption - Part 2

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 th...

Mar 17, 202355 minEp. 487

David Schwartz & Jordi Baylina: Polygon zkEVM – From Circuits to Mainnet - Part 1

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 applicat...

Mar 10, 202357 minEp. 486
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