Epicenter - 10-Year Anniversary Livestream

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Welcome to Epicenter the show which talks about the technologies, projects and people driving decentralization and the blockchain revolution. This is phenomenal. Today is Epicenter's 10th birthday and we're very pleased to be doing this special edition live stream with lots of special guests and and as you'll see here, a special Co host who I'll

introduce in just a second. But first, I just want to say just how exciting this is that, you know, 10 years ago Brian and I were releasing the very first pilot episode of Epicenter. So throughout this live stream we'll be bringing in people. It's sort of a call in show. We'll have like lots of friends, listeners and former guests of the show come in, give their thoughts or share their impressions on the industry and also share something interesting anecdotes.

We've also got some Epicenter trivia. We'll go back down memory lane. I've got some stuff prepped here to keep everything exciting. But first, yeah, welcome everyone. How's everybody doing? Great. Good. So 10 years Crazy stuff. Yeah. So I I wanna just introduce the person down on the on the on the

on the bottom right here. So Adam B Levine who some I'm I'm sure the O GS will remember as the host of let's Talk Bitcoin and people have been listening to the show long enough will know the story of how Brian and I met back in 2013 through let's talk Bitcoin. So Adam wants to just introduce yourself briefly here and we'll we'll get started. Sure. Thanks, Deb. Yeah, I'm Adam B Levine. I've been on basically both sides of like disruptive technology, journalism and

entrepreneurialism. About 11 years ago at this point, I started Let's Talk Bitcoin on the spring of 2013 and that was kind of immediately right place, right time, 5th Bitcoin podcast I'd started at a point. At that point there was really no other shows around that were talking about this stuff. And then as we came into the end of the year, we were very popular, growing very fast, and I was annoyed that there were no other shows that I could listen

to outside of myself. And I do like listening to my own voice, but, but that led me to start a contest through the network that had about 20 submissions. And I will, I think we can confirm at this point that EPICENTER is the longest lasting, greatest success that came out of that batch. But it was a pretty good batch. And a lot of those shows lasted for a few years. So that was sort of the, you know, another catalyst moment.

I like to do that whenever I can and I'm very happy that you guys have had such success and I'm very happy that I was able to help you guys get started. So congratulations on 10 years. It's a huge accomplishment. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when I got into Bitcoin, it was basically just when you guys started Let's off Bitcoin maybe like a month after that. And I was like writing my master's thesis at the time. Didn't have like too much time except whenever I was like

cycling somewhere. I was living in Berlin at the time, You know, I was listening to let's off Bitcoin, right? So listen to like all of the episodes. And there was like a really, really great way to to kind of get into it. And it was super exciting. And then I know, you know, I was just a fan of big of podcasts,

right. Because like it was for me kind of the the one of the main ways of learning about Bitcoin early on. So then when I was like, OK, I want to work fully in in this area and you had this contest and I was a fan of the sort of podcast format and felt it was such a powerful way to to learn, you know, to build a network to, you know, speak with interesting people. And then the the chance to launch our own podcast was, was,

you know, was exciting. And then I remember I think he had this call out and it said like, OK, there's going to be a call for anyone interested in participating. And it was only like maybe 5-6 people on this call. And I think Sebastian and I were the only ones in Europe. We didn't know each other. Yeah. By the time and they were like, OK, let's, let's try to do this thing together. Yeah, and then?

Yeah, did that pilot episode and then, and it was surprising actually, how many people still ended up doing the pilot episode right, because in that in that first call you you organized there, there was not a lot of people in there. But afterwards, yeah, quite a lot of episodes came through. And yeah, I'm excited we kept going. Yeah, I think it was about 20 episodes. I think we had about 20 pilots that came out of that.

And I think we wanted the intent was to be like, hey, this is gonna be the, you know, the top two or three shows. And I think we wound up taking on 7 or 8 because we're like, oh, well, actually, you know this is, this is all pretty compelling. And yeah, I remember that call that we that I remember the kickoff call. And I think that the way that, that that you guys started working on the show together was, I was like, well, you're both in Europe, you should probably just do the pilot

together, 'cause this is hard. I'm pretty sure that that was that that that I said something to that extent. You guys were like, OK, you know why not? Yeah, I think, I think that was basically it was just like, why, why? Why did you get like these Europeans work together. Yeah. But yeah, I also remember that call. I remember I was like in my kitchen like where I used to be living and and you know Brian and I afterwards like had another chat and then got to know each other.

And then we only actually met in person like two or three months later actually in February of the following year at at the Let's Talk in Berlin. And like you know for me that that that whole period was such a transitionary period out. I'd been working in sort of web design and product development, web product development before that e-commerce and it was such a whole new world. And I remember Brian, I don't know if you remember this but you know we we went to this

dinner. I don't I don't think it was let's talk I I I don't think it was at inside Bitcoin's Berlin. I think it was at the Amsterdam conference in 2014 and we went to this dinner and there were all these sort of like VC types and it was organized by Matt Rozak and Brock. Pier No, that was in Berlin. Folks from the That was in Berlin, right? So yeah. Yeah, it was Brock Pierce and Matt Rozak organized at dinner.

Exactly, Yeah. Yeah. And like Blockchain ventures guys were sitting next to us and like at some point like I remember you looked at me, you said OK Seb from now on from this point forward we're we're now Co founders because I think before that we had sort of you know this is, this is sort of being a a bit of a hobby and kind of a thing that we did on the side.

But then at that point you're like, OK, this is something that we're really going to pursue because you know, this is like you know, basically Bitcoin and blockchain are are going to change the world. And like we want to be part of this and and and we want to sort of you know, project ourselves as entrepreneurs in this space and not just hobbyists.

And and I remember that was like an importance of, you know, mind shift for me from that point on like OK, now you know I'm working in blockchain full time and and and that's sort of what happened from that point on. Yeah, yeah.

And it was also very good. I think like combination to us together 'cause you, you were very good at also at the whole, like website, figuring out the whole like technique, all of this sort of, you know, how to actually produce a podcast, put it out, the audio, all of these things that was like very helpless with. So there's like, I think we were like a great, you know, I was more like interested in the reading the white papers and preparing questions and stuff.

But like, I think we were like a great sort of, yeah, great complementary skill set. So I think that, you know, allowed us to, you know, to to produce this thing consistently and then of course we started having more hosts, right? I think Maher joined as the third host and I think it was like 2015. Actually, so this is my first trivia. Question. OK, so. I've got some trivia questions here and then we'll start bringing in the guests here.

So the first, the first chart of the question is, is for all of the all the Co hosts actually. So when when did Maher first join what was Maher's first episode? And maybe you know Maher, you're also, yeah, open to welcome to to answer this question. But I don't know if you remember, but yeah, maybe, Brian, maybe you remember. I don't remember the first episode. I think it was like 2015 that he joined, if I remember correctly, but I don't remember what it was so.

It was episode 97. It was with Paul Stork. Oh, right, the the the drive chain stuff. Or that's Yeah. Drive chains. Truth. Color Truth. Right. Background background truth coin. Yeah. And and Sunny, Do you remember your first episode? OK. Does anyone else remember? I didn't remember. I remember it in Maharis, but I didn't remember yours or Felaga's. I I I'll say it, I I'm pretty sure it was Charles Hoskinson.

I wish I had AI, wish I had a bell I. I think Brian knew I was like, really into a theorem classic at the time. And so then he like, asked me like, hey, do you want to do this one with Charles Hoskinson? I think that's how I was, how I did my first episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Sonia and I met, so I was working at Tenement in 2017 and then we had this retreat in the summer of 2017 in Canada.

And then Sunny was like, I don't know, like 19 at a time or something, something like that, you know? That was my next question. How old was Sunny when he first joined an epicenter? Correct answer. Was not old enough to drink? Yeah. He pens Where? Yeah, in Canada, Yeah. And Federica, what? Do you remember your first episode? I was going to look at that now,

but I didn't. I think it's coin fun and I think it was in 2018. And it's also super funny because I, Brian and I, we had actually known each other for a while and we had worked from the same office the East Dev office in Berlin for a while and then we actually started a Co working space together full node in Berlin in 2017 and but the way the the way I actually got on the podcast the first time is when I met Meher at a dinner and she said oh you should join Epicenter. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think it had sort of come up as an idea and we had discussed it and then at some point I think Meher was like asked you and then yeah, I was super happy that that worked out and that, you know, become a key, invaluable host and part of the show, so. Yeah, and it's such a pleasure. And yeah, Felix isn't here yet, but his his first one was with Dan Finlay of Metamask. He joined a bit later in in 2022 but hopefully he'll join the live stream and there's just a

bit. But yeah, let's get some of, we've got some people here in the in the green room that we wanted to bring on. So yeah, who, who's, who's on 1st? I think Trent. I think Trent is first. Yeah, right. All right, let's bring him in. Hey, Trent. Great to be here. Hey, how you doing? I'm good. And first of all, congratulations. 10 years. It's hard to believe. Wow. I I was. I loved hearing these stories already from what you guys are sharing. You know, a lot of Berlin

things. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think Trent was also, you know, one of the first people right in in Bitcoin in Berlin and started, you know, a whole sequence of Stardust was ascribe the first one or? Yeah, it was Ascribe which pivoted to Big Genie B, which pivoted to Ocean. So I've been at Ocean for six years I guess, Tom. Yeah, and Ascribe, a lot of people will not know Ascribe, but Ascribe was basically doing something like NFDS right on on the Bitcoin blockchain.

So they were basically, you know, taking these artworks and sort of, you know, tracking the ownership of these artworks on chain. And I remember having lots of discussions there that's always like, does this make sense because like I mean you know, sort of the image is there anyway and anyone can copy it. So you can't really protect that. Make sense? Ownership. And I was always like, at the one hand I thought was very cool. The other hand I'm like, does it really make sense?

And then of course, you know, NFTS became absolutely massive. But I think that was really the 1st, the first project that and you guys were doing cool things like working with, you know, interesting artists and galleries and you also like you know, way ahead of of your time with that. Project. Yeah, it was really fun. I mean, you know, we had these interactions, but you know, we were too relieved for the money side of things.

So we had to pivot. And interestingly, you know, like NFTS took off in Bitcoin, what, a year and a half ago. And you know, now they've been spreading the mechanism of your C20. It's sort of not much different than a hash on on the output transaction and it's sort of, you know, taking advantage of the witness stuff. But then people took the idea and dumped it into the other EVM chains for basically lower transaction fees, and it's been spreading. It's called inscriptions, right?

If you guys are following this, it's hilarious. And there's big complaints about Dust and all the other chains and you know, breaking chains 1 by 1 every week it seems. But it's actually fascinating because BRC 20 is actually very similar to the Spill Protocol we developed back in the day. And you know, for us it's like we're really happy that NFTS finally took off. Maybe it wasn't us, but you know, we're we're still playing in Blockchain and Village, so

it's great to see. Yeah, absolutely. And then I think you've also been on the show a whole bunch of times, though. I think we did a scribe. So I guess we did all of the things, you know, we did a scribe, the 20 B Ocean, I think several ocean episodes maybe, and yeah. Yeah, definitely. I remember probably 1 funny one. It was consensus 2017. I had just come off stage and I had a an interview lined up with Sebastian and I'm. I randomly met Fred Ursa.

I'm right at the tail end of my talk and he's like Trent, we need to talk Co founder of Coinbase. Right. And I'm like, OK, I'm going off to do an interview with Epicenter. You want to join me? Because I knew I had already been writing about decentralized data markets and that interview was going to be partly on that. So. So I basically hijacked Sebastian with with a friend. I remember this. I I, yeah, I remember.

I remember you came on and like I think already, you know, I, I, I was sort of on edge, 'cause it was like the first time I did an episode solo cause like usually, you know, it's always 2 hosts, right? And so in in the early days, like when I do an episode solo, I always just like be a little bit self-conscious about it and then and then you bring on this other person randomly. Right. And I was like, OK, but yeah, it up really, really good.

Yeah, it was a really lively discussion for its ball of energy. So it was really fun. Yeah. So actually this is sort of related to the to the next trivia question here, which is who is who have been our most frequent guests. I think it's italic. How many times has he been on? Five times. I mean, Harris says no. I mean Harris says no. Who? Who's our most written guest? Trend. Really. Wow. I mean, both could be true. Anybody else? Any other guesses? Martin's also been on a bunch of

times. He has. I'm going to throw in a guess. I don't know if it's right, but maybe goon. I think. We so, so actually a lot of these answers are true. So Vitalik has been on six times, Goon has also been on six times and this is this Trent, this is your sixth time as well. So you're a good company and I mean not excluding of course, although you know she was more of a of a host at sometimes.

But Shawn Jones who was a frequent contributor to the show in the early days who would come on to talk about you know regulation and then shifting it. Regulatory landscape. Yeah. And then. But yeah Martin Martin's been on, Martin's been on three times, I mean as a guess, I don't know, maybe as a host. Also he's been on as a host once or twice before this before this call, I was reviewing some episodes and the early episodes from Guen were on on consensus and really fun.

I always loved those. But then there was the one he had with with Vlad on the worries about the Dow. This was before the Dow hacked, after the Dow hit on every million, but before the Dow hacked. So that was a really pivotal episode, a really fun one. All right. Yeah. And that episode, actually, there's also some, like, funny, Yeah, how that turned out a funny story around that. So, you know, the ACC published this paper, right?

The first thing they published on Crypto, which was basically the Dow, is the security. And and they cited that podcast we did with Goon and Clad Sam for in that in that paper as evidence that it was security because they were basically talking about how, you know it's kind of centralized and you have these curators and they have this kind of control. And yeah, it's funny how it does ended up being, you know, cited by the SEC as a. The US government launches Epicenter. Yeah.

So wow, I I remember. Actually, the the week that the Dow Hawk was going down, I actually was in Ukraine, not Berlin at the time. And Vlad was there, it was. And so him and I were sitting like watching it and like he was having to run away to help, you know, fix things as well. And then at the same time it was the same week as a Bitcoin happening. So there was, I forget the name, but it was one of the Bitcoin Max, you guys. Really interesting dude and you know he was really excited with

the habiting. But there's also this Dow and you know from him it was a bit of schadenfreude as well. But overall a highly interesting week. That week, you know, habiting was 10% of the stuff. The hack was the big thing, but also the the outcome. Ethereum plastic was already mentioned. All this, right. A lot of really interesting things and that was really sort of when Ethereum started to grow up in a good way, right? You've got to have trial by fire

to really be successful. So it's, I think it's really cool how the community came through. Adam, I wanted to ask you as well, like, I mean like in your, in your podcast journey, you know, what has been the most significant or transformative change that you've seen in the last, like 11 years of of doing crypto podcasts? The biggest one is definitely the move to tokens. If you remember back in, you know when when you guys were

just getting started. This was right after Master Coin had come out with the first meta token layer, which was off and it was right before I think Counterparty had come out. So these are both metal layers for tokens on top of Bitcoin. And before that the norm was if you want to create a token, you need to figure out miners, you need to figure out distribution. And there was just all this complexity and infrastructure that went along with it. And after that it was not the

case. It was different economics that that unlocked a lot of stuff. So that was a really significant one. One of my favorite, one of my favorite things that I did there was for a couple of years we ran it as a full kind of news desk and, you know, did investigative journalism and stuff like that. And I remember in the run up to the final collapse of Mount Gox, I spent I think in a very late evening working with Charlie Shrem and Napoleon.

Can't remember his last name, but basically ripping through all of the documentation around Mount Cox and trying to figure out what it all meant. You know, in kind of the the, I think it was a few weeks before the thing actually fully collapsed because there had been all sorts of rumors circulating and stuff like that or a bunch of things like that.

You know that just like those early days, there's something so fundamentally fun and interesting to me about doing journalism in areas of really advanced technology that nobody understands. And like, that's true about technology generally. But when you're talking about something like crypto, you're really talking about really complex, you know, like multifaceted group dynamics and, you know, leaderless systems, right? Like leaderless systems are just wild things.

And so it's again, like, yeah, I mean, like, even outside of just crypto, like, that's probably some of the most fun journalistic experiences that I've had is just kind of trying to run that stuff down and figure out what's real and what's not because it's so hard to tell. Yeah. And the and the token stuff that you guys were doing really early on last topic like I I've told that story. I've talked about that with people like so many times recently.

I mean because like there there's this new, I mean I guess it is starting to become more productized like this idea of providing some sort of a token or NFT for like doing some kind of action. So it could be like interacting with a brand or listening to a podcast or something like that. It was like you know, lots of products kind of entering the market space that that do sort of similar things.

And you know, I always think back to like this LTV coin and this magic word that we used to have on the podcast, like our brand, you probably remember this. But like we, we used to do this magic word at every episode. So we'd say like OK, today's magic word is I don't know, Pickles or whatever, like not Pickles but miners or like Bitcoin or you know transaction fees or whatever.

And then you know if you listen to the episode you you take that magic word, pop it into the less topic one website and then you'd get some tokens as like proof of listenership. And like this is such AI mean this was in 2014 and this was such a forward thinking idea and I think maybe it was just too early you know for for for how how the market was evolving but

like. One of the one of the things, very divisive, yeah, one of the things that I've like for better, so I'm super experimental as you guys know, right. Like we did all kinds of stuff that was just absolutely ridiculous. Like we built a whole token powered content management platform, right, And content like expression platform that had tokens baked into it at kind of a base level in 2014. And so like that was so fun to do.

But the the thing about it that I think is challenging around all this stuff is that there was this really brief period of time where all of this stuff was possible. But before it became obvious that there was so much money attached to it and there was so much ability to do that.

And you know we gave away that token explicitly because I was concerned that later on it would be something that would be used against us. And so again, like our token had an end of life in 2017 where it was retired and changed out for another token. Like none of, like no projects

do any of this stuff even today. So no, it's again like the the greatest privilege that I I had in kind of all of this was being in a position where not only could I explore my ideas, but I could do so at scale with other content creators and with a community of a couple 10s of thousands of people, you know, at a time before the the money came in and just muddied the water. There's nothing wrong with the money, but it does complicate things in ways that they just

weren't complicated. When we were working on stuff, our problems were that we were too early. But everything else, I'm pretty pretty happy with how we got right. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's, yeah, it's interesting how the tokens changed everything. Like I I mean I remember like you know being very involved in Ethereum early on and and I was just like OK, but you so you're going to build these apps on Ethereum and at the same time you have all these you know issues with user experience and

scalability and all that. And no one's like this is going to take forever until you're actually going to be able to build sort of consumer grade applications on that. And of course that's true, right. We still basically even today right, just sort of on the verge of being able to do that. But of course, what I totally did not see, and I I think hardly anybody saw at the time, was how tokens just kind of accrue so much value even when there's little usage and the app isn't really there.

And that it can then, you know, basically keep projects funded for years and years, building all kinds of stuff like before there's really a product market fit. And I think that's of course, for Ethereum, it was absolutely crucial, right? Otherwise this Ethereum would have died, right? Or, yeah, wouldn't have made it. And yeah, I think that was super interesting. It's a blessing and a curse right?

It it's a blessing in that if you're a visionary founder who really has something to build out it means that you have a bit more time to get product market fit before you run out of cash. And the the curse is that you have a bit more time which means that you might not have that sense of urgency, right. And the way to to to resolve that is simply work. Strive really hard to maintain that sense of urgency even

though you have the cash, right. And you know, if you're a start up founder, I mean you guys all know this too. Cash is K right? There's usually a harrowing point in the time of the startup where it's really, really tough to to get through. So tokens actually really help to to get you past that, right. And the good news is, you know, maybe it took a few years from the time of the ICOS to the stuff that got built. But think about it from 2017

until 20/20/2022. Now a lot of the, the really visionary stuff did get built, right that took a lot of infrastructure building and took it for years. But that happened because of, you know, there was enough funding that came and there was enough runaway and road map and it happened and then of course there was all the scams and whatnot, but a lot of really great stuff to get built precisely because of the token funding.

Yeah. And and of course you also have the situation right, that if you have a good enough story and the token gets enough value, you can really keep this thing going of like having something you're working on that actually doesn't have any traction, any usage for like years and years and years, right. And even today, right, we still have projects that are like you know top ten, top 20 assets with billions and billions of market cap that basically have you know

zero usage. How many devs does light light chain Litecoin have now? Is it happening? So it's amazing. Well, I'm surprised some people haven't hijacked that yet. I think that we learned a couple of things from it all, which is 1. Being early is really, really valuable because anything that comes after the early, it's the earliest success point has to compete with all of the other things that want to displace it.

And that's just in practice really, really, really hard to do. The other thing is that the the one of the challenges with the money is that and this was especially true early on, I think it's a little less true today although not entirely true, is that the value of what was raised appreciated so quickly that it made it so that people who were building stuff, yes they could take their time but they could also just do nothing.

And that was fine too as far as like the deal that they had made with people. And there are many early projects that fall into that bucket. And again like the I was involved with some of the the early Etherium stuff and wound up getting kicked out of the the the early Skype group chats because when we were talking about the pre mine and stuff like that right. The founder allocations and stuff.

I was like guys this is just a bad idea like you're you're creating centralized problems stuff like that. Not well received. Exited from all of that. So I mean like, you know, like. I think for all the good that was done by the funding mechanism, early on we thought about it as crowdfunding. We thought about it as a pure analogue to taking a crowdfunding campaign which has this indefinite period of time after you funded the thing, before you actually have something that is a thing.

And sometimes people just needed to, you know, sell that because they no longer were in a position where they could have it. Sometimes people miss the campaign, and so adding tokens made a lot of sense there. But the money, when the money just stacks up so, so high, just

changes the incentive structure. And again, for every project that's out there that, you know, really deliver on something that was interesting, I would argue that there's probably 100 projects out there that just took the money and did nothing, whether through, you know, malicious intent, naivete or or whatever, like the hit rate for that relative to money. I would constitute, I would consider almost all of it to be malinvestment that we just got lucky on a few times.

So I don't know, man, the years have really made me quite jaded as far as just kind of the incentive structure as it as it all goes. But I am happy overall with kind of the way that the things have gone and the fact that it's still around. Again, there were lots of scenarios where this got much more aggressive, much faster, and none of those really manifested much to more

pleasure. So I know you guys have many guests and with that I will say thanks for having me on here and thanks for having me on so many Epicenter episodes. I I I love this show. I listen to it all the time and it's really great to be a part of it and Congrats again on on your on your anniversary. Thank you, Trent. Yeah, and looking forward to many more episodes with you, Trent. Absolutely. And we also have someone new on Sebastian from Harper, just

joined. Hi, Sebastian. Hey, for Rick and team and I guess happy birthday everyone. And yeah, thank you for being my personal educator on this journey for almost 10 years. It's been invaluable. You know, I just thought it's so weird because podcasts exist in all spaces, right? But in all spaces you also have this competitor called universities nowadays. Maybe there's some university stuff out there, but back when I joined, they were winning universities.

There was like Epicenter was the only way we could learn about crypto and not get scammed. Like the second part was kind of important. So yeah, that's that's been pretty valuable from at least. When did you start listening to the shows up? Actually, for me it's I I was thinking about it before. It was hard. It was kind of hard to tell because like I was talking to Maher a lot, who, you know, was, I would say, personally responsible for dragging me into this Crypto Rabbits hole.

And then, yeah, Meher Meher was telling me about this Epicenter thing. And I think it was in late 2014 that became I I did kind of like weekly shopping, and my weekly shopping took exactly 2 hours, which wasn't exactly the time to listen to two episodes. So that was good because I had quite some catching up to do. And yeah, that was that was when I started. That's a very long weekly shop. Oh yeah, yeah. That's happens when you live in

a countryside. Yeah. Maybe it was also two hours, because that's simply how long it took to listen to two episodes. Mahar, how How did you guys know each other? I didn't realize that there was Mahar was the connection. Yeah, he was doing a PhD in Basel. Exactly. Got it. It was, it was the Basel connection, the desert connection, and yeah, all the all the funny ideas that that mirror had, that many people had back in the days. And it all sounded kind of crazy, right?

There was Bitcoin and there was all these crazy ideas. And I also remember like, I think Mirror was the first person who had witnessed to be, like properly obsessed with something. And the first thing that I saw Mirror being obsessed with was actually Maker. And like, there was this time when mayor would join all these calls and listen in about like what's going on at Maker and like nobody could really find out what was going on because

Erjan was was a bit obscure. It still is very obscure. Yeah. Yeah, a few days ago Sebastian and I were talking about how the LLMS would have would struggle at understanding the maker code base. Make sure our bit code bases are the hardest for LMS. That's quite clean. But so it's for humans, right? So maybe, maybe you know, LLMS are the way to make these these kind of very funny code bases available to some other minds except for the handful of people who coded it.

So I mean you mentioned the episode that you like that that that was the first episode you listened to I guess like this this, this is interesting though I wanna ask like here and Frederica as well what are like what's your like most memorable episode that you listened to before you joined as a host? For me, I I think it was like in 2017 like the One with Jimmy song and it just like explained like Scaling Wars 101.

I think that was just like so helpful to just be like, OK, here's like the you know anyone who needed like understanding scaling wars. I just sent them that that episode because it's like, OK, so one hour, just like, obviously, you know, somewhat route, pretty biased view, but it was a good explanation of scaling wars. I hate listening to podcasts. Segue. You had it in fast, guys. I've never listened to NFP Central podcast. I. I can't believe you waited 10 years together.

Maybe. It's good you didn't say that earlier, Mayor. I'm. Looking for an opportunity to fit it in? I go in the white paper. Now I go in the code base. Last popular episode I remember hearing is a medical one, but I've never heard epicenter. Like, yeah. No, you were listening to Epicenter like before you before you joined us. Now I think so. That's what he told you, That's when. He told us. I mean, maybe I might have scouted like Epicenter. OK, you know, what's up or

something. But, you know, hi, Yeah. I remember. The Jingle, That place in the beginning, because you don't hear that as a host recording it, what do you recognize it may have? So Speaking of jingles, Speaking of jingles, this, this, this will lead lead us to like the next trivia question here. Does anybody remember the title of the pilot episode? I remember you were called Epicenter Bitcoin at the time. This is true. This is true.

As I get constantly reminded by every time I go to a Bitcoin conference like people like you know I still like Epicenter but you know you got sold out by dropping Bitcoin from and I have no our Twitter handle still says BTC in it. So you know. So just just one thing here. So I have here the the first message that Maher sent us and it was like, hi, Brian and Ceros, yeah, I love your show in interviewing style. So you were listening? Or just tailoring himself to get a job.

No, he was proposing himself as a. So you were working on this Hyperledger. We're involved in this project called Hyperledger, which has nothing to do with the later thing called Hyperledger that ended up, you know, Santa Cruz blockchain stuff. And it was some sort of, I mean here you'll be able to describe it more, but you're you're basically proposing us to do an episode about this. And yeah, I think that was like some point in 2015. Well, that would have gone over

better than. Well, I've never listened to your show before, but I'd like and I hate podcasts, but I'd like to go on and talk about the project I'm working on. So good job, good job. That's an excellent approach. So does anybody remember the the name of the first the pilot episode? No, sorry. Why don't Why don't we just play it then? This is Epicenter Bitcoin, a weekly podcast about Bitcoin and

cryptocurrencies. The pilot episode recorded December 20th, 2013 Regulation and the Future of Bitcoin. This episode of Epicenter Bitcoin has brought you in collaboration with the Let's Talk Bitcoin Podcast. Who did that intro? That. That that was my attempt at a radio voice. Oh wow, I always recognized you. Yeah, I didn't recognize you. Yeah, I I think you've. Read all episodes like that now. Yeah, that's right. That was, that was the theme music for the first couple of episodes.

Yeah, I think. I think. I think when I go back and listen to myself from from back then I I think, I think my, my. Like, Canadian accents used to be a much, much stronger for some reason. But yeah, that was the first episode. The, the, the regulation of the future of Bitcoin, I have a. Semi trivia question here. So at some point you just started doing doing ads in the show. But these ads are typically not very, you know, not not very crypto scammy ads like. What were the worst?

Applicants that you got for. Like. Doing ads on the show. I mean we got a lot of applicants for doing ads on the show.

I mean like I I think during during the the ICO kind of like period we we were getting a lot of queries to do ads on the show are are very does anybody remember our some bug down who's our who who does social you know our community and and and and sales his commenting is like don't even ask but no but our our first sponsor our first sponsor was Shapeshift and I mean this was Shapeshift before Eric Voorhees was even like was it I. I I. Think as easy as putting on your slippers.

I I, I, I may I may maybe I'm wrong here but I think the first sponsor was was fairly. That's right. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah, you you're right. So it it was fairly the first one. What is fairly, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, fairly was the. Prediction market that it was like by Martin and Stefan, right? Yeah, of course. You know, founds of Co founders. There was Pre Gnosis. Yeah, there was pre gnosis, so. Basically. They're going to centralized site, yeah, as opposed to a protocol.

So the Gnosis connection goes way, way, way back then? Actually met Joe at at at a Bitcoin meet up in New York and he and he was telling him about fairly and Joe said this sounds cool why don't why don't you join consensus and build the same thing on Ethereum that's that's not live yet but it's going to be live soon and it's going to be awesome. This is how Martin and Stefan became employees two and three of consensus. And fairly is still running.

I'm looking on the site right now, it says it has like 32 Bitcoin of volume in the last 24 hours. Yeah, it was so it at some point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, There you go. Yeah. You guys never got the, the cloud miners were always the ones that that most got in my like that was that was the worst advertisers, right, 'cause the cloud miners were almost always scams because they'd just be like basically they would just

run a Ponzi scheme. But then they would be like, no, we're we're we're putting your money into buying hardware and then now you're gonna get the sealed from the hardware. I think eventually some of them came out that were better, but the first couple of years when everybody wanted to do mining that was like these were the people pre ICO who had money to spend on marketing because they didn't actually have a product most of the time behind it and everybody wanted it.

So that was my memory at the. First, yeah, I remember, I remember getting some queries also like talking to some cloud mining folks and I I think Brian you were like, no, this doesn't make any sense. Yeah. I mean the issue was even even when the cloud mining thing was like honest or something that generally, you know, you know, you'd basically pay some amount in, you know, dollars to then buy some amount of hash rate over some time like a year or

two years and stuff. And then if you sort of calculate like how many bitcoins you got from that, you know, generally you're always better off just like buying the Bitcoin upfront instead of putting in this money to, you know, buy the stream of Bitcoin over time. So it was always like this is like under what there's there's always like no scenario in which you that actually be better off doing this cloud mining thing, but so somehow they could still like sell it.

Everybody. Wanted to do it. That's why sometimes, yeah, I remember sometimes they say, well you know, but you can, you know, you can sort of like maybe just Billy through your company and say it's like cloud expenses or and then you keep the big coin out of the company or you know basically some kind of you know, scammy approaches that maybe made it make sense. But yeah, so I think.

I remember for me like it wasn't the cloud mining, but I remember one of my early exposures to Bitcoin was with like, you know, 21 or were they called 21 back then? I think, yeah, they were like like pitching like, oh, here's like this, like Raspberry pie that you're going to like plug in and like your, you know, your toaster is going to be my toast and everything, yeah. Your toaster was the craziest thing. Yeah. How many, How many hours a day does the average human use a

toaster? That was, that was one of my. That was one of my first moments when I was like, starting to challenge what I hear. And yet it didn't make sense because there were all these very smart people, right? And they all were like they they were speaking like very eloquently. And I'm wondering how many minutes I use a toaster in an average day. But yeah, anyway, I think it's part of the from the education journey. The water heater was always the better path. Yeah, I like.

Water heaters. Yeah, well, one of the first Bitcoin conferences I went to was in Amsterdam in like maybe October 2013, like Vitalik was selling his Bitcoin magazine there. And then we had, I met Adam back at that conference. It was his first Bitcoin event where the, I think he didn't have any Bitcoin at the time.

So he was sort of like watching from the sidelines but had dinner with him and many Rosenfeld who's also been on the show sometimes he was kind of the original Bitcoin guy in Israel and and during the dinner there two of them went on and on and this like crazy tangents and and but I remember that was the one thing Adam was talking a lot about that yeah like some point Bitcoin mining economics is going to be that yeah you're going to mine Bitcoin with your heating device at home and

things like that. Yeah I mean to to answer your your your question Sebastian like the come to come back to the sponsors. I I think one thing that we always tried to to do is you know throughout the 10 years was also always be very, very mindful of the sponsors we we

got on the show. And like you know you know even in the beginning you know like Brian and I would would talk quite a bit about like whether or not a sponsor was good for the show if we were using, if we would use or recommend this product. And and yeah I sometimes joke about how like had we accepted all of the money that people were trying to throw at us during the ICO period.

We probably would have made like quite a bit of money, you know, but it just didn't feel right And and I think like it was the right decision to like just be very, very careful with with sponsors especially like in this space. No, I mean, honestly, especially over such long time periods, I think it you did an impressive job there at not selecting the FTXS of the world, right? It hasn't always been obvious. Let's also be honest about that, right?

Like the biggest, the the most painful ponzies were the ones that were not obvious. Yeah, no kudos on that. I mean, we did have one. We did have one. That was like it was this guppies thing. I don't remember this Brian. We we did this, this these ads. I thought it's a thing that Stephen. Gutman's dating app. And that's not an actual. We didn't have them as a sponsor. I think we had them as a we. Did have them. Yes, we did have a really sponsor. Yes. No, no, sorry, sorry, sorry.

No, it wasn't the guppies. No, no, no. We did have the We had the guppies on, but we didn't release the episode. But we did this thing called Gems, which was kind of like a social app, but it wasn't a scam. But it just they were doing kind of a sale ICO and it failed. Yeah. It was not the IT was I mean, I. Think I still have some. Kind of an interesting idea. So yeah, it was an interesting idea. Guys, I know Adam has to dash. Adam it is. It's been so lovely to be on for

this and. Yeah, and maybe one day we can meet in person. That's. A distinct possibility, guys. You're doing a great job. Keep up the good work again. You know, like it's it's important. I'm happy to see that you're you're being so successful. So have a great next 10 years. Thanks so much and thanks for your role in all of this. Yeah, I'll see you in 10 years, so. Cool. And we also have two new guests, Griff and Left Terrace. Hang on, let me bring you guys on. Hey, guys.

GMGM. Hey. Wonderful to see you. Hey, hello. As I'm going to head out now, there's people who are funding public goods and wait, privacy and local software. Before you go, I wanted to say something super juicy that I don't know if you ever knew this and I I don't. I don't know how left Harris is even going to feel about me saying this. But back during the day, so obviously left Harris and I were part of Slackett and and the Dow and managed the Dow hack to the white hat group.

But but two of the top or sorry, there were there was the the top person that was predicted to be the Dow hacker back in the day was that we were told was actually you, Sebastian and Maher and Andre Vilka back in the day. This was these. You guys were the top suspects. I bought that. My hair. Yeah. They lost you.

I didn't know you heard that. There was people accusing, there was people accusing me of that and I was like guys I actually wasted 5 ETH or like spamming the network on running this thing. That Stephen tool was just sending this thing on this you need to like counter attack the network and I wasted 5 precious ETH of it, which back then was less money than it is nowadays, obviously. So yeah, it was. A good cover story it.

Was a good cover story. Is it still a live hypothesis or is it dead because we know the hacker voice. Yeah, that's a good question. But when I first met Sebastian, I I think this is what you asked me, right? Like why? Why the heck would? Yeah. When we met in in person in in Frederick sign in in Berlin, he asked me. So I some people said that I'm, you know the hacker was from what was even the company name. The Liberty Labs. Yes, yes, yes. From us back in the days, yeah,

yeah. I don't remember where the theory came from, but there was a theory I want to say It was like it was one of the exchanges. They said that somehow some gas money was connected to Olidity Labs. That's possible, but yeah, that's funny. Actually, it's really funny. Thanks for thanks for bringing it up. But you're also in the company because Alexei was also the other suspect, right? Alexei Akunov, So. I remember I've heard those theories before.

I never had Alexei being. No, I I I think Alexei was the first to post about it on Reddit. Yeah, he'd he'd posted like something funny's going on, like the contracts are being drained or something and. Yeah. And he's like, you know, at the time, like the amount of people who like knew the EVM well enough to find it much smaller set than it is today. And Alexei was definitely like in that set, so. Awesome. Great. Anyway, awesome to. To. To bring up good stories. But.

But he has claim to fame, not the Dow hacker. Not the Dow hacker, exactly, anyway. Thank you so much for having me on and yeah, all the best for everyone. Involved. See you around. Thanks, Sebastian. So after accusing him of us. No, it was, yeah, that that was a very nice start in the in the conversation, very by the way, I remember the first time I met Sebastian, it was like it was, it was like we were at a conference and it was me, gory and lefteris and we're all talking.

To him and. It was like, Oh my God. We're talking to the Dow hacker. It's so awful. Yeah, I do that. I I wouldn't have thought to be Sebastian, to kind of be the person who kind of gives, gives off like the Super villain vibe, but yeah. Yeah, it wasn't there. So actually it wasn't the Sebastian. It was. And then there was no feeling kind of thing.

It was another younger guy from Paradigm Labs and it was Polonius that suggested that I don't remember his name, but particular guy who was talking to Stefan to all. And yeah, but it was pretty fucked up. Like it's been in in in the Cryptopians, the book that in Shanghai after the hack, the guy that was suggested as being the Dao Hager by Polonics was in in DAF country in Shanghai. And he talked to me and I was like, Oh my God, I'm talking to the guy that supposedly was a DAO hacker.

And he was saying, yeah, well, do you know the DAO hacker probably also is very bad for what he did because he just got into the situation. It was very difficult. And for him, I was like, Oh my God, this team, it has to be him. Look at how he's defending the Dao Hager. But yeah, in the end it was all just stuff. It's my even though it's it's was mentioned before who is a Dow hugger. We just have this other theory that that Laura posted in the

book. But well it's not possible to prove anything with 100% certainty, right. So I guess we will always remain with this question. Yeah. When you guys mentioned Polonia XI can see why. So because like the Dow hack happened and the first thing, like when I came to know the DAO hack, I actually sold a large chunk of my ether on Polonia X. So maybe it's like that that might have triggered them to have such a hypothesis. Yeah, Yeah.

So the hypothesis was pretty simple, that they had taken a huge short position that was being built over the days that the hack was happening and that they executed it right after the hack. But let's be honest, like this is extremely weak evidence. And if I remember correctly, the price movement, it was really time to sort. I didn't know anything about trading back then, but now that I see how trading works, I mean, it just doubled in price in a week or so. So I guess it's a sort of

paradise. So just from that saying that, OK, these guys must be, yeah, I don't think so. I know, I I like it better when the identity is a mystery. I feel like the Dow hacker is like, you know, it's on like Satoshi, like the Dow hacker. Like he's like core anons of crypto history. Like, it's just better for it to remain faceless. Well, the Dow hacker did prove that there's a distinction with like code. Code is law and social consensus is is law.

So important distinction. Yeah. Yeah, that's a very, very big contribution to the ecosystem. I mean, my Dow hack story, which is I was not, I was barely involved at at that time. But I I, you know, I was just really into Bitcoin at the time and I was at a hackathon that summer in, you know, 2016. And then I was telling my friend, I was like, hey, I heard about this like Ethereum thing. Like I heard you can like build applications and stuff on top of it. Like, you know, we should, we

should check this out. I mean, because we were like bitcoiners only at that time. And then so you know at the tackathon, we open up Reddit and the entire like page is just talking about the Dow hack and like, oh, the world is burning like you have to fork the chain. And and we were like, yeah, this community is crazy this like, yeah, what is this eat like this is some bullshit. And so we like turned it off. And I I didn't look at Ethereum again for like another year.

Yeah, you you were saying before that you were an ETH. Classic guy. I was an ETH classic guy for a while. I you know, I like the code is law and all that. So yeah, my more the specific stance was that I think it was unethical for the Ethereum Foundation to like leverage its ownership of the Ethereum trademark to declare the fork to be the to be Ethereum. My my take was that the classic change should have kept the name Ethereum and the ticker and then the fork change should have a

new name. Yeah, You know, I'm surprised that more things weren't built on it. They're in classic, like really sketchy things like a dark market or, you know, it's like all of a sudden you had this chain that's like, Oh yeah, hey, this is claimed. No one's going to mess with this, OK, Like, let's do illegal things like it never happened. I feel like crypto has in general this like really like nefarious outlook or people think that it's so bad but the real builders.

They really don't. Build bad things. I mean, there was a huge opportunity there. Yeah, exactly. That was part of my thesis on ETC. As well, but never panned out. Yeah, even even the, you know, like the the criminal smart contract paper, the assassination markets. All of these dystopian ideas that I've come across have

actually never been built. And yes, it's it's an interesting observation about actually humanity that actually most of us are either trying to build interesting things or are just trying to scam and just make a little money and just switch off. None of us are trying to do like the really evil stuff. Like where are the Professor Moriartys of the world? Like there's a serious lack of Professor Moriartys of the world or the supervision.

I I mean my thesis would be here also that you know if you wanted to build like I don't know, dark market, I don't know assassination market or something like that, well privacy really has to be like completely impenetrable and and that's just not the case, right. And and then I think of course you also see, you just see how hard it is to build anything anonymously. And I mean Satoshi managed it, which is still like astonishing that that feels like.

I mean obviously the intellectual achievement of Bitcoin is is like immense. But like him having having been able to do this without leaking his identity in any way is also just like incredible. And you know, I think people have not even even when they tried, right. Most of they fail, even things like that don't get the kind of attention that that Bitcoin did. So I still think in the end it

will, It has to happen, right. We will have to see things like dark markets that are like fully decentralized and all that stuff. But it's just, yeah, but you're right. I think it is surprising that it hasn't happened. So you're like it's down to logistics, complexity of staying anonymous, and if that is solved, we'll have a lot of super villains cop up. I mean, of course you of course you're absolutely right that like most people don't do this kind of thing, right.

Most people want to build like these things and stuff like that. But obviously, I mean look at dark markets, right, Like they they exist, right, and they keep making new ones and stuff, right.

So, but I guess, well, I mean if we put dark markets, I guess also like one of the main business models of dark markets seems to be the exit scam, right, where people put in, you know trip Bitcoin or or one era or something into something that's basically hidden centralized website and then you know they can trade drugs and then at some point when enough people have been using it, they just shut down the site and run

away with the coins, right. And of course if you decentralize it actually like you can't do that. So I guess, but but in the end I, I yeah, like you would expect that thing to happen. And then of course it also something we did episodes about, right?

There was the hackathon project whole dark Market by like Army Talkie at some point and then and then they even ended up getting well, there was a project Open Bazaar, right, that kind of took this and ended up getting venture funding from like Union Square Ventures in A16C like high, you know, very

reputable funds. And and of course I think the expectation was, you know, that OK, someone's probably going to like fork this and build a dark market because that's obviously the biggest use, I mean the biggest market probably for something like that, at least in the short term. But yeah, never happened. I do want to say, though, that I think we used to think that being anonymous is way easier than it actually turned out to be.

So I think kind of back in the days of the Dow hack people, people did assume they were anonymous to a large extent, which I think this kind of predated like you know all the chain analysis like companies of the world, right. So and then if you don't have very sophisticated block explorers and Nansen and whatever, it's really difficult to actually to actually trace everything fully on chain.

So I think there was a reasonable expectation that things would be private and things still didn't get built. So maybe something more deep seated here. Yeah, I feel that privacy is probably the it's really unfortunate that, like, we still don't have reasonable options for privacy in the space, I mean. We'll we'll get them. So this is something that I have absolutely for the next 10 years. So with with ZK Proves and FHE&MPZI think kind of we're going to get there. Yeah.

And we also have Felix on now. So Felix is the late host. Hey, Felix. Hi, thanks. Thanks for having me and Congrats to 10 years to all of you guys. So happy that I was able to join as a host and take over some of the episodes that maybe Sunny would have done otherwise. That's a that's a bird if I ever heard one. So yeah, Felix, what's your, what's your most memorable episode? I was looking earlier and it looks like you've done well. You know, you you haven't done as much as study.

So we still have some catching up to do. But you've done something like 25 episodes, maybe 29. What's been your favorite so far? Yeah, I really like the DYDX episode I did with Brian. It was like just very, yeah, clean episode. We'd kind of covered everything. It was very, yeah, a good, great product, you know, big success and we kind of went over everything and inspiring like sort of story from Anthony and like sort of the journey of the Oidx and really enjoyed that

episode. Yeah. Who would you, who would you like to to to get on in the next couple of months? Oh, yeah. I think Jeto, I was trying to get Lucas on, actually, but then they were way too busy with the AI drop and and everything. And yeah, I guess it's, it's kind of me being like in this staking niche of Epicenter. And I I think now, I guess, yeah, many people are probably interested, you know, what's how is Jito doing like because got like much bigger and much more

attention, right. And yeah, maybe like kind of a counter to this like sort of the Lido and Flash Boards episode that we also had with Stefan and Vasili back then. So could be a very cool one. Excited for that one. Yeah, Griffin, left Terrace. I want to ask you, 'cause I mean you guys are like so OG into Ethereum and you know, like still very much into that space. Like how much, how much do you

pay? How much attention do you give to like other ecosystems or like whether it's Cosmos or Solana or like, you know, maybe some of the stuff happening over on on Polygon or some other ecosystems. Like do you pay any attention at all to what's going on there? Are you just, like still very focused on Ethereum? It's a theorem alignment question. I can smell it. I can smell it. Yes, it's a drop for me. I it's very difficult. Like so many different stuff pop up, it's impossible to follow.

But I personally try to look at all the different acquisitions, but I can't even claim to know anything as well as I do a stadium. Which is kind of sad, like being honest, I look the most what I have interesting or a bug in. So if I have lots of tokens or something, I'm well interested to see if if that bug is going to be worth anything. And also because I'm doing Rocky, I am trying to focus on everything that people ask for, which besides CVM chains would

be cosmos and substrate. So these are our two biggest tasks. And then there is some people who do who want us to definity and then Solana. But I I don't know anything about Solana.

I would like to find more time and like it's also interesting like I really like everything but you didn't know what I mean yeah I'm I'm kind of like left terrace I mean I definitely chase my bags no but also I I I follow more of like the region space so region network I I I'm follow relatively closely and I'm always watching what's going on and XO in Cosmos also was checking them out but but unless it's so I'm like Solana I haven't seen any region projects on Solana.

There probably are, but I don't know them. But actually Giveth is going to be one. We're going to integrate Solana so that you can donate on Giveth because I don't. I didn't. I think there's an opportunity there. So you know there's not a donation platform that I know of there. So hey, why not I I wish I followed I I followed polka dot in in the in in that Web 3 foundation space early on. But I haven't seen a whole lot

developed there. So mostly I follow in the EVM space because that's where I know people who can do cool things and that's definitely where the region space is. I'm very close with Polygon optimism and Arbitrome and and public goods network and all the L twos. So I I consider all of that Etherium though like even Polygon. I mean if it's EVM you know Etherium is the E right? So I don't I don't know if that

should really count. You know if there is talked about alignment earlier, do you do you think that you know everything will that will converge to Etherium and that basically like all of the other ecosystems will borrow security from Etherium in one way or another, whether through restaking or or or mesh security or some other sort of like novel security mechanisms? I do not.

I I I do. Think that there is going to be a a power law distribution, but I don't think that there will be like everyone uses Etherium. That would just be dumb. Like why would we centralized around that? We need diversity in space, and I also just think there's enough incentives. For. Challengers to always be there. That's a very good question. It's very difficult to answer because Etherium has an amazing staying power. I would not have imagined that

it's so easy. So, so many things are built around the theorem, and even though other ecosystems really come up with novel ideas and pretty interesting concepts, we seem to still do stuff on the AVM. Though it has its flaws and I don't know why. We seem to just focus on it a lot more than anything else

about mistaking. I really don't know enough to even give an informed opinion, but from the problems that we have with the theorem stating some were suggesting that we can do something that I think both Cosmos and and and the subset ecosystem does. Don't remember the name, but that you are validating your stake to someone that probably has a name, I just don't know it, Which you cannot do in a theorem. You have to either stake on your own or do the liquid stating stuff right?

What's the name of that thing in in Cosmos? And that is a good name for delegating your steak, Yeah. I mean the liquid taking stuff in Cosmos or what? Or. Just delegation to to a validator. The concept that doesn't exist in here, basically. Yeah, this. So for example, when I go to my tea, I delegated it to Larry something someone for for staging, right? And with substrate it's exactly the same thing like you. If you don't want to run your own validator, you have to.

You have this option of of delegating the stake I. Mean you were you you made you made a bit of a face there while I was asking that question like like maybe you had something to to add here. I made a face yeah on on what the question about like ETH alignment. Artists, yeah? Or maybe when when Griff was saying that things wouldn't align with Ethereum? Oh, I don't know. I mean, I think Ethereum has done a good job of building this community around it.

I I I've just not, not always been a believer in like multipolar systems. I think that like, you know, Solana has built quite a bit of a Cultural Center. I think Cosmos has grown a Cultural Center. At the end of the day, I honestly just don't. I don't know. I think from a cultural standpoint, I don't know. I just find my, my maybe just like by nature of when I got involved with the space. I just like in my heart. I just like feel like a bitcoiner. I don't know why.

Like if I tell anyone it's like, you know, and I and I feel like five of us. Like when I just go talk to like friends and stuff, it's like if I try to pitch them on a trip or people who are not like drinking the kool-aid, right.

I like I feel like I can explain Bitcoin so easily and they like get it right like nothing very very little else is like easy to explain like I it's like so hard to explain like ETH like I don't think and you know I think people just start asking questions that I you know I I I can explain Bitcoin really well and I can explain like certain defy apps really well right. I mean obviously I can explain osmosis really well and like what the value prop here is right.

But like, you know, if you tried to ask me like pitch ETH to ignore me, I actually don't know how to like do that. So I don't know. That's kind of I I'm a believer in Bitcoin and I'm a believer in like applications. Yeah, I mean and I I think that's a really fair stance because Bitcoin has like a very clear application and it is its own application effectively of like these supplies money and it

does it really well. But like the other like Etherium and Solana and Cosmos, I mean it's just you're talking to normies about why Mongo DB is better than another database framework and it. It it shouldn't happen. Also, why Mongo DB is a, you know, $500 billion product? Yeah, I I I exactly, I I think in the end different product, these different products will all exist because users don't care. Our tribalism is in our in the crypto space and that's like super niche.

And what's gonna win is, is the applications that are built on top that are useful. Yeah, I guess the problem is that you're trying to compare Bitcoin, which is more like a you can you call it an application, right? It's easy to understand, while Ethereum, UVM, etc. It's a platform to build UPS on, so it's much harder to explain to an army. Cool. Thank you guys for being here. Griffin left. Harris. I know.

Left Harris, you're joining us from the middle of nowhere as as can be seen by your very blocky picture. And I, I, I, I can, I can, I can vouch for the fact that theft Harris usually doesn't look so pixely. So thank you both for coming on and it's been a real pleasure. Thank you for allowing us to, you know, participate in your 10th year anniversary, your birthday. Yeah, happy birthday. Guys, enjoyed you guys since the very beginning. Thank you for doing all this work. Thanks guys.

Thanks so much guys. OK, time for our next guests, right. So we have Anna and Sam. Hang on, let me bring you guys on. Hello. Hi. Hey hi so just brief introductions here. So Anna Rose who is the host of ZK podcast, also very popular podcast and one of my favorites. And Sam who I met a couple of weeks ago in Istanbul and he had such a crazy story about about like his experience listening to Epicenter that I just wanted to get him on to tell that story here on the on our on our live

stream. So yeah, thanks for coming guys. Cool. Nice. To. Be here the. First podcast ever. Oh, good. Nice. There are so many hosts I when I first joined, I thought there was like a ton of guests, but no, it's like it's Are you guys at six now? Seven if he counts Sunny. Sunny is a sort of, you know is depending on the weather host, yes. Yeah, Sam, Sam, tell, tell, tell us a bit about yourself and yeah, when you started this podcast.

I I've worked in Tran 5 for about 20 years so I've just gone I guess you would say crypto native I think. I think the only other one of you that I've met in person may be Sunny. We actually met you were on my flight back from from ECC we chatted in line but I started so I got into space right around when Federica joined as a Co host. I started the first macro fund that could trade liquid crypto and it's my background is in tradbi and and and and macro trading, you know come from like

the economics perspective. And. I traded the first option on Etherium. You know, back in 2018 when I was at. 2019 when I was at like 120 bucks and most recently I ran a crypto for a one of the largest and oldest global macro funds in the world and and then during that period I we invested in scroll and I have now joined full time as an advisor. Congrats. Yeah. So what's what's this? Yeah. Tell the story about I think it was about. I think it was you.

You said you were like the the episode that Ellie Benzeson. Yeah, so I was telling. So I I was telling him that I often times listen to podcasts on when I'm in the shower. And Federica recently interviewed Ellie and you know, I was literally so the obviously and I'm listening to it on my phone, which I have like, you know, put up like this. And you know, obviously the sound is not super loud. You've got the water and everything.

And she's asking him this very delicate question, which I'm a bit of an ETH maxi to the disclosure. And you know, there is some suspicion within I think parts of the Ethereum community about how aligned may be starboard may be. And she's asking him this question about where they're posting the data. And he goes, well, we're pushing it to, you know, our this state availability committee, blah, blah, blah. And she goes, so you have another L1.

And I literally was like, all I saw was like shampoo in my hair. And I like, stopped. And he goes, well, I hadn't really thought of it that way, but I guess so. And she goes, oh, that's very interesting. And then I was waiting for him and this is where I think it might get a little bit spicy, but I was waiting for him to then turn around and be if he wanted to snipe better and be like, well, don't you work for another Alt L1 as well?

Gnosis is it Gnosis an Alt L? Another L1, But it didn't go in that direction. But it was. It was the first time I've heard anybody really challenge him on this and I thought it was it was very interesting to me and I relate the story. They thought it was funny because I was in the shower at the time.

So you take you take like 90 minute long showers or like the the full episode or. Well, you know, I think this sprung out of, I think it sprung out of because I used to like to go to the sauna in the steam room and take a lot of reading. You know, there's no distractions, there's no TV's, You can't use your phone, right. And so it's just this like, you know, this deprivation and after COVID, you know, during COVID, obviously all the gym shut down and whatever.

And you know, we now we're, you know, during that COVID period and afterwards it's like you're just surrounded by your screens or televisions or your phone. And so the, I think the shower became this like deprivation place where like if I was in the shower I'd put on somewhere I could just listen. And you know, your mind's a lot, the whole shower dawn thing. So it is. I think that's where it came from, but I'm not sure. Did I get Do you remember this episode? Do you remember this?

This. What are you talking about? And I remember it was not so long ago, right? It was. Actually, during Paris, that's when I listened to it during heats. But you may. It wasn't very long ago, but I don't actually remember this specific question, but kind of I'm I'm all for kind of putting things very plainly. So it's, yeah. But I I have to say, you know, I recommend Epicenter. So I've been listening.

Probably maybe I started listening like 20/16/2017 but I I mean I'm I listened routinely since then and I refer new traffic people trying to learn about the space to listen to epicenter and to also when they're trying to learn they'll ask me about a project or something and I'll say why don't you go find the epicenter you know podcast with that project from maybe it was years ago but it's you guys have become almost like a a reference material and I think by the way I'll give

credit to Anna I listen to her show religiously as well. Certainly in the ZK space you play that role but for the Tri Fi people that's a little they the the knowledge level is extremely low in Tri Fi. I I can't emphasize this enough

a little bit to Sunny's point. You know the understanding of what Ethereum is for example should you know the the the the really the the level of understanding is that it's a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin with some utility and and that's really it. And so I actually think that Epicenter plays a really important role and from an education and introduction standpoint and I I, you know, I use it personally as a kind of an encyclopedia of the space,

but I refer Tri fi people as well to you that that way. Well, thank you. Well I guess if we, if we if we encounter people from Tri fi that listen to the podcast, I'll ask them if they come from from Sam. Cool. Yeah. Well, thank thanks for coming on and telling a story. And yeah, thanks for thanks for being a lawyer, listener. Yeah, I guess good segue to the other podcast was known. Yeah, yeah. Wendy, you get started with Seagate. It's been a long time as well,

though. Yeah. So I was thinking about your questions of like, when did we first, when did I first hear about epicentre? For sure. It's 2017 for me, probably before we started the show. I know that. Like, I mean you guys, you guys were a. Lot bigger than us. Back then, you were like the big. We were just like for our, you know, for our friends in the office. It was very, very small. But I know I was for sure a listener by Devcon 2017 in Cancun.

Because Brian, that's when I voice recognized you on a bus and like weirded you out and went over and was like, are you Brian from? Like I did that. Yes, I remember. I remember. Yeah, yeah. They're all like go away and like you had nowhere to go. It was like this this box. Of us taking us from a place to a place, another place that was like not moving anyway, but yeah, that was for sure.

So by then, obviously I've been listening for a long time and I was also thinking about what were those guests that like I remember, I don't know that I that I listened to that would have changed something and I have a few that I picked out. One was for sure like Matter and Alex GI think I had already had him on my show, but I think it was like a phase shift in the project that I learned about your Epicenter. I remember the episode with Dank Red in 2021.

For some reason that one stands out and you guys have covered Orbit often, which I still don't understand, but I I always listen to those ones. Brian, this is a good chance tell. US more about. I've listened to it that one and I don't understand it either. So I I can explain it. I can explain. It. OK, no, no, I'm sunny. Explain it. Oh yeah? Yeah. Sunny. What? What is that? OK, OK. Do you guys know Secure Scuttlebutt? You familiar with Secure Scuttlebutt? It was a DAG based social

network instead of a blockchain. You know you peer-to-peer gossip with other nodes and eventually you have this like eventually consistent view of the network. We also did an episode with them into an episode. Yeah, I did too, actually. It does not solve a double spend problem. Episode 290. But because it's a social network, what is a double spend, right? It's just, oh, you told us one person you like to post, another person you dislike to post. Like, whatever, right?

It doesn't really matter, OK? Put secure settlement on the side for a second. Bitcoin wanted to build this like thing like like decentralized money project. And in order to do this invented a new decentralized data structure called a blockchain, right. And it's like, OK, really fast finality. A relatively fast finality and like, solves this double spend problem. Etherium comes along and it's like, oh cool, decentralized data structure.

What if we put a generalized VM on top of that and like have it run arbitrary applications? I think the best way to think of Urbit is take secure scuttlebutt, the decentralized data structure that is secure Scuttlebutt. It's like, why are we only running a single social network platform on top of this? What if we actually instead slapped A generalized VM on top of this and made it so like, OK, here's a platform that people can build peer-to-peer

applications, right? Like you have a bunch of people right now trying to build decentralized social networks, right? You have like broadcaster and you know Blue sky and everyone, but right? And everyone's like building specialized P to P like networking, like most P to P Dapps don't need a blockchain, right? You don't need global state for most, for a lot of social applications.

Herbich's take is like, hey, instead of building custom P to P stacks for everything and like, let's build one OS and then people can deploy applications on top of that. That is orbit for you. And this scuttlebutt, this gossip part, is that at the core of Orbit's like architecture, This sort of. The way. Yeah, it's not communicating everywhere. No, no global state. It's just local Closer.

OK. Another way I think, I I think of like you know for Cosmos people to think about it is imagine everyone had their own personal Cosmosm chain. Like I had Sunny chain, you had Anna chain. And then like you know we all use IBC to talk to each other. And if I wanted to build a messaging app, I would deploy, I would write the Cosmosm contract for it or the the smart contract for it, and I would deploy it on my chain and on your chain. And then we send messages over IBC between our chains.

OK. But only they're kind of like, not. If you don't, you can broadcast global state every year. OK, we need we need Sunny back to do more episodes. I think maybe this is this is kind of the petition here. Yeah. Another another sort of way of explaining ERWIT is the idea that it's, it's a sort of system that's where, you know, the idea is that computation is focused around the personal server,

right? So that you have sort of your server and all of your data on your applications live on your server. And then it's like network with other servers, right? So like an application developer develops their app, it gets, you know, shipped to all everyone's server and then there's like an identity system, peer-to-peer messaging and then and yeah, it has some of these kind of blockchain features, this server, right. In that, you know, you can prove all this, you know, it's like

deterministic, right. And you can always prove the state, yeah, if people, if people are interested in it. So at of course one we've been, you know we've been sort of building orbit hosting product and you can go to redhorizon.com and then you can onboard onto orbit. Then we give you like an orbit ID and you can try it out. It's like super simple you you can be on there in like 2 minutes and then you can try it out and let us know what you think. So maybe that's the trick of

orbit. You got to, you got to try it to understand it. Yeah, definitely. That's, yeah, that helps, yeah. So yeah, it's Red, horizon.com, so RED and then horizonhorizon.com. Cool. Anna and Sam, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on with us for quote of an hour. So it was, yeah, super nice. Have wonderful holidays. Thank. You for? And Congrats again, everyone to the 10th anniversary. Fantastic. So now we're only missing AI. Epicenter Host side soon catch up to you.

Yeah. Let us know when you have your 10, when it's your 10 year coming up, It's also not that far, no. No, well we just did three, I did 300th episode with a bit of a look back that just came out a few weeks ago. But yeah, we started, I mean officially like weekly. It was beginning of 2018. So what am What am I at episode six years almost. Oh OK. The first first episode was in 2017, but it was like on SoundCloud. And then we published it elsewhere. But. OK, so three more 2018.

Yeah, there we go. Well, I hope I can invite you guys for that. I would love to that. We would, definitely. First five years of the harvest. So you're you're, you're past the hump. It's amazing that you guys stayed with it for 10 years. That's the secret sauce. It's just keep going. Don't quit. We hope. We hope we can continue providing you with shower content for for another day. But you.

Know I'm gonna break. You know, I can't get through a full episode, so you know, it's it's it, it scales well with the shower, you know, 'cause I get about 3 showers per episodes. It's true, you. Do take long showers. I'm sure your water supply company is really happy with this. Yeah, the US, you know. The the incremental water it's it's very cheap so. I. Guess yeah. And and we'll have to do another crossover episode. It's. True, I I saw, I was listening

to that the other day. There was like, I don't know if people know it was recorded. We like, kind of made a thing of it. We released it on both of our channels on YouTube. Yeah, from. Television 2019, Yeah. Have a good rest of your session. Thanks. OK. And we have Johnny. Hey, I. Know anything going to that case? Hey, Jordy.

Thank you. Yeah. Remember I remember when I mean at the beginning, very beginning when I started to be in the community in the Rao and and I mean I think it was the first podcast that I shared about Bitcoin by the time and it was in 2015 or or something around there. So yeah, which is still there in the top. So that's yeah, I think it's that's a good job guys. So Jordy, how long have you been

in the space now? I mean, I was, I was reading the Bitcoin paper in 2013, but actually I was trying to do smart contracts by the time and and you you very soon you discover that Bitcoin was not. Prepare.

Pretty much prepared me all the all the all the all the scripting language was very limited and even though most of the codes all the off codes just didn't work by the time it was very very very very frustrating everything super slow and and just abandoned some hole and was until 2015 that I discovered a film that in a very strange way and because I was just having another job out of work and I remember that in like in 10 minutes I was able to just create a solidity smart

contract. And what I was trying to do in 2013 was so easy in 2015 that I just get engaged and from there was like from me was like a drunk just reading understanding discovering just learning what these just what's behind the

technology behind the. I mean you you you just discover the community you discovered by the time was the DAO and and people just building around and there was a bunch of people just trying to develop things and Remember Me talking with people from from swarm and where all these daps start happening. And from the global perspective I think Ethereum was was incredible because it's like you have like a new toy and then you can start building a lot of these centralized things on top

of that. I mean if if Bitcoin was was fine I mean it was great but it's it's just money transfer you you just OK which is important but it's just that and Ethereum opens the space to these decentralized applications and from the developer perspective this opens a huge world a new world and and for me was I mean this is where I entered in and I'm I'm still here. I mean, I'm still learning. So yeah, that's Hawaii. How Hawaii enter. Hey, Ryan. Hey, guys. How you doing?

Good to see everybody. Hey. Ryan. We also have anxious value just now this, this was actually kind of your idea like you you when when when we had you on I think it was last year you you mentioned that we should do this. I don't remember. It was like on the podcast or like after the podcast, but then this is like we sort of ran with

it and yeah. Yeah, it it it's interesting, you know, like I I find Epicenter to be this this compelling kind of historical record of the space, right, where there are moments in time where you know the name was kind of very opportune because it was the center of the discussion in

very critical moments. So for example like the Dow hack which obviously you you know Geordie sat at the the eye of the storm of and and and was was so critical in in covering funds and and all the work that that he did and that as well as the other things with like parody wallet hacks and so on and so forth. When people needed critical information about what was going on.

Either prior to the Dow hack we think Vlad had a had like a like a a warning podcast with you guys about about it and then it happened and then Jordy saved it or saved most of it and then Jordy came on after and like if you want to stay up to date with it which I did because I I deployed capital into it. Epicenter was the thing and there and and there has been these moments in time where where Epicenter has has sat at the center of the conversation of of our space, which has been

really critical. And so yeah, I'm, I'm super happy that you guys are doing this. That chapter that thing was blood and I mean I mean we'll see her talking about the the all the power flows and all the problems and what to do and and you didn't happen yet I mean was in that moment that was the the the there was. Like 2 weeks before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was.

But for me, I mean that was personally I think that that moment was the most interesting moment on the how history because it's like OK people realize that there was like a bunch of money there and the smart contract contract was was very primitive and was a lot of problems. People started looking at that very seriously and I mean a lot of flaws just happened again that this is was just before the

the residency attack happened. I mean this was just before that and this I mean this when the Mean and and and Blad just took a little bit the leadership of the community and say hey guys this is cool but here there is a lot of of problems that we need to solve and we need to fix and we need to talk about and and I mean I think that was one of the the the the important moments from the the the history of the douse at that point and I mean at the specific chapter with with with Blad Blader.

The mean I think is one it was an important it really and the people really understands understood at that point how incredible could be the douse but at the same time how difficult is to to build them And I mean we're still not there yet that chapter means a lot of things. The number of re entrancy attacks that happened in 2023 is frankly embarrassing for our industry. Like, like the fact that we still are not getting it right as an industry is like, come on guys, like it's 2023.

Like we gotta, we gotta get this shit sorted out here. But I will never for the rest of my life, forget I actually had fallen asleep listening to, I think, that episode I was living in, in Rio de Janeiro at the time, woke up the next morning, which is a Saturday, and was at the beach with my girlfriend of the time. And I got this call from Alex Van Dusen and Jordi Bollena, not whom I knew at all.

And they're like, duh, we need your Dow tokens because, like, we're going to do the same attack that that that the guy did. And this, this this Catalonian has devised the attack just from, like, observing the attack going on. And I kind of like, you know sort of slap my girlfriend of the butt who was lying beside me and was like, hey baby, we got to go home. I got to send these these Spanish guy some tokens and and. Where? We go. I remember that is that oh I mean I was the body there.

I mean the body news me and and and and I mean I just was I deploy it. I mean some attack just trying to remember the the the Dow attack and somebody I mean some some some whale just send me like 200K or 300K which was huge amount of money without even knowing me and without understanding and just to recover. I mean for me was like that moment was like in a movie. I mean it's I can't believe what happened.

I mean just a random guy that I don't even know his name and just send me some phones to recover to my address and it was a crazy. I mean if you're thinking if you put it in perspective it was like everything crazy but all the all the time. I mean was this was just the beginning. You know a lot of guy just sent like after after recording all of the phones of the DAO just send like half $1,000,000 again back to the DAO and and then

they just tried to record. I mean, it was like crazy, crazy moments by the time. One of these things that you know and an epicenter is really very emblematic of this, right when you meet people who come into the space and and spend say like a year in in crypto, they always come back to you and they're like, Oh my God, like it's been so crazy. Like so much has happened. Like I can't even believe like like this is wild and you're like actually no, like it's just

kind of always like this. Like it just sort of, you know, every year is is just as wild, not more, not less, but just absolutely wild. And it's all its own unique way. Which is why, you know, crypto's a strange addiction, right? It's it's something that you couldn't, you couldn't really decouple yourself from even if you wanted to at this point. So that's interesting. You know, one of the questions that I've always. Asked SO.

The the I remember the first, the first episode I listened to from you guys was the predictions of 2014. Because I was kind of like. I was mining at the time and I was like, OK, like what else is out there that's like beyond just like mining? This was episode one, by the way. What was it? I mean, so that was the pilot episode. And then our predictions for 2014 was was the first like the numbered episode. It's like episode 001.

It came out in January, yeah. But when it became a regular thing for me was was actually almost a year later with the Vitalic episode. Because I was fortunate enough to see Vitalic's first ever presentation of of Etherium in in Toronto at at Anthony Diorio's place. And seeing his evolution as a kind of like an entrepreneur and a presenter over the sort of like nine months of that moment in time where like his slides were all we're all just like

code base. He's like dad is an insurance contract and dad is a is an options contract. We're like what it like what is this guy doing? I to the conversation that he had with you guys where you guys were able to really like kind of pull out a more human side of

him. And then shortly thereafter, from the metallic episode, it went from EPISODE or Epicenter Bitcoin to Epicenter, and it kind of felt like you guys were the defining group that had realized that there was more beyond Bitcoin. And this is like, you know, this is 2014, right? Like, like it's still Bitcoin. Maximalism wasn't even a term at the time. Right, because it was. Everybody was Bitcoin

maximalism. Unless you were like really a scammer and you're in the name Coin or something like that. What caused that move for you guys? Like what? What? What caused the opening of the door that like, hey, there's a lot of cool things here going on crypto and we should embrace all of that rather than continue on this narrative around what, you know, what Bitcoin did last week?

Yeah, I mean, I can answer that. I mean, I I think for me and I think Sebastian was similar in that we were just like curious about stuff happening, right. And even when, you know, even when you got into Bitcoin or I got into Bitcoin like you already had, he already had you know alternative in all chains.

You know where there was, you know, there was saying OK can we like innovate on Bitcoin and bid, you know, do we decrease the block time or you know you had things like pure coin that was trying to do some proof of stake like thing. And of course he had the things building on top of Bitcoin that we're trying to do, like applications right to Counterparty Master Coin. Master coin. Coins, yeah. And and then the.

I mean the Yep, the if you're right paper right that came out in December 2013. It's basically right when we started the podcast and we were pretty much immediately like well this is interesting. So I think we did our first Ethereum episode. This is like very start of 2014. I mean we we got some, you know, people on that. I don't remember who we got. You like you. You would you would gab on really early.

Like I remember gabs a gab thing where that was the first time I was like, OK, this guy's smart, like like this guy knows what he's doing. And it's not just metallic. Yeah, but the name change is actually a bit later, right. So we but I think I mean it was similar in Berlin name. Change was was 2016, so I've got the article. Here. Oh, was it that late?

But, but we we were doing all kinds of podcasts like from 2014 on. I think in terms of like doing all the topics, I think you're totally right. We were there already and. You were. You were the launch moment, I felt like, for the narrative around what Protocol Labs had built beyond IPFS, like, like I think it was the first time that Juan Benet discussed File Coin publicly. Yeah, there was an amazing

episode. I remember there was episode 100, we had one on and he talked about like yeah, IPFS and fire corn and stuff and that was that was really fantastic episode. That was a bit that and again, like, you know, as a capital allocator, like these were really Seminole moments for me. Like I I left that episode with a mission to go to Devcon 2 and just like Hound Juan until he just like allowed me on a gap

table. I was like, I am going to like figure something out to convince this guy that I am good to be around after listening, after listening to that. So it's it's great. You know, the longevity is important. We in dialectic, we talk all the time, every single day. We talk about the importance of compound returns, right. The strongest force in the universe is compound interest. This is true in nature with the golden ratio. It's true in finance with

compound interest. It's true in in relationships. It's true in skill development and and it's like compounding that you've had now over a decade which is in eternity in crypto is really valuable. I mean it's been it's been pivotal to to my career. You know, I I happen to be skiing with my family and my my favorite ski chalet here in Switzerland, which has only been enabled because of the alpha that I've been able to accrue from upset. Well. There's a lot of credit, but

yeah, thank you so much. Yeah. This is a story I've heard many, many times. Well, my whole family's in here. Jeez, my my mom and my dad are both watching. Yeah. 1st the 1st the pilot episode was also I was also in Switzerland in you know, apartment in mountains, you know, just before Christmas it was like in the middle of snow, so. If if you go back to like a point in time for free for you guys, how has the pod changed your life, right?

Like obviously it's changed our lives and that we've gotten like a great, intelligent, open minded, condensed information on a topic that we could like listen to say in the car, in the shower or working out or whatever. But how? How has it changed your lives overall? I I mean, I think it was, you know, of course, like crucial, right? Like meeting all people in crypto. I mean definitely investing in crypto as well.

The first, you know the first time I had kind of a job with the startup you know and it was this how many errors industries and you know we had them on the podcast and then applied and and and reach out to them and the founder was a podcast listener right. And then later you know I think sort of tenement was also kind of connected with that and then of course my hair was a Co host here and then we started correspond together and I think it's like so many times, right.

It was really also through relationships, right? And through people meeting, through hosting podcasts that played a. So yeah, I played an absolutely massive role, I think, in my life and then in the last 10 years. Yeah, same. I mean before this I was building websites and writing CSS for responsive emails, right? Like, I mean, I mean not, not the building websites and responsive emails is not like something that people should

pursue. But yeah, it's totally like changed my career path, changed my outlook on sort of like on the world and sort of like learning about finance, learning about economics. So these are these are topics that I had very little knowledge about before starting Epicenter and like just getting to talk to like incredibly smart people every week about, you know all these topics that I thought were really pat were really interesting, right.

That I was really passionate about have just like totally changed my outlook. And then and then of course you know enabled me to like start software companies. So like you know a lot of people know this but I started this company called Stratum about five years ago that no longer exists. But you know, was was a a cryptic company and and now running a fund, right.

I mean like the fund the Interop Ventures would would not exist had it not been for, you know, the time I spent like just building a massive network of people in the space. So, so yeah, it's been absolutely, you know, life changing for me too. It's also humbling, right, Because kind of like every other week or so we kind of get to speak to someone who is super smart and super passionate, passionate about something and kind of really wants to see

something through. And I think this kind of puts kind of like other things that kind of we as as I mean for all of us this is kind of a side gig, right. So kind of we all have day jobs and I think kind of this puts a lot of things into perspective and I think to me that's been, that's been a wonderful experience. By the way, is Geordie your most frequent guest? I think Geordie's had, what, 4 four episodes? No, we we we talked about it before the most.

Frequent guests Can you guess? Can you guess? Trent Trent Mcconney for sure. Trent I I feel like Trent's almost Co host and and from there Geordie Bellina and maybe metallic, I don't know. So, so six episodes is metallic emming, Gunther and then Trent. If you found this episode it would would have been a 6th. So he did like 5 full episodes and and you know it's dropping in here. So I would say kind of, yeah, metallic goon and then Trent.

That's I mean Vitali, Goon, Trent and Geordie, as your as your most popular most frequent guest like that's as good as the line up as as you you're going to get like like talk about a a a star-studded cast, right? Just a group of legends in this

game. Just I I would like to to explain before before we leave because it's So what I mean I've always been in the in the episodes as a as a interview with I mean always when they finish the the interview with you is I I get with the questions I mean those guys are doing the right questions. I mean they are So it's like I

didn't feel fully comfortable. I mean he's like OK these guys are are going to the point are going to the the the the questions that are arguable I mean they're going to the values and and and and they're going deep to the project to the. So the thing that you are talking about and this is this is very very very comfortable and I think this is one of the one of the secrets of of this podcast.

I mean it's not when you are there, you are not just I mean just just explaining random things to people that you. I mean that you go to the point in all the projects and you get the feeling when you get that. And that's why I think the people love to be here because I mean when where this, with this with this cross and with this to me what is like OK you are you're asking. I mean it's it's good.

It's where you really put your your your fox and your your what you are building or what you are doing in. They put you the things on the table and you need to explain and defend what you are doing and this is, I think this is amazing. This means so much doddy, especially coming from you. Especially coming from Geordie Bowling Island. Yeah, quite a bit more. Yes indeed. That's that's what it is.

Yeah, I think, I think one of the things you know coming back to your question really about like how it's changed us. I I think for me one of the things that I've noticed is that doing the podcast is maybe like a better a much better listener and and just the ability to like I find myself and my wife. My wife is the first to complain about is always asking questions and sometimes asking too many questions. But yeah, but I bet you're. Gonna.

Say bye to my wife's. Complaining that I'm a listener. Not complaining about that of all the list of complaints that my wife has listener. Not one of them. But no, but like asking a lot of questions, right. Like trying to get to the bottom of everything and and and that's I think something that I've picked up from from doing the podcast for service like asking question over question over question to get to the bottom of you know what people are doing

or how things work or yeah. I'm trying to understand The thing is that the point is because I mean you can you can they make questions and so on. But it's like you know you're trying to understand, you're trying to get to the point, you're trying to to to to see what's the nudity that's happened here. Why this is important is this really is done this way or this other way or or or contrasted without different ways to do things And this.

I mean I think this means more means means means a lot for this. For the people that's listening to this. I mean they are learning and they are, they are understanding what about the projects and what's the point of the project, what's the point of the what the people is building. I mean this is value that you're adding to liquidity. So this is so.

Important. Yeah, I I've always thought that you guys asked the questions that like as I was listening as a capital allocator, you guys had asked the questions that a capital allocator should ask. And it's interesting that we've watched essentially all of you in some way become capital allocators in the space and and that that now in retrospect seems obvious because you've been asking the questions of a smart money capital allocator for a long time.

And so you get good at it and you know you start to to get confidence in it and that's better. You know, that's been why the long form of your interviews I think have have survived and thrived versus versus other podcasts that have that have sort of fanned out. Well my my other podcast, the interop is basically just the forcing function for me to do DD on projects. I mean to some extent you know right?

Like I mean there there more so I mean it's more than that but but it it is it it does also serve this this purpose sometimes and also to to get a feel for how like for how the founder expresses themselves and sort of pitches their product and their project outside of a you know like zoom call setting right in a more in a more kind of like public facing setting.

But yeah, Jordy, to come back to what you were saying earlier, you know the the asking questions and trying to understand how things work, like for me was not always something that came naturally. Like in in the first three or four years of doing the show I and this changed after after some time. I was really coming to the podcast, like trying to over prepare in order to give the impression that I knew more about the topic that I actually

did right. And it was sort of like this thing where I was I was trying to understand the entirety of the of, of, of, of the of the topic at hand in order to to be asking smart questions and sort of like look smart. But then I realized at some point like this, this is absolutely ridiculous. Like this is stupid.

I should come to the, I should come to this with like you know some amount of preparation but but really be asking questions as they come, as if I was having a conversation with someone you know around the around, around a dinner table or at a bar or something. Right. And and and that's when that's when I think my whole outlook on interviews changes like when I was just sort of like asking questions from like a real place of wanting to understand things and. Also not being afraid to look

stupid, right? So basically I always get something. It's that was the that was the. Fine to ask again because kind of like, yeah, so I I had the same fear and yeah, it it, it also took me a while to kind of shed it. Yeah, yeah, not not looking stupid was a huge fear. Yeah, for a long time. Did you guys ever think of shutting it down? Is there ever a moment of like, Nah, we're doing too many things like, let's wrap this up and do something else. Not yet. There's never that conversation.

So then that leads to the next conversation because you never if you if in 10 years you haven't thought of shutting it down, that means that it's likely to survive for the next 10 years. What do you want out of it for the next 10 years? But, but I think kind of what we have done is we have added more hosts, right And we we also do more solo episodes. So I think kind of like the the onus on every one of us has decreased somewhat.

So because basically back in the day we did an episode, everyone did an episode every other week and kind of obviously that takes, you know, preparation and so on. And now we maybe do an episode every three weeks or so. And I think, yeah, so I think kind of the, the overall workload is at least for me has decreased. Same for you guys, right? Yeah, yeah. I just want to become a better capital allocator, Ryan. That's that's that's why I keep doing it.

Yeah, Ryan, in the next 10 years, I would like to have an EGA as a Co host and I would like to have built, I would like to have built that system. Both of you to assume none of us is AI. So we're going to bring on our our last guest. We're we're running a little long here, but that's great because these have been great conversations. So we're going to bring on our last guest which is Ryan Muirhead of Fabric Ventures. And yeah, welcome, welcome, Ryan. Richard, sorry. I got.

I got upgraded to Ryan there for a second. I don't. Know why I called you back? So, Richard Muirhead. With the. Ryan upgrade. How are you? Yeah I'm. I'm super good. Thank you everybody. So I've been listening a little a bit in the back and I've been listening to the the voices of of my youth. Someone already said that they kind of yeah, Brian you got outed on a on a on a bus or whatever in in Cancun. It has been voice, but it is incredible how how you know that that kind of resonates.

I guess not really my youth, I guess it's my early 40s, but. I got. I got I got recognized on the side of a mountain once that was, that was that's a real experience. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's strong. I was wondering if Ryan's voice should got graph graph for naturally, but I I can see now he's training it with with and and. Unless you the chat, you're just

having this. Now is give give me an idea which is like you know if you're Sebastian you you're using it as a forcing function of your DD. And if if if voices are so important to people they're so emotive. You have something like a competition where you have to do your capital allocation based on listening to somebody you know talk about their project and and just that and you have to kind of make the choice and you. Can be a. Fantasy capital allocation if you want.

So it's kind of like a speed day day audio only with no prep. And no prep actually it's a that's a benchmark capital thing that kind of nobody's allowed to get on prepare for the the pitch from the from the from the founders and that kind of weekly investment meeting. So this kind of I guess the motion is there's a bit of sort of level playing field and no preconceptions no cheating and checking stuff up and whatever

to come out it with an average. So you could you could do a little, we could spin that out and make make it into a DAT probably. Yeah, that's an interesting. Point. Huh. Would it be a security? It's be a gang. Probably all, probably all security, but. Whatever. If you ask Gary now, there's one. There's one guy I hope maybe we'll have on someday Gary again. So that will be fun. For the 20th year anniversary. From jail. Elizabeth Warren, maybe.

I know you get it. I know you got to jump, Jordy, as always, it's been such a pleasure and honour to have you on. Thank you very much guys and Congrats and continue moving forward. We are not there yet. On with and. Edwards actually. One last thing on that. On that Jordy. Yeah, I always take the opportunity to publicly thank Jordy for everything that he's

done in this space. I have no idea just how many times Jordy has saved all of our bake that we're all here in part because of the benevolent extraordinary talent of of Jordy Bellina and so and very, very sincerely thank you for for everything you do we're we're incredibly grateful to you what but. Leave us, leave us with one thing. Where do you want to take ZKEVM and what do you want to see in ZKEVM in the next year? I want to scale, I want to scale Ethereum.

So my goal here is so I want to reduce the gas cost of about 50 X in the next year and that's what I'm working for. Compression, compression mainly compression and and faster proofs. Is that also like lower lower latency proofs, like proofs down to a few bytes? Do you think or or or is it going to stay in like KB territory or like? Where?

Where do you can you take it? Lower latency, lower latency, it's may so may not be so, I mean it's a good thing to have and if you have low latency in the proofs that's of course you will get better, better possibility between chains mainly. So that's the good thing and we are working on that but we are finding ways that you don't

necessarily need low latency. So for me proofs are more about proof cost and and throughput that that the latency because in the consensus you can you you can keep the consensus and you can have a lot of things in the consensus, in the, in the consensus layer, in the temporary consensus layer. So Lola that is a very good to have an important thing to have.

But for throughput and for scalability maybe it's not 100% required on that that's I mean this is what we're working on in the aggregation layer in in in polygonal. This is the things that we're investigating. But yeah, I mean regarding the ZKVMI mean we, we want to scale Ethereum and we want this to be so people should be able to use Ethereum without having to worry about the gas price for most applications and this is what we're working on. So maybe this is what that Ryan's getting at.

But but outside of, you know scanning a theory, if you're looking at using CK on inferences from large language models, the kind of the the kind of presentation layer and the user experience, then latency is is involved.

And so it's interesting looking at the collision between the two kind of value chains on the data side and on the on the kind of computational, the algorithmic side between blockchain and and AI. And I think in some parts of that then latency is going to be it'd be critical. I don't know if you're looking at that. Yeah, the latency, latency, The thing is that in the 44 usability in general we are talking about latencies that goes in about a second few seconds something that's that's

what usability is, is about. I mean blockchains we are a little bit, I mean having a mostly of 15 seconds, we accept that in the 30 word for that, but we are talking always about few seconds in the proofs. Right now we are in, I mean right now we are in about 100 seconds. So we need to get one, one or at least one order of magnitude better for getting to that phrase.

I mean it's perfectly possible. I think that in the next year, two years this is, will be, it's going to be even better, especially for when the hardware, hardware acceleration starts hitting. I mean it starts being a reality on there. There are some difficulties there. It's more about bandwidth and special hardware. But yeah, I mean this is the, this is the the path that's this is it's not from work that's happening right now in the in the Zika space.

The other place where proof generation speed is really important is when you start like using it for privacy stuff, right? Because like when you want to actually like you know that that actually you needed to be fast not to some like on like on consumer level hardware. Exactly. I mean it's like level one especially when you want to do the mobile phone that's that's another that's another front. Yeah.

I mean when you get the privacy proof in a mobile phone and but the cool thing is that I mean the second technology is evolving so fast. I mean where we were two years ago and where we are now it's it's we we did the two XI mean about two orders of magnitude improvement in in the proof generate in the last in the last two years And and and this happens in the I mean in big servers but this happens also in

the in in the mobiles. But it has literally not been time for building the the libraries for optimized for mobiles. I mean we're building those now and and and this is happening at this point and I mean we are seeing a point that the the technology is advancing so fast that the engineering that engineering is going fast

cannot. I mean it requires it's time to build all these things and and I mean we've seen that that that the investigation the the the research is going faster than the engineering currently which is interesting interesting it's interesting more because this is not is in general doesn't that doesn't used to happen. So consumer privacy on the on the device was kind of what I was getting at with, you know, imprints for LLMS. So I think it's a really

interesting use case. But so I'm interested, Jordy, are you looking at hardware acceleration that might be necessary on the consumer device itself or you're not, Yeah, looking. I mean, I think that not necessarily maybe I mean here maybe the mobile mobile phone, maybe it will take like I don't know, maybe 30 seconds to build the proof. I mean if you accept that which is in most of the cases this is could be acceptable you can actually build depending what you want to prove.

But I mean you can build the privacy privacy proof relatively relatively easy privacy complex privacy proof on there no prima Aztec is working a lot that on on on that front and here porting all the Starks things that we're building to the to the to the mobile phones this is our happening. Of course you have hardware acceleration that's that's better. But in general the problem is that I mean hardware is a long process.

I mean building an ASIC, this is at least at least a one year, one year, two years project itself And and what happened now is that in two years in crypto there is a new protocol that's using something different that have to throw it away what you have been investing, investing. I was going to say before crypto one or two years wasn't too bad, but now with crypto it's a problem. But at some point this will, this will get more stable and yeah, but not no, no, I mean

we're seeing here things. I mean two years, I mean two, one month ago, two months ago there was this B News thing. I mean all these stars with binary fields.

I mean super interesting and but this has already changed what we were doing now with prime fields the Starks but I mean things are happening and and and you need to to check or you want recovering all protocols like I mean linear people recovering the GD, KS, the GKRS algorithms I mean they are putting them together it's a lot of things happening. So for example here investing a lot in hardware is I would say is quite risky because technology is changing a lot.

So you don't know for sure what's going to be the right way to do and I mean the OR prover itself I mean was super fast but next generation that we are building is even faster. So it's it's it's you're discovering a lot of small tricks and a lot of things that are happening.

So it's it's going really fast and and and and keeping up from the engineering perspective, I mean keeping up in all the new things that are happening is, is, is it's not easy and even selecting them, I mean there are so many research and then OK this thing is is a good thing or is not a good thing.

And sometimes you need to go really deep and actually implement there and then you realize that maybe that's not as fast as it's promised and then you need to step back or then somebody just it gets with a with a trick that OK, but doing this, this thing this way, then this is super fast and and then you, you come back and this is the. I mean you're going back and forth all the time.

Yeah. I mean this is this is the this is the crypto the the crypto craziness when you are developing and when you're in this space. But this is also the good thing. I mean this is amazing. I mean, for engineering perspective, this is a it's a heaven. So so I heard Brian say that he had the prediction episode at the beginning of 2014. I don't remember listening to to to that one but I I did.

I do remember the Tom Cruise episode and I went back and listened to it and and and do you remember Brian you like you noticed you know you you actually sort of you you basically said a few things about like more all this Ethereum thing sounds like science fiction. It's all going to become a kind of reality and they're they're going to be these agents are going to be able to transact

economically on our behalf. But the real problem is that we're not being able to get the accurate data to them to make sure that they you know they they represent our needs in the right way. And I think I think that's the thing that was pretty sort of that showed great foresight I guess in generally generally go there like sometime early 2014. You also said you were you were pretty skeptical involving in Ethereum. I don't actually remember that.

About what? Investing in Ethereum seemed a bit seemed a bit complex. Oh, did I say that? I got to go back and listen to these episodes. I think that was episode three. It was like Tom Cruise fights to protect the blockchain. I don't remember why we called

it that. Maybe because maybe because during the episode we like fantasized about a Tom Cruise movie where he was protecting the block's head or something He. Was a he was a tiny sliver with something to do with what how metallic could pitch the theory. But anyway it's like you were rather kind of bizarre contact and so the other had too much regulatory content for me. I couldn't get into the on let's talk Bitcoin at at walking you

through stuff, you know. We, we did have a lot of regulatory content at the beginning, yeah. Yeah. Jordy, I know you have to. Yeah. Thanks so much for coming on. It's been a pleasure. Having you. Thank you so much. Bye. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I guess this whole thing of, yeah, agents acting on the blockchain, it still doesn't exist quite right for people to have that kind of thing with. Feels like we're getting closer slowly. No, I mean it doesn't, it doesn't exist yet.

But I mean there's a lot of people now kind of innovating obviously with LLMS to kind of build those you know Yeah bots that will kind of represent your interest or you can talk to and and you and you feel like you're you know having a personal conversation with you or whatever. So but I guess whether or not that's will require some intersection of AI and and blockchain depends on whether

how foolhardy we are as humans. Like I mean whether we just we start trusting these bots out there in the same way as we're trusting the big brands of of Web 2. You know just a kind of a general social consensus. Oh it's a bot built by so and so that's fine I'll I'll work with it not knowing how it's being trained or whether you know when it's doing with any of your personal data.

OK that that's one of the big debates And then give of of today how we're going to make sure that we don't kind of sort of further fuel the the technofeudalism then you know in this in this next phase you know whether web three can actually sort of help AI to to any degree.

But there's and there's another side on the box which is that I mean I don't think any of us would say that love to hear opinions on it that that kind of decentralized governance has quite got to kind of mainstream yet. So simple governance, still pretty complex to handle and and so the. Technically speaking or socially speaking, do you think it's a technical problem or a social problem? That means it's definitely a social problem. But also a mechanism design

problem. No, also mechanism design problem. So I think kind of like the simple Dal models that we have now basically they all don't appreciate that attention is kind of the scarce resource here. I think this is something that Dallas Tech had figured out super early on. Unfortunately, they went out of business. But yeah, I I look forward to kind of having those sorts of

efforts back. Well well I think some of us come into any of that you know Co founder at near where who's got a great LLM background he he he talks you know openly now about the desire to commit Guild you know Dow presidents in the in bot form so that you can delegate you know to some intelligent agents to of various different descriptions to

represent. Because there's no way if we have, if we're going to have corporations as codes popping up everywhere and we're going to be interested in for some sliver of our existence in the the effect of governance in those, you know, dowels or DAX or whatever, then you know there's it can only scan. If we're going to. Must these these these twins in years?

Yeah, absolutely. So basically specifying your values or kind of having an AI extract your values for you and kind of your economic interests and so on, and then kind of doing kind of like a liquid delegation to those kinds of AIS. Yeah, absolutely, totally with you here. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I mean personally I feel like in the in the Cosmos space, Garland's working like pretty well, right.

I mean I think we have like Cosmos hubs at like 800 governance proposals, osmosis, tons of governance proposals and with like, you know, high participation both in terms of

you know, stake that's voting. So it's like secure from some whale coming in and like, you know, like there's often on Ethereum mapping it in dollars, like you'd have like 3 percent, 5% of dollar tokens voting in governance and then you know some big whale can come and execute a vote, but you don't have that issue in the Cosmos governance thing. And then we have, you know, regularly definitely like thousands of accounts. I mean there's always a lot of

like bought accounts voting too. I mean, Sunny probably has better idea on this, but there's definitely a lot of people participating in these boats and and I feel that's actually working pretty well, Yeah. Ryan, I think you need to run. We're gonna. I knew guys. Proper sign off. Thanks SO. Much thank you so much. Joining. Joy to Steel. Loyal, listening all these years

and yeah. Well, thank you guys for for everything you do, for the important education, the like technically sophisticated education that you provide to this, this ecosystem. It is very important, more important than you know. And so I'm incredibly grateful to all of you for keeping faith and keeping with it, and just compounding on all of our knowledge. And so thanks again. I think I think that.

Thanks and. Also by helping with all the weekly shopping trips and showers in front, getting people from. Thanks so much, Ryan. Great. Well, I think, I think we're, we're about ready to wrap up, wrap this party up. It's been 2 1/2 hours. Thanks for thanks for sticking around, Richard. So, yeah, where do we go from here? What's are we shooting for 20 years? Is that what we're doing? Yeah. We're not not just one AI host but just all of you. It's you know back back to the

previous conversations. You're just going to capture generally your values and your interests and and it and it. The bot sort of sucks up everything you're you're reading as you go along through your glasses or contact lenses and then you can you need. You don't have to do it at all. You can be doing like 10 podcasts a day. Each guy that's so they can then go forever. Well, I I wish I could even I wish I could do three, because

sometimes 2 is too much. And we could actually synthesize a much better podcast host, right? I mean, basically we could take like the good parts of all of us and you know, synthesize them into, you know? My hair is working on this. Yeah, exactly like Like the thing I do is I would for a project, I would collect the entire sort of information about the project, my paper, website, the entire code base. I would put everything in a retrieval augmented generation pipeline.

And then it's like figure out how to simulate Frederica, how to simulate my head, like somehow like fine tune an LLM so that it is able to simulate me and then it's able to ask questions from the documentation and generate an episode by itself, right? Like and. Then when can I invest? When can I allocate capital more than seller than Wafa? That's always the key question. It's also funny how how you kind of become an LLM rapper for your

Co host to a certain extent. So kind of depending on who I host with, I know what they're going to ask next. So kind of I have like this LLM representation of them inside my head and yeah. So before we end this are there any any final thoughts anything anybody especially wants to share. Well I mean if nobody's coming to you I I do I like the. Yeah. I mean I I just want to say like I absolutely appreciate all of you. I've loved doing the podcast

with with all of you. I mean it's it's it's always it's what's great about Epicenter is like I think we all have like like you were saying for like you know we all have this sort of like dynamic, right. So there are you know N number of dynamics here when when we all sort of like do podcasts together and that's been really fun and I really appreciate like yeah getting to learn so much from you know being able to Co host the podcast with with all

your weeks. So yeah, hope, I hope we I can keep doing this with you guys for for the next 10 years. Absolutely. What? What? Does. This what does this work. I don't even know that works. That's crazy. The heart now I. Want that high? It's a pause here. We go, Here we go. You you have to update your Mac. So before before we end this it, it wouldn't be a 10 year anniversary episode without the obligatory Green Day Good riddance time of your life photo slideshow.

So. I had no idea this was coming. OK, room 77. I had to add Felix in here at the end I. Saw that I knew. There's no, come on, six of us, right? No, there isn't. But there is now. I think she like like a little bit larger than the, you know, in terms of kind of like body proportions. I think kind of we have to shrink him down by like 10%. I have some. There. On my arm too, it's sunny. Let's, let's. Shrink him by Let's shrink him by 40%.

Oh gosh, yeah, yeah. Hope you guys like that is I had a bunch of pictures from that was super cool in the years I. Appreciate you putting this together, Steve. Yeah, well, you could, you could thank iOS for that, throw a bunch of pictures into into Apple Photos on there. Yeah, great guys. Well, thanks. Thanks for everybody who tuned in. There's been tons of people here in live stream. I think we probably like hit 22300 people in live stream over the course of the the 2 1/2 hours.

So, yeah, thank you and we'll be back next week as always. As every week except for the one week that we missed. That's right. Oh, that was my last. That was that was my last trivia question. Oh, I I know this one. You know this one? Christmas week 20, I don't know, 19. I I know it's definitely Christmas week. Yeah. I was so upset. I was sad. I cried. Well, we won't miss this this Christmas week. That's And then we and then we reran the David Chaum episode.

Remember that. No, no, no, no, it wasn't David Chaum it. Wasn't David Chaum, was it? No it. Was. Yeah, OK. OK, so some Ogi remember that we're like, all right, this is an Evergreen episode. We can run it anytime. Yeah, yeah. He was over then. He was over now. No one will. All right. How are you doing guys? Thanks, bye. Thanks everyone. Thank you for joining us on this week's episode. We release new episodes every

week. You can find and subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you have a Google Home or Alexa device, you can tell it to listen to the latest episode of the Epicenter podcast, go to epicenter.tv/subscribe for a full list of places where you can watch and listen. And while you're there, be sure to sign up for the newsletter so you get new episodes in your inbox as they're released.

If you want to interact with us guests or other podcast listeners, you can follow us on Twitter and please leave us a review on iTunes. It helps people find the show and we're always happy to read them. But thanks so much and we look forward to being back next week.