Stay ConnectedEpicenter brings you in-depth conversations about the technical, economic and social implications of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. Every week, we interview business leaders, engineers academics and entrepreneurs, and bring you a diverse spectrum of opinions and points of view.
Epicenter is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst, Meher Roy and Felix Lutsch. Since 2014, our episodes have been downloaded over 8 million times.
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With an average block time of 5 seconds and sub-cent transaction gas fees, Celo focuses on scalability and ease of access in order to bring DeFi to those that need it the most. Celo’s vision of ensuring equal access is reflected through their mobile-first design, aiming to disrupt legacy TradFi. The upcoming transition to an L2 rollup aims to tap into Ethereum’s security, while maintaining minimal costs through Celo’s scalability and EigenLayer’s data availability solutions.
We were joined by Marek Olszewski & Rene Reinsberg to discuss Celo's mobile-first approach to building a low-fee, high-throughput blockchain with real-world applications, and their transition to an Ethereum L2.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/524
Homo- (Greek prefix meaning ‘same’); -morphic (Greek suffix meaning ‘having a specific shape/form’)
Intuitively, one could deduct that homomorphic encryption indicates that the initial data and the encrypted result (cipher) could share the same form. Based on this property, it can be inferred that computation can be performed on the encrypted data, without prior decryption. By decrypting the result, you get the same output as the computation performed on the unencrypted data. While homomorphic encryption can be either additive or multiplicative, fully homomorphic encryption supports both types of operations. Unlike ZKPs, which are proofs of computational integrity, fully homomorphic encryption allows for encrypted data computation, without revealing additional information about the original data. This could provide the missing link for ensuring private transactions on blockchains’ public ledgers.
We were joined by Rand Hindi, CEO of Zama, to discuss fully homomorphic encryption solutions, how they differ from ZKPs & MPC, and how they can be leveraged to ensure compliant programmable privacy.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/523
"The advancements of zero knowledge proving technology, hardware acceleration and proof recursion have significantly increased the efficiency of EVM-compatible zk provers. As a result, the former tradeoff in efficiency implied by EVM-compatibility is gradually improving. Translating Ethereum’s virtual machine bytecode ensures seamless scaling for applications, without the need for additional audits and security compromises.
We were joined by Ye Zhang, co-founder of Scroll, to discuss the EVM-compatible zero knowledge landscape and how Scroll aims to stay true to Ethereum’s values and community.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/522
Leading decentralised perpetual exchange, dYdX V4 recently migrated to Cosmos to build its own sovereign appchain, in order to provide its users a much better trading experience, while continuing to deliver DeFi innovations (e.g. permisionless markets). By having full control over the appchain’s parameters, the dYdX DAOs can shape the future of the protocol, starting from the very bedrock, ensuring proper distribution and incentives for the validator set. From early adopter of L2 zero knowledge proofs (STARKs), to building its own Cosmos appchain, dYdX has proven once again to be a trailblazer for new technologies.
We were joined by Charles d’Haussy, CEO of dYdX Foundation, to discuss dYdX V4’s recent migration to a Cosmos appchain and what challenges it solves in terms of: order book decentralisation, validator distribution and user experience.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/521
The very nature of Ethereum addresses, expressed as random hexadecimal character strings, represents a big hurdle for mass adoption, as they are not human-readable. ENS domains were envisioned to not only solve this and provide a seamless UX, but to also be the cornerstone of on-chain identities. However, in the current multichain landscape, a plethora of decentralised naming services arose, which led to a heterogeneous domain name pool. As a result, ENS aims to expand to L2s and non-EVM chains, attempting to provide consistency, in order to further reduce user friction and limit conflicting domain names.
We were joined by Nick Johnson, founder of ENS, to discuss the current state of decentralised naming services from a multichain and L2 perspective, and how these ultimately tie into decentralised identities.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/520
While competition fosters innovation, the proliferation of different blockchains has resulted in the fragmentation and isolation of liquidity within each ecosystem. Early attempts to address this issue primarily involved bridges and wrapped assets. Unfortunately, these solutions were often vulnerable to hacks and exploits, and the value of wrapped assets was contingent on the security of the wrapper contract, rather than the underlying asset. Cross-chain swaps of native assets hold the promise of resolving liquidity fragmentation, but numerous technological challenges must be overcome to make them as seamless as same-chain swaps.
We were joined by Simon Harman, founder of Chainflip, to discuss multi-chain liquidity fragmentation and how Chainflip’s JIT AMM (Just in Time) aims to solve this, by providing cross-chain native swaps.
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This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/519
Stablecoins represent a safe haven against crypto’s volatility, allowing participants to remain in the market, without off-ramping to fiat. While the major stablecoins are centrally issued (e.g. USDT, USDC, BUSD), there is a pressing need for an algorithmic variant or a synthetic dollar asset. (DAI is somewhere in between since approximately 50% of its collateral is USDC). After Luna’s collapse, many jumped to point out its design flaws, yet such a concept would be crucial for crypto’s decentralisation and self-sustainability. Arthur Hayes proposed an interesting concept of NAKA synthetic dollar (NUSD), backed by Bitcoin and its inverse perpetual swap short. However, yield generation on $BTC is significantly lower than that of $ETH. A sustainable yield would help balance the cases in which funding rates would be negative (a minority in crypto).
We were joined by Guy Young, co-founder of Ethena, to discuss the stablecoin landscape and their synthetic eUSD, backed by staked ETH and its inverse perpetual swap.
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This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/518
One of the best known memes in crypto is: 'Not your keys, not your coins'. This usually resurfaces whenever a (custodial) centralised exchange is hacked or goes bust altogether. Although Web3 provides the infrastructure for self custody, this often shares the fate of Pandora. Self-custody requires increased security measures, from both end-users, as well as application developers. Web3 wallets are the interface between users and decentralised applications deployed on blockchains. While Metamask still maintains the largest market share, a multitude of wallets have emerged, promising additional features and a better UX.
We were joined by Evgeny Yurtaev, co-founder & CEO of Zerion, to discuss the challenges of building a Web3 wallet and how Zerion aims to improve user experience, while still maintaining security.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/517
Back in 2017, there was no DeFi as we know it today, yet MakerDAO were already envisioning and building towards what they thought to be a certainty. The backbone of DeFi is represented by stable coins, and MakerDAO quickly understood this: they set out to build a decentralised stable coin, $DAI (and its precursor $SAI). Being collateral-backed, the smart contract needs to know the value of that collateral, but any off-chain price data is not readily available on-chain. This is where oracles come in and provide data feeds on-chain. MakerDAO’s internal oracle has been active since 2017 on Ethereum and has recently branched out, forming Chronicle. By using aggregated Schnorr signatures, Chronicle solves the problem of oracle cost-efficient scaling.
We were joined by Niklas Kunkel, founder of Chronicle, to discuss the challenges and tradeoffs that oracles regularly face, and how Chronicle is solving them, continuing the ethos of early MakerDAO.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/516
Data immutability and transparency are key features that define a blockchain’s public ledger. However, while transactions are indeed transparent, information surrounding the blockchain’s infrastructure layer is not readily available. Since Ethereum’s Merge to PoS and the introduction of staking delegation, actionable data on the validator and client status quos became crucial for the wellbeing of the network. Rated Network aims to build a reliable ‘reputation system for machines’ forming the infrastructure layer, through better data curation and improved transparency.
We were joined by Elias Simos, founder of Rated Network, to discuss data interpretation in blockchain infra and what conclusions can be drawn about validator performance, client diversity & much more.
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This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/515
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