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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Blockchains are secured through the economic incentives offered to their validators/miners. The more robust the network effect among validators, the more difficult it is for that blockchain to be compromised. However, building a truly decentralised and reliable validator set is not a trivial task. As a result, hub and spoke ecosystem designs like Cosmos’ (and even Polkadot’s), aim to share the main hub’s validator set and security to their ‘consumer’ chains (parachains in Polkadot’s case). Neutron relies on interchain queries, interchain accounts and interchain (replicated) security to deliver the most secure CosmWasm smart contract platform in the Cosmos ecosystem.
We were joined by Avril Dutheil, GM at Neutron, to discuss Neutron’s smart contract platform and how it leverages replicated security (ICS) and interchain accounts (ICA).
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This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/504
Stablecoins represent the backbone of DeFi, allowing complex financial applications to be protected from external volatility. From fiat-backed to algorithmic, there are multiple approaches to issuing and backing stablecoins. While US regulations are looming over the crypto industry, Monerium released a fully regulated on-chain euro stablecoin, the EURe, enabling direct SEPA transfers, on- and off-ramp.
We were joined by Sveinn Valfells, CEO of Monerium, to discuss the European E-Money Directive and how it set the ground for fully regulated on-chain currencies (EURe) built on top of SEPA.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/503
Layer 2 zero knowledge roll-ups have initially been used for achieving private transactions on blockchains. However, past simple transfers, interacting with a public smart contract posed a serious challenge. As research and technology evolved, proof construction became much more efficient, enabling zk-powered scalability. There is a variety of pros and cons for each type of proof system, but given the impending rise of qunatum computers, we have witnessed a recent migration from SNARKs to STARKs. While the former relies on trusted setups, zk-STARKs are quantum-resistant.
We were joined by Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder of Starkware, to discuss Starknet's layer 2 architecture, as well as the upcoming update to Cairo 1.0 and how it will impact scalability performances for STARKs.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/502
As institutional money set their eyes on crypto, some degree of centralisation and regulation was inevitable. However, the key aspect is to limit it to access gateways and not affect protocols’ decentralisation. Recent events have shown that price manipulation is easily achieved in conditions of low liquidity, hence regulated fiat on- and off-ramps will, in the end, also benefit retail consumers. It once again all boils down to achieving these goals while maintaining privacy for users and ensuring that regulations will not stifle innovation.
We were joined by Luka Müller, co-founder of MME Legal Firm & Sygnum Bank, to discuss about crypto regulations, institutional investors, user privacy & CBDCs.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/501
As Epicenter hits the 500 episode milestone, our hosts look back on almost 10 years of crypto developments, analysing the good, the bad and the ugly. What projects & narratives have surprised our hosts? Has Bitcoin failed in becoming a reliable store of value? Will ZK proofs provide the much needed solution to AI’s alignment problem? Last but not least, are we still early? Get ready for a fascinating discussion, albeit gloomy for this special occasion.
Thank you for being part of this amazing journey! We wouldn’t have made it so far without your continuous support! Looking forward to the next 500 episodes!
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst, Meher Roy, Sunny Aggarwal & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: [epicenter.tv/500](https://epicenter.tv/500)
In order to achieve true transaction privacy, it is not enough to encrypt or build ZK proofs for transaction bundles, as long as the underlying blockchain uses an account-based model. Aztec is building a ZKVM that superposes an UTXO model, so that balances are constantly updated as new, untraceable, log entries. The upcoming Aztec 3 aims to enable privacy-preserving smart contracts, using a hybrid, multi-layered rollup. This approach allows for both public and private smart contracts to be executed simultaneously.
We were joined by Zac Williamson & Joe Andrews, to discuss the evolution of Aztec, from ZK Money to their upcoming privacy-preserving hybrid ZK rollup.
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This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/499
As crypto evolves, it becomes clearer that the future will be multi-chain. Presently, moving funds between different blockchains is frustrating...to say the least. The current bridging solutions are prohibitive from a UX perspective, mainly due to how finality is reached across different blockchains. This translates to long wait times and anxiety when interacting with new protocols, caused by the incertitude of funds arriving safely on the other side. Another major blockage consists of gas fees, particular to each blockchain, which often require an additional swap. But what if, users could enjoy near-instant cross-chain swaps (sub-20 second) and one-click transaction aggregators?
We were joined by Fig, co-founder of Squid Router, to discuss how they leverage Axelar's infrastructure to achieve one-click, near-instant cross-chain swaps, creating user-friendly interoperability.
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This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/498
Ethereum's merge and transition to a proof-of-stake consensus implied switching from proof-of-work mining to transactions being validated by entities that have an economic stake in the network. Proof-of-stake distributed networks are subject to complex game theory models (e.g. slashing). Distributed validator technology (DVT) enables a more modular validator stack at every level: key pairs, hardware and entities. This reduces trust dependencies and increases security for validator entities.
We were joined by Collin Myers & Oisín Kyne, founders of Obol Network, to discuss Ethereum's 2.0 PoS consensus, the current validator landscape and how distributed validator technology (DVT) allows for an increased security and overall smoother UX for validator entities.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/497
Public transaction history in blockchains represents one of their key features which, alongside immutability, aim to provide an alternative to CeFi. However, this transparency comes at a price: privacy. As a result, different solutions have been proposed, that preserve privacy while maintaining all the other benefits of blockchain technology, but there currently isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to this problem. For example, zero knowledge proofs convey the validity of a transaction batch without sharing any other details, but the underlying arithmetic circuits are both complex as well as computational intensive. Umbra proposes a system that relies completely on elliptic curve cryptography, employing multiple private-public key pairs to achieve stealth payments.
We were joined by Ben DiFrancesco, founder & CEO of ScopeLift, to talk about Umbra's privacy preserving stealth token transfer system and if the need for privacy on blockchains outweighs any implicit UX frictions.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/496
As the second Avalanche summit drew to a close, Sebastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal sat down with Emin Gün Sirer for a fascinating conversation exploring future innovation narratives in crypto. Longtime friend of Epicenter, Ava Labs' founder and CEO shared his unique insights on the industry, from both a founder, as well as a former academia perspective.
Given Avalanche's consensus & architecture, it boasts high TPS and scalability properties, incentivising founders to build better products in the AVAX ecosystem.
One of the most controversial narratives is that of LLMs (i.e. ChatGPT) powering smart contract development by bypassing programming languages and even bytecode altogether. The question arises if replacing the human third-party with an AI fixes trust issues or not, but only time will tell which piece of code we can actually consider 'law'.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/495
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