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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Building a blockchain from the ground-up is a daunting task in itself, one that should not be a concern when designing an end-user application. Moreover, as Web3 aims to move away from centralized vertical scalability towards a multi-chain decentralized environment, horizontal scalability and cross-communication should represent a standard. While Cosmos solves the latter, deploying application-specific blockchains has not been a streamlined process. Saga aims to address this by providing automated means of deploying application-specific blockchains, called chainlets that use the validator set of Saga. This leads to a simplified user (and developer) experience, presently much needed in the Web3 gaming and entertainment industries.
We were joined by Rebecca Liao, co-founder & CEO of Saga, to discuss bootstrapping app-specific chains in just one click, leveraging the scalability & security of Cosmos, thus allowing developers to focus more on the product and less on the blockchain infrastructure.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/484
Web3 has always been criticised for its not so friendly user experience. While one might argue that it requires a mere learning curve, similar to that of e-mail services when first introduced, Web2’s ease of use has become the norm. Account abstraction and smart contract automation are just 2 solutions for unlocking higher flexibility in transaction execution logic. These backend improvements, alongside scaling solutions and a more user-friendly frontend (e.g. wallets, interfaces) will represent the main drivers of adoption.
We were joined by Luis Schliesske & Hilmar Orth, founders of Gelato Network, to discuss about Gelato Network’s approach to decentralising Web3's backend through automation and relaying, in order to onboard the next 100 million users.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/483
The Metaverse has taken the world by storm in 2021 and even though many have and are still opposing it, the fact that we are spending the majority of our lives online is an undeniable truth. The boundaries between physical and digital worlds are slowly eroding away. Our digital presence generates a data footprint that is currently being stored in big tech’s centralized silos. As a whole, these user-generated data breadcrumbs represent our digital identity. Web3 has, so far, mainly focused on financial aspects, disregarding user specific data even though the latter actually represents the vast majority (>90%) of all generated data.
We were joined by Joel Thorstensson, co-founder of 3Box Labs, to discuss Ceramic’s goal of decentralizing ‘social’, account-based data in the form of user-generated event streams, that could unlock true application interoperability built on a composable data layer.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/482
From technological breakthrough to philosophical defiance, the topic of AI has always sparked intense debates ever since Alan Turing & John McCarthy advanced this branch of computer science. One might argue that this was caused by expectations overwhelmingly surpassing technological capabilities. However, the recent public release of ChatGPT has rekindled former sci-fi apocalyptical scenarios, even if it is (still) just a trained language model. Humanity gazed in awe as a simple input/output text interface could instantly disrupt fields such as software engineering or copywriting. Worst part? It also challenged (arguably) the most important human-specific trait: creativity (Midjourney). Data is the lifeblood of AI as it increases the model’s prediction accuracy: larger input sample translates into more outputs that help fine-tune weights during back-propagation cycles (the model ‘learns’).
We were joined by Trent McConaghy, founder & CTO at Ocean Protocol, to discuss the advantages of implementing blockchain (& NFT) technology in data management and trading, what makes a particular data set valuable and what challenges derive from AI implementations and the data digital gold rush.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/481
DeFi lending protocols operate accordingly to their smart contracts and are perfect examples of ‘Code is law’, even if some recent exploits have not quite abided to this harsh truth. From well established protocols to degenerate DeFi farms with astronomic APYs, they all mainly use liquidity pools. Morpho Labs proposes a peer-to-peer approach that operates on top of another protocol’s liquidity pool (i.e. Aave, Compound), offering better rates for lenders as well as borrowers.
We were joined by Paul Frambot, co-founder and CEO of Morpho Labs, to discuss about the benefits and challenges that arise from a peer-to-peer lender-borrower matching system and what failsafes are in place.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/480
2022 has proven time after time that centralised entities are prone to multiple points of failure, intentional or not. Decentralised finance (DeFi) addresses these, but the user experience has often been lacklustre compared to that from centralised finance (CeFi). Exchanges are the backbone of any market, but high throughput is required in order to ensure that both makers and takers can proficiently use them. Decentralised exchanges have long faced issues due to bandwidth constraints native to blockchains, but recent L2 scaling solutions have provided a considerable increase in terms of throughput. For example, dYdX is currently the largest consumer of STARKs, but growing institutional and retail interest in derivative financial products urges for an even better alternative.
We were joined by Antonio Juliano, founder & CEO of dYdX perpetual exchange, to discuss about the upcoming transition to dYdX V4 and what challenges decentralised exchanges have to face amidst technological bottlenecks and upcoming regulations.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/479
The recent advancements of layer 2 scaling solutions, especially zero-knowledge rollups, led to a complete redesign of Ethereum’s scalability roadmap. As a result, the initial concept of sharding the execution layer was abandoned and replaced by the idea of data sharding. This proposal, named after its author, is know as Danksharding. EIP-4844 is also referred to as proto-danksharding as it sets the foundation for data sharding, through the introduction of data blobs.
We were joined by Carl Beekhuizen & Trenton Van Epps from the Ethereum Foundation, to discuss about the upcoming EIP-4844 timeline and its KZG ceremony.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/478
While Part 1 (#476) focused more on the general landscape of the ZK ecosystem, covering team updates and developments, in this episode, we take a closer look at specific use cases for ZK proofs and if the focus has shifted from privacy to blockchain scalability. Moreover, as the dusk of 2022 introduced chatGPT to the world, it seems only fitting to explore ZKP integrations in machine learning (ML).
In Part 2 of this 2-part episode, we were joined by Anna Rose, host of Zero Knowledge Podcast and founder of ZK Summit, ZK Validator and ZK Hack, and Kobi Gurkan, Head of Research at Geometry, to discuss current applications for ZK proofs and what narratives are going to shape 2023 for the ZK ecosystem.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/477
Blockchains are immutable record keepers, storing information about every transaction ever recorded. However, this attribute comes at a cost: as more and more transactions occur, so does the size of the record expands. In turn, the hardware requirements for running a node increase which ultimately affects decentralization. Another aspect frequently criticized is how transactions are being processed by legacy blockchains in terms of speed. For both of these aspects there is a cryptographic solution that addresses scalability: zero knowledge proofs (ZKPs). These allow one entity (prover) to prove to another entity (verifier) that a statement is true, without revealing any additional information about the process or data involved. When applied to blockchains, ZKPs improve scalability and privacy by certifying that state transitions occurred, without the need to relay the underlying information.
In Part 1 of this 2-part episode, we were joined by Anna Rose, host of Zero Knowledge Podcast and founder of ZK Summit, ZK Validator and ZK Hack, and Kobi Gurkan, Head of Research at Geometry, to discuss the state of the ZK ecosystem and how this promising technology is evolving.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/476
When discussing the widespread adoption of true, peer-to-peer decentralization, one could easily identify various social and political obstacles. However, there is also an often overlooked technological impairment as the underlying architecture of computer networks was not designed to achieve global-scale decentralization. Ideally a complete restructuring would be necessary, from applications and programming language, to as profound as rewriting operating system kernels. This is what Urbit is trying to achieve; a decentralized network where users have full control over their computer, running a unified operating system, where applications function seamlessly, without centralized chokepoints.
We were joined by Ted Blackman, CTO of Urbit Foundation, and Gary Lieberman, the Chorus One Team Lead for Urbit, to discuss how Urbit reshapes the way we interact with computers, its current development stage, and what challenges it has to overcome.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Ted's background
- What Urbit is building
- The disruptive potential of Urbit
- Gary's motivation behind joining Urbit
- Urbit's impact on user experience
- Current development stage and potential limitations
- General timeframe for Urbit adoption
- Other use cases for Urbit
- Implications Urbit might have for crypto (synergies)
- Privacy vs. Accountability
Episode links:
- Urbit: https://bit.ly/3A9COrX
- Urbit Foundation: https://bit.ly/3G8KZXR
- Ted Blackman: https://bit.ly/3Wuqyde
- Gary Lieberman: https://bit.ly/3YJcRt6
Sponsors:
- Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash
This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: https://epicenter.tv/475
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