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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Worldcoin is a start-up trying to engineer widespread adoption for its cryptocurrency by giving away tokens. Sound too good to be true? Depends how you look at it (literally). Participants must be willing to have their eyes scanned on registration by a proprietary iris scanner dubbed 'orb'. Worldcoin says the scan is necessary to prove that users are human and to verify they only register once. The start-up has attracted big investors but it has also raised concerns among an increasingly privacy-conscious public with some labeling it a MLM.
We were joined by co-founder and CEO, Alex Blania, who explained the idea behind Worldcoin and the aspect of UBI, the current number of orbs in circulation and users, and he addresses the criticisms they have faced so far. Worldcoin is due to launch later this year.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/435
Helium is a global, distributed network of long-range wireless coverage hotspots for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, powered by the Helium blockchain. Community run hotspots create 'The People’s Network' and they are rewarded with $HNT, the native cryptocurrency of the network, through the Proof-of-Coverage mechanism. Helium has managed to build the largest P2P network with over 600,000 hotspots and is now starting to deploy other networks like a 5g cellular network.
We were joined by Founder and CEO of Helium, Amir Haleem, to chat about how Helium works and the most interesting use cases, how the Proof-of-Coverage mechanism allows the community to participate, and the road ahead for the network.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/434
Axelar is a highly scalable, decentralized blockchain that aims to connect all existing blockchains. The proof of stake network, built on the Cosmos-SDK, allows application developers to choose the best blockchain to deploy their applications and use Axelar’s cross-chain communication protocols to lock, unlock, and transfer assets between networks, as well as communicate with applications on other blockchains.
Co-founder and CEO of Axelar, Sergey Gorbunov joined us to chat about his experience working on Algorand, the importance and future of interoperabilty protocols, and the vision behind Axelar.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/433
It's been just short of 2 years since we had Julian Assange's father John, and Harry Halpin, on the show to chat about his imprisonment and the impact it could have on the crypto community. At that time it was unknown if/when Julian would be extradited to the US to face trial. On December 10 2021, the US government won its appeal of a British court ruling that barred Assange’s extradition to the US. On the very same day the AssangeDAO was born and now has a thriving community of 10k people behind it.
The DAO raised over $50 million and the funds were used to bid on an NFT, Clock, which is part of a collection between Assange and digital artist Pak. The bid was successful and proceeds from the sale of the Clock NFT will go to support Assange’s legal defence fund and awareness campaign about the free speech implications of his case.
We were joined by Julian's brother Gabriel, and Stellar Magnet, core contributors of the AssangeDAO. We spoke about Julian's case as it currently stands, how the DAO was born and why they chose to purchase the NFT, and the road ahead.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/432
NEAR Protocol is a leading smart contract platform that aims for simplicity, security and scalability. NEAR was one of the first sharded blockchains and allows deploying smart contracts using Web Assembly on currently four different shards. NEAR's sharding design, Nightshade, splits the blocks into different segments, which allows for great scalability without negatively impacting user and developer experience. Since, its launch NEAR has evolved into one of the most active smart contract ecosystems.
Illia and Alex, co-founders of NEAR, joined us to chat about the NEAR's protocol design and recent advances, such as the launch of Aurora, NEAR's EVM shard. We also discussed how their sharding solution works and how it can scale to support a massive amount of users and applications.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/431
Gitcoin is a platform which funds software developers for work in open source ecosystems. Open source creates value without capturing it: Gitcoin creates funding mechanism to correct the asymmetry between value created and value captured. So far they have raised $51million, which were then distributed to public goods projects.
We were joined, for the second time, by Gitcoin's founder Kevin Owocki. Hear as we chat about quadratic and public good funding, the Internet of Jobs, and Kevin's book, Greenpilled - Regenerative CryptoEcononmics, which is out soon!
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/430
Agoric is an Proof-of-Stake blockchain built on the Cosmos-SDK that allows developers to create secure smart contracts written in JavaScript. It offers developers safe, reusable DeFi components and built-in economic primitives like a stablecoin, while connecting to the larger blockchain ecosystem via IBC.
Besides covering the Agoric platform, we dove into the long prehistory with Agoric CEO Dean Tribble. Dean and his co-founders have been working on smart contracts and secure computing for decades, long before cryptocurrencies were invented, and a lot of that work shaped the Agoric platform today. We talked about underlying design principles like the Object Capability Security Model, but also the tradeoffs between Ethereum's model of scaling on a single chain versus the Cosmos model of sovereign chains interoperating asynchronously.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/429
Olympus is a hotly debated project in the DeFi space. It posits to be a decentralized reserve currency protocol. Each OHM token is partially backed by the Olympus treasury, but how large the treasury is, depends on what is counted towards it. We would argue that OHM tokens should be discounted for this purpose. Users can interact with Olympus DAO through staking and bonding, which incentivizes users to deposit or sell their collateral to the Olympus treasury in return for discounted OHM tokens.
We were joined by Olympus Founder Zeus to chat about why the protocol was created and how it works, and we address the debate about it being a Ponzi scheme.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Zubin Koticha. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/428
Zodiac is a collection of tools built according to an open standard which proposes a composable design philosophy for DAOs. Built by the Gnosis Guild team, this extension pack for DAOs enables connection between platforms, protocols, and chains, no longer confined to monolithic designs. It not only changes access, but bridges chains, organizations, and networks through DAO-to-DAO (D2D) collaboration mechanisms.
We were joined by Kei Kreuther and Auryn Macmillan, founders of Gnosis Guild, a core contributor to the Zodiac platform. Hear as we chat about the rise of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, the Zodiac Toolset and how it works, and the future of DAOs in not only the blockchain space but also in the real economy.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/427
The current lack of privacy on the internet exposes billions of people to mass surveillance and data breaches, undermining trust in digital services and stifling innovation. Nym is a mixnet and develops the infrastructure to prevent this data leakage by protecting every packet’s metadata at the network and application layers.
We were joined by Nym's CEO & Founder Harry Halpin, and CSO Jaya Klara Brekke, to chat about the threat mass surveillance has on society, what Nym sets out to do and take a deep dive into the architecture of the protocol.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/426
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