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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Gyroscope is an "all-weather stablecoin" that is backed by a reserve portfolio that tries to diversify across many risk factors. By maintaining a reserve of many decorrelated assets, it makes Gyro Dollars more resilient, similar to how it is hard to move a spinning gyroscope. In a market where there's an explosion of new stablecoins, Gyroscope attempts to find a niche by providing a very stable and resilient option.
We were joined by co-founders Lewis Gudgeon and Ariah Klages-Mundt to chat about how Gyroscope works and their strategy to try to make it a standard throughout DeFi.
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This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/415
PieDAO is is a decentralized asset manager for tokenized portfolios and enables anyone to create allocations for both crypto and traditional assets. PIES are non-custodial pools available to anyone in the world with an internet connection. PIES require no minimum deposits for users. DOUGH is the token that governs the platform. Token holders are given voting rights on all decisions.
We were joined by the Founder of PieDAO, Alessio Delmonti, to talk about how the project works and why he is so committed to making wealth creation more accessible to all.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/414
Notional is a protocol on Ethereum that facilitates fixed-rate, fixed-term crypto asset lending and borrowing. The core concept of Notional is fCash, a zero-compound bond defined by a currency type and maturity date. Notional’s liquidity pools are built by liquidity providers who contribute cTokens and fCash and act as counterparty to the lenders and borrowers that are active on the protocol.
We were joined by co-founders Teddy Woodward and Jeff Wu to chat about the benefits and tradeoffs of fixed rate interest borrowing, how Notional operates, and comparisons to other lending protocols in the space.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/413
Lido is a DAO that provides a liquid staking solution for Ethreum 2.0. It lets users stake their Ether, without locking assets or needing to maintain infrastructure, whilst participating in on-chain activities. Lido attempts to solve the problems associated with initial Ethereum 2.0 staking - illiquidity, minimum requirements, immovability and accessibility, by making staked Ether liquid and allowing for participation in DeFi.
Vasiliy Shapovalov, Co-founder of Lido, joined us to talk about all things Ethereum staking and the benefits of liquid staking with Lido.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/412
The Reserve project is on a mission to provide every person in the world access to stable currency. They are working to rebuild financial services in countries such as Argentina and Venezuela, that have suffered from high inflation and ongoing currency devaluation. The protocol is designed to host a completely decentralized stablecoin that can not be manipulated by governments, with an end goal of a fully self-sustainable platform with decentralized governance and developments.
We were joined by Co-founder & CEO, Nevin Freeman, to chat about Reserve's focus in Latin America, their support of activism, and the road ahead for the project.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/411
Hermez is an open-source ZK-Rollup optimised for secure, low-cost and usable token transfers on the wings of Ethereum. The Hermez network team is currently developing the next version of the decentralised ZK-Rollup with full support of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) by making a full set of zkEVM opcodes.
Jordi Baylina, the Technical Lead at Hermez, joined us to chat about how the protocol works, the recent merge with Polygon, and the roadmap leading to Eth2.0.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/410
Erik Voorhees, CEO & Founder of ShapeShift, joins us for his 4th appearance on the show. ShapeShift recently announced they are decentralizing the company and its products, which would see the company transition from a centralized entity and platform to a DAO. With the largest airdrop in history they distributed FOX tokens to over a million customers and DeFi community members, who will eventually fully control the exchange.
In this episode we hear the reasoning behind this shift, cross-chain Interoperability, the FOX token, and the future of the Shapeshift platform as a DAO.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/409
ParaSwap is a DEX aggregator that aims to provide the best prices over multiple DEXes on the Ethereum blockchain. Users are able to scan dozens of exchanges for the best possible crypto price points, and get the most for their swaps.
We were joined by ParaSwap Founder, Mounir Benchemled, to chat about his role in the French DeFi community, DEX aggregators in general, and what makes ParaSwap an important slice of the DeFi ecosystem.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/408
Mike Novogratz is the CEO of Galaxy Digital, an investment bank targeting institutional investors, which he also founded. He was formerly a Partner and President of Fortress Investment Group LLC and prior to that Partner at Goldman Sachs. Considered quite the risk taker, he has made and lost many fortunes over the years.
We chatted to Mike about the cross over between finance and blockchain, regulatory affairs, and of course, wrestling.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/407
The DFINITY Foundation is a not-for-profit scientific research organization with a mission to build, promote, and maintain the Internet Computer. The IC is a layer 1 smart contract enabled blockchain which achieves remarkable scaling properties through native sharding.
We were joined by Founder and Chief Scientist of DFINITY, Dominic Williams, who explained his deep support for smart contracts, gave us an insight into the Internet Computer Ecosystem, and shared his visions for its future.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Martin Köppelmann. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/406
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