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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1inch Exchange is a DEX aggregator routing cryptocurrency purchases through different DEXs to reduce slippage and get a better conversion rate for the user compared with just using a single DEX. The platform launched its governance token, 1INCH, in December 2020.
We were joined by Co-founder of 1inch Sergej Kunz to chat about how 1inch works, how the 1INCH token provides liquidity to their liquidity platform, its integration with platforms such as Uniswap, and the roadmap from here.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/386
Zubin Koticha, CEO & Co-founder of Opyn, joined us again on the show to give us an update on Opyn v2.
Opyn v1 was focused on insurance. It's successor, Opyn v2, offers a more traditional options infrastructure. We discuss the problems of building trustless options infrastructure: choice of collateral, partial collateralization and efficient trading mechanisms for options.
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This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/385
Liquity is a decentralized borrowing protocol that allows you to draw interest-free loans against Ether used as collateral. In addition to the collateral, the loans are secured by a Stability Pool containing LUSD and by fellow borrowers collectively acting as guarantors of last resort. Liquity as a protocol is non-custodial, immutable, and governance-free.
We were joined by Robert Lauko, CEO & Co-founder, and Kolten Bergeron, Head of Growth, of Liquity. We chatted about how the protocol is built and the mechanisms used, how to borrow, and the stability pool and liquidations.
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This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Zubin Koticha. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/384
KeeperDao is an on-chain liquidity underwriter for DeFi that combines yield farming and profits single-block arbitrage. The mining pool for Keepers incentivizes a game theory optimal strategy for cooperation among arbitrageurs. Their goal is to capture profit opportunities and distribute them to the various participants involved.
We were joined by Joey Zacherl, Co-founder of KeeperDAO, to chat about what the protocol does and its mission, the grim triggering strategy, the ongoing hiding game, and the roadmap for the future.
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This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/383
NFTs are a new paradigm that opens possibilities for new types of interactions. In digital art, it has caught on like wildfire and is transforming how people think of ownership.
Alex Salnikov has been immersed in the crypto world for many years and recognized the potential of NFTs. He created Rarible, an NFT marketplace that has seen rapid growth. But the vision of Rarible is to be more an open transaction protocol for NFTs and serve many different markets.
He joined us to discuss the different NFT use cases and how NFTs can scale and function in a multi-chain world. It's a great conversation at the unfolding of a new paradigm.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/382
Julien Bouteloup is a serial entrepreneur, Ethereum developer and addict of crazy innovative ideas. He started his entrepreneurial career building websites and selling hardware technologies at age 14. Today he is involved with many projects including Stake Capital, Rekt, Curve Finance, and he advises several crypto companies.
Julien strives to bring to light the dark side of crypto. As DeFi grows, so do the number of questionable projects and ethical concerns around certain practices. Julien joins us to talk about the excesses in the DeFi space and how the ecosystem should cope with them.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/381
Namebase is a top-level domain (TLD) name registrar that operates on the Handshake blockchain. It creates an ecosystem of TLDs that may be bought and sold using an on-chain auction mechanism. It takes a different approach to other decentralized domain name systems as Namebase is compatible with the ICANN namespace, the organization governs domain names globally. Users may register TLDs that don't yet exist in the ICANN namespace, like .epicenter or .ethereum, for example, creating the opportunity for new niche domain registrars to emerge.
Tieshun Roquerre, CEO of Namebase, joins us to discuss his vision for Namebase and his ambitious goal to decentralize ICANN.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/380
Stacks is an open-source network of decentralized apps and smart contracts. It is a Layer-1 blockchain that connects to Bitcoin. Stacks uses a Proof of Transfer mining mechanism with bidding and staking capabilities. Clarity is the programming language used, a Turing-incomplete language which aims to give developers a safe way to build complex smart contracts where the code itself clearly shows what the program will do when run.
Muneeb Ali is the CEO and Co-founder of Hiro Systems, one of the companies creating Stacks. He joined us to chat about why he felt there was a need for Stacks, why he chose to build on top of Bitcoin, and the types of apps that are currently being run on Stacks 2.0.
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This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/379
Radicle is a decentralized platform for code collaboration. It's built on Git and is an open-source decentralized alternative to platforms like GitHub. Tools like Radicle are an essential component of the decentralized technology stack and will enable DAOs to commit code through governance.
Co-founders Alexis Sellier & Eleftherios Diakomichalis joined us to chat about why they felt it was important to create Radicle and how it fits into the DAO ecosystem with a more accessible governance system of code.
Topics covered in this episode:
- What Radicle is and the vision they are pursuing
- After both working on Soundcloud, the lessons that were carried over to this project
- The Cathedral vs Bazaar model
- Git usage with the tool
- The technical architecture of Radicle
- The other differences between Radicle and GitHub
- Storage and replicating solutions between peers
- How Radicle promotes open source sustainability
- Ethereum integration with the tool
Episode links:
- [Radicle website](https://radicle.xyz/)
- [Radicle docs](https://docs.radicle.xyz/docs/what-is-radicle.html)
- [Radicle on Twitter](https://twitter.com/radicle)
- [Alexis on Twitter](https://twitter.com/cloudhead)
- [Eleftherios on Twitter](https://twitter.com/lftherios)
Sponsors:
- 1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch
This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: [epicenter.tv/378](https://epicenter.tv/378)
Ethereum Push Notification Service (EPNS) emerged from the Indian startup scene in 2020. It's a decentralized notification protocol that enables DApps to send push notifications to Ethereum wallet users. EPNS also provides incentives to users that opt-in for push notifications, creating the possibility for an ecosystem communities around topic-centric channels.
We are joined by Harsh Rajat, Project Lead and Co-founder of EPNS. We chatted about why and how the protocol was built, its technical structure, the purpose of incentivizing users to receive notifications, and how they tackle spam.
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This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/377
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