The Crypto Conversation

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CESS - Decentralized Storage and Delivery Mar 21, 2024

Show notes

Nick Zaldastani is Chairman and Co-Founder at CESS, a blockchain-powered decentralized storage and content delivery network infrastructure.

Why you should listen

CESS is a blockchain powered decentralized storage and content delivery network infrastructure. Users and creators alike use the platform for on-chain data sharing, whilst builders can develop and deploy DApps.

Offering the most optimal Web3 solution for storing and retrieving high-frequency dynamic data, CESS reshapes the value distribution and circulation of data assets whilst ensuring data sovereignty and complete user privacy.

By utilizing a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) model, CESS drives mass deployment of network nodes globally through incentives.

Nick says, "Data Value Networks are the future, and it is time we get our data back, and take control of it. The evolution has been from Oracle to the cloud to decentralized databases for sharing content, but in today's world, if we don't own the data, AI will run it, which is ultimately owned by centralized organizations. It is imperative that networks of the future be decentralized, and anonymous yet support multi-party participation. CESS has its own blockchain, its own CDN, is chain-agnostic and interoperable, and is modular and can plug into different ecosystems. Combining these capabilities forms the basis of the Data Value Network that we provide."

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Memecoins and the Rise of Financial Nihilism Mar 18, 2024

Show notes

Aditya Das is a researcher and analyst across the Techemy Group. He joins Andy to discuss the current Memecoin mania that has gripped the crypto markets.

Why you should listen

Bitcoin has led the crypto market's move into bull market territory, but it is meme coins that have captured the altcoin zeitgeist, with many investors ignoring the fundamentals in favor of the memes. Welcome to Financial Nihilism.

Memecoins are blockchain-based tokens that are based on popular pieces of internet culture. They are generally characterized by having minimal utility and extreme volatility. If you identify with cute dogs, the edgy Pepe frog, or President Trump, there is a memecoin for your tribe.

Memecoins have been popular with retail crypto investors who see the more affordable unit prices and lower market caps as an opportunity. The lack of fundamentals or a pretense at seriousness is a feature, not a bug. The vast majority of crypto retail investors have no desire to learn about composable privacy, and the esoteric differences between five different layer 2 solutions. But a meme? If there is one thing today's extremely online retail traders understand, it is the power of a meme.

In past cycles, memecoin rallies have tended to take place at the market top, some analysts say this time is different, and it's due to a rise in financial nihilism, according to a thesis by Ikigai Fund Manager Travis Kling.

Kling argued that this crypto bull cycle will see an altcoin rally driven by the concept of "financial nihilism" – the idea that cost of living is strangling most Americans; that upward mobility opportunity is out of reach for increasingly more people; that the American Dream is mostly a thing of the past; and that median home prices divided by median income is at a completely untenable level. As a result, the younger generation have turned to gambling, from sports betting to memecoin investing in an attempt to win big.

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Randcast - On-Chain Verifiable Randomness Mar 15, 2024

Show notes

Felix Xu is the Co-Founder of ARPA Network, a decentralized computation network based on threshold cryptography and its use cases

Why you should listen

Randcast is ARPA's first product, an on-chain verifiable random number generation service with an easy-to-use Smart Contract SDK that can be directly integrated into DApps to provide out-of-the-box functionalities like rolling dice, shuffling an array, generating in-game item attributes based on probability, generating random in-game maps or dungeons, and deciding the probability outcomes of a lottery.

Using a random number in a smart contract is a common requirement. For example, a game may need to generate a random number to determine the lottery winner. However, the blockchain is deterministic, and the result of a smart contract is determined by the input. That is to say, a blockchain is a decentralized and trustless environment where the random number generation can be easily manipulated by any party in the network. e.g., if we use a block hash or timestamp as the source of randomness, the miners can manipulate it to their advantage by either withholding the block or manipulating the timestamp.

The solution is to use an external source of randomness. Randcast is a service that generates random numbers through a decentralized network and provides them to smart contracts. The process of generating randomness is both transparent and verifiable. It is facilitated by a group of nodes that utilize the threshold BLS signature scheme. Before returning the requested random number to the user's smart contract, the randomness is verified on-chain by the Randcast Adapter smart contract.

Randcast and the ARPA Network solve another major issue with random number generation. Randomness generated by a single off-chain entity could potentially be tampered with or manipulated by that entity. Randcast solves this issue by using multiple nodes in the ARPA Network to generate randomness through BLS Threshold signature tasks, which means that no single node has the ability to manipulate the final randomness result.

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Chirp - DePIN for Global IOT and Mobile Mar 11, 2024

Show notes

Tim Kravchunovsky is the founder and CEO of Chirp. Chirp is a trailblazing DePIN network founded by a team of Telecommunications experts with decades of experience. Tim Kravchunovsky has over 20 years of experience as a network engineer, having held a position as a Consulting Engineer at the World Bank, Comacast and Chemonics International. Tim founded Chirp in January 2021 to connect the world through groundbreaking, accessible technology that has the potential to transform the way we all live our daily lives.

Why you should listen

Chirp's mission is to connect the largest number of devices with the blockchain under one revolutionary network and a SaaS platform. With a focus on IoT and Mobile, Chirp aims to redefine the future of wireless communication.

DePIN project Chirp Token is about to launch its testnet - the first step in bringing interconnected, people-powered IoT connectivity to the world. Mainnet will follow later in the year.

DePIN is one of the leading crypto narratives of 2024. DePIN uses blockchain to develop physical infrastructure like telecom communication, storage, IoT, and more. By decentralizing infrastructure, DePIN achieves tech scale and gives power back to the users.

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Bitcoin ATH, Ordinals, & The Three Body Problem Mar 07, 2024

Show notes

Brett Herskope aka Eliherf is head of growth at Gamma, the open marketplace for Bitcoin Ordinals. Brett and Andy discuss Bitcoin's recent all-time high, Gamma and Bitcoin Ordinals, and The Three-Body Problem. One of the most popular answers to the very famous Crypto Conversation Hot Take Round Sci-Fi question, The Three-Body Problem is a trilogy by Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin. A Netflix adaptation by David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo is expected to premiere on Netflix on March 21, 2024.

Why You Should Listen

Thanks to Ordinal Theory (which references the ordering of individual Satoshis), we can now inscribe data onto single Satoshis on the Bitcoin blockchain directly and transact them like NFTs. Whether it's an image, a memo, or anything else you want to inscribe, this data is truly immutably and securely stored directly on the L1 Bitcoin Blockchain.

Before NFTs took off on Ethereum, NFTs had originated on Bitcoin. But due to the complexities and limitations of the Bitcoin blockchain, Bitcoin-native NFTs could never really take off — until now. At the time of writing, nearly 60 million inscriptions have been made, and creating your own inscriptions is easier than ever thanks to Gamma's no-code Ordinal inscription tool. With the rise in interest around Ordinals, Bitcoin blockchain activity has increased greatly, giving miners more fees and putting positive effects on the security and decentralization of Bitcoin. And because of Bitcoin's robustness, every inscription is immutably and permanently secured on the Bitcoin blockchain.

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Bril Finance - The New Era of DeFi Mar 05, 2024

Show notes

Connor O'Shea is the CEO of Bril Finance, a cutting edge DeFi UX for seamless access to professional-grade portfolio management algorithms and yield strategies.

Why you should listen

Bril is a sophisticated decentralized finance (DeFi) tool that actively optimizes and manages portfolio strategies in a secure, non-custodial manner. The dapp allows users to deposit tokens into single-asset vaults, which drive yield based on automated liquidity strategies- giving everyone professional-grade tools that deliver high yields for risk-adjusted returns. Bril leverages an underlying liquidity provisions algorithm, which runs category-defining, automated rebalancing for high capital efficiency.

With Bril, users deposit tokens into single-asset vaults and receive LP tokens representing their share in the liquidity pool. Single-asset vaults remove the complexity of managing multiple assets in a liquidity pool. Bril deploys the deposited assets into concentrated liquidity AMMs across blockchain ecosystems via a premier cross-chain bridging partner. Positions are automatically adjusted based on market conditions. Users can withdraw deposits and earnings at any time.

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Solve Care - Blockchain for Digital Health Networks Mar 04, 2024

Show notes

Pradeep Goel is the Chief Executive Officer at the Solve Care Foundation. Solve Care is a blockchain platform for digital health networks.

Why you should listen

Solve Care is a global healthcare platform that redefines care coordination, improves access to care, reduces benefit administration costs, and helps reduce fraud and waste across the healthcare sector globally. Solve Care's decentralized healthcare model, ensures all stakeholders, from the patient, physician, insurance companies, care coordinators, and healthcare institutions have a better and more direct peer-to-peer relationship.

It is a model where patients are empowered to have sovereignty over their healthcare data, giving them control over their healthcare journey. The current model that protects centralized healthcare systems around the world fails to serve the needs of the patient and the doctor in a manner that can be fundamentally improved via blockchain.

Solve Care is focused on adoption and building real utility in healthcare rather than just focusing on blockchain technology itself. Solve Care has launched a new solution called Care Trials, which simplifies matching patients with clinical research opportunities globally and provides more choices for patients in their healthcare decisions. Care Trials aims to accelerate research for chronic diseases like cancer by decentralizing access to clinical trial information and empowering patients with options beyond traditional treatment methods offered by doctors or hospitals alone.

Its interoperable, composable, full-stack platform is the first in the world to successfully deploy digital currency and blockchain technology for value-based healthcare payments. Upon this platform, multiple Care Networks are built and operated to create an ecosystem for patient-centric care based on medical conditions, economic and social needs, and other tailored eligibility criteria.

The mission is to make healthcare work better for our parents, children, society, business, and the future global economy.

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Quai Network - Energy-based Money for the 21st Century Feb 29, 2024

Show notes

Dr. K is the Co-Founder of Quai Network, a new Layer 1 network of blockchains designed to scale to handle all human commerce while maintaining true decentralization.

Why you should listen

Quai Network is an EVM compatible, highly scalable, secure Layer 1 blockchain, designed for fast, low cost, high-throughput transactions, complemented by programmable smart contracts. It emphasizes swift finalization, steadfast censorship resistance, and robust resilience against adversarial threats. The system is built using an advanced multi-threaded blockchain with adaptive architecture and a native dual token system $QUAI & $QI, enabled by a breakthrough Proof-of-Entropy-Minima ("PoEM") consensus mechanism. The Quai Network is in testnet.

Quai is a merge-mined network of blockchains. This network is able to coordinate an infinite number of blockchains (execution shards) by using the Proof-of-Entropy-Minima (PoEM) consensus mechanism, which eliminates all consensus-based contention. The ability for PoEM to coordinate a perpetually growing set of blockchains allows the network to process more than 50,000 transactions per second. The architecture is a composable multithreaded execution environment with blocks being produced approximately every 1.1 seconds in a 9-shard construction.

All blockchains in the network can transfer and receive state through the process of merged mining, which asynchronously produces hash linked references between chains. Quai extends traditional work-based block production to enable transfers between blockchains without introducing new trusted validation mechanisms.

Quai provides scalability by dynamically sharding to add more execution shards to the network as demand for block space increases. This enables Quai to support low-cost day-to-day transactions as the user-base grows in perpetuity.

While blockchain technology has shown its potential to enable a widely-used digital currency, existing solutions reintroduce subjectivity while only achieving limited scale. Quai is unlike other multi-chain solutions which require a trusted set of validators that create weak security guarantees when moving between chains.

Quai addresses issues with scalability while maintaining decentralization to create an un-censorable network that can be ubiquitously used as money.

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Prime Staked: Liquid Restaking Feb 26, 2024

Show notes

Matt Liu is the co-founder of Origin Protocol, an Ethereum-powered platform for NFTs, DeFi, Liquid Staking, and Restaking.

Why you should listen

Origin has a stablecoin, the Origin Dollar (OUSD) to support users as they passively earn yield on OUSD held in wallets – as opposed to being staked or locked up in a protocol.

Ethereum restaking has become one of 2024's most disruptive narratives. The thriving sector is teeming with innovation, offering new opportunities for builders and users alike.

Matt says he learned that if you want to remain at the forefront, you need to constantly evolve along with the space. This principle allowed him to take liquid staking by the horns with Origin Ether. In a few months, they brought a product to market that continues to deliver value for users. Today, Origin Ether is approaching $100M of TVL while delivering higher risk-adjusted yields than the top liquid staking tokens like stETH, rETH, and frxETH.

His new product is Prime Staked ETH (primeETH), a liquid restaked token (LRT) that provides liquidity for assets that have been deposited into EigenLayer. By converting staked ETH into primeETH, users can stack ETH staking yield, EigenLayer points, and primeETH XP points all while remaining liquid.

primeETH is a reward-bearing token that works similarly to cTokens. primeETH tokens are not rebasing like stETH or OETH. Instead, the underlying rewards accrued by restaking positions are reflected in the price of primeETH over time as it increases in value.

primeETH was developed by Matt and the Origin Protocol team that have launched multiple DeFi products with $100M+ in TVL. Prime Staked is a fork of Kelp which has been battle-tested with hundreds of millions of funds and has been audited by sigmaPrime and code4arena. The primary change to the codebase was the addition of new LSTs and configuring their associated oracles. Each of the newly added assets have been carefully reviewed to make sure they don't introduce new reentrancy vectors or unexpected behaviors.

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