Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies

Measuring the social impact of a charitable donation is, oftentimes, an impossible task. Founders Pledge is a non-profit organisation that aims to funnel and streamline donations from successful entrepreneurs in order to maximise their efficiency, based on data and research. Having built a network of nearly 2000 like-minded philanthropists, the vision behind Founders Pledge was to ensure transparency, unbiased assessment, ease of access and incentive alignment for its members. Despite the hurdles of running and scaling a non-profit organisation, Founders Pledge managed to stay true to its values throughout its 10 years of activity. In the end, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

We were joined by David Goldberg, founder of Founders Pledge, to discuss the landscape of charitable non-profit organisations and how data can streamline donations and maximise their social impact.

Topics covered in this episode:

• David’s background
• Founding Founders Pledge
• How Founders Pledge works
• Joining Founders Pledge
• The challenges of managing a non-profit organisation
• Building a great company culture. Hiring process
• Maximising impact
• Assessing non-profit organisations’ efficiency
• Effective altruism
• How philanthropy changed over time
• Pledge Ventures
• Future challenges for Founders Pledge

Episode links:

• David Goldberg on Twitter
• Founders Pledge on Twitter
• Founders Pledge website
• Pledge Ventures

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/534

We are, arguably, still early in the crypto industry, but some people were really…really early. One of them is Lefteris Karapetsas, who joined EthDev in 2014 and contributed to building the Ethereum ecosystem, since before the genesis block. His crypto journey is one for the history books, as after EthDev he joined Slock.it, right around the time of The DAO raise…and hack. Lefteris remained a core supporter of decentralisation and an active member of the Ethereum community, being involved (and delegated) in multiple projects’ governance. More recently, he founded Rotki, an open source portfolio management app that aims to preserve user privacy. 

We were joined by Lefteris Karapetsas, true Ethereum OG, to discuss his 10-year long journey through the Ethereum ecosystem, from joining EthDev (pre-Devcon 0) to founding Rotki.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Lefteris’ background
• Ethereum’s beginnings
• Joining Slock.it
• The DAO r(a)ise and hack
• Ethereum classic hard fork
• Brainbot & Raiden Network era
• Founding Rotki
• Crypto accounting privacy
• The challenges of building a local app
• Rotki membership tiers
• Upcoming portfolio management on Rotki
• Future roadmap for Rotki
• How Ethereum’s culture evolved over time
• Ethereum public good funding. Optimism governance
• Hopes and fears regarding Ethereum’s future

Episode links:

• Lefteris Karapetsas on Twitter
• Rotki on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/533

The Autonolas stack aims to address the ‘A’ in DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation), through its Open Autonomy framework, which enables the creation of autonomous, off-chain services for crypto applications. A key component for ensuring the proper operation of these off-chain autonomous economic agents, is the consensus mechanism. The protocol is overseen by the Governatooorr, the world’s first autonomous, AI-powered governor.

We were joined by David Minarsch, co-founder of Valory, to discuss the ever-changing landscape of AI agents and how they can be used to automate crypto applications.

Topics covered in this episode:

• David’s background and founding Valory
• Agentic AI systems
• Multi-agent systems
• Autonolas’ agent framework
• Collaborative agent economy & composability
• DAO optimisation via autonomous agents
• Potential attack vectors & AI risks

Episode links:

• David Minarsch on Twitter
• Autonolas on Twitter
• Valory on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/532

Web2 file storage relies heavily on centralised entities, which have mostly outgrown their competitors, establishing a quasi-monopoly. The reasons for this are twofold: enormous operating costs and seamless user experience (e.g. social logins and account recovery), which, until recently, could only be solved through centralisation. Add to this the reluctance to change platforms as users need to re-upload their files, and you get an ossified user base. However, data leaks and hacks are a constant threat to users’ privacy, and indicate the disruptive potential of decentralised file storage and sharing.

We were joined by Andreas Tsamados & Vijay Krishnavanshi, co-founders of Fileverse, to discuss their decentralised file sharing solution and how they plan to disrupt the Web2 quasi-monopoly.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Returning to the P2P roots of the Internet
• Web2 vs. Web3 user experience (UX)
• Business models for Web2 data
• Decentralising data
• Web3 data storage
• Costs of data storage
• Managing file updates and permissions
• Fileverse use cases
• The business model of Fileverse
• Improving UX
• Future roadmap

Episode links:

• Andreas Tsamados on Twitter
• Vijay Krishnavanshi on Twitter
• Fileverse on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/531

Fully homomorphic encryption, also known as the Holy Grail of cryptography, allows for computation to be performed on encrypted data, without the need for prior decryption. Its blockchain applications would enable programmable, institutional-grade, compliant privacy. With the addition of fhEVM libraries, solidity developers don’t have to worry about the complex cryptography and only decide what layers of the UX should be private.

We were joined by Guy Itzhaki & Guy Zyskind, to discuss fully homomorphic encryption and how Fhenix plans to leverage it to build an end-to-end encrypted Ethereum L2 with compliant privacy.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Guy(s)’ backgrounds and why they chose FHE
• The differences between TEE, MPC, ZK and FHE
• Threshold decryption
• The challenges with FHE. Hardware acceleration. Zama’s fhEVM
• Fhenix architecture
• fhEVM
• Use cases for FHE & composability
• Compliant privacy
• Fhenix roadmap

Episode links:

• Guy Zyskind on Twitter
• Guy Itzhaki on Twitter
• Fhenix on Twitter
• Encryption Day @ ETH Denver (Feb. 28, 2024) registration

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/530

What began as an AI company trying to seek solutions in order to pay remote (unbanked) workers, Near AI became, in 2018, Near Protocol. Its sharded design was inspired by modern database architecture and large language model (LLM) training. Near Protocol aimed to solve the scalability trilemma, through a modular approach, combining data availability sharding with stateless validation. By abstracting away archaic blockchain standards, Near basically enabled decentralised full stack development and, in terms of UX, a distributed custodial solution via chain abstraction and account aggregation.

We were joined by Illia Poloshukhin, co-founder of Near Protocol, to discuss Near’s journey, from AI company to high-throughput L1 blockchain, and how LLM training influenced the modular design choice.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Illia’s background in AI & ML
• Scaling large language models (LLMs) and the role of attention
• Stochastic Parrot vs. Understanding spectrum
• From Near AI to Near Protocol and the role of LLMs
• How Near abstracted the blockchain away and enabled decentralised full stack development
• Defining ecosystem standards to improve UX
• Chain abstraction, account aggregation and interoperability
• Chain threshold signature
• Near’s intent layer
• Near’s modularity, Nightshade sharding & stateless validation
• EigenLayer integration

Episode links:

• Illia Polosukhin on Twitter
• Near Protocol on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/529

As Ethereum ‘merged’ to its current proof-of-stake consensus model, the steep (for retail) minimum stake of 32 ETH created a serious risk of centralisation through staking delegation to centralised entities. Lido DAO was envisioned to preserve staking decentralisation, while also providing additional value for staked ETH in the form of liquid staking tokens (LST). However, as its market share reached the first threshold of 33%, concerns have started to be voiced regarding Lido’s own risk of centralisation. Through its dual governance model where stakers can veto $LDO voters, and the upcoming implementation of distributed validator technology (DVT) and community staking module (CSM), the Lido DAO aims to preserve staking decentralisation.

We were joined by Isidoros Passadis, contributor and Master of Validators at Lido DAO, to discuss Ethereum’s current liquid staking landscape, Lido’s governance model and what steps it takes to ensure staking decentralisation.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Isidoros’ background and how he started working at Lido DAO
• Lido’s core architecture and how it ensures decentralisation
• Transitioning from a curated node operator set to a permisionless model
• Distributed Validator Technology (DVT)
• Lido’s dual governance model
• stETH bridging and use cases in DeFi
• How Lido adapts to Ethereum forks & EIPs
• Maximum validator effective balance and minimal staking issuance
• Ethereum vs. Lido governance
• Lido’s approach to MEV
• Restaking & Eigenlayer
• Expanding Lido to other chains
• Lido’s market share and other liquid staking competitors

Episode links:

• Isidoros Passadis on Twitter
• Lido on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/528

10 years ago, Adam B Levine, the host of ‘Let’s Talk Bitcoin!’, decided that it was time to encourage other voices to step onto the crypto podcast scene. Among many applicants, Sebastien and Brian were the only 2 Europeans, so Adam suggested that they teamed up in order to record the pilot episode. On December 20th 2013, Sebastien and Brian released ‘Regulation and the Future of Bitcoin’, which marked the beginning of a 10-year (and counting) long journey. The rest is history.

On this anniversary episode, our hosts were joined by special guests and friends of Epicenter, to share their favourite moments and fun stories gathered during the 10 years of epicness.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Adam B Levine - Epicenter’s godfather & the early days of Epicenter
• Trent McConaghy - From Ascribe to Ocean. Ahead of the NFT and inscription hype
• Sebastien Buergel - How he got into crypto, early ventures and Meher’s secret
• Griff Green & Lefteris Karapetsas - The DAO hack and Sebastien Buergel’s alleged role
• Sam Jernigan & Anna Rose - From TradFi to ZK
• Jordi Baylina & Ryan Zurrer - Standing in the Epicenter of the storm and the unsung hero of the DAO hack
• Richard Muirhead - The future of zk proofs, privacy and AI

Episode links:

• Adam B Levine on Twitter
• Trent McConaghy on Twitter
• Sebastian Buergel on Twitter
• Griff Green on Twitter
• Lefteris Karapetsas on Twitter
• Sam Jernigan on Twitter
• Anna Rose on Twitter
• Jordi Baylina on Twitter
• Ryan Zurrer on Twitter
• Richard Muirhead on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst, Meher Roy, Felix Lutsch and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/527

gnosis.ioUnlike Ethereum ‘programmable money’, Bitcoin lacks native smart contracts by design. In an attempt to expand Bitcoin past its store of value narrative, wrapper contracts provided wBTC on other chains for DeFi applications. However, wBTC does not directly represent the native asset and it is, therefore, subject to potential exploits. DLC Link introduces a novel approach, by allowing entities to self-wrap dlcBTC.

We were joined by Aki Balogh, co-founder of DLC Link, to discuss discreet log contracts, their trust assumptions and what they mean for Bitcoin’s use cases and liquidity.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Aki’s background and switching from AI to crypto
• Discrete Log Contracts (dlc)
• Trust assumptions in dlc
• BTC bridges and dlc attesters
• The non-fungibility of dlcBTC
• Potential regulations
• Current status and roadmap
• Other BTC bridges

Episode links:

• Aki Balogh on Twitter
• DLC Link on Twitter
• Epicenter's 10-year anniversary live stream

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/526

When it comes to NFTs and blockchain gaming, very few companies can rival with Animoca Brands’ early conviction, investment thesis and time horizon. They understood early on that community building and network effects are the core pillars for a true paradigm shift in gaming. However, culture and narratives transcend the boundaries of gaming, becoming social phenomena. Animoca’s latest undertaking, the Mocaverse, aims to unite communities in a truly open metaverse.

We were joined by Yat Siu, chairman of Animoca Brands, to discuss the importance of digital culture in our modern-day lives and how NFT ownership unlocks community building in the open metaverse.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Yat’s background and Animoca Brands’ interest in NFTs
• Digital culture & narratives
• Animoca Brands’ investment thesis
• Blockchain & NFT adoption by Web2 brands
• Financial inclusion & financial literacy
• Ownership & play-to-earn gaming: East vs. West
• NFT use cases & IP rights
• Interoperability
• Decentralisation & the value of ownership
• Mocaverse
• Long-term vision & the open metaverse

Episode links:

• Yat Siu on Twitter
• Animoca Brands on Twitter
• Sandbox on Twitter
• Axie Infinity on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/525