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

As crypto adoption increases, so does the pressing need for blockchain scalability. Monolithic blockchains provide data availability, consensus and execution on a single, base layer, which makes scaling them a difficult endeavour. Multiple layer-2 (L2) scaling solutions have been proposed to address computation and/or data availability, but they reach the same design bottlenecks: limited bandwidth, account state models, sequential transaction processing, etc. Modular blockchains separate the core functionalities, redesigning them as customisable building blocks. This allows for greater flexibility and scalability, adapting blockchain structure to its intended function.

We were joined by Nick Dodson, CEO and co-founder of Fuel Labs, to discuss modular execution layers and how they approach different aspects of blockchain design and scalability.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Nick’s background and founding Fuel Labs
• Why most blockchain designs are not scalable
• The vision behind Fuel Labs’ modular execution layer
• The difference between L2 roll-ups and modular execution layers
• Blockchain design philosophies and integrations
• UTXO and multi-thread parallel transactions
• UTXO vs. account model systems
• Fuel Labs’ own virtual machine (VM)
• Multiple native assets support
• Developer experience switching to Sway DSL
• Bridging to a settlement layer and interoperability
• Building on Fuel

Episode links:

• Fuel Labs
• Fuel Labs on Twitter
• Nick on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
  https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/474

This year has been quite a rollercoaster for the crypto industry. From the long-awaited success of the Ethereum Merge to the spectacular collapse of FTX, this year has been full of lessons, resilience, and insights. This is also one of a few bear markets where activities and developments continue to feel vibrant across the board, while long-term adoption and regulations seem evermore uncertain.

With that backdrop, our hosts sit down for a conversation on the current state of crypto and look back on 2022. The topics range from the general public sentiment to key developments within the industry, as well as exciting themes that the hosts are looking forward to in the upcoming future. Throughout the conversation, the hosts also express concerns over the issues with privacy and regulations, and how the ecosystems can resiliently move forward.

Topics covered in this episode:

• General public sentiment heading into the new year, after Luna and FTX collapse
• CeFi versus DeFi
• Crypto Regulations and adoption trends
• The Ethereum Merge, MEV, and OFAC-sanction
• Roadmap and community development for censorship resistance
• zkEVM and Eigen Layer
• The future of Cosmos Ecosystem and Cosmos Hub
• The state of Urbit
• Urbit and crypto
• Thoughts on the Solana community and ecosystem

Episode links:

• Brian on Twitter
• Sebastien on Twitter
• Felix on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/473

Dune Analytics is a platform aggregating blockchain data, making data easier to query and understand for the larger public. Over the past years, Dune has become the go-to tool for blockchain analytics, as well as the home of a community of dune wizards numbering in the thousands, with its fundraising at a 1 Billion valuation as a testament to the growth of the project over the past 4 years.

In today's episode, we are joined by the project's co-founder, Fredrik Haga. We discuss the products Dune Analytics offers, why it's hard to aggregate data that in principle is public, and how a community of data wizards was built in a grassroots effort. We also chatted about product focus and vision for the future, as well as useful lessons for bootstrapping a project on a shoestring budget.

Topics covered in this episode:

• The beginning of Dune
• The challenges and difficulties in building a blockchain data product.
• Technical improvements on Dune V2
• Supporting for non-evm chains
• Business models, userbases, and valuations
• Interesting use cases on Dune
• Community Building
• The focus on product experience and next steps for the project

Episode links:

• Dune Analytics's website
• Dune Analytics Twitter
• Fredrik Haga's twitter

Sponsors:

• Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
  https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/472

Artificial Intelligence is a fascinating field that has made tremendous development over the past few years. From GPT-3 to Dall-e and Stable Diffusion, the vastness of the scope of applications for AI and neural computing is becoming clearer than ever. At the base layer, there is a need for decentralized p2p AI compute platform that provides flexible access to the wider public. Gensyn sets out on the mission to provide just that by building a market place protocol for AI compute - ultra-low cost, hyperscale, permissionless.

In today’s episode we are joined by the project's co-founders Ben Fielding and Harry Grieve. We take a deep dive into the current landscape for AI and AI compute, the reasonings and trade-offs in building Gensyn, the protocol’s focus and edge cases, and how the protocol is utilizing the blockchain technology as both incentive layer and credibly neutral platform.

Topics covered in this episode:

• The founders' background and reasonings for development on Blockchain
• The current state of AI development and breakdown of AI concepts
• The current landscape for AI modeling and compute
• Gensyn's difference to other protocols, such as Golem
• How Gensyn is adhering to the decentralized default, and making trade-offs in product building
• Building Gensyn as a Layer-1 protocol
• Deep dive into the Gensyn Protocol and edge cases
• Other players in the protocol: solvers, verifiers, and whistle blowers
• Building a blockchain

Episode links:

• Gensyn
• Gensyn on Twitter
• Ben Fielding on Twitter
• Harry Grieve on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/471

EigenLayer is a 'programmable slashing' layer2 protocol built on Ethereum which leverages security through the method of restaking. This is a bootstrapping mechanism which allows existing Eth2 stakers to access the collateral in the staking system to provide additional services, for additional yield, while taking on additional risk.

We were joined by founder Sreeram Kannan who explained to us the concept of re-staking, how this works in the EigenLayer protocol, use cases, and the roadmap ahead.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Sreeram's background and how he got into crypto
• His role at the University of Washington Blockchain Lab
• EigenLayer and the concept of re-staking
• The risk with 'programmable slashing'
• The participants in the EigenLayer economy
• Impact on decentralization and home stakers
• EigenDA and other EigenLayer use cases
• Combatting malicious slashing
• The EigenLayer roadmap

Episode links:

• Episode B007 - Devcon Panel – Censorship Resistance and Credible Neutrality
• EigenLayer
• EigenLayer on Twitter
• Sreeram on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
  https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/470

For centuries, we have been led to believe that nation states are the only way to organize humankind at scale. But governments all around the world are failing to react swiftly to the severe destruction of our planet from things like war and climate change, and this is endangering our whole species.

Nation3 is ready to overturn this, by building a Web3-powered, tax-free, solarpunk sovereign cloud nation. It is structured as a DAO, meaning there is no legal entity, no gatekeepers, and no influence by trad states. The goal is to gradually build or invest in products and services that allow citizens to be actively involved in economic activity. The $NATION token serves as the gateway to participate in the community Discord, participate in governance decisions, receive an NFT passport, and eventually receive services provided by the new cloud nation.

We were joined by founders Luis and Anastasiya to chat about why they see this is as necessary for humankind, how the legal, governance and economic aspects will work, and the long term visions for the project.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Luis and Anastasiya's backgrounds
• The problem that Nation3 is trying to solve
• How the legal system works
• The differences between Nation3 and traditional nations
• The core services Nation3 will provide
• Why is the nation tax-free and how will the economy be supported?
• Issues with selling passports
• How will democracy work?
• The biggest learnings from Aragon
• What is the vision for acquiring land

Episode links:

• Nation3
• Nation3 Techtree
• Nation3 on Twitter
• Anastasiya on Twitter
• Luis on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/469

Wormhole is a decentralized cross chain messaging protocol powering the transfer of value and information across high value chains. A network of Guardian nodes secure the protocol by observing and attesting to events and data on its connected chains. These attestations are gossiped around the open Wormhole peer-to-peer network, allowing anyone connected to the network to observe the flow of information. Portal is a bridging app built on top of Wormhole where users can seamlessly bridge tokens and NFTs across supported chains and easily enter the network’s ecosystem.

We were joined by Dev Bharel, Developer Relations for Wormhole. He gave us great insight into how the protocol works, security assumptions and incidents, the concept of generalized messaging passaging, and the Portal Bridge as a first adopter of the Wormhole protocol. We also chatted about what else is being built on Wormhole, and how you can get involved.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Dev's background and how he got into crypto
• An overview of Wormhole
• The different network ecosystems in Wormhole and challenges with adding new networks
• The Wormhole guardian network and its plans for expansion
• The user experience on Portal Bridge
• Relayers on the network
• Using Wormhole bridge assets directly with non-native tokens
• The Wormhole hack and the changes that have been made
• Using zero knowledge proof on bridges

Episode links:

• Portal Bridge
• Wormhole hack
• Bug bounty program
• Developer docs
• Wormchain
• xHack hackathon
• Wormhole on Twitter
• Dev on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
  https://omni.app/ -

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/468

With the long awaited Ethereum Merge successfully executed last month, we caught up with Vitalik at DevCon in Bogota to talk shop: How does he see the state of the network, does he think looming centralization is a threat. Was Ethereum's danksharding plus third party layer 2s a good architecture decision? How much of an issue is MEV?

Topics covered in this episode:

• The state of the network and credible neutrality
• Should validators have agency?
• How much of a problem is MEV
• The Ethereum Surge
• The road to Danksharding
• Decentralizing the sequencer
• The future of the space
• The one most important thing we need to get right in the coming year for the ecosystem to succeed

Episode links:

• Ethereum
• Devcon 6
• Episode 402 - Ethereum – Can It Go Beyond DeFi?
• Join the Epicenter team!

Sponsors:

• Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/467

Since its announcement a few weeks ago at Cosmoverse in Medellin, Atom 2.0 has sparked intense debate in the Cosmos community and throughout the blockchain ecosystem. It proposes three pillars for the Cosmos Hub: Interchain Security, the Interchain Allocator, and the Interchain Scheduler. However, parts of the paper have been contested and debated over fears of token holder dilution, potential treasury mismanagement, and even the collapse of the Hub. We chat with Ethan Buchman and Zaki Manian to dive deep into Atom 2.0 and its vision for Cosmos moving forward.

Topics covered in this episode:

• The ATOM 2.0 announcement and follow up
• The goal of the whitepaper
• Interchain Security and its role in Cosmos' future
• Interchain Security vs. Mesh Security
• Cosmos scalability
• Liquid staking in the Cosmos ecosystem
• Distributing funds through the Allocator
• Atom issuance model
• The motivation behind the Interchain Scheduler
• The governance process - voting on the whitepaper
• Next steps to community adoption

Episode links:

• Atom 2.0 Whitepaper
• Atom 2.0 forum post
• Atom 2.0 Debate episode on The Interop
• Ethan on Twitter
• Zaki on Twitter
• Join Epicenter!

Sponsors:

• Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/466

After a 2 year hiatus, Devcon was back for its 6th and best year so far, this time in Bogota, Colombia. As things wrapped up we grabbed a few of the Ethereum community's most prominent names for a recap on the conference. Hear as we chat to Nick Johnson from ENS, Anett Rolikova from Nethermind, David Hoffmann from Bankless, and Joseph Schweitzer from the Ethereum Foundation, about their particular standouts of the event, the LatAm and wider Ethereum community, and what they see coming next for Devcon 7 and beyond.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Introductions and a look back over the conference
• The LatAm Ethereum community
• Favourite talks from the conference
• Having a booth at Devcon
• What's in store for Devcon7 next year
• The future vision for the event

Episode links:

• Devcon
• Devcon 4 recap from Prague

Sponsors:

• Omni: Access all of Web3 in one easy-to-use wallet! Earn and manage assets at once with Omni's built-in staking, yield vaults, bridges, swaps and NFT support.
  https://omni.app/

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/465