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

Formerly Enigma, Secret Network is a blockchain-based, open-source protocol built using the Cosmos SDK. It uses Trusted Execution Environments on nodes to marry privacy-by-default with smart contracts.

We welcomed Guy Zyskind, Founder & CEO of Secret Network, back on the show to chat about the progression of the project into the new protocol and why this is now built on Cosmos, advantages and drawbacks in using Trusted Execution Environments and SGX technology over cryptography only, and why people might want to keep NFTs private.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Guy's background and how he got into crypto
• How Enigma/Secret Network evolved
• Why the Switch to Cosmos?
• Trusted Execution Environment and SGX
• The levels of privacy within the network
• Why CosmWasm?
• The future of SGX computation
• Secret contracts interacting with other IBC enabled chains
• The types of applications running on Secret today
• NFTs on Secret

Episode links:

• Episode 246 - Enigma
• Secret Network
• Discord
• Secret Network on Twitter
• Guy on Twitter

Sponsors:

• ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
• Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/425

The DarkFi squad return for the second part of this 2 part episode. We chat about the FreeAssange DAO, totalitarianism in crypto, and hear about Amir's early involvement in many projects including Bitcoin, DarkMarket (OpenBazaar) and even Ethereum. Diving a bit more technical, we also cover the DarkFi platform, a new blockchain that prioritizes privacy. As a base layer for anonymous applications and smart contracts, it's a multichain interoperable, and open source product that anyone can build any type of applications on utilizing zero-knowledge proof.

Topics covered in this episode:

• The Free Assange DAO
• Is transparency ever a good thing?
• DarkMarket
• Totalitarianism in crypto
• Amir shares his views on Ethereum
• Solarpunk

Episode links:

• Dark.Fi
• DarkFi manifesto
• DarkFi Element channel
• DarkFi on Twitter
• Amir on Twitter
• Rose on Twitter
• Ivan on Twitter
• The Dark Forest

Sponsors:

• Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe
• Tally: Tally 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 & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/424

DarkFi is a new DeFi platform that prioritizes privacy. As a base layer for anonymous applications and smart contracts, it's a multichain interoperable, and open source product that anyone can build any type of application on utilising zero knowledge proof. The goal is to create a universe that anyone can access irrespective of their nationality or political beliefs.

Amir Taaki, Rachel-Rose O'Leary and Ivan Jelincic, the members of the squad, joined us to chat about the importance of darkness and privacy within crypto utilizing zero knowledge proof technology. This is a 2-part series and in the next episode we explore AMMs, and the Free Assange DAO

Topics covered in this episode:

• An introduction to the DarkFi team and how they got into crypto
• Darkness and why it's important
• The crisis of civilization in the West
• Crypto anarchy
• The connection between crypto and moral fiber
• The problems within crypto DarkFi is aiming to solve and how they are doing it

Episode links:

• DarkFi Element channel
• DarkFi on Twitter
• Amir on Twitter
• Rose on Twitter
• Ivan on Twitter
• The Dark Forest
• The Sovereign Individual
• Secular Cycles

Sponsors:

• Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
• ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/423

Fei Protocol is a decentralized, liquid, and scalable stablecoin platform, based on a new concept called Protocol Controlled Value (PCV). After a rocky start, Fei is now back on the road to growth with an upcoming v2 and one of the biggest token mergers in crypto history.

On the day before the Fei v2 launch, we were joined by Founder Joey Santoro to chat about the differences between v1 and v2, how the platform works on a PCV model, TRIBE and protocol governance, and the Rari merger.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Joey's background and how he got into crypto and stablecoins specifically
• The Fei launch
• The mechanisms of Fei v1
• Redeemability
• Use cases of Fei
• The Fei PCV system and Balancer's role
• The Rari Merger
• What's next for Fei

Episode links:

• Fei Protocol
• Discord
• Fei on Twitter
• Joey on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Tally: Tally 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
• Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Statelayer. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/422

2021 was an exciting year for the crypto space. We've seen all time market highs, dramatic regulatory shifts, and some use cases hit the main stream. 4 of our hosts got together to dissect the standout events of this year, and share their predictions for what is coming next.

Topics covered in this episode:

• The NFT explosion of 2021
• The DeFi bluechip decline
• Layer 1 wars & bridges
• DAO proliferation, tooling, and emergence of new organization paradigms
• Return of Dogecoin
• Bitcoin in El Salvador
• Looking ahead - crypto and its tax implications
• The future of MEV
• Urbit

Episode links:

• Episode 374 - The Great Epicenter Host Extravaganza 2021
• Epicenter - About Us
• Brian on Twitter
• Friederike on Twitter
• Sebastien on Twitter
• Sunny on Twitter

Sponsors:

• ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
• Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/421

Sorare is a blockchain sports game which bridges fantasy football and NFT collectibles. A player collects a team of players in the form of NFTs and based on the performance of the players in the real world, scores points. At the end of the tournament, the Sorare participant is ranked and earns rewards.

Nicolas Julia, Co-founder & CEO of Sorare, created the game in 2018, way before the NFT craze of 2021. He joined us to chat about fantasy sports and what convinced him of NFTs, working in the football industry and the impact of licenses, and the regulatory push backs they have faced as a company.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Nicolas' background and how he got to into the crypto space
• How Nicolas got into NFTs in 2018
• An overview of fantasy sports and Sorare
• Why did Sorare choose to work with licenses and how they work
• The challenges of working in the football industry
• Sorare as a Web3 product
• The size and value of the Sorare community
• Regulatory push backs against Sorare
• The motivations behind the numerous platform transitions
• The biggest entrepreneurial lessons Nicolas took away from his time at Stratumn and his vision for Sorare

Episode links:

• Sorare website
• Sorare Community
• Discord
• Sorare on Twitter
• Nicolas on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe is a smart wallet for securely managing digital assets and allows you to define customized access permissions. - https://epicenter.rocks/gnosissafe

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/420

Avalanche is an open, scalable, and secure smart contracts platform. It targets three broad use cases; building application-specific blockchains, building and launching highly scalable decentralized applications (dapps), and building arbitrarily complex digital assets with custom rules, covenants, and riders (smart assets). It prides itself off on being blazingly fast, low cost, and eco-friendly.

Emin Gün Sirer is the Founder & CEO of the Avalanche network. He is also a long time friend of the show, and joined us again for the 4th time after a 5 year break to share his journey since then, which led him to creating Avalanche. We also dove deep into the technical aspects of the protocol and how it fits into the blockchain ecosystem as a whole.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Gun's journey over the past 5 years which led him to creating Avalanche
• The unique features and trade-offs in the protocol
• A deep dive into bridging within Avalanche
• MEV extraction within the protocol
• Avalanche consensus - reliance on seed anchors

Episode links:

• Episode 76 - From Selfish Miners to The Miner’s Dilemma
• Episode 103 - Bitcoin-NG – Scientists Versus the Church
• Ep 134 - On a Rocky DAO
• Avalanche
• Ava Labs
• Avalanche on Twitter
• Gun on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone
• ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/419

Solana has pursued the vision of a single, fast and scalable blockchain from the start. Today, it has become one of the fastest growing ecosystems in crypto with hundreds of projects spanning DeFi, NFTs, Web3, and more.

Last week 2,000 attendees descended on Lisbon for the first-ever Solana conference, Breakpoint. We caught up with Co-founder and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko at the event for a chat about the Solana journey and some of the most important questions they are facing today around decentralization, scalability, governance, and MEV.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Solana's origin story and thesis
• The current state of Solana
• What censorship resistance is and why it matters
• Solana's bottlenecks and remaining scaling challenges
• Anatoly's views on governance
• Solana and Miner Extractable Value (MEV)
• Rollups as an Ethereum scaling solution
• Market and adoption cycle

Episode links:

• Episode 312 with Anatoly
• Breakpoint
• Solana on Twitter
• Anatoly on Twitter

Sponsors:

• CowSwap: CowSwap is a Meta-Dex Aggregator built by Gnosis. It taps into all on-chain liquidity - including other dex aggregators such as Paraswap, 1inch and Matcha - offering the best prices on all trades. It provides some UX perks (no gas costs for failed transactions!) and protects traders against MEV. - https://epicenter.rocks/cowswap

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/418

Coin Center is an independant not-profit research and advocacy organisation focused on the public policy issues that affect cryptocurrencies and open permisionless blockchain networks. Their mission is to build a better understanding of technologies like Ethereum and Bitcoin and to promote a regulatory climate that preserves free speech and privacy.

Jerry Brito and Peter Van Valkenburgh joined us for a fascinating chat about the current regulatory landscape in the US and how that might affect the crypto ecosystem going forward.

Topics covered in this episode:

• An overview of Coin Center
• How the political and regulatory has changed in the past 2 years since the release of Libra
• The regulatory topics currently impacting the US
• Ransomware and investor protection law
• Is the consumer protection force too tough?
• The Infrastructure Bill
• The US vs Europe approach
• The future of the ecosystem

Episode links:

• Epicenter Episode 296 with Jerry
• Epicenter Episode 227 with Peter
• Coin Center on Twitter
• Jerry on Twitter
• Peter on Twitter

Sponsors:

• ParaSwap: ParaSwap aggregates all major DEXs and makes sure you beat the market price at every single swap and with the lowest slippage - paraswap.io/epicenter
• Chorus One: Chorus One runs validators on cutting edge Proof of Stake networks such as Cosmos, Solana, Celo, Polkadot and Oasis. - https://epicenter.rocks/chorusone

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/417

Cometh is a game on Ethereum that lets users own yield-generating NFTs, integrating both DeFi and NFT features into a single, fun gaming experience. As a player, you control spaceships (also called astronomers) orbiting around giant stars and your goal is to position yourself close to the asteroids (also known as smart asteroids) passing by. When you are close enough, you will be able to mine tokens from that asteroid.

Jerome de Tychey, founder of the project, joined us to chat about how the game works, interactions with AMMs and lending protocols, and the future of blockchain gaming.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Jerome's background and his involvement building the French Ethereum community
• Jerome's role at Ledger and ConsenSys
• An overview of Cometh and how the game works
• How Cometh interacts with AMMs and lending protocols
• The game’s native tokens: MUST and DUST
• Cometh's use of Polygon and the launch of its own layer-2 network
• How Cometh taps into the existing NFT world
• The potential for games built on top of existing DeFi infrastructure
• The future of blockchain gaming and NFTs

Episode links:

• Cometh
• Docs on Cometh
• Github
• GeckoCon
• Cometh on Twitter
• Jerome on Twitter

Sponsors:

• CowSwap: CowSwap is a Meta-Dex Aggregator built by Gnosis. It taps into all on-chain liquidity - including other dex aggregators such as Paraswap, 1inch and Matcha - offering the best prices on all trades. It provides some UX perks (no gas costs for failed transactions!) and protects traders against MEV. - https://epicenter.rocks/cowswap

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/416