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

By default, all transactions made on Ethereum are public. Tornado Cash is a decentralized privacy preserving solution built on Ethereum which adds privacy through obfuscation. Users can place Ether and some stable coins in prescribed increments [1 Eth, 10 Eth, 100 Eth...] into the Tornado Pool. In return, they are issued a private note, with which they can withdraw funds at a later time to a different address.

We were joined by Roman Semenov, co-founder of Tornado Cash, to talk about how the protocol works, how it was set up, community governance, and where he sees Tornado Cash's position in the quickly growing privacy ecosystem on Ethereum.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Roman's background and how he got into crypto
• The problem Tornado Cash solves and how the protocol works
• What tokens are supported and can you swap tokens?
• Smart contracts and zero knowledge
• Costs involved for deposits and withdrawls
• Weaknesses of the protocol
• The Compliance Tool feature
• The regulatory threat to private coins in the future
• Tornado Cash's roadmap and how they see themselves positioned in the wider ecosystem

Episode links:

• Tornado.cash
• Dune Analytics
• Tornado Cash on Twitter
• Roman on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter
• ParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter
• Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/395

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are tokens that we can use to represent ownership of unique items. They let us tokenize things like art, collectibles, even real estate. They can only have one official owner at a time and they're secured by the Ethereum blockchain. And they have taken the crypto space by storm is recent months. Showtime is a NFT social media network where creators & collectors showcase their digital art. It reads all marketplaces and instead of buying and selling, you can comment, share and like. It's been described as the Instagram for NFTs.

We were joined by Alex Masmej, Co-founder and CEO of Showtime, to chat about why he got into NFTs and in particular crypto art, how Showtime works and its purpose, and the future of the platform.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Alex's background and how he got into crypto
• The story behind the $ALEX token
• Uncollateralized lending and why it's important
• The vision for Showtime
• Alex's views on the NFT craze
• What is the open social graph
• Why Alex chose to focus on crypto art
• How Showtime compares to similar platforms like Opensea and Zora
• The Showtime business model, funding sources, and 5 year plan

Episode links:

• Showtime
• Showtime on Twitter
• Alex on Twitter

Sponsors:

• ParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter 
• Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter
• Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/394

Ethereum will switch from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) likely already later this year in a much anticipated upgrade to Ethereum 2. The switch to PoS aims to make Ethereum both more secure and more sustainable by securing the network through Ether instead of mining. A second Eth2 update will address scaling through sharding at a later time.

Danny Ryan, Researcher with Ethereum Foundation, has been a major driving force behind the Eth2 project. He joined us for a progress update and we chatted about how the protocol will work in its steady state, what has launched so far, what happens in The Merge, and how PoS will affect centralization tendencies.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Danny's background and how he got into crypto
• An overview of Eth2 - Phase 0, Beacon Chain
• The role of a validator and building blocks
• Penalties and rewards within the protocol including slashing
• What the epoch is and how it relates to finality
• The Proof-of-Stake merge
• Why Proof-of-Stake is favorable for security purposes
• What is the roadmap for sharding?
• Ethereum fees

Episode links:

• Ethereum Community
• Eth R&D Discord
• Ethereum on GitHub
• Eth Research
• EF on Twitter
• EF blog
• Danny on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter
• Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter
• ParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Martin Köppelmann. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/393

Alchemix is a DeFi protocol that enables users to create self-repaying loans. Users deposit collateral (DAI) to take out a loan in Alchemix's native synthetic stablecoin, alUSD. Alchemix then uses the DAI deposits and puts them into the Yearn protocol to earn yield and over time, that yield automatically pays off your debt.

We were joined by Alchemix co-founder Scoopy Trooples, who gave us a deep look into how the protocol works, alUSD and the ALCX token, and what is coming out soon with V2.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Scoopy's background and how he got into crypto
• What is the story behind the name Scoopy Trooples and his anonymity?
• A high level overview and use case of Alchemix
• Scoopy's vision for alUSD
• The integration with Yearn
• Will alUSD drive down yields of other stablecoins?
• How Transmuter works to maintain the 1:1 peg
• The long term vision for Alchemix and biggest potential risks
• The Alchemix community
• How they raised their funds

Episode links:

• Alchemix Website
• Alchemix Discord
• Alchemix on Twitter
• Scoopy on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter
• ParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter
• Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Zubin Koticha. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/392

Curve is an Automated Market Maker (AMM) that lets users and other decentralized protocols exchange stablecoins (DAI to USDC for example) with low fees and low slippage. Unlike exchanges that match a buyer and a seller, users transact with the smart contract itself. By providing a flatter curve targeted for relatively stable pairs, Curve has established the lead position for these markets. Curve is also leveraging its own token CRV to incentivize long-term adoption of the protocol and decentralize control of governance.

We were joined by Curve Finance Founder, Michael Egorov, to chat about why he created the protocol and his long term vision for the project.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Michael's background and how he got into crypto
• How Curve works from the perspective of a trader and as a liquidity provider
• How they came up with the stableswap design
• How Curve compares to Uniswap v3
• Michael's take on forks, fork threat, and Curve's moat
• Curve's thesis on good governance
• How they keep the protocol secure
• An overview of the Curve community and ecosystem
• The long term vision for Curve

Episode links:

• Curve Finance
• Curve Resources
• Curve on Twitter
• Michael on Twitter

Sponsors:

• ParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter 
• Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter
• Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Zubin Koticha. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/391

Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-1559 is a proposal to make several tightly coupled additions to Ethereum’s transaction fee mechanism. Central to the design is a base fee, which plays the role of a reserve price and is meant to match supply and demand. Every transaction included in a block must pay that block’s base fee (per unit of gas), and this payment is burnt rather than transferred to the block’s miner. The base fee is adjusted after every block, with larger-than-target blocks increasing it and smaller-than-target blocks decreasing it.

Tim Roughgarden is a Professor of Computer Science and member of the Data Science Institute at Columbia University. Tim did an extensive game theoretical review of EIP-1559 and joined us to chat about what the proposal is trying to do and why, and how it is doing it.

Topics covered in this episode:

• What Tim's research focuses on and how he became involved with blockchain
• What made him interested in the fees problem
• The current fee system on Ethereum - the first-price auction and base fee
• EIP-1559 - the problem it solves and how it does it
• Increasing and decreasing of block sizes
• The threat of miners colluding to drive down base fees
• Deep dive into how the proposal works
• What are some alternatives to EIP-1559

Episode links:

• Tim Roughgarden
• EIP-1559 on GitHub
• An Economic Analysis of EIP-1559
• Tim on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter
• Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter
• ParaSwap: ParaSwap’s state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage - http://paraswap.io/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/390

Flashbots is a research and development company focussed on Miner Extractable Value (MEV). MEV is the profit a miner can make through their ability to arbitrarily include, exclude, or re-order transactions from the blocks they produce. Flashbots has created a fork of the ethereum geth client, MEV-geth, to allow miners to exploit MEV, currently run by 80% of miners.

Co-founders of Flashbots, Stephane Gosselin and Phil Daian, recently joined us to chat about the protocol and to deep dive into the good, the bad, and the ugly of MEV.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Stephane and Phil's backgrounds and how they got into crypto
• What led them to creating Flashbots and what it does
• What is Miner/Maximal Extractable Value (MEV)
• A technical deep dive into how the project works with miners and searchers
• The progress on the SGX solution
• Spam attacks and reorgs on Flashbots
• Phil's reply to the perspective that MEV extraction is theft
• What is Generalized Frontrunning?
• How MEV differs at L1 vs L2
• What's the plan for Flashbots going forward?

Episode links:

• Flashbots on GitHub
• Flashbots on Medium
• MEV...what do?
• Stephane on Twitter
• Phil on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter
• ParaSwap: Give ParaSwap a try at https://paraswap.io/epicenter. This URL will allow you to claim a 50% refund on gas fees for your first swap of at least 1 Eth. This offer is available until May 1st 2021 and refunds will be made every Friday starting April 9th, 2021*Terms and conditions apply. -
• Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/389

Trevor McFedries joined us for a fascinating chat about his background in the football and music industries, and how this led him into crypto. Trevor is the cofounder of Brud, a technology startup specializing in artificial intelligence and media. At Brud, they create social media personas with the help of CGI technology, the most well known being Lil Miquela. Lil Miquela is a sentient robot navigating life in LA -- and has millions of followers on instagram.

Trevor also started Friends With Benefits, a gated online community on a private discord server with a community token. We talked with Trevor about the increasingly immersive social media experience, the future for creators and the future of organizations.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Trevor's background in football and music, including his time working at Spotify
• An overview of Brud
• Who is Lil Miquela?
• How do these fictional characters fit into the 'real world'?
• How Trevor got into crypto
• The Friends with Benefits community
• Trevor's views on the future of DAOs
• Brud's experience with VCs as opposed to crowdfunding
• Trevor's take on NFTs and Lil Miquela's NFT drop
• The cultural impact of crypto to society and what the future looks like

Episode links:

• Brud
• Lil Miquela
• Friends with Benefits
• Friends with Benefits on Twitter
• Trevor on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter
• Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter
• ParaSwap: Give ParaSwap a try at paraswap.io/epicenter. This URL will allow you to claim a 50% refund on gas fees for your first swap of at least 1 Eth. This offer is available until May 1st 2021 and refunds will be made every Friday starting April 9th, 2021*Terms and conditions apply. 

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/388

Bitcoin just got smarter. This episode is brought to you by RSK, the Bitcoin-based smart contract platform leading the DeFi for Bitcoin revolution. Be part of the future while building your personal wealth with the Bitcoin you already have.

RSK is a secure smart-contract platform that enables decentralized applications secured by the Bitcoin Network to empower people and improve the quality of life of millions. The platform incorporates a Turing Complete Virtual Machine to Bitcoin. RSK believes that new use cases are necessary in order for Bitcoin to become the leading global cryptocurrency, and that adding smart-contract capabilities is key to secure that future. It also provides other enhancements to the network such as faster transactions and better scalability, features that they also believe will enable new usage scenarios.

We chatted to Adrian Eidelman, Co-founder of RSK, about the vision they have for the project, how it works on a technical level, and how you can become involved.

Visit rsk.co/openfinance to find out how you can put your Bitcoin to work.

Topics covered in this episode:

• The journey of RSK since they were last on the show 5 years ago
• The vision they have for RSK
• The building blocks of the project
• RSK's 2-way peg
• How merged mining works
• RSK's compatibility with EVM
• Projects being built on RSK
• How you can get involved

Episode links:

• Website
• Developers Portal
• Public Slack Workspace
• Github
• Public community discussions
• RSK on Twitter
• Adrian on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/B005

The ability to move Bitcoin on other chains isn't a new idea, and many are trying to overcome the technical limitations which make this a technically challenging feat. The latest representation of Bitcoin on Ethereum is tBTC, a fully-backed ERC-20 token representing bitcoin collateral. tBTC is fully decentralized and relies on Keep Network, a decentralized multi-party computation which enables cross-chain bridging. 

We were joined by Matt Luongo, CEO of Thesis (the team behind tBTC and Keep Network) to chat about the tBTC technology, his vision for the future of interoperability and value propositions of different chains.

Topics covered in this episode:

- Matt's background - how he got into crypto and his experience in the space
- The Keep Network - dencetralized multi-party computations
- Why trustless minting of tBTC is important
- tBTC and its security model
- Dark DAOs and vote buying
- The merge between Keep Network and NuCypher
- What other mergers are being looked at for the future
- Matt's views on the idea of BTC existing as tokenized asset on Ethereum and other chains

Episode links: 

- [Thesis](https://thesis.co/)
- [Keep](https://keep.network/)
- [tBTC](https://tbtc.network/)
- [Keep Discord](https://discord.com/invite/wYezN7v)
- [Thesis on Twitter](https://twitter.com/thesis_co)
- [Keep on Twitter](https://twitter.com/keep_project)

Sponsors: 
- ParaSwap: Give ParaSwap a try at paraswap.io/epicenter. This URL will allow you to claim a 50% refund on gas fees for your first swap of at least 1 Eth. This offer is available until May 1st 2021 and refunds will be made every Friday starting April 9th, 2021 - Terms and conditions apply. 
- Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter
- Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: [epicenter.tv/387](https://epicenter.tv/387)