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

Aaron Wright is a professor at Cardozo Law School and Co-founder of OpenLaw. Before this he was a successful entrepreneur, having sold his first company to Wikia - the for-profit version of Wikipedia. Today Aaron is a renowned thought-leader in the blockchain space at the forefront of DAOs. Last year OpenLaw launched The LAO, a DAO on Ethereum for investors looking to earn returns on Ethereum-based projects.

Aaron joins us to share his expert legal knowledge on all things DAO, and discuss his latest projects the LAO and Flamingo DAO.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Aaron's background and how he got into blockchain and the DAO space
• The early vision for DAOs
• Stakeholder participation in DAOs
• Wrapped and unwrapped DAOs
• Proxy voting on DAOs
• Governance mechanisms
• The multi-token model
• How DAOs are characterized under law and the legislation surrounding them
• The Wyoming Blockchain Bill
• The different categories of DAOs
• Where does Aaron see the DAO ecosystem headed in the future

Episode links:

• OpenLaw website
• The LAO
• Mike Hearn: Autonomous agents, self driving cars and Bitcoin
• Aaron's book - Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code
• OpenLaw on Twitter
• The LAO on Twitter
• Aaron on Twitter

Sponsors:

• 1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/376

During the DeFi Summer of 2020, YAM Finance launched with a bang, and had its share of ups and downs within its first couple of days. It started out as an experiment to bring together some of the more innovative ideas in the space. It sparked a movement which brought massive attention to yield farming, and started the food token craze. After a bug was discovered in the v1 contract, many thought the project was dead. But no, the team and community have been working diligently to bring the protocol back to life and it's now a community-run DAO innovating at the intersection of decentralized governance and programmable finance.

Trent Elmore is one of the creators of YAM. He joins us to talk about the incredibly swift birth of the project, the rebase mechanism, the treasury, the infamous bug and how they saved the project. He also shares some of the new upcoming products on the YAM Roadmap, and how a truly decentralized community is rebuilding its brand.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Trent's background and how he got into crypto and DeFi
• How YAM and food tokens were born
• The team behind YAM
• What was the vision of the project at the beginning?
• The proposed utility of the protocol
• How the treasury funding works in the context of the rebasing mechanism
• The Game Theory for YAM holders
• How they built their communities and choose tokens
• YAM's connection between their governance and Snapshot
• The infamous bug in V1 and how they recovered from it
• What plans do they have for the treasury and products going forward, including the recent UMA collaboration

Episode links:

• YAM on Twitter
• YAM Finance
• Discord
• YAM on Medium
• Trent on Twitter

Sponsors:

• 1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/375

The new year has brought with it a new bull run. This is great news for crypto holders, but at what cost? Will this bring with it a number of negative implications such as regulatory push back and privacy battles? Listen as the five hosts of Epicenter come together for an in-depth chat to share their predictions for the crypto space in 2021.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Each of our hosts share how 2020 went for them
• In-depth individual predictions on where things are headed with the current bull market
• Public backlash to the crypto system
• Regulatory and tax related implications to crypto
• The battleground of privacy
• US regulatory pressure and the effect on the US Dollar

Episode links:

• Omen Prediction Market - Will The Flippening happen in 2021?
• Brian on Twitter
• Friederike on Twitter
• Meher on Twitter
• Sebastien on Twitter
• Sunny on Twitter

Sponsors:

• 1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Meher Roy, Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/374

Eric Wall is the Chief Investment Officer at Arcane Assets, but you may already know him from his writing and his presence on Twitter where he offers valuable insights on crypto markets. He joined us on the show to share with us his deep and timely insights into the current bull run and how this compared to 2017, where it is headed from here, and also he opens up on his normally guarded thoughts on the future of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Eric's background and how he got into crypto
• Eric's experience working with Cinnober and Nasdaq
• Using blockchain as an underlying substrate in the traditional finance ecosystem
• An overview of Arcane Assets
• Eric's thesis behind Bitcoin
• The current Bitcoin bull run
• How Arcane deals with transaction fee problems and solutions that may address these over the coming years
• Using the value proposition of Ether when Bitcoin is store value
• Eric opens up on how he thinks Ethereum will become adopted in mainstream finance
• Why does the Bitcoin community reject tokens?
• What is different in the current bull market compared to 2017
• Eric's predictions on how this bull market will play out

Episode links:

• Arcane Assets
• Arcane Crypto
• Nine Bitcoin Charts Already at All-Time Highs
• Crypto Market Structure 3.0
• Arcane on Twitter
• Eric on Twitter

Sponsors:

• 1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch

Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/373

In this digital age, counting ballots by hand, as recently seen in the US Presidential Election, is very analogue and behind the times. Although the US constitution is over two centuries old and hasn't had a major version update since 1992, European democracies are much more recent and utilizing the technology available today.

This panel discussion looks at how open technologies and new systems of governance could be a path toward a future of democracy. We also hear about the avenues for improvement with modern voting techniques and liquid democracy.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Introductions to all panel members
• The state of democratic processes in G20 countries today and which are at the forefront of innovation
• What are the incentives for different stakeholders in liquid democracy
• How can digital voting systems be trusted?
• Implementing and reviewing new democratic systems
• The journey forward for digital democracy

Episode links:

• An information-theoretic model of voting systems
• Hacking Democracy with Fabric Ventures
• Jon Nash on Twitter
• Santiago Siri on Twitter
• Professor Amrita Dhillon
• Dr Grammateia Kotsialou
• Fabric Ventures
• CogX

Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/372

In today's world, life and business is moving more into to a virtual space and this has of course been accelerated as a result of the Covid pandemic. Now more than ever it is important to rethink the very basis of how we organise, make decisions, and structure the world’s governance. And how can we do this in the context of crypto and Web3?

Web3 infrastructure can provide the foundations of a digital jurisdiction. In the Web3 world rules are enforced by decentralized governance and DAOs allow for a group of stakeholders to participate in governance of an organisation that has no affiliation to a nation state. How do we treat that in the judicial system and how does it sit within existing national jurisdictions?

Topics covered in this episode:

• What is a digital jurisdiction?
• How Aragon is helping create decentralised autonomous organisations and communities
• The behaviours of millennials today and how geographical borders have fallen
• How to ensure new digital jurisdictions remain utopian
• Some applications currently being built on Aragon
• Where new systems sit within current judicial systems
• Why Tim invested in the Aragon Network Token (ANT) model

Episode links:

• Powered By Aragon
• Aragon Project on Twitter
• Draper Associates
• Luis Cuende on Twitter
• Tim Draper on Twitter
• Luis on Epicenter: Episode #236
• Rethinking the Justice System: A Digital Jurisdiction for Decentralised Organisations | CogX 2020
• Fabric Ventures
• CogX

Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/371

Torus is an open-source and universal key management system for the Web3 ecosystem. It's simple, secure and non-custodial, and suitable for anyone to manage their keys. Torus runs a Distributed Key Generation protocol built on Shamir's Secret Sharing.

Supporting over a hundred thousand authentications a month on popular applications like AAVE, KyberSwap, Augur, GoodDollar, and MyCryptoHeroes, Torus empowers decentralised applications with seamless user onboarding flows while maintaining recoverability and high standards of security for key management.

The Torus Wallet is the second layer to the system and allows one-click login and authentication on partners including Gmail, Facebook, or passwordless logins on Web3 applications. It is however reinforced behind the scenes by a clever distributed architecture. Notably, clever cryptography makes it possible for users to send crypto to social accounts that don't yet have crypto wallet. For example, one could send crypto to a Twitter username, which could be claimed once the recipient creates an account.
The team also recently released a custom version of two-factor authentication (2FA), tKey.

We were joined by Founders of Torus, Yong Zhen Yu and Leonard Tan, who gave us fascinating insight into why and how Torus was built, the recent products released, and what their aims are for the future.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Zhen and Leonard's backgrounds and how they got into crypto
• How and why Torus was formed
• The path Torus has followed over the past year
• Unwrapping the base layer, the Torus Network
• How Shamir's Secret Sharing works and why Torus chose to build on it
• The Torus Wallet and a step by step of how it works
• Torus and account portability
• Use cases and applications built on Torus
• The second layer of security, tKey
• Their plans for introducing Touch ID
• How Torus educate their users on how to stay secure
• The long term goal for Torus and how users are protected in the future

Episode links:

• Torus website
• Torus Status
• A beginner’s guide to Shamir’s Secret Sharing
• Developer documentation
• Torus on Telegram
• Torus Charity Twitter Campaign
• What Distributed Key Generation Is
• Key Assignments, Resolution and Retrieval
• How to Share a Secret in Production
• tKey - An open standard for threshold key management - HackMD
• Torus on Twitter
• Zhen on Twitter
• Leonard on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/B003

Crypto is largely reliant on incentive mechanisms, and liquidity mining is one of the more recent cryptoeconomic incentive models to emerge. When decentralized exchanges need liquidity, they can leverage liquidity mining to incentivize users to provide it. In turn, the “miners” generate revenue, generally in the form of a native tokens, proportional to their share of liquidity in a pool. This summer saw a surge in activity surrounding this concept, with Synthetix a notable player.

Kain Warwick is the founder of Synthetix, a company creating synthetic assets for DeFi, enabling exposure to fiat currencies, commodities, and cryptocurrencies. Hasu is a crypto researcher and writer with a focus on game theory and economics. They joined us to explain the key concepts behind liquidity mining, how and why it was created, and its increasingly important role in DeFi.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Introductions by Kain and Hasu
• How and when liquidity mining was created
• What they hoped to achieve with their liquidity mining programs
• How liquidity mining works in Synthetix
• Incentive mechanisms
• Yield Farming and 'getting rich'
• How Automated Market Makers (AMM) played a part in the success of liquidity mining
• How Uniswap leverages liquidity mining
• Projects that don't currently have liquidity mining but would benefit from it
• Use cases in pre-blockchain systems

Episode links:

• Synthetix website
• Kain on Epicenter, Episode 325
• Uncommon Core
• Deribit Insights
• Synthetix on Twitter
• Kain on Twitter
• Hasu on Twitter

Sponsors:

• cPanel: cPanel's WordPress Toolkit is the all in one solution that makes hosting your website easier than it's ever been - https://epicenter.rocks/cpanel
• Algorand: Learn more about Algorand and how it’s unique design makes it easy for developers to build sophisticated applications - https://algorand.com/epicenter
• 1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inch

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/370

Matic Network is a Layer-2 scaling solution that provides instant, low cost, and secure transactions on Ethereum. Built on an adapted implementation of Plasma and a decentralized network of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) validators, its goal is to solve the scalability and usability issues for developers building Dapps, whilst not compromising on decentralization and user experience.

Sandeep Nailwal, COO & Co-founder of Matic, joins us to chat about how Matic works and the problems it's solving, and we also get a fascinating look into the crypto and startup community in India.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Sandeep’s background and how he got involved in crypto
• What the crypto scene looks like within Bangalore’s startup ecosystem
• How have the Indian regulations on crypto affected Matic's business
• What Matic is and the main problem it’s solving
• A deep dive into Matic’s technical infrastructure and building on Tendermint
• Why choose Matic over other off-chain scaling solutions for Ethereum
• Matic's leveraging of hackathons in their go-to-market strategy
• Some of the trade offs one needs to make when using Matic
• How Matic will fit into the Ethereum 2.0 ecosystem as it develops
• Dagger, and other tools they are planning to build
• Learning more about Matic

Episode links:

• Matic website
• What is Matic Network?
• Episode 352 with Jack O'Holleran of SKALE Labs
• Episode 336 with Jinglan Wang & Karl Floersch of Optimism
• Episode 340 with Daniel Wang of Loopring
• Matic on Twitter
• Sandeep on Twitter

Sponsors:

• cPanel: cPanel's WordPress Toolkit is the all in one solution that makes hosting your website easier than it's ever been - https://epicenter.rocks/cpanel
• Algorand: Learn more about Algorand and how it’s unique design makes it easy for developers to build sophisticated applications - https://algorand.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/369

Filecoin is a peer-to-peer network data storage network, with built-in economic incentives for storage providers. It facilitates open-markets for storing and retrieving data, in which anyone can participate. Users can pay the network to access storage space, which can be encrypted, replicated, and highly available. After years of development and iteration, Filecoin recently launched its mainnet. The long term vision of the protocol is a fully decentralized future for the web.

Juan Benet, Founder & CEO of Protocol Labs, returns for the second part of this 2-part episode. In this show we deep dive in to the technical aspects of Filecoin, how Juan and his team decided to design it, and the types of projects that are building on top of it.

Topics covered in this episode:

• How Filecoin works under the hood and the life cycle of data
• The role of miners in the protocol
• The bridge between Filecoin and Ethereum
• How the economics of Filecoin were designed
• How governance works in the Filecoin network
• The Filecoin Foundation
• The projects that are building on top of Filecoin
• Juan’s views on blockchain scalability and Ethereum 2.0, and the challenges Web3 faces

Episode links:

• Filecoin website
• Protocol Labs website
• IPFS website
• Episode #367 with Juan Benet (Part 1 in this series)
• Episode #100 with Juan Benet
• Filecoin on Twitter
• Juan on Twitter

Sponsors:

• cPanel: cPanel's WordPress Toolkit is the all in one solution that makes hosting your website easier than it's ever been - https://epicenter.rocks/cpanel
• Algorand: Learn more about Algorand and how it’s unique design makes it easy for developers to build sophisticated applications - https://algorand.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/368