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

Decentralized exchanges have been around for some time, and various designs have been attempted. Although they provide a number of privacy and censorship resistance benefits, one of their pitfalls has been transaction throughput. However, recent advancements in Zero-Knowledge Proof-based scaling solutions is creating a new breed of scalable DEXes.

Loopring is a non-custodial DEX protocol that achieves high-throughput trading. It leverages ZK-Rollups to achieve upwards of 2,000 transactions per second with on-chain settlement. As an order book-based exchange, it sets itself apart from other DEXes like Uniswap and the Gnosis Protocol. However, users should keep in mind that the orderbook is centralized. Daniel Wang, Founder & CEO of Loopring, talks about why they decided to focus on DEXes and their plans beyond the current version 3.0.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Daniel's background and how he became involved in crypto
• Loopring's 2017 token sale and why they needed to return funds to investors
• The concept of ring matching in the Loopring protocol
• Loopring's use of ZK-Rollups
• The current throughput and transaction cost
• Looping vs Binance and centralized exchanges
• Why Loopring chose to build on a centralized order book model
• The differences between the Optimistic Rollup and the ZK-Rollup
• The Loopring token (LRC) and how it's used in the protocol
• Daniel’s views on the future of the DEX ecosystem

Episode links:

• Loopring website
• Loopring 3.0
• Loopring’s Frontend Vulnerability, Explained
• Loopring Exchange frontend password bug: Postmortem
• Loopring Twitter
• Daniel Wang Twitter

Sponsors:

• Learn how Zero-Knowledge Access Passes can help you build a more privacy-minded business by disconnecting payment and user data. Learn more at leastauthority.com/zkaps

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/340

Julian Assange, the creator of WikiLeaks, is currently in a maximum-security prison in London facing extradition to the US for violating the Espionage Act. This charge came, among other things, from exposing US war crimes in Iraq. This has put journalists around the world under fear of being prosecuted for exposing the truth. Opinions on Julian Assange are divided, unsurprisingly. But we can assume that a conviction would set a dangerous precedent for journalism, free press, and freedom of speech.

John Shipton, Julian's father, is seeking support from the crypto community to help fund Julian's legal defense. Harry Halpin, CEO of Nym Technologies and friend of Julian's, teams up with John to discuss how a conviction could jeopardize the values of censorship resistance, permissionless innovation, and privacy.

Topics covered in this episode:

• John and Harry's backgrounds and their connection to Julian Assange
• The extradition case against Julian
• How the outcome of the orders could impact the Ethereum community
• The negative effects of WikiLeaks
• Making changes to journalism and legacy media
• The effects of Social Media
• How this case could open the gates for more prosecutions within the crypto/technology community
• Contributing to Julian's legal fund

Episode links:

• Nym Technologies
• State and Terrorist Conspiracies & Conspiracy as Governance, Julian Assange
• WikiLeaks on Wikipedia
• Courage Foundation
• Harry Halpin Twitter
• Nym Technologies Twitter

Sponsors:

• ShapeShift: ShapeShift is the leading crypto platform offering zero-commission trading - https://shapeshift.com/

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/339

Genesis Mining is a leading hash power provider offering cloud cryptocurrency mining as a service. They offer mining for Bitcoin, Zcash, Dash, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero and serve over 2 million users in 100+ countries. The company was formed in 2013 and saw tremendous growth in its seven years in operation. In the mining business, process optimization, controlling costs, and vertical integration are key. Crypto prices, difficulty adjustments, hardware availability – all can have an impact on profits.

Co-founder & CEO Marco Streng shares how he built his company from the ground up, and is now expanding beyond crypto to address other profitable markets in cloud computing.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Marco's background and how he started Genesis Mining
• The biggest challenges they faced in the early days
• The company's cost structures and vertical integration
• Why they got into cloud computing and the applications of GPUs
• The major shifts in the mining industry since they were founded
• The ecological footprint of mining
• Why people would buy cloud mining and its profitability opportunities
• The risk of mining centralization
• Bitcoin halving and the impacts of this on the mining industry
• Marco's views on Proof of Stake

Episode links:

• Genesis Mining website
• Bitcoin Halving - What to Expect as a Miner
• Genesis Group
• Genesis Cloud
• Genesis Mining Twitter
• Marco Streng Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/338

Aave is building a suite of non-custodial DeFi tools that allow users to earn interest on their deposits and borrow assets. Earlier this year, Aave released its Flash Loans feature, which is drumming up a lot of excitement in the ecosystem. Flash Loans have a number of applications like executing liquidations or refinancing and require no collateral on the part of the borrower. As we have seen since they were introduced, they have also been used by malicious actors to exploit vulnerabilities in some DeFi protocols. Nevertheless, this powerful tool is an important “money lego” component that enables various new use cases. Stani Kulechov, Aave Founder & CEO, and Marc Zeller, Integrations Lead, explain their vision for the Aave protocol as an essential part of the DeFi ecosystem.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Stani and Marc's backgrounds and how they became involved in crypto
• Marc's previous project, Variabl, and why it failed
• How Aave came out of EthLend
• Switching from an OTC model to a pooled model
• Yield hacking and other DeFi use cases
• What the Flash Loan is and why it is useful
• How one can do DeFi refinancing with Flash Loans
• The Flash Loans attacks which happened in February
• Smart contract security and how the community should response to attacks
• Why privacy is DeFi is desirable, but also hard to do

Episode links:

• Aave Protocol website
• Sneak Peek at Flash Loans
• Flash Loans - One Month In
• Aave Twitter
• Stani Kulechov Twitter
• Marc Zeller Twitter

Sponsors:

• Least Authority: Register for Security Sessions on April 30th to learn about security audits for your blockchain project - https://leastauthority.com/meetup
• ShapeShift: ShapeShift is the leading crypto platform offering zero-commission trading - https://shapeshift.com/

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/337

The Plasma Group was a not for profit research group focussing on layer-2 scaling on Ethereum. Optimism is a new Public Benefit Corporation that builds on the lessons of the Plasma research and is implementing Optimistic Rollups. This solution scales Eth 1.x and offers near-instant transaction finality on Ethereum, while providing over 100x transaction throughput. Jinglan Wang and Karl Floersch, co-founders of Optimism, explain the transition to this new entity and its goals moving forward.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Jinglan and Karl's backgrounds and how they came to work together
• How the Plasma Group and all of the Plasma research evolved into Optimism
• Funding of Optimism through Gitcoin, and the lessons learned from donation funding
• What are Optimistic Rollup and how they achieve scaling
• How to make an Optimistic Rollup chain
• Optimistic Rollups compared to other scaling solutions like Truebit, sharding and zkRollups
• How Optimistic Rollups fit within the Eth 2.0 roadmap
• The role of an aggregator and how to become one
• Submitting transactions, the fees involved, and different finality levels
• Problems that could arise from mining transactions on incorrect states
• Who is using the OVM alpha and what's next for the project

Episode links:

• Optimism Website
• Plasma Group Website
• Introducing the OVM - Plasma Group Blog
• ""Ethereum Smart Contracts in L2: Optimistic Rollup - Plasma Group Blog
• A New Way to Scale - Optimized Optimistic Rollup — IDEX Blog
• Optimism Twitter
• Jinglan Wang Twitter
• Karl Floersch Twitter

Sponsors:

• Least Authority: Register for Security Sessions on April 30th to learn about security audits for your blockchain project - https://leastauthority.com/meetup

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/336

AZTEC Protocol is a protocol that enables private transactions on Ethereum. At its core, AZTEC is an Ethereum contract, otherwise known as the AZTEC Cryptography Engine. The protocol uses a zero-knowledge proof system, allowing users to effectively create shielded representations of tokens, which can then be sent and redeemed for the underlying token. CEO and CTO, Tom Pocock and Zac Williamson have plans to build AZTEC into a fully functional DeFi stack with which all kinds of trades, swaps, and financial operations will be possible, with privacy.

Topics covered in this episode:

• How Tom and Zac met and founded AZTEC Protocol
• What AZTEC is and what problem is solves
• How AZTEC enabled transactions work in practice from a user perspective
• The challenges of making DeFi systems like MakerDAO fully private
• How ERC-20 tokens could be issued as private tokens
• The AZTEC trusted setup ignition ceremony
• ZKPs for privacy vs scaling solutions
• Growing the privacy ecosystem and getting people excited about privacy
• The security guarantees of using AZTEC and other ZKP systems

Episode links:

• AZTEC Protocol
• AZTEC Protocol - SDK
• AZTEC Protocol - research papers
• AZTEC Protocol Twitter
• Tom Walton-Pocock Twitter
• Zac Williamson Twitter
• Reset Everything

Sponsors:

• Least Authority: Register for Security Sessions on April 30th to learn about security audits for your blockchain project - https://leastauthority.com/meetup
• Status: A multi-purpose communication tool that combines a peer-to-peer messenger, secure crypto wallet, and web3 browser - https://status.im/

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/335

Ryan Sean Adams is the Founder of Mythos Capital, a crypto fund and staking provider for “big fish” stakeholders. He also writes the popular DeFi newsletter, Bankless. In addition to providing excellent insights about the ecosystem, Bankless takes a very practical approach to leveraging DeFi. Ryan shares strategies and encourages readers to complete action items to utilize the full potential of decentralized finance and become bankless. He also hosts a podcast by the same name with David Hoffman.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Ryan's background as a tech entrepreneur and how he got involved in crypto
• Launching ​Mythos Capital and the thesis behind this fund
• The importance of becoming “bankless” to preserve self-sovereignty
• What good analogies we can use to describe DeFi and the use of clear terminology to describe cryptoassets
• The power and advantage concentrated in centralized exchanges
• Trustless nature of Ethereum vs. Bitcoin
• The role of nation-states in the DeFi ecosystem as it continues to grow
• The idea that “Eth is money” and Eth as a store of value asset in Ethereum
• The impact of Covid19 on the economy and crypto markets
• The future of Ethereum and Bitcoin

Episode links:

• Mythos Capital
• Bankless newsletter
• Bankless podcast
• Ryan Sean Adams on Medium
• Mythos Capital on Twitter
• Ryan Sean Adams on Twitter
• Reset Everything

Sponsors:

• Least Authority: Register for Security Sessions on April 30th to learn about security audits for your blockchain project - https://leastauthority.com/meetup

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/334

In another of our bonus episodes recorded at EthCC in Paris, we caught up with Jason Goldberg, CEO and Founder of Pepo and Ost, and James Dyer, Co-founder and Head of Product at Decrypt. At the time of recording Decrypt were about to announce they were launching their own token that rewards audience engagement, built on Ost technology. We chatted to Jason and James about this relationship, the problems solved by these monetization models, the link between Pepo and Decrypt tokens, and DeFi, and what the future holds for media and tokens.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Background of Jason and James
• Decrypt's affiiation with ConsenSys
• The issues and problems being solved with the respective monetization models
• The levers Pepo are using to ensure users trust the platform and promote growth in the ecosystem
• The reasons Decrypt chose Ost to build their platform on
• The different components of the Ost toolkit and how these are leveraged
• The technology involved with getting tokens to sponsor a 'season'
• How Pepo and Decrypt market themselves
• The bridges between Pepo and Decrypt tokens, and DeFi
• How good UX standards of the wallet are reached, in particular the recovery wallet feature
• Overcoming the challenges of civil attacks and malicious acts
• The future of media and tokens and what the new models look like

Episode links:

• Pepo
• Ost
• Decrypt
• Ost Powers Decrypt Token for Media Engagement
• Pepo Twitter
• Ost Twitter
• Decrypt Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture.

What will the World look like when capital is no longer scarce? In his book, World After Capital, Albert Wenger makes the case that technological progress throughout the ages (foraging, agrarian, industrial) brought a change in scarcities. As society transitions from the Industrial Age to the Age of Knowledge, scarcities will also shift – human attention will become our most valued scarce resource.

Albert Wenger is a Managing Partner at the VC firm Union Square Ventures. A graduate of Harvard and MIT, he holds a Ph.D. in Information Technology. Before joining USV, he founded several companies in the aughts, and was the President of del.icio.us when the company was sold to Yahoo! in 2005.

Topics covered in this episode:

• His motivations for writing “World After Capital”
• How the properties of near-zero marginal cost and universality are unique to the digital age
• Human attention as the primary scarce resource in the Knowledge Age
• The shift towards the Knowledge Age and the role of capital in the future
• Covid19 as a catalyst for positive societal change, and things like universal basic income
• Potential upsides for crypto in the current economic crisis
• The asymmetry between technological progress and privacy

Episode links:

• Union Square Ventures
• World After Capital
• Continuations by Albert Wenger
• Putting the Economy in Suspended Animation: A Proposal
• World After Capital: Laying a Foundation (Regulation & Self-Regulation)
• Albert Wenger Twitter
• Reset Everything Virtual Conference – April 29th

Sponsors:

• Status: A multi-purpose communication tool that combines a peer-to-peer messenger, secure crypto wallet, and web3 browser - https://status.im/

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/333

We caught up with Joseph Lubin, Founder of ConsenSys, at this year's EthCC. It has been over a year since he last came on the show, and we wanted to get his take on what has been happening in the ecosystem since then. We talked about the ConsenSys reorganization, interoperability between public and permission blockchains and the opportunities there, government-backed stable coins and the possibilities of nation-states building their own, DeFi and the phenomenal growth in the ecosystem, his predictions for 2020, and thoughts on the challenges facing Eth2.0.

Topics covered in this episode:

• A look back on the past year since we last had Joe on the show
• The ongoing ConsenSys reorganistaion
• Joe's views on the recent Twitter discussion that “Ether is the ConsenSys token”
• Interoperability between public and permission blockchains and the opportunities there
• Government-backed stable coins and the possibilities of nation-states building their own
• The evolving naratives around Ethereum
• Joesph's vision on how DeFi compliments the existing financial system
• Joseph's predictions for 2020
• The challenges ahead for Eth 2.0

Episode links:

• ConsenSys
• Joe Lubin on Epicenter (episode 269)
• EY and ConsenSys Announce Formation of Baseline Protocol Initiative to Make Ethereum Mainnet Safe and Effective for Enterprises
• Joseph Lubin Twitter
• ConsenSys Twitter
• Reset Everything virtual event

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