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

Bitmain is one of the most well known, and one of the most polarizing companies in the blockchain space. The largest ASIC manufacturer and operator of several mining pools, Bitmain is the center of many controversies and discussions around centralization in the space. But not only is it the subject of discussion, Bitmain breaks out of the “passive miner” stereotype and is very active in many of the discussions in the community, most notably the Great Scaling Debates.

In this episode, we sit down with Nishant Sharma, Head of Community Relations, who is responsible for acting as a bridge between the Bitmain company and the many communities it interacts with through its mining and ASIC operations. We explore the origins of Bitmain and its founders, the economics of ASIC production, its past and current relationships with different communities, and the future of the company.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Nishant's Story in the Bitcoin mining space and how it led to joining Bitmain
• Origin of Bitmain and its founders, notably Jihan Wu
• Does Bitmain contribute to centralization in the blockchain space
• How Bitmain maintains its superiority in the ASIC manufacturing space
• Economics of ASIC production and manufacturing
• Balancing business models of ASIC production, operating multiple mining pools, and exploring new verticals
• Bitmain's role in blockchain debates like the scaling debate, Bitcoin Cash split, and ProgPow

Episode links:

• Bitmain Website
• Nishant on Twitter
• Bitmain on Twitter
• Fallout: Everyone’s a loser after Bitcoin Cash split – Brave New Coin
• Bitmain Wikipedia
• BTC.com Pool
• Antpool
• Leaked Transcript Details Power Struggle Inside Bitcoin Mining Giant
  Bitmain – CoinDesk
• Dovey Wan on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com
• Cosmos: Change the future of finance at the SF Blockchain Week Defi Hackathon – $50,000 prize pool for winning teams - https://epicenter.rocks/sfcosmos

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/314

As the cryptocurrency space has grown, exchanges have become the dominant juggernauts of the industry. One of the earliest and most reputable exchanges is Kraken. From the company's formation in 2011, Kraken has grown to 4m users and almost 1,000 employees.
We are joined by Kraken Founder and CEO Jesse Powell. We dove into the history of Kraken, their values and the vision that's driving them.

Topics covered in this episode:

• How selling virtual goods for games led Jesse to discover Bitcoin
• Why cryptocurrencies will lead to a better financial system
• How Kraken launched and ended up getting strong traction in Europe
• The challenges and changes of the regulatory environment
• His thoughts on DeFi and decentralized exchanges
• Kraken's approach to listing assets on the exchange
• How to create a strong culture in a distributed company
• His vision for Kraken to become a general trading and investment platform

Episode links:

• Kraken
• How to Grow A Decacorn | Crypto Podcast | Kraken
• How to Trade Crypto On Kraken
• Kraken on Wikipedia
• Kraken Exchange Twitter
• Jesse Powell Twitter

Sponsors:

• Cosmos: Change the future of finance at the SF Blockchain Week Defi Hackathon – $50,000 prize pool for winning teams - https://epicenter.rocks/sfcosmos
• Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/313

The vision of a world computer on which anyone can deploy smart contracts has captured our imagination since the publication of the Ethereum whitepaper. But while Ethereum demonstrated the viability of the concept, its shortcomings in terms of capacity and throughput prevent it from realizing the vision. Today, throughput has become a major bottleneck for widescale adoption of decentralized technologies.

Many projects have set out to deliver where Ethereum 1.0 falls short. Most projects, including Ethereum 2.0, aim to create some kind of sharded network with many interoperable chains. Solana may be the only project that went the other way. Through identifying every performance bottleneck for a single blockchain and developing novel ways of removing them, they target to achieve throughput of 50,000 tps.

We were joined by Solana creator and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko to discuss Solana's approach to building a web-scale blockchain. We covered some of their novel ideas including proof-of-history and parallelizing smart contract execution.

Topics covered in this episode:

• The performance-obssessed engineering background of the Solana team
• The arguments against sharding for scalability
• The value of a shared sense of time in a distributed system
• How Solana's Proof-of-History creates a global clock for the network
• How Solana uses GPUs to parallelize smart contract execution
• How value could be accrued for the native token if transaction throughput is abundant
• Solana's upcoming Tour de Sol testnets and launch timeline

Episode links:

• Solana Website
• Proof of History: A Clock for Blockchain
• The World Computer Should Be Logically Centralized - Multicoin Capital
• Multicoin Capital: The Separation of Time and State - Multicoin Capital
• How Solana's Proof of History is a Huge Advancement for Block Time
• Tower BFT: Solana’s High Performance Implementation of PBFT

Sponsors:

• Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com
• Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/312

Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have the potential to change the world in meaningful ways. And this change may drastically impact people’s lives – both for the better and for the worse. While ethics are often discussed for technologies like AI, the ethical considerations around blockchain technologies have received less focussed attention.

We’re joined by Rhys Lindmark, Head of Community and Long-Term Societal Impact at the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative. Previously the host of the podcast “Creating a Humanist Blockchain Future,” Rhys’ approach to blockchain was always about considering its potential impact. Since joining the DCI, his podcast, now “Gray Mirror,” continues to explore these questions. He has also recently started teaching a blockchain ethics course with the DCI’s Director, Neha Narula.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Rhys’ background as a podcaster and proponent of Effective Altruism
• His advocacy work around universal tithing and donating to charity
• The controversy surrounding the MIT Media Lab and the resignation of their Director Joi Ito
• The difference between ethics and morals
• Why we need to study blockchain ethics
• Should we have ethics committees in blockchain as there exists about AI
• The ethical considerations for different use cases and applications of blockchain technology
• The role of miners and should they have ethical obligations to censor certain transactions
• The DCI’s blockchain ethics class and what students learn

Episode links:

• Blockchain Ethics Class
• Blockchain Ethics Class Syllabus
• Why it’s time to start talking about blockchain ethics (MIT Technology
  Review)
• Jeffrey Epstein case: Federal prosecutors broke law, judge says (Miami
  Herald)
• Director of M.I.T.’s Media Lab Resigns After Taking Money From Jeffrey
  Epstein (New York Times)
• MIT Digital Currency Initiative
• Rhys Lindmark on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Cosmos: Change the future of finance at the SF Blockchain Week Defi Hackathon – $50,000 prize pool for winning teams - https://epicenter.rocks/sfcosmos
• Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com
• B9Lab: Level up and become a Solidity smart contract auditor – 5% off the with the code EPICENTER - https://solidified.b9lab.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/311

This past year, we have witnessed what some are calling a “Cambrian Explosion” in zero-knowledge proof systems. New proof systems based on a variety of cryptographic assumptions are popping up every week. And while zero-knowledge systems are known for their privacy-preserving characteristics, they have proven particularly useful for scaling blockchains through off-chain computations.

We're joined by Eli Ben Sasson, Co-founder and Cheif Scientist in the East at Starkware. His company is developing a full proof-stack, which leverages STARKs. Pioneered by Eli, STARKs are zero-knowledge cryptographic proofs, which are succinct, transparent, and post-quantum secure. StarkWare has demonstrated how zkSTARKs may be leveraged to provide off-chain scalability by generating proofs of computational integrity which may be verified on-chain.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Eli's trajectory and transition from academia to the startup world
• The origin story of Starkware and the founding team
• The current explosion of zero-knowledge proof research
• An overview of zero-knowledge proof systems and how they work
• What are STARKs and what are their properties
• How STARKs are different from SNARKs and Bulletproofs
• What are zk-Rollups and how they are used by StarkWare to achieve scalability
• The StarkDEX experiment and scalability benefits it had demonstrated
• The issue of data availability with layer-2 scaling solutions
• StarkWare's business model and the solutions they are building for customers

Episode links:

• StarkWare
• StarkWare resources
• StarkWare blog
• StarkWare Twitter
• StarkWare Sessions conference videos
• Epicenter Podcast SFBW Week Meetup
• DeFi Hackathon sponsored by Cosmos
• SF Blockchain Week 2019 (use the code EPICENTER for 20% off tickets)
• Macro.WTF

Sponsors:

• Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com
• B9Lab: Level up and become a Solidity smart contract auditor – 5% off the with the code EPICENTER - https://solidified.b9lab.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/310

We’re joined by Yoni Assia, Founder and CEO of eToro. The concept behind this world-leading social trading platform is users invest smarter by automatically copying the top traders in the community. With over 10 million users, over a trillion dollars traded on the platform just last year alone, this fascinating approach to trading is making huge waves. A decade after its original launch, eToro entered the crypto space with eToroX, their crypto exchange. More recently, they added cryptocurrencies to the growing list of assets that users can add to “Copy Trades.” Yoni shares his long-term vision in which he sees the tokenization of all traditional asset classes eventually taking place.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Yoni's background and how he first became interested in financial trading
• How Yoni and his brother came up with the idea for eToro
• The background of the Bitcoin community in Israel
• Yoni's predictions for the finance industry
• How the power of tokenization paved the path for eToro
• What makes eToro unique compared to other crypto trading platforms
• eToro's blockchain wallet
• The launch of the eToroX crypto currency exchange
• eToro's views on custody of assets and DeFi

Episode links:

• eToro
• eToro on GitHub
• The eToro Crypto Wallet
• eToroX
• eToro Twitter
• Yoni Assia Twitter

Sponsors:

• Cosmos: Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains - http://cosmos.network/epicenter
• Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/309

As we take some time to record new interviews, we’re releasing content from DappCon which took place in Berlin in August. This week, you’ll hear a panel moderated by Sunny all about blockchain governance.

The panelists where Ameen Soleimani of MolochDAO, Stephanie Hurder of Prysm Group, Jorge Izquierdo of Aragon One, and Sebastian Gajek of ditCraf.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Hard Governance vs. Soft Governance
• What types of governance we should apply to different systems
• Different approaches to governance formalization
• How we should govern things like trademarks
• Representing all stakeholders in a governance system
• Building in exit mechanisms in DAOs
• Conservatism over Liberlism in governance mechanisms
• How to account for different value systems

Episode links:

• DappCon
• Ameen Soleimani on Twitter
• Stephanie Hurder on Twitter
• Jorge Izquierdo on Twitter
• Sebastian Gajek on Twitter
• Community manager job posting
• Epicenter Meetup at SF Blockchain Week

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/308

As we take some time to record new interviews, we're releasing content from DappCon which took place in Berlin in August. This week, you'll hear a panel moderated by Sebastien on usability and user experience in blockchain-based apps and products.

The panelists where Chriss Sugg of AirSwap, Alex Van de Sande of the Ethereum Foundation, Itamar Lesuisse or Argent and Pedro Gomez of Wallet Connect.

Topics covered in this episode:

• The state of usability in the blockchain space
• How evolving technology inform concepts in user experience
• Building products in Web2.0 vs. Web 3
• Creating dialog between engineers and designers
• Why crypto product haven't gained adoption from non-crypto savvy people
• Adoption of crypto by the unbanked
• Gathering usage data for the purpose of product development

Episode links:

• Chriss Sugg on Twitter
• Alex Van de Sande on Twitter
• Pedro Gomez on Twitter
• Itamar Lesuisse on Twitter
• Community manager job posting
• DAPPCON

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/307

Those who have been in crypto long enough remember the not-so-good-ol’ days when an air-gapped machine was the only way to store private keys securely. Thankfully, the wallet space has come a long way from that era. But we still live in a world where the seed phrase is the single atomic point of failure. Enter threshold signatures schemes (TSS), a multi-party computation (MPC) where different parties generate a key and are all required to create a valid signature. 

We’re joined by Omer Shlomovits and Ouriel Ohayon, Co-founders of ZenGo. Their product is a ‘keyless’ crypto wallet, which means users never need to generate or store a key which gives them access to their funds. Keys are created with an MPC, where both ZenGo and the user are required to sign a transaction. TTS opens up exciting new possibilities like social recovery, user permissions for teams, and inheritance planning schemes. The important distinction between ZenGo and existing multi-signature wallets is that they achieve this using only cryptography, and do not rely on on-chain elements like smart contracts or op_scriptSig in Bitcoin.

Topics covered in this episode:

- Omer and Ouriel’s respective backgrounds in academia and online consumer-facing products
- What lead them to want to build yet another crypto wallet
- The state of custody in the crypto wallet ecosystem and the challenge which remain unaddressed
- A quick refresh on cryptographic primitives and multi-party computations (MPC)
- The building blocks of cryptographic signatures and threshold signature schemes (TSS)
- How TSS is different from Bitcoin multi-sig and smart contract multi-sig
- TSS in ECDSA vs. Schnorr signatures
- Applications and use cases for TSS
- ZenGo’s on-boarding, restore process and use of biometrics
- The future of wallet interoperability in a world of proprietary cryptographic schemes

Episode links: 

- [ZenGo: Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency Wallet](https://zengo.com)
- [‎ZenGo: Bitcoin & Crypto Wallet on the App Store](https://Zengo.com/enjoy)
- [Threshold Signatures Explained](https://www.binance.vision/security/threshold-signatures-explained)
- [ShareLock: Mixing for Cryptocurrencies from Multiparty ECDSA](https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/563.pdf)
- [KZen Networks on GitHub](https://github.com/KZen-networks)
- [Zengo Research](https://zengo.com/research/)
- [KZen Research Telegram Group](https://t.me/kzen_research)
- [Tel Aviv Blockchain Week Recap with Anna Rose of the Zero Knowledge Podcast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccywXWTSFKM)

Sponsors: 
- Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com
- Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: [epicenter.tv/306](https://epicenter.tv/306)

We're joined by Sharon Goldberg, CEO of Arwen, a protocol solution for non-custodial trading. From communications engineering to Internet protocol security, to then becoming a Professor at Boston University, she shares her journey into the world of cryptography. Beginning as a whitepaper on eclipse attacks, Arwen has grown into a platform enabling atomic swaps on centralized exchanges. Sharon chats about Arwen's integration with KuCoin, how it compares to ShapeShift, Interledger, and Lightning, and the exciting new release of the Layer-2 atomic swaps from Ethereum into Bitcoin.

Topics covered in this episode:

- How Sharon became interested in blockchain technology
- The meaning of an eclipse attack
- Arwen's co-founder Ethan Heilman
- The backbone of Arwen
- The Arwen protocol and how it uses atomic swaps
- How trading takes place on the exchange
- Arwen vs Shapeshift and Interledger
- Creating multiple orders using the same channel
- Arwen vs Lightning and the use of SegWit
- How the relationship with KuCoin was formed

Episode links: 

- [Arwen website](https://www.arwen.io/)
- [Arwen's first white paper on eclipse attacks](https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/263.pdf)
- [Arwen's Trading Protocol whitepaper](https://arwen.io/whitepaper.pdf)
- [Announcement of Arwen's partnership with KuCoin](https://medium.com/arwensecure/arwen-partners-with-kucoin-to-offer-secure-non-custodial-trading-24af298d5dbd)
- [Arwen's Twitter](https://twitter.com/arwensecure)
- [Sharon Goldberg on Twitter](https://twitter.com/goldbe)

Sponsors: 
- Cosmos: Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains - http://cosmos.network/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: [epicenter.tv/305](https://epicenter.tv/305)