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

We enter dozens of trust relationships ever time we interact with the Web. Browsers, ISPs, DNS providers, cloud hosting companies, all the way down to the handful of people who control certificate root keys; we rely on the integrity of these intermediaries to serve reliable, and accurate information. The concentration of power by any one of these actors threatens to compromise the very foundational principles of the Web. Decentralized technologies, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tor, and IPFS seek to reverse this trend.

We’re joined by Nick Sullivan, Chief Cryptographer at Cloudflare. Founded less than 10 years ago, the company offers content delivery services (CND), DNS, and DDoS protection to over 12 million websites. The company contributes to open source cryptography libraries, some of which are used by Etherum. They recently launched an IPFS gateway and features which allow users to have strong guarantees as to the integrity of the content.

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This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/264

The Ethereum vision has always been to create a world computer. But its scalability and performance limitations have meant that it has fallen far short of that vision. Yet, work on scaling Ethereum has exploded in breadth and complexity over the past years. From variants of PoS, to Plasma / Plasma Cash, sharding, EWASM, BLS signatures, everything has been on the table. While confusing on the surface, underneath a coherent vision for a new Ethereum that will scale near infinitely has emerged.

We were joined by Ethereum Researcher Justin Drake to discuss the Ethereum Serenity vision, its core components and the roadmap ahead. A particular focus was the beacon chain, the role of randomness and Verifiable Delay Functions.

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/263

Most observers of the ecosystem will probably agree that 2015-2017 were the years of the enterprise blockchain. It was during that time that many startups catering to enterprise were founded and funded, including Monax and Stratumn (where Brian and Sebastien previously worked). For the permissioned blockchain camp, adoption would come in the form of enterprise use cases, arguing that public networks carried too much risk, and lacked needed features like privacy. While much of the hype has subsided, large companies in every sector are forming consortia and leveraging blockchain to provide better process traceability and transparency, and reduce their reliance on third parties.

We’re joined by Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director of Hyperledger. When Brian was last on the show, he had recently started his role at the Linux Foundation. Now, two years later, Hyperledger has gone from a nascent project to a mature ecosystem of technologies with hundreds of members. With dozens of networks in production, and backed by companies like IBM, Hyperleger is the most widely used blockchain technology for permissioned networks.

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/262

The difficulties of compensating content creators for their work has been a driving force of the web for decades. It gave rise to advertising-driven tech giants like Google and Facebook and contributed to the decline of industries like music and publishing. Coil aims to change this and leverage blockchain and the Interledger Protocol to build a new business model for the web.

We were joined by Coil Founder and former Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas and Coil Co-Founder Ben Sharifian to discuss their ambitions to change how content is consumed and paid for.

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/261

It’s that time of year again, Devcon time! Just as the conference was wrapping up, we sat down at the Prague Congress Center for a Devcon4 recap. Join Brian, Friederike, Sebastien, and a surprise guest host as we share our thoughts on the event, and how the Ethereum ecosystem has evolved since we last met in Cancun.

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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/260