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

Solana has pursued the vision of a single, fast and scalable blockchain from the start. Today, it has become one of the fastest growing ecosystems in crypto with hundreds of projects spanning DeFi, NFTs, Web3, and more. Last week 2,000 attendees descended on Lisbon for the first-ever Solana conference, Breakpoint. We caught up with Co-founder and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko at the event for a chat about...

Coin Center is an independant not-profit research and advocacy organisation focused on the public policy issues that affect cryptocurrencies and open permisionless blockchain networks. Their mission is to build a better understanding of technologies like Ethereum and Bitcoin and to promote a regulatory climate that preserves free speech and privacy. Jerry Brito and Peter Van Valkenburgh joined us...

Cometh is a game on Ethereum that lets users own yield-generating NFTs, integrating both DeFi and NFT features into a single, fun gaming experience. As a player, you control spaceships (also called astronomers) orbiting around giant stars and your goal is to position yourself close to the asteroids (also known as smart asteroids) passing by. When you are close enough, you will be able to mine toke...

Gyroscope is an "all-weather stablecoin" that is backed by a reserve portfolio that tries to diversify across many risk factors. By maintaining a reserve of many decorrelated assets, it makes Gyro Dollars more resilient, similar to how it is hard to move a spinning gyroscope. In a market where there's an explosion of new stablecoins, Gyroscope attempts to find a niche by providing a very stable an...

PieDAO is is a decentralized asset manager for tokenized portfolios and enables anyone to create allocations for both crypto and traditional assets. PIES are non-custodial pools available to anyone in the world with an internet connection. PIES require no minimum deposits for users. DOUGH is the token that governs the platform. Token holders are given voting rights on all decisions. We were joined...

Notional is a protocol on Ethereum that facilitates fixed-rate, fixed-term crypto asset lending and borrowing. The core concept of Notional is fCash, a zero-compound bond defined by a currency type and maturity date. Notional’s liquidity pools are built by liquidity providers who contribute cTokens and fCash and act as counterparty to the lenders and borrowers that are active on the protocol. We w...

Lido is a DAO that provides a liquid staking solution for Ethreum 2.0. It lets users stake their Ether, without locking assets or needing to maintain infrastructure, whilst participating in on-chain activities. Lido attempts to solve the problems associated with initial Ethereum 2.0 staking - illiquidity, minimum requirements, immovability and accessibility, by making staked Ether liquid and allow...

The Reserve project is on a mission to provide every person in the world access to stable currency. They are working to rebuild financial services in countries such as Argentina and Venezuela, that have suffered from high inflation and ongoing currency devaluation. The protocol is designed to host a completely decentralized stablecoin that can not be manipulated by governments, with an end goal of...

Hermez is an open-source ZK-Rollup optimised for secure, low-cost and usable token transfers on the wings of Ethereum. The Hermez network team is currently developing the next version of the decentralised ZK-Rollup with full support of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) by making a full set of zkEVM opcodes. Jordi Baylina, the Technical Lead at Hermez, joined us to chat about how the protocol works, t...

Erik Voorhees, CEO & Founder of ShapeShift, joins us for his 4th appearance on the show. ShapeShift recently announced they are decentralizing the company and its products, which would see the company transition from a centralized entity and platform to a DAO. With the largest airdrop in history they distributed FOX tokens to over a million customers and DeFi community members, who will eventually...

ParaSwap is a DEX aggregator that aims to provide the best prices over multiple DEXes on the Ethereum blockchain. Users are able to scan dozens of exchanges for the best possible crypto price points, and get the most for their swaps. We were joined by ParaSwap Founder, Mounir Benchemled, to chat about his role in the French DeFi community, DEX aggregators in general, and what makes ParaSwap an imp...

Mike Novogratz is the CEO of Galaxy Digital, an investment bank targeting institutional investors, which he also founded. He was formerly a Partner and President of Fortress Investment Group LLC and prior to that Partner at Goldman Sachs. Considered quite the risk taker, he has made and lost many fortunes over the years. We chatted to Mike about the cross over between finance and blockchain, regul...

The DFINITY Foundation is a not-for-profit scientific research organization with a mission to build, promote, and maintain the Internet Computer. The IC is a layer 1 smart contract enabled blockchain which achieves remarkable scaling properties through native sharding. We were joined by Founder and Chief Scientist of DFINITY, Dominic Williams, who explained his deep support for smart contracts, ga...

Aztec Protocol enables private transactions on Ethereum. It 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. They recently launched Aztec 2.0 and their rollup service for Ethereum, zk.money. This allows users to submit Ether to the Aztec rollup contract with the options to shie...

Badger is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) with a single purpose: To build the products and infrastructure necessary to accelerate Bitcoin as collateral across other blockchains. BadgerDAO is extremely community focused and has succeeded in creating a seamlessly operating DAO out of a group of random people with a shared set of values and a mission. BadgerDAO's founder, Chris Spadafor...

VitaDAO is a decentralized collective funding early stage longevity research. Their mission is to extend human lifespan by researching, financing, and commercializing longevity therapeutics in an open and democratic manner. We were joined by Tyler Golato and Paul Kohlhaas, co-founders of Molecule and initiators of VitaDAO to talk about how drug discovery and approval currently works, what the stat...

Vitalik Buterin joins us for an in-depth conversation at EthCC 4 in Paris. During his keynote presentation, he expressed his hope for Ethereum to go beyond DeFi as he wishes to see more non-financial applications built on the platform. From better social media platforms to novel approaches for funding public goods, from his perspective, Ethereum has the potential to change the world for the better...

EthCC is back and stronger than ever! Despite the pandemic, ongoing travel restrictions and sanitary passes, the Ethereum France team hosted the fourth edition of the Ethereum Community Conference in Paris. Over 1,000 people attended the week-long affair, which saw an impressive number of side events and, as always, legendary parties. For many attendees, it was their first conference since last ye...

Recently launched Osmosis is a Cosmos based and IBC enabled AMM protocol that allows for a high level of customization by liquidity providers. As the main dex on the Cosmos network, Osmosis provides liquidity for IBC-enabled Cosmos assets like AKT and ATOM for the first time. Head of the Osmosis development team, Sunny Aggarwal, joined us for a chat about why the protocol was built and the problem...

Originally started with a focus on prediction markets, Gnosis has done innovative work around automated market makers (AMMs) and decentralized exchanges for years. The latest protocol launched by the Gnosis team is CowSwap. CowSwap introduces various innovations that could improve user experience, reduce gas costs, reduce the effects of MEV and result in better outcomes for retail traders. We were...

Centrifuge is an open and permissionless protocol built on Polkadot and Ethereum that unlocks collateral for DeFi. Centrifuge allows for the tokenization of real world assets such as invoices, real estate, or goods, and puts them on the blockchain. This allows users to borrow against these assets from investors. Investors lend dai in exchange for an interest rate that depends on the borrower and t...

Ethereum 2.0 is an upgrade to the Ethereum network that aims to improve the network's security and scalability. Recently, we chatted to Danny Ryan about the Merge and switch to Proof of Stake. As a follow up to that episode, we were joined by Dankrad Feist, who heads the sharding and statelessness research at the Ethereum Foundation. We dove deep into the technical infrastructure of how Eth2 addre...

zkSync is a trustless protocol for scalable low-cost transactions on Ethereum. It's also the only zkRollup protocol which supports EVM smart contracts. Alex Gluchowski is co-founder of Matter Labs, and co-creator of zkSync. We spoke with Alex in depth about how the protocol works and the potential for a highly scalable transaction and application layer on Ethereum. Topics covered in this episode:...

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 diffe...

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...