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

Dogecoin was born from the association of two browser tabs: one was an article about the popularity of the doge meme, and the other, CoinMarketCap. The idea quickly gained traction on Twitter, and before long, a new cryptocurrency was born. Dogecoin gained adoption as a tipping currency, the community took part fundraising for charities and other causes, perhaps most notably sending the Jamaican bobsled team to the Sochi Winter Olympics.

We’re joined by Jackson Palmer, co-creator of Dogecoin. Though he has left the project, Jackson shares the story of how he created the most popular meme cryptocurrency as a joke.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Jackson’s background and early interest in cryptocurrency
• The Dogecoin origin story
• The uniquely charitable nature of the community and The Dogecoin Foundation
• How the currency became widely used for tipping
• The NASCAR sponsorship and Moolah exchange scam
• The technological choices which went into early versions of Dogecoin
• Dogecoin’s unique monetary policy and economics
• Jackson’s thoughts on Doge Ethereum and the state of the project
• Why Jackson stepped away from the project and his thoughts on the crypto space
• Jackson’s other projects and YouTube channel

Episode links:

• Jackson Palmer's website
• Dogecoin Github
• “Not actually capped at 100 billion?” GitHub issue
• Moolah, The Divisive Startup Heavily Involved In The Dogecoin Community, Is Closing Down – TechCrunch
• Excerpts from the Moolah Scam - YouTube
• Complete conversation with Mintpal/Moolah's ""Alex Green"" AKA Ryan Gentle AKA Ryan Kennedy - YouTube
• Epicenter episode 5
• Jackson Palmer - Twitter
• Jackson Palmer - YouTube

Thank you to our sponsors for their support:

• Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter.
• Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains. Learn more at cosmos.network/epicenter.

This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/280

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

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

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