Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies – Details, episodes & analysis

Brian Fabian Crain and Michael Egorov, Curve Finance founder, discuss Curve's origins: solving inefficient DAI/USDC swaps after MakerDAO borrows by creating a DeFi AMM for stablecoins and LSTs.

It hit 1M TVL with a bonding curve concentrating liquidity at 1:1, more effective for pegged assets than Uniswap. Features grew to include BTC wrappers, stETH pairs, and crvUSD (a CDP stablecoin with reversible liquidations & a peg-keeper).

Governance uses veCRV: Locking CRV grants voting power proportional to lock duration, a mechanism now refined in Yield Basis.

Yield Basis solves impermanent loss in volatile pools (e.g., BTC/crvUSD). Users deposit BTC; the protocol borrows crvUSD, pairs it at 2x leverage (50% debt/equity), and uses LP tokens as collateral. This gives 1:1 asset tracking, while fees accrue from auto-rebalancing arbitrage.

Simulations show 20%+ APY (may decline as BTC volatility drops) under a $50B TVL cap. It complements Curve by directing veCRV incentives to crvUSD pools, enhancing liquidity, fees, and DAO revenues. Key considerations: manual migrations, deterring forks, and dev support to scale.

Topics Discussed

• 00:00 Introduction to Curve Finance and YieldBases
• 02:24 Understanding Curve's Unique Mechanisms
• 07:58 The Concept of veTokenomics
• 15:27 Lessons Learned from Building Curve
• 22:20 Exploring YieldBasis and Its Innovations
• 29:47 Understanding Yield Basis and Collateralization
• 32:25 Navigating Market Volatility and Liquidation Events
• 35:32 Metrics and Performance Insights of Yield Basis
• 38:35 Scaling Yield Basis: Future Directions
• 40:33 Yield Expectations and Market Dynamics
• 43:12 Potential Growth and Liquidity Challenges
• 46:18 Expanding to Other Chains and Governance Tokens
• 49:35 The Symbiotic Relationship with Curve
• 54:31 Upcoming Milestones and Future Developments

Links Mentioned

• Michael Egorov on X
• Curve Finance
• Yield Basis
• Gnosis
• Epicenter - All Episodes

Sponsors

Gnosis: Building decentralized infrastructure since 2015. With Gnosis Pay, the first Decentralized Payment Network. Start leveraging its power at gnosis.io

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

Sci-fi titan Neal Stephenson, whose Snow Crash coined the term 'metaverse' and Cryptonomicon, which foreshadowed crypto in 1999, joins Friederike to discuss his "hard sci-fi" method: building immersive, consistent worlds, not prophecy. He's now co-founder of Lamina1, aiming to restore Web1's ethos and give creators IP sovereignty with direct micropayments, breaking free from Web2's "walled gardens."

Neal unpacks Web3's promise like "intent-casting" flipping ad models while citing its critical traps: abysmal UX, criminal stigma, and the "soul-crushing" risk of just upgrading incumbent systems.

Spotlighting Lamina 1's game "Artifact," he argues Web3's true success will be measured when the technology becomes invisible and safe, proving its value by restoring sovereignty to its users and creators, rather than through speculative hype.

Topics discussed in this episode:

• (00:00) Introduction to Decentralization and Blockchain
• (01:20) The Role of Storytelling in Technology Prediction
• (03:48) The Balance of Optimism and Pessimism in Fiction
• (06:27) Web3: Promises and Pitfalls
• (08:36) The Evolution of the Web: From Decentralization to Centralization
• (13:37) Metrics for a Decentralized Web
• (15:55) Lamina One: A New Vision for the Metaverse
• (23:44) Creating a Financial Layer for the Creator Economy
• (25:08) Legal Implications of Smart Contracts
• (27:38) The Strength of Smart Contracts
• (31:04) Decentralization vs. Centralization in the Creator Economy
• (36:21) The Decline of Centralized Platforms
• (41:23) Financialization and the Creative Economy
• (45:47) The Future of Web3 and User Experience
• (51:17) Potential Failure Modes of Web3

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Neal Stephenson, Co-founder Lamina1: https://x.com/nealstephenson
• Lamina 1: https://lamina1.com/home

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis has been building core decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem since 2015. With the launch of Gnosis Pay last year, we introduced the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Start leveraging its power today at gnosis.io

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

Built primarily for institutional-grade clients,  Pareto delivers customizable on-chain credit markets designed to expand DeFi liquidity and TradFi tokenization through structured yield strategies tailored to diverse risk profiles. Pareto allows its users to construct individualized credit lines in specific risk-ajusted tranches, with custom: interest rates, lockup periods, withdrawal cycles, reserve ratios, etc. In addition, Pareto’s USP is an yield-bearing synthetic stablecoin, fully backed by major stablecoins, that can be deployed into a diversified portfolio of liquid, short- and long-term credit, thus increasing capital efficiency.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Matteo’s background
• Idle Finance yield optimization
• Pivoting to Pareto
• Institutional borrowers in early DeFi
• Competitive advantage of Pareto
• Outsourcing underwriting
• Managing defaults
• Customized lending
• KYC requirements
• Timeline terms ‘marketplace’
• USP, Pareto’s synthetic yield-bearing dollar
• Legal framework & credit allocators
• USP yield, liquidity & integrations
• ‘Opaque’ credit vs. DeFi
• Pareto smart contracts and redeems
• Success in on-chain credit markets

Episode links:

• Matteo Pandolfi on X
• Pareto
• Pareto on X
• Idle Finance on X

Sponsors:

• Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io
• Chorus One: one of the largest node operators worldwide, trusted by 175,000+ accounts across more than 60 networks, Chorus One combines institutional-grade security with the highest yields at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

Homo- (Greek prefix meaning ‘same’); -morphic (Greek suffix meaning ‘having a specific shape/form’)
Intuitively, one could deduct that homomorphic encryption indicates that the initial data and the encrypted result (cipher) could share the same form. Based on this property, it can be inferred that computation can be performed on the encrypted data, without prior decryption. By decrypting the result, you get the same output as the computation performed on the unencrypted data. While homomorphic encryption can be either additive or multiplicative, fully homomorphic encryption supports both types of operations. Unlike ZKPs, which are proofs of computational integrity, fully homomorphic encryption allows for encrypted data computation, without revealing additional information about the original data. This could provide the missing link for ensuring private transactions on blockchains’ public ledgers.

We were joined by Rand Hindi, CEO of Zama, to discuss fully homomorphic encryption solutions, how they differ from ZKPs & MPC, and how they can be leveraged to ensure compliant programmable privacy.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Rand’s background and his interest in privacy
• Meeting Pascal and founding Zama
• Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE)
• Zero knowledge proofs vs. Multi-party computation vs. Fully homomorphic encryption
• Taking fully homomorphic encryption 'mainstream'
• Zama’s products
• fhEVM
• How multi-party computation would secure fhEVM
• Multi-key homomorphic encryption & functional encryption
• Deploying an FHE rollup
• FHE use cases
• Privacy
• Zama’s business model

Episode links:

• Rand Hindi on Twitter
• Zama on Twitter
• Fhenix on Twitter

Sponsors:

• dYdX Foundation: The recently launched dYdX chain features new governance and token economics, that empower stakers and promote validator decentralisation. Bridge your DYDX tokens and contribute to the evolution of dYdX chain, fully permissionless and community driven. - https://bit.ly/47kqG59

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/523

"The advancements of zero knowledge proving technology, hardware acceleration and proof recursion have significantly increased the efficiency of EVM-compatible zk provers. As a result, the former tradeoff in efficiency implied by EVM-compatibility is gradually improving. Translating Ethereum’s virtual machine bytecode ensures seamless scaling for applications, without the need for additional audits and security compromises.

We were joined by Ye Zhang, co-founder of Scroll, to discuss the EVM-compatible zero knowledge landscape and how Scroll aims to stay true to Ethereum’s values and community.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Ye’s background in zk research
• Hardware limitations for zk tech
• Founding Scroll
• Why Scroll went for EVM compatibility
• Efficiency of EVM- vs. non-EVM-compatible zk provers
• The timeline of ideating Scroll
• Scroll mainnet launch
• Building the Scroll community
• Scroll token
• Sequencer decentralisation
• Data availability, validiums and security tradeoffs
• L2 bridges and interoperability
• Roadmap

Episode links:

• Ye Zhang on Twitter
• Scroll on Twitter

Sponsors:

• dYdX Foundation: The recently launched dYdX chain features new governance and token economics, that empower stakers and promote validator decentralisation. Bridge your DYDX tokens and contribute to the evolution of dYdX chain, fully permissionless and community driven. - https://bit.ly/47kqG59

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/522

Leading decentralised perpetual exchange, dYdX V4 recently migrated to Cosmos to build its own sovereign appchain, in order to provide its users a much better trading experience, while continuing to deliver DeFi innovations (e.g. permisionless markets). By having full control over the appchain’s parameters, the dYdX DAOs can shape the future of the protocol, starting from the very bedrock, ensuring proper distribution and incentives for the validator set. From early adopter of L2 zero knowledge proofs (STARKs), to building its own Cosmos appchain, dYdX has proven once again to be a trailblazer for new technologies.

We were joined by Charles d’Haussy, CEO of dYdX Foundation, to discuss dYdX V4’s recent migration to a Cosmos appchain and what challenges it solves in terms of: order book decentralisation, validator distribution and user experience.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Charles’ background, from Asia to CEO of dYdX
• dYdX’s history and V4’s transition to a Cosmos appchain
• How perpetual futures work
• dYdX supported assets and permissionless markets
• DeFi innovations vs. CEX UX
• The current state of dYdX V4’s alpha mainnet
• dYdX validator dynamics & order book decentralisation
• dYdX’s DAOs & governance
• Mitigating MEV (feat. Skip Protocol)
• Migrating to Cosmos
• Astropolis
• The intersection of crypto & AI

Episode links:

• Charles d'Haussy on Twitter
• dYdX on Twitter
• dYdX Foundation on Twitter
• Charles' Astroprolis Keynote (Cosmoverse Istanbul)
• Cosmos on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/521

The very nature of Ethereum addresses, expressed as random hexadecimal character strings, represents a big hurdle for mass adoption, as they are not human-readable. ENS domains were envisioned to not only solve this and provide a seamless UX, but to also be the cornerstone of on-chain identities. However, in the current multichain landscape, a plethora of decentralised naming services arose, which led to a heterogeneous domain name pool. As a result, ENS aims to expand to L2s and non-EVM chains, attempting to provide consistency, in order to further reduce user friction and limit conflicting domain names.

We were joined by Nick Johnson, founder of ENS, to discuss the current state of decentralised naming services from a multichain and L2 perspective, and how these ultimately tie into decentralised identities.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Nick’s background and ENS history
• The plethora of decentralised naming services
• ENS use cases
• Interacting with Web2 DNS
• L2 compatibility for ENS via CCIP Read
• ENS wrapper and subdomains
• CCIP Read
• Bridging ENS to non-EVM L2s
• Coinbase’s cb.id
• ENS and on-chain privacy OPSEC
• Account abstraction
• The future of ENS
• Governance

Episode links:

• Nick Johnson on Twitter
• ENS on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/520

While competition fosters innovation, the proliferation of different blockchains has resulted in the fragmentation and isolation of liquidity within each ecosystem. Early attempts to address this issue primarily involved bridges and wrapped assets. Unfortunately, these solutions were often vulnerable to hacks and exploits, and the value of wrapped assets was contingent on the security of the wrapper contract, rather than the underlying asset. Cross-chain swaps of native assets hold the promise of resolving liquidity fragmentation, but numerous technological challenges must be overcome to make them as seamless as same-chain swaps.

We were joined by Simon Harman, founder of Chainflip, to discuss multi-chain liquidity fragmentation and how Chainflip’s JIT AMM (Just in Time) aims to solve this, by providing cross-chain native swaps.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Simon’s background
• (Legacy) Bridging vs. Threshold Signature Scheme
• Chainflip’s Just in Time (JIT) AMM vs. Uniswap’s V3/X
• Providing liquidity on Chainflip
• Slippage and UX
• Deciding trading pairs
• Chainflip validators
• Validator stake auctions
• Governance
• Roadmap and bootstrapping liquidity

Episode links:

• Simon Harman on Twitter
• Chainflip on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/519

Stablecoins represent a safe haven against crypto’s volatility, allowing participants to remain in the market, without off-ramping to fiat. While the major stablecoins are centrally issued (e.g. USDT, USDC, BUSD), there is a pressing need for an algorithmic variant or a synthetic dollar asset. (DAI is somewhere in between since approximately 50% of its collateral is USDC). After Luna’s collapse, many jumped to point out its design flaws, yet such a concept would be crucial for crypto’s decentralisation and self-sustainability. Arthur Hayes proposed an interesting concept of NAKA synthetic dollar (NUSD), backed by Bitcoin and its inverse perpetual swap short. However, yield generation on $BTC is significantly lower than that of $ETH. A sustainable yield would help balance the cases in which funding rates would be negative (a minority in crypto).

We were joined by Guy Young, co-founder of Ethena, to discuss the stablecoin landscape and their synthetic eUSD, backed by staked ETH and its inverse perpetual swap.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Guy’s background and founding Ethena
• The history of stablecoins
• The stablecoin trilemma and transparency
• eUSD synthetic dollar mechanics
• Ethena’s insurance fund and hedging
• Minimising the impact of depegging
• Leveraging centralised liquidity while maintaining self custody through MPC
• User experience
• Risk factors
• CEX vs. DEX: liquidity, infrastructure, UX
• The potential of fixed return rates
• Supply & rates equilibrium

Episode links:

• Guy Young on Twitter
• Ethena Labs on Twitter
• Arthur Hayes' article proposing the Naka synthetic dollar

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/518

One of the best known memes in crypto is: 'Not your keys, not your coins'. This usually resurfaces whenever a (custodial) centralised exchange is hacked or goes bust altogether. Although Web3 provides the infrastructure for self custody, this often shares the fate of Pandora. Self-custody requires increased security measures, from both end-users, as well as application developers. Web3 wallets are the interface between users and decentralised applications deployed on blockchains. While Metamask still maintains the largest market share, a multitude of wallets have emerged, promising additional features and a better UX.

We were joined by Evgeny Yurtaev, co-founder & CEO of Zerion, to discuss the challenges of building a Web3 wallet and how Zerion aims to improve user experience, while still maintaining security.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Evgeny’s background
• The motivation behind building a Web3 wallet
• Zerion UX and security
• Seed phrase storing
• Zerion user profile
• Challenges in building a new wallet app
• Protecting users and potential attack vectors
• Supported blockchains and (seamless) bridging
• Account abstraction and MPC
• Business models for Web3 wallets

Episode links:

• Evgeny Yurtaev on Twitter
• Zerion on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/517