Classical, monolithic blockchains are inherently limited in their throughput due to their single-thread execution architecture. Modern VMs attempt to solve this issue through parallelisation being implemented from the get-go. Movement Labs employs the Move-VM to build a ZK L2 rollups on Ethereum, thus also deriving its security. Through parallel execution threads, Movement achieves a theoretical TPS of 160,000 while also ensuring sub-cent transaction fees.

We were joined by Rushi Manche, co-founder of Movement Labs, to discuss the rise of modern VMs and how Move-VM aims to offset Ethereum’s shortcomings through parallelisation.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Impressions from ETH Denver
- Rushi’s background
- Move vs. Solidity
- EVM compatibility
- Parallelisation vs. intent-based transactions
- Security and parallel state transitions
- Transitioning from EVM to newer VMs
- Berachain’s approach to EVM-compatibility
- Movement Labs’ tech stack
- Decentralising the sequencer
- Movement’s M1 and M2 chains
- Celestia DA and the Dencun upgrade
- Restaking
- Bitcoin L2s
- IBC-compatibility and USDC on Movement
- Ethereum x Cosmos convergence
- dApps on Move

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Rushi Manche on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3U7NiAz
- Movement Labs on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3TMmLsi
- Nebular Podcast 'Ethereum x Cosmos convergence':

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 - 
- Chorus1: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at chorus.one -

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: https://epicenter.tv/542

#542 Rushi Manche: Movement Labs – Facebook's MOVE Will Bring Billions of Users to Crypto'

The initial scaling roadmap for Ethereum featured execution layer sharding. However, the rapid advancements of layer 2 scaling solutions in general, and zero knowledge proofs in particular, caused a restructuring of the original plan. The reason was that rollups would have required less changes made to Ethereum’s base layer, hence lower risks. On the other hand, Near Protocol was designed from the ground up as a sharded system, capable of withstanding billions of transactions simultaneously, without sacrificing decentralisation or security.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Illia’s & Alex’s backgrounds
- Sharding and blockchain scalability
- Challenges of building a sharded blockchain
- Near namespace
- Shard security & validator sampling
- Stateless validation and data availability
- State witnesses and chunk producers
- Block production
- Shards vs. Rollups
- How Near could further improve
- Leaderless chunk production
- Chain abstraction

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Illia Polosukhin on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3S7lz2P
- Alex Skidanov on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3wsIcXt
- Near on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3tFpYAR

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 - 
- Chorus1: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at chorus.one -

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: https://epicenter.tv/546

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

#546 Alex Skidanov & Illia Polosukhin: Near Protocol – Blockchains Cannot Scale Without Sharding!

The approval of Ethereum spot ETFs sent shockwaves through the industry as policymakers pivoted abruptly from threatening to veto FIT21 bill, to a pro-crypto discourse. One could say their hand was forced by the imminent US elections, but Ethereum is now officially classified as a commodity, nonetheless. As the regulatory hurdle seems, for the time being, surpassed, one should not forget the values promoted by the crypto movement from the get-go: decentralisation and permissionlessness. However, everyday users tend to overlook these aspects in favour of a more streamlined user experience. As technology evolves and scaling solutions mature, better UI & UX represent crucial goals in the race for end user adoption.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Crypto regulations: FIT21 & Tornado Cash trial
- Ethereum spot ETF
- Is Ethereum a commodity or a security?
- Scaling solutions & end user adoption
- The importance of decentralisation
- How Web3 lowers barriers of (permissionless) competition
- Regulatory and legal hurdles
- Educating ‘normies’ & UX
- Technology: depoliticising money
- Berlin blockchain week & Dappcon 2024 wrap-up

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Austin Griffith on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3VhRNdC
- Mona El Isa on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3VhRVK8
- Peter Van Valkenburgh on Twitter: https://bit.ly/4dV4t15

Sponsors: 
- Chorus1: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at chorus.one - 
- 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 -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: https://epicenter.tv/549

Crypto ETFs: Trojan Horse or Big Win? - Austin Griffith, Mona El Isa, Peter Van Valkenburgh. Ep. 549

In a world constantly torn by social division amplified by polarizing scissor statements throughout social media, Taiwan conducted a social experiment aimed at strengthening social unity while also embracing diversity. Plurality details how Taiwan’s Digital Minister Audrey Tang and her collaborators achieved inclusive, technology-fueled growth that harnessed digital tools to provide an antidote to information chaos and warfare. The open-source book is living proof that present global challenges can be solved through democratic solutions that embody a decentralised ethos.

We were joined by Audrey Tang and Glen Weyl, co-authors of Plurality, to discuss the social dynamics they studied and how technology can be used to unite rather than divide.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- How Audrey & Glen met and Plurality’s genesis
- Audrey’s journey from civic hacker to Taiwan’s Digital Affairs Minister
- How democracy is perceived around the world
- Establishing a co-creating mentality
- Scissor statements and how to avoid division
- How Polis works
- Leveraging Web3 to strengthen democracy & social collaboration
- Decentralised co-ownership
- Web3 governance
- Human facilitators

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Audrey Tang on Twitter: https://bit.ly/4cbjDOD
- Glen Weyl on Twitter: https://bit.ly/4ezzfx2
- Plurality Book on Twitter: https://bit.ly/4ewjGpM
- Plurality Institute on Twitter: https://bit.ly/4eBj3uX
- Radical xChange: https://bit.ly/3VGWeO6

Sponsors: 
- Chorus1: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at chorus.one - 
- 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 -

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: https://epicenter.tv/553

#553 Audrey Tang & Glen Weyl: Plurality – How Taiwan Managed to Unite Its People Through Technology

We couldn’t miss EthCC 7, nor the chance to chat with Vitalik Buterin about Ethereum’s status quo as an L1 amidst the plethora of L2s competing for market share, and what challenges will most likely arise along the way (e.g. staking decentralisation).
Tune in for a captivating discussion on the importance of decentralisation as a last stand of human empowerment in the current geopolitical context and how it could positively impact AI's trajectory.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Types of Ethereum ‘hardnesses’ (sic)
- The L1 status quo
- Staking decentralisation & block building
- Non-financial crypto applications
- Account abstraction & interoperability
- Solana & Bitcoin ecosystems
- DeSci, biotech & longevity
- Geopolitics
- Ethereum nation state?
- The impact of AI
- Do not go gentle into that good night

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Vitalik Buterin on Twitter: https://bit.ly/4bH6knS
- EthCC on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3S11MSb
- Ethereum on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3zQyVtB

Sponsors: 
- Chorus1: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at chorus.one - 
- 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 -

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: https://epicenter.tv/556

#556 Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum – Ethereum at a Crossroads

Web3’s decentralisation is currently limited to smart contracts as they can be verified on-chain. However, until scalability and UX become on par with that of Web2, the only realistic way for crypto to reach mass adoption is threw off-chain dApps. This creates the premise for a security bottleneck in the form of centralised APIs used for on-chain querying. Mel Project aims to expand on-chain security and decentralisation (consensus) to off-chain apps, basically achieving off-chain composability through trustless light clients. Earendil, the backbone of their ecosystem, designed to resist ISP-level censorship, is a decentralized anonymous communication and payment network that enables autonomous applications and true P2P protocols.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Eric’s background and founding Mel Project
- Why Ethereum came short
- Is Infura a security bottleneck?
- Liberating markets (and the Internet)
- Light clients and how Mel Project tackles them
- Use cases
- Smart contracts on Mel Project
- Scaling the ‘world computer’
- Mel Project’s consensus: Streamlet
- Why Mel Project chose an UTXO model
- Earendil & ISP-level censorship resistance
- Roadmap
- The Geph VPN
- Mel Project’s low volatility (stable) coin
- $SYM: PoS token
- Misc.

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Eric Tung on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3WEcf8Y
- Mel Project on Twitter: https://bit.ly/4dl3PJl
- Geph VPN on Twitter: https://bit.ly/4cNGCzv
- Moxie Marlinspike's 'My first impressions of web3' article: https://bit.ly/4cTRxYD
- Streamlet BFT consensus model: https://bit.ly/4dfnIkJ

Sponsors: 
- Chorus1: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at chorus.one - 
- 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 -

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: https://epicenter.tv/558

#558 Eric Tung: Mel Project – Is Web3 Truly Decentralised?

In 2017, Vitalik Buterin defined the ‘Scalability Trilemma’ which consisted of 3 attributes that every blockchain had to balance depending on its intended use cases: decentralisation, scalability and security. While Ethereum sacrificed scalability in favour of security and decentralisation, others prioritised throughput over the other two. However, a solution was proposed, inspired from Web2 computer science - sharding. Despite the fact that Ethereum’s ossification and significant progress in zero knowledge research led to a shift in Ethereum’s roadmap away from execution sharding towards L2 rollups, there were other L1s that were designed from the get-go as sharded blockchains. One such example was Elrond, who implemented the beacon chain PoS consensus alongside a sharded execution layer. Their recent rebranding to MultiversX alludes to a multi-chain, interoperable ecosystem, in which sovereign chains can communicate in a similar manner to cross-shard transaction routing.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Lucian’s background and founding Elrond (MultiversX)
- Elrond’s validator & shard architecture
- Cross-shard composability
- VMs, smart contracts and transaction routing
- Self sovereignty and modularity
- MultiversX vision
- Roadmap

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Lucian Mincu on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3LQwCK0
- MultiversX on Twitter: https://bit.ly/4fwJkuQ
- xPortal on Twitter: https://bit.ly/4dpqBj8

Sponsors: 
- Chorus1: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at chorus.one - 
- 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 -

This episode is hosted by Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: https://epicenter.tv/559

#559 Lucian Mincu: MultiversX – Blockchain Sharding 101

In this day and age, privacy and confidentiality are more important than ever. Advancements in the cryptographic research of zero knowledge proofs (ZKPs), fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) and multi-party computation (MPC) paved the way for computational integrity and confidential computing. While FHE allows for computation to be performed on encrypted data without the need for prior decryption, it is MPC that enables compliance with regulations (e.g. AML). Arcium aims to build a global super computer for parallelised confidential computing, powered by custom MXEs (multi-party computation execution environments).

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Yannik’s background
- Confidentiality & decentralised compliance
- Confidential computing
- TEEs (trusted execution environments) & side-channel attacks
- ZKP vs. MPC vs. FHE
- Arcium’s global super computer architecture
- How Arcium differentiates itself from other privacy protocols
- Use cases
- Censorship risks
- Ecosystem development

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Yannik Schrade on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3TkVY6Z
- Arcium on Twitter: https://bit.ly/4gguJUJ

Sponsors: 
- Chorus1: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at chorus.one - 
- 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 -

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: https://epicenter.tv/564

#564 Yannik Schrade: Arcium – Parallelized Confidential Computing Network


La transition écologique est une nécessité identifiée depuis longtemps et pourtant les tendances alarmantes sur la pollution, la biodiversité, l’épuisement des ressources ou le réchauffement climatique s’aggravent d’année en année. Comment donc assurer cette transition plus respectueuse de l’environnement? Quel devrait être son levier? L’État ou les groupements citoyens? Doit-on imposer ce changement par le haut et courir le risque d’une dérive autoritariste, ou peut-on compter sur les initiatives décentralisées, dont l’impact pourrait être limité?


Pour cet épisode, nous avons fait dialoguer: 


- François Xavier Hutteau, doctorant à l’Université de Genève qui travaille sur la question des technologies et du calcul en nature pour la planification écologique. Il est également militant au sein du collectif Strike sur la transition énergétique. Il compte plutôt sur le rôle de l’État pour assurer cette transition.


- Armand Paris, animateur du podcast « Sortir du Capitalisme » (https://sortirducapitalisme.fr/) depuis 2016 avec plusieurs émissions consacrées à l’écologie. Il a également co-animé Zoom écologie sur Fréquence Paris Plurielle (FPP) en 2022-2023. Lui tend à souligner le rôle clé de la décentralisation dans cette transition. 


Sans être très éloignés sur les objectifs à atteindre, nos deux invités échangent sur les meilleurs moyens, en s’appuyant sur des expériences historiques pour assurer une planification écologique significative et durable. 


Enregistré en Décembre 2024.
Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Transition écologique - Par le haut ou par le bas?

In the next episode of the Energy Connects podcast, Chiranjib Sengupta sat down with Claudio Golino, Partner at Deloitte, to discuss the critical role of utilities in decarbonisation and shaping the energy transition. Claudio explained how electricity is becoming an increasingly major part of the energy mix, and the key forces of change shaping the energy value chain: decentralisation, democratisation and digitisation. He also discussed Deloitte’s perspective on how the energy transition is evolving across the different parts of the power value chain, the dynamics of rising power demand and its influence on the strategies of utilities, and the way forward for energy companies to navigate this complex and fast-evolving landscape.

Utilities at the forefront of powering a low-carbon future

Epicenter is a podcast about the technologies, projects & people driving decentralization and the global blockchain revolution.

Epicenter is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Sebastien Couture and Meher Roy. Every week, we find the most interesting people in the industry for in-depth discussions about their projects, ideas and stories.

A trusted source delivering fresh perspectives and exclusive insights that shape the future of energy.

New tracks tagged #decentralisation