On today's episode, the Blind Alchemist has a discussion, within the context of Gnosticism, with special guests, TikTok sensation, Lunchbox, and Buck Johnson, about the place Gnosticism may play in politics and the economy. Discussion includes Cryptocurrency, foreign affairs, voting, and journalism. 

Listen to us on Spotify:
https://anchor.fm/TheBlindAlchemyPodcast
https://open.spotify.com/show/4oc1UNLF1aKbBVJVkqjiJS
YouTube:
https://youtube.com/@TheBlindAlchemyPodcast
Apple podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-blind-alchemy-podcast/id1718982586

Written, performed, recorded, and produced by Haireline Productions. Copyright (C) 10/15/2023 Haireline Productions. All rights reserved.

The Blind Alchemy Podcast

Blind Alchemy Episode 17: The Gnostics 5: Gnostic Politics 1

Blockchain revolutionizes market research by ensuring data security and privacy. Explore how this technology enhances data integrity, transparency, and trust, leading to more accurate and reliable market insights.

Link : https://maction.com/blockchain-in-market-research-a-new-era-of-data-security/

Blockchain  A New Foundation For Data Security In Market Research

Welcome to "Riding the Wave: Navigating the First Institutional Bitcoin Bull Market, Part 1" the podcast that takes a detailed view of the next 18 months in the cryptocurrency bull market. We embark on an exciting journey of understanding and preparing for the first institutional Bitcoin bull market.

In this podcast, we will explore the rapidly evolving landscape of cryptocurrencies and delve into the primary crypto, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, and more. But we won't stop there. We'll also dive further into the significant opportunities presented by so-called 'altcoins,' which offer distinct flavors and choices, some of which may even provide greater opportunities than those dominating the market share.

Episode 13 Riding the Wave: Navigating the First Institutional Bitcoin Bull Market, Part 1

Bitcoin’s lack of native programmability, coupled with advancements in zero knowledge cryptography, has led to rollups being explored as a substitute for an execution layer. Citrea’s approach involves using Bitcoin as a data availability & settlement layer for their zero knowledge rollup. These rollups not only lower transaction costs, but they also enable smart contracts to use Bitcoin’s L1 security and further incentivise miners to secure the chain despite halving rewards. In order to inherit Bitcoin’s security, zk proofs are inscribed in Bitcoin blocks.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Orkun’s background
- Inscriptions, BitVM and zk rollups on Bitcoin
- Optimistic bridging
- Sequencer
- Programmability solutions on Bitcoin
- BitVM development
- Citrea ecosystem development
- cBTC vs. custodial wrapped BTC
- There is no second best!
- PoW, halving block rewards and how rollups incentivise miners
- Citrea’s efficiency & fee reduction
- Bitcoin as an inflation hedge

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Orkun Mahir Kilic on Twitter: https://bit.ly/40DS51p
- Citrea on Twitter: https://bit.ly/40ESMrj
- BitVM: https://bit.ly/4etJL7J

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/573

#573 Orkun Mahir Kilic: Citrea – Modular Rollup Framework on Bitcoin

Bootstrapping and maintaining a validator set can be a challenging endeavour, especially for projects that are in search of a product market fit. However, this does not mean one should abandon the ethos of decentralisation in favour of a more streamlined centralised approach. The notion of shared security had been previously explored in the Cosmos ecosystem, but Symbiotic takes it a step further, making it readily available for any project, regardless of its native blockchain, through restaking. Symbiotic is a modular coordination layer that sources node operators and economic security in a maximally capital-efficient manner.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Misha’s background
- Symbiotic’s origin story
- How Symbiotic tackles decentralisation
- The role of restaking in proof-of-stake models
- The economics of restaking
- The architecture of Symbiotic
- Liquid restaking tokens (LRT)
- Expanding restaking beyond Ethereum
- Slashing
- Symbiotic smart contract immutability and future updates
- Ecosystem development

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Misha Putiatin on Twitter: https://bit.ly/4eQXW6K
- Symbiotic on Twitter: https://bit.ly/4fLRRtE

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/575

#575 Misha Putiatin: Symbiotic – Scaling Shared Security Through Restaking

Polynomials are quintessential in machine learning for establishing relationships between outputs and inputs. However, there is also a field in cryptography which could not be made possible without polynomials - zero-knowledge technology. In zero-knowledge proof systems, computations are often represented as arithmetic circuits, and these circuits are translated into polynomials. This process is crucial for generating proofs that can demonstrate the correctness of computations without revealing the underlying data. The involved complexity explains the massive adoption hurdle for zk rollups compared to optimistic ones. Succinct aims to simplify the use of zero-knowledge proofs by providing a zkVM (SP1) that allows code written in languages like Rust to be proven in a privacy-preserving way. By doing so, it aims to lower the barrier to implementing zk-rollups and increase their adoption.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Uma’s background and her interest in zero knowledge tech
- How Succinct’s story began
- ZK light clients
- ZK circuits
- SP1 and the RISC-V instruction set
- The prover network
- Use cases
- ZK rollups and commoditizing ZKPs
- Incentivizing provers
- Succinct’s business model
- Supported blockchain applications
- Bottlenecks in ZK adoption
- Succinct metrics
- SP1’s competitive advantage and future roadmap
- The real world impact of verifiability

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Uma Roy on X: https://bit.ly/3OOQ0sk
- Succinct on X: https://bit.ly/41lzdoe

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/577

#577 Uma Roy: Succinct – Every Rollup With Be a ZK Rollup!

The status quo for developers choosing an ecosystem for their blockchain usually revolves around trade-offs: do they go for Ethereum’s network effect, liquidity and decentralisation, or sacrifice some features in favour of a higher throughput. Monad aims to combine the best of both worlds, while not being limited by excessive hardware requirements. Monad built an EVM-compatible L1 from the ground up, completely rethinking execution and consensus, in order to achieve the infamous 10,000 TPS. This extreme scalability is made possible through Monad’s optimistic parallel execution which is asynchronous from consensus. The latter has also been optimized in order to achieve single-slot finality. Monad’s proprietary database architecture allows for states to be stored on SSDs instead of RAM, which ensures that consumer-grade hardware can run a Monad node, further increasing decentralisation.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Keone’s background
- TradFi vs. DeFi and how Monad was founded
- EVM’s network effect vs. other VMs
- How Monad aims to improve EVM’s performance
- MonadDB
- MonadBFT - New consensus mechanism
- Asynchronous execution
- MEV and proposer-builder separation (PBS)
- Monad’s throughput
- Further scaling and limitations
- Alternatives & trade-offs
- DevEx
- Community & ecosystem development

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Keone Hon on X: https://bit.ly/3Dq8k8Q
- Monad on X: https://bit.ly/3P47Esi

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/578

#578 Keone Hon: Monad – The EVM-Compatible 10,000 TPS L1 Blockchain

The DeFi landscape has significantly evolved since 2018 when Chainlink was launched. Recent developments such as L2 rollups, liquid staking, restaking and the rise of BTC DeFi have created huge demand for more customizable, modular oracles that would be able to provide accurate data for countless use cases, crosschain. RedStone set out to do exactly that and are now securing over $6.6 bn worth of assets (1000+ assets), across more than 60 chains, without a single mispricing event.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Marcin’s background
- Early oracle landscape
- RedStone’s technical architecture
- Network incentives
- Data aggregation module
- Node operator module
- Push vs. Pull oracles
- RedStone’s business model
- The role of RedStone token
- Pyth vs. RedStone
- Restaking
- Oracle extractable value
- Synergies between oracles and institutional investors

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Marcin Kaźmierczak on X: https://bit.ly/4j7JJpu
- RedStone on X: https://bit.ly/3BPwd9r

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/581

#581 Marcin Kaźmierczak: RedStone – The Oracle Pioneering the Future of DeFi

As more and more protocols compete for marketshare, user acquisition represents one of the most important elements of the GTM strategy. Web3 projects, through their governance tokens, can incentivise users directly to participate in meaningful activities for each protocol, subsidising their revenue generation through vested upside in the project. Turtle Club built the first distribution protocol of Web3, helping its users maximise their rewards they get for meaningful on-chain activities that help bootstrap projects.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Esfandiar’s background
- The evolution of DeFi
- Yield sustainability in DeFi
- DeFi vs. TradFi
- Quantifying risk
- Main blockers for DeFi adoption
- On-chain transparency or privacy?
- What is missing in DeFi?
- Genesis story of Turtle Club
- How Turtle Club users accrue rewards

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Esfandiar Lagevardi on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/415wA82
- Turtle Club on X: https://bit.ly/3CRZQY4

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 Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: https://epicenter.tv/586

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

#586 Esfandiar Lagevardi: Turtle Club – Helping Web3 Users Monetize Their On-Chain Activity

DMs full of fakes, welcome to the circus ,  
Underscore zheroes think they got a purpose.  
Twist a username, tryna steal some fame,  
But with the Angels fam, we end that game.  

One real Teng, but the fakes are loud,
Copy every pic just to fool the crowd.
They flex in DMs, but the script’s all weak,
A thousand fake Tengs, but the truth we seek.

They copy CZ, try to steal his crown,
Switch one letter, think we won’t find out now.
Fresh new profile, 2 days old,
Bio all hype but the story’s cold.

Underscore zheroes, tryna play that part,  
Fake nicknames with a copied chart.  
Slide in the DMs, think we can’t see,  
But we spot that scam in a heartbeat.  

Report, block — clean up the lane,  
Keep it SAFU, protect the chain.  
No fake kings in the Web3 show,  
One true fam, and the rest get ghost.  

Scammer pops up with a shady plan,
@dianab.i.n.a.n.e.chat — that ain’t Diana.
We’ve seen this trick, yeah, way too much,
One more DM, and it’s block with a touch.

Check that handle, don’t just chase the glow,  
Read the name twice before you hit that “follow”.  
Don’t be the donkey with the carrot on a stick,  
DYOR first, that’s the safest trick. 

Report that fake, don’t let ‘em slide,  
Ban the noise, keep the chain with pride.  
They make it dark, tryna kill the vibe,  
But we stay strong, let the real ones thrive.  


Underscore zheroes, dressed up like stars,  
Cheap cosplay kings with their borrowed bars.  
Slide in the DMs, think they run the show,  
But we laugh ‘cause the whole world knows. 

Underscore zheroes… we don’t play that game,  
Report, block, keep the chain the same.  
Stay SAFU, that’s the code we claim,  
One true fam, let ‘em fade in shame.  


Underscore zheroes

Old School Meets New School!

Somewhat recently, the Oracle of Omaha Warren Buffett was forced to finally admit that he was not well-connected to the tech boom to fully profit from that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

He just didn't get it.

Many of the discussions relative to current day economics, business, history, cryptocurrency are quite often constrained by the perspectives of the participants.

Younger participants are more attuned to the world into which they have grown and are now currently immersed, giving them a valuable basis to relate to those in the generations of those coming behind us.

However, without the benefit of living history, and, the historical perspectives that might be missed by that younger generation, this forward view alone clearly misses the boat.

Quite often the wisdom of eyes on events long gone must be weaved in to either emphasize, balance, or, at times, dismiss that view entirely.

And, vice versa.

This father and son pair are using their own personal understandings, successes, failures, and, understandings, both mutual and distinctively different, to impart their spin on the news and events of the day.

Many elements flowing through our media streams each and every day are leaving a few loose ends that require a bit of further understanding and crucial context.

Join us as we explore many of the topics of the day from both ends of our generational spectrums.

Disclaimer - The contents of the episodes in this podcast represent the opinions of the originator(s), and, is substantiated with factual information where it is available and reference.

This is not to be construed or taken as financial advice by listeners.

The originator maintains no responsibility for impacts of decisions made by listeners, and, actions taken from acting upon the information contained in these podcasts.

Also, see us in full video form on YouTube's Reggie and Royal channel.

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.

New tracks tagged #ethereum,