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

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

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.

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