Jasper De Goojier: SEDA – Intent-Based Modular Data Layer

As technology progresses, infrastructure should be commoditised, especially in Web3, in order to avoid the creation of bottlenecks and gatekeepers. Blockchains are naturally oblivious to off-chain data, so they need oracles to fetch data. However, given their past technical limitations, oracles have failed to provide a decentralised and permissionless framework for data query. SEDA seeks to change this by creating an intent-based modular data layer, which brings off-chain data on-chain, in order for it to be available to any party, regardless of who requested it first.

We were joined by Jasper De Goojier, co-founder of SEDA Protocol, to discuss the oracle landscape and how SEDA aims to decentralise it and make data access permissionless.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Jasper’s background
• High level overview of SEDA
• Oracle use cases
• How SEDA Protocol functions
• Intent-based data availability
• Verifying subjective data & LLM integration
• ZKPs & FHE for data privacy
• Interoperability & bridging
• Roadmap & optimistic oracles
• SEDA token migration
• Chain abstraction

Episode links:

• Jasper De Goojier on Twitter
• SEDA Protocol on Twitter

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: Chorus1 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: epicenter.tv/538

Blockchains are, by default, public ledgers containing every transaction recorded by the network. While this ensures transparency, it also violates users’ privacy once an address is linked to an entity. Apart from creating additional risk for self-custody, institutions are also limited by what they can publicly share on a blockchain. As a result, there is great demand and utility for on-chain, compliant privacy, which still requires KYC (& KYT), but protects them through cryptographic constructs. Zero knowledge proofs attest computational integrity, allowing for transactions to be bundled together and their correctness verified, without revealing each individual interaction.

We were joined by Anish Mohammed, co-founder & CTO of Panther Protocol, to discuss the importance of compliant privacy for on-chain transactions, powered by zero knowledge technology.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Anish’s background
• Panther’s value proposition
• UX & on-chain privacy
• Panther’s multi-asset shielded pool architecture
• KYC & KYT
• Shielded zones and transactions
• Zone administrator
• Address mapping
• Roadmap & Panther mainnet
• Target audience & adoption
• Fee model & tokenomics

Episode links:

• Anish Mohammed on Twitter
• Panther Protocol on Twitter

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: Chorus1 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: epicenter.tv/537

The monolithic blockchain era appears to be sunsetting. Among the first to contribute to this paradigm shift was Cosmos, which introduced the idea of specialized sovereign blockchains (appchains), made possible by the Cosmos SDK. Nowadays, the modular thesis employs external data availability and even execution solutions, which enables the creation of countless new chains. Each new blockchains comes with its own ‘specs’, and centralised RPC and node providers have to adapt to each chain’s setting. However, the saying ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ applies in this scenario too - we have often witnessed RPC failures during high demand periods. Lava Network aims to provide a competitive marketplace for RPC and node providers, which would compete based on their performance and user feedback.

We were joined by Gil and Yair to discuss Lava Network’s RPC decentralisation in the modular, multi-chain landscape.

Topics covered in this episode:

• High-level overview of Lava Network
• What problem Lava Network solves
• Decentralised marketplace for RPC providers
• Quality of centralised vs. decentralised RPC providers
• Gateways
• Lava Network participants
• Specs & APIs
• Quality of service & provider optimizer
• How services are priced
• Relayers
• Modularity & chain abstraction
• Magma & Lava mainnet

Episode links:

• Yair Cleper on LinkedIn
• Gil Binder on Twitter
• Lava Network on Twitter

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: Chorus1 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 & Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/536

Prolonged range bound markets are a hallmark of bearmarkets and they usually end up chopping inexperienced or over leveraged traders. Customised structured products offer a solution for market participants that want to limit their downside, but also the upside, by introducing knock-outs at certain levels or triggers. Such custom options, usually with lower probabilistic chances of occurring, naturally come at a discount. This allows traders to hedge their risk, while also betting on certain outcomes or market scenarios.

We were joined by Zhiming Yang, co-founder of Orbit Markets, to discuss crypto derivatives and how TradFi expertise applies to customising structured products for crypto markets.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Zhiming’s background in investment banking
• FX derivative products
• Exotic options
• Crypto structured products
• Custom solutions for crypto miners
• Hedging Uniswap V3 impermanent loss
• Options based on prediction markets
• Managing counterparty risk
• Protocolising structured products
• Differences between TradFi and DeFi

Episode links:

• Zhiming Yang on LinkedIn
• Orbit Markets on Twitter
• Orbit Markets website

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: Chorus1 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: epicenter.tv/535

Measuring the social impact of a charitable donation is, oftentimes, an impossible task. Founders Pledge is a non-profit organisation that aims to funnel and streamline donations from successful entrepreneurs in order to maximise their efficiency, based on data and research. Having built a network of nearly 2000 like-minded philanthropists, the vision behind Founders Pledge was to ensure transparency, unbiased assessment, ease of access and incentive alignment for its members. Despite the hurdles of running and scaling a non-profit organisation, Founders Pledge managed to stay true to its values throughout its 10 years of activity. In the end, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

We were joined by David Goldberg, founder of Founders Pledge, to discuss the landscape of charitable non-profit organisations and how data can streamline donations and maximise their social impact.

Topics covered in this episode:

• David’s background
• Founding Founders Pledge
• How Founders Pledge works
• Joining Founders Pledge
• The challenges of managing a non-profit organisation
• Building a great company culture. Hiring process
• Maximising impact
• Assessing non-profit organisations’ efficiency
• Effective altruism
• How philanthropy changed over time
• Pledge Ventures
• Future challenges for Founders Pledge

Episode links:

• David Goldberg on Twitter
• Founders Pledge on Twitter
• Founders Pledge website
• Pledge Ventures

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: Chorus1 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: epicenter.tv/534

We are, arguably, still early in the crypto industry, but some people were really…really early. One of them is Lefteris Karapetsas, who joined EthDev in 2014 and contributed to building the Ethereum ecosystem, since before the genesis block. His crypto journey is one for the history books, as after EthDev he joined Slock.it, right around the time of The DAO raise…and hack. Lefteris remained a core supporter of decentralisation and an active member of the Ethereum community, being involved (and delegated) in multiple projects’ governance. More recently, he founded Rotki, an open source portfolio management app that aims to preserve user privacy. 

We were joined by Lefteris Karapetsas, true Ethereum OG, to discuss his 10-year long journey through the Ethereum ecosystem, from joining EthDev (pre-Devcon 0) to founding Rotki.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Lefteris’ background
• Ethereum’s beginnings
• Joining Slock.it
• The DAO r(a)ise and hack
• Ethereum classic hard fork
• Brainbot & Raiden Network era
• Founding Rotki
• Crypto accounting privacy
• The challenges of building a local app
• Rotki membership tiers
• Upcoming portfolio management on Rotki
• Future roadmap for Rotki
• How Ethereum’s culture evolved over time
• Ethereum public good funding. Optimism governance
• Hopes and fears regarding Ethereum’s future

Episode links:

• Lefteris Karapetsas on Twitter
• Rotki on Twitter

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: Chorus1 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 Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/533

The Autonolas stack aims to address the ‘A’ in DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation), through its Open Autonomy framework, which enables the creation of autonomous, off-chain services for crypto applications. A key component for ensuring the proper operation of these off-chain autonomous economic agents, is the consensus mechanism. The protocol is overseen by the Governatooorr, the world’s first autonomous, AI-powered governor.

We were joined by David Minarsch, co-founder of Valory, to discuss the ever-changing landscape of AI agents and how they can be used to automate crypto applications.

Topics covered in this episode:

• David’s background and founding Valory
• Agentic AI systems
• Multi-agent systems
• Autonolas’ agent framework
• Collaborative agent economy & composability
• DAO optimisation via autonomous agents
• Potential attack vectors & AI risks

Episode links:

• David Minarsch on Twitter
• Autonolas on Twitter
• Valory on Twitter

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: Chorus1 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 Friederike Ernst & Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/532

Web2 file storage relies heavily on centralised entities, which have mostly outgrown their competitors, establishing a quasi-monopoly. The reasons for this are twofold: enormous operating costs and seamless user experience (e.g. social logins and account recovery), which, until recently, could only be solved through centralisation. Add to this the reluctance to change platforms as users need to re-upload their files, and you get an ossified user base. However, data leaks and hacks are a constant threat to users’ privacy, and indicate the disruptive potential of decentralised file storage and sharing.

We were joined by Andreas Tsamados & Vijay Krishnavanshi, co-founders of Fileverse, to discuss their decentralised file sharing solution and how they plan to disrupt the Web2 quasi-monopoly.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Returning to the P2P roots of the Internet
• Web2 vs. Web3 user experience (UX)
• Business models for Web2 data
• Decentralising data
• Web3 data storage
• Costs of data storage
• Managing file updates and permissions
• Fileverse use cases
• The business model of Fileverse
• Improving UX
• Future roadmap

Episode links:

• Andreas Tsamados on Twitter
• Vijay Krishnavanshi on Twitter
• Fileverse on Twitter

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: Chorus1 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 Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/531

Fully homomorphic encryption, also known as the Holy Grail of cryptography, allows for computation to be performed on encrypted data, without the need for prior decryption. Its blockchain applications would enable programmable, institutional-grade, compliant privacy. With the addition of fhEVM libraries, solidity developers don’t have to worry about the complex cryptography and only decide what layers of the UX should be private.

We were joined by Guy Itzhaki & Guy Zyskind, to discuss fully homomorphic encryption and how Fhenix plans to leverage it to build an end-to-end encrypted Ethereum L2 with compliant privacy.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Guy(s)’ backgrounds and why they chose FHE
• The differences between TEE, MPC, ZK and FHE
• Threshold decryption
• The challenges with FHE. Hardware acceleration. Zama’s fhEVM
• Fhenix architecture
• fhEVM
• Use cases for FHE & composability
• Compliant privacy
• Fhenix roadmap

Episode links:

• Guy Zyskind on Twitter
• Guy Itzhaki on Twitter
• Fhenix on Twitter
• Encryption Day @ ETH Denver (Feb. 28, 2024) registration

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: Chorus1 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 Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/530

What began as an AI company trying to seek solutions in order to pay remote (unbanked) workers, Near AI became, in 2018, Near Protocol. Its sharded design was inspired by modern database architecture and large language model (LLM) training. Near Protocol aimed to solve the scalability trilemma, through a modular approach, combining data availability sharding with stateless validation. By abstracting away archaic blockchain standards, Near basically enabled decentralised full stack development and, in terms of UX, a distributed custodial solution via chain abstraction and account aggregation.

We were joined by Illia Poloshukhin, co-founder of Near Protocol, to discuss Near’s journey, from AI company to high-throughput L1 blockchain, and how LLM training influenced the modular design choice.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Illia’s background in AI & ML
• Scaling large language models (LLMs) and the role of attention
• Stochastic Parrot vs. Understanding spectrum
• From Near AI to Near Protocol and the role of LLMs
• How Near abstracted the blockchain away and enabled decentralised full stack development
• Defining ecosystem standards to improve UX
• Chain abstraction, account aggregation and interoperability
• Chain threshold signature
• Near’s intent layer
• Near’s modularity, Nightshade sharding & stateless validation
• EigenLayer integration

Episode links:

• Illia Polosukhin on Twitter
• Near Protocol on Twitter

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: Chorus1 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 & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/529