Epicenter Media Ltd.
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Epicenter brings you in-depth conversations about the technical, economic and social implications of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. Every week, we interview business leaders, engineers academics and entrepreneurs, and bring you a diverse spectrum of opinions and points of view. Epicenter is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst, Meher Roy and Felix Lutsch. Since 2014, our episodes have been downloaded over 8 million times.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Epicenter turns blockchain projects into detailed conversations about their architecture, incentives, governance and points of failure.
Epicenter treats blockchain architecture as a set of engineering and governance choices with consequences. Its interviews move from Bitcoin bridge custody and security incentives to Ethereum scaling, Solana's approach to state, appchain economics and software for decentralized…
Bitcoin bridge security has a fee bill, and you get to ask who picks it up.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Ethereum's next bottleneck looks less like ideology and more like plumbing.
ETHPrague stays focused on the machinery under the buzz: Ethereum's L2 stack, the limits of mainnet block space, and the argument that interop is making scaling feel real for users.
A clear case for Avalanche's multi-chain design and its push for faster single-chain performance.
This episode lays out Avalanche's long-term bet with unusual clarity: many chains, one system, and enough room to keep pushing single-chain performance without giving up crypto principles. The speaker makes a simple argument out of a dense subject.
A clear case for app chains and the economic framework that helps them hold together.
Initia is presented as a response to a familiar crypto problem: app chains can attract activity, but they still need a way to pull in liquidity, users, rewards, and attention from a fragmented market.
Ethereum is framed as an infrastructure bet: scale the base layer, tighten the UX, and keep the network secure enough to stay the default for builders.
The episode treats Ethereum less as a token narrative than as a systems problem: how a shared computation layer keeps its security promises while becoming easier to build on.
A concrete tour of Ethereum scaling trade-offs, with the engineering details left intact.
This episode follows Taiko's push to scale Ethereum without giving up composability. Joaquin Mendes lays out the case for based sequencing, why data availability still matters to a rollup, and how throughput, cost, and blob space shape the trade-offs.
A technical case for Sui as infrastructure.
Sui is treated here less as just another chain and more as a thesis about crypto infrastructure: object-based state, parallel execution, and a cleaner way to coordinate software, assets, and permissions.
A sharp look at how crypto credit gets underwritten when the borrowers are already sophisticated.
Maple Finance's Sidney Powell lays out how on-chain credit is being used by primes, hedge funds, liquid token funds, family offices, and high net worth borrowers who want leverage without giving up control to liquidation risk.
Software-defined governance is treated as practical infrastructure, not theory.
Denison Bertram makes a clean case for organizations that live in software instead of jurisdictions. The point is not just technical. It also argues that standard corporate structures leave inequality baked in, while code-based organizations can, at least in theory, scale to…
Demetri Kofinas interviews specialists on geopolitics, energy markets, AI, and finance at length.
BBC's daily business show, from toy-industry founders to Anthropic's Pentagon standoff.
An interview with Torab, CEO of Move Industries, discussing the company's turnaround and the future of the Movement blockchain ecosystem.
Interview with Nansen CEO Alex Zwanwick about the company's evolution from on-chain analytics to AI-powered trading tools for retail investors.
Hosts Sebastien and Brian interview Mirko Schmiedl and Tobias Jung from Staking Rewards at the Staking Summit, discussing the economics of proof-of-stake, Bitcoin staking opportunities, consolidation in the validator ecosystem, and the future of restaking.
The hosts interview guests from ETHPrague about the conference's vibe, Ethereum's ecosystem morale, and technical advancements like L2 scaling and ZK proving.
Emin Gün Sirer discusses Avalanche's multi-chain scaling success, future focus on single-chain performance, and institutional adoption.
This episode of Epicenter features Zon, co-founder of Initia, along with Delphi's Jose and Anil, discussing Initia's launch as a layer-1 blockchain designed for app-specific roll-ups.
Friederike Ernst interviews new Ethereum Foundation co-executive directors Tomasz Stańczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang about their visions for Ethereum's future.
Joaquin Mendes, COO of Taiko, discusses the project's approach to scaling Ethereum through a type 1 ZK EVM and base sequencing.
Adeniyi Abiodun, CPO of Mysten Labs, discusses Sui's technology as a decentralized internet stack, highlighting its security against EVM hacks, horizontal scalability, and innovations like ZK login and object-based programming.
Sid Powell, CEO of Maple Finance, discusses the evolution of on-chain institutional lending, from its origins in under-collateralized loans to a hybrid model combining CeFi and DeFi.
Dennison Bertram, CEO of Tally, discusses the evolution of decentralized organizations, from Bitcoin's cypherpunk roots to today's tokenized governance.
Nick Johnson, founder of ENS, discusses the upcoming ENS V2 upgrade, which migrates .eth names to Namechain, a custom ZK-based L2 for lower costs and cross-chain functionality.
Jeff Zirlin, co-founder of Ronin, discusses the evolution of Axie Infinity and how it pioneered blockchain gaming with play-to-earn mechanics.
Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, discusses the blockchain's evolution, unexpected trends like NFTs and meme coins, and key challenges such as MEV, scaling with multiple concurrent proposers, and security.
Alexei Zamyatin discusses BitVM, a breakthrough enabling fraud-proof Bitcoin bridging without changing Bitcoin's core protocol, and outlines Bob's hybrid Layer 2 that merges Bitcoin security with Ethereum compatibility to unlock Bitcoin DeFi.
A researcher discusses moving from global protocols to community-based systems to achieve more equitable power distribution in blockchain networks.
Interview with Don Gossen, CEO of Nevermind, discussing AI-to-AI payments and the need for new payment infrastructure in the Web3 space.
Interview with Essie Lagavardi about Turtle Club, a DeFi liquidity protocol that leverages collective bargaining power for better incentives.
Discussion of blockchain scaling challenges, focusing on state storage and validator rotation, with a sponsor segment for Gnosis Pay.
Interview with David Goldberg, co-founder of Founders Pledge, discussing the organization and its impact, with a brief sponsor segment about Gnosis.
Interview with Left Harris Karapetsas about RodKey, an open-source privacy-focused crypto portfolio tracking tool.
Interview with David Minage about Autonalas, an AI and blockchain crossover project, and discussion of Gnosis ecosystem.
Interview with co-founders of Fileverse, a project leveraging existing infrastructure for on-chain document collaboration.