Homo- (Greek prefix meaning ‘same’); -morphic (Greek suffix meaning ‘having a specific shape/form’)Intuitively, one could deduct that homomorphic encryption indicates that the initial data and the encrypted result (cipher) could share the same
As Epicenter hits the 500 episode milestone, our hosts look back on almost 10 years of crypto developments, analysing the good, the bad and the ugly. What projects & narratives have surprised our hosts? Has Bitcoin failed in becoming a reliable
Bitmain is one of the most well known, and one of the most polarizing companies in the blockchain space. The largest ASIC manufacturer and operator of several mining pools, Bitmain is the center of many controversies and discussions around cent
Stablecoins represent a safe haven against crypto’s volatility, allowing participants to remain in the market, without off-ramping to fiat. While the major stablecoins are centrally issued (e.g. USDT, USDC, BUSD), there is a pressing need for a
One of the best known memes in crypto is: 'Not your keys, not your coins'. This usually resurfaces whenever a (custodial) centralised exchange is hacked or goes bust altogether. Although Web3 provides the infrastructure for self custody, this o
Sorare is a blockchain sports game which bridges fantasy football and NFT collectibles. A player collects a team of players in the form of NFTs and based on the performance of the players in the real world, scores points. At the end of the tour
Tally is a software platform designed to support tokenized organizations, particularly Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) and crypto communities. It provides tools for launching tokens, governing protocols, and enabling staking to fo
Bitcoin’s security and reliability as a store of value are undeniable. However, its liquidity remained untapped for too long due to a lack of trustless bridges and native smart contract capabilities. As BTC is only native to Bitcoin’s L1, any a
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 co
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 Tai
One could argue that psychedelic research has experienced a similar journey as crypto, in the sense that decentralised communities bound together to fund research where centralised entities refuse to do so. One of the greatest hurdles in modern
The massive success of the recently approved spot Bitcoin ETF showed tremendous interest from large institutional players. Even despite negative takes in public appearances, behind the curtain, more and more ‘smart money’ accumulate $BTC, eithe
5 years, 20 Grants, 3715 projects crowd-funded and over $60M raised towards public goods funding, from 4.2M unique donations. Gitcoin’s headline numbers are indicative of the massive success their quadratic funding (QF) and public goods funding
One of the most important hurdles to mass adoption is represented by blockchain scalability, which also hinders the real-life utility of its numerous applications. While there are different solutions being experimented with, one should not over
When it comes to NFTs and blockchain gaming, very few companies can rival with Animoca Brands’ early conviction, investment thesis and time horizon. They understood early on that community building and network effects are the core pillars for a
With an average block time of 5 seconds and sub-cent transaction gas fees, Celo focuses on scalability and ease of access in order to bring DeFi to those that need it the most. Celo’s vision of ensuring equal access is reflected through their m
"The advancements of zero knowledge proving technology, hardware acceleration and proof recursion have significantly increased the efficiency of EVM-compatible zk provers. As a result, the former tradeoff in efficiency implied by EVM-compatibil
Leading decentralised perpetual exchange, dYdX V4 recently migrated to Cosmos to build its own sovereign appchain, in order to provide its users a much better trading experience, while continuing to deliver DeFi innovations (e.g. permisionless
Back in 2017, there was no DeFi as we know it today, yet MakerDAO were already envisioning and building towards what they thought to be a certainty. The backbone of DeFi is represented by stable coins, and MakerDAO quickly understood this: they
With an extensive experience in traditional money markets, Maple Finance was envisioned as an institutional capital marketplace which combines the transparency & capital efficiency of blockchains with the regulatory framework of TradFi. Unlike
Namechain is an L2 developed by ENS Labs, to enhance the scalability and efficiency of managing decentralized identities on Ethereum. It is designed to work in tandem with ENS V2, which introduced a hierarchical registry system for more efficie
Ethereum’s transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake created a unique set of conditions (i.e. lack of protocol-level delegation, 32 ETH requirement, long exit queues, etc.) that led to Lido’s liquid staking model to gain huge traction, si
While DeFi’s ultimate goal is to provide an alternative for TradFi, blockchain gaming caters to retail masses, onboarding millions of users to crypto through incentives and fun gameplay. The greatest success story in Web3 gaming thus far has be
Solana needs no introduction. Ever since its inception, it pushed throughput scaling on a single chain, without the need of sharding or rollups. Despite its ups and downs that culminated at the bottom of the bear market after the FTX crash, it
In the digital networked age, people’s attention often overlooks local problems in favour of global ones, which don’t necessarily impact them in their daily lives, or over which they don’t have a say due to the skewed Pareto distribution of pow