“Epicenter Live” and Interchain Conversations conference sessions

This week, we’re releasing two bonus episodes which features content from the recent Cosmos conference in Berlin.

Last week, Brian, Sunny, Meher, and I attended the Interchain Conversations conference in Berlin. As the inaugural Cosmos conference, it brought together over 200 people in the Cosmos community including many developers, validators and members of the Tendermint team. The conference was followed why a two-day hackathon (or HackAtom) over the weekend, which was a lot of fun!

It was great to connect with a lot of you, our listeners, and of course, meet the Cosmos community.

This week, we’re bringing you two bonus episodes recorded from the Interchain Conversations conference!

Episode 1 — Epicenter Live and a Conversation with Jae Kwon

“Epicenter Live” on stage at Interchain Conversation (credit: Gregory Landua)

In this episode, you will hear the first edition of Epicenter Live, which we recorded on stage during the event. In this conversation, Brian, Sunny, Meher and I discuss the topic of blockchain interoperability from different angles.

• What the blockchain interoperability landscape looks like today
• The different approaches to shared security
• How different blockchains address application composability
• The importance of chain sovereignty
• How stakeholders impact network governance
• The concept of decentralized bots on Cosmos
• The notion that Proof of Stake blockchains are in fact DAOs
• The potential generalization of blockchains
• Meher makes a great analogy between evolutionary biology and blockchains
• The importance of exit mechanisms
• The role of validators as enablers of a network and its applications

Q&A with Jae — we both look a bit uncomfortable (credit: Zaki Manian)

The second part of this episode features my conversation with Jae Kwon, the founder of Cosmos. We sat down for a Q&A at the beginning of the conference to set the stage for the days to come.

• Jae’s thoughts on how the network is running since launch
• The role of the Tendermint company (All in Bits) moving forward
• The potential for centralization and how to mitigate risks
• Cosmos’ approach to security in contrast to other blockchains
• The Interchain Foundation’s role in coordinating software upgrades
• The IBC protocol roadmap
• Jae’s role in both the ICF and Tendermint, and the potential conflict there
• When we should expect Jae to get tattoos on his head

Episode 2 — Validator Panel and Governance Debates

Choose your validator wisely (credit: Sebastien Couture)

In the first segment of episode two, Brian moderates the validator panel. which included Florian Liss of Staking Facilities, Hendrik Hofstadt of Certus One, Aurel Iancu of Dokia Capital, and Jun Soon Kim of stake.fish.

• The role of validators in Cosmos and Proof of Stake in general
• The pros and cons of having a large validator sets
• How one should think about centralization in Proof of Stake
• The distinction between decentralization in staking, governance and validator infrastructure
• The risks associated with exchanges entering the validation space
• The role of validators in making the Cosmos Hub more valuable
• The long-term purpose of the Cosmos Hub in the ecosystem
• How validators make decisions about which sidechains (zones) they stake
• The criteria delegators should take into account when choosing a validator

Our favorite Byzantine General, Sunny Aggarwal

The second part of this episode is a governance debate moderated by Sunny. The first topic is on plutocracy and features Jae Kwon and Rigel Rozanski. The second is about revokable dictatorship and features Chris Goes and Jack Jampolin. There’s some real gems in this one!

We hope you’ll enjoy these sessions and we look forward to bringing you more content like this in the future. Until next time, be sure to subscribe to the podcast to receive new Epicenter episodes every week!