The concept of a decentralized exchange has been a holy grail in the cryptocurrency space for many years. Many attempts have been made, but most decentralized exchanges suffered from central points of failure, poor user experience and little liquidity. Launched during Ethereum's DevCon 2018, Uniswap is one of the first fully decentralized exchanges and managed to become the leading DEX very fast. We were joined by Uniswap Founder Hayden Adams to discuss Uniswap's unique model, the different participants in the protocol and the importance of decentralized exchanges for the blockchain space. Topics covered in this episode: How Hayden's exploratory project to learn smart contract development took off and became Uniswap How Uniswap works and its different participants The advantage of an automated exchange instead of using order books The role of liquidity providers in Uniswap Feedback loops that can make Uniswap markets popular or collapse The challenging economics of liquidity shares Addressing Arthur Hayes' criticism of decentralized exchanges Why Uniswap didn't create a tokeneconomic monetization model Episode links: Uniswap Exchange Protocol Uniswap Whitepaper Uniswap: Getting Started & Documentation Unisocks Exchange Distributed 2018: Presentation about Decentralized Exchanges by Arthur Hayes (BitMEX) Buidl Asia 2019 Conference in Seoul, Korea on July 22-23 HackAtom Seoul on July 19-21 Sponsors: Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/292

We’re joined by Dominic Tarr, a sailor, and the Founder of Secure Scuttlebutt. This curiously named project has a fascinating approach to creating a truly distributed social network. One might even say that Secure Scuttlebutt is “localized” as it gracefully degrades to Sneakernet, something few blockchain projects can claim. In actuality, the SSB protocol isn’t a blockchain in the traditional sense – each user’s feed acts as a sort of localized chain of posts, signed by their public key, and possibly encrypted for a friend's key to decrypt. When users meet, the system syncs their local databases using a gossip protocol and replicates the data. Encrypted data is transported from peer, to peer, to peer (or friends of friends) until it reaches its intended recipient. User may also optionally rely on public servers to sync data over the internet. Topics covered in this episode: Daniels background and life living on a boat off the coast of New Zealand How being at sea gave him the idea for Secure Scuttlebutt What is Secure Scuttlebutt and what are the goals of the project The issues with centralization and redefining decentralization as a positive statement The notion that the technological singularity only serves the goals of centralized power How SSB stores information and how posts get propagates from between friends, and friends of friends How the network leverages “Pub” servers to sync data over the internet Usage of the platform and the communities which thrive there The cost of spam and how users protect against DDoS attacks The project’s funding and roadmap Episode links: Secure Scuttlebutt website Scuttlebutt Protocol Guide Manyverse mobile client Designing a Secret Handshake: AuthenticatedKey Exchange as a Capability System EfficientReconciliationandFlow ControlforAnti-Entropy Protocols Scuttlebutt: an off-grid P2P social network that runs without servers and can fall back to sneakernet The Nomad Who’s Exploding the Internet Into Pieces Counter-Anti-Disintermediation “The Third Web” interview with Dominic Tarr Dominic Tarr on Twitter Sponsors: Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/290