Crypto is largely reliant on incentive mechanisms, and liquidity mining is one of the more recent cryptoeconomic incentive models to emerge. When decentralized exchanges need liquidity, they can leverage liquidity mining to incentivize users to provide it. In turn, the “miners” generate revenue, generally in the form of a native tokens, proportional to their share of liquidity in a pool. This summer saw a surge in activity surrounding this concept, with Synthetix a notable player. Kain Warwick is the founder of Synthetix, a company creating synthetic assets for DeFi, enabling exposure to fiat currencies, commodities, and cryptocurrencies. Hasu is a crypto researcher and writer with a focus on game theory and economics. They joined us to explain the key concepts behind liquidity mining, how and why it was created, and its increasingly important role in DeFi. Topics covered in this episode: Introductions by Kain and HasuHow and when liquidity mining was createdWhat they hoped to achieve with their liquidity mining programsHow liquidity mining works in SynthetixIncentive mechanismsYield Farming and 'getting rich'How Automated Market Makers (AMM) played a part in the success of liquidity miningHow Uniswap leverages liquidity miningProjects that don't currently have liquidity mining but would benefit from itUse cases in pre-blockchain systemsEpisode links: Synthetix websiteKain on Epicenter, Episode 325Uncommon CoreDeribit InsightsSynthetix on TwitterKain on TwitterHasu on TwitterSponsors: cPanel: cPanel's WordPress Toolkit is the all in one solution that makes hosting your website easier than it's ever been - https://epicenter.rocks/cpanelAlgorand: Learn more about Algorand and how it’s unique design makes it easy for developers to build sophisticated applications - https://algorand.com/epicenter1inch: Discover the best rates and most efficient swapping routes across leading DEXes. Optimize on gas cost and execute DeFi trades faster with 1inch V2 - https://epicenter.rocks/1inchThis episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/370

Filecoin is a peer-to-peer network data storage network, with built-in economic incentives for storage providers. It facilitates open-markets for storing and retrieving data, in which anyone can participate. Users can pay the network to access storage space, which can be encrypted, replicated, and highly available. After years of development and iteration, Filecoin recently launched its mainnet. The long term vision of the protocol is a fully decentralized future for the web. Juan Benet, Founder & CEO of Protocol Labs, returns for the second part of this 2-part episode. In this show we deep dive in to the technical aspects of Filecoin, how Juan and his team decided to design it, and the types of projects that are building on top of it. Topics covered in this episode: How Filecoin works under the hood and the life cycle of dataThe role of miners in the protocolThe bridge between Filecoin and EthereumHow the economics of Filecoin were designedHow governance works in the Filecoin networkThe Filecoin FoundationThe projects that are building on top of FilecoinJuan’s views on blockchain scalability and Ethereum 2.0, and the challenges Web3 facesEpisode links: Filecoin websiteProtocol Labs websiteIPFS websiteEpisode #367 with Juan Benet (Part 1 in this series)Episode #100 with Juan BenetFilecoin on TwitterJuan on TwitterSponsors: cPanel: cPanel's WordPress Toolkit is the all in one solution that makes hosting your website easier than it's ever been - https://epicenter.rocks/cpanelAlgorand: Learn more about Algorand and how it’s unique design makes it easy for developers to build sophisticated applications - https://algorand.com/epicenterThis episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/368