Bridging Digital Nations: A Discussion on the Corruption of Centralized Bridges, Academia vs field work & The Importance of Community in Decentralization with Alexei Zamyatin

This episode of the #citizencosmos podcast features Alexei Zamyatin Co-Founder of Interlay, a modular, programmable layer between Bitcoin and the multi-chain ecosystem that unlocks novel decentralized use cases for BTC. Interlay utilizes an already operational, decentralized bridge to connect Bitcoin with a lending protocol and AMM decentralized exchange, enabling Bitcoin holders to access basic financial services without relying on centralized exchanges We spoke to Alexei about Interlay and: - Payment channels - Who pays the price for decentralization? - The perfect storm leading to a death spiral - Death Spirals - How do we build trustless bridges? - Economic interests and tribalism - Economic vs statistical security - Profits at the expense of the good of the people - Centralized power corrupts - Does full decentralization exist? - One coin to rule them all - Imposter Syndrome - Early cross chain communication - Domain name squatting - Weak links in centralized systems - Should I build, just because I can? - Hostile governance attacks. - Academia and research as a launch pad for a successful project - Academia vs field work - The need for Altruism in web3 - Solving a problem is a good place to start - Thesis topics as a gateway to Bitcoin - Risks of relying on bridges - Failures of bridges wiping out entire ecosystems - The importance of community in decentralization - Ethical questions around building - Ethical implications of breakthroughs - Differences between native and wrapped tokens - Diminishing trust in institutions - The future of bridging - Computer Science as a way to be a creative - Analysis and effects of merge mining If you like what we do at Citizen Cosmos: - Stake with Citizen Cosmos validator - Help support the project via Gitcoin Grants - Listen to the YouTube version - Read our blog - Check out our GitHub - Join our Telegram - Follow us on Twitter - Sign up to the RSS feed Special Guest: Alexei Zamyatin.Links:AxelarBinanceBitcoinChatGPT4CosmosEthereumEvmosFTXGravityInterlayLightningLunaMoonbeamNamecoinNeutronParadigmPolkadotSilkroadTorVitalic