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

Citizen Web3

---

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:

• Axelar
• Binance
• Bitcoin
• ChatGPT4
• Cosmos
• Ethereum
• Evmos
• FTX
• Gravity
• Interlay
• Lightning
• Luna
• Moonbeam
• Namecoin
• Neutron
• Paradigm
• Polkadot
• Silkroad
• Tor
• Vitalic