BlockchainGandalf
136 episodes - English - Latest episode: 9 months ago -This channel features regular updates devoted to explaining issues surrounding blockchain, from the technical through to economics and philosophy. I also look at tech startup issues, innovation, and the patenting process.
You can get a copy of my book at http://mybook.to/moveover or read more about it at http://www.thinklair.com/
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Episodes
IPFS and the browser
November 02, 2021 11:46 - 4 minutes - 4.59 MBToday I have a brief introduction to the InterPlanetary File System for you, from a browser user's perspective. People are now familiar with typing HTTPS:// into the address bar of a browser (even though most don't know what it means), and the idea of domains (you know, things like www.thinklair.com), and that web pages are tacked on to the end of domains. But we're now seing the IPFS making an appearance in some browsers, for example in Brave, where you can type IPFS:// In this episode I...
The all-new black-hat bug-bounty system
November 01, 2021 21:12 - 3 minutes - 3.11 MBBryan Sanya Mondoh pointed me at yet another nine-figure loss in the cryptocurrency and DeFi space - trading platform BXH lost $130 million. And an accompanying offer from the exploited exchange to the hackers offering a bonus and wiping the slate clean if they returned the funds. There's a $1 million bounty on offer. This is seriously broken. The message that is being sent out goes against all that has been achieved in providing bug bounties and recognized systems for people who find weak...
Improving NFTs through licenses and enhanced liquidity
October 31, 2021 20:29 - 6 minutes - 5.88 MBThere are three problems with artwork NFTs at the moment: the buyer isn't getting much more than a row in a database, sales are linear and infrequent, so there is no liquidity, and hence price discovery is speculative rather than investment or trade-driven, and ongoing royalties are difficult to implement Through the use of capped Automated Market Makers and an interesting token-to-license path, Vitomir Jevremovic is aiming to solve all of those problems in one go. In this video, I talk...
Capped Automated Market Makers
October 31, 2021 20:20 - 4 minutes - 3.76 MBI'm not the only inventor on the block. I've had quite a few conversations with Vitomir Jevremovic recently about a new concept he's come up with - the capped AMM. It's an interesting DeFi concept that he's built a prototype for, which places an upper limit on how much of one of the tokens in the token pair the contract can hold. In this video, I briefly explain how AMMs work, and then cover what different properties the cap adds to the AMM. They relate to price-discovery, and an alternat...
NFTs: going beyond the usual suspects
October 31, 2021 15:39 - 21 minutes - 20.2 MBMilly Perry asked me, "I wonder if you could go beyond the 'usual suspects' (digital assets) to the physical assets or into the future?" And so in this episode, I start from basic building blocks, talk about the meaning of ownership, what a cryptocurrency represents, what a fungible token could, and then with that foundation I move on to non-fungible tokens. Physical assets are reached about a third of the way in, and the future is two-thirds of the way through the episode. And yet I've o...
Web 3.0: what it is and why does it matter?
October 31, 2021 15:34 - 38 minutes - 35.6 MBIn the late eighties the World Wide Web was invented, and has since proved to be one of the most transformative recent technologies. One of the reasons for this is that it has developed to become ubiquitous and highly useable. With Web 2.0, interactiveness was introduced, allowing anyone with a mobile phone or desktop to create and disseminate content. In this episode, as part of the Unit Masters Program, I talk about the up-and-coming Web 3.0 - which promises to remove many of the walled ...
Where are the cybersecurity guards?
October 31, 2021 15:27 - 2 minutes - 1.86 MBI was watching a video by John Oliver, in which he quotes a shocking statistic. 85% of hospitals do not have an onsite computer security professional. We all understand why physical guards are needed at hospitals, airports, and places like that. Why don't we have the same attitude towards protecting the virtual world in which all our essential data lives? In fifty years (or if we're lucky, perhaps just five), people are going to look back at this era and wonder why we were so cavalier an...
Issue a token!
October 31, 2021 15:25 - 3 minutes - 2.85 MBYou've planned your DeFi or smart contract project, advertised it, and there's interest in it. What do you do next? Issue a token, of course! But is that always the right thing to do? Are the better (and possibly more ethical) choices? More about that in this episode.
Standards lock us in
October 31, 2021 15:23 - 4 minutes - 3.74 MBToday I am talking about standards - which are good things to have, but as is always the case with good things, they also have their downside. In the episode, I look at the ERC20, ERC721 and ERC1155 standards in the world of smart contracts, and discuss why the latter isn't winning out over the other two yet.
Passive income from crypto assets?
October 31, 2021 15:14 - 5 minutes - 5.31 MBCapitalism is all about turning a profit from the wealth that you have, without having to do any work. And crypto assets are capital, but how can you use those assets to your advantage without lifting a finger? After all, that's what "passive income" is all about. In this episode, I talk about some of the DeFi protocols out there that allow you to deposit your virtual wealth and then see it increase. If you're lucky.
Blockchain and Altruism
October 31, 2021 15:12 - 5 minutes - 4.82 MBBlockchain projects devoted to charity have a problem, in that the underlying mechanism that drives blockchains is 'financial' incentivization. Mind you, a lot of conventionally funded charity projects suffer from similar problems. Don't get me wrong - my preference would be for us to interact and transact as human beings and social beings, rather than as market actors using the price system, but I'm not seeing much of that in the crypto space. Though to be fair, most of us only return emp...
Blockchain Governance and the Fourth Estate
October 31, 2021 14:19 - 8 minutes - 8.31 MBIn simple terms, blockchain governance is the method by which a blockchain is maintained, managed, and improved. For example, deciding to change a protocol is an act of governance. So is rolling back the chain after a hack. Different blockchains have different governance systems, and many of them have grown and evolved in an ad-hoc manner. Some of the parties that have an influence over how the blockchain runs are: the developers, the miners, whales (people with lots of tokens), and the us...
Frontrunning the NFT markets
October 31, 2021 13:41 - 2 minutes - 2.29 MBFrontrunning is a stock market term whereby you use insider knowledge about upcoming trades to get in on the action before the rest of the market can. So it's a form of insider trading. It's been a concern in DeFi for a while. Now it turns out that there's a version potentially happening in the NFT market space - namely on OpenSea.io. Find out how by listening to the episode. (At the point I read the tweet, which is here - https://twitter.com/RiceFarmerNFT/status/1437956078130585611 , it ...
Moving an NFT between chains?
October 31, 2021 13:39 - 5 minutes - 4.64 MBI was asked if it was possible to move an NFT off one chain, and onto another. The answer is, "yes ... sort of", but this question reveals to me that most people don't really understand what blockchains are doing. In the meantime, in this episode I discuss the question and then get sidetracked into talking about the different values of different blockchains.
How can I trust a remote blockchain developer?
October 31, 2021 13:37 - 3 minutes - 3.37 MBWith more and more small start-up projects outsourcing software development work to contractors, especially in the blockchain space, I am sometimes asked, "How can you trust the developer you hire?" This is especially pertinent in DeFi or cryptocurrency projects, because the software may eventually be moving around or locking up millions or even billions of dollars in crypto-assets. Watch the video to discover the number one criterion for determining the trustworthiness of your remote deve...
What is Tokenomics?
October 31, 2021 12:58 - 3 minutes - 2.79 MBIn this video, I talk about the relatively new discipline of "tokenomics", and the emergence of a new job, namely tokenomics specialist. In conventional business, we have people who decide how much a company is going to charge for their product, how many units will be released into the market and at what rate, and so on. With the aim being to maximize company profits. The same kind of thing is (or should be) going on in blockchain organizations, but there it's called tokenomics rather tha...
Open Authentication doesn't do what you think it does
October 31, 2021 11:35 - 5 minutes - 5.09 MBIn this episode, I talk about OAuth, or open authentication, which is the protocol and process sequence whereby you can log in to one website using your account on another website. You know, the "Log on using Facebook" button that crops up here and there. But the fact is, you aren't logging in. Something subtly different is actually happening. More on that in the episode. Incidentally, SOULS is live at https://souls.fi
How did Compound lose 90 million dollars?
October 31, 2021 11:27 - 7 minutes - 6.76 MBThe DeFi protocol Compound accidentally paid out 90 million dollars today to people who had deposited crypto-assets in their smart contract. But what exactly went wrong under the hood? That's the discussion in today's episode, in which I present an analogy to explain what the bug was, why it wasn't detected earlier, and why it allowed investors to withdraw astronomical sums. I also cannot resist the temptation to comment on Compound's initial response, which was a nervous knee-jerk reacti...
NFTs and Social Media
October 31, 2021 11:15 - 3 minutes - 3.62 MBTwitter has been working on integrating NFTs with their social media platform, as have I with my SOULS contract. But it turns out we're working in different directions. Twitter is looking to authenticate ownership of an NFT so you can use the image linked to in the NFT metadata as your avatar on Twitter, with a special check-mark to show you actually own it, rather than just making copies of the image from any NFT you fancy, and uploading it yourself. I'm producing a token that allows you...
NFTs and copyrighting 576 pixels
October 31, 2021 10:58 - 7 minutes - 6.7 MBOne of the issues that still hasn't managed to be resolved in the mainstream NFT markets is what you are actually buying other than a record of ownership in a distributed ledger of a row that contains a link to a file. Many people still think they are "buying" the art pointed to by an NFT, but that's generally not the case. For example, the Larva Labs CryptoPunks does have a contract of sorts, but it does things like put an upper cap of 100,000$ that can be earned using the punk that the N...
How to get into Ethereum programming
October 31, 2021 10:56 - 4 minutes - 4.34 MBA couple of years ago I released a short episode on how to get into blockchain programming, covering a few general points that needed to be considered. In this post, I talk more specifically about how to get into Ethereum programming, which splits into two categories - writing and deploying (and testing!) smart contracts, and producing websites that interface with such contracts (also known as web3 programming).
How come there can only be 21 million bitcoins?
October 31, 2021 10:38 - 4 minutes - 4.62 MBJamie Dimon asked the question the other day, "How do you know it ends at 21 million?" followed with a few questions that had a scornful tone about the reading of code. It's understandable that he doesn't read code - most people don't know where to begin. I don't know if viruses, DNA, or black holes actually exist. So I rely on biologists or physicists to confirm or deny their existence. I thought I would do Jamie Dimon a favour, look up the relevant code, and then explain it. He's a bank...
What is the main purpose of Web 3.0?
October 31, 2021 10:36 - 3 minutes - 3.09 MBThe reason for web 3.0 is so obvious to people working in the space that they often forget to draw attention to it when explaining it to other people. I failed to mention it explicitly in my video series on the topic of Web 3.0. And it's the number one user error that I encountered after launching my SOULS.fi NFT token website. Fortunately, Thomas Lukasik pointed out to me that I really should make a video about it. And so I have.
Should banks be allowed to blow themselves up?
October 31, 2021 10:29 - 4 minutes - 4.12 MBIn trading, a blow-up describes the "complete and abject failure" of an individual, company, or hedge fund. When an individual trader "blows up", it's game over for them, and they move on to being an Uber driver or something like that. But banks are bailed out when they manage to work around the regulations designed to protect them and then trigger a financial crisis. This is because they provide the infrastructure and mechanisms for trade, investment, and ... just everyday living. Our soc...
What kind of blockchain developer do you need?
October 31, 2021 10:27 - 3 minutes - 3.38 MBSaying you're looking to recruit a blockchain developer is like saying you're looking for a lawyer. Specifics matter - just as you don't want a patent attorney defending you against criminal charges, you don't want a web3 interface designer writing smart contract implementations of financial instruments. You need to be specific. Mind you, traditional software developer recruiting agencies are often clueless about the underlying skill requirements for the roles they are looking to fill. It'...
NFTs and automatic royalties
October 31, 2021 10:25 - 5 minutes - 5.37 MBDid Van Gogh die in vain? Wouldn't it be nice if non-fungible token art carried with it an automatic royalty, so that every time the artwork was sold, the artist would receive a percentage of the sale price? Kind of like what happens in some jurisdictions when artworks are sold through auction houses? In this video, I explain why this isn't going to work, and why NFTs aren't magic bullets that can ensure artists who become successful get a guaranteed share of the profits from the subsequen...
How to interview a blockchain developer candidate
October 31, 2021 10:23 - 4 minutes - 4.29 MBIt's a known problem in the hiring world that assessing the competence and skill of a potential candidate for a role is difficult. It's even worse if you're hiring in a space that you're unfamiliar with, because it's easier for the candidate to pretend they know more than they do, or are less experienced than they present themselves. And blockchain is an unfamiliar space for most recruiters and hiring companies. In this video I discuss the problem, and some of the solutions.
Good blockchain developers are not standard interview candidates
October 31, 2021 10:05 - 3 minutes - 2.88 MBThe best, most experienced blockchain developers with years of experience usually have a different background to your average applicant for a software development role. They're likely to fall into several of the categories below: 📀 they get obsessed with technology early on and like to work on new things 😠 they have strong opinions about traditional finance, and those opinions may transfer over into other areas 😵💫 they're risk takers - after all they sank hours of their time into ...
Why you can't find a blockchain developer
October 31, 2021 10:02 - 4 minutes - 4.13 MBThe blockchain space has sure hotted up since the cryptowinter of 2018. As a result, blockchain engineers and smart contract developers are in more demand than ever. Entrepreneurs and companies are seeing vast sums of money pouring into DeFi and payment remittance project, and want in on the action. What they don't want to do is pay for the back-end work that needs to be done to design, build, and run such project. if you want to hire someone suitable, you're going to have to compromise....
Towards a definition of "intrinsic"
October 31, 2021 09:48 - 8 minutes - 7.47 MBIf ever there was a misused word, it's the word "intrinsic". Even some of the dictionary definitions are suspect. Attach it to the word "value" and you enter a philosophical minefield. Now we have an incompletely understood word modifying another incompletely understood word. And this is all very well if we are just engaged in philosophical word games, but the problem is that the term "intrinsic value" is often used by people in authority to dismiss things that go against their agenda. An...
Filtering the truth
October 31, 2021 09:27 - 6 minutes - 6.29 MBThe final level to discuss is the presentation layer, which consists of the use of a website and web3 libraries in order to retrieve data from the blockchain to put on a web page, and in order to write data back to the blockchain in the form of transactions, usually using an integrated web browser blockchain wallet such as MetaMask. The thing to realize here, is that the web site developer has complete control over how they present the data they retrieve from the blockchain to the user. The...
A diversion into the world of sidechains
October 31, 2021 09:00 - 4 minutes - 3.96 MBThis is a digression into why the layers that I am talking about in this video series are not related to "layer 2 solutions" like Polygon and Binance Smart Chain. Instead I'm talking about layers in the same manner as the upper layers of the OSI seven layer model. I find it odd that "layer 2" solutions use the word "layer", because they don't really sit on top of the base blockchain that they use for anchoring (i.e. the Ethereum blockchain). Instead they kind of sit beside it, with bridges ...
Higher layers offer more control
October 31, 2021 08:59 - 3 minutes - 2.92 MBAs a developer, you have a choice as to what blockchain you use, but very little if any control over the mechanisms that power it. It's a bit like choosing a country and a language to write your book in. If it's a smart contract blockchain, move up a level, and you can start to exert more control - for example, you can release a centralized token on a decentralized blockchain, if you so choose. But there are still some fundamental things that you will be tied to, if you want your contract...
Layers, control, and censorship
October 31, 2021 08:58 - 4 minutes - 3.86 MBIn this video, part three of the series, I talk about how smart contract blockchains such as Ethereum allow developers to play with levels of decentralization in the smart contracts they deploy. For example, although Ethereum is "censorship resistant" due to it's blockchain consensus system, it is perfectly possible to release smart contracts that are highly centralized, under the control of one entity, and therefore vulnerable to censorship. For example, it was revealed during the Compoun...
Ledgers within ledgers
October 31, 2021 08:56 - 3 minutes - 3.59 MBHaving looked at what a ledger is, and why the concept of a ledger is significant within blockchain, it's time to move up a layer and consider "ledgers within ledgers". When a smart contract instantiates a fungible or non-fungible token, what it is doing is implementing another ledger in order to keep track of the balance or ownership of the token. So - tokens are created by building legders within ledgers. This video goes into what that means at greater depth.
How to keep track of imaginary things
October 31, 2021 08:31 - 3 minutes - 3.63 MBIn this video, I start with a recap of what a ledger is, in order to set the groundwork for later videos on the different levels that exist in blockchain. This will help you to understand what is going on in cryptocurrencies and NFTs, and what parts are arbitrary, and which are fixed. (Well, ultimately all of blockchain is arbitrary, because we invented it, but some parts are now fixed, and other parts can be "played with". But more on that later in the series...)