Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies
583 episodes - English - Latest episode: 20 days ago - ★★★★★ - 143 ratingsEpicenter brings you in-depth conversations about the technical, economic and social implications of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. Every week, we interview business leaders, engineers academics and entrepreneurs, and bring you a diverse spectrum of opinions and points of view.
Epicenter is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst, Meher Roy and Felix Lutsch. Since 2014, our episodes have been downloaded over 8 million times.
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Episodes
James Prestwich: Summa One – Cross-chain Financial Instruments and Contracts
December 12, 2018 17:17 - 1 hour - 61.9 MBWhile trustless interactions on Ethereum are native to the protocol, trustless interactions between the Ethereum blockchain and other blockchains are difficult to implement. Interoperability protocols heavily rely on atomic swaps, which typically come with a free option problem. For this episode we’re joined by James Prestwich, CEO at Summa. Summa designs and implements cross-chain financial contracts and instruments such as swaps, options, futures, and auctions. Summa recently conducted a ...
Nick Sullivan: Cloudflare – The Internet’s (De)centralized Security Blanket
December 04, 2018 14:16 - 1 hour - 73.3 MBWe enter dozens of trust relationships ever time we interact with the Web. Browsers, ISPs, DNS providers, cloud hosting companies, all the way down to the handful of people who control certificate root keys; we rely on the integrity of these intermediaries to serve reliable, and accurate information. The concentration of power by any one of these actors threatens to compromise the very foundational principles of the Web. Decentralized technologies, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tor, and IPFS seek ...
Justin Drake: Ethereum’s Audacious Roadmap to Build a True World Computer
November 27, 2018 14:00 - 1 hour - 65.8 MBThe Ethereum vision has always been to create a world computer. But its scalability and performance limitations have meant that it has fallen far short of that vision. Yet, work on scaling Ethereum has exploded in breadth and complexity over the past years. From variants of PoS, to Plasma / Plasma Cash, sharding, EWASM, BLS signatures, everything has been on the table. While confusing on the surface, underneath a coherent vision for a new Ethereum that will scale near infinitely has emerged....
Brian Behlendorf: Hyperledger – From Blockchain Hype to Production Networks
November 20, 2018 22:09 - 1 hour - 74.2 MBMost observers of the ecosystem will probably agree that 2015-2017 were the years of the enterprise blockchain. It was during that time that many startups catering to enterprise were founded and funded, including Monax and Stratumn (where Brian and Sebastien previously worked). For the permissioned blockchain camp, adoption would come in the form of enterprise use cases, arguing that public networks carried too much risk, and lacked needed features like privacy. While much of the hype has su...
Ben Sharafian & Stefan Thomas: Coil – A New Business Model for the Web
November 13, 2018 20:20 - 1 hour - 83.3 MBThe difficulties of compensating content creators for their work has been a driving force of the web for decades. It gave rise to advertising-driven tech giants like Google and Facebook and contributed to the decline of industries like music and publishing. Coil aims to change this and leverage blockchain and the Interledger Protocol to build a new business model for the web. We were joined by Coil Founder and former Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas and Coil Co-Founder Ben Sharifian to discuss thei...
Devcon4 Recap – From HODL to BUIDL
November 06, 2018 18:44 - 56 minutes - 51.7 MBIt’s that time of year again, Devcon time! Just as the conference was wrapping up, we sat down at the Prague Congress Center for a Devcon4 recap. Join Brian, Friederike, Sebastien, and a surprise guest host as we share our thoughts on the event, and how the Ethereum ecosystem has evolved since we last met in Cancun. Topics covered in this episode: Devcon4 compared to Devcon3 Changes to the Ethereum Foundation management Serenity (Ethereum 2.0) roadmap The shift from HODL to BUIDL The a...
Gavin Wood: Substrate, Polkadot and the Case for On-Chain Governance
October 31, 2018 09:49 - 1 hour - 88.3 MBFrom one of the main Ethereum clients, to Polkadot to Substrate; Parity has become exceptional at developing successful open-source blockchain projects. Their latest effort Substrate provides a framework to easily create custom blockchains. Building on cutting-edge technologies like Web Assembly, Substrate also offers automated on-chain upgrades. We were joined by Gavin Wood, who was previously co-founder and CTO of Ethereum and founded Parity. We talked about the early Ethereum days, how P...
Monica Quaintance: Kadena – Public and Permissioned Blockchains that Scale
October 23, 2018 22:21 - 1 hour - 78.2 MBWe’re joined by Monica Quaintance, Head of Engineering and Adoption at Kadena. While most companies providing enterprise solutions focus primarily on permissioned systems, Kadena is building both a public network protocol and private blockchain infrastructure. Their Chainweb protocol will soon launch as a public network and smart contract platform. The company claims their novel approach to proof of work offers enormous gains on transaction throughput, even at scale, while benefiting from th...
Kevin Owocki: Gitcoin – Aligning Incentives in Open-Source Development
October 17, 2018 19:19 - 1 hour - 65.4 MBBuilding open source software is a collaborative process which relies on good faith and willingness of volunteers. While most of the software we use daily relies heavily on open-source libraries, incentive models are broken. Repo maintainers are eager to see their projects evolve, but have little leverage to encourage developers to contribue. And projects contributors create enormous value by dedicating their time and expertise while getting little in return. Both open and closed-source proj...
Aleksandr Bulkin & Jake Brukhman: CoinFund – Crypto-Investing by Community Building
October 11, 2018 13:00 - 1 hour - 74.5 MBCoinFund is one of the earliest crypto-funds to have taken shape, forming in early 2016. The fund is well known for running an active Community Slack, conducting great podcast interviews with cryptocurrency projects and an emphasis on building network nodes / services. We are joined by Jake Brukhman, CEO, and Alexander Bulkin, Chief Alchemist, to discuss their latest thoughts on investing in the cryptocurrency space. We cover a wide variety of themes such as their opinions on the “fat proto...
Arthur Breitman & Kathleen Breitman: Tezos – The Long Road Towards A Digital Commonwealth
October 05, 2018 08:47 - 1 hour - 82.3 MBThe Tezos whitepaper, published in 2014, anticipated several areas that would become major issues for blockchain networks. Especially around governance and smart contract security, Tezos proposed original solutions. The project later went on to raise $232m in the biggest token sale at the time. Recently, the Tezos network launched as the first of a wave of innovative next-generation blockchain networks. We were joined by Tezos co-founders Arthur and Kathleen Breitman to discuss the history ...
Allen Day: Google’s Mission to Provide Open Datasets for Public Blockchains
September 26, 2018 13:11 - 1 hour - 62.6 MBPublic blockchains produce enormous amounts of data. In theory, anyone can access the raw contents of transaction and blocks. In practice, however, querying blockchains can prove to be a daunting task. The difficulty lies in the fact that blockchains are particular types of distributed databases and thus carry several limitations. Most, if not all, blockchains lack the most basic SQL querying capabilities supported by nearly every off-the-shelf database system. Take Bitcoin as an example. ...
Angela C. Walch: The Case for Treating Developers as Fiduciaries in Public Blockchains
September 19, 2018 11:37 - 1 hour - 66.8 MBThe expectation has become widespread that blockchains will end up underpinning major societal infrastructures. The narrative in the blockchain space is that networks are decentralized and trustless and thus regulation should not apply to networks directly. Legal scholar Angela C. Walch has been questioning terms like decentralization and trustlessness and argues that blockchains shift the need for trust rather than remove it. Her controversial ideas include that key developers of open-sourc...
Ralph Merkle: Revolutionizing Democracy Using DAOs (rebroadcast)
September 12, 2018 21:38 - 1 hour - 69.8 MBLegendary scientist and cryptography pioneer Ralph Merkle joined us to discuss his recent paper on DAOs. Merkle examined how the voting mechanisms in today’s democracies are flawed and how a decentralized, transparent DAO making decisions using prediction markets could create more efficient democratic systems. Topics covered in this episode: Merkle proofs, Merkle Roots and his early forays into cryptography Blockchains as living organisms Why DAOs will be subject to a Darwinian evolution...
Glen Weyl: Radical Markets – Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society
September 05, 2018 18:13 - 59 minutes - 54.9 MBThe rise of populism and increasing inequality have led to widespread questioning of democracy and capitalism. Glen Weyl, a political economist and Principal Researcher at Microsoft, along with legal scholar Eric Posner, published a book called ‘Radical Markets’. Radical Markets explores how restructuring property rights and voting systems could lead to more efficient markets and a more just society. Glen joined us to discuss the book and why the blockchain space is a fertile testbed to expl...
Clement Lessage & Federico Ast: Kleros – Crowdsourced Arbitration for Blockchain Applications
August 30, 2018 19:46 - 1 hour - 64.2 MBDispute resolution is the process by which contracting parties settle disagreements. Whether in the form of litigation, arbitration, or other means of mediation, every contract defines a dispute resolution mechanism and jurisdiction. It is the metaphorical Lady Justice, measuring the strength of each party’s arguments, and reaching a decision based on evidence. Smart contracts are unique in this sense. Unlike traditional contracts, they are rigid and deterministic. Written in computer code,...
Ryan Zurrer: Polychain – A Crypto Hedge Fund Success Story
August 22, 2018 14:03 - 1 hour - 80.5 MBWe are joined by Ryan Zurrer, Principal and Venture partner, at Polychain capital. Polychain capital is a breakout crypto hedge fund with over $100 million in assets under management, and large investments in major crypto projects such as Dfinity, Polkadot, Filecoin and Vest. Ryan was the first person to join Olaf Carlson Wee in managing this fund. He built multiple companies in the wind energy industry prior to making a switch to the cryptocurrencies. In this episode, we go behind the scen...
Uri Klarman: bloXroute – Layer-0 Scaling with the Blockchain Distribution Network
August 15, 2018 18:22 - 1 hour - 73.8 MBUntil now, proposals to improve blockchain scalability have addressed the problem in one of two ways. One seeks to increase efficiency by optimizing the blockchain or improving the consensus algorithm. The other comes in the forms of layer-2 solutions such as payment channels or side chains. However, none have addressed the core bottleneck to scalability: TCP/IP network limitations. Improving the speed at which blocks propagate through the network is the layer-0 problem few people consider ...
Ryan Selkis: Messari – Bringing Transparency and Self-Regulation to the Blockchain Industry
August 09, 2018 21:30 - 1 hour - 62.3 MBSince he started blogging as Two Bit Idiot in 2013, Ryan Selkis has been both industry insider and industry critic. Consistently calling out excesses and abuses, but also maintaining his sights on the long-term potential. He recently founded Messari, a project that aims to bring more transparency and fairness to the industry. Messari has narrowed in on siloed, inaccurate and incomplete data as a key factor that allows insiders to profit at the expense of the public. We talked about the vari...
Guy Zyskind: Enigma – Providing Scalable Privacy-Preservation to Smart Contacts
August 02, 2018 02:07 - 1 hour - 59.5 MBPrivacy and scalability are arguably the most challenging issues blockchains face. Scalable privacy-preserving state machines are inherently difficult. While cryptocurrencies like Zcash have proven trustworthy for simple transactions, privacy in smart contract platforms is an entirely different animal. We’re joined by Guy Zyskind, CEO of Enigma, a platform for scalable decentralized apps which preserves privacy. The Enigma network treats Ethereum smart contracts as “secret contracts” and ca...
Martin Becze: Primea – The Next-Generation Blockchain Operating System
July 24, 2018 19:04 - 1 hour - 59.9 MBMartin Becze is a researcher at Dfinity working on a next-generation “Blockchain Operating System” called Primea – a continuation of his work on the eWASM project from his time at the Ethereum Foundation. Primea is an actor based IPC layer intended for use with WebAssembly programs. Martin first learned about Ethereum in 2014 and was immediately drawn into the possibilities opened by having a contracting virtual machines on a blockchain. While the EVM was impressive, Martin saw the possibil...
Anthony Lusardi: Ethereum Classic Cooperative – Accelerating the Growth of ETC
July 17, 2018 09:28 - 1 hour - 58.8 MBThe 2016 Ethereum hard fork left us with two distinct Ethereum chains. While the main Ethereum chain dwarfs Ethereum Classic in terms of market cap, ETC has sustained its position as a significant actor in the broader blockchain ecosystem. ETC’s recent listing on Coinbase demonstrates its credibility as a significant industry player. We’re joined by Anthony Lusardi, Director of the Ethereum Classic Cooperative, an organization who’s goal is to promote the development of the Ethereum Classic...
Evan Shapiro & Izaak Meckler: Coda – A Succinct Blockchain
July 12, 2018 09:32 - 53 minutes - 49.2 MBOne of the key scalability challenges with public cryptocurrency blockchains is that their size grows linearly with the number of transactions. Mature blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum contain >170GB and >1 TB of historical data respectively. New nodes joining these chains need to download this data and verify it in order to become a “full node”. The number of full nodes is a key measure of decentralization, and difficulty becoming a full node translates into future centralization. I...
Neha Narula: MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative – A Research-Driven Approach to Blockchain
July 04, 2018 17:40 - 1 hour - 69.5 MBWhen the Bitcoin Foundation fell apart and funding for Bitcoin core development was needed, the MIT founded the Digital Currency Initiative to step in. In the years since, the DCI has evolved into a vibrant center of cutting edge research on some of the most difficult challenges around blockchain technology. DCI Director Neha Narula joined us to discuss the DCI’s position between academia and industry, their policy on conflicts of interest, and their most fascinating research topics. Topic...
Eric Larchevêque: Ledger – How to Build an Industry-Leading Cryptocurrency Security Company
June 27, 2018 20:28 - 1 hour - 68.7 MBBefore founding what is now one of the most successful companies in the cryptocurrency industry, Eric Larchevêque and his co-founder opened La Maison du Bitcoin, a Bitcoin education center and co-working space in the second district of Paris. It was through chance encounters in this space that Leger was born in the basement of 35 rue du Caire, where the company also operated a Bitcoin exchange desk and a handful of crypto miners. Eric Larchevêque, CEO of Ledger, joins us again since his las...
Pamela Morgan: Cryptoasset Inheritance Planning
June 21, 2018 19:46 - 1 hour - 63.7 MBWhile many cryptocurrency holders have thought about how to secure their assets, how to pass on cryptoassets in case of one’s death is rarely on people’s mind. Lawyer Pamela Morgan has been helping people and organizations build solutions to safely store their cryptoassets and has recently turned her attention to inheritance planning. Though we have often explored the legal issues surrounding blockchains and cryptocurrencies on Epicenter, never have we discussed the topic of inheritance. We...
Grigore Rosu: The K Framework – A Framework to Formally Define All Programming Languages
June 12, 2018 19:35 - 1 hour - 80.6 MBIn the past few years, we witnessed the development of multiple smart contract languages – Solidity, Viper, Michelson, Scilla etc. These languages need to enable developers to write correct, predictable behavior smart contract code. Each language development effort therefore ends up spending resources into building formal verification toolsets, compilers, debuggers and other developer tools. In this episode, we are joined by Grigore Rosu, Professor of computer science at UIUC (University of...
Amrit Kumar & Dr.Ilya Sergey: Scilla – A Formal Verification Oriented Contract Language
June 06, 2018 07:56 - 1 hour - 65.5 MBWith the rise of smart contract technology, we’ve become acutely aware of the need for smart contract code to accurately reflect the intentions of its author; and for the code to have certain (safe) behaviors in all circumstances. Creating the languages and software tools to enable ordinary developers to write safe contracts has become an intense research endeavor in the cryptocurrency space. Scilla is a Turing incomplete intermediate level language; inspired from the paradigms of functiona...
Matan Field: DAOstack – An Operating System for Collective Intelligence
May 31, 2018 19:27 - 1 hour - 62.5 MBAs a society, we have organized as tribes, hierarchies, and markets to accomplish the most impressive of achievements. Human cooperation and collective organization are present at nearly every significant milestone in the history of human civilization. As we move towards an increasingly connected and automated society and economy, there will become a need for decentralized infrastructure which enables companies and markets to make fast decisions at scale. We’re joined by Matan Field, CEO of...
Luis Cuende: Aragon – Decentralized Governance and the Fight for Freedom
May 24, 2018 16:36 - 56 minutes - 52.1 MBAragon Founder Luis Cuende joined us to discuss their work on building tools for decentralized governance. We covered the origins of his deep drive, why this is a crucial fight for humanity and the tools that Aragon has built. Topics covered in this episode: How Luis became an advisor to the European Commissionas as a 16-year old Why freedom and technology became Luis’ prime obsession The origin story and vision of Aragon The risk surveillance and authoritarianism pose to humanity Why ...
Changpeng Zhao: The Meteoric Rise of Crypto Exchange Binance
May 16, 2018 08:17 - 1 hour - 74.7 MBThe rise of Binance is one of the most astonishing stories in the blockchain space. Within less than a year of its launch, Binance has become the most popular crypto exchange trading over $2bn per day. In the past quarter, Binance made profits of $200m, likely the fastest company ever to reach this success. Binance Founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao (“CZ”) joined us to discuss why he started Binance and the extraordinary organization they built. We discussed the role of the Binance token, how t...
Charles Hoskinson: Cardano – A Third Generation Smart Contract Blockchain
May 08, 2018 20:49 - 1 hour - 88.5 MBWe are joined by Charles Hoskinson, who played an early role in developing Ethereum and BitShares, and is currently the CEO of IOHK. IOHK is an engineering company that undertakes cryptocurrency research, contributes development efforts to the Ethereum Classic ecosystem, and is spearheading the release of Cardano – a third generation blockchain protocol. IOHK has made the news recently after the publication of fundamental research papers on the Proofs of Proof of Work and the Ouroboros PoS a...
Humayun Sheikh & Toby Simpson: Fetch.ai – an intelligent learning blockchain network
May 02, 2018 13:25 - 1 hour - 60.1 MBWe are joined by Humayun Sheikh and Toby Simpson, founders of the Fetch.ai project. Humayun Sheikh is well known as the first investor in DeepMind, one of the leading AI companies in the world. This ambitious project seeks to create a self-learning blockchain network that fosters economic activity/combinations between off-chain AI agents. The fetch blockchain network will allow an AI agent, such as a delivery robot, to autonomously discover economic partners that would find its services and ...
Karl Floersch: Plasma Cash and the Ethereum Roadmap
April 24, 2018 21:18 - 1 hour - 65.1 MBEthereum Foundation researcher Karl Floersch joined us to discuss the main projects to upgrade Ethereum: Casper, Sharding and Plasma. Karl has been playing a key role in creating a new and simpler specification for Ethereum sidechains called Plasma Cash. We discussed the evolution of the Plasma project and what Ethereum’s evolution in the coming years could look like. Topics covered in this episode: How Karl originally became involved in Ethereum The role of Casper, Sharding and Plasma in...
Ajay Prakash & Gavin Brennen: Qubit Protocol – Quantum Computing & The Coming Threat to Crypto
April 17, 2018 20:32 - 1 hour - 66.9 MBWith the advent of mature quantum technologies, many of the critical cryptographic protocols which secure the Internet, financial transactions and even military secrets may become susceptible to new attack vectors. For instance, while it may take a computer millions of years to decipher a public key’s corresponding private key, a sufficiently powerful quantum computer might achieve this in a reasonable amount of time. With this reality looming over us, many in the blockchain space worry that...
Loong Wang & Taiyang Zhang: Republic Protocol – A Decentralized & Trustless Crypto Dark Pool
April 11, 2018 23:00 - 1 hour - 55.2 MBDark pools have existed for as long as there have been financial markets. Over-the-counter, or OTC markets, are sometimes also referred to as ‘upstairs trading,’ evoking the era when firms and high-net-worth individuals would meet in the upper quarters of financial markets to make large trades privately. A dark pool is a private forum where one has access to high volumes of liquidity outside the boundaries of public markets. Orders and trades represented in dark pools typically remain confid...
Ryan John King: FOAM – A Geospatial Proof of Location Protocol for Blockchains and Dapps
April 04, 2018 11:52 - 58 minutes - 53.3 MBIn just over ten years, geospatial tracking has gone from being a niche technology used by the military and outdoor enthusiasts to mass adoption, available to just about every connected device in existence. GPS and other location-tracking systems not only allows us to find our way and share our location but is critical to businesses and governments. However, while GPS has become a standard thanks to its accuracy and availability, decentralized applications can’t rely on its location data as ...
Corey Todaro & John Bass: Hashed Health – Rebooting The Healthcare Industry
March 29, 2018 18:49 - 1 hour - 81.5 MBThe healthcare industry is paradoxical. On the one hand, treatment technologies represent some of the most advanced science known to humankind, while some administrative tasks are still performed using paper and fax machine. Studies have shown that the administrative costs of healthcare can represent up to one-third of the total cost of care. Also, as diagnosis, treatment, and care, becomes increasingly data-driven and patient-specific, the industry needs to adopt more secure and robust tech...
Peter Van Valkenburgh: Where US Cryptocurrency Regulation is Heading
March 21, 2018 17:24 - 1 hour - 64.7 MBOver the past year, as cryptocurrencies and ICOs started to go mainstream, we have seen a huge surge in regulatory activities. In the US, many different regulatory bodies including SEC, CFTC and FinCEN stepped forward to regulate crypto projects in different ways. Seemingly contradictory statements have added to confusion and fear of a broad crackdown looming. We were joined by CoinCenter Director of Research Peter Van Valkenburgh to shed clarity on recent developments and understand where ...
Bob Summerwill: Sweetbridge – Rewriting the Operating System for the World Economy
March 18, 2018 00:34 - 1 hour - 46.5 MBAccording to the World Bank, universal financial access is vital to reducing poverty, and lack of access to credit plays a significant role in widening inequalities between developed and developing nations. For producers at the end of the supply chain, and who typically have little access to capital, waiting for customers to pay for their products puts them at high financial risk and threatens their livelihood. What if there was a way to bring more liquidity to global supply chains, by allo...
Anson Zeall: Blockchain in Singapore and South East Asia
March 08, 2018 17:57 - 55 minutes - 51.2 MBWe were joined by Anson Zeall, who is one of the leaders of Singapore’s blockchain and FinTech community. We discussed how the Singapore ecosystem evolved, why it became a popular place to locate cryptocurrency project, its current regulatory framework. We also dove into some of the projects he is currently involved in including one involving tokenizing cows! Topics covered in this episode: The evoluation of the Singapore blockchain ecosystem and role played by ACCESS The favorable mechan...
Jeff Garzik: Metronome – Of Bitcoin Satellites and Built-to-Last Chain-Hopping Tokens
February 27, 2018 21:55 - 1 hour - 66.3 MBWe’re joined by Jeff Garzik, who was among the very first developers to work with Satoshi in the early days of Bitcoin. Later, he was a core developer at Bitpay and even tried to put a Bitcoin node on a satellite in space. Today, he is co-founder at Bloq, a company providing enterprise-grade blockchain infrastructure. Bloq recently announced a new project called Metronome that challenges some of the design and governance principles of many public blockchain networks. Metronome is cryptocurr...
Kyle Samani & Tushar Jain: Multicoin – Emerging Frameworks for Cryptoasset Investing
February 21, 2018 14:02 - 1 hour - 61.5 MBThat decentralized networks represent a massive investment opportunity is no longer a controversial view. In the last year alone, over 200 funds dedicated to investing in cryptoassets have been created. But the principles and frameworks to understand this new world are still in its infancy. One fund at the forefront of advancing this understanding has been Multicoin Capital. Their Founders Kyle Samani and Tushar Jain joined us to discuss some of the concepts they use to invest in decentrali...
Amir Bandeali & Will Warren: 0x Protocol and the Decentralized Exchange Frontier
February 16, 2018 11:56 - 1 hour - 69.6 MBDecentralized exchanges have been a holy grail in the cryptocurrency space, since at least the MtGox hack. They promise to derisk the act of exchanging cryptocurrency by leaving custody of funds in the hands of the users. And they should be resistant to regulatory pressure, creating a permissionless way to trade cryptocurrencies. Among decentralized exchange projects, 0x has gained by far the most traction in the short time since launching. Co-founders Will and Amir joined us to discuss the...
Greg Meredith & Nash Foster: RChain – The Scalable, Concurrent and Performant Blockchain
February 08, 2018 20:00 - 1 hour - 61.8 MBWe’re joined by Greg Meredith and Nash Foster of the RChain Cooperative. A fundamentally new kind of blockchain platform, RChain is rooted in a formal model of concurrent and decentralized computation. Powered by the Rho Virtual Machine, and secured by Casper proof-of-stake, RCain is partitioned, or shareded by default, forming a network of coordinated and parallel blockchains. The project, which is formed as a coop, leverages correct-by-construction software development to produce a concurr...
Manuel Aráoz: Zeppelin and the Evolution of Smart Contract Development
February 01, 2018 09:14 - 1 hour - 59.1 MBZeppelin Co-Founder and CTO Manuel Araoz joined us to discuss his journey from building one of the first non-financial Bitcoin applications in 2012 to improving development and security practices for Ethereum smart contracts. We discussed the OpenZeppelin framework, a library of audited smart contracts as well as their new project zeppelin_os. Through on-chain, well-vetted and upgradeable smart contracts zeppelin_os aims to make developing Ethereum applications both easier and more secure. ...
Mance Harmon: Hashgraph – A Radically Novel Consensus Algorithm
January 25, 2018 18:25 - 1 hour - 66.8 MBHashgraph is a new consensus algorithm that radically differs from proof-of-work as well as proof-of-stake consensus algorithms. While work on Hashgraph begun in 2012, it’s design is radically different from today’s blockchain architectures. The Hashgraph team claims that it has found an optimal consensus algorithm design that will be impossible to significantly improve upon. We were joined by Mance Harmon, who is CEO of the Swirlds, the company developing Hashgraph. Our conversation covere...
Chris Burniske & Jack Tatar: Cryptoassets – The Rise of a New Asset Class
January 17, 2018 21:54 - 1 hour - 76.9 MBOver the past year, cryptoassets have exploded in popularity. From a mere $18bn at the start of 2017, the aggregate market cap of all cryptoassets recently reached $820bn as interest in Bitcoin and its cousins went mainstream. Jack Tatar and Chris Burniske joined us to discuss their new book ‘Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond’. It is one of the first systematic views on cryptoassets from a mainstream investor’s perspective. Topics covered in this episode: ...
Andrew Trask: OpenMined – A Decentralised Artificial Intelligence Platform
January 11, 2018 10:56 - 1 hour - 55.2 MBA significant part of the modern digital economy, is underpinned by machine learning models that are trained to perform tasks such as facial recognition, content curation, health diagnostics etc. Data to train machine learning models is the essential commodity of this century – a sentiment captured by epithets such as “”Data is the new oil””. Today’s dominant AI paradigm has companies focus their efforts on gathering data from their users in order to train models and monetise usage of the mo...
Brian Platz & Flip Filipowski: FlureeDB – A Scalable Blockchain-Based Graph Database
January 03, 2018 18:51 - 1 hour - 61 MBBlockchain technologies are changing the way we think about data archival and storage. For instance, most database systems can only capture the current state of a data set. This means we must rely on secondary backup systems to ensure historical data can remain accessible, a stark contrast from what the most basic of blockchains provide out of the box. Database systems that offer immutability and historical context for data would be greatly beneficial for companies as it would make internal ...