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.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Elizabeth Rossiello: BitPesa – Building Financial Platforms for Frontier Markets
December 27, 2017 18:51 - 55 minutes - 50.9 MBThe prospect of providing digital cross-border payments for the world’s unbanked and underbanked population has always been one of the key use cases for Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies can be seen as a way for people in developing countries to participate in the global financial market by allowing easy cross-border payments, cheap remittance transactions, and simplified lending options. We’re pleased to be joined by Elizabeth Rossiello, CEO and Founder of BitPesa. BitPesa provides companies in fr...
Christopher Fabian & Shaun Conway: Unicef & Ixo: Towards More Transparent Humanitarian Projects
December 19, 2017 21:06 - 1 hour - 61.1 MBWe’re joined by Christopher Fabian, Co-founder of Unicef’s Innovation Unit. We discuss how the global non-profit institution leverages innovative technology to solve real-world problems in humanitarian work. We explore the different applications of blockchain in the UN and Unicef, as well as the challenges we can anticipate when deploying these technologies in the developing world. Shaun Conway, Founder of Ixo Foundation, also joins the discussion as a startup working Unicef and talks about ...
Tim Swanson: Busting the Great Wall of Hype
December 13, 2017 20:25 - 59 minutes - 54.5 MBIn the blockchain world, few people are as brave as Tim Swanson when it comes to busting hype. Tim’s unbiased, honest, and sometimes controversial opinions provide a refreshingly realistic view of blockchain adoption and applications of this technology by people and businesses. Cutting through the hype, the over-sold press releases ad the blind optimism of a completely decentralized economy, Tim’s insights provide a sobering look at the state of the blockchain. Topics covered in this episod...
Adam Perlow & Asher Manning: Zen Protocol – A Decentralized Financial System
December 06, 2017 17:40 - 1 hour - 57.3 MBWe were joined by Founder Adam Perlow and Developer Asher Manning of Zen, a public blockchain project focused on building a decentralized financial system. The core premise of Zen is that none of the public blockchain networks are focused on financial asset. Zen is aiming to fill that gap through a Bitcoin-like UTXO architecture that supports multiple asset and smart contracts to enforce complex ownership rules. We talked through their original design choices, their use of formal verificati...
Zoe Adamovicz: Neufund and the Case for Selling Equity on the Blockchain
November 28, 2017 20:11 - 59 minutes - 54.8 MBNeufund CEO Zoe Adamovicz joined us to discuss how Neufund is creating a platform to allow companies to sell tokens backed by actual company equity. Topics covered in this episode: Neufund’s thesis of the revolutionary implications of token equity The difference between ICOs and Equity Token Offerings (ETO) Why from a regulatory perspective ETOs are uncomplicated How Neufund’s token Neumarks serves to build a community How the Initial Capital Building Mechanism is bootstrapping the eco...
Alex Morcos: Chaincode Labs and Why Bitcoin is Our One Shot at Creating Digital Gold
November 21, 2017 20:01 - 1 hour - 60 MBChaincode Labs Founder Alex Morcos joined us to discuss his journey, the role of the company in Bitcoin’s development and the views that drive his work. Topics covered in this episode: Alex’s background in high frequency trading as a founder of Hudson River Trading How Alex first learned about Bitcoin The vision of Chaincode Labs Why Bitcoin represents our only chance of creating digital gold Why Bitcoin’s resistance to change is one of its core features Why the NYA & SegWit2x approac...
Amrit Kumar & Xinshu Dong: Zilliqa – A Scalable Sharded Public Blockchain
November 14, 2017 18:15 - 1 hour - 67.1 MBScaling public blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum is a long standing technical challenge. In this episode, we cover Zilliqa which has pioneered a design to scale public blockchain throughput with the number of nodes by sharding the blockchain. Sharding has been hitherto proposed as a scaling technique by Ethereum. Zilliqa is one of the first projects to propose a concrete design with an operational testnet processing a couple thousand transactions per second across several shards. Our...
Post DevCon3 Roundtable: State of Ethereum, Cosmos Retreat and Parity Hack
November 10, 2017 12:56 - 1 hour - 62.7 MBFor the very first time, all three Epicenter hosts found themselves in the same location. After attending Ethereum’s DevCon 3 in Cancun, we were at a Cosmos Retreat and discussed the conference, retreat, state of the Ethereum ecosystem and recent Parity hack. Topics covered in this episode: Recap of Ethereum’s DevCon 3 conference Current state of Ethereum The most interesting new projects at DevCon The post-DevCon Cosmos retreat The internet of blockchain thesis The case for blockchai...
Micah Winkelspecht: Gem – The Enterprise Platform That Powers Data-Driven Applications
November 01, 2017 19:55 - 1 hour - 58 MBWe are joined by Micah Winkelspecht, CEO and Founder of Gem. What started as a Bitcoin API in 2014 has evolved into a leading provider of blockchain solutions for enterprise. Gem addresses the problem of digital data silos and the complexities they introduce when companies and individuals collaborate and share information. Their product, GemOS, provides a full-stack blockchain middleware platform which allows companies to build applications on top of blockchains protocols like Ethereum or Hy...
Karl Kreder: Grid+ – Unlocking Direct Access to Wholesale Energy Markets
October 24, 2017 18:03 - 1 hour - 55.6 MBEnergy markets form a complex ecosystem of actors. Wholesale energy producers create energy through various means, grid operators transport electricity over long distances and deliver it to homes and businesses, who buy it from local utility companies. The utilities act as resellers in this scheme and take on much of the financial risk associated with selling a commodity which is consumed long before payment settlement from consumers. However, utilities have high operation and marketing cost...
Galen Wolfe-Pauly: Urbit – A Digital Republic Reinventing the Internet
October 18, 2017 07:44 - 1 hour - 44.4 MBGalen Wolfe-Pauly, CEO of Tlon, the company behind Urbit, joined us to discuss one of the most radical and curious projects to come on the podcast. In development for 15 years already, Urbit aims to unravel the cloud computing paradigm that led to the creation of internet monopolies like Google and Facebook. Instead, in Urbit, each person has a personal server, a kind of digital sovereign entity, where applications are run, which leaves control and data in the hands of users. Galen joined u...
Ben Bollen & Jason Goldberg: Simple Token – Bringing Tokens to Mainstream Consumer Applications
October 11, 2017 12:48 - 1 hour - 50.7 MBAs the ICO boom continues to drive funding and interest in cryptocurrencies, mainstream consumer applications are increasingly looking towards tokenization. One of these was social network Pepo, founded by veteran entrepreneur and previous founder of fab.com Jason Goldberg. Faced with the difficulties of integrating blockchain, they decided to start Simple Token – a company focused on building easy solutions for mainstream applications to use blockchain. Simple Token CEO Jason Goldberg and ...
Fredrik Voss: Nasdaq – How Blockchain Technologies Will Transform Capital Markets
October 04, 2017 16:37 - 56 minutes - 52.2 MBNasdaq is one of the largest and most well known financial institutions in the World. As the second-largest stock market by market capitalization, Nasdaq is also one of the leading software companies in capital markets, providing its Nasdaq Financial Framework to exchanges all around the globe. Fredrik Voss, VP of Blockchain Innovation at Nasdaq, joins us to discuss how Nasdaq is leveraging blockchain technologies to propel itself into the future. Having invested in Chain and Stratumn, Nasd...
Ari Paul: BlockTower Capital and the Cryptocurrency Opportunity
September 26, 2017 18:53 - 1 hour - 50.5 MBFor many years, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies were regarded as little more than a nerdy curiosity by the financial world. But with the rise of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the process of cryptocurrencies becoming a recognized asset class has begun. One person at the forefront of this transformation is Ari Paul. Previously a portfolio manager at the University of Chicago’s $8 billion endowment, he recently left to start the cryptocurrency hedge fund BlockTower Capital. He joined us for an insightful...
Matt Kerner: Microsoft’s Coco Framework – The Holy Grail for Enterprise
September 19, 2017 18:45 - 1 hour - 64.1 MBEnterprise consortium blockchains have gained a lot of interest in recent months. And although we can see many applications for this particular type of network deployment, many questions remain to be answered before these systems can move to production. Issues related to scaling, network deployment, access controls and key management remain open at this point. With its deep roots in the enterprise, Microsoft hopes to have answers to these questions. Matt Kerner, Partner GM for Blockchains a...
Ciaran O'Leary: BlueYard – The Disruption of Venture Capital
September 13, 2017 08:34 - 1 hour - 62.9 MBIn the past year, the first killer application of blockchain technology has emerged: venture funding. As blockchain-facilitated crowdfunding is disrupting venture capital at blistering speed, we are joined by Ciaran O’Leary, Founder and General Partner at BlueYard. BlueYard stands at the intersection of this transition. Structured as a traditional VC fund, its thesis focuses fully on the decentralized economy and it invests in tokens too. Ciaran joined us to discusses what blockchain means f...
Peter Czaban: Polkadot – The Internet of Blockchain Networks
September 05, 2017 18:24 - 1 hour - 50.9 MBScalability and interoperability are two of the main issues facing blockchain protocols today. In a future in which entire industries and economies rely on distributed technologies, it is unclear how blockchain networks will support massive amounts of data, and exchange transactions in a trusted way. Peter Czaban, co-founder of Polkadot, joins us as we dive deep into the Polkadot Network. Polkadot is a heterogeneous multi-chain network, consisting of many connected chains (or parachains), a...
Nick Morgan: The DAO, the SEC and the ICO Boom
August 29, 2017 13:12 - 1 hour - 59.2 MBNick Morgan, a former attorney at the SEC, joined us to discuss their recent report on the DAO and what it means for the ICO boom. Topics covered in this episode: The history and mandate of the SEC Nick’s years as a trial attorney at the SEC How the Howey Test is used to determine if something is a security The application of the Howey Test to the DAO case The weaknesses in their argument that token holders relied on the effort of others Why the SEC did not prosecute the Slock.it foun...
Dan Larimer: EOS – The Decentralized Operating System
August 23, 2017 08:37 - 1 hour - 67.2 MBAfter Bitshares and Steemit, Dan Larimer’s latest project EOS has also gathered lots of attention. Their record-setting crowdsale has already raised $300m and is continuing for another year. Dan joined us to discuss his journey in the industry, what connects the different projects, how EOS works and how the EOS crowdsale works. Topics covered in this episode: A history of Dan’s previous projects Bitshares and Steemit How Dan knows when the time has come to move to the next project Why th...
Arthur Falls: From Lobster Fishing to Blockchain Podcasting
August 17, 2017 09:19 - 1 hour - 66 MBPrior to hosting his ground breaking podcasts Beyond Bitcoin and The Ether Review, Arthur Falls had left his home country of New Zealand to fish lobster off the coast of Maine. Like many people in the blockchain space, his unlikely journey into the world of decentralized technologies is a fascinating one, and he shares it with us in this episode. Arthur recently traveled to over a dozen locations around the World, conducting interviews for an upcoming documentary. He shares what he learned ...
Loi Luu: KyberNetwork – Towards Truly Decentralized Crypto-Asset Exchanges
August 09, 2017 17:18 - 59 minutes - 41.2 MBWe’re joined by Loi Luu, Co-founder of KyberNetwork. This new decentralized exchange protocol, built on Ethereum, aims to match buyers with reserve operators, who create liquidity for crypto-asset pairs. Trades occur instantaneously and without the need for a trusted third party exchange operator. Topics covered in this episode: Loi’s background and involvement with various projects such as TrueBit, Smart Pool, and Oyente The desirable features of a decentralized exchange Other decentral...
Eyal Hertzog: Bancor and the Rise of User-Generated Currencies
August 04, 2017 07:56 - 1 hour - 49.9 MBBancor is a simple, but hard-to-understand protocol that enables price discovery and liquidity even for assets that aren’t actively traded. Co-Founder Eyal Hertzog joined us to explain how the Bancor protocol works and why they think it will play a key role in enabling a massive wave of small, but interconnected user-generated currencies. We dissected the workings of the protocol, its radical implications as well as the takeaways from their record-shattering, but controversial crowdsale. To...
Dave Collins & Jake Yocom-Piatt:: Decred – A Hybrid Approach to Blockchain Governance
July 26, 2017 15:36 - 1 hour - 63.5 MBDave Collins and Jake Yocom-Piatt join us to talk about Decred, a cryptocurrency which introduces an innovative system of community-based governance into its blockchain. Decred implements a hybrid Proof of Work and Proof of Stake system in which miners validate transactions, while users can vote on new features and upgrades to the protocol. This clever approach enables efficient blockchain governance, which has demonstrated to be successful in a recent protocol upgrade on the live network. ...
Aviv Zohar & Yonatan Sompolinsky: Of Spectre & Ghosts – Radical Ideas to Scale Blockchain Tech
July 19, 2017 12:24 - 1 hour - 64 MBHebrew University academics Aviv Zohar and Yonatan Sompolinski joined us to discuss their research at the forefront of blockchain technology. We talked about their early proposals for scaling Bitcoin using the GHOST protocol, which later inspired Ethereum. And then we discussed SPECTRE and a new type of network based on directed acrylic graphs (DAG). DAGs abandon the blockchain data structure to allow constant generation of blocks that later get merged achieving block times of seconds and th...
Richard Craib: Numerai – A Revolutionary Hedge Fund Built on Blockchain and AI
July 11, 2017 20:35 - 1 hour - 65.4 MBNumerai Founder Richard Craib joined us to discuss his radical project to build a hedge fund with network effects. Numerai manages its portfolio by giving its data in encrypted form to data scientists who compete to create the best predictions and get paid with cryptocurrencies. Numerai expects to radically alter the structure of the hedge fund and asset management industry. Topics covered in this episode: How hedge funds work and what trends effect them Quantitative trading and the role ...
Erik Voorhees: Prism – The World’s First Portfolio Market Platform
July 04, 2017 17:23 - 1 hour - 56.7 MBShapeshift CEO Erik Voorhees joined us to discuss his journey in the industry, the evolution of the decentralized exchange Shapeshift and their latest project Prism. We spent most time diving into the mechanics and enormous potential of Prism. Prism allows users to create a portfolio of digital assets that is purely managed on the Ethereum blockchain and illustrates how blockchain-based financial products can be built. Topics covered in this episode: Erik’s journey in the blockchain space ...
Jimmy Song: A Fork in the Road for Bitcoin?
June 27, 2017 22:14 - 1 hour - 60.6 MBAfter years of what has seemed like an endless debate, bitcoin may be at a crucial turning point in its relatively short lifetime. The question network scalability has divided the community into several factions which are seemingly irreconcilable. However, in just a few weeks, the future of bitcoin may be decided as miners and users throw their support behind one of many proposals to propel the bitcoin network into a new era. Bitcoin Developer and Principal Architect at Paxos, Jimmy Song, j...
William Mougayar: Unpacking Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) and Token Sales
June 20, 2017 18:29 - 1 hour - 66.6 MBToken sales, often called Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), are exploding in popularity. Seemingly each week a new record is hit with huge sums being raised by alpha-stage projects in almost no time. William Mougayar, an investor, author and blogger, who has been at the forefront of the token sale movement joined us to unpack the most dynamic trend in the blockchain ecosystem. We cover the great promise of token sales in disrupting venture capital and changing how startups are build and grown. W...
Alex Leverington & Julian Zawistowski: Golem – The Worldwide Decentralized Supercomputer
June 14, 2017 07:58 - 1 hour - 59.8 MBWith most of the world’s computing power concentrated in Internet companies’ data centers, the Internet has become a very centralized place. The Golem project aims to build the sharing economy of computing power. This “global, open sourced, decentralized supercomputer” will function thanks to the combined power of a massive network of machines, from personal laptops to whole data centers. We’re joined by Julian Zawistowski and Alex Leverington, CEO and P2P engineer at Golem. We discuss how ...
Siân Jones: An Enlightened Approach to Blockchain Regulation in Gibraltar
June 07, 2017 16:18 - 1 hour - 66.6 MBOur regulatory expert Siân Jones joined us to discuss her work on a regulatory framework for distributed ledger technology (DLT) for Gibraltar. We discuss how the framework differs from other efforts and aims to attract rather than curtail blockchain businesses. We also covered why the rapid changes require the flexibility of a principle-based approach to regulation. Finally, we discussed current trends around ICOs and how they could be impacted by regulation. Topics covered in this episode...
Brendan Eich: Brave – Reinventing the Monetization of Content and Attention
May 30, 2017 22:37 - 1 hour - 56.4 MBThe saying goes: if you’re not paying for it, it’s likely that you’re the product. And with the rise of targeted ads, user behavior tracking, and alike, more and more users are turning to ad blocking software to protect their privacy and improve their browsing experience. In the last 25 years, the content monetization and Internet advertising industries have evolved to become complex ecosystems with multiple intermediating layers between users, publishers, and advertisers. This has created a...
Fred Ehrsam & Trent McConaghy: IPDB – The Interplanetary Database and its Applications in AI
May 23, 2017 10:48 - 1 hour - 87.3 MBData is the new oil, and those who control massive amounts of it have a major competitive advantage. That advantage becomes exponential when that data is used to teach artificial intelligence. Companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon have a far greater probability of building strong AI than smaller actors simply by the sheer amount of user data and metadata they possess. Let’s now envision an alternate reality where big data lives on public infrastructure and is accessible to anyone who...
Alex Van de Sande & Nick Johnson: ENS – A Global Naming System for Ethereum
May 16, 2017 10:39 - 1 hour - 67.2 MBNaming systems are an important component of any networked information system. It’s difficult to imagine how the Internet could have been adopted by the masses had it not been for the Domain Name System, which translates machine-readable IP addresses into human-readable domain names. Blockchains, with their long and complex address formats, suffer from a similar problem. One might think a solution would be to apply the same naming system architecture we have for the public Internet to public...
Peter Van Valkenburgh: Towards Sound Bitcoin Policy
May 09, 2017 10:26 - 1 hour - 64.9 MBCoin Center is a non-profit in Washington DC that focuses on research and advocacy issues facing public blockchain networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Their aim is to protect users and foster innovation through achieving sound policies and regulations. Director of Research Peter Van Valkenburgh joined us to discuss the work of the center and the most pressing regulatory issues facing the industry today. Topics covered in this episode: The origins and objectives of Coin Center How to judg...
Carl Bennetts & Jarrad Hope: Status – The Mobile Ethereum Client
May 02, 2017 17:29 - 56 minutes - 52.1 MBThe road to mainstream adoption of blockchain technologies is a long one. Although the user experience of wallets has greatly improved since the dark days of command-line only interfaces, decentralized applications continue to struggle with onboarding non-technical users. Jarrad Hope and Carl Bennetts, join us to discuss Status, a mobile Ethereum client which aims to turn the standard wallet experience on its head. At its core, Status is a mobile instant messenger client that leverages the ...
Mano Thanabalan: Otonomos – Simplifying Incorporation and Automating Corporate Governance
April 25, 2017 19:05 - 1 hour - 58.3 MBAnyone who has ever started a company knows just how tedious that process that can be. Whether it’s establishing a shareholder’s agreement, defining the company’s constitutional structure, raising funds, or transferring shares, corporate governance procedures remain largely paper-based, requiring validation from multiple stakeholders, and their lawyers. Blockchain technologies, and specifically smart contracts, provide the rails upon which these processes can be digitized and streamlined, re...
Thomas Voegtlin: Blocksize, Bitcoin Unlimited, ASICBoost and Activating SegWit
April 18, 2017 12:54 - 1 hour - 58.6 MBYears into the great Bitcoin scaling debate no solution is in reach. Neither bigger blocks nor Segregated Witness have anywhere near consensus support. With the conflict escalating, a Bitcoin fork has become a real possibility. Electrum Developer Thomas Voegtlin joined us to discuss the state of the Bitcoin scaling debate. We discussed Bitcoin Unlimited, ASICBoost, SegWit activation without miner support and how a Bitcoin fork could play out. Possible outcomes include that Bitcoin Unlimited...
Gilles Fedak: iExec – Blockchain-Based Fully Distributed Cloud Computing Infrastructure
April 11, 2017 20:22 - 1 hour - 62 MBFor decades, science and academia have leveraged distributed computing to solve massive computational problems. Distributed grid computing schemes allow donors to volunteer their desktop computer’s idle resources toward scientific projects in physics, biology, and chemistry, where large amounts of parallel computing resources are necessary. Relying on software like BONIC, these networks provide features such as built-in fault tolerance and result verification. And with the proliferation of m...
Christian Reitwiessner & Jason Teutsch: TrueBit – Scalable Off-Chain Computations for Ethereum
April 04, 2017 19:31 - 1 hour - 58.3 MBBitcoin and Ethereum miners collectively make up what is perhaps the most powerful computational resource in the world. However, mobile phones from the early 2000’s could arguably run more complex operations than these networks combined. While blockchains themselves may never reach the level of computational power of modern computers, they may be leveraged as the underlying verification layer for centralized computing. We’re joined by Jason Teutsch and Christian Reitwiessner. They are the c...
Adam B. Levine: Building a Blockchain Podcast Network
March 28, 2017 15:46 - 1 hour - 62.8 MBIn the world of Bitcoin podcast, there is one show which definitely stands out as the longest running, Let’s Talk Bitcoin! In its 4-year history, the show has produced over 320 episodes and expanded to become a network of podcasts which includes Epicenter and many others. We’re joined by Adam B. Levine the founder and host of Let’s Talk Bitcoin! It was thanks to Adam that Sébastien and Brian first connected in 2013, so in many ways, we consider him as the “”spiritual grandfather”” of Epicen...
Miguel Vias: XRP’s Future for Cross-Border Payments
March 21, 2017 20:31 - 1 hour - 55.9 MBFor a long time the native asset of the Ripple network XRP was the cryptocurrency with the second biggest market cap. But with much of the supply controlled by Ripple, it remained surrounded by controversy. Still, XRP remains an interesting asset to enable cross-border payments in the future. Miguel Vias recently joined Ripple after a long career on Wall Street to develop XRP as a liquid and widely accepted asset. Topics covered in this episode: How Miguel Vias went from trading precious m...
Carsten Stöcker: How Blockchains Will Power the Energy Grids of Tomorrow
March 14, 2017 22:10 - 1 hour - 60.3 MBIn the footsteps of the finance industry, the energy sector has been caught by the blockchain fever. Conceived over a century ago, increased usage and an explosion of devices have made energy grids outdated. Smart grids offer a two-way dialogue where electricity and information are exchanged between utilities and its customers. This new grid takes advantages of connected devices and green energy production to provide more reliability, security and sustainability. Carsten Stöcker, Senior Man...
Olaf Carlson-Wee: Polychain Capital – The Rise of Protocol Tokens
March 07, 2017 13:23 - 1 hour - 61.5 MBWriting his college thesis on Bitcoin in 2012 and becoming Coinbase’s first employee in 2013, Olaf Carlson-Wee has been at the forefront of cryptocurrency for many years. Recently, he left Coinbase to start Polychain Capital, a hedge fund focused solely on investing in cryptocurrencies and protocol tokens. Olaf joined us to discuss his journey in the industry and the investment thesis behing Polychain. Topics covered in this episode: How Olaf Carlson-Wee became Coinbase’s first employee T...
Peter Rizun: A Bitcoin Fee Market Without A Blocksize Limit
February 28, 2017 17:50 - 1 hour - 63.4 MBWith both the Bitcoin Unlimited and Segregated Witness efforts far from reaching majority support and exploding transaction fees, the debate around how to scale Bitcoin continues on. One of the key arguments against bigger blocks and Bitcoin Unlimited is that a blocksize restriction is needed to create a healthy fee market. Dr Peter Rizun has been researching the economics of transaction fees in Bitcoin extensively and joined us to discuss what dynamics affect fees and why he thinks the bloc...
Vitalik Buterin: DAO Lessons, Casper and Blockchain Interoperability
February 21, 2017 19:15 - 1 hour - 61.9 MBEthereum Founder Vitalik Buterin joined us once again to discuss the state of Ethereum and the efforts to innovate the protocol. We covered the takeaways from the DAO fork, switching to the proof-of-stake system Casper and how to think about blockchain interoperability. Topics covered in this episode: – Lessons from the DAO hack – The security flaws of Proof-of-Work – Why Proof-of-Stake will provide more security and scalability – The state of Casper and transition timeline – Blockchai...
Jae Kwon: Cosmos – The Internet of Blockchains
February 14, 2017 09:28 - 1 hour - 67.4 MBOne of the key issues with blockchain networks is the lack of interoperability. In the early days of Bitcoin, blockchain interoperability was far from people’s minds. However, as new networks continued to emerge and gain traction, the ability to move assets freely from one blockchain to another has become a critical feature. We’re joined by Jae Kwon, CEO and Founder of Tendermint, the team which is launching the Cosmos Network. Cosmos aims to build the internet of blockchains: A global netw...
Silvio Micali: Algorand – A New Scalable and Secure Approach to Byzantine Fault Tolerant Consensus
February 08, 2017 18:23 - 1 hour - 71.6 MBThere is no doubt that proof of work, introduced in the Bitcoin white paper, has stood the test of time as a robust and resilient Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus mechanism. However, many issues may prevent Nakamoto Consensus from securely scaling over the long term. The risk of validator centralization, network forking, block scarcity and high energy costs required to mine a block have all been extensively debated with no realistic long-term solutions to date. A new paper titled “Algorand...
Rick Dudley: The Future of Ethreum as a Strongly Typed Proof-of-Stake Blockchain Network
January 31, 2017 20:57 - 55 minutes - 50.4 MBIn the last year, blockchain protocols have matured at an exciting pace. Open source projects like Ethereum, the Eris stack and Tendermint are behind much of the experimentation being conducted at leading companies. These protocols would not be where they are today if it wasn’t for the hard work of dedicated open source developers. One of those people is Rick Dudley. An opinionated and passionate developer, Rick is involved in multiple projects. He works as a DevOps at Monax, works closely ...
Peter Harris: Democratizing the Music Industry with the Streaming Music Cooperative Resonate
January 24, 2017 19:35 - 1 hour - 55.8 MBAfter the successful Ethereum crowdfunding campaign, musician and web developer Peter Harris saw a path to creating a fair, decentralized music streaming platform. Out of that Resonate was born. Peter joined us to discuss why the dysfunctional structure of the music industry results in a bad deal for musicians and why a decentralized platform supported by blockchain technology and run as a cooperative represents a better way forward. Topics covered in this episode: How technology changed t...
Andrew Clifford & G. Andrew Stone: Bitcoin Unlimited
January 17, 2017 07:06 - 1 hour - 59.1 MBYears into the controversy around how to scale Bitcoin, there have been many challengers to Bitcoin core’s dominance. After XT, Classic and others have faded, Bitcoin Unlimited has been gaining traction and emerged as plausible new way forward. Bitcoin Unlimited wants to make the block size a parameter that is set by miners and nodes, but not fixed at a network level. They argue a natural fee market would emerge, allowing Bitcoin to rapidly scale and realizing its promise of electronic cash...