Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies

The 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 their ambitions to change how content is consumed and paid for. Topics covered in this episode: What web monetization is The difference between web monetization and web payments The negative effects of advertising-driven business models What the Interledger Protocol (ILP) is The current state of ILP Why Stefan and Ben decided to leave Ripple and start Coil The case for web monetization as an initial use case for Coil The idea of users paying a fixed bandwidth per second to content creators Possible user experiences that could be built on top of Coil How to bootstrap Coil and get adoption Episode links: Coil Website Coil: Building a New Business Model for the Web Layer 3 Is for Interoperability Talk about Ripple and Coil at TOA18 - Stefan Thomas E92: Stefan Thomas - Understanding Ripple E131: Evan Schwartz & Stefan Thomas - Building the Internet of Payments with Interledger Thank you to our sponsors for their support: The open, decentralized trading protocol for ERC20 tokens using the Dutch auction mechanism. More at epicenter.tv/dutchx. Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter. This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/261

It’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 apparent departure of ICOs from the landscape The growth of grant programs Brian’s talk at the Generalized Mining panel This year’s emphasis on security Web3 Summit in Berlin the previous week Episode links: Devcon4 website Devcon3 recap episode from Cancun Thank you to our sponsors for their support: Simplify your hiring process & access the best blockchain talent . Get a $1,000 credit on your first hire at toptal.com/epicenter. Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter. This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/260

From 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 Parity got started, Substrate, Polkadot and his views on on-chain governance. Topics covered in this episode: The genesis story of Ethereum Why Gavin prefers reasoning from first principles to reading How Parity shunned Silicon Valley principles to build an developer-driven company Why they decided to work on a scalable blockchain from scratch instead of improving Ethereum An overview of Substrate The relationship between Substrate and Polkadot How Substrate allows switching consensus in a live blockchain Why Ethereum’s governance process is centralized Polkadot and the case for on-chain governance Episode links: Parity Technologies Website Polkadot Website E199 - Peter Czaban - Polkadot: The Internet of Blockchain Networks Substrate: A Rustic Vision for Polkadot by Gavin Wood at Web3 Summit 2018 Substrate in a nutshell What is Substrate? How Polkadot tackles the biggest problems facing blockchain innovators Substrate testnet launched Epicenter episode from 2014 with Gavin Wood about Ethereum & Ether Sale Thank you to our sponsors for their support: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter. Simplify your hiring process & access the best blockchain talent . Get a $1,000 credit on your first hire at toptal.com/epicenter. This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/259

We’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 the same security as Bitcoin. Alongside Chainwebs, Kadena is building a permissioned protocol more suited for enterprise applications in insurance and finance. Topics covered in this episode: Monica’s background at the SEC The genesis of Kadena and why the founders left JP Morgan Kadena’s unique approach to building both public and permissioned protocols The Chainweb protocol and it’s approach to proof of work The incentive mechanisms in Chainweb How Chainweb protects itself against common attack vectors The PACT smart contract language Kadena’s enterprise blockchain offering The company’s go-to-market strategy and business model Episode links: Kadena Website Chainweb Whitepaper ChainWeb Protocol Security Calculations White Paper Kadena White Paper Confidentiality in Private Blockchain White Paper The Pact Smart-Contract Language White Paper Thank you to our sponsors for their support: The open, decentralized trading protocol for ERC20 tokens using the Dutch auction mechanism. More at epicenter.tv/dutchx. Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter. This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/258

Building 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 projects utilize bountied to source engineering talent. Combined with blockchain technologies, there is a potential to create efficient, two-sided markets which align incentives for all participants. We’re joined by Kevin Owocki, who is the Founder of Gitcoin. The Ethereum-based platform leverages the open source community to incentivize and monetize work, remunerating developers for pull requests made to projects. Gitcoin was itself built using Gitcoin and is today facilitating bug bounty payments for dozens of blockchain projects. At the time of writing, over 200 projects have used the platform to distribute over $340,000 in bounties to developers. As Gitcoin continues to grow, the goal is to expand its reach to the broader open-source ecosystem. Topics covered in this episode: Kevin’s background as a software engineer The fundamental challenges in open-source development and funding What is Gitcoin and how it addresses incentive alignment How Gitcoin works from the perspective of both project funders and contributors The platforms usage statistics (projects funded, contributors, bounties paid, etc.) How Gitcoin may be used to fund closed-source bountied and public goods Kevin’s proposal for recurring payments in Ethereum (EIP1337/ERC948) How Gitcoin is funded and the project’s business model Gitcoin’s roadmap moving forward Episode links: Gitcoin website Gitcoin leaderboard and top earners Gitcoin stats 1337 Alliance EIP 1337 - Subscriptions on the blockchain ERC948 - Recurring Subscription Models on Ethereum Delphi Systems Bountysource Thank you to our sponsors for their support: The open, decentralized trading protocol for ERC20 tokens using the Dutch auction mechanism. More at epicenter.tv/dutchx. Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter. This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/257

CoinFund 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 protocol hypothesis,” thesis on value capture in the cryptocurrency space, their efforts to build network nodes; and their effort to build an open source token-less technology that allows entrepreneurs to launch their blockchains. Topics covered in this episode: Coinfund’s history What is a cryptofund? Coinfund approach to investing in the cryptocurrency space Generalised mining – what it is, and how it offers cryptofunds a competitive advantage The ADAPT toolkit – a tokenless toolkit for rapid blockchain innovation Episode links: CoinFund Slack CoinFund interviews The ADAPT project Fat protocols are not an investment thesis Generalised mining CoinFund Twitter Thank you to our sponsors for their support: Simplify your hiring process & access the best blockchain talent . Get a $1,000 credit on your first hire at toptal.com/epicenter. The open, decentralized trading protocol for ERC20 tokens using the Dutch auction mechanism. More at epicenter.tv/dutchx. This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/256

The 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 of the project, how the network functions today and how it could develop going forward. Topics covered in this episode: What inspired the original Tezos vision from 2014 The critical importance of formal verification and governance Why Arthur thinks the blockchain scalability problem is overrated The case against decentralized applications Why the ability to evolve and adopt new features is critical for Tezos success Tezos’ Proof-of-Stake and emerging baking ecosystem The Tezos Foundation drama and Johann Gevers The relationship between their company DLS and the Tezos Foundation Episode links: Tezos Website E136 - Tezos – A Self-Amending Crypto-Ledger Tezos Whitepaper The $1 Billion Tezos Blockchain Is Officially Launching Monday Inside the Crypto World's Biggest Scandal | WIRED Tezos Twitter Thank you to our sponsors for their support: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter. Simplify your hiring process & access the best blockchain talent . Get a $1,000 credit on your first hire at toptal.com/epicenter. This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/255

Public 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. Its API lacks even the most basic calls which would allow a user to query any address and receive the balance. In order to achieve this, block explorers and alike have developed sophisticated middleware infrastructure that parses the blockchain, normalizes the data, and stores it in a database, where it can be queried. In the best of cases, companies offer API calls for only a limited set of operations. Google hopes to change this by freeing blockchain datasets. We’re joined by Allen Day, Science Advocate at Google’s Singapore office. Earlier this year, he and his team released the Bitcoin blockchain as a public dataset in Big Query, Google big data IaaS offering. In August, they added Ethereum to their list of freely available public datasets, which includes US census data, cannabis genomes, and the entirety of Reddit and Github. Anyone wishing to query the data can do so in SQL on the Big Query website or via an API. For instance, a relatively simple query would return the daily mean transaction fees since the Genesis Block in just a few seconds. Coupled with Google’s AI and Machine Learning infrastructure and other open data sets, one can only imagine the potentially groundbreaking insights we could gain from this data. Topics covered in this episode: Allen’s background as a geneticist The similarities between blockchains and evolution process in lifeforms Google’s cloud platform and its various components Big Query and its publicly available datasets The Bitcoin and Ethereum datasets in Big Query Why this data is useful to the public and for what it may be used The particular challenges in implementing Ethereum as opposed to Bitcoin Insights we may gain by crossing blockchain dataset with other data How machine learning and AI could help us better understand specific transaction patterns Episode links: Bitcoin in BigQuery: blockchain analytics on public data Bitcoin Blockchain Public Dataset Ethereum in BigQuery: a Public Dataset for smart contract analytics Ethereum in BigQuery: how we built this dataset Ethereum Blockchain Public Dataset Change Agent by Daniel Suarez Real-time Ethereum Notifications for Everyone for Free ethjs-abi library, compiled for use in Google BigQuery Kaggle: Your Home for Data Science The Strange Inevitability of Evolution - Issue 20: Creativity - Nautilus Reddit_ Google Cloud Thank you to our sponsors for their support: The open, decentralized trading protocol for ERC20 tokens using the Dutch auction mechanism. More at epicenter.tv/dutchx. Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter. This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/254

The 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-source project should be treated as fiduciaries and held accountable for the consequences of their work. Angela Walch is a professor of law at St Mary University School of Law and a Research Fellow at the Center for Blockchain at UCL. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and has been doing academic work on legal issues surrounding public blockchains since 2013. Topics covered in this episode: How she became interested in Bitcoin and issues around the narratives of decentralization and trustlessness How her work has been received in the blockchain space The problematic lack of a clear definition of terms like trustless, immutable and decentralized Why blockchains should be looked at as trust-shifting, not trustless The definition and role of fiduciaries in society Why blockchain developers could be considered fiduciaries The practical implications and difficulties of regulating blockchain developers as fiduciaries How the SEC’s stance on blockchains connects with the question of developers being fiduciaries Her personal views on the value and promise of blockchain tech Episode links: Angela Walch Angela C. Walch - St. Mary's Law Angela Walch – Medium In Code(rs) We Trust: Software Developers as Fiduciaries in Public Blockchains The Path of the Blockchain Lexicon (and the Law) Open-Source Operational Risk: Should Public Blockchains Serve as Financial Market Infrastructures? Coin-Operated Capitalism paper Journal of Financial Technology Introducing: The Journal of Financial Technology – Angela Walch – Medium Thank you to our sponsors for their support: Simplify your hiring process & access the best blockchain talent . Get a $1,000 credit on your first hire at toptal.com/epicenter. Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter. This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/253

Legendary 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 evolutionary process Why voting is flawed and we need new governance methods to save democracy The concept of a DAO democracy How prediction markets and futarchy would help govern a DAO democracy Episode links: Ralph Merkle DAO Democracy Paper [PDF] Ralph Merkle's Homepage Ralph Merkle's Wikipedia page Episode 98 with Robin Hanson on futarchy & prediction markets Tim Urban: Why Cryonics Makes Sense Alcor - Life Extension Foundation Thank you to our sponsors for their support: The open, decentralized trading protocol for ERC20 tokens using the Dutch auction mechanism. More at epicenter.tv/dutchx. This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/252