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The 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 explore these radical new ideas. Topics covered in this episode: Why blockchain is on a trajectory to exacerbate inequality and fail at improving the world Why property should be seen as a monopolistic institution How property rights create inefficient markets The radical idea of transforming property rights via a Common Ownership Self-Assessed Tax (COST) How the one-person-one-vote system contributed to the crisis of democracy How quadratic voting works and leads to fairer outcomes Whether or not buying of votes should be allowed in QV His work with Vitalik and radical markets experiments in blockchain Episode links: Radical Markets Glen Weyl Website Property is Only Another Name for Monopoly (2017) On Radical Markets - Vitalik Buterin Book Review Liberation Through Radical Decentralization – Post by Vitalik & Glen This economist wants to abolish private property using blockchain | Wired 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. This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/251

Dispute 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, nuances in human language and vagueness of terms do not exist in this realm. There are no judges, no jury, just calculated execution. The DOA hack and other similar events have prompted observers of the space to express the need for smart contract dispute resolution. Some have suggested “exit switches” that would allow for human intervention when edge cases appear. But could the arbitration process be integrated into the smart contract and on the blockchain? We’re joined by, Federico Ast and Clement Lessage, respectively CEO and CTO of Kleros. This dispute resolution layer provides contracting parties with a fast and secure process for arbitration. The system is broken up into courts and sub-courts, each specializing in specific matters like e-commerce, insurance, and transport. In the event of a dispute, parties submit their case to Kleros, where a crowd of expert jurors analyses the evidence. When all votes are cast, the decision is enforced by the smart contract, which may unlock funds, or provide parties with additional time to fulfill the terms of the agreement. Clever incentive mechanisms reward jurors who vote with the crowd, making Kleros resistant to bribe attacks and collusion between jurors. Topics covered in this episode: Federico and Clement’s respective backgrounds, including a crowd arbitration project called Jury. The vision behind Kleros and the problem it addresses The case for crowd-sourced jurors as a means to find the best judgment The game theory and incentive mechanisms embedded in Kleros Kleros’ hierarchical system of courts and sub-courts How jury selection works and who administers courts The system’s built-in governance mechanism and its purpose The Kleros token, Pinkaion coin, and it’s utility in the system “Doge on Trial,” a clever experiment to find authentic doges The current status of the project and roadmap Episode links: Kleros Website Kleros White Papper Doges on Trial Why Decentralization Matters by Chris Dixon This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/250

We 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 scenes of the Polychain success story. We get details on what crypto hedge funds are, how Polychain got started, reasons for its breakout success, its approach to blockchain investments and the current challenges of running a crypto hedge fund. Ryan also walks us through Polychain’s interest areas – Layer 1 blockchain protocols such as Filecoin, Dfinity and Polkadot; and financial derivative protocols. If you want to understand how some of the leading minds allocate capital at a large scale in the cryptocurrency industry, check out the episode. Topics covered in this episode: What is a crypto hedge fund? Differences between a crypto hedge fund and a venture capital firm The Polychain success story and how it played out Polychain’s approach to cryptocurrency investments and entrepreneurs Polychain’s major flagship investments – Filecoin, Dfinity and Polkadot Polychain’s perspective in the “frozen Parity ether” debate Episode links: Polychain capital website Fortune article on Polychain Previous Epicenter episode on Polychain with Olaf Carlson Wee Polychain's perspective on the “Parity frozen ether” controversy This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/249

Until 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 when thinking about scaling. Fundamentally, network bottlenecks are what prevent blockchains from increasing their transaction throughput. Raising the block size or reducing the time between blocks has devastating effects on usability as the probability of a fork increases. At a certain point, the blockchain simply breaks as forks occur faster than blocks can propagate to all validators. Remarkably, the web figured out how to scale decades ago with the invention of Content Distributions Networks, or CDN. This is what enables platforms like YouTube to steam thousands of hours of video to hundreds of thousands of people every second. However, traditional centralized scaling solutions lack the privacy and censorship resistance necessary to serve the decentralized web. We’re joined by Uri Klarman, CEO of bloXroute. Founded by a team of researchers and systems designers from Northwestern and Cornel University, including Emin Gün Sirer, bloXroute allows practically every blockchain network to “scale today.” As a scalability infrastructure service, their Blockchain Distribution Network, or BDN, sits underneath blockchain networks. Anyone operating a miner can use the BDN without any changes to their consensus algorithm or protocol. By simply pointing their software to a bloXroute node, miners immediately benefit from propagation speeds orders of magnitude higher than the time which is currently required for blocks to be seen by all validators. This global network of servers is optimized to receive and stream massive amounts of transaction data to vast networks of nodes and miners. While bloXroute relies on some level of centralization, it is provably neutral and cannot discriminate based on the contents, provenance or destination of a block. It also includes clever redundancy mechanisms which ensure availability in the event of an attack on the network. Topics covered in this episode: Uri’s journey as an academic working in the field of networking Defining the blockchain scalability problem as a networking problem Past work and attempts to scale blockchains The vision behind bloXroute and the problem it aims to solve The Blockchain Distribution Network (BDN) and its technical architecture How the BDN optimizes blocks and achieves 1,000x faster propagation times How bloXroute archives provable neutrality and ensures network resiliency The BLXR token and incentive mechanisms The project’s goals, milestones, and product roadmap Episode links: bloXroute Website bloXroute White Paper This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/248

Since 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 various ways in which Messari tackles that problem, ranging from a community-led effort to gather project data to the ambitious goal of a token-curated registry of stand-up projects. Topics covered in this episode: Ryan’s start into the crypto industry as pseudonymous blogger Two Bit Idiot His insights from being the Digital Currency Group’s first employee CoinDesk and the challenges of journalism in crypto Why poor and inaccurate information benefits industry insiders at the expense of retail investors Messari’s mission to lead a self-regulatory effort for the crypto industry How an open, distributed crypto data library could help create a fairer playing field The plans for Messari’s token-curated registry of projects following reporting standards The economics and game theory around the Messari token and TCR Episode links: Messari - Crypto News, Pricing, and Research Introducing Messari: An Open-Source EDGAR Database for Cryptoassets Messari Whitepaper A token to self-regulate tokens. But really. Cryptoasset network value, market cap, rankings & metrics | OnChainFX Ryan Selkis (@twobitidiot) | Twitter Messari Community Analyst Application This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/247

Privacy 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 can perform computations on encrypted data. Inputs are broken into pieces and distributed to network nodes which perform computations on a segment of the full data. Once returned to the Ethreum chain, data is reassembled and may be decrypted to reveal the result. Leveraging secure multi-party computation and Trusted Execution Environments (TEE), Enigma prevents a malicious actor from gaining access to the input data and the computation results. Topics covered in this episode: Guy’s background and secure computation research at MIT The different approaches to privacy preservation in computing The different multi-party computations methods and how they work Fully Homomorphic Encryption in the context of MPC How Enigma would preserve privacy for a simple application like tallying votes How Enigma reads encrypted data from the Ethereum network and leverages Trusted Execution Environments to perform computations How developers build smart contracts which use Enigma The role of the Enigma token as an incentive mechanism How Enigma ensures network availability by penalizing nodes which go offline The current state of the project and upcoming milestones Episode links: Enigma Website Enigma Protocol Docs Enigma White Paper Decentralizing Privacy: Using Blockchain to Protect Personal Data Guy Zyskind's Personal Website This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/246

Martin 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 possibility for greater usability and efficiency by using the new WebAssembly standards being created, and so led a team at the Ethereum Foundation in the creation of a new blockchain virtual machine, called eWASM. We learn about Martin’s experience on the eWASM project and how the limitations of backwards compatibility led him to begin writing a brand new execution environment from scratch, rethinking some of the core designs and mechanics of the EVM – this project became known as Primea. Martin explains many of the fundamental design shifts involved with the Primea platform, including his focus on using the actor-based model and object capabilities (and what these even mean!). He also lays out how the Primea platform fits into the larger design of the Dfinity blockchain. Topics covered in this episode: eWASM – Ethereum flavored WebAssembly (eWASM) Design. Primea – an actor based IPC layer intended for use with WebAssembly programs. Webassembly Dfinity – blockchain-based cloud computing project. Its aim is to develop a decentralized internet computer that will become the cloud 3.0. Episode links: Primea GitHub Communication Semantics - Edcon talk Primea Technical Deep Dive - EthCC talk This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/245

The 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 Network. Similarly to other industry organizations, The Cooperative invests in core development of the ETC blockchain, community building, marketing, and brand awareness. Topics covered in this episode: Anthony’s background and how he became involved in the crypto community The Ethereum Classic Cooperative and the goals of the organization What the ETC ecosystem looks like two years after the fork The people and companies contributing to the project and building on the platform The overlap and friction points with the broader Ethereum community ETC’s unique value proposition as a blockchain platform SputnikVM as an alternative to the Ethereum Virtual Machine The potential attack vectors on ETC, including 51% attacks Why the ETC community stands behind Proof-of-Work The Cooperative’s plans to remain relevant and the project’s development roadmap Episode links: Ethereum Classic Cooperative Website Ethereum Classic Website Crypto51: Cost of a 51% Attack for Different Cryptocurrencies @eth_classic on Twitter This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/244

One 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. In this episode, we are joined by the duo of Evan Shapiro and Izaak Meckler, CEO and CTO at O(1) Labs respectively. O(1) Labs is a pioneering company that uses zkSNARK technology in order to construct a cryptocurrency blockchain, called Coda, that solves the blockchain size scalability bottleneck. New nodes joining the Coda network will be able to trustlessly boot up in under a minute by verifying cryptographic proofs that attest to the validity of the current chain. This technology has great potential to enable decentralization, and for one blockchain to be a light client of another blockchain. Topics covered in this episode: Scalability challenges of current cryptocurrencies Background on O(1) Labs and their mission statement How Coda uses succinct computational integrity technology (zkSNARKs) to enable further decentralization of blockchains Snarky – a domain specific language for zkSNARK computations Current state of Coda and roadmap Episode links: Coda protocol website Coda Whitepaper Presentation on Snarkly by Izzak Meckler zkSNARKs in a nutshell by Christian Reitweissner zkSNARKs in a nutshell by Vitalik Buterin Coda presentation at hack.summit("blockchain") 2018 This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/243

When 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. Topics covered in this episode: How her interest in distributed systems and scaling lead led her to the blockchain space The mission and history of the MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative How cryptocurrency might evolve over time as an academic field The DCI’s project on digital fiat currency How zkLedger could enable privacy-preserving auditing for distributed ledgers Why sharding is unlikely to succeed in the short- and medium term Why Neha is most optimistic about layer 2 approaches to scaling like lightning network The story of discovering and writing about IOTA’s vulnerability How DCI handles conflicts of interest and strives for neutrality Episode links: MIT Digital Currency Initiative Neha Narula Personal Website What’s New at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative The Importance of Layer 2 Cryptographic vulnerabilities in IOTA zkLedger | the future of audit zkLedger Whitepaper Neha Narula: The future of money | TED Talk This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/242