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

For orthodox Bitcoiners central banks are often seen as the incarnation of evil. But , alas, in the case of two Carribean central banking economists the feeling of reprehension wasn’t reciprocated. Winston Moore and Jeremy Stephen were formerly associated with the Central Bank of Barados and fascinated by the potential of cryptocurrencies, they explored the consequences of their central bank holding Bitcoin as part of their international reserves. They joined us for a discussion of central banking, the pecularities of monetary policy in a small island nation and what Bitcoin could bring to the equation. Topics covered in this episode: The function of central banks The role international reserves hold for central banks The peculiar challenges of central banks of small island nation states How speculative attacks on central banks work Why central banks may want to hold cryptocurrencies as part of their portfolio How Bitt plans to issue Barbados Dollar using the Bitcoin blockchain and the open asset protocol Episode links: Paper on inclusion of cryptocurrencies in international reserve portfolio of Central Bank of Barbados [PDF] Barbados Cryptocurrency Startup Bitt Bitt launches Barbados Dollar on blockchain Winston Moore's Website Jeremy Stephen's Website EB Episode 83 with David Andolfatto on Fedcoin and central bank issued cryptocurrencies This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/121

The problem around content monetization is one which content producers are constantly trying to solve. At the core of this problem is a mismatch between supply and demand. Content, which is increasingly abundant, is captured by human attention, which is in limited supply. The volume of content being produced is growing at staggering rates while total human attention remains flat. Our guest, , argues that the current content monetization model is outdated, broken and is in need of an overhaul. Previously at Google and YouTube, Maciej has a broad understanding content monetization models and lays out a vision for open marketplaces for attention using blockchains. He argues that content discovery systems like the Google Page Rank algorithm and Facebook’s News Feed could be replaced by open networks based on the mechanics of Bitcoin. Topics covered in this episode: How the current content monetization model works and why it’s broken The inner workings of content discovery The economics of content discovery Open marketplaces for attention and reputation New web-native business models for content discovery Episode links: Maciej's blog This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/120

A pioneering feature of Bitcoin is verifiability of transactions: It is designed to enable low-power devices and high end computers alike to be able to verify occurrences on the blockchain. This observation led our guest, Adam Gibson, to wonder why webpages aren’t so easily verifiable as a Bitcoin transaction? Can I prove to you that I have certain bank account balance over the internet? Why do we submit photocopies of passports rather than furnishing a cryptographically verifiable proof of citizenship by logging on to a Government site? Born out of this intellectual itch is the TLS Notary protocol. It pioneers a new kind of auditing that enables participants to prove that a certain https page was in their browser. This protocol paves the way to brilliant designs for Proof of Reserves, Smart contract oracles and Decentralised fiat-to-bitcoin exchange. Topics covered in this episode: Why is the current Web structured to be not easily verifiable? What is TLS and how does it work? How TLS differs from SSL The TLS Notary protocol Capabilities and limitations of TLS Notary Applications of TLS Notary including provably honest smart contract oracles Episode links: The TLS Notary website Oraclize, the provably honest oracle service The TLS specification (TLS 1.0 RFC 2246) This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/119

A typical online transaction today isn’t very different from how it was done 25 years ago at the dawn of the Internet. In fact, online payments haven’t changed much at all. When we want to pay for something online, we copy very sensitive credit card information into a form on a website and trust that website to capture it securely and make proper use of it. If this seems like an old and antiquated way to pay, that’s because it is, and it costs billions of dollars per year in security and fraud prevention. The World Wide Web Consortium wants to standardize the way we pay online, making it more secure, and hopefully a better experience for users. is a computer scientists and Standards Lead at the W3C. We talk about some of the core problems with dealing with credentials on the web and making online payments. Specifically, we discuss the Web Payments Working Group (WPWG), and their efforts to bring banks, payments providers and browser manufacturers together to converge around a standard set APIs to make for a better and more secure payment experience for all users. Topics covered in this episode: Manu’s interest in Bitcoin and blockchains His role in building the JSON-LD standard What is the W3C, what are it’s roles and how does it operate The level of interaction between the Bitcoin community and the W3C The fundamental problems of dematerialised payments online What it means to standardize payments online The Interledger Payments Community Group Manu’s company Digital Bazaar Episode links: Web Payments at the W3C Digital Bazaar This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/118

In the midst of the heated blocksize debate one could be forgiven to think that there is very little Bitcoin developers are able to agree on. Yet, when core developer and Blockstream co-founder Pieter Wuille introduced the concept of segregated witness at the Scaling Bitcoin conference in Hong Kong most of the Bitcoin community quickly rallied behind the proposal. Eric Lombrozo, CEO of wallet company Ciphrex and responsible for running the segregated witness testnet, joined us to discuss the proposal and its implications. Segregated witness, it turns out, does not only provide an elegant way to increase the blocksize via a soft-fork, it also solves transaction malleability and greatly simplifies updating the Bitcoin’s scripting language. It’s a crucial topic and may well enable a new wave of accelerated innovation in Bitcoin. Topics covered in this episode: The various benefits of segregated witness The mechanics of segregated witness How segregated witness solves transaction malleability How segregated witness could increase the blocksize to 2-3MB with a soft fork What segregated witness means for wallet developers How segregated witness could facilitate development of off-chain networks such as Lightning Network The important difference between hard forks and soft forks How segregated witness will allow updates of Bitcoin’s script language via soft forks Episode links: Scaling Bitcoin Talk by Pieter Wuille Let's Talk Bitcoin! #277 Separating Signatures with Segregated Witness Gavin Andresen: Segregated Witness is Cool Bitcoin Magazine Series on Segregated Witness Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Eric Lombrozo's company Ciphrex This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/117

Zero Knowledge Proofs are methods of providing cryptographic proofs to another party while keeping some information secret. The simple concept of ZKP offer tantalizing possibilities: Banks could prove solvency without revealing depositors. Governments could prove the fairness of an election without compromising privacy. Computer science professor Eli Ben-Sasson joined us to discuss where blockchains and cryptocurrencies intersect with Zero Knowledge Proofs and related technologies such as zkSNARKs. It offered a fascinating view into what will surely become a core part of blockchain tech in the future. Topics covered in this episode: What are proof systems? Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) and other terminology such as SNARKs and zkSNARKs The mechanics of Zero Knowledge Proofs The role of performance in Zero Knowledge Proofs Applications of ZKPs The widespread potential impact of ZKP to verify processes Episode links: Eli Ben-Sasson's Website SNARKs for C talk by Madars Virza Stackexchange: What are SNARKs SNARKs for C paper [PDF] Zerocash Talk This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/116

The idea that in the future tokens will play a crucial role in networks and organizations to incentivize decentralized collaboration and reward contribution is not new. It’s the original decentralized autonomous organization idea that has informed many projects that have been on the podcast (Swarm, Ethereum, Factom, Storj, etc). For Matan, the vision originally led to found decentralized ride-sharing application LaZooz. One year ago, he left LaZooz to found Backfeed, which is building the tools that so far have been missing to make mass collaboration without a central party possible.Topics covered in this episode:How he became interested in blockchains and started the ridesharing application LaZoozBackfeed’s vision for a social operating system for decentralized organizationsThe role of reputation, proof-of-value and tokens in BackfeedThe applications Backfeed is currently buildingThe business of model of BackfeedEpisode links:Backfeed websiteBackfeed: An Introduction for Mere MortalsMatan Field DevCon Talk about BackfeedThis episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/115

Vinay Gupta has been a programmer, 1990s cypherpunk, ‘resilience guru’, Ethereum release coordinator and currently collaborates with Consensys to mainstream smart contract technology. He also invented the Hexayurt, a cheap and resilient architectural structure for disaster-stricken communities. Recently, Vinay has become a thought leader in the cryptocurrency space. He is famed for his eloquence and ability to distill the crypto-finance technological paradigm into easy big-picture visualisations. Check out this podcast for some unique insights into technology, politics and history. Topics covered in this episode: His work on resilience. The connection between resilience and cryptocurrencies A history of the cypherpunks – who they were, what they believed in and why they failed. Why smart contracts matter? What is special about them? The impact cryptocurrencies will have on capitalism Why cryptocurrencies could be a great tool to explore basic income Episode links: Vinay Gupta - Dangerous Old Men: cypherpunk's failure, Ethereum's success Vinay Gupta - Resilience Guru | London Real Simple Critical Infrastructure Maps Vinay Gupta | Computers that just work | State of the Net 2015 Vinay's site re.silience.com This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/114

As blockchain technologies mature, new protocol specifications are emerging, which take unique approaches to software design and how consensus is achieved. We have talked about Multchain and OpenChain in the past, but Tendermint promises to be a viable solution for many permissioned blockchain use cases. It’s design is modular, meaning that the application layer (smart contract) and the consensus layer are completely independent. This provides added flexibility and allows for business logic to be written in practically any programming language. In addition, its unique approach to consensus, a round-robin Proof-of-Skate algorithm, is much better suited for permissioned blockchain scenarios than Proof-of-Work. Meher and Sebastien talk to Tendermint co-founders, Jae Kwon, Dustin Byington and Ethan Buchman, about this promising new blockchain protocol and how it is different from other projects we’ve seen so far. Topics covered in this episode: How Tendermint came to be and how it has evolved since its creation Smart contract programming and the Tendermint Socket Protocol (TMSP) How Tendermint makes use of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) Tendermint’s approach to PoS consensus and its scalability benefits Use case for permissioned and public blockchains Future plans and business models Episode links: Tendermint Tendermint for fast settlements Tendermint vs PBFT Tendermint specification This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/113

Permissionable blockchains have gained much attention from enterprise this past year, and specifically, the traditional fiance and FinTech sectors. As new protocols emerge and the technology is matures, it is becoming apparent they are simply a new class of database, one which integrates business logic (smart contracts) and a consensus layer (PoS, PoW, etc). is the CEO of Eris Industries, a company which specializes in building permissioned blockchain systems for enterprise. Their aim is to deliver the technologies which enable companies to easily build and deploy applications which make use of blockchain and smart contract technologies. Topics covered in this episode: Casey’s impressive background as an engineer, Marine soldier, lawyer and startup founder Eris Industries and what the company is trying to achieve Permissionable blockchains and their usefulness in industrial applications Smart contracts, how to explain them and legal status How blockchains can be used to revolutionize the way organizations construct business processes The idea of Blockchains-as-a-Service The various use cases for blockchain technologies Episode links: Eris Industries 2Gather This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/112