James Prestwich: Summa One – Cross-chain Financial Instruments and Contracts

While 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 dutch auction spanning the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains: Ethereum NFTs were auctioned off trustlessly to bidders on the Bitcoin network. We also discuss Riemann, a framework for deploying transaction scripts to UTXO-based chains, as well as the advantages of the predictability of transactions in UTXO-based chains and how to bring some of those advantages to Ethereum smart contracts.

Topics covered in this episode:

• James background in Japanese and how he became interested in blockchain
• James contributions to Bitcoin Script
• Summa’s recent cross-chain auction in which Ethereum NFTs were auctioned off to participants on the bitcoin network
• Riemann, a framework for deploying script based transactions to UTXO blockchains
• Atomic swaps leading to free options
• Advantages of transaction predictability in UTXO based chains

Episode links:

• Summa Website
• Cross-chain Auctions via Bitcoin Double Spends (article)
• Statesless SPV (article)
• Declarative Smart Contracts (article)
• Introducing Reimann (article)
• James Prestwich on 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.

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/265