

A Rollup-Centric Future & Sovereign Chains with Mustafa Al-Bassam
27 snips Mar 15, 2023
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Mustafa's Blockchain Journey
- Mustafa Al-Bassam's interest in blockchain began with Bitcoin around 2010, sparked by a fascination with peer-to-peer networks.
- He later transitioned to Ethereum due to its innovative smart contract platform and the more technologically open community.
Origins of Separating Execution and Consensus
- The concept of separating execution from consensus predates blockchain technology itself.
- Early examples include Mastercoin (Tether's system) which is technically a rollup on Bitcoin, leveraging Bitcoin for ordering but not execution.
Mastercoin and Bitcoin's Data Capacity
- Mastercoin used Bitcoin's OP_RETURN opcode (or creative address encoding) to include arbitrary data.
- Today, Taproot scripts allow embedding larger files, like JPEGs, directly on the Bitcoin blockchain.