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

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

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