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The relatively new concept of a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), is often praised as a new type of organizational structure that has no identifiable owner or owners, and whose actions are automated and determined solely by a pre-defined set of rules. Views on DAOs differ widely. On one hand, members of the Bitcoin/blockchain space often portrayal them as AI-like swarm organisms, free from the shackles of nation-states, and that can act at will regardless of laws or regulation. On the other hand, legal experts caution that, like corporations, DAOs and their creators could be held liable in civil lawsuits, and that they may be served a hard dose of reality when they end up in court. We are joined by Florian Glatz, attorney, researcher and software developer (not to mention the proud owne r of the awesome domain name blockchain.lawyer). We discuss some of the basic legal concepts surrounding contracts and in what ways smart contracts may or may not fit within our existing legal framework. We also dive deep into DAOs, and address some of the challenges they may pose in the near and distant future. Topics covered in this episode: The history of innovation in law How merchant law (Lex Mercatoria) emerged in the 13th century How we can define smart contracts The legality of smart contacts The need for natural language contracts vs. contracts which are written in code Decentralized Autonomous Organizations The Slock.it DAO What would happen if one tried to sue a DAO Episode links: Florian's Website What are Smart Contracts? In search of a consensus Smart Contracts, Platforms and Intermediaries How to Sue A DAO How to Incorporate a DAO This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/125

The challenges Bitcoin’s wild volatility represents for achieving mass adoption have made the necessity for stable cryptocurrencies apparent long ago. With Ethereum applications, the problem is even more apparent as many use cases from predcition markets to insurance are impractical using the even more volatile ether. Maker DAO is an ambitious attempt to solve the problem by building a bank-like system to issue a value-stable currency on Ethereum. Rune Christensen joined us to discuss the need for Maker and the complex system to guarantee stability. Topics covered in this episode: Why money is the most successful product ever What makes stablecoins are necessary The different components of Maker such as the stablecoin Dai, the token MKR and the role they play Why Maker needs insurance against black swan events Maker’s different planned stages of increasing decentralization The MKR token sale and its value proposition for investors Episode links: Maker DAO Maker DAO Whitepaper Maker DAO DevCon Talk EB60 with Robert Sams: Volatility and the Search for a Stable Cryptocurrency This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/124

We’re joined by , Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, investor and all around emblematic figure of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Brock tells his story, from his early beginning a entrepreneur in his teens, to the massively successfull video game industry businesses he built in the early 2000s. As Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, he gives us his perspective on how the Foundation’s role has evolved over time and its areas of focus going forward. Brock also weighs in the recent debates around governance and block size. Topics covered in this episode: The lemonade-stand beginnings of Brock’s entrepreneurship story How he became involved in gaming and pioneered the sale of digital goods The 400,000-strong professional gamer supply chain he built in China His first contact with Bitcoin and the initial concerns he had Blockchain Capital and how he ended up investing in dozens of Bitcoin startups The blocksize debate and whether Bitcoin needs an explicit governance process The future of the Bitcoin Foundation Episode links: This Week in Startups with Brock Pierce The Finanser Interview with Brock Pierce Blockchain Capital Brock Pierce – Bitcoins Are The Digital Gold 2.0 This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/123

For Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn, part of the cypherpunk movement since the early 1990s, the vision of a decentralized financial system that has both openness and privacy has existed since long before Bitcoin. After many failed attempts, Bitcoin proved that that vision could be achievable. But Bitcoin also failed to deliver on the privacy features as blockchain analysis allows tracing movements and deanonymizing many users. Zooko joined us to discuss his project Zcash, a fully anonymous cryptocurrency that is scheduled to launch in July. Through Zcash’s use of ground-breaking Zero Knowledge Proofs (or zkSNARKs) the blockchain will leak no information about sender, recipients nor amounts. It was a fascinating discussion of the most anticipated launch of a cryptocurrency since Ethereum. Topics covered in this episode: Zooko’s long cypherpunk history How overconfidence derailed many cypherpunk projects Why Bitcoin’s privacy is broken and how Zcash provides true privacy The too-good-to-be-true Zcash team Why Zcash is based on a fork of Bitcoin How the initial parameter generation creates a potential security weakness Why Zcash believes in an evolutionary approach to designing cryptocurrency protocols Episode links: Zcash website Why Zcash - Project Announcement Zerocash: Decentralized Anonymous Payments from Bitcoin [PDF] EB116 - Eli Ben-Sasson: Zero Knowledge Proofs This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/122

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