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

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 LaZooz Backfeed’s vision for a social operating system for decentralized organizations The role of reputation, proof-of-value and tokens in Backfeed The applications Backfeed is currently building The business of model of Backfeed Episode links: Backfeed website Backfeed: An Introduction for Mere Mortals Matan Field DevCon Talk about Backfeed This 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

Andrew Miller is a computer science PhD student at the University of Maryland who focuses on cryptocurrency. Having gotten involved in Bitcoin in 2011 and focused on cryptocurrencies early in his research work, he is one of the most prolific researchers in the field. Our discussion mainly focused on security aspects of Ethereum including their gas model, Proof-of-Work algorithm and plans to switch to Proof-of-Stake. Topics covered in this episode: How he got involved in doing research on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies The blossoming of academic interest in the topic His work on analyzing Ethereum’s gas model Potential vulnerabilities of the Gas model Ethereum’s PoW algorithm How Ethereum handles the block size limit Episode links: Andrew's University Website Ethereum Analysis: Gas Economics and Proof of Work Overview Ethereum Analysis: Gas Economics Ledger Journal Hawk: Privacy-Preserving Smart Contracts This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/111

With over 600,000 views, James D’Angelo’s educational videos at the World Bitcoin Network are among the most popular resources on Bitcoin. Besides his excellent technical explanation, he has also been vocal about the dangers of the increasing centralization of mining. James joined us to talk about his background as a rapper, the World Bitcoin Network, his proposal to use the Bitcoin blockchain to fight climate change and his argument that keeping Bitcoin decentralized would require sacrificing the anonymity of miners. Topics covered in this episode: How he first learned about Bitcoin and started the World Bitcoin Network His proposals on identity and climate change The crucial mistake Satoshi made in designing Bitcoin Why none of the current ideas can solve the underlying problem of the centralization of mining power Why decentralization should be the only design criterion for Bitcoin His Axiom: That anonymity and decentralization of miners are inversely correlated How Identity-based Mining could foster decentralization Episode links: World Bitcoin Network YouTube channel Article about his Sno-Caps proposal to use Bitcoin to fight climate change Sno-Caps Whitepaper Bitcoin Nodes and Noses A new mystery about Satoshi hidden in the Bitcoin block-chain 'Typical American' from James D'Angelo earlier rap band The Goats James D'Angelo's talk 'What is the Bitcoin Revolution?' Bitcoin in Uganda video with James This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/110

Identity is probably one of the most important constructs in our society. In our modern world, protecting one’s identity has become complex, as we no longer rely solely on governments to prove who we are. In addition, most identity sources can be easily compromised. Credit cards and social security numbers weren’t developed with the Internet in mind, and other identifiers such as logins and passwords aren’t well suited truly secure authentication and authorisation. We’re joined by Tim Pastoor, Founder of 2way.io, to discuss how we can improve control of our identities using concepts borrowed from Bitcoin. Tim walks us through how people could better manage different identities and build reputation networks using Identifi, a global address book protocol invented by Martti Malmi, one of the very first Bitcoin users. We also talk what role this system could play in the future as autonomous agents and artificial intelligence become more prevalent. Topics covered in this episode: The history of identity systems and how traditional identity systems are broken How the invention of Blockchain technologies changed the way we think of identity The Identifi protocol and how it works How we can build reputation through Webs of Trust (WoT) The future of identity and how Identifi could provide ID for IoT, robots, autonomous agents and artificial intelligence 2Way.io and what the company is trying to achieve Episode links: 2Way Identifi protocol Identifi service This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/109

The Bitcoin and blockchain industry has been through a lot this year. While the Bitcoin price has experienced relative stability, perhaps indicating slow growth, the space has grown into a rich and diverse ecosystem of startups and open technologies. Through inspiring proof-of-concepts and exciting use cases, blockchain technologies have gained legitimacy as a viable technology to improve transparency, reduce costs and optimise processes, to name a few of it’s benefits. In this episode, all three Epicenter Bitcoin hosts, Brian, Sebastien and Meher, come together to look back on the events which marked the space this past year, and speculate on where thing may be heading in the future. Topics covered in this episode: Shift in focus from Bitcoin to blockchain technologies Public vs. private blockchain debate Bitcoin blocksize debate Media censorship and r/Bitcoin dictatorship Ethereum and it’s flourishing ecosystem Sebastien’s new startup: Stratumn This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/108

Gideon Greenspan, a computer scientist and CEO/Founder of the Israeli startup Coin Sciences, joined us for a discussion of their private blockchain platform MultiChain. Besides diving into the popular question of what’s the point of a private blockchain, we covered his earlier colored coins implementation as well as his view that blockchains are best understood as a novel database paradigm. Topics covered in this episode: How Gideon got involved in the blockchain space Their colored coins implementation MultiSpark and why it failed to get traction Why he saw a market for an open-source private blockchain platform and started MultiChain What mining diversity is and how it is used for consensus in MultiChain How permissions work in MultiChain The issues of privacy in blockchains and why you can’t have auditability and privacy How private blockchains differ from regular distributed databases The five criteria to decide if a project needs a blockchain The problem he sees with smart contract blockchains Episode links: Multichain website Multichain Whitepaper Colored coin protocol CoinSpark Avoiding the pointless blockchain project Private blockchains are more than 'just' shared databases Smart contracts: The good, the bad and the lazy This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/107

Christian Decker is a PhD student at ETH Zurich, where he is currently finishing up the world’s first PhD thesis entirely about Bitcoin. The computer scientist has been part of the Bitcoin community since 2009 and just recently turned off his last miner after 6.5 years! We talked about the current scalability debate and what his research indicated what blocksize could reasonably be handled today. We also discussed his proposal for Duplex Micropayment Channels. Like the Lightning Network, Duplex Channels use a network of payment channels to enable cheap, instant and trustless offchain transactions. The proposal, which he is currently implementing, is one of the most promising approaches to scaling Bitcoin. Topics covered in this episode: How losing 9000 btc got him on the front page of the New York Times The scaling Bitcoin debate and what blocksize could be handled today How payment channels work and could be used for off-chain transactions The advantages Duplex Micropayment Channels have with regards to privacy The differences between Duplex and the Lightning Network Whether off-chain transactions could work on Ethereum as well Episode links: Christian Decker's ETH homepage A Fast and Scalable Payment Network with Bitcoin Duplex Micropayment Channels [PDF] Bitcoin Meets Strong Consistency [PDF] Information Propagation in the Bitcoin Network [PDF] Epicenter Bitcoin Lightning Network Episode This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/106