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

With Proof-of-Stake (PoS) a blockchain is secured not by spending an external resource such as electricity but by using value internal to the chain itself. The promise of higher security at a lower cost is what also drives Ethereum to plan a move away from Proof-of-Work to PoS in the future. Ethereum researcher Vlad Zamfir, who leads their effort in the complex search for the optimal PoS consensus system joined us for an in-depth discussion of the challenges of PoS, the approach Casper is taking and what consensus in Ethereum land could look like in the future. Topics covered in this episode: How he became interested in consensus and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Why Ethereum plans to switch to the PoS systems Casper in the future What the Long-Range Attack and Nothing-at-Stake problems are and how Casper addresses them How a betting mechanism is used to get validators to reach consensus What centralization pressures exist for validators and what operating a validator will look like The role of security deposits in Casper The difference between Tendermint and Casper Whether forks create big UI/UX issues for Casper Why Casper is very light client friendly Episode links: Introducing Casper - Ethereum Blog Review of Casper, Ethereum’s proposed Proof of Stake Algorithm Casper Protocol Specification Slasher, Ghost and Other Developments in Proof-of-Stake Epicenter Bitcoin Episode 58 with Vitalik Buterin on Proof-of-Stake This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/105

Businesses with the alleged potential to become the next Google are plentiful in Bitcoin-land, but finding actual commercial success is a lot harder. The best example of a commercial success is gift card company Gyft that became known as the first place to give access to a wide range of merchants for bitcoin holders and later achieved the largest exit so far in the crypto space in an acquisition by payments company First Data. Gyft CTO joined us to talk about how he got involved in FinTech, what makes gift cards so interesting and how recently Gyft has been trying to reinvent gift cards by using the power of the blockchain. Topics covered in this episode: Giyom’s early involvement in FinTech in the early 2000s His previous projects Bernal Bucks and Credibles that explored gift cards and alternative currencies Why gift cards are a great place for financial innovation The mechanics of gift cards today and why their security is broken How Gyft Block can improve the security of gift cards using the blockchain Why Gyft moved their gift cards off the Bitcoin blockchain onto private blockchains Giyom’s view on the utility of Bitcoin and private blockchains Episode links: Giyom's blog Gyft’s Giyom Lebleu: Following Linux ‘The Most Likely Path for Bitcoin’ [CoinJournal] Future of Money Interview. Part I. On Credibles and owning digital currencies issued by brands you love Gyft Payments giant First Data acquires Gyft in an effort to bring digital gift cards to the masses [Pando] Gift Block Bernal Bucks Credibles This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/104

One of the concerns confronting the Bitcoin community is that of scaling the transaction throughput rate: How do we go from the current rate of approx. 5 transactions per second to a thousand times that? In this episode, we talk to Emin Gun Sirer and Ittay Eyal from Cornell University regarding Bitcoin NG; a next generation Bitcoin blockchain design that addresses some protocol based limitations preventing Bitcoin from increasing transaction throughput. Their proposal also enables fast (initial) transaction confirmations on the order of 10-20 seconds. Topics covered in this episode: Metrics to measure the security and fairness properties of Nakamoto consensus as implemented in Bitcoin. A network emulation of Bitcoin designed by their team to study properties of Bitcoin network. Technical design of Bitcoin NG Concerns with Bitcoin NG Impact of Bitcoin NG on various stakeholders if it is adopted in the main Bitcoin network. Episode links: Bitcoin-NG White Paper Bitcoin-NG: A Secure, Faster, Better Blockchain Bitcoin-NG and the Blockchain Test bed (Scaling Bitcoin Workshop Slides) This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/103

Among the dividing themes in the Bitcoin space is the idea of public versus private blockchains. While some argue that private and permissioned blockchains can offer better scalability and lower latency for enterprises, others insist the Bitcoin blockchain will offer the best level of security and robustness longterm. Recently, projects have emerged that propose the best of both worlds by leveraging both off-chain and on-chain transactions. This is the idea behind Openchain, an “open source distributed ledger technology, suited for organizations wishing to issue and manage digital assets in a robust, secure and scalable way.” Openchain uses a client-server model where there is only one authoritative validating node. Read-only observer nodes keep the central node honest by auditing transactions in real time. About every 10 minutes, a copy of the Ledger, and its transactions, is hashed and inserted into a Bitcoin transaction so that it can be fossilised in the blockchain. We’re joined by Flavien Charlon, the one-man operation behind Predictious, Coinprism, the Open Transactions Protocol and now Openchain. We talk about this fascinating new software, which aims to offer enterprises a digital ledger protocol that is highly scalable while enjoying the benefits of the Bitcoin blockchain for immutability. Topics covered in this episode: Flavien gives an update on Coinprism and his other projects The Openchain protocol and what it’s trying to achieve The technical architecture of Openchain and the client-server model it implements How Openchain uses the Bitcoin blockchain to “anchor” transactions into every block Openchain’s consensus model The ability for Openchain to interoperate with other ledgers and blockchains Flavien’s thoughts on what the ecosystem might look like in 10 years Episode links: Openchain Openchain Docs This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/102

A brilliant fact about crypto-economic blockchains is that they enable the construction of naming systems that transcend limits imposed by Zooko’s triangle. Traditional naming systems such as human names, Domain Name System (DNS) and Facebook profile names are subject to Zooko’s triangle and cannot be secure, human memorable and decentralised at once. For instance human names such as Meher Roy are human-memorable and decentralised but not secure (nothing prevents hundreds of people being called Meher Roy). Domain Names like are secure and human-memorable but require a central authority to hand out names. OneName leverages Bitcoin to build a Global Identification system called blockchain ID. Blockchain IDs for users can be associated with real world identity data such as social media profiles, government issued papers etc. In this episode we converse with Ryan Shea and Muneeb Ali, co-founders and leaders of OneName, Blockstore and BlockStack. They explain the rationale and vision behind their push for a Global Decentralised Identification and Verification system. Topics covered in this episode: Zooko’s triangle and how Bitcoin breaks the triangle The general idea behind blockchain ID, how it works and its component transactions Why OneName migrated their blockchain ID system from the Namecoin to the Bitcoin blockchain Technical design of Blockstore and how it enables decentralised storage and association of large datasets to blockchain IDs Vision and use cases for Decentralised Identity, authentication and identity verification. The notion of Probabilistic Identity Episode links: Intentional Naming System Zooko's triangle Why Onename is Migrating to the Bitcoin Blockchain Blockchain ID Organization of Schemas Blockstack BlockStore This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/101

We’ve made it to episode 100! Our guest for our celebratory episode is Juan Benet, inventor of the Inter-Planetary File System and founder of Protocol Labs. IPFS is a distributed file system that seeks to connect all computing devices with the same system of files. The possibilities for IPFS could range from distributed cloud hosting to websites without central servers to even replacing HTTP. It’s a project as audacious as any we’ve had on the podcast and Juan did an outstanding job explaining the technology and vision. Topics covered in this episode: Why HTTP is broken and how IPFS could complement and ultimately replace it The different technologies IPFS is based on including DHT, Git, Bittorrent and SFS How IPFS could enable the ‘permanent web’ by distributing file storage Content-addressing and how hosting works on IPFS Mutable content and the Interplanetary Naming System (IPNS) Filecoin and incentivizing hosting on IPFS Why IPFS is a great fit for smart contracts How he wants to build and monetize core internet protocols with his company Protocol Labs Episode links: IPFS website IPFS whitepaper (PDF) Replication on IPFS Neocities blog post Filecoin Protocol Labs This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/100

One of the key innovations of Bitcoin is the ability to easily implement payment channels. A number of use cases have been discussed or demonstrated, among which is the idea of pay-per-use. This is particularly useful when charging for things like WiFi or streaming video by the second. With this in mind, one could imagine a line of communication between two peers, where data flows in one direction and payments flow in the other. This is the idea behind Streamium, a free and open-source service which allows content creators to stream live video directly to viewers, and get paid instantly. We’re joined by Manuel Aráoz and , the two brilliant software engineers from Argentina who created Streamium. They have worked together on numerous Bitcoin projects these past few years, including ProofOfExistence.com, Faradam, Decentraland, RelayStore, and actively contributed to the BitCore javascript library. Topics covered in this episode: The current state of Bitcoin in Argentina The general idea behind Streamium, how it works and its technical components How payment channels are implemented in Streamium and its various use cases The Faradam project The prospect of alternative content funding models made possible by Bitcoin micropayments Proof-of-existence and what innovations blockchain technologies brings to data notarization The Decentraland project and the vision for a blockchain-based virtual reality Episode links: Streamium Faradam Decentraland Proof of Existence The Mental Accounting Barrier to Micropayments by Nick Szabo Manuel Aráoz's About.me profile Esteban Ordano's personal website This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/099

Robin Hanson, an associate professor of economics at George Mason University, discusses his invention of prediction markets and futarchy. Topics include the potential of prediction markets for better decision making, the history of prediction markets, the challenges faced by futarchy, and how Bitcoin is facing similar adoption challenges.

Prediction markets are considered one of the most promising applications of blockchain technology. Although the concept and some early implementations have existed for years, decentralized prediction markets present a number of advantages to their centralized counterparts. joins us to discuss Truthcoin, a “Peer-to-Peer Oracle Protocol which absorbs accurate data into a blockchain so that Bitcoin-users can speculate in Prediction Markets”. We dive deep to explore the advantages of decentralized prediction markets, their various real-world applications, and their potential to revolutionize the creation and propagation of knowledge in our society. On this episode, we are thrilled to introduce a new co-host on Epicenter Bitcoin, Meher Roy. He has a biochemical engineering background and previously worked as an adviser to HyperLedger. Since discovering Bitcoin, he spends most of his free time understanding blockchain technology and its potential impact on our lives. We’re confident that Meher will bring a high level of understanding and critical thinking to the topics we cover, and we’re certain our listeners will be as happy as we are to have him on the show. Topics covered in this episode: What are prediction markets and why they are useful The mechanics of prediction markets The potential for prediction markets to provide useful aggregation to today’s abundant information The parallels between crowd intelligence and artificial intelligence The different components of Truthcoin and the state of the project How Truthcoin differs from other decentralized prediction markets Episode links: Truthcoin Website This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/097

It is often said that technology is neutral. It’s certainly commonplace for Bitcoin to be thought of as such. In reality, technologies may be characterized as an embodiment of human intention, and therefore, cannot be considered as culturally or politically neutral. At least, this is the opinion of our guest, . A research scientist at MIT Media Lab and CEO of ID3, a nonprofit which aims to deploy a new generation of trusted digital institutions, John has spent the last seven decades researching the interaction between technology and society. He joins us for a fascinating discussion on the flaws of our institutions in present day society and how we can leverage technology to build a new social ecosystem. Topics covered in this episode: The political values of Bitcoin The idea of cooperative currencies The current state of identity and data ownership, and how it may be improved The governance of decentralized technologies How cybernetics and self-organizing systems may be applied to governance The Open Mustard Seed framework Episode links: ID3 Institute for Data-Driven Design From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond (Amazon) Open Mustard Seed Talk by John Clippinger: Bitcoin and Beyond This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/096