Base Layer

Jordan joins us today on Base Layer for a heavy Bitcoin talk! We discuss everything from the new BIP's such as Schnorr signatures, MAST, Taproot and more to the new Institutional infrastructure being provided by Bakkt which went live this week...how futures help with price discovery and much more.

Jutta joins us on Base Layer to break down all that is happening at Parity and especially Polkadot; it's an amazing episode! Jutta is the co-founder and CEO of Parity Technologies. Parity Technologies has developed the most advanced Ethereum client and has recently started a new blockchain network protocol called Polkadot—a pioneering work to address governance, interoperability, and scalability of blockchain technology and a fundamental building block of the future decentral Web 3. She previously served as Chief of Security for the Ethereum Foundation, overseeing security audit and integration prior to the launch of the public blockchain in 2015. Heavy discussion on interoperability and it's importance as well as Substrate - a way to speed up develop in blockchain applications.

Itamar joins us on Base Layer and it's a very exciting discussion with a founder of a project a lot of people are talking about. Argent has arguably built one of the simplest crypto wallets out there and has really taken the notion of creating simple user experiences to heart. With concepts like Guardians and the ability to freeze funds, you will learn how they are doing this and why there is such a buzz.

Seth joins us on Base Layer to tell us what Market Protocol is and why people are getting excited about it. MARKET Protocol, using Ethereum, allows users to trade the price of anything while leveraging the benefits of the blockchain. Market Protocol enables people to trade stocks, cryptocurrencies, and traditional assets -- we discuss position tokens, reference assets and much more as it relates to the who, what and how. With Seth's background in traditional finance, starting as a derivatives trader in 2005, we discuss the emergence of #defi and also get into a discussion about systemic risk.

Ed joins us on Base Layer and it's a great episode -- not often have we had the chance to talk with people who have advised the President of the United States and our government on technology like Ed has in his not to recent past! Ed and I discuss Artbitrum - a L2 solution to make Ethereum scale which also has features to add privacy and a layer of "guaranty" that smart contracts will be abided by. Really enjoyed this episode and so will you!

Jeanine and Brian from Gemini Trust Co join us on Base Layer to discuss some of the recent work Gemini is doing to offer Institutional Investors more professional services to buy & sell digital assets in the most secure and compliant way possible. This episode Jeanine and Brian have some breaking news to discuss on an important new offering they will be providing to clients. A must listen!

Dean joins us on Base Layer for an in-depth discussion on Agoric and it's not to be missed. Dean designed the negotiation process and contract for the first smart contracting system, AMiX which dates back to the 1980's. As a Principal Architect at Microsoft, he designed the Midori distributed object-capability operating system. While most smart contract platforms currently use an identity-based security architecture where access is granted based on the sender of a transaction, it has been shown that identity-based security architectures have issues. In contrast, Agoric uses an object capacity security architecture, in which access to a programming object itself is the authority to use the object. We discuss all these differences and why companies like Google and Salesforce are currently using these designs as well.

Roneil from Audius joins us on Base Layer for episode 60 and it's really a fun one! Aside from an exceptional career that has had stops at places like Kleiner and being early to the blockchain party, Roneil and team are focusing on a use case of blockchains - getting people who create content paid and removing a lot of excesses paid to the "middleman". We discuss how Audius is doing that for content creators and the technology stack involved in decentralizing what has been a legacy centralized system.

Akin from Decred joins us on Base Layer for a great overview of the project. Decred forked from the Bitcoin codebase when a proposal for new suite of features to be added to Bitcoin from Company 0 was rejected by the Bitcoin core team. Named btcsuite, these features became the core of the Decred project. Decred’s governance and consensus mechanism relies on a PoW/Proof-of-Stake (PoS) hybrid, which the project regards as a sort of “second authentication factor for consensus” by enabling coin holders to curb potential miner centralization, Decred employs a governance body called the Politeia to guide the project’s direction and fund operations from its treasury. We learn all about their special governance mechanisms and why people are talking about Decred.