Base Layer

Mike Belshe, the CEO and co-founder of BitGo, joins us for the next episode of Base Layer. BitGo, is one of the market leaders in institutional-grade cryptocurrency investment services. Mike is the driving force behind BitGo’s product and business strategy for delivering security, compliance, and custodial solutions for blockchain-based currencies. Prior to founding BitGo, Mike was one of the first engineers dedicated to building Chrome at Google. He is creator of the SPDY protocol and lead author of HTTP/2.0, the internet protocol responsible for loading web pages today. In 2003, Mike co-founded Lookout Software, an email search company acquired by Microsoft, and has held management positions at several startups including Netscape, Good Technology, and Critical Path. Mike and I talk the current state of custody and what the future has for it, insurance and custody and much more.

Alexander Zaidelson from Beam joins us on Base Layer for what I'm now calling "Privacy Week" after we had Monero on the episode prior. BEAM is a next generation confidential cryptocurrency based on an elegant and innovative Mimblewimble protocol. Users have complete control over privacy; user decides which information will be available and to which parties, having complete control over his/her personal data in accordance to his/her will and applicable laws. No addresses are stored in the blockchain; no information whatsoever about either the sender or the receiver of a transaction is stored in the blockchain. We discuss all of this, how it’s done (under the hood), discuss Pedersen commitments and much more.

Riccardo Spagni, the man, myth and legend at Monero joins us on Base Layer and it's a massive show! Not only is this a crash course in what Monero is for beginners it's also got updates and some great detail into what's happening at Monero. In addition this was a really important conversation as we've seen yet another massive data hack at a bank, with 100m records stolen. We discuss the tech that is involved in Monero (Ring signatures, RingCT and stealth addresses), commitments and much more. Also a great discussion for those trying to understand the differences in privacy coins like Monero to Bitcoin and Ethereum, among others. Listen and learn!

Jamie Burke, CEO of Outlier Ventures, joins us on Base Layer for an amazing chat about Web 3.0 and much more. OV is an early stage investment firm who also advises some very early projects, having developed a thesis called the Convergence Stack which, in my opinion, dissects the decentralized/distributed stack the best out of anyone so far. We talk about that, about a world that exists in addition to Bitcoin and much more.

Doug Petkanics joins us on Base Layer for a great overview of Livepeer which ~3/4th's of my guests have brought up a project to pay attention to! Doug is a multi-time Founder with Wildcard and Hyperpublic and has been focusing his attention for the last few years on Livepeer; live streaming services, such as YouTube and Twitch have seen tremendous growth in popularity in recent years. Broadcasting or building a streaming application however can be very expensive, as a result of payments to centralized transcoding and distribution companies. Livepeer aims to provide the infrastructure service layer for decentralized live video broadcasting. In doing so, it hopes to provide a cheaper, more scalable, censorship resistant solution that is more resilient without single points of failure. We talked about everything from the unplugging generation to their consensus methodologies and governance systems. Truly a great overview of a really important project.

Patrick, the Founder of Qtum ($300M Market Cap), joins us on Base Layer and there's a lot to unpack on this one. Qtum wants to harness the best attributes of the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains to create a decentralized, well-governed smart contracts platform with the potential to iterate on existing consensus mechanisms and other protocol parameters. Qtum believes proof-of-work blockchain protocols like suffer from categorical scaling limitations such that proof-of-stake is if only by default a viable consensus model. Qtum plans to build the first robust proof-of-stake UTXO-based smart-contract network. They also have a Decentralized Governance Protocol which we discussed in addition to their full node count and more insight into their x86 Virtual Machine which aims to support C, C++, Rust, Python and other widely used programming languages, facilitating mainstream adoption of smart contract development.

We welcome Dan and Ian on Base Layer to discuss the work they are doing at IDEO CoLab and their new Start-Up Studio. IDEO CoLab works very closely with their startups and projects; from 4-day sprints to multi-week projects, they start with an organization's hard problems and create experience prototypes that look 12+ months ahead of market. They also have some powerful corporate names behind them now including Fidelity, Deloitte and Amazon in addition to 50 new mentors they announced that range from some of the best investors in crypto to some of the best founders. In addition we also caught up with Dan to discuss #defi and his thesis around Superfluid Collateral. Not one to miss!

Kyle Davies joins Base Layer to discuss the work being done at Three Arrows Capital, a Singapore-based fund specializing in emerging markets and crypto. Kyle used to work at Credit Suisse on the exotic derivatives equity desk before founding Three Arrows in 2012 in San Francisco with a partner, Su Zhu. They met at high school at Phillips Academy, studied math and economics together at Columbia University, and then worked together in Hong Kong. We discussed the broader market and what they are seeing in crypto today.

Hugh from Nexus Mutual joins Base Layer for it's 50th episode! Nexus Mutual is building a decentralized alternative to insurance. They are using blockchain (Ethereum) to build a mutual (a risk sharing pool) to return the power of insurance to the people. It will allow anyone to become a member and buy cover. It replaces the idea of a traditional insurance company, because it is wholly owned by the members. We spoke about Nexus Mutual help users be covered for events like The DAO hack or Parity multi-sig wallet issues. This is a super interesting space evolving - one to listen to!

Xiaohan joins us on Base Layer to discuss Meter and the state of stablecoins. Xiaohan has years of experience in tech from Microsoft, Sony to Motorola, and he brings those years of experience to work on "Reinventing Money for DeFi. Permissionless, Low Volatility, Fast, No Oracles; Enable Bitcoin to Achieve Its Original Vision". We discuss different stablecoins like Tether, Dai, Basis and more. Great conversation and one to learn from!