Blockchains with Melanie Swan

Blockchains are the distributed ledger technology underlying bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

More broadly, a blockchain is a mechanism for updating truth states in distributed network computing, producing consensus trust and serving as a new form of general computational substrate.

 Melanie Swan is a science and technology innovator and philosopher at the MS Futures Group. She founded the Institute for Blockchain Studies, and is the author of Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy.

Questions:

  • What is a blockchain?
  • How can we generalize the blockchain from bitcoin to other areas?
  • How does every user maintain the entire transaction list when that list is gigantic and growing every day?
  • How do Stellar and Ripple differ?
  • What is Ethereum?
  • Is there a social tension between having strong leaders like Vitalik Buterin and a decentralized ideal culture?
  • Can you have a blockchain without mining?
  • Can the blockchain be used to prevent the artificial intelligence nightmares of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking?

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