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http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_29_EnterpriseBlockchains.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download We sign many different types of contracts throughout our lives. We sign a mortgage to get a loan for a house. When we go to the hospital, we sign a piece of paper that defines how our medical data can be shared between organizations. These pieces of paper represent our opting into an agreement that will be mediated and enforced by computer interactions.
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http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_28_Plasma.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Ethereum is a system for running decentralized smart contracts. In the current implementation of Ethereum, every smart contract gets deployed to every full node. Whenever a user wants to call a smart contract, that smart contract gets executed on each full node–across the entire network. The current model for smart contract execution needs to be made more scalable. In today’s episode, Christian Reitwiessner
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_27_Falcon.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Soumya Basu is a PhD student at Cornell, where he studies distributed systems problems associated with cryptocurrencies. Soumya is advised by Emin Gun Sirer, a Cornell professor who previously appeared on the show to discuss smart contract security. Soumya joins the show today to talk about a variety of issues in the cryptocurrency space. We first explored the degree to which Bitcoin and
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_26_Tendermint.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Consensus protocols are used to allow computers to work together. A consensus protocol lets different servers agree on the state of a system. For decades, these protocols have been used to establish consensus among database nodes, application servers, and other infrastructure that runs within an enterprise. More recently, new consensus protocols have been invented to allow cryptoeconomic systems to agree on the state
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_23_SlockitwithChristophJentzsh.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download The DAO was a system of smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain that investors put millions of dollars into. Back in May 2016, it was the largest crowdfunding event in history, and we discussed it in detail in a previous episode with Matt Leising. The DAO was hacked due to a security vulnerability, and this event led to a hard fork of Ethereum.
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_22_Streamr.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Data streams about the weather can be used to predict how soybean futures are going to change in price. Satellite data streams can take pictures of the number of cars on the road, and judge how traffic patterns are changing. Search engines can aggregate data from different queries and determine what people are most interested in. Data streams define how the world is
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_21_Statusim.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download To use a web application, you probably open a web browser or a mobile app. To access an Ethereum application, many people use an Ethereum browser. In previous episodes, we explored Metamask and Mist, which are Ethereum browsers for the desktop. In today’s episode, we explore Status, a mobile Ethereum browser. Status founders Jarrad Hope and Oskar Thoren join the show to talk
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_20_AnthonyJaxx.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Anthony Diiorio was involved with Ethereum since the earliest days. He was one of the first people to see the Ethereum ideas presented by Vitalik Buterin, and he invested deeply in Ethereum–both financially and by helping to establish the early Ethereum community. Anthony started Decentral in 2014, which is a hub for his projects in the cryptocurrency space, the most impactful project being
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_19_ShapeshiftOperations.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download A financial exchange is an operationally intensive business. You have customers making a high volume of transactions, your service has to be low latency and highly available, and you are dealing with a lot of money. A cryptocurrency exchange has all of the complexity of a typical financial exchange–and then some additional complexity. ShapeShift is a cryptocurrency exchange that allows users to buy
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_16_PumpandDumpswithBruno.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Cryptocurrency speculation has pulled in a large population of people who do not know what they are investing in. If you hear about an investment of $1000 turning into $1M, it’s tempting to get sucked in yourself. For most of these everyday people, the game is completely rigged. A large percentage of market activity is driven by “pump and dumps.” A pump and
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_15_Santiment.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download In the finance industry, many people have a computer on their desk called a Bloomberg terminal. A Bloomberg terminal contains news, stock prices, communication tools, and other features that make it worth a high subscription price. And people in finance can afford to pay that high subscription because their decisions can cause a gain or loss of thousands of dollars. Cryptocurrency investors have
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_14_Web3.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Most applications today run on a cloud provider like AWS. They are built with a framework like Ruby on Rails. They use a set of APIs like Stripe and Twilio for middleware services. This is the era of “web 2.0.” With decentralized systems, we are starting to get a feel for what “web 3.0” might feel like. The futuristic idea of “web 3.0”
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_13_Metamask.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Decentralized applications can be built on the Ethereum blockchain. Just as the Bitcoin blockchain is a distributed, append-only ledger of financial transaction history, Ethereum is a distributed, append-only ledger of computational transaction history. New kinds of applications can be built on the Ethereum blockchain—and just like every new technology, we need an interface to bridge that new technology and our existing technology. We
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_12_MonopoliesandProofofStake.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Decentralized applications might someday offer alternatives to modern monopolies. Uber, Airbnb, Facebook, Amazon—all of these services could be recreated on a decentralized stack of technologies like Ethereum, IPFS, and Golem. Fully decentralized services could be more transparent, cheaper, and more efficient. But let’s be realistic. Today, even the simplest applications of fully decentralized blockchains don’t work as well as we need them to.
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_09_ProofofStake.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download For a decade, Bitcoin’s proof-of-work system has run without disruption. In a proof-of-work scheme, Bitcoin miners compete to solve a cryptographic puzzle associated with a block of transactions. Every ten minutes, all the Bitcoin miner nodes race to be the first to solve a block of transactions. Only one miner wins each block, meaning the other nodes’ time was ultimately wasted. There is
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_08_Aragon.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Humans organize into groups. There are lots of group types: religions, corporations, national governments, state governments, citizenries, clubs, musical bands. Every group has governance. Governance defines the rules, and the ways that rules change. The United States requires citizens to pay taxes. A corporation requires you to show up to work, but they have to pay you a salary. Most groups today are
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_07_SmartContracts.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Smart contracts are programs that run on the Ethereum blockchain. A smart contract developer pays Ether to deploy the contract. When a contract is deployed, every full node on the Ethereum blockchain has a copy of the contract code in that node’s address space. Every full node needs to hold a copy of every smart contract. This allows every full node to process
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_06_BitcoinsFuture.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Joseph Bonneau is co-author of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies, a popular textbook. At NYU, he works as an assistant professor exploring cryptography and security. His YouTube lessons teaching Bitcoin have hundreds of thousands of views. His material offers clear explanations of how Bitcoin works. Since Joseph has a clear understanding of the objective facts around Bitcoin, he is the perfect person to ask
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_05_SmartAgriculture.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Farms have lots of data. A corn farmer needs to monitor the chemical composition of soil. A soybean farmer needs to track crop yield. A chicken farmer needs to count the number of eggs produced. If this data is captured, it can be acted upon—for example, a dry farm can automatically turn up its irrigation system. Or the data can simply be studied.
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_03_02_DogecoinJacksonPalmer.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Dogecoin was started in 2013 as a joke. Jackson Palmer forked Bitcoin and created his cryptocurrency as a play off the “doge” meme. The currency became popular as a means of reddit users “tipping” each other. If I made a comment on reddit that you liked, you might send me some Dogecoin. This use case allowed people to share the idea of Dogecoin
