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http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/2018_04_03_Gitcoin.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Most technology companies rely on open source software projects. But open source software projects are often maintained by a group of people that is not affiliated with any particular company. When an open source project develops too much technical debt, it can become a tragedy of the commons. Who is responsible for maintaining these open source projects? This is the motivation for open
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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.
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_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_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_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_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_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/VladZamfir.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download A cryptocurrency has a distributed ledger called a blockchain. The blockchain keeps track of every transaction that occurs across the cryptocurrency. This blockchain must stay up-to-date and verified–which requires someone in the network to do that validation. Bitcoin and Ethereum use the proof-of-work algorithm. Miners do computational work to validate the legitimacy of transactions across the network, and in return they are given
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/EthereumBasics.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Ethereum is a decentralized transaction-based state machine. Ethereum was designed to make smart contracts more usable for developers. Smart contracts are decentralized programs that usually allow for some a transaction between the owner of the contract and anyone who would want to purchase something from the contract owner. For example, I could set up a smart contract where a listener sends my smart
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/DAOHack.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download The Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) was a digital form of venture capital. It was an ambitious idea–to provide a new decentralized business model for organizing corporations on top of the Ethereum blockchain. Few people in the crypto community were opposed to this premise–but the timeline was short, the code requirements were tremendous, and in retrospect, a vulnerability was inevitable. The DAO launched in
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/blockchainapps.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download Cryptocurrencies are not only a financial instrument–they are a new platform for building applications. The blockchain allows for new solutions to digital property management, micropayments, hedge fund incentives, and ad fraud. The cryptocurrency platforms with the most traction are Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin has no central leader and is going through some growing pains with governance issues. Ethereum is led by the charismatic
“Nature, technology, and society ultimately will favor the more efficient, the better working systems.”
Ethereum is a decentralized platform for applications that are guaranteed to run exactly as expected via smart contracts.
Ripple’s secure payment infrastructure puts distributed systems security theory to a real-world test.
David Schwartz is Chief Cryptographer for Ripple Labs.
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/ethereum_stephantual.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadEthereum reporting in the podcast media shows a large hype-to-substance ratio. Technical and financial criticisms facing Ethereum are as real as those faced by bitcoin. This episode is a departure from Databases Week. Stephan Tual is CCO of Ethereum and founder of Ursium, a blockchain consulting company. Thanks to Reddit and Quora for questions. Questions Was Vitalik correct in his allocation of millions
Bitcoin was underestimated at the start of the week: “Bitcoin” is the naive marketing envoy, the minimum viable decentralized application, the introductory transaction vehicle for distributed, decentralized databases. The revolutionary technology is blockchain. This revolution is rooted in our global culture’s dissatisfaction with centralized, exploitative institutions and software. My belief was that Bitcoin is overrated, blockchain is underrated. This belief has been inverted. Bitcoin is the story of JavaScript all over
http://traffic.libsyn.com/sedaily/ethereum_aarondavis.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadEthereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud, or third-party interference. Aaron Davis works on MetaMask, which brings Ethereum apps to the web browser. In this monologue episode, Aaron dives deep into the Ethereum internals, philosophy, and developer experience. Questions How does a blockchain represent a Merkle tree? Can a
