From the Front Page - Epicenter Bitcoin
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169 - Prof. Silvio Micali: A New Scalable and Secure Approach to Byzantine Fault Tolerant Consensus
February 7th, 2017 by
epicenterbitcoin We're pleased to be joined by Professor Silvio Micali, a computer scientist at MIT, who is known for his work in many of the technologies blockchains rely on today. Prof. Micali describes the concept of Algorand, an alternative approach to proof of work which offers high security guarantees while allowing the network to scale with demand. Relying only on a trivial amount of computation to validate transactions, Algorand also reduces the probability of network forks to near-zero. It uses novel mechanisms to select validators for blocks and enabling them to come to consensus on them. Read More -
168 - Rick Dudley: The Future of Ethreum as a Strongly Typed Proof-of-Stake Blockchain Network
January 31st, 2017 by epicenterbitcoin We're joined by Rick Dudley, an opinionated and passionate blockchain developer who is actively involved in multiple projects. He works as a DevOps at Monax, works closely with Vlad Zamfir on implementing Casper in Ethereum, is a leading member of the Coala organization and is Founder and CEO of the startup Vulcanize. Rick gives us insider insights on Ethereum and on how the project may evolve, in particular, once Casper is implemented and when more robust, strongly typed language VMs are made available to the protocol. Read More -
167 - Peter Harris: Democratizing the Music Industry with the Streaming Music Cooperative Resonate
January 24th, 2017 by epicenterbitcoin After the successful Ethereum crowdfunding campaign, musician and web developer Peter Harris saw a path to creating a fair, decentralized music streaming platform. Out of that Resonate was born. Peter joined us to discuss why the dysfunctional structure of the music industry results in a bad deal for musicians and why a decentralized platform supported by blockchain technology and run as a cooperative represents a better way forward. Read More -
166 - G. Andrew Stone & Andrew Clifford: Bitcoin Unlimited
January 16th, 2017 by epicenterbitcoin Years into the controversy around how to scale Bitcoin, there have been many challengers to Bitcoin core's dominance. After XT, Classic and others have faded, Bitcoin Unlimited has been gaining traction and emerged as plausible new way forward. Bitcoin Unlimited wants to make the block size a parameter that is set by miners and nodes, but not fixed at a network level. They argue a natural fee market would emerge, allowing Bitcoin to rapidly scale and realizing its promise of electronic cash as well as store of value. The project is also member-driven, with democratic decisions driving its development decisions. Core developer G. Andrew Stone and Bitcoin Unlimited President Andrew Clifford joined us for the episode. Read More -
165 - Brian, Meher & Sebastien: Wrapping Up The Year and Looking Ahead at What's to Come
January 9th, 2017 by epicenterbitcoin It's been an eventful year in the blockchain space, for the Epicenter podcast, and its hosts. Brian, Meher and Sebastien look back on 2016 and provide a few personal updates, give their thoughts and insights on how the space evolved, and make predictions on where they feel the industry will go in the next year. Read More -
164 - Ari Juels: Using Hardware Enclaves to Provide Trusted Data to Smart Contracts
January 2nd, 2017 by epicenterbitcoin Ari Juels, a Professor at Cornell Tech and former Chief Scientist of RSA, joins us to discuss his work on Authenticated Data Feeds for Smart Contracts. These 'Town Crier' feeds would act as bridges between smart contracts and websites, srapping data over TLS and feeding to to a smart contract. Relying on sophisticated hardware enclave technology, one who uses a Town Crier feed would not need to trust its operator as code execution would be guaranteed signed by the hardware. Read More -
163 - Roger Ver: Bitcoin, Liberty and the Scalability Roadblock
December 27th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin Roger Ver is one of the earliest Bitcoin investors and evangelist. We discusses his impassioned vision for how Bitcoin can help liberty and the current issues on the best way of scaling Bitcoin. Read More -
Epicenter - Message for LTB Feed Listeners
December 26th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin Epicenter listeners who subscribe to the show on the LTB Feed probably noticed that they were unable to download the show for the last few weeks. There was an issue with the links we were posting to the LTB website. Well, we're happy to report that the issue has been fixed and that you can now go back an listen to episodes 159, 160, 161 and 162. Read More -
162 - Ned Scott: Steem - The Blockchain-Based Social Media Platform
December 20th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin Few crypto projects have gotten as much attention and caused as much controversy as Steem. The blockchain-based social media platform launched early this year and managed to gain real user traction building up a vibrant community of contributors. The Steem token quickly entered bubble territory reaching a market cap of almost $400m and losing 90% of its value since. Steem Co-Founder and CEO Ned Scott joined us to discuss the ambition of the project and its short tumultous history. We also discussed some of the accusations against Steem and its unorthodox launch. Read More -
161 - Marley Gray: Project Bletchley - Microsoft's Blockchain 3.0 Architecture
December 13th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin Marley Gray, Principal Program Manager Blockchain at Microsoft, joins us to talk about Microsoft's approach to blockchain architecture. With enterprise in mind, Bletchley introduces the concept of "Cryptlets", the core building blocks for introducing a secure middleware tier into blockchain application infrastructure. These computational units, running off-chain on secure trusted container enclave hardware, could provide trusted data to on-chain smart contract logic. Read More -
160 - Brian Behlendorf: How Hyperledger is Developing Foundational Blockchain Technology
December 5th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin As a lead developer of the Apache webserver and founder of the Apache Software Foundation, Brian Behlendorf has played a central role in building internet architecture. Recently, he became Executive Director of the Hyperledger Project that aims to build foundational blockchain technology in an open-source, collaborative way. Read More -
159 - Richard Caetano & Anuj Das Gupta: How Stratumn Secures Processes
November 29th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin Stratumn CEO Richard Caetano and Head of Research Anuj das Gupta joined us to discuss their work to bring security and integrity to processes. We covered the philosophy behind the company and why they use cryptography and other technologies coming out of the crypto space while shunning a classical blockchain design. Read More -
158 - Reto Trinkler & Mona El Isa: The Polkadot Protocol - One Blockchain To Connect Them All
November 22nd, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin Melonport, a team based out of Zurich, has taken up the challenge of deploying the Polkadot network and also building decentralized asset management software on the same network. In this episode we converse with Mona El Isa and Reto Trinkler, co-founders of Melonport, in order to discover more about the overall vision. Read More -
157 - Tom Ding & Dominic Williams: DFINITY and the Quest for a Decentralized Cloud
November 14th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin String Labs founders Tom Ding and Dominic Williams joined us to discuss their project DFINITY, a next-generation blockchain network. Through leveraging technological advances, DFINITY aims to deliver an infinitely scalable decentralized cloud that will be able to power applications from decentralized search to supply chain applications. We covered DFINITY's approach to scalability, interoperability, consensus as well as their sophisticated approach to governance: The Blockchain Nervous Syste... Read More -
156 - Leanne Kemp: Detecting Diamond Fraud And Theft With Everledger
November 7th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin As is the case with most luxury goods, the diamond industry is faced with the issues of theft, fraud, and counterfeiting. Illegal activity is present at every level of the supply chain, which collectively costs the industry and its insurers hundreds of millions of dollars each year. In recent years, international treaties and regulation have been put in place in an attempt to combat illegal activity, but criminals are most often a step ahead. Leanne Kemp, CEO of Everledger, joins us to ex... Read More -
155 - Richard Brown & Mike Hearn: Corda - A Distributed Ledger For Financial Services
October 31st, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin Attracting over 70 of the world's biggest financial institutions to its consortium in just over a year, R3 has accomplished a formidable task. Aiming to rethink the fabric of the financial system, they first conducted experiments testing blockchain platforms for their member and last year began developing their own distributed ledger platform: Corda. The effort to build Corda was lead by R3 CTO Richard Brown and the former Bitcoin developer and R3 lead architect Mike Hearn. In a wide-ran... Read More -
154 - Greg Meredith: Rebuilding The Attention Economy From The Ground Up With Synereo
October 23rd, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin As content becomes more and more abundant and immediately available at our fingertips, our limited attention is a barrier for those whose business it is to attract and harness it. In this context, large (social) media companies understand that attention is a scarce commodity, and, as has been demonstrated, those who control attention wield enormous power over our society. We're joined by Greg Meredith, CTO of Synereo, to talk about how this new Blockchain platform rebuild the attention ec... Read More -
153 - Alex Wearn: Decentralized Capital And Government Currencies On Ethereum
October 18th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin A topic which is often discussed is the limited use of Ethereum applications without stable cryptocurrencies. Prediction markets are a prime example of this. When one makes a prediction using Ether, he or she is in fact entering into to speculations: one being the outcome of the actual prediction, the other being the price of Ether when the prediction resolves. Projects like Maker DAO try to solve the problem by developing complex systems to ensure that a blockchain token keeps its value in ... Read More -
152 - Tuur Demeester: Investing In Bitcoin
October 10th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin In 2012, a year after discovering Bitcoin in Argentina, Dutch economist Tuur Demeester became one of the first people to advocate investing in Bitcoin to a mainstream audience. Tuur joined us to discuss his thesis for investing in Bitcoin and how it has evolved over time. We also talked about the road ahead and how other cryptocurrencies and Ethereum compare as investment opportunities. Topics covered included: - How Tuur discovered Bitcoin in Argentina in 2011 - The case for investing ... Read More -
151 - Ian Grigg: Ricardian Contracts And Digital Assets Prehistory
October 3rd, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin Before 2013 few people paid attention to Bitcoin and blockchain, yet even back in the 1990s a vibrant group of prioneers pursued the vision of financial cryptography and digital cash. One of these was financial cryptographer and software developer Ian Grigg, who today works as an architecture consultant for R3. Grigg joined us for a discussion of the history of the digital cash, Bitcoin and his work on Ricardian Contracts, which foreshadowed today's smart contracts. Topics covered includ... Read More
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