From the Front Page - The Ether Review
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The Ether Review #67 — Celebrating Erik Voorhees Week with Erik Voorhees!
June 11th, 2017 by
Arthur S. Falls In this, the sixty seventh episode of The Ether Review, we set out to understand Prism, Shapeshift’s new non-custodial synthetic asset built on the Ethereum network. In reviewing this episode I feel I was unsuccessful in achieving this. However, the peripheral conversation about Erik’s view of the space is extremely enlightening, especially writ large in his positioning of Shapeshift. The Bitcoin scaling debate, the future of digital assets, the financial world’s response — it’s al...
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State Change #43 - The Battle for your attention, Meher Roy, Simon de la Rouviere
June 6th, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls Recalling State Change #40 Weaponized AI propaganda machine, we discussed at length the value of attention. Today we take this subject to it’s maximum extend. Software engineer Simon de la Rouviere and biochemical engineer Meher Roy shed light on how the battle for our attention is the basis for the online economy. We see it in the business models of two of the biggest companies on earth — Facebook and Google. That ever present question of how blockchain will affect these dynamics hangs...
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The Ether Review #66 - Gnosis, Martin Köppelmann
May 28th, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls After a stunning token launch Gnosis has become a classic example of the hope for greater and more powerful decentralized applications. Founder Martin Köppelmann walks us through the project's genesis, growth, and road to success
https://twitter.com/koeppelmann itunes.apple.com/podcast/the-ethe…id899090462?mt=2
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State Change #42 The Use of Knowledge in Society, Jeffrey Tucker, Kirk Dameron, Stephen Macaskill
May 24th, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls While today decentralization seems like a revelation, one thinker more than any other stands as its chief proponent. In 1945 Friedrich Hayek bucked the post war fashion of command-control thinking and announced the futility of central economic or societal planning. His essay, The Use of Knowledge in Society, is a concise and accurate argument for the organizing principles of the internet, horizontal organizations, and blockchain networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Guests: Jeffrey Tucker: CLO...
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State Change #41 Unpacking Digital Identity - Christian Lundkvist, Stephen Wilson
May 19th, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls Today we compare in-depth the self-sovereign and federated models of identity. Why is our means of proving who we are important? Well, for one thing, relying on an authority which doesn’t have our best interests at heart to manage our identity is one of the many problems exploited by the decentralized propaganda machine described last episode.
Our guests today are Christian Lundkvist, senior technologist at ConsenSys and Chief Architect and Researcher of the uPort self sovereign identity pl...
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State Change #40 Weaponized AI propaganda machine, Amanda Gutterman, Berit Anderson, Brett Horvath
May 17th, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls The surprising outcome of the last US Presidential election brought attention to the effect fake news and social media manipulation can have on public thought. Today we are going to take a deep look at what exactly took place, while considering possible solutions to the problems we uncover. Berit Anderson and Brett Horvath, Co-founders of Scout.ai, join us to discuss their investigative piece, The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine, while media and marketing guru Amanda Gutterman of Co...
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State Change #39 Technologies of Social Organization — Vinay Gupta, Joseph Lubin
May 14th, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls Technology enables new forms of social organisation. That statement is itself a truism, but as we see technological development accelerate, our means of organising ourselves is constantly changing.
Our guests today are Joseph Lubin and Vinay Gupta. Joe is the Founder of ConsenSys and co-founder of Ethereum. He has a background in robotics, software engineering, and wealth management. He also had a short stint as CEO of a Jamaican record label. Vinay Gupta is the inventor of the Hexayurt emerg...
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Ether Review Legal Discussion #1 — Challenges in Blockchain Law
May 14th, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls In Brief: A walkthrough of the pressing legal issues in blockchain today. Over the last few months a varying group of legal professionals from New Zealand, Australia, and the USA have been meeting to discuss current events, challenges, and peculiarities in the interaction between blockchain and law. As facilitator I suggested we might record the sessions. This is the first to be published. Attendees: Arthur Falls: Host of The Ether Review, State Change, Director of Media, ConsenSys Alex Sims...
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The Ether Review #64 — Conversations with the Swarm
May 1st, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls In Brief: Swarm City, once Arcade City, is one of the most ambitious, and controversial projects in the Ethereum ecosystem. Having shed their founder, the remaining team have made considerable development progress. More than just a would be ride sharing DApp, Swarm City aims to provide an exchange infrastructure for any two sided market place.
Swarm City Mayor Bernd Lapp and Architect Michael Thuy discuss the deeper intricacies of 2 sided market transactional infrastructure in a social settin...
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The Ether Review #63 — Meet DAD, the Digital Aussie Dollar
April 26th, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls In Brief: Tokenizing fiat currency in a way that is compatible with our existing financial infrastructure and legislation is no easy feat. The consequences however reach across the entirety of industry, the economy, and society.
Nick Addison is the CTO of AgriDigital, an agricultural finance company first covered in episode 45 of TER. As part of his work at AgriDigital, Nick is researching ways to port the existing financial infrastructure into the blockchain age. It’s not easy, but as the ...
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The Ether Review #62 — The Biggest City in Blockchain Pt 2
April 16th, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls Matt Hale of Divvi is the first speaker in the second half of the conversation we began last week. Divvi is a Sydney based decentralized energy market startup. The huge scale of residential solar deployment makes Australia a uniquely appropriate environment for this kind of solution. We also look at the challenges of breaking into the highly regulated and cartel run infrastructure space. Secondly Luke Anderson, describes the dilemma of selecting blockchain as an appropriate solution to a problem...
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The Ether Review #61 - The Biggest City in Blockchain Part 1
April 11th, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls Last week I was honoured with the privilege of representing New Zealand at the inaugural ISO/TC-307 Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies standards committee meeting. The event was hosted by the secretariat, Standards Australia. 18 nations attended. The event itself will be the subject of a blog post when I get around to writing it.
While at the meeting, blockchain legend Nick Addison wrangled together a who’s who of blockchain entrepreneurs for a round table discussion. We convene...
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The Ether Review #60 — MeDAOs & Crypto Branding
March 27th, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls Today we hear first from Joe Reed who won the Seattle IPFS / Ethereum Hackathon in February. His entry Matriarch expands on the ERC20 compliant MiniMe token, using it as a basis for crowdfunded MeDAOs. It’s an avant-garde idea and compliments his decentralized reddit project, Community.
Then Gabriel Mitchell of ethereumclothing.com raises the subject of branding in cryptocurrency. These interviews have been buried in my content bank for months now and it’s fun to sometimes unearth gems. S...
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The Ether Review #59 — Money Talks, Polychain Capital
March 21st, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls By now word of the Andreessen-Horowitz/Union Square Ventures investment in the digital asset hedge fund Polychain Capital was reached far and wide across the cryptoverse. Among other things, this interview with founders Olaf Carlson-Wee and Ryan Zurrer explores the questions that must be asked while establishing a long term crypto portfolio. Much of the discussion is especially pertinent in light of the recent ETH jump and fork concerns with Bitcoin.
Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple....
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The Ether Review #58 — “Status” Conquers Mobile
March 13th, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls Ever wished for a final login, a final app? The last user name you would ever need, the last thing you would ever need to download? The Ethereum mobile client Status promises just that and it’s release is just around the corner. Founders Jarad Hope and Carl Bennetts join us to explain.
Nick Szabo’s blog Post Money, Blockchains and Social Scalability: http://unenumerated.blogspot.co.nz/2017/02/money-blockchains-and-social-scalability.html
https://etherreview.info/ https://status.im/
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The Ether Review #57 — The First Compliant-by Design Blockchain Asset
March 3rd, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls In Brief: Charlie Shrem and Jason Granger explain the Mainstreet investment fund. A limited partnership which distributes it’s revenues to addresses associated with self verified token holders. A separate company, Intellisys, manages the fund.
The intricate problem solving required to create a legal token on the Ethereum blockchain that is backed by traditional investments, is fascinating. Mainstreet started accepting funding on the 27th, so this episode is coming out a bit late. You can l...
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The Ether Review #56 - Serfs in the Attention Economy
February 23rd, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls In Brief: On today’s episode Kenny Rowe joins to discuss:
Maker DAO Governance The decision making around forks DAOs in relation to stable value tokens The double token model of stable token platforms Community diversification as it relates to application development The serfdom of the attention economy Bitcoin on telephone poles Friction in fundraising rails The magic of technology
Kenny Rowe has been a part of the Maker DAO team since shortly after its inception. Initially a co...
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The Ether Review #55 — DAOs with Wings
February 10th, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls In Brief: Stas Oskin, Wings founder, explains how DAOs can be packaged for use by startups outside the blockchain space.
Learning from others mistakes, the team at Wings are building a platform with the ability to vet, fund and launch DAOs based on input from its community. The idea of decentralized due diligence is powerful and if the mechanisms perform as expected, we may see a more refined crop or projects emerging as a result. Especially interesting is Wings’ aspiration to use the ambi...
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The Ether Review #54 — Demian Brenner of Open Zeppelin
February 3rd, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls In Brief: If there is one thing we learned in 2016 it’s that building a secure, stable, decentralized application is difficult. One of the responses to the problem has been the Open Zeppelin smart contract framework.
Open Zeppelin is really a community of developers 300 strong. Collectively they have built the framework over time in a similar fashion to Truffle or Dapple. In addition to maintaining the Open Zeppelin framework, the community audits smart contract deployments like the Golem, ...
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The Ether Review #53 — Dan Boneh, Master Cryptographer
January 14th, 2017 by Arthur S. Falls In Brief: From better signature schemes for blockchains, to quantum preparedness, to novel cryptography like zero knowledge proofs and threshold signatures, Dan Boneh takes us on a tour of cryptography in our age.
Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, Dan Boneh, has been working in the field of cryptography for over 25 years. During which time he has co-developed a signature scheme known as BLS Signatures. This was an opportunity to have some real questions answered, or more a...
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