We are joined by Humayun Sheikh and Toby Simpson, founders of the Fetch.ai project. Humayun Sheikh is well known as the first investor in DeepMind, one of the leading AI companies in the world. This ambitious project seeks to create a self-learning blockchain network that fosters economic activity/combinations between off-chain AI agents. The fetch blockchain network will allow an AI agent, such as a delivery robot, to autonomously discover economic partners that would find its services and data...
May 02, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 233
Ethereum Foundation researcher Karl Floersch joined us to discuss the main projects to upgrade Ethereum: Casper, Sharding and Plasma. Karl has been playing a key role in creating a new and simpler specification for Ethereum sidechains called Plasma Cash. We discussed the evolution of the Plasma project and what Ethereum’s evolution in the coming years could look like. Topics covered in this episode: How Karl originally became involved in Ethereum The role of Casper, Sharding and Plasma in the Et...
Apr 24, 2018•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 232
With the advent of mature quantum technologies, many of the critical cryptographic protocols which secure the Internet, financial transactions and even military secrets may become susceptible to new attack vectors. For instance, while it may take a computer millions of years to decipher a public key’s corresponding private key, a sufficiently powerful quantum computer might achieve this in a reasonable amount of time. With this reality looming over us, many in the blockchain space worry that som...
Apr 17, 2018•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 231
Dark pools have existed for as long as there have been financial markets. Over-the-counter, or OTC markets, are sometimes also referred to as ‘upstairs trading,’ evoking the era when firms and high-net-worth individuals would meet in the upper quarters of financial markets to make large trades privately. A dark pool is a private forum where one has access to high volumes of liquidity outside the boundaries of public markets. Orders and trades represented in dark pools typically remain confidenti...
Apr 11, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 230
In just over ten years, geospatial tracking has gone from being a niche technology used by the military and outdoor enthusiasts to mass adoption, available to just about every connected device in existence. GPS and other location-tracking systems not only allows us to find our way and share our location but is critical to businesses and governments. However, while GPS has become a standard thanks to its accuracy and availability, decentralized applications can’t rely on its location data as it c...
Apr 04, 2018•58 min•Ep. 229
The healthcare industry is paradoxical. On the one hand, treatment technologies represent some of the most advanced science known to humankind, while some administrative tasks are still performed using paper and fax machine. Studies have shown that the administrative costs of healthcare can represent up to one-third of the total cost of care. Also, as diagnosis, treatment, and care, becomes increasingly data-driven and patient-specific, the industry needs to adopt more secure and robust technolo...
Mar 29, 2018•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 228
Over the past year, as cryptocurrencies and ICOs started to go mainstream, we have seen a huge surge in regulatory activities. In the US, many different regulatory bodies including SEC, CFTC and FinCEN stepped forward to regulate crypto projects in different ways. Seemingly contradictory statements have added to confusion and fear of a broad crackdown looming. We were joined by CoinCenter Director of Research Peter Van Valkenburgh to shed clarity on recent developments and understand where thing...
Mar 21, 2018•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 227
According to the World Bank, universal financial access is vital to reducing poverty, and lack of access to credit plays a significant role in widening inequalities between developed and developing nations. For producers at the end of the supply chain, and who typically have little access to capital, waiting for customers to pay for their products puts them at high financial risk and threatens their livelihood. What if there was a way to bring more liquidity to global supply chains, by allowing ...
Mar 18, 2018•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 226
We were joined by Anson Zeall, who is one of the leaders of Singapore’s blockchain and FinTech community. We discussed how the Singapore ecosystem evolved, why it became a popular place to locate cryptocurrency project, its current regulatory framework. We also dove into some of the projects he is currently involved in including one involving tokenizing cows! Topics covered in this episode: The evoluation of the Singapore blockchain ecosystem and role played by ACCESS The favorable mechanics of ...
Mar 08, 2018•56 min•Ep. 225
We’re joined by Jeff Garzik, who was among the very first developers to work with Satoshi in the early days of Bitcoin. Later, he was a core developer at Bitpay and even tried to put a Bitcoin node on a satellite in space. Today, he is co-founder at Bloq, a company providing enterprise-grade blockchain infrastructure. Bloq recently announced a new project called Metronome that challenges some of the design and governance principles of many public blockchain networks. Metronome is cryptocurrency ...
Feb 27, 2018•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 224
That decentralized networks represent a massive investment opportunity is no longer a controversial view. In the last year alone, over 200 funds dedicated to investing in cryptoassets have been created. But the principles and frameworks to understand this new world are still in its infancy. One fund at the forefront of advancing this understanding has been Multicoin Capital. Their Founders Kyle Samani and Tushar Jain joined us to discuss some of the concepts they use to invest in decentralized n...
Feb 21, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 223
Decentralized exchanges have been a holy grail in the cryptocurrency space, since at least the MtGox hack. They promise to derisk the act of exchanging cryptocurrency by leaving custody of funds in the hands of the users. And they should be resistant to regulatory pressure, creating a permissionless way to trade cryptocurrencies. Among decentralized exchange projects, 0x has gained by far the most traction in the short time since launching. Co-founders Will and Amir joined us to discuss the 0x p...
Feb 16, 2018•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 222
We’re joined by Greg Meredith and Nash Foster of the RChain Cooperative. A fundamentally new kind of blockchain platform, RChain is rooted in a formal model of concurrent and decentralized computation. Powered by the Rho Virtual Machine, and secured by Casper proof-of-stake, RCain is partitioned, or shareded by default, forming a network of coordinated and parallel blockchains. The project, which is formed as a coop, leverages correct-by-construction software development to produce a concurrent,...
Feb 08, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 221
Zeppelin Co-Founder and CTO Manuel Araoz joined us to discuss his journey from building one of the first non-financial Bitcoin applications in 2012 to improving development and security practices for Ethereum smart contracts. We discussed the OpenZeppelin framework, a library of audited smart contracts as well as their new project zeppelin_os. Through on-chain, well-vetted and upgradeable smart contracts zeppelin_os aims to make developing Ethereum applications both easier and more secure. Topic...
Feb 01, 2018•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 220
Hashgraph is a new consensus algorithm that radically differs from proof-of-work as well as proof-of-stake consensus algorithms. While work on Hashgraph begun in 2012, it’s design is radically different from today’s blockchain architectures. The Hashgraph team claims that it has found an optimal consensus algorithm design that will be impossible to significantly improve upon. We were joined by Mance Harmon, who is CEO of the Swirlds, the company developing Hashgraph. Our conversation covered the...
Jan 25, 2018•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 219
Over the past year, cryptoassets have exploded in popularity. From a mere $18bn at the start of 2017, the aggregate market cap of all cryptoassets recently reached $820bn as interest in Bitcoin and its cousins went mainstream. Jack Tatar and Chris Burniske joined us to discuss their new book ‘Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond’. It is one of the first systematic views on cryptoassets from a mainstream investor’s perspective. Topics covered in this episode: How Ja...
Jan 17, 2018•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 218
A significant part of the modern digital economy, is underpinned by machine learning models that are trained to perform tasks such as facial recognition, content curation, health diagnostics etc. Data to train machine learning models is the essential commodity of this century – a sentiment captured by epithets such as “”Data is the new oil””. Today’s dominant AI paradigm has companies focus their efforts on gathering data from their users in order to train models and monetise usage of the model....
Jan 11, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 217
Blockchain technologies are changing the way we think about data archival and storage. For instance, most database systems can only capture the current state of a data set. This means we must rely on secondary backup systems to ensure historical data can remain accessible, a stark contrast from what the most basic of blockchains provide out of the box. Database systems that offer immutability and historical context for data would be greatly beneficial for companies as it would make internal and ...
Jan 03, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 216
The prospect of providing digital cross-border payments for the world’s unbanked and underbanked population has always been one of the key use cases for Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies can be seen as a way for people in developing countries to participate in the global financial market by allowing easy cross-border payments, cheap remittance transactions, and simplified lending options. We’re pleased to be joined by Elizabeth Rossiello, CEO and Founder of BitPesa. BitPesa provides companies in frontie...
Dec 27, 2017•55 min•Ep. 215
We’re joined by Christopher Fabian, Co-founder of Unicef’s Innovation Unit. We discuss how the global non-profit institution leverages innovative technology to solve real-world problems in humanitarian work. We explore the different applications of blockchain in the UN and Unicef, as well as the challenges we can anticipate when deploying these technologies in the developing world. Shaun Conway, Founder of Ixo Foundation, also joins the discussion as a startup working Unicef and talks about the ...
Dec 19, 2017•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 214
In the blockchain world, few people are as brave as Tim Swanson when it comes to busting hype. Tim’s unbiased, honest, and sometimes controversial opinions provide a refreshingly realistic view of blockchain adoption and applications of this technology by people and businesses. Cutting through the hype, the over-sold press releases ad the blind optimism of a completely decentralized economy, Tim’s insights provide a sobering look at the state of the blockchain. Topics covered in this episode: Ti...
Dec 13, 2017•59 min•Ep. 213
We were joined by Founder Adam Perlow and Developer Asher Manning of Zen, a public blockchain project focused on building a decentralized financial system. The core premise of Zen is that none of the public blockchain networks are focused on financial asset. Zen is aiming to fill that gap through a Bitcoin-like UTXO architecture that supports multiple asset and smart contracts to enforce complex ownership rules. We talked through their original design choices, their use of formal verification, c...
Dec 06, 2017•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 212
Neufund CEO Zoe Adamovicz joined us to discuss how Neufund is creating a platform to allow companies to sell tokens backed by actual company equity. Topics covered in this episode: Neufund’s thesis of the revolutionary implications of token equity The difference between ICOs and Equity Token Offerings (ETO) Why from a regulatory perspective ETOs are uncomplicated How Neufund’s token Neumarks serves to build a community How the Initial Capital Building Mechanism is bootstrapping the ecosystem The...
Nov 28, 2017•1 hr•Ep. 211
Chaincode Labs Founder Alex Morcos joined us to discuss his journey, the role of the company in Bitcoin’s development and the views that drive his work. Topics covered in this episode: Alex’s background in high frequency trading as a founder of Hudson River Trading How Alex first learned about Bitcoin The vision of Chaincode Labs Why Bitcoin represents our only chance of creating digital gold Why Bitcoin’s resistance to change is one of its core features Why the NYA & SegWit2x approach was m...
Nov 21, 2017•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 210
Scaling public blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum is a long standing technical challenge. In this episode, we cover Zilliqa which has pioneered a design to scale public blockchain throughput with the number of nodes by sharding the blockchain. Sharding has been hitherto proposed as a scaling technique by Ethereum. Zilliqa is one of the first projects to propose a concrete design with an operational testnet processing a couple thousand transactions per second across several shards. Our gues...
Nov 14, 2017•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 209
For the very first time, all three Epicenter hosts found themselves in the same location. After attending Ethereum’s DevCon 3 in Cancun, we were at a Cosmos Retreat and discussed the conference, retreat, state of the Ethereum ecosystem and recent Parity hack. Topics covered in this episode: Recap of Ethereum’s DevCon 3 conference Current state of Ethereum The most interesting new projects at DevCon The post-DevCon Cosmos retreat The internet of blockchain thesis The case for blockchain’s having ...
Nov 10, 2017•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 208
We are joined by Micah Winkelspecht, CEO and Founder of Gem. What started as a Bitcoin API in 2014 has evolved into a leading provider of blockchain solutions for enterprise. Gem addresses the problem of digital data silos and the complexities they introduce when companies and individuals collaborate and share information. Their product, GemOS, provides a full-stack blockchain middleware platform which allows companies to build applications on top of blockchains protocols like Ethereum or Hyperl...
Nov 01, 2017•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 207
Energy markets form a complex ecosystem of actors. Wholesale energy producers create energy through various means, grid operators transport electricity over long distances and deliver it to homes and businesses, who buy it from local utility companies. The utilities act as resellers in this scheme and take on much of the financial risk associated with selling a commodity which is consumed long before payment settlement from consumers. However, utilities have high operation and marketing costs an...
Oct 24, 2017•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 206
Galen Wolfe-Pauly, CEO of Tlon, the company behind Urbit, joined us to discuss one of the most radical and curious projects to come on the podcast. In development for 15 years already, Urbit aims to unravel the cloud computing paradigm that led to the creation of internet monopolies like Google and Facebook. Instead, in Urbit, each person has a personal server, a kind of digital sovereign entity, where applications are run, which leaves control and data in the hands of users. Galen joined us to ...
Oct 18, 2017•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 205
As the ICO boom continues to drive funding and interest in cryptocurrencies, mainstream consumer applications are increasingly looking towards tokenization. One of these was social network Pepo, founded by veteran entrepreneur and previous founder of fab.com Jason Goldberg. Faced with the difficulties of integrating blockchain, they decided to start Simple Token – a company focused on building easy solutions for mainstream applications to use blockchain. Simple Token CEO Jason Goldberg and Chief...
Oct 11, 2017•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 204
