Dominic Williams is a cryptographic researcher focussed on scaling and the representation of real world assets in digital form. Dfinity, Dominic’s infinitely scalable virtual machine, is simple, and extremely powerful. This is the third time I’ve interviewed Dominic. The first was for the final episode of Beyond Bitcoin. Dominic enters at the 1hr 32min mark to explain Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance. The second was in February 2016 on The Ether Review to discuss his work on synthetic digital...
Sep 14, 2016•1 hr 11 min
What is the Ethereum Virtual Machine, what design trends and decisions influence its operation and what does that mean for Ethereum the platform? Today we dive deep. There is a debate around whether the flexibility of the imperative paradigm of programming language design or the verifiability of the functional paradigm are more appropriate for the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Martin is in the functional camp which he believes can make Ethereum a more robust and powerful platform. The EVM itself is ...
Sep 07, 2016•38 min
Between August 24th-26th, a group of leaders in blockchain thought, business, and advocacy met at the Tapscott’s lodge in Muskoka, Canada. The goal of the meeting was to discuss strategies of stewardship and governance of the blockchain space. Currently, the Chamber of Digital Commerce is the most prominent advocacy group. Founder & President, Perianne Boring joined Don and Alex Tapscott, on the eve of the event to discuss their goals. http://www.muskokagroup.org/ https://www.ted.com/talks/d...
Sep 01, 2016•38 min
In Brief Zooko Wilcox has more than 20 years of experience in open, decentralized systems, cryptography and information security, and startups. He is recognized for his work on DigiCash, Mojo Nation, ZRTP, “Zooko's Triangle”, Tahoe-LAFS, BLAKE2, and SPHINCS. He is also the Founder and CEO of Least Authority. He sometimes blogs about health science. . In recent years, progress in the area of zero knowledge proofs has made it possible to construct a blockchain whose miners can verify transactions,...
Aug 29, 2016•43 min
In Brief Blockchain is a recent innovation, cryptocurrency is not. From the mid 80s to the end of the Dot Com Boom in the late 90s, cryptographers and developers tackled many of the problems we are encountering today in this new era of digital currency. Pelle Braendgaard is a veteran search engine webmaster (AltaVista) and participant in the cryptocurrency space of the early nineties. Back then, the Crypto Finance Conference, held in Aguila was the epicenter of the community. A tremendous amount...
Aug 12, 2016•33 min
Jaan Talinn is the founder of Skype and Kazaa and long time angel investor. More recently, Jaan has concerned himself with preventing the destruction of humanity. Strong Artificial intelligence is the least understood of threats and this is Jaan's chief concern. slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/30/ascended-economy cser.org futureoflife.org etherreview.info Content: Jaan Tallinn, Siri, Arthur Falls
Aug 03, 2016•43 min
Crypto guru Emin Gün Sirer wraps up the DAO hack and hard fork. While the entire episode is over for the main Ethereum chain, some questions remain unanswered. After speaking with Emin, the intrigue seems to have only deepened. Note: River Keefer is in fact in his final year hackingdistributed.com initc3.org twitter.com/el33th4xor twitter.com/arthurfalls etherreview.info Content: Emin Gün Sirer, Arthur Falls
Jul 24, 2016•50 min
Lucius Gregory Meredith, chief technology officer at Synereo is a mathematician and cryptocurrency expert. The Synereo platform began as a decentralized social network but out of a need for smart contracts, high scalability, and concurrent transactions, the project has become something much more than a replacement for facebook. Greg’s work is fascinating and novel, and frankly I don’t do it justice in this interview. Interested listeners should follow up on the provided links. What lead me to Sy...
Jul 18, 2016•50 min
The threat of Ethereum regulation as a result of the DAO fiasco raises the question: At its core, is blockchain a financial technology? The Crypto project is viewed by many to be an effort to safeguard mankind's future. Vinay Gupta says it’s time to realign the crypto project with human survival rather than human greed. Topics Covered: Will Ethereum become regulated and merge with Fintech? Is this a bad thing? In the event of a global financial collapse, have we built an infrastructure which wil...
Jul 07, 2016•1 hr 7 min
Julian Zawistowski, of Project Golem explains the distributed computing platform he and his team at Imapp are producing. The first alpha, Brass Golem will be released in weeks. The Imapp organisation itself is an interesting organization worth having a look at. Before we get to Golem however, Wall Street veteran Caitlin Long explains what blockchain can offer to financial institutions, regulators, and the Wall St as a whole. https://caitlin-long.com/ http://golemproject.net/ http://imapp.pl/en/i...
Jul 01, 2016•55 min
Peter Van Valkenburgh, Director of Research at Coin Center explains the regulatory considerations that may bear on DAO tokens. This episode was recorded before the hack but is still an excellent guide for those interested in understanding the importance of due legal diligence in advance of a crowd sale. https://coincenter.org/ etherreview.info Thank you to cryptocompare.com Content: Arthur Falls, Peter Van Valkenburgh
Jun 22, 2016•47 min
So the DAO was hacked. Karl Floersch and myself discuss the state of play. What happened? Was it the fault of the DAO developers or a bug in the Solidity language? What does this mean for the ecosystem? How should we respond as a community? What is certain is that this event will drive the maturity of Ethereum forward. Hackingdistributed.com blog.ethereum.org/ Understanding The DAO Hack for Journalists - https://goo.gl/JIFgNJ Karl.tech Credits: Content: Karl Floersch, Arthur Falls...
Jun 20, 2016•44 min
This episode features a somewhat undirected discussion with critical thinker Vinay Gupta. Starting with the technological components of Bitcoin and Ethereum, we find that all roads lead to the singularity. Thank you to cryptocompare.com for the support etherreview.info http://t.co/xrESgq7lBz (Vinay's site) https://twitter.com/leashless https://twitter.com/arthurfalls Content: Vinay Gupta, Arthur Falls Editing: Connor O'Day
Jun 12, 2016•47 min
Today we have Ethereum founder and Ethcore CEO, Gavin Wood and head of business development at Ethcore, Ken Kappler. We take a look at their Parity client and the Web 3 concept. We look at the future of Bitcoin - Ethereum interoperation, Geth security flaws, Whisper, Swarm, the DAO and even the possibility of sidechains on Ethereum. There was additional content cut into this episode so it’s a bit choppy but altogether this episode offers a fresh glimpse into the ever changing future of Ethereum....
Jun 02, 2016•42 min
This episode features two interviews. First, Karl Floersch discusses the underlying structures which shape distributed applications. Karl’s ability to explain the deeper mechanics of software running in the Ethereum environment is unique and discussions with him are always fun, insightful, and visionary. Then we have Manfred Karrer, the creator of Bitsquare. For the uninitiated, Bitsquare is a decentralized fiat to crypto exchange. While it is completely self contained and doesn’t use Ethereum i...
May 23, 2016•54 min
Blockchain Revolution, the acclaimed book by Alex and Don Tapscott has been stirring interest in elite tech circles in advance of it's launch. Steve Wozniac called it "Mindblowing in its expansiveness and profundity." Alex Tapscott joins to discus the work. Content: Alex Tapscott, Arthur Falls https://twitter.com/alextapscott https://twitter.com/arthurfalls http://goo.gl/lrll0H
May 13, 2016•33 min
In the few days between this episodes interview and the recording of this introduction, the DAO has raised over ten million dollars, bringing its total cash reserves to twenty three million. Such investor enthusiasm is unprecedented in the cryptocurrency world. But is such enthusiasm justified? What is the DAO anyway? Where does Slockit fit into the picture? Will the investor control of the DAO result in overly optimistic capital management? Do these investors realize the highly speculative natu...
May 06, 2016•32 min
Bob Summerwill has been developing the C++ Ethereum client since July last year. His background is primarily in game development but he spent a short time in finance as a “Solutions Architect” giving him a unique insight into development and culture across these fields. There are some interesting posts we speak about in this episode on his company website DoubleThink. Today we look primarily at the importance of C++ but I took the chance to ask Bob a few questions that had been accumulating over...
Apr 28, 2016•34 min
Christoph Jentzsch is a theoretical physicist and high performance computing expert. The road to co-founding Slockit lead Christoph through the world of mining to testing the Ethereum codebase to developing the DAO concept to it’s most advanced state. In this episode we cover not only the internet of things but also the challenges of creating a new model for online community entrepreneurship. https://slock.it/ Content: Christoph Jentzsch, Arthur Falls Editing: Richard Toth https://twitter.com/Ch...
Apr 22, 2016•36 min
MetaMask is a Chrome browser extension that will enable trustless interaction with DApps. Developers Aaron Davis and Dan Finlay discuss self sovereign identity, leaving Apple to develop on Ethereum and developing decentralized web services. We also talk about the Web 3 experience. http://metamask.io Content: Aaron Davis, Dan Finlay, Arthur Falls Editing: Richard Toth http://podcast-editing.com
Apr 18, 2016•29 min
John Lilic discusses the Transactive Grid project which aims to localize energy production through the creation of micro grids. John’s idea of using a pure incentive system to solve and infrastructure problem is inspired. We also touch on early days of ConsenSys and the Total Return Swap Content: @johnlilic, @arthurfalls @etherreview etherreview.info
Apr 09, 2016•31 min
Ethereum Full Transparency is a feature that has recently been added to the live.ether.camp blockchain explorer. It now allows the user to explore the operations of a smart contract in both interpreted and raw form. It's the most interesting exposition of the inner workings of Ethereum to date and definitely something everyone should take a look at. @mandeleil @arthurfalls live.ether.camp ethchamps.org etherreview.org
Mar 31, 2016•23 min
The stable token platform Maker is the focus of today’s episode. It’s a mature design that builds on both the academic and technological legacy of Bitshares. It’s live right now and has been for months. This is a great follow on to episode 16 with Dominic Williams. https://makerdao.com/ Rune Cristiansen, @arthurfalls etherreview.info @etherreview contact@etherreview.info
Mar 21, 2016•52 min
Christopher David, founder of the transportation network Arcade City came on the show today to discuss the project. Arcade City aims ultimately to be owned by the drivers themselves using a suite of technologies built on our favorite platform. It was interesting to hear the complaints many drivers had about incumbent Uber and how this has turned into grass roots support for Arcade City. It’s also interesting to see a single use case employ so many technologies. It’s a taste of things to come, I’...
Mar 17, 2016•34 min
Taylor Gerring brings us an Ethereum Development update. Then we’re taking another look at Digix, a gold backed token issuance and exchange platform. The platform featured in episode 8 but given their crowdsale begins on the first of next month and their DAO goes live on the first of the following I figured it was worth revisiting. I’m a big fan of what Kai, Anthony and Shaun have done here. It’s no frills recombinant innovation. Robust and uncomplex. For a critical view of their methodology che...
Mar 10, 2016•48 min
This is a special episode of The Ether Review. Today Taylor Gerring, the director of technology at the Ethereum Foundation joins to offer a quick development update and answer a few listener questions. If you’re interested in finding out more or would like to participate, head over to ethereum.org. Questions should be sent to contact@etherreview.info
Feb 24, 2016•14 min
Today we have one of my favourite thinkers in the cryptocurrency space. Dominic Williams featured briefly in the last episode of Beyond Bitcoin discussing Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus processes. Today we talk about Synthetic Assets: Colored Coins, Dynamically Collateralized Coins, Hedged Dao Assets, and Smart Market Instruments. This is really significant stuff and this conversation significantly deepened my understanding of the challenges of creating value pegged tokens. It’s a ...
Feb 16, 2016•1 hr 10 min
Oraclize is a project developing tools to provide trustable data feeds to smart contacts and prediction markets. Founder Thomas Bertani joins me today to explain oracles, oracle networks, TLS Notary and the emerging decentralised ecosystem. @ThomasBertani @oraclizeit oraclize.it Content: Thomas Bertani, Arthur Falls Production and Editing: Arthur Falls
Feb 11, 2016•38 min
Juan Bennet is the founder and CEO of Protocol Labs. The chief project under development over there is IPFS or the Interplanetary Storage Network. I keep hearing IPFS mentioned in the same sentence as Ethereum so I thought I’d ask Juan what the deal was. [Note: This episode does not contain a magic word.] Juan Benet: @juanbenet IPFS: https://ipfs.io/ Epicenter Episode: https://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/100/ Josh Stern: @joshuastern http://www.joshstern.info/ Content: Juan Benet, Arthur Falls ...
Feb 04, 2016•35 min
Alex Van de Sande is the lead designer for the Ethereum Foundation and Eth Dev. Originally working on the Mist browser, more recently Alex has been focussed on the developing the Ethereum wallet. The exercise tutorials he published on the official Ethereum Blog were a blast to work through and examining them makes up much of the content of this episode. [Note: This episode does not contain a magic word.] Adam Van de Sande: @avsa Wallet Tutorials https://blog.ethereum.org/author/avsa/ Josh Stern:...
Jan 22, 2016•46 min
