Hashing It Out

Latest Episodes:

Hashing It Out #52 - Blockstack - Aaron Blankstein Jul 11, 2019

Show notes

Blockstack is releasing their decentralized computing platform next year, and we have Aaron Blankstein on to talk about their whitepaper and what it means for decentralized applications in the future. Using their identity management system, Blockstack ID, their file storage system, Gaia, and their formally verifiable and non-Turing Complete smart contract language, Clarity, Blockstack will make it easier to build dapps on the Bitcoin network.

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Hashing It Out #51 - Blockstream - Andrew Poelstra Jul 04, 2019

Show notes

Today's episode Corey and Collin bring on Andrew Poelstra, a mathematician and Director of Research at Blockstream. The guys dive straight into ECDSA vs Schnorr signatures, its history, and their future in crypto systems. They talk about Mimble Wimble, and how it bled into upcoming massive improvements of the Bitcoin protocol. Lots of great stuff to sink your teeth into this episode so we go a bit longer than usual. Enjoy the show!

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Hashing It Out #50 - AVA Labs - Emin Gün Sirer Jul 04, 2019

Show notes

Welcome back, Dr. Sirer on our 50th episode! The Avalanche consensus protocol was released last year by a pseudonymous team of researches "Team Rocket" (no relation to Pokemon, our sources say). Dr. Emin Gün Sirer has been a strong proponent of the protocol and has developed an implementation under his company AVA Labs. With test TPS of 6500 on a realistic test environment, AVA is already showing speeds rivaling VISA on Black Friday. We re-hash Avalanche for the audience and then explain how the AVA implementation works, learning more about open questions such as smart contracts on AVA.

Links

https://avalabs.org/
https://twitter.com/avalabsofficial
https://twitter.com/el33th4xor

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Hashing It Out #49 - xDAI Burner Wallet - Austin Griffith Jun 21, 2019

Show notes

With great pleasure, we present to you, Austin Griffith. You've seen this man all over YouTube, often rockin' a bowtie, and showing some amazing and dynamic live demonstrations of his creative process in designing new user experiences for Ethereum. Author of the xDAI burner wallet, expert in meta transactions, and dapp development pioneer, Austin's energy and knowledge is palpable. This episode is a lot of fun and highly educational.

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Hashing It Out #48 - MakerDAO pt. 2 - Nik Kunkel Jun 05, 2019

Show notes

MakerDAO has built a token that is reasonably stable with the USD. We have the great pleasure of interviewing Nik Kunkel, Head of Backend Services at Maker. In this Part 2 of 2 on Maker, we talk about the technical design behind developing Maker. Please listen to Part 1 of 2 (previous episode, #47) before this, as it's essential for understanding the principles guiding the design decisions. This is compelling work, and truly amazing how well it's standing against the throes of the fluctuating markets.

Links
https://makerdao.com/en/
https://www.reddit.com/r/MakerDAO/
https://twitter.com/makerdao

Hashing It Out #47 - MakerDAO pt. 1 - Nik Kunkel May 30, 2019

Show notes

MakerDAO has built a token that is reasonably stable with the USD. We have the great pleasure of interviewing Nik Kunkel, Head of Backend Services at Maker. In this Part 1 of 2 on Maker, we talk about the cryptoeconomics behind creating a stable token pegged to the USD. It's essential to understand this before getting into the technicals found in Part 2 of 2 (next episode, #48). This is compelling work, and truly amazing how well it's standing against the throes of the fluctuating markets.

Links
https://makerdao.com/en/
https://www.reddit.com/r/MakerDAO/
https://twitter.com/makerdao

Hashing It Out #46 - Ren - Loong Wang May 24, 2019

Show notes

We have CTO of Ren, Loong Wang, on to educate us on their token transfer protocol. Ren is building a system that allows a user to transfer a token from one change to another, without the drawbacks found in techniques like atomic swaps. They have a network of "dark nodes" which run on their virtual machine, RenVM, to computer across the transactions and share data over the network. Interesting technology with many use cases!

Links

https://renproject.io/
https://twitter.com/bzlwang

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Hashing It Out #45 - Cosmos Network - Zaki Manian May 10, 2019

Show notes

Champion of decentralization, Zaki Manian, rejoins us for updates on Cosmos since their Mainnet launch. We dive into the design principles of Cosmos, their consensus mechanisms, incentivisation model, and how to integrate your decentralized application into the Cosmos Network. We also learn more about who is currently using Cosmos and how, what Zaki and Cosmos will be speaking on at NYC Blockchain Week events, as well as how Cosmos differentiates itself from other technologies being produced. Riveting as always!

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Hashing It Out #44 - Blockstream - Russell O'Connor May 03, 2019

Show notes

We bring you another brilliant mind on the show for this episode! Russell O'Connor, developer of Blockstream's Simplicity programming language for Bitcoin, dives deep into formal verification topics. We learn about the language design principles driving Simplicity, how formal verification plays an integral role in making the language suitable for securely automating Bitcoin transactions, and the challenges in creating a smart contract script for Bitcoin. We get a glimpse into the future of blockchain automation, and he elucidates what is being done right and what could be done better in blockchain platforms to place security first in smart contract design.

Links

Hashing It Out #43 - Kadena - Stuart Popejoy and Emily Pillmore Apr 26, 2019

Show notes

We are excited to have the Kadena team back on with an update. The erudite Stuart Popejoy and brilliant Emily Pillmore speak more on Pact, the smart contract language with built-in formal verification used in the Kadena Chainweb. We learn more about formal verification: what it means, how it works, and a bit of its limitations. They also give us an update on Chainweb itself and talk us through some of the challenges since we last spoke... AND their innovated solutions to those challenges!

Links:

http://kadena.io
https://kadena.io/en/resources/
https://twitter.com/kadena_io
https://twitter.com/sirlensalot
https://twitter.com/emi1ypi
EVM is fundamentally unsafe
Turing Complete vs Turing Incomplete

Sponsorship:
We'd like to thank our sponsor for this episode Trail of Bits for supporting us. Now go sign up for automatic github-integrated smart contract security at www.crytic.io !

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