Relay Chain

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Latest Episodes:

Innovating the Web3 Legal Space Feb 07, 2023

This week, Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined by Chrissy Hill, General Counsel, and Alica Schiffhauer, Legal Operations Specialist, from Parity’s legal team. This episode focuses on the legal side of Web3 and all that it entails, including the challenges of working within compliance for a codebase with no existing legal precedent.

They discuss the unique aspects of working within Web3 law, such as needing a working knowledge of complex technology, blockchain-specific terminology, staying on top of evolving blockchain regulation, as well as their recommendation to become familiar with the legal side of the blockchain space. In addition, you'll learn how legal teams support Web3, by bridging the gap between national laws (to avoid what happened with FTX, for example), identifying and mitigating risks, and how accountability works for breaches of the law within a decentralized system.

Links

Parity Technologies
The General Public License
Less Trust More Truth: DOT has morphed and is Software, not a Security
Coindesk policy and legal sections

Highlights

00:50 The journey from Web2 to Web3 legal

07:30 Working for a legal team in a blockchain company

17:50 Challenges as legal professionals within the blockchain space

25: 45 How Parity and the wider ecosystem benefits from legal knowledge

27:00 Compliance for a codebase with no exciting legal precedence

32:00 Open source licensing 101

37:00 DIsadvantages of open source licensing

40:45 Deciding on GPL as the license for Polkadot and Kusama

44:30 How to learn more about DOT morphing into software

47:00 Cross-ecosystem collaboration across legal teams

50:20 Code is law philosophy vs. rule of law

Special Guests: Alica Schiffhauer and Chrissy Hill.

Polkadot Common Good Parachains Update: Blockchains to Benefit the Polkadot Community Dec 01, 2022

In this episode, host Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined by Joe Petrowski (Common Good Parachains Team Lead, Web3 Foundation) to talk about common good parachains (aka system level parachains), the layer-1 Polkadot blockchains dedicated to core functionality that benefits the entire Polkadot ecosystem. Since Statemint, dedicated to asset and NFT functionality, launched as Polkadot’s first common good parachain, many more have been in development. This episode explores how common good chains are evolving and what this means for the Polkadot ecosystem, from the new Collectives parachain, evolving NFTs on Statemint, to the upcoming Bridge Hub parachain, and many exciting projects coming out of the ecosystem.

During this talk, Petrowski describes how common good parachains are elected, categorized, onboarded, and eventually made available to users. He highlights the importance of the Cross-Consensus Message Format (XCM) for system-level parachains, and those which are ready to launch once XCMv3 is deployed. Finally, during the analysis of parachain transaction validation and finalization, we discover the eye-opening benefits of moving core functionality off the relay chain; Polkadot could support far more than 100 parachains, with far fewer than 1,000 validators needed to process transactions with the same security guarantees as before.

Links
Roadmap for Parity-developed common good parachains

Highlights
2.00 The humble beginnings of common good parachains
3.22 System vs public utility chains
12:00 Pallets abstracting work away from the relay chain
13:00 How transactions are processed on the relay chain vs a parachain
15:12 The benefits of taking core functionality off the relay chain: > 100 parachains!
17:30 System level common good parachains under development
22:45 The Collectives parachain
31:35 How to create a collective or DAO using Substrate's Collective pallet
36:00 Governance to set up the Collectives parachain
39.45 Developments and roadblocks to launching the Bridge Hub
51:10 Evolution of Statemine/ Statemint including evolving NFTs
56:45 Community shoutout for support - particularly deployment tooling

Special Guest: Joe Petrowski.

Composable Finance Part 2: Envisioning the Valhalla of Cross-Chain DeFi Jul 07, 2022

This week we have the second half of the conversation between Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) and 0xbrainjar, founder and CEO of the Polkadot parachain Composable Finance. Composable and sister parachain Picasso on Kusama allow smart contracts built on different languages and different chains to connect, enabling cross-chain DeFi applications and more.

If you missed part 1, have a listen here.

In part 2, they talk more about Mosaic, Composable’s transfer availability layer, and XCVM, their cross-consensus virtual machine. They look at how Composable approaches cross-chain bridging and communication, interoperability with ecosystems outside of Polkadot, and thinking outside the box for cross-chain applications beyond what’s already been done before.

Links
Composable Finance
Picasso Network
Angular Finance
Whirlpool Cash

Highlights
01:35 - Mosaic, XCVM and liquidity fragmentation
03:45 - Transaction fees w/ multiple blockchains
04:50 - Intro to XCVM (cross-consensus virtual machine)
07:15 - Interoperability with Cosmos and other ecosystems
11:32 - XCVM and bridging deep dive
16:30 - Cross-chain developer and user experience
24:30 - Angular, Substrate’s first money market
26:45 - Whirlpool Cash (zk mixing)

Special Guest: 0xbrainjar.

Composable Finance Part 1: Unlocking Cross-Chain, Cross-Layer DeFi on Polkadot Jun 22, 2022

Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined this week by 0xbrainjar, founder and CEO of the Polkadot parachain Composable Finance. Composable and sister parachain Picasso on Kusama allow smart contracts built on different languages and different chains to connect, enabling cross-chain swaps and more. By simplifying and unifying DeFi (Decentralized Finance) with new interoperability standards, the project is accelerating this technology into the mainstream.

This talk covers Composable's solutions for developers and end users. 0xbrainjar describes building with Substrate and the new pallets they created, the native functionality of Composable and Picasso, and the various products and DeFi primitives they offer.

Additionally, 0xbrainjar discusses cross-layer NFT transfers, building oracles for price manipulation resistance, achieving protocol-owned liquidity, bootstrapping DeFi and what could be considered ‘DeFi 3.0'.

Links
Composable Finance
Picasso Network
Cubic Vault pallet

Highlights
01:35 Introduction to Composable
04:00 What problems does Composable solve?
06:10 Substrate pallets, customizations, new builds
10:31 The Pablo DEX
13:51 Protocol-owned liquidity (POL) within a DEX
18:40 Cubic: Composable’s modular DeFi vault pallet
22:20 Oracles and price manipulation resistance
29:20 'Mural', the Cross-Layer NFT transfer protocol
32:00 Mosaic — the transfer availability layer
36:20 Just in time liquidity & bot networks
39:27 Managed LP tokens

Special Guest: 0xbrainjar.

OriginTrail: Decentralized Knowledge Graph & the Semantic Web3 May 19, 2022

This week, Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined by OriginTrail’s Tomaž Levak (co-founder) and Žiga Drev (co-founder). OriginTrail is a Substrate-based blockchain that recently won a parachain slot on Polkadot. OriginTrail developed the world’s first Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG) to organize humanity’s most important assets, making them discoverable, verifiable, and valuable, often referred to as 'the google of Web3'.

This talk explores the real-world use cases of OriginTrail, and how through the synergy of knowledge graphs and blockchains, DKG forms the "semantic layer of Web3", enabling Web3 builders to organize, discover, and verify anything. It’s similar to the technology used by major Web2 giants like Google and Amazon to power their services.

The OriginTrail team explain how they moved into Web3 and achieved mainstream adoption, starting out on Ethereum as one of the first and most promising blockchain projects to address supply chain use cases, and evolving into a multichain decentralized knowledge network. They also discuss the OriginTrail parachain, enhancing the DKG with Substrate, unleashing network effects through Polkadot, collaborating with parachains, and how you can participate in OriginTrail, from running nodes to interacting with the community.

Links

OriginTrail
NFT Supercharger
The Trace Alliance

Highlights

02:00 What is OriginTrail?

04:45 Who’s using the Decentralized Knowledge Graph

07:00 What does OriginTrail solve?

10:30 Inception and expansion of OriginTrail

15:50 Existing across multiple blockchains

19:15 How OriginTrail works with the DKG

26:20 Forming the semantic layer of Web3

31:04 The OriginTrail parachain

40:15 Shout out to DKG Community members

43:20 How OriginTrail is being used

51:20 Breaking in to the mainstream

01:01:15 The Trace Alliance

Special Guests: Tomaž Levak and Žiga Drev.

Centrifuge, Connecting Real World Assets with DeFi Feb 15, 2022

This week Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined by Cassidy Daly, token design and research specialist at Centrifuge, a Substrate-based blockchain that recently won a parachain slot on Polkadot. Centrifuge aims to bring an archaic financial system into the Web3 space, enabling users to unlock financing for their real world assets by bringing them on-chain.

Daly describes why the team chose Substrate to build Centrifuge and its canary network Altair, and why Centrifuge became a Polkadot parachain: to reconcile issues with Ethereum including scalability and fees, and the difficulty in maintaining an ETH bridge. They also discuss bringing the Tinlake DApp from Ethereum over to Centrifuge to tap into the specialization between interoperable parachains and drive efficiencies, lower the cost of financing and guarantee the custody and ownership of physical assets on-chain.

Useful Links
Centrifuge's website
Tinlake's website
Altair's website
Kilt's website

Highlights
01:47 What is Centrifuge?
07:27 Creating real-world assets on Centrifuge to use on Ethereum
12:10 Integrations with MakerDAO and Aave
15:55 Guaranteeing custody of physical assets on-chain
22:40 Centrifuge’s potential uses cases
26:15 Use cases of Altair vs Centrifuge parachains
33:25 Decentralizing Altair
36:50 Altair roadmap and the NFT studio DApp
44:10 Building functionality into the runtime
46:37 How Centrifuge fits into DeFi 2.0
49:20 Plans for Centrifuge as a Polkadot parachain

Special Guest: Cassidy Daly.

Mainstreaming DeFi with Parallel Finance Dec 09, 2021

This week, Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined by Yubo Ruan, founder of Parallel Finance, a lending solutions provider designed to increase liquidity and acceptance on the Polkadot network. Parallel Finance is a Polkadot parachain and its sister network Heiko Finance is a Kusama parachain.

This episode begins with an introduction to Parallel Finance and its tech stack. They also discuss how Substrate helped Parallel launch a parachain in 7 months, and how the project is disrupting DeFi through a unique take on lending design and building user interaction interfaces (necessary for interoperability in DeFi).

Links

Parallel Finance’s website

Substrate Builders Program featuring Parallel Finance

Highlights

01:53 How to launch a parachain in 7 months

03:30 What is Parallel Finance?

05:40 Substrate modules and tech stack upgrades

08:00 Validator participation requirements

11:34 Heiko use cases and the Security Module

14:20 Increasing engagement in governance

21:50 Parallel Finance products

29:38 Staked tokens can participate in governance

31:15 Borrowing based on your collateral

33:30 Auction lending and crowdloans

42:48 Value proposition between networks: Parallel Heiko and Parallel Finance

45:27 Participation in the Substrate Builders Program

Special Guest: Yubo Ruan.

Accelerating the Web3 Metaverse with Outlier Ventures Nov 25, 2021

This week, Joe Petrowski (Technical Integrations Lead, Web3 Foundation) is joined by Jamie Burke, CEO, and founder of Outlier Ventures, an accelerator that supports the development and growth of emerging technologies, including Polkadot. They are currently running a Polkadot accelerator through their Base Camp program.

Burke describes what he set out to achieve by founding Outlier Ventures in the context of the current internet where platforms are vulnerable to state capture and coercion and are biased against users. With these flaws in mind, the pair discuss the optimal Web3 tech stack with ‘sovereignty first’ as a core design principle and building a permissionless financial system in the context of the Metaverse.

The conversation moves on to the Metaverse as a framework for the direction of Web3 where value and identity are transferred and owned by the user. They discuss how to navigate this realm in terms of technology, finance, and culture, and how this aggregate economy would enable a more open metaverse across lots of different use cases, from music to gaming, the creator economy, and more.

Links
Outlier Ventures’ website

Polkadot Base Camp

The Open Metaverse OS

Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff

The Master Switch, Tim Wuh

The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age (1997, with James Dale Davidson)

Highlights

00:57 Introduction to Outlier Ventures

07:00 User-centricity in Web3 and the Metaverse

11:55 Use cases of NFTs encourage blockchain adoption

18:00 Creating a Web3 Stack to enable a more open Metaverse

21:05 The success of NFTs in the gaming industry

28:40 Integrating into a digital economy to be part of the Metaverse

33:50 Introducing digital scarcity to digital assets = enabling property rights

38:10 Reworking economics primitives

41:25 Free markets, the sovereign individual and fluidity collectors

51:40 Commodification and financialization of data with blockchain technology

54:30 Data unions to empower individuals on Polkadot and Kusama

56:28 How can the Metaverse compete with physical nation-states?

1:05:00 Web3 stack for a better Metaverse user experience

1:10:00 Outlier Ventures support for the Polkadot ecosystem

Special Guest: Jamie Burke.

Building Blockchain Social Networks with Subsocial Sep 17, 2021

This week, Jorrin Bruns (Polkadot Integration Specialist, Parity Technologies) is joined by Subsocial’s founder and Polkadot Ambassador Alex Siman, and Zachary Edwards, Subsocial’s content lead and community manager. Subsocial is an open protocol for decentralized social networks and marketplaces, and this episode explores the world of social networks on blockchain, through the eyes of the Subsocial team.

They provide an overview of their platform and its architecture and discuss their growth strategy, targeting the non-crypto-native masses by creating a better user experience than Web 2.0 versions like Facebook. This means tackling censorship and moderation, prioritizing user sovereignty, and decentralized marketing. Finally, they consider what the metaverse could look like, and Subsocial’s part in it, and future plans to integrate with Polkadot and Kusama projects.

Links
Subsocial’s website
Blog article about Social Finance
Subsocial on Twitter

Highlights
1.30 Overview of Subsocial
06:20 Consensus algorithm to secure Subsocial
11:00 The architecture of Subsocial
15:00 Potential for (over) sharing on a blockchain social network
19:00 Separating personal identity from on-chain data
24:00 Storing content on blockchain
28:15 Addressing the issues Facebook created
35:50 Voluntary ads mechanism
38:40 Growth strategy and encouraging users to join
41:40 Account compatibility across Substrate-based chains
43:15 Targeting the non-crypto-native masses
48:50 The Subsocial mobile app
50:15 Rewarding Subsocial ecosystem contributors
52:40 Evolving social networks with blockchain
54:00 ‘Social Finance’
59:30 Integrations with ‘DotSama’ projects

Special Guests: Alex Siman and Zachary Edwards .

Robonomics: The Blockchain with Robots Aug 19, 2021

In this episode, Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined by Robonomics Software Architect Sergei Lonshakov. Robonomics is an open-source internet of things (IoT) platform. It provides ways for humans to communicate with robots, and for robots to connect to each other and the internet. Started on Ethereum in 2015, Robonomics is now aiming to be a parachain on Polkadot, with a view to work across both ecosystems. The team also publishes scientific research on the frontier between IoT, blockchain, Ethereum, Substrate, and Polkadot.

The pair discuss real use cases of robotics, from those currently available, e.g., in smart cities, to futuristic possibilities in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Along the way they talk about Mars colonization, digital twins and robot art. Lonshakov also presents Robonomics Web Services (RWS) and the development of the Robot Operating System (ROS), a framework of ready-to-work packages that enable engineers without blockchain experience to create robotic systems that connect to blockchain.

Links
Robonomics Website
Robonomics Overview PDF
Robonomics Research

Highlights
01:13 What is Robonomics?
05:42 Machine to machine communication
07:25 Milestones since 2015 – From Ethereum to Substrate
18:31 The way forward for Robonomics
21:38 The Robot Operating System (ROS)
28:16 Robonomics Relay Chain vision
34:00 Robonomics use cases
41:07 Robonomics Web Services (RWS)
47:17 Mars colonization
53:10 Digital Twins
58:41 Robot Artist Gaka-Chu
01:04:13 The Fourth Industrial Revolution
01:12:54 Side Effects of Robotization

Special Guest: Sergei Lonshakov.

Statemine: A Deep Dive Into Kusama’s Asset Hub with Joe Petrowski Aug 05, 2021

This week the tables are turned on Relay Chain, with Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) interviewing co-host Joe Petrowski (Technical Integrations Lead, Web3 Foundation) as a guest representing his contribution to the Statemint/Statemine project. Statemine — Kusama’s version of Polkadot’s Statemint — is a common-good parachain for creating and managing assets and NFTs on-chain. It recently made history as the first live, featureful parachain to be onboarded to Kusama. Now that Statemine has been made permissionless, anyone can use it to create and deploy tokens and NFTs.

The pair discuss computational resources, achieving faster speeds, lower transaction fees and the potential to shell out those fees for assets, while incentivizing validators. Petrowski also shares his insights into conceiving and deploying a parachain within two months, the Substrate build, and the project’s challenges from upgrading a runtime without governance to asynchronous asset management across chains, and what’s next for the project.

Links
Statemint announcement post
Statemine upgrade announcement
Statemint’s GitHub repositary

Highlights
01:17 What is Statemint?
05.40 Taking transactions off the relay chain
10:00 Statemine as the first common-good parachain
16:60 Teleporting assets across multiple chains
20:04 Implementing Statemint governance
23:35 Who is building common-good parachains?
25:49 Incentivizing validators
29:03 How Statemint interacts with other parachains
41:35 Considering asynchronous blockchain execution
44:48 Challenges building Statemint
49:54 Statemint’s runtime upgrade to become permissionless
50:30 What’s next for Statemint/ Statemine

Special Guest: Joe Petrowski.

Prediction Markets and Futarchy with Zeitgeist Jul 23, 2021

This week, Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) is joined by Zeitgeist’s founder Logan Saether, and CIO, David Perry. Zeitgeist is a Substrate-based decentralized network for creating, participating in, and resolving prediction markets, and exploring the potential of futarchy for governance.

They discuss prediction market systems, futarchy for decision making, mitigating market biases, how a prediction market works, and its diverse applications — from improving on-chain governance to choosing political candidates and predicting parachain slot auction winners.

The team also describes the next steps for this project in terms of usability and adoption, such as parachains leveraging futarcy, developing an SDK to speed up prediction market app deployment, and their plans for Zeitgeist to become a Kusama parachain.

Links
Zeitgeist’s website
The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki
Keynesian beauty contest
Futarchy
Kusama Derby Conclusion Results

Highlights
01:05 What is Zeitgeist
08:10 Prediction market systems
10:27 Futarchy for decision making
13:20 Zeitgeist Substrate pallet recipe
18:00 Automated Market Makers
20:15 How a prediction market works
26:14 Prediction market efficiency given subjective information
27.58 Mitigating prediction market biases and incentives
30:02 Prediction markets within politics
34:15 Types of prediction markets
38:20 Building an SDK
41:20 Zeitgeist plans as a parachain

Special Guests: David Perry and Logan Saether.

Querying the World's Data with SubQuery Jul 09, 2021

Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) talks with James Bayly, Head of Business Development for OnFinality, one of the largest infrastructure providers for Polkadot and Substrate, about Subquery, a tool that speeds up querying and extracting Polkadot network data so that anyone can take the data off-chain and create something useful.

They discuss the team's mission to deliver high performance, decentralized services to distribute assets at scale, integrate with blockchain oracles and build tools and infrastructure to advance the Polkadot ecosystem. Bayly provides insights into SubQuery’s network participants, how collaboration and feedback from Polkadot projects in New Zealand influenced several of its value-added features, their long-term plans to become a parachain and the road to 1 billion API (application programming interface) requests.

Links
OnFinality’s website
SubQuery’s website
SubQuery’s white paper
Subvis.io’s website — the SubQuery project Bayly mentioned as an example of the power of Subquery

Highlights
01:18 OnFinality and SubQuery: The mission
15:38 Providing data to blockchains vs. smart contracts
19:16 Web3 grant for open-source tooling
21:20 Decentralized cloud infrastructure
24:00 OnFinality as a distributed cloud provider
26:02 Collaboration with Polkadot teams in New Zealand
29:44 Trigger and notifications from on-chain data
37:06 Integrations with blockchain oracles
39:13 Capabilities and next steps for SubQuery
42:33 Long-term goals to become a parachain
46:10 Open positions to join the SubQuery team

Key Quotes
“There are around 500 million blocks of data on Polkadot, this team makes the tools to take it off-chain to create something useful.”

Special Guest: James Bayly.

Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves on Blockchain Adoption and Internet Regulation Jun 24, 2021

In this Relay Chain exclusive, Joe Petrowski (Technical Integrations Lead at Web3 Foundation) and Parity’s Úrsula O'Kuinghttons speak with former President of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves. Uniquely placed as one of few presidents who knows how to code, Ilves was responsible for implementing the digitization of the Estonian government, one of the first countries to adopt blockchain tech, and many other processes in the country from voting to registering a business.

They discuss how Estonia, one of the smallest countries in the world, became one of the most entrepreneurial and tech-savvy, what led Estonia to go ‘digital', declare access to the internet as a basic human right, and mediate data integrity for their digital records via blockchain. Ilves talks about his concerns for the internet given its weaponization and populist exploitation, the problematic state of freedom of expression and accountability online, and governance of online communities beyond nation-states.

Links
Toomas Hendrik Ilves on Twitter
Úrsula 0'Kuinghtton on Twitter
X-Road introduction video
Cybernetica’s website

Highlights
00:00 Intro new co-host, Úrsula 0'Kuinghttons
03:00 Estonia as a global leader in the state adoption of technology
09:04 Digitizing a nation via open-source software and distributed systems
18:55 Access to the internet as a basic human right
25:24 The weaponization of the internet
30:22 Regulating social media
38:46 Defining order and proximity in the digital world
50:20 Governance of online communities
54:56 Social media platforms: responsibilities, and oversight
01:14:30 (e)Residency unbound by offline territorial borders

Key Quotes
"If you are going to have digital records you gotta have something to maintain integrity and the way to do it is blockchain. I mean, I don't understand how all of these companies in the world and governments have digital records and don’t put them on blockchain just for security."

"Question the need to use illiberal methods to preserve liberal democracy."

Special Guest: Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

Creating Your Own Metaverse with Bit.Country Jun 11, 2021

This week we’re joined by Bit.Country, a Substrate-based decentralized world with a game-like feel that puts community at the forefront. Bit.Country lets anyone create their own decentralized virtual country and grow their own community.

Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) talks with members of the Bit.Country team: Shannon Christie, CTO, Justin Pham, CTO, and Ray Lu, CEO about creating customizable experiences in the immersive world of metahuman technology.

Besides tech, they discuss incentivizing users for social good, self-rule, and decentralized governance, designing for interoperability with Substrate, plans to launch as a Polkadot parachain and offering a place for entrepreneurs of all skill sets to create and trade NFTs across blockchains.

Links
Bit.Country’s website
Shannon Christie on Twitter
Justin Pham on Twitter
Ray Lu on Twitter
Industry Connect’s website

Highlights
02:36 What is Bit.Country?
09:51 The Good Neighborhood Protocol
15:20 Interoperability across chains and Bit.Countries
17:37 Choosing Substrate pallets to build Bit.Country
20:25 Two-tier governance on Bit.Country
22:48 Extending the use cases of NFTs
26:44 Bit.Country’s target audience
30:58 First steps to creating your Bit.Country
36:31 Technical stack and skills required to build a Bit.Country
42:05 Community and education programs
45:13 Business opportunities on the platform

Special Guests: Justin Pham, Ray Lu, and Shannon Christie.

Confidential Cloud Computing on Phala Network May 27, 2021

Privacy takes center stage in this week’s episode as Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) talks with Marvin Tong, co-founder and CEO of the Phala Network, a trustless, privacy-preserving cloud computing network based on Substrate. They dive deep into Phala’s tech, exploring how Phala tackles the issue of trust in the computational cloud by shielding user data from centralized organizations like Google, with the same level of computational power as existing cloud services.

Tong details several topics, including node security, Phala’s Substrate-based runtime and bespoke pallets, integrating alternative trusted execution environment (TEE) hardware, and how it tackles consensus. They delve into on-chain data privacy, deploying private smart contract computation for decentralized applications (DApps) and decentralized finance (DeFi) and services on Phala Network including Web3 Analytics and cross-chain interoperability.

Links
Marvin Tong on Twitter
Phala website
pDiem WIKI
Web3 Analytics website

Highlights
01:10 What is Phala Network?
04:40 Privacy in decentralized cloud computation
06:54 Scalability through TEE
09:53 Using multiple TEEs to mitigate trust
15:10 Integrating alternative hardware
17:55 Phala’s Substrate runtime
25:49 Consensus within Phala Network
30:54 Computation on TEE
35:44 Use cases for projects running on Phala
44:41 Bridging Diem (formerly known as Libra) to Polkadot
55:36 Targeting the second parachain slot

Key quotes
“Separating computation from consensus is the key to how Phala can bring the benefits of blockchain while delivering computational power on the scale of a cloud server.”

“We think there are two major types of smart contracts, for now, the first is EVM, and the other is written by ink! or Rust language running in Wasm, WebAssembly. WebAssembly is the type we chose. We want to put WebAssembly inside of TEE so that we can support this kind of security technique grade. We think it will be a major choice for not only Polkadot but the whole industry for Web3.”

“Using Web3 Analytics, all of the analysis code is running as a confidential smart contract. This means that the data is not deployed by a centralized server like Google or any other big platform. Using Google Analytics means that you trust to put your user’s data node to Google so that they can analyze it for you. From this perspective, on Web3 Analytics, the data is not trusted by any centralized server or centralized gatekeeper, it is just encrypted by Phala’s system, and how to encrypt it is in the visitor or users hands.”

“We believe that in the next three years, or five years, the major technology of all computation cloud will be confidential computing cloud. That’s what we can see from what Google, Amazon, and Facebook are doing.”

Special Guest: Marvin Tong.

Plasm: Scalable, Interoperable DApps on Polkadot May 12, 2021

This week Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies) speaks with Sota Watanabe, CEO of Stake Technologies and founder of Plasm, a platform designed to help developers deploy fast and secure decentralized applications (DApps) on Polkadot.

They discuss advancing Web3 via cross-chain collaboration, supporting DApp development, and decentralizing the Plasm network. Watanabe walks us through being the first parachain on Rococo, completing the first cross-chain message (together with Acala), bringing Ethereum compatibility and ZK-Rollups to Polkadot, staking and trading DApps, securing a parachain slot, and much more.

Highlights:
0:00 Intro to Stake Technologies and Plasm
03:35 Japan’s version of Web3, the Trusted Web Council
06:35 The value of decentralized organizations
09.48 Connecting blockchains with Substrate
10:32 Support for multiple blockchain technologies
13:05 Plasm’s unique mechanisms; DApp staking and ZKRollups
16:50 Buy and sell Plasm applications
18:15 Stake Technologies Web3 grants
22:10 Schiden and Plasm parachain strategy
24:07 Making blockchain history
26:36 Cross-chain message passing
30:05 NFT capabilities beyond gaming
33:09 Encouraging DApps to build on the Plasm Network

Links:
Sota Watanabe on Twitter
Plasm Network website
Stake Technologies website

Key Quotes:
“When it comes to a smart contract platform, I think a layer 2 solution is needed in the long run so we are making the foundation, the Substrate of Web3, for really normal people. Polkadot itself is a scaling solution, but this is a layer 1 scalability solution. We need vertical scalability which is layer 1, that is why we are working on ZKRollups now. Vertical scalability is much faster, more flexible, and cheaper since layer 2 doesn’t need to be a broken chain”

“What makes Plasm different from other parachains? We innovated two things, one is DApps staking and another one is the scaling solution ZKRollups”

“We are working on an Ethereum bridge, a Secret Network bridge, and also a Binance bridge in the near future”

“We have already connected our Plasm network testnet to Rococo and we have deployed a Web Assembly smart contract and it works on the top of Polkadot’s parachain testnet”

“In the past few months, we have successfully completed the first cross-chain messaging passing with Acala. Our token can be transferred to Acala and you can receive the Acala token on the Plasm network”

“We support Ethereum Virtual Machine on the top of the Polkadot parachain, so the user can actually develop and make applications on top of Polkadot parachain, instead of individual substrate chains. I think this is one of the most important upgrades in the ecosystem”

“On the top of the Plasm network, we can transfer ownership of a smart contract”

“We are making a new M&A solution in the blockchain system”

Special Guest: Sota Watanabe.

Tether - Stablecoin Innovation, Regulation, and Mainstream Potential with Paolo Ardoino Apr 22, 2021

This week we dive into Tether, a stablecoin playing an important role in disrupting the legacy financial system, recently announced to be launching on Polkadot.

Joe Petrowski, (Technical Integrations Lead, Web3 Foundation) speaks with Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Bitfinex and Tether. They discuss stablecoin trends, regulation and compliance with central banks, CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies), the likelihood of central banks running on public blockchains such as Polkadot and Ethereum, achieving blockchain interoperability through common goods, and the upcoming launch of Tether on Polkadot.

Highlights:
00:39 - Intro to Ardoino and Tether
06:38 - The issue of crypto arbitrage
08:57 - Stability by matching a dollar to the pace of Bitcoin
11:01 - Boom and innovation in the stablecoin sector
12:20 - The risks of decentralized stablecoins
13:30 - Achieving purchasing power stability
14:49 - The scope for non-US stablecoins
16:15 - Tether Gold, the precious-metal-backed stablecoin
20:34 - Individual assets vs. a managed basket of currencies
22:48 - Regulation and scrutiny from central banks
27:35 - Blockchain for central banks
28:40 - Tether’s criteria to deploy on a blockchain
30:15 - Common goods for blockchain interoperability
35:07 - Resilience through multiple blockchain support
36:49 - Tether to launch on Polkadot and Kusama

Links:
Paolo Ardoino on Twitter
Tether on Twitter
Grenache
Ampleforth website

Ardoino’s reading list:
Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar

Key Quotes:
“I believe that you can not really understand as a CTO, all the nuances and complexities of your platform, if you stop coding”

“the reason why our team decided to create Tether was to solve one problem I’m sure you are familiar with, that is crypto Arbitrage”

“Why don’t we create a dollar that moves at the same pace as Bitcoin”

“I would stay pure and not allow centralized stablecoins…. Crypto backed stablecoins are a very good value add to the sector, but I would prefer or would have preferred to not have decentralized stablecoins and centralized stablecoins.”

“If you are using technology and the banking network, you have to respect the same standards, there is no other way around. That is why Tether has the function to freeze funds in order to cooperate with law enforcement. We do it quite openly, and we communicate when we do. Also, we did that to help many projects. There was an exchange hacked six months ago and we helped them to freeze thirty million dollars worth of Tether. There were many DEFI projects that were hacked and we worked with law enforcement to freeze those funds. That is what is happening in the banking world if someone steals funds from your bank account, the bank has the right to freeze your funds if you have stolen funds. We had to replicate the same functionalities in our centralized stablecoins. That is something that the decentralized coins don’t have and don’t need because they don’t use the banking system, we do, and we have to respect that.”

“The idea that central banks will issue directly on Ethereum or Omni or Polkadot is quite realistic.”

“You give more freedom to your users, you will gain traction.”

“Supporting multiple blockchains makes the entire infrastructure resilient.”

Special Guest: Paolo Ardoino.

Joe Petrowski on Imagining a Brighter Future with Polkadot and Web3 Apr 08, 2021

After a short hiatus, we’re back this week with a new co-host joining the podcast, Jorrin Bruns (Support Engineer, Parity Technologies). In this episode, Jorrin turns the tables and interviews Joe Petrowski (Technical Integrations Lead, Web3 Foundation, and Relay Chain co-host) about the future of the podcast, Joe’s journey from the aerospace industry to professional cycling to Web3, and how blockchain innovation brings together diverse interest groups. They discuss the potential for Polkadot and Web3 to realize a propian future, breaking down surveillance capitalism through decentralized governance, infinitely scalable parachains (so-called hierarchical or nested relay chains), and building a decentralized economy of robots powered by Polkadot.

Links & Resources:
Joe Petrowski on Twitter

Joe’s Blockchain reading list
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff
Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism
The Art of Cruelty, Maggie Nelson
Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O'Neil
Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks

Highlights
0:00 - Intro to new Relay Chain host, Jorrin
02:51 - Joe’s interesting journey in to the blockchain space
08:04 - What attracts different people to blockchain
13.59 - Difference between Parity Technologies and Web3 Foundation
15:47 - The potential for infinitely scalable parachains
17.28 - The future direction of the podcast
21:31 - Big tech’s misuse of data in the age of surveillance capitalism
25.20 - Transparency through Polkadot’s open governance
29.38 - Should governments break up tech monopolies?
33:19 - Literary recommendations for working in blockchain
36:20 - Blockchain’s role in building a better future
38:18 - A look at the Polkadot ecosystem

Special Guest: Joe Petrowski.

Equilibrium and the Global Impact of Blockchain, DeFi, and Web3 Dec 02, 2020

In this wide-ranging and eye-opening discussion, Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Lesley Czuma, Head of Business Development at Equilibrium, a cross-chain money market combining pooled lending with synthetic asset generation and trading. They discuss the massive potential of Web3 and DeFi to radically impact global systems of organization and power, to disrupt monopolies, and bring benefits to those marginalized by the current economic paradigm. They also dive into what Equilibrium is building and the role played by Polkadot and Substrate, the blockchain-building framework from Parity Technologies.

Links:
Equilibrium website
Equilibrium on Twitter
Equilibrium on Telegram

Highlights:
02:00 - Web3’s potential effects on global systems of power and monopolies
10:30 - What Web3 can learn from political unions and nation states
16:40 - Web3’s impact beyond infrastructure builders
24:09 - Replacing legacy systems vs integrating with them
28:15 - Equilibrium’s mission
30:50 - Equilibrium’s role in the Polkadot ecosystem
33:35 - Equilibrium’s roadmap

Key Quotes:
“It’s not a coincidence that Web3 is sometimes compared to a borderless global society where people have the same chances.”

“This tech jump that we’re observing right now is catapulting new actors onto the world stage and forcing established monopolies to rethink their business models in order to stay on their toes, and it actually ends up being a little bit like a system of checks and balances”

“If the previously rich and advanced industrialized societies had the say on the world stage, together with some leading brands, I think there’s a clear trend that this new technology with blockchain is actually empowering individuals with no particular means, especially those have been disempowered until now.”

“Some of the large brand names, let’s say in credit cards, are keying into the process and realizing that if they don’t start taking blockchain seriously then they’re going to lose out.”

"As the scope in adoption of blockchain and DeFi grows, it’s automatically going to draw in more people from different walks of life. The mainstreaming is going to happen in the same way that it did with the dotcom revolution. You’re going to have blockchain apps becoming so essential that no one is going to be able to ignore them anymore.”

Special Guest: Lesley Czuma.

Web3 Community-Building and Advocacy Through the Polkadot Ambassador Program Nov 19, 2020

Polkadot and Web3 take center stage in this week's episode. Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Zoé Meckbach, a senior Polkadot ambassador and blockchain technology and cybersecurity advocate. They discuss the Polkadot and Web3 communities, the Polkadot ambassador program and what it’s like to be an ambassador, and some of the exciting things happening in the space.

Links:
Zoé Meckback on Twitter
Polkadot Ambassador Program

Highlights:
02:03 - From Google to blockchain
09:20 - What is the Polkadot Ambassador Program?
20:15 - Exciting developments in the Polkadot ecosystem
26:10 - Web3 and freedom of speech

Special Guest: Zoé Meckbach.

Freedom of the Press in the Age of Digital Surveillance Oct 29, 2020

This week we look at the intersection between journalism, freedom of the press, and technology. Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Harlo Holmes, Director of Digital Security at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. They discuss the role of journalism in a free society, the contemporary media landscape, the Snowden revelations, surveillance, the role of technology and privacy, the political implications of technology development, and best practices for whistleblowers.

Links:
Freedom of the Press Foundation Website
Freedom of the Press Foundation Twitter
Press Freedom Tracker

Highlights:
0:40 - Intro to Holmes and FPF
03:30 - Edward Snowden’s impact
09:08 - Journalism’s role in a free society
11:43 - The change in media today
16:31 - Technology’s role in journalism
19:27 - How to use technology without being exploited
23:27 - The influence that programmers have
29:42 - Blockchain experiments
34:42 - Best practices for whistleblowers

Key Quotes:

“Journalism’s role in society is as old as the printing press itself…. People have the right to know what’s going on. You can’t make informed decisions if you don’t know what’s going on.”

“Certain media sources are more skewed towards obfuscating rather than illuminating, and there has always been a challenge for individuals to find news sources that they can trust.”

“Historians will look at the rise of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter as a turning point in the way that the media has had to reevaluate its reach, reevaluate its funding model, and reevaluate how it presents itself to the public at large in order to secure its reach. This is quite a shift in the material of media itself.”

“People don’t necessarily realize that because the more digital aspects of our engagement are incredibly easy to parse, that opens us up to being entirely surveilled very easily and automatically”

“You have a profile, everybody is profiled based off their patterns of behavior on the internet however they interact with it, and you pretty much don’t live a day in your existence without interacting and without contributing to this profile.”

Special Guest: Harlo Holmes.

Running Node Infrastructure Easier with Bison Trails Oct 08, 2020

This week we look at proof-of-stake blockchain node infrastructure with the space’s leading solutions provider, Bison Trails. Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Aaron Henshaw, CTO and cofounder of Bison Trails, which pioneers blockchain node infrastructure and lowers the barrier to entry across multiple networks, including Polkadot, Cosmos, Eth 2.0, Near, Celo, and more. They discuss how and why Bison Trails was founded, the current state of node infrastructure, risk management, and possibilities for future development.

Links:
Bison Trails Website
Bison Trails on Twitter
Aaron Henshaw on Twitter

Highlights:
02:14 - How Bison Trails came to focus on proof of stake
06:12 - Bison Trails background
08:22 - Node infrastructure setup
10:12 - Similarities/differences between protocols
12:06 - Monitoring, alerting, and availability guarantees
16:36 - Node infrastructure risk and mitigation
22:44 - Blockchain infrastructure beyond staking
28:37 - Future opportunities for node providers

Special Guest: Aaron Henshaw.

Polkadot-Ethereum Compatibility with Moonbeam Sep 23, 2020

This week we dive into cross-network compatibility and interoperability between Polkadot and Ethereum. Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Derek Yoo of Moonbeam, an Ethereum-compatible smart contract parachain built on Substrate for Polkadot. They discuss Moonbeam and how it works, the role of smart contracts on Polkadot, the difference between Moonbeam and Ethereum layer-2 solutions, and the future of cross-network interoperability.

Links:
Derek Yoo: https://twitter.com/derekyoo
Moonbeam: https://twitter.com/MoonbeamNetwork
Purestake: https://twitter.com/purestakeco

Highlights:
06:27 - What is Moonbeam?
08:15 - Why Moonbeam is more than just an EVM implementation
12:16 - The difference between Moonbeam and an Ethereum-Polkadot bridge
15:40 - How parachain solutions compare to Ethereum layer-2 solutions
18:17 - The role of smart contracts on Polkadot
20:36 - Where the EVM fits in to Polkadot
24:44 - Motivation for also deploying Moonbeam to Kusama
30:05 - How different networks will work together
33:22 - Current state of applications on Moonbeam

Key Quotes:
“The power of Substrate is definitely the magic here. I think people don’t appreciate how powerful a framework on Substrate is. We’ve worked with some teams that are building a blockchain from scratch, and that’s a 20-30 person engineering effort….It’s a dramatic difference when you use a framework like Substrate.”

“Part of our attraction to Polkadot is this ability for different chains to leverage each other’s specialized services.”

“[Kusama] is a pretty key competitive advantage to Substrate-based projects. This ability to move, maintain momentum and respond to what’s happening….You can have larger competitors but if you’re able to move faster and respond faster you can get a big competitive advantage.”

“[Interoperability] is more in changing people's minds than it being a technical problem. You’re always going to get a bit of tribalism at play in this space…but we’re drawn to the interoperability idea because it opens choices for developers to take advantage of the best that any given chain has to offer.”

Special Guest: Derek Yoo.

The Challenges of Disrupting the System with Blockchain Jul 13, 2020

This week we talk to the Parity's head of security Kirill Pimenov about the shortcomings and potential of blockchain, open-source software and DLT.

Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Kirill Pimenov, head of security at Parity Technologies. The disruptive nature of blockchain has attracted many great minds from many backgrounds, and Kirill Pimenov's wealth of experience and knowledge clears up some of the hype and promises of blockchain regarding its relationship to power, raising capital, and freedom.

Links:

The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work - Phillip Rogaway

Banana Split - Shamir Secret Sharing for people with friends

Highlights:

01:40 - Mining a Bitcoin block in 2010

03:02 - The ethics of open source

04:15 - Kirill's introduction to programming

10:05 - Blockchain as the field where money meets engineering

13:25 - The Silicon Valley version of the American Dream

15:30 - Blockchain is the first non-military application which pays people enough

16:45 - "The thing you're supposed to decentralize is power"

23:06 - What underlying principle led to the internet to being this way?

27:01 - How can users have a say in the way systems work?

32:07 - If you optimize for profit, you get immoral, profit-maximizing machines

36:52 - Can a decentralized system be corrupted?

43:05 - DLT and blockchain is short-sighted right now

50:12 - We haven't figured out how to beat the current financial system yet

52:18 - We can never build a fair system without humans in the loop

57:10 - Who are your role models?

Special Guest: Kirill Pimenov.

DeFi on Polkadot with Acala and Laminar: Part 2 Jun 22, 2020

This week we talk to the Acala Network team and learn about the Acala Network and their Sovereign Wealth Fund.

Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Dr. Antonia Chen, Chief Econominst and Co-founder of Laminar and Acala, and Ruitao Su, CEO and Co-founder of Acala and Laminar. They are working on a governed protocol that enables decentralized finance applications on blockchain, allowing everyday users to join the DeFi revolution by leveraging the Acala stable token to create a Sovereign Wealth Fund and other defi applications.

Links:

Highlights:

01:00 - How is the Acala stablecoin different from MakerDAO?

04:50 - Deploying custom logic to interact with the Acala stable token

05:12 - Homa: how your funds can do more

08:00 - What is the decentralized Sovereign Wealth Fund?

10:55 - How the Sovereign Wealth Fund can generate returns

15:30 - A comparison to traditional sovereign wealth funds

16:59 - The Sovereign Wealth Fund as a parachain and beyond

20:53 - The many functions of tokens on Acala and Polkadot

25:05 - A digital society with Acala on Polkadot and Web3

26:12 - How will people use the many different protocols of Polkadot and Acala

Special Guests: Antonia Chen and Ruitao Su.

DeFi on Polkadot with Acala and Laminar: Part 1 Jun 08, 2020

This week we talk to the Acala Network team and learn about their ventures in DeFi on Polkadot and Ethereum.

Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Dr. Antonia Chen, Chief Econominst and Co-founder of Laminar and Acala, and Ruitao Su, CEO and Co-founder of Acala and Laminar. They are working on a governed protocol that enables decentralized finance applications on blockchain, allowing everyday users to join the DeFi revolution by having margin trading, synthetic assets, stable coins, and integrated money markets all on the Polkadot network.

Links:

Highlights:

01:36 - What is Defi and how does it compare to traditional financial markets?

03:20 - What makes Defi more "fair" than traditional finance?

05:40 - What new things are possible with defi on blockchain?

10:20 - The limitations of DeFi

15:01 - 3 Protocols on Laminar: Margin trading, Synthetic assets and Integrated Money Markets

19:40 - 3 protocols on one chain or three?

21:15 - The issues with tokens on Ethereum

23:12 - Polkadot's shared security enabling better tokens / Why parachains are advantageous to smart contracts

26:05 - Dual-launch on Ethereum and Polkadot

30:04 - Going live on Polkadot

Special Guests: Antonia Chen and Ruitao Su.

The Economics of Next-Generation Blockchain Tokens May 21, 2020

This week we dive deep into the economics of cryptocurrencies, proof of stake scenarios, and Polkadot's application of security, interoperability and token economics.

Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Stefanie von Jan, an economics lecturer at the FOM University of Applied Sciences for Economics and Management in Munich, Germany. Her interests in Austrian economics, Blockchain technology, and token economics led to her providing her expertise with founders and academics, and now shares her latest insights about Bitcoin and Polkadot with us.

Links:
Polkadot: Shared security or Single point of failure?
Medium Blog from Stefanie von Jan

Highlights:

02:15 - What makes blockchain economics unique?

03:50 - The Bitcoin token model

06:05 - A Keynesian cryptoeconomic model?

07:43 - Proof of Work vs. Proof of Stake

11:16 - How do we measure the value of a decentralized protocol?

13:42 - Are tokens tied to the value they intend to provide?

16:20 - Value competition of protocols and the applications on them

22:20 - What do Proof-of-Stake attack scenarios look like?

25:12 - Token security for Polkadot parachains

31:20 - The governance of parachain tokens

34:15 - Sound rule systems for parachains

Special Guest: Stefanie von Jan.

Deploying Dapps Quickly on Layer-2 at SKALE May 07, 2020

This week we talk about layer-2 scaling and quick and easy deployment of Dapps. Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Christine Perry of SKALE labs, a layer-2 solution that augments applications and transactions built on public blockchains such as Ethereum. They discuss the developer experience on Ethereum and SKALE, interesting blockchain use cases, and why layer-2 is the solution for creating usable and powerful Dapps.

Links:
SKALE network
SKALE blog with Christine
SKALE blog regarding BLS signatures and Intel SGX

Highlights:
1:50 - The major problems for Dapp developers
3:40 - Enabling developers to run smart contracts on SKALE
4:42 - How SKALE speeds up development and throughput
5:55 - Why is layer-2 the solution?
8:02 - The role of layer-2 with Ethereum
10:08 - What are the best use cases for blockchain?
12:14 - SKALE's approach to applications on blockchain, and interesting use cases
15:45 - A layer-2 network with consensus!
20:32 - Beyond Ethereum: How SKALE is blockchain-agnostic

Special Guest: Christine Perry.

Blockchain for Climate Action and Smart Cities Apr 23, 2020

This week we meet at the intersection of blockchain, climate action, smart cities, finance, and IoT.
Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Anita Mujumdar of Evercity, a blockchain-based platform to aid in financing sustainability projects to meet the UN’s 2030 climate action goals. They discuss climate finance, decentralized robot economies, using measurement and data to build the sustainable smart cities of tomorrow, and how Substrate and Polkadot are helping make Evercity’s mission a reality.

Links:
Evercity Website
DAO "Integral Platform for Climate Initiatives"
Anita’s presentation at COP25
Robonomics website
Climate Change Coalition - Digital Finance
Sub0 Online Substrate Developer and Community Conference

Highlights:
02:10 - What is climate finance?
06:50 - Sustainable cities approach
12:30 - What a sustainable city looks like
17:15 - Pilot programs
20:20 - Robonomics platform
25:35 - Role of DAO & blockchain
28:15 - Why decentralize climate finance?
31:00 - Trends outlook
32:15 - Why build on Substrate/Polkadot
34:50 - Launch plan

*The dates of the events mentioned in the podcast may have shifted due to coronavirus pandemic

Special Guest: Anita Mujumdar.

Web3 vs. Web2: How to Avoid Repeating the Same Mistakes Apr 09, 2020

What can we learn from the failures of Web2 idealism? How do we build systems that continue to reflect Web3 ideals as business models scale into the future?

In this episode, Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) talks with Shira Frank, co-founder of Maiden, the first global user research lab dedicated to forging a path to mainstream blockchain adoption. They explore the importance of building Web3 systems with proper research into possible downstream risks so as to create true change and offset imbalances of wealth, power, information, and agency.

Links:
https://twitter.com/shirabfrank
https://twitter.com/maidencrypto
https://maiden.global/
https://sub0.parity.io/

Highlights:
01:25 - From Middle-East politics to blockchain
09:45 - How Maiden started
12:00 - Failings of Web2.0 idealism
14:00 - How Web3.0 can avoid the same mistakes
15:55 - Sense making and the role of user data
22:01 - What is a blockchain “user’?
24:00 - The role of education
29:55 - How to make protocol change decisions
34:49 - Importance of diversity in the space

Key Quotes:

“The biggest problem we have to solve, in so many ways, blockchain or not, is how do we make decisions that are collectively intelligent for the whole?”

“I don’t think the general Web2 or tech community actually solved inclusivity or diversity.”

“We know what happens when decentralized protocols scale. So we have no excuse to not include major threat and risk mitigation at the very beginning of choices we’re making about how we are introducing products, what kind of products we’re building, and what kind of business models and incentives we’re putting into those products.”

“We talk in blockchain a lot about autonomy or self-sovereignty. And I’m always curious, can you be sovereign if you’re not even aware of why you’re making the choice you are?”

“Today institutions make money by taking agency away from people. I would imagine we create something where institutions make money by giving people agency over their assets. So what would it look like if people were making money by giving you agency over your money? Giving you agency over your data? If the more agency you were given the more money and scalability there was in this protocol.”

“I think it’s worth thinking about at the protocol level. Just like with the internet, what should have been done early on to protect against the aggregation of power that happened at the application layer and the company level?”

Special Guest: Shira Frank.

Investing in the Future of Web 3.0 Mar 26, 2020

How do you place a value on a more open, transparent, and representative web? What will be the true impact of blockchain technology and what motivates VC investments in the space?

In this episode, Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) talks with Jasmine Zhang of IOSG Ventures, an early-stage venture fund investing in the blockchain space. They discuss the future of web 3.0, the impact that open finance and prediction markets will have on society, the potential impact of Polkadot and Substrate, and the broader blockchain investment scenario.

Links:
IOSG Website
IOSG on Twitter
Jasmine Zhang: Jasmine@iosg.vc

Highlights:
01:25 - Why invest in web3.0?
04:26 - How can web 3.0 fit into web 2.0 business models?
10:00 - How blockchain applications will democratize finance
13:06 - How prediction markets will influence society
24:33 - How do you determine the valuation of a protocol?
29:20 - Value of Substrate
31:11 - Why come from China to Berlin for investment?

Key Quotes:

“[Web 2.0] definitely brings more convenience to our daily life, and you feel like you cannot really live without these applications. On the other hand you also feel like, at the end of the day, they’re all platforms. And platforms create value by connecting the service providers and the end users. But they also try to maximize their profit and can one day expand their commission fees from the two sides. You’re kind of taken advantage of by them in a certain way. They sell at you into every part of your life and then they become super huge, they become like giants—more money, more data, more capital that is generated by us, the end users. And they they can use all of these resources to keep building their monopoly.”

“Web 3 is a new way, more personalized way that you share your data. To be your own boss of your data. So you have ownership of your data. Is going to be more open, more transparent, and more fair.”

“A centralized authority will never beat the efficiency of a decentralized economy. Because knowledge is unevenly dispersed among the whole of humanity. Only if you can combine them can you have a better decision to be made.”

Special Guest: Jasmine Zhang.

Innovating Blockchain-Based Accounting with Totem Mar 12, 2020

Why is the “black art” of accounting still stuck in the 20th century, and how can blockchain technology make it more efficient?

In this episode, Joe Petrowski (research analyst, Parity Technologies) speaks with Chris D’Costa and and Toufiqur Chowdhury of Totem Live Accounting, a blockchain-based accounting system. They discuss why today’s accounting practices are so inefficient and how blockchain technology can improve them. Find out how Totem is innovating accounting for the 21st century, how the project fits into the Polkadot ecosystem, and why the team decided to build on the Substrate blockchain framework.

Links:
Totem on Gitlab
Chris D’Costa: chris.dcosta@totemaccounting.com

Highlights:
01:23 - Accounting & accounting software explainer
05:00 - Problem Totem is solving
07:74 - Totem active vs. passive users
13:00 - Dealing with different jurisdictions
15:20 - On- vs off-chain data
19:10 - How Totem fits into Polkadot
20:35 - Why use Substrate to build Totem?
23:15 - Current state of Totem development
24:16 - Totem’s native token
27:00 - Inefficiencies of current accounting practices
31:41 - Similarities between accounting and programming
35:20 - Why blockchain is perfect for accounting
46:20 - What’s ahead for Totem

Key Quotes:

“Generally people think of accounting as being a bit of a black art.”

“Accounting is one of the spaces that doesn’t get much love in the tech world. You don’t see many startups that are doing anything really innovative in accounting.”

“It’s crazy that a lot of this gets done manually when a lot of these accounting rules are formally specified. If you can put it in a formal specification then you can write instructions for a machine to do it.”

“Global corporations are in desperate need of having their own currency. It sounds crazy but it’s true.”

“Trust is one of the issues…but there’s also the issue of things that just get overlooked. This happens not just in small companies but also in big companies as well. Invoices don’t get paid, or they get sent to the wrong department, or somehow they just got missed. And large companies as well as small companies spend a lot of manual effort to put that back together again.”

“In Substrate you can upgrade the runtime, so that helps us with continuous development, upgrading the system, making the changes that are required. If we had a smart contract it would have to be redeployed completely.”

Special Guests: Chris D'Costa and Toufiqur Chowdhury.

Chainlink: Oracles, DeFi, and Social Impact with Sergey Nazarov Feb 27, 2020

What are the challenges in integrating off-chain data into blockchain smart contracts with oracle systems, and how might secure, oracle-powered DeFi create meaningful social impact?

In this episode, Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) talks with Sergey Nazarov from Chainlink, a decentralized oracle system bringing external, real-world data to blockchain-based smart contracts. Oracle systems like Chainlink are a necessary part of decentralized finance (DeFi), for which off-chain data such as market prices are used to trigger smart contract functions. We discuss the inherent challenges in integrating off-chain data with end-to-end security guarantees, the barriers to building smart contracts that go beyond tokenization, Chainlink use cases, the promise of blockchain for social impact, and how Chainlink is planning a Polkadot integration.

Highlights:
01:04 - Chainlink overview
07:20 - Oracle weakest link problem
14:45 - Chainlink use cases
17:40 - How to trust off-chain data
22:53 - Social promise of blockchain
41:00 - Chainlink Polkadot integration

Links:
https://twitter.com/SergeyNazarov
https://chain.link/
https://docs.chain.link/docs
https://twitter.com/chainlink

Key Quotes:

“The thing to remember is, what you’re doing when you’re making DeFi products or smart contract insurance is yes, you’re making a smart contract because you’re using on-chain logic, but you’re also expanding what you define a smart contract as. And that expansion into this off-chain realm of data delivery or randomness, for fraud-proof gaming or any other set of off-chain resources, needs to be equally secure if you expect that contract to hold large amounts of value.”

“The guarantees that society provides around ownership, when compared with Bitcoin guarantees, are laughably weak.”

Special Guest: Sergey Nazarov.

Privacy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism, with Nym's Claudia Diaz Feb 13, 2020

What is the role of privacy in the modern age, and how do we go about protecting it? How can new technologies help shield us from the rise of surveillance capitalism?

In this episode, host Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) speaks with Claudia Diaz, Associate Professor and researcher at K.U. Leuven and Chief Scientist at Nym, an open-source, decentralized, permissionless protocol providing full-stack privacy infrastructure. We discuss the recent history of public perception on privacy, how to balance the trade offs between technology’s benefits and its use for mass surveillance, and how Nym is building infrastructure that protects our privacy rights by default.

Highlights:
01:24 - Claudia’s history
02:19 - 9/11 and the erosion of privacy
06:20 - Snowden’s impact in US vs EU
08:15 - Defining privacy and how to protect it
17:46 - Surveillance capitalism & opaque systems
21:11 - Balancing tech benefits and privacy
22:25 - How privacy technologies can help
24:03 - Transparency & information asymmetry
25:00 - Benefits of blockchain vs other technologies
27:29 - What Nym is building
39:50 - Anonymity vs privacy

Links:
Claudia Diaz @ K.U. Leuven
Nym on Twitter
Nym website
Nym on Telegram

Key Quotes:
“This idea of individual control—my data, I decide—while I understand it is compelling, I think it’s a bit limited. My view is I think we need to build systems in a way that we just don’t have this exposure by default.”

“I believe that information is power”

“I think privacy is very political intrinsically”

“One of the problems when you start talking about all the privacy threats is that you almost want to just disconnect yourself from the internet and throw away your phone….But that’s not the point. I don’t think we should be regressive and go back to some ideal past.”

Special Guest: Claudia Diaz.

Designing Universal Basic Income and Trusted Execution Environments Jan 30, 2020

How do you design an effective universal basic income scheme on the blockchain? What are trusted execution environments, and how can they be used to enhance privacy?

In this episode, host Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) speaks with Alain Brenzikofer of encointer, a blockchain-based universal basic income (UBI) system, and Supercomputing Systems, which is developing the SubstraTEE trusted execution environment (TEE) framework.

With encointer, Brenzikofer came up with a novel way for personhood to be established so that people can’t game the UBI scheme: time-synchronized meetups called ceremonies. Encointer is also potentially the first cryptocurrency project innovating local, geographically-based currencies. With SubstraTEE, Brenzikofer is working to improve the privacy, scalability and interoperability of Substrate-based blockchains by off-loading state updates into TEEs.

Highlights:
00:57 - What is encointer?
04:00 - How to model a UBI system
06:37 - Proportional transaction fees
08:05 - How encointer ceremonies work
10:37 - Innovating local cryptocurrencies
14:50 - Privacy and trusted execution environments
22:52 - SubstraTEE
30:27 - SubstraTEE target user base
38:35 - Current state of SubstraTEE and roadmap

Links:
https://encointer.org/
https://github.com/encointer
https://github.com/brenzi/substraTEE

Key Quotes:
“One thing special about encointer is that I’m not intending to have transaction-based fees. I want to have proportional fees. That means there is no issue with micropayments in developing countries for example. Because if you look at the transaction fees of bitcoin and ether as well, the transaction fees can be as high as a day’s income or even worse.”

Special Guest: Alain Brenzikofer.

Ethereum: Past, Present, and Future with Parity Core-Developer Wei Tang Jan 16, 2020

In this episode, hosts Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) and Phil Lucsok (Product Communications Manager, Parity) speak with Wei Tang (Core Developer, Parity) about his work on several Ethereum- and Substrate-related projects. They discuss Tang’s experience working on Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Substrate, including innovative proposals for account versioning, backwards compatibility, and bridging and merging different Ethereum chains, as well as the future of ETH 2.0 and the broader Ethereum community.

Tang is known amongst his peers as an exceptionally gifted and prolific developer, having built the SputnikVM Rust implementation of Ethereum from scratch just by reading the Ethereum yellow paper (without looking at other clients), and having created the Substrate EVM implementation in just a few days.

Highlights:
00:57 - Why open source and Rust
03:30 - Building an Ethereum VM implementation from scratch
05:53 - SputnikVM and ETC
08:22 - Ethereum account versioning & backwards compatibility
15:10 - EIP 2225: bridging and merging different Ethereum chains
20:00 - Multi-client transaction validation for Ethereum
25:00 - Contentious EIPs and improving governance
26:52 - Shasper and implementing Ethereum 2.0 on Substrate
31:57 - ETH 2.0 challenges and roadblocks
34:07 - Substrate EVM
37:19 - Solri and Kulupu: Substrate meets proof-of-work

Links:
Wei Tang on Twitter
Wei Tang on Github

Key Quotes:

“I really like working for open source because you are essentially building a community.”

On EIP 2225: “Currently it’s really easy to create a chain split…you just disagree on something and it just forks. But if the disagreement disappears, if the community decides to come together again, there’s currently no way to merge those blockchains together again. You can split but you can’t merge. I just think that’s a bad thing.”

“Currently we rely too much on the people factor for governance. Everything is a human procedure….What I always want to propose is that we should add more automated processes into this.”

Special Guest: Wei Tang.

Democratizing Access to Wealth Creation: Tokenized Securities on Polymesh Dec 19, 2019

What are the benefits of tokenizing regulated assets, and how might it revolutionize the world of finance?

In this episode, Joe Petrowski (Research, Parity) is joined by Adam Dossa, Head of Blockchain at Polymath, a security token platform currently building a custom blockchain on Substrate called Polymesh. They discuss the world of tokenized securities and the promise this area of decentralized finance holds for democratizing global wealth creation. Dossa also explains Polymath’s reasoning for moving from Ethereum to Substrate, including the unique benefits of the blockchain building framework.

Highlights:
01:35 - Benefits of tokenizing securities
07:51 - How to verify the underlying asset
12:52 - ERC-20 vs Polymath’s ERC-1400 token standard
16:44 - Limitations of Ethereum
18:14 - Polymath’s white label solutions
19:57 - Operating in multiple jurisdictions/Polymath modules
23:39 - Moving from Ethereum to a custom Substrate blockchain
26:48 - Benefits of Substrate’s GRANDPA consensus mechanism
28:55 - Benefits of Substrate’s forkless upgrades
31:00 - Users and use cases Polymesh
42:51 - Interaction between modules and smart contracts
47:00 - Progress status of Polymesh

Links:
Polymath website
Learn more about Polymesh
Polymath on Github
Polymath on Twitter

Key Quotes:

“Financial infrastructure should be transparent and accessible. It should be more like a public good than siloed, private infrastructure.”

“Whilst Ethereum is great, there’s a saying: ‘You can please some of the people all of the time or all of the people some of the time.’ Ethereum is a general purpose blockchain, it’s not optimized for any specific use case. In our particular domain of regulated securities, there are some choices which are not optimal.”

“You have this huge, trillion-dollar regulated securities market globally. If you can bring those assets into DeFi, that’s like DeFi times a hundred. You have all these interesting, varied asset classes and you can start to use those as collateral. Instead of using Ether as collateral, you can take your Apple shares, your Tesla shares, or some basket of shares and use those as collateral.”

Special Guest: Adam Dossa.

Building a Custom Blockchain with Substrate Dec 05, 2019

What is it like to develop on the Substrate blockchain building framework, and what resources are available to developers? How different is it from developing Ethereum smart contracts?

In this episode, Joe Petrowski (Research, Parity) is joined by Shawn Tabrizi and Joshy Orndorff from the Developer Experience team at Parity Technologies, where they help developers building or interested in building on Substrate, regardless of experience level.

Highlights:
01:12 - What is Substrate?
02:18 - Substrate Seminar open collaborative learning call
07:08 - Substrate Off-Chain Workers
16:29 - Substrate Developer Hub
17:17 - Developing for Ethereum vs. Substrate
25:15 - Substrate Kitties
27:35 - Substrate maintenance/upgrades
33:13 - Current developer experience

Links:
Substrate Developer Hub
Substrate Seminar
Substrate Technical Riot Chat
Substrate Stack Overflow

Key Quotes:

“If you want to build a blockchain and you don’t want to build every single piece from the ground up… then you can use Substrate and you can take all of the common parts from our standard implementations, and the only thing that you have to code is the part that’s unique to your blockchain.”

“If you’re part of Substrate Seminar, you can actually get access to the latest features right as they come out of the gate.”

“Substrate is an ecosystem.”

“Smart contracts aren’t the only way to get your logic on a blockchain.”

“We want to make Substrate the best platform for blockchain innovators.”

Special Guests: Joshy Orndorff and Shawn Tabrizi.

On-Chain Trust with KILT Protocol Nov 21, 2019

How do trust and identity work in decentralized systems, and how can we help ensure our data isn't abused by centralized authorities?

In this episode, Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) is joined by Ingo Rübe (Founder and CEO, BOTlabs) and Timo Welde (Product Owner and Technical Lead, KILT Protocol) of KILT Protocol, a built-on-Substrate project providing credentialing and authentication for web 3.0. Learn the difference between identity and attribution, and how KILT is building the future of decentralized trust.

Highlights:
02:35 - Why KILT is bigger than identity
07:50 - Problems with web 2.0 authentication
11:30 - Attack vectors and KILT security
17:00 - KILT developer experience
19:35 - How roles work in KILT
23:00 - Attestation use cases
28:30 - Substrate and the KILT stack
31:40 - Possible Polkadot integration
35:45 - Regulation and the future of KILT

Links:
KILT website
KILT github

Key Quotes:

“Identity should not be solved at the protocol level…. There are many things that you shouldn’t solve at the protocol level.”

“What we wanted to deliver is something so easy to use that a normal web developer could be successful in building applications on top of it.”

“Trust is generated outside the system, it’s just transported into the system.”

“Building your own network of validators is a pain in the ass.”

Special Guests: Ingo Rübe and Timo Welde.

Jillian York: Censorship, Human Rights, and Activism in the Digital Age Nov 07, 2019

Where should digital platforms draw the line between content moderation and censorship? How do company policies shape our culture, and how can we make technology a force for good?

In this episode, writer and activist Jillian York (Director for International Freedom of Expression, Electronic Frontier Foundation) joins Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity Technologies) to discuss freedom of expression, censorship and surveillance by digital platforms, and the role of internet activism in global social movements.

Highlights:

0:45 - What is freedom of expression?
2:41 - What is authority in relation to free speech?
4:05 - Facebook
8:40 - Content moderation vs censorship
22:38 - Governments asking platforms to censor content
25:15 - Algorithmic moderation
29:12 - Is technology a force for democracy?
34:18 - Using platforms for political organization
50:45 - Anonymity, privacy, and safety
58:10 - Hope and optimism for the future

Links:
https://twitter.com/jilliancyork

Key Quotes:

"Censorship always backfires."

"A lot of people think that technology is this ultimate force for democracy. It doesn't pan out that way though."

"I'm not sure that I believe in tech as a force for democracy. I believe in tech as a tool in the same way books are a tool"

"In San Francisco, you have all of these incredibly talented engineers and technologists who, instead of building toilets for the homeless population, which is desparately needed there, are trying to save the world with an app.... It's about making money and white savior complexes rather than about looking locally."

"Liberal society means you need to have a thick skin."

Special Guest: Jillian York.

Mentorship and Values in Open-Source Development Oct 25, 2019

How do you create meaningful change with open source software and what role does mentorship play?

In this episode, Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) talks to Ben Kampmann (Core Developer, Parity) about the role of mentorship, learning, and values in the open-source community. They also discuss Open Tech School, a non-profit organization Ben created for open source education, as well as recent Substrate developments, including Substrate LFS (Large File Storage).

For more info on Ben Kampmann and his work, check out his recent People of Parity showcase on the Parity Technologies blog: https://www.parity.io/people-of-parity-benjamin-kampmann/

Highlights:
01:28 - The vast potential impact of these technologies
02:00 - Building for startups vs established teams, how to promote positive change
06:18 - Importance of economic considerations and incentives in blockchain engineering
09:09 - Role and importance of mentorship
15:00 - Dealing with constructive criticism vs negative criticism
18:10 - Importance of not trying to learn too much too fast
22:00 - Open Tech School
26:35 - Most important skills for quick pivoting
29:55 - Substrate and its value for developers
33:30 - Sustainable open source business models and the role of money
40:47 - Status of Polkadot and Substrate
43:37 - Substrate LFS
46:00 - Hacktoberfest

Links:
Hacktoberfest
Ben on Github
Ben on Twitter

Key Quotes:

“Learning itself is a very hard job. You’re asking your brain to rewire itself.”

“Don’t believe that you can’t program because you don’t know logic or math. I didn’t study any of this either. And don’t give up.”

“You need to be willing to throw away what you know in order to learn.”

Special Guest: Ben Kampmann.

Mona El Isa and how Melon Protocol is disrupting asset management Oct 11, 2019

Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) talks to Mona El Isa (Co-Founder Melonport, MAMA) about using Melon Protocol to reduce the barriers in setting up and managing funds. Mona discusses delivering on a two-year roadmap, IRL Melon experiments, and educating the next generation of financial industry disruptors.

Note: Mona has launched a new project called Avantgarde Finance. Avantgarde Finance positions itself as a company devoted towards creating value on the Melon protocol. The longer term Avantgarde vision is to create a better everyday experience for asset managers and their investors by giving them easy access to a new financial infrastructure.

00:27 Mona El Isa’s journey to Melonport
03:19 Why Melon Protocol
06:19 The advantages of tokenizing assets
08:54 Delivering on a two-year roadmap
09:47 Liquidating Melonport
10:14 The Melon Council
12:43 What the Melon protocol allows you to do
17:52 IRL Melon experiments
20:01 Scaling Melon
26:31 MAMA, the Multichain Asset Managers Association
28:08 Engaging with regulators, law makers, and institutions
30:48 Regulatory victories
35:25 Madeeba
38:22 Raising Melon awareness on a global basis

Links:
https://melonprotocol.com/
https://medium.com/melonprotocol
https://twitter.com/melonprotocol

Special Guest: Mona El Isa.

Exploring a Multi-Chain Universe with Polkascan Sep 27, 2019

In our fifth episode, Nicole Zhu and Joe Petrowski talk to Emiel Sebastiaan, WEB3SCAN CEO, about Polkascan, an open-source block explorer that allows any Substrate-based blockchain project to have a block explorer. They discuss the Polkadot multi-chain explorer, how a DAO could fund block explorer services, Polkascan vs. Polkadot UI, and the nitty-gritty of how one actually goes about extracting data from a blockchain.

Links:
https://www.web3scan.com
https://polkascan.io
https://medium.com/polkascan
https://github.com/polkascan
https://twitter.com/polkascan

Highlights:
01:32 - How Emiel got into block explorers
04:38 - Block explorer use cases
06:26 - Getting meaningful data out of Substrate vs. Bitcoin and Ethereum
08:54 - Specialized and upgradable runtimes with Substrate
13:01 - Out-of-the-box block explorer support for parachains
16:00 - Polkascan PRE and Polkascan MC
19:38 - How Polkascan uses archive nodes
21:51 - Tools Polkascan uses
26:40 - Performance benchmarks for block explorers
31:40 - Scalability, roadmap, and managing 10-terabyte databases
37:58 - The roadmap to paid services
45:34 - DAOs as customers
52:18 - Polkascan vs. Polkadot UI
57:34 - A multi-chain universe

Special Guest: Emiel Sebastiaan.

Zcash’s Anna and Deirdre on Zebra and quantum-resistant cryptography Sep 13, 2019

In this episode, Joe talks to Deirdre Connolly and Anna Kaplan from Zcash Foundation on the state of the Rust Zcash client, “Zebra,” originally developed by Parity Technologies and now maintained by Zcash Foundation. They also discuss integrating cryptography into our day-to-day lives, quantum-resistant cryptography, and what baby zebras are called.

Highlights
00:28 - How Anna and Deirdre got to the Zcash Foundation
02:08 - Why have multiple Zcash clients?
06:54 - The state of Zebra now and future plans.
11:38 - Build-test-deploy benchmark pipeline
20:53 - Blossom features
22:03 - Integrating cryptography into our day-to-day lives
33:33 - Quantum security

Links
Zebra repo
Parity’s Zebra release announcement
Deirdre Connolly on Twitter
Anna Kaplan on Twitter
Zcash Rocket Chat
Zcash Community dev room
Zcash Wizards chat

Subscribe and follow us at @relaychain to stay tuned for more episodes.

Special Guests: Anna Kaplan and Deirdre Connolly.

Staking and Validating on Kusama and Polkadot Aug 29, 2019

Gautam Dhameja (Solutions Architect, Parity) talks to Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) about staking, validating, and nominating on Kusama and Polkadot. If you want to learn more about how Kusama's and Polkadot's nominated proof-of-stake system works, or if you're interested in staking or validating, this episode is a great place to start.

To get more information on staking, validating, and validator setup on Kusama, check out the Kusama network guide at https://guide.kusama.network/.

Highlights:
01:43 - What is consensus?
02:48 - Polkadot and Kusama’s block production and finalization algorithms, BABE and GRANDPA
06:35 - Polkadot’s two types of accounts: stash and controller
09:11 - Session keys
15:41 - Key management
20:19 - Understanding nominated proof-of-stake
23:50 - How to nominate
25:30 - Rewards
28:35 - Slashing
36:05 - Validator setup
41:40 - Step-by-step validator process review
44:30 - How to upgrade/maintain
47:40 - Common misconceptions
49:18 - Validator DOs and DON’Ts

NOTE: At 8:00, Joe mistakenly mentions that the controller account can be used to vote on governance proposals. Actually, the stash account can set a proxy account to vote on its behalf. It could be the same as the controller but does not have to be.

Special Guest: Gautam Dhameja.

Clovyr’s Amber Baldet and Patrick Nielsen on Building Simple Tools for a Wider Reach Aug 23, 2019

In Relay Chain’s second episode, Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) talks to Amber Baldet and Patrick Nielsen from Clovyr. They discuss connecting app devs with tools to easily plug into blockchains, non-surveillance business models, why working for large corporations has its value, and more. Check it out and subscribe for more episodes of Relay Chain.

Highlights:
(00:22) How Clovyr is connecting application developers with tools to easily plug into blockchains.
(05:44) Customizability versus ease of use.
(11:16) The dream of the Internet as its own jurisdiction.
(17:27) Non-surveillance business models.
(23:49) Targeting developers who so far have not cared about blockchain.
(25:33) Building APIs in a changing protocol landscape.
(33:42) Decentralization as an ongoing process.
(42:28) The value (and challenges) of working for a large corporation.

Special Guests: Amber Baldet and Patrick Nielsen.

Gavin Wood: Building Tech That Protects Our Interests Aug 06, 2019

In Relay Chain’s inaugural episode, Joe Petrowski (Research Analyst, Parity) talks to Dr. Gavin Wood, Ethereum Cofounder and Founder Polkadot and Parity Technologies. They discuss nation states vs. protocols, building technology that fundamentally protects our interests, the most important skills for those looking to get into the blockchain industry, and more.

Topics covered:
(03:49) Web3 as a meta-platform
(04:42) Nation states vs. protocols
(08:27) Building technology that fundamentally protects our interests
(16:06) Can we expect Web3 to be better than our current web?
(16:27) Nation state law vs. blockchain law
(22:07) Coin holder voting vs. on-chain governance
(24:50) Governance in Polkadot
(36:54) The most important skills for those looking to get into the blockchain industry

Special Guest: Dr. Gavin Wood.

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