BlockchainGandalf

One of the upshots of the tendency of human beings to gravitate towards centralization for its efficiency and perceived security is the handing over of control to a popular leader. 

In this episode, I talk about how some of the decentralized projects out there have coped (inadvertently or otherwise) with the centralization risks inherent in highly visible leadership and personality cults.

About a year ago I made a video explaining the differences and similarities between ERC20, ERC721 and ERC1155 from a layperson's perspective (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt5C-j2b62U).

I thought it might interesting to remake the video and release the audio as a podcast, but this time explaining the differences in the standards through the differences in the data structures within each contract that act as ledgers for the tokens.

I found it interesting that ERC721 is at its core a flipped ERC20 data structure, and that ERC1155 is an ERC721 that encapsulates ERC20s. Plus there's a trick discussed which allows you to use ERC20 to mint a single NFT. So that's all great fun, isn't it?

Most traditional companies are based on a hierarchical command an control structure, and as a result most people are used to functioning in such a structure.

These companies are structured that way partially due to the laws that enshrine what corporations are as legal entities, partially due to conditions imposed by venture capitalists or investors, and mostly because people in companies don't know any better.

This has a serious impact on how blockchain projects develop as they become commercialized. And so we start with founders espousing a decentralized philosophy, and end up with a centralized company controlling the end result.

If you push a round peg through a strong square hole for long enough, the peg becomes square too. Even a conical hat won't protect you from that.

Centralization around the edges can take the teeth out of decentralization in the center.

Well, if that isn't a confusing sentence then I don't know what is. In this video I dig a bit deeper into two opposing tendencies within the human psyche - moving towards centralization, and moving towards decentralization. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

Furthermore, localized decentralization can give the illusion of control in what ultimately remains a centralized system.

What, for example, is the use of "being in control of your data" (whatever that may mean) if you have no community in which to control it? Similarly, what is the point of owning digital assets if there is no wider system where those assets have practical value?

A week ago about 100 NFTs worth an estimated $1.4 million dollars were grabbed by someone for $0 million dollars.

How did they manage to do this? There was an error in a smart contract which did not consider the result of multiplying a number by zero.

The case is not just interesting from a smart contract testing perspective, but is also a clear-cut example of "code is law" diverging from the "spirit or meaning of the contract".

More on that in this episode.

In hindsight, the 2017 craze of handing over the digital equivalent of a suitcase of cash to a small group of project coordinators in the hope of making a financial killing was a bit stupid.

The next evolution in this is to hand the suitcase of cash to a smart contract, a DAO, instead. The idea being that the investors maintain some control over the finances of the enterprise in the same way that traditional VC investors control the startups they invest in with seats on the board of the company.

Will it work? Time will tell.

One thing is for sure - there will be bugs, and they will be interesting to study.

Human beings are contradictory: they're remarkably good at adapting to both change, and things staying the same.

In this episode, I talk about the impact this has on web design, and why you need to fix problems with your site sooner rather than later.

Because within a matter of days:

🤢 the awful experience you had the first time you used the site will be forgotten,

🥴 you'll start to take it for granted that your site makes sense,

☹️ your early user base won't want it to change because they're used to it, and

😵‍💫 many of your later users will be put off, and will leave.

So fix it now!

Smart contract testing currently faces a problem:

👨‍💻 developers are in short supply, so

🧪 smart contract testers get asked to write code, and

🔎 code writers are too close to the code to spot the wider problems, and

📄 smart contract quality suffers, thus

💵 funds are lost

I use a chess analogy to explain why developers usually only test one aspect of code.

Would you hire some random person in a different country that you found on Fiverr to look after your money? And the money of other people that trust you? 

Yet that's exactly what over 30 NFT projects did.  And the backdoor to their contracts consisted of a few lines of code that are shorter than the average fortune cookie message. 

There's a lot more in this episode, so go listen to it.

What is the difference between on-chain and off-chain signing?

Less than you'd think. Mainly because everything is signed off-chain.